story
A journey into freedom spanning
generations and continents I BY CHANDREA SEREBRO
THIS IS THE STORY OF A PERSONAL EXODUS THAT
spans generations and continents. It’s
just another reason I love writing, and it’s
just another example of why I love this
thing called Judaism and why being a Jew
is such a brocha. The Pesach table will resound this year for me, of all the tales of
miracles and freedom I have heard and
written about over the years. To help
make your Seder more meaningful, I’ll
share one that touched me recently.
I recently interviewed Rabbi Avraham
Vigler about his immensely layered and
16 JEWISH LIFE
ISSUE 82
powerfully relevant personal family history. His stories point to the fact that anyone can overcome any obstacle if they direct their faith toward Hashem and His
Torah. The examples of how his and his
wife’s families left Egypt again and again
throughout their generations, to bring
Rabbi and Mrs Vigler to this old tip of the
world, is life-changing, and while I cannot
do it justice, I can offer you a glimpse into
how a person is able to journey into freedom from unbelievable bonds.
Rabbi Vigler’s grandfather lived in a
PHOTOGRAPH: ILAN OSSENDRYVER
AN EXODUS
time of unbelievable poverty, in the Jerusalem of old, under Turkish rule during
the First World War. It was 1914.
People were dying of famine in the
streets. The British only arrived in 1917.
To survive, Rabbi Vigler’s grandfather
sold cigarettes, and when someone would
only pay him with Turkish currency,
which was worthless and he wouldn’t accept it, he would ask to be paid rather
with the Austrian Schilling. For this, he
was reported to the police, jailed at the
infamous Kishle prison in the old city,
and beaten to within an inch of his life.
He died within 24 hours after his release.
Within t he next six months, Rabbi Vigler’s grandfather’s wife and child died,
leaving Rabbi Vigler’s father all alone in
the world at the age of four years old.
Brought up in the Diskin Orphanage,
which Rabbi Vigler explained was “not a
nice place”, he had no choice but to go out
to work to survive, forced to grow up before his years. He went on to join the freedom fighters of Etzel (aka the Irgun), contributing to an organisation that undertook the most courageous escapades to
fight for Jewish freedom. His life can only
be described as overwhelmingly difficult,
but, said Rabbi Vigler, his father understood the power of unity, and was driven
by a faith in Hashem and in the ideology
that as a Jew, and together, all obstacles
can be overcome, and he could get
through life’s most impossible crises.
It is almost no wonder that a descendant
of his, Rabbi Vigler, would end up with Rebbetzin Hadassah Vigler, whose parents,
both Holocaust survivors, also braved the
worst kind of evil. They lived in a town
called Sighet in northern Romania, near the
meeting point of the Hungarian and Ukrainian borders. Her father saw brutality and
pain to the nth degree. He watched his first
wife and three children being shot, before
he was taken away violently, and spent the
entire war in different war camps, working
to the bone and barely surviving. At the
same time, he witnessed the destruction of
whole families, haunted by the heartfelt
cries of the fathers left alive because they