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Born around 1904 in Vlotslovek, into a rabbinic family. Received a high education, from childhood on she drew and painted. In 1922 traveled to Berlin to study painting. Around 1926 she came to Paris, took part in various exhibitions. Actively participated in the progressive workers' movement and in the culture circles. Until her arrest she took an active part in the underground work. Arrested in 1941 and deported in 1942.

Kovalska was the daughter of a famous Vlotslavker rabbi Rov Kovalski, who was for many years a senator in the Polish Parliament

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and a leading personality among religious Polish Jews. In her aristocratic rabbinic home she received a solid and many-sided education – Jewish and secular. Even as a small child she demonstrated great ability and constant curiosity for drawing and painting. And already in her free youth painting became an inner calling for her.

I heard about Khane Kovalska for the last time, after the tragic events of the 16th of July 1942. Even in the [concentration] camp she did not lose any time, she would paint the whole day. (Because she was arrested from her home she took the necessary equipment with her.). “I have more time to paint here that in my freedom” she noted ironically.

Khane Kovalska: A French prison

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The truth is that this could happen thanks to the energetic conduct of the French women interned there, who declared to the administration that “As long as we are here our Jewish friends will not wear the yellow star.” But it was also thanks to the fact that there were such brave and heroic women as Khane Kovalvska in Lila-Lager.

Khane Kovalska was among the first deported Jewish women who were taken out of Lila-Lager for an energetic and exemplary uprising. As punishment their heads were violently shaved on the eve of their deportation. Thus Khane went on the road to Jewish martyrdom. She was sent off and did not return. A sensitive Jewish woman was taken from us, a crystal-pure and noble person, a brave and intelligent fighter. We will never forget her.

(“Yisker-bukh”, Paris, 1946.)

Khane Kovalska: A French prison

The Soviet-Yiddish poet Ayzik Platner died in Minsk at age 68.

Ayzik Platner was born in Sokolov Podlaski. In 1921 he left for America in order to help his family in Poland from the new place. There he joined the writers' group “Prolet-pen”, and in 1930 published his first collection of poetry titled “Vos der tog dertseylt”.

In his article about murdered Soviet-Yiddish poets Hirsh Somliar, among others, wrote in the Warsaw “Folks-shtime” of August 1^st:

“Ayzik Platner, who was smitten with the new socialist life,

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did not escape the horrible fate that those thugs of Beria's cut prepared for many. He came home a very ill man.”

Shortly before his death he again had the merit to publish his poetry collection “Dos zalts fun lebn” (in a White Russian translation).

“Folks-shtime”, Warsaw.

City From all sides of the world, From all roads in the world, Train after train is bringing A human skein, a raw swell; Spitting them through the open station, Into the face of the city. A grumble from metal lungs Sways the drowsy day – It's hard to rouse and distresses the heavens, Drumming out to the edge of the city; On mountainous backs and pointy shoulders, From far and wide the dispersed city; Arises a bellow conveyed from thousands of stoney walls. City – hands have flung bridges over the water, And so it greets the world. A scorched day falls, Smoke-blackened copper – In flocks of smoke, On the city's life and limb. The city-folk are out in the streets, In lines, in rows; Woven in rings, Veiling the corners, A whirl of arms, of sticks, of shoe-heels.

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City Snaking streetcars with single eyes, Cut through the masses headfirst. Waves of wind cross over, and heads run – A head on two shoulders, a head on two shoulders. Feathers, pins and ribbons cover it, In _______ There is a neck, and there a pair of eyes… Turning, spinning A bustle, spinning – Soon it will snap, the crowd, the buildings; Turn itself over, turn on around; will take off with feet in the air, A dance in the streets – The city blows apart.

Snow My windows – small little squares, I look out through them; I see – Snow is falling, White and still, Makes me a little sad. I think – There must be a ship right now in the great sea Cutting its way through the water, And the shore is far from either side, The ship is alone in the great sea, and the people on the ship – the ship in the middle of the sea is small, they must e smaller still. Vey! Middle of the sea alone, Who will warn them That there is no one Who will warn them That the whole world is snow.

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Dawn Dawn, my vigor is rested, Pale skies still and soft wake the world; I walk with my work-strength in hand. In the quiet street my footsteps beat out an echo. It rests my vigor, My blood is strengthened with juice from bread; And my muscles fortified with courage. Work calls me from the distance, Felt in my every limb; And my steps echo faster – The day must not stand empty, the air will not be vacant: I harness you all into one I take the winds to help me; Order the rivers: do what we want! May the wind carry hammer-banging, Rustling wind, the rush of water – Carry them to all the corners of the world. Until evening will calm the machines, And another night will find the world.

Thus am I Happy Thus am I happy, Thus am I gay And do a little slow dance – A world will just never starve, A world sparkles with a thousand colors, And fields abloom, bundled in sheaves –

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Oh, ah, a world will not starve! The reaper is cheerful, who cuts all the more – All more secure, more healthy, A world will have what to eat – A world will not starve. Thus I am happy – And do a little dance, Ta-ta-de-ra-ta, And ta-ta-de-ra-ta.

Although Sokolov did not produce any famous writers, there were still some between the two world wars who were well-known in Yiddish literature, and the Sokolov youth were proud of their success: Gad Zaklilovski, Ayzik Platner, Gershon Pomerants and the murdered Borukh Vinogura. From my childhood years I only remember Platner when he spoke in our house at a founding assembly for a professional union, and Vinogura from his talks at my father Yankl Kagan's house – the meetings of the Jewish school organization and of the drama club took place

in that apartment of two small houses where the tailors' workshop was located. The majority of local activists met there and the speakers from Warsaw were presented there.

I recall the veneration with which we young people regarded an editorial certificate that Vinogura showed us one time. He also showed us a declaration from the Warsaw literature union with the two recommenders Dr. Y. Shiper and Y. B. Tsifur (the latter became Vinogura's father-in-law).

I also became acquainted with Gershon Pomerants in my father's house. I had just had a humoresque printed in a weekly newspaper. He – then a sixteen year-old boy – showed me a lot of friendship. Later when he was already in Canada, I remember how we used to go to his mother (the well-known Henye Beyle – the letter-writer) to read his articles in the “Fraye arbeter shtime” that he sent to his mother; he had his own columnn titled “Tint un pen” under the pen name “A. Sokolover”.

I saw Gad Zaklikovski for the first time when he was traveling from Argentina to Erets-Yisroel, and got to know him better only during my visit in Israel in 1955.

When all of these had left Sokolov, people shared the newspapers and journals with their articles. Even a non-Sokolov native who was a writer was treated

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as our own and we were proud of him: Meyshe Zilbershteyn (whose parents were partners in Shafran's mill) published “Shprotsungen” in Warsaw, a journal of literature for youth, and later, under the name M. Rozenberg, was founder and editor of the Mexican “Der veg”; the Hebrew author and thinker Khayim Meyshe Mayzelsh, former editor of “Hadoar” in New York, is today editor of the“Masada” press in Jerusalem; and the famous writer B. Epelboym.

Included in a letter we received in the 1930s from an uncle in Russia was a clipping from the Minsk “Oktiaber”, of a poem by Platner. The poem went from hand to hand, and when the Warsaw weekly journal “Velt shpigl” conducted a novel contest, among the the winners was Gad Zaklikovski. We also received a journal from Cuba, “Havana lebn”, with a work by A. Sokolover (Y. Shpanke). When Vinogura, along with his wife the art-painter Khane Kovalska, began to publish the journal “Parizer bleter” in Paris, we considered that our own personal journal. In a letter from H. Madanski from Chicago we found a newspaper clipping with a story by Ester Shpanke.

In 1937 there was a mention of Gershon Pomerants in Canada regarding his meeting the poet Meyshe Shteyngart during his recent visit in New York. (Shteyngart was a former collaborator in the journal “In zikh” and later, editor of “Vayter”). It is no wonder that, in that atmosphere, young Sokolover were inspired to write.

In the last years we were surprised to see in print the names Elieyzer Rubinshteyn, Shimen Vays, Yisroel Mayer Vaysberg, Yisroel-Yankl Morgenshtern and this writer of these lines.

