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Mine is a selective memory. There are two periods of my life that are particularly engraved in my heart and head. The first is my childhood in my home town Rzeszow, beginning at the age of three and very clear between the ages of four to six. Afterwards, the memories grow more pallid and fade away.

The second period is the commencement of the Hashomer Hatzair Movement in Vienna until I was sent to the Front in World War I. The third period is the year when I came to Eretz Israel. Like my years of early childhood, so I see this year as something very close indeed. On the other hand, many other years that came earlier and later appear to be hidden in a mist. There were other events like the foundation of the Kibbutz Artzi which have also left a deep impression in my memory.

In any case, my memory is more or less reliable. I can begin with my father, Reb Hayyim Wald, from whom all three of us; my two brothers and I, have inherited each one after his own fashion. Father was a merchant, a God-fearing Jew who never missed even a single prayer. He was always dressed in the old-style traditional clothes, but always took great care that they should be really clean. At the same time, he was a devoted Lover of Zion and was busy with communal affairs, helping to see that the poor were provided for. He was a synthetic character. If I am so concerned with synthesis, it is something I have inherited from his example. I was born in the year of the First Zionist Congress, and I can say that Father became a Herzlian Zionist that year.

My own, first Zionist experience, came when I was three years old. I was holding my Father's kaftan and accompanied him to the “Zion Verein” in the town where I saw the picture of Herzl with his grave eyes and handsome face. I fell in love with him. What happened afterwards happened to me because of that first glimpse of the eyes and the handsomeness of the wonderful leader.

My grandmother was the matriarch of the family. She was erect and highly respected and had a cloth over her forehead – a “Shterntichel” as they called. Her eyes had faded, either because of old age or because she suffered from glaucoma – nobody knows. In those days, nobody knew how to diagnose illnesses of that kind in our parts. But she put up with her sufferings courageously and quietly, and ruled the household with a firm hand. In the house there were also proletarian types; and she, being the head of the household, used to judge between them. She was very stern when she did this and her severity served to hide the gentleness that marked her whole life. You could not talk to her sentimentally, but her authority was mixed with affection.

She spread her wings over me and she used to take me into her broad bed. Indeed, she died in the bed when I was four years old. She woke me up in the night – she must have had a heart attack – and said: “Meir, get up and go and tell the neighbours that granny is dying! I jumped up like a whirlwind, I ran from door-to-door, knocking and shouting: “Jews, come and help us, granny is dying! By the time I went back home, I found her dead. I can still remember the wall of the room where I wept for half a day without stopping.

After grandmother died and they prevented me from going to her funeral, I began to suffer from hallucinations. Whenever I left the house, I could see grandmother coming towards me. I began to wail and gasp and lost my breath and choked. People would shake me, call mother, slap my cheeks or pour water over me. When the attacks came again and again, and none of the treatments helped, my mother decided to take me to Reb Luzerl in the hope that he would cure me.

Reb Luzerl lived near us and was a Hassidic rabbi of Hassidim from Carpatho-Russia. His Hassidim could always be recognised by their broad brimmed velvet hats. Reb Luzerel himself was rather

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like Tolstoy with his blue eyes and his beard spreading all over his chest. Father did not believe in any Dibbuk or in anybody who could drive out a Dibbuk, but mother said: “Just the same, let's take Meir to Reb Luzerel. Even if it doesn't do any good, it can't do any harm”.

The rabbi fixed his eyes on me and declared: “From today forward you won't choke any more”. And sure enough, from that day forward, I never lost my breath again and my hallucinations vanished. That is a historic fact. Maybe the strength of superstition? Who can say … or, maybe it was the power of suggestion, the power of practical Hassidim.

Reb Luzerel was a widower but he married again when he was about seventy years old. He' brought home a quite nice-looking young woman who was about twenty-odd years old. After nine months had passed, a daughter was born to them and given the name of Hannele. This was the pearl in Reb Luzerel's crown, the greatest thing in his life in the evening of his days. All the Hassidim celebrated the occasion. Every Sabbath eve, before chanting the Lecha Dodi hymn, the rabbi would rise and very softly sing: “Hannah Kreineniu” (Hannah my little crown).

