(CHASSIDISM).

Yekuthiel Yehudah Halberstam (1905-94) was the Grand Rabbi of the Sanz-Klausenberg Chassidic dynasty. Prior to World War II he was one of Europe’s youngest Rebbes, leading thousands of followers from his base in the town of Klausenberg, Romania. During the course of the war, his wife, eleven children and almost all his followers were murdered by the Germans and their Hungarian and Romanian collaborators. He himself survived despite incarceration in a series of death camps, including Auschwitz. Following liberation, he sought to rebuild Jewish communal life for those Jewish survivors left bereft in the Displaced Persons camps of Western Europe - he subsequently re-established the Sanz-Klausenburg dynasty in both the United States and in Israel. In 1947 he rebuilt his own family, marrying his second wife, Chaya Nechama Ungar, the orphaned daughter of the Nitra Rav, R. Shmuel Dovid Ungar (whose other son-in-law was R. Michael Ber Weissmandl). They subsequently raised seven children, five daughter and two sons. The two sons succeeded their father: Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech Halberstam, appointed the Sanzer Rebbe of Netanya, Israel, and Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Halberstam, the Klausenburger-Sanz Rebbe of Brooklyn, New York.