“The Tehran Children” – 80 Years since their Immigration to Israel

Part 2: Pinihaleh Schreiber’s (later Rabbi Pinchas Schreiber, the rabbi of Ashdod) path of agony

By: Rabbi Yaakov Rosenfeld, Ganzach Kiddush Hashem

On Shvat 18, 5691 (February 1931), Pinchas was born to Yisrael Bunim and Tziporah in Jaroslaw, a large city filled with wise men and scribes.

Rabbi Pinchas Schreiber z”l

His father was a great genius, and already in Pinchas’s infancy his father would meditate with him for long hours on the Torah “behind the stove” (the place where the beggars sat) in the synagogue, which can be seen in the remains of the city.

As a child, his study partner was the child prodigy, Shalom Brander, who was also from Jaroslaw and had a sharp mind. He later became the head of the Belz Yeshiva.

At the outbreak of the war, the chasidic genius Rabbi Yisrael Bunim (Pinchas’s father), one of the great men of Belz chassidism, moved his family to the neighboring town of Ciechanow, where they hid from the terror of the Nazi oppressors in the grandfather’s home. On one Shabbat night, though, Russian military men broke into their home and harshly and violently loaded the whole family onto a car, and then the traumatic episode in little Pinihaleh’s life began – from a calm and peaceful life of “Torah and greatness in one place,” he became a persecuted refugee throughout the terrible war. And this is how that Shabbat night is described in the book about his experiences (with editorial changes):

The Shabbat that the soldiers arrived in the town of Ciechanow, the peaceful Schreiber family appeared on their lists, they too were declared “counter-revolutionaries” those who sinned against them and were on the “treason list”. While the family members were sitting around the Shabbat table, enjoying their Shabbat, they did not imagine that in a few moments the Shabbat table would be turned over and chaos would prevail […]

Suddenly there were harsh knocks that interrupted the peace. One of the members of the house tremblingly went to open the door, and before his eyes were a number of Russian soldiers armed from head to toe. They proudly entered the house and announced with a thunderous voice that all the members of the house must take a number of objects with them and leave the house.

Russian soldiers during WWII

Their pleas to wait until Saturday night were to no avail. Due to the short notice that they were given, they were only able to take the most necessary items. Despite their haste, they did not forget to take the essentials, the Judaica objects, pairs of tefillin and prayer shawls, and a religious book or two.

Little Pinihaleh took the tefillin, hid with them until the soldiers had to leave and then, as he had planned, and indeed succeeded, took the tefillin during the commotion and kept this “deposit” with devotion all the time.

The family members were dragged like sacks of worthless potatoes into vehicles and after a long and tiring journey, arrived in Siberia, where they stayed for about a year and a half.

And there, in Siberia, every evening, when the father returned from the hard labour that was assigned to him, he would sit and devotely study Torah with his son.

One day, great joy spread among the Jews of the area where the members of the Schreiber family were staying. An entire volume of Gemara fell into their hands, a Talmud Bavli with tractates Passover and Sukkah, and everyone turned their eyes to this Gemara, in which they would forget their sorrows a little and through it they would connect to their being, to the point of their hearts…

One Gemara fell into their hands and everyone wanted it; what did they do? The Jews opened the volume and divided among themselves the most valuable pages of all the wealth of the world. The segment of of “Rabbi Hanina the Deputy of the Priests”, a bundle of difficult and complex Gemara pages, on matters of impurity and purity, sanctity and mundane, ended up with Rabbi Yisrael Bunim, and this is what Pinihaleh studied with his father every evening at the end of a hard and arduous day of work.

And this is how this period is described in the book “Va’Ivatair Ani Levadi” (And I Will Give In Alone):

A year and a half, winter, summer, and winter again, unbearably hard days, sharp weather differences prevailed in Siberia, a huge climatic difference between winter and summer, those who were not native to the place were not able to cope with it, even the most robust creatures would kneel down after a very short period, not the least the weak people…

If there was anything that could have eased the difficulty, it would certainly have been the the strong faith that was firmly planted in all those who were strict with the word of G-d, that the Creator of the whole world watches over all His creatures individually, He is kind and calculates, from the horns of rams to lice eggs, and He is the one who creates redemption and welfare for all those who believe in Him, even in the Siberian steppes.

During this period of time, many Shabbats and holidays passed… many stories of heroism were written about Jews who lived in such places and observed what they could with true dedication. Authors are good at sketching each one with their pen, the many struggles they went through, every Shabbat and holiday.

