Der Shma Yisrael vos Admor…Ha-Tzemach Tzedek hot geredt In Peterburg far di Soldaten vos Czar NicolaiI yemach shemo hot opgerissen yungerheit fun zeir elteren.

(SCHNEERSON, MENACHEM MENDEL).

New York

1939

FIRST EDITION. Yiddish text. With: A Sicha from the “Frierdicke Rebbe” sent from R. Yechezkel Feigin from Otwock to the Ladies Auxiliary in Brooklyn in 1938; and a copy of a letter written in Moscow in 1927 by the Chassid R. Eliahu Chaim Althaus to R. Menachem Mendel Lokshin concerning the arrest and freeing of the Rebbe on the 12th Tammuz.

Haberman, Sha’arei Chabad (in Alei Ayin: S. Z. Schocken Festschrift) no. 267.

Recounts the Tzemach Tzedek’s words of spiritual encouragement to those Jewish boys forcibly drafted into military service at the age of twelve and placed for military education into “Cantonist” schools, after which they were required to serve in the Imperial Russian army of Czar Nicholas I for a further 25 years. The goal behind such brutal compulsory military service - to the horror of the traditional Jewish community - was the forced integration of Jews into Russian society, effectively, to the utter detriment of their religious identity.