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"There’s no mention of this in Chabad’s official bio of the Rebbe. However, one can find the story of Rabbi Schneersohn’s rescue in 1939 by Nazi soldiers acting on behalf of the head of the Nazi’s military intelligence based in Berlin (the Abwehr) in the fascinating book entitled “Rescued From the Reich – How One of Hitler’s Soldiers Saved The Lubavitcher Rebbe” by Southern Methodist University historian Brian Mark Rigg."
How Chabad's Beloved Rebbe Was Saved - AJT
RABBI SCHNEERSOHN ESCAPED WARSAW ONLY WITH AID OF GERMANS
The story of how the leader of Chabad was saved from the Nazis began just about 73 years ago. It was October 1939; during the previous month, Nazi Germany threw the globe into World War II with a blitzkrieg as ruthless as it was effective.
The Nazis’ first target, Poland, lasted less than a month before it folded, and on Oct. 5, 1939 Hitler triumphantly reviewed his troops in Warsaw. It was that day that the fate of more than 3 million Jews in Poland was largely sealed.
Among those trapped in Warsaw was the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, and his extended family. As the rebbe celebrated the closing days of Succoth that year, leaders of Chabad in the United States set about the difficult process of rescuing their beloved leader from the Nazis; what they developed was an extraordinary plan to bring him to the U.S. in the months following the German military victory.
It was an audacious operation that depended on international diplomacy, secret intelligence work and cooperation from the highest levels of the Roosevelt administration. Of course, as crucial as the President’s support was, the many maneuvers almost certainly would not have succeeded if it did not have the support of some of the most prominent Nazis in Berlin.
There’s no mention of this in Chabad’s official bio of the Rebbe. However, one can find the story of Rabbi Schneersohn’s rescue in 1939 by Nazi soldiers acting on behalf of the head of the Nazi’s military intelligence based in Berlin (the Abwehr) in the fascinating book entitled “Rescued From the Reich – How One of Hitler’s Soldiers Saved The Lubavitcher Rebbe” by Southern Methodist University historian Brian Mark Rigg.
Chabad had been in America since the mid-1920s, and the Rebbe had visited in 1929 and met President Herbert Hoover at the White House. At the start of World War II, though, the Lubavitchers were a mere shadow of the rich and politically influential worldwide movement it has become in recent decades.
Still, leaders of Chabad were able to find the support of prominent Americans including Sol Bloom, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives; Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis; and Secretary of State Cordell Hull, whose wife had a Jewish father – early in their campaign to save the Rebbe.
The United States was officially neutral in 1939, and thus high-ranking State Department official Robert Pell – who had good contacts in Berlin – was able to convince Helmuth Wolthat, the head of Germany’s Four Year national economic plan, to help. Wolthat found a sympathetic ear in Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, a career military officer, who led the aforementioned Abwehr.
Exactly why Nazi intelligence was willing to help is not entirely clear, but apparently there were a few followers of Hitler who did not want to destroy every Jew they found. Though he himself was dedicated to his party, Admiral Canaris had a number of trusted officers under his command who were part-Jewish; they were what the Nazis described as Mishlings, meaning they had been “aryanized” under Germany’s racial laws.
Canaris chose three of them – including Major Ernst Bloch, who had a Jewish father – to work with the Abwehr office in Warsaw. The trio’s task was to find and safely rescue the Rebbe and his family before the Nazi SS or the Gestapo murdered them.
It would take them nearly two months in their quiet search through the rubble of Warsaw to finally locate the Chabad leader. Meanwhile in the U.S., Chabad officials and their lawyer Max Rhoade began the difficult process of securing visas for the Rebbe.
It was a quest that was complicated by often anti-Semitic officers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and hostile American diplomats in Europe and the United States. What’s more, the Chabad officials also needed the cooperation of a reluctant Latvian government, as the Rebbe was a citizen of that still independent Baltic nation.
In what could only be described as an extraordinary – even miraculous – accomplishment, the Rebbe, his family and several of his followers finally left Warsaw under Major Bloch’s and the Nazi government’s Abwehr protection on Dec. 22, 1939. They traveled by train through Poland to Berlin, passed through hostile document checks by the SS, stayed the night in Berlin’s Jewish Federation offices and then journeyed to Latvia and ultimately to neutral Sweden.
