The Rav Who Went Into Hiding

In 1929, worried about his sons' yeshiva education, Rav Yechezkel sought permission to leave the Soviet Union and become Rav of Petach Tikva. The authorities knew him as a prolific teacher and author of Torah, and instead of granting his request they placed him on a blacklist of people barred from emigrating. Understanding that he was now a marked man, he went into hiding and moved from city to city for ten months.

At one point he dreamed that NKVD officers were on their way to arrest him. Together with his wife, Rebbetzin Reizel, he decided that he should leave right away and find another hiding place. Soon afterwards the police did arrive at their apartment and demanded to know where he was. Reizel invented a tale that the two of them had quarreled and that her husband had stormed out. The ruse worked, but she was deeply troubled that she had told even a made-up story of a quarrel.

Not long after, he was caught and condemned to death. The Rebbetzin and Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzenski then joined forces to persuade leading rabbanim and Jewish organizations around the world to press the Soviet government. Their efforts brought the sentence down to five years of forced labor in Siberia, and in time he was released entirely. In the labor camp he kept working on Chazon Yechezkel, and he cleverly smuggled his writing out on cigarette paper.