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My mother died when I was three years old. And my father was a shoemaker and toiled many hours of the day. He was not able to take care of his numerous children. Thus, I was placed in the orphanage and remained there until the age of ten.

I remember our orphanage well, but only things connected to my life and the lives of the rest of the children who were with me at the institution. There were times that I was obligated to remember; I only remembered the meager food and the distress of the house but many days my attitude changed toward it and I appreciated it. Now it seems to me to have been an institution which saved children from a terrible fate at home and from a stepmother relationship of darkness and gloom. Because I now understand my father, which to my regret and our regret, he had to give up on educating me and fatherhood for my sake and our sake, and to deliver me to an institution. And thus I am filled with understanding for the institute, for its administration and its founders.

In the beginning the orphanage was in a small house on Beit Midrash Street. Later it was moved to a different street, and when the Russians came, they took the institution under their aegis. It was moved to the modnik [Russian meaning trendy, elegant, fashionable] estate next to the train station in a very lovely villa. They improved its condition but turned it into a large, multi-national institution which was not distinctly Bielsk.

Under the Jewish authority there were about 20 to 30 children in the institute. The management was very limited, and its means were very meager. The effect seemed to us to be a lack of responsibility, resulting in the suffering of the children. But over time our wonder grew. When we got older, we wondered how Bielsk could dare to establish with limited means such an institution as this? You see, towns in the area that were much larger did not have such courage, and they did not take upon themselves the burden of alleviating the distress of the children and the parents beaten down by a family disaster. They were frightened by the lack of funds and lack of friends, people devoted to this. Bielsk was bold and in this way saved the lives and souls of tens of Jewish children deprived of their childhood.

The first director during my time there was Elka Winograd, a very good woman, full of sensitive compassion and love for us. She was very weak as an administrator, and the regime which founded it was very lax. But we loved her dearly. She tended to our injured souls with her mothering and devotion.

When Elka got married, she left the orphanage and Batsheva arrived in her place. I do not recall her last name. She was very pretty, single and forceful in her authority. During her term the orphanage was very clean and orderly. Batsheva was incredibly clean, and this she strongly demanded of residents and of the cleaning workers. Our relationship with Batsheva was one of discipline bordering on fear. Elka before her we loved and were happy to fulfill her requests. We were always weighing the comparison between her and Elka, and it was always to her disadvantage. Though, over the years, as I said, we realized that Batsheva did compare well.

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The children slept in very crowded conditions. The institution only had two rooms for the children - a room for the boys and a room for the girls. The dining room was not one of the larger rooms. There was also a room for the administration and a kitchen and bathrooms. Among the children were also some from outside the town. One girl from Siemiatycze was my best friend, and there were those from other towns.

The Orphanage

Food was meager. Thin bread in the morning, butter and coffee; lunch was rarely any meat. Most days of the week we almost never saw meat. We received clothing from rich people in town. In these actions of concern for clothing and other things, it was very much Yacha, an aunt of Zipporah

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Kdelobovsky, and Chaya Mlodovsky. The latter was received by us and was well loved. She is located in Israel, and I once visited her in her apartment in Kiryat Bialystok in gratitude for the years gone by. She was the daughter of the butcher and lived near the orphanage on Beit Midrash Street. Her concern for the institution was very much felt and was continuous. On the board was another person, Rosenberg, who lived on Mitzkovitz [Mickiewicza] Street and had a warm relationship with us. These three I remember well because they would visit us frequently, and we would go to see them, and in an institution like this one connections such as these are very important, almost as much as food - and perhaps more so.

The highlight of the services that the institute provided was going to summer camp. Every year we would go for a month to a camp in Dubna, Miliachich [Milejczyce] or Druzgnik. The flavor of these camps followed us the entire year, health-wise and in spirit. We drew from this one month many emotional and uplifting experiences. Meeting with nature in the world for those without parents blurred our gloomy distinctiveness and anointed us with a good feeling that we were “like all the [other] children.”

The kitchen and clean-up worker was a Polish lady, a devoted and good woman. She was a good cook, and I remember her well.

