Everything for the Rebbe

That year, Rosh HaShanah fell on Thursday and Erev Shabbos. In Belz, the custom is to eat a certain fish on Rosh HaShanah, called “korselach,” since the name sounds like “koreis,” and by eating them, they were, as it were, “eating away” and becoming exempt from all sins punishable by koreis. Local Belzer chassidim tried to obtain these fish for the Rebbe, in accordance with Belzer tradition, but in wartime, this was not a simple matter. They searched, but couldn’t didn’t find these fish. In great disappointment, they reported their failure to the Rebbe. About an hour later, the Rebbe told them, “Go back there now. You’ll find fish.” The chassidim didn’t ask any questions, but returned to the place. Suddenly, a fisherman approached them and told them that he’d caught some such fish that he wanted to sell them. To their amazement, he indeed had korselach — nine of them, three for each day (counting Shabbos). Thus the Rebbe was able to fulfill this age-old tradition of the Rebbes of the Belz dynasty.

The Reiners were neighbors of the Rebbe, living on top of the Talmud Torah. During those “Yamim Nora’im,” in both senses of the word — awesome and awful days — many Jews gathered in the Reiner family’s yard, which was also the Rebbe’s yard, to daven together with him and be strengthened by his holy presence. There was a lot to daven about that year. The brothers will never forget Yom Kippur with the Rebbe, how he paced back and forth, his face flaming, how the prayers shook the heavens.

They remember that on Succos, those surrounding the Rebbe began searching for arba minim for him. How would they find arba minim in the midst of a war? In the end, somehow, arba minim got to the Rebbe; the esrog was the size of an olive.

After Succos, the students of the Talmud Torah, had to return to school, so a different apartment had to be found for the Rebbe. The head of the community, a member of the Council of Jewish Communities in Budapest, Baron Phillip Freudiger, went from family to family asking if they could give over their home for the Belzer Rebbe, but no one agreed to do so. Finally, he got to the home of the Reiner family, where he met with a different response.

“We were a family of ten — Tatte, Mamma, and eight children,” the Reiner/Ra’anan brothers recall. “Our father said, ‘I have to ask my wife.’ Indeed, he went to our mother and, a little fearfully, raised the possibility that maybe they should turn over their apartment for the Belzer Rebbe. Mamma didn’t hesitate for a moment. ‘For the Belzer Rebbe, I’ll do anything,’ she said.

“Tatte gathered us all together and joyfully informed us that the Aibeshter had sent us an important mitzvah, to host one of the great tzaddikim of the generation, the Belzer Rebbe. Not every day is one granted such a merit, Tatte continued, adding that he didn’t understand what merit he could have for which Heaven was granting him such a thing. ‘True, we must leave our house and all our comforts,’ Tatte said. ‘But I’m sure that the Aibeshter will remember this for us for good.’ ”

How did you children feel about this?

“As the two oldest, we saw what mesirus nefesh is for the sake of gedolei Yisrael. We learned the meaning of valuing Torah greatness. That has accompanied us all our lives — because there’s nothing like personal example.”

The Reiner family left their home in Pest, moving to the upper part of the city, to Buda, to what was considered a vacation home. “It was cool and pleasant there in the summer, but terrible in the winter. The cold was unbearable. Our oldest sister was fifteen and our youngest sister was two. We were traveling the whole time, up and back. It was a nightmare, and risky as well, since the main fighting was on the road between Buda and Pest, and the crossing between the two sections of the city was dangerous. But the Belzer Rebbe’s people tried hard to recompense us and used to drive us in a car. And we believed that the great merit of putting our home at the Rebbe’s disposal would stand by us.”

“Once, I asked my grandfather why he agreed to give his home to the Belzer Rebbe,” says Avraham’s son Rabbi Shlomo Ra’anan, director of the Ayelet HaShachar kiruv movement. “Grandfather told me that he heard that the Belzer Rebbe learned Torah even when he was ill, even when he was burning with fever, to the point of collapse … ‘For such a Yid,’ Grandfather said, ‘I’m ready to do anything.’ ”

The family’s former home became a center of Chassidic activity and Torah learning. Reb Yosef Reiner would visit the Rebbe there. Budapest residents had to extinguish all lights, because lights in the windows helped Axis pilots who were bombing the streets of Europe. The Hungarian government strictly enforced this law. This task of was assigned to Reb Yosef. Every evening, he went to his home that was now the Rebbe’s home, and saw to it that the house was dark.

