Maybe We'll Understand

  Think about Les Miserables; the youth often lead the revolutions.  "Little people know when little people fight," Gavroche said, and this was as true in the 1848 uprisings as it was in the Holocaust.  Making this all the more possible was the rise of youth group movements.  Rachel Boehm, the young lady I'm writing about today, made sure the last act of her life was to help one such movement.

   Take a look at her in 1943 in the Lodz Ghetto.  She's smack in the center, along with a lot of her peers. You can see her holding the sign, right above the numbers.  Rachel Boehm.

 Take a look at her one more time:  here she is with a friend and a little boy named Jankusz.

 I find this photograph to be telling because they are together and looking out to the unknown.  You see, there was so much that was unknown in the Holocaust.  That was part of the emotional warfare of the Nazis.  People would disappear on trains, and nobody knew where the trains were going to.

  This is where Rachel stepped in.  One of her friends in the youth movement had the job of cleaning up the cattle cars.  He began to notice that the same cars were coming back. It was suggested that anyone who was deported should try to let people know.  When Rachel lived her last moments, she did just that.  Perhaps by helping people understand the un-understandable, she could do something meaningful for the cause.

  She didn't know the meaning of Auschwitz.  She didn't know about what would happen when she took the huge jump off the train.  She didn't know about the sudden death that would await her and so many others. She only knew that she needed to get this information back to her friends in Lodz.

  Today, while standing in the shadow of a cattle car, I listened to the song below.  Listen to it, even though it's in Hebrew.  I'll put the translation below.  I think you'll understand why I had to share.

"Then we asked Rachel to find out where the trains are going.

When they leave, all the cars are full. When they return, the benches are empty.

Rachel, travel on the train and see where it's going, where it's going. (Chorus)

 We asked the drivers of the locomotives where are the Jews in the trains going to?

And they replied that they didn't know because they are replaced between the stations.

Go, Rachel, please leave a letter hidden in a narrow crack under a bench,

And when the cars return we'll read it and maybe we'll understand...

Rachel left with the train from the city, she sat at the edge of a bench

She traveled past fields and villages, bridges, rivers and forests.

After some time she came to a place whose name she didn't know

She saw the Jews getting off the train and she added to the letter:

'I see shacks, gardens, flowers,  and the name of the station in German.

I hear dogs barking and people wearing striped clothes.'"