Haredim and the Holocaust, cont.

Esther Farbstein is a 'courageous' Holocaust researcher. Why? Because…

…she compiled a database of prefaces rabbis who survived the Holocaust wrote to sefarim, religious books, they published afterward:

…The conference hosts presented a CD-ROM containing a database of prefaces to religious texts - Torah interpretations and meditative literature - written from 1945 onward by rabbis who survived the Holocaust. Only one of the prefaces was written before the end of World War II.

The database project was initiated by ultra-Orthodox Holocaust researcher Esther Farbstein, director of the Holocaust Education Center at Jerusalem's Michlala Women's College in Jerusalem, with the support of the Holocaust Claims Conference.…

Farbstein is seen as a trailblazer in Holocaust studies in the ultra-Orthodox community. Some say that had she not been the daughter of a family of rabbis, she would not have been permitted to go so far.…

For almost two generations, the ultra-Orthodox avoided dealing with the Holocaust, at least officially. Farbstein says this derives from the trauma they experienced after the great destruction, the need to rebuild their communities and to survive in the face of secular Israeli society and Zionism. It may also derive from their revulsion at the Zionists' appropriation of the subject.…

The bodies of these religious books do not deal with the Holocaust itself; only in the the prefaces, where rabbis mention family members killed and communities destroyed, is the subject mentioned.

This is 'revolutionary' because the haredi world has largely suppressed any discussion of the Holocaust, in part because of theological issues (how could God have allowed babies to be turned into soap?, etc.). But a larger part of the silence comes from the behavior of haredi rabbis leading up to and during the Holocaust:

…Professor Menachem Friedman, however, one of the leading experts on ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel, attributes it to Haredi society's reluctance to confront the most difficult questions arising from the period. Questions like "Where was God in the Holocaust?," and those raising doubts about the rabbis' performance during those dark years. These questions were seen by ultra-Orthodox society as threatening to their way of life, and pushed it into a defensive stance.

"Even now, the Haredim cannot ask, at least not openly, how the Gerrer, Satmar and Belzer rebbes and others fled and saved themselves, leaving their followers behind. The question is not only why the rabbis refrained from warning their followers, but also why they prevented them from migrating to Israel for fear of 'spoiling' them," says Friedman.

Friedman says these questions, which Agudat Yisrael newspapers dealt with passionately immediately after the Holocaust, gradually became taboo over the years. …

Farbstein wrote a book on the Holocaust to explain actions during the Holocaust to non-Orthodox historians and researchers. That book has now been published in English by Mossad HaRav Kook and Feldheim.

Ephraim Zurroff , a Holocaust historian and researcher associated with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, has long contended haredim rescued their own first, paid rabbis to study Torah while rank and file Jews burned, and that leading hasidic rebbes fled to safety while telling their flocks not to run away.

Zuroff reviews Farbstein's book for Ha'aretz. He finds much good in her work, especially in dealing with the application of Jewish law to real life ghetto situations like turning over Jews to the Nazis to fill deportation quotas.

But Zuroff also finds much bad:

…With a graduate degree from the Hebrew University's Institute of Contemporary Jewry, the world's premier institution for Holocaust studies, and with a most-impressive ultra-Orthodox pedigree as the wife of the head of the Hebron Yeshiva and the great-granddaughter of the Ger Rebbe, Avraham Mordechai Alter, Farbstein possesses the necessary tools to conduct pioneering research in the field: access to Haredi sources, knowledge of the mindset of ultra-Orthodox Jews and training as a professional historian. In the end, however, these two volumes come with only the veneer of objective historical research, and ultimately read like something closer to hagiography.

This is clearly evident in Farbstein's focus on two highly controversial subjects: the priority given to the rescue of rabbis and Torah scholars(as opposed to run-of-the-mill Jews) during the war; and the decision of three leading Hasidic rebbes to escape Nazi-occupied Europe, leaving their adherents behind. This is hardly surprising, since it is these two questions that continue to be bitterly debated, serving as a source of constant friction and hostility in the relations between ultra-Orthodoxy and the rest of the Jewish world.

Priority for whom?

The first subject was highlighted by the activities of the Va'ad Hahatzalah rescue committee, which was established in the United States in mid-November 1939, in the wake of the escape of hundreds of Polish rabbis and yeshiva students from Eastern Poland, which the Soviet Union had occupied that September, to the independent republic of Lithuania. Created by American Orthodox rabbis, the Va'ad was initially established for the sole purpose of rescuing these rabbis and yeshiva students, who were seen as the elite of the world of Torah study and as deserving of absolute priority in all rescue projects. Farbstein explains the halakhic basis for granting rescue priority to these groups and presents the Va'ad's activities in an entirely positive light, while neglecting to mention a very problematic policy it pursued in the latter stages of the war.

Thus while a theoretical case could certainly be made for granting Torah scholars priority if they are among a group of Jews all facing the same degree of physical danger, it's difficult to believe that halakhah would support sending money to rabbis and yeshiva students who are not facing death, at the same time that other Jews are in danger of being murdered.

This was the situation in 1944 and 1945, by which time it was absolutely clear in the U.S. that Jews living under Nazi occupation were facing the threat of mass murder. During those years, the Va'ad, which in the meantime had officially expanded its mandate to include the rescue of all Jews, sent a significant portion of the funds it raised (close to 40 percent) to groups of rabbis and yeshiva students who had already found refuge in Shanghai and Soviet Central Asia. They undoubtedly faced difficult physical conditions, but by then they were not threatened with physical annihilation. In addition, these refugees were simultaneously being assisted by other Jewish relief agencies (the Joint Distribution Committee in Shanghai, and both the JDC and the Jewish Agency in Central Asia), so that the funds sent from the U.S. were not absolutely critical for their physical survival. Instead, they were used to enable them to pursue Torah study on a full-time basis.

At the same time, the Va'ad had found a means to send funds into occupied Europe to save Jews in Hungary, Slovakia and Poland from deportation to death camps. It did so by helping to move them from more dangerous places to less dangerous ones, supplying them with false documents and the like, objectives that clearly should have been given absolute priority over the support of Torah study. Oddly, there is absolutely no mention of this dilemma in Farbstein's book, nor is there any suggestion that the policies of the Va'ad were at any point highly questionable, even from a halakhic standpoint. Also missing from the context is the fact that most of the refugee rabbis and yeshiva students who had escaped to Lithuania, whom the Va'ad was established to save, were ultimately murdered by the Nazis.

One of the main factors responsible for this result was the refusal of most of the yeshiva heads who had been among those who escaped from eastern Poland to Lithuania to endorse a rescue scheme for emigration via the Far East. Only the Mir Yeshiva, whose head, Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, was convinced by Zionist leader Zerach Warhaftig to make arrangements to supply all his students with the necessary documents and visas to enable their emigration from the Soviet Union (which occupied Lithuania in June 1940) via Japan, was saved in its entirety. The vast majority of students from the 20 or so other yeshivot who had escaped to Vilna chose, upon the advice of their rabbinic leaders, to pass on the admittedly dangerous option of applying to emigrate from Soviet Lithuania. Farbstein also neglects to point out that among those who advised their students not to try and emigrate via the Far East were yeshiva heads who themselves had visas to the U.S., at least one of whom, Rabbi Aron Kotler, of the Kletzk Yeshiva, indeed went to America.

This total reluctance to criticize rabbinic leaders, which is characteristic of Haredi historiography, can also be clearly seen in the manner in which Farbstein assesses the decision of several leading Hasidic rebbes to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. The three most famous cases in this regard are those of the Ger Rebbe, the Belzer Rebbe and the Satmar Rebbe, all of whom left behind their followers and fled to the safety of Palestine, a decision that has been severely criticized by non-Haredi scholars and polemicists.

"Sense of public duty"

Farbstein is correct when she points out that each such decision must be analyzed separately, given their different historical contexts. (The Ger Rebbe escaped from Poland in 1940, the Belzer left Poland initially and then Hungary in January 1944 and the Satmar was on the "Kasztner transport" released in December 1944.) Ultimately, however, the rationale she presents to justify their escape is the same in all three cases, pointing to their "sense of public duty"-which dictated that they rescue themselves, as the future of Judaism was to a large extent dependent on their survival. Farbstein compares the rescue of the rebbes to that of Zionist leaders, whose escape she belittles as virtually worthless in terms of the Jewish future.

At the same time, however, that Farbstein justifies the escape of the rebbes, she also points to the extremely positive and inspirational role played by those rabbis who did not escape overseas, leaving unanswered the obvious question of the positive role that the Ger, Belzer and Satmar Rebbes could have played had they chosen to remain with their communities. What is clear in this sense is that Farbstein consistently supports the decision of the rabbis, even if in certain instances they appear contradictory. This basic inability to criticize Orthodox rabbis reduces the analytical elements of Farbstein?s study to hagiography rather than history. …

Chabad's record in this regard is no better, as I noted previously:

…The Rebbe Rayyatz followed in his father the Rashab's virulent anti-Zionism. (Did you know that a significant part of Neturei Karta's ideology is based on three hasidic Rebbes' anti-Zionism, the Satmar Rebbe, the Munkatcher Rebbe and the Rebbe Rashab of Lubavitch?) The Rayyatz told his followers there would be no war and Warsaw was safe for them. He did this in the summer of 1939, a couple of months before the Nazi destruction of Poland.

