[Columns 313-314]

[Columns 315-316]

[Columns 317-318]

Kehat Kliger was born in Ludmir. The son of the synagogue cantor Dovid Kliger of blessed memory. He displayed writing talent from his earliest years – publishing is first creative poems and prose in the local weekly paper. He was an active librarian in the “Sholem Aleichem Society” and at the same time proceeded with his personal and modest talented work. In the years 1930 – 1932 he entered the literary world with the publication of his mature works in the Warsaw weekly literary magazine “Literarishe Bleter” (“Literary Pages”) published by Nakhman Maizel. He emigrated to Argentina and became a contributor in the local Yiddish press. In 1941 he published his first book called “Songs on the Earth”, poems and ballads. His creative talents grew and expanded and the fruits of his talent were published in a series of books from 1943-58. Among them, there is one worth giving special mention, a book of poems and ballads called “The World Has Invited me to Die”, which was dedicated to horrific tragedy of the Ludmir martyrs and expressed the deep cries of pain and suffering of our generation. It is important to mention that after his visit to Israel, K. Kliger published a book of poems in Buenos Aires in 1956 called “Scenes from Israel”.

The world invited me for a glass of mourning, The world invited me to a bloody feast, The world invited me to die. I arrived, drank from the glass of mourning, I arrived, prepared and ready to die. In order for the drink to be sweet on my palate, In order for me to enjoy the meal, In order for my death to be pleasant, - Musicians strummed dead melodies at open graves, Winds danced with ropes at the gallows, Bows dug, like steel shovels, - Ay, mother, how the red slaughter knives played, Ay, how they tugged melodies from the millions of dead, When suspended nights rocked under the skies, Years smiling on one digging his own grave And I, mother dear, how I drank, How I drank the glass of blood until the last drop, The bitter glass of bile with mourning. And my heart fogged up with the melodies of the million of dead, My blood was intoxicated by confession – wailing, My body squirmed, My body was feverish, My body was dying But did not die. My body was dying, squirming, My body was feverish but did not die. I opened my eyes, Saw ruins and destruction, I saw dead nights With choked necks, Split open heads with eyes still open, Shot winds girded with swords, Dancing on rooftops, on trees, On corpses, on limbs, On choked necks, On dead heads with with open eyes. -Who is there, Who is there in the red hollow of bloody scents, Who is there, Who is there under the lit skies In blazing fervor, Who is there under the ruins of ash and fire? – This is how I asked and screamed, This is how I bled, This is how I walked This is how I wandered through ash filled days on end Over embers of lives and homes, Through extinguished worlds, - But nobody answers my terrified screams, Only winds play dead melodies Over exterminated warm necks. -Who is here, Who is here under the embers of fire, Who is here,

[Columns 319-320]

It began with mockery and cutting off sidelocks, and it ended with…complete extermination

A Jew recites “Kaddish” the memorial prayer for the dead for the first Jews killed by the Nazi murderers on Parne Street in Ludmir

[Column 321]

Who is there under skies and red immersions? – However, no one answers my screams of terror, Only shooting winds dance on shot temples, Only winds scrape out the dying melodies Over dead heads with open eyes. Who is there, Who has remained after the glass of mourning, Who is there, Who had remained after the bloody feast? - I wrap my body In a piece of sky – a torn curtain from the Torah ark I bow my head In the tattered shadows of the gallows I break my fingers On hills with open graves: -Oh world, you, world, Red-slaughterer hangman, Oh, world, you, world, Sword-girded murderers, - You invited me to the bloody feast – I came and ate your meal; You invited me to die – I arrived all set for death; I was prepared to confess my sins before dying, My body squirmed, I was feverish, I was dying, But I did not die; You led me and led me Through seven gates of suffering and death, You led me through millions of dead, But I did not die. And since I did not die, I want salvation for my earthly life; Since I did not die, I want redemption for my earthly existence, I want redemption for terror and horror, I want redemption from: Fire, murder and choking. I want the blossoming earth, the calm seas, I want the bright sun on my head, my shoulders, I want the song filled day In my blood, my limbs; I want the green kindness of the mountains, The tranquility of valleys, I want the familiar nourishing tables, The cries of joy, The dancing breath of twenty-four-hour days; I want the blessing of the fields,

