Yisrael Spira

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Yisrael Spira (November 12, 1889 – October 30, 1989) was the Bluzhover Rebbe and a senior leader of the Hasidic community. He survived the Nazi Holocaust and his prison camp experiences became the basis for the book Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust.

He was born in Reisha (Rzeszów), Galicia, Poland, into a famous rabbinic family. He was ordained as a rabbi at age 13 and served as rabbi of Pruchnik and later of Ustrzyki Dolne. After his father’s death in 1931, he became the Rebbe of Bluzhov.

During World War II, Spira was forced into ghettos and concentration camps. He spent time in Janowska, Bełżec, and Bergen-Belsen. His wife Perel was killed in 1942, and many of his relatives were murdered. He was liberated from Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945.

After the war, he married his second wife, Rebbetzin Bronia Spira, and moved to the United States, living first in Brooklyn and then in Borough Park. He played a major role in Agudath Israel of America and served as a senior member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, the council of leading Torah sages. He died in 1989 and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Spira’s Holocaust stories were shared with researcher Yaffa Eliach, helping inspire her book Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust. In 2005, his grandson Yoseph Spira published two volumes of his grandfather’s Torah thoughts, Shufra Deyisroel, and a biography LeAid Bivney Yisroel.