The Town. Kielce was a city holy to the Poles — a seat of the Kraków bishopric, ringed by churches, a cathedral and a priests’ seminary — and for centuries it was closed to Jews. A privilege of King Zygmunt I in 1535 let the townsmen bar Jews from the gates; in 1761 the Bishop of Kraków renewed the ban; and Jews who began to settle after 1832 were expelled again in 1847. Only after the failed Polish rising of 1863, when the Russians stripped the local powers, were Jews permitted to settle freely. In 1852 barely a hundred Jews lived among some three and a half thousand Christians, registering their births and burying their dead in nearby Checiny, on which the handful of Kielce Jews depended for every matter of the kehilla. From 1868 — when Jewish births were first recorded in the city and its Pakosz beis hachaim was opened — a kehilla rose with extraordinary speed, swelled by the Warsaw–Vienna railway: lime-kilns and brickworks, sawmills and tanneries grew up around it, and Kielce became the district capital. By the eve of the war some twenty-four thousand Jews lived there, near a third of the city — among the youngest of the great kehillos of Poland, of which its own son the historian Pinchas Cytron wrote that “the early-morning dew still sparkled upon its streets.”

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. The first rav, crowned with the rabbinical crown when the community was founded, was R' Tuvia Gutman HaKohen, son of the ABD of Ostrowiec — a chossid of Kotzk whose yichus ran back to the Shach and the Rema; he was niftar in תרס״ב (1902) and lies in the Kielce beis hachaim. To his seat was called R' Moshe Nochum Yerushalimsky, one of the great poskim and meishivim of the generation, revered even by the Gerrer chassidim who held the reins of the kehilla; on Shabbos at shalosh seudos all the city’s lomdim would gather to his drashos, which ranged from the poskim to the Moreh Nevuchim and the Kuzari, and in 1910 he was sent as the district rabbonim’s delegate to the convention of rabbis in Petersburg. The crown of the kehilla was its great shul — built between 1901 and 1903 on land given by the gvir R’ Moshe Pfefer, its Aron Kodesh of marble steps and gilded keser, a beis medrash in one wing and the hall of the Achiezer chesed in the other — and about it stood battei midrash, chadarim, and the shtieblach of Ger and the rest.

Torah of the Town. For all its youth, Kielce became in its last decades a gathering-place of admorim — many driven in from the smaller towns by the front of the Great War, who found in the large city both parnassah and safety, and whose ohalim sanctified the cemetery of a place once held by Jews to be “impure.” The Chentshin court of the Chozeh of Lublin’s blood settled there — R’ Chaim Shmuel Horowitz, grandfather of the Aish Kodesh of Piaseczna, niftar in Kielce in 1916 and buried in the Chentshiner ohel. R’ Motele Twersky, the Rebbe of Kuzmir — of the Trisk and Chernobyl line — held his mystic court in the city, careful in taharah, his ohel too in the Pakosz beis hachaim. The Pińczów court of the Finkler family — R’ Chaim Meir Finkler, brother of R’ Hillel of Radoshitz — came at the war’s start; his grandsons R’ Pinchas, of Agudas Yisrael, and R’ Yitzchak, of the Mizrachi, divided the kehilla’s politics and its chadarim, the Yesodei Torah and the Yavneh. The Chmielnik rebbe of the Goldman house, of the Vorka line, and the Suchedniow and Rakow rebbes of the Rabinowicz house, who traced to the Yid HaKadosh of Przysucha — all made Kielce their seat. The kehilla’s record was set down by Pinchas Cytron in the Sefer Kielce (Tel Aviv, 1957).

The Churban. On the eve of the war some twenty-four thousand Jews lived in Kielce; with refugees driven in from Łódź and the west the number rose toward thirty thousand. On 31 March 1941 the German commander ordered a ghetto into the city’s poorest quarter — sealed behind a high fence over twenty-six streets and split by the Silnica river — and through the winter of 1941–42 typhus and starvation took many; in April 1942 the Germans seized and murdered those marked as “political.” Between 20 and 24 August 1942, in the days of Operation Reinhard, the ghetto was destroyed: more than twenty-one thousand Jews were driven to the wagons and deported to Treblinka, while the sick, the aged and the children were shot where they stood, many at the beis hachaim itself — murdered al kiddush Hashem, הי״ד. A “small ghetto” labor-camp of some two thousand held on at Stolarska and Jasna streets until, in 1943, its remnant was scattered to the slave-camps of Skarżysko, Starachowice, Pionki and Bliżyn; by mid-1943 Jewish Kielce was no more. And the wound did not close with the war: on ד׳ בתמוז — 4 July 1946 — a blood-libel rumor, a Polish boy’s false tale of a child held in the cellar of the Jewish committee at 7 Planty Street, loosed a mob of townsmen, steel-workers, soldiers and policemen upon the survivors gathered there, and forty-two Jews who had outlived Treblinka were murdered, הי״ד. The Kielce pogrom drove the broken remnant of Polish Jewry into flight, and the kehilla that had risen so swiftly came to its end.

The Kehilla and its Rabbanim. Jews lived in Kutno, in central Poland between Warsaw and Łódź, from the early 1500s; by the eve of the churban the kehilla numbered some 6,400 souls. Its rabbinic seat was among the storied ones of Poland: R' Moshe Yekusiel Kaufman, son-in-law of the Magen Avraham, held it in the early 1700s; R' Moshe Yehuda Leib Zilberberg, the Zayis Raanan, held it before going up to Yerushalayim; and from תרכ"א (1861) it belonged to R' Yisrael Eliyahu Yehoshua Trunk — the Yeshuos Malko, one of the greatest poskim of Poland, whose seat passed to his son R' Moshe Pinchas and to his grandson R' Yitzchak Yehuda Trunk, the last Rav of Kutno, niftar in ניסן תרצ"ט on the very threshold of the war. In the beis hachaim of Kutno rest the Yeshuos Malko, R' Berel of Kutno — grandfather of R' Avraham of Ciechanow — and R' Berish Chassid of Kutno.

The Churban. The Germans took Kutno in September 1939; in 1940 the Jews of the town were driven into a ghetto on the grounds of the ruined Konstancja sugar factory at the town's edge, where hunger and typhus reigned; and in the spring of 1942 the kehilla was deported to the death camp of Chełmno and murdered, הי"ד. Seeded thin — for a later full pass.

The Town. Warsaw was the capital of Poland and the largest Jewish city of Europe: on the eve of the churban some 350,000 Jews and more — a third of the whole city — filled its quarters, from Nalewki and Muranów to Praga across the Vistula. Every stream of Polish Jewry ran through it: the great chasidishe courts kept their shtiblach in their hundreds, the misnagdim their botei medrash, and around them pressed everything the site's churban diaries will yet tell.

The Kehilla. Its rabbanus was first held, from תקפ"א (1821), by the Chemdas Shlomo, R' Shlomo Zalman Lipschitz, the first chief rav of the city. The kehilla of Warsaw was the metropolis of Torah-loyal Poland — its rabbanim and dayanim (among them, for some three decades, the dayan and moreh tzedek R' Pesachya Hornblass, the Pischei She'arim), its hundreds of shuls and shtiblach, its chadarim and Beis Yaakov schools, the seat of Agudas Yisrael of Poland and of the Orthodox press. To Warsaw the courts came in the wars' upheavals: the Imrei Emes of Ger held his court at its edge and moved into the city when the churban broke, and rebbes of the whole land — Aleksander, Strykov, Radomsk, Novominsk — lived, hid, or were buried within it.

Torah of the Town. The site's own cards gather in Warsaw: the Netziv was niftar in the city in תרנ"ג; Reb Chaim Brisker was buried in the Okopowa Street beis hachaim, a stop on the kever map; R' Aharon Tzvi Landa of Strykov drew fifty thousand to his levaya there; R' Yaakov Yitzchak Dan of Strykov was smuggled into the city and stood in the Ezras Torah of the ghetto rabbanim; R' Shlomo Chanoch of Radomsk הי"ד was brought in peril to kevurah in the ohel of the Novominsker Rebbe; Rav Menachem Ziemba הי"ד, the gaon of Warsaw, answered she’eilos from the ends of the earth from his house in Praga as a posek acharon, refusing every rabbanus for the counter of his iron shop; R' Dovid Bornsztain of Sochatchov הי"ד, the third Rebbe, lived hidden in the city his last two years — the first to warn the ghetto of the deportations, niftar 8 Kislev תש"ג and among the last brought to kevurah on Okopowa; and the Akeidas Yitzchok of Aleksander הי"ד stood his last two years in the ghetto, a crown in the dark. Among the chasidishe gedolim laid to rest in the Okopowa Street beis hachaim were the Sabba Kadisha of Radzymin and the Divrei Binah of Biala, beside the famed ohel of the Chemdas Shlomo, the city's first rav. And the churban diary of Warsaw — first of the Polish line — is told in full in the Churban section: the Warsaw diary ↗. And it was in this Warsaw that R' Itche Grodzinski, "the Chofetz Chaim of Warsaw," raised his network of Torah mosdos for the city's workers and baalei melacha — out of which grew the Litvish yeshiva Toras Chaim.

The Churban. In November 1940 the Germans sealed the Warsaw ghetto — the largest of Europe, some 450,000 souls at its height behind the wall — eighty-three thousand dead of hunger, cold and typhus by the middle of תש"ב, per the count Yad Vashem keeps. From 22 July תש"ב (1942) the Great Deportation emptied it: some 265,000 Jews were sent in that summer to Treblinka and murdered — among them the gedolim this site mourns. On erev Pesach תש"ג the remnant rose in the ghetto revolt, and the Germans burned the ghetto to the ground house by house — Rav Menachem Ziemba, the gaon of Warsaw, fell al kiddush Hashem on its third day, and the Rebbe of Piaseczna, the Aish Kodesh, was carried to Trawniki and murdered there; the full record stands in the Warsaw churban diary. Of the largest kehilla of Europe there remained rubble and a beis hachaim — Hashem yikom damam.

The Town. Lodz grew around its looms into the great industrial city of Congress Poland, and its Jews grew with it — weavers and factory hands, melamdim and magnates. On the eve of the Second World War some 223,000 Jews lived in Lodz, about a third of the whole city: one of the largest kehillos in Poland, second only to Warsaw. At the city's western edge lay the weaving town of Aleksander — seat of the Danziger court, second of the chasidishe courts of pre-war Poland.

The Kehilla. Over this roaring city of industry stood, for some forty years, a rav who belonged to the poor: R' Eliyahu Chaim Meisel, the legendary baal tzedakah, of the leaders of Polish Jewry, who drew the tzedakah of the magnates down to the cellars of the weavers and stood firmly against the maskilim and the winds of the age.

Torah of the Town. The rav’s beis din served a kehilla of hundreds of thousands; after his petirah in תרע"ב his grandson R' Eliezer Yitzchak Meisel stood among the rabbanim of the city and on its vaad harabbanim. The chasidishe shtieblach of Ger and her sisters filled the courtyards of the Jewish quarters beside the botei medrash of the misnagdim — Aleksander alone, the record tells, counting above a hundred shtiblach in the city under the Akeidas Yitzchok — and R' Dovid Bornsztain, the third Sochatchover Rebbe, held his court in the Lodz orbit, Pabianice, Kolumna and the city itself, with the Beis Avraham yeshiva in its streets, until the Germans of ת"ש broke into his house, beat him and sheared his beard, and his chassidim smuggled him in changed clothes to Warsaw.

The Churban. On 8 September 1939 the Wehrmacht took Lodz, and the recognizably Jewish were hunted first — the chassidim, and the rabbanim in their wide-brimmed hats. The Germans annexed the city to the Reich and renamed it Litzmannstadt. In the spring of 1940 some 160,000 Jews were sealed into a ghetto of four square kilometers, without electricity or water — the second ghetto established in Poland, and the last to be liquidated — joined by some 40,000 Jews deported from Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and the Czech lands. From the first months of 1942 the deportations went to the death camp of Chelmno: twenty thousand demanded in December 1941, some fifty-five thousand more in May 1942. In August 1944 the ghetto was emptied: some 67,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, most of them murdered al kiddush Hashem; the last train, on 30 August, carried the controversial Judenrat head Rumkowski himself. Of the great kehilla of Lodz only a remnant survived. השם יקום דמם. The full churban is told in the Łódź churban diary.

The Town. Józefów — Józefów Biłgorajski, in the Biłgoraj district of the Lublin region — was founded in 1715 on the estates of the Zamoyski counts and granted city rights in 1725. Jews settled there from the close of the seventeenth century; by the eve of the Second World War the town held some three thousand souls, about two thousand of them Jews, living mostly around the market square.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. A shul was raised about 1735 with a loan from the Vaad Arba Aratzos, the Council of the Four Lands, and the present shul was built in 1768, partly burned in 1830 and rebuilt. The kehilla was counted among the important communities of the region and was named more than once in the Vaad's deliberations; its rabbinic chair was held in high regard. In the last generations the town yeshiva and a Talmud Torah served the town under R' Shalom Yosef Hercsztark (until 1924) and R' Shimon Prancewski (until the war). The old beis hachaim still holds some four hundred matzeivos, the eldest from 1743 — one of the largest preserved collections in the whole Lublin region.

Torah of the Town. Above all Józefów was a town of seforim. About 1820 Szaja Waks, a leaseholder of the local papermill, brought printers from the famous Slavuta press after the Tsarist government shut it down, and founded a Hebrew printery that — using paper from its own mill — grew into one of the most important in all of Congress Poland. Gemaras, chassidishe seforim and sifrei kodesh went out from Józefów across Poland, Russia, Moldavia and Wallachia, as far as Istanbul; rebuilt time and again after floods and fires, the press ran until the close of the nineteenth century, managed from 1865 by the brothers Boruch and Shlomo Zecer. So the town's name was carried on the title-pages of seforim in battei midrash across Eastern Europe.

The Churban. No ghetto was sealed in Józefów; the town became instead a place of slaughter. In 1940 the Germans set a labor camp there, with Jews driven to quarry work; refugees expelled from Kazimierz Dolny and Konin were brought in. German police shot some ninety Jews in April 1941 and about a hundred and eighty more that October. On 13 July 1942 a German order-police battalion trucked the town's Jews into the nearby forest and shot some twelve hundred of them — the sick, the aged and the children murdered already in the streets — while the able-bodied were taken to labor camps in the Lublin country, on the road that led the region's Jews to Bełżec. The last seventy, left to sort the property of the murdered, were killed on 21 September 1942, and the kehilla of Józefów was no more, murdered al kiddush Hashem. השם יקום דמם.

The Town. Lublin rose in the southeast of Poland as one of the oldest and most distinguished Jewish settlements in the land. From a few dozen houses in the sixteenth century it grew into a great kehilla — at times the second largest in Poland after Warsaw — with its heart in the streets around the great Maharshal Shul. By 1939 some 42,000 Jews lived in Lublin, more than a third of the city.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Lublin’s rabbinic chair was among the most honored in Poland. R’ Shalom Shachna, who established its yeshiva, was followed by his talmid R’ Shlomo Luria, the Maharshal (d. 1574), one of the shapers of nusach Polin; and by R’ Meir of Lublin, the Maharam (d. 1616), rosh yeshiva and rav. R’ Mordechai Yaffe, the Levush, and R’ Yehoshua Falk, the Sma, also sat in Lublin, and the city was a seat of the Council of the Four Lands, the central body of Polish Jewry.

Torah of the Town. Lublin’s yeshiva, opened in the early sixteenth century, became famous across Europe — so much so that Lublin was called the Jewish Oxford, and its rosh yeshiva was granted the standing of a university rector by royal privilege in 1567. In the chassidishe era the city became the seat of the Chozeh of Lublin, R’ Yaakov Yitzchak Horowitz, the Seer whose court drew the founders of Polish chassidus to his door. Centuries later, in 1930, the city’s old crown was renewed when R’ Meir Shapiro opened Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, the grandest yeshiva building of its day.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Lublin were sealed into a ghetto, and in the spring of 1942 Lublin became the first kehilla in the General Government to be destroyed in Aktion Reinhard: from March 1942 its Jews were deported to Bełżec and murdered, the selections made before the very Maharshal Shul. The great Torah city of Poland, with its shuls, its yeshiva and its centuries of learning, was wiped out al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The full churban is told in the Lublin churban diary.

The Town. Żmigród — Nowy Żmigród, Zhmigrid in the mouth of its Yidden — sits south of Jasło in the low hills of the Beskid, in western Galicia, on the old trade road that runs down toward the Hungarian passes. It held town rights from the 1300s; the first record of Jews living there is from 1410 — among the older Jewish settlements of Galicia — and in the 1500s a fine shul already stood in the town. The middle of the 1600s brought the Cossack and Swedish devastations over its Jews, as over all the kehillos of the land; in 1772, with the first partition, Żmigród passed under Austria; and from the 1880s a steady stream of its Jews crossed the sea to America. After the First War, under restored Poland, the town itself was reduced to village status — but its Jews remained the heart of the place, a kehilla of well over a thousand souls, most of the town, dwelling around the market square with the Poles at the edges.

The Kehilla. Zhmigrid was a shtetl of the old Galician cut — traders, horse-dealers of the fairs, craftsmen, the shul and the batei medrash full between mincha and maariv — and it carried the smaller settlements around it: the Jews of Osiek Jasielski and the villages of the district looked to Zhmigrad, and in the last years Osiek's rav was a son of the Zhmigrader Rebbe himself. Its beis hachaim held the generations; its shul of the 1500s stood into the churban.

Torah of the Town. The crown of Zhmigrid's Torah record is a birth: in תק"ח (1748) there was born in the town, to R' Shmuel, Raavad of Neustadt, the child who would become R' Avraham Yehoshua Heshel — the Ohev Yisrael of Apta, zekan haadmorim of his generation, whose card on this site opens in this town. And a century and a half later Zhmigrid became a seat of the house of Sanz: from תרס"ז (1907) its rav was R' Sinai Halberstam — grandson of the Divrei Chaim, son of R' Boruch of Gorlitz, talmid of the Shinover — who conducted the court of Sanz-Zhmigrad in the town: a kadosh who rose at chatzos to learn Zohar until davening, a baal mofes whom chassidim from across Galicia sought out, some calling him simply "Chozeh." When his health failed in תרצ"ח he moved to Krakow, and his son R' Aharon, rav of Osiek, sat as memaleh makom on the Zhmigrad seat — the last rav the town would ever have.

The Churban. The Germans took the town in September 1939, and upon the Jews of Zhmigrid fell the decrees of all Galicia: confinement to the Jewish quarter on pain of death, forced labor, plunder, hunger. Through 1941 and the spring of 1942 the Jews of Osiek Jasielski and the surrounding villages were driven into Zhmigrid nearly empty-handed, until some two thousand souls pressed into the shtetl, the kehilla feeding its refugees as the elderly starved and typhus spread. Five days after the Jews of neighboring Frysztak were shot in the Warzyce forest, the turn of Zhmigrid came — Bloody Tuesday, כ"ב תמוז תש"ב (July 7, 1942): the whole kehilla was ordered to Bal's meadow below the town, where the Kreishauptmann of Jasło, Dr. Walter Gentz, conducted the selection in person.

The old, the women, and the children were forced onto trucks and driven south toward the Krempna pass, to the forest above Hałbów, where a pit thirty meters long stood ready: they were shot at its rim, the small children beaten to death with clubs, the layers of the dead covered with chlorine and lime — some 1,250 Jews of Zhmigrid, Osiek and the villages, and among them R' Aharon Halberstam, the last rav, with his family הי"ד. Some forty Jews found hiding that day were shot in the town's own beis hachaim; on the trucks, Jews of the town drank pharmacy poison rather than reach the pit. The head of the Judenrat, Hersh Eisenberg, was beaten before the kehilla, made to watch, squeezed for a ransom of one hundred thousand zlotys from the 450 left alive — and murdered as well.

On July 12 the young men were marched off to Płaszów, the remnant kehilla still scraping together seven hundred kilograms of food packages to send after them; and on September 3, 1942 the last Jews of Zhmigrid were assembled, the hidden shot where they were found, and the transport went by way of Przemyśl to the gas of Belzec. So ended five hundred years of the kehilla of Zhmigrid — the full arc, from the decrees of 1939 to the fenced grave in the forest, is told in the Zhmigrid churban diary. A handful of its young slipped to the forests and fought with the partisans; the mass grave at Hałbów stands fenced in the forest to this day, and the survivors' yizkor book carries the names. The churban record here is drawn from the JewishGen yizkor book of Nowy Żmigród, the Yad Vashem Ghetto Encyclopedia, and the Ansberg trial record of Walter Gentz.

The Town. Kraków, the old royal capital of Poland, held one of the most ancient and distinguished kehillos in the land, centered in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter across the river from the city. Its shuls — the Old Shul, the Rema Shul, the High Shul, the Isaac Shul — were among the oldest in Poland. By 1939 some 60,000 Jews lived in Kraków, a quarter of the city.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. The golden age of Kraków gathered a constellation of gedolim. R’ Moshe Isserles, the Rema (d. 1572), whose Mapah on the Shulchan Aruch made the halacha of Ashkenaz, led its yeshiva and is buried beside his shul, his kever a place of tefillah to this day. With him and after him sat R’ Yoel Sirkes, the Bach; R’ Yom Tov Lipman Heller, the Tosfos Yom Tov; and R’ Nosson Nota Spira, the Megaleh Amukos.

Torah of the Town. Kraków’s yeshiva, led by the Rema, drew talmidim from across Ashkenaz, and the city became one of the twin capitals of Polish Torah alongside Lublin. It was a seat of the Council of the Four Lands and a great center of Hebrew printing. In the chassidishe era Galician courts and shtieblach filled Kazimierz alongside the old battei midrash, and the city remained, into the twentieth century, a metropolis of Torah, of Agudah, and of every current of Polish-Jewish life.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Kraków were driven from Kazimierz into a sealed ghetto across the river in Podgórze. From 1942 its Jews were deported to Bełżec and murdered, and the ghetto was liquidated in March 1943, its remnant sent to the Płaszów camp and to their deaths. The ancient kehilla of Kraków, the city of the Rema, was destroyed al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד — though its old shuls in Kazimierz still stand.

The Town. Przysucha — Pshischa in the mouths of its Jews — was a small town in central Poland, in the Radom region, that would leave a mark on chassidus far beyond its size. By the early twentieth century its Jews were a majority of the town. Its great baroque shul, built in the seventeen-hundreds, was the largest of its kind in Poland.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Peshischa became famous as the seat of a new derech in chassidus. R’ Yaakov Yitzchak Rabinowicz, the Yid Hakodosh (the Holy Jew, d. 1813), a talmid of the Chozeh of Lublin, settled there and gathered a circle around him; after him came R’ Simcha Bunim of Peshischa, who shaped the town into the heart of a movement.

Torah of the Town. The Peshischa derech turned chassidus inward — toward truth, depth of mind, and the avodah of the individual rather than the wonder-working court. From this small town came the spiritual line that produced Kotzk, Ger, and much of the intellectual chassidus of Poland; its talmidim carried the Peshischa fire across the land.

The Churban. The Jews of Przysucha were driven out under German occupation and deported to their deaths in Treblinka with the Jewry of the Radom region. The wellspring town of Peshischa was emptied of its Jews al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד — though its great shul still stands.

The Town. Lizhensk (Leżajsk), a town of western Galicia near the San, had a Jewish kehilla from the early sixteenth century. Small in itself, it became one of the most renowned names in all of chassidus through the tzaddik who made it his home.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. R’ Elimelech of Lizhensk, the Noam Elimelech (d. 1787), talmid of the Maggid of Mezritch, settled in Lizhensk and made it a great center of chassidus. From his beis medrash went out the masters who would carry chassidus across Galicia and Poland — the Chozeh of Lublin, R’ Mendel of Rimanov, the Maggid of Kozhnitz, R’ Yehoshua Heschel of Apta, and R’ Naftali of Ropshitz among them.

Torah of the Town. The Noam Elimelech, his sefer, became one of the foundational works of chassidus, and the derech of Lizhensk — the avodah of the tzaddik on behalf of his generation — shaped whole dynasties. From the end of the eighteenth century until 1939, Jews streamed to Lizhensk on the tzaddik’s yahrzeit, כ״א אדר, to daven at his kever.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Lizhensk were expelled and murdered with the Jewry of the region in the churban — הי"ד. The tzaddik’s ohel survived, and to this day Jews come from across the world to his kever on כ״א אדר.

The Town. Kozhnitz (Kozienice), a town in the Radom region of central Poland, held a Jewish kehilla that became, through its Maggid, one of the cradles of chassidus in Congress Poland.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. R’ Yisrael, the Maggid of Kozhnitz (d. 1814), a talmid of R’ Elimelech of Lizhensk and of the Maggid of Mezritch, made Kozhnitz his seat. Frail in body but towering in avodah, he was sought out by masses of chassidim and by Polish noblemen alike, and his court became one of the founding pillars of Polish chassidus alongside Lublin and Peshischa.

Torah of the Town. The Maggid’s Torah and his Kozhnitzer line shaped the chassidus of central Poland; the dynasty he founded continued through the generations until the churban. Kozhnitz remained a chassidishe town, its shtieblach and battei midrash carrying the Maggid’s avodah.

The Churban. The Jews of Kozhnitz were sealed into a ghetto and deported to Treblinka in 1942, murdered with the Jewry of the Radom region al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Town. Kotzk (Kock), a small town in the Lublin region of Poland, would never have been widely known but for the tzaddik who made it his seat — and through him its name became one of the most charged in all of chassidus.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. R’ Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (d. 1859), the Kotzker Rebbe, a talmid of R’ Simcha Bunim of Peshischa, settled in Kotzk and gathered around him a circle of the sharpest minds of Polish Jewry. Demanding, uncompromising, and famously withdrawn in his last years, the Kotzker forged a chassidus of emes — of inner truth stripped of all falsehood.

Torah of the Town. From Kotzk came two of the great rivers of Polish chassidus: after the Kotzker’s petirah the majority of his chassidim followed his brother-in-law, the Chiddushei HaRim, who founded the court of Ger, while another line continued through Sochatchov through his talmid the Avnei Nezer. The Kotzker derech — the relentless search for truth — shaped the whole intellectual chassidus of Poland.

The Churban. Under the German occupation the kehilla was made to pull down its own shul (November 1939), then sealed into a ghetto where typhus and hunger took many; in 1942, after two mass shootings, its Jews were marched through Łuków to Treblinka and murdered — as this site’s Kotzk churban diary tells in full. The town that had given chassidus its byword for truth was emptied of its Jews — הי"ד.

The Town. Góra Kalwaria — Ger in Yiddish, Gur in Hebrew — lay south of Warsaw on the Vistula. From the middle of the nineteenth century its Jews, more than half the town’s some seven thousand people, made it the capital of the largest chassidus in Poland.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. The town became the seat of the Gerrer dynasty when R’ Yitzchak Meir Alter, the Chiddushei HaRim (d. 1866), a leading talmid of the Kotzker Rebbe, settled there and gathered the bulk of the Kotzker’s chassidim after his petirah. He was followed by his grandson R’ Yehuda Aryeh Leib, the Sfas Emes, and then by R’ Avraham Mordechai Alter, the Imrei Emes, under whom Ger became a power in Polish Jewry and in the Agudah.

Torah of the Town. Ger’s Torah — the seforim Chiddushei HaRim, Sfas Emes, and Imrei Emes — became foundational works of Polish chassidus, and the Gerrer court drew tens of thousands of chassidim from across the land. Ger carried the fire of Kotzk into a great and disciplined movement.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Ger were deported to the Warsaw ghetto, where many died of hunger and disease, and from there in the summer of 1942 to Treblinka, where they were murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The Imrei Emes escaped Poland and reached Eretz Yisrael; only a handful of Ger’s Jews survived.

The Town. Sochaczew, a town west of Warsaw on the Bzura, held a Jewish kehilla that became, through its rav, a great center of both deep lomdus and chassidus.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. R’ Avraham Bornstein, the Avnei Nezer (d. 1910), a talmid and son-in-law of the Kotzker Rebbe, served as rav of Sochaczew and founded the Sochatchover court there. A towering lamdan whose teshuvos and chiddushim are studied across the yeshiva world, he united the sharp analytic Torah of Kotzk with the avodah of a chassidishe rebbe.

Torah of the Town. The seforim of Sochaczew — the Avnei Nezer on halacha and the Beis Avraham, the Torah of his son R’ Shmuel — became classics of Polish lomdus. Sochaczew ran a yeshiva drawing bochurim to its derech of iyun, and the court continued through the generations until the churban.

The Churban. The Jews of Sochaczew were sealed into a ghetto and deported with the Jewry of the region to their deaths in the churban — הי"ד, the great center of Torah and chassidus destroyed al kiddush Hashem.

The Town. Tzanz — Nowy Sącz, a city in the Carpathian foothills of western Galicia where three rivers meet — held a largely Orthodox Jewish kehilla that became, through its rav, one of the most influential centers of chassidus in all of Eastern Europe.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. In 1830 R’ Chaim Halberstam, the Divrei Chaim (d. 1876) was appointed rav of Tzanz, and remained there for the rest of his life. A talmid of the Sar Shalom of Belz and of R’ Naftali of Ropshitz, he was a towering lamdan and posek whose Sanz court drew chassidim from across Galicia and beyond; his sons founded courts of their own across the region.

Torah of the Town. The Divrei Chaim, his seforim on halacha, became a classic of Galician lomdus, uniting deep analytic Torah with the avodah of a chassidishe rebbe. Tzanz ran a yeshiva and its name became a byword for the union of chassidus and learning. The Sanz dynasty he founded spread through dozens of courts numbering tens of thousands of chassidim.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Tzanz were sealed into a ghetto and deported in 1942 to their deaths; the city was declared Judenrein in July 1943, its shuls, shtieblach, and battei midrash destroyed, and the Halberstam family scattered and largely murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Town. Belz, a town of eastern Galicia near the border of Congress Poland, held a Jewish kehilla that became one of the great centers of chassidus. Of some 6,000 residents in 1918, around 3,600 were Jews, the overwhelming majority of them Belzer chassidim.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. R’ Shalom Rokeach, the Sar Shalom (d. 1855), a talmid of the Chozeh of Lublin, became rav of Belz in 1817 and founded the Belzer dynasty. He was followed by his son R’ Yehoshua, the Maharid (here meaning the line of Belz), and by his grandson and great-grandson — a dynasty that grew into one of the largest chassidus in the world.

Torah of the Town. The Sar Shalom built in Belz a great shul, dedicated in 1843 — a fortress-like building seating thousands, among the largest in Poland, famed for its acoustics. Unlike most Polish chassidus, Belz maintained not a public yeshiva but its distinctive yoshvim program of mature scholars, which produced many great talmidei chachamim. Belz became a name known across Galicia and Poland.

The Churban. When the Germans came to Belz in 1939 they tried to destroy the great shul by fire and by dynamite and failed, and in the end conscripted Jews to take it apart brick by brick. The Jews of Belz were murdered in the churban — הי"ד — the great kehilla almost entirely destroyed; the Belzer Rebbe R’ Aharon Rokeach escaped to Eretz Yisrael and rebuilt the chassidus there.

The Town. Opatów — Apta to its Jews — was an old town of central Poland whose Jewish kehilla reached back centuries, a chassidishe town whose name was carried far by the tzaddik who served as its rav.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. R’ Avraham Yehoshua Heschel, the Ohev Yisrael — the Apter Rav (d. 1825) — a talmid of R’ Elimelech of Lizhensk, served as rav of Apta and made its name his own; he is known to chassidus by this town to this day, even after he moved on to Mezhbizh. The Apta line he founded continued through the generations.

Torah of the Town. The Ohev Yisrael, his sefer — named for his boundless love of every Jew — became a beloved work of chassidus, and the Apter Rav one of the central figures of the chassidishe world of his day. Apta remained a chassidishe town, with shtieblach of many courts, until the churban.

The Churban. The Jews of Apta were sealed into a ghetto and deported in 1942 to Treblinka, murdered with the Jewry of the region al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The old chassidishe kehilla of Apta was destroyed.

The Town. Lemberg — Lwów, Lvov — was the great capital of Galicia and the soul of its Jewry, a metropolis to the hundreds of towns and shtetlach around it. One of the largest kehillos in all of Poland, ranked among the foremost after Warsaw and Lodz, it counted well over a hundred thousand Jews on the eve of the churban.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Lemberg’s rabbinic chair was among the most honored in the land. R’ David HaLevi Segal, the TaZ (the Turei Zahav), davened in its Golden Rose Shul; R’ Tzvi Ashkenazi, the Chacham Tzvi, served as its rav at the end of his life; and in the modern era R’ Yosef Shaul Nathanson, the Shoel U’Meishiv, sat in Lemberg — beside him his lifelong chavrusa, the gaon R' Mordechai Zev Ettinga. The Orthodox of Galicia organized here in the Machzikei HaDas, the movement of Belz and the Torah-loyal camp.

Torah of the Town. Lemberg was a center of Torah and of Hebrew printing for centuries, its Golden Rose Shul (Di Goldene Royz), built in the late sixteenth century, among the most famous in Poland. By the modern era the city held every current of Jewish life — chassidim of Belz, Husiatyn and other courts, misnagdim, the Machzikei HaDas, and also the Haskalah; but the Torah-loyal kehilla held its place at the city’s heart.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Lemberg were sealed into a ghetto and destroyed: through 1942 tens of thousands were deported to Bełżec, and tens of thousands more were murdered in the Janowska camp within the city and in mass shootings. By the time the city was taken in 1944 almost none of its Jews remained alive — the great kehilla of Lemberg destroyed al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד; the Golden Rose Shul was blown up.

The Town. Tarnów, a city of western Galicia between Kraków and the Carpathians, held one of the largest Jewish kehillos in Galicia — fourth in number after Lwów, Kraków and Stanisławów, and first among the great towns in the Jewish share of its people. By 1939 some twenty-five thousand Jews lived there.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Tarnów was a deeply chassidishe city, its streets filled on Simchas Torah with the dancing of chassidishe rebbes in their wide fur hats and the Jews of every beis medrash and shtiebel. Shtieblach of the Galician courts — among them Sanz and its branches — stood through the town, alongside its great shuls and battei midrash; and in its last generations the foremost posek of Galicia, R' Meir Arik, sat on its rabbinical chair and led its yeshiva.

Torah of the Town. The kehilla carried a full Torah life — chadarim, battei midrash, and shtieblach — and one of its shuls, the New Shul, was a famed landmark built of stone. Tarnów stood as a center of Galician Jewry and a gateway between the chassidus of the Carpathian foothills and the wider world.

The Churban. The Germans entered Tarnów in September 1939 and within weeks burned its forty shuls and prayer-houses, dynamiting the great stone shul. A ghetto was sealed in 1941. In the Aktion of June 1942 thousands of Jews were shot in the streets and in the cemetery and murdered in the Buczyna Forest at Zbylitowska Góra, and some twelve thousand deported to Bełżec; further deportations followed until Tarnów was declared free of Jews in 1943 — the great kehilla destroyed al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד.

The Town. Przemyśl, an ancient town of eastern Galicia on the San, held one of the oldest Jewish kehillos in the region, a community reaching back many centuries that became a seat of Torah and a chassidishe town.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Przemyśl’s rabbinic chair was held by gedolim across the generations — among those who served as rav of Przemyśl was R’ Yaakov Yehoshua Falk, the Pnei Yehoshua, before he went on to Kraków. In its later generations its rav was R' Yitzchak Yehuda Schmelkes, the Beis Yitzchak, one of the foremost poskim of his day, succeeded by his son R' Gedalia Schmelkes. The town held shtieblach of the Galician chassidishe courts alongside its old battei midrash and the beis medrash of its rabbonim and lomdim.

Torah of the Town. Przemyśl carried a full Torah life — its battei midrash, chadarim and shtieblach — and stood as one of the established kehillos of eastern Galicia, a town of rabbonim, chassidim, and centuries of Jewish settlement on the San.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Przemyśl were sealed into a ghetto. In the summer of 1942 the kehilla was destroyed: in the Aktions of late July and early August many thousands were deported to Bełżec, and others shot in the forests outside the city. The ancient kehilla of Przemyśl was wiped out al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Town. Częstochowa, the great industrial and pilgrimage city of southern Congress Poland, held one of the largest and most vibrant Jewish kehillos in the land. By the eve of the war some forty thousand Jews lived there, a community of every walk of Jewish life.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. The chief rabbinate of Częstochowa was held in its last generations by R’ Nachum Asz, who led the kehilla into the modern era. Chassidim of Ger and other courts, misnagdim, and the full range of Torah-loyal life filled its shuls and battei midrash, alongside the modern movements that grew in a great industrial city.

Torah of the Town. Częstochowa carried a full Torah and communal life — chadarim, battei midrash, shtieblach, and chinuch institutions — and was a center of Jewish life and livelihood for the whole region. Its Jews built the kehilla into one of the foremost in Congress Poland.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Częstochowa were sealed into a ghetto. The Germans chose Yom Kippur of 1942 to begin the liquidation: from 22 Tishrei the kehilla was destroyed in mass deportations, and across September and October some forty thousand Jews were sent to Treblinka and murdered, the aged and the children killed on the spot. A remnant was held in a small ghetto and in the HASAG slave-labor camps until they too were destroyed — the great kehilla wiped out al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד.

The Town. Piotrków Trybunalski — Petrikov to its Jews — was one of the oldest cities of central Poland, long a seat of the Polish tribunal and Sejm, with a Jewish kehilla reaching back to the sixteenth century. On the eve of the war some fifteen thousand Jews lived there.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Piotrków’s kehilla was an old and established one, a town of rabbonim and a chassidishe community, with shtieblach of Ger and other courts alongside its great shul and battei midrash. Its rabbinical chair was held by R' Menachem David Temkin and then by R' Meir Shapiro, who built Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin and gave the world the Daf Yomi, and at the last by R' Moshe Chaim Lau, who led its Torah and went with his kehilla to Treblinka. The city also became a major center of Hebrew and Torah printing, its presses sending seforim across Poland.

Torah of the Town. Piotrków carried a full Torah life — its great shul, its battei midrash and shtieblach, its chadarim and yeshiva — and its printing houses made the city’s name known on the title pages of seforim throughout the Jewish world.

The Churban. In October 1939, only weeks after the invasion, the Germans sealed the Jews of Piotrków into a ghetto — the first ghetto they established in occupied Europe. In October 1942 the ghetto was liquidated: some twenty-two thousand Jews were deported to Treblinka and murdered, while a remnant was held in slave-labor camps and largely destroyed. The ancient kehilla of Piotrków was wiped out al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Town. Zamość, a planned Renaissance town of the Lublin region in southeastern Poland, held an old and distinguished Jewish kehilla — a community of some thousand families renowned, in the words of its chroniclers, as a town full of wise men and writers without equal.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Zamość’s rabbinic chair was held by a line of gedolim, among them R’ Moshe Yehoshua Heschel Wahl, the Beis Moshe, and R’ Yosef Shlomo Shabtai Halevi Horowitz (1861–1943), a direct descendant of the Chozeh of Lublin and a founder of the yeshiva Yagdil Hatorah. The town held shtieblach of the chassidishe courts alongside its battei midrash.

