Miracle of the Rock
Isaac Avigdor was one of ten thousand Jews transported in 1944 from Poland to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. There he was put on the infamous “Quarry Detail,” removing by hand large rocks blasted from a mountainside. After each dynamite blast, the prisoners were ordered to carry away a large rock to the disposal area. Being the new man on the detail, Avigdor hesitated after the first explosion while the others rushed in to pick up the rocks of manageable size. He could find only a boulder that he could barely lift. At first he tried to carry it in his hands, then on each shoulder. Soon, his shoulders were bleeding, and he was lagging behind. He knew that laggards were usually shot and that thousands had already died in the same situation. As he stumbled and fell, he knew that this was the end for him.
I didn’t care anymore: let them shoot me, or throw me off the mountain, and I let the rock drop to the ground. And the miracle happened: the rock hit the ground and split in two. Quickly, unnoticed by any one, I picked up one of the pieces and resumed marching. There may have been a natural crack in the rock that caused it to split the moment it received a blow. None the less, a threefold miracle happened to me: the rock split; I had enough presence of mind to realize at once to take advantage of what had happened; no one noticed.485
In recalling this incident, Avigdor thought of another rock made famous in the Old Testament. Jacob used a stone for a pillow as he dreamed of a ladder to heaven. He made the stone a pillar and declared, “This stone… will be God’s house”(Genesis 28:22). There are other occasions in the Bible where God uses rocks miraculously. Moses drew water from the rock at Horeb to satisfy the thirst of the Israelites and to demonstrate God’s presence (Exodus 17:6). An angel caused fire to come from a stone to give Gideon a sign of God’s favor (Judges 6:21). I believe that we can accept Isaac Avigdor’s witness as evidence of God performing another miracle with a rock, in a time much closer to the present day.
Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread. And the angel of the Lord disappeared. When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, “Ah, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!”
—Judges 6:21–22