Here is something more about my father's gentle character. As I said, he was one of the people responsible for the poor. On one occasion, this pious occupation proved very expensive for us. A poor Badhan (wedding jester) lived in the cellar of our house. He had ten children whom he had to feed between one wedding and the next. On one occasion during the war, he fetched home a present, a roast duck (just as Schneur tells in his story about Noah Pandre). It seems that the duck was not too fresh but the children gobbled it all up and then came down with typhoid. That was a harsh winter, and the state of affairs in the cellar apartment can easily be imagined. My father took the sick children of the Badhan to the Jewish Hospital, which in those days was a poorhouse of the most miserable kind. He carried them one by one on his shoulders until he brought them all to that hostel which was at least one kilometre away from our house. He himself remained hale and hearty after this operation, but our mother caught the illness. The children were all saved, but we barely escaped from a catastrophe;

And what about mother?

Mother was a simple woman of good family, being descended from the Rebbe Elimelech of Lezhansk, who was one of the first of the Hassidic saints and whose book: “Noam Elimelech” (The Sweetness of Elimelech) was printed in Lwow in the year 1800. It was she who chiefly made a living while father paid for it by taking over the difficult work in the household. He used to cut wood, sew clothes for the children and repair the roof. He was a rich character as an individual, just as in the Community. He fought courageously for Jewish political emancipation, and was among those who secured the election of the Zionist leader, Adolf Stand, as a deputy to the Reichstag in Vienna.

As a son of Rzeszow, it seems to me that I can consider that I am the direct offspring of Jewish folklore at its centre. The Community which existed in our own day dated from the 17^th or 18^th century, but it preserved far older memories going back to the days of Kazimir the Great in the 14^th century. I have to mention the new cemetery where they used to bury the Jews in our times, and the Old Cemetery in the centre of the city, between the Kloiz and the synagogue: A point of concentrated Jewish tradition. I was attracted to this cemetery, both attracted and afraid. In the darkness, I would never dare to enter it, but during the day, I was enchanted by the ancient gravestones. Some of my townsfolk, including my older brother Dr. Moshe Wald Yaari and my brother Tuvia, who is ten years younger than me and has been a member of Kibbutz Merhavia ever since it was founded, have an exceptionally fine memory and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of Rzeszow. My brother Moshe is now editing a volume on our city which will contain some 600-700 pages. I am in no way up to their standard. I left Rzeszow at the age of seventeen, at the outbreak of World War I, and afterwards, I only visited it occasionally.

But I can say that the experiences, the elements which afterwards combined in the total values of the Youth Movement, found their roots and foundations in places like Rzeszow …

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In 1925, I went abroad to help establish the World Organisation of Hashomer Hatzair. I came to a conference which was held in Danzig and lectured there. In the audience, hidden in a corner after his fashion, sat Berl Katzenelson, listening. I spoke about the elements of Hassidim and Haskala and said that we, as non-vulgar Marxists, as historical materialists, had to remember that we were sustained by the past when we sought for a future.

And what was the nature of our emotional link with the past? What were its sources? Maybe we ourselves could not realise how much we combined the heritage of Hassidim and Haskala in our youthful experiences. Nor had this begun with Hashomer Hatzair. Our fathers had preceded us in their youth, people like my father and all the Zionist circle in Rzeszow. They had already been marked by the qualities which were to characterise Hashomer Hatzair in time to come. When we came to Eretz Israel, when we walked on the roads in Upper Bitania and the group who established “Kehiliyatenu”, we loved to sing; and particularly the Hassidic songs which the early Zionists of our town had sung. Around my father, there had come together a group of dreamers and fighters who were younger than he was; gymnasiasts, students, young married men and young intellectuals in general.

Since these were more progressive than the average Jew of the Kloiz, they set up a synagogue of their own at the meeting-place of the Zion Society. Naturally they had no professional cantors, but they prayed and sang very sweetly. My father in particular made his mark as a pleasant prayer leader, and the doctors and lawyers and all the intellectuals who did not pray every day, used to come to hear him when he used to lead the prayers at the festivals in a voluntary capacity. His choirs included his sons among others.

