[Page 525]

In the afternoon hours of the twelfth of May 1942, after the horrible slaughter, we, the 1,200 men and women left alive, were taken back to the market square near the shops, and there Vindish, the department head from the Lide commissariat, gave his well-known speech: “You are alive temporarily. Your fate is dependent on the success of the German Army at the front. You wanted the war, you have it!"

After the speech we were directed into the small streets of the ghetto. For the ghetto, the Germans had designated a row of houses located behind the shops along the market square, up to the beginning of Novoredke Street. The few remaining Jews went into the few limited houses, and searched out a place for themselves and their families. The brain had not yet comprehended the gruesome fact of the barbaric mass-murder: people went around stupefied, half mad. The Germans allowed us to carry out the shot, the old and the sick from the houses to the cemetery.

Soon after our going into the houses, Polish police ran through the ghetto and grabbed young men. There was a panic in the ghetto: I and my brother Fime may he rest in peace and 50 young men were grabbed and assembled near the building that housed the Polish police. We were arranged in rows, and the Polish police commandant delivered a speech: “Don't be afraid, nothing will happen to you. You are only going to fill in the pits.” We were given shovels, and under the guard of ten or fifteen policemen we went off in the direction of the Stonevitsh forest. The road from the church to the pits presented a horrible sight: torn-up bank notes, various items of clothing, and collages of dried blood. We went along as though hypnotised, unable to believe our own eyes.

About 50 meters from the Stonevitsh forest and about 150 meters from the road to Stonevitsh, we saw two parallel pits, 30 meters long, 4 or 5 meters wide and about 2 or 3 meters deep. The pits were full of naked and half-naked bodies of women, men, children and elderly. Near the pits were piles of clothes, linens and shoes. We understood that the victims had been forced to undress before their deaths. The image of the pits will never disappear from my eyes. The innocent victims of the Nazi beasts were lying in various positions: one on another, in and near the pits. Some of the victims were still breathing...

Fifty or sixty Polish police and German gendarmes were going around the pits like wild animals, shooting those who still showed any signs of life. Fifteen or twenty meters from the pits a group of Lithuanian soldiers in green uniforms were disassembling a machine-gun position, from which they had earlier shot the victims...

Following an order, we laid into the pits the bodies that had been laying around them. A group of Jews went into the pits and took the bodies to lay in. Soon a heavy truck arrived with several barrels of chlorine. The department head, Vindish, who also arrived, told us to pour the chlorine over the bodies and then to cover them with earth. He cynically, unashamedly, ordered, “Cover up this crap."

I was standing near the first pit and pouring chlorine on the bodies...suddenly I heard a voice: “Friends, save me, I want to live!” I recognized the 18-year old Elke Kesler, she was only wounded. Her dramatic voice was also heard by a Polish policeman, and before we were able to figure out how to rescue her, he had shot her with two bullets.

A few minutes later I heard another voice: Khaye Nakhimovski from the little town Trab, was laying covered up by several other bodies. She was not even wounded: “Save me, save me!” she screamed to us. Her voice was like a voice that came from under the earth. Also Shayke Kozlovski from Trab was only wounded. We quickly consulted with the Trab rabbi's son, who worked with the gendarmes. Several friends and I threw a pair of pants and a shirt into the pit, because Mrs. Nakhimovski was completely naked. The Trab rabbi's son tried to pull her out and convince the Austrian gendarme Karol, who was standing not far from the place. But the gendarme saw that something was happening. He came up and said, “It will be better for her and for you if I shoot her.” Before our very eyes he pulled out his revolver and bestially shot her. Such incidents occurred many times.

We heard voices and moaning from every side; the police and the gendarmes shot into the pits at the bodies that even trembled.

I recognized our neighbor's son, the 6-year old Meyshe Epshteyn, he moved and was quickly shot.

It was difficult to recognize the victims. They were covered with blood and brains. Some of them had dreadful holes in their heads (dum-dum bullets?). The greater part of them was naked or in their underwear. A few had, it appeared, categorically refused to undress before death and had been shot in their clothes. The slender, handsome Niomke Mailovitsh lay in his clothes with a great hole in his head. We worked as if in suspension, filling the pits with chlorine and earth, our eyes searching the victims for friends. From time to time we heard a heartrending, spasmodic wail from one of the workers who had recognized a family member among the victims...

