113. The 16-Year Old Boy Who Risked His Life To Save Others From Starvation In A Concentration Camp

00:16 Hello, parents of these wonderful children that listen to these stories. Uh, before your kids listen to the story, maybe per- perhaps would be a good idea for you to listen to it first and decide whether you want your children to listen to it. It's a wonderful story that shows the Yad Hashem and the great, uh, zechus for... that people have who sacrifice their lives, Mesirat Nefash, for other Jews. And, uh, it's about a person that I happen to have known personally, and today happens to be his yahrtzeit. So I decided to share his story, which involves his experiences in the Holocaust, one of the incredible episodes of his life. And, uh... But because it involves experiences of the Holocaust, there may be details there that may be a little bit too much for some of the younger children. Uh, I tested it, uh, with some of the children of a younger age, and they found it to be, you know, perfectly normal and fine and didn't, uh, didn't in any way scare them. But just for, um, extra caution, I'm men- I'm mentioning it, and you, uh, do what you have to do. Thank you. Hello, kinderlach. I just wanted to share with you a story, an amazing story that I heard or read from the person himself. He wrote a book. He was my neighbor. He came from Poland and survived the war, the Holocaust, and ended up in concentration camp when he was sixteen years old. It shows that Mesirat Nefash for another

02:18 person, the kinds of miracles that happen to such a person. His name was Shaul Hutera. I knew him very well. He was a Bobover Hasid, a Polish Hasid, Hasid of a Rebbe called the Bobover Rebbe. His Rebbe was killed by the Nazis, but he survived. And when he was in the camps, it was a horrible camp. Many Jews, unfortunately, were killed in that camp. There were a few elderly rabbis, rabbonim, that refused to eat the food from the camp. They decided that they're not gonna eat any of the s- the food, which was mostly soup. They were worried that maybe the kashrus wasn't right, and, uh, there was some meat in there, so they wouldn't wanna-- they didn't wanna eat the, the soup or any of the food from the camp. And he felt, uh, this Shaul, this neighbor of mine, wanted to help these rabbonim, these elderly, very important, chashuve rabbonim from Poland, unfortunately ended up in the camps. In order to give them food so they wouldn't starve, he did some amazing thing, a very daring thing. Outside the camp... You know, the camps were surrounded by a fence of wires. Outside the camp, there was a potato field. This potato field was owned by a farmer. So this neighbor of mine, Shaul, who was a sixteen-year-old boy, would sneak out every night from a place where the fence was broken. There was like a little hole in the fence. So he snuck out from the camp. It was, like, two in the

04:20 morning, like, when it was pitch dark and the guards were mostly sleeping already. So he would sneak out of the camp and go to the potato field and collect some potatoes. He put the potatoes in his shirt, and then before it gets light outside, he made sure that he wouldn't be seen because he came back in when it was still very dark, and he would come in-- sneak into the camp with the potatoes. He would hide the potatoes somewhere, and then he would find some fire sometime during the day where he would bake the potatoes in a fire. He would take some wood and find some matches and light the wood and bake the potatoes, and he would feed the potatoes to the rabbonim, who would starve. He did this every day. He would get up, like, two in the morning, go into the potato field, sneak out of the camp, making sure the guards are not watching. They're sleeping right by the fence, by the, by the gate. And, and he would come in before it gets light, so he wouldn't be seen, not when he leaves and not when he comes back. One day, something terrible happened. Shaul went outside the camp. He snuck out. It was three in the morning. It was very dark. Nobody was watching. And he got into the potato field and started collecting potatoes. It was a summer day. So in summer, the light, the day begins to get bright early in the morning. Sometimes at four o'clock

06:00 in the morning, it starts getting bright already. As he was collecting potatoes, he wasn't paying attention that there was-- the sun is beginning to rise. It was getting brighter outside. And then he suddenly hears a voice in German calling out for him to turn around and to come over. He dropped the potatoes, turned around, and who does he see? At the edge of the potato field, there was a little house. This house belonged to the head of the camp, the biggest Nazi German vicious, terrible guard of all the guards. He was the head of the camp, and he would-- he killed so many Jews. And if you did anything wrong, he'd kill the person. He was a terrible person. His name was Hans. Hans sees Shaul and he s- points with a finger to come over. Shaul thinks in his head, "Okay, that's it. I better say Shema Yisrael, and that's the end." I mean, this guy is a, is a monster. He's an animal. He kills people every day. He's caught him outside the camp. He's not supposed to be there. So he walks over, and this Hans had a big dog. It was a vicious, vicious dog. He trained the dog to bite people and to bite him really hard. So he called his dog out from the house and says to the dog, "Mensch." He called the dog "Mensch. Ess das Schwein. Eat this pig." He points to the-- to Shaul, to the Jew, and the dog doesn't move. So he yells

07:59 at the dog, "Come on. I told you to jump and, and eat this pig, this Jew." The dog didn't move. Now that dog was used to jumping on people. That what he was trained, he was trained to... When Hans, his boy-- his owner would tell him to jump, he would jump right away. But here he, he refused to jump. So then he took out his whip, this Hans, and started beating the dog that he should go and jump on Shaul, but he didn't. He beat the dog and the dog wouldn't move. It was very, very strange. Finally, Hans said to Shaul, "Okay, I'm gonna kill you with my gun." He told him, "You start walking, and I count to three, and that's it." And he tries to kill him. He goes with his gun, click, click, and nothing comes out. He said, "Oh, something is broken inside. Let me fix it." He told Shaul, "Come back." And he opened up, he fixed the gun and closed it up again and said to Shaul, "Okay, start walking." He goes click, click, nothing. He got very annoyed and started opening it up again. He said, "What's going on here?" He took out all the bullets and put it back in and fixed everything, and everything looked good. Closed the gun. He said, "Shaul, okay, one more time. You walk." And he pulls the trigger and nothing comes out. Nothing comes out. It was a nes min hashamayim. It's not logical. It didn't make sense. The gun was

09:42 perfectly fine. When the Nazi Hans, that Yamach Shemo V'Zichro, this terrible monster, saw what was happening, he got very upset. The dog doesn't wanna jump on him. The gun doesn't shoot. He said to him, "You get quickly into the camp. If I ever see you out here, you know what's gonna happen to you." And he told him to quickly go back into the camp. The entire camp, everybody heard about the story. Everybody heard what happened to Shaul, a boy who literally risked his life to save the lives of a few old Jews. In return, Hashem made such an incredible miracle for him. This is the story of a man, of a boy, a sixteen-year-old boy who was willing to risk his life for other people, for another Jew to save his life. Uh, good night.