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I was going to Angilim, but when I crossed the border from occupied territory – into the free part of France – that is where my luck ran out. Once I was on the other side the French police (in civilian clothing) stopped me and took me back to where I came from. Through lack of caution the German military watch stopped me and put me in the jail in Angilim where I spent time in many of the cells of the German administration department. There, I was in a cell with seven Jews who lived in Saint Belle-Rochelle. Among them were a talented artist and painter, Nutkovski. Another that I remember was from Sokolov – Meyshe Shvartsberg. I had never met Shvartsberg in France before, and later never saw him again either. Among them was also a Jew of almost seventy years.

After suffering there for a time I was taken to an investigation and also stood for trial, accused of working as a spy. They had no evidence, and so freed me. It was a miracle and a joy. In the early part of the occupation they were not yet so extremely wild, and a captain used his influence and advised me that I should go back to Paris once freed, where there were many people and it would be easier to conceal myself.

I was freed and did go back to Paris. My friends could not believe their own eyes, because they knew about my calamity and were certain that I was dead. Encountering me again, free, was for them a strange riddle.

But that did not last long and I was a victim again. As a camp inmate I and others had to work in agriculture in the worst circumstances. We were beaten there,

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and from time to time the field-general visited and sought out victims. I myself received my portion of blows on 27 February 1942, something which was enough to remember my whole life. They hoped to extract the maximum amount of labor from us through threats. The motto was “work or croak”. In those circumstances I went about hungry and in tatters and shoeless. I went through more than twenty-six months that way. In the end, when the new front approached they evacuated the people from that place. Jews were sent away to Auschwitz and other extermination camps, from which very few came out, and the rest disappeared.

In that chaos some lost their minds and went obediently like sheep to the slaughter – following and not trying to save themselves. A small part determined to flee. I was sent to a small place, literally isolated, where because of the terrible conditions I became got rheumatic pains in my legs and about a month later I took the risk and fled.

I traveled past Paris and reached a distant region somewhere in France. I had made a journey of about eight hundred kilometers.

Again there was the sharp problem of what to do and where to conceal myself. At that time this was not the least bit simple, and over the space of several days I could not find any way out, the earth was hot and burned under the feet. Before I became completely taken over by despair I turned up in an internment camp, not a German one but a French work-camp where I had a better chance of avoiding the dangers of death.

The dangers threatened constantly, because the German military also attacked those camps and took victims from them; plus the danger that they would kill all the people. Then I hid out in an unfamiliar forest where I finally found a connection with a partisan unit. Thus I remained a forest-man and consistently took part and fought against the armed German troops. The area of France was a huge center. It was a hilly area that occupied about a fifth of the land. Sometime in the very

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distant past volcanoes had erupted, now long extinguished, but leaving behind some two hundred craters. The earth around also had all the signs of that destructive era. Stones were strewn everywhere, there were cliffs, sloping mountains, caverns and streams, most grown over with large forests, among which gurgled small and large rivers. And the partisans hid in those places in order to be able to carry on their armed battle against the German military troops.

The first group I encountered had 28 people. I and another new arrival rounded the number up to thirty. Only two were French. The majority were Spanish, and the other 14 were Jews, from various European countries: Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Poland and Hungary.

Our people had given up on everything that had come before, the only thing for us was the weapon and the duty. Divided into groups of eight, we carried out doing various tasks for the civilian population. We were strange creatures in the neighborhood and a supplementary morsel for the wild appetites of the thieving German beasts.

In anyone's evaluation one reckoned our situation it was sad enough. One was alive, and a little later…. Somewhere one is left lying with a body of flesh and with their own blood staining the stones of the highway. But one had to choose that path voluntarily. One had to be willing to come out to open battle with weapon in hand, to be shot like a worthless mangy dog somewhere under a fence, or be uselessly trampled underfoot by a band of dusty murderers.

Each one of the relegated divisions around here was fated to have special missions. At times we were sent masked and armed to distant areas, a hundred kilometers away, to destroy a center of Petain's Fascist youth, and while there to take anything that we needed. Another time we made a surprise attack on the servers and drivers of a train, and looted the valuables from the mail car. We blew up and destroyed bridges, sawed down and threw trees across to barricade the highways, laid mines under the roads, and waited in concealment to ambush Germans.

We became accustomed to it and each day had to

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carry out another assignment, and we also had to endure sudden ambushes by the German punitive expeditions.

Sometimes we were placed in a very critical situation and had to flee in the middle of the night to another location in order to catch our breath, or encounter German divisions and engage them in battle.

Besides the constant local occupation we were also often called on as an armed partisan troop against Germans with greater strength. The Germans cunningly shot civilians, and our people, who fell into their hands and thus covered up their cowardice for not being able to penetrate into our areas. That is how the time drew out over those strange, historic days.

After the triumphant entry of the Allied armies into France the methods of fighting changed for us. We were less cautious before the eyes of the civilians and at the same time we dominated the area, where we used to move with trucks over the highways, we were busy occupying and securing certain places in order to attack the German troops that might try to pass through. Once a larger part of France was taken from the Germans we remained in the area and gathered strength and waited until it was necessary to regroup. We had blocked German troops in several regions. We were also partly successful even in taking prisoners, although they also fought through some roads.

In places where we prevailed against the strongly-armed German forces, the battles lasted days and there were fatalities on both sides. In the same province Karbed, in the little town Egleton, we stood in open warfare against 380 Germans who wanted to force us to give in, but we did not give them that. Even though there were high-ranking officers among them. In that battle the Germans used heavy machinery and even airplanes. After 19 days they received reinforcements and freed the roadway. Our side was forced to retreat, leaving behind ruined and burned-out houses with many dead and wounded. Of ours – 15 dead and some wounded. Of the Germans about 18 dead and others wounded.

