Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl
| Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl | |
|---|---|
| Position | Rosh Yeshiva |
| Yeshiva | Nitra Yeshiva, Mount Kisco, New York |
| Began | 1946 |
| Ended | 29 November 1957 |
| Personal details | |
| Birth name | Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl |
| Born |
25 October 1903 Debrecen, Hungary |
| Died | 29 November 1957 (aged 54) Mount Kisco, New York |
| Denomination | Orthodox |
| Parents | Yosef and Gella Weissmandl |
| Spouse |
|
Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl (Hebrew: חיים מיכאל דב וויסמנדל) (25 October 1903, Debrecen, Hungary – 29 November 1957, Mount Kisco, New York) (known as Michael Ber Weissmandl) was a rabbi and shtadlan who became known for his efforts to save the Jews of Slovakia from extermination at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Thanks to the efforts of his "Working Group", which bribed German and Slovak officials, the mass deportation of Slovak Jews was delayed for two years, from 1942 to 1944.
Largely by bribing diplomats, Weissmandl was able to smuggle letters or telegrams to people he hoped would help save the Jews of Europe, alerting them to the progressive Nazi destruction of European Jewry. It is known that he managed to send letters to Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he entrusted a diplomat to deliver a letter to the Vatican for Pope Pius XII.
He also begged the Allies to bomb the rails leading to Auschwitz, but to no avail. He believed that if the Hungarian Jews would resist, then only a small number of them would be deported, as the Germans in 1944 could not garner enough soldiers to leave the front and deal with the Jews simultaneously. Of around 900,000 Hungarian-speaking Jews, close to 600,000 were murdered.
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.
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