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For the past several years David Feldman,
co-coordinator of the Belarus SIG, and a group of
cousins have been researching and recording data about the Feldman and Zafman families, originally from Shereshev, Belarus. The project was started by Rachel Feldbaum Zafman when she
dictated the family history, as she remembered it. She was about 90 at the time, and her
memory was perfect, including her recall of names and dates. Several years later, after she died,
Donald Messenger, the great grandson of her sister Malka,
took over the task of updating the information. He has now been joined by David
Feldman, Aaron Reznick, and
Sonny Zafman in the role of recording the
family’s history.
In the author’s words, here is the motivation
for a trip to ancestral towns in Belarus:
“While we
had identified a great deal of our family history, we still wanted to see
what life in the old country was like.
To this end, Martin (Sonny) Zafman and David
Feldman decided to make a trip to the area where our
ancestors came from. Rather than go
with a larger group, we decided to coordinate our own trip, which allowed
us to completely customize our travels to our needs.
“The article below covers our trip planning,
travels in and out of Belarus,
research in Belarus,
visiting the town of Shereshev
in Belarus
and the town of Białowieża
in Poland. In addition to our thoughts on the trip,
there are some very old family photographs taken in Shereshev
and Białowieża, along with numerous
pictures taken on the trip.”
© This article
is copyrighted by David Feldman.
Reprinting or copying of this
article is not allowed
without prior permission from the copyrightholders.
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A
Trip to Shereshev
by
David Feldman & Martin Zafman
Background on Shereshev
 The first
known record of our family name, Feldbaum, is Matas Feldbaum, who was born in
Shereshevo around 1750. He is our direct ancestor –
Martin’s gggg and David’s ggggggrandfather. Shereshevo is in Grodno Gubernia, Belarus (Gubernia is the administrative-territorial division in the Russian Empire and
in the USSR from 1708-1929). Since Shereshevo is so close to the Polish border, it has
changed hands many times from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus. More recently, the town is referred to as Shereshev, and that is the name we will use throughout
this document.
The picture on the left is our ancestor, Aaron Feldbaum (standing on the right), and his brother Nachman, with their mother Zelda, taken in Shereshev around 1875. The Feldbaums
lived in Shereshev continuously from at least 1750
until 1942. This was when the Germans
emptied the town of all the Jews by killing them and/or transporting them to Pruhzany, Belarus,
where they placed them in a ghetto, and many died. Those that survived the ghetto were sent to
Auschwitz on January 29, 30, 31, and February 1, 1942, where most of them
were sent directly to the gas chambers.
Our family had only one survivor living in Shereshev just prior to the war - Laibel
Feldbaum, the son of Nachman
Feldbaum, who was Aaron’s brother. After he was liberated from Auschwitz
he spent a few years in Displaced Persons camps in Europe
until he finally came to America.
Aaron Feldbaum married Yuddis (Judith) Smorgon, and in
1881 left Shereshev and moved to Białowieża.
They had 11 children, and both Martin Zafman
and David Feldman, the
two people who went on this trip, are descendants of Aaron and Yuddis.
Martin’s mother, Rae Zafman, was the
second youngest daughter of Aaron and Yuddis, and
David’s grandfather, Herschel, was Aaron and Yuddis’s
oldest son. For details on the Feldbaum family home in Białowieża
and the nearby cemetery in Narewka, see the Białowieża link at the top.
 Aaron
and Yuddis Feldbaum and
their children all immigrated to the US or Canada
between 1902 and 1921. Today there are
over 250 descendants of Aaron and Yuddis who have
been born in the US and Canada.
The picture to the left is from a painting of Aaron Feldbaum studying the Talmud. The original photo, taken
by a WPA photographer during the Depression, hung in the New
York Historical Museum, and
was used for decades by the Hallmark Card Company on their Passover cards. It
also appears on Page 1 of the Pictorial History of the Jewish People.
The original photo was apparently taken on a weekday at the synagogue in Brooklyn where
Aaron went every day.
 In
addition to the Feldbaum ties to Shereshev, Martin’s father, Israel Zafman, and his family can be traced to Shereshev to about 1735.