The time was always racing with bizarre experiences

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that are difficult to relate. We were constantly under the gun and expected the indefinite. A large part of the land was already held by hateful troops that sowed terror, murder and fear among the civilian population. We always expected whatever the evil fate would send us.

The late summer of that year, 1944, was fine. Friends in the liberated part of the forest strolled over the streets of the towns and visited the cafes to wet their throats for their few francs. It had been tedious but we were proud and excited that our work and sacrifices had not been for nothing. The Germans were now driven out to the eastern borders of the land. They stopped there and put up a strong resistance, attempting to capture Paris again and so take their revenge. But the Allied armies were not joking this time. In the areas where the Germans were still present they shot civilians in order to spread terror. Many people in those areas paid with their lives, but the hideous monster, the German Army, had already collapsed.

Hershl Koyfman with a group of Partisans

The second half of the year between the attack on Poland and the Fascists' tearing into the Soviet territories, I spent in the quiet Ukrainian town Rokitno, where I organized and worked setting up a Soviet printing shop.

Avrom Farbiarzsh After the War he died in Poland

Three months after the outbreak of the war saw evidence of the S.S. troops who only “fulfilled” the “work” of the Ukrainian fascists – shooting at Jewish passers-by, raping Jewish women, extorting “ransom” money from the population.

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A little later a troop of S.S. was settled permanently with us in the town and the suffering took on a “systematic” character.

Jewish labor battalions had to repair the railroads, highways, bridges. Needless to say that the work was grueling labor and lasted for 12 to 15 hours a day with hardly any food. And every morning we had to transport on a hand-powered rail trolley some 70 well-fed Hitlerites who had to be carried to work. They took great enjoyment from riding fast, and while sitting on the trolley they beat us with cat-o-nine tails to make us push them faster. The same scene after our labors.

That was the “life” we conducted for one year. But then the Germans decided to speed up our demise and began making “selections”. The first selection took place on the 23^rd of July 1942, when they assembled all the Jews, men, women, children, in order to sort them: men separate, women separate, children separate; during the process 8 year-old boys were categorized as men. During the separation itself there were heartrending scenes. One can only imagine the feeling called up among the entire mass of exhausted, broken, helpless people when 30 armed bandits appeared to assist the ordinary S.S. command that was holding us. We felt that something horrifying was happening.

Given that situation, the Jews were not going to give themselves up to the slaughter and some began to run away wherever their eyes could take them. The Germans opened fire. I was among the runners. When we found ourselves a good distance from the bandits in a dense forest, I looked around to see about 12 people around me, including several women. We wandered day and night and nourished ourselves with things growing in the forest. We gradually calmed down somewhat and approached some settlements in order to be able to get some food. Along the way we met other groups of Jews. But we decided not to join with other groups because it was easier in that situation to find food for a small number of people.

But the forests stopped being safe. The Germans sent their bandits after us and many Jews were murdered in the forests.

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This was summer – and winter? In tatters and without shoes, without food, in a forest. We constructed a shelter of twigs. But could it warm a bunch of starving, half-naked people in the winter?

We had to get closer to a village. My luck: I found a peasant in a village who agreed to hide me at his place. Needless to say, the peasant himself lived in the fear of death. The peasant's father was hiding Jews. It appeared that, or the peasant had the impression that, the Germans were sniffing around, and we, the two Jews with the peasant's father and I, had to leave our hiding place in the middle of winter, before the new year, and go back into the dark night in the surrounding area.

One of those young men was a butcher and he served as our guide. He was well-acquainted with the local peasants, whom he had traded with before the war. The peasants were quite terrorized, some had already paid with their heads for hiding Jews, and no one dared to take us in to hide us.

One of the peasant women indicated a forest in which Jews were hiding who often came into the settlement for various things. She even showed us how to get there. For a long time, several days, we searched for the well-masked hideouts of our brethren before we finally found the two barracks in the forest that were residences: one for women and one for men. That is where we spent the winter.

We encountered armed Ukrainians in the forest, but those were friendly forest wardens who warned us to be careful or even to leave the forest because the Germans were continually sending their police into the forests in search of Jews.

We had to move on to another forest. But it was uneasy there as well. I decided to go off in search of partisans.

Then all I once I had a flash of recall. The peasant Yan Zalevski, in whose cellar I hid at the beginning of the winter, lived in Gorokhovo. One night in the cellar I heard a lot of voices and the clanging of guns. Did he already have a connection with the partisans? And perhaps that is why we had to leave?

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Another two friends went off with me to find partisans. Naturally we went straight to the village Gorokhovo. Arriving there we went right to my householder Yan Zalevski and wondered if he would allow us to spend the night. We shaved off our long beards grown in the forest, washed ourselves, and slept in the warm hut. To our question of the householder about partisans, he answered very cautiously, appearing not to trust us completely. We understood that we had guessed correctly.

The next morning we met with the partisans.

A typical Russian, armed from head to foot, with kind mild eyes, who in answer to our question “Are you a partisan?” regarded us, thought and finally asked, “What do you need?” We answered “To go to headquarters.”

There is a law among the partisans which can never be disputed. The law is: if you want to be a partisan you must first arm yourself by disarming a German. The law was established not only because the partisans need weapons, but also because this is an certificate for the new partisan, a indication of hatred for Germans, of audacity, of soldierly ability.

Would we be able to avoid it?

We were taken to the headquarters.

