By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
After World War II, the Soviet Union agreed to allow Polish citizens who had fled into the USSR to return home. Religious Jews seized on this rare parting of the Iron Curtain to flee brutal communist oppression. In what became known as “the great escape,” hundreds of men, women, and children posed as Polish citizens and made their way to freedom.
It was a dangerous mission that involved forging passports and paying off officials. Before one trip, the Soviet secret police caught a woman with 60 forged passports. She was jailed, but the trip was deemed too important to be postponed. New passports were quickly forged, new bribes distributed, and a large group departed for the border.
In the chaos, Reb Berel Gureveitch was left without a passport. He was arrested at the border and taken to a work camp where he was assigned to work in a shoe factory.
The young chossid had one concern: avoiding work on Shabbos.
The first week, he convinced the foreman to give him a job that did not involve sewing, one of the 39 activities expressly prohibited on the holy day. The next week, however, that job was refused to him. “You have hands,” the foreman plainly said. “You could sew.”
Reb Berel sat down holding the needle in his hand. He knew that if he refused to work, he would be severely punished, perhaps killed. Still, he could not bring himself to stitch the leather. Suddenly, he thought, “G-d’s work is not my concern. I need to try my best not to desecrate the Shabbos. G-d will do as He pleases.”
He stood up and left the factory. Passing through the courtyard, he saw a group of prisoners cleaning. He told the one in charge that he had been sent to join them, took a broom, and began to sweep. Soon, the foreman of the factory came looking for him. He demanded to know what was going on. “At least if you did some of the work, I could tell those in charge that this is what you did. But you did nothing. What should I tell them?”
He could tell them whatever he liked, Reb Berel responded.
Not long after, he found himself standing before the factory’s administrator. He, too, demanded to know why Reb Berel had not worked. But before he could respond, the administrator asked another question: “Is it because of the Sabbath?” Reb Berel made a motion with his head as if to say, “If you know, why even ask?”
“We have a problem,” the administrator said. “Perhaps you can solve it.” Leather, a rationed commodity in the USSR, was disappearing from the factory’s storeroom. They had assigned guards, but they, too, had stolen the leather. The representative of the secret police in the factory had suggested that Reb Berel could be “relied on” not to steal.
Reb Berel joyfully accepted the role, which allowed him to observe Shabbos fully for the remainder of his time at the camp.
Find Hasidic Archives latest books on HasidicArchives.com Dear Rebbe and The Edifice: Dating, Marriage and an Everlasting Home, also available on Amazon Prime.
