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[Page 211]
Translated by Allen Flusberg
Another link in the golden chain of the Hagana[2] was broken when Michael was killed in the Judean Hills, in the battle over Castel[3] during the War of Liberation [Independence] of the year 1948.
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Michael, son of Shimon and Neḥama Kotik[4] was born in Safed on January 8, 1929. He attended the Hebrew Reali School[5] in Haifa. When he ended his studies in 1947, he enlisted in the Palmach. With every bit of the loyalty and ideological innocence of youth, he fought in the battles for the liberation of our homeland and for the independence of Israel. He fell in battle on the Eve of Passover 5708[6] in Nabi Samwil[7], and he was buried in Kiryat Anavim[8].
May his remains find peace!
May his soul be bound in the bond of the renewed life of Israel!
Footnotes
[Page 212]
By Baruch Mordechai Kotik
Translated by Allen Flusberg
He was a captain in the Israel Defense Forces. He fell on his watch, while carrying out his duty, on the 18th of Adar, 5723.[2]
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Already in his youth, Efraim stood out in his noble-mindedness and his readiness to help others all the time. In school he would lend support or help any student who had either physical or psychological issues. His friends were drawn to him and enjoyed his company; he was at the center of his circle. He also excelled in his studies in the Marom-Zion Yeshiva in Jerusalem, winning first prize twice for his knowledge of Talmud. And when at the completion of his studies he joined Bnei Akiva[3], he was the spirit of the group. Before he joined the army he was working as a trainee in Kibbutz Be'erot Yitzḥak[4].
[Page 213]
After a period of basic training, he was sent to a radar course. After he completed this course, he participated in the harsh battles near Mitla during the Sinai Campaign[5], and, risking his life under fire, he evacuated the wounded from the battlefield. After the Sinai War he was sent to officers' school, and when he finishing this course he continued to serve in the army as a lieutenant. After completing his military service he went back to Kibbutz Be'erot Yitzḥak, but after a period of time he returned to the military and was appointed a training officer.
He was married on Thursday, 18 Ḥeshvan 5723[6]; on Thursday, 18 Adar of that same year he was slain, not meriting to establish a Jewish family life.[7]
May his memory be a blessing!
Footnote
[Page 216]
by Leah Bobrowski-Aloni and Ḥaya Krakowski-Karabelnik
Translated by Allen Flusberg
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| (Standing [sic]). Last on left—Pinḥas Rabi From right to left: Leah Aloni-Bobrowski, Ḥaya Krakowski-Karabelnik, Simḥa Dubiner, Yeshaya Rimon |
[Page 217]
With the end of the Second World War, reports of the destruction of the Jewish communities of Europe began reaching Israel. And very soon we ascertained that all the members of our town, Kamenetz-Litowsk, Zastavya and the Colonies, had been taken out of the ghetto, and that the accursed Nazis and their lackeys took them away to some place and murdered them all.
When we received this chilling report, we gathered together in Tel Aviv on the 4th day of Adar 5705—February 17, 1945—and we decided to establish an organization of former residents of Kamenetz-Litowsk and the surrounding area.
The first committee that was elected included the following: Yeshaya Rimon (chairman); Leah Aloni (vice-chairman and treasurer); Ḥaya Krakowski (secretary); and members Dov Zhernensky, Simḥa Dubiner (Petah Tikva), Golda Sher-Gershuni (Jerusalem), and Aharon Kotik (Haifa). The committee was assigned the task of examining, investigating and unearthing—by all possible means—what had become of our parents, brothers and sisters of Kamenetz-Litowsk, Zastavya and the Colonies. Our hope was that perhaps some of them had been rescued with the help of their Christian neighbors, or perhaps others had managed to flee to the forests and had survived.
The organization members made contributions that were meant to be sent to aid those we were hoping had survived; and as a first step we collected 100 Palestinian lira (pounds) that were dedicated to this goal.
