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In the year 1916, I was a student at the Rabbinical Seminary in Vilna. Despite the various dispensations that were in place to excuse students of theology in the country of Austria, I was compelled, by law, to enlist in the army, although I enlisted a year late.

As was the case with many others, I decided not to get near to the war, in which the sparks of Aryan racism were already evident and that were already shooting about in Germany at the hands of the then Chief of Staff, General Ludendorff, a partner of the Satan, Hitler, ימ”ש.

According to the law of the land, anyone who avoided military service during wartime, was exposed to placing his life at risk in the most severe manner possible, because the law said, in this regard: anyone who deliberately avoids enlistment, or military service during wartime, his sentence will be death or life imprisonment at hard labor.

I did not enlist on time for a number of reasons. A) I wanted to complete my studies. B) Despite the ardent patriotism of the Jews of Galicia, toward Franz Joseph, I didn't find it appropriate to sacrifice myself on the altar of strangers, that is to say, non-Jews. Specifically, I relied on the words of Our Sages, who said: Anything for the benefit of the wicked is bad for the righteous (Psakhim, 103). And being that the ally of the good Emperor was an anti-Semite, who hated the Jews, Kaiser Wilhelm [sic: II], I didn't see any value for Jews to help the German nation win the war by putting their lives on the line.

As was usual, those who transgressed in this respect were brought before a field tribunal (Feldgericht in local language). The field tribunal for my area was in the city of Sziget.

On one clear day, I was handcuffed, and two armed soldiers transported me to the previously mentioned court.

I waited in the gigantic corridor of the building, until I was called to appear before the judges. In the meantime, hours went by, and the pounding of my heart did not stop for a minute, due to my fear of the sentence.

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I saw, in the courtyard, how they were escorting soldiers who had been sentenced to death, being taken out for execution. I was almost certain that I would be sentenced to this punishment, however, from the minute that I entered the hall of the court house, some sort of premonition seized me, and I felt some sort of lightening of the pressure in my soul, and to this day, I cannot give myself an explanation of this feeling.

Twelve officers sat in judgement with an aged general at their head.

The Chairman asks me: Why have you not enlisted on time? Are you unaware of the severe penalty that the law imposes on deserters?

With tears in my eyes, I replied: ‘Excellence! After I read ‘Die Liebes Leiden des Jungen Werthers,’ by Goethe, I sank into the world of romance, a world where everything was good, and I completely forgot that there was another world, that is to say, the real world, practical, a world in which people kill each other without knowing for what or why.’

My answer made such an impression on the old general to the point that he began to smile (it appears, that at that moment, he remembered himself as a young man, and what he did), and in the midst of his remarks, was transformed from a prosecutor to a defender, tuning to his colleagues and saying: we see here before us a matter regarding a person who is yet immature. It is my thought, in this regard, to lighten the sentence to the extent that is possible. He ordered me to leave the room, and after a quarter of an hour, they summoned me to hear their sentence.

It is interesting that, the emotion that took hold of me at the moment I entered the corridor of the court building, did not betray me. The court handed down a sentence as follows:

“Sie werden verurteilt zu zwei Monate Kerker. Jedoch im Falle ein tüchtiges verhaltens vor dem Feinde, wird Ihnen die Strafe teilweis oder gänzlich nachgesehen.”

“We sentence you to two months of imprisonment, on condition, that in the instance of distinguishing yourself in the face of the enemy, the command is given the discretion to set the sentence aside, either in part, or completely.”

As you can understand, I endeavored to be a good soldier, and a model in my appointment. However, this was only in an office setting, and not at the front, and I was lucky in two respects: A) That year, I received an amnesty from the sentence, B) And this is the core, thanks to God, I successfully was able to get out of the hell that was called The First World War, heathy and whole.

There is an expression in the Province of Galicia, that “Strife is borne to the point until one's ear is torn off.”

Chaimchi was hidden for a period of time, until one fine day, he was nabbed, and thrown into jail., and on the morning, was taken that popular place in Vienna which was a center for the production of cannon fodder.

This place was a primary ‘Musterungsamt,’ and was located in the third level of the ‘Landstrass-Hauptstrasse.’

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The commission consisted of senior officers headed by a doctor, who in Chaim'l's eyes appeared to be no minor anti-Semite.

The doctor examined Chaimchi, and palpated him with sullen eyes, touching him here, there, and concluded shortly and sharply ‘eligible,’ meaning that he was fit to become one of Froyim-Yossel's soldiers.

Chaim immediately became a solder in the land of soldiers, with a feather and patriotic medallions in his headgear, singing along such German military songs as ‘How beautiful are the girls of 17 and 18 years of age.’

Chaim was trained in the art of killing people for a month, and he was assigned to a company that was scheduled to be sent to the Italian front.

From the first minute on, Chaim'l gained favor in the eyes of his commandant, who was a Jew with the secular name of Dr. Epstein, a Viennese lawyer, and a very refined person.

A day before Chaim'l marched away to the front, he received a six-hour liberty in order to make his farewells with his family and friends.

His mother, Faiga Ruchama, with her younger children, in the meantime had been sent back to their home that had been liberated from the Russians, and in Vienna, there only remained those whose homes were still occupied by the enemy, or had been entirely burned down.

In the middle of the night, the military transport, in which Chaim'l found himself, chugged off to the front in the direction of Italy, to the sounds of a military orchestra, and patriotic exhortations, from Evangelical, Catholic and Jewish clergy, and with cries of ‘Hurrah’ being shouted.

The railroad track led to the Italian city of Udine, which was occupied by Austrian troops.

From Udine forward, everything had been torn up, burned and laid waste by the operations of the war which were being carried out by hostile armies.

From the city of Udine to the front, was a walk of ten to twelve kilometers, which had to be done on foot, thereby having to withstand great danger.

Rifle and cannon shells whistled over the heads of the marching soldiers, and not only one of the unfortunate was left lying with a head that was split open, and didn't even live long enough to see the real front.

Chaim'l fell sick out of fear from the very first ‘report’ that he heard, coming from the other side of the front, getting a severe diarrhea, a disease called ‘Dysentery,’ which was highly contagious, and therefore it was necessary to send him back to the city of Udine, to be treated at the local hospital there.

In the meantime, the military situation on the western front got worse, and gradually, everyone was evacuated to the east.

To Chaim'l's good fortune, after having been in the hospital for less than two weeks, the turn came for his hospital to be evacuated eastward.

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There was a so-called ‘epidemic-hospital’ in the shtetl of Lubaczow, which was merely seven kilometers from Chaim'l's birthplace, where soldiers were treated from all of the fronts who had contracted all variety of contagious diseases, typhus, cholera, dysentery, and others.

Chaim'l, with his good sense, understood that were he fortunate enough to be admitted to this hospital, it may become possible for him to survive the war.

Some special Providence followed Chaim'l when he found himself in need, and almost at the last minute a salvation came to him.

He thought through and reasoned in such a way, that the chief doctor had to send him for further treatment, and specifically to this hospital which was so close to his home.

Chaimchi was not mistaken, there was an order. that all of the soldiers who were in the present hospital and had returned to good health, were forbidden from returning to the front, but they, as ‘immunized,’ meaning that they who could no longer contract the contagious disease, should be used as nurses or other jobs among those soldiers who were ill from epidemic diseases, who were send to be cured here on a daily basis.

Chaim'l immediately became a fairly important member of the hospital staff.

As an assigned officer in the hospital chancellery, he served his Emperor ‘Kira’ until the bitter war ended, and the legendary ‘Kira-Empire’ ceased to exist.

The news of the establishment of the Polish ‘Rzeczpospolita’ had the same effect on the spirit of the Galitzianer Jew as a sudden ‘eclipse of the sun’ on a fine clear summer day.

The mood of the Jews in Galicia was altered immediately, and they began to think of themselves as a sort of lower lass relative, which the higher class community had distanced itself and segregated itself, and this new coterie of uncultured sorts were not to their taste, and was beneath their dignity as someone with whom to associate, especially as regards the unfamiliarity and distance between their culture and way of life.

The best definition of the emotional and physical transfer of the Jews of Galicia to their new Polish country was given by R' Shlomo'leh the Dayan's.

Some beautiful exchange we've made, R' Shlomo'leh argued in front of the Master of the Universe in the Bet HaMedrash.

Dear Sweet Father, you took away Prague and gave us Krasznik, we lost Budapest and found Frampol, bargained away Vienna with the Emperor, and acquired Chelm with her well known ‘sages^[1].’

Truthfully, the Galitzianer Jews were, in the initial period, not satisfied with the exchange, and this was for

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many reasons that are superfluous to reiterate.

The foremost reason is, that even before ‘Jasza’ felt like the legitimate owner of the Galician Province, he immediately showed what he is capable of, one little pogrom giving way to a second, a Jew suddenly lost his personal name, and for Jasza, ‘hate’ became the collective name for all the Jews.

In the newly established Poland, there was no other name for a Jew other than ‘Parszywy Zydze.’ It was then that the Jews understood, what wise men had once said: ‘Better to be the tail of a lion, than the head of a fox.’

The loving ‘Jaszas’ not only didn't let the Jews be a ‘head,’ they spared no effort to bar the way to them from even being a tiny tail.

On the day that the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated, our hero Chaimchi found himself at his daily work.

Not grasping what was going on outside the hospital, Chaim'l attempted to exit the through the great gate, as he was used to doing every early morning, to take part in the little Bet HaMedrash for soldiers, which was on the second side of the street, as a center for a minyan.

How great was his astonishment, upon seeing a group of young gentile hooligans in civilian clothes, old rifles on their shoulders, with red and white insignias on their helmets, drunk as Lot^[2], staggering along with uncertain steps, and drawing closer to him.

Not asking any questions, they tore off the Imperial Insignia from Chaim'l's soldier's hat, and at the same moment, pinned on a white-red ribbon with a metal eagle, which, with his sullen, murderous stare, stabbed Chaim'l through the heart.

Chaim'l's healthy instinct immediately set him on the right course, he immediately oriented himself to the real situation, reacting with a favorable look to this unfriendly act, sticking his hand into the hands of each gentile individually, and with a seemingly satisfied little smile, blurting out a hearty ‘Czesc Bracia^[3]’ with the addendum of ‘Niech zjye Polska.’

This lucky thought really did save Chaim'l from a variety of troubles, that other Jewish soldiers had to put up with in the first days of transition.

[At this point} Chaim'l no longer sought to go into the little Bet HaMedrash, turning himself about to the barracks with their Polish insignias, quickly entering his room, packing up his bit of impoverished belongings, and with quick strides, left the last of the Austrian territory on the way to his birthplace in the shtetl of Cieszanow.

Entering the shtetl in full uniform, excepting that instead of the old Austrian markings, wearing the Polish white eagle, he was received with great respect by the local residents, they were taking pride in the fact that

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Chaimchi was, so to speak, a good Polish patriot.

He found great favor in their eyes, personally, he seldom felt their brutal animosity as did the other town Jews.

The took great pride in him, and treated him like he was one of their own, saying to him, in very sincere terms, that it was truly a shame that he was a Jew, and simultaneously, using various forms of compliments and flattery, demonstrated to him that they did not detest him.

This was the way Chaim'l managed to stroll through World War I.

In 1914, Chaim'l left behind a well-to-do home, which was aristocratic, with all good things, but when he returned in 1918 to his home, he didn't find any home, only a wreck, a desolation.

From all of the houses in the shtetl, among them Ruchama's houses, almost nothing remained, burned down, wrecked – everything lay in a heap of garbage.

Only with strenuous effort, was Chaim'l able to clean out a room in one of Ruchama's houses, in which she had lived with her children, and also served a s a guest room in the saloon residence house.

Thanks to Chaim'l's good relationship with the new Polish gentry, he was able to obtain a license from the new constabulary for his mother's businesses.

In this little room, they began to live as if from the beginning, in new effects, with new furnishings, with new laws, and with new people, who were spiritually alien to the Jews.

The condition of the Jews became catastrophic, various epidemic diseases ran rampant, and the resistance of the ill to disease grew weaker with every passing day because of the great hunger which reigned in the Jewish homes.

The larger portion lived nearly in the streets, under the open sky, and were it not for the immediate aid by the ‘Joint’ from America, which became visible in the Galitzianer Jewish homes after the war, the larger part of the Jewish populace would have perished.

Also the relationship between the Galitzianer Jews and their new Polish neighbors were not very normal.

The larger part of the Polish populace, immediately from the first minute of the transfer of power, manifested a bestial and sadistic hatred toward the Jewish part of the citizenry whom they had taken over in their Austrian legacy, and the more the Jew strove to align himself to the new situation, to serve his newly found fatherland, and to be a good and decent son of Poland, the new rulers pushed them away brutally, insulted them, encumbered their economic position, and from time to time, honored them with a bit of a pogrom.

Up to the San River, Galicia did not officially belong to Poland, despite this, when the Polish-Ukrainian War broke out, and the Poles did not in concert mobilize the young Jewish boys, also not from the part of Galicia that belonged to them, the larger part of the young boys did not protest, but like good loyal Polish

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citizens, they took part in liberating all of Galicia up to the Prut River.

Also, Chaim'l did not protest when his local Polish comrades took him out of his house in the middle of the night, and with a group of Jewish youths, transported him over to the self-same barracks in the shtetl of Lubaczow, in which Chaim'l had just finished World War I just five weeks before.

To tell the truth, his new-found military colleagues related very well to him.

