Rabbi Chaim Dov Ber Silver was a student at the Mir Yeshiva in the 1930s. (See photos of Rabbi Silver and other Mir Yeshiva students.) He, along with the other British yeshiva students, fled Mir for Lithuania. They stayed in Kovno and Kelme. The British government helped some of its citizens to escape from Eastern Europe. They went by train to Moscow via Riga, through Omsk, Tomsk, Krasnoiyarsk, Biro-Bidjan and Khaborovsk in Siberia and finally to the port of Vladivostok. They boarded a Chinese ship for Hong Kong. The story of Rabbi Silver's escape and resettlement in Austrailia is told in the pages below.
You can click on any page and see a larger image or read the two articles in pdf format by clicking KelmeMelbourne |