The Leaf and the Branch

In 1980, at the cornerstone ceremony for the second building of Laniado Hospital, the Rebbe told in Yiddish how the hospital began in the camps. A bullet had struck his arm, and he dreaded going to the Nazi infirmary, because he knew that no one who went in came out alive.

Instead he pulled a leaf from a tree and pressed it to the wound to stop the bleeding, then cut a branch and bound it on to hold the leaf in place. With Hashem's help the arm healed within three days. Right then he resolved that if he survived, he would build a hospital in Eretz Yisroel in which every person would be treated with dignity, and in which the doctors and nurses would believe in Hashem and see the care of a patient as the greatest mitzvah.