Why Does Gaza Appear in This Antique Hebrew Scroll?

Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, the tombs of the righteous in the Galilee, and... Gaza? Jewish scrolls from the 16th and 17th centuries offer an interesting selection of holy places in the Land of Israel. How did the city of Gaza end up on this list?

The National Library of Israel | 16.05.24

Illustration of the city of Gaza in the 17th century Yichus Ha’avot Scroll, which is kept at the National Library of Israel

A complete road atlas for the holy sites in the Land of Israel, an advertisement brochure, or a travel book? From the Middle Ages to the 16th and 17th centuries, written and illustrated compositions were circulated in the Land of Israel and in the Jewish Diaspora, claiming to present those abroad with descriptions of the Jewish holy places found throughout the land. Three of these, which were copied as illustrated scrolls, are preserved at the National Library of Israel.

These items were copies of what’s known as the Yichus Ha’Avot scroll, or in its full name as it appears in the first part of the manuscript: “Lineage of the Forefathers and the Prophets and the Righteous and the Tana’aim and the Amora’im, May They Rest in Peace, in the Land of Israel and Outside the Land, May God Establish Their Merit for Us, Amen.” As its name indicates, this scroll is mainly focused on the burial places of our ancient ancestors – from those buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs (Ma’arat Ha’Machpela) to the later tombs of the Amorites which were spread throughout the Land of Israel, and sometimes even outside of it (such as the tombs of Mordechai and Esther, Daniel, and others).

65546c101538030053c2207e A1 4a יחוס האבות — The Yichus Ha’Avot scroll, preserved at the National Library of Israel and on display in the permanent exhibition

But then, in one of the copies, above the illustration depicting a city surrounded by a wall, the following Hebrew inscription appears:

“Kfar Gaza, the city of Samson, a beautiful country”

This particular copy of Yichus Ha’Avot was copied and illustrated in Casale Monferrato in northern Italy, in 1598. As mentioned above, the illustration depicts a walled city with many towers covered with domes, some alluding to their status as mosques, some reminiscent of churches. The whole city is surrounded by a wall, and a (very) large domed gate with no doors symbolizes the entrance to the city.

990000927110205171 — Yichus Ha’Avot scroll 1598

Another illustration very similar in its characteristics – in which Gaza is referred to as “the land of Samson, a beautiful country” – appears in another Yichus Ha’Avot scroll from the National Library collection, this one dating to the 17th century. Here, the illustrator imagined Gaza as an even greener and more colorful city, with the mosques appearing more prominently. The city gate is still broad and impressive, lacking doors and wide open.

Capturegaza — “Gaza is the land of Samson, a beautiful country” illustration of the city of Gaza in the Yichus Ha’Avot scroll, preserved by the National Library of Israel

Shlomo Zucker, a former member of the National Library’s manuscripts department, researched the composition and described it as follows:

“The drawings are spectacular; green and red for the trees and flowers, gold for the domes and some of the columns of the buildings […] However, the buildings – with vaults, gables, columns, and crowns in the classical style – are completely imaginary, and have nothing to do with the actual shape of the sites described in the text.” (S. Zucker, Yichus Ha’Avot or Elleh Massai, Ariel, 123-122, 5757, p. 206 [Hebrew])

Is this really how Gaza looked in those days?

Written testimony, archaeological findings, and descriptions in various travel books present a different picture of the city.

But the very fact that the descriptions and illustrations in the Yichus Ha’Avot scroll are imagined is not surprising or unusual. Scientific or geographical accuracy was not necessarily at the forefront of the minds of the writers and artists of the time. Maps and illustrations based on imagination or various graphic ideas disconnected from reality were quite common.

One of the interesting examples is the “Clover Leaf Map” by Heinrich Bünting, one original copy of which is preserved in the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection at the National Library.

The map depicts the old world in the form of a clover leaf on which three continents are represented: Asia, Europe, and Africa. Jerusalem, by the way, is located in the center of the world according to this map. On the map itself, Bunting explains the reason for his artistic choice: “The whole world is in the shape of a clover leaf, which is a symbol of the city of Hanover, my beloved birthplace.”

