Thus It Began (cont.)

From Place to Place

The town of Witbesk itself was occupied by the German army; many times they would shell the area where we were located, so once in a while we would change our location There was a member of the staff of the newspaper by the name of Shikarda, with his driver, Schmidt; both of them were of German descent and they were Volga people. They were very loyal to the Soviet authorities and were treated with respect and trust. One night, when the shots came very near our area, we were ordered to leave immediately and the trucks were ready to go. When we arrived at a bridge over a river, it seemed as if the bridge would not tolerate the weight of the trucks; there was an order to burn the trucks so they would not fall into enemy hands, and the order was sent out to continue on foot. But Schmidt was stubborn and said we should attempt to get the trucks to the other side. A miracle occurred and the trucks drove across, and the bridge did not collapse. This brave act by Schmidt became known and he received a lot of praise. In the end we found out that the people who shot at us were only drunken German police.

It was January 1943. After driving from one place to another we were now at the front. One day I was working on the newspaper and I was told that someone was waiting for me outside and had asked to see me. When I went out my eyes filled with tears. Itzkaleh was standing outside. With excitement he told me that he was sent to SpetzGrupa, which was an elite demolition unit. We met for a short time. We talked about Kurenets, whose fate we still did not know. We so wanted to go back there and fight for the area. We parted with hugs and kisses and promised each other that whoever arrived in the area of Kurenets first would help the members of the family of the other as much as he could. We felt, at that moment, that Witbesk was foreign to us, and our ties to Kurenets were very strong. We had deep feelings for every piece of land, every road and forest that were known to us in our hometown, the places that made us want to fight. This was our last meeting. We never saw each other again. This meeting made me feel very lonely, and once again I went to the officer above me and asked to go back to the area I had come from, where I could be used in a better way. But once again I was told that we couldn't choose where to fight: we had to fight wherever we were ordered to.

After the First Mistake

We kept moving around the areas of the front, near the towns of Witbesk and Smolensk. I remember that one time we were told they were showing the movie, A Ray in the Clouds, by Vanda Vasilavska, half an hour from where we were located. I walked many miles by myself until I got there. Not many people came to see the movie, and the audience also had to run the movie, changing the reels every few minutes. Despite the fact that I was very tired, the movie greatly affected me. It wasn't the plot itself – I was too sleepy to really follow it – but the fact that there were still movies in the world and they were being watched; this gave me hope of better days to come.

At that time I met a young man named Marek Shapira. He was from the town of Hormel. Even before the war his life was very difficult. He was practically on the verge of joining the criminal underworld. Now he worked for us. He was a good-looking man filled with energy. He could sing and dance and was very generous. I liked him very much. At one time, he was responsible for putting letters onto the printing press. He once typeset a speech by Stalin and he omitted some words. The head of the newspaper accused him of doing this on purpose, but Marek said that these words didn't appear in the handwritten version. Marek was fired and I tried very hard to help him. I shared my food with him. For a while he was accepted for work again, but ultimately he was fired.

Letters

Sadly, I didn't receive any answer from Shirinsky, despite sending many letters. But one day I received a letter from my childhood friend Motik, the son of Ruven Zishka and the brother of Elik. As it turned out, Motik was in the same brigade as Shirinsky. The letter made me so excited and was so dear to me that I constantly read it until I knew it by heart. And here I am reciting the translated letter:

“Hello to you, my comrade in the fight, Nachum. In spite of the fact that you never, ever in any of your letters wrote to me, your friend, Motik Alperovich, I can't resist writing a few words to you. I assume you don't know that I exist here. I have some sad news. I found out that our friend Noah Dinestein fell in the battle. It was about two months after my brother Eliyau was killed. Also, our contact with the Partisans, Bertha Dinestein from Kalafi, was killed, and Nyomka was killed after he put explosives on a German train. That is about it, as far as our friends. Here with me is Shimon Alperovich, son of Zishka, as is Shirinsky. I am in good condition and I am now a soldier, but I still miss very much the old days that will never return.

