Home > History > Rabbi Daniel Hirtzke Frisch

Rabbi Daniel Hirtzke Frisch – 
Baal H’Matuk M’Dvash

(11/1/1935-24/1/2005)

The Zohar mentions in Parshas Vayera that “in the 600 year of the sixth millennium (Hebrew year of 5600) the gates of wisdom on high and the wellsprings of wisdom below will open and the world will be prepared in the seventh millennium (for the final red redemption) in the same manner in which a man prepares for Shabbos on a Friday afternoon”. The Hebrew year of 5600 roughly corresponds to the secular calendar year of 1839. Both Kol HaTor says in the name of the Vilna Gaon at the revelation of wisdom mentioned in the Zohar refers both to secular earthly knowledge and heavenly Torah knowledge. Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, the Tzemach Tzedek, in Derech Mitzvotecha says that this refers to the esoteric Torah teachings spread by the Baal Shem Tov that prepare the world for the times of the Mesiah. The increase in revelation of the hidden esoteric teachings of the Torah will come to strengthen Jews in the times of great spiritual darkness that lead up to the final redemption.

Anyone thinking about gates of wisdom opening and the city of Leiden will probably think of the great research institutes the city has and its famous university – in which many new inventions and developments have seen their first light. But where are the esoteric teachings in Leiden which isn’t famous even a little bit for esoteric Torah studies yet we know from quite a few commentaries that these two will go together.

What is much less known is that a young boy by the name of Daniel Frisch, who was destined to enlighten the eyes of the Jewish people with one the most popular contemporary commentary on the Zohar, would open that same holy book for the first time somewhere in a small corner of the Leiden Synagogue…

Nanash
The town of Nanash, Hujdunanas  is know to have had a very big Jewish history. It was the hometown of the two famous Chassidic Rebbes. 
Reb Yoseph Nanasher and Reb Michael Nanasher who moved there to learn by Rabbi Yitzchak Aizik Taub of Kaliv who arrived in Nanash about
50 years before the 1st world war.

The men of the town were known to spend their evenings engrossed in Jewish studies in the local Beis Midrash. Besides the synagogue it had it’s own Jewish schools and a Yeshiva. From 1862 till 1898 it was led by Rabbi Ephraim Hershel Sofer, one of the last students of Rabbi Moshe Sofer, also know as the Chatam Sofer of Pressburg (German for Bratislava, the capital city of Slovenia) and it always remained a town very loyal to it’s Jewish heritage.

Rabbi Daniel Frisch was born unto Naftali Hirtzka Frisch and Sarah Beker in the year 1935. The story goes that even before he was born his maternal greatgrandfather Daniel Palatshek called in the mother, his granddaughter, and told her that “My life on this earth is about to come to an end. In another few months I’ll have to part from you and depart as do all men. In that same period a boy will be born unto you, he’s have a very high soul that will enlighten the eyes and hearts of the Jewish people. My request from you is to give your son the name “Daniel” which will be a great kindness for him!” Sure enough long afterwards grandfather passed away after which a young boy was born and so she named the boy after her grandfather: Daniel. Little Daniel was orphaned from his mother at age 3 after which his father remarried Freidel (Adler) . Avraham Yakov Frisch relates: “The Chaddisim would pray in the Kloiz in Nanash. Rabbi Yekusiel Yehuda Halprin was the Rabbi of the city”. Daniel Frisch and his brothers would pray in the bigger congregation in the main synagogue lead by Rabbi Halprin.

Rabbi Frisch was known for his piety already at a young age, as per government degree all young children in Nanash had to learn secular
studies and even though he’d refuse to do so and would read Jewish books under his table, he was nevertheless able to answer questions 
by the teacher who’d try to publicly embarrass him for not paying attention.

The Nazi Invasion
Rabbi Frisch writes: “In was on a clear day,  sunday the 24th of Adar, 5704 years since the creation of the world that the Germans entered into Hungary and on that same day they also reached the city of G-d, Nanash, the place of birth of our teacher”. That sunday is known as the 19th of march 44’ which was the day the Germans invaded Hungary as part of Operation Margarethe. 

Hungary had been an autonomous country aligned with Nazi Germany yet not ruled directly by it and so the Jews were not persecuted until 1944 when the Nazi regime conquered Hungary lead by the Horthy government. The Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary Horthy stayed in power until october 1944 which was well after the invasion, but the Germans had him replace the righteous prime minister Miklós Kállay de Nagykálló, who had been able to protect the Jews of Hungary, by the wicked Döme Sztójay who started the persecution of the Jews of Hungary and amongst them the prestigious and G-d fearing community of Nanash.

His father Hirtzka was, like all men at the beginning of the war in Hungary, drafted to the Hungarian army in 1940 and would come home only once in a while and so Daniel and his 3 brothers we’re taken away from Nanash with their stepmother and spent the rest of the war with her, not knowing anything about their fathers whereabouts. 

