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Kolki. What do you think? A crumb of a shtetl [town]. A small dot in Volyn. Where does one not meet Kolki Jews?! Spread over the Seven Seas. The communal graves near the Biala shores – this is the grave of Kolki. Here is…Kolki! But, individuals? Where were they carried away by fate? Through which roads and paths, forests and fields did Kolkers not give up their souls? Where does one not find drops of their blood, the last echo of their suffering?

Many were mobilized immediately at the outbreak of the war. Before they arrived in the places to which they were designated, they fell on the bombed roads or in fights with the German parachutists, or were lost completely without a trace. We know something about some, about many – nothing. And about everyone whose fate we do know, I do not want to speak. We would need volumes. Those who perished in their divisions but did not immediately enter the battle like those originating in the western provinces, many of them were taken to the hinterland, many in the labor battalions. For others, fate made complicated zig-zags that brought them to various armies. No, I will not tell about everyone and everything. In this chapter, only about three: about Naftali Inkeles, who luck brought to the Czechoslovak division that was created in the Soviet Union; about Yitzhak

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Sima, from Kolki, who went along the road of fighting in the Jewish Legion in the English Army, which consisted of Palestine Jews; and about Sidney Maks, who fought in the ranks of the American Army.

Trails and paths led from Kolki to the larger world. They took with them the spirit of their birthplace; the corner in which they saw the light, the road to begin life.

Naftali Inkeles was among those whose road in the war led through heavy physical work in labor battalions.

I remember Naftali as a small boy, but for a long time did not know that he was an orphan and that Motl Inkeles was not his father, but his brother. Motl Inkeles was a grain merchant and inherited [the business] from his grandfather and father. It would be said that Motl did not bargain with the peasants when buying. He only looked at the goods and proposed a price. And it was like a verdict that could not be changed. The peasants would scream, haggle, but could not get an “appeal” from the price given. Motl stood by his [price]. The peasants would finally give in and he would leave satisfied. He was always composed, stood as if in thought, with a finger on his lips and waited calmly until the peasant gave his agreement to the price. He was respected in the shtetl. Not less than Sender Szpic, the owner of a shoe shop; not less than the owner of an iron shop, Pinkhas Guz, as with Khackl Danciker and other respected merchants in the shtetl.

Naftali Inkeles belonged to the same type of people as his older brother, Motl. As a young boy, he began to earn an income that not everyone would have had the daring to do. Namely: with Yitzhak Verbe as a partner, he bought a barge in Pinsk and organized water transport for

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Lutsk. Peasants would pull the barge (loaded with wood) to Rozhyshche, to Sokil and back with a rope – take our goods. He was a daring man, this Naftali Inkeles. In the beginning, when he was put into a work battalion in a distant forest, he said to himself: “This is not for me. I was mobilized; therefore, my place is not here.” He began to search for a way to the army, to the front in the city Buzuluk.

No one can know what will happen tomorrow, even when he sketches it out. It had to happen that the events there in Buzuluk, of course, had an unfolding – an unexpected one. There, in Buzuluk, the Polish Army was organized in the Soviet Union with General Anders at the head. Instead of joining the fight on the Soviet-German front, the army because of its own political manipulations, went to Iran and the same base (in Buzuluk) became the territory on which the first division of the Czechoslovaks was formed. And so: among the soldiers of První Polní Prapor [Czech – First Field Battalion] was found a Kolker, none other than Naftali Inkeles.

After four months of intensive physical training and preparations, the division left in the direction of the front – to the west.

The stories are only told fast and easily. It took many weeks until the troop transport with the Czechoslovak military arrived at the front and began to take part in battles. After arriving in the troop transport, there was a difficult march of 350 kilometers [over 217 miles]. We walked at night and during the day we would hide in ditches, in the ruins of houses, in forests. We slept very little. There is always work for a soldier. Not that he looks for work, work looks for him. And this work, how does one say, it had scant appeal. In frost, in snow, in wind – walked. A short rest after 10-12 kilometers [6-7.5 miles] and further – onward, onward – until the morning. The frost goes through the bones, the eyes are blood shot from the frost;

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sleep made its demands. There was a desire not to get up, but to shout: “You can protest, but it will not do you any good!” The order is stronger than the man; it does not want to know any, “I cannot.” It always appears as one must – one can… The sixth night. We were closer to the front near Kharkov [Kharkiv]. Further along, we more often found murdered Germans. Bodies jutted out from under the snow, hands, feet and…eyes, eyes like round pieces of glass. It can be seen that the Germans had here received what they had earned. Heavy and light cannons, flame throwers, trucks and peasant wagons – all left in panic, if only to save one's life… Horses that had been shot, dead Germans. “Why did you come here? Who invited you here?” Came and paid with your lives!

The direct fight began. This [the town of Lenin] was for the Polish division – the beginning of the battles for victory. For the Czechoslovak divisions this was the village Sokoliv – in Ukraine.

From whom did I receive this information and then tell about it just as if I had been present? I was told this by Naftali Inkeles. However, Naftali Inkeles does not like to talk about his war epic as others do. He refers to documents – gathers them himself. You will learn from the papers about the countries and cities through which the Czechoslovak battalions went. His road was my road. And he began in the village of Sokoliv, where our battalion, První Polní Prapor, clashed with the S.S. from the Totenkoph [death's head – skull and crossbones] division.

I was patient. “Drew out” from Inkeles what I could and I returned to Warsaw from New York. I was not lazy and searched the documents in the Czechoslovak Culture Center in the Polish capital and I learned the rest there; I actually received confirmation of what I already knew.

Several former military men were called into the cultural center; others were contacted by telephone to get information about

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the course of battle in which Naftali took part. The current General Reichliov, with whom we had a telephone conversation, was truly moved. Oh, he remembered the soldier, Inkeles, very well, remembered him from Buzuluk. He had forgotten many names from that time, but this name he remembered well. One does not meet such families.

I learned the same thing, actually much more about Naftali whose inborn modesty kept him from telling everything. He maintained in one respect: “I was not any kind of hero. I was like everyone.” However, those Czechoslovaks with whom I conversed remembered, remembered very well the first battle. It was a very dark night. Snow poured from the black sky, mixed with rain, and it was dreadfully cold. Their hearts beat faster with the first acquaintance with death as during the first night with the one [spouse] destined for them. It was cold and it poured. But it would soon start, and it would become warm.

Naftali told me that the battle at Mczar River was difficult and many perished there: Czechs, Slovaks, Carpathian-Ukrainians and very many Jews.

My Czech began with the fact that it was very difficult, many victims.

