Posts
Monday, July 30, 2012
Rabbi Weissmandl forwent the convenient safety of Oxford
In 1939, Slovakia became a puppet clerofascist state from 14 March 1939 to 8 May, 1945, as an ally and client state of Nazi Germany. It appears that at the beginning of 1939, Rabbi Weissmandl was at Oxford working on the manuscripts and it would have been convenient for him to stay the war in Oxford away from harm.
It therefore astonishes one that while at Oxford, Rabbi Weissmandel volunteered on 1 September 1939, shortly after the invasion of Poland by Germany together with Slovakia, to return to Slovakia as an agent of World Agudath Israel to help rescue the Jews of Slovakia and other Jews of Europe.
It is interesting to speculate whether Cecil Roth who had just returned in 1939 to Oxford as reader in Jewish Studies was an inspiration for him to return to Slovakia to aid the Jewish community there under the Nazis. It is known that as early as 1933, Cecil Roth was vocal and active against the Nazis, as he penned a letter of protest to the London Times against Hitler's declaration to boycott Jewish establishments.
ACQUAINTED WITH THE BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT AT OXFORD NOT AN ACCIDENT
Due to Rabbi Weissmandl having spent considerable amount of time in Oxford and likely became acquainted with the British establishment, it gave him the ability to assist with attempts to save Jews from the Holocaust.
ENTRY VISAS FOR THE SIXTY RABBIS FROM BURGENLAND
This happened when the Nazis gathered sixty rabbis from Burgenland, bordering Slovakia. Czechoslovakia refused them entry and Austria would not take them back, leaving the stranded on the border. Rabbi Weissmandl flew to England, where he was received by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Foreign Office, and succeeded in obtaining entry visas to England for the sixty rabbis, saving them from the Holocaust.
When the Nazis, aided by members of the puppet Slovak government, began its campaign against the Slovakian Jews in 1942, members of the Slovak Judenrat formed an underground organization called the Working Group. The group's main activity was to help Jews as much as possible, in part through payment of large bribes to German and Slovak officials.
This Working Group during the period of WWII was led by Rabbi Weissmandl after he moved back to Slovakia, together with Gisi Fleischmann.
The transportation of Slovak Jews was in fact halted for a long time after the Working Group arranged a $50,000 ransom deal with the Nazi SS official Dieter Wisliceny.
At Weissmandl's initiative the Working Group was also responsible for the ill-fated Europe Plan which would have seen in late 1942 large numbers of European Jews rescued from the Nazis by paying the Nazis one to two million dollars ransom to stop most transports. The Germans asked for a 10% down payment, which unfortunately was never made.
The Working Group played a central role in distribution of the "Auschwitz Report" in spring 1944, which ultimately led to its publication in Switzerland. That triggered a major Swiss grass roots protest in the Swiss press, churches and streets. It was a major factor in President Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and others threatening Hungary's Fascist regent Horthy with post-war retribution if he doesn't immediately stop the transports. At the time 12,000 Jews a day were transported to Auschwitz.
In 1944, Weissmandl and his family were put on a train headed for Auschwitz. Rabbi Weissmandl escaped from the sealed train by sawing open the lock of the carriage with an emery wire he had secreted in a loaf of bread. He jumped from the moving train, breaking his leg in the process, and hid in a secret bunker in suburban Bratislava, from where he was taken by Rudolf Kasztner and his Nazi associate Kurt Becher to Switzerland.
In 1946, Rabbi Weissmandl left Switzerland for the U.S.A, where he re-established the Nitra Yeshiva.
Rabbi Weismandl expert in Hebrew MSS
During his visits to Oxford, he recorded variant readings from the Hebrew manuscripts as well as hundreds of unpublished rabbinic responsa which he intended to publish. As an expert of Hebrew manuscripts, he gained much respect from the librarian, allowing him considerable access, during non-visiting hours, to the Hebrew collection for his research.
It appears that Rabbi Weismandl was not uninterested in the people around him while he was in Oxford. He related that he became acquainted with a non-Jewish scholar in Oxford, who had an exceptional knowledge of Talmud, allowing him to quote entire tractates from memory. It is likely he then would have also got to know other prominent Jewish members of the university community in the 1930’s, as Sir Isaiah Berlin, who had then received a prize scholarship at All Souls College.
His work in Oxford seems to have included, among other things, preparing a new edition of Kikayon de-Yonah, a Talmudic commentary, by 16th century Rabbi Jonah T’omim, who was born in Prague and acted as rabbi in Grodno and Pinsk, Lithuania. In 1648, because of the Chmielnick pogrom, Rabbi Teomim fled to Vienna, Nikolsburg, Austria, and finally Metz, Lorraine, before he passed away in 1649.
The editing new edition of Kikayon de-Yonah seems to have been for the publishing of the 3rd edition of Kikayon de-Yonah. The first edition was edited in Amsterdam in 1690 by the son of Rabbi T’omim, Joshua, and the second printing was in 1712 at Hanau, Germany.
In less than a year, according to his biography, An Unheeded Cry (Artscroll), Rabbi Weissmandl reviewed the fifteen tractates of the Talmud included in the above-mentioned book which was ultimately printed by the governors of the Nitra Yeshivah with Rabbi Weissmandl’s notes, glosses and emendations.
At the end of the volume, Rabbi Weissmandl added notes to Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) Even Ha-Ezer (Laws of Marriage and Divorce) on the basis of a manuscript he had discovered in Oxford.
The manuscript with these notes can be in fact found listed in Adolf Neubauer’s Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian and in the College Libraries of Oxford (Published 1886) entry number 761:1 (p. 149): “R. Yonah T’omim’s Novellae on Ebben ha-Ezer, and some other casuistic notes.”
Thus, it appears, Rabbi Weissmandl was not just comparing the second edition of this work with the original manuscript but intended to add an unpublished manuscript of the same author that was exclusively found at the Bodleian library.
In his biography it mentions his motivation to prepare a new edition of this work was due to the fact that students were studying this work as a basic text at the Yeshiva of Nitra in Slovakia, under the tutelage of his father-in-law, Rabbi Ungar.
It is therefore possible that Rabbi Weissmandl heard that there existed this additional rare unpublished manuscript by Rabbi T’omim in Oxford and this discovery and pursuit to publish it seems to have been a central reason for his travel to Oxford.
It is, however, interesting to note that the Bodleian Library doesn't appear to have in its collection the main work by Rabbi T'omim, Kikayon D'Yonah, on the Talmud. It would therefore seem that the comparing of the published edition to the original manuscript was not the reason for his coming to Oxford when working on the third edition of Kikayon D'Yonah but rather just for the publication of the additional unpublished manuscript on Shulchan Aruch that Rabbi Weissmandl wished to add to his new edition.
Indeed, from the following story about his ordination, it is clear that he was undertaking many different Hebraic academic studies as his purpose for coming to Oxford, in addition to the expanding of the the work of Kikayon D'Yonah.
His research and intense study of unpublished Hebrew manuscripts in Oxford in fact led to his rabbinical ordination before his wedding.
