[Page 123]

I was sixteen years old when this horrible war broke out, which ended in a terrible holocaust for humanity and the attempted extermination of the Jewish people in Europe. I dedicate my lines to my hometown, Bielsk. It was my terrible fate to see it a few days before its destruction, and to be with its beloved Jews a few hours before their death, when they were concentrated in the Jewish quarter and the ghetto, imprisoned and awaiting their bitter end.

In fact, I lived in Gajnówka after my parents moved to live there in 1933, but, my entire childhood world would remain tied to Bielsk with strong emotional ties. I know Bielsk in spirit and soul as the region of my longings, as a person in moments of nostalgia and as a child in his hours of diving into the world of his memories and the depths of his innocence. I was also drawn to Bielsk during the years of terror, when my father z”l was murdered, and I was left the only “man” in the family, and planned to move to Bielsk, the city of our extensive family and a city where we could alleviate our sudden loneliness and satisfy our hungry soul.

Gajnówka, or Hajnówka, was a city of 25,000 residents, but the number of its Jews was very small, only about twenty percent. When the Nazis entered, the Jews were imprisoned in such a way that they could not move at will, nor save themselves and escape from the hands of the Nazi guards and their local Christian helpers.

A short time later, the Jews of Gajnówka were taken to the Pruzhany Ghetto and I was among them. While leaving the city, on the way to Pruzhany, dozens of Jews were shot for no reason. They were murdered out of the bloodlust of the murderous rulers. Among those murdered on the way, which were not buried and remained dead in the fields, was also my father, Yosef Grudzinski z”l.

In this manner I became an orphan and the head of a family in a brief moment. My mother was exhausted and broken from the death of her husband and days of bereavement and hunger, and my twin sisters, Esther and Gitel, relied on me, the man in the family. Our situation was difficult. We were hunted like animals when we walked to Pruzhany Ghetto. Jews were beaten and pushed and they tripped and fell, to speed up their way to the death cells and the murder centers.

On the way another thought oppressed us. Apart from those worries that bothered everyone we had our own private concern. All, or most, of those who left for Pruzhany were equipped, more or less, with foodstuffs or rags to sell for food. We left destitute, without a ration of food for the first day in the ghetto. The first thought that came to our mind was - to escape and go over to Bielsk.

We did not know the situation in Bielsk. We knew that preparations were being made to concentrate its Jews in a ghetto, but we did not know for sure if it had already been done, or if it was within the scope of plans for immediate execution. In any case, we wanted to be in Bielsk the city of our family, the famous city of mutual aid. We wanted to be with the Jews of Bielsk in times of trouble.

Pruzhany Ghetto was tightly closed and it was difficult to get out, very difficult, but the situation was urgent. We had no bread to eat, no clothes to wear in the intense cold of that winter and no

[Page 124]

bedding to cover us for the night. That's how we came to the decision that I would go out first, I will check the options, and how we would be able to move to Bielsk and stay there. Fortunately for us, at that time there was a connection between Pruzhany and Bielsk. The first produced slippers to warm the murderers' feet in the winter, and the second provided the raw material for these slippers and luckily for us, Pomeranz, a Bielsk man, carried out this connection. He was in charge of the truck with the wool and occasionally came to Pruzhany.

He was a good Jew with a warm heart, a daring Jew who did not shy away from danger. I approached him as a Jewish child, to the father of Jewish children, and he agreed to take me in his truck while I was hidden and covered with layers of materials that he was transporting.

It was in the winter of 1941. The cold was unbearable. The policemen, who guarded the entrance, sat wrapped in their coats, hiding themselves in the corner from the cold. When they saw the truck they thought from afar that it was a German truck and let us pass without inspection. The Germans did not tolerate their inspections and they tried not to carry them out.

In this manner I arrived in the winter of 1941to Bielsk, my miserable city.

There was still no ghetto in Bielsk. The Jews were concentrated in a small quarter that extended in a small square between the street leading to Bialystok and the small river, and between Orla Street and the butcher shops street. The quarter was guarded from all sides and had only one entrance. Then, the quarter was surrounded by a fence and became a prison for the Jews, “ghetto” in the language of the murderers of my people.

I managed to get in and stayed there for two or three days. As mentioned, I traveled to collect a few items for my family's needs, and to check the possibilities of our move to Bielsk and our stay there. I was a youth very focused on my responsible task, but these unfortunate people, cut off from everything, treated me seriously and warmly. As a person, who came from the outside, they talked to me a lot and told me many things. In these conversations I learned that close to their entry the Nazis gathered all the Jewish intelligentsia of Bielsk, their leaders, and murdered them without explanation or reason. Then, with no representation for the community, they began the arrangements for their annihilation, and the confinement was the condition that made it easier. They also told me about many murders in the street, in daylight and in the evening hours. Jews were murdered in the street, at work, on their way to and from work, or just walking from house to house, from neighbor to neighbor. Every Jew outside his home, his four walls, was intended for murder.

The situation in Bielsk was somewhat surprising. In any case, in my eyes, the eyes of an innocent youth, death certainly hovered over everyone, the murderers' intentions were known and clear, the Jews were full of anxiety and yet... the Jews were equipped with food and clothing and had their meals as on normal days. They bought what they lacked from the gentiles around them in exchange for clothes and other rags that they brought with them from their homes to the enclosure. Something from the stupidity, and the blurring of the brain, befell them and they lived in complete - or deliberate - disregard of the situation and its seriousness. Their main concern, so to speak, was given to food, their daily meals and the next day's meals. I remember, with a laugh, that there were those who started to take care of the stock of wood for the next winter, so that they would have enough to heat their houses when the new year, and its cold, will arrive.

[Page 125]

I left Bielsk in danger, with death waiting for me every step of the way, but, for the sake of my family, I did and succeeded.

Between the first and second trip to Bielsk I left for Bransk disguised as a Pole, to stock up on additional equipment, all with the thought of returning to Bielsk when we are equipped with a necessary supply of food and clothing.

Bransk was still free. Not a quarter or a ghetto. We also had a family there, but we were attracted to Bielsk, and on my return to Pruzhany we looked for advice on how we could all move to Bielsk.

And again, as per our previous plan, I left ahead of the family. This time I had to look for an apartment for us, to return and realize our aspiration for our family there.

I waited again for the good Pomeranz. Again he had to risk something for us, the people of Bielsk in exile. We also wanted him to take the whole family out.

Pomeranz came, and as at the beginning the same trick. I am hidden in the truck. The truck leaves safely as rulers' car. And again, the policemen will surely be afraid of the Germans' scolding and won't check the vehicle, and we are in Bielsk. But this time something happened…

We were stopped by the Germans who ambushed us on the way out of Pruzhany Ghetto. We were taken back to the police station outside the ghetto. I don't know what happened to Pomeranz, I was put in prison. A 16-year-old criminal who wanted to unite his separated family in time of trouble, a youth, whose whole sin was, that he wanted to exchange a ghetto with a more family ghetto. A Jewish boy whose only desire was to continue living and this was one of the most serious crimes.

I sat here until the Jews of Pruzhany Ghetto were evacuated. I was returned to them when they were taken to Auschwitz, to the gas chambers and crematoria. I was taken out together with my family to Auschwitz.

