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[Page 141]
by Rabbi Yehuda Gershuni
Translated by Allen Flusberg
Zahava-Golda (née Sher) was born in Kamenetz-Litowsk. She was a member of the very first committee formed by those who hailed from Kamenetz-Litowsk, Zastavya and the Colonies.
When Zahava was one year old her mother died, leaving her as a lonely orphan who went through much suffering during her childhood. At a young age she joined the Zionist youth movement, and she remained devoted to Zionism until the end of her life.
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In 1933 the two of us immigrated together to the Land of Israel, settling in Jerusalem. Everyone who knew Zahava liked her. She was so very generous that she tried to help those in need all the time, beyond her ability. She was a mother not only to her daughters, but to every depressed child. There was an impoverished family living in our neighborhood. The children of this family were hungry most of the time and left on their own. My very merciful wife Zahava used to bring them clothing and food to revive their spirit.
[Page 142]
When she found out that one of our friends was in dire need, she did not rest until that friend came over to us, and she cared for him like a devoted mother. She especially dedicated herself to the education of our little daughters. She used to say: “Education in the Land of Israel is the siren of our spirit. Our entire aim is to bring about the renewal of our people in their land, a renewal that can be accomplished only through proper and basic education.”
With a strong love for our people and culture, she took care to ensure that Hebrew was the only language spoken in our home.
Because she died young, Zahava did not merit the full pleasure of seeing our daughters educated.
When she felt her end approaching, she called out in a choking voice, “I don't want my daughters to also be left orphans!”
May her memory be a blessing!
Footnote
[Page 143]
by Asher Glezer
Translated by Allen Flusberg
Yudl (Yehuda Rappaport, of blessed memory) was forty-one years old when he gave his soul back to the Creator on the 27th of Elul 5719 (September 30, 1959).
I knew Yehuda from the time we were children; we studied together in cheder[2]. After he was grown he continued his studies in the Yeshiva of Kletsk[3]. I have been told that he received certification as a shochet and bodek[4], and he became well known for his good qualities, his humility and generosity.
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In 1949 Yehuda and his wife reached Israel (via Cyprus). His two children, Yosef and Asher, were born here. For several years Yehuda was a committee member in the Organization of Kamenetzers in Israel.
The night before he passed away, he was still baking bread in the bakery that he had worked hard to establish near the train station of Lod, the city of immigrants. In the early morning hours he did not feel well, and he asked to be taken to Hadassah Hospital. But the doctor concluded that he was in immediate mortal danger and that it was imperative to bring him to a nearer hospital. He was brought to the hospital in Tzrifin[5]. On that very day he suffered a heart attack; his heart could not withstand the pressure and gave out.
Yudl, who in the past had experienced and survived so much suffering and torment, did not make it this time, and his life ended before his time.
May his memory be a blessing!
Footnotes
by Ḥaya Krakowski-Karabelnik
Translated by Allen Flusberg
Tuvya was born to religiously observant parents in Kamenetz. His father was a synagogue gabbai [charity functionary] whose modest salary was not large enough to support his family. They did also have a tavern that the farmers who lived in the surrounding area used to frequent on Sundays and during town fairs.
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Tuvya did not adapt to his situation, and his parents' livelihood was not to his liking. Not wanting to continue his studies in a yeshiva, as his father wished him to do, he was going through a psychological crisis.
[Page 145]
When HeḤalutz[2] was established in our town, it was as if he had found a path to redemption. He joined the movement, and at a later time he joined the Poalei-Zion [Zionist Workers] (united with Tz.S. [Zionist Socialist])[3] party, becoming one of its active members. Together with a number of comrades he set out for training in Pinsk[4], so that he would be able to immigrate to the Land of Israel. But for various reasons his aliya [immigration to Israel] was delayed, and he returned home from the training program.
He didn't stay in Kamenetz very long, however, and left for Warsaw. There he worked for a period of time in a locksmith shop, continuing to train himself for aliya. His living conditions in Warsaw were very difficult, and he came back home again without having obtained an immigration certificate. And once again he was unable to adapt to his situation.
