A Journey Through Legacy: One Rabbi’s Exploration of His Parents’ Holocaust Experience

Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Benish holds two unpolished pieces of granite in his hands, their rough edges a stark contrast to their stunning beauty. The snow-white stones are embedded with blue sparks that radiate light. This beauty conceals a horrific story of bondage, pain, and suffering endured by his parents. "I returned from the place these stones came from," he shares emotionally. "I couldn’t leave without a memory from this place. I’ll place this on the table in the center of our home so we won’t forget the hell my mother went through because of these stones until she was liberated exactly seventy years ago, in the month of Iyar 5705."

Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Benish

For those who may not remember, Rabbi Benish is a renowned author and scholar behind a series of respected works in Torah research. Now, seventy years later, it’s time to confront the personal chapter of his parents he had previously avoided—the story of his father, Rabbi Shimon, and his mother, Gilda Benish, and their liberation. This is what brought him to Poland, embarking on a journey through his mother’s suffering, culminating in the distant and lesser-known extermination camp, *Gross-Rosen*.

"Everyone knows about *Auschwitz* or *Treblinka*," says Rabbi Benish. "But almost no one knows about the camp referred to as 'Auschwitz II'. It was a massive camp where thousands of Jews were murdered and perished. This was the last camp to be liberated, and my mother was there until it was freed by the Russian army."

Logisław

Kaddish at the Grave of My Stepfather

The journey began in Logisław, Poland, the birthplace of his mother, Gilda, from the Rubinstein family. There she married her husband, a student of the *Chafetz Chaim* who also studied at the *Radin* yeshiva, and they had five children.

"Her husband, of blessed memory," recounts Rabbi Benish, "who was my stepfather, initially served as a rabbi. But how did a rabbi make a living during those times? He would answer questions and receive an egg or a chicken leg for his efforts, and that’s what he lived on. It wasn’t for him, so he left his post and moved to Ostrowiec. Later, when the Germans arrived and confined all the Jews in the ghetto, he fled to join the partisans. He was captured by the Gestapo and executed."

Rabbi Benish and his brother visited the town, entered the town hall, met with the mayor, and heard the entire story. "He took us to the basement of the Gestapo offices. The detention cells stand there as if untouched for seventy years. The names of the detainees are inscribed in Hebrew on the walls, engraved by their own hands for memory, and it remains to this day. My stepfather was shot to death and buried there. At his grave in the yard of the Gestapo offices, we recited Psalms and said Kaddish."

Model of the camp (Photo: Gross Rosen)

What happened to your step-siblings?

"There was an Aktion in the ghetto. All the Jews were sent to *Auschwitz*, among them my mother, who was left alone with five children. She managed to pass the youngest child to a Polish neighbor who promised to keep him safe. With the remaining four children, she arrived at *Auschwitz*, where their fates were decided for life or death. She was sent to work, and they were sent directly to the gas chambers."

For many long days, the mother toiled in the hell of *Auschwitz* until the Germans began to suffer defeats on the front. Then thousands of prisoners were sent on a death march to Germany, first to the extermination camp meant to replace *Auschwitz*: *Gross-Rosen*.

"To reach it," describes Rabbi Benish, "we went through great difficulty. We landed in Warsaw, traveled to Łódź where Dariusz was waiting for us. Dariusz is a 40-year-old Polish guide, a complete gentile who for some reason is interested in the Jewish people and their history. He even visited Israel once to see what a Jewish *Shabbat* is like. A sort of righteous among the nations."

"From Łódź, we traveled for many more hours until we reached the Silesia region in southwestern Poland, and its capital, Wrocław. The local architecture is decidedly German, a remnant of the days when Germany ruled the area. There is a noticeable presence of descendants of Germans who once lived there, and it is far grander and more pleasant than other Polish cities."

