"It was the eve of Hanukkah, and we took a potato, cut it in half and made a hole in the middle. We stole some oil from the machines we worked on, we pulled thread out from the sheets and made it into a wick – and that is how we lit the Hanukkiah [Hanukkah menorah], in the window overlooking the river, where there were no houses or anything, no possibility of being seen... we sang 'Maoz Tsur [O Rock of Ages – a traditional Hanukkah song]. We knew the blessings off by heart… and then what did we get? A tiny saucer of real potato soup… we treated it like ice-cream, we licked it to make it last."
So describes Edith Rotschild (née Weiss) the lighting of Hanukkah candles in the slave labor camp of Oberhohenelbe in the Sudetenland. Rotschild, who was born in Balassagyarmat, northern Hungary in 1923, had been sent to Oberhohenelbe from Auschwitz, where the women were forced to make radio components, light bulbs and weapons.
Rotschild's testimony is one of many about the festival of Hanukkah during the Holocaust that may be viewed in the online exhibition "Hanukkah – The Festival of Lights" on Yad Vashem's website. Hanukkah, which symbolizes the struggle between light and darkness, the battle of the few against the many, and the Jewish victory over the Greek conquerors, held an even greater meaning during the Holocaust. The poem "Maoz Tsur" that Rotschild and her friends sang in the camp illustrated the historical the struggle of the Jewish people throughout the generations, and their ultimate salvation – which echoed within the hearts of the prisoners as a longed-for miracle that would save them too from their suffering.
Celebrating the Jewish festivals during the Holocaust was a significant challenge for the persecuted Jews. The decision to take charge of their own time, often without knowing the date, in order to remember the upcoming festivals, allowed them to preserve their spiritual essence and act as human beings.
Marking the festivals in prayer and song and performing customs as much as conditions, time and place would allow, in the ghettos and the camps and in hiding, gave the Jews something to hold onto, a feeling of continuity and hope for the future, as part of the ancient tradition and as a link in the chain of generations past.
"Hanukkah – The Festival of Lights" is one of a series of online exhibitions that present the many ways in which Jewish festivals were marked in Europe and North Africa before, during and after the Holocaust – the latter in DP camps and children's homes that were established after the war. The exhibitions are based on Holocaust-era items housed in the Yad Vashem Archives and Collections: photographs, artifacts, testimonies, documents and works of art.
The online exhibition "And You Shall Tell Your Children," for example, includes stories of Jews who wished to mark Passover during the Holocaust. The exhibition presents Passover Haggadot (texts for the order of the seder celebrated on the eve of Passover), among them one that was copied and illustrated by Ephraim-Ze'ev Yacqont while in hiding in Belgium.
"Marking the New Year" illustrates episodes from the High Holydays – days of atonement, forgiveness and renewal of hope for a better future. The exhibition – which was recently updated with ten new stories – features greeting cards and wishes for the Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah. Each message carries with it the fate of those who sent or received it. One of the greeting cards was written and illustrated by Mojsze Treschtschanski for his caregiver, Emilie Reinwald, in September 1943 in the Theresienstadt ghetto. "Redemption and happiness for the New Year," he wrote, a short while before they were both transported to their deaths in Auschwitz.
The unique way of keeping Jewish tradition during the Holocaust is perhaps best expressed by 13-year-old Fanny (Zipporah) Dasburg in the New Year's greeting card that she wrote to her parents in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in September 1944. "We will have a happy and sweet New Year even without apple and honey [the traditional food for Rosh Hashanah]," she wrote, and concluded with a prayer: "May peace come quickly in our days, and may we speedily return home with all the family. May you be inscribed for a good year."
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 93.
