[Page 293]

Horror and Death

Don't look at me that way, dear Rabbi, don't look with your wonder eyes. Your penetrating look has no limit and your face–heart is in my eyes. I will never forget, dear Rabbi, how they made you kneel and crawl, cut your beard into a cross; your light that last day, dark as night. Rabbi, your people are shining again. Jerusalem is ours once again. The old history will be no more. We are told from above: Be anew and be!

[Page 296]

For the memorial book, I believe that it is my duty to write not only my experiences in my home town, but a memorial, so the time itself is not forgotten and won't be forgotten by Vishnevets compatriots, wherever they are.

I'm one of the few Vishnevets Jews who went through Hitler's concentration camps in Buchenwald and in ghettos. It is not my goal to break your heart by telling about my experience. But only to remind. And who can remind? Only one who went through everything himself, several ghettos and concentration camps, until May 1945. Because when you've read descriptions of ghettos and camps by a talented writer, many of them are translated and interpreted in various ways.

So, accept the reality from your Vishnevets brother who went through that hell, from 1939 in the Petrikov ghetto through Camp Buchenwald and the liberation of Theresienstadt (Czech) in May 1945.

The words in the Shavuot poem Akdamus^[1]–that if all the trees and rivers were transformed into pens and ink, they would not be enough to describe the holy Torah's worth–are exactly applicable to me when I attempt to describe everything I went through.

I will limit myself to a few facts in order to convey to you that the memorial shouldn't be just a complaint.

With my own eyes, I witnessed the burning of 500 small children in barrels of gasoline. Living people had to do this, and then dig graves for themselves and go into them alive. This was in the ghetto.

In Buchenwald, a camp that had existed since 1934, the Germans denigrated people, shaming the “aspect of God” in them. It happened that people of higher culture, whom I knew personally, went around as naked as Adam and didn't even know they were naked.

Some 400 people a day literally perished from hunger, and those people didn't have to be burned people alive. The ovens couldn't burn so many dead people. Close to the liberation of Buchenwald, they gathered all the inmates in one place. Ninety percent were sent off to be killed.

[Page 297]

All these are just a few facts, so that this memorial will be written with “ink” that can never be erased. So for our towns, the verse “two towns and one family” is fulfilled, since nothing remains of our town Vishnevets either. Against that we deserve to have a beautiful family in Israel, the Vishnevets Association.

You Vishnevetsers in Israel must be the backbone, the continuation of everything good and fine that was cut down and murdered with the demise of our beloved Vishnevets community.

Remnants of Vishnevets …

Let's all hope that this memorial book about Vishnevets will enter the house of each Vishnevets Jew, so that throughout the generations they and their children remember and teach what Amalek^[2] did to you and your town, Vishnevets.

The destruction of Vishnevets should never recur in the history of mankind. If this memorial book is to be a memorial for us, may our children never forget it either, and we will have fulfilled the duty and the last will and testament of the Vishnevets martyrs that resides with us, the remnants of destroyed Vishnevets.

[Page 335]

Mama you're not here now, Mama! Mama you are no more. Who will say sweet rhymes, who will wipe my tear? Who will read the little letter that I've sent out to you, across a sea on big ships, back now four years ago? Then did it ever reach you, arrive upon your doorstep? Long years, anxious years– ________ death from you, and cold. Where is your grave, where is Mama? Good Mama, white dove. Body burned away with others, reduced to dust, to dust, to dust. Bring me, wind, just carry here, dusty ash from Mama's body, come from four–corners' wander– find her ash, seek out her ash! What remains is all of my Mama, woe is me. I still see her eyes a–sparkle, I feel, it seems, still in touch. Maybe then the wind will carry off a little ash from her body? Come on, wind, from distant wanders, hear at night my quiet call.

