How Dr. Mindel Smuggled Manuscripts

How Dr. Mindel Smuggled Manuscripts

Welcome to the weekly story of the inside of the archives of Rabbi Nissan Mindel. Since we are approaching Gimel Tamuz, the Yom Hilula of the Rebbe, and this year is twenty-five years since Gimel Tamuz, so to commemorate this milestone of the Yom Hilula, we are beginning a new program, Chabad in America, through the Mindel archives.

Over the years, people asked me, since I have the privilege, the zechus, to be the son-in-law of Dr. Nissan Mindel — who was the Rebbe's personal secretary, who was the Frierdiker Rebbe's secretary, whom the Rebbe asked to come to America with him, together with Rabbi Hodakov — and he left fascinating archives, which he entrusted me with. So people want to hear how Chabad in America started, how it was established, and how it was developed.

To begin Chabad in America, it really started in the '30s, when the Frierdiker Rebbe was in Europe. It was in the late 1930s, the beginning of the war. The Nazis were already bombing. The Rebbe had to leave Poland. And through the help of people from America, the Rebbe left Poland, and the Rebbe went to Riga. Riga was a little easier. And then from Riga, they went to Sweden, and from Sweden they took a boat to America.

It was a big miracle, a big neis, that the Rebbe — this was the last plane that was going out in the war, the last plane, and he got that plane. That plane was a passenger plane, a very small plane, with eighteen seats. The Rebbe had with him eleven people: the Rebbe, Rebbetzin Nechama Dina, the Frierdiker Rebbe's mother, Rebbetzin Shterna Sarah, who was the wife of the Rebbe Rashab; Manya, the nurse of Rebbetzin Shterna Sarah, whom in a future part we will talk about; and Chaim Lieberman. Then there was Rashag and his wife, and their son Berel; Rabbi Hodakov and his wife; and my father-in-law. My mother-in-law was in England because she wanted to come back, but she couldn't come back, so she wasn't there.

The Rebbe said, "We cannot leave" — this was in the middle of the war — "until we fill up every single seat." There were seven seats left, and they couldn't go to save a Jew, but by the Rebbe this was the most important thing, and they had to find seven people to fill up the plane to go to Sweden.

When the Rebbe sat on the plane, he always held his manuscripts and his tallis and tefillin. He did not let go of his manuscripts. These manuscripts were part of what he left — most of it in Poland, which he couldn't take, hoping that these manuscripts would be brought to Riga. He did not know. And then they went to Sweden, and then they took a ship, a boat.

Now I want to go to a little later years. In 1962, our Rebbe asked Rabbi Mindel — he wanted him to go on his shlichus to Russia, and he told him what to do, how he should dress himself. In those days Russia was not like today — it was dangerous. If they found out that he belonged to Schneerson, or that he was going on the shlichus of the Rebbe, they would arrest him for twenty years. So the Rebbe told him exactly how he should go about his trip, and that he should go and see what happened with the manuscripts that the Previous Rebbe had left in Poland — whether they had been transferred to Riga or not.

So he asked the Rebbe, "I have two sisters in Riga, I have brothers with their families, they want to go visit my sisters — can we go together on this trip?" The Rebbe said it should be so. So they went. He had a brother, Berel, in Israel with his family; Asher, in Argentina, with his family; and his own family, and they all went to Riga to visit the sisters.

They came to Riga, and the first thing he did was find out whether the manuscripts were in Riga, or maybe they were still in Poland. It took him a while, quite a few days, to find out that the manuscripts were in Riga. So he tried to get the manuscripts, and he got them, and he put them in a suitcase, and he was very happy that he got them, but he was always nervous that if somebody caught him with that suitcase, in those days in Russia they would arrest him.

To make a long story short, before they all had to leave Russia, they went on a train, and they had to change stations. In order to go to another train, they had to take out all their belongings, and the guards checked them over. Can you imagine how my father-in-law felt — here one of the suitcases contained the manuscripts, and if they caught him, that was it. So he had to do it. They went off the train, lined up twelve suitcases, the whole family together, and the manuscripts were in one of the suitcases.

So a guard was standing there, and he pointed with his finger, like this, to open it up. They opened up the first suitcase and found personal belongings — clothes, presents. He said, "Close it." Then they went to the second suitcase. They opened it up — again, personal belongings. He said, "Close it." Then he put his finger on the sixth suitcase, where the manuscripts were. So he raised his finger to tell them to open it.

At that second, my father-in-law said, somebody — a guard, I guess — tapped him on the back and spoke to him for maybe half a minute, and he was still holding his finger up, so when he turned back his finger had moved to the seventh suitcase. This was the biggest miracle, Dr. Mindel said, in his whole lifetime.

When he came back to the Rebbe, he told the Rebbe what happened. So the Rebbe said, and here's the lesson: when you go on a shlichus from my father-in-law, from the Rebbe, when you go with the truth —

What is the lesson from this program? The lesson is: we are all shluchim of the Rebbe. Every Chabad shliach is a shliach of the Rebbe. As the Rebbe wrote, as soon as you walk out from the yechidus room, you are a shliach. Whether you live in Australia, whether you live in New York, whether you live in China, you are a shliach. Some people have a tougher time there, some are far, but they are a shliach, a shliach of the Rebbe. Whether you have a Chabad house, whether you have a big Chabad house, a small Chabad house, no Chabad house — you are a shliach of the Rebbe.

And as Rabbi Hodakov wrote — and I have it written, maybe we'll show it another time — a shliach has to be like the one who sent him. A shliach has to represent the Rebbe exactly. If you go on the shlichus and you have personal motives, there's a question on your shlichus. So whenever we go on shlichus, we have to always know that we are a shliach of the Rebbe.

I remember when I got married, the Rebbe told me — I went with my wife to yechidus, and I had offers to go on a shlichus, so the Rebbe told me, "What do you care to live next to me? You can do shlichus here." And this is my shlichus. Everybody has their shlichus, but it has to be with an emes.

And I'll finish off with what the Previous Rebbe said to my father-in-law: "You searched for the truth. You found the truth. And you lived with the truth."

I hope that this program will not be divrei beteilim. The program should strengthen our connection to the Rebbe, and we should do the right thing. The next program will be next week. Thank you.