Simcha Lieberman

Rabbi Simcha Binem Lieberman (29 December 1929 – 28 June 2009) was an Israeli Talmudic scholar, lecturer at Jews' College, London, and a prolific writer. He was one of the last survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Poland

Simcha Binem was born in Warsaw, Poland on 29 December 1926 (24 Teveth 5687 in the Hebrew calendar) to his father Rabbi Brachya Lieberman, a notable Gerrer hasid. He received the traditional education in chasidic families, steeped in the study of the Talmud and its commentators. This ended abruptly in 1939 with the Nazi invasion of Poland.

With the enclosure of Warsaw Jewry in a confined ghetto, his education continued along with the fight for survival entailed in ghetto life. When the bulk of the ghetto population was sent to the Treblinka extermination camp, Simcha, as an able-bodied teenager, was transferred to Majdanek, where he worked as a slave labourer. He was tortured brutally on account of his involvement in numerous acts of sabotage. Ultimately he was imprisoned in seven concentration camps including Dachau and Theresienstadt.