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| Stropkover Rebbe |
Rebbitzin Chayeh Halberstam, widow of Rav Avraham Halberstam, Stropkover Rebbe, was deported from Kashau to Auschwitz May 1944.
A SonderKommando who got killed himself recorded the Rebbittzin's last words.
״I see the end of Hungarian Jewry. The government had permitted large sections of the Jewish community to flee. The people asked the advice of the admorim and they always reassured them. The Belzer Rebbe said that Hungary would only endure anxiety.. And now the bitter hour has come, when the Jews can no longer save themselves. Indeed, heaven concealed [this fate] from them, but they, themselves, fled at the last moment to the land of Israel. They saved their own lives but left the people as sheep for slaughter. רבונו של עולם ! In the last moments of my life I set my plea before You. That You pardon them for this great חילול השם!״"
From the book "Rabbinic Authority and a Personal Autonomy" edited by Moshe Sokol
3 comments:
I'm not going to judge leaders who ran away from their flock to save themselves. Let the Great Judge deal with that.
That said, the point has to be made that some of them discouraged people from fleeing, especially to then Palestine because of their anti-Zionist ideology. Though I believe that this wasn't the pure motive, the motive being that they didn't want to lose control and power over their respective groups.
Be that as it may, instead of living with these facts, the revisionists are denying them , vilifying the Zionists with false invented facts and/or pulling quotes and some negative happenings out of context, magnifying them out of proportion . This is a disingenuous proposition .
Rabbi Weissmandel, for example, a flaming anti-Zionist, was deported with his family from Bratislava to Auschwitz. During the ride he was able to break an opening in a plank and jumped out to freedom, leaving his family to roll away. Beware----The revisionists are now attempting to change this story. It's hard to judge the rabbi but facts are facts.
His interpretations of the events which strengthened his anti-Zionist views are arguable when you read other sources that are more balanced and researched. Historians in more recent times have more pieces of informantion than what R' Weissmandel had.
But this doesn't stop the masses from worshipping his book "The Unheeded Cry" as absolute truth. It was members of his family and rabid Israel hating disciples who actually edited the book posthumously. What did they add, omit?
It should be noted that Artscroll will never write a biography of Dr. Janusz Korczak, not religious Jewish educator who refused to leave his pupils and rode with them to Treblinka.
The anti-secular education crowd in NY/NJ and in Israel are afraid that maybe you and I will read other books and be open to information other than what they stuff into our heads or the toxic Kool-Aid into our mouths..
Never mind that our greatest commentators were knowledgeable in other worldy disciplines.
The current Talibans are charlatans who are desperately afraid that the people will develop critical thinking skills,will nurture their potential, will leave them.
They, the fanatical leaders, don't understand that the moderate sane leaders who encourage individuality, and growth help us in Torah, ahavas and yiras Hashem. Not the other way around.
Falsifying historical facts will not pull educated people to your side.
"I think, therefore I am," said a great philosopher.
Their mantra is "Don't think, and don't be."
Here's something I want to tell the megomaniacal control freak leaders.
From the time of Moshe Rabbeinu and on , it has always been thus:
You (rabbis) are here for us. We're NOT here for you.
the Derby - en route
Tante Jenny & his Kapelye here:
You meander all over Derby, but your talking point are on the mark.
Speaking of helping Jews, how many know of Aliya Bet? Zionists from the yishuv and America pooling resources including money to bring Jews from Europe into Palestine illegaly against the British White paper.
Zionists who worked in peril to their lives and in fact many did lose them.
The Aliya Bet chapter should be course 101 in every school curriculum.
How about the American Mickey Marcus who a had a Jewish heart and was killed in Jerusalem in 1948?
Countless of heroes, even non-Jewish who gave their time, their money and their lives to save Jews.
But no, the frum rags with their 100-pages plus weeklies would rather tie us up with massive bittul Torah through Shabbos
while shouting out hypocritical columns FOR learning Torah in kollels and propagandizing against the Israeli draft which would cause bittul Torah. Is this insane , or what?.
The average zhlubby shuckling robot who can read Yiddish gets to read nearly a thousand pages of farchnyukte bittul Torah from the Der Yid, the other Yiddish weeklies whose names escape me at the moment, Shmated, Hamodia etc.
When am I supposed to learn some Chumash? Or do you supply this service already with a column or two from a rabbi, who 5 out of 10 times has his smiling photo up there on the left side?
Speaking of which, please update your photo. You no longer look like that. I once looked good too. Another sham!!! Photos from 30 years ago. That includes you ladies who write for publicatons that permit women's photos.
I feel I must comment, my Father ZL was from Oberland and he knew personally HaRav Weissmansl TZL and the Rav's cousin the legendary Gisi Fleischmann ZL HYD who was sent to her death put on a train and deported from Slovakia to Auschwitz' upon the express order of the wicked Adolf Eichmann,
HaRav Weissmandl TzL was also put on a train to Auschwitz with his Rebbetzin of Blessed memory and their young children. According to my Father ZL HaRav Weissmandl had given out previously ' blades' cutting implements and one of these R Weissmandl had hidden in a loaf of bread.
R. Weissmandl took out this blade and began cutting through the lock of the railway carriage as soon as he could, he and his Rebbetzin and children were in.
R.Weissmandl managed to break open the lock slightly.
He begged his wife Rebbetzin Weissmandl to jump from the train and for their young children to also jump, unfortunately a heated discussion occurred and only R Weissmandl jumped from the train, My Father ZL told me that R Weissmandl broke his leg after jumping from the train and suffered tremendously that he couldn't persuade others to also jump from the moving train,
The outstanding Av Bet Din of Pressburg R Dovid Wesseley TzL who was present at my Father's BarMitzva on the 7th day of Pesach, 1941 described HaRav Weissmandl as an incredible Neshoms who always acted with great Ahavas Yisrael,,...
To say otherwise is incorrect, R Weissmandl and his Working Group were brave and selfless people devoted to saving the remaining Jewish People during the terrible war years.
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