Shmuel Dovid Ungar
Encyclopedia
Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar (23 November 1886 – 21 February 1945), also known as Rabbi Samuel David Ungar, was the rabbi of the Slovakia
n town of Nitra
and dean of the last surviving yeshiva
in occupied Europe during World War II. He was the father-in-law of Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl
, who relied on his guidance to contrive many schemes to rescue Slovakian Jewry from the Nazis
.
. Ungar's father died when he was 11 years old, and he became a frequent guest at the home of Rabbi Kalman Weber, who was appointed Rav of Pöstyén in his father's place.
After his bar mitzvah, Shmuel Dovid left home to study at the yeshiva
in Preshov headed by his uncle, Rabbi Noach Baruch Fisher. Later, he studied at the yeshiva in Unsdorf led by Rabbi Shmuel Rosenberg. He married his first cousin, Miriam Leah Fisher, daughter of Rabbi Noach Baruch.
. It was also during this time that Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl joined his yeshiva and formed a lifelong attachment to him.
In 1931, Ungar was approached by the town of Nitra, which had recently lost its chief rabbi, Rabbi Avraham Aharon Katz, with a request that he head that community. To sweeten the offer, the community promised to help him expand its yeshiva under his leadership. Weissmandl tried to dissuade Ungar from accepting the offer, arguing that it would be a mistake to leave an established community like Trnava for Nitra, which was only about 200 years old and had 3,000 Jews. Ungar, however, said he would go. "My heart tells me that the day will come when there will be no yeshiva anywhere in Slovakia but Nitra, and I want to be there when that happens", he said presciently.
In Nitra, Ungar built up a yeshiva with nearly 300 students that eventually attracted students from Czechoslovakia, Romania
, Austria
and Germany
. He taught in the classic Hungarian style introduced by the Chasam Sofer
, and although he did not set out to produce rabbis, some of his students did go on to become prominent rabbis in their hometowns. He developed a close and loving relationship with each student and kept the connection after they left, conducting an alumni reunion every five years. Weissmandl married his Rav's daughter, Bracha Rachel, in 1937 and became Ungar's right-hand man in all aspects of running the yeshiva.
Besides his position as the chief rabbi of Nitra, Ungar was appointed vice president of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, the supreme religious body of World Agudath Israel
, in 1935.
of 1938 carved Czechoslovakia into separate states. Slovakia became a totalitarian state run by the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso
, who allied with Nazi Germany and supported discrimination against his country's Jews. In 1942, deportation
s from Slovakia to Auschwitz
via Lublin
began. The first Jews were forced to leave Nitra on the Shabbat
after Passover
.
Ungar could have left Slovakia to save his life, but he refused to desert his community and his yeshiva. Defying a Nazi order to remain at home on that first day of deportations, Ungar walked to the synagogue
to spend the third meal of Shabbat
with his flock.
After 58,000 Jews had been expelled from Slovakia, Weissmandl, in conjunction with the Working Group that he and other activists had established to try to save Slovakian Jewry, attempted one of the most ambitious rescue schemes of the Holocaust. With a $50,000 bribe to Dieter Wisliceny
(Adolf Eichmann
's deputy in the Jewish Section of the Reich Security Main Office and adviser on Jewish affairs to the Slovak government), the Working Group managed to halt the deportations until 1944.
Weissmandl also intervened with the Slovakian government to allow the Nitra Yeshiva to continue functioning as the only legal yeshiva in the country during the next two years. To assist students who were still being accosted and sent to forced labor camps, the yeshiva constructed hiding places under the bimah
and above bookcases in its study hall in the event of Nazi raids. Often the warning came at such short notice that Talmud
s would be left lying open on the tables as everyone fled and hid. Despite these disruptions, Ungar continued to teach and give weekly examinations as usual.
who had never supported the Nazi Slovakian regime, and the German army entered and occupied the country. Deportations to Auschwitz resumed in greater intensity than before. The Nitra Yeshiva was liquidated on September 5, 1944. By September 17, every remaining Jew in Nitra had been deported.
Ungar and one of his sons, Sholom Moshe, together with Rabbi Meir Eisler, had been vacationing in the forests of the Zobor Mountain near Nitra. When they heard that the yeshiva had been liquidated, they did not return to Nitra. They made their way to Bistritz
, which was under partisan control, but when the Germans attacked that city the following month, they fled and spent the winter hiding in mountain caves and subsisting on starvation rations. Ungar kept a diary in which he recorded his travails and prepared his spiritual will.
