The Schneerson Collection

יאר יהוה פניו אליך ויחנך

“Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret
et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.” - The Epistles of Horace.

The Facebook page of the Schneerson Collection has some curious finds.

This is a plan of the apartment of Rayatz in Leningrad on the corner of Pestel and Mokhovaya streets with renovation work estimate:

1. ? floors in Kitchen and Corridor of apartment 12 = 144r ( Rubles)

2. Remove the bath tub, new flooring with a zinc sheet under the tub [so it doesn’t leak, today they use copper for this] = 75r

3. Wood partition for the bathtub with a door = 50r

4. New 1/2 bath toilet with compartment [stall] and a door = 250r

5. Repair parquet floor in all rooms = 100r

6. Fix doors and windows = 75r

7. Fix plaster on walls and ceilings and paint with “glue paint” = 150r

Total 844 Rubles

Above is a beautiful photo of Raytz relaxing with a cigarette. Unlike many other photos, it has the three-dimensional depth. This man was cursed or blessed with performing a role all his life. But in the photograph he appears at home, looking directly at you with his piercing dark eyes, as he would, in a friendly conversation. There is the carpet on the floor and the nicely patterned wall paper. Imagine this is his working table where he thinks and writes. You can see a lamp on the table and the white lacquer furniture in the background. I'm not sure what is under the cover there but to add the feeling of a warm home, why not two chalas? On the left, outside the shot, is a window that throws just the right amount of light for a perfect resolution to sculpt the face in focus.

And then, some moron took a marker and smeared a crude yarmulke on top of the historic photograph. In all honesty, Rayatz has no one to blame for this toxic culture but himself. But I am glad the collection is still in Moscow because if it was captured by the Barry S. Gourary Memorial Library, we would not see any of this. The library in Brooklyn serves the cult, not history. Not even the family that collected the library. Especially not the family…

R. Nechama Dina.

Turns out Musya resembles her condemned in modern Chabad mother. Initially, I even thought this was Musya.

Malka Zonis, Nechama Dina's sister, and her husband, Pinchas Zonis, Rayatz’s brother-in-law.

Above is a Telegram sent from Nevel to Rayatz in Leningrad upon his freeing:

“Congratulations, we ask for a 15 word blessing [see below] - happy travels - Yunger Nevel Committee .

יברכך יהוה וישמרך
יאר יהוה פניו אליך ויחנך
ישא יהוה פניו אליך וישם לך שלום

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Telegram to Nechama Dina in Riga while Rayatz in Amerika. Rosh Hashone. What is LCD? I guess he writes V as W.

Telegram to Nechama Dina in Riga while Rayatz in Amerika. Yom Kippur. 184 Brooklyn Ave. is the building behind 770. I am not certain how.

Let us all ask for forgiveness, I guess it was a thing even then.

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Tomchey Tmimim

1935, Warsaw (same as Otvozk or a different yeshive?). Not going to call this a concentration camp because this what was actually awaiting these boys in a few years. Let’s call is a “boot camp” except all forms of physical exercise are forbotten. They can’t even walk during davening.

No one from an established family will send kids there (Berlin and Gourary being an exception perhaps). You would not find any Schneersons in TT for sure. Not even your Rebbe who davka did not want to be there. As Gutin describes in his book, he was in TT Lubavitch despite the horrendous condition because he knew that at home his mother can’t feed him.

And what if you are an introvert? What if you need a space to think? There isn’t even a day off or a darn homework to be left alone. Hell on earth!

And that beautiful last line:

I didn’t know there were many varieties of richuk? And here is the secret. Maybe Chabad is pretending to do kiruv now, when in reality they have done nothing but richuk when it counted. Russian Jewry was and is destroyed. And it is this Chabad richuk that played a part, perhaps a big part. Arrogance and spoiled stupidity.

Saloniki Sephardim had a higher survival rate in Auschwitz. Frumaks who had no physical stamina were the first to die. Look at the above schedule to understand why. Anything to stunt the boys physically and intellectually. To shock the poor youngsters into the fascist submission, to destroy any talent besides the autistic memorization and meekness and to crush the creative, playful, introverted souls.

Anything to lower the chances of survival for these boys [even outside the Holocaust], and everything to subjugate them to the queen bee, financially and emotionally.