“Do you remember our old friendship? In life you encounter situations and conditions you never anticipated. We used to be so naïve. Nachum, it could be that I will not be lucky enough to return to Kurenets, but maybe you will be lucky and return there. Do not forget to get revenge for all that was done to us. One day you will meet my cousins, Eshka and Bushka nee Kremer; please help them as much as you can.

“Your friend,
Motik”

I spilled more than one tear reading that letter and kept it as a very dear possession. In 1960, in Warsaw on the way to Israel, I visited the Israeli consulate there and showed the letter to the secretary of the consul. He said that he wanted to show it to a relative of his who was a writer. He promised to return the letter to me, but to this day the letter has not been returned to me.

Anyway, back to 1944. I responded to Motik's letter and I even sent more letters to him, but I never received an answer. Many years later, when I came to Israel and met with Avraham Aharon Alperovich, who was with Motik in the forest, I found out why Motik didn't answer any of my other letters. Avraham Aharon Alperovich's story was recorded in Megilat Kurenets. He told me of the condition of the Partisans around Polacheck during the retreat of the Germans. At that point the Germans' objective was to clear the forest. That was the only mission they were able to do well at that point. They tightened up the area in three rings. The first ring contained Belarussian and Ukrainian soldiers fighting for the Germans, the second ring was Polish and Latvian, and the third was German. Thousands of Partisans were killed during that blockade, among them several from Kurenets who fell in battle. Avraham Aharon Alperovich said he encountered Motik during battle and he was gravely wounded in both his legs. He told me that Motik was beloved by everyone, and they refused to leave him there. They wanted to do everything to save him, but he begged them and demanded to be left. “I am already lost,” he told them. After throwing all his grenades at the Germans, he used his last grenade to kill himself.

I cried when I heard the story of my childhood friend and member of our Resistance unit, Motik. Avraham Aharon also told me about Zalminka Alperovich, the son of Moshe the brother of Rivka, whose torture in the Vileyka Ghetto I told you about. He was able to get out of the ghetto and escape to the forest. He was beloved by the Partisans. In the brigade where he was a member he became the contact person. When he met with Avraham Aharon, he suggested that he be transferred to his brigade with the other Jews from Kurenets, so they could all be together. But when the head of Zalminka's brigade heard this suggestion, he said he could not let Zalminka go. He said, “You will see him after the war.” Nevertheless there were some battles where they fought together, side by side. In one of those battles, the Partisans were surrounded by German tanks and Zalminka would constantly run in front of the German tanks to throw grenades at them; you couldn't stop him. At the end of the war, when Avraham Aharon lived in Kriviczi, he received a letter from the Soviets, who thought that he was a relative of Zalminka. In the letter they wrote glorious words about the bravery of the boy Zalman Alperovich, who couldn't be drafted into the Red Army but who volunteered because he so wished to get revenge against the enemy of his people. He fell in battle in Prussia as a hero of the Soviet Union, and after his death he received two of the highest awards of the Red Army; the bravery of this young man should be considered an example of greatness in serving the Red Army.

With regard to the death of Bertha, I heard a rumor that Lonka Verbayov had murdered her. During a battle between the Partisans and the German army, Lonka was the number one, and Bertha the number two, shooter. At one time during that battle, all of Lonka's bullets were gone and he decided to leave the place during the battle, despite the fact that Bertha could supply him with more bullets. But Bertha pointed her gun at him and forced him to stay in the battle. People said he never forgave her for that, and at the first opportunity, he killed her. Further, people said that Volinitiz, who greatly respected Bertha, later killed Lonka. I don't know, however, if these are just rumors or are true facts.

