Swiss Account

The Torah community of Switzerland is a small, tight-knit, and famously stalwart enclave. It’s really a microcosm of the frum world, with members who represent a panoply of Jewish streams and backgrounds — chassidish, yekkish, yeshivish, balabatish, and Modern Orthodox. It has often been noted that here, “even the chassidim have a certain yekkishkeit,” a certain correctness, which mirrors the unique character of their host country.

It’s now over eight decades since Rav Aharon Leib Steinman spent the turbulent years of 1937 to 1945 sheltered in the small, neutral haven Switzerland provided. While the Rosh Yeshivah eventually made his way to Eretz Yisrael after the war, his close friend and chavrusa, Rav Moshe Soloveitchik — here they pronounce the “ei” like “sky” — remained in Switzerland and became known as the “Swiss Gadol,” whom so many in the small kehillah were deeply attached to, until his passing in 1995. Rav Moshe’s name still evokes tremendous reverence and affection, but those who are old enough to remember still look back to the time when the two great yeshivah bochurim learned in their midst. It’s as if the wartime chavrusashaft between Rav Aharon Leib and Rav Moshe left behind a special gift in this tranquil, Alpine land. When they arrived, it was a land unsown, with Torah scholars few and far between. But once they had kindled the flame, that spiritual fire warmed the hearts and minds of a new generation.

Of course, most of the people who had contact with Rav Aharon Leib during those years have passed on, but Mishpacha tracked down some veteran Swiss residents and their children who remember those days when Switzerland served as a haven for those fortunate to be sheltered within its borders.

A world away from Rav Aharon Leib Steinman’s hometown of Brisk, in a medium-sized Swiss resort town on the shores of Lake Geneva, stood a small, relatively new yeshivah. Yeshivas Eitz Chaim of Montreux was founded by Rav Eliyahu Botchko in 1927. (Rav Botchko was a brother-in-law of heroic Holocaust rescue worker Mrs. Recha Sternbuch, as his wife, Rebbetzin Sarah Rivkah Botchko, was a sister of Yitzchak Sternbuch.) In 1937, that yeshivah proved to be the salvation of two prime talmidim from Brisk, who needed to escape Eastern Europe in a hurry.