In January, 1937, (14 Shevat, 5697), Rabbi Weissmandl married Bracha Rachel, the daughter of his teacher Rabbi Samuel David Ungar. For the tenaim (engagement) party, which was held some time earlier, the bridegroom had returned from England, where he had been pursuing his research in Oxford.
At the celebration, he gave a brilliant lecture which lasted for two and a half hours. In his discourse, he discussed the legal aspects of sivlonot (gifts which a man gives his future bride). At the beginning of his talk, he recounted that in Oxford he had found manuscripts containing several problems on the subject raised by an ancient Torah sage, Rabbi Simon Sharabi.
Rabbi Weissmandl intended to resolve these questions. He proceeded to explain, on the basis of the manuscript sources he had discovered, the custom of the Jews of Oberland (Upper Hungary) not to commit the engagement conditions to writing.
Rabbi David Meisels of Satoraljuajhely (northern Hungary, near the Slovak border), who was present at the celebration, was so impressed that, as a wedding gift, he granted the bridegroom rabbinical ordination in appreciation of his deep knowledge of Jewish law and scholarship of the Torah.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Jewish Communal Life Virtually Non-existent in Much of Europe
http://archive.jta.org/article/1945/06/22/2867475/jewish-communal-life-virtually-nonexistent-in-much-of-europe-says-jta-correspondent
June 22, 1945
Jewish Communal Life Virtually Non-existent in Much of Europe, Says JTA Correspondent
New York, Jun. 21 (JTA) –
Declaring that in all the countries of liberated Europe which he had visited in the past nine months he did not find one deported Jew who wished to return to his homeland, Meyer Levin, Jewish Telegraphic Agency war correspondent, who has just returned home after covering the Allied armies in Europe since D-Day, said yesterday that Jewish communal life in much of Europe is virtually non-existent.
At a press conference here, Levin revealed that even among Jews. the Nazis practiced their theories of "superior" and "inferior" groups. Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, for instance, were sent to Theresienstadt, where conditions, although bad, were much better than those found by the Jews from other countries sent to Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Maidanek, or other camps in Poland and Germany. He said that the problem of recovering Jewish children placed in non-Jewish custody is acute and that strong efforts must be made if these children are not to be reared in non-Jewish religions.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Jewish Communal Life Virtually Non-existent in Much of Europe, Says JTA Correspondent." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 22 Jun 1945.
Polish Anti-semitic Students Delivered Jews to Gestapo During Occupation of Poland
http://archive.jta.org/article/1945/06/18/2867426/polish-antisemitic-students-delivered-jews-to-gestapo-during-occupation-of-poland
June 18, 1945
Polish Anti-semitic Students Delivered Jews to Gestapo During Occupation of Poland
London, Jun. 17 (JTA) –
Capt. Leon Peretz, a Jewish captain in the Polish Army who was liberated by American troops from a camp in Bavaria, today charged that Polish anti-Semitic students, members of the Nara Party, cooperated with the Germans during the occupation of Poland and delivered many Jews to the Gestapo.
Arriving in London, Capt. Peretz, who is a relative of the famous Jewish writer J. L. Peretz, told a press conference how he fought with a partisan unit battling the Germans in Poland, after he succeeded in escaping from a transport on route to the Sobibor death camp. He revealed that while working in the underground in Warsaw he forged identity documents for Jews, adding that about 30,000 Jews hid in Warsaw, using false documents, after the Germans liquidated the ghetto there following the Jewish uprising.
"Secret hideouts for Jews were maintained throughout the occupation," he related. "Three Jewish women and two men were kept in a walled-up room in a German factory in Warsaw and were secretly fed every night through a small hole. When one woman died, her body had to be cut into parts in order to be removed through the hole. The underground movement paid a thousand zlotys monthly for the upkeep of hiding Jews."
Capt. Peretz, who was twice wounded, witnessed the gruesome execution of his parents and brothers. He participated in the battle of the Warsaw ghetto in 1944, where he was captured by the Germans and taken to a concentration camp in Upper-(##). After long months of internment, he and other prisoners were marched 900 kilometers to a camp near Bad Neustadt, Bavaria. Four days after their arrival at this camp, the American troops occupied Bad Neustadt and liberated the internees.
June 18, 1945
Polish Anti-semitic Students Delivered Jews to Gestapo During Occupation of Poland
London, Jun. 17 (JTA) –
Capt. Leon Peretz, a Jewish captain in the Polish Army who was liberated by American troops from a camp in Bavaria, today charged that Polish anti-Semitic students, members of the Nara Party, cooperated with the Germans during the occupation of Poland and delivered many Jews to the Gestapo.
Arriving in London, Capt. Peretz, who is a relative of the famous Jewish writer J. L. Peretz, told a press conference how he fought with a partisan unit battling the Germans in Poland, after he succeeded in escaping from a transport on route to the Sobibor death camp. He revealed that while working in the underground in Warsaw he forged identity documents for Jews, adding that about 30,000 Jews hid in Warsaw, using false documents, after the Germans liquidated the ghetto there following the Jewish uprising.
"Secret hideouts for Jews were maintained throughout the occupation," he related. "Three Jewish women and two men were kept in a walled-up room in a German factory in Warsaw and were secretly fed every night through a small hole. When one woman died, her body had to be cut into parts in order to be removed through the hole. The underground movement paid a thousand zlotys monthly for the upkeep of hiding Jews."
Capt. Peretz, who was twice wounded, witnessed the gruesome execution of his parents and brothers. He participated in the battle of the Warsaw ghetto in 1944, where he was captured by the Germans and taken to a concentration camp in Upper-(##). After long months of internment, he and other prisoners were marched 900 kilometers to a camp near Bad Neustadt, Bavaria. Four days after their arrival at this camp, the American troops occupied Bad Neustadt and liberated the internees.
Czech Court Trying Commander of Theresienstadt Camp; Jews Testify to Atrocities
http://archive.jta.org/article/1946/10/20/2744223/czech-court-trying-commander-of-theresienstadt-camp-jews-testify-to-atrocities
October 20, 1946
Czech Court Trying Commander of Theresienstadt Camp; Jews Testify to Atrocities
Prague, Oct. 18 (JTA) –
A charge that he was forced to confiscate the rings of Jewish prisoners and later drown them in a swamp was made today by a former prisoner named Hanus at the trial in Litomerice of Heinrich Joeckel, commander of a section of the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Other witnesses revealed that Jewish political prisoners were treated in a more brutal fashion than other camp inmates. They declared that one prisoner, a Professor Levit, was tortured and his legs broken and then carried to a cemetery to be murdered. However, he revived and committed suicide before he could be tortured further. Other prisoners were forced to hang themselves with wire.
It was also disclosed that numerous officials in the puppet government witnessed the horrible tortures. One witness related how Joekel, himself, beat a pregnant Jewish woman on the abdomen until an abortion occurred.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Czech Court Trying Commander of Theresienstadt Camp; Jews Testify to Atrocities." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 20 Oct 1946.
