 After the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, the "Alter" ordered his students to cross the border into Poland.Many of the students were shot in the attempt; others were sent to Siberian prison camps, but six hundred made it across the border.The "Alter's" son-in-law, Rabbi Avraham Yoffen, was the head of the Novardok yeshiva in Białystok, the biggest Yeshiva in Poland between the two world wars.