Israel – The Myth of the 93 Cracow Girls Who Took Their Lives in the Holocaust Exposed

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    A small street in south Tel Aviv bordering on the streets of Mordechai Analewitz (commander of the Warsaw ghetto) and Chana Seresh (the Hungarian Jewish parachutist who was brutally murdered by the Nazis) was called The 93 after the righteous girlsIsrael – Which girls attending a Bais Yaakov school hasn’t heard the story of the courageous 93 girls from Sara Shnirer’s Cracow seminary who preferred to take their lives rather than submit to the Nazis’ despicable plans? A small street in south Tel Aviv bordering on the streets of Mordechai Analewitz (commander of the Warsaw ghetto) and Chana Seresh (the Hungarian Jewish parachutist who was brutally murdered by the Nazis) was called “The 93” after the righteous girls. A book was written about them called “Chaya Feldman’s last letter” recounting the tale of courage.

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    But 60 years of research have concluded that the story was a fraud.

    Who created the myth and why?

    The beginning of the chilling story was in New York in 1943. Meir Shenkolevsky, the secretary of the world Bais Yaakov movement and a member of the Central Committee of Agudas Israel in New York, received a letter from Chaya Feldman just before she gave up her life: “I don’t know when you will get this letter and if you still will remember me. When this letter arrives, I will no longer be alive. In a few hours, everything will be past. We are here in four rooms, 93 girls ages 14 to 22, all of us Bais Yaakov teachers. On July 27, Gestapo agents came, took us out of our apartment and threw us into a dark room. We only have water to drink

    “The younger girls are very frightened, but I comfort them that in a short while, we will be together with our mother Sara [Sara Shnirer’, the founder of the Bais Yaakov Seminary]. Yesterday they took us out, washed us and took all our clothes. They left us only shirts and said that today, German soldiers will come to visit us. We all swore to ourselves that we will die together. The Germans don’t know that the bath they gave us was the immersion before our deaths: we all prepared poison. When the soldiers come, we will drink the poison. We are all saying Viduy throughout the day. We are not afraid of anything. We only have one request from you: Say Kaddish for 93 bnos Yisroel! Soon we will be with our mother Sara. Signed, Chaya Feldman from Cracow.”

    The letter also reached Israel, was published in the Davar newspaper and the New York Times, and was the inspiration for songs, articles, assemblies, prayers and poems. A memorial booklet was even issued in memory of the women, who were symbols of bravery, purity and modesty.
    Chaya Feldmans last letter recounting the tale of courage
    The one problem with the story: After 60 years of comprehensive research, Yad Vashem says conclusively that it never happened. The 93 women were a Holocaust myth, without a basis in reality.

    The street in south Tel Aviv was called “The 93” after chareidi organizations, including the administration of Bais Yaakov and Agudas Israel, asked the municipality to commemorate the girls and call a street after them. The Name Committee accepted the request, based on the “The 93” book which was published by the “Committee to Protect the Honor of a Bas Yisroel” (published in Iyar 1943) which contained articles, prayers and songs in memory of the undefiled girls who took their lives.

    Atty. Naomi Levenkron, an expert on women-trafficking and the director of “Mishna”, a non-profit dedicated to studying social law in the Administration College, happened to come across the story. “As one whose occupation revolves around prostitution and rape, I was astonished how come I had never heard this story before.”

    Levenkron turned to Yad Vashem and received the laconic reply that the story wasn’t true. The response shocked her. “I heard about Holocaust deniers, but I never met Holocaust inventors,” she said. She even suspected Yad Vashem’s attitude to the story was based on apathy towards abuse of women.

    But there were annoying question marks hanging over the story long before Atty. Levenkron got involved. Prof. Judy Tidor Baumol-Schwartz, the head of the Contemporary Jewry Program in Bar Ilan University, had asked, “How could Chaya Feldman’s suicide letter arrive from a room in the closed ghetto, in occupied Europe, to the rabbis in New York? Where did the women acquire such a large quantity of expensive poison? How come none of the Holocaust survivors had heard of this story, which occurred in a relatively small ghetto? Why was the Yiddish letter written in a Hungarian dialect, while Chaya was from Poland? The large number of girls proves that the story was impossible.”

    Chareidi Holocaust researcher Esther Farbstein, the head of the Holocaust Studies Center in the Michlala, and author of the book “Hidden Thunder”, confirms that from the point of the Nazis, the story is illogical. “It’s hard to believe that an organized group of Germans planned an action which opposed the Nazi racial laws, which forbad relations with Jews, and all the more so to do it in public — even though it is possible that similar events took place in less public circumstances and in different numbers, such as when the soldiers serving in the Wehrmacht felt themselves unhampered by the regulations to maintain their race.”

