[Page 667]

One of the oldest and most respected families in Yedinitz was the family of Sara and Moshe Axelrod. They had three descendants: one son, Avraham, and two daughters, Rachel and Tova. Avraham was an educated and cultured man who knew well the Torah, had rich life experience, and was a successful merchant. His wife, Hannah, born Segal, was the daughter of one of the most respected families in Lipcani, a neighboring village. She, too, was educated, cultured, and wise. The couple settled in Yedinitz. Both were generous and dedicated to public activities, giving their time and money to others.

Above: Lawyer David and Osnat Lerner and their daughter Teyvale Bottom: Lisa Lerner, Hannah and Avraham Axelrod

[Page 668]

The two younger daughters, Hayke and Bat-Sheva, were unmarried.

The Holocaust that befell the community did not spare the Axelrods. All the members of this family perished in the Transnistria's camps. The lawyer David Lerner, his wife, and their six-year-old daughter perished in a cruel way in the Chukiv Camp (see M. Reicher's article about “The Holocaust of the Yedinitz Jews” in this book).

Their good name will be remembered among the remains of the village for all generations.

Fruma Blickstein

She made Aliyah in 1934 and joined Kibbutz Yagur. Lioba Gokovsky, z”l, took care of her like a compassionate father and a loyal friend.

Despite her disabilities (her hand and part of her body trembled) she was a dedicated worker. She learned Hebrew quickly and was helpful with the affairs of the kibbutz. For many years she worked at the kibbutz laundromat in Haifa. However, loneliness, being an orphan, and losing her loved ones, were always part of her life. Toward the end of her life, her depression grew. She committed suicide and died on April 10, 1966.

Death, this veiled secret, will free her – she thought in her despair – from her bodily sufferings and her loneliness.

There was In Yedinitz a nucleus of “Poalei Zion” members, the remains of the movement in Czarist Russia, managed by the unforgettable Shimshon Bronstein. Bard joined them at once and quickly became one of its main activists. That year the members of “Hatechiya” joined as well, following the ideological differentiation and the split they had (see the article about “Poalei Zion” in the village). An active chapter was founded with a vibrant youth movement; a hall was rented bustling with life every evening filled with members and a lot of activities. Bard never missed a meeting or a talk that took place at the “Hall” on top of his General-Zionist activities and the various fundraising.

Aryeh was born in 1902 in the small village of Zamihov, in Podolia, which had 1000 Jews, to his father Meir the Melamed, and his mother Sara, where he received a traditional education. In his youth, he was attracted to the Zionist Idea, and at the beginning of the Soviet Regime, he was a member of “Tzeirei Zion” and “Halutz,” which were back then clandestine. In 1924 he illegally crossed the border to Bessarabia aiming to reach Eretz Israel. He spent about a year training as a pioneer, and later, he served as a Hebrew teacher. The Podolia Jews were similar to the Bessarabia Jews in their mentality, traditions, and the southern Yiddish dialect, so no one noticed or knew that Leib was a refugee from Ukraine.

One by one the movement activists and many of its members made Aliyah. In 1935 Leib Bard, his wife Henia, and their two sons arrived in Israel. Leib was then 33 years old and was not used to doing physical labor. Still, he joined the Kibbutz Yagur, where a few Yedinitz natives were there, including Lioba Gokovsky, who has been there for two years already. Bard had a few years of difficult adaptating and was full of doubts and deliberations which bothered him for a long time.

A few months after his arrival the riots began. Bard was working in the quarries. He was a member of the “Haganah” and participated in protecting the Kibbutz. In June 1946, on the “Black Shabbat,” Aryeh was arrested together with hundreds of the Yagur members and was imprisoned by the British in the Rafah Camp. His 16-year-old son Haim was wounded standing guard at the Kibbutz gates. Aryeh participated in several operations of smuggling immigrants illegally into the country and hiding them from the British.

We met in 1938, after my Aliyah, in Kibbutz Yagur. Our paths again separated. Later, I met him when I returned from my service with the Jewish Brigade. Apart from our long acquaintance and friendship, we had a common ideological basis we shared since we both decided when the party split to join “Mapai” while most of our friends in Yagur supported another movement.

[Page 670]

Aryeh-Leib Bard

He always demonstrated an ideological awareness and a capacity to analyze facts and situations, taking a stand and expressing his sorrow about things that seemed to him wrong. He was a pleasant and interesting conversationalist.

He complained a lot about his failing eyesight and other ailments that bothered him. I tried to encourage him as much as I could. I knew he was weak; but I did not believe his end was near.

Aryeh wrote sometimes expressing his thoughts and feelings. He had an exact, clear, and practical style, without using cliches. This I noticed when I read his articles in the Yedinitz Yizkor Book as he became part of the book and cherished their memory in his heart.

He used to urge us, the writers of the book, to hurry up and publish it so that he will be able to see and read it (since his eyesight was failing), at least to touch the book, or to listen when it will be read to him. I thought that these were the words of despair of an ill man, his pessimistic inclination, and I disregarded them uttering words of encouragement that are said under such circumstances.

A man of qualities, a sincere friend and a devoted member of the movement, a deep thinker, and having had a sensitive heart passed away. He left Henia, his beloved wife, and his two sons, Yedinitz natives, who one of them, Haim Barad, teaches Judaism at the Sde Boker Institute, is an editor and the author of pedagogical books; the other son, Shlomo, is an expert on agriculture.

[Page 671]

My father, R' Baruch Blanc, z”l, was born in Yerzhev, a tiny village in the Podolia district. Like most of the Podolia villages, Yerzhev had a small population, and its economic situation was dire. Still, most of the Yerzhev youth were dedicated to studying Torah. In the schools and synagogues, you would often meet adults, too, who studied Thora. My father, z”l, excelled in his studies from an early age. When he was 13 years old, he moved with his parents to Bessarabia, and in 1912, when he was already married and the father of four, the family settled in Yedinitz.

Compared to Podolia, Russian, Poland, or Lithuania, Bessarabia was considered rich, “The Land of abundance,” or “The barn of grains, fruits, and wine.” But in reality, most of the inhabitants at that time were small merchants and laborers who could not even dream about luxuries. The number of the inhabitants in Yedinitz (Jews and non-Jews) back then was about ten thousand. The economy was stable, and since “Man cannot live on bread only,” many wished to provide their children, boys, and girls, not only a Torah education but also a general education.

Among the older citizens there were quite a few “scholars,” Torah learners and teachers, like R' Meir Boim, Yaakov Dorf, Nissan Weissman, Itzhak Rabin, Lipa Schor; and among the younger ones were Avraham Weissman and others, all had all passed away already. However, they were not united socially, each was his own man.

My father, z”l, was warmly welcomed by the community's dignitaries. First, because we had many relatives in Yedinitz from my mother and my father's side, people who lived there for many years and had a good economic and social standing, and secondly, because my father had a general education and was a professional bookkeeper, and since he spoke Russian, he could negotiate with the authorities. This did not prevent him from frequenting the Beit Midrash since he was a wise and bright scholar.

R' Baruchel Blanc (as most people knew him) was friendly, a man involved with people and in community affairs. He was a fanatic in his views from a young age, a man with national recognition, investing efforts to do good for the Zionist souls. So, in a short time, he acquired a status in community life. Our financial situation back then was good, and he was willing to contribute his time and money to the public in general, and especially to Zionism. In those days, before WWI, he dedicated himself to raising money for the “National Committee to Help the Agriculture Laborers in Syria and Palestine” - the name officially certified by the Russian Authorities for the Zionist “Histadrut.”

[Page 672]

R' Baruch and Sara Blanc

We can learn from this report, because Yedinitz, a small village, counted 360 donors (the small donations were all summed up), and the sum of these contributions was 131 Rubles. It is a relatively considerable large amount compared to Kishinev, Bessarabia's capital, which had far more Jewish citizens, whose collections amounted to only 140 Rubles. It should be mentioned that my mother, z”l, managed to collect, too, according to this report, between the women at the minyan of uncle Yaakov Lerner, where we prayed, the sum of one Ruble and a half.

The public activities in Yedinitz existed only to the measure that the authorities allowed it. Among the institutes worth mentioning: the “Chevra Kadisha,” which did only what it was assigned to do, the “Taxa” (the “Korovka,” the Meat Tax)), the institute in charge of taking money from the slaughter at the slaughterhouse and slaughtering poultry at the Shochets homes. From the income of the “Taxa” the salaries of the Dayan and the Shochets were paid, and some establishments were kept. A certain amount of money was allocated to support the “Talmud Torah” and the school fees for children from poor families.

I remember there was back then an institute for social help called “The Committee for Assisting the Needy.” It was sustained by donations and its budget was quite remarkable by these times criteria since besides the well-off citizens were quite a few deprived people which you had to take care of on Shabbat and during the holy days, marriages of daughters, medical costs, etc.

[Page 673]

When the diaspora learned about the foundation of the “Herzliya” Gymnasium in Jaffa many parents wished and dreamed, especially the traditionalists among them, to send their sons to “The Promised Land” to get a high school education without desecrating the Shabbat. But fulfilling this dream was affordable only to the happy few. Not many parents could afford to send their children to the private high schools in Russia, in which they did not study on the Shabbat, among them was the Kogan Gymnasium in Vilna, Rapaport's in Odessa, and the Commercial High School, in Odessa as well.

And here came a young man of 18 years old, Itzhak Rosenthal-Raziel, z”l, who stood up and did the bravest thing: he left his father's house, the small merchant in the center of the village, and despite his meager means was able to get to Eretz Israel and study there. His letters coming from Israel made a strong impression on all of us. We saw indeed that Eretz Israel was “A real thing.” I recall another Yedinitz native, Azriel Eidelman was his name, a middle-aged Jew, a wealthy one, who had Jewish and general education and used to visit Israel now and then, getting back to Yedinitz and bringing live regards from Eretz Israel, and thus awakening a warm feeling for our ancestor's land. (See an article apart)

When we settled down in Yedinitz I was 10 years old, and my father registered me in the “Improved Cheder” of Yaakov Kizner. We studied the Bible, grammar, Hebrew Literature, history, and calculus. The studies were “Hebrew in Hebrew.” Another revolutionary novelty in the “Improved Cheder” was that boys studied with girls, whose numbers were still low back then.

In the fall of 1916, youngsters my age and older were sent to cities that had state educational establishments. This was done to “prepare for the future” when we need to serve in the military if the war continued. I reached Odessa and passed the entering exams to the fourth grade in the gymnasium, where only Jews studied, and the weekly free day was Shabbat. There were many candidates to enter this gymnasium, however, the only one who was accepted alongside me was my childhood friend Yosef Klieger.

The war and its many sufferings ended. Bessarabia was handed to the Romanian authorities. New misfortunes landed on the Jews and the village Jews (there are other articles about it in this book) and new hopes, and new disappointments, were awoken concerning Eretz Israel.

The Zionist Movement grew as did the Zionist activities, especially in collecting donations for the Zionist' Funds. My father was one of the heads of the Zionist activists and the head of “Mizrahi” in our town. Our home was the center for the reunion of the Zionist activity, and we hosted the important guests who came to town.

The need for a high school grew as many graduated from elementary school. In 1920-1921, the private gymnasium was founded without special difficulties. In the lower classes, everything was taught in Hebrew, in the upper classes, in Russian and Romanian on top of basic Hebrew, most teachers were Christians, refugees from Russia.

[Page 674]

The school was located next to the “People's house,” an establishment from the estate of Kazimir, the landlord. My father was one of the founders of the Gymnasium, and until he made Aliyah, he was the head of the parent's association when my sisters studied there.

The years that we lived peacefully were few. Antisemitism was rearing its head in Europe and Romania and came at a time when the economic situation was deteriorating. Some of the youths were attracted to communism and others, not many, did their soul-searching and decided to make Aliyah. Some dropped out of universities and made Aliyah despite the difficulties awaiting them in Israel. Among them was my friend Yosef Klieger, who left university in his third year of medicine, and my friend Itzhak Bar-Samcha, who interrupted his law studies, both were lucky to see their offspring become an integral part of life in Israel.

After the riots of 1929, the economic situation in Israel improved slightly. In Yedinitz, as in all other places, the urge to make Aliyah increased.

During those days, it was as if my father, z”l, was feeling the sacred calling, the earth was burning under his feet. Despite his age, he was already 52 years old, he did what he preached for: in 1931 he made Aliyah, the first from our family. He enjoyed a warm welcome in Israel and found at once work in his profession, bookkeeping. With his old contacts, he helped us all make Aliyah.

And so, things were “up-side-down;” the veteran, older Zionist became the pioneer walking ahead of his son and daughters, the first of the whole family.

My father died in 1945, he was 66 years old. My mother outlived him by 22 years and died in 1967.

My sister Zipporah died in Israel in 1966 and left a husband and two children. My sister Polia died in 1973.

My other sisters, Yona and Hannah, may they live a long life, are in Israel.

My friend and Zionist activist, the late Baruch Blanc was a scholar, had many gifts, owned a sharp tongue, and had a great persuasion gift. He had a deep faith in the future of Zionism as a young man and did not lose his faith when he made Aliyah at the beginning of the thirties, during the economic crisis in Israel.

He suffered and lived in dire straits in Tel Aviv until he was able to find work as a bookkeeper, his expertise. He had a hard time attaining certificates for bringing his family to Israel, Itzhak Ben-Avraham Rosenthal, z”l, a Yedinitz native, who came with the Second Aliyah, helped him.

