“A regular day in Eretz Yisrael contains the same holiness as Yom Tov Sheini shel Galuyos in the diaspora”
It was the darkest of times for world Jewry. World War II had begun and the daily dispatches from Europe were only getting worse. In the yishuv, there was a general feeling of helplessness, compounded by the recent losses of Rav Shimon Shkop; Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz; Rav Yitzchak Zelig Morgenstern, who was the Sokolover Rebbe, a grandson of the Kotzker, and a leader of Agudas Yisrael; and (allegedly) Rav Aryeh Tzvi Frommer, who was the Kozhiglover Rav, rosh yeshivah of Chachmei Lublin, and author of the responsa sefer Eretz Tzvi.
Across Palestine, events were organized to commemorate these Torah giants, including in Yerushalayim at the Churvah shul and at Yeshivas Meah Shearim. Luminaries such as Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, Rav Yitzchak Isaac Herzog, and Rav Zvi Pesach Frank were among the maspidim.
There was just one little problem. Although the Kozhiglover Rav was eventually martyred at the hands of the Nazis, at the end of 1939 he was still alive and well. Upon the closure of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin and the Nazi occupation, he fled to Warsaw. With the sealing off of the Warsaw Ghetto in November 1940, Rav Frommer organized an underground yeshivah for chassidic students in the ghetto.
He was initially saved from the deportations to Treblinka in the summer of 1942 by being employed in the famed Schulz Schop, which produced textiles for the Wehrmacht. The original owner was a Sokolov chassid named Avraham Handel, who used his position to stave off the inevitable for as many rabbinical leaders as possible; the shoe factory of the complex was nicknamed “the rebbes’ workshop.” Among them were the rebbes of Alexander, Sochatchov, Radomsk, Sokolov, and Piaseczna; Rav Moshe Betzalel Alter of Ger; Rav Menachem Zemba; the Kozhiglover, and many others.
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