Refusing to Be Singled Out

In Lemberg, Rav Dov Berish was a guest in the home of Rav Nachum'enyu Friedman, son-in-law of Rav Yisroel of Husyatin. The house became a hive of Torah as many gedolim came to be near their revered guest. But with every month, life grew harder for the Jews of Lemberg. The Bolsheviks closed and locked the major shuls, forbade the public study and teaching of Torah, and arrested rabbanim, shochtim and other klei kodesh. The Tchebiner Rav continued to learn Torah clandestinely, and his talmidim and yeshivah went underground, until the decree was carried out and all the Jewish refugees of Lemberg were gathered up and shipped off to Siberia.

Eyewitnesses testified that askanim did everything they could to persuade the Bolsheviks to release Rav Dov Berish, and they succeeded. But he would not allow himself to be saved while all his brethren were being deported. He cried out: "I don't want to be singled out from everyone else. I refuse to separate from my congregants and fellow countrymen. I won't leave my fellow Jews behind in their pain and distress." He was returned to the truck that was to take them to the labor camps of Siberia.

While those gathered wept over the fate of the deported Jews, Hashem's hashgachah pratis was at work. Had those good-hearted askanim succeeded in rescuing him, who knows whether he would have survived? Most of the Jews of Lemberg later suffered the bitter fate of millions of others at the hands of the Nazi regime. It was only thanks to his Siberian exile that Rav Dov Berish survived.