On the night of February 6 to 7, 1945, a train with 1,210 inmates from the Theresienstadt concentration camp crossed the Swiss border at Kreuzlingen to freedom. On the train were 663 Jews from Germany, 434 from Holland, and 104 from the Czech Protectorate.
Unlike the only other, well-known and fully documented “rescue train” of Jews permitted by the Nazis to leave German-occupied Europe with a relatively large number (1,684 Hungarian Jews), though only 320 reached freedom in Switzerland (the others were incarcerated, initially in Bergen-Belsen), hardly anyone is aware of the train that brought 1,210 inmates of the Czech concentration camp to Switzerland.
The reason for the different treatment of these two trains is apparently linked to the identity of their organizers.
The Kastner train was organized by Hungarian Zionist leader Reszo Kastner, working with Saly Mayer, the Swiss representative of the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC, known as “the Joint”), the Jewish relief and rescue organization which strictly observed the regulations authorized by the American government’s War Refugee Board, prohibiting paying the Nazis ransom.
The train from Theresienstadt, on the other hand, was organized by the American Vaad Ha-Hatzala, an ad hoc rescue organization, established in November 1939, by prominent ultra-Orthodox European-born-and-educated rabbis (such as Rabbi Aharon Kotler, the rosh yeshiva of Kletzk, who established the famous Lakewood Yeshiva in New Jersey; Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz, the president of the Mir Yeshiva; and anti-Zionist Jacob Rosenheim, a prominent leader of Agudat Yisrael in Germany) initially for the sole purpose of helping save the rabbis and students of the Lithuanian yeshivas, who had fled Eastern Poland, occupied by the Soviets in September 1939.
From the establishment of the Vaad Ha-Hatzala in mid-November 1939, the rabbis refused to join ranks with the three major American Jewish philanthropic organizations that had united in the wake of Kristallnacht to assist German Jewry.
These were the JDC (the most important US relief agency established to aid Jews overseas, responsible for the relief and rescue of Jews in distress outside the US); the United Palestine Appeal (for aiding Jewish resettlement in the Land of Israel); and the National Refugee Service (which assisted newcomers to the US).
They banded together under the umbrella of the US-created United Jewish Appeal (UJA) – a major Jewish philanthropic organization still in existence, that had great success during its initial campaign in 1939.
The rabbis of the Vaad refused to join them, even though another of the groups that made up the JDC was the Orthodox Central Relief Committee since the majority of the rabbis making the decisions there were Reform and Conservative, a situation the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) rabbis of the Vaad could never accept.
When the rabbis were criticized for refusing to join the other American Jewish aid agencies, the Vaad claimed that they would only solicit contributions from Jews who prayed in shtiblach (small, privately-owned synagogues), therefore, they were not in competition with the UJA.
It did not take long, however, for the leaders of the Vaad to realize that they could not raise sufficient funds if they only solicited worshipers in small synagogues. They then approached local Jewish federations throughout the United States, threatening to conduct fundraising campaigns in the middle of the local UJA campaigns – unless they would contribute a large sum to the Vaad.
Needless to say, most federations had no idea whether the Vaad was a genuine charity, worthy of their support, and they were afraid that they could not even reach their own targets – since the local Orthodox Jews would prefer to contribute to the Vaad.
In the meantime, from its establishment in 1939 until late 1943, the Vaad helped rescue approximately 625 Polish rabbis and yeshiva students from Lithuania via the Far East. Additionally, it assisted several hundred refugee Torah scholars living under extremely harsh conditions in Central Asian areas of the Soviet Union – and enabled approximately 500 rabbis and Torah scholars to survive while continuing their Torah studies, despite the numerous hardships of living under Japanese occupation in Shanghai.
BEGINNING IN 1943, however, in the wake of the reports from Europe of the mass annihilation of European Jewry and the dangers facing the remnants of numerous Jewish communities, the leadership of the Vaad changed its raison d’etre. Instead of focusing exclusively on assisting rabbis and yeshiva students, it began to devote most of its resources to rescuing as many Jews as possible, regardless of their level of observance and religious practice.
In the latter stages of World War II, these efforts were actualized because some of the leading Nazis realized that Germany was losing the war and facing total defeat – and thought that the only way to save the Third Reich would be to convince the Western allies to join forces with Germany and turn together against the Soviet Union.
Himmler was willing to negotiate to release Jews
While Hitler was totally opposed to halting the “Final Solution,” some of his underlings, among them Heinrich Himmler, were willing to negotiate deals to release Jews from concentration camps in return for money or items that the Nazis needed, such as trucks, tractors, or medicines.
There was, however, a serious obstacle to such deals. The US War Refugee Board (the official agency tasked with assisting those in danger of being murdered by the Nazis) prohibited any ransom payment of money or goods to the Germans.
The ultra-Orthodox Vaad, however, chose to ignore the US’s prohibition – as it had on previous occasions when it had hindered the Vaad’s aid to Jews in distress. Thus, the Vaad sent Swiss Politician Jean-Marie Musy to negotiate a deal to release Jewish inmates from Theresienstadt.
CURRENTLY, THE Israeli haredi leadership faces a somewhat similar dilemma.
The IDF is in acute need of an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 additional soldiers, in the wake of the fatalities and serious injuries in the current war against Hamas and Hezbollah and the unprecedented burden on thousands of reservists who have served extremely lengthy stints in the past year and a half.
There is no justification for the exemption of tens of thousands of haredi youth from military service when Israel faces existential dangers. The American haredi rabbinical leadership understood the dangers facing European Jews during the Holocaust and chose to ignore the prohibitions and risk the consequences.
The time has come for Israeli haredi leaders to make a similarly bold decision and send their boys to the IDF with their blessings.
The writer, a Holocaust historian, is the author of The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust: The Activities of the Vaad Ha-Hatzala Rescue Committee, 1939-1945.