True Passover Seder Stories

The Jewish Passover Seder has been performed in many different ways and in many different places. Here are several true stories:

A Seder in the midst of a Civil War battle was described by a young American soldier in a letter to his family: Having received matzos and Haggadot, two dozen celebrants "sent parties to forage in the country while others stayed to build a hut for the services...We obtained two kegs of cider, a lamb, several chickens and some eggs." Since they didn't know which part of the lamb was required, they cooked the whole animal, thus making sure they retained the paschal symbol. A brick served for the charoses, which "rather hard to digest, reminded us, by looking at it, for what purpose it was intended." They found a weed whose "bitterness exceeded anything our forefathers enjoyed" It proved so fiery that "we forgot the law authorizing us to drink only four cups, and the consequence was that we drank up all the cider." Quite tipsy, one soldier announced that he was Moses, another Aaron, and another Pharaoh; soon the three stalwarts "had to be carried to the camp, and there left in the arms of Morpheus...In the wild woods of West Virginia, away from home and friends, we consecrated and offered up to the ever-loving God of Israel our prayers and sacrifice."

A group of Jewish prisoners in the Gur Detention Camp in southwestern France created their own mimeographed Haggadah under horrendous improvised conditions. Thousands of Jews existing in almost indescribable conditions celebrated Passover there in 1941 using copies of a handwritten manuscript by Rabbi Leo Ansbacher, understandably incomplete since it was set down from memory by an inmate, Aryeh Zuckerman. It was prepared on stencils with a sharpened stone and duplicated outside the camp. Zuckerman escaped and joined the underground against the Nazis. Ansbacher ended his days in Israel.

Another Haggadah was written and mimeographed in 1941 by Rabbi Leo Cohn in the Lautrec Concentration Camp in France. The introduction explained that "because there has been no famine greater than this... the normal observances, not possible under the current situation, could be abrogated, but only in this year, a year of war." Cohn fought in the French Resistance and was killed while helping children reach Palestine.

Do you have any interesting Passover stories? We'd like to hear about them.