Wife of the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneerson, and mother of the sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, Rebbetzin Shterna Sarah (1860-1942) lived through the upheavals of the first half of the 20th century. She fled the advancing front of World War I from Lubavitch to Rostov, where her husband passed away in 1920 at age 59. In 1927, she witnessed the arrest of her son by Stalin's henchmen the night he was taken away and sentenced to death, G-d forbid, for his efforts to keep Judaism alive throughout the Soviet empire. After Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak's release, the family resettled in Latvia and later, Poland; in 1940, they survived the bombing of Warsaw, were rescued from Nazi-occupied city, and emigrated to the United States. Rebbetzin Shterna Sarah passed away in New York on the 13th of Shevat of 1942.
On January 27, 1945, the Russian army arrived in Auschwitz, the most infamous of the Nazi death camps, and liberated some 7,000 survivors—those left behind as unfit to join the evacuation "Death March."
Adam trudged past the gates of Eden, his head low, his heart heavy with the pain of remorse.
Suddenly he stopped. A thought had struck him.
He turned to the heavens and exclaimed, “You had this planned! You put that fruit there knowing I would choose to eat from it!”
“But tell me: Why?
The heavens were silent.
But we have found an answer.
Without failure, we can never truly reach into the depths of our souls. We cannot know that our choices matter, and that we hold our destiny in our hands. That we exist.
With that failure and that discovery, we can return to the garden, reaching higher and higher without end, to the One that exists without cause.
Beyond Eden.