Rabbi tells miraculous story of 51 boys who escaped the gas chambers of Auschwitz

Rabbi Naftali Schiff and author Michael Calvin (Photo: Jewish Futures)[Missing Credit]

Speaking at the premier of the screening of Undeniable, where the book Miracle was also launched, Rabbi Schiff said: “For the last two years [since October 7], we have been languishing in the darkness, with a lack of hope, and I knew I was carrying a story which carried light and hope.”

Rabbi Schiff first met one of the survivors, Yaakov Yosef Weiss, in 2006 and has spent the past 20 years trying to track down the others.

He managed to find five more of them - Wolf Greenwald, Chaim Schwimmer and David “Dugo” Leitner, Chaim’s cousin, Hershel Herskovic, and Mordechai Eldar.

Hershel, now in his late 90s, is living in Stamford Hill, and Mordechai Eldar is a few years younger and living in Israel.

After the Holocaust, all six settled in either Israel or the UK, and it’s their deeply moving testimonies which form the basis of both the documentary and the book.

Miracle by Michael Calvin, with Naftali Schiff (Photo: Jewish Futures)[Missing Credit]

Michael Calvin, who wrote Miracle, with input from Rabbi Schiff, said he had been “blown away” when he first heard the extraordinary story.

Asked during a discussion with journalist Nicole Lampert how the boys survived, Calvin said that a consignment of potatoes arrived at the death camp and the Nazis needed 50 strong boys to carry them up a hill and load them onto trucks to be taken to German soldiers fighting at the front.

After a selection process - described by Calvin as “macabre, and haphazard” - during which the boys’ fitness was tested by having to do push-ups and a sprint, they lined up in ten rows of five. Undetected, an additional boy joined the group by hiding under discarded clothing.

In their testimonies, the survivors recalled how they were forever haunted by the cries of the boys who were sent back to their deaths.

Despite suffering devastating loss and being subject to the depths of inhumanity, the six survivors went on to rebuild their lives, many of them going on to have large families and successful careers.

Screening of "Undeniable" (Photo: Jewish Futures)[Missing Credit]

“Their drive for life was palpable,” Rabbi Schiff told the audience and is something which comes across on screen. “They loved life. They were driven to live with hope. While they were the toughest people I’ve met, they were also incredibly soft and cheeky.”

Recalling meeting Yaakov, Calvin said: “His dignity and strength gave me an insight into the human qualities these survivors defined – their inner strength, faith and hope. The moral of this book is to never give up. Their examples are stellar.”

He added that “as a non-Jew, telling stories like this, I feel a special sense of responsibility to tell the story with authenticity. We need to express and amplify the truth of survivors. It’s very important that while we have the chance to, we sit at their feet and say: ‘Teach us.’”

During the launch, Rabbi Schiff showed a photo of himself with Hershel Herskovic at the wedding of one of the latter’s great-grandchildren just a couple of days earlier.

The authors and team behind the book and the film (Photo: Jewish Futures)[Missing Credit]

Losing his sight due to a combination of Nazi brutality and contracting typhus just two weeks before the end of the war, (after much persuasion from his family) Hershel now walks with a white walking stick.

Rabbi Schiff recounted how, at one point during the wedding, Hershel was seated in the middle of a circle, surrounded by relatives. “He brandished his white stick in the air like a sceptre and said: ‘We won.’”

Miracle – The Boys who Escaped the Gas Chamber in Auschwitz

By Michael Calvin with Naftali Schiff

Bantam

To find out more about book launches of Miracle and screenings o Undeniable, go to: www.jfutures.org/miracle or click here