The Unheeded Cry Part II

http://www.weissmandl.org/TheUnheededCry/UnheededCryText.htm
Rabbi Benzion Ungar, the rabbi of Piest’any. He was interrogated about Rabbi Weissmandl’s activities and how he had disappeared. Later he was taken out and executed while wrapped in his tallit and reciting Shema Yisrael

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At the end of September, Brunner demanded that a number of Jewish leaders from Pressburg be brought to Sered "in order to organize social work there." For this purpose, he also demanded the immediate return of Rabbi Weissmandl. Actually Brunner wanted to get Rabbi Weissmandl out of Pressburg so that he would not be able to warn Pressburg Jewry that Brunner was planning their imminent expulsion and mass arrests. After Rabbi Weissmandl and several other leaders were transferred to Sered, some 1,800 Jews in Pressburg were arrested and sent to Sered.


OPEN NEGOIATIONS WITH ALOIS BRUNNER -R WEISSMANDL RISKED HIS LIFE -SENT WITH FAMILY ON TRAIN TO AUSCHWITZ

ON HIS RETURN TO SERED, Rabbi Weissmandl took his life in his hands and opened negotiations with Brunner. He tried to persuade him that the war was nearly over and that Germany’s defeat was a foregone conclusion; he suggested that Brunner should start preparing his alibi by preventing the expulsion of Slovakia’s Jews. He also promised him that a great deal of money would be deposited in his name in a Swiss bank. The discussion often became heated and in his excitement Rabbi Weissmandl even pounded on the table. Finally, Brunner decided to send Rabbi Weissmandl and his family to Auschwitz. Before Rabbi Weissmandl was put on the train Brunner had him photographed in twenty-two (!) different poses to ensure that should he escape he could be easily identified and recaptured. Brunner also sent special instructions how to treat him in Auschwitz.



Before he got on the train to Auschwitz, Rabbi Weissmandl advised a number of people to saw through the doors of the carriages and jump out; he even distributed small hand-saws for this purpose. He himself took a saw with him, concealed in a loaf of bread. He was convinced that if he could only reach Pressburg, he would be able to alert world Jewry to the renewed danger in which Slovakian Jewry was now placed. His heart was torn between his love for his family and his responsibility to the Jewish people.



After the train started its journey, Rabbi Weissmandl sawed through the lock of the carriage door in the middle of the night and jumped from the train with a troubled conscience. With great efforts, he succeeded in reaching a bunker in Pressburg where a number of Jews were hiding. When Brunner found out that Rabbi Weissmandl had not reached Auschwitz, he put a price on his head and began an intensive search for him. It did not take long for the news of his escape to reach the Jews in Sered and they were revitalized by the hope that he would do something for them. It was said that Rabbi Weissmandl wept day and night because he had not succeeded in saving the Jews and because his wife and children had stayed on the train to Auschwitz.



Within a short time, Rabbi Weissmandl made contact with Jews in other bunkers in Bratislava, who were suffering from a chronic lack of money. Rabbi Jacob Ungar, Rabbi Weissmandl’s brother-in-law, was hiding in a bunker in Nitra together with other Jews and was making great efforts to contact Rabbi Weissmandl. They published a classified ad in a Slovakian newspaper in Pressburg that "the Rabinger family was seeking Michael Medved (Rabinger – "the rabbi’s" and Medved means a bear – Dov – in Slovakian); a post office box number was given. The response was not long in coming. Rabbi Weissmandl made contact with the group, and by a special messenger, he sent them money, wine, matzot and raisins for Passover

A Jew named Funk, who had been an officer in World War I, came to Rabbi Weissmandl’s aid while he was in the bunker. Funk disguised himself a non-Jew and, with forged identity papers, roamed the streets of Pressburg freely. He dealt in foreign currency and had good contacts with various Germans and foreign diplomats. Funk used to visit the bunker and served as its contact with the outside world. As a result of Dr. Rudolph Kastner’s negotiations with the Germans, they agreed that the occupants of the bunker be transferred to Switzerland in a truck. The vehicle traveled from Slovakia to Austria and collected a number of Jews from various camps and also the wife and family of Rabbi Isaac Ze’ev Meir from a camp near Vienna. Four days before Pressburg was liberated by the Russians, the truck left for Switzerland and arrived safely.




AFTER HIS ARRIVAL IN SWITZERLAND, Rabbi Weissmandl suffered a massive heart attack and spent considerable time in the hospital. The terrors of the war and his deep despondency sapped both his physical and spiritual strength.



In the meantime, a few members of his family and some friends and students had returned to Nitra. They included his brother-in-law, Rabbi Shalom Moshe Ungar, Rabbi Isaac Ze’ev Meir and Rabbi Jonah Forst. These three made contact with Rabbi Weissmandl and asked his advice regarding their own future and that of the yeshivah. His advice was to renew studies in the yeshivah and he promised to find the funds for its maintenance.



Among the many friends who visited Rabbi Weissmandl in Switzerland was a former Nitra yeshivah student, Rabbi Reuven Monheit, who was an officer in the French army. Rabbi Weissmandl asked him to use his position and its authority to seek out Nitra students who had survived and to help as many Jewish survivors as he could. Monheit applied to the French War Ministry for permission to undertake this mission and was granted his request. He then devoted his energies to the rehabilitation of the survivors.



