[Page 467]

[Page 468]

I walk upon fires, on eternal ruins, And all the slain of my people follow me. They rip up every paving stone, And they count the tears in every brook and river. I lift up a handful of earth in my hands – Alas, how many eyes are peering at me! Every pebble – a generation, every grain of sand – a grandfather. The earth has been near to me these many years. I walk upon ruins, I seek graves, Only a lone tree lifts its head to me, A fugitive tree, a survivor, broad in trunk and branch. Once my poor grandfather sat in its shade. The tree is struck dumb, its bark is cracked, Bent over graves, with a broken spirit. Its hide withers as my heart withers. O tree, alas, O tree, you are to me as my father. O tree, alas, O tree, before you is one who hears[1]. My heart is a flute, the deaf man refuses to listen. Like birds from a cage my songs burst forth from my mouth, But they do not give rest, they do not give quiet. I stand upon ruins and carve a path through them. Until a spring in the desert announces redemption. Until my darkness changes to light seven times seven, Until my angel[2] ascends to the highest heaven.

Editor's Notes:

1. Literally “before you is an ear”, but, by contrast with the next line (“the deaf man refuses to listen”), “one who hears” seems appropriate. Return
2. “ayin-yud-resh-yud” generally means “city”, but there is another, rarer word of the same spelling, which means “angel”, more appropriate for the context. Return

[Page 469]

Our shtetl [little town] is desolate as a cemetery and in this desolation still hangs the uproar of those for whom no one had any mercy. Each name – an open wound that tells of huge wonders, of fine, honest Jews who lived here warm, quiet and happy, and blessed with the power of simple speech, with the smell of fresh rye bread and with great belief in God the merciful and forgiving.

Oh, fine and strong Jews of our shtetl, with your virtues and demeanor were like bits of heaven over the Tarnogrod earth and so are you etched in the memory of the surviving Tarnogrod Jews. Your entire life in today's time is no more than a long-vanished story. But the longing for the fineness that you carried within yourselves and left as an inheritance for the survivors can never be stilled.

The soul of the shtetl has been taken away. It has been extinguished, has breathed its last. It looks like a throwback to its original condition hundreds of years ago, before the Jews had arrived and it was just a small peasant settlement. Now we come to the horrible, sticky filth of the horrendous crimes that were committed here which we will never forget.

[Pages 470-481]

The war had ended and the few Tarnogrod Jew left alive, who had saved themselves from the murderous hell, began to present themselves in the light of day. The Jews came out of the forests and from the bunkers and various hiding places provided for them by a few good-hearted Christians. The Jews turned back to Tarnogrod with the hope that the war was over and the Jews who had fled to Russia would return and they could begin a new life in Tarnogrod. They intended that the shtetl [little town] would once again become a Jewish settlement.

The Poles in Tarnogrod thought differently. One night they attacked the remnant of living Jews and beat them, robbed them and warned them to leave the town right away. The warning was accompanied by the threat that any Jew who remained in Tarnogrod would be killed.

For less than one year the surviving Jews lived in Tarnogrod and sought in several ways to find livelihoods to support a life and waited calmly, hoping, that other Jews would return and that life would be regularized. But their hopes were false. The danger of death still hung over their heads and they had to leave their homes and go away, some to Lublin, some to Wroc³aw, some to other German cities that belonged to Poland and where it was easier to rent an apartment, in place of the Germans who had been driven out and had returned to Germany.

It appeared that the Tarnogrod Jews' attachment to their town was so strong that even after the night of attack by bandits some families remained, thinking that the danger would pass. In 1946, when the last victims -- Ozer Wachnachter's wife and 6 month-old daughter and Chaim Weiner from Bilgoraj – were murdered by the Polish bandits, not one Jew dared to stay in Tarnogrod.

No more Jews in Tarnogrod. The Jewish houses, remaining empty places, went to ruin, vestiges of destruction, and the earth around them sprouted wild grasses.

A few houses remained around Lakhever Street, on Rozshinitzer Street and on the market square, on the side where Yentche Lemer had lived. Those houses were snatched up by the Poles, who lived in them and dealt in the shops and used the things that had been left there.

In the shop where the stately-looking Jew had stood and weighed out merchandise with his honest hands now stood Makhiek and did the same with his piggish hands. Instead of a mezuzah at the entryway, a cross was drawn.

