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Author
Ruth Marcus submitted the following abstract of her article:
During
the last five years I have been involved in research on Jewish life
in the village of Lunna, now in
Belarus. Part of the results of this research, together with old
photographs that were taken in Lunna before WW2, are posted on the Lunna
webpage at: www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/lunna
which has been online since May
18, 2007.
The
following article consists of two parts which have not yet been posted on
the Lunna webpage. The background part describes
my personal connection and attachment to Lunna,,
which was the hometown of my ancestors and the place where my father was
born and grew up. The second part describes impressions and
reflections of my visit in Lunna in August
2006, followed by selected photos from that trip.
© This
article is copyrighted by Ruth Marcus.
Reprinting or copying of this
article is not allowed
without prior permission from the copyrightholders.
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Once there was
a small Shtetl named Lunna
by
Ruth
Marcus
Introduction
My father, Yitzchak ("Yitzl") Eliashberg (also spelled as Eliasberg)
was born on October 14, 1910 in Lunna. The village was then in the Russian Empire;
between WW1 and WW2 Lunna was in Poland and now it is in Belarus. His parents were Yehoshua Eliashberg and Batya nee Kosovsky (also spelled as Kosowski).
He grew up in Lunna with his four sisters: Malka, Yocheved, Chaya and Leah. He attended and graduated the "Torah
Ve'daat" Hebrew elementary school which was
established in Lunna after WW1. Later on, he
studied at the "Tarbut" Gymnasium (Hebrew
high school) in Grodno where he graduated in 1930. He was active in the "Ha'Shomer Ha'tzair" youth
movement in Grodno and was one of its leaders. At the end of 1932 he left Poland for Eretz Israel and settled with his friends from "Ha'Shomer
Ha'tzair" in kibbutz Bet Alfa. A few years
later he left the kibbutz and moved to Tel Aviv. His father died in Lunna in 1934. At the end of the summer in 1937 Yitzchak
traveled by ship to visit his mother, Batya, his
two younger sisters, Chaya and Leah, and some other
Eliashberg and Kosovsky
family relatives who remained in Lunna. From that
visit he sent several letters to his girlfriend Ahuva
in Eretz Israel, who was born in Jerusalem,
and whom he married a year later. In his letters he described the exciting
meetings with his family relatives, friends and acquaintances in Lunna and in Grodno.
In 1939 before
the outbreak of WW2 my father and his sister Yocheved
were already living in Eretz Israel. Their older
sister Malka Bialoblocki,
her husband and their children were living in Rozyscie, Poland. Their two
younger sisters Leah
and Chaya were living in Lunna with their mother Batya.
It turned out that my father had the possibility to bring to Eretz Israel only one of
his two younger sisters, so he decided to get his youngest sister Leah out
from Poland. To do so he
paid for the travel expenses of one of his acquaintances in Eretz Israel who traveled to Lunna,
married his sister and brought her with him to Eretz Israel on an official certificate at the "last
moment" on April 5, 1940 and then divorced her (i.e. "fictitious
marriage"). His other sister Chaya and his
mother Batya remained in Lunna
and perished in the Holocaust with all the other Jews of Lunna on December 8,
1942, the fifth day of Chanukah.
 
Yehosua Eliashberg
and Batya Kosovsky Eliashberg circa 1930
 
Yitzchak Eliashberg
at Lunnyanka Brook Yocheved Eliashberg Rutenberg (rt) and her aunt Shoshana Kosowski Harkabi
Circa 1927
circa 1926
 
