Rav Chaim Ozer calmly said, “Go to America, Reb Avrohom, and ratevet, save as many people as you can”

Rav Avrohom Kalmanowitz zt”l, Rosh Yeshivah of Mir Brooklyn, was renowned for his hatzalah work on behalf of World Jewry. His youngest daughter, Rebbetzin Maita Nelkenbaum, recounts to her granddaughter what it was like growing up in her parents’ home

I was born in 1948, three years after the Holocaust ended, so I wasn’t around when my father was busy fundraising and lobbying for the rescue of European Yidden, including the Mirrer Yeshivah. Many years later, my sister, Reichke (Rebbetzin Reichel Berenbaum), would ask me, “Do you remember when the FBI came to the house, during the war?”

And I’d answer, “I wasn’t born yet.”

Confidant of the Gedolim

BBefore moving to America in 1939, my father was the rav of Titkin, Poland, the city where my mother was born. He was part of the hanhalah of the Mirrer Yeshiva, the youngest member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah in Europe, and a close confidant of Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzenski ztz”l and the Chofetz Chaim ztz”l.

After his wife passed away, leaving him with young children, he married my mother, Mina Hadas Lenchevsky a”h, who raised his children as her own, with great love and mesirus nefesh, enabling my father to continue his work for the Mirrer Yeshiva and as rav of Tiktin. When my parents got married, my father wanted to take my mother on vacation. She replied, “I’m married now and I can’t go, I have to take care of the children.”

That was my mother. She didn’t live life for herself.

Even as a young child, my mother shouldered responsibility. My mother’s parents, Rav Naftali and Rivka Faigel Lenchevsky a”h, were Gerrer Chassidim. Her father was the melamed at the city’s cheder. Although she was very young, she’d go collecting tuition on behalf of her father. Some families were so poor they would give her potatoes or onions instead of money for tuition.

When she was 15 years old, her father sent her to the Bais Yaakov Seminary in Krakow to learn under Sarah Schenirer. She was privileged to sleep in the same room as Frau Schenirer. My mother absorbed Frau Schenirer’s hanhagos, her behavior, which inspired her for the rest of her life. She always spoke of Frau Schenirer with such eimas hakavod, with the highest derech eretz. Frau Schenirer was like her rosh yeshivah. She never referred to her by her first name; she always called her by her title.

My mother graduated at the age of 17 and was sent to Zelichov to establish a Bais Yaakov. At first, she started with only seven students, but within three months the enrollment increased to 75. Interestingly, at this school, she didn’t only teach the students; she also taught their mothers.

When she’d receive her salary, she sent 80 percent of it to her father, to help him repay the debts he had from marrying off her older sister. She explained, “Ich darf a gezunte Tatte, nisht di gelt — I need a healthy father, not the money.”

Because of her great success as a teacher in Zelichov, Frau Schenirer made her an official inspector for the Bais Yaakov network of schools all over Poland.

Escape from Europe

In 1939, when the opportunity to escape Europe arose, my father went to ask for advice from Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzenski. My father had come to the USA in the 1920s with other rabbanim to fundraise for the Mir, so he already had a visa to America and was able to add his wife and children easily. My father cried to Rav Chaim Ozer, “What should I do? In Vilna, the bombs are falling! But to go to America with four little children is a sakanah, a great danger!”

Rav Chaim Ozer calmly said, “Go to America, Reb Avrohom, and ratevet, save as many people as you can.”

My parents arrived in America in September 1939. They had come to a new country with a new language, but my father wasn’t fazed by that. He had work to do. I think he felt he was put on this world to help people. My parents got off the boat on a Monday, and by Thursday my father was already in Washington, D.C., meeting with government officials to try to save the lives of Yidden in Europe. My mother did her part, staying home alone with the children in Brooklyn.

I wonder now, as an adult, how my parents were able to go on. My father lost his sister and her two children in Mir. The whole city of Tiktin — my mother’s hometown and the city my father led as a rav — were taken into the forest and murdered, including my mother’s parents.

