Children of Survivors & SS Officers Weep Together - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

so we all came together and we ate and the truth is that I felt a a tense energy from the very beginning when we all came together in Jeremy Suka I felt intense energy that I wasn't expecting because I didn't really realize that while I have a long history with these Germans the other people there did not and uh you know I knew that shayna's mother was the daughter of a holocaust Survivor um you know it sets a central part of her identity um shayna's grandmother who we all lovingly called Bubby zush she endured the living hell of Auschwitz but I didn't know about the family background and connection to the Holocaust that the other two women had and I should have because they were ashkenazic and most ashkenazic Jews that aren't spartic from the you know Arabic countries have a story with the Holocaust there's a connection that they have and indeed they had a very strong connection and very painful past so I couldn't put my finger on the tension but it was there so I decided that the moment had arrived um to stand up and share some Torah and I you know I scanned the portion in my head and I arrived at exactly what Jeremy and tahila have been talking about and I really feel like Hashem could in my heart the Tower of Babel you know I had and I felt a piece that's it that's what I want to talk about now I've spoken about this idea on the fellowship before so I won't rehash the entire thing but in very short I shared the idea that Humanity came together to to defeat God but not by like as Tila said not by arrows and cannons and going up to this great tower that's like an infantile childish approach they came together in the united desire to be evil and when they saw what happened the last time they were evil Hashem sent to flood so they wanted to build the Tower so high that Hashem would if he decided to punish their evil again with the flood they could go up there and they could take refuge in the tower and that's why he confused their languages to expose that this Unity that seemed like all of mankind was United it wasn't real Unity the unifying to do evil is not a real bond of friendship and togetherness and all it took was for them to throw bricks at each other's head was just mixing up their languages anyways and there we were you know Christians from Colorado Jews from Florida and Boston Israeli Jews living there there from Jerusalem Christians from Germany like as you know descendants of who who they were and um they were all coming together with different backgrounds and cultures and languages and we were coming together from a place of Love or so I said I think I was trying to empower the situation to be more from a place of love and and to fix that initial sin of the Tower of Babel and like the deepest way possible and then Jeremy spoke beautifully about do you know I think you shared it with you about the picture he has on on his library books right by the door to his house of the piazatzana where if Clinton is common of PS that's the rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto and how he uh this is one of the tours that Jeremy shares one of the ideas that no matter how many times he tells me it always always penetrates to my heart every time and how he imagines that this great Sonic would feel if he opened his front door and instead of seeing the swastikas and suffering bringing murder and death that he always saw every day that he was able to see through Jeremy's house right the Rolling Hills of Judea and the children of Auschwitz prisoners having a Shabbat kirish with the children of the SS officers that ran their camp and I think that it was around then that shayna's mother I guess she couldn't take it anymore and she stood up and said my name is Lily or liba and I'm the daughter of Auschwitz survivors and I lost much of my family in the camps now you could you could see her shaking you could see her shaking and she said uh you know I'm trying to remember it all the whole thing just happened so quickly and unexpectedly but she stood there and told everyone that before her mother died she was able to come out to the farm and see where her granddaughter was living and where she would please God be raising her family and her eyes filled up with tears I actually merited to see this happen I remember her grandmother turning to me and saying uh you're either mashiach or Meshuggah well you're either Messiah or you're crazy anyways she said that you know this moment sitting with all of them she said that it was an overwhelming uh experience for her and she didn't exactly know what to make of it and now in the German group are these two sweet women they're twins their names are ERM guard and Anna Marie and they look so German from their hats to what they're wearing to the their jawline they're just so German looking and they're nearly 80 years 80 years old and they're filled with strength and vigor here's actually a picture of them of them in the back of the Ranger from the olive Harvest just so you can sort of visualize their their faces that's them with Shayna and Vash up front anyways one of them stood up and addressed shayna's mother and with tears in her eyes she announced that she was the daughter of the SS officer and so there was it went from this sort of Cloudy hazy I know that there's Jews here and I know that there's Nazi but who's who we don't really know is all very ambiguous and confusing and now it became very clear and specific and exact and she said that she was just so filled with pain and with sorrow and with regrets and and then one of the Jewish women stood up and shared her heart and just the penta pain and tears welling up in her eyes which was followed by another German woman standing up and begging forgiveness through her own tears and then they all just embraced each other and wept on each other's shoulders it was just I mean just can you imagine this was a you know a picture I captured after Shabbat but that doesn't compare to what happened on Shabbat this is when they were all saying goodbye to each other that shayna's mother on the left and I think ERM guard on the on the right but everybody was everybody was crying everyone almost everyone other than Jeremy you know who started clearing off the table and whispered to me ah I'm not ready for this I'm short circuit there was just I mean that's one approach I couldn't blame him part of me also couldn't fathom what my eyes were beholding there was no introduction for me it was like short circuit short circuit overload overload this is too much for me right now I don't know how to process what my eyes are beholding I but I should just clean off the table and be productive I the short circuits that's what it is like how could you be doing the Jeremy I'm like oh this is coping mechanism because there's no introduction for this this was not planned or engineered at least not by man and as I beheld what was playing out before my own you know tear filled eyes I felt strongly this was not just an isolated event that was happening that something very profound and historic was was happening you know we're only on the lowest dimension of of what was happening were we seeing with our eyes