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May my tongue cleave to my palate if I would forget you! And how could one forget all our most sacred and dearest? How could one forget the place and the environs, the home and the friends, where and with whom we felt like contemporary people and worthy Jews.

It appears before my eyes, the shtetl Rozhan and its surroundings, the marvelous nature, the hills, the Narew River, the forest, the demon bridge and all the gruesome tales about it. And in it and around it all the masses of Jews, Jews with sadness in their eyes, with fear for the morrow and with hearts full of hope that for us too, for the Jewish people, there would someday be joy, that better times would yet come.

How much strength, how much bravery, lay inside each one of them – and in all of us – to live through the hostility and hatred from the surrounding environs and from their authority. Who can say that our brothers went submissively to the slaughter, as they try to tell the story. How much strength, how much heroism was displayed by our Rozhaner Jews who more than once fended off antisemitic attacks and pogroms.

Rozhan was a shtetl with teachers, merchants and proprietors, of workers, unions, libraries, evening courses, lectures, sports clubs, drama circles and many others.

A Shabes in the shtetl – Jews in their silk kapotes, Jews in their Shabes'dik clothing going to the bes-medresh; youths and children going to their societies; and it all had one aspiration, one hope, one will – to live as Jews. Those innocent martyrs, those who were murdered in so many horrifying deaths – for what? For what? Only because they were Jews!

The Hitlerists and their helpers wanted to erase from the world and from History one of the oldest peoples. And the leaders of the whole world looked on and were silent. How indeed can we forget them? How could we forget? When we, on the other hand, protest and demand that the Nazi murderers not be pardoned, those who go around happy and free in both sides of Germany and in Austria. We will shout and call out to the last bit

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of conscience in the world: Do not allow the court to pardon the Nazis and to forget their hideous crimes!

Medinat Yisroel that arose after the murder of the Six Million martyrs, must and will absorb their holy memory into itself. Many of them could have been with us today and enlarge the settlement, increase our strength and make our land fruitful.

Let us remember them, and in thinking swear not to forget the immense crimes of the Nazi bands and their helpers! Do everything so that our Land will become stronger, because a Jewish State is the only guarantee that such misfortune can never be repeated!

Rozhan – a small shtetl in Poland, where we were born and set our first steps on God's earth. Nothing extraordinary ever happened in Rozhan, not among the Jews and not among the Polacks. No famous figures were produced in Rozhan. Not even any military battles of historical significance took place in Rozhan, as in, for example, nearby Ostrolenke or Pultusk. The shtetl was sleepy, as forgotten, although it lay on the country road between Bialystok and Warsaw. So then why write about Rozhan? Only in order to give honor to the innocent murdered Jews, our relatives and friends of our youth, those with whom we sat on the same bench in kheyder or the same bench in shul. And one must begin with the childhood years.

They kheyder years. In memory remains etched a feeling of fear: fear of the goyish dog that runs after you and wants to bite you; fear of the Polish young hooligan who necessarily needs to demonstrate his “bravery”

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upon the body of a five- or six-year-old Jewish boy; also fear of the melamed teacher is baked into the memory.

One goes to school in the morning; in kheyder one goes until late afternoon or even into night. The melamedim – old Jews with long or short beards, without a spark of understanding of pedagogies or child psychology, with medieval methods for “very young males” as Max Nordeau called the youths of the Jewish Exile. But they had to teach, because they instinctly understood that only with that can one excel. Learn, learn, learn! Not wasting any time for play, for swimming in the Narew in summer or skating in winter. The skis we made from a piece of wood with an iron wire stretched along the length of the wood. Primitive – but in those years they served the purpose. Physical exercises to grow up healthy, that was strange thinking. Learning in order to become a rabbi or a doctor – that was the dream of the Jewish mother.

Unfortunately, there was no yeshive or gimnazie in Rozhan. The bar-mitsve boys traveled to yeshives in other towns, and there they “ate days” and tutored others. It was very rare to study in a gimnazie or a seminar. The overwhelming majority of Rozhan youths learned trades, craftsmanship. But I can give witness that the thirst for learning was very strong. They always wanted to know what was going on in the wider world. One read books and dreamed dreams. When I came home for vacations, some of them wanted to talk about literature, and literally manifested information in the work of the current popular writers such as Romen Rolan, Andrei Zshhid, Sholokhov and, of course, the Russian classics.

