Western Light on the Eastern Front 

While all 12 children of Rabbi Shlomo and Rebbetzin Esther Carlebach of Lubeck, Germany, excelled in rabbanus, business, and other endeavors, two of the brothers — venerated German rabbiners, turned out to be unlikely saviors of Eastern European Jewry during the turbulent years of World War I

The lights had gone out all over Europe, millions were locked in combat, and World War I was in the process of erasing a generation of young men. It was August 1915, and while the battle on the western front had been reduced to a grinding stalemate, in the east the Kaiser’s spike-helmeted soldiers overwhelmed the Czar’s forces. From Warsaw to Vilna, the feudal Russian overlords were replaced by orderly German administration.

But as Eastern Europeans greeted the conquerors as liberators, farsighted leaders such as the Gerrer Rebbe and the Telsher Rav, feared what the “Deitcher” would do to Poland and Lithuania’s pulsating Jewish life. Because Imperial Germany hadn’t just come to expand its territory. The High Command’s plan to create puppet states on Germany’s borders called for the civilizing of millions of Jews, turning the “wild” Polish Jews into “cultured men,” and replacing the cheder system with German-style schools.

It would be two brothers, both German rabbiners from a venerated family, who would turn out to be unlikely saviors of Eastern European Jewry.