Rabbi Yechiel Michael Jungerman zt"l, a Holocaust survivor, gave his life to save Jews during the Holocaust during World War II, and was a scholar of miracles. Many times he was a step between himself and death.
One day, the German Gestapo, accompanied by members of the Hungarian Special Police, broke into one of the Swedish shelters where Rabbi Jungermán was staying, claiming that they were looking for Russian spies who had infiltrated and hid among the Jews. They took all the Jews out and gathered them in the yard for examination and sorting. All the Jews had to line up for the parade, and the Gestapo men went through the rows and pointed out the suspects, each suspect was immediately taken to a different corner of the yard and shot to death on the spot. And behold, a Gestapo man pointed his finger at the late Rabbi Jungerman as a suspect, and ordered one of the Hungarian policemen to take him to the corner of the murdered and shoot him.
Rabbi Yechiel Michal's custom throughout the war was that he kept his tallit and tefillin in a small bag that was sewn into the sleeve of his coat and tied to his right hand, and wherever he went, he always had the tallit and tefillin with him, and he never parted from them even in the most difficult situations. When he was led to shoot in the yard with his hands raised above his head, his tallit bag and tefillin were swung in the air. And so he progressed one step at a time, with the Hungarian policeman following him with a rifle ready to shoot, and accompanying him until he reached the place in the murdered people's yard. When Rabbi Jungerman arrived at the designated place for the shooting, he suddenly grabbed the tallit bag and tefillin in both hands, turned quickly with his hands outstretched and began to advance towards the face of the Hungarian policeman who was holding the rifle in front of him, ready and ready to shoot. And here the unbelievable happened, when with each step he took towards the Hungarian policeman's rifle, holding the tallit and tefillin in both hands in front of him, the Hungarian policeman began to retreat, and so they took about ten steps, with Rabbi Jungerman advancing towards the policeman, and the policeman retreating in front of the astonished eyes of the Jews standing in the line.
In the middle of this strange parade an alarm sounded and bombs began to fall from Allied planes that bombed Budapest constantly, one of the bombs fell on the same building that served as a Swedish shelter, and in the chaos that ensued, everyone began to flee and seek shelter from the bombs, and Rabbi Jungerman zt"l also managed to escape and be saved, when his son Rabbi Shalom Meir Jungerman shlit"a asked him on what basis he did this. He replied that he did not know himself, but that he felt a kind of inner urge that he could not control, and said that he saw in the eyes of the Hungarian policeman astonishment at the boldness, and a strange fear of the bag of tallit and tefillin.
