Mir yeshiva (Belarus)   

The Mir Yeshiva (Hebrew: ישיבת מיר‎, Yeshivas Mir), commonly known as the Mirrer Yeshiva or The Mir, was a Lithuanian yeshiva located in the town of Mir, Russian Empire (now Belarus). After relocating a number of times during World War II, it has evolved into three yeshivas, one in Jerusalem, with a subsidiary campus in Brachfeld, Modi'in Illit, and the other two in Brooklyn, New York: the Mir Yeshiva, and Bais Hatalmud. 

For a short period, part of this yeshiva was located in Ramygala. 

The invasion of Poland  by Nazi Germany from the west, in 1939, and the Red Army from the east meant the yeshiva was unable to remain in Mir, which was now under Soviet Communist rule. Many of the foreign-born students left, but the bulk of the yeshiva relocated to Lithuania, which had been overrun by Soviet Russia, but not yet Sovietized. The yeshiva was first re-established in Vilnius, and then in Keidan, Lithuania. Not many months elapsed before Lithuania became virtually annexed by Soviet Russia, and the future of the yeshiva was again in peril. The yeshiva was split into four sections: The "first division", under the leadership of Rabbi Chaim Leib Shmuelevitz as rosh yeshiva and Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein as mashgiach, relocated to Krakinova; the other three divisions went to the three small towns of Ramigola (about 15 km away), Shat and Krak. This arrangement was only a temporary solution, and that ultimately the yeshivah would need to flee Soviet-occupied Lithuania in order to survive. In the summer of 1940, several students of the yeshivah learned that the Dutch ambassador to Lithuania was willing to provide them with destination-visas to the Caribbean island of Curaçao. Concurrently, it became known that the Japanese consul in Lithuania, Chiune  Sugihara, had agreed to issue transit visas to refugees who wished to escape via the Japanese-occupied Pacific. As a result of these fortuitous events (seen by many to this day as acts of divine providence) most of the yeshivah students requested and received several thousand transit-visas from Sugihara, permitting them to depart to the Far East. 

For more on the Mir Yeshiva see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_yeshiva_(Belarus) 

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