Dedupmrg71540295 Ie6882732 Fl7074006 — The Clover Leaf Map. From the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of Israel

Like the famous Clover Leaf Map, the Yichus Ha’Avot scrolls also weren’t trying to be realistic or to reflect actual geography and topography. The scrolls and the illustrations inside them tried to express a visual-imagined space, emotional at its core, which made it possible to browse through them and feel like someone who was walking in the footsteps of our ancestors, as someone who is faithful and connected to the “lineage of the fathers”.

The much more surprising fact is that Gaza was added to the map of holy places at an unknown time.

In earlier and more ancient versions of the Yichus Ha’Avot scrolls, Gaza does not appear at all. Why suddenly in the 16th and 17th centuries was Gaza included on the map of holy places? Why is it described as a “beautiful country”, and why is the city where Samson the biblical hero met his death suddenly named after him – “Samson’s city”?

It should be noted that Gaza was not one of the four traditional Jewish holy cities in the Land of Israel. Moreover, various halachic discussions raised the question of whether Gaza is part of the Land of Israel, and whether the commandments that are dependent on the land must be observed there. According to most opinions, the answer is no.

So what suddenly changed at the end of the 16th century?

The fluctuations in Gaza’s status as an important or backwater city over the years stemmed from its location on the coastal road leading between the Land of Israel and Egypt. When the Crusaders conquered the Holy Land, there were no trade relations between the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and Muslim Egypt, and Gaza was a ruined and largely abandoned city. But then the Mamluks conquered the region, and with the increased stability, the status of Gaza, which had been rejuvenated into an important roadside trading city, rose as well.

Towards the end of the Mamluk period, in 1481, Rabbi Meshullam of Volterra, a Jewish banker from Florence, visited Gaza, and his descriptions corroborate the literal description in the Yichus Ha’Avot scroll which states that Gaza is a “beautiful country”.

According to Rabbi Meshullam, Gaza was “a good and fat land”, with a small Jewish community that produced wine. But unlike the illustrations in the Yichus Ha’Avot scroll, Rabbi Meshullam described Gaza as so self-confident that it had no wall at all: “Aza is called Gaza by the Ishmaelites, and it is a good and fat land, and its fruits are very fine. And there is good bread and wine, although the wines are only made by the Jews. Its perimeter is 4 miles long and it has no walls […] it is surrounded by blue on the shore of the sea. And has about 60 Jewish homeowners […]”

Captureshimshon — Samson carries off the gates of Gaza, a mosaic from the synagogue in Hukok, Byzantine period / Photo: Jim Haberman, courtesy of Jodi Magness

Rabbi Meshullam also notes the fragment of Jewish history that is connected to the city of Gaza: It is the city where the biblical hero and judge Samson lived for part of his life, together with his wife Delilah, who ultimately brought on his demise out of greed. It is also the city where Samson was imprisoned and killed, and which he destroyed:

“And at the top of the Judaica [mound] was the house of Delilah, and Samson the hero lived in it. And near there […] I saw the great court which he overthrew with his strength and power” (Abraham Yaari, Masa Meshullam MeVolterra, Mossad Bialik, 599, p. 64 [Hebrew]).

About thirty years after Rabbi Meshullam’s visit, in 1517, an event occurred that further affected Gaza’s status in the following centuries: The war between the Mamluks and the Ottomans ended in an Ottoman victory. The Ottoman Sultan Selim I conquered the entire region, including the Land of Israel, the shores of the Red Sea, Mecca, and Medina, as well as the southern connection to the African continent – Egypt. The victory of the Ottomans strengthened the position of Gaza. From a peripheral border city, it became a city perfectly situated in the center of a vast empire.

The Ottoman victory also had additional significance. All the holy places of Islam and Judaism and most of the holy places of Christianity now fell under the control of a single regime. The Ottoman Empire developed, improved the access routes, and ensured the safety of the Muslim pilgrims who set out for the Hajj to Mecca, while also offering safety to the Jewish and Christian pilgrims. The security resulted in economic growth and the improvement of roads, which contributed to a significant increase in the volume of pilgrimage.

Samson In Dagontemple — Samson bringing down the temple of Dagon on all the celebrants and calling out “Let me die with the Philistines!”, Gustave Doré

As it turns out. even though Gaza was not one of the four Jewish holy cities in the Land of Israel, it became a popular place to visit when making the long journey to the Holy Land.

