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Shortly after the war, in 1945, when I returned to Bialystok, the full horror of our hometown's destruction during the Hitler era struck me with unbearable clarity. Everything from those years of war was still so present to me then, as if it had happened only yesterday. At that time, one could clearly see the dreadful traces of the years-long war in Bialystok. I could still see before me all the remnants of our hometown, once so dear and precious to all of us.

But now, when I visited Bialystok again at the end of 1977, I found almost nothing of what had once made up our unforgettable Jewish Bialystok. All of it had been erased, nothing is recognizable anymore. Nothing remains…

I was in Poland as a member of the delegation from the Federation of Polish Jews, traveling at the invitation of the Polish government. The purpose of our visit was to meet with several representatives of the Polish authorities and to negotiate in connection with a memorandum that the Federation of Polish Jews had submitted to the government in Warsaw two years earlier.

Our delegation included:

Rabbi Dr. Aleksander Shindler, chairman; Shloyme Ben-Yisroel and Eli Zborovski, vice-chairmen; Ben Gray from Los Angeles; Yekhiel Dobekirer, secretary; Kalman Sultanik; and myself, serving as treasurer.

Due to the simultaneous arrival of Prime Minister Begin in America, Rabbi Shindler was unable to travel to Poland, as his presence in Washington was required.

During our stay in Warsaw, our delegation held numerous meetings and discussions with representatives of various Polish ministries.

Among other points, our delegation presented the following requests to the Polish government:

That the government in Warsaw allocate an appropriate sum from the remaining Jewish assets in Poland, to establish a financial fund dedicated to preserving the spiritual heritage of Polish Jewry. That the Polish government grant access to and permission to use the historical documents of Polish Jewry. That Poland release all sacred Jewish objects scattered throughout the country.

That proper gravestones be erected at the mass graves in Poland, where the mortal remains of Jews murdered by the Nazis lie. And that Poland resume the payment of “pensions” (Social Security) to those Jews who left the country and were forced to renounce their citizenship.

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The building of Citron's Bes-Hamedresh [house of study] in Bialystok, where the Polish Association of Culture and Arts is located.

In Treblinka, I had a particularly moving experience. On a vast field where the crematoria and gas chambers once stood, 800 large and small stones have now been erected, each bearing the name of a Jewish community in Poland that was destroyed.

There, among the countless stones, I came upon a large one engraved with the name Bialystok. I stood before it with a heavy heart and recited a silent Kaddish…

As soon as I arrived in Warsaw with the delegation, I immediately began preparing for the journey to Bialystok. We arrived in Warsaw on Monday and had a meeting scheduled with representatives of the Polish government for Wednesday. I decided to travel to Bialystok on Tuesday morning, the day after my arrival in Warsaw.

Dr. Shimen Datner, who accompanied me to Bialystok, had already learned of my trip to Poland beforehand. I rented a private car, and we set out on Tuesday morning.

But I had not expected that such a bitter experience would await me.

The journey from Warsaw to Bialystok by taksovka [taxi] takes only about two and a half hours. But to me, it felt like an eternity–as if it would never end. All along the way, from Warsaw to Bialystok, towns passed by with names familiar to all of us. Once, they were home to predominantly Jewish communities, where Jewish life thrived and was visible everywhere. But today? Not even a trace remains.

As I drove along the road and looked out through the car window, I saw–before my inner eye–the once vibrant Jewish Lomzha, Grajewo, Botski, Wysokie Mazowieckie, Bielsk, and other towns.

As we know, the total population of Bialystok before the war was around 90,000. Among them were approximately 60,000 Jews. Today, Bialystok is much larger than it once was–newly built up and expanded in all directions. The total population now exceeds 200,000. Yet there are only nine Jews left. They live in different parts of the city and know little of one another.

When I later met some of them, I learned that they are all elderly and live on state pensions. Because of their loneliness and the fact that they lost their loved ones during the time of Hitler, they began forming relationships with women–most of them non-Jewish.

I asked them why they had remained in Bialystok, what their reason was. Their answer was that, after their wartime experiences, they were isolated, broken, and ill. It was too difficult for them to start over, to travel and search for new places to live. And so, they stayed in Bialystok.

The entrance to the Jewish cemetery of Bagnowka in Bialystok. The wall that had surrounded the cemetery before the Second World War had been torn apart. From right to left standing: Isak Ribalovski, Shiye Bartnovski, and Dr. Shimen Datner The photo was edited by Dr. Tomasz Wisniewski, Bialystok, “The Place.”

