the Polish Hasidic Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva also managed to escape to Japan and then China, and studied in the same beth midrash (study hall) as the Mir students. The many students who remained in Lithuania continued their escape efforts, attempting to travel to America. Although Vilnius had originally been given by the Soviets to Lithuania, the Soviets soon took over the entire region in 1940. When the Russian government found out that the yeshiva students were attempting to leave for America, they began to view the students as anti-Communist and against the Soviet Union. They therefore did not want them so close to the war front, lest the Germans invaded Russia and the yeshiva students joined sides with them (as the Nazis were intent on wiping out European Jewry, the yeshivas would not have joined them anyway). They therefore made plans to deport the students to Siberia. However, Russian soldiers had been commandeering Jewish homes in Lithuania, and when the hosts got wind of the situation, they warned the yeshiva students of the government's plans. Many of the students went into hiding to avoid the deportation, while other felt it would be safer for them in Siberia than to be so close to the Nazi front. In the end, many of the yeshiva students, including those from the Kaminetz, Radin, and Bialystok yeshivas, were sent to Russia, although not all to Siberia. While some, including students from Novardok and their teacher, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Nekritz, and future-rabbi Yaakov Galinsky, were indeed sent to Siberia, others (as published in the book Tales of Devotion in the name of a student) were taken to the remote Komi Republic at the foot of the Ural Mountains where they were subjected to forced labor. The Holocaust According to the book Tales of Devotion, mere days after the yeshiva students' deportation to the Komi Republic, the Nazis invaded Lithuania. The students who had stayed behind hoping for safety were ultimately killed by the Nazis. The Telshe yeshiva was located in the city of Telšiai () in Lithuania, and was therefore relatively already safe when World War II broke out. However, plans were made to move the yeshiva to the United States, and Rabbi Elya Meir Bloch and Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Katz traveled to America to arrange the transfer. The yeshiva, led by Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Bloch, continued in Telshe. While the rosh yeshiva's daughter and