[Column 318]

The mossy alleys of the castle writhe in terror. They want to flee far from this cursed soil. Like stabbed children, the small trees on the street corners are bewildered. Their sword gashes are still trembling.

The dawn has no time to comb its shaggy blue hair. It emerges from between the prison bars, traces of night stuck to its eyelashes. Its blood is infused with the murder of Jews, the helpless lambs, who wait in terror for the slaughter–knife, the hangman's rope.^[1]

The last breaths of night are still dying on the crumbling old walls, as if a body were hanging outside the bars, bony, shriveled; the first drops of sun drip with the mold of thorny wires that hang, like burning veins, in the din of an insistent clamor.

Like bloody madness, the knowledge burns in inflamed brains. The silence is full of uproar. It screams from all bodies: “Soon, we will be dragged again, once more taken to lead and rope and pit and pyre!”^[2]

And who will be led, and who will be dragged, if not desiccated skeletons, if not the bones, the skulls, if not the bodies, that have been blackening here for days, stitched with lead, in order to die once again for the executioner Westerheide.^[3]

[Columns 327–328]

Where will we be taken? Piatidin has guzzled enough, Piatidin has eaten its fill of blood and marrow and bones.

A pyre has been lit under the hearts of the Jews of Ludmir, and the terror of mothers pierces their children. A blind Jew recites his confession in preparation. Another holds a knife to his own throat: “If it is death, let us slaughter ourselves here, brothers. Let the murderer not see our pain, our suffering.”

But the red voice of Executioner Westerheide giggles. He likes the wailing, the funerals of the living Jews. His bloody fingernails joyfully claw deeper into the hearts of the hiding, panicking Jews.

O, Piatidin, what is your sin – or your merit – that entitles you to cuddle your Jewish neighbors in graves? Piatidin, who cut your trees down and fashioned them into gallows, so that the shame and the curse will blaze over you for years?

O, Piatidin, see how the footsteps of children and elderly die on the road to your ripped bosom, once fields of wheat. Why did you not sow your soil with rocks and stones, why did you not set your land on fire with burning forests?

See, here it is, the death procession, funerals of elderly and children. Sky – why are you blue? Sky, pluck yourself to tatters. If there is a God here – let Him die together with them, before this ground heaves with strangled voices. And the blond Ukrainian dogs guard the gate, their crooked crossed teeth hiss with boiling, venomous hate. Ha–ha – why are they guarding the gate? Jews are already dying here, slaughtered babies slaughtered– woe is me –already lie in their own blood.

Yes, the blond–brown dogs still guard the prison, and the bones inside the bodies sound like the bare bones of the dead. Who will make it to the grave of the Piatidin ditches, who will live to see the merciful death of the murderer? The prison gate, the gate will be the only one to bear witness.

The massive, sturdy bolts will open with a grating screech, and the metallic, steel–clad voice of Executioner Westerheide will seal his last murderous command here with Jewish blood.

Yossele Dreyer sits in his sheltering green caftan in the sunny guesthouse of the small Karlin synagogue on a pinewood board, still scented with forest sap and roses. He scrapes out a childish “Here lies” with a chisel.

“Ay, ay, little Jews are dying, poor things, of tuberculosis,” and he stills his sorrow with a deep draw of snuff–tobacco. His 90–year–old beard smells of brandy, midnight prayers, Mayver–Yabek; but he himself, Yossele, is already a pile of clay, a shadow.^[2]

The chisel scratches angrily at the white flesh of the board, and Yossele's feathered cap shifts back and forth. He is saying verses from Psalms and his eyes are full of tears: “Beloved father, plant no more black flowers in the cemetery. Save your little Jews, who haven't yet tasted mother's milk, from joining the young dead.”

In Piatidin, in yesterday's little Volhynian village: blue peace, flickering candle stubs, dreaming farmhouses, gleaming sickles drunk on sunny wine, moss–covered sheds, heaps of rye sheaves.

In Piatidin, in yesterday's little Volhynian village: a cow watches a rosy sunset in the pond's mirror, nightingales in the pine forest sing a sweet Slavic melody, a barefoot girl walks through the stalks carrying a clay jug.

In Piatidin, in yesterday's little Volhynian village: a flaxen–haired shepherd boy, a reed pipe, misty meadows, an little evening fire, crackling, joyous.^[1] A harmonica sings longingly in the moonlight.

In Piatidin, in yesterday's little Volhynian village: a blue–fringed napkin – the sky –– over the white–blooming month of Nissan. Next to a dusty path, a chapel with golden hangings and images of Christ, a peasant woman kneels, kissing the crucified one's feet.^[2]

In Piatidin, in today's little Volhynian village: the fields are blooming with skulls and bones. From the smallest stalks, too weak to green themselves, dangle blond heads of dead children of Ludmir.

In Piatidin, in today's little Volhynian village: each sprouting blade of grass is a human limb, each root – a bone. The cornflowers spurt with the red froth of a live heart, stabbed.