We found several good-natured Soviet people in a room, lightly armed, who indeed reminded us of the partisan law and did not understand that we could not with our bare hands, starving, weakened, attack Germans and take their weapons. I realized that this was not the headquarters and asked again that we be taken to headquarters because I have something to share. I reckoned that at headquarters I could request that the law not be applied to us.

I was amazed myself that they listened to me and took me to headquarters. The leader scanned us from head to foot and led us to a few commanders of the Red Army. One of them asked what we wanted. I repeated our request. We got the same answer, with this addition: We do not have any gun factories and no uniforms. The partisan himself must create it.

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My trade saved us. When the commanders of headquarters heard that I was a typesetter they became very happy.

“Davay, bratko, budet dielo!”

I felt newly-born.

Yesterday – a plagued, starving, helpless creature, without any perspective, with no worth – and today a member of a fighting organization, part of a power that fights against fascism. None around me are overwhelmed, helpless people, but conscious, calm, bold fighters against Hitler's Germany who do not know fear. No, I cannot describe the crisis in my psyche over those few days.

My two friends were sent off to other formations and I received a mission.

The headquarters possessed a treasure: little sacks of letters according to the Hebrew alphabet, each sack holding a letter. From those I must set appeals to the population, transmit reports from the fronts according to Moscow radio and get busy to publish a partisan newspaper. There had not been any printer, they had turned to Moscow for one but had not yet received any answer.

I had to tell them about the miracle. And from the letter in the sack create a call to arms.

I put myself to the task. I had a wooden paddle made, and dumped out the little sacks onto the table and at every little hill of letters wrote which letter it was and began to set type. This took a long time, but the members of headquarters were amazed, seeing how the lines of type grew.

The appeal contained 20 lines of type. The members of headquarters considered me the best typeset specialist in the world.

How was I going to print the thing? That took some pondering. And this is what I invented: I added a fourth strip to the paddle, made two wooden sides to fix the form in the paddle so it would not move and not become loose. Then I took a piece of pipe, filled it with stones to make it heavier, and plugged the ends with rags; I wrapped the pipe with a piece of heavy fabric to make a roller. I applied a little ink to the letters with a brush and –

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“Davay pietshatat!”

Headquarters sent special delegates out to the provincial towns for type, which they would take from the working German printeries.

After many failures they were successful in bringing a few type-letters. We then made real cases and I could soon set whole sentences. The case was set together from three smaller cases, so that we could more easily take it with us on the road. Thus we gradually developed the technique.

The peasants brought grain and cows. Soviet administrations were established in the villages. The work was continually expanding, the assignments grew larger. We built an airport, established permanent radio contact with Moscow, from where airplanes with weapons, ammunition and medical supplies arrived. They took our wounded and sick and transported them to the “great land” (as we used to call the land that had not been taken by the Germans.)

Meanwhile I was steaming ahead with the preparations for publishing a newspaper, and made a work-bench where I could lock in two sides in folio format. The paper became damp and when the two sides were printed we had to make the other two and the newspaper “Za Rodinu” (“For the Fatherland”) was published.

We then completed several achievements of typesetting and printing, made mistakes, improved things. But the work was already going full pace.

Moscow created a wonderful surprise for us. After we had made all the preparations to celebrate the First of May 1943, suddenly on the First of May at dawn 12 parachutists landed with the most precious gifts for the partisan group. Among other gifts we found a field printery.

The parachutists brought with them an order from Stalin to the partisans, which was read aloud to our large assembly of partisans whom we had organized for the First of May.

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The order revealed the weak sides of German fascism and called us to attack those weaker sides. In that period the Germans were losing a lot of locomotives and so we must destroy even more German locomotives. The parachutists had also brought with them a kind of rockets that burst locomotives into flames when they encounter them.

The enthusiasm of the huge crowd of partisans was tremendous. The culmination point of the parade was the dedication of the partisans' oath of revenge to overtake and root out the Hitlerites, to drive them from Soviet land.

Afterwards headquarters gave out medals to the excelling partisans.

Among the parachutists was also a Moscow typesetter, with whom we set the next work.

At the end of 1943 our partisan detachment already had to its credit more than 4,000 smashed train wagons, more than 80 locomotives, a large number of automobiles and thousands of dead fascists. We blew up dozens of railway bridges and shot down three German airplanes.

The whole detachment lived with one life: beating the Germans.

Very serious times for our massed partisans were approaching. The Germans were retreating from the front in whole divisions and we had to conduct heavy battles with well-armed German units. After a series of lengthy battles we tore through the retreating German divisions and united with the Red Army which was marching toward Lutsk.

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On Shabes August 22 1942 the horrible reports reached us that the German murderers had already liquidated the Jews in Shedlets. There was terrible chaos in the town. People were afraid that they would come right from Shedlets to us. A frantic terror seized everyone. Since the gendarmerie and the special service were not in town (they were detailed to the liquidation action of the Shedlets Jews) people began to flee from the ghetto onto all the roads, fields and forests to save themselves.

I think ceaselessly about saving my children. A certain teacher and his wife in a certain village come to my mind. We know them and good and honest people and I believe that they would be ready to help in this critical moment. I succeed in sending them a letter in which I ask them to meet me by the ghetto gate. But the danger is very great, and it cannot wait until they could come. I run from the ghetto with my little daughter, to the woman tailor Virshbitska, beg her to hide my child for just a few days. She agrees. I part from my child with bitter tears, unable to believe our experiences. I am able to send my son and my young brother-in-law Yudele to a work camp in Kurtshev, and my husband is away at a well-known peasant in the village Virekhov, 8 kilometers from town. My sister and mother and mother-in-law as other relatives are away with well-known Christians. The I am last to leave the ghetto and go to a Christian customer. He allows me to stay the night. My father and brother, because of their Jewish appearances, remain in the town.