[Column 322]

The abundance of corn and rye, I want the granaries, The barns, The mines, The gold and silver treasures; I want the harbours, Factories, The villages, The cities, The regions, The borders, - I want the round world from all four sides, I want the entire universe. Oh world, you world, Gallows swinging in the wind, - You invited me to the bloody feast – I came and ate from your dead meal; You invited me to die – I came ready to die; I recited the confession of my sins, My body trembled, I was feverish, dying, But in spite of you I did not die. And since I did not die, I want a penalty, A verdict, A rabbinic tribunal, I want a reckoning, A balance, Settlement, - Because my body is still being tortured With terror and horror, Because my blood is still intoxicated With moaning confessions, Because my heart is still fogged With melodies of millions of dead. Oh, world, you, world, Red slaughtering murderers, Oh, world, you, world, Wind blown gallows, - You will give, Me the round world and all four sides, You will give, Me the entire universe, You will give, Give me – Reckoning, a verdict, settlement!…

[Column 323]

The autumn tress saw and remained silent, The skies of Elul did not shout out to God. “Autumn trees, why were you silent?” “Elul skies, why did you not shout?” My small Jewish town, my twenty thousand Jews, Were slaughtered on the 19th day of Elul in the village called Pitidin. Woe to the trees, in the village of Pitidin, Woe to you, the skies over the village of Pitidin. From suckling to children, from conception to old age The slaughtering knife slaughtered, each and every one. The slaughtering knife slaughtered, the knife cut, The bride, the groom, the rabbi, the in-law. From the main street to the synagogue court yard, from poor to rich, The slaughtering knife slaughtered, treating everyone equally, My twenty thousand Jews, - How many have remained? No one has remained, no one has remained. And the autumn trees saw and remained silent, The skies of Elul did not shout out to God. At least tell me skies, tell me tress, About the day of slaughter in Pitidin, woe is me! I know the village, the cottages – each one, With the yearning country roads, with the meagre plains; I know it, the village, the Volhynian Pitidin, Every wretched peasant from the market and fairs; I know every sound from the scythe In sunny spring, and cloudy autumn, - Oh, tell my skies, tell me trees About the slaughter day in Pitidin, woe is me! The rabbi Yakov – Dovid, the old grey naïve man, Did he actually smile before his soul left him? When Hinde the Gabbai's wife, wearing her Sabbath kerchief, Welcomed with love the brown murder? Oh, tell me skies, tell me tree, About the slaughter day in Pitidin, woe is me!

[Column 324]

Did the cantor's wife, Pesiye – Gitl, my mother, With my sister, her only daughter, - Really dance before the killer, dance and sing: Holy, holy – and hop three times? Did the ritual slaughterer Yitzkhak – Shloyme make a blessing, When the knife of the evil slaughterer cut his throat? When the pious water carrier Srolye the mute, Shouted as he was dying: God will pay? When Reb Nokhemtze's son – a seven-year-old, Yelled out “Hear O Israel”, was his cry was suffocated and remained in a void? Woe unto you, trees, you blood stained witnesses, Why were you silent at the sacrifice in Pitidin? I will write this with blood in the journal of my heart, Let it remain in our memory for generations, While my Jewish town, the twenty thousand Jews, Where slaughtered on the 19th of Elul in the village of Pitidin, - The trees on earth did not cry, nor scream As if it was possible for them to remain silent in the skies.

