
Meet Meir Yechiel HaLevi, Rabbi of the tiny hamlet of Ostrowiec, Poland, in the early 1900s, known as the Ostrovtsa Rebbe. He lived almost eighty years and became world renowned as a leading Hasidic figure of his time. About four months ago, I learned that this odd, pious, brilliant, often eccentric man had intervened with my grandparents about ninety years ago, back in 1920, and essentially saved our family from the Nazi Holocaust.