Rav Nachum Shmarya Sassonkin, who learned in the Tiferes Bochurim yeshivah in Leningrad, recalled that one day, a boy from Minsk joined the underground beis medrash. He learned well, and joined the young men in all their activities. But Rav Sassonkin recalled that the boys felt “there was something suspicious about him.” Expelling him from the yeshivah could invite further trouble, so they decided to keep an eye on him.
On Yom Kippur, he cried harder than everyone else, and the bochurim wondered what terrible secret he was hiding. It became apparent all too soon. Unable to withstand the terrible pressure from the NKVD (the Soviet secret police, a predecessor to the KGB), he had informed on them — with dire consequences. Rav Sassoskin recounted:
First they imprisoned our maggid shiur, Rav Nachum Terebnik, and exiled him [to Siberia] for three years, in the hope that this would frighten the rest of us into submission. But when they saw that Torah study was continuing just as [it had] before, they decided to imprison all of us.