The day swallows the last cup of Jewish blood from sunset, Shmayeh sways, in the red glow, not cold on the way to the gallows. The birch trees escape from the road, the peasant huts Shmaye's eyes – blazing blue, Shmaye goes to the gallows. Kneeling, The musicians' cross blazes, the lens shines with malice, Shmaye's tuft, a blond fire, Shmaye strides to the gallows. On his lips, furious curses, his blood boils with hatred, Like his holy forefathers, Shmayeh goes to the gallows. Under the ashen dust of the Ghetto, he sees a blade of grass growing, Shmaye is feverish: A white birch tree will grow from my gallows. Over the short grinding night dawn will break lighter Shmaye squirms: I am the last Jew going to the gallows. From the earth where national joy sprouts like blossoms from one seed, Shmaye's limbs Hallelujah to death, to the gallows. “Adieu dear parents, it is now a great privilege, Like a proud Jew and man to die on the gallows.”

[Column 325]

The cold sky turns ashen grey, like a scorched parchment of the Torah, Shmaye's neck in a polished tight noose on the gallows. His body – a flag, a flag in the wind, his red tufts flying. May the people of Israel Live! Am Yisreol Khay! Sang Shmaye on his way to the gallows. 1947

I am writing you a letter of a sort, My Lord, And you may, Want to punish me severely for this: One terrifying night You made me a boy orphaned of both parents – “YIsgadal” May His great name be sanctified[1]. You left my home in ruins. From my house only a mound of earth remains. You took everything away from me, Except my sorrow, Now I am lonely Like you my Lord – May His great name be sanctified. I wander through ruins, Abandoned, on my own In a dead world, Without mercy, My God; Take my soul

[Column 326]

For a slice of joy, If you want my body, It's also ready – May His name be sanctified. I'm writing you such a letter, My Lord, And you may, angrily, Punish me for this: I have nothing left on your sinful earth Than a curse, a sigh, a tear – May His name be sanctified.

Bring me wind, my little sister's ashes, I want to bury them in my heart; Search well, they are mixed with The ashes of our grandparents. I want to protect the ashes like an amulet, Until the end of my life. Later, I will give them to the Lord of the world, As a gift. I will tell him: My Lord, I bring to you, from your people, A vestige of the destruction: Sit my Lord, with ashes on your head, Sit and recite The Book of Lamentations. I ask of you, wind, Bring my sister's ashes to me from across the seas; Search well, they are mixed With the ashes of our parents.

[Columns 325-326]

The mossy alleys of the castle writhe in terror. They want to flee far from this cursed soil. Like stabbed children, the small trees on the street corners are bewildered. Their sword gashes are still trembling.

The dawn has no time to comb its shaggy blue hair. It emerges from between the prison bars, traces of night stuck to its eyelashes. Its blood is infused with the murder of Jews, the helpless lambs, who wait in terror for the slaughter–knife, the hangman's rope.^[1]

The last breaths of night are still dying on the crumbling old walls, as if a body were hanging outside the bars, bony, shriveled; the first drops of sun drip with the mold of thorny wires that hang, like burning veins, in the din of an insistent clamor.

Like bloody madness, the knowledge burns in inflamed brains. The silence is full of uproar. It screams from all bodies: “Soon, we will be dragged again, once more taken to lead and rope and pit and pyre!”^[2]

And who will be led, and who will be dragged, if not desiccated skeletons, if not the bones, the skulls, if not the bodies, that have been blackening here for days, stitched with lead, in order to die once again for the executioner Westerheide.^[3]

[Columns 327–328]

Where will we be taken? Piatidin has guzzled enough, Piatidin has eaten its fill of blood and marrow and bones.

A pyre has been lit under the hearts of the Jews of Ludmir, and the terror of mothers pierces their children. A blind Jew recites his confession in preparation. Another holds a knife to his own throat: “If it is death, let us slaughter ourselves here, brothers. Let the murderer not see our pain, our suffering.”

But the red voice of Executioner Westerheide giggles. He likes the wailing, the funerals of the living Jews. His bloody fingernails joyfully claw deeper into the hearts of the hiding, panicking Jews.

O, Piatidin, what is your sin – or your merit – that entitles you to cuddle your Jewish neighbors in graves? Piatidin, who cut your trees down and fashioned them into gallows, so that the shame and the curse will blaze over you for years?

