ONLINE
NEWSLETTER
(No. 3/2006
- March 2006)
Editor: Fran Bock
A
Journey to
Judd Rothstein and Zijana at Why go to I feel
that in many ways my journey to I knew only the
following: My great-grandfather, Yaakov
“Jacob” Rutstein was born in the small
Bessie
(daughter of Tzvi Hirsch) Poretsky Rutstein (1888-1947) and Jacob (son of Dov Behr) Rutstein
(1878-1946), I also knew two other pieces of information: First that
Jacob had five children and they were Bertha, Dora, Nathan, Milton my
grandfather, and Rita - all of whom went their separate ways in life. Like
the vast majority of American families none of the descendents of Jacob are
close to one another. Members of our small clan, especially of my generation,
only meet at funerals, if at all. The
second fact was that my great-grandmother, Bessie or Basha
Poretsky, was also born in Tolochin
and was a daughter of a Rabbi and great Torah scholar – Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Poretsky. Bessie’s voice, like many other
woman’s voices and narratives throughout history were mostly lost.
Rabbi Tzvi
Hirsch Poretzkyn (b.1857, d.1933) and wife Esther Dubrow Poretzkyn (b.1860, d.
1941) circa 1920. It was with this scant information that I began my
journey some six years ago. As a sophomore in high school I remember feeling
that by discovering my family roots and learning about my ancestors I would
somehow be paying homage to the people for whom I am a legacy. As a member of
the internet generation I immediately began my search on the internet and found
my way to www.jewishgen.org and
joined the Thanks to Jewishgen I found two long lost cousins, also children of
Tolochin, one from the Poretsky
side of the family and one from the Rutstein side
of my family - both of whom have been invaluable in my research. I would like
to thank my cousins Nancy Wexler (of the Rutstein
family) for spending hours showing me around the Preparing for the journey After beginning my research I
was able to gather scores of disjointed facts, stories from various cousins
and artifacts such as pictures and old Yiddish letters. All this information
became critical as it helped me reconstruct the larger family puzzle. I
decided that I wanted to visit the shtetls from
which my family came. I expressed the
idea on the However, for various reasons, it was not viable for me
to simply pick myself up and travel to I would like to point out that Yuri was even better able
to help me with the logistics in Belarus because I knew what I wanted and he
helped me fill in the details. For example, I didn’t want to hire a
personal driver from There
are things that, in hindsight, I wish I had done but I didn’t actually
do. I wish I had brought more small gifts such as general In
addition, Shelly Dardashti of Tel-Aviv was able to
direct me to a few key contacts within “At present 23 Jews live
in Tolochin. Most of them are elderly people and
live in mixed families. A functioning pre-war Jewish cemetery was preserved
in the town. The location is to the left from the road from Tolochin to village Slobodka. Unfortunately,
people began to make Christian burials at the cemetery. The building of a
synagogue was not preserved – it was destroyed during the war. During
the Holocaust in Tolochin 2000 Jews were murdered.
The place of execution is situated out of the town, not far from the village Raitsy. All the Jews were killed within a day on March
13, 1942. In 1960s a memorial was erected at this place. The details of
ghetto life and the facts of Jews execution one may find in the local museum
at I also went to local After spending several weeks in
the I
arrived on Sunday evening in
Some of the regions in which the At the center there are daily
prayer services in the adjacent synagogue and the center was able to provide
me with kosher food. Everyone I met there was friendly and curious and it was
very meaningful to receive an aliyah during shachris while being in After breakfast, I finally met
Yuri after having exchanged so many e-mails. He was friendly, compassionate
yet always to the point of business – just how I like things. Yuri
escorted me back to his office from the dining hall to fill me in on the rest
of the details of the trip which he arranged on my behalf. His office was
filled with photographs of great Belarusian Jewish leaders and Rabbis. It was
through the pictures and maps on the wall that I first slowly became
conscious of the fact that Byelorussian Jews were Litvaks
and were strongly associated with the Lithuanian tradition. I also learned a little bit about Yuri as
an individual. Yuri is a businessman and travels back and forth between Dmitry, my translator and new friend, along with Leonid took me to two memorial sites for Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
Memorial sites to victims of the Holocaust in If my memory serves me correctly the site of this
memorial was one of the places where the Jewish population of Dmitry and I were also taken to the
local JDC building in Inna was very excited to meet and speak with me and I
gave her some information about my family history which she will add to her
database. For researchers hoping to learn more about their family history or
about a town or region she may be a good person to speak with. She has access
to Yiddish papers and archives going back to the turn of the century.
