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At the Dawn
of the Twentieth Century

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The Levitt Brothers Sitting Herschel, Standing Berel

When I reach into my memory for the Dereczin that I recollect, I return back to those early years at the dawn of the twentieth century. The little town is nestled among the impressive buildings of the golden age of Poland – the large fortress and the remaining palaces of the Duke,^[1] in which the soldiers and officers of the Czarist Army were billeted, along with other officials of the regime. We, the Jews, lived in adequately spaced houses, built in rows a handbreath on either side of the market square, and also in flimsy houses that seemed to be constructed without any order or plan on the way down to the river.

On market days, and on the Russian Orthodox holidays, the large market square would fill up with the wagons of the farmers from the nearby villages, until there was no space left. Alongside the wagons, and in the adjacent stores, business is being conducted, and we children, are catching snatches of the intonation of the strange language being spoken, that our parents resort to with some difficulty. Towards the end of the day, the square became emptied, and the farmers traveled back to their villages, and the Catholic ‘townies’ went to their homes on the outskirts of town, and the town center reverted to being an exclusively Jewish quarter. The Jews then began, for the afternoon and evening prayers, to stream toward the spiritual center, the Schulhof, where three Batei Midrash were clustered, along with the large, beautiful synagogue, which was silhouetted against the sky, with its typical roof, alongside the old cemetery. What a good feeling and sense of beauty descended on these holy places, especially during the major holidays, the High Holydays and Simkhat Torah!

And these days were harbingers of change in the lives of the Jews: new ideas, challenging trends, increased anti-Semitism, and the footfall of the approaching upheaval, slowly but surely began to erode the solid signposts in their way of life, one of which stands out in my memory as most vivid of all. This was my grandfather, and mentor, Reb Ze'ev Wolf Lev, the Dayan. He sedulously observed the commandments of the Torah and its interpreters without any compromise, read only the works of the Sages and learned rabbis, and dismissed as rubbish any challenging [external] thinking. On Yom Kippur, he would not leave the synagogue from the time of his arrival for Kol Nidre, until the blessing of the moon at the nightfall of the observance. During the holiday night, he would snatch a short nap on his bench, and the rest of the time he would recite chapters from the Psalms, and selections from the writings of the Kabala. My grandmother supported the family with a small store, and when it was necessary for her to leave it, for some reason, and my grandfather was left to mind the store, he found it extremely difficult to conduct transactions with non-Jewish people. When he became a widower in his seventies, he turned over his house and assets to his heirs, and he himself went up to the Holy Land. I recall with what pride I sat with my grandfather and parents in the wagon that took us to the railroad station in Zelva, and how after us, came a long line

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of wagons and pedestrians – literally the entire town came out to wish farewell to my grandfather. Subsequently, he settled in Jerusalem in one of the Kollel institutions, but he did not live very long thereafter.

My parents, Reb Aryeh-Leib and Rivkah, were already ‘exposed’ to the new winds [blowing through] the Jewish world. My mother was one of those women in Dereczin who knew how to read and write Hebrew in an open [free] manner. She even peeked into the modern literature of the time, but she was sharply critical of those writers and authors who wrote about non-traditional subjects, and were derisive about the faith. She was the one that townspeople turned to, when they needed enveloped to be addressed that were sent to the United States – in those days, knowledge of the Roman alphabet was a rarity in Dereczin.

My father practically instigated a ‘revolution’ when he decided to enroll me in the ‘Revisionist Heder’ established by the teacher, Abraham Izaakovitz (who came from Mikhoysk), who attempted to teach reading and writing using the method of Ivrit-B'Ivrit,^[2] using the textbook, Eden HaYeladim.^[3] My father, and his friend Eliyahu Abramovich, the tavern keeper, nurtured the seed of the Maskilim^[4] and subscribed to the Hebew newspaper (HaTzefira, which later became Zman - the Times), and read the creations of our authors and poets.

However, sharp and fundamental change came to our town on the wave of the Russian upheavals of the years 1904-5. It was as if the entire town was drugged. Young men and women, from all walks of life, mostly from the ‘Badgessel,^[5]’ would congregate at the Bet HaMidrash, and orate about their ideas over the objections of the synagogue functionaries. On the Sabbath, and sometimes during the midweek towards the evening, large groups of the ‘brothers and sisters’ would parade with red colors, with the songs of revolution on their lips, to the outskirts of the town behind the Ma'agilkes (the Christian cemetery). Workers demanded an increase in pay, and once actually went on strike. Muscular young men would come around and shake down the wealthy for protection money (a ‘self-protection’ organization), they distributed labor organizing leaflets, brought outside union people from the big cities, marched with red flags, and of course, there were run-ins with the constabulary. A part of the bourgeoisie, and most of the common people sympathized, even warmly with these young people, but even so, they could not forgive them “because they say there is no God.”