Bialoblocki family near Nieman River, 1937
Leah Eliashberg Yanovsky
(left) and Chaya
(Malka Eliashberg,
Avigdor B. and children Aviva
& Shmuel-Arie) Eliashberg
in front of their house, 1934
I remember the days when my father got together with his two
sisters, Yocheved and Leah, in Israel. They used to talk a lot about Lunna,
mentioning the Niemen River
and the forests which surrounded the shtetl. With
tears in their eyes they used to talk about their relatives and friends who
had remained in Poland and perished in the Holocaust. His younger sister Leah used always
to repeat the fact that my father saved her life when he had managed at the
last moment to bring her to Eretz Israel.
Sometime between the late 1960s and the early 1970s my father began
to write memoirs on Lunna. "Once there was a
small shtetl named Lunna"
– this is how he opened his reminiscences of Lunna. He wrote in Yiddish several memory stories
as "A Fair Day in Lunna", "Theater
in Lunna", "Berl
der Furman" (the teamster) and added an
introduction to them in Hebrew. He used to read these memoirs to his family
relatives and friends during their meetings. I used to watch them at that
time without understanding any word in Yiddish but enjoyed their interest and
reactions. I suppose that my father intended to write a Yizkor
book about Lunna but never reached this goal. In
1972 he had a stroke which changed the rest of his life. All his activities,
including the writing of his memoirs and stories about Lunna,
came to an end. Ten years later, on November 19, 1982, my father passed away.
About five years ago, I found in the home where my parents used to
live an old copybook which included the three memory stories which my father
had written. These memory stories, written in Yiddish, were translated for me
into Hebrew and from then on I have been drawn to and have become engrossed
with the town and deeply involved in its research. I started to interview
former Lunna residents, in particular Mr. Eliezer Eisenshmidt, a
Holocaust survivor from Lunna, who now lives in Israel. In the course of my research on the Lunna
Shtetl, I became acquainted with its day-to-day
Jewish life prior to WW2, its paths and alleyways, the public buildings and
private houses it contained, the well-to-do and the ordinary people - most of
them were artisans and petty merchants. I suddenly felt as if that I knew the
people and the characters that were described in my father's memoirs. I got to
know who was Berl der
Furman (the teamster), Rubtze the Melamed (the teacher), Elka's Yankel, Leib the blacksmith, Yoske the baker, Berl the
hairdresser, as well as other types and characters. The results of my
research were summarized in a booklet entitled "Once there was a small Shtetl named Lunna" (Ruth
Marcus, 2005, 195 p. in Hebrew).
Some time after the booklet was published and distributed among a
few people who found an interest in that Shtetl,
Mr. Eisenshmidt found at his home an old notebook
with lists of names and addresses of people who resided in Israel during the 1950s and participated in memorials for the Lunna Jews who perished during the Holocaust. These
memorials were held in Tel Aviv in the 1950s but ceased afterwards. Following
these lists, Eisenshmidt and I managed
to find many descendants of former Lunna-Wola
residents who reside in Israel. As a result
of these searches a Gathering of Descendants from Lunna took place in Beit Vohlyn in Givatayim in March 2006. About 150 people ingathered
there from all over the country and participated in a moving and exciting
evening.
In August 2006,
I accompanied Eliezer Eisenshmidt,
his granddaughter Liat and Mira Feingold (her
father Aba Margalit was
born and grew up in Lunna) on a visit to Lunna. Impressions and
reflections of this visit, together with selected photos, are presented below.
Our visit to Lunna (August 2006)
We travelled from Ben-Gurion airport to Vilnius, where a
Lithuanian driver was waiting to pick us up. From Vilnius, we drove on
to Druskininkai, Lithuania, then crossed
the border with Belarus and after
three hours drive arrived in Grodno. There we had
a hotel for five nights. A Grodno driver would
pick us up every morning from the hotel for our daily trip. On the first
morning we drove from Grodno, passed Skidel and after about an hour we approached Lunna, greatly excited. At first we took pictures of Lunna's sign, written in Belarusian Cyrillic, a few
hundred yards before the entrance to the village. On the other side of the
entrance to Lunna lies the village of Zaleski. We came to Lunna through the road which used to divide the former village of Wola. The village of Wola was officially
annexed to Lunna in 1915. Many Jewish residents,
however, continued to refer to Lunna as "Lunna-Wola".
 
