die al kiddush Hashem and inquired of the Vilna Gaon which blessing he should make immediately before his death. The Vilna Gaon answered, "...m'kadesh es Shimcha be'rabbim" (Who sanctifies His Name in public) and sent Alexander Süsskind of Grodno as an emissary to hear and answer "Amen". His mother used all her influence to procure a pardon for him, but the execution was moved up one day so that she would not be able to deliver it in time. Potocki was executed in Vilna on the second day of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. It was unsafe for any Jew to witness the burning; nevertheless, one Jew, Leiser Zhiskes, who had no beard, went among the crowd and succeeded by bribery in securing some of the ashes of the martyr, which were later buried in the Jewish cemetery. Potocki walked proudly to the execution site, singing a song that was later sung in the Volozhin yeshiva and that was also sung by Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer after Yom Kippur. Some sources say that Rabbi Alexander Ziskind, author of Yesod VeShoresh HaAvodah, stood near Potocki and said "Amen" to the blessing he said before he died. Following Potocki's execution, the town that had furnished the firewood for the execution burned down. There was also an unusual number of fires in Vilna, and a building that stood opposite the execution site bore a black stain from the "smoke and fumes of the burning". No amount of paint or whitewashing would remove the stain, and finally, the building was taken down. The authorities would not allow a monument to be erected over Potocki's ashes, but a "strange tree" grew at the site. Those who tried to cut down the tree were mysteriously injured in the process. Around 1919 a tomb was erected over the ashes and Jews came to pray there. Following the destruction of the old cemetery of Vilna by the Nazis during World War II, a new cemetery was built and the Vilna Gaon was interred in a new ohel. Potocki's ashes were reinterred alongside the Vilna Gaon's grave, and an inscribed stone memorial to him was mounted on the wall of the ohel. Potocki's comrade Zaremba returned to Poland several years before him, married the daughter of a great nobleman, and had a son. He remained true to the promise to embrace Judaism and took his wife and child to