The picture on the far left, taken about 1916, shows Martin’s
father, Israel,
standing in the back with his parents, Pesha Feiga and Moshe, and his younger brother, Irving. The picture on the left is of the Shereshev fire department, taken about 1918. Israel Zafman is
second from the right. Israel
immigrated to the US in
1920.
Trip Planning
 Here
are a few notes on coordinating your own trip, especially if you are going to
Belarus. A good guide and driver are a
necessity. In addition, you will need
to get a visa to go into Belarus,
which requires getting a sponsoring company as part of your visa application,
usually set up through the company providing the guide. You need to start your planning early and
finalize your itinerary so it can be included in your visa application (the
visa application process takes about 8 weeks). We started our planning in February, 2007,
and we departed the US
on May 25.
Flights going directly into Belarus were
not as convenient so we chose to fly to Warsaw, and
then take trains to get us close to Belarus,
where our guides could pick us up. This was not a good idea, as is detailed
below. Based on our experience, we
would recommend either flying or taking a train into and out of Belarus.
The map above shows that we started in Warsaw, then
took a train to Bialystok. From there, the guide and driver picked us
up, and we went to Grodno for
research. After two days in Grodno we
drove to our family hometown of Shereshev, and
spent the night in Brest. We then took the train across the border to
Terespol, Poland, and
another guide and driver picked us up and took us to Białowieża.
Entering Belarus
 The
afternoon we arrived in Warsaw we
dropped our bags in our hotel room, and took off for an extended walking tour
of the city. Much of Warsaw
was destroyed during World War II.
When it was rebuilt under the Communists, the architecture was modest,
functional, and drab. The one wise
thing that the Poles did during rebuilding was to restore a section of the
city to be an exact duplicate of Warsaw
before the war. It’s a charming
area called Old Town.
There are many shops, galleries, bistros, and outdoor cafes. The picture above was the Monument to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, which was unveiled in 1989 and commemorates the POLISH RESISTANCE FIGHTERS who are the heroes of the Warsaw Uprising, which took place well after the Jewish Ghetto had been demolished by the
Nazis.
On Sunday we left Warsaw by
train to go to Bialystok. Bialystok was
also destroyed during WWII. It has
been rebuilt with no effort to capture the beauty of the historic city. There is very little industry there, and
it’s a quiet city, with the exception of the traffic between Poland and Belarus, as a
result of its location on the main highway between the countries.
On Monday morning, May 28, our driver and guide came to
the hotel to pick us up, and take us across the border to Belarus. Our guide was able to read, write, and
speak Russian, Belarusian, Polish, English, Hebrew, and Yiddish.
 That
trip into Belarus
turned out to be a challenging journey.
We drove from Bialystok to
the border in a relatively short time.
As you can see from the picture to the left, the line of cars was very
long. There were three lanes of traffic
- the extreme right was for trucks, the middle was for cars going to Belarus, and
the left lane was for opposing traffic that just crossed the border into Poland. The line for cars was over a mile
long. We got in line, and after
waiting almost 3 hours, we had only moved about 50 feet. At that rate it would have taken us days to
get across.
David asked Martin for his passport and walked to the
front of the line with our guide to see if they could expedite things. David told the border guard that he was
traveling with an old man who was not feeling well, and he was worried about
his health. The guard looked at the
passports, and told David to go back to the car and move to the front of the
line. They stopped the oncoming
traffic so we were able to get to the front of the line. While the guard was
“processing” us he stepped out of his booth to get a good look at
me. He asked Martin for his medical
insurance documents. Martin showed him
what he had, and he decided that they were not adequate. He made Martin buy special Belarusian
health insurance for a total cost of $4.00, and he sent us on our way.
As soon as we crossed the border our guide asked to see
the insurance document, and she started to laugh. The piece of paper was an advertisement for
something that had nothing to do with health insurance. It seems that this was his way of getting a
bribe.
Research in Grodno
Once we got into Belarus we
drove directly to the Central Archives in Grodno. The archives building can be seen in the
picture on the right. Here, too, it
was necessary for our guide to give a “gift” to the
director. By doing this she smoothed
the way for us to start our research.
