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General Section

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Come, and let us offer our good wishes and blessings to the great and dear man of enlightenment and good deeds, my exalted and respected friend and fellow landsman, R' Dov Koenig שליט”א of Antwerp, who together with his sister-in-law, that lady of so many good charitable deeds, Mrs. Leah Koenig, long life to her, who donated a sizeable gift that is well-known, for purpose of publishing this book.

This donation made it possible for us to realize the idea of creating a spiritual memorial marker to the memory of those of our townsfolk that fell as victims of the Holocaust.

The Committee of Cieszanow Émigrés in Israel and the Diaspora convey, in this place, our deep thanks, congratulations and blessings for good health and everything good.

May the Lord grant them a just reward in the present and the future.

Amen

R' Aryeh Leibusz Koenig ז”ל

R' Avigdor Taubenblatt of New York Let these stand to be blessed, who are the volunteers among the people who helped us.

R' Aryeh was a familiar personality and figure among those who emigrated from our town. His roots are in a family of scholars and Hasidim, and the apple did not fall far from the tree, because he, too, was an enlightened man, in addition to being a man of good deeds, generous in charity – both discreetly and publicly.

After wanderings, and after terrible suffering that dogged him in the forests and deserts of the Evil Red Empire, he succeeded to establish his household anew in that Mother City to Jews in the Diaspora of Belgium – Antwerp, and precisely when he finally achieve greatness, he contracted a very severe illness full of suffering and exhaustion, which shortened his life in this world.

He left a very beloved wife behind, who looked after him, and assure him all that was good in life, dear children, well trained, who did not forsake their father's ways, who observe the Jewish traditional legacy.

After the passing of the Chief Rabbi R' Aharon Rokeach ז”ל in Tel-Aviv, R' Aryeh ז”ל was among those who held the view, was a striver, and founder of the Belz Yeshiva whose sun had set in Tel-Aviv, and with his charitable help and support was caused to shine anew in Jerusalem, the Capitol, and in this way, helped to safeguard the spiritual legacy of the Torah and its traditions among the youth of Israel.

The following is copied from a letter of the Yeshiva Institute in Jerusalem to R' Aryeh, ז”ל.

“With respect to our exalted friend, a great man among the giants in the measure of his generosity, the generous Grandee, whose name is praised greatly among all of us who are scattered to the ends of the world, our Teacher, R' Aryeh Leibusz Koenig שליט”א.

We have received news through our emissary the Hasid and Gaon, from the Devoted Shames of The Honorable, Holy, Our Teacher, the Chief Rabbi Zatzulka, that a pure spirit from the Lord has aroused the heart of your good self, שליט”א, to build the Bet HaMedrash to God and his Law in the midst of the King's sanctuary in the center of the building of the place beside the institutes of the Belz Hasidim in the Holy City of Jerusalem, may it be rebuilt and reconstituted.

There is insufficient song and praise in our mouths to thank your good self, שליט”א, for this sacred idea, because from the day that The Abrogator descended on Belz, that shining ancient place in Galicia, no man has arisen since who would take upon himself a deed so great as this.

Let the

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sake of our Holy Rebbes of Belz, may their memories be for eternity, and the sake of the Torah and its recitations, that will go up to the heavens in this holy house, guard over him and the members of his household, to fulfil all his heart's desire for good, and may he be privileged to participate joyfully in the dedication of the building of this institute to which he has dedicated his entire energy and fortune.”

May the sake of his good deeds guard over his pure soul that rests under the wings of the Holy Spirit.

A Memorial Plaque Affixed in the Haifa Synagogue in Memory of the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes (Lehrer and Waxman Families

A Kickoff Meeting for the Memorialization of the Cieszanow Community in the Moriah School in Haifa, in the month of Adar 5729 [1969] From right to left: Rabbi Dr. Mendel Frankel, Dr. David Ravid, Rabbi Yaakov Funk, Mr. Schraga Feivel Lehrer, Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Fogelman, and Mr. Nathan Lahav

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In Memory of All the martyrs of our people who were cut down and made to vanish, At the hands of the accursed Nazis and all their accomplices and followers, And who had no sin on their hands. In Memory of All Six Million of Our People, and in memory of One million, three hundred thousand babies, And martyred children, pure and without blemish. In Memory of All our heroes who showed strength in their souls, By rising like lions against their exterminators, Who risked their lives, and saved their honor And the honor of all the Jewish people, may their names be preserved And their memory, to the end of all generations. In Memory of All members of our people, who fought in the forests and in the armies Of all nations, in all places, against beasts Of prey, in the form of human beings, and with their heroism, erected A memorial and a model of wonder for all time. In Memory of All the fighters in the Underground, in the fighting divisions And the engagements of the people. In Memory of All military dead in the Israeli Army, Tzahal, in all battles. In Memory of All of our people, who died for liberation, independence And defense, who fell in eternal heroism On the altar of Our Land and Our People. תהייה נשמתם צרורה בצרור החיים

In the month of Nisan 5729 [1969], the government religious school ‘Moriah’ in Haifa adopted our destroyed community, thanks to the initiative of the writer of these lines. The adoption and memorialization ceremony of our community as well as the communities of Narol-Lipsko and Belzec, was initiated with a recitation of a chapter from the Psalms, recited by a cantor, the children of the school lit candles in memory of the Six Million martyrs and heroes, a student recited ‘Yizkor’ and the music professor, Shimon Mutman played dirge music from the Holocaust on his cello.

The initiator, a scion of Cieszanow, stressed the importance of the obligation to memorialize those of our people that had been cut down, in a variety of ways, and for all time:

“I wish to give a blessing and to greet this circle for Jewish cultural activity in our mameloshn, who has privileged us with putting on this evening. I also wish to add that between Yiddish and Hebrew, I have selected Yiddish, because Yiddish was the language of our martyrs that they uttered at the last, of our last martyrs, such that even in reciting ‘Shema Yisrael’ before death, they said this in Yiddish, and because of this, not only is this language dear to us, it is also holy. R' Akiva said: All is anticipated, permission has been given, and the world is destined for good. The entire human race, is measured only by its good and bad, with each human value being either good or bad, tragedy and comedy, life is drama, and the lives of the Jewish people are especially dramatic, and the mix of the two emotions is, indeed, the subject of this evening. We Jews, our entire history, is always at the extremes, either on the edge of comedy, or at the edge of tragedy, and it is always dramatic.

Even our music and drama, one would say at weddings, Nu – play for me either a freilach or something sad, because sag music is an artful form of weeping without the use of words. While I am recalling our Yiddish music, I permit myself to introduce the noteworthy professor, Mutman, who unites art and heart, with Yiddishkeit in one gifted virtuosity.

We are, indeed, a Chosen People, because only we have the greatest and most dramatic life story.

No other people has suffered as much for its nationhood, culture and religion, our suffering never let up despite the fact that we did not take them upon ourselves, nor made by ourselves, but it is other nations that inflicted themselves upon us.

Almost all the nations, all of them, all! We have a bloody reckoning with almost all of those so-called ‘cultured’ peoples – but the climax was the catastrophic destruction of the Holocaust Europe killed us off and disinherited us. Why? For what reason? What? My Lord, why? For nothing – only because the worst of the world, since the time the world was created, always murdered the best – because since Cain murdered his brother Abel, all peoples live as such antagonistic brothers!!! Simply stated – like Cain and Abel.

The clearest lesson to be learned from this latest tragedy, both today and for all time, is the following: The Diaspora doesn't work! Being rich doesn't work, being smart doesn't work, being foolish doesn't work, and refined does not work, educated doesn't work, patriotism doesn't work, and to be heroes on behalf of foreign nations and lands doesn't work, etc. A people can only be free and remain alive in its own land.