The Rayyatz was saved by American intervention. As he was being whisked out of bombed out Warsaw, what did he ask his American saviors for? To save more Jews? No. He asked for his book collection (largely secular books like Sherlock Holmes in Yiddish) and his household silver. The Rayyatz wrote several letters to President Roosevelt during the war. He never once asks Roosevelt to save Jews.…

None of us know how we would act if, God forbid, we were placed the same situations haredi leaders found themselves in 70 years ago.

The point here is not to assign blame – although in some cases, the blame is clear.

The point should be as follows: Rabbis are not perfect and should not be followed as if they were perfect.

Whitewashing history may make haredim feel good, but feeling good should not be the goal – learning from past mistakes should be.

Haredim and the Holocaust.
The Satmar Rebbe and the Holocaust.
The Belzer Rebbe and the Holocaust.
Chabad and the Holocaust (index).
Daas Torah and the Holocaust.
My rebbe, right or wrong - Haaretz - Israel News.pdf
Sign of Haredi society coming to grips with the Holocaust - Haaretz - Israel News.pdf

[Hat Tip: FormerlyFrum.]

Comments

[Malachhamovies]

I heard from someone that after the war Rabbi Michoel Ber Weissmandel (who with gisi fleischman a major zionist figure helped rescue jews) wanted to go to lakewood to confront reb aaron kotler and to physically hurt him. He was persuaded not to go.

His contention was that reb aahron opted to print a new shas for the refugees in shangahi rather then saving jews from the death machine in europe.

Rabbi Weissmandel called it the "Blood Shas" and because of this despised reb aaron kotler for the rest of his life.

[Martin]

Malach Hamoves,
Playing the blame game with historical hindsight is silly.
Your story about R'Weismasndel wanting to attack R'Ahron Kotler physically is laughable.R'Ahron had already established his Yeshiva with quite a number of adult boys at the time:Do you thing that Rabbi Weissmandel, an ailing Holocaust survivor thought he would be able to 'physically attack' Rabbi Kotler???
If you want to make up stories, give them some plausibilty at least.This is not a Chareidi website were fairy tales are considerd history.

Nothing at all to do with the topic:Rabbi Weissmandel was the father of the current kashruth supervisor at Agri.He lost a wife and 8 kids during the war and remarried afterwards

[yabed]

There was a sefer called MIN HAMETZER, written by this Rabbi Weismandl. He holds that the Zionist movement in the early 1900's (like BILU or Bais Yisroel Lechu Venelcha) was responsible for the holocaust's 6 million dead.

Last time I looked, I did not see his credentials as G-d's Accountant. Instead of embracing a Jewish State, where soldiers put their lives in jeopardy every day so that haredim can try to bring down the government, many chasidim would like to live under the oppresion (or die, as the case might be) of an Arab rule.

[Rachel Batya]

--This total reluctance to criticize rabbinic leaders, which is characteristic of Haredi historiography---

Could someone help me out here, benighted liberal Jew that I am, because I just can't understand how it became forbidden to criticize a rebbe. Have these people not studied Torah? Has it escaped their notice that Torah does not whitewash the errors of the patriarchs, the matriarchs, or Moshe Rabbeinu himself?

It's all there for generations of Jews to read over and over and over, year after year after year. We're relentless. No matter what week it is, no matter where we may find ourselves in the world, there's no hiding, it's in our faces, week in and week out, until the end of time. We're forced to look at all of it--and well we should be. Confronting our own flaws in the stories of our ancestors is vital to our ability to become a more ethical people.

If Moshe Rabbeinu couldn't enter the Promised Land because of some shortcoming, the nature of which commentators have argued for centuries, how in G-d's name has it become some terrible sin to speak about the flaws of the teachers who came after him?

[formely frum]

If Moshe Rabbeinu couldn't enter the Promised Land because of some shortcoming, the nature of which commentators have argued for centuries, how in G-d's name has it become some terrible sin to speak about the flaws of the teachers who came after him?

Posted by: Rachel Batya

funny I asked that question on VIN and got response.

You remember that every single og their live the rabbi controls from with hand to use when u you go to the bathroom which shoe to put on first and even which one to tie first

[formely frum]

funny, the auther does not see any reason that the rabbis choose to pick the brightest, but criticizes kazner for doing the exact same thing picking the strongest.

Ir seems what she did was very simple if a so called godol did it was good, no matter what they did. And if a non-religiuos Jew did the exact thing that a godol did it was wrong.

Now I know why I left that cult.

IN ADDITION WHY DID SHE NOT ADDRESS HOW A CHUSSID FELT WHO STAYED BEHIND AND LOST MOST OF HIS/HER FAMILY BECAUSE A RABBI SAID DO NOT GO TO A TREIF COUNTRY ONLY TO FIND OUT AFTER THE WAR THAT IS EXACTLY WERE THE REBBI WENT, WhEN IT GOT TO HOT.

[formely frum]

to Rachel Batya who askes--This total reluctance to criticize rabbinic leaders, which is characteristic of Haredi historiography---

because is a cult that is why

[WoolSIlkCotton]

The rebbes of the ultra-orthodox cults grant themselves the equivalent of papal infallibility. So if you dare to criticize, you are criticizing the word of G-d Himself.
The rebbe's henchmen, who kiss his rear end in order to curry favor, will then do everything possible to ruin you.
Because you are trapped in their small isolated cult world, where can you move to if you still want to be religious? Where else can you send your kids to school? Who would be willing to still talk to you once you are blacklisted by the cult leader?
So you learn to keep your mouth shut and tow the line. Stop thinking, and just obey; it's the easiest way.
If you can gather enough courage, you leave, knowing full well that they will try everything they still can to make you miserable.

[Rachel Batya]

I know the train has tumbled down the embankment. I can see the twisted wreckage at the bottom of the ravine. I'm just curious as to when, where, why, and how the train left the tracks at all.

[Rachel Batya]

This article also raises the question for me of how much respect to give to the teachings of a person who, for all of his/her learning, did some pretty unethical things and never did any kind of teshuva for them.

This kind of thing happens in all religions and groups, and every time, you have people saying "Yes, well, so-and-so was did betray his followers, his own teachings, and basic rules of ethical behavior, but he was so BRILLIANT!" In the Renewal world, people have said (and still say) this kind of stuff about Gafni, and it never ceases to amaze me. The only response I ever had to the man was a deep and immediate need to exit any room in which he was present. Along with what I've learned about him since then, I've never been able to compartmentalize my thinking sufficiently to read anything he actually wrote.

On the other side of the coin...In "There Once Was a World" by Yaffa Eliach, there is a beautiful story about a shamash and what he did the day the Nazis came into Eishyshok to murder all the Jews. The Nazis were going door to door that morning, pulling Jews out of their homes, and the shamash was one step ahead of them, asking every person in his community for forgiveness if he had done anything to harm them. Had he not invited so-and-so for an aliyah? Had he been too harsh when the children were noisy? He could have run and saved himself, but he didn't. I can never read this story without crying. I don't know how scholarly this man was, but to my mind, he certainly knew a lot more about Judaism than the "great teachers" who left their followers behind to perish without them.

[Jason]

Rachel, I can tell you that in my Modern Orthodox yeshiva day school education, I was always taught that one of the strengths of the Jewish tradition was that our forefathers and mothers were not God-like, were not saints without sin, but were real people, with real human desires and foibles. This was meant to be a lesson to all of us that while we might be expected to strive to be the best we can, perfection wasn't achievable and that we could still be great human beings and Jews without being perfect. This is something that has always stuck with me, and it's a shame the lesson doesn't seem to have made it to the Haredi world.

[Jake]

Don't know enough about the subject and need to study the post.

But did anyone ever hear of Douglas McArthur?

[Archie Bunker]

Zuroff's argument doesn't have a leg to stand on. There is no question that the Jews in Shanghai and Soviet Central Asia faced a clear & present danger to their lives.

When the Gestapo learned that Jews were in Shanghai they sent engineers to construct gas chambers and a delegation to convince Hirohito's people to exterminate them. The Jews were saved because the Japanese commander in China could not figure out why the Nazis were so hell bent on killing a few Hebrew on the other side of the world. When he summoned the Amshinover Rebbe from the Shanghai ghetto to ask him this question, the Rebbe cleverly told him that Germans hate Jews since they are an Oriental people. The Imperial commander then refused to cooperate with the Gestapo.

Jews in the Soviet realm were under constant threat of disappearing entirely or to Siberian gulags where they could die of cold, starvation, slave labor, or even being murdered at the hand of Nazi war prisoners. Even one of the Mirrer bochurim was removed from the train by NKVD (pre-KGB) and did not make it to Japan.

There is merit to the argument about money being spent on books which some rabbis were furious about at the time.

