Drogichin, Belarus (pages 201-202)

[Page 201]

Dr. Gershoni

        Dr. Gershoni, the town doctor, arrived in Drohitchin around 1900. He studied medicine at the University of Odessa, where he married his wife, who was a midwife. There is no confirmed information about Dr. Gershoni's background, except that it is said he was a cousin of the great scholar, Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik. Therefore, Gershoni apparently came from Brisk.

        Dr. Gershoni, who was renown as a good doctor, was a popular individual. He spoke Yiddish well, and enjoyed chatting with people. He held the rank of colonel in the Czarist army, and during the 1905 Russo-Japanese War he served on the front for a long time. In World War I, Dr. Gershoni served as a medical colonel at the front, and was wounded. He came to Drohitchin to recover, and then returned to the army. Thereafter no one heard of him ever again. Rumors had it that he died in Odessa. His wife and two children, Yasha and Lola, currently live in Russia.

Doctors Shechter, Gloiberson and Lampa, may G-d avenge their blood

        Dr. Henrik Schechter, who replaced Dr. Gershoni arrived in Drohitchin a couple of years after World War I. We know nothing about his background. People say that he was born in Galicia, and we know that his wife was a member of a fine Jewish family in Warsaw.

When he arrived in Drohitchin, Dr. Schechter was in the high point of his life (he must have been in his 30s), and was extremely active and energetic. Ideologically, Schechter was a Zionist maximalist, a right-wing revisionist; he was actively involved in cultural, political and community life in Drohitchin. In the early 1930s, Dr. Schechter settled in Gdinia, where he practiced medicine and ran a Revisionist-Zionist organization, called Zevulun, for the fishing industry.

In Drohitchin, Schechter was replaced by Dr. Gloiberson of Pinsk (son-in-law
of Y. and Sarah Meshel, daughter of Mordechai and Rivka Mirsky of Drohitchin). Dr. Gloiberson later returned to Pinsk, and was replaced by Dr. D. Lampa, about whose background we know nothing.

        In the meantime Dr. Schechter fell victim to the Polish boycott movement in Gdinia, where he lost all his patients, and returned to Drohitchin in 1937. Dr. Lampa was then appointed regional doctor, and Dr. Schechter resumed his position as doctor in Drohitchin, where he remained until the Germans took over Drohitchin in 1941.

        Doctors Schechter and Lampa went through the living hell together with all the Jews in the Drohitchin ghetto. When the doctors found out about the murderous plans of the Germans for the Jews of Drohitchin, they poisoned themselves, thereby ending their suffering. May G-d avenge their blood. See references to them in the Yizkor section.

        Dr. Schechter's wife and two little daughters, Yehudit and Halina, were also killed. Dr. Lampa was not married. Dr. Gloiberson and his family died in Pinsk. May G-d avenge their blood!

[Page 202]

        [photo:] From right: Naftali Steinberg's house. Left in background: Lazer's windmill. This is the isolation hospital in 1915. From left to right: Solya Fideta, mayor; Rosenblatt (Russian-Jewish prisoner of war); German doctor; Todros Leib Milner, Gedaliah Kaplan, Shimon the Doctor, Pesach (Berel Rimmer's son-in-law), Dora from Pinsk, Moshe Perkovitsky, Meita Trashinsky, Aharon Lasovsky (army surgeon), Feiga-Rachel Warshavsky-Kotler, Reizel Baum-Shoshanov, Solia Weissman-Wasserman and a Russian prisoner of war. (See pp. 97-98).

Aharon Lasovsky, May G-d avenge his blood

        Aharon Lasovsky, the country doctor, was born in Pinsk. His father was involved in gardening and printing pamphlets. Aharon studied in Kiev, and was certified as an army surgeon. Aharon's wife Chaya (Chayka), born in Pinsk, was a very kind person. Her maiden name was Feldman, and she was a cousin of Leah Valevelsky (the wife Chaim the hardware store owner) of Drohitchin. Chayka's sister was married to the editor of the Pinsker Shtimma, M. Bolin. One of her brothers was one of the 36 martyrs of Pinsk who were accused of being communists and then shot by the Poles in 1920.

        Aharon Lasovsky came to Drohitchin during the 1915 typhus epidemic, and together with Shimon the Doctor and others was able to heal the typhus victims. After the death of Shimon the Doctor, Lasovsky took over his position, and he became the only doctor or army surgeon for Drohitchin and surrounding communities. Aharon Lasovsky was a nationalist Jew, a people's man, unassuming and traditional. He was also a Revisionist Zionist. Eyewitnesses report that until the last minute Aharon Lasovsky went from door to door, doing everything he possibly could to save the lives and spirits of despondent and sick Jews in the Drohitchin ghetto.

        Aharon and Chayka had three children: Dinela, Hershela and Moshela. They were all brutally killed by the German murderers. May G-d avenge their blood!

Dr. Avraham Yosef Weissman

        Dr. Avraham Yosef Weissman, a son of R. Shimon Weissman, was born in Drohitchin. As a boy of 17 at the end of the 19^th century, Avraham came to the United States and studied medicine. For many years he lived in Chicago, where he practiced medicine, especially delivering babies, and was renown for his work. Dr. Weissman died in November, 1939 in Chicago at the age of 76.

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