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[Page 397]

The decimation of the Shedlets Jews in the month of Elul 1942 put a temporary end to the killings by the lying German murderers, as the ghettoes in Podliash were not liquidated but turned into work centers for the German Wehrmacht.

We, Sokolov Jews, locked in the ghetto, perceived that the wave of extermination was getting closer to us. The fear of the pains of death and the gas-chambers rattled everyone terribly. Shocked and confounded, the Jews in the ghetto ran to one another, everyone asking the same question: What can we do and where can we run to? But sadly no one could provide an answer to the questions.

The despair grew greater from minute to minute. From time to time we heard that Jews had fled from the ghetto. Men, women, children, mothers with infants in their arms, began to run into the field gardens which led to the Kipitine, Nitshitse and Rogov forests, ignoring the strict German orders that any Jew who stepped beyond the confines of the ghetto would be shot.

There were Jews who ran off without any aim, not knowing themselves where they were running to. One thing they did know: They were running from the German persecutors who would certainly come from Shedlets once they had made a blood bath of the Jews there. And if they carried it out on the Shedlets Jews, why would they not carry it out on the Sokolov Jews?

And in reality, the Sokolov Jews were not wrong. While the extermination action against the Jews in Shedlets was still going on in all its brutality and intensity, a brigade of Gestapo-niks came to Sokolov to kill Jews.

They came to the local teams in order to get exact instructions from Dr. Herman, who led the entire extermination action not only in Sokolov but also in Vengrov and in Kosov.

Dr. Herman, who already had detailed reports about the Jews fleeing the town, arranged to put off the slaughter

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for another month's time, until the Jews returned to the ghetto. After a few weeks in the forests and fields most of the Jews – hungry, thirsty and desperate – returned to the ghetto because the Christian population helped them very little. Rather, organized bands of gentile men were on the roads to attack the helpless and condemned-to-death Jews. They beat them and robbed them, often taking the clothes from adults and even small children, and drove them back into the ghetto or incited the German gendarmes who spilled Jewish blood with devilish pleasure. Also, the known gentiles who they believed would offer help refused to do so. In the words of the Prophet Yermiahu “I called for my lovers, but they deceived me”. Only a few Christians had mercy for the unfortunate wanderers that were fleeing from certain death. Should they ever be remembered for good, it was sadly only individuals. Some were shocked by their neighbors when they were reported to the Germans for offering help to Jews.

With the return to the ghetto of the Jews who fled over a few days, and hearing the sad news about the reactions of the Christians with them, a panic overtook all the Jews in the ghetto. The news shook everyone. All their dreams of saving themselves were ruined, because it became clear that we were really among enemies.

At night visions of Treblinke suffocated us. We heard louder the voices of the Jews being driven by the German devils into the gas chambers, wailing “What is our sin, what is our crime?” “Why are you killing us?” The voices tore at the hearts of every Jew in the ghetto, we could not stay there anymore. Jews stole out of the ghetto and the Shtsheglotshin-Kurtsheve Camp, where several hundred Jews worked in the dry swamps of the empty fields that belonged to the Kurtsheve Prince.

I was also among those who fled and, disregarding the danger that lurked for us from the Germans and the Polish bands, every day larger groups fled the ghetto for the above-mentioned camp: it was the only way out.

Over a few weeks the number of Jews in the camp multiplied. The majority of them on the road were confused and robbed, completely naked and barefoot. Contact with the town became ever more difficult because of the increased German guard-posts. The days are no longer summery, the nights are quite cold and

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rainy. The naked and barefoot Jews shiver in the cold. The suffering is great but sadly few would give up anything for another. I lay in the bunk at the camp for the night but cannot close my eyes. I toss and shiver. I feel the cold of the unfortunate clothing-less Jews in the camp and I decide to call a meeting in the morning with the former leaders of Sokolov in order to organize an aid brigade to help here.

In the discussion, in which twenty persons took part, it was decided to send a delegation of five people: Rov Yankev Karpl, the son-in-law of Yeshive Head Rov Simkhe Volfovski; Rov Asher Rozenblum (son-in-law of Avrom Yankev Tshernitski); Leyzer Elbling (“the grey Leyzer”); Meyshe Peltsenmakher and the writer of these lines.

Given that it was the eve of Yon-kiper it was decided to announce it to the whole gathering before praying. It is worth mentioning that it was only on Yon-kiper that we had the opportunity to pray as a community, because we were still many representatives of the Sokolov Jewish Council and freed from work.

But on Rosh-hashone we had to work in the wild fields. Yona Pasmente, the son-in-law of Avrom Midlarski – a Bratslov Hasid – called up from the pit where he was working in deep water, praying aloud; and when he came to U'b'kheyn ten pakhdikha said it with such wailing lament that everyone around was carried away and shouted out as one voice “May all the wicked ones be banished from the earth”.

Between the morning and afternoon prayers on Yon-kiper Pinkhas Tshernitski announced the decision to the gathering. They accepted the news enthusiastically and wished us success in the action, especially that we return in peace.

The commandant of the camp was a Shtsheglotshin goy, an underworld figure, who loved the taste of liquor. For money you could get a pass permit from him.

Yom-kiper evening we got the “pshepustke” from him for a very lovely gift, so we could travel into the town as messengers from the camp to help the needy and naked with clothing.

By chance Sholem Glezer was in the camp on Yon-kiper with his horse and wagon and he happily agreed to take us into town.

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We left the camp at six o'clock in the morning, the day after Yon-kiper. We believed that “messengers on a good deed will not be injured”. We were certain that over two days we would successfully carry out our action, knowing the deep understanding and broad-heartedness of our Sokolover, even in the worst moments in the ghetto. Even those who were known to be stingy contributed their share in the ghetto, for the needy. And indeed, thanks to them it was possible for us, the Jewish Committee for Social Action, to open soup kitchens for almost three years, where we distributed about 1,500 lunches for adults and 400 breakfasts for children as well as medical help.

Two kilometers before Skrisheve we came across a Christian who said “Jews, where are you going? Don't you even know that they are killing all the Jews in Sokolov?”

That news froze us. Recovering a bit after a few minutes, we talked among ourselves about what to do. Meyshe Peltsenmakher proposed that we continue our journey, explaining that the Christians get pleasure from frightening Jews, and this was simply a joke to him.

On the road from Skrisheve to Rifki we encountered masses of Germans armed with machine guns and many vehicles. We did not know what direction they were traveling in. We were gripped by a death fear. We felt that something was being prepared for this area. We knew from experience what such “movements” by the bloodthirsty animals indicated, and what sad results they brought. We wanted to pull off of the main road but there was no longer any chance of doing that, so against our will we drove on and our nerves got less all the time, more tense, and shredded like old cloth. Our bodies were paralyzed. Suddenly we heard a wailing shout from a boy: “Don't go into the town! They are killing all the Jews! Run away!”

I turn my head in every direction to see who had called out. I see no one. The voice came from the open fields. I could not see any human face. Rov Karpl cried out “It is a voice from the heavens!” What to do in such a situation? After a hard struggle we decided quickly to leave the wagon and turn back on foot through side roads to Shtsheglotshin.

We run for several hours and we do not know where we are going. We even see a house in the distance, but we are afraid

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to go there to ask directions. It is known that the Germans paid each goy five hundred gilden for delivering a Jewish head.

We met an old Christian woman who pitied us, expressed sympathy, and showed us the road to Kurtshev. We run further. In the evening we arrive in camp.

The large square and all the barracks were shrouded in a deep sadness. From the barracks we heard weeping from the orphans for their mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, who are suffocating now, crowded into the sealed train cars on the way to Treblinke.

I drag myself to my barrack. As I stepped over the threshold I fainted away. When I came to, I realized that I was back among my brothers and sisters.

The news that the five Jews who were sent as messengers for life were now in the camp spread quickly among all the Jews.

Eventually Hersh Tuvye Yablonovski and Yisroel Roznboym pulled off a jacket or a sweater with a collar and went to others, holding them in their hands as an example for others to follow. Every one of us should give something, a shirt, a pair of shoes and so on.

After a while there was underwear and clothing in the barrack that our Jews had literally taken off themselves. At sunrise the next day that was distributed among the naked and barefoot Jews in the camp.

Dark days began in the camp. The panic that took over in the last weeks before the extermination of the Jews in town stayed in the camp. Every day brought terrible news. The question of whether the camp would remain or be liquidated weakened our strength so much that we saw no redemption for us.

Meanwhile we went to work every day at dawn and stood in the pits that were full of water and worms. The dawn hours were cold, penetrating all our bones, but worse than anything was that none of us believed the torture and pain would save us from death. The camp got worse every day. The special food distributed by the Germans was a starvation ration: 20 dekas of bread a day and half a kilo of potatoes per head. Plus, the

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bread was a mix of flour and sand. The potatoes were half rotten and with a lot of worms. The hunger – along with the fear of death – over time changed the faces of the Jews in camp. White and yellow, really, one encouraged another and helped as much as possible. Some Jews arrived who had saved themselves in the ghetto, hiding for several weeks in cellars or in other hideouts. A fear of looking at them took hold. It was hard even to recognize them: bent over and shrunken and sick.

Monday November 2^nd, 1942, the news arrived that the camp would be liquidated, and all its workers would be sent to various points to work in forests.

We did not have any illusions and did not believe in all the assurances. For us it was clear that the goal of the Germans was simply to take the Sokolov Jews into the forest and shoot them there just as they had done with the Vishove and Pultuske Jews.

But unfortunately there is no way out and no where to run to. We sit on an island, surrounded by enemies.

On a certain evening there came secret reports from a group of youths, former military men, and it was decided to buy some weapons in order to be able to resist the Germans. That was not successful though, due to the guards over the camp being reinforced.

On the 10^th of December 1942 a messenger arrived in camp from the Jews in the labor details at the princely estates in the villages. Thanks to that we were not killed in the slaughter of the Jews on Yon-kiper in Sokolov.

The Jews related that an announcement had been made in all the locations, signed by the regional chief, that all Jews from the work details must leave those places by the 30^th of November 1942. And they must move to the special small ghettos in Kosov, Mezritsh, Kalushin, and any Jew who was found outside the above-mentioned ghettos after the 30th of November would be shot on the spot.

The messengers had risked their lives stealing out of their workplaces and come to the camp where there were more than a thousand Jews in order to ask their advice about what to do next.