[BronxJew]

To Martin-
MalachHamovies is telling the truth. Weissmandel did indeed despise Kotler and called the Shanghai Shas idea the "Blut Shas".
And just becasue Weissmandel was weak and frail after the war doesn't mean he did not want to thrash the cocksure little man from Kletzk.
I personally know of a prominent orthodox rabbi who was beaten up in an even more prominent yeshiva after the war, by a man who accused him of squealing on his kin to save his own neck.
There was a Shammes (sexton) years ago in The Bronx who had to leave town because a fellow survivor came into Shul, took a look at him, and accused him of having his family killed at Auschwitz.
A lot of rabbis and Klei Kodesh (religious functionaries) turned out to be morally bankrupt when the chips were down. And don't you dare say that "they were just human beings, you would have done the same". Because in Warsaw, the three chief rabbis were offered to be hidden by the Church. They refused outright and said that they would remain with their flock. THAT is religious leadership.
Look at Janusz Korscak - not a rebbe - but the director of a Jewish orphanage. He was offered to be spared going to Auschwitz. He wouldn't even think of it. He boarded the train with his beloved orphans and sang to them and kissed them tenderly as they were all going to their deaths. THAT is a Tzadik.
The Kletzker Rosh Yeshiva, the Belzer, the Satmarer, the Gerrer and the "Frierdiker" amount to a moral ZERO.
By the way, there were indeed Chasidic rebbes who were not selfish cowards: The Kalever in Tiberias, the late Bluzhever from Boro Park - men like these suffered the most unspeakable trauma. And they didn't flee. They didn't abandon their people. They were true Tzadikim.
(So you can't accuse me of harboring a hatred for rebbes and the like.)

[formely frum]

I have read many books that there were non-jewish who brave who risk torture (and some where) to save Jews. There are even stories of two 10 year old boys who hid Jews because their parents tol them too if the nazis ever came and killed them (they were) and the children continued to feed and save the Jews.

i am not trying to make fun of the rebbis since who knows what I would done but to distort realty so to make the rebbis as flawless is wrong

[Pure Sephardic]

I haven't read her book yet , but I ate at their house a few time, her food is pretty good. She is not at all your typical Rebbitzin, neither is her Husband a typical rbbi. Her Husband was a Dayan in netanya, getting paid by the evil Zionism, a no-no for all charedim. He is quite knowledgeable, and a fun down to earth guy.

She is very loud and gets into heated Halachik debates with her husband. It's very weird that the Charedim let her go so far, this is very unlike them.

[WoolSIlkCotton]

BronxJew, my late parents and uncles, all Holocaust survivors, told similar accounts. They lived in Newark NJ after coming to the USA. There were similar such incidents in shuls in Newark, as you described in the Bronx.

I have found, that despite all the invocations of the Holocaust by the ultra-orthodox crowd, they are very ignorant of history. I strongly suspect that many in the ultra-religious world have never even read a factual history book about the Holocaust, and they have never read any of the great works by survivors such as Primo Levi or Elie Wiesel.

I will not attempt to justify the actions of all Hareidi Jewish leaders during the holocaust. However, I must point out that the escape of various rebbe'im from German hands is something that their close Hasidim would have strongly urged and had arranged. For these loyal Hasidim, the survival of the Rebbe and his successor meant that their flavor of Hasidus survived - even if with a very diminished flock. Thus, the Gerer Rebbe and his son were spirited out of Europe, but the rebbetzin remained (albeit with visas to Palestine and elsewhere). When order came down to "thin out" the Jewish population in Bergen-Belsen (the camp for the more prominent Jews), she was shipped to Auschwitz where she was gassed.

Her story is told incidentally with the stories of "Rabbiner" Spero, the Blushever rebbe, rebbetzin (2nd wife) and her sons in the book, "Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust" by Prof. Yaffa Eliach. Those stories are among the most remarkable in the book and come nearly directly from the rebbe and rebbetzin (via their daughter-in-law, Dina, who was a student of Eliach's.

Y. Aharon

[Archie Bunker]

http://www.kansas.com/news/local/story/529044.html

A Chabad connection.

[Archie Bunker]

BronxJew, Why do you attack Rabbi Kotler with such ferocity? Perhaps he erred in funding an edition of Talmud but he also raised tremendous amounts of money to save lives. He only gave shiurim on the weekends while he raised money for rescue.

[BronxJew]

WoolSilkCotton-
The Shammes in the story was my paternal grandfather. He died when I was a year old. He had to flee a shul in Boston, and then another in The Bronx, because survivors came in to Daven and saw him reading the Torah and caused a huge scene. Several unrelated survivors in Boston and New York recognized him.
I am very sensitive to any whitewashing of immoral conduct during the war, because I long ago came to terms with the fact that my Zeide was guilty.
I have long been very ashamed of my father's family because of this. This is one of the reasons I have only kept up relations with my mother's side of the family, who are all Americans and fought in the war.
When I was growing up, every time a rabbi or anyone else would tell me how wonderful my Zeide was, what a Talmid Chacham he was, I would always feel very embarrased. Because I feel that in a way , my blood is tainted: Here was a man who was a Sochatchover Chosid in Lodz before the war, was an accomplished Hebraist, etc. and sacrificed the ideals of his heritage to save his own neck.
Because of my grandfather's misconduct (I know, that's not the right word), I have always endeavored to find out the "inside dope" on Gedolim who were accused of treachery during the war. I have names and stories that would make your hair stand on end.

[formely frum]

Many Hareidi jews believes the holocaust happened because of the Zionist and or non religious Jews.
Therefore, this is how they few history, and taint history to conform with their believes. Their believes are rock solid, therefore history the past must conform to it.

[Rachel Batya]

--Because I feel that in a way , my blood is tainted--

Perhaps G-d saw to it that you were born into your family so that you could be the one to tell the truth about your zeyde and others like him. Someone had to, and you accepted that role.

Of course, you know that there is no such thing as tainted blood (though I know the feeling and it can feel very real). There are only free-willed choices. Your zeyde made his choices. You've made yours. The difference couldn't be clearer.

This whole thread is about truth-telling, and that's what you're doing.

[Shmarya]

I have names and stories that would make your hair stand on end.

Shouldn't those stories be told?

[critical_minyan]

an incredible thread of comments. the people who post on this website are fascinating.
I was not knowledgeable about this subject beforehand. Thank you all for posting.

[BronxJew]

Dear Shmarya,
I am not willing to risk someone getting after me. They could find my IP address and do damage to my life. Once they find out my identity they or their families could sue me for libel.

[Un-Orthodox and Unimpressed]

So many of Gd's accountants on one blog at one time!

[moishe]

as for the rabbis who left europe without their followers, I don't see why they shouldn't rescue themselfe. As for the rabbis who chose to die with their followers, I admire them very much fo that.

[moishe]

as for the rabbis who left europe without their followers, I don't see why they shouldn't rescue themselfe. As for the rabbis who chose to die with their followers, I admire them very much fo that.

[Shmarya]

When the Gestapo learned that Jews were in Shanghai they sent engineers to construct gas chambers and a delegation to convince Hirohito's people to exterminate them. The Jews were saved because the Japanese commander in China could not figure out why the Nazis were so hell bent on killing a few Hebrew on the other side of the world. When he summoned the Amshinover Rebbe from the Shanghai ghetto to ask him this question, the Rebbe cleverly told him that Germans hate Jews since they are an Oriental people. The Imperial commander then refused to cooperate with the Gestapo.

I heard this story from several people, including from Rabbi Blau, who was there with the Mir.

The Japanese were planning on deporting the Jews. A series of rabbis from the Mir went to the Japanese governor to plead for mercy. He rejected them. Finally, as a last resort, the Amshinover –who was viewed as an eccentric – was sent to plead.

When the Japanese governor asked the Amshinover why the Jews should be allowed to stay, rather than be deported, the Amshinover said, "The Germans hate us because we are Orientals."

The Japanese governor allowed the Mir to stay.

The point is, there were no German engineers and no gas chambers.

And no amount of money sent by the Vaad had any influence on saving the Mir at that point.

The money sent by the Vaad was used to keep rabbis learning.

Zuroff is correct.

[NotFrom5W]

BS"D

how could God have allowed babies to be turned into soap?

------------

Anyone with half an ounce of knowledge can tell you the soap is an urban legend. I would say that your regurgitation of it matches the rest of your site.

May the coming year bring you to true tshuva as well as to a refuas hanefesh and a silencing of the demons within you that are so much more poisonous to yourself (and to others, but your 15 minutes of semi-fame will come to an end in due time and leave you even more desperate for attention than you ever were before) than even the actions of the most despicable child molester or the reprehensible Leib Pinter.

[Shmarya]

Anyone with half an ounce of knowledge can tell you the soap is an urban legend.

Ian,

As most people reading this realize, whether babies were turned into soap or were simply murdered doesn't change the question being asked.

Process that.

[rebitzman]

+they or their families could sue me for libel.++

Truth is the absolute defense against such a lawsuit.

[formely frum]

as for the rabbis who left europe without their followers, I don't see why they shouldn't rescue themselfe. As for the rabbis who chose to die with their followers, I admire them very much fo that.

Posted by: moishe | September 15, 2008 at 12:27 AM

_________________________________

I think you are missing the point. Some rabbis said to their flock do not go to usa or Israel since it is a treif country. They said that even to some would could have immigrated and did not because of the rabbis view/advise. They the flock stayed behind and most likely died in the gas chambers. Their rabbi who told them not to go to a treif country, did just that to save themselves.

[Archie Bunker]

"I heard this story from several people, including from Rabbi Blau, who was there with the Mir."

So? I have known dozens of the old Mirrers, some of whom are still alive.

The fact that the Japanese wanted to deport the Jews does not contradict that the Nazis sent engineers which is recorded in at least one book.

Zuroff and Shmarya are still being silly since the Shanghai Jews were not only under constant bombardment from Allied warplanes but probably would have starved to death without outside help. Shanghai was not some kind of resort either. It was defacto house arrest. You two guys are just bothered that a yeshiva was transplanted intact from the old country.