October 20, 1946
Czech Court Trying Commander of Theresienstadt Camp; Jews Testify to Atrocities
Prague, Oct. 18 (JTA) –
A charge that he was forced to confiscate the rings of Jewish prisoners and later drown them in a swamp was made today by a former prisoner named Hanus at the trial in Litomerice of Heinrich Joeckel, commander of a section of the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Other witnesses revealed that Jewish political prisoners were treated in a more brutal fashion than other camp inmates. They declared that one prisoner, a Professor Levit, was tortured and his legs broken and then carried to a cemetery to be murdered. However, he revived and committed suicide before he could be tortured further. Other prisoners were forced to hang themselves with wire.
It was also disclosed that numerous officials in the puppet government witnessed the horrible tortures. One witness related how Joekel, himself, beat a pregnant Jewish woman on the abdomen until an abortion occurred.
Citation - Click to see see this article's citation
"Czech Court Trying Commander of Theresienstadt Camp; Jews Testify to Atrocities." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 20 Oct 1946.
Rabbi Michael Weissmandl: A Rabbi from Oxford’s Bodleian Library who saved Jews from the Holocaust
http://www.oxfordchabad.org/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/1378317/jewish/A-Rabbi-from-the-Bodleian-Library-who-saved-Jews-from-the-Holocaust.htm
Rabbi Michael Weissmandl: A Rabbi from Oxford’s Bodleian Library who saved Jews from the Holocaust
By Rabbi Eli Brackman
Rabbi Michael Weissmandl: A Rabbi from Oxford’s Bodleian Library who saved Jews from the Holocaust
By Rabbi Eli Brackman
Michael Dov Weissmandl (1903–1957) was a scholar and expert of Hebrew manuscripts, who visited Oxford during the 1930’s, and played an instrumental role in attempting to save Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War.
This article will illustrate how Rabbi Weissmandl’s visits to Oxford served him his rabbinical ordination, possibly the first rabbi to be ordained from his research at the Bodleian library, and offered him the groundwork to attempt to help save tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis in Slovakia and millions in Europe.
Rabbi Weissmandl was born in 1903 in Debrecen, Hungary, and a few years later his family moved to Tyrnau, Slovakia. In 1931, he moved to the Slovakian town of Nitra to study under the rabbi of Nitra and dean of the last surviving yeshiva in Nazi occupied Europe, Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar (1886 – 1945), whose daughter he later married.
Before moving to Nitra, he studied at the yeshivah of Rabbi Joseph Zvi Dushinsky, who was chief rabbi of Galanta, Slovakia, until around the First World War. (Rabbi Dushinksy was fourth or fifth cousin to political scientist Dr. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, currently living in Oxford.)
Rabbi Dushinksy later moved to Israel and was known for his strong opposition to Zionism, and spoke to the newly-formed United Nations against the creation of the Zionist State.
In the 1930’s, in Rabbi Weissmandl’s work in deciphering Hebrew manuscripts and comparing printed works with the manuscripts, he travelled to Oxford three times to do research at the Bodleian library collection of Hebrew manuscripts. On one occasion he helped the librarian identify the author of a new manuscript they had just acquired and been misattributed by the scholars at the library.
This scholar was most probably Eric Otto Winstedt, who was Keeper of the Oriental Collection, including the Hebrew holdings, during the 1930's. As E.O. Winstedt was principally a Latinist and Gypsologist, rather than Hebraist, Rabbi Wessmandl's assistance must have been appreciated, as well as other rabbis who visited the Bodleain library earlier, like Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.
During his visits to Oxford, he recorded variant readings from the Hebrew manuscripts as well as hundreds of unpublished rabbinic responsa which he intended to publish. As an expert of Hebrew manuscripts, he gained much respect from the librarian, allowing him considerable access, during non-visiting hours, to the Hebrew collection for his research.
It appears that Rabbi Weismandl was not uninterested in the people around him while he was in Oxford. He related that he became acquainted with a non-Jewish scholar in Oxford, who had an exceptional knowledge of Talmud, allowing him to quote entire tractates from memory. It is likely he then would have also got to know other prominent Jewish members of the university community in the 1930’s, as Sir Isaiah Berlin, who had then received a prize scholarship at All Souls College.
His work in Oxford seems to have included, among other things, preparing a new edition of Kikayon de-Yonah, a Talmudic commentary, by 16th century Rabbi Jonah T’omim, who was born in Prague and acted as rabbi in Grodno and Pinsk, Lithuania. In 1648, because of the Chmielnick pogrom, Rabbi Teomim fled to Vienna, Nikolsburg, Austria, and finally Metz, Lorraine, before he passed away in 1649.
The editing new edition of Kikayon de-Yonah seems to have been for the publishing of the 3rd edition of Kikayon de-Yonah. The first edition was edited in Amsterdam in 1690 by the son of Rabbi T’omim, Joshua, and the second printing was in 1712 at Hanau, Germany.
In less than a year, according to his biography, An Unheeded Cry (Artscroll), Rabbi Weissmandl reviewed the fifteen tractates of the Talmud included in the above-mentioned book which was ultimately printed by the governors of the Nitra Yeshivah with Rabbi Weissmandl’s notes, glosses and emendations.
At the end of the volume, Rabbi Weissmandl added notes to Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) Even Ha-Ezer (Laws of Marriage and Divorce) on the basis of a manuscript he had discovered in Oxford.
The manuscript with these notes can be in fact found listed in Adolf Neubauer’s Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian and in the College Libraries of Oxford (Published 1886) entry number 761:1 (p. 149): “R. Yonah T’omim’s Novellae on Ebben ha-Ezer, and some other casuistic notes.”
Thus, it appears, Rabbi Weissmandl was not just comparing the second edition of this work with the original manuscript but intended to add an unpublished manuscript of the same author that was exclusively found at the Bodleian library.
In his biography it mentions his motivation to prepare a new edition of this work was due to the fact that students were studying this work as a basic text at the Yeshiva of Nitra in Slovakia, under the tutelage of his father-in-law, Rabbi Ungar.
It is therefore possible that Rabbi Weissmandl heard that there existed this additional rare unpublished manuscript by Rabbi T’omim in Oxford and this discovery and pursuit to publish it seems to have been a central reason for his travel to Oxford.
It is, however, interesting to note that the Bodleian Library doesn't appear to have in its collection the main work by Rabbi T'omim, Kikayon D'Yonah, on the Talmud. It would therefore seem that the comparing of the published edition to the original manuscript was not the reason for his coming to Oxford when working on the third edition of Kikayon D'Yonah but rather just for the publication of the additional unpublished manuscript on Shulchan Aruch that Rabbi Weissmandl wished to add to his new edition.
Indeed, from the following story about his ordination, it is clear that he was undertaking many different Hebraic academic studies as his purpose for coming to Oxford, in addition to the expanding of the the work of Kikayon D'Yonah.
His research and intense study of unpublished Hebrew manuscripts in Oxford in fact led to his rabbinical ordination before his wedding.
