{"id":22963,"date":"2026-06-18T02:53:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T21:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/my-father-carried-his-holocaust-story-his-entire-life-he-never-asked-us-to-carry-it-too\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T02:53:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T21:23:18","slug":"my-father-carried-his-holocaust-story-his-entire-life-he-never-asked-us-to-carry-it-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/my-father-carried-his-holocaust-story-his-entire-life-he-never-asked-us-to-carry-it-too\/","title":{"rendered":"My father carried his Holocaust story his entire life. He never asked us to carry it, too."},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p><iframe title=\"Everlit Audio Player\" src=\"https:\/\/everlit.audio\/embeds\/artl_2QdBkiVX2ba?ui_title_intro=Listen+now%3A&amp;client=wp&amp;client_version=3.1.5\" width=\"100%\" height=\"136px\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(RNS) \u2014 Although my parents raised me from my birth in Baltimore and I had the happiest of childhoods, I only came to really know my father, Rabbi Simcha Shafran, who died in 2016 at 91, in the final 30-odd years of his life.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s because he spoke very little about his life before his immigration to the United States in 1947, and his becoming a citizen shortly thereafter. And I was too stupid to ask him about those years.<\/p>\n<p>It was only around 1990, as an adult living with my own family in Providence, Rhode Island, that I learned about his youth.<\/p>\n<p>The lesson arrived in the mail, on a cassette tape sent me by someone who had recorded a speech my father delivered to an audience on Holocaust Remembrance Day. He apparently felt more comfortable relating his story to strangers than to his own children.<\/p>\n<p>I came to realize his reticence had been because he hadn\u2019t wanted to burden my sister, brother and me with the weight of the harrowing years of his youth.<\/p>\n<p>How, for instance, at the age of 14 in his native Poland, Simcha Bunim Szafranowicz \u2014 the name he was born with \u2014 had stubbornly insisted his parents let him study in yeshiva, even though what would come to be known as World War II had begun mere weeks earlier, and the family was fleeing the approaching Nazis.<\/p>\n<p>How SS men who had caught up with his family and other refugees from their town, Ruzhan, killed his uncle in front of him and packed my father and hundreds of other Jews into a synagogue, locked them in and set fire to neighboring homes. Preparing to die, the Jews were rescued at the last minute by a German army official who passed by and ordered the Jews to be let out. It was the Prophet Elijah, they suspected \u2014 who, in Jewish tradition, appears throughout history to save Jews \u2014 here, in strikingly unusual disguise.<\/p>\n<p>How the boy\u2019s parents reluctantly gave him their blessing \u2014 they didn\u2019t know, after all, where would be the safest place for him \u2014 and said goodbye to him. As it turned out, for the last time.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<hr\/>\n<p>That was the beginning of a journey that would take young Simcha to Siberia, and then America, where, as Rabbi Simcha Shafran, he would become a revered, beloved rabbi of a congregation.<\/p>\n<p>In the fall of 1939, the boy who would become my father, holding his tefillin \u2014 the small leather boxes holding pieces of parchment with certain Torah verses on them, bound to leather straps and placed on one\u2019s arm and head \u2014 and some apples his mother had given him, set out for the Novardok Yeshiva in the Polish town of Bialystok.<\/p>\n<p>En route, he discovered that all the Polish yeshivas had relocated to Vilna, Lithuania. In the train station, he recalled, he heard and heeded a voice in his head crying \u201cSimcha! Get on the train!\u201d to Vilna, and managed to pull himself onto the platform between two cars.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4264708\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 640px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2026\/06\/17\/my-father-carried-his-holocaust-story-his-entire-life-he-never-asked-us-to-carry-it-too\/webrns-rabbi-simcha-shafran-siberia-20260617\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4264708\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4264708 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-Siberia-20260617-807x579.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"459\" srcset=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-Siberia-20260617-807x579.jpg 807w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-Siberia-20260617-427x306.jpg 427w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-Siberia-20260617-768x551.jpg 768w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-Siberia-20260617-300x215.jpg 300w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-Siberia-20260617-600x430.jpg 600w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-Siberia-20260617.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\"\/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text edd-enabled\"><span class=\"caption\">Rabbi Simcha Shafran as a boy, top left, after being released from Siberia. Photo courtesy of Avi Shafran<\/span><span class=\"credit\"\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>He ended up in the relocated Novardok Yeshiva in a Lithuanian town called Birzh, where the yeshiva functioned until the Soviets took over in 1941 and demanded that all refugees become Soviet citizens.<\/p>\n<p>My father and his fellow students knew that accepting Soviet citizenship would have made them cannon fodder in the army, and they refused the offer. As foreign nationals, they were put on cattle trains, with a hole in each car\u2019s floor acting as a toilet, and, weeks later, arrived at a Siberian work camp, where they were ordered to fell trees, chop wood, harvest grain and grind it.<\/p>\n<p>My father was the youngest of the group that spent the rest of the war in the frozen taiga, along with their teacher, Rabbi Yehudah Nekritz.<\/p>\n<p>When working, they would discuss Talmud lessons or recite Psalms. They would not allow the Soviets to rob them of their spiritual heritage. In their shelter, they always had a chessboard, mid-game, in front of them, in case their overseer \u2014 who hated religion \u2014 should stop by.<\/p>\n<p>The exiles used an assortment of tricks to avoid working on the Sabbath, clandestinely baked matzos for Passover and jerry-rigged a sukkah, a special hut, in the middle of the night to observe the Sukkot festival.