Rav Shmuel Dovid HaLevi Ungar of Nitra

Early years

Rav Shmuel Dovid Ungar zt"l, the Rav of Nitra and rosh yeshiva (head of the yeshiva) of the Nitra Yeshiva, was born on 23 November 1885 in Piešťany, Slovakia, then known as Pöstyén. He was the only son of Rav Yosef Moshe Ungar (1855–1897), the rav of the town, and a descendant of the Abrabanel.

His father passed away when he was eleven years old. Rav Kalman Weber, who was appointed to succeed his father as rav of Pöstyén, welcomed the boy into his home again and again.

After his bar mitzvah he left home to learn in the yeshiva of Prešov, which was headed by his uncle, Rav Noach Baruch Fisher. He later learned in Unsdorf under Rav Shmuel Rosenberg. He married his first cousin, Miriam Leah, the daughter of Rav Noach Baruch.

Torah and leadership

At twenty-one, Rav Shmuel Dovid became rav of Korompa (today Krompachy), where he also founded a yeshiva. Five years later he was invited to serve as rav and rosh yeshiva of Nagyszombat (today Trnava), an old and established Jewish community, and he held that post for fifteen years. During those years he became known across Europe as one of its leading rabbanim, admired for his depth of learning and his careful halachic observance.

It was in Nagyszombat that Rav Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl joined his yeshiva and formed a lifelong bond with him. In 1937 Rav Chaim Michael Dov married the Rav's daughter, Bracha Rachel, and became his right hand in running the yeshiva.

In 1931 the community of Nitra, which had lost its chief rav, Rav Avrohom Aharon Katz, asked him to take the position. They also promised to help him build up the yeshiva there. Rav Chaim Michael Dov urged him to refuse, since Nagyszombat was long established while Nitra was only about two hundred years old and had three thousand Jews. The Rav chose to go. He said that he sensed a day was coming when Nitra would hold the only yeshiva left in Slovakia, and he wanted to be there when it came.

In Nitra he built a yeshiva of nearly three hundred talmidim, who came from Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria and Germany. He taught in the classic Hungarian style brought by the Chasam Sofer. He had not set out to train rabbanim, yet a number of his talmidim became prominent rabbanim in their home towns. He kept a close, warm relationship with each talmid, stayed in touch after they left, and held a reunion of alumni every five years.

Besides serving as chief rav of Nitra, he was appointed in 1935 as a vice president of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah (Council of Torah Sages), the senior religious body of World Agudath Israel. He also played a limited role in the efforts of the Bratislava Working Group to rescue Slovak Jews.

The war years

Persecution of Jews in Slovakia began even before the war. After the Munich Agreement of 1938 divided Czechoslovakia, Slovakia became a totalitarian state led by the priest Jozef Tiso, who allied himself with Nazi Germany and supported discrimination against the Jews. In 1942 deportations to Auschwitz, by way of Lublin, began. The first Jews were sent from Nitra on the Shabbos after Pesach.

Rav Shmuel Dovid could have left Slovakia to save himself, but he would not abandon his community or his yeshiva. On that first day of deportations the Nazis ordered him to stay at home. He walked to the shul anyway, to eat the third meal of Shabbos (seudah shlishis) with his flock.

After 58,000 Jews had been expelled from Slovakia, Rav Chaim Michael Dov and the Working Group he had helped found attempted one of the boldest rescue plans of the Holocaust. They paid a bribe of $50,000 to Dieter Wisliceny, Adolf Eichmann's deputy for Jewish affairs in the Reich Security Main Office and an adviser on Jewish affairs to the Slovak government. The payment halted the deportations until 1944.

Rav Chaim Michael Dov also persuaded the Slovak government to let the Nitra Yeshiva keep functioning, and for the next two years it was the only legal yeshiva in the country. It became known as the last surviving yeshiva in occupied Europe. Because students were still being seized and sent to forced labor camps, the yeshiva built hiding places beneath the bimah and above the bookcases in the beis medrash. Warnings of raids sometimes came with so little time that Gemaros were left open on the tables as everyone ran to hide. Even so, Rav Shmuel Dovid went on teaching and giving his weekly examinations as usual.

In hiding

In August 1944 the Germans crushed a revolt by Slovak partisans and occupied the country, and deportations to Auschwitz resumed with greater intensity than before. The Nitra Yeshiva was liquidated on 5 September 1944, and by 17 September every Jew still in Nitra had been deported.

Rav Shmuel Dovid, his son Sholom Moshe and Rav Meir Eisler had been staying in the forests of the Zobor Mountain near Nitra. When they heard that the yeshiva had been liquidated, they did not go back. They made their way to Bistritz, which was under partisan control, but when the Germans attacked it the following month they fled, and spent the winter hiding in mountain caves on starvation rations. The Rav kept a diary of his hardships and prepared his spiritual will.

Throughout that winter, though he was starving, he kept halacha with great care. He would not eat bread or milk from non-Jews, and would not eat bread at all when there was no water for netilas yadayim (ritual hand-washing). When he was given some grapes, he set them aside to eat on Shabbos. While fear gripped those around him, he was troubled about how he would be able to hear the shofar on Rosh Hashanah.

Later years and passing

Rav Shmuel Dovid passed away from starvation in Adar 5705 (February 1945). Before the end he instructed his son where and how to bury him, and recited viduy (the final confession).

After the war his son brought him to rest again in Piešťany, his birthplace, beside the kever of his father.

Legacy

Two of his sons, Sholom Moshe (1916–2003) and Yaakov Yitzchok, survived the war, as did his daughter Chaya Nechama, who married Rav Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam, the Klausenberger Rebbe, in America in 1947. Another son, Rav Benzion, the rav of Piešťany, was taken to a prison camp in Sereď and murdered there by Slovak military police. The Rav's rebbetzin, Miriam Leah, was also murdered, along with many other family members. His son-in-law, Rav Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, survived.

His Torah writings were saved by a non-Jewish woman, who handed them to Rav Sholom Moshe after the war. They were published as Neos Deshe ("lush meadows," from Tehillim 23). The second word, דשא, is formed from the initials of his name, שמואל דוד אונגר.

After the war, those who survived from Nitra chose Rav Sholom Moshe Ungar as their rav, and he reopened the yeshiva. Together with his brother-in-law, Rav Chaim Michael Dov Weissmandl, he relocated it in 1946 to Somerville, New Jersey, and in 1948 it settled in its present home, Mount Kisco, New York. His son, Rav Shmuel Dovid Ungar, who bears his grandfather's name, serves today as Nitra Rav and rosh yeshiva. The community now has centers in Boro Park, Williamsburg, Monsey and Yerushalayim.