[Column 485]

To my dearest beloved father!

A rare stroke of fortune has granted me that it is possible to let you know that I am alive, completely healthy, and that I find myself in the ranks of the heroic Soviet partisans (operational location: in one of the units of the Minsk region). We stand in an unceasing, bitter struggle with the enemy who has murdered a vast portion of our people and devastated Europe and part of the Soviet Union. With pain and anger, day in and day out, I take bloody revenge for the wrongs done to our people.

What has happened to me since the infamous, bandit-like assault of the German Huns upon the Soviet Union is material for historians and elegists. It is, in part (in its first period), the horrific story of the Jewish settlement that was wiped entirely from the earth. I can only convey to you, in brief, the dreadful summary of it:

This is the dreadful reckoning of our own, of a brutally murdered family and its surviving branch! This is the mournful sum of our Jewish community from our hometown of Lakhva, now fallen into two enormous mass graves containing eighteen hundred souls, among them three hundred little children, innocent souls

[Column 486]

crushed by suffering. Living bodies were tossed into the death-pits due to the “economy” of bullets spent sparingly!

This is the terrible sum total of that which took place in all the towns and townlets of our region – such as Davyd Horodok, Mikashevichi, Luninets, Kazan Horodok, and Pinsk. In Pinsk alone there are twenty-two Jewish mass graves, where the bones of forty thousand souls lie.

This is the sum total of tears and blood, of millions of Jewish people – tortured in concentration camps and inquisition cellars, shot en masse into communal pits, drowned in rivers, lakes, and wells, burned alive in ovens and furnaces, thrown alive from airplanes^[2], hanged upside down, hanged by their sexual organs and breasts, tortured with electric current, or chopped into pieces, limb by limb – according to the system of the “Düsseldorf murderer”^[3]. A sum total of tens of thousands of Jewish children, cast among grenades and mines.

My dear father! This is not just my imagination speaking; these are not mere impressions. All these bizarre deaths I either witnessed myself or heard described literally from living testimony.

Among the slain were our best and dearest – my brothers and

[Column 487]

your sons, Avrom and Moshe, and my refined wife, Rochele. I alone remained alive, a remnant. I succeeded in tearing myself away literally from the hangman's hands. Together with the entire community of Lakhver Jews, I was already standing at the cemetery. The murderers aimed at me as well, but the bullet missed.

My dear father! Now we stand in a battle of life and death. Our partisan unit has more than once thrown the German murderers into panic and terror. You should have seen, my dear one, how those despicable persecutors, who boasted of their so-called heroism when they had before them defenseless, lonely Jewish elders and women – how those same people bent their knees when they suddenly found themselves face-to-face with your son Itsche, armed with a submachine gun and a bundle of grenades at his belt. You would not recognize your son, the yeshiva-boy – but the Germans did not recognize him either, nor his thousands of blood-brothers who fight in the partisan ranks. We, the Jewish fighters in the vengeance camps, have said once and for all: “We will not die al kiddush ha-gornisht (for the sanctification of nothing)! We will give our lives al kiddush ha-foterland (for the sanctification of the fatherland) and al kiddush ha-uma (for the sanctification of the nation)”.^[4]

Dear father! Through this means I want to send my greeting to the Jews on the other side of the ocean. Tell them in your son's name that the Jewish stock in the areas under occupation has not been entirely exterminated. Tell them that in the White Russian forests there still exists brands plucked from the fire [Zecharia 3:2], holoveshkes [embers – literally: little coals] saved from the terrible conflagration that turned the greatest Jewish communities to ash. Only reassure them that from these embers

[Column 488]

there will emerge a stronger fire that will burn and wipe out the German murderers. The embers – that is we, the Jewish partisans – and the fire of battle and uprising, the fire of the ever-approaching Red Army attacks, is becoming ever stronger and is encircling the German garrisons from all sides.

