Last week, we learned that Soviet police accused Rabbi Gavriel Kagan (1889-1972) of being present at newborns’ brissin (which were banned under Soviet law). He denied organizing them and avoided giving names of parents or mohelim who could be located.
Now Kagan’s interrogation took a sinister turn: “We have information that you, as organizer of the circumcisions, contributed to illness of children who, as a result, developed bleeding and festering infections…. Some parents were forced to seek medical help. Do you admit it?”
“I don’t admit it,” replied Kagan. “I wasn’t the organizer of the circumcisions. I didn’t persuade any parents to have their children circumcised. I didn’t call the mohelim.”
The modern researcher who dug up these NKVD archives expresses his admiration for Rabbi Kagan’s strength of spirit, noting, “Despite the investigator’s sophisticated pressure, Kagan almost never specified family names and addresses demanded of him, and those whose names he did give, apparently could no longer be found.”
When he was arrested and his home searched, two photographs were seized. An interrogation on August 15, 1939 concentrated entirely on these pictures, the investigators seeking to use them as evidence of his ties with people outside the USSR, especially the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak.
When asked whom one photo portrayed, Rabbi Kagan replied truthfully: “the Tzaddik Schneersohn.”
“Where does Tzaddik Schneersohn live?” the investigator asked.
“I don’t know. About eight years ago, perhaps, Rabbi Don-Yechiya said that Rabbi Schneersohn lives in Poland” (he actually moved there from Riga, Latvia, in 1933).
“When did you receive this photo from Tzaddik Schneersohn?”
“I never received a photo from him,” Rabbi Kagan replied.
“So from where did you get it?”
“After Rabbi Don-Yechiya left for Palestine in 1936,” Rabbi Kagan replied, “he left many books and photographs in his room at the shul. When I cleaned that room, I took the photo off the wall and brought it home.”
“When your home was searched, another photo was seized. Whom does it portray?”
Kagan replied, “The photo shown to me here is of the father of the present Tzaddik Schneersohn who lives in Poland” (i.e., the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe).
Asked where he had obtained it, Kagan gave the same reply, “From the wall of Rabbi Don-Yechiya’s room.”
“You’re not telling the truth,” the investigator raged. “The photographs confiscated from you during the search were obtained from abroad. Why are you hiding that?”
“I haven’t received any photos from anywhere,” Rabbi Kagan insisted.
The protocol records that the investigator was so enraged that he literally grabbed Rabbi Gavriel Kagan in a potentially fatal “death grip” for a few moments.
Since this interrogation concentrated on the Rebbe’s picture, a later KGB investigator, in 1961, saw fit to add the following note:
“Schneersohn, Yosef, son of Sholom Ber, was a tzaddik – prophet – and headed the most reactionary and fanatical anti-Soviet movement among Jewish clerics…. While abroad, Schneersohn intensified his anti-Soviet activities, managing to attract his relatives and authoritative chassidim who had remained in the USSR, through whom he organized a whole network of illegal yeshivos – schools for training religious youth as ministers of worship – of an anti-Soviet nationalist character. Among his adherents, Schneersohn propagated regular information about the economic situation in the Soviet Union, which was of an espionage nature…”
That was how the Marxist Soviet regime viewed the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe and his Chabad movement. Thank G-d, we live in a tolerant land where we can freely practice our faith without persecution.
(To be continued)