Shimon Sholom Kalish

He was a major driving force behind the exodus of thousands of young men in Mir, Kletsk, Radin, Novhardok, and other yeshivas, via Russia and Japan to Shanghai at the outbreak of World War II.

As World War II intensified, the Nazis stepped up pressure on Japan to hand over the Shanghai Jews.

Warren Kozak describes the episode when the Japanese military governor of the city sent for the Jewish community leaders.

"Without hesitation and knowing the fate of his community hung on his answer, Reb Kalish told the translator (in Yiddish): "Zugim weil mir senen orientalim — Tell him the Germans hate us because we are Oriental."

Upon his passing in 1954, his son Yerachmiel Yehuda Myer Kalish (1901-1976) accompanied his father's body to Tiberias in Israel, and remained there.