Just to clarify, Rabbi Benish explains that Jewish history knows the city better by its name 'Breslau' and most notably due to the giants of the world who lived there: the city rabbi, Rabbi Isaac Taumann, and Rabbi Benjamin Wolf Eiger. One of the famous yeshiva students is the Torah genius, Rabbi Akiva Eiger. However, over time, the city declined under the influence of German enlightenment and became one of the centers of the Reform movement.

Entrance to the camp (Photo: Gross Rosen)

"From Breslau we continued another sixty kilometers to the *Gross-Rosen* camp. The road passes through magnificent German castles from the Middle Ages and villages that look like they were torn from Bavaria, making it hard to believe we are on Polish soil. Everything here is German, orderly, and far more developed than Polish villages. We paused for fuel, and one of the villagers told us that indeed the village, like the whole area, was under German control and only after World War II were the Germans expelled, and the Poles settled there. 'We didn’t know what a faucet or water sink was. We were used to wells. All the hygiene arrangements, all the innovations in the village, were great new beginnings.'"

"Like everywhere that changed hands, names also change, causing confusion. We searched for 'Gross-Rosen' but it wasn’t there. Instead, we found the Polish village of Rogóźmice. After a tiring drive, we finally arrived at its gates. "Now there’s no doubt: a vast structure near the railway line, with the German inscription 'Arbeit Macht Frei', welcomes us."

Gross-Rosen

At the Entrance to Mother's Bunker

"Unlike us," Rabbi Benish explains, "Mother arrived here after going through *Auschwitz* and the horrors of the camp, after marching on a death march of 300 kilometers in freezing cold of 18 degrees below zero. About 50 thousand Jews marched with her in long lines alongside armed Gestapo men. Any Jew who fell was shot on the spot. This was the fate of thousands of Jews. The entire path from *Auschwitz* to *Gross-Rosen* is strewn with their graves. Mother was one of the few who survived."

Was she particularly strong?

"Not at all. But as I was told in the camp, women endured more than men, perhaps due to a stronger instinct for life ingrained in them. Mother had the child she thought survived, and for him, she fought for another minute, another hour of life. She kept telling herself: 'I have a reason to live; to return and meet the little child I still have left.' That’s what kept her alive."

This lesser-known camp was established in 1940. Thousands of its inmates were subjected to the horrific work of quarrying stone. Here, a unique type of granite was revealed, with a special pattern that exists nowhere else in the world. Prisoners were forced to hew this rare stone. A whole mountain was broken and quarried by the prisoners' hard labor, and from it, Rabbi Benish took a keepsake. "Today," he describes, "the quarry is completely abandoned and filled with water."

The bell used to round up the prisoners

As *Auschwitz* was being evacuated, it was decided to expand the camp to serve as a replacement. When the prisoners arrived here, they encountered the same camp that resembled the hell they had just left: the same inscription 'Work Sets You Free'; with the 'barracks'—the huts of *Auschwitz*. In reality, it was even worse. Within a few days, tens of thousands of exhausted prisoners were crowded into a camp that lacked the adequate resources to accommodate them. The overcrowding was unimaginable.

In several barracks intended for around 200 prisoners, more than 1,000 and sometimes even 1,800 prisoners were crammed into those weeks. Among the inmates who arrived at what was then the largest camp throughout the Reich, a struggle escalated into violence over a tiny space. Within a few weeks, tens of thousands of prisoners died. "Mother didn’t stay here; the Germans sent her to the town of Waldenburg. From there, we continued our journey on the path of her suffering."

The Pierschenstein Palace near Waldenburg, now called Walbzyce in Polish, is one of the most beautiful sites in Poland. Nestled amid mountains on a high wooded cliff stands a magnificent castle with a red roof and soaring spires. The castle dates back to the Middle Ages and is isolated by valleys and rivers all around. Adolf Hitler, for some strange reason, perhaps due to the location's remoteness, high altitude, and isolation—believed this area would never be conquered by allied forces, thus it would remain in his possession. He decided to fortify the area and build underground bunkers for himself and his staff beneath the mountains.

