Ros. Responsa 30 c

Ros. Responsa 30 c

Agunah

1959

Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana

Levie (Louis, Lou) Vorst

Vorst

Even Ha'Ezer

TRUE

A woman loses her husband and only son in the war, without solid evidence. She wishes to remarry to a Cohen. Does she need Halitsah?

A woman married before the last world war to a Jew in a reform community in Berlin and they had a son. But because of the Nazi persecutions they fled to Holland and there they resided until the German enemies took them in 1943 to the detention camp at Westerbork. The family remained there until in June 1943 the Germans moved him together with his son to the death camp at Sobibor, and the woman to the Bergen-Belsen detention camp. After the war the woman returned to Holland but the husband and son did not return. And a well known lawyer, a religious Jew, investigated the matter and interviewed witnesses regarding the lot of the unfortunate sent to Sobibor, and it became clear to him that almost all were killed either in the gas chambers or through shooting and that fewer than 20 people who managed to escape from there were able to reach their destination. However not all Jews who entered the camp were killed at once, for at first they separated the young who looked strong to work in the camp. The husband was then 46 and the son 16 and perhaps the son worked for some time in the camp. And now the wife comes and says that she wishes to remarry according to Jewish tradition to a man who is a Cohen. And she also says that he has a brother who lives in Israel. And now the question is whether we are permitted to allow this woman to marry according to Jewish tradition without a Halitsa. And it is also imprtant to know that if we do not allow her to marry they will live together without a Jewish marriage.