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The Day of the Red Army
(February 23, 1944)

The Red Army is on all fronts and getting closer and closer to us. Other comrades already hear certain explosions and try to convince us that they are Soviet artillery shells. Every single one comes running out from above and asks the guard if he doesn't hear anything. The hope arises to be able to go out to “pay the German” a little for the hard winter and our fallen comrades and to show him that we are still there! “He” is not rid of our group yet, as he thinks. All of our conversations revolve around liberation but we can't go out and blow something up in the summer like we used to. We have to be content with cooking something completely different than usual to create a festive spirit. During the meal, comrades tune in with stories about the Red Army, its founding and its combat tasks. We have designated a comrade especially for this day [February 23] to prepare the meal. The meat we ate from for three weeks has already been used up, but the horse's “kishke” [intestine] is still there, and our “comrade cook” has agreed to prepare a proper “kishke and cholent” as it used to be, in good times. We explain to our Russian comrade who is with us how Jewish “kishke and cholent” tastes, and that it is so delicious that the letter carrier who used to deliver our letters came especially to eat with us when there was “cholent and kishke”.

For the holiday, people are busy crafting. The kishke is filled with some potatoes we found. That day we hear a very close shooting, more violent than usual, but we already do not even pay attention to it. At 12 noon, by our reckoning anyway, we sit down to celebrate the feast in our primitive way, due to the living conditions. It is comrade Khayim's turn to keep watch. It doesn't suit him at all that he has to go out and keep watch for an hour at such an important time when everyone

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is preparing, but it's no use and off he goes.

The “kishke” is soot-blackened, outside and inside, plus too much has been stuffed into it, so it could barely cook through. We all eat, smacking our lips and looking at our Russian comrade to see how he likes it. We eat and reminisce about that time; but he must be wondering what kind of food it is, and if it was worth waiting so long for it and listening to all the explanations about it! The comrades begin to talk, but in the middle of it we hear our comrade Khayim Khalef shouting, “Stoy” [Stop!]. We don't grasp the situation yet, but suddenly there is a heavy firing from an automatic weapon; we grab our weapons and run out, partly barefoot, partly wearing a shoe, and see our comrade lying on the ground and a person in civilian clothes fleeing with a machine gun. We run to our comrade Khayim and he tells us that the unknown man was running towards him, he wanted to stop him but the other one started shooting, whereupon [Khayim] immediately fell down. We decide to leave the place because we don't know who the unknown person is and what the all-day shooting is about. There is snow all around us, every step reveals where we are, but we choose to spend a whole day and night walking around in the forest on different paths to cover our tracks. Late in the evening the shooting ends and we decide, to go back to the site from which our group was expelled on New Year's Day, to rest. We do not dare to go to other groups, because that could also mean having to stay in the snow for months. We approach the site and everyone instinctively feels fear to go in there, where it is dark and reminds of each of the comrades who were with us in so many battles, and went through the hardest time until they perished on New Year's Day. For the time being, however, we must remain here in the same place where our best comrades lost their lives, but who, in view of their fighting and human attitude, will be a pioneering example for others in the future, because their perseverance

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and their struggle against injustice has not been in vain. The struggle will be carried on by the remaining comrades in memory of those who perished.

We reinforce the posts, because comrade Datner left in another direction during the shooting at us and is now missing; we don't know what happened to him. So we lie in the new site for three days, completely without food, because we left in a hurry and couldn't take anything with us; and here everything is smashed by the Germans who were there. The snow is starting to thaw a little, and [the moisture] is trickling in through the earth to us. Our only worry is, what happened to our comrade Datner? Once, while standing guard, I see a person coming toward us from a distance, but I can't see him clearly because of the trees. I put out a report to everyone and [comrades] come out and position themselves in the snow. How stunned are we when a comrade observing the person exclaims: “There goes Datner!” We are all trembling with surprise; he can hardly drag himself to us, with his sack on his back and his rifle in his hand. I am the first to run to meet him and cover him with kisses, followed by all the others. With tears in our eyes we welcome each other. Our joy at that moment was indescribable!

We learn from Comrade Datner that he was in the village of Dvozhisk [Dworzysk] during the three days and hid with the village elder. The Germans had a fight that day with a Russian group 5 kilometers from us. There were many dead on both sides, and the person who ran to us was a Russian partisan of that group, whom the Germans shot at and whose tracks they followed. He did not know that we, on our place, [were on his side] and when he heard the exclamation of our comrade “Stoy!” he thought that we were Germans who continued to pursue him. Therefore, he immediately fired and retreated. For us this was a very big blow. We were not allowed to return to the other place because when [Datner] was in the village,

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he learned that the Germans were bringing reinforcements and were setting about checking the forest for human footprints that had been carried all over the forest after the fighting. So, in the meantime, we have to stay here until the snow, which gives us no possibility of operations, thaws. The next few days pass us by with difficulty, but they are already the last! The month of March has arrived and the sun is already beginning to warm us a bit during the day. Surely the snow in the city has already completely thawed away; but here we live with appropriate hope. The few potatoes that Datner brought from the village is for the time being the only food for 15 men. We build a small stove of wood, which constantly goes out, and we have to build a new one every few days. In April, all our food supplies are already used up and we decide to go out.

Our first walk is to our former hiding place, which we had left; we want to see what has become of it, and besides, comrade Datner left a loaf of bread there 6 weeks ago. We calculate that this will make 120 grams of bread for each comrade, and that would be a great joy! We choose 6 comrades to go ahead and, if possible, go to the village to find out what is going on in the area. I am one of the 6 comrades; we set our footsteps only where grass can be seen. When we get to our old mud hut, 7 kilometers from our new location, we find that the bread has since been eaten by a mouse. Only the old, upper crust remains. Instead of 120 grams, there are now only 20 grams left for everyone. Everyone takes their piece of bread and chews each bite well before swallowing it. The pleasure and taste of that piece of bread, which was hard as stone, frozen and nibbled by a mouse, and smaller than a “kezais” [the smallest portion of food counted as food in the Talmud], I will remember all my life. Even now, when I already have the opportunity to eat the best food, yet I have never had so much pleasure from a meal as I did then from that little bit of

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bread. Afterwards we go to the village and learn that the front is already very close to us. We decide to return and advise our comrades that we should prepare to go out, to begin to revive with the spring that will bring us the possibility to move freely, to re-establish contacts with all those who are in the forest and to make the Germans pay for our sufferings and fallen comrades.