His home was in these days the center for all the newcomers from Yedinitz who were welcomed very warmly by him and his wife and who actively helped us all get the certificates. At the end of his life, Baruch Blanc worked as an accountant for the newspaper “HaBoker” in Tel Aviv. He died during WWII.

[Page 675]

Adina Kreiner born Boroshin

When the Germans invaded Bessarabia in 1941, her mother, Feiga, was slaughtered with hundreds of other local Jews, may their blood be avenged. Adina was deported with her father and sister to Transnistria and survived. The father and two daughters made Aliyah in 1946 together with the illegal immigrants on the “Haganah” ship. In Israel, Adina graduated from the WIZO Nursing School for “Mother and Child” and became an expert in treating preemies, continuing to work at the school.

When the Independence War broke out, she volunteered in the “Haganah” and after that, she volunteered to work at the immigrants' Camps and different hospitals. Since 1948, she worked in the preemies' department of WIZO until her last days, even in her last three years, when the terminal disease was nesting in her blood. She died in 1968 when she was only 40 years old.

She was survived by her husband, a 13-year-old son, and a 5 year old daughter.

Sara Goldenstein-Mankovsky

[Page 676]

Despite the poverty at home, Sara continued her studies (she studied at the teachers' seminary of “Safa Bruria” in Czernowitz) and advanced on her own in life and society. She obtained an education, spoke fluent Hebrew and was active in the “Poalei Zion” Movement.

Before WWII, Sara immigrated to Brazil. She established there together with her husband Zelman Mankovsky from Secureni, a spacious home in Recife, Brazil, which quickly became a social-Zionist center. Sara was active in Zionist organizations and the field of Hebrew education. The family had three daughters: Ilana, Fanny, and Rachel.

In 1955 Sara sent Ilana, her eldest at 15 years old, to study in Israel. She lived in the house of Shalom Caspi in Herzliya. She graduated here and is nowadays a kindergarten teacher in Haifa, where she raises her own family. In 1962 Sara sent her daughter Fanny to Israel, where she studied at the Hebrew University and started a family.

Meanwhile, Sara and her husband Zelman bought an apartment in Herzliya to settle in Israel. In the beginning of 1964, Sara and her youngest daughter arrived in Israel. The husband was supposed to join later. In Israel, it was discovered a terminal disease and Sara passed away 6 months later, in July 1964. She was 54 years old.

R' Yekutiel Dorf had a patriarchal appearance, he was slender, had a bushy beard, and was all smiles. His bright Jewish eyes revealed his generosity and kindness. He was a typical Hassid, and had a bigger-than-life soul, revealed especially on Shabbat when he shed off his secular occupations, elevated his soul, and was transported into deep prayer. In the same way, he was lit by faith, he fell for the Zionist idea. He worked in this Bessarabia town with a Hassidic enthusiasm, with Zionism as well, and demonstrated a keen penchant for organizing. He united under the “Mizrahi” Flag the best of the traditional activists and convinced them to contribute to Zion and its funds. As a spiritual and practical man, he found a way into many hearts and passed on the Zionist “virus,” enticing others to the idea of building the Holy Land. He not only preached but was committed, too. He visited Israel, bought some land, sent his sons beforehand, and was planning to tie his life and future with his ancestor's land. He spared no effort to instill the natural awareness in the heart of every Jew, whose origin, roots, and landscape are at “Home” and not in the diaspora, as a divine order and a must in view of the diaspora's reality.

The heart wrenches at the thought of what could have been the Jewish reality if we had back then people as pure of heart and honest as he was. How many pure and sacred we would have saved and how we would have enriched, with quantity and quality, our life in Israel and advanced our endeavor and creation of our human and moral status.

The Holocaust preceded him and his family, and he joined these “anonymous soldiers” whose acts are part of our life throb here, and some as the trailblazers of Zion roads and paths.

[Page 677]

The family of R' Yona and Bracha Gerstein when the daughter Miriam immigrated to Brazil Sitting from right to left: the oldest son Yaakov-Yosef (perished during the Holocaust) Shmuel Ben Yosef, Miriam, Yona's daughter (died in Brazil), Bracha, R' Yona's wife (died in Yedinitz during the thirties), Ada (the wife of Shmuel Israel), Rivka- Mirl, Yosef's wife (perished in the Holocaust) Standing from right to left: Miriam and Sirel, Yosef's daughters (perished during the Holocaust), Sirel Vinitzky (died in Tel Aviv) Hayke, R' Yona's youngest daughter (Brazil)

Their decendents:

1. R' Yaakov-Yosef was a Shochet in Cliscauti, a village of about 1000 Jews, near Novoselitza. His wife: Rivka Mirl.
2. Sirel, the wife of R' Avraham- Mordechai Vinitsky, a shochet and cantor in Soroca, Vertujeni, Iasi, and Jerusalem.
3. R' Moshe-Aharon, Shochet in Kalius, Ukraine. His wife: Sar'ka.
4. Hanna, the wife of R' Israel Yulis, shochet in Otaci.
5. Pinchas (Pinni) a Hebrew teacher, immigrated in the beginning of WWI to Brazil, where he continued his public and educational activities. His wife: Minna.
6. Miriam and her husband Eliezer, Brazil.
7. Haike and her husband Shmuel Glozman, Brazil. She was active in “Tzeirei Zion” until her immigration.

[Page 678]

R' Yaakov-Yosef from Cliscauti was a bright scholar, a man of faith, and a deep thinker. He perished in Transnistria with his wife, their son Leib-Avraham and his family, their daughters Sirel and Miriam, and most of their family. Their sons were 1. Shmuel, 2. Srul (from his first wife), 3. Leib-Avraham 4. Yeshayahu 5. Moshe 6. Hanoch 7. Miriam 8. Zehava 9. Israel (from his wife Rivka-Mirel)

After being discharged from the Russian Army after WWI, Shmuel, the eldest son, settled in the village of Tirnova, next to Briceva, and was a farmer. In 1936, he made Aliyah with his wife Ada and his son and was one of the first settlers in the Moshav Beit-Oved near Nes-Tziona. His sons and daughters are well integrated into Israeli life.

The younger sons of Yaakov-Yosef who studied in Czernowitz often visited their grandfather's home in Yedinitz and were influenced by him. They were active in the “Tzeirei Mizrahi” movement and were affected by its Zionist spirit. A training group of religious pioneers founded in Czernowitz after the riots of 1929 by Hanoch Ben Yaakov, Yosef Boyer (nowadays the deputy Mayor of Tel Aviv), and Yosef Litvak (Kfar Haroeh), made Aliyah in 1931.

[Page 679]

Later on, all the other sons of Yaakov-Yosef made Aliyah: Moshe, z”l, Zehava, and Israel. They all joined “Shachal,” a group in Rehovot that was the basis of Kibbutz Tirat-Zvi, founded in the Beit She'an Valley in 1937. They changed the name Gerstein to Yorav (a combination of the parents' names; Yaakov-Yosef and Rivka). For many years Hanoch served as the first secretary of the religious Kibbutz, and later, as the foreign secretary of Tirat Zvi. He took an active and daring part in the counterattack when the Arabs attacked the kibbutz. He is nowadays one of the first settlers of Kiryat-Shmuel, near Haifa.

After WWII the rest of R' Yaakov-Yosef's family came to Israel, those who survived Transnistria. His son Yeshayahu (settled in Kiryat Shmuel) and his grandchildren, Miriam, the daughter of Sirel and Eliezer (lives in Holon with her husband and two sons), and Zvi, the son of Miriam, one of the founders of Kiryat-Hebron and its settlers (with his wife and four children).

In Kibbutz Tirat Zvi live the daughter Zehava, the family of the son Moshe, z”l , and Malka, his wife (8 people), and the family of Israel and Lea (born in Novoseletz) they have six children. Two sons are in the kibbutz with their families, a married daughter is in Kibbutz Sa'ad, as well as nine grandchildren.

Sirel, my mother, R' Yona's oldest daughter, married my father, R' Avraham-Mordechai Vinitsky, a Shochet in Soroca, and later in Vertujeni, Iasi, and Jerusalem. Their sons:

1. Yeshayahu, the writer of this article, a teacher and musicologist, made Aliyah from Kishinev in 1936.
2. David, who was the “Tarbut” secretary and the head of the Eretz Israel office in Kishinev, made Aliyah in 1961 after spending 21 years in the Siberian Labor Camps in the USSR, was active in Israel in the publication field, edited a book about the history of the Zionist Movement in Bessarabia, and participates in the Yedinitz Book;
3. Yaakov-Yosef, a teacher who died young in 1926;
4. Meir, who made Aliyah in 1936 and played an important role in the education and teaching systems of Israel, died in 1944. My brother David published for his memory a pedagogical compilation titled “The Book of Meir;”
5. Rachel, a kindergarten teacher, arrived in Israel in 1940 and died in Jerusalem in 1944;
6. Itta Sifroni, arrived in 1940;
7. Itzhak, arrived in 1934, served four years in the Jewish Brigade, and had two sons.

The second son of R' Yona and Bracha, the Shochet Moshe-Aharon from Kalius was trapped in Ukraine and persecuted by the authorities because he was faithful to Judaism. He died with his wife during the war. His children, two sons, and two daughters remained in USSR and raised their families there.

The other daughter of R' Yona and Bracha, Hannah, her husband, the shochet Israel Yulis and their daughters from Otaci, were evacuated at the beginning of the war to Kazakhstan, came back to Kishinev, and made their life there. The daughter who returned from France joined them; she was part of the anti-Nazi resistance there. The third son of R' Yona Shochat, Pinni, and the sister Miriam and Hayke immigrated to Brazil and had big families.

[Page 680]

Pinni and Miriam died in Brazil, their descendants founded families well integrated into the public life of the Jews in Brazil.

My late father, R' Chaim Weinschenker, was active in all kinds of public institutions. He was a lobbyist for the benefit of the public and the benefit of the individual. Since he had good relations with the authorities and was a confidant of the local judge (the Judokatur), he often rescued Jews from troubles while this Jew “got his punishment” from my father.

As a “trading man,” he was active in the Merchants' Association and served for a long time as the director of the branch of the bank Spotol Nogusturosk in the town.

He was religious and served as the Gabai at the Chasidei Sadogura Synagogue although his wife Batya, my mother, referred to the house of the Tzaddik from Rashkov.

He struggled, that the Chevra-Kadisha affairs will not be managed by secularists but by the elected religious people. At the institution of the community in the 1930s, the TAXA affairs (taxes) were transferred to the community. My father and Samuel Fradis oversaw the slaughter on behalf of the community.

When the Romanians conquered Bessarabia in 1918, my father was taken with other dignitaries as a hostage for the sake of not disciplining the city.

He was also engaged in Zionist activity, and as a tradition-keeper, he joined the Mizrahi movement. He encouraged his children to make Aliyah. When the girls were in Israel, he refused his brother's offer from Paris to leave Israel because of the unrest events and to move to France. He wrote to us: “We do not leave Israel, we make Aliyah to Israel,” silently he was busy with the public needs.

R' Chaim Weinschenker was shot by the Romanian invaders in 1940 in his attempt to escape from the Seminary, where many Jews were concentrated.

We will keep his blessing memory.

Isaiah, Dr. Sioma, and his wife Iza Tolpolar

[Page 681]

Also, Mrs. Tolpolar was an educated woman, active in the field of social assistance and in the Zionist movement.

The family had two educated sons: the eldest, Dr. Sioma Tolpolar (born in 1911) graduated from the Yedinitz Gymnasium and completed his studies in medicine at the Iasi University. He married Iza, the daughter of Dr. Flak Mataki, and opened a clinic in the village of Cepeluti. The second son also graduated from the local gymnasium, studied law, and became a lawyer. He was active in the “Gordonia” movement. During the Soviet occupation, he was drafted into the Red Army and served there during the entire war.

Dr. Sioma and his wife were brutally murdered in their bed at their home in their village of residence. Their killers were the local peasants, whom the doctor had brought them medical treatment. It happened during the second day of the occupation.

A similar fate was intended for their parents, Isaiah and his wife. They fled from Yedinitz when the disturbances began there to their son's house in Cepeluti.

The Romanian and German armies entered Cepeluti a few days after they occupied Yedinitz, and so they were also brutally murdered.

Their second son, Pima, was in the army at the time. At a certain time, he served as an investigating officer of the Soviet occupation authorities. Some people say that when he returned to Yedinitz he revenged the blood of his parents, brother, and sister-in-law. Pima is now a lawyer in Czernowitz.

The father of Iza, Dr. Tolpolar's wife, Dr. Flak, served in the Red Army and died in the war. The mother and the second daughter settled in Czernowitz.There my mother died.

He was about twenty years old in those days, a young man still, with the rare combination of having an analytical talent, the depths of emotions, and a devotion to the movement. He did not feel that with every farewell handshake from friends and trainees he is separated from the same generation where he grew up, within which he was educated, which he educated, and to which he belonged.

From the words of friends who later came to Israel and from his letters, you can get the impression that Yossale was caught with open eyes inside the circle of knowing that everything around him is collapsing and the storm is coming.

From the terrible personal tragedies of the victims of the Holocaust in our town, Yossele's unique character emerges as one of the most tragic.