“Every day, when he came back, he would tell us a ‘vort’ that he’d heard from the Rebbe,” the brothers relate. “One day, the Rebbe told him, ‘Listen, Reb Yosef, we have a tradition that a kvittel written to a Rebbe has its effect.’ Suddenly, our father remember that he had an all-but-forgotten kvittel in his pocket, that someone in a labor camp had asked him to give to the Rebbe.”

A Cellar Apartment in Eretz Yisrael

It seemed that the Belzer Rebbe had attained a little peace. The government wasn’t bothering him, and he was even conducting tischen for hundreds or thousands of chassidim who flocked once more to his home. Though the Hungarian government put a guard at the door of every building, and all who entered had to present proof of Hungarian citizenship, the guard in the doorway of the Rebbe’s building was bribed to ignore the chassidim who were constantly coming and going without proof of citizenship.

So the Rebbe was relatively free, the Germans hadn’t yet reached Hungary, and he could wait out the situation until things improved. However, the Germans soon discovered that the “criminal” that they’d been looking for had fled. They took out an arrest warrant against him in all the countries of the region, including Hungary.

A Budapest police officer arrived at the Rebbe’s house to present him with the arrest warrant from Germany. Clearly, this was a real danger and the Rebbe had to escape as quickly as possible. The police officer was bribed with huge sums to agree to wait another twenty-four hours. The Rebbe quickly prepared to leave, but he didn’t forget his benefactors, those who had made their home his own.

“The night before he left, the Belzer Rebbe asked Tatte to bring the whole family to the house. ‘Put the children in a row, from oldest to youngest,’ the Rebbe directed. We got to the house — our old, familiar house, but everything looked different. The shining personage and holy influence of Rebbe Aharon of Belz filled the rooms. The Rebbe closed the door from inside and paced back and forth for about ten minutes, with his eyes closed and his face flaming. We all gazed at him in wonder.

“Then he asked Tatte to come near, and said to him, ‘I promise you that the whole family in its entirety will reach Eretz Yisrael.’ In those terrible times, this was no simple promise. The Rebbe wrapped his hand in a handkerchief, and passed from child to child, shaking the boys’ hands — it was his custom not to shake hands with pre-bar mitzvah children, except with something between his hand and the children’s.

“The Rebbe then said to Tatte, ‘My chassidim have caused some damage to the furniture. Let’s make a tour of the house, and make an estimate of how much I have to pay.’ But Tatte refused to take a cent. ‘So what will you ask for?’ the Rebbe asked.  ‘I’ll be satisfied if, in Eretz Yisrael, I’ll have a basement apartment with two rooms. That’s all,’ Tatte answered. And he received a blessing that his request be fulfilled.”

Thus the Rebbe escaped from Hungary, with a borrowed identity, of course.

The bribed police officer came to “arrest” the Rebbe, twenty-four hours after he’d already crossed the border. To create the impression that he was fulfilling his orders, as sent from Germany, the officer arrested hundreds of frum men on suspicion of being the Belzer Rebbe or of knowing his whereabouts. All of them were freed at once. No one knew that the only one who really knew where the Rebbe was at that moment was the officer himself. In January 1944, possessing highly-rationed Jewish Agency certificates to enter Palestine, the Belzer Rebbe and his brother boarded the  Orient Express to Istanbul. Less than two months later, the Nazis invaded Hungary and began deporting its 450,000 Jews.

In return for his help in getting the Rebbe out of Budapest, the police officer asked not money, but for a blessing from the Jewish holy man: that he remain alive, even if Germany would eventually fall, which by those last years of the war was a real possibility.

Who Was That Clerk?

Days later, the Rebbe’s blessing began to materialize, in a very surprising way. Reb Yosef Reiner was walking down the street and saw some people gathered, holding suitcases. “What’s happening here?” he asked, and the people explained, “There’s a chance that a train may soon be leaving from Hungary to Eretz Yisrael. This is where you sign up for that train. The suitcases contain money to pay for passage on the train.”

“Tatte looked hopelessly at the people who were signing up. All the most prosperous names in Budapest Jewry were there,” David Reiner recalls. “For Tatte, who was a melamed, there was no money, and not even a suitcase. He didn’t dream of getting onto that train. But the Rebbe had decreed, and the Aibeshter fulfilled. Suddenly, a woman came out of the office and asked Tatte if he wanted to sign up. ‘I want to,’ Tatte said. ‘But I don’t have money.’ ‘Never mind,’ the woman said, and ushered Tatte into the office.

“ ‘I have eight children,’ Tatte said hesitantly, expecting to be thrown down the flight of stairs. People were fighting tooth and nail over every place on the train and were ready to pay a fortune, and he wanted to get on, with all his family, for free? The clerks, as though they’d received an order from on high, listed all the children’s names, without a word.

