The Half-Jewish Nazi Who Saved The Lubavitcher Rebbe

The sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe was hiding in war-torn Warsaw during the days after the German invasion in 1939. After locating the rabbi at the order of Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the so-called Abwehr, Maj. Ernst Bloch, whose father was Jewish but who had no particular love for Judaism or those who practiced the religion fervently, enabled him to escape to safety in Latvia.

 

The half-Jewish Nazi who saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Thanks to the late Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, Chabad Lubavitch is a well-known and powerful Hasidic movement. But few people know that the rebbe's predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, owes his life to a half-Jewish Nazi officer acting under the direct order of the head of the Third Reich's military intelligence agency.
By Raphael Ahren • Ha’aretz

Thanks to the late Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, Chabad Lubavitch is a well-known and powerful Hasidic movement, with 4,000 emissaries now stationed around the world. But few people know that the rebbe's predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, owes his life to a half-Jewish Nazi officer acting under the direct order of the head of the Third Reich's military intelligence agency.

The sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe was hiding in war-torn Warsaw during the days after the German invasion in 1939. After locating the rabbi at the order of Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the so-called Abwehr, Maj. Ernst Bloch, whose father was Jewish but who had no particular love for Judaism or those who practiced the religion fervently, enabled him to escape to safety in Latvia.

"This operation came about as a result of back-channel diplomatic efforts by the Germans to try and convince the Americans not to enter the war with the British and French against Germany," said Larry Price, whose documentary about this episode, "The Chabad Rebbe and the German Officer," airs tonight (Channel 1, 9:45 P.M. ). According to the Jerusalem-based journalist and filmmaker, the American Chabad community at the time was small in number, but influential enough to save their leader.

"Using their contacts, Chabad managed to get Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis involved," the 66-year-old told Haaretz. "Brandeis contacted one of [U.S. President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt's right-hand men, Benjamin Cohen, who influenced Roosevelt to toss the Jewish people a bone. That bone was Rabbi Schneerson."

On Roosevelt's orders

At the time, those demanding that the U.S. government take on a stronger role regarding the fate of European Jewry did so despite "tremendous anti-Semitism in America," Price said. "Roosevelt had to tread lightly and do something, so he thought that perhaps rescuing the rebbe would ameliorate the situation with the Jewish community. The Germans, for their part, thought perhaps they could keep a backdoor channel open with the Americans and prevent them from entering the war."

Releasing one rabbi was a relatively low price to pay, he added. Price's 56-minute documentary details the background of the Schneerson deal and how Bloch and his fellow Abwehr agents accompanied the rabbi and about 20 of his relatives and peers in the first-class cabin of a train from Warsaw to Berlin, using his acting skills to avoid being arrested by suspicious Nazi officers. In the German capital, Schneerson was given over to Latvian diplomats, who brought him to safety in Riga. About a year later he made his way to New York, where he died in 1950. He was succeeded the following year by his son-in-law, Menachem M. Schneerson.

Price, who was born in Chicago and immigrated to Israel in 1971, came across Schneerson's story while working on his previous documentary film, "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers," which tells the story of some of the estimated 150,000 men of Jewish origin who served in the German army during World War II.

"I thought it was a conundrum: Why would the Germans want to send anybody to rescue an ultra-Orthodox Jew from the Germans? It's a very unique story," Price said.

This film and Price's previous film are based on books written by Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military and Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

What Ha'aretz doesn't tell you is that the moment Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn crossed into Latvia he was met by US State Department officials. Why? Because the US Government had arranged the rescue because Chabad convinced gullible US Government officials and elected leaders that Schneersohn was the "pope of all the Protestant Jews in the world."

What did this great Jewish 'leader' do when he got to freedom?

The first act taken by Schneersohn was to ask the US Government to send representatives back to war ravaged Poland to rescue his book collection (the vast majority were secular books like Sherlock Holmes stories translated into Yiddish), his household goods and his silver.

No mention was made of saving Jews – even of saving other members of his own family.

During the war, Schneersohn wrote several letters to US President Roosevelt. Never once did Schneersohn ask that Jews be saved or that the Nazi extermination machine be targeted by Allied troops.

Chabad did not arrange Schneersohn's rescue – Chabad was far too incompetent for that. Through a lawyer whose father was a Chabad follower, Chabad was put in touch with another attorney – a secular Jew with no connection to Chabad – who used his contacts in Washington to arrange the rescue.

Chabad owed this attorney thousands of dollars. His wife was pregnant and the electric company was threatening to turn off power. And it was winter. But Chabad, which had promised the man the money and had agreed on his fee, never paid. Instead, the money was turned over to Schneersohn, who kept it.

Later, after attacking the Vaad Hatzoloh, the Orthodox rescue group that saved Jews from the Holocaust, for not being haredi enough, Schneersohn started his own rescue organization. But, because the only person Chabad had contact with who had the talent and the connections to rescue people was the lawyer Chabad refused to pay, Schneerson's rescues overwhelmingly failed.