[Yoel B]

the Shanghai Jews were not only under constant bombardment from Allied warplanes...

From the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website's article on the refugees in WWII Shanghai: "Shortly before the end of the war, a U.S. air raid on industrial Hongkew killed 40 Jewish refugees, including seven Polish Jews, and hundreds of Chinese."

--+they or their families could sue me for libel.++

Truth is the absolute defense against such a lawsuit.--

In the Heavenly Court perhaps, but here, it takes time, energy, money, and tsouris to defend oneself against a libel suit.

It's not that BronxJew shouldn't go through all that if he feels G-d requires it. But if G-d wants him to do something else, then holding his tongue on this subject would be a very wise decision.

[Archie Bunker]

Historians also have documentation that the Jews in Harbin, China, were subject to seizure by that region's Japanese commander who had them subjected to medical "experiments" similar to those at the hands of Mengele at Aushwitz. A minority of the Mirrer crowd ended up in Harbin.

[WoolSilkCotton]

We today cannot possibly imagine what truly went on then, in the darkest time of mankind's history, nor can we conceive of what people went through and why they did what they did. We hope that we will never know, either.
When I read Primo Levi's "Survival in Auschwitz", I got a better understanding, after which I decided to never question the actions or decisions of any survivor.

Anyone wishing to continue second-guessing or criticizing the people who went through those times should consider reading Primo Levi's book.

BronxJew, put your mind at rest. Each survivor's dilemma was unique. Your zeyda was faced with impossible decisions in the worst of times. Indeed, many survivors are alive because of such decisions they had to make. The people who died, whose families were the accusers he encountered here in the US, would have done the same thing if they could have. We will never know.

[formely frum]

Historians also have documentation that the Jews in Harbin, China, were subject to seizure by that region's Japanese commander who had them subjected to medical "experiments" similar to those at the hands of Mengele at Aushwitz. A minority of the Mirrer crowd ended up in Harbin.
___________________________________

please provide the source, otherwise you statement is meaningless.

[Shmarya]

The fact that the Japanese wanted to deport the Jews does not contradict that the Nazis sent engineers which is recorded in at least one book.

ArtScroll? [/sarcasm]

Zuroff and Shmarya are still being silly since the Shanghai Jews were not only under constant bombardment from Allied warplanes but probably would have starved to death without outside help.

Vaad money would not have protected the Jews from bombardment.

The Jews got money from other sources, like the Joint. Vaad money was supplemental.

[David Bar-Magen]

A Holocaust survivor once told me that there was an SS officer in his camp who regularly kicked Jewish men in the crotch. When the camp was liberated--he said--he and many other crazed, starving inmates captured and hanged this officer by his genitals until he died gruesomely and then--he continued without blinking--they ate him.

"We were starving, after all," he offered by way of explanation. There wasn't a shred of apology in his voice.

Whether or not this story is true is irrelevant. The salient point is: this story will never appear in any frum account of the Holocaust.

By sugarcoating the sheer, incomprehensible brutality that was the norm in those years in favor of creating a perfect, sheltered world in which Jews did no wrong and towards which factions of us strive to return, we are doing ourselves and our ancestors a great disservice.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Jason: I think today's MO yeshivot are staffed by chareidim, largely, for limudei kodesh. Back in the day, there was only one in my yeshiva. So the openess you rightly admire is largely gone- not everywhere but in many places. I could be wrong, but that's my impression.

On another topic: I love how certain interlopers parachute in from time to time to insult the posters here, who are having a heartfelt theological conversation, with the standard BS party line, and/or an ad hominem attack.

[Un-Orthodox and Unimpressed]

The claim that Jews were turned into soap is not total fiction.

There was experimentation done with the corpes of Jews and several proto-type bars of soap were made.

It would appear though that the idea never went further.

[maven]

This thread could go on for years and still not even cover a small amount of what happened. I would also state that blame is easy to fling around, but the world then was not our world and even serious attempts at trying to recreate it for movies, etc, seem sugarcoated to those who were there.
In Rego Park, NY there was a Hungarian/Chassidish shtieble in which the Rebbe there was, until his death, hounded with rumours of his being a kapo in the lager. Other survivors davened there, because those who were there, as opposed to those two or three generations removed, understood what the choices were and how they were made.
This is, of course, on the individual case by case record. Leaders are held to different standards. Its good to have the examples of Bobov, Alexander, Piesetzne, etc. The "artscroll-type" revisionism is to be expected; anyone with any real interest in the subject needs to rapidly move past that (its like learning "history" from Rabbi Wein- his history makes for great derashas but little else).

[sandman]

Archie - Rabbi Weissmandel did, indeed, think that the Shas printed in Shanghai was wrong...but he did not "despise R' Aharon Kotler for the rest of his life." In fact, following the request of one of his sons to sttend the Lakewood Yeshiva, Rabbi Weissmandel actually went to the yeshiva and listened to R' Aharon delivering a shiur. He left after about twenty minutes, went home and told his son that he could go. I heard this directly from the son's rommmate at Lakewood....Rabbi Weissmandel was a passionate person whose trauma in the years following the war was severe...as with many others. With the passage of time, he was able to reassess his positions to some degree.

[anonymous]

"When he summoned the Amshinover Rebbe from the Shanghai ghetto to ask him this question, the Rebbe cleverly told him that Germans hate Jews since they are an Oriental people."

Correction: This story happened when the Amshinover rebbe and Rabbi Moshe Shatzkes were in Kobe. Both were chosen to represent the Jewish community and were sent from Kobe to Tokyo. The story occured in or around 1941, before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The complete story can be found in the Fugu Plan by Marvin Tokayer.

[Paul Freedman]

Shmarya, you primarily attacking God or the Rebbes who made decisions in acute situations morally culpable in hindsight?

Both?

Neither side excusing the other we see.

Let us say the Rebbes hadn't fled but chosen to die with their flock.

OK. They are now pure.

How would this have helped.

Made the situation better?

Or is the complaint that they didn't go the Revisionist route and cry high and low for rescue?

Did they have the opportunity or mindset?

If they had would millions have been rescued?

It is claimed that Satmar simply misled followers.

Assume true, did all who fled?

If all had stayed behind what could have been done?

Even with a hue and cry?

The American air force when everyone knew what was going on refused to bomb Aushwitz and Churchill and the FDR refused to compell them to conduct an operation that would not have been daunting operationally.

[bloggela]

Bronxjew, I'm impressed with your honesty re your family history. To be honest is hard. Question: do you have any info on the Satmar rebbe in Bergen-Belsen? His Hasidim constantly speak of his mesirat nefesh and never fail to mention that Teitelbaum did not shear his beard during the war. I am looking for reliable source material that would confirm what I have read on blogs and elsewhere, and that is, that Teitelbaum was treated differently, better, than regular deportees while in Bergen-Belsen--as were all the passengers on Kasztner's train (indeed, even the infants of this contingent survived). One blogger wrote that the entire Kasztner contingent stayed in some special division of the camp, a showplace for the Red Cross, meant to convey that inmates were treated properly in the camp. BronxJew, do you have info on how Teitelbaum was treated in the camp, info that might help assess the extent to which he "risked his life" when he kept his beard? Thanks.

[Y. Aharon]

One of the more remarkable facets of the war that witnessed the near destruction of European Jewry was the practical opposition of Hitler's ally, the Japanese government, to his "final solution". Jewish refugees, including the Mirrer yeshiva body, found a home in Kobe, Japan prior to Dec. 7, '41. After war broke out between Japan and the US, they could no longer obtain financial support from the US, and had to leave for Shanghai. The continued support that they got from the Va'ad Hatzalah and others kept them from starving.

The lack of Japanese animus to Jews has been attributed to a number of factors. One was the sympathy of Hirohito's brother to Jews and Judaism (He may have converted later). Another was the memory of those in power at the vital help Japan received from Jacob Schiff and other Jewish financiers in their war against Czarist Russia in 1904. The high-powered rifles that they were able to buy based on the financial credit extended by those financiers was an important factor in their defeat of Russia (similar credit lines were withheld from Russia due to the recent Pogroms there). The lesson that was learned was the important power and influence of Jews. That lesson was only reinforced by the Nazi's constant propaganda about how the Jews control the democratic governments.

Y. Aharon

[Rachel Batya]

--Shmarya, you primarily attacking God or the Rebbes who made decisions in acute situations morally culpable in hindsight?--

Paul, my reading is that Shmarya's main intent is to attack neither G-d nor the rebbes. He's criticizing the fact that there is less than full disclosure in Haredi circles about the choices the rebbes made. It's not about blame. It's about honesty.

The inability to make an honest appraisal of any rebbe is at the heart of so many of the ills facing the Haredi community. If you look at VIN regarding the child molestation scandal, for example, you see comments like "Why don't the rabbonim just tell us what to do???" These people hand over power to the rabbonim as though they have all the answers. There is very little talk about people following halacha themselves, generating lists of these rodfim who prey on children, giving comfort and support to those who want to go to the police, and defending the honor of any family who makes public the abuse of one of their children.

You can't give all the power to authority figures and expect to live in a safe community. And you can't refrain from criticizing something a rebbe did in the past and expect to learn anything at all from history.

