At the first opportunity after they had checked us, we gathered again on the straw, sitting as close to each other as we could. There was a great mixture of feelings provoked by the knowledge of what the holy day of Yom Kippur meant to us. Through our keeping of the prayers there pervaded the emptiness of what we had experienced, the longing for our missing families, and the sharp feeling of repugnance that resulted from the ugliness around us. Our environment could never become anything except the imprisonment of patched and dirty canvas walls and damp straw beneath us. We sat there like poor sheep whose shepherd had been swished away by a horrible fate.
Never, I am sure, had the Yizkor service been held with more warmth of heart than it was that day.
We girls who prayed in the tent had been educated to read and understand the Yom Kippur prayers in the book. Now we felt deeply the misfortune that was caused by our not being able to obtain even one precious copy of the prayer book. Without it we could not possibly carry on the services properly, and we could not help feeling more bitterness because of it. As the time for the Yizkor service approached later in the morning, we felt even more lost and desperate without a prayer book.
One of the girls at this point began to sing in a soft lilting voice. I found myself listening with a certain tingling of the spine to her melodious tones. As if a signal had been given, all of us joined her and together we sang the Yiddusheh Mameh. Never, I am sure, had the Yizkor service been held with more warmth of heart than it was that day. We were sure that the G-d of Israel saw our feelings and felt their depth, and accepted this makeshift Yizkor. We felt a visible reward in the form of a wonderful warmth which overflowed our hearts. For a little while, we forgot the tent and the straw and the supervisors and the prison. But soon, all too soon, the glow became another memory and the days melted once more into uninterrupted lethargy.
Reprinted from an email of aish.com.
