Rabbi Nissan Mangel was born in Košice, Slovakia. In 1944, together with his father, mother and elder sister, young Nissen Mangel had been caught by the Nazis, arrested and deported from Bratislava.
He was first sent to the Sereď labor camp near Bratislava, then on to Auschwitz, where he was selected as one of the subjects of Dr. Josef Mengele’s ym”sh horrific human experiments. He was sent on to Birkenau, Mauthausen, Melk and Gunskirchen, from which he was liberated in 1945 after surviving a forced death march as the Nazis fled the oncoming Allied armies.
Nearly 80 years later, the boy who survived Auschwitz returned there to celebrate his 90th birthday with his wife, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, nearly 100 people in all. The children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren came together from Ohio, Florida, Colorado, New Jersey, Georgia, New York, Montreal, S. Paulo, and Israel.
Their first stop was the city of Łańcut – Lantzut in Yiddish –a city that once served as an important center for Chassidic life. The next stop was Lizhensk, home of the great Tzadik, Reb Elimelech, author of the Noam Elimelech, and the site of his kever. For Rabbi Mangel, a direct descendant of Reb Elimelech, and for the entire Mangel family, the visit was a reach back to their roots, generations of Chassidim over many generations. A return to Krakow followed, where a visit to the historic Jewish Quarter and famous Rema Synagogue.
On Thursday came the highlight of the trip with the much-anticipated visit to Auschwitz. Upon arrival, the whole family posed for a photo on the tracks through which Rabbi Nissan Mengel and his family entered Auschwitz.
While taking the photo, the family members sang the song that Rabbi Mengel composed, with the words ‘Hodu LaHashem’ -Thank God, expressing their praise to the Creator for bringing them to this moment.
He recently received a call from the Reagan Library in California, asking for a copy of the photo. Starting today, this photo will be displayed in the library!
Walking through the camp, Rabbi Mangel pointed to various buildings, the gas chambers, the crematoria, the sleeping pavilions, and other places where countless Jews suffered and were killed. He showed his great-grandchildren the barracks where he slept and told his family his memories of his time in this hell.
But along with the painful stories, the family members also heard about the miracles and wonders that happened to their father amid the German hell.
Everyone knows the great miracle of Avraham Avino from the fiery furnace in ur Kasdim. I received the grace of heaven. I was also saved from the fiery furnace. One such miracle was the miracle during a encounter with the ‘Angel of Death of Auschwitz’, Dr. Mangele.
His first encounter with the ’Angel of Death’ was right at the entrance to Auschwitz, where Dr. Mangele who made the selection was already waiting for them. He was still smoking a cigar for pleasure and decided who would be sent to life and who to death. I was ten years old, small, and skinny, but I told him I was 17 years old. Mangele laughed devilishly and said: ’I know you are not 17 years old, but go with your father.’ That’s how I continued with my father towards those who were sent to labor camps, and not towards the crematoria.
At that site where Dr. Josef Mengele selected Nissen Mangel out of the line to the gas chambers, the patriarch pointed and recited the prayer, “She’asah li nes b’makom hazeh,” that God performed a miracle for me right here.
The trip felt so much more potent with the current situation in Israel, family members said. Once again, there arise those that seek to destroy the Jewish people, but we know that Hashem will save us.
Rabbi Mangel related, it is stated in the Midrash Rabbah that Hadrianus asked Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania From where will the Holy One, blessed be He, revive man in the future to come? That is to say: if G-d will just create new people, then these are not the same people who died, and from the expression ‘resurrection of the dead’ it means that the dead themself - will live.
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania said to him: from the Luz bone. Meaning that there is a small bone in the spinal cord, which remains always present, from which God will create the body.
He said to him: How do you know? Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania said: Bring it to me, and I will show you - he ground it, and it did not grind, burned in fire and did not burn, put in water and did not dissolve, put on the anvil and began to hit it with a hammer, the anvil split and the hammer split and nothing was missing.
I was in the extermination camps, in Auschwitz and more, where millions of Jews were burned. There were days when thousands of Jews were burned there! Even this terrible fire could not destroy the Luz bone. A Jew who was forced by the Nazis to take care of the crematoria, told me that in the ashes there was always a small bone that was not burned!
At the time, when he told me about it, I didn’t understand the meaning of things. But after a few years, when I studied the aforementioned midrash, I realized that it was actually the Luz Bone, from which these millions of saints will rise to life.