There should be a full and honest disclosure about what our rebbes did. Then people are free to draw their own conclusions. There are some who will say, "You can't judge, I might have done the same." There are others who will say, "If you can't judge the actions of a religious leader, then how does one earn the respect of being called a religious leader?" Still others will say that we need this information in order to make better decisions in the future, and to have some rachmones for ourselves, should we, G-d forbid, ever face the same kinds of circumstances.

But if you don't have information, you can't move anything forward at all.

[Shmarya]

Paul Freedman –

Shmarya, you primarily attacking God or the Rebbes who made decisions in acute situations morally culpable in hindsight?

Both?

These rabbis told their followers, Do not go to Palestine, do not go to America, do not go to Canada, etc.

Many of them also told their followers the Nazis would not hurt them because "we" are not Zionists.

Then many of those same rabbis tried to run away when the Germans came. They left their followers. Rabbis like Teitelbaum were saved when thousands of their flocks died, trapped.

If a rabbi had said, Do what you think is best. Go to America, etc., or not. And then that rabbi later fled – fine.

But to tell people to stay, to order them to stay, and then to run away from them at the end – that is a moral, ethical and religious problem.

But to post-war elevate these same rabbis to sainthood?!

That is a travesty and it makes a mockery of everything Judaism stands for.

[Un-Orthodox and Unimpressed]

But to post-war elevate these same rabbis to sainthood?!

That is a travesty and it makes a mockery of everything Judaism stands for.

Posted by: Shmarya | September 15, 2008 at 04:41 PM

I am having a hard time figuring out what part of Judaism was made a mockery.

What exactly do you think Judaism stands for?

[Shmarya]

I am having a hard time figuring out what part of Judaism was made a mockery.

What exactly do you think Judaism stands for?

Throughout Tanakh, leaders are written about, warts and all, bad with the good.

That has always been considered something unique, a primary defining element of Judaism – other religions and nations don't have national books that do this.

Jewish leaders were – until haredism – understood to be human beings with flaws.

[Un-Orthodox and Unimpressed]

Is that all Judaism stands for?
What a waste!

[formely frum]

weird why can't they admit a rebbi made a mistake did not moshe rabanu make a mistake, yes he did so can a rebbi.

to Paul

imagine the pain of a chussid, who followed the rebbis advice and stayed, only to lose his whole family. After a year or two in a concentration camp and then a dp camp he emigrated to USA. And is shocked to learn his rebbi to very same rebbi that told him stay, do not go to a trief country, finds out that is exactly what his rebbi did went to a treif country to same his butt. The powers to be know that there is no way to answer that, so they lie, so the question does not arise.

We are just saying he was a hypocrite, that cost many lives.

In general the really frum where least prepared because of the rabonim. They erred in judgement. But at least some really believed what they were saying and went down with the ship. The satmer and others that saved themselves while leaving the flock to die, should not be looked at holy men but as charlatan

As far as the beard issue the whole discussion is ridiculous, what do you think the Germans said shave your beard and the satmer rebbi said no, and the Germans said okay, this is one tough Jew.

Get real, either they took him by force, cut off his beard and pious whether he like it or not, or he was protected by some guards maybe because they where bribed or some other reason. And not because he refused he was in no position to refuse. That story is a good fantasy to create the infallible one .

[WoolSIlkCotton]

If some people wish to remain loyal followers of a leader who is, in fact, a manipulator and is taking advantage of them, that is their prerogative.
If people are foolish enough to allow a leader to claim the equivalent of papal infallibility, then let them remain loyal fools.

Perhaps this is why the Hassidic/Haredi crowd will never become a dominant force in general society, no matter how many babies they produce. They must all, by definition, remain as unthinking unquestioning sheep.
As the mass gets larger, it is harder and harder for the leader to keep everyone under his spell. So he creates stricter and stricter rules, keeps the group more isolated from the outside world, and issues dire warnings to those who would dare to disobey.
But how can you keep so many people under control? How much nonsense will they be willing to put up with before they openly start to question it all? When does the group reach critical mass? I guess we'll find out.

[Un-Orthodox and Unimpressed]

Perhaps this is why the Hassidic/Haredi crowd will never become a dominant force in general society, no matter how many babies they produce. They must all, by definition, remain as unthinking unquestioning sheep.

Posted by: WoolSIlkCotton

ROTFL! They already have taken over Orthodoxy and the demographic trends show them taking over Judaism within two generations.

(btw, the crack about how many babies they produce proves you are as bigotted as any of them.)

[WoolSIlkCotton]

+++...they already have taken over Orthodoxy and the demographic trends show them taking over Judaism...+++

What exactly have they taken over? Are you required to attend their shuls? Can't you attend a modern Ortho shul? What power does the H/H crowd have over you? Unless you agree to live under their rules, the answer is 'zero'. Outside of a few square blocks in Brooklyn, Lakewood, and Monsey, where else in the USA do they have power?

Having lots of babies has done nothing to improve the standing of third world and otherwise impoverished countries; in fact it only makes things more difficult for them. Ethnic groups here in the USA striving for more socioeconomic power also haven't improved their lot by having more and more babies. The opposite occurs for them.

BTW, what is ROTFL?

[Paul Freedman]

Shmarya, Rachel, formerly frum: I'm trying to make a distinction between integral problems of patriarchal authority, dependency of followers, or, if you will, passivity, (and the hagiagraphical reluctance to come to terms with individual weakness put into relief by the deaths of followers) (on the one hand) and (on the other hand) literal responsibility by those leaders for those deaths on a historical/generational scope--which is being implied.

The window when rabbinic resistance to emigration to America was of great affect ended circa 1905 when quotas were established and the American State Department resisted filling those quotas in WWII--even if Rebbes circa WWII had pleaded with their followers to flee flee flee their followers could *not* go to the United States that had barred its doors (as the voyage of the St. Louis sadly demonstrated) and could not go to Israel whose doors were closed by Britain in the 30's.

Even if we stipulate that Teitelbaum and other Rebbes (if you want to invite distress then, yes, we can add then the Lubavitcher Rebbe who escaped on the last transport available from France) were very bad and wicked hypocrites for choosing life over shared (and inspirational) death, their individual rescue doesn't change the very real inability of their leadership to effect a mass rescue of their followers,

Death with honor or to be a rescued remnant and charged with calumny is not much of a choice once the tanks roll in and the range of choices shrinks.

To make a cultural charge against orthodox culture in its attitude towards modernity or Zionism or to have had a limited conception of rescue or a societally determined focus on those selected for individual rescue is a different argument than confirming rabbis of virtual complicity in the physical extinction of the Jewish masses.

I was born in the United States because my apikores maternal grandfather was whipped by melameds for being a wiseacre and lit out for the America and because my freethinking/Reform paternal great grandfather took in his daughter's orthodox boyfriend (abandoned by his own father) and helped support them both through his bakery.

Born in the United States and born period then--you could say because my ancestors left the frum world behind. But I can't agree that that to say my family was not extirpated because it ignored the advice of rabbis is the same thing as to say that the direct moral responsibility for death at the hands of the Naziis of those who heeded the rabbis advice in prior decades or went untouched by Va'ad funds or were not instructed to flee to Shangai is anything more than incremental responsibility whose scope we cannot ultimately know after the Naziis and their minions had seized control of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and parts of Russia and the Allied Powers subordinated rescue to fighting the war militarily.

The Zionists also employed party keys outside and within captivity and we know the limited success of the negotiations that were attempted with the Naziis after extermination began when Nazii's bartered the lives for of scattered hundreds for booty or just their grim ironic amusement.

Millions of Russian prisoners of war were callously killed. About 2.5 non-Jewish Poles and minorities were murdered in Poland. We can disagree with or discount Farbstein's polemical argument for the superiority of rabbinic rescue without agreeing that the combined distortions and shortcomings of resources available to those rabbis and their supporters in the face of a genocidal war within a world war had anything other than a marginal effect, that given the magnitude and scope of the Holocaust they rise to historical significance.

[WoolSIlkCotton]

Well stated, Paul.

[Un-Orthodox and Unimpressed]

WoolSIlkCotton: Ever try buying kosher meat slaughtered by a Modern Orthodox shochet? Buy a mezuzah written by a Modern Orthodox scribe? Buy a wagon full of food products with Modern Orthodox kashruth supervision? Send your child to Modern Orthodox day school that only hires Modern Orthodox teachers? Send your wife to a mikvah built under the supervision of Modern Orthodox rabbis only? Get buried by a Hevra Kadisha with a Modern Orthodox rabbinic authority?

Good luck. You can't survive as an Orthodox Jew without them.

Worst thing about it is, they didn't win. You guys all surrendered without a fight.

BTW, ROTFL = Rolling On The Floor Laughing

[WoolSIlkCotton]

Good points, Un-Ortho.

I am no longer Chassidic, and not particularly orthodox, and your points are the reason. I finally got tired of the control they exerted over my life.

And thanks for explaining the acronym!

[Yochanan Lavie]

UO&UI has a good point. I have repeatedly said the MO have to train their own Jewish professionals, and not only strive to be Ortho-Yuppies. Also, due to party politics, the H/H crowd has a disproportionate amount of power in Israel, and therefore over world Jewry. If one wants to be H/H, gei gezunte heit. Those of us who don't need to develop the skills we need to sever our ties. If not, we will always be beholden to them.

