diff --git a/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/index/TestIndexWriterWithThreads.java b/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/index/TestIndexWriterWithThreads.java
index 4e27c135938..dd4b30208c4 100644
--- a/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/index/TestIndexWriterWithThreads.java
+++ b/lucene/src/test/org/apache/lucene/index/TestIndexWriterWithThreads.java
@@ -184,6 +184,8 @@ public class TestIndexWriterWithThreads extends LuceneTestCase {
           if (threads[i].addCount > 0) {
             done = true;
             break;
+          } else if (!threads[i].isAlive()) {
+            fail("thread failed before indexing a single document");
           }
       }