The thoughts of the Jews in the camp were divided: some said that since no such announcement had been made in the camp,

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it was a sign that the camp might continue to exist. Therefore, it would be easy to smuggle the other Jews into the camp. Others maintained that the camp would be considered a small ghetto. And so, there was no doubt that the intent of the Germans was to gather all the Jews together in the small ghettos in order to exterminate them all at once and to make an end of the remainder of the living Jews they would also liquidate the camp. We warned them not to go into the ghettos, but to seek possibilities to create places with gentiles or go into the forests because the small ghettos were a certain death.

On the 20^th of November 1942 the Polish overseers came in to the camp at dawn and led the groups out for work. We can tell by their faces that they know some bad news about us, but they say nothing. Our curiosity grows from minute to minute. Hearts pound in terror. The work begins. Looking for an opportunity to get something about our fate from the gentiles, our group came up with the idea to stop work for a while and start talking to one another and see how the overseers respond to the issue.

Usually, the overseers do not allow taking any general break from work. But this time they do not order us back. Their cool relation to our working predicted larger events. Finally we began to find out the secret, that the regional chief over Vengrov, Sokolov and that area had stopped work in the Shtsheglotshin fields and had resettled the Jews from the camp in certain groupings in the occupied Russian areas as well as in the Bialavezshe forest to cut down trees. Women and children would be shipped to the small ghettos which had been specially set up for them.

The news about the arrangements spread quickly over the camp and rattled everyone, large and small. The panic grows from minute to minute. It is remarkable how the children were involved in the difficult moment. Along with the adults. They understood the gruesomeness of the camp. A small number of women who looked like Christians took their children and went to the villages in search of hiding places. And a small number of men stole out of the camp to go to known Christians in various villages. After the war there were almost none of them in Sokolov, they

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were probably murdered on the roads or in their bunkers by the goyim.

The camp is in chaos, a confusion. We do not know what to do, and how to save ourselves. On November 22^nd, 1942, the engineer came – a Pole who had directed the work in the camp – and announced that the liquidation of the camp had been delayed for a month. As it was later discovered, the Germans had fooled him and used him for their devilish ends in order keep the Jews from fleeing or thinking about an uprising.

The Jews in camp did not believe all the promises in any case. All those who had a place to run to, left the camp in the dark days of the month of November, seeing all the dangers they were exposed to. Some also went to the newly-built small ghettos, hoping that their friends, old settlers in the places, had sure relationships with the gentiles or secret places in the forest, and that they might save them from death.

Pinkhas Yankev Levin and Henekh Mankhes Rubinshteyn believed that the best plan was to smuggle oneself over to the occupied Russian areas on the other side of the River Bug, which were so far not under threat.

Motl Sminover was a good swimmer, and he organized a group of more than twenty people who had decided to swim the Bug in the dark of night, while the German guards were not so watchful.

The plan was that after their work in the fields they would hide in the pits and at night swim the Bug, about two kilometers further.

We put together a little money for the group to provide them with bread. The money was eventually needed to pay bribes to the gentile men.

In order that the Polish overseers would not be aware of the plan, we said goodbye to them at work site. We separated. The group left for the river. After Liberation no one found any trace of them either. Suddenly on the 25^th of November 1942 an autobus arrived in the camp with German gendarmes and policemen and carried out an intense inspection in all the barracks. When questioned by the Polish commandant about what they were searching for, they replied that they had information about a large quantity of leather in the camp that had been smuggled out of the ghetto, from the deported Jews. While carrying out the

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search they did not spare any blows on whoever they came across, whether they had any leather. At the same time, they took a detailed report from the camp commandant, about the number of Jews in the camp. There was now no doubt that the day of murder was nearing. I, along with many other Jews, decided to flee from the camp.

There was deep snow outdoors. A blizzard was blowing up so that we could not recognize the road. Still, we left the camp, using various routes. I went off to my family at the Estate “B”, arriving in the village half dead and frozen in the middle of the night. At nine in the morning, we got the horrible news that all the Jews in the camp had been bestially murdered may God avenge their blood.

At the estate there were still twenty-some Jewish souls, among them children aged two to thirteen years. The adults were some from Sokolov and some from Ostervek, and a few from Pultusk. The estate was managed by a steward who loved to receive gifts and thanks to that grabbed another few Jews as workers even though they had not arrived with work passes from the labor office. The steward gave all the Jews a house that had once served as a carpentry workshop. Of course, the house was too small to fit in the twenty-some souls. But for a gift the steward made some exceptions that made it possible for the Jews to squeeze themselves into the one house that served for cooking food and sleeping.

The proprietor of the workshop was Meyshe Sheyne-Khave's. He provided the potatoes that were distributed for the workers, as well as purchasing the necessary products from the peasants in the village, to keep body and soul together.

The women who had smaller children cooked the food, as they needed to stay in the house with them. The other women and the men worked in the field digging up potatoes, beets, cabbage, carrots and so on.

When I arrived at the estate after fleeing from Camp Shtsheglotshin, I found all the Jews there in a terribly depressed state. It was dark and cold in the house: from time to time I heard a moan and quiet weeping from a woman, whispering the words “How to go and what to do? If only my husband were here with us, it would be easier.”

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I felt my strength melt away. But the thing that broke me was the child speaking to the mother: “Mameshi, don't cry, daddy will come back to us yet…”

The words from Psalms raced through my mind: “Our soul is bowed down to the dust; our belly cleaves to the earth”.

Hardly any of us closed an eye that whole night, and even the children awoke often. At dawn, still dark outdoors, the steward came to the door of the house and confessed that the Jews were not going out to work. They had received an order from the authorities in Kurtshev, to which the estate was also connected, that the Jews would leave this place and transfer to Kosov, where a small ghetto for Jews existed. They were prepared to supply a wagon for them to travel to Kosov. Anyone who did not want to go there would go someplace else and go by foot. The final date to leave the village was the 29^th of November.

The estate is a kilometer from the village where peasants lived, who possessed their own farmlands, pressed one against the other. Across from them all the farmhands lived in apartments, each building housing many laborers.

Of course it was not possible to consider trying to hide at the estate among those in the houses, being afraid of one's neighbors.

Therefore we, some of the Jews, went into the village in search of hiding places. Perhaps we would find a refined gentile who would save us from the German at least temporarily.

All of them answered, however, that they could not help any Jews, out of fear for their own children. Only one thing they were ready take in return: all the money and items from the Jews. And if we remained after the war they would give it back to us. The intent was clear: they wanted to be the inheritors of what the Jews still had at this moment.

We stood broken in two, full of pain and worry: where to go now? No road leads to home, no path arouses any hope. Like any person in trouble, we lift our eyes to heaven, but over us creep random thoughts that seek a hiding place. A way out, to remain alive while waiting for liberation and then see our murderers avenged, and to find our close ones.

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After a while all these thoughts fell apart. A panic seizes the entire group. A Kosov youth comes running from Shtsheglotshin, his face is whiter than a corpse. He announces, “Run away from the village now! They are killing all the Jews in the camp! They can be here soon to liquidate the Jews!”

After giving this news he fell over in a faint. It took a lot of effort to revive him. The news put an end to our pondering and everyone ran off on different paths and also into the nearby forest to find a redemption. Some went off to Kosov.

My wife and I found a kind and generous Christian family. They took pity and agreed to hide us. My wife had an assurance from a Christian woman who used to buy from our store, that she would manage to help in a time of trouble. The woman was very kind, literally a friend of Jews, and her husband was employed by the Polish government. He was a member of the Endek Party. But he opposed the killing of Jews. In those times that was a large step.

We came into the village where the Christian family lived late at night and begged them to save us. My wife went to them with great caution, so that no neighbor would notice. The night was frosty. I was standing hidden under the trees and shivered with cold and fear that some village peasant might recognize me. Each minute was like a year for me. I will never forget the moment when I saw a dog, a large as a lion, approaching the trees where I was standing; the blood in me almost froze from horror and fear. I collapsed and the dog came over to me, licked me all over and went away.

During that time my wife tearfully pleaded with the husband to hide us among them.

I must mention here that the greatest influence over the husband was his wife, who cried along with her for him to take us in.

The Christian would not allow my wife to go out to bring me into the house, fearing that some neighbor might notice. He came out to the trees himself and quietly told me to follow him. And so I went with him into the house.

The next evening, he took us to the barn

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in the yard, not far from the house. That is where we stayed for 22 months until the liberation.

The first few days we lay in the barn among the sheaves of cut rye, hidden from every side so that no one would God forbid see us. But the bunker was not secure. The husband told me that it was necessary to dig a hole under the grain inside the barn and to mask it. Then the bunker would be hidden.

Naturally we set right to the tricky task. We had to do it very quickly so none of the neighbors would hear rustling from the barn. Over two days the pit grew to 190 centimeters long, 120 wide and 90 deep, and ready. The roof was covered with bales of straw and wood; on one side was a small, well-masked opening which served as an entrance and exit from the pit.

After finishing our dark apartment, we went right over to living in our hole. Our household goods consisted of talis un t'filin and a quilt and a few shirts. It was hard at first to lie in the living grave. We were afraid even to cough, to speak a word, in case a goy was passing by and would hear us. Whole days and nights we cried and could not sigh until the source of tears was dried out, and the heart was so clenched that we could no longer cry or sigh. We felt like living corpses wandering around like transmogrifications in a cemetery.

The dark days and nights drew on. The German victories on all fronts made our days even darker as well as our hopes of getting out of the pit into the sunshine.

Mostly what affected us was the report that the last 200 Jews who remained in Sokolov as workers had been sent to Treblinke. That was the seal on the account of all the Sokolov Jews under the Nazi murderers.

Our bereavement was very strong, and we could not recover; our proprietor's face was also somber because he had not reckoned that his hiding us would go on for such a long time. He believed that we would be able to go over to the Jews in town and unite with them as workers in the small ghetto. And that threw us into a fright that we would have

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to leave our hideout.

We feel that our energy is giving out and we will not be able to hide for long. Our legs do not work. Our heads spin and troubles and worry plague us. The danger of my brother-in-law and his family being killed awake our strength to search for a way to save ourselves.

After difficult and dangerous efforts my brother-in-law succeeded, along with Yankev Shimeon's grandson and his wife, in locating a hole in a barn a kilometer away from us. They paid well for the hole.

After several months, when the goy had already taken a significant amount of money from him and used it to build up his neglected estate, he told them that he could not keep six people, but only two. And since my brother-in-law's family consisted of four people, it fell as their fate to leave the hideout. If not, when the peasant was away from his shabby hut, in the fields for a while, or with his father-in-law in another village, they might die of hunger. The initiative for this pretense came from his wife. She was a terrible antisemite. After sucking the money out of the Jews, she wanted nothing to do with them. The mother's, my sister-in-law Khantshe's, crying did not help, as she begged mercy from the goya, who was also a mother of small children. The goya demanded that they leave the “kriuvke” over the next few days.