Torah of the Town. Zamość was famed for its learning — a town of lamdanim and writers — and the yeshiva Yagdil Hatorah and its battei midrash carried its Torah into the twentieth century. The Haskalah, too, found a foothold in Zamość, but the Torah-loyal kehilla held the heart of the town, building its chinuch and its mosdos until the churban. Zamość was also the birthplace of R' Yehuda Leib Edel, the Maggid of Slonim, the baal Afikei Yehuda.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Zamość were sealed into a ghetto and, in 1942, deported to their deaths in Bełżec, murdered with the Jewry of the Lublin region al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The old kehilla of wise men and writers was destroyed.

The Town. Będzin — Bendin in Yiddish — was the old Jewish center of the Zagłębie region of southwestern Poland, a settlement reaching back to the thirteenth century under privilege of Casimir the Great. By the eve of the war some twenty-eight thousand Jews lived there, more than half the town.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Będzin’s kehilla was an old and well-ordered one, headed by its rav and dayanim, who oversaw its chevra kadisha, Talmud Torah, and tzedakah funds. R’ Yekusiel Zalman Graubart served as rav from 1913. A deeply chassidishe town, Będzin held shtieblach of Radomsk, Aleksander, Sochatchov and other courts alongside its great shul.

Torah of the Town. Beside its Great Shul stood chadarim and a yeshiva, and the kehilla carried a full Torah life into the twentieth century. Being near the border, Będzin often took in Jewish refugees expelled from other lands, and its mosdos bore the work of a busy and generous community.

The Churban. The Germans entered Będzin in September 1939 and within days burned the Great Shul — some sixty Jews who were inside were burned to death, and fifty houses around it went up in flames. The Jews of Będzin, in the region annexed to the Reich, were held without a ghetto for a time — and the Jews of nearby Oshpitzin (Auschwitz) were expelled here in 1941 — before being deported to Auschwitz and murdered al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד.

The Town. Sosnowiec was a young city, grown up in the nineteenth century around the coal and railways of the Zagłębie region beside Będzin. Its Jewish community, which began only in 1859 and at first belonged to the Będzin kehilla, grew with the city into one of some twenty-eight thousand Jews by the eve of the war.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. As the city grew, its Jews built an independent kehilla with its own rabbonim, shuls, and mosdos. Among the chassidim who settled there were those of Radomsk, Aleksander and Sochatchov, and the town held a full range of Torah-loyal life alongside the currents of a modern industrial city.

Torah of the Town. Sosnowiec carried battei midrash, shtieblach, chadarim and a yeshiva, and its shuls served a large and growing kehilla; after the First World War it became the seat of the Radomsker Rebbe's court and of the Keser Torah network's elite Kibbutz Govoha. Though a young community, it became one of the two great centers of Zagłębie Jewry together with Będzin.

The Stashover Court. Sosnowiec became a seat of the Stashover (Pardes) chasidishe court when R' Mordechai II moved its center to Zagłębie: R' Dovid HaLevi Pardes of Stashov led here and lies buried in the Sosnowiec beis hachaim; his son R' Yosef Menashe raised a great yeshiva in the city, and his son R' Yisrael Yaakov led as Admor in Sosnowiec until he was murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Churban. The Germans came to Sosnowiec in September 1939 and blew up its great shul; the Jews took bricks from the ruins as mementos and, that Chanukah, lit their licht upon them. The Jews of Sosnowiec, in the region annexed to the Reich, were deported in 1942 and 1943 to Auschwitz and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Town. Stanisławów, a great city of eastern Galicia, held one of the largest Jewish kehillos in the region — among the foremost of Galicia after Lwów, Kraków and Tarnów. Some twenty-five thousand Jews lived there on the eve of the war, a third of the city.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Its rabbinic chair was held for over forty years by R' Meshulam Yissachar Horowitz, the Bar Levai, one of the foremost poskim of Galicia and mechaber of the shu"t Bar Levai. Stanisławów was a center of Torah and of Galician chassidus, with shtieblach of the Husiatyn, Stratin and other courts, and its Or Chaim Yeshiva drew bochurim from across Galicia and Bukovina. The kehilla carried a full Torah and communal life into the twentieth century.

Torah of the Town. The yeshiva, the battei midrash and the shtieblach made Stanisławów a Torah city of eastern Galicia, a community of rabbonim, chassidim and lamdanim that stood at the heart of the surrounding region.

The Churban. Under German occupation the kehilla of Stanisławów was destroyed with terrible cruelty. On a single day in October 1941 the Germans drove thousands of Jews to the city cemetery and shot them into open pits — many thousands murdered in hours. The survivors were sealed into a ghetto and, through 1942 and into 1943, deported to Bełżec and murdered or killed within the city — the great kehilla wiped out al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד.

The Town. Radom, a city of central Poland south of Warsaw, was the seat of its district and one of the great kehillos of Congress Poland. On the eve of the war some thirty thousand Jews lived there, about a third of the city.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Radom held an old and well-built kehilla, with its rabbonim, its great shul, and its mosdos. A chassidishe town, it held shtieblach of Ger, Radomsk and other courts alongside its battei midrash, and stood as a Torah and communal center for the many towns of its district.

Torah of the Town. The kehilla carried a full Torah life — its shuls, battei midrash and shtieblach, its chadarim and Talmud Torah — and Radom served as the hub of Jewish life and livelihood for the whole region around it.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Radom were sealed into a ghetto in 1941. In August 1942 the kehilla was destroyed: in the Aktions of that month, some twenty thousand Jews and more were deported to Treblinka and murdered, the sick and the children killed on the spot, a remnant held for slave labor and later destroyed. The great kehilla of Radom was wiped out al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Town. Otwock, set among the pine forests southeast of Warsaw, was famed as a health resort — a place chassidim and Jews of all kinds came to for its clean air. Its own Jewish community numbered some eleven thousand on the eve of the war, more than half the town.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Otwock was a chassidishe town, the seat of the Vurka–Otwock court of the Kalisz dynasty, an offshoot of Vurka and Amshinov. Its battei midrash and shtieblach, and the rebbes who held court among its pines, made Otwock a place of Torah and chassidus as well as of healing.

Torah of the Town. Beyond the local kehilla, Otwock’s air and quiet drew mosdos to it: yeshivos and battei midrash relocated to the town for its setting, and it became a center of learning in the pine forests near the capital. The town carried a full chassidishe and communal life until the churban.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Otwock were sealed into a ghetto, the second largest in the Warsaw district. In the summer of 1942 the ghetto was liquidated and its Jews deported to Treblinka and murdered, those who fled hunted in the forests — the kehilla of Otwock destroyed al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד.

The Town. Staszów, an old town of the Sandomierz region of central Poland, held a Jewish kehilla reaching back centuries, a chassidishe community that made the town’s name its own through the court that sat there.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Staszów was the seat of the Staszów court, and a chassidishe town through and through, with shtieblach of its own rebbe and of other courts alongside its great shul and battei midrash. Its rabbonim and its kehilla carried the town’s Torah life across the generations.

Torah of the Town. The kehilla held a full Torah life — its shul, its battei midrash and shtieblach, its chadarim and Talmud Torah — and Staszów stood as one of the established chassidishe kehillos of the Sandomierz region.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Staszów were sealed into a ghetto and, in the autumn of 1942, deported to Treblinka and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The old chassidishe kehilla of Staszów was destroyed.

The Town. Chełm, an old town of the Lublin region, held one of the most ancient Jewish kehillos in Poland — a community some hold to reach back to the twelfth century, its oldest matzeivah dated to 1442 and its Great Shul built in the early Polish style of stone. By 1939 some fifteen thousand Jews lived there, near half the town, the second kehilla of the Lublin province after Lublin itself.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Chełm’s rabbinic chair was among the oldest in Poland. R’ Yehuda Aharon of Chelm headed the kehillos of the Lublin, Chelm and Belz districts in the early sixteenth century, and his son R’ Eliyahu Ba’al Shem of Chelm (niftar 1583) was the famed kabbalist of the Golem tradition. The Maharsha — R’ Shmuel Eidels — held his first rabbanus in Chełm before going on to Lublin. From the early nineteenth century the town’s rabbonim were chassidim, and shtieblach of Kotzk, Kuzmir, Radzin and Belz stood through it.

Torah of the Town. Chełm carried a full Torah life across the centuries — its ancient Great Shul, its yeshiva and battei midrash, its Talmud Torah, its chassidishe shtieblach — and its line of rabbonim made the town a Torah center of the Lublin region from the earliest generations of Polish Jewry.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Chełm were driven into a ghetto and, in 1942, deported to their deaths in Sobibor, which lay not far off, murdered with the Jewry of the Lublin region al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. Of the great and ancient kehilla of Chełm only a handful lived to see liberation.

The Town. Chęciny — Chentshin in Yiddish — was an old town of Lesser Poland beneath its royal castle, one of the early urban centers of the region, with a Jewish kehilla reaching back centuries.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Chentshin was a chassidishe town, the seat of the Chentshin court founded by Reb Chaim Shmuel Szternfeld, a great-grandson of the Chozeh of Lublin. The Chentshiner Rebbe was known for his longing for Eretz Yisrael — the record tells that he kept a clock in his home set to the hours of the Holy Land — and his court gave the town its name in the chassidishe world.

Torah of the Town. Beside its great shul and battei midrash, Chentshin held the shtieblach of its own rebbe and of other courts, and carried a full chassidishe and communal life. The town’s name lived on in the Chentshin dynasty long after.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Chęciny were sealed into a ghetto and, in 1942, deported to Treblinka and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The old kehilla of Chentshin was destroyed.

The Town. Łęczna — Lentshna in Yiddish — was an old market town of the Lublin region, its Jewish community recorded from the early sixteenth century. So central was it that the Council of Four Lands, the governing body of Polish Jewry, gathered there in the seventeenth century.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Łęczna was a chassidishe town, the seat of the Lentshna court, and its old shul — built in the seventeenth century and standing to this day — anchored a kehilla of rabbonim, chassidim and craftsmen. Its shtieblach and battei midrash carried the town’s Torah life across the generations.

Torah of the Town. From its days as a seat of the Council of Four Lands through the rise of its own chassidishe court, Łęczna held a full Torah and communal life — its great shul, its battei midrash and shtieblach — one of the established kehillos of the Lublin region.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Łęczna were driven from their homes and, in 1942, deported to their deaths in Sobibor, murdered with the Jewry of the Lublin region al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The old kehilla of Lentshna was destroyed.

The Town. Modrzyce — Modzhitz to the chassidim — was a small town on the Vistula beside Dęblin, in the Lublin region of central Poland. Small as it was, it gave its name to one of the best-loved of the chassidishe courts.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Modzhitz was the seat of the Modzhitz court, founded when Reb Yisrael Taub settled there in the 1890s and became known as the Modzhitzer Rebbe. The court of Modzhitz became famous above all for its niggunim — the Rebbe composed melodies of great beauty and length that are sung by chassidim and beyond to this day, so that Modzhitz became a byword for the avodah of song.

Torah of the Town. Around the Rebbe’s court gathered the shtiebel, the beis medrash and the chassidim of Modzhitz, and the town carried a full chassidishe life. Its melodies traveled far beyond it, carrying the name of the small Vistula town across the chassidishe world.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of the Modrzyce and Dęblin area were driven from their homes and, in 1942 and 1943, deported to their deaths in the death camps of the Lublin region and held in the local labor camps until they too were destroyed — murdered al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד.

The Town. Mińsk Mazowiecki — Novominsk to its Jews, after the town’s older name of Nowomińsk — lay east of Warsaw in the Mazovia region. Its Jewish kehilla, settled from the eighteenth century, numbered some five thousand on the eve of the war.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Novominsk was a chassidishe town, the seat of the Novominsk court of the Perlow dynasty, whose rebbes drew chassidim from the towns around. Its shtieblach and battei midrash, gathered about the court, carried the Torah and chassidus of the town across the generations.

Torah of the Town. Beside the Novominsk court stood the great shul, the battei midrash and the chadarim of the kehilla, and the town held a full chassidishe and communal life. The name of Novominsk lived on in its dynasty long after the town itself was destroyed.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Novominsk were sealed into a ghetto in 1940, into which Jews of the neighboring towns were also driven. In August 1942 the ghetto was liquidated: about a thousand Jews were shot, and the rest — some seven thousand souls — were deported to Treblinka and murdered al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד. Of the whole kehilla only a small remnant survived.

The Town. Tarnobrzeg — Dzikov to the chassidim, after the Dzików estate beside it — was a town of western Galicia near the San, with an old and chassidishe Jewish kehilla.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Dzikov was the seat of the Dzikov court of the Horowitz dynasty, a branch of the house of Ropshitz and Sanz. Its rebbes, the Dzikover Horowitzes, served as rabbonim of Tarnobrzeg and led their chassidim there, the last of them, Reb Chaim Menachem David Horowitz, perishing in the churban.

Torah of the Town. Around the Dzikov court gathered the shtieblach and battei midrash of the kehilla, and the town carried a full chassidishe life in the western Galician style, its rebbes’ Torah preserved in their seforim.

The Churban. The Jews of Tarnobrzeg were among the first to be uprooted: in the autumn of 1939 the Germans drove the whole kehilla from the town, expelling them across the San, and in the years that followed its Jews shared the fate of Galician Jewry, deported to Bełżec and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The old kehilla of Dzikov was destroyed.

The Town. Ożarów — Ozharov to its Jews — was a small town of the Opatów region in central Poland, its Jews about two-thirds of its people. Some thirty-two hundred Jews lived there on the eve of the war, earning their bread in its small trades — its glassworks, its mills and its tanneries.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Ozharov was a chassidishe town, the seat of the Ozharov court of the Epstein Levi’im, whose rebbes led their chassidim there. Its shtieblach and battei midrash, gathered about the court and the town’s great shul, carried the Torah and chassidus of the kehilla across the generations.

Torah of the Town. Small as it was, Ozharov held a full chassidishe and communal life — its shul, its battei midrash and shtieblach, its chadarim — and the name of the town lived on in the Ozharov court and its seforim long after.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Ozharov were confined to a quarter of the town. At the end of October 1942 the ghetto was liquidated: the kehilla was marched to the train, the old and the children shot along the way, and some forty-five hundred Jews deported to Treblinka and murdered; the remnant left to clear the town was later marched toward Sandomierz and shot — the kehilla of Ozharov destroyed al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד.

The Town. Lelów — Lelov to the chassidim — was a small old town of central Poland near Częstochowa. Small as it was, it gave its name to one of the foundational courts of Polish chassidus and remains a place of pilgrimage to this day.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Lelov was the seat and resting place of Reb Dovid Biderman of Lelov (niftar 1814), founder of the Lelov court and a foremost talmid of the Chozeh of Lublin — of whom the Chozeh said that he was the foundation of all the tzaddikim. Reb Dovid was beloved above all for his boundless ahavas Yisroel; his talmid was Reb Yitzchak of Vorki, of the line of Vurka and Amshinov, and his son Reb Moshe married the daughter of the Yid Hakodosh of Peshischa and later brought the Lelov dynasty up to Eretz Yisrael.

Torah of the Town. Around the memory and the kever of Reb Dovid, Lelov held a chassidishe kehilla — its shul, its beis medrash and shtiebel — and his ohel drew chassidim to the small town across the generations, the well-spring of a chassidus that lived on far beyond it.

The Churban. Under German occupation the small kehilla of Lelów was uprooted and, in 1942, its Jews were deported with the Jewry of the region to Treblinka and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The old kehilla of Lelov was destroyed, though the kever of Reb Dovid remains a place of tefillah to this day.

The Town. Wolbrom, a town of Lesser Poland near the old Austrian border northwest of Kraków, held a Jewish kehilla settled from the late seventeenth century, long under the wing of the Kraków community. Some five thousand Jews lived there on the eve of the war, more than half the town, among them — unusually for Polish Jewry — not a few who worked the land.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Wolbrom was a chassidishe town from the nineteenth century, the seat of the Wolbrom court, with shtieblach of its own rebbe and of other courts alongside the shul of the misnagdishe “regular Jews.” Its rabbonim, shul and battei midrash anchored a kehilla that grew with the town across the generations.

Torah of the Town. Wolbrom held a full Torah and communal life — its great shul, its battei midrash and shtieblach, its chadarim and Talmud Torah — one of the established chassidishe kehillos of the Kraków region.

The Churban. In the autumn of 1941 the Jews of Wolbrom were sealed into a ghetto, into which thousands of refugees were also driven. The liquidation came in September 1942: the kehilla was marched to the railway station, some two thousand of the old and weak shot in the forest over ready-dug graves, and the rest — six to seven thousand souls — deported to Bełżec and murdered, the able-bodied sent to the camps; a remnant was killed in a second Aktion that November. The kehilla of Wolbrom was destroyed al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Town. Kalisz — Kulish to its Jews — is held to be the oldest town in Poland, and its Jewish kehilla among the very oldest, reaching back to the twelfth century, when Jews minted the prince’s coins. It was here, in 1264, that Duke Bolesław the Pious issued the Statute of Kalisz — the first charter of Jewish rights in the Polish lands, later extended by Casimir the Great over the whole kingdom, the legal foundation on which the great Jewry of Poland was built. By 1939 some twenty-five thousand Jews lived there, near a third of the city.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Kalisz was an important Torah center from the earliest generations. R’ Avraham Avele Gombiner, the Magen Avraham — whose commentary on the Shulchan Aruch is learned wherever halacha is studied — sat as dayan in Kalisz in the seventeenth century, and R’ Yehuda b. Nissan, the Beis Yehuda, and other gedolim served there. Among its later ravs was R' Meir Auerbach, the Imrei Binah, who led Kalisz before his aliyah to Yerushalayim. Its kehilla, led in the modern era by the Agudah, ran its yeshivos Magen Avraham and Eitz Chaim, its Talmud Torah, its hospital and its welfare mosdos; chassidim of Kotzk, Ger and Aleksander filled its shtieblach.

Torah of the Town. From its medieval yeshiva through its two yeshivos of the last generation, Kalisz carried a full Torah life across the centuries — its two great shuls and its many battei midrash, its chadarim and Talmud Torah — a spiritual center of Polish Jewry from the days of the Statute that bears the town’s name. For twenty-seven years the Magen Avraham himself sat as dayan on its beis din (תט"ז–תמ"ג); in the last century its seat ran from R' Meir Auerbach, the Imrei Binah — who went up to the rabbanus of Yerushalayim — to his successor R' Chaim Elazar Wax, the Nefesh Chaya, and down to R' Yechezkel Lipschitz of the HaMidrash V'HaMaaseh (niftar תרצ"ב).

The Churban. Kalisz lay in the region annexed to the Reich as the Warthegau. Late in 1939 most of its Jews were driven out — expelled to the towns of central Poland and Galicia — and those who remained, with the Jewry of the Warthegau, were murdered at Chelmno, the first of the death camps. The most ancient of Poland’s kehillos was destroyed al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Town. Białystok, the great city of the Podlasie region in northeastern Poland, was a Jewish metropolis — the textile capital of the land, where Jews built the mills and the trade that made the city. Its Jewish kehilla, settled from the seventeenth century, grew to some fifty thousand souls, for generations a majority of the city.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Białystok was a Torah center of every current — misnagdim and chassidim alike — with two great shuls and close to a hundred battei midrash and shtieblach, many with their own libraries, and a Talmud Torah and yeshiva under the kehilla’s hand. Standing on the edge of the Lithuanian Torah world, the city held a full and varied Jewish life into the twentieth century.

Torah of the Town. Around its great shuls and its many battei midrash, its chadarim, its Talmud Torah and its yeshiva, Białystok carried a Torah and communal life worthy of a metropolis — a city of rabbonim, of lamdanim, and of a hundred houses of tefillah.

The Churban. Białystok fell to the Soviets in 1939 and to the Germans in June 1941. In the first days the Germans drove the Jews into the Great Shul and burned it down with hundreds of Jews inside, and shot thousands more in the fields around. The survivors were sealed into a ghetto; in February 1943 some ten thousand were deported to Treblinka, and in August 1943 the ghetto rose in armed revolt as it was destroyed, its Jews sent to Treblinka and Majdanek — the great kehilla of Białystok murdered al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד.

The Town. Rzeszów — Reisha to its Jews — was a great city of western Galicia east of Kraków, the seat of its district and a hub for the many small towns around it. Some fourteen thousand Jews lived there on the eve of the war, a large share of the city.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Reisha held an old and established kehilla — a town of rabbonim, of chassidim of the Galician courts, and of battei midrash and shtieblach gathered about its great shuls. It stood as a Torah and communal center for the western Galician region, between the courts of Sanz and the cities of the plain; in its last generations its rav was R' Aharon Lewin, the Reisha Rav, who led its yeshiva and was murdered al kiddush Hashem with his kehilla. Among the rabbonim who held the city's beis din was R' Menashe Eichenstein, the Alfei Menashe — Ra'avad of Riesha from around the turn of the century, who divided his year between Riesha in winter and his Veretzky rabbanus in summer, and printed his Toras Ha'asham here.

Torah of the Town. Reisha carried a full Torah life — its great shuls, its battei midrash and shtieblach, its chadarim — and as the seat of its district drew the Jews of the towns around it for trade, for tefillah, and for din Torah.

The Churban. Under German occupation Reisha was sealed into a ghetto, into which the Jews of the whole region around — Lancut, Tyczyn, Kolbuszowa and many more — were driven, swelling it to some twenty thousand. In the summer of 1942 the kehilla was destroyed: the old and the sick were shot in the Rudna forest, and the rest deported to Bełżec and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Town. Sandomierz — Tzoizmir to its Jews — was an ancient town on the Vistula near its meeting with the San, one of the oldest Jewish kehillos in Poland, settled from the thirteenth century, with a shul first built in 1255. By the sixteenth century it was among the largest Jewish communities in the land.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Tzoizmir’s was a kehilla of the earliest generations of Polish Jewry. Together with the Jews of Kraków and Lemberg its leaders appealed to Casimir the Great, who in 1367 extended to them the protections first granted to Kalisz in 1264. Through the centuries it held its rabbonim, its great shul, its battei midrash and shtieblach, a chassidishe town whose Jews bore the name Tzoizmir across the Jewish world.

Torah of the Town. Around its old shul — rebuilt in stone and standing to this day — and its battei midrash, Sandomierz carried a full Torah life across the centuries, its chadarim and shtieblach anchoring a kehilla that reached back to the dawn of Jewish Poland.

The Churban. Under German occupation Tzoizmir became a place of refuge, Jews expelled from Kalisz, Sieradz and Vienna driven into it. In 1942 the kehilla was destroyed: its Jews, with those they had sheltered, were deported to Treblinka and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד, and by the war’s end not a Jew was left in the ancient town.

The Town. Płock — Plotzk to its Jews — was an ancient city on the Vistula northwest of Warsaw, and one of the most ancient Jewish kehillos in all of Poland, reaching back to the medieval beginnings of Jewish settlement in the land.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Plotzk’s rabbinic chair was among the oldest and most honored in Poland, held in its time by R' Yehuda Leib Margolios (until 1804) and then by Reb Aryeh Leib Tzintz, the Maharal Tzintz, known as the Plotzker Gaon, one of the great poskim and darshanim of his age. The kehilla’s Great Shul and Little Shul, its Beis Medrash and its yeshiva anchored a full Torah and communal life of misnagdim and chassidim alike.

Torah of the Town. From the Maharal Tzintz through its yeshiva and battei midrash of the last generation, Plotzk carried the Torah of one of Poland’s most ancient kehillos — its Great Shul, its chadarim and Talmud Torah — across the centuries.

The Churban. Płock lay in the region annexed to the Reich. The Germans desecrated its shuls — the Great Shul turned to a garage, the Little Shul demolished — and early in 1941 expelled the whole kehilla to the towns of central Poland; from the ghettos into which they were driven its Jews were later deported to Treblinka and the death camps and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The ancient kehilla of Plotzk was destroyed.

The Town. Siedlce, a city east of Warsaw on the road to the Bug, held a great Jewish kehilla — some fifteen thousand Jews, about half the people of the town — a center of Jewish life and trade for the region of Podlasie around it.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Siedlce held an old and well-built kehilla, with its rabbonim, its great shul and its battei midrash, and the shtieblach of the chassidishe courts. A town of every current of Jewish life, it carried a full Torah and communal life into the twentieth century and served as a hub for the smaller kehillos around it.

Torah of the Town. Around its great shul, its battei midrash and shtieblach, its chadarim and Talmud Torah, Siedlce held the Torah life of a regional center — a city of rabbonim and chassidim drawing the Jews of the towns around it.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Siedlce were sealed into a ghetto in 1941, into which the Jews of the towns around — Łosice, Mordy and more — were also driven. Beginning on 22 August 1942 the kehilla was destroyed: some ten thousand Jews were gathered at the Umschlagplatz and deported to nearby Treblinka, and Siedlce became a way-station through which the Jews of the whole region were sent to their deaths al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Town. Pińczów, an old town south of Kielce, held a Jewish kehilla settled from the sixteenth century, granted its rights in 1594. So old was it that its shul, built between 1594 and 1609 in stone, was among the most ancient in all of Poland, its seventeenth-century wall-paintings preserved to this day.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Around its venerable shul Pińczów built a full kehilla of rabbonim, dayanim and chassidim, its battei midrash and shtieblach gathered about the old beis haknesses. From the earliest generations of Polish Jewry the town held a place of Torah and learning in the Kielce region.

Torah of the Town. The old shul, the battei midrash and the chadarim of Pińczów carried its Torah life across the centuries — a small but ancient kehilla whose stone beis haknesses still stands as a witness to the Jewish generations who davened in it.

The Churban. Under German occupation the Jews of Pińczów were sealed into a ghetto of some three thousand souls. In October 1942 the kehilla was destroyed: its Jews were driven on foot to Jędrzejów and from there deported to Treblinka and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד; those who fled to the forests were hunted down. The ancient kehilla of Pińczów was destroyed.

The Town. Ostrowiec — Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski — was a town of the Kielce region whose Jews, settled from the seventeenth century, at first belonged to the kehilla of Opatów (Apta) nearby. With the growth of its steelworks the kehilla grew to some ten thousand and, with refugees, to over fifteen thousand by the war.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Ostrowiec was a chassidishe town, the seat of the Ostrovtzer Rebbe, Reb Meir Yechiel Halevi Halstock, who was renowned for the fasts he kept across the decades of his life and for the sharpness of his Torah. Around his court and the town’s great shul gathered the shtieblach and battei midrash of a full chassidishe kehilla.

Torah of the Town. The court of the Ostrovtzer, the great shul, the battei midrash and the chadarim of Ostrowiec carried a full Torah life — a chassidishe town that bore its name into the wider world through its rebbe and his Torah.

The Churban. Under German occupation a ghetto was sealed in Ostrowiec, swelled to over fifteen thousand by Jews driven in from the towns around. On 11 and 12 October 1942 the kehilla was destroyed: some eleven thousand Jews were gathered in the market square and deported to Treblinka and murdered; a remnant held in a slave-labor camp at the steelworks was later sent to Auschwitz — the kehilla of Ostrowiec destroyed al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד.

The Town. Sanok, a town of western Galicia on the San in the Carpathian foothills, held an old Jewish kehilla of some five thousand souls, a community of trade and craft and chassidus among the hills near Przemyśl.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Sanok was a chassidishe town in the Galician way, with its rabbonim, its shuls and its shtieblach of the Galician courts. For over thirty years its rav was R' Yehuda Yitzchak Frankel, mechaber of Me'at Mayim and Mechir Chalav; in the early 1920s the chair was held by R' Meir Shapiro, the future Maharam Shapira, who led its Torah in the years his Chachmei Lublin and Daf Yomi were taking shape. Its battei midrash and chadarim carried a full Torah and communal life in the foothills of the Carpathians.

Torah of the Town. Around its shuls and battei midrash, its shtieblach and chadarim, Sanok held the Torah life of a Galician kehilla — a town of rabbonim and chassidim in the hill country of the San.

The Churban. The Germans entered Sanok in September 1939 and burned its shuls; on Sukkos many Jews were driven across the San into Soviet-held land. The rest were sealed into a ghetto, swelled by refugees to many thousands; in September 1942 they were taken to the Zaslaw camp and from there deported to Bełżec and murdered, the sick and the aged shot in the forests — the kehilla of Sanok destroyed al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד.

The Town. Jarosław, a town of western Galicia on the San near Przemyśl, held an old Jewish kehilla reaching back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its great fair was among the most important in the land, drawing merchants from across Poland and beyond.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Jarosław held a place of honor in the order of Polish Jewry: at its famous fair the Council of Four Lands — the governing body of Polish Jewry, seated at Lublin — would gather to rule on the affairs of the kehillos. The town’s own kehilla, with its Great Shul and its battei midrash, held a full Torah and communal life across the generations.

Torah of the Town. Around its Great Shul and its battei midrash, Jarosław carried the Torah life of an old Galician kehilla — a town of rabbonim and chassidim that had once hosted the leaders of all Polish Jewry at its fair.

The Churban. The Germans took Jarosław in September 1939 and within weeks drove almost the whole kehilla across the San into Soviet-held land; many were exiled deep into the Soviet interior. Those who remained or returned shared the fate of Galician Jewry, deported to Bełżec and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The old kehilla of Jarosław was destroyed.

The Town. Bochnia, an old salt-mining town of Lesser Poland southeast of Kraków, held a Jewish kehilla of some three thousand souls, about a quarter of the town, who lived by trade and craft and small industry.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Bochnia held an old and established kehilla, led for generations by a rabbinic dynasty of the house of Sanz — the Halberstam family — with its battei midrash and chadarim, its great shul and its battei midrash, and the shtieblach of the Galician chassidishe courts. Its chadarim and Talmud Torah carried the Torah life of the town across the generations.

Torah of the Town. Around its shul, its battei midrash and shtieblach, and its chadarim, Bochnia held a full Torah and communal life — an old kehilla of the Kraków region in the foothills southeast of the city.

The Churban. Under German occupation a ghetto was sealed in Bochnia in 1941, swelled by Jews driven in from the towns around. In the deportations of 1942 the kehilla was destroyed: thousands were sent to Bełżec and hundreds shot in the nearby forest; the remnant, held as a labor camp, was deported in 1943 to the camps and to Auschwitz — the kehilla of Bochnia destroyed al kiddush Hashem, הי"ד, the town declared free of Jews in October 1943.

The Town. Oświęcim sat in western Galicia where the Sola meets the Vistula — and its Jews called it Oshpitzin, from ushpizin, guests: a town whose Jewish name meant hospitality. By the prewar years Jews were roughly half the town, with its shuls, shtiblech and chadarim — an old, warm Galician kehilla. (Seeded thin — population figures, institutions and kehilla records await a dedicated pass; named targets: Pinkas Hakehillot Poland, Yad Vashem, the Auschwitz Jewish Center records.)

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. The town's seats carried admorim and rabbanim of the Galician heartland: the Admor R' Dov Berish of Oshpitzin, whose testimony and descendants stand already on this site's cards; R' Yitzchak Aizik Rosenbaum, Rav of Oshpitzin, zeide of the Chelkas Yoav's house; R' Shlomo of Bobov, the first Bobover Rebbe, who held the rabbanus here in the years before Vishnitsa; and from תרס"ז the chain closed on his brother-in-law, R' Elazar Rosenfeld — the Oshpitziner Rav, of the house of Kaminka, youngest son-in-law of the Divrei Chaim, with his sons R' Shalom Reuven and R' Naftali Shmuel Tzvi serving beside and after him.

Torah of the Town. Oshpitzin was a town of chassidus — Bobover roots from the Rebbe's own tenure, the Kaminka court of its Rav — and of yeshiva Torah: among the first eight yeshivos of the Keser Torah network of Radomsk, one opened in Oświęcim, the town's bochurim learning in the network that covered western Poland.

The Churban. The German army took the town in September 1939 and renamed it Auschwitz — and at its edge rose the camp that would swallow the Jews of Europe, bearing the town's German name into eternal infamy. The kehilla itself was broken first: in 1941 the Jews of Oshpitzin were expelled — to Będzin and Sosnowiec, as this site's Będzin diary records — and from those ghettos they were deported to Auschwitz: the children of Oshpitzin murdered in the camp that carried their own town's name. Their Rav, driven to Sosnowiec, was niftar there in a cellar in תש"ג. (Expulsion dates and numbers seeded — named targets above.) הי"ד.

The Town. Chrzanów, a town of western Galicia near the border of Upper Silesia, held a large and intensely religious Jewish kehilla — some eight thousand souls — so devoted to the mitzvos that it was known as the Jerusalem of Galicia, a town where the Shabbos was kept, in its people’s words, as a Shabbos of Shabbosos.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Chrzanów was a chassidishe town, its rabbinic chair held in its last generations by rabbonim of the Halberstam family of Sanz — the court of Keshanov founded by R’ Dovid Halberstam, son of the Divrei Chaim, the first Keshanover Rebbe; in its old beis hachaim rest R’ Shlomo Bochner, a talmid of Reb Elimelech of Lizhensk, and the Halberstam rabbonim of the town. Around its great shul and its battei midrash gathered the shtieblach of the Galician courts.

Torah of the Town. Famed for its Shabbos and its yiras shamayim, Chrzanów held a full Torah life — its great shul, its many battei midrash and shtieblach, its chadarim and yeshivos — a kehilla whose devotion gave it its name among the towns of Galicia.

The Churban. Chrzanów lay in the region annexed to the Reich, near Oshpitzin. A ghetto was sealed in 1940; in June 1942 some four thousand Jews were deported to Auschwitz, and the ghetto, turned to a slave-labor camp, was liquidated in February 1943, its last Jews sent to Auschwitz and murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד. The kehilla of Chrzanów, the Jerusalem of Galicia, was destroyed.

The Town. Brody, in eastern Galicia near the Volhynian border, was for generations one of the great kehillos of the region — a free city of commerce whose fairs drew merchants from across Europe, and whose population was for long stretches a Jewish majority. This is a thin card, to be enriched later.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Brody was crowned by some of the foremost geonim of Galicia. R' Efraim Zalman Margolis, the Mateh Efraim, sat there; and from Tammuz תק"פ (1820) for nearly fifty years R' Shlomo Kluger, the Maharshak served as maggid meisharim and dayan of the city, one of the most prolific poskim of the age, so bound to it that he is remembered as the Maggid of Brody.

Torah of the Town. At the heart of Brody stood its celebrated Kloiz — a beis medrash of elite lamdanim and mekubalim; among those connected to it in earlier generations was R' Avraham Gershon of Kitov, the brother-in-law of the Baal Shem Tov. In the nineteenth century Brody also became a gateway of the Haskalah into Galicia, and the Torah-loyal of the city stood against it — the Maharshak among the fiercest opponents of the new way.

The Churban. The Jewish community of Brody, like all the kehillos of eastern Galicia, was destroyed in the Shoah — ghettoized under the German occupation and deported to the death camps, the ancient kehilla brought to its end al kiddush Hashem, Hy”d. The old beis hachaim of Brody survives, and the kevarim of the Mateh Efraim and the Maharshak within it remain a stop on this site’s map.

The Town. Tomaszów Lubelski (Yiddish Tomashov) was founded at the close of the 16th century by the magnate Jan Zamoyski and named for his son Tomasz. It lies in the southeastern corner of the Lublin region, close to the old Galician border. A Jewish kehilla took root there early, and by the 19th and 20th centuries Jews made up about half the town — more than five thousand souls by 1939.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. With the spread of chassidus in Poland, Tomashov became a seat of rebbes and a town of many shtieblach — batei medrash of Kotzk–Ger, Trisk, Radzin, Belz and Sanz stood side by side. Its own admorim were R' Yehoshua Frisherman and his father R' Yosef of Yartshev, of the Yaritchov court, and later R' Aryeh Leibush Rubin of the Chelm line, who served as rav and rebbe in the town.

Torah of the Town. Tomashov was the birthplace of R' Mordechai Yosef Leiner, the Mei HaShiloach of Izbica, and the place where the Kotzker Rebbe spent his early years — an extraordinary pair of contemporaries drawn from one small town. Among its lomdim was R' Shmaya, baal Siyata DiShmaya, and it gave the Torah world a stream of rabbonim and dayanim.

The Churban. Six days after the German invasion the town was bombed on 6 September 1939, and about a hundred and fifty were killed; that December the Germans herded the sick and disabled into a cellar and drowned them. The Jews were forced under a Judenrat, penned into a ghetto, and in 1942 deported the few kilometres south to Bełżec, where the kehilla of Tomaszów Lubelski was murdered al kiddush Hashem הי"ד.

The Town. Eishishok (Lithuanian Eišiškės; Polish Ejszyszki; איישישאָק) lies in the Vilna region of Lithuania, some sixty kilometres south-southwest of Vilna on the old road to Novogrudok, near the Belarus border. By tradition it was founded around 1070 by the Lithuanian commander Eišis — older than Vilna by some two and a half centuries — and its Jewish presence was among the most ancient in Eastern Europe: matzeivos in its beis hachaim were reported from as early as the 11th century. From the mid-18th century Jews were more than half the town, reaching some eighty percent by 1820, dominating its trade and crafts and its famous horse and cattle markets.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Across Lita the town was known as ayaras haperushim — the town of the prushim — for its Kibbutz HaPerushim, an elite kollel of married scholars who parted from their homes to toil in Torah. Among its rabbonim were R' Yosef Zundel Hutner, his son R' Naftali Menachem Hutner, and, in its last years, R' Shimon Rozovsky הי"ד, who was murdered with his kehilla. In its final generations the town divided, as many Lita kehillos did, between a zealous Torah-loyal camp — most of its baalei batim and the men of the Kibbutz HaPerushim — and a Zionist-maskilic one; the prushim twice brought the Chofetz Chaim to deliver sharp derashos against the new movements and against the "cheder metukan," though the tide could not be wholly held back.

Torah of the Town. The Kibbutz HaPerushim was a nursery of gedolim. Among those who sat and learned there in their youth were R' Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, later the manhig of Lita; R' Isser Zalman Meltzer; the Steipler Gaon; R' Shabsai Yogel, later rosh yeshiva of Slonim; R' Nachum Zev Ziv of the Kelm mussar house; R' Elya Chaim Meisel; and R' Chaim Aryeh Leib Mishkovsky, the Stawisker, who sat five years among its prushim. It was here, too, that R' Moshe Danishevsky, the young "illui of Smorgon," taught in his early years, and among his talmidim in the town was R' Meir Simcha HaKohen, later the Ohr Sameach of Dvinsk, who learned by him in Eishishok for some two years. From this small town flowed roshei yeshiva, dayanim and rabbonim across the Torah world.

