One evening the Agents of Destruction [i.e. the NKVD] came and imprisoned the whole group, among them my two sons, and they were sent to Siberia for ten years of exile. After enduring brutal conditions in the labor camps, where many perished from hunger and thirst, cold and frost, they were never heard from again.
The Yevsektsia, though, were not content with striking just individual bochurim and yeshivos; they really wanted the mastermind whose will and daring kept it all going. All the evidence — in particular, a voluminous paper trail of correspondence — pointed to the Rebbe Rayatz.
One morning, NKVD agents burst into the shul where he was davening with his chassidim, and demanded that he stop his illegal activities. The Rebbe refused to be cowed by their threats.
One agent aimed a gun at his head and said, “This little ‘toy’ has made many a man change his mind!” “No,” the Rebbe replied calmly. “This toy can intimidate only a man with many gods and one world. I, however, have one G-d and two worlds — This World and the Next — so I am not impressed by your little toy.”
When continual threats did not succeed in stopping the Rebbe, the Yevsektsia pushed for more drastic measures. Early in the morning on June 15, 1927, NKVD agents, accompanied by Yevsektsia members, arrested the Rebbe in Leningrad. Taken to the infamous Spalerka Prison, he was tortured there for days, and sentenced to death.
Even in prison, the Rebbe’s determination for Torah did not waver. Without paper or seforim, he scribbled Torah thoughts on cigarette papers, and when he was told he could not have his tefillin, he went on a hunger strike for two and a half days until they were — remarkably — returned to him.
Eventually, a bevy of highly placed and prominent figures — including Chief Rabbi of Yerushalayim Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook, US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, Senator William Borah of Idaho, and even President Calvin Coolidge — pushed for his release.
