Reb Mendel's Story

so this intellectual this professor ends up in this work camp with Reb Mendel foot the fastest llevaba Chuck Lawson and Amanda was telling the story over breakfast years later and he says this professor asked me he said I've noticed that many of the men are demoralized to the extent that they actually die he says healthy men who do not directly die from from starvation or from disease or from from from an act of violence they simply lose their will to get up off the cot in the morning and when we come back from our day of slave labor they're dead he says with you I see the opposite you have this Jawad Aviva and nothing gets you down and I can't in fact you won't you inspire everyone else I can't put my finger on what's the difference so the Mendel tells this professor says let me explain something to you these guys that you're watching that you see them dropping like flies they're Cossacks you know what a Cossack is I mean you're talking about a real not refined people okay the Mendel said for a Cossack life is three things his horse his rifle and his bottle of vodka that's life now when they send them to this gulag they lose those three things but that's life for that so by losing those three things they've lost their lives and it's only an inevitability sooner or later the body is gonna get the memo from the brain you're dead already and when that happens they don't get up off the cot in the morning and when we come back they're dead because they already lost their lives by coming here but at Mendel says but you should understand something about me really my life is not so different here than it was at home now the man didn't see his wife and children for 14 years anyway that means it was a slave laborer he was abused he was beaten he's just my life is not so different what's my life he says like back at home I see the Sun is about to go down so you have to pray yet it's mental time for me later afternoon prayer well here it's pretty similar you see the sun's going down it's the same Sun it's the same type of scenario it's an afternoon yeah pray me the afternoon prayer now it's a little different because there's no show and I can't actually stop chopping what they were chopping wood in the forest he says because if if I stop working they'll shoot you dead so while I'm doing the work I silently I pray the afternoon prayer to myself and in fact I think to myself you know in all the years since creation I bet you nobody ever prayed to God standing on this spot and I think to myself you know my life's not so different back home I tried my best to serve God over here I try my best to serve God so what did they take from me nothing you