191. The Incredible Miracle Of Reb Simcha Gorodetzky’s Survival

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinders. Vushat is coming up, so I'm gonna share with you an incredible story that happened at the time of the Friediker Rebbe and the Rebbe. As you all know, that Hasidim in Russia under the communist, uh, government had to have Mesirat Nefesh to stay Jewish. They even were willing to risk their lives for keeping Shabbats, keeping kashrus. Many of the Hasidim were arrested by the KGB because they were teaching children Torah, and they were sent far away to Siberia to work very hard in very, very freezing cold weather. And these Hasidim would not eat treif, so they literally would starve. Some of them spent ten years in prison like this, and they wouldn't eat anything except for a piece of bread and water. And many of them got very sick from this because if your body doesn't have real good food, you can, you can, Hashem, Shalom, get very sick. One of those Hasidim is a very famous Hasid, one of the greatest Baal Mesirat Nefesh of that time, Reb Simcha Gorodetsky. Simcha Gorodetsky, let me tell you a little bit about him, so you understand who it was, and you'll understand the story I'm about to tell you. The incredible story. Simcha Gorodetsky was born in Tav-Reish-Samech-Gimel, that's 1903. He learned in a Lubavitch yeshiva in Kharkov, and the mashpia there was Reb Heskel Fagin, the famous mashpia, where later on he became the s-- the, the, the secretary of the, the Friediker Rebbe, but he was a great Hasid. Uh, they

02:04 called him Hache Fagin, but his full name was Rabbi Heskel Fagin. He was the mashpia in the yeshiva. Reb Simcha learned like a real Hasidus bachelor. He learned in Davening, and then one day he got very sick. He started feeling these terrible, terrible headaches, and his whole... He felt very weak. Something was wrong. He was not well. He didn't know what was wrong. Reb Heskel Fagin, who was the mashpia in the yeshiva, took him to another city where there was a very famous doctor, big doctor, and that he should examine him and see what's wrong with him. When the doctor looked at, uh, Reb Simcha's body, he was a young bachelor. He was like twenty, eighteen, nineteen years old, and he realized that he was very, very sick. Not only is he very, very sick, he's so sick that the doctor told Reb H-Reb Heskel Fagin that, "I don't think this student can live more than three months." Now, Re-Reb Simcha was outside. Reb Heskel Fagin went into the room. First, the doctor examined Reb Heskel Fagin-- uh, Reb Simcha, you know, the bachelor, Reb Simcha, and then he told them to go out, and he called in Reb Hache Fagin, the mashpia, and he said to him, "Let me tell you. I don't want to tell it to him, but I'm telling you, he's very, very sick. His heart is very, very sick, and his lungs are very, very sick, his liver, and he's very weak. He cannot stay in yeshiva." Yeshiva is too

03:34 much. You learn twelve hours a day. Four hours a day Hasidism and eight hours a day Negla Gemara is too much for him. He needs to go home and rest up. And I don't think he's gonna live very long, maybe three, four months. When Reb Heskel Fagin heard this, he was shocked, and he went out, and he didn't wanna tell the full story to, uh, Reb Simcha. And he told him just that, "I think you need to go home and rest up for a few months, but, uh, you should probably leave the yeshiva and go home." Reb Simcha didn't wanna leave the yeshiva. He said, "The yeshiva is such a special place. You, you see Hasidim learning and davening. It's farbrengen. There's this... I don't wanna go home." And he said, "No, I'm not going home. I'm staying in yeshiva." So Reb Heskel said, "But, but you have... The doctor says you need to go home 'cause it's, uh, the yeshiva is too much for you." So he said, "Well, let's go ask the Friediker Rebbe." This was already after the Fri-- the Rebbe Rashab was Nistalik. Friediker Rebbe took over the Nesi'im in, in Tav-Reish-Pei, Pei, Pei, Pei-Alef, and this was like the beginning of the Nesi'im of the Friediker Rebbe. The Friediker Rebbe at that time was in the city called Rostov. Friediker Rebbe was in Rostov. There he has the schul where he davened and had the Hasidim come and for-- it was close to Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur, so Simcha said

