Editing Menachem Mendel Futerfas (section)

== Documents from KGB Archives ==
New documents from the Lvov case and new memories about R' Mendel Futerfas were published during 2022-2023 in Chabad media outlets:

* Elul 2022: On Chabad.org (and translated to Hebrew on Chabad Online), KGB documents from 1950 were published reflecting the situation of Chassidim escaping through Lvov and Chernovitz. These documents also include documentation of arrests including R' Mendel Futerfas: "Among the Chabad leaders arrested following the operation were R' Mendel Futerfas (arrested on a train leaving Lvov in 1947, released from the Gulag in 1956); Yona Kagan ('Poltaver', arrested in 1948, died in the Gulag in 1949); and Mordechai Dubin (arrested in 1948, died in Soviet custody in 1957)."
* Tammuz 2023: R' Mendel's investigation file reached Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Kratz, publisher of the book about him being prepared by author Rabbi Yisroel Elfenbein. Portions of the file were published in WhatsApp groups, which sparked discussions and debates. From the publications, it is understood that R' Mendel and the escape organizers, including his brother-in-law R' DovBer Robinson and R' Shimon Katzenelenbogen, obtained enormous sums to get hundreds of Chabad families out of Russia. The publications also include details about R' Mendel's escape attempt with Rabbi Shmuel Notik.
* On 11 Tammuz 2023 (for the 12 Tammuz redemption holiday), additional photos from R' Mendel Futerfas's file were published on the Anash website.
* On 17 Tammuz 2023, additional documents from the file were published in Kfar Chabad magazine issue 2016, revealing that after interrogations, investigators managed to extract a confession from R' Mendel about his activities in organizing the smuggling of Chassidim through Lvov and Chernovitz. However, several years after he left the Soviet Union, the sentence was retroactively canceled and it was decided that he had not betrayed his homeland due to his 1958 complaint that the confession was extracted through illegal means.