Here I learned later, that in 1942 a ghetto was established in Bielsk in the area of the former Jewish quarter. This time, besides the Jews of Bielsk, the Jews of its surroundings were imprisoned there, and at the end of 1942 the Jews of Bielsk Ghetto were taken to Treblinka and exterminated there. On the way out a number of Jews tried to escape and were shot at the place of their escape. They were murdered without mercy. Among the murdered, who were left dead on the spot, was also Pomeranz. He tried to jump over the fence, was shot while holding onto it, and remained hanging on the fence.

I was in Auschwitz with my mother and my sisters until the selection. My mother was murdered in the selection, and burned in the crematoriums along with many of the inhabitants of Auschwitz camp. My sisters held on and lived. Two weeks after our mother's death Esther fell ill with dysentery. She was fed up with her life. She turned to the camp authorities and asked to be sent to the crematoriums. They fulfilled her request and she was burnt while fully conscious, because her death was better than her life. Gitel, her twin, followed her and also voluntarily burned herself. The separation from her beloved twin sister was very difficult for her.

That's how I remained in my youth, orphaned and useless to myself. But friends, who were older than me, took care of me and with their help I held on until the days of my rescue. Thanks to them I registered as a carpenters' apprentice, as a required professional, I worked, sunk my troubles in the tedious labor

[Page 126]

and forgot my grief and longing to the dear souls, which were cut off before my eyes, and I was so in need of their closeness.

Dear Jews surrounded me all the time. They taught me the carpentry trade while caring for my life. This friendship of these people to my family helped me and I stayed three consecutive years in Auschwitz until I wore out my future murderers.

When the Red Army approached our camps and the Germans began to retreat and dragged us along with them. This is how we arrived in Mauthausen, from there to Ebensee in Austria, and here we were liberated by the Allied army.

In my three years in Auschwitz I knew many hardships, I also knew selections, in which people close to me perished, and my feelings of terrible loneliness were renewed from time to time after each selection. Nevertheless, something beat in me and told me: Live! I lived at any cost. I escaped from the selections. I risked my life to stay alive to wear out the terrible enemy. From every escape I returned risking my life to live again with my family's friends, with the remnants of my benefactors. I hid so as not to be discovered. I was in terrible situations, when the murderers were angry with me for being able to escape from under their eyes and live, while for them I was marked for death. I remained alive.

In the end, I wanted to return to Bielsk, as I saw it in its last days and after the Holocaust. I did it out of a double impulse - also because its memory is associated with the memory of many things in my childhood, and also because I carry with me the horror sight of Bielsk after it became the object of German genocide.

As mentioned, I saw Bielsk during my three days stay in the Jews' enclosure in their quarter. Then, I was engrossed in the matters of the task assigned to me by my mother z”l and my sisters. But I remember it clearly. Bielsk, in the winter of 1941 was partially burned. As was their custom, the Nazis burned it to abuse its Jewish residents who were evacuated, to imply to them that they were preparing a destruction that would never be rebuilt. For some reason they left the ghetto quarter untouched and also other quarters remained undestroyed. The burned section extended from Moshe Leib Ferber on Orla Street to the Catholic Church. The rest of the streets remained standing. Orla Street, in the section where the carriages stood, also remained in existence.

They did not touch one synagogue. I don't know which of the many that were in Bielsk they didn't dare to touch. It's possible that it was “Yefe Einayim,” or the new Beit Midrash, but it is clear that one remained and I saw it as it was.

The state of partially burned Bielsk more than doubled the anguish of its horror, its houses, empty of Jews, emitted horrors and anxieties. The abandoned streets before our eyes emphasized that here was Jewish life, the beauty of youth, the joy of children, the murmur of lovers, the fervor of believers and the longing for the coming of the Messiah, and all of this was destroyed and gone.

But Bielsk, to the horror of it, remained largely unburned, a legacy of murderers and human abusers of the lowest kind, and this I would like to emphasize in the Bielsk Book.

I left Sverdlovsk for Krakow with the first transport. When I arrived in Krakow, the members of Hashomer Hatzair^[1] movement were already at the train station. All the movements came to take their members and bring them to the kibbutzim. When I heard that there were representatives of the Hashomer Hatzair movement, I decided to turn to them because I was educated at the movement. I said that I was also in Hashomer Hatzair. I was taken to the kibbutz leadership in Krakow. A day later I was sent to Lodz to the main leadership of Hashomer Hatzair. There, I met with many instructors I knew from before the war. They sent me to organize the kibbutzim in Dolny Úlônsk [Lower Silesia]. Groups of survivors were sent there and I had to arrange accommodation, beds and workplaces for them. There, I received a message that I had to leave with the children who were traveling to Germany. These were one hundred and fifty children who were bought from Poles, taken out of monasteries, and had no parents.

[Page 142]

At night we crossed the border with the children near Kłodzko. There, we crossed the border into Czechoslovakia, and the Czechs helped us carry the children to the other side. This was border smuggling done at night. There were days when the Czechs opened the border to let us cross. A few days later we traveled to Germany and arrived in Ludlik- Dorf. Hashomer Hatzair already had a youth home there and we arrived with one hundred and fifty children and five instructors. We were given a big hotel that belonged to a German. We concentrated there and started doing activities with the children, educating them and teaching them Hebrew. I was an instructor of twenty-five small children. I told them stories, went out to play with them and worked very hard. Later, we moved to Darmstadt, where there was an Air Force base, and all these children concentrated there. In this place I worked with the poet Anda Pinkerfeld and another poet whose name I have forgotten. We divided the children according to age. There were problems with the older children who could not adapt. There were escapes of children who wanted to return to Poland. There was a case of a sixteen year old girl who lived with a Pole and did not want to talk to us all the time. We couldn't get anything out of her about her family and how she stayed alive. Anda Pinkerfeld said:

“We will arrange something with a young man. Maybe he will find access to her and through romance will bring out her history in the Holocaust.”

At the end of 1947 we left for France. We passed a Palmach^[2] course near Marseille and left illegally for Israel on the ship “Mali.” Today it is a warship in our fleet.

We arrived a few days after Haifa was captured. We were the first ship to dock at the port after the liberation of Haifa and we were recruited from the ship. My wife and I went through the Palmach course together, and returned here to Haifa.

Then, the great battle took place in Mishmar HaYarden and I was sent there. When I arrived in Rosh Pinna, to the 24th “Carmeli Brigade,” I was sent to an intelligence battalion. I went through an intelligence course, and when Manara was attacked I participated the battle near Al-Nabi Yusha'. Several members fell in this battle on the hills. My role in this battle was to

[Page 143]

bring ammunition to the positions above. When I reached the hill with the ammunition the wounded had already left the posts, and we began to establish ourselves in Kibbutz Yiftah. The shelling of Kibbutz Yiftah was very heavy at night. Early in the morning we received an order to go and collect the wounded in the hills. Our sergeant told us not to go because the hills were occupied, but the order was to go, no matter what. We were given an armored vehicle and left. Halfway the armored vehicle got stuck, we got out of it and with our own strength we got back to the kibbutz. A few days later the operation began on the road to Safed. I was discharged from the army in 1948. I wandered around without a job for six months, until I got a job in the army with the help of the elderly Tikotzky from Bielsk. To this day I work as a manufacturer of weapons at the Ministry of Defense.