<\/p>\n<p>The group survived those years. In 1944, the young men were transferred westward and eventually smuggled into Berlin\u2019s American zone. My father had a bullet wound scar on his arm from when a bribed guard betrayed them and sprayed the truck they were in. I was in my 30s, I think, when he first showed me the scar.<\/p>\n<p>The refugees organized a yeshiva in a town near Frankfurt and resumed their Torah studies. In June 1947, after establishing contact with a relative in the U.S. willing to sponsor him, my father arrived at Ellis Island.<\/p>\n<p>With the $75 given to him by a Jewish social service organization, he bought a new pair of tefillin, his old ones having been well-weathered by Siberia.<\/p>\n<p>In New York, he met the daughter of a respected Baltimore rabbi, Noach Kahn, and courted her. They had only Yiddish in common, and my father, impoverished but resolute, dated my mother by taking walks with her, sometimes subway rides, and singing songs from his yeshiva days. He had a sweet voice and what struck everyone as perfect pitch.<\/p>\n<p>The couple moved to Baltimore and my father became the rabbi of a small synagogue. He picked up English quickly, thanks largely to my mother, who helped him translate sermons he wrote in Yiddish into English.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<hr\/>\n<p>His income from the synagogue was paltry, and so, even with the counseling, weddings, funerals and hospital visits, my father found the time to attend night school to study accounting. In addition to his rabbinic responsibilities, he became an auditor for the city of Baltimore. He took his obligations seriously, and his co-workers were impressed by his integrity. They said they could set their watches by when he left for lunch break and when he returned to his desk.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout his more than 60 years as a rabbi, my father made deep impressions on young and old, seekers and scoffers, intellectual and spiritual sorts alike. There wasn\u2019t any trick. With his radiant smile, he just presented himself, and Judaism, honestly, without pretensions. Someone once remarked that he had always assumed that to be a successful rabbi in America, a man had to be tall and sophisticated, speak the Queen\u2019s English and hold himself aloof \u2014 until he met my father.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4264707\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 640px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2026\/06\/17\/my-father-carried-his-holocaust-story-his-entire-life-he-never-asked-us-to-carry-it-too\/webrns-rabbi-simcha-shafran-circumcision-ceremony-20260617\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4264707\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4264707 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-circumcision-ceremony-20260617-807x568.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-circumcision-ceremony-20260617-807x568.jpg 807w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-circumcision-ceremony-20260617-427x300.jpg 427w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-circumcision-ceremony-20260617-768x540.jpg 768w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-circumcision-ceremony-20260617-300x211.jpg 300w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-circumcision-ceremony-20260617-600x422.jpg 600w, https:\/\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/webRNS-Rabbi-Simcha-Shafran-circumcision-ceremony-20260617.jpg 1096w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\"\/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text edd-enabled\"><span class=\"caption\">Rabbi Simcha Shafran at one of his great-grandchildren<span>\u2019<\/span>s circumcision ceremonies. Photo courtesy of Avi Shafran<\/span><span class=\"credit\"\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>When, after more than 40 years of marriage, my mother died in 1989, my father was devastated. But the inner strength that saw him through so much emerged with time and he resumed his life with vigor, even marrying again. His second marriage lasted for 20 years. When my stepmother fell ill, my father cared for her, as he did for my mother, during her final illness.<\/p>\n<p>He walked 3 miles daily, well into his upper 80s. In 2012, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Fire-Ice-Air-Yeshiva-Siberia\/dp\/0615598196\">he published his memoir<\/a>, \u201cFire, Ice, Air: A Polish Jew\u2019s Memoir of Yeshivah, Siberia, America.\u201d Only a brain tumor slowed him down and, eventually, ended his life.<\/p>\n<p>On his last morning in this world, he made a final request. It was hard to understand him, but his daughter-in-law said she heard him say \u201ctefillin.\u201d When she asked him if that was what he wanted, he nodded yes, and my brother fetched my father\u2019s tefillin and placed them on my father\u2019s arm and on his head. It was then, after fulfilling that observance, that my father relinquished his soul.<\/p>\n<p>On the final day of the Jewish week of mourning, a baby boy was born to one of our sons. At the child\u2019s circumcision, he received his name, and a new Simcha Bunim Shafran entered the world.<\/p>\n<p><em>(<a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/author\/avi-shafran\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-mrf-recirculation=\"Author Profile Link\" data-mrf-link=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/author\/avi-shafran\/\">Rabbi Avi Shafran<\/a>\u00a0writes widely in Jewish and general media and has a Substack\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@rabbiavishafran\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-mrf-link=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@rabbiavishafran\">here<\/a>. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)<\/em><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!-- CONTENT END 1 -->\n        <\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2026\/06\/17\/my-father-carried-his-holocaust-story-his-entire-life-he-never-asked-us-to-carry-it-too\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) \u2014 Although my parents raised me from my birth in Baltimore and I had the happiest of childhoods, I only came to really know my father, Rabbi Simcha Shafran, who died in 2016 at 91, in the final 30-odd years of his life. That\u2019s because he spoke very little about his life before his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}