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In writing the book of Bielsk-Podlaski, we are perpetuating the memory of precious Jews who, according to the history of the Jewish People, were pushed into one of the remote corners between virgin forests and an endless wilderness in order to unite here, far from the storms of madness of the nations of the world and to establish for themselves a center of protection for their Jewish connection. Here in the Bialowieza wilderness, Jews, having been hunted by gentiles about a thousand years ago, wanted to unite with their Creator and fellow Jews and to establish, in a world of constant murder and mass killings, an experiment of setting times for Torah, prayer, brotherhood and peace between people. Far from their people and homeland, a handful of Jews gathered here to live their lives according to Halacha, Torah, and, like all such groups in Judaism, to impose on themselves a life of restriction and mitzvah in rabbinical and community circles, in order to continue to exist, to be, until the coming of their righteous Messiah, who will bring them in worldly joy to the Land [of Israel].

And so they continued for about a thousand years, and the experiment was successful.

In writing the book of Bielsk, we are writing the final chapter of this community and recording forever how this Jewish city and this Jewish community were consumed, destroyed by the greatest of the madmen in the world. Its Jews were exterminated with insane cruelty. Because they were Jews, because by their very being they served as an uncomfortable reminder of the sin of the Gentile world, which goes wild from time to time, reveling in human blood without reason or justification.

In writing this book, we add another chapter of Lamentations to the martyrology literature of our people, but in a change from the previous chapters of Lamentation, we seek to prove to ourselves and to the entire world that our loved ones were indeed destroyed because they were good and holy, that they were indeed destroyed by human beings whose goal was the extinction of humanity in general, but who were unsuccessful in doing so. But unlike previous periods, the blood of our saints will not be in vain, and for generations to come, we will carry in our hearts the bitter lesson of the deceitful “kindness” of nations and will no longer trust it. We will write books, we will tell and we will continue to tell how crazy the world was and how naïve we were and how we will no longer continue in our naiveté. We will be strong! We will be united! And the blood of our parents, siblings, friends, colleagues and neighbors will serve as a cement that will unite us in a collective memory of a tragic past and in a shared vision of a future that prevents such repetitions in history.

Bielsk was a city-town with its own characteristics and uniqueness, which the book will tell about. But beyond that – like all the towns of Israel [Jews] in the Diaspora – it was a fortress and preserve for Judaism and Jews, whose longings, strengths, bonds, quarrels and disputes, were proof to the world that even in this way it was possible for man to exist as a society without murder and bloodshed, as a society that maintains itself by virtue of laws and discipline, which they willingly imposed on themselves,

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and thus to constitute a unit of human beings in the universe, living a life in which there is an anticipation of better days in the future and steadfastness amidst hardship and distress in order to sanctify the name of Judaism, which contains a vision and a sacrificing reality for the sake of a vision of the end of days,^[1] a righteous Messiah and Redeemer, the Kingdom of Heaven and endless peace.

The Bielsk community existed for many years, many centuries, and in some of them its situation did not improve. Surrounded by enchanting forests, Bielsk became a target for various invaders, who waged wars and conquests, with robbery and extermination, rape and plunder among themselves, while the Jew among them served as a perpetual orphan, whom anyone who wanted came and struck, taking his life and the lives of his friends. Nevertheless, Jews did not leave Bielsk for good, and at every opportunity they returned to it to continue building their home, their beit midrash [house of study], their congregation and the dream it had woven for a thousand years. This situation of the Jews in Bielsk amidst the Gentiles of this region left its mark on Bielsk and united its Jews into a community with a strong sense of society, to which the individual belongs and gives for the sake of the community and its existence as a whole. And whoever will write about Bielsk will write about a city in which the unity of the whole is for the sake of the individual, and the unity of the individuals is for the sake of the whole, whose main concern is for the individual within it.

