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Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
Soon after the liberation from the Hitlerite hell in Europe, when our brothers and sisters emerged from the suffering and torment inflicted by the Nazis, they – the she'erit ha pleyta [surviving remnant] – sought comfort, hope, help, warmth, and a sense of brotherly connection. All of this was for them a great healing after the terrible experiences they had endured, and after having escaped, almost miraculously, from annihilation at the hands of the Nazi murderers. The heavily afflicted Jews, our Białystoker landsleit, were in need of assistance – both material and moral – as they began to rebuild a new life after the great destruction.
The rescued Białystoker landsleit who had survived the Nazi Angel of Death, as well as those who returned from deportations to Soviet Russia, the partisans who emerged from the forests, and those who came back from hiding places, aimless flight, and long wanderings, immediately began seeking contact with their fellow Białystokers throughout the world. An important place for all of this, for those who had, as if by a miracle, emerged from the valley of tears, was the Białystoker Center in New York.
There, at 228 East Broadway in New York, in the neighborhood that was once the old Jewish Lower East Side of America, it became like a heart for the deeply afflicted and for those rescued from annihilation during the terrible Second World War.
There, in the Białystoker Center in New York, countless letters and inquiries began arriving immediately after the war from she'erit hapleitah Jews in various parts of Europe, as well as from Cyprus and the Land of Israel, where they had found themselves after escaping the Hitlerite flood. In these letters, rescued Jewish men and women from Białystok and the surrounding region asked for material and moral assistance. In such letters they also inquired about relatives and loved ones – their own family members and friends – who had been swept up in the storm of war in Europe, or who had lived earlier on American soil.
At that time, a truly immediate bond of brotherhood was formed between the landsleit who had survived Hitler's terror on the other side of the ocean and the great Białystoker Center in New York. Our tormented and long suffering brothers and sisters across the sea felt at once that they had not been abandoned to their fate. The Białystoker Center in New York then inscribed one of the most beautiful and uplifting chapters – a chapter that will forever remain a shining point in the history of the fraternal connection among the Białystoker landsleit.
It is, and will always remain, an elevated, deeply Jewish and deeply human chapter – one that draws its lineage from the heartfelt Jewish Białystok of old, our once tragically destroyed home during the horrific Nazi years.
The Białystoker Center in New York – thanks to the energetic efforts of the leaders and workers of the institution, and the devotion of the great number of Białystoker landsleit and friends – immediately developed an extensive program of assistance for our rescued landsleit across the sea. In those days, right after the war, the Białystoker Center organized a Relief Committee with the help of the Białystoker landsmanshaftn of New York, Newark, Paterson, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and other American cities, as well as from Montreal and Toronto in Canada.
All Białystoker landsleit – and also those from the surrounding region – who, after the liberation from the nightmare of war in Europe, had wandered and drifted to various places where they made their way to new homes, received help from the Relief Committee in New York. The same was true for rescued landsleit who rebuilt their new homes in certain European countries, as well as for those who were – on their way to the Land of Israel – in Cyprus. This assistance also reached, of course, the landsleit who were at that time temporarily in the DP camps in Germany, Austria, Italy, and other similar countries.
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An important part of the relief work carried out at that time by the Białystoker Center in New York was helping to settle the landsleit rescued from Hitler's terror, who had managed to make their way to the shores of America and Canada. Those Białystoker Jews who arrived and established themselves in various cities in the United States and Canada built new
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and satisfying lives, thanks to the fraternal assistance of the Białystoker Center in New York. A number of the rescued landsleit who settled in New York, as well as in other American cities, soon did indeed become active themselves – both within and on behalf of the Białystoker Center, and in support of the interests of Białystoker Jews more generally.
An important role in this far reaching relief effort – carried out by the Białystoker Center in New York with the help of the Białystoker organizations in various cities in the United States and Canada – was played by the Białystoker Shtime. The journal of the Białystoker Center in New York became a vital driving force in all of this. In the columns of the Białystoker Shtime, the relief work of the Center found expression. In those years, the Białystoker Shtime also served as an important bridge of connection between the Białystoker landsleit in America, the Land of Israel, Canada, and other countries, and the landsleit who had survived Hitler's terror and were temporarily in various places in Europe.
In those days, soon after the great destruction under Hitler, Białystoker landsleit everywhere – wherever it was at all possible – were constantly alert and active, ready to provide the necessary help for our rescued brothers and sisters who had endured suffering and torment under Hitler. Such wide ranging relief work was also carried out, soon after the war, by the Białystoker landsmanshaftn in Australia, Canada, the Land of Israel, Argentina, and other places.
All of this forms a splendid chapter of goodness, readiness to help, and brotherhood among Białystoker Jews.
Translator's notes:
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
Esteemed Białystoker landsleit of America!
We have once again found ourselves together – Jews from Białystok and the Białystoker region – this time in Cyprus, after our collective attempt to reach the Land of Israel.
Fighters from the Białystoker ghetto, partisans, people from concentration camps, soldiers of the Polish and Red Armies, those deported to the Urals and to Siberia – this is what we Białystokers were during the years of war.
Everywhere and always, wherever the storm of war had flung us, we sought one another out, drawing close even to those we had not known before the war, yet bound to them through shared memories of our birthplace, Białystok. United in the shared dream of the blessed moment when we would once again meet in Białystok, when we would find there our families and relatives, our friends and acquaintances, we did everything we could to help one another, to ease each other's heavy lives. But our dream remained only a dream!
Ruins and graves – that is what we found in Białystok when we arrived there, driven by longing and unextinguished love. Białystok has forever become for us only a name, symbolizing our past, our youth, and our once peaceful family life.
We left Białystok so that we would never return there again, for we understood – as did the entire she'erit hapleitah [surviving remnant] – that our only path was the path to the Land of Israel.