I will now mention in particular two who were murdered by the Nazis.

Shimen Vays (Vaysberg shortened, perhaps because of its similarity to Vaysenberg.) A grandson of Itshl Milkhiker, studied in the “Mizrakhi” kheyder where his father Hertske was an active member, later educated there himself. There were several children in the home, and very poor. He went to Warsaw, where he engaged in private teaching, and for a short time he lived with Efraym Kaganovski. For the summer fairs and on [Jewish] holidays he came home to Sokolov, and then we would stroll together. I recall going to his house on summer evenings. The home for the

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whole family consisted of one small room, literally “four by four”. As I entered, he would be by a small oil-lamp, writing. He was the youngest one in our group and was beginning to be published in the Warsaw newspapers. His larger novella was printed as an “extra” in serial; he was a collaborator in the Warsaw “Folks tsaytung” and in the Riga journal “Idishe Bilder”.

In the big city, he longed for Sokolov. In November 1939 he wrote to me: “Although I am in Warsaw, my little town is always before my eyes; in the big-city fog Sokolov shines out to me like a lit room on a dark night. You know that already: Whenever I speak about my town, I am soon as lyrical as in my stories.”

Right before the outbreak of World War II he had a position as a private teacher in the Posen region, and during the War he managed to get to the Russian side, Bialystok, where he lived in the writers' house; then I saw one of his stories in a New York newspaper, sent in from Bialystok. He was killed

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at the beginning of 1941 in Slonim. In losing him we lost a talented Yiddish writer.

Yisroel Yankl Morgenshtern, a grandson of the Sokolov Rebi (Meyshe's son). I cannot recall when we first met. He – the Rebi's grandson, in the old traditional clothing, and I – well-known in the Socialist movement. But the common interests in literary subjects brought us together.

In his small privet archive he also had a thick notebook in Hebrew – a collection of his grandfather's – the Sokolover Rebi's – lectures, held for any opportunity to take it out.

He remained in Sokolov. I heard from him again in

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one letter during the gruesome time (1940) in Polish language (possibly there was no other way at the time).

The translated letter came to me by way of Lithuania, where his brother Mendl was at the time (today in Israel).

The tender young poet fell victim to the Germans.

Many these lines be a gravestone on the unknown graves of the two young members of the Sokolov family of writers – the last from the Sokolov soil.

Yisroel Jankl Morgenshtern's last letter from the Nazi hell:

“Sokolov, 4 April 1940

Dear friend Rotshteyn!

Due to reasons that are probably clear to you, I have not answered your postcard from some months ago. Now I can continue our correspondence.

First of all I am grateful to you that I and my family are well.

My brother Mendl is wandering around Vilne these days. He is homeless and in need of friendly help, and I ask you heartfully that you help him in his difficult situation, as is possible for you. Mendl wants to travel to your cousin Dovid Perlov. So I ask you with all my strength to help him to get there.

I ask you, after receiving this letter, to immediately send a telegraph to Dovid. At the same time, I plead with you to communicate with the Sokolov landslayt who help in such situations, so as to help him as far a possible to get material help and so on. I hope that I will have the opportunity to reciprocate.

What is going on with you? I am busy as a cook for those without means in Sokolov, giving out about 1,500 lunches every day – and it is hard work.

I hope that you will be able, to the best of your ability, to help in the matter of my brother, for which I thank you profusely.

Elieyzer is in Drohotshin; his parents are there too.

Your friend who sends heartfelt greetings,

Yisroel Yankl Morgenshtern.”

Impatient, nervous and hungry, Sholem Vaserman waited for the master's arrival. He sat as on pins, he turned to all sides, every moment snatching a glimpse at the door, perhaps it would open? His hearing was strained, quiet as a cat lying in wait for a mouse. Every time the echo of footsteps in the corridor reached his ears his heart gave a leap:

“Here he comes…”

Except for the shiny brass handle, he saw nothing. For just a moment, and through a fog, it seemed the various tools of the trade and the long cutting table looked out at him. He could not believe that with the hammer that lay on the windowsill, with the large scissor in hand, he stood at the table for a full twelve hours a day and assembled the valises. Sarah, the master's wife, also looked strange to him, with her pleasing lips set in a smile, sitting by the oven of the great light-filled home with the child in her lap. He thought again about waiting a bit for the master, to collect the debt of five gilden that was due him from the previous month, and go buy a bread, a whole loaf of bread.

Eventually the door opened. In came Ayzik the master. Sholem leapt from his place, fixed his eyes on the fat, overstuffed person with the finely-combed blonde moustaches – and was silent. He could not speak. But Ayzik did not approach him. He went into the large room, throwing off his fur coat, going to his wife and mumbling an aside to the former journeyman,

“You are waiting for nothing. I have not been paid. Come up tomorrow, maybe I will have it.”

And he merrily gave the child a pacifier.

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Sholem barely stammered out, “Maybe you have – at least something?”

“When I have it,” smiled Ayzik as the touched the warm oven, “I will be a rich man.”

Sholem could hardly drag his feet. He breathed in the fresh, frosty air and in a minute regained feeling in his limbs. He stood on the street corner for a while, listened to the creaking of the passing tram, returned his sharp gaze to the people hurrying by… He started walking, went a short way and stood still: Where does one go the make money? He tried to recall a friend, an acquaintance who could let him borrow a few groshen and he could not. He could think of nothing. He only saw himself alone on the street.

So standing there, it occurred to him to look into his money pouch. But he remembered that he had already done that more than once and found nothing there. Just a day ago he had emptied it completely. Still, it increased the urge to take a look once again into the empty pouch, not more than a glance, and then lay in back in his pocket. Sholem was certain that there was nothing left, but unwillingly he took out the pouch. It was half-round, made of brown leather. He opened it slowly, gave it a shake and – out fell a gildn, but what kind of gildn? A fake one. It was a tin, dark-colored gildn that he had received in change from another gildn while buying four bagels from a street vendor. He had seen right away that the vendor had given him a fake coin instead of a good one, and he wanted to give it right back to him, but glancing at the poor bagel-seller – at his yellow wrinkled face, at his grey extinguished eyes which looked at him hungrily just as if they were silently begging him to take the gildn because he did not have another one – he took it and threw it in his pouch and went on home with the four bagels in his hand. Soon after that, he forgot about the incident. Only the image of the bagel vendor remained before his eyes.

Now when he was standing one the street hungry, with the fake gildn in his hand, he again recalled the history of the fake gildn.

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If I see that bagel-vendor again, thought Sholem, I will force him to take this gildn back.

Vaserman look around sadly. He saw several lonely young bagel vendors who were advertising their merchandise in a loud voice:

“Warm, hot bagels… four for a tenner, three for a tenner. Warm, warm bagels!”

Sholem studied them closely. None of them was similar to the one he was looking for though. He started walking further, for the thought ran through his mind that he should polish up the gildn with a handkerchief so it would shine just like a real one and then try to give it to one of the vendors. But what if he got caught?

Sholem was ashamed of that brazen thought, but a hidden will drove him to the place where the bagel vendors stood. Almost all of them were young with pinched, pale faces with wide-open mouths and looked very mean. Sholem was afraid to give them the gildn since one of them could grab him and beat him up. He remained standing there near the vendors with a pounding heart and just looked at them silently.

“Perhaps you want bagels – take some,” said a boy with a yellow, floury face, holding out his basket. Vaserman now wanted to hand him the gildn. But at that same moment the boy gave him a kind of searching look and Sholem knew that the boy already knew that he would give him fake money. Ashamed, Sholem walked away. He felt like a thief caught in the act.

Vaserman was afraid to look the people in the eyes. He hung his head and, embittered by his own weakness, sighed deeply and went away from the place with the firm intention not to test his fate again. He decided to go to his lodgings, lie on the bed and let be what will, be. He braced himself, gulped in some fresh air and picked up his pace.