Bielsk knew ups and downs in its life, in the number of its Jewish residents and in the possibility of its future existence. Always, whether in peak periods or periods of decline, its remnants remained loyal to themselves and strong in their communal faith and thus returned to it and continued in their fraternal existence and vision of mutual Jewish responsibility. In this way, fundamental qualities were formed that encompass very deep social structures [Heb. חברתיים, lit. intrigues] and human visions. And these qualities have blessed its inhabitants, who have adhered to them for generations. And whoever comes to write about the people of Bielsk will in any case write about heroic souls of sacrifice, people of heart and human pearls, whose uniqueness is a testament to the person who endures distress in adversity, turmoil, and fear of destruction, and yet remains a human being, strong in his principles, faithful to his vision and steadfast in his faith: in humanity, in Jewry, in a better future… and that the Gentiles too shall see the light of His lights.

We, the last generation of Bielsk, who were awakened from the intoxication of deep faith in the existence of Judaism in the Diaspora – in Bielsk, and were the first to leave it [emigrated], we left it because our strength to withstand the shocks of the past and the future to come had failed, but we will always appreciate and be blessed by those who remained there, in the heights of their humility, in the radiance of their brotherhood, in the purity of their humanity and in the strength of their existence for the sake of all these things. And if there is anything in us from the joy of our faith in the eternity of Israel – it comes to us from them, and in the light of their memory we add a reason for our existence and strength to fortify our existence on the soil of this country of ours.

This is why we decided to write the chronicles of the days of Bielsk and leave a memory of it and its pure individuals so that we may remember where we came from and so that the world may know the crimes of that Nazi lunatic and his idiotic nationalist assistants, who cut down the fruitful tree of Bielsk and other cities of Israel [the Jewish people] like it, cut down the tree of their existence

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and their right to live in this world. The world needs to know what Bielsk was and whom they destroyed, to know and remember who the founders of Bielsk and its community were and how they were destroyed.

Our dear ones, the Jews of our town, were destroyed, slaughtered, burned alive, strangled and buried alive, and there is no memory of them, no tombstone on their graves, no graves for their bodies, no names for their souls. How can we remain silent and how can we see the disgrace of our generation, a generation that forgets its parents and hides the memory of its loved ones? Our ancestors, our predecessors, took care of the “House of Eternity” [Heb. Beit Olam, refers to a cemetery] and the eternal honor of all those who passed away before them, and then not a single Jew in Bielsk was left unburied or buried without a marker on his grave. Even the poorest of the poor did the same. How can we see our loved ones, our parents, our brothers, our sisters, our relatives, our neighbors, our friends torn apart and ravaged by the hands of the maddest madman of all generations, with no marker for their graves, no monument for their catastrophe, no memorial for their names? And yet we swore allegiance to them; we swore to remember them; we swore to thwart the plot of the Nazi devil; we swore not to let their names be erased. And we said in the heat of our great moments to do whatever was necessary, to erase his name from under the heavens [skies of the earth], and to place a monument for all the innocent and holy victims, so that their names would not be erased and their memory would be carried on forever. And where is the memory? Where is the commemoration?

Therefore, we have come to dedicate our best efforts to write, edit, print, and complete the Book of the Bielsk community [Heb. קהילת בילסק, Kehilat Bielsk]. And let our loved ones not remain anonymous in their graves without a monument or a name [Heb. יד ושם, Yad Vashem] and may the enemy of Israel not boast for generations that someone succeeded in erasing our names from the face of the earth.

The Book of Bielsk was therefore intended to record Bielsk in a Memorial Book. The Editorial Staff set out for themselves the following goals: [Line breaks added for clarity.]

(A.) To give a full description of the Bielsk community, how it arose and how it fell, and what it was like;

(B.) To bring testimonies from Holocaust survivors, who would forever and ever inscribe the crimes of the Nazis and their accomplices, the darkest of nations, and through those testimonies our truth would be established in the world – that the Jewish People are entitled to a place of refuge and protection for itself from the madness of the gentile culture that erupts from time to time with thunderous hatred against the Diaspora of Israel [Jewish People] and receives the support of the gentiles as they stand idly by with indifference.

(C.) To erect a monument for our blood relations, the victims of Nazi malice, and for each of us to know the burial place of our loved ones even if we are not able to visit their graves and lay wreaths at their tombstones.

A. In order to present the image of Bielsk, we used historical sources that confirm and document the beginning of its existence and the beginning of the foundation of the community; and in the Book of Bielsk – to tell the story of its last days and its last Jews.

