The recent comments by President Bush that the US should have bombed the rails leading to Auschwitz, and the ensuing debate of what the world did or didn’t do, drags along with it the question-what did world Jewry do or not do? We all grew up on the legends of the Agudah, Va’ad Hatzalah, and their associates abroad. In fact, these organizations were led by the Gedolei Hador, and staffed by people whose mission it was to save Klal Yisroel. What is less known is that their efforts were consistently hampered and obstructed by the Reform and Conservative in America, and by the Zionists in Europe.
Even less known, is that after the war, Va’ad Hatzalah itself splintered, when some segments of the coalition moved to position themselves for political gains in the soon to be established State of Israel, while the Gedolei Torah led the efforts to continue to save the she’aris hapleita through the rebuilding of Torah in America and in Eretz Yisroel. The results are well known, and are the basis of our Torah lives today. Lakewood Yeshiva, Agudas Yisroel, Torah U’Mesorah and Chinuch Atzmai are fixed icons which to us are synonomous with Kiyum HaTorah.
What we take for granted is that had we been in that generation, we for sure would not have rested until we did everything in our power to save yiddishe neshamos. We don’t realize that Auschwitz was a nisayon that America failed, and so did the Reform and Conservative. Today that nisayon doesn’t exist, so what do they lose from saying they should have done otherwise. The question is -what is the nisayon of today, what can we do to save yiddishe neshamos, and are we involved in doing what we can?
Today’s struggle does pit the Reform against the Gedolei Torah once again.
It is interesting that Chinuch Atzmai, the mosad which was built by Reb Aharon Kotler zt”l, finds itself besieged by the very same Reform Jewry of America which frustrated his hatzalah efforts over a half a century ago. In the recently published Mishnas Reb Aharon Ma’amarim V’Sichos Mussar Chelek 4, Reb Aharon zt”l expresses grief that he was unable to found more Chinuch Atzmai schools in the rural villages, something which could have saved an entire village from losing its connection to Torah and Mitzvos.
Today, with the developement of an intercity bussing infrastructure, these same cities which Reb Aharon zt”l anguished about can be ‘turned over’, by registering and bussing the children to a neighboring town, where Reb Aharon did establish a Chinuch Atzmai school. This in fact did begin to happen over the past decade, as Torah education enrollment increased to over 200 towns and villages where children from totally secular backgrounds get on a coach bus each morning and are transported as far as 30 km away to a Chinuch Atzmai school. From Na’hariya in the North, to Dimonah in the South, and to 120 schools in between, 20,000 children are depending on these buses for their connection to Torah.
An insidious lawsuit which is pending in the Israeli High Court, has been brought to the court by a plaintiff none other than the legal representative of Reform Jewry of America in Eretz Yisroel, in a direct effort to ground these buses. Because of the lawsuit, the State is officially barred from funding this bussing program. And so, private monies are needed to continue the bussing.
This is the nisayon of today.
These children are yesomim bechayei ha’av, with no one in the world to care about their yiddishkeit. That is why Gedolei HaDor are so intimately involved. Because there is nobody else to worry about these neshamos. Are we going to be there for them? Can we hear their cry? Can we contemplate the remote possibility that they chas veshalom return to secular public school? What is our share in the effort to save them? And potentially, b’ezras Hashem, the many other children who would follow their example and make the switch to a frum school? Once again Gedolei Yisroel are sounding the cry- Mi La’Shem Ailai
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14 Responses
Is there a donations hotline?
Yes, you are completely correct.
This issue of who should pay for school busses is exactly the same as Auschwitz, thank you for making this explicit and obvious comparison.
First the killed six million of us, now they want us to pay for busses, AD MOSAI.
I find your comments about the Holocaust offensive. It appears as if you are blaming the deaths of many of our bretheren during the Holocaust on the reform and conservative jews in America as well as on the Zionists, rather than on the Nazis,Germans,Poles,Ukranians etc.