After marrying Tova Solnitze, he decided to immigrate to Israel in Aliya Bet[5]—for the time being by himself—and to make a home for himself in the Land of Israel. And in 1934 he fulfilled this dream of his.
His absorption—adaptation to the country—was difficult. Meanwhile his wife, who had remained behind in Kamenetz, gave birth to a son. Tuvya had still not found adequate work and was actually going hungry, and so he did not dare bring his family to the country.
On the eve of the outbreak of World War II he was working as a watchman.
His wife and son, who had not managed to immigrate to Israel, perished in the Holocaust together with all the other Kamenetz martyrs.[6]
In Israel Tuvya served on one of the committees of the Organization of Kamenetzers, but he did not live to see the memorialization of his fellow townspeople. His heart was unable to physically withstand the hardships he had lived through, and he passed away very suddenly in Tel Aviv in the year 1948.
May his memory be preserved among us!
Footnotes
[Page 146]
By Pinḥas Ravid-Rudnicki
Translated by Allen Flusberg
A short announcement appeared in the press on the sudden death of our fellow townsman, Yeshaya Rimon, one of the old-time prominent townspeople, who had continued the tradition of the best of the previous generation, incorporating a fusion of Torah and secular knowledge. I recall the heartfelt memorial speeches he gave many times at the yearly gatherings to honor the martyrs of Kamenetz and Zastavya. His words were saturated with pain and anguish for the loss of the living town—a town that once was and is no more, a town whose living song was interrupted in mid-stanza.
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For a while Yeshaya Rimon, of blessed memory, served as the head of the Committee of Townspeople from Kamenetz and Zastavya. He carried out this volunteer position faithfully, working hard for long hours to memorialize our martyrs.
But he did not live to see the actual publication of the collection of essays in this memorial book. And so, as fate would have it, this book is now serving as a memorial not only to our martyrs, but also to the remnant of our beloved townspeople, who, like him, felt the pain of the loss—of their townspeople and all the other Jews who perished in the period of the Holocaust.
May his memory be a blessing!
Footnote
[Page 147]
By Leah Aloni-Bobrowski (Tel Aviv)
Translated by Allen Flusberg
Shimon, who was born in Kamenetz-Litowsk, was the son of Matke and Yudl Kotik. He received a traditional and general education in the town, and for a few years he also attended a high school in Brisk-Litowsk[2]. When he grew up, he saw no future for himself in Kamenetz and decided he would leave. He studied Hebrew and general knowledge of the Land of Israel. He joined the first group of pioneers from our town, all of whom immigrated to the Land of Israel together. When he got here, he found a job as a policeman in Safed. He viewed himself in this line of work as serving in an important public position. Shimon understood that as a policeman he would be able to help others, and indeed he helped many people find work. In that period, when the Jewish population was struggling — practically empty-handed — for security, Shimon many a time also helped purchase arms.
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[Page 148]
In Safed he started a family, but he did not enjoy a happy family life for very long. The first calamity he suffered was the sudden, untimely death of his wife. He was left alone, depressed and hopeless, with his little daughter.
It was not very long before his only daughter passed away, too.
It was very hard for Shimon to carry this painful burden of loneliness. With the encouragement of family members, he married his cousin Neḥama. They left Safed and moved to Kiryat-Ḥaim[3], where a son and daughter were born to them.
Shimon was promoted to sergeant. In the defense of the Jewish population, he held high-level public positions, placing himself at risk more than once in very dangerous situations.
But the path his life took was littered with grief and tragedy. During the Israeli War of Liberation [Independence], his only son was killed in the war, in defense of his native land. This tragedy depressed Shimon to the very core. It was hard for him to recover, to get over his bitter fate; and the great sorrow he experienced made him physically ill. As he lay on his deathbed in the hospital, his devoted wife Neḥama died, too.