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The historical sources are few but most of whatever was available was used to the fullest. And what was Bielsk in the beginning, the descendants of Israel who were gathered in the countries of Poland and Belarus],^[2] with their help we gave a faithful description that is consistent with the sources and historical references.

We recounted its last days, according to Sefer Bielsk [Book of Bielsk]. We see this book as the last community register [pinkas] of our city, whose existence has come to an end with its completion. We endeavored to verify what is written and recounted in the book using seven tests, tests comparing one list to another list and checking the memory of the survivors of Bielsk. We matched their words and the details of their records with what we knew and with the circle of people of Bielsk, who carry her memory with them and whose minds are never far from her. All this was done in order to give the book the value of a true historical account.

The Book of Bielsk helped us to complete its faithful image by describing its people, its individuals, and its prominent members of society, who dedicated their lives to the city of Bielsk Podlaski so that it would remain a city of brotherhood and Jewish charitable qualities, who preserved it so that the “Zeydene Tarbes”^[3] [Yiddish, silk rucksack] would remain a “tarmiel meshi” [Hebrew, silk rucksack] that contains the suffering of the inhabitants of ielsk, the troubles of individuals and the help of the community, so that Bielsk would not be forgotten, because the secret of Judaism's existence is in the secret of the existence of its individuals, and its individuals cannot exist unless the people of the city maintain them. And there is no secret grander than the secret of preserving this hidden treasure of Bielsk, called a great brotherhood, and the secret of its constant nurturing.

Those individuals who carried a great Jewish calling, whether they were rabbis, activists, and donors of their time to the maintenance of brotherhood's institutions, for which the community of Bielsk was renowned; or whether they were party activists who knew how to separate the tiniest detail [lit. a thorn] of an outlook and then reunite it so that this thorn would not be in the way of the great Bielsk brotherhood; all of these were human gems, diamonds of the soul, and pearls of the heart, which crystalized under the pressure of the heavy and dark Jewish national burden in the Diaspora, just as diamonds crystallize the sparkling brilliance under the pressure of heavy layers of darkness. The individuals of Bielsk were reservoirs of the bitter experience of an oppressed nation throughout its generations and willing to bear it without being consumed, unlike other nations and powers of the world have perished in times of crisis and trial.

We have therefore devoted a chapter to describing these outstanding individuals, without exaggeration or embellishment. Here before our eyes arose a large gallery of individuals with a spirit of the heart from whom there is something to learn, and whose paths, it is hoped, will illuminate the paths of our journey to the State that gathers the scattered of its people and illuminates the way on their return to it.

And this gallery is nothing more than an example of what a society could achieve when brotherhood was a lamp at its feet, and to what heights a man, separated from his society, could soar to, when he sets his mind to rising above unnecessary luxuries and alluring comforts.

This chapter, while flattering by emphasizing the background of our social growth, is also a tormenting chapter that proves to us and to our children after us how much we were obligated to form charitable and virtuous qualities for ourselves, qualities that distinguished

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the dear ones of Bielsk, the uniqueness that is the simplicity and purity, lofty and great, the secret of heroism in the reduction of the self, and the secret of kindness in the exaltation and shaping of the collective.

B. In order to leave a testimony of the shameful madness of the hatred of Jews and the great Holocaust that befell Bielsk, we collected testimony from Holocaust survivors. These few survivors, who have no moment in their lives free from these memories of gloom and depression, carry the cruel memories in their hearts and will carry them forever.

We sought to verify the details of their testimonies in various ways and to state them in their own words; as they were said and told in their simplicity, as simple and primitively as the atrocities that they recounted “on my back they plowed” and “from their own experience” [lit., from the Hebrew].^[4] We considered it our duty to record things as they were, to be a faithful record of the unbelievable things that nonetheless happened to our dear ones. What happened is written faithfully and grammatically down to the finest detail of what was narrated.

These individual stories emerge and intertwine into a single cluster of hair-raising horrors and planned cruelty, which no normal person can fathom, because there was such a madman who reached such a low point that we must know about it. Because this is what our loved ones endured, we must keep it in our hearts [as sacred] in their memory, just as their hearts beat in the suffocation of the gas chambers, the crematoriums and the dirt pits, and by this power we will merit and ascend to a state where such a terrible reality will never afflict us again.

