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[Pages 205-211 Yiddish] [Pages 99-104 English]
by Sam Rafel
Translated by Janie Respitz
Edited by Leon Zamosc
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In 1913 I left Gombin and came to America. I was a young man of 17 going to a strange new world. I had an uncle in New York, my mother's brother–in–law, but I knew I could not count on much help from him. Still, I decided to leave home because, at that time, the situation in Gombin had become unbearable.
Gombin had been a quiet, sluggish place until the late 19th century, when the arrival of worldly, secular ideas brought rapid changes and a great deal of excitement. The exhilaration, however, only lasted until the failed 1905 revolution, which led to years of Czarist counter–revolutionary repression. It was a period of terror, police harassment, and general disappointment and resignation. Gombin's youngsters were either sent to Siberia or left for America. There was an unsettling stillness in town. The fresh worldly winds that had briefly blown through Gombin had left everybody with an uneasy feeling. And what was happening in Gombin was also happening in all the towns and cities of Russian empire.
We could feel the anguish and emptiness at home. My only brother Chaim had been arrested during the revolution and was now sitting in a Warsaw jail. At the time I was 17 years old. I lived with my parents and three sisters. My father, Pinhas Schacher, was a tailor. He had a small workshop at home. Feeling suffocated by the depressed mood in the town, I finally convinced him to allow me to travel, promising that I would not go for long and I would return after a short time. My father understood my anxiety. He was an active person who gave a lot of his time to communal work. He was the manager of the society to Help the Sick and the poor Jews of Gombin would always come to our home for assistance. As a child, I had helped my father writing the notes that the sick gave to doctors and pharmacists. I myself had health issues, problems with my lungs, but my father did not stop me from leaving. Eventually, I embarked on a ship to New York.
At the time, there was no visa requirement. All you had to do was show you that had 25 dollars in your possession when you arrived at the port in New York. I went straight from the ship to my uncle's place.
I had learned to work as a tailor at home, but I arrived in America at a difficult time. I walked the New York Jewish neighborhoods stopping at the workshops of the small Jewish tailors, but I could not find work anywhere. Finally I went into a woman's clothing store on Houston Avenue and told the owner that I had just gotten off the ship and needed work. “Alright, you have a job in my store”, he said. I worked for a couple of weeks and he kept postponing my wages. Then, one Friday he said: “I'll pay you next Monday”. When I came back on Monday there was no sign of the store, clothes, machines or the Jew. He simply liquidated the business and disappeared.
I worked at a small trousers factory, and later at a bigger one. But I did not last very long, the bosses did not like my work. In one factory the only workers were the owners, a couple who were always fighting, and a young man who pressed the clothes. One day, when the owners fired the presser, I left in solidarity. The presser had a wife and child. We tried to develop our own business, but things went poorly and we did not receive any work.
I continued to work in factories but always for short periods of time. I had difficulty adapting to American conditions. In one factory, for example, I messed up sewing sleeves: all the work was returned and had to be done again. The boss immediately fired me. Nevertheless, after a year I had managed to save 180 dollars which I planned to use for a ship ticket to return home. I kept the money in Adolph Mandel's small bank. One day, unfortunately, Mandel's bank and many other small banks declared bankruptcy and I lost all my “capital”. That, and the fact that the outbreak of the First World War made sea travel impossible, put an end to my thoughts about returning to Gombin.
Eventually, I left New York for Newark, where some landsmen from Gombin were living, including Hymie Rubin, Abraham Shtiglitz and others. I worked there in various jobs until 1916, when I became secretary of the executive board of the International Garment Workers Union. My material difficulties ended and I finally started to fit in. In Newark I also met my wife, who had came from Gombin to America with her family in 1910. I began to earn more money and, as things improved for me, I began to think about Gombin and its poverty, wondering what could be done to help the needy Jews of the town.
At the time, the Gombin Jews of New York and Newark were trying to organize a systematic way to send money to Jewish philanthropic institutions in Gombin. In 1920, the Gombin Relief Committee of New York and Newark was founded by the following members: Max Jacklin, the Kraut family (father Simon and sons Teddy, Alex and Philip), Louis Green, Max Green, Ralph Rafel, Louis Koch, Abe Carmel, Abraham Itshe Zichlin, Abraham Max, Nathan Kleinert, Zishe Zichlinsky, Maitshik, Wolf Kesselman, Jack Sherman, Joseph Stern.
Five years later, after Hersh Karo arrived in America, the “Young Men's Benevolent Association” was founded. Their goal was to give money support to the Gombin landsmen arriving in America. The Relief Committee was also involved in this work: according to its bylaws, help should be given to the Jews from Gombin regardless of their location.