[Page 682]

Yosef Sonnenschein

Being an outstanding high school student, he abandoned his studies just before the final exams because in his sensitive ears the alarm bells were already ringing sharply. He stood with all his might, energy, and personal ability in battle with the zealous youth in our town as a preacher, educator, stimulant, and motivator.

His personal influence went beyond the “Gordonia” chapter, and he became a figure admired by other youth groups in the town. Over time, he became one of the influential members of the “Gordonia” movement in the area.

Many talented people lived in the town. But what sets it apart from Yossale, was the rare blend of human qualities that made him the center of interest and authority without intending to.

He was charming on the outside, had a remarkably shapely body, black piercing eyes, was smart, and kind. He had an endearing smile and a deep, melodious voice. And when Yossale sang a Chassidic melody, the Shekhinah herself seemed to hold her breath to listen to his singing. That's why he was affectionately called Yossale “the nightingale.”

He had a talent for expression and analytical ability. Despite his principles regarding the matters of the social movement and society, he always saw the person, because he had a sensitive soul, and he was humanist in all his being.

Not many were as proficient as he was in Hebrew literature and poetry.

Although he was an idealist in his views, he devoted considerable time to learning thoroughly the Marxist worldview and was a witty and sharp opponent in the discussions on Saturday evenings open to all the youngsters organized by the local chapter of “Gordonia.”

No one could guess that a mild cold during a summer camp in “Gordoni,” will end for him in such a fatal way. He returned home with lung disease. The disease limited his ability to be active and even influenced his fate. With all his longing to make Aliyah to Israel, he made the decision not to do so as long as he did not recover, lest he fall upon the burden of the members of his group in Israel.

Yossale took out his soul by way of torment and death to Transnistria together with many of the townspeople and Bessarabian Jewry during the Holocaust, whose atrocities are told much in this book.

[Page 683]

I knew him when he was a thirteen-year-old boy. We were both in the same group of “Hatzofim” in “Gordonia.” His name was Yossale “Solovey” (“The Nightingale,” in Romanian) because of his nice voice. He was beautiful, tall, erect, and naughty.

In his voice tonight. He was good looking, always, standing straight and tall, and with a playful forelock crowned his high forehead. His character was full of personal charm. He was mature for his age. Although he was among the outstanding students at the high school, he suffered from hostile treatment from the teachers and the principal was expelled from school and did not graduate.

At his parents' home, we always found a warm and friendly Zionist atmosphere.

His father, R. Hirsch Kalkehnik, as he was called, and his mother, Charna, were engaged, besides their livelihood, also in public needs. They provided the needs of the many poor people like food, firewood in winter, etc.

We faced a difficult and overwhelming confrontation by communist propaganda among the Jewish youth in the first half of the 1930s, which tried to undermine the belief in the Zionist ideals. Some of the youths were tempted. And if we still stood the test, and even managed to bring back many
who almost left the movement, it was thanks to the persuasive power of Yossale. He had the halo of a leader, besides modesty, and good friendship.

When his peers went out for training and prepared for Aliyah, it was discovered that he had a lung disease. Doctors feared that the hot climate in Israel would be harmful to his health. They did not imagine that in Israel they would exterminate the disease. We, his friends in Israel, still expected him to come, but in the meantime, the Holocaust, the greatest of the disasters of our people, started.

He perished, along with the many other people in our town, whose burial place is unknown.

Moshe Teperman was born in 1913 in the village of Neporotove, located on the banks of the Dniester River, about 45 km north of Yedinitz, at the home of his father, R' Gershon Leib (A native of this place, in the 1880s) and his mother Sirel, (from the house of Benderman, a big family from around Kamenetz - Podolsk). The village was famous for the Jewish Zionist atmosphere and the Hebrew education.

Until the age of ten, Moshe studied at the local Hebrew school and when the family moved to Yedinitz due to the dwindling livelihood, and the disconnection from Russia in 1918, he continued for some time in the Hebrew school there. His father was then sent to study at the Kishinev Yeshiva, very famous then. There, he completed his law studies and was certified as a rabbi.

Moshe was tall and handsome and had an impressive appearance.

[Page 684]

At the Kishinev Yeshiva - at the certification exam From left to right: Moshe Teperman (perished in the Holocaust), the examining Rabbi Moshe Ginshfurg, Yaakov Koifman (Kryalener), Meir Shluch-Shlyakhovai (Kvutzat Yavneh)

Upon graduation from the Kishinev Yeshiva and his ordination to the rabbinate, he entered into the realm of pragmatism in the religious Zionism movement.

In 1939 he was a delegate to the Zionist Congress on behalf of the Mizrahi movement. He was only 26 years old. The last greeting that I received from him in Israel was from the congress that took place in Switzerland, through Moshe Kolodny at that time (now the Minister of Tourism, Moshe Kol). This Congress, which was discontinued due to occurrences in Europe, could have been used as a good chance to save his life. Friends who begged him not to return to the Eastern European volcano encountered a total refusal on his part. He felt that he must return to his senders, to be together with them, though, he knew what is going to happen.

It is not known what happened to him under the Soviet rule in Kishinev.

It is only known that with the invasion of Bessarabia by the Romanians and Germans in 1941, he was among the deportees from the city of Kishinev and then his traces are unknown.

The father of the family, R' Gershon Leib, z”l, together with his wife, Mrs. Sirel established a family in the first decade of the twentieth century.

They had three sons and a daughter. R' Gershon Leib was a Traditional-advanced Jew and public activist with no reward.

[Page 685]

When the differentiation in the Zionist movement started, he saw himself as a religious Zionist although he was close in essence to the practical, working Zionism. During the Revolution of the year 1917/18, when antisemitic agitation was felt in Neporotove among the local peasants, R' Gershon Leib was among the organizers of the self-defense of the Jews, which prevented riots.

Gershon Leib integrated into public life and took a place of honor among the activists of religious Zionism. All his sons, when they grew up, studied at the Kishinev Yeshiva, and his son, Moshe, z”l, was ordained as a rabbi.

At the start of the Holocaust, he was in Dondushan, about 30 km from Yedinitz. There, his youngest daughter, Charna, lived with her husband David Rosenberg (Ben Zvi, known as Hirsch Kassilles). The daughter and her husband fled to Russia (David Rosenberg was drafted into the Russian army and did not return from the war). R' Gershon Leib struggled to get home, to Yedinitz. However, his efforts were in vain. He went out with the deportees, without knowing about the fate of his family.

Little is known from people who have met him by chance. They reported that he had passed through the Secureni camps, the horrible camp in one of the forests around Soroca, and then, was around Mogilev-Podolsk. Those who met him say, that he took the initiative to organize the deportees in order to work for the peasants in Ukraine. He encouraged the spirit of the oppressed, and even distributed his poor food to the needy until he perished.

The mother of the family, Mrs. Sirel Teperman, was deported from Yedinitz, alone, as was her husband, without knowing the fate of her husband and sons. All the time she stayed in the Transnistrian exile. She was a woman of valor, overcame hardships, and survived. The younger boys were evacuated by the Soviets to inland Russia when the German invasion started in 1941.

At the end of the war, the remains of the surviving family met, crying about the loss of their loved ones, the father, R. Gershon Leib, the eldest son Moshe, and the husband of the daughter David Rosenberg, z”l , and then the family moved to Kishinev (Charna and her second husband with their two sons immigrated to Israel in 1972).

I knew Moshe Teperman, z”l, when he arrived with a few other boys from Yedinitz to study at the Kishinev Yeshiva. We studied for many years in one class, including the upper class, and we were certified together by our teacher Rabbi Moshele Dayan Hinshpreg, the head of the Yeshiva.

The late Moshe had a quick perception and analytical ability, he was very diligent, and studied day and night to absorb the material; and he was considered one of the outstanding students there.

His head and heart were open to what was happening in the Jewish world, and not only in the Torah studies. He had a rhetorical ability and was accepted as a rabbi and preacher at the largest Synagogue in Kishinev (“Di Heker-Shil”).

[Page 686]

He reached the peak of his public activity with his election as a center member of “Mizrahi” and the management of the “Mizrahi” pioneer. Here, he discovered organizational skills, systematic thought, and loyalty to principles. As a known speaker, he spoke at various conventions and assemblies in the capital of Bessarabia and the countryside including in his lecture's sentences from the Talmud while his main purpose was to encourage the Aliyah and practical Zionism.

He had a well-developed political sense, and soon became one of the prominent speakers of our movement, included in relations with other parties. He was handsome and had a beautiful soul and a noble face, expressing majesty and cleverness. Everyone agreed that he was created for greatness. His approach, his comprehensive and wide-ranging skills and qualities were displayed in his personality.

They would naturally march to a respectable and active place, blessed influence and plots. If not, there was a terrible time for our people he should have a wonderful future as a real leader.

He will be blessed forever in the treasure of the souls of the holy people of Israel.

Shmuel Itzhaky

On the last day of Passover in 1966, her husband, Shmuel Itzhaky, passed away. A year later, on the 5^th day of the Six Day War (June 10, 1967), their firstborn son Zalman, named after her father, was killed.

Shmuel Itzhak came from Poland, and he spent his childhood in Warsaw and Lodz.

[Page 687]

His family was a family of laborers. His father was one of the activists of the Bund anti-Zionist movement, and in this spirit, he educated his son.

When World War II started, Shmuel lost all his loved ones and became an orphan and a widower. He was with the frightened and fled to Russia in a group, which found refuge in the northern Russian plain, but suffered from plagues and the awful cold weather.

Shmuel was saved and was one of the few survivors. When the opportunity came, he enlisted in the Polish army organized in Russia, called “Andreas army,” and he arrived in Palestine with them. As a Jewish soldier in a foreign army infected with antisemitism, he came to stay at Kibbutz Yagur. He decided, like many others, to abandon the Polish army and to build his future here.

Despite his anti-Zionist upbringing at his father's house, he became an avid Zionist.

He worked in the kibbutz sewing shop as a tailor. Here he met Havah Shapira, they established a family, and had two sons: the eldest, Zalman (born in 1947), and the youngest son by a few years named Ron.

As soon as he joined the kibbutz, Shmuel acquired the friendship of all the kibbutz members because of his cheerfulness, his direct approach to material and spiritual matters, and because of his cheerful and nostalgic poetry, especially in Yiddish.

He participated in public and cultural events, in the choir, and the drama circle. He influenced these circles with his optimism.

[Page 688]

He joined the Haganah, and in the War of Independence, he fought as part of the infantry army taking part in the occupation of the Western Galilee.

On the last day of Pesach in 1966 he suddenly died from a heart attack.

And here, is an excerpt from the words of his eldest son, Zalman, who died in the Six Day War (about a year after his father's death), speaking about his father:

“Dad loved to live. He loved life as it was. We never heard him think of death. He tried to exhaust from his life to the maximum, and with great success. Dad did not bring up thoughts about death. He was a symbol of health, of the body and mental strength. It was hard to digest the news of his death. He just returned from his work, his steps confident and complacent. He had steps that I could already recognize from a distance. He has just water and cultivated his small garden raising flowers and put them in jars. He walked in the green Carmel Mountain on Shabbat, laughter on his face, he sang and danced to the brim at the annual celebration in the communal dining room.

It is hard to understand, and the mind refuses to believe, that this is it, that we will no longer see it, that we will no longer feel him forever.”

Indeed, the bereavement of Havah was difficult.

[Page 687]

Fayge, David, Reisel and Haim Serebrenick

In the same year several Zionist families were organized into the association centered in Brichan (Briceni), near Yedinitz, to make Aliyah and to establish an agricultural settlement there. However, for political and other reasons these families established a farm a few dozen kilometers from Constantinople called “New Way.”

This farm was used for about a decade as a transit place and agricultural training farm on the way to Israel for many of the people of the Second Aliyah who got stuck in Constantinople. Among the founders of the farm were my parents: Rav Shmuel and Pesia Goldgaile, who were born and lived in Brichan (Briceni). In 1912, my father, David Serebrenick, traveled to Constantinople and stayed for some time in the farm “New Way,” leaving in his grandfather's house two of his children: my brother Yosef (who had already changed his name from Serebrenick to Caspi) and my sister Hania.

[Page 688]

Yosef Serebrenick-Caspi, grandmother Pesia and grandfather Shmuel Goldgaile

[Page 689]

Yoseph emigrated to the US, established a family, and died there in 1950. My sister Hania immigrated to Israel and got married. The family also immigrated to the US in 1922 and are still there.

Four children remained at my parents' house: my eldest sister Rachel who immigrated also to the US, and who visited Israel several times.

Grandpa Shmuel and Grandma Pesia Goldgaile immigrated to Israel from Constantinople in 1920 and settled in the German colony of Jaffa. My grandmother died in 1923 and my grandfather in 1929.

I immigrated to Palestine for the first time in 1925 at the age of 15 and a half. I was a farmer in the orchards of Petah Tikva along with Ephraim Schwartzman, the late Zvi Rostel, the late Yaakov Tepper, the sisters Pesia and Hannah Shabaretz (daughters of the family known as “Dazorates”), and other people from Yedinitz.

On the occasion of the malignant disease of my mother Reisel (who claimed to be cured, if she will see her youngest son), I was asked to come back to Yedinitz, but my mother died because of her illness in 1930. In Yedinitz, I helped establish a chapter of “Poalei Zion” (in Israel I was a member of the original “Achdut Ahavoda”). I was active in the field of the trade union of trade assistants that we established.