The new spring presents itself to us as a savior from the psychological and physical sufferings of the whole winter, which have so strongly affected our limbs. With each of us who has gone through it, the feeling of successive sufferings remains, and each of my comrades who was with me will remember it; he, when he tells of it, will constantly endure the long influence of a great pain, while he cannot make the listener sympathize with it all. However, there is no force that can change the course of nature: The sun destroys all the snow and wipes it off the surface, creating a path for us to the new life that begins with us crawling out of our mud huts onto the open earth and spreading out over all parts of the forest, shouting our slogan: “We are back!”

The front is already very close to us; the Germans are focusing all forces in various ways to find us. They make Ukrainians and Belorussians put on civilian clothes, send them into the forest as partisans to get to us and uncover our [hiding places]. We engage in many battles with them, which cost us and them victims. All this, unfortunately, prevents for a long time our meeting with the Russian groups, which are already on the way to look for us and bring help. The large-scale

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movements of us back in the forest led to a meeting with the old Russian partisan groups that had begun to move toward our forest area. When we went to the village at night to get various information about the area, we also met a group of Russian partisans. But due to the experience in previous places, where we met Ukrainians, whom we had to face to fight, now we also started a fight,

With my comrade in battle, Khalif

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when a comrade recognized the former Russian comrades who had been with us that summer and had assured us then that they would return. They came with many new partisans from organized military cohorts who had the task of going into our forests and making further preparations for the Red Army. In their forests they left only small groups and moved almost all to our area.

Many of the comrades we asked about died during the battle and many of our comrades, who were known to the others and with whom they did various jobs, also fall in the meantime. We welcome them because it is decided that with us will be the meeting place for all who will arrive. They will also bring their “kombrig” (brigade commander) who will unite us all into a military cohort.

The final day of the meeting we had been waiting for so long was approaching. Every day new Russian partisans come to us from their military cohort, and all of us are now waiting for the staff with the “kombrig”, which will finally officially accept us into the Soviet partisan federation, according to the laws of the partisan army. Until the arrival of the staff, all Russian groups that are coming in are staying with us; we already feel very strong. Many machine guns and automatic weapons have been brought by the Russian comrades. It already doesn't matter whether you are in the forest by day or by night; meanwhile we go when we want and where we have to, right under the nose of the Germans. The forest is turned into a front with all the main communications. We already have radios transmitting directly from Moscow various information and instructions on which sections to be active. We hurry to gather all our comrades from the different forests and bring them to us with the news that finally the moment they have long waited for has arrived: Our trusted old comrades came back, with whom we will have the opportunity

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to make the necessary arrangements to liberate our city and area. All our groups have been severely affected by the winter with its difficult, superhuman conditions. One group lost 90%, the other two suffered extremely from the lack of provisions, but managed to avoid human casualties. The comrades from Bialystok worked continuously during the winter after they lost contact with us; and when the snow melted, they brought to us quite a few comrades who helped [others] to escape from the Bialystok prison or assisted those who were persevering still in the city in various ways. Berl Shatsman and others have arrived. We gather everything and all [comrades] together, all our material and strength, to present ourselves to the staff that will come to us.

We have all gathered now and are waiting for the staff to finally be connected, after waiting for so long! [At last] many well-armed partisans arrive at our place together with the “kombrig”, Voitshekhovski [Woyczechowski]. He is a tall man in good physical condition, with a very intelligent face and many medals for leading the partisan struggle. During the war he was specially flown from Moscow and parachuted for the tasks in the woods. There are also women with German rifles, which they captured in the battles, on their way to our forests. The general outward appearance of the “kombrig” evokes a great awe in us, more than anyone else who has come with the staff. We all sit down and tell about all our struggle until the time we met. Our contact with the city will now be used

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by the staff on more important sections. We sit there for a whole day and report on the entire course of the fighting and conditions in the forests. We also tell about our connections with the individual farmers of the surrounding villages.

The staff recognizes all our work, perseverance and persistence under these conditions and with so few weapons. At the same time, he announces that he will give us the same credit for all the time we were alone as if we had belonged to the brigade earlier. He asks us to decide whether we want to continue to exist as an independent Jewish group with our commander or whether we no longer want to be detached. But then we would be distributed among all the divisions of the brigade, and in each military cohort there would be a part of us. We decide to be sent to all military cohorts and to take equal part in all the tasks that are imposed on us. The “kombrig” accepts our decision. We are divided among the whole brigade. One part goes to the “Matrosov” [Sailors] detachment with the name “ Geroy Sovetskovo Soyuza Matrosov” [Matrosov, Hero of the Soviet Union], a small part is taken over to the staff to work there, and the third part, in which I was, goes to another militia cohort with the name “26 Yor Oktyober Revolutsye.” [26 Years of October Revolution]. One detachment with the name of its commander, Andryev, the “Andreyevtsn”, consists of the dropped paratroopers, and the fourth detachment consists of Belarusians of the same area. We say goodbye to the comrades who were with us for so long; and actually they stay together even now, although each division goes in a different direction. We scatter over the entire length of all forests from Volkovisk to Knishin [Knyszyn]. We are dispersed to all places there and meet only from time to time when we pass through a forest for certain works and sabotage actions. Then we used to discuss with the comrades, each of whom can tell something about blown up trains, fights with Germans on the main roads and night raids on the vehicles they are driving. Documents and pictures are shown,

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which were taken from the dead Germans, including their weapons. We also get to see Ukrainians captured in battles; Germans are less likely to be captured alive.

