It takes a certain amount of willful blindness to see overwhelming good in the haredi response to the Holocaust. Jonathan Rosenblum…
… has that blindness.
In a new column published in the Jerusalem Post, Rosenblum discusses what he considers to be Yad Vashem's biased coverage of the haredi Holocaust experience and praises the work of Esther Farbshtein, a haredi historian who, Rosenblum says, is attempting to right the wrong.
But Rosenblum writes disingenuously:
Take [Farbshtein's] treatment of the famous speech given by Rabbi Mordechai of Bilgoraj on the eve of his departure together with his brother Rebbe Aharon of Belz from Budapest for Palestine. Rabbi Mordechai told his listeners that they had no reason to fear. That speech has been seized upon by secular historians as an example of a leading rebbe abandoning his flock.
Yet even though Rabbi Mordechai spoke only three months before the German takeover of Hungary, no one, including communal leaders of all political stripes, anticipated the fate of Hungarian Jewry. There were no efforts to flee. As Polish refugees, however, the Belzer Rebbe and Rabbi Mordechai were subject to dangers - imprisonment and repatriation - that did not apply to Hungarian Jews at that time. If some official versions of the speech omit the 22 lines of reassurance, Farbstein argues, that is not because Belzer Hassidim are covering up Rebbe Aharon's abandonment, but out of embarrassment that the father of the present Belzer Rebbe proved so lacking in prophecy.
Nor was the Belzer Rebbe a "model" of any pattern, as some historians have alleged. Of the 300 Lithuanian communal rabbis at the time of the Nazi invasion, no more than one or two survived. And the overwhelming majority of hassidic rebbes suffered the same fate as their hassidim.
At first blush, nothing may seem wrong with what Rosenblum wrote. But there is.
Lithuanian rabbis died in such large numbers because Lithuania fell to the Germans early in war. Poland, which borders Lithuania and whose border region had many "Lithuanian" yeshivas like Mir, fell even earlier.
If the rabbis of Poland and Lithuania were were going to successfully flee, that flight had to take place before the war began or in its first few days when it was still possible to cross the border into Latvia or into the Soviet Union.
Some rabbis – like those associated with the Mir – did flee and rode out the war in Shanghai.
Most others reacted too slowly. A day or two of indecision was enough to block flight. Others simply decided to stay put, not realizing how bad the German occupation would become.
But that is far different than the choices made by Hungarian rabbis.
Germany captured Hungary quite late in the war, and Hungarian community leaders, including leading rabbis, knew that the Germans had murdered enormous amounts of Jews in Poland and the Baltic countries. There was no mistaking Germany's intent.
The Belzer Rebbe and his brother knew what happened in Poland. They knew the Germans had turned on the Soviets. They knew Hungary could very well be next.
Further, Rosenblum omits another key fact, one brought clearly by a rabbinic eyewitness, Rabbi Teichtal, author of Eim HaBanim Semeicha.
Rabbi Teichtal points out that leading Hungarian, Slovakian and Romanian rabbis – like, for example, the Satmar Rebbe – told their congregations that the Germans would not hurt them. Why? Because, these rabbis said, we are anti-Zionist and God will protect us from the Germans in the merit of our refusal to join the Zionist heresy.
In that atmosphere, it is no wonder religious Jews did not try to flee. Their miracle working rebbes had promised them salvation.
When the Germans came the Satmar rebbe went into hiding. He was later saved by the Zionist Rudolph Kastner. The vast majority of his hasidim were murdered in Nazi death camps.
Rosenblum ignores this rabbinic behavior just as he ignores Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman's refusal to allow his students to flee to America and other examples of rabbinic errors that killed Jews.
Farbshtein argues that Belzer hasidim are embarrassed, not by their rebbe 's abandonment of his hasidim but by his lack of "prophesy."
And, in a sense, that is true. Hasidim don't expect their rebbes to go down with the ship or to lead the charge on the battlefield. They expect them to be "prophets," to "draw down" blessings from heaven and to "intercede" for their followers on high.
That is why these hasidim listened to their rebbe and his brother. It why the hasidim stayed put and did not try to flee. It is why they suffered and why they died.
And it is why the students of Elchonon Wasserman, who believed in da'as Torah, in the idea that the "greater" the rabbi the "closer" to God, that what came out of the lips of Rabbi Wasserman was God's will. They stayed. They suffered. They died.
Were there haredi heroes in the Holocaust?
Yes, there were.
They davened in death camps as an act of resistance. Some fought the Germans, fleeing to the woods and joining partisans. Others lived lives of quiet dignity as the world turned into hell around them.
But what Rosenblum misses is that secular Jews did these things as well. They held science classes in death camps. They lived with dignity as ghettos turned to hell, chronicling every bit of daily life to preserve it for history. And, of course, they fought the Germans.
Religious Jews were kapos and saints, just as secular Jews were.
But there is one difference.
Secular Jewish leaders did not claim prophesy. They did not stand before Jews order them to stay put, claiming prophesy (or da'as Torah).
Rebbes did this. Rabbis did this.
And they have not learned their lesson, 6 million Jews later.