In January, 1937, (14 Shevat, 5697), Rabbi Weissmandl married Bracha Rachel, the daughter of his teacher Rabbi Samuel David Ungar. For the tenaim (engagement) party, which was held some time earlier, the bridegroom had returned from England, where he had been pursuing his research in Oxford.
At the celebration, he gave a brilliant lecture which lasted for two and a half hours. In his discourse, he discussed the legal aspects of sivlonot (gifts which a man gives his future bride). At the beginning of his talk, he recounted that in Oxford he had found manuscripts containing several problems on the subject raised by an ancient Torah sage, Rabbi Simon Sharabi.
Rabbi Weissmandl intended to resolve these questions. He proceeded to explain, on the basis of the manuscript sources he had discovered, the custom of the Jews of Oberland (Upper Hungary) not to commit the engagement conditions to writing.
Rabbi David Meisels of Satoraljuajhely (northern Hungary, near the Slovak border), who was present at the celebration, was so impressed that, as a wedding gift, he granted the bridegroom rabbinical ordination in appreciation of his deep knowledge of Jewish law and scholarship of the Torah.
In 1939, Slovakia became a puppet clerofascist state from 14 March 1939 to 8 May, 1945, as an ally and client state of Nazi Germany. It appears that at the beginning of 1939, Rabbi Weissmandl was at Oxford working on the manuscripts and it would have been convenient for him to stay the war in Oxford away from harm.
It therefore astonishes one that while at Oxford, Rabbi Weissmandel volunteered on 1 September 1939, shortly after the invasion of Poland by Germany together with Slovakia, to return to Slovakia as an agent of World Agudath Israel to help rescue the Jews of Slovakia and other Jews of Europe.
It is interesting to speculate whether Cecil Roth who had just returned in 1939 to Oxford as reader in Jewish Studies was an inspiration for him to return to Slovakia to aid the Jewish community there under the Nazis. It is known that as early as 1933, Cecil Roth was vocal and active against the Nazis, as he penned a letter of protest to the London Times against Hitler's declaration to boycott Jewish establishments.
Due to Rabbi Weissmandl having spent considerable amount of time in Oxford and likely became acquainted with the British establishment, it gave him the ability to assist with attempts to save Jews from the Holocaust.
This happened when the Nazis gathered sixty rabbis from Burgenland, bordering Slovakia. Czechoslovakia refused them entry and Austria would not take them back, leaving the stranded on the border. Rabbi Weissmandl flew to England, where he was received by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Foreign Office, and succeeded in obtaining entry visas to England for the sixty rabbis, saving them from the Holocaust.
When the Nazis, aided by members of the puppet Slovak government, began its campaign against the Slovakian Jews in 1942, members of the Slovak Judenrat formed an underground organization called the Working Group. The group's main activity was to help Jews as much as possible, in part through payment of large bribes to German and Slovak officials.
This Working Group during the period of WWII was led by Rabbi Weissmandl after he moved back to Slovakia, together with Gisi Fleischmann.
The transportation of Slovak Jews was in fact halted for a long time after the Working Group arranged a $50,000 ransom deal with the Nazi SS official Dieter Wisliceny.
At Weissmandl's initiative the Working Group was also responsible for the ill-fated Europe Plan which would have seen in late 1942 large numbers of European Jews rescued from the Nazis by paying the Nazis one to two million dollars ransom to stop most transports. The Germans asked for a 10% down payment, which unfortunately was never made.
The Working Group played a central role in distribution of the "Auschwitz Report" in spring 1944, which ultimately led to its publication in Switzerland. That triggered a major Swiss grass roots protest in the Swiss press, churches and streets. It was a major factor in President Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and others threatening Hungary's Fascist regent Horthy with post-war retribution if he doesn't immediately stop the transports. At the time 12,000 Jews a day were transported to Auschwitz.
In 1944, Weissmandl and his family were put on a train headed for Auschwitz. Rabbi Weissmandl escaped from the sealed train by sawing open the lock of the carriage with an emery wire he had secreted in a loaf of bread. He jumped from the moving train, breaking his leg in the process, and hid in a secret bunker in suburban Bratislava, from where he was taken by Rudolf Kasztner and his Nazi associate Kurt Becher to Switzerland.
In 1946, Rabbi Weissmandl left Switzerland for the U.S.A, where he re-established the Nitra Yeshiva.
As his former teacher Rabbi Joseph Zvi Dushinsky, Rabbi Weissmandl was also known for his strong opposition to Zionism, and also spoke to the newly-formed United Nations against the creation of the Zionist State. In his biographies it attributes this to the fact that he felt that the Zionist leadership allegedly frustrated some of his plans in rescuing Jews from Nazi Europe.
It seems that a possible reason for this was also due to his former esteemed teacher Rabbi Dushinsky’s influence, albeit for similar reasons.
Rabbi Weissmandl passed away in 1957.
Rabbi Michael Weissmandl: A Rabbi from Oxford’s Bodleian Library who saved Jews from the Holocaust
By Rabbi Eli Brackman
Rabbi Michael Weissmandl: A Rabbi from Oxford’s Bodleian Library who saved Jews from the Holocaust
By Rabbi Eli Brackman
Michael Dov Weissmandl (1903–1957) was a scholar and expert of Hebrew manuscripts, who visited Oxford during the 1930’s, and played an instrumental role in attempting to save Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War.
This article will illustrate how Rabbi Weissmandl’s visits to Oxford served him his rabbinical ordination, possibly the first rabbi to be ordained from his research at the Bodleian library, and offered him the groundwork to attempt to help save tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis in Slovakia and millions in Europe.
Rabbi Weissmandl was born in 1903 in Debrecen, Hungary, and a few years later his family moved to Tyrnau, Slovakia. In 1931, he moved to the Slovakian town of Nitra to study under the rabbi of Nitra and dean of the last surviving yeshiva in Nazi occupied Europe, Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar (1886 – 1945), whose daughter he later married.
Before moving to Nitra, he studied at the yeshivah of Rabbi Joseph Zvi Dushinsky, who was chief rabbi of Galanta, Slovakia, until around the First World War. (Rabbi Dushinksy was fourth or fifth cousin to political scientist Dr. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, currently living in Oxford.)
Rabbi Dushinksy later moved to Israel and was known for his strong opposition to Zionism, and spoke to the newly-formed United Nations against the creation of the Zionist State.
In the 1930’s, in Rabbi Weissmandl’s work in deciphering Hebrew manuscripts and comparing printed works with the manuscripts, he travelled to Oxford three times to do research at the Bodleian library collection of Hebrew manuscripts. On one occasion he helped the librarian identify the author of a new manuscript they had just acquired and been misattributed by the scholars at the library.
This scholar was most probably Eric Otto Winstedt, who was Keeper of the Oriental Collection, including the Hebrew holdings, during the 1930's. As E.O. Winstedt was principally a Latinist and Gypsologist, rather than Hebraist, Rabbi Wessmandl's assistance must have been appreciated, as well as other rabbis who visited the Bodleain library earlier, like Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.
