In the Russian Gulag, in the freezing labor camps of Siberia, Rabbi Yankel Galinsky and another 120 friends managed to put on Tefillin nearly every day.
When Rabbi Yankel Galinsky came to visit the Chazon Ish and they told him that he had been in Siberia he asked how we managed with putting on Tefillin.
The Chazon Ish never asked if he had put on Tefillin, he asked how they managed. The Chazon Ish understood that if they were students of Novardok they must have come up with some solution.
The truth, when the Yeshiva boys arrived in Siberia the officers burned all their Seforim and Tefillin, but Reb Yankel and a friend both managed to hide a pair of Tefillin.
The Yeshiva boys kept Shabbos as best as they could, davened three times a day and even managed to obtain a few pages of Gemara to study in secret.
When the Second World War was close to the end and the Russians needed every soldier, they took the camp officers to the battlefields and the inmates were released to civilian villages in Siberia.
There the boys met other Jews who arrived from Lithuania, some totally irreligious and some that, sadly, with time became very lax in their keeping Mitzvos due to the terrible difficult conditions they went through, poverty, hunger and religious persecution.
The Yeshiva boys never lost hope. They davened normally, studied and even gathered local children and taught them Torah and Jewish knowledge.
The authorities were aware what was happening. They even threatened the boys, but they persevered religiously.
The locals weren’t very happy with the Yeshiva boys’ behavior. They even voiced their opinion that the boys were playing with fire and would end up paying a big price. The boys didn’t argue but continued their activities never the less.
When the War finally ended, the Russians agreed to return all Polish refugees and prisoners to their Country. It was a golden opportunity to escape the Soviet oppression and poverty with hope for a brighter future.
All the Jews who had been arrested in Lithuania and sent to Siberia claimed they were Polish citizens that had gone into Lithuania that was a War free zone at the outbreak of World War II and had been arrested there.