[Un-Orthodox and Unimpressed]

If one wants to be H/H, gei gezunte heit. Those of us who don't need to develop the skills we need to sever our ties. If not, we will always be beholden to them.

Posted by: Yochanan Lavie | September 15, 2008 at 08:17 PM

And you'll have no one to blame but yourselves.

[bloggela]

Frum, What you say re Teitelbaum's beard is what I am inclined to believe. Still, if someone out there knows the exact circumstances that permitted the "miracle" of the untouched beard (if it was untouched...), then I think it worthwhile for that person to come forward. If someone knows that Teitelbaum was in a special red-cross section of the camp that tolerated behaviors forbidden elsewhere in the camp, then it would be worthwhile for this fact to be known. A curious satmar adolescent might come across the circumstances that facilitated the rebbe's "tremendous mesiras nefesh"; one more myth debunked, one more soul more inclined to use its brain rather than recycle, unquestioningly, unendingly, that which mammy, tatti, der melamed have drilled into it.

[Rachel Batya]

Paul, I see nowhere in Shmarya's comments in which he says that the rabbis who fled were solely responsible for the liquidation of their communities. Here's an example of what he said:

"But to tell people to stay, to order them to stay, and then to run away from them at the end – that is a moral, ethical and religious problem."

An analogy:

Suppose you order your children to stay in a house with a fire smoldering in the basement. The fire has been set by an arsonist who hates you and your family because you're Jews. You tell your children that nothing will happen because you're shomer shabbos and G-d will protect you. You tell them not to leave the house because G-d forbid, they might end up finding refuge in a goyishe house. And then, as you realize that the flames are going to engulf the house, you run and you leave the children behind.

Did you set the fire? No.

Could you have saved the children if you'd stayed behind? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Do you have a responsibility as a parent, who told the children to stay in the house, to do everything in your power to get them out of the house, even if it kills you? Absolutely.

If you occupy a position of authority, and you've put people in danger by using that authority, you have a unbreakable moral obligation to them. To abandon them to the flames after ordering them to stay is simply unconscionable.

Whether you can actually save the people is completely irrelevant. The question is not "Can you succeed?" but "Can you act in an ethical way?" If a rabbi cannot understand his moral obligation in a circumstance like this, he should find another job better suited to his abilities and interests.

[formely frum]

the problem Paul there where some Jews who could have immigrated, and some did not even try to escape because of their rebbis comment. In addition the rebbis do not see what they did wrong.

Why could not any of the rebbis mentioned, given a speech and cried, there where a few yiddin that could have emigrated but because of my decrees, they did not. I ask forgives from them, they could have maybe still be alive.

maybe they could not have done anything, but they closed the little opening that some had. But took that very same opening themselves.

[formely frum]

these issues will never be agreed on, simply because a fundamental diffidence how to look at matters especially life and death.

For example I come from a family
where almost every older person was holocaust survives. They would say many times the Germans/Nazis killed my family and hashen saved me.

I would always ask I do not understand shouldn't it be the Germans killed your family and the Russian and Americans saved you? Or, if you want to say hashem saved you then I guess hashem killed you family.

maybe that is why I am formerly frum I just cannot think that way. And the frum think that way
and that is why we think differently about historical events.

[JewishCynic]

It is important that the truth be told.
But when trying to understand motivations there is one other factor that should be kept in mind - the holocaust was an unprecedented event, many simply did not realize the danger - even when warned.

My grandparents came to the US almost two decades before the war and they had difficulty believing the reports coming out of Europe. My maternal grandfather lived in Berlin before WWI and thought the Germans were too cultured a people to do such things. My paternal grandfather grew up in a shtetel, he knew of pogroms and such but to believe such an organized and determined effort to exterminate was difficult.

I know of a number of personal stories where families argued whether to stay or go - even when already in the ghettos. Eastern european jews were used to outbreaks of anti-semitic attacks, many thought this was a particularly bad event but would subside. It was a logical, reasonable thing to think, unfortunatly the Nazis were neither logical or reasonable.
I've wondered if R. Wasserman thought the Americans warning him were just not used to the ways of europe and were over reacting to this latest pogrom.

So I disagree with Rachel Batya's smoldering fire in the basement analogy and see an analogy in recent financial events.
The talk has been out for months that Lehman Bros was on shaky ground. More recent reports indicated the Gov't might not step in like they did w/ Bear Stearns.
Experts were warning a collapse was coming Yet there were seasoned traders/investors who were burnt by Lehman's failure because they just didn't believe an institution like that would be allowed to go down.

Same thing can be applied to 9/11. The experts charged with protecting us had so many opportunities to stop it but they didn't know how to react to the information because nothing like that happened before.

It's part of human nature.

It's not a blanket excuse for an individual's behaviour but it should be kept in mind.

[Rachel Batya]

JewishCynic--

Yes, within families and communities, there was chronic disagreement about whether to stay or leave. I have one family member who saw what was coming and got out with his wife and sister in 1933. The rest of his family thought it would all blow over, because Germany was a "civilized" country. Needless to say, none of them survived.

But you really can't use this fact to excuse the behavior of the rebbes. They ran away *because* they saw what was happening. The Satmar and Belzer rebbes left in 1944. By that point, you had to be completely unconscious not to figure out what was going on. Anne Frank looked out the window and saw the Jews being rounded up, and she knew what fate awaited her if she were found. And she was a child.

Plus, this was not simply a family disagreement among relative equals. These were rebbes ordering their followers to stay, and then leaving, and at no point asking forgiveness from G-d or man about what they'd done. These men had a tremendous amount of power in their communities, and tremendous power brings with it tremendous responsibility. You just don't throw a stumbling block before the blind and then run like hell in the other direction. And that's what they did.

[Rowan Berkeley]

I don't agree with Shmarya that the truth or falsity of the soap story is irrelevant. In order to understand the political and cultural relations between the Jews and the West since WW2, it is necessary to face the fact that Western populations have been quite literally hypnotised by cinematic depictions of the Holocaust, and this is why they are unable to compete rationally with Jews in the formulation of policy, which in turn is why Western policy is going off the rails.

[Archie Bunker]

http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=73463

Video on this subject available for purchase from the History Channel.

http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:mpo-TLwr5b4J:www.history.navy.mil/library/online/usprisoners_japancomp.htm+harbin+jews+%22war+crimes%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

Unit 731

Starting with the 1980 publication of "Japan's Germ Warfare: The U.S. Cover-up of a War Crime," in The Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, information on alleged Japanese Army biological warfare experiments on POWs has slowly been revealed, contributing to the continuing intensity of the WWII POW issue.70

According to Sheldon Harris, there were apparently at least two different chemical and biological warfare units centered in Manchuira, each commanded by a different officer. One organization was Unit 100, with a central headquarters at Changchun, 150 miles south of Harbin: it was commanded by Major, later Major General, Wakamatsu Yujiro. Although, Harris reported, it experimented on humans, it has gotten little attention so far.71 The experiments about which the most is known are the biological warfare (BW) as well as some chemical warfare (CW) experiments, reportedly directed by a military doctor named Shiro Ishii.72 From the mid-1930s through 1945, Dr. Ishii, who eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant General, reportedly directed BW experiment organizations under various names at a number of locations in and around the northern Manchurian city of Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province. His main organization, Unit 731, was based in Manchuria, 15 miles south of Harbin at Ping Fan.73 The base at Ping Fan had a perimeter of almost four miles an airfield, and a rail spur from Harbin, 150 buildings, and 3,000 employees.74 Ping Fan was declared a Special Military Region and was very securely fortified and guarded.75

Three books have been written about the activities of Unit 731, and it has been the subject of frequent mentions in U.S. newspaper articles in the late 1990s. A one-hour television documentary on Unit 731, entitled History Undercover: Unit 731, Nightmare in Manchuria, was broadcast on the History Channel on March 7, 1999, and was rebroadcast an additional three times.76 Books have been written about Unit 731 in Japan, former members have come forward to tell of their activities, and a traveling exhibit about it has been seen by some 200,000 Japanese.77

Ongoing private investigations by scholars have described Unit 731 as spreading disease and causing epidemics in field experiments that may have killed tens or even hundreds of thousands of Chinese.78 Although exact numbers are unknown, various researchers have alleged that Unit 731 performed laboratory experiments on somewhere between 850 to 10,000 or more subjects, and that none of them survived.79 According to author Sheldon Harris, victims consisted mostly of Han Chinese inhabitants of the area around Harbin but also included stateless White Russians, Harbin Jews, criminals, communist guerrillas or spies, Mongolians, Koreans, the mentally handicapped, and also Soviet soldiers captured in border skirmishes.80 Newspaper articles also state that Allied soldiers, possibly including some Americans, might have been experimented on.81

Experiments on humans reportedly not only included infection with anthrax, typhoid, and other infectious diseases but also live dissections of prisoners without anesthesia, exposing prisoners to low air pressure, freezing of prisoners, removal of limbs, blood, and organs (often without anesthesia) to see the results, exposing humans to fragmentation rounds containing infectious agents, and other experiments.82