They permitted him to retain the rank that he had brought with him from the Austrian army, even honoring him by giving him [a promotion to] a higher rank, handling him with great tolerance, almost like one of their own.

The one-time Yeshiva boy immediately extracted himself from his former German cultural circle, in which he was sunken with head and feet as if in the 49 gates of uncleanliness, immediately orienting himself in the new reality, and with his acute temperament took to ‘Mickiewicz-Sienkiewicz^[4]’ and in a short time, he became a ‘Pole of the Mosaic faith’ with all the i's dotted and t's crossed.

His gentile friends derived great pleasure and satisfaction from him.

At every opportunity, they boasted about ‘Nasz Chaimczu,’ and put him forward as a model before the general, who had organized the assault on the Ukrainians, in which Chaim'l's division took part.

On a certain Friday at nighttime, about twelve o'clock, a trumpet alarm [sic: bugle call] sounded through the barracks, mixed in with [the sounds of] rain and storm.

Outside is a darkness like the plague sent at Pharaoh's time, wet, cold and dank. A chill cuts through the bones of everyone standing in rows with all their gear.

The general holds forth with a patriotic speech, the well known song ‘Jeszcze Polska^[5]’ is sung, and an immediate order [is issued]: ‘March.’

The assault against the Haidamak bands, under the leadership of the Bandit [Semyon] Petlura, who brought tragedy, had begun.

The stalwarts of Petlura demonstrated their might, but only against unarmed and innocent Jews, but when these big heroes, and even bigger anti-Semites, heard the first shot from the opposing side, they would scatter like mice, and take out their anger on the innocent Jews.

Chaim'l was so strongly taken up with what his own eyes had seen, and despite the fact that his own Poles were not exactly righteous people, they also beat Jews and cut off Jewish beards, robbed and abused, but it didn't begin to compare to the deeds of the barbaric Ukrainians.

Not that, God forbid, ‘Jasza’ loved the Jew any more than ‘Nikita,’ but simply for the reason that many Jews

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were serving in the Polish army, and it was not always that ‘Jasza’ could do with a Jew what his befouled heart urged him to do, if he was in the presence of a Jewish officer, noncom, or even plain soldier.

In every eastern Galician shtetl occupied by the Poles, the first objective was, instead of searching out spies and Ukrainian gangs who fought against them with arms in hand, was to search Jewish homes for so-called illegal merchandise.

During such searches, the ‘troublemakers,’ ימ”ש would confiscate everything that begins with ‘A,’ ‘A silver Sabbath candlestick,’ ‘A Hanukkah Menorah,’ ‘A covering,’ ‘A fur coat,’ and similar things.

After such a search in the shtetl of Kalisz, Chaim'l's comrades stole everything from the Rosenbaum family that they could lay their hands on.

Blood dripped in Chaim'l's heart, when he was passing by and he had to witness what was being done with his brethren.

Not being able to control himself, out of great frustration, he threw himself at the three gentile hooligan soldiers, and with an authoritative shout drove them out of the Jewish saloon.

A similar incident happened to Chaim'l marching with his division on the road between Stanislaw and Kolomyja.

In a village they were passing by, a Jew was standing and harnessing his horse in the field.

A soldier, who could not tolerate the fact that a Jew could own his own horse, left the marching division, and specifically wanted to forcibly take the horse away from the Jew.

The Polish hooligan, however, encountered a Jew who was obdurate, who resisted vigorously, and in the midst of this, Chaim'l noted what took place, not thinking, he went with a pennant to the ‘war hero’ and gave him a not insubstantial whack across his filthy mouth, and in this way, he rescued the Jewish horse which was perhaps the last [possession] that the Jew had.

During all this time, Chaim'l had one plea to The Master of the Universe, that he should be able to take vengeance upon Petlura's bands.

The lust for vengeance was not derived from his love of the opposing side, but rather from hatred of Haman.

In that era, the Polish anti-Semites, with the ‘Haller’ faction and the ‘Poznan’ factions at their head, appeared almost as Tzadikkim in the eyes of the Jews, in comparison to the wild and murderous ‘Petlura’ bands.

The Jewish-Polish soldiers had an expression that cholera is worse than typhus, and this was truly the right definition and assessment of the situation of trying to refrain from engaging one's self with the two new sets of neighbors in Galicia, in relation to the Jews.

It was in this condition that Chaim'l marched day in and day out, into a village, out of a city, and his heart broke, observing the destruction heaped on the Jews which both parties strove to deepen and enlarge.

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He saw so much evil with his own eyes, hatred, brutality, and barbarity, that this refined and genteel young man was transformed into a beast thirsting for vengeance.

He thought to himself – Oy, Master of the Universe, if such a Petlura beast would fall into my hand, I would take my revenge on him for the innocent Jewish blood that has been spilled.

Chaim'l lucked out in the shtetl of Kosow and was able to get his hands on such a Petlura beast.

In his chancellery, which was found in the house of the local family, Kez, a soldier armed with a gun always stood at a post.

As it happened, on the day that the incident took place, a Jewish soldier from Chaim'l's town of birth was on the post.

The soldier, known throughout the entire company by the name ‘Elali,’ was small and thing, more uniform than flesh, with his hat always down over his eyes, the rifle almost double the length of himself.

On that day, a gentile hooligan, of sizeable stature, fat, broad as Og, the King of Bashan, with a wild, unkempt forelock, attempted to enter Chaim'l's room.

In response to the question posed by ‘Elali’ at the post, as to what he wanted, he got a punch in the ribs from the gentile hooligan, and without asking, burst into Chaim'l's chancellery.

Entering – he requested from Chaim'l a ‘passport’ to be able to travel to the fair at Kolomyja, not grasping that before him was also a Jew, thinking that he had before him a pure Pole, relying on Chaim'l's Aryan features.

The Ukrainian follower of Petlura exudes a cynicism in front of Chaim'l, and simultaneously mocks the ‘Zyd’ that stands at his post, who had wanted to bar his way from entering the chancellery to Chaim'l. and with what strength he assaulted the Parszywy Zyd, and gave his a good shot in the ribs.

The gentile hooligan had not yet finished his nervy description, when the soldier ‘Elali’ entered Chaim'l's room, his face, which was no bigger than a tiny bouquet, white as chalk, the gentile hooligan gestures arrogantly towards him.

‘Here is the Zyd, and envelopes himself with a pleasant laughter, Ha…Ha…Ha…’

At that moment, ‘Elali’ wanted to tell the seated Chaim'l about the incident, but it was no longer necessary for him to do so.

Chaim'l immediately oriented himself towards what was taking place here.

Chaim'l's first act was to lock the door, so that the bird does not fly away, ordering ‘Elali’ to call in two soldiers to assist, and that they should bring along a leather ‘nagaika.^[6]’

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The Petlura bandit was bound hand and foot, thrown on the ground, the two Polish soldiers – themselves gentiles, held him firmly by the head and the feet, and Elali received an order from Chaim'l to administer twenty five lashes to the gentile hooligan's bare bottom.

The two Polish goons, not satisfied with Elali's weak blows, requested permission from Chaim'l to deal with this beast.

The Pole, with his entire might, and beastly murderousness, counted out twenty five lashes anew.

The Petlura bandit no longer was able to get out on his own two feet, and the two gentiles carried him out into the street, ordering a peasant who happened to be conveniently standing not far away, with his wagon, to convey the gentile hooligan to the train station, and from there he was transported to the well-known Lemberger ‘Brigidas^[7],’ from where, it appears, he did not survive to emerge.

In the meantime, the Poles occupied the entire area, meaning the vicinity of ‘Kosow – Kolomyja – Zhabe,’ the corner of Eastern Galicia up to the Rumanian border city of ‘Wizniec’ beside the Czeremosz River.

Chaim'l, with his company, wandered about the high mountains around Kosow and Zhabe.

This area reminded Chaim'l of the legendary persona of the Baal-Shem-Tov, who some two hundred years before, had also wandered here like him, eating polenta and milk.

The mountains, the forests, the beasts, and separately the people, look, in reality as if they were created for a Hasidic-mystical life.

Even the so-called village ‘guralehs,’ with their broad round fur-covered hats on their heads, and thick white woolen coats, with small, almost bursting close-fitting pants, which they wear all year round, even during

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the hottest summer months, their ‘kibitkas^[8],’ and especially their primitiveness, everything taken together – the local Jews in their integrity and modest lives, conjures the natural picture of the times of the BESH”T.

The clear sky, the houses are also identical to the ones in the Cabalistic city of Safed, it appears that the sacred teachings of the ‘Holy AR”I^[9]’ who had studied them with the residents of Safed two centuries ago, were later studied by the BESH”T with his Hasidim in the towns of Kosow-Kuty which lie deeply imbedded in the sacred hills located there.

A Jew who is well-versed in the Kabbalah, can see here, as well as there, with only a good look from his eyes, how angels, the souls of the righteous, and all the other saints, clamber about in those heavens so full of mysticism.

It is not for nothing that the Holy BESH”T selected this vicinity for his labor on behalf of The Creator.

The BESH”T like atmosphere of the area made a strong impression on Chaim'l, and in the meantime, he forgot that apart from being a Hasid influenced by the BESH”T, he was also a Polish officer.

Secondly, he was sunken into a trance of higher worlds, Kabbalah, and mystical dreams.

On a nice winter's day, descending from a such a mountain, imbued with the spirit of the BESH”T, in a sleigh, the driver, at a curve, made a strong turn to the left side, at the point when the horse was at full gallop, and he couldn't hold them back, and at that same moment, the sleigh capsized, and people, along with the horse, rolled down the side of the hill with an enormous amount of force, not being able to separate themselves, either from the sleigh, or from the horse, which rolled together as a single unit, with the single destination of falling with a violent force for several hundred meters into the deep Czeremosz River.

In this critical moment, when Chaim was threatened with danger to his life, and when it was a t a point, which he thought of at the time, that there was only a little hope that he would remain alive, in his thoughts, he pleaded for himself, that the good will of the BESH”T be with him.

And, indeed, the good will of the Tzaddik indeed by him.

As if by command, the sleigh slammed into a telegraph pole, which stood in its way.

Chaim, instinctively sensed that it was now or never, and with both hands, grabbed onto the telegraph pole with the last of his strength, and remained hanging in such a position in mid air.

Behind him, in the meantime, the sleigh, with the horse, together with the driver, fell the hundred meters deep, with a violent shudder, into the river that laid in their way.

Nothing further was seen other than several eddies of water that was churned up. and everything together vanished into the cold deep river forever.

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Chaim, the only one to come back alive from this catastrophe, got banged up severely during the time that he wrapped his hands around the telegraph pole, and specifically, he banged up his head, and because of this, he fell into a deep faint, drenched in blood, and he lay in a deep sleep lying on the snow-covered road between heaven and earth.

At this moment, Chaim'l thought that before him stood a very radiant-looking Jew, wearing a white kaftan, with a gartel bound around his loins, half shoes with long white socks, with the face of an angel, and he presses on his head with his soft, skillful hands, and murmurs something of a prayer.

Chaim'l hears, as if the Jew is praying with an intonation, and says I, ‘Israel ben Hodel’ decree that Chaim ben Faiga Ruchama shall remain alive, and that health should be restored to him soon.

And lying so – Chaim'l sees how this holy Tzaddik suddenly wipes him across the eyes with his right hand, and Chaim'l sees how he stands besides an enormously large table of ice and snow.

On the table, there stands a fiery set of scales, with two gigantically large deep plates.

On the right plate, in fiery letters, are etched the letters of the word, ‘Zchus’ and on the left plate the word ‘Khova.’^[10]

Near the scales lies an old and thick volume, ravaged by age, with yellowed pages.

Opposite the scales, the old man sits, still looking very fresh and healthy, with red cheeks, and a long white beard, with two large penetrating black eyes.

From his shoulders, two large white wings emerge.

A small angel shakes out – immediately onto the right scale dish, immediately onto the left scale dish, white, red, fiery small round beads.

The right scale immediately pulls down – so the angel adds from the red beads to the left plate, – and the left plate pulls over because of the weight.

And so the game proceeds back and forth.

First the right side of the scale up, and the left down, then the left up and the right down, and then the reverse.

In the meantime, Chaim'l's head is splitting from the pain, he sees and thinks, but he can't apprehend, and he wants to cry out – but he cannot.

Soon, he perceives that a small white angel has come, riding on a small horse, and approached the scale with a great haste, where the good deeds and transgressions were being weighed out.

The little angle dismounts from the horse like a bolt of lightning, grabbed it, and flung it into the right side

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dish of the fiery scale.

In that blink of an eye, a great rejoicing occurs around the table of ice.

Chaim'l hears, how the old man with the white beard calls out in a loud voice, which rang like the reverberations of an orchestra:

Chaim ben Faiga Ruchama – to Life!

At that minute, Chaim'l opened his eyes, and saw that he found himself clean and fresh in a bed, a doctor and a nurse in white uniforms – with a variety of vials in their hands, gauze, cotton and bandages, – they are winding it around him, and are occupied in binding his wounds.

The doctor asks Chaim how the catastrophe with the sleigh took place.

Instead of answering the doctor's question, Chaim'l asks that the Baal Shem Tov, R' Israel ben Hodel be sent in to him.

He must – he says – talk with him.

Chaim'l's body is burning like a furnace, and he says further to the doctor that he wants to ask the Baal Shem Tov who was the small angel with the tiny horse, who added for him to the right side of the scale, and because of this, cause the scale to tip in favor of life.

