by Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com
Boruch Hashem, there are now Beis Yaakov’s across the country and across the world. It was a movement that was started, of course, by Sara Schenirer a”h. But the Shanghai Bais Yaakov was one of the first that existed outside of a a world that was no more.
Featured here is a picture of the students. The teachers were all students of Sara Schenirer a”h herself. They themselves were married to Mir Talmidim. And they taught these young girls – who moved on to build remarkable Torah homes.
Some married Roshei Yeshiva. Some are our mothers. And some are our grandmothers and great-grandmothers.
But it would be rather fantastic if we could crowdsource this picture and try to identify each of these young ladies and the Moros who taught them.
These were the heroines who built the Torah world that we now live in. Just for hakaras hatov it would be great to identify them all.
If you can, please forward any identifying information and details of where they went afterward, who they married and what they were zocheh to build.
Who knows? Maybe two chevrusos learning across from each other in Mir Yerushalayim, Lakewood, Mir Brooklyn, or any other Yeshiva each had great-grandmothers in this photograph. Maybe we can get a page written up for each of them and put out their story. And maybe we can print up some sort of history of it all, like they do for the great Yeshivos.
So if you have any information, please forward it to the author below. Thank you!
The author can be reached at [email protected]
POST SCRIPT: Wow what a reaction!
The building in the back is the Heim – named by the German Jews who came after ’39. To the right of the two girls holding the sign B10- is Faigeleh Nayman a”h . B13 Sarale Garfinkel. B14 Sarake Hirshfeld shetichya who lived in Lawrence, next to her is Rebbitzen Esther Levin B15, a Ginsburg and a granddaughter of Rav Chatzkel Levenstein. B16 is Rachel Lopian daughter of Rav Mendel Kaplan, a student of Rav Elchonon Wasserman hy”d.
D10 is Rebbitzen Chaya Small. B7 is Esther Gurelick (Rav Yeruchem’s wife). C2 is Chalata Eisenberg. E6 is Esther Poupko (sister of Rebbitzen Chaya Small). G2 is Cyril Kaplan. D12 is Balgelay.
The teacher in white in the third is Rebbitzen Esther Bakst shetichya – daughter of R’ Mordechai Rogov.. More to come.. B’Ezras Hashem..
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5 Responses
The pic is very sharp considering how long ago it was taken
This picture is also found on the website page of Keren Hayeled .org /founders
It is described: Rebbetzin Godlewsky with the girls of Keren Hayeled in the early days of the institution.
The students can be seen holding a sign “Bais Yaakov” yet it is captioned as the girls of Keren Hayeled.
Any explanation?
So who’s wearing a sheitel?
The post stated that these were the heroines. In my opinion 99% of the Chasdei H resurgence we see today is from those families that did not make it out of Europe.
The real heroes and heroines are those that survived the worst of the shoah, left the concentration camps and raised generations of frum descendents.
My mother a’h came from a neologue (reformed) family of Hungary, freed from Aushwitz and married my father a’h who converted her to orthodoxy with a high level of emunah and betochan, they both passed on in the U.S. My father had a wife and children who died in Aushwitz and she was a sister to my mother.