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The center of the town

With the retreat in World War I of the Russian troops from the Austrian and German armies, in the counterattack in 1915, the Russians kidnapped many of our brothers in all the Galician towns, men of all ages, boys aged 15-16, as well as old men aged 70 and over, and exiled them to Russia to the remote areas up to the Volga region. Many of Galicia's Jews were exiled far away to the Siberian steppe.

Among the exiles of the Jews of Bobrka was my father and teacher, Rabbi Nehemiah Beker ztz”l, and I, the writer of this article, who was then a young boy. We stayed in Russia almost until the end of the war (1918). Some of the townspeople returned in the summer of 1918 and the rest returned at the end of that year and the beginning of 1919. First, we walked to the city of Volochysk (the border between Galicia and Russia) and from there they took us by train to Kiev. After staying for three months in Kiev, we were sent further east. Some of us reached the provincial city of Penza and the rest were sent to the city of Chistopol in the Kazan province. Although 49 years have passed since then, almost a Jubilee, I will try to recall this event in my memory.

It was in the month of July 1915, with the sunrise of Wednesday (as I was later told upon my return, the Austrians occupied the city on Saturday afternoon of that week) two Russian soldiers broke down the door of our apartment by force. Armed with bayonetted rifles they ordered the men to dress quickly and go with them. They checked and examined those who were sleeping on the beds. My brother, Aryeh, seemed to them to be too small and too young, so they let him go.

They took my father and me with them. Father took the tallit bag and the Tefillin and we set off.

Our apartment building was hidden in the remains of the ruins of the burned and destroyed city, and was used during all kinds of disasters in the city as a secret place and hiding place for many Jewish neighbors, who would come to us to hide from the harasser until his anger passed. It is interesting that that night we were alone in the house, as the Jews were not aware what the harasser was planning to do.

They brought us to the town's prison on the “Zagora” (behind the mountain) where we found many other Jews who were gathered from different corners of the town. On Wednesday at 8 o'clock in the morning we were counted and set off. Outside, by the prison gate, women and mothers were waiting for us and accompanied us with tears and lamentations and did not want to part with us; they were not harmed. Their screams were of no avail, we were driven away from the town and the women were returned to their homes.

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The commander, who, by the way, spoke Yiddish, commanded his soldiers to treat us gently, with moderation, to allow us to rest and provide us with water to drink. But the moment the commander moved away, the cavalrymen on the horses began to harass us and the infantry soldiers who accompanied us would rush us and insult us with shouts and blows to hasten our walk. Thus, we walked without rest and without water. This spectacle, that the commander commands moderate behavior and his soldiers act brutally, has been repeated in every place that has served as a parking center. It's either that the soldiers were really evil by nature, or that the commander gave the beautiful orders only for a false impression.

The behavior of the Russian soldiers was only part of the trouble; much worse than them were the “voluntary prisoners”, that is the “sheygetz”, the Ukrainian brats who were attached to our convoy.

On the way, we were joined by prisoners of war, Austrian soldiers, as well as the above-mentioned “sheygetz”, who retreated into Russia together with the Russian army because of their fear from the Austrians and of being drafted into the Austrian army. The camp grew and became a convoy of thousands. The prisoners of war went first, after them we, the Jews of Bobrka, and after us went the “sheygetz”. As long as the number of “sheygetz” was small, they did not dare to provoke us, but when their number increased and reached three or four times our number, they began to abuse us as we walked, as well as in the train cars, and they didn't stop all the way until we came to the city of Kiev; on the contrary, their insolence grew and grew.

In Kiev we were put in a camp, in a large yard surrounded by a wall with a guard of policemen stationed at the gates. In the yard stood a large house surrounded by a garden. The house and the barracks that were added to it were not enough to accommodate everyone (we were 600 people), so a large part of us had to spend the night in the garden, out in the open air. Later, when they saw that the space in the camp was too tight to accommodate everyone, they moved part of it to another place, to the house of the “Talmud Torah”, which was cleared for our use.

