On 9 Nissan 5699 (March 28, 1939), at three o’clock in the morning, four agents of the NKVD arrived at the Schneerson home on 13 Barikadna Street. Stationing guards at all doors, they searched the house like beasts. Confiscating thousands of folios of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak’s written works on Kabbalah, halachah, and rabbinic correspondence. They confiscated his rabbinic ordination certificates and destroyed his seforim.
After they had ended their search, Rav Levi Yitzchak was arrested on trumped up charges by the inhuman Soviets for his activities on behalf of Judaism in the Soviet Union. After over a year of torture and interrogations in Stalin's notorious prisons, by those animals Rav Levi Yitzchak was tried in Moscow and sentenced to five years exile in Central Asia. After a year of stravation, suffering and privation, immediately after Pesach, after much effort and bribes, Rav Levi Yitzchak and Rebbetzin Chana left Chi’ili and arrived in Alma Ata.
On the 20th of Av, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak’s condition turned critical. He was no longer able to speak, but he still continued to murmur words of Torah & Tehilim. That evening, he returned his pure soul to its Maker.
When she escaped Russia in 1947, Rebbetzin Chana managed to smuggle out the manuscripts that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak had written during his years of exile. Rav Levi Yitzchak’s son, the seventh Rebbe published his father's manuscripts in a five-volume set under the title Likutei Levi Yitzchak.
