[Page 144]

Remember days gone by, Remember days that have passed, Days, not to be forgotten, Days, to be always remembered. Days, on which she came to visit, Full of joy and radiating light; Raising the spirits of the grown ups, Shielding the souls of the small. Forever, but she will never vanish from us Until a malignant disease attacked her, Lingering for a day and a year. Until the day she fell silent forever, But from us, she will never disappear. We will feel her absence forever, We will live in her shadow forever. We will not be consoled for the bad time That arrived with her departure.

This memorial is placed in lieu of a grave stone in memory of my parents and the members of my family, may God avenge their blood, who were murdered by the Nazi German murderers and their accomplices, and whose final resting place is unknown.

Sitting in the middle: My father, R' Naphtali and my mother Rachel, ז”ל From the right: The grandchildren Motkeh and Chaim, sons of Sholom and my sister Tauva Gershtenfeld ז”ל From the left: The grandchildren Michael and Chaya, the son and daughter of Beryl, my brother, and his wife Frieda Tepper, ז”ל And Separated for a Long Life, sitting, my daughters, from the right: Tonya, Sala, and Lyuba

[Page 145]

I Remember: Sheva and her daughters Gartl and Faleh ז”ל, the wife and daughters of my brother Moshe Michael Tepper, to long life, and Fradl and her daughter, ז”ל, the wife and daughter of my brother Leibusz Ber Tepper, to long life. I Remember: My brother Chaim and his wife Yehudit Tepper ז”ל, who died in Harbin in the year 5716-1956. Woe to them who lose and do not remember. May their memory be for a blessing.

Sholom and Tauva Gershtenfeld and their sons, ז”ל

Mrs. Dwora Lempel ע”ה Mother of Benjamin ז”ל who fell in the Sinai Campaign

 

ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

[Page 146]

R' Zelig Wartzel and his wife Nechi ע”ה A family known for its good deeds, from a Hasidic family and Torah scholars. May their souls be bound up in the bond of life.

R' Menachem Wartzel and his wife ע”ה The entire family was exterminated in the Cracow Ghetto. May God avenge their blood.

Our Sages have said, concerning “Blessed are you in arriving, and in your departing.” (Deuteronomy 28:5), may your departure be like your coming, if your arrival in the world was without sin, may your departure be without sin. A blessing of this nature, to leave this world without the blemish of sin, is not easily accomplished, because “There is no righteous man in the land who can do good but not transgress (Ecclesiastes 7:20), and in order to purify a person so as to facilitate his departure from this world without sin, death was decreed on all human beings, even on the righteous and the pious. Death, and the agonies that accompany it, purify the human being of his sins, an a priori argument can be made, that if the tooth and eye which are working parts are liberate4d, how much more so then all of the limbs of the human, it is therefore appropriate to say that the entire human being is liberated of all sin and transgression (Berachot 5). How appropriate and relevant are the words of our Sages, referred to above, to my Grandfather R' Baruch Aryeh, ז”ל! It was possible to encounter him morning and evening, treading with measured strides – in his traditional direction – upon rising, to the central Bet HaMedrash in our town, so that he would not miss out, God forbid, on communal prayer, since it was his custom to be among the early risers, who poured their hearts out to our Father in Heaven. This dear man, was modest and chaste, among the most chaste. For his entire life, he earned a living by the work of his own hands, doing whatever it was within his ability to do. By nature, he was careful in the way he dressed, a simple form of garb – but he was never extravagant about his clothing. He took everything lovingly, and never complained about acts of the Almighty, and he was privileged to see his progeny continue in the ways of tradition during his lifetime, and also was privileged to reach a formidable old age – the age of 96 years.

[Page 147]

With the outbreak of The Second World War, he went together with his family to Nemirov, and lived there with my brother David, הי”ד. My grandfather Baruch Sholom ז”ל, came into this world without sin, and he left this world as he came into it, without sin. He passed away on 19 Av 5700 [1940] in Nemirov – and there is his honored resting place.

Moshe Mikhl Tepper from Rio De Janeiro

In the year 1941, when Hitler ימ”ש ordered his wild bands to march into Lemberg, the lives of the Jews of Lemberg were immediately transformed, the process of dragging Jews out of their houses was initiated, and the unfortunate ones never again returned.

It happened to me, when very early in the morning, I had gone out on foot to go to work (it was forbidden for Jews to ride on the trams), and Jewish ‘Kapos’ captured me, and presented me to a gathering point, had me tossed into a cattle car, and taken away to a work camp in Zloczow.

There were already many unfortunate of our brothers and sisters, I lay in a barracks which was surrounded by barbed wire, half dead from hunger and cold.

We worked on the roads, doing such work as breaking stones and digging the earth. In a very short time, very many became completely exhausted and fell dead of hunger, cold and hard labor.

Thousands of Jews who became ill with Typhus were shot under the order that they were taking the place of others.

I, personally, was rescued by coincidence, since I also became ill with typhus, only my good fortune was that the commandant happened to be on leave, and his substitute was a bit more lenient, so he didn't have me shot, and God helped me so that by the time the tyrant returned, I had in the meantime returned to health; that is why I am currently alive ע”ה.

And when the defeats of the Germans became more severe, they began to liquidate the camps en masse. Also, in our camp, hundreds of innocent Jewish souls were shot every day.

Seeing that I had nothing to lose, I attempted an escape and ended up wandering about in the surrounding forests for a while.

Words fail me to describe the struggle for life and the suffering I endured in the forest.

On a beautiful clear day, the Russians arrived and liberated us, this was in the month of May 1944.

After exhausting myself for an additional 4 years, I was saved from Hitler's Hell as the only survivor of my entire family.

My wife and children ז”ל were exterminated in the year 1942 in the well-known ‘Janowska’ camp in Lemberg^[1].

Wandering about in the Hell of Europe for a while, I settled in Brazil, where I started everything over anew.

You – our sons and daughters, you succeeded in fleeing from the European Valley of Death bare and without anything.

You reached the enchanted land at a tender age – the Land of our Forefathers,

We raised you and educated you to a new life – a life of Torah and tradition together with practical day-to-day living, and we thank God who kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to arrive at the point where we can see the sweet fruit from the tree that we planted.

You are the younger generation, who are almost entirely intellectuals, there are among you engineers, artisans, certified accountants, lawyers, lecturers, technologists, zoologists, generals, Rabbis, ritual slaughterers and meat inspectors, and ordinary learned people, and you have become the pride of our clan, and we the ones who are growing old – feel blessed and take pride in you and consider that we are fortunate to be the fathers to sons and daughters that are like you, and we are fortunate in our progeny that has not brought shame to our old age.

However, to each healthy fruit, there sometimes is such a blemish, and consequently there are those, beyond the pale, who lack enlightenment among you –

Like Korah in his time of great and heated anger
When a fire seethed in his nostrils
And who called out what is it that the elders are doing
Who are publishing a Yizkor Book?
‘Yet another book’
And before they even set eyes on it – said,
That ‘Half the material of the book’
Was as if tucked away in his breast –
Hidden in his gut, which rises arrogantly between his teeth
And no one knows when he lies down or rises up.
It is not we who are to blame that you have selected the name for yourself of a ‘scholar’
A scholar – not that his stories can be found on the shelves…
Rather – what is written can be found in his head.
Well, show your power, and don't be a contentious man, bring us your book and receive your recompense.
God in heaven! How long will the Korahs continue to revel?

My eyes, my eyes cascade tears over the tragedy that has occurred to the daughter of our town, Chaya Angerst-Berger, daughter of Yekhiel and Leah, who died after a difficult delivery on 8 Heshvan 5730 at the age of 40, leaving her husband, three of her children, her saddened brothers and sisters – bereaved and left alone.

May her soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life under the wings of the Holy Spirit.

Chaya Angerst-Berger

[Page 151]

R' Schraga Feivel Lehrer

Mr. Lehrer in destroyed Warsaw

He also dedicated himself to the work of aliyah, and in the preservation of the memory of the martyrs of the Holocaust, he saw the purpose of his life; such was the case when he was in Poland, and such was also the case when he arrived in The Land. Here, he set himself up in business, raised a family, but in the end, he continuously returned to the mission that he had taken upon himself, continues to work, to stimulate himself and others, to address the responsibility of this generation, and that is the mitzvah of remembrance!

Great is the doer and the deed.

My addendum here is the fruit of an emotional effort.

While I [personally] did not remain under the Nazis ימ”ש for more than two weeks, you must understand that despite this, what sort of ardor and how much love, and how much spiritual agony and searing pain is involved in order to be the one who must renew this era and to tell about it in memoirs. I refer to these chapters as memories, because they happen to be stories drawn from memory, enveloped in flames of love and hate. An unbounded love to our oppressed people, that was tortured in its weariness, and an immense hatred toward its unclean murderers, the scum of the human race.

Yizkor books are in general a collection of threnodies and beseeching, in which every Jew, even if he is not a scion of the city, to find a faithful echo of the great human tragedy and because of this, to intensify strength and unify himself with the memory of all the pure souls of those who were slaughtered and exterminated, also of those members of generations gone by, and of all of these, who by their lives and death saddened our spirits and our souls.

[Page 152]

It is understood that everything depends on the mood and the creative capacity of the designated publisher. All of the tribulations to reduce these things to writing coalesce into a memorial that speaks to our proud and distinguished past.

When the Second World War broke out in the year 1939, I was Bar Mitzvah, and precisely on that day, I became a full thirteen years of age. I do not remember a great deal from my childhood. Despite this, something does bruit about in my memory. I remember my little town, populated by Jews living in great crowdedness, the town of my birth, Cieszanow. I remember my parents' house very well. Because of my father's occupation of being a grain merchant, we lived in the core of the town, at a bit of a distance from the center. My father was busy with his work all day, and during the twilight hours, he would go hurriedly to the synagogue of the Husyatin Hasidim as if someone were chasing him, or as if he suspected that he would be somewhat late there, and it was his responsibility to hurry along….

