R' Chaim Yisroel Eiss

Chaim Yisroel Eiss Hebrew: חיים ישראל אייז‎ (1876-1943) was an Agudath Israel activist and writer. He also was among the founders of the Agudath Israel in 1912. During the First World War, Rebbe Eiss set up an aid system that located refugees, found out what they most needed and raised the required funds. During World War II, he worked on behalf of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe and he was a member of the Bernese Group also called as Ładoś Group.

Chaim Yisroel Eiss was born in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, in the town of Ustrzyki Dolne, now Poland; as one of 11 children of Rebbe Moshe Nissan Eiss and his wife Myria née Kessler. He was the only one of the children to survive an epidemic of diphtheria, an illness for which there was no treatment at the time. After the death of his other children, his father Rebbe Moshe Nissan Eiss took young Yisroel to the Sadigora Rebbe who blessed him and gave him an additional name, Chaim.

Eiss got no secular education. ‘I taught myself to write at a later age. I did not learn any trade either as my father wanted me to be a rabbi. For this reason, I then only completed Jewish religious studies’, he declared in 1943. In 1900, he moved to Switzerland and came to Zurich where he wanted to study. However, having no money, he started working as a door-to-door vendor. Later, in 1901, Eiss acquired his own shop.

Later on he married Adele Holles. The couple had 10 children.

Further reading;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Yisroel_Eiss

Haim Yisrael Eiss was one of the most productive rescue activists during the Holocaust. He was originally from Galicia and lived for most of his life in Zurich. Eiss left the Mizrachi religious Zionist movement and was among the founders of Agudath Israel in 1912. He began assisting Jews to leave Germany and Austria in the 1930s, and after the war broke out he devoted most of his time, gratis, to rescuing Jews from the Nazis. Eiss was appointed by the Executive Committee of Agudath Israel World Organization to work together with the Geneva delegation of the Jewish Agency for Palestine toward rescue. However, friction among rescue workers led Eiss to operate independently. His main rescue activity revolved around procuring passports for Jews in ghettos. After acquiring the passports from South American consuls in Bern (usually for a fee), he sent copies to their destinations via couriers or the post. The author estimates that Eiss sent hundreds of passports, although most of the people for whom they were destined did not survive, as happened with other rescue efforts as well. Eiss passed away in November 1943, at the peak of his work, and having won widespread admiration during his life from various rescue activists from other movements.

From yadvashem.org

Photo colorized using: https://www.myheritage.co.il/incolor

• Reference: Famous People Throughout History - SmartCopy: Jun 30 2020, 20:45:16 UTC