– Against us stood the S.S. tank division Totenkopf [skull]. They were determined not to let us pass the frozen river. We received an order to cross it. We went through heavy fire from various kinds of weapons, through hell itself. Went through the screaming of the wounded, through the bodies of our dead comrades. When it became dark, the Germans illuminated the river with reflectors. We were pressed to the ice by heavy cross-fire. However, ice is not the Mother Earth, in which we could bury ourselves. The exploded ice was also a danger: its splinters wounded, mutilated…

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However, the survivors reached the other shore. Among them was our Kolker, Naftali. During the redeployment, Naftali found himself in the village of Archipovka. The Germans carried their entire fire-power there. Naftali was wounded there and he was taken to Kharkov [Kharkiv] with other wounded.

Medical locations, hospitals. And Naftali was again back in the ranks. No longer as a regular soldier, but an officer. The Czechoslovak division found itself with the Soviet Army at the Dnieper [River]. Kiev, the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, was across from them. Hundreds of meters [there are about 109 yards to 100 meters] divided them from it. The pontoon bridges being built by the engineers were being smashed by the German air force before they reached the other shore. We crossed the river with the help of hammered-together rafts from material that was found nearby; doors removed from the hinges, beams, boards, kegs, fences; everything that was still on the surface of the water and, naturally, also boats – all kinds and of various sizes, but the Germans attacked them with all means. The Dnieper flamed and burned. The soldiers swam in fire and blood, holding their rifles over their heads. The dead were carried by the current. And among those storming, without any strength present to stop them, was present a young Kolki man – Naftali Inkeles, a messenger from his birthplace to the earth.

The dead swam in eternity; the living in front! The goal: take Kiev.

Words by General [Ludvik] Svoboda were cited to me about this battle:

“Our soldiers heard my order just at the moment when previously unheard artillery preparations had begun. Our cannons, the Katyushas from our neighbors, hurled a sea of fire against the enemy. At each kilometer, more than 350 heavy artillery units served on the front. Not including in this were

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flame throwers, smaller cannons, heavy machine guns and the legendary Katyushas [rocket launchers]. During the course of 40 minutes, the fire was lit, broke, shattered and tore through the defense of the enemy. Nothing was left there except pits, human bodies torn to pieces, hundreds of burned tanks and S.S. men running from place to place as if dazed. After this, our soldiers moved from the spot.

Naftali had already told me that he and his group of scouts were among the first to enter Kiev. He added: I had never wanted to remain alive as much as then; my soldiers were creeping in somewhere. However, for a soldier, an order was stronger than the devilish fear. He overcame all feelings and only it, the order, was valid. The strength of the military consisted of this. Nothing could or must not stop the carrying out of the order. To do this one did not have to be a hero. The strength of the joint attack created feelings for everyone, of being an organism in which one is only a small living part.

Mountains of rubble were everywhere, ditches, pits, walls bent over that waited only for you go near them and then they would collapse and bury you under them. Soldiers with emotional intelligence hear, I think, their [the Germans'] devilish laughter at the collapse. The smoke over you is thick as if you were moving in the clouds. I think I see before me a street and suddenly it collapses. One has to move quickly in the depth of the alleys and not think about anything, nothing except this – going through and annihilating the enemy. In the twinkling of an eye, who makes the decisions running through a street, in hiding behind a corner – your dry sense, or something that is stronger than it – the instinct of life, some kind of feeling that prompts as a flash: “Do this and not that!” The spiritual condition of a person is different in battle, dynamic, colossally concentrated, operational. Who knows what! One, two, three: fulfill the order and remain alive. Win and remain alive! Be a sensible person! The

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bullets fly toward you from every window, from every door, from cellars, from attics, from chimneys, from the roof. All want your body, your life, and you? Live. So many victories are present in each minute that you remain alive. The air is suffocating. The water covers the streets, everything around burns. And you… Live and you fight! I was not even wounded in Kiev.

Here is a document:

Signature: “In the name of the President General [Ludvik] Sloboda”

At the Czechoslovak Culture Center, they told me that the War Cross is the highest military award in the republic and only given for special tasks in severe conditions.

Kharkov and Kiev were not the only phase of the journey. Naftali also remembered a series of places from his road of combat: Karistyn, Bila Tserkva; particularly heavy battles took place near the city of Zashkiv.

Naftali did not say a lot. A document:

I spoke to the Kolkers in New York. It was a long conversation about everything and naturally it did not follow the events chronologically. Only in a novel or in a film – where everything is not arranged as it is in the reality of life, where the material is clear and molded – can one make of it what one will, close one's eyes and transport oneself to the

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past, as if the present would unilaterally not be present and corrected, interpreted, and revived anew and created anew, is it possible to have harmonious order. Like all in life, a conversation is also a report of what one has seen, different from real life, and this means little chaos and more order – because it is already after the fact. I will not create the illusion of authenticity. I will try so that we should see Naftali as much as possible as he is in truth.

Suddenly, Naftali's story gets interrupted with digressions:

Our brigade stood near Rovno. Many Czechs lived there and they entered our military divisions. Approximately 50 kilometers [31 miles] from Kolki, we found ourselves there for a long time. Familiar ground, as is the manner in such cases, I began to look around and to think about what to do next.

I am not a Czechoslovak citizen. Simply, one can say, an accidental one, a lost one. I can remain in the ranks and can also, if I want, go away. No one will stop me and no one will look for me. I will not be taken in the army; I can choose whatever civilian work I want. However, what can keep me here? To what should I be drawn? To whom should I go? Everything has lost its earlier purpose and received a new one; a completely different one. In Kiev, I heard about Babi-Yar. The Kiev Jews lie there. For me Kiev is Babi Yar. And who do I have here around Lutsk? There is here Polyanka – several twenty thousand murdered. A grave. I have all of the faces that I saw here in my brain, even if I met them once. I remember their shops. I see them on their Shabbos [Sabbath] strolls. I see them in school, in the club. Lutsk is not here – Polyanka is here. Rozhyshche is such a sunny and beautiful shtetl [town]. Her young people are beautiful, singing… The houses are carved, colored. Where are they, where is everything? What do I have to do,

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a living one among the dead?! Kopachivka – is their grave. And my Kolki?! Not one Jew. Not any child and not any old man… Their grave is seven or eight kilometers [almost five miles] from the shtetl, at the Biala shores. One can cry at a grave; living on a grave, one cannot. Torchyn, Ludmir, Stepan, Rovno, Lokachi, Olyka – all over it is the same… With whom should I remain here. I see people around me. Life goes on, but my alleys are deadly quiet! The silence screams at me; the silence cries in me. Familiar places! There are no longer any familiar places! There is no home! I have to run away from this silence that knocks in my heart with dried out bones, with the last scream of thousands, with the insulting of everything that was so dear to me. I just now understand how dear this was to me and therefore the pain rages more sharply, more dreadfully in me. I pressed the submachine gun, my weapon of revenge, as if I were giving it a part of my pain. One can pray collectively, one can die collectively; being in pain, suffering one can only do alone and that is terrible…

– The brigade is my home – it “speaks” with fire. I left for Sadhora with the brigade, where all of the Czechoslovak divisions were assembled to form a corps.