70. John W. Powell, "Japan's Germ Warfare: The U.S. Cover-up of a War Crime" Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 12, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1980), p. 17.
See statement by Han Xiao, China's leading expert on Unit 731, that U.S. POWs were experimented on in "A Half Century of Denial: The Hidden Truth About Japan's Unit 731," U.S. News and World Report, vol. 119, no. 5 (July 31, 1995), p. 56.
See "Japan Rebuffs Requests for Information about Its Germ-Warfare Atrocities," New York Times, Mar. 4, 1999, sec. A, p. 12, for the statement, "It is still not established, for example, whether American prisoners of war were among those experimented on."
71. Sheldon Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Coverup (London, New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 83-100.
72. "In Search of Buried Poison," Newsweek, July 20, 1998, p. 27. A chemical warfare unit about which little is known at the present time was Unit 516, headquartered at Qiqihar in northeast China.
In 1999 the Japanese government signed an agreement with China which pledged that Japan would be responsible for demilitarizing what Japan says are some 700,000 or more shells filled with CW agents left in China after Japanese forces withdrew after their defeat in WWII. China puts this figure at 2,000,000 shells. China had claimed that these live munitions had injured or killed over 2,000 Chinese who had accidentally encountered them since 1945. See "Gov't Oks Use of Articles for Weapons Disposal in China," Japan Weekly Monitor, Apr. 24, 2000 (online). Available through NEXIS Library: NEWS File: CURNWS.
"Japan, China OK Chemical Arms Cleanup," Asahi News Service, Aug. 2, 1999 (online). Available through NEXIS Library: NEWS File: CURNWS.
"Cleaning Up a Poisonous China," The Japan Time, Aug. 15, 1998 (online). Available through NEXIS Library: NEWS File: CURNWS.
73. Sheldon Harris quotes Lt. Gen. Kajitsuka Ryuji, Lt. General in the Medical Service and former Chief of the Medical Administration of the Kwantung Army, as saying that he saw an imperial decree giving Ishii permission to start the initial BW operation in Manchuria in 1936 "by Command of the Emperor" and that later on Emperor Hirohito also issued a decree authorizing creation of Unit 731. Prince Mikasa, the emperor's brother, also reportedly inspected the work at Pingfan in 1943. Harris, Factories of Death, pp. 40, 142.
See also "A Half Century of Denial," U.S. News & World Report, July 31, 1995, p. 56.
74. Harris, Factories of Death, pp. 33-35.
"Bacteriological Warfare Museum to Open in Harbin New June," Asian Political News (online). Available through NEXIS Library: NEWS File: CURNWS. According to news accounts, in June 2001 the Chinese plan to open to the public part of a "Unit 731 Bacteriological Warfare Museum" in Harbin and to ask that the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) put this site on its World Heritage list.
75. Ibid., pp. 31-56.
76. Information on the History Channel Web site [http:/www.historychannel.com/] and from discussion with AETV customer relations representative, Dec. 3, 1999. This program can be ordered through the History Channel Web site.
77. "‘Japan's Auschwitz’ Revealed; Nation Confronts Unit 731's Cruelty." Phoenix [Ariz.] Gazette, Sept. 30, 1994, p. A6.
Japanese language books on Unit 731 include Seiichi Morimura's 1981 The Devil's Gluttony, a three-volume fictional narrative based on historical research, and Keiichi Tsuneishi's later book, The Biological Warfare Unit That Disappeared.
"Wartime Skeletons Return to Haunt Japan: Human Remains Found on a Tokyo Building Site Have Revived the Ghosts of Japan's Experiments with Biological Weapons," New Scientist, Feb. 25, 1995, p. 12.
78. “Japanese War Crimes Are still Coming to Light; The So-called 'Asian Holocaust' Was Covered Up by the Americans, Some Experts Say,” Orlando Sentinel, Mar. 14, 1999, p. A6.
According to Qiu Mingxuan, A Chinese epidemiologist who recently testified in a Japanese court about Unit 731's biological warfare in China during WWII, the most conservative estimates are that 270,000 people were made ill and that 50,000 people died as a result of Unit 731's spreading plague, cholera, typhus, anthrax, and dysentery. Newsweek, Feb. 12, 2001, p. 56.
79. "Death Factories," New York Times Book Review, Jan. 23, 2000, p. 22. A low estimate of 850 POW experimentees is cited in this book review of The Biology of Doom: The History of America's Secret Germ Warfare Project.
See "Japan Rebuffs Requests for Information," New York Times, Mar. 4, 1999, for an estimate of 10,000.
80. Harris, Factories of Death, p. 49.
81. See "Human Guinea Pigs 'Advanced Medical Science'; Japan, the Shame of Unit 731," The Independent (London), Apr. 16, 1995, p. 14, for information on a former Unit 731 member who said he saw specimen jars of organs labeled Chinese, Korean, and later Russian, American, French, and British.
See "Japanese Doctor Lectures as Penance for Horrors Inflicted on War Prisoners," The Washington Times, May 21, 1995, p. A1, for the allegation that American, Australian, British, Chinese and Russian POWs were injected with tetanus, anthrax, bubonic plague and other germs.
See also "A Half Century of Denial," U.S. News & World Report, for a statement by Chinese Unit 731 expert Han Xiao that American POWs at Mukden were injected with bacteria to test their immunity.
82. Harris, Factories of Death, pp. 57-82.

[Shmarya]

I don't agree with Shmarya that the truth or falsity of the soap story is irrelevant. In order to understand the political and cultural relations between the Jews and the West since WW2, it is necessary to face the fact that Western populations have been quite literally hypnotised by cinematic depictions of the Holocaust, and this is why they are unable to compete rationally with Jews in the formulation of policy, which in turn is why Western policy is going off the rails.

Please.

6 million Jews were murdered, Rowan, and a large part of the West either did the killing or stood by while it happened.

It's not movies that cause the West to be extra careful when dealing with Israel, Rowan – it's the guilt.

Process that.

[Un-Orthodox and Unimpressed]

If nothing else, I always figured Shmarya was a pretty smart fellow. (angry as all Hell, but smart nonetheless.)

I am surprised to see he bothered to answer Rowan.

Unless of course Shmarya's long simmering hatred of all things Orthodox has dulled his ability to detect hatred of all things Jewish.

[Yochanan Lavie]

There are two schools of thought in dealing with cranks. One is "Don't give them the time of day," which is UO's approach. The other is: refute them every time, which is Shmarya's. In the past, I would have sided with UO on this. But in the age of cyber-disinformation, and black helicoptor theories gaining mass credence (esp. after 9/11, amoung otherwise intellegent people) I am now inclined to side with Shmarya. A difference of opinion in tactics is not a difference in self-hatred.

[Y. Aharon]

Archie has cited material on Japanese war atrocities in China that is still relevant today. The US government after the war made a decision at some high level not to prosecute some notorious Japanese and German war criminals because they were deemed useful in combatting the new enemy, the Soviets. Thus, the mass murderers of Chinese and allied personnel were never brought to trial in exchange for the laboratory notes and files on their germ warfare and other experiments. Thus, expediency, in the form of a possible advantage over a potential enemy, prevailed over justice and morality. Is our current government much different?

Y. Aharon

[Yochanan Lavie]

Y. Aharon: The Soviets also had their pet Nazi scientists. And has any gov't been any different? (I know that doesn't make it right).

[Rachel Batya]

--There are two schools of thought in dealing with cranks.--

I think each one has its merits. If the crank in question is simply a) obscene, b) attacking someone without making an argument, or c) trying to hijack the conversation just for the fun of it, it makes sense to let them shout into nothingness.

However, if the crank in question is spreading misinformation, bigotry, ignorance, or any other form of falsehood, then refuting said crank's crankiness is a necessity--that is, until you've repeated yourself enough that any sane person except a crank would get it already.

--A difference of opinion in tactics is not a difference in self-hatred.--

What do you mean by this? I'm interested.

[Paul Freedman]

So, besides human nature and the "Hobson's choices" presented by the catastrophe I suggesting that leadership responsibility for what we could charge was the passive vulnerability of the flocks is also qualified by major factors:

a) by the time of the war Jews were being stripped of their legal protections--think of Postville, Jews were not only "illegal aliens" regardless of prior citizenship but they became "illegal human beings"--punishable by death; I do not believe it is inaccurate as others have also suggested to state that those who had power, negotiating chips for rescue often failed to act. Reading the cold and delaying tactics of State Department officials under Morgenthau *after* the worst was underway and known in the 40's is chilling.

b) the fire may have been smoldering for decades but when it burst out, when the chorban was lit by the Nazi nihilistic crusade an open fire the doors of rescue were closed. I can't agree that there was a realistic chance that the rebbes who were rescued/or described as fleeing could have put that fire out as the firemen were off putting out other fires or getting drunk and laughing outside the barred exits.

c) secular Jews, caught too as the circle of flame constricted and were faced with the same dilemmas also failed to live up to their better natures and also temporized knowing what lay ahead--secular functionaries appointed to the Judenrat councils pursued favoritism and petty powers

d) also if rescue generally tends to single out "extraordinary" public officials to save that tendency is not exclusive within the religious community. Albert Einstein was not specifically rescued but he was in a "special" position to proactively anticipate events in Germany, arranging for teaching positions in the United States and resident here since 1932 when the legal campaign against German Jews began. You can say he did not abandon anyone but opportunities were available to him that were not available to other Jewish educators or scientists. Is that so different than the case of a rabbinic leader who was deemed by his community to be important enough to rescue?

[Paul Freedman]

Rachel, formerly frum: it was 1924, not 1905 that immigration was restricted in the US--personally I am reluctant to judge even should you say that perhaps so but in this situation or that situation this or that individual could have at least been warned or, if not part of a mass movement of rescue, been saved.