However, she does not speak English and one would only be able to communicate
with her only in Russian, Hebrew or Yiddish. We spoke mostly in Hebrew with Dmitry helping me when either of our knowledge of Hebrew
failed us. She is currently working on
various projects right now, including documenting Jewish participation in the
general resistance\partisan movement and Jewish resistance to being murdered
by the Nazis. She is trying to combat the myth that the Jews behaved
passively during World War-Two and wants to publish a book for the general
Byelorussian public but is unable to do so due to lack of funding. We decided
that we would meet again on the late evening on Wednesday, the day before I
left the country. She kept her word and days later we met in the evening and
she gave me a personal tour around the museum and we arranged for an elderly
Jew there to translate my Yiddish letters.
The American Joint
Distribution Committee center in Engaged in conversation with Dr. Inna Gerasimova, I foolishly lost track of the time on early
Monday morning. Her knowledge about the region, her ability to tell me
tidbits of information about what was contained in my family letters, some a
century old, captivated me. Dmitry kindly pointed
out that we better leave soon unless I was going to miss my
At the Orsha train station. From Orsha to We arrived at the mini train station and Dmitry tried to negotiate with one of the cashiers to
accept US dollars but she refused. Seeing the train pull into the station we
started running towards the train with our bags bouncing over our shoulders.
I was hoping that I could pay the more expensive fee by paying on the train
like they have in the I asked
Dmitry why and I don’t think I shall ever
forget his answer. He told me that “people work really really hard and they receive nothing in
return…people are poor and they are trying to figure out where their next
meal will come from.” As he spoke the train conductor stumbled past us,
“You see” he said, “look at her! She is drunk.” He
proceeded to tell me how someone like his mother, a university educated
women, works two jobs just to make ends meet. Yet this uneducated, drunken
conductor and his mother make the same salary. When I asked him about the
political situation or why things were the way they were he hushed me up. It
was not something he wanted to talk about and I gathered that was because we
were in a public place. I realized I had committed a significant fauxpas. In an unrelated topic of discussion, Dmitry also mentioned that because people are so poor,
out of compassion the conductors don’t always check everyone’s
ticket. Throughout the early
parts of the train ride various conductors walked through the cabin until one
finally stopped to ask us for our tickets.
Dmitry explained to her that we only had
dollars and not Byelorussian rubles. She said that we would have to ask some
of the other passengers to exchange the money for us. Dmitry
uncomfortably went to a few of the passengers and asked them if they were
willing but nobody would touch the dollars because they thought they were
counterfeit or that we were running some sort of scam. The conductor said she
would come back later in the journey to collect our fare. I instinctively
knew that the exchange between us was a charade. I knew that in the end we
would pay off the conductor to accept our dollars and that she would accept
what was essentially a bribe. Echoing my thoughts Dmitry
told me that the only reason she didn’t accept the money initially was
because she thought that we were members of the secret police, the KGB. I
sensed that she was thinking something along those lines from the way she looked
at us, trying to size us up and our story. In the end, hours later, she did
accept our dollars. In fact, her friend came in on the deal with her. They
first spoke amongst themselves as to what would be an appropriate
“deal.” The conductor then told Dmitry
that she wanted five dollars. My largest bill was ten dollars and so I just
gave that to her. They looked at each other and they looked at us stunned as
it was twice what they requested. They then quickly left the cabin all giddy
with their booty and they didn’t even give us any tickets. After they
left, I asked Dmitry how much ten dollars was in
terms of buying power and in proportion to daily wages. He told me that ten
dollars was about two days worth of wages. It probably wasn’t the most
intelligent thing to do by putting myself in that situation but it sure was
an interesting experience.
An artificial lake
in the Minsk City Center At some point during
the first half of the day it came up in conversation that Dimitry
did not know Hebrew and so I offered to teach him. And so it was that on the
train ride from We
arrived in the early evening into the city center of Orsha
after having crossed the
The The train station was one of the only buildings that was
not destroyed by the Germans in both World Wars and is a glimpse to the
official architecture that existed during the turn of the century.
Near the Orsha
train station at the turn of the 20th century. Waiting at the train station was Ilya
“Yehuda” Halfey
and Misha “Michael” Ginsberg who took
me to the home of one of the members of the Jewish community of Orsha - Lazar and Tamara Tavger.