 The
picture to the extreme left is the main office in the Archives. As you can see, most of the records are
either in card catalogs or binders – we did not see any computers. Every item in the Archives is documented in
a master index. The index is kept in a
journal much like an accountant uses.
Nothing there is digitized, microfilmed, or reproduced in any other
way to make it easier to find information.
We spent the rest of the day looking through the indexes and listing
all the documents that had the name of Shereshev, Feldbaum, or Zyvzich. At the end of the day, we gave the list to
the assistant who said that she would have the documents ready for us the
next morning.
 When
we arrived the next morning she had a pile of the original documents from the
archive. Our guide started to go
through these old files, some of them almost 200 years old. The original documents were filed in
leather-bound books that were falling apart.
The leather was mostly cracked and peeling. Some of the books were 5 or 6 inches thick
with documents. The room we did the research
in can be seen in the picture on the left.
  We
found information about our maternal grandfather’s brother, who left Shereshev with his 8-year old son during the time a
census was taken. The two documents
above show the front and back of the revision record form, necessary to prove
that he had reason not to be home when the revision was taken. When he returned, his son was not with
him. Apparently, his son died in 1875
while away with his father. We assume
that our great uncle took the boy to get medical help but was
unsuccessful. On the back of the
census form there was a statement that attested to the fact that the boy
died. The back was certified and signed
by Rabbi Shereshevsky.
 The
Director of the Archives allowed us to photograph each document with our own
cameras. We did have to pay about
$5.00 for each picture. We needed the
pictures so we could have a hard copy of the actual document that our guide
would be able to translate for us. The
other documents we found are shown in the pictures on the left. They are
written in Old Russian Cyrillic. A
great deal of the information we found gave very detailed descriptions of our
families’ residences, including building materials, size of building,
number of rooms, and whether or not there was a business in the building.
  On our
last night in Grodno our
guide arranged to have a Holocaust survivor take us on a tour of the
city. His name was Tzvi
Hosid, and he was born in Grodno, and
returned there after the war. The tour
focused on the Jewish history of the city.
He took us to the Grodno Synagogue shown at
the left. We were allowed to go
inside, and the picture on the far left shows the interior. The synagogue was quite beautiful, outside
and in, and it’s rather obvious that there are no longer regular
services held there.
 
We toured the Ghetto, and he described to us what life
there was like. The pictures to the
left show the entrance to the Jewish Ghetto and the memorial plaque that
honored them after the war. While we
were standing at the entrance, Tzvi told us of his
daring escape from the train on the way to Auschwitz
and his joining the resistance for the duration of the war. Tzvi was so thoroughly steeped in the history of the city
that he captivated us with its history and stories. After the tour we all went to dinner, and
he continued to tell us stories about life in Grodno before, during, and after
the war.
Shereshev
 The
drive from Grodno
through Pruzhany to Shereshev
was a pleasant one. The land is flat,
and we were able to see what life must have been like at the turn of the last
century. The bigger cities like Grodno, Pruzhany, and Brest show
little trace of what it looked like 100 years ago because they were mostly
destroyed during WWII. In Pruzhany we did see several old houses that were once
owned by Jews, but there were very few of them. The Jewish cemetery in Pruzhany
has been mostly destroyed. A memorial
was erected at the entrance to the cemetery.
The picture to the left shows a stork. There were literally hundreds of these huge
birds’ nests on many buildings, poles, and any other available
above-ground structure. Some of the
nests were almost 4 feet in diameter.
When our parents and grandparents lived in Shereshev and Białowieża,
a trip to Pruzhany was a long, tiring one –
about 15 kilometers. Traveling that
distance by horse and wagon on unpaved roads took its toll on the
people. They only traveled back and
forth on special occasions.
 Today
the trip took about half an hour on a road that had no traffic, but did have
more than a few potholes. Still, it
was an easy trip.
A few hundred yards from the outskirts of the city there
is a road sign that announces that we have arrived in Shereshev.
