An emotional letter of request to help the wondrous Gaon Rabbi Mordechai Pogermansky, who as a refugee had to leave Belgium and organize paperwork from England.
Letter from him are rare.
Etz Chaim yeshiva was originally in Heide, Belgium and is now in Wilrijk. The yeshiva attracted students from Holland, France, Switzerland and Germany. The curriculum was very strict and included vocational training. Etz Chaim graduates travelled to Telshe to continue their yeshiva studies. After the Holocaust the yeshiva reopened under the same name in the village of Kopela and later moved to Wilrijk, near Antwerp.
The Gaon Rabbi Shraga Feivel Shapira is the one who founded this yeshiva, when he served as a Shada”r in Belgium for the Kelm Yeshiva, and when he visited the home of two benefactors for the yeshiva, the Meisel and Burak families who had immigrated to Antwerp from Argentina, the benefactors spoke of the Shadar’s heart to open a good yeshiva for the locals , and they take on the burden.
The Gaon Rabbi Shapira opened the yeshiva in Heide – a small and quiet resort town whose fresh atmosphere and geographical location not far from Antwerp, but not too close to it, were a major consideration in choosing it, and there he moved to live in himself, while his entire family remained in Kelm. He brought from Lithuania the
wonderful genius Rabbi Mordechai Pogermanski, a wonderful and God-fearing genius of the world, about whose pure image many legends were woven, while the overseer was the man of thought and thought, the righteous genius Rabbi Yosef Bigon, who was a man of distinct morals, whose educational influence was prominent and well-known throughout Jewish Lithuania. Rabbi Bigon taught them the Maharal and Ramchal books, and was an uplifting moral figure for the lads.
wonderful genius Rabbi Mordechai Pogermanski, a wonderful and God-fearing genius of the world, about whose pure image many legends were woven, while the overseer was the man of thought and thought, the righteous genius Rabbi Yosef Bigon, who was a man of distinct morals, whose educational influence was prominent and well-known throughout Jewish Lithuania. Rabbi Bigon taught them the Maharal and Ramchal books, and was an uplifting moral figure for the lads.
In 1940 after the occupation of Belgium by the Nazis, the yeshiva moved to Antwerp. Rabbi Shapira refused to abandon the members of his yeshiva, and claimed that the yeshiva’s right would protect them. In 1942 a secret plan was hatched to evacuate the whole Yeshiva to France, but it turned out to be a fraud and behind it were double agents who worked for the Gestapo. The head of the yeshiva and dozens of his students were taken to the Majdanek extermination camp, where they all perished Hy”d.
Sent to the
Gaon Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Segal Rosh Yeshivas Manchester.
Gaon Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Segal Rosh Yeshivas Manchester.
27.5 Cm. Closed tears.
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Lot #453