When I arrived in Lodz from Krakow, the first thing I asked for was to be allowed to see Bielsk before I started to work. I said that I wanted to come to my city to see the destruction with my own eyes. I left there a mother, two brothers, two sisters, and a brother-in-law, and I want to see what was happened there. I heard that Tikotzky was there and many other friends. It was the last chance to see my city with my own eyes. I received money and arrived in Bielsk via Warsaw. When I got off at the station I did not see the city. It was completely destroyed. In the distance I only saw the city's clock. It was a tall tower and nothing hid it, neither houses nor people. In the distance I also saw the bath house and the churches. When I arrived at the place where the city hall once stood, I was met by gentile acquaintances who asked: how did you stay alive? We thought no one was left. One of them told me that my house remained. He took me and brought me to my house. The whole city was burned, my house remained. I entered the house where I lived. A gentile family from some village, who occupied the house, was there. They looked at me as if I arrived from heaven. They told me that my cousin, also named Cherblowsky, is in Bielsk and lives on the other side of the house. He is a relative of mine who later went to America. We were very excited when we met, and he told me how he remained alive. He was also a butcher in the city and when the Russians entered he had a butcher shop where he sold meat. The Russians saw him as a merchant and imposed high taxes on him. When he couldn't pay they said that he boycotted them, and he got ten years in prison.

He sat in prison in Brest. When the war started they took all the prisoners and sent them to Russia, and that's how he remained alive. When the Germans began to retreat, and the Russians advanced into Poland, he advanced along with them and arrived in Bielsk a few days after the liberation of the city. He was a prisoner. He was released after the signing of the Sikorski agreement^[3] and received permission to return to Poland since he had a decoration from the first war.

And what was left of the Jews of Bielsk? And what was left of my family? And from other families?

No one is left of my family, not even from my cousin's family. A gentile told me that my brother-in-law, along with his other friends, wanted to leave the ghetto, but, when

[Page 144]

they got as far as the Białowieża Forest the Germans caught them and killed them. It was at the time when Bielsk Ghetto was established. They sensed the calamity that would come and wanted to reach the partisans, assuming that the Germans would be afraid to reach the forests.

When I was in Bielsk there were a father and his son, Shafferman and Davidovich, who returned from the camps. Blumenthal and my cousin Cherblowsky were there. Tikotzky and a tailor from Ginewka. We met the father of Blumenthal z”l at the Hassidic synagogue. There was a meeting there of all those who remained from Bielsk. We talked all evening and they told me everything that happened to the Jews of Bielsk. They also talked about the need to stay, to sell property and make some money for living. I said: “I only came to see this place. For me, there is nothing here. Not even a house. I can't live here”. The next day I left and never went back.

What I have heard:

The Poles, who remained in the city, told me that the fire was before the Germans left, and the Russians' advance exacerbated the situation. There was a great battle at the entrances of the city. Many public houses were destroyed. The big theater that was built before the war, the magnificent building on 3 Maja Street, remained. They did not have the time to blow it up. They also wanted to blow up the big city hall building, and left it and the municipal bath house. I heard that the central Great Synagogue was dismantled and its parts were sold. The elderly Blumenthal said then that he couldn't understand such a thing. When he came half a year after the war, everything was dismantled and all the bridges were uprooted. The bridge, which connected us with Bilowsk, was blown up. When we were young, we used to walk across the bridge to the villages on the other side where Jews also lived. On Ostowa Street, which led to Orla, once lived the Geir family. Their daughter was my friend from childhood and until I left for the army. I have been told that when the Germans entered the city they took the first four most beautiful girls they met, abused them and shot them. Among them was Geir's daughter. They told terrible things, what happened to Zeitlin who was a respectable man in the city, and to Stopnitzki the principal of Tarbut School who was among the veteran Zionists in our city. How the Germans tortured them when they entered.

1. Hashomer Hatzair (lit. The Young Guard) is a Labor Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary. Return
2. The Palmach (Hebrew acronym for Plugot Maḥatz, “Strike Companies”) was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. Return
3. The Sikorski–Mayski agreement was a treaty between the Soviet Union and Poland that was signed in London on 30 July 1941. Return

It was on 3.6.1941. We were taken, together with several other children from Bielsk, to a convalescent home in Druskininkai^[1]. Among them were only three Jewish children, Chaim Wolfson, Edna Lev and me.

About one hundred children from the entire area were concentrated in this convalescent home. Eighty percent of them were Jews from Bialystok and its suburbs. The director of the institution was a Jew from Leningrad named Pevzner, who, apart from his devotion to his party, did everything possible to make our stay in Druskininkai pleasant, there was good food and quite warm treatment. However, confusion reigned on the day the Russian-German War broke out, and he took us in the morning to a concentration place to bring us back to our parents' home. We traveled in the direction of Bialystok, but, in the meantime, the Grodno bridge was blown up and we couldn't go back home.

We progressed east, towards the original Soviet Russia.

I was cut off from my hometown. I was among the older children. There were younger children around me, seven or eight year olds, and this imposed a kind of early maturity on me. We were so busy with each other until we, the older children, did not feel the meaning of this moment. We were simply cut off from everything that was dear, familiar, loved and normal to us,

Multinational municipal choir during the Soviet rule - Bielsk 1940

[Page 146]

and departed for a very foreign distance, very different, and not ours. We were suddenly left without a mother, father, brother and sister. Cut off from schoolmates. At once we were thrown into a wide and terrible world.

German planes bombed us all the way. We jumped out of the train cars, hid on the side of the road, in the forests, in the ditches, and continued. We changed a lot of trains until Minsk. Pevzner took care of us with great devotion, always got us a place on trains crammed with soldiers, refugees, retreating and wounded. There were times when we jumped out of the train, and when we returned it was destroyed by the bombs, and we had to wait for another train and for the track to be cleared from the bombed train. In places, where we had a break, Pevzner made sure to get us food and a place to stay. When we arrived in Minsk thousands of bombs were dropped on it. The city, and its suburbs, turned into hell. We barely had time to jump out of the train to hide among the piles of rubble, and be saved. This horror scene haunted me for many days, and to this day it is difficult for me to free myself from it. It is difficult to define what bombed Minsk was for me at the dawn of my childhood. I was amazed at the strength with which I freed myself from these horrific images, when I was 13 years old in a group of trembling and scared toddlers. Over time, these horrors returned and stood before my eyes, but it happened precisely when we arrived, after these discouraging wanderings, at a permanent place and rest from the roads. In the wanderings, at the intensity of turmoil of death and destruction, I did not remember them. I put them out of my mind a moment after they happened until they became a complete blur.

In the meantime we advanced north and reached the Urals^[2]. Here we were supposed to stay far from the fields of wars and their terror, and maybe also because it was possible to find housing, work and food for us there.

For several months we stayed in a place whose name I have forgotten. Then, we arrived in the village of Krakolniko, where Pevzner found an abandoned orphanage and we were housed there. On the way we were joined by the teacher, David Tobiash, who helped Pevzner to withstand the enormous difficulties of our care, our food and clothing.