The picture on the left shows the sign that stands on the road from Pruzhany at the entrance to the village. The sign is written in Belarusian Cyrillic
and reads “Sheresheva”. The Jews called it Shereshev. This picture was taken at the height of the
local rush hour - notice that there isn't one vehicle in sight. We stopped the car, walked to the sign, and
took pictures of it. It is so hard to
describe the feelings we had - we were about to walk in the same streets that
our ancestors walked...
  As we
began to walk around, our guide told us that we had an appointment with the
mayor of Shereshev.
His name was Vadim Malyshkevich. We
went to City Hall (see picture at left), where he was waiting for us. He seemed genuinely happy to see us. He didn't speak English so our guide did the translating
for us. He was warm and
gracious, and asked us a bunch of questions.
He said that he was born in Shereshev, and
he told us a bit of the town’s history.
He was sad that there are no records of any Jews ever living in Shereshev and that he knows that we had a major role in
the development of the village. He was
unhappy about this because the Jews were so much a part of the city’s
history.
We
asked the Mayor if we could take his picture and he agreed; however, he
insisted that he sit at his desk and made sure that he was centered properly
beneath the Coat of Arms of Belarus and the picture of Alexander Lukashenko, the President of Belarus.
  We
told him that our ancestor, Matis Feldbaum, was born there in 1750, and that Martin’s
gggggrandfather, Nossel Zyfzick, was born there in 1735. He asked us if we had any pictures of Shereshev, and David said that he did. David then downloaded pictures from the Feldbaum/Feldman website, and gave them to him.
We
asked the Mayor if he had a map of Shereshev, and
he produced a huge 5’
X 7’ map, dated 1911 (far left). It shows every
street, house, and house number. In addition to the map, the mayor gave
us a copy of the Coat of Arms of Shereshev, and a
picture of this can be seen on the left.
At the time
Martin didn't realize that we had the address of the house that his great
grandfather, grandfather, and father lived in. It was on one of the
documents that we found in the Grodno Archives, but
hadn't yet translated. The house that
Martin’s father, Israel, lived in for about 25 years, was assessed
a real estate tax of 20 rubles in 1910 and 1911. There was one other house in Shereshev that had the same assessment. It was the lowest real estate assessment in
town, which means that it was the smallest, least expensive house in
town.
 He
then invited us to have lunch with a few of the local politicians in what we
think is the only restaurant in town, called Raisa Bulchuk, owned by a woman who lives in Shereshev. She also owns 6 other restaurants in the
surrounding area. She, along with the
Mayor, hosted the lunch. There was no
menu - the waiter just kept bringing food, and we kept eating. We also partook of the customary rounds of
vodka that go with every meal. We were
each given shot glasses, and had to have 3 shots of the strongest vodka we
have ever had. It was potent.
 The
inside of the restaurant can be seen on the far left, and our meal is shown
on the left. We noticed a moon-shaped
window cut into the door of a very small building in the back, and
subsequently, found out that there is no indoor plumbing anywhere in Shereshev. Each
house has its own well (or a shared well) in the yard that supplies them with
water.
The mayor told us that there are only a few people left
that remembered what it was like before the war. One was a lady with whom he had arranged a
visit for us in her house (picture at left).
When we drove up to her house, she was waiting for us in
her yard. Almost every house in Shereshev had a garden, either in front, in back, or on
the side, as did hers, where they grew their own vegetables. If they had more
then the needed, they sold the excess at the market.
 The
pictures to the left and below show the main room in the house. It probably looks exactly the same as it did 75 years
ago. It was immaculate and quite
comfortable.
The
main room was a multi-purpose room. It
served as the dining room, living room, and bedroom. Notice the huge bed
pillows. The carpets on the walls
serve two purposes. First, it’s
decorative, and second, it’s utilitarian. It keeps the drafts out, and prevents the
heat from escaping in the winter.
 The
furniture was quite old, but in excellent condition. We suspected that there had been no changes
in the house since it had been built.
It gave us a great opportunity to see how the people live now, as well
as 100 years ago.
We then sat down at the table shown to the left, and talked with the elderly woman though our interpreter,
our guide. We asked her what it was
like before the war. She told us that
she remembered that every Friday evening a town crier went around calling,
“Shabbos, Shabbos”,
to let everyone know that it was time for the Sabbath to begin. She told us stories about going to school
with the Jewish children and how everyone got along. She also had some photographs of herself
when she was a student in elementary school.
