Taken From the Home in Kovno

It is told that in his last weeks in Kovno, Rav Elchonon spent his days in the home of Rav Avrohom Grodzensky, where rabbanim, yungeleit and bochurim learned in pairs in every room. One day Rav Avrohom asked him to give a shiur on the sugya of kiddush Hashem, which was the subject of the moment. Rav Elchonon hesitated, asking how he could give a shiur in such turbulent times, but he agreed and shut himself in his room to prepare. When he came out, his face was aflame, and he gave a deep and reverent shiur on kiddush Hashem.

Rebbetzin Wolbe, Rav Avrohom’s daughter, then a young girl named Rivka, described what followed in her book Veemunascha Baleilos. Three Lithuanian partisans with drawn guns burst through the front door. Rav Elchonon was standing in the entranceway, learning with his chavrusa, Avrohom Yitzchok Zaks, and the sight of rabbanim still learning enraged the intruders. They searched every floor of the building, even the upper story. Her brother Zev and some other bochurim had hidden in a closed-off space in the attic, but the Lithuanians found them. Rav Elchonon, standing in plain view, had no way to hide.

In all the soldiers rounded up thirteen men. Besides Rav Elchonon they included Rav Yitzchok Gefen, Rav Dovid Goder, Rav Moshe Reiss, Rav Moshe Chaim Zaks with his son, and Rivka’s brother Zev (Velvel), only twenty-one years old. Also taken were her uncle Reb Shabsi Vernikovsky, a rebbi in the Lomza yeshivah, and his son Mordechai. The women and girls pleaded with the soldiers to let the men go. Rivka, the eldest of the girls, tried to make them understand that rabbonim were no Communists. The soldiers said they would accept this if she could show them documents. She raced upstairs to find proof, and from the window she watched all the men being marched off at gunpoint.

Rav Avrohom was lying on a sofa in the room, and the intruders took him for a sick man and left him. He was saved, with Hashem’s kindness, for a few more years. The family learned only later that the thirteen rabbonim and bnei Torah had been murdered al kiddush Hashem at the Seventh Fort. Rochel, a daughter of Rav Aryeh Malkiel Friedman, had gone to bring Rav Elchonon his shoes, because he had been learning in slippers, and she and Rivka were among the last to see him. Decades afterward, Rebbetzin Wolbe was asked whether Rav Elchonon had said anything as he was led away. She answered that he had been silent.