The Dramatic Escape of the Frierdiker Rebbe

In honor of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s upcoming yahrzeit, popular Jewish history podcast ‘Jewish History Soundbites’ covered the Frierdiker Rebbe’s dramatic escape from Nazi occupied Poland, and the people who made it happen.

In honor of the Frierdiker Rebbe‘s upcoming yahrzeit, popular Jewish history podcast ‘Jewish History Soundbites’ covered the Frierdiker Rebbe’s dramatic escape from Nazi occupied Poland, and the people who made it happen.

Jewish History Soundbites is presented by Yehuda Geberer, a Yerushalayim-based tour guide, lecturer and researcher of Jewish history at Yad Vashem. Multiple new episodes are released each week, with a motzei shabbos episode focused on stories of tzaddikim. Last night’s episode was dedicated to the Frierdiker Rebbe.

“In one of the most daring rescue schemes of the Holocaust era, Rav Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, the sixth Lubavitch Rebbe, the Rayatz (1880-1950) was whisked out of Nazi occupied Poland by agents of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence.”

“Chassidim in the United States, along with the activist Rabbi Mordechai Dubin in Riga, orchestrated the operation. The United States government was lobbied and the State Department eventually applied pressure on the German Foreign Office to rescue the Rayatz. Chief of the Abwehr Wilhelm Canaris tapped Major Ernest Bloch – ironically an officer with Jewish ancestry – for the rescue mission.

“Arriving in Warsaw shortly after the commencement of the Nazi occupation, he finally was able to locate the Rebbe and his entourage. They were then brought to Berlin, then Riga, Latvia, until finally arriving in New York in March 1940.