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You find yourself in a stone crypt. There are no windows. The sole door is locked from the outside. How are you free?<\/em><\/p>\n Miscellaneous Koans of the Harada Yasutani Curriculum<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I find myself thinking of Herschel Schacter.<\/p>\n He was a leader of the Modern Orthodox movement who died in 2013.<\/p>\n But we mostly recall him for an incident at the close of the second world war.<\/p>\n It was the 11th of April, 1945. He was a Jewish chaplain attached to the VIII Corps of the Third Army. He was the first chaplain to enter Buchenwald \u2013 about an hour after its liberation. In her obituary for the rabbi in the New York Times<\/a>, Margalit Fox describes how \u201cthe smoke was still rising\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n He later would describe the memories seared into his heart. That \u201csmoke in his eyes, the smell of burning flesh and the hundreds of bodies strewn everywhere.\u201d It seemed everyone had been murdered, and he had to ask were any Jews still alive?<\/p>\n He was taken to the barracks where people too weak to move lay in bunks, confused, and terrified, not knowing what was happening. It fell to him to tell them.<\/p>\n \u201cShalom Aleichem, Yidden,\u201d he called out in Yiddish. \u201cIhr zint frei!\u201d Peace be upon you, Jews, you are free!\u201d He ran to every one of the barracks repeating his call of rescue, of freedom.<\/p>\n The rabbi spent months there, helping. Among the survivors there were a thousand orphans alone that needed tending. Among them he helped a teenager Elie Wiesel.<\/p>\n