My brother and sister-in-law still had other familiar Christians in various villages in the area. The Christians had been regular customers in their shop and considered them literally as close friends. Although all these dear friends had already promised their readiness to hide them, at the actual difficult moment when there were no paths open to save themselves – my sister-in-law decided to try to awaken their pity, if only for her two children, the sole continuation of the entire family.

The road was immensely dangerous, because the Polish men would murder the Jews who wandered the roads. The children still remember today the terrifying and tragic moment when their mother went out over the villages seeking a safe corner for them. The weeping and lamenting of the whole family opened all seven heavens. Those entire days of her not being with them the children did not sleep.

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After roaming for several days and nights over field and forest – by day she did not approach any Christians for fear of being reported by neighbors – she returned broken and despairing. Everywhere the same excuse: people were afraid of a betrayal by a neighbor and of their children, who took pleasure from the great Jewish misfortune.

My sister-in-law had a coupon for merchandise that she had gotten from a known Christian, to trade it for bread. One time, going outdoors after a chat with a Christian, his son followed her and robbed the merchandise. From that she knew that she should leave the village, otherwise they would kill her. The Christian with whom they were hiding demanded that they leave the place. The situation was hopeless.

The hideout which they shared with Pinkhas Tshernitski, and his wife was all of one kilometer's distance from our hiding place. They were also located in a barn that stood in a field, back from the road. As usual in the barns there was a vent opposite the door that was opened only when threshing the grain, so the wind could blow away the chaff from the grain.

My brother-in-law Shabsel decided before they would leave the hideout at the Christian's which would mean a certain death for the whole family, that he would tell us about it and if we could stay alive we should take revenge on the goy who took their money and then bought up horses and cows with it – and then drove them out into the hands of the angel of death. Execution and inheritance.

The nights at the end of the month were dark; Shabsel came late at night to the vent in our barn and told us his situation. The news shattered us, our trust: lying in that pit was our tiny family; without them we had no content in our lives.

We decided to rescue them with our Christian and ask him to take pity on the four souls and take them in with us in the pit. But meanwhile my brother-in-law would prevail upon the Christian where they were now, that he would keep them for about three days longer, until we could talk it over with our proprietor. That night was horrible for us. We knew that our Christian had endured enough since he took us in. He had thought that it was a matter of weeks, not of years. What would happen with food?

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He can, because of security reasons, not buy any food for us, two people, and we are hungry now too, and how to add four more souls, including two small children.

We cannot find any logical basis for the plan, but we decide to be bold and ask. And if we are not heaven forbid victorious, we will share in the fate that awaits them. As every day, today the kind Christian brings us a little bread and black coffee for breakfast. At that moment we began with tears to tell him about the misfortune and beg him to save the four souls who are the content of our further life. We will share our bit of bread we receive with them, in this pit.

The noble Christian stood shattered and wept deeply with us. She promised to do everything she could so that her husband would allow this. The dear Lutsina did indeed talk it over with her husband and asked him to save the four souls too. In a few hours the man came out to us in the barn with a strong reproach about our breaking his wife's heart, and appealed to our better sense: how is it possible, how can we ask this of him while he does not have enough food for his family, and can the pit hold six people and he envisioned that we would hole up there for several weeks. But we held our own. We will all just press together. And as for eating – we will share what we have been given up until now.

At night my brother-in-law came to the vent again in order to learn if our asking the Christian had had any real results, we decided that my sister-in-law Khantshe should go to the Christian at night to ask him to save them.

She did go into his house that night, fell at their feet and begged them to save her two children. The precious Lutsina helped. In the end he said that he would think about it. The Christian woman said quietly to my sister-in-law that tomorrow, late at night, she would help her sister and her husband get into the barn, to us. The woman then promised that she would not lock the barn. And once they were there in the pit her husband would certainly not throw them out. That would be like handing them over to the German murderers.

The next evening, in the dark of the night, stealing one by one into the pit, came my brother-in-law with his wife and their two children. Like beggars, each had brought on their shoulders

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a pack of old clothes. The reunion was very touching but all in deaf language: if someone would hear we all were lost.

Once the sun was shining one could see how awful it was to look at them. Their faces were yellow with black lines under their eyes. The eyes themselves, frightening. The children looked much smaller, as if they had grown backwards, yet one recognized that from the joy of being saved from certain death, smiles appeared on their faces.

Our noble Lutsina showed them a happy face that encouraged everyone. She concerned herself with making our portions of bread larger, as far as possible, so that we could distribute it among six souls. We also got a little more soup. We were hungry together, but we were happy. And little Sorele said that since now we will survive, we will soon travel to Erets-yisroel.

The days went by with hunger, and not enough sleep.

There was no room for all six people to lie down. We had to sleep sitting up in the pit, leaning against the walls of the pit.

We were all devastated. We could see no end to our troubles. And it seemed as if our pain was more than from the devil…it was hard to see the hunger of the children. We saw that they were exhausted from bearing the suffering. They ate raw rye that we had taken from the stored grain.

The secret letters that Vatsek, the son of our proprietor, brought were a ray of light and hope. We received several encouraging reports, the boy's character was such like his mother's. He strengthened and bolstered us with his fantastic news that the German defeat was near, and we would soon be free.

One of us could always hear the movement outdoors along the highway – several hundred meters away from the hideout, and one could be sure: if an automobile was passing it could only be Germans, because Poles at that time did not drive cars.

When we heard cars driving by, we quickly got up from the pit and masked all the openings.

Once it was July 1943, it was warm and lovely outdoors, the fields standing in bloom and the landowners expanding to bring

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in the grain. Through the slats we can see children returning home from school, singing and dancing. We are full of envy and protest against our dark life. Deep in our sad thoughts, little Yitskhak suddenly shouts that he hears the sound of an automobile.

In great fright and haste we all got into and closed the hideout, strained to hear what direction the car was driving.

After a few minutes we hear voices of overfed Germans. The heat in the pit is awful, and our hearts pound with fear that they have come to the village to find hidden Jews.

We hear the Germans getting closer to our barn. Throwing open the doors and pressing inside. They throw aside bundles of straw, howling “Among these bundles of straw we'll find some cursed Jews.” They step on the hideout, along with their dogs. We expect death; they will throw grenades. But a after a few minutes of searching and finding nothing they leave the barn in anger. Then what comes to our minds but the psalm verse “For He has down from the heights of His sanctuary, from heaven did the Lord behold the earth to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to liberate those doomed to die. To recount in Zion the Name of Adonoy and His praise in Jerusalem”. The victory over death in that terrible moment gave us hope that we would outlive the troubles and merit living life as human beings.

Our conjecture was that sending the Gestapo into the village was inspired by our Polish neighbor, whom we had given merchandise and money before the liquidation of the ghetto, as redemption money. In order that he would remain the heir of the fees, he probably reported it to the gendarmerie. That is how the friendship of the majority of Poles looked to the Jews. Thus the Poles who helped the save Jews are even greater than the Righteous of the Nations.

Another week goes by and another week. We already know the end of the small ghettos and the gruesome way of their annihilation. The two children with us begged us with tears in their eyes that we do not cry, but hope for the liberation.

The day goes by a usual in the village, but for us in the pit the time lies on us like a beast full of secrets. We feel weak and depleted of energy by hunger and fear. And that is how it goes, day after day, awaiting the help that must come.

As is common knowledge, Thursday was market day in Sokolov. The peasants from all the surrounding villages gathered in

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in town to buy what the needed. In the early morning hours we could already hear the peasants driving by. On a certain Thursday in August 1943, we do not hear anyone traveling on the road. We look through the slats of the barn and see restless movement among the local gentiles. Then our proprietress comes to us, wringing her hands, and tells us that the underground organization has shot a German in the village, and in such a case the Germans carry out a selection: They arrest the most respected proprietors of the village and sometimes drive them all away. She is afraid that if they burn the barn where we are hiding, everything will be revealed and so they would be shot to death. She begs us to go into the woods at night temporarily, until the rage settles down.

We know that if we go into the woods now that we will be killed by the antisemitic Polish bands that murder any Jews they encounter. We ensure her that even if the barn burns down, we will not run out. We will not put in danger the lives of the family that is saving our lives. We managed to remain in the pit.

One time many cars bearing gendarmes and deputies drove into the village and began to inspect every house and outbuilding. The Germans also trod over our hideout. They were searching for young men to ship to Germany as workers. They tossed aside the top bales of straw that covered our hideout. But the hiding place was not revealed. Once again, we won over certain death.

Sitting in the pit, we hear someone open the barn gates quickly. We tremble. It is the proprietor's 16-year-old son who opened the gates, come to tell us that the Germans have suffered a great loss in Stalingrad. The whole German Army at the front at Stalingrad – Moscow has taken prisoners, and the Germans were beaten on all the other fronts, so that our liberation is very close.

It is hard to describe the joy at that news. We feel a ray of hope, encouragement. The will to live is now stronger and more substantial.

Once again, a group of S.S. officers arrived in the village and evacuated the Polish residents of the handsome homes – including that of our proprietor.

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Soon a group of German soldiers came into the barn where we were hiding and scattered straw all around.

We stayed in the pit for two days without food or water. The proprietress could not bring us anything in the pit. We felt that we would perish from hunger and thirst. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, the Germans left the village and with that we were save from death by starvation.

The proprietors brought us the news that the German Army had rebuffed the Russian Army and advanced. The news was devastating. We had bourn not dying from hunger in those days in the pit. It appeared that that was an interruption in a great battle. July 1944, in the night, we heard in the pit that airplanes were flying over us. We got out of the pit in the barn and saw through the slats in the walls that there were great illuminating lamps in the sky, and it was as bright as the daytime. The airplanes were flying in the direction of Sokolov. And soon we hear the powerful detonations that tear the air. Bombs fall one after another. The ground shakes. And the barn wobbles like a drunkard, and we see the flames on several sides of the town.

The air attack went on for two hours. In the morning, we knew that it was over Sokolov, where more than two thousand Germans were killed, as well as a large number of Poles.

After the bombardment of the village where we were many military men arrived. All the private houses were evacuated. And the barns were filled with German soldiers. We were again sealed in the pit. Our provisions were a two-kilo loaf of bread and a bottle of water. The heat was horrible in the pit. We nourished ourselves with a piece of bread, a few grams, and a coffee cup of water.