It was a mixed group that included the Jewish children who went to the
secular school.
We asked her if she knew what happened to the Jews - she
told us that one night they all ran away, leaving everything behind, and that
no one was killed. We respectfully
told her what happened to our great uncle, Nachman,
who lived in Shereshev, and that he and his family
perished in the Holocaust. She
remained silent, as did we.
Martin asked her if she had a pripichuk. He didn’t know if she would laugh at
him, or be embarrassed because she didn’t know what it was. Much to the surprise of all of us, she
said, “Yes”, and invited us into her kitchen to see it. Her pripichuk can
be seen below.
When Martin was a young boy, his father told him stories
of what life was like in the “Old Country”. He described in great
detail the many roles of the pripichuk, a
wood-burning stove. First, it was an
oven that provided heat for the entire house.
It was also a cooktop where the food was
prepared. In addition, it served as
the clothes dryer. (See the picture to the left with the clothes drying on
it.) However, in the winter it was
mostly used as a bed because it was the warmest place in the house.
To sleep on the pripichuk,
first a sheet was spread over the sleeping shelf. On top of the sheet was placed a “perineh”, a goose down-filled comforter, which acted
as a mattress and softened the “bed”. A person slept on top of this perineh. A second perineh was used as a blanket. Sonny’s father claimed that sleeping
on the pripichuk was as warm as toast and extremely
comfortable. Our hostess was very proud of her house, and she showed us the
heavy perinehs that were on her bed.
 The
mayor then had someone bring us to the Jewish cemetery in Shereshev. It was heartbreaking because it had been
almost totally destroyed. The graves were destroyed by the
Germans, by townspeople who used the stones for building materials, and by
the locals who destroyed them for the fun of it. There are only 2 or 3
gravestones that are still standing, but leaning, and will eventually
fall. The majority of the remaining
stones have sunk into the ground so that only the top one-third or less is
visible. The harsh seasonal weather
softens the ground, which subsequently cannot support the full weight of the
stones, so they have sunk into the soil over the years.
 As you
can see from the picture on the left, goats freely roamed the cemetery. There were many fragments of stones with
engravings on them. The picture on the
far left was the most well-preserved of all the stones that we saw. We took pictures of all of the stones that
were in any way legible, and sent them to Israel to
see if they could be translated.
  When
we were finished taking pictures at the cemetery, we just drove around and
took some photographs of the town. The
pictures shown here show how little has probably changed from when our
ancestors lived there. As you can see,
transportation is pretty basic, from the horse-drawn wagon to the frequently
seen bicycles.
 A street scene on the left shows houses that
probably look exactly the way they did when our ancestors were living there.
On the main street through town we took a couple of
pictures of houses showing the shared wells (see pictures on the left and
below). People have to draw water from
the well for all of the bathing, cooking, washing needs, etc. As already mentioned, each house has an
outhouse in the back, as does the restaurant and all other buildings.
 The house next to
the elderly woman had a huge wood storage area. Even though it was summer
time, there was wood stored for heating the stove for cooking and making hot
water. We assumed that in late summer they would have to prepare a great deal
of firewood to last through the winter.
While we were driving around, we never saw any
automobiles, but did see animals such as the geese shown to the left.
Before we left Shereshev we
wanted to see the house where our grandfather/great grandfather’s
brother, Nachman Feldbaum,
lived. In 1891 he moved to a nearby
town, which we also visited, and details on this are below. A family member had given us a picture of
what she thought was Nachman’s house. In doing research before going on our trip,
we ran across a beautiful story written by Moshe Kantorowitz
about his life in Shereshev from 1933 until he went
to Auschwitz in 1943, how he made
it through Auschwitz, and
how he ended up immigrating to Canada. His story can be found at: www.freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cpsa/shereshov/my_mothers_bequest.pdf. If you have not already read this story, it
is well worth the read.