The next day it is quiet in the ghetto, I want to get my father and brother out. I go back to the ghetto, and my sister comes back. We go out into all the streets and manage to find a well-known customer of ours who agrees to take them in. We dress them as gentiles and with great trepidation take them out of the ghetto into the town where the peasant takes them over.

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I stay in the ghetto and wait for the teacher. The nest day I meet the teacher near the ghetto and beg him to save my daughter. Touched by my difficult situation, he assures me he will hide her as long as there is no announcement about the death penalty for harboring Jews. And he takes her with him.

I go back to my Christian, where I had spent the night. His wife is full of fear because gendarmes are searching every house for hidden Jews. I must leave the house now. My legs are aching under me but I go to the village Pshivazk, 5 kilometers from town, where a known Christian allows me to spend the night, but in the morning gendarmes arrive and I must leave that house. When the Germans leave the village the Christians come into the forest and take me back. But during the night I go off to other villages. Since none of my familiar customers will let me in to spend the night I become discouraged and go back to the ghetto. There is a dead stillness in the ghetto. My in-law are waiting there for someone to come with the children, to take them out. When my father-in-law accompanies me to the gate of the ghetto two gendarmes arrive; they ask if I am a Christian (and Christians drew the death penalty for entering the ghetto). When I said that I was Jewish I was arrested, because I was not wearing the yellow armband.

I feel now that this is the end of me. My father-in-law went right to the Judenrat to request them to save me. The Juden-elster at the time, Itskhak Shedletski, went to the gendarmerie and after much trouble he was successful in getting me freed. From arrest I went immediately to the Polish side, to the village Karavi 8 kilometers from town. In front of the Jewish cemetery I had to use all my money to bribe a young Pole who knew me as a Jewess and wanted to take me to the gendarmerie.

After wandering through difficult experiences during the week I arrived back at the ghetto, where there were now announcements about the death penalty for hiding Jews. Jews outside the ghetto, including my family, come back. The gentiles will no longer hide them. I must then also take back my daughter. Various rumors coursed around which calmed the Jews a little. Some were busy getting work “positions” in the “estates”. We travel out to work in a camp. From the camp they later shipped us out to work in a neighboring “estate”. Rokhl Rozentsvayg and her two children were with us. My parents as well as my husband remained at home.

The work was very hard: eight hours a day standing

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And digging potatoes, and afterwards – hungry and broken. After two weeks of hard work the horrible news reached us, that the ghetto was being liquidated. They were shooting, throwing grenades, many Jews were shipped to Treblinka or killed on the spot. The news rattled us all. Each of us had their close ones.

A few days after the action some solitary Jews appear, whose hiding places had not been discovered and so managed to save themselves from the action. They tell us that all the Jews in the ghetto were murdered.

Ten days after the action, being completely resigned about my husband, my little daughter come running across the field where I am working, and says to me that her daddy is coming with Meyshe Sheyne-Khave's Rozentsvayg. I run “home” and meet my husband fainted on the ground. I revive him. When he regains consciousness we inquire about their terrifying experiences in the “krivuke”. The young wife of Mandlboym of the fur-coat store and the neighboring girl Ester Platner was also with them. They parted along the way, each going to her closest ones at the work sites.

I go further out in the region to unknown gentiles about a place for our family but without success. Until a village peasant with a basket in her hand helps me get in contact with my known Christians who are now far from Sokolov. Meanwhile no one recognizes me, suddenly I see a German with Polish police near a house in a park where I must now go; it sends a fear of death through me, and it is too late to turn around. Barely able to stay on my feet I go past near them. I still have 8 kilometers and arrive in great terror to my acquaintances, who decline my request but send me a few kilometers further into the forest to another family. The Christian in the forest will make us a pit in the field and provide us with food. I have no trust in such a hideout and come back with nothing.

When In November 1942 the order come to us that all the Jews in the camps and “estates” can only remain until the end of the month and after that go into the ghetto at Kosov or Shedlets with the rest of the remaining Jews – then we see the terms of our end. Some believe that the remaining Jews will be allowed to live. We decide to take the place in the forest but that is already taken. A known teacher recommends to us a place for my husband with a peasant in a grocery store. At that time the remaining

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members of his family come to us: Khane Grinberg with her friend Isroel; Mayer Vaysberg and his two children, Shabosil Liberman and Kuva Bub from Lodz. They want all of us to stay together. They go to the camp to bring their things and say they will come in the morning.

In the morning my husband comes from the path with his head bandaged. He was beaten on the path through the woods. He says that he has found a place and that we should leave this place in the morning. He is happy that Khane and her cousins are coming and that will be together. The Christian requires that we come without small children.

While packing our few poor things, some youths suddenly come running and relate that early today the camp had been encircled and everyone had been killed. They had stolen out of the camp at dawn to buy something from the peasants and so avoided death. We were thrown into chaos. The youths – among whom were the rabbi's two grandchildren (the sons of his daughter Rokhl) took spades and ran off into the forest to dig a hiding place for themselves.

In accordance with the wishes of all the camp Jews we request the “steward” to send us to the ghetto in Kosov now. He puts it off until the afternoon. That waiting is a great danger. We take both the children and set out for the teacher's, as from there we will be close to our hideout.