[Page 352]

“They took your mother to Ponar”… a young friend brought the news to me, and then the grief boiled up in me: Mama, you survive only in these lines! Sharp sorrow convinced me that my pen had traced out my mama's path from Vilna to Ponar, and from Ponar to unknown heights; that the wind had lifted her ashes up high, and where had she later rained down? And maybe carried them to me, too, falling in drops of rain. Just like my tear here on my hand, and I did not understand: that my mama was wandering like this around in the countryside…

[Page 387]

The Russians arrived on December 17, 1939. I was working as a salesman for Yosel Averbukh. Although I was a legitimate employee, I decided to leave town so as not to see the happiness that came with the new regime.

I went to my brother's in Butin, where I was elected pretsedatel siel–Sovieta [village elder].

On October 2, 1940, all the Polish settlers in the area were shipped out to Siberia.

I took this in with a calm conscience, because the settlers in our area were not well liked among the Poles.

On April 16, 1941, I was mobilized into the Russian army and transported deep into Russia, 300 kilometers from Moscow. The Russo–German war broke out on June 22, 1941, and as a tank officer, I was in the thick of it.

I relate this because, as I fought the Germans, I didn't know the Germans were murdering and eradicating the Jewish people. I was fighting for my army and Russia.

In 1942, the Ukrainians, betraying the Soviets, fled from the front and went home. It seems that they'd heard about Hitler's victories. They also wanted to take part in the killing of the Jews. But Stalin thought we were all to blame and ordered all the eastern Ukrainians taken from the front, including Jews. I, however, was considered trustworthy, and I stayed at the front.

At the beginning of 1944, the Russians battled their way to Tarnopol. The Russians didn't let soldiers fight near their home province. I knew that I hadn't told anyone [where I was from], and I set of for Tarnopol Zbarazh with the thought that I might see my family, relatives, and friends.

I went to Dubno. On the street, I recognized a Jew: a capmaker whose name was Yenkel Tsitrin.

A conversation ensued. Gradually, incrementally, he told me: in Dubno, where there had been 16,000 Jews, barely 30 Jews remained: broken people who had survived through a miracle.

[Page 388]

In Kremenets, there were even fewer. In Vishnevets? He implied that he couldn't tell me about our town's misfortune. He said only, “Don't go to Vishnevets! Better stay in Dubno.”

I couldn't help myself. I went off to Kremenets and from there, to Vishnevets. I counted the minutes until I got there.

I didn't recognize the town. I went to the dike, which led to the Old City. I stopped my truck and said to my captain, “Comrade Maltsev, I was born in this town, and I request 12 hours' leave.”

He tried to talk me out of it, but I convinced him. All the vehicles drove away, and I stayed in Vishnevets.

Walking around in the marketplace near Shimon Chayim Shimon's, I met a gentile from Butin, traveling home. He recognized me and said that I shouldn't stay here in town. The danger was great; I might get killed. He took me to Butin with him. I didn't know that the danger of traveling with him was greater than that of being at the front.

In the village, I went to see Tshervinski. Very touched, he kissed me and begged, “Simche, run away from here. You'll be beaten to death here, and no one will know where your bones are.”

I was frightened, and I went from there to a place nearby where I had a good friend, Pavele Pientkovski, and his wife, Anelka. But their house was empty; they'd been gone a long time already, out of fear of the Ukrainians.

I went into the stable. I didn't want to stay in the house. I made a hole in the hay, dug myself in, and looked outside.

Gentile men were lustily singing songs, laughing and joking, but they kept repeating one song.

We've killed off the Jews
and planted the trees;
the trees will develop,
we will turn to the ladies
the Polish pabirate.

[Page 389]

At four o'clock in the morning, I left there and went to Vishnevets. I covered six kilometers in 40 minutes, running in fear.

In town, I felt better than in the shadow of the singing gentiles.

I walked around until 7:30 and then met a Jew. I recognized him: it was Hershel Margolius from the Old City, a relative of my mother's. It was from him that I first heard about the great misfortune. His fractured “news” was a rain of pain and sorrow–who could bear it?

They had shot the Vishnevets rabbi to death and buried him along Pochayev Road along with the gentile Ivan Volinski, who was a deputy for the Russians. They themselves had to dig the graves.

There were four pits in the Old City where about 2,500 Jews were buried.