The youths of my generation found an ersatz school in the Zionist and non-Zionist movements. There they learned the history of our folk, learned to understand the abnormal Jewish-Polish life. They marched and sang songs of awakening, songs of love and longing for Zion. They read about a struggle for Jewishness and about a Jewish settlement in the Land of Yisroel based on just socialist sources. Others were captivated by the Bundist or Communist thought. Rozhan was a miniature reflection of the huge ebullience all over Jewish Poland.

The older generation also showed interest in the events of the times. There were hardly any Polish newspapers to read. But every weekday in the morning people would walk to Frizant's and wait impatiently for the “Haynt”, “Moment” or “Folks-tsaytung”, and analyze them on the spot to decide whether the news was good for Jews or bad for Jews.

Mostly the reports were unfavorable. Those were bad times for the Polish Jew. The antisemitism was rampant. The boycott against the Jewish shopkeepers or craftsmen was grim. The economic situation was

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a bitter one. Among other nations of the world such a situation would likely lead to a revolt. The Jews however were in Exile and had no unity among them. Rebellious thoughts multiplied, but the reality of the times took over and conquered the feel for freedom. The urge to emigrate was strong. But Jews did not have enough money, and, perhaps, not enough knowledge about what was going on in the wider world. Of course, the emigration politics of the pre-war government was also a great interference, and the position of the English administration in Erets Yisroel on immigration is very well known.

In today's times when every home has a radio, and almost every house has a television set, it is worth mentioning that in Rozhan in the Jewish houses up to the outbreak of the war, there were few radios. I remember precisely that only in 1932 was the first time I heard the voice of a radio. That was at Frenkl the “bicycle-maker's” house. He allowed me to put on the headphones and in a “mystical” manner I heard Yehude Meniuin play. Meanwhile others waited impatiently for their turn to put on the headphones.

To write about those days and not to mention the yon-teyvim would literally be a crime. But the two days that have left the strongest impressions are Yon-kiper and Simkhes Teyre. What a contrast! Yon-kiper – serious, somber, the day the world is judged. Simkhes-teyre – happy, smiling, almost carefree.

Yon-kiper at night is the image of the burning light in the study-house, the image of Jews wrapped in [long white] kitln and taleysim, reciting the prayers with intention. Yon-kiper is hearing weeping that carries from the women's shul, especially during the u'natana-tokef. And who could express the mood of Yon-kiper evening, when Jews are going back home with the not-burned-out candle in the study-house or in the hasidic prayer-rooms – burning candles in the surrounding darkness!

Simkhes Teyre was the opposite. Simkhes Teyre was the hasid with a soldier's cap on his head, dancing and singing. It was the day when the Jew also took a drink of whisky and was often a bit tipsy. That was the day when he threw off the yoke of livelihood, forgot the whip of obligation, and was happy that he was a Jew.

All this came to an end on 1 September 1939. The war broke out. The German airplanes appeared all over the skies. We were able to carry wet handkerchiefs to protect against the poison gases. A well-known major helped my mother to flee to the other side of the Narew River, because on

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that side of the river the Polish Army was putting up a strong resistance. The concept that the Polish officers had about conducting a war! What a joke!

In all my years growing up in Poland and going to Polish schools I rarely had a positive approach to the Polish people. If I had learned something and appreciated from Polish literature, it was the idea of Wollenrodism.^[1] I saw around me a raging antisemitism and also felt it on my own shoulders. More than once I was attacked. Each time I responded and sometimes lost the battle.

Because I did not take to heart Mickievicius' description of an Exile-type Yenkl, because I defended the Jewish right and had the nerve to doubt the truth of my history professors' interpretations regarding the role of the Jews in Polish history, I bought the “slate” of the Communist. What an irony! I, a student of Jabotinski, a communist of all things! Even Professor Rovkovski, the deputy to the Polish Parliament, the non-provincial, could not understand the new type of Jewish youth in Poland. Just a few weeks after the outbreak of the war the position regarding Poland had changed: in the end, the German Nazi was a greater enemy than the Polish hooligan. But even that romance came quickly to an end.

