Who Rescued the Rebbe?: Competing Accounts of Aharon Rokach's Survival of the Holocaust

• In Event: Memory, Violence, and Political Identity: Competing Narratives in Ukrainian and Jewish History and Literature

Abstract

From 1940 to 1942, the fourth Rebbe of Belz, Aharon Rokach, hid from the Nazis in the western Ukrainian city of Peremyshliany before successfully fleeing Axis-occupied Europe. The Rebbe never had the time to leave any testimony before his death in 1952, and in this void the Ukrainian mayor of Peremyshliany, Mykhailo Shkil`nyk, and the Rebbe's students in Israel produced two different accounts regarding the extent of Shkil`nyk's role in ensuring Rokach's survival. This presentation will unravel the ways in which these competing narratives accrued eyewitness corroboration and institutional endorsements in their efforts to explain how the Rebbe survived the Holocaust in Peremyshliany.

Author

• Danylo Leshchyshyn, Northwestern U