On the outside, he had a Jewish bearing that was a little difficult: he would speak differently, smile differently, and react differently to specific developments: I used to say, that he would restrain himself in his joy, and similarly in his sorrow. His relationship to the public was as if he constantly suspected that he was threatened by The Evil Eye. Personally, he probably didn't [sic: consciously] know that he did this because of the Eye that peers at him from the side.

However, he felt entirely different when he was in his own home, in the Bet HaMedrash, and in his kloyz. His behavior was different in his relationship to other people, to matters pertaining to one person to another. He became transformed, he became more intimate, gentle and closer, natural and more from the heart. Among brethren, the Jew feels as if the cables that constrain his steps have suddenly been cut away. His attitude towards a friend or a neighbor, to a relative, and other kin becomes more emotional without ulterior motive.

I remember the secular discussions in the kloyz in the intermissions between the afternoon and evening prayers. The subjects of these discussions dwelt largely on the condition of the nation, the world, the new generation, the young people growing up, who in part were going off in alien directions, distancing themselves from the way of life of their grandparents, that the generation is prodigal, some a little, and some a lot, in deserting the ways of Yiddishkeit.

My childhood way of life in the town was no bed of roses, for we lived in the Diaspora. In the end, it was an ambience that was sown with hatred, unfounded hatred… the young gentiles schemed against us – but for the sake of truth, we did not keep our hands out of the cookie jar, and didn't behave like good kids. They too, when the situation arose for them to pass through the Jewish neighborhoods, looked around very carefully as they proceeded… however, despite the hatred that was spread among us by implementation, the Jewish children did feel themselves in their own town as if they were in their own homes and their own country…this is more or less how the matter looked up to the outbreak of the war: the years of Heder, and their glow, the days of Hanukkah and the joy they brought, the days of Purim and their din. The noise of the groggers, and the whistles that deafened the ears, and cohorts, cohorts in masquerade, filling the streets of the Jewish district with a racket and tumult. All of this made a deep impression on the soul of a child. The eve of the Passover holidays, with the boiling of the dishes and the burning of the leaven, and the smoke that rose form the yards, were a source of joy to children. The Sabbaths and Festivals in the synagogues and houses of study, the courtyard of the Rebbe, and even the meeting places for the youth movements, all of this was genuinely Jewish to the core, have a Jewish flavor and redolence.

I am reminded of the large yard, the deciduous tree beside the house and the stand of pines nearby, where

[Page 154]

we spent our Sabbath days playing games and engaging in conversation and in all the other things that young people do while they are growing up. How great was the joy that we derived from all of this!…. In the Festivals and on the Sabbath in the afternoon, we would read in the shade of the trees that were in the thicket, stories of events…and newspapers. Out of great exhaustion, we would grab a nap in the embrace of the clean air. We fell asleep quickly after our play. During the summer, we would go out to the grove beside the river, or to the green fields, or we stretched out on the freshly cut bales of hay; during the brightly clear winter days, we would go out onto the fields that were wrapped in pure snow, and establish a base for our amusement, we would make snowballs, and throw them at our friends, our cousins, male and female alike, who returned the assault measure for measure, amid groans and cries of pleasure. We would slip and slide, and fall, in order to hug and kiss one another, and even…bite one another from the ever increasing sense of hilarity. And what was the wonder? The burden of making a living had not yet descended upon our shoulders.

Quickly, the childhood years flew by. The war put an end to them abruptly. My town, Cieszanow, with its beautiful ambience, the Hasidic Jewish shtetl – the malevolent and purposefully murderous hands of the evil ones has destroyed you, and transformed everything into a wasteland. To where have your young people vanished, and the entrepreneurial balebatim? Where are your Jews, with the shining faces, to be found, the scholars, the scribes, and ordinary learned folk, those, who evening in and evening out, after a hard day of burdensome work, who in trade, and who with his manual labor, would sit in the houses of study, in the kloyz of the Hasidim of Belz, or in the kloyz of the Husyatin Hasidim, or in the Bet HaMedrash of the Rabbi and study with such great focus and seriousness.

Even the young people would sit and learn. Even if the larger part of them preferred to spend their time in the offices of the various Zionist organizations, or non-Zionist ones, everything had the stamp of the truth on it. These, these are the words of The Living God. They sought some meaningful result in every undertaking. A meaningful result for the sake of the Jewish people, a meaningful result for humanity, the specific and at hand, as well as for the world in general. Everything was done with a Jewish dedication for the sake of the essence of the issue, to implement it properly. Everything was genuinely Jewish, and its flavor and its redolence were Jewish.

The towns adjacent to Cieszanow were: Narol-Lipsko. These were twin cities with only a small river separating them, and a narrow bridge connected them. It is from here that the double name Narol-Lipsko is derived. This was the birthplace of my father. It was a magnificent area, as if it had been dipped in a great greenness of forest and pasture. These added an escort of charm to the towns, and this is the way they lived in this little gorgeous gem in the center of Galicia. It's populace, even though it resembled the surrounding populace in its way of life, had its own special charm. The young people were more energetic, they were more joyful, but woe, there was only one single fate, and one bitter end that cut both of them down.

To the north was the Polish border. To the east, could be found Rawa Ruska, Lemberg (Lvov), and to the west could be found Oleszyce, Jaroslaw, Rzeszow^[1], Lubaczow, etc.

The town of Belzec is not a great distance form Narol-Lipsko. In times past, before the First World War – it was a border point between the Austrian Empire and Czarist Russia. During the time of the Second World War, there was an extermination camp in Belzec well known for its barbarity and cruelty. In the period between

[Page 155]

the two wars, this entire district belonged to Lvov, and now, with no Jews, to the Resza District.

As said above, the War found me at the end of childhood, but nevertheless, I remember a number of the older people in town. I remember the Jewish craftsmen of my town – in our town, forward-thinking people, but people with a real Jewish feel to them. Before my eyes stand Hasidim, young married men, who would inject life and vigor into the town. There was a genuine Hasidic ardor in them, when they would literally besiege the courtyard of the Rebbe. I see the groups of the various professional unions, the various organizations, each to its own kind, in whom warm Jewish blood coursed, and a pure Jewish spirit reigned.

In passing from the general to the specific, the spirits of different people stand before my eyes, each man, standing distinctly by himself. First and foremost is my grandfather Meir. He was called Meir Nossn's, that is to say, the son of Nathan. During the days of summer, my father would take me to the home of my grandfather and grandmother in Narol-Lipsko. I would spend the long vacation there. My grandfather took me on a daily basis to pray at the synagogue, and after a generous breakfast would send me to study in the Heder, in order that I not sit idle and away from Torah study all these days. And my grandmother Rivka! Oh, how she spoiled me, fulfilling my every wish! And Aunt Mindl, and Aunt Gitla and Uncle Shmuel-Zeinvil? All of them strove on my behalf, to amuse me and make my stay pleasant in this Jewish home blessed with everything that was good, suffused with genuine love and patience. My grandfather was a renown host. Merchants that came from Lvov to transact their business, would arrive and depart from my grandfather's place. To spend time in Narol-Lipsko and not to stop off at R' Meir? To partake of a glass of tea from the pot, and to have a taste of grandmother's baking? It was not conceivable to skip this. And even the conversation in the house was not idle. The words of Torah and wisdom were always to be heard, or just plain news of the world. At Meir Nossn's, everyone felt as if they were in their own home. All his doings were from the heart. And all of this without any show of emotion, except for tranquility and modesty. And his attitude toward matters of spirit is best demonstrated by the fact that he turned over one of his rooms to be used as a Zionist Library not for the purpose of receiving a prize.

And it was this quiet heartiness, and atmosphere of love, of good deeds and elevated intentions these are among the attributes that were bequeathed to us by my father's grandfather, R' Nathan.

Regarding my grandfather Nathan Lehrer, a baker of fine breads, he was a Jew wise in the was of life, with an acute sense of perception, a doer of good deeds, and a whole person about whom many stories circulated in the family. I will recall one of them here: after The First World War, he stood at the head of an organization to provide assistance to the needy which dealt with providing aid for the reconstruction of homes that were burned, having gone up in flames during the war. (Narol-Lipsko was known for its fires even during peacetime, not to mention wartime). His sons and daughters, whose houses were also destroyed. turned to him with a request for periodic help, they being as innocent as others who had been burned out. Grandfather refused them and his reasoning was as follows: “This assistance has not been allocated for you. It has been allocated for the elderly and weak, the ill and the maimed, who do not have the strength to build everything from anew. You, my children, are young and healthy, capable to do all manner of work, so work and do commerce on the land, and with God's help, you will build and be built….”

Also, the conflagration did not skip over the house of grandfather Nathan, and he too, was among those who was burned out. My father told me, that most of all, the old man was saddened by the books that had become fodder for the flames. These were his personal precious treasure. He was a scholar, one of the people close to the Rabbi of the town, and it was his practice to engage in Torah discourse with him, and to analyze matters pertaining to religious law.

[Page 156]

I remember my uncles and aunts and remaining relatives very well, and I will add and tell about them. Let me recall a number of them: My Uncle Moshe Joseph Segal, a wondrous teacher, who sat day and night immersed in Torah study, and he was a perfectionist, being zealous and observant down to the tip of a yud in everything that touched upon tradition. Yet, in matters pertaining to the education of his sons, he showed a brought heart and tolerance, and did not interfere with them if they began to take an interest in secular subjects, and read a secular book or as it was then called ‘the enlightened literature.’ His sons proved faithful to him, in that they did not pursue a malign cultural path.

