Responsa from the Holocaust

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Absolutely essential reading for anyone who wants to begin to try and understand what occurred during the Holocaust

In this breathtakingly moving book, Rabbi Ephraim Oshry documents the remarkable continuity of religious life under the horrendous conditions of Nazi-occupied Lithuania. Most other books about the Holocaust neglect to tell this astonishing and important story. Despite having been driven from their homes and jobs with little more than the clothes on their backs, many Jews remained single-mindedly determined to maintain their religious life. Although they witnessed the destruction of ancient synagogues, religious seminaries and Jewish neighborhoods, their courageous commitment to Jewish law was unwavering. Even while experiencing unbearable suffering and watching as Jews everywhere around them were brutally murdered, they tried in whatever way they could to celebrate Jewish holidays and adhere to Jewish law. And during the long days when they toiled in slave labor, half-starving and often ill, they thought of how they could feel spiritually nourished.

They went to Rabbi Oshry, one of the remaining religious authorities in the Kovno ghetto, and posed their questions to him. Questions like: Could they commit suicide so that they could be buried in a Jewish cemetery instead of being murdered and thrown into a mass grave? A little boy wondered if he could have the privileges of a bar mitzvah boy even though he was too young, since he didn't think he would live to see his bar mitzvah. Rabbi Oshry answered their questions and recorded each and every query by copying it onto paper that he tore from cement sacks. He then buried these scraps of papers in cans in the soil around the ghetto. This book bears witness to the power of faith to survive in the most dire of circumstances.