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Issue # 19
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Soul On Fire - Reb Michoel Ber Weissmandl
By: Shimon Rosenberg
With sparks of hatred flashing from his eyes, SS Officer Dieter Wisliceny gazed at the Chassidic rabbi, in full rabbinical garb, who stood before him. He had never seen such daring in his life. Not only did this East European rabbi have the guts to walk calmly right into the lion’s den, where plans for the destruction of all the Jews of Czechoslovakia were carefully being worked out, he actually had the audacity to suggest that a high-ranking Nazi officer such as himself accept bribes from the filthy Jews to save Czech Jewry!
Wisliceny’s deputy, a Jewish traitor named Karol Höchberg, dutifully pointed his gun at Rabbi Weissmandl and said angrily, “How dare you offer a bribe to the honored officer!” But the rabbi remained maddeningly unruffled. He replied calmly to the Nazi and his Jewish lackey, “You can shoot me if you wish, but my offer is still very worthy of your consideration.”
Wisliceny could no longer contain himself. Grabbing an empty chair he threw it with all his might at Rabbi Weissmandl, who ducked instinctively. The chair thudded against the wall behind him and cracked into a number of pieces. Still composed, he looked the fierce Nazi straight in the eye and told him quietly but firmly, “Listen to me well. One day this war will come to an end and you will be brought to trial for your crimes. You will certainly want to have a witness who will step forward and testify that you saved Jews. Now is your only chance to buy yourself a witness.”
As he listened, the Nazi’s arrogant self-confidence began to melt and was quickly replaced by uncertainty. He knew that the war that had gone so well had changed and Germany was being pushed back relentlessly on both the eastern and western fronts. For all his self assurance, they would be no match for the massive Russian armored divisions that were already on their way, even as he continued to plot the destruction of Czech Jewry.
Wisliceny cast a doubtful glance in the direction of his Jewish underling as he thought to himself, “The man is right. Much as I hate the thought of coming on to Jews, the truth is that I probably will have to answer to others some day and we would be well advised to consider that fact now when there is still time.”
The Rabbi, Genius and Unparalleled Rescue Worker
Much has already been written about the legendary tzaddik Rabbi Michoel Dov Weissmandl, popularly known as “Reb Michoel Ber.” He passed away at the age of 53, but even in the short time that he was active on a communal level he accomplished more than another person could do in 100 years.
Perhaps more than anything else, Reb Michoel Ber was absolutely fearless. However, it was fearlessness not born of bravado, but of fear… of heaven. The Nitra Rav shares with us the following episode:
There were two respected Hungarian Jews that lived here in Monsey, Reb Aharon Tauber, father of Harav Yechiel Tauber of Machon L’Hora’ah, and Rabbi Yosef Rosenberg. Both were nephews of Rabbi Dovid Vaslli, Rabbi of Pressburg (today known as Bratislava, capital of Slovakia) who taught my father in his [Reb Michoel Ber’s] younger years. Each of them separately told me the following incident.
As soon as the troubles began in Pressburg the Nazis instituted a curfew. No one was permitted to be out on the street between 8 PM and 8 AM. My father ignored the curfew and used to go out during the night hours. He went to two Jews whose phone he would use for his rescue activities. Not only that, he went out in his full Jewish garb with his beard and peyos. Every time they looked out of their windows and saw my father they would tremble. They knew that at any moment an SS could appear and shoot him. They decided to speak to R’ Dovid Vaslli and ask him as his rebbi to command my father to shave off his beard and that he not go in the streets at night.
When they reached R’ Dovid and shared their worries with him the rabbi grabbed his beard and told them, “I swear by the Torah that my Michoel Ber has never sinned and one who has never sinned has nothing to fear!”
Other tzaddikim said of him that a person such him descends to this world only once in a few centuries -- and that was said of him before the outbreak of World War II, when his daring and genius came to the fore in the desperate efforts he made to rescue the Jews of Europe.
A brilliant Talmudic scholar, Reb Michoel Ber was already revolutionizing the world of Torah from his position in the Yeshiva of Nitra in Czechoslovakia before the war. He found himself in London at the outbreak of the war and could easily have chosen to remain there in relative safety while the fires of the Holocaust consumed continental Europe, but instead he returned to take his place among his people and it was during this period that his true genius became known to the world.
For the next several years Reb Michoel Ber waged what was largely a one-man war against not only the Nazis but against the many apathetic, uncaring or misguided Jews who often stood in his way as he tried valiantly to fight the Nazi death machine in every conceivable way. With the passage of time his groundbreaking, revolutionary ideas and methods of rescue have slowly gained greater recognition, aided and abetted by a wealth of hidden documents that have only recently begun to emerge.
Even his opponents have been forced to admit that Reb Michoel Ber must be credited with forestalling the deportation of Czech Jewry to concentration camps for several years, for publicizing to the world the existence and nature of the Auschwitz facilities, thus halting the deportation of Hungarian Jewry, and for initiating the ultimately unsuccessful plea to the Allies to bombs the rail tracks to Auschwitz.
Recently we were granted the privilege of meeting with one of Reb Michoel Ber’s sons, Rav Menachem Meir Weissmandl, Nitra Rav, in his office. He shared with us insights and memories of his father and reviewed with us some of the better known aspects of his father’s rescue work in light of newly discovered and often amazing information.
Ever since the posthumous publication of Reb Michoel Ber’s epic, unfinished work Min Hametzar (“From the Depth”), documenting his efforts during the Holocaust, various left-wing and Zionist writers and historians have attempted to minimize his efforts with the argument that they were wild ideas that were doomed to fail before they began. The Nitra Rav has undertaken to uphold his father’s legacy by debunking their claims with hard evidence. Over the past few years he has managed to obtain hundreds of historical letters and documents that remained hidden until now, and interviewed and heard testimony from countless people. Not only does their information confirm everything Reb Michoel Ber wrote in his work, but they often throw new and dramatic light on previously known incidents that underscore the incredible effort Reb Michoel Ber invested in his attempts to rescue his brethren. A new Reb Michoel Ber emerges.
An entire dossier of documents was recently discovered in the Manhattan archives of the American Joint Distribution Committee. Other documents were uncovered in the Libin Institute in Tel Aviv as well as in other locations. These documents will slowly be published over the next few years, but meanwhile we were granted a glimpse of a small portion of the historic papers and we heard some of the newly discovered details which we share here with our readers.
To read more, please purchase this issue, or signup for our monthly subscrition.
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