Uncle Abraham Yitzhak Lehrer was a totally different type of person. He, personally, did not depart from the tents of the Torah, practically a resident of the Belz kloyz, he sat hunched over the Gemara. He sanctions for his sons, in addition to the Shas, to partake of secular knowledge. In contrast to other zealous Jews, who are even suspicious if their sons even want to learn a chapter of the Tanakh, he would encourage his sons to imbibe all sources…let his sons grow up to be come well-informed people…that is what he would say constantly.

And additionally I recall Mordechai Waxman, and his wife Pearl, and their nine children: Moshe, David, Hirsch, Yeshaya, Eliyahu, Yaakov, Aharon, Esther and Faiga with their families הי”ד. And Abraham Feder ז”ל, an ardent, important Belz Hasid, and his wife Min'cheh ע”ה (of the Waxman family), and Yitzhak Waxman, a philanthropist and giver of charity, who never sought any thanks for all of his good works and his oneness with the world about him.

I remember Uncle Yaakov Waxman, his wife Eidel (of the Lehrer family) and their children. The young married couples, Yaakov Braker, a scribe of Torahs and Mezuzot, and Mottl Zambank and their families. Among the more prominent members of the community, it is worth recollecting: Leib Sternlicht ז”ל, R' Moshe Root, who exchanged responsa with the sages of the times. Additionally, I will recall Mordechai Glanzer, Meir Waxman, and his wife Elka, Joseph Waxman and his wife Tova, Hirsch Waxman, Gershon Lehrer, Chaim-Joseph Just, Benjamin Just, I would be in the habit of going to Chaim-Joseph's house on Saturdays for the purpose of being tested on the Torah portion of the week.

An here is the elementary level teacher, R' Itcheh, with whom I first learned my alphabet, my memory of him comes to me as if from out of a black cloud. And this is no wonder – I was then about three years old. Opposite him, R' Leibusz lives in my memory, a man from Narol, with whom I learned the Pentateuch with Rashi commentaries. I can even remember the special sing-song tune of the way we did our study. He loved his pupils with his soul, and we reciprocated in kind. The son of the Rabbi, R' Yekhezkiel Halberstam הי”ד, also studied in this Heder, and he was my classmate, Chaim Hirsch הי”ד. The Rabbi was in the habit of coming to our Heder, because it was adjacent to his study house, and during his visit on Friday, he would do so to test the children. It was only a few steps from the Bet HaMedrash, and the Rabbi would appear enveloped in his prayer shawl, and dressed in his phylacteries, immediately after prayers. For whatever reason, I was always among the first that he would question.

I remember well the parties that we had in Heder. Year in and year out, on the Sunday of the portion of V'Ayleh P'kuday, and if the portions were concatenated, then Vayakhel-P'kuday, a party would be arranged to mark the end of the period during which study would be conducted at night. This was because the days grew longer as we got closer to Passover, and we would learn only up to the time of the afternoon prayers, and not as was the custom during the long winter nights, in which we continued to study even after the evening prayers. (It is understood – before noon we were in secular school). Also, the following maxim was well inculcated: “When we reach Vayakhel-Pkuday, we have a party.' And the party was arranged under the

[Page 157]

supervision and direction of the Rebbetzin, that is, the Rabbi's wife, and in her kitchen, but it is self-understood that it was at our expense. For months in advance, we would insert money into a sealed box, made of clay, pennies from the Sabbath money that we received from our parents. In praise of this pleasant custom, it is possible to add that no accounting was taken of the monies that were put into the box, ‘in order that a blessing reign there,’ as the Rabbi said, but also in order that we would not know what each individual puts in, in order that the children of the poor not be shamed because they didn't have the means to contribute in a measure that was equivalent to the others.

The custom was, that when one of the children drew near to the box to make a contribution, that the others averted their faces, in order that they not see their comrade's gift. The box was well sealed on all sides, and only a tiny slit, like a crack was in it, through which it was possible to insert a coin. To take out the money was only possible if the box was broken open. At the time the box was broken, and on the occasion that the money was counted, the Rabbi also participated. We awaited this event impatiently for the entire winter.

Our Gemara teacher was R' Avigdor, who was stricter by far with us, even though he also was committed and faithful in his mission and to his students. He pressed down the full weight of the yoke on us, along with the cascade of mitzvot that we were obliged to observe. Nevertheless, everything that he did – he did for our own good, in order that we be good Jews when we grow up.

The memory of the Sabbaths in the town are especially deeply etched into my memory. The sanctity of the day was palpable in the entire area. Even the gentiles refrained from traversing the Jewish streets in their heavily-laden wagons, in order not to disturb the rest of the Sabbath Day.

The elevated spiritual state that the Sabbath brought could literally be felt with the hands. The burning candles, the bathed children, carefully combed, the cleanliness that stands out from every nook and cranny of the room, this atmosphere could be felt as early as Friday morning. Father comes rushing from town: get up, today is the eve of the Sabbath, and he would rush out to pray. Mother rushes off to the market to buy the last of her Sabbath provisions, that she had not managed to buy the day before. All of this creates a pleasant rush of sound in the heart of a young child. The difference in this day can be felt well: it is a weekday, but not like the rest of the days.

From the noon hour on, a flood of hurried activity commences in a race with time. Father runs to the bath house and on his return, he reviews the Torah portion of the week, twice in the original Hebrew text, and once in the Aramaic translation. Mother is occupied and busy in the kitchen, to finish her work on time, and not, God forbid, after the time of candle-lighting. Even I am taken up in this mood, and I hurry to get myself ready for the Sabbath. And my heart is full of anticipation. With the descent of night, after the final preparations, my mother's custom, Chava, long life to her (of the Waxman family) to rest a bit, after she had managed to change clothing in honor of the Sabbath, and awaits the appointed hour to bless the candles. With a glance at the clock in the kitchen, she squeezes in a look at the Sefer HaTekhinot that is ready in front of her, and she opens it to the page where the specific supplication is found to be recited along with the lighting of the candles. She prays for good health, and a living for the members of her household, and also offers a supplication on behalf of all Jewry, for the sake of the Holy Sabbath. And as it happens, tears fall from her eyes , as if by themselves, hot tears of gratitude for the week that has gone by, peaceably, and without any disabling obstacles, and she pleads for God's blessing for the coming week. After lighting the candles, we leave, my Father and I, for synagogue. The little daughters go outside to play with their girlfriends. Mother remains in the house alone, and she returns to her [Sefer] HaTekhinot, or to Tzena U'Re'ena, reading there what is said about the weekly Torah portion, and she closes the book with a kiss only when she hears our

[Page 158]

footfall outside. The door opens to its full width, and Father noisily blesses her with a gleeful ‘Shabbat Shalom,’ and burst into an ardent rendition of “Shalom Aleichem Mal'achei HaSharet.’ My mother's face radiates holiness, and like a secret shining, her tears reflect the Sabbath candle light like sparks, in the silver candlesticks on the set table. The Holy Spirit hovers in the house. and the spirit of holiness from other worlds stirs the heart…

On the morrow, with the conclusion of the Sabbath during the Third Feast, the sensitive should of the Jewish child fills with a longing that seems to threaten one's life. Slowly, slowly, the sun sets, and it is as if the Sabbath Queen is weighing in her mind if it isn't too early to return the evil ones to their purgatory. And the young heart spasms from pain and compassion for the evil ones.

I rush with my father to the Husyatin kloyz. From there, one hears the voices and melodies of the Third Feast burst forth and rise upwards, which is still being celebrated in accordance with ritual. And here, we are accosted by the familiar traditional melody, and the carrier of longing, ‘B'nai Hilka Dikhsiffin’… The Jews of the town come to take their leave of the Sabbath, and the sorrow of this parting becomes almost like an ache. They sit, crowded together, around a table in the atmosphere of the twilight. The singing is especially soulful, full of enchantment and weavings. A few run about the kloyz hither and thither. The holy fervor is intense, and it is difficult to sit in one place. Even I run about with them, with my eyes shut…in the recitation of ‘May your servant run like a ram’ that is now intoned sung by the singers. And with the singing, all boundaries fall away. All borders are erased between heaven and earth, between dream and reality, between illusion and what is truth. The kloyz is suddenly filled with shadows, as if all the souls of the generations past have gathered within its walls to escort the Sabbath Queen.

And it is odd: There is a co-mingling that reigns everywhere, among the shadows there are also the outlines of women. How is it that women have come to the Husyatin kloyz?

Apart from those whose passing was natural, in the manner of one generation following another, I also see families, each family according to its generation, also from among those who were exterminated much later by the Nazi Scourge ימ”ש, and not only them, but also entire generations of Jews, men, women and children, that are filling up the confines of the kloyz.

As the first one, I saw my paternal great-grandfather R' Nathan Lehrer, and with him, my grandmother Charna and their nine children: – Meir, Abraham-Yitzhak, Leib, Beryl, Ozer, Azriel, Sarah, Zelda, and Eidel. Except for the one, Azriel, who died naturally, all the rest of the sons and daughters and the families that they brought into the world, were all killed by the unclean Nazi murderers ימ”ש.

And here they are in front of me: Bran'chi, Miriam, Mottl, Mordechai, Simcha, Moshe, Charna, Chana-Esther, Shlomo, Baylah, Rivka, Chaya, Malka, Asher, Leah, Nathan, Shmuel, Peshka, Rocheh'cheh, Dwora, Tzeitl, Leib, Yitzhak, Shayndl, Hirsch-David, Chaim, Chana, David, Melekh, Khala, Michael, Malka, Zelda, and others, הי”ד.

