Hrubieszów, Poland - Columns 693-708

It was at the beginning of spring 1942, still before that 17^th of April, that bloody day ^[2] in the Warsaw ghetto. Then already the first news arrived about the massacre in the Vilna ^[3] area, but in the Warsaw ghetto they were still living in relative quiet. Hunger, death, killings and arrests were normal phenomena, part of everyday life. About mass extermination, crematoria, and so on – these were then still not spoken about among the Jewish public.

I went out with Frumka Plotnicka ^[4] from the ghetto. In those days that was still possible, after giving a bribe to the Jewish policeman, who would share his profits, of course, with the German gendarmes. Nothing needed to be done but to remove the ribbon ^[5] and move away from the fence as quickly as possible and jump on to a tram.

We traveled to Hrubieszow. There was a branch there that was strong and dedicated. We wanted to meet with the members and to prepare them for the day when contact between us would be cut off.

We sat in the train. I looked at Frumka. What wonderful quiet! Even though she did not look the most “Aryan.” She was dressed nicely, her lips were colored slightly (we labored hard until she agreed to this; the color gave her a “better” look). She was always the first [to volunteer] for trips, she did not notice that her face was likely to arouse suspicion. Self-confidence, internal – protects her.

We came nearer to Hrubieszow station. We looked out of the window: unusual movement. Masses of people are concentrated next to the platform. We did not suspect anything and we disembarked. We were the only travelers who got off at the station.

Who are these thousands of people? – Immediately everything became clear to us: Jews, men and women, the elderly and infants, squashed and vanquished among parcels, blankets and bundles. Shouts, weeping, and above everything – the screams of the Germans.

Four clumsy Germans, red of face, their shirt sleeves rolled up, gallop on horses along the length of the platform, lashing out with the whips that are in their hands without pause, running over people, spilling their rage on to mothers holding suckling babies, and today – a clear sunny day.

I peeked at Frumka's face. Very pale. We understood everything, without uttering a sound. We must stay, maybe we will get the opportunity to contact our friends.

We went into the waiting room. There is no one there except us. The Poles that day avoided going out of their houses. I asked Frumka to sit, so that her eyes would not see what was being done past the house. She sat without moving, and her gaze was fixed out to space. I stood next to the window; I could not look.

A gigantic German, whose face is the face of a murderer, is leading four fellows wearing overcoats. I see their faces, their wondering eyes, here they give them spades, and they dig a pit at a distance of several meters from the window. The whip hurries them up:

After a few minutes four shots are fired, and the whip returns and lashes those who are filling in the pit. The murderer returns to the square in order to continue his “work.”

Suddenly the terrible scream of a woman is heard – and a shot. A woman collapses and a baby falls from her arms. It is still alive. She wanted to throw it over the barbed wire fence, so that it would stay alive. In a moment the hooves of horses crush the little body.

Quiet. The thousands crowded on the platform are dumbstruck for a moment. I held on to the window sill. My head is dizzy.

Someone came in to the waiting room. I smiled at Frumka. It is clear, we must get out of here.

I walk in the direction of the city. The road is full of carts: sick travelers, the elderly, those who cannot walk on foot to the “target.” The guards who are watching over them – Ukrainians.

To look we are entitled to do. Only one small thing is demanded by that spring day: a laughing face. Surely it is spring for the world!

Here, not far away, lives Aharon Frumer, in whose house we would always gather. Near to the place there is not a person. Frumka stays below and I go up to the first floor, I will know every corner, and here the door is wide open, on the floor are scattered all sorts of objects, bedding. The residence is empty, there is not a living soul inside.

In the center of the city a group of gentile youths passes by and behind them two Germans, axes in their hands. The youths are leading the Germans to show them a house in which Jews are still hiding.

In our passing through the empty city we arouse attention. One needs to walk forward with confidence, like someone who is walking towards a target. We walk past the church, we buy violets. Frumka stays and I go out to the city, as indeed I in my walking endanger myself less than she does. Several more familiar houses, and their doors too are torn wide open – they are empty of people.

In a store, in a conversation of “by the way,” and as if out of simple “curiosity,” we are informed that the Jewish youth is concentrated behind the city. They will be taken away separately, not together with all the other Jews. They are destined for work.

– “Nu, and the rest, Madam – to the garbage.” A smile, I even return a smile.

To the place where the young Jews are concentrated it is impossible to go: They have been given over to the supervision of the Ukrainians.

– And despite this I would like to see the “sight.” – My voice is quiet. It is as if it is not I who is speaking, [but] someone else is speaking out of my throat.

– It is impossible, Madam, you will not get there. Today – no, maybe tomorrow.

We walk through the streets, the population of which is Polish. Here is tranquility, spring.

We arrived at the hotel. We know that it is not desirable to stay here tonight, but there is no choice. Let us only arrive safely to the morning of the next day!