If you mean to place blame for inadequate rescue efforts, than there is plenty of blame to go around including the Orthodox. In fact Rav Weissmandel himself actually placed this blame on Rav Aharon Kotler and threw a chair at him for not doing enough to rescue Hungarian Jewery.
Perhaps you would like to place blame on the victims of the Holocaust for incurring the wrath of Hitler Yimach Shemo. After all, if it were not for the “Jews causing Germany to lose World War 1” Hitler never would have come up with his Anihillation plan. It is inappropriate to use the Holocaust as a marketing tool to raise funds for other causes no matter how worthy they may be.It is also not right to oversimplify the enormity of the tragedy of Holocaust for the sake of propaganda and furthering a religious or political agenda. Do you really believe that Hashem Yisborach allowed 6 million yidden to be murdererd because the Reform and Conservative thwarted Hatzolah and Agudas Yisroel in their rescue efforts? Or because Roosevelt did not bomb the rails leading to Auschwitz. You state “We don’t realize that Auschwitz was a nisayon that America failed, and so did the Reform and Conservative”. I am curious if the person who wrote that statement, grew up with any Holocaust survivors in their family or if they knew any Holocaust survivors personally. There are many Gedolim who did not think the Holocaust was such a simple thing to understand and who did not agree with the Satmer rebbe that it was the Zionists fault.
Dear I.M.
Your naivte is exceeded only by your ignorance!
I am a Holocaust survivor, and I have studied this period extensively.
The Reform group in America, led by Stephen Wise, SR”Y, intentionally downplayed the murder of the Six million in Europe, in order to please their hero, Roosevelt, in the White House.
“Rabbi” Wise considered it more important to please Roosevelt than to save his six million Brethren.
When Rabbi Eliezer Silver, ZT”L, led a delegation of 400 Rabbis to Washington to plead for his brethren in Europe, Wise and his friends told Roosevelt that “these are nothing but a bunch of old fashioned Rabbis,” and that they should be ignored.
When Hillel Kook and Ben Hecht launched a fund-raising campaign to rescue the Jews of Europe, Wise and his Reform group urged their buddies in the Anti-Semitic State Department to deport them (Kook was an Israeli).
These scum undermined every effort to save the Jews of Europe.
May they all rot in hell!
You can’t be “Koifer” against a human being (outside of Lubavitch)
Deepthinker I think you are missing my point. I am not trying to absolve any of the various leaders of the time from their failures in effective rescue or advocacy on behalf of the 6 million Kedoshim. However since you studied the period extensively you would know that historians have concluded that the Jews were essentially doomed from the start of the war and perhaps even before that. No amount of rescue activity,money,bribery or bombing of rails would have had a major effect in altering the Nazi program to cleanse the earth of the Jew. Perhaps a few thousand could have been saved here or there and maybe even a few hundred thousand but that is speculation. Had the rails been bombed, The Nazis might have resorted back to mass shootings as they did with the Einzatzgruppen. One way or another with the borders closed and
Hitler in control of Europe, the Germans were going to find a way to murder the Jews.Had he G-d Forbid won in Europe he had plans to murder the Jews in America as well. It is understandable that people want to focus the “blame” on reform or Conservative or Orthodox or Roosevelt etc. This is because the scope of what happened is so incomprehensible and unbelievable,that finding a particular group or individual to blame makes it more digestible. We should anylyze that era and learn from our mistakes but not use it to further a narrow agenda or raise money in a tasteless comparison.
Dear I.M:
With all due respect, I’m afraid you have your facts wrong.
Rabbi Michoel Ber Weissmandel,ZT”L, with very limited resources, was able to bribe top Nazi officials and save tens of thousands of Jews by postponing the deportations. He maintained the cooperation of Dieter Wisliceny, while asking the American Joint Distribution Committee for more money to continue the rescue effort, but their representative in Switzerlan refused to help him.