Throughout that winter of hiding in the forest, Ungar scrupulously observed every detail of halakha
even though he was starving to death. He refused to eat bread or milk obtained from gentiles, or to even bread if there was no water for ritual hand-washing. On one occasion he received some grapes, but would not eat them immediately; he insisted on saving them to make Kiddush
on Shabbat
. While terror and fear were others' constant companions, he was concerned with how to fulfill the mitzvah
of hearing the shofar
blasts on Rosh Hashanah
.
Ungar died of starvation on 9 February 1945 (8 Adar
5705). He instructed his son where and how to bury him, said his last viduy
(confession), and died. After the war, his son re-interred him in Piešťany, his birthplace, next to the grave of his father.
, the Klausenberger Rebbe, in America in 1947.) Another son, Benzion, the Rav of Piešťany, was taken to a prison camp in Sereď
, where he was murdered by Slovakian military police. Ungar's rebbetzin, Miriam Leah, was also murdered, together with many other family members. Ungar's son-in-law, Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, survived the war.
Ungar's Torah
writings were saved by a gentile woman who gave them to Ungar's son, Sholom Moshe, after the war. These were published under the title Ne'os Desheh ("Lush meadows", a line from Psalm 23
; the second word in Hebrew
, דשא, contains his initials, שמואל דוד אונגר).
After the war, Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar was named Rav of Nitra by the survivors of that city and reopened the Nitra Yeshiva. In 1946 he and his brother-in-law, Rabbi Weissmandl, moved the Nitra Yeshiva to Somerville, New Jersey
. In 1948 the yeshiva was moved again to its present site in Mount Kisco, New York
.
Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar's son, Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar (named after his grandfather) is the current Nitra Rav and Rosh Yeshiva. Today the Nitra community has branches in Boro Park
, Williamsburg
, Monsey
and Jerusalem, Israel
.
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
n town of Nitra
Nitra
Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...
and dean of the last surviving yeshiva
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...
in occupied Europe during World War II. He was the father-in-law of Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl
Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl
Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl was a rabbi and shtadlan...
, who relied on his guidance to contrive many schemes to rescue Slovakian Jewry from the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
.
Early life
Ungar was the only son born to his father, Rabbi Yosef Moshe Ungar, the rabbi of the town of Pöstyén (today: Piešťany). He was a descendant of the AbrabanelAbravanel
The Abravanel family is one of the oldest and most distinguished Jewish families of the Iberian peninsula; they trace their origin from the biblical King David...
. Ungar's father died when he was 11 years old, and he became a frequent guest at the home of Rabbi Kalman Weber, who was appointed Rav of Pöstyén in his father's place.
After his bar mitzvah, Shmuel Dovid left home to study at the yeshiva
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...
in Preshov headed by his uncle, Rabbi Noach Baruch Fisher. Later, he studied at the yeshiva in Unsdorf led by Rabbi Shmuel Rosenberg. He married his first cousin, Miriam Leah Fisher, daughter of Rabbi Noach Baruch.
Rabbi and rosh yeshiva
At the age of 21, Ungar became the Rav of Korompa (today: Krompachy), and founded a yeshiva in that town. Five years later, he was asked to become Rav and Rosh Yeshiva of Nagyszombat (today: Trnava), an old and well-established Jewish community, which he served for 15 years. It was during this tenure that he became known as one of the leading rabbis of Europe for his erudition and strict adherence to halakhaHalakha
Halakha — also transliterated Halocho , or Halacha — is the collective body of Jewish law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions.Judaism classically draws no distinction in its laws between religious and ostensibly non-religious life; Jewish...
. It was also during this time that Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl joined his yeshiva and formed a lifelong attachment to him.
In 1931, Ungar was approached by the town of Nitra, which had recently lost its chief rabbi, Rabbi Avraham Aharon Katz, with a request that he head that community. To sweeten the offer, the community promised to help him expand its yeshiva under his leadership. Weissmandl tried to dissuade Ungar from accepting the offer, arguing that it would be a mistake to leave an established community like Trnava for Nitra, which was only about 200 years old and had 3,000 Jews. Ungar, however, said he would go. "My heart tells me that the day will come when there will be no yeshiva anywhere in Slovakia but Nitra, and I want to be there when that happens", he said presciently.
In Nitra, Ungar built up a yeshiva with nearly 300 students that eventually attracted students from Czechoslovakia, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. He taught in the classic Hungarian style introduced by the Chasam Sofer
Moses Sofer
Moses Schreiber, known to his own community and Jewish posterity as Moshe Sofer, also known by his main work Chasam Sofer, , , was one of the leading Orthodox rabbis of European Jewry in the first half of the nineteenth century...