Our life becomes more interesting and active every day. A small part of comrades are very exhausted from the winter and sit in the mud huts until they come to themselves again.

My group moves to another site. I, too, have to rest for a few days and cannot do anything because of my weakness. However, I am quickly regaining my strength and after that I am again doing my due part; for now, in such an interesting time we are facing, is no time to be ill. In each section, we, the newcomers, take an oath, as required by military law. My commander Filipov, also a paratrooper who went through partisan training and is a lieutenant, calls for me: “Have you rested enough, have you recovered? We are to go to the Krinker Forest now, and you have been appointed to do so, too!” I still feel weak, but I would be ashamed to say that I cannot yet, and answer: “Healthy or sick, it doesn't matter. I just have to go along!” I have waited so long for this time, and now I am supposed to be sick?! I am angry with myself. In the evening we set out for several weeks, 8 men with the commander Filipov, a nurse (a Russian woman who came with the commander). Armed with automatic weapons, a machine gun and rifles, we go through forests where we find our groups widely scattered, and in each of the sites, we hide. Along the way, we introduce our commander to all our trusted farmers who have provided us with connections and news. Our commander now gives them new tasks to perform. When we reach the railroad junction Volkovisk, we meet one of our groups and stay there for a day. It is determined that a train should be blown off the tracks, in the middle of the day and not at night as usual. The commander of the other group puts on the uniform of a German railroad official and goes out on the tracks

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pretending to repair something. Lying in the forest, we prepare the explosive material and wait for the train to come. We can already hear the sound of the wheels, our excitement is growing by the minute. Soon the German sons of bitches will feel the new summer coming upon them. A sign from the commander. We run to bring the material there and then retreat. When we have already run 30 meters from the spot, we fall down by the shock wave of the violent explosion and hear screams of people, later also shots, from the same direction. We get up and go further into the forest. Later we learn from the surrounding farmers that the action was very successful: German soldiers were on their way to the front by train and had to “pay” there! Many dead and wounded, over 30 of these dogs. The peasants are satisfied, and when we visit a village, they ask incessantly when the Red Army will finally come, which is so close. It takes them too long and they have no more patience.

We continue to the Krinker Forest on “trails and paths” over marshes that have never been trodden by a human foot, not even that of God. Mud up to over the knee, so that one thinks never again to be able to crawl out. We are led by a Belorussian whom we met in the forest; he fled from Germany, where he was deported to work. At his home, in Mikhalove [Michałowo], he hid a rifle before the war, which he now wants to dig out. At night we position ourselves near his village and keep watch in the surrounding area. He goes with two men to his family to dig out the rifle. The night is starry and bright. We wait for him. Suddenly, from a distance, we see a group of people moving in our direction. We let them come closer to us and then shout: “Stoy! Kto idyot? (Stop! Who goes there?)” “Russians,” they shout and go on. This answer is worth nothing, because they would have to answer “Partizani!” and stop. We shout for them to stop, if not, we shoot. They stop. We give instructions that one

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person from them and one from us should walk forward to face each other. Comrades of ours and of theirs step forward, and when they meet, they embrace and squeeze hands. We now know that they are partisans, and we all walk toward them. We learn that they are a group of Russian prisoners who escaped from Germany. They had been in Warsaw all this time, on the other side of the Bug River, but they had to leave that area and move further east because the Polish partisans were chasing them. The last battle they fought with these “Polyakn” forced them to leave those forests. The falsehood of the Polish partisans went so far that they first made an agreement with [the Russian partisans] not to attack each other, after which they were even invited to their camp for talks, to continue the fight together. But the “Polyakn” took advantage of the visits to the camp of the Soviet partisans; at first they spied on the forces of the group, and on their third visit, when precautions had already ceased to be taken in the camp and everyone was allowed to move about freely, two “Polyakn” at a time sat down next to a Russian or a Jew. This was their strategy, and when the Russians were completely guileless, sitting together and talking like the times before, suddenly the Polish commander gave a signal, and each “Polyak” shot at the Russian partisans sitting next to them. The battle was terrible; the sudden attack brought great losses to the Russians. More than half of them perished, the rest gathered and decided to move further east.

They divided into two groups, both moving in the same direction, but only one arrived at our place, without knowing what became of the second. We also learn that together with them came a Jew who remained alive after the fight with the “Polyakn”. Out of 20 Jews, he was the only one left. We seek him out and learn from him that after the fighting in the Warsaw Ghetto, he fled with those Jews who had now perished in the fighting. He remained all alone,

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He is young, only 17 years old and speaks a poor Yiddish. He is surprised by the meeting with the Red Army and, at the same time, with us.

The way in which the “Polyakn” fought for liberation was best shown to us by the facts they [the Russians] handed over to us. During the day the “Polyakn” lived as free citizens in the villages, and at night they went armed into the forests to search for and murder Russians and Jews. This was their struggle, which helped the Germans more than it harmed them. We take the group with us and decide to turn back after we meet a group of Białowieża partisans in the Krinker Forest, who tell us that this is their forest and we are not allowed to stay there for long. At first they also wanted to take over the Russian group, because they thought it belonged to them, since we had found it in their forest. But we agreed: they should belong where they themselves wanted to go. We knew that in order to be safer they would have to go further east, and when we told them that we too would go back east to our forests, the result was that 90 percent went with us and only some who had found a few acquaintances in the other partisan group stayed with them. We now returned with 20 more comrades with machine guns and rifles. At night, when we passed the place where the railroad was blown up, we heard how they were working there to put the rails back up. After that, we decided that a large group should go to a village during the day to pick up the milk that the village had already prepared for the Germans. This made such an impression on the village that the children ran into the houses with joy, exclaiming, “The Red Army has come!”