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The prophet says: The eternity of Israel is no lie! Jews will never succumb, so? ‘Israel’ does not, on the face of it, refer to ‘The Sons of Israel,’ but rather ‘The Nation of Israel,’ indeed, only: The Land of Israel. Today, our country is called ‘Israel,’ and ‘Eternal Israel’ refers specifically to the ‘Nation’ Israel in the Land ‘Israel’ which will never vanish, appearing to be the only meaning in substance for the prophetic pronouncement.

Because Israel among the gentiles…because Israel among European gentiles… because Israel in the Diaspora has been doomed.

We Jews have built all of those other countries.

When Kazimierz III the Great, in the 14^th century^[1] invited the Jews of Germany to come to Poland to develop commerce and industry, they came with their Yiddish language and with head and hand built up almost all of the centers of the Polish cities…. until they were killed out, spit out and swallowed up, when they thought we were no longer necessary.

All the nations (with the exception of those who were exceptional among the nations) paid us back with stones for bread, we had built up almost all of Warsaw, Lemberg, Lodz, Katowice, Rzeszow, Vilna, Kiev, etc., and even Vienna and Berlin, we are the myrmidons of history…we are the yeast in the dough of humanity, both materially and morally, and in the same way, in matters that are cultural and intellectual, because our Central and Eastern European brethren created monumental cultural works of everlasting value.

When we recall only a few of these, such as: BESH”T, the Berdichever, Salanter, Sandzer, Belzer, Ryuzhiner, Sholom Aleichem, Peretz, Asch, Manger, Dr. Tahn, Krochmal, Dubnow, Yavetz, Graetz, Schulman, Einstein, Zeitlin, Ringelbaum, Ziegelblum, Weitzman, Trotsky, Buber, Leivik, etc. And those, set apart, living, for long life: Agnon, Uri Zvi Ginsberg, Sh. shalom, Shlonsky, Shazar, Greenbaum, Dr. Sneh, Gideon Hausner, Ben-Gurion, Professor Sadan, and many others, in the scientific, cultural, social and other fields, I have brought them here as examples of talent and of a prophetic superhuman capacity, and in order to observe the spiritual height and contemporary character of the branch of our people that has been cut down.

We Jews have a good memory, and for all time to come, we will not forget what the Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and many peoples of other lands, did to us.

After 3500 years, we still continue to recite the Haggadah, as if the flight from Egypt and the miracles of the Exodus had taken place yesterday.

For it is this memory of ours, which is the one and only solace, and psychic reaction, to all the Pharaohs, Amaleks, Torquemada, Petluras, and Hitlers, may all their names and memories be erased.

The European Jews have vanished, but our free Land of Israel is, and will remain, forever.

The People of Israel Live – The Eternity of Israel is No Lie

Survivors [sic: of the Holocaust] have taken part in this ceremony, and also Dr. David Ravid, and Mr. Kurman as representatives of the communities mentioned.

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Dr. Ravid, in his remarks, mentioned that during the last Holocaust, certain leaders and representatives of the [Jewish] people were blinded by Divine oversight from seeing the tragic outcome, just like Our Sages (Gittin 56), are not ashamed to admit that ‘because of the sins of R' Zechariah ben Avkalos, they destroyed our House, and burned our Hall, and exiled us from our land,’ and the Gemara recalls for itself the familiar sentence: ‘He sets back the wise, and addles their sense,’ which we take to mean that ‘if the Dweller in the Heavens, forbid it, wants to inflict something on His people Israel, first He deprives the so-called leaders of their common sense, and , forbid it, they become blinded from seeing the approaching evil, and so this statement supports what occurred in the last Holocaust’.”

Rabbi Fogelman and Rabbi Funk have also spoken, as have others.

All recollect the communities that were cut down.

At the conclusion, the children recited and sang ghetto songs, and the cantor recited ‘El Moleh Rachamim,’ for the fallen martyrs and fighters in the armies against the Nazis, and those who fought for Tzaha”l.

Translator's footnote:

1. The writer erroneously said 15^th century. The reign of Kazimeierz III the Great was (1333-1346) Return

Merciful God, who dwellest on high, above all that is high Take vengeance for the shed blood of your servants, the vengeance for our offspring Our frail newborn, who were murdered by accursèd evildoers With terrifying brutality, to sanctify Your Name, May it be Blessed and Praised, Mothers on top of their progeny were dispatched; Remember: My beloved, God-fearing wife, a prominent woman, may she be praised Rachel daughter of Jonah Baumel ע”ה, and my children Sheva and Faiga ע”ה These pure and holy souls that were brought to the altar of sacrifice On 25 Heshvan 5703 [1943] in the Tarnow Ghetto. We affix our signatures to memorialize them for all eternity. ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

Jews who fled from the ghettoes of Poland lived on the ‘Aryan’ side as gentiles, so long as their manner of speech, their accent, and appearance did not expose the secret of their Jewish identity, and as a consequence, if they were found in the hands of religious leaders, and the globally-minded members of the land, and were able to conceal themselves easily in the midst of the non-Jewish populace. Jewish who lacked such characteristics, were forced to conceal themselves as Jews. However in the two instances, and especially in the latter instance, they needed to resort to financial means in order to pave a way for themselves and to preserve themselves on the ‘Aryan’ side. And because of this, they had to be adept in the skill of being able to function in an atmosphere of constant fear. Those people who had Semitic features, and received a consideration from non-Jews not only had to be constantly afraid, a palpable fear that was very real, but they also had to bear the justifiable fear of their hosts.

Dangers without number confronted Jews on the ‘Aryan’ side. Furtive eyes, a posture that communicated insecurity, and the behavior of someone who is hiding something, were ultimately capable of easily betraying that person. If a Jewish woman and her daughter were living among Poles, she was accustomed to request of her daughter, that if she had the nerve to go out of doors: ‘Close your eyes, Anya, they look so Jewish.’

A camouflaged Jew was inclined to reveal himself by a phrase that had a Jewish resonance to it, by means of behavior and Polish expressions a bit more indirect, and in the different manner in which he manifested concern and affection for his children, by the refusal to participate in any discussions that were anti-Semitic, an absence of friends and relatives, an abundance or a lack of money, etc. All these indicators potentially could reveal a Jew, as actually did happen many times.

Even a dream was capable of revealing a Jew's secret. A crippled Jew, who was lame in a leg, whose appearance was that of a respected Polish soldier wounded in the war, having an enchanting presence, a long moustache and blue eyes, mumbled a few words in Yiddish while asleep, while riding in a train. His traveling companions turned him over to the German police in the next train station. Seeing that his papers appeared to be in complete order, he was given a physical examination – and was shot at the rear of the station.

Apart from accidental meetings, such as letting down one's guard with people who knew the true identity of the Jew, and were likely to reveal his identity accidentally, hundreds of extortionists lay in ambush for him, who could smell a Jew from afar. They would engage in innovative techniques, to snare their prey in their traps. For example, they would publicize a room for rent, being certain that most of the interested parties were likely to be Jews without a roof over their heads; they would entice Jewish children to draw near to certain ‘offerings’ and whisper Yiddish words in their ears, looking for some form of a reaction in the frightened eyes of the victim. It is no wonder then, that many Jews would return to the ghetto, when their nerve failed, or their money ran out. The life of the Jew on the ‘Aryan’ side can be summed up in one word – fear.

Jewish children who were with their families and friends were exposed to the very same dangers that lay in wait for the grown ups. Solitary children, with their profound sense of imitation, and their childish fidelity,

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were forced to learn how to conceal and deny their Jewishness the hard way. they learned this very quickly.

To conceal one's self alone, in general was less complicated that concealing one's self in a group. Despite this, many Jews refused to part from their families and friends out of fear of having to go it alone, face-to-face with the dangers of life on the ‘Aryan’ side. It is understood that this was particularly so with regard to children.