05:00 to Reb Hache Fagin, "I wanna go for Yontif Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur to the Rebbe, and I'll go to yechidus and ask him what to do. If he tells me to leave yeshiva, I'll leave yeshiva. But if he doesn't, I don't wanna leave yeshiva." Reb Heskel Fagin said to him, "You know what? I'll travel with you. We'll go together to Rostov to visit the Friediker Rebbe." And so they did. Came right before Rosh Hashanah, they both traveled to Rostov. And when it came time for yechidus, Reb Heskel, Reb Hache Fagin said to, uh, Simcha, "You stay outside. I'm gonna go talk to the Rebbe first." So Reb Heskel went into the yechidus room, spoke to the Friediker Rebbe. He told him the whole story with, with, with Reb Simcha and how he's very, very sick and what the doctor said. The doctor said he's so sick that he may not live more than four months. He doubts he would live more than four months, and he said he should go home and rest up. Uh, Friediker Rebbe said to Reb Hache, "You go outside and call in this Simcha. Call him in. I wanna talk to him." R' Simcha went inside the room. The Friediker Rebbe said to him like this: "I heard from R' Chaim what hap-- what the doctor said about you. They... Whatever they said that you're very, very sick and you shouldn't be in yeshiva, but I understand you wanna be in yeshiva. So let me tell you something. For you

06:24 to stay in yeshiva and learn twelve hours a day is definitely too much, but you should not leave the yeshiva. But I'm going to make you do something else. Instead of learning twelve hours a day, you will travel for me. I'll send you on shlichus in different cities. First we'll raise money for the yeshiva. The yeshiva needs desperately money to support the yeshiva, the students, the talmidim, they should have food to eat. So you go around and collect money, and you will also do different shlichus for me, different things that I'm gonna send you about. Uh, first of all, I wanna know how the Hasidim are doing in different cities and different towns, where they need a mikveh, where they need a shochet, because you have to understand this, after the communist government took over, they didn't allow mikvehs. So the Friediker Rebbe used to build secret mikvehs and secret, um, um, secret yeshivas, underground yeshivas. So you go, you find out what they need and how the Hasidim are doing and, and, and what their problems are, and you come back and report to me. That will be your shlichus. If you promise you're gonna do this, then I promise you that you will be healthy, and you will have a richis yamim. You'll live a long life." Wow, this was the Friediker Rebbe giving him mamash a haftacha, a promise that he'd have a long life. R' Simcha walked out and told R' Chaim what the Rebbe told him, so he can stay

07:45 in yeshiva, but he needs to travel for the Friediker Rebbe. R' Simcha immediately took from the Friediker Rebbe a list of places he should go visit, and he said as soon as he got on the train, suddenly his headaches went away, and he started feeling strong again. It was, like, unbelievable. He felt like a healthy person. And he had many stories of shlichus the Friediker Rebbe sent him, but he said one of the things that he mentioned that when he traveled, and he would tell stories about Hasidim like this, this, this shochet in, in this and this town. His son died, and he, and he had to come back and tell the Friediker Rebbe, but he was afraid because he saw how the Friediker Rebbe was very, very hurt every time he heard that some Hasid had a tzarah, a problem. So he was always afraid. The Friediker Rebbe said, "No, no, no, tell me, tell me." So he told him, "Oh, that shochet says I can't do this and this because my son..." His son died. When the Friediker Rebbe heard, he burst into tears, crying, sobbing hysterically. And R' Simcha saw this. He was afraid to tell the Friediker Rebbe the tzaras because every time he told him a terrible thing that happened to a Hasid, the Friediker Rebbe would starts crying and crying and crying. So he s-- The Friediker Rebbe said to him, "I see you're afraid to tell me all the tzaras because you see how it hurts me. So

