Recently I saw the improbable ‘Holocaust’ story of Yaakov Moshe Friedman promoted by the Lubavitch Chabad. The story itself isn’t particularly related to the ‘Holocaust’ per se – other than by dint of occurring during the same time period – as it occurred in the confines of the Soviet Union’s gulag system in Siberia during the despotic rule of Joseph Stalin.
The fantastic tale is as follows:
‘Still a teen, while in Siberia he worked a double shift so that neither he nor his father, Rabbi Meir Yisroel Isser Friedman (the “Krynitzer Rav”), would have to work on Shabbat. At one point, he was known to have walked 30 miles in tattered shoes, fighting off attacks by wild dogs in order to bring food and blankets to a starving widow and her seven young daughters.’ (1)
Tattered shoes, starving families and wild dogs…
Sound a bit fantastic and apocryphal?
Why: yes it does.
References
(1) http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/3703672/jewish/Chassidic-Matriarch-Miriam-Friedman-101-Helped-Jews-Flee-to-the-West-During-Holocaust.htm