The Great Terror: Executed Rabbis
The 1930s brought the total destruction of Jewish religious life. The NKVD systematically arrested rabbis, teachers, and Chassidic activists.
The Great Terror of 1937–1938 swept through every part of Soviet society — and Jewish religious communities were among the hardest hit. NKVD lists specifically included rabbis, ritual slaughterers (shochtim), teachers, and community leaders.
The last legal Jewish religious institutions were dissolved. Underground activity became the only possibility for maintaining Jewish life.
Thousands of rabbis and religious activists were arrested. Most were shot within months of arrest. The "troikas" — three-man NKVD tribunals — handed down death sentences in minutes.
Despite everything, Chabad maintained underground networks: secret classes, hidden mikvaot, covert Torah printing. Every participant risked their life.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson: Arrested, Tortured, Exiled to Death
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson (1878–1944) was the Chief Rabbi of Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro, Ukraine) and one of the last openly functioning rabbis in the Soviet Union. He was also the father of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — who would become the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The NKVD arrested Rabbi Levi Yitzchak on fabricated charges: "counter-revolutionary activity," "espionage," "Jewish nationalism." In reality, his crime was being an openly practicing rabbi who refused to abandon his community.
During more than a year in prison he was subjected to severe torture — sleep deprivation, beatings, psychological pressure — aimed at forcing confessions and the betrayal of names. He refused to betray anyone.
Rebbetzin Chana: A Wife Who Followed Her Husband
His wife, Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson (1880–1964), followed her husband into Kazakh exile. Under conditions of extreme deprivation, she secretly obtained kosher ink and wrote it herself so that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak could continue writing Torah manuscripts in exile.
After his death in 1944, Rebbetzin Chana managed to smuggle the manuscripts out of the USSR in 1947 — an act of extraordinary courage. These manuscripts are now preserved in Chabad archives.
In 1991, the KGB officially acknowledged that the charges against Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson had been fabricated. The case was closed posthumously. His son — the Seventh Rebbe — knew his father was murdered by the Soviet state. This was personal.
The Holocaust: Mass Murder on Soviet Lands
The German invasion of June 1941 brought the Holocaust to Soviet territory. The murder of Jews here was especially rapid and total. By the end of 1941, over one million Jews had been killed in Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, and other occupied territories.
29–30 September 1941. 33,771 Jews shot in two days. The largest single massacre of the Holocaust. For decades the Soviet regime refused to acknowledge its Jewish character.
1941–1944. Approximately 70,000 Jews shot. "The Jerusalem of Lithuania" ceased to exist.
November–December 1941. Around 25,000 Latvian Jews shot. One of the largest mass executions in the Holocaust.
Hundreds of cities, towns, and villages. The entire Jewish population was murdered within weeks of the German arrival. 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews killed.
The Soviet government's official narrative downplayed the specifically Jewish nature of the Holocaust, describing the victims simply as "Soviet citizens." Babi Yar was not officially recognised as a Jewish site of martyrdom until the 1990s.
"Over Babi Yar there are no memorials. The steep hillside like a rough inscription. I am afraid. Today I am as old as the Jewish people."— Yevgeny Yevtushenko, "Babi Yar," 1961 — a poem Soviet censors tried to suppress