"When we arrived at the place," Rabbi Benish shares, "at the luxurious palace intended to be Hitler’s palace. Beneath our feet, a vast complex of underground halls and passages was constructed that extended for several kilometers. In a document left by his headquarters, there is a request for an allocation of cement for the construction site designated as 'the structure planned to be the Führer’s main residence'. These caves and halls deep within the mountain were meant to be his last bastion. The construction required 28 million tons of cement, which was equivalent to the annual allocation given for building all the shelters constructed at that time throughout Germany."

The Pierschenstein castle. The castle under which the bunkers were excavated for Hitler

"After touring the luxurious palace that was fully prepared for the dictator, we also wanted to descend into the cellars beneath the palace. Here, Mother was employed in back-breaking construction. The managers were kind and did not hide the site’s horrific past. However, when we tried to enter the bunkers to see where she worked, we faced obstinate refusal: 'The caves are used for scientific seismographic instruments,' they told us, 'they are off-limits.'"

It turned out that Hitler was indeed correct in his assumption of the difficulty of conquering Silesia. During the winter of 5705, all of Germany was falling, Berlin itself also fell to the Russian army. Hitler committed suicide on the 13th of Iyar, leaving a letter demanding his men continue fighting until total destruction. Even after his suicide, fighting continued, and the extermination machine in *Gross-Rosen* operated in full force for several more days. Only on the 26th of Iyar was Silesia liberated by the Russian army after a three-month siege of the capital city, Breslau. The Jews in *Gross-Rosen* were, in fact, the last to be freed from the Nazi concentration camps, including Benish’s mother.

Łódź

*Shabbat* in the "China" of Europe

"After the war," Rabbi Benish transitions to the next stop, "Mother returned to Ostrowiec. The first thing she did was approach that neighbor with whom she left her son, who for whom she still held onto life with all her might. Unfortunately, she learned that the gentile decided one day she had enough of taking care of the Jewish baby. She went to the Gestapo and handed him over for a kilo of sugar and a liter of oil. The little child was immediately taken to the yard and shot. Thus, my mother’s entire family was completely obliterated. A small consolation to her great loss came when by divine grace she discovered that all nine of her brothers and sisters survived the Holocaust. Perhaps it was the only family in all of Poland whose children, to such an extent, survived. This was the consolation."

Broken and crushed, mourning and alone, Mother decided she had nothing more to seek on the cursed ground screaming for her children’s blood. Therefore, she began to take actions and efforts to obtain visas to immigrate to the Land of Israel. In one of the displaced persons camps in Germany, she had the chance to meet the renowned activist Rabbi Shimon Benish, of blessed memory, one of the leading founders of the *P.A.I* movement and *Kibbutz* *Chafetz Chaim*. With the sacred goal of avenging their enemies, they got engaged and established their home.

"My father, the rabbi Shimon, was born in the great city of Łódź. He was a *Radomsko* Hasid and studied at the famous 'Keter Torah' yeshivas," Rabbi Benish recounts. "He was, in fact, one of the founders of the *Agudat Israel* labor movement in the city." To understand the motivations and historical background, Rabbi Benish asks rhetorically: "Do you know why my father and his friends founded the *Agudat Israel* labor movement?" He explains: "Łódź was then the 'China of Europe'. Here were the large textile factories of Eastern Europe, and almost all the clothing and fabrics of the continent were produced here."

Here the Jewish prisoners quarried granite from the mountain

"Many of the factories belonged to Jews, including Orthodox and Hasidic Jews. They used to make a special *hetter mechira* for *Shabbat*. This was an arrangement that sold the factory to a gentile and allowed the machines to continue operating even on *Shabbat*. This permission was rather dubious, but unfortunately, this mass desecration of *Shabbat* was accepted by all. The problem was that because these factories operated on *Shabbat*, the wealthy and connected Orthodox Jews refused to employ the Orthodox. Thus, thousands of yeshiva boys and Orthodox scholars faced a cruel dilemma: 'Either desecrate *Shabbat*, or starve.' All attempts to halt this wrongful practice failed, and that’s how my father and others began to organize and establish a framework for Orthodox workers to fight against the phenomenon."

