Fire in the Sky
By Moshe Katz
CEO
Israeli Krav International

August 30-31, 2017, El Al flight 007, Israel - New York

Just last month Eliezer, "Eli," Wiesel, departed from this world. He was 87 years old but according the Nazi plans he should have been dead at 16. He beat the system and lived to tell the tale. His book "Night" describes his experiences and teach us a great many lessons that are still relevant, and sadly, still ignored, today. 

Wiesel passed away on July 2, 2016, after a life devoted to helping humanity. May his memory be a blessing to us all. In his honor let us discuss some of his lessons in the coming blogs..

NIGHT has descended upon the world, Night has descended upon Europe, all values are reinterpreted as the nations of Europe descend into a deep and dark night. Who is sane and who is mad?

Note: I tell this as a short story, as if I were there. In a sense...I was. (My family was...)


The Jews of Hungary have been spared, until May 1944. And now they are on the train to Auschwitz. 

The doors were nailed shut, there is no way back, there is no way out. The world is now a hermetically sealed cattle car...that is our world now.

There is a woman among us, she has been separated from most of her family, and she is deeply troubled. 

We hear her moans, her sobs. "Later her screams became hysterical" (Page 42)

And then, on the third night of our journey, in this dark hell of a cattle car, while everyone was sleeping "a piercing cry broke the silence".

"Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire!!" 

The passengers were alarmed and began looking for the fire and thinking how to put it out. The woman was howling, and she was pointing through the window. 

"Some pressed against the bars to see. There was nothing. Only the darkness of night" (43)

The passengers reach the conclusion that the woman has gone mad, she has lost her mind. Everyone goes back to sleep. A long deep sleep....

The woman now and again began her screaming, Fire! I see a Fire!

But the people learned to ignore the rantings of the mad woman. Poor thing, lost most of her family already...

She would not relent, "Yidden, Jews, listen to me, she cried, I see a fire! I see flames, huge flames!"

The people came to believe she was possessed by some evil spirit. "We tried to reason with her".

They tried to calm her, to use logic but it did not succeed.

One man said she is hallucinating because of the thirst, that is why she believes there is a fire.

It was all in her head. 

Silence

Night.

The woman broke the silence of the night. "Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Flames everywhere..." (44)

Some young men bound and gagged her; to silence her, they could not take it anymore. Keep her quiet, make that madwoman shut up!

The night seemed endless...

And then the next day, she began again to shout, "The fire, over there!"

She was pointing to a specific place in the distance, but no one could see anything. She could feel the fire. Clearly, she was mad. During such difficult times many had lost their minds, to see such horrors, to see your family torn from you and murdered. It was understandable. She had lost her mind, she could no longer live in such a world of insanity, so she had perhaps escaped to a saner world, she was mad.

Or was she?

Soon we pulled into a station, someone near the window read the sign to us, it said "Auschwitz".

None of us had ever heard this name before.

For many, this was the final destination. 

Many of us were optimistic, we were told there was work and fields and food. But not the madwoman, she was not calm. Soon her shouting started again..."Look at the fire! Look at the flames! over there!"

But of course, there was nothing, just the rantings of a poor woman gone mad. 

We were all optimistic. 

The woman caused so much trouble with her constant screaming that the man in charge of our group called over one of the Germans and asked to have her taken away.

"Patience", the German responded, "soon enough she will be taken away, not to worry...." (and of course he made good on his promise...)

Soon enough again there was a terrible scream. "Jews, Yidden, look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!"

But this time it was no longer an illusion; this time we looked and this time we saw flames rising from a tall chimney into a black sky. (46)

Now the woman finally fell silent, she became mute, indifferent. 

We stared at the flames in the darkness. The air was filled with the stench of burning human beings. The doors of the train opened and strange looking creatures, Muselmänner, more skeleton than alive, dressed in striped jackets, entered and pulled us out.

In front of us were those flames and the smell of burning flesh. We had arrived. Welcome to Hell my child. 

Lessons: I believe the lessons are obvious...but...just in case.

Who is mad?

This is a true story. The woman, a Mrs. Schachter, in her mid 50s, "saw" the flames. At that moment she was given a prophetic vision. It was real to her, but no one else could see what she saw. Just as Abraham the Patriarch and his son Isaac "saw" the mountain ahead while the two servants did not, here too Mrs. Schachter saw the flames of the crematorium of Auschwitz long before their actual arrival. I repeat, this is a true story.

The flames were real.

There are those who can see the future, and they are regarded as Mad, crazy, delusional. In time they will be proven correct, but the judgement upon the rest is that by the time they see the truth it will be too late to take action. All of us saw the flames of Auschwitz but it was too late. 

We stared at the flames in the darkness...and they began to beat us with sticks shouting...OUT, Raus, OUT, HURRY!

To my family who were in Auschwitz, to my family who went up in smoke through those chimneys, I vow to you that I will always see the flames, and like the "Mad woman" I will continue to shout: Look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames!

..and suddenly there was a terrible scream...

Update, August 11, 2025

I joined the JDL, the Jewish Defense League, as a teenager. It was the first movement where I felt I belonged. Our message was a simple, another Holocaust is a very real possibility, and we must be prepared. This was the motivation for my decision to take up martial arts, at first Karate and Judo, later on Krav Maga. 

In 1973 I wrote a short paper where I expressed that Peace would never come, not in my lifetime, that the Arabs wanted more than land. Since my youth I have been labeled an extremist. But I feel that I too saw the fire in the sky, and screamed, Look Jews, there is a fire burning, but I too was dismissed. Be careful before they call you a radical. 

I protested, I was arrested, I learned to fight. I wrote that we behave as if we live in the Club Med resort but in reality, we live in the very dangerous real Mediterranean. Our government pursued policies of moderation, uttered silly things like "Quiet will be answered with Quiet", and then came the fire, October 7, 2023, and then I was quiet.

Like the crazy old lady, there was no longer any reason to shout. Now everyone could see the fire in the sky. And I remember my cousin Joe Klein telling me that when he was first taken to Auschwitz, asking others when he will see his mother and his sister, and a fellow inmate pointed to the smoke coming from the crematorium, there they are, wave goodbye, they are on the Himmel Strasse Weg, the road to heaven. 

Fire! I see a Fire!

and I see many fires ahead, and I try to teach Krav Maga, but the response is always the same, Quiet him down, he is insane, perhaps call the Nazi to take him away, soon enough my child, soon enough, don't worry, we will take all of you away. Just keep up your delusions.

And I wonder who is sane and who is truly insane. 

Fire! I see a Fire!

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