The Fall of the Ax

As a teenager in the U.S.A., I was a sprite but muscular fellow, built like a tiger or cheetah, bones and muscles without any fat. I was a kind, caring and quiet kid, never attacking, never looking for a fight, never someone to attack, at certainly not head on. Alongside my studies, I was on the school’s fencing (sword) team and soccer team. In younger years, I was in a Talmud Torah (cheder), and after that went to a public high school in the day and a Yeshiva in the evening to continue my religious studies.
 
One sunny early summer afternoon, I was at a bus stop waiting for my bus to the Yeshiva. Two friends were standing opposite me. I was facing the street to look out for my bus. Overhead very near the stop was a bridge used by the freight train line. While we were chatting, a freight train passed over us, its noise obliterating all other sounds. At that very instant, my friends screamed suddenly; one of them, a hemophiliac, jumped backwards. The other ran away. The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed in pain – lots of pain.
 
I was told that four big ruffians had jumped me from behind, beat me and ran off. Witnesses had called the police and an ambulance. Some recognized the attackers, who it turns out were star members of the football team of a Roman Catholic high school and members of the local American Nazi Party!
 
The police gave my father the registry number of the incident and told him to call the station in two weeks to ask how the investigation is going.
 
I suffered two cracks in my skull and a broken shoulder. I also had been beaten in my abdomen. The damage suffered required two surgeries, one to save my life from kidney damage and another to repair the shoulder.
 
The two weeks went by and my father called the police station of the neighborhood where the attack occurred, gave the incident number and asked about the investigation. The reply on the other end of the line was, “What criminal investigation? It’s a parking violation.” Dad went personally to the station to see the journal. What he saw raised his blood pressure. Someone had erased the original description on the journal and wrote in details of a supposed parking violation.
 
As a volunteer driver-paramedic in the city’s ambulance company, he had contacts in the police department and city council. He discovered that the captain of that station was the father of the head of the local Nazi party gang, and had been covering up his son’s criminal activities.
 
Dad was really steamed and said he would talk to his friends in city council to deal with it. My mother, from a rabbinical family and who had strong emuna said, “Don’t do anything. If they are that filthy, let Hashem deal with them. Recall, there is what we learned from our ancient sages, ‘There is indeed a G-d Who judges in the land’ (Psalm 58:12). HE can do to them what all your friends in city council can’t.”
 
Six months later, the Viet Nam war broke out. Those four Nazi bullies volunteered into the Marines. A few months later, three of them “came home” in plastic bags. The leader remained alive, and during the coming year became a master sergeant. A while later, all the newspapers in the city blared big type headlines: THE SON OF POLICE CAPTAIN GROSSKOPF DISHONORABLY DISCHARGED! He had done something so bad that he got tossed out of the Marines in dishonor in the middle of the war. The article pointed out clearly that his father could forget any further promotions and that he himself could forget about the once promised career in the city’s police force.
 
A few months later my father, who made a living as a mechanic in a chocolate factory, came home from work all upset. “You’ll never who the heck is a new worker in the factory.”
 
“Who?”
 
“That evil Grosskopf! The one who tried to kill our son! I’ll fix him now and close accounts.”
 
Mom told him, “Don’t touch him, Moshe. Hashem, the big powerful Judge, will close the accounts like HE did with the other three. You’ll see.”
 
A couple months later dad came home trembling with excitement. When mom asked what the excitement was all about he told us. “I was in one of the machine rooms. You know the chocolate machines are 3 stories high and have maintenance scaffolding around them. That thug Grosskopf entered the room and while I was looking at him I saw a 5 pound steel hammer slide off the top level of the scaffold and land smack square on his head. It killed him on the spot!”
 
Mom said, “Nu, Moshe, I told you let The Great Judge, Hashem take care of the accounts with those four Nazis. Your friends in the city council and police could never have arranged the fitting death sentences for them.”
 
The ax of judgment falls exactly where it should fall. May the enemies of Israel be forewarned.