Why?

Those who embarked on a pilgrimage for religious reasons were specifically interested in the holy places, especially in the tombs of biblical figures and righteous sages, which Gaza could not claim to have. But Samson “came to her aid”.

This is perhaps the reason why Gaza is depicted in illustrations as a walled city with its mighty gates open. The illustrators of the scrolls didn’t illustrate Gaza, the prosperous trading city without a wall, but rather as a city whose doors Samson had uprooted, leaving it with wide open gates. That’s also why they call it the “Land of Samson.”

The illustrators of the Yichus Ha’Avot scrolls knew that many of the immigrants, especially those from Italy, would pass through Gaza anyway on their way to or from Egypt. As such, they indicated to the pilgrims that although there were no tombs of note in Gaza, there was indeed a history of Jewish heroism there.

This article is based on an article by Dr. Chaim Meir Neria, curator of the Haim and Hanna Solomon Judaica Collection at the National Library of Israel, published in Etmol, issue 286 February 2024

Freedom Under Siege: The Last Seder in Kfar Etzion

How can one celebrate the festival of freedom, with the clear knowledge that your life or liberty will be taken from you in just a few days? The Seder night of 1948 was one of the last nights of freedom for those in besieged Gush Etzion, but this fact did not prevent the isolated group of men from creating the most celebratory atmosphere possible under the circumstances.

Miryam Zakheim | 07.05.24

History of Israel Israel's Wars Israeli Memorial Day Passover War of Independence היסטוריה ישראלית

The Nebi Daniel convoy, the last convoy to leave the besieged Gush Eztion, and the agenda for the last Seder. Image courtesy of the Dov Knohl Gush Etzion Historical Archive

On the 14^th of Nissan (April 23), the eve of Passover 1948, the defenders of Gush Etzion knew that their fate was sealed – and that if they stayed where they were, they would die. They were surrounded by Arab villages which served as bases for the Arab Legion, a Jordanian military force that outmatched them by orders of magnitude. Efforts to reinforce the settlement bloc had failed, and a plane meant to land there on Passover eve was forced to turn back due to thick fog.

Most of the women and children had been sent just to Jerusalem, just north of Gush Etzion, several months earlier. The last few women had left more recently. The men remaining there had all the reasons in the world to become mired in despair: their personal situation was hopeless, they missed their wives and children (some of whom, having been born in Jerusalem, they had yet to meet) and were worried about them. After all, Jerusalem was also under blockade and anything but a safe place.

Family in Kfar Etzion, part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. Photo courtesy of the Dov Knohl Gush Etzion Historical Archive

Shlomo Garnak ob”m shared the mixed feelings they felt with his wife:

“We’re planning here for the Passover holiday. But I lack the sense of a holiday eve. When they put together a plan for guard shifts on the Seder night, I said I don’t care if I guard from 6 in the evening or 8 or 10. If you and the children are not here – celebrations are far from my mind. And still we must overcome and not let despair and bitterness control us. We especially must not arouse grief and sadness during the holiday.”

They were a wonderful mixture of the diversity of Jews present in the Land of Israel at that time – Holocaust survivors who’d just arrived to the Promised Land, Israeli sabras who consciously chose to take part in establishing new communities in one of the most dangerous locations in the country, and volunteers who came to support their efforts.

The quiet before the storm: the trees planted in Kfar Etzion, before the war began. Picture courtesy of the Dov Knohl Gush Etzion Historical Archive

This home, which they’d just started building but a few years before, turned into a military camp before their very eyes: holes formed by shells adorned the walls of the white houses, cow dairies were turned into weapons storage facilities, and playgrounds became fortified positions.

Endless debates accompanied the decision to stay in the bloc, which lay outside the territory assigned to the Jewish State in the UN partition plan. They fought not to save themselves, as the settlements of the Gush Etzion bloc (Kfar Etzion, Revadim, Masu’ot Yitzhak, and Ein Tzurim) were at this point clearly beyond rescue, but rather to give hope to besieged Jerusalem, by keeping the Arab Legion busy to the south, and preventing if from invading the Jewish neighborhoods of the Holy City.

It was in this atmosphere that the holiday arrived.