Sholem entered a quiet little street. The gas lamps were burning and spread a lovely light all around. In some places it was quite dark. An old bagel vendor was standing beside an unlit lamp. He still had a full basket. Into Vaserman's mind

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immediately floated the thought that he should approach him. He would certainly not be noticed. Sholem still felt weak. But the thought got stronger minute by minute, and he no longer had control over himself. He took one step, a second, he was soon standing near the vendor. Sholem saw that a hand, searching, stretched out to him and took the gildn from his hand and instead of just tossing it into his pocket he brought it toward his eyes, looked at it several times, turned it to all sides, touched its edges and did not give him any change. Why? He probably realized that they gildn was a fake.

Sholem stood there and could not move from the spot. His heart raced. Sparks were burning before his eyes. But the vendor did not hurry. He did not seem to notice Sholem's horror. He did not say anything, but slowly, with a grimace on his yellow wrinkled face, looked at him silently. Sholem's terrified glances met the vendor's eyes against his will. Sholem was certain that any minute a heavy hand would come down on his skull – or the earth itself would open its great mouth and swallow him alive. A minute went by. The man who was standing across from him gave a sigh, threw the gildn into his pocket and handed Sholem four large bagels with thirty groshn change. He said quietly, “Take them!”

Sholem took them and breathed easier.

Looks like he did not notice it, Sholem thought.

He quickly turned from the vendor, afraid to look at him. He thought only about one thing: that he must get farther away from the lamp.

Was he just making this up? No! Certain and clear Sholem heard someone running after him.

Was it the bagel seller? To his misfortune, yes. He heard the tapping of his hurrying steps. There could be no talk of running away now. Sholem willed himself to stand still. Hanging his head, he was ready for anything.

The vendor approached, put a hand on his shoulder and asked, “Do you recognize me? Don't be afraid… Look at me.”

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Sholem managed to lift his eyes and meet the vendor's grey extinguished eyes, see his yellow wrinkled face with the two deep creases on the forehead, and he did recognize him: It was the same vendor who a week ago had given him the fake gildn – yes, he recognized him. It was the same one.

“I do recognize you,” Sholem barely stammered and could not look the other in the eyes.

“I only now recognize you!” the vendor said with the least little smile. “But that is not the reason a called you back. I just wanted you to know, I wanted to say, that we each fooled each other. Why? You are hungry, yes? Don't be shy. Say it. Then, my children were hungry. That's what I wanted to say. I fooled you unwillingly. Take another two bagels, I still have a full basket.” And he went back to the unlit lamp.

Sholem looked after him, lighter, sighed more lightly, ripped pieces from the six bagels and felt that a good hand had lifted a great shame from him.

(“Folks-tsaytung”, Warsaw)

Late Summer As the trees have also lost their joy And a breeze rattles them in the wind, I have lost my time too, I have become like a child, Who is blind, Without a mother, in the wind. And as the trees and grasses are weeping, I am also weeping. And now I discover the tree's outcry, And it makes me sad.

Tamuz Evening As a white eagle's wings float in the sky of blue The grasses are soaked and full of dew I float easily, hold my head lightly, I see farther, breathe more easily too. Little white clouds wander alone, The high-up doves make the world sweeter, Sandy paths forget to lie still, And somewhere a mill murmmers with pleasure. ________ birds merrily in their nests, Old women sigh quietly, The valley becomes deeper, a deep abyss, And I happily rest my head anywhere.

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I Will Have to Become a Stone I go through crowded streets and search, Look into eyes, into display windows, Look inside and interrogate people – Am I small? Am I small? No one answeres me; I walk on Alone, alone, And deep in me, in my dumbness I feel I will have to become a stone, That lies on a street corner and is silent, And hears everything And can carry in its stone heart Everything around, the ________ The chatter, And says to himself: “I am big” And is not afraid to be alone. Yes, I will have to become a stone – I will have to become a stone! (“Literarishe bleter”, Warsaw, 1937.)

The writer Gad Zaklikovski died suddenly in 1960. His death tore him away from his active work in publishing this yisker-bukh, the stele for the devastated shtetl.

His interest in community work was not incidental – but was the expression of his desire for something higher, in particular the elevation of the everyday Jewish individual. Because of his free thinking Zaklikovski came into conflict with the town proprietors, so he left the town and settled in Kosov for a short time, as a Hebrew teacher.

As a carrier of free thought in that era, he had to drink the bitter cup of a vagabond and wanderer. Laden with cultural baggage, he roamed over Polish and Lithuanian cities and small towns, searching for any livelihood for himself and his family. But he did not fall into despair, he did not break down; rather he became spiritually stronger,

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fortifying himself with the certainty of his Zionist thought, and everywhere that he taught he sowed the seeds of the Pioneering spirit, inspiring his pupils with his own brilliant faith in the Jewish national revival.

Gad Zaklikovski in his youth

Zaklikovski left Poland in 1931, wandered around South American countries but only found his place of comfort in the land of his vision, in the land of Jewish redemption in Erets-yisroel, where he came for the second time in 1938.

Gad Zaklikovski led a quiet, singular life in Israel, his last years as an agent for Sokhnut. In his free time he sat over holy books, reading and studying, writing and rewriting at a table full of newspapers, books and mountains of scattered notes.

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Sturdily built, with a sure step in his walk, he was also strong in his character in conducting his life's tasks as a writer and community activist, although he was not free from illusions.

The biographical notes that lay recorded by his orphaned wife and loyal life companions as well as by his daughter, show the difficult path of life from his early youth until the last days of his life. But Zaklikovski was, not considering his heart illness, by nature a happy man, who took on all the difficult moments of life with a smile on his face. With his happiness, with his jokes and humor, he could drive away the worst mood.

Already over seventy years old, Gad Zaklikovski was still involved in his creative life with full impetus, full of joy, his will was to write more, he would not be separated from his pen, even when they took him, ill, to the Beylinson Hospital, but this time his weakened heart could not hold out.

His sudden death took away from the Sokolov landslayt one of those few remaining of the older generation who with honor and dignity embodied in himself the one-time life of the shtetl destroyed.

Honor his memory.

Reb Yankl Rokhl-Hinde's was a master builder, an artist in his trade. And in the town he lived in his environment as a hasidic Jew. Yankl spent the whole day soaking himself in the aromas of freshly sawed wood, standing bowed over the long planks with his sharp, broad hatchet, singing a hasidic melody with his long, pointed beard shaking rhythmically with every chop into the wood. After the hardest workday Yankl would brush off the sawdust and go to the study-house to study a chapter of Mishnayos.

That's how I remember Reb Yankl Rokhl-Hinde's from my boyhood days.

Years later when I came to Sokolov as a refugee I met Yankl as an old man, whom I recognized in those sadness-laden days.

When the ghetto was writhing in inhuman suffering from the epidemics of disease, from cold, hunger and loneliness, Reb Yankl still maintained life with a contained stillness and calm – with his trust in God who

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gave him strength and courage, to procure for himself the great mitsve of self-sacrifice and preparedness to help Jews when the judgement-decree of death and murder hung over all the ghetto.

In those days of complete hopelessness, when Jews in the ghetto had started making hideouts, Yankl Rokhl-Hinde's took it upon himself as a holy assignment to help the despairing Jews in that work.

My family and I and another few refugees lived at Peysakh Shults' house at Ragovska 24. It was there I saw Reb Yankev as a hideout maker.

There was a deep nighttime stillness in Peysakh's room. His wife and child were deep in sleep. The wind rattled the shutters every so often.

That night, as with all my ghetto experiences, is deeply etched in my mind. Peysakh, Shleyme and Binem were sitting around the turned-up oil lamp at the table, twisting their heads around in their upturned collars.

Bunem [sic], resting his head on his hand, spoke as if just awakened: “The night is passing and we haven't heard from him or seen him.”

“Without him there's no hideout,” Shleyme answered. Peysakh, holding his stiff hands over the glass of the lamp, said, “Be certain! If he promised me to come today, at night, his word is just like an oath.”

“No, so late at night in the ghetto is to offer up your life.”

