Letter about the Holocaust in Lithuania - By the Heads of the Telz Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch and Rabbi ...

Letter about the Holocaust in Lithuania - By the Heads of the Telz Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch and Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Katz - Yokohama, Japan, Tishrei 1941
Long letter (3 leaves) by Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch and Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Katz. Yokohama, Japan, Tishrei 1940.
Sent on their way to the US, to Rabbi Moshe Blau, head of Agudat Yisrael in Jerusalem: "For over a month, we are staying in the port city of Japan, Yokohama. We are among the first survivors and arrived here with an American tourist visa. Naturally, we are considered community delegates to transmit to our brethren [information] about the situation of the Jewish people…". Further in the detailed letter, they describe the destruction of the European and Lithuanian communities ravaged by war and write about the difficult situation and the Russian occupation of Lithuania. [This letter was written before the Nazi invasion of Lithuania in the summer of 1941]. They write about the heads of the Telz Yeshiva and of the students who do not know if they will succeed leaving Japan [in the end, Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Bloch and most of the yeshiva students were murdered by the Nazis, and some were exiled to Siberia].
Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch (1895-1955), son Rabbi Yosef Leib Bloch served for 12 years as head of the Telz Yeshiva in Lithuania in the lifetime of his father [from 1928]. In 1940, two heads of the Telz Yeshiva in Lithuania, Rabbi E. M. Bloch and Rabbi C. M. Katz left on the perilous journey via Siberia and Japan to the US to try to rescue their wives and children and the yeshiva students and their families who remained in the war-ravaged city of Telz. Upon their arrival in the US, they decided to found a new yeshiva on US soil. In Cheshvan 1941, they established the Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland, Ohio. Until 1945, they were not informed of the details of the destruction and horrific annihilation. Only after the war, they discovered that most of the rabbis and students of the yeshiva and their families were brutally murdered at the time Lithuania was occupied by the Germans. However, Telz Torah was saved by their tremendous efforts to strengthen and glorify the Torah.
Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Katz (1894-1964), son-in-law of R' Y. L. Bloch was known from his youth as an outstanding Torah prodigy. He headed the kollel in the city of Telz and after the Holocaust founded and headed the Telz Yeshivas in Cleveland and in Chicago.
3 leaves, 22.5 cm. (Stationery of "Centre Hotel - Yokohama"). Good condition. Filing holes. Few tears and wear.