by Frank Schroth

This evening Passover begins. It is a very special time for Jews, and as with many special days that are observed by one relegion or another there is, perhaps a lesson for all.

Rabbi Brad Hirshfield, an author and commentator for The Huffington Post, writes “Passover .  .  .   is a roadmap to liberation, both personal and global, and who doesn’t want, and deserve, to be free?”

Recently a Milton man told me a tale of liberation. This is it.

The man is Jewish and was born in Vienna. He had a good family and was happy. And then the war came, a violent catastrophic man-made hurricane of oppression and persecution. It was 1942, and the man was 15 years old. He was separated from his family. He was forced to march. He was put on trains and sent to camps: Terazin, Auschwitz, and Dachau.

Dachau was his final stop. When he entered the camp he knew it was his final destination. He was weak and sick. In his memoir, he writes, “The progression in Dachau was that you get sick, you go to barrack number 4, and from there you exit the world.”

One day they heard that that the SS had vacated the camp and been replaced by Volkssturm, a reserve army. The man told me, “I was lying on the bottom shelf. I told my friend Hardie, ‘I will tell you what is true.’ I was going to pull myself up and look out the window. I crawled  across the floor and was halfway to the window when the door opened and in came an American soldier.”

“I was on the floor and I cried. I cried like nobody ever cried.” He was liberated.

The soldier asked who was in charge. “Nobody’s in charge here,”  he was told. The soldier told them to stay in the barracks and that help would come.

After awhile the man managed to pick himself up, and he walked outside. He went up to a man with a red cross arm band and said, “Sir, I am very sick and I need help.”

“The man with the arm band picked me up. It was’t hard to as I only weighed 64 pounds. He drove me to a field hospital. I took a shower and the water was delicious. I didn’t want to get out. Another man took me and sat me down and rubbed everything off me. I had scabs and sores and lice. It hurt. I called him bastard and son of a bitch and German Nazi!”

“He said, ‘Yes, I understand.'”

The man recovered. He went on to play soccer and eventually came to the United States where he happily married and was a successful salesman.

He is older now and largely confined to his bed; but his eyes are bright and his mind alert.

Perhaps most remarkable of all is his attitude. After all this time and after all he has suffered and endured – events and experiences that strain at our ability to describe, explain or undertand – he speaks with candor and a kindness that are life-affirming and, frankly, liberating for those fortunate enought to meet him. Our Milton neighbor, Mr. Ladner.