Their visas were finally granted in early January 1940. Ironically, it took longer to get the visas from the American government than to rescue the Rebbe from the Nazis, but on March 19, 1940, the Rebbe, his wife, several family members and a few other Lubavitcher Hasids finally set foot in America and began their work to rebuild the Chabad movement in its new home. Rabbi Schneersohn’s beloved library of 135 crates of books was saved, too, and arrived from Warsaw a few months later.
Despite a severe heart condition and multiple sclerosis, the Rebbe continued to work tirelessly to lay the ground work for a vibrant post-war Chabad. He died in 1950 at the age of 70 and was succeeded by his son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, whom he had helped rescue from Vichy France.
In a short span of years that saw most of the great Hasidic dynasties of Eastern Europe end in the Nazi concentration camps, the Chabad Rebbe’s survival came against all odds and all logic. That he survived to continue to create what is arguably one of the biggest Jewish success stories in modern times is the stuff of great Hollywood movies.
Sometimes, our stories astonish even us.
Editor’s note: Bob Bahr is President of Shema Yisrael – The Open Synagogue and leads High Holiday services there.
By Bob Bahr
For the Atlanta Jewish Times
http://atlantajewishtimes.com/2012/10/how-chabads-beloved-rebbe-was-saved-from-the-nazis-by-the-nazis/
RABBI Schneersohn ESCAPED WARSZAWA TYLKO z pomocą Niemców
Opowieść o tym, jak przywódca Chabad został uratowany przed nazistami rozpoczęła się zaledwie około 73 lat temu. To był październik 1939; w poprzednim miesiącu, nazistowskie Niemcy rzucił kulę do II wojny światowej z blitzkrieg bezwzględny jak to było skuteczne.
Pierwszym celem nazistów, Polska, trwała mniej niż miesiąc przed jego złożeniu, a w dniu 5 października 1939 roku Hitler triumfalnie przeglądowi swoje oddziały w Warszawie. To było tego dnia, że los ponad 3 milionów Żydów w Polsce w dużej mierze zamknięty.
Wśród tych, uwięziony w Warszawie był szóstym Rebe, Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, a jego dalsza rodzina. Jak Rebe obchodzony ostatnich dniach Sukkot, że rok, przywódcy Chabad w Stanach Zjednoczonych ustaw o trudnym procesie ratowania ich ukochanego przywódcę z nazistami; czego opracowany był niezwykły plan sprowadzić go do Stanów Zjednoczonych w miesiącach następujących po niemieckim zwycięstwie militarnym.
To była zuchwała operacja, która była uzależniona od międzynarodowej dyplomacji tajnej pracy wywiadowczej i współpracy z najwyższych szczeblach administracji Roosevelta. Oczywiście, jak niezwykle ważne, ponieważ wsparcie prezydenta było, liczne manewry niemal na pewno nie udało, gdyby nie miał wsparcia ze strony niektórych z najbardziej znanych nazistów w Berlinie.
Nie ma wzmianki o tym w oficjalnej biografii Chabad dnia Rebe. Można jednak znaleźć historię ratowania rabina Schneersohn w 1939 roku przez nazistowskich żołnierzy działających w imieniu szefa wywiadu wojskowego nazistów z siedzibą w Berlinie (Abwehry) w fascynującej książce "Ocalona z Rzeszy - jak jeden z żołnierzy Hitlera Zapisane Rebe "przez Southern Methodist University historyka Brian Mark Rigg.
Chabad był w Ameryce od połowy 1920 roku, a rebe odwiedził w 1929 roku i spotkał się z prezydentem Herberta Hoovera w Białym Domu. Na początku II wojny światowej, chociaż, Lubavitchers były cieniem bogatej i politycznie wpływowych światowego ruchu stało się w ostatnich dziesięcioleciach.
Mimo to, przywódcy Chabad byli w stanie znaleźć poparcie wybitnych Amerykanów tym Sol Bloom, szef Komisji Spraw Zagranicznych Izby Reprezentantów; Sędzia Sądu Najwyższego Louis Brandeis; i sekretarz stanu Cordell Hull, którego żona ojca żydowskiej - na początku kampanii ratowania Rebe.
