A Machzor Without Our Sins

Lieutenant Meyer Birnbaum, who worked heroically to save lives and comfort the starving survivors, recalled his first Yamim Noraim after the war, when he went to the various minyanim in the Feldafing DP camp. For Kol Nidrei and Maariv on Yom Kippur he joined the Klausenberger Rebbe and survivors from Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia. He spent the morning services with the small Litvishe group and the afternoon and closing services with the Polish minyan. After Kol Nidrei the Rebbe rose to speak. Lieutenant Birnbaum had never heard so powerful a speech, he said, and when it ended more than two hours later, he was drained and yet inspired for the best davening of his life.

The Rebbe stood with a machzor in his hand, turning the pages and asking, “Who wrote this? Does this apply to us? Are we guilty of these sins?” He went through the Ashamnu and the Al Cheit one by one and found that they had little to do with those who had survived the camps. Had they betrayed their loved ones, or been disloyal to Hashem? No. Could they have stolen? There was nothing to steal. Then he stopped. “Wait. Gazalnu does apply to me.” One day he had come in from work and lain down on the wooden slats to rest. His skin caught between two slats, and as he pulled free, some skin tore, and he cried “Oy.” He thought it was only a soft groan, but it woke a fellow prisoner. “I stole that man's sleep. It is the one theft I remember, and for it I must beat my chest.”

He closed the machzor, and Lieutenant Birnbaum thought he was finished. Then the Rebbe asked again who had written this machzor. The only sins that applied to them were the loss of emunah and bitachon. On their wooden slats at night, how many had said Krias Shema and thought, “Ribbono Shel Olam, let this be my last hamapil. I can't go on.” And in the morning they had to say Modeh Ani, thanking Hashem for returning their souls. They had carried out those who did not wake, and looked at them with envy. “Is that emunah? Is that bitachon? Yes, we have sinned. Now we must beat our chests and pray to get back the emunah and bitachon that went to sleep in the camps. Ribbono Shel Olam, our Father, forgive everyone here, and forgive every Jew in the world.”

The Rebbe was also quoted as saying, “When you come to a place of darkness, you do not chase out the darkness with a broom. You light a candle.”