The S.S. Men, who were already soaked with Jewish blood, left the place, leaving behind only the Polish police. Among the police were known underworld figures, such as Zshukovski, Sielski, Zshebrik, Mulitsie, and others. They told us about the last words that Gute Goldberg had said to the Germans before going into the pit: “The world will not be silent about you and this innocent blood will call forth a terrible revenge!” She warned them that when they returned home, they would find their own wives and children shot, too.

The police also told us about Rashke Gaskind (Margolin), who, before her death, had screamed at the Germans: “For the innocent blood poured out from these Jews, you will have to pay with your own blood and with your children's blood!” They told us that groups of Jews had tried to run away, but the bullets of the machine-guns and automatics had laid them down.

The sun of the lovely May day was already setting when we finished our work. The pits were filled in, there lay the bodies of about 2,500 Jews from Ivye and the neighboring townlets of Trab, Lipnishok, Borisovke, Baksht and other neighboring settlements. We were placed in rows and told to go back to the ghetto. Apathetic, broken down, and silent, we went as though coming from another world. It was quite dark when they brought us back to the unfortunates, the few orphans left alive in the Ivye ghetto.

[Page 530]

A Nation of Orphans...

With broken-down feet, bloodied hearts, completely despondent, we spilled into the houses at the market, behind the row of shops and in a few streets nearby--the new ghetto for the barely 1,300 Jews who remained alive. After praying the afternoon prayers everyone without exception said kaddish. Of hundreds of families, not even one solitary remnant remained...no one cried. The source of tears had dried up...really, what was there to mourn? We were also “temporaries” according to the speech of the department head Vindish, and our fate was completely bound up with the victory of the murderers of our people...

The Polish police, who were at the pits during the “action”, told us horrible and heartrending stories of how the photographer Leyb Kalmanovitsh kissed his wife and daughter in the pit, how Jewish girls would absolutely not undress naked and they had to be shot half-dressed; how boys made futile attempts to run away and were cut down by the bullets chasing after them; how Gute Goldberg, Rashke Gaskind and other women spoke to the Lithuanian murderers and threatened terrible revenge; how the nearly 2,500 Jews sat near the church and had a death sentence presented to them before they were taken in groups to the pits; how impoverished families went solemnly to death, how the victims tore up their money the whole way and destroyed every thing of value; how our good-hearted neighbors from generations back, the Stonevitsh peasants, threw themselves on the rings and ear-rings of the still-warm, bloody corpses...

A shudder gripped us, the blood froze in our veins hearing such horrible stories.

Those left to life (about thirty percent) were mostly young men capable of work, or as the Germans said “useful Jews”. Big families with small children, the elderly and ordinary people with an unhealthy appearance, were sent off to the pits during the selection. Even the permits of the skilled workers did not help. All the families whose men had been killed in the slaughter of the intellectuals (tishebov 1941) were sent to death. Only a few of the Jewish police were left. Of the intellectuals, there remained only a few Jewish doctors (Melamed, Siniuk, Bernson--the son-in-law of Rov Shatskes, Kaplinski (from Baksht) and Volfovitsh (from Lide), and the Judenrat, whose lives the department head Vindish had guaranteed for a price in gold which was collected a day before the great slaughter and which was supposed to have been a redemption for the whole Ivye community.

As stated, about 2,500 people were murdered in the great slaughter (according to official German count from the Lide regional commission--2,482). They were united in their death as martyrs with the 224 (or 222) Jews who were shot during the slaughter of the intellectuals (2 August 1941) and found their rest as martyrs in the pit-graves at the edge of the Stonevitsh forest.

The Ivye Judenrat was designated by the Germans soon after the selection on the day of the slaughter of the intellectuals, and held its position until the full liquidation of the ghetto. The Judenrat members were: Meyshe Kopold, Khaym-Leyb Dvoretski, Bernard Mlinarski, Leybman (from Devenishke), Yudl Kabak, Fayve Albershteyn, Khone Malakhovski and Tsalke Milikovski. (Of these, only Khaym-Leyb Dvoretski, in Bielski's detachment; and Fayve Albershteyn, in hiding with a peasant, survived. He died in Cuba.)

Practically, the rulers were Kopold (chairman), Dvoretski and Mlinarski (labor office). The commander of the Jewish police was Yoel Girshovitsh and his representative, Leyb Kalmanovitsh (Trab). The Jewish police recruited especially from among the youth driven in [to Ivye] from other towns.

The regional commander of the Polish police was Mulitse. From the town police, Boleslav Zebrik. In the first months of the occupation--Shtshepanski.