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The names of the nine Jews I met in Bialystok are:

Shiye Bartnovski, Avraham Shidranski, L. M. Pener, Leyb Byelski, Hershel Jalovski (all from Bialystok), Kalman Kanya (from Yashinovke), Yankel Khashkes (from Siemiatycze), Shloyme Pakhter (Brjansk), and Shimen Zabludovski (Siemiatycze).

I would like to remind you that the Bialystoker Center in New York remains in regular contact with the group of Jews in Bialystok and continues to send systematic aid. This is made possible thanks to a special fund established several years ago by our esteemed landsman Jerry Mink. Mr. Mink founded the foundation following his return from a visit to Bialystok.

During my stay in Bialystok, I had a special connection with Shiye Bartnovski. He spent the entire day with me and Dr. Datner, guiding us to various places.

When traveling from Warsaw on the highway toward Bialystok, one can still see the once-familiar inscriptions of the Khoroshtsh and Nowashalki [Choroszcz and Nowosiółki] cottages. As is known, they were formerly located outside the city. But now, with Bialystok expanded and enlarged, the city already begins at Khoroshtsh and Nowashalki.

From there, we took a taxi to the train station, where the trains arrive and depart. And from the station, we continued into the city. When we reached Lipowa Street, where the area of the kościół [Polish Catholic church] begins, I did not recognize anything. I could hardly believe my eyes–how could this be! Everything had been rebuilt and changed; everything looked different, like newly arranged decorations on a theater stage.

Nothing remains of the former Jewish life.

From Lipowa Street, we drove to the [Basilica] Świętego Rocha, on the other side of the railway tracks, where people used to cross the bridge^[3]. The Bialystoker landsleit surely remember that we–the Ribalovski family–had our hall and restaurant there, where Jewish weddings were held. And in the surrounding streets and alleys, it was always full of Jews, and a vibrant, warm Jewish life flourished. But today, there is no trace of Jewish life to be seen.

As if such a thing had never been there at all…

We drove to Zhabye Street, to the Jewish cemetery, which had also been included within the Nazi-established ghetto. But here too, I was met with a painful experience. Most of the graves of the former, departed Jews had been destroyed. Most of the gravestones had been demolished and had disappeared.

As I learned, the “Polyakn” [non-Jewish Poles] took the Jewish gravestones and used them to build their houses. Jewish gravestones, bearing sacred Jewish names, were even used as steps at house entrances–where people wipe the dirt from their feet…

The small memorial at the end of Zhabye Street, erected after the large monument above the mass grave in memory of the Jewish martyrs of Bialystok was knocked down.

But now, this sacred memorial no longer stands in the Zhabye cemetery. It has vanished, along with countless other Jewish gravestones. Today, a park with tree-lined paths has been created in its place.

At the end of Zhabye Street, there is only a commemorative plaque with a Polish inscription that speaks of the annihilation of the Jews in Bialystok. I was told that in summer, flowers can be seen there. I asked Bartnovski, who lives in the area, to care for the site during the warmer months and keep it clean. He promised me he would.

The old Jewish cemetery in Bagnowka is completely destroyed - nothing is recognizable anymore. Here too, the gravestones were looted; the Poles used them to build their houses. There is no trace left to be seen.

Bialystoker landsleit still remember well the tall black monument that stood for many years in the Jewish cemetery in Bagnowka. It marked the mass grave of the Jews murdered during the great pogrom in Bialystok in the summer of 1906.

It is known that more than a hundred Jews were killed at that time, and many others were wounded. But today, the great monument commemorating the Jews murdered in 1906 no longer stands there.

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The Poles also destroyed and plundered it in the postwar years. Yes, it is a tragic reality–and if one did not see it with their own eyes, it would be hard to believe that this is truly how things are there…

When we stood in the cemetery in Bagnowka and saw it all, we were filled with sorrow and pain. Dr. Shimen Datner recited the sacred prayer El Molei Rakhamim [Merciful One who dwells above] at the remaining foundation of the former monument.

In the cemetery, where once Jewish graves with headstones stood, new houses have already been built. Poles live there now–people leading normal, content lives–right on the ground where Jewish graves once were.

When you see all this up close, it is impossible to comprehend how such a thing can be. And yet, this is how it is–it is a sorrowful reality.

The remaining foundation of the memorial to the victims of the 1906 Bialystok pogrom, at Bagnowka Jewish Cemetery.

I walked through Bialystok, searching, hoping to find some sign of the Jewish life that once was - but there is almost nothing left. And what little still remains brings deep pain. I searched the entire area, I reflected, and kept asking myself again and again:

where are the former Jewish homes, with all their joys and sorrows? Where have the countless Jewish textile factories gone, the many organizations and institutions? Where are the Jewish newspapers, the theaters, the schools and sports clubs, the associations and so much more? I wanted to cry out and ask aloud: how can it be that all of this has vanished?!