When we get back to our woods, we learn that in the meantime large searches by Germans and Ukrainians have taken place in our camps. At the agreed point we meet our

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elder who leads us away. We learn of a new stand for which we all have to go back into the Knyszyn woods. On this walk we shell a vehicle with Germans in it. We take one prisoner alive, a Russian in German clothes, and of course “he is quite innocent”. He comes from Voronyezh [Voronezh], fighting all the time on the side of the Germans. He gets his “earnings” from us. Military cohort “Matrosov” remains in the woods. The German armies are already partially retreating, and we go to blow up bridges. From the forest we fire on the passing army, which is retreating on the main roads that pass through the forest.

A group of our military cohort has, together with the staff, already left for the Knyszyn woods. I walk with the second and last group. We make it in one night and at dawn we reach the woods of Knyszyn, where we meet our group, which in the meantime, has organized all the Jews they encountered, including several Jewish women. For two years these Jews hid in the forests under the most difficult conditions, where they had to stay from 1942, after all the Jews from the surrounding towns had been deported. They persevered without weapons and bought food from the surrounding farmers. Many of them perished during the time, but a large part persevered and now experienced the longed-for hour.

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We [finish] organizing all of them, take them to us and, as far as possible, provide them with weapons. We ask them to lead us along the paths they are so bitterly familiar with, and involve them in our activities. However, we soon meet Polish partisans, coming face to face with them. There are a large number of them in the woods, and the surrounding Polish villages are their allies. As we enter the village to gather information about our new location, fire is opened on us! Our comrade, a Russian, is wounded in the hand. We search the village and encounter Polish partisans who, as usual, were shooting at us. We establish a contact with them for cooperation.

We know that they have been fighting us all the time and even shooting at our Russian comrade, but the surrounding area is full of their villages where they have many confidants. We have to join with them, and indeed, a union is coming about. However, they still put the condition that they will not go together with Jews, but the Russians reject it. Meanwhile, it remains that when they go to fight, they go only with the Russians, without us Jews. We, with a part of the Russian partisans, stay in the Knyszyn forest. The staff with a large part of “Polyakn” [Polish partisans] goes ahead to the “Shilingvukher” swamps around Ostrovyets to continue the fight. For a short time, we are together with the “Polyakn”, but we feel very bad among them because at any turn, they show their anti-Semitism, so we go to another part of the forest. All their behavior in the forest [toward us] was provocative.

We received a new radio receiver to transmit information to and from Moscow. Our group with its commander, Filipov, and the Jews from the Knyszyn Forest who had joined us, stayed

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after the staff had left for the Knyszyn forests to continue our work.

The front is already near Bialystok; the fighting for the liberation of our city continues. Every evening and every day Bialystok is heavily bombed. We see Soviet planes flying, dropping missiles that light up the whole forest as bright as day and also give us the opportunity to walk in daylight. The Germans position themselves around our sites with heavy artillery, their constant cannon shots echoing in the forest and making the earth tremble as if it were being cradled. The surrounding peasants lead everything out of the villages, the horses, the cows, the sheep and more precious things, because the retreating Germans grab everything, rob all that is possible and set fire to the villages and towns. The sky keeps turning red from the burnings. We have to dig pits for ourselves where we can lie at times during the frequent shelling of the main roads by the Red Air Fleet [Soviet Air Forces], for they drop very low to fire on the retreating German armies and often hit right into the woods.

Every day we go out of the camp to the edge of the forest to wait for the departing German army and catch them, and then “refresh” ourselves at some Germans for the last weeks. Because the liberation is near, and after the liberation there will be no more such opportunity. Going out to the village of Kopisk, as we always do, from the edge of the forest we see a cart driving, fully loaded with sacks. We hide and wait for it. Not long after, we see 5 young Germans walking right behind the cart, their sleeves rolled up as always when they are at their predatory work. They walk so slowly, as if they don't want to get ahead at all. They stride with their bandit-like equanimity. We let the cart pass, and while [the five] go on, we jump out of the forest, pointing our rifles at them. “Hands up!” we shout to them in German. We take their weapons from them and begin to lead them to us in the forest. One tries

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to escape, he is shot. A comrade immediately pulls off his good boots. To our shout we immediately hear a response from the Germans, who are rushing to help and are standing relatively close around us. There are still a few hundred meters to the forest. Concluding that we can no longer take the Germans because their cavalry is on us, we shoot them and retreat into the woods, where we are at the mercy of a firefight with their cavalry, who chase us all the way to the forest.

It was not a good noon, because their revenge was that they set fire to a house in the village and shot a farmer who applauded joyfully when we seized the Germans. We go on every day and, as always, we surround a main road that leads through the forest. Day and night, very close to the edge of the forest, the German army drives with shouting and roaring. We open fire on them, whereupon their normal ride turns into a commotion and a race, they collide with each other, everyone runs in the direction they can, losing various things. However, we can't hold off for long. After a short shooting from our side, we retreat deeper into the forest and seize 20 armed soldiers in German uniforms. Later, after bringing them to our camp, it turns out that they are Russian citizens from [Andrey Andreyevich] Vlasov's army fighting against the Soviet Union; several Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks and others. Each of them claims that they came of their own accord to surrender after fleeing from the Germans and that they did not accompany the [German] army that we just shot at. We assign them a separate place, deciding to detain them and hand them over to the Red Army, which will come in the next few days. Every day they are guarded by a different comrade and it is observed that every day they get rid of more [of their military clothing] and put on civilian clothes to conceal their past.

Bialystok is already liberated, taken by the Red Army. We learn that during the last three days before they retreated,

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the Germans set fire to all the houses and factories in the city. The front is now in the direction of Knyszyn, only 5 kilometers from us. On all roads and paths the German army is retreating, fighting for every meter of earth. In the last few days, we've been putting up more guard posts outside. We are no longer allowed to cook or make even the smallest fire. Shots and explosions are heard incessantly. We sit there and listen every hour on the radio receiver to the positions that are being taken around us; those that we know, but where we have never been. How indescribable the word “freedom” sounds to us now!