– You ask if I had Jewish friends in the division? Certainly, and not just a few: soldiers, sergeants, officers. My captain Karber, was a Czech Jew. I remember some names: Cukerman, Drajlich, Ashkenazi, Eizensztajn, two Webers, one from Poland and the other from Moravská Ostrava. There were, in addition, Jews from Czechoslovakia as well as from Poland, particularly from the Lemberg region: from Drohobych, Stanislawów [Ivano-Frankivsk] as well as from Lodz and Lublin.

1944. Summer. We are busy with exercises. Exercises – this is the difficult military bread. How many of us were in Buzuluk and how many

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are we now? Almost a handful in a brigade outside Kiev, in a block of buildings near Sadagura [Sadhora]. Naftali is already a councilman, a leader.

Naftali remembered the road and reflected; he was silent. I let him be quiet. I already knew that the Corps left for the Carpathian [Mountains]. All roads and paths in the mountains were full of Soviet and Czechoslovak soldiers and the tanks, cannons, Caucasian cavalry divisions, trucks moved with them. Mainly, those on foot.

Heavy rains began. It poured without interruption. The terrain was wet and slippery, pasty. The mud adhered and did not fall off. As soon as German airplanes appeared, we fell on our faces into the mud. We lay in the mud for a long time and again began the march that was not like a march.

The Germans stubbornly defended themselves. The mountainous topography was as if created for defending, for fulfilling the task to do great harm to the attacking side. As if this was an entire chain of fortresses of which each must be stormed separately. The mountains, the Carpathians, were overgrown with vegetation and each line of trees rose high like sticks compared to those whose crowns were found at the roots of those that were higher in altitude. And on each such stick stood masses of mortar launchers, heavy machine guns, cannons, submachine guns and rifles, whose fire was aimed downward, toward the attackers; they showered the valley with heavy fire. And not only the natural fortresses helped them, but also the bunkers that they had built over the course of months on the mountain rims.

– For us, Naftali said, every altitude was a number that we had to “take.” Many mountains and hills changed hands many times and we had to “take” them again. And despite this, we could not forget all of the roads and paths to them were mined. All kinds of mines were hidden everywhere. Our sappers tried [to clear them] day and night. I already was bathed enough

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in fire – an old soldier, but here the feeling came that we lay as if strengthened by the piles of stones. Over them, everywhere, there are enemies, who lure you, who have sworn to annihilate you. Many of us here have “survived,” among us, a great many Jewish young men. I remember many faces, particularly one smiling face of a young Jewish man in my division. His name was Zusia Furman. He was deeply convinced that he would live to the end of the war. Here, we were killed not only by bullets, but also by stones that circled with great noise over our heads.

I was here for the entire month of September. At that time, I was in battles that did not cease over the course of entire days.

In the middle of October, we prepared to attack the city, Dukla. I was a captain. We received an order to break through a low mountain and to rise through the valley to the other side and consolidate on the rim of a high mountain. There to wait for further orders. When we found ourselves in the valley, we were as if in the palms of the Germans. Each one who found himself higher than us could shoot at us like ducks. However, an order is an order. At first, the Germans were silent. Perhaps, they had not noticed us and, perhaps, they wanted to catch us in a trap. However, when we reached the middle of the valley, they covered us with thick firing. We began covering the German locations with fire in order to ease the way for our attacking groups; save ourselves. We fell to the earth and pressed into it. I, with two comrades, tried to fling ourselves and run through the several hundred meters [100 meters = 328 feet] that separated us from the enemy. Suddenly, it grew dark for me as if I had been covered by night and with dirt…

How long I lay in an unconscious condition, I do not know… When with difficulty I slowly opened my eyes, around me it was

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[Mikola] Konishchuk – “Kruk”

Ivan Shishka

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night. I only saw the contours of the mountains and of the trees. When I tried to move, I felt pain as I was being stuck through with thousands of needles. I slowly moved my hand to the right and I found a dead comrade next to me; I did the same thing with my left hand and also tapped the dead body of a comrade-in-arms. I was in the middle and without a doubt, I was alive. The pain increased, particularly in my right foot. I understood that I was wounded. As if through a fog, I noticed that people were coming closer to me. They lay me on a stretcher and carried me away…

My entire body was covered with wounds. They, however – the wounds – did not threaten me with mortal danger. Only my right leg was cut through in its depth and length as if by a knife.

My war had ended. The usual road for one who was wounded began. From one medical point to another. In the end – by train to Lemberg. After a whole series of operations, I was transported by a medical train to Yerevan, where I found myself until the end of March 1945. I had left; they sent me to Prague as a Czechoslovak soldier.

– What further? Further you see, I am across the sea. However, previously I was in Prague. I will not erase Prague. The true “further” began in Prague. Here I met my other, best half. Here was the beginning of further… Children were born; we had pleasure from them. We have no complaints that we were destined to meet in Prague, a meeting that extends further… “From Hoda to Cush.” [From the Book of Esther 1:1 – “…he is the Ahasuerus who reigned from Hoda to Cush – India to Ethiopia.”]

Before me lie papers. They help me find my way. There is a paper that says that the President of the Czechoslovak Republic recognized Naftali Inkeles, the captain in the Czechoslovak Army with the War Cross, created in 1939 for heroism for the second time for fighting in the Carpathian Mountains.

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And another paper:

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics rewards Naftali Inkeles with the Medal of Victory over the Germans for his leading role in the Great Fatherland War [Great Patriotic War] 1941-1945.”

Sitting at Inkeles' in New York, can I forget the small Naftali, the orphan, who was raised by his older brother? Can I not think about Motl and his fate?

I know that Motl and his family perished, like all of the other Jews in Kolki. We succeeded in learning that when they murdered his wife and daughter, Motl succeeded in escaping. However, the neighbors rifled through his hiding place and caught him and dragged him to the Germans, beating him mercilessly. He was a healthy Jew, Motl, and he succeeded in surviving to escape from the hands of his persecutors. He was taken to the pits of the Biala shores with the second transport of other Kolki Jews. However, then something unbelievable happened. Tzirl Hatihs, the daughter of Chaim the peasant, prepared salt, took it with her and at the last minute before the execution, she threw the salt in the eyes of the Ukrainian policemen. Many tried to escape in the tumult, Motl, too. Tzirl fell cut by a series of bullets. I was told that in the forest, through which Motl ran, Germans were strolling and if he had not run, perhaps, he would have survived, but he ran, so the Germans understood that they had to annihilate this man. They did so. Thus perished Naftali's brother, Motl.