09:08 go outside and you'll, and you'll write on a piece of paper. If you can't tell it to me, uh, with your mouth, write it down and send me, and, and I need to know everything. I wanna know everything." He walked out of the room of the Friediker Rebbe, and he saw the Friediker Rebbe's mother, the Rebbetzin of the Rebbe Rashab, and he, and he, uh, uh, um, and he... She asked him, "Why you look so pale? You look, like, very, very confused and distraught, distressed. What's wrong?" And he told her the whole story, that he-- Friediker Rebbe wants him to come and tell back stories that happened to Hasidim in different places in Russia, and every time I tell him, he starts crying, and you can see that it hurts his heart. He gets so, so, uh, upset, and I'm afraid it's gonna hurt his health. So the Rebbetsin, the, uh, Friediker Rebbe's mother said, "You know, it's true, and you... Let me tell you, every time he has Yechidus at the end of the night after Yechidus, I go into his room, and I see the floor is flooded with his tears, 'cause after Yechidus he cries and cries and cries for all the tzaras that he heard from different people during Yechidus." This is just one example of, of the kind of shlichus that he had and what he had, the experiences that he had. Now, this R' Simcha, um, was sent to the Friediker Rebbe by the Friediker Rebbe in, in, in

10:38 Bukhara to Samarkand to be there for a while. He did a lot of shlichus. Just... Now, he had a promise of the Friediker Rebbe that he'll live a long life, but he faced so many situations of danger, and the way he s-- survived was mamash a nes. I'll give you a few examples of things that happened to him and how mamash im-- through impossible situations he was saved. He describes one incidence where he, um... This was right after the, you know, the, the, the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were the communists were trying to take over the government. But at the beginning, they weren't yet in charge of the, of the country because they were trying to conquer everything and become in control of the whole Russia, but there were other countries who wanted to stop them. They didn't want them to be in control of Russia 'cause they knew they're terrible people, so they would send their soldiers. So there was the Greeks sent the, the, the country of Greece, they sent some soldiers to take over some cities and prevent the Bolsheviks from taking it over, and then the French and the English. Different countries sent soldiers to fight against the Bolsheviks. But that only lasted for a while. In the end, they were all driven out, and the Bolsheviks took over eventually, and the communists became in charge of the country. But while there was still fighting going on between different soldiers from different nations, there was a place, uh, an incident where he

12:07 was in a, in a city where there were a lot of Hasidim. And there were some Greek soldiers who tried to take over the city, and it so happened that somebody shot a Greek soldier and killed him. They didn't know who it was. The person disappeared. It was just a regular person, not a soldier. So the Greek soldiers, they made a rule. Everybody who is within four blocks of where this incident took place, where this person was shot, this, this Greek soldier was shot, has to come together now out of their homes and gather in the street. Everybody came out, five thousand people. They took them to a special, like, warehouse, and there was different parts to the warehouse, and they made everybody go in there, and they locked the doors. Rab Simcha was one of them, and there were a few others, other Hasidim, young Bochurim, who were also in that, in that warehouse, and they didn't know what the Greeks are gonna do to them. So one of them said, I think it was Rabbi Yehezkel, he was a Bochur, a friend of, of Rab Simcha. He told the whole group of, of Bochurim, you know, Bochurim from the, from the yeshiva, from the Babaji yeshiva, "Why should we stand here inside a room that they put us? Let's go closer to the door, the entrance, and we'll make a farbrengen, a happy, freilech farbrengen. Listen, maybe in the zchus of the farbrengen, in zchus of the farbrengen we'll be saved." So they

13:42 started singing and singing. Now, there was a guard outside the door, a Greek soldier. He saw they were singing inside. He wanted to see why are people happy. So he opened the door and says, "What's going on?" So one of them, one of the Bochurim, decided to give him a watch, and the soldier was so happy. So he was very excited he got a free watch. So they asked him, "Can you leave the door a little bit open so that we have fresh air coming in?" Because it was very stuffy inside. It was dark and stuffy inside the, the, the warehouse. So they continued the farbrengen. Suddenly they smell a terrible, terrible smell of fire, and they start looking, where is this fire coming from? And they suddenly see there's a huge fire burning all over the building. They opened the door because the soldier had left the door a little bit unlocked for them 'cause they gave him a watch, and they started running, running, running for their lives, so they shouldn't get burned by the fire because the whole building was on fire. It turned out that the Bolsheviks came and were attacking the Greek soldiers, and the Greek soldiers fled, and while they were fleeing, they threw some bombs to the warehouse, which put the whole warehouse on fire. And because they were close to the door, they had time to flee, and they fled. And but then the Bolsheviks saw that they were fleeing, so they shot at them. But Baruch