When we fled to Brisk and saw how the remnants of the Polish Army treated the Jews brutally, blaming them for helping the Red Army, I was outraged that the enmity of the Polack for the Jews was not reduced. The land of the Liach, as some Polish writers used to call their people, was for Jews a bitter place of refuge.

The end of Rozhan began on Shabes in the morning, the 2^nd of September 1939. Some with baby carriages, some with wagons and horses, some with not more than a pack on their backs, Rozhan Jews set out toward Goworowo. This was the beginning of a long path of wandering, the beginning of the life of a refugee. Over fields and through forests they ran, on unfamiliar roads they dragged themselves, in order to flee further from the Nazi beasts. And those who were not running, were sadly murdered in the ghettos or crematoria.

I am often asked if only the brave survived. My answer was usually a categorical “No!” Each of the survivors looked death in the eyes more than once. He remained alive only by chance, simply a miracle.

The martyrs were so brave, intelligent and clever to me – but they unfortunately did not have any luck. The German persecutor succeeded in laying his paws on them.

May this yisker-bukh be a monument for all the martyrs of our shtetl.

Translator's footnote:

1. The cautionary protagonist in one of Adam Mickievicius' novels. Return

[Pages 131-133]

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The Jews in Rozhan – who numbered over three thousand souls before their murder – had, like all the Jews in the Polish shtetlekh, traded and worked in order to earn a livelihood. It was destined, however, that Rozhan would be destroyed two times, in both World Wars. That brought about the development of stronger brotherhood and gave Rozhan a special character.

When Rozhan went up in flames in 1914 – we still remember it – the Jews built it back when they returned home. The first to return quickly organized a common coexistence and temporary aid institutions. Years later people were still talking about how Jews had helped one another, raising the fallen, feeding the hungry, and the town was rebuilt from the ruins.

In 1920 we had victims fall in the battle between the Bolsheviks and the Poles. The Russian bombs used to bombard the military barracks and war objectives fell on the Jewish population, and Rozhan paid dearly in the after-war. Later the Poles took revenge on some Jews in order to satisfy their thirst for revenge. All that laid an obligation on the survivors, and Rozhan stood up to the trial.

There were merchants in the town, a few rich people, a lot of poor people who were continually worried about how to put two zlotych together to pay a note, to buy merchandise, and also where to borrow a few groshen for Shabes. There were artisans, brokers and ordinary dealers, and also official paupers, whom Jews in Rozhan took care of and remunerated, as they were fallen who needed help and one must care for them.

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A group of young people after the First World War

We had a large, fine shul and other prayer houses and hasidic prayer rooms. Even in the dark one could see Jews walking or running in our lanes with taleysim under their arms, to pray at the first minyen. Yeshive youths sat in the shul and studied, and heartfelt melodies carried out onto Shul Street. Day and night, all year long, Jews served God and so deepened the Jewish sense of destiny.

The shul was burned in the First World War, and the post-war generation was hard-put to build back what previous generations had built over many years and established. Rozhan Jews in America supported them in order to rebuild the holy center of Rozhan Jewry. Also, the repair of our shul with community energy and with brotherliness nourished our hearts with warmth for years.

The cultural and political-social sense in Rozhan was an action in unity as well. There were movements, institutions, parties – Zionist, Mizrakhi, Agudas-Yisroel, Poaley-Tsion, Ha'shomer ha'tsair, He'khaluts, BETAR and others. They conducted community activities with insight and culture. There were religious schools, libraries, evening courses, prayer rooms, minyonim, drama circles, sport clubs, reading rooms, free lodging for the poor, hospitality houses, a fund for poor brides, and others. When I begin to mention all that was done in our little town, I stand and declare: Heavens, was all that done in our little Rozhan?!

I have mixed it all up together. I cannot differentiate among the various

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characters of each institute and each society. I won't be able to figure it out. I will simply give a true, accurate picture of the tremendous activity in our shtetl. Where did anyone get so much energy to dedicate to the Jewish community? Where did we get so many activists, leaders of public affairs in good faith that they would expend their spare time and energy, their whole lives, for so many community affairs?