We could not imagine that the Nazi beast of prey had been so brutally cruel that it had annihilated thirty-four thousand Jewish communities, including the communities of Kamenetz, Zastavya and the Colonies.
After many investigations, we found out from the HIAS[2]-ICA[3] organization known as HICEM[4] that some of our townspeople who had managed to escape from the Nazi occupation were in Russia and Shanghai. We immediately contacted our fellow townspeople who were in Shanghai and made arrangements for HIAS to send them packages of clothing and food supplies as aid. And in addition, we tried to locate their relatives in Israel so that they could help them out.
When the lone survivors reached Israel—and among them one woman who was rescued from the Auschwitz concentration camp—each of them received a loan from our fund, which, in the interim, had grown larger from additional contributions. Most of the survivors paid the loan off after they had undergone absorption in Israel and had found jobs.
Among those who were rescued and reached Israel after the Holocaust was our townsman Tz.S., who had arrived with a serious heart ailment. He found absorption [adjusting to Israel] very challenging; eventually his heart disease worsened and we had to hospitalize him in a sanitorium. The committee tried to cover some of his hospitalization expenses, and was able to pay a significant part of the expenses until the day he died.
[Page 218]
We were unable to sit idly by, always feeling we had a sacred duty to establish a memorial to our cherished fellow townspeople who had been put to death, exterminated and burned alive in Auschwitz, Treblinka and the forests of Bialowieza[5], leaving behind no trace of where they had been buried.
Already in the year 5705 [1945], several of the committee members proposed to perpetuate the memory of our martyrs by publishing a “Yizkor Book” dedicated to their memory, following a well-defined plan. Unfortunately, this proposal was shelved at the time.
In the year 5709 [1949], the head office of the Jewish National Fund [JNF] announced a plan to plant groves of trees, dedicated to the martyrs, in the Jerusalem Hills. Any organization that contributed 1000 Israeli liras[6] would plant a grove of 1000 trees in the name of their destroyed community, and the grove would commemorate the community with a specially inscribed marble plaque. The members of our first committee decided to participate in this project and to plant a grove commemorating the martyrs of our town and the surrounding area. Up to that time we had raised only 65 liras. We got several of our townspeople to join this important activity by planting trees in memory of their relatives. We thereby succeeded in collecting about 500 Israeli liras. But according to the rules of JNF we were not able to obtain and set up our marble plaque in the Martyrs' Forest as long as we had not yet collected 1000 liras for the 1000-tree grove.
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[Page 219]
In the year 5710 [1950], Mr. Yaakov (the son of Moshe Zevil) Savitzky, of blessed memory, visited our country from New York, where he lived. When we met with him, we told him about the planting of the grove commemorating the martyrs of our town, and about the difficulties we were having raising sufficient funds. After he returned to New York he immediately sent us the money we needed to complete the funding, and so the grove was planted.
Shortly thereafter Yaakov Savitzky passed away in New York without ever having had the opportunity to visit Israel once more to see the grove. May his memory be a blessing!
Today our grove stands prominently in the Jerusalem Hills, with the following inscribed on its marble plaque: “In Memory of the Communities of Kamenetz-Litowsk and the Surrounding Area”.
On Monday, the 29th of Av, Eve of the New Month of Elul, 5723 [August 19, 1963], we set up a plaque memorializing the martyrs of our town in one of the halls of the “Chamber of the Holocaust”[7] on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Kostin and Sheinfeld of the United States contributed toward the plaque. More that forty of our townspeople came from all corners of Israel to participate in the impressive ceremony.
While Mr. Abraham Shudroff, the committee chairman of Kamenetzers in the United States, was paying a visit to Israel, the proposal to publish a Yizkor Book memorializing our martyrs was brought up again—this time with the support of our fellow townspeople in the US—and this time the proposal was ratified. In the year 5722 [1962] we published a special preview sample of this Yizkor Book. Four hundred copies of the preview were printed and distributed among our townspeople in Israel and the Diaspora.
