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The two libraries differed in both their content and their organization. The first was a socialist library for workers. Its founders were influenced by the first revolution in Russia in 1905. In the bigger Russian cities the fire of that revolution still glowed, but in the smaller towns of Poland it had been extinguished.

Then the young teacher Pinkhes Graubard came to Chorzele. He was the son of a wood merchant and landowner from Sokhatshov [Sochaczew]. Yisroel Leybush Kronenberg had brought him to Rembinek to teach his children Rokhltshe and Pinye. The owner of the Rembolinek farm, Reb Hirsh Kronenberg, Yisroel Leybush's father, was a Torah scholar who sat at his studies all day and let his son run the business. Even though the son was somewhat assimilated, he wanted his children to obtain both a Jewish and secular education.

Any time a teacher came to our town, my parents would also hire him to give us lessons in our home. Our mother wanted her children to be respectable “in the eyes of God and of people.” And so my sister and brother Dvoyre and Moyshe took lessons from Pinkhes Graubard, a follower of Poalei Tsion [Workers of Zion, a Zionist–Socialist organization], and a future Yiddish writer and folklorist, and he instilled in them a socialist spirit. Also in the group were: Simkhe Yankev Shafran, the watchmaker; Shmuel Meyer–Khaim; and Miryem Soretshe Zilberman, Yekl the bookbinder's daughter. She was also greatly influenced by her brother Avraml who studied watchmaking with Moyshe Opatavski in Mlave and also got a general education from [Moyshe's brother], the teacher Fayvl Opatavski, who had already published stories in the London [Hebrew language] newspaper Hadogal [The Banner], as well as other periodicals. (Both of these were older brothers of [the Yiddish writer] Joseph Opatashu, and were killed by the Nazis.)

As I recall, the workers' library

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consisted of 300–400 books as well as almost all the pamphlets put out by the publisher “Di Velt” [The World] in Vilna. Among these I recall “The Erfurt Program,” by [Karl] Kautsky; biographies of Marx and Engels; works by Sholem Aleichem, Spektor and Mendele Moykher Sforim (from the Hebrew Publishing Committee in New York); Phillip Krantz's “History of Culture” and his biographies of well–known Jewish figures; the works of Jules Verne and many others. The purchase of the books was entrusted to the Chorzele shipping agent, Reb Shmuel Frenkl, who travelled weekly to Warsaw.

Rokhltshe Kronenberg

The library also had a drama society and I remember that

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they put on Sholem Aleichem's “Mazl Tov” (with my sister Dvoyre in the role of Beyle the cook and Shmuel Meyer Khaim as Reb Alter.) I remember how they rehearsed the recitations of Bialik's “The Last Word”, Frug's “Sand and Stars” and Morris Rosenfeld's “The Storm at Sea.”

The library and drama circle did not last long. Someone informed on the leaders and participants and the whole enterprise had to be liquidated.

The first Hebrew public library was more fortunate and had a very different character. It had 500–600 books, mostly fiction (such as “The Agora Books,” by Ben–Avigdor and The Hebrew Library of the Tushia Publishing House) and a section for children's literature. The founders were Moyshe Nitskin, Dvoyre and Moyshe Lakhower, Shmuel Meyer Khaim, Rokhltshe Kronenberg and Leye Likhtenshteyn. Leye got her father, Motl Likhtenshteyn, to agree to house the library in their attic.

At that time, Mordkhe Ayznshatadt, the maskil [follower of the Jewish enlightenment], began to exert influence on the town. He wanted to extend education to the common people and sought ways to expand the library in a legal manner. With the help of the Jewish Literary Society in St. Petersburg, which had the right to open libraries throughout the Pale of Settlement in Poland and Russia, a branch of that organization opened in Chorzele. In this way, the public library was re–opened in the house of Avromke Akive Noyekh (on Budke Street) and it made a great impression on the town.

Mordkhe Ayznshtadt saw to it that the library would have a section on science, mostly books from the Akhiasaf Publishing House. Among these were: “The History of Humankind,” by [Julius] Lippert; ”Knowing God,” by Shimen Bernfeld; the works of Shloyme Rubin; [Heinrich] Graetz's' “History of the Jews;” “Each Generation and its Scholars,” by I.H. Weiss; and the Library of Jewish Science published by [the periodical] Har Haman [The Mountain of Time] in Vilna.

The library existed until 1911, when its founders left Chorzele. Moyshe Nitskin and Moyshe and Dvoyre Lakhower went to Warsaw; Mordkhe Ayznshtadt, Simkhe Adler and Eliezer Meyer Khaim made aliyah to Israel, the first khalutsim [agricultural pioneers] from our town. There was no one else in town at that time to continue the cultural work of the library.