Gisela M. (A dancer today, in Israeli Europe) was only five years old, when her despondent parents decided to send her, and her eight year-old brother to the ‘Aryan’ side. Gisela refused to go. In her own despair, she clung to her mother, holding onto her dress, took her in her arms, and covered her with endless kisses. When the little child was taken from the room, she held onto the door handle, and kissed it with emotion, just like she had previously kissed her mother. The door handle for her was a symbol of the house.

Mata Varubel was twelve years old when in the confusion and chaos of one night of the ‘aktionen,’ she became separated in the dark from her parents and brothers in a field. ‘I remained alone in the world, in the darkness of the night’ – Mata relates – ‘I didn't know where to go… I crawled through the grass, and I remained there with bated breath…suddenly, shooting opened up. A woman with a baby in her arms were murdered not far from me.’ Seized with fear and pressure, I thought: ‘God knows if my mother is still alive. I don't know where to go… all about there were shots and outcries… I have nothing to eat. And there is no one to whom one can say so much as a single word.’

Her parents, and four of her six brothers were murdered. Mata hid out with one of the surviving brothers, and she remained alive only by a miracle. When she was again by herself among the grasses, she sensed wounded: ‘My brother is no longer alive…my mother is no longer alive, and my father and four older brothers, even they are dead. For whom am I supposed to live? There is nothing to eat… what is the point of me remaining in the cold like this among the grasses? I will go and surrender myself to the Germans….’

Children who were hidden together with their parents and relatives, succeeded in guarding their mental and physical health for a more extended period of time than those children that remained alone. They developed a remarkably practical sense, a keen sense of observation and a bias to action. Their senses became sharpened and their emotional state was something miraculous.

The principal dilemma facing parents that had gone into hiding along with their children on the ‘Aryan’ side, was how to protect the lives of the children and their own lives. Children who were accustomed to a way of life with their families in villages and towns, were sleeping in forests and fields, begging for a piece of bread, etc., and were always busy, they were in danger every minute of their lives. But parents who hid their children in more conventional refuges, had an added dilemma – how to occupy the children for their own good, and for the good of everyone connected to them.

Excerpts from the autobiography of a boy and a girl aged thirteen, written in a Displaced Persons Camp, portray a nomadic life in the shadow of death on the ‘Aryan’ side. The girl, Leah K. tells of the incidents in dramatic and encompassing lines, and even if the boy tends to details, and together with this, having a practical grasp of the total picture, a real picture unfolds in front of us of his nomadic life and that of his family, and he describes their struggle for survival.

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Here is what Leah tells:

“From that day, our tribulations began in earnest. Every day that went by was flush with miracles. We were living in that hospital. and afterwards, transferred to another ghetto. Once again, we were pushed into the pits to be shot – and we escaped. We came to a friend of our father's, a non-Jew. He kept us for a number of months. When it became necessary for him to flee in order to save his own life, we fled with him.

We were getting close to the front line. Not once did we encounter a Jew, and not once did we even hear of them. At frequent intervals, on a cold night, somewhere in the forests, hungry and shivering from the cold, I pressed myself up against my mother and beseeched her: ‘Mama, I'm scared, speak to me, tell me, how you are going to bring me to the Land (of Israel).’ And my mother would tell me that the entire world will welcome the surviving Jews, and we would travel to Israel, and I will study Hebrew along with other Jewish children.

Day by day, the hiking around the area grew more difficult, and we were vulnerable to falling into the hands of the Germans at any minute. For this reason, we found it necessary to hide during the day. But in that case, we had nothing to eat. My mother was very weak. She did not believe we would stay alive. She would plead to me: ‘Leah'leh, let us go to the pond, and drown ourselves. Let us put an end to our issues.’ I wept and pleaded with her: ‘Make yourself strong, Mama, do this for my sake, I don't want to die. You will see, you will overcome all of this, I won't tell you I'm hungry anymore, but please don't take me to the pond.’….”

The Story of Yitzhak Sorovitz (excerpts of his autobiography have been cited in the previous chapter):

“We fled to the forests (at the height of a night time ‘action’), myself, my aunt and sister…we blundered along the way, and in the course of three days, we wandered around the ghetto in an enfolding darkness, without food. But who thought about food? For we had become accustomed to hunger. At the same time, we did not hear anything about my mother. We were cast into bogs of such a nature that we didn't know how to extricate ourselves from them. When we heard the barking of dogs, we went along the trail of the sound of their barking. Almost naked, we and our feet were swollen from the cold… when we came out of the swamps, we came to a farmer…he was frightened about giving us any assistance; he gave us some torn rags, a loaf of bread, and ordered us to move on…

Afterwards, we came to another farmer, and we asked him, if he saw a woman with a baby, but he responded negatively. We begged him to let us lodge. But he was afraid to take us into his house, and told us to go to his grove and hide in a pile of hay. The night was cold, and the hay kept us warm.

That night, a woman and a baby came to the same farmer, and asked him if he had seen Jews who had fled from the ghetto…. when she saw us she screamed: Yitzhak, Lyuba! And we knew that this was my mother….

And this is how the wandering began, going from one farmer to another. We went at night, during the day we remained close to the forests, in order that no person be able to see us. We were – as the saying goes – like a serpent who slithers out of his hiding place (nocturnal) and going out onto the road… We would go about without any sort of food. Only at night would we go out to beg for charity by tapping on the windows. We would rummage through piles of garbage in order to find something to eat, like scavenging dogs. When a farmer didn't want to give us anything, he would holler at us: ‘Get away from here, and if you don't, I'll call

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the police.’

We were alone in the forests, without a person to light a fire for us. We were compelled to cut branches of trees by hand and ignite something of a fire. Obtaining food from the farmers, grew more and more difficult day by day. The Germans proclaimed that whosoever gives assistance to the Jews in the form of clothing or food, will be taken out and executed along with his family, and his possessions will be burned. The farmers were seized with a fear that if a Jew were to approach them for food, they would drive him away like a dog. We reached a state of energy, such that we could barely walk. We were in the forests, and we ate acorns…

Snow began to fall, winter drew nigh. We were naked and barefoot. But to eat or be hungry – this was not important in any respect. What worried us, was that we could no longer remain in the forests. there was not another person with us: we were doomed to die from the cold.

We heard about a farmer who knew where several Jews were hiding. We walked to him all night, and we prevailed upon him to show us their hiding place. But he said: ‘what is the point of hiding, the world is not a world any longer. Your place is by the river bed.’ When we heard what he said, we thought in our hearts: He's right. But the spark of hope always flickers in the heart of man (‘the man’ at that time was seven years old). No man by nature gives up on his life. We went back at him so many times, that in the end, he showed us where the Jews could be found.

When we found the Jews, we finally knew what a real life meant. They had the skins of potatoes and pots. We were literally filled with wonder. In the entire period of our wandering, we never saw pots. In living with these Jews, we tasted what cooked food was like. When we had been alone, we didn't have a taste of anything cooked, and here utensils, potatoes, etc.

That winter was very cold. All these Jews joined the partisans, but we were destined to remain apart, because we had little children.

Once we were thrown onto a Baptist priest named Jakob, and we begged him to be permitted to remain in his woods. He could not refuse us, because he was a good-hearted man. Somehow or another, he took up an axe, and went with us into the forest. He made a sort of bunker for us… and we remained in it, until the great snow fell. Then, again, we went to him. When Jakob saw us, he began to tremble out of fear, but he said: ‘Alright then. So we will all be killed. Come inside, somehow, and when our hour arrives, we will suffer together.’ We didn't know how to thank him. Out of great joy, we fell to his feet and kissed them. He immediately gave us work to do, and in this way, we did not idle, and we earned our keep…”

Israel M. from the city of Buczacz describes several other aspects of life on the ‘Aryan’ side in his collected testimony. He looks back on his life under the Nazis. His approach is less emotional, even if it has the freshness and resonance of a child.

