In a trip Rabbi Michael Yamer took with his students to extermination camps, he revealed the story of the father who made a covenant for his dead son, just before he was murdered

• Chanukah pendant found in excavations in the Chelmno extermination camp // Photo: World Name Institute

The honoring of Holocaust Remembrance Day requires us to honor the memory of those who perished. Some have experienced the inferno on their flesh and are reminded of it, some think of their murdered loved ones and some are reminded of the various stories to which they have been exposed over the years. One is Rabbi Michael Yamer, who recalls a chilling story he experienced 20 years ago.

"A month before I went on a trip with my students," says the head of the settlement meeting in Al'avim. "Call me Rabbi Abraham Krieger of the World Name Institute for Holocaust Studies." Rabbi Krieger told him about an amazing discovery from the Chelmno extermination camp, which was the first camp established by the Nazis and marked the beginning of the practical phase of Hitler's final solution.

Rabbi Yamar heard from his interlocutor that, following the fall of a stone in the camp, very small bones of a baby were discovered, along with a knife for a challah that read "Shabbat Shalom". A Polish doctor brought to the scene examined the bones and said they belonged to a baby of only five days.

The prevalent hypothesis was that after the baby died in the midst of the Holocaust, his father sought to fulfill the commandments and perform it after his son's death with the knife, probably shortly after he also found his death. "We will understand what mental powers are required and what faith is required of them," Rabbi Yamar notes.

50 years after that event, Rabbi Yamar and his delegation were asked to arrange a funeral baby. "We asked all the delegations that were in the area at the time to come to Chelmno. Dozens of buses arrived. I eulogized him and gave him the name. I decided what name to give such a baby. I decided to call him Jacob Israel."

According to him, the participation of delegates representing the State of Israel "covered the gap between the day of burial and the day of the funeral and reflected the process of past and future that have been expressed in the baby's name. The next pillar of the State of Israel is to fulfill the will of the murdered, which is to live head-to-head as Jews and in faith, just like the same father who pelted his son with a bread-slicing knife moments before he was murdered. "