Letter handwritten and signed by Rebbetzin Feigel Leibowitz, widow of R. Baruch Ber, dean of Kamenets yeshiva. [Raseiniai (Lithuania), ca. Nisan 1940]. Yiddish.

Written on the (rare) printed stationery of the yeshiva, from its exile in Raseiniai, Lithuania during the Holocaust, with an image of her husband and a blessing for the deceased.

Addressed to her cousin and her family in London – Rebbetzin Hendel Reizel Abramsky, wife of R. Yechezkel Abramsky, head of the London Beit Din. In this emotional letter she expresses her pain and describes her difficulties after the sudden passing of her illustrious husband, as well as her concerns for her orphan grandchildren raised in her home, and her distress that her husband could not accompany them to their marriage [her grandchildren Rivkah and Yeshayah remained in Lithuania and were murdered in the Holocaust].

Rebbetzin Feiga Leibowitz (1872-1944; perished in the Holocaust), daughter of R. Avraham Yitzchak Zimmerman Rabbi of Hlusk and Kremenchuk (ca. 1850-1917). Her mother was the daughter of the "Tzaddik of Mush" R. Yaakov Moshe Direktor Rabbi of Novaya Mysh (1809-1879), father of R. Yisrael Yehonatan Yerushalimsky Rabbi of Ihumen (1860-1917), father of Rebbetzin Reizel Abramsky – the recipient of the letter.

At the outbreak of World War II, the Kamenets yeshiva fled to Lithuania (at the beginning of the Holocaust, many yeshivas fled Poland, which had been occupied and partitioned by the Germans and Russians, for Vilna and other cities in independent Lithuania). The Kamenets yeshiva fled at that time to Vilna together with the yeshiva dean R. Baruch Ber Leibowitz. After the passing of the yeshiva dean in Vilna on 5th Kislev (17 November 1939), the yeshiva began to be directed by his son-in-law, R. Reuven, together with his brothers-in-law R. Moshe Bernstein and R. Yaakov Moshe Leibowitz and the mashgiach R. Naftali Ze'ev HaKohen Leibowitz (brother-in-law of R. Baruch Ber, son-in-law of R. Avraham Yitzchak Zimmerman, Rabbi of Kremenchuk). The yeshiva later relocated to Raseiniai, at the instruction of the authorities to spread the refugees throughout Lithuania. After the Russian occupation of Lithuania, her sons and sons-in-law escaped and reached the United States and Eretz Israel, but Rebbetzin Leibowitz remained in Lithuania together with her orphan grandchildren, mentioned in the present letter, and was eventually murdered in the Kovno ghetto in 1944. Some students of the Kamenets yeshiva managed to flee with the yeshiva deans or with the Mir yeshiva to Japan and Shanghai, while the others were massacred after the German conquest of Lithuania in summer 1941.

[1] leaf. Official stationery. 29 cm. Good-fair condition. Folding marks.