He did not live very long after that. He passed away suddenly while in the middle of his morning prayers, standing as he did every day wrapped in his tallit [prayer shawl] and tefillin [phylacteries].
May his memory be a blessing!
Footnotes
[Page 149]
by Dov Aloni (Tel Aviv)
Translated by Allen Flusberg
Meir was the son of Avraham and Tama in Kamenetz-Litowsk. During his childhood—from the age of five until his bar-mitzva—he received a traditional Jewish education, in classes taught by a series of melamdim [children's teachers] in the “Four Ḥeders”. He did not have the inclination to continue his studies in yeshivas. He received a secular education—in Russian and German—from private “licensed” teachers who used to occasionally be in Kamenetz. Mainly he devoted himself to both mathematical science and humanities, studying them intensively day and night.
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[Page 150]
During the Russian-Polish war[2] he was compelled to quickly leave his parents' home to save himself from the Poles when they occupied Kamenetz. Using back roads, he crossed the border and arrived all alone, with no near relatives, in Soviet Russia. Lonely, cut off from all his family members, he suffered the indignities of hunger, disease and cold weather. In spite of all his agony he aspired to study for examinations, obtain a high-school diploma, and enroll in one of the schools of higher education or in a university. But because of his decision not to join the Communist Party he was never able to fulfill this aspiration.
During those days of torment, he needed to find some kind of work to support himself. Fortunately, he was able to get a job in a stationery cooperative. He worked in this cooperative for several years, until he obtained a new job as manager of a large regional warehouse containing various food supplies. His material situation improved greatly, but his social life was unsatisfying. He made up his mind to leave Russia when the opportunity presented itself. To make sure he would be able to carry out this ambition of his someday, and taking into account that Russia was sealed off and did not allow its people to leave, he chose not to put down roots: instead of starting a family, he remained all alone—solitary and lonely.
During the years of the Second World War, Meir was drafted into the Red Army. For a long time he served as a translator from German to Russian. When the war intensified, he was sent to the front to fight against the Nazis. He was gravely wounded and lost his left leg. In this condition he clearly did not find any fulfilment in living in this land, where he felt like a stranger[3]. He decided that he would leave Russia—come what may—and when he was released from the hospital he got around on crutches and refused to work, claiming: “I am an invalid; I am ill, and lack the strength to work. I have no relatives in Russia. Let me leave the country to join members of my family, with whom I will live, and they will support me for the rest of my life.”
Meir knew that in the Land of Israel, which he longed to go to, he had four sisters, all of whom had families, and that they would certainly welcome him into to their homes and family circles, so that in his last years he would find support and achieve a tranquil life. After much effort for many years, while he was living in Fergana[4], he succeeded in getting an immigration certificate to the Land of Israel from the Russian government, which “permitted” him, after three years of treatment, to unite with his family members. And after he received the requisite sum of money that would completely cover the trip expenses from the Chief Rabbi of Moscow, Rabbi Shlomo Shliffer—who was a personal friend of his brother-in-law, the author of this article—he arrived the year that the State of Israel declared independence, welcomed by family members in Israel. On crutches, he was carrying with him a passport with the very first visa from the government of Communist Russia.
Once he was in Israel, however, he did not sit around with folded hands. He studied Hebrew for two years in our house, and the third year he was accepted as a student in the most advanced class of the Ulpan [for learning Hebrew] in Jerusalem. When he came afterwards to Tel Aviv he passed an examination, and he got a job managing the catalogue of the electric company in the Reading Power Station[5], to the satisfaction of the company management. He worked there for 18 consecutive years, until the day he died.
