Passover in Auschwitz, 1943: When Ashkenazi Jews Used a Sephardic Haggadah

“It was a long, dark and frightening night.” Readers may mistake these words as coming from the pen of Elie Wiesel, but they are actually from the testimony of Joseph Kotlianski, a Jew from the town of Volkovysk in Belarus. These words are part of his chilling but moving memory of one long Passover night he endured in Auschwitz.

Kotlianski’s story begins a few days before Passover, on Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat immediately preceding Passover. On Shabbat HaGadol – the Great Shabbat – Jews read a special Haftarah (prophetic portion) that concludes with God sending Elijah the Prophet to announce the coming of the Messiah. We read this portion because of our belief that the Messiah will come sometime around Passover.

But on that Shabbat HaGadol in 1943, no Messiah came to Auschwitz. Instead, a large transport of Greek Jews arrived, and for them, this Shabbat was not so “Gadol.”

“On that ‘Shabbat HaGadol,’ the Nazi murderers began to burn the Greek Jews in the gas chambers” tells Kotlianski.

As was the practice of the Nazi murderers, they stripped the Jews of their clothing and confiscated their belongings. Kotlianski and a few others somehow got access to some of the confiscated belongings of the Greek Jews. Amongst the few articles of clothing stuffed in their suitcases, they found matzot and raisins for Passover.

Kotlianski and his friends hid these few precious matzot and raisins and were determined to use them for a seder on the night of Passover.

“Six of us in my cell block decided to hold a Passover Seder. Lights out was 9:00 p.m., and we planned to hold our Seder at 10:00 p.m. We were quiet and very careful, well aware that we were risking our lives.”

They snuck out of the cell block holding the precious few seder items in their trembling hands:

“We were able to take two matzot and some raisins brought by the Greek Jews. We soaked the raisins in water, so that they gave a semblance of wine for our seder.”

There was one more sacred item Kotlianski was able to take: “In a pile of books brought by the Greek Jews, we found an old, tattered, worn out Passover Haggadah.”

When I read this part of his story, I pictured that “old, tattered, worn out Haggadah” from Greece. It most probably resembled the beautiful Sephardic Haggadot from Greece shown to me by the Greek Holocaust survivors that I was privileged to know throughout my life.

Some of those Haggadot had charming drawings of the “Four Sons,” others artistic depictions of each character in “Had Gadya.” The Hebrew font was in beautiful block print, and alongside it there was the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) translation, also in Hebrew letters. I imagine that it was this kind of Sephardic Haggadah that Kotlianski and his friends used at their seder that night in Auschwitz.

“So we sat at our concrete ‘Seder Table,’ looked at one another, and with tears of anguish and pain, we recited the blessings over the raisins in water – our wine that night – and the blessings over the matzah. We read portions of the Haggadah…and we cried.”

They had no salt water reminding them of the tears we wept in Egyptian bondage, but their own tears took care of that. They had no bitter herbs to eat. Auschwitz and the Nazis were their bitter herbs.

They had no salt water reminding them of the tears we wept in Egyptian bondage, but their own tears took care of that.

They had no bitter herbs to eat. Auschwitz and the Nazis were their bitter herbs.

I wonder if they were able to decipher the Judeo-Spanish and chant Had Gadya in Ladino – “Un Kavretiko.” Maybe they did, and when they came to the stanza about the Angel of Death, they beheld his murderous ways before their eyes.

The transport of Greek Jews that arrived on Shabbat HaGadol was quite large, and the Nazi murderers could not kill all of them on that Shabbat.

“So the remainder were killed that Passover night. While we recited the blessings from their Haggadah, we saw the smoke coming from the chimneys of the gas chambers, as the Nazi murderers burnt the Greek Jews.”

Indeed, the Angel of Death was present that night, inscribed in that Sephardic Haggadah and actively murdering Jews in the gas chambers.

“So it was,” tells Kotlianski, “that on that Passover night, at the very hour when they were murdered, those sacred Greek Jewish martyrs left this world while we fulfilled the mitzvah of the Passover Seder with their matzot, raisins and one Haggadah.”

On that dark night, Had Gadya ended with the Angel of Death. God did not come and slaughter the Angel of Death. On that night, while six Ashkenazi Jews held a seder using matzot baked in Greece and a Sephardic Haggadah, the Angel of Death slaughtered the Greek Jews … and their Ashkenazi brethren cried bitter tears.

Let us not allow their sacred memories to be slaughtered. Eighty years later, on this coming Seder night, as we sit down at our comfortable Passover Seder tables, let all of us — Sephardim and Ashkenazim together – tell this sacred Passover story, reminding us that we are all one people.

Rabbi Daniel Bouskila is the director of the Sephardic Educational Center and the rabbi of the Westwood Village Synagogue.