Zew Wawa Morejno was a Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 and American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 rabbi.

Morejno was born into a hasidic family in Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

. He studied at rabbinical schools

Yeshiva

Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...

 in Baranovichi

Baranovichi

Baranovichi , is a city in the Brest Province of western Belarus with a population of 173,000. It is a significant railway junction and home to a state university.-Overview:...

, Mir, Belarus

Mir, Belarus

Mir is an urban settlement in Kareličy raion, Hrodna Voblast, Belarus on the banks of Miranka River, about 85 kilometers southwest of the national capital, Minsk....

 and in Kamieniec Litewski. In 1939 he became a rabbi in Zuprany. He survived the German occupation of Poland, serving as a rabbi in the ghettoes of Ashmyany and Vilnius

Vilna Ghetto

The Vilna Ghetto or Vilnius Ghetto was a Jewish ghetto established by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the occupied Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic , during the Holocaust in World War II...

, and later (1943–44) he was imprisoned in Klooga concentration camp

Klooga concentration camp

Klooga was a Nazi labor subcamp of the Vaivara concentration camp complex established in September 1943 in Harju County, during World War II, in German-occupied Estonia near the northern Estonian village Klooga...

 in Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

.

During the years 1945 and 1946, he served as dean and founder of The Advanced Rabbinical School Netzach Israel in Łódź. From 1948, he served as the Chief Rabbi of Łódź. In 1952, he was removed from this position by the Communist leadership of Łódź over a dispute regarding Jewish cemetery rights in the city.

In 1956, reinstalled as Chief Rabbi of Łódź, he also became the director of the Main Religious Council and the Chief Rabbi of Poland. Shortly, however, he was again removed.

Prosecuted throughout the 1960s by the Communist party for protesting the destruction of Jewish cemeteries in Poland and for the widespread resurgence of political antisemitism culminating in the mass expulsion of Polish Jews in 1968 (March 1968 events), after the Six Day War. As the last rabbi of Communist Poland, in 1973 he emigrated to the United States where he became a rabbi in the Hasidic Ger

Ger (Hasidic dynasty)

Ger, or Gur is a Hasidic dynasty originating from Ger, the Yiddish name of Góra Kalwaria, a small town in Poland....

 community in Brooklyn, New York. He died in New York on March 19, 2011.