I linked my fate with Mania (Miriam) Weizmann, who was also active in “Poalei Zion” (previously “Hatechia”). After we got married (without parental presence) in Lipkan (Lipcani), I made Aliyah again along with Mania in 1932. We lived in Herzliya, where we built our house (here our three sons were born: Uzi, Yair, and Aharon/Roni), who were raised on the ideas of loyalty to Eretz Israel and to the labor movement.

In Yedinitz remained my father, R. David, my married sister Feiga, and my brother Haim, who was a student. All of them were killed by the Nazis. My father, David, perished on the deportation way to Transnistria; my sister Feiga perished in the Moghilov camp with her husband Yitzhak Eisenberg. My brother Haim also perished on the way to deportation at age 35.

My father was involved in public life, he was one of the leaders of “Helping the Poor,” and was one of the lenders of “small” cash registers.

He was a loyal Zionist. My mother also engaged in giving secretly to the people who lost their possessions and who needed help, in modesty. Let their memory be blessed.

One of the most prominent families in our town was the family of R. Shmuel Ludmir. R. Shmuel Ludmir came to Yedinitz from one of the towns in Ukraine. He was known as a Torah scholar and a wealthy man. He had many occupations: timber merchant, forests tenant, quarries tenant, owner of a charcoal kiln and limestone, and even be the owner of a brick factory.

[Page 690]

R. Shmuel excelled in generosity and “opened his hand” to everyone who needed it. He helped the poor people of the town giving them firewood in the winters for free. He was one of the founders of the “EZRA” Bank and headed this bank for 30 years without getting any payment. And of course, he did not forget his “Rabbi” from Chortkov, sending him frequently a “Redemption fee.” He also generously supported his synagogue “De Chasidey Chortkov.” His wife, the late Atti, also dealt with charity and welcomed everyone in her home with kindness.

R. Shmuel was imbued with a national and Zionist spirit. He contributed with a generous hand for the sake of the national foundations. He educated his sons and daughters with Zionist spirit and all of them were active in the field of Zionism. Despite being an ardent follower and observant of the “religion” and all the commandments, he educated his children in the spirit of advanced modernism. His children not only breastfed Israeli culture and the Hebrew language but were also sent to study in gymnasiums.

One of his sons, Isaac, graduated as a physician, and his youngest daughter, Hannah (Hanza), who lives in Israel, studied pharmacy in Prague.

The Ludmir's family home was always full of life. It was visited by adults and young people, their guests and from his sons and daughters. Many debates erupted there with general and Jewish issues, and R. Shmuel was very active during these debates.

Another area of R. Shmuel's public activity was arbitration in trade and the dispute in resolution matters. Everyone listened and trusted him, and his opinion was accepted. Not only Jews came to hear his words of wisdom and counsel from mouth, even the local non-Jewish people met with him.

Most interesting was the revelation of his personality and the point of view of R. Shmuel Ludmir when the revolution took place in Russia and the corrupt and oppressive Russian government collapsed. He was happy and content. His sons and daughters were the first in tow to wave the flag of the revolution in the doorway of their house accompanied by the slogan “Long live Free Russia.”

The members of his household even prepared the red flags and the posters that were written in Russian, in preparation for the “mass manifestation” which took place the next day, and the main speaker was Avrahami Steif.

The revolution and its related event worsened the financial situation of R. Shmuel Ludmir. Only the stabilization of power after the entry of the Romanians helped him to return somehow to his previous occupations, though with less success. The house returned to being a center for public and Zionist activity. The Zionist movement was then in great momentum and the members of the household were active in the various Zionist parties. When the day came some family members fulfilled their practical adherence to Zionism by making Aliyah to Eretz Israel, whereas for another part of the family luck did not shine and suffered from the destruction of their town: the deportations and the Transnistrian camps.

[Page 691]

The famous writer Itzik Manger wrote: “When passing on the street and I see one of the rich people building for himself a palace, I am not shocked, as to, I hope, that one day the palace will be moved to the ownership of the workers, I'm filled with anger” he added: “when I see the rich eating roast ducks, drinking champagne, and reveling. For those, there is no solution.” In terms of Manger, Shmuel Loibman was a decent rich man.

The frugality of Shmuel Loibman (Drutzer) was very famous. There were many stories among the people in the town about his thrift which became for him a worldview and a way of life.

Havah Loibman

He was also a money lender in addition to the usual business of trading and leasing land. It is said that one evening a Jew entered and asked for a loan. They settled among themselves on the loaned amount, the level of interest, and repayment times. The borrower signed the bills, put the money in his pocket, and before making his way to the door he took out from his pocket a cigarette and matches and lighted the cigarette. At that moment, Shmuel turned to him and asked to count the bills again because he doubted in his heart the correctness of the previous count. Receiving the money, he returned to the borrower the signed bills and announced that he would under no circumstances give a loan to a person capable of wasting a match when on the table in front of his eyes stands a lit oil lamp.

In the field of construction, signs of extravagance could be found in his work. His house, which was a palace compared to the buildings of the town, was the most beautiful from an architectural point of view (In general, the man was gifted with an aesthetically developed taste, and people testified that his wife Havah was in her youth very beautiful). He was always willing to build. He built a synagogue, which was the most magnificent in town.

[Page 692]

He built in his yard another house on top of the big house that faced the street front. All these years he dealt with adding wings to existing houses, and inside the house he covered the walls with expensive oil paintings.

In his yard he dug a well, and in the large basement under the house he installed giant boilers whose purpose no one knew. It was a mystery to the town people why a childless thrifty person like him would waste his money until his last days on a frenzy of construction.

Over the years the mystery has been solved. One day Samuel fell ill with a malignant disease, and being a Jew who does not like illusions, he traveled to Iasi to Professor Tensko who in those days was famous among the Jews of Bessarabia and asked him to give a clear answer regarding his life annuity. Professor Tensko told him that he had only six months to live. Receiving the requested information Shmuel returned home to prepare himself for his death and arranged his accounts.

The first action, so they said, however it is not possible to verify, was to divorce his wife to rescue her from the Haliza^[1]. For residence, he gave her the little house in the yard. When she turned to him and claimed: “Shmuel, you leave palaces, and to me, you give a small house?” He answered her: “Havah, and what house am I going to enter?”

The big house with its many wings, the basement with the boilers that were intended to be used as a laundromat, was turned into a hospital. He also left a large sum of money in cash for its equipment (see the article of Sheindela Sadovnik).

When the Russians entered Yedinitz in 1940 they removed the sign on it, where it was written that the hospital is the contribution of Shmuel Loibman and his wife Havah...

Translator's footnote:

1. levirate marriage. (When a woman becomes a widow, her husband's unmarried brother must marry her. Used in the story of Ruth.) return

The Romanians came to Bessarabia in early 1918. After years of military rule and the hardships for the Jews of Yedinitz, civilian rule was stabilized. The connection to the centers of the Zionist movement was renewed and the Zionist activity resumed. A letter from London arrived, calling to raise funds for Zionist purposes, that's before the establishment of “Keren-Hayesod.”

Avrahamel Milgrom was the head of the Zionists in the town. He was a senior Zionist and was registered at that time among the members of the circle “Bnei Moshe,” founded by Ahad Ha'am. When the split between the “Ugandanists” and the Zionists happened, he was among the fighters against the “Ugandanists” and tried to educate his family from childhood in a Hebrew and Zionist atmosphere.

[Page 693]

A family photograph on the occasion of the Aliyah to Israel of Shmuel Kormansky, 1934 Standing - (from right): Yehuda-Leib son of Israel Kormansky (may God will revenge his blood), Yaakov Ben Shmuel Paradis (may God will revenge his blood), Itzik the son of Israel Kormansky (died as a soldier in the Red Army), Bella Kormansky (Uzbekistan), Menashe the son of Binyamin Bronstein (Ita's husband) (may God will revenge his blood), Ksil (Yekutiel) Paradis (may God will revenge his blood) Middle (from right): Israel Kormansky (exiled by the Soviets, did not return), Feige Kormansky the wife of Israel, z”l (died in Kazakhstan), the late Abraham Milgrom (died in Israel in 1940), Ita wife of Menashe Bronstein (may God will revenge her blood), Shmuel Kormansky the brother of Israel (lives in Tel Aviv) Below: Yani the son of Menashe Bronstein (may God will revenge his blood), Pesia the daughter of Menashe Bronstein, wife of Yaakov Paradis may (God will revenge his blood), Rivka (Pikele) daughter of Avraham Milgrom, wife of Shmuel Kormansky (died in Israel in 1951), Husia daughter of Israel Kormansky (Soviet Central Asia)

Avrahamel Milgrom was born and raised in the town of Tulchin, in Podolia, a city famous as a center of Torah and wisdom and as a large commercial center. In his youth, he moved to Bessarabia, to the town of Brichan, where he married the daughter of one of the noble Jewish families in the Hotin district. There were scholars and Torah knowledgeable among the family members from Hasidey Sadigura, there were also good farmers who leased estates from the landowners and the nobles of the district and who cultivated the land.

Their wealth was also exploited for the benefit of the public, since they were philanthropists and generous. Abraham's father-in-law, Leib Kormansky, made Aliyah in the days of the first Aliyah, in the nineties of the 19^th century, bought an orchard in Petah Tikva but due to his illness he was forced to go to Italy, and there he died.

From Brichan, Avrahamel moved to Yedinitz due to his land leasing business. Here, a family disaster befell him. He became a widower when his wife was still young. The disaster caused a depression in the family among his two sons and daughter.

Throughout his life Avrahamel dealt with public needs honestly, and when he retired from his business after the agrarian expropriation which was carried out in Bessarabia after the Russian Revolution, he was completely addicted to public and Zionist work. When the war ended, help began to flow from the relatives in the US to the Jews of Yedinitz, and especially to the refugees of Ukraine.

Many letters in English were also received, and when the recipients of the letters turned to Avrahamel for help and he only spoke in French, he found among the Christian nobles a lady who knew English and sent her the recipients of the letters. One day a Jew appeared before him with his Kapota torn, since the noble girl who happened to be nervous, got tired of reading the English letters and sicced her dog on this Jew.

[Page 694]

Avrahamel took an English dictionary and started learning English, and indeed, after a short time, he knew how to translate the letters from English by himself.

Daily Zionist vigilant work was carried out in the town. It was not easy to persuade a shopkeeper Jew, or a young merchant, to donate one or two “Keral” (500 Lei) for the sake of Keren Hayesod. Avrahamel was walking more than once in the muddy streets of town, going from house to house, from store to store, speaking and organizing, convincing and inspiring. He was a delegate, almost permanently, for all Zionist conferences in Bessarabia. Once, when a Zionist conference convened in Kishinev on the occasion of Haim Weizmann's visit to Romania and the organizers of the conference understood that it is doubtful whether he will also be able to come to Kishinev, he was sent with two other conference delegates to Iasi to convince Weizmann not to miss Kishinev, and indeed the delegation led by Abrahamel was able to bring Weizmann to Kishinev for a two-day visit.

Letter of appointment as a member of the welcome committee for Haim Weizman's visit

[Page 695]

He received a certificate as a “capitalist” (transferred a thousand pounds to Israel) and came to Israel in 1934 with his daughter Rebecca and son-in-law Shmuel, the son of Naftali Kormansky. The family settled in Hadera, where his daughter engaged in the dental profession and his son-in-law as an expert in agriculture, learning quickly the orchard profession. For health reasons, they were not able to fulfill their ambition to settle as farmers and moved to live in Jerusalem in the neighborhood of Beit Hakerem. Six months after they settled in Beit Hakerem, Avrahamel passed away after a very fruitful life at the age of seventy-nine.

My father, R. Itzhak Melechson (this is the traditional spelling in our family), the son of R. Yehezkiel-Feivel, z”l, was born in the village of Seleshti near Briceni in the year 1872. He grew up in Brichany, and there, he received his deep Jewish education as well as a comprehensive general knowledge. He knew Russian well, which was unusual at the time.

The Melechson family was large and well respected in Ukraine, whose businesses of forestation, flour mills, and field crops spread throughout the South of Russia; one branch of the family arrived mid-prior century to northern Bessarabia, near Briceni, where they continued the businesses mentioned. When he was young, my father married my mother, Chanah-Sarah, daughter of Sender Rissman (“Volodener”), a well-known family of land leasers (“Posessares”) from the village of Voloden (Volodeni), near Yedinitz. A short time after their marriage the young family settled in Yedinitz.

[Page 696]

That was at the end of the prior century^[1], and they continued to engage in crop trading, the family business.

R. Itzhak Melechson was a public figure, but a humble one, who didn't brag. He was an active Zionist, one of the founders of the Zionist synagogue “Sha'arei Zion.” He was involved in collecting donations for the “Keren HaYesod.” On the issue of politics, he leaned toward “Tzeirei Zion” and participated in the library “Tarbut.”

Our mother, Chanah-Sarah, Hy”d, was also involved in a type of charity, giving secretly. Both, mother and father, excelled in their charity, good nature, and eagerness to help those in need.