Israel, his parents, and his older brother fled the ghetto when Israel was seven years old, and the family split up…. the father took the older boy, and the two of them worked at the home of farmers, tailoring jackets from sheepskin. The mother wandered about with Israel.

“ We scavenged around the villages. The young and healthy people joined the partisans, but this was denied to us. Those who wandered without any objective were distressed. We wandered from village to village, from house to house. Most of the time, we stayed close to the village of Wicikhowka. Good people lived there. They would warn us when the Germans

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drew nigh, we had a bit more ease during the summer. We would sit in the fields of corn and beans, in our clothing, and in the dark of night, I would walk to the village to beg for some bread and to fill the bottle with rainwater, in which small frogs bounded about. Because of the dark, I could not see clearly.

We remained in the midst of the corn days and nights, during rainy days and clear days, without knowing what day it was. There was a hiding place after the field near the village – grasses as tall as a house. and within – a hollowed out area. We would hide there also, and not only ourselves, but also other families, we agreed among ourselves on a few signals when the hiding place was occupied. But the curse of a terrible plague hovered over this hiding place – lice. We saw them crawling on the branches, and swarming about on the ground. We stepped on them as if we were stepping on a carpet.

My clothes became torn from the outset, and my mother sewed me trousers from a sack of jute. The farmers gave me shoes with wooden soles and straw sides. I did not have socks, and the straw scratched my bare legs. During the summer, I walked barefoot, but I could not do this in the winter. One time, my mother persuaded a farmer to take me to work. My mother helped out in the house, and I pastured the cattle. I was barefoot, and I was required to run over sheaves of wheat, and I rushed as if I was stepping on nails. I returned when my legs were covered in scratches and light bruises, and could not then walk at all. The farmer [then] gave me other work – to separate grains of corn for planting. I did this by rubbing ears of corn together. I was not particularly good at this wok either, and my hands became covered with scratches and bruises.

The farmer gave us food, and permitted us to sleep in his granary. We were very fortunate. We knew the meaning of having to sleep on the ground out in the field. We had only one sheet, and we didn't know how to conduct ourselves: to cover ourselves with it, or to put it under us. Not only once did we have to sleep with slime dripping down on us, and yet we were delighted that we were certain that they would not come chasing after us. The quarters that we had in this place appeared to us as if they were a boon from heaven.

We didn't always come out of the cornfield at our own will. It was pleasant there, except for rainy days and at night. However, we had to leave the place, not only because of the Germans, but because the farmers also chased us. We trampled their corn – the crop that they anticipated. Once, while we were sleeping in the cornfield, my mother and I hear the footfall of people, who were speaking in Ukrainian. A terrible fear seized us…we were certain that the end had arrived. We covered ourselves in the sheet, and remained silent. The people got closer, and shouted out: ‘Jews, Come Out!’ We acted as if we were deaf. And so they shouted louder: ‘We are required to kill you’ With that, we leapt up onto our feet, and pleaded in front of them not to hurt us, because the end of our suffering is so near. One farmer said, that he would turn us over to the Germans, a second farmer added that they will kill us. Only one said: ‘Let them go, can't you see this is a wretched woman with an infant.’ These words made an impression. They ordered us to leave the village within two hours.

…we located a poor farmer, aged eighty. A widower, he sometimes had, and sometimes did not have food. He agreed to permit us to live with him, on condition that we feed him. We remained in his hovel, hidden behind a large oven. However, it was not possible to rest even there, and also not to raise one's head. It was only possible to lie down prone. He was very lucky, because it had been a long time since he had eaten cooked food. It was my father who provided the food.

We did not stay with the old man for a long time. We knew that there was no point in trying to live with him, unless our father would be able to provide him with food. This, and other things. This was a Ukrainian village, and it was clear to us, that if we were caught, our

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sentence would be uniform – to be killed. We moved to the village of Polny-Ukrainy.

In the meantime, the summer returned, and we decided to hide ourselves in the corn until winter. Once again, I was compelled to go out each evening to beg for bread, and to fill the bottle with water. There were instances when I had to go out in the rain and storm. I was not frightened. On the opposite. The light was of help to me, because in the total darkness, I found it difficult to find my way back. I waiting for a lightning bolt to illuminate the road for me. I would run for a few steps, and again wait for lightning. My mother waited for me always in prayer that I would be spared any and all evil.

This was our life in the summer. In the winter, our worries doubled. We suffered from hunger and cold. There was no high corn to conceal us… the Polish houses in the village were at a distance. We scavenged in the rain, and sunk into the snow up to our knees. Sometimes our shoes remained stuck in the snow, and in general, there were times when I could not extricate myself from the snow, for after all, how tall was I altogether at that time?

Soaked to the bone, and covered with snow, we once came to the home of a farmer at the edge of the village. For this entire time, we had not changed clothes, because we had nothing with which to change them. We begged so profusely from this farmer, until he finally agreed to let us stay in his hovel. He gave us potatoes and buttermilk. We were lucky to find ourselves under a roof, because there was a snowstorm blowing up outside. We lay down in the straw and fell into a deep sleep. When we woke up in the morning, I couldn't move any limb. That night was cold, and my wet clothes froze to me…”

Many children like Yitzhak and Israel who lived a nomadic existence, adapted to their conditions to the extent that they viewed ordinary daily routines, such as eating cooked food, sleeping under a roof, clean warm clothing, as exceptional – as if it were a miracle and an exceptional joy.

Gabriel H. from the city of Czestochowa (today a geography teacher in Israel), and his parents, remained alive it the end of the war. They hid themselves in a residence that was prepared for them by a Pole. Here is his story:

“… Vaclav Milewski came and took us to our dwelling. This was on April 13, 1943. Milewski was a tall solidly built Pole. He rented a small residence – a room and kitchen – in a very old house in the center of Czestochowa behind a compost heap… The residence was on the level of the ground, and looked out over a yard. Under the floor in the center of the room, there was a cellar, as was usual in the home of farmers. Most of the time we spent in the residence, but in times of danger, went down into the cellar.

We could have remained on the east side of the cellar. However, after trying it, we discovered that if we have to remain there for an extended period of time, the air becomes asphyxiating to the point where it is unbearable.

The central issue lay in the fact that it was difficult to move in an unencumbered fashion, while at the same time assuring they could not see or hear us. We lived in this place for nearly two years. During this entire time, I didn't see so much as a sliver of the sky…. the huge compost heap was a barrier to the eye. I was also unable to see the sun, and I could not play in the yard….

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I invented all sorts of games for myself, and as it were, I fancied myself to be in a variety of places. I would scramble about beside the corner near the window, the one place where it was possible to mover around. My parents began to worry about my health. They saw me moving about and idle away the hours in this little corner, and the look on my face was as if I was standing in the garden, in the field, or in some other place.

The problem of trying to keep me occupied was a difficult one… in the beginning, my mother tried to teach me….but after this, the situation became tense, in that my parents did not have the patience to continue with the lessons. The dilemma was resolved by a recognized method, by which I found a book from Mr. Szynkowicz, ‘In the Desert and in the Forest.’ I read this book a countless number of times. I practically knew it by heart…. This book was spiritual fodder for me during long months… I was fortunate, that this was a good book, and suitable for my age. This book was a great help to me. I was in the company of two children (heroes of the book) in Africa, and in the thick of all the tribulations that they encountered.

Hunger was the dominant force in our lives. For the entire time, we ate only bread and potatoes. And even this, in amounts that were insufficient. My father ate the least of us. Most of the food was set aside for me. He made do with a slice of bread per day, and perhaps less than this. My parents imposed a fast on themselves of one day per week, and afterwards increased the fast to two days per week….