If we could ask any of those staying in Siberia, we would have many questions to ask: how did they fulfill the mitzvah of eating matzah on Passover, when there was no wheat that had been watched by a Jew? How did they set up a sukkah, carry the four species, hear the sound of a shofar, was it possible to put on tefillin without being disturbed? After all, they were living in a Bolshevik country, Siberia was also the territory of a Pagan regime, the prohibitions that were applied everywhere were applied even under the shadow of death.

In ordinary places of desolation, it is at least possible to observe Shabbat as much as possible, no one interferes with taking a break from work. But in the Siberian wilderness under the boots of the Communists, even stopping labour was an impossible task. What did they do with the lumber division on Shabbat, wasn’t there one day in the year when they were prevented from this?

There is no doubt that they had a difficult life, and as much as they could, they did what their hands could do, and what they could not, their souls wept over and grieved.

Who can paint for us, how the melody of the Gemara of Rabbi Yisrael Bunim sounded, when he memorized the words of the Gemara with his son? If we were standing there, we would perhaps hear what seemed to be the singing of the angels: Oh, let my rabbi… How much devoted love of the Torah is in this. They were not in a well-heated study hall sitting next to the comfortable lectern, with one hand holding a cup of steaming tea and the other waving a finger in Mishna learning, to explain the deep teaching clearly, and sometimes also leaning on top of the lectern loaded with books, “dos is takeh a mechiyeh” (this is indeed the life), really a kind of next world. But here at the “Study Hall of Siberia” they studied Torah with real dedication, they received the warmth of Torah from the holy words of the Gemara, the opinions of Abaya and Rava (2 talmudic era rabbis) they now heard in different tones!

Rabbi Yisrael Bunim learned many hundreds of pages of Gemara by heart with Pinihaleh in the Siberian steppes, until they became his eternal possession […]

The father was a tangible daily example for the righteous little son that it is possible to learn the Torah in any situation with infinite love. Siberia was a melting pot for a boy, who was barely ten years old, to be ready to sacrifice himself for Torah, even when he was alone with endless obstacles standing in front of him which wanted to take away from him the right to sit in front of the Torah scrolls. There is no doubt that in the Siberian melting pot, the right training and preparation for Pinihaleh was prepared in Heaven for him to overcome all obstacles and not be deterred by any difficulty, thus he was prepared to be one of the greatest people of the generation.

The boy found pleasure in his joint study with his father, and in the same chapter a brother was born to Pinihaleh, a baby full of light and sweetness after long years of anticipation, and there in the conditions of Siberia, raising a baby was almost impossible. The parents and the brother waged a ceaseless war against the rats that tried to devour the tender baby, this was aside from the daily concern for the living and health of the bare and destitute child.

This is not the place to describe the political processes that took place between the countries at that time, we will suffice by saying that under the auspices of political agreements that were signed at some point, the Schreiber family had the opportunity to leave frozen Siberia (where they left their dear grandfather who died and was buried in its forests) and after a long and arduous journey, they arrived in Tashkent.

In Soviet Uzbekistan, a completely different climate prevailed, but unfortunately this is what happened to the couple, the chasidic genius Rabbi Yisrael Bunim, and his wife, Rebbetzin Tzipora:

In Siberia, the freezing cold, with all the suffering it inflicted on humanity, there were serious diseases that did not penetrate Siberia, such as typhus. In hot Tashkent, his parents contracted typhus one after the other and then, precisely towards the end, after all the suffering and terrible exile they experienced with bravery and faith, the dear parents died in a foreign land, in a foreign country.

One after the other, his dear parents died a few days apart (4th and 7th of Adar 5702 – Winter 1943) due to the illness that attacked them. Before his eyes they died, and with his own hands the gentle boy had to bury them.

Pinihaleh and his toddler brother Zvi, remained together with their good, warm, and devoted grandmother Chana, who looked after the two orphans and cared for them, but sadly these days did not last long and the grandmother also died of the same disease, and he buried her with his own hands. And then Pinihaleh was left alone in the world in a foreign land, and his eyes remained open for the safety of his brother Zvi, whom he watched over like the apple of his eye.

In the orphanage set up in Tashkent for the war refugees, Pinihaleh found a hiding place for him and Zvi, but an incessant anxiety troubled his peace: what if they threw his brother away from him by force? For the Church was constantly looking for prey of this kind. Zvi, with a bright appearance that was not yet confused due to the danger involved, could have been a good opportunity for them and another point of victory in their war against the Jewish community that fought by the skin of its teeth for every soul from Israel.