In this group of Zionists were several of the first Palei Zion in Galicia, and ordinary Zionists. At the end of the prayers on Simchat Torah, the members of the Congregation used to fetch mead, wine and other drinks and had their annual feast, bursting out into song and settling down into a

Hashomer Hatzair Exhibition for the Jewish National Fund

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Hashomer Hatzair Exhibition for the Jewish National Fund

That may help to explain why we feel so close to Agnon. He goes in for lots of stylisation, yet his work contains a reconstruction, achieved by true genius, of what each of us lived through and sensed and inherited and carried with him when he went his way. Agnon revives all our experience and way of living for another generation.

It is natural that I should refer to Rzeszow, but Rzeszow was not the only place like that. When the first Hashomer Hatzair Kibbutz was organized in Galicia, the one which afterwards united with my Kvutza and established the foundations of Merhavia, I went abroad to deal with the necessary preparations for coming to Eretz Israel and setting up the world movement. Meanwhile, I served as a representative of the Jewish National Fund (that was in 1925-26), together with Abba Khushi. I then went through dozens of communities in Galicia and they are all fixed in my memory as a reflection of Rzeszow; either on a large scale like Cracow, or in the miniature style of tiny isolated hamlets.

So, the heritage of the home is clearly what led to Hashomer Hatzair.

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When speaking of theatrical and cultural lives of the Jewish population, I can say that there probably was no theatrical company in Poland that did not perform in Rzeszow. The theatres were always filled to capacity. The oldest Jewish theatre owned by Rigelhaupt, was in Lwowska Street; the next oldest theatre was at the Jewish Hospital; the most modern was in the Dom Ludowy, founded by Dr. Tannenbaum. The latter building also boasted an excellent library containing French, Polish, German, Yiddish and Hebrew books, papers and magazines.

The greatest contribution to the group culture of the Jewish youth was made by Z.T.G.S. Bar Kochba which, at its peak, was presided over by Henek Weinbach; Geno Dornfest for secretary and Bronek Unger as treasurer.

Bar Kochba came into existence with the formation of a Soccer team whose first captain was Joseph Heiblum. As for the rest of the team, I remember only a few other names: Mundek and Dudek Rubel and Klarnet. Later, the best-known was Syek Keller. The Soccer Team's first game was with Resovia. The day of the game was indeed a gala occasion for the young people of Rzeszow. I believe that there was not a single boy with money for admission who was not there. As for those who had none, they watched through cracks in the wooden fence.

Z.T.G.S. Bar Kochba grew gradually. After a few years and with the help of several wealthy supporters such as the Wang Brothers, we bought several acres of land and built a sports field.

First, we built a Soccer field, and tennis court which became a skating rink during the winter. With the passing of time, tennis, ping-pong, chess, bowling and billiard teams were organized.

Each day, the number of members increased, and in 1932, Z.T.G.S. Bar Kochba reached the

“Bar Kochba” boxing team From left: Tusiek Karp, Weinbach, Grauer, Merel, Eckstein, Merel, Kalb Max Grauer, Brust, Lischitz

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The “Scena” Dramatic Circle Seated from left: H. Reich, H. Fuchs, K. Shindler, Wider, Joseph Tuchfeld, D. Grünspan; Standing from left: Meler, H. Sak, S. Strasberg, Meller, M. Fränkel, F. Wintergrün, J. Mohl, H. Weichselbaum, M. Mohl, H. Eimer, Lamm, D. Wachspress

1. A Soccer team
2. A Ping-pong team
3. A Chess team
4. A bowling team
5. A Tennis team
6. A Boxing team
7. A Dramatic club (Z.T.G. Scena)
8. An Orchestra.

