Ratno, Ukraine

Ratno
Story of a Destroyed Jewish Community
(Ratno, Ukraine)
51°40' / 24°31'

Translation of
Ratne; sipura shel kehila yehudit she-hushmeda

Editor: Nachman Tamir

Published in Tel Aviv, 1983, Ratno Society in Israel

Acknowledgments
Project Coordinator

This is a translation from: Ratne; sipura shel kehila yehudit she-hushmeda (Ratno; Story of a Destroyed Jewish Community),
Editor: Nachman Tamir, Tel Aviv, 1983, Ratno Society in Israel (H 331 pages)

Note: The original book can be seen online at the NY Public Library site: Ratno

Purchase details for a printed copy of this translation can be found at http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/ybip/YBIP_Ratno.html

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Ratno

The Story of a Destroyed Jewish Community

Publisher: Nachman Tamir
Edition editor: Moshe Droog
Publishing committee: Moshe Gutman z”l, Shmuel Goldman, Zeev Grabov,
Ya'ako Grabov, Simcha Lavie, Shlomo Perlmutter, Pearl Vernik Karsh

Published by the Organization of Ratno Descendants in Israel
Tel Aviv 1983.

Translated by Jenni Buch

Edited by Jerrold Landau

Title	Author	Page No.

Preface to the Book	Moshe Droog	7

Origins and History of the Jewish Community

Early Ratno in Historical Sources		12
Jews in Ratno	Fishel Held	16
The Jews of Ratno in the Last 70 Years	Yudel Konishter	19
Hebrew Schools on the Eve of the First World War	Leibel Wahl	43

Between the Two World Wars

Between the Two World Wars		59
In the Days of Bulak Balachowicz		61
In the Eyes of a Child	Shmuel Goldman	63
The Balachowiczes Come to the Town	L. Baion	65
The Days of Bulak Balachowicz	Binyamin Fuchs	67
I Hate you, Ukraine	Sh. Goldman	69
The First Zionists	Yudel Malkus	72
Political Parties and Organizations in our Shtetl	Moshe Honik	75
The First Scouts	Yaakov Rog	84
The First Buds	L. Baion	86
Letter to a Friend	A.Y. Ginzburg	86
The New Era	Simcha Lavie	91
On the Borders	Aryeh Avrech	91
The Era of Ideological Excitement	L. Baion	94
Hechalutz Hatzair [The Young Pioneer]	Shmuel Goldman	94
To Escape from the Valley of the Shadow of Death	Batya Chayat	97
Six that were Designated	Avraham Grabov	98
My Path to the Movement	Shmulik Goldman	98
Mornings in my Town	Avraham Grabov	100
Moments	Avraham Grabov	100
	Shmulik Goldman	101
I Will Not Allow!	Shmulik Goldman	101
Spring on the Roads	Shaul Greenstein	102
In the Workshops of the Early Pioneers	Shmuel Goldman	103
The Chapter of “Hashomer Hatzair”	Zeev Grabov	105
The Uniqueness of our Chapter	Devora and Yehudit	105
The Pact of Trumpeldor and the Revisionists	Dov Marin	113
The Workers Union	Chaim Grabov	116
The Tradesmen and the Unions	A. Berg	120

Chapters of Memories and Experiences

Memories of the Distant Past	Isser Kamintzky	125
My First Attempt at Agriculture	Simcha Lavie	125
The Terror of Fires	Chaya Frusman	127
How do you Teach?	Berel Kahan	132
With the Stain of Poverty	Berel Kahan	132
Articles from “Hamelitz” Newspaper	David Finkelstein	134
Teachers and Educators at “Tarbut”	Zeev Grabov	137
Noach Kotzker - Teacher and Educator	Noah Cohen	141
The Battle over the Library	Yisrael Honik	141
Thou Shalt not Make Graven Images	Leib Olitzky	147
Tidbits	Zeev Grabov	149
About the Town	Chaim Hazaz	151
Impressions from a Visit to Ratno in 1937	Mordechai Gefen	152
The Mission	Zeev Grabov	155

