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I was sixteen years old when this horrible war broke out, which ended in a terrible holocaust for humanity and the attempted extermination of the Jewish people in Europe. I dedicate my lines to my hometown, Bielsk. It was my terrible fate to see it a few days before its destruction, and to be with its beloved Jews a few hours before their death, when they were concentrated in the Jewish quarter and the ghetto, imprisoned and awaiting their bitter end.

In fact, I lived in Gajnówka after my parents moved to live there in 1933, but, my entire childhood world would remain tied to Bielsk with strong emotional ties. I know Bielsk in spirit and soul as the region of my longings, as a person in moments of nostalgia and as a child in his hours of diving into the world of his memories and the depths of his innocence. I was also drawn to Bielsk during the years of terror, when my father z”l was murdered, and I was left the only “man” in the family, and planned to move to Bielsk, the city of our extensive family and a city where we could alleviate our sudden loneliness and satisfy our hungry soul.

Gajnówka, or Hajnówka, was a city of 25,000 residents, but the number of its Jews was very small, only about twenty percent. When the Nazis entered, the Jews were imprisoned in such a way that they could not move at will, nor save themselves and escape from the hands of the Nazi guards and their local Christian helpers.

A short time later, the Jews of Gajnówka were taken to the Pruzhany Ghetto and I was among them. While leaving the city, on the way to Pruzhany, dozens of Jews were shot for no reason. They were murdered out of the bloodlust of the murderous rulers. Among those murdered on the way, which were not buried and remained dead in the fields, was also my father, Yosef Grudzinski z”l.

In this manner I became an orphan and the head of a family in a brief moment. My mother was exhausted and broken from the death of her husband and days of bereavement and hunger, and my twin sisters, Esther and Gitel, relied on me, the man in the family. Our situation was difficult. We were hunted like animals when we walked to Pruzhany Ghetto. Jews were beaten and pushed and they tripped and fell, to speed up their way to the death cells and the murder centers.

On the way another thought oppressed us. Apart from those worries that bothered everyone we had our own private concern. All, or most, of those who left for Pruzhany were equipped, more or less, with foodstuffs or rags to sell for food. We left destitute, without a ration of food for the first day in the ghetto. The first thought that came to our mind was - to escape and go over to Bielsk.

We did not know the situation in Bielsk. We knew that preparations were being made to concentrate its Jews in a ghetto, but we did not know for sure if it had already been done, or if it was within the scope of plans for immediate execution. In any case, we wanted to be in Bielsk the city of our family, the famous city of mutual aid. We wanted to be with the Jews of Bielsk in times of trouble.

Pruzhany Ghetto was tightly closed and it was difficult to get out, very difficult, but the situation was urgent. We had no bread to eat, no clothes to wear in the intense cold of that winter and no

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bedding to cover us for the night. That's how we came to the decision that I would go out first, I will check the options, and how we would be able to move to Bielsk and stay there. Fortunately for us, at that time there was a connection between Pruzhany and Bielsk. The first produced slippers to warm the murderers' feet in the winter, and the second provided the raw material for these slippers and luckily for us, Pomeranz, a Bielsk man, carried out this connection. He was in charge of the truck with the wool and occasionally came to Pruzhany.

He was a good Jew with a warm heart, a daring Jew who did not shy away from danger. I approached him as a Jewish child, to the father of Jewish children, and he agreed to take me in his truck while I was hidden and covered with layers of materials that he was transporting.

It was in the winter of 1941. The cold was unbearable. The policemen, who guarded the entrance, sat wrapped in their coats, hiding themselves in the corner from the cold. When they saw the truck they thought from afar that it was a German truck and let us pass without inspection. The Germans did not tolerate their inspections and they tried not to carry them out.

In this manner I arrived in the winter of 1941to Bielsk, my miserable city.

There was still no ghetto in Bielsk. The Jews were concentrated in a small quarter that extended in a small square between the street leading to Bialystok and the small river, and between Orla Street and the butcher shops street. The quarter was guarded from all sides and had only one entrance. Then, the quarter was surrounded by a fence and became a prison for the Jews, “ghetto” in the language of the murderers of my people.

I managed to get in and stayed there for two or three days. As mentioned, I traveled to collect a few items for my family's needs, and to check the possibilities of our move to Bielsk and our stay there. I was a youth very focused on my responsible task, but these unfortunate people, cut off from everything, treated me seriously and warmly. As a person, who came from the outside, they talked to me a lot and told me many things. In these conversations I learned that close to their entry the Nazis gathered all the Jewish intelligentsia of Bielsk, their leaders, and murdered them without explanation or reason. Then, with no representation for the community, they began the arrangements for their annihilation, and the confinement was the condition that made it easier. They also told me about many murders in the street, in daylight and in the evening hours. Jews were murdered in the street, at work, on their way to and from work, or just walking from house to house, from neighbor to neighbor. Every Jew outside his home, his four walls, was intended for murder.

The situation in Bielsk was somewhat surprising. In any case, in my eyes, the eyes of an innocent youth, death certainly hovered over everyone, the murderers' intentions were known and clear, the Jews were full of anxiety and yet... the Jews were equipped with food and clothing and had their meals as on normal days. They bought what they lacked from the gentiles around them in exchange for clothes and other rags that they brought with them from their homes to the enclosure. Something from the stupidity, and the blurring of the brain, befell them and they lived in complete - or deliberate - disregard of the situation and its seriousness. Their main concern, so to speak, was given to food, their daily meals and the next day's meals. I remember, with a laugh, that there were those who started to take care of the stock of wood for the next winter, so that they would have enough to heat their houses when the new year, and its cold, will arrive.