We write our names on the registration cards. The female owner of the hotel justifies herself:

– In these times, and especially today, I must keep watch on all the formalities. The ladies are unknown, they are searching for Jews even here with us, the Poles. This does not affect the ladies, correct? – and she looks at us with investigative eyes.

Frumka, Frumka! Silently, she strokes my hair. Night. I know that she is not sleeping either. A long night of terrors. What is good, is that I do not have to smile. The dawn lit up [the sky]. A sudden knock on the door.

– There is nothing [to worry about] in this, this is just a check – the answer calms us from behind the door.

I cover Frumka well with the blanket up to her forehead, and open the door. Two civilians come in.

In a moment a story was created. We had come to an aunt, in the village, and we were delayed, because on the way we could not make contact. They listen, my claim arouses doubts, I have only a [forged] birth certificate and a permit on the back of a photograph. The [fake] identity card is not yet ready.

They went out, and an instruction was given to us: to present ourselves that morning at the police station.

The train is leaving at 8 [in the morning]. Through alleyways we walk to the train station. At the platform – a freight wagon. This is the “special” train. It goes to Bełżec.

Into the wagons enter the last of the Jews. The German boot pushes. On the platform – parcels, pillows, children's prams, pots. At some distance, several youths lie in ambush for prey: They wait until the train will move, and then they will swoop on the bounty.

This was the first, certain news [of mass murder of Jews in the region] that we brought to Warsaw. And they did not believe us.

A period of acclimatization and preparation began. The people are tired from the suffering in the period of the ghetto and hungry from the lack of food.

The autumn rains fall without pause. We constructed structures from cypresses and from wooden poles and we covered them with tree branches and leaves. More than once we awoke in the morning and found ourselves in puddles of water.

The diseases multiplied and people wondered and asked themselves whether it was for this that we had come, to die in the jungle?

It was a difficult period. The despair and the disappointment penetrated the camp. The disappointed were given permission to leave the base within a number of days. To my regret, Y. Ang from Hrubieszow was among the disappointed. He invites me to join him and he is prepared to cover the costs. He relies on his “experience in life.” I tried to convince him that this is not the way, and he refused to listen. We parted, and he did not know that he was marching on his last journey. Friends who came back from a routine patrol told me that someone had informed on him and his friends…^[3]

I am also reminded of Lipa Aizen who came from our city - a modest man and pleasant of manner. He worked as the manager of a supply store in the Vilna ghetto. At the beginning of August 1943, before the liquidation of the ghetto, Jews were sent to work in Estonia. Lipa, who happened to be in the street, because of his freedom, was ordered by the commander of the police, the Gestapo agent Dessler, to lead a Jew to the gate of the ghetto. He refused, saying that this was not his job. As punishment he was added to the deportees and he perished in the concentration camps in Estonia.

With the approach of winter, we transferred our living quarters to a hill. Around it were swamps and into the camp there was only one entrance, which was well hidden. In the new bunker that we built on the hill we feel as if we are at home. The people have become used to life in the forests. Slowly, slowly, supply arrangements came on track. We began provisioning activities on a significant scale. The peasants did not always give foods out of their own will. Through lack of choice, we would leave them receipts for the food we received, with the promise that they would receive their value after the victory.

Engraved in my memory is an action that was under the command of a son of our city, Shlomo Brand. At dusk we set out on the road with the manpower of a [military] company. Throughout the past week snow had been falling and we trampled in it up to our waists. Despite the difficulties and the danger that our footprints would be discovered, after midnight we reached a “wealthy” village next to the city Eishishuk ^[4]. We posted guards at the two ends of the village, in which the houses were spread out along several kilometers. Shlomo divided up the fighters and gave detailed instructions. I went with my friends to the first farm shack. When the farmer saw us, he crossed himself and said:

He was right to a great extent. At a distance of one and a half kilometers away, a reinforced German corps was based. He added that until that day partisans had not dared to come to their village. Despite our tiredness, we worked with great vigor to discover the food hiding places.

At 5 in the morning the convoy was ready. Shlomo sent a spearhead group, about 20 fighters, ahead, and I stayed back with the second group and with him to finish our “labor” in the neighboring village.

After about half an hour shots split the air. We moved forward in the blink of an eye. We galloped on winter wagons to catch up with the group that had gone ahead, and it became clear that they had been caught in an ambush. The Germans had entrenched themselves in houses on a hill, behind a thicket, in comfortable positions. When we came near, a terrible barrage of shots poured onto us. We did not find shelter and under covering fire we retreated until we reached the forests.

The second group carried out a stubborn battle with the enemy, which was several times stronger, and retreated, leaving behind three slain on the field. Shlomo returned to gather up the soldiers and to bring them to the camp. He also managed to bring a large part of the supplies.

