The youngest of the ten children of Rav Yisrael Perlow, the Yenuka of Stolin, Rav Yochanan was now the sole survivor
ON May 24, 1946, the SS Andre Lebon was greeted at the port of Haifa by a large crowd that included official representatives of the Yishuv, there to receive the heroine of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Zivia Lubetkin. There were also throngs of chassidim anticipating the arrival of another famous passenger — the Stoliner Rebbe, Rav Yochanan Perlow.
It was a poignant welcome. The youngest of the ten children of Rav Yisrael Perlow, the Yenuka of Stolin, Rav Yochanan was now the sole survivor. Almost all his siblings and their families were killed in the Holocaust, including the two primary Rebbes of the Karlin-Stolin community, Rav Avraham Elimelech and Rav Moshe. The last surviving brother had been Rav Yaakov Chaim, the Stolin Rebbe who had immigrated to the United States in 1923 and established a small court in Williamsburg. Just two weeks earlier, the very day that Rav Yochanan had boarded the SS Andre Lebon at Marseille, Rav Yaakov Chaim had passed away in Detroit while visiting his chassidim there.
To compound the tragic scenario, his brother in the US had been childless. Rav Yochanan’s wife Margalit and elder daughter Sarah had succumbed to food poisoning in their wartime exile in the Soviet interior. Rav Yochanan arrived with his daughter Faigaleh and no one else. Bereft of his family, community, and worldly possessions, he was all that remained of the storied Karlin-Stolin dynasty.
Four sons had succeeded the Yenuka of Stolin upon his passing in 1921: Rav Avraham Elimelech in Karlin, Rav Moshe in Stolin, Rav Yaakov Chaim in Brooklyn, and Rav Yochanan in Lutzk.
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