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Preface
by Moshe Shiveck
“Oh that my hand were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I
might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!”
Jeremiah, Chapter VIII, Verse 23.
Twenty-five years are gone and past since that terrible, bitter day when the
curtain rose to reveal a spectacle of horrors the likes of which had not been
seen by human eye on the face of this earth. These were shockingly horrible
sights to those of us who had stood outside the conflagration of the Nazi
Holocaust, unable to extend the hand of salvation. And it was like a mocking
dream to those snatched from the burning fire, who found themselves facing an
indifferent world, rejecting them and behaving as though nothing at all had
happened.
The years that have passed may, perhaps, have blurred the individual's memory
of the agony and helped to heal his wounds, but we refuse to be consoled about
the calamity, the parents made childless and children made orphans. The further
we are removed from this terrible period, the more strongly are we charged with
remembering and perpetuating the magnitude of our disaster, with infusing the
hearts of our children with a consciousness of the Holocaust – if only for the
sake of the generations to come after us.
About a decade ago, we – immigrants to Israel from Dąbrowa Górnicza – banded
together to establish a memorial to the memory of our Jewish community, which
the hand of the Reaper rose up against during the great Holocaust which
overtook the House of Israel in Poland. We took upon ourselves the sacred
mission of perpetuating the image of Dąbrowa Jewry for the coming generations,
a true image of lights and shadows. As the remnants of the generation which
lived in this fateful age, we deemed it our duty, and a command from our dear
ones who marched, to the furnaces, to recount to the coming generations, as it
is written: “And you shall tell your son in the time to come”, to
collect fragments of tablets, splinters of creations and memories from the life
of the city and its Jews, to try and shed light on its civic, national,
spiritual, religious, cultural and economic experiences, before they are
swallowed up in the gulf of oblivion.
We did not delude ourselves; we knew that the road would be long and arduous
before we would succeed in making the book materialize from the plan to
reality. We also knew full well that we were not appealing to authors to
recount their memories, but rather to the people who came from our city -
ordinary working people the year around. They might be immersed in their
personal and family cares, but we knew that our fellow-townsmen guard in their
hearts many particulars of utmost importance about our community, its glory and
its splendour.
The command “In your blood shall you live!” has accompanied us since
we first appeared on the stage of history, but all the preceding pales in the
face of the acts of atrocity and annihilation committed against us by the Nazis.
This book bears witness and testimony to the crimes of the German people, to
the years of oppression, torture and murder of the Jewish community in
Dąbrowa, under conditions of dreadful isolation. These transpired in the
prison of the ghetto and in the death camps, with the active participation of
the Polish people and the indifference of the “enlightened and
cultured” world to the right and to the left, which knew very well that
the Nazi monster was digging its preying claws into innocent men, women and
children, sucking their blood night and day with Satanic barbarism. These Sons
of Belial trampled with a heavy foot, plundered in broad daylight, strangled
our brothers and raped our sisters until the last capillary of the heart was
cut in cold blood and with a brutal hand. No writer can recount our catastrophe
or enumerate our casualties. The human hand is incapable of describing our
disaster.
Dear to us are the chapters of glory and heroism recorded by our
fellow-townsmen in their struggle with the oppressor before their holy souls
were carried away in the defense of Israel's honour, which was not desecrated;
so are we deeply moved by the pages of suffering and torment which were dipped
in the blood of our brothers and sisters who were led to their destruction
without ever having heard of the establishment of the State of Israel for the
afflicted people. But the parchment is too short to set down everything in the
columns of this book. What we have done is but a little part, a symbol of the
turbulent period in which the life thread of our community was severed. How
great is our pain that we cannot even perform the true rites of memorial prayer
for the pure souls of the victims of murder in absence of full data on the
names of our loved ones.
Our description of the outstanding personalities of the city does not dim the
glory of the masses who, in their honest simplicity, infused Dąbrowa Jewry
with their down-to-earth nature and character. In this book, neither the
weekday Jew with his “Milei D'Alma” – worldly discourse – nor the
Shabbat Jew in his silk caftan with his “Milei D'Shmaya” – discourse
of Heaven – will be neglected. The coachmen, the porters, and the drawers of
water have all disappeared and are no more. But their shades walk with us
through each and every line of the hundreds of pages of this book.
In delivering this book to the people of Dąbrowa in Israel and wherever they
may be, we are unveiling the monument which it was incumbent upon us to erect
upon the family grave of our beloved parents, brothers and sisters of Dąbrowa
Górnicza – and it is fitting that we construct this monument in the free and
independent State of Israel.
Magnified and sanctified be the name of the Jewish Community of Dąbrowa, and
may He who maketh peace in His high places grant peace unto us, unto our land
unto all the People of Israel. Blessed be the memory of the community.
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