[Page 151]
In Israel he also found community work that particularly interested him, and he devoted much of his time to it. He was chosen to serve on the Committee of the Kamenetz-Litowsk and Zastavya Organization; and when the Committee decided to publish a book dedicated to the memory of the martyrs who perished in Kamenetz during the Holocaust, he was one of the first to serve on the editorial staff of the book. He decided to visit every single one of the Kamenetzers who now resided all over Israel, to obtain testimony from them that would provide the most updated list of the martyrs. And despite his difficulty getting around on one leg, he went up and down many flights of stairs in all the apartment houses the Kamenetzers lived in, wherever they were. He took down detailed testimony from them about every one of those who had perished, by family, by name and by profession. He also contacted the Organization Committee of the Kamenetzers in the United States, asking them to add whatever they knew to this list. And when with tremulousness and reverence he handed this list of his—of the many names of those who had perished—to the members of the editorial board, they offered to compensate him for his travel expenses. He was offended and stated: “This work of mine, so precious to each and every one of us, I am dedicating and offering as a memorial to our townspeople and to their memory.”[6]
All the suffering and anguish that he experienced in Russia affected his health and damaged his heart. On Friday, the 15th of Kislev 5729[7], during the afternoon, while he was in a Kupat Ḥolim[8] clinic—in the presence of doctors, nurses and a crowd of people who were there for doctor's visits—he suddenly collapsed and died: a quick, painless and easy death.[9]
May his memory be a blessing for all of us forevermore.
Footnotes
[Page 152]
by Leah Aloni-Bobrowski
Translated by Allen Flusberg
Yehudit was born in Kamenetz-Litowsk, the daughter of Yisrael and Ḥana Grunt. She received her traditional and general education from private tutors, just like all the other girls of the town. During World War I, when a Hebrew-German school was established in the town, she was one of the first students there, and she excelled in her studies. After the war ended, she continued her studies in one of the gymnasia high schools of Brisk-Litowsk[2].
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After she married her fiancé, Yeḥezkel Koscikiewicz, she settled down to start a family in Brisk-Litowsk.
[Page 153]
Yehudit was not satisfied with her life in Poland, where anti-Semitism was growing stronger from day to day. She decided to immigrate to Israel together with her husband and her little daughter. But it was a very long road between making this decision and implementing it, because Israel was then experiencing an economic crisis and a job shortage. In 1932 she went to Israel all by herself—as a tourist— even though she was the mother of a three-year-old daughter. After she had checked out the situation and become intoxicated with the life of freedom in Israel, she decided not to return to Poland. She took on all kinds of jobs and worked hard, so that her husband and daughter should be able to immigrate as soon as possible.
After much effort—and with the help of relatives in the country—her husband and daughter arrived in Israel. For a short time they lived in Tel Aviv, and afterwards the Koscikiewicz family moved to Petaḥ Tikva.
Yehudit was very sociable and liked helping others. With her pleasant demeanor, she was a good conversationalist who was always accessible to anyone seeking advice and wisdom. And indeed she helped many people out with great devotion. Her home was a meeting place for the large number of Kamenetzers and other people she knew, as well as new close friends she had made in Israel. She would genially and affectionately invite her guests in—including any who had come from far away and sometimes stayed for a long time. These qualities helped her acquire many devoted friends.
Thanks to its energetic effort—and with some help from friends—the Koscikiewicz family set up an electrical appliance shop in Petaḥ Tikva, from which they made their living.
For many years Yehudit worked hard and suffered through the difficulties of absorption [adaptation to Israel], but she never complained, instead accepting all her hardships with equanimity.
As time passed these hardships began to ease up, but then her husband suddenly died, before his time. She bore the burden of widowhood in silence.
Yehudit was an active member of the Kamenetzer Committee and was a member of the editorial board for the publication of this Memorial Book to honor the martyrs of our town. She was particularly dedicated to arranging the necrologies that would perpetuate the memory of those who perished and those who passed away.
Our hearts ache, not wanting to come to terms with the reality that our Yehudit is no more, and that we must add a necrology to her memory as well[3].
She passed away in the early hours of Tuesday, January 21 1969.
With her death her only daughter, Zahava, and her daughter's husband Binyamin, as well as her three grandchildren—Aya[4], Avi and Yeḥezkel (who is named after her husband)—and her sister Rachel—the only one left from among the older generation of the family—have all been bereaved. She loved them all so much, and they loved their mother and grandmother with an eternal love.