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When we were no longer small children, but had become young adults, we criticized our town and wanted to free ourselves from its old traditions. But whenever people left Chorzele, they would yearn from a distance not only for the town, but for the Arzhits river where we would hold a swimming contest with the Christian boys despite the constant fear that its waters would claim its yearly victim. We missed the Pshonteliner Woods with its berries and laburnum, missed the bushes where we playfully hid and loudly laughed.

My memory takes me to Yosl Meyer Leyb's building with its courtyard, and its many tenants. I remember old Silke who would walk back and forth over the courtyard, talking to herself. We children were afraid of her, because she would mutter about the Messiah and how he had to come soon so that everyone could die and be resurrected.

My brother Aron was the leader of all the children of our and the surrounding courtyards. He was the initiator of all the childish exploits and the organizer of all the games. Once, at Passover, he organized one such adventure: the children uncovered the pits in all the courtyards in which the tenants had buried the utensils that were not kosher for Passover for the duration of the holiday. They brought them to our courtyard and hid them among the stacks of boards. After Passover, when the housewives went to reclaim their utensils they made such an outcry that the whole town was topsy–turvy. Finally, they discovered the instigator and my father administered the appropriate punishment.

The first stimulus for the idea of pioneering Zionism among our young people were the talks of the ardent Zionist, Vayser, who called for personal development through emigration to Eretz Yisroel. Quite soon after his first appearance, the first three pioneers made aliyah: Simkhe

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Adler, Leyzer Merheym and Mordkhe Ayznshtadt. The above–mentioned Vayser made a deep impression with his fiery speeches about Eretz Yisroel, which awakened in the young people new dreams about having their own land. But he also left behind the sad memory of his unnatural death. He was living with Christians whose daughter fell deeply in love with him and when he was lying unconscious while sick with typhus, the girl's parents brought in a priest who converted him. He never got up from his sickbed and a rumor spread that the Christians had poisoned him. After his death his family members came to Chorzele and demanded an investigation into his death, but in the meantime, the First World War broke out and the mystery remained buried in Vayser's grave.

I remember the return of the refugees after the end of World War I. A large number of Jews who had been expelled from town and went to Siberia at the beginning of the war never returned, but those who did return began to rebuild their economic and social lives. A number of young people organized a cultural club which undertook the task of reestablishing the earlier library that Dvoyre Lakhower had organized for the town youth. The activists who undertook to rebuild the library were Alter Tsitrinazh, Itshe Kozhenik, Libe Pshisusker, Hagar Adler and Shloyme Hertzog.

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Another group of young activists decided to reorganize an amateur drama club to perform theater. The first rehearsal took place on Shavuot. While the parents were in synagogue praying they got word that the holy day was being desecrated and that boys and girls were performing theater together [in violation of religious strictures]. So the rabbi ordered that the prayers be interrupted and personally went to find the sinners, accompanied by a large group of butchers, wagon drivers and ordinary Jews.

The Jews in the rabbi's entourage angrily wanted to barge into the house, but Shloyme Hertzog, a student of the rabbi, asked the rabbi to enter alone to assure himself that the whole story was a libel. The rabbi entered, looked around, and saw a group of boys, without any girls, not wearing makeup and not acting on stage, but sitting innocently and reviewing the texts of a forthcoming performance. It thus became clear that the big outcry about the desecration of the holy day and the mixing of boys and girls was greatly exaggerated and there was no reason to get upset.

After this event the young people began to feel a little freer and they began to attract talented girls to the drama club. I was one of the first actresses who appeared on the “Chorzele stage.” My father [a ritual slaughterer] was very upset because Hasidim didn't want to eat the meat of the animals he slaughtered while his lewd daughter was involved with theater. They tormented him so much that he decided to see for himself what occurred during performances, and once slipped in through a window to have a look. He watched for a few hours to see how the young people were fooling around, and mumbled to himself, “Children, silly children, it's just childish foolishness.” But the fanatic elements in town didn't share his assessment and didn't stop tormenting him in his work as slaughterer the entire time I played theater.

My brother Yoysef had also at that time “gone astray” but in a more serious way. He taught Hebrew to the young people and gave readings on Zionist themes. The young people began to participate in

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The Hertzog family

An entire Chorzele family (?) together

Nakhman Tikulsker		Rifka Herstog

Moyshe Rozenblum		Simkhe Berlinka

social and political groups. They were mostly Zionist, but there was also a Bundist group and others even further to the left. There began a struggle among the groups in town over influence and that struggle was reflected in the question of who would have control over the non–partisan library. Except for this, the social and cultural activity of the young people was non–partisan. They brought in lecturers, organized entertainment and excursions, conducted self–educational groups and the like. For example, the Jewish doctor gave lectures on anatomy, Moyshe and Bashke Tsvierkovski devoted themselves to the young people in the field of theater, and Rabinovitsh and Tik taught violin.