The battles began in the village. We saw how a barn shot through with shrapnel caught fire and burned. We lie in the pit, fainting, suffocating, and feel that these are the last minutes of our lives. I look at the people lying here. Their lips are scorched from thirst. The faces yellow like wax. I wake them up, they cannot speak. Now I do not look at the danger, and quietly move the wooden board away from the door of the pit in order to let in a little air. I hear a movement

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that echoes in the yard, everyone perks up. That arouses a hope in me that something is finally happening. In the early morning hours, in the short time after that, Lutsina come and knocks on the pit, saying “You are saved. The Russian Army is here now in the village.” I opened the pit wide, take the prostate souls out into the air. From their great joy they were able to revive.

In that very moment of liberation, in that dreamed-of minute, our deep pain breaks out in frightful wailing – at once feeling the great singularity that has brought us to this freedom; first perceived the heart-rending longing for our dear ones; and the horrific reality. Our first desire is water! We were all dried out from the heat and thirst. Not even thinking of hunger. We gradually came to and began to realize our salvation. The proprietress brought us a bread and black coffee. The children were radiant, seeing a whole loaf of bread. We thought that we would eat the whole loaf in a minute. Our stomachs were shrunken though and could not take in what our eyes wanted to eat.

We gradually recovered and began to feel that we were alive. We stood by the slats of the barn and looked around. Russian military units were continually streaming toward town, marching, riding horses, with tanks and machine-guns. A few remain in the village and take over the barn.

We find ourselves in a moment of suspension, waiting for the proprietor to allow us to get out of the pit to our freedom, like a bird from a cage. The proprietor comes to us and says that he wants that we not be seen in the village. He is afraid for their safety. He will, he says, pay with his life for such a deed. In the best case his home and possessions would be burned. He wants the matter to remain a secret. We understand his wish completely. The proprietor closed the barn with a large lock, and we remained there and stayed alert that if he opened the gate with someone else, we should go right into the pit.

On the 9^th of August 1944, the news reached us that near the village of Rogov, about six kilometers from Sokolov, the Germans had taken a fort and posed a strong resistance. A few hours later the proprietress came into the barn wringing her hands and explained that the Germans had pushed the Russian Army back four kilometers, and that the Russians were retreating. Our eyes

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go blank, we do not know what to do: should we leave the pit and flee across to the other side of the Bug River where, we believe, the defeated Germans will not retreat so quickly; or should we remain here, although running along the roads presents no small danger of being killed by the Polish N.S.Z bands whose program is to liquidate every Jew saved from the Germans. Our proprietors themselves do not know how to advise us: from their side they wanted to be free now, but on the other side they want to save us. In the end we decide to remain here and not to run.

Again we live through hard hours. Joy is shattered. We live in fear again. Our nerves are tensed to the highest level. They tear like threads of cloth, and we cannot control them.

Happily, the hours were not long. In the evening we hear through the cracks as the priest from the village tells our proprietors that the Germans are pulling back from Rogov and the Red Army is advancing. The joy in that moment is not describable. At dawn the next day our proprietress brings the news that the Russians are now two kilometers from town and they are advancing. We wait patiently for the report that Sokolov has been taken. Each minute is a year. Because of strategic maneuvers the taking of the town is delayed by two days. Finally on the 12^th of August 1944, at six o'clock in the morning, the united armies enter the town. And atop the building on Shedlets Street on which the German flag waved for four and a half years, now hangs the banner of victory.

Eleven o'clock in the morning we get permission from our proprietress that a few of us may leave, singly, in secret so that our neighbors do not see us sneaking out of the barn and go into town.

We decide that the children and their now-failing, weakened father should stay in the barn. My wife and sister-in-law Khentshe and I will go into town.

Not pondering it for long, we steal out of the barn one at a time through the back door of the barn and leave by different paths until we are near the village. We me at the paved road that leads to the town and walk to town, about fifteen kilometers.

The joy of this helps lift our dried-out legs.

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In a few hours we were in Rogov. We stopped to rest a bit. Familiar Christians crossed themselves seeing Jews as if risen from the grave; and they looked with concern at how we appeared. They gave us bread and milk and rejoiced with us. We ate something and went on our way.

The road trembled from the trucks and tanks on their way to the front. We dragged ourselves to the town with our last strength.

Finally, just before sunset we made it to the fields of the town, were soon at Rifke Lane and from there into the town. Where and to whom should we go? Should we search and who might we find?

We walk on both sides of the street. We stop by the Jewish houses. Itsik Leybishe's daughter lived here, there lived Rafoel Rokhl the Trinetsierin's son-in-law. We stop at the homes of Elieyzer Hendl, Hershl Fisher, Yudl Kreytman, Avrom Asher and others, but unknown, non-Jewish faces look out from behind the windows. We walk and do not believe what we see. Sokolov without Jews! We walk further and we see the destroyed houses on Shlepa Street, where Shmulke Yisroel-Mordkhe's lived. The houses are no longer there. We cannot even tell that there was once something there. The new study-house is a club for Polish youths; our yard on Mali market destroyed by bombs, felled in those historic nights that gave us the strength to hold out those difficult weeks before the liberation. We stand in the middle of the street, having no place to go into. A large crowd of town Christians gathers around us, among whom the news had spread that we are here. In town everyone knew us as eminent merchants. Each one of them took care to show friendship and emphasized that they had helped Jews. They had hidden this or that Jew for a certain amount of time. They denied robbing Jewish possessions and property. We searched – perhaps Jews would still come back to the town. We did not find anyone. Shivers ran through us. Oy, where are the Sokolov Jews? Is there really no one left of them? A flood of tears poured from our eyes, where are they all coming back from the Jewish town? Where all they all, who I loved so? Are they really all burned up and suffocated in Treblinke and murdered on our roads? How can one take revenge?

The thoughts fly around in my head. I tremble all over. Night is falling. We have no place to go. My house was destroyed, all

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the other Jewish houses that are still standing are taken by unknown Christians from the villages. The Christians advise us to go to the Polish school on Nitshitse Lane, which was just cleared of Germans a few days ago. In the school

there are still a few beds and straw mattresses. We can live there, meanwhile, a few of them are prepared to give us a bed for the night in their homes. Suddenly a group of six young people tears through the crowd of Christians and falls on our necks shouting, “We are Jews!” This woke me up from my despair. I kissed these people who I had not known before. We were united by one thing: we are Jews, saved from the Hitler murderers.

The six young people were from various small town in the Lublin area, who were sent to Treblinke by the Germans, along with all the other Jews in the towns. But they jumped from the train along the way and after tragic transmogrifications after the liberation of Sokolov came into town in search of Jews. Our joy for this encounter was immense, and we all went to the afore-mentioned school in order to rest a little. Fear enveloped us there. The shadows of the Germans accompanied us at every step. We decided to leave that building and take several straw mattresses with us. Better to spend the night in one of the falling-down Jewish houses on Netsala Street, across from the new study-house, in the house of Mendl Shabsel, the grandfather of Shabsel Grinberg – now the only inheritor of the house.

Half of the building was damaged: split walls, the ceilings caved in. A danger to go in there, but in the other half it was better. The other apartments were taken by gentiles, and now were locked. They probably left the town during the bombardments.

The residents started returning in the morning and dispersed in the Jewish house, although they had their own houses in a village or outside of town. We asked the goyim if they would give back the apartments because the house had belonged to Jews who were still alive; just two apartments where we could organize ourselves together.

Meanwhile another few Sokolov Jews arrived, so that our number grew to twenty-five souls.

The Christians had no desire now to hand over a few

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apartments. They put off the matter until later. We spent the night in the ruined apartment.

In the morning we decided to turn to the mayor of Sokolov, for him to give us a few apartments in a Jewish house. We were in fact Sokolov “obivateles”!

At that time the mayor was the photographer Fendik. Before the war he presented as a democrat. I was very friendly with him and had met with him and the Jewish members several times about various issues in the town, while he was still vice mayor.

Grinberg, Asher Saperstein and I went to the mayor and asked for several apartments. He advised us to go over to Vengrov as there were 50 Jews there. The town of Vengrov had not been bombed and there were enough apartments there. Here in Sokolov we were a total of twenty-some souls. Why should such a small group of Jews sit around in Sokolov? We were disappointed with his advice, and boldly asked that goy, “So are you going to make a new ghetto in Vengrov for the Jews? Do you want to keep our houses – already robbed by the Germans – for the Poles? That won't go over well.” And we left his office. The goy was a little shocked and sent for us the next morning, but we did not go to him anymore.

As we realized, he and other democratic members possessed large amounts of abandoned Jewish possessions. Because of that, he did not want any witnesses in town to recognize the Jewish property.

Seeing that we could expect little help from the local authorities, we decided to put all our efforts into liberating a few apartments in the previously mentioned building for the surviving, homeless Jews. To our happiness we succeeded in convincing a few of the locals who had nice apartments outside of town and had also gotten an apartment in town from the Germans, to cede an apartment to us. And we all, 25 Jewish souls, moved into the apartment, which consisted of one large room and a kitchen. We ate together as one family. We slept on the floor, laying on straw as in the poorhouse.

The remaining goyishe locals in the building, for whom a Jew is just a pest, gradually left the building and

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over a period of a few days, we had four free apartments which we divided among ourselves. All at once R” Mendl Shabsel's may he rest in peace house became the single Jewish point in goyishe Sokolov. The first Shabes we prayed in a minyen. Each day brought more surviving Sokolov Jews to the house. And in a week's time the number of surviving Sokolov Jewish reached 36. And with that it ended.

The eldest of the survivors was Meyshe Shtutman (today in Israel). And Meyshe Miedzeshinski from the village Lizk near Yablona.

The New Study-house that stood opposite the house where we are now, was full of Soviet soldiers who were quartered there. They visited us often, out of curiosity, in order to look at surviving Jews. There were military bases outside of town too, among them many Jews. As the Jewish soldiers and officers learned about us, they quickly came bringing bread and preserves that were hard to come by even for money. They kissed us with tears in their eyes and pressed us to their hearts in great joy.

I will never forget the touching moment when one Shabes morning a division of military with tanks and various heavy weapons stood in the middle of Shedlets Street, awaiting an attack by the Germans to march in. A that moment a high officer, a Jew who had heard that there were Jews nearby, jumped up out of a tank. He ran up to me and began kissing and crying. He only knew a few words of Yiddish and I did not know Russian. He threw open his soldierly greatcoat and called out, “I have a Jewish heart!” What dear souls those Russian Jews were. Their deep-hearted and soul-suffering concern for a Jew was great! We saw them in difficult circumstances, disciplined, among the goyim in military clothing. Despite that they also were very warm-hearted and helped us to manage the first hard days and also brought their field doctor to our sick ones. How eternal are the words “Who is like Israel, one nation on earth”.

