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Transliterated/translated by Merav Schejtman
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Translated by Gloria Berkenstat Freund
Tuvya Borszykowski
The name Tuvya Borszykowski is engraved with bloody letters on the honored tablets of the eminent fighters and rebels in Poland who, during the savage Holocaust era, defended the honor of the Jewish people and took revenge against the Nazi enemies for the spilling of innocent Jewish blood. His name will also eternally remain engraved in the history of the Zionist Halutz Movement in Poland and Israel and in the hearts of his Radomsker landsleit, who personally knew him or who will study and read his books of memoir about the era of annihilation and the treatises and reviews of others about his personality and heroism. *
Tuvya Borszykowski was born in Radomsk in 1914, the fifth son in a family who
had been tailors for generations. After several years of kheder-learning,
his father sat him down at the sewing table and thus the young man
entered his earliest years in the atmosphere of the burden of earning a living
and the necessity of making his way in life through his own strength.
At 15 Tuvya was already an active member in founding an organization of young Zionist-Socialist Workers and a year later he was a leader of an entire group in the organization.
* In the 9th part of this book (Holocaust and Revenge), several chapters of his unpublished Memoirs and in addition (in the section Avengers and Guards) some excerpts from treatises, appreciations about his personality, which were published in Israel after his death (written by Moishe Basok, F. Heika, Nakhman Blumental, Haim Goldberg, Yitzhak Tabenkin, Melekh Rawicz, Tzvia Lubetkin, M. Najsztat).
Two years later the organization imposed on him the assignment of breaching the anti-Zionist establishment that reigned then in the Needleworkers' Union of Jewish Tailors in the city, which he fulfilled. He was elected as vice president of the Union and there often agitated for the idea of Socialist-Zionism.
Tuvya became known in the city very quickly as an active community worker in a range of institutions and societies and as a cultural worker who with his own strength (he was self-taught) acquired learning and self-education in various areas. He was among the leadership of Freiheit, the Youth movement of Poalei-Zion Ts. S., and an active member of Hahalutz and in the League for Labor in Eretz-Yisroel, one of the most outstanding speakers at Zionist public meetings and beloved lecturers during internal party seminars (about Yiddish literature and history of the workers' movement). He was an active member of the managing committee of the Folkes-University and in the Sholom Aleichem Library and its last librarian. When the Germans occupied Radomsk, he and several comrades carried the contents of the library to a hiding place and right after the war transported the library to Warsaw for its disposition by the Zionist refugee institutions.
After he hid the library (Spring 1940), he was summoned by the central administrative body of Hahalutz and Dror (Freiheit) to Warsaw to join in the organization of the underground movement. His primary work was to organize seminars, to publish leaflets and to carry out cultural-educational lectures [in which he would act out the parts in question] among underground youth groups. At the beginning of 1942 he managed a Zionist-Halutz underground Hakhsorah group near Warsaw and immediately after that he returned to Warsaw and joined the ranks of the Jewish Fighters' Organization that was organized in the ghetto. He visited Radomsk several times on assignment from this combat organization and there attempted to organize a group of young people who would be ready to fight against the Germans.
Tuvya Borszykowski took part in the first combat action against the Germans in
the Warsaw Ghetto in January 1943. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April
1943) he fought in the ranks of the group that militarily fortified the Central
District of the ghetto and he left the Ghetto with the remnant of this group
through the underground sewers.
[Page 552]
During the Polish Revolt against the Germans in
August 1944, Tuvya fought in the ranks of the Jewish Unit that joined the
Polish Partisan Army Army Ludawa after the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising. By a resolution of the President of the new Polish People's Republic,
on the 19th of April 1948, Tuvya Borszykowski received the
Grunwald Military Award for his part in the struggle of the Polish Partisan Army.
Right after the liberation from the German occupation, he renewed his Zionist-Socialist activity among the survivors in Poland and called upon the surviving Jews to leave the accursed Europe and make aliyah to Eretz-Yisroel. In 1949, he himself emigrated to Eretz-Yisroel and immediately joined in the creation of the kibbutz for surviving Ghetto Fighters (Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot Ghetto Fighter's Kibbutz) in Galilee. He did various physical labor in the kibbutz and in the early years was occupied with communal cultural activities, chiefly recording and revising his important horrible memories so that they would serve as evidence for the coming generations. He was one of the founders of the Documentation Center named for the famous Ghetto poet Yitzhak Katznelson, which was built in Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot. The full collection of Tuvya's published writings and unpublished manuscripts is found in the Center.
The first grave that was dug in the newly created Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot was a fresh grave for the heroic Ghetto Fighter Tuvya Borszykowski, who was not defeated by the German murderers, who took revenge against them and gave up his flesh to the holy ground of the Land of Israel. A pity, a great pity that it was so premature
L.L.