The anxiety increased immeasurably when Zvi fell ill with a contagious disease and was arbitrarily separated from him. Pinihaleh could not find rest for his soul and would constantly walk around his little brother’s room.

One moment before his abduction by the messengers of the church, Pinihaleh succeeded with open miracles to save his brother and with the help of G-d, they were able to join the group of children who were smuggled into the Land of Israel through the “Tehran” camp, the group known as “Tehran Children” to this day.

From “Va’Ivatair Ani Levadi” (And I Will Give In Alone):

Today, looking back, it is difficult to understand how a young man managed to cope in Tehran and further strengthen and encourage his friends. The case of Pinihaleh’s actions there in the Tehran camp is worth remembering, even though he hid almost all of his actions throughout his life; he never spoke about what he did for the common good, but during the shiva (7 day mourning period) for Yosef Garten, secretary of the Ponivezh Yeshiva, he told this to the son (merely in passing): “Thanks to me, your father remained charedi (loosely translated as “ultra-orthodox”) all his life. Whenever I felt that his strength had failed and he was about to, G-d forbid, abandon everything, I would stand and strengthen him and shower him with things. Please hold on a little longer, it won’t be long and the hard trials will be behind us. Know this, because really everything is imagination, as if they have something and you have nothing, but really it’s all vanity and bad spirits, they have nothing, they exchange a straight world for a handful of fake people, but we have G-d and the Torah which is eternity. It’s true that right now it seems like they have the upper hand, but it’s momentary, and we need patience and the simple belief in the rightness of our ways.”

These words were not only spoken once, but day after day Pinihaleh would stand strengthening his hands and supporting him, so G-d forbid he would not let go of the path and the simple faith on which he had grown up with. And he did not abandon them even for a moment, even after he was already out of their control, he made every effort to get him out from under their control, and indeed succeeded in doing so (he did not specify in what ways he was able to get him out of there).

He had a yedid nefesh (a very close friend) in those days, Rabbi Yosef Glicksberg (later Rabbi of the city of Givatayim) […]

He connected with Pinihaleh and they spent many hours together; he was greatly influenced by the pure character of the young boy who knows very well what his duty was in the world.

And so he testified about him after many years:

“Rabbi Pinchas Schreiber was 12 years old. These are not empty words, he was already a complete person in those days, the mental strength he accumulated in his short years was also tested in the terrible Tehrani camp. We lived in a different world than that of the camp, a pure spiritual world that was greatly influenced by the spiritual world of Rabbi Pinchas z’l.”

From his descriptions: Pinihaleh sat in the very late hours with his friends, talking quietly, but with great confidence, about faith and belief. Strengthened and caressed the spirit, and preached a sermon for the spiritual wounds. Told stories of righteous people stored in his mind from his father’s house, demanding on the one hand, and caressing on the other.

…from the tents the influence of “Rabbi Piniyeh” (the affectionate nickname given to him by his friends) was evident, Jewish songs could be heard filled with praises to the blessed Creator. There they sang “A voice of singing praises and salvation in the tents of the righteous, the right hand of the L-rd deals valiantly”, and they were lit up by the catchy song “My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you”.

The tents were divided according to age, and Pinihaleh was in a tent with those aged close to bar mitzvah, the ten-year-old Yosef Glicksberg lived in another tent. Nevertheless, a close bond was formed between the children and it helped little Yosef not to get carried away by the general influence. The separation between Pinihaleh’s tent and Yosef Glicksberg’s tent, was only a tarpaulin, and thus every evening they would establish contact, whisper and encourage each other in the continuation of the struggle…

The wonderous struggle of the chasidic children in the Tehran camp against young and strong secular instructors who did not experience bereavement and did not go through the horrors of war, deserves to be described in a separate article. This is a story that must be studied.

We will focus here only on the main points of the amazing story of the youth Pinihaleh and his brother Zvi, who was under his protection, until their agony ended and the two arrived at the shores of safety, in the hall of the Ponivezh yeshiva.

The Tehran camp, as mentioned, was divided according to age groups. Each group was housed in tents designed for people of the same age, so that there would not be much contact between the older and the younger children (this would make it easier for them to take control of the younger ones who would be defenseless). This created a kind of partition between the age strata, each stratum had connections only among themselves, except for siblings who had some kind of connection.