Naftali passed through the road of fire from the enemy. Barely survived: the younger brother was the revenge-taker for the blood of their parents.

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Yitzhak Sima

The fraternal grave of Y. Sima and his comrades in Italy

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It is not a good style to tell a story within a story. I know – this usage has long been out of style. However strange, it happens that one cannot do without it.

I will tell about Yitzhak Sima, but in my memory I still see him as a young boy in the frame of a certain environment. And the environment has no direct connection to his way of life. However, I do not want to avoid it, because it is a fragment, a picture of our shtetl that we also try to see when we think about particular individuals.

The Sima family was our closest neighbor. However, it was an uncommunicative family. They, the family members, were quiet; however, they liked to listen.

In addition to the four drugstores in the shtetl [town], there was a real apothecary shop headed by a real pharmacist. His family was Szkliar. I do not know from where he came to us, I do know that he learned Yiddish in the shtetl. He spoke a strange language – Yiddish and Russian woven together, in such a manner: Dubroye utro [good morning], a gutmorgn aykh [good morning to you], Shto slishno, vos hert zikh bay aykh [what do you hear], Zaiditye, zaiditye, kumt areyn [come in], Pozhaluista, bita zeyer [please].

As a boy, I would love to run into the apothecary shop and look in amazement at the shelves and at how the apothecary mixed various powders and liquids; weighed and made remedies. He would do his work with extreme care. In his free hours he was happy to go out on the porch, murmuring Russian songs. At night, esteemed Jews would come to visit him on the porch, among them, Yisroel Sima. They would sit and talk about worldly matters. Among them were men who

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experienced the world and really knew what to say and could narrate [a story]. Yisroel Sima would take his young boy, Yitzhak, with him to the conversations on the porch at night. I would look at Yitzhak and see that he was listening carefully. I would wonder, does he understand what the older ones are talking about? I understood very little. Szkliar would talk about monuments in Petersburg; another, Nusan Hersh, who had been in America, about New York skyscrapers; Shlomo Shlaja about “handsome” guests who stayed in his hotel.

After the war, when I began to ask about Jews from my shtetl, I learned that Yisroel Sima, his wife and daughter perished in the Lutsk ghetto; his younger son, Avraham, was mobilized in the Soviet Army and Yitzhak, the older one, what happened to him? I later read a pamphlet that was published about him in Jerusalem.

I learned that this young boy, who could listen so well, later could himself tell stories well. He used vivid language. Things in his stories took on life. He would have particular pleasure telling his young friends a legend about how Kolki was created:

– A young angel flew over the earth. He had a shetele [small town] in his bag. Suddenly, the angel noticed a magnificent valley; he looked at it with such excitement that the bag opened and the shtetele fell out. Of course, with such beautiful nature. This was Kolki – the shtetele that I lost.

As in other shtetlekh [towns], the Jews in Kolki worried about a practical purpose for their children – let them study in a Vilna TOZ [Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydowskiej – Society to Protect the Health of the Jews] school or in the Rovno [Rivne] ORT [Obshestvo Remeslennogo i Zemledelscheskogo Truda – Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor]. They took the food from their mouths to be able to stand their children on their feet. Yitzhak Sima was sent to study in the Lutsk Jewish gymnazie [secondary school]. He had an “open mind” and was a good student. He quickly became

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a real doer. He would organize excursions, literary evenings, political discussions. Gymnazie is gymnazie, but when one does not work on oneself, the road to spiritual gain is a narrow one, a small one. Yitzhak devoured books. The more he knew, the more he desired to obtain knowledge, the wider his interests. He studied and held readings to share his knowledge and his beliefs with others. He read about the history of philosophers, was interested in political economics, even strayed to [Karl] Marx, to [Friedrich] Engels, to [Ludwig] Feuerbach, to [Karl Ludwig] Börne.

Yitzhak was active in the youth organization, Gordonia [Zionist youth movement], became a member of its global central council, a member of the main managing committee of HaHalutz [The Pioneer – trained young people for agricultural work in Eretz Yisroel] in Warsaw. He belonged to my political opponents. However, he possessed in himself that which can be recorded as personality, a virtue that created esteem in the eyes of his opponents. During the years of misfortune in the Warsaw ghetto, Gordonia belonged to the anti-fascist block and carried out its last battle for the honor of our people, hand in hand with everyone who was united in this last struggle…

Where then was Yitzhak Sima? I do not remember when Yitzhak left and settled in a kibbutz [communal settlement] in Israel. A certain number of people from the kibbutz had to leave for the Jewish Legion of the English Army. They, the residents of the kibbutz, told me that they drew lots: Who? Among others, the fate to go to the Legion and to the front was drawn by a young man who had a wife and two small children. Yitzhak stood up and declared: I am alone, without a wife and children, it would be equitable that I should go to the army. And that is what happened. Yitzhak voluntarily left. He fought on various fronts and finally found himself on a transport ship that sailed in the direction of Italy.

From the ship, he wrote:

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“I cannot write where we find ourselves; it is a military secret, but I am full of hope, I and all of our comrades.”

I was inspired to do research about the fighting road of Yitzhak Sima. This, which I have gathered together, are slivers from which it is not possible to create an entire picture. Something is already present in the Jerusalem eulogy pamphlet that was published in 1945. I became acquainted with several facts in the Italian Institute in Warsaw. They are witness to the difficult fight against the Hitlerists that was led by an Italian insurgent brigade that thousands of Jews had entered voluntarily. The last battle took place in April 1945. It is told about that battle that it lasted for seven days without end. Suddenly, there was dead silence. On the 6th of April, at two o'clock at night, the Germans renewed fire in the village of Brisighella, near Paencia. The observation point of a company of the Third Regiment, which consisted of five young, Jewish men, was located in a ruin of a peasant house. One of them was Yitzhak Sima. All five perished under a hail of fire. In the morning, five burned bodies were pulled out. They were buried in a fraternal grave.

The noble Yitzhak Sima landed on Italian soil and took revenge. Took revenge for his annihilated parents and for all of the Kolki Jews whose bones are hidden in the ground at the Biala shores.

Two additional fraternal graves are united with the spirit of the last Kolkers spread over the Seven Seas…

I came as a guest to a Kolker in Baltimore, United States. At home [in Kolki], he was named Shlomo Maks. Here, his name is Sidney. One Polishizes oneself, one Russifies oneself, one Americanizes oneself, and they remain Jews…

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I sit, that is, with Shlomo Sidney and we talk about this and about that… He throws in a word:

– When I was in Berlin…

– I asked, when were you in Berlin?

– A story began! – Shlomo Sidney said joyfully – You do not know that I spent the war in the American Army and, in addition, as a volunteer. So I was when Hitler's Germany was devastated and the allies placed their united, powerful feet on the head of the smashed snake.