Not many days went by, and this upheaval was suppressed, and all of its external trappings disappeared. But the way of life in Dereczin, especially of the young generation underwent a transformation, a daily Yiddish newspaper became compulsory in each and every home. Emigration surged upward. Many young men left, not to go to the Yeshivas, but to secular schools, or to learn a trade. And a new custom arose: unions that were not arranged by a matchmaker, but rather ‘out of love.’ In secret, the ‘self-protection’ organization began to operate again.

The younger generation in Dereczin became driven by the challenges of the times, and was hurled headlong into them with the outbreak of the First World War.

In those days, when I was on the threshold of maturity, having gone through growing pains of investigating what was over my head, faith and its abandonment, the secrets of nature and the human soul, the ways of the world both Jewish and gentile, etc. – I loved carrying on extended conversations with two of my friends who were inspiring – and yet both of them had ideas that were at extremes from

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one another.

One was Menahem Mansky, a man of revolutionary ideas, opposed to religion, and who saw the future of the community and its fortune dependent on the harnessing of the forces of nature, and who saw the ultimate salvation of the Jewish people through the establishment of a society based on equality and justice. The second, was David Alper, a man possessed of a profoundly intense sense of Judaism, rooted in the notion of being one of the “Chosen People.” A believer in the eternal existence of the Jewish people without hesitation or doubt, who yearned for the realization of the Zionist ideal. He was not well-read in books having to do with the debate of ideas, or natural phenomena, and in contrast to this, he literally ingested volumes of philosophy of the Jewish philosophers, and those of other nations, and was aroused especially by the new Jewish poetry which appeared at that time already in its greatest glory.

Menahem Mansky went to Moscow, where because of his good skills, immediately obtained a distinguished position with the Soviet newspaper establishment. During the 1930's we lost all contact with him, and according to what we heard he fell victim to the [Stalinist] purges. And David Alper, true to his creed, became one of our better teachers in Poland during the years between the two world wars, and as the headmaster of the Hebrew Gymnasium in Pinsk, he was responsible for inculcating a love of the Jewish people into many students, and to encourage them to make and consummate aliyah. Most of his students [in fact] did make aliyah, and he, himself was planning to do so himself, except that the Tormenter^[6] may his name be for erased, got to him first. The master educator fell at his post.

Copy of a letter from R' Gavriel to R' Simkha-Isser in America, requesting him to remit funds speedily to his wife to cover the cost of writing the Torah scroll

Rabbi Plotkin

My father, Simkha-Isser, may he rest in peace, went out across the entire town, and went door-to door, once, and then again, until he was able to accumulate a specific [sic: the necessary] amount of money. [From this] it would be possible to place a beautiful headstone for the deceased rabbi, and a small amount of money remained afterwards from the funds raised by my father.

As it happened, at that time, a pauper came from a faraway place to solicit alms, and he fell sick in Dereczin, laid for a short while in a sickbed, and expired. My father takes an interest in the deceased pauper's family, sends for his widow, and assumes responsibility for arranging the funeral. We host the poor widow for a couple of weeks, and send her home with a few rubles. Needless to day, this poor woman does not have the means with which to fund a headstone, so my father, once again, made the rounds around town, and gathered money from the balebatim for this purpose.

In assembling these funds, my father computed that, after providing a headstone for the grave of this deceased poor man, a tidy sum of money would be left over. [From this} he conceive the notion that with this remaining money, together with an additional sum he would contribute from his own pocket, that he would commission the writing of a

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Torah scroll.

So, he went off to Yudel the Scribe, and took counsel with him. The idea inspired Yudel, and the two of them applied themselves to the endeavor.

Yudel the Scribe ordered the best quality parchment from Warsaw, and it took a while until the Torah scroll was completed.

And when the Torah scroll was completed, my mother, Hindeh, may she rest in peace, baked and cooked for three days and three nights, to prepare the repast for the Feast of Completing the Scroll. Flyers were sent to the surrounding towns, and many rabbis came for this great [festive] celebration.

Our father felt himself to be the principal host for the entire celebration.

After the feast and all the formalities, the question was posed as where the Torah scroll should be domiciled. It was decided to do this by lottery, and the lots cast were in favor of der Alter Mauer [synagogue], which was the place where the town rabbi made prayers.

This caused yet another occasion for celebration in the town. Can you imagine: a brand new Sefer Torah is to be installed in a synagogue – no small thing! We grab a bite, and the brand new Torah is carried under a canopy from our house on the Neuer Gasse, to the Schulhof, with care not to go past the church. The young folk got a pail of kerosene from Sholom Pinoyer, and soaked rags in it, and carried torches [lit from this]. In all the houses that we passed during this parade, there were lamps lit in all of the windows. The Torah scroll is escorted with song on the lips of the entire company, and all the faces are shining with joy.

