My grandmother, Julia Yitta Unger (1884-1944), was raised by Reb Shayele and lived in Bodrogkerestir. When she was 10 years old, her mother died. Her father thought it would be better if Reb Shayele and his family would raise her. She was with Reb Shayele’s family for a few years. My grandmother eventually married Avraham Tzvi, who was a baker by trade and also lived in Bodrogkerestir. Perhaps Reb Shayele had arranged the marriage.
When my mother, Fayga, was born, she was very sick. My grandmother went to Reb Shayele for a blessing. Reb Shayele added the name Alte (old) to my mother’s name, so her name became Alte Fayga. It is customary to change the name of a sick person to bring the person new life. When my grandmother returned from Reb Shayele my mother had recovered.
This blessing perhaps lasted through the Holocaust, because my mother survived the war through a miracle. While she was living in a Yellow Star House in Budapest, her sister Moncie encouraged her to take Christian identity papers that she could provide for her. However, my mother was afraid, and she did not believe the rumors of mass murder.
My mother was soon ordered to a deportation staging area. When she saw the multitude of men, women, and children, she knew in her heart that the rumors were true. She then sat on her valise and began to pray. Suddenly it began to rain. And because of the massive overflow of people, she was ordered to return the next day. She never did. The next day she removed her yellow star and went straight to her sister to assume her new Christian identity.
With that new identity, my mother rented a room in an apartment. The woman who owned the apartment was nice but unfortunately, her partner, a physician, was a rabid antisemite. He was always railing against the Jews. On Sunday mornings my mother would go take a walk pretending to go to church. My mother told me that one day this physician asked her why, as a good Christian, she never spoke against the Jews. My mother said that she just looked him in the eye and said: “It is because I am a good Christian that I do not speak against the Jews.” She was able to hide her true identity until after Budapest was liberated. And so the blessing of the Kerestir rebbe continued.
My mother’s parents, brother and two sisters were murdered by the Nazis, and after the war my mother lived in a Displaced Person’s camp in Bamberg, Germany. My grandmother’s brother, who lived in the United States, sponsored my mother’s visa. In New York my mother was introduced to my father who was a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp. I was born in 1952, a last chance only child to parents at the tail end of their childbearing years.
Reb Shayele of Kerestir passed away on April 27, 1925. Thousands of hassidim and followers converge on his burial place each year in Bodrogkerestir. It seems more than just a coincidence that Rebbe Shayele and my mother lived to the same age of 73. It is even more of a coincidence that they both passed away on the same day of the Jewish calendar, the third day of the month of Iyar. The blessing of Reb Shayele was a blessing of life. ■
Steven Barry Friedman is a Jewish educator and social worker who lives in New York. He visited Reb Shayele’s grave in Hungary in 1988.
