Michael Dov Weissmandl

Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl[lower-alpha 1]
Weissmandl before the war
Position Rosh Yeshiva
Yeshiva Nitra Yeshiva, Mount Kisco, New York
Began 1946
Ended 29 November 1957
Personal details
Born (1903-10-25)25 October 1903
Debrecen, Hungary
Died 29 November 1957(1957-11-29) (aged 54)
Mount Kisco, New York
Denomination Orthodox
Parents Yosef and Gella Weissmandl
Spouse
  • Bracha Rachel Ungar
  • Leah Teitelbaum
Part of a series of articles on
the Holocaust
Blood for goods

Michael Dov Weissmandl[lower-alpha 1] (25 October 1903 – 29 November 1957) was an Orthodox rabbi who became known for his efforts to save the Jews of Slovakia from extermination at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. He was one of the leaders of the Bratislava Working Group, an underground organization that attempted to save Slovak Jews and other European Jews from deportation to death camps.

Largely by bribing diplomats, Weissmandl was able to smuggle letters or telegrams to people he hoped would help save the Jews of Europe, alerting them to the progressive Nazi destruction of European Jewry. He managed to send letters to Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he entrusted a diplomat to deliver a letter to the Vatican for Pope Pius XII.

He originated the proposal to bomb the rails leading to Auschwitz, but his suggestion was not implemented. He helped distribute the Auschwitz Protocols, believing that if the Hungarian Jews would resist, then only a small number of them would be deported. Most of those who received the information were unable to act on it, and the view that a significant number could have been saved is contested by mainstream historians.

Early life

Michael Ber was born in Debrecen, Hungary on 25 October 1903 (4 Cheshvan 5664 on the Hebrew calendar) to Yosef Weissmandl, a shochet. A few years later his family moved to Tyrnau (now Trnava, Slovakia). In 1931 he moved to Nitra to study under Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar, whose daughter, Bracha Rachel, he married in 1937.[1] He was thus an oberlander (from the central highlands of Europe), a non-Hasidic Jew.

Weissmandl was a scholar and an expert at deciphering ancient manuscripts. In order to carry out his research of these manuscripts, he traveled to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. It is related that he was treated with great respect by the Chief Librarian of the Bodleian after an episode when he correctly identified the author of a manuscript which had been misattributed by the library’s scholars.[2]

World War II and the Holocaust

While at Oxford University, Weissmandl volunteered on 1 September 1939 to return to Slovakia as an agent of World Agudath Israel. Later he was the first to demand that the Allies bomb Auschwitz.[3] When the Nazis gathered sixty rabbis from Burgenland and sent them to Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovakia refused them entry and Austria would not take them back. Rabbi Weissmandl flew to England, where he was received by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Foreign Office. Explaining the tragic situation, he succeeded in obtaining entry visas to England for the sixty rabbis.[2]

The Working Group

When the Nazis, aided by members of the puppet Slovak government, began its moves against the Slovak Jews in 1942, members of the Slovak Judenrat formed an underground organization called the Bratislava Working Group. It was led by Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Weissmandl. The group's main activity was to help Jews as much as possible, in part through payment of bribes and ransom to German and Slovak officials. In 1942, the Working Group initiated high-level ransom negotiations with the Germans (ref. Fuchs and Kranzler books). The transportation of Slovak Jews was in fact halted for two years after they arranged a $50,000 (in 1952 dollars) ransom deal with the Nazi SS official Dieter Wisliceny.

Deportation

In 1944, Weissmandl and his family were rounded up and 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.

Rudolf Kasztner and his Nazi associate Kurt Becher took Weissmandl from his Bratislava bunker to Switzerland. This was highly unusual for both Kasztner and Becher. There is some speculation that Kasztner and Becher sought to reinforce their alibis for the predictable post-war trials.

Post-war America

Personal recovery

After the war, Weissmandl arrived in the United States having lost his family and having been unable to save Slovak Jewry. At first he was so distraught that he would pound the walls and cry bitterly on what had befallen his people.[4] Later he remarried and had children, but he never forgot his family in Europe and suffered from depression his entire life because of the Holocaust.

His second marriage was to Leah Teitelbaum (1924/5–9 April 2009), a daughter of Rabbi Chaim Eliyahu Teitelbaum and a native of Beregszász, Hungary. With his second wife, Weissmandl had five children.[5]

An innovative American yeshiva

In November 1946, Weissmandl and his brother-in-law, Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar, re-established the Nitra Yeshiva in Somerville, New Jersey,[6] gathering surviving students from the original Nitra Yeshiva. With the help of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, Rabbi Weissmandl bought the Brewster estate in Mount Kisco, in Westchester County, New York and moved his Yeshiva there in 1949. There he established a self-sustaining agricultural community known as the "Yeshiva Farm Settlement". At first this settlement wasn't welcome by its neighbors, but in a town hall meeting, Helen Bruce Baldwin (1907–1994) of nearby Chappaqua, wife of New York Times military correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner, Hanson W. Baldwin, impressed by Rabbi Weissmandl, defended its establishment and wrote a letter-to-the-editor to the New York Times regarding it. Weissmandl designed the community's yeshiva to conform with Talmudic accounts of agricultural settlements, where a man would study Torah continuously until an age suitable for marriage, whereupon he would farm during the day and study in the evenings. While this novel approach was not fully realized, the yeshiva flourished. Currently, the settlement is known as the Nitra community.

