By Isaac Shadpour

 

The Jewish people are no strangers to suffering. Our history is a trail of exile and persecution, marked not only by our enemies’ attempts to break our bodies but also to sever our connection to Hashem. And yet, as Rav Yaakov Emden famously wrote, the very fact that we, Am Yisrael, still exist is the greatest miracle of all. In Lakewood, there’s one man who stands as one of the greatest living testaments to that miracle—R’ Shea Brisk.

 

If you ever meet R’ Shea, a soft-spoken man now in his 90s ka”h, you might not immediately realize you’re in the presence of one of the greatest nissim walking among us. He’s not just a survivor of Auschwitz. He’s a survivor with a heart full of emunah and a spirit aflame with ahavas Hashem and ahavas haTorah. His story isn’t just about what the Nazis tried to destroy—it’s about what they couldn’t.

 

As I wrote this article, I found myself repeatedly breaking down in tears. Not from the horrors alone, though there are many. But from the sheer light that somehow pierced through the darkness in every moment of R’ Shea’s journey. This is his story—preserved through sacred memory—and it’s a story meant to be read on Tishah B’Av, the day we mourn destruction but also remember that even in the ashes, we’re still Hashem’s beloved children.

 

R’ Shea’s story begins in the Transylvanian town of Lechnitz, Romania, a small shtetl nestled in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. He was born in 1930, the second of five brothers. His grandfather, Rav Shimon Lichtenstein, was the rav of the village. In Lechnitz, R’ Shea was surrounded by Torah and kedushah. His family lived with their grandparents, learning by their example what it meant to live a life of emunah and bitachon.

 

When R’ Shea was four years old, his family moved to the town of Lunca, where his father, Rav Moshe Shmuel Brisk, became the spiritual heart of the community. “My father was the rav of the shul and the only shochet in town. He also served as the chazzan,” R’ Shea told The Voice. “However, Lunca didn’t have a proper cheder. So when I was six years old, my parents sent me back to Lechnitz to live with my grandparents and get a proper Torah education.”

 

Life in Lechnitz was idyllic—simple, pure. R’ Shea would go to cheder early in the morning before davening, then after davening, he would attend the government-mandated public school for several hours. In the afternoons, he returned to the cheder, where his real learning—and the foundation of his emunah—took place.

 

Public school in Romania included classes on Shabbos. But because R’ Shea’s grandfather had a warm relationship with the head of the school—fostered by a weekly gift of homemade challah from R’ Shea’s grandmother—an arrangement was made: The Jewish children would attend on Shabbos without having to bring any supplies or write. It was a compromise that preserved halachah in a difficult world.

 

But that world was rapidly changing.

 

 

“Antisemitism began to spread like a dark stain through society,” R’ Shea recalled. “By 1941, Hungary had already taken over Northern Transylvania, and in 1943, all Jews not born in Lunca were expelled from the town. My brother Yidel and I remained in Lechnitz with our grandparents. Our parents and three younger brothers left to the Hungarian town of Szekeshfehervar.”

 

In Lechnitz, the tide of hate became more openly hostile. Locals formed a Hitler Youth group, and though some neighbors were sympathetic, others turned their backs—or worse. The situation continued to escalate, and on Sukkos, those in the Hitler Youth group threw stones at the sukkah where R’ Shea and his grandparents were eating the seudah. That’s when they knew that life was never going to go back to the way it used to be. The illusion of peaceful coexistence had shattered.

 

“In those early years, we heard whispers of what was happening to the Jews in Poland—ghettos, deportations, even rumors of killings—but none of us ever imagined it could happen to us,” R’ Shea explained. “Not in our town. Not with our neighbors. We’d lived alongside these people for generations. We davened in the same towns, shopped in the same markets, traded with one another, greeted each other on the streets. We thought they were our friends. They would smile at us during the week and say ‘Good Shabbos’ on Friday afternoons.

 

“My grandfather, the rav, was respected even among the non-Jews; people would come to him for advice. So when we heard about the horrors taking place in Poland, we said to ourselves, ‘That could never happen here.’ We thought our relationships, our decency, our years of peaceful coexistence would mean something. It meant nothing! Nothing! When the tide turned, it turned swiftly and without mercy. The same people who once asked my grandmother for a cup of sugar were now cheering as we were herded into the wagons. That betrayal cut deep—not just the cruelty of strangers, but the silence—or the approval—of those we once called neighbors.”