    Despite the hard questions, the chareidi community continues to celebrate the story. Sarit Yechimowitz, who learned in a Bais Yaakov school, recalls that on the day of the 93 girls’ yahrtzeit, the girls in her school had an assembly, the principal spoke, and an important rav visited who spoke about the girls’ courage and their dying al kiddush Hashem.

    Yechimowitz explains, “The story had a strong impact on us, even me, who was known as a rebel. The line that was taught is that it was ‘:yaharog v’al yaavor. When you hear again and again about these women’s courage, you think to yourself, ‘How can I dare go with a short skirt, when 93 women died al kiddush Hashem to be sure their bodies weren’t violated?”

    Esther Ettinger, the author of “Wonder in the Night”, an account of her childhood and youth in a Bais Yaakov school in Tel Aviv, says she also remembers the story of the 93 girls. “This story sanctifies the goals and important values we were educated to in Bais Yaakov — maintaining our modesty and purity,” she says. “It shows the greatness of faith and the desire for Kiddush Hashem.” Nevertheless, Ettinger says that she had also heard that the story was a myth.

    “A Holocaust survivor, who taught in Bais Yaakov, told me that she has her doubts about the story and therefore doesn’t teach it,” says Prof. Baumol-Schwartz. “She told me that there are enough stories of true bravery by Jewish girls in the Holocaust, but if someone wants to use this story of the 93 girls, let them.

    “I find a dark side to using a fabricated letter about a story that never occurred, but the people who created it probably had good intentions. The story has elements that are poignant to all of us.”

    Ms. Farbstein says that the story became famous after the war, when ghetto fighters and partisans were prime heroes in Israeli society. “All the others, particularly the religious, had to defend themselves for going like sheep to the slaughter. There was need for a story of courage that could compare with a ghetto revolt.”

    After researching the case, Atty. Levenkron wrote an article which appeared in the Theory and Review journal tying the myth to the shame and guilt suffered by raped women.

    “Throughout history,” she explained, “the occupying army not only conquered the enemy country but also its women’s bodies. When the war was over, the suffering of the women victims didn’t end either. Their community, who should have been supportive of them and help their rehabilitation, accused them of consorting with the enemy. Norwegian women who had relations with German soldiers as part of the German plan to improve its racial purity, were treated viciously and with hostility. Women who were raped in Darfur are similarly treated shamefully by their communities.

    “During my research I discovered only a few references to sexual abuse or sex in exchange for food during the Holocaust. Even when such cases occurred, they were never retold in first person. Holocaust researchers preferred to deal with other questions focusing on femininity rather than sex. A discussion of this kind in reference to the Holocaust is viewed as eroticizing the genocide.”

    Mrs. Levenkorn believes that the message which the story of the 93 girls conveys is that whenever a Jewish woman is in danger of being raped, she has the choice to commit suicide or live a life of shame.

    But this may be a misunderstanding. Perhaps the message of the story is that where a woman is likely to be killed anyway, she should take her life in purity rather than first become a rape victim and then be killed.


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    70 Comments
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    gevaldig
    gevaldig
    14 years ago

    what a message….we all need none….gevaldig

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    My grandfather a halucaust survivor told me long ago that this story was made up and it never happend lot of holucaust survivors say this.

    Charles Hall
    Charles Hall
    14 years ago

    Mass suicide did occur in Germany, but in the time of the rishonim, in order to avoid forced conversions at the hands of the crusaders.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Tell Atty. Naomi Levenkron she can go to Iran, there she will have more people who will believe her findings.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    who has proof either way? why do we suddenly beleive MAARIV? i beleive it is a true story and not a hoax so there.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Yet another example how myths can go viral in a closed society. How many other bubbah maysahs were passed off as maysas shehaya in chinuch?

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    There was a girl in the war that the last thing her mother gave her was a necless with the star of david on it, she had it under her dress, but when she had to run for her life she wanted to open her dress so they won’t think she’s a jew, but she said to her self I won’t do anything againts the halocha and then be killed with some sin, so she didn’t open her dress, when she got somewhere to hide for the rest of the war she reminded her self of the necless with star of david on it, yet if she would of opened her dress they would for sure kill her they would of seen the necless, so doing the right thing of tzenious she got saved.

    True
    True
    14 years ago

    While this in specific story may not be true, there was a very similar story with the daughter of the Mashgiach of Gerrer Yeshiva, R’ Godel. Ask almost any old time gerrer and he’ll tell you the whole story.