“To this day, we don’t know if that woman wasn’t Eliyahu HaNavi himself, in disguise.”

Years later, when Reb Yosef Reiner went in to see the Rebbe in Jerusalem, the Rebbe asked how he’d arrived in Eretz Yisrael. Reb Yosef told the whole story in detail and took the opportunity to ask who the woman was. “The Rebbe smiled,” Reb David relates. “He told Tatte, ‘Know that I’ve never in my life failed to repay anyone who did me a favor.’”

One day, they got the order to set out on the train organized by Rudolf Kastner in his “blood for goods” negotiations with Adolf Eichmann. “Mamma prepared cookies and other food for us to take along. We knew we were setting off on a long journey that would, in the end, bring us to Eretz Yisrael.

“We boarded the train. These were cattle cars, with no seats or facilities, but we were all very happy, knowing we were headed for Eretz Yisrael. The cream of the Jewish community was on that train, the wealthy and those of greatest lineage, including the Satmar Rebbe. We didn’t know that then, though. Nobody realized his exalted status; he too was pushed and shoved in the crowd that, like everyone, wanted to leave the cursed Hungarian soil.

“The train was supposed to travel through Spain. But suddenly, it stopped, changed direction, and went to Bergen-Belsen. They informed us that the promised money had not yet arrived, and that we had to stay there until it arrived. It was an awful feeling. We thought we were about to be taken to the death camps. The passengers, all aristocrats and wealthy people, tried to pull strings, summoned Dr. Kastner, but nothing helped. The train arrived at the camp and that’s were we got off.

“The Germans at once separated men and women and ordered the women’s heads shaved, which intensified our impression that we were indeed going to our deaths. In the end, they took us for disinfection, not to gas, as was the fate of the Jews in the neighboring camp.”

The train passengers were put in huge barracks filled with bunks and paper-thin mattresses. Conditions were harsh, but as hostages, they were treated better than those Jews destined for death.

That first night, Reb Yosef noticed that one of the people in their barracks had a special appearance; he seemed to literally radiate holiness. The man’s bunk was next to the Reiner family, and Reb Yosef sensed that this was a person of extraordinary elevation. A short inquiry proved him right. It was the Satmar Rebbe, Rav Yoel Teitelbaum.

Washing the Rebbe’s Hands

As soon as he discovered the Satmar Rebbe’s identify, Reb Yosef called over his two oldest sons. “The One Above first sent us the Belzer Rebbe, and now He has sent us an angel to guard us on our way — the Satmar Rebbe is in the bunk beside ours!”

From then on, the Reiner children clung to the Rebbe and tried to serve him in any way they could. “The most important service,” the brothers describe, “was to bring him water to wash his hands in the morning. This wasn’t simple. All sanitary conveniences were in one long, cold barrack, at the far end of which was water. Every morning, we brought him the water from there. He would wash his hands and daven. I’ll never forget the Rebbe’s davening. We didn’t talk with him, because it didn’t seem to us that we could talk with angels. We were just happy for the merit of serving him.”

Did others know that the Satmar Rebbe was in the camp? “We imagine that there were a number of people who knew, but most didn’t know, or at least, they didn’t talk about it so that the Nazis wouldn’t demand a higher price.”

In the barracks, the Jews established a cheder. Teachers and melamdim weren’t lacking. But the biggest lesson for the Reiner children was their vigilant study of the  holy conduct of the Rebbe. “He would sit in his bunker and learn Torah from memory. His visage radiated majesty. Even the Germans didn’t dare go near him, and let him conduct himself however he wished. He was particular to change his shirt each day, in accordance with the sayings, ‘Let your garments be always clean’ and ‘A scholar with a stain on his garment is deserving of death.’ Such a thing was very rare in the camp.

“Gradually, people came to know that there was a holy person among them, the Satmar Rebbe. When he would start davening, the whole bunker fell quiet. Every Shabbos, we heard words of Torah and consolation from him. People understood that an angel of Hashem was walking within the camp.”

Every morning, in sub-freezing cold, the appel took place outside the barracks, and the nearly 1,700 Kastner train passengers were not excluded. Huge, menacing dogs stood there as the Germans counted everyone and distributed the terrible food, a kind of half-raw turnip. “To this day, I can’t stand the sight of a turnip,” Reb Avraham Reiner says. The children were given animal fodder.

The passengers arrived in the camp in July 1944; in August, following negotiations between Kastner and the Germans, a preliminary list was prepared of 300 Jews who were to be freed. People fought over who would have a place on this list. The Satmar Rebbe wasn’t included on the list, and neither were the Reiners.

