Exciting Letter from the Gaon Rabbi Shmuel David HaLevi Ungar, Av Beit Din of Nitra [1944]

Exciting Letter from the Gaon Rabbi Shmuel David HaLevi Ungar, Av Beit Din of Nitra [1944]
Letter from the gaon Rabbi Shmuel David HaLevi Ungar, rosh yeshivah and Av Beit Din of Nitra, one of the leaders of Slovakian Jewry, to his in-law Rabbi Simchah Natan Greenberg, rabbi of Kezmark (Slovakia). Nitra, 1944.

The letter before us was written at the height of the terrible Holocaust, which systematically annihilated the Jewish people country after country. Around the roiling storm, and in the letter before us, the world appears to be rotating normally. Rabbi Ungar invites his in-law together with his wife, the rebbetzin, and all the members of their household, to join them in celebration of his daughter's wedding!?

This is not from a person uprooted from reality, for the rabbi of Nitra, together with his son-in-law Rabbi Weissmandel, were up to their necks rescuing the remnants of the Jewish people remaining in Europe. His home and his yeshivah constituted a refuge for masses of displaced persons from Poland. Rabbi Ungar's sermon from Yom Kippur the previous year about the terrible situation (Husbands don't know where their wives are, and mothers don't know what happened to their toddlers) made waves all over the world. Yet the rabbi knew how to rise above human emotions and occupy himself with continuing the generations and the existence of the Jewish people. A short time after writing the letter, Rabbi Ungar's yeshivah, the last yeshivah in Europe, was deported along with the remainder of Nitra Jewry to Auschwitz. The rabbi fled to the mountains where he died of cold and hunger.

The gaon Rabbi Shmuel David HaLevi Ungar [1886-1945] was the rosh yeshivah and rabbi of Nitra, Slovakia. He was the president of the Orthodox communities, a gaon and a tzaddik, and taught Torah to thousands. The yeshivah in Nitra was the last yeshivah to function during the Holocaust in Occupied Europe. After the yeshivah was dismantled, he escaped to the forests and to the mountains, where he died of starvation and weakness while still hiding from the Nazis in the Calisch forest in early 1945. He was the father-in-law of the Admo"r of Sanz-Klausenberg, author of Shefa Chaim, z"l, and of the gaon Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, a Holocaust rescue activist and founder of the Nitra yeshivah in the United States. His son Rabbi Shalom Moshe Ungar married Rabbi Simchah Natan Ginzburg's daughter.

Rabbi Simchah Natan Ginzburg [1884-1945] was rabbi of Kezmark and a disciple of the author of Shevet Sofer. He was rabbi of Toldiesh beginning in 1914. Before his father's passing, he returned to Kezmark and assisted him. He succeeded his father there in 1920. For more about him, refer to HeChatam Sofer V'Talmidav 620.

[1] leaf official paper, handwritten and signed by Rabbi Ungar. 15x23 cm; moderate-fine condition. Fold marks. Tears in the margins and in the folds without damage to text. Taped reinforcements.