A few days before the Shavuos holiday 1944 the war the family was moved to a ghetto around the main synagogue for a little more than two weeks, then to Debritzen for one week and from Debretzen to Vienna with a one and half week stopover in Strasshauf which was miraculous as the original destiny of the train was Aushwitz and the train was already at the border with Poland yet because of all kinds of failures and bombed traintracks it returned to Hungary and from there to Austria. On the way the grandmother Rebbetzin Miriam Elboigen died and a Nazi officer came over telling them to throw the bodies of the dead to the tracks and so a riot occurred and the officer who noticed the granddaughters crying and so he asked what the uproar is about. They told him that they need their grandmother to be buried in a Jewish cemetery and they are worried that animals will devour her body. The body was throws outside yet the officer told them not to worry as he’ll see to it personally that she will be buried in a Jewish cemetery and the train continued in it’s deadly tracks. Obviously no one took his promise serious, the focus was back on survival again and no one thought about the corpse until after the was had ended.

This is when the Frisch brothers went back to the exact spot where the body had been dumped yet nothing was to be found. They then search for traces of a man-made pit, couldn’t find any and so they asked a few of the neighboring residents who also didn’t know anything. They then remembered the promise made by the Nazi officer and went to a nearby Jewish cemetery in the Vienna area, where they turned to the up-keeper who opened the cemetery’s notebook. They asked him if a lady was buried during the war, he responded that indeed a lady called Miriam Elboigen was buried in line 7 but that there was no sign as there was no one to pay for one. Yaakov Frisch commented that it must have been Elijah the Prophet who came down in the disguise of a Nazi officer as there is no way a Nazi officer would show such mercy (Source: Yitzchak Harpaz ).

Rabbi Frisch now describes the moment they arrived in Vienna “We arrives in the dark of night, yet the bombs thrown unto the city from airplanes belonging to the American and Russian armies light-up the darkness of the night. The guards that we’re appointed over us in the train went and hid themselves out of fear of the bombardments. In the morning they came back and opened the stalls, took us down from them and gathered all 600 souls together, and escorted by these guards we’re taken to the center of the city to 11 Haken street to a big building of 3 floors which was a school called Knabbel Schule.                                 

In Vienna all boys older then 10 were taken to rebuild homes that we’re destroyed by the allied bombardments. Working in these conditions wasn’t easy yet there was a certain ration of food provided that many times was not kosher so Rabbi Frisch refused to eat from. Rabbi Frisch writes that: “Yet, thanks G-d, ” by asking for food from non-Jewish civilians we’d have enough to eat, a few people gave us bread, fruits and vegetables, there we’re also good people between the inhabitants of Vienna that shared in out suffering for one reason or another and would help us in different ways and gave us food even though that was forbidden by (Nazi) law”.

On the 7th day of the Passover holiday 5705/1945, after nine months in Vienna and as the allies we’re getting closer to conquering the city of Vienna the entire group was again taken somewhere else, mainly by foot and sometimes by train in a prolonged march, this time to the Matthausen extermination camp in which the situation was relatively hard, with the smell of death all around, even though death had been around the corner the whole time and little Daniel had already seen many murdered by the cursed nazis.

About the liberation of the Mauthaussen camp Rabbi Daniel Frisch wrote the following:
“On the night of the holy Shabbos, parshas Behar-Bechukosai 22 Iyar 5705, the 5th of May 1945 (4 days before the end of WWII, which was on 26 Iyar 5705, the 9th of May 1945) there was a bombardment by the American army and soldiers that had already taken the city of Lintz which was near to Mauthaussen, and during that whole night we heard and saw the sparks of light that sparked off of the bombs”. In the morning of Shabbos in the order of “But despite all this, while they are in the land of their enemies, I will not despise them nor will I reject them to annihilate them“, all of a sudden all of the SS men fled and the guards disappeared from the camp. And we all went out towards the big gate, we saw a white American military vehicle, on which a white flag was lifted which circled the camp to communicate that the camp had been conquered by them after which a few tanks arrived, some of which the drivers we’re Jewish US soldiers and they conquered the camp and told us that the nazis, may their name be blotted out, planted and hid bombs and other explosive material around the camp and that if they wouldn’t have rushed over to find them, they would have exploded and the whole camp would have experienced a destruction that would have completely destroyed it without leaving a single remembrance or survivor, and in this manner it was that we, about 20.000 Jewish men and a few hundred woman and children, amongst them my family, survived this ordeal with great divine intervention and protection”.

Nanash post WWII
My father R’ Hirtzka obm also returned from a different camp, a few weeks after us, and this is how we reorganized and returned to live in our city Nanash, about one third of the Jewish inhabitants came back from the camps, which was a relative high percentage of survivors compared to other cities, and started to organize and open the Great Synagogue and also to arrange the Mikva (ritual bath) and the Jewish slaughterhouse. And the Rabbi of Nanash, the well-learned Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda Halpert obm who had returned from the camps, started to organize communal affairs. And matchmaking, wedding canopies and weddings happened again yet the Talmud Torah (Jewish boys school) and the Yeshiva (Talmudic Academy) couldn’t be restored in their original place”. 

To be continued

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