Peysakh, lifting his head up from between his shoulders, waved his hand as if to drive away Binem's doubts:

“This is just the time for the old man to buy himself the whole world of mitsves. He is on watch the whole night. He roams around the shadows, shuffling along the walls from house to house, to attics and cellars. Wherever there is a hideout, he must lay his carpenter's hands on it. I heard it told,” Peysakh spoke as if in secret, “that his secret doors have such clever devices that if the demons stand on their heads they would not recognize the hideout. And the way they tell it, he will not take any money for such work, it is called buying the world to come for the old age.”

Shleyme leaned toward Peysakh: “You will see what kind of secret entrance he will think of for our hideout. How many I have already planned,

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it looks like something sealed up. In such darkness he should knock on our house.”

“It should remain among us. He should now be close by. Last night I saw them dragging sacks of dug-out earth from Meyshe Piekarski's house out to the field. And Yankev Leyb, the shoemaker, was also whispering with him.”

In the middle of the conversation Peysakh gave a shudder. He snatched both hands away from the lamp. They all pricked their ears toward the exterior door, as where the wooden bar rested in the two iron loops there was a scratching sound.

“The wind is rattling the door.”

“No, it's not the wind, someone's knocking again.”

When Bunem turned the lamp up even more the knocks moved over to the window.

“Who is it?” Peysakh asked quietly.

“I promised you I would come,” was heard from the other side of the shutter.

From behind the curtained door appeared Reb Yankl Rokhl-Hinde's, a tall man with broad shoulders, in a long cloak. He remained standing, leaning on a stick, badly out of breath, and turned his thick-grown face with the pointed grey beard to the three Jews opposite him. Looking over the glasses on the point of his nose, he spoke out hoarsely, “A good evening to you, Jews!”

“Sit, Reb Yankl! Thank God that we see you at last. So late at night in the ghetto in these times.” Reb Yankl slowly lowered himself onto the chair and wiped his wrinkled forehead. He unfastened the cloak, pulled out from his belted bosom a short hand-saw, a hatchet, a hammer, a pair of pliers and a handful of nails. From the leg of his boot he drew out a wooden measuring stick, and laid all this out around him and answered, “Isn't my Protector on the roads I have just taken to get here now?”

“A small thing, helping to save Jewish lives from such danger! There is no way to value such a thing! May God reward you.”

The poor, good-tempered Peysakh leapt across the room with quiet steps and suddenly stopped, thinking, as if he did not understand what this was about:

“Are we to believe that our world is really God forbid going under? It's

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not something one can understand with regular sense. Of course, the Jews are having a lot of troubles now; well, Jews have recited psalms, prayed to God to help, but now?”

Reb Yankl lifted his head and said punitively to Peysakh: “One must never ask hard questions of the Master of the universe, even when the troubles are large. Jews must have trust. And especially in such an emergency one is forbidden to lose faith. How can we understand what is happening now in the world? I have not asked hard questions of the One above for eighty-three years and I still will not!”

“Sleep well, Reb Yankl has come to us!” said Peysakh to the side of the bed where his wife was sleeping and had lifted her head. Reb Yankl continued to sit. He spoke to the Jews about those times when life in the shtetl was peaceful. He told about how much energy he had devoted to building the town after each destroying fire, and which houses he had raised. He recalled the big folks-school on Kupientina Lane where hundreds of the town's children had studied, and the big shul with the four-columned Torah-reading desk and the Torah ark with the precise wood carvings, the town's ritual bath and the new study-house. Yankl interrupted his story with a deep moan and fell silent.

Reb Yankl sat that way for some time, supporting his head with both heavy, laboring hands and a deep despair shadowed his face. It was the specter of where in his 83 years his life had been ruined.

He recalled when his house, once full of life, was emptied, when after 30 years his wife Dvore Feyge's died – a name everyone mentioned with deep respect. Soon after that he lost his only son, the Zionist activist who moved to Erets yisroel. He lived with the hope of seeing him again and perhaps of living out his last years together in Erets-yisroel.

Now that hope was lost, and his only daughter Alte and her husband and child had been driven to the Arkangelska forest.

Alone in the world and in the sights of death, and no one to speak his heart to.

In the midst of his thoughts Reb Yankl remembered just why he was here in the middle of the night, and said to the Jews:

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“My plan is to cut out the right corner of the floor in this room, by the window, and from there make a little door to enter the hideout. I will make the cut in only one place over the boards. The other side will be inside under the wall molding. The beds must be placed over the little door. And may the time never come that you have to use it, but if you have to use it you must go through the bed into the hideout. But the last one must not forget to slide the bed back and to close the door over yourself.”

When the cut boards were nailed together, according to the size of the door, Reb Yankl hung the lamp in the cut-out hole. The hideout was ready.

Reb Yankl spent the rest of the night on Peysakh's cot. When the early morning pressed through the cracks in the shutters in Peysakh's house, Reb Yankl gathered his tools, kissed the mezuze and went off through the alleyways of the ghetto, taking with him the blessings of all the residents.

And even a few decades before the First world War Reb Yankl had already been saving Jews from the angel of death. Old Jews told it that during the time that the cholera plague ran rampant through the town, the only method to save someone consisted of continually rubbing the infected person's body with alcohol.

Even then Reb Yankl ignored the great danger of infection and along with other Jews from the burial society went around to rub the sick. Often it took 24 hours without a break until he was successful in warding off the infection of cholera, which during the Second World War came in another terrible way, in the form of the Hitler murderers.

At the beginning of the week, as soon as Reb Alter had recited the morning prayers, he would hang his empty sack over his shoulder, brush the mezuze with his fingertips, go out of his crooked little wooden house, leave the still-sleeping town behind him, and take slow steps away to the roads outside the town that led to the surrounding villages.

Reb Alter left his wife and children for the whole week, striding slowly like a vagabond on the far-flung roads – in summer when it smelled of greens and blooms and in winter over the frozen waste,

[Page 699]

on snowy roads from village to village with the sack on his back, which day after day went among the peasant huts and became fuller with its merchandise of furs and hides, bundles of hair and dried pelts.

A Jewish peddler in Poland, by Hertsl Daniels

Reb Alter's heart had clenched with anxiety more than once, as he had to save himself from some desperate trial due to the dangers and calamities that lurked for a Jewish peddler on those roads; and he remembered from his young years when these same thick-trunked trees along the sides of the field roads were still small, young switches.

In the gathering dark of the evening twilight, after a whole day of traipsing among the gentile huts, Alter entered the house of a Jewish village resident, kissed the mezuze, unloaded his heavy pack from his shoulder, washed his hands; then his tall figure with the pointed yellow goatee on his hard gaunt face, would sway by the eastern wall.

The dim illumination from the lit oil lamp was

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swallowed up by the gloomy evening darkness that hung like a grey cloud in the empty room. Under the bluish wall of the caulked oven stood a woman's figure, wrapped in a woolen shawl from which a pale, shy face peeked out. Her hands were quickly and expertly peeling potatoes from her aproned lap into a large pot, and she tossed in another couple of potatoes for dinner for Reb Alter.

On the long winter nights, the Jewish folk in the village sat around Alter and gobbled up the words of his absorbing stories about Jewish life in the town, of his slow, quiet and pleasant talk about the town's wealthy who were proud of their children, wealth and calm, and about the ruinous sins, because of which things were going so badly in the world.

As I child I very much loved the nights when Reb Alter came to the village and was a guest at our house. I loved to see how he raised his eyes to the ceiling as he prayed the evening prayers in a dark corner of the room; I loved his thin two fingers on my boyish cheek at the table. How many times could I not sleep after his stories about witches and demons, or about his solitary wandering over the sandy roads through frightening forests, from village to village among lawless gentile youths with angry dogs. I was so bewitched, drawn to hear his story about a Jew who was burned out – a saint whose last small possessions were burnt and he had never transgressed against God.

The winter passed and Spring peered through the windowpanes, and the village world became so red and blue; on the summery evenings as the flames of the setting sun gradually went dim, village girls would come to Reb Alter, sitting on a bench behind a hut across from the dark green fields and holding in his hands a worn and crumpled notebook in which he had written the names of the young men who were looking for marriages.