And truth should be said: there was plenty of food. Some say that our brothers in Russia have already taken care of this, and they have also provided us with underwear and clothes. For we arrived in Kiev with torn and worn-out clothes, and we did not fulfill the words of the verse that were said about the those who left Egypt: “Your dress did not wear out and your leg did not swell” (Deuteronomy, 8:4). My late father suffered a lot: his feet were swollen from walking and he could not take off his boots until we came to Kiev and even there, they had to cut them with a knife in a lengthwise cut from the top of the shins to the sole at the end of the toes. The camp also suffered greatly from the third plague of the Plagues of Egypt. The suffering of this plague cannot be described properly.

At the “Talmud Torah” house in Kyiv, our late poet Chaim Nachman Bialik visited us. Normally no one was allowed to visit us, except for the officials and workers in the camp. On the first day of “Rosh Hashanah” (year 5676), actually the day of the holiday before the Musaf prayer, suddenly an order was given to be present in the roll call, to be counted, and to pack the things and get going.

A little while later we were walking through the streets of Kyiv on our way to the train station. This became known somehow to our brothers of Israel who lived in the city and they approached us and put money in our pockets for the expenses on the road. Apparently the decision to move us was made suddenly, otherwise they would bring us from their homes all the good things they had prepared for the holiday and would equip us with food for the road.

We boarded the train cars and did not get off them until after Sukkot, until we reached the city of Penza. Later on, we learned that the rest of our townspeople, those who had stayed in another camp, were also transferred, two weeks later, with hundreds of other Jews, from Kiev east to the Kazan district.

In Penza we were housed in barracks, but without a guard. Not many days passed and we were allowed to look for apartments in the city. We received financial support by a Jewish aid institution, and we also enjoyed the benefits granted by the local authorities, that is the “Payuk”, to prisoners of war and refugees. In the course of time, we also received a monthly aid from the Austrian government, through the Red Cross. Until the rise of the “Bolsheviks” to power, our relatives in America also often sent us certain sums of money. My late father received a few times a little money from his uncle in America. And even a childhood friend of my father sent him a check in an envelope when he learned that my father was in captivity. The young people did not sit idly by, some of them worked at any job that came their way and some were engaged in trade.

Among the other Galician Jews who were in Penza, our townspeople were known for their cohesion and the close ties between them. The classes became blurred; we discovered in people qualities and virtues that we didn't know about before, during the time we lived in our hometown.

We were a close-knit community, almost one family. Every letter received from home belonged to all of us, and the first person to whom the letter fell into his hands was allowed to open it and read it himself and even in front of the rest of the townspeople.

I remember that the letter that was received with the news of the death of my late righteous mother was held by the townspeople and they did not hand it over to us immediately; they waited for a more convenient time, and if it wasn't obligatory to say “Kaddish”, they would have continued to hide it from us.

There were also gestures of touching devotion; while we were on the way, one of the young men among us broke down and could no longer bear the hardships of the road; he was stunned and indifferent to everything around him. Needless to say, this depressed us all. But Moshe Gimple, the son of Itamar Gimple, stood by the young man the whole time, supported him with his arms and helped him walk after the convoy (finally they picked up the sick young man in a cart). This devotion will be fondly remembered. Moshe Gimple treated the patient with fatherly care, fed him, clothed him and did not abandon him until he finally recovered completely, in the camp in Kiev.

Not everyone was privileged to return home. Reb Uri'le, the eldest son of Rabbi Reb Yitzchak Isaac Langner, the Rabbi of Stratyn who lived in Bobrka was with us there. Reb Uri'le (who was named after the “Saraf”) was a great and wise Torah scholar, qualified to teach, noble and gentle but he was not healthy. He accepted the suffering with love and a smile on his face. Our men tried to ease his life and took upon themselves all his burden, firstly out of respect for his father, the honorable Rabbi, and secondly because his strength was slowly leaving him, he was sick. Reb Uri'le died in Chistopol.

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