In Tarnogrod not all the Jewish houses were burned, but were sold by the Germans once all the Jews lay in the mass graves. They sold them to the non-Jews from the burned-out and demolished villages. In 1945, when there was once again a Polish government, the Poles sold Jewish houses with the goal of cleaning them out and leaving empty places. A special committee was created by the authorities at the time to deal with this. Ninety percent of he Jewish houses in Tarnogrod were wooden so it was easy to dispose of them.

I was in Tarnogrod during those days and saw the Poles tearing apart the remaining Jewish houses that they had bought from the government and loading the lumber onto wagons and driving away with it. I went to the town hall and called on the Polish committee with a protest against the sale of the Jewish houses. I reproached them, that there were families of the killed Jews in Russia who would soon come back home and would want to live in the remaining houses. They answered me with derision and irony, that the town could not take it upon itself to protect the houses that were robbed and sacked by the peasants, who took off the doors and windows and also the wood siding. Thus it was better that the houses be sold and when a relative from Russia announced himself he could receive the money that had come from the sale.

The prices were negligible. But the true intentions of the city fathers were clear to me then. They were selling the houses just then when they had heard that Jews were beginning to return from Russia. They did not want the returning Tarnogrod Jews to come back to town and so were doing everything so that they would have no place to rest their heads and would be forced to leave Tarnogrod.

Such were the plans of our former neighbors in those days, and they carried their plans out. So they finished with the last Jews, with Azriel from Maydan Shinovski, with Shmuel from Borvits, with Rivka and Pesza from Bishtsh, with Mordechai Lipe Adler, with Itsik Egert.

Among the Jewish ruins, I saw straying in the empty places moldy pages from a prayer book, detached and decaying sheets imprinted with the Holy Name, stuck together with dust and mud. A child's summer cap rolled about someplace, and the wind played with a sack, chasing it to and fro in the empty space. Among the ruins lay a child's shirt, torn and molding. It was sad wandering through Tarnogrod streets, looking into the windows. The stones, the houses -- everything screamed with that scream of the most horrifyingly violent deaths that anyone can conceive of. The few passers-by looked at me strangely, with suspicion. In their eyes, faces, I could read the suspicion: What is he looking for here, this stranger? Has he come here to demand his due for an injustice that one of our current residents has done to him?

And I looked these people in the eye searchingly. Perhaps there would be a name, a familiar face, who could repeat for me the gruesome history of all that had happened on this soil. I felt so lonesome and needed to have someone with me who would help me shake off the horror of those days, help to demand justice, to cry out… I saw how non-Jews were wrapping their treif sausages in torn Talmud pages, to take to market. I was silent, mute, could not find words for my pain, and I thought: God, do You see how people are wrapping pig flesh in your Torah? Why are You silent?

I stood alone in the empty market square. A strange emptiness engulfed me. The same market and yet so strange as to be unrecognizable. It was the realization of the evil dream of the Polish anti-Semites who had fought even in the early days to have the Jewish shopkeepers thrown out of the market. But even they had not imagined back then that the realization of their dream would also remove all the Jewish householders from the Jewish homes. All those Jews, who had built up – from an empty piece of meadow – a bustling center of trade and craftsmanship that provided necessary supplies for the residents of the town and for the surrounding villages.

Here in Tarnogrod, at the Jewish blacksmiths, tailors and shoemakers, carpenters and harness-makers, the peasant repaired his plowing tools, his wagon or sled, had his clothes resewn or got a pair of boots or a coat for the winter. And they worked, those Jewish craftsmen, for bread and water.

How much life those Jews had brought to the whole area. The market was always full of them. Standing around in groups and chatting. Arguing with one another. Now not one of them. All is as though emptied out, asleep, dead.

I already knew then that among the surviving Jews from Tarnogrod and the surrounding villages who succeeded in evading the German hangman and hiding in the forests, in
underground hide-outs at a peasant farm, some for money, some without, were Eliezer Wertman, Mordechai Lipe Adler, Chaim Adler and his wife, Lipiner, Shlomo Yehoshua Adler and his sister Tobtche, Malka Herbstman, Eliezer Lumerman, Avigdor Gut, Efraim Lumerman and his wife and children, Avraham Haler and his wife and children and also his sisters, Shmuel Borvitzer, Hersh Weltz, Teme Trinker, David Entner. All of these survived in the Józefów forest. David Entner was later murdered by Polish bandits outside Tarnogrod. Weltz killed a German in Frankfurt several years after the war. He tricked the German into coming to his home under the pretext of selling him gold, and he killed him there.

