Michael Dov Weissmandl

Rabbi
Michael Dov Weissmandl[a]
Weissmandl before the war
Personal
Born(1903-10-25)25 October 1903
Died29 November 1957(1957-11-29) (aged 54)
ReligionJudaism
Spouse
  • Bracha Rachel Ungar
  • Leah Teitelbaum
Parent(s)Yosef and Gella Weissmandl
DenominationOrthodox
PositionRosh Yeshiva
YeshivaNitra Yeshiva, Mount Kisco, New York
Began1946
Ended29 November 1957

Michael Dov Weissmandl (Yiddish: מיכאל בער ווייסמאנדל) [a] (25 October 1903 – 29 November 1957) was an Orthodox rabbi of the Oberlander Jews of present-day western Slovakia.[1] Along with Gisi Fleischmann he was the leader of the Bratislava Working Group which attempted to save European Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps during the Holocaust and was the first person to urge Allied powers to bomb the railways leading to concentration camp gas chambers.[2] Managing to escape from a sealed cattle car headed for Auschwitz in 1944, he later emigrated to America where he established a yeshiva and self-sustaining agricultural community in New York known as the Yeshiva Farm Settlement. Accusing the Zionist Jewish Agency of having frustrated his rescue efforts during the Holocaust, he became a staunch opponent of Zionism after the war.[3]


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  1. ^ (September 26, 2019). Rabbi Weissmandl, a Holocaust hero, Jerusalem Post.
  2. ^ (September 2, 2021). Son of famed rabbi among victims of New York flooding, Forward
  3. ^ Weissmandel, Mikha’el Dov Ber, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.