Sunday at dawn we, a few people, went out to the Sokolov cemetery to be at one with our martyrs, and at the same time give them the news that there is a living memorial for the Sokolov Jews.

Arriving at the cemetery, we were blinded.

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with anger. A heavenly strength empowered us to overcome the pain that engulfed us, seeing the awful indignity of the innocent victims. Human limbs were strewn all over the cemetery. The gravestones were smashed, and many of them had disappeared from their graves.

The mitsve of burying found corpses

We did not want to go to the antisemitic mayor, the photographer, anymore and decided to turn to the village elder about the matter, and also to the police chief. In the first days after liberation Stzshelits the regular assistant elder substituting for the elder – who had run off with the Germans before the Russian Army's taking of Sokolov.

Stzshelits was one of the ten fathers whose sons the Germans had shot to death a few months before liberation on

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Shedlets Street before the eyes of all the Sokolov “citizens”. Among those shot was also Pravetski, the director of the folks-shul on Kipitine Road; two teachers from the same school; the son of the “Endek Dombrovski and a few other young men, for their political activity. The Gestapo tortured them horribly and before shooting them, abused them in front of their parents and residents of the town.

As stated, Stzshelits was a parent of one of the ten shooting victims. A delegation of several persons went before him and requested that he issue an order for the police to take care of the matter. Stzshelits received us in friendship and promised to do all he could; he did emphasize that now it was not just a question of him, but he would do everything possible.

Stzshelits had connections with the police chief as well as with the main judge of the local court, in order to inform the juristic side. We also made use of protection by the police chief. In the end the police chief sent out several police officers to the cemetery and demanded that the goyim drive their cows out of the cemetery. With that we were freed from the nightmare of violating the graves. But after that interruption of several weeks, they put their cows back in the cemetery.

Part of the Sokolov cemetery

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Then we decided that every time there was grass in the cemetery two people must go every day to prevent the violation of the cemetery. Once a fistfight occurred between Simeon Grinshpan and Yehuda with several goyim who opposed the demand that they immediately drive the cows out of the holy place. The majority of the goyishe neighbors did not send their cows to the cemetery during the day.

Our little settlement in Sokolov gradually enlarged. Rescued Jews from several small towns in the area arrived. Two months later there were 98 souls with us.

Besides the regular settlers there were dozens of homeless guests on the way in search of various relatives. It is possible that our warm welcoming of guests drew all the despairing and broken to us, to find a word of comfort, a feeling of nearness that they so badly lacked. We made an effort to encourage them and influence them to normal life. In the first months after liberation there was no “mine and yours” – in many cases we were able to pull them out of the abyss of despair.

The house that served as the center of the Jews in Sokolov could not hold all the nearly 100 souls as regular residents. Because of that many Jews settled in other places in town. And gradually the Jews began to seek temporary work, although none of us considered staying in a Poland soaked with the blood of our near and dear. Everyone pondered the quickest way to travel out. It was only a question of time, because the other side of the Vistula River was still in German hands and everyone hoped to locate saved relatives.

Besides that, the great poverty impeded people. Everyone was almost naked and barefoot. People looked for possibilities to clothe themselves. Some Jews traveled to Lublin and brought back various products that were lacking in the smaller towns: soap, matches, yeast and other foodstuffs. They served well and gradually brought the necessary clothing.

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Traveling to Lublin – the capitol of liberated Poland at the time – involved risking one's life. The temporary seat of the Polish government was located in Lublin, as well as the general military headquarters. But very young men, mostly with a goyishe appearance, could offer to undertake such a trip. As stated, in the early days a feeling of unity ruled among the Jews. The youths turned over the merchandise from Lublin to the local Jews to sell in the market, as everyone had started to earn some money. Thanks to that we, those rescued from death, began to get an opportunity to prepare to leave.

Some in our little settlement also tried to get back their lost possessions from the goyim. Before the war I had a large manufacturing shop in Sokolov, and I had managed to hide some of my merchandise with known Christians. And Sh. Grinberg had given his merchandise to Christians in the hope of getting it back. They were known and intelligent Christians in the town.

As it later came about that was a great favor. After a lot of trouble and effort we were able to get back about five percent of what we had given them to hold in trust. All but one had the same lying answer: The Germans took it.

I located the furniture from my house with the goy Gurski. When we asked for the furniture back, he said that he had bought it from the Germans. Afraid to be taken to a claim in court and bring about a charge of Jewish chicanery, I reported him to the court, but an appropriate date could unfortunately not be found.

Sh. Grinberg had given a large amount of merchandise and clothing to the shoemaker Kozak. Among the clothing was his son Itsik's little overcoat. When Grinberg went to him to get back the merchandise, Kozak also maintained that the Germans had robbed all the merchandise. And he did not give back the overcoat. It appeared that he had bought a house and a large barn with the merchandise.

Meyshe Sheyne-Khave's Rozentsvayg may God avenge his blood told us that when he escaped from the “action” in the ghetto he spent one night with that goy, in order to save himself from the ghetto and to get to Bartkov where his daughter-in-law Rokhl Libe Kaver's daughter

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was staying. The goy took all the money that he had.

The same happened to many other more “upstanding” Christians. If they did indeed give anything back, it was a small percentage of what they had been given, and that only after a lot of trouble and intervention from the Sokolov priest, who gave a Sunday sermon calling on the goyim to give all their possessions back to the unfortunate Jews.

Of course, in such a situation none of the Jews could consider settling into a stable life in Sokolov. Some Jews went into the surrounding villages to buy or sell things, and that was how Jewish life was in the meanwhile.

A disrupted part of the Jewish cemetery in Sokolov

We welcomed two Torah scrolls into the shul, that were

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rescued from destruction. One Torah scroll came for no payment from a Christian who had held it for several years. The other we bought for money from a shoemaker who had made shoe-soles from the parchment. He demanded a lot of money. But we prevailed. After the transaction with the shoemaker, goyim began bringing us various books, knowing that we would pay a better price for them than for packing-paper. We collected many sacks for torn holy books and buried them in the cemetery.

The Days of Awe draw near. One is reminded of other years. How long there had existed a beautiful Jewish life in Sokolov: scholars, hasidim, ordinary householders, simple craftsmen – they all possessed so much folk-spirit, big-heartedness, Jewish knowledge and intelligence.

On the days of Rosh-ha'shone and Yon-kiper all this was stirred up in the shul and in the study-houses: cleaned, freshened, benches set out, tables so that they could accommodate that all the Jews who came to pray. Who then did not come to the shuln? Now, unfortunately, there is no trace of the beautiful shul that stood on Shul Street; the only beautiful and artistically-painted shul in Podliash province was torn apart by the Germans, down to its foundation.

The single stone from the Sokolov Shul, a memorial of the destruction

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administration for the town, where great antisemites gather and sit. Russian soldiers are quartered in the New Study-House. I shudder at the words: “God! Foreign nations come into Your territory”.

The window of our apartment in Mendl Shabsel's house are directly across from the New Study-house. I cannot tear my eyes from it. It seems to me that I can hear the voices of those praying during the Days of Awe, who plead the Creator of the World for a good, healthy year with livelihood. Memories whirl around me, recalling all the cantors and prayer leaders. Torah readers in the shul and in the study-houses prayed with so much heart and fervor; R' Khayim Shmuel Rozenboym and the choir led the heart-felt afternoon prayers in the shul; his “mekhalkhel khayim b'khesed” was sung all year by the laborers in the workshops; his sermon before the shofar blowing and the “Hineyni he'oni mimas”. R” Shmuelke Yisroel Mordkhe's and R” Yisroel Henekh in the New Study-House, and Menakhem Miendzshitski in the Aleksander shtibl, Yankev Kiveyko in the Radziner and Yisroel Goldfarb in the Bialer, Dudtshe Rozenboyn in the Gerer; Elieyzer Hendl and Avrom Shmuel Grinblat in the Pulever shtibl, with the Rebi in the courtyard where a huge crowd came on Rosh-ha'shone from many cities and small towns; the Rebi's courtyard was full of hasidim in silk long-coats lined with fur and wide fur hats. Alterel may he rest in peace prayed the afternoon service with enthusiasm and style; the Rebi may his sainted memory be for a blessing led a “table” until late in the night. Now everything is in ruins. No trace of that world.

The memories pull me back further and further. I gather all my strength to reinforce myself and find comfort in the words of the prophet, which I shout out like a prayer: “Let all their wickedness come before You and do unto them as You have done unto me for all my transgressions; for my sighs are many and my heart is sick.” (Lamentations 1, verse 22)

I am overtaken by an extraordinary need to enlarge an appropriate space for a place to pray on the Days of Awe. In the evening, I call together many of our brothers and explain to them how easy it would be to take a ruined apartment in Mendl Shabsel's house and make minimal repairs in order to pray there as one large group. I also proposed that we invite the Jews from Vengrov, Kosov and Sterdin, and all agreed.

Meyshe Shtutman, Meyshe Miedzsherski from the village Lizuk and Shabsel Grinberg took on the task of preparing the apartment for Rosh ha'shone. Some Jews from the mentioned small towns, among them Shmuel,

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Berl and Khayim from Kosov, young men from Drogotshin and Semiatitsh and from Sterdin came to Sokolov to pray with us.

None of the Jews considered repairing or even making order in other broken apartments. Mostly every Jew was still sitting on his suitcase. Another day and we will leave the Polish earth with its Jewish blood spilled by the Germans and the Polish “Narovtses”. We plead that the day comes very soon.

The offensive finally began. The Germans fled from Poland. All the areas in Poland were now under Russian control. Our hopes held that that would be effective. Several thousand Jews who had been in the labor camps in the western areas were redeemed from certain death.

The Russian military that was stationed in Sokolov hurriedly withdrew from town and went to the newly-occupied territories. Only a small number stayed behind, and those were outside the town.

The “Narovtses”, who had retained their antisemitism this whole time, reared their heads after the withdrawal of the Russian military. And they renewed the bandit attacks on Jews in the town. No week went by without their taking some Jewish lives.

The news had the effect of a bomb, that the “Narovtses” had shot the Jews in Semiatitsh, taken Jews off the train and killed them on the spot. The movement of the Jews in the country became very dangerous. At night one was afraid to go out on the street. We were living in fear again and wanted to leave Sokolov all the more quickly.

At that moment there were two towns where large Jewish settlements were located, Praga and Lodz. There were smaller Jewish settlements in Lublin and Otvotsk.

The decision of the Jews in the small towns was to travel to Praga or Lodz. The Sokolov Jews decided to go over to Lodz. A few individuals Jews remained in Sokolov, but later they also went to Lodz. Sokolov was cleansed of Jews.