Also remaining alive were Sara Magram, Sini Groyer, Neche and Sara from the village Babitsh, Simcha Knochen, Teme and her two brothers, Krigsner from the village Bishtsh, Shlomo Sprung from Fatik, Azriel Korngold. They were all hidden by peasants who were well paid by them.

Also among the living were Rivka Lustrin, Mindel Klug, Rivka from Bishtsh, Itsik Egert, Ozer Wachnachter and his wife Pesza. They survived on Aryan papers.

Staying alive in camps were Yentche Melamed's grandson, Zelik Tryb, Sarale Fiter, Mendel Silberzweig. Simcha Statfeld and his son survived in the Lemberg (Lviv, Ukraine) ghetto and later in the forest.

All these survivors who thought that they could stay in Tarnogrod had to leave the town and settle in Lower Silesia, with the hope of emigrating from Poland later. The single dominating thought for everyone was Erets Yisroel [land of Israel].

In Tarnogrod the big shul [synogogue] and the beit midrash [house of study] remained whole. But the Poles later built a coach house in the place of the beit midrash which they demolished. They turned the shul into a storehouse for various kinds of merchandise.

There is no trace of the old cemetery in the place where it had been. There are only unclean things there today. All the matseyves [gravestones] have been torn out. All the trees cut down. The Germans used the matseyves to pave the road to Rozanietz. The graves have become even with the earth, beaten down by paths and trails that the Poles have ground down as ways to the town. There is no sign of any grave.

The three fresh graves of the Wachnachters and Weiners are also effaced. The brick ohel [crypt] that held the remains of the Kreszówer Tzadik (see page 275) and Tarnogrod Rabbi has also been torn down. There is no evidence of the generations of holiness with which the Tarnogrod Jews encircled this place.

How terrible is the obtuseness of the remaining Poles. The holiness of that place is much greater and more fearful than that of an ordinary cemetery. This is the cemetery of a world that was murderously cut down. Everything that reminds us of that world must be held as holy and dear. There is no designation for those who desecrate it so brutally, so un-humanly, with animal boorishness.

We will never forget the murder of our shtetl, of our slaughtered people. We will carry eternally the debt that we owe our murdered Tarnogrod Jewish families, who with their last shout of “Shema Yisrael!” also demanded revenge for their innocent blood's out-pouring.

Honor all our dearest and best, who were so gruesomely slaughtered by the Hitleristic and Polish murderers!

In 1946 Jewish refugees from Russia began coming home, including those from Tarnogrod. In their minds Tarnogrod remained their old home. With that word, home, they got by in far-off Russia. They who traveled home did not think that the home was already long gone, that the German devils had ripped up their homes roots and all.

Only with their arrival in the towns did they set their eyes on the destruction and perceive that the earth on which they trod was soaked with Jewish blood.

Already at the border their transports were attacked with stones and with Poles shouting “Jew, death awaits you!” All the refugee transports were turned toward the German cities that now belonged to Poland. The Jews felt somewhat safer there. More than 80 percent of the houses were vacant. The previous German residents had fled to the American zone. In those cities and towns, the Tarnogrod Jews who had lost their homes also set up their new homes temporarily. No matter who you spoke with then, there was always the call “How do we get to Eretz Yisrael?” But that promised Jewish land was closed and protected by the English military so that no Jew could sneak in illegally.

In those days the Brikha movement [organization that transported Holocaust survivors into Palestine] began to operate. Hundreds and thousands of young people, led by Eretz-Yisrael Haganah [volunteers protecting Jews] fighters, began to organize the refugees and help them to cross the borders to Germany, Austria and Italy where camps had been set up and from there they could take various routes – all very dangerous – to the borders of Eretz. But there were several reasons that Jews become chained to their new places. Some remembered later and wanted to travel out but it was too late, the Brikha was no longer working and the Polish borders were already closed.

