Letter by Rosh Yeshivas Mir Hagaon Harav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel Regarding the Rescue of the Yeshivah from Shanghai & Comprehensive List of All Jewish refugees in Shanghai.
“I received a telegram from my son-in-law Harav Chaim [Shmuelevitz] shlit”a, that he and another one hundred and thirty students from the Yeshivah wish to travel to Eretz Yisrael, and now they have an opportunity to journey to France…Since the boat is expected to disembark in the coming days, and it will be easy for them to continue from there to our Holy Land, he appealed to me that we should endeavor to obtain visas for them, in order to rescue them.”
Ultimately, Hagaon Harav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel’s efforts bore fruit, and he miraculously obtained transit visas for the entire group to France, albeit his true intent was to enable them to continue their journey from the port of Marseille onward to Eretz Yisrael. When the group reached the shores of France, Rav Chaim endeavored tirelessly to secure visas to Eretz Yisrael, yet this time, his efforts were for naught; and with no choice, the group of refugees continued to the United States. From there, they sailed to Eretz Yisrael, thus culminating the exiles and travels of the Mir Yeshivah.
Attached to this letter is a 7-page typewritten list of hundreds of Lithuanian and Polish Jewish refugees and their families who had been exiled to Shanghai, among them students of the Mir and Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin. Celebrated names that appear on this list include the mashgiach Harav Yechezkel Levenstein and family; Harav Chaim Shmuelevitz and family; Harav Shmuel Dovid Walkin and family; Harav Shmuel Birenbaum, son-in-law of Harav Avraham Kalmanowitz and Rosh Yeshivas Mir in the United States; Harav Leib Malin; Harav Leib Baskt; Harav Shmuel Brudny, Rosh Yeshivas Mir in the United States and other Torah sages and luminaries.
Hagaon Harav Eliezer Yehudah Finkel (1867-1965) was the grandson of the Alter of Slabodka and Rosh Yeshivah of Mir. He settled in Eretz Yisrael in 1941 where he rebuilt the Mir Yeshiva on holy soil and endeavored tirelessly to bring his talmidim from Shanghai to Eretz Hakodesh.
This letter, dated 26 Tammuz, 1946, was addressed to Harav Zeidel Semiatsky, famed alumnus of the Mir Yeshivah and Rosh Yeshivas Toras Emes in London. It is typewritten and autographed by the Rosh Yeshivah with several handwritten corrections.
Page size: 24×19 cm. Hole punches.
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The Mir Yeshivah in Shanghai
The Miraculous Rescue
The wondrous flight and rescue of the Mir Yeshivah during World War two is one of the most inspirational tales of the Holocaust era and a clear manifestation of Divine providence.
In 1939, the Mir Yeshivah and its students fled from Poland to Vilna, where they remained for a brief period of time before Lithuanian authorities expelled the Yeshivah from its borders. In an extraordinary twist of fate, the Japanese consul in Kovno, Mr. Chiune Sugihara, agreed to issue Japanese entry visas to all the Yeshivah’s students and its esteemed Rosh Yeshivah Hagaon Harav Chaim Shmuelevitz. This enabled the escape of the entire Yeshivah via the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Japan where they remained for nine months before continuing along their journeys to Shanghai, China.
Yeshivas Mir remained in exile in Shanghai for five years. Under the leadership of its venerable Rosh Yeshivah and mashgiach, the Yeshivah’s students immersed themselves in a sacred world of Torah. Throughout the war years, rescue activists around the world endeavored tirelessly to procure visas for the bachurim to Eretz Yisrael and America, an effort that finally came to fruition at the end of 1946.
The following is a collection of historic letters and records recounting the compelling story of the Mir Yeshivah in Shanghai and worldwide efforts to bring its talmidim to safety.
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