Schneerson kept raising money for Holocaust rescue anyway, but he used that money to open his Brooklyn yeshiva.

All of this is amply documented in Rigg's book and in interviews with Rigg posted here and elsewhere.

Rigg was offered inducements by Chabad to leave out this information from his book.

Rigg refused the deal. As he told me, printing the truth was more important than making money or living a comfortable life.

Others who have written books on Chabad have not been so honest or so courageous.

The Story Chabad Doesn't Want You To Hear: An Interview With Historian Bryan Mark Rigg.

Index of Bryan Mark Rigg posts.

[Hat Tip: AEA.]

Comments

[corn popper]

As one who is alive due to the prodigious efforts of the Vaad Hatzolah, I am outraged at Shneerson's SELFISH and SHAMEFUL actions!

[Yoel Mechanic]

Posted by: moshy | May 01, 2011 at 01:56 PM

How is this relevant to this blog? This blog is explicitly for covering certain news from the orthodox Jewish world since 2004. Nothing could be clearer from the masthead, and explicit rules against name calling, requests to base arguments on logic, etc. (not to imply you are breaking any rules with your post...but maybe you are heading in that direction)

[Barry]

Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was a very mysterious man who was hanged in connection with the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/canaris.html

I think in 1939 the USA made is quite clear that it had no intention to enter into war with Germany so Larry Price's hypothesis is probably wrong. It was however possible that the USA for domestic purposes wished to be helping Jews and the Abwer was happy to help it do so. It is not as if Germany had any need for the rabbi.

[seymour]

thi sis old

and many other chassidic rebbies (not all) did nothing for their chassideim to save them but made sure that they got out and their familes.

amazingly that has no bearing on their followers that think they are great holy men who can do and did no wrong.

Of course they have a simple answer to all the criticism don't look at us or our leaders the holocaust happened because of the secular and the Zionist.
If it would not have been for our frumkeit to counter balance the evil of secular and Zionist Jews it would have been much worse

[David]

the vast majority were secular books like Sherlock Holmes stories translated into English

Sherlock Holmes was written in English. It must mean it was translated from English into something else.

[Sparky the Wonder Dog]

" Why? Because the US Government had arranged the rescue because Chabad convinced gullible US Government officials and elected leaders that Schneersohn was the "pope of all the Protestant Jews in the world."

This is just tootsty-fruitsy drivel.

The "pope of all the Protestant Jews in the world" is meaningless to begin with. Plus the US government didn't care about the Jews in the world that were being exterminated whose rescue was not an American war goal and hadn't been a priority before the war began. Nothing else recounted here gives any indication that the Rebbe was considered some huge big deal by the Americans-in the very story it is reported as a bone, a crumb, a way to mollify Jews by doing something on the cheap, whatever Canaris, with or without backing from Hitler's Chancery intended to accomplish.

[Shmarya]

You see, Paul, we've been through this before – you know, way back when you used your reall name.

You were a delusional liar then and you are a delusional liar now.

These spiritual descendants of your dear (but delusional and probably drug addicted) Ba'al Shem Tov were very disgusting people.

Everything I wrote is backed with facts.

Pull your head out of your ass and confront those facts – if your capon-like existence can find courage to do so.

[dlz]

Why did Sherlock Holmes have to be translated into English?

[Shmarya]

Why did Sherlock Holmes have to be translated into English?

Posted by: dlz | May 02, 2011 at 04:32 AM

Sorry. It's a typo. It should read "Yiddish." I corrected my post. Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

[sk]

It is preposterous to believe that anyone would choose a Yiddish Sherlock Holmes over a human life.

[Shmarya]

It is preposterous to believe that anyone would choose a Yiddish Sherlock Holmes over a human life.

Posted by: sk | May 03, 2011 at 10:13 PM

The books had monetary value.

[Yosef ben M]

really? 1/2 yid? huh! and all the while, they kept repeating their mantra that a joo is a joo und a goy is a goy.!?

ps: and I keep vondering, can any of them be considered a joo?

[Alon]

At the time, much of the world was focused on defeating the Nazis in western Europe, but documents recently uncovered in Chabad-Lubavitch archives in New York confirmed that upon his arrival in the United States, the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, immediately began lobbying for assistance to Jews in the Nazis' path.

The Rebbe petitioned ambassadors and politicians in London and New York for relief packages to be sent to the Jewish communities in the western parts of what is today the former Soviet Union. His letters were co-signed by Rabbi Jacob Rosenheim, the then-president of the Agudath Israel World Organization. As the massacres in Rostov-on-Don and Kharkov proved, however, the effort ultimately proved fruitless.

http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/558369/jewish/Remembering-Holocausts-Russian-Horrors.htm

[Shmarya]

Please.

The Frierdiker Rebbe walked out of the Vaad Hatzolah, went off and raised money for his own rescues, and then used most of that money meant to save Jews from the Nazis to open his Brooklyn yeshiva.

And he did not ask Americans to save anyone else. All he asked for was for the Americans to save his silver, his furniture, and his (largely secular) book collection.

And your lies don't change those facts.