Chaim– lying ill with a forty degree [sic: Celsius] fever, received an injection from the doctor with a narcotic, and the sick Chaim'l immediately fell into a sleep, and once again saw the same Baal Shem Tov, R' Israel.

Now, Chaim'l thought, he must reveal the secret which weighed so heavily upon his soul.

Tell me – Holy BESH”T….

The Baal Shem Tov cuts off the remainder of Chaim'l's remark, and it seems to Chaim'l that the BESH”T is cramming an esrog into his mouth, and because of this, he cannot get out even a single word.

But the saint does not leave Chaim'l, he tells and reminds him of the day ten months earlier, when he and his company marched past a village between Stanislaw and Kolomyja, and a Polish soldier from his division saw fit to steal a horse from that Jew, who was grazing it in the field.

The BESH”T coughs slightly – and you, Chaim'l literally were prepared to give your life away – a solitary Jew among an entire band of Polish anti-Semites, and you put your life on the line, saving the horse, from which the poor village Jew earned a living to feed his wife and six little children.

And, the holy Baal Shem Tov said with a sigh, had you, God forbid, not performed this great mitzvah, that Jew, his wife, and their six children would have perished from hunger.

In the sacred book of the kabbalah, the Zohar, it is written, the holy Baal Shem says further to Chaim, that He who sits on high, punishes and rewards man measure for measure, that means – said the Baal Shem Tov,

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adding in his own beloved Ruthenian tongue, ‘kakoi rabotu – takoi ploto,’ and you, Chaim'l have to your credit, a good ‘rabotu,’ despite the fact that you found yourself in danger, your life, at that time, literally was hanging by a hair.

At the time when they were weighing and measuring your sins and good deeds, in the two dishes of the scales, they swung up and down, down and up, almost equal, and the Heavenly Court Above could not decide whether guilty or innocent.

Know then, Chaim'l – that in that critical, and for you dangerous moment, that tiny, beautiful angel came flying on your behalf, riding on the little horse, which at that time, you had rescued from the Poles' hands.

This little, good angel, not asking questions of anyone, threw the little horse into the dish marked for ‘benefit,’ the right side dish, which with difficulty, like an arrow from a bow, buckled and descended downwards.

It is thanks to this ‘Little Horse’ that it was ruled that you should live.

I assure you Chaim'l, the Baal Shem Tov, adds further, that you will soon get well, and you will be released from gentile hands.

At that precise moment, Chaim'l opened his eyes, it was a cold, wintry, dry, sunny day, with a covering of icy frost on the windows.

The fever vanished suddenly, and for the first time since the incident, Chaim'l felt good and fresh.

The nurse immediately came to his side, to his bed, with a small sweet smile on her Polish lips, a glass of warm milk in her hand, and with a pious religious emotion, asked Chaim'l the meaning of the word ‘Pshem?’ which you did not let go from your mouth during all the time you had the great fever.

Chaim thought to himself, go explain to a gentile Polish woman a story involving the BESH”T.

In order to get her away, he told her that it wasn't ‘Pshem,’ but ‘Baruch HaShem,’ that he had said, meaning, ‘Blessed be the Name of the Lord,’ meaning that he had asked of God that he be granted his life.

Upon hearing the name of God, the gentile woman crossed herself three times, and left the room.

What lay heaviest on Chaim'l's soul were the Fridays before sunset, all of the Jews of Kosow sat at their Sabbath feasts, together with their near ones, and he found himself in a room, with his gentile comrades, in which there was the suffocating odor of non-Jewish kielbasa and the odor of sauerkraut made the air stuffy, and it was possible to almost literally feel the texture of the air.

Chaim'l had requested from his commandant many times, that he be released from duty on Friday, and that he would take the duty of a Christian on Sunday.

The commandant did not want to release him as a matter of principle, and to rub salt in the wound – set him

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to a variety of orders towards Friday evening.

Chaim'l suffered this silently, and ground his teeth, for, after all, did he have another choice?

He suffered this up to the point that God presented him with the incident of the sleigh, and because of this, he was admitted to the hospital for several weeks.

After Chaim'l was discharged from the hospital, the commandant chose to turn a blind eye to the fact that Chaim'l disappeared each Friday towards evening.

Chaim'l made the acquaintance of a Jew, who was a scholar, a so-called man of thought. This man's hat was always on backwards.

When he spoke, he would always point his index finger to his right temple, and lose himself in thought.

With it all, this did not prevent a new child from being born into his family every year.

Despite his eccentric nature, the Jew was a Torah scholar and a Maskil.

Chaim'l pleasure was to sit with this Jew, and spend hours with him in discourse about the Torah.

Upon entering into the home of this Jew on a certain Friday evening, he found him in a very upset and distraught state.

What happened? Chaim'l asked the Jew.

My dear Esther'l gave birth to twins today.

Mazel Tov to you, Chaim'l shouted out with glee, and at the same time, out of simple curiosity, asked the distraught happy father, what kind of twins are they?

The distraught Jew replies, I think a boy and a girl, and immediately puts his index finger to his temple and says, excuse me, I am not so sure, but it is possible that it is a girl and a boy.

Chaim immediately understood that this Friday night was lost, he wished him a Good Shabbos, and returned to his soldier comrades, who lay on their general hearth, not their ‘berth’ deep in sleep, gurgling and snoring, in various hoarse voices, like a symphony of inebriated and incompetent musicians.

It was then that Chaim'l saw the great disaster of the Jewish people.

Petlura, and his bandits, burned, abused, and murdered the Jewish populace in every village and every town where they were only able to set their unclean feet.

It is hard to imagine the fear of the distraught and lifeless eyes in the pale and exhausted Jewish faces, at the time that the Polish soldiers marched into their town.

They had endured enough from the Ukrainians, who were their masters up to this point, and they thought,

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now the same tragic story will be repeated at the hands of another beast.

Immediately at dawn, Chaim took a stroll through the shtetl, the windows and doors of the plundered and partly burned Jewish homes were locked up ‘with seven locks.’

Neither a Jewish man, nor a Jewish woman trusted to poke their heads out onto the day lit street.

Chaim'l in going from street to street, notices that on a number of locations, dried human blood, here a broken up bed with torn up, dirty and bloodied clothing, bedding and other rags, there an emptied and broken bureau, feathers and bed stuffing was being blown about almost over the entire town.

It was in this a state, that Chaim'l encountered his Jewish brethren on the other side of the border.

Despite this, he was obdurate, and thought, I must present myself and speak with a Jew, in order to strengthen them, and calm them a bit.

Thinking in this way, he espies, with his sharp eye, that from a nearby house, a human finger protrudes a couple of centimeters from a shutter that covers a window.

He stopped by this window, and shouted into the window in Yiddish: ‘Dear Jews, no fear, I am also a Jew, I wish to speak with you.’

A deathly silence reigns, there is no voice and no response, silence, nothing moves, and he sees nary a person with his eyes.

Chaim is not discouraged, he knocks, and offers many pleas, that they should open the door – but it is still, and there is no response.

At that very moment, it occurred to him to try the familiar stratagem which united all Jews tribes in all the lands of the world.

He shouts Shema Yisrael! into the window, and a miracle occurs, a woman with a bare head, hesitantly showed herself behind the shutter, and asked: Are you really a Jew?

I am a Jew, a good Jew, Chaim'l replied with a sympathetic voice, do not be afraid, my dear lady, let me into your house, I have brought something for you and your family, to give you some sustenance for your hearts, and especially your souls.

Hearing these kind of words, a man with a pointed beard, and gentle Jewish features, immediately opened the door carefully, and with a Russian ‘Pozhalusta’ requested that Chaim'l enter his home.

The first thing Chaim asked for was a pair of Tefillin.

At the moment, the Jew did not believe his own ears, Tefillin? And he thinks to himself, perhaps all this is some sort of a dream?

Chaim'l put on the Tefillin, and faced to the east, praying out loud, in order that the frightened people be able

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to hear, and to be certain that he is a Jew and not a Pole.

After prayers, Chaim asked that everyone be seated at the table, he pulled a bottle of 96-year old brandy out of his rucksack and recited a blessing, treated the balebatim, and immediately wished that there should be peace on all Israel, and that all enemies of the Jews, on both sides, should soon have a downfall.

Two loaves of bread, and three cans of sardines, which Chaim'l placed on the table, was not adequate for the family, which consisted of three people.

The dear people begged Chaim'l's pardon for the speed with which they ate, they confessed to their guest that this was the fourth day that they were hungering, Chaim'l wished them all good things, and promised them to visit periodically, and at that time, not to forget to bring something with him.

During this time, the Jewish man had a conversation with his guest.

From word to word, Chaim'l became aware of the fact that this Jew was a member of the illustrious Rabbinical Hasidic family of ‘Twersky,’ and is an uncle to R' Zusha Twersky, the son-in-law of Chaim'l's Szczecin Rabbi Rav Simcha Issachar of the house of Halberstam ז”ל, with whom he studied Torah, before he was transformed first into an Austrian, and then later, a Polish soldier.

This connection, and the recollection of his old good days, so warmed Chaim'l that he emptied his rucksack of everything that he had, and gave it to the people, repeatedly giving them encouragement and comforting them, and after a couple of hot tears, which Chaim'l unwillingly shed, and embarrassed him, took his leave of this Jewish home that had been wrecked by anti-Semites.

After he had seen what the wild Ukrainians, and even the so-called European Poles had done to the Jews, he became disgusted with the entire world, and attempted however more quickly to bring his military service to an end, and be rid of his nearly five years of service to his various ‘Fatherlands.’

During all of this time, Chaim'l knew that his being drawn into the Polish army was accomplished by not entirely legal means.

His shtetl lies on the east side of the San River, and this part of Galicia was at this time still referred to a ‘no-man's land.’

He persistently complained to his colonel, but he was laughed at, until a genius of an idea occurred to him, to make his way to Geneva, to the ‘League of Nations’ and demand an intervention by the Polish regime to immediately discharge him from the military.

A miracle out of heaven occurred, and a month later, by way of an order from the Warsaw-based Ministry of War, Chaim'l was discharged, his commanding officer sought to detain him at the last minute by making a variety of threats, but it was for nought, and Chaim demanded a discharge.

The dog, left with no alternative, was compelled to let him go.

And it was evening, and then morning, and Chaim'l ended the First World War.

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Chaim'l returned to his birthplace in Cieszanow two days before Purim, discharged after nearly five years of military service.

The shtetl lived on its reputation in the past.

For generations, this very shtetl was renown for its Rabbis, rabbinical leaders, Torah scholars and Maskilim.

The last Rabbi of the shtetl, Rabbi Simcha Issachar of the house of Halberstam, ז”ל, with his full entourage of Hasidic adherents infused the shtetl with a substantive Hasidic way of life.

The mutual tolerance of the various parts of the Jewish populace was a model for all of the other area towns.

Hasidic balebatim, manual laborers, and merchants, all intermixed under one roof of national aspirations, understood that in a time of peril, it was necessary to stand together against an external foe.

When the local anti-Semitic hooligans attempted to perpetrate something in the shtetl, they received an appropriate set of desserts from the young people of the shtetl, without any difference regarding party or position, when it came to defending Jewish honor or Jewish property, [because] at times like that, a unique unity of purpose reigned among the youth of the shtetl.

Several days after Chaim'l returned to his new ‘old home,’ after all his male and female comrades arranged a picnic celebration in his honor in a nearby woods, on an official day, it happened that a group of the village hooligans forced their way into R' Chaim Yisrael's nearby business location, on the pretense of wanting to buy something, but really to beat the Jew, for no good reason.

As if by a command order, the entire population of menfolk in the shtetl, under the order of R' Fishl the wagon driver and Paltiel Sztam, took a stand against the hooligans, and with various implements which came to their hands, stepped out to defend Jewish honor.

R' Fishl the Wagon Driver tore a ‘Sign’ off of his wagon, and wielded this implement among the hooligans to the extent that he could.

Since that incident, it was truly tranquil in the shtetl, these reprehensible troublemakers restraining themselves from carrying on at Jewish expense, which regrettably was not the case in other area towns.

This R' Fishl, Balegolah, a Jew possessed of a round, heavy build, with a friendly and perpetually laughing broad face, with strong evidence of the Mongolian race, but with a warm Jewish heart.

R' Fishl himself was a rather simple man, he had never had any schooling, and was compelled to go to work as a young boy, because he came from very poor parents.

When Fishl was discharged from Franz Joseph's military service, where he had served three years with the heavy “Howitzers” as he used to boast, he thought that it was time for him to begin creating a home [and family].

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This did not come easily to Fishl for a variety of reasons.

The daughters of the craftsmen, such as tailors, and others, did not want to have Fishl as a husband. first, being a wagon driver was not something they viewed favorably, they had hoped to get a young man who worked at the same trade as their father, and their argument to Fishl was that a craftsman was a greater blessing.

Fishl thought, let them all go to blazes, and first of all, he built himself a house, bought two horses like lions, and when he cracked his whip, and with his deep booming voice, gave a yell to his two beasts, ‘Viyoi!’ the whole street shuddered, and this made Fishl famous among the merchants, nobility, and others, who had recourse to a ‘Teamster.’

When all the other wagon drivers had nothing to do, Fishl didn't know what to do with all the people that wanted to ride with him, and specifically only with him.

In the shtetl, there lived – can one really say lives?

All anti-Semites should live this way, Sweet Father in Heaven, the way R' Berish'l Badkhan live, or as he was called R' Berish Marshalek.

