192: How A Woman Risked Her Life Saving 17 Bochurim From Serving In The Russian Army

00:15 Shalom Aleichem, kinders. I want to tell you the story of Mesirus Nefesh, filled with moifsim and miracles of a woman, her name was Musia Katzenelenbogen, a woman, a Hasid of the Friediker Rebbe and the Rebbe who had great Mesirus Nefesh in Russia. And the miracles, the open, incredible nisim and miracles that she experienced. So first, let me tell you who she was. She was born in a family called Gorelik. Her father's name was Chaim Lozow, and the mother was Chaya Dobe. They had at first, before Musia was born, they had six sons and daughters. Five of them died as children within six weeks. Only one child was left, was a daughter. Her name was Sipah. She, she was-- She remained alive and she got married to a Hasid Kozliner. It was a terrible tragedy, a terrible thing. Five children out of six all died in a very short period of time, like within a month. They thought maybe an Ayin Hara hurt them because why would suddenly five children die like this? But then the mother expected again a child, and she was very worried because who knows, maybe there is something wrong because the children die like this. So the husband, Chaim Lozow, went to the Rebbe Rashab, and he told him the whole situation, that they lost five out of six children, and now his wife is expecting again. So the Rebbe gave a bracha and says that she shall have a normal birth, and he gave several instructions. First, he said that

02:13 if it's a girl, if the baby is a girl, they should name her Mushka, uh, like the Rebbetzin of the Tzemach Tzedek. And if it's a boy, you should call him Menachem Mendel like the Tzemach Tzedek. Another instruction he told them, they should move to another city. Then there was a third instruction, which is more personal, and they-- She didn't share. They moved, as the Rebbe Rashab said, from... They came from Szczebrzyn, and they moved to Rogatchov. As you know, Rogatchov is the place, the city where there was a Rav, the famous Rogatchover Goan. And so indeed, she was born, um, Musia, Musia Katzenelenbogen was born, and, uh, they gave her the name Musia as the Rebbe Rashab instructed. And then a year and three months later, her mother gave birth to a boy. His name was Menachem Mendel, also like the Rebbe Rashab instructed. And of course, the family was very happy that they had children. And then she expected again another child, but now the doctors told her very, very seriously, she may not have this child because she's in danger. She's in a big sakanas nefashos. She has a very weak heart, and the birth, which is a very, very difficult thing to do on the body, it's very hard on the body, it may, chas v'shalom, kill her. And it's very, very dangerous, so she can't have the baby. And the father traveled to get a bracha from the Rebbe, the Rebbe Rashab, and the Rebbe Rashab said something very surprising.

03:59 He said, "I'm coming to your house." Looks like m-most likely that the Rebbe Rashab was traveling through Rogatchov. He decided to come to visit the house of Chaim Lozow and Chaya Dobe Gorelik. The Rebbe Rashab indeed, um, came to the house. Chaim Lozow opened the door, and he says, "Where is your wife?" And Chaya Dobe came out, and the Rebbe Rashab said, "I know that you're worried about the doctors, but the greatest professor, the greatest and the best doctor and professor is the One above." And he pointed to, to Shamayim, to the Aibishter. He says, "Everything will be good. Don't be afraid. Hashem will help you." And with that bracha, her younger sister, Mariashe, was born. She later on married Vilenkin. When they, uh, were little girls, they had to go to school. Uh, but on Shabbos, they didn't go. And they had nisim because the school was very upset they don't show up on Shabbos. But the nes was they didn't tell the KGB, which then would have resulted that their parents would have been arrested. Musia says that she met the Rogatchover Goan. Her father had a shailah about a, a certain urn, a pot, and he wanted her and her brother, Mendel, to go to the Rogatchover Goan and ask the shailah. On the way, she and her brother had an argument. She thought her father is a big talmid chacham, and he can answer the question himself. She doesn't know why he's sending them to the Rogatchover. And her brother, Mendel,

05:50 said, "No, Tati is not such a big talmid chacham. That's why he needs the Rogatchover." As soon as they arrived in the Rogatchover's house and told him the question the father had about the pot, the Rogatchover right away said, "Well, your father, he knows how to pasken a shailah himself. Why did you have to come here?" It's, uh, right away addressing their conversation which they had on the, in the street on the way walking to the Rogatchover. So now comes the big story. The big story was that Mendel, when Mendel, the younger brother of, of Moshe, became, um... went to yeshi-- learned in yeshiva, in the underground yeshiva of Tomchei Temimim in Kharkov and then in Nevel, which was secret yeshivas which was hiding from the KGB, and Baruch Hashem, he did well. Um, but they decided... Well, the, the government sent him an invitation like they sent to all young men over the age of eighteen, that they must come to the army. Now you can understand for a Jewish boy, especially a Hasidische boy, to go to the army in Russia would be terrible. He wouldn't be able to eat kosher, they'd eat treif, and he would probably die from, from antisemitism. People would... They, they know he's Jewish. They would, they would give him a very, very difficult time. He, he can't keep Yiddishkeit. So of course, no yeshiva bucher wanted to go to the army. It was too dangerous, both begashmius and beruchnius, it was dangerous. S-- And they told him