"There was a case when community leaders gathered to strengthen *Shabbat* observance. On the agenda was the issue of women standing at street corners selling parsley, radishes, and spices until *Shabbat* entered. The *Shabbat* activists drove them away, but they kept appearing again at the corner of the next street. At the assembly, my father stood up and confronted the older activists: 'Before you fight against them, make sure that the Hasidic manufacturers employ their husbands and fathers, so these poor women won’t have to find miserable livelihoods selling parsley. What can we do, he continued to shout, 'that they cannot sell their 'parsley factories' to gentiles and earn a living on *Shabbat* like is customary here?"

"Father didn’t stop there. He protested against Hasidic manufacturers who continued to go to the *shteibel* as usual while their factories worked on *Shabbat* and succeeded in changing this. He also established a special *shteibel* for Orthodox workers that operated until the days of the Holocaust. The motto of the *shteibel*, as he defined it: 'Even a worker can receive *Shabbat*.'"

Rabbi Benish’s father was also active in establishing Torah and charity institutions until the terrible days of the Holocaust arrived. Like all the Jews of the city, he was also imprisoned in the Łódź ghetto with his wife and three children. Toward the end of the war, when the Germans decided to evacuate the ghetto, they were sent to *Auschwitz*, where he stayed for several months until he was sent to another camp and managed to survive the horrors of war. He too dreamed of moving to the Land of Israel. He reached the displaced persons camp where he found the one who would be his support in the second chapter of his life. Together, they began to try to build a new life and immigrate to the country."

Cyprus

Canned Goods and Rolling Pins Against Bombs

The story of their immigration is fascinating in itself. "They immigrated to the Land on a ship of immigrants. Father gathered a group of Orthodox Jews around him to ensure a kosher kitchen and religious needs on the ship. This was a ship from the 'new generation' of immigrant ships that 'went big' and carried thousands of immigrants. When the ship’s commander was Mordechai (Muka) Limon.

"Throughout all my writings, I tend to return to my roots and check first-hand what happened with my parents and those who were with them, and so I went to meet Muka Limon, who shared fascinating stories about my father and his actions. He even recalled that Father came to ask him for the keys to the kitchen. 'He told me that without a kosher kitchen, a third of the ship's passengers would starve,' Muka recalled. Thanks to Father there was a kosher kitchen on the ship.

On the last night of *Chol Hamoed*, a British warship approached the vicinity of the ship and questioned its identity, attempting to disguise the large ship as an innocent trade vessel making its way from Italy to Port Said in Egypt. But the next night, on the seventh night of *Pesach*, another British destroyer appeared, surrounding the ship and disappearing again. It was clear they had been discovered. The passengers ceased to pretend. They unfurled a banner on deck with writing in Hebrew and English: 'The *Hagana* Ship' and began preparations for the battle that was yet to come against the British. The religious group led by Rabbi Benish took the defense at the bow of the ship. Their weapons consisted of rolling pins, and their ammunition consisted of canned goods, which no one touched because of *Pesach*. Hence, the religious group had an advantage of 'bullets' as well as rolling pins left over from matzah baking in preparation for *Pesach*.

Commemorative tombstone at the camp

After a few days, as the ship neared the shores of the Land, it was attacked by a British destroyer that began bombarding it with tear gas. The immigrants tried to respond by throwing bottles and canned goods, but it didn’t really faze the destroyer, which fired streams of seawater and tear gas bombs. Soldiers swarmed onto the deck and conquered it. The results were bloody. Two Jews were killed and 24 were injured. The ship was towed to Haifa port, and the immigrants were transferred to another ship that took them to Cyprus. Thus began a new exile: the exile of Cyprus.

