Rabbi Naftali Halberstam was born in Bobova, Poland in 1931 (25 Sivan, 5691 on the Hebrew calendar). His mother and two siblings died in the Holocaust, and towards the end of the war, when Rabbi Naftali was a teenager, his father, Rabbi Shlomo, managed to arrange for him to go to the Holy Land. Rabbi Shlomo remained in Europe, so Rabbi Naftali was not sure if his father had survived the war.