Ki Savo: You Did This!

Good evening and welcome to Alishi. This week's para right before bringing mik a person remembers talks about all the the annals of gullis and the things that we went through mimi lavan the people who try to do damage to us and we're very specific in what we remember and why we re remember it along that that nostalgic route that we take. We talk about all the challenges along the way along this this journey. We talk about being a matri they were very bad to us and everybody asks many of them ask what's it should say lanu they were bad to us what's my grandfather basal used to say over at the very frequently tell of a story he was a very diplomatic person a very smart person my grandfather clever man not long after world war ii somebody came to his office not somebody he knew The person said his name was Mr. Freriedman and and he had ran into real issues, legal issues. They needed help. And someone said, "Go talk to Rabb Master. Maybe he could help you." My grandfather said, "What's the problem?" So he said that after the war, people were eligible for funds from the German government, people who had been victims of Nazi persecution and Nazi oppression, and there was money available to them, and he was available. He was he was also eligible for those funds. He had lost a lot of the and he filled out the forms. when he filled out the forms, he he exaggerated or tweaked or or a little bit shifted the reality of uh what he had had before the war, what he was eligible to, changing the number that he was eligible to. And the Germans run a tight ship and they they did their accounting, their forensic accounting, and they realized after a couple years that he that he had that the number didn't really add up and he had taken more than he should have and they came after him very hard. They wanted to prosecute him legally and of course they wanted all the money back. didn't have any money and he wasn't he didn't believe he was frightened. He was terrified. So he went to my grandfather knowing that my grandfather spoke German and he he had political connections to the degree. So grandfather said he's going to try to handle it and he made a uh appointment with the German consult to New York and uh and he made made a meeting with her. He went to sit down over there and they they uh he came he came to her office and she said, "Yeah, go there, Rabbi. How can I help you?" She said, "I want to tell you a story about a friend of mine, Mr. Friedman. and he showed her the file. He said, "Let me tell you the a little bit of the history of this, Mr. Freedman." Mr. Friedman came to the camps and soon as he arrived, they asked the first question they said, "Uh, is are you over 16 or under 16?" And he just understood instinctively that it wouldn't be good to say he's under 16. So he said, "I'm I'm 17 even though he was 14." So they said, "Okay, go to the right." Okay. Dodge a bullet. Then they said, "Do you have any anybody here in this this crowd over here have any experience with being an electrician with electrical work?" He said, "Yeah, I was an apprentice electrician." So I thought, "Oh, great. Okay, come here." And again, he had never really dealt with a wire in his life. He had never worked an electrician, of course, but he understood that that would be a prudent thing to say. And then he joined the crew that was helping an electrician over there in the camp and doing work. At one point, they said, "Does anybody have any experience not just with wiring, but with dealing with light with light bulbs and and with being able to take apart a light bulb and put put it together?" And he said, "Yeah, he he actually had some experience with that, too." They said, "Oh, perfect. Okay, good. We need you go over there to that division." And my grandfather said, "This is how he survived for years." He tried to figure out what the smartest answer and the most prudent answer would be. And and that was the answer he gave. And and that's how he stayed alive. And he said, "For five years, he survived on lying because that was the only way he could survive. Everybody else was killed." And my grandfather tells this woman, "You made him into a liar. You turned him into a liar. and now you complain that he's lying to you. You did this. There was a story um and her grandfather was successful with that with that argument. Of course, they they understood the woman understood. They dropped the case. A grandfather would say doesn't mean that they were bad to us. It means they made us bad. They exposed the climate of such evil, such wickedness, such moral depravity that it affected us those years. We hung around with people who were bad. We became bad. Kim is our chance to roll. We're starting again.