I placed my things down in their home and we then went to one of the local
markets where we purchased, soviet style, some fruits, vegetables, milk and
other miscellaneous stuff that I could find to suit my dietary needs. We then
went back to their home and sat together, talking, while eating dinner. Lazar
and Tamara were generous enough to open up their home to other members of the
local Jewish community in
Ilya “Yehuda”
Halfey and Misha
“Michael” Ginsberg at the Orsha train-
station. Ilya related some of the oral
history he had received from his grandfather about how life once was in Orsha. Orsha was once a very
small town but over time grew to be a major center of Jewish life. Orsha was a well traveled transportation center with
major connecting points for trade and commerce. All this contributed to Orsha being a cultural center. In
The home of Lazar
and Tamara Tavger and the Religious center in At some point in the evening we went to the home of a
certain Boris, one of oldest members of the Jewish community in Orsha (1). I told him who I was and why I had come from
the
Boris and I at his home in Orsha, Boris spoke of life in the city before the Second World
War. Orsha was a center of Jewish culture and
contained two Jewish theaters and a tremendous amount of Jews. There were
four primary synagogues. The founder of the Lubavitch
Chasidic movement Shenur Zalman
of Liady lived not more then thirty kilometers from
the city. Thus there was some Chasidic influence on the city. Boris says that
before the wars people decided on which synagogue they would attend based on
class and or their professions. Boris
says there were three children in his family and the family worked in the
tiles business. His family “was taken to war fighting” and his
father was in the army. Before the Russian Revolution
Jews had the worst of jobs, working for the lowest wages and in the most
demeaning positions. Boris recalls that his mother and father would go to
synagogue but they didn’t pray at synagogue they “just went to
go.” However, everyone celebrated all the holidays and it was a big to
do in town as everyone came together.
Boris recalls that before the Second World War Jewish and non-Jewish
kids played together and that anti-Semitism was minimal. His mother
didn’t work and his father worked with roof tiles and metals. After the
war there was a great demand for someone proficient in metal and roof making.
Thus business was good for someone like his father. Boris’s father worked with the
highest quality metals including those that are used in a kitchen such as
metals for cooking and for pots. Boris grandparents worked in a small (home)
factory which was a family business. Children were all working full time by
the age of sixteen. All or most of the shops in Orsha
were owned by Jews and Jews dominated the metal working industry and
manufacturing. The Jews of Orsha were the primary
advocates of culture and arts in the town.
The great pogroms of During the cold war it was forbidden for Jews to
practice their religion. However, members of the community still wanted to
observe the Jewish holidays especially Passover. Many others were still
afraid because if they were caught celebrating Judaism the police would
arrest them and take them away. Boris and his brother, who now lives in
The above is the matzah
machine that Boris and his brother used to make matazot
secretly during the Soviet Era. The matza machine
is now located in the Jewish Museum in Minsk and is under the care of Dr.
Inna Gerasimova
The two pictures above represent the
location where Boris and his brother baked matzot
in secret After we left Boris’s
home, we didn’t really do anything else that evening. We did briefly
visit the cemetery but we decided to leave a more comprehensive visit for the
morning. I was told that it isn’t safe to travel, even for
Byelorussians, around Orsha in the evening. So
instead Dmitry and I spent the evening indoors,
read, learned some more Hebrew and got to know one another. I woke up early the next morning, the sixth of September, just towards the end of sunrise. There was this misty, cool and fresh feeling to the air which I haven’t experienced before. There was no heating in the home and I had only my covers to keep me warm from the chilly Byelorussian night. Waking up in such a home and walking out into the backyard with an open field, breathing the fresh air and heading towards the outhouse was a very surreal experience. It allowed me to place myself in the shoes of those that left this land a century ago, it triggered my imagination and it made me intimately aware of the living conditions in which they likely lived. During the night when I went to use the restroom there were no lights. I had to use my palm pilot light to direct me to where I need to go. I think it’s hard for people in our society to imagine not having light at night and the kind of feelings that brings. I am so glad that I didn’t stay in the local hotel.
Top: A washing station, a place for
winter wood storage and perhaps what is a workhouse. Bottom: The inside and
outside of the outhouse that we used I understand from discussions with people that indoor
plumbing is still rare. In the last few decades people have begun running
pipes from the main water network to their property in order to have running
water. Prior to that time people had their own private wells that they used
for water. Presumably one would use this running water from a well or from
the pipes outside their homes to cook and to draw a bath. The yard also
contained a large backyard, a fallow field and what looked like some fruit
trees. I got the impression that the backyard of the home was more or less
representative of other homes in the area. However, I would say that this
property seemed to be on the larger side.
Left: A stand filled with what looks like
squash near the garden in the backyard. To the right was a large field which
appears to be fallow After eating breakfast, we walked to the local cemetery
which wasn’t very far from where I was staying. The cemetery is located
on a top of a hill which has historically made it very difficult to bury
people during the winter months when there was heavy snow. I was told that
the Byelorussian government, beginning from Soviet times all way through the
present, has had a bad habit of building on top of and or destroying Jewish
cemeteries. The Orsha cemetery is one of the select
Jewish cemeteries that haven’t been built upon or destroyed. That is
because over the years the cemetery has become a mixed cemetery with both
Jews and non-Jews being buried there. Destroying the cemetery would create
tremendous opposition amongst the non-Jewish members of the city. However,
originally the cemetery was only Jewish.