Over fierce opposition from Wise’s Reform group (and from the Mizrachi), Agudath Israel, under Reb Elimelech Tress, ZT”L, kept thousands of Jews alive by sending Care packages illegally into Nazi Europe. Unbelieveably the Mizrachi actually picketed the Aguda offices.
Despite opposition from Wise and his henchmen, the Vaad Hatzolo, under Rabbi Eliezer Silver and Rav Avraham Kalmanovitch, ZT”L, eventually convinced Treasury Secretary Morgenthau to create the War Refugee Board, which saved hundreds of thousands of Jews.
At every step of the way, Stephen Wise, Judge Proskauer, and the rest of those Reform swine, obstructed all attempts to save European Jewry.
They were truly the descendents of the Erev Rav who created the Golden Calf and brought tragedy on the Jewish people.
I.M.,
I am shocked by your comments (#9). You make it seem like saving a few thousand yidden would have been no big deal if anyway millions of others would have perished. That is soooo wrong.
deepthinker never said that the reform caused the holocaust nor did he say that they could have prevented it entirely. He Also didn’t say that they merely didn’t do enough to save their brethren. What he said was that they ACTIVELY PREVENTED others from doing whatever was humanly possible to save yidden. Had they not done this even you admit that thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yidden may have been saved.
You mention that Rav Weissmandel was angry at Rav Ahron Kotler for not doing more. I never heard that story, but even if it is true, the issue was that he felt that more could be done. But to compare that to the obstruction of the reform is ridiculous.
Imagine a mad gunman had taken a group of people hostage and a swat team was on the way to try to rescue them. Then another person had prevented the swat team from getting there and all the hostages were murdered. Would you say that the the person who stopped the swat team from arriving bears no blame at all because it is only mere speculation about whether they would have been able to save the hostages even if they had been able to get there on time?
TO CHARLIE BROWN:
I LIKE YOUR STYLE!
deepthinker,
thanks so much, and same to you!
To Deepthinker and Charlie Brown. I think you are missing my point. I think that by focusing on the failures in relief and rescue, and using that as a hammer to pound away at the Reform and Zionists, and to use this as a selling tool to get donations for an Orthodox organization, is inappropriate.
I also think the debate about rescue and relief failures and the attempts to highlight them to portray the Orthodox as the good guys and the everybody else as the bad guys is politically motivated. I think that is wrong and it detracts from really analyzing the Holocaust to see what lessons the Jewish People could learn.
I suspect there were two sides to the story and it is not so black and white. I do not think it is appropriate to refer to Stephen Wise and the reform as “Swine” and I do not think the Mizrachi and all the others you have such vitriol for, intentionally worked to bring about the deaths of Jews. Unfortunately all of the rescue and relief efforts were too little too late no matter who did them and how valiantly they tried.
We are blessed with hindsight. At the time that war was going on there was real validity to the argument that winning the war as quickly as possible would be the best way to save Jews. Giving money to the Nazis to save some Jews might have allowed them grow their capacity to murder even more Jews. An allied victory was not so certain at the time. It is not difficult to understand the motivation for the laws against transferring money to the Nazis at the time,and it might even be unfair to critisize someone for not breaking the law and not supporting those kinds of efforts.
This article is a low blow. Don’t bring in the holocaust to discuss a bussing issue please.
Does anyone of the chashuva commenters know ANYTHING about the budget cuts in the Israeli knesset? (or why confuse reality with your personal agenda) Besides bussing cuts, prescriptions and medical therapies have been cut for disabled veterens, bituach leumi is at its lowest, religious ministries have been cut, mikvaot are in disarray, subsidizes for higher education have been cut, military budget has been reduced, bread & food subsidies were removed………but its only the CHAREDI BUSSES that are being hurt. H-E-L-L-O!!
I think bringing in Churban Europe into this issue in the article was wrong. I also think what matters is that Chinuch Atmzoi gets the funding for the busses it needed.
So, to repeat the first commetn (#1), does anyone know what’s the best way to donate to this worthy cause?