Nazi Grandfather, Jewish Grandchildren

As Tishrei, the month of holidays, draws to a close, allow me to present one more faith-based story, not as spectacular as the earth swallowing up a rebellious kohen and his would-be divorcée bride, yet more along the lines of the everyday miracles that Barbra Streisand sang about as indicative of the way the world generally works. Once again, I turn to Rabbi A. L. Scheinbaum’s Peninim on the Torah, volume 29 (Hebrew Academy of Cleveland), this time under the heading of Parshas Ha’azinu. This story was recounted by Rabbi Berel Wein.

Our story begins with a seemingly chance encounter on a Jerusalem street on Shabbos afternoon as Rabbi Wein was walking home from shul, when he met a man who seemed oddly out of place. Although he “wore the garb and talked the talk,” his features appeared to be neither Jewish nor Israeli. Sure enough, he confided to Rabbi Wein that he was a German convert to Judaism. Then he made a startling admission: His father had been a Nazi, an SS officer no less. When the young man found out, in his early twenties, he was so profoundly ashamed that he cut off all ties with his family in Germany and set out on a quest to find out why there was so much Jew-hatred in the world. He reasoned that the best place to investigate was the Jewish homeland, Eretz Yisrael, so he journeyed there.

It didn’t take long for him to fall in love with the country and its people, so he enrolled to continue his graduate study in microbiology at Hebrew University. As his stay extended to more than a visit, he found he wanted to learn more about Judaism and began taking classes, which led to his converting to Judaism. And in time he found another love, a wonderful woman who was, like himself, a German convert to Judaism. They married and raised three sons, all of whom went through the yeshiva system and became observant Jews. Aside from the fact that all three of them had blond hair and blue eyes, they were indistinguishable in dress and conduct from any other Torah Jews.

After many years elapsed without any contact with his biological family, the ger tzedek was surprised to receive a letter from his father stating that he was terminally ill and wanted to see his grandchildren before departing this earth. Faced with an ethical dilemma, the son consulted a prominent rabbi in Yerushalayim who advised him to fulfill his father’s dying wish, so he took his sons and returned to Germany.

When he came home, he was astonished to see the change in his father’s appearance. The once strong man he remembered was now gaunt and haggard due to age and illness. There was a certain tension in the room as the Nazi grandfather hugged and kissed his yeshiva-educated grandsons. As his son described it, his father cried amidst spasms of coughing. He said he wanted to tell his son a story, and given how close he was to death’s door, the son had no doubt that it would be the truth. He prefaced his remarks by saying, “I think you’ll appreciate what I have to say.”

The father’s story is as follows, as best as the son and Rabbi Wein could reconstruct it.

“One day during the war on the eastern front, my comrades and I were rounding up all the Jewish residents and throwing them into trucks to be delivered to the gas chambers. We wanted to be sure that we had found every Jew, so we made another tour of the village and searched everywhere.

“It was during this last inspection that I saw them: three sets of round, black eyes peering up at me from beneath one of the trucks. Their eyes locked with mine, as I was about to call my comrades and inform them that I had discovered three more Jewish children hiding from us. But I could not do it. Something prevented me from passing the death sentence on these children. It was their eyes, staring straight into mine, pleading with me to allow them to live. For the first and only time in my career as a Nazi, I felt a touch of compassion. I was somehow moved. I walked away and shouted to the others, ‘There’s no one left. We are through here. Let’s go!’

“I will never forget those children. They were three little Jewish boys, innocent children with sweet faces. Just like your sons!

“You know,” the father mused, his clouded, death-filled eyes suddenly perking up, “I am certain that had there been four boys hiding under the truck, I would have had four grandchildren – not three!”

Rabbi Scheinbaum wrote a final comment on this story. “This goy, this Nazi, understood the Jewish teaching: No act goes unrequited. It might take time, we may never understand, but one thing is sure: Everyone receives his due.”

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