The winter is already in full force. Terrified, we walk in the deep snow. We are successful in receiving an offer in the village Skrishev. From there still 6 kilometers. We walk further with fear, through the forest. A gentile scoundrel recognizes us and grabs the basket in which there are several important things, and drawing a knife he begins to search through the things; but he notices a Christian passing by and runs away. I beg her to take us to the village. Touched by my pleading and crying and from the tears of my child she leads us to the village. I go away from them to the teacher to wait until my family comes.

Finally they arrive along with Pikhas Tshernitski and his wife, who my husband had taken along in the hope that they would be taken in with us. The peasant however regretted the whole business. Where to go? We sit in the snow in the field and tremble from fear and cold. Only when my husband assured him he would give his all our possessions in Sokolov does he agree to let us into the barn. We dig a pit in the barn in 24 hours of hard work and we go into the

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dark hole. My sister and father-in-law remain with the teacher. We lay in the hole for several days and the Christian reduces of quota of bread every day. The hunger torments us, the children can hardly bear the suffering.

Despite all the dangers, I decide to slip out of the barn and go to a known Christian to beg for bread for my children. In order not to betray myself I go out in the dark before dawn, two sticks being my only weapon against the dogs that would certainly attack me along the road. I finally arrive at my known Christian. There I receive a large loaf of bread, a beet and a few carrots. Only late at night do I return with the products.

The children, seeing the bread, opened the half-closed, dulled-out eyes. And the adults are revived by it. This successful effort gave me the courage to make such a risky outing ever week, and often I fell into a hole in the snow-covered fields. Besides that we suffered a lot from dangerous filth. And worms and flies, without light and without water.

After several months of this suffering the householder comes to us and announced that we could no longer keep more than two people, otherwise we would have to leave the place. We plead and explain to him that we have no place to go, that sending us out is for us a certain death, and in the end he agreed that we could stay another month.

Before I go out my little daughter suddenly becomes ill, with a very high fever. She is in a state of unconsciousness and I have nothing to cure her. When I hear that the Christian herself is in the barn I pull myself up out of the hole and ask her for a half glass of water with milk for my sick child, and she refuses. God helped and my daughter's health began to improve, without a doctor and without milk.

The month that the Christian had extended us comes to an end. I cannot wait any longer. On a particular dawn I gather my family and set out on the road again, where the danger of death is huge. I come to Dzshirb, to my acquaintances. Unfortunately he refuses too. He very much wants to help me, he says, but is afraid because there are Germans in the village.

He takes me back in the middle of the night in his horse-drawn wagon in the middle of the night with some food products.

Disappointed I come back to my family without any

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prospects of who to turn to next. Our money runs out, and without money we are lost for sure. I decide to make every effort to get some of our merchandise that I had turned over to a well-known Christian in the village. I go to him, and he gives me what I want. On my way back at night, when I was already close to my place, two Polish young men attack me and rob me of the package with a basket in which were two pieces of linen, shouting “What are you doing here, you louse-y Jew!” I get away from them after the robbery and I continue on and they do not follow me. Once they are gone I calm down a little but I cannot go to my family in the pit because of the danger of spies following me. I lay down in a field and think it would be better to kill myself than to uncover my family who are patiently waiting for me.

The incident with the scoundrels has made it impossible for me to move on. Perhaps the news about us has already spread in the area. The only way out now is for me to turn to the teacher where my sister and brother-in-law are. Although he had refused to take me in one time I must make another effort because now that is the only way out.

One evening I went to him, and with bitter tears described our critical situation, begging him to save us and allow us in with my sister and brother-in-law. But he would not hear of it. I fall to his feet and appeal to his fatherly senses for him to at least allow in my two children and save them from a certain death. Thanks to his noble wife who tearfully begged him to help us, he agreed.

In the morning while it was still dark we parted with bitter tears Tshinitskers and made our way unnoticed to my sister and brother-in-law. Over those 15 months that we were together, we still went through difficult experiences until we finally lived to see liberation.

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A gift to my children
Yosele and Rivkele

Already in the first days of the German occupation – right after the tragic report that the Russians were leaving the town of Sokolov which was supposed to remain with the Russians, and the border was moved to the Bug River – my family and I, along with hundreds of other Jews, left my hometown.

After a long wandering we arrived in the small town of Ivienits, near the large town of Minsk. My younger brother Motl Rozentsvayg (today in America) was also traveling with us, and my brother-in-law Binyumin Shpadl, a partisan who fell in battle with the German murderers in the Volozshine forests).

But the Nazis reached us in Ivienits and shoved us into the ghetto with all the local Jews. In 1942 the Germans took all the people capable of work, tore them from their families and sent them to work camps. We then thought that our separation was a temporary one; we did not believe that this would be our last time together.

A few days later it was the 24^th of Sivan. The German murderers shot the children and elderly into a mass grave. Also killed on that day – my never-to-be-forgotten children Yosele and Rivkele who still appear alive before my eyes on every path, and also in the forest with the partisans and in the bunkers dug into the earth. Storms, frosts, and in the big rainy nights. Also today in the radiant bright streets of Israel. The last farewell kiss was sundered by a murderous blow flung from a German whip.

When we learned the tragic report that the Germans had killed all the children including ours, broken down we, my husband and I, decided not to stay in the work camp. We would not let ourselves go in the heavy truck like sheep to the slaughter.

Over a long tormented road – driven by hunger, want and cold, not

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settling at night and dragging ourselves like beaten, tortured dogs, one dark, cold, frozen night we made a connection with a group of Navogrodke partisans. For three years we lived in various forests, plank beds and holes in the ground, together with Jewish and Russian partisans.