As the war ended, there were a few places in the Soviet Union where they formed committees to look for friends and relatives. Also the Red Cross took part in such actions. I sent many letters to such committees to ask what had happened to the remnants from Kurenets, Vileyka, and Dolhinov. From one of the committees I received an answer concerning Meir Meckler from Kurenets, who left Kurenets with me on the day the Germans started the war with Russia. I met him in Ratzke after escaping. I quickly sent a letter to him, and he told me he was in the area of Gorky, where he worked at a tractor factory. He also sent me addresses of others from our town who had survived. He also asked for information on every other surviving Jew from the area.

Although at this point the Germans were retreating, I was wounded during a shelling. I was hospitalized, and near me was a Russian soldier who was badly wounded but who still had a clear memory. We started talking and he asked if I had relatives in Gorky. He said that he had had communication with a woman who worked with him and he said her name was Alperovich. My parents had told me that we had relatives in Gorky [The relatives in Gorky were a brother of his father by the name Itzhak Salomon Alperovich, who had two daughters.] Anyway, this man said that the name of the girl he knew was Mira Alperovich and he gave me her address. After a short time I received a letter from her saying, “Dear Partisan, I tried to find the roots of my family. At this time I could not find links to your family, though I may be your relative even if there is no obvious connection.” She added a small package to the letter with some candy. I was very surprised to receive the package unopened, because supplies were so limited at the time that I expected someone would have stolen the food. Anyway, I kept in touch with Mira, and after the war I visited Gorky, where I found the brother of my mother from the Castroll family. He was by then an old Jew, 70 years old. I also met with Mira during that visit.

In June of 1944, the Soviets started an attack on the front in Witbesk. The area fell into Soviet hands, and the Red Army kept pushing west. During those days, the Katyushas became very famous. They were new Soviet weapons, and they may be the reason that the Germans lost so rapidly. Everyone would talk about the miracle Katyushas that were mounted on top of the trucks, facing the front; they would shoot twelve rockets from twelve different tubes at one time. So these Katyushas hit the Nazis hard, and one town after another was freed. Among them was Kurenets.

At that point we were already in the city of Witbesk, with the printing press. There are two rivers that meet in Witbesk: the Dvina, for which the town of Dvinsk is named, and the Vesiba. The town was empty of people when we arrived, and it was burning. The Germans blew up all the bridges when they retreated. Many of the residents of the town who hadn't escape east and who had stayed in town were German collaborators, so they now retreated with the German army. As soon as we arrived, I was sent to check the printing presses that the Germans had used. I found that the Germans had destroyed most of them before leaving, but I found lots of supplies, which I transferred. I was also told to look for workers, and at that point they didn't care if the workers were collaborators: I was told that right now we needed to use them and we could worry about punishment later on.

I was able to find a very experienced man named Sazunov. He was very excited to meet a Jew. He kept telling me about how thousands of Jews were annihilated in Dvinsk and Witbesk. He said he would see the Germans take them in boats to the deepest place in the river, and there they would either blow up the boat or capsize it. Anyone who tried to save himself was shot. There was another worker taken there who would get very angry upon hearing these stories, saying, “Why are you only talking about Jews who were killed? There are plenty of Russians who were killed.” It greatly irritated me to listen to this worker, and I said, “There is a big difference between me, a Jew, and you, a Russian. I am sure that when you saw a Jew being killed you helped the killers. But when I saw Russians being hurt I aided them as much as I could.” Although the man was corrupt, he was very good technically and for a while we used him, but finally he was sent away and we got someone else. The Germans left many supplies in different places, but they put mines all around the supplies. However, since I was trained to disarm mines, I was able to get the supplies.

To Kurenets

There was no electricity at the time. During the night hours we used a generator to provide power for the printing press. I let the doctor use the generator during the daytime to provide electricity for the hospital, and that is how we became close. Since the doctor and his wife had no children, and they knew that my parents had been killed, they asked to adopt me. But despite the fact that I really liked them, I couldn't do it. I told them that the war was not over yet; besides, our friendship was more important than such a formal act.