My tenth birthday drew near, and for the celebration of that day, my mother had saved a number of potatoes and some fat. On that day, my mother made pancakes, and I received a portion equal in number to my age in years. This was more than enough for a boy of my age, but I was very hungry. I achieved the goal of filling up my belly. This was the only day in which I was not hungry. I recall that my father fainted from hunger on the day of his fortieth birthday. If I remember correctly, this was exactly a month before my tenth birthday…”

We can see in the conditions under which Gabriel lived, circumstances somewhat more permissive than the places in which other Jewish families lived under the Nazi occupation. Faygl Platel-Meindzydzca describes in Yiddish in her book ‘On Two Sides of the Wall’ the hideaway and the life in which a Jewish mother and her ten year old son lived, in the following terms:

“ I saw a hand stretched out between the branches of a dead tree, and I heard a choked voice that said quietly: ‘Good Morning.’ This same hand began to move the twigs on the branch of the tree. I opened the door to the stable a bit, and then I was able to discern a woman and a little boy laying down on the bare floor, clutched together, in order to occupy the least amount of space possible. Around them and above them were walls of dried branches. It was evident that it was not possible to make even the slightest movement there.

The faces of the mother and child were black, skin and bones, with eyes sunken deeply into their sockets, cracked lips, with the gate faded and full of sawdust. The first thing that they asked of me was to close the door, their eyes were unable to stand the light.

This is the way the two lived, shut away, and pressed together on the ground. It was in this state that they ate, slept, and guarded the door. Twice a day, the lady of the house brought them food. She was very careful, and never permitted them to leave their confines…. they did not bathe, they did not change their clothing or their underwear.

Occasionally at night, when the mother was no longer able to bear the suffering, and was afraid that her limbs would go numb, she would orient herself and crawl outside in order to straighten out her body. She could not reach her right arm, and this also caused her great pain….

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The boy looked at me from behind the pile of branches with burning eyes. Tears rolled from the mother's eyes. Were she alone, she could get by with the absolute minimum, but she feared for the fate of her child. Before long, the child caught a severe cold. He began to cough. In a matter of days, the mother began to hold him in her arms, day and night. He had a high fever. The mother did not know what worrier her more – the cough that was destined to reveal the secret of their hideout, or the fever that was destined to bring on death. The lady of the house was afraid to take in the child and put it in her bed.

It was necessary to be very careful not to arouse the anger of the lady of the house. Everything depended on her. Once, rumors were circulated that panicked the lady of the house, and she ordered them to leave the place. The mother and child wandered for a span of days in the nearby forest. They had no place to go. Somehow, the mother begged the lady of the house to take them back…”

Among the children who remained alive, were many who lost the ability to walk, many were struck blind, and many contracted skin disease, typhus, and other chronic diseases, as a consequence of life in the course of months in places that are indescribable for their inhuman conditions. The damage that was done to their emotional development after an extended period of time like this was immeasurable. However, the return of the health of these children in both body and spirit was something miraculous to behold.

The Jewish scholar, Prof. A. A. Roback unfolds a wonderful thought in one of his books, about the deathless nature of the Jewish people. He says:

“An ethnic body politic rarely dies, a people, a language, a culture is not in the domain of the individual. We know that an individual has a heart, a head, which if they cease to function, then the individual is gone. A people, however, is like a plant, which, if certain parts fall away, others grow in their place, so long as the taproot is not impaired, the plant is able to bloom further and further.”

Jewish Cieszanow was just a small part, but its Yiddishkeit and Zionism has remained historical, a great part of this Jewish people, which produced wise men, Gaonim, scholars and educated people, thinkers and writers, in prose and poetry, whose thoughts and ideas points of view and spiritual thoughts, enriched all of world Jewry with permanent fundamentals, with genuine endeavors of Zionist striving, with concrete pioneering implementations in the Land of Israel.

And while the “Cieszanow Yizkor Book,” with the help of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and the facilitation of the lines of memorialization, lights an eternal light to the sacred memory of a Jewish community that was cut down, of a Jewish community that was destroyed, let my modest words in this article also be an addendum to the “Yizkor” and the Eternal Light, which the survivors from Cieszanow light in their hearts, in their minds, in order not to forget the dear Jews of Eastern Galicia in general, and of the community of Cieszanow in particular.

* * *

The spiritually rich Jewry of Eastern Galicia was a strong foundation on which World Jewry relied for centuries. During the course of many centuries Jewish communities in Galicia presented themselves as a comprehensive, internally rooted organizational creative strength of such scope, that it had the force to hold together all the parts and sectors of this Torah-loyal and culturally devoted Jewry, and I am of the opinion that whether in faith or religion, its scope was global.

The Jewish communities nourished the Galitzianer Jews with those energizing nutrients that were vital for their lives, from the inexhaustible well springs of Torah, as well as the redemption ideals of Zionism. The voice of Torah and education, rich in wisdom, could be heard the length and the breadth of Jewish Eastern

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Galicia. The Heders and Yeshivas, the “kloyz”, and Hasidic “shtibl” the courtyards of the Tzadikkim, and the Belz, Sanz Sadigur, or Chartkov Rabbinic dynasties, altogether was a formidable and grandiosely fiery religious Jewish manifestation, a fortress of ardent Hasidic Yiddishkeit, which was assaulted by all kinds of anti-Semitic elements, as well as internal forces of assimilation, and traitors to the people, but all were smashed and eradicated against the rock-hard walls so well armored with Jewish lore, Torah and tradition – Yiddishkeit, which were so zealously guarded by the Galitzianer overseers of Jewry....

* * *

Up till the outbreak of the Second World War, Galician Jewry looked like a full-colored rainbow, whose shimmering colors of spirit and culture, of Torah and Hasidism, of ideas and principles, of Zionist differentiated ideas, directions in Hasidic dynasties, lit the heavens of the Jewish world with all its candles, which like lightning bolts from Sinai, showed the direction in all ways and paths of the many-sided Jewish life in Eastern Galicia.

With the invasion of the Soviet armies first, and the coming of the murdering Hitler Hordes later, the lives of our brothers and sisters were torn apart, the echo and reverberation of the voices of Torah were stilled, the Jewish spirit was destroyed, together with those who were the bearers of its religion and spirit, and those fresh well springs were stopped up, the Zionist movements were brought down along with the “Rabbinic courtyards” made desolate, the communities and everything attached to them were smashed, and gruesomely annihilated, the kloyz, the synagogues, and the houses of study, were wiped off of the face of the earth, and almost the entirety of Galician Jewry was martyred by extermination, together with all the other millions of Jews, pure and holy, by all manner of bizarre deaths. A wholesale slaughter for which there will never be any forgiveness or pardon forthcoming from Jews, the blood of innocent Jews cries out from the depths, from the earthen fields, wailing from the burnt ash on the fields for the Galician vale of tears, from all the gas ovens, from crematoria, murder factories of the gentile world, through whose portals, our unforgettable brothers and sisters gave up their lives through asphyxiation by gas and incineration. Their vibrant lives went up in smoke through blackened chimneys, going immediately up to the highest heavens, and perhaps reaching the Divine Throne...

The brutal feet of Esau trod on the wreckage of hundreds and thousands of Jewish communities in Galicia, during the time of the Holocaust and extermination of the Jews, and even today – free and publicly – these bloodthirsty hyenas in human form continue to go about in these sanctified places, but without any Divine Presence, in the hateful form of the sadistic Ukrainians, of hooligan Poles, of murderous Germans, despicable Hungarians, and in contemporary low and high officials in today's Soviet Ukrainian regime.

* * *

We mourn the annihilation of Galician Jewry, we bow our heads in deep sorrow with the pained sadness before the graves, not graves, but the mountains of ash and for the unburned bones of hundreds of thousands of exterminated Jews of Galicia. We, those who are the remnant of survivors of Galician Jewry, cry out a renewed “Pour Out Thy Wrath” on such gentiles that have laid waste Jacob's tents, destroyed our lives, and cut down our tree of Jewish Galicia to the taproot, along with almost all of its many-extended branches , leaving behind only a burned base, a Jewry cut down, and an unbearable sorrow for those left alive.

