Rebbetzin Adina Landau, the wife of HaGaon HaRav Dov Landau, met last week with some of the relatives of hostages being held in Gaza.

The relatives came to receive a bracha from the Rosh Yeshivah and afterward, they sat down and talked with the Rebbetzin.

Rebbetzin Landau began by telling the families: “We daven every day. Hakadosh Baruch Hu directs everything. We daven and cry and are pained by everything you’ve endured. I survived the Holocaust – as a young orphaned child without parents. And I say that these Arabs are worse than the Nazis.” [The Shefa Chaim, z’tl, expressed the same sentiment.]

“Even the Nazis did what they did secretly but like this, so openly? To murder people like that? Apparently, we’re in great debt to Hakadosh Baruch Hu – we can’t understand His ways.”

Rebbetzin Landau is the grandaughter of Rosh Yeshivas Slabodka, HaGaon HaRav Yitzchak Isaac Sher, z’tl, the son-in-law of the Alter of Slabodka, HaGaon HaRav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, z’tl.

HaRav Yitzchak Isaac was in Switzerland when World War II broke out and survived the Holocaust. However, his son, HaRav Yosef, H’yd, and his wife were killed by the Nazis in the Kovno ghetto. Their young daughter, Adina, survived the Holocaust in hiding in a monastery.

HaRav Yitzchak Isaac’s daughter, Rebbetzin Chaya Miriam, the wife of HaGaon HaRav Mordechai Shulman, z’tl, traveled to Poland after the war and found her niece and brought her back to Israel and raised her in her home. When she reached marriageable age, the Chazon Ish suggested HaRav Dov, who was then learning in Chevron Yeshivah in Jerusalem.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)