Beis Nissan

At the beginning of 567 6 (1915), the Rebbe Rashab decided to leave Lubavitch as the German army approached the area during World War I. On 16 Cheshvan, the Beis Harav [the Rebbe’s family] traveled for a few weeks and arrived in Rostov.

R. Zalman continued to travel to the Rebbe in Rostov. The last occasion he merited to see the Rebbe Rashab was on Simchas Torah 5679 (1918), a year and a half before the Rebbe’s passing.

After that Simchas Torah he returned to Homil. On erev Shabbos 5 Cheshvan, at four a.m., his zeide R. Mordechai Yoel passed away at age 83. R. Zalman describes his zeide’s passing and the intense mourning that followed: “My zeide passed away at four in the morning on erev Shabbos Kodesh, the fifth of MarCheshvan, 5679 (1918). We stood there throughout the night as he turned from side to side, holding his yarmulke on his head, not letting it fall. As his soul departed my father cried out to us, “The crown of our head has fallen,” 57 and so he wailed in anguish for six hours uninterruptedly. ” R. Zalman records how, before his passing, his zeide asked one of his friends to place a Tanya in his b urial place; they placed only the title page (shaar blettl).

Soon after, the deadly disease of typhus raged in Homil and the Duchman family was stricken. R. Ber Mendel loyally nursed his family back to health, but that dedication and courage cost him his life. Having just completed saying kadish for his father, R. Ber Mendel returned his soul to its Maker.

Half a year later, on 2 Nissan 5680 (1920), the Rebbe Rashab passed away in Rostov. Understandably, this was a difficult period for R. Zalman, who had been so connected to the Rebbe.

R. Zalman’s intense love for the Rebbe Rashab drove him to make the long and arduous trip to the Ohel for the Rebbe’s yahrtzeit each year. Before Beis Nissan, R. Zalman would board the train to Rostov, without knowing what lay ahead of him. Communist spies roamed the train looking out for “suspicious persons, ” and anti-Semitic thugs would regularly attack anyone they recognized as Jewish. But R. Zalman’s burning desire to be by his Rebbe on that special day made him ignore those fears.