The Churban. German troops entered Eishishok on 23 June 1941, and on 21 September an SS Einsatzkommando arrived with Lithuanian auxiliaries. The Jews of the town and the surrounding villages — more than four thousand souls — were herded into the great shul and two batei medrash over Rosh Hashana and then, on Tzom Gedalia, led out in groups to the old beis hachaim. On 25–26 September 1941 the men were shot at one pit and the women and children at another: some three and a half thousand of Eishishok's Jews, and fifteen hundred more from nearby, murdered al kiddush Hashem in two days; barely twenty-nine survived in hiding. Its churban has its own record, and its faces live on in the Tower of Faces in Washington, gathered by the survivor Yaffa Eliach. הי"ד.

The City. Shavel — Šiauliai, called Shavl by its Jews — is the fourth-largest city of Lithuania and the chief town of Žemaitija (Samogitia), in the north of the country. From the nineteenth century it grew into a center of the leather trade: the tannery founded by Chaim Frenkel in 1879 was the largest in the whole Russian Empire. A fast-growing Jewish population came with it — by 1902 Jews were nearly three-fifths of the city.

The Kehilla. Expelled en masse into Russia in 1915, the Jews returned through the 1920s; by 1939 some 8,000 lived there, about a quarter of the city, with their shuls, their Hebrew and Yiddish schools, and a line of distinguished rabbonim — among them R' Yosef Zecharia Stern and R' Meir Atlas, and finally R' Aharon Bakst — "Reb Archik" — its last rav.

Torah of the Town. Shavel never housed one of the great Lithuanian yeshivos; its Torah life ran through the town's rav and beis din, its shuls and Talmud Torah. What gave it its place on the Torah map of Lita was its chain of rabbonim: R' Yosef Zecharia Stern, who sat on its beis din for forty-three years — the “Rav HaZocher” of phenomenal memory, author of the Zecher Yehosef; R' Meir Atlas, father-in-law of R' Elchonon Wasserman and R' Isser Zalman Meltzer; and finally R' Aharon Bakst. Shavel was also the birthplace, in 1910, of R' Yosef Shalom Elyashiv — the future posek hador of the Litvish world — born into the household of his grandfather, the great mekubal R' Shlomo Elyashiv, the Leshem, who had himself served as a moreh tzedek in the town.

The Churban. The Germans entered on 26 June 1941. Three days later the rav R' Aharon Bakst, his son-in-law Dayan Aizik Rabinowitz, Dayan Avraham Yitzchak Nachumovski and other Jews were forced to dig their own graves and shot in the Kuziai forest; within weeks about a thousand of the city's six thousand Jews had been murdered. The rest were sealed into the Shavel ghetto and set to labor in the leather works; in 1943 it became an SS concentration camp; in the Children's Aktion of 5 November 1943 more than five hundred of its children were torn away and murdered at Auschwitz; and in July 1944 its remnant was deported to Stutthof. Only some five hundred of the kehilla survived. The full account is told in the churban diary of Shavel; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The City. Dvinsk — called Dinaburg until the Russian renamings, today Daugavpils in Latvia — sits on the Dvina (Daugava) river in the southeast of the land, near the meeting of Latvia, Lita and White Russia. A fortress and railway city of the Russian Empire, it held one of the great Jewish kehillos of the region, Jews forming a large share of the city through the late nineteenth century.

The Kehilla — Two Crowns. A generation before the crown was shared, the rav and Av Beis Din of Dvinsk was R' Aharon Shaul Zelig HaKohen, the Pruzhiner (1868–1879), the rosh yeshiva of Minsk who came to the city in his later years. For a generation Dvinsk was led by two geonim at once: the Ohr Sameach over the misnagdic kehilla from תרמ"ח, and the Rogatchover Gaon over the chasidishe one — a pairing told in full on their two cards, which gave the city a stature in Torah unmatched by any community of its size. The Ohr Sameach stood on the dike of the Dvina when the river rose, and stayed under the guns of the First War — every bullet has its address — and both geonim lie in the Dvinsk beis hachaim to this day.

The Churban. The kehilla of Dvinsk perished in the churban of Latvian Jewry: in Sivan תש"א (1941) the Nazis took the city and put its Jews to death, הי"ד — among them Rachel, daughter of the Rogatchover, who had raced to that very month to send her father's manuscripts to New York as two-centimeter photographs, as his card tells. The kevarim of the two geonim survived: the remnants of the kehilla still go up to them, as a recorded aliyah of 2011 attests — a card to be told in full in its own pass.

The Town. Salant — Salantai — a small town of Žemaitija (Samogitia) in northwestern Lita, held a Jewish kehilla of modest size and outsized name: it was the town of R’ Zundel of Salant, by whom the founder of mussar learned, and the town whose name R’ Yisrael Salanter — R’ Yisrael Lipkin, raised there — carried into every beis medrash of Lita. Here too R’ Naftali Amsterdam, of the first of the movement, was born in 1832.

The Churban. The kehilla of Salant perished in the churban of Lithuanian Jewry in תש"א (1941), הי"ד — the wider story told in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. A card to be told in full in its own pass.

The Town. Tismenitz — Tysmienica, in eastern Galicia near Stanisław — was an old kehilla: Jews are recorded there from the fifteenth century, and an organized community stood by the turn of the eighteenth, reckoned among the kehillos under the Council of the Province of Russia, a limb of the Va’ad Arba Aratzos. The town, held by the Potocki magnates — King Jan Sobieski himself lodged there in 1686 — grew into a famed center of the fur and leather trade, its furrier-merchants traveling to the great fairs of Leipzig and Breslau. When the old wooden shul burned in 1754 the kehilla raised a great stone beis haknesses in its place; some eight hundred Jews paid the poll-tax in 1765, and through the nineteenth century the kehilla numbered between two and two-and-a-half thousand souls, a quarter and more of the town. Poland until 1772, then Austrian Galicia, then Poland again between the wars, Tismenitz lies today in Ukraine.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. The name of Tismenitz stands in the Torah world above all on one chair — the thirty-year rabbanus of R' Meshulam Igra, the orphan-iluy of Buczacz, who came to its seat at barely seventeen and made his Tismenitz beis medrash a beis medrash of geonim: there the Ketzos HaChoshen, the Nesivos, R’ Mordechai Benet and his nephew R' Naftali of Ropshitz sat together on one bench. After him the kehilla kept a long line of rabbonim — among them the Horowitz ravs (R’ Aryeh Leibish and R’ Shmuel Halevi Ish Horowitz) and R’ Yosef Hager — down to its last rav, R’ Aharon Aryeh Leib Koten, who led the kehilla into the churban. The great stone shul stood at its heart.

Torah of the Town. Tismenitz was also a cradle of chassidus. R' Yaakov Koppel Chossid — Reb Yaakov Kopel Likover, a talmid of the Baal Shem Tov — settled there and made it a seat of the rising chassidus of Galicia; when a dispute broke out between the misnaged gaon Igra and the townsmen, it was R’ Yaakov Koppel who kept the peace and stood at the rav’s side. From his house came his son R’ Menachem Mendel, the founder of the Kosov dynasty — and from Kosov grew Vizhnitz: so the great Kosov–Vizhnitz line is rooted in Tismenitz, where R’ Yaakov Koppel lies buried. The chassidim of the town were harried in the anti-chassidic campaigns of early Austrian Galicia, and in time the Haskalah pressed at its Torah life as well; yet its battei midrash, its chadarim and its shtieblach carried the kehilla’s learning to the end.

The Churban. Under Soviet rule from 1939, Tismenitz fell to the Germans in the summer of 1941; on 2 July 1941 Hungarian troops entered the town amid a wave of Ukrainian-nationalist pogroms, and its Jews were given over to violence and plunder. In September 1941 the Jews of Tismenitz were driven to Stanisławów, the regional city — and there they were swallowed in its destruction: in the “Bloody Sunday” massacre of 12 October 1941, when some ten to twelve thousand Jews were shot at the Stanisławów cemetery, and in the deportations through 1942 to the death camp of Belzec. The ancient kehilla of Tismenitz — the seat of the Igra and a cradle of Kosov — was annihilated, הי״ד.

The Town. Eisenstadt — Kismarton — stood at the head of the sheva kehillos, the seven guarded communities of western Hungary under the Esterházy princes, and carried one of the great rabbinic chairs of the land: the city of R’ Meir Eisenstadt, the Panim Meiros, in whose yeshiva the young R’ Yonasan Eibeschutz learned, and of R’ Akiva Eiger the first, later of Pressburg. Here R’ Yeshaya Pick (Berlin) was born in תפ"ה — the boy whose hagahos would one day sit in the margin of every Gemara. In 1851 the chair passed to R' Azriel Hildesheimer, who built here a yeshiva that joined limudei kodesh with secular study and grew from twelve talmidim to over a hundred before he was called to Berlin in 1869 — a derech that drew the fierce opposition of the Hungarian kannoim. A card to be told in full in its own pass.

The Town. Ivye (Iwie; Yiddish Ivye) is a small town in the Grodno region — today in Belarus — founded in the fifteenth century. Between the wars some two thousand Jews lived there — a large part of the town — with Tarbut and Yiddish schools and a full range of youth movements.

The Kehilla & its Rabbonim. A kehilla of traders and craftsmen grew in Ivye over the centuries — several hundred Jews through the nineteenth century, swelling to some two thousand between the wars, with its shuls and batei medrash. Its rav for some fifty years in the eighteenth century was R' Moshe Ashkenazi, who was close to the Vilna Gaon and served without pay; later generations were led by the Grodzinski rabbinic line. Ivye was the birthplace of R' Aharon Bakst — "Reb Archik."

Torah of the Town. Ivye had its dayanim and a local rosh yeshiva, but no yeshiva of wide renown; its Torah life centered on the town rav and its batei medrash. Its pride was rather the gedolim it sent out into the Torah world — foremost among them R' Aharon Bakst, "Reb Archik," who was born there.

The Churban. The Germans entered at the end of June 1941. On 2 August 1941 some two hundred and twenty of the town's educated men — its teachers, bookkeepers, technicians and professionals, aged twenty to sixty — were taken to the forest by Stonevichi (Staniewicze) and shot. In February 1942 a barbed-wire ghetto of about three thousand was sealed, the Jews of the surrounding villages brought in. On 12 May 1942 a Gestapo unit from Lida gathered the Jews on the pretext of a passport check and murdered some two thousand five hundred of them — by then mostly women and children — at Stonevichi; about twelve hundred able-bodied Jews were kept alive in a shrunken ghetto. It was destroyed by the start of 1943, its last Jews sent by way of Lida to Majdanek; a remnant escaped to the forests, and the Bielski partisans brought out more than a hundred. The full account is told in the churban diary of Ivye; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Vilna (Vilnius) was founded in the early fourteenth century and held a central place among the cities of Lithuania. A Jewish community took shape around the city's great shul, and by 1592 the street on which it stood was already known as "Jews' Street."

The Kehilla & its Rabbonim. From at least the second half of the seventeenth century Vilna was one of the largest Jewish communities in Lithuania. It governed itself through the Kahal — an elitist communal council of talmidei chachamim and men of means that ruled with a firm hand; in the nineteenth century the Kahal lost its authority and communal governance passed to the various parties active in the city. Renowned rabbis settled there from the seventeenth century onward, and in the twentieth century its rabbinate was led by R' Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, author of the Achiezer — in his generation the leading halachic authority and manhig of Lithuanian Jewry. On his beis din sat, youngest of the dayanim, R' Yisrael Zev Gustman — last of the dayanim of Vilna, who would carry the name of Ramailes through the churban to Yerushalayim.

Torah of the Town. Though Vilna rose as a Torah center later than other great Polish-Lithuanian kehillos, by the seventeenth century it had secured its standing in the Jewish world. The crown of its "primacy of Torah" was the Vilna Gaon in the eighteenth century and his talmidim, the ro'ei pnei haGra, who established Lithuanian Jewry as a Torah-centered Jewry and created the very type of the Lithuanian yeshiva — among its houses of learning Yeshivas Ramailes and the Gaon's kloiz. In the nineteenth century the city was also the principal center of the Haskalah in Eastern Europe and a cradle of the mussar movement, the early seat of R' Yisrael Salanter. The Gaon himself, though the supreme halachic authority of his age, refused all communal office; and from Vilna's presses came the Romm edition of the Talmud — the Shas Vilna, completed in the 1880s — which became the standard printed Gemara of the Jewish world. The census of 1897 counted 63,891 Jews in Vilna — some 42 percent of the city; and the years after the First War were bought with blood: in April 1919, in the Polish–Lithuanian struggle for the city, eighty Jews were killed by Polish army units.

The Churban. Vilna's Jewry — "Yerushalayim d'Lita," flourishing for centuries — was annihilated in the Shoah, in the ghetto and in the pits of the Ponar forest outside the city. The full account is told in the churban diary of Vilna; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Kovno (Kaunas) was among the foremost Jewish cities of Lithuania. Across the river lay the suburb of Slabodka (Vilijampolė), where Jews settled in the eras when they were barred from the city itself; it became a Jewish-majority quarter and the seat of one of the great mussar yeshivos.

The Kehilla & its Rabbonim. Kovno's rav in the later nineteenth century was R' Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, the posek hador, whose secretary R' Yaakov Lifshitz directed "the Black Bureau" (ha-Lishka ha-Shechora) in the battle against the Haskalah and Zionism and founded the famed Kollel Kovno. R' Tzvi Hirsch Rabinowitz later served as rav of the city, and its last rav was R' Avraham Dovber Kahana-Shapira, the Dvar Avraham, who led the kehilla into the ghetto and was niftar there.

Torah of the Town. Slabodka was a world of yeshivos. In 1877 the Alter of Slabodka, R' Nosson Tzvi Finkel, founded the mussar yeshiva Knesses Yisrael; in 1894 he appointed R' Moshe Mordechai Epstein and R' Isser Zalman Meltzer as roshei yeshiva — Meltzer was later sent to found the yeshiva of Slutsk. The mussar controversy that shook Slabodka in 1897 drew in R' Yitzchak Blazer, a foremost talmid of R' Yisrael Salanter, at the invitation of R' Tzvi Hirsch Rabinowitz — who that same year founded a second yeshiva, Knesses Beis Yitzchak. In 1924 R' Avraham Grodzinsky and R' Yechezkel Sarna established a Slabodka branch in Chevron, which after the 1929 riots moved to Yerushalayim as Yeshivas Chevron; R' Aharon Kotler was among Slabodka's sons.

The Churban. On the night of 25 June 1941 Lithuanian nationalists fell upon Slabodka and murdered some 800 Jews. On 15 August 1941 the Kovno ghetto — officially "Ghetto Viliampolė" — was established in the Slabodka suburb; it was emptied and destroyed in July 1944. The full account is told in the churban diary of Kovno; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Brisk (Brest; Yiddish Brisk, formerly Brisk d'Lita) is a city in the southwest of today's Belarus, on the Polish border. For centuries it was among the foremost kehillos of Lita — a Torah and spiritual center for the region from the Middle Ages, and one of the chief communities of the Va'ad Medinas Lita, the Council of the Land of Lithuania. The records trace the kehilla from the thirteenth century, and count it the spiritual and Torah center of all Lita's Jewry until the seventeenth century; on the eve of the Second World War the records give its Jews at between some twenty and thirty thousand — two in five to nearly half the city — and the conflict of the figures is stated. Its name was later carried across the Torah world by the dynasty that led it.

The Kehilla & its Rabbonim. The elder chain of Brisk's chair carried crowns of its own: the records count among the city's rabbonim R' Yoel Sirkis — the Bach, R' Yaakov Meir Padua, and the Maharil Diskin, "the Rav of Brisk" of the generation before the dynasty. Then Brisk's name became bound to the Soloveitchik rabbinic dynasty. R' Yosef Dov Soloveitchik — the Beis HaLevi, rav of Slutsk and then of Brisk and a rosh yeshiva of Volozhin, was succeeded by his son R' Chaim Soloveitchik — "Reb Chaim Brisker" (rav from 1892 to 1918), and then by R' Chaim's son R' Yitzchak Zev — the Brisker Rav (the Griz), the city's last rav (1918–1939). Beside them sat the dayan R' Simcha Zelig Rieger, whom R' Chaim had made a condition of his own appointment — brought as the town's moreh hora'ah so that he himself need not turn to day-to-day psak.

Torah of the Town. Brisk gave the Torah world the Brisker method — the analytic derech of Talmud study, its first seeds in the Beis HaLevi and its full power brought out by R' Chaim, then the Griz, and later R' Yosef Dov Soloveitchik. The city's communal yeshiva gedolah was Toras Chesed, led by the Imrei Moshe, R' Moshe Sokolovsky. When the Griz escaped to Eretz Yisrael in 1941, he reestablished the derech as Yeshivas Brisk in Yerushalayim, where his sons and grandsons carry it on.

The Churban. After the German invasion of June 1941, Brisk's Jewry — some twenty thousand souls — was destroyed: a first massacre of thousands of its men that summer, a ghetto sealed in December 1941, and a liquidation in October 1942 in which most were carried to the pits of Bronnaya Gora. Among the murdered was the aged dayan R' Simcha Zelig Riger. The Griz, away from the city when war broke out, escaped through Soviet-held Vilna and on to Yerushalayim — but the kehilla he had led did not survive. The full account is told in the churban diary of Brisk; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Telz (Telšiai) is one of the oldest towns of Lithuania, set in its northwest. Jews began settling there in the sixteenth century, at first under the kehilla of nearby Kiddan. By 1897 some 3,080 Jews lived there, close to half the town.

The Kehilla & its Rabbonim. For all its charedi character, Telz also saw considerable Zionist activity between the wars — Herzl himself once spoke there. Its rav and rosh yeshiva was R' Yosef Yehuda Leib Bloch; after him his son R' Avraham Yitzchak Bloch led both the kehilla and the yeshiva, until he perished with his community in 1941.

Torah of the Town. The glory of Telz was its yeshiva, founded in 1875 by three local rabbis and raised to greatness after R' Eliezer Gordon became rosh yeshiva in 1884 — by the end of the century some 400 talmidim, among the largest yeshivos in the world, with R' Shimon Shkop among its maggidei shiur for some eighteen years. Telz was famed for its ordered, rigorous regime and its distinctive analytic derech — talmidim grouped by their level rather than their age — and for the intellectual mussar brought in from 1885 by R' Gordon's son-in-law R' Yosef Yehuda Leib Bloch. The rosh yeshiva passed within a single family: from R' Gordon to R' Yosef Leib Bloch, the Shiurei Daas, and then to his grandson R' Avraham Yitzchak Bloch; and after the churban the yeshiva was rebuilt on new soil in Cleveland by another son, R' Eliyahu Meir Bloch, carrying the name and the derech of Telz to America.

The Churban. When the Germans came in the summer of 1941 they herded together the Jews of Telz and the surrounding towns. The men — among them the rav and rosh yeshiva R' Avraham Yitzchak Bloch, his brother the mashgiach R' Zalman, and the talmidim of the yeshiva — were driven to the Rainiai estate and murdered there on כ' תמוז תש"א (15 July 1941); in the aktionen that followed the women, the elderly and the children were taken to the pits, and the kehilla was destroyed. Its yeshiva lived on, rebuilt in Cleveland by R' Eliyahu Meir Bloch. The full account is told in the churban diary of Telz; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Grodno (Hrodna; Yiddish Grodne) is a city in the west of today's Belarus, on the banks of the Niemen river, near the border triangle of Poland and Lithuania. On the eve of the war some twenty-five thousand Jews lived there — about half the city — among the senior kehillos of Lita and an important center of Jewish life.

The Kehilla & its Rabbonim. Grodno was one of the oldest and most senior kehillos of Lita. Together with Brisk and Pinsk it ranked among the veteran communities whose standing the rising kehilla of Vilna long laboured to match, sending its representatives to the Council of the Chief Communities of Lita. Among the glories of the town was its great shul, founded in 1578 by R' Mordechai Yaffe, the Levush; and among its tzaddikim R' Alexander Ziskind, author of the Yesod V'Shoresh HaAvodah (niftar 1794). After him the city's most beloved figure was R' Menachem Nachum Kaplan — Reb Nachumke of Grodno (1811–1879) — who held no rabbinic post yet was renowned as a hidden tzaddik and gabbai tzedakah, and was the rebbe muvhak of the Chofetz Chaim.

Torah of the Town. Yeshivas Shaar HaTorah, founded in the city in 1915, was its crowning Torah institution. It began among bachurim stranded by the First World War — gathered with the help of R' Yaakov Aryeh Lifshitz in the beis medrash of the Yesod V'Shoresh HaAvodah — and in 1920 R' Chaim Ozer Grodzinski called R' Shimon Shkop to its helm. His iyun, set down in the Shaarei Yosher, shaped a wide circle of Lithuanian roshei yeshiva and remains a pillar of the yeshiva derech to this day; among his Grodno talmidim were R' Dovid Lifshitz, R' Chaim Shmuelevitz, R' Shmuel Rozovsky, R' Yisrael Zev Gustman and R' Aryeh Leib Malin. Of the city's rabbinic houses stood the Rozovskys: R' Michel Dovid of the morei horaah, his shver R' Avraham Gelbort the kehilla's rav — and the son R' Shmuel Rozovsky, first rosh yeshiva of the rebuilt Ponevezh, whose eldest brother R' Yehoshua Heshel, rav of Grodno in his father's place, was murdered with the kehilla, הי"ד. And in an earlier generation the city had been the home of R' Nochum’ke of Horodna — R' Menachem Nochum Kaplan, the humble shamash and gabbai tzedakah who was the hidden tzaddik of the town and the rebbe muvhak of the Chofetz Chaim.

The Churban. After the German invasion the city's Jews were enclosed, in November 1941, in a ghetto of two separated quarters: in "Ghetto 1," in the old city around the great shul, some 15,000 Jews were crammed, and in "Ghetto 2," across the railway tracks in Slobodka, some 10,000 more, mostly ba'alei melacha. The deportations began on 2 November 1942; over five days from 18 January 1943 some 10,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz, on 13 February 5,000 more to Treblinka, and by 13 March 1943 the last were sent on to Bialystok and Grodno was declared judenrein. The full account is told in the churban diary of Grodno; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Ponevezh (Panevėžys) is a city in the north of Lithuania. On the eve of the war it held about seven thousand Jews — roughly a third of the city — one of the principal kehillos of northern Lita, with its shuls and schools and the Torah world that R' Kahaneman built around it.

The Kehilla & its Rabbonim. On its rabbinical chair sat the Aderes, R' Eliyahu Dovid Rabinowitz-Teomim, before he went on to Mir and then Yerushalayim; after him, from 1895, the great lamdan R' Yitzchak Yaakov Rabinowitz — Reb Itzele Ponevezher, author of the Zecher Yitzchak and the rebbe in lomdus of R' Shach — who led the kehilla until his petirah in 1919. Then came R' Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, the Ponevezher Rav, who built up not only the kehilla but a whole network of Torah institutions: a yeshiva gedolah, a yeshiva ketana, a talmud torah and kindergarten, and a Bais Yaakov seminary for the town's girls.

Torah of the Town. In 1919 R' Kahaneman founded the Ponevezh yeshiva gedolah — twenty-seven bachurim at its start, lodged in the homes of the town's Jews. Among those who shaped it in its early years were R' Yosef Leib Nendik, who came with bachurim from Grodno, and the famed mashgiach R' Yerucham Levovitz, who served as menahel ruchani before leaving for Mir at the end of 1922; afterward R' Kahaneman's brother-in-law R' Asher Kalman Baron led the ruchniyus. By 1929 the yeshiva and its lower divisions counted hundreds of talmidim, and in 1930 R' Kahaneman moved them to a campus bought with funds he raised in America.

The Churban. The Germans entered on 26 June 1941, and by 11 July the city's Jews were driven into a ghetto on a few streets; on 23 August 1941 some seven and a half thousand Jews of Ponevezh and the surrounding towns were murdered in the pits of the Pajuostė forest. Its rav, R' Kahaneman, had reached Eretz Yisrael in 1940 and there rebuilt the yeshiva in Bnei Brak — naming it Ponevezh after the town that had been destroyed, at once a memorial and a rebirth. The full account is told in the churban diary of Ponevezh; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Uzhvent — Užventis in Lithuanian, Uzhventy in the Russian registers — sat in the heart of Zamut, twenty-one miles southeast of Telz and twenty-eight from Shavl, a near-neighbor of Kelm. It was one of Lita's small kehillos: some 330 Jews at 1900 — traders and craftsmen of a market town — with a well-ordered kehilla that maintained its shul, its beis medrash, its Talmud Torah, and the rav's house. The kehilla numbered 330 at 1897, 173 at 1923, and about 100 Jews by 1940 — nearly every family keeping a small garden and a cow beside its trade. In June 1939 a great fire — suspected arson by antisemites — burned down the shul, the beis medrash, the Talmud Torah, the rav's house, and five homes, striking some thirty families; a public appeal for aid, signed by the town's rav, went out to the Jews of Lita. The rabbanim of Uzhvent, per the Pinkas register: R' Yaakov Mordechai Dinezon (תר"מ–תרמ"ז), R' Shlomo Nosson Kotler (until תרנ"ט), R' Nesanel Yosef Graz (until תרפ"ו), and the last rav — R' Yaakov Wolpe, who signed the fire appeal; whether he went with the kedoshim of the Pažilvis forest or of Zhager the record does not state, and it is seeded.

Torah of a Small Town. The measure of the town's Yiddishkeit is preserved, remarkably, in the memory of its own gentile neighbors: a Lithuanian townsman's recorded testimony states that the majority of the Jews of Uzhvent kept their tradition and did no work on Shabbos, and kept separate vessels for meat and for milk — the Shabbos and the kashrus of a Zamut shtetl as its neighbors saw them. And from this small town came a crown of the mussar world: here was born, in תרמ"א (1881), R' Moshe Rosenstein — the talmid of Kelm and Radin who stood three decades as Mashgiach of Yeshivas Lomza.

The Churban. When the war broke on 22 June 1941, refugees from Kraziai and from Kelm — among them a number of rabbanim — fled into Uzhvent; few of those who tried the road east got through. The Germans arrived on 24 June, but the town's rule passed to the local Lithuanian nationalists under a lawyer of the town, and for three weeks they beat, robbed and humiliated their Jewish neighbors and drove them to forced labor. For a time all the Jews were imprisoned in the alcohol-brewing cellar of the Smilgiavičius estate. On ו' אב תש"א (30 July 1941), 91 Jews — most of them of Uzhvent — together with ten refugee rabbanim were taken to the Pažilvis forest, three kilometers southeast, and murdered there, al kiddush Hashem הי"ד.

The names of the ten rabbanim are not preserved in the reached record — the Pinkas counts them without naming them, and the memorial's own inscription says only “among them, worldly just rabbanim”; their names are seeded for the Koniuchowsky testimony collection (O-71, files 102, 105–106) and the Yad Vashem files the Pinkas entry cites. The remaining Jews were driven to Zhager (Žagarė), and their fate was the fate of all the Jews gathered there: murdered in the great Zhager massacre the day after Yom Kippur תש"ב (2 October 1941; one printing of the record gives 11.10 — the variance stands as printed). Nine Jews were kept alive in the town for months more — and on 8 December 1941 they too were murdered; and with them, on that same day, twenty Jews who had accepted baptism to save their lives were murdered regardless — the record's own bitter testimony that the murderers made no distinction. A postwar name-list preserves 48 of the murdered by name, delivered to the killing ground by wagon. Of the kehilla survived only a few — among them the sisters Rachel and Miriam Davidov, hidden by a farmer of the district for two and a half months until they reached the Shavl ghetto.

What Remains — and the Bones Carried to Vilna. The record states plainly the shame that followed: for years after the murders — through the war and into the Soviet years — Lithuanians of the district came to the mass grave in the Pažilvis forest and rummaged it for valuables and for the gold teeth of the murdered. The surviving bnei hakehilla then carried the bones of the kedoshim to Vilna, and buried them there with dignity, raising a memorial over the kever with a Hebrew inscription — preserved in the record's rendering: this monument is a witness... for the holy of Uzhvent, and two of Luoke, who were murdered by the occupying enemy — among them, worldly just rabbanim... may their souls be bound in the bond of life (the original lashon awaits the matzeivah's own record and is seeded). The Pažilvis site on the Užventis–Pašilvė road stands in the US Commission survey; the Jews of Uzhvent driven to Zhager lie in the mass grave of the Zhager town park. The names of the Lithuanian murderers are kept, the Pinkas notes, in the Yad Vashem archives — not to be mentioned in one breath with the few righteous saviors. By 1970 four Jews remained in the town; by 1989, one. (Sources: Pinkas HaKehillot Lita — Užventis, via the JewishGen yizkor project · the USHMM Holocaust Survivors and Victims name-list record · the International Jewish Cemetery Project / US Commission survey · the LitvakSIG neighbor-testimony record · this site's R' Moshe Rosenstein card.)

The Town. Shklov sat on the Dnieper in the Mogilev land, on the old border-road between Poland and Russia — and every army that crossed that border crossed Shklov: the Cossack wars of the 1650s, the Swedes of 1708, Napoleon's men in 1812, and its Jews bore the brunt each time. After the first partition of 1772 carried it into the Russian Empire, Shklov rose as the first great Jewish commercial city of Russia — the largest Jewish shtetl of the whole Mogilev gubernia — its merchants trading from Riga to the Black Sea; and at the opening of the twentieth century it held some 5,400 Jews, four of every five souls in the town.

The Metropolis of the Misnagdim. More than a trading town, Shklov was the Torah metropolis of White Russia — the stronghold of the old learning and of the circle of the Vilna Gaon, some of whose choicest talmidim were the town's own sons; in the years of the great machlokes, declarations of the misnagdim went out from the rabbanim and talmidei chachamim of Shklov as from few other towns in Lita. Its own record runs deep: the Imrei Pinchas — R' Pinchas of Koretz was born in the town in תפ"ו (1726); R' Yaakov, mechaber of the Betzias HaPas, sat as its rav — father of R' Baruch Schick of Shklov, the dayan who at the Gra's word turned Euclid into lashon hakodesh, recording in his hakdamah the Gaon's teaching that what a man lacks of the other chochmos he will lack a hundredfold in Torah — and R' Baruch's einiklach were the Mishkenos Yaakov and the Keren Orah. Here too stood the beis medrash of R' Binyamin Rivlin, of the Gra's circle, and a Hebrew printing press from the 1780s — among the first in Russia — that sent seforim across the land. In those same decades the first stirrings of the Russian haskalah gathered around the town's merchant courts; the batei medrash of Shklov withstood that wind, and the Torah thread remained the town's crown. In the nineteenth century its chair carried great names: R' Yehoshua Leib Diskin held Shklov before he went to Brisk; after him came R' Hillel Milikovsky, of the talmidim of R' Yisrael Salanter; and from the תר"ל years, for some fifteen years until תר"נ, R' Yehoshua HaLevi Horowitz, son of Cherikov.

The Sar of Ustye. Just outside the town, at the estate of Ustye, stood the wonder of the generation: the beis medrash and great library of R' Yehoshua Zeitlin — talmid of the Shaagas Aryeh, purveyor of Potemkin's armies and counselor of the imperial court — who left the palaces and set a house of Torah in a field, sustaining talmidei chachamim at his table for years on end: a kollel before the word existed. His daughter's daughter Tzertil was the mother of the two Horowitz gaonim of Cherikov.

Gates of Yerushalayim. Out of Shklov went the builders of the old yishuv: R' Yisrael of Shklov, mechaber of the Pe'as HaShulchan, who led the third caravan of the Gra's talmidim to Eretz Yisrael in תקס"ט, and his chaver R' Menachem Mendel of Shklov, who led the first — the Perushim of Tzfas and Yerushalayim, sustained by the Vilna trustees under R' Chaim of Volozhin, as this site records. One Dnieper town, and from it the gates of two cities of Eretz Yisrael.

The Last Generations, and the Churban. Before the first war the yeshiva of R' Pesach Pruskin stood in Shklov and neighboring Amstislav — R' Moshe Feinstein learned within it. Under the Soviets the kehilla was ground down: private trade liquidated in the early 1930s, Jews pressed into crafts, field-work and the town's paper factory, a Yiddish school in place of the chadarim, the young drained to the cities — until on the eve of the invasion some 2,100 Jews remained, a quarter of the town. The Germans entered on 12 July 1941. Within a week part of the kehilla was driven to the village of Ryzhkovichi: after a selection, 84 men between fifteen and sixty-five were shot, and the rest were penned in an open-air ghetto in the village square under Belarusian police guard, given no food at all. In Shklov itself a ghetto was set on a street of destroyed houses — its Jews forced to wear the yellow magen-david armband — and some 100 more were held at the Iskra kolkhoz. On 2 October 1941 Germans, Finnish troops and Belarusian police led the Jews of Ryzhkovichi down to the Dnieper and murdered them near the village of Zarechye; and at about the same time the ghetto of Shklov and the Jews of the kolkhoz — 1,459 souls in all — were taken by truck to Zarechye and murdered there, every one. The kehilla of the Gra's circle, of the Sar of Ustye and the Perushim, ended on that riverbank. The names of its kedoshim await the registers (→ Yad Vashem, Ghettos Encyclopedia; JewishGen Belarus; the Mogilev-land registers). הי"ד.

The Town. Cherikov — טשעריקאָוו in the mouths of its Jews — sat on the Sozh river southeast of Mogilev, some twenty miles from the rail station at Krichev, a river town of wharves and great horse fairs. Jews stood in it from the settlement wave of the 1500s–1600s, and in 1648 King Władysław IV granted the Jews of Cherikov a charter — to trade in liquors and grain, to acquire property, and to keep their own shul and beis olam free of tax. In that very year of תח ותט the Cossacks fell upon the town and massacred its Jews — the charter and the churban of 1648 standing in one year — and the kehilla rebuilt itself upon its dead. With the first partition of Poland in 1772 the town passed to the Russian Empire and became the seat of its own uyezd in the Mogilev governorate. At the census of 1897 it held some 2,700 Jews of 5,200 souls — a Jewish-majority town of small traders, tailors and artisans, with Jewish farmers working the district villages around it.

The House of the Levi'im. In this small uyezd town lived R' Tzvi Hirsh HaLevi Horowitz — "R' Hirsh Milchiger" — of the Stanisławów Horowitz line of Reb Itzikl of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek and the descent of the Shelah HaKadosh, who in extraordinary stringency of kashrus ate no meat for forty years, and who brought to print the commentary of R' Yehoshua Zeitlin on the Smak. His wife Tzertil was a granddaughter — a daughter's daughter — of R' Yehoshua Zeitlin, the Sar of Ustye. Two sons born in Cherikov rose to great chairs of White Russia: R' Elazar Moshe Horowitz, born ב' תשרי תקע"ח (1817), thirty years ABD of Pinsk, whose hagahos stand in the Vilna Shas; and R' Yehoshua HaLevi Horowitz, born ~תקפ"ג (1823), ABD of Shklov — and both returned their neshamos in one year, תר"נ. The town sat in the Mogilev land whose Torah metropolis was Shklov of the Zeitlin line; and in Shklov and the neighboring district town of Amstislav the yeshiva of R' Pesach Pruskin would later stand before the first war — where R' Moshe Feinstein learned — the region's chain of Torah running down to the last generation.

Under the Soviets. In the 1920s the Jews of Cherikov were still its craftsmen and merchants; even in 1928 two shuls stood open in the town, holding on under the pressure of the years. The Yiddish school was closed in 1938; and by 1939 only 914 Jews — some fifteen percent of the town — remained, the young drawn away to the cities, the old kehilla shrinking under the Soviet decades. Its inner registers — the shuls by name, its rabbanim of the last generations, its chadarim and chevros — await the fuller record (→ the Mogilev-land registers; Rossiyskaya Yevreyskaya Entsiklopediya; JewishGen Belarus).

The Churban. The Germans entered Cherikov on July 17, 1941. In October 1941 — one record says November — all the Jews of Cherikov were taken out to the Mostovoye Ravine and shot; in 1942 a second operation murdered the Jews of mixed marriages and their children. The Red Army returned on October 1, 1943, to a town emptied of its kehilla. What survived: the old Jewish beis olam of Cherikov still stands, photographed and registered — the last witness of the kehilla of the 1648 charter. The names of its kedoshim await the registers (→ Yad Vashem, The Untold Stories; the IJCP survey; JewishGen). הי"ד.

The Town. Pinsk sat on the Pina river amid the great Polesia marshes, at the meeting of the water-roads of the south — and its kehilla was one of the oldest and greatest of Lita, standing from the early 1500s and counted among the head-kehillos of the Vaad of Medinas Lita beside Brisk and Grodno. For generations the city was in its majority a Jewish city — merchants of the river trade, craftsmen, and a world of Torah; on the eve of the churban some 21,000 Jews lived in Pinsk, an absolute majority of the town. The old trials struck it too: in April 1919 thirty-five Jews were shot against a wall by Polish soldiers — the massacre of Pinsk — and a further pogrom followed in 1920.

The Rabbonim. The chair of Pinsk carried some of the great names of the generations: R' Yehuda Leib Pohovitzer the mochiach; R' Refael HaKohen, later ABD of Hamburg; and R' Levi Yitzchak — the Kedushas Levi, who served in Pinsk as rav and rosh yeshiva until תקמ"ה (1785), before Berditchev — the years of the great machlokes between chassidim and misnagdim touching Pinsk as sharply as anywhere in Lita. In the nineteenth century the chain ran: R' Aharon of Kretinga, the Tosefes Aharon, niftar suddenly in 1841; three empty years; R' Mordechai Zakheim of Ruzhany (1844–1858); and from תר"כ (1860), for thirty years, R' Elazar Moshe Horowitz, the Ohel Moshe, whose hagahos stand in the Vilna Shas — beside whom lived his son-in-law R' Baruch Epstein, the Torah Temimah. After him: R' Tzvi Hirsh HaKohen Volk, and at the last R' Aharon Walkin, under whom Pinsk and Karlin were united into one kehilla — its last rav, niftar as the Germans entered the city.

Karlin Beside It. Across the way stood Karlin — the suburb that gave its name to the first great planting of chassidus in Lita, the town of R' Aharon HaGadol and of the Beis Aharon; for generations the two kehillos, Pinsk and Karlin, stood side by side, each with its rav — the misnagdishe chair of Pinsk and, in Karlin, R' Dovid Friedman, the She'eilas Dovid, one of the poskim of the generation. Between the two banks lived one of the fullest Jewish cities of Lita. When R' Elazar Moshe Horowitz took the Pinsk chair in תר"כ, one of his first acts was to restore peace between the two kehillos, whose relations had long been strained.

