An excerpt from the new book My Gulag Life: Stories of a Soviet Prisoner, as told by Reb Mendel Futerfas (Hasidic Archives):
When I was eight years old, I met the Rebbe Rashab in a private audience. He looked at me from head to toe and said, “You should be an upright Jew and live a long life.”
Many years later, during a particularly difficult part of my imprisonment, my body became swollen from hunger.
The camp administrators gathered all the critically ill prisoners, and I was taken too. They removed my clothes and covered me with a sheet, waiting for me to die.
Lying under the sheet, unable to move, I thought about the blessing of the Rebbe Rashab.
“This is called long life?” I cried silently.
They may have given up on me, but Someone did not.
(Reb Mendel survived the gulag and lived to the age of 88)
What happened next in the story though??
It’s not a criticism of the author it’s a critique of stories that leave the reader hanging! Did Reb Mendel ask for his clothes? Did someone (Eliyahu perhaps) intervene? How long did he stay there? How was he able to recover? Etc.