The Holocaust and its overwhelming destruction of European Jewry has almost entirely overshadowed the horrors and devastation inflicted upon Eastern European Jewry in WWI and its aftermath. The persecution of Torah Jewry in the Soviet Union in this period was brutal as well and Eastern European Jews lived day to day, just barely surviving, and in large part only due to the philanthropy of American Jews.
A string of letters I had acquired recently, sent by Rav Baruch Ber Leibowitz (1862-1939) to a famed American Philanthropist and supporter of Yeshivas throughout the world, Abraham Meyers, details the conditions that a European yeshiva in the 1932-1933 period had to endure. These letters were written on the letterhead of Rabbi Baruch Ber as rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Knesses Beis Yitzchak-Kaminetz, founded originally in Slobodka, a suburb of Kovno, Lithuania. Following the devastation of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe during and after WWI, the yeshiva was forced to relocate and found itself in Minsk, then Kremenchug, followed by Vilna. In 1926, the yeshiva was finally able to find a permanent home, this time in Kamenitz, Poland. The period between the two wars was the height of the success of this famed yeshiva, with 300-400 students in attendance, arriving from throughout Europe as well as America and Eretz Yisrael.
From the letters of R. Baruch Ber in 1932: “A horrific year we had endured in the yeshiva, a year of great deprivation, and starvation in a literal sense. The great crisis had taken from the mouths of our dear students that are entrenched in the Torah even dry old bread. Starving and without enough sustenance, they still arrived in the yeshiva day after day to study Torah. Many are refugees from Russia and there were days where they had no bread at all, now as the year is at its end, hunger has become a regular occurrence.”
From another letter, dated 1930: “In particular the situation affects the students who escaped from the religious persecution in Russia, who have no communication with their parents. In this winter, we had accumulated a debt of over $10,000, and the yeshiva is in danger of total collapse.”
From a 1933 letter: “Students from many countries, including Poland, Russia, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, America and the Holy Land are studying in the yeshiva and are toiling in Torah, They are destined to be leaders and rabbis of the Jewish nation – how the heart aches to see our dear yeshiva students starving from lack of food. In this summer months, there wasn’t one week that went by without delays in bread delivery. We had already taken loans to the extent possible but have the reached the possible limit. Thank G-d we see success in our learning in the merit of the great geonim that founded the yeshiva, but now the yeshiva is in constant danger of closure and we don’t see a way to continue to operate – what will become of our students and what will become of the Torah?”