The Holocaust Era

In the Days of Soviet Rule		161
Embers of a Broomwood Fire	Shlomo Perlmutter	161
A Chapter from my Diary	Avraham Berg	166
These I Remember	Shlomo Vernik	166
Sorrowful Memories	Ben Zion Kamintzky	170
Roads and Dreams	Yisrael Chayat	170
How were the Sparks of Revenge Ignited?	Yaakov Grabov	173
There Were Also Such as Those	Yaakov Grabov	176
I was Saved by a Polish Woman	Hershel Mustiscer	178
From the Diary of a Brand Plucked from the Fire	Yehuda Kagan	180
Yehuda Kagan		180
My Revenge	Eli Zisik	182
The Way of the Partisan	Yaakov Grabov	187
One day in Ratno	Shlomo Perlmutter	187
With the Covering of the Grave (a poem)	Simcha Lavie	199
Memories of the Holocaust	Pearl Vernik Karsh	202
The First Days of the Nazi Regime	Shlomo Perlmutter	202
Pages from a Diary	Yisrael Chayat	210
My Way in the Land	Pearl Vernik-Karsh	214
In Honor of the Ratno Survivors	Tova Gandelsman (Bokser)	215
The Tribulations of Freedom	Yisrael Chayat	215
The Fateful Escape	Shlomo Vernik	221
From the Stories of the Fighters - Two Brothers with the Partisans	Elchanan Steingarten	221
With a Song on Their Lips	Shlomo Perlmutter	226
A Survivor's Story	Eliyahu Liberman	226
The Story of Her Survival	Dvora Dorner (Teitelbaum)	229
Revenge and Recompense	Shlomo Perlmutter	231
The Traitor	Michael Glider	231
Next to the Open Album	Yisrael Honik	236
At the End of the Story	Shlomo Perlmutter	236
On Martyrdom and The Violin	Shlomo Perlmutter	239
How the Jews of Ratno were Murdered	Shlomo Perlmutter	242
How the Jews of Ratno were Murdered	Shlomo Perlmutter	242
Ratno (A Poem)	Zeev Grabov	243
Two out of 130	Shlomo Perlmutter	244
After Forty Years – A Public Dialogue Among Holocaust Survivors		249
After Forty Years – A Public Dialogue Among Holocaust Survivors		249
We Shall Remember – A list of the Ratno Martyrs		262

Ratno Descendants in Israel and Abroad

The Story of Mordechai Gefen		271
The Story of Moshe Droog		276
The Story of Shmuel Goldman		281
The Story of Simcha Lavie (Leker)		287
Childhood Landscapes	Simcha Lavie	287
The Story of Eliahu Feintuch		290
The Story of Charna Givoni (Geenstein)		292
The Organization of Ratno Natives in Israel	Simcha Lavie	293
I Thank You, Father and Mother!	Aviva	293
A meeting of the Ratno natives in Kfar Sirkin	Shmuel Goldman	296
Ratners will Always be Ratners	Zeev Grabov	300
On the Communal Activities of Ratno Natives in Argentina	Zeev Grabov	305
Ratno Natives in Argentina	Isser Kamintzky	305
Ratno Descendants in the United States		310
The Ratno Heritage in Cuba	L. Shapira	311
Ratners in Israel		313
Ratners who Died in Israel		317
Avraham Grabov	Moshe Kliger	318
Our Brother Avraham	Chaya	319
Avrech	Aryeh Pialkov	321
My Native Land (poem)	A. Avrech	321
Pnina Brustin (nee Droog) of blessed memory	Mordechai Gefen	323
The Image of Pnina		323
Moshe Greenstein of blessed memory	Shmuel Goldman	324
Yisrael (Srulik) Steingarten		325
Mordechai Yanover of blessed memory	Shmuel Goldman	327
Arnon–David Grabov Writes to his Mother		328
Arnon–David Grabov		328
Moshe Gutman of blessed memory	S. Lavie and M. Gefen	330
Pnina Drezner of blessed memory	Nechama Meril	331
Miriam Shoshani of blessed memory	M. Gefen	331
Afterward – In Memory	Shmuel Goldman

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