R' Berish'l, a handsome Jew, with a combed out wide white and flattened beard, was a Torah scholar, well versed in minutiae, remembered many tales, homilies from the tradition, folklore, and ordinary tales.

He utilized this ‘knowledge’ in order to make a living, and was the village jester and storyteller at all weddings.

It was simply a pleasure to gaze upon the handsome R' Berish'l when he stood on the wedding table, and sang to the bride and groom before the wedding ceremony under the canopy.

Rivers of tears were shed by the womenfolk when R' Berish would cry out the traditional verse in a loud resonating and tearful voice:

Dear Bride, dear bride
So full of grace –
To One Hundred and Twenty
May you not be left alone.

He handsome R' Berish had even more beautiful daughters.

Fishl cast his eye on one of these daughters.

This girl was an ‘assistant’ to the wife of the town Rabbi, an ‘Ozeret,’ as it is called in the Land of Israel.

[When] the girl told the Rebbetzin who it is that wants to take her to wife, she didn't think very long, and immediately presented an assessment of Fishl, who would transport her husband, the town Rabbi himself, in his wagon, that he was worthy to be Esther's – that was the girl's name – husband, and the father of her children.

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After such a ruling by the Rebbetzin, it was naturally forbidden to protest, and at the appropriately auspicious hour, Fishl found himself standing under the wedding canopy with his chosen Esther.

Things did not go badly for Fishl, he made a good living, when compared to the other wagon drivers in the town, he was something of a ‘wealthy man,’ and the locals didn't call him by any other name but ‘Rothschild,’ and that name stayed with him forever.

Chaim'l's first objective was to rebuilt all of their burned out houses.

Only with difficult and bitter effort was it possible for him to obtain three cubic meters of lumber, as a form of government support for his houses, not taking into account his past participation in the liberation of Poland.

At the time when Poles – Christians, were favored by the regime with a generous hand, and supported with large financial subsidies, and even larger amounts of materiel, Jews got next to nothing.

To his naive question put to the Polish authority for an explanation regarding this treatment concerning reconstruction, he received the clear reply that had no second meaning, ‘Zydy – do Palestiny.’

This reply penetrated deeply into Chaim'l's soul, and without giving it much thought, thoroughly discussed the realistic Jewish situation in the newly established Poland with his male and female comrades.

They organized themselves into a Zionist club, and gave thought to ridding themselves as quickly as possible of their new master, and to make aliyah to the Land of Israel.

In the meantime, a struggle began between the pious Hasidic parents, and their modern, Zionist children.

The struggle was conducted on all fronts.

The Zionist youth fought to take over the leadership of all the town institutions, which actually happened in a short time.

The first move by the young Zionists was to organize a synagogue for themselves in which all of the national holidays were observed, such as Tu B'Shevat, Hanukkah, Herzl's Yahrzeit on November 2, a Keren Kayemet evening, and so forth.

Chaim was one of the Zionist Jews in the shtetl, himself, as was known, a Torah scholar, he would hold forth a lecture in the Zionist Schul every Sabbath, with the teachings of the Sages woven into his speech, for the purpose of demonstrating the great mitzvah of settling the Land of Israel.

After his speech, they sat down to study the Tanakh, a page of the Gemara, or the weekly portion of the Pentateuch.

Chaim took this responsibility on himself as well, and apart from him, there were other young people who assisted in spreading Zionism with an admixture of Torah scholarship, especially, R' Asher Dieler, ז”ל.

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And, perhaps, Chaim'l thought, he is a complete ignoramus, and has no knowledge of Torah?

So I will ask him, let our Sages teach us – where are our modern day Gaonim?

What is the matter with: Koch, Wasserman, Weitzman, Einstein and thousands of others?

For a longer time, Chaim ceased to write in ‘Heint,’ until he had an encounter with two of his comrades, when the writer and Chaim'l campaigned for the same Zionist candidates for the Polish Sejm.

Juschzohn admitted that he had made an error, and asked for a pardon, and because of this Chaim rolled up his sleeves again and began again to express himself, and send in articles to ‘Heint.’

Chaim'l was unable to build himself a house from all of his Zionist and community activities.

His girl, Sarah'leh justifiably argued with him. it is, she said, high time that you should give thought to yourself and your own future.

She, Sarah'leh a girl with all the virtues, beautiful, young with curly blond silken hair, very talented, with a pair of intelligent blue eyes, and a sharp mind as well, continuously demanded that Chaim'l lay aside what she referred to in her practical language, ass ‘the community foolishness,’ and in its place, be concerned with the renovation of the burned down house, and especially, with the question of how long will they carry on like this, being in love, but not having gotten married?

In the meantime, nothing came of the idea that Chaim'l and Sarah'leh were planning, that is, to make aliyah to the Land of Israel.

Sarah'leh argued that meanwhile, months and years were going by.

Chaim'l also became rapidly disgusted with the daily wrangling that went on with his anti-Semitic colleagues – the Lavniks, with whom he was compelled to sit in session together especially in the Municipal Council, and in addition, the struggle with the stubborn older generation was also burdensome, who fought him with all means at their disposal, against the Zionist youth and against the Yishuv in the Land of Israel.

Chaim took the words of his young lady to heart, whom he loved totally, with his entire ardent and innocent temperament.

He immediately resigned from community endeavors, and with a quick tempo, reconstructed his burned homes, set down the conditions for a marriage contract, and on an auspicious hour, began to plan for a forthcoming marriage together with his chosen Sarah'leh.

On a beautiful weekday of Rosh Chodesh Elul, Chaim'l stood under the wedding canopy with his Sarah'leh.

The wedding was conducted with great pomp and ceremony, Chaim and his bride shone with joy.

In the small town area where he found himself, through the boycott against everything that was Jewish, his

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entrepreneurial thrust was strongly interdicted and weakened.

The economic situation of our hero, like a fever in a sick person, immediately began to rise, and immediately fell, his businesses would rise, and then fall, and melt away, like snow on a summer's day.

His distress and sensitized feelings had a great influence on him, in the time when the political and economic crisis of Polish Jews became greater.

The frequent pogroms and daily boycott actions, put severe pressure on Chaim'l, and in between, they already had three little children.

Altogether, he was possessed by the thought and driven by the impulse to emigrate out of the Polish purgatory, and to flee wherever his eyes might take him.

They decided to settle in the big international port city of [Dan]zig, and from there, he thought, it will be easier for him to achieve his life's goal, that means, to make aliyah to the Land of Israel.

AS the Jewish saying has it: ‘Man plans, and God laughs,’ Our Chaim'l lived waiting in [Dan]zig for this opportunity for a period of over ten years, and this opportunity never manifested itself.

In the first years, that is, until the Austrian house painter and adventurer Hitler ימ”ש , became visible to the obtuse Germans, the Jews were able to carry on a normal cultural life in [Dan]zig.

Also, Chaimchi did not feel himself to be in a bad situation, in keeping with his character and intellect, he was not suitable to do physical labor, and a particularly frightening and bad impression was made on him by the local so-called ‘abzahlung’ businesses, that the majority of the incoming Polish Jews took up.

People not qualified to do knowledge work would engage in this ‘trade,’ and these people, firstly, had to deaden any sense of their ‘humanity,’ and especially these were types who could step on dead bodies in order to be able to earn more money.

Chaim'l lacked both of these characteristics, which is the reason he did not take to this despicable line of work.

It was not only once, that such a young man was thrown down all the steps with the addition of a coarse anti-Semitic expletive for having provided the despicable German merchandise to be paid out over time.

After the unfortunate year, in which the brown-shirted Asmodeus took power in Germany, these sorts of occupations were exposed to much greater dangers.

The uncouth Germans, took merchandise from these young Jewish people to whatever extent they wanted, but practically cut off their payments, and when such a ‘merchant’ on the Sabbath, which was the day of settlement, came back to his wife and child with his limbs intact, he considered himself to be a fortunate man.

There was not only one instance where it occurred that these emboldened Jaeckes would break the bones of such a merchant, in order to rob the poor Jew of everything that he had, and add to it the well-known blessing –

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‘Judes – Verrücke’^[11] from his house.

Chaim could not orient himself to engage in this sort of living, he worked at a bank branch in the morning as a bookkeeper, and as a teacher in a community Jewish school in the afternoons, which had been established in all German-Jewish communities because of the political situation.

He made a good living, and after being alone for a half year, he brought his family down, and in time, became an important citizen in the old city of [Dan]zig.

He made a living, and hoped that the brown[-shirted] fire would stop and the good and tranquil old times would return.

As did all of the German Jews, he made an enormous mistake, the situation grew worse with each passing day in all of Germany, and especially in [Dan]zig.

Here, in this very international city, but having an almost one hundred percent German population, they wanted to show their ‘Straying Führer’ that they too are patriots of the so-called ‘Reich,’ and are also well-versed in the ‘lore’ of beating, robbing and abusing Jews, just like their brown[-shirted] brethren in Germany.

Like an unmoving black cloud, accompanied by a hating thunder and lightning that fills the skies, so did the brown[-shirted] plague grow ever nearer, and with every passing day, the air became more stifling for the Jews in all of Europe.

In the first period, it became a common occurrence to verbally assault Jews in the street through the use of coarse insults.

Later on, they were awarded beatings, and in the final days, literally with pogroms.

And it was in this fashion, with precise Jaecke calculation, that the great tragedy closed in on the German Jews, and in the end, almost on the entirety of European Jewry.

Chaim'l had a special good fortune, in that the brown[-shirted] bandits did not assault or insult him even once.

This was partly due to his not very Semitic features, or because he was involved almost exclusively with Jews, and was rarely around in the streets.

On this street, he could never give the right answer, and there were many instances when even such non-Semitic looking Jews were insulted and beaten by the Nazis.

During the early phases, many Jews did have the opportunity to gradually liquidate their assets, and send it over to the Land of Israel.

Our hero, Chaimchi did not have an insignificant part in such operations, because of his employment at the only Jewish bank, which engaged in this sort of a transfer, initially legal, but later on, illegal.

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Such fortunate Jews left the [Dan]zig purgatory immediately.

In the meantime, Chaimchi's family grew larger, and he was already the father of four sons and a daughter.

And he did everything that he could to obtain a certificate that would enable him to leave [Dan]zig along with the fortunate, but without success.

At the exact time of the greatest Jewish need, the English Mandate Authority, together with the well-known Anti-Semite, [Aneurin] Bevan, pushed down the so-called ‘quota’ to a minimum, not taking into account the increased demand for European Jewry, and especially the German [Jews] to be admitted to the Land of Israel.

In this manner, several years went by, hoping, and hoping for Bevan's just ways, but all of the hoping came to ruin, until on a somber Saturday at dusk, on the so-called ‘Kristallnacht’ as it was called by the Hitler bandits, in [Dan]zig, with punctilious German efficiency, the great and familiar pogrom was also organized along with the burning of synagogues.

The Jews scented that something was going to happen.

[However], not a single person knew exactly what was going to occur.

But, at a time when Jews stand before large, sorrowful events, everyone, including the infant in a crib, knew.

As if by a signal, at exactly four in the afternoon, the march of the Hitler Youth began, led by the [Dan]zig police, and SS troops, through the Jewish businesses and private homes.

On the wall of each Jewish business, in red paint, they scrawled the word ‘Jude,’ and stove in the large display windows.

Finishing this bit of work, they marched on, singing joyfully, the familiar song of murder: ‘Und wenn das Judenblut von messer schpreizt,’ again smashing windows, and when they concluded this work, they gathered at t6he beautiful [Dan]zig Temple, throwing their lit torches at it from all sides, and carried on with glee until the Synagogue became a mountain of ash.

Chaimchi and his family sitting in their dwelling, in fear and terror, the small children who did not yet understand the real situation, played in the house, not understanding why they were compelled to spend the entire day locked in their house?

As to the older children, each was in a separate little corner.

Chaim'l along with his wife, Sarah'leh, were sitting apart, sadly, warming themselves at the coal stove, like on the day of Tisha B'Av.

In this situation, each individual was sitting, lost in their own thoughts and speculation.

Suddenly, through a crack – a frighteningly large stone came crashing through the shattered window, entering their home with violent force, flying between the oven and Chaim'l's head.

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From the impact on the coal stove, a piece of the stone went out through the nearby door, which stood not far from the oven.

This, for Chaim'l and his family, was the first harbinger of the approaching catastrophe.

Out of reaction to their woes, Jews cried, thought and laughed.

Many fled to distant places from this hell.

They crossed the border between [Dan]zig and Poland, getting out of the German Hell and entering the Polish Gdynia, which was not a small Hell, like German [Dan]zig.

The Jewish community of [Dan]zig quickly called together a secret meeting of the leadership of all the resident Jewish institutions, worked out a plan to immediately dispatch all of the young Jewish children to the Land of Israel of 10-15 years of age.

A prominent member of the community accompanied the children on their boat to Haifa.

Among these children who were sent away, were to be found Chaim'l's two older children, a boy of thirteen, and a girl of ten.

The rest of the family remained behind for the simple reason that the pseudo-socialist Bevan did not permit them entry into the Land of Israel.

The transfer of the two hundred children, or as they were called, the Exodus of [Dan]zig, took place shrouded in strict secrecy, so that even their parents were not permitted to see their own children off.

The joy of the community was without bounds on the day that news arrived advising that they [sic: the children] were outside the danger area.

On the Sunday after ‘Kristallnacht,’ Chaim went to work at the bank as if nothing had happened.

