By Chaplain (Captain) Ernst M. Lorge, USA
Excerpted from Rabbis in Uniform
I was born and raised in Mainz, a town situated on one of the most beautiful parts of the Rhine River. In 1936 I left, what in my childhood I had thought to be, my home. My parents followed me in 1939.
On March 28, 1945, I returned to the Rhine, to the very hills through which I had hiked so many times as a teenager. Almost everything that once mattered had changed in the intervening nine years. There were only three elements that still made for continuity in the thoughts which intruded on the busy schedule of a fast-moving Army.
The first element of stability was the river and the hills; even the Nazis could not destroy the beauty. The second was my family—my wife, my child and my parents—whom I now expected to see before long. Letters from home reported my mother seriously ill, but I was sure everything would turn out all right. The third element was our Jewish people. I wasn’t yet aware of the extent of the slaughter that had taken place. Yes, we had heard the dreadful news of mass killings in concentration camps, but certainly we would arrive in time to liberate the great majority. Here I was back at the Rhine, my Chaplain’s flag with a Mogen David proudly flying from my jeep. Tonight we would celebrate the first seder. We were a stone’s throw from Bacharach, the town from which Heine’s rabbi had fled on a seder night in the Middle Ages when Jew haters sought to destroy him and his family. Am Yisroel Chai!
The Jewish men from the entire Division were to arrive in about eight hours to celebrate their seder in freedom on German soil. A large hall at Neuenahr had been cleared for the occasion. The cooks were preparing the food. The wine and the matzo had accompanied us as we moved toward the Rhine. They were well protected and guarded in two one-and-one-half ton trucks assigned to me especially for their transportation.
Mail call! I received a V-Mail letter from home. At first I refused to believe my eyes. And yet, there it was—my mother had passed away. My brother, a surgeon with the Army in New Guinea, was preparing for an invasion of Japan. I was back in Germany. My mother was laid to rest in New York, daughters-in-law the only children present.
I was stunned. I just sat. How long? I don’t know. The telephone rang. The Chief-of-Staff wanted to talk to the Chaplain. The combat elements of the Division had just been ordered to cross the Rhine on a pontoon bridge and to move into position without delay. No seder at Neuenahr, no seder anywhere. The General wishes to express his sincere regret to all the men of Jewish faith. The field telephone clicked. The General regrets… Doesn’t anyone regret the passing of my mother?
A few minutes later I caught myself. What foolish thoughts. The war is on again. American soldiers will die again. Where would the General find time to listen to my problems? It was quite decent of him to express his concern for his Jewish men amid all the hectic preparations at Headquarters.
When my assistant, Isaac, came in he knew immediately something had gone wrong in my personal life. “Will you sit shiva?” he asked.
It sounded unreal to me. “There’s a war on, remember? Besides, since it is so close to Passover, an hour of meditation may be all that is required in my case.”
The mention of Passover brought me back to reality. Men on the march and not even a trace of the holiday spirit. What would they eat tonight? The bread substitutes in their rations that were known as dog biscuits? It would be a mockery of Passover.
“Isaac,” I said, “we’ll take the matzo to the men in the units.”
“That’s impossible. You don’t know where they will be, and how could they carry the matzo along?”
“We’ll go where the troops are, moving along with them and between them. We’ll find the kitchen trucks of each Company and transfer a case of matzo to the cook in charge.”
“Chaplain, read this general order from Headquarters.”
I read it! “To avoid the congestion and confusion, nobody is to cross the Rhine except as part of a moving unit or by special permission of the Commanding General.”
Half an hour later I was at Headquarters trying to get permission for us to take the matzo across. The Chief-of-Staff would not take the responsibility. I managed to catch the General’s attention. When he explained that a large truck moving out of order would clutter up the roads, I told him that I would personally transfer the matzo to my jeep and trailer and try to get back and forth as often as was possible in the time remaining. I received the permission.
Soon we were driving madly all over the countryside, trying to locate kitchen trucks, mess sergeants, cooks, anyone who would listen to our story about the need for matzo to be served to Jewish men that night. Military Police, trying to keep order, questioned our right; Unit Commanders wondered if we had gone out of our minds. But after patient explanation everybody cooperated. The contents of one of the two matzo trucks was completely distributed. From all indications, the majority of Jewish soldiers in our Division had matzo that night. And they shared it with the gentile soldiers, who blessed the Jewish men and their Chaplain for providing a welcome change after three months of biscuits. Later, many a Jewish soldier admitted that there was a tear of joy in his eyes when he saw this small symbol of Passover being brought to him even in his difficult situation.
There were no Passover morning services on March 29, but shortly before noon I had another call from Headquarters. Most of the Division had moved into the assigned positions. There was only negligible fighting activity. If the Chaplain would organize a service on such short notice, it could be held that night. Most of the Jewish men would be allowed to come to a central place. However, the entire organization of the scheme, from beginning to end, would have to be done by the Chaplain and his assistant.
This meant there would be a second seder, to begin about six hours after permission was granted. All the units had to be notified by special messengers. Transportation had to be secured and organized to bring the men to some central point. Headquarters kitchen had to be prevailed upon to prepare the meal. A thousand other details, major and minor, had to be attended to.
What were we talking about? We didn’t even have a place to bring 500-1,000 soldiers together. But my knowledge of the towns in this area suddenly proved invaluable. Forward Headquarters was at Bad Ems, where there was an opera house I visited often as a child, which had all sorts of large halls and vestibules that we could use. It took me an hour to get to Bad Ems and requisition the building. The German Army had been serving as an enclosure for German prisoners of war. The seats had been torn out and the prisoners were lying all over the floor. The solution was obvious. The prisoners could be moved into some auxiliary halls, and the main theatre could be used for the seder guests. The seder would be conducted from the stage.
What type of seating arrangements could be made? Luckily, the tremendous windows of the outside vestibule were decorated with drapery. In the general destruction that had taken place, nobody had as yet found any use for large quantities of heavy drapery. So the drapes would come down and, spread on the floor, would provide fairly comfortable seating.
But we were not yet ready for this. The place really was not fit for humans. So, while I rushed on to make arrangements for food, for bringing the wine to Bad Ems and for gasoline lights to illumine the hall, my assistant drew a detail of 100 German prisoners of war and supervised the cleaning and general readying of the building. At 6 P.M. the trucks with the men began to roll in; at 6:30 P.M. I began the seder service. The facilities were somewhat makeshift, but they were adequate. In fact, they even added a great deal of realism to the Haggadah’s story of the Jews’ hasty departure from Egypt.
At 7 P.M. the General entered to pay his respects. The men were truly impressed when they found out that he had taken the trouble to study enough about Passover to tell them: “More than ever do you have a right to celebrate this Festival of Freedom when your ancestors threw off the slavery of Egypt, because you yourselves are participating in a mighty battle which will bring freedom to the oppressed all over the world.”
Republished in the Pesach 5784 issue of The Jewish American Warrior.
