Ponevezh פוניבז'
A Lithuanian town whose community perished entire—and whose name is borne today by one of the chief yeshivot of the Land of Israel.
Jews lived here from the eighteenth century; by the beginning of the twentieth they were about half the town. From 1919 the rabbi of Ponevezh was Rav Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, under whom the town held a yeshiva, a yeshiva for younger boys and an orphanage.
In Av 1941 the Germans and local collaborators murdered the Jews of Ponevezh—nearly all of them, within a few days. Rav Kahaneman was abroad at the time on the yeshiva's business and survived; almost none of his family did.
In Bnei Brak he began again and gave the new yeshiva the name of the murdered town. To those who asked why he was building when everything was destroyed, he answered that he was building for those who would come. Today Ponevezh is one of the largest yeshivot in the country, and the name of a small Lithuanian town is known to everyone who learns.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The testimonies on the destruction of the Ponevezh community, Av 1941 — the destruction of the community within days
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the Jewish history of the town, Rav Kahaneman's rabbinate from 1919, the yeshiva in Bnei Brak
Basis: documents and evidence.