Originally published by Lani Lederer Berman Apr 6, 2015
Throughout history, the mikveh has stood at the very core of religious Jewish life and practice, and said to protect the Jewish people both physically and spiritually. It is therefore fitting on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, to explore some of the discourse surrounding mikveh during the Holocaust, when Jewish existence was threatened in both these realms. Though this piece is not an exhaustive examination of the topic, it is meant to join the conversation in an attempt to pay respect to those who endured the suffering and thereby fought for the physical and spiritual survival of our nation.
The Nazis understood the importance of the mikveh. Rabbinic responsa record that in many places, specifically in the ghettos,1 the Nazis banned the use of the mikveh and closed them down. They prevented Jews from immersing for any reason, and thereby largely prevented women from keeping the laws connected to family purity. This raised serious questions regarding the propriety of a halakhic marriage. In The Oneg Shabbat Archives,2 which chronicled the lives of Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghetto, Rabbi Yehoshua Moshe Aronson notes that after the Nazi invasion, the mikvaot were closed in the Warsaw Ghetto. This led him and others to worry that “the consecration of married life would be marred by impurity.”3
Likewise, in the Slobodka ghetto, Rabbi Avraham Dov-Ber Shapiro, the chief rabbi of Kovno, struggled over whether to allow marriages, because of the difficulty of observing the laws of family purity in the ghetto. However, when a rumor that single women could be selected for deportation from the ghetto began to circulate, many women sought civil marriages to prevent deportation. Rabbi Shapiro thus decided to perform halakhic weddings, even without mikveh, for pikuach nefesh reasons.
Another halakhic authority Rabbi Shimon Huberband, wrote in his responsa (preserved in the Oneg Shabbat Archives), “Jewish Warsaw was left without any mikvehs, and the problem of the purity of the daughters of Israel became as serious as it was in the days of the ancient Roman edicts against Judaism.”4 Anyone who used the mikveh would face the punishment of anywhere from ten years of imprisonment to death.
Evidence suggests that the Nazis understood the mikveh to be something that separated the Jews, elevated their sexuality, and set them apart from others. Much like they desecrated Sifrei Torah, using their sacred parchment to make shoes, they used the mikveh, and the purity it symbolized, to taunt and degrade the Jewish people. The Nazis even went so far as to desecrate and defile people in the mikvehitself, as a symbol for the undoing of the Jewish people’s sanctity and lauding their abasement. Chaim Kaplan, who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, noted in his diary on May 14, 1942:
This week they have invented a new torture. Whoever hears of it doubts its veracity, yet this has happened— First they captured a few dozen young and beautiful women and transported them to a certain Jewish ritual bathhouse; afterward they captured some strong, powerful, virile men and brought them to the same bathhouse. Both sexes were forced by means of intimidation and whiplashes to remove their clothes and remain naked; afterward they were made to get into one bath together and were forced into lewd and obscene acts ”5
The Nazis explicitly overturned the symbolism of the mikveh, and turned it into a source for humiliation and degradation. Kaplan’s account continues with the Nazi’s stated aims: “Henceforward, all the world will know how low the Jews have fallen in their morals, that modesty between the sexes has ceased among them.” While the Nazis attempted to undermine or prevent use of the mikveh, it is interesting that many women, and even some communities, attempted to remain steadfast to its observance. Rabbi Huberband discusses how women in the Warsaw Ghetto risked their lives going to nearby towns to immerse in the river or to use secret ritual baths. This was all the more difficult (and heroic) since there was a restrictive curfew in effect, as well as restrictions on transportation. In the Lodz Ghetto, themikveh was left under the auspices of the rabbinical board of the Judenrat. They made the mikveh a priority, even working to supply coal to heat the water (see above the photocopy of Lodz Rabbinical Board papers, April 1941. From Esther Farbstein’s Hidden in Thunder, p. 334). Various other ghettos were able to rebuild their mikvaot after they were destroyed by the Nazis, and retained their mikvehuntil the communities were deported.