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| At one of the Yizkor services memorializing the martyrs of Kamenetz-Litowsk in the JNF Building in Tel Aviv |
[Page 220]
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| At the grove of trees commemorating the martyrs of Kamenetz, on Holocaust Memorial Day |
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| Lighting of candles at the memorial plaque on Mount Zion |
[Page 221]
In the year 5723 [1963] Attorney Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor in the trial of Eichmann (may his memory be blotted out), made a proposal to the Israeli schools that they should perpetuate the memory of the Jewish communities that had been destroyed in the Holocaust period. The Bialik mamlachti [state secular] school of Tel Aviv was the first to respond, choosing to memorialize the community of Kamenetz-Litowsk, Zastavya and the Colonies. This effort was led by Leah Bobrowski-Aloni and her husband, both of whom had been teaching in that school for many years.
In an impressive ceremony that took place on the 12th of Heshvan 5724 [October 30, 1963], many distinguished public figures came to participate and to pay their respects to our martyrs. They were joined by many of our townspeople. The members of the committee: Chairman Simḥa Dubiner, Leah Aloni, Ḥaya Krakowski, Pinḥas Rabi and Arye Goldberg-Sarid, spoke from the podium on the history and institutions of our community, a community that was destroyed and is no more.
The organization committee decided to erect a memorial to the martyrs by establishing a “library of the Holocaust” within the school. One bookcase has been dedicated to works on the Holocaust, contributed by the Kamenetzers in Israel and the Diaspora in memory of their family members who had perished. Each book contains a page dedicated to a family member who perished, with the signature of the contributor. We hope that the number of books and contributors to this memorial library will grow with the participation of all our townspeople, wherever they may be.
In this library there is also an “Album of Kamenetz-Litowsk, Zastavya and the Colonies”. This album preserves photographs of our town's institutions, and each of the townspeople can add photographs of his parents and family members, so that they may be preserved.
A strong bond between our organization and this school has persisted. We conduct our yearly memorial services in the auditorium of the school, with the participation of the students.
We acquired a “perpetual lamp” from the Yad Vashem management board. It bears a special inscription on its six candlesticks memorializing the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
During the yearly assembly meeting of Yad Vashem of the year 5725 [1964-65], a memorial scroll was presented by the school to Ḥaya Krakowski-Karabelnik, who was representing our organization. The scroll bore the signatures of the principal of the Bialik school and its students. The scroll reads as follows: “We declare that our school has taken upon itself the mission to perpetuate the memory of the Kamenetz-Litowsk, Zastavya and Colonies communities that were destroyed during the Holocaust period by the impure Nazi soldiers and their followers…The students will do their best to continue the activity they have begun—to perpetuate the memory of the living, active community as it was before the Holocaust; and also to preserve the memory of its suffering, struggle and annihilation during the Holocaust.”
Because of its primary role in this program, our community's name has been mentioned in other schools during memorial assemblies, as well as in newspapers, both in Israel and the Diaspora.
[Page 222]
During the last few years, we have devoted much time and unceasing energy to the publication of a book memorializing our martyrs. We have been able to concentrate a maximum number of lists, articles and photographs that are printed in the book. Thanks to the cooperation of our fellow townspeople in the United States, this long-awaited book is coming out; and we hope that copies of it will soon be found in all our townspeople's homes, wherever they may be, as well as in institutions and public libraries in Israel and the Diaspora.
The members of the organization's committee have for years been in close touch with the sole survivor of the ghetto, Dora Galperin. The dozens of letters that we received from her have provided a trustworthy testimony on the lives of the Jews in the Kamenetz ghetto up to their very last day, as described in this Yizkor Book in three languages.
The tree-planting ceremony in the grove dedicated to the Kamenetz-Litowsk martyrs, the erection of a memorial plaque on Mount Zion, and the arrangement of the commemoration ceremony in the Bialik school of Tel Aviv were organized through the laudable instigation and diligence of Dov Aloni, for which the organization committee here expresses its special thanks.
Footnotes
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