I hate to be the spoilsport but some of these alte heim beliefs don’t hold up under closer examination. The “world that we lost” was already being lost, well before the Holocaust, despite the best efforts of the Gedolim.
Assimilation had been thwarted in Eastern Europe because government laws kept Jews essentially poor and confined to the shtetl, where they were more easily influenced by the Gedolim to stay frum.
However, by the end of the 1800’s, more and more shtetl youth, no longer banned by government, were leaving for the big cities, attracted by the isms ( socialism, anarchism, communism, Zionism ) . Assimilation was growing .The communist party and other radical groups were full of Jews who grew up in frum homes. If the Holocaust had not occurred, Eastern European Jewry was well on it’s way to looking like Western Europe. There are many family bare headed on line depicting the generational change going on ( fathers with long beards and mothers with hats; sons who are cleanshaven and bareheaded )
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