I became very curious. Where else but in the American army should a Kolki revenge-taker wander? – I did not expect this.

– Tell! Tell! How did you get here and where did you fight? – I stubbornly demanded of him.

Sidney did not let me ask for long:

– Telling this would last a day and a night, but I will make this short, in an outline, jumping, skipping; only that which will pop into my head.

– Speak – I said – speak and I will just listen…

He began a monologue that I provide as I can, better or worse, but nothing invented and nothing added.

As you know, in the house of my father, Dovid Kolikovicher, who was called that because of the village he came from, there was no scarcity. Thank God – my father was not a poor man. Alas, you know, that by us in the shtetl, when one [member] of a family began moving from the spot, other members of the household later began to move. When my brother went out into the world, he wanted to reach Cuba. At age 19, I went out into the great world. If only my sister, brother-in-law and their children had done so, my sister, Dina, my brother-in-law

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Ahron Kurc would not have perished in the village Koszice, my brother Oser and my sister Chana would not have perished in the Kolki ghetto and my father, a Jew, a strong man, would not have died of a heart attack in the ghetto. What an accounting!

I began my wandering road in Paris. I did not find any work there, so I tried my luck in Spain. It was no better there, so I left to search for my luck across the ocean and I arrived where no one should, in Cuba. I could not anchor myself there, either, so I traveled to New York. You understand: one does not run away from a good life. I left New York and finally stumbled upon Baltimore, where I live to this day. You see, it was not so easy for a young man from Kolki to find a small place in the larger world.

In 1942, I was not an American citizen. I was permitted to just sit at home. But how does one sit at home when the world is burning. Without a great philosophical and internal struggle, I declared myself a volunteer. They took me, sent me to California for a military education. There I needed to prepare myself for operations at the Japanese shores. Suddenly, I was taken to Washington and placed in an artillery division. At the end of 1943, the division was loaded on a military transport ship and in a convoy sailed to the shores of Europe.

I lack the words to describe the path to Europe. German submarines lay in wait almost the entire way. They did not give us any rest during the day and during the night. We were always dressed in rescue gear so as not to be swallowed by the waves during the danger. From time to time, the German torpedoes would blow up one or two ships in our convoy. During the day, we would see black smoke during such events. At night, a bomb found one of our ships loaded with oil and the ocean literally began to burn with a hellish red fire for a square kilometer [about four-tenths of a square mile]. The flaming tongues

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rocked on the waves and overflowed. It was a frightening spectacle and, we, the spectators stood ready to jump into the water at any minute. We were all subdued, but the fear of a death by fire in the ocean froze our hearts. We always had the feeling that death on dry land was easier than in the raging and, at times, fiery arms of the ocean.

We arrived in Marseille. We saw the destruction that our side had done to the German fleet close to the shore. Entire ships remained there that the Germans had tried to save, to remove. Later we saw hundreds of new airplanes that the Germans could not raise in the air because we did not let them have access to any fuel.

Swastikas, swastikas everywhere – on airplanes, tanks, intact and battered, overturned trucks with the wheels up. Swastikas on the arm of the still unburied human-snakes. Swastikas, everywhere swastikas, but no longer as signs of subjugation and world rule, but as symbols of defeat, of death, of conquest. Now, no longer a symbol of death of the other one, but of death for themselves; the symbol of their end! The Jews who did not see this cannot imagine what joy a Jewish soldier had at the appearance of a cemetery of Germanic humiliation, defeat, death, the death of a hydra that threatened everyone, a hydra whose frightening teeth were knocked out.

In the fight and through victory, I had the joy of going through France. I found myself in an advance intelligence group that directed the movement of the mixed and moving divisions. We pointed out targets for our artillery and corrected [the direction] of shooting. The mood was such that no one, I think, thought of the danger in which the group found itself. During the moving battles, we stood in danger of falling under heavy fire from the Germans when they noticed us or we found ourselves under fire from our own artillery

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when, God forbid, it made a mistake. In a village near Kassel, when we were moving in the direction of Hamburg, the Germans noticed our forward group and opened a hurricane of fire on us with flame throwers. The entire group led by the captain perished; only four wounded remained. I was among them.

I was brought unconscious to the hospital. I lay there for two weeks and was transported to a hospital in Holland. I was sent from the hospital to another artillery division. Among others, we liberated the Spicheren Mountain, the fields around which were considered as sacred because Hitler placed his feet here for the first time on French soil. White sheets fluttered in all of the cities we went through – a sign of defeat and surrender. How different the defeated Germans looked. What happened to their arrogance?! The “supermen” [“Übermenschen”] had a very pathetic appearance. They were ready to serve the victors like beaten dogs who had completely forgotten their courage of yesterday…

We saw with our own eyes the verdict of history over the men of murder and robbery and outrages. The verdict of history was as if stamped on the hypocritical faces full of flattery and readiness to obey. Those who last night had thrown deadly fear on the peoples who were held in a vise were dragged through all roads. Yesterday and today! Ah, how history took revenge, how it demands revenge, although it was not possible to remove the blood that was spilled across all of Europe because of the Hitlerists' greed.

I observed with terrifying sharpness the terrible difference between night and day when I was assigned to a group of officers as a translator of German into English. In the town of Gelnhausen near Frankfurt were large barracks. Everyone was thrown out of them to arrange a barracks for American soldiers. In the

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building, we found packs of letters. It is possible that this was previously a military post or, perhaps, the office of a censor. We packed the letters in boxes and sent them to a special location where they were handled. While going through the packs, we took several letters from the packs to become familiar with the content.

The opened letters were strangely alike in content – independently, if they were written to parents, to brides or to friends. They told about their heroic acts, [acts] against Jews; they shot twenty or so hidden Jews; they drove together into the synagogue an entire shtetl of Jews and burned them; others were not ashamed of boasting about how many French girls they had raped. The scoundrels illustrated some of their stories with photographs of scaffolds of those hung; pits with naked women, thrown in a pile; how they drove groups of naked women to the water to drown them.

This was all last night and the night before last. Now, the Germans, who cleaned the rooms, acted the comedy of innocent people who were ostensibly horrified by the work of their colleagues, sons, suitors. They [lied and said they] “did not know,” “did not have the least idea…”

Our officers wanted to take the villa of a rich German; they found an inscription on the door, Hier leben Juden [Jews live here]. They wanted to save their possessions, furniture, carpets, crystal and other things of value. However, the officers entered and found a frightened German. They cursed with youthful, military laughter. Made a joke: “Perhaps the man wants to lower his pants?!”