At that time, I found out that Josef Norman, my friend from the printing house in Vileyka, had survived. I received a letter from him and we started a regular exchange of letters and we tried to arrange a meeting in Vileyka. I worked for the Witbeski Rabutzi, but there was another newspaper that was printed in Witbesk by the army, and we kept in close contact with the other press and we helped each other. This was in September 1944, and I found out that a truck from their newspaper was going to the town of Polaczek. I asked for permission to go with them, and I received a few days' vacation. I left Witbesk with a heart full of fear for what I would encounter. The truck that took me was filled with paper; the roads were badly damaged by the war, and in one place we had an accident. I remember telling the people who were in the truck with me, “We went through this whole war and survived, and now we'll get killed in a truck carrying paper?”

But we survived and arrived in Polaczek; there I found out, at the main station in the town, that there was a train going to Molodechno but that it would not stop at this side station. I entered the station anyway and told the head of this station my story, and I said I would give him some paper, which was still a very hot commodity, if he could do something to stop the train right there, or even make it go slower so I could jump onto it. It was late at night and he went towards the train with a red lantern, a signal for it to stop. The train stopped for a minute and I quickly went onto the platform. It was an open train car, and it took five hours for it to reach Kurenets. When the train arrived near Kosita Street in Kurenets, I jumped off and ran away, fearing someone would chase me to ask questions.

It was a dark day in autumn and it suited my dark heart. Externally I looked like an army man, with my green uniform, but this shiny green did not express my mood upon seeing the dark vistas where once my hometown stood. Everywhere I saw empty fields where only chimneys stood, and also some damaged buildings that had been made of cinder blocks. All of the homes that had been made of wood had been burned to the ground. I crossed land that once had beengardens for homes and arrived at the area where synagogues used to be. This place was also empty of buildings. Across from me stood the central market, which was now empty and desolate. Only on the western part of the market did I see one home still standing. It was our home, which had been made of blocks. I couldn't understand why it was still standing. I wanted to go there, but my legs felt paralyzed; finally, though, I was able to walk and slowly I approached the house and entered. I cannot describe the meeting with my sister Doba, my only sibling to survive out of the whole family,other than my sister Hanna, who left for Eretz Israel before the war. For a long time we sat there crying.

During that day I met with other remnants of our Jewish town who had returned from the forest. Some of them had escaped from the ghetto in Vileyka, among them Dinka Spektor, the sister of Kopel. They told me about the last days of the Vileyka ghetto, which was known by the Germans as “the Ghetto of the Useful Jews.” They gave me information about what had happened in the ghetto after I left. I learned that the Vileyka ghetto existed for seven months after the annihilation of Kurenets. I found out information about Kopel Spektor and his activities in the ghetto. Kopel was very helpful to young people in escaping the ghetto; he refused to join them at first, fearing that if he escaped he would endanger the people who remained in the ghetto, since he was very important to the Germans, who knew him well and used his technical skills. He decided to wait for the day when all would escape, and he became one of the organizers. Then he worked tirelessly to collect and fix weapons for the day of the escape. One time he was asked to fix some locks on a door in the supply depot of the Germans. While he was fixing the lock, he saw that in this depot there were many weapons and ammunition, so he immediately made copies of the keys so he could secretly get some weapons out of there for the use of the Partisans. Kopel was able to repair many dysfunctional guns and to replace missing parts so that they would work.

Kopel was one of the organizers of the escape. They contacted the Partisans in the forest, and there was a Christian man who would arrive in the ghetto with his horse and buggy and would bring wood for furnaces, and they would hide weapons on his buggy as he was unloading the wood. Then he would take the weapons out to the forest to hide them. They would do this by making holes in the wood and hiding the weapons and bullets inside. They called them their “Revenge Tablets.” Originally, some young people escaped. Among them was Riva, the daughter of Shaptai Gordon, and later her husband Shimon Zimmerman. After they escaped they joined the Partisan brigade that was headed by Shaptzenko, and they asked him to get the Jews out of the ghetto. But Shaptzenko said that first they must prepare weapons for them, so Shimon got in touch with this person who would transfer the weapons. His name was Januk and he was from the village Vilovitz, but his nickname among them was “the One with the Yellow Beard.” The person who arranged permission for him to get into the ghetto was Schatz, who was responsible for the workers in the ghetto.