Reb Alter would glance with a velvety, homey smile at the faces of the village brides-to-be, look in his little book and match them up with dark or blonde town boys.

Then the village girls would dreamily leave Reb Alter to his town world with his young men, their dreamed-of princes.

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At the end of the week Reb Alter would come home from the villages to the town with a full sack on his shoulders.

Aron Vans stemmed from Nashelsk. He was a “born” doctor. In his young years he studied in the Ger Yeshive. After finishing there, as the best yeshive boy, he was taken by Yankl Feldsher from Ger as a son-in-law. He was provided with room and board. But the young Vans was drawn to modern education and attended the Rodem School for paramedics and earned a diploma there. He settled in Sokolov soon after the First World War and promptly started practicing as a paramedic.

Vans sought to quiet the feeling of interrupted peace with his tireless work among those ill with typhus. After his work in the ghetto hospital, he went around all day to the houses of his patients,

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hurrying to them with medical help. One would chiefly find him among the poor Jews, whom he quickly recognized with his deeply humane approach. He understood that his duty in such a bizarre time was to heal the sick, and his heart easily perceived the pain of his town's Jews.

Aron Vans' activity as a paramedic in the ghetto was filled with many quiet but large and lovely doings. Only a few knew about this. And only afterwards when the epidemic had quelled did Jews talk about Paramedic Vans and his deeds for the ghetto sick. Especially among the refugees they spoke of their gratitude for this exemplary Jewish doctor.

When the ghetto was established in Sokolov, Yisroel Bram, like all the other merchants, lost his shop. The stalls remained on the Aryan side. He took his few remaining possessions into his home, in that part of the ghetto on the shul side. There he sold his merchandise illegally and quickly ate up his “possessions”.

Yisroel Bram took it upon himself to still his thirst for news from the outside world.

[Page 703]

He used to bring in a limited number of newspapers and journals; he got them from the Polish newspaper dealers who demanded a highly multiplied price.

Yisroel Bram, the illegal newspaper dealer, acquired a name for himself in the Sokolov Ghetto for his distributing the forbidden daily press and the various news items that came from the “other side”. He brought “good news” that often filled the desperate people's hearts with hope in a better tomorrow.

On the morning after Yom kiper 1942 Yisroel Bram, the great optimist of the ghetto, sitting on Shul Street, was among the first four thousand Jews caught to be sent off to Tribelike. His small children clung to him. They did not understand what was happening, what fate awaited them and their father in the death chambers of the nearby Treblinke.

The stillness in the little town gelled into the dreary after-rain autumn day. A melancholy tiredness hovered over the gloomy narrow lanes. Under the clouded sky the low little houses one next to the other looked like big, jumbled piles of wet rags.

Hans was coming from the market square with his heavy, elephant-like steps. This time he was walking alone, lazily, holding himself as if the dreary cold weather would eat into his bones. Now Hans had a contradictory look. Usually when he appeared, like the typical German in the Jewish streets hunting down Jews, he scarred the cobblestones with the nails of his soldiers' boots and the Jewish cottages trembled from his thundering voice. Jews would disappear into the attic rooms and cellars. Now, he did not hear anyone, and no one knew that Hans was in the town and walking in the middle of the street as if someone were leading him by a bridle.

So going, Hans threw angry glances to both sides of the Jewish houses. With his head stretched out from the turned-up collar of his military great-coat, he turned his coarse face to the right and left and did not see any sign of a Jew on the whole long street.

Had the Jews noticed his arrival and hidden from him? He could not even hear their footsteps.

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Now Hans felt that he, a German, could throw a panic even when they did not see him or hear him. An entire town full of Jews trembled before him. In Germany he was a peasant boy whom even his harnessed horse did not obey. Here in this little Polish town even the gentiles took off their hats to him.

Usually when Hans passed through the town the Jews were sad to recognize him. Once he beat them for not taking off their hats, and once for taking them off. Hans loved to hit and all the more when someone trembled for his life. This gave him pleasure, which was expressed by his hysterical, coarse laughter. Who would disturb him now if he tore open a door to a Jewish hut and dragged out a couple of terrified Jews and made them recognize that Hans is walking the street? But Hans must be in the mood for such games. Now, in this dreary weather his heavy body is too lazy to start chasing terrified Jews around.

Hans regrets, however, that over the whole length of the town he has not encountered a single Jewish face. He would not beat them now but just grab any Jew who fell into his hands and make the Jew ashamed, that he would like to do. Such a game would cheer him up, make his life more merry.

Hans suddenly snaps his head up, he has heard the sound of a door closing, from an attic room. He spies an old Jew coming down the steps, a Jew with a long beard from which pieces have been cut, a pinched face and a humped Jewish nose. He goes to the house and stands with a cynical smile between his pursed lips. The Jew shudders, looking at the German opposite him with wide open eyes.

“Come here, Jude!”

The elderly man pulled off his hat and came closer to the German, full of fear.

“Tell me Jude, who is your barber?”

The Jew indicated the neighboring house with his finger.

“Come, show me!”

The terrified Jew led the German to the barber's thresh-hold and stood still.

Hans looked at the old man and burst out in wild laughter. “I have brought you to the barber, Jude!”

The confused Jew asked the German to leave him in peace. A pair of sharp eyes looked down from Hans' creased snout.

[Page 705]

He pulled up a hand with a stiff finger pointing and with a wild scream shouted, “Go in!”

Hans stood at the barber's with his feet spread apart, his hands crossed behind him, and ordered the Jew to sit in the chair opposite the mirror on the wall, and the yelled to the barber, “Mr. Cutter, cut the beard off this Jude, so his face is as smooth as mine. Understand? To the devil! You Jews must learn the German culture. That's why we came here! Juden with beards on the Strasse?! Hans cannot endure that! Understand?!”

To the memory of my parents Reyzl and Avrom Hersh Poliakevitsh

After the German left the barber's with a joking laughter, Reb Avrom Hersh collected the discarded hair from his cut-off

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beard just the way one gathers together the scattered pages of a holy book.

When he came home, he initially remained standing at the door, at a loss for words. The householders at first recognized him only from his clothing and his voice which boomed with disgust.

Reb Avrom Hersh's wife, a mother with children, wrung her hands. Startled, and with a teary pitying face she looked at her husband's changed appearance, which she had never seen in the whole time the two had lived together.

The children tried to make the pain easier for their father: “Hair is not like, heaven forbid, cutting off a limb. A beard will grow back again…”

But stuck in the father's throat there were still un-cried tears. In his hollow pain he kept his heart closed. He did not respond to anything. In voiceless, hopeless pain, like a mourner, he sat at the table and did not allow any words of comfort to reach him, and did not comprehend the constant glances, full of love and pity, from his family.

He sat there alone, with his gaze buried in the bundle of hair. The last rays of light from the fading autumn day trembled on the walls and strangely lit the tormented face. He sat thinking in the room's growing darkness. His past observant Jewish life which embraced his tormented soul like a strap of his phylacteries, now suddenly resurfaced. There, it seemed to him, when he sat in the study-house between the afternoon and evening prayers, holding a Talmud volume with one hand and with the other hand bending the points of his beard upward toward his mouth and humming the Talmud melody to himself. This is a shabes evening. Jews are singing songs of praise. Eating the third meal and smoothing their beards and whiskers with a sleeve of their silk robes to wipe away the crumbs that have tangled in the thick hairs.

So pondering his memories of a past life, Reb Avrom Hersh had lost the sense of time, of how long he had sat there with his gaze forged to the bundle of hair from the hacked-off beard. A strange and grey paleness ate into his changed face like a heavy grey cloud that would long hover over him. The gaze – extinguished, just as he would now lose his Jewish appearance for a time.

The darkness had completely engulfed the room and the old shames still sat alone, enveloped in his deep silence.

Someone in the room lit the lamp. The old Avrom Hersh

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gradually regained the sense of the stammering talk, the moaning and weeping of the others, as he had not gotten up from his chair for a long time. Exhausted, with eyes of pain, he had something to say but the paleness of his shaved face and his painful gaze closed his speech inside. From the table he gathered up the hair sheared from his beard, bound it around with a thread from his sash and laid the bundle of hair in his tales bag between the two little sacks of tfiln.