And after this, I see my other great-grandfather, R' Schraga-Feivel Yitzhak Segal^[2], g”b, a Jew who occupied the tent of Torah study, and beside him is my great-grandmother Sarah-Tova; and with them are Sholom

[Page 159]

Waxman and his wife , grandmo0ther Faiga, and here is my grandfather (beside my mother) R' Leib Uri Waxman, and my grandmother Shayndl of the Segal family of Cieszanow. And here is Uncle Yehuda Segal, from Rawa Ruska, with Aunt Mindl (of the Lehrer family), and their three year old son Asher, הי”ד, and beside them I see my uncle, Moshe-Joseph Segal and Aunt Pearl with their son, Chaim-Simcha of Cieszanow. And here they are in front of me: My grandfather (on my father's side) Meir Lehrer, whom I remembered above, and my grandmother Rivka (of the Just family) from Narol-Lipsko. And Aunt Bran'chi, Uncle Abraham-Yitzhak Lehrer, and Aunt Leah, Mordechai Segal from Pshebursk, Alter Meir and his wife Dwora, Moshe Reiss, Feivel Gruar. I add further, and I look, and here are the two sisters of my mother: Esther and her husband, their children Abraham and Faiga'leh, Min'cheh and her husband Yaakov Sternlicht and their sons, Joseph and Lipa, and also my mother's brother Joseph, and his talented sons Leib-Uri and Sholom, and others as closely related family members, from Cieszanow, Narol-Lipsko, Rawa [Ruska], Lvov, Rzeszow and others.

In the darkness of twilight, as the congregation sings ‘El mistater b'shafrir khevyon…^[3]’ I am borne aloft on the wings of my imagination to faraway worlds. I imagine that here I am, in the Seventh Heaven, in the company of my ancestors, and among generations of the righteous and holy, and for my pleasure, I walk among the great figures of the world. And this is not a simple optical illusion, because here is the Vilna Gaon, the BESH”T, and here, closest to us, the Chofetz Chaim, and there is one of us, a Galitzianer like me, and is this not R' Moshe Leib of Stov, who is also the closest in spirit and soul, the Cieszanow Tzaddik in with his coterie from Belz and Zanz..

And suddenly…in all his glory….King David himself! He is not strumming his lyre, because it is still Shabbat…but he is preparing himself for the feast, the Melave-Malka feast, the feast of the reigning of the Messiah…

And here is an intense light, and from the ordinary, the light of the Havdalah brings me back to the real world and its tumult, to the gloom of reality. I open my eyes, and think: where am I? Yes, the era is an era of murder and much death, that is what the Nazis sow with their advance, and I was then all of thirteen years of age. The recruits of Hitler tread on, and stream over, all of the land, and reached our town as well. Dark guests to celebrate the occasion of my Bar Mitzvah. With fire and sword, steel and lance, with chariot and cavalry, they reach everywhere. With an arrogant march in steel-toed boots they trample everything that is beautiful, sacred and lofty, every living thing that blooms and is developing, and among this the thirteen years of my life and childhood. In one move, I grow up and become an adult, and suddenly feel that I have been transported on the wings of tender youth to the age of seventy or so. From that day forward, I will see every minute of life, every breath, and every heartbeat, as a generous gift, as if given by God. A heavy sens of oppression descends on me, and a dark, black terror, and a heavy Jewish moan is torn from my heart when I observe the bitter resignation in the eyes of my parents, as I also saw in the eyes of our neighbors and in the eyes of the entire area populace.

My father, Aryeh-Leib Lehrer, was a man at the prime of his life at the time, full of the lust for life, happy and radiant, a man of initiative with creative capacity, and here, surprisingly, it was as if the lights of his soul were extinguished. He walked about muttering all day, and the echo of his sighs could be heard, along with his calls that lacked any vigor: What shall we do now? Where shall we go, and to where will we come? His words penetrated into my soul, they ate holes in my breast, and silenced my will. They tied heavy stones to

[Page 160]

my young spirit. Together with him, with my father, I would walk about oppressed and in despair.

As I recalled above, we resided at the outskirts of the town, at the crossroads. The roads to Lubliniec and Kosobudy met there. Our house was open to people leaving and arriving, it was an oasis of sort and a sitting place for the local residents, and neighbors would come in when they had a free moment, some to simply snatch a bit of conversation with my parents, some to drink a glass of tea, or ask for advice from my father with regard to business matters, or to hear news from the larger world. We had a standing sort of an ‘inn’ for merchants and transients, who would be traveling to the towns and villages of the area. And there were those who passed through who would inquire as to the welfare of different Jewish families in the town, or for directions to one of the nearby villages. In short, the house was something of a center of activity.

And now, even before the Germans attacked the town, and only the staccato of machine guns could be heard in the distance, and the deafening noise of the steel airplanes fills the air, and heavy tanks and cannon make the earth tremble, and the tramp of hobnailed boots arouses a dark terror, already the neighbors from the adjacent houses were thrown into a flight of panic. They abandon their possessions, for which they had worked hard for years, and forsake everything in order to increase their distance from the enemy. Even we fled, by way of the road to Kosobudy to the nearby village. Because of the panic and fleeing, an individual was left stuck at the place he was standing: Oh, my heart…. and his hand is clutched to his chest. and he cannot even finish his call for help, falls, and is splayed out on the ground for his full length.

My father, who had managed to get ahead for some distance, looked back when he heard the cry, and the fall, and he recognized that the falling man was the elderly and weak Moshe Koenig. He retraced his steps amid a hail of bullets, stooped over the fainted man, and succeeded in reviving him, and threw him over his back, and in less than an hour brought him the nearby village, which was our short term objective.

That night, we spent in a silo of a farmer whom we knew.

On the following morning, when the din of the invaders subsided, we returned home.

A silence pervaded the town, like the silence in a cemetery. Not a man from the local residents had the nerve to open a door or window. During the short while that the Germans had control of the place, the Germans managed to rack up for their account not only robbery and plunder, but also tens of deaths. The victims were from the Jews and non-Jews. There were no lack of reasons given for the killings, and they also were not obligated to explain. They brought ready-made excuses from the ‘Nazi School of Murder’ in Germany, just as they had brought ammunition with them, tanks, cannons, and other implements of destruction. Here, they would argue, someone shot and hit a German, there, someone opened their door, which was prohibited. Jews were killed without explanation. Jews, to begin with, were designated as targets for German fire. Jews were shot like geese in the field or like partridges…

After a few days had gone by, an incident occurred, that a satchel was lost from the inside of an auto, which contained very important documents. The matter took place in the courtyard of the Novoslya Palace. Tens of Jews were immediately arrested as spies, and they were threatened with capital punishment, and that the entire town and its residents was threatened with being put to the torch, if the lost satchel would not be found.

An outcry and a shriek went up that reached the heart of heaven, especially from the women and children. As if insane, they ran about to look for the satchel. The town Jewish elders, accompanied by the town priest, as well as Christian dignitaries came to testify that the Jews most certainly did not take the satchel, and it

[Page 161]

is certain that no one took it by mistake, because otherwise, it would have been returned immediately. The priest took it upon himself to travel and pay a visit among the local farmers, and called upon them to participate in this undertaking, and to try and help find the lost item and therefore deny a certain death to the residents of the town.

In the end, a miracle occurred. the satchel was found in the possession of one of the farmers. He had found it lying on the road, and did not know what to do with it.

And here, Rosh Hashanah drew near… Our editor, Dr. David Ravid tells us about this Rosh Hashana at the beginning of his memoir.

The Germans don't give us a chance to breathe. On the First Day of Rosh Hashana, they took out the worshipers from our synagogue, that is to say, the minyan of the Husyatin Hasidim, and sent them to work. The area is populated by Jews crowded together, and in its confines is found the Great Synagogue, the Bet HaMedrash, the kloyz of the Belz Hasidim and other various houses of worship. The worshipers in the other prayer houses, upon seeing how the men of our prayer house were being pushed about and shoved, abandoned their prayer houses and attempted to escape by way of yards to reach a secret hiding place in their homes. The Germans caught many of them and sent them to work. And understandably, this was a nightmare occurring specifically on the Holy Day of this festival, to have to go and work for the Germans…. and again a pandemonium ensued. A few Jews made an attempt to hide themselves in one of the nearby houses and to wait there until the fury passed over…until the Nazis withdraw, but they sensed something there, and burst into the house and took out all those who fled there. In the street, they ordered the Jews to stand up against the wall of the very same house, to receive their punishment, for having violated the German order not to show themselves in the street. And the punishment – the death penalty by firing squad. The Jews did not have any idea that such an order had even been issues (not to appear in the streets).

Those who were sentences stood dumb and resigned. A few attempted to arouse the sympathy of the Germans… they asked for mercy for the sake of their children.

And then a senior officer passed by and among the sentenced men, he saw one who just yesterday had helped him in regards to a matter. He stopped and asked the head of the guard detail: what is going on here? (Was kommt hier vor?).

The Nazi responded that the Jews had violated the German order not to appear in public.

Hurry away from her (Weg von hier) the officer shouted to the Jews.

The Nazis arched their eyes in wonder. They did not grasp from where the officer had the courage to offer protection to the Jews…. even the Jews weren't certain if perhaps the officer was toying with them, or this was a ruse of some sort.

One of the Nazis repeated what he had said: –

‘These people violated a German law.’….

The officer paid no attention to him, and did not turn his head, as if he didn't hear anything that he had said. For a second time, he turned to the Jews and shouted in a loud voice: –

[Page 161]

‘Get out of here! Get to your homes with you!’

