Hersh Eliyah Wiesenthal

HERSH ELIYAH WIESENTHAL (born ca. 1837; died ca. 1933; son of Leah and Yosef Leib Wiesenthal) was a grain merchant who drove a wagon to Bessarabia to get the raw materials from which flax-seed oil was manufactured in Skala. He was a follower of the Chortkover rebbe and went to synagogue three times a day to pray and study. After the Great Fire of Skala in 1899, he felt there was no economic future in the town and wanted to bring his family to America; but the voyage by ship took 12 days and his wife ETHEL refused to travel over Shabbat.