they killed him that is. He said: Shema Yisrael and I started
to say that too and they came to get the corpses and saw
that I was alive and they brought me here and Im going to
live."

"Maybe we should say Shema Yisrael too?"

The adult who overheard this discussion added, "I didn't
hear any more because I dropped a file and the children fell
silent." ²

But such dramatic testimony should not be taken as a sign
that the Shema has always been morbidly connected with
death. On the contrary, to profess the unity of God and the love
for God is life affirming; in so doing, we recapitulate the
essence of our spiritual existence under God: to live lives in rel-
ative indifference to death.

So central has the Shema been to Jewish identity that it
became the signal for the tragically failed revolt of Jewish
inmates in Auschwitz. In this regrettably little-known incident,
a medallion engraved with the first verse of the Shema was
passed surreptitiously from emaciated hand to hand to trigger
the ill-fated uprising. For the leaders of the rebellion knew that
no Jew would fail to recognize the Shema -- the symbol of
Jewish courage, hope, and commitment. ³

Holocaust historian Yaffa Eliach provides another case in
point:

After the liberation, an American Jew by the name of
Lieberman went to Europe, from monastery to monastery,
from nunnery to nunnery, trying to find Jewish hidden
children. He would walk into each institution and recite the
Shema Yisrael. Those who responded he would then
attempt to rescue from the monasteries and nunneries. ⁴

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