0586 - The Rebbe Instructed to Remove the Benches After the Heart Attach

00:01 In Tofshin Lat Medches, when the Rebbe had a heart attack on Shemini Atzeres at night in the middle of Achafes, and the Rebbe stayed in this room for a long time till Rosh Chodesh Kislev. So the Maskirus made sure that nobody should be in the shul upstairs, in the whole upstairs floor. Though the shul downstairs was open, but upstairs they made sure it should be empty. So they put benches in front, outside of Seven Seventy, that it would block out the entrance, that no one should be able to enter into Seven Seventy, into that floor where the small shul is and where the Rebbe's room is, et cetera, et cetera. A while later, I don't know if it's a week later or two weeks later, they had an ar- uh, an article in the Algemeiner Journal, the newspaper in Yiddish, about the Rebbe and his heart attack and what's going on. And they had a picture in the front page of the Algemeiner Journal of the front of Seven Seventy, that you could see the doors, you could see the building, and you see the benches blocking the entrance into Seven Seventy. When the Rebbe saw that, the Rebbe asked, "What is that?" So they told him they're blocking out that no one should be able to enter Seven Seventy because you need quiet, you don't want anyone to interrupt, because the Rebbe's room was like a hospital room. It was like a intensive care unit that the Rebbe-- they made for the Rebbe, so

01:17 they didn't want anyone to be there. And the Rebbe said, "Right away, take away the benches and let any-- everyone who wants to come in." The Rebbe didn't know about the benches. They didn't ask him, but when he saw the picture, he asked what this is, and then they told him. So that's when the Rebbe said, "No, you have to let everyone in." In other words, even though really it should be quiet there, et cetera, et cetera, but the Rebbe didn't want that in any form or shape it should interrupt the learning or davening, et cetera, et cetera, because of him. That's why he said right away they should take away the benches and open Seven Seventy. People should be able to come in, and people did come in then, probably with certain nagbalas, et cetera, et cetera, but it became open.