Fire at Oholei Torah Preschool

A major fire broke out on Sunday morning at the Oholei Torah Kindergarten Building in East Flatbush, at 407 East 53rd Street, destroying the building. 

Fire Commissioners are now beginning preliminary investigations.

As of now there is no information on how the fire started.

Firemen were amazed that the school’s main picture of the Rebbe was untouched, even though the entire area around it was scorched. The children’s Haggadahs, prepared for the upcoming Pesach holiday, were saved as well.

The Kindergarten Administration, under the Director Mrs. Faige Winner-Hertzel, announced that arrangements are being made for the children to have regular school bus pick up on Monday, and a regular school day schedule. The classes will be held in the Beis Medrash Class rooms in the Eastern Parkway building, which are available due to their Pesach break during these days. 

The burned building is also the site of the famed shul of Reb Michoel Teitelbaum obm, who fought a years long legal battle to keep the Shul from being sold to non-Jews in the 1960s by the Shul’s board.

Reb Michoel, having heard the Rebbe’s impassioned words against such actions, fought heart and soul against the proposal and campaigned to have the shul stay open. After the judge ruled that the board had no right to sell the shul as long as some congregants still desired to worship there, Reb Michoel kept his apartment in East Flatbush and worked tirelessly to coax any remaining Jews to come and daven in his shul. Within a few years, however, all Jews had fled the vicinity and Reb Michoel was virtually the only one left.

Despite the obstacles, Reb Michoel then organized a group to come in from Crown Heights and maintain the minyan, keeping the shul open three times a day. He personally cleaned the shul and kept it presentable. Later, he moved some classes of the Oholei Torah kindergarten into the empty building, thereby bringing a permanent and vibrant Jewish influence to the area.