My father wrote in his tzava’ah that my mother was moser nefesh for him and the children. At her shloshim, my uncle, Rav Yosef Lenchevsky ztz”l, called her an eishes chayil. He explained that the word chayil isn’t an adjective describing a wife, instead refers to her husband, meaning that she’s the wife of a soldier. There were many times that my mother was asked: “Where is the rav?” She would answer that she didn’t know where he was. She understood that he was a soldier, out on the battlefield, trying to save the remnants of European Jewry, and later the Jews of North Africa, through the Otzar HaTorah organization he was a driving force behind. He was also responsible for keeping the Mir afloat financially.

My mother’s main goal was to help my father undertake his work. She took courses in English so that she would be able to help my father with letter writing and office responsibilities. Back in the 50s, Flatbush, where we lived, had a tiny frum community. Since there was no Bais Yaakov there, sending me to school would necessitate my mother spending lots of time with pickup and drop-off. She worried that she’d be too busy doing that and wouldn’t be able to be there to help my father, so she kept me in kindergarten for an extra year, until I was old enough to travel to school by myself.

My mother always made sure a meal was ready for when my father came home from yeshivah. She would set his place with cutlery and even a napkin. She ensured he looked respectful, that he had clean clothes and shined shoes.

My mother always knew what to say to people. If they were smart, she would ask, “Do you have a good vort?” If they weren’t so smart, she spoke about recipes or any other mundane topic.

She was very talented and she’d say, “It’s always good to know how to do things.” She knew how to sew and knit. She would sew tichels to sleep in and make aprons from old skirts. She would crochet yarmulkes for the grandchildren with their names on them. She knew how to do sheitels and put in rollers. Someone called her a modern rebbetzin because she was always up-to-date.

She also wasn’t a batlan. She couldn’t sit and do nothing.

A Little Girl in Flatbush

My mother waited many years to have a child of her own. When I was born in 1948, it was a great simchah for everybody. My father said that my mother was zocheh to have a child because she was a tzadeikes.

My family had been living in Williamsburg when I was born, but moved to Flatbush after the yeshivah moved there. I shared a room with my sister Deverke (Rebbetzin Devorah Svei) until I was six years old. When she got married, I asked her chassan, Reb Elya Svei ztz”l, “For how long are you going to take my sister away from me?” I was little. I didn’t want this man to take my big sister away. But I was also happy to be the flower girl at their chasunah.

For elementary school, I went to Bais Yaakov of Brighton. The Brighton area was slowly becoming a frum neighborhood then, with many Russian immigrants moving in. I traveled to school every day by trolley.

For high school, I went to Bais Yaakov of Boro Park.

At Bais Yaakov of Brighton, we had choshuve teachers, including Rebbetzin Miriam Feldman z”l, the wife of Rav Hirsh Feldman ztz”l, the Mirrer mashgiach, and Rebbetzin Chana Davis, the wife of the founder of the yeshivah in Mountaindale.

The girls were a big mixture of levels of observance. I don’t even know if the girls were all shomrei Shabbos. I didn’t know the background of all the girls; we were just girls in school together, all doing the same thing.

I didn’t hang out with most of my classmates, because I lived in Flatbush and they were all from Brighton. There weren’t so many girls my age in the neighborhood to be friends with. Chani Ginsberg, the daughter of the maggid shiur in Mirrer Yeshiva, and Tirtza Feldman, the mashgiach’s daughter, were basically the only friends I had when I was growing up. To keep myself busy, I used to sometimes play monopoly with my right hand against my left hand….

Some years we had Bnos, but there weren’t that many social activities going on. Because I didn’t go out so much, I used to read a lot. There were no Jewish books available then, so I’d to go to the public library.

My sister, Rebbetzin Reichel Berenbaum, lived downstairs from us, so I used to sometimes play with her children, either jump rope or other games. When we got into an argument, I went upstairs and locked the door so they couldn’t come in. On Friday night, we’d put on plays for my father. He’d enjoy them and sometimes even laugh. I also used to babysit for my sisters’ children.

You couldn’t get chalav Yisrael at all in Flatbush then, never mind ice cream, because there were so few frum people living there. Only when I went on to high school in Boro Park was I able to buy chalav Yisrael ice cream. I remember standing in the bus stop eating the ice cream.

