Chabad.org
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was born on Friday, April 18, 1902 (Nissan 11 on the Hebrew calendar) in the Ukrainian-Russian town of Nikolaev.
His father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, was a renowned Kabbalist and Talmudic scholar; his mother, Rebbetzin Chanah, an aristocratic woman from a prestigious rabbinical family.
The Rebbe spent his childhood in pogrom-ridden Czarist Russia, the 20’s battling the Stalinist attempt to eradicate Jewish life in the Soviet Empire, the 30’s in Berlin and Paris. In 1941 he escaped Nazi-occupied Europe and settled in New York, where for the next 50 years he transformed the very fabric of Jewish life in every corner of the globe.
