Make Me a Corner

KIRYAT UNGVAR, Jerusalem

Dedicated in memory of the Rav (and town) of Ungvar Hy’’d

WHO WAS THE UNGVARER RAV?

Actually, there were two. There was the Ungvarer Rav from the city of Ungvar, Czechoslovakia, Rav Yosef Elimelech Kahane Hy”d, who was murdered in Auschwitz. And there was his talmid and successor, Rav Menashe Klein ztz”l, who was the Ungvarer Rav in Brooklyn and later in Eretz Yisrael, where he was niftar in 2011. Rav Menashe Klein, preeminent posek, rosh yeshivah, mechaber of dozens of seforim, and considered as one of the gedolei hador, built the neighborhood of Kiryat Ungvar in Ramot, naming it after his rebbe and rosh yeshivah, Rav Kahane.

Rav Menashe Klein, born in 1925 in Orlova, a town near Ungvar, Czechoslovakia, was a young illui who studied in the yeshivah of Ungvar, where he became the talmid muvhak of its rav and rosh yeshivah, Rav Kahane.

Between Pesach and Shavuos of 1944, all the Yidden in and around Ungvar — which had been taken over by Hungary at the beginning of the war and was overrun by Germany in 1944 — were herded into a ghetto. Being young and strong, Menashe’s parents urged him to flee to safety, but he would not abandon his family, especially since his sister’s husband had been conscripted into the army, and she was fending for her children alone. After a time in the wretched and cramped conditions of the ghetto, Menashe heard a faint voice calling his name. He turned around to see a frail old man. Suddenly he recognized the gaunt face as his saintly rosh yeshivah, Rav Kahane, his beard ripped out. He was horrified to see the elderly 83-year-old enduring such torture.