Even in Cyprus, Rabbi Benish continued to be a beacon for the exiles. He established Torah classes and worked to strengthen religious observance. And here, in exile in Cyprus, the firstborn son of the new Benish family was born. "In the year 5708," he now recounts from years away, "the British decided to release the Jews and return them to the Land of Israel, with priority going to infants and their parents. Thus my father said that thanks to the children we were immigrating, as the prophet Malachi said: 'And He shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.' The fathers will live for the sake of their children."

Rabbi Benish participated in the founding of *Kibbutz* *Chafetz Chaim*, then moved to live in Kiryat Ata and worked to support his family in the textile industry at *Atar*. He was the driving force behind establishing synagogues and educational institutions in the town and was among the prominent activists of *P.A.I* in the country. He was also one of those who tried to revive the *Radomsko* Hasidism in the Land of Israel.

"My father, of blessed memory," Rabbi Benish recalls, "was the one who pushed and worked to appoint a successor Rebbe for the Hasidic dynasty, after the last Rebbe, Rabbi Shlomo Hanuch, was murdered in the Warsaw ghetto. He also headed the Hasidic kollel and worked to commemorate its memory."

Kiryat Ata

Looking Only Forward and Building

Where did your parents find the strength to start anew after their family was set ablaze in the exile of Europe?

"My father, of blessed memory," Rabbi Benish gets emotional, "always told us: 'We Jews need to look forward, to the future, not to the past.' He wasn’t afraid to talk about the Holocaust. In his role as the director of the culture department in Kiryat Ata, he organized exhibitions about the Holocaust and ensured that the memory of what happened then would not be forgotten. But he didn’t dwell on destruction or wallow in despair. The view was always ahead to building. He would say: 'Lot’s wife was commanded during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah not to look back, for in times of disaster we must be engaged in rescue and not look back. After she violated the command, she became a pillar of salt. We too must not look back.'"

As noted, just in these days, following extensive research and visiting the sites of events, Rabbi Benish completed the printing of his comprehensive book, *A Man of Flame*, detailing the fascinating life stories of his illustrious parents, of which only a sample was shared in our conversation.

Cart transporting stones from the quarry

During that time, there was little focus within the Orthodox community on the Holocaust, but recently the subject is becoming more recognized and more books are being published in the field.

"That’s very true," confirms Rabbi Benish. "Like my parents who mostly wanted to build and not sink into the past, the Orthodox community, which was the most affected by the Holocaust, was busy with rebuilding and not with the painful past. Today, after we are stronger and have already built ourselves, we have the strength to look back."

"My father also believed that the Holocaust was not a private event that happened to a specific number of Jews, but a matter of all Israel. A significant event, transcending our understanding, whose meaning we cannot comprehend, and we can only believe in simple faith that it was *Hashem*'s will."

"I remember one day he saw an announcement from a large organization promoting Judaism that published a headline for a study day discussing the question: 'Why did the Holocaust occur?'. Father decided to attend the lecture. There, on stage stood a young man, detailing the sins and reasons that *Hashem* decreed the Holocaust upon the Jewish people. When the lecturer finished, he asked: 'Are there any questions? Is everything understood?'. My father was genuinely agitated. He stood up and said: 'Given your beautifully described explanations, if the Holocaust did not occur, we would have to ask, why isn’t there a Holocaust?'. Everyone laughed. Only father remained pained. He explained to those present: 'Today we are used to wanting to understand everything and know everything, but we must recognize that there are things that are beyond our understanding. This decree touches on the very existence of all Israel and therefore touches on the roots of creation and the roots of divine will as elaborated in the books of Hasidism. Thus we must not engage in this but accept everything with simple faith. Never forget Amalek, and continue to look forward and rebuild'".  

This article was first published in the magazine *B’Keilah*. For a special subscription campaign for Hidabroot readers,click here.