Maybe this was an early symptom of typhus. Or of starvation, since I had eaten so little, like everyone else.
The sound became a sort of chanting interrupted by shouts, and I was not sure if I should run away or find its source. My desire to know overcame my fear. I walked toward the center of the camp, the direction from which the murmuring or chanting or shouting seemed to be coming. Finally I went around the side of a building, to a large open space, and it took me a long minute to understand what I was seeing.
A group of men, maybe forty of them, stood tightly together, with shirts or rags or coats covering their heads, rocking on their feet, sometimes bowing slightly and abruptly coming upright. To their left stood a group of women, of about the same number, also packed tightly together, also with their heads covered, not rocking like the men but looking down into their hands. I had not been to a synagogue in decades, and even in the days when I was still a Jew, the practices were foreign to me. So not even the sight of a man with a blue prayer shawl could explain what was happening before me. I understood only when the entire group’s voices rose up in unison to chant:
Shema, Yisrael!
Adonai Eloheinu
Adonai Echod
The single Hebrew prayer I knew. The Shema, the proclamation of the One God. Even I, a “German of Hebrew heritage” and a convert to Catholicism, knew this prayer.
Hear O Israel!
The Lord thy God
The Lord is One.
And it came to me that it was Friday. And this was a Sabbath service. Tears streamed down every congregant’s face. Women sobbed; men sobbed, some so uncontrollably that they could barely intone the second “verse” of the prayer, which I never knew well and have mostly forgotten, only that it begins with something like Baruch shem c’vod—something like that, I could be wrong.
I stood in astonishment as I watched the rest of the service. Gradually I took in the presence of some British soldiers, standing by, watching, maybe protecting the congregants; the rabbi in a British uniform leading the service, probably a chaplain, a Jewish chaplain; and others on the edge, watching as I was, some moving their lips along with the prayers, their eyes also wide in astonishment, because many congregants were so weak, so thin, some thin as rails, barely able to stand, and others clearly ill, so everyone seemed to be holding up everyone else, there was no other way this service could be happening. And last came the realization of where we were, Bergen-Belsen, Germany. And the question, How long had it been since a Shabbat service had been celebrated in Germany?
Michal paused for several seconds.
That’s amazing, said her daughter. Are you crying?
No, said Michal, but with a sniffle and a catch in her throat, perhaps truly crying. Then she said: But I have not even come to the miracle yet.
The service went on toward its conclusion, said Michal, and it ended with the singing of a Hebrew song. It had a pretty, uncomplicated melody, it seemed cheerful. Many alongside me clearly knew it well, because they slowly moved in closer and joined in the song.
And soon everyone was crying. I, too. Although I could not have told you why. There was nothing in me, up until that moment, that would have made a Shabbat service moving to me, nothing that I had ever cared about in the rituals and prayers: the men rocking on their feet—davening, it’s called—which I always thought was funny and stupid; and the separation of men and women, because supposedly men talked to God and the very sight of a woman would arouse them, take them away from God—what a stupid idea. You see, I had always scoffed at the rituals, thought them backward, embarrassing. But there I was, suddenly overcome with a sense of belonging to these people, to everyone who knew even the slightest bit of the Shema. And I cried—sobbed—for the first time since … everything.
Then a larger group joined us, very hale and hearty people by comparison. By now we were perhaps a hundred, and everyone was crying and laughing and crying—we did not know which to do first. And the ones who joined us started up another song, called “Hatikvah”—
I heard that sung at Belsen! said the patient to her mother.
You what?
I have a recording of it. Of the Belsen survivors singing “Hatikvah.” Made by