Stolin’s Sole Survivor - Rav Yochanan Perlow

The Youngest Son and the Last Remnant of Stolin

Chaifa, 1946

On May 24, 1946, the SS Andre Lebon edged into the port of Chaifa to a scene unlike anything the battered Yishuv had witnessed since the war’s end. Representatives of the Jewish community pressed forward to greet Zivia Lubetkin, the famed heroine of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

But beside them stood a second crowd — hushed, trembling, and filled with awed anticipation. These were the Karlin-Stolin chassidim, awaiting not a partisan fighter but a man who carried within him the broken remains of a dynasty: the Stoliner Rebbe, Rav Yochanan Perlow.

When he stepped onto the soil of Eretz Yisrael, a wave of emotion swept the crowd. Rav Yochanan was the youngest son — and now the sole survivor — of the Yenuka’s ten children. All his siblings but one had been murdered in the Holocaust. Among them were the two principal Rebbes of the chassidim in Eretz Yisroel, Rav Avraham Elimelech and Rav Moshe, who perished together with their beloved chassidim. His last surviving brother, Rav Yaakov Chaim, who had immigrated to America in 1923 and established a court in Williamsburg, suddenly passed away in Detroit, on the very day Rav Yochanan boarded the ship that brought him to Chaifa. He left no children.

And so the Rebbe arrived in Chaifa with only his young daughter, Faigaleh. His wife, Margolis, and eldest daughter, Sarah, had died of food poisoning in their wartime exile in Soviet Central Asia. He stepped onto the quay of Chaifa alone, bereft of family, community, or possessions and bearing the crushing responsibility of rebuilding the decimated house of Karlin-Stolin.

The Six Sons of the Yenuka

When the Yenuka, Rav Yisrael Perlow, passed away in 1921, leadership was dispersed among his sons:

• Rav Asher — in Stolin

• Rav Aharon — in Warsaw

• Rav Avraham Elimelech — in Karlin

• Rav Moshe — in Stolin

• Rav Yaakov Chaim — in the USA 

• Rav Yochanan — in Lutsk

Rav Avraham Elimelech founded the Lunintz yeshivah and appointed a young Rav Elazar Menachem Shach as rosh yeshivah. He visited Eretz Yisrael four times. His final visit ended on August 29, 1939, just three days before the outbreak of World War II. Returning to Europe, he was martyred together with his flock.

Rav Yochanan established yeshivos in both Lutsk and Praga (Warsaw), and had visited Eretz Yisrael himself in 1937. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, he fled eastward, urging his chassidim to do the same. He spent the war years in Frunze (Bishkek), Kyrgyzstan, where tragedy struck with the loss of his wife and daughter.

Rav Yochanan Perlow After Liberation — Feldafing

After liberation, he slowly made his way — exhausted, grieving, and nearly unrecognizable from years of deprivation — to the Feldafing Displaced Persons Camp, in the American zone of Germany. Feldafing was one of the largest Jewish DP camps in postwar Europe, a place where thousands of survivors tried to rebuild themselves from the ruins of body and spirit.

There, Rav Yochanan lived in deliberate obscurity. He refused any honors, revealing nothing of his lineage. Many who saw him had no idea that this quiet, humble man was the last surviving son of the Karlin-Stolin dynasty.

Only when Lieutenant Meyer Birnbaum, sent by Mike Tress to locate the Stoliner Rebbe, confronted him, did the truth surface. When asked directly if he was the Rebbe, Rav Yochanan was silent. When gently pressed — whether his silence meant yes — he finally breathed:

“I was the Stoliner Rebbe.”

But as the final surviving son, he understood he must become the Rebbe once more.

A New Era Begins

As the ship Andre Lebon approached Chaifa, Rav Yochanan entered a new chapter. No longer just the Stoliner Rebbe of Lutsk, he now became the Stolin-Karlin Rebbe, charged with resurrecting a dynasty nearly erased.

He settled in Chaifa, the first Chassidic Rebbe to rebuild there after the war. In 1948, he traveled to the United States and established himself in Williamsburg, later visiting Eretz Yisrael shortly before his passing. At that time, the American Karlin community numbered barely 200 families.

Rav Yochanan established a yeshivah and planted the seeds for future expansion.

But his leadership was brief. In 1955, he suffered a stroke and soon passed away. Once again, the future of Karlin seemed uncertain, but the dynasty rose again under his grandson, today’s Rebbe, who continues to lead Karlin-Stolin throughout the world.

The Rebbe Who Played the Violin

Music flowed in the veins of Karlin. Rav Yochanan embodied that legacy — a gifted composer and musician, master of the violin and cello. In Lutsk, he befriended a Polish musician, Witold Pomienko, who spoke perfect Yiddish. In Feldafing, he asked Lt. Birnbaum for help obtaining a violin — one of the few comforts he allowed himself.

Later in Brooklyn, his chazzan was Yom Tov Ehrlich, the legendary composer whom the Rebbe encouraged to publish and record his music.

