“My Name is Moshe Kotlarsky, and I Am Here on A Mission From the Lubavitcher Rebbe”

This story was shared at the Maimonides Hebrew Day School dinner in Albany this week in tribute to Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky OBM, sharing a revealing glimpse in his work for the Rebbe.

Rabbi Kotlarsky had a favorite story he loved to share about his work.

Once, he received a phone call from Rabbi Hodakov, the Rebbe’s senior secretary. “Wash your hands,” he said (a code indicating the Rebbe was listening to the conversation). “The Rebbe wants you to go to Curacao immediately.”

With no further instructions, Rabbi Kotlarsky, being a dedicated Chassid, booked the first flight to Curacao.

Upon arrival in Curacao, he hailed a cab and asked to be taken to the synagogue, expecting to find someone who knew the Jewish community there.

Curacao is home to the famous synagogue, Mikvah Israel Emanuel, the oldest in the Western Hemisphere. However, the taxi driver took Rabbi Kotlarsky to Shaarei Tsedek, a small neighborhood synagogue instead.

As he got out of the taxi, he noticed a man walking out of the synagogue. Rabbi Moshe approached him. “My name is Moshe Kotlarsky, and I am here on a mission from the Lubavitcher Rebbe,” he said. “Do you happen to know the local Jewish community?”

“What did you say?” the man replied in disbelief. “Who sent you here? Did you say the Lubavitcher Rebbe?”

The man, Chaim Groisman, was visiting the synagogue due to a crisis his family was experiencing. His son, Eli, attended the only local school, a Protestant institution. Eli, a proud Jew, refused to participate in religious classes, leading to hostility from teachers and students. Eventually, Eli left the school, leading to legal issues as local laws mandated school attendance. The relationship with the local community also became strained.

One night, Chaim dreamed about his deceased grandmother. “My love,” she told him, “if you are in trouble, go to the Lubavitcher Rebbe!” This was the first time Chaim had heard of the Rebbe.

The following morning, he decided to visit the synagogue, opened the ark, and poured out his heart to G-d, pleading for a miracle. When he finished, he walked outside and met Rabbi Kotlarsky.

Rabbi Kotlarsky spent hours with the Groisman family, answering many questions. He suggested that Eli move to New York to attend a Jewish school. For Eli, it was a dream come true.

After this encounter, Chaim Groisman wrote a thank-you letter to the Rebbe, signing it as “a small Jew from Curacao.”

In his reply, the Rebbe thanked him for the letter “I was pleased to receive regards from our esteemed mutual friends.”  but added, “I must, however, take exception to your referring to yourself as ‘a small Jew from Curacao.’ There is surely no need to emphasize to you at length that every Jew, man or woman, has a Nefesh Elokis, which is a ‘part of G-dliness Above,’ as explained in the Tanya, beginning of chapter two. Thus, there is no such thing as ‘a small Jew,’ and a Jew must never underestimate his or her tremendous potential.”

To note: the family name is Groisman literally “Great man”, the Rebbe saw what others  may overlook that family name itself was the message they needed to hear. As Eli Groisman the boy relates:

My father told Rabbi Kotlarsky about our family’s plight and introduced me to him. My first question to Rabbi Kotlarsky was: “Are you allowed to defend yourself if someone comes up and punches you?” I had formed an impression from the movies and TV shows I had seen about the Holocaust that Jews were weak and did not fight back when attacked. Rabbi Kotlarsky responded, “You make sure that you defend yourself and do such damage that they won’t come back to you!” I thought this Rabbi was cool.

Rabbi Kotlarsky invited me to go to New York and attend Camp Gan Israel in the Catskills that summer and later to Yeshivah, which started in September. This was the answer to my prayers, and I accepted the offer immediately.

I would like to thank the Rebbe for caring for me and my family. We should all take his example on how one should care for a fellow Jew. It doesn’t have to be a Jew in far-off Curacao; it could be someone right around the corner. Surely, by following the Rebbe’s example, we will all merit the revelation of Moshiach.

Another note: Where was this all taking place in Curacao.

The small island that had a vital role to help save thousands of Jews during the Holocaust including including Rabbi Kotlarsky’s own father and many Chassidim.

Although they didn’t actually go to Curacao it saved many Jews from physical danger. Forty later in 1984 Rabbi Kotlarsky was sent by the Rebbe to Curacao to save Jews from spiritual danger completing that circuit trip; a sense of Hakaras Hatov to this island that had a role to save so many Jews.

In September of 2017, with the help of Rabbi Kotlarsky, Rabbi Refoel and Chani Silver moved to Curaçao to establish Chabad of Curaçao and serve as Rabbi and Rebbitzen of Shaarei Tsedek. The same shul  (now it built a new building) that Rabbi Kotlarsky met Mr. Groisman that fateful morning.

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The back story.

How this all began: Nathan Lewin’s mother kept up with the news. Unlike other Jews in Poland, she had been born in the Netherlands, and even attended the University of Berlin, before marrying a Polish Jew — Lewin’s dad — and immigrating. Because of this experience, she was perhaps more aware than others around her of the threat of Adolf Hitler.

When Hitler invaded in September 1939, they did just that. Lewin, then 3 years old, was “carried in the night through the forest” to Lithuania with his parents, maternal grandmother and an uncle. But Lewin’s mother knew they still weren’t safe. A Dutch diplomat told the family they would be allowed into Curaçao without visas, but they still needed a transit visa from another country to get there.

The Dutch consul in Kovno, Jan Zwartendijk, was persuaded to stamp the passports with the phrase “Valid only for Curaçao,” thus arranging for entry to the Dutch controlled island of Curaçao, in the Caribbean. There would’ve been no Jewish refugees in Japan if it weren’t for Jan Zwartendijk. He started the whole thing. Without him, Sugihara could never have given visas.  Before Sugihara gave them transit visas, Zwartendijk gave the same Jewish refugees destination visas to Curacao, then a Caribbean island colony of the Netherlands.

The number of visas Sugihara issued jumped exponentially on July 29, 1940, when hundreds of Jews who had escaped to Vilna learned of Lewin’s mother’s successful effort. They crowded outside the Japanese consulate in Kovno (Kaunas in Lithuanian) hoping Sugihara would issue them a visa. Sugihara worked around the clock for a month, issuing 2,139 visas, including to whole families. These enabled the refugees to take the trans-Siberian railroad from Moscow to Vladivostok, and then travel by boat from Russia to Japan, supposedly en route to Curacao.