During his visits to Oxford, he recorded variant readings from the Hebrew manuscripts as well as hundreds of unpublished rabbinic responsa which he intended to publish. As an expert of Hebrew manuscripts, he gained much respect from the librarian, allowing him considerable access, during non-visiting hours, to the Hebrew collection for his research.
It appears that Rabbi Weismandl was not uninterested in the people around him while he was in Oxford. He related that he became acquainted with a non-Jewish scholar in Oxford, who had an exceptional knowledge of Talmud, allowing him to quote entire tractates from memory. It is likely he then would have also got to know other prominent Jewish members of the university community in the 1930’s, as Sir Isaiah Berlin, who had then received a prize scholarship at All Souls College.
His work in Oxford seems to have included, among other things, preparing a new edition of Kikayon de-Yonah, a Talmudic commentary, by 16th century Rabbi Jonah T’omim, who was born in Prague and acted as rabbi in Grodno and Pinsk, Lithuania. In 1648, because of the Chmielnick pogrom, Rabbi Teomim fled to Vienna, Nikolsburg, Austria, and finally Metz, Lorraine, before he passed away in 1649.
The editing new edition of Kikayon de-Yonah seems to have been for the publishing of the 3rd edition of Kikayon de-Yonah. The first edition was edited in Amsterdam in 1690 by the son of Rabbi T’omim, Joshua, and the second printing was in 1712 at Hanau, Germany.
In less than a year, according to his biography, An Unheeded Cry (Artscroll), Rabbi Weissmandl reviewed the fifteen tractates of the Talmud included in the above-mentioned book which was ultimately printed by the governors of the Nitra Yeshivah with Rabbi Weissmandl’s notes, glosses and emendations.
At the end of the volume, Rabbi Weissmandl added notes to Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) Even Ha-Ezer (Laws of Marriage and Divorce) on the basis of a manuscript he had discovered in Oxford.
The manuscript with these notes can be in fact found listed in Adolf Neubauer’s Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian and in the College Libraries of Oxford (Published 1886) entry number 761:1 (p. 149): “R. Yonah T’omim’s Novellae on Ebben ha-Ezer, and some other casuistic notes.”
Thus, it appears, Rabbi Weissmandl was not just comparing the second edition of this work with the original manuscript but intended to add an unpublished manuscript of the same author that was exclusively found at the Bodleian library.
In his biography it mentions his motivation to prepare a new edition of this work was due to the fact that students were studying this work as a basic text at the Yeshiva of Nitra in Slovakia, under the tutelage of his father-in-law, Rabbi Ungar.
It is therefore possible that Rabbi Weissmandl heard that there existed this additional rare unpublished manuscript by Rabbi T’omim in Oxford and this discovery and pursuit to publish it seems to have been a central reason for his travel to Oxford.
It is, however, interesting to note that the Bodleian Library doesn't appear to have in its collection the main work by Rabbi T'omim, Kikayon D'Yonah, on the Talmud. It would therefore seem that the comparing of the published edition to the original manuscript was not the reason for his coming to Oxford when working on the third edition of Kikayon D'Yonah but rather just for the publication of the additional unpublished manuscript on Shulchan Aruch that Rabbi Weissmandl wished to add to his new edition.
Indeed, from the following story about his ordination, it is clear that he was undertaking many different Hebraic academic studies as his purpose for coming to Oxford, in addition to the expanding of the the work of Kikayon D'Yonah.
His research and intense study of unpublished Hebrew manuscripts in Oxford in fact led to his rabbinical ordination before his wedding.
In January, 1937, (14 Shevat, 5697), Rabbi Weissmandl married Bracha Rachel, the daughter of his teacher Rabbi Samuel David Ungar. For the tenaim (engagement) party, which was held some time earlier, the bridegroom had returned from England, where he had been pursuing his research in Oxford.
At the celebration, he gave a brilliant lecture which lasted for two and a half hours. In his discourse, he discussed the legal aspects of sivlonot (gifts which a man gives his future bride). At the beginning of his talk, he recounted that in Oxford he had found manuscripts containing several problems on the subject raised by an ancient Torah sage, Rabbi Simon Sharabi.
Rabbi Weissmandl intended to resolve these questions. He proceeded to explain, on the basis of the manuscript sources he had discovered, the custom of the Jews of Oberland (Upper Hungary) not to commit the engagement conditions to writing.
Rabbi David Meisels of Satoraljuajhely (northern Hungary, near the Slovak border), who was present at the celebration, was so impressed that, as a wedding gift, he granted the bridegroom rabbinical ordination in appreciation of his deep knowledge of Jewish law and scholarship of the Torah.
In 1939, Slovakia became a puppet clerofascist state from 14 March 1939 to 8 May, 1945, as an ally and client state of Nazi Germany. It appears that at the beginning of 1939, Rabbi Weissmandl was at Oxford working on the manuscripts and it would have been convenient for him to stay the war in Oxford away from harm.
It therefore astonishes one that while at Oxford, Rabbi Weissmandel volunteered on 1 September 1939, shortly after the invasion of Poland by Germany together with Slovakia, to return to Slovakia as an agent of World Agudath Israel to help rescue the Jews of Slovakia and other Jews of Europe.
It is interesting to speculate whether Cecil Roth who had just returned in 1939 to Oxford as reader in Jewish Studies was an inspiration for him to return to Slovakia to aid the Jewish community there under the Nazis. It is known that as early as 1933, Cecil Roth was vocal and active against the Nazis, as he penned a letter of protest to the London Times against Hitler's declaration to boycott Jewish establishments.
Due to Rabbi Weissmandl having spent considerable amount of time in Oxford and likely became acquainted with the British establishment, it gave him the ability to assist with attempts to save Jews from the Holocaust.
This happened when the Nazis gathered sixty rabbis from Burgenland, bordering Slovakia. Czechoslovakia refused them entry and Austria would not take them back, leaving the stranded on the border. Rabbi Weissmandl flew to England, where he was received by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Foreign Office, and succeeded in obtaining entry visas to England for the sixty rabbis, saving them from the Holocaust.
When the Nazis, aided by members of the puppet Slovak government, began its campaign against the Slovakian Jews in 1942, members of the Slovak Judenrat formed an underground organization called the Working Group. The group's main activity was to help Jews as much as possible, in part through payment of large bribes to German and Slovak officials.
This Working Group during the period of WWII was led by Rabbi Weissmandl after he moved back to Slovakia, together with Gisi Fleischmann.
The transportation of Slovak Jews was in fact halted for a long time after the Working Group arranged a $50,000 ransom deal with the Nazi SS official Dieter Wisliceny.
At Weissmandl's initiative the Working Group was also responsible for the ill-fated Europe Plan which would have seen in late 1942 large numbers of European Jews rescued from the Nazis by paying the Nazis one to two million dollars ransom to stop most transports. The Germans asked for a 10% down payment, which unfortunately was never made.