Road sign of Lunna, 2006. L to R: Mira Feingold, Eliezer Lunna
entrance thru road bisecting Wola; on the other
side
Eisenshmidt,
Ruth Marcus
of the road is the village of Zaleski
In September 1941, on Sukkoth Eve, the Germans
declared Wola to be the ghetto for both Lunna and Wola Jews. The Lunna Jews were then forced to leave their homes and move
into the houses of the Wola Jews, the synagogue or
the Beth Midrash (study house). After the war many old houses in Wola
which remained in poor condition were destroyed by the Soviets and new
buildings were built on the site. When we drove through Wola,
Eisenshmidt showed us the small bridge over the
brook where the flourmill of Galinski and Rumsisker and their partners had once stood and he
mentioned the names of several Jewish families that had lived in Wola, including Replanski, Muler, Friedman, Murawski, Pluskalowski, Halpern and
others.
We went on to
the "Goyeshe Gass"
where the Christians used to live and arrived in Wolpianska Street, now Sovietskaya Street. Eisenshmidt showed us the place where his family's house
had once stood, its storage and the ice-pit. The house was destroyed and a
new house was built on its place. The two Lunna
Jewish schools had once stood to the right side of Eisenshmidt's
house. Incidentally, he met an old Christian woman whose father was a
shoemaker and a neighbor of his family. He talked in Russian with her and
with other neighbors who joined the discussion, and he also simultaneously
translated for us parts of their talks. His old neighbor remembered Eisenshmidt's mother Etka
(Ethel) who used to feed her as a child. She also remembered other Jewish
families who had once lived in Lunna and even
mentioned their names. They both recalled the special reception that was held
in 1932 at Eisenshmidt's home when Mr. Shwed (a Pole) was elected as the Mayor of Lunna. During their talks Eisenshmidt
showed her the tattoo from Auschwitz on his arm and
she began crying. Eisenshmidt's granddaughter Liat videotaped the whole exciting meeting. After
spending a couple of hours with Eisenshmidt's old
neighbors we continued our walking tour in Wolpianska (Sovietskaya)
street
and saw the places where Jewish families lived before the Holocaust,
including those of Basha Becker ("der Eigele"), Nachum-Moshe Welbel, Murawski, Marchinowski, Feiwel Yedwab and others. In one of Yedwab's houses is
now the supermarket of the village.
In the backyard
of Eisenshmidt’s old neighbor, 2006. L to R: Mira Feingold,Ruth
Marcus (holding old photos), Eliezer Eisenshmidt and two old neighbors of his
Eisenshmidt met some other
old friends in Lunna. One of them, Mr. Romanowicz, a grandson of the former Russian orthodox
priest, invited us to have lunch at his home. Mr. Romanowicz's
neighbor prepared for us a salad of fresh vegetables that she just picked
from her garden. We brought with us foodstuffs that we bought in the nearby
supermarket, including of course, a bottle of vodka. Over lunch, Eisenshmidt and Romanowicz
talked about the Jewish families who had once lived in Lunna,
about the old Polish school where Jewish and non-Jewish students had
attended, and they raised other memories as well. I had with me several
copies of old photos that were taken in Lunna
before the war, including a photo of students and teachers at the Polish
school. Romanowicz looked at the photo of the
Polish school and was excited when he identified his grandfather, the Russian
orthodox priest, Alexander Kalishewitz, and the
teachers: Kuznitzki, Raditzewski
and Shurowski (the principal). He looked at that
photo again and again, repeated the names of his grandfather and the
teachers, and asked me to give it to him, which I happily did.
We spent four
days visiting Lunna. We traversed the streets and
at each house Eisenshmidt told us the story of the
Jewish family that lived there before the Holocaust. We saw the Lunna market square, now called the Heroes Square, and we were
told that a market-day takes place in the early hours of Sundays morning in
which cattle is being sold. The Heroes Square and its
surroundings were almost empty. It is hard to believe that Lunna was once the home of a vibrant old Jewish
community. We went around the square and
photographed the former houses of Moshe-Yudel Arkin, Raphael Zlotoyabko, Zeev (Wolf) Berachowitz, Israel Lubitz, Leib Goldin, Basha Yogiel, Eli Shalachman, Chaykel Friedman, Tzvi Eisenshmidt and others. The house of Leib
Goldin is now the office building of the Lunna municipality. Most of the houses around the square
were renovated and painted. When we stood in the square Mr. Eisenshmidt showed us the house where my grandfather Yehoshua Eliashberg lived with
my grandmother Batya Eliashberg
(nee Kosovsky) and their five children. Several
families live there now and they let me wander freely through the house. I
went into its various rooms. I looked through the windows onto the market
square imagining the sights that my father saw in his childhood. Next to my grandparents' house was that of Aaron Kosovsky (my paternal grandmother's uncle) which is the
only building in Lunna that carries an inscription
of a Magen David (Star of David) on top it.
 