The return of Polish Jews from Russia began in 1946, some of them from Sokolov too. The transports

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were for the most part sent to the former German areas of Poland, to Upper Silesea and Lower Silesea, Stetin and others.

Lodz was the center of the saved remnant. There one could still recognize a Jewish life in miniature. There was a community council, a Jewish committee, various aid institutions. It also attracted some Jews from Russia whose first trip was to Lodz, in order to meet friends who had survived.

And our Sokolov Jews from Russia came to Lodz then as well.

The first Sokolov Committee after the war, in Lodz, Poland

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The last time I was in the town of my birth, Sokolov Podlaski, before the war was in August, 1939. I never saw my unforgettable parents, sister and brothers again. I went to Brisk, where I lived after my marriage.

The third of June, 1941, during the night, the Hitlerists surrounded my house, burst inside, robbed and demolished everything that they could. They took my husband away with them along with many other young and fit Jews and shot them in the Brisk fortress. While they were still in the hallway I brought him some bread and the Germans immediately hit me so murderously with the butts of their rifles that I fell to the floor covered in blood and afterwards was ill for a long time.

The hell became ever worse. After several days Jews had to wear on their right arms the bands with yellow mogn Dovid stars sewn on them. A couple of months later we were stuffed into a ghetto enclosed by barbed wire, where we suffered hunger and cold. Many people died of typhus – especially small children. My only child also died of typhus. At night hooligans, robbers and murderers came from the Aryan side to steal and kill in the ghetto; Ukrainians, Hitler agents, spies in the ghetto, searched out Jewish rebels and ridiculed the Jews, cut their beards, ordered them to dance in the middle of the street, accompanying them with harmonicas.

I managed to make a visit to my sister Matl in Pinsk, who was also left a lonely widow with two small children when the Germans murdered her husband soon after the outbreak of the war. I wanted to find some kind of hiding place for us both. But before I managed to get back to Pinsk both she and her children were killed.

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I would steal out of the ghetto through the barbed wire and wander around without any documentation. I hid my Jewish-identity documents and the band with the yellow star in the ground.

Refugees from Volin and Ukraine began arriving in the ghetto. They were mostly Jews who had jumped from the trains on the way to the death camps.

I was one of a group of 62 Jews in the ghetto who – not willing to believe the optimistic propaganda from the local Judenrat – began thinking about an uprising, or about getting out of the ghetto and into the forest. I made the acquaintance of a White Russian woman on the Aryan side who obtained a little food for me in exchange for various things, or medicine, poison (often fake) and a few pistols. Meanwhile the maid of my in-laws (a Jewish woman, regrettably) reported me for going out of the ghetto. Early one morning a Ukrainian in a Gestapo uniform came to arrest me. Because he was alone I succeeded in bribing him with a suit, a blouse and two tablecloths.

I was successful in making contact with a Pole and several prisoners of war who worked taking apart the remainders of the destroyed houses. For bread and tobacco I got some explosives from them. We gathered ammunition and decided to do something about starting a resistance. In the ghetto this could not be considered since our stock of weapons was very small, and we did not have any support from the Aryan side. Among the 22,000 imprisoned Jews in the ghetto, pressed together in a few narrow streets (several dozen families confined to one apartment) only a very few believed that the Jews faced an actual extermination. The majority would rather believe in the good promises that the Judenrat distributed in the name of the German authorities.

We sent out the first group of people into the forest but after several days only a few came back. Some of them were murdered on the road and others in the forest. Everyone was killing Jews: “Akovtses” (a military formation of Polish nationalists who fought the Germans in the occupied Polish

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territories, the so-called “Armeya krayova”, A.K.), Ukrainians, regular Poles and of course – the Germans.

Some well-known refugees from Kovel let me know of a place where one could negotiate Aryan documents. Kulinski, the father-in-law of the Sokolov doctor Grodzientshik, to whom I went concerning this matter, told me that he would have thrown me down the stairs if he had not known who I was. (He survived). On the morning of 14 October 1942 I succeeded in going out to the Aryan side. There I noticed large gatherings of military and gendarmerie, and people talking about the near liquidation of the ghetto. That same day, around 10 o'clock, I was already back in the ghetto and told all my friends in the underground about it. We also, through several trusted persons, let the Judenrat know about it. I myself spoke personally with the vice president of the Judenrat, told him everything and confided in him that I was fleeing the ghetto. But it did not seem to have any effect. They did not contemplate leaving the ghetto. The vice president also advised me to remain in the ghetto and share the fate of everyone. The president had been arrested by the Germans a day earlier on the pretext that there had been a louse on the fur coat that he gave one of the German dignitaries.

That same day I managed to leave the ghetto along with a group of eleven people. We were armed with revolvers, a little medicine, bread and water and also two compasses. Our goal was to reach the area around Bialystok. We walked as two or three persons, distancing each group from another over about one hundred meters, and we hoped to locate a contact with the partisans. We knew that the ghetto in Bialystok, which belonged to the East Prussian area, would not be liquidated so quickly. I arrived in the forest at night with two other friends. On the way to the forest we noted a lot of automobiles and wagons packed full with German soldiers and realized that that very evening, around nine o'clock, the ghetto would be surrounded. In the morning we encountered two who had fled the ghetto. One of them was the 17-year old son of Dr. Librovitsh. My friends, members of the underground movement, had not wanted to leave the ghetto. They poisoned themselves later and left the son a note with the address for a

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well-known Christian who could save him. However that same family had driven him out and so he came into the forest.

Late that night shooting began between the partisans and a German detachment. Six persons from my group fell. Meanwhile we were advised that the partisans did not want to take us into their ranks, saying that Jews were useless among the partisans and that there were no hiding places for us. After a thorough inspection they took our weapons but allowed us to live. We decided to set out for Bialystok. The weather became cold, wet and frosty. We soon began to suffer from hunger, thirst and cold. In the fields it was hard to find even a leaf to nourish us. We drank water from the puddles. The shoes on our feet were falling apart. I wrapped my feet in rags and dragged myself through the mud. I was the first one sent into a nearby village to get something to eat. I was accompanied only by the dark and the barking of dogs. Early one morning I approached a well from which an old woman had drawn some water. I pleaded with her to let me into her hut for a little while to warm myself. But she was afraid for her children, and told me to hide among the nearby trees and wait for her. When her children had left the house, she brought me bread with kasha. I went away happy to my friends in the forest. We were then not far from Misaka-Litevsk. But we would have to steal across the border. There were electric wires along the ground that if touched would alert the border patrol. Because of my appearance with a haughty-looking nose I was sent over first. When night fell I set out on the path, trembling all over from fear and cold. At dawn I came to the gates of the ghetto in Visoka-Litevsk. People in the ghetto gave me signs that I should hide immediately, because the police were about. In a few hours I made an attempt to get into the ghetto. I barely managed to get inside when I heard the murderous shout: “Halt!” I lifted my head and saw a German in a watch-tower with his rifle aimed at me. I managed to quickly hide myself in the doorway of a wooden barrack and there saw a horrifying image before my eyes. Wan, barely breathing with faces of

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death – this was the women's department of the ghetto hospital for those ill with typhus.

Naturally the German guard ran after me and I was saved from his hands by the administrator of that hospital, Yankev Fridman, who also managed to bring in my friends from the forest. They stayed in the ghetto for a while to recover and rest. Now they did not want to move from the spot. I myself set out on the road again and happily took the train to Bialystok. Later I learned that at the liquidation of the ghetto in Visoka-Litevsk my friends hanged themselves in order not to fall into the hands of the murderers.

I wandered around by myself in Bialystok on the Aryan side, having no place to put my head down. During the day I would go into houses and work for a little food, and at night I would sleep under the open sky. No one let me sleep in their house overnight because I did not have any documents. One time I succeeded in stealing into the ranks of a group of Jewish workers whom the gendarmerie was taking back to the ghetto after a day of hard labor outside the walls of the ghetto. Once inside the ghetto I reported to the Judenrat and told them that in Volin, Ukraine, and Congress Poland the ghettoes were being liquidated and the Jews murdered. But they did not believe me and thought I was fantasizing. I started searching for Sokolov folk. I found only a few, one of Dovid Leyserke's sons, a shoemaker, who did not know anything about the fate of the Sokolov Jews. Later we learned about the liquidation of the Sokolov Jews.

I was able to make contact with the underground groups who had prepared a resistance in the Bialystok ghetto. There were people from several political parties among them, Zionists, Bundists and Communists.

The role which I came to play was not an easy one. I hard to arrange for work on the Aryan side by my own devices. When leaving the ghetto through a hole in the wall I encountered a ten year-old boy dressed in a long overcoat with a hat pulled down over his ears. From time to time he would go over to the Aryan side to scrounge food for his family in the ghetto. The

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image of the child was always in my mind as a symbol of our innocent, suffering children.

The underground anti-fascist committee connected me with a certain Pole who was to help me acquire Aryan documents and in general help to organize on the Aryan side. He turned out to be a hateful anti-Semite who would only find a place for me in the Jewish cemetery. Of course I quickly got out of his eyesight and spread the word among the underground. I had to hide out in various holes again and among the ruins of houses. Once the residents of such a house packed me up and chased me out but did not report me to the police.

Another two young women were sent out to the Aryan side. They had Aryan documents and they succeeded in obtaining work as maids in private Christian houses. They would bring me something to eat in my hideout, and when there were days of arrests in town – the so-called “lapankes” – I went for several days without food. Once sitting there in the hideout I decided to go to a factory for work, I settled on an Aryan name and it suited me. I was taken on to work without documents and even would be issued a document from the labor office for production. I worked as an apprentice at spinning thread; my teacher was a 14 year-old Polish girl. In time they began giving out passports for the population, the so-called “ken-kartn”. I gave my name as Emilia Stefanska and received a temporary document and a food card and in two weeks I would receive my “ken-karte”. I found a little room on the third floor on the khaneykes. Everything would have been fine if not for the condition of my health. I had a terrible appearance: I was completely sprinkled with blisters on my skin and my face was peeling. The factory doctor, a Pole, healed me. By then I had been working in the factory for about ten days, when suddenly some young worker came up to me and started kicking me with his feet, and others screamed at me “Go to the rabbi!” My 14 year-old teacher let me know that the Gestapo would be coming soon to take me away. Everyone

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gathered around me. I understood that something was going on around here. But I did not leave because I had no other way out. I could not run away and I did not have any poison. I quickly grabbed my documents and ran to the chief, a folks-German, and complained to him about what I thought was suspicious. “I know about this,” he answered, “I have not told the German director of the factory about it.” The chief began to ask around among the workers where the rumor that I was Jewish came from, and it turned out that it was a certain old man, – a worker at the scale outdoors weighing raw materials from the warehouse for the factory – who had started the rumor about me. I went to him and was astonished to recognize him as my former neighbor, the watchman of the house where I had lived in Brisk. I appealed to him and began to convince him that he had made a fatal mistake and that he would have to make it right. He began to retract his words. He came with me back to the chief in the factory and explained in front of everyone that he had made a mistake, that from a distance it had seemed to him that I was like a Jewess he had known.