The streets were quiet as if dead, except for the fact that shards of glass were scattered over all of the streets, the open window frames looked like the eye sockets of people from whom the eyes had been gouged out while they were alive.

Here and there, one could see a drunken SS trooper running by with his foul ‘Gretchen’ from a night of carousing.

The instinct found in every individual who finds himself in danger, is to keep himself strong and maintain a desire to live, also manifested itself as a delusion for the Jews of [Dan]zig.

After each anti-Semitic incident, they convinced themselves that this is all over, and nothing of this sort will ever happen again. And in addition to this, each individual talked himself into believing that he personally was not a target.

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Even the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Green, when initially he had an opportunity, as the representative of the Jewish community of [Dan]zig to speak on the radio, took such an opportunity to openly blame the ‘Ostjuden’ and declared in full public view, no more and no less, that the ‘Ostjuden sind unser umgluck.’

Also, this ‘Rabbi Ivan Green’ really believed that not a hair would fall from his head, and the head of his ilk, that the entire anger was directed towards other [kinds of] Jews, but not against those of Germany, or so this light-minded ‘Rabbi Ivan’ convinced himself.

It was through this natural law, that Jews remained in their places, in subordinate positions, up to the last minute.

The majority, indeed, were exterminated.

On that same Sunday, sitting at his daily work in his bank, thinking, like all the other Jews, that from today on, everything will again be normal, a band of armed SS troops entered, went up to the safe, and robbed a sum of eighty thousand [Dan]zig Gulden, in addition to foreign specie.

The director, chief bookkeeper and treasurer were brutally thrown out of the bank.

In the street, a second gang waited for them, which pinned a sign that had previously been prepared on the breast of each of the Jews, with the writing on it of: ‘Ich so-Jude bin ein verbrecher.’

With jeering and mockery, they were led over the streets, and then incarcerated in jail.

After this incident, while still in the same day, Chaim packed together a few belongings, and in the middle of the night, together with his wife and children, crossed the border on the way back again, to his birthplace in the shtetl Cieszanow.

His comrades in the shtetl welcomed Chaimchi with open arms, they thought to themselves that they had retrieved their old general, who had abandoned them in the midst of their battle for more than ten years.

The battle between Hasidism and Zionism still was in existence.

The old crowd did not yet want to agree to the concept that to rescue the Jewish people, there was only one way, and that was to go to the Land of Israel.

In his old-new home, Chaim'l didn't have the time to even rest his wandering bones for a little while, after the difficult and complicated trip which he had just gone through to escape from the Hell in [Dan]zig.

When the idea of rebuilding a means to make a living finally ripened, and when he thought that surely the steps to carry out this initiative were just within his grasp, the reality of Poland arrived, along with the big disappointment.

Chaim had forgotten that in Poland too, in that time, the concept of exterminating the Jews reigned in a manner no less virulent than in Germany.

The hate between Poles and Germans had existed for hundreds of years, but when it came to the task of

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eradicating Jews, both of these eternal blood-enemies were prepared to shake hands, and present gleeful faces to one another.

The Pole, Beck, had invited the brown[-shirt] devil's representative Goering to visit in Polish Warsaw.

It appears that all they talked about was the Jews, and at that opportunity, worked out the now familiar plan, that Poland will become the slaughterhouse for all the Jews of Europe, and perhaps the entire world.

In the meantime, the brown[-shirted] plague continued to do its deeds.

Their work proceeded on two fronts.

[The first front was] a European one, such as the Czechoslovakian question, Danzig, Upper Silesia, Posen, former German colonies in Africa, which were divided up by the victors after the First World War.

The second front, and this was the central one to Hitler, ימ”ש, was the Jewish one.

In the year 1938, after the Hitlerist assault on the Czechs, the Jews began to understand that the global catastrophe waits for them behind the door.

However, by this time, it was too late to liquidate assets and transfer them to the Land of Israel, to settle there, and help to build a Jewish state.

The Hasidic-Agudah opposition to settlement in the Land of Israel reaped the fruit of what it had sown.

The Jewish people stood at the threshold of annihilation. The numbed opponents of the rising younger generation, as they demonstrated, did not have in themselves even so much as a spark of inspiration, in the way they persuaded their followers, on the contrary – they had blinkered eyes and dense minds.

From day to day, the European horizon grew more and more dark, especially that of the Jews.

The brown [-shirted] beast had successfully seen through almost all of its demands.

The familiar, English Minister, [Neville] Chamberlain, known for carrying an umbrella, conceded in satisfying all of Hitler's wishes, and in this manner, the German ‘Mikhl’ came to understand that the world fears engaging in war, and because of this, he became increasingly bolder day by day.

He increased the scope of his demands at every opportunity, and in parallel, blocked and increased the destruction of the German Jews.

On a September day that was a dark day for the Jewish people, in that accursed year of 1939, the brown [-shirted] devil initiated the great and tragic world war of extermination, in spite of all the nations of the planet.

These events halted all of Chaim's planning, and he was left stuck in his shtetl, along with all the others, just like him.

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In the meantime, the Germans, in their Messerschmitts, sowed death and destruction over the burning Polish soil.

On the second day, after Poland was ablaze from end to end, from the west, her good friend Goering, with whom Poland had not long ago concluded a pact of friendship at the expense of the Jews, pressed with his heavily-armed army, and from the east, the Russian Bear fell on her, and suddenly, at three in the afternoon, Chaim'l's shtetl also tasted the flavor of German brutality.

Six airplanes bombarded the shtetl, and shot at the people with machine guns as if they were beasts in the field.

The Germans occupied Chaim'l's shtetl eight days before Rosh Hashanah.

The entered after the Soviet Army had vacated the shtetl pursuant to two weeks of occupation.

It became apparent that according to the agreement between the two anti-Semites, ‘Ribbentrop and Molotov’ the shtetl was to remain in German hands.

In the first days, they held themselves quietly, but despite this, the Jewish houses and businesses were locked up as tight as could be.

A Jew did not trust himself to go out into the day lit streets, and each person sat in their homes waiting for the Messiah to come.

The Jews of Cieszanow chose to deduce an a priori argument from this, reasoning that if after eight days of occupation, not a single Jew had been accosted in a bad way, this must be a sign that the devil is not as bad as he is made out to be.

And they chose to accept the simple extrapolation further, that since it was now the eve of Rosh Hashanah, it is necessary to give thought to how it would be possible to gather on the morrow for communal prayer, to blow shofar, and specifically in the synagogue;

A delegation, mostly of balebatim, managed, willy-nilly, to crawl out of their caves, and by a strenuous effort, using back alleys, gathered together at the domicile of one of their number, and decided that they would en masse make a request of Chaim'l to go to the German commandant as an emissary of the community, to request that he grant permission for the [celebration of] two days of Rosh Hashanah, that they be allowed to gather for communal worship in the synagogue.

The gaggle of Hasidim fell into Chaim'l's residence like orphans who were returning from the cemetery, after having interred their kin, with a sorrowful and low-voiced entreaty to present their request to him.

They based their request on the fact that he was practically the only one in the shtetl who had a good command of the German language, and it was [therefore] his obligation in the name of the Jewish populace to make the request of the German [officer] for the permission to assemble in the synagogue.

The idea did not appeal to Chaim right there on the spot, and he declared the following:

[Page 98]

It explicitly is written in the Gemara: one does not rely on the miracle, especially in a time like this, which is fraught with so much danger for Jews.

He declared further, that even if the commandant were to grant the permission, it is entirely not certain that everything will come off as desired.

Chaim'l's arguments did not help him, which were opposed, and he received admonitions that the entire town of Jews will think of him as being unfaithful, if he will not go as the community emissary to the commandant.

Being unable to get rid of them, he agreed, but on the condition that whatever the commandant will rule, must be adhered to without qualification.

Not thinking this through a great deal, the group agreed and expressed the view that this is the way it will be, and no different.

Unwillingly, Chaim girded his loins, put on his black [-rimmed] glasses for good luck, and with a heavy spirit, went off to the German commandant the town.

The streets, and the Ringplatz were black with tanks and other military machinery, and with a beating heart, and without paying attention, he passed through the way until he came to the place where the German was billeted.

The gentile did not receive Chaim'l badly.

He demanded of Chaim'l that he convey to the Jews, in his name, that he personally has no opposition, but as he further articulated, under the present situation, he cannot absolutely guarantee that the soldiers would not violate his orders, when the matter involves Jews, and he will then not be able to help, because they will think he is a protector of the Jews.

It appears to be decent and humane speech, and in addition, he argued why was it necessary to place one's self in danger, when each indivi9dual can beseech God in their own home, because, he says, God is to be found everywhere.

Literally a real human being, and not a German.

Chaim could not believe what he had heard with his own ears. He, the German extends his hand to Chaim'l, and once more requests that his message and intent be conveyed precisely to ‘die arme Juden.’

Chaim, a bit buoyed by the humane German, conveyed precisely what the Jaecke had said and they promised him that on this Rosh Hashanah they would not go to the synagogue, and that each individual would recite prayer in their own home, in order not to provide provocation to the Hitlerists.

After this assurance, Chaim'l was very satisfied, and was also proud that the great privilege had fallen to him to be the good emissary.

He calmed his wife down, who had opposed his acceptance of this mission by her husband.

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On the morrow, meaning Rosh Hashanah, very early, standing by his covered window, with an eye placed against a crack of the shutter, to see what was going on in God's little world, Chaim'l notes, to his great wonder, that Jews wearing shtrymels, with prayer shawls under their arms, women, with their thick Tzena-U'Re'ena prayer books are proceeding openly and freely to communal prayer, as if nothing had happened.

A fright fell on Chaim'l look at this going on, he thought to himself, and he was simultaneously afraid of two things; first, that no evil befall the Jews during their sojourn in the synagogue, especially – he was practically certain, that the Commandant will hold him personally responsible for what had happened, with the expression that he had not conveyed his words and warning with adequate conviction, and that Chaim'l had literally told them to go and attend worship.

He requested of his Sarah'leh that she prepare some clothing for him, along with miscellaneous foodstuffs for two days, and so forth.

He expected that they would come for him at any minute, and send him off to a place from where mostly one never comes back.

It happened otherwise, because Chaim'l was not in the least harmed, but everyone who found themselves in the synagogue were suddenly assaulted by a group of German soldiers, who beat them brutally, tearing out their beards along with skin, collecting all of the shtrymels, prayer shawls, and prayer books into a mound, lighting a fire under them, burning – beating everyone right and left.

A chaos and rampage seized the entire town, with everyone trying to save their own life, hiding in whatever hiding place one could find.

The sum total of today's attendance at synagogue, were thirty beaten Jews, the destruction of the synagogue, and in addition to this – all Jewish girls and women had to clean the Ringplatz with their bare hands, removing all the horse droppings that had accumulated since the time that the Germans marched into the town.

Also, our Chaim'l nearly became a victim of an accusation which seemed to be innocent.

Between Chaim'l's two houses was a large yard, and this yard served as a parking place for German tanks.

When the tank division left the parking area on one day, Chaim noted, to his great fright, that a large number of gun bullets lay in a corner of the yard, along with some guns, which belonged to those who had not long ago vacated the yard.

The accusation was lodged, as Chaim'l later became aware, by a Ukrainian living in the town, who held a grudge against Chaim'l for voting in the town council with the Polish representatives, and not with the Ukrainian representatives.

Chaim immediately oriented himself to the great danger that stalked him, and without care, tore through the streets that were filled with the military, entered into the town commandant, and described that the tank division had left a sizeable amount of ammunition behind in his yard by mistake, and that he makes a fervent request that the ammunition be removed from his yard.

Coming home, from the commandant, Chaim'l encountered two soldiers waiting for him.

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To the question of what they want of him, they succinctly declared that the ammunition located in his yard was stolen by him for use by Jewish youths would use it to attack the German military.

Hearing such a tale, Chaim'l immediately understood that his situation at that moment was not retrievable.

Interesting! Once again it was established, that when Chaim'l finds himself in a state of need, a salvation appears almost at the last possible minute, and he emerges whole from the danger that threatened him.

Not thinking too much, he says to the soldiers, that not only here does he have collected ammunition, he has, he says, another place, an assembled storage place with a variety of military equipment, a much larger one than the one they found on his yard.

He doesn't let the two soldiers utter a word, making a motion to exit, and asks them to accompany him to the second accumulated magazine, and he goes with them directly to the commandant, with a forced laughter, as if he is puzzled, he makes his way to the commandant, as if he doesn't understand what is going on here?

Who, he asks innocently, has the authority to designate ammunition in the strongest and most disciplined army in the world?

An officer, in this case he says – the town commandant, or two ordinary soldiers?

He doesn't understand, he says further to the officer, first, about an hour ago, I turned over to your disposition, the entire ammunition that the tank division had by error left in my yard, suddenly, these two ordinary soldiers demand that I should give them the ammunition, and at the same time they are threatening me with punishment if I do not obey their order.

He does not know what to do?

He beseeches that the commandant should rule as to what he, Chaim'l should do in this instance.

The two gentiles immediately became as white as lime.

He, the officer, noticed their pallor, did not utter a word, rang with his little bell, and a young officer immediately entered, gave them an order, ‘kert auch, march.’

The two lowlifes exited the commandant's room, Chaim'l was immediately released, and sent with an auto with soldiers to collect the ammunition left behind.

To this day, Chaim does not know what happened to the two soldiers, especially – in that instant, as he later proudly related to his Torah scholars, he came to understand the saying of the Ancient Sages: ‘temerity, especially when a person finds himself in dire need, is helpful even before God himself.’