From where did I, a weak woman, take the strength to carry weapons and take part in varied partisan actions? The desire to take revenge for spilled blood of my children gave me power and courage to live through that gruesome time.

I will not forget the townlet Ivienits until the end of my life. Each moment, until the liberation, when we were only with partisans, not far from the town in a forest standing by a large, long common grave where my children were buried – standing paralyzed, without language, no sign, sunken in grief, like a mute, silent stone.

Lonely, alone, with painful longing, we experienced reading in a Russian newspaper the joyful news that Sokolov too had been freed by the Russians.

Then we did not yet realize the destruction. All those years we had hoped, believed that we would go back to our home. To our parents, sister, brothers and friends, in order to find comfort there. After much effort we received permission to travel home, to Sokolov. We dragged ourselves in long echelons over the ruined towns. With yearning eyes we read their names at the train stations.

Finally we pulled slowly into Shedlets. Seeing the sign for Shedlets, we got quickly off the train with our light baggage in hand and went into the town in search of a Jew. On a Shedlets street we recognized two Jewish faces. We stopped them and asked them if there were other Jews? They advised us how to find the Shedlets committee, where all those coming back were gathering. We spent the night there and could hardly wait for sunrise.

First thing in the morning we set out for the train station at dawn, in order to more quickly arrive in Sokolov. On our way, we did not met even a single Jew. Shy, orphaned, we went past the droshky carts at the station. No Jew called out, “Come up to me!” as we used to hear before the war from Jewish wagon-drivers.

With trembling hearts we walked along Lipove Street

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through the town. At the time it was just after Sukes. The golden Polish autumn lay poured out over the fields of cut grain; yellow-copper leaves were sprinkled between our steps along the sandy road. And a kind sun accompanied us with soft rays. But for us the pain drilled the question deeper into our marrow:

“Will we find anyone?”

Exhausted, we arrived in our ruined town. We encountered a Jew from Kosove by the name Khayim. He recognized us as Jews and led us to the Paleger house where at the time all the few surviving Sokolov Jews had gathered. In the house there were two iron double beds and a long table that wobbled on its broken legs. It appeared that the goyim left him alone, as not worthwhile to bother such a broken vessel. On the table lay strewn many letters from other countries. I started reading the addresses on the letters. I did not find many familiar names.

The first letter was from Rivke Piekarske (of the Rozenberg home), to her family; the second from Yankev Fisher to his parents and the third from Berl-Akive's grandchildren to their grandfather. With teary eyes I tore myself away from reading them. The Jews standing around me told me that none of them remained.

The first night we spent in that house with another couple of Jews. When we fall asleep after a long painful day, we are suddenly awakened by wild shouting from a lot of drunks. In fear of death we sat up a whole night and waited for it to be day.

Shuddering, beaten down, we still decided to see our ruins with our own eyes. See the streets, the shops, the market place, and the area of the former ghetto. We walked around almost the whole day, the streets, where each stone, each place, each little house called up memories from our childhoods. In every place we considered our loss– our murder.

As we were standing on Rogovska Street, the place where we once had our lumber warehouse, some well-known Christians walked past, and they greeted us with arrogant, closed faces. Their first words were, “You're alive?”

We walked further on, I also wanted to see my parents' house and also my brother Yosl Rozentsvayg's house. In my parents' former business stood a Christian man and woman. I did not go into the shop, but turned myself in the direction of my brother Yosel's shop. The building

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was destroyed. From there to Elke-Brayne's shop the road was paved with gravestones from the Jewish cemetery.

The rubbed-out, violated Hebrew letters depressed us. We could not go any further.

As we were, weary from the day, arriving at Binyumtshele's former soda-water business our former janitor who could speak Yiddish, embraced me warmly and kissed me with tears, and would not let us leave the house, where the few remaining Jews were gathering. She took us to spend the night in her home – “your life is safe with me” – she assured us. That was on a Wednesday. Since on Thursdays people came together for the Sokolov market day we decided to stay, wanting to see what the Thursday market looked like without Jews.

The market square filled with a thousand peasants from the local villages. All the previously-Jewish businesses were filled with merchandise and Christian sellers. Polish merchants from the small towns had driven in, set up tables with various merchandise in the small market square. Where we Jews used to buy fish, fruit and green vegetables. At some tables we saw used Jewish clothing for sale, good fur coats and also our own clothes. It was the same market, only without Jews.

The old cemetery

[Page 540]

Dear brother Khanina, dear sister-in-law Viere and beloved child Khanele:

I write this letter to you after my return from Lodz, Warsaw and from Sokolov. Being in Warsaw, I decided to travel down to the town of our birth and see with my own eyes how it looks now. In the entire eight years of our wandering around I was always accompanied by a longing just to see the little town and have a restful image.

I arrived in Sokolov at eleven at night, by train. The first thing that assaulted my eyes was the destroyed train station. I went into the town by the back way. You certainly remember the way exactly and that little wooden bridge. It was all the same, exactly as if nothing had happened in the world.

It is eleven at night, a darkness hangs over the town, no life to be seen. Quiet on the streets. I walk along Pieratske Street (the main street) and as in a dream the life appeared before me: memories from the past mix together, of hundreds of Jews, especially young people, flooding the street with noise, with song, with life. A dead silence dominates around, a stillness that comes after a storm. The moon begins to come out from behind a cloud and to illuminate the town. It seems to be the same moon but is not. It is not the same. It seems to have become more red. Is she a witness who saw everything, with axes and knives, it seems like the same moon. But no, it is not the same one. It seems to stream from the new beys-medresh, through Binyumtshele's, downhill to the river (the Strige) and certainly not one Jew in that gruesome night cursed you, moon, because your light showed the way to their hiding place.

