The Girl Who Defied Stalin: A Child’s Courage and Faith Under Soviet Rule

What gives a child the strength to endure hunger, fear, and oppression, and still feel like a hero? In this unforgettable story, Rebbetzin Batya Berg shares how keeping Shabbat under Soviet rule shaped her identity, her faith, and her lifelong understanding that only heroes survive.

A Childhood of Hunger, Shabbat, and Faith

“I had a very hungry childhood. Hunger was soaked into my blood; it flowed in my veins,” Batya Berg tells Karat.

Each week, her family received a ration of bread meant to sustain three people: her father, her mother, and little Batya.

“My mother divided the bread into careful portions: one for our shared daily meal, and another she saved for me for the morning, because I ‘have to eat to grow.’”

Their meal began with what they called soup. They would crumble bread into a plate of boiling water, wait for it to swell, and drink the water first on an empty stomach. Afterward, Batya’s mother would gently gather the soggy crumbs, shape them into a heart or a flower, decorate them with a few green leaves, and say with a radiant smile:

“If there’s nothing to put on the plate, at least let’s arrange it nicely.”

The little girl would eat quickly and then sit beside her mother, staring at her with hungry eyes.

One day her mother said softly:

“You know, it’s hard for me to eat in front of your hungry eyes. I would gladly give you my portion too, my child, but if I die of hunger, you won’t have a mother. You need a mother’s love, and for your sake I need to hold back my urge to give you my portion and eat it myself.”

From that day on, Batya stopped looking at her mother while she ate.

The Sandwich She Refused

At school, Batya did not have a sandwich like the other children. Instead, her mother gave her a small candy wrapped in paper. During recess, while her friends ate sandwiches, she would suck on the candy, wrap it back up, take it out again, and repeat.

One day, a classmate noticed she never brought a sandwich. The girl approached her and held out her own.

Batya remembers it vividly.

“It was a white roll, lavishly spread with butter, topped with a slice of red salami and a green cucumber. She tore off a generous piece and gave it to me.”

Batya calls that moment the hardest test of her life.

“My hand pulled back. I did not take the sandwich. It burned me, but I was filled with pride. A minute later, an immense satisfaction washed over me. It nourished me almost like real food. I had never been as pleased with myself as in that minute when I  refused a deliciously-looking sandwich while my stomach twisted and turned.”

She ran home and fell into her mother’s arms.

“Mom, they gave me a sandwich. And I didn’t eat it!”

Her mother lifted tear filled eyes toward Heaven and said:

“Another angel was born.”

To this day, Batya says, she sees that sparkle in her mother’s eyes.

Hunger for the Sake of Shabbat

Their hunger was not random. It was the price of keeping Shabbat under Soviet rule.

“If my parents had gone out to work on Shabbat, we would have had more food. Because they did not work, we lived on a small pension we received in exchange for the blood of the children murdered in the war. Each time the money arrived my mother would sigh and say: ‘Slaughter money. They slaughtered our children, and we are eating bread dipped in blood.’”

Batya grew up knowing they were hungry because they kept Shabbat. That awareness transformed deprivation into heroism.

“We were keeping Shabbat in spite of the hunger, and that made us feel like great heroes. Heroes over Russia.”

As she walked through the frozen streets, she would whisper to herself:

“No one knows how heroic I am. If they knew, they would kiss the ground I walk on.”

She felt she was carrying the flag of the Creator of the world.

“Stalin murdered 22 million people and thinks he’s a hero. I’m the heroine. He does not allow keeping Shabbat, and I keep it. I am stronger than Stalin.”

“That is how I survived,” she says. “I survived as a heroine. Only heroes survive.”

A Little Girl Against an Empire

Keeping Shabbat was the hardest mitzvah of her childhood. Those who observed Shabbat risked exile to Siberia.

School attendance was mandatory. A child who did not show up needed a valid medical excuse. The only one who could provide that excuse was a doctor.

So her mother taught her how to become sick.

“Go out barefoot into the snow,” her mother told her. “Jump and call out, ‘I am fulfilling the mitzvah of keeping Shabbat.’ Hashem will help you to be sick for us.”

And Hashem helped.

Batya became ill repeatedly, with throat infections and tonsillitis. Two years passed this way.

At nine years old, the Ministry of Education sent a letter: if she was too sick for regular school, she would be placed in a hospital school.

All summer she asked her parents:

“So what will happen? Will I write on Shabbat?”

Her parents answered calmly:

“Do not worry. Moshiach is already at the door.”

September first arrived. Moshiach had not.

She asked her father:

“So should I write or not write?”

Her father answered carefully:

“You stood at Sinai just as I did. What needs to be done, you know. How to do it? From Heaven they will help you.”

When the teacher ordered everyone to write, Batya picked up the small knife used to sharpen pencils and cut her own finger.

“As a grown woman you might ask if it was permitted,” she says. “But I was a little girl with no rabbi, no teacher. It seemed better to injure my finger once than to write for five hours.”

That was her reckoning with the Father in Heaven.

Be My Kaddish

Years later, after the Iron Curtain fell, Batya came to Israel.

She recounts a walk with her father along the Dnieper River.

“You know, Batya’leh, I had fine, talented sons. I taught them Torah with self sacrifice. But Divine Providence decreed that I would leave this world without someone to say Kaddish for me. Therefore I want you to be my Kaddish and my headstone.”

He explained that a true headstone is not marble, but a person’s good deeds and the deeds of their descendants.

“Behave in such a way that anyone who meets you will say: ‘That is the daughter of R. Yehuda Leib Meizlik.’ That is my Kaddish and that is my headstone.”

He asked four things of her:

1. Find a good friend
2. Be deaf sometimes to things not worth hearing
3. Do not take offense
4. Always be joyful

“Serve Hashem with joy.”

Batya concludes:

“Please be my Kaddish and my headstone. Continue the path. Live by these four requests.”

The little girl who walked barefoot in the snow still lives inside her.

A heroine over Russia.

And only heroes survive.