The year was 1944. The Holocaust was raging, with the Nazis bent on the complete destruction our people, G‑d forbid.
In Brooklyn, New York, at the Lubavitch headquarters located on 770 Eastern Parkway, an unusual meeting was taking place.
The Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, had asked his secretaries to gather the young yeshivah boys, as he wished to address them personally. They waited anxiously, unsure of what to expect.
The Rebbe, himself a victim of vicious anti-Semitism, gently began to tell the children a bit about what was happening to their brothers and sisters in Europe.
He ended his tearful words, spoken from an ailing body and broken heart, with a request. He asked the young boys to take upon themselves to refrain from indulging in extra treats that week, so as to identify, in small measure, with the pain of those who were suffering terribly.
The following week, a repeat assembly took place, in which the Rebbe reiterated the same request, and then again the following week. Subsequently, however, such meetings were no longer necessary; by then the young boys had decided to continue with their resolutions on their own.
I heard this story from one of those children, who is today a great-grandfather. To this day, he said, he cannot bring himself to eat ice cream, the particular item he resolved to abstain from as a nine-year old boy acting in solidarity with those who were being murdered.
[In a similar vein I remember reading about Rebbetzin Kotler who had a sweet tooth but refrained from eating sugar during the Holocaust in order to display some measure of solidarity with her suffering brothers and sisters in Europe.]
