It is ten years since the passing of the Chassid, R’ Zalman Levin a”h of Kfar Chabad. He walked among us but he belonged to the generation of giants, Chassidim who lived lives of mesirus nefesh. In a series of meetings with him, he recounted the story of his childhood in a Chassidishe home in the Soviet Union where children learned Torah and where kosher meat was secretly slaughtered. * Part 4 of 9.
One of the places where we went to learn was the city of Melitopol. Our mashpia there was R’ Sholom Morosow. He taught us Nigleh and Chassidus and he would farbreng with us every so often. He was excellent at explaining things. We learned there until they caught us and we had to escape.
We managed to flee at the last minute thanks to a bachur whose job it was to stand guard. When he saw someone approaching us or any suspicious activity in the area, he would quickly tell us and say how much time we had left, etc.
In my youth, I learned for a while in Kursk under difficult conditions and constant terror. We learned in rooms that we rented from gentiles. Sometimes, we would rent a room as a place to sleep and did the actual learning amidst the hay and straw of the cows. Thus, we wandered from place to place so we wouldn’t get caught. This wandering was over a long period of time.
Our mashpia in Kursk was R’ Henoch Rapoport. He mainly taught us Chassidus and gave us very powerful shiurim. He was a bachur who, like everyone else, had fled from other places and came here. Since he was older, he was appointed as the maggid shiur.
At a certain point, the yeshiva in Kursk was discovered and disbanded. I was 14. I fled to Leningrad as I was afraid to return home to Nevel. It was very dangerous for me to return home for they would certainly arrest me immediately and ask me where I had been and what I had done.
Out of all the bachurim who escaped from Kursk, they only caught R’ Yehoshua Katzenelenbogen (the son of Mumme Sarah). They put him in jail with criminals. It was a special prison in which they supposedly reeducated criminals, including dangerous ones. He went through all the levels of hell there since he wouldn’t eat the treif food they served. He remained in this prison for two and a half years. It was a punishment for his not having attended school in his childhood, they said.
Throughout this time, he refused to reveal who his parents were and where he was all those years. Since he remained silent, they made him suffer and every day he was cruelly beaten.
He was a sweet bachur with a good head. He was a sort of mashpia of mine. When I ran into difficulty in preparing the Gemara, he would help me. He was a golden bachur. He was eventually released but I don’t remember how.
As I escaped, I began thinking where I would stay. I knew that I had to find a house. I couldn’t go to my parents, as I said earlier, for the communists would throw me in jail without a trial and my father might also suffer. There was also the danger that they would catch the children who learned with him. These wicked people were capable of putting children in jail too.
When I arrived in Leningrad I had no permanent place to stay. I went from house to house and every few weeks I moved to another house. I did this so they wouldn’t catch me and also because the people whose homes these were did not want to put themselves in danger. They were unwilling to have me stay with them for too long.
In addition, every building had a concierge who was responsible for everything that went on inside the building. He would inform the authorities about every stranger who appeared that was not registered. In a case like mine, that of a child, it immediately aroused questions. What was a child doing here? Who brought him? Who are his parents? Why isn’t he in his own home?
The good people I stayed with in Leningrad were the parents of old students of my father, from the towns near Nevel (Toropets and others), and my father would make the effort to travel to these distant towns occasionally, where he taught children secretly. Naturally, due to the great danger my father put himself in to do this, the parents were very appreciative, and so when I arrived in Leningrad, they were very happy to be able to help the son of their children’s melamed. It was a way of paying back my father for what he did for them.
One of the people I stayed with was a special man. He wanted his two sons to have at least a minimal knowledge of Judaism, like knowing how to read from a siddur and how to say Kaddish, etc. This is why he entrusted them to my father. I know that my father experienced great fear and danger in order to reach those distant towns and teach these children.
There were other parents whose names I don’t remember now, with whom I stayed briefly. I didn’t stay in any one house longer than a few weeks, so people wouldn’t get used to seeing a certain face for a long time, and later be able to testify about me and against me.
For a while, I lived in the home of the Chassid, R’ Yaakov Yosef Raskin.
In Leningrad there was a shul called the Kopetchka Shul, where I would daven and learn a little with the Shamash. This shul was actually a central synagogue that hosted world class cantors and it served not only as a shul but looked more like a conservatory because of the beautiful sanctuary (apparently referring to the Grand Choral Synagogue – Ed). Now and then, famous chazanim from all over the world would come and daven there. To the government, this was like a showcase for the arts, but in actual fact, the Lubavitchers ran it and handled the organizational aspects such as arranging the minyanim for davening and Krias ha’Torah and everything having to do with running a Jewish shul.
In addition to the magnificent main room, there were inner rooms that served as alternate places for minyanim. Each room had a different type of minyan. There was the Litvishe minyan, the Poilishe minyan, and the Lubavitcher minyan. Of course, I davened in the Lubavitcher shul that they called Chabad’ke. The Shamash was a real tzaddik who davened with a chayus and inner, pure concentration. Everyone called him “Moshiach” because they didn’t know his name and this name suited him well.
I don’t remember the names of other people from that shul even though I had friends there. The fact that I don’t remember names is not due to forgetfulness but simply because I did not know their names. This was intentional; for if I knew and remembered them, and then the Soviets interrogated me, I could inadvertently reveal the names of Jews. I preferred not knowing.
There was a Jew there who had pity on me now and then and gave me something to eat to revive me.
In contrast to these good Jews, there was also another type of Jew who would come to the house I was staying in and ask who I was and what I was doing there. They looked religious, but were government agents whose only goal was to catch Jews and squeeze information out of them. I told these individuals that my house was far away and I did not have enough money to go home.
I lived in Leningrad and waited to turn 16 when I could legally receive a passport as a resident of the city. Then I could register and get a job and would not have to look for a place to sleep, since the government supplied lodgings for those who worked. There was a sort of motel for people who had no place to stay, mainly for those who worked in the city and lived far away.
I will tell you the truth (said R’ Zalman with tears in his eyes), I have no idea how I survived at that age and experienced all those miracles and was saved from Eisav, the hands of Satan. Boruch Hashem, I was saved time and again. It was a miracle.