Brittney Hibbs KGAN reports:
Sholom Rubashkin and his family will soon know where he will spend the rest of his life.
It all stems from the Postville immigration raid heard around Eastern Iowa nearly two years ago. Back in May of 2008, federal agents swarmed the meat packing plant in Postville arresting 389 illigal immigrants. Former manager Sholom Rubashkin was arrested and charged with 86 counts of fraud. Now he sits in the Linn county jail to await his sentence. Prosecutors are pushing for a life sentence. And now a CBS 2 exclusive, his wife Leah speaks out for the first time on camera.
Brittney Hibbs sat down with her as her husband faces life in prison and she faces a life without him.
Leah Rubashkin hopes to find out her husbands fate by the end of this week.
VIDEO LINK POSTED BELOW
“To tell you the truth, basically this whole story has destroyed him, has wiped his name off the face of this earth. Its’ destroyed my kids. This whole story has destroyed our kids. When you read the media reports it’s like ‘Is this the same guy that I’ve been living with for 28 years?’”
With her husband facing life in prison, Leah tries her best to smile for her children.
“We have 10 altogether, we are trying to distract them a little bit so they enjoy their time when they can speak with Sholom. But it’s really, really hard. We’re doing the best we could to try and stay focused instead of just lying in bed and groping around in the misery of it.”
She says having Sholom gone has been especially hard on her son with autism.
“He’s always been really close to Sholom and Sholom calls every night to say night prayers with him before he goes to sleep and its’ been really, really hard on him.”
Leah, now practically a single mom, talks about that day back in may of 2008 when her world changed.
“I think a lot of lives changed that day. I got a call from my 16 year old son. He said ‘Ma you’re not going to believe what’s going on out here. There’s like these black cars everywhere out here. There’s like a parade of them.’ Nobody could understand what this was all about. It was like a scene from a movie or something. Nobody could imagine what it could be or what it could be about.”
That day not only rocked the Rubashkin family but the entire town of Postville.
“A lot of change has come over the community, stores closing down all over main street, people relocating. Everyone is trying to pull together the pieces it’s not easy there’s not too much opportunity.”
Now her husband remains behind steel bars waiting to hear the Judges decision.
“What has gone on here has just been unbelievable. I feel that we’ve lost so much already. The whole business, we have nothing left financially, his name is mud. What else do we need to experience here? The stuff that has happened has brought a lot of pain to a lot of people and our hope is that we can pick up the pieces.”
And in the meantime, Leah holds her head high for her children and her faith.
“Knowing that there is going to be a day when this will be over and we will be back together.”
YWN VIDEO LINK: Click HERE to watch the video.
(Source: Brittney Hibbs CBS 2 News)
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11 Responses
may hashem send the yeshuah soon. he’s being persecuded so harshly because he’s jewish and all the GOOD things he’s done in life. we are all really on trial.
actually this morning i got an email to say tehillim for him, so i said it routinely. now (i watched the video) i said tehillim w/ *much* more kavana! you just identify with Mrs. Rubashkin so mcuh. Cry!! when you say the tehillim…
May H’KBH grant all the Rubashkin family to be matzliach in all their endeavors!!!! Amen!!!
hashem should give them alot of strength to endure this nisayon. i daven and cry every day that HE should show rachamim and let this holy man who did nothing wrong free out of jail. my heart bleeds esp. for his autistic son and we must beg hashem to help sholom in his plight.
Sholom Rubashkin and his family will soon know where he will spend the rest of his life:
Only HASHEM KNOWS where sholom will spend his life. And even after the judge makes a decision, hashem is still in charge.
May hashem send moshiach now and free sholom from his tzaros and free all yidden from their misery. Amen.
I’m with all of you and wish the best for him. He doesn’t deserve the way they’re treating him for sure. But Mosh, how can you say he did nothing wrong?
A thought that may resonate with this group, drawing on this past week’s Parsha:
Perhaps Hashem is using the SMR case to send us a message that he has had it up to here with Frum scamming, and is employing a harsh sentence as a means of getting our attention.
One need not even see SMR as a bad fellow under this assumption (on the contrary, BeKrovai Akadesh), just that Hashem is choosing this case, on which the Frum world has its eyes, to fire a warning shot.
Judaism has a rich and storied tradition–from Avraham to Choni HaMagel–of people not accepting Hashem’s “opening bid,” but once judgement is passed, VaYidom Aharon/Aaron.
#6 Perhaps he did some small wrong in hiring illegal aliens.
But the fact is that the government hires illegals at taxpayer expense all the time.
What I mean by hiring is not that they take them as workers for government jobs.
Instead they do far worse, they take tax dollars from our pockets and give them amnesty and free medical care and free schooling, and welfare and free cable TV (to learn English, this was told to me by a rabbi who works with Russian immigrants and I am sure it also applies to all those who do not speak English when they come here).
People in business cannot compete when so many of their competitors hire illegals.
The government and unions are making hiring Americans far too expensive to stay in business.
As for the other main charge of bank fraud, from what I have heard on YWN reports, that seems to have occured, only after the raid on the plant for the illegals which destroyed the business as the ATF (or wheoever) agents were apparantly very destructive and after that Rubashkin could not keep paying the loans he had previously been keeping up with.
So yes in my opinion, if he did not do ‘nothing’ wrong, it was certainly very little wrong, relatively speaking.
Thank you, hereorthere, that was very eloquently put. Hashem yerachem, I pray that he receives a light sentence be”H.
Brief reminder today is pesach sheni may hashem let him go free jus like he let kellal yisroel go free out of Egypt and be home to eat the matzah and say “zecher lekorbon pesach”
Chulentlover12:
Thanks for the reminder!