The Tarnogrod residents learned, meanwhile, about the misfortune that had befallen the Jewish victims who were murdered by the Poles, and the refugees were afraid to travel into Tarnogrod. And the road back involved deadly dangers. The Polish underground army, the A. K., was set up in the forests and lay in wait for Jews passing through, whom they murdered in savage ways.

Only in the 1950s, when the Polish underground army was liquidated, did some of the Tarnogrod Jews who remained in Poland, decide to travel to Tarnogrod and there to sell their inherited properties, for which they had not received any payment. And later those same Jews, with the opening of the gates to free immigration, made aliyah [immigration] to Israel. And there are still some Tarnogrod Jews in Poland, working in various posts.

During the time when the Jews fleeing Poland found themselves in the specially-made camps in Germany and Italy, the Tarnogrod Relief Committee in America sent packages of food and clothing to the Tarnogrod Jews in the camps. The Committee was headed by Itche-Ber Adler as president and Berel Tryb, secretary.

When the Jewish state was proclaimed – a state located among nine Arab countries – there were Tarnogrod Jews among the volunteer fighters who came out of the camps: Moshe Rosenfeld, Shmuel Eliyahu Futer, Chaim Bornstein, Moshe Treger and Itche Weintraub, the last of whom fell in a battle with the Arabs. As soon as the stream of immigration began – after a cease-fire – many Tarnogrod Jews made aliyah to Israel. Unfortunately some could not arrange it and some of them went off to various American states, where they managed with help from the Joint Distribution Committee and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which also helped them to find livelihoods.

The Tarnogrod Jews in America had founded the Tarnogroder landsmanshaft [organized society of countrymen] several decades before, according to the example of all the other Jews from various villages. They had their own shul and their own cemetery. These landsmanshaften met once a month and accepted new members, and at special meetings decided whom to give help to and how to help their landsleit on the other side of the sea.

The Tarnogroder landsmanshaft took in all the newly-arriving refugees from Tarnogrod without fees and helped them in every possible way to get on their feet.

The Relief Committee had been concerned even before the war with the poor Jews in Tarnogrod. They had sent aid, especially for Passover and other holidays. After the war, when the Committee was led by A. B. Adler and Secretary N. Krymperkopf, and later when the president was Lumerman and the secretary Fink, there was a regular stipend for poor Tarnogrod Jews in Israel. The Relief Committee in America also took upon itself the whole responsibility for publishing this Yizkor Book. A money stipend was promptly sent to Israel for the first expenses for the Yizkor Book by Yosef Schorer and Abraham Kramer.

My brother Avraham took me to a meeting of the society as soon as I arrived in New York. At the time the governance was composed of Proisengarten, President; Yakov Stiglitz, Financial Secretary; M. Baumfeld, Minutes Secretary; A. B. Adler, Chairman of the Relief Committee; Berel Tryb, Secretary.

The society took me in with heartfelt friendship and accepted me as a member without dues, and proposed to me to be secretary of the Relief Committee with a stipend of 50 dollars a year, which was considered a gift. I accepted the proposal and immediately took on the work of helping the Tarnogrod Jews in Israel.

The whole time that I was in America, I was occupied with the idea of creating a monument to our martyrs, the murdered Jews of Tarnogrod, and being Secretary of the Relief Committee and I often suggested that idea, mentioned and proposed, that we erect a matseyve to our martyrs. Everyone's reply was positive. Everyone understood the importance of that act, but the difficulties lay in gathering the financial help necessary for carrying out the project. Difficulties are presented so that we may overcome them, and I did not give up on the idea, and brought up the matter at a meeting with the administration of the society. Unfortunately there were those who did not want to deal with the matter as urgent, and they set it aside for a later time.

Time does not stand still. One administration dissolves and another takes its place. The positions were taken by the newcomers, the greenhorns. Yosel Schorer became President. A meeting was called, and only a few members attended, and I was called upon to present my proposal to erect a memorial in the cemetery for Tarnogroder Jews in New York, a special tombstone for the murdered martyrs.

The proposal was accepted with the condition that the erection of a matseyve be approved by a specially-called general meeting. That decision calmed me. We were certain that everyone at the general meeting would value the moral significance and not oppose the erection of such a memorial.

