“What do you think?” Reb Laizor thundered. “Without mussar I would be like that too!”

Laizor Milstein loved learning. His parents, proud of their young son’s passion, nurtured it — his father had always dreamed of having one child who would sit in the beis medrash rather than go out to work at a young age.

But young Laizor was troubled; was it fair for him to burden his parents with another mouth to feed if he wasn’t contributing to the household? Late one night, the determined bar mitzvah boy pocketed the few groschen he owned and shook his sister awake. “Don’t wake our parents,” he whispered. “But in the morning, tell them I’m fine. I’m going to yeshivah.”

He tried Brisk, then Mir, then Kletzk, before settling in Pinsk. In Yeshivas Novardok, he finally found his place.

But the rumbles from Germany got louder. As the Nazi party gained more and more power, the yeshivah moved to Vilna, where they occupied the beis medrash where the Gra had davened. As tensions heightened, the bochurim realized they’d have to disperse.

The rosh yeshivah, Rav Shmuel Weintraub, stood in front of the beis medrash and opened the aron kodesh. Turning to the bochurim, he addressed them one last time.

“The situation isn’t good,” he said, “and it will get worse. I want every one of you to open your Gemara, place your hand upon it, and be mekabel upon yourself that you will learn Torah every day, no matter what happens, until the day you die.”

Standing before the open aron kadosh, facing the holy scrolls, Laizor made the promise that would come to define his life.

Shortly afterward, Laizor heard that his parents were in the city of Lemberg. He packed his meager belongings, then hesitated. The rosh yeshivah had advised the bochurim to learn Chullin; with the future so uncertain, they might need to know hilchos shechitah. Laizor took a few blatt from a Maseches Chullin. He didn’t know what the coming days or months would bring, and he had a promise to keep.