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Passaic Park Post
Erev Shabbos Ki-Tzeizei 5782- September 9, 2022
Avoid the Fight, and You Will Win
The uniqueness of the special occasion was not lost on those present.
When Mendel Weiss spoke at the Sheva Brochus of his granddaughter, he mentioned the zechus of having his mother, the great-grandmother of the Kallah, present at the Simcha.
Mendel spoke with great passion about how his mother, now 96 years old, and his grandmother had the foresight to see what was in store for Hungarian Jewry.
In 1944 his grandmother escaped with his mother from Ungvar to Budapest and eventually reached the shores of America.
His mother arrived penniless with her mother.
Mendel disclosed how his great-grandmother left behind her family's wealth when she left Ungvar.
He stressed that his great-grandmother's farsightedness and visionary state of mind had saved her family.
He reminded everyone of her remarkable insightfulness, which allowed her to leave behind great riches and led her to safety.
It was truly a remarkable moment.
The benchers were distributed, and Shir HaMaalos was sung to the niggun of Od Yishama.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, Mrs. Eva Weiss, the great-grandmother of the Kallah, asked to speak.
Mrs. Weiss, who at 96 was a very unlikely speaker.
The women around her thought she was not fully aware that bentching was about to start.
Yet, Bubbe Weiss was more intuned to the goings-on than most of those present.
In a halting near-whisper voice, the nonagenarian Holocaust survivor apologized for the somewhat unconventional request.
Sitting among the woman, her voice filled with emotion, Bubbe Weiss began her speech.
"My son Mendel told you that my mother left her wealth behind in Ungvar in February of 1944 when she fled to Budapest.
He mentioned that she alone had the foresight of things to come, and this saved her life.
I am ninety-six years old, and I was eighteen, the same age as our Kallah when my mother and I escaped to Budapest.
I have kept silent for more than seventy-five about the incident, never telling a soul.
However, hearing my son relate the incident, I feel the time has come to tell my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren the true story.
The story will also serve as my Brocha to the young couple for them to know what is important in life.
My mother did not leave any wealth behind in Ungvar.
She had no money there, and she left with no money.
Her siblings attempted to deprive her of any family money, and when she left Ungvar, she was penniless.
She also was not more proactive or prescient than any other Jew in Hungary.
She, like everyone else, felt by 1944, with the Russians advancing, that the war would soon be over.
No one ever heard the cursed name of Eichmann at that time.
She had no foreshadowing of the horrific events that would decimate Hungarian Jewry.
Why, then, did she leave her city of birth as an almanah with me, her daughter?
She was not running away from the Nazis but from machlokes.
I was born in 1926, and my mother was 27 years old.
My father died in 1929, and my mother was left an Almanah with me, a three-year-old daughter.
Her father, my grandfather, passed away at the end of 1943. He was a man of means; he had real estate and factories.
When he died, there was terrible machlokes over his yerusha.
My mother was his only daughter, and her six brothers fought bitterly over the Yerusha.
The only thing they agreed upon was not allowing my mother to receive any money from the estate.
Other family mothers encouraged my mother to fight for what was Halachikally hers.
After all, they said, she was an Almanah with a child.
After a month of bitter family feuding, my mother announced, "I am leaving. I don't want any money, and I don't want to be a part of machlokes."
And with that, she ran from Ungvar to Budapest to be away and rid of the machlokes.
My mother left in late February 1944.
Ultimately and certainly unbeknownst to her at the time, her decision to go to Budapest saved her life. Hungary would be occupied by the Nazis in March of 1944.
Between April 21-23, 1944, the 25,000 Jews Ungvar were incarcerated in a Ghetto.
In May of 1944, all 25,000 were transported to Auschwitz, with the overwhelming majority gassed on arrival.
When the war ended, only 300 of the original 25,000 remained alive.
All of my Uncles and Aunts, their children, and grandchildren went to the gas chambers.
All of this time, we were in Budapest waiting and davening to be liberated.
Soviet forces liberated Budapest on February 13, 1945, and we were among the survivors.
More than 100,000 Jews remained in the city at liberation.
Of all her siblings and relatives, only my mother and I remained alive at the war's end.
That is the real reason she left Ungvar.
Not because she was farsighted and not because she knew what others didn't.
The only thing she saw and knew was the need to run away from machlokes.
She did not possess Ruach HaKodesh, nor did she have a special aversion to money.
She just hated Machlokes.
And thankfully, she wasn't one of the Kedoshim.
She knew that one must run from machlokes as one runs for their life."
The entire room was silent; you could have heard a pin drop.
Mrs. Eve Weiss wiped away a tear, sat down, and never looked as regal as she did at that moment.
As silence reigned in the room, the presence of the Shechinah could be felt hovering over Bubbe Weiss.
"And when I am for myself, then what am I?"- Hillel
Ron Yitzchok Eisenman
Rav
Congregation Ahavas Israel
Passaic, NJ
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