As soon as he saw, said Chaim'l that his situation was beyond retrieval, he took this daring and foolish step, and it was this temerity that indeed saved Chaim'l's life.

The Hitlerist-beasts went wild in the town for two weeks, with different disruptions every day, up to a certain day, when the Germans abandoned the tow for the second time, leaving this entire border strip for their

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partners, the Bolsheviks.

During the time when the Bolsheviks took over the shtetl, the Jews breathed easier after a two-week period of mortal fear under German control.

During the first day that they took over control, the Bolsheviks immediately organized a local leadership.

As the town elder, they appointed the illiterate Zissl'eh Bagruber, as Burgomaster, Beinish Fuster, and a Ukrainian shepherd as the commandant of police.

This coterie ruled in Chaim'l's shtetl, and over him personally, in the name of Karl Marx's ‘ten commandments.’

When after two weeks of control, the Russians were compelled to surrender control of the town to the Germans, and this time permanently, the Jewish populace understood that they had been given the last chance to save themselves from the brown [-shirted] plague, to go along with the Bolsheviks, and in this manner, rid themselves of all the troubles.

On the day of the Bolshevik withdrawal, as a perverse consequence -- Chaim'l did not feel good, and he was beset with an intense rheumatic pain in the small of the back, and he simply could not move from his spot.

The Russians permitted anyone who was evacuated to ride along with them in their transport autos.

The allocation of such riding permits was found in the hands of the ‘Starotsa,’ Zissl'eh Bagruber.

Chaim'l, led by two people, with great difficulty, and accompanied by much pain, clawed his way to the chancellery where this fellow, comrade Zissl'eh sat as the authority in charge, at Stalin's ‘pleasure,’ giving out the riding permits and blowing himself up like a strutting turkey.

As soon as he spotted Chaim'l, he proclaimed, with the voice of a ruler, generally into the surroundings, asked, as if he were the Emperor Nero, without looking at Chaim directly in the face: what does he want here?

Chaim told the censorious official about his illness, that he also wishes to leave the shtetl, and how he is unable to walk, and requests a riding permit so that he can ride.

Zissl'eh Bagruber said curtly to Chaim, that he will not be receiving a riding permit, that he, Zissl'eh, had been waiting for many years for the opportunity for Chaim and his ilk to feel the meaning of being under the control of others, and especially such persons as Zissl'eh Bagruber.

Not deterred, Chaim'l was compelled to hire a two-in-hand cart, for an exorbitant amount of money, in order to get him and his family transported over to the Russian zone, and he was able to get this done.

On the morrow, Chaim'l found himself in a place that was undoubtedly in the hands of the Bolsheviks.

It was in this fashion that, at the last minute, Chaim'l and his family saved themselves from Hitler's talons.

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He immediately took stock of the situation, and realized that there was no purpose to sit in the little shtetl of Nemirov, and thanks to his wife Sarah'leh, decided to move on to the east, wanting to be in the city of Lemberg.

As mentioned, in Lemberg at that time, there were already two hundred thousand Jewish refugees.

It was only with a great deal of effort that he was able to rent a small, damp room far outside of the city, for a very dear sum of money.

The first step of the Bolsheviks in Eastern Galicia was to confiscate all the large factories and businesses.

The second step, in order to find favor with the local populace, they established schools in all of the languages of the peoples that inhabited Galicia, that is, Polish, Ruthenian and Yiddish.

A Yiddish school appeared to be laughable in the eyes of the Intellectual Galician Jews, [because] they did not understand that Yiddish was a legitimate language, like all other languages, which also possessed a grammar, rules, construction, and a history.

At a Yiddish lecture in Lemberg, by a Soviet-Jewish teacher, our Chaim'l confronted the following type of spectacle.

The hall is filled with invited citizenry of both sexes, and from a variety of professions, doctors, engineers, teachers, professors, merchants and others.

On the podium, a young man stands with a not particularly intelligent expression on his face, next to him is a large blackboard, and he is teaching the gathering how to correctly say the following expression in Yiddish: placing the baggage trunk on the bench.

Everyone thought to themselves, this is not bad Yiddish.

After several declarations, he asks the ‘students’ to rise, and to signal with their hands in accordance with is command.

At the statement: Put the baggage trunk up, the ‘crowd’ should raise their hands, at the statement: Put the baggage trunk down, they should lower their hands, and it was in this manner that the hands of hundreds of students, teachers, doctors, professors and other intellects moved for several minutes, up and down.

Then he asks his students, what is to be raised?

All answer as if as one person – raise the baggage trunk, Good…

What is to be lowered?

To this question, all the men return the answer:

You must lower your trousers…. Bad, he shouts….

[Page 103]

The women blushed, lowered their eyes, and quickly left the Bolshevik school.

The little young man was left alone in the hall, and he straggled out as if he had been whipped, and vanished.

This so-called teacher later declared, that in the Soviet sphere, this is called ‘sabotage,’ and for this, one is sent for ten years to the White Bears.

In Lemberg, as was the case in the entire Soviet sphere, there reigned a shortage of everything that began with the letter ‘A.’

Beginning with A shoe, A shirt, A dress, A loaf of bread, A needle, A watch, etc.

In the meantime, Chaim had made the acquaintance of the manager of the distillery in Lemberg, and he provided products for the workers, clothing and shoes, and he was not paid with money, but with a variety of alcoholic beverages.

Every month, Chaim obtained thousands of liters of liquor from the distillery, cognac, and primarily, eight-nine percent spirits.

The business got bigger and better for him every day, and he already had enough money to rent himself a large, beautiful residence.

Suddenly news spreads through the city that all male refugees, who have refused to abandon their Polish citizenship in favor of Soviet citizenship, are to be exiled to the White Bears, or to the Taigas.

Soon the truth is heard that on the previous night in the streets of a certain quarter of Lemberg many men were taken away, and nobody knows where their physical being is to be found.

It didn't take long before the N.K.V.D. appeared in Chaim'l's neighborhood, taking out a father here, a son, a brother, etc.

Immediately the expulsion was extended to include entire families.

One Friday night in the month of June, Chaim'l confided in his wife that his heart tells him that the kidnappers are going to show themselves in their streets on that night.

Without giving it much thought, his Sarah'leh agreed that he should sleep that night with a Jewish neighbor who was a citizen of Lemberg, who had become a Soviet, as he was certain that he would not be taken for exile.

Because that Friday night was so hot and humid, Chaim'l could in no way manage to sleep for the entire night.

At 3 AM, he was standing by the open window, in order to take a bit of fresh air.

Oh, my God! Darkness descends over his eyes at that moment.

[Page 104]

He does not know whether it is a dream or reality.

In front of his eyes, he sees them transporting his entire family in a wagon, with all of their belongings packed up, accompanied by a Tatar uniformed as an N.K.V.D. man.

He wants to scream, but nothing comes out, his voice had been taken away, and he is unable to get a single word out of his mouth.

Immediately, as in the case of all his exigencies, a good thought occurs to him, that whatever happens to his wife and children should also happen to him.

Like a wounded wolf, he leaps out onto the street, in his sleeping pajamas, runs after the wagon, his wife, sitting with her face to the rear, noted how he was running in their direction.

Out of great fear for having deceived the Tatar at the time he took her into custody, when he asked her, where is your husband to be found?

She told a lie, that he is visiting far away, and suddenly he is here in this place? Chasing after them, and who knows with what sort of angry thoughts?

This is what his Sarah'leh thought.

Sunk in her own thoughts, she indicates with her hands, despite this, that he should run back.

At that minute, Chaim'l grasped that he must be together with his wife and children, and with rapid steps, he reaches the wagon.

The idiotic Bolshevik asks him who he is, and what does he want?

To Chaim'l answer of; eta maya semya he received a clear reply: davai!^[12]

Chaim was ensconced in the wagon.

They were brought to the train station, at which a large echelon of tens of cattle cars waited for them, in which men, women and children were driven together from all of Lemberg.

They were crammed into the echelon for a day and a night before it left the train station on the way to their new place of exile.

Until they finally lived to see the end and completion of the interminable ride, took over two weeks, in which day in and day out, they passed the time in misery, until they arrived at a place with the exotic foreign name of ‘Cheboksary.’

We thought this was the end of the world.

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On the right side of the large river was the town, on the left side a desolate jungle of thick pine forests.

It appears that such forests had disappeared from Europe thousands of years ago.

An old ship was anchored at the edge of the river, into which they were driven like cattle.

To the question of why they were being treated with such brutality, they received the classic and familiar answer: nichevo, priviknish ilyi zdekhnish – davai.^[13]

This river is the famous ‘Volga.’

We sailed the length of the Volga for four days and four nights.

The only thing we saw was the sky and the forest.

After the four-day ride, Chaim'l and his fellow sufferers were invited over into a small open forest train, on the left side of the river edge, which made a sorry impression on them.

They dragged themselves on yet again for another day and a night, except this time into a deep forest.

At dusk of the following day, the contingent halted in a wooded area that was in the middle of a gigantic swamp.

The first ‘welcome’ they received was from the innumerable number of mosquitoes that fell upon their fresh faces, hands and feet.

The mosquitoes danced around them and buzzed about them with a wild glee. It appears that the fresh blood that they sucked from these new people smelled very good to them.

People, who were not well traveled, saw this kind of a world for the first time in their lives.

That world consists of two elements: trees and mosquitoes.

The controller of these two elements is the Soviet N.K.V.D. which reigns with unrestrained brutality over the million ‘zakladchanehs^[14]’ who find themselves to be free slave laborers in those Taigas.

It was to this sort of Hell that Chaim'l and his family were brought.

When the contingent suddenly remained standing in this God-forsaken place after having been brutally driven from the wagons by the militia men, they did not, in the first instance understand exactly what was being demanded of them.

It absolutely did not occur to them, that this dark forest had been designated as their new home by the great ‘People's Guardian.’

[Page 106]

The N.K.V.D. immediately awakened them from their naivete, and they were informed categorically that it was here, in this forest, that they would remain forever, because this is the place which Comrade Stalin had designated for them, and added: eta vsy.

The commandant, Smirnov, a young, anti-Semitic gentile, by nature a sadist, vehemently ordered them to occupy the wooden barracks, which were hideously filthy, looked abandoned, with broken windows.

On the walls, there were written mostly the names of a variety of people, in a variety of languages, unfortunate people, like themselves, who had been housed here, worked in the forests, starved, and left their lives here, in this dark, God-forsaken jungle.

Chaim'l acquired a ‘residence’ for his five-member family, a small tarred dirty corridor, full of small itchy and biting forms of life all over the walls, against which a prison bunk could barely stand, on which all five later slept.

In order to reach their residence, one had to go through a room in the same filthy condition, which was allocated to three other families.

After the difficult journey, the people got a ‘furlough’ of a day.

On the second day, beginning at five o'clock in the morning, a militia man with piercing Mongolian eyes with a face of a person from the first stone age, drove the entire group of people – slaves, from the small to the older, men, women and children, healthy or sick, young or old, out of the barracks.

Near the barracks of the commandant Smirnov, there was a yard full of forest tools such as: saws, handsaws, arrows, axes, rope, a variety of wedges and other such tools.

Not far, was a second yard, with constraining devices such as: whips, crops, reins, a variety of nosebags, sacks, bells, wedges, iron horse shoes and other things.

People could choose between cutting trees or working as haulers, to transport the cut trees out of the forest.

There was a third group, the so-called ‘gruzhchikehs^[15],’ and to this distinguished group Smirnov appointed only young healthy men.

Our Chaim'l grabbed a saw, and enlisted in with the forest workers.

The men were divided up into brigades, and each brigade was accompanied by a militia man, and it was in this way, that these foreign citizens, who had no concept of what real communism entailed, began to get a taste of the communist paradise, for which tens of millions of people were compelled to offer their lives.

Work started at five o'clock in the morning, every two hours, the militia man permitted a break during which a cigarette could be smoked.

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The cigarette consisted of some black filling, or just simply from rubbed dry leaves, wrapped in newspaper.

Work ended at sundown.

Each brigade was given a quota, of so many cubic meters of lumber that it had to present for a day's work.

Usually, such a quota was beyond the strength of these foreign people to provide, I emphasize ‘foreign,’ because their own Russian ‘zakladchanehs’ who were lazy, and worked in these same forests, were able to meet the quota, without any real input, but after doing this a couple of times, the person who set the quotas suddenly was found laid out in the forest swamp, and had given up the ghost.

Our people sought all manner of means to get themselves out of such a strenuous form of slave labor, and because of this a variety of conflicts erupted.

The men alternated the work every few days, from a forest worker, to a wagon driver, immediately to a water carrier, and again back to his first duty.

And it was in this way the struggle of the unfortunate went on, who had been driven away, as they referred to it in a bitter joke, to the land of the lucky.

Chaim'l also sought means to make his enslavement somewhat lighter, exchanging his bitter forest work for wagon-driving work, and to his good fortune, Chaim'l became a wagon driver.

Since he had been alive, his delicate hands had never touched a horse.

And now, when he presented himself to the stable master, a Pole, a certain Pan Hrabie Raczynski, a Pole who was in this camp along with Chaim'l, indicating that he should be allocated a horse and wagon in accordance with the order from Smirnov, this grand Pole didn't have any particular desire to place a horse in the hands of this one-time Yeshiva student.

To Chaim'l's question of why he doesn't want to give him a horse, he answers quite plainly, because he has pity on both of God's creatures.