1. The Soccer team was indebted for its start to Joseph Heiblum, who was a soccer player from Resovia.He was the team's first captain. During this time, the team prospered so that it could afford to play the best soccer teams in all of Poland. Even Resovia, which was much older than we were, was not able to engage those teams. Indeed, the Polish Soccer League even engaged a champion team from another country for Rzeszow to play a combination of the teams of Bar Kochba and Resovia.
2. The Ping-pong team also distinguished itself, winning one game after another. It travelled to Przemysl, Lwow, Krakow and Jaslo for tournaments. I remember a truck being rented with which the team, with its loyal followers, journeyed to games. Neither wind, cold nor rain frightened or kept us away.
3. The Chess team also distinguished itself, but unfortunately, I can say no more, for I did not participate in it.
4. The Bowling League grew from year-to-year and also formed a female team. Every year who was crowned king? The first king was Wurn, we had tournaments from which emerged a champion who was truly an amazing player. Mrs. Feldmaus was the only Queen. She bowled as well as any man. I remember several other members: Geno Dornfest, Joseph and Moniek Mohl, etc.
5. The Tennis team was mediocre: The most successful and popular were:
1. The Bowling Team;
2. The Dramatic club
3. The Orchestra;
6. The Boxing team was the pride of the Jews of Rzeszow. Each game was invariably followed by an epidemic of laryngitis among the youth. Even today, I can still hear their shouts.

The best and most beloved fighter was Wilus Grauer, feather-weight boxer. He won the championship of Lwow, and indeed the championship of Poland; for he twice fought the champion Rotholz of Poland and twice tied him. One can say that he actually won both times. During the war, he was in Russia where he is reported to have boxed in the Russian Championship League.
Also known was Akerman who likewise held the championship title of Lwow. Moskowitz held the championship title of Kattowitz, while the very popular Lipshyc (Gdynia) was a heavy-weight boxer.
7. Thanks to the endeavours of H. Weinbach who was the Vice-President of Bar Kochba, and B. Unger who is now in Kibbutz Givat Brenner in Israel, free performances were staged every Friday. At such times, talented members performed at whatever they could do best. For example, there were Klara Schindler, Fajga Schwefel, Hesiek Weichselbaum, Edek Metal, Shlomo Wintergrün, and I, along with Max Mandel, who was the conductor of the orchestra.
   Max Mandel played a big part in these productions. He organized an orchestra of sixty people and trained them to function like a machine. He himself arranged and selected all the music for the revues. He also wrote the music for Nahum Sternheim, who was a composer of Yiddish folksongs. I remember several occasions at Max's house when Nahum Sternheim was present. Mr. Sternheim sang the melodies and Max played them on the piano and recorded them on paper. Nahum Sternheim's songs have been sung in practically all the Yiddish theatres. His good-natured face was always smiling, even though he was as poor as a church-mouse and barely had a crust of bread at home.
   From our amateur performances, we soon realized that there was enough good material in Bar Kochba to start a Dramatic Club. So, we began to organise such a group.
   The first and oldest participants of the Dramatic Club, Z.T.G. Scena were: Joseph Heiblum, Henek Fuchs, Chaim Sack, Henek Eimer, Goldstein, Shlomo Wintergrün, David Grünspan, Heshek Weichselbaum and others. The women were: Klara Schindler, Miss Lam, Fajga Schwefel, Dozia Abramowitz, etc. Later, Edie Metal, Merel, Schwebel, Mikolajewicz, his wife and others joined.
   The dramatic club performed the best -known plays written by Jewish playwrights, revues and Goldfaden operas. Indeed, the famous Jewish director, David Sherman, had to be secured to select and direct our plays.
   As a member of the Club, I went to rehearsals and participated. Everyone took their parts seriously and went to great lengths to make the play a success. One of the most beloved was Shlomo Wintergrün.
   Yet another place where the older and younger people gathered was the “Dom Ludowy”, founded by Dr. Tannenbaum. As stated previously, this contained a library which was always full of people and so silent one could hear one's own breathing. Indeed, cultural life in Rzeszow was at an extremely high level, and every one who comes from there has good reason to be proud of the city where he was born.

Bnei Zion members in 1934 Front row from right: Moshe Tuchfeld, Regina Sturmlaufer, Jaacov Berglas Middle row from left: Rosenwaser, Jechiel, Friedman, Yaacov Goldman. , Kripel Back row from right: Naftali Baum, Malka Friedman, Chaim Plutzer

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Hashomer Hatzair members

Hanoar Hatzioni, 1932

Dozens of towns and hamlets surrounded the Rzeszow community, adorning it like a row of pearls. These communities, both large and small, perished in the terrible flame of the Holocaust. Hundreds and thousands of Jewish families had lived their lives there for generations, and the Jews who had lived their intense lives in these villages had filled the streets and town squares, leaving their Jewish mark upon them. It was from these small communities on the outskirts that even the larger Jewish community of the district town Rzeszow absorbed vitality and originality; This also applied to other District towns in Galicia and Poland, which absorbed so much from their Jewish peripheries.

