The winter of 1944 was an extremely bitter winter in Poland, and none felt it more than the Jews lost in the world of the lagers, the concentration camps.
Often in life, it is the little things one remembers years later, and if you ask Rav Yisrael Lau what got him through that bitter winter as a seven year old boy in Buchenwald, he will tell you about Fyodor from Rostov, and a simple pair of ear muffs.
Every morning, the Nazi guards would rush into the barracks screaming and yelling and swinging their rubber truncheons every which way; the prisoners had only seconds to jump out of their bunks and stumble out in the snow; anyone not standing in roll call when it began was often killed on the spot.
As the guards walked up and down the lines in the bitter cold morning, their Alsatian dogs straining on their leashes, they watched for any puddles in the snow.
None of the prisoners, you see, had any time to relieve themselves in the morning before they were forced to stand in the bitter cold Polish winter mornings, and eventually from the cold they were forced to relieve themselves , a distinctive puddle would form at their feet. And when the guards saw this, they would mete out the most horrific blows, often ending with the prisoner falling to the snow in a heap of blood.
Rav Lau recalls many prisoners desperately trying to keep their legs together to put off relieving themselves and avoid almost certain death.
And little Srulli Lau who figured this out very quickly was sure this would be the death of him, until a Russian prisoner of war named Fyodor from the city of Rostov took a liking to him. Something about the little seven year old boy, still alive in the hell of Buchenwald touched this large Russian POW, who made it his mission to ensure this Jewish boy would survive.
One morning at roll call Fyodor snuck up behind little Srulli and placed a pair of ear muffs on his head. And from then on, every morning, as the frost turned people