Rabbi Avrohom Jofen

http://hebrewbooks.org/40824

http://hebrewbooks.org/2818

http://hebrewbooks.org/41735

http://hebrewbooks.org/33369

http://www.hamichlol.org.il/רבי_אברהם_יפה%27ן

A Yeshiva, which was opened in Navogrudok in 1896 by Rabbi Yosef Yoysl Horowitz (later he received a nickname “Saba (grandfather) from Novogrudok”), passed through all stages of these misfortunes. In 1915, when the front line during World War I began to move eastward, Yosef Yoysl moved his yeshiva to Gomel. They did not have a synagogue of their own, so the students slept on the benches in the city synagogues, lived from hand to mouth and went around in worn-out clothes. But they professed the teachings of the Mussar, which in those years was popular among mitnagdim (Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox). It was the Novogrudok yeshiva that was the ideological center of this doctrine, and the ideas of asceticism were particularly attractive to them. Deprivations suffered by the whole nation at this time, led many followers to Yosef Yoysl. The number of yeshiva students reached several hundred. They were actively moving through the territory of Russia, not paying any attention to the "color" of power - "white", "red", "green". In many cities there were new yeshivas professing Mussar, and the number of followers reached two thousand. In 1919, the activity of Rabbi Yosef Yoysl's yeshiva began to seriously worry the Gomel authorities, and so he moved to Kiev with all 300 students. But centers of Mussar remained in Belarus - in Mogilev, Bobruisk, Rechitsa. Moreover, when believers from Kharkov, Rostov, Nizhny Novgorod came fleeing from repression they represented a considerable power. The Central Branch of yeshiva remained in Gomel. It was headed by Rabbi Yosef Yoysl’s son-in-law, Rabbi Abraham Yafen. Rav Yosef-Yoysl died of typhus in Kiev in 1920 , and his son-in-law led the entire system of yeshivas bearing the name "Novogrudok”. In 1921 he was arrested and, together with a group of his students, was imprisoned in investigative prison of Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya (ЧК - чрезвыча́йная коми́ссия, (Russian) – a predecessor of the KGB) After being freed, Abraham Yafen decided to emigrate. Leaving Gomel, about six hundred men in small groups crossed the border (with the help of smugglers) in the area of Baranovichi. Once in Poland, they founded the yeshiva in Bialystok. (After World War II, Abraham Yafen recreated yeshiva "Navogrudok” in Brooklyn, one of the boroughs of New York.) http://www.jewishgomel.com/eng/clauses/nasha-istoriya