A Free Man in Labor Camp
By Shmuel Eidelman
Excerpted with permission from www.toldosyeshurun.org.
In his book titled “Sichos Al HaTorah,” Rav Yitzchak Zilber recounts celebrating the festival of Pesach fifty
years ago in the work camp located in the central Russian city of
In jail his task was to draw water for the camp. In order not to desecrate
Shabbos, he took upon himself the entire job of supplying water and did not
divide the work among other prisoners. On Erev
Shabbos he would carry water until sunset, and from three-o-clock on Shabbos
afternoon, after the water that he had stored on Friday was finished, he would
ask a non-Jewish prisoner to bring water, for pay.
When Pesach appeared on the horizon Rav Zilber started to plan his preparations for the festival.
He firmly decided that even in imprisonment he would not eat chametz on
Pesach. Not all the Jewish prisoners shared his opinion. Among the prisoners
were several members of ‘Yevsectzia,’ the
Jewish communist party. They were sworn to fight Judaism to the bitter end, and
were possessed by a ferocity that would not shame even the non-Jewish
communists. Rav Zilber tried
to convince them. “I am not promising that you will get out of jail early,” he
said to them, “but I promise that you will not lose anything by not eating chametz.”
This was not an easy matter to arrange: bread was distributed in the camp in
meager amounts that did not satisfy the prisoners’ hunger.
Elijah the Prophet as a Tatar Police-Chief
The difficult task of obtaining matzah flour was
taken on by his wife (who has since passed away). She stood in line for many
hours with her two small children and obtained fifty-five pounds of flour. In
order to obtain such an amount she had to stand in several places in order not
to arouse suspicion. She had to bake the matzos in hiding, because someone who
was caught baking matzos was sent to jail. She baked the matzos, put them on
her sled, and started walking home. A Tatar policeman stopped her and asked
what she had on the sled. She answered that she was bringing cakes for the
birthday party of her daughter, but the large amount did not convince the
policeman and he whistled for help. A Tatar police-chief arrived. After the two
men exchanged a few sentences the police chief waved his hand to her, signaling
her to go. She later told her husband that Elijah the Prophet had appeared to
her in the guise of a Tatar police-chief.
She broke the matzos into little pieces that were designated as ‘teacakes,’
and she brought them wrapped in a package. Rav Zilber saw to it to acquire potatoes as well from some of
the camp’s known thieves. The question of where to cook was yet unsolved, as
was the question of where to find cooking utensils. He managed to find a pot
and cleaned it with snow and sand. A prisoner named Mishka
Kosov, who held the other prisoners in terror,
approached him. Rav Zilber
knew Kosov as the leader of the gang of thieves in
the camp, and a complete non-Jew. Suddenly Kosov
began to speak to him in Yiddish: “I see that you are making efforts not to eat
chametz,” he said to him. “I also am a Jew; I will be with you too.” Kosov continued to surprise Rav Zilber. He took out a hundred rubles, gave them to Rav Zilber, and asked him to send
the money to his wife to buy kosher chicken for Pesach.
Finding a place to cook also required creative thinking. The prisoner
responsible for heating in the camp was a terrifying man. He would sell toast
to the prisoners. Over the course of several days Rav
Zilber bought toast from him and thereby developed a
relationship. In return for some potatoes, he got permission from him to use
the stove for cooking.
A Seder in the Clinic, and Raisin Wine
The main thing that worried him was that the food they had prepared for
Pesach would be stolen. For each eight prisoners there was a little cabinet
divided into compartments, but experience had shown Rav
Zilber that it was impossible to leave anything
valuable there. The night he arrived at the camp they stole his shoes, and the
second night they cut a piece out of his winter coat. From then, until he was
released from jail three years later, he slept with all his possessions in hand.
Here Mishka Kosov surprised
him again. He gathered all the thieves and informed them: “For eight days it is
forbidden for you to ‘ask’ anything from Yitzchak Zilber.
Whoever does not obey will find himself headless.” The
warning proved effective.
The camp physician, a Jew who had a non-Jewish wife, also
agreed to cooperate. He gave the Jews access to the clinic on Seder
night. “We sat and spoke and I said over words of Torah; we did everything
properly,” recounts Rav Zilber.
“If I fulfil HaShem’s mitzvot properly, then I am a free man. We taught the
prisoners to say ‘Pesach, Matzah, and Maror.’ Also Mishka Kosov was there, and he really liked the wine made from
raisins,” he laughs. It was a true feeling of freedom.
On the eighth day of Pesach, the second day of Yom Tov
as is kept in the Diaspora, there were no matzos left. Hunger increased. One of
the prisoners said to Rav Zilber:
“I can’t wait any longer. In