Recounts Rabbi Nechemia of Kfar Chabad:
I was born into a religious family, but I joined the Czar's army before WWI, served valiantly as a tank commander, and even earned several medals for bravery. When I finished the army I was considered a loyal citizen. But then came the Communist Revolution and turned everything upside down.
It wasn't long before I received a summons to the "Peoples Court," and innocently believing that my combat record and medals would prove my loyalty, I confidently strode into the courtroom only to be rudely introduced to the "New Order."
After a ten-minute trial, I was sentenced to fifteen years of "Correctional Hard Labor in Siberia" for the crime of "Maintaining Loyalty to the Old Regime." I was led completely bewildered from the courtroom, directly to prison, and waited there for several weeks to be shipped off to a Labor camp.
But then came unexpected "better" news. The Government needed volunteers for an icebreaker ship that was going to forge its way into some obscure sub-zero territory in Siberia to build an army camp.
The food was supposed to be much better, the hours of work shorter, and as an additional incentive, each year would count as three years of my sentence. So I jumped at the opportunity. After five years, most of the crew died from disease or cold, the project had to be abandoned, and those who were left returned home. Miraculously I was one of the lucky survivors.
I should have been grateful...but something was bothering me; I couldn't accept the fact that absolutely nothing resulted from all my work. I kept thinking to myself, there must be some reason. I was sure of it! But I couldn't figure what it was. At first I kept it to myself, but little by little it became an obsession.
Then late one night I was walking down a street and I heard singing coming from a shul (synagogue). A group of Lubavticher chasidim were sitting together, singing. Then they stopped, raised their small vodka glasses saying l'chaim, took a sip, and one of them began speaking
"Once there was an old, wealthy Polish Baron who had an eccentric idea. He wanted a statue of himself made from a certain rare type of semi-precious marble found only in the Far East and he wanted it placed as a gravestone on his grave after he died.
"He found a Jewish dealer in precious stones whom he trusted and gave him an unusually large sum of money to accomplish the task. He was to travel to India, buy a large block of this stone, and accompany it back to Poland where the Baron would commission a sculptor to do the job.
"This Jew, being a chasid of the Holy Rebbe Yisroel of Ruzin, first traveled to his Rebbe, who warmly blessed him and encouraged the journey, and then sailed to India, certain of success. A month later he arrived in India, bought the stone, had it loaded on the ship and began his return voyage to Poland.