    In short, his daughter came and told him about a very similar story as described above and asked him if commiting suicide is the right thing to do. He told her no, rather she should stand up and say no and let them kill her, that’s what the mitsvah of Kiddush Hashem is. Later on he heard that his daughter did exactly as she was told. When a yungermen once told him that has “good news” about a pay raise in the Yeshivah, he repeated this story and he said “This is what I call good news, not money”.

    BTW the polish guards were not bound to the race law.

    Agent Emess
    Agent Emess
    14 years ago

    Is this the second myth story that we are finding out about after the truth came out on the herman rosenblatt apple throwing story?
    Boy are we looking great these days.

    Dov
    Dov
    14 years ago

    When too many bubba maases and Rebbe stories are propegated, those stories which are true suffer from lack of credibility.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Logic has long been an undeciding and irrelevant factor when stories of the Holocaust years are examined and analyzed. The whole holocaust was devoid of any logic.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    I went to two pretty religious girl’s schools in NY and never heard this story once.

    Pashuteh Yid
    Pashuteh Yid
    14 years ago

    I think we should give the benefit of the doubt that the story did occur, since reliable information was almost nonexistent in the holocaust. We still only know about half the names of all the six million. If we deny it, we could chas vsholom be degrading the memory of the kedoshim, if it turns out to be true.

    However the story about the Chazon Ish being an expert in neurosurgery is much more doubtful, and is harmful as well. Nobody seems to know the name of the doctor or patient or hospital or any corroborating information, other than I saw it in one book, so I will repeat the story in another book. Since the Rishonim did not have accurate knowledge of today’s science and astronomy, and they were far greater than the generation of the Chazon Ish, how could the Chazon Ish have had some miraculous knowledge of neurosurgery.

    The reason why that story is so harmful is that it legitimizes the ban on secular studies for boys older than 13 in Israel. They are taught you can know all you need to know from learning Torah alone. This causes a cycle of terrible poverty and suffering and now juvenile delinquency among the Chareidim. Chayav odom llamed es bno umnos, vchol mi sheino milamed es bno umnus melamdo listus. Let us not be smarter than Chazal.

    tzvi frankliner
    tzvi frankliner
    14 years ago

    “All the others, particularly the religious, had to defend themselves for going like sheep to the slaughter. There was need for a story of courage that could compare with a ghetto revolt.”

    Hard to believe such a motive

    After what they went true

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Ask Rabbi JJ Schachter of Yeshiva University . He has the proof that it was made up. He knows who made it up and how. Pretty sad that this story has lived so long. Comments from people who have no proof or idea what happened are just stupid,

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Dr.rothschild of the maaney hayeshua hosp. in bnei brak has a diagram of the
    skull that the Chazon Ish made for the neurosurgeon directing him from where to
    operate.dr. rothschild stated only someone with vast medical knowledge could
    have drawn the diagram.check it out with him.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    I went to BY of BP elementary, hs and sem and never heard this story.

    halacha question
    halacha question
    14 years ago

    Are you permitted to committ suicide in this case?

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    it is true the details are probably false- i doubt it was 93 of them, that there was poison, they were locked in a room for a day before etc- these kinds of details are probably what make it into the inspirational, touching tale that it is. but don’t worry if this really is a myth- it is most certainly based on the truth that many bnos yisroel throughout those years, in the ghettos and the camps, were taken to be defiled by the nazis and allowed themselves to be killed al kiddush hashem rather than be defiled. why do we need a maaseh about 93 and a mass suicide? i am just as inspired to be meticulous in matters of tznius knowing that even one died for the sake of it.

    esther
    esther
    14 years ago

    feminists like levenkorn see history and current events through a warped world veiw ..certainly comparing the treatment of women in darfur to any jewish women is simply ridiculous.

    Gadolwannabe
    Gadolwannabe
    14 years ago

    I think the following thought says it all:

    The Real Victim of Holocaust Veneration is the Truth

    “According to one of the worldwide leading Holocaust scholars, Yad Vashem Prof. Yehudah Bauer [right]: ‘The story of the 93 girls in the Beis-Yaacov Girls School in Krakow, who in 1942 preferred suicide over falling into the hands of the Nazis, is not necessarily a lie. It just didn’t happen.’ […] However, no explanation about the origin of the myth of ‘the 93’ will satisfy Mr. Leathon. ‘It is extremely important that the story of the Holocaust not be sullied by absurd untruths’ he writes to the synagogue in protest. ‘If we want the world to believe the testimony of the survivors, we have to make certain that we do not allow sensationalistic myths to continue.”