Jews in the small towns often numbered close on half the general population, so in order prevent any local Jewish majority, the Polish authorities would often annex neighbouring, predominantly Christian, villages to the town. This practice was also common in the days of Austrian rule in Galicia.

There is not the slightest vestige left of the Jewish towns, hamlets and villages in the District of Rzeszow. Everything was consumed in the furnaces or the mass graves in the Polish woods. Very few of the survivors have found shelter in Israel or the Americas – and they had neither the strength or the means to set up a memorial for their communities or tell future generations of the past history and the fate they underwent in the days of the Holocaust. Let us, remnants of the Rzeszow community, therefore, carry out this holy task, this last act of true kindness. And for this, we shall recall the memory of the communities around our town.

The municipal authorities in Poland itself have inherited the property of their Jewish neighbours and inhabitants who lived among them for hundreds of years. But they have not initiated the erection of memorials on the sites of the cemeteries which were ploughed over and left without tombstones. Those tombstones had been removed and turned into stones for road and house construction. In the Glogow Forests where the murderers issued instructions for digging holes and trenches to bury the bones of Jewish victims, a memorial stone has indeed been placed to commemorate the victims of the Nazi fiend. But on it, there is no mention of our nation, the nation of the slaughtered people. Let these lines therefore serve as a modest stone marking the memory of our martyrs.

Most Jews of the small towns made their living by commerce and craftsmanship. On fair-days, farmers would come to town from neighbouring villages to sell their agricultural produce and buy manufactured and trade goods, shoes and clothing. Jewish craftsmen worked as tailors, shoemakers, ironsmiths, locksmiths and similar trades necessary to both the urban and rural populations. There were Jewish carpenters, leatherworkers, saddle makers, ropemakers, furriers, barbers, watchmakers, engravers, goldsmiths, tinsmiths, etc. There were also Jewish families who were connected with agriculture and the preparation of Kosher milk products. Jews worked as barmen, manufactured and sold alcoholic drinks, and some owned inns. There were yet others who made a living as money-changers, pawnbrokers, or buyers of agricultural produce such as fruit and eggs, which they exported to countries in Western Europe. Another well-known Jewish trade was waggoneering, and the Jewish “wagoner” – Baal Aguleh” has won considerable fame in Jewish folklore and literature.

Most Jews lived in wooden houses, but some of the wealthier built themselves houses of stone. Their dress was traditional: Felt hat, black kaftan, sandals in summer and boots in winter. The Jew wore his cap at home and at work. On Saturdays and holidays, they would wear a long silken coat (“the kapote”), and on their heads a “Shtreimel” or “Kalpak” and a sheep-skin coat (“Tilip”). Practically al men had long beards and ear-locks. There were a few “more modern” towns with regional Courts. These towns could also boast of Jewish lawyers and a handful of free professionals, such as doctors, pharmacists and dentists who dressed and behaved like people in Western countries.

This way of life was very similar in small towns in the outlying districts of Central Galicia

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between the rivers Wisloka-Wislok-San, which was a Polish-Catholic neighbourhood with no Ruthenian influence. This, despite the fact that 700 years ago, this district belonged to Ruthenia or “Red Russia”.

The smaller a town and the smaller its Jewish community, the more conservative and religious were its members. There were entire settlements where not a single youth or married Jew shaved his beard. This, at least, is the way I remember things at the beginning of the century.

An ancient air of countless Jewish generations enwrapped the town. On weekdays, at dusk when the day's cares and business worries were over, the festive Jewish atmosphere would descend upon it. Many of the mannerisms and habits of the 18^th century Poland still clung to Rzeszow and elsewhere, and people used to say: “Just as in King Sobieski's days”. The Jews were concentrated in separate quarters, which formed “extra-territorial reservations” of a sort.