The first mayor was a teacher of German language in “Povshekhne”, Tribling. Later he was replaced by Yozef Lerokh, administrator of the Povshekhne school, and soon Bialkovski was nominated as mayor. During the time of Polish rule he was secretary of the court. He governed until the retreat of the Germans. The chief of the German gendarme was Bayer, an Austrian.

The Judenrat, whose assignment was in particular to carry out the Germans' policy of robbery and extermination in regard to the Jews, was not to be envied. The demands that flowed in from every side without let-up were hard to accommodate. Every minute they had to revoke decrees, shootings of individuals for not observing the Draconian German laws whose penalty for the smallest sin by Jews, was the death penalty. They had to assemble workers for the local military and civilian authority and also, according to the demands of external factors as well (the Lide regional commissioner, the Todt organization, etc).

The Judenrat newly organized the workshops that worked for the non-Jewish population. They continually repeated the words of the Lide regional commissioner, Hanveg, that we earned life with our work. With the help of the Jewish police they continually demanded gold and other valuables from a population that was approaching the last stages of extortion and want. It is superfluous to say that there were many complaints about them. The unfortunate Jews had exchanged their last clothes and furniture for foodstuffs. For a trifle the peasants carried off all kinds of furniture, clothing, bed linens and the hard-earned possessions of generations. Nothing was spared, one lived day to day, because no one believed that we had even a chance to survive the war. Despair and fatalism dominated the ghetto and led to full-blown apathy and loss of initiative.

In the first months of our ghetto life there were reports of a new wave of slaughters in the towns and settlements of White Russia. The reports were brought by peasants who were paid to travel around, and collect [information] for the Judenrat. The hopes that we were facing a long pause to catch our breath in partial ease were dashed, there was no more room for illusions as the Judenrat used to do, in order to quiet the spirits in the ghetto.

In that same time, Jewish workers who went outside the city to work, encountered Russian partisans who wore red stars on their caps. They themselves had not yet carried out any war operations and were satisfied with hiding out in the thick forests. Thus ties were already made.

At the same time, some Ivyers left the ghetto and went in the direction of the Baksht forests--Vele Blokh and Berman. Their guide was a young man from Baksht who knew the area well (after the war it became known that they were successful, with the help of Russian partisans, in getting through the front lines and arriving safely in Russia. Vele Blokh lives in Canada; Berman in Israel.) Their escape made a big stir in the Ivye ghetto and encouraged the youth, who sought a path for rescue.

We, a group of young people, began to think that we must not sit with our hands folded. I had a talk with Dr. Ayzik Melamed, with Meyshe Stotski, and we decided to establish an underground partisan organization. I found it necessary to include several people who I knew to be bold, who were not afraid of danger. I found an especially valuable member in Ali Kats (Khaykl's). We held the first meeting in his “maline” [hide-out], and a committee was voted in, composed of Meyshe Kaganovitsh (chairman), Shepsl Sheftl, Tuvie Ingel, Ali Kats, Dr. Melamed, M. Stotski, L. Kalmanovitsh, and others.

We encouraged the building of “malines” in every house, where people could hide in the event of an “action”. The ghetto was very quickly full of underground, disguised hiding places. Others had some amazing ideas. There were “malines” whose entry was through the hen house, and so on.

We created a bond with the Jewish police. Every night, according to a line-up, we stood watch in the ghetto houses from which one could observe the movements of the Germans. (The gendarmes were in Osherovski's house, the Polish police in Kopshteyn's house near-by, the municipal authority was in Dovid Goldberg's house.) In the event that we would see that there was a dangerous concentration of German strength, we had to cut the wires and flee to the forest. For a long time the members of the organization did in fact sleep in the houses near the ghetto wire.

We decided to solicit weapons at any price, and to that end we carried out an action. Each of us gave a gold coin. Our appeal to the Judenrat for a large sum was dismissed. They maintained that our activity could cause a premature slaughter of the few Jews who were left. They warned my older brother Dovid may he rest in peace that my activity was liable to bring about the handing over my family to the gendarme. (My parents and the family of my younger brother Ruben may they rest in peace were killed in the great slaughter.)

We reacted to the death-penalty with alarm as compared to the leading members of the Judenrat and they calmed down.

Not having any weapons, we had to initiate some means of resistance. With the help of the Jewish veterinary doctor Zshitaner (later murdered by the White Poles), who was permitted free movement in the ghetto, we bought several bottles of vitriol. We distributed it among the members of the organization and among ordinary young people. In the event of an action we would pour it into the eyes and faces of the Germans and police. The Jewish ghetto police (especially Leyb Dalmanovitsh from Trab) worked closely with us. It is thanks to that tie and because the guarding of the ghetto gate was in their hands, that they helped with the realization of the plans prepared for action.