Torah of the Town, and the Churban. Already under R' Elazar Moshe the kehilla was bound to generous support of its Talmud Torah. In the 1920s Pinsk held a branch of the Novardok world — the Beis Yosef yeshiva of Pinsk under R' Shmuel Weintraub, which in the war's first winter was carried into exile and found shelter in Vilkomir, as this site records. The kehilla's own registers — its shuls and batei medrash, its chadarim and mikvaos, its chevros — await the fuller record (→ Toyzent Yor Pinsk, New York 1941; the Pinsk yizkor volumes via JewishGen). The churban: the Germans entered in July 1941; the first mass murders came within weeks, the ghetto in 1942, and its liquidation in the fall of תש"ג (October 1942) — the kehilla of five hundred years destroyed (→ Yad Vashem Ghettos Encyclopedia; the Pinsk volumes). הי"ד.

The Town. Kupishok — Kupiškis, on the Lėvuo and Kupa rivers in the far northeast of Lita, a near-neighbor of Rakishok — carried a kehilla from the seventeenth century: the local record dates it to 1682, when the nobleman Pacas granted the Jews the right to build their shul, and matzeivos of the 1600s have been found in the old beis hachaim. The kehilla grew from 1,350 souls at 1847 to 2,661 — seventy-one percent of the town — at 1897. In May 1915 its Jews were expelled eastward with all the Jewry of Kovno province; only part returned, 1,444 (54%) at the 1923 census, and the interwar years drew its youth out to South Africa and to Eretz Yisrael.

Two Kehillos, Three Shuls. Kupishok was, like its neighbor Rakishok, the rare thing in mitnagdishe Lita — a town with a substantial chassidishe kehilla beside its misnagdim; and the record preserves the doubled frame in full: two officiating rabbanim, two shochtim, two chevros kadisha, and three shuls — the chassidishe davening-house, the misnagdishe beis medrash, and the Great Shul, a fine stone building capable of holding all the Jews of the town — with a stone-built mikvah-house, a yeshiva, and a Talmud Torah beside them. On the misnagdishe chair sat forty years R' Alexander Sender Kaplan, the Shalmei Nedarim — from c. ת"ר to his petirah ד' אב תרמ"ד, and he is buried in the town; the roster of the rabbanim of both kehillos before and after him is seeded for the Pinkas HaKehillot (Lita) entry and the JewishGen Kupiskis records.

The Native Son. In Kupishok was born R' Ephraim Oshry — the talmid of Slabodka who, in the Kovno ghetto, wrote down on scraps the sheilos of the churban and their teshuvos, the Shu"t MiMaamakim, and lived to print them: one of the very few rabbanim of Europe to survive, and the posek whose Torah preserved the ghetto's halachic record for all generations.

The Churban. The Germans entered on 26 June 1941, and the murders began before the ghetto did: in late June about 1,000 Jews were murdered at the "Free Thinkers’" cemetery at the end of Gediminas street, and 78 more in the Slavinčiškis woods — the local killing unit led by the town’s own Lt. Antanas Gudelis. In mid-July the remaining Jews were ordered into a ghetto, and through July to September תש"א some 2,700 were murdered beside the town’s own Jewish beis hachaim (another record counts 1,500–2,000; the conflict is noted). Three kever-achim grounds hold the kedoshim: by the Free Thinkers’ cemetery, at the Jewish beis hachaim, and in the forest a kilometer from the railway station. הי"ד. And the aftermath is its own record: after the war the town midwife, Stefanija Glemžaitė, and her helpers compiled the names of the murdered Jews, name by name — and those names stand today on the Wall of Memory, dedicated in 2004 by forty-eight descendants of Kupishok inside the Great Shul itself, which still stands — the Soviet-era "culture house," now the town library, its walls holding the names of its kehilla; at the dedication was held the first tefillah in the building since the churban. The wider story is told in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. (Sources: the ESJF cemetery surveys · Remembering Litvaks / the litvaks.org community record · Encyclopaedia Judaica · the JewishGen Kupiskis kehilalink. Seeded: the rabbanim rosters of both kehillos, the yeshiva’s record, the Shalmei Nedarim’s kever site.)

The Town. Rakishok — Rokiškis — sat in the far northeast of Lita, near the Latvian border, its Jewish settlement running from the late seventeenth century. The railway of 1873, binding the town to Riga and Libau and to the Russian interior, made it a regional trading center, and the kehilla grew with it: 2,067 Jews by 1897 — three-quarters of the town. The first war scattered most of the kehilla eastward into Russia; it returned and rebuilt under independent Lithuania — 2,013 Jews at the 1923 census — and when the twenties' economy turned against the shtetl, its sons went out to South Africa, to America, and to Eretz Yisrael, the Johannesburg landsleit becoming a pillar of the town across the sea. On the eve of the churban some 3,500 Jews lived in Rakishok, four of every ten souls in the town.

The Kehilla & its Rabbonim — a Chassidishe Town in Lita. Rakishok's mark in the map of Lita was its chassidim: a strong chassidishe presence, rare almost to uniqueness in mitnagdishe Lithuania, lived side by side with the town's misnagdim — the yizkor book of the town devotes whole chapters to "Rakishok and its Chassidim" — and the kehilla carried the two worlds' shuls, shtiblach, chadorim and mikvaos together. The roster of the town's rabbanim across the generations — the chassidishe kehilla's rabbanim and the misnagdishe — is seeded honestly for the yizkor book's rabbanim chapters (Yisker-bukh fun Rakishok, Johannesburg 1952) and the Pinkas HaKehillot (Lita) entry.

Torah of the Town. The town lived a full Torah life to the end — its botei midrash of both camps, its melamdim, the niggunim its emigrant sons wrote down longingly in the yizkor book ("My Father's Niggun") from across the world. The record of its yeshiva-ketanah and chadorim is seeded for the yizkor book's education chapters.

The Churban. When the war broke on 22 June 1941 the town saw what was coming — nearly half its Jews fled toward Russia in panic, virtually all its youth among them — and those who remained fell into the hands of the Germans and the Lithuanian partisans within days. The record preserves weeks of cruel torture before the end; the despair of those weeks is preserved in the account of the town's doctor and two mothers who poisoned their children and themselves rather than wait. The murders came in Av תש"א under the documented deception that the Jews were being sent to work in Smolensk: the survivor accounts record the men shot on י"ז אב (10 August 1941) and the women on כ"ז אב (20 August), while the documented record — the murderers' own Jäger tally and the Lithuanian museum's account — sets the ghetto's emptying at the Velniaduobė pits by Bajorai on erev Shabbos and Shabbos, כ"ב–כ"ג אב (15–16 August): 3,207 souls, and the women and children at the Antanašė forest on ב' אלול (25 August): 1,160; the survivor's memory and the perpetrator's ledger are both preserved in the churban diary of Rakishok.

And the yizkor book preserves the crown of the kehilla's end: its rav spoke at the pits — and because of his words, the rav was shot first; the kedoshim were driven into the pits under a hail of bullets, and the record laments that those killed at once were the fortunate, who were not buried alive. The rav's name is seeded for the yizkor book's necrology. The Jews of the district — Abel, Ponemunok, Sevenishok and their neighbors — were murdered with them, al kiddush Hashem הי"ד. The Johannesburg landsmanshaft raised the town's matzeivah in 1952 — the 626-page yizkor book; the wider story is told in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. (Sources: the Yisker-bukh fun Rakishok un umgegnt, Johannesburg 1952, via the JewishGen yizkor project — the survivor accounts, the dates, the deception, the rav at the pits · Hebrew Wikipedia Rokiškis · the JewishGen project record. Seeded: the rabbanim roster, the rav's name, the chadorim record.)

The Town. Vilkomir (Ukmergė) rose on the Šventoji where the roads to Vilna and Riga crossed the river, and its Jews were there from the town's early centuries — timber men, bargemen, traders of grain and linseed oil on the river whose guild-rules governed the sculling from 1589. The kahal and its shul stand in a document of 1685; a generation earlier, in 1665, the princedom of Zamut had given the 622 Jews of the Vilkomir kahal leave to build their first shul — the “River Crossing” — and sanctioned the beis hachaim. The Jewish quarter sat at the River Crossing, its streets bearing names like “Egypt” and “Bath.” The kehilla grew from 716 souls at the 1766 census to 3,758 by 1847 — merchants, craftsmen, the tanneries — and by the 1880s to some 10,000 Jews, before the new railroads bypassed the town and the numbers eased: 7,287, more than half the town, at 1897. In 1878 a market-day fire burned down the entire town — and the kehilla rebuilt itself on its ashes. In May 1915 the Jews of Vilkomir were expelled eastward with all the Jewry of Kovno province; those who returned rebuilt again under independent Lithuania — 3,885 Jews at the 1923 census — and the kehilla's Chevra Kadisha kept its register and restored matzeivos three hundred years old in the old beis hachaim.

The Kehilla & its Rabbonim. The record's own testimony of the kehilla is that it was renowned for its conservatism — a fortress of the old ways: when the haskalah passed through it, and the maskil Lilienblum began his public career in the town in the 1860s, he found the kehilla unmoved, holding to its mesorah. Its rabbinical chair carried great names — R' Chaim of Volozhin himself held the Vilkomir rabbanus for a single year (c. תקמ"ט) before Volozhin drew him home. Across the generations the chair and its beis din carried great names: R' Aharl'e Vilkomirer — R' Aharon ben R' Shlomo HaLevi (תקע"א–תר"כ), the tzaddik whose name became one with the town's; R' Moshe Shapira, the Pnei Moshe, son of R' Yehoshua Yitzchak Shapira — R' Eizel Charif; R' Shaul Padwa of Polotsk (on the chair תרמ"ד–תר"ע); the dayanim-mechabrim R' Yosef Padwa, the Ikrei HaKorbanos, and R' Alexander Kaplan, the Shalmei Nedarim; and the town's famed darshan, R' Chaim Yitzchak Aharon Rappaport, the Maggid of Vilkomir.

And in the last generations on it sat R' Aryeh Leib Rubin, who founded the yeshiva of the town and was among the heads of Agudas HaRabbonim of Lita; after his petirah in Cheshvan תרצ"ו (1935) came R' Yosef Zusmanovich, “the Yerushalmi” — chosen for the seat over R' Yaakov Kamenetsky, then the struggling rav of little Tzitevian, who had also vied for the Vilkomir rabbanus and thought he had secured it; the loss carried R' Yaakov to America and, as he would say in later years, saved his life and the lives of his family. The crowning of the Yerushalmi also stilled the long and painful machlokes of Slabodka: at last, in the record's own words, the undisputed rav — and rosh yeshiva — in a prestigious town — a great lamdan whose kuntreisim of chiddushim on the whole Shas were lost in the war. When the refugee yeshivos were dispersed from Vilna, the Beis Yosef Novardok yeshiva of Pinsk, under R' Shmuel Weintraub, found shelter in Vilkomir under his hand — the rav himself delivered shiurim to its bochurim.

The Churban. The Germans took Vilkomir on 25 June 1941, and the local Lithuanians fell upon the Jews from the first day. In the Pivonija pine forest, four kilometers from the town, the pits were dug: the actions of August 1941 and the great massacre of 5 September 1941 murdered the Jews of Vilkomir together with the Jews of the district towns brought to the same pits — more than 7,000 kedoshim per the Vilna Gaon Jewish Museum's record (the US Commission survey counts 6,354 across the three great actions; the memorial plaque at the kever achim records 10,239); the ghetto's remnant was murdered in late September. With his kehilla went its rav, R' Yosef Zusmanovich, the bochurim of the town's yeshiva, and the sheltered bochurim of the Pinsk Novardok yeshiva. An obelisk of 1953 stands in the forest; the fuller account is told in the churban diary of Vilkomir and on the yeshiva card, and the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Baranovich (Baranavichy), in the Brest region of today's Belarus, was a relatively young town that rose to importance from 1870 as a junction of the Vilna–Lvov and Moscow–Warsaw railways; by 1883 it counted some two thousand souls. Jews settled there only from the close of the nineteenth century — residence had been formally barred until permission was granted in 1903 — yet the kehilla grew swiftly. Between the wars (1921–1939) the town lay in Poland with a Jewish majority, and on the eve of the Second World War about 12,000 Jews lived there, more than half its people.

The Kehilla & its Rabbonim. Across the life of the kehilla two rabbonim served in succession: R' Chaim Yehuda Leib Lubchansky (from 1887 until his petira in 1906) and his son-in-law R' Dovid Weitzel, who held the rabbanus from then until the kehilla's destruction — his wife and children were murdered, and he himself reached Eretz Yisrael after the war. The town rav's son, R' Yisrael Yaakov Lubchansky, would serve as mashgiach of the Ohel Torah yeshiva. Between the wars the town held a full Jewish life: Tarbut, Yavneh, Beis Yaakov and TzISHA schools in Hebrew and Yiddish, Zionist parties and youth movements, and six Yiddish weeklies; in 1931 both Ze'ev Jabotinsky and the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik visited.

Torah of the Town. Baranovich was a town of yeshivos. Foremost was Yeshivas Ohel Torah, founded by the Alter of Novardok and led from 1921 by R' Elchonon Wasserman. From 1928 the town also became a center of Slonim chassidus and its Yeshivas Toras Chesed — shaped and led as menahel ruchani by R' Moshe Midner, grandson of the Yesod HaAvodah — and two of the Slonimer admorim dwelt there — R' Avraham Weinberg II (the Beis Avraham) and his son R' Shlomo Dovid Yehoshua Weinberg, who perished in the Shoah. The rosh hakehilla of the city was R' Moshe Avraham Berezovsky, intimate of the Beis Avraham, murdered with his family הי"ד — his son R' Shalom Noach Berezovsky, the Nesivos Shalom, rebuilt the chassidus and its yeshiva in Yerushalayim.

The Churban. The Germans took Baranovich at the end of June 1941; a ransom was levied, the yellow badge imposed, and some five hundred young Jews murdered that July. On 12 December 1941 the Jews were sealed into a ghetto in the south of the town. In the first great aktion, on 4 March 1942, some twenty-four hundred were murdered, and about a thousand Jews deported from Theresienstadt were killed in gas vans near the town. A second aktion in September 1942 took some six thousand lives, with about two hundred escaping to the forests. On 17 December 1942 the ghetto was liquidated — the last roughly three thousand Jews shot in a nearby forest — and the town declared "free of Jews"; some 250 forced labourers at a nearby airbase were murdered that January. When the Soviets returned in 1944, about 150 local Jews who had fought with the partisans came out of the forests. After the war R' Yaakov Lachowitzki, a Slonim chossid, briefly served as the town's rav before settling in Italy, where he founded Yeshivas Maor HaGolah. The full account is told in the churban diary of Baranovich; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Slabodka (in Yiddish Slabodke; in Lithuanian Vilijampolė — "the town on the Vilija") lies across the river Neris from Kovno, near where it meets the Neman. Because Jews were at times forbidden to dwell within Kovno itself, they settled across the water in Slabodka; in 1919 it was brought within the city's bounds.

The Kehilla. For all its modest, working-class character, on the eve of the war Slabodka was a quarter with a Jewish majority — and one of the beating hearts of the Lithuanian Torah world, its name carried by the yeshiva that bore it across the globe.

Torah of the Town. Slabodka was home to two of the great yeshivos of Lita. The first was the mussar yeshiva Knesses Yisrael of the Alter of Slabodka; the second, founded in תרנ"ח (1897) by R' Tzvi Hirsch Rabinowitz in memory of his father R' Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor of Kovno, was Knesses Beis Yitzchok — later led by R' Boruch Ber Leibowitz — the two standing side by side through the years of Slabodka's great machlokes over the place of mussar. From the Alter's derech of Gadlus HaAdam, Knesses Yisrael sent into the world a generation of roshei yeshiva — among them R' Isser Zalman Meltzer, R' Moshe Mordechai Epstein, R' Aharon Kotler and R' Yaakov Kamenetsky.

The Churban. On the night of 25 June 1941, even before the German army had taken firm hold, Lithuanian nationalists fell upon the neighborhood and murdered some 800 Jews — among them the rav of Slabodka, R’ Zalman Osovsky, with rabbeim and bachurim of its yeshiva. On 15 August 1941 the Germans sealed within Slabodka itself the Kovno ghetto — officially the "Vilijampolė ghetto" — emptied and destroyed in July 1944; through its years the mashgiach R’ Avraham Grodzinski stayed with his talmidim, perishing in the final liquidation. The full account is told in the churban diary of Slabodka; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Volozhin (in Yiddish Volozhin; today Valozhyn in Belarus) was a small market town in the Vilna gubernia, within the Pale of Settlement, founded around the fifteenth century by the counts Tyszkiewicz and held by their line for generations. Its land was fertile and good for flax; its Jewish population was never large — yet for all its modest size, the name of Volozhin came to be known wherever Jews learned Torah.

The Kehilla. Volozhin was an ir va'em b'Yisrael — a mother-city of Torah — and the life of its kehilla was bound up with its yeshiva. The bochurim who filled the town rented their rooms from the townsfolk, and the yeshiva gathered funds across Eastern Europe to sustain them, so that the yeshiva was itself a mainstay of the town's parnasa; its talmidim were, as one of them wrote, the very breath of the place.

Torah of the Town. Volozhin was the home of Yeshivas Etz Chaim — the Volozhin yeshiva — founded in תקס"ג (1803) by R' Chaim of Volozhin, foremost talmid of the Vilna Gaon, to carry his rebbe's derech in learning down the generations. It was the first of the great Lithuanian yeshivos — eim hayeshivos, the cradle from which all the rest descended. After R’ Chaim it passed to his son R’ Itzele Volozhiner and in its later years to the Netziv, who led it for some forty years and grew it to about five hundred talmidim. Among those who taught there were the Beis HaLevi, R’ Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, and the Netziv’s son-in-law R’ Rephael Shapira, a rosh yeshiva of Volozhin whose own son R’ Yaakov Shapira would be its last. The Russian authorities forced its closure in 1892 over the demand for secular studies. Its derech of iyun — and its talmidim, among them R' Chaim Brisker and R' Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook — became the template for every great Lithuanian yeshiva that followed: Mir, Slabodka, Telz and Radin among them.

The Churban. Under Soviet rule from September 1939, Volozhin fell to the Germans on 25 July 1941; on his second day the town's new mayor had the Jewish doctor and ten others seized and shot, and in August a ghetto of some 3,500 was sealed. After the killings of October 1941 the ghetto was largely destroyed in the great aktion of 10 May 1942, and its last remnant murdered in the final liquidation of 29 August 1942. The full account is told in the churban diary of Volozhin; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Mir was a small town in the Novardok region — Polish between the wars, today in Belarus. Jews settled there from the early seventeenth century; already in 1685 the town's lords were ordered to grant them equal rights in trade and dwelling and not to meddle in their inner affairs.

The Kehilla. On the eve of the war close to 2,000 Jews lived in Mir, drawing their parnasa from peddling, crafts and trade — and famously from the writing of holy scrolls, for some hundred of the town's Jews were sofrei stam; a little came too from renting rooms to the yeshiva bochurim. The kehilla had its parties and youth movements, four Jewish schools (one Yiddish, two Hebrew, and an Agudah school for girls), a library and a culture club.

Torah of the Town. Mir was the home of the world-famous Mir yeshiva, founded in 1815 by R' Shmuel Tiktinsky and led for generations by his family; it rose to its golden age under R' Eliyahu Boruch Kamai, his son-in-law R' Eliezer Yehuda Finkel and his son R' Avraham Tzvi Kamai, with the mussar of the mashgiach R' Yerucham Levovitz, growing to some five hundred talmidim. The yeshiva itself sat in the White Shul on Wisoker Street, where R' Avraham Tzvi davened through all his years in Mir and gave the rov's two yearly droshos, on Shabbos HaGadol and Shabbos Shuvah. When the Red Army came in 1939 its situation grew impossible, and in 1940 the bochurim left the town — making their way through Vilna and across the world to Shanghai, where, alone among the great yeshivos of Europe, the Mir survived the war almost whole. From its survivors it was rebuilt in Yerushalayim, where it stands today as the largest yeshiva in the world.

The Churban. The yeshiva escaped; the kehilla did not. In October 1941 the Jews were sealed into a ghetto, and on 9 November 1941 — in the aktion the survivors called "the first slaughter" — some two-thirds of the town were murdered, the rav of the kehilla R' Avraham Tzvi Kamai among them. The remnant was destroyed in August 1942; the full account is told in the churban diary of Mir; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Radin (in Yiddish Radin; today Radun in Belarus) was a small market town, mentioned already in the fourteenth-century documents of Grand Duke Władysław II Jagiełło, with a fortress in its early days and town rights granted in 1649. After the third partition of Poland in 1795 it lay within the Russian Empire; between the wars it belonged to Poland, in the Nowogródek voivodeship. Modest in size, its name nonetheless came to be known wherever Jews learned Torah.

The Kehilla. On the eve of the war some 900 Jews lived in Radin, most of them in petty trade, peddling and the crafts; a Tarbut school served the town. Among its rabbonim were R' Eliyahu Margolios, R' Yehuda Aryeh Leib Kawal, R' Zecharia Mendel Katz, R' Mordechai Sender Kopstein, and R' Aryeh Leib Poupko — a son of the Chofetz Chaim.

Torah of the Town. Radin was the town of the Chofetz Chaim, R' Yisrael Meir HaKohen, and the home of his Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim — founded in תרכ"ט (1869). From Radin the Chofetz Chaim gave the Torah world his Chafetz Chaim on the laws of lashon hara and his Mishnah Berurah on the practical halacha of daily life. Its very remoteness, far from the distractions of the city, made it an ideal place to sit and learn; its bochurim, who took their meals in the houses of the townsfolk, were known as perushim, and its kollel was famed for the study of Kodshim — reflecting the Chofetz Chaim's longing, as a Kohen, for the rebuilding of the Mikdash. In 1900, on the recommendation of the Netziv, he called R' Moshe Landynski to head the yeshiva, and in 1904 he brought R' Naftali Trop as rosh yeshiva; in the golden age that followed Radin grew into one of the largest yeshivos in Europe. The First World War scattered the yeshiva into exile — R' Landynski and the mashgiach R' Yosef Leib Nendik holding it together, with R' Elchonon Wasserman among its ramim in those years — and after the churban the Chofetz Chaim’s son-in-law R' Menachem Mendel Zaks raised it anew in America as Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim.

The Churban. Under Soviet rule from September 1939, Radin fell to the Germans at the end of June 1941. A ghetto was sealed that autumn, into which nearly a thousand Jews of the surrounding towns were also driven; in May 1942 it was destroyed — a group forced to dig their own graves rose against their guards, and after a handful broke free the rest were shot and the ghetto liquidated; the few hundred craftsmen spared were deported that June to Lida and Szczuczyn and murdered there. The full account is told in the churban diary of Radin; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Kelm (in Lithuanian Kelmė) was a town in the Shavel district of northern Lithuania, first recorded in 1416. By the census of 1897 some 2,710 of its 3,914 inhabitants were Jews — most of them merchants — and famous rabbonim made their home there.

The Kehilla. Kelm was a town small in size but great in Torah, its life shaped by the spirit of mussar that radiated from its yeshiva. Its Jews were chiefly tradesmen, and the town carried a quiet dignity that its mussar masters held up as a value in itself. On the eve of the churban some 2,500 Jews lived in Kelm — and the survivor record testifies that part of the town's very parnassah came from its famed yeshivos, to which bochurim came from all Lithuania and from across the world, America and Eretz Yisrael among them. The same record testifies that the town was strictly religious — and remained so through the Soviet year.

Parnassah of the Town. The Zak testimony preserves the town's working life whole. Its larger houses: the sawmill of Yitskhok Shapiro, and the sawmill of the partners Mende Rozin and Nokhum Udwin; the electric power station of Moyshe Udwin, Nokhum's father; the starch factory of Khonon Rubikovitsh; the candy factory of Meyer Mordkholovitsh; the variety store of the brothers Meyer-Mote and Leyzer Shtern; the iron businesses of Moyshe Shafer and of the Fridman family; the textile houses of Yisroel Gurvitsh and of Shabsay Beker; and the tanneries of Efroyim Milner, Avrom Podles, and Zalmen Orl. Around the town lay nine Jewish farm compounds: of Zunde Lunts and of Efroyim Milner in the town itself; of Avrom Zaks at Veidszhia; of Shimen Osher at Madzhiunai; of Yankl Kholozhik at Lucinawa; of the Berman family at Kablowcisne; of Khatzl Kushelevski at Paduole; of Moyshe-Leyb Mendelovits at Blekharne; and of Moyshe Gelman at Lukodeme. The kehilla kept a Hebrew school of seven grades; a Jewish national bank — its director, Mr. Mer, would fall among the first kedoshim of the churban — a free-loan gemach, and societies of mutual aid; part of the youth went on to the gymnasiums of Kovno and Shavl. In the Soviet year the compounds, the larger enterprises and the houses were nationalized, yet the record testifies that the town's parnassah on the whole held.

Torah of the Town. Kelm was the home of the Talmud Torah of Kelm — the yeshiva of R' Simcha Zissel Ziv, the Alter of Kelm, foremost talmid of R' Yisrael Salanter — who from תרכ"ו (1866) remade the town's plain talmud torah into a house of mussar. Among those who helped him was the young R' Nosson Tzvi Finkel, later the Alter of Slabodka. After the Alter the Talmud Torah passed to his son R' Nochum Zev Ziv and to R’ Tzvi Hirsch Broide, the Alter's nephew and son-in-law, and among the Torah greats it raised was R’ Elyah Lopian. In its last generation the institution was led by R' Daniel Movshovitz and his brother-in-law R' Gershon Miadnik — both sons-in-law of R' Nochum Zev Ziv, as was R' Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, the Michtav MeEliyahu. Its way was the doctrine of Gadlus HaAdam — the greatness of man — pursued through a regime of exacting self-work unlike any other yeshiva; and from Kelm the Alter's talmid R' Nosson Tzvi Finkel built the Knesses Yisrael yeshiva of Slabodka, so that Kelm stands as a fountainhead of the whole Lithuanian mussar world. The survivor record adds the houses themselves: the yeshiva of the town — Rabbi Sadovsky at its head — sat in the great beis hamidrash and the shul, and those who finished it entered the higher house, the beis hatalmud under R' Daniel, which stood in a building of its own, and those who completed it received semichah; and besides these stood a learning-house of its own for the town's frum young men. The record knew R' Daniel by the town's own name for him — the Siderer, the man of Sidra.

The Chair of the Town. The register of Kelm's rabbanim is a register of crowns: R' Eliezer Gutman, the first rav of the kehilla, from 1810; R' Yechezkel (niftar תרט"ו); R' Elyakum Getzel HaLevi Horovitz, whom the town called "the Shulchan Aruch" for carrying the whole of it by heart (niftar תרל"ג), and briefly his son-in-law R' Yitzchak Horovitz; R' Eliezer Gordon, before the chairs of Slabodka and Telz; R' Tzvi Yaakov Oppenheim, forty-three years on the chair, among the founders of the Telz yeshiva; and his son-in-law R' Kalman Beinushevitz, the last rav of Kelm, who carried it to the pit's edge. The yizkor record adds the yeshiva's own heads at the outbreak of the war: R' Shlomo Pianko, a Kelmer by birth, at its head, R' Eliahu Kremmerman beside him, and the mashgiach R' Pesach Sadovetski of Shadova — the "Rabbi Sadovsky" whom the Zak testimony remembers at the head of the yeshiva; the two records are set down side by side, the variance kept.

The shuls of Kelm. Two batei knesses stood at the heart of the kehilla. The Old Shul — by tradition more than three centuries old, raised in wood by the town's poritz, Gruzhevski — was famed across Lita for its artistry: an Aron Kodesh carved with a penknife by Yaakov ben Shlomo of Resain and finished in 1775, and a great copper chandelier of forty branches brought from Vilna and first kindled in 1820, on a day Kelm long remembered as di groiseh simcha. Beside it rose the white, spacious Beis HaMidrash; and after a great fire late in the nineteenth century spared the shuls, the Jews of Kelm built a Kloiz in thanks. The survivor record remembers the old wooden shul still standing in the courtyard of the beis hamidrash in the town's last days, its carved Aron Kodesh a wonder to the end.

The Churban. On ה' אב תש"א (29 July 1941) the men of Kelm and the talmidim of the Talmud Torah were marched to the killing pits and murdered. Before the end R' Daniel Movshovitz spoke to the kedoshim of kiddush Hashem, and R' Gershon Miadnik went down into the pit holding a sefer Torah. The women, the elderly and the children, held apart on the farm compounds, were murdered at the same pits in a second aktion on erev Shabbos, כ"ט אב תש"א (22 August 1941). With the kehilla fell its rav, R' Kalman Beinushevitz — the survivor testimony records him brought to the pits with the Jews of Vaiguva on ה' אב, forced to kneel beside the pit through the whole day, whispering tefillah as his kehilla was murdered, and shot last. The full account is told in the churban diary of Kelm; the kehilla-wide record here follows the survivor testimony of Yakov Zak — one of the 121 witnesses recorded by Leyb Koniuchowsky in the DP camps, 1946–48; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Novardok (in Polish Nowogródek; today Navahrudak in the Grodno region of Belarus) was an ancient town, recorded from the year 1116, once a seat of one of the principalities of Kievan Rus. Between the wars it was the capital of the Nowogródek voivodeship of Poland.

The Kehilla. Over 6,000 Jews lived in Novardok on the eve of the war. Its rabbanus was held over the generations by names known across the Torah world: R' Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, later the Gaon of Kovno, sat in Novardok from 1851 to 1864; and in its last generations R' Yechiel Michel Epstein, the Aruch HaShulchan, held the rabbanus until his petira in 1908, standing firmly behind the town's yeshiva when opponents of mussar sought to close it. On his passing the young R' Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman — later the Ponevezher Rav — served briefly as interim rav.

Torah of the Town. Novardok gave its name to Yeshivas Beis Yosef, the yeshiva of R' Yosef Yozel Horowitz, the Alter of Novardok — a talmid of R' Yisrael Salanter and the most demanding of all the mussar masters, whose talmidim gave no thought to comfort or food but to the work of the soul alone. Founded in תרנ"ו (1896), the yeshiva sent out a wide network of branches across Poland and Russia that numbered some four thousand talmidim at its height; in the First World War, when the front reached the town in 1915, it moved to Homel. Novardok taught the most radical form of mussar — that a man's own intellect can distance him from true self-work, and so must be subdued (hachna'as ha'sechel) through relentless, public labor on the middos; after the Alter's petirah — in Kiev in 1919, where he had gone to sustain Jewish refugees and was taken by typhus — his son-in-law R' Avraham Yoffen carried the Beis Yosef network onward.

The Churban. The Germans took Novardok on 4 July 1941; that December the Jews were sealed into a ghetto, and in a series of aktions through to May 1943 the kehilla of over six thousand was reduced to fewer than three hundred. From the doomed labour camp the last Jews dug a tunnel and broke out on the rainy night of 26 September 1943 — the largest such escape in Europe — many reaching the Bielski partisans in the forests. The full account is told in the churban diary of Novardok; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Kamenitz-d'Lita (in Polish Kamieniec Litewski; today Kamyanyets in the Brest region of Belarus) lay some forty kilometres north of Brisk. Founded, the Volhynian Chronicle records, in 1276, it received Magdeburg town rights confirmed by King Jan Sobieski in 1684.

The Kehilla. Between the wars some 1,900 Jews lived in Kamenitz — about four-fifths of the town — most in trade, a few in crafts and small farms. The kehilla maintained a Talmud Torah (the town's only Jewish school), three Jewish libraries and a drama circle; private teachers taught Hebrew, and the Zionist parties and youth movements were active.

Torah of the Town. From 1926 Kamenitz was the seat of Yeshivas Knesses Beis Yitzchak — the yeshiva founded in Slabodka in 1897 by R' Tzvi Hirsch Rabinowitz in memory of his father R' Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor of Kovno — whence its name Knesses Beis Yitzchak — and brought to the town by R' Boruch Ber Leibowitz, foremost talmid of R' Chaim Brisker and author of the Birkas Shmuel, who taught that a man must shape his mind to the Torah and not the Torah to his mind. The Kamenitz years were the most fruitful in the yeshiva's history, until the Soviet occupation of 1939; after the war it was rebuilt in Yerushalayim by his son-in-law R' Moshe Bernstein.

The Churban. The Germans first entered on erev Rosh Hashanah 1939, then handed the town to the Soviets; after their return the Jews were driven in August 1941 to the Pruzhany ghetto, allowed back, and sealed into a ghetto of some 450 families. On 9 November 1942 they were carted to the station at Wysokie Litewskie and deported to Treblinka; of the town's 1,900 Jews, three survived. The full account is told in the churban diary of Kamenitz; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Minsk — capital of White Russia, today the capital of Belarus — was one of the oldest and largest Jewish centers of the region. Jews settled there from the sixteenth century, and the community grew until, by the census of 1897, its 47,561 Jews made up more than half the city. It was a great hub of trade and, by the turn of the century, a center of the Jewish labor movement, alongside its life of Torah.

The Kehilla. Minsk was among the founding kehillos of the Vaad of Lita, the Council of the Lithuanian communities, and one of its most important. Its rabbinate was held over the generations by some of the great names of Lithuanian Jewry — among them R' Yechiel Heilprin, author of Seder HaDoros, called to Minsk in תע"א (1711) from the rabbanus of Hlusk; R' Gershon Tanchum; the Gadol of Minsk; his son-in-law and successor R' Eliezer Rabinowitz, who held the Minsk rabbinate for twenty-eight years; and the Maggid of Minsk. For decades the kehilla was so rich in talmidei chachamim that it appointed no official rav at all — and when it did seat a rav, it seated greatness: R' Dovid Tevel, the Nachalas Dovid, held the Minsk rabbanus. And of the house of its rabbanim came the Shaagas Aryeh — grandson and son of Minsk's rabbanim, rosh yeshiva in the city at thirty-seven until the break with the parnasim told on his card.

Torah of the Town. Under the influence of the Vilna Gaon, a number of yeshivos were established in the city — chief among them the famed Blumke's Kloiz, led by R' Gershon Tanchum, which was reckoned a preparatory gateway to Volozhin. The Gadol of Minsk sat in its rabbinate at the height of its renown, and the Maggid of Minsk roused its tens of thousands from the pulpit.

The Churban. When the Germans took Minsk in June 1941 some 80,000 Jews lived there, about a third of the city. A ghetto was sealed at the end of July, and through aktion after aktion at the pits of Tuchinka and Maly Trostinets its Jewry was destroyed; it was the largest and longest-surviving ghetto in the occupied Soviet Union, and a heartland of armed Jewish resistance. The Minsk community records that only some thirteen of its Jews survived. The full account is told in the churban diary of Minsk; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Smolevichi — Smolovitz in Yiddish — was a town of the Minsk region of White Russia, with a large Jewish community before the war.

The Kehilla. Jews had lived in Smolevichi from the late eighteenth century, and it grew into a Litvish, misnagdic kehilla of the Minsk region — a White-Russian shtetl on the Minsk–Moscow railway, with its shul and batei medrash and its trades. On the eve of the war it numbered well over a thousand Jews.

Torah of the Town. Its rabbinate was held by men of note: R' Eliezer Rabinowitz — son-in-law of the Gadol of Minsk — served here as his first rabbanus, from 1880, before being called to Minsk; and from תרע"ד (1914) the town was led by R' Yechezkel Abramsky, the Chazon Yechezkel, who went from Smolevichi to the rabbanus of Slutsk in the seat of R' Isser Zalman Meltzer, and was afterward Av Beis Din of London.

The Churban. When the Germans took the town at the end of June 1941, about 1,400 of its Jews were herded into a fenced ghetto. On 28 July 1941 some 120 of its men were murdered; at the end of August 1941 the Germans and their auxiliaries shot the kehilla — mostly its elderly, women and children — into the pits at Gorodishche hill, and a last remnant about 13 September; the German report itself counted 1,401 murdered. The full account is told in the churban diary of Smolevichi; the wider story in The Destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Lyuban sits in the Minsk pleck of White Russia, some thirty kilometers from Slutsk and close to the border of the Gomel region, first mentioned in the records in 1566. Through the generations its Jews made up a great share of the town; in 1939 there lived in Lyuban 1,077 Jews — thirty-five percent of the population.

The Kehilla. It was a kehilla of melamdim and carters, shochtim and shopkeepers — at its head the rosh hakahal and shochet R' Yaakov Moshe Kustanovitz — and from תרפ"א (the town record gives תרפ"ב) its rav and av beis din was R' Moshe Feinstein, who in תרפ"ב married Sima, the rosh hakahal’s daughter. His rabbanus here was a rabbanus of mesirus nefesh under the Soviets. In תר"ץ, when the Communist authorities laid a tax of seven thousand rubles on the rabbanim, he strained to pay it and stayed at his post — for resignation, he held, would be a chillul Hashem, since the authorities paraded every rav who stepped down as one who had “seen the light” of Communism. And in תרצ"ב, when they locked the mikvah on claims of “hygiene” and built a swimming pool in its stead, he put his life in danger and bribed the contractor to build, at a distance, a bor for rainwater joined to the pool by his instructions — so that the pool itself was kosher as a mikvah — both of them knowing that discovery meant death. His son R' Dovid said in later years that the zechus of that mikvah stood for his father long afterward. In Shevat תרצ"ז (the town record gives תרצ"ו) he left the Soviet Union for America — where he stood some fifty years at the head of Tiferes Yerushalayim on the Lower East Side, wrote the Igros Moshe, and was seen by many as the gadol hador. The posek of the generation was, first, the rav of Lyuban.

Torah of the Town. Lyuban gave the Torah world more than its rav. Here, in תרל"ד (1873), was born R' Yerucham Levovitz — the Mashgiach of Mir — to R' Avraham, a melamed of young children in the town: the shtetl that raised the master of mussar of the yeshiva world. And here in תרפ"ט (1929) was born R' Dovid Feinstein, named for his grandfather R' Dovid, a profound talmid chacham whose family descended from R' Avraham, the Vilna Gaon’s own brother; at eight he left with his father for Manhattan. And here, in תרס"ב (1902), was born R' Yehoshua Dovid Povarsky — of the town’s own Kustanovitz family — who would lead Ponevezh for over fifty years. A town of melamdim, whose children carried Lita to America and to Eretz Yisrael.