The incredible resilience of the Jewish people is made particularly eminent in the lengths they traveled to preserve the laws of family purity during the period of the Holocaust. On the 27th of Nisan, the Jewish people commemorate Yom Hazikaron L’Shoah U’le-Gevurah. The addition of “gevurah” to the name of the day is meant to emphasize the strength of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, to remember them not as victims but as heroes. The women willing to risk their lives to keep these laws should inspire us; they are reminders of the importance women of all generations placed in the mikveh, and how it continues to bind us to our roots, especially during the most challenging times.
Footnotes
1. The internal structure of every ghetto differed based on its location and the Nazi officials overseeing the ghetto. This being said, the Eastern European ghettos, as opposed to many of the Nazi camps, maintained more of a sense of daily life and routine. The mikveh was less relevant when Jews were deported to work camps, both because the sexes were separated and because, in most cases, the women were so malnourished that their menses ceased.
2. In October 1939, Emmanuel Ringelblum created the Oneg Shabbat Archives, a collection of over 1500 items documenting life in the Warsaw Ghetto, and the most important historical source from Nazi-occupied Poland. Ringelblum was caught hiding outside the Warsaw Ghetto with his family in 1944. They were taken back to the ruins of the ghetto and murdered.
3. From Aronson’s response, Alei Merorot, 230, as quoted by Farbstein, Thunder, 330.
4. From Huberband’s responsa, Kiddush Hashem, pp.194-195, as quoted by Farbstein, Thunder, 331.
5. Kaplan, Scroll of Agony, p. 331-332.
Sources:
- Esther Farbstein. Hidden in Thunder: Perspectives on Faith, Halacha and Leadership During the Holocaust. Trans. Deborah Stern. Jerusalem, 2002.
- Abraham I. Katsch. Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan. Indiana University Press: Indiana. 1973.
Other Eden Blogs on the Holocaust::
Honoring the Strength of Women During the Shoah
A Message From the Train to Auschwitz
Lani Lederer Berman received her MA in Holocaust Studies from the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She works as a Museum Educator in the Holocaust History Museum of Yad Vashem. Lani is also certified as a Madrichat Kallot through the Moetza Datit of Gush Etzion and a graduate of the Eden Center’s Advanced Kallah Teacher Course. Lani lives in Alon Shevut with her husband and two children.
Reminds me of this story by Yaffa Eliach: The Ritual Bath
An Aktion took place in the Bochnia Ghetto. Among the people caught that day was an especially large number of young women. The women knew full well what would happen to them. They discussed something among themselves and selected a spokeswoman. She was a very attractive young woman in her early twenties. She walked over to the German officer in charge of the Aktion and said: “We know the inevitable.’ You will murder us as you murdered the other innocent Jews before us. We demand that you grant us our last wish.” “Granted,” snapped the German as his hand lovingly caressed his pistol.
“And what is it, may I ask?” he said in a derisive tone. “We demand that the ritual bath house, closed since your occupation of our town, be reopened, heated, and cleaned, and that we be permitted to take our ritual bath of purification” said the young woman.For more than half a day the women cleaned the ritual bath house and filled it with water. Then they cleaned themselves and immersed themselves in water as prescribed in the Laws of Purification.
As they were led off to be shot, the German officer asked for the young lady who had approached-him earlier in the day. When she stood before him, he said: “You are a filthy race, the source of all disease and vermin in Europe. Suddenly, before your death, you wish to be clean. What spell did-you cast in that ritual bath house of yours?”
“Cleanliness and purity of body and mind are part of our tradition and way of life. God has brought our pure souls into this world in. the pure homes of our parents, and we wish to return in purity to our Father in Heaven.”
The German officer took out his pistol from his holster and at close range shot the woman between the eyes. Most of the other women were also killed that day.
What an interesting article. It is absolutely shocking to think about what Jewish women went through in the Holocaust.
Rav Alex, that is a very powerful story. Thank you for sharing.
This is amazing research and should be included in all Kallah classes. What these brave heroic women did to maintain the laws of purity should be shared with all Kallahs so they can hear how their continuation of this meaningful ritual is a tribute to the courage and determination of women of the Holocaust who went to great lengths to continue the holy practice of Mikveh.