We look at each other and ask ourselves, could it be possible that we are free? No one really can believe that. After all, it means to us that we survived, which creates a sensation that no other participant in the war, except a Jewish one, might feel. The last days it is impossible to leave the forest. One day, it is a little quieter than usual. We sit in separate groups and talk about comrades from the other groups who may already be in Bialystok. Each individual thinks of his home, to which he will quickly return. Suddenly, we hear a noise close to us. A comrade runs to look and soon comes back shouting, “Russian scouts have arrived at our place!” The shouting confuses us all, though; it has all come so suddenly! Especially since we have been used to hearing just silence for the past year and have been wary of a loud word or even a strong cough. Quick as a flash, we all get up and run to look: yes! There is sitting the commander with the scouts in a circle, two young Red Army soldiers, 18 to 20 years old, with automatic weapons in their hands and grenades strapped around them. Their faces are haggard and angular; they are so thin that the belt with the grenades strapped to it barely holds on to them. At once, the whole atmosphere changes. They tell us that from Minsk onwards they, as scouts, have been constantly chasing the Germans. We give them food and, sitting together, we talk about various battles in which they were involved.

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Their task now is to scout the German forces around Knyszyn. We immediately introduce them to our comrade from Knyszyn; he accompanies them to show them a better and shorter way. After a few days the regular army arrives, which we await with great joy and disbelief. No one can sleep anymore during the day or night. Everyone asks themselves the question: Having arrived at the destination, and now what happens next? For so long we have been waiting for this day! So many Jews have perished, and only we have made it to this extraordinary day. Every Russian who is among us talks about how he will come home to his parents, wife and children, and tell them all he has been through, but to whom can we talk about it? Can we really rejoice in having survived? Have we now achieved freedom? When we come out of the forest and are on the way to the next village, we see the great “rulers”, the “victors of the world” lying in the ditches, as objects for dogs and insects, and passers-by spit on them in disgust.

The Red Army soldiers are different from what I remember from 1940. They wear different uniforms, epaulettes and medals for heroism on their chests. But, they are as good-natured interpersonally as before; for four years I did not see them and longed for them. Now convoys full of Red Army soldiers are driving and occupying all the villages in the area. We hand over our prisoners of [Andrey Andreyevich] Vlasov’s army to the staff with a document, “captured when they fought against us,” and we all go on our way, further below the front, to the position of the staff of partisans, to receive our documents. All the main streets and roads are full of Red Army soldiers moving to the front. But we go back, some in civilian clothes, others in military, each different. The passing army shouts: “Our partisans!” Everyone quarters with a farmer to eat and spend the night. We begin to learn more and more about the great catastrophe that has befallen the Jews, because when the peasants realize that I am Jewish, they tell about it. It becomes more and more burdensome

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to listen. With the peasant population it causes astonishment when we say that we are Jews. They look at us strangely: How is it possible for a Jew of our region to still be alive?”

After completing all the formalities and handing in the rifle, I turn back to see Bialystok again. I leave with a feeling of “joy” to return to my native city, and at the same time with a cutting pain, asking myself: “What will I find there?” My mind tells me, “nothing at all,” but my inner feeling calls out to me, “Maybe yes- a single one?!” I walk 10 kilometers on foot. On the way, farmers are standing in their fields harvesting grain, the scythe cutting as if nothing had happened at all. The villages along the way are partially destroyed, but others still intact. The jars are inverted over the fences, the peasants are in front of their houses having finished their day's work. In one breath I walk ahead, driven by one thought: Bialystok! What does it look like? And who is still there? Arriving in the outskirts I can see the extent of the destruction: Chimneys without houses, all bridges destroyed, the train station burned down; of entire streets only skeletons of masonry are left, and other streets are completely obliterated. You don't even recognize if anything was ever there. Is that really where the people I once knew well lived, people I spent time with? At least memories and a good souvenir will remain forever.... Germans are standing there locked behind a fence. I walk up to them, looking at them with disgust, and ask the Red Army soldier guarding them: “They are still alive?” He answers with a smile: “It is meaningless, they will perish!”

I continue on my street to see the house where I lived and left brother and sister a year ago! I walk in the direction where the ghetto was. My first glance falls

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on the pavement where, as far as I can remember, the fence had been. 20 meters from the fence the earth is overgrown with grass, so that the stones can hardly be seen. No people have walked here [for a long time], the grass is already firmly grown. Where once the stones had already loosened from so many human footsteps, now grass is growing, and the stones, half-covered, are shouting: “Grass, would you please not cover us? People have to walk here! Jews have

Excavation of the murdered heroes

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a look. And if you turn your head: broken furniture, chairs without feet, cupboards without doors, broken beds; it's not worth it to take any of it away. Feathers from quilts are lying there intermingled with photos of people who lived there, photos of Jews with beards and forelocks; Jews without hats, women with “sheytlen” [wigs] or with the most modern hairstyles. The image of a child laughing

The pit, where they have now transferred the remains of the heroes of the ghetto

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all at once. Even the earth does not want to swallow this, it lacks the boldness to do so; it leaves everything on its surface, admonishing and crying out: “What did you do? And why?”

My blood freezes as I look at all this, and it upsets me, the tears come. When I get to my street, Bialostotshenski [Białostoczańska], I walk more slowly; as in the times when they used to tell me that I am about to be shot. The same feeling I have as I approach the house number 19. This is where I lived. Three house numbers before, I can already see that our house no longer exists at all, not even a skeleton has remained that you could look at and run towards, like to your loved ones. Where you could cry, lean in like a little kid just learning to walk and still clinging to the walls. I meet only stones of the foundation and half a chimney. Sand has fallen on it from above and sparse blades of grass have grown. I climb onto the foundations of the house, consider and check where the window has been? Where was the door? Where was my bed? And, where did the picture of my parents hang, which they had taken the week of their happy wedding. We children used to look at how they changed as they got older, and Mom used to remind us of how they had once looked.... Yea! How they had once looked... And today I stand alone on my own rubble, reminding myself, in whatever I do, of all the unimaginable cruelties they had to suffer, for nothing at all, just for being Jews! The air I breathe stands, saturated with smoke from their bodies burning in the ovens of Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz and other places. The smoke drifts up to the sky in black clouds of mourning, it cries out and admonishes: “What are you people doing to another human being!” However, the air has captured the smoke and has sucked it into itself, nullifying it, not allowing it to remain as a permanent black cloud over the world. And yet, I feel the blackness of the air, being filled with that stuffy smoke that it doesn't allow itself to secrete again. The air chokes me

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and my hands fall down fainting. My feet, which have walked thousands of kilometers over all the forests, main roads and swamps, become weak. Now that I see my own home, without my loved ones, everything becomes powerless in me, my knees buckle, I have to sit down on a pile of stones of the foundation. Looking straight ahead, I discover a piece of fence, with wire on top, a remnant of the ghetto.