It is late, I go to search out a place to sleep. I go where Shleyme Rozenberg once had his hotel. Yes, the same building, it seems, the

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little beds, everything as before, but with one difference: Instead of the usual happy, welcoming Shleyme – a cold Pollack checks me in. Yes I can sleep, why not? “Come see – your business is going on and the ashes of the Jews – in Treblinke. It is a lie when they say that there is a war going on in the world. No! The war is only for you and for your millions of brothers.”

A night full of nightmares. I cannot go to sleep. I do not want to believe it. Is this really true? Images float up and soon disappear, one image chases another: I see the town when I was a child and you took me to Shia the melamed's kheyder, those were really the best years – the good, childhood years. And it reminds me of the time when you directed the “Skif” and “Tsukunft” and the place and the house were always full, and the singing used to carry far out into the surrounding streets. I see the people. They stand before my eyes: Dovid Grosman, Shleyme Vaynshteyn, Gadlihu Rolnik. Did the people actually exist or did my fantasia just make them up?

I want to get dressed and bolt, do I still have any family here? Uncle Yankl (Rotshteyn), Mendl Lopate, am I really in Sokolov after so many years and not gone to see how our friends are, Shmilkele (Borenshteyn), Avrom Yitsik (Vishnievski)? But the fantasy vanishes, I begin to take in the sad reality. I begin to hate the town before I have even seen it well. I do not sleep all night. I beg that the day would come sooner, that I can take a look and run away; run wherever my feet take me, as long as not to be here any more.

The sun begins to come out and illuminate the town with its rays. It is quiet in the streets, I still do not see any movement, everything is still sleeping, only I stride quickly over the streets as though someone is chasing me. I want to see everything, examine everything, so that the town can always stay before my eyes, the town from before and the town as it is today. But sixty percent of Sokolov is destroyed: the Germans fortified themselves in the town. The Russian aviators bombed it heavily and even earlier before the war operations the Germans took down a lot of the wooden houses. So that our street (Shul Gas) is almost completely gone. Only the beys-medresh remains. And the streets around it, like Sheroke, Shkolne and others are gone. When one stands near the beys-medresh one can see out to Shedlets Street.

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Everywhere only empty places. It is difficult for me to orient myself, where once our house stood – only thanks to the pharmacy can I locate the spot. Of the large beautiful shul there remains a memory – just one large stone that lies in the middle surrounded by overgrown grass.

It was Thursday, market day: just as before, a commotion: hundreds of farm wagons flood the streets, stopping at the same places as before, our place was quickly filled with wagons and it reminded me how sometimes father went out and squabbled with them, not to leave the place dirty. The market today is a big one, a thousand peasants fill the town. The same tables of dry goods, sweets, fruits – everything being sold and bought. A little further along, near the butcher shops, it is hard to get through. A throng of people, one hears the voices of geese, ducks, chickens, baskets full of eggs – everything is here, only there are no Jews! In the long martyred history of our folk in various times and eras poets rose who with their poems cried out the pain and torment of our people, and also Bialik screamed out in his “Kishenev, Town of Slaughter”. Standing now in the market square I see how weak you were, Bialik – how small was Kisheniv against Sokolov. At least the Kisheniv Jews were given a proper Jewish burial, and of the Sokolov Jews there is no trace remaining. Only a little ash in Treblinke. Yet the names of the Jews are on all the streets here; you walk along the streets and you see only gravestones; paved streets and you see only gravestones; paved for hundreds of meters in length with the holy gravestones, the paint is still fresh on many of them, and you can read the names.

Dear brother, there are no longer any Jews in Sokolov. No more any cemetery. Everything is wiped away, no sign must remain of the six hundred-year existence of the Jewish community in Sokolov. In a garden near Nakhum Levin's place lie a hundred Jews in a pit, a huge common grave. The Germans did not see to taking them out to burn them. I stand near the grave, I am perhaps the only one in the recent months who stands and weeps at the grave. No one to come to bewail their lives cut short. I must go away too, I cannot be here. I will run, run away from myself, away in a desert far from people and there cry out my pain, the pain of those who remain alive and can find nothing in life.

The night is falling. The market has ended. A stillness rules

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the town again, I wander around from one street to another. I sit down to rest a little by the old cemetery. Today it is not the old cemetery – a lovely park with paths hacked out among the old trees, leveled, benches installed. An echo of laughter carries over to me, I hear the playing of a harmonica, the youth are partying here, they dance, they play. The old dream of theirs is become reality.

I travel away, back, I cannot remain here another minute, I want to run away from here forever. Adieu, Sokolov, town of my birth, I will not see you again, there will not be Jews here any more – may your soil no more soak in Jewish blood, and for you, residents of Sokolov, Jews will build no more houses.

The gravestone for the murdered Jews in Sokolov, installed in 1945 on the initiative of the Sokolov Committee in Lodz

[Page 544]

Just as it is hard to visit one's parents' graves for the first time, so it is hard to come to one's own little town, there where you first saw the beauty of the fields, where your father took you to kheyder for the first time, where you first encountered the world. In Sokolov I knew every stone and every tree. I would be able to enumerate whose windows I peeked into when as a child I first went into the street by myself.