Among those attending the general meeting was former president of the Jewish Council in Tarnogrod, Sini Groyer. Along with him came his brother Zischa and a few other organized members of the society, Tarnogrod sons-in-law, and they opposed the decision to erect a memorial.

The proposal failed and that was a hard blow for me. I could not comprehend that Tarnogrod Jews, who had survived that horrible hell, would not understand the importance and the respectability of erecting a matseyve to the memory of our dear tormented families. I experienced a deep embitterment and disappointment and thought that something must be done for the memory of our martyrs. I decided to take on the project with my own strength and not to ask anyone for any help.

My disappointment caused me to renounce my duties as secretary of the relief committee. During that time I harbored the idea of going to Israel. In my plan it would be possible in a few years. But now the rejection of the idea of erecting a matseyve, made me quicken the pace for the plan and I hurried my trip to Israel.

Immediately upon my arrival in Israel I began with my own resources to erect a matseyve on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Approaching the realization of this task called for assembling a meeting of Tarnogrod Jews in Israel. The meeting took place in Haifa, in the home of Yekhezkel Tofler. We discussed what the inscriptions should be on the matseyve. I also asked for the help of people who would travel to Jerusalem and decide which wall of the Holocaust House the matseyve should be mounted in.

I also met with the unexpected opposition of one person who maintained that there was no need for a matseyve, and who declared that the Tarnogrod Jews in Israel had never given such an idea any thought and were not in agreement about the importance of such a monument. Tzvi Rozenson stayed actively on my side and others also agreed. We went to Mount Zion together with Shmuel Fefer and wrote out the style of the inscription and showed the stone-carver which wall to place the matseyve into.

The unveiling of the matseyve was on May 1, 1960. Moshe Sprung sent out the invitations to all the Tarnogrod Jews and a fine audience attended. All were satisfied with immortalizing the memory of the martyrs from our shtetl.

Being in Israel for five months, I was in contact with many fellow landsleit and I could feel their satisfaction and understanding about the importance of the matseyve on Mount Zion. I was very touched by the evening gathering that the Tarnogrod landsleit organized at Golda Egert's home. We sat around two covered tables. People shared memories about life in Tarnogrod. People discussed questions having to do with the American Relief Committee, about the urgency of establishing a free-loan society and a committee charged with distributing the aid only to those in need.

At that same meeting we dealt with the issue of writing a scroll in which the names of all the martyrs from our shtetl would be written. Everyone accepted that proposal with great enthusiasm. Mr. Moshe Sprung sent out a letter to all the landsleit asking them to send in the names of their murdered relatives.

It was painful for me to convince myself of how few people responded to that initiative.

[Pages 481-482]

Finding myself in Lublin when the war ended, I began to think about ways in which I, as a Jew, could travel to Tarnogrod, which entailed great dangers. At that time the Kelts pogrom also took place, costing the lives of forty Jews, and the anti-Semitic bands terrified every surviving Jew. Jews were warned not to ride trains until the hooliganism stopped.

But my heart was pained, and would not let me rest. Seeing the great catastrophe that had befallen the Jewish people, my desire to live was lost; but at the same time the Jew felt within himself the mission of continuing the lives of his slaughtered parents and relatives. Despite the most gruesome nightmares, he knew that he must continue living. To ride from Lublin to Tarnogrod with a beard like mine meant risking my life.

After considering all of the risks involved, I went to a barber and wept over my beard as it was cut off. I left long mustaches like those of a Polish peasant, put on peasant boots and a peasant cap, and set off for Tarnogrod at the end of May 1945.

I took the train as far as Zamoshtsh, where I met a few surviving Jews, slept at the home of a Jew, and set off on the train in the morning to Zvyezhinyets. From there I took the local train to Bilgoray.

It was hard for me to tell whether there was another Jew on the train. Perhaps he was disguised as a gentile, as I was. But all of the passengers were positive that there wasn't a single Jew on the train. It was hard to believe that a Jew would dare to travel on that line in those times.

When I arrived at Bilgoray, Polish coachmen stood in front of the station. They fell upon me, asking me where I was headed; each one wanted to take me. I stood mute for a while, searching with my eyes: perhaps Mendl Roshe's would appear, or Mendl Avel, or another of the Jewish coachmen of Tarnogrod, who used to drive to Bilgoray and back each day.

