the youngest survivor of buchenwald on Germany's circumcision ban

[Brittain33]

read this story and you may begin to understand why most Jews agree with every word he said.

The Bluzhever Rebbe was a survivor of the Holocaust who had suffered in the camps throughout the war. During one particular brutal assignment of chopping wood, he overheard the Nazi's instructing all infants, children and mothers to line up. The Rebbe understood very well that this meant that they were next to be killed. Amidst the cries and moans of the mothers, the Rebbe heard a mother cry out, "A knife, a knife. I need a knife." The Rebbe thinking that it was a distraught woman who wanted to take her life, quickly ran over and tried calming her down. An S.S. officer who witnessed the scene, came over and hit the Rebbe over the head with his gun, knocking him down to the ground. Smiling, the officer proudly presented the woman with a knife. The Rebbe still in a daze, looked away, so as not to see what the lady was about to do. Surprisingly, he began to hear the lady talking in a very calm and controlled voice. He turned around and saw the lady place her infant on the ground, unbutton his clothing, and proclaim, "Hashem, you granted me this beautiful baby. Today, he is eight days old. I know that he will be returned to You very shortly. Let me at least return him to You as a Jew with a Bris." She then recited the blessing and circumcised her son, before the stunned Nazi.

That story is obviously apocryphal.

[Brittain33]

read this story and you may begin to understand why most Jews agree with every word he said.

Most Jews don't agree.  You're just projecting your opinion onto millions of other Jews; stop it.

The Bluzhever Rebbe was a survivor of the Holocaust who had suffered in the camps throughout the war. During one particular brutal assignment of chopping wood, he overheard the Nazi's instructing all infants, children and mothers to line up. The Rebbe understood very well that this meant that they were next to be killed. Amidst the cries and moans of the mothers, the Rebbe heard a mother cry out, "A knife, a knife. I need a knife." The Rebbe thinking that it was a distraught woman who wanted to take her life, quickly ran over and tried calming her down. An S.S. officer who witnessed the scene, came over and hit the Rebbe over the head with his gun, knocking him down to the ground. Smiling, the officer proudly presented the woman with a knife. The Rebbe still in a daze, looked away, so as not to see what the lady was about to do. Surprisingly, he began to hear the lady talking in a very calm and controlled voice. He turned around and saw the lady place her infant on the ground, unbutton his clothing, and proclaim, "Hashem, you granted me this beautiful baby. Today, he is eight days old. I know that he will be returned to You very shortly. Let me at least return him to You as a Jew with a Bris." She then recited the blessing and circumcised her son, before the stunned Nazi.

That story is apocryphal.  You cannot possibly believe it actually happened like that.

Not only are there a half-dozen details in there marking it as an impossible situation (a pregnant woman giving birth in a camp and still alive to be sent to forced labor, and only then having a selection? WTF?), but the idea of an SS agent smiling and handing over a knife to a prisoner marks this so obviously as a fable that I can't believe anyone would give credence to this story.

Judaism has a long tradition of fables meant to teach virtue and values to young people. The rebbe wanted to teach the importance of keeping the covenant and of Jewish women standing up for their values, so he made up a story and set it against the backdrop of the Holocaust to give it extra moral weight to young people not living in such difficult times. It's fine as far as fables go but as history it is transparently bogus.

[Brittain33]

Not in an extermination camp, obviously, but it's far from impossible at many other places. It may also be a real story augmented for dramatic telling. (Heck, virtually everything Americans, Jewish or not, believe about WWII is.)

If you were to conceive of this as a plausible story, which details would survive the editing?

I trust we agree that there was no situation where an S.S. officer handed a Jewish woman a knife, expecting her to kill herself, only to see her circumcise her baby.

[Brittain33]

you do know that he was a survivor (there are certain things that people don't make up)

And there are certain things people repeat or embellish which are unprovable, and because they don't think it matters that much if it's factual if it makes for a good story with a good message.

Do you believe every story mentioned in the Talmud or that you learned when you were a kid is the literal truth?

Every survivor deals with what he or she experienced in their own way.

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Quite a few, and I'll wager I've read and researched far more about the Holocaust than you've come into contact with in your life.

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Both are plausible. Certainly more plausible than an S.S. man ironically handing a knife to a woman he was about to murder.

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Ok, because I called out an obvious fable as a fable, you jump to the conclusions that a) I know nothing about the Holocaust and that b) I'm insulting everyone who was murdered.

I know enough about the Holocaust, the misery and debasement of it all, to recoil at people using it as a backdrop for cheesy just-so stories about the triumph of the human will over the stupidity of their murderers and to teach children a lesson about observing the mitzvot. Maybe you smiled when you read the story - shows that stupid German, hee hee - but in reality, the story of the Holocaust is of millions of murders, senseless and cruel, with no chance for dignity or redemption. There were no doubt thousands of individual cases of people preserving their dignity or standing up for the commandments - I learned about them in Hebrew School, too. But this particular story doesn't pass the smell test.

I'm sorry that it's impossible for someone to disagree with you without your dialing your response meter to 11 and claiming that they must know nothing and hate and insult everyone. Really, it's just that this sounds like a fable. 

[Brittain33]

When they were eliminating the last of the ghettos in Poland, they didn't necessarily bother even transporting the oldest and the youngest. Similarly, they also held selections when they eliminated smaller ghettos and transported their "useful" populations to other ghettos rather than camps. I could certainly picture an emergency circumcision under such circumstances.

Certainly. I can see a scenario where you have healthy mixed with the young and old in the Occupied Soviet Union or eastern Poland in late 1941 and early 1942, and a selection. I can also see someone wanting to do an emergency circumcision if facing death.

I agree about ghettoes being cleared and often children and young mothers left behind as the "healthy young" were moved on to a ghetto like Lodz or a work camp for work, not knowing what would happen to their families... somewhat different from people being sent out to chop wood on a work detail.