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[Pages 347-349]

It has been thirty years since I left Podkamien, where I was born, and lived till the age of ten. Between 1930 and 1941 I visited Podkamien frequently, but I was not a resident.

Podkamien lies around 10 kilometers to the northwest of Rohatyn, about halfway along the road from Strelisk (Streliska Nowe.) To the east is the village of Czercze, to the west Beikowce and Frei (Fraga.) Zalanow is to the north, about seven kilometers to the southwest of the station Pomonieta Psary.

Before World War One, there were at least 100 Jewish families in the village. Most of them left and were scattered, some to other cities and towns in the region, and others to America.

In 1930, Podkamien contained about twenty Jewish families. Two or three of them left the village after 1930.

Most of the population in the village, apart from the Jews, were Ukrainian, with a few Poles. There were also some German families, holdovers from the Austrian era who had taken root in the village. Most of the Poles had been settled there in the twenties, in separate enclaves, by the Polish government, which was trying to impart a Polish character to the village. A drawn-out war, complete with acts of hostility, was waged in the village between the Poles and Ukrainians. At the end of the twenties, the violence took on a more serious aspect, and I recall a period in which twenty Ukrainian homes were set on fire by Polish nationalists.

The Jewish populace hardly took part in the communal life of the village, except for the indirect influence of one or two Jews in favor in the court of the count. The count actually spent most of his time abroad, but his property manager and the priests were the effectual governors of the village, despite the so-called “elections” for the municipal institutions.

Most of the non-Jewish residents were farmers of their own land. Some, however had either no land at all, or small plots that could not provide sufficient livelihood, and so they hired themselves out to work in the fields of others.

The non-Jewish populace were reserved in their treatment of the Jews. I remember very few public acts of violence or hostility against the Jews occurring in those years, but the Ukrainian children and youths pursued and oppressed the Jewish children. A great fear would fall over me whenever I had to pass by the house of a Ukrainian boy who was bigger than me. In the thirties, with the opening of cooperatives in the village, a covert economic war against the Jews began.

The Jews that remained in the village were for the most part those who could not immigrate to other lands, mostly the elderly and some who were disabled, and some closely related to those who had to stay. Three Jewish families lived off of agriculture, owning fertile parcels of land, upon which the Gentiles cast jealous glares.

Two Jewish families eked meager livings out of their village general stores. A third established ties with the count's court, and was therefore considered wealthy, and so felt the sting of the local cooperatives directed at them.

There were two barkeepers in the village, one of the holding open an inn as well, where non-Jews met to consider the municipal and economic matters of the village over glasses of brandy. One of the two taverns closed at the end of the twenties, when its owner, a widow and her two children, immigrated to Canada.

There was also a kosher butchery in the village.

Most of the retail trade was based on selling to the local populace on credit. Once every week or two the storeowners went to the city and brought back their goods. After passing them on to their local customers, they would go out among the villagers many mornings, with their baskets, collecting eggs, hens, and so forth, as payment for the goods they had given out. Once or twice a week, when the peddlers and merchants came from Rohatyn, the storeowners would give over the gathered yield.

At the beginning of the thirties their was still a shochet (ritual slaughterer) in Podkamien, who went through the surrounding villages, as far as ten kilometers away, visiting Jewish families to slaughter fowl and cattle, sometimes by special invitation. In general, he had the most work on the eve of Yom Kippur, when Jews from all around would bring him their kapparot (expiatory sacrifices) for slaughter. This shochet also taught the children Chumash (Torah) with the Rashi commentary. As I recall, he left after a year or two, for lack of livelihood.

The first stage of Jewish education, the “alef-bet,” was provided for the Jewish children by a dardike-melamed (preliminary religious teacher,) but at the start of the twenties a number of families also brought in a Hebrew and general studies teacher.

A public school with four grades was also established in the village. The few Jewish children also attended it. The level of education was very low, and a graduate of all four grades could read with difficulty. The percentage of students who dropped out before finishing all four grades was high, because there was a shortage of man-power in the farming families, and the children served as shepherds of cattle and geese. Two or three times a week, priests would come into the class to give religious instruction, and I remember that always after such an instructive lesson I took a beating from the Ukrainian children, together with curses: “Jew, you killed our lord.”

Jewish life in the village was concentrated around the synagogue. This synagogue stood in the center of the village, next to the village-council building and a large public square. It possessed four Torah scrolls.

In the period that I remember, there were no public prayer services on regular weekdays, but only on Shabbat, holidays, and festivals. Only on memorial days (yarziet) would a minyan (quorum) assemble for prayer. In contrast to this, the synagogue was full to capacity on holidays, when Jews from the neighboring villages of Dhova, Psiri, and Zilnow came to pray with the community. When a holiday fell on Shabbat, the Jews would come with their families and stay over, so as not to transgress the “Shabbat limitations.”^[1] On Yom Kippur they would remain in the synagogue, spending all their time on the recitation of Psalms. On other holidays they would stay as guests in the homes of local Jews. Or they might leave Podkamien on the “Days of Awe,” and go to the court of the Stretiner Rebbe, to Rohatyn, and spend the holidays there.

To this day, the Torah reading of Reb Mordechai Wilig, of blessed memory, still resounds in my ears. He was the usual reader on every Shabbat of the year, and would walk the village roads from his house to the synagogue and back decked in his talit (prayer-shawl) because of the prohibition against carrying anything on Shabbat. He would spend Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur with the Stretiner Rebbe, and hear the Torah reading there.

The stirring words of Reb Shlomo Titel, before shofar blowing on Rosh Hashana, and before neilah (the concluding prayer) on Yom Kippur, brought tears to the eyes of everyone praying in the synagogue. This learned old man was the spiritual leader of the regional Jews, and was regularly called upon to blow the shofar, and to lead musaf (the additional service) on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

When the archbishop passed through the village in the twenties, it was Reb Titel who went out to greet him with a Torah scroll in his hands, and in those years, when on Simchat Torah the Jews still went dancing out onto the village roads, he went out, together with Mordechai Wilig, at the head of all the Jews.

Reb Moshe Fenster, a shofar blower, who led shacharit (morning prayer) on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, used to gather all the youths on almost every summer Shabbat, and instruct them in a chapter of Pirkei Avot (“Ethics of the Fathers”) or a page of Gemara.

And Zvi Axelrod, who stood and recited pesukay d'zimra (preliminary morning prayers) for an hour and a half on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, must be remembered. He could be seen on every summer Shabbat going out to survey the fields.

With the coming of the Germans in 1941, all the Jews of Podkamien were transported to the Rohatyn ghetto. As far as I know, only two or three Podkamien Jews survived, the rest perishing alongside the Jews of Rohatyn and its vicinity.

May their souls be bound together in eternal life, and may their memory last forever.

Footnote:

1	A person is prohibited from walking more than about ¾ of a mile outside the town one is in durng Shabbat. back

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