When the procession drew near the Schulhof, the Jews brought out all of the Torah scrolls from each and every house of worship, and came towards us in a welcoming procession for the new Torah. The community celebration lasted well into the night, and by the time the new Torah scroll was deposited in the ark of the Old Synagogue, and the company dispersed to their homes, dawn was beginning to break.

Our father counted himself as the happiest man in the world, and our mother radiated with joy, and she was exceedingly proud of her husband's accomplishment.

Shortly thereafter, our father departed for America. He arrived there during the time of a severe economic crisis, when many people were unemployed. He worked extremely hard, under bitter conditions, and yet from his meager wages, he was able to send back money to Dereczin to help build a new ritual bath. At that time, he [also] brought me to live with him in America.

He yearns, however, to return to his roots. After spending a couple of years in America, he returns to Dereczin, and I stay in America. To me, he said, that he is going back home, where Shabbos is Shabbos, and Yuntiff is Yuntiff, and Jews can live as Jews. When he arrived back in Dereczin, my mother wrote to tell me that all the Jews came to greet him. In those days, it was not a trivial thing to survive such a long voyage from America to Dereczin.

My father, indeed, brought back some dollars with him to Dereczin, but could not find an occupational outlet for himself. After another bit of time back in his hometown, my father decided to go once again to America. With him, he takes my two younger sisters and a brother, and leaves my mother and two younger brothers in Dereczin. He agrees with mother prior to his departure, that as soon as he can find suitable housing for the entire family, and get himself established and organized, he will send back ship tickets for her and the two brothers.

However, at the time that father arrives in America, with three young children, the First World War breaks out. This was in 1914. Contact between America and the ‘old country’ was broken. A couple of years later, America also is drawn into the world war.

During the war years, father was unable to discharge his plan concerning those whom he left in God's care, my mother, who was ill, with two small children. Meanwhile, the Russian Revolution breaks out, the sovereignty in that part of the world changes

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periodically, and we get no news at all from Dereczin.

Finally, when the war ended in 1918, we received a letter from Dereczin, with the sad news that our mother had died, along with one of the two younger brothers. Meir, may he rest in peace, died at the age of 13 in a typhus epidemic. Our youngest brother, Kadish, remained alone in Dereczin.

At the same time, a letter comes from Rabbi Plotkin, with a request to help find the Rabbi's relatives in the United States, who originally were from Minsk. It was not the easiest thing in the world to track down the rabbi's relatives. Our father attended several meetings of the Minsk Society, and in the end this finally led to him finding a cousin of the rabbi, who was a ritual slaughterer - a shokhet. In 1920, when Rabbi Plotkin visited the United States, he was indeed able to meet with his kin.

When Rabbi Plotkin arrived in America, he first sent for my father. I accompanied my father to this meeting. It was three days before Passover.

Rabbi Plotkin embraced my father like a long-lost brother. The hosts receive us with great respect, and father begins to inquire about his youngest child in Dereczin, about the family in general, and about everything and everyone.

The Rabbi says: “Reb Simkha-Isser, relax, sit down, and I'll tell you everything, whether it is about your son, or about Dereczin. Thank God that we are able to see each other again in good health. But before anything else, Reb Simkha-Isser, I want to tell you that I have brought you a gift…”

My father is astonished: “A gift for me? From Dereczin? Rebbe, I need to give you a gift for Dereczin, not you to give one to me…”

“Reb Simkha-Isser, I have brought you a gift,” the Rabbi reiterates, in a quiet but firm tone, “ I have for you the Torah scroll which you commissioned to be written in Dereczin!”

At this point, my father lodged a complaint: “See here, Rabbi, you removed a Sefer Torah from such a sanctified location, from our old Bet HaMidrash, and you brought it here, to a treyf country?!

Rabbi Plotkin replies: “ I know, Reb Simkha-Isser, that you are an observant Jew, and I [also] know how much time, work, energy and money was expended until this Torah scroll was completed…”

And, it was in this manner, that the conversation between my father and Rabbi Plotkin ensued for several hours, during which time the Rabbi related to my father what his plans were for his American trip, and he also solicited a variety of suggestions from my father. As the hour was growing late, my father arranged with the Rabbi that in a few days, the second day of Hol HaMoed of Passover, a Tuesday, the Rabbi would be a guest for dinner at our home.

Rabbi Plotkin then wished us a Happy and Kosher Passover, and I left with my father to go home. On the way home, we decided to invite several other Jewish relatives and acquaintances to dinner with the rabbi.

To our greatest sorrow, Rabbi Plotkin came to our home, not on Tuesday, but on Monday, the first day of Hol HaMoed.. And he came, not to a festive holiday dinner, but for the funeral of my father. My father died suddenly on the second day of Passover.