My father passed away in Yedinitz at the age of 62 in 1934. In 1941, at the beginning of the Holocaust, lived in Yedinitz my elderly mother, seventy years old, my brother Feivel-Shraga and his wife Clara (he was 47; she was 45), my brother Pesach, 45 years old, and his wife Chaykeleh (daughter of Nachum and Arette, Hy”d), 40 years old. There was another daughter, my sister Chavaleh, who passed away in Yedinitz at a young age, 17, in 1917. Three sons, Nathan, Alexander, and Yakov emigrated to South America in the 1920s and 1930s. There, they established their families and continued the tradition of public service they learned at our home.

Together with other local Jews, my mother, my siblings and their children, were forced from their homes into exile and death. All of them died, whether during the massacre at the Cosauti Forest or in unknown places. My brothers could have saved themselves by leaving town before the arrival of the Romanian-German plague but they did not want to leave our elderly mother alone and perished with her, Hy”d.

Headstone on the grave of R. Zalman-Yehuda Bar Zvi Diamant		Headstone on the grave of R. Itzhak Melechson, z”l, that because of its local style, became the inspiration to the artist Benn for the cover of the “Yad l'Yedinitz” memorial book.

1. In the 1880s return

[Page 697]

And indeed, at the age of sixteen, he finished his studies in the Yeshiva and took his place in the Beit Hamidrash with others of the same age until he encountered the scandal of the Agunot.

During those years at the turn of the prior century (1800s), there was an increased migration from Russia to America. Many husbands emigrated with the hope of bringing over sometime later and once they settled down their wives and the rest of their family. However, many of those husbands disappeared without a trace and many wives were left Agunot. The arguments and court decisions on the issue of Agunot reverberated throughout the towns of Russia and Poland.

Even in the town of Zebresh there was an Agunah, who after ten years of searching for her husband with no success appealed to the new members of the Beit Hamidrash to lift her Agunah status.

The young members split into two groups: my father belonged to the group supporting the woman's right to remarry while the opposing camp insisted that according to Jewish Law she was forbidden to marry if there was no concrete proof that her husband had died. The entire town was in an uproar. Eventually, an emissary was dispatched to Vilna to ask the Rabbi for his opinion. The Rabbi's decision: the Agunah cannot marry. When it became known to my grandmother that my father lost his argument, she grabbed her rolling pin and rushed to the Beit Hamidrash, where she hit my father with it in front of everybody, and said:

“I was hoping that you would be a Rabbi in Israel, but I don't need a “little Rabbi” – come home!” And thus, his studies were ended.

Many years later I asked my grandmother, who was a wise Jewish woman, why she jumped on my father, and she answered that he knew the Torah but interpreted it according to his own heart, “in this manner, he cannot be a Rabbi in Israel.” My father confirmed what his grandmother said about him, and that he had already realized that laws that were written hundreds of years ago, needed to be adapted to the current times.

Therefore, his grandmother sent him to Yedinitz to the home of her son-in-law, R. Shmuel Ludmir, so he would learn a trade.

Shmuel taught my father the trade of forestation and lime quarries, and that's what he did.

[Page 698]

When my father married Chanah, the daughter of “Moshe'le dem deiness” (rabbinical judge), he moved to the village of Potzumbon (Pocumbeni). There, he became the “Trustee” of a nearby forest.

My father arrived in the village a few years before the Russian revolution of 1905. In this village he became aware of the life and suffering of the farmers. He was swept by the revolutionary fervor of those days and was attracted to the Social-Revolutionary party. As a brave person, honest and generous, he quickly became respected by the farmers and asked to mediate any disagreements or arguments.

When the October revolution broke out he was still living in the village, and he was elected to lead the soldiers and farmers representing the local government. This governing body distributed the lands of the landowners among the poor peasants. As a matter of fact, those governing bodies had both judicial and executive powers. In such cases, negative urges appear and create malice and crime. All in the name of justice, of course.

I remember an instance from those days. The village people had gathered for a meeting when three thieves took advantage of the opportunity and stole two horses. The thieves were caught, and the peasants decided that they should be tied to the horses and be dragged through the fields until their death. When they tried to execute their plan my father intervened, and at great personal risk, he saved the thieves from a terrible death.

The horrors of the revolution, the pogroms, and the corruption among Ukrainian Jews influenced my father's thinking. He felt that the Jewish problem would not be solved by the Russian revolution. The Balfour Declaration made a strong impression on him, and he concluded, that the Jewish people should seek their home, existence, and happiness in Eretz Israel.

Since 1920, when he returned with his family to Yedinitz, his home became a warm Zionist house, and even though he was not financially secure and was caring for a large family, he never passed up an opportunity to go to Kishinev to meet with the great Zionists: Weitzman, Sokolov, Brodsky, and others.

His home became the center of “Gordonia” in Yedinitz during the years when the government forbid the existence of a chapter in the town; he succeeded in that five of his six children emigrated to Israel before the Holocaust.

He visited Israel in 1936 during the economic downturn, and his friends in Israel, among them the Perl Family and Asher Goldenberg, offered to help him open a store, but he claimed that he did not want to transfer a Diaspora occupation to Israel. He returned to Yedinitz in the hope that in a few years when his children were settled in Israel he would join them. He did not.

During the war and the Holocaust, he perished together with his wife Itta, the sister of his first wife, whom he married eight years after his first wife, Chanah, passed away. Itta was a faithful companion and devoted mother to his children.

They took their last trip together, and we don't know when or where they met their fate.

* This article was received from the Urals in Russia return

[Page 699]

In the years before the war, Marusia served as a maid in the house of Shmuel Fradis, and during the war, she was frequently concerned with the fate of her former employer, his wife Zeitel, their two sons, and their daughter Rachela. One day, Marusia met a Holocaust survivor from Czernowitz who came to perceive with his own eyes what remained from Yedinitz, where he lived in and worked for many years. He told her that from this family only the daughter Rachela remained alive. He also told her that she was in Czernowitz. Marusia asked the man to give Rachela the message that she must come to Yedinitz as soon as possible because she had, in her hands, something very important to give her.

It did not occur to Rachela to go back again to Yedinitz and see the destruction of the town and the ruins of her father's house. However, when she received the unexpected message, she hurried to go to Yedinitz. She hoped to learn from the maid something very important about her family. When Rachela arrived at Marusia's house she hugged her, and while crying, Marusia opened a closet in her room with twelve clean and ironed dresses hanging that Rachela and her mother gave as a present to Marusia at the time she worked in their home. Marusia took the dresses and asked Rachela to take them back. She knew Rachela would need them as she certainly had nothing.

I brought this story to the hands who remember and the feelings of the servants towards their employers as a trustworthy testimony of how well Jewish families treated their household employees.

The home of Shmuel Fradis was one of the few houses in town, the truth is, that in our town there were wealthier Jews than Shmuel Fradis, but the mind of these human beings did not measure the wealth according to the balance in the annual statements of their bank accounts.

Their hand was open to the needy. They were respected by everyone in town. They were people of true nobility who saw their wealth as a matter of luck, without the need to patronize others, and extending a helping hand to those in need to the best of their ability.

Shmuel Fradis himself, a Jew with a face, good eyes always smiling and laughing, was in the business of leasing forests. He was not attracted to being a public figure advertising its business and seemed

[Page 700]

to be only interested in his business, but underneath, he had a warm Jewish heart, ready to help anyone in trouble.

His humane approach to man and his sufferings only came about evident years later: When the Russians entered Bessarabia and the Communists took over the town and expropriated the wealthy families and sent some even to Siberia, the house of Shmuel Fradis was the only one spared. He was left to live in a large private house and no one touched him. To the detriment of the fact that he was as far from communism as the far East from the West, and not only in his way of life, but also in his views. In his defense and to his credit was his human approach to human life. During the Terror Days of the Romanian regime when young people were imprisoned for communism and tortured severely, it was the good relations Shmuel had with the authorities that alleviated the punishment and suffering of the prisoners. As they were about to transfer the prisoners on foot to the district town of Hotin, it was Shmuel who rented a cart with his own money to drive them and make it easier for their suffering, lest they be shaken on the way on foot. Things got to that point because during searches they would hide propaganda material and pamphlets that the authorities were interested in the contents.

A pure human being, feeling that a person should be helped in a time of need beyond political views and opinions, he also stood once in times of trouble. However, all this came to an end when the Germans invaded Bessarabia and removed from town the “solid tree” - Shmuel Fradis. Shmuel and most of his family were deported to Transnistria and perished.

Zeitel, Shmuel's wife, also had her own good name in town as a philanthropist. She was very passionate and a leader of a few charity organizations. Her tireless activity would infect others as well. She headed different aid agencies and the needy had confidence in her. As chair of A.A. she turned in a proclamation to all the patients with ringworm (parach) in the town to let them come for treatment. Indeed, many have come to know that they are loyal, and without arrogance, you will be delivered from their distress. And these they knew - because their “shame” supposedly did not come out in public. There was no area of ??help and public activity that Zeitel Fradis did not find the necessary time and to give a generous contribution.

Indeed, the Fradis family deserves a place to be set aside on the “Kotel Hamizrach” (Eastern Wall) of the people in our city.

David's father, Jochanan Kalis, z”l, a locksmith, passed away in David's childhood. His mother Chaika, Hy”d, known as “Di Yochanka,” leased their spacious house (next to the pharmacy of Shimon Shor, z”l, and lived there the family of Yossef Steinman and his two sons, our friends Yaakov and David, who emigrated to Brazil) and turned the locksmith's warehouse in the depths of the yard to a living room for her and her only son David.

[Page 701]

His mother worked hard for their livelihood. She cooked and washed in other houses, even experienced a difficult and disappointing personal tragedy. The circumstances where David grew up with imprinted in him a seal of sadness.

Despite their difficult material situation, his mother worked hard to provide him with a good education. David studied with excellent Hebrew teachers and was a member of all the first youth organizations in town. He read a lot and thus acquired knowledge and opinions. At a young age, he began to write songs in Hebrew, a language he knew well, and was predicted the future of a poet. As a teenager, he joined the “Hechalutz” and spent some time in the “Hachshara” training farm in Bilichen together with Itzik Schwartz “the one with the scar,” and passed away in 1965 in Israel. However, to help his aging lonely mother, he gave up his immigration plans. During that time, he worked as a Hebrew teacher in the villages (“konditzia”).

I met him on one of my visits to the town in the 1930s. He told me he was planning to publish his own collection of poetry. The manuscripts, like their creator, perished in the Holocaust.

Rachel and Yaakov (Yankel) Gold (Herzliya) report that they met David and his mother Chaika in one of the deportation convoys near Vertujeni. After that, no one had seen them alive since. But if he would have survived, he would be 65 years old. A noble figure of the Yedinitzer youth perished between the two wars.

Mordechai Reicher, z”l, was planning to write a list in memory of his parents, his sister, and her son, who perished in the Holocaust and write about the destroyed house of his youth. His sudden death prevented him from doing it. Instead of a list, we bring his own poem, which he composed on the evening the “Gordonia-Avuka” group (he was a member) left Pardes Hanna to a settlement in the Beit She'an's Valley. The poem was read on the eve of the farewell in Pardes Hanna and published at the time in the newspaper “Omer” (December 17, 1941).

The poem bears the date of its essay: November 28, 1941. Let us remember that the Jews were deported from Yedinitz in July 1941. Mordechai's family perished during the deportation a few weeks before Mordechai wrote his longing poem, which we will publish here as a lamentation from a son to his parents. By the way, Motia translated the poem into Yiddish. The translation has the date: in the record, February 2, 1945 (see also the Commemoration Section).

On days of holidays and festivals, Mom, do you know, I never forget for a moment to remember you. Who knows, where are you, in the village or in the city? Is it in the old house, in the Caucasus, or in Siberia?

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And where is it you've been tossed in ways not ways? Have you found refuge to your aching body? And maybe you stayed home anyway, receiving suffering in your house of joy... Even then, who knows about your day-to-day life? Laying only in suffering and rising up to evil. Destruction will lay you down and destruction will awaken you; There was another time, this time passed away. And what do we have here, they would like to know, Also here will we be persecuted and will not know peace? - “We will build again, immigrants and builders” A new home for us from the days of destruction and bloodshed. The field is already plowed, also the house is erected, In the evening will celebrate we moved there… The seed will rise, trees will bloom In the yard, children's laughter will be heard. And there Dad and Mom will whisper: When are they coming, in another year or two? And all in all, the pain burns so much - And when we will be privileged to see you again - the heart will roar. And Dad, how is he, still coughing Wandering around the house, casually asking: “And my son, what is he doing there? Is he suffering like us In the blessed land” - with humble voice, Lower his hand to cover his eyes And wipe away a warm tear... Why are you crying? - He will say to Mom - It's really not worth it - and an eyelid will not move - Soon we will be saved, so help me G-d. I wish, who will give - with no choice you will agree. Don't be angry, mother, for this letter I just wanted to spill on the holidays, I could not do otherwise ...

Mordechai Reicher Pardes Hanna, November 28,1941

Born in Yedinitz in 1907. Received a Hebrew education at his traditional-Zionist parents' home. At the age of 18 he immigrated to Israel.

From the first day when he set foot on the soil of Eretz Israel, he did not turn to his relatives who lived in Tel Aviv but made his way to a life of work and creation in the colony. His first stop was “The Mother of Colonies,” Petach Tikva.

