Heter Me’ah Rabbanim. Typed Document Signed. Text of the Beth Din ruling followed by c. 90 signatures.

A halachic ruling issued by the Beit Din Tzedek Chassidim of Jerusalem allowing Yoel Aschkenazi to marry following the dissapearance of his first wife in the chaos of the Holocaust. The “Heter” is based upon a certified document issued earlier that year by the Beth Din of the Bergen Belsen DP Camp citing the statement of a witness who saw Ashkenazi’s wife transported from Reisha to the extermination camp of Belzec. “It is well known that the crematorium in Belzec was worse than Auschwitz, as no one ever returned alive from Belzec.” The Beth Din Tzedek Chassidim of Jerusalem consisted of R. Yeruchem Fishel Bernstein, R. Naphtali Tzvi Shmerler, and R. Yisrael Yitzchak Reisman. The first two venerable signatories following the Beth Din officials are R. Dov Berish Weidenfeld, (Tchebiner Rav) and R. Abraham Sternhartz (leader of Breslov Chassidim), subsequently followed by a veritable ‘who’s-who’ of Jerusalem’s most prominent rabbinic leaders and scholars, many of whom later became internationally renowned, including: Rabbis Chanoch Dov Padwa (later of London), Mordechai Chaim Slonim, Chanania Lipa Teitelbaum (son-in-law of the Satmar Rebbe), Shneor Zalman Weber (Rosh Yeshiva Chayei Olam), Yehoshua of Horadna (Rosh Yeshiva Minsk), Aaron Yaakov Klepfish of Shnadava (later editor of Otzar Haposkim), Shlomo Tzimbalist (later a senior Dayan who presided over the dispute in Yeshivath Ponivezh), Yitzchak Meir Hager, Ben Zion Lebel, Moshe Shuvaks (later Rosh Yeshiva of Belz), Samuel Halevi Wosner (celebrated Posek, now in Bnei Brak), Mordechai Eilender (later ‘Alon’), Joel Ashkenazi of Jassy, Meir Stalvitz (author of MiBeth Meir), Meir Schwartz (celebrated Kabbalist), Mordechai Goldman (Zeviler Rebbe), Yechiel Michel Mushkin, Binyamin Yehoshua Zilber (author of the multi-volume Az Nitbaru), Menachem Zev Schick (Rabbi of Tokay) and many others.