Language:
English
Year of publication:
1988
Titel der Quelle:
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
3,4 (1988) 431-441
Keywords:
Grodzinski, Ḥayyim Ozer,
;
Wasserman, Elhanan Bunim,
;
Holocaust (Jewish theology)
Abstract:
According to a statement written by Chayyim Ozer Grodzinski, the leading Vilna rabbi, in May 1939 and published in a volume of responsa, the Reform movement and assimilation had brought persecution such as "Kristallnacht" on the Jews. Grodzinski was against active opposition to Nazism, arguing that the Jews should remove the causes of oppression by dedicating themselves to Torah study as a catalyst for redemption. His main activity up to his death from cancer in 1940 was the rescue of the Vilna yeshivas. Grodzinski's brother-in-law, Elchanan Wasserman, argued in his Yiddish treatise "Ikvosso de-meshicho" ("Footsteps of the Messiah"), completed in the fall of 1939, that the Jews were being punished by God for the sins of assimilation, Zionism, and neglect of Torah, and that the Nazis were His instruments. However, this punishment also meant that the redemption was at hand. Wasserman was arrested by the Nazis in 1941 in Kovno and murdered along with 12 other rabbis.
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