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I left Bielsk in danger, with death waiting for me every step of the way, but, for the sake of my family, I did and succeeded.

Between the first and second trip to Bielsk I left for Bransk disguised as a Pole, to stock up on additional equipment, all with the thought of returning to Bielsk when we are equipped with a necessary supply of food and clothing.

Bransk was still free. Not a quarter or a ghetto. We also had a family there, but we were attracted to Bielsk, and on my return to Pruzhany we looked for advice on how we could all move to Bielsk.

And again, as per our previous plan, I left ahead of the family. This time I had to look for an apartment for us, to return and realize our aspiration for our family there.

I waited again for the good Pomeranz. Again he had to risk something for us, the people of Bielsk in exile. We also wanted him to take the whole family out.

Pomeranz came, and as at the beginning the same trick. I am hidden in the truck. The truck leaves safely as rulers' car. And again, the policemen will surely be afraid of the Germans' scolding and won't check the vehicle, and we are in Bielsk. But this time something happened…

We were stopped by the Germans who ambushed us on the way out of Pruzhany Ghetto. We were taken back to the police station outside the ghetto. I don't know what happened to Pomeranz, I was put in prison. A 16-year-old criminal who wanted to unite his separated family in time of trouble, a youth, whose whole sin was, that he wanted to exchange a ghetto with a more family ghetto. A Jewish boy whose only desire was to continue living and this was one of the most serious crimes.

I sat here until the Jews of Pruzhany Ghetto were evacuated. I was returned to them when they were taken to Auschwitz, to the gas chambers and crematoria. I was taken out together with my family to Auschwitz.

Here I learned later, that in 1942 a ghetto was established in Bielsk in the area of the former Jewish quarter. This time, besides the Jews of Bielsk, the Jews of its surroundings were imprisoned there, and at the end of 1942 the Jews of Bielsk Ghetto were taken to Treblinka and exterminated there. On the way out a number of Jews tried to escape and were shot at the place of their escape. They were murdered without mercy. Among the murdered, who were left dead on the spot, was also Pomeranz. He tried to jump over the fence, was shot while holding onto it, and remained hanging on the fence.

I was in Auschwitz with my mother and my sisters until the selection. My mother was murdered in the selection, and burned in the crematoriums along with many of the inhabitants of Auschwitz camp. My sisters held on and lived. Two weeks after our mother's death Esther fell ill with dysentery. She was fed up with her life. She turned to the camp authorities and asked to be sent to the crematoriums. They fulfilled her request and she was burnt while fully conscious, because her death was better than her life. Gitel, her twin, followed her and also voluntarily burned herself. The separation from her beloved twin sister was very difficult for her.

That's how I remained in my youth, orphaned and useless to myself. But friends, who were older than me, took care of me and with their help I held on until the days of my rescue. Thanks to them I registered as a carpenters' apprentice, as a required professional, I worked, sunk my troubles in the tedious labor

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and forgot my grief and longing to the dear souls, which were cut off before my eyes, and I was so in need of their closeness.

Dear Jews surrounded me all the time. They taught me the carpentry trade while caring for my life. This friendship of these people to my family helped me and I stayed three consecutive years in Auschwitz until I wore out my future murderers.

When the Red Army approached our camps and the Germans began to retreat and dragged us along with them. This is how we arrived in Mauthausen, from there to Ebensee in Austria, and here we were liberated by the Allied army.

In my three years in Auschwitz I knew many hardships, I also knew selections, in which people close to me perished, and my feelings of terrible loneliness were renewed from time to time after each selection. Nevertheless, something beat in me and told me: Live! I lived at any cost. I escaped from the selections. I risked my life to stay alive to wear out the terrible enemy. From every escape I returned risking my life to live again with my family's friends, with the remnants of my benefactors. I hid so as not to be discovered. I was in terrible situations, when the murderers were angry with me for being able to escape from under their eyes and live, while for them I was marked for death. I remained alive.

In the end, I wanted to return to Bielsk, as I saw it in its last days and after the Holocaust. I did it out of a double impulse - also because its memory is associated with the memory of many things in my childhood, and also because I carry with me the horror sight of Bielsk after it became the object of German genocide.

As mentioned, I saw Bielsk during my three days stay in the Jews' enclosure in their quarter. Then, I was engrossed in the matters of the task assigned to me by my mother z”l and my sisters. But I remember it clearly. Bielsk, in the winter of 1941 was partially burned. As was their custom, the Nazis burned it to abuse its Jewish residents who were evacuated, to imply to them that they were preparing a destruction that would never be rebuilt. For some reason they left the ghetto quarter untouched and also other quarters remained undestroyed. The burned section extended from Moshe Leib Ferber on Orla Street to the Catholic Church. The rest of the streets remained standing. Orla Street, in the section where the carriages stood, also remained in existence.

They did not touch one synagogue. I don't know which of the many that were in Bielsk they didn't dare to touch. It's possible that it was “Yefe Einayim,” or the new Beit Midrash, but it is clear that one remained and I saw it as it was.

The state of partially burned Bielsk more than doubled the anguish of its horror, its houses, empty of Jews, emitted horrors and anxieties. The abandoned streets before our eyes emphasized that here was Jewish life, the beauty of youth, the joy of children, the murmur of lovers, the fervor of believers and the longing for the coming of the Messiah, and all of this was destroyed and gone.

But Bielsk, to the horror of it, remained largely unburned, a legacy of murderers and human abusers of the lowest kind, and this I would like to emphasize in the Bielsk Book.

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