The French and Poles who were taken here to forced labor said that an English airplane had been shot down in the village. The pilots saved themselves with parachutes. They were surrounded by the local peasants who lynched them on the spot. On the basis of this information, our group worked

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to establish who the lynchers were; we learned very quickly who committed the murder. A brother and brother-in-law and their wives pointed to their own brother in the Hitler Youth and to a few neighbors. They were arrested and placed before the court.

In my work as a translator, I saw a great deal. If there is such a thing as being able to judge character, there was no better school needed. I willingly, unwillingly recognized people in their fundamental essence, in their core and I must say that one does not become an optimist from being able to judge character.

The peasants in the villages came running at full speed and complained that the strangers, those with power, had brought foreign workers here as well as people who had left the camps; they were looting, dragging away cattle, slaughtering pigs, cooking their chickens and meat in large cauldrons and fed everyone who just passed by, all vagrants and all workers who have left the bosses. They complained and asked for help and support. There were camps all over here; the people were terribly emaciated.

Our captain looked at the ostensibly wronged ones with a calm and sharp gaze, in which was found both irony and nausea, and said to them:

– I think that all of the people did not ask, thank God, why they were not killing you and were not setting fire to your houses as you did on their soil, in their countries.

The captain was a good, honest and naïve man – he was, incidentally, like the majority of decent people, convinced that the Germans would pay the debt they deserved for murder and robbery, for the death of the millions. He could not believe otherwise that a payment must be demanded. They should remember and not dare ever forget their terrible crimes.

I remember how a tall, German officer came, dressed up from head to foot; everything on him shined, with the same

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arrogance as if he was still taking country after country and now complained that the German officers were not receiving everything according to international law. Our colonel lost his usual restraint, turned red in anger and shouted with passionate, pressed lips:

– Quiet! Quiet! You have no other name in any language across the entire world than murderer! Get out of here!

So he who a minute earlier had still been an arrogant “superman” was transformed in a minute into an insignificant, small man. He lost himself, but soon straightened up, according to all rules, turned on his heels and with a Prussian stride left the office.

Our work in the region was finished. We traveled to Berlin. It was no longer the first intoxicating days after the victory. However, it appeared as if representatives from all of the people of the world had assembled on the ruins of the capital of hate to express their joy and their brotherhood. It is impossible to describe the mood. There was joy from the consciousness that the world had been liberated from a terrible nightmare; had breathed with full chests in the hope that the human race had the absurdity of war behind it. From today on – for eternity!

– The longing for peace and for goodness is not eradicated in a person. This the largest summary of everything…but…wait: I will show you something.

He stood up, left and immediately returned with an enameled insignia in his hand on which was an inscription in the Russian language: “A distinguished marksman.”

– I actually received this in Berlin. When I walked through a street with cast-away paving stones, I encountered a member of the Red Army. He looked at me, face to face:

– Are you a Jew?

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– Certainly, a Jew!

– I am also a Jew!…

We kissed. He removed his insignia and gave it to me as a gift. We drank up and warmly said goodbye.

– I keep the insignia as a relic. It is dear to me. I remember this resolute Jew in the Red Army uniform and think: “We were at all fronts and fought together and defeated the common enemy.”

– We must never forget this!

– And will not forget!…

Meir Czarta		Lajbke Chuk

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Since my encounter with Shlomo-Sidney Maks, I have lost the certainty that we succeeded in searching more or less for all of the facts about Kolkers who fought in various armies. Perhaps young Jews from our shtetl took part in all fights in the mountains and valleys, across the Seven Seas!

Naftali Inkeles		Shlomo (Sidney) Maks

Ester Biber-Mac		Yisroel Meniuk

During the war, the Germans prepared the same fate for all Jews. Therefore, the fate of many Jews was the same or very similar. Those who tried to resist the sentence that was placed on us in advance submitted their fate to the unknown. Although they comparatively speaking faced the same fate, there were variations.

So, for example, because of my relation to the events, I took my fate to a certain extent in my own hands. I will not speak so much about the ghetto as about me.

In June, when the war broke out, I was mobilized and sent to Lutsk. In Lutsk we were taken as prisoners by the Germans. Our regiment was housed at Krasne, near Styr.

The Germans immediately began to divide the Jews separately and the Ukrainians separately. No one had to spell this out for us. We understood: this was our end.

I sneaked out of the camp at night, crawled to the river and swam across it. I went through Kivertsi in the direction of Zofiówka-Trochenbrod. Many Jews had done the same as me. The Germans and the Ukrainian nationalists began to arrange searches for those who had escaped to the forests. They would shoot on the spot those they caught. I succeeded in reaching Trochenbrod. I waited there for a week and tried my luck at going to Kolki. I was extremely careful, did not act like an escapee, but quietly went through the alleys

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to my house where my parents, my wife and my children and my brother had lived.

I entered and saw our neighbors and other peasants from the surrounding villages tearing our bedding from the hands of each other. I could not control myself and, despite the deadly danger, began to shout. Seeing me, one of them took out an axe from under his belt and the others, around 10 or 12, grabbed something in their hands. I sprang through the door and began to run. I had an acquaintance, the tailor Cama Kalka, on the Christian street. He was not home and his mother would not allow me into the house. They already had an order to not permit any Jews to enter their houses. She carried out a little water and told me to go. At the same time, as if from underground, three strong tough guys appeared. One lay his hands on my shoulders and said: “Chodi na rabatu” [Go to work]. I understood what kind of work; I grabbed him by the throat and hit him under his stomach with my knee and began running through the gardens, jumping over fences and into the forest.

Later, I learned that they also attacked Yosef Kurland, Artshik the blacksmith's son in such a manner and began to drag him ostensibly to work. He was a healthy young man; they could not easily cope with him. Another gang of young bandits ran up and they beat him with metal bars and stones and murdered him on the spot.

I supposed that my family had left for Osova, leaving the house at God's mercy – my wife came from there. That is how it actually was. I took my family and returned to Kolki.

You already know what life in the Kolki ghetto looked like, Dovid, I will not repeat what you have already described. It was difficult for me to watch how my children starved. However, I later

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obtained good work at a place where peasants would supply food products, furs and straw for the Germans. We would sort this, pack and load it on trucks. I would specially work until late at night to be able to steal and bring food into the ghetto. One night when I was in the warehouse, the ghetto was surrounded and the first liquidation began. I will not speak about this because after this I did not recover for days. Everyone who was not in the ghetto then escaped into the forest.

Some time later I also sneaked into the ghetto where there were very few people remaining in order to return to the forest with a group of young men and to start looking for partisans. It was said that there were many Jewish partisans in Polesia. There were no enthusiasts for going into the forest. We could not go into the forest with children and we did not want to leave our children. I thought: what happens to am-Yisroel [the Jewish people] also will happen to Reb Yisroel [the Jew], and I remained. What can I forfeit here? Life? – Scarcely a bargain.