07:40 that the date he needs to show up in the army base so that he can be officially, uh, recruited for the army was Rosh Hashanah. So the father of, uh, Moshe, Chaim Lazar, decided, "No, my son Mendel will not go to the army." But what do you do? You have to. I mean, if you don't go to the... If you escape and hide and don't go to the army, they come and arrest you, and they can give, get the whole family in trouble. So he went to a doctor who lived... He was a neighbor, a goy, a Russian goy. He was a doctor who was one of the doctors that served in the army base, where they examined all the s- new soldiers that had to come in and be sent to the army base. So first they gave them a medical checkup, and if they were sick, they would send them home and say that you can't serve in the army. But Mendel, uh, he had, um... looked pretty good. So he went to Chaim Lazar, the father of Mendel, went to the doctor and visit him in his house and asked him to please, "I'll give you some money, but find a way that when you see my Mendel come into the army base for a checkup and then you'll say, 'Yeah, he's too sick. He can't serve.'" And the doctor says, "No, I don't wanna do it. I don't wanna do it." So the Chaim Lazar, the father of Moshe, wrote to

09:12 the Frierdiker Rebbe. The Frierdiker Rebbe at that time was already, um, outside Russia. He was in Poland, in Riga or Poland. And, uh, so the answer came back. So Chaim Lazar wrote to the Frierdiker Rebbe that he has a problem. His son ha- he's gonna be taken to the army. That would be terrible. So the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote back, um, "Tell your middle daughter to go to that doctor, that neighbor, that doctor that you went to, and he didn't want to help you. Go with, um... Tell your middle daughter," which was Moshe. Moshe was the middle daughter, 'cause the oldest one was Sipor, and the younger one was, um, Mariashe, and she was the middle daughter. "Tell your middle daughter." The Frierdiker Rebbe said exactly which daughter should go with a little bit of money, and she go to this doctor again, and Hashem will help you. That was a very surprising response. So when my father came to me and said that I need to go to this doctor, and he'll give me some money, and I should ask the doctor to do something to help my brother Mendel. So my father said, "Go, don't be afraid. Hashem... The Rebbe, the Rebbe gave a bracha, and Hashem will help you." I tried to get out of it, and I said, "I'm, I'm very afraid." And, uh, and I said to my father, "If you try to convince him, why would I, a, a young person, be successful in convincing him?" So my father didn't

10:52 pressure me, but then my father told this to, secretly to his friends, Hasidich- Hasidim, other Hasidim who were his friends, and they said, "Listen, if the Rebbe answered that your middle daughter needs to go, then that's the only way you'll have a nes, and you need... The middle daughter should go." They came to the house. His Hasidische friends came to the house, and they tried to convince me, and they said the Rebbe is a tzadik, and he sees from far away and, and if you go, for sure Hashem is gonna help you. Finally, they convinced me. I'll say the truth. I took the money my father gave me. I went to the doctor, but my heart was pounding so hard from nervousness until I came to the clinic. I had to go to a clinic where the doctor, uh, worked, and I didn't know how he would respond if I come to him. He might actually go and tell on me to the KGB and tell on my whole family. It seems like he wasn't a, a great friend of the Jews because he didn't wanna help my father. So he might actually be an enemy. He might go to the KGB and tell them that I was trying to bribe him and give him money, and then all of us are gonna go to Siberia, and who knows, we're all gonna die. So she was very afraid, but she had no choice. She had to go. She had to hope for the best. When

12:17 she came to the clinic, she says, "I saw the doctor standing by the entrance. He was about to leave the clinic, it was the end of the day, and he was going home. So I thought to myself, 'Oi, he's leaving now. How am I gonna stop him and convince him to do this for my brother?' And so I went over to the doctor and I didn't say a word. I was so nervous that I, I couldn't open my mouth. But when the doctor saw me, his eyes lit up and he says, 'Ah, I waited exactly for you.' So I said... I was shocked. Why was he waiting for me?" And he said to her-- Well, he said to the, to, to Musia, "Go quickly home and tell your brother to come to me tomorrow when he comes to the army base." Tomorrow was Rosh Hashanah, and that was the day he was supposed to come to the army base, where this doctor is gonna be there. "Tell him he should smoke a lot of cigarettes before he comes so that he would-- his lungs would look like they're very bad." You gotta-- smoke from cigarettes can make your lungs very sick and also very dark. When the doctor looks inside, right, and, and he looks at the lungs, he can see it's very dark from the smoking. So you should do that, and then I'll be able to say, "Oh, you got very sick lungs. You're gonna go home." You know. So she said, "Oi,