I send to you, my American brothers, not only a greeting. I send you also a demand: our blood must not be silenced! Every place where Jews live and create, and step into the anti-Hitlerist armies, come to help the heroic Soviet Army. Do everything to quickly open the second front in Europe. Mobilize your entire society – your political, financial, and physical strength – for the decisive, imminent battle against to completely uproot the thousand-times-accursed Hitlerism! Do not come only with yizkors and Kel Maleh Rachamims!^[5]

My battle-comrades and I are deeply convinced that the Hitlerist wild beast cannot withstand the united power of the progressive world. Only the joint and unified offensive effort of all the allied peoples will save the lives of our brothers who still languish here and there in the last ghettos, and will spare humanity much suffering and blood.

Because of this, dear father, wherever you go and wherever you stand, remember it – and let your fellow citizens of your country, America, remember it as well.

I hold you tightly, Father, I kiss you, and I believe that the words of your only-remaining son will cross forests and borders, seas and oceans, and will reach you.

Your unbroken son,

Itsche

1. An excerpt from the Einigkeit newspaper, an organ of the Jewish anti-fascist committee in the Soviet Union, May 1943 (republished in several other newspapers).^[1] Return

Translator's footnotes

1. Athough framed as a personal letter, this text was published in Einigkeit (May 1943), the Soviet Yiddish newspaper of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Such pieces were crafted as representative voices of Jewish suffering and resistance, blending emotional truth with literary stylization. The elevated, highly polished language – far beyond what an actual partisan in the field could have written – and the implausible premise of a partisan sending a letter to a father in Brooklyn both indicate that this is a Soviet wartime elegiac-propaganda composition rather than a literal private correspondence. During the war, copies of Einigkeit were distributed abroad, including to the United States, where they circulated especially within Yiddish-speaking left-wing communities in New York. The “father in Brooklyn” thus functions as a symbolic addressee for American Jews – the intended overseas audience of such appeals. This was a common practice in Soviet Jewish wartime journalism. Return
2. As with other Soviet Yiddish wartime publications, atrocity descriptions in Einigkeit often employed heightened, symbolic imagery drawn from fragmentary reports and martyrological tradition. Such catalogues express the emotional truth of catastrophe rather than literal forensic detail. As terrible as the Holocaust was, Jews were not thrown from airplanes; this image reflects the rhetorical mode of the period rather than a documented practice. Return
3. The “Düsseldorf murderer” refers to Peter Kürten (1883–1931), a notorious German serial killer whose crimes were widely reported in the Yiddish press of the 1930s. His name became a cultural shorthand for extreme sadism and cruelty. Yizkor-book writers sometimes invoked him symbolically to describe Nazi brutality. Return
4. All takeoffs on the Jewish concept of dying al kiddush Hashem – in sanctification of the Divine Name. Return
5. Memorial prayers. Return

[Column 489]

Just yesterday it seems, Or, not so long ago; In an instant, with a backward glance of the eye My youth is still pictured My springtime still shines. So short are my bygone days… Nu, just yesterday And yet so far, So far; So far… Do you sit like me so lost in thought? Do you also, like me, peer into the sapphire heavens And paint with your memory-pencil Images from times gone by? Ahh, yesterday! You stand before my eyes Like the living present You caress me, like a mother, And you torment me like a hangman, For joy and sadness lie in your essence Youthful joy and the motherly grave all at once. Ahh my yesterday! Everything, everything lies in what you have covered over: From a cradle until the uniform of a soldier,

[Column 490]

From a little toy to an artillery shell. A labyrinth, you are, of spiky glitter An outcry of the thousands in the throes of death Until the carefree birthplace, – Lakhva… Say, do you also sit like me and ponder About a calm, summer,o holy evening About a far-off, peasant-like, village remark Say, was it not really so long ago? The broad linden tree stands in the market Little Yutkele the rascal runs off and laughs Yosele the water-carrier groans wearily And the horse of a gentile travels to the market. How many times will you come to life in my memory My shtetl – a huge cemetery! And candles? How many yahrzeit candles should I light for you? Is a candle every day enough then? And teeth?… Every time that I think about you And a tear falls from my face I murmur: Here, here is my memorial candle For you Lakhva!