Agenda for the last Seder night. Courtesy of the Dov Knohl Gush Etzion Historical Archive

Between standing guard and caring for the wounded, the men found the time to decorate the collective dining room in Kfar Etzion. Spring-themed landscape pictures were hung and flower pots spread out throughout the room, adorned by verses from the Song of Songs – “the vineyard has flowered, the nascent fruit has opened,” “the buds have been seen in the land.” The courtyard, neglected since the beginning of the siege, was cleaned up and organized. The customs of Passover eve were adhered to in full, despite the void left behind by the children who had left.

“This morning we held a siyum masechet [celebratory ceremony for completing the learning of a Talmudic tractate], in which the “first born” took part [the ceremony allowing them to eat rather than adhere to the traditional fast for first born on Passover eve]. I also participated, in the name of our eldest son. There were cakes and drinks. The happy news encouraged us and excited us until we went out to dance. And now everyone is rushing to finish the last meal of chametz [leavened bread and grain food, forbidden on Passover].”
(Letter from Akiva Galdenauer ob”m to his wife in Jerusalem)

“I just finished bedikat chametz [ceremonial check for chametz to ensure none is present for the holiday]. Yair my son was not with me, and there was no-one to hold the candle. In these days, I miss you most. But the encouraging news of our victory in Haifa [most of the city of Haifa fell to Jewish forces a few days before] sweetens the suffering of detachment. Perhaps we are close to victory. True, we have no illusions that the war will end quickly. But the recognition that our strength is with us to acquire our state with God’s help, immunizes us in these grim and dark days.”
(Letter of Shmuel Arazi ob”m)

As evening came, a holiday prayer was conducted at Neveh Ovadyah – an impressive stone house, less than two years old, which served as the central beit midrash or house of religious learning in Gush Etzion, after which everyone gathered for the Passover Seder – the religious kibbutz members together with the Nebi Daniel Convoy drivers and members who remained there.

Neveh Ovadyah, the building serving as the religious and communal center of Kfar Etzion, where holiday prayers took place. Picture courtesy of the Dov Knohl Gush Etzion Historical Archive

The traditional Haggadah, which now took on a new and contemporary significance, was peppered with newly written Zionist texts.

“Every so often, a [Kfar Etzion] member got up and read from the works of our time, things related to the project we are defending. The whole group joyously sang passages which have become popular during Eztion Passovers.”
From the diary of Yaakov Edelstein, Kfar Etzion member

Between the song Vehi She’amda [a song about how enemies seek to eliminate the Jews in every generation] and the tune Betzeit Yisra’el Mimitzrayim, [“When Israel Left Egypt”] passages from the poems by Yitzhak Lamdan (Mitzpeh Beyehudah) and Uri Tzvi Grinberg (Hayakar Mikol Yakar) were read aloud. When they came to the verse “And I pass over by you, and I see you trodden down in your blood, and I say to you in your blood, Live!” they read passages from Shalom Karniel’s article – “In Your Blood, Live.”

Tzvi Lifshitz, one of the participants in the Seder, described the scene:

“there was some excitement when the door opened and everyone got up and excitedly called out ‘Pour Your fury on the nations who have not known You’– all the humanistic hesitations which accompanied the reading of these verses in previous years were now rejected. The blood of our dear friends, who fell in defense of the Gush and in the War of Liberation throughout the country, demanded revenge.”

Later, when they reached the song “Next Year in Rebuilt Jerusalem,” most of the members got up in a wild dance. But some remained to sit with a bowed head round the table – they could not dance as they remembered their friends and the members of the convoys who had come to save them, who did not get to sit with them now around the Seder table.

The relative quiet which enabled this Passover celebration did not last. The attacks on Gush Etzion renewed already during the holiday, with one of the fiercest battles taking place ten days after the Seder was held. On the 4^th of the month of Iyyar, the day before Israeli independence was declared, the last of the defenders surrendered. Some were massacred by Arab forces, and the others were taken into captivity in Jordan.

The Knesset would later mark the day Gush Etzion fell as the Memorial Day for all the fallen of Israel’s various wars and conflicts.