They differed in their way of life from all the surrounding peoples – in clothing, language, food, beliefs and opinions, morals, customs and manners. The language of the Jews was Yiddish – juicy and lush – a rich German dialect of the 14^th-16^th centuries which had been brought to Poland in the 14^th Century, in the days of Casimir the Great, after the persecution and expulsion of Jews during the time of the Bubonic Plague (Black Death) that had prevailed in German-speaking territories. These wanderings of the Jews from the west to the Slavic east went on for hundreds of years, bringing with them fresh German dialects which helped to influence the Yiddish language. Yiddish was also studded with phrases from the Bible, the Talmud and the Midrashim. Expressions such as: “Adraba, Kal Vahomer, Mai Nafka Mina, Meila, Hafleh vafeleh, Neisi Sefer Venehezeh”, etc., were common in the daily language of the learned and the elders. Polish, the language of the country, was not particularly familiar to the Jews, apart from the women who helped their menfolk by attending to all business matters and handled all negotiations with the Polish public and the officials.

In my mind's eye, I can still see my town at the beginning of the century. I used to visit the town of Kanczuga in the summer. I would travel by night in a wagon loaded with goods through the forests surrounding Lancut, Blazow and other towns. When I arrived on a Friday afternoon, I could immediately feel the atmosphere of holiness over the town. The sun was setting in the west. The chanting of passages from the Song of Songs could be heard from every house. Fathers and sons, grandfathers with grandchildren, would start out for the Bet Hamidrash to welcome the Queen, Shabbat. The scene in the street was uniquely, remarkably colourful. Jews wearing silken gowns with “Shtreimelech” on their heads and beards and ear-locks, would hurry to the synagogues. Black, brown, yellow and all shades of red abounded. Here and there a gleaming white beard or greyish hair might be seen. Occasional drops of water gleamed on the beards from the baths they had only just taken.

Copper and brass candelabra were hanging from the ceilings and their candles threw a festive glow on the praying faces.

The Prayer-leader, wrapped in his prayer-shawl, would start with: “Come let us sing to the Lord”, and the worshippers would burst into a roar of fervour. Everybody swayed back and forth, like forest trees in a storm, and sang; “Then all the trees in the woods shall sing … The rivers clap their hands, together the mountains shall sing …” it was impossible not to be swept in this joyous stream of ardour! “Light is scattered for the righteous, and joy for the upright at heart …”

Saturday morning on a summer day. The sounds of those checking the Weekly Portion of the Pentateuch could be heard from every house. The notes of the traditional cantillation of the Bible passages, resounded in the air and the fulfilment of the ancient rule: “Read the Portion twice in Hebrew and once in Aramaic” filled it with flavour and charm. A few hours later, the procession of mothers and fathers from the synagogue, Bet Hamidrash and Kloyz would begin, the women wearing coloured “Turkish” kerchiefs and carrying their own Judaeo-German prayerbooks.

Over the years, western winds had also blown in the towns. But they hardly managed to shake the pattern of life there. The Rabbi, the Hassidic Rebbe and his Hassidim safeguarded its walls against the outer world. Yet, the past gradually gave way. The young men taken for military service in the Austrian Imperial army were partly responsible. For when they returned, there was a discernible change in their appearance and clothing. There were already some young men who had trimmed their beards slightly, wore a tie and read the Haskala or Hebrew Enlight-

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enment literature on the sly. They would read the “Lemberger Tageblatt” or the Hebrew “Hamitzpeh” in the open. Young married women removed the kerchiefs which had covered their heads and replaced them with wigs. Young girls had begun to attend Polish schools, whereas the boys continued studying at the traditional ”Heder” and went to a private tutor to learn Polish.

At the time of the outbreak of World War I, it was possible to see the beginnings of progress and education among the younger generation. The locked citadel was forced to open by the whiplash of the National Movement, the immense inrush of Zionism and the Haskala, and the town walls collapsed. The townspeople, both young and old, would have to go to large towns for business transactions. There they saw the new way of life, which influenced their own behaviour. Large families sent their children to the cities or abroad to America. Girls married bridegrooms from the district towns, and the community lost its uniformity. The processes of internal migration left their mark and brought continual changes. It was a slow process, but a man who had been away from the town for 20 years, could clearly see the transformation.

