From Holocaust’s ruins, a life of learning and teaching

Burning conviction, faith in G-d, love of Torah and the will to live has driven Rabbi Chaim Aryeh Leib Schwartzblatt in all the years since he was forced by the Nazis from the ashes of his Polish town.

Schwartzblatt’s story, like those of many survivors, is worthy of a movie script. His vivid recounting of his flight as a boy from the Nazis, the loss of his family, hiding in a forest, joining Russian partisans, and building a life in America — including painful loses here as well — is a lesson in faith and perseverance.

His story was recorded by Steven Spielberg — he was interviewed for more than six hours — and he was part of the “Names not Numbers” movie, interviewed by high school students recording the story of Holocaust survivors as part of a Yeshiva University program.

Schwartzblatt, 84, one of the mashgichim (kashrut supervisors) at the JASA complex in Far Rockaway, was born in 1930 in Vladymiretz, Poland, a small town with a small Jewish population, near Brisk. He said that his grandfather, whom he is named after, was from Brisk. Chaim’s father, who Schwartzblatt said “could have been a rov,” was a businessman, and Chaim and his parents and two older sisters lived in an apartment, where he went to cheder, behind their general store. His father also went from town to town selling fabric; his mother was a tailor. Although the government was Polish, 98 percent of the town was Ukrainian, he said.

War swept through Europe and the Germans invaded up to Brisk in 1939; the Russians held Brisk.

“They were friendly,” he said of the Russians, and brought communism to the store making his father the manager even though he was the owner.

“We didn’t realize then how lucky we were to have the Russians and not the Germans.” They were told that the Nazis were killing the Jews. He said that in 1941 a Russian General commander was a traitor and told the Russians to clean all their weapons that day — the Germans invaded and the Russians fled, but many were shot by the invading Nazis. Some managed to flee and formed partisan groups to fight the Nazis.

The Jews were forced into a ghetto and made to wear a yellow circle on their front and back, “a target,” he said, “so they can shoot at the Jews if they try to escape the ghetto.” The Schwartzblatts were chased from their home into an apartment in the ghetto shared with three or four families. His father spoke many languages and was called in to the Nazis to collect gold from the Jews “if they want to stay alive.” Gold was collected a few times this way.

• • •

Two weeks before Rosh Hashana in 1942 — “I remember exactly,” he said, bitterly — “it was a Friday at 10 a.m., the 15th of Elul, a beautiful day. Some Germans came but mostly Ukrainians. We were told that the mayor of the town wants to talk to us. It seems my father knew that they were not talking. I saw he put on his tallis and tfilin to go to the place, the marketplace. They came into every house.”

He said that his mother fainted, and his father revived her and the family walked hand in hand saying the Shema.

“All our neighbor friends were celebrating like it was a big holiday — they knew what was happening and they were very happy. They would take our house.” Some were shot on the way if they stepped out of line as they were rushed to the site. “A lot of Jewish men had their talis and tefilin on,” he recalled.

The Germans separated those who said they knew a trade and some families gave their little children to those, “if they kill us the children will stay with them. And then Reb Aharon a very tall man with a beard yelled in Yiddish, ‘yidden! Jews, save yourselves! Start running!’ Some listened, some not.

• • •

“We started to run to the forest about a mile away, running, saying Shema, holding hands. The police started to chase us with guns and shooting. The Jews started dropping as they were being shot. My instinct was ‘don’t look around.’ I was running, saying Shema over and over.” They were using machine guns. And he kept running.

He saw one of the attackers was a Ukrainian friend who would visit and eat at his house and sit at the family table. “I didn’t see my father. I didn’t see my mother.” He collided with another young boy who had been shot in the leg and fell into a pigsty, rolling under the threshold and he lost his sister.

The Ukrainian who had shot his father and mother, the family friend, was looking for him. Chaim lay quietly, his hand on the other boy’s mouth to quiet his groans and tied his bleeding leg with a handkerchief. He saw the Nazi’s boots above on the door step and heard him say, “there is nothing here but pigs.” But then he heard his sister’s voice pleading with the Ukrainian not to kill her after he poked her with his bayonet.

“I’m doing you a favor,” he said, and shot her. His older sister, age 17, had been taken to work in Russia as a telephone operator when the Russians had invaded but at that point they thought that she was dead as well. He found out later that the remaining Jews were lined up on their knees by a pit dug four days before and shot in the head.

After the Nazis left the area, Chaim and the other boy, Sender Applebaum, staggered into the forest. Sender went to one of the huts in the forest to care for his leg. (Chaim never saw him again but found out later that he survived and moved to Israel.)

Chaim ran deeper into the forest, familiar with the area since he had accompanied his father on sales to the nearby villages after his day in cheder. He found a brook for water and stayed in the forest for a few days pleading for food from some Polish shepherds — until one of their fathers grabbed him and dragged him off, turning him over to the Ukrainian who killed his family in exchange for some salt.