Now I come to the secret of our particularity. Rozhan had devoted Jews, dear lovers of Yisroel, extraordinary figures – Jews who bore the Jewish pain and put their entire life-interests into the life of the community with its all its needs and problems. Rozhan also had ardent and energetic youth who in the evenings, day in and day out, filled the local political party venues, culture institutes and youth clubs, and still found time to take part in libraries, play in the theater, sponsor chess evenings and Friday evening lectures, dances, singing and youth fliers. Hard to comprehend how the youth could participate in so many undertakings, like selling shekels, agitating, running election activities, reading books, acting in the theater and so on.

And we should not forget that Rozhan was a town of labor and artisanry, good tradesmen, folksy Jews who were full of joy for creativity and love for their trade. When I wake up in the middle of the night and ask myself, in what did Rozhan excel above all else, I must say I do not have to think very much: Rozhan's craftsmen! The gentile region around us spoke about Rozhan as the town that could do everything, that you could always rely on their artisans.

And our artisans did not only excel from the standpoint of their trade. They served as an example for society. People spoke of their sincerity, their loyalty to one another, their activity in all areas. And after a hard day's laboring they would go the bes-medresh and take pleasure in reciting a few psalms, hearing a lecture on Mishnayos, and delight in a little Ayn Yankev.

Now, Rozhan's weddings! How could you forget the weddings among us! With invited and un-invited guests. A wedding in Rozhan was everyone's wedding. The town shared the event together. Musicians played, the in-laws were merry, young people danced, children ran back and forth between the groom and the bride. In the streets were the sounds of music and commotion. The groom and bride were led through the streets so that everyone would see, everyone would know, that it is a joy for Jews that a couple was joining, Jews would multiply and not fade away! Jews placed candles or kerosene lamps in all the windows. Flames of joy illumined the darkness. We rejoiced because we wanted to forget, and there was much to forget about. But we also consciously rejoiced with them, that a Jewish daughter was done right by, that parents had lost a burden, that there was happiness in the shtetl.

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At the end of the Second World War, when I returned back from the gehenem with other surviving Jews and came to see how our town Rozhan looked, I thought I would pass out. The lively little town Rozhan looked like a cemetery. Everything was burned, it was dark all around, deaf-quiet and dead.

The Polish neighbors, our enemies, rejoiced at our tragedy and tried to beat up these few remaining surviving Jews. (Then there was the pogrom in Kelts [Kielce]). They looked at us as if at an error in the world, that Hitler had made, that he had not us eradicated us down to the ground.

I left Rozhan forever.

Blessed may be the hands that have undertaken the huge and difficult task of publishing a book in memory of Rozhan.

The Epic Poem of Rozhan

Rozhan after sunset was the authentic Rozhan. In that slice of time there was a quality that drew you to her and you cannot forget it. Between minkhe and mayriv was her “epic”, in which she was different from her surroundings, vivid, and endlessly deep.

Rozhan was everywhere full of Jews, especially in the study-house. Jews were together in order to forget what united them. In those hours they studied in the old holy books and joined with their great intellectual past. They studied khumesh, mishnayos, Talmud, Khay Adom, Ayn Yankev. And they studied alone or with the help of the learned men of their “group”, from a rebi, a teacher, a commentator. The point – not to stop learning, learning, learning!

In these hours there came together orators, fund collectors, sermonizers, emissaries from the yeshives in

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Lomzhe, in Telz and others. Here one could see the everyday Jews become suddenly others, become changed. Here they forgot their penny-livelihoods and occupied themselves with heaven and visions. And now and then they spared a little time for human issues and problems of the mundane world.

There was a lovely hospitality house in town. A woman, an ordinary seamstress, had donated a house on a nice site in the center of the town. Kind Jews organized themselves as the “society for the guest house” and dedicated their time to the “guests”, meaning the paupers and those who wandered from shtetl to shtetl, the lost of the eternal people. There they were cared for, had a clean bed, a warm house, a light ceiling over their heads. The city itself had added that it should be a special house for cooking warm meals for Jews and the impoverished, for a householder who had lost his way of making a living. They also organized a house for washing, with an attendant to help the poor folk orient themselves in the customs of the shtetl. The poor used to say that here in little Rozhan they could ease their bones more than in the big cities.

