This is Betty Schimmel’s story. Her crossing with bare feet the iced land of Hungary during a snow storm. Her arrival to Buchenwald, a place which her enemies hoped she will never survive. This is her mother’s story. A woman whose nostrils were full of ash coming from burn souls and whose mouth did not stop to repeat every night, through lices, illness, murders and death, the words of the Shema Israel. This is Emma Tedeschi’s story. An Italian Jewish lady who took pen and paper during October 1943 and wrote. “Dear children, consider these words as my last will. I beg you, all of you, please, do not surrender. I know, there is dark and pain there outside. But if you let go everything, if you don’t hold strong to your faith, you will help our enemies achieving their goal. Don’t forget our traditions, don’t stop leaving as Jews. This is the only way we can survive this hell.” This is Elie Wiesel’s story. A man who lost all his family between Auschwitz and Buchenwald. The story of a person who denied G-d’s existence with all his anger and tears. A man who, full of his disbelief, decided to circumcise his son. Months and years brought him to decide. “I will never deny my forefathers heritage. I am not allowed to break the chain transmitted by one of my ancestors, Rashi, Rabbi Shlomo Itzchaki. And I cannot betray the trust my forefathers put in me. I will go on complaining against G-d, as Jeremiah in his pages, but I will also call Him and love Him”. This is the story of a nation that was tested by story more than any other one. People who dag secret tunnels six hundred years ago and prayed to G-d from the depths of earth. Lost souls who during 1942 went around looking desperately for potatoes. They were intended to become food for empty stomachs which hardly received one or two breadcrumbs a day. They were meant to engraved. In order to become the right place for Chanuka lights. This is the story of men, women and children, who, during history span, did never desist. But went on fighting against dark and evil through circumcisions, the observance of shabat and prayers to G-d. Ani Maamin, I believe in you, were their last words. Jewish eco can be heard through eternity only in one way. Going on in the same thoughts, actions and words that our proud and stubborn forefathers tried with all strengths to transmit to us, today.
Gheula Canarutto Nemni
39 mother of the bride 