There was joy in the Ivye ghetto when the carpentry workshop received an order for 19 coffins. We quickly learned the details of the successful ambush that had been conducted by the partisan detachment “Stalin” near the town of Nalibok, on a punishment expedition of S.S, which was traveling from the slaughter in Ivienits to Lubtsh, where they were to carry out the slaughter of the remaining Jews, who were being held tied up in a stall. Nineteen executioners lay dead, among them too the head of the Baranovitsh S.D. (September 1942).

Gradually we were enriched by three rifles, bought from peasants with gold. The were in good condition, but the number of bullets for them was limited. We hid them in hollowed-out logs (later they were taken out to the Morine forest by the Ivye partisan group).

A group of young people headed by Ali Kats and Leyb Shmukler united with a partisan group, “Tshapayevtses”, in the Ivie neighborhood, and sent little stoves and other necessary things out to them for the promise that they would be taken into the detachment.

The carpenters Tsirulnik and Savitski, who worked in the workshops, prepared the wooden part of rifles and looked outside the ghetto for the metal parts. In the ghetto people had started talking about escaping to the forest. The much-exaggerated stories of the peasants about the partisans also ignited a spark of hope that there was a way to revenge and rescue.

People began to sense in the air, that something else terrible was approaching. They began to take workers out of the ghetto more often, to work in Molodetshne, Strage and Krasne, and to take the skilled workers to the “Todt” camps in Lide. In autumn 1942 stubborn rumors spread that the Ivye ghetto would soon be liquidated and Ivye would be “Judenrein” [clean of Jews]. The Germans of course denied such rumors and assured us that the Ivye Jews were a useful element. The Judenrat after all tried to spread an optimistic mood, but the Jews already had no more trust. (They still remembered well their happy reports a day before the great slaughter, that the decree had been annulled and dozens of families, among them my brother Ruben's family, came out of their hiding places, to go the following morning to the pits...) Like black ravens, who sniff out dead bodies, the peasants now came into the ghetto in droves and sought how to trick the Jew out of his possessions, or to buy them for a piece of bread. The rich people in the ghetto were suddenly receiving propositions from the “good friends” to hide in their “malines”.

Many began to spend the night outside the ghetto. Individual families disappeared from the ghetto and into malines (almost all were murdered). It also became suspicious how the gendarmes had recently let the Jews move around more freely, were hardly guarding the ghetto gate and pretended not to see crimes that before would have drawn the death penalty.

We did not have to wait long. On 31 December 1942, the first group was taken to Borislov. On 20 January 1943 the whole ghetto was taken to Borislov, in order to quickly find their deaths in the peat-swamps of Biala-Bolota (end of March 1943). Ivye had become “Judenrein” [and Russian.]

[Page 535]

The Bunker in the Morin Forest

On December 31st, 1942, out of a clear blue sky, the Ivye ghetto was surrounded by the gendarmes, police and people from “Todt” (German construction organization for military projects), who had come to take workers for the peat-fields in Biala Bolota (near Borisov, White Russia). A great panic broke out and many from the ghetto and from the work-places outside the ghetto fled into the near-by forests and settlements.

A group of youths that had been organized earlier and was prepared to flee into the forests to the partisans, gathered in an attic near the ghetto fence. They succeeded in breaking through the police cordon and getting away. In the region of the Khrapenive hamlets they were met by Tuvie Bielski, the commander of the big Jewish detachment who had planned to organize an Ivye partisan detachment. The following day at dawn, the Germans from the Shelibe garrison attacked the hamlets, and after a bitter and unfortunate battle, killed many partisans, among them the Ivye youths Eli Baksht and Leyb Shmukler.

Hearing the shooting, the group ran off and arrived in the Morin forest. In the group were: Shepsl Sheftel and his wife Sima, Leyzer Tsirulnik and his wife Khaye, Malke Sheftel, Eli Kats, Sender Bielavski, Yoel Savitski, Rokhl Slonimski, Mayer Romanovski; and from Trab, Yitsik, Khaym and Rokhl Mints, Merke Levkovitsh and her husband Leyb Kalmanovitsh, Hirshke Levkovitsh and Avrum Levin.