For the moment, the Jews were saved, and to this day, no one knows who this officer was.

At this time we know and understand what lay in store for the Jews of Cieszanow and its surroundings. Tuvia Friedman, the Director of the Documentation Institute, author of the book, ‘I Pursued Eichmann for Fifteen Years,’ told me, that the courtyard of the Rabbi of Belz and also the courtyard of the Rabbi of Cieszanow and other houses of prayer and study in the area, were converted into camps of labor and suffering as early as the summer of 1940.

But now, let us move to Warsaw after the Great Destruction. In postwar Warsaw, in the year 1946, I am working at the Central Jewish Library on Tlomacki Street. Here, I have the opportunity to see up close. the extent of the devastation of Warsaw, the crown of Polish Jewry, the center of its creative energy, the largest Jewish community in Europe. The building in which I work, Von Verein (currently the Jewish History Institute) that was on the Tlomacki Street, as erected on the property of the great and magnificent synagogue , that the executioner of the Warsaw Ghetto, General [Jürgen] Stroop^[4], ordered to be blown up on May 16, 1943 as a symbol of the final destruction of European Jewry.

Adjacent to the room in which I work there are still piles of bricks, mounds of wreckage, the residue of the collapse and the remnants of the magnificent synagogue that was no more. At a distance, only a few steps from there, a desert of rock and sand, a wasteland that remained after the destruction of Jewish Warsaw, a trace of a people that just yesterday was alive and in existence, alert, vibrant and creatively productive.

I work under the supervision of the aristocratic lady Batya Berman g”b, and the gifted scholar Yehuda Leib Bialer נ”י, both experts in literature, both of them with their hearts and souls immersed in their work, to erect a memorial to the Library of Jewish Knowledge that was wrecked, and of its buildings, the Jewish Historical Instate had been saved since the war. As part of our work, we are occupied in transferring a portion of the books to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and to other similar institutions in the Holy Land.

It was here that I could see palpably that the sobriquet of ‘People of the Book’ was not just a metaphor. but rather that there is real substance to it. Here the name was transformed into substance. The two experts referred to above, Batya Berman, the author of the book, ‘A Diary in the Underground’ and Yehuda Leib Bialer, author of the book ‘Days of Ashdod,' spill tears and blood over each page, and over each piece of crumpled paper, that fell victim to the burnings, and were saved by a miracle, even though they were half-burned. They treated these books like one treated Jewish children, that were found wandering half frozen in the forests, and with compassion for their sake, camps were established to gather them up. here was an urgent need to save them by all human means possible, for the sake of the future of their people.

The work with the books, and the attitude of awed respect to the written word on the part of these people had a tremendous influence on me. It was my great good fortune to be part of the redemption, in the final details, of Hebrew or Yiddish books from the hands of strangers.

By being so close to the destruction, I was troubled by frequent dreams and hallucinations, even while awake. I envisioned the large Jewish community of Poland, of Galicia, of my home town, Cieszanow, of Narol-Lipsko and its surroundings, of Rawa Ruska, Lvov, Rzeszow and other places…

[Page 162]

Here, opposite the windows of my work room, in the diminished Warsaw – a Mother City to the Jews in times gone bay, I see my family as well, along with my other kin both near and distant, among the millions that were exterminated by the malevolent Nazis.

And here, they too, are before me: those who were privileged enough to die a natural death and were given a proper Jewish burial before the outbreak of hostilities. The Scourge smashed their gravestones and eradicated all trace of them, and they are beseeching that we remember them for the good. To my sorrow, I am not particularly good at remembering the names of all the relatives, friends known to me, and all the townsfolk who have departed this world, after all of the experiences that I went through, during the days of the war and destruction, and I beg the forgiveness of their sacred memory. I will also beg forgiveness from all of those who were exterminated by The Scourge in the variety of ways involving torture after the war, and the names are also not recorded of those who fought among the allied armies, the partisans, and the underground, each in his proper place.

Our family, that is, my parents, my sisters Shayndl'eh and Sarah'leh and I, remained in German occupied territory, and of these, I remained for only two weeks. During their occupation of the large border between Germany and Russia, at the generous offer of the Soviets, we crossed over to Rawa Ruska, which at the time was under their control. The experience of spending about a half month under the oppressive lash of the ‘Master Race’ ימ”ש was enough for us to ease the decision to abandon our spacious home, on a foundation of plenty, and to go out on the long road of the wanderer, whose end we did not know, and brought us to the edges of Siberia.

And our way was not a bed of roses, for these were days of war, and the tribulations and suffering of the Russian people grew large and intense. And we were among the tens of thousands of refugees that moved to the east. There, along the way, we lost our youngest child, my brother Moshe-Joseph ז”ל, who was barely a year when he died. His fragile life could not stand up to the harsh, brutal conditions of those days. Even may adults were unable to survive, and perished along the way. It was on this trek that the pure soul of the Rabbi of Tomaszow-Lubelski gave out, Rabbi Leibusz Rubin. And there were deeds of cruelty by the officers in charge, but occasionally the act of mentioning the name of the Soviet Union would suffice…in order to cause the speaker to lower his voice, and change his attitude and manner of speech towards us.

So, this was a difficult journey, and the fact that we were exiled and uprooted from the roots of our sustenance proved to be an obstacle in every direction that we turned. We were thrown thousands of miles from our homes, into a world that had living conditions that were more difficult than we were used to bear on our backs, a brutal climate, cruel people, and in addition to all this, we were required to engage in labor that we had never been engaged in our entire lives. This work was not in line with our physical capacity, and not to our frame of mind. It was work that Jews had never engaged in at all: to clear forests, to cut trees, to lay new railroad track, and other such work. It was enough to become transformed into a source of bitterness and disappointment.

However, there were also incidents that were pleasant and encouraging: I keep hold of details that literally touch the heart. bearing witness to the generous heart of the plain Russian people. After the meeting with General Sikorsky^[5], when we were released from the Taigas, we were taken to the city of Guryavsk in

[Page 164]

Siberia. When we arrived there, we were allocated a place to live in the home of the citizen Nikita Kowalczyk, who was the person appointed to look after security at the local factory: Drovilnaya Fabrika K.M.K. As we were subsequently able to deduce, this Siberian man was a rare person of high cultural intellect with a marvelous disposition. His considerably generous help to an exiled family, with day-to-day problems was of great value. He tried to help with the long-faced and sad appearance of the Jewish boy from faraway, trying to master the alien environment. Among his other good deeds on my behalf, and for the sake of my education, I will record here that he helped me get accepted in the above-mentioned factory, as an apprentice in its technical class, and there I was taught to be an independent locksmith technician, and much later the principles and practice of electrical machinery and train engines. And not only this.

This Siberian man had roots in the Ukraine. During his youth, he lived for a time with an elderly Jewish couple in a Jewish shtetl. From there, he brought with him the knowledge of the way of life of Jews and their customs. He encouraged my parents to bake matzos for Passover in his oven, and turned over his kitchen to us for exclusive use during the eight days of the holiday. He even reminded my father about the mitzvah of putting on Tefillin…. In order to elaborate on his words, he bared his left arm, and with his right arm, demonstrated the motion of putting on the tefillin and winding the straps around his arm. From that time, my father began to wrap himself in his prayer shawl, and put on his tefillin openly and in public, because up to that point he hid himself and did it secretly.

In this connection, I perceive a responsibility to myself to remember those dear personalities that I encountered along the way in my long journey, who taught me a chapter from the way people are supposed to relate to one another. One such person, who left such a deep and unforgettable impression on me was the engineer, Mikhail Savlovitz Igentov, and the second was the craftsman Fubronkin.

Igentov's approach to the workers in the business, he attitude to the general populace, all testified to an unusual personality, an a man of generous proportion. When he looked over the work of one of the workers, a craftsman, who was under stress, and was exhausting himself trying to get something done, he would go over to him, and approach him in a refined way, stop him, and tell him something or another, in the way of a joke. And then, when he had broken through the stress, and the two of them had a laugh, Igentov would ask casually, as part of the conversation: – what is your idea about trying to do this is a different way, for example, like this – and he would then show how it would be possible to overcome the dilemma, and he would add – wasn't that easy after all? – And this was the way the craftsman Fubronkin also behaved. They did things only with pleasant remarks and considerate attitudes, and they had a great deal of success.

When we returned to Poland in 1946, we passed through many cities and towns. We found destruction and ruin in all of them. It was in this manner that the entire tragic scenario was revealed to our eyes, in its full measure. Like mourners, we walked about all the days. Regardless of where we turned, we saw total loss, and a heartbreaking complete destruction. The palpable result of German rule, the harvest of death of the brutal Nazi beast.

In one of the locations, a Jew told us the following: –

‘Do you see that mound over there? After the extermination of a complete Jewish community by gunfire, and after they were covered up with the dirt in a mass grave, it

[Page 165]

became evident that one of the victims was still moving and still alive under the thin covering of the earth. Among those slain was also my brother's son, sixteen years old, and was unlike me, who possessed Aryan papers, and I was thought to be a Christian. I stood in silence, and looked on from afar. Immediately, a Ukrainian went over, with a axe in his hand, and struck the spastic body, and hacked it to pieces. Perhaps this was my brother's son, Berishl.’

Jews who survived Belzec told that the entire large expanse of the camp is covered with the killed and victims lie hidden under a very thin layer of soil. Later, when we reached Lower Silesia, to the village of Gshcfusta or Ludwigsdorf (we attended the seminary there), we saw a field, in which eighteen thousand Jews had been buried in one mass grave. These Jews held on to life until the last minute. They worked in the local German factory. hey were exterminated, literally on the night of the retreat. We divided up the field, and buried them in three separate graves.