In 1946, Rabbi Weissmandl left Switzerland for the U.S.A. With the help of his friends and former students, he succeeded in renting a building in the vacation town of Somerville (N.J.) with the intention of starting a yeshivah there. After completing the transaction, he returned to Carlsbad in Slovakia to meet the yeshivah students. He stayed with them during the selichot period and Rosh Hashanah. Rabbi Weissmandl had been accustomed to fast during the selichot period and the Ten Days of Penitence between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur but, because of his weakened physical condition as a result of his heart attack, he had to forego that act of piety and ask that the vow implied in his fasting in previous years be absolved.
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After Rosh Hashanah the yeshivah, led by Rabbi Weissmandl, left for Paris by way of Germany. As they passed through Nuremberg, the news that several Nazi war criminals had been hanged reached the travelers and for the rest of the journey, which took seven or eight hours, Rabbi Weissmandl talked about the war to his traveling companions. Just before Yom Kippur, the party reached Versailles, on the outskirts of Paris, and lodged in one of the local hotels. Immediately after that Holy Day, Rabbi Weissmandl returned to the U.S.A. to continue preparations for the reception of the yeshivah students. In December 1946 the students left Cherbourg by sea; when they landed in the U.S.A. they went to Somerville immediately.




THE YOUNG MEN started their studies at once. Rabbi Weissmandl was in very low spirits; he used to roam through the rooms of the yeshivah as though in mourning with tears in his eyes. Fearful sighs would frequently escape him. In a letter he wrote to a student in 1950 he related: "There were days and years when in the suffering of my soul I prayed to the Almighty, as Jonah the prophet had done in Nineveh, saying, ‘And now, O L-rd, take my soul, for it is better for me to die than to live.’" At the end of every Talmudic lecture Rabbi Weissmandl spoke to his students about ethics and piety and made reference to the terrible calamity which had befallen the Jewish people. Rabbi Weissmandl relived the Holocaust in his heart continuously, wherever he was.



On Purim 1947, he tried to overcome his depression and fulfill the rabbinic dictum that ‘a man must drink (wine in order to be happy) on Purim," but he imbibed a little more than he should have. He stayed with the students six hours. At first he talked to them about the laws and significance of Purim and then turned to each one of them individually and reminded him of his parents and family who had not survived. He made personal references to each of the young men and begged them to continue the traditions of their fathers and thus perpetuate their memory.



Rabbi Weissmandl spent the Seder night of Passover alone; he was too troubled and pained to be able to sit with the rest of the yeshivah. He sat alone in an upper room while the yeshivah students celebrated the Passover Seder below. Occasionally, they could hear him weeping.



After Passover, the Rebbe of Satmar was invited to the yeshivah to give regular classes for seven weeks until after the Shavu’ot festival. Rabbi Weissmandl spent a great deal of time with the Rebbe, discussing scholarly subjects and talking about the war and its terrible suffering. These conversations had a calming effect on Rabbi Weissmandl; his pain became more internalized and he showed it less outwardly.



In the course of time, Rabbi Weissmandl remarried. His second wife was Leah Teitelbaum of Beregszasz (Berehovo) who was the sister-in-law of Rabbi Shalom Ungar. Only some ten persons, of whom most were rebbes or rabbis, were invited to the wedding.




Rabbi Weissmandl realized that in Somerville the yeshivah had little opportunity to expand so he began to look for a new location. A suitable site was found in Mt. Kisco, but the huge sum of money needed for the purchase was not available. After great efforts, Rabbi Weissmandl succeeded in raising the necessary funds, and the new campus was acquired. A new rural Jewish township was created around the yeshivah and then, after all the intensive activity invested in the project, the local authorities wanted to confiscate the entire property because the taxes on it had not been paid on time. It was only after a prolonged legal struggle that this threat was removed.



In addition to managing the yeshivah which he did for the rest of his life, Rabbi Weissmandl worked tirelessly at gathering documentation on the Holocaust. He accused the Jewish Agency, the Joint Distribution Committee and the World Jewish Congress of ignoring the appeals he had made during the Holocaust for the financial help with which he could have saved a great number of Jews.



When the State of Israel was established in 1948, he traveled to Washington frequently to express his opposition to it. He even published a pamphlet setting out his views on the subject.



For the latter part of his life, Rabbi Weissmandl suffered from chronic heart disease and spent long periods in the hospital. As soon as he recovered from a bout of illness, he returned to work immediately. He was incapable of resting.



In the winter of 1957 he was stricken by an extremely severe heart attack and was hospitalized for several weeks. After his release, he found it very difficult to travel to the yeshivah’s New York office because of his physical weakness; nevertheless, he did attend the Melaveh Malkah Banquet held to raise funds for the yeshivah. The first sentence of his speech on that occasion electrified the assembled guests, for he opened his remarks with a citation, "The Rock whose work is perfect’ – the first verse of the funeral service!




A few days after the banquet, he was back in the hospital and his condition deteriorated steadily. Even in the hospital he did not desert his responsibilities to the yeshivah and on the very day he died he sent a congratulatory telegram to one of his students who was marrying that day. In that telegram he wrote "From the straits I call out Mazel Tov!" On Friday, Kislev 6, 5717 (1957), he asked his visitors to leave his hospital room because he felt weak. One of his pupils noticed that he had reached out and taken hold of a book, Rabbenu Bachya’s Commentary on the Torah. He spent his last moments on earth reading the book he had bought with the money his grandfather had given him for his bar-mitzvah. Holding the book he loved so much, he returned his soul to his Maker.