Khaye Tsirulnik went out of the forest into the Ivye ghetto and brought back the bricklayer Hirshl Goldshmidt and his work-tools. Despite the fact that the ground was frozen solid he dug out a “ziemlianke” in the Morin forest, between the settlements of Dziamunt and Morin (in the Ivye district) for the 20 members of the partisan group. The armaments of the group consisted of a total of 6 rifles, three brought from the ghetto and three bought from peasants for gold and valuables. During our flight from the ghetto it was not possible to take out the three rifles that were well masked in a “maline” in Eli Kats' (Khaykl's) house. They were taken out later at risk of death on a dark winter night, after the complete liquidation of the Ivye ghetto.

The underground bunker was disguised from above with brush and branches. Descent into it was by way of a ladder. One could only go out on nights with a heavy snowfall, and had to take care to obliterate all the foot-prints. The local population did not know the location of the hide-out. Food was procured in the surrounding settlements with the force of weapons. A reserve of food stuffs was kept for the days when no one could go out of the bunker.

At the head of the partisan group stood Shepsl Sheftel, a brave young man who breathed revenge and a desire to fight against the German murderers and their collaborators among the surrounding population. His assistant was Leybke Kalmanovitsh (from Trab).

The group knew that the peasant Lastun, from the settlement of Strizshenat, had turned Freydl Vismonski (Labata's) into the gendarme. Just before the liquidation of the Ivye ghetto (20 January 1943) she had run away to a peasant she knew, Lastun from Strizshenat, who had promised to hide her for the valuables that she gave him. He hid her for only three days. He dragged her by the hair to the Ivye gendarme (3 kilometers), where she was promptly shot.

On January 22 1943, the group went to Lastun at night and asked him the way to the trestle. He came outside in order to show the way. They took him about 300 meters from the settlement, near a wood and asked him why he had turned her in to the Germans. After he had confessed to the crime, they shot him and placed a note in his hat that anyone who turned Jews over to German hands could not avoid their proper revenge at the hands of the Jewish partisans. The news spread quickly in the entire region and threw fear into the peasants. Thanks to that act of revenge dozens of Jews who were hidden with peasants in that area survived the war.

One dark winter night they traveled to the house of the forest watchman Butshel, who had, it was said, appeared voluntarily on the day of the big slaughter (12 May 1942) near the pits at Stonevitsh, and asked the Germans to allow him to help kill the Jews. Butshel escaped through a window and they had to be satisfied with confiscating all his possessions.

They also carried off everything that they found in Shaliapke's house, he whose hut was near the Stonevitsh pit-graves. Shaliapke himself succeeded in fleeing. They gave the collected belongings to the Russian partisan detachment by the name of “Stalin”, which promised to include the whole group in their detachment.

They confiscated the stolen Jewish possessions from the peasants and prepared for bigger acts of revenge, murder and robbery.

After such acts of revenge and re-taking of stolen Jewish possessions from the peasants, the existence of an Ivye Jewish partisan group could not remain a secret from the peasants, or from the German murderers of peoples. As the Spring was approaching, shepherds came near with their flocks. It was clear that they could not hide themselves there for long and that they must unite with the large, well-armed Russian partisan group in the Nalibok wasteland.

For that goal, four brave partisans went out: Shepsl Sheftel, Sender Bielavski (Ivye), Leyb Kalmanovitsh, Hirshke Levkovitsh (Trab). They succeeded in getting an assurance that the whole group would be taken into a new detachment, “Aleksander Nievski”, which was being organized. Happily, they turned back to bring the group.

On the way, near the little town Olenieve, they encountered a Russian “wild” partisan group, “Antonovtses” (from the name of their leader, Anton), that did not conduct any war activities, but was only busy eating, drinking and robbing. They were incited by the peasants, who said that the Jewish partisans robbed them. They took the four rifles and everything that was on the wagons (food and supplies), and let them go free. But figuring that without the rifles the other detachment would not take them in, they went back and demanded the four rifles. They claimed, “Without rifles our lives are not lives. Better to shoot us...” The “Antonovtses” took them into a house, made them undress, tortured them and drove them out naked to the local cemetery and shot them there.

Not waiting for the return of the group, five men went out knowing what had happened. The Startshinate village magistrate had told them about the tragic death of the four partisans. According to their request the peasants buried them in the Olenovke village cemetery.

The whole “Antonovtses” group was later shot by the partisan leadership for not maintaining partisan discipline.