And so we have been wandering for nearly a year now – from one camp to another, from one country to the next, climbing over mountains, crossing borders, all for the single purpose of reaching our goal: to arrive in our homeland, the Land of Israel. On an old merchant ship, to which we gave the name Moledet (מולדת, Homeland), we drew close to the shores of the Land of Israel. But the ship was already in a bad state. Through a hole in the lower part of the ship, water had begun to pour in.
We also did not succeed in avoiding the English patrol. An English airplane spotted our ship, and soon British destroyers arrived, towing it to the port of Haifa. After a long and bitter resistance, we were forced – with violence, with beatings, with tear bombs – to transfer to another ship, which brought us to Cyprus. And now we are all in a concentration camp, behind two rows of barbed wire, under the unceasing watch of English soldiers. A prisoner's life lies before us here in Cyprus – a life without freedom.
Yet we are not crushed. We have not fallen into despair or hopelessness. Proud and courageous, we look toward the future. We have the strong belief that sooner or later – but in the end, certainly – we will reach the Land of Israel, in order to take part in the grand work of construction undertaken by the Jewish people.
In this difficult hour, as we stand at the beginning of a prisoner's thorny path, we Białystokers – once again bound together by a shared fate – have turned our eyes to you, the Białystoker Relief Committee. We have understood that you, more than others, are the ones who, though far from us, will surely do everything possible to strengthen us in our situation, to come to our aid both morally and materially.
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After the catastrophe with the ship, many of us arrived in Cyprus truly torn up and in rags. All of us with an insufficient amount of laundry and clothing; without money even to buy a stamp for a letter. The food in the concentration camp, and the number of cigarettes distributed, are far from adequate. We believe that you will be able to help us in every respect. It would also be a great joy for us Białystokers to receive issues of the Białystoker newspapers and journals that appear among you.
It is difficult for us to turn to you with a request for help. Yet we are convinced that your assistance to us will not be a charity for unfortunate brothers living in hardship and need. We believe that you see in us what we truly are: pioneers of the people, who have consciously chosen the hard and uncertain path of ha'apalah – of illegal immigration, of the struggle for the freedom and independence of the Jewish people.
With your help, you will be walking alongside us, giving us strength for the continuing struggle and fight.
It would also be important for us to know that you have understanding and sympathy not only for our physical suffering, but also for the idea we serve, and for the realization of which we are ready to make the greatest sacrifices. It is the Jewish Land of Israel that we seek to win; it is the ingathering of the exiles that we strive to achieve.
Your weighty voice, brothers in America, would be for us not only a source of comfort, but also a great support. Your protest and your efforts could help shorten – and perhaps even remedy – the many months of camp and imprisonment life in Cyprus, which for us are an unnecessary torment and an utterly wasted time.
Do everything you can, Białystoker brothers, to bring an end to – or at least shorten – our exile in Cyprus. The knowledge of a good deed accomplished, and our gratitude, will be for you the best reward.
We enclose a list of those who lived in Białystok and the surrounding area until 1939 and who are now in the quarantine camp in Cyprus.
With heartfelt greetings,
Dr. Shimon Datner
Fishel Galinski
Avraham Koniak
Clothing for the Children
On the initiative of the Białystoker Relief Committee, a group of women from the Białystoker Victory Club, together with sisters from our Auxiliaries, have undertaken a campaign to clothe the sixty surviving children – most of them orphans – who are in Białystok. New clothing, shoes, underwear, and other necessities are being procured for the children, whose ages range from one to fourteen years.
At a luncheon given for this purpose by our landsfrau Nekhama Shtsufak, in her home in the Bronx, two hundred dollars were collected.
The special gift of clothing for the destitute children of Białystok will be sent with our Białystoker ghetto heroine, Chaya Grossman, who is currently in America together with the Jewish delegation from Poland.
A concert and tea for this purpose is being arranged by the Committee in our Home, on Saturday evening, June 15.
Translator's notes:
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
Dear Białystoker friends!
Only a moment ago we received your precious gift, the Bialystoker Shtime. Can you imagine the joy in our home? Every word carries the scent of Białystok. Five years torn away from my dear, sweet home Białystok, living in deep Asia, I searched everywhere to find a Białystoker Jew. And once, going to the hospital with a half dead child, three young men arrived – and mentioned Białystok. I, forgetting that I was already carrying my child without a pulse, trembled, stopped, and held on to the three men. They were indeed Białystokers. One of them is no longer alive.
A spring of tears burst from me at once. I was unable to speak. I asked them to accompany me to the hospital, and on the way we talked. All of us were then in the same terrible situation.
But once my child had been accepted into the hospital and given first aid, the three boys did not move away from the little window, constantly watching my swollen, tear filled eyes. “Where do you live? “ they asked. “In a little garden, on the grass, where all the homeless stay, “ I answered.
And my child, no longer able to endure hunger and cold, had contracted diphtheria, and the doctor gave little hope that it would live.
”A great deal of blood is needed, “ said the doctor. “We will give, “ they said, “as much as is needed. “ “No,” I answered, “it must be from the father or the mother. The father is surely dead, and I am terribly anemic – I don't know if they will take from me.”
They ran to the doctor, begging him to save the child. They would do everything. No blood was taken from them.
Everything I write here is to show what it means to be a Białystoker. We are all strangers – and yet so close. Can any other city show such a thing? It seems not.
Białystok – and once again Białystok. To my good fortune, and perhaps to the child's luck as well, the father remained alive.
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When they came to shoot the last twenty four Jews, my husband jumped from the second floor, escaped, and remained alive. One cannot possibly write about such a thing in just a few words – it could only be written in a book. My son lives, and he is already eight years old. A splendid Białystoker boy. I read every story, every song in the precious Bialystoker Shtime. It awakens something in me; it draws me still closer to my Białystoker friends.