In shock, I close my eyes and unconsciously run my hand through the sand, digging with my fingers—I don't know what for—and feel something hard. I open my eyes and pull out an old, broken sieve. It is from our home, the potatoes were sieved with it and immediately I remember how Mom used to say with joy, “today we have a delicious meal for you children, lentils with alkalekh [potato dumplings], especially for Srolke.” I cannot sit any longer and rise. My eyes drop shut, but in doing so, my gaze falls on an opening in the earth and I remember that this must be the pit I dug as a hiding place for my parents and little sister. I go and bend over it, looking for a long time into the dark opening from which a broken board peeps out; that's all I see. Heat flows through my whole body and sweat breaks out, although it is already October, autumn. The wind blows, chasing as if to flee, since it can no longer see me standing. But who can bear to come back and see something like this? I find it particularly stuffy, although everything around me is free, no house or fence cuts off my air.

I stand hunched over, peering into the darkness of the opening and can't decide, should I start digging to go in now? No! I am afraid for myself; can a man go into his own grave? Perhaps my dear parents and sister are lying there. A thought frightens me, maybe I will meet them there? How could I answer them to the question: Why have I just stopped and by what right do I come back now, treading

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on the earth soaked with their blood; and perhaps is the grass, already beginning to wilt in autumn, fertilized by the ashes of their bodies? And the soap with which I washed, from their fat? You have been torn from your lives in such an inconceivable way. Mom! Dad! Raytsele! My brothers! What should I do to justify to myself, to my own mind? Not to mention when I meet people and, pointing to myself, have to say, “I live on in this world!?” Now what resonance is there in every word about people and the world, when all at once all the affections were torn away, which one had absorbed for so many years and which meant everything that makes up a life and humanity. Stirred up by suffering, I stand there and keep looking at the opening; sit down and get up again; don't know what to do; dig up? I lack the courage. Should I go? I can't. I look around, again and again in all directions, and every glance at the surroundings makes it harder and harder for me. It begins to get dark, the evening dawns. The question occurs to me, “Where should I go now?” After all, I did come home - a winner....

It is already very dark when I leave my “home” and look around in the subsequent shattered houses, but I see neither a living person nor any other being. From a distance I notice a person walking like a shadow across the open yards. I start running, reach him and ask him in Polish: “Are there Jews living here?” He looks at me as if I am crazy and answers me: “I haven't seen any Jews at all. None here.” I stop and don't know what to do anymore. I continue walking and see something bright in a window. I go into the house, a former Jewish house. A Polish woman is sitting there next to the kitchen, tinkering with something. “Dobry wieczór [Good evening!],” I say and ask her if Jews are living here. She remains lost in thought for a long time and

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answers: “They say that on Kupyitski [Kupiecka] Street some Jews have come.” But she does not know for sure. I go there and actually see in front of a half-destroyed stone house with broken window panes many dirty things thrown down. On the stairs, too, a lot of different things were thrown; I go up and in the darkness of a room, sitting on a chair at a broken table, I meet a woman like a shadow, pale, haggard. It is impossible to recognize who she is. I say “gutn ovnt [good evening], voynen do idn? [ are there Jews living here]?” “Yes,” she answers me so quietly that I can barely hear her voice, gazing at me with a cold, dull look.

During the time when we sit there and look at each other, and, not being able to recognize our counterparts, ask each other if we are Bialystokers, her husband comes in, of whom you can see only a pair of pants and shoes dressed to a human skeleton. We talk for a long time and each inquires of the other who might have stayed? Does one of us know something about someone else, what news does he have? But how terrible it is to hear that none of us knows anything about thousands or at least hundreds of those who remained, but only about a few who can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And of the few who come later to spend the night in the apartment, after wandering the streets all day to find something edible, temporarily at old acquaintances of yore, we know only one, Dine Treshtshanksi [Dina Treszczańska], a neighbor from the past who raised me^[1]. She is the only one I meet who can confirm that I am from the city. The others are all unknown to me, as if we had never lived in the same city.

Basically, we have nothing to talk about, because after all, each one of us knows everything, and yet the story seems to be different with everyone and even more cruel. In the meantime, a few more people come along, some barefoot, some without any things at all, looking for a piece of floor to  lay down to sleep, all in different poses, with their fists under their heads and covered with the papers and books that are lying around in the apartment. It is hard

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to suppress one's thoughts; one has to get used to them and tell oneself that this is now the reality one has been waiting for so long, enduring incredible conditions that no human imagination can ever describe; and the one who lived through it still wonders how it was actually possible to survive all that? Dine Treshtshanski [Dina Treszczańska] leads me to her room and offers me a bed; for more than a year I have not seen anything like that and I am not even used to lying in it. She beds me in clean linen, which I don't even know anymore what it looks like, and I go to sleep. I get up very late because the bed has lulled me to sleep so much. I no longer meet any of those who slept on the floor or on tables. Everyone goes around to see the former places of residence and to ask for food from acquaintances.

The fight with the Nazi bandits lasts even longer; however, it is clear to all that the war will end with the victory of all united peoples fighting against fascism. On the part of the liberated Polish territory occupied by the Red Army and the fighting sections of the new Polish government, isolated Jews begin to appear, crawling out of various places, where they have lain and suffered in hiding in various ways. Each of them is a world apart, each has persevered by different means, and yet none of them imagined that when they returned to their hometown they would encounter what they must now see with their own eyes: No one could grasp with their minds what it looked like there, and even we, who have seen it all, after all, are interested in hearing from each of them again and again how they persevered.