A Blessing Fulfilled

On Rosh HaShanah, Reb Yosef Reiner led the davening, since he knew all of it by heart. “Just to see the Rebbe sit and daven, with great kavanah, was something unforgettable. He didn’t conduct a tisch; there was no food and no conditions for that. But we still zealously guarded our function of bringing the Rebbe water to wash his hands in the morning. We knew that we were amassing merits for ourselves. The Rebbe was grateful.

“One clear, freezing morning in December,” says Reb David. “we were ordered to take our possessions and were marched to the train to Eretz Yisrael. We were marched for an entire day, under impossible conditions. Nobody said a word. Each of us marched, with our packet of possessions in our hand. The Rebbe too. He marched with us, like everyone else.

“They had promised that those who were ill would be transported in vehicles, but of course that promise wasn’t kept. My feet froze. I felt no sensation in them. When we got to the station, there wasn’t any train. We waited for it all night, in terrible cold. There was screaming and crying; people were sure the train would never come.”

But the train did come, a train with real seats. Everyone boarded and sat down. After a few days, it arrived in Lucerne, Switzerland. Dozens of Jews awaited them on the station platform.

“I met an eighty-year-old Yid from Jerusalem,” Reb David relates. “When he heard that I’d been on the Kastner train, he told me that he’d been learning in a yeshivah in Lucerne at that time. When they found out that a train was coming from Germany, they worked day and night to prepare good, nourishing foods for the Jews who had escaped from that Gehennom. They waited many hours for us, arranging the food on the platform, despite the disapproval of the immaculate Swiss government. But after all their work, the Jews arrived, hungry, thirsty, and exhausted — and refused to touch the food until its standard of kashrus had been clarified. They were upset that they weren’t considered reliable, but they were also amazed at the yiras Shamayim of Hungarian Jews.”

The Satmar Rebbe was first to alight from the train. His chassidim in Switzerland ushered him into a large car and drove off with him.

The passengers crossed the Italian border, eventually arriving in Eretz Yisrael. The Reiners settled in Haifa, on 27 Harmon Street. When the Reiner family arrived at their new home, they gasped in amazement: they’d been assigned a two-room basement apartment, with permission from the government to expand it to accommodate the family. “Our first reaction was, ‘Tatte, you couldn’t have asked the Belzer Rebbe for something a little better?’ Our father lived in this apartment for the rest of his life.”

MORAL DILEMMA OF THE KASTNER TRAIN

In March, 1944, at the start of the German conquest of Hungary, the heads of the Hungarian Jewish Aid and Rescue Committee were contacted by Adolf Eichmann,  who had come to Hungary to organize the annihilation of its Jews, and by Kurt Becher, chief of the SS Economic Department in Hungary. They proposed transferring Hungarian Jews outside of the area of the German conquest, in return for 10,000 trucks and huge quantities of soap, coffee, and tea (the so-called “blood for goods” proposal). One of the members of the Committee, Joel Brand, flew to Istanbul to convey the proposal, then to Lord Moyne, British Minister Resident in the Middle East, based in Cairo. But Brand was arrested, and nothing came of the proposal.

After the failure of Brand’s mission, the Aid and Rescue Committee people kept in contact with Eichmann; their main negotiator was Rudolf Kastner. The Nazis finally allowed the exit of a single train, carrying 1,684 Jews selected by Kastner and by Otto Comoly, president of the Aid and Rescue Committee. On the train were Kastner’s family members, his friends, wealthy people (who had paid about $1,000 per person) and members of various youth movements. Kastner thought that this first train would be followed by others, but his hope was not realized. Instead of reaching a neutral country, the train arrived at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Negotiations surrounding the “blood for goods” proposal continued between Kurt Becher and members of the Joint Distribution Committee and of the Jewish Agency, after which, in August of 1944, 318 of the train’s passengers were freed and sent to Switzerland. In December, the other 1,366 passengers were sent to Switzerland as well.

The transport played a major role in the famous Kastner trial in Israel in 1954, which was the basis for the book Perfidy – banned in Israel for many years. The Government of Israel sued Malchiel Gruenwald, a hotelier, a political pamphleteer and stamp collector, for libel after he published a pamphlet charging Kastner, who was then an Israeli government spokesman, with collaboration. Gruenwald charged that Kastner had agreed to the rescue in return for agreeing to keep silent on the fate of the other 450,000 Hungarian Jews who were being transported to Auschwitz. This accusation was accepted by the court, leading Judge Binyamim Halevi to declare that Kastner had “sold his soul to the devil.” The Israeli Supreme Court later overturned this verdict, but by then, Kastner had been assassinated.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 319)