My dear Białystoker friends, I beg you – let this not be the last journal for me. Send it to me regularly, and I will be able to send you only my heartfelt thanks. Your journal is a refreshment in our present life. You read the articles and you see everything before your eyes: Chanaykes, Piaskes, Shyenkevitsha [Sienkiewicza], Lipowa. Oy, what is left of all that? A dream, and nothing more!
I feel like writing so much to you – you are the closest and dearest we have today. We are all so lonely. You are for us both sisters and brothers. So I ask your forgiveness for writing so much. One wants to speak from the heart to Białystokers, who will understand me best. Convey to all Białystokers that I wish them health and long life.
A Białystoker woman in Poland
(The name of the writer is known to the editors.)
A Letter from the Jewish Community
To the Białystoker Center in New York:
Dear friends!
In the name of the religious kehile [community] in Białystok and in the name of its administration, I have the honor to thank you for the Bialystoker Shtime, issue no. 248, which you have sent us.
And for the first time since our liberation, a religious Jew has had the privilege of seeing how our Białystoker landsmanshaft lives in America. For us Białystokers it was truly a source of spiritual satisfaction to read the Bialystoker Shtime. It passes from hand to hand, and everyone wishes to acquaint themselves with the life of our Białystokers – of whom so few remain after the destruction wrought by Hitler and Nazi Germany, may his name be erased. We are certain that you will continue to provide us with the Shtime.
On this occasion, I wish to remind you of the former Jewish Białystok – to remind you of the many houses of study that once existed. And to remind you that Białystok also now has a religious community, which strives to meet all religious needs to the extent that we are able. And we are certain that you, as Białystoker representatives, are not far from our ranks, knowing how national in spirit, and what a source of Torah, Białystok has always been.
And we, the Białystoker religious kehile, turn to you and appeal to you: in Białystok the holiest places were destroyed, torn apart. And whatever lies within our power, we will not allow any desecration of the sacred.
We hope that you will not forget us in the future either.
With Zionist greetings,
The Religious Kehile of Białystok
Fayvel Kagan, Chairman
The Landsleit in Romania
We received six issues of the Białystoker Shtime. I have no words to thank you for them.
Each of us has already read them several times, and many tears have been shed over them. So many familiar names of people, of streets, so many memories. Old and new – all of it so precious, so close, so full of recollections, so full of descriptions – and all of it now destroyed and desolate, empty and hollow.
As Shmuel Leyb Rabinovitsh expresses it: We have remained Białystokers without a Białystok.
Across the entire ghetto cemetery there is one great monument with the inscription:
In memory of the sixty thousand Jews murdered by the Germans – and that is all.
Only now, after rereading the accounts by Shoshkes, by the son of Khaykl Aldak, and by others about Białystok, do we have a clear picture of our city and of its terrible tragedy. We knew almost everything – but we had no picture. Now we have one.
Perhaps we could receive a few more issues; perhaps the editorial board could send them to us directly. It is a pity that I do not see the price of the journal – here we do not have a single Yiddish word to read. Nothing reaches us, not from Warsaw, not from Paris, not from London. Surely, in the meantime, more people from Białystok must have arrived and written down what they saw there.
You yourself, Genye, surely also come to the Białystoker Center and meet many Białystokers, including David Sohn. Tell him that in Bucharest, in Ia?i, in Bacau and in Buhusi there are quite a number of Białystokers. I gave several of them these six issues to read; all of them rejoiced over them – and wept.
Mr. Sohn would be doing a great kindness and an important service if he were to send us the Białystoker Shtime regularly. We would feel even more connected with the Białystokers in America and throughout the world – and truly with our beloved city itself. With our beloved cemetery – for when we think of our city, we think only of the cemetery. Our eyes and our hearts turn toward it.
And when one reads the Białystoker Shtime, one feels it as a bit of healing, a bit of balm for our misery, for our orphaned state. One feels oneself a little in Białystok, and among Białystokers.
We, the Romanian Białystokers, would be deeply grateful to Mr. David Sohn if he were to send us his journal at all times.
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The four dollars it costs – we would find a way to send it. We thank him very much in advance.
David Sapirstein
From the Landsleit in Sweden to the editorial board of the Białystoker Shtime!
As a lover of Yiddish literature, a friend of mine from Stockholm sent me an issue of your journal, which made a very fine impression on me. Although for more than twenty years I have subscribed to a Yiddish newspaper from America – Der Tog, which I value very highly – your journal is much dearer and closer to my heart. Being a woman from Grodno, where I was born and where I spent my school years and my youth, these memories are very precious to me. And I find them in the articles of your journal, which are written so naturally and so warmly.
The language of your articles can be compared to American Yiddish, and it reminds me very strongly of my unfortunate birthplace, where my friends and schoolmates were killed. Yet I have sweet memories of the beautiful city of Grodno, where I spent my best years – my childhood and youth together with my loved ones. Therefore I turn to you with the request to write to me about the conditions for subscribing to your very interesting journal.
At the same time, I want to convey greetings from your – from all of our – great artist, Chayele Grober, who visited us and who gave us Jews in Sweden a new spirit with her wonderful concert. The name of our great, God blessed artist does not leave anyone's lips. Today she is the talk of all the refugees who are in Sweden, every single one who heard her. Despite all difficulties, she visited every camp and gave people a new spirit and new hope.
I myself had the great honor of meeting her personally. Her visit to my home on Friday night, the 16th of November, 1947, I will never forget in my life.
Besides the fact that we Jews are so inspired by our great artist, she also achieved tremendous success among Christian Swedes – which should make us even prouder of our Chayele Grober.
Hoping that my request will be fulfilled, I remain your faithful reader,
M. Garelik,
Gothenburg, Sweden
Translator's notes:
by Israel Beker
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
The well known Białystoker stage artist, who lives in the State of Israel, is widely recognized as an actor and director of Habima in Tel Aviv. He is also well known from his artistic performances in America, in Europe, in the countries of Latin America, and in other parts of the world, through his highly artistic appearances in Yiddish theatrical productions.