The Working Group played a central role in distribution of the "Auschwitz Report" in spring 1944, which ultimately led to its publication in Switzerland. That triggered a major Swiss grass roots protest in the Swiss press, churches and streets. It was a major factor in President Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and others threatening Hungary's Fascist regent Horthy with post-war retribution if he doesn't immediately stop the transports. At the time 12,000 Jews a day were transported to Auschwitz.
In 1944, Weissmandl and his family were put on a train headed for Auschwitz. Rabbi Weissmandl escaped from the sealed train by sawing open the lock of the carriage with an emery wire he had secreted in a loaf of bread. He jumped from the moving train, breaking his leg in the process, and hid in a secret bunker in suburban Bratislava, from where he was taken by Rudolf Kasztner and his Nazi associate Kurt Becher to Switzerland.
In 1946, Rabbi Weissmandl left Switzerland for the U.S.A, where he re-established the Nitra Yeshiva.
As his former teacher Rabbi Joseph Zvi Dushinsky, Rabbi Weissmandl was also known for his strong opposition to Zionism, and also spoke to the newly-formed United Nations against the creation of the Zionist State. In his biographies it attributes this to the fact that he felt that the Zionist leadership allegedly frustrated some of his plans in rescuing Jews from Nazi Europe.
It seems that a possible reason for this was also due to his former esteemed teacher Rabbi Dushinsky’s influence, albeit for similar reasons.
Rabbi Weissmandl passed away in 1957.
Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl TO BE CONTINU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmuel_Dovid_Ungar
Shmuel Dovid UngarFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar
THIS EXTAORDINARY RAV WAS ORDAINED AT ENGLAND'S BODLEIAN LIBRARY AT OXFORD I BELEIVE AND RETURNED TO SAVE HIS BRETHREN AND WAS OF THAT HOLIEST GENERATION --I WILL CONTINUE HIS STORY
Position Rosh Yeshiva
Yeshiva Nitra Yeshiva
Began 1931
Ended 1944
Successor Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar
Personal details
Birth name Shmuel Dovid Ungar
Born (1886-11-23)23 November 1886
Debrecen, Hungary
Died 9 February 1945(1945-02-09) (aged 58)
Buried Piešťany, Slovakia
Nationality Slovakian
Denomination Orthodox
Residence Nitra, Slovakia
Parents Rabbi Yosef Moshe Ungar
Spouse Miriam Leah Fisher
Children Sholom Moshe
Yaakov Yitzchak
Benzion
Chaya Nechama
Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar (23 November 1886 – 21 February 1945), also known as Rabbi Samuel David Ungar, was the rabbi of the Slovakian town of Nitra and dean of the last surviving yeshiva in occupied Europe during World War II. He was the father-in-law of Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, who relied on his guidance to contrive many schemes to rescue Slovakian Jewry from the Nazis.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Rabbi and rosh yeshiva
3 World War II
4 In hiding
5 Legacy
6 References
[edit] Early lifeUngar was the only son born to his father, Rabbi Yosef Moshe Ungar, the rabbi of the town of Pöstyén (today: Piešťany). He was a descendant of the Abrabanel.[1][2] Ungar's father died when he was 11 years old,[3] and he became a frequent guest at the home of Rabbi Kalman Weber, who was appointed Rav of Pöstyén in his father's place.
After his bar mitzvah, Shmuel Dovid left home to study at the yeshiva in Preshov headed by his uncle, Rabbi Noach Baruch Fisher. Later, he studied at the yeshiva in Unsdorf led by Rabbi Shmuel Rosenberg. He married his first cousin, Miriam Leah Fisher, daughter of Rabbi Noach Baruch.[3]
[edit] Rabbi and rosh yeshivaAt the age of 21, Ungar became the Rav of Korompa (today: Krompachy), and founded a yeshiva in that town. Five years later, he was asked to become Rav and Rosh Yeshiva of Nagyszombat (today: Trnava), an old and well-established Jewish community, which he served for 15 years.[3] It was during this tenure that he became known as one of the leading rabbis of Europe for his erudition and strict adherence to halakha. It was also during this time that Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl joined his yeshiva and formed a lifelong attachment to him.
In 1931, Ungar was approached by the town of Nitra, which had recently lost its chief rabbi, Rabbi Avraham Aharon Katz, with a request that he head that community. To sweeten the offer, the community promised to help him expand its yeshiva under his leadership. Weissmandl tried to dissuade Ungar from accepting the offer, arguing that it would be a mistake to leave an established community like Trnava for Nitra, which was only about 200 years old and had 3,000 Jews. Ungar, however, said he would go. "My heart tells me that the day will come when there will be no yeshiva anywhere in Slovakia but Nitra, and I want to be there when that happens", he said presciently.[4]
In Nitra, Ungar built up a yeshiva with nearly 300 students that eventually attracted students from Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria and Germany. He taught in the classic Hungarian style introduced by the Chasam Sofer, and although he did not set out to produce rabbis, some of his students did go on to become prominent rabbis in their hometowns.[3] He developed a close and loving relationship with each student and kept the connection after they left, conducting an alumni reunion every five years. Weissmandl married his Rav's daughter, Bracha Rachel, in 1937[5] and became Ungar's right-hand man in all aspects of running the yeshiva.
Besides his position as the chief rabbi of Nitra, Ungar was appointed vice president of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, the supreme religious body of World Agudath Israel, in 1935.[6]
[edit] World War IIJewish persecution began even before World War II in Slovakia, where the Munich Agreement of 1938 carved Czechoslovakia into separate states. Slovakia became a totalitarian state run by the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso, who allied with Nazi Germany and supported discrimination against his country's Jews. In 1942, deportations from Slovakia to Auschwitz via Lublin began. The first Jews were forced to leave Nitra on the Shabbat after Passover.
Ungar could have left Slovakia to save his life, but he refused to desert his community and his yeshiva.[3] Defying a Nazi order to remain at home on that first day of deportations, Ungar walked to the synagogue to spend the third meal of Shabbat with his flock.
After 58,000 Jews had been expelled from Slovakia, Weissmandl, in conjunction with the Working Group that he and other activists had established to try to save Slovakian Jewry, attempted one of the most ambitious rescue schemes of the Holocaust. With a $50,000 bribe to Dieter Wisliceny (Adolf Eichmann's deputy in the Jewish Section of the Reich Security Main Office and adviser on Jewish affairs to the Slovak government), the Working Group managed to halt the deportations until 1944.
Weissmandl also intervened with the Slovakian government to allow the Nitra Yeshiva to continue functioning as the only legal yeshiva in the country during the next two years. To assist students who were still being accosted and sent to forced labor camps, the yeshiva constructed hiding places under the bimah and above bookcases in its study hall in the event of Nazi raids. Often the warning came at such short notice that Talmuds would be left lying open on the tables as everyone fled and hid. Despite these disruptions, Ungar continued to teach and give weekly examinations as usual.