In returning from Russia, we passed through Lublin, and we came to nearby Majdanek and we saw… in reality, we did not see, but rather we sensed everything and we passed through all seventy cauldrons of Hell. We stood opposite mountains of shoes, of brushes, of baby dolls, and all manner of children's toys, various items of clothing of the people who at one time existed, but were now no more. They brought us to the crematoria, that is, the rooms in which the corpses were incinerated. Up until we entered there, we maintained some sort of composure, but when we saw the six wall holes, through which the corpses were inserted for incineration, a terrifying scream burst forth from our throats, a scream of a breakdown and pain that simply cannot be described in words, that came from the depths of the heart, and spontaneously, the words came forth from all mouths: ‘Yisgadal VeYiskadash Shmay Raboh.’

So, our journey was a difficult one, through the Russian hinterlands. Today we understand very well that this was the only way to stay alive, with all other roads leading to torture and to death. Back then, in the first days after the outbreak of the war, in the period when the German Nazi beast had not yet gotten its talons dug in (I almost was going to say the ‘Golden Age’ of the days of conquest), the decision to abandon the warm ambience of our home appeared in the lives of aimless wanderers, into the heart of an unknown land as bad judgement… that is the way it looked to most of the people (who can be a seer?). In light of the findings afterwards, the terrifying Holocaust that overtook our people, it became clear that this was the only path to survival. At the time, the uprooting from those warm, solidly-based houses was difficult, it was difficult to become transformed into refugees, the ones who were leaving – fleeing their homes and the Nazi conquest to the districts that were in Soviet hands, but it was precisely the expulsion to those lands of perpetual snow and the shriveling permafrost of the Taigas, that saved the lives of many and kept them whole.

If their intent was to assure our welfare – we will never know, and who knows what is hidden behind the slings of their decisions and deeds? And who has the capacity to probe the inner secrets of high politics? We were exiled as refugees because of the Soviet rule, to faraway places and to conditions that were trying, but as it turns out, it saved the Jew during the darkest period in the history of our people.

It is a fact that because of this exile, we were saved – the exile was transformed into an act of rescue, the saving of lives…

With the completion of my work, in the gathering, and also in the library, and after literally sitting on the what was literally the wreckage of the people, that gave rise to such suffering in body and spirit, after having drunk from the cup of hemlock to its bitter dregs, I left Poland, the land in which in which our nation awoke

[Page 166]

to such a powerful spiritual existence, and upon which The Abrogator descended and exterminated its sons, with a merciless animal fury. Only a small remnant survived, traces, refugees from the sword, smoking embers pulled from the fire. And here we are, traveling to the Land that is going to be renewed, that was established again after two thousand years of assault, wanderings, murder and ruin. We are traveling to the Land of Israel, and who can imagine how high our spirits are lifted, the eagerness, the expectation?

Basha Batya Temkin Berman ע”ה, that good person, who looked after every concern, after each and every detail, in order to make things easier for us, to make the voyage pleasant. She accompanied my step like a dedicated mother. May her memory be for a blessing.

In the year 1948 we reached The Land of Israel. And the sequel to these memoirs, well – this is not the right place.

Our generation, that saw the Holocaust with its own eyes, and has felt the spiritual need deep within itself to raise its hand for purpose of memorializing those who were murdered by a malign hand, and to honor their spiritual legacy, seeks ways to pass on to future generations that which it received, and what was left to those that survived. We know that today's young people do not have their attention focused on the past, and all of their attention is focused on the future. And perhaps, there is a blessing in this situation, even though there is no meaning to the future without knowledge of the past, and without any feeling for the connection with past generations.

One of the traps that we fall into, and we are severely damaged by it, is the attitude of canceling out the Diaspora experience, but such an attempt at nullification is nothing more than proof of a lack of knowledge, of an absence of understanding in the events, and what took place. Many Diaspora generations found themselves in difficult circumstances, from many perspectives, whether in the political circumstances and in the absence of rights, or in economic circumstances, with a lack of a means of livelihood, all this had an influence on the somber image of the Jew and his spiritual condition; yet despite all of this, his spiritual life was vibrant even in the face of all these assaults, and many alternatives in economic and cultural life were opened up. The large, and glorious Jewish settlement in Poland and its environs was a notable exception in excellence in this respect (Congress [Poland], Galicia, Lithuania, Upper Silesia, and others). And a number of these lands and areas who with their spirit and culture enriched the people all over the world, served as a spiritual reservoir and source of inspiration, developed a large Jewish culture, and had an impact in every corner of Jewish life, and on every individual in them. It is possible to see in these developments a miracle in the deep and hidden power of creativity in this people. If, in fact, the Jews were able to achieve only limited goals in economic life, they did even greater in cultural accomplishments, creating in two languages (not to mention those of our people who gave of their energies to the non-Jewish world, and wrote in the national language, and how many there were who wrote in the languages of the countries in which they dwelled). Apart from the Eternal Tongue of the people, and this is the language of Hebrew – the Holy Tongue, they also wrote (most of what they wrote) in the spoken language of the common man, and that is the language of Yiddish (the language of the martyrs) that blossomed in their midst, guarded over us, and connected us to all the dispersed parts of the Diaspora (our spirit and our Jewishness). And it is a fact that history does repeat itself, because something like this had already taken place. It was not only in exile, but even when the people still occupied its homeland, it wrote in the Aramaic language, and the books of our Hagiographica [sic: Ketuvim] which are written in Aramaic bear witness to this, and in the Diaspora – the Babylonian Talmud, the pride of our people's creativity, and even the moving prayer, that soothes the soul

[Page 167]

of our people in difficult moments, even it is composed in Aramaic: ‘Yisgadal VeYiskadash Shmay Raboh.’ In the distant past, and in the near past, a similar occurrence has reappeared, the poems of the people, love poetry, poems of work, poems of weariness, and poems of joy, all have been written in the Yiddish language, which many chose to see as a handmaiden to her mistress – Hebrew.

And there are among the great poets and writers who possessed the double talent and wrote their pieces both in Hebrew and in Yiddish. And who is greater among our nation's poets than Chaim Nachman Bialik? And how many of those poems that he wrote, which touch the heart were, indeed, written in Yiddish. And the great literary figures, such as Mendele Mokher-Sforim, Yitzhak Leib Peretz,^]6] and Sholom Aleichem, and many others, who are famous the world over, wrote in both of our languages, Hebrew and Yiddish. And this causes the question to be asked: are we then relieved of the onus of taking an interest in this language and the pieces that were created using it, and are still being created with it, both in the remnant Diaspora of Eastern Europe, elsewhere n the world, and in faraway places? Is it up to us to terminate the connection with those of our people in faraway places? Accordingly, in adopting a nurturing, conserving posture, we see a way of honoring the cultural riches of our brethren who are there, and a sacred obligation especially to the enlightened members of the nation. After all, it is those who are learning in the schools today, who stand to inherit these riches in the future, and if we, the parents approach you, it is as if we are discharging the behest of those who are dear to us, the victims of the most terrifying Holocaust (in the history of humanity) and in our history [sic: as a people]. It is our wish to place in your hands the fidelity that we inherited ourselves, the essence of the spirit and culture of a nation that was tortured and killed.

There are several alternatives to achieve this goal: deepening the curriculum in binding together of the people, and integrating it by means of teaching history and literature from original sources, that is to say also in the Yiddish language, Yiddish clubs, initiative and preservation of communities, deepening research into their histories, customs, and especially in those communities from which the great people emerged, in all creative fields of endeavor, scholars, artists, scientists and entrepreneurs, people of idea and people capable of doing things, the teaching of creativity together with those that practiced it (folklore), sayings and words of wisdom.

The work of preserving the memory of the exterminated and the martyrs for all time, the establishment of cultural endeavors in their memory, translation of their works into Hebrew, compilation of ab anthology of the best of the works of the poets and writers who were eradicated, in order to establish an institute in their memory, so their names are not forgotten and neither the fruits of their labor, it is up to us to imbibe from both sources Hebrew – Yiddish for the purpose of enriching out culture, our spirit and our unity.

There are ways of going about doing this, and we must attempt all means that bring us towards this positive, sacred goal.

It is up to us not to forget the self-organizing pioneering, the realization of the dream and the vision of the establishment of Israel. It was in the Diaspora that the better part of those of her sons that cam here to the Homeland of the Jewish People, to make the desert bloom, and to raise up what we [now] have here. Yes, in general, there is cause for us to memorialize all the Jewish organizations. In preserving their memory forever, we discharge an historic national responsibility, and a human responsibility of a higher sort, and may all those who engage in such works be blessed.

[Page 168]

Note: On page 256, there is a three page summary in Yiddish of the information contained in this memoir, which is not being repeated. The author provides the following final paragraph to explain why he did this added writing:

It was my desire to publicize my memoirs in Hebrew, because Hebrew is the language of the settlement of the nation in Zion, but being that almost all of the heroes and martyrs that appear in this book, spoke, wrote and suffered exclusively and only in Yiddish, I could do no other than write these words in their tongue.

After it became possible for me to assemble a part of my memories and I was privileged to do this as a free man in the Land of Israel, I raise my eyes to that place..and with the eyes of my soul – it is not only that I see them, I am also with them on their last journey.

Memories

In the summer of 1940, several thousand Jews were taken from the General Gouvernment [of Poland] which consisted of four provinces: Cracow, Warsaw, Radom and Lublin.

To this, the fifth, Galicia-Lemberg was added in the summer of 1941. Several thousand Jews were taken from these areas, in the age group of 16-30 years of age, for forced labor on the German-Russian border in the area of Belzec-Narol-Cieszanow-Zukow, a area of approximately 30 sq. km.