Israel Beker, who during the Second World War was exiled in Soviet Russia, studied and trained at the Dramatic Yiddish State Theater in Moscow, which was under the direction of the famous artist Shloyme Mikhoels. Beker is also well known from a number of films that he produced and in which he acted.
Israel Beker is likewise widely recognized as a painter, both in the State of Israel and among Jews in other countries. His paintings and drawings are highly praised by critics in the Jewish state. In 1979, Israel Beker published in the State of Israel a splendid album containing eighty four of his painted works of art.
This magnificent album appeared within the framework of the celebrations marking sixty years of the Hebrew National Theater Habima. At the beginning of this large album, which bears the title The Stages of My Life, there is also a substantial introductory essay written by Israel Beker. Below we print excerpts from this description by our esteemed landsman and great, renowned artist.
I come from Białystok – you know where that is? It was once a Jewish city between Warsaw and Minsk. A city, an ir ve em beYisroel [a mother city of the Jewish people]. Had I spent my childhood somewhere else, my life would have looked entirely different. I do not merely come from Białystok – I am a Białystoker, and that is something more! The street and the nearby surroundings, the things and events engraved in my being, have a great significance.
We lived in the tallest building in our city, a “skyscraper” of four and a half floors, which looked down with pride on everything around it.
The house had two entrances: the paradner khod [representative entrance], with mirrors and red runners on the stairs, and the tshorny khod [black or rear entrance], which led to the kitchens, the stables, and …the attic. As a child I always trailed after the maids who went up to the attic to hang laundry. The attic served as a storage place for old furniture, battered vessels and all sorts of things that turned into toys and playthings for children.
But the main thing was looking out through the little roof windows at the great city that lay at one's feet. Roofs – a sea of roofs – in all shapes and colors. Roofs of study houses and factories, square and triangular roofs, the spires of churches piercing the clouds, the chimneys of factories. The streets were far below, and the people looked like tiny shretelekh [dwarfs]. The lively, bubbling Białystok – that is how I remember it best, from up there…
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I returned to Białystok at the beginning of 1945. It was winter, and a heavy snow covered everything – that is, everything that had once been a city: streets, houses. In the distance one could still hear the dull thunder of the fighting armies, and over everything that had once been Białystok there lay a mantle of silence.
I made my way along the narrow paths between the mountains of ruins, hurrying toward the place where our home had once stood… I knew my feet were standing on the right spot. Here it is. Remnants of walls… the arched gateway… high above, over my head, the balcony of our apartment, hanging by a thread, and on the balcony the iron railings decorated with rings – the ones I used to hold on to, to steady myself on my crooked little child's feet.
I looked upward, and for a moment it seemed to me that any second now… after just a little while… my mother would step out onto the balcony. She would stand there and look around – toward the town clock, toward the bustling streets, toward the row of shops where my father's store had been – and I would stretch out my hands and grasp her dress…
And I knew that I was dreaming an empty dream, that these were only nightmares. They are gone.
I stood on the snow covered ruins, and my whole life swayed before my eyes. The past, the home, everything…
I began searching among the ruins. Just like that, without knowing why. I turned over bricks, pushed aside pieces of iron, and suddenly I found something I had never imagined could still exist: an enameled salt box – the one that had hung above our kitchen stove, with the word zalts [salt] printed on it in blue Gothic letters.
Here was the proof. If the salt box was in my hand, then it meant they had been. They had once existed. Because it had seemed to me as if nothing had ever been – no father, no mother, no brothers or sisters, no surroundings, no Białystok. All vanished. And if that were truly so, then I myself would not exist either.
I turned my head, feeling that someone was watching me, stabbing my back with their eyes. Out of the ruins people were looking. Apparently non Jews, wanting to know what someone who looked like a Jew was searching for among the rubble. Surely he had come to dig out some buried treasure. Their faces promised nothing good.
I threw the salt box in their direction and ran…
Translator's notes:
by Y. Freidkes
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
The paths of the people of Białystok in the world are varied. They have led them to America, Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Palestine, and wherever there is a Jewish settlement. But one path unites them all: the path back to the old home, from which we draw the nourishment that binds together all our memories.
Białystok – our dear, beloved Białystok – lies in ruins. Where sixty thousand Jews once lived, there remain today (after the war) barely a handful of six or eight hundred. And yet, with what stubbornness they rebuild their lives, with what a sense of responsibility they care for the preservation of our past and the building of a new future.
Our paths are varied. For some they lead to personal happiness and well being; for others they are filled with suffering. But all of us grieve over one great tragedy – the tragedy of our people, the tragedy of all humanity, which seeks the road to common happiness and well being. In our great misfortune, we do not lose faith in a better and more beautiful world.
The paths of Białystokers flow into the broad road on which our people walk toward a brighter and better future. We go forward filled with faith in the strength of our past and in our beautiful thousand year old tradition. We carry into the world the accumulated treasures of our culture – treasures we will continue to cherish, expand, and deepen.
In our far flung corner in Argentina, in America, in the Land of Israel, as in Australia and everywhere else, our hearts still tremble with the sacred shiver for our old hometown – trampled and blood soaked, yet proud of its great contribution to Jewish and to general history, proud of its heroic partisans and ghetto fighters, proud of its new builders of the old new Białystok.
Białystok, the source of our eternal inspiration, must live forever in our memory and accompany us in spirit along the difficult road of our lives.
by A. Parizer
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
Białystok's Jews have, in every era, produced remarkable personalities in all fields – in Jewish life as well as in the wider world. The Białystoker yishev [Jewish settlement] was small, but the spiritual richness of its Jews was immense. This has always been visible – and remains so – everywhere in the world, wherever Jews of Białystok descent have settled and built new lives.