The houses of Yehoshua Eliashberg (white) and Aaron Inscription of year 1931 and sign
of Magen David on top of
Kosovsky
(dark), facing square, 2006 Kosovsky’s house, facing Kirov Street,
2006
We also entered to the town club which was once the old synagogue
of the "Mitnagdim" congregation. Inside
we felt the holiness of the place and looked all around with tears in our
eyes. Eisenshmidt showed us the place where the
Holy Ark ("Aron Ha'Kodesh")
once stood; the seat of Rabbi Tuvia Rotberg was to the right of the Holy Ark and the seat of
my paternal grandfather to the left of it. The
wooden house of Rabbi Tuvia Rotberg,
as well as the "new" synagogue that belonged to the "Mitnagdim", and the small Shtibl
(prayer-house) of the Chasidim which were located at the Shulhof
(synagogue square) behind the "old" synagogue, were destroyed. On
one day of our visit, Lunna residents gathered at
the courtyard near the town club and celebrated the end of their harvest
season. Some farming combines were placed around and music and singing by the
audience were heard all around. Standing a bit far from there we imagined the
Jews who used to gather at the same place on Shabbat days and holidays.
In a backstreet behind the "old" synagogue many poor
families used to live, as Shabtai Yanovsky, Derewianski, Kraselnik and others. We passed through small lanes and
through a backstreet behind the synagogue where the houses remained in their
shape exactly as they were in former days. When we walked in Proletarskaya Street, Eisenshmidt showed us the houses of Pesia and Shalom
Margulis (Mira's grandparents), Gisser
the butcher, Simon Alperstein the Shochet
(slaughter), Werebejczyk the baker and those of
others.
  
The “old” synagogue, now
the town club Old houses in Proletarskaya Street Mira Feingold in front of her
grandparents’
(2006)
(2006)
(Shalom & Pesia Margulis)
house on Proletarskaya Street, 2006
In another day
we walked along the street which leads to the Niemen River with a feeling
of the footsteps of our ancestors who had once walked there. The street is
now named Komsomolskaya Street. Eisenshmidt showed us the place of Pesia
Margulis' (Mira's paternal grandmother) coffee shop
and another house that belonged to Yedwab family (at the corner of Sovietskaya Street). On June 22, 1941, about ten
Jews were hiding in the basement of Yedwab's house and were killed by the
German bombing. Among them were Rebetzin Rasha-Mine Rotberg (Rabbi Tuvia's wife), Chana-Beile
Lidski (Rabbi Rotberg's
daughter) and her daughter Gela, Israel Lubitz's wife (her name unknown), Chaya
Galinski and others. Eisenshmidt
also showed us the houses of Yaakov Abin, Yehoshua Win, Mordechai Yevnin, Leib Reizner, Zalutzki, Munia - Berl der Furman's son, and
other families. We also passed near the small brook where the Jewish youth
used to take photographs.
Just in front
of the Niemen River is a memorial
monument for the memory of seven Russian soldiers from Brigade 64 who crossed
the Niemen River to the bank of
Lunna in WW2 and were
killed while defending the area against 12 attacks of the German army. Nearby
is also a monument for the memory of the anonymous Russian soldier. Eiseneshmidt told us that the old cemetery of Lunna was located on
that area and almost all the tombstones there were destroyed. We reached the Niemen River greatly
excited. Mira and I began singing and repeated saying: "That's the Niemen River our fathers
told us about".
 