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    I like the way she calls it a holocaust fabrication .
    that’s exactly what holocaust deniers say and have yad vashem call for them to be jailed.
    but as soon the holocaust has anything to do with yiddishkeit and mesiras nefesh, the zionists call it fabrication .
    incidentally, Yad Vashem is a creation of the israeli government as a political tool and the zionist were against saving jews who werent young and zionist during the war.
    Read Perfidy.

    Askupeh
    Askupeh
    14 years ago

    I don’t understand why everybody is getting so riled up. Most of us never heard this story, I didn’t, even though my mother and sisters went to Bais Yaakov; so now we know that a story we never knew isn’t true. Fine, but let’s not make believe as we just witnessed an earth shattering event. What’s the moral of the story? That the Agudah is a fake? Then maybe Reb Moshe and the Chazon Ish were also a fake? Give me a break! At worst, one person made up a story, or exaggerated a story, probably good intentioned, and that is all.

    Dave
    Dave
    14 years ago

    How about, when you are dealing with something as serious as the Holocaust, especially with the active community of Holocaust deniers around the world, don’t claim unsubstantiated stories as truth. Not only is there no need, but any case where falsehoods (or “it could have happened” stories) are being claimed as truth plays into the hands of the Holocaust deniers.

    There is a tremendous body of evidence of what happened; don’t add questionable stories to it.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Not surprising if it isn’t true.

    Even in the age of the internet and cell phones and instant communication with anybody, anywhere, anytime the story of Rav Shach’s shoes in Slutzk keeps coming around and around and around, even if it couldn’t possibly have happened.

    Makes me wonder about the flying horses……

    Niskatnu Hadoirois
    Niskatnu Hadoirois
    14 years ago

    When I heard the story as a teenage there were four hundred girls and they jumped off the roof.Or was that a different story that really did happen?

    Now you see why the emes has to be total emes and why there are no lies that are OK just because the person telling it has good intentions?

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    “When too many bubba maases and Rebbe stories are propegated, those stories which are true suffer from lack of credibility.”

    Don’t worry, there are very few of those.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    “This closed society is extremely open minded, on the other hand the open world at large is extremely closed minded. There are myths everywhere in open societies and in closed societies.”

    Yeah, and there are myths in closed societies that they are open-minded.

    Common Sense
    Common Sense
    14 years ago

    While I have doubts about the veracity of the story and tend to believe it is myth, if it did happen, I don’t think the suicide was against halacha. Why? Because this was a matter of preserving Jewish honor, and in such cases my understanding is that one should not, if possible, submit to the enemy. The defenders of Masada could have surrendered the fort and allowed themselves to be taken as slaves to the Romans. Instead they chose suicide. Let me say, I am not an expert in halacha, this is just my understanding.

    In any event, we should teach our children there were many forms of resistance to the Nazis, and to anti-semites throughout the centuries. Some fought physically and militarily; others resisted spiritually. Both forms of reistance were an authentic Kiddish HasShem and should be honored. The real myth of the Shoah is that the Yidden went like sheep to the slaughter. They did not. Those who resisted spirtitually, and went into the gas chambers singing Ani Ma’amin were heroes too.

    merkin
    merkin
    14 years ago

    in our circles, we look sometimes for legends and stories. I remember when 9- 11 happened and flyers asked people for miracle stories. This is the wrong approach and makes us look like silly people. There is even a book of Holocaust legends written by a female professor at Brooklyn College. It is full of silly stories such as Chasidim flying into the air over the fire pit and other nonsense. We should not believe these stories and we should not teach them to our children as they make us look very silly and gullible. Such as the story that Rachal Iemeinu was in Gaza directing IDF soldiers, which was published as fact on VIN>

    HT
    HT
    14 years ago

    24_

    ” it is most certainly based on the truth that many bnos yisroel throughout those years, in the ghettos and the camps, were taken to be defiled by the nazis and allowed themselves to be killed al kiddush hashem rather than be defiled. why do we need a maaseh about 93 and a mass suicide? i am just as inspired to be meticulous in matters of tznius knowing that even one died for the sake of it.”

    Hu? You think they were givin the option of rape OR death?

    For most it was both.

    Rippin Pinchas
    Rippin Pinchas
    14 years ago

    “Prof. Judy Tidor Baumol-Schwartz, the head of the Contemporary Jewry Program in Bar Ilan University, had asked, “How could Chaya Feldman’s suicide letter arrive from a room in the closed ghetto, in occupied Europe, to the rabbis in New York?”