One of those who brings great honor to the Jewish lineage of Białystok is the renowned artist Benn, who lives and works in Paris. Through his artistic creations, which he has been producing for decades, Benn has grown and risen to the highest level in the world of art. This is especially true in the years after the Second World War, when he became famous everywhere – not only in France but throughout the world, and not only among Jews but also among non Jews.
The critics and the press in Paris, who write regularly about Benn's work, emphasize again and again that Benn is surely one of the greatest artists of our time.
Benn became particularly celebrated after the war, when he created more than one hundred major works based on themes from the Tanakh [Bible]. And as we know, these paintings – which caused a great resonance in France, where Benn lives – were created while he was in hiding during the war, when the Nazis hunted for his life from all sides, as they did with so many other threatened Jews.
Exhibitions – a broad selection of the works of the renowned artist Benn – occupy a prominent place in the French art world. The Paris press writes regularly about Benn's creations, about his exhibitions, about the splendid art albums he publishes, and about the honors he receives from circles of the French government and from other distinguished institutions. Benn – the great artist Benn – whose life and work are accompanied constantly by praise and recognition.
But Benn (Ben Zion Rabinovitsh) is a heymisher Id – a Jewish landsman from Białystok. He is one of our own, someone of whom Białystok's Jews are especially proud.
Benn (Ben Zion Rabinovitsh) comes from a distinguished lineage. His grandfather was a rabbi in Navaradok. Benn's father, R' Shloyme Yakov Rabinovitsh, was a respected architect and builder. Among other buildings, he also constructed the Białystoker Great [Wielka] Synagogue.
Already as a boy of fifteen, Benn began drawing and painting portraits of his relatives. Later he became recognized in the wider Jewish circles of Białystok, and he painted portraits of prominent Jewish personalities of the city.
When the Habima Theater came to Białystok for the first time in 1926, Benn had already immortalized them as well. And so, throughout all the years since his earliest youth, he became known – and later famous – as a brilliant portraitist.
It is no exaggeration to say that Benn is unique in this field.
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In Paris it is well known – and indeed throughout the world – that Benn has painted portraits of perhaps hundreds of prominent figures, Jews and non Jews alike. Among them are French writers, artists, and actors.
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With his painter's brush he has immortalized dozens of Jewish writers, artists, actors, community leaders, and others – from Paris, from America and from other countries whose paths led them to Paris.
Benn's art studio, which he shares with his beloved wife, the well known artist Gera, is familiar to everyone.
It should be remembered that in 1929 Benn received a scholarship from the Białystoker municipality to go study art in Paris. He did not, of course, return to Białystok, and in Paris – the city of light and the center of art – the talented young man from Białystok rose higher and higher.
It was precisely there in Paris, at the beginning of his artistic career, that Benn painted portraits which aroused admiration everywhere. His first Paris exhibition took place in 1931 and received enthusiastic reviews from the critics. The same was true of his later exhibitions. He painted portraits of various well known personalities – from France, and of those who had come from other countries – and this made him very popular.
At that time the critics called him “the soul artist,” because his portraits of people were marked by warmth, depth, and color.
His portraits and various other works were purchased by leading figures, museums, art galleries, and others. Yet throughout all the years, in all his creations and his rise in the art world, Benn remained the faithful, folk rooted Jew from Białystok. He always wove into his art – and continues to do so – the Jewish warmth, tradition, and atmosphere that he absorbed at home, with his father and mother, in the Khanaykes district – in the old Jewish Białystok, which was wiped out, destroyed, and vanished during the great catastrophe of the Hitler era.
His deep attachment to the Jewish people, to his childhood and former home, to the environment in which he grew up in the beloved Jewish Białystok of earlier days, was also expressed by Benn in his crowning achievement – the more than one hundred biblical paintings that have enchanted everyone. The same is true of his other, later works.
When the Second World War broke out and the terrible time for Jews began, Benn too was in danger in Paris. For several years he was hidden in a cellar by a Christian family. Even in that cellar, under harsh conditions, Benn did not stop creating. At that time he made a vow that if he were to come out into freedom, he would create one of the greatest works, something that would inspire admiration among Jews and non Jews alike. And he succeeded: his one hundred and fifty large paintings on biblical themes bear witness to this.
Our esteemed landsman Benn, one of the most creative artists of our time, whose works have found great resonance and admiration, continues steadily on his artistic path. Through this he brings – and will continue to bring for many years – great honor and pride to his fellow Białystokers. He knows this well. On various occasions he openly expresses his sense of connection and closeness to his Jewish heritage from Białystok.
Translator's notes:
by Aharon Zeitlin
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
By chance I reread in recent days a description of old Białystok, which made a deep impression on me with its lively folk character, its artistically sharp memory for details, and its bubbling humor. The description was printed in the May 1947 issue of Bialystoker Lebn, a journal published by the Białystoker Biker-Khoylim [Bikur Cholim] in Brooklyn, New York. The name of the writer is Shmuel Leyb Rabinovitsh, and it is noted that he lives in London.
The memoirs are written – to tell the truth – chaotically. Almost every second line cries out: “Edit me!” And yet the entire manner of storytelling is such that it gave me a pang, a kind of sweet pain – Sholem Aleichem à la Białystok. I admired the idiomatic Yiddish, the lively, talkative folkish freshness, the humor filled sparkle, and above all the artistic richness of detail.
Sh. L. Rabinovitsh's Grandmothers' Remedies in Old Białystok (that is the title of his description) shows that this Białystoker Jew, now living in London, has a great deal to tell. And it is not merely a matter of literature – in our times it is a general Jewish communal concern.
After the destruction of Jewish life in Europe, it is important – nationally important – to preserve the memory of Jewish towns and of the Jewish way of life.
