How a Leading Anti-Zionist Rabbi Betrayed His Community
The hypocritical actions of the Satmar Rebbe during the Holocaust
In the frum community, you hear the stories of gedolim (great rabbis) during the Holocaust. They are painted as fearless leaders who marched with their flocks into the gas chambers or miraculously rebuilt from nothing purely on the merit of their unbroken emunah. And some of these stories are true. But if you dig into the actual historical records, the truth is often much darker. Sometimes the revered tzadik (saint) who built a massive post war empire was, objectively speaking, incredibly selfish.
Take Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the famous Satmar Rebbe. Today, he is venerated as the ultimate unyielding leader of ultra Orthodoxy who built a massive, prosperous hasidus in America. He's also admired by some on the Jewish left for his antizionist theology. But during the Holocaust, his actions were anything but heroic. The historical record reveals a man whose self preservation consistently cost others their lives.
Even before the war, he was known for a relentlessly ambitious personality and a lust for power. When his father the Sighet Rebbe died, his older brother inherited the rabbinate of Sighet. His family exiled the jealous 17-year-old Yoel to Satmar to prevent him from interfering. Years later, when his brother passed away, he considered his family traitors for bypassing him again to appoint his 14-year-old nephew as the successor. He then engaged in six years of bitter relentless campaigns against his opponents in Satmar, whom he slandered both openly and surreptitiously, before securing the position of chief rabbi of Satmar in 1934.
Even after becoming religious leader, his primary concern was himself. When a virulently antisemitic government took power in Romania in 1937, he simply packed up and traveled to Czechoslovakia despite his kehillah (congregation) begging him not to abandon them in a time of crisis. Just a few weeks later, the Romanian king dissolved the antisemitic government. With the immediate threat over, Rabbi Teitelbaum returned home to his community in Satmar. When he got back, he gave a sermon to his congregation justifying his disappearance, making the claim that a Tzadik could only do his holy work if he was safe. This was a harbinger for what was to come.
As the terrifying reality of the Polish extermination camps reached Satmar in 1943, one man attempted to warn the Jewish residents of Satmar about the impending threat and urged them to escape. In response, the Satmar rebbe excommunicated him. Rabbi Teitelbaum himself cautioned his flock against trying to immigrate to Palestine or other countries, preaching that such a move would severely harm their strict Hasidic way of life.
Rabbi Teitelbaum did not just passively fail to help. He actively dismantled the escape routes others tried to build. At one crucial point, roughly forty rabbis recognized the impending doom and signed a desperate memorandum. This agreement would have integrated vulnerable Haredi (ultra Orthodox) Jews into the established Zionist underground networks, which were actively operating systems to help Jews hide and escape across the border. When Rabbi Teitelbaum found out about this life saving collaboration, he immediately stepped in to stop it. He appealed to the Central Bureau in Budapest and aggressively demanded that the Orthodox congregation in Oradea completely nullify the agreement. Because of his rigid ideological refusal to cooperate with Zionists, he deliberately severed a vital lifeline for his own community. He even refused to let other rabbinic leaders organize a public Taanis (fast day) to mourn and pray for salvation, worrying the government would see it as a political protest. He forced his community to stay quiet and reject the underground networks, paralyzing them right up until the moment he slipped away in the middle of the night to save himself.
As the Nazi threat closed in, his followers desperately tried to smuggle him out, but his rigid ego continually got in the way. At one point, a group prepared to cross the border into Romania, an escape route that saved over ten thousand Jews. The organizers sent a vehicle to collect him, but he refused to go, and because of his refusal, the entire plan was aborted, dooming the rest of the group. Another time, a plan was made to smuggle him to safety by train, but it required him to shave his beard and wear goyishe clothing. He refused to alter his appearance, killing that escape plan as well.
When he finally did escape his doomed congregation, it was in a bribed Red Cross ambulance with his wealthy followers. During the chaotic nighttime departure, the very man who organized the rescue and knew the location of their safe house was accidentally left behind. They did not turn back for him. Because they left their guide behind, they got lost, wandered the streets of Cluj, and were arrested and thrown into the Cluj ghetto.
In the horrific conditions of the brick factory ghetto, he showed no leadership or compassion. While regular Jews suffered, he demanded his food be prepared in entirely separate vessels to maintain his strict kashrus standards, despite the ghetto hosting a completely kosher kitchen. He hid from the public, spoke to few people, refused to serve as a chazzan for the makeshift synagogue, and begged his closest associates to pull strings to get him transferred to a more comfortable ghetto.
The most hypocritical part of his story is how he actually survived. He was a virulent anti-Zionist, preaching that collaborating with Zionist institutions was a grave sin. Yet, when the opportunity arose, he eagerly took a spot on the famous Kasztner train, a rescue transport organized and negotiated by the very Zionists he despised. On the train, leaving his community to be deported to Auschwitz, he spent the journey hiding in the corner of the last car behind cloth sheets hung from the ceiling, entirely shunning the other terrified passengers.
When the train was diverted to the Bergen-Belsen transit camp, his entitlement continued. While others suffered the brutal camp conditions, he was exempted from roll calls by a doctor, and volunteers performed all of his forced labor tasks. He refused to daven (pray) with the main camp minyan. In a display of profound arrogance, he even picked a fight with another captive rabbi, accusing him of giving a lenient psak (halachic ruling) despite the fact that they were literally in a Nazi camp!
After his release, he was brought to safety in Switzerland where he lived in a private apartment funded by his American followers. Even in safety, his refusal to play nice cost lives. He tried to track down Jewish orphans hidden with Christian families, but his main goal failed completely because his distaste for non Haredi organizations caused him to alienate the Joint Distribution Committee and Agudas Yisroel. Because of this pointless infighting, he failed to establish a rescue home for those children.
When the war was over, his ingratitude became absolute. He refused to send a single letter of thanks to the people or institutions who secured his rescue. Years later, when Israel Kasztner, the man whose train saved his life, was put on trial, Rabbi Teitelbaum flatly refused to testify on his behalf.
How did he justify all of this to his new followers in America? Well, he didn’t. Instead, he developed a radical theology claiming the Holocaust was God’s direct punishment for the sin of Zionism. He taught that Zionists violated the Shalosh Shevuot (Three Oaths) and that their push for a state was a collective kefirah (heresy) that brought down the harshest divine wrath. He literally wrote that Zionists were descendants of the Erev Rav and Amalek. He even blamed religious groups like Mizrachi and Agudas Yisroel, claiming they shared the guilt for the slaughter of six million Jews. He claimed his own personal survival was a pure miracle through the merit of Yaakov Avinu, while arguing that the Zionists were only saved by the Satan who was trying to glorify himself. He built an entire religious dynasty on blaming others, successfully using a total anti Zionist worldview to expunge his own historical failures and rewrite his cowardice as holy zealotry.¹
All the above details come from “Hast Thou Escaped and Also Taken Possession? The Responses of the Satmar Rebbe – Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum – and his Followers to Criticism of his Conduct During and After the Holocaust” by Menahem Keren-Kratz
1 comment:
When people tell me I disrespect him I point out that he told his followers never to make aliyah, told them to sit put and say tehillim and then got on a Zionist train and made aliyah.
No amount of Torah learning can kasher that much hypocrisy.
Post a Comment