[Columns 501-502]

No.	Surname	Given name	Remarks	Place
1	AVRAMOVITZ	Yakov		Israel
2	OLIMOTZKI	Uri		Israel
3	GUZBITZ	Kalman		Israel
4	GRADBIN	Fishel		Israel
5	GRADBIN			Israel
6	GRADBIN			Israel
7	DOLGOFITI	Shlomo		Israel
8	DROPSKY-GELBERSHTAT	Gitel		Israel
9	DROPSKY-LEVIN	Pesya		Israel
10	CHAFETZ-BAUMAN	Chaya		Israel
11	CHAFETZ	Shimon		Israel
12	CHAFETZ	Zelig		Israel
13	CHEINITZ	Dov		Israel
14	CHEINITZ	Yosef		Israel
15	TURKENITZ	Aryeh		Israel
16	YULEVITZ	Yakov		Israel
17	LEIBMAN	Zelig		Israel
18	LICHTSTEIN	Yehoshua		Israel
19	MURAVCHIK	Yakov	son of Aryeh	Israel
20	MILMAN	Yeshayahu		Israel
21	FINBERG	Avraham		Israel
22	KOLPENITZKI	Koppel		Israel
23	KOGOT	Adam	refugee	Israel
24	KRAVCHIK	Moshe		Israel
25	KRAVCHIK	Sima	GRINFELD	Israel
26	KRAVCHIK	Shimon		Israel
27	ROMANOVSKY-FLEKS	Leah		Israel
28	RIEMER	Chaim		Israel
29	SHVORIN	Zev		Israel
30	SHVORIN	Yisrael		Israel
31	SHUSTERMAN	Avraham		Israel
32	SCHIFFMAN	Michael		Israel
33	SCHIFFMAN-MURAVNIK	Esther		Israel
34	SCHIFFMAN	Zev		Israel
35	SHLIPAK-BIK	Sarah		Israel
36	SHAKLER	Chaim		Israel
37	EISENBERG		daughter of Eizik	Russia
38	EISENBERG		son of Eizik	Russia
39	GLINSON	Shimon		Russia
40	GUZBITZ	Leah		Russia
41	DOLGOFITI	Ben Tzion		Russia
42	CHAFETZ	Chaim	son of Reuven	Russia
43	CHAFETZ	Asher	son of Shmuel	Russia
44	CHAFETZ	Yerachmiel		Russia
45	CHAFETZ	Reuven		Russia
46	WILK	Sarah		Russia
47	YULEVITZ	Roza		Russia
48	MARGOLIN	Zelig		Russia
49	STOLLER	Yitzchak		Russia
50	FELDMAN	Yosef Meir		Russia
51	KIRZSNER	Yitzchak		Russia
52	KIRZSNER	Shabtai		Russia
53	KRAVCHIK	Dov		Russia
54	KRAVCHIK	Meir		Russia
55	SHUSTERMAN	Yakov		Russia
56	SHEVRIN	Herschel	son of Nachman	Russia
57	STEINBERG	Avraham		Russia
58	STEINBERG	Meir		Russia
59	SHAKLER	Alexander		Russia
60	SHAKLER	Bila		Russia
61	SHAKLER	Liebel		Russia
62	GITTELMAN	Dov		America
63	GITTELMAN	Tzipora		America
64	ZARETZKY	Chaim		America
65	ZARETZKY	Channah		America
66	ZARETZKY	Eliahu		America
67	CHAFETZ	Yakov		America
68	KATZ	Miriam		America
69	KAPLAN	Moshe		America
70	ROMANOVSKY	Moshe Zev		America
71	ROMANOVSKY	Yocheved		America
72	ROMANOVSKY	Genya		America
73	SHVORIN	Zvi	son of Moshe	America
74	SHVORIN	Zev		America
75	SHAVIKO	Avraham		America
76	SHAVIKO	Sima		America
77	ZELMANOVITZ	Noach		Canada
78	MURAVCHIK	Yakov David		Canada
79	MURAVNIK	Aharon		Canada
80	FELDMAN	Aharon		Canada
81	SHVORIN	Aharon		Canada
82	WALOCHINSKY	Aharon		Germany
83	SLUTZKY	Aryeh		Austria
84	KRAVCHIK	Kalman		Germany
85	KRAVCHIK	David		Germany
86	FRIEDLAND	Sarah		Italy
87	OLOMOTZKY	Zev		Poland
88	GUZANSKY	Alexander		Poland
89	GUZANSKY			Poland
90	LICHTENBERG	Yitzchak		Poland

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