I do not remember who brought the Torah scroll to our house – father, or Rabbi Plotkin. I do recall, however, that during the days when we sat Shiva, the Torah scroll was used for reading.

When we left home for work, I was so afraid of either a fire or theft, that I asked our relative, Zalman Friedman, that he should take the Torah scroll to his place, and turn it over to our landsleit from Dereczin.

There were those among our landsleit who proposed that the Torah scroll be sold (it would have fetched about a thousand dollars at that time) and that the proceeds be sent to Dereczin to provide for the needy Jews there. However, the majority of the Derecziners were opposed to this proposal. It was decided to establish a Dereczin Landsmanschaft Synagogue, and this Torah scroll, which was commissioned by my father to be written in Dereczin, was taken into this synagogue.

This synagogue was situated in Brownsville, a

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neighborhood of [Brooklyn] New York City, which at the time was largely inhabited by Jews.

A short time back, I became interested in determining the fate of this Torah scroll, and the Dereczin Synagogue. All these years, I live far away from Brownsville. To my sadness, I discovered that the synagogue had not existed for many years already, the neighborhood had completely turned over, and most of the Jews from their had moved to other neighborhoods in New York. I did not find the Torah scroll, and I do not know where it is. I hope however, that I will have the opportunity to continue to search for it.

The Melamed, R' Yosheh Abelovich

R' Meir Yanovsky (‘Meir der Melamed’)

The Teacher, Leib Abelovich

Y. Pintzov, Teacher of Russian Language

The scholars that I remember were: Reb Meir Yanovsky (Meir der Melamed)^[1], Reb Alter (Alter Deikhess), Hirschel der Lehrer, Reb Leib Abelovich, who later emigrated to America, Abraham Izaakovich (der Mikhoisker), Reb Leib Kobrinsky (Leibeh Meite's), and others, whom I can no longer recall.

When the Talmud Torah came under the oversight of the Hevra M'Fitzei Haskalah,^[2] before the First World War, they began to teach arithmetic there also to the children.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the Haskalah movement, with the concept of promoting the study of Russian language and other general education in middle-level schools, began to do so as well in my town of Dereczin. The instruction of children in Russian was begun, preparing them for gymnasiums, taking advantage of every opportunity to utilize the skills of qualified or trained teachers, such as the pharmacist, and Mordechai-Yankel Lansky (the father of the well-known Hebrew poet, Chaim Lansky, who perished in Siberia), and Pintzov, and Motkeh Izaakovich, and others. More and more spheres of skills were encompassed and harnessed through the spread of general education. Young people champed at the bit, to leave the town, and Pale of Settlement, which was far from the railroad, even without a spur to the train station, to

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break out into the larger world. The long and the short of it was – one wanted to be “a person, alongside other people, on an equal basis.”

The religious balebatim did not want to, and could not reconcile themselves, to permitting Russian to be the language of instruction for the children. What is to happen to Yiddishkeit? A page of the Gemara? Reb Velvel Meite's the Talmud teacher, in his older years, after his wife passed away, went to the Holy Land; the Talmud teacher from out-of-town, hired by several of the balebatim to come to Dereczin to teach the Talmud to their children, found it necessary to return home after a couple of years. Can this be? No Gemara?

In this instance, it was Rabbi Plotkin who came to the aid of the balebatim. He organized the parents, and arranged to send the young boys to study at the Yeshiva of Szczuczyn. He, the rabbi, took responsibility to escort the boys there to the Yeshiva. As he said, so did he do. To the best of my recollection, this group [of boys] consisted of: the Rabbi's son, Moishkeh Plotkin, Shmuel Shepshelevich, Shmuel Abelovich, David Alper, David-Zelig Epstein, and his brother, Berel, Joseph Dykhovsky, Berel Sakar, and several others. The rabbi accompanied them, arranged for where they would be given their ‘days’ of food, and lodging – in a word, he erected a wall as a barrier against assimilation.

In those years, in the beginning of the twentieth century, the yeshivas were already not so hermetically sealed off from the influences of the Haskalah, especially not opposed to the influence of Hebrew language. The young men began to look into the pages of the new Hebrew books of prose and poetry, which they would conceal inside the folios of their Talmud volumes. When they came home for the holidays, at the end of a school period, one would hear them singing songs written by Bialik or Tchernikhovsky, carry on literary discussions, or general themes of public interest, such as Zionism, the Bund, Hebrew, Yiddish, etc.

It was in this way that the modern Yeshiva students sought a synthesis between the Gemara and the new national imperatives, in order to inject a little modernity into the Jewish-national thought processes, into the life and learning of the young people.

