Painful Testimonies from Auschwitz and Heterei Agunim, with Signatures of Rabbi Eliezer Fisch, Av Beis Din of Hadas, and Others
Hadas, Papa and Pest, 1946
Two authentic documents from a Beis Din, written in the first year after the Holocaust’s end, intended to permit Holocaust survivors to marry a second wife, as their first wives were murdered in the Holocaust.
One document contains a heartbreaking firsthand testimony about a man’s wife who was sent to Auschwitz: "There came before us [a man]… who went with his wife… to Auschwitz,
and his eldest daughter told him that she saw her mother with three small children going to the left side."
At the end of each document are signatures of the members of the Beis Din.
One document is from the Hadas community, signed by
the Av Beis Din Rabbi Eliezer Fisch, grandson of the holy Admor Rabbi Aharon Yeshaya Fisch of Hadas, along with two additional dayanim.
A second document is from the Pest community and is signed by:
Rabbi Yaakov Segal Lebovitch (later Av Beis Din of Kopish) who later testified that during those difficult years he permitted approximately 5,000 agunim and agunos to remarry, and was not mistaken in any of them! (See the introduction to his sefer ‘Mishnas Yaakov’).
Also signed with him are: Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch HaKohen of Derechke, Rabbi Yisrael Weltz, Rabbi Moshe Baba"d and others.
Hadas and Pest, 1946. Total of [2] documents.
Average Size: 14.5 x 21 cm.
Condition: Good, some tears.
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The Special Batei Din for Holocaust Agunim and Agunos
The intense desire of Holocaust survivors, alone and isolated in the world, to rebuild their lives anew after the terrible destruction is one of the most moving things that occurred after the Holocaust.
However, it raised one of the most painful and complex questions: just as the catastrophe itself was unprecedented, so too were the related questions that arose in its wake that had never existed before.
The surviving Rabbanim quickly understood the magnitude of responsibility resting on their shoulders – freeing thousands of agunos and agunim from their bonds of marriage – and gave it top priority. They devoted themselves to this task with total dedication, while they themselves were still broken and crushed from the destruction of their families and communities.
For this purpose, Rabbanim gathered in Hungary, Romania, and in the Displaced Persons camps in Germany, establishing foundational principles and rules and establishing special Batei Din that would deal exclusively with this matter.
Before us are two original documents from these courts, written in the first year after the war’s end.
