Great story of survival

Story of the day

In 1943, Avraham Shapiro, 22, was a recent yeshiva graduate living with his parents in Poland's Cracow ghetto. 

Knowing that the Nazis would soon liquidate the ghetto and kill every Jew inside, young Avraham concocted a clever multi-step plan to ensure his family's survival. He built and stocked an underground bunker; he obtained counterfeit papers for his parents and himself; and he found a map of the sewer system through which they would escape. They planned to reach Hungary, at the time considered a safe place.

As the day approached, Avraham heard a knock on the door. It was his teenage neighbor, Chaya Rivka, holding a baby. 

The boy was her nephew Chaim, who was 20 months old but could neither stand nor sit up by himself. Chaim's parents had just been deported to Treblinka and his aunt begged Avraham to take the baby. Like everybody in the Cracow ghetto, Chaya Rivka knew that Avraham Shapiro had the best chance of making it out alive.

Accepting the baby in all likelihood meant sacrificing his own family's chance of survival. 

How could he keep a baby in a bunker, or carry him through a sewer? In that moment, Avraham's instinct of lovingkindness overwhelmed rational thought. He took the baby. 

When his parents came home, they were horrified. Now they were all at much greater risk! Avraham calmly explained that Chaim was now his, and would live or die with the Shapiro family. 

Two days later, the Nazis liquidated the Cracow ghetto. It was impossible for the Shapiros to reach the bunker Avraham had created because it was now on the other side of a barbed wire fence. Avraham found an empty building with a cellar where he brought his parents and the baby. 

He could hear the Germans outside searching, but a miracle happened. The building had sewage problems - not uncommon in the squalor of the ghetto - and the residents had been disposing of their excrement in a large barrel. 

With strength he didn't know he had, Avraham overturned the barrel, pouring its vile contents all over the stairs leading down to the cellar. He thought the Nazis would not want to dirty their boots looking for Jews, and he was right.

The Shapiros spent several days in the cellar, pre-chewing stale bread to make it soft enough for Chaim to eat. Late one night, Avraham Shapiro, his parents and baby Chaim snuck out of the building and through streets covered with Jewish corpses. 

They made the perilous journey and finally arrived in Budapest. A Jewish aid worker heard about the Shapiros and approached Avraham, suggesting that he give Chaim to the Schonbruns, a wealthy religious couple in Budapest who couldn't have children of their own.

Again Avraham had a tough decision to make. He loved the baby as his own, but as a homeless fugitive, he knew he could not provide the nurturing home that Chaim, still in very poor health, desperately needed. Over his mother's strong objections, Avraham gave Chaim to the Schonbruns.

In March 1944, the Nazis invaded Hungary, and the Shapiros were deported to Auschwitz. 

Avraham was able to enlarge a hole in the boxcar with a pocketknife and jump out. He spent the rest of the war in Slovakia, then returned to Budapest in 1945. 

Avraham was overjoyed when one day he saw little Chaim on the street, looking happy and healthy. Chaim and the Schonbruns had survived the war.

Over the years, Avraham kept tabs on Chaim from afar. He knew that the Schonbruns had moved to Belgium, then to Montreal, where Chaim grew up. 

Avraham got married and moved to Israel. Chaim was told once that a Jew in Israel had carried him from Poland to Hungary and saved his life, but he didn't know the man's name.

Avraham did not contact Chaim until 1980. Chaim was in Israel for his son's Bar Mitzvah and he received a message that the man who saved his life was finally ready to meet. Avraham and Chaim met in Haifa the next day. In an emotional reunion, the two men sobbed and hugged for hours. 

Chaim asked Avraham why he'd waited 35 years to contact him. Avraham responded by handing Chaim a box. Inside the box were hundreds of gold coins. Avraham explained that before Chaim's mother was shipped to Treblinka, she'd given this box of gold to her sister, who gave it to Avraham when he agreed to take the baby. 

Having lost all their money and possessions when they fled the ghetto, the Shapiro family had little choice but to use the gold on their journey to Hungary, but Avraham always felt bad about it. 

As soon as he got a job, Avraham started putting aside money from his paycheck to buy gold. Finally, after 35 years, he'd saved exactly the amount of money that had been in the box Chaya Rivka gave him in 1943. He didn't want to see Chaim until he could return the box of gold which rightfully belonged to him. 

Avraham told Chaim, "I had done the mitzvah of saving a life, and I didn't want to sell this mitzvah for any amount of gold."

Chaim refused to accept the money, instead donating it to multiple charities in Israel. 

Over the next few decades, Avraham and Chaim became extremely close. Avraham has attended the weddings of all of Chaim's children, and Chaim has attended the weddings of all of Avraham's grandchildren. Chaim now has well over a dozen grandchildren, all of whom owe their lives to Avraham Shapiro.

"Whoever saves a life, it is as if he saved an entire world." (Sanhedrin 37a, B. Talmud)

For his courage in saving the life of a young child, even at great risk to his own, we honor Avraham Shapiro as this week's Thursday Hero at Accidental Talmudist.

Note: Avraham Shapiro is a pseudonym. He is too modest to allow his real name to be used in coverage of this story. 

with thanks to Sara Yoheved Rigler

Image: "Avraham Shapiro" and Chaim Schonbrun in Israel.