Stany Zjednoczone były oficjalnie neutralne w 1939 roku, a tym samym wysokiej rangi oficjalnego Departamentu Stanu Robert Pell - który miał dobre kontakty w Berlinie - była w stanie przekonać Helmuth Wolthat, szef Four Year krajowego planu gospodarczego Niemiec, aby pomóc. Wolthat znalazł sprzymierzeńca w admirał Wilhelm Canaris, o karierze oficera, który prowadził ww Abwehry.
Dokładnie, dlaczego nazistowskie wywiadu był chętny do pomocy nie jest do końca jasne, ale najwyraźniej było kilka zwolennicy Hitlera, którzy nie chcą, aby zniszczyć każdego Żyda znaleźli. Choć on sam został poświęcony jego osobie, admirał Canaris miał kilka zaufanych oficerów pod jego dowództwem, którzy byli częścią żydowskiego; były co naziści opisany jako Mishlings, co oznacza, że został "aryanized" na mocy ustaw rasowych w Niemczech.
Canaris wybrała trzy z nich - w tym majora Ernsta Blocha, który miał ojca żydowski - do pracy z urzędu Abwehry w Warszawie. Zadaniem tria było znalezienie i bezpiecznie ratować Rebe i jego rodzinę przed Nazi SS i Gestapo zamordowali.
zajęłoby im prawie dwa miesiące w ich spokojnej przeszukiwania gruzów Warszawy, by w końcu znaleźć lidera Chabad. Tymczasem w USA, Chabad urzędnicy i ich prawnik Max Rhoade rozpoczął trudny proces zabezpieczania wiz dla Rebe.
To było zadanie, które zostało komplikuje często antysemickie funkcjonariuszy Imigracyjny i wrogich amerykańskich dyplomatów w Europie i Stanach Zjednoczonych. Co więcej, potrzebne na Chabad urzędnicy również współpracę niechętnie łotewskiego rządu, jak Rebe był obywatelem tego wciąż niezależnego narodu Bałtyckiego.
W co można określić tylko jako niezwykłego - nawet cudowne - realizacja, Rebe, jego rodziny i kilku jego zwolenników ostatecznie opuścił Warszawę pod dowództwem Bloch i ochrony nazistowskiego rządu Abwehry na 22 grudnia 1939. Jechali pociągiem przez Polskę do Berlina, przepuszcza przez wrogich kontroli dokumentów przez SS, zatrzymaliśmy się na noc w biurach Federacji żydowskiej w Berlinie, a następnie wyruszyli na Łotwę, a ostatecznie do neutralnej Szwecji.
Ich wizy zostały ostatecznie przyznane na początku stycznia 1940. Jak na ironię, to trwało dłużej, aby uzyskać wizy od rządu amerykańskiego, niż ratowanie Rebe z nazistami, ale w dniu 19 marca 1940 roku, Rebe, jego żony, kilku członków rodziny i kilka innych Lubawiczer chasydzi końcu postawił stopę w Ameryce i zaczął swoją pracę, aby odbudować Chabad ruch w swoim nowym domu. ukochana biblioteki rabina Schneersohn w 135 skrzyń książek zostało zapisane, także i przybył z Warszawy kilka miesięcy później.
Pomimo ciężkiej choroby serca i stwardnienie rozsiane, Rebe nadal pracował bez wytchnienia, aby położyć podwaliny dla dynamicznej powojennej Chabad. Zmarł w 1950 roku w wieku 70 lat, a jego następcą został jego syn-in-law, rabin Menachem Mendel Schneerson, któremu pomógł Rescue z Vichy we Francji.
W krótkim latach kierowała większość z wielkich dynastii chasydzkich Europy Wschodniej zakończyć w hitlerowskich obozach koncentracyjnych, przetrwanie Chabad Rebe przybył na przekór wszystkiemu i wszystkim logiki. Że przetrwały do dalszego tworzenia, co niewątpliwie jest jednym z największych żydowskich sukcesów w dzisiejszych czasach jest rzeczy wielkich hollywoodzkich filmów.
Zdarza się, że nasze historie zadziwiają nawet nas.
Od redakcji: Bob Bahr jest Prezes Szema Jisrael - The Open Synagogi i prowadzi tam Wysokie usługi wakacje.
