Key to Survival 

When the Russians and Germans divided Poland at the onset of World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jews suddenly found themselves under Communist rule. Faced with the opportunity to take Soviet citizenship, many Jews turned it down; they saw voluntary acceptance of Soviet citizenship as an affirmation of the Communists’ atheist, anti-religious worldview — and therefore as unthinkable. In fury, the Russians rounded up those who refused citizenship and sent them to Siberia.

Rav Itzikel of Pshevorsk advised his chassidim to refuse Soviet citizenship. When he and his chassidim were subsequently sent to Siberia and suffered terribly from the cold and hard labor, the chassidim complained to him, “Why didn’t you let us take citizenship?”

“The day we were sent to Siberia was the 23rd of Sivan,” he told them in response. “This was the same day that Mordechai sent the letters telling the Jews of the Persian Empire that the king had granted them the right to defend themselves against their attackers. It became a day of deliverance and salvation, causing the ‘LaYehudim haysah orah, v’simchah v’sason v’yikar’ that we celebrate on Purim. On such a day, nothing bad can happen.”

Indeed, when Rav Itzikel and his chassidim returned from Siberia and learned that the Germans had killed all the Jews remaining in Vilna, they understood that Hashem had in fact been safeguarding them in the far recesses of the Russian tundra.