Later life

During his later years, Weissmandl suffered from chronic heart disease and was frequently hospitalized. He suffered a severe heart attack in the early winter of 1957 and was hospitalized for several weeks. Upon his release, he attended the yeshiva's fundraising banquet, and then was readmitted to the hospital. His health deteriorated and he died on Friday, 29 November 1957 (6 Kislev 5718) at the age of 54.[2] His second wife never remarried.[5]

Religious work

Statements

In a letter, dated May 15, 1944, addressed to the Zionist leadership in Palestine (under British rule) Rabbi Weissmandl called on the Zionist leadership to take stronger action on behalf of European Jewry which was systematically being destroyed by the Nazi lead genocide:

And you - our brothers in Palestine, in all the countries of freedom, and you, ministers of all the kingdom — how do you keep silent in the face of this great murder? Silent while thousand on thousands, reaching now to six million Jews, were murdered. And silent now while tens of thousands are still being murdered and waiting to be murdered? Their destroyed hearts cry to you for help as they bewail your cruelty. Brutal you are and murderers too you are, because of the cold-bloodedness of the silence in which you watch.[7]

Books

Two of Weissmandl's books were published posthumously.

  • Toras Chemed (Mt. Kisco, 1958)[8] is a book of religious writings that includes many commentaries and homilies, as well as hermeneutic material of a kabbalistic nature. Included in this book are the observations that led to what is called the Torah Codes.
  • Min HaMeitzar (Jerusalem, 1960) is a book that describes Rabbi Weissmandl's war-time experiences. The title consists of the first two words of Psalm 118:5, meaning "from the depths of despair", literally "From the Straits". This is the main publication in which Weissmandl's accusations against the Zionist organizations appear.

In 1958, Rabbi Weissmandl republished the magnum opus of Rabbi Jonah Teomim-Frankel, Kikayon D'Yonah with his own footnotes and glosses. In the introduction to this volume, Rabbi Weissmandl gives an emotional history lesson.

Notes

  1. 1 2 Also known as known as Michael Ber Weissmandl, he took the forename Chaim after surviving the Holocaust. His surname is sometimes spelled Weissmandel or Weismandel.

References

  1. ↑ Brackman, Rabbi Eli (2011). "Rabbi Michael Weissmandl: A Rabbi from Oxford's Bodleian Library who saved Jews from the Holocaust". Oxford Chabad Society. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
  2. 1 2 3 Fuchs, Abraham (1984). "The Unheeded Cry, Chapter 1: A Biographical Sketch". Mesorah Publications, Ltd.
  3. ↑ Brenner, Lenni (1983). "Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Chapter 24: The Wartime Failure to Rescue". Archived from the original on October 1, 2006.
  4. ↑ "Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection, Interview with Siegmunt Forst". Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 2015-10-04.
  5. 1 2 "Rebbetzin Leah Weissmandl, a"h." Hamodia, U.S. Community News, p. B20. 23-04-2009.
  6. ↑ Tannenbaum, Rabbi Gershon (2006-12-13). "Mishkoltzer Nitra Chasunah". The Jewish Press. Retrieved 2010-03-16.
  7. ↑ "Pleas to Rescue Jews in the Holocaust Ignored by Zionist leaders". jewsnotzionists.org. Retrieved 2010-03-16.
  8. ↑ "Toras Chemed, web copy" (in Hebrew). hebrewbooks.org. Retrieved 2010-04-28.

Sources

  • Fuchs, Dr. Abraham (1984). The Unheeded Cry (also in Hebrew as Karati V'ein Oneh). Mesorah Publications.
  • Hecht, Ben. Perfidy (also in Hebrew as Kachas)
  • Kranzler, Dr. David. Thy Brother's Blood
  • Kranzler, Dr. David. Holocaust Hero: Solomon Shoenfeld - The Untold Story of an Extraordinary British Rabbi who Rescued 4000 during the Holocaust
  • Fatran, Gila. The "Working Group", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 8:2 (1994:Fall) 164-201; also see correspondence in issue 9:2 (1995:Fall) 269-276
  • VERAfilm, Among Blind Fools (documentary video)
  • Satinover, Jeffrey (1997). Cracking the Bible Code. William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-15463-8
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