Yisrael Spira

Spira was the rabbi of Błażowa and a descendant of the Dinov and Munkacz Hasidic dynasties.[4][1] He survived confinement in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, including Bergen-Belsen.[1]

In October 1942, Spira was transported from Janowska to Bełżec, where he was selected for a clothing-work kommando.[4] After several days, he attached himself to an escort returning to Janowska with a trainload of clothing.[4] On reaching Janowska, he separated from the escort and mingled with other Jews; recognized near a coffee stall, he was protected by them.[4] He survived Janowska and subsequent deportations to Bełżec, but his wife, Pearl, was murdered in Bełżec on 18 October 1942.[4]

At Janowska Road camp, Spira concealed his identity from a kapo named Schneeweiss, whom he had known in Lvov; only a few close Hasidim knew who he was.[2] Accounts attributed to Spira describe prisoners turning to him for help in maintaining religious observance under camp conditions.[2]

Spira arrived in the United States in 1946 and became the spiritual leader of a Hasidic branch in Brooklyn and Israel.[1] An account of his arrival in New York describes an American G.I. translating Emma Lazarus’s Statue of Liberty lines into Yiddish for him.[1] The account describes Spira as the lone survivor of his family and as still bearing open wounds from beatings. He answered that the arrivals were not masses but “remnants, a trickle of broken individuals” seeking peace and relatives in America.[1]

While already in the United States, Spira learned that his niece Steffa and her family had survived the war.[3] He helped secure difficult-to-obtain American visas for them through the former Agudath Israel contacts of Steffa’s father, Rabbi Tuvia Horowitz.[3] Steffa, her husband, and their two daughters emigrated to the United States in 1947.[3]

Several Holocaust narratives attributed to Spira in Yaffa Eliach’s Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust were later adapted into educational booklets.[2][5] These include accounts of Yom Kippur observance at Janowska and a prisoner’s reliance on Spira during a life-threatening ordeal.[2][5]

In the Yom Kippur account, prisoners asked Spira to seek work that would avoid labor forbidden on the holiday.[2] Schneeweiss assigned them to clean SS rooms: Spira wiped windows with dry rags, while others worked on floors without polish.[2]

At noon, two SS men brought food and ordered the prisoners to eat.[2] Schneeweiss explained that Jews were fasting for Yom Kippur and repeated his refusal when threatened.[2] An SS man shot him.[2] The account says Schneeweiss had publicly violated Jewish law before the war and portrays his death as a martyr’s death for Jewish honor.[2] Spira’s reflection connects his death to the Talmudic saying, “Even the transgressors in Israel are as full of good deeds as a pomegranate is filled with seeds.”[2]

Another narrative, attributed to a conversation with Spira on January 3, 1975, describes him and a nonreligious fellow prisoner being ordered to jump across pits at Janowska.[5] In the story, the 53-year-old Spira explained after reaching the other side that he had held to the merit of his forefathers, while his companion said that he had held on to Spira.[5] The educational booklet containing the narrative also presents a separately identified version with differences in setting and detail.[5]

In an opinion essay, Rabbi Dr. Kenneth Brander recounts a Hanukkah story from Eliach’s collection in which Jews at Bergen-Belsen fashioned lights from a wooden clog, threads taken from a camp uniform, and black shoe polish.[6] Brander presents the Bluzhover Rebbe’s recitation of the Shehecheyanu blessing as a response to the faith of the Jews gathered for the lighting.[6]