However, this is not an isolated incident. Shlomo is always sent to carry out the most dangerous activities. He excels in his brave-heartedness and cool-mindedness and is considered one of the most talented and daring commanders in Puszcza. With the transfer of the second camp to a new base, he is appointed the head commander until the liberation.

The provisioning activities did not win appreciation from the partisans. But for us – the Jewish camp – this was the most important problem.

Throughout this short period, Jews joined us who had escaped from the slaughters in the towns, from the ghettos and from the hiding places, mostly adult men with wives and children. The commanders of the brigade headquarters, most of them gentiles, did not understand our special situation: Where can we send the persecuted Jews, who had been saved from the Valley of Death? Should we return them to the arms of the Gestapo?

The life of the Jewish partisans entered a routine. Activities began to acquire weapons in the villages, which had been armed by the Germans, and also punitive actions against the Nazi agents and their helpers the farmers. A known village of rioters, which had in its possession a large quantity of weapons that it had received from the Germans, was burned over - everything that lived and all the property, and nothing remained of it except ashes alone.

In the meantime news is being received of victories by the Red Army and quantities of weapons are arriving from the air ^[5]. I remember one evening when the airplanes came and in the darkness of the night the white parachutes popped out. To my eyes they were the symbol of the renewal of contact with the world outside, the free world.

If in this stormy period of murder and blood I did not believe that I would remain alive, it was in these limited moments that hope awakened anew. With the deliveries, which included anti-tank weaponry, the scale of operations increased. An armed column of Germans that passed on the Grodno-Vilna highway was defeated in broad daylight. The soldiers were destroyed and much bounty fell into our hands. The victory was large, because earlier the gentile companies had tried their strength and success had not lit up their faces.

Spring 1944 arrived. The Russians are preparing a large attack on the northern front. We increase our war on the home front. Night after night the bases empty out, companies go out for combat activities and acts of sabotage. A new spirit beat in the camp. The fighters are thirsty for battle and for revenge against the “master race.”

Special success is won by the partisans and their commanders who take part in the actions of mining trains. Hundreds of Germans and valuable military equipment are slaughtered, without mercy, on the way to the front and do not arrive at their destination. The Nazis are forced to increase their guards on the transport routes and their bases, and to transfer soldiers from the battle front to the home front.

In the meantime the Germans are retreating and absorbing blows on all fronts. With experience our daring grew, and we attack the fortified bases of the enemy, dismantle railway tracks, cut off telephone contact, and place ambushes on the roads.

In these activities and battles hundreds of Jewish fighters fell, in avenging the spilled blood of their people. May their memories be a blessing!

At the beginning of July 1944 an order was given to prepare for the road. The fighters go out in the direction of Vilna and take part in its conquest.

On the second day of the battles I was sent to the city with a patrol unit. The Germans retreated and buttressed themselves in the train station and, characteristically, as soon as they noticed us their fear increased and they fired at us in a fury.

The war ended and we remained alive, it was hard to get used to this idea. The companies of Jewish fighters march in unified rows and as a group pass through the main streets of Vilna.

In February 1945 I return to Hrubieszow. The city is hanging on by a thread. In our house gentiles are staying: They murdered and they also inherited ^[6]. I pass through the empty streets and the market. Silence. Quiet, quiet, that of a cemetery. Only a few remain alive, embers saved from the fire.

A number of Hrubieszow Jews, who had evacuated themselves from the town in the year 1939 and who avoided the deportations to Siberia ^[1], settled in the areas of Lutsk and Tuchyn ^[2]. They became local citizens, took out Soviet passports ^[3], and led a normal life, together with all the local Jews, who numbered up to 5,000 persons.

The Germans took the town of Tuchyn two weeks after the outbreak of the war. The local Jews who still had the means to run away were held back from taking this step by the [Soviet Communist] party secretary, who reassured them that the enemy would be beaten down. There were also rumors flowing that the Soviets were not allowing the escapees to cross the border. One way or another, together with all the [local] Jews, there were left sitting in Tuchyn the Hrubieszow townspeople: Shepsel Shteinboim, the Veisbroit family, Hersh Engelshtein, Yechezkel Tenner, Pesach Katz, Shalom Richter, Yossel Lerer, Avraham Reichman, and others.

As soon as the Germans settled in the city, the local Ukrainians, feeling themselves to be the chief landlords of the town, organized a horrible pogrom against the unprotected Jewish population.

The first party of 150 Jews, which was ostensibly taken to Lutsk for work, was sent away to Kyiv ^[4], and after completing their work on a bridge, all of them were hanged. Only Yonah Heiss, a young boy from Hrubieszow, succeeded in running away, and gave the gloomy information to the local Jews.

The Jews in the ghetto suffered hunger and want, and they were forced to send their children to work as shepherds for the surrounding farmers.

At the end of 1942 the Germans issued an order to the local farmers to not have any more Jews at their properties.