I had to rejoin my military unit. I went into the office, and I recognized the same Russian who had sent me away before. He grabbed me around and said with a big smile, “See how lucky you are. If not for me, you wouldn't be alive now either!”

It was true.

There was an unlicensed physician in Vishnevets, Avraham Yenkel, and a gentile, Sheteras. I didn't find the Jew, but Sheteras was still alive, and they called him “doctor.” They had killed Avraham Yenkel and Dr. Grintsvayg as well. He was “one in a million,” as they say. When I asked the Russian official if I could lengthen the 12 hours to 30 days, he told me to go to the “doctor” and tell him I wasn't well, I wasn't in good health.

I went to the unlicensed doctor, and he recognized me right away. He used to visit Yosef Averbukh every day. I said nothing. He examined me and said that I was 100 percent healthy and didn't need 30 days. I understood his intention and got very angry. In my anger, I grabbed my revolver and was going to shoot him. He was shocked and started shouting, and the officer came in. He grabbed me by the hand, winked at the “doctor,” and we went out. Afterward, he signed me up for 90 days.

[Page 390]

Before I left I said, “Look, your son is alive, as are you and your family. My entire family is gone. How can you act like this?”

I met with Hershel Margolius again. There was another Jewish woman with him, from a village whose name I don't remember. They both told me horrifying facts that made me shudder. But a lot of Jews from Vishnevets will not want to read them, because they took part in them. Now they're going around in Israel disguised, as if for a Purim ball.

I also saw entryway steps made of Jewish gravestones. I saw floor coverings and boots made of parchment from Torah scrolls.

On the graves in the old cemetery, the bones of our brethren and elders were thrown around, uncovered by earth.

In the Great Synagogue, I found the names of our near, dear, Vishnevets friends, which they had managed to inscribe on the walls before the final death march, so that generations later one could know that it was from here that they went to their gruesome slaughter.

[Page 391]

I can't describe so well what I saw and heard in Vishnevets. The town's destruction was wiped away, but the traces of the mass murder couldn't be wiped away. Everything in the town spoke of the worst things that our dearest had to bear.

I met with Anelkin Piontkovski's wife, who told me:

“Even before the Germans arrived, they took 70 Jews and threw them into the cellar at Shimon Chayim Shimon's. They gave them axes and shovels and told them kill one another with them. The Jews didn't want to do this, so they killed themselves in the most horrible ways. With stones, iron bars, and bullets. Only one of them was left, Hershele Sender's. He had had a tavern. All the gentiles used to go there to drink. He was thrown in with the dead, and their stones and bullets missed him. At night, he got out, bloodied and drenched in his neighbors' blood, and related what had happened.

My father was among the first victims. He was coming to her in Poland, near Butin, to ask for bread and potatoes for his family members, who were hungry. At night, Ukrainians from Vishnevets came and talked with glee about “snatching Jews.” She begged my father to stay the night at their house, but he answered that his wife would be apprehensive and worried. And he left.

He never saw his family or his world again.

Chayim Kornfeld–we called him Chayim Shmeline–Mordekhay Boytiner's brother, was caught by gentiles in Mishkovtsy and beaten to death. My father–in–law, Moshe Rozental, buried him in the little valley behind Katsap's woods, because they wouldn't allow him to take him into town.

Yashke Badeysiuk, a shoemaker, became a police officer for the Germans and killed hundreds of Jews. When I was there, he hid in a well, and I dragged him out of there and brought him to court. I saw that murdering Jews wasn't a serious crime in the world for any gentile, and told Hershel Margolius that he should be a witness and say that he had killed Russian parachutists. Hershel did as I asked. The prosecutor jumped for joy and said, “Scoundrel, confess. If you tell the truth, we'll shoot you, and if not, we'll hang you, and you'll suffer.”

[Page 392]

Badeysiuk replied, “Do with me what you will. There are plenty of Ukrainians here. They'll get even with you for me.”

I've recorded what I remember. It's difficult to remember more; it's even harder to return to and describe it.

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