Todays Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul

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Dreaming of Matzah

By Trish Krotowski

" If all you have is lemons, make lemonade. " But what if you could

only

dream of having a lemon, or a potato, or even a bowl of watery broth? Where

would you find your strength? This was the situation twenty-eight-year-old

Abraham Krotowski faced at Passover time in 1945 when he was dreaming of

matzah

while being held captive in Dachau, Germany.

To some Jews today, Passover is considered a difficult eight days

during

which you are not to nosh on your beloved bagel, not eat your favorite

pasta,

not indulge in your delicious pizza. But the commandments of Passover are

not

" nots. " As a remembrance of the Exodus of the Jewish slaves from Egypt, we

are

commanded to eat unleavened bread. Out of respect for the sacrifices of

those

who have gone before, it is a mitzvah to eat matzah.

To a concentration-camp prisoner, however, any food is an impossible

dream.

Eating matzah would be considered crazy. Since being Jewish was the crime

that

you were being punished for, why flaunt that in the face of your captors?

There

was nowhere to get matzah, anyway. Or was there?

Call it crazy, but with the help of some friends, Abe set out to make

matzah in Dachau. The resolve that he mustered to achieve his goal was the

same

determination that kept him alive through six difficult years in three

ghettos

and two concentration camps. He was, above all, a Jew, a survivor,

sustained by

the same belief that had kept the Jewish slaves in Egypt before him alive -

that

someday soon he would be free.

The recipe for making matzah in a concentration camp is an odd one.

Start

with a generous portion of determination, add a few packs of American

cigarettes, throw in a German construction foreman with a fondness for

schnapps,

keep your faith, and say a brakhah (Hebrew blessing).

For some time, Abe had been sneaking out of the camp at night and had

befriended some Russian and Italian officers who were prisoners working in

the

nearby building for a factory. Having cleverly fashioned woolen blankets

into

much-needed scarves to fend off the fiercely cold weather, Abe exchanged

them

for bread or potatoes, enough to sustain himself. He was an honest and

clever

barterer, aware that what one person doesn't need, another will pay dearly

for.

You just have to know your customer.

Thanks to the American Red Cross, that winter some prisoners in Dachau

received relief packages - a small bar of soap, some sugar cubes, one can of

sardines and two packages of Camel cigarettes. For those like Abe who did

not

smoke, the cigarettes became valuable bargaining tools. Abe offered his

cigarettes to a lazy German construction foreman named Karl, who seemed to

pay

little attention to the prisoners at work. Karl asked Abe what he wanted in

return, and Abe said food. The German told Abe how to get into his work

shack

where he could take some bread. It was risky business since Abe would have

been

shot if caught. But Abe got the bread and later came to Karl again saying

that

there were some sick people in his barracks and they needed flour for soup.

Karl said he could get him flour, but Abe had to bring him some schnapps - a

nearly impossible request. A few days later, after much trading and

bartering,

Abe had a small bottle of vodka for Karl. When Abe gave Karl the bottle, he

was

certain he would be killed on the spot. But Karl was a man of his word -

and a

man with a fondness for drink. His eyes lit up when he saw the bottle, and

in

exchange he helped Abe smuggle a five-kilo bag of flour into the camp.

For three nights, Abe and his brother-in-law Isaac Zelinski, a baker by

trade, made matzahs in improvised tin ovens, under the cover of darkness.

They

made enough matzah to feed the entire barracks so that, on Passover 1945,

each

of the seventy-five prisoners had their own piece of matzah to eat during

the

short, secret Passover Seder. No bitter herbs were needed to remind this

group

of the harshness of slavery - or that miracles can happen anywhere.