15:02 Hashem, Rab Simcha was not killed. He was saved, and they all came out alive. But unfortunately, the rest of the five thousand people inside the building, many, many Jewish people, Hasidim, uh, men, women and children, all died in the terrible fire. But because of this farbrengen, they decided to have a big farbrengen, and, and the Greek soldiers saw that they were so happy, and he opened the door, and they gave him a watch. Besiat Hashem, they were saved. Their lives were saved. This is, uh, one, one example of the Nissim that he saw. One other example of one of the great Nissim. He had many, many of them. But just one other example that he was finally arrested, and they sent him to Sibir- Siberia in a, in a very, in a terrible place. And, uh, he... They made him sign papers that he's a bad person because he does this thing. They accused him of things which weren't true, and he didn't wanna sign. And he was very, very hungry because he hadn't... He didn't wanna eat treif. So he only ate a little piece of bread, and he w-- he was very sick. Well, he got sick from it because he didn't have enough food. And they told him, "If you sign the papers we give you, which you say that everything we write about you is true, then we'll get you kosher food." He said, "Well, I can't sign. It's a lie. I don't wanna sign a lie that I said this

16:24 and I said that." They also wanted him to tell on other people, on other Hasidim, so he would tell on them, and then they would arrest them also. He didn't wanna do that. So anyways, he had bitul nefesh and did not sign any papers and did not give in to them. And finally, he said to them, "Listen, I'm a sick person. You don't send me a doctor to help me with my health, and then you want me to sign a paper which is not true." So they said, "You know what? We'll get you a doctor if you sign. We'll send you a doctor, but if the doctor helps you, you have to sign." So they send him a Jewish woman who was a doctor. She works for the... She worked for the communists. And she came in, she told him, "Listen, you know, um, I, I think I can help you, but, uh, you know, I'm also Jewish, and I wanna help you, but, you know, they will not allow me to help you unless you sign." He said, "Well, I can't sign treif, uh, uh, uh, lies, you know?" So she said, "Listen, but you need to eat because you're very sick." And he said, "Yeah, but I can't eat any treif." So she said, "Listen, if I promise you I'll go home, I'll buy a new pot, and I'll make some porridge, you know, like, uh, like hot cereal, like cooked porridge, and I'll bring it to you. Will you eat it then?

17:37 If I promise I'll cook it in my kitchen with a new, brand-new pot." He said, "If you do that, I will, I will eat it." The next day, uh, he hears her voice outside the cell where she's speaking to the guard, and she's saying to the guard, "Take out the meat from here. He's not gonna eat it. He doesn't like to eat... He doesn't eat meat." So he overheard this. He understood that the porridge she made had first meat, and now she's taking out the meat so he wouldn't know. She lied to him. She said she's gonna do it at home and only porridge. She's gonna make sure it's kosher. She wasn't saying the truth to him. And when, when they gave him the pot, he threw out everything. He didn't eat it. But he was so sick and so hungry, he started crying. Says, "Hashem, make sure they give me a piece of bread because I can't take it anymore. I'm starving. I feel like I'm fainting." A few minutes after he made this, he cried and davened like this, the door, the little door window opened of the cell, and they gave him a piece of bread. Without saying, they closed the door, like, without saying a word, He kept writing to the Rebbe letters, a brocha for his health, but the Rebbe didn't answer. He was very down that the Rebbe doesn't answer his letters. One day, somebody comes to visit him. He sees that he's very good mood. He's very excited.

22:43 Asked the Rebbe, "Rebbe, Rebbe Simcha, why are you so excited?" He says, "Because I got a letter from the Rebbe today that my two children are coming out of Russia." The Rebbe told him, and he showed him a letter of the Rebbe. Today, he got a letter from the Rebbe. The Rebbe said, "You tell me in your letters that I don't answer your letters because you think you don't deserve it. You don't have the zchus that you should answer your letters. What do you mean I don't answer? First of all, you should have a refuah shleima. Secondly, you say I don't answer your letters? Your two children just got a permission to leave. That is the answer I'm giving you." In other words, the Rebbe didn't answer with words by writing something back, but he worked very hard by davening and davening the