On the holidays we always had parties. We would sit at long tables and sing. It was so nice. Neighbors on the street would come to us for the parties, and it was very joyful with them.

The orphanage was our home, the place where we ate and lodged. It was not a closed institution, where our studies also took place, coordinated to the spirit of the institute and its line of education. Instead, we went to school in town. When it came to education the Yiddish School controlled the institution. We did not learn Hebrew. The teachers were good, but they were always changing.

When the children reached the age of 14 and completed seven grades of school, the administrators of the orphanage saw to it that the children learned a trade and would be able to stand on their own. They would arrange to have the orphans placed with experts in a craft, or they would send them to Bialystok. There the children would continue to live in a local orphanage and learn occupations at a trade school or with a master craftsman. Completing their education in this way raised many difficulties for the board. They had to worry about money for clothing and food, and here I saw the greatness of volunteers of Bielsk, the public figures of the orphanage. We were small, and I remember the concern for our independence was very heavy on our little hearts. But we trusted the good hearts of our patrons and knew we were in good hands.

Even when the children went out “on their own,” that is, when they were earning money for their work, the committee would arrange a place of work and see that salary conditions were decent, just as they arranged a place for them to live and other things.

From previous years would come echoes of the warm care the committee gave us, and it was easy for us to think that there was concern for us. We knew details about the classes, and we saw them graduate with a healthy spirit of independence and freedom like all the graduates their age.

At the end of 1939, the Russians came to Bielsk, and they stayed until mid-1941. During that period of time the institution grew too much and lost its warm, Jewish character. It is true that the living conditions and the food greatly improved. However, the children began suffering; social suffering was very hard. The institute had over 200 children. Among them were some street children, criminals who really destroyed everything

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that had been built and obtained in the institution. We suffered terribly. We were afraid of the criminals who bullied and persecuted us and brought fear on the administrators of the institution, as well, until there was no one left to turn to with our complaint and no one who would defend us. In the end, the Russians themselves saw that the institute could not have a period of time like that and in that framework, and they reduced the number to 40 children.

The Russians also continued in a tradition of reducing it until it was as it had been previously.

When the Russians left, the institution was abandoned, and I do not know what was the fate of the children in it. I was staying in Druzgnik and thus I stayed alive. The rest of the children were abandoned, and shared the fate of the rest of the martyrs of our town.

When the Russian-German War broke out in June 1941, nearly 300 of us sick children without parents were brought into Druzgnik. I was sent there after being ill the entire winter with a terrible case of bronchitis and chronic bronchitis. The place is located on the border of Lithuania and was amazingly beautiful. I had already been there a few times and loved it. But this time it was in a different season, in June, and everything stood in a state of flowering and deep green; as if to cause anger, I enjoyed this time more than ever. And here it is The War, and I am alone amidst children gathered from different institutions. I wanted to go home; I was dying of homesickness but the way was closed. Vilna Bridge was completely burned, and the roads around it were destroyed. The director of the orphanage, a Jew from Leningrad, was anti-Semitic and had a virulent hatred of Zion. He assembled all of us and loaded us onto wagons heading to Russia for the dangerous withdrawal.

The director, who belonged to an obscure party, was Orthodox and strict. However, in regard to the order of the trip, he was like all of his management sloppy and not organized. We traveled without bread, without clothes, and it was not just one time that we were hungry. We were actually at the edge of dying from starvation. He moved us about from one place to another. Perhaps he wanted to come with all of us to Russia. For the privilege of his rank in a new situation or perhaps he did all that in order to be saved from a fate of the front and being mobilized in the army. In any event, his concern was as of a stepfather and hostile person. The one thing he did not forget to cram into us was Jewish self-hatred and humiliation of Zionism. All the time he would bring up his discussions along these lines. Luckily for us we had with us a Jewish counselor, David Tobias, who worked at the institute on a community mission, and he brought forth the opposite of the sabotage that the director was striving for. Tobias, a young man from Lomza, was implanted with us in the institution and everything was a secret. He himself was a man full of secrets and mystery. He was all the time in contact with Israel. I do not know where he pulled his information from. But he always had something fresh to relate to us on Eretz Yisrael [The Land of Israel] that from detail to detail he portrayed before us as a land of freedom, successfully fighting for its existence and rescuing Jews dispossessed of a home, deprived of existence and parents. Tobias was our comfort and the light of our lives.

