Belz (Hasidic Dynasty) - Escape From Belz

Escape From Belz

With the outbreak of World War II and the Nazi invasion of Poland (1939), the town of Belz was thrown into turmoil. From 1939 to 1944 it was occupied by Nazi Germany as a part of the General Government. Belz is situated on the left, north waterside of the Solokiya river (affluent of the Bug river), which was the German-Soviet border in 1939-1941.

Rabbi Aharon Rokeach, known as the "Wonder Rebbe" was at the top of the Gestapo's "wanted list" of rabbis targeted for extradition and extermination during the Nazi occupation of Poland. With cash inflow from Belzer Hasidim in Palestine, England and the United States, the Rebbe and his half-brother, Rabbi Mordechai of Bilgoray, 22 years his junior, managed to stay one step ahead of the Nazis in one miraculous escape attempt after another. Notwithstanding the watchful presence of Gestapo patrols at every turn, the pair was spirited out of Premishlan into the Kraków Ghetto, and then to the Bochnia ghetto. In their most hair-raising escape attempt, the brothers were driven out of occupied Poland and into Hungary by a Hungarian counter-intelligence agent who was friendly to Jews. The Rebbe, his brother, and his attendant, shorn of their distinctive beards and payot (sidelocks), were disguised as Russian generals who had been captured at the front and were being taken to Budapest for questioning.

Rebbe Aharon and Rabbi Mordechai spent eight months in Budapest before receiving highly-rationed Jewish Agency certificates to enter Palestine. In January 1944, they boarded the Orient Express to Istanbul. Less than two months later, the Nazis invaded Hungary and began deporting its 450,000 Jews.