The Churban. The Germans took Lyuban on 28 June 1941 (some records, the 27th or 30th), and the occupation lasted three years, to 30 June 1944. Within days — on 4 July (one record, 2 August) — they went house to house, took the men from about fifteen to fifty, marched them out of the town, sent the non-Jews home, and shot the Jews, some two hundred men. From 5 July 1941 the rest were sealed in a ghetto, a Judenrat forced upon them under Boruch Molin, the former head of the carters’ artel, הי"ד. Again and again, from 1941 into 1943, its prisoners were taken to the marsh west of Lyuban and shot; in June 1942 (one record, July), at the farmstead of the Lyuban machine-tractor station, 1,150 Jews were shot in a single aktion — and by July 1942 some 1,400 Jews of Lyuban had been murdered al kiddush Hashem. Practically all the Jews of the district were killed; the few who escaped fought mostly with the partisans. Since 1964 a stone figure of a grieving woman stands on Kalinina Street over the kedoshim. The full record is told in the churban diary of Lyuban. השם יקום דמם.

The Town. Bűdszentmihály — Semihaly to the Torah world — was a village of Szabolcs county in eastern Hungary; in 1941 it was united with neighboring Tiszabűd, and from 1952 the joined settlement bears the name Tiszavasvári.

The Kehilla. Jewish settlement in the village grew from the second half of the 19th century — a small kehilla whose name in Torah far outgrew its size. At the appointment of the Kol Yehuda in תרל"ה (1875), and at the lead of his rebbe the Maharam Schick, it entered the union of Hungary's Orthodox kehillos, and around its shul, its cheder and its yeshiva it stood until the churban as one of the lights of Szabolcs.

Torah of the Town. R' Yehuda Greenfeld, the Kol Yehuda — one of the great masmichim of his generation, who gave semicha to the Atzei Chaim of Sighet, the Satmar Rav, R' Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky, R' Elimelech Lowy of Tosh and the Keren LeDovid — served as ABD from 1875 until his petirah on ג' אדר תרס"ז (1907), an ohel raised over his kever. His son R' Shimon Greenfeld, the Maharshag — born in Chust, nine years a talmid muvhak of the Maharam Schick, the generation's foremost expert in freeing agunos — led the rabbanus and the yeshiva from תרס"ח (1908) until 5690 (1930), and was buried beside his father; the yeshiva, with R' Shlomo Eliezer Rotenberg as dayan, continued until the war. The full story is told in the Yeshivas Maharshag card.

The Churban. On Isru Chag Pesach 1944 the Jews of Bűdszentmihály were concentrated and taken to Nyíregyháza, held in its ghetto and then at the puszta camps, and deported to Auschwitz in the transports of 12, 18 and 26 May and 4 June 1944. The dayan R' Shlomo Eliezer Rotenberg, the Maharshag's son-in-law, was murdered with his wife Chaya and their eight children; the Maharshag's son R' Mordechai perished at Chelmno; the Kol Yehuda's printed chiddushim were lost. After the war some fifty Jews returned — twenty of them from the labor service — renovated the shul and raised a memorial to the kedoshim; from the late 1940s they began to leave, and the last Jews left Bűdszentmihály in 1956. The full account is told in the churban diary of Bűdszentmihály; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Bonyhád (Yiddish Bonihad) is a town in Tolna county in southern Hungary, west of the Danube. A Jewish kehilla took root there from the 18th century and grew into one of the important communities of the region — its Jews about half the town in its heyday, with more than three thousand souls before the war.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Bonyhád was a fortress of Chasam-Sofer Torah. Its rabbanus and yeshiva were held by the Pollak dynasty — R' Yitzchak Zekel Pollak, a talmid of the Chasam Sofer, and his son R' Moshe Pollak, the Vayedaber Moshe — and by R' Yehuda Grünwald, the Zichron Yehuda; the last Orthodox rav was R' Aharon Presburger הי"ד. In 1868 the kehilla split, as many Hungarian towns did, into an Orthodox and a Neolog community; the Orthodox held fast to the mesorah, and it is told that even the Neolog rav would eat only from the shechita of the Orthodox rav.

Torah of the Town. The great yeshiva of Bonyhád, led across the generations by the Pollaks and their successors, sent out roshei yeshiva and rabbonim across Hungary — among the town's bnei Torah were R' Yehuda Grünwald and R' Moshe Pollak, and in its last years its bochurim learned under R' Aharon Presburger. As in the Hungarian yeshivos of old, the out-of-town bochurim were sustained by teg — eating a different balebos's table each day of the week, the housewives setting out a proper meal on the day their bochur came though the family itself ate plainly the rest of the week.

The Churban. In May 1944 the Germans set up two ghettos — the upper for the Neolog community, the lower for the Orthodox around its shuls — and drove in some sixty Jewish patients from a nearby asylum. The ghetto was emptied first into the town's sports field and then, two days on, into a military base for deportation. On 4 July 1944 the kehilla was deported to Auschwitz, among them the rav R' Aharon Presburger; that October the SS shot about twelve hundred Jews left for forced labor, and barely three hundred and fifty of Bonyhád's Jews survived. The kehilla of Bonyhád was murdered al kiddush Hashem הי"ד.

The Town. Šurany — to its yidden Shoran or Nagy-Shoran — lies in the Nitra region of western Slovakia, in the Nové Zámky district; with the First Vienna Award of 1938 it was annexed to Hungary, and its Jews came under the Hungarian anti-Jewish laws.

The Kehilla. The kehilla was old and senior — already in 1787 some 211 Jews lived in the town, and in earlier generations the rav of Shoran held jurisdiction over Nové Zámky itself, until that city broke away to the Neolog stream. Before the Shoah the kehilla numbered some 150 families — over six hundred registered members, most of them Orthodox, kovea'i ittim baTorah — 722 Jews by the count of 1930, more than a tenth of the town — and it stood until the churban as one of the foremost centers of traditional Jewish life in western Slovakia. Its shul, raised in 1916, is reckoned among the jewels of shul architecture in Slovakia, and near it R' Meir Leib built a modern mikveh for the city in the early 1930s.

Torah of the Town. The rabbanus was held by R' Yeshaya Ehrenfeld until his petirah in 5666 (1906), and passed — as he had stipulated at the wedding — to his son-in-law and nephew R' Meir Yehuda Leib Freya, the Shevet Mishor, a great-grandson of the Chasam Sofer through his mother, talmid of the Levushei Mordechai and musmach of the Shevet Sofer. Immediately upon his appointment he founded Yeshivas Shoran, which grew to three hundred bachurim — one of the largest yeshivos in Hungary and Czechoslovakia — and from its seat he led Hungarian Orthodoxy in the Lishkas HaYereim beside R' Yehoshua Buxbaum of Galánta and R' Shmuel Dovid Ungar of Nitra.

The Churban. At the end of May 1944 a ghetto was set up in Šurany itself, near the shul and the Jewish school, into which were crowded some 1,115 Jews of the town and the Érsekújvár district. On 10 June 1944 it was emptied to the Kurzweil brickyard, the entrainment center, and on 14 June 1944 the Jews were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. R' Meir Leib — admirers had bribed an official to take him from the train, but he refused to abandon his kehilla — was murdered al kiddush Hashem on כ"ו סיון תש"ד with three of his sons and eight grandchildren. By 1948 only fifty Jews remained, and most soon left; the shul stands today as the town museum, a memorial to the kedoshim where the aron kodesh stood. The full account is told in the churban diary of Šurany; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Kecskemét is a market city of the great Alföld plain in central Hungary, in the Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun district, north of Felegyhaz on the Kiskunság. Jews were permitted to settle there from 1746; most were tradesmen and merchants, dealing above all in the produce of that fertile plain — poultry, wine and flowers. By the eve of the war it was a city of some hundred thousand, with a Jewish community that, though never large in proportion, was old, established and well-organized.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. A community was organized at the start of the nineteenth century; the Jews bought a house for a shul in 1814 and consecrated their first shul in 1823, and in the revolution of 1848 their shops were looted. In the great split that followed the Hungarian Jewish Congress, the community went the way of much of central Hungary and joined the Neolog stream in 1868 — the assimilationist current that sought integration into Hungarian society and the softening of the old ways; its lay leaders raised in 1871 a vast Neolog temple, taller than the town church, which an earthquake felled in 1911 and which was rebuilt in 1913. The Jews who held fast to the mesorah were the minority, and in 1917 the shomrei Torah seceded and founded a separate Orthodox kehilla with its own shul, its chevra kadisha and its Talmud Torah — the Torah-loyal core of Kecskemét Jewry. The Neolog chair was held by Dr. Armin Perls (later of Pécs), Dr. Joseph Bárány, Dr. Joseph Borsodi and Dr. Joseph Schindler, who survived the camps and returned to the city after the war. Born in the town was the Neolog rav and historian Ármin Kecskeméti (1874–1944), who served as rav of Makó and lectured in Jewish history at Szeged University, and who was murdered in the Strasshof camp.

Torah of the Town. Two kehillos prayed in Kecskemét side by side — the larger Neolog and the smaller Orthodox — and between them they kept the institutions of a full Jewish town: shuls, a chevra kadisha, a women’s society, a Jewish elementary school and a Talmud Torah where the children of the Torah-loyal learned. Theirs was the lot of a small kehilla in a Neolog-leaning city, a fervent minority holding to Yiddishkeit in a place that had largely chosen the other path; in the years of the White Terror after the First World War the city turned on them, and in 1919 several of the Jewish notables were arrested and hanged on a false charge of having collaborated with the Romanians who had briefly held the city — a foretaste of what was to come.

The Churban. In the census of January 1941, the last before the German occupation, 1,346 Jews were counted in Kecskemét, about one percent of the city. After the Germans entered Hungary in March 1944, Kecskemét was made the regional ghetto and deportation center for a whole district of the Alföld: the mayor, Dr. Béla Liszka, penned the city’s Jews into a ghetto set up in the Orthodox shul and the buildings around it, and the great Copper Match Factory on the edge of the city was turned into a regional collection camp. To it were driven the Jews of the surrounding towns — Felegyhaz, Cegléd, Abony and others — by way of the Kecskemét brickyard, and from the match factory the transports went to Auschwitz on 25–27 June 1944. The members of the Kecskemét Jewish Council — Károly Adorján, Miksa Gerő, Lajos Gratzer, Mihály Kecskeméti and István Maskó — went the way of their kehilla. About 150 survivors returned to renew a remnant of communal life in 1946; the great Neolog temple, emptied of its Jews, today houses a museum. The fuller account is told in the churban diary of Kecskemét, and the regional deportation through the city is traced too in the churban diary of Felegyhaz. Sources: Yad Vashem Ghettos Encyclopedia, entry #974 (Kecskemét); Pinkas Hakehillot Hungary (Yad Vashem / JewishGen Yizkor Book Project); Encyclopaedia Judaica; Hebrew Wikipedia. Yizkor bibliography: János Hornyik, A kecskeméti zsidók története (Gyula, 1988).

The Town. Kiskunfélegyháza — Felegyhaz — is a market town of the Kiskunság on the great Alföld plain, south of Kecskemét. The old Cuman free-district long shut its gates to Jews: in the early 1800s the town council barred even peddling and forbade a Jew to remain within it after sunset; the first Jewish merchant obtained a leasehold only in 1824, on condition that no Christian tenant wanted the shop, and only the national enactments of 1838 opened the town to Jewish settlement.

The Kehilla. The kehilla was founded in 1850, and by 1852 the town's 113 Jews — twenty-six families — already held twenty-eight of its forty-one merchant houses; Jewish hands launched the town's first factories — vinegar, matches, brick — its first banks and its newspapers. On 30 January 1876 twenty-six members withdrew and the community divided — the Neolog majority of the Alföld pattern on one side and the Torah-true Orthodox kehilla on the other, the Orthodox founding their own chevra kadisha that year and their school and talmud torah from 1878, each with its own house on Bercsényi utca — both with beautifully painted ceilings. Around the Orthodox shul lay the Jewish courtyard: the cheder, the mikveh behind it, and at the back the home of the rav — a kehilla that lived the strict life of its fathers. By the census of 1941 the town held 975 Jews, and in the spring of 1944 the Orthodox kehilla numbered 517 souls and the Neolog 459, each with its school, the Orthodox with its talmud torah.

Torah of the Town. The first kehilla of 1850 was served by R' Sámuel Günsberger; in the Orthodox kehilla the rabbinic functions were carried until 1928 by Bernát Holländer, when the kehilla elected its first chief rabbi. The rav of Felegyhaz was R' Ahron Mordechai Lieberman הי"ד — talmid of the Be'er Shmuel of Unsdorf, ABD of Paye, Bilke and Ricse before Felegyhaz became his own kehilla — who against the assimilationist pressure of his day invoked the stand of the Machaneh Chaim a half-century before; his line ran through Liska and Ratzfert back to the court of Kaliv. His son-in-law Reb Chananyah Yom Tov Lipa Weinberger הי"ד served as dayan and led the yeshiva of Felegyhaz, dozens of talmidim strong, until he was seized for the labor service and perished in the winter of תש"ב; his Torah survives in the Shaarei Yom Tov.

The Churban. On 12 May 1944 the ghetto was ordered onto Bercsényi utca itself — the street of the two shuls — 985 souls behind boards, under the whip of Márton Zöldi; in its last days the boundary was shifted overnight, leaving the Orthodox shul outside the fence. On 15 June the Jews were marched down Kossuth Street to the station — Zöldi fell upon the elderly rav before the town, beating him and tearing his beard until he was covered in blood — 269 men, 341 women and 373 children, by way of the Kecskemét match factory with more than 5,400 of the region, to Auschwitz in the transports of 25 and 27 June 1944. A place secured for the rav on the Kasztner rescue train he gave up — he would not save himself while his kehilla remained. R' Ahron Mordechai and Rebbetzin Frimet were murdered al kiddush Hashem on י' תמוז תש"ד; of the deported, only 97 returned. The full account is told in the churban diary of Felegyhaz; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Yas — Iași, the old capital of Moldavia — was among the greatest kehillos of Romania, a city of shuls, batei medrash, printing presses and courts, where the Jewish street was for generations a world of its own — at its height between the wars some 43,000 Jews, half the city, with more than 110 shuls. Its trials were old: the record preserves the pogrom of 1652, when the hordes who came with Chmielnicki's son Timush to his wedding in the city fell upon the Jews of Yas — and the refugees of the Gzeiros of ת"ח–ת"ט streaming into Moldavia swelled the kehilla. Through it passed the roads of chassidus and rabbanus alike: the Ruzhiner fled through Yas to the Austrian frontier, and in תרצ"ד the court of Skver set its seat in the city.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. The chair's early crowns stand in the record: R' Nosson Nota Hanover — the Yeven Metzulah, the recorder of the Gzeiros of ת"ח–ת"ט himself, and the mechaber of the tefillos of the Shaarei Tzion — served as rav of Yas from about ת"כ to תל"א (1660–1671), and it was at his insistence that the kehilla completed its Great Shul; after him R' Aryeh Leib ben Shmuel (niftar in Yas, תל"א), and R' Pesachya ben Dovid Lida (תס"ה–תע"א); in the Chacham Bashi years the office was held from תע"ח (1718) by R' Naftali HaKohen Katz, the Semichas Chachamim — once rav of Frankfurt — and after him his son R' Yeshayahu and grandson R' Betzalel Katz, ABD and reish mesivta of the city.

In תקס"ח (1808) the chair was taken by the Apter Rav — the Ohev Yisrael — who served the city until תקע"ג (1813) — and who darshened its name, י'א'ס', as roshei teivos read backward: סוף ארץ ישראל; and the record names beside the chain R' Yosef Dovid HaKohen, the Darkei Emunah; R' Yitzchak Moshe, a talmid of the Baal HaTanya; and R' Yeshayah Shor — "the Rav HaMedinos" — mechaber of the Kelil Tiferes. And in the later generations, on its rabbinic seat sat R' Yosef Landau, the Birkas Yosef; beside and after him the house of Taubes held the city's Torah for three generations — R' Aharon Moshe Taubes, the Karnei Re'em and To'afos Re'em, called in תר"ב; his son R' Shmuel Shmelke Taubes, the Chayei Olam, who filled his father's place from תרי"ג; and the grandson R' Uri Shraga Feivel Taubes, the Uri v'Yishi.

The Torah of the house of Taubes was set into the Vilna Shas itself, standing among its printed commentaries. And in the city's last generation, R' Yitzchak Wahrman, Rav of Yas and son-in-law of the tzaddik of Faltichan, stood at the head of the city's yeshiva, Beis Aharon. The great chometz polemic between R' Landau and the Karnei Re'em — four kuntresim and the gedolei hador drawn in — ended in shalom and a shidduch, and the two houses answered the city's shailos together.

Torah of the Town. Yas was a city where rabbanus and chassidus met: R' Boruch of Iași, from whom rose the court of Skolye; the chassidus of Ruzhin, of which the city was a great center — R' Menachem Mendel of Shtefanesht, son of the Ruzhiner, was buried in the city, and his beis medrash, the Ștefăneșter Kloiz, stands to this day; the court of Faltishan — the Wahrman house of the Eshel Avraham — which carried its seat from Fălticeni into the city; the seat of Kollel Moldavia, the hand of Moldavian Jewry stretched toward Eretz Yisrael; the four great Talmudei Torah, chief among them the Aharon Wada Talmud Torah of 1876, 250 talmidim fed and clothed free; and, from תרפ"ז (1926), the city's own yeshiva — Yeshivas Beis Aharon, raised after the decree of 1912 drove the Jewish talmidim from the state schools; the printing houses that carried Torah across Moldavia; and the old beis hachaim on Ciurchi street, where the city's gaonim and tzaddikim lay — until the wartime order razed it and some forty of them, the Karnei Re'em among them, were carried to Păcurari, where the Taubes tziyunim stand side by side today.

The Churban. In the first week of Tammuz תש"א (June 1941) the Iași pogrom fell upon the kehilla — thousands of Yidden murdered in the streets and courtyards, and thousands more sealed into the death trains, among the most terrible single slaughters of the churban in Romania — the name it earned stands in the books: "the City of Slaughter." The full account stands in this site's Iași churban diary. Its kedoshim were murdered al kiddush Hashem הי"ד.

The Great Shul — Standing to This Day. The Great Shul of Targu Cucului — its ground bought in 1657, its building completed in תל"א (1670–71) at the insistence of R' Nosson Nota Hanover — stands yet: the oldest standing shul in Romania, rebuilt and renewed across the centuries (1762, after the fire of 1822, the dome added in the last generations), on the state's register of historic monuments, and one of only two shuls still serving the city's small remnant kehilla; its ezras nashim holds the kehilla's little museum. The matzeivos of the razed Ciurchi beis hachaim were carried to the Păcurari cemetery, where the monument to the kedoshim of the תש"א pogrom stands, cut with the pesukim על אלה אני בוכיה and ארץ אל תכסי דמם; and in 2010 a mass grave of the murdered was uncovered and its remains brought to kever Yisrael there in 2011. Of the city of 43,000 remain today a few hundred Jews — and the shul of the Yeven Metzulah, open.

The Town. Botoshan (Botoșani), in northern Moldavia near the Bukovina border — some thirty kilometers east of Suceava, on the old crossroads of the trade from Poland down to the Danube — was a mother city of Romanian Jewry, the second kehilla of Moldavia after Yas and for generations one of the great Jewish cities of the land. Matzeivos of 1540 stand in its old beis hachaim; the kehilla is named in Hebrew seforim printed in Lublin in 1615; and it grew on the roads of the fairs, swelled by Jews of Galicia and Ukraine and by the refugees of the Gzeiros of ת"ח–ת"ט streaming into Moldavia. From 1,400 souls in 1800 the kehilla rose to 9,880 by 1838 and to 14,817 by 1899 — more than half the city; on the eve of the churban some 11,840 Jews lived in Botoshan, and in 1942, with the exiles of the district gathered in, 15,502 — 53 of every hundred souls in the city.

The Charter of 1745 — Citizens of the Town. The record of Botoshan preserves a wonder among the kehillos of Europe: by the charter of Prince Mavrocordat of 1745, confirmed again in 1754, the Jews were counted citizens of the town — equal in privileges and in obligations to all its residents, with a share in the town's own government — a standing the record notes Jews attained in no other land of Europe in that age. In 1817, when neighbors sought to close the beis hachaim and to bar the Jews from the town well, Prince Calimachi ruled that the cemetery had stood two hundred years and that "the Jews were until now equal to all the other residents"; a traveling count of 1818 marveled that the Jews of Botoshan went bearded — a privilege of boyars and priests alone — and traded as far as Leipzig and Brody. In the Greek revolt of 1821, when calamity fell on the kehillos of the land, Botoshan's Jews were spared — they stood with the townsmen and drove the rebels off. In 1828 two representatives of the Jewish merchants sat on the town council itself, until the Russian regulation of 1832 closed the council to them; yet at the state ceremonies of the town the kehilla's representatives stood in their place of honor, sifrei Torah in their arms beneath a chuppah.

Parnassah — the City of Jewish Craft. Botoshan was a city of Jewish hands. Whole trades were Jewish alone — the hatters, the sack-makers, the water-carriers; the census of 1832 counted 98 Jewish tailors against 35 of all others, and by 1900 nine of every ten craftsmen of the town were Jews, with three of every four merchants. Barred from the church-guilds, the Jewish craftsmen raised guilds of their own — fourteen of the town's sixty-three — joined in the union called "Zvat" with a building of its own; and when the Christian furriers petitioned the Prince in 1852 to bar Jewish furriers from the town, he refused them. The kehilla kept a commercial club (1893), a cooperative bank (1908), a savings-and-loan (1911) — and the Hebrew printing house of Azriel Grinberg, famed across all Romania for its siddurim and its luchos. Beside the substance stood the deep poverty of the "poor quarter," and the kehilla's chesed was built around it.

The Kehilla and its Chesed. The Chevra Kadisha's pinkas of 1740 is preserved — an older pinkas, the tradition tells, was lost in the war of 1730 — and the register of 1777 counts the kehilla's servants: one rav, one chazzan, two shochtim, one shamash. From the hekdesh of 1817 grew the Jewish hospital, rebuilt in 1877 and again in 1906, of such a name that the peasants of the district chose it over the state's own, saying the Jewish doctors were the more faithful; a women's society for mothers in childbirth stood from 1833; a school-aid society fed two hundred needy children a year; an old-age home rose in 1908 and again in 1929; soup kitchens served the poor; and the kehilla's clinic, opened in 1930, treated 95,599 souls in its first seven years.

Torah of the Town. The Pinkas sets it down plainly: Botoshan was always a place of Torah. Two great shuls and sixty batei tefillah stood in the town — some seventy houses of learning and tefillah by the last generation — and in the kloiz of R' Yoshki the lomdim of the town met over the daily blatt Gemara. In 1889 the town kept thirty-two chadorim with two thousand children; the Talmud Torah, founded in 1908 by the rav R' Yehuda Leibush Frenkel, held five hundred children within two years and received its own building in 1917 and a new one in 1929. Modern schools for boys (1865) and girls (1896) stood beside them, among the first in the land.

The Rabbanim of Botoshan. The chair's crowns stand in the register. In 1783 R' Marco ben Shimon was set by the Prince under the chacham bashi "to rule and judge according to the law of the Torah." And at the turn of that age the chair was held by R' Chaim Tirer of Chernovitz — the Be'er Mayim Chaim: leaving the rabbanus of Chernovitz over the Austrian decrees, he crossed into Moldavia and was crowned in Botoshan on his road to Eretz Yisrael — the Pinkas records him "a gaon, a chassid and a baal mofes," his house and his beis midrash still standing in the town when the register was written; his son-in-law R' Aharon was set as his memaleh makom on the chair, and his Sha'ar HaTefillah was printed in Botoshan in תקפ"ח.

After them the register carries R' Moshe Alter Barb, born in Botoshan, a rosh yeshiva and a mechaber, son-in-law in the house of Ruzhin per the Pinkas (niftar in Bacău, תרל"ג); R' Shalom Taubes (תקפ"ה–תרמ"ה), a mechaber, and his son R' Chaim Taubes after him; and R' Yehuda Leibush Frenkel of Bucecea — of the seed of the Baal Shem Tov and of the Berditchever, the house of the Bucecea-Botoshan chassidus — rav from תרס"ז, founder of the Talmud Torah, niftar in Botoshan תרע"ז. The kehilla knew also years of machlokes: from 1889 the "new town" took a rav of its own, and the rift — through the years of R' M. Mairson, the gaon and baal tefillah the town loved, of R' Leibush Mendel Landau after him, and of R' Schmelner whom the poor quarter held dear — was healed only in 1921, when R' Dov Burstein was crowned over the whole city: rav until 1950, a mechaber who set the defense of shechita into print in 1938 against its slanderers, and at the last an av beis din in Tel Aviv.

Beside the rabbanim stood the dayan R' Chaim Dovid Sant, forty years on the town's din until the war, and the mechaber R' Elazar Cohen Schechter. And the courts: the chair of Sulitza-Botoshan — R' Mordechai Yosef Moshe of Sulitza, of the Moskowitz house, niftar י"א סיון תרפ"ט, and after him his son-in-law the Botoshaner Rebbe, R' Chanoch Henich Dov Silberfarb, a Koidanover einikel on a Moldavian chair until the end of the churban years; and in the town's earlier days R' Tzvi Aryeh of Botoshan, grandson of R' Aharon Moshe of Brod — in whose home the zeide tarried nine full years on his road up to Eretz Yisrael, pouring his influence into the Jews of Botoshan.

The Trials of the Kehilla. Its trials were old. In the Turkish war of תקכ"ח–תקל"ד the rav of the town was murdered by the soldiery; a blood libel was cast in 1783, and another staged by the authorities in 1883; through 1881–1893 the expulsions from the villages of the district drove hundreds of families into the town — six hundred souls in 1892 alone. In the great fire of 1887 eight hundred houses burned, and with them the Great Shul, five batei midrash and the Talmud Torah — while the town's firemen refused to raise a hand for the Jews. In the peasant riot of March 1907, which began in the Botoshan district itself, fifteen hundred peasants fell upon the town — the Christian houses marked beforehand with white crosses — and looted the Jewish streets, twenty shuls and two schools among them; two Jews were killed and 1,614 families struck, the district head refusing the soldiers leave to defend the Jewish quarter — and the record preserves that on some streets the Jews stood and fought the looters. In the Cuza years the hatred wore new clothes: a murderer of a Jew acquitted in 1926 with the party chief as his counsel, a gutter sheet preaching "do not buy from the Jews," and in 1932 the police forbidding Yiddish on the streets of a city half Jewish.

The Churban — and the Kehilla's Crown. Botoshan lay in the Regat, and its kehilla was not emptied — but its churban years were years of terror, plunder, forced labor and blood, and they ended in a record with few likenesses in the whole churban: the rabbanim and shochtim of the city held hostage in the Great Shul; the yellow star; eight thousand at forced labor; 148 deported to Transnistria, and of them kedoshim shot on Yom Kippur at Mostovoi; the small kehillos of the whole district — eleven thousand souls, the Rebbe of Pascani among his chassidim — driven into Botoshan and carried on the kehilla's shoulders, a beis din of all the exiled rabbanim raised in the city under R' Dov Burstein; and in the last weeks, when the state fled the city before the Russians, the kehilla itself governed Botoshan — its guard on the streets, its hands on the hospital and the registers, until the city was handed over whole. The full account is told in the churban diary of Botoshan. Of the sixty batei tefillah, the Great Shul — the Hoihe Shil — stands and serves to this day, one of the last living shuls of Romania; nineteen and a half thousand Jews stood in the city in 1947, and the aliyah of the years that followed carried the kehilla to Eretz Yisrael.

The Town. Senpeter — Sajószentpéter, on the Sajó river in Borsod county, a short ride from Miskolc — was a small Hungarian kehilla whose rabbanus seat carried names far larger than the town.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. On its seat sat R' Yehuda Dovid Rottenberg, the Tehillah L'Dovid — formerly ABD of Tállya — until his petirah in תרי"ז (the toldos record gives תרכ"ד); within two years the seat was taken by R' Chaim Sofer, the Machaneh Chaim (1859–1868), who went from Senpeter to the crown of Munkacs and printed there his Shaarei Chaim on hilchos chillul Shabbos; and in the later generation the seat was held by R' Yitzchak Glick, the Chinuch Beis Yitzchak.

Torah of the Town. A seat between the Tokaj hills and Miskolc, its rabbanim bound into the correspondence of Hungary's poskim — the letters to the Tehillah L'Dovid preserved in the auction records, the Machaneh Chaim's Senpeter years feeding the seforim he carried to Munkacs.

The Churban. In תש"ד (1944) the Jews of Senpeter were driven with the kehillos of Borsod into the ghettos of the Miskolc district and deported to Auschwitz. The full record of the town's last days is seeded for this site's diaries. Its kedoshim were murdered al kiddush Hashem הי"ד.

The Town. Verbó — Vrbové — sat in Nyitra county in the western Oberland, near Pieštany, one of the storied old kehillos of Hungarian Jewry north of Pressburg. Its Jews traded in the town's cloth and produce markets, and its kehilla, of the old Oberland stamp, built its life around its rabbanim, its shul, and the yeshiva that made the small town a name across the country. (Seeded thin — population figures, founding dates, and the kehilla's institutions await a dedicated pass; named targets: Pinkas Hakehillot Slovakia [Yad Vashem], the Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, JewishGen.)

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. The seat of Verbó carried some of the great names of the Oberland. R' Yaakov Koppel Altenkunstadt — the Koppel Charif, mechaber of the Chiddushei Yaavetz, talmid of the Noda BiYehudah and rebbe muvhak of the Menuchas Asher of Csenger, held it until his petirah in תקצ"ו; after him R' Binyamin Zev Wolf Loew — the Shaarei Torah, son of the Shemen Rokeach, by whom the Kol Aryeh learned after the Chasam Sofer's petirah; later R' Shmuel Ehrenfeld-Mannheimer led the town and its yeshiva until תרל"א; and the chain closed with R' Yitzchak Weiss — the Siach Yitzchak, talmid of the Shevet Sofer, murdered with his kehilla in תש"ב הי"ד.

Torah of the Town. The Verbó yeshiva drew bochurim from across the Oberland — the Kol Aryeh among them — and was given renewed momentum under Mannheimer at its head. Verbó was also the birthplace, in תר"ג, of R' Dovid Tzvi Hoffmann, who carried its cheder-Torah to the seat of Berlin. And its last Rav left the town a written monument: the Elef Ksav's thousand recorded hanhagos of the gedolim, and the Avnei Beis HaYotzer on the kevarim of tzaddikim, were the Torah of Verbó set down before the fire.

The Churban. In תש"ב (1942) the deportations of Slovakian Jewry emptied Verbó with the towns of the Oberland — the transports running through Žilina to the camps of the east. The Rav, R' Yitzchak Weiss, was murdered together with his family and his kehilla — the townspeople of the Koppel Charif's town, with their Rav at their head, al kiddush Hashem הי"ד.

The Town. Csenger — Tshenger in the mouths of its Yidden — a market town of Szatmár county on the Szamos, hard by what became the Romanian border. Jews arriving in the great flow from Moravia settled there at the end of the eighteenth century, and by the opening of the nineteenth Csenger stood as the Jewish center of its whole district — in those years barely seventeen Jews lived in neighboring Fehérgyarmat, whose community remained subordinate to the Csenger rabbinate until 1810. Its Jews lived first from trade; in the second half of the nineteenth century Jewish workshops opened in the town, and its Jews were permitted to lease estates and enter the free professions.

The Kehilla. Csenger held the status of an Orthodox autonomous kehilla. Its big shul — the yizkor record builds it in 1794 beside the main square, while the Wikipedia record gives its dedication in 1820, the conflict kept, anchored a courtyard of Jewish life: the Talmud Torah and cheder beside it, the houses of the two shochtim, and the large mikva. Every day and evening baalei batim gathered in chevros of Gemara and Mishnayos, served by a large library; and the Rov stood as the highest authority of the town — sought not only in halacha but for a purchase of land, a shidduch, a business undertaking, and it was he who would arrange Tikkun Chatzos to be said for the sick. Between the wars a Mizrachi branch also operated in the town, with hachshara training on the spot.

Torah of the Town. Before the Jungreis century the seat belonged to the house of Estreicher (Ostreicher): the fuller family record shows R' Moshe Aryeh Ostreicher as ABD of neighboring Karoly (Nagykároly), and it was his son R' Yonasan Binyamin Ostreicher — blessed in his cradle by R' Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev to become a rabbi of the chassidim and a worker of yeshuos — who took the Csenger seat after his brother-in-law R' Moshe Spitz; the register's R' Yosef Binyamin Estreicher (petirah תקצ"ד) stands beside the name, the records kept side by side; and among the old kevarim rests R' Moshe HaLevi Spitz — the fuller record shows him ABD of Csenger himself in the kehilla's early generations — niftar כ"ה תמוז תקס"ב. For generations after, the rabbanus of Csenger belonged to one house.

Its crown was R' Asher Anshel HaLevi Jungreis, the Menuchas Asher — forty years ABD from תקצ"ד (1834), "Mofes HaDor," whose yeshiva of some thirty bochurim stood among the important yeshivos of Hungary — and after him his descendants held the seat until the destruction: the children of Csenger likened the seven great rabbanim of Csenger to the seven lamps of the menorah. The chain ran: after the Menuchas Asher his son R' Avraham Jungreis — son-in-law of R' Avraham Yitzchak Glick of Tolcsva, the Yad Yitzchok — held the seat thirty years (niftar תרס"ד) and raised his father's yeshiva until bochurim came to it from every corner of Hungary; and after him his son R' Asher Anshel the second, named for the zeide niftar the year before his birth — his mother of the lines of the Maharam Banet and R' Elazar Löw, his rebbeim R' Moshe Tzvi Fuchs of Grosswardein and his uncle the Baal HaMichtavim — who held Csenger exactly forty years, תרס"ד to תש"ד, against his zeide's forty of תקצ"ד to תרל"ד: the symmetry the einiklach preserve.

Of the house's spread, it is told that at a great asifa of a hundred and fifty rabbanim in Hungary shortly before the war, when those of Csenger descent were asked to rise — eighty rabbanim stood up. And the family's seats ringed the region: the Menuchas Asher's own nephew and son-in-law, R' Shmuel Dovid Jungreis, the Maharshd"h, held neighboring Fehérgyarmat. His ohel in the Csenger beis hachaim remains a mokom tefillah to this day.

The Churban. After the German occupation in March 1944, the head of the kehilla was ordered to submit a list of every Jew of Csenger; then the Jews of the surrounding villages were herded into the big shul, sleeping on straw on its floor, and carted off in transports; gendarmes broke open the Aron Kodesh and carried out its forty-two Sifrei Torah as the Rov's son, R' Shlomo Tzvi Hirsh Yungreis, cried aloud that all was lost. Street by street the Jews of Csenger followed them to the Mátészalka ghetto, where on arrival the men of forty-eight and under were torn from their families for forced labor, where some eighteen thousand Jews of the district starved under a handful of teenage SS; from כ"ז אייר the cattle cars ran to Auschwitz, eighty and ninety to a car. The last Rov, R' Asher Anshel Yungreis הי"ד — who bore the Menuchas Asher's name and, like him, had led Csenger forty years — was murdered there with his kehilla on ט"ו סיון תש"ד; the big shul itself was torn down in 1963 — the full arc, from the Shabbos omen of 1938 to the ohel that still draws multitudes, is told in the Csenger churban diary. Sources: JewishGen Csenger yizkor book · Hamichlol · Hebrew Wikipedia (the kehilla & both Asher Anshels) · Kehilos Hungary (Spitzer) · the zadikim beis-hachaim record · iVelt mesoros.

The Town. Fehérgyarmat lies in Szatmár county in the far northeast of Hungary, in a country of heavy rains, floods and swamp that long kept it isolated; Jewish settlement began in the second half of the 18th century, at the invitation of the landowner Count Sándor Károlyi, and it was the Jews who built up its commerce, marketing the region's produce — its jams and its wool — across the land. The town's development itself ran through Jewish hands: the landowner Spitz with his three estates drove the roads and the water-works, and the electric company and the power mill belonged to the Frank family.

The Kehilla. At the opening of the 19th century barely seventeen Jews lived in the town, under the rabbinate of Csenger; from 1810 the kehilla stood independent, R' Yitzchak Yisrael Blau leading its early religious life, and from 1885 its rabbinate held jurisdiction over sixteen surrounding villages. It grew from 56 Jews in 1840 to 774 by 1941 — 708 registered members with 108 children in its two schools by 1944 — with its shul, beis medrash, chasidishe shtibel, chevra kadisha, Tiferes Bachurim and Agudas Bachurim, the school of 1906 under its first principal Kalman Meisner, and the talmud torah with its four teachers; on the first night of Selichos the square before the shul would fill with the carts of the villages. The census of 1930 counted among its Jews 25 merchants, 30 craftsmen, 5 estate owners, 7 farmers, 9 industrialists, 3 doctors, 5 lawyers, a veterinarian, a pharmacist — and two street-sweepers.

Torah of the Town. The first yeshiva was founded by R' Moshe Nosson Jungreis, the Menuchas Moshe; the enduring yeshiva was established by R' Shmuel Dovid HaLevi Yungreis, the Maharshd"h — talmid of the Goren Dovid and the Ksav Sofer — upon his appointment as rav in 5628 (1868), and led by him until his petirah on 22 Teves 5652 (1892). His eldest son R' Avraham Binyamin led it thirty-nine years more; R' Asher Anshel joined as rav sheini from 5669 (1909); and from 5694 (1934) the rabbanus and the yeshiva — swelling to nearly two hundred bachurim, protected in 1939 by the town's special nineteenth-century yeshiva license — passed to R' Zev Wolf Ginzler, the Toldos Yisrael, with R' Yaakov Tzvi Yungreis as dayan. The full story of the yeshiva is told in the Fehérgyarmat yeshiva card.

The Churban. After the occupation the Jews were rounded up with the full cooperation of the townspeople. Six young men ordered to the labor service sought the psak of the Satmar Rav, who commanded them to leave their parents and report — all six survived; Dr. Sternberg took his own life on the day he was to appear. On the last days of Pesach 5704 the Jews of the town's far end were assembled in the Great Shul, and on Isru Chag the carts went out to the ghetto of Mátészalka, where they were held about a month; in the second half of May 1944, among the earliest of the Hungarian deportations, they were sent to Auschwitz. R' Zev Wolf Ginzler was murdered al kiddush Hashem on 15 Sivan with Rebbetzin Leah and their children. From the district's forty-two villages not one Jew is known to have survived; of the school's last class of 120 children, not one returned. Eighty-four survivors came back; in the end a single Jew remained, and the Great Shul was demolished — the kehilla lives on in Brooklyn around R' Yaakov Tzvi Yungreis, where the Shu"t Maharshd"h and the Shu"t Toldos Yisrael were published. The full account is told in the churban diary of Fehérgyarmat; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Nikolsburg — Mikulov — sat among the vineyards of southern Moravia on the Austrian border, the road-town between Vienna and Brünn, and for centuries the capital of Moravian Jewry: the largest kehilla of the province and the seat of its Landesrabbiner, the chief rav of all Moravia and Silesia, whose hand every rabbinical candidate in the province required. (Seeded thin — population figures, the quarter's institutions and the kehilla's ordinances await a dedicated pass; named targets: Pinkas Hakehillot, the Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities [Yad Vashem], Hugo Gold's Mähren volumes.)

