Mr. Yaakov Yosef Jungreis
Safe Passageway
While I was a young boy living with my family in Szeged, one of the largest cities in Hungary and near the Yugoslavian border, my father served as the presiding rabbi. In the neighboring town of Xanten, Germany, there lived one particularly prominent Jewish family. Unfortunately, however, the father of the family was taken away, leaving his wife and their unborn child all alone. As this occurred, the entire city of Xanten was moved into Szeged, which had been turned into a Jewish ghetto.
One night, as I was davening Maariv in my father’s Shul, in came four broad-shouldered men carrying a large bed. The woman who was expecting the child was about to give birth. But being that there was no other available place for her to do so, the men positioned the bed right in front of the wide open area before the Aron Kodesh. Some time later, my mother helped deliver the baby boy this woman was carrying.
Eight days later, the brit mila was held in the dark basement of our Shul by candlelight. With my father bringing the baby into the basement and the Rav of Xanten serving as the sandek, it was an emotionally stirring occasion. Although giving the baby a brit mila meant that he would now clearly be identified as a Jew and be in danger if ever caught by German soldiers, tears of great happiness streamed down the cheeks of all those who were present.
After the brit was completed, my mother asked me to do something that for years later she and my father wondered why they ever allowed. “Take off your yarmulke and yellow star, jump the fence of the ghetto and run to the city to buy some diapers for the baby.” Although the risk existed that I may never return, I nevertheless followed these instructions, and returned safely with the diapers in hand.
In April of 1944, this baby with its mother made their way from Xanten to the concentration camp in Strasshof, Austria. Populated with 18,000 Jews, my grandfather, Rav Tzvi Hirsch Cohen, served as the sole Rav for the entire city of Strasshof. Times were difficult and conditions were uneasy. But then there was Rudolf Israel Kastner. He was one of the leaders of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee and was known to have assisted Jewish refugees escape Hungary in 1944 when the Nazis invaded. Kastner would every month or so come to Strasshof and offer the Gestapo a sum of money to avoid killing Jews wantonly. On one such occasion, Kastner approached my grandfather and said that he had rented two trucks with twelve seats each. He wished to save twenty-four Chassidish Rebbes, one of them being my grandfather. With every seat accounted for, this was a unique opportunity at escaping the clutches of potential death especially considering that what the future could bring may be for the worst.
But my grandfather was not so quick to comply with his kind offer. “Listen,” said my zaidy to Kastner, “there is a widow here with her young child from Xanten. Give her my seat.” And so it was. When the trucks came to take the twenty-four Rebbes, the young lady and her baby went along.
But that is not the end of the story.
Being granted such an opportunity, the young woman had something special in mind. She decided that for the rest of her life, she would support and serve the needs of Torah scholars. And so, as she took a seat on the truck next to the Stropkover Rebbe, not before long, she went on to marry him. Despite the large age gap, she was committed to rebuilding a future with the Rebbe.
Years later, the Stropkover Rebbe passed away. But even so, the woman was still intent on remarrying and continuing to build another family. And indeed, with the Tzelemer Rebbe losing his own wife, this woman went on to marry him.
With the Tzelemer Rebbe passing away on the 27th of Nissan, 1980, the woman’s young son who had survived the war assumed the role of the next Rebbe. He is known today as the Tzelemer Rav shlita, head mashgiach (food supervisor) of Kedem Wine and Products.
At a moment when survival was a most viable option, Rabbi Jungreis chose a different option: to grant safe passageway to a single widow and her child. Thinking of not himself, but a fellow Jew, he insured the existence of a future rabbinic dynasty and brought life to those who perhaps would never have seen tomorrow. Such is the care and sensitivity that hallmarks a Jew.