The entire way we were subjected to German bombs. We jumped from the train each time and hid in the forests, on the sides of the road and in ditches of the field, waiting until the bombs passed and continuing like that without shelter or concern for shelter.

For two long weeks this was a road of suffering until we arrived in Russia. Of all the suffering,

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the torments of hunger and doing our needs (defecating) in public were great. It is difficult to explain especially this second one how great was the suffering for maturing young men and young women.

Our first stopping point in Russia was Sarapul^[1] in the Ural Mountains. We did not manage to get situated there and rest a bit when we already had to leave the place and go to Karakulina on the Kama River. Sarapul was turned into a medical camp for the tens of thousands of injured soldiers who were returning from the front lines. There they were hidden from the view of the residents in order not to break their spirits. This is what Tobias explained to us; also we were not permitted to be witnesses to the signs of the defeat of Russia at the Front. Thus we had to move out of there to another place.

In Karakulina, which was a large village, though not according to our concept of dimensions, they put us in a structure at an abandoned school, and there we stayed for five years. Actually, it was almost solely Jewish children who stayed. Most of the Poles left the institution before we left for Russia, and the Russian children were slowly spread out here in Russia with each going to his home or over time finding a relative or redeemer to take him in. The Russians cared for us well. We had good food and were well clothed, even while around us there was hunger and distress. I remember this well. We continued to study at a school with the customary ten grades in Russia, and those who graduated were even sent to study at a university or a technical school or in an upper-level trade school.

At the end of the War in the year 1945, the few Polish children returned to their land and only the Jews who had nowhere to go remained. David Tobias stayed with them as the only one who cared and was faithful.

In 1946, Yakov^[2] decided to have us make aliyah [emigrate to The Land of Israel] and worried about every detail in the process of aliyah. But out of caution, he arranged things officially as if the intention was to repatriate to “Polin,” to “parents.” Only in that way was Tobias able to overcome the Jewish manager who wanted to keep us as proof of his rights in the party like a crop from his Russian upbringing in the Komsomol and Russian culture.

The struggle between the two ended with Tobias winning out. The Polish Embassy passed us on to Lodz and from there to Wrocław^[3] and Kudowa-Zdroj.^[4] The last place was on the Czech border and Tobias was able to smuggle us from there to France, to a place next to Paris called Ch âteau de la Gite. From there the route to Israel was open. Nevertheless, we boarded the “Theodore Herzl” for the migration^[5] and after three days of waiting in Haifa, as captives were transported by the British to Cyprus.

Here we had another new chapter of suffering and torment without water and food with dreadful living conditions in shabby tents and waiting in line for water that was in a measured cup. The Shlichim [emissaries of the Jewish Agency] Zeev Boxter, from Gesher^[6], Yitzchak Zickerman from Kinneret,^[7] and Mindel from Alonim^[8] eased our suffering by making efforts to shorten the route for a return to Israel.

Thus ended the path of affliction for an orphan wandering about from Bielsk to Israel. These are also among the glorious chapters of Bielsk and the stories of suffering of a girl from Bielsk.

Translator's and Editor's Notes

1. Sarapul is a town located on the Kama River, a tributary of the Volga River, between Moscow and Petropavlosh. Return
2. This is the only mention of someone named Yakov, and the preceding and following sentences speak of David Tobias. It may have been a typo, or perhaps Yakov is another name for David Tobias. Return
3. Wrocław is located in western Poland on the Order River. Return
4. Kudowa-Zdroj, located in southwestern Poland, is near the border with Czechoslovakia. Return
5. The Hebrew word ההעפלה [hapalah] has the following meanings: immigration under difficult conditions to Palestine during the Mandatory regime; and blockade-running. Return
6. Kibbutz Gesher was founded in 1939 in the Beit Shean Valley in Israel. Return
7. Kibbutz Kinneret was founded in 1911 in the Galilee by the Sea of Galilee in Israel. Return
8. Kibbutz Alonim, founded in 1938, is located in northern Israel in the Lower Galilee. Return