Ruth Marcus near small brook, Komsomolskaya
Street The Niemen
River, 2006
2006
On another day
in Lunna, we made a walking tour of the scene of a big fire that caused a
disaster in Lunna in 1931. The fire began in a wooden storage shed of Munia
Kagan who resided in the middle of Zagorynay (now Kirov) street. We passed near
the old building of the Polish school, near the place where Elazar ("Leishke") Kagan had once lived, and crossed the town-square, till
we arrived in Grodzienska Street. Many wooden
houses which were burnt in that fire were replaced by new houses built of
bricks. Many of them carry the inscription of
the year 1931 on their top (the year in which they were built after the
fire). In Grodzienska Street
we photographed the houses of Kuperfenig, Mordechai Kosovsky (my
great-grandfather), his brother Moshe Kosovsky, Moshe Feinzilber, Israel Shnier, Berl
Becker, Eli Rochkin, Yaakov
Welbel and others. When we stood near the house of Mordechai and Tzipora Kosovsky (my great-grandparents) I asked for permission to get inside
the house and was very happy when I was allowed to do so. I watched the
rooms, looked through the windows and took pictures of the outside and also
of the interior of the house - sights that my
father saw when he visited his grandparents in his childhood. Before I left Israel I bought several souvenirs and vowed that if I get permission from
the tenants to enter inside the homes of my grandparents and
great-grandparents, I would leave them souvenirs from Israel. I was very happy to fulfill that vow.
 
Ruth Marcus in front of house of her great-grand- Kosovsky
family members in front of their old house, burnt in fire in
parents, Mordechai & Tzipora (Feigel) Kosovsky,
1931. Sitting: Mordechai and Tzipora Kosovsky (circa 1930)
Grodzienska Street,
2006
On one day we
went to visit the City Hall and had a meeting with the mayor's secretary. She
did not speak English but Eisenshmidt spoke with
her in Russian and translated for us. We were surprised to find on her desk a
copy of the photo of the Polish school that I gave to Romanowitz
a day before. It turned out that Romanowicz made
another copy for her since her mother also attended the Polish school in Lunna in the early 1930s. I asked her whether she had a
map of Lunna or any records or documents of the
Jews who had lived in Lunna before the war.
Unfortunately, she had no material on Lunna from
that time. Then I asked her whether she would be ready to draw for me a
schematic map of Lunna as it is today. She promised
to do that, and on the next day when we met her again she gave me a clear
computerized map which she had prepared. I intend to insert in this map the
street names, the Jewish houses and the public institutions as they were
before the war. I had with me two articles (posted on the internet in 2005)
regarding a discussion held about the constructing of a memorial monument for
the 1549 Lunna Jews who were transported to the Wola ghetto and later on to extermination camps (1). We
asked the secretary if something was going on with that monument and we were
excited to hear that about a month earlier a memorial stone and a plaque were
erected at Kirov Street close to the
square. After the meeting with the secretary we hurried to see the memorial
stone and the plaque.
 
