![]() ![]() One was the rov of the town, Rav Eliezer Paltiel Rothblatt, who was appointed rov of Siennica while still in his twenties. The saga of Siennica is chronicled by two rabbonim who were present at the scene they were among the very few Polish rabbonim to survive the Holocaust. ![]() These simple folk, tormented with fear for themselves and their families, could have allowed self-interest to guide them but they did not choose this easier path. ![]() Many of these dilemmas pitted self-interest against Torah ethics and obligations. The story of this shtetl shines a light on how ordinary Jews turned to their rabbonim in those dark days for life-and-death questions that confronted them. Siennica was occupied by the Germans in 1939, after their lightning conquest of Poland which set the stage for the Nazi slaughter of more than three million Polish Jews. ![]() More than half of the town’s population was Jews. One of these accounts unfolds in Siennica, a Polish shtetl of about 1000 people, southeast of Warsaw. Esther Farbstein, first-person accounts bring the reader into the heart of some of these wrenching quandaries. In “Hidden in Thunder: Perspectives on Faith, Halacha and Leadership,” by Prof. Holocaust memoirs record many situations in which a Jew or group of Jews found themselves in unprecedented moral dilemmas that tested every drop of their spiritual fiber. ![]()
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