A Randomly chosen grave site in the Orsha Jewish cemetery. The tomb stone reads “An old
man, simple and straight {with G-d} – Chaim Yitzchok the son of Tzion
PATZARSKI I took some random photographs
of grave sites because I knew they would be of some interest to some other
researchers. Most of the tombstones that date before the second war have been
destroyed by man and nature but mostly by man. However, there are a handful
of tombstones that weren’t destroyed by the Nazis or by local vandals
that date before the revolution. Most of these tombstones are faded and
it’s very hard to make what is written on them. One can see the remains
of many tombstones that jut out of the ground several inches.
Two Jewish gravesites, one partially
destroyed, which date from before the Russian Revolution. Towards the back of the cemetery
there is tall grass that has since grown on top of many of the grave sites.
There are tombstones buried amongst the thick shrubs. In some of the newer
sections of the cemetery one can see the introduction of non-Jewish burial
sites. On the outskirts of the cemetery there are some shepherds and
shepherdesses who graze their cattle. I wouldn’t be surprised if
occasionally some of their flock wandered off and entered the cemetery to
graze. There seems to be no clear designation of the grazing area of where
the cemetery begins or ends. This is mostly true in the most northeastern
part of the cemetery.
A shepherdess along with her flock
grazing on the border of the Orsha Jewish cemetery
A memorial to victims of the Nazi-Fascists
at the back of the Orsha cemetery. This memorial,
like many others in
Grave site of a former Orsha mob boss in the Jewish However, after he was buried there, people would come to
his grave site and desecrate his tombstone. Sometimes they would unbury his
grave and leave his body out in the open. So in order to prevent this, the
family built a booth directly across from his grave. The booth is capable of
housing a full time security guard in order to protect the grave site of this
mob boss from vandals.
The security booth which is home to a
security officer hired to protect the grave site of one of Orsha’s former mob bosses. After we finished visiting the cemetery we went to the
JDC offices in Orsha. What was special about this
JDC center was that it seemed that it had both a strong institutional framework,
strong social bonds and at the same time managed to create the feeling that
this was a second home for many of its constituents. It had a very homey
feeling to it. The Inside there was a small crowd of people trying on
clothing. The JDC had recently sent a shipment of mostly new clothing to the
local members of the community and people were happily trying some of them
on, some suggesting clothing to their friends and replacing some of their old
tattered clothing. One of the people that I met at the center was said to be
very knowledgeable about the history of Jews in Orsha.
His name was Boris “Baruch” Reitsen.
Boris and I went outside to the backyard where I interviewed him. We would have
spoken longer but we needed enough time to drive out to Tolochin.
Boris told me that the town of
A monument or tombstone located in the Orsha Jewish cemetery possibly dating to the time of one
of the great pogroms from the beginning of the 20th century If I recall correctly, the above monument is in memory
of an entire family (or all the children of a family) that perished in these
pogroms. If you focus in on the above photograph you can see the names of
various people of one family; all appear to have been murdered in the
pogroms. It was these pogroms from the turn of the century through the
revolution that contributed to Jewish emigration to the West. Boris conveyed how during the days leading up the
revolution people were disappointed and disenfranchised with the Russian
Empire especially the Jews. In the Jewish community there was a large gap
between rich and poor. Sometimes the poor Jews would steal or raid from rich
Jews. The poor Jews were angry and alienated from the Jewish establishment
and were not satisfied with their lot. Boris believes that often poor Jews
would complain to poor non-Jews about their own rich Jews. Boris thinks that
could have influenced some of the poor non-Jews to engage in raids on Jews as
a whole. However, unlike the non-Jews, Jews would never murder or commit
violence against one another. Boris says that there were “middle
class” Jews but that really just meant making enough to have the most
“basic of necessities.” I should interject that “middle
class” in Orsha standards would probably be
considered way below the poverty line in the Boris told me that his uncles were in the Russian army
and that his Aunts went to study in
Boris Reitsen
at the JDC center in Orsha, Belarus. During the Second World War, Boris and his family left Orsha and fled to Like before the war, people after the war were afraid to
announce that they were Jews and lived their Jewish lives discretely. Like
before the war there was lots of bickering and fighting in the Jewish
community, “two Jews, three opinions” Boris said chuckling. People were afraid to celebrate their
Jewish identity in Orsha though many of them
continued to observe Jewish holidays, mitzvoth and other rites. Boris stated
that everyone was proud of the secret baking of matzah
which occurred during the Soviet era.
Dmitry standing outside what I have dubbed the
‘shtetle mobile’. We used this car to
drive around Orsha and from Orsha
to Tolochin. Tolochin,
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