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. The seat of Nikolsburg carried names that carried Klal Yisrael: in the seventeenth century the Tosfos Yom Tov and R' Menachem Mendel Krochmal, the Tzemach Tzedek of Nikolsburg, held it; in the eighteenth, the Rebbe Reb Shmelke of Nikolsburg brought the fire of the Maggid's beis medrash to the crown of Moravia; after him the long dayanus of the Maharam Banet, Landesrabbiner for decades and one of the poskei hador; and after the Maharam Banet, R' Nochum Trebitsch, the baal HaKovetz, the last to hold old Moravia by main strength against the Vienna-nusach tide. The succession after him is seeded for a dedicated pass.

Torah of the Town. The Nikolsburg yeshiva under the Rebbe Reb Shmelke and the Maharam Banet drew hundreds of bochurim from Moravia, Hungary and beyond — kuntresim of its talmidim's Torah, carrying the chiddushim of its rabbanim beside those of the Chasam Sofer, survive in manuscript to this day. Its beis hachaim, with the ohel of the Rebbe Reb Shmelke and the kevarim of the Maharam Banet and R' Nochum Trebitsch, stands preserved — a stop on this site's nesia map.

The Churban. The old kehilla, thinned through the nineteenth century by the drift to Vienna and Brünn, met its end under the German occupation: the Jews of Nikolsburg and Moravia were driven into the transports of תש"ב — the deportations that ran through Brünn to Theresienstadt and onward to the camps of the east. (The town's transport dates, numbers and survivors are seeded — named targets: Yad Vashem's Theresienstadt records, Pinkas Hakehillot, Hugo Gold.) The remnant of the capital of Moravian Jewry was murdered al kiddush Hashem הי"ד.

The Town. Pressburg (in Hungarian Pozsony; today Bratislava in Slovakia) stood on the Danube as the coronation city of the kings of Hungary, and was one of the oldest Jewish communities of Central Europe — there is evidence of Jews there already in the eleventh century, and in the thirteenth its Jews suffered at the hands of the Crusaders. After the First World War the city passed to Czechoslovakia; on the eve of the Second, Slovakia declared an independence that was in truth a Nazi puppet state, with its capital at Bratislava.

The Kehilla. By the start of the nineteenth century some two thousand Jews lived in Pressburg, with a full array of communal institutions — a great beis haknesses, charitable societies and a moshav zekenim. At the rupture in Hungarian Jewry the whole community ranged itself under the rabbanus of the Ksav Sofer within the Orthodox office, and only after his petirah did a small Neolog community form alongside the central Orthodox one. The kehilla was wealthy and flourishing, and the famed yeshiva of the town leaned upon it.

Torah of the Town. The yeshiva of Pressburg reached back to a beis medrash in the Schlossberg quarter early in the eighteenth century, and by its end — under Chief Rabbi R' Meir Barbi — stood among the great rabbinic centers of Central Europe beside Prague and Nikolsburg. Its golden age opened in 1806, when the Chasam Sofer, R' Moshe Sofer (Frankfurt 1762 – Pressburg 1839), was chosen chief rabbi; he held the chair for thirty-three years, learning each masechta start to finish with deep iyun, and grew the yeshiva from a few dozen talmidim past two hundred and fifty toward five hundred. Pressburg's stamp was its rigour — formal examinations and even courses in public speaking — and its banner against the Haskalah and the reformers, the Chasam Sofer's own Chadash Asur Min HaTorah; dozens of yeshivos across Hungary were founded on its model, and from its benches went out the Maharam Schick to Chust, the Kol Aryeh to Mád, and R' Ahron Dovid Deutsch, the Goren Dovid, to Balassagyarmat. The chair passed down the house of Sofer — the Ksav Sofer, under whom Kaiser Franz Joseph recognized it as an official rabbinical college; the Shevet Sofer, who brought it again to five hundred talmidim; and the Daas Sofer, R' Akiva Sofer — until 1938, when R' Akiva Sofer left for Switzerland and then Yerushalayim, raising the Pressburg yeshiva anew in Givat Shaul.

The Churban. At the start of 1942 some 8,400 Jews remained in the city. That March the roundups began: hundreds of young men were sent to the Sereď camp and on toward the death camps, and on the night of 28 March 1942 about a thousand young women were marched to a remote railway station and deported to Auschwitz. The deportations went on through 1942 until roughly four thousand were left, some shielded by foreign protective papers; in 1944, after the Slovak National Uprising, the Germans occupied the city and some two thousand more were sent by way of Sereď to Auschwitz. Through those years the "Working Group" — led by Gizi Fleischmann and R' Michoel Ber Weissmandl — laboured from Bratislava to halt the deportations and to wake the free world to what was being done. The full account is told in the churban diary of Pressburg; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Ujhel (in Hungarian Sátoraljaújhely) lay in the foothills of the Zemplén hills of north-eastern Hungary, and from the mid-eighteenth century was the seat of Zemplén county. Jewish settlement grew steadily through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, drawn largely from Galicia; the formal kehilla is reckoned from about 1771 and its first beis haknesses from 1790, with a Jewish hospital opened in 1817. After 1886 the original Orthodox community divided into Orthodox and chasidishe branches.

The Kehilla. On the eve of the war some 4,690 Jews lived in Ujhel (1940), a thriving regional center of trade and crafts. Among its rabbonim were R' Naftali Tzvi the Mochiach; R' Moshe Teitelbaum, the Yismach Moshe; his great-grandson R' Moshe Yosef Teitelbaum; R' Moshe Yosef's son R' Berachya Teitelbaum; and the last rav of the town, his son-in-law R' Dovid Dov Meisels, author of the Binyan Dovid, murdered al kiddush Hashem together with the people of his kehilla.

Torah of the Town. Ujhel was the seat of the Yismach Moshe (Przemyśl 1758 – Ujhel כ"ח תמוז תר"א / 1841), called to the rabbanus of Ujhel in תקס"ח (1808) — a talmid of the Chozeh of Lublin who carried chassidus over the mountains into Hungary, among the great rebbes of his generation, renowned as a sharp lamdan and a worker of wonders; he taught at a yeshiva in the town for some thirty-three years, and his court was a place of pilgrimage for thousands, from whose line the dynasties of Sighet and Satmar would later descend; he lies buried in Ujhel, and his ohel is a place of pilgrimage to this day. Under R' Yirmiyahu Loew (1854–1873) the Ujhel yeshiva grew to one of the largest in Hungary, with a hundred and fifty talmidim.

The Churban. Zemplén fell within the jurisdiction of the Eighth (Kassa) Gendarmerie together with Subcarpathian Ruthenia. After the German occupation of March 1944 the Jews of Ujhel and of the whole county were swiftly herded into a ghetto in the town's poorest quarter, sealed on 25 April 1944. At five in the morning on 16 May 1944 the first 3,500 — men, women and children — were gathered at the Status-quo beis haknesses and marched to the railway station; transport followed transport to Auschwitz, the last reaching the camp on 5 June 1944. At its height the ghetto held some fifteen thousand souls; some 12,300 Jews were deported from the Zemplén territory by the Yizkor's count, and only a few hundred returned. The full account is told in the churban diary of Ujhel; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Chust (in Hungarian Huszt; today Khust in the Subcarpathian region of Ukraine) was a market town of the Maramaros country. Its great beis haknesses, raised more than a century and a half ago, still stands.

The Kehilla. The community of Chust was Orthodox, most of its members merchants and craftsmen; in January 1941 it numbered 6,023 Jews, more than a quarter of the town. It kept a Beis Yaakov school for girls and a range of religious and social societies; from the 1920s a Zionist school and Zionist organizations operated there as well. Its rabbinic chair was held by men of renown — R' Amram Blum of the Beis Shearim; R' Yoel Tzvi Roth of the Beis HaYotzer; R' Moshe Greenwald, the Arugas HaBosem; his son R' Avraham Yosef Greenwald, later rav of Ungvár; R' Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky, the Maharitz — a sister's son of the Maharam Schick, called to Chust in תרפ"א (1921) from the rabbanus of Galanta — afterward gaavad of the Eidah HaChareidis in Yerushalayim; and the last rav, R' Yehoshua Greenwald, a grandson of the Arugas HaBosem, who served until the deportation, survived the war, and rebuilt a kehilla of Chust survivors in Brooklyn.

Torah of the Town. In תרכ"א (1861) R' Moshe Schick, the Maharam Schick (1807–1879) — the foremost talmid of the Chasam Sofer — founded in Chust what was then the largest yeshiva in Eastern Europe, with more than eight hundred talmidim. The chair later passed to the Arugas HaBosem (niftar תרע"א / 1911) and then to the Maharitz Dushinsky, who had married a daughter of R' Winkler, the rosh yeshiva of Mád, before leaving to become gaavad of the Eidah HaChareidis in Yerushalayim — so that Chust, the home of Yeshivas Chust, stood among the foremost Torah centers of Hungary, a meeting-place of its yeshiva world and its chasidishe currents.

The Churban. Subcarpathian Ruthenia was among the first regions emptied. Under German occupation from March 1944 a ghetto was set up in Chust, its people put to forced labour; between late May and the first days of June 1944, in four transports, all the Jews of the ghetto were deported to Auschwitz, where most were murdered on arrival. Those who fled to the forests were in large part killed by Hungarians and Ukrainians. By the summer of 1946 only some four hundred Jews remained. The full account is told in the churban diary of Chust; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Nitra (in Hungarian Nyitra; in German Neutra) lay in western Slovakia. The first Jewish community in Slovakia is held to have been founded here — the Nitra kehilla is named in writing already in 1113, and R' Yitzchak ben Moshe of Vienna, the Or Zarua, makes mention of it.

The Kehilla. The modern kehilla was founded in 1750 and numbered some 4,358 Jews by 1940 — an Orthodox community, with a small Neolog congregation from 1907 — and held until the churban a yeshiva that drew talmidim from across Europe. Its last rav was R' Shmuel Dovid HaLevi Ungar (1886 – ט' אדר תש"ה / 1945), a leader of Slovak Jewry, who succeeded R' Avraham Aharon Katz in תרצ"א and held both the rabbanus and the rosh-yeshiva's chair.

Torah of the Town. Nitra was the seat of R' Shmuel Dovid Ungar and his son-in-law R' Michoel Ber Weissmandl, whose Yeshivas Nitra — uncommonly for a Hungarian yeshiva — set mussar sefarim such as Chovos HaLevavos and the Ramban's Iggeres beside its limud. In an earlier generation the Ohel Moshe of Makova sat as dayan and rosh yeshiva of Nitra for twenty-five years, and the town was the birthplace of R' Shaul Brach, later rav of Kashau, who carried its name on his stamp all his life. Through Weissmandl's extraordinary efforts the yeshiva won protected status from the Slovak government and kept its doors open until Elul תש"ד (1944), when every other yeshiva in occupied Europe had already been shut — fulfilling R' Ungar's own foreboding that a time would come when there would be no Torah in all of Europe, and only in Nitra would Torah remain. When the gendarmes burst in to inspect it, warning came in time, and the many refugees sheltering there would slip underground.

The Churban. In the deportations of 1942 three of every four Jews of the Nitra district were expelled — the young men to Majdanek, the young women to Auschwitz, and from mid-April some 3,120 of Nitra and its surroundings in family transports to the Lublin district, the dayan R' Chaim Meislik among them; in all some 4,400 of Nitra's Jews were sent to the death camps. From within the yeshiva, R' Ungar and above all R' Weissmandl ran a far-reaching effort to rescue Jews from destruction — R' Weissmandl among those who carried the Auschwitz Protocols westward and pleaded for the camp and its rail lines to be bombed. After the Slovak National Uprising the yeshiva's talmidim were deported, together with the last Jews of Nitra, to Auschwitz. R' Ungar, then in the nearby Zobor hills, escaped the transport, but weakened by illness he remained hidden in the hills with his son and was niftar there months later, in the Kališčí forest. The full account is told in the churban diary of Nitra; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Szerencs (Serentch) lies in the Tokaj-Hegyalja wine country of Zemplén county in northeastern Hungary — a market town and an important railway junction on the Miskolc–Sátoraljaújhely line, and the seat of the Szerencs district (Szerencsi járás). To Jewish history it is known above all as the birthplace of the Kaliver Rebbe, R' Yitzchak Aizik Taub, born here in 1751 to R' Moshe Yechezkel Taub, a Szerencs merchant — the first chasidishe rebbe to arise on Hungarian soil, of whom the famous mesorah tells that he was found as a shepherd boy by R' Leib Sarah's.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Szerencs's Orthodox kehilla was founded and shaped by the Billitzer rabbinic dynasty, Leviim of the house of Bilitz. R' Amram Yishai HaLevi Billitzer established the Orthodox kehilla in the years after the 1868 Congress split and served as its first chief rav for some thirty years, until his petirah in 1889; his son R' Pinchas, author of Giv'as Pinchos, held the rabbanus from 1889 until 1913; and R' Pinchas's son-in-law R' Menachem HaLevi Pollak, a talmid of the Daas Sofer and of the Be'er Shmuel of Unsdorf, led the kehilla from 1914 until 1941, when he emigrated to New York. Smaller communities of the district — Legyesbenye, Bekecs and Gesztely — were bound to the Szerencs kehilla. The two Billitzer rabbonim rest in the Szerencs ohel, which remained a place where Jews came to leave kvitlech. The Billitzer rabbanus also maintained the town's yeshiva, established with the founding of the kehilla and led in its last years — some sixty bochurim — by R' Yehuda Leib Lemberger.

Torah of the Town. Szerencs carried a double Torah inheritance. It was the cradle of the Kaliver chassidus, whose holy niggunim — the shepherd's song Szól a kakas már foremost among them — were born of its son R' Yitzchak Aizik Taub; and it was the seat of the Oberlander-style Orthodox rabbanus of the Billitzers, who guarded the kehilla on the Torah-true path through the decades of the Hungarian split. That Torah lived on in R' Pinchas's Giv'as Pinchos and in the line of rabbonim and sons-in-law — the Pollaks and the Millers — that went out from the town.

The Churban. After the German occupation of Hungary on 19 March 1944, the Jews of Szerencs and its district were stripped of their possessions — a report of the Zemplén alispán in early May recorded more than a million pengő seized from the Jews of the Szerencs district alone — and — while the Jews of the neighboring Hegyalja towns of Mád, Tokaj, Tállya and Tarcal were taken to the central ghetto at Sátoraljaújhely — the Jews of Szerencs and of the whole Szerencs district were concentrated, "for transport reasons," in the ghetto at Miskolc. From there, in mid-June 1944, they were deported to Auschwitz, where most were murdered on arrival. The full churban is told in the Szerencs churban diary. The kehilla into which the Kaliver had been born and which the Billitzers had built was destroyed; only its ohel and a remnant of survivors remained.

The Town. Mád (Hegyalja-Mád) lay in the Zemplén district, some twenty-three kilometres north-east of Miskolc, in the Tokaj-Hegyalja wine country. A Chevra Kadisha is documented there from 1769 and its beis haknesses from 1771; the present shul, raised in 1795 on the hillside above the vineyards, is among the oldest and most beautiful in Hungary — a jewel of Hungarian-Jewish baroque, declared a historical monument in 1946.

The Kehilla. The 1812 census listed seventy-six Jewish families in Mád, most of them in the growing and trade of wine. The kehilla built houses for its institutions and a dwelling for its some forty communal workers, founded a welfare committee for its poor, and in 1793 established a Ner Tamid society; shortly before the churban its shul held fifty sifrei Torah.

Torah of the Town. Mád was a seat of Torah for more than a century. Its yeshiva was founded by R' Amram Rosenboim, R' Amram Chassida, rav of the town until his aliyah to Tzfas in 1830, and was led across the generations by the Kol Aryeh, R' Avraham Yehuda HaKohen Schwartz, by his son R' Naftali HaKohen Schwartz of the Beis Naftali, and — at its height — by R' Mordechai Yehuda Leib Winkler, the Levushei Mordechai — a talmid of the Ksav Sofer in Pressburg, reckoned in his generation one of the three pillars of hora'ah in Hungary together with the Maasei L'melech of Vác and the Maharshag — rosh yeshiva from תרס"א (1901) until his petirah on י"ז תמוז תרצ"ב (1932), whose talmidim included the Maharam Brisk. After him came R' Chaim Tzvi Ehrenreich, the Kav Chaim, and then his son R' Moshe Yehuda Leib Ehrenreich הי"ד, the last rav of Mád, murdered al kiddush Hashem in the churban. Among the earlier rabbonim of the town was Reb Shimon of Mád.

The Churban. Mád lay in Zemplén, whose Jews were gathered to the county seat of Ujhel. Soon after the German occupation of 1944 some families were arrested; at the end of April all the Jews of Mád were assembled in the shul, where they were held for three days, then moved to the Sátoraljaújhely ghetto and from there deported to Auschwitz in four transports between 16 May and 3 June 1944. Only a very few of the kehilla survived; by 1949 some twenty-eight Jews remained, and by 1964 none. The full account is told in the churban diary of Mád; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Ungvár (in Hungarian Ungvár; today Uzhhorod in Transcarpathian Ukraine) was the chief city of the Subcarpathian region and a center for dozens of smaller communities around it. Records of its Jewish community begin around 1750.

The Kehilla. In 1941 some 9,500 Jews lived in Ungvár — about a quarter of the city — most of them merchants and craftsmen, with many professionals and clerks among them; two communities operated there, a large Orthodox one and a small Neolog one; the kehilla kept a hospital and a soup kitchen, and a society of Lomdei Torah brought evening shiurim to its working men. Buried in its beis hachaim are R' Shlomo Ganzfried, author of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, and the Maharam Asch.

Torah of the Town. Ungvár was the seat of R' Meir Eisenstadter, the Maharam Asch, a senior talmid of the Chasam Sofer, and the home of Yeshivas Maharam Asch; he was followed by his son R' Menachem Asch, reckoned among the senior roshei yeshiva of Hungary, whose talmidim included R' Eliezer Deitch of Bonyhád and R' Yosef Meir Weiss, the Imrei Yosef of Spinka. In the town lived R' Shlomo Ganzfried (1804–1886), whose Kitzur Shulchan Aruch — first printed in Ungvár in 1864 — became the most widely used halachic digest in the Jewish world. The kehilla's last rav was R' Yosef Elimelech Kahana הי"ד (from 1931) — himself a talmid of R' Shlomo Ganzfried, and Nasi of the Vaad HaRabbonim of Carpatho-Russia — who led the community and its yeshiva until he was deported with them in the last Ungvár transport and murdered al kiddush Hashem in 1944.

The Churban. Ungvár was one of the gathering points for the Jews of Subcarpathian Ruthenia, who were among the first to be deported. After the German occupation of March 1944 the kehilla was bled with a levy of two million pengő in forty-eight hours and the yellow badge from 5 April; on 14 April 1944 — the last day of Pesach — some eighteen thousand Jews of the surrounding district were driven into a ghetto in the Moskovits brickyard on Minai Street, the Jews of the city forced in after them; from there they were deported to Auschwitz in May and June 1944, among the earliest transports of the Hungarian deportation, the first reaching the camp around 20 May. The full account is told in the churban diary of Ungvár; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Galánta (in Slovak Galanta) is a district town in the Bratislava region of southwest Slovakia, in what had been Upper Hungary. First mentioned in 1237 and long an estate of the Esterházy counts, it grew in the mid-19th century into a provincial capital on the Budapest–Vienna railway and a trade center for the farming country around it. After the First Vienna Award of November 1938 Galánta was annexed to Hungary, and so its Jews shared the fate of Hungarian Jewry; the town remained within Hungary until it was liberated by the Soviet Army in 1945.

The Kehilla. Jews settled in Galánta under Esterházy patronage by the early 18th century — fifteen families with a kehila of their own already in 1728, the oldest matzeivah dating to 1726 — and a 1729 writ of privilege from Count Franz Esterházy secured them a beis tefillah, a beis hachaim and a mikveh. With the split of Hungarian Jewry in 1869 the kehilla joined the Orthodox camp; in 1899 it dedicated a large new shul, and Jews of twenty-nine surrounding settlements belonged to its rabbinate. Its most striking feature came after a bitter dispute over the rabbinical succession in 1891, when the community divided into two separate Orthodox kehillos — each with its own rav and its own yeshiva — that stood side by side until 1944, an arrangement unique in all of Slovakia. On the eve of the war some 1,200 Jews lived in the town, about a quarter of its people, with two Jewish schools.

Torah of the Town. Galánta was one of the important Torah centers of Hungary, chiefly through its renowned yeshiva, which drew talmidim from across Europe and was built up by R' Hillel Lichtenstein, a talmid of the Chasam Sofer and a leading posek of his day; among the ravs who followed were R' Menachem Deutsch, R' Asher Lemel Wolfner and R' Shimon Friedman. The larger of the two kehillos was led from 1891 by R' Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky, the Maharitz — a prized talmid of the Shevet Sofer in Pressburg and a son-in-law of R' Mordechai Winkler, the Levushei Mordechai of Mád — under whom the Galánta yeshiva became one of the largest and most important in the country; in 1921 he moved on to Chust, and afterward was called to Yerushalayim as Gaavad of the Eidah HaChareidis. He was succeeded by R' Yehoshua Buxbaum, the Ohr Pnei Yehoshua, who headed the yeshiva of some 230 talmidim. The smaller kehilla was led by R' Binyamin Seidel, who maintained the second yeshiva alongside it.

The Churban. When the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944 some 1,105 Jews remained in Galánta, the two kehillos still operating separately to the very end. On 5 June 1944 a ghetto was thrown up around the shul, into which all the Jews of Galánta — and some six hundred more from the surrounding villages — were crowded; a few days later they were taken to the camp at Komárno, and on 13 June 1944 deported to Auschwitz. Among them were the ravs of both kehillos, R' Yehoshua Buxbaum and R' Binyamin Ber Seidel, together with the dayanim R' Yosef Yechiel Seidel and R' Yaakov Buxbaum — all murdered al kiddush Hashem. Some 1,800 Jews of Galánta and its district were killed, and only about 250 ever returned. The fuller story is told in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Kashau (in Hungarian Kassa, in German Kaschau, and Kashoy in Jewish records; today Košice) is the capital of the Abov district and the administrative and economic heart of eastern Slovakia. A free royal city from 1342 and capital of Upper Hungary from 1554, it commanded the trade road running from southern Europe toward Poland and grew into a great railway junction. After the Vienna arbitration of 2 November 1938 Kashau was annexed to Hungary, and its Jews were drawn into the fate of Hungarian Jewry.

The Kehilla. As a royal free city Kashau kept its gates closed to Jews for centuries; the Jews of the district lived in nearby Rozhanovce and entered only on market days. Only after the residence bans were lifted in 1840 did a community take root — an independent kehilla founded in 1842 with a rented shul and a cheder on Zvonárska Road, some thirty families by 1843 under its first rav R' Mordechai HaCohen. It grew with the city: about 5,600 Jews by 1900, over 11,500 by 1930, and roughly 10,200 — a sixth of the population — in 1941. As in the great Hungarian cities the community divided into camps; the separate Orthodox kehilla was established in 1873 under R' Moshe Jungreis, alongside a Status-quo community led by R' Mordechai Eckstein and a Neolog (Yeshurun) one.

Torah of the Town. The Orthodox kehilla of Kashau was built by three generations of leadership, told more fully in the Yeshivas Kashau card: R' Moshe HaLevi Jungreis — a talmid of the Goren Dovid of Balassagyarmat and of the Ksav Sofer — who was appointed Rav in 1873 and founded the separate Orthodox community; his son R' Yitzchok Tzvi Jungreis; and R' Shaul Brach (1865–1940), the Mishmeres Elazar — born in Nitra, a talmid of the Maharam Schick and the Chasan Sofer — who came to Kashau from the rabbanus of Nagykároly in 1923, a staunch defender of Hungarian Orthodoxy, and led the kehilla and its yeshiva of hundreds until his petirah in 1940. In its midst sat also the Maharash Engel, R' Shmuel Engel of Radomishla — among the foremost poskim of Galician and Hungarian Jewry — who spent his last decades as Raavad of Kashau and was buried there in תרצ"ה (1935). When R' Moshe Jungreis left Balassagyarmat for Kashau, the Goren Dovid said that the glory had departed from Balassagyarmat — but that its sun had risen in Kashau.

The Churban. After the German occupation of March 1944 the Jews of Kashau and the surrounding district were ordered, on 27 April, to gather in the city's three great shuls, and from there were driven into two brickyards at the city's edge; by the end of April more than eleven thousand were penned in the brickyards and a small city ghetto. A spur was laid to the brickyard, and in five transports between 15 May and the night of 3–4 June 1944 some 15,700 Jews of Kashau and its vicinity were deported to Auschwitz — among them the Status-quo rav R' Mordechai Eckstein הי"ד. Kashau, the great railway junction, was also the point at which the deportation trains from across Hungary were logged as they rolled toward the camps. Only a few hundred returned; R' Shaul Brach's talmid R' Refuel Blum survived to rebuild the Kashau kehilla in America. The full account is told in the churban diary of Kashau; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Unsdorf (in German Hunsdorf, in Slovak Huncovce, in Hungarian Hunfalu) is a village in the Spiš (Zips) hills of north-eastern Slovakia, in a region densely settled by Zipser Germans who would not let Jews live in their towns. So the Jews of the district gathered in the village of Unsdorf, which served in effect as their Jewish town — the place to which they returned each evening when the gates of the Saxon towns closed.

The Kehilla. Jews settled in Unsdorf by the 17th century — its first rav, R' Binyamin Sinai, was niftar in 1708 — and though the community was buffeted by migration (when settlement was opened across Hungary in 1840 many moved to neighboring towns) and dwindled in the later 19th century, it remained the mother-congregation of the smaller communities of the region, including the resort towns of the Tatras. What kept Unsdorf on the map of the Torah world was its yeshiva.

Torah of the Town. Unsdorf was the seat of R' Shmuel Rosenberg, the Be'er Shmuel — one of the foremost Hungarian poskim of his generation and author of the responsa Be'er Shmuel — whose yeshiva, told in full in the Yeshivas Be'er Shmuel card, was a leading center of Hungarian Torah and the primary place of learning of R' Ahron Mordechai Lieberman. Of his talmidim he said of R' Yehoshua Buxbaum that he was sure he would be a gadol beYisroel; his grandson R' Yosef Yona Horowitz later founded a Yeshivas Be'er Shmuel in Boro Park in his memory. The yeshiva's last rosh yeshiva and the kehilla's last rav was R' Shlomo Shneur Zalman Horowitz.

The Churban. Unsdorf lay not in annexed Hungary but within the Slovak State, and so its destruction came not with the Hungarian deportation of 1944 but with the Slovak deportations of 1942. On 15 March 1939, at the founding of the Slovak Republic, some two hundred of its Jews were driven out to the no-man's-land on the Slovak–Hungarian border near Rožňava and held for two weeks before being let home. Then in the spring of 1942 most of the Jews of Unsdorf — among them the last rav, R' Shlomo Shneur Zalman Horowitz, and his family — were taken to the collection point at Poprad and from there deported to the death camps and ghettos of the Lublin region of Poland. When the deportations halted, only two families with exemption certificates remained, and their fate is unknown. The kehilla was never reborn; the yeshiva building and the two old cemeteries still stand. הי"ד.

The Town. Tasnád (in Romanian Tășnad) is a market town on the Szilágy–Szatmár borderland of north-western Transylvania. Held in turn by Hungary and Romania, it was returned to Hungary by the Second Vienna Award of 1940, and so its Jews were swept into the Hungarian deportation of 1944. Among its dayanim stood R' Chaim Elazar Teitelbaum, of the Ujhel Teitelbaum house, who also led the beis medrash of the Satmar chassidim in the town — succeeded in the dayanus by his son-in-law R' Moshe Aryeh Leib Leichtag הי"ד.

The Kehilla. The Jews of Tasnád formed an Orthodox kehilla whose rabbinate, from 1919, embraced the town together with some fifty surrounding communities. Its life turned around its yeshiva, which under the Maharam Brisk became the largest in the land. The central shul was built in 1867, and at the start of the twentieth century a chasidishe beis medrash was founded beside it.

Torah of the Town. The first rav of Tasnád, appointed in 1833, was R' Chaim Betzalel Paneth, author of the Derech Yivchar, a son of the Mareh Yechezkel, chief rabbi of Transylvania, and brother of the Maaglei Tzedek of Deyzh. From 1919 the Rav of Tasnád and its district was R' Mordechai Brisk, the Maharam Brisk (1886–1944) — a talmid of the Levushei Mordechai in the Mád yeshiva, who gave him semicha at eighteen — as did R' Avraham Yitzchak Glick of Tolcsva and R' Pinchas Chaim Klein of Selish — and a son-in-law of R' Shmuel Zalman Weinberger of Margita. Born in Tisza-Dada to R' Yehoshua Brisk, its rav, his mother a daughter of R' Menachem Gershon Grünwald of Kerestir, he served from תרע"א (1911) as dayan in Margita under his father-in-law, whose grandfather's Shu"t Mahariatz he published with his own notes, the Binyan Yehoshua. A renowned posek called to judge the era's great public disputes, he built at Tasnád — told more fully in the Yeshivas Maharam Brisk card — a yeshiva of some 500 talmidim, the largest in all of Transylvania and Romania, and after 1940 the largest in Hungary, with a full dormitory, dining room and kitchen and a seder that began at four in the morning. In 1942 he was nearly named ABD of Budapest — a post that might have saved him — but the appointment fell through when the community heads would not undertake to keep a yeshiva at the kehilla's expense, and he stayed with his kehilla and his yeshiva in Tasnád.

The Churban. After the German occupation of March 1944 the Jews of Tasnád and its district were driven, with the Jews of Szilágy county, into the county ghetto at Szilágysomlyó — a camp in the brickyard and open fields at Cehei outside the town, where some eight thousand Jews of the Szilágyság were gathered — and from there deported to Auschwitz in three transports at the end of May and the beginning of June 1944, by way of Szatmárnémeti. Through the war years the Maharam Brisk had gone on answering halacha and laboured to free the agunos of men who never returned from the labor battalions, and his teshuvos went to press as Shu"t Maharam Brisk in the war years themselves. The Maharam Brisk was murdered al kiddush Hashem at Auschwitz-Birkenau on the night of 11 Sivan / 2 June 1944 together with his rebbetzin and their children; of his family only his son R' Ahron Tzvi survived. The full account is told in the churban diary of Tasnád; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Szerdahely (in Hungarian Dunaszerdahely; in Slovak Dunajská Streda) lies on the Žitný ostrov, the great island of the Danube in south-western Slovakia; its name means "Wednesday market." Part of Czechoslovakia from 1919, it was annexed to Hungary by the First Vienna Award of November 1938, and shared thereafter the fate of Hungarian Jewry.

The Kehilla. Jews settled in Szerdahely around 1700 and received a charter of rights from Count Pálffy in 1739; from sixteen families the kehilla grew to some 1,900 souls by 1880 — nearly half the town — and about 2,700 by 1930, the Dunaszerdahely rabbinate watching over the Jews of some fifty villages of the island around it. It was among the most thoroughly Jewish towns of the whole region.

Torah of the Town. Szerdahely was led by four generations of Torah giants, told in full in the Szerdahely card: R' Yehuda Assad, the Maharyi Assad (1853–1866) — a talmid of the Maharam Banet in Nikolsburg, reckoned the posek of the generation in Hungary after the Chasam Sofer's petirah — with a yeshiva of 150 talmidim; more than fifty works remained in his manuscripts, and they were burned by the Germans in the churban. After him came his son R' Ahron Shmuel Assad (1869–1905); R' Shmuel Levi Weinberger — a talmid of R' Ahron Mordechai Lieberman in his Chust yeshiva — son-in-law of R' Hillel Lichtenstein of Kolomea (c. 1906–1924); and finally R' Hillel Weinberger (1924–1944), who had semicha from the Be'er Shmuel of Unsdorf and the Levushei Mordechai of Mád, founded Yeshivas Beis Hillel of 100–150 talmidim, and though he davened nusach Ashkenaz traveled for Shabbos to the Minchas Elazar of Munkacs.

The Churban. Already from 1940 its men were taken to the labor service, and the army confiscated the kehilla's buildings — the school among them — to quarter the labor companies. After the occupation of March 1944, SS units entered Szerdahely within two days; on 10 May a ghetto was ordered in the streets east of the Great Shul, and within forty-eight hours every Jew of the town was driven in, soon joined by the Jews of some seventy villages of the Komárom district. The Great Shul was desecrated and made the assembly point. On 15 June 1944 a transport of 2,970 Jews of Szerdahely and its vicinity was sent to Auschwitz — among them R' Hillel Weinberger, R' Asher Anshel Katz, and the dayanim R' Shmuel Friedman and R' Moshe Katz, all murdered al kiddush Hashem. About 650 returned, among them R' Hillel's son R' Yechiel. The full account is told in the churban diary of Szerdahely; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Bergsás (in Hungarian Beregszász; in Czech and Slovak Berehovo; today Berehove, Ukraine), the capital of Bereg county, was the third-largest town of Transcarpathia, some 26 km south of Munkatch. Part of Czechoslovakia from 1920, it was returned to Hungary by the First Vienna Award of November 1938, and shared the fate of Hungarian Jewry.

The Kehilla. The first Jewish yishuv of four families took root in 1768; by 1830 there were two hundred Jews, and by the 1941 census 5,856 — about thirty percent of the town's nineteen thousand people. It had become one of the most important Torah centers of Carpatho-Rus, and the seat of the Lishkas HaYire'im, the Orthodox Bureau of Carpatho-Rus, modeled on the central Orthodox Bureau of Pressburg.

Torah of the Town. Bergsás was led by a chain of four generations of rabbonim, told in full in the Yeshivas Kol Aryeh card: R' Yitzchak Rachlitz (until 1859), a talmid of the Chasam Sofer, who before Bergsás had served nineteen years as ABD of Nyír-Tosh; R' Avraham Yehuda HaKohen Schwartz, the Kol Aryeh (1861–1881), born in Mád and a talmid of the Divrei Chaim of Tzanz, who led a yeshiva of some fifty talmidim and signed the 1869 Sanz declaration — his grandsons, the Lechem Shlomo of Szilágysomlyó and the Kav Chaim of Mád, carried his line onward; R' Shlomo Sofer-Schreiber, the Chut HaMeshulash (from 1883), grandson of the Chasam Sofer and son of the Ksav Sofer; and the last rav, R' Shlomo Hirsch.

The Churban. After the occupation of March 1944 the Gestapo reached Bergsás within ten days, took more than 120 hostages — among them the rav and the leaders of the kehilla — and extorted a ransom of a million pengő. Ghettoization began on 16 April 1944, the first in annexed Carpathian Ruthenia: some 12,000 Jews of Bergsás and the villages of Bereg county were crowded into the Vály and Kont brickworks and the Weisz farmstead, without water or sanitation. In May 1944 they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau; the last rav, R' Shlomo Hirsch, perished al kiddush Hashem with his entire kehilla. The full account is told in the churban diary of Bergsás; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Bilke — Bilki — lies in a valley deep in the Carpathians of Bereg county, on the main road between Munkacz and Chust, six streams rushing down to it from the forested hills; the town keeps an old legend that a nobleman's drowned daughter gave her name to the river and the town alike. Some ten thousand souls lived there — Ruthenians, Hungarians, Jews, and after 1918 Czechs — in a wine country of vineyards and water-mills, Austro-Hungarian until the empire fell, Czechoslovak between the wars, and Hungarian again from 1939. Bilke was a hotbed of the Ruthenian national movement: on 13 March 1939 an independent Ruthenian republic was declared there, and lasted a single day under Hungarian attack.

The Kehilla. The kehilla of Bilke stood some three hundred years — fifteen generations — most of its families tracing their roots to Galicia and Ukraine, from which they had fled the pogroms of the Chmielnicki era. Over two hundred families, close to two thousand souls, lived along the main road, blessed with houses of ten and twelve children. The great shul stood in the center of town — high-ceilinged and airy, biblical scenes painted overhead, graceful candelabras above, decked in green branches for Shavuos — with the Beis Hamidrash beside it and the communal oven in its courtyard, where the shamash Reb David Aharon Reisman sealed the Shabbos chulent pots behind an iron plank and wet clay each Friday before shkiah. From 1905 the chazzan was Reb Yehoshua Doft, shochet of the town, whose six sons sang beside him at the amud; the dayan was Reb Leibush Kalech; the melamdim included Reb Meshulam Friedman, who held the kehilla's matzah-baking concession, awarded each winter by sealed bid in the heated side chapel so that the poorest Jew could afford the mitzvah. The outlying suburb of Kolbasovo, half an hour's walk away, held thirty Jewish families of its own, with a shul first built by Reb Yosef Chaim Josovic and rebuilt in 1913 by his grandsons from America, housing the cheder under its tin roof. Among the town's baalei chessed was the cobbler Reb Moshe Benyamin Klein, gabbai of the Beis Hamidrash and the chevra kadisha, who sang words of Torah between the blows of his hammer and whose house stood at the edge of Bilke — it was said — so that wanderers would see it first.

Torah of the Town. From around 1915 the rav of Bilke was R' Ahron Mordechai Lieberman הי"ד, who founded a large yeshiva whose graduates went on to Pressburg, Galanta, Nitra, and Unsdorf, served as the town's mohel, brought train cars of Pesach wheat from Budapest in the war years and the Joint Distribution Committee to Carpatho-Rus after them, and rose from Bilke to the presidency of the Lishkas HaYire'im of Carpatho-Rus — until the campaign of the Munkacz faction drove him from the town in 1926. For three years the rabbanus stood empty; in 1929 the kehilla elected R' Naftali Tzvi Weisz הי"ד, son of the Chakal Yitzchak of Spinka, welcomed by chartered bus with the elder Spinka Rebbe in his spodik at his side, the cheder children lining the road with banners of יחי. The new Bilker Rav's yeshiva drew dozens of bachurim in its first year, fed on teg at the tables of families who ate better on a yeshiva day, and its fame spread to Romania, Hungary, and Poland; its talmidim went up through the Spinka-affiliated yeshivos to the Spinka Yeshiva of Selish itself. The Bilker Rav ruled on every detail of the town's Pesach — inspecting the kashered water-mill at Kolbasovo and vetting those who rolled the matzah dough — and among the town's other spiritual leaders was R' Avraham Lipschitz, son of R' Shabsai Lipschitz, the chief dayan of Irshava county and a prolific mechaber.