Translator's footnote:

1. “Reb” is a title of respect like “mister”; it does not mean rabbi, which is rov, or rebi which is a hasidic rov. Return

In the center of the town, behind the big market square, in a three-story building, lived Butshe Rubinshteyn – Butshe vinegar-maker, as people in the little town called him – with his married sons and daughters. The house was famous in Poland. Merchants from Danzig, Warsaw, Lublin and Shedlets carried on a large trade with the Rubinshteyns.

After the First World War Butshe's children broadened their businesses. They began dealing with grain and forests. They were successful in their facility in developing the trade and became well-known merchants

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in the region. The Rubinshteyn firm became popular in all the estates, they bought forests from the local princes, sent hundreds of wagons of oak to Danzig. Barges loaded with wood from the Rubinshteyns' forests floated across the Bug River. Workers over a huge area split and cut the oak doorsteps for Danzig merchants.

Dozens of Sokolov Jews worked for them as carpenters, guards, wagon-drivers and clerks. The office, which operated facing the street, was as busy as a beehive. The telephone rang constantly with calls from Danzig, Warsaw and from the princely estates.

Besides that multi-branched trade in forest products, they were buyers of all sorts of grain. They set up huge magazines near the train. They brought in special machines to clean and sort the grain. They kept a stable with the best horses to pull the hundreds of wagons loaded with grain to and fro from the princely estates. Many Jews' livelihoods were tied to the Rubinshteyn's estate.

Sokolov's markets were well-known in Poland. There were hundreds of princely estates and wealthy noblemen's villages in the region. On Thursdays, market day, thousands of peasants drove in with wagons heavily laden with grain. Hundreds of Jews on that one market day. It did not take a special granary to hold all the merchandise. One bought a sack of grain, caried it to the Rubinshteyn's estate and sold it again. Everything circulated around the “Imperial Estate” on market day. The stairs never rested: Women who dealt in chickens, Jewish butchers with kosher meat, fishermen with big carp and pike, wives with big pails of milk, wives with goose fat to spare, stall-sitters with all kinds of goods – baskets, raspberries, strawberries to make various juices and preserves. In the kitchens stood stout, overfed maids with thick, made-up lips, preparing and cooking the tasty dishes. The sweet, tempting aroma of the roasting meats wafted over the estate.

Butshe's children had generous hands for giving charitable donations. If someone need to set up an impoverished Jew, make a marriage for a poor bride, if someone was sick and had to be taken to Warsaw to a hospital or if some wagon-driver lost his horse and had to buy another – one went first of all to the Rubinshteyn children.

All the poor folk from the area and from the town were frequent guests. If someone of the poor folk was sick, they ran to him with a little soup. Whoever got a chill and needed a little raspberry juice for sweating, they went to the estate.

And in all the campaigns for Keren kayemet and Keren ha'yesod

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they requisitioned the estate first thing. If one made a ______ for a social purpose, each couple wanted the main street allocated for it, since that's where the “Imperial Estate” was located.

Up there on the second floor sits Reb Butshe Rubinshteyn on a soft, cushioned chair like a king, his stately appearance bright with aristocratic old age – the holiness of generations. He counts out the money for the seller of the grain he has purchased with his blue-veined hands. Butshe Rubinshteyn is a Ger Hasid, he prays at the Ger shtibl. In his younger years he traveled to Ger, to the Sfas Emes. He hates disputes and does not mix in community controversies. He is also a learned man. All the town's scholars come to his room to study a page of Talmud in their free time. He secretly supports several Hasidim. The town knows about it.

The town scholar Meyshe Aron Melamed/the Teacher is always with him at his house. When he saw that Meyshe Aron was going about without warm clothes in the winter, he himself had a tailor make a fur coat for Meyshe. And the Talmud scholar Mendl the Rov's – the son of Idl Plotsker, the former town rabbi – was like a member of the household. Everyone knew that Butshe the vinegar-maker supported Mendl the Rov's.

After Butshe's passing the children operated the businesses by themselves. The estate remained the same. They did not disgrace the memory of the father. And his household with the maids, with the charity, with all the town's patronesses and needy ones – his wife Feyge, the grandmother of the estate, carried on. The children paid her for her partnership. She continued to rule of the “Imperial Estate” like a duchess.

Feyge Butshe's was a tall, broad Jewess with a face as round as a plate. A fleshy double-chin like an overstuffed turkey folded, collected, under her charming chin.

She had a pair of large, wide-open blue eyes. She took pride like a peacock in her polished silk and velvet bonnet, hung with silver bangles and colored beads.

When she spoke she drew out every word as if she were asking for something. Her language, her diction, was womanly, heart-felt, as if she were reading the Tsene urene aloud.

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Her glance, her bearing, was just as if she had been specially born in order to feel sorry for someone, to be able to sympathize with another. Her pity for people suited her. If not for all the needy, sick, and widowed who came to her to pour out their bitter hearts, she would not have had any flavor in her life and she would have been bored in God's world.

Feyge had to consider, examine and speak expertly about the materials, the Persian lamb fur coats, that the “Imperial Estate” would purchase in Shedlets and in Warsaw.

She had a separate cashbox, a special fund for loving-kindness and charity. Anyone in town who was pinched, in need of a little support, would go the Feyge Butshe's. A couple dozen serving girls worked there over the years between the World Wars, girls from “King of Poverty's” properties, or the Jewish poor, who lived near the bathhouse in Yankl Dovid Gitke's old run-down houses.

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Feyge helped all the serving girls who worked in the estate, making marriages with craftsmen, wagon-drivers and porters. All the servants came to her as to a faithful mother, to speak from their hearts, to tell her how their men were treating them; also

when they needed help because a child was sick. The only place for them, someone who would understand, would sympathize, would help them, was Feyge Butshe's.

Her kitchen was always full of the town's patronesses and the regular wives who came to ask for a little broth for a sick child. The widow Sheyne Blume, the best-known fat Jewish woman in own, was always there. What to do? Throw her out? She had pity on her. She had once been wealthy herself. If only one didn't test it. What can a sinful person know about what tomorrow will bring? She always provided Sheyne Blume with rendered goose fat, baked her the cookies and gave her a bite to eat in her kitchen.

And Khayele the matchmaker, a Jewess who went around to the rich houses collecting money for poor, needy Jews and took the money for herself, ate the food donations herself, came to the kitchen every day with a pot for a piece of chicken flesh and a little broth for a sick woman…. The maids would often shout,

“Madame, you should not give her any meat or any broth. She doesn't give it to anyone, she eats it herself. Everyone in town knows about it.”

“Go now, go now, no worry. May she eat in good health, I will not be poorer for it,” Feyge would say to the maid and her double chin would shake.

When the porter Yisroel Brisker's wife lay ill, he took a little pot and clambered on his booted wooden feet to the estate, ducked his dense bull's head into Feyge Butshe's kitchen, twinkled his pitiful calf-like eyes and asked a maid to give him a little broth for his sick wife. Feyge took the pot from him, poured in some broth, stuck in a goose wing and a gizzard.

“Long life to you, Feygeshi,” Yisroel Brisker the porter thanked her with helpless humility. “Feygeshi, if my wife is in confinement, I will come to you again for a little broth.”

“Go on, you cow, may God help you so that you will not need to go to anyone.”

“That is impossible,” answered Yisroel Brisker and ducked out of the kitchen with his heavy steps.

How did it happen that all the poor folk knew to come to Feyge Butshe's? There were many rich people in town at the time. Was Aron Karpels of small-time wealth? Or was the former forest merchant Pinkhas Puterman, before he was burned out, barely affluent? And now all the newly-rich war merchants?

Were all the good qualities of Feyge Butshe's taken over from her husband Butshe the vinegar-maker, or did she bring them over from her youthful years, from her father's house in the Peterkaze, the farmer Idl Ber?