 

The final blow came in the spring of 1944. The Jews of Lechnitz were ordered to gather in the town square. “Take only what you need for a few days,” they were told. R’ Shea took his tefillin. The cattle wagons rolled in. Men, women, children, elderly—80 people per car, crammed together in suffocating darkness. One bucket for water. One for waste. Screaming babies, mothers in tears, the stench of fear and despair.

 

R’ Shea recalled, “For most of those in the car, it was the sound of their lives being sealed away. Inside, it was pitch black. There was no room to sit, barely room to breathe. The air was thick with sweat, fear, and the cries of children. Mothers clutched their babies, trying to soothe them, but it just wasn’t possible.

 

“The heat was unbearable, and the stench from the bucket in the corner grew stronger every hour. We had no food, no idea where we were going, and no way to count the time. Every minute felt like a lifetime. That cattle car wasn’t just a train—it was a coffin on wheels. And yet, we were alive. Somehow, we were still alive.”

 

They traveled like that for three days. On the Czech border, they make a brief stop. A little water. A little air. The Germans took over.

 

A few more days passed. The train jolted to a halt, and the shouting began. Auschwitz.

 

Chaos reigned. The air was thick with smoke and terror. Other Jews in the death camp were tasked with overseeing their fellow Yidden as they stepped out of the cars. One of them saw young Shea clutching his tefillin and asked, “Do you speak Yiddish?” When Shea said yes, the man whispered, “When you get to the front of the line, say you’re 16 and you work in the fields.”

 

R’ Shea didn’t yet understand that that moment would decide his life.

 

He stood before the monstrous Dr. Mengele, who looked him up and down and asked in German, “How old are you?”

 

“Sixteen,” R’ Shea replied without hesitation. “I’m a field worker.”

 

Mengele, the infamous Angel of Death, examined him further—without emotion, without humanity. Finally, he gave a small nod and motioned to the right—life. His grandmother was sent to the left. Instinctively, R’ Shea broke away to go with her, but the guards shoved him back with brutal force. He didn’t get the chance to say goodbye.

 

Life in Auschwitz was a daily confrontation with the unfathomable. Each moment demanded a will to survive in a world that had been drained of humanity. And yet, in that valley of death, Hashem performed a great neis for R’ Shea and his brother Yidel: They were placed in the same barracks. In a place designed to strip away all hope, they had each other—a flicker of light in a sea of darkness. Together, they shared what little strength they had, offering each other silent support against the horrors unfolding around them.

 

The air never stopped trembling. Motorcycles circled the gas chambers constantly, their engines roaring—not for transport, but to muffle the blood-curdling screams of mothers holding their children as they struggled in futility for one last breath of life in those sealed chambers of horror. But the Nazis couldn’t hide everything. The acrid smell of burning bodies hung thick in the air, drifting from the chimneys of the ovens like a smoke that refused to disappear into the ether.

 

Selections came without warning. At random intervals, prisoners were forced to line up, and children or the sick—anyone deemed too weak—were pulled from the rows, their fates sealed with a glance. They were marched off, never to be seen again. In Auschwitz, death didn’t knock. It simply arrived.

 

One morning, during one of these dreaded selections, R’ Shea and another boy quietly slipped away, pretending they needed to use the latrine. When they returned a short while later, they saw that the younger children who had been standing in their line were gone—taken and never heard from again. They had been spared by mere minutes. On another occasion, during a selection, a Nazi officer momentarily turned his head. In that fleeting instant, R’ Shea and another few boys slipped across to another line, merging with a group that had already been counted. No one noticed. It was yet another miracle.

 

“The meals were meager,” R’ Shea said. “Just one loaf of moldy black bread was provided, and we had to share it. At night, we were given a thin watery soup made from just the peels of potatoes. We slept in wooden bunks, three rows high, packed with 30 people per tier. If anyone wanted to use the latrine at night, everyone in front of him had to wake up and move over.”

 

One morning, while waiting in line for food, Shea’s brother Yidel suddenly spotted their father. He had been assigned to deliver meals to the barracks. For a brief moment, their eyes met. He quickly passed him a bit of extra food—but there was no time for a greeting or even a single word.