[Page 703]

That year, in 1925, the Jewish workers suffered in the agricultural colony (Moshava) from lack of work because the owners of the orchard were alienated from the Hebrew workers. However, Zvi did not give up. He managed to get a job, although with a low wage and difficult conditions just to conquer the work and to prove to the peasants that the Jewish laborer knew how to work and achieve great productivity in his work. For some time, he worked in agriculture, and then, he moved on to construction work paving roads and drilling wells in the Sharon and Samaria. He was content with little, however, always took care of his many friends and his face shone with joy when he was able to get a few working days for an idle friend. Though his material condition was never great, he always shared his bread with friends.

He never complained about his distressed condition but was angry at those who slandered the land. He was active in the ranks of the “Hagana,” to which he devoted days and nights. All the days of his life he suffered badly because he believed in every person. Having trouble settling, he tried his luck in other colonies until coming to Netanya, where he got sick and died. He left a wife, Yona (died 1972), and a married son.

Esther Rosenberg

Esther, daughter of Yaakov and Rachel Rosenberg (Yitzhak Jonas), was a great figure among the Yedinitz youth who were active in the late twenties and thirties. She received a fine Jewish education, Hebrew, and general studies in the best schools, and later she worked for some time teaching. She was a poetic soul, loved books and poetry. She had a beautiful appearance and a radiant personality. In her youth, she was active in “Hatechya” and later in “Poalei Zion,” where she instructed youth groups. Her physical weakness did not allow her to go out for pioneering training like most of her friends, which prevented her to fulfill her ambition to immigrate to Eretz Israel. Her health deteriorated more and more: she passed away a few years before World War II at the age of 25. Her parents, her father R. Yaakov was an educated Jew and an experienced arbitrator, and her mother Rachel, worked hard all their days to support their home and educate their children. They perished in the Holocaust. Of the entire family, only her sister Zipora survived (Resides in Brazil).

Esther Rosenberg's many friends keep her memory in their hearts.

Born in Yedinitz in 1905 and died in Hadera in 1968. Got a high school education and went to Eretz Israel in 1933. Together with his wife Chaia (daughter of Hersh Kassiles Rozenberg), he passed through many pioneering stations and fulfilled all his duties to the Land of Israel and its people.

But he had his share of disappointments. Left behind two sons rooted in Israel and three female grandchildren.

He learned about his parents' fate from a letter sent by Yeshaia Elkis, the slaughterer of Yedinitz. His mother Devorah died in the Vertujeni camp on 29 Elul (1942) and his father Meir died in the Transnistria deportation in the village of Stratovska, in the Avadobka region, Vinnytsia county, on 3 Cheshvan of that same year.

[Page 704]

Every seventh day of Pesach my father, Hirsch Kassiles Rosenberg, offered a “Kiddush” to all his friends, acquaintances, and to everyone. This “Kiddush” was about being saved from a certain death at the last moment on the infamous blood day, that is, the seventh day of Pesach in 1918. Only an inch was between him and death, and so, he celebrated it as a kind of a new birthday.

As it is well known that the oppressor, the “Romanian commandant,” gathered many Jews as “Rebels to the Authority” and decided to execute them (the story of that day's atrocities is presented by Moshe Kupit in Yiddish, Y. Vinitsky in Hebrew, and others, the publisher). Apparently, it was in the mind of the oppressor to kill 10 Jews and possibly many more. He divided those sentenced to death into three groups. Indeed, the first three were shot first: Haim Srolevich (40 years old), Baruch Mayberg (Yeshiva boy about 18 years old), and Yaakov Lazerles (70 years old man). While the victims were still fluttering on the ground, the blood-thirsty commandant approached and kicked the second group of three with his boots as a sign that they were next in line for execution by shooting. In this group were my father, Reuven-Peretz Grossman and Munia Tokgaus. Suddenly, according to the version that was circulating at the time, a military doctor came, whispered something, and the mass murder stopped abruptly. The death sentence was overturned for lashes. The survivors of death “were granted” only 25 lashes each on their nakedness. Not only my father, but also his two friends to fate, celebrated their “second birthday” every seventh of Pesach.

Zvi (Hirsch) son of R. Yekutiel Rosenberg was born in 1881 in Yedinitz. Received a traditional education, knew Hebrew, and was fluent in the matters of the world. He was very aware of public matters. During the 1917 pogrom, he was among those calling for self-defense. Since he saw that the gypsy musician Iwanitsa had robbed Yechiel Klugman's house, my father organized a boycott for him and his seamstress wife. After the pogrom, my father encouraged the Jews to buy weapons and so he was active in the organization of self-defense. His courage stood in rescuing a four-year-old girl from the burning house of the Zilberg family.

Between the two world wars, he was very active in all kinds of relief and charity companies, especially at the “Aid Committee.” Since he had worked among the authorities he engaged in lobbying for the benefit of various Jews. It is known that most of the people in power in the town were among the recipients of regular bribes (most of them received “news”) to avoid harming the Jews of town. Hirsch Kassiles was among the organizers of the collection of bribe money for these people. Because he was very popular with people, and was known as a person without bias, he served as an “arbitrator” between Jews who were controversial in matters of business and personal issues.

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He was a general Zionist, an active in fundraisers and looking for funds, and was a patron of the youth movement of his sons, the “Gordonia.”
Hirsch Kassiles perished in the horrific slaughter carried out by the Romanian and German occupiers immediately after entering Yedinitz in 1941. Witnesses tell he tried to organize the resistance to the robbery, killings, and rapes, and was murdered.

My mother, Hannah, also worked extensively in welfare and charitable institutions and was active in the Keren Kayemet (Jewish National Fund).

My brother David married two years before the outbreak of the war with Charna, the daughter of Gershon Leib Teperman, and settled near the Dondushan Railway Station. At the outbreak of the war David and his wife fled to Russia. There, he enlisted in the Red Army and did not return from the front. He was 24 years old.

My brother Eliyahu was the only one left alive from the whole large family. He arrived in Israel and immediately joined the Chanita group. However, a few weeks after they arrived, he was killed, stepping over a mine in pursuit of a lost lamb. That week he was about to establish a family. (There is a special article on him in this book).

My brother Baruch passed away in faraway Faro at the age of 50 from a blood illness.

My father was born in Yedinitz in 1880. When he was 11 years old, a Cholera pandemic broke in town. In the house of my grandfather Matityahu, the father of my father, died in the pandemic two of his children, a boy, and a girl. My father, the eldest of the family, received from his father a lucky charm with the inscription “change your place change your luck” given to him by a wealthy relative, Reb Alter Zonis, z”l, who lived next to my younger uncle known as “Berke the cripple.” When a year passed Reb Alter met my grandfather, and casually told him: “For good luck and blessings, and things we cannot control like the evil eye on your children and his children's children, let's engage your son Yaakov with a girl of our family, Yehuditel, the daughter of Reb Yossi-Gaal and Pesia Zonis, who has the same age as your son, also beautiful and innocent. In a few years, they will marry and start a family in Israel, G-d willing.”

[Page 706]

Judith and Yaakov Schwartzman

When my father's Bar Mitzvah came, my grandfather celebrated with a festive meal. The bride - whom my dad did not see all the time – also came to listen to her father-in-law's speech. The bride gave a Bar Mitzvah present, the five books of Moses and a full set of the Vilna Mishna. My father continued to study at my grandfather's house. At the time, it was customary among the more cultured families that the head of the household would study with their sons, not only Gemara but also Tanakh and Hebrew grammar, to learn the holy language and read Nachum Sokolow's newspaper “Hatzfira” and other Hebrew newspapers that came to town. The breeze of education of the Haskala also gave the signal that it started in our town.

Since his youth my father wanted to be a teacher, and his method to teach was Hebrew in Hebrew. He began to give private lessons even before the other “modern” teachers came to town.

Among the educated circles in town was Benzion Weintraub, who prayed in the Bayan Chassidic Synagogue. He persuaded my father to study Russian with a teacher called Orlet. He taught Russian to most youngsters in town. My father enumerated their names: Leibush Ludmir, Yaakov Parness, Zanvil Dorf (son of Yankel Kozlower), Yossef Speier, Zalman Weinshenker, Benzion Weintraub, and others, all from wealthy families.

[Page 707]

With the efforts of Benzion my father began to study with this teacher without paying for tuition, as he didn't have any. But the Russian lessons were conducted without the knowledge of my grandfather.

When “this issue” was finally revealed in town and in the synagogues, the worshipers told my grandfather about it. The parents of my father's students were afraid that perhaps this issue also influenced their sons and will bring them to the hands of the “heretics.”

The Russian teacher had a reputation for disregarding the commandments (Mizvot) and being “free.” Under his father's pressure (my grandfather) and the “public opinion,” my father was forced to stop his studies in the Russian language even though he progressed in his studies to the point he could read Russian newspapers.

However, my father lost his charm in the eyes of the older generation also because he changed his attire. He wore a tie and dressed up in modern suits as the “Ashkenazim” way and not as the Chasidic way, who wore a white shirt, polished shoes, and a black hat on their heads.

When he entered the synagogue on the night of Passover in his elegant attire, the praying Chasidim began to touch his clothes, the white shirt, and the shiny tie as if to praise it. But what my father did not know is that their hands were dipped in ashes. This was discovered by his mother (my grandmother) when he came home. This act completely distanced my father from the Bayan Chassidic Synagogue and the Chasidic followers in general. At that time, the war between Chasidim and the adherents of Haskalah (Maskilim) got fiercer in town. My father “preached” my grandfather because he abandoned the house, my grandmother, and all the members of the family to travel on the holidays to his rabbi.

My father continued to teach his students Hebrew and grammar according to the new method, and under his influence, the students would try to speak Hebrew even on the street. During the same period lived in our town one of the Chortkov's followers, R. Nachman Weinschenker who began to incite against my father and the heretics that taught the sacred language as colloquial. He went to speak to my grandfather, R. Matityahu, about the way he educated his son. Things got worse, to the point that the Chasidim blocked out my grandfather Matityahu and my father from entering the synagogue and ban them.

That hour, it was Friday night before Shabbat began, Benzion Weintraub, who was, by the way, a strong Jew who more than once landed his hand on peasants, appeared, and threatened the Chasidim that if they do not stop the heretics, they would feel his strong arms. Indeed, Benzion succeeded.

My father married my mother at the age of 17. For some time, the young couple lived with my mother's parents, and a few months later he rented a house in the center of town, on Post Street, at the Rappaport House. There, he opened his own school, which had four classrooms. The school moved from place to place until finally stayed in the house he bought in front of Shmuel Ludmir's house.

In addition to teaching, my father was involved in public business. He was a Zionist and afterward a member of “The Mizrahi,” he helped Ukrainian refugees after WWI together with Samson Bronstein and worked at the institution “Aid of the Poor” headed by Rabbi Reuven Peretz Grozman in “Hidden aide” along with the dentist Chaim Gukowski, who was then a member of “Poalei Zion.” In “The Mizrahi” were at the time the active members Baruch Blank, Reuven Peretz Grozman, Shmuel Ludmir, and others. My father used to deliver Zionist speeches in synagogues, and on the Eve of Yom Kippur he sat next to the Keren Kayemet bowl.

[Page 708]

Although he aspired to come to Israel all his life he only did it at an old age, and thanked G-d, he had the privilege of living his last years in the independent State of Israel.

My father told me about the beginning of the Zionist movement in town at the end of the century with the convening of the First Zionist Congress in Basel. Zionist preachers began arriving in town speaking Yiddish and even Russian. Avrahamel Weissman, the later active Zionist, was in his youth a devout Chasid, bearded, and hated Zionists. When rumors came of the death of Dr. Herzl, he broke into the synagogue during the memorial and shouted:

“May the name and memory of this oppressor of Israel, whose name was Herzl, be erased.”

Mordechai Sheindelman, already a veteran Zionist at the time, slapped his cheek and threw him out of the synagogue. As it is well known, Avraham Weissman changed his views and became an enthusiastic Zionist (“young Zion”), immigrated to Israel, and at the end of his life he got to see the resurrection of the State of Israel.

In 1920 my father abandoned teaching and opened a large store for haberdashery with the help of an uncle who lived in England. After my sister Leah married to her husband Zvi, my parents left Romania and settled In Brussels with the help of relatives. There, the horrors of the war passed to them. At the end of World War II they moved to Dublin, Ireland. There, my mother, a woman of valor who bore the burden of life, died. My father immigrated to Israel and died in old age, in his 86^th year, and was buried in Jerusalem in 1966.

Leah (Lea'kle) Schwartzman

She was the eldest of five children born to our parents. From her childhood, she carried the burden of the home and cared for the younger children. Despite her help at home, she studied at the gymnasium and even graduated. She was a Zionist activist and loved books. She then finished a kindergarten course in Czernowitz. After she got married, she dreamed of immigrating to Israel. But it did not work out. During the Holocaust she was with all the people of the city on the roads to the camps in Transnistria, where she perished together with her husband and her two twin children, Fishla and Matitel.

Rachel Shkolnik, z”l, who met my sister on the migration ways, told me that Leah encouraged the deported Jews to not to fall in spirit, saying in these words in Yiddish:

“We will survive them. You will see, we will still be in the Land of Israel.”

However, fate was cruel to them. We don't even know the place of their burial.

[Page 709]

He was a tall, broad-shouldered, elegant Jew. He was a respected member of the community even though he was only a tailor.

He was born in our town, had to abandon his studies in his early youth to begin work, and became a ladies' tailor. This was because his father died young and left behind a large family. Mordechai was the oldest son.