Indeed, the debate surrounding the Hebrew-Yiddish issue took on a concrete form, when a Culture Club (Kulturverein) was founded, at the initiative of Bundists, and a library for Russian and Yiddish books was opened. The pro-Hebrew faction, who also joined as supporters of the Club, demanded that a section be set aside in the library for Hebrew books as well, in order that [the library] be given a truly general nationalist character. After some heated discussions, debates, and lobbying, they were able to carry out their agenda in large measure, and a section for Hebrew books was created for the library.

Those who were caught in the yeshiva reading a treyf-possul^[3] pamphlet, such as the poems of Bialik, or other authors, or books by the new Hebrew writers, were forced to leave the yeshiva. Fairly advanced yeshiva students, already close to ordination, used to wander between the smaller yeshivas, looking for an opportunity to complete their studies and reach their objective.

I will tell of one of the exponents of Hebrew and secular education in Dereczin – about Reb Abraham Izaakovich, who is remembered as der Mikhoisker.

When I came to his Heder, at the age of seven, he had already educated a couple of generation of students, among them were such that were already studying medicine at the university, or pedagogy at Steinberg's Teachers' Seminary in Vilna.

His progressive Heder was very well received in Dereczin. There were two sessions taught: until noon, Pentateuch, Prophets, Hebrew and Prayers (davening). In the afternoon – reading and writing Russian, penmanship, and arithmetic (the afternoon sessions were conducted in Russian). Both boys and girls received instruction in his

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progressive classroom, in which they sat as equals but in two separate groups.

His classroom was to be found in his own small house, which stood off to a side on the Neuer Gessel. The house was divided into two parts, and a large dark foyer separated his private quarters from the Heder. The windows of the small house were set close to the ground, and in the winter, during the great snowstorms, they became obscured by the snow, and it was necessary to learn by the light of kerosene lamps which hung from the rafters.

Reb Abraham Izaakovich was an intellectually accomplished Jew. Apart from Jewish reference material, he was knowledgeable in Russian (his children were education by the Russian method – in high schools), and German. He made use of a Tanach with Mendelson's commentary. Often, his discourse on the Tanach, peppered with German phrases, was unintelligible, almost as bad as the source material itself.

His classroom took on a much improved appearance when he built himself a new house, a wooden construction, with nice windows and well-lit rooms.

Reb Abraham went through many changes of situation as a teacher: he ran the progressive Heder until the First World War, then there was a period during which he was unemployed during the German occupation; later, [he was] a teacher of Jewish religion and German language in the German school, which the occupation forces established; and at the beginning of the 1920's he taught Hebrew (Ivrit B'Ivrit) in the middle classes of the Tarbut School for a number of years – until is children brought him to Russia, where he was not comfortable.

His memory and his pedagogic and scholarly accomplishments are woven into the history of Dereczin, quite apart from his skillful leadership in school education from the end of the nineteenth century until the end of the first quarter of the present [sic: twentieth] century. Because of this, a hidden envy lay deep in the hearts of Dereczin residents relative to their more affluent neighbors in Zelva, but they understood that their town, Dereczin surpassed Zelva in its spiritual qualities. Beginning with the great rabbis who served the community of Dereczin, up to the time of our national liberation, Dereczin was known as a seat for learning, study and reflection. Its Jews were blessed with lively thought, a yearning for scholarship, and Zionist activities. We find testimony to all this here in Israel and in the Diaspora, among the remnant of Dereczin residents, who are doing everything they can, to perpetuate the glory of the little community of Dereczin, destroyed and annihilated during the Second World War.

On restless nights, as I lay tossing on my bed, the image of our town appears in my mind as I remember it from sixty years ago. These recollections are always accompanied by feelings of pain and grief over the destruction of Dereczin.

Our town was small and impoverished. There were no paved roads, and no railroad passed through it. In

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order to get to Slonim, the seat of the district, we traveled for an entire night in the well-known wagon of Sholom Hirsch, of blessed memory, the only coachman on the ‘Slonim-Dereczin Line,’ seemingly having a franchise for that line. Most of the travelers were tradesmen who had business contacts in Slonim, and occasionally people who had business to attend to at the regional government offices.

Dereczin's contact with the outside world was through the railroad in Zelva, a distance of two hours by [horse-drawn] wagon. And those who were fortunate, got to Zelva, which was endowed with a railhead that led to all the cities of Russia and the outside world.

Every day at noon, a wagon drawn by two horses would bring us the mail. At 3:00PM, the mail would leave for the train.

There were two coachmen who served this ‘Dereczin - Zelva Line.’ I remember their frequent quarreling very well.

The only hotel in town, an inn for transient people, was the hotel of Beckenstein, in his home, a building of two stories in the center of town.

