Saturday evening, I go for a stroll.
An old man calls me over. “Can you do me a big favor?” he asks.
“What do you need?”
“I need a mitzvah.”
“What do you need?”
“I just had heart surgery. I need you to walk with me. The person who was supposed to walk with me did not show up.”
“Sure, I’ll walk with you.”
He takes my arm and we walk slowly down the street.
“I needed to go for a walk but I had no one. God told me to go down to the street and He would send somebody to me. Two other people passed by but I did not call them over. When I saw you, I saw an arrow pointing at you, this is the one.”
We walk on.
He tells me he survived the Holocaust. “I had 120 family members and relatives. I was the only one who survived. I was in five camps including Auschwitz. After the war, I went back to my village in Poland. I waited for three weeks. None of my family returned.
“My mother was 42 when she was murdered by the Nazis. My father was 45. My zede (grandfather) had a beautiful white beard. When the Nazis entered the ghetto, they asked him, why don’t you shave your beard? Before he could answer, they took out a gun and shot him in the head, splitting his head in half. I can still hear the click of the pistol. I was covered in blood. I just had a nightmare about it last night. Such things, you never forget.”
