By Jerry Klinger in Boynton Beach, Florida
Jews can die twice. It is a strange thing to say that a human being can die two times. Yet, in Jewish tradition, it is possible for a Jew to die twice.
The first death of an individual is when his or her body fails. The second death is when she or he are forgotten. No one knows their name anymore, no one says kaddish for them, no one remembers they ever lived. They are erased from memory just as the Nazis wished and attempted to do.
It is the second death that is the most painful. It is not just painful to the immediate family. It is painful to the Jewish world when even the memory of Jewish life is erased.
A few months ago, an unknown individual referred the story to me about John Doe “Shoah.” It was an incredible story, macabre on one hand, righteous on the other hand.
October 27, 2021, Rabbi Yonasan Abrams of Chabad Temecula and Baruch Bloom, of the Chesed Shel Emes Society of California, buried the remains of a Ploni Ben Abraham, in the Chabad Mt. of Olives Cemetery in Los Angeles. Ploni Ben Abraham means unknown but to God.
The remains they gently buried in the consecrated Jewish grounds had been brought to them by Penelope Frey. The remains were only a skull. The rest of the bones and body were long ago lost. Even more macabre was the skull belonged to a Holocaust survivor who had died probably fifty years ago.
Penelope Frey was the widow of Dr. Maurice Frey, a dentist by profession and a Holocaust refugee.
Dr. Frey escaped through Portugal on the Serpa Pinto, a ship from Lisbon to New York in 1941. On board the same ship was Rabbi Menachem Schneerson and his wife Chaya Mushka Schneerson, both of righteous memory. Rabbi Shneerson settled in New York and founded the worldwide Jewish outreach community of Chabad Lubavitch. Today, Chabad has over 3,500 Jewish centers in 100 countries.
Dr. Frey opened a dental practice in New York. He was known among the survivor community for helping indigent Jewish Holocaust survivors with their dental care.
One day, a sick and clearly indigent Holocaust survivor came to his practice asking for help. Dr. Frey readily offered care. The survivor, with a sense of dignity, had no money to give Dr. Frey. He insisted Dr. Frey accept an exchange.
The survivor told Dr. Frey that when he died, he was willing to donate his remains to a local medical school. It was his intent that his skull should be given to Dr. Frey for educational purposes in his practice. The good Dr. reluctantly agreed.
A few years later, a small package arrived at Dr. Frey’s office. It was the skull of the unknown Holocaust survivor. Dr. Frey offered it to the NYU School of Dentistry. They turned it down. Dr. Frey stored the skull in his clinic until his retirement in 1987. The skull was transferred to his home with his records. Dr. Frey passed away in 1993.
Penelope Frey would relocate to California to be near family. One of the items she shipped to California from her husband’s former practice was the skull.
In her new Los Angeles home, she asked a religious friend what she should do with the skull.
Penelope was advised to contact Chabad for advice. She contacted Rabbi Abrams. Rabbi Abrams, working with Baruch Bloom secured a small burial site adjacent to the roadway in the Chabad Mt. of Olives L.A. cemetery. They knew the importance of giving whatever remained of the tormented soul of the Holocaust survivor some rest in Jewish Holy Burial Ground was an absolute of Jewish obligation.
After horrific terrorist bombings, Jewish men scour every inch of the ground for any possible bit of human remains to be gathered and buried with Jewish dignity and prayer.
Rabbi Abrams and Baruch Bloom, together with an elderly Penelope Frey buried that skull where it’s last human visage could rest until the coming of the Messiah.
The Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, JASHP, over the years, has been involved in giving respectful memory to those who have passed and whose gravesites have fallen into decay and shameful disrepair. JASHP has restored and preserved the gravesite of Shmuel Cohen, the composer of the Hatikvah, when no one in Israel bothered. JASHP has restored the gravesite of a 19-year-old Holocaust survivor, murdered in Jerusalem by Palestinian terrorists while he walked to the Kotel for prayer in 1947. JASHP restored the severely deteriorated gravesite of the first American Consul to Jerusalem (1844), Warder Cresson. Cresson was buried on Mt. of Olives in Jerusalem.
And there are others.
It is not unusual for JASHP to be approached for help.
When the story of the Ploni was brought to us, we knew he had no name to say Kaddish in his memory. The question we asked was, did he have a stone of memory?
John Doe Shoah, Ploni Ben Abraham, did not have a stone of memory. What was left of his earthly remains was buried with dignity and kindness in the Chabad cemetery, but…
Visitors to the cemetery, going to the resting place of their loved ones, were walking on his grave, unintentionally, unknowingly.
His life was a tragedy, a horror punctuated by unimaginable suffering in the camps. Penelope Frey recounted that her husband spoke of the numbers tattooed on his forearm. He survived alone, came to America, and his life could never be restored or rebuilt. Alone, he lived in abject poverty. He died, and his remains, except for the skull, were lost. So many of the victims of the Holocaust became luftmenschen, as their ashes wafted into the air from the crematoriums. Their names lost.
Yad Vashem has so far collected over 3,000,000 names of the 6,000,000 victims. Their names will be known. To that extent, they will no longer suffer a second death. The other three million ???
Learning about Ploni Ben Abraham, the thought of people walking on him in death, as life had walked on him, grinding him to dust, was not acceptable.
JASHP contacted a friend, Rabbi Shalom Raichik, Chabad, Montgomery County, Maryland. Rabbi Raichik reached out on my behalf to Rabbi Abrams and, in turn, Bruce Bloom.
Last week, Ploni Ben Abraham was, somewhat, no longer unknown but to God. A footstone of memory was placed at his skull’s resting place. It was funded by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. It was the least we could do.
Bashert…perhaps… since… JASHP has been presented with three more Jewish unknowns who have no memory. They, too, are obligations. The right thing must be done, will be done, for them and the Jewish people.
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Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.