The Churban. On the night the one-day Ruthenian republic fell, 13 March 1939, the cobbler Reb Moshe Benyamin Klein was shot on the bridge over the first stream walking home from maariv — the tzedaka coins he had just collected for a wanderer still in his hand. The Hungarian Jewish laws followed in 1940, and the munkatábor took the able-bodied men. On Tisha B'Av 1941 two dozen stateless families of Bilke and Kolbasovo — among them the family of the melamed Reb Meshulam Friedman and the sons of the dayan Reb Leibush Kalech — were driven across the Polish border and shot at Kamenets-Podolsk on 27–28 August. At the close of Pesach 5704 the rest of the kehilla, some 1,500 Jews, were assembled in the courtyard of the great shul and entrained for the brickyard ghetto of Bergsas; by late May 1944 the transports had carried them to Auschwitz, where the Bilker Rav was murdered with his kehilla — his photograph on the ramp at Birkenau opening the Auschwitz Album, found at liberation by Lili Jacob of Bilke. The full account is told in the churban diary of Bilke.

The Town. Balassagyarmat is a town in northern Hungary (Nógrád county), about 67 km northeast of Budapest, on the Ipoly river that marks the Slovak border. A county seat and market town, its kehilla was long reckoned among the strongholds of Hungarian Orthodoxy.

The Kehilla. The kehilla of Balassagyarmat was among the oldest in Hungary, its roots reaching back centuries; by the mid-nineteenth century nearly two-fifths of the town was Jewish, an autonomous community whose own council — the rav at its head with two dayanim beside him — judged its internal affairs. By the 1941 census some 1,712 Jews lived in Balassagyarmat, about an eighth of the town — a strictly Orthodox kehilla with its batei midrash, chevra kadisha and Talmud Torah, and a rabbinic seat whose beis din served the Jews of the surrounding Nógrád villages.

Torah of the Town. Balassagyarmat's rav for nearly thirty years was R' Aharon Dovid Deutsch, the Goren Dovid (ABD 1851–1878) — born in Rudnitz in Bohemia, niftar כ"ג ניסן תרל"ח — a leader of the fight for separation from the Neolog at the time of the schism and one of the three Orthodox envoys received by Kaiser Franz Joseph, a talmid of the Chasam Sofer and a champion of Hungarian Orthodoxy — the same Goren Dovid who, when R' Moshe Jungreis left him for Kashau, said its glory had departed but its sun had risen there. He was succeeded for some fifty years by his eldest son R' Yosef Yisrael Deutsch, the Ben Garni (until 1927), a talmid of the Ksav Sofer, a mekubal and baal mofes. After him the rabbinate passed to his sons, twin brothers: the last ABD, R' Chaim Aharon Dovid Deutsch, named for his grandfather the Goren Dovid, and R' Menachem Tzvi (Manó) Deutsch, dayan of the kehilla, who led a yeshiva from 1934 until the end; beside them served the dayan R' Akiva Unger. Serving as Raavad at the Goren Dovid's right hand was Reb Boruch Lieberman.

The Churban. After the German occupation the local authorities under Mayor Béla Vannay set up two ghettos in Balassagyarmat between 4 and 10 May 1944, sealed on 13 May, into which the Jews of the town and the women of the surrounding villages were crowded — the village men having already been taken to forced labor. At the end of May some 2,100 Jews were moved to a holding site at Nyírjespuszta and the rest to the tobacco-drying barns at Illéspuszta, and on 12 and 14 June 1944 they were marched back to the town and deported to Auschwitz — among them the last rav R' Chaim Aharon Dovid Deutsch and his twin brother the dayan R' Menachem Tzvi, grandsons of the Goren Dovid, murdered with their families al kiddush Hashem. The full account is told in the churban diary of Balassagyarmat; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Erlau (in Hungarian Eger), the seat of Heves county, lies about 110 km northeast of Budapest in the wine country of northern Hungary. Its Jewish community, though never large, was a Torah center out of all proportion to its size.

The Kehilla. By the 1941 census some 1,787 Jews lived in Eger, about a twentieth of the city; the kehilla maintained its batei midrash and a Status-quo congregation, and the town was the seat of a yeshiva that drew talmidim from across Hungary.

Torah of the Town. For sixty-four years, from 1881 until the churban, the rav of Erlau was R' Shimon Sofer, the Hisorerus Teshuvah (1850 – 1944) — a son of the Ksav Sofer and grandson of the Chasam Sofer, who in his earlier wanderings had dwelt in Uman and Kiev, learned two years in Cracow under his uncle the Michtav Sofer, and in Pressburg begun publishing the writings of his father and grandfather — who founded there the great Yeshivas Chasam Sofer of Erlau, drawing talmidim from across Hungary, and who, like his fathers, stood uncompromisingly against Zionism, Agudah and reform, urging his people after the First World War to go up to Eretz Yisrael rather than emigrate to America. His Shu"t Hisorerus Teshuvah appeared anonymously, marked on every page that none should rely on its rulings le-maaseh. In his old age his son R' Moshe Sofer, the Yad Sofer, took up the beis din at his side — R' Moshe's eldest son, the bochur R' Avraham Shmuel Binyamin, corresponded in learning with the Maharam Brisk of Tasnád over his teshuvos; both were murdered al kiddush Hashem at Auschwitz — R' Shimon at ninety-four (Hebrew sources count his years as ninety-five) — on 21 Sivan תש"ד. The dynasty was raised anew by R' Moshe's son R' Yochanan Sofer — a talmid of R' Yosef Asher Pollack of Verpelét — who rebuilt Yeshivas Erlau (Ohel Shimon) in Yerushalayim in 1953.

The Churban. After the occupation of March 1944, ghettoization in Eger began on 15 May; some 2,744 Jews of the city and the surrounding towns were crowded into the Eger ghetto, and another 984 into a second ghetto at the abandoned Bagólyuk mine. In early June they were deported to Auschwitz; R' Shimon Sofer, then ninety-four, was murdered al kiddush Hashem on 21 Sivan / 12 June 1944 together with his son R' Moshe Sofer and some three thousand of his kehilla. Seven of the Hisorerus Teshuvah's fifteen children perished in the churban — among them R' Shmuel Chaim, rav of Zagreb, and R' Yaakov Binyamin of Ujhel. His grandson R' Yochanan Sofer survived to rebuild the Erlau dynasty, in Budapest and then Yerushalayim. The full account is told in the churban diary of Erlau; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Satmar (in Hungarian Szatmárnémeti; today Satu Mare, in north-western Romania) was part of Hungary until the First World War and again, by the Second Vienna Award, from 1940 to 1944. A county seat near the Tisza plain, it grew into one of the great Jewish centers of Transylvania.

The Kehilla. Jews first came to Satmar in the early 18th century but were turned away when it became a royal town in 1715; they resettled from the 1820s — the organized kehilla was founded in תר"ח (1848) — and the community grew quickly — some 1,357 by 1869, over 7,000 by 1910, and on the eve of the war one of the largest kehillos of the region, Orthodox and Status-quo together. Its Av Beis Din in the final years was R' Moshe Dovid Winternitz.

Torah of the Town. For its first fifty years the kehilla was led by R' Binyamin Zev Mandelbaum, a talmid of the Chasam Sofer, rav from the founding in 1848 until his petirah in 1898; after him came R' Yehuda Greenwald, who raised batei tefilla and talmudei Torah where hundreds of children learned each day and founded the Satmar yeshiva, teaching thousands across two decades until his petirah in 1920. He was succeeded as rav by his memale makom at the yeshiva's head, R' Eliezer Dovid Greenwald, the Keren LeDovid — a brother of the Arugas HaBosem of Chust and earlier a dayan in Szerdahely — who gave the yeshiva most of his hours, called his talmidim “my children” and built them a dining hall and lodgings, until it stood the largest in all of Transylvania, drawing hundreds of bachurim until his petirah on 20 May 1928; he gave semicha to R' Ahron Mordechai Lieberman.

A stormy six-year contest over the succession followed, ended by the compromise of 1930; only on י"ב אדר תרצ"ד (27 February 1934) did the Satmar Rav, R' Yoel Teitelbaum, settle in the city, under whom the yeshiva doubled to some 400 talmidim — the largest in Romania and Hungary — and the town became a great chasidishe seat. He was a son of the Kedushas Yom Tov of Sighet, rav first of Orshiva and then of Satmar — renowned for his gadlus baTorah and his uncompromising opposition to Zionism and the haskalah; he survived the churban to rebuild his chassidus in Brooklyn as the largest chasidishe kehilla of postwar America, and was the author of the Divrei Yoel and the Vayoel Moshe. Satmar was also the cradle of the Shomer Emunim chabura of R' Aharon Roth, Reb Areleh, until his move to Bergsás.

The Churban. After the region came under Hungarian rule again in 1940 the anti-Jewish laws bore down hard. Following the German occupation, a ghetto was set up in the Jewish quarter of Satmar in early May 1944, into which some 18,000 Jews of the city and the surrounding districts were crowded; in six transports between 19 May and 1 June 1944 they were deported to Auschwitz, the great majority murdered on arrival — among the kedoshim the Av Beis Din R' Moshe Dovid Winternitz הי"ד. The Satmar Rav was seized and taken to the Kolozsvár ghetto, but was among those rescued on the Kasztner train and survived to rebuild Satmar in America. The full account is told in the churban diary of Satmar; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Nyíregyháza, the capital of Szabolcs county, lies in eastern Hungary about 210 km northeast of Budapest. Known to its yidden as Niredhaz, it was the seat of a large, well-organized kehilla and a hub for the Jews of the Szabolcs villages around it.

The Kehilla. By the 1941 census some 4,993 Jews lived in Nyíregyháza, about a twelfth of the city — divided between a sizable Orthodox congregation and a Status-quo one, each with its own rabbinate, batei midrash and institutions. The kehilla had stood independent from 1865; after the Congress of 1869 it held neutral, declaring itself formally Status-quo in 1877, and in 1904 part of its members founded the Orthodox kehilla with a shul of its own — though the school, the shechita and the chevra kadisha remained shared between them.

Torah of the Town. Niredhaz's rav was R' Yitzchak Aizik Friedman, the Tiferes Yitzchak (c.1820 – 1893), a talmid of the Chasam Sofer who sat as av beis din of Alkan and Baia before Niredhaz and left the Tiferes Yitzchak. He was succeeded by his son-in-law R' Shalom Weider, the Mashmia Shalom (1865 – 1944) — a talmid of the Yeitev Lev and the Kol Aryeh and mechaber of the Shu"t Mashmia Shalom — who led the Orthodox kehilla in its last decades and was murdered al kiddush Hashem with his kehilla on 16 Sivan תש"ד. Alongside the Orthodox rabbanim the town was also home to a chasidishe court: R' Yehoshua Heshel Landau (1880 – 1944), the av beis din of Vitka who, after the First World War, settled in Nyíregyháza as its Admor — a son of R' Moshe Dov Landau of Veretzky and son-in-law of R' Shlomo Yehuda Weinberger of Bagad (Nyírbogát). A chassid of Shinova, Cheshanov and the Atzei Chaim of Sighet, he was known for his siddur Chemdas Yisroel, held as a segulah and graced with the haskamos of the Darchei Teshuvah of Munkács, the Ahavas Yisroel of Vizhnitz and the Imrei Yosef of Spinka. He was murdered al kiddush Hashem in Auschwitz on 16 Sivan תש"ד, the same day as the Ratzferter Rebbe — הי"ד. The Nadvorna chassidus was present in the town as well, through Reb Yosef Leifer of Niredhaz, a son of Reb Mordche'le of Nadvorna, whose kever in Nyíregyháza is a stop on the kever map.

The Churban. The Jews were made to wear the yellow star on 5 April 1944 and confined to a ghetto in the Jewish quarter between 23 and 29 April. From 5 May they were moved to three deserted puszta sites outside the city — Sima, Nyírjes and Harangod — and from there, as part of Deportation Zone I, deported to Auschwitz in four transports — 12, 18 and 26 May and 4 June 1944 (other records count five, between 15 May and 6 June) — together with the Jews of the surrounding towns (among them Kalov and Bűdszentmihály) who had been brought to Niredhaz. Through the Niredhaz ghetto and its camps passed also the Ratzferter Rebbe, Reb Shalom Eliezer Halberstam — his Rebbetzin, aged eighty-five, perished at the Sima camp — deported on 4 June and murdered al kiddush Hashem on 16 Sivan, the same day as the Mashmia Shalom and the Niredhaz Admor. The full account is told in the churban diary of Nyíregyháza; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Dayan of the Ashvar Chassidim. Among the town's dayanim stood R' Boruch Mordechai Frenkel — dayan u'moreh tzedek of Kleinwardein, rosh of the Ashvar chassidim, einikel of the founder of the Chevraya Kadisha d'Ashvar, a great mekubal said to be of the ל"ו tzaddikim of his dor — niftar ח' מנחם אב תרט"ו.

The Town. Kisvárda — to its yidden Kleinwardein — lies in northeastern Hungary (Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg), about 237 km northeast of Budapest. It was a regional center whose Jews made up a large share of the town and whose rabbinate served the district around it. And the court of Kosson kept a presence in the town: R' Moshe Shmuel HaLevi Rottenberg, son of the Bnei Shileshim, led here for years before crossing to America — his son R' Pinchas Shalom, ABD Kason in the Bronx.

The Kehilla. By the 1941 census the Kisvárda district counted some 4,865 Jews, of whom 3,770 lived in the town itself — nearly a quarter of its population — a strongly Orthodox kehilla with its batei midrash, chevra kadisha and chinuch institutions. Jews stood at the heart of the town's economy — most of its retail trade, the managers and lessees of the great estates, the warehouses for the district's produce, the food-industry works and the first banks were in Jewish hands. The kehilla maintained a large yeshiva and several talmudei torah; by 1900 its Jewish school counted some 370 children, and in 1901 a large and stately new shul was raised. The town kept a Hebrew press of its own, whose seforim were printed down to the war years.

Torah of the Town. Kleinwardein's rabbinic seat was held across the generations by, among others, R' Dovid Friedlander — grandfather of the Tal Chaim, who was born in the town — R' Avraham Yitzchok Weinberger, the Pnei Yitzchok, a rebbe of the Saraf of Tosh, and the Arugas HaBosem, its ABD before his elevation to Chust; and R' Shimon Sofer of Erlau spent his early years in the town. In its last generations Kleinwardein's rabbanim came from the Litsch-Rosenbaum family — descendants of the Maharal of Prague who took their name from the town of Litsch near Prague, and whose forebear R' Moshe Aryeh Leib served as Dayana Rabba of Pressburg in the time of the Chasam Sofer. R' Moshe Chaim Segal Litsch-Rosenbaum, the Lechem Rav — son of R' Gershon of Tállya, the Meshiv Devarim, and mechaber of Lechem Rav on the siddur and on Perek Shirah — was reckoned among the dominant rabbanim of Hungary; his son R' Shmuel Shmelka HaLevi Litsch-Rosenbaum, the Eleh Divrei Shmuel, named for his maternal great-grandfather R' Shmuel Shmelka Klein, the Tzror HaChaim of Sevlush, succeeded him as the town's last rav and was murdered al kiddush Hashem on 12 Sivan תש"ד.

The Churban. Already in 1942 the young men had been taken to the labor service and sent to Ukraine, where many perished. Ghettoization began on 16 April 1944 with the roundup of the Jews of the district's villages, and by the end of the month some 7,000 souls were confined in the Kisvárda ghetto under an unarmed Jewish police; some who understood what awaited them took their own lives. As part of Deportation Zone I the deportations began on 25 May 1944 — the first transport to Csap, and then, after a further wave of suicides in the ghetto, on to Auschwitz-Birkenau in two transports of 29 and 31 May 1944. The last rav, R' Shmuel Shmelka Litsch-Rosenbaum, was murdered with his rebbetzin and most of his children on 12 Sivan / 3 June 1944. The full account is told in the churban diary of Kisvárda; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Vác — to its yidden Waitzen — is a town on the left bank of the Danube in Pest county, about 35 km north of Budapest. An old episcopal city, it was home to a kehilla whose batei midrash and yeshiva gave it a name in Hungarian Torah out of proportion to its size.

The Kehilla. A formal kehilla took shape in Vác from 1840; after the Hungarian schism the town held two kehillos — the Orthodox kehilla of the Silbersteins, and the central kehilla, Status-quo, which under its last rav passed over to the Orthodox stream; on the eve of the war some 1,900 Jews lived in the town, with its beis knesses, beis medrash, chevra kadisha and chinuch institutions.

Torah of the Town. The Orthodox kehilla's first rav, R' Moshe Segal Levinger, was taken suddenly within his first year (1876), and period sources record that he had already set a yeshiva on its feet; the kehilla and its yeshiva were then built by R' Dovid Yehuda Silberstein, the Shvilei Dovid (1820–1884), mechaber of the Shvilei Dovid on the Shulchan Aruch. His son R' Yeshaya Silberstein, the Maasei L'Melech (1857–1930) led the kehilla and its yeshiva for forty-six years, and was reckoned — beside the Levushei Mordechai of Mád and the Maharshag — one of the three pillars of Hungarian halachic instruction in his generation. The yeshiva stood among the central yeshivos of Hungary, some two hundred talmidim with a menza of their own; from its benches went out, among others, R' Aharon Roth, the Shomer Emunim. After the Maasei L'Melech his son R' Dovid Yehuda Leib Silberstein, a talmid of the Levushei Mordechai, led the kehilla and its dwindling yeshiva until the churban. Beside them stood the central kehilla's rav from 1901, R' Shraga Feish Pollak, the Sefer Tishbi — also the prison chaplain of Vác, with a small yeshiva of his own — through whose efforts his kehilla passed to the Orthodox stream; and the dayan R' Yissachar Dov Stern, who headed a small yeshiva in the town

The Churban. After the occupation, on the order of the deputy prefect László Endre, a ghetto of sixty-seven houses, two schools and two shuls was marked out around the Vác shul, into which some 1,900 Jews of the town and another 625 from the surrounding villages were crowded in the last week of May, under a Jewish council that included the rabbonim of both kehillos. On 29 June 1944 the ghetto was emptied to the collection camp at Monor, and from there, on 6, 7 and 8 July 1944 — among the very last transports before the deportations were halted — the Jews of Vác were deported to Auschwitz. Among the kedoshim was R' Shraga Feish Pollak, murdered at Auschwitz on כ"א תמוז תש"ד. Of them all, only 224 returned. The full account is told in the churban diary of Vác; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Sopron (German Ödenburg, Latin Scarbantia) is a royal free city in western Hungary on the Austrian border, beside the Sheva Kehillos of Burgenland. It held one of the most ancient kehillos in Hungary: in their pleas of 1526 the Jews of the town claimed to have dwelt there in peace for six hundred years — from the tenth century — and pointed to the ancient matzeivos of their beis hachaim as witness. Records of Jewish life run from the fourteenth century; among its early rabbonim were R' Meir, cited by the Maharil in Sefer HaMinhagim, and R' Yehuda, named in the Shalsheles HaKabbalah among the great Ashkenazi scholars, and a medieval "Old Synagogue" of the town still stands.

Expulsion, and return. After centuries of expulsions and returns, the Jews were driven out "forever" following the battle of Mohács in 1526 — their houses plundered, their shul and beis hachaim wrecked. The refugees fled to Eisenstadt, Mattersdorf, Kobersdorf and Deutschkreutz — the Burgenland Sheva Kehillos that would guard Torah for the next four centuries. Sopron's gates stayed shut to Jews until the law of 1840, when they returned, many of them from those very towns.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. After the schism that split Hungarian Jewry in 1868–69 the main community remained Status Quo, but a separate Orthodox kehilla broke away in 1872 under R' Menachem Greenwald, a talmid of the Ksav Sofer, who led it for more than fifty years; its shul rose in 1891 and the Lackenbach and Pressburg families were woven into it. The Status Quo community built its own shul in 1876 under its rav and historian Dr. Max Pollak, who chronicled the Jews of the town. In its last years R' Shimon Yisrael Posen led the Orthodox kehilla; by 1926 the Status Quo counted some 352 baalei batim and the Orthodox 217.

The Churban. Eighteen hundred and sixty-one Jews lived in Sopron in 1941. After the German occupation of 19 March 1944 they were confined to a ghetto, and on 5 July 1944 some three thousand — together with the Jews of the surrounding towns — were deported to Auschwitz; only a few returned. The two Jewish kehillos had been dissolved by decree on erev Pesach תש"ד (7 April 1944), and ghettoisation began that June. The town's churban has its own record. הי"ד.

The Town. Mattersdorf (in Hungarian Nagymarton; since 1924 Mattersburg) lies in Burgenland — the strip of land that was Hungary's westernmost region until 1921 and has since been Austria's easternmost province. It was one of the Sheva Kehillos, the Seven Holy Communities that flourished for centuries under the protection of the Esterházy counts.

The Kehilla. One of the oldest kehillos of central Europe — its shul was dated to 1354 — Mattersdorf was renowned among the Sheva Kehillos for its piety and its rabbanim, governing its own religious, economic and communal life in centuries-long autonomy. Some 1,500 Jews lived there in 1848, a third of the town; by the Anschluss of 1938, emigration to the larger cities had reduced them to about 511.

Torah of the Town. Mattersdorf — one of the Sheva Kehillos of Burgenland — was a seat of the house of the Chasam Sofer for the better part of a century and a half. The Chasam Sofer himself served as its rav from 1798 until he was called to Pressburg in 1807, and after him R' Bunim Eiger — a brother of R' Akiva Eiger and father-in-law of the Yerios Shlomo of Makó — held the seat. The rabbanus later passed to the Ehrenfeld family, grandsons of the Chasam Sofer: R' Shmuel Ehrenfeld, the Chasan Sofer (1835 – 1883), rav from 1877 where his grandfather had sat, whose seforim shaped a generation of lomdim; In an earlier generation the town's yeshiva, under its av beis din R' Yirmiyahu, raised the young R' Simcha Bunim of Peshischa — the future master of Polish chassidus, sent from Vodislav to learn the Torah of Hungary; his son R' Simcha Bunim Ehrenfeld, the Maaneh Simcha (d. 1926); and the last Mattersdorfer Rav, R' Shmuel Ehrenfeld, who led the kehilla until the Anschluss of 1938 and then carried the name across the sea — founding Yeshivas Chasan Sofer of Mattersdorf in New York and, in 1958, the Kiryat Mattersdorf neighborhood of Yerushalayim.

The Churban. Mattersdorf and the Sheva Kehillos were among the very first Jewish communities in Europe to be destroyed. Within days of the Anschluss of 12 March 1938, the Jewish quarter was attacked, homes and shops looted and bank accounts seized, and the sifrei Torah were carried away to the Schiff-Shul in Vienna (where they too would later be destroyed); within months the Jews of Mattersdorf were driven out — expelled or stripped of everything and removed to Vienna — and the ancient kehilla was declared dissolved. Many of those expelled would later be deported from Vienna and murdered. The Mattersdorfer Rav led the remnant of his kehilla out of Austria and rebuilt it in America, and later in the Yerushalayim neighborhood that bears its name. הי"ד.

The Town. Deutschkreutz — in Hungarian Sopronkeresztúr (Németkeresztúr), in Yiddish צעהלים (Tzeilim), pronounced Tzelem — lies in central Burgenland, the strip that was Hungary's westernmost land until 1921 and has since been Austria's easternmost province. The German name means "German cross"; unwilling to speak the cross, the Jews called their town Tzelem — a word the lashon uses for an idol — and by that name it is remembered. Jews are documented in the area from the fourteenth century and settled in strength from the sixteenth; the town was one of the Sheva Kehillos, the Seven Holy Communities that flourished for centuries under the protection of the Esterházy counts.

The Kehilla. Together with Eisenstadt, Mattersdorf, Kobersdorf, Lackenbach, Frauenkirchen and Kittsee, Tzeilim formed the Sheva Kehillos — the first and only fully self-governing Jewish autonomy in central and western Europe, each kehilla choosing its own dayanim and running its own religious and communal life for generations. Tzeilim kept its own beis din, chevra kadisha and chinuch; the pinkas of its chevra kadisha was kept from תר"ט (1849) until the kehilla was liquidated in תרח"ץ (1938). Once several hundred souls, at the Anschluss the kehilla still numbered some 430 Jews (103 families).

Torah of the Town. Tzeilim was a seat of Torah for two centuries, and its rav was always also its rosh yeshiva. R' Ahron Leib Hamburger raised a yeshiva there already in the mid-1700s; R' Levi Pollak, a talmid of the Noda B'Yehuda and author of Amudei Shittim, held the seat after him; and R' Yoav Rosenbaum, the Mattersdorfer Rav, led the kehilla in the 1790s. Its defining figure was R' Menachem Katz (Prostitz), a talmid muvhak of the Chasam Sofer who sat as rav of Tzeilim for over fifty years (1840–1891), raised a yeshiva of some hundred talmidim, and stood among the seven rabbonim received by Kaiser Franz Josef in the fight against the Neolog seminary. His son-in-law R' Dovid Friedman filled his place (1891–1906) — and Friedman's own sons-in-law were R' Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal, the Eim HaBanim Semeicha and R' Mordechai Rottenberg, later Rav of Antwerp. There followed R' Eliezer Dovid Greenwald, the Keren LeDovid (1906–1912), who led a yeshiva of some hundred and thirty and went on to Satmar; R' Yaakov Yechezkiya Greenwald, the Vayagid Yaakov (1912–1923), a son of the Arugas HaBosem of Chust; R' Yosef Elimelech Kahana (1923–1931); and, last of the line, R' Levi Yitzchok Greenwald — the Tzelemer Rov (1932–1938), another son of the Arugas HaBosem, who would survive the churban and rebuild Tzelem across the sea in Williamsburg. Tzeilim was also the birthplace of R' Avraham Tzvi Unger, the Machaneh Avraham, later ABD of Kapuvár, whose father R' Chaim was a talmid of R' Menachem Katz.

The Churban. Tzeilim and the Sheva Kehillos were among the very first Jewish communities in Europe to be destroyed — not in the deportations of 1944 but in the first days of the Reich. Within days of the Anschluss of 12 March 1938 stones were thrown at the Jews' homes, and the Jews of Deutschkreutz were driven out faster than any of the sister kehillos: by 17 June 1938 two hundred and sixty-two of them had already been forced into Vienna, and within months the whole kehilla — some 430 souls, 103 families — was expelled, stripped of everything, the last to leave a teacher held back until the Gestapo released him. The shul still stood, unharmed, until early 1941, when it too was destroyed; even Heydrich would later call the Burgenland expulsion "illegal." From Vienna most of Tzeilim's Jews were deported eastward and murdered. By 1970 not one Jew remained in the town, and a memorial stands where the shul had been. The Tzelemer Rov carried the name of the kehilla to America, but the kehilla of Tzeilim was no more. הי"ד.

The Town. Kapuvár is a market town in Sopron county in western Hungary, on the edge of the Hanság marshland, not far from the Sheva Kehillos of Burgenland. Its Jewish settlement was small, a community of tradesmen and townsfolk in a region long shaped by the Orthodoxy of nearby Tzeilim and the western-Hungarian kehillos.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. The kehilla had torn itself free of the Neolog camp and joined the Orthodox, though for years most of its households remained mechalelei Shabbos and its offices lay in secular hands. Its rav was R' Dovid Sneiders הי"ד, son of R' Bentzion Sneiders הי"ד; and from תרפ"ו (1926) R' Avraham Tzvi Unger, the baal Machaneh Avraham, served as Av Beis Din and rosh yeshiva, strengthening the Talmud Torah against much opposition.

Torah of the Town. R' Avraham Tzvi Unger raised a yeshiva of some forty bochurim and, teaching through the shittos of the Rishonim and Acharonim, finished all six sedarim of Mishnah with his talmidim in about two and a half years. His chidushim on Mikvaos and Beitzah are his sefer Machaneh Avraham, whose name his son R' Yitzchak Shlomo Unger later gave to his yeshiva in Bnei Brak.

The Churban. In the spring and summer of תש"ד (1944) the Jews of Kapuvár, with the Jewry of western Hungary, were herded into ghettos and deported to Auschwitz. The rav and the greater part of the kehilla were murdered al kiddush Hashem, and the little kehilla of Kapuvár was no more. הי"ד.

The Town. Szilágysomlyó (Romanian Șimleu Silvaniei; Shimloi to its yidden) is a town in the Szilágy region (Szilágy / Sălaj county) of Transylvania, returned to Hungary by the Second Vienna Award from 1940 to 1944. It was the chief town of the Szilágyság and the seat of one of its leading kehillos.

The Kehilla. Szilágysomlyó was a strongly Orthodox kehilla and a Torah center for the Jews of the Szilágyság — the town itself counted some 1,500 Jews of its 9,400 people in 1941, and the county some 14,000 by the count of 1930 — fallen to 8,000 by 1944, after its men of sixteen to sixty had been taken to the labor battalions on the eastern front, so that those who remained were the women, the children, the old and the sick. The kehilla maintained its batei midrash, its chevra kadisha and a large yeshiva.

Torah of the Town. Szilágysomlyó's rav from 1899 was R' Shlomo Zalman Ehrenreich, the Lechem Shlomo (תרכ"ג – תש"ד / 1863 – 1944), among the leading poskim of Transylvania and mechaber of the Shu"t Lechem Shlomo and some forty works. Born in Beregszász, a grandson of the Kol Aryeh and a son-in-law of R' Yosef Dovid Horowitz of Liska, he was directed to the Shimloi rabbanus by the Kedushas Yom Tov of Sighet. There he built a yeshiva of close to a hundred talmidim and a talmud torah of hundreds, and as mara d'asra enacted strict takanos — curbing spending on luxuries and on matzeivos and strengthening the gderei tznius of the town. He was murdered al kiddush Hashem with his kehilla on 11 Sivan תש"ד.

The Churban. At a conference held in Szatmárnémeti on 26 April 1944, the authorities resolved to concentrate the Jews of the whole Szilágy county in a single ghetto at Cehei (Somlyócsehi), in the open fields outside Szilágysomlyó. The ghetto was set on the grounds of the Klein brickyard at Cehei — a swampy, isolated field five kilometers from the town — where some 8,500 Jews of Szilágysomlyó, Zilah, Tasnád and the county's districts were crowded together, about 3,500 of them left under the open sky; it was reckoned among the most terrible of the Transylvanian detention sites. In three transports — 31 May, 3 June and 6 June 1944, some 7,851 souls — they were deported to Auschwitz. R' Shlomo Zalman, offered escape to Romania, answered that kiddush Hashem was a mitzvah not every generation merits and that he might not separate himself from the klal; he was murdered with some eighty souls of his family. About 1,200 of the county's Jews survived; his son R' Yehoshua filled his place in Shimloi after the war before going up to Yerushalayim, and since 2005 the old shul houses the Northern Transylvania Holocaust Memorial Museum. The full account is told in the churban diary of Szilágysomlyó; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Hajdúnánás — Nánás to its yidden — lies in Hajdú county in eastern Hungary, north of Debrecen. It was the oldest and most populous of the Jewish settlements of the Hajdúság, the old district of the hajdú free-towns.

The Kehilla. A community reaching back to at least the early 19th century — its beis olam dates from 1839 — Hajdúnánás numbered about 700 Jews (some 160 families) at the start of the 20th century and about 1,080 by 1940, the great majority of them Orthodox, with its shul, batei midrash and chevra kadisha.

Torah of the Town. Nánás's rav and rosh yeshiva was R' Yisrael Efraim Fishel Sofer, the Afsei Eretz (תקפ"ב – תרנ"ט / 1822 – 1898) — among the last talmidim of the Chasam Sofer and, for twenty-five years, a chossid of Reb Hershele of Liska — a renowned baal mofeis and mechaber of the Afsei Eretz — appointed in תרכ"א (1861), he led the rabbanus and a yeshiva in the town for thirty-seven years. At his petirah some ninety rabbanim were gathered at his bedside — among them the Darkei Teshuva of Munkacs, the Kedushas Yom Tov of Sighet and the Arugas HaBosem of Chust — and in his tzava'ah he forbade hespedim and any title of praise on his matzeivah. After his petirah R' Ben Zion Halpert led the kehilla until 1918.

The Tzaddikim of the Town. Among the founding families of the kehilla stood the brothers R' Michael Nanasher — of the great talmidim of the Kaliver Rebbe, his baal makri on Rosh Hashanah, member of the Chevraya Kadisha d'Ashvar, whose matzeivah stands in the town's beis hachaim to this day — and R' Yosef Yozefa Glücklich, of the great Kaliver chassidim; their Glücklich descendants lived in Nánás from its founding until the churban הי"ד. R' Michael — called the Saraf — was niftar ח' אב תר"ט; and of the town itself the Gaavad of Yerushalayim, R' Moshe Aryeh Freund, a descendant of the house, said that he travels out of Eretz Yisrael only to come to Nanash, where many hidden Yidden — ל"ו tzaddikim — rest.

The Churban. After the occupation, a ghetto was set up in Hajdúnánás in May 1944 — the town shul and a few nearby buildings, fenced in with high wooden planks — into which all the Jews of the town were driven. In June they were moved to the great collection camp at the brickyard in Debrecen, where some thirteen thousand Jews of the region were gathered, and between 25 and 29 June 1944 they were deported — some to Strasshof in Austria and to Mauthausen, most by way of Kassa to Auschwitz. The Strasshof diversion — part of some 21,000 Hungarian Jews sent to forced labor around Vienna through the negotiations of the rescue committee with the SS — gave many of Nánás's Jews their lives. The beis olam of 1839 stands, and the ohel of the Afsei Eretz within it remains a place of tefillah for his thousands of descendants. The full account is told in the churban diary of Hajdúnánás; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Tolcsva is a small town in the Tokaj wine district of Zemplén county, in northeastern Hungary, about 20 km north of Tokaj. Jews settled there from the 18th century, drawn into the wine trade of the region.

The Kehilla. A kehilla took shape in Tolcsva in the 1700s — its Jewish cemetery dates from 1770 — and grew through the 19th century to some 929 Jews by 1890, settling at 363 by the 1941 census: a strictly Orthodox community with its beis knesses, beis medrash and chevra kadisha. Among the town's earlier rabbonim was R' Moshe Dovid Ashkenazi, the Toldos Adam, who led Tolcsva for some forty years before making aliyah to Tzfas in 1843.

Torah of the Town. Tolcsva's rav for nearly fifty years was R' Avraham Yitzchak Glück, the Yad Yitzchak (תקפ"ו – תרס"ט / c.1825 – 1909), reckoned among the foremost poskim of Hungary in his day. Born in Vircse near Debrecen, a talmid of the Selisher Rav and of R' Yitzchak Moshe Perls of Bonyhád, an ilui from childhood, he answered halachic questions from rabbanim across Hungary and Transylvania — close to nine hundred of them gathered into his three-volume Shu"t Yad Yitzchak — and brought to print the Parshas Mordechai of his wife's grandfather the Maharam Benet, with his own notes. His hasmadah was a byword: in all his years, his son-in-law recorded, he never took a vacation, sat in a rabbinic conference, or opened a newspaper. He lived in ascetic modesty, supported the yishuv of Eretz Yisrael, and urged the buying of esrogim grown in the Land. His seforim — Yad Yitzchak and Be'er Yitzchak — carried the town's name across the Torah world; the Maharam Brisk called him rosh hamorim b'medinaseinu, and some kehillos made his semicha a precondition for a rabbinic candidate. At his levaya in תרס"ט stood Reb Yeshayele of Kerestir and the Levushei Mordechai of Mád — who fainted in the midst of his hesped — and he was buried beside his rebbetzin in an ohel in the Tolcsva beis olam. In the last generation the rabbanus was held by R' Akiva Pinchas Kornitzer הי"ד, of the Kornitzer rabbinic line descended from the Chasam Sofer through his daughter Gittel; he was murdered with his kehilla.

The Churban. In May 1944 the Jews of Tolcsva were rounded up with the Jews of the Tokaj and Zemplén towns — Bodrogkeresztúr, Mád, Olaszliszka, Sárospatak, Tokaj and the rest — and brought to the ghetto at Sátoraljaújhely, set up in the slums of the Roma quarter, which at its peak held some 15,000 Jews of the county. From there they were deported to Auschwitz at the end of May and beginning of June 1944; of the nearly three hundred Jews of Tolcsva, only some forty ever came back. The beis olam of 1770 stands, and within it the ohel of the Yad Yitzchak. The full account is told in the churban diary of Tolcsva; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Sevlush — in Hungarian Nagyszőlős ("great vineyard"), today Vynohradiv in Carpatho-Ruthenia — was the ancient seat of Ugocsa county, on the Tisza near the Romanian border. A royal wine town since the 14th century, it became a center of Jewish life in the Carpathians.

The Kehilla. Jews lived in Sevlush from the 18th century, growing into a large Carpatho-Ruthenian kehilla — numbering in the thousands on the eve of the war, strongly chasidishe and Orthodox, with its batei midrash, its shtiblech and a famous yeshiva. After the Munich Agreement of 1938 the town was annexed to Hungary as Nagyszőlős.

Torah of the Town. Sevlush — Selish to its yidden — was the seat of R' Shmuel Shmelka Klein, the Selisher Rav (ה'תקס"ה – תרל"ה / 1805 – 1875), rosh yeshiva and av beis din who served Bilkáni and Chust before Selish, a talmid of the Chasam Sofer and the Ksav Sofer and mechaber of the Tzror HaChaim. Named for his great-uncle Reb Shmelke of Nikolsburg and an ilui from childhood, he was renowned as a po'el yeshuos whose every salvation, it was said, was bound to limud haTorah, and as a baal menagen whose niggunim for Hallel and the Havdalah besamim are still sung in Hungarian kehillos; from his yeshiva went out rabbanim across the region, among them R' Avraham Yitzchak Glück, later the Yad Yitzchak of Tolcsva. The town was also home to the Yeshivas Beis Yosef of Spinka — founded by the Chakal Yitzchak, the second Spinka Rebbe, at Munkács in 1916 and moved to Selish in 1929, where it grew to some hundred and fifty bachurim until it was destroyed in the Shoah.

The Churban. From 1940 the men were drafted into the labor battalions and many died on the eastern front; in 1941 families without Hungarian citizenship were expelled to Kamianets-Podilskyi and murdered. After the German occupation, on the last day of Pesach 1944, some 12,000 Jews of Sevlush and the surrounding districts were driven into the Nagyszőlős ghetto, and from there — among the first wave of deportations from Carpatho-Ruthenia — they were sent to Auschwitz in May 1944. The full account is told in the churban diary of Sevlush; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Makó — to its yidden Makava — is a town in Csanád county on the Maros river, in the far south of Hungary near the Romanian border. Jews settled there from the mid-18th century, under the protection of Bishop Stanislavich of Csanád, who in 1740 assigned them a quarter of the town.