Once I heard a voice in my sleep: “What are you waiting for? Wake up and disappear!”

I woke up. I was sure that a living person had spoken to me. I looked around and saw no one. When I went out to the street, I saw that other people were not sleeping. I said:

– Jews, I am leaving! Everyone was silent.

Near me I saw Tatshe Berl's son, the 10-year-old Avrahaml. His entire family had already been murdered. An orphan! Where would he go?

– Come with me, Avrahaml, I said to him.

– I am coming, he answered.

We both hid outside Kolki and waited until the Ukrainian policemen moved away and then we ran across the road and left…

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The final liquidation of the Kolki ghetto took place the same night. Those with whom I had just spoken last night and proposed going away already lay in the pits at the Biala shores.

Avrahaml and I left for a Polish village – Golodnitsa I entered the first house, to Vladek Barycky. I pushed Avrahaml into a stall. We knew Baryck and I was sure that he would not refuse to help. He gave me a piece of bread and told me to go quickly into the stall. I crawled in with the fellow up to the stall attic and Baryck brought food every day. He was sure I was alone. One night I sensed someone sneaking into the stall. At first, I thought that they were spying on us, but looking into the darkness I recognized that this was Moshe Szlejen from Kolki. I supplied him with a ladder and quietly called:

– Come here!

And we were a group of three and Barycky was still certain that he was bringing food for only one.

However, once he became suspicious and quietly sneaked into the stall, went up to the attic and found all three eating the potato that we had received from him.

Barycky, hiding, let us finish the banquet and unexpectedly we heard his voice:

– Dear ones, I am afraid. Leave here! Only when you are very hungry, come in quickly at night to me. I will help you all. Now go to the forest and that is it…

Silently, we left for the forest and there met another Jewish boy, another Avrahamele. Sender Szlejen's son. And then… We became a group of four: two boys and two adults. Not far from the village Golodnitsa was a hamlet of several houses; there

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lived Ukrainian neofitn [converts] who were called Shtundists [evangelical Protestant groups]. They broke with the Pravoslavner [Orthodox] church and became Baptists. We knew that although they were fearful, too, they would not give up a Jew to the Germans. We could get a piece of bread, an old garment, a pair of shoes from them. We created a hiding place in the forest and the Shtundists greatly helped us.

Once Potap, a peasant from the hamlet, warned that we should escape because the policemen from the area were searching for Jews. I believed that I had to accept what Potap was saying and disappear from here. But Moshe Szlejen said:

– A shame to leave such a pit. No one would find us here.

The misfortune arrived. Suddenly, policemen surrounded us. We ran on all sides. They opened fire on us from all sides. I noticed how Avrahaml, he who had left the ghetto with me, fell. From the beginning, we had talked about the spot where we would need to meet after an escape, if it came. I waited at the agreed upon spot all night and none of the others showed up. Waiting longer made no sense. I left to look for them in Golodnitsa, at Vladek Barycky's. I was sure that if one of my partners was still alive, he would definitely go to Vladek. I entered his stall, sat on the bales and began to wait. Finally, the gate opened and Barycky entered. As usual he gave a friendly answer to my dzieńdobry [good morning], just as if he had expected to find me here. He went out and came back with bread and milk. He said to me:

– Remain here. What is ordained will happen with God's help. I stayed.

Later I learned the entire frightful story of what had happened to Avrahamele Szlejen. The boy ran fast and escaped from his persecutor.

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He ran very far, got lost in the forest and could not find the agreed upon place. At night, the Ukrainians caught him. A fresh portion of bread was found in his pocket. This was from the bread that we had received from the Shtundists. It was so hot then that it actually burned our hands. The Ukrainian policemen flogged Avrahaml with the ramrod (stiff wire for cleaning the rifle) from the rifles so he would tell them from whom he had received the bread. At the same time, they beat him over his head, back, hands and feet with the ramrod. Blood poured from the child. There was no intact limb left on him and Avrahaml, like an adult hero, did not reveal his benefactor. A 12-year-old, he understood that five or six cottages of the good people from whom he received the bread would be erased from the earth and their residents murdered. The longer Avrahaml was silent, the wilder his torture became. He died, the small, true hero, under the blows of the ramrod and did not reveal…

I was told this by Piotr Barycky, Vladek's brother. When he told me about the execution of a Jewish child, he screamed in pain, screamed in pain and intensity for [the boy's] heroism:

– Such a small child! What a spiritual one, what moral strength the boy possessed! Books need to be written; songs sung about one such as him! This is a hero; this is a sacred one.

Thus Avrahaml Szlejen left the world.

Piotr Barycky became strangely quiet, stood with a bowed head. Then he tore himself from the spot and, as one who felt guilt for the cruelty of his fellow man, ran away, not returning.

Vladek Barycky had taken a risk. Someone denounced him, that he was hiding a Jew in his stall. At the last minute, we succeeded in escaping into the forest.

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– Where does one run? He said – to Piotr? Where else? He, Piotr, lived in Tarazh, a Polish village. I sneaked into the stable. He entered at dawn and when he saw me, he cried out:

– Oh, Jesus-Mary! Sender! You are alive? Last night, Jews were killed in Golodnitsa; someone denounced them.

I certainly looked terrible. According to his voice, according to his eyes, I saw that he was very pleased that I had avoided the fate of others and was alive. Piotr left me alone, hid me for the entire winter, until Wielkanoc [Christian Easter). I lacked for nothing, just as if I were a family member. I would eat and drink the same as everyone else, shaved and washed in the house. His entire family, his son Janek, his two young daughters, everyone knew that I was hiding with them. They were all always on guard and protected me from an “evil eye.”

When Wielkanoc arrived, he came up to me and said:

– Come down to the house. Sit with us at the holiday table.

I began to beg him:

– Let me be. It is good for me here, too.

I felt that I did not have to go down; one must not test fate. But Piotr did not leave:

– It is a holiday. You are my guest; an invited guest. They are resting. No one will stick their nose in.

How could I refuse? I entered the cottage with him. The table broke under the weight of the foods. I had long forgotten that something such as this was present in the world. We spent time peacefully when suddenly a wagon stopped near the house. The door opened and his father-in-law and mother-in-law appeared on the threshold. They had not let them know they were coming and suddenly decided to visit their daughter for the holiday…

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According to Piotr's face, I immediately understood that a misfortune had occurred. However, nothing immediately happened. The father-in-law and mother-in-law sat down at the table and the father-in-law began to pour himself a glass after a glass [of whiskey]. A glass after a glass without interruption. And when he became very tipsy, he stood up with difficulty, came over to me and pointing at my eyes with his fist began ranting:

– Do you know why they injure you? Why they slaughter you? Because you nailed our god onto the cross.