C. In order to create a tribute and a memorial to our loved ones, we tried to establish for them a memorial of names in the book, so that we can see their image each time we read their names and memorialize them using names according to Jewish custom. A memorial and a name. For this purpose, we printed the names of the deceased and included in the book every section that mentions names. We included the list in spite of its “value” [possibly meaning despite it being incomplete] and we placed it in the book of Bielsk to give honor to the names of the Jews of Bielsk who are mentioned in it, so that the names would be remembered forever.

The list of the victims of the Bielsk Holocaust is unfortunately not complete, because the only source for recording the names is the survivors of Bielsk, whom we asked to submit the names of the saints of their families and loved ones in their neighborhoods, and the names of childhood friends from a school and a youth group, with whom they spent years of their lives in the landscape of their childhoods, the landscape of Bielsk. And these sources are meager. There are those to whom we appealed but who were not motivated to sit down and put these holy names on paper.

We deeply regret that the list of names was not completed, despite our repeated appeals to the families of the deceased. And we apologize that we were unable to complete the list even though the fault is not ours. It is a pity that the list was not completed. After all, this is one soul remembering other souls among the Jews, as without a name and a father's name there is no remembrance. But what could we do? We did not want to sacrifice the effort of those who did submit names for those who, because of laziness of a moment, thwarted an effort that would have been a record for eternity.

The list is incomplete, but its inclusion in the book testifies on the one hand that every effort was made because the committee knew the value of the names in the commemoration. On the other hand,

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because we are small, because we are poor, because we are small and poor, those who did not want to put in a moment of effort remained above it, and for their holy ones, our holy ones, there are no names on their tombstones.

The Bielsk Book editorial team decided that by publishing our book, we would also commemorate those who died or fell in the State of Israel, both on the way to its becoming and as a State. The section that memorializes those who died in the State [of Israel] commemorates only those whose next of kin took the trouble to bring us their stories and the medals of honor for what they did.

The editors took the trouble to maintain a proportion between the sections in Hebrew, Yiddish and English, which reflects the scale of value in which the people use the different languages: the language of their future to which they equate a rehabilitative value for the people, the language of their past to which they relate with respect and admiration, because the language of the past was the language of the holy ones of the Holocaust who are the subject of our book. It is the language in which they spoke and thought and expressed themselves. Just as the editors know the positive value of the English language, in which our brothers speak in the Anglo-Saxon diaspora (or diasporas), brothers who are English-speakers, but whose hearts beat in Hebrew, a pulse of identification with the people of Israel who live in Zion and speak in the language of their people – Hebrew.

In the Yiddish section they gave us things that were written in Yiddish, and in the English section they gave us things that have been translated into English. But in both, the correct relationship that the system attributed to the book's format was maintained, and each section is given in the languages in which they were originally written.

Very late, twenty years after the end of our community, we got together to publish a book about it and establish a name for its holy ones. It took three years of work to complete the manuscript and print it. We cannot blame anyone for it taking so long. There were obstacles in our path that we had not foreseen, and it is good that they were not foreseen, so that their efforts would not be discouraged. There were experiments with editors that did not turn out well, and it is good that they did not turn out well, and it is good that the book is appearing. In doing so, we have lifted the disgrace of anonymity from our holy ones. We have created a commemoration for them and told our generation and generations after us what Bielsk was and how it was.

We thank all those who helped us and all those who encouraged us with patience, and we trust that our efforts will not have been in vain. We ask all the people of Bielsk to receive the book in purity and holiness, as befits the pure and holy names of those dear to our hearts.

Translator's footnotes:

1. In Judaism, the End of Days is generally viewed as a restoration and perfection of the world rather than its ending. Return
2. Yiddish רייסן, transliterates to Raysin. An archaic term for a geographic area that was (and still is) mostly modern Belarus at the time this chapter was written. Return
3. The Yiddish term Zeydene Tarbes translates to the “Silk Rucksack,” a name by which Bielsk Podlaski was known. See the first paragraph of “Bielsk – Its Rabbis, Teachers and Jews” on page 48 for an explanation. Return
4. One interpretation of the Hebrew phrases: the enemies were trying to destroy them but they became stronger. Return

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