After the murder of the four brave members, left with one rifle and one wooden intimidation-rifle, the whole group fled to the Nalibok wasteland. A few (Hirshl Goldshmid and his child) went over to Bielski, a few couples (especially those from Trab) went off to a pit near Baksht where several dozen Ivye and Trab people had been hiding out since the liquidation of the Ivye ghetto (they were all killed in July 1943 during the great German raid on the partisans of Nalibok. The Germans uncovered the hide-out through an informer, and threw grenades into the dug-out).

The largest part went over to the “Aleksander Nievski” partisan detachment. At the end of 1943 the leader of the detachment sent the newly-arrived Ivye group out on a war-assignment: to blow up the German train near the Yuratshishok station. The group included: Leyzer Tsirulnik, Yoel Savitski (Ivye), Mayer Romanovski (Baksht), Avrum Levin (Trab) and a Christian.

They did not succeed in blowing up the train, and were lying in a forest resting, outside the partisan zone, not taking any security measures. Germans, who were by chance in a nearby village, surrounded them and shot them while they slept. The peasants buried them in the same place.

Later the names of the three goyim who had led the Germans to the partisans in the forest were discovered. They were brought to the detachment and shot. Their possessions were confiscated.

Eli Kats, who was chief of the detachment, died from a bout of typhus (January 1944). A month later his son Gershon fell, bravely in a big battle of the partisan detachment against a German garrison in the village Lugomovitsh (near Ivye).

Of the whole partisan group in the bunker in the Morin forest, the only ones to survive the war were: Hirshl Goldshmid (today in America), Sima Sheftel, Malke Sheftel, Rokhl Slonimski (Canada), Khaye Tsirulnik and Itshke Mints (Yisroel).

(According to the witness of Hirshl Goldshmid and Khaye Tsirulnik)

Tanfel, Frume fled to the forests from Ivye ghetto on January 1, 1943. She was a nurse in the “Suvorov” detachment (“Stalin” brigade). In addition to her duties she took part in several battles and distinguished herself thereby. After each battle the commanders would remark in the daily roll-call on her brave doings.

She fell when she had crept out to the front line of fire to pull back a wounded partisan, in a battle against the Germans near the village Novosiolek (Radoshkovitshe area) in April 1944. The detachment's commissioner wrote a love-song in honor of the brave young woman from Ivye.

The brothers Motke, Eli and Yankl Kagan. In the spring of 1943 they escaped from the Lide “death"-camp to join Bielski, and later went over to the “Nievski” detachment. All three were brave, disciplined partisans.

Motke fell after liberation, during a clash with retreating Germans. Eli and Yankl were mobilized in the Russian army. From there, their footprints disappear.

Betsalel (Tsalke) Ginzburg--the brave and distinguished partisan from the “Iskra” detachment. He blew up 17 German troop transports with soldiers, weapons and ammunition, that were on the way to the front.

In April 1943 he, together with his brother Motke and cousin Yude Mote, blew up the Parove mill, electrical station and saw mill in Ivye. He was murdered after liberation (July 1944) in the village Dokudove by White-Polish gangs. He was designated for the Order of Lenin and named “Hero of the Soviet Union”.

Khaym-Leyb (“Lioke”) Dvoretski from the Bielski detachment and Meyshe-Zalman Kinkulkin, a partisan from the “Aleksander Nievski” detachment, fell in the war of liberation for the state of Israel (1948).

Yosef Blokh (son of Khone “Mister”) fell after going out of the forest, in the ranks of the Red Army during its advance into Poland.

Melamed, Fime (son of Dr. Melamed of blessed memory) was distinguished as “chief” in the “Zshukov” brigade. A loyal fighter, full of initiative.

He fell in the big raid (July 1943), pressing on in a German ambush.

Eli-Zalman Albershteyn (Kushke's youngest son). Was in the “Iskra” detachment. Fell in the village Litvitse, going with a group of partisans to mine a bridge on the Lide-Vilne train line (18 March 1943).

Aba Boyarski. A partisan in the “Lenin” detachment in the Rudniki forests. He was a diversion [specialist]. He blew himself up while planting a mine under the train lines (15 April 1943).

Yosef Kabak and Peysakh Bielski. Partisans in the “Aleksander Nievski” detachment in the Nalibok wastelands. Captured alive by the Germans going to buy weapons from Poles. They were tortured for information about the partisans. They remained stubbornly silent and were shot in Ivye (9 March 1943).

(More details and photographs, see the section “Children of Ivye...”)

    Iwie (Ivye), Belarus     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2024 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 16 Sep 2022 by MGH