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[Page 145]
by Penina Biran
Translated by Jerrold Landau
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My revered father Reb Yitzchak–Meir Richter of blessed memory was the youngest son of an honorable family of Ger Hassidim. He arrived in Chorzele as a young lad, as the son–in–law of Reb Feivel Lichtensztajn of blessed memory, a G–d fearing scholar, one of the city notables and leaders, who served as the head of the community for 30 consecutive years. My revered father quickly blended in to his new environment. He would attend the shtibel, was a regular studier of Gemara, and befriended the fine young men of the town, especially with the one who would in the future become the well–known Rabbi Graubard.
Father was only married to his first wife for a few years, until she died. (She died after childbirth, leaving behind two babies, the youngest ten days old.) After some time, he married my future mother Naomi, of the Przysusker family, a refined woman with a boundless good heart. My dear mother died in her prime, leaving my father alone to bear the yoke of raising and educating the children, in addition to the yoke of his many businesses.
My father prepared to make aliya to the Land of Israel in 1938, and even began the preparations. However, in the interim, the sky clouded over, the Second World War was about to begin, and all plans were thwarted. Father was forced to leave Chorzele in July 1939 along with his daughter Fruma and his granddaughter. When the war broke out, he brought the rest of his family out of Chorzele. However, this too was to no avail, for the hand of the enemy reached them even in the distant place, where they were all murdered.
The following people perished in the Holocaust along with Father: my intelligent brother Motel, and his wife of valor Yocheved; my beautiful, intelligent sister Dvora; my young, talented sister Fruma, who was always full of grace and joy of live. We, the family in Israel (David, Yehuda, Penina, Yeshayahu) and our families will always preserve their memories in our hearts.
May their souls be bound in the bonds of eternal life.
[Page 146]
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by Henry Adler
Translated by Jerrold Landau
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I am the son of Wolf Adler of Chorzele. My grandfather Reb Moshe–Shimon was the cantor and shochet [ritual slaughterer] in that town.
I was born in London, where I was raised and educated. However, I felt an internal impetus to travel to Poland after the Second World War, to see with my own eyes the town of my father and that of my mother (Miedzyrzec), in the hope that perhaps I would find some survivors of their families.
From Warsaw, I traveled first to Miedzyrzec, where I discovered a relative name Fiszbajn. He was one of the three Jews who I found at that time in the town, which had 1,400 Jews before the war. I traveled to Chorzele the next day.
When I arrived in the town, I immediately asked where it would be possible to find Jews. I was told, “There are no Jews here.” I went to the cemetery, and found it completely destroyed. Nevertheless, I placed flowers on the site and recited kaddish. Then I went around the streets of the town, and, with weak knees, went to see the house in which my family had lived. I also approached the river to look at it, for my father told me that they would often go there to bathe…
The house in which my grandfather had lived was abandoned and desolate. I went up to the attic and began to search through the remains, for perhaps I might find something. Indeed, I found a piece of linen from a nightgown. I said in my heart, “Perhaps this is from one of my family members. I will take it as a souvenir.” I guard the piece of linen and the photographs that I took during my visit as an eternal souvenir.
I saw the great destruction of Polish Jewry in the two towns in which my parents were born and raised. Since that time, my heart was further attracted to those two towns. Perhaps I will visit them again.
[Page 148]
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by Moshe Baharab
Translated by Jerrold Landau
It seemed that all the residents of Chorzele were Jews. Even the few gentiles that I remembered there spoke Yiddish. I remember one gentile, a border guard named Wronski, who would come to my parents' store and speak fluent Yiddish. He came to the Land with the Polish Army during the Second World War and visited us in our home. I took him on a comprehensive tour of the Land. Tears came to the eyes of the “gentile” when he visited Kibbutz Yagur. He wept with actual tears even when he left the Land with the Polish Army. This man had a “Jewish heart,” and when he expressed the name Chorzele, it seemed to me that he was referring solely to the Jews of Chorzele at that moment.
In November 1948, at the end of the attack, and before the storming of an Arab village in the Galilee[1], three of us Chorzele natives sat and discussed – about what? Of course, about Chorzele. I recalled one Simchat Torah evening in the town in the home of Moshe–Aharon Gabiazda (after he had married a very young woman). We recalled the songs of Zion that we sang in that house, and the discussions about Mizrachi and Zionism that took place in that house. We also talked about the members of Agudas Yisroel, who at that time were very active against Zionism and against the vision of the establishment of the State of Israel.
On the other hand, we recalled the speeches of M. M. Frajdman (my teacher in the cheder) who was the head of the Jewish National Fund in Chorzele. He spoke enthusiastically about the Land of Israel, and all his dreams were only about the Land of Israel. How much would this man had given to merit to see natives of Chorzele among the first ranks of the fighters for the Land of Israel.
The aforementioned discussion, which started with intimate silence, turned into a general conversation after half an hour. All the Yemenites and Sephardim in my brigade (of which I was a commander in the Israel Defense Forces) listened to it with great interest, and they could not pronounce the difficult name “Chorzele” under any circumstances. However, when we meet at times, they all remember the town in which I was born. They know its name, and know that our teachers and counselors were among those pure, faithful people in the towns of the Diaspora who dreamed throughout their entire lives of the establishment of the state, but did not merit to see it.
[Page 150]
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[Page 151]
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Deep pits, red clay – I once had a home.
Spring – the orchards would bloom,
Year after year passes,
There lie my brothers,
Deep pits, red clay – |
| Sh. Halkin |
Translator's Footnote
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