“…I do not know of a more glorious, tragic and heroic struggle in all the valiant battles of the Israel Defense Forces than that of Gush Etzion…Their sacrifice, more than any other war effort, saved Jerusalem… The Gush Etzion campaign is the great and terrible epic of the Jewish war… If a Hebrew Jerusalem exists… the gratitude of Jewish history goes first and foremost to the fighters of Gush Etzion.”
From a speech by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, 1949

From Ben Shemen to the Concentration Camp and Back: The Story of a Family Photo

One photograph. That’s what Sarah Kagan left behind at the concentration camp in Klooga. But sometimes one picture is all you need to have closure on a painful chapter in a family's history.

Miryam Zakheim | 30.04.24

History of Israel The Holocaust

The Linkovsky family in Kovno (Kaunas). The photo was found among the ruins of the Klooga concentration camp and is now held at Yad Vashem

Family. Young men and women who share DNA or marital ties, and three little children, all of them smiling for a photographer, frozen in one moment in time and in a single place: Kovno, 1939. Just a few months before the whole world turned upside down. Ostensibly, this is a perfectly ordinary family picture, one of millions kept in the Yad Vashem photographic collections, each commemorating entire worlds which once were and are no more. But behind this specific picture is a broader story, written in part on the picture itself.

Writing on the back of the picture. Photo kept at Yad Vashem

On the other side of the photograph is a brief message written in Yiddish, in Hebrew script:

“A gift for the entire family, from your brother and the granddaughter,

Avraham

Daliah

Linkovsky

May 18, 1939

Ben Shemen”

How did a picture reach the distant concentration camp in Estonia from a Zionist youth village in the Land of Israel? Who were Avraham and Daliah Linkovsky and what was their connection to the people in the photograph?

To see the big picture, we have to go back a bit.

In the 1920s, a terrible tragedy befell the Linkovsky family living in Kovno: they lost both their parents. The father’s death certificate can be found at Yad Vashem, but the mother apparently also died before the war. The older brothers each went their own way, even if earlier than expected. But the two younger brothers – Avraham and Pesha – were sent to the Jewish orphanage in the city. This fact, which must have seemed particularly tragic at the time, ended up saving their lives.

Children at the Kovno orphanage. From the Ben Shemen Youth Village Archive, IL-BSYV-001-13-0102-02

The Kovno Jewish orphanage, or the Kinderhaus as it was known then, was founded and run by the German-Jewish educator Siegfried Lehman. Lehman came to Kovno at the request of Max Soloveichik – the Jewish Affairs Minister for the Lithuanian government. Lehman was an inspiring figure who dreamt of equal, collective education. He eventually became an enthusiastic Zionist, though he didn’t start out that way, and made Aliyah in 1926 to found what would become the Youth Village of Ben Shemen – an educational institution which served as a home for the children who grew up there.

Dr. Siegfried Lehman. Photo: Ben Shemen Archive, IL-BSYV-001-13-0102-01

He didn’t come alone. With him came the first class of students for this new youth village – the children of the Kovno Kinderhaus. Later, two more groups of children came from Kovno, mixing in with native-born “Sabra” children as well as kids who were later rescued from Europe and brought to Mandatory Palestine by the Youth Aliyah organization.

Avraham Linkovsky’s Aliyah certificate. Photo courtesy of the Ben Shemen Archive

One of the first groups to arrive included the orphans Avraham and Pasha Linkovsky. Avraham was sixteen years old, Pasha fourteen. Pictures from Ben Shemen show them with their friends and teachers who became their family. But they never entirely forgot their old family in Lithuania, and kept in contact via correspondence. Upon completing their studies, Avraham married Sarah (of the Warful family) and they stayed in the country to work at the youth village. They had a daughter, whom they named Daliah.

In the spring of 1939, the young family travelled to visit their relatives in Lithuania. Avraham and Sarah took Daliah to meet their uncles and aunts in distant Kovno, people she would see only once in her life, when she was too small to remember. As a reminder of their trip before heading back, they all took a picture together. A fence passed behind them, behind which was a river or fields. A European landscape. What were they thinking when posing for this picture? Did they think this might be their last meeting?

The picture apparently belonged to Avraham, and he took it back with him to the Land of Israel, where he developed the photo and sent it as a gift to his brother back in Kovno, as a souvenir. Did he keep a copy for himself? We don’t know.