Bob Bahr
Dla Atlanta Jewish Times
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/the-half-jewish-nazi-who-saved-the-lubavitcher-rebbe-1.359059
Pół-żydowskich nazistą, który uratował Rebe
Dzięki zmarłego rabina Menachema M. Schneersona, Chabad Lubawicz jest dobrze znany i potężny ruch chasydzki. Ale niewiele osób wie, że poprzednik Rebe, rabin Josef Icchak Schneerson, zawdzięcza swoje życie pół-żydowskie nazistowskiego oficera działającego pod bezpośrednim celem szefa wojskowego wywiadu III Rzeszy.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/the-half-jewish-nazi-who-saved-the-lubavitcher-rebbe-1.359059
Dzięki zmarłego rabina Menachema M. Schneersona, Chabad Lubawicz jest dobrze znany i potężny ruch chasydzki z 4000 emisariusze teraz stacjonują na całym świecie. Ale niewiele osób wie, że poprzednik Rebe, rabin Josef Icchak Schneerson, zawdzięcza swoje życie pół-żydowskie nazistowskiego oficera działającego pod bezpośrednim celem szefa wojskowego wywiadu III Rzeszy.
Szósty Rebe ukrywał się w rozdartej wojną Warszawie podczas dni po inwazji niemieckiej w 1939. Po zlokalizowaniu rabina na zlecenie ADM. Wilhelm Canaris, szef Abwehry tzw. Mjr Ernst Bloch, którego ojciec był Żydem, ale kto nie miał szczególną miłość do judaizmu lub tych, którzy praktykowali religię żarliwie, pozwoliła mu uciec w bezpieczne miejsce na Łotwie.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/the-half-jewish-nazi-who-saved-the-lubavitcher-rebbe-1.359059
Ernst Bloch was a German Marxist philosopher. Bloch was influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious ...
01.05.2011 - Ernst Bloch, whose father was Jewish but who had no particular .... There were never thelargest groups in Russia, One of a few hasidic groups.
Thanks to the late Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, Chabad Lubavitch is a well-known and powerful Hasidic movement, with 4,000 emissaries now stationed around the world. But few people know that the rebbe's predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, owes his life to a half-Jewish Nazi officer acting under the direct order of the head of the Third Reich's military intelligence agency.
The sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe was hiding in war-torn Warsaw during the days after the German invasion in 1939. After locating the rabbi at the order of Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the so-called Abwehr, Maj. Ernst Bloch, whose father was Jewish but who had no particular love for Judaism or those who practiced the religion fervently, enabled him to escape to safety in Latvia.
Maj. Ernst Bloch
"This operation came about as a result of back-channel diplomatic efforts by the Germans to try and convince the Americans not to enter the war with the British and French against Germany," said Larry Price, whose documentary about this episode, "The Chabad Rebbe and the German Officer," airs tonight (Channel 1, 9:45 P.M. ). According to the Jerusalem-based journalist and filmmaker, the American Chabad community at the time was small in number, but influential enough to save their leader.
"Using their contacts, Chabad managed to get Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis involved," the 66-year-old told Haaretz. "Brandeis contacted one of [U.S. President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt's right-hand men, Benjamin Cohen, who influenced Roosevelt to toss the Jewish people a bone. That bone was Rabbi Schneerson."
On Roosevelt's orders
At the time, those demanding that the U.S. government take on a stronger role regarding the fate of European Jewry did so despite "tremendous anti-Semitism in America," Price said. "Roosevelt had to tread lightly and do something, so he thought that perhaps rescuing the rebbe would ameliorate the situation with the Jewish community. The Germans, for their part, thought perhaps they could keep a backdoor channel open with the Americans and prevent them from entering the war."
Releasing one rabbi was a relatively low price to pay, he added. Price's 56-minute documentary details the background of the Schneerson deal and how Bloch and his fellow Abwehr agents accompanied the rabbi and about 20 of his relatives and peers in the first-class cabin of a train from Warsaw to Berlin, using his acting skills to avoid being arrested by suspicious Nazi officers. In the German capital, Schneerson was given over to Latvian diplomats, who brought him to safety in Riga. About a year later he made his way to New York, where he died in 1950. He was succeeded the following year by his son-in-law, Menachem M. Schneerson.