The village was a village without Jews, and yet, it was infected with anti-Semitism of the most primitive and severe kind. They simply hated Jews of all ages. They openly hated us, the Jewish children, and at every opportunity revealed their animalistic feelings towards us. They insulted us, oppressed us, and didn't let us forget that we are Jews despite our orphanhood and complete separation from our parents and relatives. We suffered a lot from their hatred and contempt for us.

The Krakolniko period was the hardest in our difficult life. Most of the children in the institution were Jews, from the age of seven to the age of twelve-thirteen, who were far away from their families. The longings were terrible, the nights, and the dark moments of the twilight of the day, turned into terrible nightmares which were doubled when one was infected by the crying of his friend. We, the Jewish children, cried for our parents more than all the children of the world. An awful cold prevailed in the institution. We did not have clothes, or suitable blankets to cover us at night, in the harsh winter conditions of the Urals, and we also did not have enough food. The suffering was great, during the day due to the hunger and cold, and at night due to the cold, hunger and insomnia. But, most of all, we were depressed by the longing for our parents, our brothers, our home and our environment. I don't know what caused these longings and how we overcame the heartaches.

[Page 147]

In the summer it was a little easier for us. It was hot, the heart wasn't pinched by the cold, the hands and feet weren't pricked by annoying and torturing needles, and we worked. I think that's the main thing. The work relieved the many feelings of distressed and gave interest to life. We had an auxiliary farm at the institution. We worked hard, made a living from it, and we loved it. It healed our mental wounds that gnawed and hurt to the point of suffocation. If it weren't for the anti-Semitism of the hostile environment, we would have been able to relax in mind and body, but, for some reason, they did not leave us alone. When we were rescued from the torture of frost and hunger, the hatred of our hosts jumped on us and oppressed us again, because they couldn't overcome their disgust towards us. Even when they showed us an attitude of mercy, it was a humiliating and painful attitude. First of all by its exaggeration, as if they did not want us to forget, even for a moment, our terrible orphanhood, but also because their humane attitude was entwined with oppressive racial animosity. They took pity on us, not because we were orphans, but because we were born to Jewish parents and were orphaned by them. In other words, how terrible is the blow to an orphan that he misses such parents, Jewish parents, and it hurt a lot. In their great primitiveness, and lack of any expression of politeness, they exaggerated the significance of their feeling of pity towards us, until we could not ignore it. They also expressed rude and cruel statements towards us because we dare to live, and we are Jews who should not be allowed to live. And if that wasn't enough, they sent death curses towards us

It was very difficult to be a Jewish child in Krakolniko. Pevzner eased our situation with his concern, and Tobias had done more than was required of him. He simply deepened in us the sense of honor to be Jews, until it became a protective armor against those who despised us. We started to despise them, their ignorance, their racist stupidity and the poison of hatred that fermented in their veins.

Tobias knew how to transfer us to a world of royalty and Jewish culture also in the most difficult moments of our childhood. In the middle of the tormenting winter he held a Hanukkah ball, and warmed our hearts with our enthusiasm for the actions of the Maccabees^[3], our people. It was in the winter of 1943. Tobias, who had a broad understanding of political matters, realized that the Russians were conducting a false affair with the Jews of the world who fought the Nazis, and took advantage of this opportunity to receive from Moscow, through the Jewish Committee there, the means for the ball and a blessing for its organization. The ball was impressive. It was traditional in all its details, and yet, extreme anti-religious Russian party members were also invited, and they, supposedly, rejoiced in our joy, the joy of the victory of the few Jews against the many gentiles. For us, this ball, and its familiar atmosphere, was a source of pride and hope. We have not forgotten it for years.

It can be said that thanks to Tobias we have not forgotten our origin. Over the years it was easy to forget it there.

In the spring, Tobias held a traditional Passover Seder for the institution's children. This Seder was done in secret, under underground conditions and in an atmosphere of fear and sanctification of God's name. I can't remember what changed from Hanukkah to Passover. Only the older children in our group participated in the Seder. The preparations were made with all precautions, and while it was held there was also a guard outside so that it would not be known to the hostile environment.

[Page 148]

I don't know how Tobias managed to get wine and matzot for the Seder, everything was done in secret. Maybe it was a year after the Hanukkah ball. In this year the Russians were seen at the height of their treachery, maybe because they freed themselves a little from the Nazis and were able to manage without flattery to the Western world, with its influential Jews. However, I remember well the Seder, and its tense atmosphere, as an event whose echoes circulated in the soul and the sensory system, and as an eternal revelation that is not measured in the time and place where it happened.

In this manner our oppressed Jewish childhood continued, for me until 1945 and for the younger children until 1946. That year I was already an adult and traveled to Moscow to study in high school. There, the atmosphere was easier. There was no trace of anti-Semitism. The general attitude was quite good. Discrimination was not felt at the boarding school, and there were no national divisions.

The end of my wanderings in Russia was good, and all is well.

I arrived in Israel via the paved route. Training for work and defense in kibbutzim in Warsaw, Austria and Italy. Later, Cyprus^[4] and the Etzioni Brigade^[5]. All this information is for the Bielsk community in Israel, although there is no general value in it. But, there is a Bielski value in it. It is expressed in my constant longing for Bielsk. It is expressed in my origin, that I see myself as a Bielski.

When I think of belonging, I think of Bielsk. Many children were lost to our Bielsk, few remained, and we should remember how, and under what circumstances, Bielsk's children remained in the Holocaust and in exile.

1. Druskininkai is a spa town on the Nemunas River in southern Lithuania, close to the borders of Belarus and Poland. Return
2. The Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Return
3. The Maccabees were Jewish rebel warriors who fought against Ancient Greco-Roman Hellenization in the 2nd Century BC. Return
4. During the summer of 1946, the British Mandate Government in Palestine decided to intercept the Ma'apilim, illegal immigrants, and redirect them to internment camps in Cyprus. Return
5. The Etzioni Brigade (Hebrew - Hativat Etzyoni also 6th Brigade and Jerusalem Brigade, was an infantry brigade in the Haganah and Israel Defense Forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Return

I stopped here. From the other side of Mickiewicza, almost opposite Orla Street, narrow and previously totally populated by Jews, was Third-of-May^[1] Street, “3-go Maja,” which the Jews called “Di Paradna Gas.” It had been a lovely street, truly the prettiest street in town. It gave Bielsk an appearance of a large city, at least in this part of town. The homes were beautiful. Each one was different and each one stood separately on a raised foundation. There were no stores here; it was only a splendid residential street and its width was such that only on the wide boulevards of large cities would it be possible to find something like this. Almost at the end of the street on the right side there was a small municipal garden with trees and benches and with a kiosk with sweets at the side of the road. Beyond that the last house, spacious and lovely, had lived the family of our last rabbi, HaRav [Rabbi] Moshe Aharon Bendas [Ben Daat].^[2] Perhaps thanks to the appearance of this street and surrounding area, visitors and those coming from smaller towns were so impressed by the city. They felt the special atmosphere as if it was more developed, more elevated, and they credited that phenomenon to the residents, who gave the impression of being more friendly and cultured. Now even that street had disappeared and was turned into being part of the large empty area of

[Page 151]

Bielsk. Only the wide street and sidewalks of the memory remain. And where is the well? In the middle of the road at the entrance to 3^rd-of-May Street from the side of Mickiewicza Street had stood a well-pump for the use of all residents. There were also wells pumping water in the city, bringing pure water flowing from a spring to all the houses that needed it. No trace of it remains.