Mordechai Sheindelman was one of the first members of “Hovevei Zion.” Although he was unable to continue his studies, he loved to read books. He subscribed to two daily newspapers, one in Yiddish and another one in Russian.

His son Menachem recalls that a tutor came daily to his house to teach him Tanach and Hebrew. When Mordechai went to Warsaw to bring sewing machines, he also acquired 200 Hebrew books. Everything was published by the Moriah Publishing House.

Community work was in his blood. From an early age, he loved cantorial music and never missed an opportunity to hear all visiting cantors. He, too, was able to lead the services, especially on the Holy Days. Whatever money he received for this task, he donated it to the shul renovation fund or to the Tarbut library.

Zionism was not just an ideology. There was a practical side to it. He was involved in all Zionist fundraising. When a delegation of Keren Hayesod came to town, he abandoned his work and spent his days and nights on the campaign.

His family was brought up in Zionism and Jewish nationalism. A year after his son Menachem made Aliyah to Eretz Israel, Mordechai did it too (1935). He had plans to build a house on a plot in B'nei Brak which he had bought while still in Yedinitz. Sadly, he became ill soon after he came to the country. He had diabetes. He died a week after his arrival, having been satisfied that he had, at least, touched its soil and have seen the Land of Israel being rebuilt.

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Grandfather had a factory that manufactured coats and suits for ladies. Everyone worked there to support the family. When my grandfather passed away my father was already married. I was about a year old. My father, Mordechai, the firstborn son, had to take on the task of supporting the whole family. As time passed, his brother got married, and so did his three sisters. In 1905, when the stream of immigration to America got stronger, they immigrated there.

Father was one of the early “Chovevei Tzion” (“Lovers of Zion”) in Yedinitz. He loved reading, and he read a lot. There were always two newspapers in the house, in Russian and Yiddish. I remember, when I was already seven years old, that a Tanach teacher came home every evening and taught my father privately, as he felt he did not learn enough in his youth at an early age working to support the family. He loved cantorial music and never missed hearing any visiting Chazzan who arrived in town. He was an amateur cantor and Torah Reader. During the High Holidays he acted as cantor, and he always donated his pay either for the repair of the synagogue or to the “Tarbut” library.

From my father, I still have a souvenir watch from the First Zionist Congress on which appear the legends “Set up a standard toward Zion, put yourself under covert, stay not” (Jeremiah 4:6) and “If I shall forget you, o Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning” (Psalms 137:5)

When my mother, z”l, passed away, and I went on to make Aliyah, he stayed in Rishkan (Riscani), with my sister Liuba, a teacher at the local school, and her husband Noach Leiderman, who was the principal of that school.

Already in the first year of my arrival in Eretz Israel, I tried and succeeded in procuring a permit for Father to enter Eretz Israel. As luck would have it, he stayed with me no more than a week, as he died of a heart attack. Traveling by boat, it seems, caused him harm, since he greatly suffered from diabetes.

The whole family did not enjoy good luck. My sister Liuba and her husband Noach Leiderman, together with their only son, were killed in 1940 during the deportation from Rishkan to Beltz. My brother, Yaakov-Tzvi, who was in the Russian Army in 1910 in the vicinity of the Caucasus, disappeared and nothing was ever heard of him since. My brother Shmuel, who lived in Paris, was sent by the Nazis to Auschwitz, together with his wife and three children. My brother Levi, together with his wife, was killed during the deportation from Yedinitz to Transnistria.

I was left alone and orphaned from my whole family. My consolation is the two sons I have raised. The firstborn, Yaakov, is a Permanent Force lieutenant colonel and engineer. He has a son and three daughters. The younger son, Moshe, lives in Jerusalem and belongs to the University Staff. During the War of Independence, he fought in the Palmach. In the Six Days War, he was among the troops

[Page 711]

who broke into the Old City and freed the Wailing Wall. Later, he was the commander of Gush Etzion, with the rank of major.

A family photo (taken) prior to R' Mordechai Sheindelman, z”l, making Aliyah Standing, from right: Noach Leiderman, Hy”d, Levi-Lyova, son of R' Mordechai Sheindelman (perished in the Holocaust), Liuba (daughter of Mordechai Sheindelman) Leiderman, Hy”d Sitting: Clara Roitman (Tel Aviv), Shomo'leh, son of Noach Leiderman, Hy”d, R' Mordechai Sheindelman (passed away in Israel in 1935) In the center: the photograph of Mrs. Sara, z”l, wife of Mordechai Sheindelman

The brothers, sons of Mordechai Sheindelman Antchel-Menachem (left), z”l, and Shmuel, Hy”d

*Menachem Shani (Sheindelman), son of R' Mordechai Sheindelman (see a separate article by M. Reicher) passed away following a road accident on Sunday, 17 Av 5831; August 8, 1971. He was about 80 years old when he passed away. He came to Eretz Israel in the year 1935 and worked as a bookkeeper. In his later years, he lived in Maoz Aviv, Tel Aviv.

[Page 712]

Moshe Shteinburtz, z”l, occupied a very important place among the prominent community advocates. He was one of the leaders of the Zionist activists of the shtetl.

Already when meeting him for the first time while visiting his warm and pleasant home, the hearty and generous welcome extended by all the members of his family, his countenance, the constant smile on his face, the light in his eyes expressing generosity, the frankness of his words, and the honesty of his actions, made one feel that one is in the presence of a man, a comrade, and a friend in the best aspects of these terms.

He was a dedicated Zionist, wholly given to the matter and the goal without any preconditions, without bounds. It is no wonder that for every difficulty, every distortion, every stumbling stone in the path of achieving the Zionist goal, he always saw the good, found the defense, the merit, the belief, and the explanation in which the essence and the principle were not affected, and in the end, the goal would be achieved in the best possible way.

Politically, he was a member of the” Tzeirei Tzion” party and was among its earliest founders. He worked closely with the teacher Dubrow, z”l, and others.

There wasn't a public enterprise, and especially a Zionist one: organizational, financial, or cultural in which Shteinburtz's hand was not involved. When the delegation of “Keren HaYesod” came to the shtetl (for some reason it was called the “Campania”), it was already mentioned that for this campaign to succeed, all “heavy artillery” had to be roped in. Shteinburtz placed his main responsibilities in the branch of the “Bessarabia Bank,” which he managed, in the hands of his assistants, as he knew that these days (including the evenings and the nights) are to be fully dedicated to the campaign undertaking. He was also active for the benefit of the “Keren Kayemet,” “HeChalutz,” and for the benefit of what not? He was not a polished public speaker, but in a close, personal conversation, face to face with the donor, he was convincing, and would not allow his interlocutor to evade him without generously donating to the cause.

He was a friend to the youth at any instance, at any time, and under any circumstances. He “rented out,” so to speak, his home (a four-bedroom house in which the printer Zunis lived beforehand) to the “Gordonia” movement. This included the big yard and the garden adjacent to the house. When it came to the rental amount, whenever they will have collected, they may pay. He never pressed for payment. “Nothing is burning,” he used to say to the treasurer of the chapter, when the latter would apologize to him that they do not have the full amount, showing a smile on his face, as usual.

Often, especially in the evenings, it was possible to see Shteinburtz standing in the central room of the clubhouse (called “the Hall”) enjoying the lively Hora dances of the boys and girls, joining in the songs, and clapping his hands to the beat. More than once you could also see his wife Henia joining the youthful merriment.

[Page 713]

He was one of the prominent personalities in the shtetl, filling two representative positions: as the manager of the main bank (“Bessarabia”) and as the Crown Rabbi (“kazione rabiner”), and besides that, he was popular with the Authorities. If it so happened that Jews were arrested, whether adults or adolescents and with the Romanian Authorities there was never any shortage of reasons for it, the first port of call was Shteinburtz. He, together with Shmuel Fradis, would hasten to appeal to the authorities to release the detainees to ensure they were not abused and that they should not spend, G-d forbid, a single night in prison with all that it entails.

One evening: Henia tells us: “we were told that two of the members of “Gordonia” (among them the writer of this article) were detained. I quickly sent Monya (she called Moshe, “Monya”) to the Authorities to release the boys, and I, together with Liza Galperin, wandered around throughout the night, outside on a cold autumn night hoping we'll somehow be able to help release the children. They were released by midnight and taken out of the house by the back door. But we only found this out in the early hours of the morning. We were not upset about it. It was good that the children at least slept at home.” Henia emphasizes with a smile, still the smile of the young, bubbly, lively woman, full of activity. Few were like her.

Not only for the benefit of the Zionists he helped like this. When Communists or alleged Communists were detained and the authorities were not yet convinced whether to lay their hands on guilty parties, they also turned to Shteinburtz to indicate whether they have succeeded in catching the “enemies of the government and the regime.” Shteinburtz would ensure the suspects would all be released from custody, avoiding a military trial and a long prison sentence.

There was not an institution whether public, organizational, financial, or cultural that he was not counted among the members of its committee, or at least, among its chief activists. He sat on the committee of the hospital established by Shmuel Loibman, on the directorate of the financial-cooperative “Lay Un Shpar Kasse,” and was among the activists for the “Shaarei Tzion” school on the committee of the “Tarbut” library, and in other organizations. He did not do it for the honor or for the “chair.” He did it all for its own sake, for the ideology of whose importance he recognized. Therefore, everybody gave him the acknowledgment and respect he deserved.

His home was saturated with a sincere and true Zionist spirit. His wife Henia was a loyal “help-meet” and a dedicated activist for any Zionist task. With a smile on her face, she set her house to use for any meetings or a party that had a Zionist or public orientation. The goodbye party for Shimshon Bronstein and his wife Golda in honor of their Aliyah to Eretz Israel took place in this home. It is no wonder, that their sons were raised with a Zionist spirit, and that they were active in the “Gordonia” movement. They arrived in Eretz Israel at the time of the Arab Revolt in 1936. The older of the two, Yitzchak, was among the pioneers of kibbutz Chanita at the ''Tower and Stockade” settlement period, in 1937.

For many years, Monya (Moshe) and Henia Shteinburtz continued their public and Zionist activities while thinking and planning to join their sons in Eretz Israel one day. But fate decided otherwise.

When the year 1940 arrived, and with it the Russian Occupation with all its upheavals, Shteinburtz continued managing the bank.

[Page 714]

A few days after the Russian Occupation began, Krieg, a veteran Communist, and the new mayor came to him and announced that he had to relinquish the management of the bank to the new rulers. Shteinburtz replied that on his side there was no objection and only insisted that meticulous records of all bank transactions and the actuarial standing of the bank would be made in two copies, one of which was to be sent to the central authorities and the other would remain with him. Until a decision about the matter arrived from the authorities, the bank remained closed, under lock and key. Indeed, that is what happened. The records were made and a copy was sent. Shortly afterward a special messenger from the central government arrived, announcing the decision that Shteinburtz had to reopen the bank to get it operating and manage it without any interference. It must be noted that at that time, the local rulers (long-standing ardent Communists) had fallen out of grace with the central authorities and were removed from their positions including Krieg.

In the yard of the Shteinburtz home, a Russian army unit settled.

And so, a new chapter began with new working conditions. Shteinburtz continued managing the bank affairs, though side by side with a couple of high-ranking Soviet functionaries, who were sent from the central government for better safety, of course. However, even that chapter, which was “ideal” under the circumstances ended sooner than anyone could have imagined.

With the declaration of war and the Russian retreat from Bessarabia in June 1941, it became clear that the upper-level functionaries including those who worked in the bank knew about the plans for the desertion of Yedinitz, but they kept it from their Jewish colleagues, including the manager. When rumors abounded about what might happen, Esther Gratzman came to the Shteinburtz home, to ascertain the source of these rumors and to ask for his opinion about what to do. She found the house empty. Dishes and half-eaten food, including the soup that was still warm, were left on the table. It seems there was not enough time for the family to finish their meal, they were in such a rush to get out of the house to escape. When people asked what they should do, Shteinburtz gave one decisive answer: “Run away! Escape!” And so, he escaped before the murderous Romanians had returned.

Where did they run to?

According to Henia, they were heading for Securan (Secureni), to cross the Dniester River for the town of Mogilev. When they arrived in Ataki, which was deserted and in ruins, they were met by heavy autumn rains, which came early that year. It became clear that the bridge over the river was blocked and there was no passage across. Here, Shteinburtz, again, showed his initiative, his personal connections, and his ability to attend to delicate situations under difficult conditions. He managed to convince the relevant people to “open the gate.” The group, including Shteinburtz and his family, crossed to the other side of the river to go further into Russia.

Here began a period of wandering, full of hardships.

On the way, they were joined by the widow of the teacher Yeshchikman and her children, the family Gokovsky, and others. They made their way adjusting to difficulties and harsh conditions in the areas of Baku, Turkistan, Uzbekistan, and at

[Page 715]

the end of the trek they got stuck in the town of Novocherskoy. Here the family “settled” and Shteinburtz found a job as the head bookkeeper for a large corporation dealing in construction and operating power stations and trains in the vicinity. He gained trust, respect, and honor from the authorities and his superiors for more than 10 years until 1953.

All through these years, he strived to reach Eretz Israel, but, unfortunately, he failed in realizing his dream. He found eternal rest in exile, far from the land for which he put so much effort over the years, and far from family, relatives, and friends. So far, even if it becomes the wish of one of his relatives to visit his grave in commemoration, there is a doubt they'll ever be able to get there.

