Reb Hershel, z’l, and Chana, ybclc, Nudel
By Larry Gordon

When I first met the young lady who was going to be my wife back in 1978, I asked her, “By the way, what does your father do?” Not that I thought it would impact in any way, shape, or form on what would soon evolve into a life together. I may have been naïve, but it just was not an issue for me.

“He learns,” she said.

“What?” I responded.

She repeated herself, staring at me with a bit more incredulity when I questioned what her father really does for a living.

On that first day that I met Esta I had already made up my mind that I was going to marry her; now I just had to figure out how I was going to get from this first meeting to our wedding day.

A few days later we had our first date, and that is when I met her parents. I soon learned that they were Holocaust survivors. At the time I had been hosting radio programs on subjects that included the experiences of survivors—but I had never gotten this close.

There were many aspects that I obviously had no idea about. For those who survived, the experience was shrouded in miracles of one kind or another. In my father-in-law’s case, his yeshiva was taken over, so to speak, by the Russians when they came into Bialystok, and they moved the Bais Yosef Yeshiva into the frigid area of Siberia.

Hershel Nudel was born and raised in an environment of Torah scholarship that did not know what it meant to take some time off or compromise your studies in any way. His generation certainly could not entertain the idea of going to Orlando for winter break in order to strengthen one’s Torah leaning in the next z’man. There was no such concept. Every waking moment had him attached to Torah and living in the four cubits of halachah. There was nothing else.

At the same time, he and his wife—may she continue to be well—were sole survivors of large families. It is impossible to fathom that people can endure such personal and communal devastation and still summon the strength and courage to rebuild—but that is exactly what they did.

He passed away quietly six years ago on a Shabbos afternoon, after years of dealing with dementia which kept him apart from his well-worn sefarim that sat on the shelves in his study until a few years after his passing, when my mother-in-law finally moved from the home in which they had lived for decades.

In the early years, as I slowly but surely got to know him, his quietness about those years was most notable. He had quirky habits that were apparently a reaction to what he had experienced during the war. Most noticeable—to me, anyway—was his discomfort at watching Esta, his daughter, clean the leftover matzah or challah from the table and dispose of the crumbs and small pieces.

Then there was the matter of the half-filled bowls of cereal the children would leave over each morning when they were here with us over a yom tov or a Shabbos. It was many decades after the war, but observing the waste quietly unnerved him.

He hailed from the Polish town of Tishevetz but as a teenager joined his yeshiva, and that is what saved his life and made our lives possible. We are not sure how many years he spent in Siberia, but I recall him saying it was about three-and-a-half years in those brutally cold environs.

We basically know nothing about his parents and siblings except for their names, and even some of those he wasn’t completely sure of as time went on. Some of our children are named for his siblings and now for him; one of our grandchildren—Ahron Tzvi Franklin—bears his name.

Siberia was the personification of the survival of the fittest or perhaps the most barely fortunate. Everything was frozen, but he did talk on occasion about how he chased after pigs or other animals running with an ear of corn or a potato in their mouth and if he was able to startle the animals they would drop the food item and make a run for it. Then the boys would boil the potatoes or corn back in yeshiva and that is how they survived.

As the years passed and as he aged, he began opening up about how things were during those years in Siberia. Once, as we were sitting in the sukkah in the back of our house, he began to reminisce about what they used as a sukkah over those years in Siberia. He said that they looked for four large trees with long thick trunks and whose branches were interwoven above their heads. No, it wasn’t a Litton Brothers sukkah, but it was something, and the best they could do under those desperate circumstances.

As a yeshiva bachur back in Tishevetz he was an occasional guest over Shabbos at my mother-in-law’s family’s home. My mother-in-law was also a sole survivor of a large family. She and my father-in-law ended up on the same ship that was taking survivors to the new world in the U.S. But first there was a stop in Paris where many of the yeshiva men married the orphan girls, with the couples staring at an unknown future together. Somehow, they landed in New York and moved to an apartment in Boro Park. By the time they arrived in New York they were expecting twins. After that there was another boy, then Esta, and then her younger brother.

Hershel Nudel passed away at age 95, just six days after my mom’s passing. If you read last week’s column or if you are keeping tabs on these things, then you know that in between was the wedding of our children, Shayna and Nison.

After the wedding I went back to sitting shivah while Esta attended the sheva berachos. After her father passed away—that is, on the next day, Sunday—she was sitting shivah while I attended the next two sheva berachos.

So this week we are remembering and observing the yahrzeit of Ahron Tzvi (Hershel) Nudel. He may have lived during the most transitional time in the history of the Jewish people. Historically, we were always the targets of our enemies, but in modern times there was never anything as violent and destructive—for those who perished as well for those who survived.

Through it all he managed to smile and celebrate family simchas. He was a happy man engrossed in his constant Torah study. However, I was able to see on his face and in his eyes the pain of the experiences that never left him.

But then six years ago he left us. We pray that he was united on a level beyond our grasp with those who were so mercilessly taken from him as a young man. Finally, he is hopefully privy to G-d’s grand design and the brilliance of His plan for humanity and the Jewish people. All his life he was dedicated to trying to understand His holy wisdom; now he sees it all and knows it well. May his memory be a blessing for us all. 

Read more of Larry Gordon’s articles at 5TJT.com. Follow 5 Towns Jewish Times on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for updates and live videos. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome at 5TJT.com and on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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