, and although he did not set out to produce rabbis, some of his students did go on to become prominent rabbis in their hometowns. He developed a close and loving relationship with each student and kept the connection after they left, conducting an alumni reunion every five years. Weissmandl married his Rav's daughter, Bracha Rachel, in 1937 and became Ungar's right-hand man in all aspects of running the yeshiva.
Besides his position as the chief rabbi of Nitra, Ungar was appointed vice president of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, the supreme religious body of World Agudath Israel
World Agudath Israel
World Agudath Israel , usually known as the Aguda, was established in the early twentieth century as the political arm of Ashkenazi Torah Judaism, in succession to Agudas Shlumei Emunei Yisroel...
, in 1935.
World War II
Jewish persecution began even before World War II in Slovakia, where the Munich AgreementMunich Agreement
The Munich Pact was an agreement permitting the Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without...
of 1938 carved Czechoslovakia into separate states. Slovakia became a totalitarian state run by the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso
Jozef Tiso
Jozef Tiso was a Slovak Roman Catholic priest, politician of the Slovak People's Party, and Nazi collaborator. Between 1939 and 1945, Tiso was the head of the Slovak State, a satellite state of Nazi Germany...
, who allied with Nazi Germany and supported discrimination against his country's Jews. In 1942, deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
s from Slovakia to Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
via Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
began. The first Jews were forced to leave Nitra on the Shabbat
Shabbat
Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...
after Passover
Passover
Passover is a Jewish holiday and festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt...
.
Ungar could have left Slovakia to save his life, but he refused to desert his community and his yeshiva. Defying a Nazi order to remain at home on that first day of deportations, Ungar walked to the synagogue
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
to spend the third meal of Shabbat
Seudah Shlishit
Seudah Shlishit is the "third meal" customarily eaten by Sabbath-observing Jews on Shabbat .-Practices:According to Halakha, the meal is to be eaten in the afternoon...
with his flock.
After 58,000 Jews had been expelled from Slovakia, Weissmandl, in conjunction with the Working Group that he and other activists had established to try to save Slovakian Jewry, attempted one of the most ambitious rescue schemes of the Holocaust. With a $50,000 bribe to Dieter Wisliceny
Dieter Wisliceny
Dieter Wisliceny was a member of the Nazi SS, and a key executioner in the final phase of the Holocaust.Wisliceny studied theology without obtaining a degree...
(Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
's deputy in the Jewish Section of the Reich Security Main Office and adviser on Jewish affairs to the Slovak government), the Working Group managed to halt the deportations until 1944.
Weissmandl also intervened with the Slovakian government to allow the Nitra Yeshiva to continue functioning as the only legal yeshiva in the country during the next two years. To assist students who were still being accosted and sent to forced labor camps, the yeshiva constructed hiding places under the bimah
Bimah
A bimah A bimah A bimah (among Ashkenazim, derived from Hebrew בּמה , almemar (from Arabic al-minbar) or tebah (among Sephardim) is the elevated area or platform in a Jewish synagogue which is intended to serve the place where the person reading aloud from the Torah stands during the Torah reading...
and above bookcases in its study hall in the event of Nazi raids. Often the warning came at such short notice that Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
s would be left lying open on the tables as everyone fled and hid. Despite these disruptions, Ungar continued to teach and give weekly examinations as usual.
In hiding
In August 1944, the Nazis crushed a revolt by Slovak partisansSlovak partisans
Slovak partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Slovak resistance movement, including against Nazi Germany and collaborationism during World War II.-Beginning:...
who had never supported the Nazi Slovakian regime, and the German army entered and occupied the country. Deportations to Auschwitz resumed in greater intensity than before. The Nitra Yeshiva was liquidated on September 5, 1944. By September 17, every remaining Jew in Nitra had been deported.
Ungar and one of his sons, Sholom Moshe, together with Rabbi Meir Eisler, had been vacationing in the forests of the Zobor Mountain near Nitra. When they heard that the yeshiva had been liquidated, they did not return to Nitra. They made their way to Bistritz
Bystřice pod Lopeníkem
Bystřice pod Lopeníkem is a village and municipality in Uherské Hradiště District in the Zlín Region of the Czech Republic.The municipality covers an area of , and has a population of 814 ....
, which was under partisan control, but when the Germans attacked that city the following month, they fled and spent the winter hiding in mountain caves and subsisting on starvation rations. Ungar kept a diary in which he recorded his travails and prepared his spiritual will.