Yet despite these changes, the small town was still a tower of strength and fortitude in its adherence to the vital and elemental Jewish culture. It was a barrier and a dike against the assimilation and inter-marriage which raged in larger centres. The hidden light of Israel's ancient heritage shone in the small town, that light which nurtured Jewish lives for so many generations. That light of life was extinguished by the German invasion in hundreds and thousands of Jewish settlements throughout Poland and Eastern Europe.

I would like to recall the names of some of the communities that vanished in the Holocaust.

There were dozens of towns, hundreds of villages around Rzeszow, hamlets swarming with Torah and toil, with their prayer-quorums, communities, Rabbis, Hassidic Rebbes, community leaders and ordinary day-to-day Jews. A few memorial books have been published by the survivors of some communities. Among these, I can name memorial books for Lancut, Dembitz, Gorlic. The survivors of a few other communities are preparing further publications in memory of their places of origin.

I still hear those dear names I used to hear in my youth, the communities and towns in which relatives, acquaintances and friends used to live. I am waiting for the day when the Memorial Authority of “Yad Vashem” will publish the “Register of the Jewish Communities” which have had no one to publish their memorial volumes. Here I am listing a number of towns of the Rzeszow District whose Jews perished, with the number of Jews living in them, according to the Government Census of 1921.

Town	Jews	Total population
Glogow	648	2291
Blazow	230	5123
Dynow	1273	2727
Ticzin	957	3095
Czudec	332	940
Sokolow	1351	3515
Strirzow	1104	2188
Przeworsk	1457	3371
Kolbyszow	1415	2900
Kanczuga	967	2396
Ranizow	278	1562

The Cemetery at Sokolow, 1965

It all went up in flames. The earth swallowed everything. Today, 23 years after the annihilation of the Rzeszow Jews, it is difficult to reconstruct the precise set-up of the town in 1939, on the eve of the terrible destruction. But it is well worth going to the trouble of collecting the thousands of fragments of data and facts from the period between the two World Wars, and of trying to answer the question: who was wiped out in Rzeszow, one of the thousands of towns and villages inhabited by Polish Jewry?

Statistical figures have been obtained from the Jewish press in Poland as well as data from Jews who remained alive and who remember the situation, also by comparing the state of affairs in Rzeszow in 1939 with that of other Jewish communities in Poland where statistical documents were miraculously preserved. In this way, the following picture is obtained:

Total number of inhabitants 34,600. Jewish population

15,000. Jewish families 4070 (an average of 3.8 per family).

Jewish children, 0-14 yrs old	3700
Youths, 14-18 yrs old	1100
Adults, 19-65 years old	9030
Adults over the age of 65	1070
Disabled persons	300
	15,200

In 1939	%
University graduates	5.5
High School education	12.0
Elementary School	66.0
Traditional education (Talmud Torah, Yeshiva)	11.0
Illiterate	5.5

N° of persons of working age	8,620
Labourers and hired workers	2,400
Wholesale merchants	200
Retailers	550
Artisans	600
Free professions	400
Housewives	3,400
Manufacturers	70
Religious officials	150
Students	350
Unemployed	500
	8,620

On the basis of data received from the Zionist Federation in Rzeszow, as well as Jewish Youth Movements, data which are well engraved in my memory as well as in talks with the surviving members of “Hehalutz”, “Hashomer Hatzair, “Hanoar Hazioni”, “Beitar”, etc. I was able to establish that during the 20's and up to 1939, over 3,000 youths attended vocational courses. These youths came from trader-class families, and over 600 of them immigrated to Israel. The numbers would have undoubtedly been far greater had it not been for the restrictions imposed by the Mandatory regime in Palestine. It is a well-known fact that “productive labour” was the ideal of the Jewish people in the cities and the towns of Eastern Europe who aimed at agriculture rather than trade and

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industry – which was the main aim of the Movement for National Liberation of Polish Jewry.