The way my father lived was that if something needed to be done, you did it right away; you didn’t wait for someone else to do it. He impressed that upon me very strongly. One time, he needed a letter typed for a Jewish refugee who had come from Syria. Since it was Sunday, the yeshivah office was closed. He asked me to type the letter that they needed. I was eight years old then and didn’t really know how to type. In those days, typing was very tedious, because on a typewriter, any mistake you made had to be scratched out and typed over; you couldn’t just press backspace.

I said to my father, “Tomorrow, the secretary can type it, and it will take her two minutes, while for me, typing will take hours.”

He responded, “It’s not that you can’t, it’s that you don’t want to.”

I promptly sat down and typed the letter.

My father put aside special time for me. When I was in high school, every Friday night, my father said I could choose one subject to review with him. I didn’t chap what gadlus I was learning with. I’d take out one of my loose-leafs and would tell him everything. One time, after I repeated a Ramban, my father asked me, “So what is the simple pshat in the pasuk?” and I replied, “I don’t know, my teacher didn’t tell me, she only taught me the Ramban,” and it sounded very funny….

Straight to Gan Eden

The Mirrer Yeshiva was a big part of our life. When I had free time, I used to help in the office, stuffing envelopes. Bochurim also used to come to our house to be tested for semichah.

My father’s desk was always full of papers, serving as a sort of office for his myriad activities. One time, I organized his desk. When he saw his tidy desk, he smiled and said, “Before you organized my desk, I knew where everything was. Now, how will I find anything?”

My father often traveled to Morocco and would bring back serious bochurim to learn in yeshivos in Brooklyn. These bochurim were like my cousins. They were young, they’d left their families behind, and so I shared my parents with them. My mother really took care of them, even taking them to medical appointments when they needed.  Some of them even married into our family. Rav Boruch Harrar’s son married my brother Rav Shraga Moishe’s granddaughter, and Rav Shlomo Vanunu’s grandson married my sister Deverke’s granddaughter.

My father’s whole life revolved around helping Klal Yisrael. He once saw someone reading a newspaper. My father asked him, “So what’s the news?” The man replied that there were three Yidden being tried in the Far East and were going to be put to death. That night, there was a big snowstorm. Nevertheless, the next day, my father put on his boots and traveled to Washington to see what could be done to save those people.

He would say to me many times, “Get it done. You just have to do it, don’t worry about perfection.”

There was something special about my father’s appearance. He was tall and thin with a flowing white beard. People said my father looked like a malach, or like a prince. When we moved to Flatbush, the non-frum Jews there would say he looked like Moshe Rabbeinu.

My father worked until the end; he made no allowance for his old age. In 1964, he was in Florida on a fundraising trip. While he was there, he had a heart attack and needed an operation. They called our family to come. Not all of us went. My father said that I should come because I’m the baby, and my brother Reb Shraga Moishe should come because he’s the oldest. Rav Elya Svei, my sister Devorah’s husband, came, too. While I was there, I used to help him put on his tefillin, and he’d say, “Tighter, tighter.” I said “Tatte, ich hub moirah, I’m scared to pull it tighter,” but he wanted his tefillin to be put on right.

The doctors were happy with the results of the operation, but my father had an uneasy feeling. The Shabbos after the operation, my father read Shaarei Teshuvah. He read out loud, “A person may not stop focusing on performing the mission for which Hashem sent him into this world.” And then he started to cry.

He, who was responsible for the continuation of Torah after the Holocaust by saving the Mirrer Yeshiva and sustaining it for many years; he, who saved large groups of Sephardic bochurim from spiritual destruction, was worried that maybe, he could have done more.

Just before the end of that Shabbos, he was niftar.

At his levayah in Eretz Yisrael, Rav Yecheskel Levenstein ztz”l spoke powerfully. He said, “Rav Avrohom, Rav Avrohom, hut nit kein moirah, ir geit gleich in Gan Eden arayn. Don’t be afraid! You’re going straight to Gan Eden!”

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 942)