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The first Jews from Bialystok to appear in the city immediately after the liberation were the two Okon brothers. They had been lying under the floor of a house for a year. Germans were living above them, and while the latter were stamping their feet noisily, the brothers were able to turn from one side to the other. When they ran out of prepared provisions, they ate only one jar of raw flour a day and a few raw peas for the last three months. Every day they had to reduce the portions because they did not know how long they would have to stay there. When

The historical commission in Bialystok documenting Nazi brutalities. In the center Dr. Datner, to his left Dr. Turek.

A 10-year-old boy of the Kovalski family remained alive. He, his

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mother and other Jews had been in hiding for many months after Bialystok was already “ cleansed of Jews”. But those who used to go through the streets of the ghetto to rob the remaining goods lying around discovered them in their hiding place and betrayed them to the Germans. The Germans found all the Jews, arrested them and took them by truck to Pyetrashe [Pietrasze] to be shot. Even before that, they had dug pits and ordered everyone to strip naked and go into the pits so that it would be easier for the Germans to shoot them.

It was already early evening and dark. The boy saw what was going on, hid

A group of front-line fighters and partisans at “Tsitrons at the Midresh” [Faivel Citron's Bes-Medresh] on Polne Street

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remained from those who were in the Bialystok prison. After the liquidation of the ghetto on August 16, they were put to forced labor. The General of Bialystok thought it would be a pity to kill them immediately, when he could still use their free hands to build a palace for him. However, the German law stated that there could be no more Jews in Bialystok. Thus, he ordered them to speak only Polish and to pretend to be Polish, so that he could have them work for him for free. During the day they slaved and at night they sat in prison; and whenever a few of them were no longer needed, he had them shot.

A few months before the liberation, only 40 Jews were left of them. They were forced to dig up all the places where the Germans had shot the Jews and lay the corpses on wooden boards; always a layer of people, and above that a layer of wood. After that, people and wood were doused with burning liquid and set on fire, because no traces of their continuous shootings should remain. Some [of the Jews] recognized near ones among the corpses, but had to do the work under threat of gun power, because [the Germans] were already expecting the cession of the city. When after several months of work everything was ready, they ordered [the Jews] to dig a pit and strip naked; and 30 armed Germans were waiting with their rifles to shoot them. However, the Jews saw what was going on, rushed at the Germans naked or half-naked and with their bare hands, made their way through and ran apart. 30 Jews fell, 10 managed to get to safety and hid in the city for the last few weeks waiting for liberation.

Apart from the partisans who, on their own initiative, took their fate into their own hands from the first minute, understanding that the struggle is the only way to liberation, individual Jews, who can be counted on the fingers of one hand, returned in unbelievable, various ways.. The smallest resistance,

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even that with bare hands, as the case with the 40 Jews, offered more security to stay alive than remaining in despondency or clinging to a religious point of view, when in some cases it was said that this [catastrophe] was a “gzar“ [judgment of God or decree]. Life is absolutely no “gzar”, and with hope and faith in one's own strength, which one must always muster in moments of relapse, one can save oneself. Each [of these] battles is a battle won, and if not for all who fight, then definitely for those who learn from it. However, if you take the path of despondency in conjunction with “advocates or mediators,” you are lost; and for those who have learned this path and want to continue on it, all is lost. We, all surviving Jews, had to learn this lesson, and so we turn to our brethren, who demand of us an answer to the question, “What happened?” “This has happened!” we reply to them. And no matter how “naked” we talk and how awful our never-healing wounds are: The fact that people wanted to save their own lives by selling the others, that they put their own ego above the welfare of their whole people and our one hundred percent annihilation, is merely a product of governance.

The small parts of the Jewish youth who were educated in the revolutionary spirit, constantly fighting against the other types of leaderships and education, proved, before the whole world and for the future, that even in the cruelest times of our people, those of us survived only thanks to active resistance. After all, the 20 percent who fell died a dignified death, like all the peoples' fighters, on an equal footing with everyone, because in these conditions people perishing in battle is inevitable.

Any Jew who remembers Yom Kippur, related to what he saw and witnessed at home in his town or city,

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will have deep memories regardless of his view or attitude toward the religious ceremony. With trepidation in his heart, he will remember being young and at home with his parents on that special day, which was for all different than any other day of the year. [Just to mention] the emptiness in the streets, the crowded synagogues and especially, the mood of the people in the synagogues. However, when I remember the Yom Kippur in Bialystok of 1944, when out of 60,000 Jews barely thirty Jews gathered, in addition to ten persons coming from the province, I have to focus specifically on that day on the question of what actually brought us to the synagogue at that time, not only us, but also the Jewish officers of the Red Army, who were supposed to stand there with a “sider” [Jewish prayer book] in their hands and pray, or those Jewish officers of the new Polish Army who were supposed to do the same. Above all, however, with regard to a Jew with a cross on his chest, who came back to the Jews, and of whom it was not ascertainable what he, silently, wanted to do with the cross, and to whom he was actually praying.

Nature has its own course, as it did thousands of years ago, and it is not particularly interested in what is happening on man's earth and what changes man is making in their economic-political sphere. It does not make a fuss about it. Autumn is approaching in our region, with its fierce, cold winds and rains, where it is already necessary to prepare the winter laundry and seal the windows against the rain pouring in. My apartment at that time was on Kupyitski [Kupiecka] Street 39, in an old, ruined building with broken windows. It was a half, dark, sooty room with wallpaper torn on all sides, without electricity, with only a rag as a wick in a small bottle, an empty bed without a blanket, a broken table with three and a half legs found somewhere, which often fell over when I leaned on it or a comrade did not pay attention and leaned on it. So the few of us who have remained alive are sitting there right now, telling each other various episodes of our former lives, memories, when someone speaks up: “Come, let's find out where the Kol Nidre is prayed!” No need to pray for a long time. Nothing is there to go to or do anyway.