Because of this, a hidden envy lay deep in the hearts of Dereczin residents relative to their more affluent neighbors in Zelva, but they understood that their town, Dereczin surpassed Zelva in its spiritual qualities. Beginning with the great rabbis who served the community of Dereczin, up to the time of our national liberation, Dereczin was known as a seat for learning, study and reflection. Its Jews were blessed with lively thought, a yearning for scholarship, and Zionist activities.

We find testimony to all this here in Israel and in the Diaspora, among the remnant of Dereczin residents, who are doing everything they can, to perpetuate the glory of the little community of Dereczin, destroyed and annihilated during the Second World War.

The old, traditional way of life continued without being threatened until the beginning of the twentieth century. On the threshold of the new century, the new winds of the Haskalah blasted through even our little town, and with them came – the rise of new, revolutionary movements.

In those years, there suddenly appeared among the freshly arrived students in our Batei Midrashim, also those sort of young boys, who would conceal under their Talmud volumes and on their learning stands, all manner of treyf-possul books. I remember one such student, who was a relative of Reb Leib Luner, an outstanding scholar, who brought to Dereczin all manner of Hebrew books and Russian periodicals, such as Ьосхол,^[1] and Еврейская Увозерня.^[2] We would study together with him in Chevra Shas, and he would, from time-to-time discuss worldly and scientific matters with us; He also permitted us to read selected pamphlets of his.

It didn't take long, and a number of our small-town, more sheltered young folk (please understand, with a Talmudic education and religious inculcation) began to see in front of them a new world with entirely different horizons. A little at a time, they began to look beyond, and free themselves of the atmosphere of the Bet HaMidrash, and quite frequently began to strive towards a more cosmopolitan education. A portion of them went

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off to our district seat in Slonim, and began to study there in existing [more] worldly schools, such as the Еврейская Училще, and the Городская Училще.^[3]

Young people who lacked the material means to go and study out of town, began to dig in for themselves into the books of the Haskalah. A little at a time, they began to distance themselves from the Gemara, and began to learn Russian, Hebrew, and a variety of intellectual disciplines from which they had heretofore been distant.

A few of the Dereczin youth decided to go to the major Jewish cultural center, to the “Jerusalem of Lithuania,” – Vilna. That place [was a magnet] that drew many hundreds of Jewish young people from the cities and towns of the Pale.

It was in this manner that the following went away from Dereczin to Vilna in those years: Pesach Dworetzky, Ezer Weinstein, Katriel Gelman, David Poupko, Leibeh Abelovich, Aaron Rabinovich, and the writer of these lines.

Naturally, for parental consumption, this meant that one was going to Vilna for the purpose of continuing Torah and Gemara studies with the famous scholars to be found there. In reality, as soon as these young men, who for the first time in their lives, and in the lives of Dereczin youth in general, were exposed to a large, tumultuous city, with a populous young intelligentsia, they were drawn into spheres and circles where they immediately became infused with new ideas and pursuits.

It was in this manner, that these former small-town, provincial young people, threw themselves with their entire enthusiasm and energy into the world of Haskalah and general education. There were no shortage of teachers in Vilna – Instructors from the Jewish-Russian Teachers-Institute, and students from the university, would provide lessons, and lectures on all subjects to the newly arrived knowledge-thirsty students, for a small fee, and often free of charge.

Large, famous libraries, where stacks and reading tables stood at the disposition of those willing to learn, who wanted to continuously absorb the Russian language, and other languages, and read, literally swallow, the books written by the best that were available. Especially, they interested themselves with disciplines which to this point they had not been introduced, such as, science, anthropology, cultural knowledge, general history, etc.

The larger portion of the Jewish youth in Vilna was, in those years, already involved in the general Russian revolutionary movement and in Jewish socialist circles.

It is no wonder, that these Jewish young folk:

which always saw in front of its eyes the terrifying tragedy and chronic martyrdom of the Jewish people, the life without civil rights of the Jewish masses in despotic Czarist Russia,

these Jewish young folk:

who, with smoldering anger and clenched fists, heard the news of the pogrom of Kishinev, and the hounding of Jews and excesses against them in other cities in vast, dark Russia,

these young folk:

raised in their hometowns on Torah concepts, such as ‘love thy neighbor as thyself,’ and the vision of the prophet Isaiah of the ‘end of days,’ –

That these Jewish young folk seized upon the ideals of socialism, of freedom, equality, and brotherhood. They saw, in their youthful fevered dreams, the immediate coming, in the near future, that New World with its New Order, in which slaves and oppressed nations will be liberated from their chains and their poverty. For this Jewish youth, socialism

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was the new Messiah, a modern one, real, and for which it would not be necessary to wait so long.

A specific circumstance arose in that the small circle of Dereczin youth happened to land in a neighborhood where there was a certain active cell of Bundists. {The Bundists] immediately began to nourish our young folk on Bundist literature, and by applying its entire energy, normally focused on agitation, it so influenced the thinking of these former yeshiva students, that it didn't take very long before they were spending their time studying this ‘new Torah.’

