Reb Moshe Chaim Tiefenbrun was one of the personalities I grew up with, and one of the two people who first introduced me to nusach (the beautiful melodies of our liturgy and prayer). He was a Holocaust survivor who always had a tractate of the Talmud under his arm; and I recall hearing the story of his terrible loss.
When the war broke out and the Nazis were approaching his village in Poland, fearing he might be taken to the German army or a labor battalion (as had been the Russians