But my search was fruitless. None of them was left. Gentile wagons had taken their place. Having no other choice, I approached one of the Polish coachmen, and we settled on a fare to Tarnogrod. For a short while we both sat silently. He was the first to speak; I tried to answer as little as possible, so that he wouldn't realize I was a Jew. Then he pointed in front of himself with his whip and said:

“See, on both sides of the road are buried Jews whom the Germans shot. Jews from Tarnogrod, Bilgoray, and the surrounding villages lie there. The Germans knew what they were doing when they shot all the Jews. It was a good thing they did, and we should be grateful to them for it.”

Frozen in these tragic thoughts I arrived in Tarnogrod. I didn't want to ride straight into town, and asked the coachman to let me off near the factory at the Bilgoray gate.

There I met Sore Magram. She stood on the porch of her house, and looked at me without recognizing me. Seeing her, a Jewish woman of Tarnogrod, joy flooded through me for a moment. I approached her, told her who I was, and saw how she, too, was filled with the same joy.

[Pages 483-492]

We began to tell each other about our experiences during the war years.

She told me about the destruction of our town, describing the various ways in which Jews had unsuccessfully fought for their lives. She also told me about her own life, which had been fraught with danger. She enumerated for me the villages where she stayed and the peasants with whom she had hidden, living in fear of daylight, of strangers, of informers who swarmed everywhere. For a time, she had lived as a Christian, with Aryan papers, and watched as the Germans carried out their aksties against the Jews. After Tarnogrod had been emptied of Jews, someone denounced her, and the Gestapo came to get her one night. When she heard them knocking at her door, she immediately understood what she had to do, and jumped out a window and ran through the dark fields until she got to Lukow.

Fearful, ashamed, and in despair, I slipped into town by the backstreets, wending my way through the narrow alleys until I reached the market place, on the side where Shlomo Mantel once lived.

I stood there dejected, not knowing where to go next. After a while, I began to imagine that this wasn't Tarnogrod, that perhaps I had strayed into another town. Quickly I shook off that thought. After all, I recognized the shops the Jews had left behind. Nothing had changed except that instead of the Jewish merchants with their luminous, refined faces, there now stood Poles with their pitted, swinish mugs. No, I hadn't lost my bearings. This was truly Tarnogrod, the same town, but without Jews. With an aching heart I went to the left side of the market place and exited onto Razhenitser Street. Here was the house that Chaim Segalman had built for himself in 1940, already under German occupation. Here was the lot that belonged to Shabtai Sabel.

I proceeded along Razhenitser Street, not glimpsing a single Jewish face, not even a Jewish house. I soon reached the vacant lot where my father's house had stood. On this very spot I had taken leave of my parents and my sisters. Weeds were growing there and scattered around were remnants of the brick chimney and the oven where we used to bake matzo for Passover. I remembered where our house had once stood, where there was an alcove with two beds, the place near the window where my father had his weaving workshop. Here was the spot where my cradle had stood, where I and six more children were rocked to sleep. I envisioned the large, ragged basket in which the matzo maker delivered matzos to the householders. The mezuzah from our door lay muddied and broken on the ground. I picked it up and held it to my lips.

Standing on the ruins of my father's lot I looked across to my own house, which remained intact, because the Poles had turned it into a temporary school for their children. Although I thought it best not to go there, my feet took me there without thinking and I soon stood in front of my house on Lakhover Street. The entry was wide open; the doors had been removed by thieves. Some of the windows were missing their shutters and those that remained were hanging loose, like the limbs of cripples.

My eyes clouded; I wandered through the empty rooms with their peeling walls. What was I looking for? Who was I looking for? My ears were filled with noise and I sat down on the floor as I slowly began to grasp the scope of my own personal Holocaust, my own catastrophe.

I had left behind a loving wife and beautiful, sweet children and now…? Empty, deserted rooms, silent walls that could perhaps have told so much about the last hours of my family.

I looked at the peeling walls, as if waiting for them to answer me: Perhaps they knew where the bodies of my wife and children lay, where the soil had absorbed their blood? But the walls remained silent, as if angered and insulted by the horrific fate of the people who had lived within them so many years, who had painted and adorned them with pictures and drawings.

