Letter handwritten and signed by the gaon Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua Gutschechter, Warsaw 1936.
Letter in which the gaon requests that the adjudicators of the Haifa regional rabbinate quickly arrange a get [divorce document] and send it to Warsaw as soon as possible “because delay could cause a major stumbling block.”
The righteous gaon Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua son of Rabbi Menashe Simchah Bunim Gutschechter (known as “R’ Chaim Shiye,” 1860-1942) was the elder rabbi of Warsaw and in charge of the city’s kashrut. He was a member of the Warsaw Vaad HaRabbanim, and adjudicator of Quarter 2 in Warsaw. He studied in Volozhin under Rabbi Chaim HaLevi Soloveitchik. He passed away in the Warsaw ghetto and was buried there.
He daughter Frieda married Rabbi David Kahane Shapira, a member of the of the Vaad HaRabbanim of Warsaw and later rabbi of Furth. She was killed in the Holocaust with their son and three daughters in Majdanek (Iyar 1943). Her husband was the last rabbi who remained alive in Warsaw after the the passing of Rabbi Menachem Ziemba and Rabbi Shimshon Shtukhommer.
“Among the other official rabbis and adjudicators better known to this writer, Rabbi Chaim Yehoshua Gutschechter should be mentioned. He was spiritually prominent among the rabbis of Poland. An exceptional scholar, sharp and witty, very wise and understanding of commercial life. As such, he was also known among the many circles of lawyers in Warsaw, both Jewish and Polish, due to their encounters with him at various matters of trials and other issues involving financial law. He held the banner of the rabbinate high and led it with courage.”
Rabbi Aryeh Feingold’s story B’Gei Tzalmavet describes his conduct during the Nazi occupation: “Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Kanel … said to us: ‘I admit: Rabbi Gutschechter was right – from day one he did not want to step over the threshold of the Judenrat, which had been appointed by the Nazis. He understood, in his wisdom, that it would be better that they do everything with their own hands and not by Jewish hands. It is our great shame that Jewish policemen are assisting the Germans. Although they are doing it against their will, they are in fact helping them …'” [Moshe Tzinowitz Rabbanut Warsaw B’Tekufah HaAcharonah, Ishim V’Kehillot Tel Aviv, 1990].
His home was filled daily by people who came to be judged and to receive a Torah decision in financial law and other issues of laws between man and his fellow. During the Nazi control of the Warsaw ghetto, they caught him and cut his beard. Eyewitnesses said that when the Nazis cut his beard, he fainted.
[1] leaf official paper 18×21 cm. Fold marks, fine condition.