The new [sic: Bundist] “Rebbe,” was extraordinarily pleased with his pupils, who had honed their intellectual skills through study of the Talmud, and [therefore] quickly absorbed the new disciplines of political economics, and other socialist knowledge, and philosophical teachings. Our Bundist neighbor provided a variety of lecturers to our circle. These Dereczin inspired young people saw before them a new world, with entirely new and unlimited prospects. A little at a time, they distanced themselves from their studies of the Gemara, and from their one-time plans and dreams. They agreed to bring back to Dereczin, the ideas of the new, socialist Messiah.

After having spent a year in Vilna, we traveled home for the holidays, with our travel cases full of illegal revolutionary literature.

The first act, on the part of these newly-minted socialists, was to tear down the wall between the young people from the family of the balebatim, and the young people from the families of the working class and those of the poor. They started to pal around with the embittered working class young people. They did this, having cloaked themselves in the Marxist truth, that these productive laborers were in reality the true role models, and not the balebatim.

In Dereczin, the majority of young working people were employed in the big factory of the partners, Bialystosky-Goldenberg. Among them were circumspect, yet savvy workers, with whom we immediately joined up, and began our fomenting of agitation.

As their first objective, the Bundists saw the need to organize an economic strike against the 12-hour workday and the attendant low wages. The older workers, who did the “dirty” work in the factory, worked 14 to 15 hours a day, and earned 3 rubles a week. Even the older, more observant people were intrigued by the new “revelations,” namely, that it is possible to improve ones working conditions through a strike, and thereby better both one's salary, and lot in life. It didn't take long, and the younger workers, together with some of the older ones of poorer circumstance, gladly seized upon these new ideas, which promised to better their bitter condition, and in the process bring a New Order with a paradise for the working class. A temporary organizing committee of the factory workers was created, of which I remember the following persons [who were members]: Moshe-Yaakov Abramovich, Leibkeh Shalkovich, The Jezernitzky brothers from Ruzhany, Nahum Blizniansky, one Motkeh, a worker from out-of-town, and another couple of younger workers, such as the daughter of the blind musician, the children of Shlomo the water-carrier, Moshe Grachuk, Arkeh (Aharon) the synagogue crier's son, Berel, the hatmaker's son, Temkeh Bricker – Elieh Paretz's son, etc.

A strike broke out in the factory, and after a sharp conflict, almost all of the demands were met: the workday was shortened, and the pay scale was raised. The 70 year-old “dirty” workers now had more time to go to the Bet HaMidrash and recite a chapter from the Psalms, and a couple of more rubles on which to live; the young workers got a bigger pay raise, and more free time to attend illegal assemblies and to read illegal literature.

The period of summer vacation was utilized by the returnees from Vilna to foment agitation. They found clandestine quarters, far behind the barracks, which was rented from a certain Christian butcher for six rubles a month. For this sum, her was also obliged to stand watch in the street for the entire time that the secret meetings took place, to look for any

[Page 62]

strangers who might accidentally chance upon the location.

At these meetings, the first session was devoted to lectures about the meaning of socialism. Excerpts were also read from Philip Krantz's Kultur-Geschichte, and Bogdanov's Political Economics, which had already been translated into Yiddish.

Apart from these sessions, on every Saturday afternoon, the various Bund supporters were called from their homes by means of [pre-arranged] signals and code words. One at a time, they would go off to the Visoka-Gur Forest which was about 3km from town. There, larger meetings and discussion [groups] took place, which continued until nightfall came. Then one would silently part from one another, and quietly return to our respective homes. People at the fringe [of this activity] were unaware of these clandestine gatherings for quite some time.

The conspiracy was a strict one. A newly proposed member underwent and extensive investigation, and was observed for a significant amount of time, before the committee designated him as a full-fledged member. Special men and women took care of orienting and assuring the adherence of new recruits to the tenets of the group, and controlling them. After the decision to admit a new prospect, that individual was sworn in with an oath to be intensely conspiratorial, committed and decent, also in their personal conduct and demeanor. Drunkenness, card-playing – this was strongly prohibited to the membership.

The general ‘Vilna Group’ used to return to Vilna after the holidays, in order to continue their studies and to complete their development in socialist spirit. During all this time, they maintained a clandestine contact with their comrades who remained back home in town, sending them periodically, by all sorts of means, secret illegal literature and proclamations. From the center in Vilna, various reference materials were also sent to the clandestine meetings in the forest. The larger part of this entire effort was aimed at raising the spiritual and cultural level of the masses that had been oppressed for ages, and to rectify their condition with respect to their human rights.