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The sorrowful words of Lamentations will never part from our lips:

Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me, (I:12)

Young and old lie together in the dust of the streets; my young men and maidens have fallen by the sword. (II:21)

We recollect, with a trembling respect – through these pages of the Cieszanow Yizkor Book – the sacred memory of our holy and pure, the Jewish communities of Galicia that have been cut down, of brothers and sisters who were killed. They will forever remain engraved in our minds, in our souls, just as they will remain in the history of the Jewish nation, from its epoch-making avant garde in the Land of Israel before, and in the Jewish State today. Galician Jewry has already taken its historic place against the “Eastern Wall” of the Jewish people.

The fecund life of the Jewish settlement in Galicia as its tragic denouement, will serve as an enduring stimulus for the surviving remnant of Galician Jewry in the entire world, especially in the State of Israel, and most certainly to the scions of Cieszanow wherever they may be found, and they will find themselves in the front ranks everywhere, in the most demanding positions in the difficult struggle for the survival of the Jewish State, as well as for the continuity of the Jewish people.

Very substantial memories remain with me, from the months and years that I spent in my second home, Cieszanow, thanks to which I am able to relive those happy times of great striving, of exalted missions, of important objectives, of invigorating activities, accompanied by attractive efforts and by dedicated Zionist realizations among the Jewish young people of the referenced city, as well as among all of the ranks of the local Jewish populace.

Memories, if they are substantive and worthwhile, especially if they are of the type that derive their sustenance from a happiness that one has lived through, from struggles for truth and serious ideals, from beauty in the heart, they do not ever leave the memory of their owner.... not even for one minute of his life. I therefore feel myself fortunate from the gladdening fact, that in the course of my days and nights in Cieszanow, I gathered up substantive impressions, unforgettable memories and hid them away in the most beautiful compartments of my heart, so that for my entire life, I may obtain a great satisfaction, in an ongoing manner, that I have accomplished something, that I filled my hours with specific accomplishments for the Zionist concept, for the not falsified education of the young, and at the core, before everything else, that I have united myself with the Jewish nation and its striving for redemption.

My terse sense is best summed up in the following saying:

“Live your days in a manner that you will be able to say that I have done something good on each and every day.”

In the entire time that I spent in my second home, Cieszanow, when I lived there, in all the days, months and years, when I found myself in her outstretched Jewish arms, whether as a teacher or as a youth leader, not to mention my activities in Hitakhdut and Gordonia, I came to love the local Jewish people, the Jewish youth and even the opponents of Zionism. I lived their happiness with them , and felt their sorrows with them. My educational work among the adults, the youth and children, based itself not only on educational methods alone, in that dark time of Polish anti-Semitism on the one hand, and the time of Jewish want, on the other, but I also focused on the joy that comes with fraternal community, which our gatherings, assemblies and trips to the forest, promoted among all those who participated. During such times, who thought of need, about crowded little rooms for dwelling, from an unsatisfied hunger, from sorrows at home, and parental aggravation? Hebrew song carried itself through the length and breadth of the town, the discussion about the end goals of Zionism drove a new hope for individual and collective redemption into the hearts of every participant. The Sabbath summer sky, even the midweek one, became that much more blue, even more beautiful than it was... and also on cloudy days, young and old Zionists alike from Cieszanow knew, that under the heavy, coal-black clouds, a warm bright sun is shining...

I recall a conversation, that at the time, I had with a local Bund leader about Zionism. Cieszanow was one of the Jewish towns of Eastern Galicia which had an active Bund organization. In a sarcastic tone, he asked whether I believed that the Zionist utopian ideal would someday be realized. I replied to him that much sooner, before communism, and its entire Marxist entourage become transformed into a single anti-Semitic horde against the Jewish people, an independent Jewish state will already be in existence. We were both standing up, leaning against the wall of Shmuel Tepper's “Delicatessen,” store, and heaven and earth bore witness to the outburst of laughter that my conversation partner let out, when he heard my unusual reply....

This very same Bundist was also of the opinion that socialism will bring both the human and material means for the national liberation of the Jewish nation, on the “mighty wings” of “freedom, justice and righteousness. regrettably, these wings were broken by a frightening storm of blood and fire over large parts of the Jewish nation. If Hitlerism wanted to exterminate us, and indeed, excised a third of the Jewish people by the taproot, whether physically or spiritually, Communism carried out a spiritual genocide against more than three million Russian Jews, which also, in a different form, was a great catastrophe, and a severe annihilation...

It was not only once that I had to carry on such discussions with contentious Jewish people. and not always were the Zionist arguments understood, because to the degree that a Jew was willing to diminish his loyalty to Zionism, the more he could divide his soul into two parts: a larger part for “suffering humanity” [sic: in general] and only a bit of his heart – for the Jewish masses. In Cieszanow, there were also found such Jews, and it was not important if they agitated on behalf of the Bund, or believed in communism, or, separately, believers in assimilation, or in a Messiah from a faith point of view, or had their own hopes and did not believe in disappointments, they would often reject Zionist hopes openly. To our great sorrow and pain, they, too, were exterminated in a martyr's death together with all the others from Cieszanow and Eastern Galicia.

From my earliest youth, and I came to Cieszanow while I was very young, I promoted Zionist fantasies both in word and through teaching, and this was not exactly saleable merchandise in the Jewish market... Anyone who wanted to jeer at the peculiar fabulist, was certainly able to do this with pleasure in his heart, and whoever could not hold back his anger at the Zionist “buffoon” broke out into a pointed hysteria of words, but despite this, I was a believer in the Eternity of Israel.

This is not the place to recollect how I was brought to Cieszanow, and who among the local Zionist youth activists helped to make that possible. At that time, I was already a recognized leader of “Gordonia,” not only

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in my birthplace of Nemirov, but in all the regions of Rawa Ruska and Jaworow. I had also taken my place in the ranks of the “Hitakhdut” movement and my place in Zionist party activity, with the recognition of the central committee in Lemberg. The important thing is, when I received the call from the comrades in Cieszanow to remain with them in their city, as a teacher and youth leader, I assumed that [burden] with affection. I knew, that it would be difficult for me to take leave of my family, with so many tens of loyal friends, with hundreds of Jewish homes, which were a refuge for me, from friendship gatherings and spiritual surroundings, but I overpowered many difficulties, overcame many stresses, and arrived in Cieszanow with a youthful ardor, with boundless Zionist fire, with an unbending will, to continue to remain with the mission of spreading the Zionist agenda, which others referred to as Zionist fantasies...

Individual Zionists, such as R' Shmuel Zeinvil Tepper and his family, uniting the Hitakhdut organization with its “Gordonia” received me with love and a full heart, and whose good feeling I can still feel today. After several middle level contacts with circles and youth groups, I earned everyone's trust, and I became surrounded by a full-hearted envelope, and despite the fact that I was rather young, in my heart, I sensed, and all my senses established for me, that I have loyal students, that I had achieved making life-long friends, possibly even someone I would marry, and ignoring age entirely, or at the age difference between them and myself, any doubt about the degree of the bond between us emotionally could be laid to rest by the vivid sign that the very personal connection between kin and close friends, the ongoing love and heartfelt sense of friendship, was not vulnerable to either time or forgetfulness.

Immediately upon my arrival in Cieszanow, I assumed the double yoke of study and education.

Every educated person clearly understands the difference between studying and education. It is possible to teach someone a great deal about reading and writing, but this does not influence the thoughts or the thinking of the “learner.” One person can have a more beautiful penmanship, a second person, less attractive, but no ideas or fundamentals can be obtained this way...