Her family members and her many friends followed behind her bier and shed bitter tears over her untimely death.
We will not forget you, Yehudit. Rest in peace! And may your memory be an everlasting blessing.
Footnotes
[Page 154]
by Gideon Hausner
Translated by Allen Flusberg
We take our leave from a lady to whom we can wholeheartedly give the honorary title of “a mother in Israel”. For Leah Aloni was a mother who merged the best Jewish-family tradition with all the lifestyles of our times. Whoever visited her home invariably admired the prevailing splendid family relationships between parents, daughters and granddaughters, all of whom lived together in a common apartment—not because they had to or were forced to, but rather because they loved and respected one another, and so they liked being together.
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[Page 155]
Leah was a beloved wife, loving and sympathetic, who accompanied her husband on the entire trajectory of his life, from the little town in the Diaspora where she became attached to Zionism and the Hebrew language—and further along the way, with all its geographic twists and turns. Yet this path went straight, naturally and consistently: aliya to Israel, school-teaching, and educating many generations of pupils. Thus she walked alongside her spouse in all he did, for their lives were a joint enterprise, and they saw themselves as bound together in everything. Even the letters they wrote to friends were signed by both of them, for they were a pair of comrades who labored side-by-side. And they worked as a team—whether at home, within society, or in school.
Leah was a gifted educator. Once I happened to go with her to the school that she had taught in. It was after she had already retired. And so I saw the children who remembered her dashing over and hugging her with affection and admiration. I saw her fellow teachers greeting her with respect and appreciation. I saw that she had left love and admiration behind in her wake.
In the last few years, I collaborated with her on the educational project of memorializing—within Israeli schools—the communities that had been destroyed in the Holocaust. She was enthusiastic about this educational program that was intended to provide Israeli youth with an existential connection to the past of the people that had been destroyed. Leah implemented this project, as well, at the side of the love of her youth. She worked on it tirelessly, travelling to schools in various parts of the country, acting and encouraging others to be active, giving speeches and rousing the hearts of students, teachers and principals with the fire of her enthusiasm for the project that she was so attached to. She was very pleased when her little town Kamenetz-Litowsk was the first to be commemorated by her school in Tel Aviv.
What words of solace can we offer to her husband, Dov, who is now bereaved of the love of his youth; to her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughters, who have lost a mother; to her bereaved sisters; and to the entire family? I have no words of comfort for them, nor for myself. One can only hope that her husband and family will manage to continue to live according to Leah's spirit. I am sure that were she able to speak to us from beyond, she would say to all of us: “Continue! Guard the glowing ember of love of family and of our people, and may the same spirit dwell among you as has until now.”
Let us strive to fulfil this command and to cling to the values that Leah believed in. And in this way her soul will be bound in the bond of life.
Rest in peace, Leah Aloni; your family and friends will fulfil your command.
Footnotes
[Page 156]
(Delivered at her Graveside on 23 Tishri 5730[2])
by Shraga Aloni
Translated by Allen Flusberg
I knew you as a refugee after the First World War, when you left you parents' home in Kamenetz-Litowsk, serving together with my only brother, Dov, as a Hebrew-language classroom teacher[3], in the Reali [Natural Science] Gymnasia [high school] in Kovno[4].
After two years of respectable work, both of you left your positions in Kovno, immigrating together to the Land of Israel during a difficult period for aliya. This was what you had been yearning for—to get to Israel, come what may.
In spite of your own hardship establishing yourselves in Safed, in Rishon LeZion and even in Tel Aviv, you showed concern for your family in Kamenetz-Litowsk; and, taking full responsibility, you brought over your three sisters, your parents as tourists as a first step[5], and your brother Meir from the Soviet Union[6].