I felt it deeply - standing in Bialystok, where nearly sixty thousand Jews once lived - I was a lonely, grieving orphan.

As we approached the square where, before the war, the Groyse Shul [Wielka Synagogue] had stood, I once again had a bitter experience. One should remember that on Friday, June 27, 1941- the 3^rd of Tammuz, 5701- the Nazi murderers entered Bialystok and drove two thousand Jewish men, women, and children into the Groyse Shul. These unfortunate Jews were, in fact, burned alive that very same day by the Nazis - may their name be erased - along with the city's renowned sacred site.

After the war, the remaining iron, rubble, and remnants of the synagogue were gathered and laid in one place. It resembled a gravestone for the former Groyse Shul.

But when I visited Bialystok now, I saw that everything had vanished. The Poles had cleared it away and destroyed it. On that spot, now unrecognizable, new residential buildings have been constructed. On one of the buildings, there is a small inscription stating that the Groyse Shul once stood here.

When you stand there, you feel as if you are in a completely different world - as if there had never been Jews or Jewish life there at all.

The Jews of Bialystok also remember well the large bes-hamedresh on Nayvelt, built by the well-known Jewish textile manufacturer Sh. Citrin. It had long been a familiar [and cherished] place for the Jews of Bialystok. Even after the Second World War, when the last Jews who had survived Hitler returned to Bialystok, people gathered once again in Citrin's great bes-hamedresh. Remarkably, the building has remained completely intact, just as it was before the war. Today, however, the former bes-hamedresh of Citrin houses the Polish Association for Culture and Arts.

The former Gumyener [Gumienna] Street now bears the name of the heroic Jewish anti-Nazi fighter Yitzkhok Malmed. As is well known, Malmed caused a Nazi murderer to lose his sight. For this, the Nazi killers hanged him on Gumyener Street - which today bears the name of this great Jewish hero. On one of the buildings along this street, a small memorial plaque tells the story of Malmed's courageous act and marks the street that now honors his name.

I still feel the deeply moving experience I had as we approached the building on Shyenkevitsha [Sienkiewicza] Street, where the Hebrew Gymnasium once stood.

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The building remained untouched, just as it had been. When I arrived there with Dr. Shimen Datner, he began to cry and collapsed. You should know that Dr. Datner had been a teacher at the Hebrew Gymnasium for over fifteen years. I too wept, together with Dr. Datner…

The building now houses a hospital. Incidentally, the former large Jewish hospital on Warszawska Street is now also a general hospital.

When our delegation of Polish Jews visited the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Warsaw, we spoke with government representatives about the neglected and destroyed Jewish cemeteries across the country. We were promised that some of these abandoned Jewish cemeteries would be preserved as unique landmarks. At the same time, the Ministry assured me - at my request - that the Jewish cemetery in Bagnowka would be among them.

When I left Bialystok, my eyes were filled with tears and my heart was heavy. This feeling will likely stay with me until the end of my life. As the taxi carrying Dr. Simon Datner and myself drove away – after we had said goodbye to Shiye Bartnovski – I turned my head and cast one final glance at my former home, our beloved home shared by all of us: at our unforgettable, warm-hearted Bialystok, where we spent our childhood and youth. And where all our loved ones were murdered – the once-vibrant, precious Jews of Bialystok…

The moment I departed Bialystok, I felt that there was no longer a Jewish Bialystok there. The Jewish Bialystok now lives on in our great Bialystoker Center in New York, where we continue to live and breathe with the memory of the former Jewish Bialystok.

This is true as well for Bialystoker Jews all over the world, wherever the activities of our landsleit are carried out.

Let us all, together - with love and loyalty - preserve in unity and forever the great legacy left to us by the holy martyrs, the Bialystoker Jews who were murdered by the Nazis.

Translator's notes:

1. Contents in [ ] are from the translator. Contents in ( ) are from the author. Return
2. I would like to note that a chapter with similar content–apparently by the same author–appears on page 143 of the English section of this Yizkor book, under the title “My visit to Bialystok in 1977.” However, this is a separate translation and a significant abridgement of the original text, prepared by Rabbi Lowell S. Kronick, as indicated on pages IV–V. This version also contains several deviations from the original. Return
3. A horse-drawn tram crosses the bridge. Dr. Tomasz Wisniewski, founder of the Jewish Museum in Bialystok, The Place, kindly sent me this photo from his archive for use. Return

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