I wish to recollect that we were taken near to the Belzec station, on an open field near a large courtyard, and the Germans told us that the Rabbi of the shtetl had once lived there. There, we met up with about two thousand Jewish captives in the same condition as we were, uprooted, excluded, hungry and exhausted, not a shirt on one's back, with rags for pants, very filthy and infested with lice, because the evil Germans forbade us from washing ourselves.

We lived under the open skies, and in the middle of this large courtyard, there was a creek in which it was said that the Germans had drowned many Jews, and whoever allowed himself to drink from the dirty green water immediately contracted the disease, cholera.

A couple of hundred Gypsies were also to be found in this same courtyard, with their wives and children.

Many somber and exhausted older Jews told us that they are in this location already for a couple of months, and they come from Tomaszow-Lubelski and its environs, and they have to put up with a great deal of trouble from the Gypsies, being beaten by them, and being robbed of everything that they had.

We entered this Hell with a bit of meager foodstuffs, and our baggage, and these veterans immediately threw themselves on us with an outcry, that we should take pity on them, to give them a bite of bread which they hadn't seen with their own eyes in months, and our group unpacked the rucksacks and distributed whatever we had. We spent the night there, and in the morning we were stood out in rows, and after the order, 'March!' we were driven on foot to Narol.

Those who had been there, remained, and it appears that they had already been sentenced to death because they were like skeletons already, and incapable of doing even the lightest work. Their work in this courtyard consisted of a 12-hour day in which they had to carry large rocks back and forth, the intent of the evil ones was to exhaust the Jews to the point of death, so that they begged God that he should take them away sooner.

From Narol, we were driven on further to Cieszanow, a very pretty town which shone with green places of an artistic quality, flowers all over, redolent and enchanting, and we marched through the streets of Cieszanow, and the local Polish gentiles looked upon us with schadenfreude, with their shovels and other tools as well as litter poles in the instance that one of us should drop dead on the way, or the Germans shot someone, or similarly bayoneted someone because the person, out of weakness took a bit longer while marching, we were obliged to take the corpse and carry it to a specified place for burial, which was the purpose of the litter poles.

[Page 150]

SS Troops led us, together with the Ukrainian gentiles in their black uniforms, they led us into a place that was surrounded with barbed wire, the place was at one time the home and courtyard of the Rabbi of Cieszanow.

There, we encountered several hundred Jews with the same appearance as the Jews in Belzec. They were almost all from the Cieszanow area and province.

On the right side of our camp, stood the Great Synagogue of Cieszanow, which was already half wrecked, without a floor and windows, literally a ruin.

On that side was the bath and the mikva, behind the bath a toilet facility was created where the municipal one had been, and there was no handhold to prevent one from falling in, and no closet was created deliberately, and there were many instances when a person fell in, and this unfortunate was immediately shot by the bandits, because he could not [sic: was not permitted to] wash himself off, or change his soiled and smelly clothing.

To tell the truth, some of the time, the Christian Polish people threw over a bit of bread to us.

The Hunger was endless, we sold off everything that we had to the Ukrainian guards, for a dried out bit of bread, and we were there long enough to become naked and barefoot, just like our hapless comrades whom we encountered in Belzec, and we became the genuine veterans of troubles and torture.

We were led to work at six o'clock [sic: in the morning], two kilometers past the Rabbi's house we dug pits.

We were always required to march through the town singing, all the gentiles of the town looked at us but did not laugh at us, because, as it appears, they feared that the same could happen to them, and whoever among us sang too weakly received murderous blows, such that, because of this, we instituted an hour of singing, in order that all of us not be exposed to beatings for not singing along.

On a certain Friday evening, an SS trooper took the cap off of a Jew and sailed it towards the barbed wire fence, ordering the Jew that he should run and retrieve the cap, and in running this way, the Jew got a bullet in the head from that same German, and he told his officer that Der Jude wanted to go over the barbed wire, and because of that he was compelled to shoot him. We buried that Jewish man, and gathered to pray, despite the fact that it was strictly forbidden.

We poured our hearts out to He Who Sits in the Heavens, begging to be allowed to live long enough to see the downfall of the accursèd German nation along with their partners, the Ukrainian beasts.

When the opportunity presented itself, despite all of the difficulties, for one of us to escape to the Russian side, the Russians drove back these unfortunates, “Давай Назад!”^[1] they would shout. and it appears that the two despots, Ribbentrop-Molotov had an agreement that the Jews that were to be found in German hands would be exterminated, otherwise, it is not understandable why the tyrant, Stalin the second worst murderer in humanity, would not have allowed the hapless escapees from the German Hell to remain on the other side

[Page 171]

of the border.

^[2] An incident occurred when a young boy did something that did not please a German, and the German wanted to obtain a certain death sentence for the boy, and we – on no account – were willing to reveal the name of the boy, such that ten other young men paid for this, alas, with their lives, for the life of this one boy.

I absolutely cannot grasp how it is possible to withstand so much abuse and torture and still remain alive.

We dug pits from Cieszanow to Zukow Stara, for a period of six weeks.

After Rosh Hashanah many of us were dispersed to other forms of labor, and I escaped from the camp and after exerting a great deal of effort, and with difficulty, arrived to my home town of Radom.

This is a short description of the camp at Cieszanow where I spent some time, and it is deeply imbedded in my soul to this day, after 25 years.

[Page 172]

Cieszanow served as a bastion for the Hasidim of Belz. Almost every Jew of the Jews in the town, who confronted trouble, traveled to the Rabbi of Belz to enlist his prayers and supplications on his behalf, and when the Rebbe came to take rest in a town near ours, it was well known in our town that the Rebbe was in the area, and he spread his radiance and sanctity over it.

The extent to which the Belz following of Hasidism was spread throughout our town, can be appreciated from the following tale: The Rabbi of Cieszanow ז”ל, was sitting once with one of his intimates, and having a conversation on secular matters. In the middle of the dialogue about this and that, the intimate turned to him and said: Do you know, respected Rabbi, that a marvelous community has fallen under your aegis, a community of Hasidim, who are people of action (and indeed, Cieszanow was a town full of people of this type, so it was called “The Little Jerusalem”). The Rabbi answered him: And do you not know that I am the Rabbi here? You are surely mistaken, so you need to know immediately who the Rabbi of this place is.

Outside stood two boys aged 10-11. The Rabbi, ז”ל called to them, and turning to the older of them, he asked: Do you recognize the Rabbi, שליט”א? Certainly! The lad replied – And you, boy? – The Rabbi asked the second one. I – the boy said – do not know him yet, but my father promised me that on Rosh Hashana, God-willing, he will take me to Belz, to the Rabbi.

The Rabbi ז”ל laughed: And so, who is the Rabbi here, I, or the Rabbi of Belz? Because when a Cieszanow Jew said, “The Rabbi, long life to him,” “The Rabbi” without any added modifier was intended to mean the Rabbi of Belz, and everyone knew the intent was to refer to the Rabbi of Belz.

The reputation of the kloyz of the Belz Hasidim was a glorious one in our town. The sound of Torah study never ceased there, not by day, and not by night.

From the dawn until the late hours of the night, Jews, scholars, and God-fearing people prayed there. Even anyone who entered the kloyz as late as 11 o'clock at night, could find R' Yaakov Weinig ז”ל and the young man R' Shabtai Frankel ז”ל who sat and were engaged in Torah study. On the severe winter nights, it was always possible to find an empty place on the benches of the kloyz.

It is my desire, here, to recollect a number of the dear Jews who were Belz Hasidim.

My father, and Teacher, R' Yaakov Friedman ז”ל – a Jewish man who was a scholar and God-fearing man, that almost never uttered a word having to do with secular matters, and every available minute that he was free of the yoke of earning his living, he would dedicate to Torah [study] and God's work. On each and every day, whether summer or winter, he was in the habit of getting up at about 5 before dawn, and after ritual ablutions in the mikva, he would head for the kloyz. Until the hour of 11, he engaged in prayer and study, and in the evening, immediately after he closed up the store, he returned to his work – God's work, until the late hours of the night.

R' Raphael Gutman ז”ל – a scholar who lead a Gemara study group at the kloyz, Additionally, he was also a good Baal Tefila, and he did marvelously when he led prayers in front of the ark on Yom Kippur – literally

[Page 173]

splitting open the heavenly firmament with his prayers. He was also one of the very few who were in the habit of reading a newspaper, and in the night, after study, he would communicate to those who participated in his lessons, all of the news, along with his own interpretations.

R' Chaim Edelman ז”ל – A formidable scholar, he was thoroughly familiar with the Shas and the Poskim, and would be in the habit of “surfing” the Talmud for several hours on the Sabbath.

R' Leib Sternlicht ז”ל – A scholar who participated in all of the study groups in the kloyz, and was also an accomplished Baal Tefila, who would lead prayers on the Sabbath and Festivals. He was privileged to come, and passed away in Our Land.

R' Leibusz Naroler – He was a teacher of the children in our town, and would teach them the Gemara, and the greatest satisfaction for him was to see one of his students – attain the level of being able to engage in independent study of a page of the Gemara.

Despite the fact that he was laden with troubles and worries, he was a rock of dependence, and always comported himself pleasurably and with a good heart. On Simchat Torah, he was in the habit of dressing up in a kittl, and went about with the Jewish children in the streets, singing and dancing, throwing apples about and making merry, and all of this in order to bring a bit of joy to the Jewish children, shouting 'The Sacred Flock' to the point where he just ran out of strength.

R' Isaac Katzbach שליט”א – A Hasid in all 248 parts of his body,^[1] to whom each word of the Rebbe was as if it came from the Holy of Holies, id found with us today in Jerusalem, may he live to One Hundred and Twenty years.