He is afraid, lest the horse kill Chaim, or the opposite – that Chaim kill the horse.

Despite this, he took pity on him, and gave Chaim a horse, and told him to drive to the second camp which lay about ten kilometers deeper into the woods, and to bring back for himself a cargo of things that were missing from Raczynski's stable.

A fear and fright descended on Chaim'l.

As if he hasn't lost enough blood, but just for the thought alone, that here, he must touch the horse, and it is possible to imagine that at that first touch, the horse could bite off his fingers, or knock the guts out of his belly, and here he is asking him to ride, and deep into the forest, entirely alone, with such a large and wild animal, with which he doesn't even know how to begin to communicate.

Chaim reminded himself of the first Russian rule that he was taught, when arriving in the communist

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paradise: priviknish ilyi…

Chaim, placing his life at risk, drew close to the horse slowly, with uncertain steps, and reciting the familiar [prayer]: Lord of Rabbi Meir help me, stroked the horse with the reins for a long time, led the foolish horse out of the stall, stood up on a table, closed his eyes, went up onto the horse, stuck his feet into the stirrups, held onto the reins with both hands, and before he had a change to orient himself to his new situation, the stall master gave the horse a whack on the hindquarters with a rubber switch.

At this moment, the horse became terribly frightened, and reared up on its hind legs.

With eyes shut, pitifully, Chaim'l bent himself toward the hindquarters of the horse, and with all of his strength, pulled on the leather reins with a countervailing force, and again, like in the hospital, recalled the holy BESH”T and in such a ‘Herculean’ position, hung between heaven and earth for a couple of minutes which for Chaim'l seemed like an eternity.

God heard Chaim'l's prayers, and the horse righted itself once again, and took off with our hero at a trot for a couple of hundred paces.

The communist horse than remained standing, waiting for Chaim'l's next order, either from his pressure, or his riding crop.

Chaim stubbornly held on with all his might, and he did not fall off the horse, and a miracle occurred.

The delicate Chaim'l, in that instant, became welded to the horse, and in a rather short period of time, became to best wagon driver and the best rider in the entire camp.

The wagon driving Yeshiva student immediately became accustomed to his horse.

This communist horse became much more important in his eyes than the legendary horse of the Emperor Caligula which was appointed as a Consul in the senate of the Roman Empire.

The work of transporting the lumber out of the forest was equally as hard for Chaim'l as the forest work itself.

He thought to himself, giving up one's life for the communist prophet Stalin is for others, and that he, on no account, would engage in such foolishness.

He would never be one of those who sing the familiar song of the gladiators to their Emperor before they give up their lives for him: ‘Ave Caesar, morituri tea salutamum,’ or ‘Hail Caesar, we who are about to die, salute you.’

He had no great desire to bless his comrade Stalin, and even less desire to give up his life for him.

Chaim'l got hot suddenly, and fell ill, and on that day did not show up for work.

He hadn't yet rehearsed a good excuse for why he had not come to work today, having not completed heating up his face next to the flaming oven, in order that he should appear to be flushed as if he were really sick and has a strong fever – and look who is here!

[Page 109]

Smirnov is here.

A tchto takoi? He asks Chaim.

The one feigning illness declares to him that he has suddenly gotten a fever, and a rather high fever at that, stomach cramps, and because of this, he cannot under any circumstance work today.

The first cure that the sick person got was Smirnov's order to the quartermaster to reduce the daily bread ration from eight hundred to four hundred grams.

The second cure a similar order in ‘stalavni^[16]’ the daily borsch which workers received after a hard day's work was no longer given to Chaim'l.

To Chaim'l's naive question of ‘how an a person live without food?’ He gets the clever, ingenious reply from Smirnov:

There is a statute in the Soviet area that the great compassionate father of the ‘Работчй Иарод^[17]’ has promulgated:

‘Кто не работит, не кушаит,’ that is, ‘One who does not work, does not eat.’

After this sort of rigorous diet, Chaim'l didn't go to work, but ran back to work.

The sick one, thanks to God returned to good health, before surrendering his strength, health, and for others, also their lives.

As punishment for being sick, he never got his horse back, and he again had to chop down the half-meter thick trees, and split each two meter part into quarters, in order to meet the daily quota volume, and basta.

This is the way Chaim spent his life in the camp. From early in the morning to late at night, with work, work, and more work.

Apart from the mosquitoes that sucked out the last bit of blood from him, that he had brought with him form home, he had not only one, stepped with is shoes made of rags on some snake, or other dangerous reptile, which could be found around his ‘periphery’ at very turn.

Only at one time did he attempt to pour out his heavy heart before the Master of the Universe, and that was at the Kol Nidre service for Yom Kippur.

Coming back from the forest, Chaim'l quickly organized two minyans of his suffering comrades, while still laden with their implements, they quickly set themselves to recite Kol Nidre.

As the only one literate in all of the details, his comrades designated Chaim'l to recite Kol Nidre as the leader

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of the service.

With a broken heart, the worshipers voiced their complaints to the One who sits in Heaven, with an empty stomach, blackened faces, bruised hands, and broken spirit, Chaim'l with hot tears intoned the verse, ‘As clay in the hands of the potter…’ and beseeched: Master of the Universe save us a quickly as you can from this dark Hell, so that we will cease to be ‘clay in the hands of the potter’ in the hands of Smirnov.

Praying, or carrying out other forms of religious observance, was from the first day on, strictly forbidden to the people in the camp.

Such prohibitions were observed all of the year, but at Kol Nidre time on Yom Kippur, the Jewish heart demanded its own need.

The people did not pay heed to the prohibition, and despite it, they assembled to pour out their bitter hearts before the Jewish God, who had, by the expression of the camp residents in bitter humor, since the accursed rise of the brown [-shirted] Satan, abandoned his people who were all over the world, whom he had taken to wed through the agency of the marriage maker Moses, on Mount Sinai.

As is known, it was not through love, but by force that His Jewish bride came to be wed, after he threatened her, that should she not agree to this union, He would: cover them with the mountain, and ‘ere will be your burial place,’ if the bride will not accept the Torah.

As a stroke of bad luck, at this precise, holy moment, a Polish Christian happened to be walking by the barracks of these latter-day anusim.^[18]

This ‘omen of trouble’ lost no time in immediately conveying what his unclean eyes had seen.

It didn't take long, but three militia men, with Smirnov at their head, befell the room where prayers were being said, and brutally threw out the people who were there, confiscating the prayer shawls, prayer books and makhzors.

Chaim'l became very severely frightened, fright gripped him, and fearing that Smirnov will hold him responsible for this counter-revolutionary behavior, he jumped out of the window, and vanished into the dark forest.

On the following morning, it became known that the master of the room had been taken off with them.

On the fourth day he returned more dead than alive, he was a silent as a fish, and even had great fear in front of his own family, not telling them what had occurred to him.

It was only after the people, after a certain space of time, had left the camp, that they found out that during the three days and three nights, hie had been bound to a tree in the deep forest, every five hours, a militia man came to him, gave him a morsel of bread to chew on, and a half glass of water to drink.

[Page 111]

The end of this ‘adventure’ was that they did not recite Kol Nidre on the eve of Yom Kippur, but rather, two nights after Yom Kippur.

Chaim'l and his comrades literally lost track of the count of days, and took the count in a manner where they recited ‘Al Khet’ on a regular weekday.

In the camp there was also a ‘Zakladchaneh’ a Jew by the name of Zucker.

Formerly a tailor in a Galician shtetl, he was the only open communist, already for many years.

Not looking at his communist past affiliation, it appears that comrade Stalin did not have much loyalty to this ‘sweet communist,’ and bunched him together with all the rest, in this bright communist paradise.

Regarding instances of the sort posed by comrade Zucker, Our Sages had said: The wicked, even at the threshold of Hell do not repent.

Also, this comrade Zucker was in very bad circumstances, along with everyone else, yet despite this, he was the only one in the entire camp who taunted Chaim'l for organizing the Kol Nidre evening.

Chaim attempted to defend himself, and attempted to demonstrate to him that no single prayer has such an attractive power among us Jews, and such a powerful force, as this short prayer of Kol Nidre.

This is something of a rare religious attraction, a sacred folk-ritual that draws into the synagogue and brings there almost everyone, even those who have no cognizance of the Sabbath or the Festival Days, and do not want to know about other sacred things, and yet the prayer of Kol Nidre is sacred to them, very sacred.

The liturgical melody of Kol Nidre caresses and soothes their soul for as full year, until the next recitation of Kol Nidre.

You, comrade Zucker, with your equality, Chaim said further with heart, which you hold as a hyper-progressive indicator of tomorrow's day, in whose eyes, such foolishness will no longer be cultural or real.

In your eyes, this is old-fashioned and outmoded.

For you, only the teaching of Marx-Lenin-Stalin is cultural and real, and it is they who are guilty of, and responsible for, all of the ills that have befallen Jews and others in general, and also for your and my troubles right here in this camp.

For us from the days of past, every memory is dear and cherished, every image, even the smallest stirring or reflection of our ancient traditions.

See with what a rare language they speak to our heart and our memory, see with what a sweet expression they speak to us in the Aramaic of the Kol Nidre words, a language that in your eyes has died long ago.

And it is not only Kol Nidre, but every minor utterance of the mouth, of our past, sparkles yet in our recollection:

[Page 112]

Elijah's cup on the Seder night, the wax Yom Kippur candles of the Kol Nidre night, the silver border ornament on a grandfather's prayer shawl, the brass candlesticks on the table of the Bet HaMedrash, a grandmother's Turkish shawl, even the yellowed page in a mother's Korban Mincha Siddur speaks differently to us than it does to you, comrade Zucker, than the ‘Das Kapital’ written by your leader Marx, who, by the way, has brought us to the travail that we must now endure in these jungles.

Comrade Zucker, do you know why this is so?

Chaim'l spoke on, because that yellowed little page speaks to us in the terms of our homes, warm, Jewish, it speaks to our soul with that sweet tongue that flows amicably, so familiarly, it gladdens us, warms us, making our heart and soul young and fresh.

That is the power, Chaim'l says further, of the Jewish reserve, ‘old wine,’ but the new bottle of vinegar from the factory: Chmielnicki-Stalin-Khrushchev, give the Jewish people a bellyache and troubles.

That is the reason, my dearly beloved comrade Zucker, why we find ourselves in these God-forsaken ‘Taigas.’

I am absolutely not an enemy of the communists, Chaim'l says further, but a Jew need not be anything more than a Frenchman, British, or Dutch, or something else.

Since each nation is proud of its own religion, culture, history and tradition, a Jew must be a watchman of a foreign vineyard, and therefore abandons his own Torah, history, tradition, and ethnic identity, so all of the ‘isms’ are OK for you comrade Zucker, except for your own nationalism.

We have to learn from what has happened to our German brethren.

They thought that they were already a part of the German people, and so the somber brown [-shirted] Asmodeus, Hitler ימ”ש, arrived, and reminded them that they were, and would always remain Jews, the sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

As far back as Dr. Pinsker, in his famous [essay] ‘Auto-Emancipation’ he warned the Jews: a day will come when history will take vengeance for your verdict against your people, and your greatest offerings will be of no avail to you, they will always remind you that you are the children of Shem, and on one fine day, they will throw you out of the ‘fatherland,’ the rabble will escort you with the calling out of the familiar ‘HEP-HEP^[19]’ and remind you that the laws of citizenship applies to everyone except you Jews.

Chaim'l ceased speaking, and he took note of the fact that tears were streaming from the eyes of the communist Zucker.

Suddenly, Chaim'l reminded himself that he must quickly run to help his Sarah'leh to heat the kettle in which Sarah'leh makes ‘Kipiatak,’ for the workers.

Sarah'leh received six hundred grams of bread for this work, a soup, or a borscht from thorny brenessel.

[Page 113]

Our great prophet Isaiah said: When The Master of the Universe wishes to punish the wise, he first deprives them of their common sense.

It was in this fashion that He took away the common sense from comrade Stalin in his pact with that second man of righteousness, the Polish General Sikorsky.

The slightest remark by Stalin ימ”ש would have been sufficient for the Polish general, to exclude the Jewish Polish citizens, from this pact, and it seems, that deep in his filthy Polish heart, he would have enjoyed agreeing to having his Jews remain permanently in Russian hands,

But as previously said, God deprived these two non-Jews of their common sense, he took pity on his Jews in the steppes, and looked down from his heavenly heights, [seeing] how his children are being worked with mortar and bricks, as in days of old under Pharaoh in Egypt.

Therefore, he stopped up their heads, took away their reason, both, in the moment forgot to exclude the Jews from the pact, and literally, a miracle occurred, sent from heaven, and at the time of the rationalization of the ‘Zakladshchanehs’ out of the camps, the N.K.V.D. made no distinction between Christian and Jewish Poles, and all Polish citizens were liberated at once, directly, from these dark work camps.

Despite this, Smirnov attempted through terror, and all manner of possible threats, to influence the people not to leave the camps.

However, this was in vain!

The people, who in the space of a year and a half had been enslaved, locked away from the rest of the world, not knowing what was happening except in their part of the dark thick forest, under no circumstances wanted to agree to stay in this mosquito and snake-ridden place, crawling with other forms of life.

Smirnov immediately reckoned that all of his effort was going to the devil, and he assembled the camp inmates, and with a sweet cunning smile read the order to them, that from this day forward, they are free people. And each of them has the freedom to move on and settle anywhere in the entirety of Russia, except for Moscow and Leningrad.