Buried Twice

After his passing, a dispute arose between the American and Israeli communities about his final resting place. Rav Yochanan was initially interred in New Jersey. More than a year — sixteen months — later, it was agreed that he be reburied in Eretz Yisrael.

When the grave in New Jersey was opened, those present were astonished to find his body lay whole and fresh, as though he had passed only moments earlier.

Thousands attended his levayah in the Old Cemetery of Tiveria, where he was laid to rest beside Rav Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk.

His yahrtzeit is 21 Kislev.

“Moshe, fahr aheim!”: The Rebbe Who Sent a Man Home

Fifty years ago, a quiet, weather-worn Jew entered the Karlin synagogue in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood of Jerusalem. He sat alone on an old wooden bench, staring ahead as if searching through layers of memory.

His name was Moshe, a wandering Hungarian survivor who now sold bags and wallets for a living.

A young man who knew him approached and asked if he needed anything.

Instead of answering, Moshe asked softly: “Did the Stolin Rebbe, Rav Yochanan, ever daven in this shul?”

“Yes,” the young man replied. “Whenever he came to Yerushalayim, this is where he prayed.”

Moshe grew quiet. Then he said, “I have something to tell you.”

Chassidim gathered around him — young, old, curious, reverent. And Moshe began.

“In my early days in the DP camp…”

“In Feldafing,” Moshe said, “there was no life — only shadows. We were broken people. No past remained, and no future could be seen through the fog of loss.

“And among us, hidden, lived the Rebbe, Reb Yochanan of Karlin. A saintly man — humble beyond words. He refused every honor. He lived like one of us, suffered with us.

“I am a Hungarian Jew. We didn’t go to Rebbes. But this man…”

Moshe’s voice trembled.

“This man captured my heart.”

He would help the Rebbe with small tasks, though the Rebbe rarely accepted help.

“Moshe, fahr aheim”

“One morning,” Moshe continued, “I wandered the camp aimlessly when the Rebbe approached me. He looked at me with eyes that saw straight into the soul and said:

"Moshe, fahr aheim!" — Moshe, go home!

“Home? My home was a cemetery… my family murdered, my childhood burned. I ignored his words.”

But the next morning, once again, the Rebbe found him.

"Moshe, bist noch do? Fahr shoin aheim!"(Moshe, you’re still here? Go home — now!)

“A force stirred inside me. I packed up and left.”

Moshe. Your father is gone. I saw him fall into the pit with the firing squad. Do you want to say Tehillim at the mass grave?

The Ghost Town

Moshe described arriving in his hometown — a silent, ruined shell.

“Every street screamed memories. The shul burned. The cheder shattered. The mikveh is dry. Gentile boys walked past laughing while my insides twisted.”

A Jew approached him and said:

“Moshe. Your father is gone. I saw him fall into the pit with the firing squad. Do you want to say Tehillim at the mass grave?”

Moshe went. He stood by the mound of earth and tried to cry — but no tears came.

“I understood then,” he said, “that I would never cry again in this world.”

The Living Dead

As he wandered, someone called, "Moshe—". He turned. A man stood there who was thin as a skeleton, draped in rags, barely alive.

“Moshe…” the man whispered. “Ikh bin dayn tateh.I am your father.”

Moshe approached and recognized him. “Father! But they told me—”

“Yes,” his father said, trembling. “I stood at the pit. The shots came. I fell. I pretended to be dead. When darkness came, I crawled away. Since then, I have been alone.”

Then he added, “This morning, I could bear my loneliness no longer. I walked to the river to end my life. If you had come tomorrow, I would not be here. Hashem sent you to me.”

The Tears Return

“Then,” Moshe said, “the dam broke. All the grief, terror, and years of torture poured out. My father cried with me. A puddle of tears gathered at our feet.

I saw my reflection in the water, mocking me: ‘And you thought you'd never cry again…’”

Moshe concluded, “I never saw the Karliner Rebbe again. But with two words, ‘Fahr aheim’, he reunited me with my father, saved his life, and restored my tears. I came with my father to Eretz Yisrael. I rebuilt myself here. And now I sit in the Beis Midrash of the Karliner Rebbe telling you this, so you know in whose presence you once stood.”

A Teaching from the Rebbe

Another Jew, raised in Williamsburg in the 1940s and ’50s, recalled davening in the Karlin-Stolin shul on Rodney Street. He remembered the singing — the first chassidic orchestra at weddings — and the Rebbe’s gentle, luminous derashos.

Rav Yochanan would often say: “We are Beis Yisrael — one house. A house stands only on achdus, achvah, and ahavas Yisrael.”

Ten planks bound together can form a raft that floats; so too Jews bound together in love can rise above any storm.

The Rebbe told a parable:

A prince’s carriage was stuck in the mud. His four champion horses could not move it. A farmer replaced them with his four ordinary horses — and immediately the carriage came free.

“How?” the prince asked.

“Your horses,” said the farmer, “come from different estates. When one is struck, the others

feel nothing.

My horses grew up together. When one feels pain, all feel it.”

And the Rebbe concluded:

“So it must be with our people. We rise only when we pull together.”

Article © Kahal Chasidim