I was walking along the sidewalks on large paving stones when I read the name Tikotzky, the sole contractor for public works in the town. He had paved the sidewalks on a number of streets. The sidewalks with his name engraved remained whole, apparently, thanks to the Polish sound of his last name.

The streets were empty of people. The residents were at work. I walked down the main road, Mickiewicza. When I got to the corner of the street that we had once called Orla, before me appeared three two-story, block-shaped buildings, white and simple structures. Like a new housing project here [in Israel], this place had no trees, no plants, and no shade. These were three government office buildings. I continued. In front of me appeared a house that when I got closer to it, I recognized as the barber's house. Next to it stood a Russian Orthodox Church, just like before, only this time it seemed different to me. The buildings were old and had lost the charm that they used to have. Maybe what influenced me was the fact that there was no greenery around or all the surroundings that I was used to seeing. From a distance I could see a reflection of houses. I noticed a two-story building at the corner of Poniatowski Street. In this white and clean building there was once the post office. I stopped. On the other side of the road, opposite the building, there was a lawn of fresh grass. It was as if it was well cared for so children could play there. I looked around. On this plot of land, covered with beautiful grass, had actually stood the house that my family lived in throughout my high school years. From this very house I made aliyah^[3] [moved] to Israel.

Here, in my rooms in the attic of the house, it was once happy and interesting. Meetings and gatherings of the groups^[4] “HaShomer HaTzair” and “HeHalutz” took place, and who from the Zionist youth in Israel does not remember the room in the attic in the center of town? We had to go there in secret and to leave without being seen, in order not to annoy the teachers at the high school. Those living close to it and the “mashgiahs watching with seven eyes”^[5] the behavior of the students. And at that time, we did not know fear. The gatherings were held frequently and matters of Keren Kayemet [Jewish National Fund]^[6] and aliyah [resettling] to Israel were subjects of the utmost importance. Here we spent good evenings and years filled with the problems of the world, here in this room. Then I stood and looked around. For sure, the house had stood right here. Here we, the youth, had gathered. We had argued; we used to go out for field trips together beyond the city limits. Sometimes in the winter, on a day with deep snow, we went out with sleds; sometimes in the summer – to the forest. And the neighbors? The Jews? Not a trace remains. Empty lots. Some are clean; others are neglected.

In the stretch of road going from our house south to the railroad tracks stood other individual houses: the home of the Polish attorney Witkiewicz. A little beyond that, the home of the Nevrut Family. In here once had been a fine restaurant and after that the small, wretched house of the Brevermans. And opposite that, another miracle! Opposite us stood a spacious home with an entrance up several steps. This house had belonged to the Mazia Family many years ago. My father rented it while he was building his own house outside the city, next to the big mill building. It was the only three-story building in the city and the surrounding area. Opposite this was where we were born, I and my brother as well. And right after these houses there is a small bridge over the Lubka River, which falls from here a distance of 100 meters

[Page 152]

to Biala^[7] [River] which meanders for the length of 100 kilometers. The name Bielsk, also Bialystok and Biała Podlaska, as well as various villages, is derived from Biala. On this bridge a feeling of great emotion came over me. The river was almost completely dry. The tributary appeared unusually deep, black and dirty, as if the marrow left its bones after the living flesh was burned and the spinal cord blackened by smoke. Only at the bottom did we see cloudy water, a memory of the living and full river which had been here a long time ago. They told me afterward that the rivers dried up because of the regulations of the beaches by the authorities for tens of kilometers.

That is strange! It is as if the physical Bielsk left its foundations: from its grounds, from its fields and from its forests, as if life left them as well -- an arrangement of bones. It became empty of substance and only a dry, broken skeleton remained!

Across the river, on the other side of the bridge, opposite the Breverman house, a cottonwood tree grew tall and is similar to our eucalyptus [in Israel]. Its long branches were bending and falling down to the water. While I was still a student at school, I once went to the train on a rainy and cloudy day. When I got closer to this bridge, we could hear thunder and lightning hit the tree. It actually made a long slit through it. I stood astonished at the noise of the thunder and the brightness of the lightning, like I was in shock, frozen in place on the bridge. I was waiting; I was two meters away from the tree. Then as I was touring Bielsk, and I was standing on the bridge, I looked for and noticed a long slit and a deep hole in the trunk of the tree about three meters up from the ground. Wasn't that the same slit from the same lightning that I could not forget?

I continued until the railroad tracks. The beautiful, straight boulevard leads to the left side of the train station, once was a place for walking on Shabbat and holidays. Now even this has completely disappeared. The place was abandoned. I returned to the town center.

Today was an autumn day in September. At that time of year “our” environment was blessed with rain, which used to pour for weeks without end, and it would cover the ground with a thick layer of black mud. Despite that, this September in 1957, it was a beautiful, clear day, a mild autumn day, peaceful and golden. The sky was blue, exactly like in Israel, and the sun shone above my head scattering warm rays. The same sky and the same sun. I was comfortable and at ease in my short jacket. The fresh air woke me up and cheered me. On that day I managed to fulfill all the duties that usually every guest would have to fulfill visiting a town under these circumstances. I took it on myself to visit not just the remains of the city but also to visit the destroyed people, the citizens that remained, those living in the city. And also to fulfill the sacred obligation of visiting the remaining graves.

Yisraelkeh Borkowsky, a well-known football player [soccer] for the “Maccabi” team, was born in Bielsk, the only one there. He recognized me as I got closer to his shop. He called my name, as if he had not seen me in little more than a week. He invited me to his house and agreed to accompany me to the cemetery. He had a license to sell cool drinks and perhaps even warm drinks, and his financial situation was good. I watched him as he was working. A few people were at the kiosk and from behind my back I heard a few clear words in Polish:

[Page 153]

“She's from Bielsk. I remember her well.”

“Yes, that's true,” I said, turning around. Before me now stood a young Polish fellow. When he was younger, he worked at the cinema which belonged to Jews.

The second Jewish person in Bielsk was Izvitzky, from neighboring Orla, who was married to a Christian woman and was the father of three lovely children. He worked moving supplies from the railway station. And there was one large household that was made up of two related families from Briansk [Bransk]. These people were already sitting on their suitcases ready to make aliyah [resettle in The Land of Israel]. However, for some reason, the exit permit of one of the two families was delayed, and they were worried. Despite all that, it was they who welcomed me in a festive and friendly manner. They arranged regal tables with generous and varied foods and wine.

In that family there were two young women who offered to accompany me on an afternoon outing.

Town hall stood as it had before, with some slight changes, on a square – Piłsudski Square, which was once used for the weekly marketplace, every Thursday. Then the town was the noisy place for all the villagers; they came from the entire surrounding area to sell their produce and to buy what they needed for living in the village. Now the square stood abandoned, empty of all people; it was on a huge piece of land that included the streets around it, but was devoid of houses. Only on one side of the square did there remain some isolated houses. I recognized the Boyarskys' house and some others. And from the yards, small, old houses could be discerned. We stood on the main road, Mickiewicza Street, opposite the square and town hall. In the same section, a few houses remained: those of Barkot, Schlosberg, Dansky, Germaiza and Sahr, and on the other side of the street – a field with no houses.

