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Ephraim Oshry, author of The Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry, was one of the few European rabbis and poseks to survive the Holocaust.
Born in Kupiškis, Lithuania in 1914, he studied alongside some of the most prominent and revered Jewish leaders and rabbis of his time, most notably Rabbi Avraham Duber Kahana Shapiro. When the Nazis invaded Kaunas in 1941 during World War II, Oshry's community was forced into the Kaunas Ghetto and Concentration Camp.
In his book, The Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry, Oshry tells his story of living through the Holocaust. Besides the horrific details of how the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators viciously murdered Jews, Oshry focuses on the spiritual life of the Jews living in the Kaunas Ghetto and Concentration Camp; these tortured Jews, despite being starved and beaten, continued to study Torah in secret and to risk their lives in order to fulfill God's commandments.
While in the Kaunas Ghetto and Concentration Camp, Oshry began writing his responsa regarding the Holocaust, answering very difficult questions concerning human nature, God, and Jewish ethics. Before the final battle between the Nazis and the Soviets, Oshry buried his responsa in the ground. After the war, he retrieved them and ultimately - in 1959 - he published some of those Hebrew responsa under the title: She'eilos Uteshuvos Mima'amakim. This volume ultimately was followed by four more volumes, the final one published in 1979. There is an abbreviated version in English: Responsa from the Holocaust.
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