In Piatidin, in today's little Volhynian village: a twisted human limb hangs down from a branch. My town's mass grave stretches for miles: Gnoyne, Rilivetz, Khapalitsh, Kilshtshine.^[3]

In Piatidin, in today's little Volhynian village: the soil refuses to remain soil, the soil wants to become sky! The grieving Shechinah, its head covered with ashes, wanders restlessly in the gurgle of choked voices.^[4]

In Piatidin, in today's little Volhynian village: the sun hangs, an open ledger, the white–hot letters boil, dripping warm streams with the holy blood of twenty thousand Ludmir Jews.^[5]

October 12, 1947

[Columns 333–334]

Ludmir, September 1939. Our alley, near the “Green Market,” had changed: it was almost empty of people, empty of fruit and vegetables. Everything seemed to have died out. Here and there, at street corners and intersections, at the corner of Magistrat and Lutsk streets, Jewish guards were standing on watch during an alarm, and did not let people out on the street. They were recognizable; in addition to their colored armbands they wore gas masks over their faces. As night fell, people had to hang black curtains over their windows, and lie down on the floor by the faint flicker of a kerosene lamp as they listened to the terrifying silence of the night, which seemed to last a year.

During this harrowing period, my sister Gitl became very ill and was taken to the hospital on Kowel Street. As far as we were concerned, we were at war: the German army was on the other side of the Bug River, and many Jews began fleeing to us to save themselves. The study houses filled up immediately.

Tearful women and their children, hungry and exhausted, were sitting or lying on bundles scattered on the street. When the siren sounded, all the nearby residents rushed to the shtibl.^[2] Naturally, because it was a brick structure, a bomb could not damage it. Children cried in fear, and orthodox Jews begged in their prayers to be delivered from the enemy and their lives saved.

One morning the first powerful bombardment was heard, landing on the railroad station. Pieces of shrapnel reached our houses. No one went out on the street that day.Nearby neighbors whispered that there were numerous wounded, as well as some dead.

That evening, we heard a wagon approaching our house; our sister Gitl lay in it, half–dead. She had been sent back from the hospital, which had admitted about one hundred wounded from the day's bombardment. We wanted to save her, but doctors were afraid to come for consultation. Gitl was prescribed injections, but the nurse was to frightened to venture out on the street.

[Columns 335–335]

The next morning, we saw men running on the streets with bundles of bedding, and women carrying children. Holding their last possessions, they were fleeing from the bombs to the villages and the fields. We were almost the only ones left in our alley. I remember our aunt Yocheved (may her memory be for a blessing) packing her things every morning and saying to my father, “Come, Sholem! Let's run away too.” His answer was always, “I'm not running anywhere. If the One above wants to take care of me, He will do that here too…”

And indeed, how could we flee with such a sick girl? When the siren sounded we would carry her to the Blatsovk shtibl^[3] and lay her on the floor. I remember how the steeple of the nearby cathedral was burning after bomb explosions, and the residents of an entire row of houses were fleeing because their homes were burning. We were in terrible danger then.

Besides the airborne enemies, we were faced daily by local enemies. These were the Ukrainians who wanted to exterminate the few remaining Jews. The high–ranking Polish officials had left town at the outbreak of war, and there was now no authority in Ludmir. One morning the entire staff of the large prison near us ran away. The prison gates opened and all the criminals took over the town, weapons in their hands, supposedly to “safeguard public order.”

Posters in the city announced a provisional city management, headed by a well–known Ukrainian doctor, who was an extreme anti–Semite. Local persecutions of Jews started. Jews who lived in Vadafuin and Ustil streets were were taken out and shot, and their homes were set on fire.^[4] It was very dangerous to go outside.

However, I had no time to be afraid. My sister's health had deteriorated. Besides, I was the only remaining capable person in the family. These were her last few hours of life. But I did not believe that, and like an insane person I ran to the pharmacy through the deserted streets looking for injections. I still wanted to save my sister. Bullets landed on the street a few feet away from me. When I finally reached the nurse, gasping for breath, begging her to come and inject my sister, she asked me, astonished, “Now? Nobody can walk on the street. I will come later, when things are quieter.” But I was already too late. The same day, during my sister's funeral, bodies of people who had been suddenly shot to death near the cinema on Farna Street were brought to the cemetery.

That was a terrible night for our family. We lay on the ground at the house of our Zamosc relatives (may their memory be for a blessing) and listened, heartbroken, to the silence. At midnight, we heard the din of tanks and heavy machine guns, as well as screams and clamor of people.We thought that, God forbid, the enemy had entered the town. With the blue dawn, we emerged, grieving, into the daylight to find out what was happening. We were glad to see it was the Russian army. People said that they had had a long hard way, because the bridges from Lutsk had been damaged, and that caused many pointless casualties.

At the end of December 1939 I left Ludmir for Lemberg, and from there made my way deep into Russia.^[5]

  Volodymyr Volynskyy, Ukraine     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

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