PART I
We just marked the first yahrtzait of the Chassid, R’ Aharon Eliezer Ceitlin a”h. He was gifted with a certain chein and chayus which made him easy to love and learn from him.
In pictures that were publicized on Chabad news websites, I saw that he is buried near the Chassid, R’ Refael Wilschansky a”h. That reminded me of events that transpired twenty years ago.
It was shortly after I had married when R’ Aharon Lazer called and suggested that I write a book about his grandfather (R’ Aharon Leizer Ceitlin, may Hashem avenge his blood) and father (R’ Yehoshua Heschel a”h), two inspiring Chassidic personalities. When I accepted this challenge, I didn’t realize that writing such a book would take so long. Throughout that time, I occasionally hosted R’ Aharon Lazer at my home, and we would work on the book, writing, deleting, and editing. Each of these visits lasted almost a full day and they always turned into a sort of farbrengen full of Chassidishe chayus that energized my new home.
PART II
The two friends, R’ Refael Wilschansky and R’ Yehoshua Heschel Ceitlin, were exceptionally close and went through tough times together. In their youth, they had to flee from place to place in order to learn Torah and preserve the spark of Judaism in the former Soviet Union.
For many years, they stuck together as they navigated their difficult path. Their long and winding road is impressive: from Berditchev to Moscow, to Tarapitch then to Kursk. They escaped to Kutais, went to Militopol and returned to Kutais and fled from there to Samarkand until they left Russia.
During the 1930’s, the situation in Russia became harder day by day. There was starvation and persecution by the NKVD. Many yeshivos were shut down and a special effort was needed to maintain the existing yeshiva. Many of the Chassidim who had been involved in maintaining the yeshiva had been arrested or were in the cross-hairs of the authorities and they had to hide.
At the beginning of the summer of 1936, when government agents shut down the Tomchei T’mimim yeshivos in Haditch and Poltava, the talmidim searched for places to continue learning. Some of them went with mesirus nefesh to Berditchev where they reopened a branch of the yeshiva. Among these talmidim were the friends, fourteen-year-old Yehoshua Heschel Ceitlin, who came from Mazaesk, and Refael Wilschansky.
R’ Heschel later spoke about that time:
In Sivan 5696, I went with R’ Chaim Shaul Brook from Moscow to Berditchev by train. Before we left, he warned me to sit at a distance from him and not say a word to him. He also told me to tuck my tzitzis in so they wouldn’t show. (After we reached our destination, he told me that he was aggravated the entire trip because one strand had stuck out of my pants which could have gotten me arrested but he was afraid to come over and warn me.)”
There was good reason for him to worry. A few months later, young Heschel went on a trip. When he arrived at the station, one of his tzitzis threads inadvertently came out. A NKVD agent noticed this and pulled it out, thus revealing all the threads.
“What’s this?” he demanded to know.
Heschel was a little frightened but kept his wits about him. “I am a Jew and this is a garment Jews wear.”
“Don’t tell me nonsense,” thundered the agent. “I’m sure you secure a revolver with these threads and use it to kill people. Follow me!”
Having no choice, Heschel began walking behind the policeman. His passport, without which you couldn’t go out on the street, was taken from him.
The policeman said, “I have a way of proving whether you told me the truth. There is an old Jew who has been working here at the station as a porter for many years. Let us go over to him and see whether he has these threads. If he does, you told the truth and will be released immediately. But if he doesn’t wear this garment, that’s the end of you!”
The policeman dragged Heschel with him over to that Jew. Heschel was certain that a man who worked for many years in a train station would not be wearing tzitzis. Only ardent Chassidim wore tzitzis in those crazy times.
The policeman ordered the man to lift his shirt. The frightened man did so and to Heschel’s great surprise, he was wearing tzitzis! A miracle, a real miracle.
PART III
Upon arriving in Berditchev, Heschel met twelve talmidim, some of whom learned on their own and some of whom heard shiurim from the maggid shiur, the Tamim Avrohom Zelik Gansburg, who was later replaced by R’ Moshe Robinson.
The living conditions were harsh. The NKVD continued to pursue anything that smelled of Judaism. As a result, the talmidim had to be careful of their every move. In some places, the gabbaim did not allow them to learn in the shuls and even private people were afraid to let them into their homes. The boys had to learn in attics or in gloomy cellars, with great mesirus nefesh.