 

 

That was the last time Yidel saw his father. He disappeared shortly after, swallowed by the cold machinery of death. Later, the boys learned from their uncle—who had been with their father in the camps—that he died of typhus. The Nazis stole his life and robbed his sons of the warmth and love that every child deserves from their father—especially in the darkest moments when they needed it most.

 

“The work in the camp was designed not just to exhaust us, but to break us,” R’ Shea said, his voice steady but heavy. “It wasn’t just physical torture—it was psychological torment. The labor was cruel and completely meaningless. We would spend an entire week digging up sod, hauling dirt in the freezing cold or blistering heat, with guards screaming and beating us. Then, the following week, they would order us to move that same dirt to another spot. And the week after that, they’d make us carry it all back and fill in the original hole as if nothing had ever happened. It was all for naught—just to strip us of any sense of purpose, to make us feel like our existence had no value. They wanted to destroy not just our bodies, but our will to live.”

 

It was in 1944, right after Rosh Hashanah, when the Nazis sent R’ Shea to Germany to work on farms. He was sent to Kaufering, a subcamp of Dachau where he worked in the fields harvesting potatoes. The food was better, and the German women who ran the farms while their husbands were away at war treated them slightly more humanely.

 

When the harvest ended, R’ Shea was taken to Kaufbeuren. This camp was different. Prisoners were made to dig deep bunkers into the earth for hidden storage for German ammunition. It was brutally cold. R’ Shea’s feet froze. He could no longer put on shoes. He wrapped his feet in rags and continued to work.

 

“Eventually, I just couldn’t walk anymore,” R’ Shea recalled, his voice low and steady. “My feet were frozen and blistered, and I was near collapse. They sent me to the Schonungsblock—the place where they put people to die. We were packed in tight, no beds, just the floor and each other’s bodies for warmth. They gave us almost nothing to eat, a bit of water if we were lucky, and left us there like forgotten scraps.

 

“One night, a boy curled up next to me—he couldn’t have been older than 12. He was shivering so hard I could hear his teeth clattering in the dark. We huddled together, trying to share whatever little warmth I had left. We didn’t speak much. In the morning, I felt cold against my side and knew before I even turned—he was gone. His skin had gone grey. His lips were blue. I knew his family. I knew his name. After the war, I found his parents and told them what happened—that he hadn’t died alone, that someone was with him when his neshamah left this world. That’s all I could give them.”

 

Then came one of the most harrowing moments of R’ Shea’s journey. As the war neared its end and the front lines closed in, the Schonungsblock was evacuated. Prisoners were loaded into cattle cars once again and sent to Dachau. The kapo—a fellow prisoner appointed by the Nazis to oversee the others—leaned in and quietly warned R’ Shea: “You must walk when we get off. If you fall, they’ll kill you.”His words weren’t just a warning—they were a lifeline. R’ Shea’s legs were barely working, battered by frostbite and exhaustion, but the urgency in the kapo’s voice gave him the strength to force himself forward.

 

“When we arrived in Dachau, I couldn’t walk anymore,” R’ Shea said, pausing for a long moment. “My feet were completely frozen. I was barely dragging myself forward. Somehow—who knows how—they put me and my brother, Yidel, in the camp hospital. That was a major neis! The Nazis saw the writing on the wall. They knew they would be prosecuted for their crimes if they lost the war. So they decided to make a hospital to present to the Red Cross to appear humane. But for me, it was the difference between life and death. They took me in, laid me on a table, and put me under. When I woke up…my feet were bandaged, and I could feel something was missing. I pulled back the cloth—and saw that my toes were gone. Just gone. I started shaking. I didn’t even feel the pain at first, just shock. I was a child. And I was mutilated. But deep down, I knew—I knew that if they hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be here today. That surgery saved my life. If I would have been able to walk, they would have surely sent me on a death march. It was another moment of Hashem’s mercy.”

 

On April 29, 1945, the American army liberated Dachau. R’ Shea weighed barely 60 pounds.

 

After the war, R’ Shea and his brother were transferred to Feldafing, a Displaced Persons camp, where they were united with their uncle, Rav Elya Dovid Lichtenstein. It was there that they met the Klausenberger Rebbe—a towering figure of strength and compassion who became a father figure to the orphans.

