And it wasn’t chilul Shabbos just for parnasah, because they needed food to eat. I went with a friend of mine, Rabbi Yehuda Davis zatzal, and together we walked one Shabbos afternoon to the port in Kovno, on the river. It was the summertime and the Jews in Kovno were gathered there at the port. And every fifteen minutes a steamboat full of Jews left to go up the river to a vacation place. Jews – men and women together, smoking, carrying packages, dressed of course in undress, all bare-headed, all being mechalel Shabbos. We didn’t believe our eyes. Kovno?! That’s a Jewish Kovno?! “A leibidiker tug! There’s no G-d anymore! There used to be a G-d in Kovno but now we forgot all about Him.”
Well, He reminded them! He reminded them! And once more they all met again in that same place. Again they assembled, only this time it was for different purposes. This time they weren’t going upstream to a vacation place; instead they were being put in cattle cars. Some were being led to the Ninth Fort where they were shot down en masse.
But not only shot down. Why did it have to be that the Jewish women were subjected to such indignity before they were killed? It just happened that the Nazis chose to strip them of their clothes, to act in the most vile way?
Because Jewish women began to dress in immoral dress in Europe – things that you never saw before – that’s why the Jewish women were subjected to indignity before they were tortured to death. That’s middah k’neged middah.
Because Jewish women began to dress in immoral dress in Europe, things that you never saw before, that's why they were stripped naked, the Jewish women. And they were subjected to indignities before they were tortured to death. Because once upon a time you couldn't find a Jewish woman who uncovered her hair. But now things changed, and that's why all the Jewish women were shaved bald before they were sent to the gas chambers; and they found tons and tons of human hair. They're still wearing them in America today as wigs. Human hair; tons and tons of human hair from Jewish women. That's middah keneged middah.