We continued on for the length of Mickiewicza, going northward. I asked to see Bialystokska Street.

At the corner of Mickiewicza and Bialystokska Streets stood a Unitarian Church. It was standing just as it had been before: the tall trees rise above the fence and make it appear like an ancient monastery. A little further on is a long single-story building with barred windows, once used as a jail serving all of the surrounding area. Later it was turned into a hall for plays, celebrations and dance parties for Purim and Hanukkah. Now the post office was there. I went in to buy stamps. A bit further on was a triangular-shaped area, whose sharp edge was facing us. Standing in the middle of the road was a white building, which, as before, housed the Office of the Treasury and Income Tax. This building divided the road into two arms. On its left side there extended a narrow alleyway and on the right was the continuation of Bialystokska Street with all of its small, rural houses, as it had once been. Behind almost every house was a garden with wonderful fruit, and next to the entrance under the windows – small gardens with flowers which were already wilted. The street went out to a road going 50 miles north to Bialystok. We used to go strolling a lot on this road. I knew all the homes of the Jews and of the Christians. From afar I saw the home of the poet's family where my friend Tziporah lived. I used to visit her from time to time. They had the largest and most beautiful gardens in the city behind their house. We used to spend pleasurable hours there, while smelling the sweet fruit: sometimes as individuals and sometimes as a group. Now the house stood abandoned and very sad. The boards of the long fence were twisted, leaning to fall on the side of the trees. Behind the house, you could see dried up and sick trees…

[Page 154]

Opposite the wide City Hall on Mickiewicza Street, there remained a number of Jewish houses in their entirety. We sat and chatted as we once had. Here was the town hall building: the Germans had made changes in it. Here they closed up a door; there they opened a window. Here displayed on the top of the building on a high flagpole was the famous buffalo built with strings of iron. It was the mascot of the city, standing like that for about 600-700 years.

I was accompanied by Lydia, a Polish gentile woman, my friend from a long time ago. Her story about the Jews of the city, who had been and were no more, grabbed my attention. I was interested in hearing it and especially from someone who had actually witnessed it. She decided once again to verify the tragic fact of the imprisonment of all the Bielsk Jews in a very small area [lit. pen], in the ghetto that was on Kazimierzowska Street, and after that of their deportation from the city. In a very soft and low voice she was telling the story of how in small groups within three days, with little parcels under their arms, the Jews went to the trains. She saw my big brother with his family among them… Also, our mutual friends who were already married, the whole city. It was November 1942.^[8] Her voice was shaking a bit; it was drawn out but with pauses. Her tone of voice was one of guilt… “What could we have done under these circumstances?” she asked herself. While she was telling the story, her face blushed, and it was clear that she was ashamed of herself. She personally suffered, because she herself was left as a widow with a little boy in her arms after the Germans called her husband out of the house, and since then he never returned. The same fate happened to another friend from our class, Yanka, a Catholic; she also came to meet me. She was working as a clerk at City Hall.

That evening, on my second day in Bielsk, Lydia did not allow me to stay at the hotel. She invited me into her room in her parents' small house, where she lives until today with her son and daughter-in-law. She dedicated the day to me and to my visit in Bielsk. I suggested going on a trip or taking a walk on the last section of the main road that I had not yet been on. The main street, Mickiewicza, starts in the south at the railroad and continues for two to three kilometers north of there. It was divided into sections that were called different names by the Jews: the first one is a section that starts at the entrance to the city and continues up to the corner of Poniatovsky Road where our house used to be. The Jews used to call it: “De Bahn Gas,” the Railroad Street. To the part of the street which was located between our house and Orla Street on the right side, there was a wide sidewalk. We used to walk on the sidewalk a lot, on Saturdays and Sundays, the sabbath of the Christians. That section had a special name, even before World War I; they gave it a flamboyant name: “Dar Niavasker Prospect,” as if it was a street one would stroll down in Moscow. Further on there was Mickiewicza Street. It was getting close to the market square and that is what the Jewish citizens used to call it: Main Street or “the one near the market.” After the marketplace there was another quieter and narrower section that continued all the way to Bialystok Street, and from there began the last section, which was called “Di Litvisheh Gas,” the Litai [Lithuanian] Street. I had already walked twice along Mickiewicza Street, along every one of the sections – almost all. Now all that was left for me to see was Litai Street, which starts at the beginning of Bialystok Street next to the Unitarian Church and ends at the border of the city limits. That section had to have a special name, more special than all the other sections, and that is because not only is it located within special surroundings, but it looks different from the rest of the main road. Litai Street has a special shape, one of a typical village street. It was always inhabited by Christians and

[Page 155]

there were only a few Jewish families, and that is probably why this street remained whole and in its previous shape. A few of the houses that had belonged to Jews already had residents from nearby villages living in them. Other houses were still empty and closed up, standing almost in anticipation, as if waiting for the old residents that left them in a very peculiar manner. To my left I recognized the Appelbaum house; to my right – that of the Glogovsky. On that street a part of all Bielsk was preserved – of the real Bielsk, the one that stood for hundreds of years. Here you could become emotional from the old spirit of an old small Polish town whose population was mostly Jewish, once upon a time of course. We walked along one side of the street and then returned along the other side. Here and there a few houses were still standing on Mickiewicza Street. As I got closer to Bialystok Street, to my left were two little crooked and gloomy houses. In one of them lived an old Catholic resident named Szewitsky. The other house used to belong to two Jewish families, Eisenberg and Kaplansky.

After a general tour of the entire city area, one could begin to estimate the extent of the devastation. The city was destroyed, especially the center; the center with its adjoining streets was the main area of the Jews of Bielsk. This city has become an empty area, almost entirely along with the network of stone roads cutting through it and with complete sidewalks on both sides of the street – a memory of a city that used to be here in the past.

Around this ruined area a little further away were streets that had been left as they were in the past. Mostly Christians used to live there, and the devil's hand did not have time to reach them. Naturally these streets became suburbs with a larger population flowing from the villages and needing apartments. To the east Holovisk, for example, is spread out between two bridges that are parallel to one another. Above the Biala [River], it was built up a lot, and the old park that was given as a gift from the Czar to General Masur is now standing not at the end of the road and the city but is in the middle of a fully built-up neighborhood around it. On the street that leads to Bialowieze via Heinkovka, suddenly a new boulevard appeared from both sides of the new street. The old street, Davicha, is also populated just as it used to be. However, in a large part of this road a new generation has replaced their parents. Closer to the center and parallel to the main part of Mickiewicza, Jagiellonska Street was left untouched. Westward from the center, they finished building Augustavska [Augustowa] Street, which leads to a village with the same name. The building with the electric station and the district hospital, which had bordered on farmlands, suddenly found themselves in the middle of a populated street. Back on the southeastern side behind the train tracks grew and developed a whole new neighborhood due to the lack of apartments. The big sports field that used to be far from the city got closer to the city and became part of the town itself.