In the courtyard of Libe the baker's house, in a cellar, born of poor parents who made paper bags and wallets, Arye Tsibule was suckled in poverty and want.

[Page 714]

Many mothers wished their children would take to study as he did, and learned Jews predicted that he would be a great Talmud scholar. He had the mind of a genius!

He did indeed astonish with his grasp and brilliance. Reciting a hundred pages of Talmud by heart was one of the lightest things for him. He had an easy-going, playful nature. One could not see any sign of the oppression because of his poor, wretched circumstances. His clever eyes twinkled with confidence and optimism.

He left the yeshive along with the other hundreds of pupils in the storm of revolution, social and national upheaval in Europe - the awakening energies that lay buried in the depths of the Jewish masses thirsting over the generations, spread like a volcano over the yeshives in the Polish-Jewish towns. The tidings of redemption of the Balfour Declaration, the longing for a Jewish redemption and for a better, finer life and their own Jewish land, the awakening of the thousand-year dream, deeply shook the old Jewish religious-conservative life that had formed in Eastern Europe.

The bells have sounded, When bronzed youth Are struck with the will To quiet their anger At the lost years…

(Meyshe Kulbak)

The Sokolov yeshive did not avoid the outbreak and crisis that Polish Jewry endured. The ideological and political split between Zionism and Agudas Yisroel, between the Zionist Fund and the rabbinic “ransom money”. As from a collapsed bird nest, many yeshive pupils burst out flying, running, in various ideological directions, a few to extreme leftist camps. Arye Tsibule elected the golden mean, joining political Zionism and Hebrew literature. For him it was the logical continuation of the old ways according to the universalist wave, until Khayim Nakhman Bialik's “Ma-in nakhalti shirati” and Yosef Khayim Brener's “Memak habekha”.

In his young years he was rather taken with himself, was

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even a bit prideful. The other youths had respect for him. Everyone knew that he was more intelligent and more capable than they. He was considered a wonder-child. To sit with him was a real pleasure. Even the women were taken with him, although he was not handsome. He gushed over with wisdom and humor, not a bit vulgar like some of the local youths. Happy, hearty laughter flowed from him as from a clear, pure spring. He could improvise, could imitate speakers and party activists who spread their “knowledge” through brochures and newspapers. He was one of the finest speakers in the town, with beautiful diction and a finely-honed literary Yiddish. His physical appearance was a little distracting but the audience loved to hear him speak.

He was the darling of the Friday-night checkers evenings at the Zionist “Merkaz”. He had and knew what to say, not like all the other empty fools. I will never forget one experience, as the image comes to mind often:

The great Jewish poet H. Leyvik visited Sokolov on his trip back to Russia. Jewish youth from all the surrounding towns came to hear an elevated, learned Yiddish word from the esteemed guest. The wooden building of the fire station near the ritual slaughterer's house was full. It was as quiet and still as yom-kiper before kol-nidrey. My friend and fellow-member, the essayist Gershon Pomerants, beaming with joy, with a disheveled mop of hair, offered words to welcome the esteemed guest. All the speakers, like frightened sheep, tangled their tongues and murdered the language. Arye Tsibule shuffled up to the podium to greet H. Leyvik:

“Esteemed friends!” he began, “H. Leyvik does not belong to those poets who have locked themselves up on the Olympic heights in an ivory tower and do not see the suffering and human loneliness. Leyvik carries within himself the distant snowy Siberia and the chains on his body of the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed masses.”

The great poet answered him: “I have been drawn from great, fat America here to you, here among you, great things are born in poverty.”

Arye Tsibule was well read in Hebrew and Yiddish literature. He had a phenomenal memory, a special facility to imitate precisely every person, exactly as he could

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recite hundreds of pages of Talmud by heart, so he also remembered stories, poems and essays. He wove them into his speeches. Is it any wonder why he excelled with the fine speeches?

He was an activist and an educator with the Zionist party. When his party united with the right “Poaley tsion” he felt that it was not a suitable match. He was the only one in town who said “No”. It was beneath him, the “rich capitalist” son to be in-laws with the Marxist Poaley tsion revolutionaries. Perhaps because of his Hebraism? He had no intention of going into the Yiddish school organization. He went right to the “Hisakhdus” and became a Hebrew teacher. His parents then moved out to Warsaw, suffering, living in the worst conditions. Arye made a living from Hebrew lessons in the big city of social conflict and struggle - the poverty of Niske, Shliske, Smotshe, and the rich's spoiled, capitalistic, comfortable and extravagant life in the big city, the social paradoxes, the on-march of the socialist and communist parties, the great victories in the Parliament and city council elections. The powerful, imposing May Manifesto, the many-branched professional and cultural unions tore at him. Friends who met him came back to town and related that Arye Tsibule was off on extreme leftist paths. He was not yet an official party member but he was standing at the threshold.

I had the opportunity to meet with him several times. In 1929, at the Congress for a Working Erets-yisroel in Warsaw, while the chairman of the Socialist International Dr. Emil Vandervelde and the representative from the Histradut Ben-Tsvi were participating. The Poaley tsion activists Yitsik Skale, Henokh Zayonts and I had h taken a guest card and gave it to Arye Tsibule. Then we sat together in one row at the Kaminski Theater on Obozshne where the Congress took place. When all the speakers had spoken, Arye Tsibule joked in his style, stuck through with anti-Zionist barbs. We tried to start a dispute with him. He did not give us a chance but turned around and ignored the discussion with a pair of intellectual word-plays. We knew that his “leftism” was for him a temporary, political acrobatic, the socialist rockets that were then very much in the mode of a large part of the Jewish intelligentsia.

A very short time later he separated himself from the

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modern fog, went back to the main road, settled in a provincial small town as a Hebrew teacher, traveled around the neighboring towns giving lectures about Hebrew literature. The ascendency of Zionism, the great migration to Erets-yisroel, inspired him to join the united Poaley tsion Party. He was sent to Lodz as Secretary of the Fleysher Union, which had moved to the right Poaley tsion. Arye Tsibule became an energetic community activist, often writing articles and correspondence in the Poaley tsion daily newspaper “Dos vort”, under the pseudonym “Artsi”. He came to Warsaw for all the conferences and meetings. Strangely, when we met we always diverged on the idea of political and social management and tactics. When I became a follower of Borokhov, a “Yiddishist”, he became a follower of Gordon, a Hebraist; when I approached Hebraism, Gordonism, he became a fiery Marxist, an Internationalist, dreaming of the Chinese revolution. When the great leader of the Erets-yisroel labor party, Ben-Gurion, closed the agreement with Zhabotinski, he upset the entire movement. It created two sides, for and against. I was in Warsaw then, and belonged to the nay-sayers. Arye Tsibule was for the agreement.

With the first German bombardments he was killed fleeing from the city. Someplace along the road near Lodz, he lies buried in a common grave. May all Sokolover, in all countries, from time to time recall his luminous memory!

A youth group with H. Leyvik (third from left) during his visit in Sokolov in 1930

Hershl Grinberg never had any time, he was always teaching and cultivating himself. There was no one to learn from - the only teacher, Berl Meter, knew quite good Russian but Hershl managed to learn it without him. And he did not admire Berl Meter's grammar, so he, besides his kheyder knowledge, learned Hebrew well enough for reading TaNaKh.

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came to Hershl. They also went to him to learn playing and Hershl became a teacher of languages, music, and bookkeeping.

Hershl, Secretary to the mayor during the First World War, was the actual mayor since the German mayor was a party-goer who took no time to lead the town, and left everything to him. Hershl was the actual head of the town, and he was not put there by any political party or society. He began as an ordinary office worker, and by his many kinds of knowledge and language abilities, served city hall very well.

Nonetheless he ruled the town, and no one ruled him. We considered this a great morale strength and saw in him a power for our people. His calmness was a marvel, in all his speech and relations with people and all his activities, everything was calm and measured. Such unheard-of calm in life is only possible when deeply rooted in a person's soul.