O, Piatidin, see how the footsteps of children and elderly die on the road to your ripped bosom, once fields of wheat. Why did you not sow your soil with rocks and stones, why did you not set your land on fire with burning forests?

See, here it is, the death procession, funerals of elderly and children. Sky – why are you blue? Sky, pluck yourself to tatters. If there is a God here – let Him die together with them, before this ground heaves with strangled voices. And the blond Ukrainian dogs guard the gate, their crooked crossed teeth hiss with boiling, venomous hate. Ha–ha – why are they guarding the gate? Jews are already dying here, slaughtered babies slaughtered– woe is me –already lie in their own blood.

Yes, the blond–brown dogs still guard the prison, and the bones inside the bodies sound like the bare bones of the dead. Who will make it to the grave of the Piatidin ditches, who will live to see the merciful death of the murderer? The prison gate, the gate will be the only one to bear witness.

The massive, sturdy bolts will open with a grating screech, and the metallic, steel–clad voice of Executioner Westerheide will seal his last murderous command here with Jewish blood.

Yossele Dreyer sits in his sheltering green caftan in the sunny guesthouse of the small Karlin synagogue on a pinewood board, still scented with forest sap and roses. He scrapes out a childish “Here lies” with a chisel.

“Ay, ay, little Jews are dying, poor things, of tuberculosis,” and he stills his sorrow with a deep draw of snuff–tobacco. His 90–year–old beard smells of brandy, midnight prayers, Mayver–Yabek; but he himself, Yossele, is already a pile of clay, a shadow.^[2]

The chisel scratches angrily at the white flesh of the board, and Yossele's feathered cap shifts back and forth. He is saying verses from Psalms and his eyes are full of tears: “Beloved father, plant no more black flowers in the cemetery. Save your little Jews, who haven't yet tasted mother's milk, from joining the young dead.”

In Piatidin, in yesterday's little Volhynian village: blue peace, flickering candle stubs, dreaming farmhouses, gleaming sickles drunk on sunny wine, moss–covered sheds, heaps of rye sheaves.

In Piatidin, in yesterday's little Volhynian village: a cow watches a rosy sunset in the pond's mirror, nightingales in the pine forest sing a sweet Slavic melody, a barefoot girl walks through the stalks carrying a clay jug.

In Piatidin, in yesterday's little Volhynian village: a flaxen–haired shepherd boy, a reed pipe, misty meadows, an little evening fire, crackling, joyous.^[1] A harmonica sings longingly in the moonlight.

In Piatidin, in yesterday's little Volhynian village: a blue–fringed napkin – the sky –– over the white–blooming month of Nissan. Next to a dusty path, a chapel with golden hangings and images of Christ, a peasant woman kneels, kissing the crucified one's feet.^[2]

In Piatidin, in today's little Volhynian village: the fields are blooming with skulls and bones. From the smallest stalks, too weak to green themselves, dangle blond heads of dead children of Ludmir.

In Piatidin, in today's little Volhynian village: each sprouting blade of grass is a human limb, each root – a bone. The cornflowers spurt with the red froth of a live heart, stabbed.

In Piatidin, in today's little Volhynian village: a twisted human limb hangs down from a branch. My town's mass grave stretches for miles: Gnoyne, Rilivetz, Khapalitsh, Kilshtshine.^[3]

In Piatidin, in today's little Volhynian village: the soil refuses to remain soil, the soil wants to become sky! The grieving Shechinah, its head covered with ashes, wanders restlessly in the gurgle of choked voices.^[4]

In Piatidin, in today's little Volhynian village: the sun hangs, an open ledger, the white–hot letters boil, dripping warm streams with the holy blood of twenty thousand Ludmir Jews.^[5]

October 12, 1947

[Columns 333–334]

Ludmir, September 1939. Our alley, near the “Green Market,” had changed: it was almost empty of people, empty of fruit and vegetables. Everything seemed to have died out. Here and there, at street corners and intersections, at the corner of Magistrat and Lutsk streets, Jewish guards were standing on watch during an alarm, and did not let people out on the street. They were recognizable; in addition to their colored armbands they wore gas masks over their faces. As night fell, people had to hang black curtains over their windows, and lie down on the floor by the faint flicker of a kerosene lamp as they listened to the terrifying silence of the night, which seemed to last a year.

