Unique & poignant letter ”I have received a letter from ….. Rabbi Dr. [Yakov] Avigdor,
Chaplain Dr. Avigdor, Warburg….He together with a few others are …abstaining from forbidden foods.
….Please be good enough to send him …. some kosher food…. He writes that he together with the other few people are absolutely starving.
At the same time would you be kind enough to let me know if you have heard anything of my family- Margulies-Babad-Frenkel?
I wish you much sucess in the great and holy work you are doing. And may the almighty blessing accompany you.
My regards & ברכות to all the suffering brethren. May we be זוכה very soon to see the ישועת ישראל".
English with some Hebrew. London, 1945. On official letterhead, Filing holes.
Rebbe Israel Aryey Leib Margulies, Admur Przemyslany, born in Przemyslany in 1892.
He married Pesha (Peszy), daughter of Rabbi Isaac Babad of Tartakow. He was Premishlan Rebbe in Cricklewood, north-west London where he settled in 1927 with his family.
For nearly 30 years he had played a leading role in strengthening the religious life of the London community. Apart from being a sympathetic orator with a charm and simplicity of speech which commended his words to the learned and unlearned alike, be was a constructive religious leader. He established his own Beth Hamedrash in the East End, in Cricklewood, and, during his last year, in Hampstead Garden Suburb, and was one of the founders of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations. He was appointed a member of the Moetzet Gedolei Hatorah and in that capacity recited chapters of the Psalms at the opening of the Knessia Gedola in Jerusalem.
Rebbi Margulies’ greatest enthusiasm was for Jewish education, and the North West London Jewish Day Schools, of which he was a founder. He died in East Finchley, London on January 18, 1955.
The Tzadik Rabbi Shlomo Baumgarten Rabbi of the Toras Etz Chaim synagogue in London, served as a British Army Chaplain right after the war ended, & was one of the first to travel to the D. P camps to help the stricken Sherit Hapleta brethren.