In the course of a couple of years, a library was created in our small town of Dereczin, which housed over a thousand books in the Yiddish language, and also a certain number of Russian books, for the few Christians and those townsfolk who were drawn to the Bundist circles. In order to promote general socialist objects, it was necessary to maintain contact with the town, and train people who would be able to act as membership recruiters, a circumstance that was to prove quite useful later. Among the comrades, were two talented non-Jewish shoemakers, Juzik and Stepan, who taught themselves to read and speak Yiddish.

I am reminded of an interesting episode, that took place in those years, involving those two Christian shoemakers. One night, a couple of professional thieves in Dereczin broke into their shoemaker's shop and proceeded to rob them of all their possessions. The Bund organization reacted swiftly and sharply. Saturday afternoon, when the thieves appeared in the Ager-Sod park, at a pre-arranged signal, they were surrounded by a group of young people armed with revolvers. The thieves were soundly thrashed, and compelled to return their loot. At an order from the Bund, they were driven out of town for a long time.

The Bund organization developed systematically, and in time numbered over one hundred comrades. The number of readers, and volumes available, also grew at the library. The local committee stayed in continuous contact with the founding group, which was studying in Vilna and Bialystock. A clandestine correspondence was carried out between Dereczin and the aforementioned two cities. The messages were sent, that is to say, from one private person to a second individual, since friends were in the habit for sending each other letters regarding personal matters, but between the lines, it was usual to write about organizational issues, utilizing a goose feather dipped in lemon juice. The secret writing became legible only when the letter was held up to a kerosene lamp. For reasons of security, in order that the confidential deliberations of the organization not fall into the hands of the Czarist police, we would constantly be looking for all manner of alternatives [to communicate]. So it was, that we, the

[Page 63]

intelligentsia, became compelled to give lectures, and to read from illegal publications, to gatherings of young workers. The gatherings used to assemble in upper stories of buildings, always in the evening hours. In order to disguise the true purpose of the meeting, one male and female member were outfitted as a bride and groom, with bottles of whiskey on the table along with food. In the event of a surprise visit from the police, the pamphlets were immediately stuffed out of sight, and the assembled young people began to “carry on the Simkha,” whether it was an engagement or a wedding. You should understand that we would always honor the visiting police with a couple of drinks, and with that, get rid of them.

It is necessary to remember, that in those years, all the party members were pure idealists, and no ambitious plans were either thought of, or made, by the rank and file membership. The one career that awaited every one of them was – exile to Siberia. Because of the intensity of their conspiracy, members were carefully chosen, and well-controlled, and it was seldom that there was an instance of betrayal, or being turned over to the authorities. Socialism at that time, was accepted as an ethically pure ideal, that demanded loyalty and decency from its adherents. Nobody in those years could imagine, that in the end, these ideals would be crippled by a socialist leadership in socialist country, and to debase the worth of an individual human being, and inaugurate such terrifying deeds against those who offered their lives for [the advancement of] socialism in Russia.

This is how the endeavor proceeded for a number of years. The original founders, who would return at least annually from Vilna or Bialystock to visit their parents, continuously managed the intellectual work, and occupied themselves with developing the knowledge and awareness of the working masses. During those years, they were the ones responsible for maintaining the revolutionary spirit among the circles of the poor, downtrodden and oppressed.

In the years of 1904 and 1905, the general revolutionary movement in greater Russia grew stronger, and from the other side, the reaction of the Czarist regime became intensified. The black-mood, intransigent rulers decided to drown this revolution in rivers of Jewish blood, and they began to organize an array of terrifying pogroms in various sections of the country, pointing to the Jews, and accusing them of being those principally responsible for the revolutionary movement.

The socialist parties on the Jewish side, among them the Bund, decided to establish self-defense groups in all of the cities and towns of the Jewish Pale, which were known by the familiar Russian name, Самоовороно (Samo-Oronova). A group of this sort, and quite a strong one, was founded by the Bund in Dereczin. From various sources, it was possible to assemble through purchased, about forty revolvers and about a hundred metal nagaikas.^[4]

It is worthwhile and interesting to tell how the money was come by, in order to purchase the necessary arms for the Dereczin self-defense group. The other factions, such as the anarchists and revolutionary socialists, used to carry out various expropriations, [even] attacking governmental financial institutions, and even private wealthy people, in order to generate the funding for their undertakings. The Bund, as is well-known, was in principle opposed to expropriation, and only seldom engaged in assaulting government financial institutions.

And so it came to pass, that once in 1904, it was agreed with the Slonim chapter of the Bund, to carry out an assault on the Dereczin government post office. From time to time, large sums of money would be kept in the safe there, amounts even up to 100 thousand rubles. The postmaster was at that time a Russian from Kiev, by the name of Batrokov, a virulent anti-Semite, and also understand, a big-time card player, a drunkard, and always short of money.^[5]

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