  In
Moshe’s story he mentioned his next-door neighbor, Nachman
Feldbaum, many times in the book. Moshe had a picture of his house in Shereshev in the story, and it was the same picture we
had which we thought was Nachman’s
house. Both the Kantorowitzes
and the Feldbaums had some of the larger homes in Shereshev so when the Germans arrived,
they wanted to take over these houses for their headquarters. Unfortunately, when the Germans demanded Nachman’s house, apparently he didn’t move
quickly enough so the German SS guard shot him in the head in front of his
family. Eventually, the rest of the
family met the same fate, except Nachman’s
son Laibel, who was with Moshe at Auschwitz and
did survive the war.
 Having
a picture and knowing that Moshe’s house was on the market square and
that Nachman’s house was right next to it, it
was not difficult to find both houses.
Both of these houses can be seen in the picture above. The aqua-colored house on the left is Moshe
Kantorowitzes’, and Nachman
Feldbaum’s is the brown one on the
right. The area in the front of these
houses is currently a park, but before the war it was the market square. It was disappointing that no one was home
because we would have loved to see the interior. We did walk around the house, and to the
left is a picture of the back of Nachman’s
house.
We have an old picture from Nachman’s
house showing his mother Tzina and his daughter Sarah standing in front of
the house. The sign on the door behind
Sarah shows a picture of a shoe, and says “Gentlemen” (in
English) - Nachman and his brother Aaron were both
cobblers. This picture was taken about
1920. While Nachman’s
house shown above has 4 windows in the front, on a blow-up of the picture an
outline of where the door that Tzina and Sarah are standing by can be
seen.
Brest
After spending most of the day in Shereshev,
we decided to leave for Brest,
where we were going to spend the night.
Brest, like
many of the other cities we visited, was badly destroyed during WWII. Most of the buildings were post war,
Communist-style architecture, with little or no personality. As we knew from our planning, our
Belarusian guides were not able to go easily into Poland. They had to get a special temporary pass,
which costs about $60, which they did in order to pick us up in Bialystok.
So we arranged for another guide and driver to assist us
in Poland. The following morning after breakfast our
driver and guide took us to the Brest Railroad Station, where we were going
to take a train across the border into Terespol, Poland. While this was a much easier and more
pleasant way to cross into Poland,
it still was not simple. When we got
to the train station, we had to wait outside a special room for those exiting
Belarus. Our wait was about 30 minutes because no
one was there yet. After going through
many lines we were finally allowed to get on the train. Unlike airports, there were no carts
available for helping with moving the luggage around, and getting on the
train with our luggage was no small task.
The entire train trip was supposed to take 18 minutes to
get from Brest to Terespol. However,
there were problems with other trains in the way, and the short trip took
much longer. Getting off the train was
not easy either. Rather than being
allowed to get off the train, security people came on board and checked
papers, and actually went through luggage one person at a time. We were glad we were in the front of the
train so it did not take that long for us.
Our Polish guide and driver were waiting for us at the
train station. They, too, were most
pleasant and extremely knowledgeable.
We asked the guide if he had ever heard of a Polish King named Sabetski, and he immediately told us the exact date of
his reign in the 17th century.
He was a walking encyclopedia, and even though it was a little hard to
understand his English, he added so much to our understanding of the
area.
Białowieża
In 1881 our
grandfather/great grandfather Aaron Feldbaum and
his wife Yuddis Smorgon Feldbaum, who were young newlyweds, moved from Shereshev to Białowieża,
which was about 15 kilometers to the west.
From the 1600’s until World War I Jews were restricted to living
in certain areas within the Pale of Settlement. Białowieża
was outside the Pale.
 Białowieża
(pronounced B’ya-yo-vesh-ia), which is now in
Poland, had
no Jews living there until the early 1880’s. It was the home of the winter hunting
palace of the czars, and Jews had not been permitted to live in such close
proximity to the royal family. We
don’t know why the Czar changed the policy and allowed Jews to move to Białowieża.
The town of Białowieża is
located adjacent to the Białowieża National
Park. This park is the oldest in Poland, and
its history goes back to 1921 when the forest district “Rezerwat” was created. The park is 26,000 acres, of which 11,725 acres are strictly
protected. The European bison is the
symbol of the Białowieża National
Park and the entire Białowieża Forest. The entrance to the park can be seen to the
left.