During this harrowing period, my sister Gitl became very ill and was taken to the hospital on Kowel Street. As far as we were concerned, we were at war: the German army was on the other side of the Bug River, and many Jews began fleeing to us to save themselves. The study houses filled up immediately.

Tearful women and their children, hungry and exhausted, were sitting or lying on bundles scattered on the street. When the siren sounded, all the nearby residents rushed to the shtibl.^[2] Naturally, because it was a brick structure, a bomb could not damage it. Children cried in fear, and orthodox Jews begged in their prayers to be delivered from the enemy and their lives saved.

One morning the first powerful bombardment was heard, landing on the railroad station. Pieces of shrapnel reached our houses. No one went out on the street that day.Nearby neighbors whispered that there were numerous wounded, as well as some dead.

That evening, we heard a wagon approaching our house; our sister Gitl lay in it, half–dead. She had been sent back from the hospital, which had admitted about one hundred wounded from the day's bombardment. We wanted to save her, but doctors were afraid to come for consultation. Gitl was prescribed injections, but the nurse was to frightened to venture out on the street.

[Columns 335–335]

The next morning, we saw men running on the streets with bundles of bedding, and women carrying children. Holding their last possessions, they were fleeing from the bombs to the villages and the fields. We were almost the only ones left in our alley. I remember our aunt Yocheved (may her memory be for a blessing) packing her things every morning and saying to my father, “Come, Sholem! Let's run away too.” His answer was always, “I'm not running anywhere. If the One above wants to take care of me, He will do that here too…”

And indeed, how could we flee with such a sick girl? When the siren sounded we would carry her to the Blatsovk shtibl^[3] and lay her on the floor. I remember how the steeple of the nearby cathedral was burning after bomb explosions, and the residents of an entire row of houses were fleeing because their homes were burning. We were in terrible danger then.

Besides the airborne enemies, we were faced daily by local enemies. These were the Ukrainians who wanted to exterminate the few remaining Jews. The high–ranking Polish officials had left town at the outbreak of war, and there was now no authority in Ludmir. One morning the entire staff of the large prison near us ran away. The prison gates opened and all the criminals took over the town, weapons in their hands, supposedly to “safeguard public order.”

Posters in the city announced a provisional city management, headed by a well–known Ukrainian doctor, who was an extreme anti–Semite. Local persecutions of Jews started. Jews who lived in Vadafuin and Ustil streets were were taken out and shot, and their homes were set on fire.^[4] It was very dangerous to go outside.

However, I had no time to be afraid. My sister's health had deteriorated. Besides, I was the only remaining capable person in the family. These were her last few hours of life. But I did not believe that, and like an insane person I ran to the pharmacy through the deserted streets looking for injections. I still wanted to save my sister. Bullets landed on the street a few feet away from me. When I finally reached the nurse, gasping for breath, begging her to come and inject my sister, she asked me, astonished, “Now? Nobody can walk on the street. I will come later, when things are quieter.” But I was already too late. The same day, during my sister's funeral, bodies of people who had been suddenly shot to death near the cinema on Farna Street were brought to the cemetery.

That was a terrible night for our family. We lay on the ground at the house of our Zamosc relatives (may their memory be for a blessing) and listened, heartbroken, to the silence. At midnight, we heard the din of tanks and heavy machine guns, as well as screams and clamor of people.We thought that, God forbid, the enemy had entered the town. With the blue dawn, we emerged, grieving, into the daylight to find out what was happening. We were glad to see it was the Russian army. People said that they had had a long hard way, because the bridges from Lutsk had been damaged, and that caused many pointless casualties.

At the end of December 1939 I left Ludmir for Lemberg, and from there made my way deep into Russia.^[5]

  Volodymyr Volynskyy, Ukraine     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2025 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 09 May 2025 by JH