13:41 I'm so sorry, but tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah. It's a holiday for the Jewish people, and Jews don't smoke on that day." So the doctor understood that, you know, they're not gonna change their mind. I mean, tell them to smoke. So he said, "Okay, you know what? Let him come in without smoking. He should come in on Rosh Hashanah, but he should make like an effort like it's very hard for him to walk and to get up. Like he should look like he's very sick." The next day on Rosh Hashanah, my father and my older sister, Tzippa, and Mendel, we all went to that building where my brother Mendel had to go in to present himself as the new soldier. But of course, first they give him a medical examination. We stood in the hallway waiting for him to go into the office where Mendel would go in to be examined. My father said Tehillim the whole time, he took a Tehillim with him and said Tehillim, davening to Hashem, and we all waited nervously to see what's gonna happen. Mendel stood in line for, for a while, and while the head of the whole committee, of the medical committee, they had three doctors, and then there was the head of the whole team of doctors. He walked out from the room for a moment, and as he walked out, the doc-- the doctor, the neighbor, our neighbor doctor, which Musia met the day before, um, came in, um, and he said, um, "Gurelik," he says

15:23 to Mendel, "come, come here. Come quickly. We're gonna, we're gonna examine you." And Mendel, her brother, Musia's brother, immediately went, and they checked him out. Three doctors checked him out, and they told him to sit and, um, and to stand up and see how fast he can sit and stand up. He made it sound like it's very, very hard for him to get up, very hard to sit down. He like sounded-- he pretended to be very, very weak and sick, and they right away wrote to him, um, signed a paper that he's exempt from the army. As they're signing the paper, the head of that team of doctors, who was not a good guy, came in back to the room, and he looked at the document they just signed to exempt Mendel from the army, and he said disappointingly, "Oh, you came too late. Um, you know, we saw his papers before. Sounds like he's very talented when it comes to drawing and to printing, so we can use in the army people like that. But it's too late, I guess. You already signed it, so I can't do anything about it." And so Mendel was sent out, and they sent a special message to the Friediker Rebbe, Mazeltov, as a hint that he was let go out. But this is not the end of the story. Now comes the most surprising part of the story and the most amazing. Why in the world did this doctor suddenly change his mind? He told Chaim Lazar,

17:00 the father of Musia, that, "No way. I'm not going to take your money and help you. Uh, it's too dangerous. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna risk my life." And now when Musia came, he said, "I was waiting for you," and, and said, "Please tell your brother we're gonna help him." And you know who gave her-- finally solved the puzzle? Who solved the puzzle? The doctor himself, because a few days later, her father wanted to show the doctor an appreciation for what he did to his son, that he freed him from the army. So he sent with Musia a nice beautiful cake and wine and a little envelope with a hundred and fifty rubles, which was a lot of money, just to thank him for what he did. When I-- When Musia said, Musia said, "When I came to the doctor with, with the cake and the wine and the envelope, he said to me, 'You probably are wondering why I agreed suddenly to free your brother.' Well, I said, 'Yes, I would love to know.' He said, 'When, uh, your father asked me the first time that I should help him freeing your brother, I c- I couldn't s-- I couldn't fall asleep at night.'" That means I couldn't decide to actually help him because I thought to myself, "I'm a goy and you're a Jew, so we're different. Why should I risk my life for a Jew?" You know? But one night before you came to my clinic and met me

18:37 by the door, I had a dream, and in that dream, I was told that you, the daughter of Chaim Lazar Musya, will come to me tomorrow, and I should do what she wants. It was a very strange dream. So when I saw you, I saw that this dream wasn't just a dream, it was a real thing. It was like some voice came to me and told me that I must do it. But he says, "Nevertheless, I still don't know why I did it. Normally, I would never have done it if not for that dream, but even then, with the dream, I don't know why I did it." So Musya said, "There's a great God, there's one Hashem, and he gives everybody a neshamah, and, uh, and everybody has a purpose in the world, and for you, He gave you a purpose to save Jews." So Musya says, "After this story, I saw the incredible power of the miracles of the Friediker Rebbe." So she said she decided to become a schliach of the Friediker Rebbe to save other bochurim from going to the army. And here is what happened. An amazing thing happened. In her area, there were a lot of Jews, a lot of bochurim, tmimim, Tomchei Tmimim, Lubavitcher bochurim, that were receiving these letters that they need to come to the army. They didn't know how to get out, so they would, uh, get, get out of the, of the army duty. So they wrote to the Friediker Rebbe. The Friediker Rebbe, uh,

20:19 answered to all of them, "Go to the middle daughter of Reb Lazar Gorelik, Reb Chaim Lazar Gorelik, and she will help you." It was a surprising answer that the Rebbe now made her the schliach for all the different people, all the different bochurim who need to go to the army. The Friediker even sent them a letter to send, give to her, giving her berachos for helping my brother coming out of the... Getting, getting exemption from the army. So these bochurim came to me with a letter of the Friediker Rebbe saying that I need to help them. And she says, "I felt I was overjoyed because I felt the Friediker Rebbe made me a, his schliach to help all these bochurim. So I decided I will help them, and I went to the doctor every time." She said, "I saved seventeen bochurim from serving in the Russian army, and all bizchos of the Friediker Rebbe."