My gaze wandered over the piles of refuse and I lifted the torn briefcase in which my Peshe kept her school books. Then I saw a piece of my wife's Sabbath dress, a torn boot that had belonged to my son Kopel, a sleeve ripped from my Malkale's shirt. These were the only witnesses I found that my family once lived here, my dear good wife, my lovely, loving children.

With a broken heart I left my house and went out into the market place. The Christians didn't recognize me and looked at me as if I were a wild creature. Finally, they showed me where Wachnachter lived.

Someone added that he, too, would soon be driven away, that Jews were not needed here.

I went to visit Wachnachter, who was living in Guthertz's house. I found him at home with his wife Peshe and their little girl, who was lying in her cradle. They were very glad to see me and I again heard about their horrifying experiences.

The next day I went around to see my Polish acquaintances living in the area outside town and on the commons. I asked about my family and other Tarnogrod Jews, how had they lived under the German tyrants, when and how did they die.

I spent a week visiting the Poles, searching for information about the last days of our Jews. They told me the names of Jews whom they encountered after the aktsies, wandering around the fields, looking for a place to hide, something to eat, until they disappeared. Everyone knew the fate that awaited them.

A woman from the commons told me that my 13-year-old son Kopel had worked as a cowherd for Dekash. At dawn on the day of the aktsie he had driven the cows to the commons, where he was shot and killed by an S.S. officer near Avraham Ruer's unfinished mill. The woman showed me the field where he had been buried by two Christians from the commons. I tried to find out how I could remove his remains and rebury him in a Jewish cemetery. But it turned out that would have been impossible. Tall wheat was growing in the field and there was no one who was able to show me where exactly my child was buried.

Every day the Poles told me new details about those horrific years. Two days after the aktsie they found my wife Mindl wandering in the fields near Bartashik's mill. Two weeks after the aktsie my 15-year-old daughter Peshe was captured in the village of Korchow and brought to Tarnogrod, where she was held in Chaim Goldman's dark warehouse until they killed her.

For several days after the aktsie my 9-year-old Malkale wandered among the Christians who lived near the cemetery. Skura told me that he found her in his pig pen, eating from the trough. He took her home, fed her and let her sleep there overnight, but in the morning he sent her away because he was afraid of the Gestapo. Christian boys caught her and took her to the S.S., who killed her. That was how my own family perished.

The entire time of my 8 day stay in Tarnogrod, I slept at Wachnachter's house. At night we heard shooting. These were attacks by Ukrainians upon the Poles and Poles upon Ukrainians. There were only two other Jews besides Wachnachter living in Tarnogrod at that time – Ezriel from Majdan Sieniawski and Shmuel Barovitser. They lived in Rachel-Chaiake's house.

One Friday a Christian from Lezenski drove into town with a car carrying salt to sell. Baratshik wanted to buy the salt at half its value. It was already twilight when Wachnachter and the two other Jews bought two sacks of salt. When Baratshik found out, he denounced them to the militia and the three Jews were arrested.

At the jail, the three Jews were mercilessly beaten. Their money and watches were taken, as was the salt they had bought. They were threatened with death if they made a complaint. It took them three days to recover from the beating.

I urged them to leave Tarnogrod as soon as possible. The two single men followed my advice and left. Wachnachter, who had a family, stayed until the catastrophe occurred, about which I have already written [see page 470]. After having survived the hell of the Nazis, they were killed in a terrible way by the Polish beasts.

With each day It became more dangerous for me to stay in Tarnogrod. I returned to Lublin, coming back to Tarnogrod to complete the formalities for the sale of my house, for a negligible price. By that time, I had concluded that not a single Jew would return to Tarnogrod.

During the short time I was in Tarnogrod, Mordechai Lipe Adler would sometimes visit there from Bukovina, where he was living. Simche Shtatfeld would also visit Tarnogrod, from Lublin. He would buy butter and other foodstuffs, which were much more expensive in Lublin. After the tragedy with Wachnachter, not a single Jew came to Tarnogrod. Every day I spent there was a torture for me. The entire area became repugnant to me and I had the feeling I was moving through a horrible sticky filth of crime and decadence which could not be redeemed at any cost.

I stayed in Lublin for several more months and then escaped to Germany, and from there, with the help of the Joint Distribution Committee, left for America.

At a meeting one evening the suggestion was made to write a Yizkor book, as other large and small towns in Poland were doing.