I want to add Hershl's tirelessness, private saintliness, and good deeds for justice. (A large part of the monies was his own.) He saw to it that town funds were used for the food banks and distributed to the needy in that era of hunger and starvation. He also, on his own initiative, began to rebuild the buildings that were destroyed in the big fire in the 1910s and fill in the long, deep pits from Ali Shteper's houses by the river as well the so-called sand pits. But the crowning achievement was the restoration of the shul, in particular the new, beautiful, fine Torah ark - which Khane Peske's and her women's group also had a hand in - and the eye-catching painting of the shul, completed by a famous painter from Mezritsh, an artist in his craft (recommended by Meyshe the Rov's). The painted animals and birds looked alive. The large plaza around the shul was illuminated and given a paved sidewalk. Finally, Hershl surprised everyone with his fine, expensive gift, a large lamp hanging from the ceiling over the Torah-reading table. When one walked into the shul one could not pull one's eyes away from the painting and the hanging lamp.

In 1919 Hershl and his family moved to Warsaw where he

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became a publisher of books and journals and founded a printing company. He soon earned great loyalty among the printers and publishers there, as well as the family of writers. There were times when his house and printery were a literary union in miniature, with editors, writers and publishers meeting there.

Hershl Grinberg's house was also the meeting-point for people from Sokolov who came to ask his advice about their concerns. Thus, the great Warsaw also benefitted from Hershl's good qualities.

Hershl, his wife Rokhl and their children Khayele and Motele were murdered during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, may God avenge their blood. Their son Ayzik survived in Russia, and the eldest daughter Hela with her husband Meyshe Zayonts (son of Rov Aron Asher of blessed memory), who are in Israel.

Hershl was killed at the age of fifty-five. And that was his unassuming tombstone, as unassuming as his life.

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soldier standing guard he would not move one step. And he took those same good qualities into the Poale-tsion Party and into his communal activities.

When someone would ask him where he got such a drive to be a party leader, he would answer “If there is an empty place, I go into it: In a place without a person there is a herring.”

Imagine if it had not been as he so modestly expressed it. His ability only helped to take in everything around him and adapt it to this or that frame of social ideology. Alter could conceive an idea down to its foundation. Having been in Bialystok for all of a year and a half, he was elected a member of the local Jewish Council; in his thirties he [a line of type appears twice] had a firm base, where the artisan could became a member for a small contribution and receive merchandise on credit and on installment payout.

And indeed the artisans and the Right Poale-tsion Party sent him to the Jewish Council, also electing him as secretary of the artisans.

People saw Alter's organizational abilities and his idealistic devotion and delegated him to the Central Committee of the Right Poale-tsion Party as a provincial representative; and as Avrom Bialopolski was head of the Right Poale-tsion in Warsaw and was also on the committee of the “Keren-hakimas” in Poland, he asked Alter to better organize the work of the local Keren-hakimas. And once again Alter was in “a space without a person”, and he reorganized that work.

Thus he sacrificed himself on four altars: Party, artisans, elected official and finance (in the “Keren hayesod” work). Here he abandoned his workshop and went from being an official until a livelihood was a further stage. Then Khave, Alter's wife, a businesslike woman, took a package of leather at wholesale price (perhaps even underpriced) from Shmuelke Khaym's (Shnayder) the leather merchant to her brother Shimeon in Bialystok, sold it at retail to the artisans, and saved the family from disgrace. She was a devoted Party member, but “man cannot live by bread alone” and Khave could barely earn enough for bread. After that Alter was designated as an instructor for “Keren-hakimas” in the Bialystok region, with a salary.

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This began a whole new public service for Alter. He traveled out to Bialystok province for the affairs of the community, and also concerned himself with strengthening his Zionist work, thereby improving his public-speaking abilities. He then founded the “Ha'oved” in that region; his wife Khave helped him in that as well.

Alter Shuster was born about 1898. After the death of his father (Yenkl Shteper) the eleven year-old Alter learned leather cutting for shoes. But he also began reading all kinds of literature very early and was considered knowledgeable about Borokhov-ism while still quite young.

He made aliya to Erets-yisroel in 1925.

His wife Khave and their child arrived in 1926, and both became sick. The doctors told her and the child to go home immediately. Alter remained in Erets-yisroel and earned a living, saving up money to bring Khave and the child back to the land. In 1932 he traveled back to Bialystok, where Khave's family had lived earlier.

In 1937 Alter was ready to make aliya with his family and again encountered obstacles, but in spring of 1939, though he was completely prepared, their aliya was dragged out until the outbreak of the war.

Alter was arrested in June of 1941 in Bialystok and soon the next day Khave and the children were shipped off to Russia. When the Germans began the war with Russia the gates to Russia were opened. Then the Germans came in, and shut the local Jews up in a ghetto. Alter Shuster was killed along with them.

I was still a child when we lived in Yom-tov's houses, before Ali Shteper bought them up, and Berl Meter lived in one of the rooms. We khumesh boys would stand outside someone's window and never tire of listening to his clear translations of khumesh, and the differences from our rebi's half-word and un-clear translations mixed with RaShI's exegetical explanations. We were surprised even more by the order and the calm of the teacher.

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When Berl Meter finished the week's parshe in the khumesh and the children began to repeat it, it was like an organized choir. And one always wanted to shout out above the others, so he told him to be completely quiet and the “choir” went on learning.

“pashelenshtshike” parents. And if any of the pious hasidic children studied with him it was only for Russian.

Berl Meter did not go about dressed in short clothing. His long kapote looked a little shorter because of the long trousers over his short boots. The only modification was his exterior smoothly-straight shirt collar. His long, broad beard never had one hair out of place. But he could not bear to be called “rebi” , like the elementary teachers, but Teacher; or to let anyone make use of his whip.

Berl Meter's kheyder - although without any school furniture - was a little like a school because of the pupils always sitting in one place, of our calling him Teacher, of the cleanliness of the table and bench and of the room around it, and the special TaNaKh lessons, which in the other khedarim were not so

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clearly explained. And if he brought just a little RaShI into his lecture it was always in pure Yiddish. And if a child had a hard head and required a little extra labor to comprehend, Berl would take of tiny sheet of silk paper from his cigarette-paper folder, sprinkle in a little “Vishe-Srednye” tobacco to make a very thin cigarette, smoke, and without any impatience find an easier interpretation.

Suddenly a decree from the tsar was issued to teach in Russian in the khedarim and there was a rush by elementary teachers and community activists to the “authorities” to annul the decree. One late afternoon Elieyzer Shakhnes Rozentsvayg, a member of the council, met Berl Meter in the Bialer shtibl and discussed how to ease the decree if they could not rescind it. Then, next thing they decided to go to the old council member Velvl Tsibulie and later let Nakhman Dovid, the third council member, know, and he and Zalberfert went to see the Rov Binyumin Alin who also spoke good Russian. And it remained as Berl Meter had proposed - that since he was an officially- recognized teacher of Russian, he would travel to the inspector in Shedlets and sign up to take on the teaching of Russian in the khedarim. So he did go there and return with an official “certificate” that he was appointed as a supervisor over Russian lessons in the khedarim. In addition, the opening of a kheyder must be under the signature of Berl Meter. He also related that the decree would be annulled because the Poles were also strongly against it too. Soon there was almost no decree and we got away with just teaching the titles of the tsar's family.

From then on, the “razrashenye” hung beside the tsar's portrait and Berl Meter received a weekly stipend from the teachers, and that saved the quiet teacher Berl Meter from dishonor.

Berl Meter would come once a week (sometimes once in two weeks) to teach the titles by heart. The children had to repeat them in one chorus, then each individually recite the Russian Tsar's family titles.

Berl Meter was a teacher with a strong pedagogic talent and a deep knowledge of Hebrew and Russian. He had an influence on his pupils, in whom he planted a desire for knowledge and science. He also studied with children for half tuition

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and with some children for free (something not seen in any other teacher in town). He was also the best Torah-reader in town, and when they wanted to hire him for a paid position, he did not want it.

It seems that no one remains of his family in Poland. Dvore died in America in 1943 and her husband in 1948; he used to study with a group on Shabes for no fee. They left children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are all good Jews.

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