In those days I was the chairman of the Relief Committee. Our job was to collect money for a fund that we had created in Gombin: the Gemilat Hesed Kasse, which offered interest free loans to all the Jews of Gombin. The Joint Distribution Committee helped us with this work. The Joint matched the money we raised with an equivalent amount of its own and sent it to Gombin. Later, in the 1930s, similar Gombin committees were set up in Detroit and Chicago.
I went to visit Gombin in 1930. It is hard to describe the joy I felt after being away from my hometown for 17 years, and finally being able to reunite with my parents, my brother, my sisters, the rest of our family and so many acquaintances and close friends. I did not go empty handed. I brought a large amount of money from the Relief Committee, mainly for the Gemilat Hesed Kasse and also for other Jewish institutions. When I arrived in Gombin, my warm reception at home was followed by a big reception at the the Gemilat Hesed Kasse. The banquet was chaired by Itzkhak Shikorsky, his secretaries were Meir Zaideman and Abraham Tiber. They bestowed honors on me as president of the Relief Committee, but the honors were not only for me, they were for all the landsmen from Gombin who had participated in the American effort to send help to Gombin.
Attending the banquet were representatives from all the Jewish organizations and movements. There was a moving moment in which they gave me a gift, a golden plaque with the inscription: “To our honorary chairman, in recognition of his help”.
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The text reads as follows: “Mr. Sam Rafel, honorary president of the Gemilat Hesed Kasse in Gombin. We are grateful for your help to this association, which provides assistance to the Jewish community of Gombin. Signed by Chairman Itzkhak Shikorsky and Secretary Abraham Tiber, in Gombin, 9th of (month not legible), 1930” |
During the two weeks that I spent in Gombin I chaired many meetings, learned about the plight of the needy, and promised that our work in America would continue to grow not only for the Gemilat Hesed Kasse but for all the assistance organizations including the Beit Halehem, Linat Zedeck, and the Children's Home. It was exciting to see how the assistance work was handled in Gombin, and when I returned to America I tried to instill my enthusiasm in the hearts of the other members of the Relief Committee.
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Seven years later, in 1937, I visited Gombin again. This time I was accompanied by my wife and, once again, I did not go empty handed. They gave me a reception that was even bigger than the one I got on my first visit. It took place in the large Firemen's Hall and was attended by more than three thousand Jews, virtually everyone in the town. In Gombin, those were years of terrible poverty and anti–semitism, which was incited by the Polish government. This time, I had brought a camera and made a film of what I saw during the visit. Later, I showed that film many times in America and Israel. I believe that it has great historical and cultural importance.
During the visit, once again I spent many hours at meetings in which we discussed the plans to increase the aid from America. Before my departure, I reached an agreement with Gombin's Dr. Dzewciepolski, who agreed to provide free treatment to the Jewish poor and send us the bill at the end of the year.
All this was in 1937, when we did not expect that, two years later, Gombin and all the other Jewish cities and towns in Poland would be swallowed up by the fires of a horrific war. When the war broke out, we lost contact with Gombin. Despite that, I thought that we had to continue our work, collecting money and establishing a fund that would allow us to help the Jews of Gombin as soon as the war ended.
Our organization raised 25 thousand dollars but, unfortunately, the end of the war brought the dreadful news about the Shoah. During those terrible days, we received some letters from Jewish survivors from Gombin. We immediately began to help them with money, packages, clothing and medicines. We then started a movement to bring surviving Jewish Gombiner families to America. In a short time we managed to complete the paperwork to bring fifty families from refugee camps in Poland and Germany.
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We also decided to launch a large help initiative for the Gombin Jews in Israel. The first thing we did was to organize a Lending Society in Israel. At our meetings, people began to voice the proposal that we had to build a monument to memorialize Gombin. There was a suggestion to create a Gombin House in Tel Aviv, which would serve as a center for the Gombiner Jews. It would have a memorial hall and would serve as a gathering place for historical materials about Gombin. After much effort, the committee managed to obtain an available lot in Tel Aviv from the Keren Kayemet. We then built the house, with a beautiful Memorial Hall to accommodate 150 people. The names of the martyrs from Gombin were inscribed on one of the walls, illuminated by an eternal flame and covered with a curtain. Every year a memorial takes place in that hall for the murdered Jews of Gombin. In the front room, before the entrance to the main hall, one can see inscriptions with the names of the men's and women's divisions of the American relief organizations, including the names of their officers.