[Page 249]

The orphanage was initially on Josephs Street in a two-story building, and as my mother told me there was a separate room for two children with tuberculosis, because there was no small hospital for them elsewhere. The institution had 120-140 children, and almost one hundred percent of them were from outside Bielsk, there were no children from Bielsk. These were children from nearby towns and even from Bialystok, even though there was a large orphanage there. Later, a girl from Bielsk was admitted, but this was an exceptional case - she had a father and a stepmother who neglected her and did not take care of her cleanliness and health. The girl was afflicted with wounds that spread on most of her body and there was no way out except in the orphanage.

Later, the financial situation of the institution worsened and it was moved to a smaller apartment. In the meantime the children grew up and did not fit the institution's terms. The only way out was to move them to nearby towns, to families who adopted them and the orphanage was closed. It was in renewed and destroyed Poland after the war. It was in the 1920s. My mother worked from1922 to1924. It also had school-aged orphans. The orphanage did not employ paid workers. Two received payment, Bar Levin who was a bookkeeper and another one. The treasurer was Michel Weinstein. My mother worked after the number of children was reduced, and then they also took a caregiver named Pribalistin. My mother was the house mother and responsible for everything.

It is worth mentioning Miss Fraulein Sarashnovsky, who was literally a mother to all the orphans in the city and the surrounding area. She came from a very intelligent family. This was her emotional satisfaction. She was already sixty years old then, and maybe older than that. When I was a little girl she looked awfully old to me, but her kindness and her dedication to the children endeared her to all of us, and her old age seemed to have disappeared. Among the activists who supported the orphanage were: Chone Tykocki who was very active, Alexander Weinstein a lawyer who was a native of a town near Bielsk, and Moshka Rosenberg brother of Leah Rosenberg.

These personalities influenced the success of the fundraising. Alexander Weinstein, for example, invited a young dancer to perform a ballet dance, or they held a singing ball with non-professional “actors,” and the income from the ticket sales was for the benefit of the orphanage. The hall was always full when the lawyer Weinstein took care of such balls for the benefit of the orphanage.

The balls, in support of the orphanage, became an event in the city. Wide circles mobilized for the success of the operation. The schools' students made themselves available to the activists, their choirs performed at the balls and contributed to the enrichment of the program.

The municipality made itself the guardian of the institution, supporting it with food, and also from time to time with financial aid.

According to the plan of the orphanage directors, the children started to learn a trade when they reached the age of fourteen. They did it in the afternoon at the end of school hours. The maturation problems of these unfortunate children were difficult. The institution

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could not meet the needs of the child who marched towards independence in his life. Nevertheless, the orphanage supported them at that age, and they received food rations for work and school even though they didn't live in the institution itself.

As mentioned, the older children were organized with families, mostly in the surrounding towns, and in most cases they lived in the house of their employers who trained them in their profession.

Over time, very interesting relationships developed between the children, the apprentices, and the families. Most of the children maintained contact with their adoptive families for a very long time.

The orphanage in Bielsk was founded out of the great spirit of tortured people, who commanded themselves to continue its existence. Their concern for orphaned Jewish children, which exceeded the limits of their ability, was a direct continuation of an absolute and deep-rooted popular national feeling.

The period of the orphanage in Bielsk was relatively short, but in this short period Bielsk passed a great test in its achievements in the field of mutual aid. The story of the history of the orphanage adds a special charm to the Jews of Zeydene Torbe^[1].

The old orphanage

1. This Yiddish term translates to the “Silk Rucksack,” a name by which Bielsk Podlaski was known. See the first paragraph of Bielsk - Its Rabbis, Teachers and Jews, by Tzvi Ben-Daat, on page 48 for an explanation. Return

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