His wife Henia passed away in Haifa in 1972. Mindl, the wife of his son Yitzchak, passed away that same year and Yitzchak himself passed away a few months later, in 1973. All that is left from the family are the sons Abba and Beno.

My father, Moshe (called Moshke) Shitz, came to Yedinitz from Soroca in 1908, his hometown, to marry my mother, Sosya (nee Guberman), a native of Yedinitz. He was 26 and she 18.

In his birthplace, my father received a traditional Cheder education complemented with secular studies in Russian. In his youth, he was active in “Poalei Zion,” especially during the revolutionary senior year. His younger brother, Motya, was in those years active in “Poalei Zion.” During the revolution, Motya was torn away from home and remained in Odessa. He died there in his early fifties. I received his last letter in 1948 in the spring of the Russia-Israel relationships. This is what he wrote: “Finally, after 2000 years, the dream of the Jewish people has been realized….” He thought the Messiah had arrived. Afterward, he stopped writing completely. There were new winds…

The third younger brother, Ben Zion (nicknamed Eliulik), was also a sympathizer of “Poalei Zion.” He died in Transnistria together with my grandfather and with his whole family including his wife and two daughters.

Before WWI, Soroca was known to “Poalei Zion” as a center for its activities.

[Page 716]

Sosya and Moshe Shitz

It was due to the active involvement of a student from Soroca, Shalom Gendelman. He was a member, a worker, and a disciple of Ber Borochov. The latter remembered him. My father used to call him “Shulke” Gendelman. Later, Dr. Gendelman was famous for contributing to the Ukrainian Independence movement. He even became a professor at the Expatriate Ukrainian University in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He made Aliyah to Israel. Lately, he was the director of the Zionist Library publishing house in Jerusalem.

My father used to tell me about the discussions at the stock exchange among the various political factions and the “tricks” they used to confuse the opposing speakers.

He was a community worker in different organizations in Yedinitz, was a Zionist, and a campaigner for Zionist funds. My father was also an initiator among the parents who brought the teacher Dubrow and established the Hebrew school. There, Zipporah Dubrow (from Yedinitz) was the kindergarten teacher. She studied in Warsaw. He was a Hebrew teacher and later, he was among the founders and establishers of the Hebrew high school. Two years later, the dream was realized.

As previously stated, he was involved in the initiative of Shimshon Bronstein to revitalize “Poalei Zion.” Together, they spread the “red shekels.” He supported his children in their activities in the “Poalei Zion.” In 1926, Shimshon Bronstein dragged him to a conference of “Poalei Zion” in Czernowitz.

[Page 717]

He was a delegate from Bessarabia.

When we, the children, left town and made Aliyah, only the youngest son, Mendel, remained. (He is now in Haifa). He became a patron and spokesperson of the “Poalei Zion” youth, “Dror.” In general, he became the address of the movement.

He was active in the movement for the “Jewish Party” during various parliamentary elections.

In his younger years, he performed in many amateur productions in dramatic and romantic roles. He always stated that he missed his calling and that “today” he would perform even better.

He took part in several economic undertakings such as the “Merchant Hospital,” and later, in a cooperative bank, the “Commercial Bank of Yedinitz.” He was its director. However, the bank did not last for a long time and was liquidated. The failure of the bank ruined our economy. He always dreamed of making Aliyah and he believed that we, the three children, Yosef, Sarah, and Yasha, z”l, would bring him over.

Moshe Shitz read Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian fluently, and later Romanian. He used to bring from Odessa all the issues of the publication Moriah, the original works, and translations. Later, he brought books from the nearer towns. He went to Czernowitz, Kishinev, and Iasi to buy merchandise. In addition, he liked to study the Mishna and Gemara and involved himself in deep research.

My father was not overly religious and did not follow all commandments. He did not go to synagogue every Shabbat, but on the High Holidays, he served for a while as one of the Gabbais when young people would attend. He inherited his status from his father-in-law, Moshe Guberman, of the Hosiatyn synagogue. On these holidays, the synagogue was decorated with paintings of trees and animals, appropriate inscriptions such as “brave like a lion,” “running like a deer,” etc. There was even enough money left for kiddush. The old Gabbais used the income from the synagogue (they rented shops) on memorial kiddush occasions, remembering various rabbis and, in general, good Jews, saintly beings.

Throughout the time, he agonized over the fact that we, the children, except for me, the oldest, did not study Gemara. I, too, mourn this fact.

[Page 718]

He used to say: “a heretic has the right to be the one who can still learn. Otherwise, he is a gentile.”

He also used to say: “We believe in God because we are Jews. It is not because we believe in God that we are Jews.” He emphasized the national spirit of Yiddishkeit.

I was not a consistent synagogue goer. I did not put Tefilin very often after my Bar Mitzvah. However, I never missed Simchat Torah in shil. It was a happy event. One time, my father travelled to Czernowitz during Hol HaMoed to buy merchandise and did not return by the eve of Simchat Torah. I went to synagogue by myself.

He returned to town early in the morning, walking. His horse and buggy with the merchandise arrived later. His anger, that I went to services by myself, was unimaginable.

“You suddenly became a believer. I always had to drag you to shil for prayers on Simchat Torah.” These were biting words!

During the Soviet occupation I was in Eretz Israel, and he sent me an unsigned postcard sent from Czernowitz. In it was written: “We are well, and we have everything we need. We are sated as on Yom Kippur, happy as on Tisha B'Av, dressed up like on Purim. Fleishman (the meat-man) and Broitman (bread-man) have not visited us for a long time.”

Together with all other Jews from Yedinitz he traveled the long road to Transnistria. He was accompanied by his youngest son, Mendel (today in Haifa). First my father, and six weeks later my mother, died of Typhus in the Bandaruvke camp. This was in the first winter of the expulsion. Mendel tells us that before he died, he said:

“Write to my children in Eretz Israel. They must exact revenge!”

I received the tragic news in the first letter Mendel wrote after he returned to Yedinitz. I was then a soldier in the Jewish Brigade, on the anti-Nazi frontier in Northern Italy. These were the last phases of WWII. I recited the first Kaddish in the temporary synagogue of the Jewish Brigade on the front.

[Page 719]

Yaakov Magen

Yasha Shitz (in Israel: Yaakov Magen), the son of Moshe, the brother of Yosef, Sara, and Migdal (all of them in Israel) was born in Yedinitz in 1917. He learned Hebrew with the teacher Hillel Dubrow and in various schools, and after that, he learned in the local gymnasia. He was active in “Dror” and went to the pioneer preparation course. He made Aliyah illegally and entered the Kibbutz Yagur. After that, his girlfriend Devora Liebman made Aliyah from Briceni (Britschan). After some time, the family settled in Haifa, where he was a member of the “Haganah” and joined in many defense activities. In the Israel Defense Forces, he served as a sergeant-major in the nascent Navy. In the Army, at the time of an ordinary examination, a heart defect was discovered that he had since birth. He was what people call “the owner of golden hands:” carpenter, picture framer, plumber, etc., and indeed, he worked at various jobs in these professions. Afterward, he did office work and for some time he managed the administration of the weekly Laboring Haifa.

When his situation became known, it was decided to operate on his heart. He was one of the first people to undergo heart surgery in Israel (1953). But he did not completely recover after the operation and sometimes had to lie down.

He was a companion and friend to many. His house, his and his girlfriend from youth, was a meeting place for people from Yedinitz and the movement from Haifa and other places. He was one of the initiators of the establishment of the “Association of Those Who Came Out from Yedinitz” in Haifa and was its secretary.

He passed away at the beginning of 1964 at the age of 47. He left two daughters. His granddaughter was born two months after his death.

Yosef Shpier, z”l, was one of the most important economists in our town. He previously established a mechanical flour mill and own a house, a mansion built according to the ideas of the 1920s. He was a member of the congregational committee established in the 1930s. He was loved and respected thanks to his distinguished character, for his generosity, and for donations to the Zionist funds and charitable purposes.

[Page 720]

Yosef, z”l, and Chaika Shpier, May she be blessed with long life

One day, attention was paid that workers were digging deep holes at the edges of the town and driving tall posts of wood into them at the direction of an engineer named Paul who arrived from Czernowitz. Nobody knew what the purpose of these posts was, and rumors of all kinds began to go around in town. Only after they heard that soon “electra” would be installed the residents breathed easily. At the same time, they were afraid lest a disaster would come to them from the controllers and the preceptors (collectors of income tax), who would contend that the townsmen can afford such luxuries, like electric lighting, would certainly increase their income and end having to pay more to the coffers of the state.

One evening a rumor was spread: the electric lamps were lit…the entire town, from the smallest to the biggest, went out in the streets to see a great miracle – four lamps lit in four intersections with a special light. Slowly, slowly, electricity was brought into all the houses, and the Jews had “light…”
The Shpier family lived during the last year before the Holocaust in Beltz. The Romanian-German occupation cut the mother off from her family. She lived with her daughter Leasha and her husband Liosa Premislov. Yosef Shpier, his daughter Devora and her husband Grisha Lindver, his granddaughter Betika, and his wife's sister Batya Weintroib were expelled with all the Jews of Beltz and perished on the way to Transnistria. His daughter Susia and her husband Dr. Salomon fled to Russia with the Soviets, who were withdrawing, and so they survived. Their son was born there. Mrs. Chaya Shpier, Leahsha's daughter and her son-in-law Liosa were expelled from Czernowitz to Mogilev in Transnistria, and they also survived. After the War, all the remnants of the family made Aliyah and settled in Haifa. In 1961, Leahsha passed away from a malignant illness. Chaya Shpier, may she be blessed with long life, lives with her daughter Susia and her son-in-law Dr. Solomon in Haifa.

[Page 721]

Judaism and humanity were the foundations of my father's house, which was soaked in Zionism, expectation, and the faith in the revival of the nation and the Land of Israel. The love of Israel was engraved in all 248 of Father's organs. I remember when I was still a girl that my father, who was born in Zinkov, Ukraine, once told me that when he came to live in Yedinitz in 1900 a rumor was spread that a young Zionist had come to live in the town and that a few of the young intellectuals came to him and asked to join the Zionist and communal work. Father responded to them, and from then on, he began to work and dedicate himself for the sake of the Land of Israel with all his strength and being. For 25 years he served as “commissar” (representative) of the “Keren Kayemet for Israel.”

Father did not leave any opportunity, celebratory event, or, to differentiate, any private or public mourning, to gather donations for the “Keren Kayemet” even when there was no one to send to collect the donations. He sprung himself to action, even if it was the smallest. And indeed, Yedinitz took second place in Bessarabia right behind Kishinev, which had a large Jewish population, in the manner of gathering donations to the Zionist funds. At one of the Zionist conferences in Kishinev, Father came out strongly against the Zionist leaders and the leaders of this large city saying: “You, who are sitting at the head of the table are receiving all the honor, but the hard work you are leaving to others…” and he compared the income of Kishinev to that of Yedinitz. With great exactness and care, he would send a monthly report of donations to the chapter in Kishinev.

When a delegation of the “campaign” for “Keren Hayesod” would arrive in Yedinitz, Father would desert his house and his livelihood. He made nights like days to ensure the success of the drive. He gave more than his ability to serve as an example to those who asked, “How much did Ben-Zion Tieman donate?” in an attempt to lessen their own donations.

Father's great dream was to make Aliyah, to settle in a small village, to be a farmer, and work the land. When he spoke about this, he became excited, and his eyes shed tears.

To read a newspaper from Israel and know what was happening there, was like a holiday for him. When I made Aliyah in 1932 and I sent him newspapers from here, my mother would write to us: “Father reads what is going on in Eretz Israel and he cries, sometimes from excess of happiness and sometimes from grief.” More than once he wrote in his letters the well-known line from Yehuda HaLevi's poems: “I am in the West, and my heart is in the East.” And at the beginning of our Aliyah, mine, and that of my late husband, we suffered from severe pains of absorption and a lack of work, and when we wrote home that it was quite difficult for us Father would encourage us by writing: “Have patience, it will yet be better for you.” When my late husband succeeded in arranging work as an engineer in the potash company Shavim HaMelach, there was no end to Father's happiness.

[Page 722]

Ben-Zion and Etty Teiman

Baruch, Breina and Sherla Teiman

Our house was large. Holidays in the house were impressive occasions. Father, with his tall height and his radiant face from which the smile never disappeared (even the “katsap” customers called him 'Choroshi” – “the good”) would spread a good mood over those who surrounded him. I rarely saw him sad. When a problem came up in business or another event that disturbed his spirit, he bore his distress inside within himself so that the members of his family would not notice it.

Then the war broke out and the Russians came. Zionist activity was forbidden. The Zionists were pursued to the bitter end. The Soviets confiscated all our possessions and expelled Father and Mother from their home. Lacking everything in the middle of the winter, they went to live with my brother Buzia in the village of Glodian (Glodeni). He was unable to overcome the troubles and passed away a short time after in the month of Shvat (January) in 1940 and was buried in Rishkan. These details reached me in the last letter from my brother Buzia before the Romanians and Germans reconquered Bessarabia. Mother, my brother Buzia, and his wife were among those expelled and sent to the camps in Transnistria, where they found their deaths. We will remember them in our hearts forever.

[Pages 723-724]

Personal Notes – Events and dates of a family and private nature

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