Biography chaim michael dov weissmandle

Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl

חים מיכאל דוב ב"ר יוסף

Date of Death: Fri. November 29, 1957 - Kislev 6 5718

Anyone with biographical information is asked to please send it in.
See CONTACT page for details. Thank you.

Directions to Kever: Beth Israel Cemetery, also, know as Woodbridge Memorial Gardens located along US Highway 1 in Woodbridge, New Jersey. Gate hours are officially 8:30 – 4:30 but will remain open until sunset (6:30 during the summer). In addition, Beth Israel maintains computerized records and will provide a detailed location map upon request. Location: along Montefiore Avenue in the Viener Chelka

Biographical Notes:

Photo Caption: Rav Shmuel Dovid Unger, Natra Rav, d. 8 Adar, 1945, Credit: IFJCAH

Bio Information: 
Rav Weissmandl who was better known as Reb Michael Ber was born in Debrecen, Hungary in 1903. In 1931 he entered the Nitra Yeshiva where he was considered a prize student of Rav Shmuel Dovid Unger, whose daughter he later married.
The Rav became known for his efforts to save the Jews of Slovakia from extermination at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Largely by bribing diplomats, the Rav was able to smuggle letters or telegrams to people he hoped would he

WEISSMANDEL, MICHAEL DOV (1903–1956), rabbi and Jewish resistance leader. An Orthodox rabbi, son-in-law and close associate of Rabbi Unger of Nitra, Weissmandel began his public and social activities during the Nazi period when Jews were deported from Slovakia, engaging non-Jewish emissaries to send food, clothing, and money to the deportees temporarily "settled" in the territories of the General Government in Poland. Weissmandel belonged to the core of the underground "Working Group" and was the initiator of the *Europa Plan to rescue the remnants of European Jewry, seeking to bribe Nazi officials to forestall the deportation of Jews. When an initial $20,000 ransom to Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann's deputy in Slovakia, which he reported to his superiors, halted a limited deportation, the Working Group and Weissmandel in particular thought they had hit upon a formula that might save Jews. When the vast sums promised were not forthcoming from the West, most particularly from the *American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which was prohibited by law from transmitting funds behind enemy lines during wartime, Weissmandel turned bitter and interpreted the slow responses that he was receiving from Switzerland as indifference born of assimilation. In a remarkable and extraordinary situation, he worked closely with a woman Zionist leader, Gisi *Fleischman, in a rare display of cooperation. Fleischmann and Unger were cousins and this certainly helped mediate the vast political divide. His letters, addressed to the Jewish leadership of the free world "in the style of the Marranos," castigated indifference and begged for action to save the Jewish remnants from extermination. He was frantic and he communicated this both in his letters and his postwar memoirs. He sought $200,000 as a down payment on a $2 million ransom. In April 1944, he warned Hungarian Jewry of the impending deportations. He was part of the group that

Hungarian rabbi (1903–1957)

Michael Dov Weissmandl (Yiddish: מיכאל בער ווייסמאנדל) (25 October 1903 – 29 November 1957) was an Orthodox rabbi of the Oberlander Jews of present-day western Slovakia. Along with Gisi Fleischmann he was the leader of the Bratislava Working Group which attempted to save European Jews from deportation to Nazideath camps during the Holocaust and was the first person to urge Allied powers to bomb the railways leading to concentration camp gas chambers. Managing to escape from a sealed cattle car headed for Auschwitz in 1944, he later emigrated to America where he established a yeshiva and self-sustaining agricultural community in New York known as the Yeshiva Farm Settlement. Accusing the Zionist Jewish Agency of having frustrated his rescue efforts during the Holocaust, he became a staunch opponent of Zionism after the war.

Early life

Michael Ber was born in Debrecen, Hungary on 25 October 1903 (4 Cheshvan 5664 on the Hebrew calendar) to Yosef Weissmandl, a shochet. A few years later his family moved to Tyrnau (now Trnava, Slovakia). In 1931 he moved to Nitra to study under Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar, whose daughter, Bracha Rachel, he married in 1937. He was thus an oberlander (from the central highlands of Europe), a non-Hasidic Jew.

Weissmandl was a scholar and an expert at deciphering ancient manuscripts. In order to carry out his research of these manuscripts, he traveled to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. It is related that he was treated with great respect by the Chief Librarian of the Bodleian after an episode when he correctly identified the author of a manuscript that had been misattributed by the library's scholars.

World War II and the Holocaust

While at Oxford University, Weissmandl volunteered on 1 September 1939 to return to Slovakia as an agent of World Agudath Israel. When the Na

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form - including photocopying and retrieval systems - without written permission from the copyright holder.

The following  is the full text of the first chapter of "The Unheeded Cry" by Dr. Abraham Fuchs and is reproduced here with permission.

Chapter 1:  A Biographical Sketch

(Click here to purchase this book)

RABBI CHAIM MICHAEL DOV WEISSMANDL, known as Reb Michoel Ber, was born in Debrecen, Hungary on Marcheshvan 4, 5664 (1903). When he was still a child his family moved to Tyrnau (in Slovakian, Trnava); there his father, Reb Joseph, served as a shochet.

Although Tyrnau was a Christian town which contained many churches and a seminary for the priesthood (it was even popularly known as "Little Rome"), it nevertheless had a Jewish history. In the fourteenth century, it had been the home of Rabbi Isaac Tirna, who wrote Minhagim, an important book of customs (published in Venice, 1591). Before World War II there were approximately four hounded Jewish families in Tyrnau of whom more than half were Orthodox.

At first Rabbi Weissmandl studied in a local cheder but then when he was older, he commuted daily to the nearby town of Sered where he studied under Rabbi David Wesseley, who headed a small yeshivah there.

Reb Joseph Weissmandl had three sons and two daughters. Rabbi Weissmandl was the oldest and in the late years he always spoke of his father with deep affection and great respect. Once he revealed that his father was exceedingly meticulous in reciting the special midnight prayers (Tikkun Chatzot) and when he saw that his sons were asleep, he would weep and pray only that he merit devout and scholarly sons.

Rabbi Weissmandl suffered a great psychological shock when his father died in 1941. At that time he was living in Nitra. On a Friday, just before the onset o