From a Holocaust Labor Camp to the Shofar of Mashiach - Rabbi Shlomo Landau

L 1943 in a forced labor camp somewhere deep in Hungary. The hundreds and hundreds of Yidden look towards their leader, Rabbi Shaya Markovitz, a great tzaddik and a big talmid chacham, wondering what's going to be with Rosh Hashanah. They're working 14 hours a day of forced labor. When are they going to daven? How are they going to experience the loftiness and the holiness of that very special day? With great trepidation, Rabbi Shaya Markovitz puts his own life on the line and goes to speak to the chief of the entire forced labor camp. He begs and he pleads on behalf of so many Yidden there to please give them a chance to daven on Rosh Hashanah. His pleas pierced the evil heart of the commandant and he agreed they could daven each day of Rosh Hashanah together with Rabbi Shaya. When the news spread in the labor camp that there would be a Rosh Hashanah davening, it filled the Yidden's hearts with hope. And on Rosh Hashanah morning, hundreds and hundreds of Yidden packed together in a barrack led by the holy Rabbi Shaya Markovitz. The tefillos were le'eila u'le'eila, so lofty. But in middle of davening, all of a sudden, the door to the barrack bursts open and a soldier is standing there and he says, "The rabbi needs to go right now to the commandant." He had no choice. Everyone was fearful. Did he have a change of heart? Was he going to do something to their holy rebbe? Rabbi Shaya ran the 1 and 1/2 km all the way to the head of the camp's office. He knocked on the door gently with his heart beating and he said, "What's wrong?" And the fellow asked him some trivial question. "That's what you disturbed davening for?" he thought to himself. But he answered the question and he started his trek all the way back, running as quickly as he could to get back to his Yidden, to get back to davening. As he does so, his foot hits a small little shrub and he looks down at the shrub and he sees something protruding from the shrub. He bends down. It's a small, tiny little shofar. And someone had scratched in the letters shofar of Moshiach, the shofar of Moshiach. He couldn't believe it. They didn't have a shofar in the labor camp. He picked up the shofar. He ran as fast as he could to the barrack. He says, "Yidden, you're not going to believe this. I thought I was going to the commander of the camp, but I really was going to find the shofar." And when he got up to the kiyashofar, he put the shofar to his lips and the sound was high-pitched and almost otherworldly. Yidden listened to the sound. It gave them so much connection. It brought them up to such a lofty place. That shofar survived the war. It was super precious to the Yidden. And eventually it made its way into a shul of Holocaust survivors. And the very first Rosh Hashanah in freedom, they went underneath the Aron Kodesh to take out the shofar to use that shofar again, but this time as free people. And the shofar had disappeared. It had vanished into thin air. And no one ever heard from that shofar again. Go figure. Perhaps that shofar had served its purpose in a time when it was needed. But one thing is clear. Whether you're a Jew in a labor camp and miraculously listen to a shofar, or a Yid nowadays who walks into shul the second day of Rosh Hashanah to listen to the kiyashofar, it needs to move us. It needs to stir us. It needs to fill our neshamos with hope that with Hashem, very soon, all of us together will be able to listen to the real, genuine, lasting shofar of Moshiach.