Anyway, this Januk arrived in the ghetto a few times and was successful in transferring the weapons. Shortly before the day of the escape, March 18, 1943, he came with a letter telling them that on Saturday the Partisans would send horses and buggies to the forest behind the train station. Everyone was very excited, but then a woman saw a policeman coming towards Januk, and they took him to the police station. This woman thought Januk was arrested, and she started screaming that soon the Germans would come and kill everyone. This was in the afternoon, and the Germans were resting. All the Jews of the ghetto were very frightened, and they decided to use this time to escape. Many, many people were killed during that escape; among them were Kopel, his brother Eliyau, and two of his sisters.

My sister Doba escaped from the ghetto that day. At that time, she worked in the warehouses in Vileyka for a German by the name of Rydel. She worked separately from the other Jews, and her job was to fix the clothes brought over from annihilated Jewish communities. Once in a while, Doba took some of those clothes and shoes and gave them to Jews in the camp who were ready to escape, and also to people who were already in the forest. Doba herself had some clothes ready for the time when she would escape. Anyway, she had everything for herself ready to go, but during that day, March 18, she didn't know anything. It turned out that she was going to the train station with some clothes that she was getting ready to give to Gershon Eiyshiski, who worked in Vileyka near the train station. Gershon was somehow able to transfer the clothes to his relatives who were already in the forest. At that point she found out about the escape and she took her clothes and started running with the rest of them. She quickly put on the long coat that she had prepared ahead of time so people would not recognize her. After some hours of running, the long and warm coat made her running very difficult. Also, carrying a bag of clothes was very difficult, so she threw it away. The escapees who passed on their way and recognized the clothes as Doba's were sure that she had been killed. So when they arrived in the forest, they told the rest of the people that Doba was dead. When she came there eventually, everyone was greatly shocked to see her alive.

Later on, Doba told me about the fate of my parents. During the day of the annihilation, my father was with other Jewish men in the prayer house that we called “the rabbi minyan,” and from there he was taken to his last walk. My mother and my youngest sister, Rashkaleh, who was sixteen at the time, together with six other women, were able to escape during the day of the annihilation. They arrived at the village of Poken, and hid in the barn of Tkachuk, a resident of the village. They hid for three days. When Tkachuk realized there were people hiding there, he notified the Germans. They came there and caught all the women. The Christians who saw it said that my mother fought the Germans. She cursed them and spit in their faces and slapped one of them. So she was the first to be killed; then they murdered the rest of the women. I had two grenades with me. The story was very painful to hear, and I decided that night to go to the village Poken and to get revenge on Tkachuk for the blood of my mother and sister. I arrived at the house where a person told me Tkachuk was living. I left a grenade at the door, thinking that if someone would open it, it would explode. But when I left the area, I all of a sudden asked myself, “But what if not Tkachuk but someone else opens the door? And is it really the right place? Is it Tkachuk's place?” So I returned and removed the grenade and left the area. I realized that the memory of my mother and Rashkaleh left such a deep hurt in my heart that no revenge would make it heal. My heart filled with emotion, and I threw away the two grenades. I returned home, to the only home that survived out of all the homes in the market. Our house. From that point on, we stopped talking about the tragedies and we became frozen. I still needed to go to the village of Dyaditz to visit my Christian friends Kostya and Agassia, who were true friends. My sister told me that Kostya brought back the possessions that our family had left with them. Kostya and Agassia received me with much warmth. They kept bringing glasses filled with vodka and we drank it as a sign of our friendship. They said that they would do whatever they could for us. I told them that there was nothing that I needed and I only wanted to thank them for all that they had done and all that they had wished to do for our family.