[edit] In hidingIn August 1944, the Nazis crushed a revolt by Slovak partisans who had never supported the Nazi Slovakian regime, and the German army entered and occupied the country. Deportations to Auschwitz resumed in greater intensity than before. The Nitra Yeshiva was liquidated on September 5, 1944.[6] By September 17, every remaining Jew in Nitra had been deported.
Ungar and one of his sons, Sholom Moshe, together with Rabbi Meir Eisler, had been vacationing in the forests of the Zobor Mountain near Nitra. When they heard that the yeshiva had been liquidated, they did not return to Nitra. They made their way to Bistritz, which was under partisan control, but when the Germans attacked that city the following month, they fled and spent the winter hiding in mountain caves and subsisting on starvation rations.[3] Ungar kept a diary in which he recorded his travails and prepared his spiritual will.
Throughout that winter of hiding in the forest, Ungar scrupulously observed every detail of halakha even though he was starving to death. He refused to eat bread or milk obtained from gentiles, or to even bread if there was no water for ritual hand-washing.[3] On one occasion he received some grapes, but would not eat them immediately; he insisted on saving them to make Kiddush on Shabbat. While terror and fear were others' constant companions, he was concerned with how to fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the shofar blasts on Rosh Hashanah.
Ungar died of starvation on 9 February 1945 (8 Adar 5705).[2] He instructed his son where and how to bury him, said his last viduy (confession), and died. After the war, his son re-interred him in Piešťany, his birthplace, next to the grave of his father.[3]
SOURCE 3 MENTIONED IN THE SHORT ARTICLE IN JTACONERNING HIS MURDER
[edit] Legacy
Two of Ungar's sons, Sholom Moshe (1916–2003)[6] and Yaakov Yitzchak, and a daughter, Chaya Nechama, survived the war. (Chaya Nechama later married Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam, the Klausenberger Rebbe, in America in 1947.[7]) Another son, Benzion, the Rav of Piešťany, was taken to a prison camp in Sereď, where he was murdered by Slovakian military police. Ungar's rebbetzin, Miriam Leah, was also murdered, together with many other family members.[3] Ungar's son-in-law, Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, survived the war.
Ungar's Torah writings were saved by a gentile woman who gave them to Ungar's son, Sholom Moshe, after the war. These were published under the title Ne'os Desheh ("Lush meadows", a line from Psalm 23; the second word in Hebrew, דשא, contains his initials, שמואל דוד אונגר).[3]
After the war, Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar was named Rav of Nitra by the survivors of that city and reopened the Nitra Yeshiva. In 1946 he and his brother-in-law, Rabbi Weissmandl, moved the Nitra Yeshiva to Somerville, New Jersey. In 1948 the yeshiva was moved again to its present site in Mount Kisco, New York.[6]
Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar's son, Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar (named after his grandfather) is the current Nitra Rav and Rosh Yeshiva. Today the Nitra community has branches in Boro Park, Williamsburg, Monsey and Jerusalem, Israel.[6]
[edit] References1.^ "Today’s Yahrtzeits & History – 27 Nissan". matzav.com. 1 May 2011. http://matzav.com/todays-yahrtzeits-history-27-nissan-2. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
2.^ a b Paltiel, Manny (2011). "Gedolim Yahrtzeits". chinuch.org. http://chinuch.org/AdarI.php. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
3.^ a b c d e f g h i j Project Witness. "Harav Shmuel David Ungar, Hy"d, of Nitra". Hamodia, 17 March 2011, p. C2.
4.^ Fried, S. (3 June 2003). "A Cry from the Pages". Dei'ah VeDibur. http://chareidi.shemayisrael.com/archives5763/NSO63features.htm. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
5.^ Brackman, Rabbi Eli (2011). "Rabbi Michael Weissmandl: A Rabbi from Oxford’s Bodleian Library who saved Jews from the Holocaust". Oxford Chabad Society. http://www.oxfordchabad.org/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/1378317/jewish/A-Rabbi-from-the-Bodleian-Library-who-saved-Jews-from-the-Holocaust.htm. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
6.^ a b c d e Tannenbaum, Rabbi Gershon (5 January 2011). "Nitra Reborn". The Jewish Press. http://www.jewishpress.com/printArticle.cfm?contentid=46689. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
7.^ Landesman, Yeruchem. The Wedding that Changed Despair to Hope. Mishpacha, 11 November 2009, pp. 30-34.
Shmuel Dovid UngarFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar
THIS EXTAORDINARY RAV WAS ORDAINED AT ENGLAND'S BODLEIAN LIBRARY AT OXFORD I BELEIVE AND RETURNED TO SAVE HIS BRETHREN AND WAS OF THAT HOLIEST GENERATION --I WILL CONTINUE HIS STORY
Position Rosh Yeshiva
Yeshiva Nitra Yeshiva
Began 1931
Ended 1944
Successor Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar
Personal details
Birth name Shmuel Dovid Ungar
Born (1886-11-23)23 November 1886
Debrecen, Hungary
Died 9 February 1945(1945-02-09) (aged 58)
Buried Piešťany, Slovakia
Nationality Slovakian
Denomination Orthodox
Residence Nitra, Slovakia
Parents Rabbi Yosef Moshe Ungar
Spouse Miriam Leah Fisher
Children Sholom Moshe
Yaakov Yitzchak
Benzion
Chaya Nechama
Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar (23 November 1886 – 21 February 1945), also known as Rabbi Samuel David Ungar, was the rabbi of the Slovakian town of Nitra and dean of the last surviving yeshiva in occupied Europe during World War II. He was the father-in-law of Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, who relied on his guidance to contrive many schemes to rescue Slovakian Jewry from the Nazis.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Rabbi and rosh yeshiva
3 World War II
4 In hiding
5 Legacy
6 References
[edit] Early lifeUngar was the only son born to his father, Rabbi Yosef Moshe Ungar, the rabbi of the town of Pöstyén (today: Piešťany). He was a descendant of the Abrabanel.[1][2] Ungar's father died when he was 11 years old,[3] and he became a frequent guest at the home of Rabbi Kalman Weber, who was appointed Rav of Pöstyén in his father's place.
After his bar mitzvah, Shmuel Dovid left home to study at the yeshiva in Preshov headed by his uncle, Rabbi Noach Baruch Fisher. Later, he studied at the yeshiva in Unsdorf led by Rabbi Shmuel Rosenberg. He married his first cousin, Miriam Leah Fisher, daughter of Rabbi Noach Baruch.[3]
[edit] Rabbi and rosh yeshivaAt the age of 21, Ungar became the Rav of Korompa (today: Krompachy), and founded a yeshiva in that town. Five years later, he was asked to become Rav and Rosh Yeshiva of Nagyszombat (today: Trnava), an old and well-established Jewish community, which he served for 15 years.[3] It was during this tenure that he became known as one of the leading rabbis of Europe for his erudition and strict adherence to halakha. It was also during this time that Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl joined his yeshiva and formed a lifelong attachment to him.