Immediately after Yom Kippur, divisions of the Ukrainian police armed with machine guns encircled the ghetto. At the same time, the children, who had come back from the farmers, passed on that not far from the town large pits ^[5] were being dug by Soviet prisoners [of war]. It was immediately understood that these two facts have a close connection and that the days of the Jewish population are numbered.

The Hrubieszow resident Shepsel Shteinboim, who was the first to receive the information about the prepared pits, went off to a representative of the Judenrat and demanded that they not allow themselves to be led to the slaughter like sheep. He put forward that around 10 kilometers from the town large forests are to be found; they should tear through the ghetto fences and run away to the forests. To confuse the powers and make the escape easier, they should set the ghetto on fire.

It was decided to call an assembly about the matter in the synagogue at night. Unnoticed by the powers, they came to the synagogue one by one, as the plan had laid out. Each one took into account that with the igniting of the ghetto, everything would be lost. Small are the chances of tearing oneself through the machine gun fire, but this way or that, they are sentenced to death and there is nothing to lose.

It was decided that everyone should prepare kerosene, and when the Gestapo would show itself in the ghetto, each one would set his house on fire, and with wife and child would let himself run in the direction of the forest.

When the decision became known in the ghetto, heartbreaking scenes began. One bid farewell to his wife and child and the wretched weeping reached the heavens. One said the Vidui ^[6] and prepared to be martyred.

The events did not allow a long wait before happening. With the first appearance of the Gestapo men in the ghetto, the ghetto began burning on all sides. In great panic, thousands of Jews with wives and children set off running to the gate of the ghetto. From all sides, the burning ghetto was shot at with murderous fire from machine guns. Thousands of Jews were shot and did not manage even to run to the ghetto gate.

Shepsel Shteinboim and his wife caught the children in their arms and ran to the door. A Ukrainian policeman who blocked his way had his head split open with a hammer by him [Shteinboim], and by hacking through a board [across the doorway], he with the 4-year-old child got through to the other side, not noticing that his wife with the second child already could not tear their way through.

Out of the 5,000 Jews who had been in the ghetto, barely 2,000 succeeded in tearing themselves through to the forest, among them several families from Hrubieszow. The rest fell as martyrs, in the daring heroic operation.

Like hunted animals they ran into the denseness of the forest, searching for a place where they could hide themselves. When the first panicked fright was over, and they started to return to themselves, they remembered that they were still living people, and one must eat. In the first days they sustained themselves with forest berries. Later the surrounding farmers began to bring foodstuffs and sold them for a good price.

After the first onslaught by Ukrainian police and S.S. units in the forest, in which many Jews would perish, they [the Jews] became more cautious, they did not emerge from the thickness of the forest and began to prepare bunkers.

With tooth and nail, the unfortunate Jews dug out deep pits. The pits were covered with branches and a thick layer of leaves.

Exactly like the animals, they lay for an entire day in the pit. At night they came out to look for food. In order to find the way back to the bunker, one had to leave signs on the way. Like shadows they used to move away from the forest to the nearest fields, scoop up a few potatoes, and in this way hold on to life. After wandering around for a short time in the forest, Shepsel Shteinboim and his child left to go to a farmer acquaintance in a village. Shteinboim gave the farmer everything that he still had, and submitted himself so that the farmer would allow him to hide himself in the barn attic.

The organized divisions of the Ukrainian nationalists, the so-called Bandrovists ^[7], who at first worked with the Germans, used to make frequent raids and with the help of scouting dogs would uncover the concealed bunkers. The murderers used to drag the victims out from their hiding places and murder all of them, or in a case when the victims did not want to come out of the bunker, they would set it on fire and burn the people alive.

In separate tragic circumstances, shot in revealed bunkers were the Hrubieszow residents: Shmuel Veisbroit, Hersh Shneiderman, and Itche Mende's grandchild. Those remaining in the bunker, hearing the barrage of shots, understood that their bunker had been discovered, and began running out of the bunker,

hoping maybe it would be possible to save themselves. During the panic a child of the Hrubieszow resident Malia Veisbroit was trampled.

The terrible forest murders by the Ukrainian bloodhounds became a daily event, and the remnants of the Jews who were still hiding out in the forests grew fewer and fewer.

In those days hiding oneself at a farmer's place had already become impossible. The Germans had committed themselves to shooting every farmer with whom a Jew was found. The Bandrovists, from their side, imposed a second punishment. If they found a Jew at a farmer's place, he was made to bury the Jew in his house.

Shepsel Shteinboim had to leave his hiding place and went with the child to a second village, maybe someone there would take pity on them. He had barely managed to knock on the first door when the son of the farmer came and wanted to give him up to the arms of the police. After a difficult struggle, he succeeded in overcoming the Ukrainian and ran away with the child. Out of fear the child then became paralyzed in one foot.