 

 

R’ Shea shared something remarkable that happened in the camp shortly before Sukkos: “General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, came to the camp to meet the Rebbe,” R’ Shea said. “After surveying the scene, he asked the Rebbe if there was anything he could do for him or for the Jews in the camp. Without hesitation, the Rebbe replied that what we needed was lulavim and esrogim for Sukkos. It was such a small, specific request, yet so deeply symbolic. Despite everything we had been through, we wanted to keep Hashem’s mitzvos. Eisenhower, moved by the request, arranged for a military plane to be sent to Italy to bring back lulavim and esrogim for the survivors. Before leaving, he turned to the Rebbe and asked for a blessing. The Rebbe looked him in the eye and said, ‘You have reached the highest rank in the army—but you will go higher.’ And he did. He became the President of the United States.”

 

 

Not every general left such a legacy. Another high-ranking officer, General George S. Patton, took a very different approach. “Patton, who had the power to liberate more camps earlier, delayed the liberation of Dachau and the surrounding camps by nearly two critical weeks,” R’ Shea said. “Thousands more died in those final days—lives that could have been saved. When he came to visit the camp and met the Klausenberger Rebbe, he too asked for a blessing. The Rebbe gave him one—but not the kind he expected. In Yiddish, the Rebbe said quietly, ‘You should have a strange and bitter death’. One of the soldiers standing nearby, realizing the danger, quickly interpreted it as, “Your name will be remembered forever, etched in stone.” Weeks later, Patton was killed in a bizarre and sudden car accident.”

 

 

R’ Shea with author Isaac Shadpour

 

 

 

 

R’ Shea’s mother and three younger brothers were deported separately from the rest of the family. They had been living in Szekesfehervar, Hungary, when the deportations began in full force. Like hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews, they were rounded up and packed into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz. There, they were sent directly to the gas chambers upon arrival. Shea never saw them again. He later learned, through survivors, that they had perished together, without even being given the chance to fight for their lives.

 

“We remained in Feldafing until after Sukkos,” R’ Shea said. “My grandfather’s brother, the Krasne Rav, R’ Hillel Lichtenstein, brought my brother Yidel and me to Landsberg, where we learned in a newly opened yeshivah. In December 1946, we were granted visas to America through the efforts of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and UNRRA. The Klausenberger Rebbe traveled with us on the same ship. He made sure we woke up each morning with negel vasser and oversaw our Yiddishkeit. He lit the fire in the ovens each morning so we could eat the bread.”

They arrived in New York on the fifth night of Chanukah, 1946. “That first Shabbos we stayed in an orphanage in the Bronx, and the Rebbe arranged for us to get food from the Rosenberg family. They were very warm and welcoming,” R’ Shea said. “Just a few days later, we moved into the Rebbe’s newly founded yeshivah, She’eiris Hapleitah, in Williamsburg. That became our home for the next few years, and the Rebbe was our Rebbe, father, and mother.”

 

As the years passed and the world slowly began to heal, R’ Shea began to piece together a new life of his own. He found work as an accountant, dedicating himself to honest labor while carrying the weight of all he had endured. In time, he met his wife, a partner in faith and resilience, and together they created a home rooted in Torah, warmth, and unwavering emunah. They were blessed with four daughters, whom they raised with the same values that had sustained R’ Shea through the darkest chapters of his life. Every Shabbos table, every brachah recited, every simchah in the family was a quiet victory over those who had tried to destroy him. And every baby born is a nekamah on Hitler; R’ Shea truly appreciates each and every einikel born as a final revenge.

 

As we concluded our interview, R’ Shea left me with one message he hoped everyone would remember: “When I was a little boy, my parents taught me that everything comes from Hashem and everything Hashem does is for the good. That was the foundation. It never left me—not in the camps, not in the darkness, not in the years that followed. That emunah carried me.”

 

It was planted in him as a child, and it became the anchor of his soul through the storm. R’ Shea Brisk didn’t just survive—he held onto the unshakable faith that was instilled in him from the very beginning. And in doing so, he became a living reminder that no matter how far we fall, no matter how dark the night, a Yiddishe neshamah that clings to Hashem can never be extinguished.

Every baby born is a nekamah; R’Shea Brisk with his family