When, upon my arrival in Cieszanow, I came into a direct contact with the unforgettable young Jewish people, with those Jewish children – engraved in my heart – with older young people, and those of middle years, I grasped it was not only the mastery of Hebrew as a language that was essential to them, but rather their life's goal, or their single striving, I felt their inner spiritual will to obtain instruction about our Zionist ideals, as if like by an electric shock, to dedicate themselves to loftier pursuits, consisting of serious Jewish-ethical principles, and to cherish lifelong, a grounding in the essentials of the Jewish struggle for redemption, which are based on the foundations of the Love of Israel and the love of the individual.

Our Hebrew school was located in the rooms of R' Pinchas Szpiergel, the owner of a large house, with a saloon in the front, and a large salon on the side for meetings. Day in and day out, the sound of learning could be heard, and the echo reached other cohorts of the more mature young people, organizations and groups, and all together, sought an appropriate time to study Hebrew, to listen to discussions, to carry out acts of greater ideological significance, and education and learning became united, each having an influence on the other, raising them, inspiring and rounding them out...

The study of Hebrew, accompanied by an earnest educational endeavor, led to the fact that I put on short but

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substantive scenarios with the unforgettable young boys and girls, a variety of celebrations, a choir – and oratorical presentations, substantial memorial meetings in memory of the creator of political Zionism, Dr. Benjamin-Ze'ev Herzl, and the national poet, Chaim Nachman Bialik, ז”ל, whose ideas and works were portrayed in images by the Jewish children who were pupils in our school.

Who of us, in Cieszanow, especially during the summer months, did not await the Sabbath afternoon? In the first row, my students and myself, joined by the tens and tens in “Gordonia,” committed Zionist youth, who in regulated and disciplined ranks marched out in groups from the center of the city. Each section, group, was led by a director, wither male or female, and the entire host headed to enter the nearby woods, where according to a previously drawn plan, of discussions and communal singing, each group carried out a variety of activities. The energetic singing of Hebrew and Yiddish songs of hope wafted over the city, carried over the gentile fields, and reached the nearby villages. At the time of such marches, I would always thing the line [sic: from the HaTikvah] “Our Hope is not yet Forlorn...” as if some special force, I thought, could be found within us, which life in exile has not been able to overpower, that all our enemies have been unable to break, or break us, or our faith in a better Jewish tomorrow, without fear of pogroms and their perpetrators. On such a Sabbath day, every one of us, knowingly, or unknowingly, thought of ourselves as a Prince of the Jewish people, and with our inspired eyes, we saw the Land of Israel during the time of our discussions, and who felt the physical presence?....

It was with this Sabbath-imbued spiritual Jewishness that we lived for the entire week, and spiritually influenced our weekday environment along with our study and educational objectives.

I do not know who among my beloved Cieszanow Jews remembers the episode, when I was taken down by the police from the dais, and was arrested for almost the entire night in the local “jail” under confinement. What my transgression was: it was – a story like this:

The First of May arrived, and the local Bund “celebrated” the “the Holiday of the Proletariat,” in its own fashion, with a pre-planned international flavor, with the poor Jewish worker in Cieszanow required to be concerned, alas, with “suffering humanity” and I received my directions, notwithstanding my tender age, from the central Hitakhdut office in Lemberg, that this Zionist People's Party, which takes its spiritual nourishment from the teachings of A. D. Gordon, and draws its concepts from Marxism, as well as other prophets about justice and righteousness, about justice and compassion, should make a separate May 1 presentation, in order to permit me to bring out Zionist points of view, to portray the frightening condition of our people and to come to the same conclusions.... because there were deeper ideological differences between the genuine Jewish striving as opposed to the socialist justice in the original socialism.

In the middle of my speech, police broke in and arrested me. I remember a variety of details of the arrest, coming to the police station, the commandant had already “examined” me and took me for a “dangerous revolutionary.” He took out thick volumes of statues, and showed me, how severe my punishment would be for my “May 1 transgressions,” and at the same time, he portrayed me as a well-informed expert of all the ideological directions of the Jewish street. He enumerated Zionist and anti-Zionist parties with their programs, and began to “analyze” the ideological differences among these. My heart was a bitter as gall, but the “knowledge” of the police commandant impelled me to burst out into laughter, but I contained myself, in my situation, which required all my strength to do so.

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Quietly in my heart, I only wished that all haters of Jews should have so much physical strength, as this police commandant has intellectual prowess and understanding, of Jewish matters....

Today, I no longer remember exactly which of the Jewish city balebatim it was, who made the necessary intervention to get me released, but it was for many hours, on the night of the end of April to the first of May, that I felt the taste of what it meant to be a prisoner, which the Cieszanow police had apprehended and wanted to accuse of “fomenting revolutions,” and calling on the masses to battle for a “new order” in Poland, as well as disseminating communist literature.

Indeed, I was released, however, during those days and nights, a feeling remained with me that in the eyes of gentiles, we were all communists, and for a long time, the feeling of pity did not vanish for the few Jews with whom I sat for those hours, in the local jail of the Cieszanow police.

Two ideological directions took priority in the pulsating Jewish life in Cieszanow: “Hitakhdut” and the general Zionists. It needs to be said, for the entirety of truth's sake, that there never were any ideological discussions between the members of both organizations. If anywhere, one sought to find a common endeavor, a friendly form of expression, a heartfelt relationship among friends, and overall – cooperative activities in the local Keren Kayemet L'Yisrael, as in the general area of the clarification of Zionist ideas, the unification of schooling and educational objectives, especially for the Zionist youth organizations in the city, one could encounter this at ever turn in Jewish-Zionist Cieszanow.

Apart from my specific work as an educator and a director, having received a set position, I was also the representative and instructor for the “Hitakhdut” Party and its central offices in Lemberg, as for “Gordonia.” On a certain day, I received a request from the central office to carry out a regional get-together in Cieszanow for the previously mentioned ideological movement and its branches in the surrounding towns and villages. After a consultation with my fellow comrades in Cieszanow, I obtained their agreement and everyone took themselves to the organizational activity. The preparations were intensive. Members, along with me, first visited Lubaczow, Oleszyce, Havenyiev, or as the city was properly called: Dachnow, in order to make certain of the participation of the larger delegations.

On a summer's Saturday night, the introductory session of the meeting was opened in a festive manner, with the participation of many delegates, and I, the junior, gave the opening speech and at that time, touched on all of the timely questions of the day, that were connected with this very movement, as well as those situations concerning the plight of all Polish Jewry. Also, the entire day of Sunday, bathed in sunlight, was taken up with serious discussions, conversations with many practical implications, which led to real decisions. Other speeches and debates were held in a fraternal context – happiness accompanied by song. To this day I can see the picture: gentiles are leaving the Orthodox church, and are getting ready to go to the saloons to grab a glass, and we are occupied with communal singing, and hours later, those who visited the Orthodox church will stagger around dead drunk in public through the streets of Cieszanow, and we, Jewish young people, will still remain occupied with the dissemination of Zionist lore and bringing into Jewish homes, the warmed up fantasies of the Jewish redemption, of a life in the Jewish homeland in the Land of Our Fathers.

The regional “Hitakhdut” conference elicited dissatisfaction among the more dilute ranks of the local Bund, but the theme that was undertaken, and the large number of participants in the gathering, the inspiration of the members, the stimulus that was received to assume even greater obligations, this by itself made a great impression on the Jewish populace of Cieszanow proper, as in the neighboring towns.

If I do not err, and my memory does not betray me, I believe that such a congress was literally unique in all of

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Eastern Galicia, where a Zionist-ideological force was actuated and made an impact. When such gatherings were carried out in those days, they were usually held in the really large cities, such as Stanislawow, Stary, in which I had the privilege of directing the “Barzel” training as a recording secretary, but never were regional conferences of this sort held in the smaller towns. Jewish Cieszanow, in this regard, was truly an exception, and in addition to this, not only did the regional congress receive a great deal of publicity in the central party organ “Dos Freie Vort”, but it also had a broad distribution in the “Lemberger Tageblatt.”