	Members
1. The General Zionist Organization	720
2. Poalei Zion	220
3. Hashomer Hatzair	170
4. Hanoar Hazioni “Akiva”	190
5. Revisionists and Beitar	280
6. Mizrahi	300
7. Agudat Israel	350
8. Supporters of the Polis regime (Sanazia & Reb Asher Silber's group)	750
9. Communists	300
	3,320

In the year 1936-1939, the Eve-of-war years, the Polish Government started basing the national economy on new foundations, aiming in the direction of an autocracy. This tendency found expression in the erection of very large government industries (“Stalowa Wolla”) which were closed to Jews. Owing to this development, Poles from the Posen region began to flood Rzeszow, and national Jewish unity began growing stronger. The “Agudat Israel” headed by Rabbi Aharon Levin, as well as the supporters of Reb Asher Silber, head of the Orthodox Community, began to show their interest in the Land of Israel and the idea of rebuilding of the country which was in accordance with the political inclinations and public opinion of the ordinary Jews at that time.

In 1939, the Rzeszow Jews were represented by delegates with national Jewish convictions on the Rzeszow Municipality. In 1948, while I was in exile in the U.S.S.R., I met Reb Asher Silber in Czernowitz and had a number of talks with him. He told me that in 1939, he was well informed on Palestine matters, and was “almost a Zionist” and expressed his desire to immigrate to Israel. But he never managed to attain his ambition, and died in Czernowitz. It may be stated that the majority of Rzeszow Jews were nationally-minded, apart from a small minority of the Hassidim or followers of the Rebbe of Koloshitz, and similar groups on the one hand, and the Jewish Communists on the other.

The annihilation of Polish Jewry has undoubtedly affected the development of the young State of Israel. The destruction of the immense reserve of 3.5million Polish Jews has considerably slowed down the development rate of the young Israel, its economic and military power.

23 years have passed since the unforgettable period of terror. Of the 30,000 Jews who remained in Poland, approximately 200 Rzeszow Jews are left. The last Jew to reside in Rzeszow, Engineer Janek Rogovsky (Horn), who acted as General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Rzeszow District, immigrated to Israel with his family in 1958.

When I visited Warsaw in 1963-64, I heard of a group of Communist Jews from Rzeszow who held high posts in the economic and social life of the People's Republic of Poland. They included the brothers Alster, the brothers Wistreich, Engineer Tennenbaum, Milard (General Gorecki), Roman Karst (Tuchman) – a small last of Rzeszow Jews who had dedicated their lives to the People's Republic of Poland and held decisive and prominent offices during Young Poland's development.

In 1963, I visited the grave of Aharon (Arthur) Wang, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Committee in Warsaw. In 1964, I had a conversation with his colleagues, who did not hesitate to say that Arthur Wang's name had been completely forgotten. Yet, Arthur Wang had been one of the chief organisers of planning in Modern Poland.

In the years 1963-64, I also witnessed a number of behind-the-scenes incidents and underground activities on the part of anti-Semitic Stalinists in the Polish Communist Party. They demanded the removal of all Communist Jews from positions of power and influence in Government.

That is the final echo in the tragedy of Rzeszow Jewry.

[Page 73]

Millenia Hence, on our Lord's eternal earth, Nothing will endure, nothing of you or of me, and, perhaps, nothing of Word and Song, Only: our martyrs will be unforgotten; Generations yet unborn, Parchment-scanning, will remember. Nineteen Thirty-Two: the tyrants Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels Rose to brandish torch and sword Over peoples, lands and seas. Peruse the Scroll of our Lamentations, This was our martyrs' Sanctification: Poland – gallows – ghettoes, Rumania – the stake, Russia – mother ravished before daughter, Dachau – father burned in sight of son… Warsaw, Vienna, Kiev and Vilna, German Berlin… Holy scrolls and temples burning, Ancient heritage – aflame! Weeping children, belly-swollen, In Jewish rags, with pallid faces, Lost on fugitive word crossroads, On ships, mid sea – calling: Lord! Millenia hence, this our scroll will be changed, Sadder by far than Jeremiah's! Matrons strung upon the gallows, Calf-like, naked. Their children – Oh God, those little graves! Oh, not Warsaw, not Lodz, not Brody, But the split blood of our dead kinsmen; Abraham, Solomon, Moses, Zebulun… Not Amsterdam, Prague, Berlin, But… chaste daughters of the Covenant… God! Their cry for mercy unto You Still gleams from their glazed eyes! Millenia hence, on our Lord's eternal earth Nothing will endure, nothing of you or of me, And, perhaps, nothing of Word or Song, Only: Scripture, World and God And, most precious: this scroll, These alone will endure Millenia hence.

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