Sokolov, my hometown, Sokolov my beloved Jewish town which as a child I saw as the center of the world. Perhaps there are still a few towns in the world, but not one is so large and so fine as you. In no place in the world is there such a river as you possess, although the river did not even have a name. Someplace else the meadows are not so green as your meadows and no town in the world has two strolling parks, and what a wonderful world that was: Sokolov had a tall shul whose colored panes above the Torah ark one had to crane one's neck to see and to see the play of the colors; Sokolov had a pump in the middle of the market square that in my childhood years enticed me like some enchanted machine that drew water out from the very depths of the earth. Even Sokolov's frequent fires had in them some deep, wild beauty that inflamed my childish fantasy and carried me off to a world of great emotions.

Even the story books that we later read out to blind Aron did not tell about the mysterious worlds like those that Yone the tinsmith used to tell.

No, Sokolov was the very center of the world and the most beautiful and everything of most interest played itself out in that town.

I had been in many towns in Poldliash. It was possible for me to see the town ten times, and I avoided it. I was afraid

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to travel in and to see that it was true, that there were no Jews left there.

I arrived in Sokolov at a late-summer dawn. The market square was empty, the shops were locked. The buildings and the street stalls around the market – which I thought as a child that there was nothing better – were now strangely small and alone. A familiar, close loneliness. It seemed to me that the houses too, looked at me with panes glinting in the rising sun. They recognized me for sure, and I surely recognized the pump in the market, whose heavy iron handle I could never lift as a child.

I do not see anyone going into the shul to pray. I see that no one is opening the “pivne” in the early morning and I do not see the stall-sitters going to the market with vegetables for the industrious Sokolov housewives.

I walk through the empty streets and do not see any human in sight. Something opened a door and two hands pour out a bowl of water onto the sidewalk and the door closes itself again. I do not see a face. I see the sign of destruction in the new study-house: the broken-out windows, the smoke-stained walls. I follow the street down to the river. Many of the wooden houses have been carried away, new houses have been put up. The world of childhood is broken.

And the old cemetery is torn up, it is a big wild place. At the bridge I can hear the mill clapping, it was a Jewish mill. Nearby a blacksmith is hammering – that was once a Jewish smithy. And now I look in on a gentile smith, he certainly marvels that a stranger is visiting this neighborhood at such an early hour. Further up, to the market, I find that the shul has been erased, the new study-house lonely and abandoned. And when I come back up to the market there are already a few shops open and in the shops, strange, unfamiliar faces.

No longer any Jews in the Jewish town of Sokolov.

Clerks, military, strange people are in the Rebi's court. Today there are government offices that have nothing to do with Jews.

And recently there is a whole government here: The Rebi's court was once an important center for all of Podliash.

The Sokolov Rebi Yitskhak Zelig Morgenshtern, a grandson of Kotsk, ruled over Podliash like a monarch. From the farthest little towns came women with sick people, with children –

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begging the Rebi for healing. And the Rebi, like an experienced doctor, would question the patient and write out a prescription in a Hebrew-Latin that only the Sokolov pharmacists could understand.

He was a marvelous personality, the Rebi. A person with a flaming temperament and a knowledge of people. He never engaged with his children, he never knew how many boys studied in his yeshive, how many Jews there were in the town, but he knew about everything and had a pertinent point of view about everything. He loved a gift but had no relationship with the money that he possessed, and the old shames used to follow him and collect the coins that he threw out of his pockets.

Sokolov Jews were hearty, industrious Jews, craftsmen and small merchants who never missed a day in the week of their constant hard toil. But they were Jews with a powerful faith. Maybe they did not have food to eat, but they had work and faith to their fill.

Even in the complete material poverty Sokolov produced a generation of intelligentsia, poets, authors, intellectuals and teachers who are now dispersed and spread over all the Jewish settlements in the world.

All the social and political struggles of the Jews played out in that little town. When the fights among the Kotsker, Gerer and Aleksander Hasidim ended – because hasidus in Sokolov had by then not produced any young inheritors – the fights among the secular parties began: “Bund”, Zionism and communist. Those struggles were just as hard-bitten as the wars between the Sokolov Jews had been.

In the evenings, in the strolling park and in the unions, the discussions reached the heart of the heavens. It seemed as if these were the birth pains of a new order in the world.

The Sokolov youth never reached any new world order. When the new world order came about that order fell into a viper's nest that had already poisoned Jewish life and later, under the guardianship of the Germans, helped to uproot the remains of the Jews.

Since the beginning the Jews here had to bear a wild antisemitism. The local government, the Sokolov shoemakers and firefighters always sought out an opportunity to “play the Jews”. They obtained that historic

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chance on the first day when the Germans took the town. Even then, when the Germans were not yet undertaking the extermination of Jews, the local powers began to rob and murder them.

But Sokolov went through a sinister assault. When Jews fled to the Bug River to save themselves, Sokolov peasants robbed them and murdered them along the roads.

Come with me in the afternoon to the streets of Sokolov. The few passing women are dressed in clothing that you know for certain were Jews' clothes. The curtains in the windows, the installations in the shops – everything is Jewish. What was not robbed from Jews was gotten later from the Germans…. And all the stolen goods were called “things from the Germans”, and the houses that Poles are living in are not called Jewish houses but “houses from the Germans”, because the Germans had the mind to sell them.

I have the habit whenever I go into any town to inquire at the local photographers whether they have any hidden photographic shots from the time of the occupation. Here in Sokolov I do not even dare, I do not want the least suspicion to fall on me that I have any relation to Jews, or that I am interested at all in Jews.

I do not want to add another lonely grave to the Jewish graves that are sown and dispersed over all the fields and forests around here. I only want to take a look at how the town looks, that was the world of my childhood, that I have barely praised, as it is now such a different one from that. And I see it so bereft, so terribly broken, that when the bus to Vengrov arrived the earth under my feet burned and I left the town. Lost forever.

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