Price, who was born in Chicago and immigrated to Israel in 1971, came across Schneerson's story while working on his previous documentary film, "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers," which tells the story of some of the estimated 150,000 men of Jewish origin who served in the German army during World War II.
"I thought it was a conundrum: Why would the Germans want to send anybody to rescue an ultra-Orthodox Jew from the Germans? It's a very unique story," Price said.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/the-half-jewish-nazi-who-saved-the-lubavitcher-rebbe-1.359059
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Yitzchak_Schneersohn
Schneerson book collection[edit]
During his life in Smolensk, Rabbi Schneersohn set up a collection of his family's religious books and writings. It includes texts dating back to the 16th century. After World War I, the Bolsheviks found part of the collection and moved it to the Russian State Library. Another part of the collection was confiscated by Soviet troops in Nazi Germany during World War II and moved to Russia's military archive. In 1994, seven books were loaned to the U.S. Library of Congress for 60 days through an inter-library exchange program.[11]
The books were given to the Chabad-Lubavitch library which helped to prolong the use of the books twice, in 1995 and 1996, before they finally refused to return them to Russia in 2000. They proposed an exchange for the opportunity to keep the books indefinitely, but Russia refused. In 2004 the Chabad-Lubavitch filed a lawsuit against Russia, claiming the remaining books. In 2010, an American court granted their claim, which Russia ignored as invalid.[12] In retaliation, in 2011 Russia put a ban on lending works to American museums. In 2014, Senior United States District Judge Royce C. Lamberth imposed fines of $50,000 a day for Russia refusing to return the Schneersohn collection of more than 12,000 books and 50,000 religious papers. Since Rabbi Schneersohn had no heirs, Russia claims the collection is a national treasure of the Russian people. This dispute is related to the deteriorating ties between Moscow and the U.S. over the ongoing 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine.[13] A Russian court ruled that the Library of Congress should pay fines of $50,000 a day for refusing to return the books.[14]
Droga do USA
Warsaw to USA[edit]
Following Nazi Germany's attack against Poland in 1939, Rabbi Schneersohn refused to leave Warsaw. The government of the United States of America, which was still neutral, used its diplomatic relations to convince Nazi Germany to rescue Schneersohn from the war zone in German occupied Poland.[5] He remained in the city during the bombardments and its capitulation to Nazi Germany. He gave the full support of his organizations to assist as many Jews as possible to flee the invading armies. With the intercession of the United States Department of State in Washington, DC and with the lobbying of many Jewish leaders, such as Jacob Rutstein, on behalf of the Rebbe (and, reputedly, also with the help of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,[6] the head of the Abwehr), he was finally granted diplomatic immunity and given safe passage to go via Berlin to Riga, Latvia (where the Rebbe was a citizen and which was still free) and then on to New York City, where he arrived on 19 March 1940.[7] Major Ernst Bloch, a decorated German army officer of Jewish descent, was put in command of a group which included Sgt. Klaus Schenk, a "half-Jew" and Pvt. Johannes Hamburger, a "quarter-Jew" assigned to locate the Rebbe in the Poland and escort him safely to freedom.[5] They were a few of some 150,000 Jews and people of Jewish descent who were classified as Jewish by the Nazi government, but served in the German armed forces during World War II.[8] They wound up saving not only the Rebbe, but also over a dozen Hasidic Jews in the Rebbe's family or associated with him.[5]
When Schneersohn came to America, two of his chassidim came to him, and said not to start up all the activities in which Lubavitch had engaged in Europe, because "America is different." To avoid disappointment, they advised him not even to try. Schneersohn wrote, "Out of my eyes came boiling tears", and undeterred, the next day he started the first Lubavitcher Yeshiva in America, declaring that "America is no different."[9] In 1949, he became a U.S. citizen, with his son-in-law Menachem Mendel assisting to coordinate the event. A special dispensation was arranged wherein the federal judge came to "770" to officiate at Rabbi Yoseph Yitzchak's citizenship proceedings, rather than the Rebbe travel to a courthouse for the proceedings. Uniquely, the event was recorded on color motion film.[10]
Early life[edit]
Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn was born in Lyubavichi, Mogilev Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Smolensk Oblast, Russia), the only son of Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn (the Rebbe Rashab), the fifth Rebbe of Chabad. He was appointed as his father's personal secretary at the age of fifteen; in that year, he represented his father in the conference of communal leaders in Kovno. The following year (1896) he participated in the Vilna Conference, where Rabbis and community leaders discussed issues such as: genuine Jewish education; permission for Jewish children not to attend public school on Shabbat; the creation of a united Jewish organization for the purpose of strengthening Judaism. He participated in this conference again in 1908.[2]
On 13 Elul 5657 (1897) at the age of seventeen he married a distant cousin, Rebbetzin Nechama Dina Schneersohn, daughter of Rabbi Avraham Schneerson ofChişinău, son of Rabbi Yisroel Noach of Nizhyn, son of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Tzemach Tzedek.[2]
In 1898 he was appointed head of the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva network.[2]
In 1901,[2] with financial support from Yaakov and Eliezer Poliakoff he opened spinning and weaving mills in Dubrovno and Mahilyow and established a Yeshiva inBukhara.[3]
As he matured, he campaigned for the rights of Jews by appearing before the Czarist authorities in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. During the Russo-Japanese Warof 1904 he sought relief for Jewish conscripts in the Russian army by sending them kosher food and supplies in the Russian Far East.[3]
In 1905 he participated in organizing a fund to provide Passover needs for troops in the Far East.