There might be for me one exception that proves the rule, if it is true that a rescued leader went one step further and pacified those left behind by assuring them that divine providence would make everything all right even though that rabbi knew otherwise

[Yochanan Lavie]

"--A difference of opinion in tactics is not a difference in self-hatred.--

What do you mean by this? I'm interested."

Rachel: UO, who is obviously very intellegent, wrote:

"I am surprised to see he bothered to answer Rowan.

Unless of course Shmarya's long simmering hatred of all things Orthodox has dulled his ability to detect hatred of all things Jewish."

I thought that was an unfortunate comment. I was trying to explain that just because Shmarya chooses to engage that Rowan Berkeley person doesn't mean he is a self-hating Jew. It simply means that Shmarya's approach to people like Berkeley is different.

[formely frum]

Rachel, formerly frum: it was 1924, not 1905 that immigration was restricted in the US--personally I am reluctant to judge even should you say that perhaps so but in this situation or that situation this or that individual could have at least been warned or, if not part of a mass movement of rescue, been saved.

There might be for me one exception that proves the rule, if it is true that a rescued leader went one step further and pacified those left behind by assuring them that divine providence would make everything all right even though that rabbi knew otherwise

Posted by: Paul Freedman | September 16, 2008 at 05:05 PM

Not sure I understand this

[Paul Freedman]

formerly frum: OK, in a nutshell-by 1924 doors of US close to Jews, in the war American State Department actively works to prevent rescue of Jews, Palestine is closed off from Jews, by the time it is clear that the Naziis intend to fight a war of annihilation the Jews are hunted non-persons targetted for literal extermination in all places the Naziis can get their hands on them--whatever the rabbis did or didn't do, said or didn't say, preached or didn't preach before WWII, their action or non-action was a feather on the scales. If leaders were rescued their followers died, if they weren't, their followers died. But having been rescued it was I think wrong to deliberately mislead followers.

[formely frum]

Paul, no one said that the rabbis could have done anything most likely they could do nothing. However, it is well know some rabbis told their chassidim not to leave not to try, and said
DON'T GO TO A TRIEF MEDINA (country) he must have been asked a question and that was his answer. why not just say i do not think it is necessary, but if you are so worried go, but keep your faith strong.

THEY told them not to save themselves, some even said better to die frum then go to a treif country and become frie (non religious)

They cannot even admit that the rebbie erred in judgment. They will say and do say that god guided him to say that or something in that vain

I do think that this issue is very painful for the heridie community. And this is why they make up fantasy stories about the rebbi. Like the satmer rebbi beard story, or the Beltzer rebbie praying in an apartment right across the street from Hitler.

This type of delusion is common, not only the heridie community.

The heridie the rebbi is almost godly, it reminds me of a joke.

As a NYC train was pulling away someone inside said `yelled antisemetic things. The rebbi hearing this said and looked up to the heaven, please hashem derail the train. One of the chassidem said rebbie, but there are yiddin on the train. The rebbie looked up and said, hashem please I beg you do not derail the train. The chassidem looked in anticipation and rejoiced that the train did not derail, and proclaimed it was a miracle the rebbie saved so many lives the train did not derail.

An old joke from my yeshiva days we used to say about Lubavitch

[Paul Freedman]

bad choices for all Jews--religious leaders were hypocritical? how about secular leaders of Jewish councils appointed as overseerers of Jewish communities before the Naziis liquidated the remnants--Chaim Rumkowski in Lodz etc.

----wikipedia (but accurate)------

Rumkowski's "Give Me Your Children" speech pleaded with the Jews in the ghetto to give up children of ten years of age and younger, as well as the old and the sick, so that others might survive. Some commentators see this speech as exemplifying aspects of the Holocaust.

“A grievous blow has struck the ghetto. They are asking us to give up the best we possess - the children and the elderly. I was unworthy of having a child of my own, so I gave the best years of my life to children. I've lived and breathed with children, I never imagined I would be forced to deliver this sacrifice to the altar with my own hands. In my old age, I must stretch out my hands and beg: Brothers and sisters! Hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers: Give me your children!"

[Paul Freedman]

formerly frum: I have to agree that in hindsight encouraging Jews to go to America would have not been a bad idea. I am only asking you to consider that if you think that was a moral error the rabbis couldn't correct it after 1924...

I'm secular, so as much as I respect the values of chassidus I would personally be hypocritical if I said I would accept that kind of authority in my own life.

[Paul Freedman]

...not to mention being so naive that you turn your rebbe into a comic book

[formely frum]

Of course many non religious Jews did much worse than what we are saying the rabbis did.

Just a comment i know what you are saying but this is not the same situation. In the case of Rumkowski for example the Nazis said we need 100 Jews for liquidation. If you do not choose we will choose 100 at random. Not sure what his option were.
But in the rebbies cases some could have been saved yes by there own means at no cost of lives to other Jews and the rabbis said no, do not go a treif medina, there has been rumors that they even ripped up passports (heard that on VIN). If he really believed that, why was it ok for him to go?
simply said, in Rumkowski case no matter what he said or did 100 jews died. in the rebbie cases, the ones that had the means could have escape and he stopped them

In addition, we can as intelligent people discuss debate the action of Rumkowski and others during such a
horrible time. But we can discuss it, debate and it is not taboo to maybe say they were wrong, made bad judgment or worse. It is not whitewashed and said they were great people and all their decision were noble and great decreed from hashem, like the chassidum do and this new book does , she cannot get herself to criticize any action by the rabbis. not to even admit they made a bad judgment call

[Rachel Batya]

--An old joke from my yeshiva days we used to say about Lubavitch--

ROTFLMAO!!!!!

That's one of the funniest jokes I've ever heard in my LIFE!

[Rachel Batya]

--I was trying to explain that just because Shmarya chooses to engage that Rowan Berkeley person doesn't mean he is a self-hating Jew. It simply means that Shmarya's approach to people like Berkeley is different. --

Got it. Thanks!

[formely frum]

paul
formerly frum: I have to agree that in hindsight encouraging Jews to go to America would have not been a bad idea. I am only asking you to consider that if you think that was a moral error the rabbis couldn't correct it after 1924

they of course could not correct it, or saved anyone, but there were some people that had that opportunity even late into the war either because of people they know wealth whatever and the rebbie stopped them and said DO NOT GO
i know it was probably a small group of people but those few could have been saved,

For example what happened if a person got a visa to China, japan or Switzerland (those countries had people who gave out passport) gets home and tell the rebbie I am so happy I can leave and save my family, (I have no evidence for the next statement) other should go and get visa from their embassy.

And the rebbie said to him, no do not go the other countries they are trief you are going to put you and your children in spiritual danger. He throws any his passport and does not relay the information because the rebbie thought it was a bad idea.

We are saying is he "actively stopped" some from saving themselves but use the very same method he forbid he flock to use to save himself

[Paul Freedman]

formerly frum: some...

I think we disagree on whether the crisis of imminent death permits a rabbi to "eat his words"--to fail to live up to his former ideals and seek refuge. But yes I would think that if you could save one life it would be wrong to tear up a passport etc. Or escape and then send word to those that are left behind that everything would be OK if you knew otherwise.

I am curious though what the prefaces said about those the rabbis remembered, how did the rabbi refer to those lost when the rabbi himself brought up the topic in the preface

[formely frum]

ROTFLMAO!!!!!

That's one of the funniest jokes I've ever heard in my LIFE!

Posted by: Rachel Batya | September 16, 2008 at 07:35 PM

Not a bais yakov girl i guess LOL

what is Mao?

[Rachel Batya]

Paul and FF--Here's the bottom line for me:

It is true that no one can judge, because the circumstances were unthinkable. I like to think of myself as a highly ethical person, but lots of people who are ethical under normal circumstances can go pretty low when their lives are on the line.

So yes, I might have done what the Satmer Rebbe did. However, I would NOT expect history to treat me kindly.

[Paul Freedman]

p.s. my grandfather was a very observant traditional Jew and always said to his children when Zionism etc. came up that while the state of Israel was not exactly a holy state it was a place of refuge for Jews and merited support for that reason.

[Rachel Batya]

--Not a bais yakov girl i guess LOL--

Not in this life, anyway.

--What is Mao?--

He was a Chinese Communist dictator. Didn't they teach you anything in yeshiva? ;-)

Actually, ROTFLMAO==Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off

[Paul Freedman]

Rachel: something to think about .. .ty

[Yochanan Lavie]

Rachel: Your comeback was funny!

[formely frum]

Paul we agree more than you think
read on I explain further down

I am curious though what the prefaces said about those the rabbis remembered, how did the rabbi refer to those lost when the rabbi himself brought up the topic in the preface

do not know the book is to expensive for me at this point.

As far as to what i would do, i do not know and I hope I never have to find out. But that is not the point, the point is (not so much to say anything about the rebbie, but about how it is discussed and or viewed) that it is taboo to ask discuss this matter in the heridie community. And even to suggest that maybe the rebbi erred in judgment. Or, when faced with only two option death or immigrate to a trief country. He choose to live. He choose to be human. If you would even suggest that I am sure if you said that in a satmer shul, you ass would be flying out of the window.

Also I wonder did the satmer rebbie or chassidium ever give thanks to the Zionist that saved him?