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There are numerous Holocaust archival collections in various communities. Each has tried to document the horrors of the era experienced by Jews worldwide or by people who later settled in the local area. The Kiddush HaShem Archives, however, is different. The collection, housed in Israel's B'nei Braq, does not emphasize the cruelty of the Nazis; it stresses Jewish religious life under occupation.

The archives are the dream-come-true of HaRav Moshe Prager (1909-1985), a religious Jew and writer from Poland. In 1940 he fled war-torn Europe to Palestine in the entourage of HaAdmorAvraham Mordechai Alter (1866-1948), the rebbe from Gur (also Ger, Yiddish for Góra Kalwaria, a village in Poland).

The rebbe was the head of Poland's largest pre-war Hassidic movement. When he left Poland it was his fifth trip since 1921 to Palestine, where he maintained an apartment in the Sefas Emes yeshiva and saw a bright future for Jewish learning and observance based in Jerusalem, then later in Tel-Aviv/B'nei Braq and other cities. His son was already living in Palestine and had come to take the father to Jerusalem via Italy.

Rabbi Prager hid from the Germans in various Warsaw apartments, then was fortunate enough to escape. He saw from afar the utter decimation of Gerer Chassidus in Poland and started the arduous task of rebuilding.

Unfortunately, Moshe Prager's entire family was not as privileged. They were all killed in Poland. Prager continuously asked himself why God spared him. He came to the conclusion that his task had to be preserving the memory of those who were murdered.

Prager contended that Hitler wanted not only to annihilate the Jewish people. He wanted to strike at the heart of our people -- the Torah. Often the first to be put to death by the Germans were rabbis, such as HaRav Elchonon Wasserman, who was taken from the house of HaRav Avrohom Grodzensky and murdered in the first German akzion in the Kovno ghetto. So, Prager helped establish a series of Chassidei Gur schools in Israel, and donated land for a rabbinic center. Yet, he felt that his main task was still not fulfilled. Something was missing.

Prager decided to document how Jews found strength in the Torah even under Nazi occupation. He joined the Council of Yad VaShem. The work was important, but he wanted more. He wanted to show that for all of Hitler's barbarity, the Germans could not stomp out Torah.

In 1964, Prager started the Kiddush HaShem Archives, today run under the auspices of Chassidei Gur and housing pictures, films, and documents. The archives started in Prager's house. The next step was to take over a storage room in his residence. Finally, the archives moved to a building owned by Chassidei Gur. That facility, however, has become too small and now contains more than 300,000 items, so a new building is being contemplated on the plot of land where Prager's former house stands. Prager's goal was to document how the Torah cannot be destroyed. To the contrary, the Torah gives strength to those who observe it, even under the most trying circumstances.

The Kiddush HaShem Archives contain two collections. One is Holocaust-related. The other is an outgrowth of another of Prager's ideas. Hitler wanted to kill every Jew, be he Ashkenazi or Sephardi. Hitler made no distinction. Prager contended that this is another indication that we are one people. Therefore, he started to collect information about religious life in Jewish communities wherever they were.

The Kiddush HaShem Archives does not work in a vacuum. It has run joint projects with the Spielberg Film Institute and Yad VaShem, always keeping to its mandate of documenting religious life and the keeping of commandments under the most oppressive conditions.

Visiting the archives can be an interesting and inspiring experience, whether to do research on an historical subject or family background, or to view some of the films that the archives has produced, such as how Jews strove to keep the commandments of Pesach and tefillin under the hard Nazi hand.

One small anecdote: In the archives collection there is a very small tefillin shel rosh. In one of the concentration camps, a Jew noticed it on the head of a corpse. He quickly grabbed the tefillin before he was detected, and put them into his pocket. He wore these tefillin whenever he could, and was convinced that they saved his life until liberation at the end of the war.

Dr. Jay Levinson is an adjunct professor at John Jay College of criminal justice, New York.