There were no bounds to the joy, and migration immediately began a new.

Most of the camp inmates migrated to warmer climates, to Russian middle Asia, such as Kirghizstan, Uzbekistan, and so forth.

Logic dictates, that after twenty months of residing in a place where the cold dropped to forty-to-fifty degrees below zero, people lusted for a bit of sun, and a bit of warmth, in order to warm up their frozen bones.

Chaim'l and his family also took to the road.

They, along with an acquainted family whom they befriended in the camp, and were also burdened with the

[Page 114]

care of young children, on entry into the city of Ofo in the Urals, decided to seek their fortune in this large, but rather primitive industrial city.

The city of Ofo, like all large Russian cities, was divided into two parts. One part was called Starygorod, that is, the Old City, in existence for hundreds of years, remaining in the same medieval condition, with houses of an exotic style and appearance, with churches from the time of Ivan the Terrible.

The second part, is called Novygorod [i.e. the New City] and came into being after the revolution, with halfway modern houses.

With a very strenuous effort, Chaim'l was able to rent a room that was located on a high hill on the left side of the city.

To reach his dwelling, meaning, to pull one's self up the hill, it was necessary to crawl on all fours, because climbing, or other means for being able to go up the hill did not exist, as opposed to descending into the city, which one did by simple sliding down the snow and rolling down.

This was the most reliable and fastest means of transportation, there being no other means of communication for Chaim'l and his family.

True the Bashkirsh gentile had a small donkey with which he assisted himself to get up and down the hill – to and from his little dwelling, but he didn't permit Chaim'l to make use of the little donkey.

They went for an entire month this way, rolling down from the hill, when someone in the family needed something that needed to be obtained in the city, and they immediately regretted their leaving the camp.

In the end, they decided to leave the city of Ofo, and for a large sum of money, he bought an unused wagon from the station master, packed both families into it with whatever remained of their poor possessions, and took off for the warmer climates like all the other Jews who were former inmates of the camp.

Arriving in the large city of Tashkent in the middle of the night, they remained in the street until dawn, together with other thousands of people who fled from the various camps that were spread all over Russia.

The crowding, filth, thievery and outcry reached the heavens, nobody – not the authorities, and also not kin, took an interest in the homeless and confused, many fell sick from epidemic diseases, people fell like flies.

When the scandal became very large, the familiar beloved N.K.V.D. showed up again, took pity on the people, again packed them into wagons, and sent them off to collective farms throughout all of middle Asia.

Chaim'l and his family were settled in a collective farm in Uzbekistan, named ‘Strelkov.’ They were billeted in a small ‘residence’ that just before had been used to stable two small donkeys.

A hole in the side served as a window, a table covering, hung up by his wife, served as a door, the floor was sand, mixed with the dried out droppings of the previous four-footed occupants.

The fields of the collective farms were worked in return for a ‘lepyushka’ and a bit of flour.

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The living conditions in the collective farm were a lot worse than that in the camp.

The difference was that in the camp, one starved, got sick and died on command, in the collective farm by contrast, it was permissible to make use of a measured means called ‘skolko unadna,᾿ but under the oversight of the N.K.V.D.

In order to leave the collective farm, one needed only a couple of hundred rubles, to rent an ‘arba,’ which is a higher wagon on two even higher wheels, spanned by a ‘keel.’

An Uzbek would do you a favor, for a dear sum of money, and transported you in the middle of the night to a small town that was not far away.

After a bout two months of wearing themselves out at the collective farm, Chaim'l concluded that they must leave this place as soon as possible if they were to remain alive.

But, man plans and God laughs, as the Yiddish expression goes, and standing out in the field of the collective farm at work with his wife Sarah'leh, thinking that they would leave this place in the morning, they see that two militia men were drawing near to them, with an officer at their head, not saying much, an order: take everything with you – and let's go.

A large ‘arba’ stood in front of Chaim'l quarters, and everything was loaded on ‘bistre.’ – up on the wagon, off to the small train station, into the echelon, which arrived from somewhere else, full of other people.

The echelon began to move, and off in the direction of the Iranian border which according to the Russian estimates, was not very far, a sum total of about twelve hundred kilometers.

They traveled for a day and a night.

Suddenly, the echelon came to a halt in the middle of a field.

The people were not told what the journey meant, why, or when – no person knew where they were being taken.

Among themselves, the people conversed that they were being taken to Teheran, and from there, to the Land of Israel.

As later became evident, nothing came of this dream.

Stopped in the field for about three days, the locomotive was suddenly detached, it was re-attached in an opposite direction, the people were quickly driven into the wagons, there was a whistle from the locomotive, and about face, back to where they came from.

Ride back for something less than a day, the same procedure of dropping people off at collective farms begins again.

However, they were not taken to the same collective farms from which they came, but to new ones.

[Page 116]

It makes no difference, the officer of the transport declared to the people when they asked why they were being settled in new places.

‘Eto vsye nashi,’ he explained.

In reality, what difference was it for Chaim'l in the suffering he endured in the former collective farm named ‘Strelkov,’ which was found in the land of Uzbekistan, or in his present collective farm named ‘Bolshevik,’ found in the country of Kirghizstan, these are the same filthy, torn and, excuse me, barns – that is to say in simple language, it's the same old bag in different rags.

Life in the collective farm was hard, tragic and monotonous.

The principal activity was to crop and take the ‘khlapak’ off the fields, that is ‘cotton’ which had been planted in that soil.

The compensation for this twelve-hour day of labor was a ‘lepyushka,’ which is a sort of Arab pita, with four hundred grams of flour per person.

The trouble would not have been so bad, had this starvation ration been distributed honestly and in a timely fashion, but in reality, days would go by and nights, until you lived long enough to see a ‘Lepyushka,’ or a bit of flour.

Hunger was intense through out, people became as brutal as animals in the wild.

One would steal a morsel of bread from the other, a bit of flour, salt, and a bit of ersatz tobacco, or a bit of newspaper with which to wrap the tobacco.

Chaim'l, his wife and twelve year-old son, worked from early in the morning until evening, and their accounting was simple.

For three workers, three ‘lepyushkas,’ with a kilo and two hundred grams of flour a day, and from this, all five would somehow have to sustain their lives, but what was the decree when nothing was given?

Had Chaim'l not placed his life in danger for them, they would have certainly expired from hunger, and it would have been all over.

Two-three times a week, in the middle of the night, he would steal into the fields of the collective farm, and bring back a bit of onion, cucumbers, or another bit of vegetable.

Apart from his daily work, he had supplemental work.

Every evening, to sit hours on the officer's neck to extract his pay for the day's work, mostly without success.

Sitting one evening at the residence of the Kirghiz, waiting for a bit of flour, two unfamiliar men and a woman appear in his location.

[Page 117]

They introduce themselves as coming from the ‘NaKrom’ in Tashkent (Narodny Komissariat) with an order that in the span of four weeks, our collective farm must construct a bath house.

Upon hearing this order, the Kirghiz, who was in charge of the collective farm, ran hot and cold.

Out of great fear, he approached Chaim'l with the following question: Tovarishch Chaim, is there a construction engineer to be found among you Polish people who can undertake to build this bath house?

There is a saying in the world Need can transform a shoemaker into a Rabbi, and a Rabbi into a wagon driver.

This very thing happened to Chaim'l at that moment.

Not thinking for very long, he replied to the Kirghiz that, indeed, he does know of such a person among his people, who is a construction engineer, an expert, who had constructed the largest houses and factories in Poland.

And this great expert, is to be found, right here, in our collective farm.

Hearing this good news, he regained his normal color, and it became lighter for him in his heart.

Chaim only asks if they had brought some sort of building plan with them?

At his wish, he receives the required plan, and after a few minutes, he says to them: Tovarishchi! I, myself, Chaim'l, am that great expert among experts, who has built up nearly half of Poland, and I take it upon myself to build this bath house in the course of four weeks, on condition that the four weeks will commence only when the officer in charge will have provided me with all of the needed material.

Hearing such words, the officer in charge, out of great inspiration and satisfaction gave Chaim'l such a slap on the back that he can feel it to this day…

He cemented this with a generous Russian blessing, and immediately agreed to turn over the work to Chaim'l.

The compensation for the work was set at seventy kilograms of wheat, so said, and so done.

At this opportunity, I also do not want to forget those of our brethren who live in these places.

My wish is to give a bit of an overview of the way of life of these children of Israel in a faraway place.

It is not my purpose here to give a [sic: complete] portrait of these Uzbek Jews, because I think this has already been done.

However, this does not deter me to underscore and reflect for my readers the character of this community.

I had acquainted myself thoroughly with their way of life, customs, and characteristics, which is the operative

[Page 118]

evidence of their innermost spiritual being.

The Soviet system impacted these Jews severely, and lowered them from the level of their standard of living that they occupied yet from the time of Tamerlane.

The revolution, as it had done to all other Jews in Russia, had permanently broken their economic status.

An entire community of Jews sit on the lounging chairs in streets, back alleys, on small benches, with shoe brushes in hand, and wait for a passer-by to have their shoes polished, in order to be able to sustain their impoverished lives with a ‘pita and a tea.’

The entire physical and emotional focus is directed towards how to obtain, by all means, even if it is illegal, one more pita and one more teapot of tea.

This is the quintessence of the life of the community with a patriarchal past and a proud heritage.

The surroundings, ethnography, cultural-historical details and especially the regime, create the conditions that the intelligence of the entire community is occupied with only one thing, how to fill one's empty stomach [kursak], in their language, and through this, their thoughts and efforts and demands are attenuated to a minimum.

And when such an Uzbek Jew is enriched with a pita and a teapot full of ‘Kipiatak’ his demands of that moment are fulfilled.

And it is, in this way, that the old folk saying is once again confirmed: ‘when warmth comes only in the form of horseradish, one believes that there is nothing better.’

On the anniversary of the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution, in my new location, a group of young people, of both sexes, encountered me with wild shouts of ‘zdrastvuity tovarishch^[20]’ sitting under heavy branches of nut trees, with pots of Kipiatak in their hands.

In the shade off to the side, sat the older companions, near them was a small music ensemble with a variety of different musical instruments, which were hard to even find inn the local areas, and which one of our people would not even dream that they were musical instruments, and despite this, the Kirghiz natives played their mournful and monotonic melodies on them.

My soul became a bit lighter, hearing this mournful music, but it was much more difficult to improve the mood of my wife and children.

Hunger in this place had reached its zenith, and our people fell like flies from starvation.

And when the knife truly lay against one's throat, suddenly a salvation arrived, we packed up our bit of

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impoverished possessions, and were sent back to our original home via an echelon.

Coming back to wartime Poland, our eyes, once again, were made dark, no sisters, no brothers, not a single relative, all had disappeared along with the Jewish houses, assets, and other belongings.

The ground literally burned under one's feet, and as if what the brow [-shirted] devil and his Polish accomplices had not done enough during the war years to the Jewish people, the Polish anti-Semites further murdered Jews on top of the Polish soil that was already soaked in Jewish blood.

It was under these circumstances that Chaimchi, with is wife and children abandon their ‘fatherland’ Poland, with the idea of realizing his old dream, meaning – to join up with his two older children in the Land of Israel.

Chaimchi sat in an American camp in Salzburg Austria with his family for about one and a quarter years, until his oldest son in the Land of Israel, who, in his role as an emissary of the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, facilitated the immigration of European survivors by illegal means.

On one fine day, using such a means of transport, he brought his parents and three younger little brothers to the Land of Israel.

During the days of September in the year 1947, a ship with a full complement sailed towards the direction of a shore that was still not visible, but one already heard about it, and talked of it, as if it was a visible parcel of land.

We sat in our cabin plastered with our satchels as if with large bricks from a building that had collapsed, with which one wants to rebuild the old, collapsed house.

The ship, on which Chaimchi and his family traveled, arrived in Haifa on the day of a hamsin.^[21]

With the first welcome greeting, they were taken up an hour after their arrival.

A group of Jewish fighters had thrown a bomb into the English police station that happened to be right across the street from the hotel where Chaimchi and his family had been quartered.

Running out onto the veranda of the hotel out of great fear, Chaimchi saw body parts mixed in with chunks of wood and iron, with paper fluttering about, and a heavy black smoke which covered the entire vicinity.

A little at a time, the fear subsides, and Chaimchi manages to get himself onto the first bus that is bound for Tel-Aviv.

Arriving in Tel-Aviv, the war with the Arabs immediately broke out, and the fear of taking a bullet in the head starts anew.

[Page 120]

And as if the measure of travail did not appear yet to be full, all of Chaimchi's children without exception had to mobilize themselves into the Israeli Army, and it was in this fashion that all of the months and all of the time of the new war went by with a heart full of fear for the fate of his children who each separately found themselves at a different section of the front against the Arabs.

But God protected them from an Arab bullet, and all of Chaimchi's children returned healthy and well from the war, which gorged itself and spilled the young, pure Jewish blood of thousands of precious young boys and girls.

This was the fourth war that the former Yeshiva student Chaim had gone through and survived, starting anew, finally, to rebuild his life in the Land of Israel, and to rest his bones a bit, from dragging himself around for decades, from land to land, from city to city.

This is a short memoir, of how a Jewish life and suffering looked to be, in the time of The First World War, when the accursed clique of ‘HiSta-Khrumika’ began to dominate the world, with the two principal criminals Hitler and Stalin, may their names and memories be erased.

This desecrated era already spans three generations, and who is to know when the travails of the Jews will come to an end already?

Would that it were only now.

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