TEICHTHAL, ISSACHAR SOLOMON. Eim ha-Banim Semeichah

Eim ha-Banim Semeichah constitutes one of the most passionate appeals to the Jewish nation to return to the Land of Israel. This disquieting tract was written by one of the rabbinic leaders of Slovakian Jewry, deeply distressed by the onslaught of Nazism through Europe and the absence of any trace of salvation. Despite Teichtal’s lifetime rejectionist stance vis-`a-vis the Zionist enterprise, he writes here that this very rejection no doubt provoked God to permit the mass slaughter of European Jewry. Teichtal was murdered en route to Auschwitz, lynched by Ukrainian criminals occupying the same rail-car. See E. Schweid, Bein Churban li-Yeshu’ah (1994), pp. 89-104