And Rozhan had an interest-free loan society by the group “support the fallen”, a group that gathered money to help small merchants and poor artisans stay on their feet and not go under, and allow them to remain Jews among Jews. They received the loans with no interest and at small, easy pay-back rates, and with respect, all according to the Jewish standard: mercy, humility, loving kindness.

There was no lack of problems. Rozhan had military barracks around it and Jewish soldiers would linger in the town. Rozhan concerned itself that they be among Jews, rest from the antisemitism of their brothers-at-arms, or even a warm Jewish meal after weeks of avoiding [treyf] and being hungry. I recall that on Jewish holidays there were more than a hundred Jewish soldiers in Rozhan, as well as our own poor folk. And they were all given the four cups of wine, matzo and a holiday lunch.

That was the collective content , and also the content of each Jew in Rozhan. They sent their children to other towns to learn the proper Jewishness. In the yeshives all around one could find Rozhan boys, who lived far from home and family and studied. Because Jews wanted to eternalize Jewishness in the coming generations.

A new, fresh energy arose gradually in the town – the enlightened youth. They created political parties, clubs, libraries, theater circles. The drive for a new direction pressed upon several areas and included various circles of the youth in Rozhan.

The Mizrakhi movement founded a kheyder in which Torah and Zion went together. Here boys and girls studied together, and many Jews looked askance at that. Old-fashioned elementary teachers helped to heat up the opposition of their sincere competition. But Rozhan's parents accepted it. Yekhezkel Gishem, a maskil [“enlightener”]

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and a Talmudist, and his son were quite devoted to the new institution and the kheyder stayed, literally the school with classes and a system, with consideration for the child, for his parent and tendencies.

The Polish regime created a Jewish government school with seven classes, with Jewish teachers and sabbath rest. Rozhan had begun to raise her own intelligentsia.

Rozhan was divided into two forces, the observant and the modern, and as the saying goes “God joins a good thought to an action”. Thus, Rozhan remained Jewish outwardly. Friday afternoon became Shabes in the shtetl. Then, a difficult problem arose: the youth did not understand that Shabes demanded the whole person. They would carry things in public, for anyone to see, and did not feel that doing so would render the pact of the Shabes. The town did not bicker with their children and put up an “intensive” eyruv border with a kind of boxes and wire the length of the streets, and on Shabes the wire was drawn out along it – that was that! The children would not blunder into desecrating the Shabes. True, the older ones did not rely on the eyruv. Does it bother me, then, that I'm not even carrying anything in the confines of Shabes? They would put on a talis under a coat, the red kerchief tied around their necks with the knot in the front, or stick it into their tightened belt, and were certain that they were not trampling the sabbath.

But it happened that, in the First World War, while the tsar's Cossacks were in Rozhan inspecting all the streets and lanes of the town, they saw the little boxes with the wires that made up the eyruv and it occurred to them that the Jews had a secret telegraph connection with the enemy, with Germany.

The Narew River was one of the first lines of the front for the Russians, and their defeats along the way from Warsaw had made them nervous. They wanted to throw off their own defeats and lay them on Jewish shoulders – the Jews were guilty: They had transmitted reports to the Germans.

The Jews did not have any permits for the eyruv and could not demonstrate their innocence. And especially since one of the boxes was nailed to the residence of the organist, the organ player for the church, and the goy poor thing did not know what to say about it. That cost enough fear, exploitation and money before the issue was resolved and the laws of the sabbath had been explained to the Cossack general once and for all.

The intervention of the Jewish social activists who came from Petersburg was also a big help in defending Jewish issues.

But that did not hold for long. Jews had to leave Rozhan. And not only because of the eyruv. The Russians had, before their retreat, burned the town.

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Merciful Jews in the surrounding towns helped their Rozhan Jewish brothers to salvage whatever was left and they took them in like caring brothers. But how much can one, as a refugee, drag with them to a stranger's place?

When the Jews turned back to Rozhan, they encountered Wilhelm's German regime, but they had nothing over their heads and not a piece of bread. Homeless, they stayed in pits in the ground or in cellars, freezing in the winter, until they revived the rebuilding of the shtetl.