Memorial stone for the perished Jews of Lunna Memorial plaque for
perished Jews of Lunna
L to R: Mira
Feingold, Ruth Marcus, Eliezer Eisenshmidt
2006
On another day
we visited the Jewish cemetery in Lunna which was
restored by Dartmouth students in
June 2005. They built a fence around the cemetery and cleaned up part of the
area. A number of headstones were righted (See: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~projpreservation/lunna/index.html
). Mira found there the headstone of her great-grandmother Basha Yogiel. Eisenshmidt found the headstones of his aunt Elka Welbel and of his maternal
grandfather Avraham Welbel.
We all had tears in our eyes at the moment he prayed "Kaddish" and "El Male Rachamim".
He then became obsessed to find the headstone of his paternal grandfather
Shalom Eisenshmidt. He remembered the place where
the headstone was located before the war and spent about an hour walking
around and searching for it. However, the headstones in that part of the
cemetery sank into the ground. On the next day we returned with shovels and
dug around in that place until he found the top edge of the headstone of his
paternal grandfather. Following with white chalk the scratches on the
headstone we tried to read the inscriptions. Eisenshmidt
who stood near the headstone suddenly said: "My beloved grandfather, I
am your only grandson who survived the Holocaust; all your children and
grandchildren perished in the Holocaust. I came here with my granddaughter Liat and we found your headstone which I have not seen
for about 70 years. The Eiseneshmidt's dynasty
continues to grow." It was heartbreaking when he prayed "Kaddish" again. I myself was quite disappointed from
the fact that I did not find any of my relatives' headstones. I took with me
old photos of the tombstones of my grandfather Yehoshua
Eliashberg, my great-grandmother Tzipora Kosovsky and other
relatives with hope to find at least one of them, but did not find any. There
are several hundred stones extant in the cemetery. Many of them have sunk in
the ground during time and others are hidden beneath high noxious weed. I
hope that in the future more restoration work will be done and more stones
can be reset.
  
Tombstone of
Abraham Welbel, maternal Tombstone of Shalom Eisenshmidt,
paternal Mira Feingold at tombstone
of her
grandfather of Eliezer Eisenshmidt grandfather of Eliezer Eisenshmidt great-grandmother, Basha Yogiel
We also visited
the nearby village of Zaleski which is close
to Wola. The Zaleski
forest and the Niemen River that flows
nearby attracted summer vacationers and the Jewish youth of Lunna before the Holocaust. Vacationers enjoyed walking
and staying in the forest, breathing the fresh air and fishing in the nearby Niemen River. Many students
from famous religious schools (Yeshivot), such as
Mir and Eishyshock, also used to spend their summer
vacation at Zaleski forest. Eisenshmidt
took us to the place where the rest-house in Zaleski
was located before the war, but we found it destroyed.
 
Near the Niemen River, Zaleski forest, 2006 Three friends in Zaleski
forest, circa 1928. L to R: Zeev
L to R: Liat, Eliezer Eisenshmidt, Mira Feingold, Ruth Marcus (“Volfke”)
Zlotoyabko, Saul Rotberg,
Yitzchak Eliashberg
Currently there
are about 1,000 residents living in Lunna, none of
whom are Jews. During our visit in Lunna I was
under the impression that the village was almost empty. Since we came back
from Lunna, I have been looking several times at
the old photos in my collection watching the smiling faces of the Jewish
youth and children who lived in Lunna before the
war. It is hard to believe that there was once a vibrant and active Jewish
community in the Lunna shtetl.
I am very
grateful to Eliezer Eisenshmidt
for his willingness to go with us on that moving and unforgettable trip and
for sharing with us his recollections about the life of the Jewish community
in Lunna before the Holocaust and the hard and
horrible time he had in the Auschwitz-Birkenau
Camp.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
An article (in English) was
published in the bulletin Assembly of Belarusian Pro-Democratic on April 4,
2005.
See: http://belngo.info/cgi-bin/e.pl?id=822
Another article (in
Belarusian] was published in the Belarusian News on May 5, 2005.
See: http://www.bdg.by/newnews/news.shtml?71472
Copyright © 2007 Belarus
SIG and Ruth Marcus
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