In the afternoon, we went with Barkovsky to visit the Jewish cemetery. It is a kilometer south of the city on the road to Briansk [Bransk]. The first buildings on Briansk Street also remained in their places, and when we got to the point where the road splits into two arms, we saw on the lefthand road a few houses from the old street that leads to Buchki [Bocki]. We entered the righthand road, the Branski Street, and after about 100 meters we stopped. Here, on this place, my father many years ago built a mill,

[Page 156]

a large flour mill. It was mechanized in a modern way, a three-story building, the only one that was that tall in the entire area. When I got closer to the place, I saw a huge pile of small bricks, what remained of the building. On the other side of the yard beside the entrance gate, there once stood a house. It was there that I lived during the first few years of my life. The area was now empty, but you could discern a sturdy foundation and the entire layout of the house, everything, the rooms and the corners. All the foundations remained intact, now all covered with grass and tall wild growth. Behind the house was a very large yard; it was empty and desolate.

From afar we could see the hill of the cemetery that was raised above the surroundings. From east to west on the righthand side of the road was a row of high coniferous trees, bordering the length [of the cemetery]. It made an interesting shape. From the road the hill looked almost like a grove, just as in the olden days.

We went in by way of the first entrance. Not a soul was there, no guard. The small, square tahara [purification] room and the storage room for the trolleys for the deceased connected to it had completely vanished. A few steps away from the gate, at the front of the area, we came across a foundation made of cement. It was long and narrow, in the shape of a low and long box. Borkowsky [might also be Burkowski] explained that this is a mass grave of the first hostages murdered by the Germans. After the war ended, he found them in a pit next to the forest, and he made them a proper burial. The names were blurred from the rains, and he promised himself that he would restore the writing and look after this holy grave. I kept walking uphill in a certain section that faces the city; here were the graves of my parents and my sister Sarah who had died at a young age. I knew precisely that here in the corner of this tel [hill] in these rows, they have been lying for many years in their eternal resting place. They were here in these very rows, but I was not able to distinguish or to establish in which of the graves. Not one tombstone stood on the sacred graves, and the books and the lists of the congregation had been completely destroyed without a memory. I stood beside the graves and looked out. Where is the grave of my father and where of my mother? Here. But where exactly? For that there was no answer.

The author of the list of remains in the Jewish cemetery of Bielsk

[Page 157]

I told Borkowsky that I wanted to put up a symbolic tombstone in the cemetery. He was astonished: “Who will make a tombstone? And what for?” It was a strange thing; what for? After a few minutes I understood what he was saying.

He took me to the old part of the cemetery, where we found their resting place – the first members of the settlement, many generations before our parents. At a special place of honor, we found the builders of Bielsk: at the high western section. It was a kind of thick grove at the border, and graves were found inside of it and at the border. From here before me, the view and the scenery that were revealed to me will not leave my sight.

The cemetery suddenly ends, as if a mountain range would end. When I looked, drawn downward to the brownish-yellow ground, I clearly discerned the work of a bulldozer in this area. I saw clearly the remains of digging which were carried out on this area. They dug and flattened the field until they came to a half-circle up to the boundary of the cemetery! It needed no words. It was all clear. Borkowsky looked at me and said, ”As long as I live, my foot will tread on the soil of G-d, the cemetery will stand as it used to.” And it stood. The many graves, whose graves we do not know, abandoned and neglected, but we can clearly see how straight the rows are with an area that is covered with wild grass, dry and lifeless. Here also the ground and the plants have dried up and everything was colorless. Only one yellow stem grew straight and sad.

On the way back I, nevertheless, found one tombstone, a small marker ahead of me, for a woman. Chaya Leah z”l, who died in the year 1914. She was the first wife of Alter Bielsky, owner of the large galenteria [haberdashery or variety store] in the center of Bielsk. A second large tombstone, broken and in pieces, was lying next to the grave of Dr. Mazia, whose name I was able to put together from the broken stone.

I do not know how long I stood next to the graves; darkness slowly began to wrap around the world. I thanked G-d that He gave me the honor of seeing Bielsk once more and visiting the remaining graves of my parents, my sister and others.

This time I left Bielsk and Poland, which I had wanted to see so much, without emotion and without suffering. After that I no longer yearned to visit these places, and I do not dream of this kind of journey.

1. May 3^rd is the Polish national holiday of Constitution Day. Return
2. Rabbi Ben Daat/Bendas (1866-1943), the last rabbi of Bielsk, Poland, served the community until his death in the Holocaust. Return
3. Aliyah: lit. going up; leaving one's current home and going to live in Israel. Return
4. Zionist youth groups: Shomer HaTzair: the first Zionist youth group, organized in Eastern Europe; and HeHalutz: literally The Pioneer, a federation of pioneering youth groups, educating people for farming, labor and aliyah. Return
5. Mashgiahs watching with seven eyes: a mashgiah is a Jewish supervisor of strict kosher adherence. In this case meaning keeping a strict eye on the youngsters' behavior. Return
6. Keren Kayemet: New National Fund, the land company that purchased land for Jewish settlement. Return
7. The Hebrew spelling used was Bialka (ביאלקה), but from the description and the location this is actually the Biala River. The Lubka River intersects with the Biala River about 1,000 feet from the closest point in the center of town, where the synagogues and schools were, and which later became the ghetto. Return
8. The original text said 1943, but the ghetto was liquidated in November 1942. Return

The road, leading from Zabłudów to the district city Bielsk-Podlaski, is paved with gray bricks. This magnificent road, which continues for many kilometers, is soaked with the blood of Jews, the forced laborers. The road was built by the Jews of Zabłudów, Bielsk-Podlaski, Orla, Krzywa, Wasilówka, Zambrów and other cities from the Bialystok area.

As in Egypt, here too the Jews had to provide the materials, produce the bricks and pave the roads that were submerged in mud. The responsibility for the quick execution of the work was assigned by the Nazis to Rabbi Halperin from ORT^[3], and the chairman of the community committee, Shmuel Weinstein, who owned three brick factories in the vicinity. Both were beaten to death by the Nazis for refusing to urge the Jews to work faster

Bielsk-Podlaski was a city of a great Jewish center in the Bialystok District. At the outbreak of the war there were over twelve thousand Jews in Bielsk-Podlaski. It was an almost pure Jewish city. In total, there were a few hundred non-Jewish families. There were Jewish cultural and economic institutions, a bank, schools, and dozens of synagogues.

In the years 1939-1941, when the area passed a number of times from hand to hand, several thousand of Jews from the surrounding area crowded into Bielsk-Podlaski. Probably, because of this reason, the Nazis were late in establishing the ghetto in this city.

At first, the Jews were forbidden to live in the same house with Aryans. Then, they were forced to crowd in several streets, but a barbed wire fence was not erected around them. Only in May 1942, the official decree was issued to establish a ghetto in Bielsk-Podlaski, and, according to the order, the Jews erected the wooden fence around the ghetto with their own hands. S. Burstein, who wrote the history of the ghetto, referred to it as a “coffin.» The Jews of Bielsk were forced not only to build the fence, but also to provide the wood and the nails for it. Since there was a shortage of planks they were forced to use their furniture. Understandably, this caused quarrels among the Jewish population.

Only eight families remained in Bielsk-Podlaski after the deportations and exterminations. When I came by car with my friend to Yisrael Kaplanski, all the city's Jews immediately gathered... It is worth mentioning the heads of the families by names: Yisrael Kaplanski, Yisrael Bińkowski, Yosef Isboutsky, Eliash Pogoda and the three Grudy brothers.

