Memory Lane: R’ Shmiel Roth, President of Agudath Israel of Boro Park

Muncacz

Reb Shmuel was born in the town of Muncacz, Czechoslovakia, in the year 1923. His father, Reb Moshe Hakohen Roth, was a wealthy paper manufacturer, and was a Rosh hakohol in the community. 

Reb Moshe spared no effort for the education of his son. He hired a slew of private tutors to teach him Torah, and with his prodigious mind, young Shmuel absorbed much Torah during his youth. 

For his bar mitzvah, the Minchas Elozor of Munkatch, was invited to the Roth home. He drank l’chaim and gave a brocho to the young bar mitzvah bachur. Reb Shmuel would relate that it was the brocho of the Minchas Elozor that sustained him through the war. 

At the age of seventeen, Shmuel journeyed to the famed Galanta Yeshiva which was led by the great ga’on Rav Yehoshua Buchsbaum. The three years that he spent in Galanta were life changing for him (he later published an essay in Dos Yiddishe Vort entitled “A Shabbos in the Galanta yeshiva.”). Shmuel would transcribe the Torah of his rebbe, and much of that Torah was saved from the war and included in the Galanta Rov’s seforim Ohr Pnei Yehoshua. 

As noted, he was deeply impacted by his time in Galanta, and would sing the zemiros that were sung in the yeshiva at his Shabbos table even sixty years after his time there. 

Flight 

The Nazis closed the Galanta Yeshiva, and the talmidim dispersed. Shmuel returned home to Munkatch. On the day he fled the town, his father stood with him on the front steps to his home and placed his hands on the head of his beloved son, bentching him with birchas kohanim. This was the last time that Shmuel saw his father. 

In later years, he would recount his Holocaust experiences, but not with sadness—only with heartfelt gratitude to Hashem for saving him through a series of miracles. 

His first destination was Miscolc, where he planned to obtain gentile papers for himself and his parents. When he finally managed to obtain the papers, he concealed them in his shoes. But he was found out and imprisoned in solitary confinement.  

One day, two men came looking for him in the camp. They had been paid by Shmuel’s sisters to fetch him after they had procured for him gentile papers. With his papers safely in hand, he made his way to Budapest where he remained until the city was liberated by the Russians in 1944. 

Boro Park 

Making his way back home to Munkatch, he encountered a friend who asked him what he was doing there. He answered, “I’ve come home… to which he was told “Shmilu, there’s no such thing as home anymore…” 

He was reunited with his two youngest sisters in Washington Heights. He was introduced to his wife by a friend from Galanta, and the couple remained inseparable for the next 65 years. 

They made their way to Atlanta, where Mr. Roth attendee Georgia State University and simultaneously became the principal of the local Jewish day school. He brought down the Helmetzer Rov, a renowned expert in mikvaos, to oversee the building of a brand new mikvah that would live up to the highest standards, and he corresponded with Rav Moshe Feinstein regarding different issues that came up in the community. 

The Roth’s moved back to New York, settling at first in Crown Heights and later in Boro Park, where he became the president of the Agudah.  

For decades, he delivered shiurim for balebatim, drawing on the wealth of Torah knowledge that he amassed back home, as well as in the postwar years. 

The Roth home was a beis va’ad l’chachomim; they hosted numerous gedolim on their trips to America, and Reb Shmuel cherished his close relationship with many of them. They, in turn, appreciated his chein and Torah’digkeit. 

At the time of his passing, he left behind beautiful Torah generations, and legacy of Torah and cheesed in Boro Park of yore.