His good friend, R’ Refael Wilschansky, remembered those days and the events that occurred with his friend Heschel, who was also his chavrusa:
“The atmosphere in yeshiva was special in a way that is hard to describe. There were nine talmidim. We would all go to the shul at five in the morning. We learned in the women’s section of the Litvishe shtibel. After we went into the shul, the shamash would lock us in and only then did we start the shiur. Before davening, the shamash would come and open the shul and we would leave and learn in pairs in various shuls. We would convene again for the next shiur. That is how the yeshiva ran.
“Despite the escalating danger, not only did the learning not weaken, it became stronger. We began to sense that we were being followed, especially after a Ukrainian newspaper said there is an underground yeshiva in Berditchev. In case of emergency, the shul had another door from which we could escape.
“Heschel was already fifteen years old. According to the law, a boy under sixteen was considered a minor. Only sixteen and above was considered an adult responsible for his actions and subject to legal penalties.
“I remember Heschel sitting and learning together with the other bachurim, trying to forget what was going on around him, despite the fact that the difficulties in those days were enormous. At that time, we heard the tragic news that his father had been arrested and sent to some unknown location and it wasn’t known what had befallen him.”
Later, the two friends were arrested together with a larger group of bachurim and their teacher, R’ Moshe Robinson. They were harshly interrogated and then sent together to a government orphanage for “reeducation.” They were there for several weeks until they were extricated in a daring secret operation by R’ Michoel Teitelbaum. The story is known and appears at length many times in books about the heroism of Chassidim in that generation.
Even after they were arrested and released, the two did not weaken and did not give up. Their wanderings did not stop and they continued their travels to Kutais in Georgia where they hoped to find respite in the local yeshiva. But the divine orchestration of events once again intervened.
With the invasion of the Germans into Russia, the terrors of war began to be felt by the civilian population, including the two friends. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled deep into Russia, to Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, etc. and the cities in these countries were full of refugees.
The situation worsened when Georgia was stricken with a famine. The famine affected all residents, including the Chassidic families. The yeshiva was maintained by generous Georgian donors, but it was necessary to travel to collect the money. Traveling entailed many dangers. These two young bachurim, Heschel Ceitlin and Refael Wilschansky, enlisted for this job, despite the dangers.
“Aside from the danger in collecting and being in possession of money,” R’ Wilschansky later recounted, “we were of draft age and it was dangerous to be out on the street without identification papers. We obtained these papers in exchange for a lot of money and we set out. We went to various cities in Georgia like Tbilisi, Kulashi and
Sukhomi and raised nice sums for the yeshiva.”
Throughout their travels to various Georgian cities, the two friends were close:
“We were loyal friends, very attached to each other and Hashem helped us all the time,” said R’ Wilschansky.
Throughout the remainder of the war, the two friends stayed in Kutais where they continued to learn and grow, despite the great hardships from without and within. Starvation, epidemics, persecution, and the chaos in the city, did not deter them from continuing to learn and serve Hashem.
After the war, they heard that a Chassidic community had formed in Samarkand, and that there was a new Yeshivas Tomchei T’mimim there. They packed their bags and traveled to Samarkand where they soon became an integral part of the life of the yeshiva.
In 5707, they left Russia with forged passports. After many difficult travels, they arrived with Anash in France.
It seemed as though after all the travails, Anash finally had achieved a happier time because over forty Lubavitcher couples married in the next a year and a half! Most of them had postponed marriage due to fear, persecution and starvation. Every wedding was a joint simcha of them all.
Heschel Ceitlin married Rivka, the daughter of R’ Yehoshua Zelik Aronov, after receiving a bracha from the Rebbe Rayatz.
The wedding celebration took place in a hall in Bezons (a suburb of Paris) where Lubavitcher refugees from Russia lived. Since Heschel was orphaned in his youth, he gave his good friend, R’ Refael Wilschansky, the honor of walking him down the aisle. R’ Refael had married just the week before.
PART IV
Decades passed and the two friends became related by marriage.
“At my l’chaim,” said his son Yosef Yitzchok Ceitlin, “R’ Refael testified that R’ Heschel did not change at all since he knew him as a yeshiva bachur. He said that his avodas Hashem remained consistent to the same degree, and this was forty years later.”
***
The day before the first yahrtzait, the wedding of R’ Yehoshua Heschel Ceitlin took place. He is the son of R’ Aharon Lazer of Tzfas. At this wedding too, ancestors from the next world certainly came to participate in the big simcha: his father, R’ Aharon Leizer, his grandfather, R’ Yehoshua Heschel, and his great-grandfather, R’ Aharon Lazer. And who knows … maybe they brought along their good friends, including R’ Refael Wilschansky.