In his wanderings through the forests he was forced to carry the child in a sack, throwing off all the advice that he was given that he should leave the child somewhere. The farmers, when they learned that he was a tinsmith and could make equipment used to produce liquor, used to place themselves at risk and take him in, so that he would do the work.

Once, when he happened to find himself in a farmer's house, two Bandrovists came in and ordered him to go with them, and he understood that this was already the end. The child was sleeping in the attic then and Shteinboim remained as if turned to stone. What should be done with the child? Left behind, this one would die a slow death. He told them he had a child with him. They told him to take the child along. Farmers who saw him being led away by the Bandrovists shook their heads. A pity, there would be no tinsmith.

Fortunately, already then, in the year 1943, the Bandrovists had broken away from the Germans and began to search for Jewish craftsmen for their requirements, and permitted farmers to use Jews for the work. They led him into a barn where there was tin, and ordered him to work there.

The Bandrovists began in those days to carry out partisan warfare against the Germans. They tore up the roads that led to the villages, so that the Germans would not be able to confiscate products. In response to the actions, the Germans bombarded the Ukrainian villages, and used to burn the population alive in sealed barns.

After the rebellion by the Ukrainians, the Germans began dealing with the Polish colonists ^[8], and turned the Poles into their lackeys. The Ukrainian revenge against the Poles was a terrible one.

The Bandrovists then ordered that all Jews should leave the forests and settle in the houses of the Poles. As soon as Soviet partisans, with whom the Bandrovists were carrying out a battle, began to show themselves in those areas, the Bandrovists announced that every Jew they would run into in the forest would be considered a Soviet partisan and would be shot. The rest of the Jews left the forests and settled in two colonies [that had been abandoned by Poles].

As was later revealed by one of the Bandrovists, a devilish plan was prepared. Given that the Jews were living witnesses to the collaboration by the Bandrovists with the Germans, and to their terrible crimes, they wanted to have the remnants of the Jews all in one place, so that when it would become necessary, all of them would be killed.

Meanwhile, the Bandrovists on a certain night attacked the first colony where all the Jews were to be found, and with axes murdered them. One Jew, who by chance received a light wound, was able to run bloodied and with his last strength to the second colony, where the last 64 Jews were to be found, with the shout:

In deathly fear everyone ran into the forest, and still on the same night ran away to the Sluch River ^[9], maybe they would succeed in crossing over to the other side.

Among the group was a Jew who knew the region and who said that in the area there should be a bridge. And indeed they actually found a bridge. It lay low over the water, so they could hardly see it. But upon coming to the [steel] girded bridge, a barrage of shooting opened from the other side. Disappointed and with their last strength, they ran back into the forest.

For several days they ate almost nothing, and they seemed bound to die of starvation. And in reality, the hunger took many victims, among them the Hrubieszow resident Chava Leah Veisbroit. It was decided that the wives and the children would remain in the forest and the men would go to the nearest villages to obtain food, and if they did not meet with anything good, they would apply force.

As they approached a village, they noticed two farmers. The farmers passed on that in their village there were Soviet partisans.

From that information a light appeared in their eyes. They forgot hunger already and went straight to the village. But the partisans were already gone from the village. They had only given the farmers an order to bake bread for them, and they would come back the next day to take it with them. The next day the whole group went off to the village, where they met up with the Soviet partisans.

Whoever saw the meeting would have thought that the people had lost their minds. They cried and laughed and did not know what to do with themselves.

On the 6^th of January, 1944, the small group of about 60 Jews, the poor remnant of the 5,000 Jews who were in Tuchyn at the time of the outbreak of the war, crossed the bridge to the other side of the Sluch River, where there were already the forward posts of the regular Soviet army. Among the group were the Hrubieszow people: Shepsel Shteinboim with his child, the Veisbroit sister, and another woman.

Shepsel Shteinboim, who passed on the events, is today to be found in Israel, together with his daughter.

In December 1939, after the tragic infamous death march, the German radio cynically announced:

The attempted uprising by the Jews in the Chelm and Hrubieszow district has been suppressed without mercy!

The renowned hero of General Bor's ^[1] uprising in Warsaw, Captain Leon Poretski, who was decorated
with the greatest orders, is none other than Lolek Peretz, the son of the Hrubieszow photographer Hershel Peretz.

In the night, before the large and last aktzia ^[2] in Hrubieszow, I ran away with my wife, together with my mother and my two brothers, Franek and Yuzhek, towards Obrowiec ^[3]. My mother and my two brothers, may their memories be for a blessing, remained in the village, while my wife and I decided that we would go into the forest. We left Obrowiec and through dangerous routes struggled through to a division of partisans in the Bilgoraj forests ^[4]. In this way I began living as a gentile with the name Poretski.

On one occasion we were surrounded by German bandits, and through a miracle we emerged from the ring and struck through to Warsaw. There I joined the underground movement of General Bor, wanting to take revenge against the bandits.