The way Sh. L. Rabinovitsh tells about his town and its people pleases me so much that I – not even a Białystoker – feel it necessary to appeal to the local Białystoker landsmanshaft to persuade their ben-ir [fellow townsman] to sit himself down there in foggy London and, for heaven's sake, calmly, at leisure, and with all the details, recount everything he knows and remembers from old Białystok. And if he does this, then the Białystoker landsmanshaft will not only be permitted, but truly obliged, to publish their townsman's memoir book. Such a book could become a classic.
The memory of this London Białystoker – as one can see from the little I have now had the chance to read – is simply vivid and plastic, not a dry, ordinary recollection.
If the local Białystokers would indeed take steps in this matter, and if Mr. Rabinovitsh would truly take the time and write down his memories with order and with a plan, I am certain that the Białystokers would gain greatly in moral strength, and Jewish memoir literature would gain greatly in artistic richness.
Translator's note:
Music transcribed and arranged by A. Hirshin
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
English Proofreading by Dr. Susan Kingsley Pasquariella
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Ikh hob di hofnung nisht farloyrn Tsu zen di shtot vu kh'bin geboyrn, Tsu zen mayn heym, mayn libe heym, Fun bretlekh, tsigl und fun leym. Farmakh ikh nor azoy di vies Oyf dayne gasn ze ikh tlies, Khurves, mist. S'hot der fashist Mayn libe heymshtot dikh farvist oy, oy, oy. Refrayn:
Białystok, kh' gedeynk a yedem gesl un yedem hoyz.
Vos farlang ikh mer?
Mayn mames ponem ikh ze dem blasn Refrayn: Białystok, un azoy vayter… |
I have not lost my hope to see The town that once gave birth to me, To see my home, my dearest home, Of boards and bricks and clay and loam. I close my lashes, just like this and on your streets I see the gallows, Ruins, filth. The hand of the fascist Has laid my beloved hometown waste, oy, oy, oy. Refrain:
Białystok, I remember every alley and every house.
What more could I ask for?
I see my mother's face, so pale, Refrain: Białystok, and so on… |
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Translator's note:
by Yehuda Grinhoyz
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
English Proofreading by Dr. Susan Kingsley Pasquariella
After that first nightmarish night in the hekdesh [the communal poorhouse], I rose before dawn and decided to go and look at my beloved hometown.
My fellow townspeople had told me, late into the night, terrible things – what they had lived through in the ghetto, and later in the camps, and how they had escaped death. Now they offered to go with me and show me the destruction of Białystok. I refused and asked them to let me go alone. I know Białystok quite well… and I want to go through this sorrow by myself.
I left the hekdesh.
From the order of the streets I understood that I was on Surazer [Suraska] Street, and the second little lane to the left should have been Yeshiva Lane. But what do I see? An empty field overgrown with wild grass. Only here and there, in the distance, the skeleton of a house. It is hard to orient myself, to know where I am. I begin to crawl through the grass, scanning in every direction, but I cannot find even a trace of the place on Yeshiva Lane where the house once stood – my home, where I grew up and spent my childhood years. The hill is gone, where we boys used to slide down in winter on our little sleds. Somewhere here should have been Karakuzel's yard, the solid stone building where the meeting place was located, which the workers had built themselves. Workers from various trades used to sit at the little tables, chatting comfortably and finding a common language about their everyday worries. I often used to come here in the evenings to perform for them.
I let my eyes wander over this whole desert-like expanse where, for so many years, Jewish life had bubbled with energy and toil. Shmuel Shmid's Lane, Khaye-Odem [Chaye-Adam] Street, the Shoemakers' Bes-Medresh [study house], Elimeylekh's Bes-Medresh, all of Papoutshizne – everything, everything wiped flat with the earth. And the Old Cemetery, now forming a kind of enclosing fence together with all the surrounding emptiness, appears like one vast cemetery. And I, one of the few who remained, stand here on this cemetery like a living gravestone of the destruction and sorrow that reign all around.
A deep pain is in my heart, and I feel my legs trembling. I sink down onto a stone, my head bent into my hands, and again I see before me the image of Surazer [Suraska] Street.
And memories come back from those years when Surazer Street was the workers' birzhe [stock exchange]. As soon as work ended, the street would fill with masses of people. Here the strikes were organized, the meetings held; here the freedom movement on the Jewish street was forged, and representatives of the parties delivered speeches in the middle of the street. Not for nothing did the Tsarist soldiers, in the time of the pogrom, not dare to approach the fortress of the workers, for here the boyovke [self defense unit] was concentrated, ready with weapons in hand to defend the workers' quarter.
I cut across the field where the width of the street had been. Sender Mirtshe's Street is gone, Tankhum Fisher's Lane, Bunem Essigmacher's Lane, the entire shul hoyf [synagogue courtyard]. I approach the place where the synagogue once stood, and again I recall the Great Synagogue, guarded on all sides by the bote-medroshim [study houses] – the Old Bes-Medresh, the New Bes-Medresh, the Chevra Shas [Talmud study society], the minyan of the rabbi, R' Chaim Herz, of blessed memory.
Friday evening, when the town would shed its weekday garb, and the old sexton would walk through the streets calling people into the synagogue! And the synagogue would shimmer with its light through the many-colored windows out onto the street, and the whole synagogue courtyard would become wrapped in a Shabbat like, mystical atmosphere.
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Now all that remains of it is the iron dome , its twisted iron beams lying on the ground like a memorial to the destruction.
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Here thousands of Jews were burned al kiddush ha Shem [martyred because they were Jews], thrown alive into the fire.
I walk on from the synagogue toward Deutsche Street, toward the Catholic church. Everything is a desert. I reach the courtyard of the editorial office of Unzer Lebn – the entire building broken and destroyed. No longer can one hear the sounds of the three linotypes that the editorial office had possessed during its twenty years of existence. Gone is the spiritual and cultural institution of the Białystoker newspaper Unzer Lebn, which never rested, working twenty four hours a day to produce the newspaper that reflected our cultural and social life.