In 1931, Ungar was approached by the town of Nitra, which had recently lost its chief rabbi, Rabbi Avraham Aharon Katz, with a request that he head that community. To sweeten the offer, the community promised to help him expand its yeshiva under his leadership. Weissmandl tried to dissuade Ungar from accepting the offer, arguing that it would be a mistake to leave an established community like Trnava for Nitra, which was only about 200 years old and had 3,000 Jews. Ungar, however, said he would go. "My heart tells me that the day will come when there will be no yeshiva anywhere in Slovakia but Nitra, and I want to be there when that happens", he said presciently.[4]
In Nitra, Ungar built up a yeshiva with nearly 300 students that eventually attracted students from Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria and Germany. He taught in the classic Hungarian style introduced by the Chasam Sofer, and although he did not set out to produce rabbis, some of his students did go on to become prominent rabbis in their hometowns.[3] He developed a close and loving relationship with each student and kept the connection after they left, conducting an alumni reunion every five years. Weissmandl married his Rav's daughter, Bracha Rachel, in 1937[5] and became Ungar's right-hand man in all aspects of running the yeshiva.
Besides his position as the chief rabbi of Nitra, Ungar was appointed vice president of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, the supreme religious body of World Agudath Israel, in 1935.[6]
[edit] World War IIJewish persecution began even before World War II in Slovakia, where the Munich Agreement of 1938 carved Czechoslovakia into separate states. Slovakia became a totalitarian state run by the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso, who allied with Nazi Germany and supported discrimination against his country's Jews. In 1942, deportations from Slovakia to Auschwitz via Lublin began. The first Jews were forced to leave Nitra on the Shabbat after Passover.
Ungar could have left Slovakia to save his life, but he refused to desert his community and his yeshiva.[3] Defying a Nazi order to remain at home on that first day of deportations, Ungar walked to the synagogue to spend the third meal of Shabbat with his flock.
After 58,000 Jews had been expelled from Slovakia, Weissmandl, in conjunction with the Working Group that he and other activists had established to try to save Slovakian Jewry, attempted one of the most ambitious rescue schemes of the Holocaust. With a $50,000 bribe to Dieter Wisliceny (Adolf Eichmann's deputy in the Jewish Section of the Reich Security Main Office and adviser on Jewish affairs to the Slovak government), the Working Group managed to halt the deportations until 1944.
Weissmandl also intervened with the Slovakian government to allow the Nitra Yeshiva to continue functioning as the only legal yeshiva in the country during the next two years. To assist students who were still being accosted and sent to forced labor camps, the yeshiva constructed hiding places under the bimah and above bookcases in its study hall in the event of Nazi raids. Often the warning came at such short notice that Talmuds would be left lying open on the tables as everyone fled and hid. Despite these disruptions, Ungar continued to teach and give weekly examinations as usual.
[edit] In hidingIn August 1944, the Nazis crushed a revolt by Slovak partisans who had never supported the Nazi Slovakian regime, and the German army entered and occupied the country. Deportations to Auschwitz resumed in greater intensity than before. The Nitra Yeshiva was liquidated on September 5, 1944.[6] By September 17, every remaining Jew in Nitra had been deported.
Ungar and one of his sons, Sholom Moshe, together with Rabbi Meir Eisler, had been vacationing in the forests of the Zobor Mountain near Nitra. When they heard that the yeshiva had been liquidated, they did not return to Nitra. They made their way to Bistritz, which was under partisan control, but when the Germans attacked that city the following month, they fled and spent the winter hiding in mountain caves and subsisting on starvation rations.[3] Ungar kept a diary in which he recorded his travails and prepared his spiritual will.
Throughout that winter of hiding in the forest, Ungar scrupulously observed every detail of halakha even though he was starving to death. He refused to eat bread or milk obtained from gentiles, or to even bread if there was no water for ritual hand-washing.[3] On one occasion he received some grapes, but would not eat them immediately; he insisted on saving them to make Kiddush on Shabbat. While terror and fear were others' constant companions, he was concerned with how to fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the shofar blasts on Rosh Hashanah.
Ungar died of starvation on 9 February 1945 (8 Adar 5705).[2] He instructed his son where and how to bury him, said his last viduy (confession), and died. After the war, his son re-interred him in Piešťany, his birthplace, next to the grave of his father.[3]
SOURCE 3 MENTIONED IN THE SHORT ARTICLE IN JTACONERNING HIS MURDER
[edit] Legacy
Two of Ungar's sons, Sholom Moshe (1916–2003)[6] and Yaakov Yitzchak, and a daughter, Chaya Nechama, survived the war. (Chaya Nechama later married Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam, the Klausenberger Rebbe, in America in 1947.[7]) Another son, Benzion, the Rav of Piešťany, was taken to a prison camp in Sereď, where he was murdered by Slovakian military police. Ungar's rebbetzin, Miriam Leah, was also murdered, together with many other family members.[3] Ungar's son-in-law, Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, survived the war.
Ungar's Torah writings were saved by a gentile woman who gave them to Ungar's son, Sholom Moshe, after the war. These were published under the title Ne'os Desheh ("Lush meadows", a line from Psalm 23; the second word in Hebrew, דשא, contains his initials, שמואל דוד אונגר).[3]
After the war, Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar was named Rav of Nitra by the survivors of that city and reopened the Nitra Yeshiva. In 1946 he and his brother-in-law, Rabbi Weissmandl, moved the Nitra Yeshiva to Somerville, New Jersey. In 1948 the yeshiva was moved again to its present site in Mount Kisco, New York.[6]
Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar's son, Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar (named after his grandfather) is the current Nitra Rav and Rosh Yeshiva. Today the Nitra community has branches in Boro Park, Williamsburg, Monsey and Jerusalem, Israel.[6]
[edit] References1.^ "Today’s Yahrtzeits & History – 27 Nissan". matzav.com. 1 May 2011. http://matzav.com/todays-yahrtzeits-history-27-nissan-2. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
2.^ a b Paltiel, Manny (2011). "Gedolim Yahrtzeits". chinuch.org. http://chinuch.org/AdarI.php. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
3.^ a b c d e f g h i j Project Witness. "Harav Shmuel David Ungar, Hy"d, of Nitra". Hamodia, 17 March 2011, p. C2.
4.^ Fried, S. (3 June 2003). "A Cry from the Pages". Dei'ah VeDibur. http://chareidi.shemayisrael.com/archives5763/NSO63features.htm. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
5.^ Brackman, Rabbi Eli (2011). "Rabbi Michael Weissmandl: A Rabbi from Oxford’s Bodleian Library who saved Jews from the Holocaust". Oxford Chabad Society. http://www.oxfordchabad.org/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/1378317/jewish/A-Rabbi-from-the-Bodleian-Library-who-saved-Jews-from-the-Holocaust.htm. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
6.^ a b c d e Tannenbaum, Rabbi Gershon (5 January 2011). "Nitra Reborn". The Jewish Press. http://www.jewishpress.com/printArticle.cfm?contentid=46689. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
7.^ Landesman, Yeruchem. The Wedding that Changed Despair to Hope. Mishpacha, 11 November 2009, pp. 30-34.
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