As the years passed, we slowly learned the fates of different people during the annihilation of September 9, 1942. Years later I found out from Yehezkel (Charles Gelman), the son of Yitzhak Zimmerman Z”L, about Zalman Mendel, the tailor who was his relative. His mother, Feyga, and her grandson Shimshon, who had survived an earlier killing, were hiding in his house. On the day of the killing, Zalman Mendel, who was a sick man, as well as the mother of Yehezkel, with a baby less than a year old, knew they could not escape to the forest. Before the annihilation, Zalman Mendel was known as a very able person, and the Germans used him for tailoring and shoemaking; the house was filled with shoes and clothes and Zalman would work day and night as a laborer for the Germans. Fearing that someone would steal the Germans' belongings, police surrounded his house at all times. Still, there was a hideout in thehouse, where the daughter of Zalman Mendel, Dishka, and her husband, Hirshel, the son of Elhanan Alperovich the butcher, lived. They were still very young and they planned to go to the forest. But since the place was surrounded by police, they decided to hide there, and when the opportunity came, they would escape to the forest. Anyway, they were able to hide there, but when they finally decided to escape to the forest, they had to move a big bureau that was covering the hideout, and the policemen who watched the door heard it and caught them and killed them.

There was also another person from the Dinestein family who was able to hide with his family that day. He begged his family to come to the forest with him, but they refused. He warned themthat in the hideout they would surely die, but to no avail. Although he showed them he was able to leave and come back, he left them there to die. He was able to reach the forest, where he stayed for some years, walking around as if there was a curse put on him. There, in the forest, he found his death.

After a few days I went to visit Joseph Norman. This was October 1. We also encountered Lazar, who used to work in the printing house. At least externally he looked happy to see us. He said to us, “You must think that I didn't know about all the secret pamphlets you printed. I already knew then that you belonged to some Partisan unit that was working underground, but I am not one to talk idly. I saw everything but I knew how to keep quiet.” We suspected that he was lying, but we didn't confront him. In Vileyka we also met with Volinitz, one of the Partisans I met during my walk to the front, to the Vostok. During those years he became a high-ranking officer. He became the commander of a full brigade of Partisans. He became known as the Partisan who freed Vileyka from the Nazis when the Red Army started to come near Vileyka. The rumors were that when the town of Vileyka was given to the Red Army by the Partisans it was free of Germans. From Volinitz we heard much about Itzkaleh Einbender and Nyomka Shulman. “Brave fighters, they were,” Volinitz said, “and this Einbender was a true hero. Can you imagine? Eighteen trains this guy derailed! From this you can imagine how many Nazis he killed.”

I also heard about the bravery of Itzkaleh from other people. Of all the Jewish members of our Partisan unit, only Zalman Gurevich and I survived, but we were not together. After some time I moved to Molodechno, and Zalman was in Smorgon and later in Poland. As I later found out from Zalman, he met Itzkaleh when he returned to the area, where he stayed for more than a month. The story can be found in Megilat Kurenets. From that story we learn that he also came to the town of Kurenets and, together with Zalman, did many missions against the collaborators. Itzkaleh was known as Dvitka, and his bravery was renowned, and many collaborators feared him. During the summer of 1943, after derailing a train, Itzkaleh went home with other members of his unit to Dolhinov, to celebrate the success of their mission. One of the villagers who saw them went to the Germans and told them about the party. German soldiers surrounded the house. Itzkaleh was able to escape from the house, but while he was fleeing he was shot and killed. After his death he received the highest awards from the Soviets.

