R’ Chaim Eliezer Gurewitz was a gaon in Nigleh and was appointed as mashgiach of Tomchei T’mimim by the Rebbe Rayatz. During the harsh years under communist rule he served as a wandering melamed, going to the homes of students and teaching them Torah. * In 5708, he was arrested in Moscow and after exhausting interrogations he was sent to Siberia where he remained for nine years. * To mark his passing on 7 Kislev.
Photograph of R’ Chaim Eliezer at his arrest, with a page from his file in the backgroundR’ Chaim Eliezer was born in 5662 in Kalisk. His father was R’ Mendel Dovid Gurewitz, a descendent of the holy Sh”la.
R’ Eliezer was a gaon in Nigleh. Those who knew him said that he knew Shas by heart. He was one of the outstanding students in Yeshivas Tomchei T’mimim in Lubavitch. For a number of years he served as mashgiach in Nigleh in the yeshiva, having been appointed by the founder and nasi of the yeshiva, the Rebbe Rashab and his son, the dean of the yeshiva, the Rebbe Rayatz.
His Torah and Chassidic stature were worthy of emulation by the talmidim of the yeshiva and even afterward, when the Rebbe’s court moved to Rostov along with the yeshiva, R’ Eliezer continued to serve as mashgiach in Nigleh. When he was appointed mashgiach of Nigleh in Rostov by the Rebbe Rayatz, other “youngsters” joined the staff: R’ Shlomo Chaim Kesselman and R’ Chaim Meir Liss. “It is wartime now and you make officers out of enlisted soldiers,” said the Rebbe, referring to the young and inexperienced staff.
DURING THE DARK YEARS
After the communists took over the government, they began oppressing those who observed religious life. Thousands of Jewish schools were closed, shuls were turned into theaters, rabbanim were arrested and exiled, and those who worked in klei kodesh were relentlessly persecuted. The yeshiva in Rostov was closed down after only a year in existence. The talmidim fled to Poltava.
R’ Eliezer went underground and secretly continued teaching Torah to Jewish children despite being a genius who could have devoted himself to his own learning or to giving shiurim to bachurim-lamdanim. It was clear to him that this was his mission.
As time went on, the noose tightened. Even the small secret schools that had only five or six children were closed. R’ Chaim Eliezer began going from house to house, with great mesirus nefesh, and spent time with one child at a time, teaching them p’sukim.
Aside from the learning that they did, he would encourage the children to continue observing their parents’ traditions even when the situation around them was hard and threatening.
He was moser nefesh for the chinuch of his son too. For the first three years of obligatory schooling, until he reached the age of nine, he did not send his son, Sholom Dovber, to school. One day, officials came to his house and said that if he did not send his son to school like all other Russian children, they would take the child away from him and put him in an institution.
So Sholom Ber went to school, but he was regularly absent on Shabbos and Yom Tov and gave various excuses. Things went on in this way until a Jewish teacher discovered the secret and from then on, he had to show up on Shabbos too.
“My father encouraged me to do everything possible not to write in school. He explained to me that even if I attended school on Shabbos, when I finished at school, I needed to conduct myself as on a regular Shabbos,” said his son.
Every Shabbos R’ Eliezer would walk with his son to a minyan in shul. It sounds simple enough but in those days it entailed real mesirus nefesh, for it meant not only was the father a counter-revolutionary, but he was corrupting his son too!
Although there were enormous difficulties in obtaining kosher food, R’ Eliezer was particular about all the stringencies. He never worked on Shabbos and as a result, he went from one job to the next. For a period of time he worked as a bookbinder, then in a chemical factory, and then he got a weaving and knitting machine and worked as a tailor.
“You cannot waste time,” he taught his son. “It makes no difference what you do, just don’t waste time.” And he did as he preached. He always had an open seifer in front of him and whenever he had free time, he sat and learned.
Despite the oppressive situation, his house was open to guests and his modest home regularly hosted Chassidim and T’mimim. Although his home consisted of one room within a shared apartment with gentiles, three or four Chassidim always slept on the floor.