Meanwhile, the war broke out. Avraham would never hear from his brother or sisters again, murdered in the Holocaust that engulfed European Jewry. For many years, the family left in the Land of Israel didn’t even know the exact details of when and where they died.

But the picture, the souvenir sent from the Land of Israel to Europe before it went up in flames, survived, and it tells us the story of the family that was lost.

In 1944, the Russians liberated Estonia from the Germans. Among other sites, they reached the remains of the Klooga concentration camp. This camp was established in 1943 as one of the work camps meant to exploit the area’s natural resources. Prisoners were mostly sent from the ghettos of Vilna (Vilnius) and Kovno.

But when the Russians finally came to “liberate” the camp, there wasn’t much to free. A few days before the arrival of the Red Army, as they heard the approaching Russian guns echoing in the distance, the German camp commanders understood that this was the end of the line for them. Together with local collaborators, they murdered all the prisoners, tying them to tree branches to entirely burn the bodies and erase any trace of the horrors that took place there. But perhaps due to haste or the weather, the fire didn’t spread to all the bodies, most of which remained intact.

The Russians found piles of corpses, still warm, a strong scent of burnt flesh, as well as piles of documents and photographs. Within this inferno and the horror covered in ash, pages and fragments of documents remained which would tell, silently, the story of those who perished there.

Among them was this photo, with the writing which clearly tied it to people who were still alive at the time. Those people being family members waiting in the Land of Israel and hearing of the worst from afar. Aside from this picture, other hints were found: Eliyahu Linkovsky’s death certificate (dated to many years before the war, a testament to the early orphanhood of the brothers) as well as the marriage certificate of Avraham’s sister, also named Sarah, and Yehudah Kagan. Sarah Kagan’s name was found on the prisoners’ roster, no. 856.

The connection between the siblings was apparently cut off in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. From this point on, we can only guess, based on the stories of other survivors from that area, what Sarah went through. The crowding in the ghetto. The hunger. The death. The fear. The orders from the Germans to quickly pack their things: how to choose what to take from home, knowing how unlikely it was they’d return? The nightmarish trip to the concentration camps, the confiscation of everything she brought once she came to the German offices. The certificates. And the pictures.

They came with her, in her pockets or under her underclothes, but they didn’t stay with her.

They were left behind, to tell others a little more of what was and is no more.

Avraham, who was able to raise a model family in the Land of Israel, was never able to see the picture again or hear this story. The Russians eventually passed along the archival material of what is now known as the “Klooga Collection” at Yad Vashem, but only after he passed away.

Among the thousands of documents and pictures, the picture would probably have remained in the shadows, an anonymous item in the Yad Vashem collection. But one scholar, Orit Adorian, did not rest until she succeeded, together with the veteran staff members who run the Ben Shemen Youth Village Archive, in giving the family closure.

–

The items appearing in the article are preserved at the Ben Shemen Youth Village Archive and are made available thanks to the collaboration between the archive, the Ministry of Heritage, and the National Library of Israel.

Special thanks to Orit Adorian for sharing her part in the story and helping us prepare the article.

How the Inmates of a Concentration Camp Celebrated the Festival of Freedom

Despite the lack of food, the threat of deportation, and the difficult prison conditions, Jewish prisoners at the Gurs concentration camp in southern France insisted on celebrating Passover at any price. One of them wrote the Haggadah they read from by hand – from memory.

Chen Malul | 30.04.24

Haggadah Passover The Holocaust סודות כתבי היד העבריים

1941 was a difficult year for the Jewish People. This was the year in which the persecution and discrimination which was their lot since Hitler rose to power formed into the “final solution” for erasing the Jewish People and its memory entirely – in Nazi-occupied Europe and the whole world. This was also the year in which the first death camp was established on Polish soil, in the city of Chelmno.

In that same cursed year, on a different war front, prisoners of the Gurs concentration camp in southern France gathered to celebrate the Jewish festival of freedom – Passover. When evening came, the men – husbands, brothers, and sons – arrived in the women’s barracks. There, with empty hands and full hearts, they held a Seder. “And soon the old and pleasant tune of this night echoed: “Ha Lachma Anya” [Poor Man’s Bread]. There was no meat and wine for the holiday meal, but thanks to the initiative of one of the prisoners, these persecuted Jews had a Haggadah with which to celebrate.