We, who originated in my native town of Yezne[7], also found sanctuary in your home in Safed—I, our elderly mother, my grandfather who is turning 116 this year, family relatives, friends and acquaintances; you took care of all of us and helped see to it that we establish ourselves in Israel. And you also did much volunteer work in the organization for those who came from the Diaspora.
You were one of the veteran classroom teachers in the country—a skill you passed down to your only daughter—and hopefully, as the years pass your other descendants will also be blessed with the talent of teaching. You helped your husband Dov—to whom we wish a long life—with the commemoration in Israeli schools of the martyrs of the communities, on the initiative of our honorable Knesset Member and attorney, Mr. Gideon Hausner.
How great is our sorrow and how devastating it is that, following his physicians' orders, your husband—my brother, Dov—is not with us here, attending your funeral.
Together, all of us grieve your sudden death—woe unto us that you have been taken from us in so untimely a fashion. May you rest in peace!
Footnotes
[Page 157]
by M. K.
Translated by Allen Flusberg
Pinḥas, who had such a zest for life, who saw only the good in life, who was always filled with the joy of creation, who believed in the good hidden within people, who used to drive the mundane away from our lives—he, too, is gone, no longer with us.
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Pinḥas Rabinowitz was born in Kamenetz in the year 5657[2]. His father was the prodigious, saintly Rabbi Moshe Yitzḥak[3] of blessed memory, who was the chief rabbi of the town, a member of a large, multibranched family of great Torah scholars, such as the Maharal of Prague[4], the Maharam of Padua[5], etc.
He was educated at home by his rabbi father, a home in which Torah scholars were always present. Within the walls of his father's house he absorbed the wisdom of life, the beauty and courage of Jewish life—passed down for many generations—the dreams of a persecuted people that had lived throughout most of the years of its exile in sorrow and hardship. All these impressed on him the dreams of generations of Jews and the path they had followed.
[Page 158]
At a very young age he was bereaved of his father the rabbi, and the hardship of life affected him in the little town of Kamenetz[6]. His lot was that of other Jews of the town who could not afford to indulge themselves, who experienced a hard life of suffering. Most of them sometimes went hungry. They were good, simple Jews whose difficult lives were always illuminated by a longing for consolation and redemption. And it was this light that left its impression on young Pinḥas and on the entire course of his life.
And in this atmosphere, among the youth of the little town, there arose a yearning for redemption. The threads leading to the old-new homeland had been woven, and then these young people became aware that there was substance in this new life, that there was a path to redemption and deliverance for the persecuted nation that they were part of.
The striving for and streaming to the land of our forefathers had already begun. But the first ones, among them young Pinḥas, did not arrive on a magic carpet. They experienced days and nights deprived of food and sleep. And it was along a circuitous path that Pinḥas finally reached the Land in 1920.
He lived in the country for fifty years. His life encompassed a series of events and uncertainties. He experienced many crises during these years, but he always emerged from them honorably.
He was among the first who, as soon as he had set foot upon the soil of the homeland, went to the kvutza [agricultural communal settlement][7] of Degania[8], and recognized that the kibbutz lifestyle could provide a life of substance. He worked as a construction laborer, seeing in it a fulfilment of the idea of building up the country. He went through many years of being up on scaffolds during both fierce summers and rainy winters. This hard labor exhausted his strength. He also experienced years when there was no work and times of unemployment, but he was always full of life, for he saw this lifestyle as a fulfilment of his dreams.
He was one of the founders of the Ohel Theatre[9], and he viewed his appearances in it as an educational role. True to himself, he battled against exploitation all his life, and he was a conscientious worker. Whatever he believed in, he believed with all his heart and soul.
He did not live in the past, but there were moments in his life when, with trepidation and longing, he began to talk about his childhood—of his little town Kamenetz and all that he had experienced there. At those moments gloom and grief melted away from his face, and we would experience with him the life of the little town in its times of joy and sorrow.
He departed from us quietly, silently. May the clumps of earth of our homeland, which he loved so dearly, give him sweet comfort.
Footnotes
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