With rising anti-Semitism and pogroms against Jews, in 1906 he travelled with other prominent rabbis to seek help from Western European governments, especially Germany and the Netherlands, and persuaded bankers there to use their influence to stop pogroms.[2][3]
He was arrested four times between 1902 and 1911 by the Czarist police because of his activism, but was released each time.
Upon the death of his father, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn ("Rashab"), in 1920, Yosef Yitzchak became the sixthRebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch. It was an age of great social and political upheaval following the Russian Revolution of 1917. The victorious anti-religious Bolsheviks were intent on uprooting and suppressing all religious life in the newBolshevist Russia.
Battling the Bolsheviks[edit]
Following the takeover of Russia by the Communists, they created a special "Jewish affairs section" run by Jews known as the Yevsektsiya, which instigated anti-religious activities meant to strip orthodox Jews of their religious way of life. AsRebbe of a Russia-based Jewish movement, Schneersohn was vehemently outspoken against the atheistic Communist regime and its goal of forcibly eradicating religion throughout the land. He purposely directed his followers to set up religious schools, going against the dictates of the Marxist-Leninist "dictatorship of the proletariat".
In 1921 he established a branch of Tomchei Temimim in Warsaw.[2]
In 1924 he was forced by the Cheka (Russian secret police) to leave Rostov due to the Yevsektsiya's slander, and settled in Leningrad.[3] In this time he labored to strengthen Torah observance through activities involving rabbis, Torah schools for children, yeshivot, shochtim, senior Torah-instructors and the opening of mikva’ot; he established a special committee to help manual workers be able to observe Shabbat. He established Agudas Chasidei Chabad in USA and Canada.[2]
In 1927 he established a number of yeshivot in Bukhara.[2]
He was primarily responsible for the maintenance of the now-clandestine Habad yeshiva system, which had ten branches throughout Russia by this time. He was under continual surveillance by agents of the NKVD.
Imprisonment[edit]
In 1927 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Bolshoy Dom in Leningrad. He was accused of counter-revolutionaryactivities, and sentenced to death.[3] A world-wide storm of outrage and pressure from Western governments and theInternational Red Cross forced the communist regime to commute the death sentence and instead on 3 Tammuz it banished him to Kostroma for an original sentence of three years.[3] Yekaterina Peshkova, a prominent Russian human rights activist, helped from inside as well. This was also commuted following political pressure from the outside, and he was finally allowed to leave Russia for Riga in Latvia, where he lived from 1928 until 1929.
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak's release from Soviet imprisonment is celebrated each year by the Chabad community.[4]
After his release, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak then went to visit the Land of Israel where he visited holy gravesites and met with rabbis and community leaders. From there he travelled to the USA, where he was received in the White House by US President Herbert Hoover, who, as Republican presidential candidate had lobbied for his release.[3] Lubavitch followers in America begged their Rebbe to leave Russia and stay in America, but Schneersohn declined, saying that America was an irreligious place where even rabbis shaved off their beards. From 1934 until the early part of the Second World War he lived in Warsaw, Poland.
Literatura
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