Levi Yitzchak Schneerson’s exile and the place of remembrance in Almaty

Before Kazakhstan, he served Yekaterinoslav’s community

Levi Yitzchak Schneerson was born in 1878. From the early twentieth century until his arrest, he was a prominent Jewish religious figure in Yekaterinoslav, later Dnepropetrovsk, now Dnipro. Chabad biographies describe his efforts to sustain religious education and practice under increasingly restrictive Soviet anti-religious policy.

On 28 March 1939, NKVD officers arrested Schneerson at his home. Lengthy interrogations and transfers between prisons followed. Contemporary publications drawing on surviving case records and Chabad’s archival tradition state that the charges included anti-Soviet activity, foreign contacts and other political formulations typical of the period’s repression.

According to Kazinform, Schneerson was posthumously rehabilitated in 1989.

Arrest and the decision to exile him

Following the investigation, Schneerson was assigned five years of internal exile in Kazakhstan.

Publications differ on the exact date of the decision. Dovid Margolin gives 4 October 1939 on Chabad.org, while Mendel Adelman gives 23 November 1939 in another article on the same site. Adelman refers to pages 153 and 154 of a biographical book. Neither publication reproduces the exile order itself. Dovid Margolin’s Chabad.org article, Mendel Adelman’s biography.

The biographies also describe the procedure differently. Margolin writes of a decision to exile the rabbi without trial. Adelman describes a committee that found the evidence insufficient for a trial and ordered exile. This account therefore does not assert that a trial took place. Dovid Margolin’s Chabad.org article, Mendel Adelman’s biography.

Chiili, now Shieli

Chiili in Kyzylorda Region became his place of exile. The settlement is now called Shieli and is the administrative centre of Shieli District.

His wife, Chana Schneerson, lived with him in exile. The preserved Chabad accounts, including her memoirs, describe extreme poverty, food shortages, damp, illness and the absence of adequate working conditions.

He continued writing in exile

Schneerson had very few books and writing materials. Chana made ink for him from available plants, herbs and roots. He wrote commentaries in the margins of his books, including volumes of the Zohar.

These pages survived. Some notes were later published in the Likkutei Levi Yitzchak series. An article about a library exhibition shows books with notes in several colours.

His exile coincided with wartime evacuation to Kazakhstan

Schneerson’s years in exile overlapped with the Second World War, when many evacuees and displaced people arrived in Kazakhstan from the western parts of the USSR.

Chabad memoirs describe Jewish refugees and families, far from their former communities, seeking out the Schneersons. These accounts confirm religious and practical support, but cannot establish the number of people helped or the scale of community life.

He moved to Alma-Ata in spring 1944

By early 1944, Levi Yitzchak’s health had seriously deteriorated. Chabad sources and eyewitness memoirs describe friends and acquaintances in Alma-Ata seeking permission for his relocation from Chiili and raising money for it.

After Passover in 1944, Levi Yitzchak and Chana Schneerson arrived in Alma-Ata. Bezalel Shailzon was among those who helped them after their arrival. His daughter Luba Liberow’s later recollections describe the caution with which local Jews received someone who had just emerged from political exile.

The memoirs describe Jewish connections in wartime Alma-Ata and help for the exiled rabbi’s family, despite the risks to those offering it.

His final months

Conditions in Alma-Ata were better than in Chiili, but the rabbi’s health had already been severely damaged.

He died on 9 August 1944, corresponding to 20 Av 5704 in the Jewish calendar, aged 66. He was buried in the Jewish section of Alma-Ata’s cemetery.

20 Av became an annual day of remembrance.

The grave survived the Soviet period

Chabad accounts state that Almaty’s Jews sought to preserve the burial site through the Soviet decades, when many Jewish cemeteries deteriorated and religious infrastructure was under pressure.

A memorial structure, an ohel, stands over the grave. The cited sources do not establish its construction date unambiguously. There is insufficient evidence to associate its construction solely with the dissolution of the USSR.

Rehabilitation and the return of case records

In a report dated 10 August 2009, citing the press service of the Jewish Centre of Kazakhstan, Kazinform dated Schneerson’s posthumous rehabilitation to 1989. This is a secondary report, not the original rehabilitation decision. Kazinform’s report on rehabilitation and the transfer of records.

The transfer of investigation records was a separate, later event.

According to Dovid Margolin’s reconstruction, which draws in part on the diary of Chabad librarian Sholom Ber Levin, representatives of Ukraine’s KGB handed a first package of 65 pages to Chabad representatives in Kyiv on 7 August 1991. In spring 1992, SBU officers from Dnepropetrovsk handed three more files to the Shamir organisation in Israel. Dovid Margolin’s reconstruction.

The 1991 and 1992 transfers preceded Kazakhstan’s transfer in 1999. The contents of the packages have not been compared through documentary evidence.

Kazakhstan transferred case records in 1999

A separate transfer from Kazakhstan’s archives took place on 19 December 1999. Kazinform gives this date in its retrospective report from 2009. Kazinform’s report on rehabilitation and the transfer of records.

During a visit to New York, Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, handed Chabad library representatives three volumes of Schneerson’s investigation records from Kazakhstani archives. JTA reported that they contained interrogation records and documents, including an arrest warrant and death certificate. JTA’s report dated 21 December 1999.

Kazakhstan’s transfer was not the first known return of investigation records. The publications do not specify the contents of the different archival packages or their relationship to one another.

The burial site was recognised in 2020

On 10 August 2020, JTA and Chabad.org reported that Kazakhstan had added Levi Yitzchak Schneerson’s burial site to its national heritage list. Kazakhstani representatives and Paul Packer, chairman of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, attended the ceremony. JTA on the burial site’s status, Chabad.org’s ceremony report.

Speaking at the eighth Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions on 17 September 2025, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev named Levi Yitzchak’s grave in Almaty among sacred places whose preservation the state supports. This confirms the content of the official address, but does not replace an entry in a monument register. Full text of the address to the eighth Congress.

The reports from 2020 and 2025 concern the burial site. They do not establish protection status for the entire Central Cemetery.

Pilgrims visit the grave from different countries

In August 2023, Chabad.org reported that more than a thousand local residents and visitors from various countries had gathered for events marking the 79th anniversary of his death. For the 80th anniversary in 2024, it estimated that around a thousand people were travelling to Almaty. Chabad.org’s 80th-anniversary report. Both publications connect the visits with the anniversary of his death, 20 Av.

In brief

• 28 March 1939. The NKVD arrested Levi Yitzchak Schneerson in Dnepropetrovsk.
• 1939. Following the investigation, he was assigned five years of exile. Biographies differ on the exact date of the decision.
• Chiili. The settlement, now called Shieli, became his principal place of exile in Kyzylorda Region.
• 1940s. Chana Schneerson joined her husband. He continued writing religious commentaries in exile, some of which survive.
• Spring 1944. The Schneersons moved from Chiili to Alma-Ata.
• 9 August 1944, or 20 Av 5704. Levi Yitzchak died in Alma-Ata and was buried there.
• 1989. According to Kazinform, Levi Yitzchak Schneerson was posthumously rehabilitated.
• 1991 and 1992. According to Chabad.org’s reconstruction, case records were transferred from Ukrainian archives. Publications describe the contents of the packages differently.
• 19 December 1999. Kazakhstan handed the Chabad library three volumes of investigation records.
• 10 August 2020. International sources reported the burial site’s inclusion in Kazakhstan’s national heritage list.
• 2025. An official Kazakhstani address named the grave among the country’s particularly significant religious sites.
• Place of remembrance. Community publications describe international pilgrimage. Heritage reports do not name the exact category of state protection.