I started working in a kitchen at a factory. I turned to the factory doctor and complained that I had some eye disease; he sent me to a commission and from there I was sent to an eye specialist at the Red Cross. I was examined by Dr. Kershman from Volyn, who was brought from the ghetto especially for such investigations. Being alone with him in a darkened room, I told him the truth about me and begged him to give me a diagnosis that would help free me from the factory.

I began working in the kitchen of a factory that processed oil. I stood up on a ladder and stirred a big pot so that it would not burn.

My room was a meeting point for the liaisons from the ghetto and the forest. And those sent from the ghetto to the Aryan side would spend the night there. We held conferences there and prepared ourselves for the uprising in the ghetto. I presented several reports and also located weapons.

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Once the manager of the kitchen took me along to the storehouse to bring back some products. There I met a friend from Warsaw who also worked there on Aryan papers. It appeared that he was also a member of the underground movement. (He was Lopatas, he lives in Erets and works as a teacher in Efula.). At the factory I made myself out as an illiterate who did not know a word of German. From time to time I succeeded in buying oil at the factory and trading it to some German for weapons. The uprising in the ghetto broke out. The survivors fled into the forests, where they created a Jewish partisan group. They were, among others, Rifke Vayskovskoy and Khayke Grosman. Those captured by the Germans were hanged en masse from the balconies of the ghetto houses.

It was a difficult experience for me when I had to see how they beat the Jews who were brought for forced labor at the factory where I worked. I also had to be at the event of a death sentence for two youths who were found with a few of the oil-kernals after work. Both were hanged in the yard of the factory.

The house in which I lived began to get more populated. Two Christian families came to occupy the room right across from me, and on the other side a family with one son who served in the Gestapo. When I came home to my room I used to leave the door open so that one could see that I had nothing to hide. My room was divided into two parts. One part was well disguised, and was where there was usually someone transferring to the forest. Nakhum Shapira from Kovel hid with me for ten days. We agreed between ourselves that whoever survived would manage to seek out someone from the other's family and tell them about their life and death. I led him about three kilometers outside of the town. I took a small pistol with me (French made). He encountered a German patrol and was wounded in the leg. Not willing to give himself into their hands, he shot himself. In the early morning after I took him out on the road to the forest, I had a hallucination: I saw someone in terrible condition as he died, pouring out blood. I later learned that it was indeed during the time when I experienced that hallucination

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that he was killed.

I used to carry weapons into the forest, and charged batteries and medicines. I twice took part in an attack on the factory guards and that way took their weapons. I once lulled a guard at my factory to sleep, and the comrades took his rifle. One of our women members worked as an Aryan in the Gestapo. She used to provide documents for us and also bring reports when they were preparing for an action against the partisans. That same member – the red-headed Rifke – shot one Gestapo before her escape to the forest. I hid bullet-ribbons for automatic weapons that we bought from Germans for olive oil and pork fat. They liked to make such exchanges because they needed those products to send to their families back in Germany.

In the beginning our group lived in the forest as a separate group, carried out various undertakings and received foodstuffs from the village population, all this by their own hands and under the leadership of Rifke Voiskavska (she lived and is in Poland).

Only in 1943 did they take us into the partisan detachment “Kostush Kalinovski” under the leadership of General Kapuste and Commandant Voytshekhovski. That detachment harbored horrible antisemitism. They, the Russians, White Russians and Poles, would get drunk, curse and more than once they raped women. The Jews conducted the most responsible and dangerous assignments. They blew up trains and strategic points behind the front, as well as the electric station in Bialystok.

They never wanted to take me into the forest. Meanwhile the town was being bombarded. A bomb landed in the house where I lived. The house was completely destroyed (there were storehouses for matches in the yard). It was simply a miracle that I was saved from certain death, because I had left the house a minute earlier. Two members from the underground had brought me an order to leave Bialystok and travel to Salnik, closer to the front. I went through two horrifying days near the front and went back with very important news for the partisans. I want to mention an incident with a young Jewish woman, a liaison from the underground movement, Khaye Rozenberg from

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Lublin; she hid a Jew for a long time in a hide-out among the ruins of a collapsing building. Once when she approached the hideout, bringing a pair of boots and ready to take the Jew into the forest, several German agents suddenly came out and tried to grab her; she began running and was shot to death on the spot. Honor her memory. I also want to mention another incident. I hid a certain Yosef Finkelshteyn and his 14-year-old daughter. Late one evening my next-door neighbor knocked on my door and let me know that the Gestapo was there in the yard and asking for me. And I could actually hear the heavy steps of their boots. We bid farewell to life. I asked Finkelshteyn to shoot me first and then do whatever he wished. But he was stubborn, he wanted to shoot a German first. Meanwhile the Gestapo was on the first landing and started up to the second floor. But suddenly they turned around and started going back. It appeared that they did not mean me. It felt as if in a second we would be shot ourselves.

There was another incident. I was once approaching the door of my room and was taking out the key, and I was sure that I was being watched, and something was happening. I did not go into the room, but ran to meet with one of the survivors and tell him. One of the members, dressed as a German, went to see what was going on there; he went into the room and not meeting anyone he gave the agreed-upon signal and the hidden Yosef Finkelshteyn came out of hiding. Seeing the “German” he fainted. But that ended well.

It is impossible to understand how the nerves held out, but I was young and healthy. I was very dragged out and exhausted from sleepless nights and from always being on tense guard, being afraid that someone was spying on me.

On the 7^th of July 1944 I was liberated. I gave up my Aryan passport and received documents in my real name. Bialystok was completely in flames.

I received two citations for bravery as a liaison to the partisans. Sadly that horrible cataclysm remains on my soul.

I left for Grodne to search for my family, because I knew that my two brothers had been deported to Russia. It turned out that they had come back from Russia with the army and demobilized in Poland.

Life was hard even after the liberation. Not finding anyone of our close ones, the loneliness filled the heart with sadness and longing for a little happiness, and more than once I posed the question, why and for whom am I living? And yet the life instinct demanded one to go on living.

I was in Sokolov for the first time in 1949 when just two Jewish families lived there. The last time I was in Sokolov was in 1957, several weeks before my move to Israel. I was in Vengrov, Kalushin and Shedlets, almost all of Podliashe and did not find any Jews. In Shedlets people told me that a few Jews still lived there.

In Sokolov I stayed at the hotel “Podliashanka” on Ragov Street. Life in the town was as though dead. The outside appearance of the town had changed. The big market square had been turned into a town park. The market stalls were all locked; a few of them were being used for storage. The only life was in the taverns, where people were drinking, and in the bus station where the peasants from the villages were milling about and driving speculations. There were no Jews in Sokolov, but people still talked about them. In a bad set of circumstances the Jews were guilty even today…. From a Jew you could get a bribe, and then one might be polite to him. For my departure I had to obtain certain documents from Sokolov, and that, they said, would take two days; but for a half-liter of whisky I got them in a few hours. The official lightly mentioned that he knew who my father was, but in truth he did not even begin to know him. I went to see our former neighbors, the Viganovskis, the baker's daughter, and she asked if she could tell me something about my family's fate. The cruelness in her was so incendiary that I was afraid that she would bite me, just as her crazy dog once used to bite our children.

Holy is the memory of all our unforgettable folk, slaughtered by Hitler's murderers and their helpers.

(Yiddish M. Z–ts)

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In the first days after their arrival the Germans caught only men as laborers. Later they snatched up women from the rooms of their homes since they often used to hide men who had successfully evaded capture. Once the German police came into our house and demanded that my mother show them where the hidden men were; they beat her and began to search the house themselves, but they never found the place. Those who did not respond to the orders from the Jewish council, the German police along with the Jewish police took them from their homes by force; because of that the Jews were afraid to appear on the street. The Germans beat Jews, sheared their beards, robbed their belongings and took them away on buses. One time a startled gendarme ran wild in the study-house and, shooting into the women's section, killed a Jewish woman.

The Germans took the captured Jews to the Jewish council building. There each was given his portion of bread. At that time the president of the council was Nakhum Levin and the members were Yitskhak Shlafmits, Kalman (called “Klin”) and others.

Before long the Jewish council received a strict order that all Jews must wear arm bands bearing the Shield of David. The bitter decree fell heavily on the Jews and everyone felt as though hard times were coming.

The leaders of the Jewish council called on the Jewish population to carry out the order, because otherwise there would be sacrifices. Nevertheless not every individual would adapt to the decree. And indeed the Germans did shoot at Jews out on the street without the armbands.

Months later many Jews from Kalish began appearing in Sokolov, whom the Germans had driven out of that town.

By the end of 1941 Sokolov set up the ghetto. The Jews from the surrounding towns were forced to come into

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our ghetto, which was enclosed with brick wall and barbed wire all around and was guarded by the German, Polish and also Jewish police. Soon a decree came out that forbade Poles from entering the ghetto. With that, all the trade died. Those who had prepared food supplies could get by, but the hunger was frightful. Then a typhus epidemic broke out, and the fatalities were extraordinary. The commandant of the ghetto, Surdik, a Pole from Posen, did not allow groups of people to gather at the funerals, of which there were dozens every day.

The capturing of young men for work did not cease. The Jewish council (now the Judenrat) had to provide the contingent. The work force was led out of the ghetto to work at washing laundry in the German hospital, clearing snow from the highway, bridges, latrines and so on. When the S.S. troops wanted entertainment, they brutally beat anyone who happened along. They shot large numbers of people and cackled with laughter at it. The workers were brought back into the ghetto each night.

About three months later the situation in the ghetto changed. The Germans sternly demanded from the Judenrat that all those capable of work be sent to the work camps. They convinced the Judenrat that the Jews would be sent out to work details.

Once a rumor went around the ghetto that those Jews were being killed in Treblinka. The rumor came from a railroad machinist who traveled with the train to Treblinka, which had become a death camp. The machinist told the peasants that he had seen for himself how the Germans killed Jews and pleaded with good Christians to let the ghetto know. Good peasants did just that. They also related the report from a peasant who had seen a luxury train of finely-dressed Jews from another country who had asked the passing peasants where Treblinka was located. The peasants were thus certain where the Jews were being taken and they let people in the Sokolov ghetto know. There was indescribable panic in the ghetto.

