Photos of Shanghai Students Discovered
When the Hamodia Newspaper landed in the homes of thousands of families last week, Lubavitchers were surprised to see ten photos of Chabad Tmimim in Shanghai, China. Making its way through social media since, the photos have brought shivers down the spines of many whose loved ones were photographed in the refuge city during WWII.
The students were a part of thousands of refugees that received Sugihara Visas to Japan during WWII.
“In mid-October of 1941, as they prepared to attack Pearl Harbor, the Japanese felt that it was time for the refugees to leave their country,” explains Dovid Zaklikowski, whose grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Meir Bukiet was one of the students of Lubavitch Yeshivah in Shanghai, “The only option for the Jews was to go to Shanghai, China, an international city that welcomed everyone.”
The story of the photos take us across the country to Portland, Oregon, where Rabbi Yehuda Oppenheimer served as the rabbi for eleven years, starting in 1994.
During that time he would drive cross-country, with his family, so that his kids could spend their summers in the New York Catskills.
On the way, after spending a few days at the Yellowstone National Park, they headed east and stayed overnight in Cody, Wyoming.
He was on line at a supermarket when a man approached him and asked in a deep Texas drawl, “Are you a Rabbi?”
Somewhat disturbed that he was being drawn out of “vacation mode,” he replied in the affirmative. After some “chit-chat,” he told the Rabbi Oppenheimer that he had been looking for a rabbi for years.
In 1944 young Max Krueger joined the U.S. Army Air Corp and served one year in India and one year in China. Among his duties in Shanghai was to take photographs of potential immigrants to America and. “Among the applicants were a bunch of rabbis who seemed oddly out of place in that city,” Mr. Krueger, who passed away in 2005, told the rabbi.
Nevertheless, Mr. Krueger went about his business and took the photos.
“Finding the subjects interesting, he retained copies of some of these photos,” Rabbi Oppenheimer says, “and reckoned that some rabbi might come along someday who would also find them interesting.”
The two exchanged information and said their goodbyes. Sometime later Rabbi Oppenheimer received an envelope with ten photos “of young scholars.”
All these years, Rabbi Oppenheimer thought that they were Mir bachurim, decades after he received them, he learned that in fact they are Lubavitchers.
Over the past few days, Chabad Lubavitch Archives, with the assistance of the descendants of the students who studied in Shanghai, Rabbis Shimon Raichik, Sholom Ber Tenenbaum, Yisroel Rubin and Yosef Landa, identified those photographed:
Here are the results:
1. R. Moshe Rubin
2. R. Shmuel Moshe Lederhandler
3. R. Chaim Ber Gulevsky
4. R. Yechezkel Deren
5. R. Leibish Probst
6. R. Mottel Bryski
7. R. Yosef Borenstein
8. R. Avraham Tzvi Landa
9. R. Gershon Chanowitz
10. R. Moshe feder or R. Hirshel Rubin
Please use the comments section to identify the others and correct any mistakes.
izzy rubin
#10 is Reb Hirshel Rubin definitely
#3 is probably Reb Moshe feder
A Montreal
I also agree that #3 looks like Reb Feder (the one who was the Ba’al Koreh at Congregation Lubavitch in Montreal.
names in Picture
Isn’t the bottom right in the group picture Reb Shmuel Tzvi (Hershel) Fox?
Izzy
No
It’s Reb Hirshel Rubin from Montreal
mention
hopefully the paper will identify them
One who knows
Picture number 2 is definitely Reb Pinya Blatt
49 yr in the hood
# 3 is moshe feder obm he had a kevias to learn with his neighbor across the street on kent with the famous Rabbi leib kramer obm
Yehuda
to # 7. I agree that #3 is Reb Moshe Feder a”h but he & Rabbi Kramer lived on the same side of the street.
Correction
#2 Pinchos Blatt, #3 Moshe Feder
chana k
I don’t know why Rabbi Oppenheimer thought that they were Mir bachurim,the MIrers were clean shaven!
Rev wolf
Living in mtl from r over a decade
I know that # 6 is definitely Reb Wolff Greenglass
Thank you