Here our finest intellectual forces gathered, with the editor Pesach Kaplan at their head, who, with sharp insight and a clever mind, responded to the daily events of our lives. He was the soul of the newspaper, and when I would sometimes come into the editorial office and from his room the low, humming sound of a Jewish melody would drift out, one knew that the editor had finished the leading article for the press, and one was permitted to enter. Now everything is destroyed.
Gloom and sorrow lie poured out over everything around, and it seems as if the shadows of the people flicker over all these ruins, demanding and calling for vengeance for the innocently spilled blood.
I approach the site of the Theater Palace, where I gave twenty five years of my life, beginning in 1916 and ending in 1941. How can one forget the Fridays and Shabbats when the theater was full of our dear, warm hearted horopashnikes – butchers, coachmen, porters, and simple folk – who filled the gallery and swelled with the beautiful, heartfelt Jewish folk melodies, taking spiritual delight after their hard weekday struggle for livelihood?
The Shabbat daytime children's performances, which used to fill the theater, when the children, with childlike curiosity, would listen to the heroism of Bar Kokhba or the sweet melodies of Shulamis.
Now everything is dead. Laid waste. Our dear brothers and sisters are gone, the dear little children are gone; a dead silence reigns here. I stand and look at the destruction and can no longer restrain myself, and I feel how the tears pour forth – tears from a grieving heart that no longer has the strength to hold them back. With heavy steps I drag myself back, exhausted with sorrow and pain, into the hekdesh – my old new home.
Translator's note:
by Isak Ribalovski
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
English Proofreading by Dr. Susan Kingsley Pasquariella
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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where the Polish Association of Culture and Arts is located. |
Aside from Warsaw, where our delegation held important meetings with government representatives, we also visited Lublin and Kraków. One of the most painful experiences for us was visiting the former Nazi extermination camps–Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka–where millions of Jews and other people were murdered.
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…
In the Former Homeland
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.
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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 |
[Page 295]
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.
On the Ruins of Jewish Life
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…
At the Graves of our Parents Among the Martyrs and Our Loved Ones
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…
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I remember how, shortly after the terrible Second World War - in 1945 - the few Jews who had returned to Bialystok erected a monument in the Zhabye cemetery to commemorate the sixty thousand Jews murdered by the Nazis. It must be remembered that those who had survived Hitler did so with sacred reverence, and this monument was meant to serve, at the very least, as a lasting memory of the destruction of the Jews in Bialystok and its surroundings.
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.
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Only Traces Remain
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 3rd 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.
The Great Legacy Must Be Preserved
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:
by Chaika Grossman
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
We present here the speech that Chaika Grossman delivered at the Zionist Conference in London, in September 1945.
A comrade asked me: From where do we draw our calm and our self control? I will answer that we were calm the entire time.
It was the calm that surrounded our comrades during the battle and before it. The battle – that was our striving, that was the moment for which we had hoped and waited.
It is easier to lay mines than to give speeches. What we can tell you is that we live and exist; that our movement was great and strong, and that it was also beautiful in the moment when it was defeated. To live – that is not the great art. One must know how to live, and, even more importantly, how to die. We knew that with our death not everything would be orphaned; that our death would be transformed into an uplifting force, into a Torah [teaching] on which the youth would be raised. This is what we thought about in the ghettos, and this became the Torah [teaching] that we repeated and studied the whole time, in calm and in silence.
And something else I want to tell you – although it is hard to bring it forth with my poor lips: the heroes of the people are not necessarily famous political leaders; the heroes of the people are small people, gray and quiet.
I remember the days of the first Aktion in Białystok, in February 1943. Then there was still no fighting. That was before Warsaw. Thousands of Jews were killed in the ghetto in every outbreak of violence.
Quietly, they also hanged in the ghetto a Jewish hero named Yitskhok Malmed, as punishment for killing a German. And many others were like him.
I will tell you something more: we, the pioneering movement, never regarded ourselves as leaders or politicians. We had hundreds of comrades who fell quietly, with their faith in the Land of Israel deeply embedded in their hearts.
The story of the Jewish catastrophe in Poland is long and complex. But we have remained alive, despite the suffering, the horror, and the destruction, and we demand the life that is owed to us and to the entire Jewish people. We will not rest.
For us, the war is not over.
Despite the fact that Poland has become a cemetery, we have built up a pioneering youth movement that is ready to go to the Land of Israel by any path.
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These are not broken or dejected people. They are ready for everything, and no borders will block their way. From you, and from the Land of Israel, we ask that you encourage them and strengthen their hands.
We will not leave Poland until we have firmly established the movement there. We are tired; I, too, am tired. But I will not come so quickly to the Land of Israel. We will make aliyah only when there are emissaries in Poland, kibbutzim, an organized aliyah, and a Zionist movement.
Only then will we be able to immigrate to our homeland with a calm heart and live in kibbutzim. If we are not helped, if the Land of Israel does not help us, a grave sin will be committed.
I want to unfold the scroll of heroism in the history of our fighting movement. I recall with trembling the memory of the heroic Jewish daughters: Lanke, Tashe, Frumke, and many others who occupy a place of honor in the history of the movement. (Everyone rises.)
Silence – that was the most characteristic, the most exalted, and the most beautiful quality of our Jewish daughters who fell in struggle and battle. The Jewish girls were the “nerves” of the movement, the couriers who carried the word of the movement from place to place. Tashe and Lanke were the first to bring the word of the movement from Warsaw to Vilna, and you cannot understand what that meant to us.
We will never forget them, and their figures will be an educational symbol for generations and generations.
It is no accident that none of us have spoken about our experiences. Yitskhok Tsukerman could have told you a great deal, and the same is true of the others. But I do not know how or when we will be able to do this. We have come here to describe our suffering, not to boast of it. We have come here to build bridges to you, to tell you that we are alive, that we will make aliyah at any price, that we are with you.