Throughout that winter of hiding in the forest, Ungar scrupulously observed every detail of halakha
Halakha
Halakha — also transliterated Halocho , or Halacha — is the collective body of Jewish law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions.Judaism classically draws no distinction in its laws between religious and ostensibly non-religious life; Jewish...
even though he was starving to death. He refused to eat bread or milk obtained from gentiles, or to even bread if there was no water for ritual hand-washing. On one occasion he received some grapes, but would not eat them immediately; he insisted on saving them to make Kiddush
Kiddush
Kiddush , literally, "sanctification," is a blessing recited over wine or grape juice to sanctify the Shabbat and Jewish holidays.-Significance:...
on Shabbat
Shabbat
Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...
. While terror and fear were others' constant companions, he was concerned with how to fulfill the mitzvah
Mitzvah
The primary meaning of the Hebrew word refers to precepts and commandments as commanded by God...
of hearing the shofar
Shofar
A shofar is a horn, traditionally that of a ram, used for Jewish religious purposes. Shofar-blowing is incorporated in synagogue services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.Shofar come in a variety of sizes.- Bible and rabbinic literature :...
blasts on Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah
Rosh Hashanah , , is the Jewish New Year. It is the first of the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im which occur in the autumn...
.
Ungar died of starvation on 9 February 1945 (8 Adar
Adar
Adar is the sixth month of the civil year and the twelfth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. It is a winter month of 29 days...
5705). He instructed his son where and how to bury him, said his last viduy
Confession in Judaism
In Judaism, confession is a step in the process of atonement during which a Jew admits to committing a sin before God. In sins between a Jew and God, the confession must be done without others present...
(confession), and died. After the war, his son re-interred him in Piešťany, his birthplace, next to the grave of his father.
Legacy
Two of Ungar's sons, Sholom Moshe (1916–2003) and Yaakov Yitzchak, and a daughter, Chaya Nechama, survived the war. (Chaya Nechama later married Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah HalberstamYekusiel Yehudah Halberstam
Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam was an Orthodox rabbi and the founding rebbe of the Sanz-Klausenburg Hasidic dynasty....
, the Klausenberger Rebbe, in America in 1947.) Another son, Benzion, the Rav of Piešťany, was taken to a prison camp in Sereď
Sered
Sereď is a town in southern Slovak Republic near Trnava, on the right bank of the Váh River on the Danubian Lowland. It has аpproximately 17,000 inhabitants.It has a hotel, cinema, culture house, many restaurants and confectioner's shops.-Geography:...
, where he was murdered by Slovakian military police. Ungar's rebbetzin, Miriam Leah, was also murdered, together with many other family members. Ungar's son-in-law, Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, survived the war.
Ungar's Torah
Torah study
Torah study is the study by Jewish people of the Torah, Hebrew Bible, Talmud, responsa, rabbinic literature and similar works, all of which are Judaism's religious texts...
writings were saved by a gentile woman who gave them to Ungar's son, Sholom Moshe, after the war. These were published under the title Ne'os Desheh ("Lush meadows", a line from Psalm 23
Psalm 23
In the 23rd Psalm in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the writer describes God as his Shepherd. The text, beloved by Jews and Christians alike, is often alluded to in popular media and has been set to music....
; the second word in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, דשא, contains his initials, שמואל דוד אונגר).
After the war, Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar was named Rav of Nitra by the survivors of that city and reopened the Nitra Yeshiva. In 1946 he and his brother-in-law, Rabbi Weissmandl, moved the Nitra Yeshiva to Somerville, New Jersey
Somerville, New Jersey
Somerville is a borough in Somerset County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 12,098. It is the county seat of Somerset County....
. In 1948 the yeshiva was moved again to its present site in Mount Kisco, New York
Mount Kisco, New York
Mount Kisco is a community that is both a village and a town in Westchester County, New York, United States. The Town of Mount Kisco is coterminous with the village. The population was 10,877 at the 2010 census.- History :...
.
Rabbi Sholom Moshe Ungar's son, Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar (named after his grandfather) is the current Nitra Rav and Rosh Yeshiva. Today the Nitra community has branches in Boro Park
Borough Park, Brooklyn
Borough Park , is a neighborhood in the southwestern part of the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City in the United States....
, Williamsburg
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, bordering Greenpoint to the north, Bedford-Stuyvesant to the south, Bushwick to the east and the East River to the west. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 1. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 90th ...
, Monsey
Monsey, New York
Monsey is a hamlet , in the Town of Ramapo, Rockland County, New York, United States located north of the state of New Jersey; east of Suffern; south of Airmont and west of Nanuet...
and Jerusalem, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.