The regional congress of the membership, and its agenda which was its constant companion, presented an inspirational, and Zionist-Jewish supplement to the drab and uninspiring daily work of a large number of the loyal Zionist membership. which Cieszanow had by the hundreds, for the ultimate benefit of the concept of the rebirth of the people and its Land.

All these memories are crammed into a slice of time from the year 1930 to almost the end of the year 1933, with minor interruptions because of my travels to my birthplace in Nemirov and other places in connection with a variety of missions.

It is not possible to write and portray all the important, and possibly also interesting episodes from this –for me – unforgettable time, which supported me in Cieszanow. However, I cannot move onto the memories of other episodes, if I first do not recollect the defining fact that Jewish Cieszanow began to produce a small but substantive monthly periodical under the masthead of “Der Baginen.”

I, the junior, sowed this thought among my dear friends, and also transferred it to the older Zionists, and inculcated this idea even into my students in school, and all of them gave their very enthusiastic conceptual support to the idea, and it became a reality.

It was far from easy to produce a periodical in that time, wen their was no Jewish printing press in Cieszanow, and this could not be found even in other towns. Well, to write down and describe short essays and episodes from Jewish life in the city, the Zionist activities in the city, was not the most difficult task, so we were well-provided with content. The concern surrounded the Jewish printing press, which was the most difficult one to solve. At that time, a good idea came to me, to tie up with the members in Rawa Ruska, which already had a large Jewish community, with a Zionist as a community head. This city already had a printing house, and, indeed, it was from here that the first edition of “Der Baginen” was published, of which over two hundred copies were sent off to Cieszanow.

The appearance of such a local periodical was a bit of an event for everyone, for many a real to-do, for a few – a joke, but the essential fact was, that in Cieszanow, a small Jewish community, a monthly periodical had been published, printed in Hebrew font, with a quite respectable content, added a meaningful appearance and much significance to our cultural work.

Only two editions of the periodical “Der Baginen” appeared, and were in the public domain, but I was sent to Sokolov, near Stary, to conduct a seminar with “Gordonia” and I was compelled to disrupt all of my activities in Cieszanow and this brought an end to this periodical.

“Der Baginen” went down, literally at the very time of its “Beginning.”

[Page 205]

But through these lines, a very glad fact is fixed. that a monthly Jewish periodical was published in Cieszanow, the only one of its kind in the region of Rawa Ruska, Lubaczow, and Jaroslaw.

My memories and portrayed episodes have the same value to me as a memorial candle that has been lit in the memory of the destroyed Jewish community, as was the organized Jewish congregation in Cieszanow.

[Page 206]

At the time of the Ukrainian-Polish Wars in our area, when I was yet a small child and lived through this bi-national armed conflict as if in a dark fog, without memories and without details, my father ימ”ש once told me, how the Poles once seized a spy, as it happened a Pole from the same nation, and shot him for this near our house, which was in the vale of my birthplace, Nemirov.

This image made an extraordinary impression on my child's mind, and not a single detail of this has left my memory, concerning the execution of this traitor.

Well, such incidents have occurred among all nations, and so long as there will be people with lofty minds and traitorous hearts, national treason will not vanish from the face of the earth.

I was reminded of this theme of treason about a Pole, who served the Ukrainians and gave them military secrets to the detriment of the Polish occupation campaign in Eastern Galicia, because this week, I read a Yiddish-German weekly, from the Austrian capitol city of Vienna, about the publication of a book by the lofty minded Canaanite, shameful propaganda-smearer, and national traitor, Uri Avnery, “Living with the Arabs? – Israel between the Future and Zionism,” which appeared this year in the Bertelsmann Zagbuch-Verlag (Spiegel Series). Even though the language, in which Avnery's pap was written, is not mentioned, I can imagine that this character has abandoned the Hebrew letters, and that the original is in Hebrew.

I have to force myself to excerpt several lines from this treasonous book against the Jewish people, especially against the Jewish state, because every adhering Jew and person would bridle to the point of spitting gall when it becomes necessary to engage such fallen souls. The author utters such awful thoughts as: “ The Jews have driven the Arabs from Palestine” (the original German uses the words “Die Juden haben die Araber aus Palestina vertrieben”) . And if this were not enough, this previously mentioned traitor writes about Zionism with such anti-Semitic sentiments as: “Zionism has made one cause with modern imperialism, one of the most provocative and hateful movements in the world.” Such words, full of poison aimed at Zionism and towards the work of Jewish liberation, do not emanate from some other Jew-hater, who was, God forbid, educated in the Hitlerist schools of racism and Jew-hatred, but from a “Jewish” Deputy in today's Sixth Knesset, and uses the Jewish name: Uri Avnery. In accordance with his anti-Zionist outbreak and his loyalty to Arab murderers, such a character would be expected to be employed in today's fascist “Deutscher Nazional und Soldaten Zeitung,” which disseminates a zoological hatred against Jews in the official organ of Neo-Nazism in the West and East-Germany. Uri Avnery is also not a member of the traitorous communist band of the RK”Kh, at the head of which one can find traitors to the Land such as: Meir Willner and the hysterical Jewish Ruth Lubitsch, who are ready to murder Jews, if the latter day Kremlin would demand it of them.

If the Israeli authorities were not functioning in a democracy, which is, indeed, a foundation of the local life, but also is possessed of a great deal of neglect, and if the government and the justice department of the Jewish State were to give a suitable interpretation of Israeli democracy, a bald-faced anti-Jew and anti-Zionist dissolute like this Uri Avnery, would be brought up to trial for high-treason, especially in today's exceptional circumstances, in which the Jewish State finds itself, and it would not be difficult at all to take away the immunity of a Deputy from such a Canaanite character, bring him to the bar of justice, as a genuine criminal against the security of the State of Israel.

[Page 207]

Once again, it is possible to find such soft hearts among our Jews, who will say, what then is the difference between Israel and the politics of pursuit in the Soviet Union? Here, in the land of the Haidamak movement, authors and writers are punished because their works have been published outside of the country, and Israel is punishing an editor of a weekly periodical? How inappropriate is their point of view, and an author of a book in the German language, which mars the face of the Jewish State. With this kind of soft-hearted fool, it is entirely not possible to have a conversation. What sort of equivalence can one possibly find between democratic Israel and the bloodthirsty Red Dictator of the Kremlin satraps? The Daniels and the Sinyavskys are sentenced, because they have the temerity to raise their voices against wantonness and murder, but the Willners and Lubitsches and Avnerys, just like the satanic Yevseksiya in the entire Jewish world, raise themselves up with hatred for Israel and demonstrations against the core of the Jewish State, against the vanguard of the Jewish people, the world Zionist movement, and what it really means, and is unspeakable – to join with the most gruesome enemies of Jewish life and of Jewish freedom.

Uri Avnery's book that assaults the Jewish State contains a countless number of pro-Arab chapters, and in one of them, he says in a loud voice, that “the Jews created Israel with brutal violence,” but there is not a single word about the assault on the newly-created Jewish State by seven Arab armies, each of which, jointly or severally, were ready to pull out each and every Jew in Israel by the roots, Avnery included, just as these same Arab nations today, inflamed by Soviet imperialism are prepared to do right now, may that hour not come.

The great anti-Israel front does not have its origins in Moscow, or in the Arab capitol cities, in has its roots in the Yevseksiya in every Jewish settlement and ends with the disinterested claque of the Canaanite Uri Avnerys and ends with the communist Willners and his ilk.

A new initiative needs to be undertaken: to root out national treason against the Jewish people, and the frightening treason against the State of Israel.

R' Mordechai Kaufman with his wife, Frieda, the daughter of R' Abraham Ber Starkman, ז”ל with their son

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