Aaron and Yuddis bought a
house on the main street of town, where all of their 11 children were
born. Three of the children died at a
very young age. The family lived in
the house for 40 years. They left in
April, 1921, to go to America to
join their 3 children who had immigrated before World War I. The picture at the left shows Aaron and Yuddis, 5 of their children, one son-in-law and two
grandchildren, taken in about 1909.
All of their older children had already immigrated to the US.
 When
Martin Zafman was a small boy, his mother, Rachel
Feldman Zafman, told him many stories about her
life in Europe before they came to America. She often described the house in great
detail, and she was especially proud of the fact that her house was the only
one on the main street to have a “bay window” in the front. Her brother-in-law, Chaim
Krugman, used the bay window as his shop where he
repaired watches and sold jewelry.
There used to be a short flight of stairs that led from the street
into the house.
 In
addition to knowing roughly how big the house was and what the house looked
like, we also knew it was on the main street down from the entrance to the
park. At the park we got a detailed
map of the area, and found the main street we were looking for - it was
called ul. Waszkiewicza. The first part of the street had some
stores and restaurants, but after the first street it was entirely
residential. It did not take us long
to see the house that met the specs exactly, but we decided we should drive
up and down the street to make sure that there was not another house that fit
the description. There was no other
house that matched exactly what Martin remembered from the stories that his
mother told him.
 The
picture above and to the left was what we saw. It was the only house with a bay window on
the main street that was well over 100 years old. While the house seemed small across the
front, the house was quite long, as can be seen from the side view above and
to the right. Given that there were 11
children and 2 adults, we felt comfortable that it was big enough to
accommodate the family.
Martin also had mentioned about a separate room on the
back, and sure enough we found one, as can be seen from the rear view, shown
in the picture on the left.
Perhaps you can imagine our joy when we found the
house. It was so special for us to see
the house that some of our parents, grandparents and great grandparents were
born in. It’s difficult to
describe our emotions when we walked around the house, walking on the same
ground as our ancestors. The stories
that Rae Feldbaum (Rachel) told her son Martin
immediately came to life, and we were transported back to the end of the 19th
century and the beginning of the 20th. It was a very emotional time, and
undoubtedly, the highlight of our trip.
 Our
next and final stop was Narewka, which is the
location of the Jewish cemetery for Jews buried in this area. The road between Białowieża
and Narewka is a single-lane dirt road that cuts
right trough the Białowieża
Forest (Bialowiezkia
Puscha). The
Narewka cemetery is on the outskirts of the
city. If our guide didn’t know
exactly where it was, we would have passed it by and never found it. It’s right in the forest on a hill
sloping down to a small valley, but is not identified in any way. So it was quite surprising to learn how
many local people knew of the Jewish cemetery.
We had a picture of a gravestone of a son-in-law of
Aaron and Yuddis, who died around 1924. The picture on the left shows Aaron’s
and Yuddis’ second oldest daughter, Reina, with her 2 daughters, Bella and Lily, at the
gravesite of their husband and father, Chaim Krugman. This
picture was taken in the Narewka cemetery some time
after 1924 and before 1929 when they immigrated to Canada.
When Reina and her 3 children immigrated to Canada in 1929 they were the last members
of our family living in Bialowieza. This was fortunate, since during the week between
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur 1941 the Jews of Bialowieza were sent to the Kobrin Ghetto
where they all perished.
    Compared
to Shereshev, the Narewka
cemetery was in much better shape, but nowhere near its original
condition. After looking for over an
hour, we could not find any family members in the cemetery. The area around the gravestones was quite
overgrown, and there were no organized rows to follow, rather, just random
grave markers, some close together, others quite far apart. We took pictures of over 50 gravestones,
and some of the ones in better condition can be seen to the left. We also sent these pictures to Israel to be
translated.
We would truly love to help bring the cemetery back to
its original state, but, unfortunately, it’s just not realistic. Walking around the gravestones and reading
as much Hebrew as we could really moved the clock
back in time for us, albeit for a brief time.
Copyright © 2007 Belarus
SIG and David
Feldman
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