The Germans introduced a coupon system and began to distribute bread and potatoes for coupons. The German government helped with cheap lumber for construction from the government's forests and Rozhan could begin to build itself back. Jews toiled for years before they could see their families in the houses. It took years. Indeed, at the same time, Jews were occupied building a holy space for prayer and Torah. Everyone gave money to support the study-house. Craftsmen lent their work. Shaul from Lodz did the artwork for the cupola. Zalman the carpenter made the round windows. I myself made the entrance doors. Others did the carpentry and fine art for the interior. The holy ark was made later, in the time of the Polish regime. It was completely beautiful, but for years we Rozhan Jews remembered with longing the old ark with the throne of Eliahu, which my father Yisroel Yehude and his brother Khayim Leyzer had made. In time, a Rozhan Jew came back from America, donated a sum of money and Leyzer Leybl Zshelazni's son carved a holy ark that was even more beautiful that my father's.

Rozhan was known for its good artisans and other workers in general, and specialists in all branches of work. Rozhan Jews clothed and shoed the town and the area around it. The goyim did not have their own specialists who could help out. Jews properly made the agrarian machines and tools for them, built their houses and covered their rooves. Without Jewish blacksmiths, carpenters and wheelwrights they were helpless. Rozhan's work had a good name in Warsaw, Lodz and other big cities. No work was too hard for our Jews.

There was no industry there. The only “factory” was Beker's brickyard and sawmill. There were also Jews among the mechanics and porters, grown-up Rozhan children.

The new leaders of all the new regimes found all their needed workers in the Rozhan Jewish community. I myself worked as a carpenter for the Germans (Wilhelm's Germans), and the Bolsheviks and the Polacks.

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Under the Germans the police inspector was Nakhum Rivke's son-in-law, and vice governor and chief administrator was Henikh Bukhner. He made everyone happy and relaxed with his good-natured smile, which was a family trademark among the Bukhners. I still remember his father, Meyshe Bukhner, and “grandma” Velke. When Meyshe prayed for Rosh-ha'shone and yon-kiper and his sons were his choir assisting him, people believed that it would be a good year for certain. Jews took much pleasure in his sweet praying.

In the women's shul there was a female singer, Rivke Avrom Leml's or Sore the Rebitsn. Both had sweet voices and knew the style and the prayers as well as the men. And when they would belt out the high “C” in their own women's choir it confused not only Satan but also all the fine Jews. But the oldest folks did not want to accept Reb Meyshe Bukhner's tune. They would clap on their prayerbooks and shout “Quiet!” until the women were silenced.

And when we're talking about prayer leaders and singers – they were in all the prayer rooms and minyonim. When Jews met for a happy occasion, there was no lack for someone to rejoice with a song, and a prayer, a wordless tune and a joke. Simkhe Hirsh the leather-cutter, our own “Hershele Ostropoler”, made even the sternest Jews laugh with his own jokes and witticisms.

There was no lack here either for bands for weddings. Yekusiel the wheelwright with his fiddle touched everyone's heartstrings with their pain and comfort, worry and courage. And his helper Vashileski the musician knew all the Jewish tunes and played with him. He even learned Yiddish well and spoke like a Jew. He spoke to his child in Yiddish and also could recite a blessing.

Interesting that Rozhan was also burned down by the Wilhelm's Germans, Jews again had no roof over their heads, and still they played theater in Rozhan. It is difficult to understand. From one side one could see that here Jews wandered around and searched for a corner to lay their heads, and there, the youth ran around in search of a venue for the rehearsals and performances. In the barracks near the bridge the Germans had made a bathhouse and quarantine area, and there they presented “Bar Kokhba” and other plays.

I left Rozhan in 1929. The last chapter of Rozhan is the same as the last chapter of all of Polish Jewry, but I cannot tell about that. My three sons fell as partisans.

Rozhan was mowed down. We remember her with pride. Our shtetl was a proletarian, industrious and politically intense town. What their death was like is hard to bring into thought. The heart could burst. They suffered, suffered terribly, for their Jewishness, and they have been given the name of martyrs, holy

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sacrifices. May my few memories, along with this whole yisker-bukh, be a matseyve, a gravestone for them, for our dear lost ones. May their souls be bound up in the bundle of life!

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