My battle comrades considered me a crazy person, or, they used to whisper to themselves, maybe I am a Jew, because there was not one action in which I would not be the first to volunteer.

It happened in the time of the uprising in Warsaw. After settling in Grzybowska Street ^[5], I was called into the house and told that as we are without ammunition, there is no other way out except to attack the school of the Schutzpolizei^[6] and steal weapons from them.

The spirit of revenge was burning in me, I picked myself up and asked that I be given this little piece of work. The rest of the officers latched on to this, because the task was full of dangers. This meant, simply, to walk into the hands of death. To this end, they assured me that the houses on the other side of the street are in our authority, so in this way I had my back secured.

We decided to carry out the attack at 9 o'clock in the evening, so that the Germans would not see and not know how large the number of aggressors was. I went away to my division, to consult with them and to divide up the functions. In our possession were: 50 insurgents with 10 rifles, six Stens ^[7], four revolvers, and a few grenades from our own production. How many Germans were to be found at the Schutzpolizei we did not know, but of one thing we were sure, that weaponry and ammunition were to be found there in plenty.

At 8 o'clock we came out of the Grzybowska ruins and began moving in single file to the school. My plan was to surprise the bandits, tear open the door, and with a “hurrah” break inside. As soon as we entered the Ciepla Street, and we were sure that our group had settled in the opposite houses, we began the attack with a strong “hurrah.” In that moment a barrage of gunfire poured on to us. The Germans had managed to settle in the opposite houses. That meant that we were under fire from the front and from behind.

We already hear shouts of pain from our wounded and we cannot run away, because a hellish inferno is all around. I see that they will shoot us all. I grabbed three of our grenades and a German one, tied them together, and tore myself from the ground, shouting: Everyone after me! And I threw the bundle of grenades at the door. A crack was heard and the door broke open.

I went in through the door with a group and made such a racket that the Germans thought that we were a large force and they hung out a white rag [of surrender]. I demanded that everyone go down to the yard and lay down their weapons. The Germans opposite also paused their shooting, out of fear that they would shoot their own.

One by one the Germans went down and each one laid his weapon aside. And here it emerged that we, the attackers, were no more than 30 men, and the Germans, who stood by the walls with raised hands, numbered 350 men.

I made a selection ^[8]: Wehrmacht ^[9] – to the right; S.S.^[10] – to the left. Many of them represented themselves as Wehrmacht, but one gave another away.

We also captured a tremendous quantity of weaponry and ammunition. For that successful piece of work I was awarded the greatest order and received the rank of captain.

It is hard for me to write at this hour, during which our blood is being spilled like water, but I want to take from you a farewell blessing, because without that, the matter would weigh on my heart, like a heavy stone.

My dear ones, on Shabbat, at the hour of 4 in the afternoon, I was brought together with my family to Hrubieszow. Imagine for yourselves my situation: We were taken out of the village, we left everything there, because indeed we were told that the diphtheria would continue for days. At this time, we are in Hrubieszow ” isolated.

On Sunday, in the morning, a terrible panic arose in the city: Rumors spread that they would soon exterminate us. You will not be able to imagine how that day was for us. I have no words in my mouth to describe it. For the entire night after that, we did not close an eye. We waited for what was about to happen.

On Monday, in the morning, we were informed that not one person would remain in Hrubieszow. All the people of the city must go. We tossed up in our minds what to do, but we did not arrive at any decision. An opinion was sounded, that we should leave, together with our parents. There were those who supported this view, but a decision was not accepted.

On Monday, Jewish blood was spilled in the streets. People fainted, wept bitterly, wailed, but all that was in vain, the storm still occurred. On that day, at 7 in the evening, I was called in with my friends. My opinion was that we should hide.

On Monday, at 2:50 at night [i.e. 2:50 in the morning Tuesday], the journey of destruction began. People escaped to the fields, hid in the basements. The sounds of weeping rose to the heart of the heavens. I did not have any place in which to hide, I lay down together with my parents and I waited for the coming of death.

Many doubts awakened themselves in me as to whether I should write chapters about my wanderings through the Nazi night. I want with all my strength to uproot myself from my soul as long as it remains tied up with that nightmare, and now I should refresh the memories anew, and this in the name of our sacred community, Hrubieszow?

Nevertheless, I will endeavor to recall figures from our city, who were left to wander in the Warsaw Ghetto, only from there to go away to their eternity. If my mood will play along with me, I will also dare to bring out memories of laughter and dreams, the little song of a child and the audacity of faith.