Translator's notes:
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by Dr. Samuel Pisar
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
English Proofreading by Dr. Susan Kingsley Pasquariella
The distinguished Białystoker landsman Dr. Samuel (Shmuel) Pisar was a boy of barely twelve years old when he was deported to Auschwitz together with his entire close family. Over the course of several years he endured suffering and torment under the Nazis; all his loved ones were murdered by the Hitlerite killers. In the postwar years, Dr. Pisar studied and pursued his education with tireless dedication. He is now well known as an international lawyer, with major offices in Paris, Washington, and other places.
Dr. Pisar, rescued as if by a miracle, travels to many countries and occupies a prominent place in the international world. He is in contact with, and has close friendships among, heads of state, government leaders, and high ranking personalities. This Jewish boy from Białystok – once a victim of Nazi barbarism, the youngest survivor of Auschwitz – is also a personal friend of the President of France, [Valéry] Giscard d'Estaing. When the President of France traveled to visit Auschwitz in June 1975, Dr. Samuel Pisar was at his side.
Standing in Auschwitz together with the French President, Dr. Pisar delivered a brief and deeply moving address. Printed below is that dramatic speech by Dr. Samuel Pisar.
To return now to Auschwitz, to the mizbeyekh [sacrificial altar] of that terrible destruction, together with you, Mr. President – here, where as a boy of fourteen I died among so many deaths, endured so many torments and humiliations, where everything I had once loved was turned into ashes – is for me a profound experience that shakes my very soul. Yet it is also a path from tragedy to triumph.
With your presence here today – on the very day when de Gaulle, thirty five years ago, from London, with his call for resistance, saved the honor of France – you give a new dimension to the historic meaning of the 18th of June. From here, Mr. President, you speak to generations, to ethnic groups, to peoples, to ideologies, to liberals and conservatives, to rich and poor, to East and West.
For the place where you stand is the deepest wound ever inflicted upon all of human civilization – the valley of death and darkness, where Eichmann's reality cast even Dante's vision of hell into shadow.
From here I bring you my personal testimony – from one of the few who remained alive and, according to the archives of hell, the youngest of the survivors of the Auschwitz inferno. Out of the dreadful memories that dominate my thoughts in this once-so-familiar surroundings, a single heart rending image emerges. And it is about this alone that I would like to say a few words.
Facing those machine gun towers, dressed in their blue and white striped rags, there sat every day the most extraordinary symphonic orchestra ever assembled. This remarkable orchestra was made up of virtuosos from Warsaw and Paris, from Kyiv and Oslo, from Budapest and Rome.
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The violins they had brought on their final journey were Stradivari, Guarneri, and Amati instruments.
To accompany the daily hangings and murders – when the gas chambers spewed fire and smoke – they were ordered to play Mozart, the Mozart whom you and I revere.
Enough now of the past.
These horrors, which I have never mentioned to you during the years of our friendship, Mr. President –as we have been dedicated to seeking together new paths of international coexistence, new instruments for peace – must not dull our senses or weaken our faith in God and in humanity.
If they have meaning today, it is because we must not forget that the past can also be the prologue to the future; that out of the ashes of Auschwitz there reveals itself the specter of the apocalypse – a warning of what may yet come…
Before these barbed wire fences, a person must therefore come, following your example, to bow his head and meditate on justice, on tolerance, on respect for human rights, and above all on new moral perspectives that might restore the estranged youth of the world.
Mr. President, on this accursed and sacred ground you stand face to face with your greatest Jewish congregation. You are here in the presence of the souls of four million murdered mentshn – human beings in the fullest sense.
In their name, and with the right granted me by the number burned into my arm, I tell you that if the murdered here could now answer your moving words just spoken, they would cry out:
“Never again – never again an Auschwitz… never again [war] between French and Germans, between Turks and Greeks, between Indians and Pakistanis; never again [war] between Arabs and Jews!”
In their name, I thank you for making this pilgrimage to the holy place of martyrdom, of suffering, of agony, and of annihilation. Your gesture inspires a universal hope that the leaders of the world will look with greater vigilance at the clouds of violence gathering over us, and that they will make every effort to lead us toward a safer and better future.
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Translator's note:
by Bayle Bender-Khudin
Translated by Beate Schützmann-Krebs
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Ghetto
Dear sisters and brothers of Białystok,
Read it, so that your friend may hear
In the ghetto hospital my child was born –
In the first Aktion my father lost his life.
Until the evil order came one day: Bunker [Hideout]
We did not make that mistake –
Our throats burned with thirst;
This dog like life became unbearable;
Until the moment came
Naked – men and women together –
Driven by the betrayer –
We were hunted to the Gestapo, Arrest
That same day, toward nightfall,
Yet it was, for us, almost a joy
From the attics and the nooks,
A mass of people, suffocating,
In trembling I wait and hope: Transport
A rumor went round the prison walls:
Early at dawn, for the transport call,
They drove us out into the open field,
It took only a few seconds –
Darkness – no glimmer of light.
We should jump from the train –
Everything prepared, with hollow hands,
Paid for with marrow and with blood – |
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Stutthof Camp
A few days the journey took,
He greeted us with blows and rage,
No end at all to all our woes; Auschwitz Camp
The camp, enormous – long and wide;
Not even two full weeks had passed –
My dearest mother was burned alive;
And not far from where we stood,
Ovens, chimneys with hellish tongues
There was another bitter grief: Lippstadt Camp
We thought that here at last we'd stay,
A week the road before us lay
A little while – then once again,
And right in the middle of this march,
Suddenly they turned around, The Liberation
The impression cannot be described;
They sang and danced from sheer delight,
With bread, with clothing, medicine,
The JOINT and UNRRA looked after us, In Warsaw
I came to Warsaw; at the station
All with walking sticks in hand,
The D.P. camps – Fernvald[3], Felzn[4] – At Home in Our Own Land
Enough of mockery and shame –
A new life then began for us, |
Translator's notes:
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