Yossele Schumacher Affair - Abduction

Abduction

Schuchmacher was born in Russia and immigrated to Israel as a child with his parents. Due to financial difficulties, his parents requested that Yossele's Haredi grandparents, Nachman and Miriam Straks, take care of him. After a few months the father decided that he wanted to move back to Russia. Yossele's grandparents were aghast and were determined that Yossele not go back.

Fearing that the Schuchmachers might end up in Russia, the Orthodox community of Jerusalem took the boy from his grandparents and hid the boy in 1960 with another Haredi family in Bnei Brak.

In the shadow of a court order for his return and a possible police search, the rabbis of the Jerusalem Orthodox community disguised Schuchmacher as a girl and placed him the care of a Frenchwoman and convert to Judaism named Ruth Ben-David (then Madeleine Feraille, later well known for her controversial marriage to Rabbi Amram Blau), who took him with her to Europe. Schuchmacher would spend two years total in France and Switzerland under her care.

By this time, authorities in Israel had increased their search efforts, leading Ben-David to again disguise Schumacher as a girl and smuggle him into the United States in March 1962. There he was hidden in the apartment of a Haredi woman named Mrs. Gertner at 126 Penn St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Subsequently the family changed Schuchmacher's name to Yankele Frenkel and kept him indoors, holding him from the time he arrived in March until August 1962.