Community Leader
Eventually, Rosen and Rabbi Levi Yitzchok Bender became the joint leaders of the Breslover community in Uman.
Rosen displayed his commitment to his flock during a government-engineered famine in Ukraine engineered by Joseph Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture (see Holodomor). Rosen organized shipments from the bread lines in Moscow to the starving community in Uman, and also appealed to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for assistance. This latter act brought Rosen and Bender to the attention of the NKVD in November 1935. The two were arrested and charged with making contact with foreign organizations. They were imprisoned, put on trial and faced the death sentence, but won an unexpected reprieve from by a sympathetic Jewish official in the Ministry of Justice in Kiev.
Rosen and Bender were allowed to return to their homes, but were placed under "city arrest" and not allowed to leave Uman. However, both men fled the city. While Bender migrated from place to place, Rosen traveled straight to Moscow to pick up an exit visa that he had applied for in 1931.
Read more about this topic: Eliyahu Chaim Rosen
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