I have recalled here only a few of the members of the aliyah, but there were tens of Jews like this in our town, in general, and in the Belz kloyz in particular.

[Page 174]

A “Bayt Yaakov” school was in operation in the city for a number of years, where several tens of girls from all walks of life received instruction.

The writer of these lines was one of the founders of this school, along with the young ladies Bina Tikher הי”ד, and Faiga Alter ע”ה. Bina Tikher was a very refined, aristocratic young lady, the daughter of R' David Tikher ז”ל, the Rabbi of Tarnogrod that was close by to our town, who was a great scholar, and a granddaughter of R' Yitzhak Glanzer ז”ל, who also was a renown scholar and God-fearing man, known throughout the area.

Faiga Alter was in Cieszanow with her mother during the Holocaust period.

The skein will run short if we attempt to describe the immense amount of help that they gave to the Jews in the Cieszanow ghetto.

A Jew who was in the ghetto told me, that he owes his life to this mother and daughter of the house of Alter. They stole from the gentiles and distributed it along the road that the Jews went on their way to work; because of them, many Jews we saved from hunger and death.

The kind of personal commitment that they revealed themselves to be capable of, is hard to find.

The founders of the school worked, with rather constrained means, not for the purpose of receiving a prize, and they did not spare any effort in order that the school be able to exist.

May their souls be bound up in the bond of eternal life.

I am certain that such decent and good-hearted craftsmen and balebatim, such as we had in Cieszanow, were seldom encountered in other cities of Poland.

The majority of our craftsmen were observant Jews who did not miss out on praying three times a day with a proper quorum [sic: minyan].

The first minyan at daybreak in the Bet HaMedrash, was for the craftsmen, and if one went by the synagogue whether summer or winter before dawn, you could near the monotone, but sweet voice of the craftsmen who were reciting Psalms.

Our wagon drivers, during the time they were harnessing up their horses, were also not idle, but continuously kept reciting Psalms.

[Page 175]

The shoemaker, R' Joseph Eichler ז”ל, was literally a [true] Hasid. He was an observer of all 613 mitzvot with his entire heart and soul.

The three brothers who were tailors, R' Akiva, R' Yukl, R' Abraham, ז”ל were heartfelt and pious Jews. At this opportunity, I wish to tell a simple story about R' Akiva Schneider^[1] regarding something that he once responded to the Rabbi of Cieszanow, ז”ל.

The Rabbi sends for him on Passover eve, and the Rabbi asks, is it possible, R' Akiva, that I gave you the material for a kapote before Purim, and you agreed to have the garment ready for me by Passover, and you have not kept your word? R' Akiva answers him – Rebbe! When you apply yourself to your work, the study of the Torah, that is, everyone's helps you in this – Rashi, Tosafot, Maharsha, Rashi asks and the Maharsha answers, and so forth, all of them help you, and no one of them ever gets sick, however, I have no one to help me, and I had a bit if an apprentice, and he got sick exactly before Passover, so tell me Rebbe! Seeing as I cannot complete all of my work before the Holiday, whose kapote should I not make for the Holiday, that of the poor man? A Jew who truly has no other garment for the Holiday, or yours, Rebbe, whose situation is not so dire, because, bless God, you have something to wear for the Holiday, and for certain, you will not be embarrassed for Passover by having to wear a torn kapote. The Rabbi smiled and said “Halakha K'Rabi Akiva,”^[2] meaning that he was truly justified, and do have a Kosher and Happy Passover.

The Émigrés from Cieszanow at a Memorial Service in Memory of the Martyrs of our Town, in Tel-Aviv in the Year 5722 [1962]

I had the privilege of participating in this group, and on frequent occasions to substitute as the leader of the study session in place of the regular leader of the study group.

In my time, they were already going through their fourth cycle of study of the Shas.

It is my desire to recall here, a number of people who participated in this Shas study group.

The regular leader of the study group was R' Moshe Ratah, ז”ל, who was a great scholar and very precise in his study, covering every minute detail of the Gemara and Rashi, and almost always leaning towards the

[Page 176]

analyses of the Rashash ז”ל, and because of this we were told that he had an essence in him of this great commentator on the Shas.

R' Yehoshua Ziegler ז”ל, was a Shas expert and host to guests without peer, his house being open to its full extent for every man. Every poor person turned directly to him, and R' Yehoshua Ziegler dis not rest or remain silent until he satisfied his needs, and in addition was completely fluent in the Polish language. He would write out all of the applications to the government agencies on behalf of nearly everyone in the town, without asking even a cent for compensation. He was prepared to dedicate hours of his time on behalf of the townspeople despite the fact that every minute of his time was valuable.

R' Jonah Kirschenfeld ז”ל, a great scholar and Shas expert, and was thoroughly versed in all four parts of the Shulkhan Arukh, knowing them by heart. He was not particularly engaged in matters of making a living, and was at the table of his father the ritual slaughterer and meat inspector, R' Yitzhak Meir ז”ל, and during all hours of the day he was engaged with Torah and God's work.

R' Jonah Berger ז”ל, was an aristocratic Jew, and was someone who was an advocate and activist on behalf of community needs.

I have recalled only a few members of the Shas study group, and there were many others like them.

May their memory be for a blessing.

[Page 177]

R' Leib Ber Geller

He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.
In famine he shall redeem thee from death: and in war from the power of the sword.

(Job 5: 19-20)

Already from the first steps in his life, the six troubles and seven evils began to dominate the world.

With the outbreak of the First World War, he was a young lad of 17, and was still at his studies in the Bet HaMedrash, in the early years of life, and he was known as a very ardent Zionist. At this age, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army, and fought there for about two years at the front and was seriously wounded.

At the end of the war, he returned as a young man to his birthplace – Przeworsk, and there he proved himself as an orator and community activist.

After he married, and took to wife, the daughter of R' Chaim Israel Schreiber ז”ל from Cieszanow, he established himself in his new home as the head of the “Po'el Mizrahi” Division, and after a short time was able to see the good fruits of the endeavors that he had planted.

His righteous wife, Mrs. Ethel ז”ל, good-hearted and known for her good deeds, passed away in the city of Szczecin in the year 5706 [1946], after a severe illness that she had contracted in the forests of Russia and a labor camp.

After he remained solitary as a widower, from the loss of his beloved wife, he wandered with his four orphaned children to Austria, on his way to the Holy Land to which he had dedicated all the years of his life, his energy, stamina and blood.

In making aliyah, he sunk his strength in the construction of a synagogue dedicated to the glory of his new home city – B'nai Brak.

He found the fulfilment of his life in the development of The Land. Every new home, every road, and every tree in Israel that was brought up to life, added to his sense of joy and his fortune.

R' Leib Ber ז”ל was a man dedicated to the outlook of his spiritual world, rational in matters of the secular world – in addition to his piousness in matters of faith.

He passed away in B'NAI Brak in the year 5726 [1966].

ת.נ.צ.ב.ת

Thirty years have passed since we left our former home, Cieszanow.

I remind myself of my beautiful childhood years, and of the taste of the goodness that we felt from the care given to us children by our father and mother.

The natural setting in the shtetl was like it came from an artistic picture with its meadows, fields, forests and river.

The Sabbath, after noon – when we, a group of young boys and girls would stroll, sang national songs, and enjoyed ourselves and breathed in a full breath of fresh air and hope.

Many of us went for training in order to prepare ourselves to make aliyah to the Land of Israel.

Every one of us had our own problems, and also hopes for a better future, until the dark war broke out that cost our Jewish people six million pure and innocent victims.

In our “Yizkor Book,” I wish to memorialize for all time the memory of my parents, sisters and brothers, who lost their precious lives at forced labor in the jungles of the Bolshevik forests.

Because of our parents, and only because of them – who raised us in a spirit of good-heartedness and with boundless dedication, in the hopes that better times would come – only thanks to them, did we remain alive and continue to be able to live.

Our warm home, the straightness of heart, nobility of spirit of everyone who surrounded us, those who gave us the strength to resists and to remain alive.

Our father, that most precious of all men, R' Yekhiel Berger ע”д who was always occupied with the matters of making a living, would turn to us, his children, only on the Sabbaths, and at that time he would regale us with wondrous tales about the BESH”T, R' Meir of Rawszic, and R' Nachman of Lubliniec ז”ל. According to his words, this R' Nachman dedicated literally his entire life to the poor, and was always prepared to provide assistance to the community, and he was an exalted role model for my father ז”ל.

Our mother – a dear soul, who inspired us greatly from her noble spirit.

I remember in the most difficult of times (and times like this were not missing during war), during hours of

[Page 179]

hunger, cold, deprivation and fear, she would sing us songs about the Holy Land that so enchanted her. She would tell us wondrous tales in her sweet voice, and thereby take off all worry and sorrow from us. Her strong belief was that we, her children, would reach the Land of Israel, and live a good life there, and she was such a powerful force, that we literally clung to her.

It was as if she instinctively felt that we would go on without her, and she would repeatedly say: remember that in all places, no matter what will be, always behave as if I am with you, so that it will not be necessary for me to, God forbid, be ashamed of you.

Accordingly, we forgot nothing, and we hope to raise the generation that we brought into the world to continue in this path, and that the benefit of your life stand in good stead for our children, and that they will endeavor to carry on the good works and your name with pride.

My grandfather, R' Jonah Berger and his wife Reizl, along with all of their children, and my maternal grandfather, R' Chaim Wolf and his wife Shayndl with their children all were exterminated during the Holocaust. May God avenge their blood.

  Cieszanów, Poland     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2024 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 4 Sep 2023 by LA