He waved his fist in my face as if he would soon lower it on my head. His children began to calm him. However, he would not be calmed and raged even louder.

I stood up, looked at him and was silent. What else was there to do but be silent? I felt sorry for Piotr. The scene was very hard for him; harder than for me. It was a humiliation for him and he did not know where to look.

Suddenly, the father-in-law shouted to his wife:

– Come! I do not want to be under the same roof as the Jew! He dragged his wife, put their things on his wife and himself and both emerged outside full of anger.

Piotr approached me: Escape! I beg you. Escape to Vladek!

I did run there. However, several days later Vladek came to me:

– Now you have to leave the stable. You cannot be here any longer. It is warm now; you can go to the forest. I found a gun for you. An old one, actually from the First World War, but it can be shot. I have a little ammunition for it. Go; you will meet Vava Wajnman in the forest.

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I knew him, Wajnman. This was the son of Avraham the hatmaker. Barycky showed me exactly how I could find Wajnman and added that he also was armed with an abrez (a rifle with a short gun barrel).

I met with Wajnman. Two armed young men. Spring. Food was not a problem. Anyone with a rifle could open a door, show the weapon, ask [for food] and immediately receive it.

Neither of us had any fear of death. We had seen so much death, so that the one with collapsed jowls, bared teeth and with a scythe in his hands was like a relative, was like a serf with whom one was not impressed. We all wanted [to die]… Sooner, later. With a rifle in the hand, one [dies] later…

Everything can happen and everything happens. We encountered a large group of Banderowces [members of the Bandera faction of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army]. We had a fortification. We noticed them earlier and they us. They were led by “one of their own.” Zhorzh Raikin, a bandit from Kolki. We found a good secure place from which it was easier to defend ourselves. It was dark. Thick, red fires flew at us from all sides. We shot back and withdrew deeper. We tore off from them unscathed.

Although the spot was seriously compromised, we walked around for several days and finally decided to move in the direction of the Shtundists.

On the road we met a group of real partisans for the first time. A small group with a certain Vasyly at the head. They did not want to take in anyone new, fearing that they were scouts from the enemy. For the first time we were lucky because we were Jews. We said that the Shtundist knew us. We left together and we immediately took part in a true partisan attack.

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The Banderowces had their economic base in this area. Their weapons were hidden with the surrounding peasants.

Vasyly and his group had for its task catching a few political workers from the living Ukrainian nationalists. Still alive because the headquarters of the partisan united forces wanted to learn where the Banderowces were hiding their weapons. I knew the entire area, knew where those for whom the partisans were searching lived. Twelve partisans including me and my comrade left for the village Rudnyky. We caught two young Banderowces when they tried to escape through the attic. We had previously surrounded the house so they would fall into our hands. Another young bandit escaped; we found his father and a younger sister. We tied up those caught, laid them in wagons and brought the fresh, trembling one to the headquarters of the “Chapayev” detachment of the partisan united forces under the leadership of Colonel Naumov. The two young Banderowces revealed everything at their first interrogation. However, the old one knew more than anyone and he stubbornly was silent. We did not treat him too “genteel.” But he answered everything with the same slogan, Khay zhyve samostiyna Ukrayina [Long live independent Ukraine]. So the old one was the biggest bandit in the entire area; one of the most brutal thieves at liquidating the ghettos in this perimeter. Then, during the interrogation, I learned that Vasyly was a Jew and, therefore, he also was seeking a Jewish accounting with the evil-doer; his family was annihilated in the ghetto.

Our detachment found itself in continuous movement. When we arrived at a designated spot we would divide into small groups of 10-12 people and every group received its task: blowing up rails, liquidating smaller German bases, setting fire to sawmills, tanneries. After carrying out the tasks, we would come together again at a previously designated point. Thus we went from one task to another until reaching Galicia.

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Our brigade truly was international: Russians, Ukrainians, Poles as well as very many Jews; there were also Georgians among us. In comparison with our previous solitary wandering life, this was a paradise for us. We felt like members of a powerful organism. We were a power – a well-armed power. Not only policemen and Banderowces, but also German divisions trembled in deadly fear of us. Often we would encounter iron-concrete bunkers already abandoned by the enemy.

The Soviet Army moved forward quickly and we often moved faster to penetrate behind the enemy's back and beat him on two sides. There were times when we would move for two days without stopping; then attack the enemy when he least expected us.

We went through the city of Brody and consolidated on the other side. The machine guns, at which I was “number two,” were located on the right flank of the division. We were supposed to enter the fight as soon as the Red Army began the assault. The assault had not yet begun, but the Germans spotted us and a large group started to come against us. We staged a resistance from eight o'clock at night until one in the morning and the Soviet divisions still had not entered the battle. Apparently an error had been committed. We received an order after one o'clock at night: not to end the fight, but to try to withdraw from the enemy. We slowly withdrew deep into the forest, leaving those killed, taking the wounded with us. We did not encounter any Germans during our withdrawal deeper into the forest, but constantly entered battle with heavily armed bands of Banderowces. We would rest battle-ready, not letting our weapons out of our hands.

We caused losses for the enemy, but also suffered great casualties ourselves. Our Chapayev detachment approached the village Berlyn.

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First we sent a scout group. They did not return. We learned that specially trained Banderowces divisions were located in this village. This was their fortress. We received an order to liquidate it. We encircled the village at night and began the assault. Every cottage was fortified; machine guns were placed everywhere (here, it was revealed, was the central base of UPA [Ukrayins'ka Povstans'ka Armiia – the Ukrainian Insurgent Army]). The fight was very relentless. We had to go through the village; it lay like a bone in the throat for our further advance. We fought an entire night. In the morning we received help from our partisan united forces; took control of the village and very few of the enemy succeeded in breaking through to the forest. Perhaps a few of the two squadrons of shooters remained alive. Only embers remained of the village itself.

We went forward in a stubborn fight until in November 1944 when we found ourselves outside Lvov. Here we were divided: a division in the Red Army and the physically weak freed. A larger group with experience that had been in combat the entire time was sent to Kiev to the headquarters of the central partisan movement in Ukraine. I also was in the group.

I came to Kolki. Found no one; everyone was dead. There I found Getsia Szlejen. Together, we wandered through the ruins. All of the possessions of the Kolki Jews were in Starosillia and Roznychi. We searched for thieves, whose deeds we knew, but all of them had escaped to the forest. Getsia left for Kivertsi where his military division was located. I wandered around Lutsk for a time. I left Kolki “emotionally drained” with an empty soul. What did I have to do in the places where I had spent my childhood, my youth; where every stone reminded me that everything had ended for me here. Here there only remained stirred-up wounds. My further route was to the south, through Romania, Italy – Israel.

Kolki remained in me. Remained in me as a wound.

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