A Fateful Meeting

Some months later we decided to marry. In October of that year, we arrived in Pleshensitz for our wedding. Our party took place in a private home, and we served bread and salted fish, and of course some vodka. We sang in Russian and Yiddish, but still my heart was saddened knowing that not one of my family members was there. After drinking some vodka, I started singing in Hebrew, songs from distant days, days of school in Kurenets – the songs of Bialik. Tzila's father joined me, and his eyes filled with tears. From that day on we became very close to each other. I moved with Tzila to Molodechno, where our children were born. Here we found out about the establishment of Israel. We were excited when Golda Meir came to the Soviet Union as an ambassador for Israel. On the other hand, we suffered anti-Semitism and the trials of Jewish doctors (who were accused of some conspiracies). As Jews, we knew that the Soviets were spying on us. We always had to be very careful. I would like to tell a story that happened to me.

In 1948 I received a letter from my cousin Moshe Alperovich, from Israel. Moshe was the son of my Aunt Rashke, the sister of my father. Moshe, together with his mother and his sister Sarah, was able to escape to the forest during the day of the annihilation. But Rashke died there from starvation. After the war, my cousin Moshe went to Israel, and the letter supposedly came from Tel Aviv and was written in Yiddish. The return address was Shderot Rothschild Street, Tel Aviv. Tzila and I were very excited. The letter said that he was married and had a daughter, and it even had a drawing by a baby. Although we so wanted to have a contact, when we thought about it, we became very suspicious. First, how was Moshe able to find our address? And the fact that he was so soon a father to a girl who could draw with a pencil seemed unbelievable. I knew that he had left Russia only two years earlier, and he was not married then. So we never answered the letter, knowing that it must be a trick. As we later found out, Moshe Alperovich married only in 1952. This letter must have been sent by the secret police, who waited for my answer.

Quiet Hatred

This was in the 50s, during the time of the doctors' trials, when there was great hatred toward Jews in Soviet Russia. You would often encounter conversations in which peoplesaid how they were afraid to go to doctors, since most of the doctors in Russia were Jews and they betrayed the nation. In the winter of 1953, my wife Tzila and I went to a health resort. They would have cultural activities at the resort, and a Soviet colonel came to speak about the technical advancement of Soviet Russia. At the end of the speech, it was usual to ask questions, and people felt that they showed their loyalty to the Soviet Union by being interested in the subject and asking lots of questions. Since many of the people who were present for this speech knew nothing about technology but still wanted to show loyalty, they asked questions that had nothing to do with technology. Because the Soviet system was that you had to answer the questions whether or not they were on the topic, and not dismiss anything, he answered them. Most of the questions had to do with the so-called Jewish betrayal. At the end of the speech, someone came to me with a worried sound in his voice and said to me quietly, “I would like you to know that I have a very important political position in this area, and I am not supposed to tell you this, but I would like to ask your forgiveness for the questions in regard to the Jews that these people asked here. I am sure that times will change and the Soviet people will show a nicer side of their personality. This ugly wave of hatred will subside.” Although I believed that the man was really honest with me, as a person who looked very Jewish I still had to be very careful, and it was very hard for me to really rest in this place, where the atmosphere was so hateful.

There were also Jew-haters in the printing house. There was one mechanic, named Katzan, who was very talented at his job. In 1946, I was the head of the printing department in this printing house, and here as well as in Vileyka, Riva nee Gordon Zimmerman from Kurenets worked with me and lived in one of the rooms in the printing house. Since the nights were very cold, she collected some discarded papers to burn in the furnace in her room. When Katzan saw her holding papers, he started looking at the ones she took and decided that some of them were of value, and he went to call the police to inform them of her disloyalty to the USSR. Riva came to me to tell me what had happened. I told her to immediately go and burn the papers in the furnace, and I went to the telephone room to talk to Katzan. I informed him that his job was to take care of the technical side of the printing, and that as far as the papers were concerned, I was the one who was responsible and he should not get involved in it. I also informed him that I told Riva to take the papers, and since the papers were already burned as I had informed him, Katzan knew there was nothing he could do and he didn't contact the police.