The Kehilla. A kehilla took shape quickly — a chevra kadisha by 1747 — and grew to some 1,642 Jews by 1900, a substantial Orthodox community of the southern plain with its batei midrash, chevra kadisha and chinuch institutions. Three batei chaim told its history: on Kassit Street lay the Kadosh of Makova, Reb Dovid, murdered al kiddush Hashem in 5531 (1771); in the second rested R' Rabinstein, a talmid of the Chozeh of Lublin, among the rabbanim of the town; and in the great beis hachaim beyond the town — moved there for the floods of the Maros, its Orthodox and Neolog halves divided — lay the Yerios Shlomo and, at the last, the ohel of the Ohel Moshe.

Torah of the Town. Makó's first rav was R' Yehuda ben Avraham HaLevi (1778 – 1824); its most renowned was R' Shlomo Zalman Ullman, the Yerios Shlomo (תקנ"א – תרכ"ג / 1791 – 1863), av beis din of Makava for thirty-seven years. A son of R' Shalom Charif of Lackenbach (the Divrei R"Sh) and a son-in-law of R' Bunim Eiger of Mattersdorf — a brother of R' Akiva Eiger — he was hailed by the Chasam Sofer as "unzer yunger gaon," and the Divrei Chaim of Sanz said of him, "Hungary does not know what they possess." His Yerios Shlomo on Yoreh De'ah carried the name of Makava through the batei midrash of Hungary. In the last generation the rav of Makava — from תרע"ג (1913), for thirty-two years — was R' Moshe Vorhand, the Ohel Moshe, talmid muvhak of the Chasan Sofer, who came from Nitra where he had sat as dayan and rosh yeshiva for twenty-five years; in Makava he founded the Makova chasidishe court and Yeshivas HaRamah, raised thousands of talmidim — R' Aharon Roth, the Shomer Emunim, the most renowned among them — and stood at the bimah every erev Shabbos at dawn, saying the whole sefer Tehillim in tears with his yeshiva.

The Churban. After the German occupation the Jews of Makó were confined to a ghetto. In the ghetto days a false accusation was laid against the aged Ohel Moshe; he was arrested and beaten severely, and sent broken to the Jewish hospital in Budapest, where he was niftar on י"ז סיון תש"ד — a week before the deportation. On 9 June 1944 the Orthodox kehilla received permission to bring him home: he was buried erev Shabbos in the beis hachaim, no more than a minyan permitted at the kevurah, and at the close of his shiva the town was taken — with the Jews of Csanád, Csongrád and Bács-Kiskun counties — taken to the brickyard at Szeged, where nearly 9,000 souls were crowded together. From there they were deported in three transports on 25, 27 and 28 June 1944, among the last of the great deportations; by the chance turns of the Szeged transports some cars went to Auschwitz and others to Strasshof in Austria, so that a larger share than elsewhere survived — it is told that the Ohel Moshe's bracha stood over his town, two of the three transports turning toward life, and that those who returned remained shomrei Torah u'mitzvos. His grandson-in-law R' Moshe Nosson Nota Lemberger went with the kehilla through the Szeged ghetto, Bergen-Belsen, and Theresienstadt, and rebuilt Makava after the war. The full account is told in the churban diary of Makó; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Munkács (today Mukačevo, in Carpatho-Ruthenia) was, before the war, one of the largest and most vibrant Jewish communities in the Carpathians — a town close to half Jewish, and the beating heart of chasidishe life in Subcarpathian Rus'.

The Kehilla. Munkács was home to well over ten thousand Jews — an overwhelmingly Orthodox and chasidishe kehilla of batei midrash, shtiblech, mikvaos and a great yeshiva, around which an entire Jewish world revolved.

Torah of the Town. Munkács was the seat of a dynasty of rebbes descended from R' Tzvi Elimelech of Dinov, the Bnei Yissaschar — who had himself sat as rav of Munkacz for five years and enacted there his takanos Tamchin D'Oraysa, writing of the town as a joyous city in which dwell yerei Hashem — R' Shlomo Shapira, the first Munkácser Rebbe; his son R' Tzvi Hersh Shapira, the Darchei Teshuvah, who built the town's great yeshiva and wrote his sweeping responsa across the Shulchan Aruch; and the Darchei Teshuvah's son R' Chaim Elazar Shapira, the Minchas Elazar (1872 – 1937), av beis din from 1914 and the dominant figure of Carpatho-Rus chassidus — a gaon in nigleh and nistar and the most forceful of its leaders, uncompromising in his opposition to Zionism and to Agudas Yisrael alike. To Munkács came, too, the Zidichover Rebbe R' Menashe Eichenstein, the Alfei Menashe, who took up his father's Zidichover admorus in the city in תרפ"ד (1924) and was niftar and buried there on ט"ז Tammuz תרצ"ד (1934).

The Churban. Subcarpathian Rus' was the first region of Hungary marked for destruction, and Munkács itself was made the command center of the deportations — the gendarme commander László Ferenczy fixed his seat there, and at meetings on 8 and 9 May 1944 the fate of Carpathian Jewry was settled. The Jews of Munkács were crowded into a ghetto, robbed of their belongings, and taken to the town's brick factories; a day before the ghetto was emptied, the Germans forced the bearded Jews to tear down what remained of the famous Yeshiva of Rabbi Shapira. The first deportation train left Munkács on 11 May 1944 — among the very first of all the Hungarian transports — and within weeks the great kehilla was deported to Auschwitz. The years before the ghetto were years of strangulation — the Hungarian laws from 1938 cutting the Jews from parnassah, the labor battalions taking the men, the bearded humiliated in the streets; and in the summer of תש"א (1941) came the first deportation, the "alien" Jews of the town driven toward Kamenets-Podolsk — the Rebbe R' Boruch himself seized among them with his son, escaping at the border. The ghetto fell upon the chag: the district's Jews ordered to the brickyard on אחרון של פסח תש"ד itself, the city's three days after; and nine trains carried 28,587 Jews of Munkács and its district to Auschwitz, the last on ב' סיון — the yahrzeit of the Minchas Elazar. The full account is told in the churban diary of Munkács; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Sighet — Máramarossziget in Hungarian, today Sighetu Marmației — sits in the Máramaros region on the upper Tisza. Part of Hungary until the First World War, Romania between the wars, and Hungary again from 1940 to 1944, it was one of the most intensely Jewish towns of the whole region — a center of the timber and salt trades and of Hebrew printing since the 1870s, and the birthplace of Elie Wiesel.

The Kehilla. Jews settled in Sighet from the eighteenth century, after the partitions of Poland sent Galician families south over the Carpathians; the first shul was built in 1807, when they were about an eighth of the town, and they grew to some thirty-eight percent of it by 1930. By the 1941 census some 10,144 Jews lived in Sighet — close to 40 percent of the town, one of the highest proportions in Hungary. It was an overwhelmingly chasidishe kehilla, home to the chassidim of the Teitelbaums, of Vizhnitz, of Spinka and Kretchnev, alongside Orthodox and Zionist circles.

Torah of the Town. Sighet’s rabbinic chain reached back well before the chasidishe dynasty: its first rav was R' Tzvi Fish (1759), followed by R' Yehuda Kahana Heller (1801) and R' Menachem Mendel Stern, the Derech Emunah (1819). In 1834 R' Elazar Nissan Teitelbaum, a son of the Yismach Moshe, was chosen rav — the family’s first tie to the town — but the opposition of the Kosov chassidim drove him out by 1840, and he went on to Drohobych. The dynasty’s lasting seat at Sighet began only a generation later, when his son R' Yekusiel Yehuda Teitelbaum, the Yeitev Lev (d. 1883) — grandson and closest talmid of the Yismach Moshe — came in 1858 and established the Yetev Lev yeshiva, the first chasidishe yeshiva in Hungary, binding chassidus to rigorous Talmudic and halachic learning.

His son R' Chananya Yom Tov Lipa, the Kedushas Yom Tov (d. 1904) greatly expanded the court — its chassidim numbering in the thousands — and was reckoned in his day the most influential of all Hungarian chasidishe leaders; he was succeeded by his son R' Chaim Tzvi, the Atzei Chaim, the supreme authority of Máramaros Orthodoxy in the early twentieth century — and after him, orphaned at fourteen and raised to the seat by the zekenei hachassidim, his bechor R' Yekusiel Yehuda (II), "R' Zalman Leibele" הי"ד. From this house came also the Satmar Rav and, through its daughters, the Klausenberger Rebbe. Alongside the rebbes the town kept its rabbinate: R' Shlomo Yehuda Tabak, the Erech Shai, sat as rosh av beis din of Sighet, and R' Shmuel Binyamin Danzig — who also sat on the city council and led the town's nusach-Sefard (chasidishe) kehilla — served among its rabbanim, murdered al kiddush Hashem in the churban (הי"ד). The full court is described in the Sighet court card.

The Churban. After the occupation, two ghettos — a large and a small — were set up in Sighet on 18–20 April 1944, into which some 14,000 Jews of the town and the surrounding villages were crowded. Between 16 and 22 May 1944 some 12,749 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in four transports; only several hundred survived, and the last Sigheter Rebbe, R' Yekusiel Yehuda (II) — "R' Zalman Leibele", son of the Atzei Chaim, was murdered al kiddush Hashem with his Rebbetzin, his children, and his chassidim on כ"ה אייר תש"ד. The full account is told in the churban diary of Sighet; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Kerestir — Bodrogkeresztúr in Hungarian — is a small village in the Tokaj wine country of Zemplén county, in northeastern Hungary, on the Bodrog near its meeting with the Tisza. Its name in the Jewish world belongs above all to the court of one tzaddik.

The Kehilla. Kerestir was a small kehilla, but for decades it was a place to which Jews streamed from across the region — for it was the seat of the court of Reb Shayale, whose table was open to every wayfarer and whose name became a byword for hachnasas orchim.

Torah of the Town. R' Yeshaya Steiner — Reb Shayale of Kerestir (1851 – 1925) was orphaned young and sent as a boy to learn by Reb Hershele of Liska, the Ach Pri Tevuah, whom he served some eleven years, and was later drawn to the Divrei Chaim of Sanz and to Nadvorna. At Kerestir he made his court a refuge for the poor and the broken — his kitchen cooked for hundreds daily so that no wayfarer should go hungry, and Jews streamed to him for the blessing and help of the wonder-rebbe. A byword for ahavas Yisrael and hachnasas orchim, long after his petirah his open table remained a light in the region, his picture hangs in homes the world over as a segulah, and his kever on the hill draws tens of thousands each year.

The Churban. After the German occupation the Jews of Kerestir were rounded up with the Jews of the Tokaj and Zemplén towns — Tolcsva, Mád, Olaszliszka, Tokaj and the rest — and brought to the ghetto at Sátoraljaújhely in the slums of the Roma quarter, and from there deported to Auschwitz at the end of May and beginning of June 1944. The full account is told in the churban diary of Kerestir; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Liska — Olaszliszka in Hungarian — is a small town in the Tokaj wine country of Zemplén county, in northeastern Hungary, between Tokaj and Sátoraljaújhely. Its name in the chasidishe world belongs to the dynasty that made its court there.

The Kehilla. Liska was a small Zemplén kehilla, but for nearly a century it was the seat of a chasidishe court to which Jews came from across the region — with its beis medrash, its chevra kadisha and the shtibel of the Liska Rebbes.

Torah of the Town. The Liska dynasty was founded by R' Tzvi Hersh Friedman, Reb Hershele of Liska, the Ach Pri Tevuah (1808 – 1874) — a talmid of the Yismach Moshe and the Divrei Chaim of Sanz who carried chassidus to the masses of Hungary and was called the father of the movement there. Renowned for chesed beyond measure, he raised in Liska a great beis kneses built without a foundation, in mourning for the Beis HaMikdash; his foremost talmid was Reb Shayale of Kerestir, who served him eleven years. He was followed by his son-in-law R' Chaim Friedlander, the Tal Chaim (1836 – 1904), who led the court for thirty years, and then by R' Tzvi Hersh Friedlander, the Shaarei HaYosher, the third Liska Rebbe, a gaon in nigleh and nistar, murdered al kiddush Hashem in Auschwitz on 27 Iyar תש"ד.

The Churban. After the German occupation the Jews of Liska were rounded up with the Jews of the Tokaj and Zemplén towns — Tolcsva, Mád, Tokaj, Kerestir and the rest — and brought to the ghetto at Sátoraljaújhely in the slums of the Roma quarter, and from there deported to Auschwitz at the end of May and beginning of June 1944. The Shaarei HaYosher, the last Liska Rebbe, was murdered al kiddush Hashem with his chassidim. The full account is told in the churban diary of Liska; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Kalov — Nagykálló in Hungarian — is a town in Szabolcs county in eastern Hungary, some fifteen kilometres from Nyíregyháza. To the chasidishe world its name belongs to the Kalover Rebbe, whose court made it the cradle of Hungarian chassidus.

The Kehilla. Nagykálló had a kehilla whose matzeivos attest Jews in the town from the Middle Ages; its Jews were farmers, craftsmen and merchants of the Szabolcs plain. Under the Rebbe the kehilla received its lasting form: the chevra kadisha, a bikur cholim and societies of mutual aid, the talmud torah and his yeshiva, and the shul he founded in 1800. In 1790 the town's hatred broke into a blood libel: a Christian boy disappeared, the Rebbe himself and many of the kehilla were arrested, and four were sentenced to hang — before the execution the boy appeared, alive, at his own home. On the eve of the war, in 1930, the kehilla numbered 977 souls, and the town drew chassidim from across the region to the kever of its Rebbe.

Torah of the Town. Kalov belongs, in the chasidishe world, to Reb Yitzchak Isaac Taub, the Kalover Rebbe (1751 – 1821) — the first chasidishe rebbe to sit permanently in the heart of Hungary. A talmid of the Rebbe Reb Shmelke of Nikolsburg and of R' Elimelech of Lizhensk, and — as chassidim tell it — discovered as a shepherd-boy by Reb Leib Sarah's, he led Kálló and the Szabolcs district of some eighty towns for forty years; the Chasam Sofer called him a lofty and exalted tzaddik. Known as the singing tzaddik, his Hungarian niggun "Szól a kakas már" is sung in chasidishe courts to this day, and his kever in the town was a place of pilgrimage until the Churban. Among his talmidim was Reb Avraham Weiss of Munkács — grandfather of the Imrei Yosef of Spinka, R' Yaakov Gottlieb, ABD of Patak, Tokaj and Chust, and R' Shraga Feivel Horowitz, ABD of Papa.

In the rabbanus of the town his place was filled by R' Yosef Yochanan Bennet, who served barely a year until his petirah on 9 Kislev 5582, and nineteen years after the Rebbe's petirah R' Yeshaya Bennet was appointed rav of the kehilla. In תרנ"ח (1898) the Rebbe's great-grandson R' Moshe Taub, the Es Ratzon, returned and revived the court in Kalov itself, leading it until his petirah in Budapest on 19 Iyar 5696 (1936); his son R' Menachem Shlomo Taub, the Chakal Tapuchin, son-in-law of R' Yissachar Dov of Linsk, dwelt among the Kalov chassidim of Transylvania, survived the war, and carried the name of Kaliv to Boro Park and Williamsburg. zt"l. And the rabbanus of the town itself was carried in its last generations by R' Menachem Brody, the Be'er Menachem — son-in-law of the Saraf of Tosh, who came to Kalov after R' Elazar Löw, the Pekudas Elazar, and was marbitz Torah in his great Kalover yeshiva of 250–300 bochurim; at the ז' אדר hilula all the admorim in town sat at his tish. He was niftar ח' אב תרצ"ט (1939), weeks before the war, and rests in the town's beis hachaim.

The Churban. From the autumn of 1939 the young men of the kehilla were taken to the forced-labour battalions. After the German occupation, in the early hours of a day in April 1944 gendarmes roused the Jews of Nagykálló, gave them a quarter of an hour to pack, seized their valuables and sealed their homes; gathered first in the courtyards of the Jewish school, they were taken in three groups — the children, the sick and the aged by cart, the rest on foot — to the ghetto at Nyíregyháza, and from the collection camps of the Szabolcs plain deported to Auschwitz between the middle of May and the beginning of June 1944. The kehilla was almost wholly destroyed. The full account is told in the churban diary of Kalov; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Tosh — Nyírtass in Hungarian — is a village in Szabolcs county, between Nyíregyháza and Kisvárda, near the old Slovak and Ruthenian borders. Its name belongs to the Tosh chasidishe dynasty founded there.

The Kehilla. A small village kehilla — its Jewish population peaked at some three hundred and twenty-five in 1920 — Nyírtass nonetheless carried a rabbinate, a chevra kadisha, a cheder, an Israelite elementary school and, from the early twentieth century, a renowned yeshiva; its Jews had joined the Kisvárda kehilla in 1885.

Torah of the Town. The Tosh dynasty was founded at Nyírtass by Reb Meshulam Feish Segal-Lowy, the Saraf of Tosh (1816 – 1873) — a descendant of the Tosafos Yom Tov and a talmid of the Maharam Asch of Ungvár who drew close to the courts of Komarno, Sanz, Zidichov and Dinov. His chassidim called him the Saraf for an avodah they held to be beyond human reach, and he was niftar in an epidemic that swept the town in 1873. The town's rav was R' Yitzchak Rachlitz, a talmid of the Chasam Sofer who sat as ABD of Nyír-Tosh before Bergsas. From the Saraf's house came both the Tosh dynasty — refounded after the Churban as Kiryas Tosh near Montreal — and, through his son-in-law the Bnei Shileshim, the Kossover line; the graves of the Tosher rebbes in the village remain a place of pilgrimage.

The Churban. After the German occupation, on the last day of Pesach 1944 the Jews of Nyírtass were driven to Kisvárda — held first in a timber yard outside the town, then in the ghetto where some seven thousand Jews of the district were gathered — and between 30 May and 1 June 1944 deported by way of Kassa to Auschwitz; a Tosher Rebbe of the Segal-Lowy family, Reb Elimelech Segal-Lowy, was murdered al kiddush Hashem there with his chassidim. The full account is told in the churban diary of Tosh; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Spinka — Szaplonca in Hungarian, Săpânța in Romanian — is a village on the Tisza in Máramaros, about nine miles west of Sighet, on what is today the Ukrainian border. Its name in the chasidishe world belongs to the dynasty born there.

The Kehilla. A Máramaros village kehilla — some five hundred and seventy Jews in 1877, over a thousand by 1920 — Szaplonca carried a name far larger than itself, for here the Spinka court was founded.

Torah of the Town. The Spinka dynasty was founded in the late nineteenth century by Reb Yosef Meir Weiss, the Imrei Yosef (1838 – 1909) — born in Munkács, the foremost talmid of R' Yitzchak Aizik Eichenstein of Zidichov and a mekubal whom even the Divrei Chaim of Sanz consulted. Under his son Reb Yitzchak Eizik Weiss, the Chakal Yitzchak (1875 – 1944), the court moved after the First World War to Selish (Nagyszőlős), where the Yeshivas Beis Yosef of Spinka was established; the Chakal Yitzchak built bunkers to shelter Polish refugees and was murdered al kiddush Hashem in Auschwitz, הי"ד. The town's own rav, Reb Tzvi Hirsh Kahana — a grandson-in-law of the Imrei Yosef — was murdered with his kehilla in Sivan 1944, הי"ד.

The Churban. When the deportations came in 1944, the Jews of Szaplonca were gathered with the villages of Máramaros to the Sighet ghetto and deported to Auschwitz between 16 and 22 May 1944; the Chakal Yitzchak, by then in Selish, was murdered al kiddush Hashem with his rebbetzin and most of his family on 13 Sivan תש"ד. The full account is told in the churban diary of Spinka; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Budapest — the Hungarian capital on the Danube, Buda and Pest joined across the river — was the heart of Hungarian Jewry and one of the great Jewish cities of Europe.

The Kehilla. Before the war some two hundred thousand Jews lived in Budapest — the largest kehilla in Hungary and among the largest on the Continent — with its yeshivos, batei medrash, schools and the seat of the Hungarian Chief Rabbinate. The capital was the principal center of the Neolog movement and the most assimilated of Hungary's kehillos; the Jews who held to the mesorah were a minority, and in the schism that split Hungarian Jewry they separated to build their own Orthodox kehilla and institutions — the rabbanim and batei medrash told below.

Torah of the Town. Budapest — Óbuda, Pest and Buda — held some of Hungarian Jewry's foremost rabbanim. R' Moshe Münz, the Maharam Munz sat as ABD of Óbuda from 1789 and chief rabbi of the Pest region; the Seder Mishna, a son of the Machatzis HaShekel, had earlier held Óbuda and Pest among his many seats; and for half a century the beis din of Pest itself stood under R' Shimon Oppenheim — dayan from תקס"א and Raavad until his petirah in תרי"א, the halachic anchor of the young kehilla in the very years the drift gathered. When the autonomous Orthodox community took shape, R' Chaim Sofer, the Machaneh Chaim served as its chief Orthodox rav (1879 – 1886), and in the last generation R' Yaakov Kopel Reich stood as Chief Rabbi of Budapest until his petirah in 1929, with R' Yonasan Shteif among its dayanim (later of Williamsburg). It was in Budapest, in hiding during the Churban, that R' Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal wrote the Eim HaBanim Semeichah, before he was murdered al kiddush Hashem — הי"ד.

The Churban. Budapest's churban took a different shape from the towns of the provinces. After the German occupation of March 1944, the government installed by the regent Admiral Miklós Horthy decreed that all Jews wear the yellow star; while the rural kehillos were deported in the spring of 1944, the Jews of Budapest were ordered in June into more than two thousand "yellow-star houses," and some twenty-five thousand of the suburbs sent to Auschwitz; after the Arrow Cross coup of October 1944 came the brickyard concentration and the death marches toward Austria, the closed ghetto of District VII and the international ghetto under the neutral legations — where Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden and the Swiss vice-consul Carl Lutz sheltered tens of thousands behind protective papers — and the shootings on the banks of the Danube. When Soviet troops liberated Pest in January 1945, more than a hundred thousand Jews remained alive — the one great Hungarian kehilla not wholly destroyed. The full account is told in the churban diary of Budapest; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Nagyvárad — Grosswardein in German, Oradea in Romanian — is a city on the Körös in the Bihar region, in what was the eastern reach of Hungary and is today western Romania.

The Kehilla. Some twenty-five to thirty thousand Jews lived in Nagyvárad — one of the largest and most important Jewish communities in Hungary, with a great Orthodox kehilla alongside its Neolog congregation, and its shuls, batei medrash and schools.

Torah of the Town. Nagyvárad — Grosswardein — was already a fortress of Hungarian Orthodoxy under R' Yitzchak Ahron Landsberg — the Chasam Sofer's talmid, its ABD and rosh yeshiva until his petirah on the first day of Pesach תרל"ט — and then under R' Moshe Tzvi Fuchs, the Yad Ramah, who from תרמ"ב/1882 led its great Orthodox kehilla — the largest in Hungary after Budapest — and built a yeshiva of four to five hundred talmidim, a Jewish hospital and a soup kitchen for the poor; and it became one of the great centres of Hungarian chassidus after the First World War, when Reb Yisrael Hager, the Ahavas Yisrael of Vizhnitz, fled there and made the city the seat of his court until his petirah in 1936; his Beis Yisrael yeshiva drew thousands, and he was followed in Grosswardein by his son Reb Chaim Meir, the Imrei Chaim, who sheltered Polish refugees and, having survived the war, rebuilt Vizhnitz in Bnei Brak. Alongside the Vizhnitz court the city held a Sanzer kloiz and a Satmar shtibel — the Satmar Rebbe's court, an hour by train from Sátmár, even relocating to Grosswardein for Succos of 1943 as the danger closed in. Its Orthodox kehilla, distinct from the city's large Neolog community, kept its own batei medrash and yeshiva at the heart of the Bihar region.

The Churban. After the occupation, from early May 1944 the Jews of Nagyvárad were forced into a ghetto of some twenty-five streets — the main ghetto held about twenty-seven thousand, with a separate ghetto for the Jews brought in from the district — twelve to fifteen to a room, the heads of families taken to the Dréher Brewery to be tortured for hidden valuables. Between 23 May and 27 June 1944 the ghettos were emptied, transport after transport, to Auschwitz. Among the city's dayanim of the last generation, R' Chaim Elazar Teitelbaum of the Ujhel house — formerly dayan of Tasnád — remained with the kehilla and was murdered al kiddush Hashem with his Rebbetzin Rikel on ב' אב תש"ד הי"ד. The full account is told in the churban diary of Nagyvárad; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Kolozsvár — Klausenburg in German, Cluj in Romanian — was the historic capital of Transylvania, on the Szamos river, in what is today central Romania.

The Kehilla. By 1930 some thirteen and a half thousand Jews lived in Kolozsvár; they played a large part in the life of the city, and a chasidishe kehilla had grown there alongside the wider community.

Torah of the Town. Kolozsvár — Klausenburg — held two Orthodox kehillos. The older was led by Reb Moshe Shmuel Glasner, the Dor Revii (1856 – 1924), author of the Dor Revii on Chullin and almost the only Hungarian rav of his standing to support the Mizrachi — a stand that drew fierce opposition and, in 1923, his aliyah to Yerushalayim, his son Reb Akiva Glasner taking the Orthodox rabbanus after him. From that kehilla a chasidishe community broke away, largely chassidim of Sighet, and took as its rav, in 1926, the young Reb Yekusiel Yehuda Halberstam, the Klausenberger Rebbe of the Sanz line and a son-in-law of the Atzei Chaim of Sighet. Deported in 1944 and bereft of his rebbetzin and their eleven children, הי"ד, he himself survived the death march and raised the Sanz-Klausenburg court anew in America and in Kiryat Sanz of Netanya.

The Churban. After the occupation, on 3 May 1944 the Jews of Kolozsvár were driven into a ghetto in the open yards of the Iris brick factory in the north of the city; with the Jews brought in from Borșa, Huedin and the district the ghetto held some eighteen thousand, about five thousand of them children, sheltering under the brick-drying sheds with one meal a day. In six transports between 25 May and 9 June 1944, some sixteen thousand were deported to Auschwitz. The full account is told in the churban diary of Kolozsvár; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Mátészalka is a town in Szatmár county in northeastern Hungary, on the plain east of Nyíregyháza, near the old borders of Máramaros and Carpathian Ruthenia.

The Kehilla. Mátészalka had a substantial kehilla of its own — one of the larger towns of the Szabolcs-Szatmár plain — with its shul, batei medrash and schools serving the Jews of the town and the villages around it. The shul, raised in 1857 as the families of the mid-eighteenth-century settlement grew strong, bears over its gate the pasuk “זה השער לה' צדיקים יבואו בו” — and a plaque within its entrance counts some 1,700 of the town's own Jews among the kedoshim.

Torah of the Town. The first Jewish families settled in the mid-eighteenth century, and by 1900 Mátészalka had grown into a major Torah center of the Szatmár plain, with a yeshiva, mikveh and beis medrash. R’ Yosef Rottenberg established the Kosson chasidishe court in the town and served as its av beis din (niftar 1911); Reb Kalman Lieberman (1838–1904), of the Shenya line, held the Mátészalka rabbanus before Kashau; and after the First World War the Hadász Rebbe, R’ Aharon Yeshaya Fish, founder of the Hadász chassidus, established his beis medrash there — his Kol Nidrei derashos and his Purim long remembered.

The Churban. After the occupation, a ghetto was set up in the Jewish quarter of Mátészalka into which were herded some eighteen thousand Jews — of the town and of the villages of northern Szatmár and the bordering Máramaros — making it the largest single concentration of Máramaros Jewry and, by the testimony of survivors, among the worst-conditioned of all the ghettos of Hungary. From the second half of May into early June 1944 the ghetto was emptied to Auschwitz — through its gates passed R' Zev Wolf Ginzler with the kehilla of Fehérgyarmat and its sixteen villages, and R' Yechezkel Shraga of Páie, tortured in the ghetto and deported on כ"ח אייר. Of the Máramaros Jewry that passed through, perhaps a tenth survived. The shul still stands — it never again functioned; the actor Tony Curtis, whose family came from the town, gave to its restoration, and a marble plaque on its wall keeps the memory of Adolph Zukor, who lived in Mátészalka in his boyhood years. The full account is told in the churban diary of Mátészalka; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Debrecen — the chief city of the Tiszántúl and Hungary's second city, the great Calvinist stronghold of the eastern plain that men called the “Calvinist Rome of Hungary.” A royal free city, it shut its gates to Jews for centuries: only the Diet's Act 39 of 1840, opening the royal cities, permitted Jewish settlement at all — a mere 118 Jews lived there in 1848.

The Kehilla. From those 118 souls the kehilla grew to nearly two thousand by 1869, over six thousand by 1900, and more than ten thousand by 1920 — the second-largest provincial kehilla in all Hungary, after Miskolc — some 9,142 Jews on the eve of the churban. After the rift of 1871 the community stood as an independent Status Quo kehilla (a short-lived Neolog congregation, 1870–1886, closed and merged into it), and in 1886 the shomrei mitzvos seceded and founded a separate Orthodox kehilla, chasidishe groups among its ranks, which built its shul on Pásti Street in 1893 and opened its own school in 1901; the great Status Quo temple rose on Deák Ferenc Street, and the two communities, sharing one chevra kadisha (founded 1856) and one women's aid society, lived peaceably side by side in the Jewish quarter at the western edge of the old town. Already in the war years its men had been swept into the labour battalions sent to the Ukrainian front, from which few returned. Already in the summer of 1941 Jewish families who could not prove Hungarian citizenship were deported from the city to German-held Ukraine, most of them murdered at Kamenets-Podolsk.

Torah of the Town. Debrecen, a Calvinist free city, long kept Jews out, and a kehilla took root only in the nineteenth century with emancipation; an Orthodox community then grew up beside the larger Status Quo one. At its head from 1902 until the churban of 1944 stood the chief rabbi R' Shlomo (Salamon) Strasser, who led the Torah-loyal kehilla of the Calvinist city through two generations. Among its bnei Torah were the Weinbergers — R’ Chananya Yom Tov Lipa Weinberger, born in the city in 1914 and named for the Kedushas Yom Tov of Sighet, who learned first under R’ Shlomo Tzvi Sternberg, av beis din of Debrecen, before the yeshiva of the Levushei Mordechai. The Status Quo kehilla was led from 1937 by Dr. Pál (Meir) Weisz, whom the occupiers forced in 1944 to head the Nazi-ordered Jewish Council. After the war the she'eris hapleita of Debrecen was served by R' Moshe Stern, the Be'er Moshe — dayan of Debrecen and a survivor of Bergen-Belsen — who later carried the city's name to America as the Debreciner Rav.

The Churban. After the occupation the Germans dissolved both kehillos and seized hostages from among their leaders; the Jews of Debrecen — some nine thousand — were locked into a double ghetto in their own quarter, two parts divided by Hatvan Street, and on 21 June 1944 driven with the Jews of the Hajdú towns, more than thirteen thousand in all, to the Serly brickyard on the city's edge. From there the road forked: the first two transports, 6,841 souls, were turned not to Auschwitz but to Strasshof in Austria, dispersed to forced labour, and about half of them lived; the rest were deported to Auschwitz, reaching the ramp on 3 July 1944. Ten families — those of the chief rabbis R' Shlomo Strasser and Dr. Weisz among them — were taken instead to Budapest and placed aboard the Kasztner train to Switzerland. The full account is told in the churban diary of Debrecen; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Szeged — the great city of the southern Hungarian plain, at the meeting of the Tisza and the Maros near the Serbian border. A royal free city, its burghers held the right to bar Jews: those of the Ottoman era were driven out at the reconquest, and only the Toleranzpatent of 1781 opened the gates — the merchant Mihály Pollák settled that year as the first, and by 1840 the Jews numbered 681. After the great Tisza flood of 1879 the city was rebuilt in boulevards and squares, and its kehilla's most prosperous era came with it.

The Kehilla. A community of about four thousand Jews — some three percent of the city in the census of 1941 — almost entirely Neolog after the schism of 1869, with its Jewish school and associations and a great Neolog temple, completed in 1905, among the largest in Hungary. The community had numbered nearly seven thousand in 1910 and some eight thousand in 1927 before emigration and the dark years thinned it. After the congress of 1868 a smaller circle of shomrei mitzvos held apart and continued as the Szeged Orthodox Prayer Society — a minyan of the faithful keeping the mesorah in the most assimilated of cities, whose record books survive to this day in the community archive.

Torah of the Town. Szeged was among the most thoroughly Neolog of Hungary’s kehillos — almost the whole community followed that stream, led for generations by the Löw rabbis: Leopold Löw, a founder of the Neolog movement, and his son Immánuel Löw (1854–1944), its long-serving chief rabbi and a scholar of the natural world of the Talmud. The Torah-loyal life that flourished in the towns of the north and east scarcely took root here; the observant were a small minority in a city that had largely left the mesorah — the Orthodox Prayer Society their last stronghold. The kehilla's first rav, from 1789, was R' Yechiel, of whom little more is recorded than his name; he was followed for half a century by R' Tzvi Hirsch Bak (1790–1843), in whose days the community still stood within the old order, before the rabbanus passed to the reformers.

The Churban. Already in the war years 612 of the city's Jews perished in the labour battalions. After the occupation the Jews of Szeged and the region were confined to a ghetto laid around the Neolog temple — the temple itself turned into a warehouse for their confiscated property — with a first transport sent out on 17 May by way of the Baja ghetto to Auschwitz; then all were driven to the Rókus brickyard, where some nine thousand were gathered from the city and the Csanád and Csongrád towns — among them the Jews of Makó. In three trains on 25, 27 and 28 June 1944 they were carried off; but two of the three, by what some called an error, were turned not to Auschwitz but to Strasshof in Austria, and most aboard them survived, while the first train went to Auschwitz, where most were murdered — in all, some three thousand of Szeged's Jews reached that place. On the last transport a single wagon, sixty-six Jews, was uncoupled in Budapest for the Kasztner train; among them was the ninety-one-year-old Immánuel Löw, who died in a Budapest Jewish hospital weeks later. The full account is told in the churban diary of Szeged; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Nagybánya — Baia Mare in Romanian — a mining town in the hills of northern Transylvania, in Szatmár county near the Máramaros border.

The Kehilla. A kehilla of several thousand, with its shul and batei medrash, in a county whose Jewish life centred on nearby Szatmárnémeti.

Torah of the Town. Nagybánya was a thoroughly Orthodox kehilla — by the census of 1941 some 3,623 Jews, about a sixth of the city — keeping its Talmud Torah, its yeshiva and its batei medrash. Long a Hungarian town, it had passed to Romania after the First World War and returned to Hungarian rule in 1940; throughout, the Torah life of the region looked to the court of Satmar at nearby Szatmárnémeti.

The Churban. After the occupation, the anti-Jewish drive in Szatmár county was set at a conference held in Szatmárnémeti on 26 April 1944; in the early morning of 3 May 1944 the Jews of Nagybánya were rounded up and shut into two ghettos — the larger in the Bernáth iron works — some five thousand nine hundred in all, robbed and tortured for their hidden valuables. Between 31 May and 5 June 1944 they were deported in two transports to Auschwitz. Yet some were spared: an army officer, Imre Reviczky, called up the Jewish men of the ghettos into the labour service, and so drew them out of the path of the trains. The full account is told in the churban diary of Nagybánya; the wider story in The Destruction of Hungarian Jewry. הי"ד.

The Town. Kobrin — Kobryn to its Jews — sat on the Mukhavets river in Polesia, in the marsh-and-forest country between Brisk and Pinsk. Jews are recorded there from the fifteenth century, and under Poland, Lita, the Russian Empire and again interwar Poland — the Polesie voivodeship — the kehilla grew into a classic Litvish shtetl. Between the wars some 5,600 Jews lived there, the greater part of the town; Yiddish was the language of its streets, its shops stood shuttered on Shabbos and Yom Tov, and its communal life ran rich with every shade of Jewish party and mosad. From the late 1920s the kehilla's hanhala was led by a representative of Agudas Yisrael.

The Kehilla and its Rabbonim. Kobrin's rabbinic chain reached back through the generations — R' Shlomo, and R' Nachum, grandfather of the Maggid of Dubno, in the eighteenth century, and R' Meir Marim Shafit, mechaber of the Nir on the Talmud Yerushalmi, until תרל"ג. In תרל"ד R' Eliyahu Schick, the Ein Eliyahu, was called to its rabbanus and was niftar there suddenly half a year later, buried in the town. After him came R' Shaul Katzenellenbogen; then R' Chaim Berlin, son of the Netziv of Volozhin; and R' Meir Atlas, a talmid of R' Yisrael Salanter. In the last generation R' Michael Shemesh served as rav of the kehilla, murdered in the Shoah with his flock.

Torah of the Town. Kobrin was the cradle of Kobrin chassidus, a Lithuanian chassidic court founded by R' Moshe Polier of Kobrin (1783–1858), of the Lechovitch–Slonim line — "by R' Moshe of Kobrin I found my heart," it was said of him — whose shtieblach, and a Kobrin–Bialystok branch after him, carried the avodah of the heart. Beside them R' Pesach Pruskin's yeshiva, founded in תרפ"ג (1923) — he a talmid of the Alter of Slabodka — drew bochurim to the lamdus of Lita; and between chassidus and yeshiva flowed the full life of a Torah town: its shuls and batei midrash, its Talmud Torah and chadarim.

The Churban. When the Germans took Kobrin on 22 June 1941 at the opening of Barbarossa, they began at once to burn Jewish homes, and by September had murdered some two hundred Jews. That November the Jews were sealed into a ghetto; with the Jews of Białowieża and Hajnówka driven in, it held some eight thousand souls. Within weeks the Germans demanded hundreds of "incurables," and when these could not be found the Judenrat was forced to fill the quota with the elderly, the sick and children, who were taken out and murdered. Early in 1942 the ghetto was split — Ghetto A for some five hundred craftsmen and their families, Ghetto B for the rest — and in the spring it was fenced with wire and its electricity cut; on Pesach the Jews were suffered to bake matzos only if they found their own flour.

On Shabbos, 27 July 1942, Ghetto B was liquidated, and some three thousand Jews — with the patients and staff of the Jewish hospital — were taken to Bronna Góra and murdered. A ghetto underground of some fifty young men and women now armed itself from the German arsenals; and when Ghetto A was destroyed on 14 October 1942 and its people were marched toward Dywin to pits prepared in advance, they fought — Gershon Tenenbaum shooting until he fell, Rachel Goldin flinging grenades, Dr. Chaim Goldberg firing and keeping his last bullet for himself. Some five hundred broke for the forests, of whom about a hundred reached them; the last craftsmen left in the town were murdered by year's end. The kehilla of Kobrin — its rebbe R' Moshe Aharon Rabinowitz among the kedoshim — was destroyed al kiddush Hashem — הי״ד.