Life in Russia became intolerable and R’ Chaim Eliezer began thinking of emigrating. In 1934, he wrote to the Rebbe Rayatz that he wanted to leave. The Rebbe responded briefly that the idea of leaving was proper and he should make aliya. The Rebbe asked whether he had the money for it.
For various reasons, he did not emigrate.
IN THE RUSSIAN ARMY
During World War II, R’ Chaim Eliezer was drafted into the Russian army and, fortunately, was sent to the city of Opa in the Urals. They had him guard the local power station. He spent four years there, nearly throughout the war. Every Shabbos he went to shul, a three hour walk each way. While he was there, he ran the minyan and also davened at the amud.
For years afterward, he was the chazan for Kol Nidrei in the secret minyanim that the Chassidim had in Samarkand.
POST WAR
At the end of World War II, he returned to Moscow where he continued teaching Torah to children while endangering himself.
Rumors abounded about the possibility of leaving Russia as Polish citizens and that many of Anash had purchased forged Polish passports and left the country. R’ Eliezer’s son suggested to his father that he try leaving Russia in this way, but he refused to leave with a forged passport. His wife also refused to leave in this way, being afraid lest this method be discovered and her family who remained behind would be made to suffer.
R’ Chaim Eliezer decided to remain in Moscow and continue his work. Two years later he was arrested by the cursed NKVD.
IN RUSSIAN PRISON
At the beginning of 5708, six great Chassidim in Moscow were arrested: R’ Yona Cohen (Kagan), R’ Berel Rickman, R’ Mordechai Gurary, R’ Berel Levertov, R’ Moshe Dubroskin, and R’ Chaim Eliezer Gurewitz. They were all accused of attempting to escape the Soviet Union via Lvov.
In the period prior to their arrest R’ Chaim Eliezer felt more unsafe and he left home and hid in the home of a relative. After several months passed, he returned home and continued his routine. On 15 Cheshvan 5708 he left home on his way to the large Archipova shul and he did not return home.
After midnight, when he still had not returned home, his family began looking for him. But he had disappeared. The regular worshipers at the shul said he had never come for Shacharis. The family became even more worried.
It was three days later when they found out where he had disappeared to. That was when policemen knocked at their door at four in the morning and said they needed to conduct a search. They searched the house for an hour and took all the writings of the Rebbe that they found.
In the following months he was interrogated under harsh torture. Since he did not like talking about this period of his life, we don’t know much about the interrogations except what was revealed fifty years later in the interrogation documents which were discovered.
The interrogators tried as best they could to justify the arrests and they worked to extract confessions from him. We learn this from papers that document R’ Chaim Eliezer’s interrogations.
The first document is a log of the interrogations. At the top of the page it says, “Secret.” Naturally, those evil men did not dream that one day this secret document would reach the hands of R’ Shneur Zalman Berger and be publicized in Beis Moshiach for all to see.
The paper says that the prisoner, Gurewitz, Chaim Lazer, was arrested on October 29, 1947 and that on February 6th he was transferred to the Butyrka prison. The log is dated on the day he was sent from one prison to the other.
There is a long list of the days and hours he was interrogated. One can only imagine how much he suffered during these lengthy interrogations and sometimes, there were a few on one day! The longest interrogations were conducted in the period right after he was caught. In the final interrogations it seems he was forced to sign to charges in which he was accused of religious-Chassidic crimes and other accusations.
In the investigation notes it says that he was caught as he walked to shul on the morning of 15 Cheshvan. The first interrogation took place that day, from 2:05 in the afternoon until 11:20 at night. The next day he was interrogated four times between 11:00 in the morning and 4:05 in the morning, seventeen hours in a row!
He was interrogated by day and by night with the interrogators preventing him from sleeping so as to squeeze out a confession from him. During the final days of the interrogations he was interrogated over fifteen consecutive hours!