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It is cold in the room, everything is open. Today you don't have to walk long through streets and alleys, as you once did, because as soon as you come out, you walk right across the courtyards, streets, houses, everything has been razed to the ground. In the past, if you wanted to go to the Mlynove [Młynowa] Street 157 to pray, as we do today, you had to turn through alleys and streets, but today it is a pleasure: “freedom and equality”, [so to speak], because the roads are free of houses and, as far as equality is concerned, everything is level with the earth.

Approaching in the darkness, we see from afar that something is shining in a window of a “new” [a recently converted] house; we go inside and immediately see the following at first glance: In the eastern corner of a small room there is a table with lighted candles; the whole room is full of Jews, most of them are men and maybe six women, nothing more. All standing together and crying, all with hairy faces and in old, torn clothes. So each of them stand, facing their wounds. Not a single Jew without a beard, not a single child. All between the ages of 25 and 45, plus military men, officers from all armies, common soldiers or those with decorations, some invalids. The one at the omed [podium] is davening, but you can barely hear him, because from every angle and side another “oy!” rings out with a sigh and chokes in convulsions. Without prayer shawls, without white robes, but with big wounds in their hearts and swollen eyes, they stand there close together, but where are the thoughts and looks of each of them turned to?! I can't tell, because I can't read their minds; they are very different Jews: There is that tall Russian officer standing by, holding a Jewish prayer book next to his chest full of medals, and crying. I wonder if he is praying seriously. One cannot believe it! After all, only one thing I do believe, concluding from me to others: After losing everyone during the war and facing the reality, which proved to be cruel, many hopes that were placed in people while they were at the front, ready to sacrifice their lives, proved to be deceptive, and they became shaken [ in their values and faith]. Looking for

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a place where they could get everything off their chest, they came to the synagogue to sob their heart out.

How difficult it is for those who had to go through all this to answer all the questions! There' s a Jew pretending to be a Pole. A big mustache, a Polish hat, appropriate boots and a cross on his chest. Hard to tell if he is a Jew or not, but his eyes are puffy. He's not holding a prayer book, just a cane. I look at him and try to get an idea of this person, according to his posture and behavior, “what is he doing?” He seems broken; what kind of hell of human suffering has he gone through?! Since he may not have been so religious before, he may have converted from the Jewish faith and now, in the silence, when all eyes are watching him, he cries along with everyone, responds with “omeyn!”, does not take down the cross, but is interested in all Jewish content. Afterwards, I actually learned that this Jew later lost his life in a raid by Poles on a shtetl to which 10 Jews had returned. He died while he was in the shtetl among Jews; that's how his life ended. After all, on Yom Kippur, everyone had gone to the synagogue specifically to come clean with themselves, not to ask someone else's forgiveness and wish them a good year, but to demand a response, from God, from others, or from themselves. Not to “knock Al-Khet” [say the prayer of repentance] they came, but to “knock the table” [“clear the air”]; not to say a prayer for the deceased, but to obtain satisfaction for their souls and for themselves, to find an answer to all that had happened.

It was not the prayer ceremony of those days, where occasionally you could even hear the words of the khazn [cantor] standing on the podium and performing all his duties in terms of reciting the prayers. Rarely did anyone care about the [individual] words of the prayers they heard from the khazn. However, what was said then, connected man with his people, and the momentary broad connection, no matter what class or stratum a person belonged to and what views he held, so tore the individual apart that he was drawn into the small

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courtyard and into the dark room to find something that would give him relief and answer his questions. After all, when we finally left the prayer ceremony, our thoughts became even more bitter and somber as we realized what we had become and what we looked like now, after the expected victory.

Just as the millennia-old Jewish legend tells of the time when the Flood subsided and Noah let out a pair of each kind of living creature so that it could develop again in the world after its kind, so now the first Jews are coming together. Each one of different stratum goes back now to his former work: a shoemaker, a manufacturer, a turner, from each fellow-one. Each in his own way creates a workshop and begins to work.

In the evening we all meet and discuss about the conditions of our new life, that one person succeeds better in integrating and the second worse. The “stronger” one already hires the newcomer, who is not yet coping well with the new situation, and pays him a fixed wage per working day. Life makes its own demands, not knowing anything about brokenness and sentimentalities. You live?—Then continue to fight for your life and prepare your way according to the laws in which you find yourself. The first committee arises from itself; it is not elected. Those who are interested take the work into their own hands. Every evening, also a small number of pious Jews sit together and study the Gemara. Once I was very impressed by the scene I saw there. When I happened to come into the room where the committee used to meet during the day, I met ten young Jews sitting and studying old religious book pages that had been gathered together. I stood

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there for maybe ten minutes thinking how people at a time like this could sit with so much patience and a clear head; young people who had endured so much were learning topics that were written so many years ago and even still discussed them, just as if everything had gone normally, as if nothing had happened.

The answer to the above can be found in the tendency to cling to the “old” even when it is doomed. But now, after all our people have been handed over

Back to life: Bialystok schoolchildren with their teachers

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a system that contains the call for love between people and against mutual exploitation. For the old system, with its racial hatred and exploitation of peoples, is firmly rooted and demands to remain.

My intention is not that the reader groans or regrets the fate of the people who were in the middle of the events and had to go through such cruel experiences, but that he should form a judgment according to the facts I mention and the pictures I have seen, because I have experienced everything myself, in my own body. [My book] should be understood as a call to reconsider the existing attitudes and ideas and not to lift hands for continuing to bring to power those people who stand for the same old system, but to go into resistance against them with all means. In this way we can pay tribute and honor the memory of all the fallen and loved ones, our parents, brothers, sisters, wives, children, grandfathers and grandmothers, the innocently murdered and the fighters in the armies and partisan groups in the ghetto.

1. possibly it is meant that she was his nurse Return

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