Good Morning, Herr Mueller

By Yaffa Eliach

(from Yaffa Eliach, Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust. New York: Avon Books, 1982. Pages 129-30. Used by permission of the author. Dr. Eliach writes that this story was "based on my conversation with an elderly Hasidic personality."
Other, more recent editions of this superb book are more readily available, but, of course, have different pagination. Please visit Dr. Eliach's web site, http://www.shtetlfoundation.org.)

Near the city of Danzig lived a well-to-do Hasidic Rabbi, scion of prominent Hasidic dynasties. Dressed in a tailored black suit, wearing a top hat, and carrying a silver walking cane, the rabbi would take his daily morning stroll, accompanied by his tall, handsome son-in-law.

During his morning walk it was the rabbi's custom to greet every man, woman, and child whom he met on his way with a warm smile and a cordial "Good morning." Over the years the rabbi became acquainted with many of his fellow townspeople this way and would always greet them by their proper title and name.

Near the outskirts of town, in the fields, he would exchange greetings with Herr Mueller, a Polish Volksdeutsche (ethnic German). "Good morning, Herr Mueller!" the rabbi would hasten to greet the man who worked in the fields. "Good morning, Herr Rabbiner!" would come the response with a good-natured smile.

Then the war began. The rabbi's strolls stopped abruptly. Herr Mueller donned an S.S. uniform and disappeared from the fields.(*) The fate of the rabbi was like that of much of the rest of Polish Jewry. He lost his family in the death camp of Treblinka, and, after great suffering, was deported to Auschwitz.

One day, during a selection at Auschwitz, the rabbi stood on line with hundreds of other Jews awaiting the moment when their fates would be decided, for life or death. Dressed in a striped camp uniform, head and beard shaven and eyes feverish from starvation and disease, the rabbi looked like a walking skeleton.

"Right! Left, left, left!" The voice in the distance drew nearer. Suddenly the rabbi had a great urge to see the face of the man with the snow-white gloves, small baton, and steely voice who played God and decide who should live and who should die. His lifted his eyes and heard his own voice speaking:

"Good morning, Herr Mueller!"

"Good morning, Herr Rabbiner!" responded a human voice beneath the S.S. cap adorned with skull and bones. "What are you doing here?" A faint smile appeared on the rabbi's lips. The baton moved to the right - to life. The following day, the rabbi was transferred to a safer camp.

The rabbi, now in his eighties, told me in his gentle voice, "This is the power of a good-morning greeting. A man must always greet his fellow man."

(*)After the German occupation of Poland, many Volksdeutschen were eager to serve the Nazi cause. They joined the Nazis and took revenge upon their Polish neighbors in reprisal for the alleged anti-Volksdeutschen pogroms that took place in Poland in the late 1930's. See Hans Schadeaaldt, comp., Polish Acts of Atrocity against the German Minority in Poland: Documenting Evidence, published for the German Foreign Office (Berlin/New York, 1940).

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