Taking Maaser from funds recovered from Nazis - Tzitz Eliezer 6:27

In 1957, Rav Waldenberg was asked whether one has to take ma'aser from reparations made or recovered from Germany as a result of their seeking to restore what the Nazis had forcibly taken from the Jews during the Holocaust. The questioner, Dr. Pinchas Wolf, assumed that no ma'aser needed to be taken, since the money or possessions that we being returned were actually the property of the recipient all along.

Rav Waldenberg argued that, in fact, the opposite would be true. Given the nature of the Nazi regime and the brutality with which they treated the Jews, with regard to their taking property from the Jews they would have the status of armed bandits. When a person has his money or other possessions taken from him by such individuals or gangs he is assumed to have יאוש, to have despaired of ever seeing that money again. Thus, if the money is ever returned to him it is considered to be not a return of the lost money, but rather a new infusion of funds that are thus subject to the laws of ma'aser.

Rav Waldenberg concludes by citing the Sefer HaChassidim, who discusses the important of giving ma'aser, and among the cases when one must give ma'aser he includes someone who finds a stolen object. Recovered funds or possessions that were taken by the Nazis certainly fall under the category of stolen objects that have been found (and whose owners have despaired of ever getting them back), and thus one should give ma'aser from these recovered funds.

Clothing of the Deceased - Mima'amakim 1:3

Rav Oshry was asked about a case where the Jews in the Kovno Ghetto were ordered daily to provide 1,000 people to work on a nearby airport for the Nazis. One erev Rosh HaShana, they failed to produce the requisite number of workers, and the Nazis entered to ghetto to find Jews to force into labor, and along the way they killed a number of individuals (including one who was holding his machzor). The Nazis then demanded that the Jews dig graves for their deceased brethren and offered the clothes of the deceased to those digging the graves. The question asked was whether those clothes could be worn by the living (insofar as they had no blood stains on them).

Rav Oshry began his response by citing the halacha in the Shulchan Aruch that when a person is found killed he should be buried as is, with his clothes left on. He then discusses a distinction made by the Shach between one who is killed and one who dies several days after sustaining a fall, where the former should be buried as is while the latter should receive a normal tahara. In the case under discussion, since there was no blood absorbed into the clothes, Rav Oshry ruled that the clothes could be taken off the bodies and used. However, since the individuals were killed in cold blood, there exists an idea of burying them in their clothes in order to increase the anger of others against the murderers.

(The latter portion of the teshuva discusses other cases concerning clothing of the dead, including some cases that Rav Oshry dealt with in America after the war.)

Pikuach Nefesh - MiMa'amakim 1:2

There was an airfield near the Kovno Ghetto and each day the Nazis asked for 1,000 Jews to come and work at the airfield. As a ration, the Jews were given some form of soup that was most decidely not kosher (and probably not so edible either). A group of the Jews who were on the work detail asked Rav Oshry if they were allowed to eat the soup, since at the present moment their failure to eat the soup would not cause them to starve, and thus perhaps the general rules of piku'ach nefesh would not apply.

Rav Oshry began his reply by basing himself on the case of someone who is ill on Yom Kippur who either feels that he needs to eat or is told by a doctor to eat. In both instances, we allow the individual to eat, even if his failure to eat will cause his condition to worsen down the road and not at the present moment. Based on that, Rav Oshry held that it would be permitted for the people on work detail to eat the soup.

However, Rav Oshry presses the case further, noting that in the Yom Kippur case the individual is already sick, whereas in the question posed to him the people were not sick at the time, and thus perhaps they cannot claim to fall under the rubric of piku'ach nefesh. To answer this concern, Rav Oshry cites the case of a person lost in the wilderness who does not know which day is Shabbat. The law in such a case is that the individual should count off six days and then hold the 7th day as Shabbat. However, there is a discussion as to whether he should actually rest on that day, or whether he should behave as normal and simply designate that day as unique through kiddush and havdala. According to the Bigdei Yesha, he can treat the day normally in terms of food preparation and does not have to fast, since he is trying to hasten his exit from the wilderness. From this, Rav Oshry derives that a person can take certain liberties to stave off a harmful situation, even if he is not currently in that situation. And thus, Rav Oshry permitted the workers to have the soup even though they were currently in a healthy condition.

Tearing keriah for a Sefer Torah - Mima'amakim 1:1

In the first teshuva in his collection, Rabbi Oshry describes a case where the Nazis brought many cats and dogs into the Beit Midrash in the Kovno ghetto and slaughtered them. Not content with that desecration of a holy site, they then had Jews come forward and tear the sifrei Torah to be used to cover the rotting corpses of the slain animals.

The question that emerged was whether a general fast day or some other public expression of mourning could be proclaimed as a result of this incident.

Rabbi Oshry first deals with the halacha as it pertains to those who actually witnessed the incident. After dealing with a potential variant text in the Gemara in Moed Katan 26a, he concludes that anyone who actually saw the sifrei Torah being torn had to tear keriah. With regard to others in the ghetto who did not witness the incident, and who perhaps did not even see what had happened, Rabbi Oshry deliberates, weighing the issue that such a horrific incident is clearly a call from Hashem to repent against the fact that there does not seem to be a strong source obligating the masses to take any definitive action.

In the end, Rabbi Oshry concluded that there was certainly no need for people to fast as a result of this incident, particularly in light of their generally weakened state due to the lack of proper nutrition in the ghetto. However, anyone who wanted to give tzedaka as a result of this event was encouraged to do so, and Rabbi Oshry used the following Shabbat as an opportunity to arouse the people to do teshuva and to be particularly careful in the respect that they accorded sifrei Torah.