Aryeh Ludwig Zuckerman had been imprisoned at Gurs for over a year. At this camp near the Spanish border, some thirty people died from hunger and disease every day. In the face of the suffering and the despair of the twelve thousand Jews imprisoned at Gurs, Zuckerman decided to take action that Passover.

Zuckerman was every inch an educator, and was known as one of the most energetic figures in the camp. He organized Torah and shop classes, as well as cultural activities that included plays and concerts performed by denizens of the camp. Zuckerman was also one of the managers of the camp clinic and its Chevra Kadisha burial society.

He wanted all the prisoners in the camp to have something for the approaching holiday of Passover. Since they had no way of securing food, he took responsibility for matters of the spirit and worked on writing the Haggadah in Hebrew letters.

Indeed, he wrote the Haggadah in his own handwriting and from memory (as can be seen from a number of errors he made). His daughter recalled how he engraved the whole Haggadah in Hebrew letters, aside from the songs at the end of the Haggadah, which were engraved in Latin letters.

According to Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, a fellow prisoner who helped Zuckerman put out the Haggadah, Zuckerman wasn’t able to write it all down. As Passover approached, he rushed to send it to Rabbi Shmuel René Kappel. The Rabbi, a chaplain of the French Army Corps, took Zuckerman’s papers to Toulouse and had it printed in thousands of copies.

Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, Gurs Camp, 1941-2,
Yad Vashem, Photographic Archive b 926/5

In an anonymous testimony written after Passover of 1941, one of the prisoners remembered the enormous difficulty of celebrating the Festival of Freedom in conditions of terrible uncertainty. The anonymous witness told of how the “feast” of this seder was poorer than anyone had ever seen.

“Many received, in addition to the matzah, a little salad instead of maror, charoset, and an egg. Only some of the people got to eat a meal, albeit in tiny portions. There were those who were fortunate and received food packages, and then shared the food fairly among all those seated.”

But what they lacked in the material, they made up for in spirit. The thousands of prisoners in the camp insisted on adhering to tradition even in the face of the death that was all around them. Thanks to them and the work of Zuckerman, Ansbacher, and their partners, the spirit of the holiday was maintained, and there was even a sense of hope:

“A refreshing April night and moist spring wind descended on the dark lanes between the shacks. From within the shacks, lights burst forth and voices were heard saying the blessing after the meal and singing. The song of the words sung and heard innumerable times, was the song of the uplifting of the spirit, of consolation and hope.”

The song Chad Gadya in Latin letters, the Gurs Haggadah

The next morning, Rabbi Ansbacher received irregular permission to conduct the Passover holiday prayers in the camp yard. The Rabbi held the prayer in the open air and also gave a sermon with words of consolation to the camp prisoners during the Yizkor prayers for the dead.

The painter Fritz Schleicher was there to immortalize the event (below). He himself was murdered in Auschwitz on October 5, 1942.

On May 1942, Zuckerman understood that the Jews were being deported east to Poland. He and Rabbi Ansbacher, together with the Jewish leadership in the camp, worked to smuggle the camp’s Jews out before they could be sent to the death camps there. Thanks to his friendship with the man in charge of burial for non-Jews in the camp, a friendship he’d formed as part of his work in the Chevra Kadisha, Zuckerman was smuggled out of the camp together with his family inside of a coffin. After making it out, he took care to find a hiding place for them in the forests in the south of Belgium. After doing so, he joined the Belgian underground to fight the Germans. He died in Belgium in 1958.

Rabbi Ansbacher was seized earlier and imprisoned. He was on the list of those to be deported, but managed somehow to escape and find shelter in Spain – where he survived.

The Passover Haggadah of the Gurs camp is one of two Haggadahs written in southern France during the Holocaust in the period of the Vichy regime. In 1999, Yad Vashem republished it to retell the story to new generations.

Rabbi Ansbacher was seized earlier and imprisoned. He was on the list of those to be deported, but managed somehow to escape and find shelter in Spain – where he survived.

Further Reading

The Gurs Haggadah: Passover in Perdition, edited by Bella Gutterman and Naomi Morgenstern, translated from the Hebrew by Nechama Kanner, editing by Yaacov Peterseil. Jerusalem: Devora Pub, Yad Vashem