The Gombin House has a three–room apartment for a family of caretakers. We hired a Gombiner couple, the Segals, with the three children that they found and adopted on their escape road to Russia. As I write these lines, two of those children are already married.
In 1959 I went to Israel with my wife. The members of the Gombin committee met us at the airport. Most of the Gombiners in Israel came from their far off Kibbutzim and Moshavim to the memorial evening in Tel Aviv. That evening I showed the film I had made in Gombin more than twenty years earlier. I will never forget the people's tears when they saw their parents, relatives and close friends. I had also brought money from our American Relief Committee, and we spent quite a bit of time making plans to continue our work.
In 1962 my wife and I returned to Israel again. The Gombiners in Israel were happy to receive us again and expressed their appreciation for our work in America. There was another emotional memorial evening at the Gombin House in Tel Aviv.
At the present time, our organizations in New York and Newark continue to be very active. We have succeeded in bringing together Gombiner Jews from all over the world. We have also managed to instill in them a feeling of warmth, kinship and intimate friendship. Among the Jews from Gombin, family occasions are not just for relatives. They also invite the entire Gombin “colony”, all the other landsmen from Gombin who live in their communities.
Today, our most urgent undertaking is the publication of the Gombin Memorial Book. It is a sacred task that is on the conscience of all of us.
by Louis Philips (Pochekha)
Translated by Janie Respitz
Edited by Leon Zamosc
I am approaching the house that carries the name of my hometown. I experience a storm of emotions. Feelings of sadness that our former home no longer exists; and a feeling of joy that a clean white building has been built as a symbol of the vanished Jewish life in Gombin.
I am now standing in front of the building that must eternalize the memory of the destruction. A mental image flashes in my memory – a moment, as I lay in the shade of the Gombin forest reading, or perhaps I should say praying over, Herzl's book “The Jewish State”. A cloud covers my thoughts: there was a land which was ours – yet not ours… But now, I am standing in front of a Gombin House that was built on our land, in a Jewish country of our own. I happily climb the wide stairs.
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The whole house is filled with dazzling light. The crowd is gathering. The mood is shining and gleaming. Everyone is happy and radiant. The children of Gombin enter in a procession. So many people, close and dear to my heart. I am surrounded by dozens of friends. They gather around me. For them, I am Potchekha's son – their guest who comes from America!
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(from right: Rabbi Shrager, Frenkel and Yakov Finkelstein) |
The chairman, my dear Yitzhak Finkelstein, speaks first. After him our friend Shrager gives a sermon with quotes from the bible. They are telling me: “We are here to receive you, dear friend Potchekha, with open arms in our own Gombin corner.”
“Can you hear our hearts beating?” asks our dear friend Shrager. “Do you hear the blessings with which we receive all of our brothers and sisters from across the ocean? You have made things easier for us. We have been elevated after many years of subjugation. We feel good in our Jewish state and in our own Gombin House”.
Our dear friend Fritz speaks next. “We cling to this place, stubborn, often tired and exhausted, but conscious of the fact that here we are free and proud Jews. Here we can spread our wings and achieve wholeness, the completeness that we had missed for so many generations”.
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Their warm words will keep ringing in my ears. The scene of this day in the Gombin House will always stay in my memory. Among the crowd I see many dear faces, friends from my childhood in Gombin: I see Rivka Frenkel, now Halpern. Thirty five years ago I sent her a twelve–page letter from America. After all these years she still has the letter. Together, we once dreamed about redemption, and now the dream has become a reality…
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I look at the house and the beaming faces and I am overwhelmed by joy. I feel proud that we, Gombin Jews from New York, Newark, Detroit and Chicago, with pious devotion, helped build a bright Gombin House, brick by brick, here in this light–filled Tel Aviv, where thousands and thousands of stars are shining.
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| Memorial ceremonies at Gombin House, Tel Aviv 1967 | ||||||
I say to my friends Yitzhak and Yakov Finkelstein: “Look, the night is silent and calm, but there is a storm brewing in my heart. The evening has intoxicated me. My mood is feverish, I share your emotions, the air is Jewish, it feels like Sabbath, and now there is even an echo from our old town Gombin… Who can be happier than us?”
The south is covered by shadowy veils. Everything seems to be part of a magical story. The white wall of Gombin peels away from the darkness of the night. Is it real or just a dream?
After we leave the Gombin House there is a deep silence. Someone whispers to me quietly and firmly in Hebrew: “Hope to see you again soon!”
Written during the days of Sukkot, 1967.
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