In 1948, my wife went to visit her parents in Pleshensitz, and I had my lunches in the cafeteria-style restaurant in Molodechno. I took my soup and sat at the table, and a drunken Christian man kept saying loudly, “Bey zidov say Rasia”, meaning, “Beat the Jews and save Russia.” Another person in the restaurant said to him, “Why are you yelling like this? Here is a real Jew sitting here. Beat him up and save Russia.” Immediately, the drunk approached my table and tried to take my soup away from me. I took a flowerpot that was on the table and hit him on his head. The drunken man shook and fell to the floor. Immediately, people in the restaurant started cursing me, and some wanted to beat me up in revenge for the comrade who had fallen. I felt I was in real danger, and I was very lucky that Andrey Volinitz entered the restaurant. He was well known as a hero of the Soviet Union and beloved by many. As soon as he found out what had happened, he pushed the crowd aside and came to me. He shook my hand and hugged me and told the people, “You must know that this Jew fought with me as one of the most loyal and dedicated Partisans.” The spirit in the restaurant immediately changed. The drunken man was taken out and now everyone wanted to be our friend. They tried to give us vodka, and they wanted to appear open minded.

Obviously there were other people who were honest and open minded among the Russian population, people like Kostya and Agassia, and Bakatz, the citizen of Kurenets who proved his good will toward the Jews and endangered himself by staying with them through the toughest days. One of the most sensitive deeds done by this righteous Bakatz was when he invited some of the remnants of the Kurenets community, as soon as they returned to town from their forest hideouts, and he gave them the big Torah book from the synagogue, which he had saved in his house through all the days of the destruction of the community.

It was very hard for me to visit my hometown, where my family was killed, but still I had a desire to see Bakatz and talk to him. I felt as if I was going on a pilgrimage to a holy man, but I delayed this desire for pilgrimage for a long time. The son of Bakatz worked in the Molodechno post office. I met him often and always triedto show our feelings of deep love for his father, which existed in the hearts of all the remnants of the Jews of Kurenets. Bakatz belonged to a Baptist sect that believed in a life of piety and purity. He was very old by the time I came to him. He lived in a little village near the water mill that once belonged to the Jew Mota Leib Kuperstock, who perished with his sons Zeev and Josef and their families. When I expressed my admiration for all that he had done, he said to me that considering the horrors and the travails he witnessed, what he did was so little that there was no need to thank him. He further expressed thanks for the heaven that kept him from being engulfed by the evil waves of hatred for Jews that swept through the rest of the population. I sat with him for a while and then said goodbye.

In 1950, I visited Kostya in the village of Diyadich, and Agassia told me about something that had happened eight years earlier, in 1942, that was affecting Kostya's life now. What happened was that after our first Partisan mission, when Elik died, I was in a very depressed state. I went to Luban to look for Noah Dinestein from Vileyka, who trained us in military action. I couldn't find him there, but when I returned to Kurenets with my gun, I passed by Kostya's house and I saw that two armed men were trying to take the cow from him. I pretended to be part of a Partisan unit and scared them, and they left the area. Now Agassia told me that a relative came to visit them from a faraway place, and Kostya went to the Kehanina train station but didn't return; a long time passed and she was worried about their situation. I asked for permission to check the situation, and I had to take a day off from work. I went to Kehanina station and approached the police there, but could not get any information. It was as if he had vanished without a trace. So I had no choice but to return to Molodechno, and Agassia went to Diyadich. She said that Kostya had returned home in a very bad state: he was beaten up and his toes were blue from being frozen. What had happened was that in Kehanina, two men who pretended to be policemen came up to him. One of them, he thought, was one of the people who had attacked him eight years before. During this encounter they took everything he had, beat him, and pulled him into the snow. They took off his boots and he was left alone, barefoot in an open field. It took a long time and help from people he encountered for him to finally arrive home. He was in very bad condition and was taken to a hospital in Vileyka. They had no solution but to cut his toes, and he was in the hospital for many months. When he finally recovered, I was able to get him a job in the printing house, where he became the carpenter. So now I would see him daily in Molodechno, and I was very happy to help take care of him.

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