“Praise Hashem that we emerged alive!”
Stirring Handwritten & Autographed Letter by Rabbi Aharon Kotler during the Throes of the Yeshivah’s Escape to Lithuania. Vilna, 1939
This letter was dispatched from Vilna at the end of 1939 to American patrons of Yeshivas Eitz Chayim. In his letter, Harav Aharon Kotler informs them with relief that the yeshivah had relocated to Vilna “Following events and upheavals that we endured, and praises to Hashem that we emerged alive.”
With the invasion of the Russian Bolshevik army into the city of Kletsk in November 1939, Harav Aharon Kotler decided to flee with the yeshivah to Vilna. Under the cover of darkness, all the talmidim of the yeshivah made their way clandestinely out of Kletsk and began the dangerous and illegal trek to the greater Vilna area.
Immediately upon arriving in Vilna, Harav Aharon Kotler officially reinstated the yeshivah’s learning schedule, albeit the talmidim suffered gravely, enduring harsh physical conditions and hunger, as he portrays vividly in this letter.
Harav Aharon Kotler (1882-1963) was one of the venerable Lithuanian Roshei Yeshivah of the pre-Holocaust era who endeavored mightily to rebuild a world of Torah from the ashes. As Nasi of Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah and the foremost Rosh Yeshivah in America, he founded Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey, stimulating a revolution of Torah in America.
Vilna. Letter dated Erev Shabbos Chayei Sarah, 5700 (November 3, 1939). Handwritten, autographed and stamped with yeshivah’s stamp. The stationery is distinctly from the period of the yeshivah’s exile, as it is labeled “Yeshivas Eitz Chayim of Slutsk that relocated to Kletsk.”
Page size: 27×21 cm. Good condition
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