May my little daughter, who carries the name of her proud grandmother, Leah Kirshenfeld of the Holtzers, receive the love of all those who formed a Jewish world and the hundreds of cities and towns on the black earth of the Lublin plain, where Hrubieszow and its Jews spun the tradition of the Council of Four Lands ^[1]. May my Leahleh and your Moshelehs and Saralehs be proud of our Hrubieszow and let them know that it was a city as if in Israel …

The Hitler invasion in September 1939 caught me in Łódź ^[2], where already for the fourth year I was working in the Yavneh ^[3] school (which belonged to the Tarbut ^[4] school movement). In those days of panic, when people were running away to wherever their eyes led them, I remained in Łódź. Also remaining were my sister, Doba Elbirt, with her husband, Shmuel, may his memory be for a blessing, and her only daughter, Shulamit, who was cut down by the Germans on the eve of her spring.^[5]

In the beginning a renewed pedagogic activism was permitted in occupied Lodz, but this did not hold out for long, because the Germans, as planned, arrested the Yiddish and the Hebrew teachers. Every day my friends brought news about the transparent intentions of the Germans to root out the intelligentsia. Every day Yiddish and Hebrew teachers would disappear. The disquiet grew stronger when Łódź became Litzmannstadt ^[6] and the western districts of Poland were absorbed into the German Reich. It became clear that the only [option] that remains has its face to the east, and is counting on the Soviet Union.

On the 19^th of December 1939, I, together my husband, smuggled myself through from Łódź to Warsaw ^[7]. The last kiss of the little Shulamitel, my mother-in-law and parents, sister, brother-in law, a forlorn tear, a sad glance at our apartment on Kamienna ^[8] 16, with a heart overflowing with terrible feelings, and we let ourselves go to the station on Narutowicza [Street]. Not just buying tickets, but the very least movement was bound up in dangers and the smallest of these was to be [caught and] flogged.

On the 20^th of December we exchanged the yellow patch of Lodz for the white and blue one that was obligatory for the Jews in Warsaw. The plans for the east remained a dream. We remained stuck in Warsaw.

The changes in housing marked separate periods of our life in Warsaw. The residence on Miodowa 23 marked the beginning of our Warsaw episode. Then we were still full of confidence that the decrees would quickly end.

We were driven out of Miodowa and found a place of shelter on the fourth floor of Białostocka 15, with a wonderful family, Krauze, and there we remained until they sealed the ghetto, on the 15^th of November, 1940. In the ghetto it turned out for us to live at Muranowska 6.

In June 1942 we were forced to find a new accommodation within half an hour. We stayed for several weeks at Nowolipki 29 and then at Miła 54. After the January uprising ^[9], we hid out at Świętojerska 30, in the brush shop, and there prepared for the dramatic struggle on the Aryan side.

In the Warsaw Ghetto I met many Jews from Hrubieszow. Mainly they were those who had been born in Hrubieszow but who lived in various towns in Poland, from which they had wandered into the Warsaw Ghetto.

Rachela Zilbershtein-Pilizoff made her way to death from Łódź through Warsaw to Hrubieszow, together with her husband and child. Her sister, Ester, a student at the University of Warsaw before she left Warsaw for Hrubieszow, passed on to me a wonderful happening with the Yavetz family from the first days of the German occupation.

In the rows of the infamous march were to be found Rabbi Yavetz's son-in-law, Yosef (Reizel's husband) and the rabbi's young son, Dubtche (Dudl). In the middle of the journey, there appeared before Dubtche his deceased father, the rabbi, and took him by the hand and led him out of the camp of pedestrians. That is what Dubtche later told. Yosef, hurried along and beaten by the Gestapo men, did not notice him. When they passed through the village where he was born, the farmers fell on their knees before the Germans and freed Yosef from the painful torments. How great was both their joy when they met in Hrubieszow, both through a miracle having remained alive!

Meirl Oder, a young, gifted artist, known as a talented painter, from a respected Hrubieszow family, became a waiter in Warsaw. I met him at Orla 6, in a cozy restaurant where he worked. He too was swallowed up in the mighty stream of death.

Luzer Eizen managed to run away from Hrubieszow in the terrible days of the liquidation and destruction, and got himself into the Warsaw Ghetto. His experiences were quite dramatic. For long hours he told me of his miracles in fighting his way out of besieged Hrubieszow, where he had worked as a bookkeeper in the Judenrat's storehouses, but this unfortunately did not give him any protection. Thanks to our social connections, we succeeded in organizing him, the former Communist activist, with black [unauthorized] work in a bakery.

For about two weeks we had news from Luzer. Then suddenly everything was torn apart. Together with the bakery itself, its owners and workers were divided up.

There was a time when I was a Hebrew teacher in the Warsaw Ghetto. By the way, I am the only Hebrew teacher from the folkshuls ^[10] who remains alive.

About schooling in the ghetto, one can find information in the Ringelblum archive ^[11] and in the publications of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. My notes belong only to one school, the school at Nowolipki 22, and through this they carry a personal character.

memory of the pedagogic personnel of the school, of whom only I evaded death. The leader Shoshana Mostkov, the teacher Sonya Stoshevska, Mrs. Frid, Mrs. Vengrover, the mother of the underground activist Yehuda Vengrover of Hashomer Hatzair ^[12], and Yosef Skorupa. It falls to me to eulogize all of them.

