Shmuel Dovid Ungar

Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Ungar (1885–1945), also known as Rabbi Samuel David Ungar, was the rabbi of the Slovakian town of Nitra and dean of the last surviving yeshiva in occupied Europe during World War II. He was the father-in-law of Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, who relied on his guidance to contrive many schemes to rescue Slovakian Jewry from the Nazis.

Early life

Ungar was born in Piestany, Slovakia, where his father, Rabbi Yosef Moshe Ungar, was rabbi of the town. His father died when he was still a young child, and he became a frequent guest at the home of Rabbi Kalman Weber, who was appointed Rav of Piestany in his father's place.

After his bar mitzvah, Shmuel Dovid left home to study at the Preshov Yeshiva headed by his uncle, Rabbi Noach Baruch Fisher. Later, he studied at the Unsdorf Yeshiva. His uncle was so impressed with his comportment and his devotion to prayer that he took him as a son-in-law for his daughter, Miriam Leah.

Rabbi and rosh yeshiva

At the age of 21, Ungar became the Rav of Krompachy, Slovakia. Five years later, he moved to Trnava, an old and well-established Jewish community which he served for 15 years. It was during this tenure that he became known as one of the leading rabbis of Europe for his erudition and strict adherence to halakha. It was also during this time that Rabbi Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl joined his yeshiva and formed a lifelong attachment to him.

In 1931, Ungar was approached by the town of Nitra, which had recently lost its chief rabbi, Rabbi Avraham Aharon Katz, with a request that he head that community. To sweeten the offer, the community promised to help him expand its yeshiva under his leadership. Weissmandl tried to dissuade Ungar from accepting the offer, arguing that it would be a mistake to leave an established community like Tyrnau for Nitra, which was only about 200 years old and had 3,000 Jews. Ungar, however, said he would go. "My heart tells me that the day will come when there will be no yeshiva anywhere in Slovakia but Nitra, and I want to be there when that happens," he said presciently.

In Nitra, Ungar built up a yeshiva with nearly 300 students that eventually attracted students from all over the world. He developed a close and loving relationship with each student and kept the connection after they left, conducting an alumni reunion every five years. In 1937, Weissmandl married his Rav's daughter, Bracha Rachel, and became Ungar's right-hand man in all aspects of running the yeshiva.

Besides his position as the chief rabbi of Nitra, Ungar was appointed vice president of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, the supreme religious body of World Agudath Israel, in 1935.

World War II

Jewish persecution began even before World War II in Slovakia, where the Munich Agreement of 1938 carved Czechoslovakia into separate states. Slovakia became a totalitarian state run by the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso, who allied with Nazi Germany and supported discrimination against his country's Jews. In 1942, deportations from Slovakia to Auschwitz via Lublin began. The first Jews were forced to leave Nitra on the Shabbat after Passover.

Ungar could have left Slovakia to save his life, but he refused to desert his community and his yeshiva. Defying a Nazi order to remain at home on that first day of deportations, Ungar walked to the synagogue to spend the third meal of Shabbat with his flock.

After 58,000 Jews had been expelled from Slovakia, Weissmandl, in conjunction with the Working Group that he and other activists had established to try to save Slovakian Jewry, attempted one of the most ambitious rescue schemes of the Holocaust. With a $50,000 bribe to Dieter Wisliceny (Adolf Eichmann's deputy in the Jewish Section of the Reich Security Main Office and adviser on Jewish affairs to the Slovak government), the Working Group managed to halt the deportations until 1944.

Weissmandl also intervened with the Slovakian government to let the Nitra Yeshiva continue to function as the only legal yeshiva in the country during the next two years. To assist students who were still being accosted and sent to forced labor camps, the yeshiva constructed hiding places under the bimah and above bookcases in its study hall in the event of Nazi raids. Often the warning came at such short notice that Talmuds would be left lying open on the tables as everyone fled and hid. Despite these disruptions, Ungar continued to teach and give weekly examinations as usual.

In hiding

In August 1944, the Nazis crushed a revolt by Slovakian partisans who had never supported the Nazi Slovakian regime, and the German army entered and occupied the country. Deportations to Auschwitz resumed in greater intensity than before. The Nitra Yeshiva was liquidated on September 5, 1944. By September 17, every remaining Jew in Nitra had been deported.

Ungar and one of his sons, Sholom Moshe, who had been vacationing in the forests of the Zobor Mountain near Nitra, remained there and hid from the Nazis in mountain caves, subsisting on starvation rations. Ungar kept a diary in which he recorded his travails and prepared his spiritual will.

Another son of Ungar, Benzion, the Rav of Piestany, was taken to a prison camp in Sered, where he was murdered by Slovakian military police.

Throughout that winter of hiding in the forest, Ungar scrupulously observed every detail of halakha even though he was starving to death. On one occasion he received some grapes, but would not eat them immediately; he insisted on saving them to make Kiddush on Shabbat. While terror and fear were others' constant companions, he was concerned with how to fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the shofar blasts on Rosh Hashanah.

He finally died of starvation on February 21, 1945 (9 Adar 5705). He instructed his son where and how to bury him, said his last viduy (confession), and died. After the war, his son re-interred him in Piestany, his birthplace, next to the grave of his father.

His many Torah writings were lost during the war, save for a small volume entitled Ne'os Desheh ("Lush meadows," a line from Psalm 23; the second word in Hebrew, דשא, contains his initials, שמואל דוד אונגר).

After the war, Weissmandl and Ungar's surviving son, Sholom Moshe, founded a new Nitra Yeshiva at Mount Kisco, New York.