Joseph Isaac Schneersohn
The response of the sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn to the Holocaust has been condemned from a number of quarters. Bryan Mark Rigg wrote his PhD thesis on the subject at Cambridge University. He quotes Rabbi Alex Weisfogel, secretary of Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz of the Vaad Hatzalah as saying that Kalmanowitz and Aaron Kotler were appalled at Schneersohn's focus on "bringing the messiah" while the war continued.
| “ | He was a moral failure at this time to condemn us and the Jewish people as a whole for the Holocaust when he in turn did hardly anything except rescue his books and few students' lives. | ” |
Rigg argues that while "he employed every means possible to escape Europe, when he arrived in the US, he did not approach those very same people to help rescue those who had to remain in Europe. However, he did approach those people in the government to rescue his library, which he did get out in 1941. Also he started condemning people who were organizing amazing rescue efforts like rabbis Kotler and Kalmanowitz of the Vaad-Hatzala".
Others contend that Rabbi Aharon Kotler was using funds raised to rescue Jews to fund his Yeshiva and that is why the Mizrachi and Agudas Harabobnim withdrew from the Vaad after they discovered this. Rabbi Schneerson did not participate in his Vaad in the first place perhaps because Rabbi Kotler was his opponent back in Europe for whatever reason and told hundreds of Yeshiva students not to go to the Far East (where their lives would have been saved) reportedly because Rabbi Schneerson instructed those who would listen to him go.
He forbade his followers from leaving Russia in the 1920s and 1930s, declaring that those who did were "deserters". Chabad scholar Avrum Erlich writes:
| “ | In Yosef Yitzhak’s case, the consequences of staying in the Soviet Union were disastrous for the obedient Hasidim; moreover, as there was little for those who stayed to do, their sacrifice was largely in vain. While he prevented his followers from leaving Russia, Yosef Yitzhak himself eventually migrated to the United States, long after it became impossible for many of his followers to escape Communist persecution. | ” |
However, Chabad sources state that recently uncovered documents show that Schneersohn immediately began lobbying for assistance to Jews in the Nazis' path. According to Chabad he petitioned ambassadors and politicians in London and New York for relief packages to be sent to the Jewish communities in the western parts of what is today the former Soviet Union. His letters were co-signed by Rabbi Jacob Rosenheim, then-president of the Agudath Israel World Organization.
Read more about this topic: Chabad-Lubavitch Related Controversies