"Are you ready to put on Tefillin and pray?"

“Today is Wednesday, 21st of June, 1944. It is very early in the brick factory in the Debrecen Ghetto. Someone touches my shoulder. I wake up. My uncle whispers to me: “Moishe’le… Moishe’le… Do you know today is your Bar-Mitzvah day? Are you ready to put on Tefillin and pray?”

“I am ready,” I whisper to my uncle in a steady voice.

I took out the Tefillin from my bag. They were the Tefillin my father bought for me on his last vacation, before the Germans came into town and closed us in the ghetto.

In the first weeks we were in the ghetto, I practiced wrapping the Tefillin straps on the arm and fingers of my left hand.

A decree was issued in the ghetto, forbidding possession of prayer shawls, Torah scrolls and Tefillin. Whoever didn’t obey this decree would be punished with 75 lashes!

I wanted to put on the Tefillin for the first time with my father at my side, but my father had been taken away. I hid the Tefillin pouch under my shirt, as well as my prayer book. I held my uncle’s hand, and we reached the brick incinerator. We stepped down into the dark cellar. I took out the Teffilin in awe, put them on and prayed: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to put on Tefillin"”. Peter Zuesmann answered “Amen”. We prayed.

We took off the Tefillin and went back to our place. Mother was already waiting for us. She took out of her bag a handful of cooked-chick peas and divided them between all the members of the family who had gathered around us”.