Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman רבי אלחנן וסרמן
head of the yeshiva at Baranovich; disciple of the Chafetz Chaim and of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk
Born at Biržai in Lithuania—the sources give the year as either 1874 or 1875. He studied at Telz under Rabbi Eliezer Gordon and Rabbi Shimon Shkop, then attached himself to Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik at Brisk, and from 1907 to 1910 studied with the Chafetz Chaim at Radin. Both teachers can be seen in him: the analysis is Brisker, the measure is Radin's.
From 1921 to the end he led the Ohel Torah yeshiva at Baranovich; by the late 1930s there were about three hundred students. Copies of his shiurim were transcribed and studied across Eastern Europe—out of them the Kovetz Shiurim was later assembled. The Kovetz Maamarim stands apart: there he writes not on analysis but on faith and on his own times.
He was among the leaders of Agudath Israel. From 1937 to 1939 he spent seventeen months in America raising money for the yeshiva—and returned to Europe just before the war.
On 11 Tammuz 5701 he was seized at Kaunas and shot at the Seventh Fort of the Kaunas fortress.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Kovetz Shiurim — the shiurim that circulated in copies through the yeshivot of Europe
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, "Wasserman, Elhanan Bunim" — the teachers, Baranovich from 1921, the American journey, the death on 11 Tammuz 5701
Basis: documents and evidence.