On the 8^th of August, 1942, I was with Shoshana Mostkov on the Umschlagplatz ^[13] (the loading square on Stawki Street, a side line from the Danzig train hub). I was free of all illusions; I did not have the least doubt where they would be sending us and what the Germans intended to do with us.

Shoshana Mostkov, an energetic and clever woman, already detached from her pedagogic abilities, who knew well the life in the ghetto, tried to soothe me, saying that she had taken enough clothing for us both, and that “there” in the “east” (that is how the Germans camouflaged the death camp Treblinka) we would both stick together and overcome the hard times. My clarifications that “there in the east” we would not need anything did not convince her. With the thought of a Jewish settlement somewhere far away in the east, she went into a freight carriage to her own funeral.

I was saved then, you understand, by a miracle. But to tell of how the school inspector, Rembo, and the nursing sister, Regina Veil, and the police officer, Leon Vartski, traded and what else they had to do to rescue me would take too much space. But one thing I want to say, when I came back to our “shop” on Gęsia 42, everyone looked at me as though I had risen from the dead!

In my memories of the school work, there mix and twist together elements of life and death. Our school had to fulfill numerous functions. First of all, it did everything in order to keep the children at a level of knowledge and love for the people. Then it bestowed upon the young beings a bit of a smile and joy and a [theater] performance about the little green trees, which decidedly were not there in the ghetto. About a small spoon of stew we had to worry quite strongly in the ghetto desert. Lunches and dinners were divided out by the teachers, so as to personally make sure that what had been designated for the children would come to them.

Our school was also a transit point for the Ringelblum archive. As a collaborator from the underground ghetto archive, I took advantage of the school's site for the archive's purposes.

Our school on Nowolipki 22 was similar to a military post in its desperate struggle for days and even hours of life. Only a few among us hoped that they would make it through to the shore of freedom, but no one wanted to lose the image of God [i.e. their humanity] in the competition to death. When at the beginning of August 1942 the information came to me that the young enthusiast, my friend Yosef Skorupa, had committed suicide when the Gestapo came to take him, I saw in this proof of bravery and human worth, that he did not want to make peace with the Nazi judgment.

And our children? As I write these lines tears fill my eyes. They come up from forgottenness, the little boys and the little girls with their large, frightened eyes and small, collapsed faces, their little bodies on small feet that could barely hold them. I loved them so much, those who went through the club and the kitchen of our school, so as to win a small spoonful of stew and a small slice of bread with artificial honey or marmalade. My students I used to see and hear often in the streets and yards, where they used to sing the Hebrew songs so as to receive a donation for their sick and hungry families.

Imagine for yourselves such a 4- or 5-year-old human being, and perhaps older, but who can estimate the years of half-dead children. Under the banner of a large courtyard, enclosed in the square of a four-story cage of buildings, the child sings with a trembling little voice: “A good day to us, Chag Sameach ^[14], children let us rejoice, to our school comes a visitor, the teacher Skorupa, welcome.”

In that happy little song was concentrated all the suffering and pain of a hungry child. No! Not one child, but hundreds or thousands, who so longed to live and who had to spit out their lungs so as to earn yet another day of life.

Before my eyes I saw the downfall of a people and its children! There were cases when people would hold on to a dead child for several days, so as to receive from the school the food ration for the deceased. I loved them all so much, and they, the prematurely mature children, yearned so much for a bit of sun and a smile, for some comfort and a caress on their heads! Always they come to me in a dream, the sweet little Jewish children.

I knew well what sort of fate was being prepared for us by the German occupier. Together with my husband, Hersh, I was a collaborator with the Ringelblum archive. I was a liaison, guardian of documents, and correspondent of the archive. In our home they always used to occupy themselves with conspiracy. They used to write bulletins for the underground press, they used to edit reports for the Polish government in exile in London and pack materials so as to ensure their safety under the ground. The largest part of them was rescued [after the war], according to our instructions.

We used to meet with the unforgettable Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum, with the directors of the “Joint ^[15],” Yitzchak Gitterman and David Guzik, with the future commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Mordechai Anielewicz, with the second secretary of the archive, Magister Eliyahu Gutkowski, and many others. To me it fell to collect together the testimonies about the extermination of the Jews in Chelmno, Belzec and Treblinka. In front of my eyes the thought of resistance wove itself.

The burning ghetto in the days of Passover 1943 I saw, when my husband found himself there. After his return, the two of us continued our wanderings over the hiding places of Aryan Warsaw, over the roads and byways of the General Government, until we were redeemed in the village of Łętownia next to Jordanów (Kraków district) on the 28th of January, 1945.

When we arrived in Lublin, at the beginning of February, our friends told us that they had already eulogized us on the radio and in the press, a charm for long life ^[16].