“It was Kol Nidre eve. My husband said: “It's time to pray”. He placed two suitcases one on top of the other and covered them with a tallit (prayer shawl); He stood with Levin and his son from Komotau in Bohemia and the three put their prayer shawls over their heads and when my husband began to pray out loud, a bitter cry rose from the throats of all the men and women. One who was not there cannot even imagine it. It is necessary to understand that most of the Czech Jews were not religious… So things continued until the next day-Yom Kippur… for two days with no sleep. People sat on their cases. During Yom Kippur whoever wanted to joined the prayers. My husband chanted the “U’Netane Tokef” and an old man, apparently a Rabbi from Slovakia removed his shoes and recited in a fearful cry - Vidui (confession)…
The women returned to their rooms but we couldn’t sleep. We waited for the sound of the train’s departure. At 6 a.m. we heard the train’s whistle."
Excerpt from Charlotte Hellman-Lederer's testimony, in which she describes the Yom Kippur prayers that took place in the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1944 while 2,000 men, including her husband, Avraham Hellman, were waiting to be deported.
Prayer is perceived as a significant element in the relationship between man and God. Through the medium of prayer, man forges a dialogue with God in good times and in bad. During the Holocaust, many sought consolation and comfort in traditional or personal prayer rituals, while others found that the suffering and cruelty they experienced and the tragedies befalling their people precipitated a crisis of faith that rendered prayer meaningless. The appalling living conditions in the Holocaust also led to halachic (Jewish law) challenges pertaining to religious observance in general, and to prayer in particular. These included the lack of an appropriate forum for prayer due to the destruction of synagogues and the ban on public communal prayer services; the incongruence of reciting certain parts of the prayer liturgy, such as the blessing "Who did not make me a slave"; the inability to pray at the appointed times due to forced labor; and other dilemmas faced by observant Jews during the Holocaust.
Despite the inherent difficulties, Jews did cling to prayer in the Holocaust period in their quest for consolation, hope and meaning. They prayed alone or as part of a congregation, adhering to the traditional liturgical texts or crying out to God in their own words. Even in the direst of circumstances, many Jews were comforted and fortified by the power of prayer.
_3.jpg?itok=EaABXYfQ "The Siddur (Prayer Book) that Gabriele Kohn Received after Liberation")
