[1] He also helped establish branches of the Lakewood Yeshiva in dozens of cities, and opened a combination Torah study and Orthodox outreach centers in the United States and other countries.

In the early 1920s, his father accepted a rabbinical post in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and moved there with his mother, while Nosson Meir remained in Kuhl to complete his mesivta (Jewish secondary school) program.

[9][8][3] He stayed in Kelm for over three years,[9] remaining there after World War II broke out, when he could have left with his Canadian passport.

They did this by conducting the first half of their Jewish marriage ceremony, erusin, in Kovno; their chuppah took place after they reached Montreal.

From Vladivostok they traveled by steamship to Brisbane, a voyage of nearly four and a half weeks (here their rations were limited to sardines, eggs, and tomatoes).

While the British citizens in the group spent over six years in Australia waiting to be repatriated, Wachtfogel, Schechter and Wachtfogel's bride were given first-class tickets to New York by the Board of Governors of the Australian Jewish community, which feared that they would foment a religious revival in their community.

[10] In spring 1942 Wachtfogel and 19 other avreichim (young married men) started the first kollel in America, called Beth Medrash Govoha, in White Plains, New York.

[12][11] They offered the leadership to Rabbi Aharon Kotler, who asked that they move the kollel to Lakewood, New Jersey, and admit bachurim (unmarried young men) in order to turn it into a full-scale, European-style yeshiva.