Some of the Tehran Children

Pinihaleh resided in the group of tents ranging from 11 to 13 years of age. Zvi, on the other hand, due to his age of less than 3 years, lived in the camp’s nursery, which was far from the other children’s tents and located in a stone building on the other side of the camp.

Pinihaleh would go check on his little brother whenever he could; he did not for a moment forget his role and responsibility as a mature and educated brother, and with all the power the counsellors had, they could not completely prevent him from contact and he fought for his right as best as he could. He watched over Zvi and let everyone who was with him understand that he was the brother responsible for him and for all its implications.

Zvi was a mentally developed child and it was very important for him to have a relationship with his older brother; he was very happy with every visit, so it was burned into the toddler’s mind that apart from all the uncles and aunts that surrounded his daycare there was another big boy who came to him every day and showered him with great attention. He was not just someone but something more than that, a kind of protective father.

In the middle of winter, Zvi fell ill with whooping cough (just as bad as acute pneumonia), a disease that attacks the respiratory tract and burdens the bronchi with a severe and bothersome cough that almost tears the lungs. In those days, this disease often ended in death after severe suffering.

The little boy, who had already experienced so many stormy events in less than three years of life, almost suffocated from coughing. He was rushed to the nearby hospital and stayed in complete isolation.

In addition to the fear for his health, Pinihaleh was struck by a strong fear for his brother’s entire future. When he is not around, terrible things could happen to Zvi. His fear was not out of thin air, as he remembered very well the spiritual danger that hovered over him a few months ago in the city of Tashkent; Why would they not try to harm Zvi this time when he is alone again?

The hospital was full of Catholic nurses, some of whom even belonged to an order of nuns, among them some Polish nurses who did not forget their “religious duty.”

The sisters smelled very easy prey. They discovered a toddler who was not mixed up! Which led them to the natural conclusion that the child is a member of a non-Jewish family or very far from Judaism. He also had a somewhat Polish appearance, one could easily mistake him for not being Jewish.

The nurses decided among themselves that as soon as Zvi was cured and released from the hospital, they would hand him over to the church’s authority, but with G-d’s help, the conversation was overheard by a Jewish soldier who was visiting the hospital at the time, and who was already in contact with the ten-year-old boy Yosef Glicksberg, a strange relationship that may have been forged through Divine providence only for the purpose of saving Zvi Schreiber. The soldier went to the children’s camp and looked for his “friend” Yosef Glicksberg and told him about the Jewish toddler who might be handed over to foreign hands, G-d forbid.

Yosef did not waste any time. He crept into the hospital and searched the various wards for a long time until he found the three-year-old toddler sitting in his bed, carefree. He went up to him and asked him in Yiddish: “Yingaleh vi heisti?” (Child, what’s your name), and the boy answered him, “My nomen is Schreiber” (My name is Schreiber).

He suddenly remembered his friend Pinihaleh, “the Rebbe”, as they called him in the camp. He heard more than once from that tzaddik that had has a little brother who was at the edge of the camp and that he always tried to take care of him. Maybe this was the brother of the same Pinihaleh?

He asked the boy: “Perhaps you have a brother named Pinihaleh?”

“Takeh azoi” (indeed yes), the boy answered happily. He remembered his brother Pinihaleh whom he had not seen for a long time. A spark of joy lit up in his eyes. He missed his brother.

In a fit of madness, Yosef Glicksberg ran to his friend Pinihaleh. The ten-year-old Yosef told his friend about the information he received from his friend, the Jewish soldier, that the nurses intend to transfer Zvi to the church that day. From that moment, Pinihaleh acted without thought. He “flew” to the hospital, very quickly found his little brother, “pulled” him with strong forces from his room and the entire medical staff as if blinded. None of them saw Pinihaleh and his brother! From that day on, he did not leave his brother until the day when their feet stood on the ship that took them to the Land of Israel.

There, in the Atlit camp, a new chapter began in the struggle of the boy Pinchas Schreiber until his miraculous rescue by the emissaries of the great Jewish men, who discovered him among the group of war refugees and insisted on his greatness and holiness. He knew then, after years of war and bereavement, four Gemara tractates by heart!

About his hardships during the days of the voyage (“Like the journey of the Israelites in the desert, I went through arduous journeys with them, almost a quarter of the globe shook us…”) and about his war in the Land of Israel for the image of his theological Jewish character until his amazing reception into the Ponivezh Yeshiva, when he became a yeshiva student, until he qualified for the rank of one of the greatest Jewish men of the generation, will be elaborated upon in a separate article, G-d willing.