In the spacious rooms of Kaplanski's house, I saw three huge crates made of pine wood which spread the smell of the forests. Here, the belongings were packed for the family's aliyah to Israel. In one of the crates was a modern piano.

Kaplanski, who was a cattle trader, admitted to me that he had made a good living in recent years, and now, when more freedom was given to trading, he would be able to earn even more. But, he

[Page 159]

decided to make an aliyah to Israel because in Bielsk, and also in Bialystok, Jewish life was fading away, “and there is a will to live the last years in a Jewish environment.”

Kaplanski, and also Eliash Pogoda, the latter the director of the state linen spinning mill, were called for the presidency of the National Committee in Bielski, and the committee chairman, together with other officials, tried to influence them not to leave the city.

Eliash Pogoda admitted that the committee chairman, his personal friend, spoke in sincerity when he said: “Don't go, it will be boring without you. You have nothing to fear. What happened will not happen again.”

The three Grudy brothers were also ready to leave for Israel. As talented traders they planned well their aliyah to Israel. They sent, as a pioneer ahead of them, their eldest brother Eliezer, with his seventeen year old son. Eliezer Grudy, and his son, left together with a group of twenty two Jewish farmers from Lower Silesia. It was a special journey of thirty six wagons with cows, horses, sheep and farm machinery. The Grudy brothers sent six cows, nineteen sheep and a tractor. When they arrive in Israel, they will find a farm near Haifa that was prepared by their elder brother.

The Grudy brothers, including the handful of Jews from Bielsk-Podlaski, do not reflect the situation of the Polish Jews, most of whom are poor people who will need help and food immediately upon their arrival in Israel.

The Grudy brothers did not get rich suddenly. They suffered badly in the early years of the communist regime in Poland. Fishel Grudy was arrested in 1950 when the regime was tightened, and suppression of all private initiative began. The Bielsk-Podlaski police falsely accused him of trading in US dollars. After lengthy investigations and trials, the four lawyers - three Poles and one Jew - managed to obtain a “light” sentence of nine months imprisonment. Before the trial he was brutally tortured. The Jewish lawyer, Erlich, is already in Israel. Two years after his release, in 1953, during the days of the Doctors' Plot^[4], he was arrested again. This time he was accused of being in contact with the underground. Twelve policemen came to the Grudy brothers' house and literally took out everything that was in the house. A few days after Stalin's death, when the doctors were released in Moscow, Grudy was released without a trial and his place in the prison was taken by the public prosecutor and the investigating judge of Bielsk-Podlaski. It turned out that they stole all the silverware and other valuables from the Grudy brothers' house.

The trial against the public prosecutor, and the investigating judge, was conducted behind closed doors and they were sentenced to eight years in prison. They were released under Gomulka's^[5] amnesty. The investigating judge returned to Bielsk-Podlaski but worked as a porter. When he was released from prison, he came to the Grudy brothers and apologized, saying that everything he had done to them was according to the party's order. The party secretary demanded that he sentence the brothers to five years in prison.

The hardships of Fishel Grudy, and his wife, reflect what happened to the surviving Polish Jews. During the Nazi occupation Fishel hid with Christian friends and his wife wandered across Russia. In 1941, she was deported to Soviet Bashkortostan^[6], and she was then a twelve year old girl. Until 1945 she stayed in the city of Ufa. She became

[Page 160]

very attached to a Jewish family, Kramar, from Stanislawow [now Ivano-Frankivsk], and in 1945 returned with them to this Galician city.

In 1947, she arrived in Warsaw with the help of her uncle, Chaim Schreier, who sent her the necessary documents for that purpose. When she arrived in Warsaw she did not find her uncle because he was already in Israel. In a small town in Lower Silesia she met Fishel Grudy and married him. They now have three children.

“They are sitting on the luggage” and waiting for a message from the Polish ship that will take them from Gdansk to Haifa.

The editorial staff's note: We give this excerpt from Davar 1954 (?), because it reflects Bielsk, and its exiled Jews, twelve years after the extermination of the Jews of Bielsk, and because it mentions the names of survivors from Bielsk. Its value is that it tells about the people of Bielsk after the Holocaust, a value that is important for the people of Bielsk in their Diasporas.

1. Aliyah (lit. “Ascent”) is the immigration of Jews from the Diaspora to Israel. Return
2. Davar (lit. “Word”) was a Hebrew-language daily newspaper published in the British Mandate of Palestine and Israel between 1925 and May 1996. Return
3. The Organization for Rehabilitation through Training was founded in Russia in 1880 to promote vocational training of trades and agriculture among impoverished Jews. Return
4. The Doctors' Plot affair was an alleged conspiracy of prominent Soviet medical specialists to murder leading government and party officials. In 1951–1953, a group of predominantly Jewish doctors from Moscow were accused of a conspiracy to assassinate Soviet leaders. Return
5. Władysław Gomułka (6 February 1905–1 September 1982) was a Polish communist politician. Return
6. Bashkortostan Republic, or simply Bashkiria, is located between the Ural Mountains and the Volga River, on the border of Europe and Asia. Return

[Page 161]

The Jews of Bielsk-Podlaski

Translated by Sara Mages

The editorial staff's note: This letter is one of the first, if not the first, that brought the news of the Nazi disaster to the attention of the Yishuv[1]at a time when Jews were still moaning under the Nazis' yoke. It was the tragic right of Bielsk, of a daughter of Bielsk, to bring to our attention what happened to the Jews in Poland. We give the letter because of its importance. Unfortunately, we are unable to specify the name of the newspaper in which this letter was printed.

 

Tel Aviv, Tuesday - the first shocking news about the fate of Bielsk-Podlaski's Jews was received in a letter that arrived on 2.9.44 from the nearby city of Siemiatycze, from G. V. to her sisters in Tel Aviv.

G. V. is writing in her letter: On November 1, 1942, all the ghettos in the Bialystok District were surrounded by the Gestapo. Some of the Jews were exterminated on the spot, and the rest were sent in freight cars in which chlorine was sprinkled. In a car that had room for 40 people, 150-200 crowded. Tightly closed, so that the sun's eye would not reach us, we were transported under the pretext that we were being driven to work in the Black Sea. Later, it turned out, that the Black Sea was changed to the famous station, Treblinka, and there, in a nearby forest, was the slaughterhouse which was specially established for thousands and millions of Jews.

Some tried to escape by breaking windows in the cars, or by jumping from the train when it was in full motion - and thus to find death, to escape from the Nazis' claws. The greatest happiness was to be redeemed by death by shooting. But this “happiness“=8; was not given to the Jews. They were murdered by torture, clubs, hammers, or burned alive.

- - - We recently lived in Bielsk-Podlaski. From the two thousand families who were there, four people remained alive: me (the writer of the letter), my husband M. and a doctor with his wife from Siedlce.

- - - At the end of 21 months of wanderings, hardships and frost, we are now in Siemiatycze hungry and destitute.

[Page 162]

 

“Like dung on the open field” [Jeremiah 9:21]

 

Translator's footnote

1. Yishuv (lit. “Settlement”) is the Jewish community in Palestine prior to the declaration of the State of Israel. Return

  Bielsk-Podlaski, Poland     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2024 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 12 May 2024 by JH