There were many fine men and women in town who devoted themselves body and soul to various kinds of social and communal activism, caring for the needy, helping the poor. And they did this without any political ideology but simply with a Jewish heart, for their own souls, for God and people, often in unusual and original ways.

Take the two sisters, Sore and Miryem Kalmans. They demonstrated warmth and kindness for the poor and suffering. When our mother died,these two sisters saw to our needs and were our protectors, teachers and care providers in every way.

Take the household of Dovid Koval. Libe, the mother, would share her last bit of kerosene, flour or fat during the German occupation in World War I. Leye was always collecting money for the poor. Shloyme gave to charity generously. Malke would bring shirts or sheets or pillows from home to distribute to the needy.

Take Sore Yukht (from the Koval family). On the coldest days she would drop in, wearing her husband's boots and fur coat, at the houses of her well–off friends (Libe Koval, Gitl Koval, Hagar Hertzog) to collect all kinds of necessities for poor children and women.

Take our stepmother, nicknamed the khazente [cantor's wife]. She took care of the sick, applied cupping, gave enemas, assisted in births and, not to be mentioned in the same breath, sewed shrouds for the dead. Her competition in these

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areas was Melekh Tsitrinazh; he was such a specialist in various “medical” practices that the town doctor would take him along to help with difficult cases. Melekh would say that he was the doctor's “existence” when he meant his “assistant.”

Take my mother–in–law, Haytshe Hertzog. She and her husband Yehoyesh were distinguished not only for their concrete help for the poor, but also for the way they gave that help, modestly, with deep caring, as if they were part of the family.

The following episodes offer profound and original revelations about individuals and the community in the past of our destroyed town.

The wife of Yisroelke the Koheyn, Blime, had three weaknesses: 1) Every Passover she would sew a new garment for the Christian Patfor, the town water carrier, and make him put it on when he fetched water for her during the holiday, so as to avoid the possibility of contamination by leavened food. 2) When she went every week to the mikve [ritual bath] she would stay there late into the night and immerse herself tens of times to purify herself of traces of unclean animals (dogs, cats, mice) that she had encountered in the course of the week. 3) She would go about singing the then popular song “Borekh Shulman went out” which portrayed the tragic fate of a Jewish boy who sacrificed himself for the community.

Yankev Kozheniak was himself one such sacrificial martyr. When his wife, Yakhtshe, was gravely ill he made a vow that if she recovered he would for his whole life, winter and summer, waken and summon Jews to prayer in the morning. I still remember: on a late Friday night in winter, the windows covered in frost, a deadly silence; suddenly the clock strikes 4:00 and beneath the windows one hears a deep voice: “Wake up, Jews, to worship God.” I lay in my warm bed thinking what love, what devotion to God and man are embodied in the religious devotion of this simple Jew.

Mendl Farbarovitsh and Mordkhe Pshisusker are etched in my

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memory as participants in the ceremony dedicating a new Torah scroll in the synagogue shortly before I left for Eretz Yisroel. Mendl fitted out the Torah in his own home and Mordkhe walked at the head of the procession, dressed in white and blue clothing, like the flag of Zion. The whole town, rich and poor, participated with joy, faith and enthusiasm in bringing in and installing the new Torah, everyone feeling that he was taking part in a great religious and national event.

Finally, a few words about my father, the cantor and ritual slaughterer, Reb Moyshe Shimen Adler – an unforgettable father, Jew and man. He was not only an officer in a religious institution but also a social institution all by himself, personally providing food and fuel to all the needy. He himself raised the money for these two necessities; himself delivered bread and wood; himself brought what was needed in such a manner that the recipient would not notice that help had come from a human hand. Many times he returned from the bath house without the shirt that he had been wearing because he gave it away to a poor Jew who had no shirt at all.

Often, he would disappear from home for an entire evening because he was busy with outfitting a poor bride for her wedding or with cheering up the sick child of poor parents. He poured his heart and soul into relief work and the town appreciated and honored him for that. When he was old and had grown weak, he continued his work of collecting money for the poor and when he knocked with his cane on someone's door, they gave generously. When he lay breathing his last on his death bed, tens of poor women opened the door to the Holy Ark in the synagogue to make an accounting to God on my father's behalf.

I see him now before my eyes, as he was on the night before Yom Kippur, wrapped in his snow–white cloak and saying the Kol Nidre prayer. Now I feel his gentle hand, which he would place on my head before leaving the house to listen to Kol Nidre. Now I see the Chorzele Jews for whom, for many years, he

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prayed to God for health and livelihood and whom he loved as his own brothers.

The community has disappeared, the brothers have been wiped out.

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