After so many exhausting interrogations R’ Chaim Eliezer was charged with the attempt to smuggle across the border even though he had no connection whatsoever with it.
All these Chassidim were sent to exile. R’ Chaim Eliezer was sentenced to ten years in a Siberian labor camp. Five returned from exile, physically broken, while R’ Yona Cohen, one of the founders of the Tomchei T’mimim yeshivos in the Soviet Union, died in exile. May Hashem avenge his blood.
FREED
Siberia was hell on earth. The exiled prisoners worked at hard labor for many hours in the severe cold. They were malnourished, receiving a little bit of food that was not enough for a person under normal conditions and certainly not enough for someone working that hard. Disease and death were rampant in the camps.
Camp rules were harsh and whoever transgressed them was punished severely and sometimes even taken out to be executed without a trial. Many of the prisoners broke down, physically or emotionally, from the great suffering.
For a Chassid, life was even harder, but R’ Chaim Eliezer held strong for seven years. He not only was moser nefesh in Siberia to observe mitzvos, he even looked out for others, as his son recounted:
“He hardly spoke about what he went through there. Once, a man who had been with him told us that even in the camp our father made sure to put on t’fillin daily. He held onto his t’fillin, which was very dangerous, and hid them in a large box of groats. One day, they moved him from one camp to another and when he entered the new camp they thoroughly searched him and took everything away from him, including his t’fillin. He was greatly anguished by this.
“A few days later, a terrible thing happened in the camp. The guard who had taken the t’fillin away had gone around at night on a routine check to make sure everything was as it should be. He also checked the fence. The soldier who was in the guard tower mistakenly thought he was a prisoner who was trying to escape and he shot him to death.
“Here is another story we heard about many years later. My mother and I would send food packages to my father every month. Before Pesach we sent him matzos so he would have what to eat on Pesach. Afterward, we found out that he gave out nearly all the matza to other Jewish prisoners there in the camp. When he later returned to Moscow, there were some people who were with him in the camps who remembered him just for this deed.”
Although he had no s’farim since they were forbidden in the camp, he prayed and learned by heart, utilizing his excellent memory that enabled him to remember entire s’farim by heart.
When Stalin died, many prisoners were released, including R’ Chaim Eliezer, who had almost finished his term. After more than nine years he was released from exile and in 5716 he returned to Moscow, a broken man.
He could no longer teach children but he continued being involved in Jewish matters. Before Pesach he worked as a mashgiach in a private matza baking enterprise in Moscow. He did it out of a sense of responsibility although he suffered greatly. There were workers there who didn’t care much about Halacha and kashrus; they received their salary based on how many matzos they baked so differences of opinion regularly developed.
He would leave his house at six in the morning and return at one in the morning, utterly exhausted. Every night he would painfully ask himself, “Why did I get involved?”
Apparently, due to his anguish he had a stroke the first night of Pesach. He had prepared all the simanim on the table, was looking at a seifer, and then suddenly keeled over. He was seventy years old. He became paralyzed on his right side, but fortunately his speech was not affected.
Months later he did not feel well and was taken to the hospital where doctors said that he had a malignant tumor. They were 99% sure of this diagnosis. They wanted to take an X-ray to affirm their conclusion, but due to his paralysis, it was dangerous to take the X-ray. The doctors did not think he would live for more than a few weeks.
A month later his condition improved a little and he was able to have the X-ray. It turned out there was no tumor after all. His condition improved and a short while later he was released from the hospital and returned home.
LEAVING RUSSIA
In 1972, R’ Eliezer told his son the time had come to leave Russia. He received his visa on Purim of that year and left on 11 Nissan.
He arrived in Eretz Yisroel on Erev Pesach and lived in the immigrant hostel in Kfar Chabad. Life was very hard and he was still paralyzed. He passed away nine months later on 7 Kislev 5733 and was buried on the Mt. of Olives.
Sources: Articles by Menachem Ziegelboim and S. Z. Berger