Rabbi Shlomo Wahrman

• The library of Rabbi Shlomo Wahrman A"H
• Reminiscences of Rabbi Shlomo Wahrman: Torah and Ahavat Yisrael
• Book Review: Rabbi Shlomo Wahrman, Lest We Forget: Growing up in Nazi Leipzig 1933-1939.

Rav Shlomo Wahrman was born and grew up in Leipzig, Germany. In 1939, at the age of twelve, he and his Polish-born parents and his siblings received American visas and found peace and a life of relative safety away from the clutches of the Nazi regime. On these shores, Rav Wahrman lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he grew close to the legendary Rav Leizer Silver zt”l, who he considered his rebbi muvhak. Due to Rabbi Silver’s insistence and encouragement, Rabbi Wahrman honed his writing skills and recorded his copious chidushei Torah. He later moved east and became a well recognized mechanech, educator, advisor, talmid chochom and mechaber seforim.

He served as rosh yeshiva of Hebrew Academy of Nassau County (HANC) and authored Sheairis Yosef and other seforim. The glowing approbations of the gedolei yisroelgracing these seforim attest to his premier standing in the ranks of talmidei chachamim. Yet, Rabbi Wahrman acted always with great humility, simplicity, and, with his signature smile and wit, made everyone feel comfortable in his presence.

In Lest We Forget: Growing up in Nazi Leipzig 1933-1939, published in 1991 by ArtScroll Mesorah Publications, Rav Wahrman shares an account of life in Leipzig in the 1930s, portraying the impact of Nazi policies on a thriving Jewish community that peaked at 18,000 in 1935 before declining to around 6,000 in1939, when Rav Wahrman left the city for New York.

Rav Wahrman’s story of the six years during which he lived under Nazi rule provides an honest account of the persecution suffered by average Jewish citizens on a day-to-day basis, intensifying in stages as the Nazis legislated and then consolidated. Rav Wahrman tells of the impact of different Nazi acts, such as the decision to forcibly expel Jews of Polish nationality from Germany in 1938. While in accord with our general knowledge of Nazi acts against Jews, Rav Wahrman reveals the fact that the Nazis took the decision when they did in response to a Polish law of March 1938, stripping expatriate Poles of their citizenship if they had lived outside Poland for more than five years. The Nazis saw the Polish law as aimed at Polish Jews abroad, and the Nazi expulsion of Jews was an attempt to repatriate them before the Polish law came into force. Another revealing fact mentioned by Rav Wahrman is that only the Polish Jews who held Polish nationality were expelled by the Nazis. Polish Jews like his parents who were statenlos (‘stateless’) were not targeted.

Rav Wahrman’s story succeeds not only in relaying the nature of the Nazi regime – one which, while we need reminding of it, has nonetheless been told many times – but also frames it within the international context of general anti-Semitism, demonstrating the ugly side of Polish policy in the 1930s too, and within Nazi legalism, seeing Jews of Polish nationality expelled but Polish Jews without nationality being exempted.

Furthermore, he portrays the struggle of the average Leipzig Jew, such as when 1300 Polish Jews were harbored in the Polish consulate in Leipzig, a building designed to house 30 or 40 consular officials, and those not threatened by expulsion, like him and his mother, spending all day preparing food and delivering it to the consulate. The expulsion of Polish Jews continued for a number of days in October 1938 until the Polish and German governments reached a compromise, and Polish citizens abroad were not automatically stripped of their nationality.

Rav Wahrman related that, as an eleven year old, he was excited by the Austro-German Anschluss, as the Austrian football team contained several of the best players in Europe, and he looked forward to seeing the German national team made up of the cream of the two countries’ talent. On the other hand, he also records his efforts to obtain players’ autographs following a match between Tura Leipzig and Dresden S. C. As he wore his Jewish school cap, most of the players ignored him, though the star turn, Helmut Schoen, showed friendliness and provided a few kind words and an autograph.

In summation, Rav Wahrman’s memoir puts flesh and blood onto the bones of Jewish experience during the Holocaust. He reveals how Jewish life in Leipzig went from a thriving community to daily irritation following the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, before the events of Kristallnacht led Jews to see emigration as essential rather than simply being preferable to life under the Nazis.

Rav Wahrman concludes his book with powerful words: “All these events have delivered a powerful message to me. Any Jewish city anywhere could potentially suffer Leipzig’s fate, chas v’shalom. There is no safety and security for us in galus, even in a democracy. The German Weimar Republic was a democracy, yet it could not prevent the emergence of a Hitler. When the anti-Semites so decreed, Leipzig, a city of 18,000 Jews, became Judenrein.”

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