The Kaliver Rebbe
Revered Hasidic rabbi who survived Auschwitz and devoted his life to Holocaust remembrance
THE KALIVER REBBE, who has died in Jerusalem aged 95, was the last surviving head of a significant Hasidic dynasty to have come of age in pre-holocaust Europe – and, after being subjected to barbaric pseudoscientific medical experiments in Auschwitz, spent the rest of his life affirming his faith in God and recalling the memory of those who were slaughtered in the Shoah. He became the personification of Holocaust remembrance.
Menachem Mendel Taub was born on September 9 1923 in Margareten in Transylvania, the seventh Tzaddik (wise man, or saint) in direct paternal line from Rebbe Isaac Taub, the founder of Kaliver Hasidism and the first Hasidic grouping in Hungary. He was orphaned before his bar mitzvah and studied under Rabbi Mordechai Brisk in Toshnad, the largest Yeshiva (or religious seminary) in Hungary.
Until 1944 Hungarian Jewry was the last major European Jewish community not to have been destroyed by the Nazis; but between May and July, in the largest deportation operation of the Holocaust, more than 437,000 Hungarian Jews were transported to Auschwitz-birkenau, with the concurrence of the authorities in Budapest. It was all the worse because the outcome of the war was already known by all, but massive resources were none the less diverted to the task.
Churchill was moved enough to write about the demise of Hungarian Jewry to Anthony Eden shortly after D-day – and included a reference in his final volume of war memoirs: “There is no doubt that this [persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory] is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilised men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe.”
After a journey in cattle trucks – where passengers threw their remaining valuables through any crevice available to stop them falling into the hands of the Nazis – the 20-year-old Taub arrived on the platform at Auschwitz.
The prone bodies of those who had killed themselves touching the electrified barbed wire fence were shocking enough; but what struck him even more was the mysterious sight of other men reaching through the wire to reach a loose leaf of paper just beyond the perimeter. It turned out that this was a key page of the prayer book for the forthcoming Pentecost Festival – containing the words of the famous liturgical poem Akadmus.
The sight of men risking their lives to obtain a single page of praise to God
inspired Taub through his ordeal. According to some accounts, he was “selected” by Dr Josef Mengele (also known as the “Angel of Death”) upon arrival at Auschwitz for chemical “experiments”. In consequence, he was unable to grow a full beard and could not have his own children.
Four of his seven siblings perished, including a brother who was also the victim of genetic experimentation.
Taub was later transferred to another camp in Warsaw to clear away the ruins of the ghetto; there, he was selected with a group of three other men to be thrown alive into a furnace. Facing death, he bargained with his maker: “What will my last Shema Yisrael on this world add to you? [The best known Jewish affirmation of faith: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”] Master of the World, give me life and save me, and I will bring Your Shema Yisrael to so many.”
At that moment, another group of SS officers turned up, demanding extra slave labour for the German firm, Troppen. Taub suggested making a run for it.
“They will shoot us if we run,” said one of his companions.
“And if we don’t run, will it be any better for us?”
They somehow ran out of sight, and Taub lived to be transferred to other camps including Flinsberg and Bergen-belsen, where he was eventually liberated.
The recitation of an additional Shema Yisrael at the end of each of the three daily services became for him the unique means of remedying the memory of the horrors of the Holocaust (in the Jewish liturgy, it is usually done twice daily). Taub fulfilled this pledge to God to the end of his days.
Taub had been engaged in 1943 to Hannah Sarah Schapiro, the daughter of the Rabbi of Kechnia and Visheva (also in Transylvania) who had fled to Sweden; she assumed that he was dead. But in his last will and testament, seen by The Daily Telegraph, he recalled that she had experienced a vision of the prophet Elijah who informed her that Taub was still alive. They were reunited in Sweden and emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio, adopting two daughters.
Two of the Rabbi’s sisters also survived the war and one is still alive. In 2012 he married, secondly, Sheindel Malnik.
Taub became Rebbe of Kaliv in 1947 and set up the Kaliver Yeshiva of Cleveland, and latterly in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where he established a Beis Yaakov school for Orthodox girls. In 1980, he moved to Israel, first to Rishon Le Tzion, where he founded the Centre of Kaliver Hasidim; then to Bnei Berak (an ultra Orthodox stronghold near Tel Aviv); and finally in 2002 to Jerusalem; last year, the Kaliver Rebbe blessed President Trump for moving the US Embassy to the Holy City, advising him to take no notice of the negative things that people were saying about him.
Kaliv is by no means the largest such Hasidic grouping. But such was the Rebbe’s authority that his influence extended far beyond his court – as the immediate circle of Hasidic Rebbes is usually termed – including among “Mizrachi” (or Eastern) Jews who originated in Arab lands.
The memory of those killed in the Holocaust remained at the heart of the Rebbe’s mission; as the owner of one of the most comprehensive collections of photographs of pre-holocaust Jewish communities, he wanted to set up another Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem as well as Yad Vashem, that would accord greater recognition to the religious as well as the racial dimensions of Nazi anti-semitism. His oeuvre included a 13-volume work on the Torah and Jewish Holy Days, as well as the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.
In 2002 the themes of the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust came to the attention of a wider Englishspeaking audience, with the publication of Shema Yisrael: Testimonies, Courage, and Selfsacrifice 1939-1945. This volume, dedicated to the memory of another remarkable Hungarian survivor of the Holocaust, Josef Weiss of nearby Fehergyarmat (who lost his entire family), contains 560 first-hand accounts of the Rabbis and other Jews who had been killed – and featured a lengthy introduction by the Kaliver Rebbe explaining his experiences to a new generation.
In his later years, the Kaliver Rebbe was a frequent visitor to St Moritz where he came at the same time as other Holocaust survivors to recuperate. There, he cut a dashing figure on summer hikes in his long golden robes and Hoisensocken (or pant-socks, the long white stockings characteristic of certain Hasidic groups).
On the Friday night of the Sabbath, he always danced for joy for his deliverance from the Nazis; later on the day of rest, he would chant old east European melodies, seemingly moving in and out of consciousness in a trance-like reverie.
In 2014 the Rebbe returned to Budapest for the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary. He broke down crying, recalling how he had witnessed children being thrown live into furnaces; he believed that tears were the best guarantee of prayers being received in heaven, as at the critical Ne’ilah service late in the day on Yom Kippur, where he believed the drops would fall into a Divine container and transform divine judgment.
He is succeeded as Rebbe by Rabbi Yisrael Mordechai Yoel Horowitz, the 27-year-old son of one of his adopted daughters.