(Hebrew text to be translated)
* The Holocaust Era memories of Tuvya Borszykowski are reflected in three published books: Lightning in January (1941-1942); Among Falling Walls (1943-1944); Spring in January (1945). Return
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Haim Goldberg was born into a family of workers and men of the people. From his grandfather, Reb Mordekhai Skalke and father, both leading members of the Khevre Kadishe, he inherited his love of the Jewish worker and folk and he brought this love to the idea of Socialist-Zionism. Haim Goldberg founded and led various institutions for the young in the Zionist-Socialist spirit in his home town of Radomsk, was active in cultural and sports organizations, in K.K.L. and Keren Hayesod and the like. Later in the Center of his party in Warsaw Haim Goldberg was the unelected but virtual representative of all of the party members who were in need of counsel or assistance as he was always ready to be of assistance to everyone.
It is self-evident that with his aliyah to Eretz-Yisroel (at the end of 1935), various workplaces were suggested to Haim Goldberg that expressed his capabilities, earnings and administrative experience. However, a person such as Haim Goldberg would not leave the way of Halutzish physical labor that he had enjoyed his whole life and believed correct. The first 3 years he worked as a common laborer on highway construction in the area of Haifa and a short time as a worker in the glass factory, Penizia.
In 1938 he joined the printing cooperative Ot in Haifa as a member, in which he was active in the course of 26 years. During that time he thoroughly studied the history and basis of the cooperative movement in Israel and grew accustomed to its ideological and organizational framework and was one of its prominent community workers and activist builders. His special concern for the social security and future of the members of the cooperative enterprise and their families carried him to the front rank of originators, founders and chief leaders of the special cooperative pension fund, Magen (Shield), in which he was active until the last day of his life.
A separate chapter of his life in Israel was his deep love of people that created for him a great circle of friends among all social strata, cultural leaders and community activists, politicians and academics, landsleit and co-workers, particularly for the common working man, for the man in the street. He was always ready to give support in every way. Therefore, he was beloved and esteemed everywhere.
The savage Holocaust arrived, the extermination of European Jewry and the Jews of Radomsk by the German Nazis. His heart and soul, his whole being was not only shocked by the cruel extermination process, but with his life's path of inspiring and organizing, he together with certain other fellow landsleit took to rescue activities for those individual survivors among his landsmen, both when they were still in Radomsk or in the D.P. camps, or on the way to Eretz-Yisroel, and later when they had arrived in Israel. Haim did not rest. He did everything in order to help them. In addition to his widespread communal duties he also took upon himself, literally with love, the not easy task of intervention with institutions and individuals on behalf of the new immigrants. In addition, he assisted in creating the Interest-Free Loan Fund in Tel-Aviv and Haifa that actually helped out his Radomsker landsleit in settling in their new home.
The Jews in Radomsk were destroyed; they were no longer present. It was necessary to erect a headstone for them; one must immortalize all those who had lived and had an effect on Jewish Radomsk in a Yizkor Book a gigantic task. Haim Goldberg took this sacred work upon himself and in the course of years indefatigably collected material about Radomsk in general and about Jewish Radomsk in particular.
It is impossible to comprehend the effort, intellectual and physical, that he made in collecting such a colossal amount of material, in writing and in photographs, for this Yizkor Book. Here, too, he showed his intellectual level; he embraced everyone with his full soul, not omitting even one layer of Jewish society in Radomsk. He searched for every trace, every piece of information about ancient Radomsk and collected, literally, a treasury of documents about the spiritual personalities of the Radomsker Rabbinic Dynasty, and also about every other social or economic group.
Even for those who worked with him in this area, it was a surprise to see the great spiritual strength that accompanied the search and collection of documents and newspapers, in archives and from among private collectors. Haim knew and understood that everything must be collected and immortalized, he separated everything and created an appropriate section for each theme and searched for appropriate people who could adapt these sections.
Fate treated this great and gentle man cruelly. He became very ill. However, even then, the severe physical pain did not hold him back from his sacred mission of setting down and of publishing the book.
Haim Goldberg, the great man and Jew, on whom weighed the responsibility of immortalizing Jewish life in his birthplace, Radomsk, alas, did not have the privilege to see his work completed. Let this book serve, too, as a scared memorial for his dear soul.
Dovid Koniecpoler
(Hebrew text to be translated)
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Yosef ben (son of) Shimon Haze was born in Radomsk in 1905. As a youth he
already stood in the struggle against anti-Semitic acts in the city and in
school, too.
In 1926 he cuts short his studies in the gimnazium Zielinski and makes aliyah to Eretz-Yisroel with the Hazomir Hatzair movement. He joins the Tel-Yosef Kibbutz, where he works as a farmer. Then he builds his own farm in Tsofit and lastly specializes in reviving old citrus orchards and planting new orchards as an official of the agency.
He died suddenly while buying plants for an orchard in the Galilee (the 7th of May 1962).
D.Kh.
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