[Pages 191-192]

Small was “Kolonia Izaaka”. She was never accorded a place on the map of the world. And in vain would we look for her now. Indeed the Nazis took pains to obliterate her from the face of the earth.

Even so, they did not succeed. The few sparks that remain of this little village continue to illuminate the darkness of her past…

I was five when my parents uprooted and immigrated with their daughters to the land of our forefathers, in the year 1935. In the years that followed I didn't find in myself the courage to confess my sin: my shame in revealing to anyone that I was a daughter of the “Kolonia”. To those who inquired as to the place of my birth, I was accustomed to answering that I was born in Bialystok. I held on to this with great authority, because I didn't have the strength to reveal my secrets.

Now I confess: A daughter of “Kolonia Izaaka” am I!

The little village rises from the mists of oblivion and demands to be brought to life again, and suddenly here I am on the “main” street. Indeed she only had one street – there were no side streets. Two lines of trees upright along her single street; upright as the Jews who lived in their shade – a tree in front of each house. The entire village was bathed in green.

Atop the surrounding hills spread forests on the horizon, shrouded in mist. I always had a vague fear looking at them; my parents used to tell us about the goyim that lived in them. I was tiny at the time, but the word goy would already give me a shudder.

A special smell would waft from the house of Vicenty– the only gentile neighbor I remember well.

The residents of the single road of the “Kolonia” – not the few gentiles that lived on it – are the ones who sank their stamp into the village. Great Jews lived in it, whose roots grasped deeply in the earth, and whose eyes were always lifted to their Father in Heaven. With the sweat of their brow they brought forth bread from the earth. They plowed their fields, planted, harvested and tended their fruit. In their calloused hands, every clod of earth became a flowering garden of delight. Those same hands held the siddur, and they prayed to God with complete faith that their crops may flourish.

I am reminded of the green meadow, where Father, may his memory be a blessing, used to transport our fruit. I loved to accompany Father, to pluck a blade of sorrel with which to stretch out on the grass. I would listen hours upon hours to Father's stories about the wars of Nikolai the Second, wondrous stories of battles that I could not understand.

In my imagination I stroll down the single road of “Kolonia” and see the Jews. They mix together in my brain; only a few would I know to call by name. But they are so close to me.

Here is old Chaneh-Bashe. She wasn't a relative of mine, but I was born on the day her mother died and I was thus called by her name. I loved her and my lot was good. She would hide sugar cubes for me in her white apron, and she would give them to me when I would pass by her house. She would also tuck away slices of white bread that she brought me from Sokolka. And she loved to tell me the stories of ghosts and goblins that she knew so well.

We used to come to her house in the long winter nights when my mother and father would go to Sokolka to sell their produce. I am reminded of the good deed she would do for us on stormy nights, when lightning and thunder streaked across the dark of the sky. She would lay us all down – six girls – in her wide bed, and read us Krias Hashema. She kept a special prayer for times like those, and we were commanded to repeat after her word for word. In vain would we now look for that prayer in a siddur.

Many days I spent eagerly watching for the same wagon in the distance. And as soon as it appeared, we children would run from far off to greet it. In that wagon my dear parents returned, bringing from Sokolka all sorts of good things – herring, bagels and more.

But there were days when the road concealed a mysterious terror. That would be upon hearing the din of an automobile: all of us, the little ones and the big ones alike, would run for our lives indoors and lock the door. Only when the car would disappear would we race out to study the tracks its wheels left deep in the dust of the road. We feared lest the eye of this “demon” behold us.

Before our departure for Eretz Yisrael, with the first light of dawn, the entire village got up and came to accompany us. Everyone walked the Sokolka road, plodding along after the horse-drawn wagon, which held all the members of our family with our possessions.

In remembering my “Kolonia”, dear Liba comes to mind – my cousin and age-mate. In the last evening when we parted from you all, my dears, the two of us disappeared from the crowd and went out to sit alone on the steps of the house. We sat there sadly and prayed.

It was a simple life of great people on that single road that was called “Kolonia Izaaka.”

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