* * *

My father, Meyshe Shtutman, my father-in-law Asher Yaspershteyn and I were returning from the work-place Skrishev to the Shedlets ghetto. That was already after the liquidation of the Sokolov ghetto. Besides us there were many Jews from the surrounding work-places coming into the ghetto.

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The arriving Jews were thin, dragging their feet and full of lice. It was horrible to look on that scene. When we saw what awaited us in the new ghetto we decided to travel back to Skrishev, where we knew familiar peasants and for a lot of money – we thought – we could succeed in hiding with them. We were met by the familiar peasant Stanislav Rasakhatski, who had built his cottage on the main road through the village. We negotiated a price of 7,000 zlotys to keep us until the Germans left Poland. The peasant assured us that however long the war lasted, he would not drive us away.

The peasant Rasakhatski's cottage consisted of one room. He patched together a sort of wall behind the oven and let us inside. His neighbors noticed it immediately and asked him, why he was building such a wall now. Stanislav answered that he had made it because he wanted to store grain back there in case the Germans searched his property.

When the neighbors went away the peasant began to worry about the hideaway. He discussed it with us and we decided to dig a pit under the floor. We set right to work and dug a deep hole to the outside, to the little garden.

As soon as we had the hole ready the peasant covered the outdoor part and poured heaps of earth over it. We dug out little holes in the pit in order to look out and also to let in a little air, and that is how we lived for seventeen months.

Once when my father and father-in-law had gone to find bread – the peasant had agreed to provide everything we needed except bread, since he could hide everything about our being there but not bread because he could not bake more bread than usual since the neighbors would not become suspicious – two members of the “Akavtses” (Armia Krayova, an antisemitic military formation) saw us go out. The “Akovtses” spied on us and investigated which cottage we were hiding in.

A week later a band of “Akovtses” knocked on the peasant's door. One of them strongly demanded that the peasant turn over the

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Jews he was hiding. At first our peasant, very upset, denied it. But when they threatened to shoot him and burn down the cottage he opened the hideout and told us to come out.

We got out with our legs trembling. One of the band commanded that we lay on the floor with our faces up. When we did that he said that if we would reveal the place where we had hidden the thousand liters of whisky they would let us live.

My father-in-law realized where this was going. He had once told a friendly peasant that he had hidden a little whisky, and as this information had circulated to other peasants it had grown from a little to a thousand liters. My father-in-law replied that he could go with them and show them the hiding place. The band left my father in the pit and took my father-in-law and me with them.

When we arrived in their camp my father-in-law described to them where the hiding place for the buried whisky was, a few of them drove to that place and, returning, reported that our description was correct. However since they could not dig up the hiding place because the nights were illuminated by the full moon, they would free us in the meanwhile. They took us into a nearby forest and gave us some food. They ordered us not to leave the place until they could dig up the whisky from its hidden place and thus after retrieving the whisky we would benefit from their help.

We understood that if they did not find even that small amount of whisky – and even if they did find it – they would do the same with us as they had done with other Jewish partisans.

We quickly left that place and turned back to the cottage where my father was.

When we got into the house the peasant was very surprised that were we able to return alive. We did not find my father there. The peasant said that my father had asked him to tell us that we should go to the Skrishiv orchard, near the highway. We went straight there and indeed found my father there.

And so we wandered around in the forest, enduring hunger and fear.

Once on a summer night when we could not bear

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the hunger we decided to cross the highway which led to a camp, where a Christian family lived. When we were across the road we were stopped by German soldiers. Glancing around we saw many German soldiers. We thought that in any case it must mean the front was not far away. But since we did not have any documents we were arrested by two German soldiers. My father-in-law managed to escape while we were being escorted by the soldiers, and they took my father and me to the village Skrishev. The two armed soldiers took us to a large peasant cottage. Soon a German officer came out, regarded us and pronounced his thought that we must be Russian spies. The officer gave a strict order that we be taken immediately to the Sokolov gendarmerie.

When we were taken to Sokolov the gendarmerie there had been moved. We realized that the Red Army was nearing with giant steps. We were literally eating ourselves with woe that we had not stayed in the forest for a few more days.

The two soldiers went with us back to Vengrove. But there too the gendarmerie was abandoned. They deliberated and then turned us over to the military headquarters.

At the headquarters they investigated who we were. They came to me first. One of them treated me by beating me all over my body with a leather whip while screaming at me to tell the truth. Crying, I never stopped maintaining that I fled my home due to the terrible shooting at the front and I forgot to bring my documents. To the question of who the old man was, I answered that I did not know him at all and that I met him by accident walking along the road.

After that investigation I was taken, in pain from the beatings, out to a warehouse in the yard. A soldier with a rifle in his hands was stationed outside.

After that they investigated my father. My father maintained the same thing. Having a suspicion that we were Russian spies, an officer patted down my father's clothing. While patting a vest pocket he found something thick. He cut open the vest and an armband with a Star of David fell out. When the Germans saw it, they asked my father in wonderment,

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“Are you Jews?” My father – astounded that he did not remember that he had sewn in the band as a memento in the ghetto – strove to stay calm and began to deny that he was a Jew. The officer gave a wink to the soldier, that they should take him into the other room to search him and see if he was circumcised. Father then admitted that he was a Jew and begged them to shoot him now if they intended to, but not torture him.

Next father saw that they were bringing in a large wild dog. Father trembled all over in fear. The dog regarded the trembling and starving man and did not move from the spot. When the onlooking Germans saw this they stood there in amazement, and one of them, an officer, talked to the dog so that he would bite father. But the dog hung his head and did not in any manner touch the man. The Germans, wild and infuriated, ran to my half-naked father and beat him murderously. They bloodied him frightfully, knocked out his teeth and dragging him in a faint across the yard they threw him into the warehouse where I was.

My father lay almost unconscious. With all my strength I began ministering to my father. Coming around a little, he lifted a hand and said in a broken voice,

“Rabeynu shel eylem, what do you want from us?” And then be began reciting the final confession. I shuddered and banged my head against the wall. Later while I was laying breathless from crying, I saw my father had suddenly gotten himself up, gone to the closed door and tried to open it. To my surprise the door opened itself. It was before daybreak. Father saw the mistress of the house where the military headquarters was, go into the outdoor toilet. He asked her about the “guards”, because he had to go there too. The woman answered that the guards were away sleeping.

When the mistress went back into the house we realized that she gave us the opportunity to flee. We hurried to leave the warehouse and run away through back streets. We went into a field and hurried to find some hiding place, not knowing where to run. Finally we saw a forest and headed there. Standing by the forest we were afraid to go into it, unsure

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whether it was clear of ”Akavtses.” Seeing that there were ricks of straw all over the field, we went under one of those. About two hours later we saw German soldiers with weapons running, and after them a gang of Pollacks, all screaming “Jews, come out of the forest!”

And as no one appeared from out of the forest the soldiers began shooting into the forest. The shooting was so heavy that it seemed to us that the whole terrain must be torn up.

When the soldiers left we were still so afraid that we crawled out from the straw and sat up for the rest of the night.

At dawn we crawled out with aching limbs and wanted to leave that place. Suddenly a peasant popped up before us and asked where we were going. As we had asked him for a little bread he told us to wait until he could bring it. We did not want to wait and went further on. Father stood still and said that he had no strength to go on. We had no choice but to go under another pile of straw. I left my father there and went off to search for food.

And I came upon a settlement. Opening the door of a house I saw an elderly Christian. I presented myself to him as a Christian, saying that because of the heavy shooting of the nearby front I had lost my wagon and I asked him for some bread. The Christian invited me to the table and gave a wink to his wife that she should serve me some food.

When I had eaten with great appetite, the proprietor – never taking his eyes off me – said, “Don't think that I don't know that you are Jewish. One can see it in you. But do not be afraid. I will not turn you in and will not do you any harm.” Seeing that I was dealing with an honest person I told him everything. He gave me food to take to my father.

When I returned my father was lying on the ground with no strength. I had to chew the bread for him because he did not have any teeth in his mouth. We remained sitting there until night then went off to go further, to the Sokolov cemetery. But my father felt that his legs would not carry him and he said, “Listen, daughter, you can see that I cannot walk now, leave me here and go on

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by yourself. You are young! But if you survive the war, you must not forget that your father was killed on this spot or perished from exhaustion.”

I felt as though my heart would burst; I steeled myself and with great effort stood my father up on his feet. He leaned on me and we took difficult steps. When he had recovered a little, he gradually came to himself. We walked the whole night.

In the morning we encountered two armed German soldiers on the road. Terrified, I took us into the tall stalks of wheat. By the time the Germans were out of sight we had lost one another among the thick stalks of grain. I called out to father but did not hear any answer. I searched for my father around the whole area. Then I once again saw two armed Germans, and I passed them close by with my head held high and they paid me no notice. At that moment I heard a shot and a cry “Gevalt!” It seemed to me that they had shot my father.

I started running further to the place, and not knowing for sure whether father had really be shot, I went toward the Sokolov cemetery.

Nearing the cemetery I met two peasants who recognized me as a Jewess, and they told me I should run away because the whole area around was full of German military. I got out of there and walked to the village Ripki.

Arriving there I confronted the entire front and now could not go anywhere. The Germans asked me where I was going, and I told them that I was going to my home. They told me I should not go any further because the Russians were there already. I went through a short way and got into a peasant cottage, and asked the woman for a piece of bread. She gave me a whole loaf of bread. Going to several cottages in order to be further from the military, I saw a young Christian sitting with three small children. The Christian was weeping bitterly. I asked her why she was crying and she explained that because her fields were far from the village

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her husband and a son had to stay there with the Russians and so she and the children were separated from their family. I told her she should stay with me. She obeyed me. I gave her half the loaf of bread. Later the Germans fled and the Russians came in with a storm.

As soon as I was free I first went to Skrishev to search for my father. I met five Jews there. The Jews had no news of my father. I soon thought my father was one of the lost. Two days later I went to a nearby princely estate with the hope of perhaps finding father there. On the way I met some peasants. They told me that they had just seen my father. I hardly believed them.

Arriving at the estate I saw an old, very tattered person sitting, who looked a little like my father. But I could not believe that it was really my father.

As father raised his eyes I started to shout, though not in my own voice, “Tate! Tate!”

We both fainted.

When we recovered a little we decided to leave Poland.

And that is how we came to Israel.

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