NEW YORK (VINnews) — Rabbi Dovid Moshe Lieberman, the oldest Chabad rav who survived WWII and served Jewish communities in Chicago, Detroit, and the Chief Rabbi of Antwerp, Belgium, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 97. He was buried on Friday on Har Hazeisim in Jerusalem.
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Rabbi Lieberman was born in 1925 in Cologne,Germany to Rabbi Eizik and Sarah Hinda Lieberman. His father was described as a Shas Yid who knew Shas comprehensively. At the age of one, his family moved to Antwerp where he learned in the Yesodei Hatorah school. Due to his remarkable talents he entered the Etz Chaim Yeshiva at the tender age of 10 and studied as a chavrusa with Rabbi Mordechai Rottenberg, one of the rabbis of Antwerp.
When Rabbi Yechezkel Abramski visited the yeshiva in Haide, he gave a deep shiur to the students. After the shiur he asked the Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Feivel Shapira, if they had comprehended the shiur. Rabbi Shapira replied that “I don’t know but there’s one 11-year-old here who definitely understood.” Rabbi Lieberman later related that when a member of the yeshiva later met Rabbi Abramsky, he asked him “what happened in the end with the boy Lieberman?”
Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman HyD also visited the yeshiva in this period. Rabbi Lieberman said that he had studied under him for two months and had been tested by him on the last chapter of Yevamos.
During the Holocaust, the yeshiva was betrayed by Nazis and most of the students were sent to the Maidanek concentration camp and murdered. Rabbi Lieberman had already escaped to France at the beginning of the war but even there he was caught by the Nazis. His mother was murdered but he somehow survived.
After the war he was taken to a Chabad yeshiva led by Rabbi Shneur Zalman Schneersohn and became attached to Chabad for the rest of his life, forging a strong connection with Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn.
In 1946 he arrived in New York and went straight to Rabbi Hutner, who tried to persuade him to enter Hayim Berlin yeshiva. However he had decided to study in Lakewood with Rabbi Aharon Kotler. Afterwards he went to Crown Heights and studied in Lubavitch yeshiva.
Rabbi Lieberman married the daughter of Rabbi Yehuda Chitrik, a chabad chasid who lived to the age of 106, passing away in 2006. Later he received semicha from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who wrote him a long teshuva in Igros Moshe. He served in a number of communities and later became rabbi of the Shomrei Hadas kehilla in Antwerp. He also founded the Merkaz Rabbanei Europe organization and taught shiurim for many years in the community.
On Wednesday he returned home from hospital, asked for his hat and davened Mincha and Maariv. He then asked for a drink, made a Shehakol and passed away. It was the yahrzeit of his wife who had died 9 years earlier.
His funeral was attended by many Jews in Antwerp and he was then taken to Israel and buried on the Mount of Olives. The mayor of Antwerp, Bart De Wever, eulogized him as a “monument of and for the Jewish community.” He offered his condolences to the members of the rabbi’s family living abroad.
Mayor De Wever had met Rabbi Lieberman during 2021 to reach a conciliation with the Jewish community which had been accused of not maintaining health guidelines.
The last ten years of his life he was nebech blind
And when learning with chavrusa’s Gemare halacha and many other seforim if his chavruse made a mistake or skipped a word Rav Liberman would correct him from memory.
May he be a Melitz Yosher for all of Klal Yisroel
יהו זכרו ברוך