    As difficult as things were, it was possible to smuggle things in and out of the ghetto. Just because it is difficult does not make it impossible.

    “Where did the women acquire such a large quantity of expensive poison?”

    Good point but the poles were probably more than willing to supply the Jews with poison to kill themselves

    “How come none of the Holocaust survivors had heard of this story, which occurred in a relatively small ghetto?”

    People did not gather together in large groups in the ghetto right before an Aktion. They did not have cell phones or internet in those days.

    “Why was the Yiddish letter written in a Hungarian dialect, while Chaya was from Poland?”

    Perhaps her parents were originally from Hungary.

    “The large number of girls proves that the story was impossible.”

    It is possible that they got cyanide and killed themselves.

    “It’s hard to believe that an organized group of Germans planned an action which opposed the Nazi racial laws, which forbad relations with Jews, and all the more so to do it in public.”

    That statement I agree with. In Slovakia, the Nazis stopped the deportations for over 2 years because the Jews promised them money. The Nazis believed their propaganda that the Jews controlled the banks so the Slovakian Jews would come up with the money. Logically, the Nazis believed in their propaganda with the 93.

    Did it happen? Probably not. I never believed because of the last statement. Might it have happened? Sure. This study proves absolutely nothing to me.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Some young Jewish ladies were taken by the Nazis for immoral purposes and never heard from again.

    As for the halachic issue, it is complex, but passivity may be different than active behavior in znus.

    What halachos apply in a time of milchama, and the ramifications of submitting or refusing to submit to marauders and barbarians, are also complex. Anyone who posts halachic ‘decisions’ here should be suspect.

    The real shame in such crimes should be cast on the perpetrators, and those who protect abusers and criminals from prosecution.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    If you never heard the story and claim to have gone to BY, then you might have been sleeping in class. Were you not at the yahrtzeit in Madison Square Garden??? It’s told every year on the yahrtzeit but in a delicate manner, just as story of Tamar is skipped over… they wanted to play “nasty games” with the girls. One of the girl’s father’s was reportedly a pharmacist… and so they sat in a ring placing their heads in the lap of eachother as a matter of tznius, a barrier to raising the others skirt.

    Many survivors admit to knowing girls were being taken in early years for this purpose and the uproar when it was discovered. Racial laws? Did it really matter if they knew they were going to kill them anyway?

    For the commenter who says you can commit suicide if know will shortly be killed anyway, do you not know “we come from a nation that doesnt give up even when the sword is on my neck.”

    Sarah
    Sarah
    14 years ago

    I got all emotional
    Tears for slidding down from my eyes
    When I read the letter. And then all of a sudden the denial part.
    This is sick

    matzahlocal101
    matzahlocal101
    14 years ago

    the story was first questioned in the late forties by people who had sisters in the BY and was debunked by the 50’s. This is old news. It is even possible that the original receipient faked it in order to arouse world condemnation of the Nazis.

    My first problem is the number. 93 people hiding anywhere takes alot of space and requires a lot of food. It’s likely unheard of that so many peopel hid together. Secondly which frum persons prepare poison (enough for 93 people) in advance? where did they get it from and what were they expecting to use it for? That aside, thousands of people in Germany did commit suicide in the pre-kristalnacht years but they were largely frei and the reason was depression caused by the economic sanctions, not religious zeal. (the war against the Jews -L. Dovidowicz)

    The BY story allegedly happened in Poland.

    shlomo zalman
    shlomo zalman
    14 years ago

    I would love to believe the Chazon Ish neurosurgery story if someone , any one, would just offer some identifying details, as suggested here by others.

    The reason I want to believe it as that would be proof that the Chazon Ish studied medicine privately on his own, a breath of fresh air from the obscurantist Harry Potter yiddishkeit that is taught in chareidi institutions. Only a moron can believe that neuroscience can be learned from traditional Talmudic sources.

    shlomo zalman
    shlomo zalman
    14 years ago

    Even assuming the Bais yakov story is fabricated, the formal Halacha is not always necessarily the proper option. Rabbonim who have keen intellectual and emotional insight have pointed this out. One example. Eating human flesh is at worst a bitul aseh and possibly an issur d’rabbonon only. It is a lesser transgression than eating pork, a definite lav d’oraisah. However, given a forced choice where there is nothing else to eat, would any thinking person perform cannibalism instead of eating a nonkosher food? I think not.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    all the questions on this story have only reinforced my belief that the story is authentic and true. I can find you many questions to prove that the holocaust never happened but they don’t change the fact.