The Ukrainian put a collar around his neck and tied him to his horse, forcing him to run or be dragged alongside for ten kilometers back to town. It was Thursday and he was thrown in prison to be killed the next day. As he lay in the cell, a bruised and bloodied non-Jew was thrown in, suspected by the Nazis of being a partisan though he wasn’t. Chaim davened and he fell asleep. His mother came to him in a dream, as clear “as if she was alive.” She said that he would be killed the next day and he had no time and must escape. He awoke and fell asleep again and she came again, urging him to take a stool from near the non-Jew and the matches from his pocket, go to the closed, barred window and escape.

“With Hashem’s help you’ll do it.”

He groped around in the dark, found the stool and the matches, set the stool by the window and pushed his way up. He forced the window open pushing his head between the bars, grasping the bars in both hands. He was stuck; the stool fell away and he was left hanging. He pulled on the bars — somehow they spread and he was able to squeeze his body through, sliding out the window onto the ground beneath and fainted. Outside stood a Nazi guard with a barking dog. The non-Jew woke up and shouted, “The little Jew escaped!”

Nazis ran into the cell and shouted to the guard outside to run down the street to catch him. Chaim came to and ran across the road into the brush and the forest beyond. “I heard the dog barking. I ran the whole night until I didn’t hear the dog. And then the shephard’s father grabbed me again.”

Chaim couldn’t understand why he was there — it was a different forest! “G-d wants you to stay alive,” said the man.

• • •

Chaim’s mother came to him in a dream that night as well, and told him where to meet Chaim to save him. The man convinced everyone in the village to take in Chaim for a day each so all would be implicated in his survival and none would dare give him away. This lasted a few months until the area was overrun by the Nazis.

Chaim ultimately sought out the partisans and their commander recognized him from his hometown and welcomed him. He became a messenger boy for them until after the war. He then found his sister in Tashkent in Uzbekistan — he was 16 and she was 21. She had lost touch with Judaism but under his guidance returned. He introduced her to someone he knew from his town whose father was a Stollener Chosid and who had learned in the Kletzker yeshiva. Rav Aharon Kotler sent visas for Chaim, his sister and her husband, Nissan Shor.

After learning in Lakewood, Rav Kotler advised them to seek a way to support a family and Shor opened a restaurant and catering business in Forest Hills, New Forest caterers.

Young Chaim sought a place to learn in the summer when he arrived but the yeshivas were closed. “I was very upset, in Europe there was no such thing as vacation from learning.”

• • •

He was tested by Rabbi Mendel Zacks, z”l, in Yiddish at Yeshiva University. He said that he learned in Yeshivas Sheayris Haplayta that traveled from Poland to Prague, Paris, back to Poland, and to the U.S. He pointed out that he learned Chumash with Rashi, Navi, davening, Shir Hashirim, Tehilim. Later, in yeshiva, he learned mishna and gemara. “I was so hungry for learning I learned Torah day and night.”

When Chaim began to “yell and cry” when he was told by Dr. Samuel Belkin, z”l, of Yeshiva University, after he passed his test, that school was closed for the summer, Belkin contacted Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky and attended Torah Vodaas’ camp. He received smicha (rabbinic ordination) from Rabbi Dovid Lifshitz a rosh yeshiva at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) at YU.

He said he always prepared for the shiur — he studied in Yiddish, and he was known as the “Kleine (little) Rebbe.” He worked in the diamond center at 47th Street, eight hours a day and studied education at night at the Herzliya teachers’ college in Manhattan and then went to Israel in 1958 for a one year scholarship to Hebrew University.

There, at a friend’s aufruf in Rishon Letzion, he led the davening and was approached by a man who asked him to marry his niece. “I had to teach her. She wasn’t religious enough.” They married in Israel in 1959 and returned to the States.

He taught for 40 years at Yeshiva Hudson County, and the Talmud Torah in Westchester and the Yonkers Jewish Center. Twenty years ago, a Rabbi Shulman in Far Rockaway asked him to be a mashgiach at the JASA houses where he is today.

Rabbi Schwartzblatt and his wife, Rivka Rachel, a”h, had three children. All three married and had children but one daughter died in a car accident. His son Berel, a member of Kehillas Bais Yehudah Tzvi in Cedarhurst, died, leaving three children.

• • •

Schwartzblatt narrates his story colorfully, animatedly yet modestly, almost as an observer of history and not as an active participant. He recounted in a tone of amazement that when he sat in a lecture on farming at Hebrew University he turned to see a man in shorts and an eye patch sitting beside him. “I said, ‘You look like Moshe Dayan.’ The man responded, ‘Zeh Hu’ (this is he).”

His deep understanding and love of davening and Torah study and the importance of teaching Torah continues to sustain him. The prayer before the Shema, he said, stresses “to learn and to teach, if it says to teach you have to teach! I brought a lot of people closer.”

He said that he was once in Israel with his son and his family, davening in an American minyan. “Abba,” said his son, “somebody is staring at you.”

After the davening the man approached and asked, “Were you ever a teacher in Yonkers? I was your student.”

“He hugged me. He became frum, made aliyah, studied in yeshiva in Yerushalayim, got smicha, koshered his parent’s kitchen and made them frum.

“He gave me credit for this.”