Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam - in The DP Camps

In The DP Camps

In fall 1945, Halberstam moved to the new DP camp of Föhrenwald, a larger location in Munich which he turned into the center of religious Jewish life for all the DP camps. Here the Rebbe created a communal survivors organization called She'aris Hapleitah ("the surviving remnant"), which operated religious schools for boys and girls and yeshivos for young men in 19 different DP camps. In addition, Halberstam set up a kosher slaughterhouse; built a kosher mikveh; acquired and distributed religious articles such as tzitzit, tefillin and mezuzot; raised money to help couples marry; and established Halakhic (Jewish legal) guidelines for men and women who had no proof of their spouse's death, enabling them to remarry and start new families.

On Yom Kippur, 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the camps and came to see Halberstam, who had received a reputation as a "wonder rabbi". However, the Rebbe would not speak with him until he had finished his prayers. Afterwards he told the general, "I was praying before the General of Generals, King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He. The earthly general had to wait." Impressed by the rabbi's leadership and frankness, Eisenhower asked him if there was any way he could help him in his efforts. In typical fashion, Halberstam asked for a small sample of the Four Species so that the survivors could properly celebrate the upcoming Sukkot holiday.

In spring 1946 the Rebbe made a special fund-raising trip to New York on behalf of She'eris HaPleita, raising $100,000, a huge sum in those days. That fall, he embarked on another fund-raising trip and decided to resettle in New York to strengthen the American Jewish community there and to continue working for Holocaust survivors from that side of the Atlantic. He established his court in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.