We weighed the difficulties entailed in such a project. In addition to the actual writing, and collecting memoirs, documents and historical material, there was the central issue of finding the necessary financial resources. The Tarnogrod landslayt in Israel placed a lot of hope in me. They saw me as the American, the former secretary of the Relief Committee, and thought that I would take care of the financial side. I promised to present the matter to the Relief Committee, that I would demand special meetings, would insist on the necessity to organize a broad effort to carry it out. But I objectively and truthfully told them that in America, too, we had to deal with people who didn't have the appropriate appreciation for such a Yizkor book. I described the circumstances under which the current secretary Mr. Yosef Fink had to operate.

Upon my return to America I immediately, at the first meetings, presented the suggestion made by the landslayt in Israel. But the Relief Committee did not display the appropriate understanding. The problem was discussed several times but the committee continued to send aid in the amount it deemed appropriate.

The entire time I corresponded by mail with the landslayt in Israel, especially with Mr. Meir Ringer and Mr. Moshe Shprung. I asked them to find out how much it would cost to publish the book. Meir Ringer put in a lot of effort to assemble the necessary information and after assessing the situation, I wrote him that he should begin to work more intensively to realize the Yizkor book, and I on my side, was ready to provide what was needed, including gathering the memoirs, documents and providing the financial aid.

The truth is that I placed hope for realizing the idea on the Tarnogrod Society in New York, thinking that it would be easier to gather the necessary funds with the help of the landslayt in America. I took every letter that I received from Messrs. Ringer and Shprung to meetings of the Society and pressed them to make every effort to collect or borrow the money necessary to put out the book.

I did not weary and I did not stop demanding that we fulfill the obligation we owed to our martyrs, until at a meeting, Mr. Max Levinger, from Lukow, son in law of Mendele Silberzweig, spoke up and demanded that the Yizkor book include everything that had been said about the last president of the Judenrat, Sinai Grauer.

In reply, I explained that it was not possible to do what Mr. Levinger suggested. I personally did not know anything about the deeds of the former president of the Judenrat, Mr. Sinai Grauer. Had I known anything, I wouldn't have needed his suggestion to write about it. In my drive to write the complete truth about what happened in the ghetto, I was not afraid of anyone, but I would have to bear sole responsibility for anything I wrote. I emphasized that writing about the conduct of the former president, as Levinger desired, would expose him to disgrace and condemn him in the eyes of history. Such a thing could only be done by a person who actually witnessed it. It would have to be thoroughly researched, and could only be based on precise and honest facts. It could not be based on rumors that had not yet been substantiated.

I sent a detailed report of these meetings to the landslayt in Israel. In return, Ringer wrote me that he was resigning from working on publishing the Yizkor book. I had no further correspondence with him. The work was resumed only after my visit to Israel for a longer stay.

Of all my family, I alone remain Without a home, Hounded by strangers. My life has been cut down Everything I loved and cherished destroyed Everything I owned is gone And my home destroyed by fire. No wife, no child No father, no mother, No sign of them remains Oh, how bitter is my life. I had a wife and three children Each of them shot By the Germans With their machine guns. Peshe, my daughter, Kopel, my son… All I found of her was a bloodied dress Where are their bodies buried?! Malkale, the youngest Mindl -- my wife. If only one of them had lived, Oh, woe is me. When I remember the faces Of my children and their mother Buried in ditches along with thousands more I am engulfed in horror and trembling. How sad and terrible is this life, As I have been left alone How bitter and lonely is life When one is alone like a stone. Stay away from the murderers, Have nothing to do with them You must flee from the thorns [sic] Have you so soon forgotten? Oh, woe is me. You must remember The Nazi beast. You must seek revenge For your brothers and sisters.

Jews from Tarnogrod: I appeal to you, the heirs of Tarnogrod! Your inheritance is not a material one; it doesn't consist of houses or castles, or fields or gardens. You do not belong to that category of heirs who fear that they may need to fight over what was left by their deceased parents.

You are the heirs of a great and sacred commandment: You must remember and not forget.^[1] You are the heirs of an exalted aspiration, that will overcome fire or water.

Until the end of time and generations we will cherish what remains written in fire and blood. We who have been saved from a horrific death will always have before us the words: “You must blot out the remembrance of Amalek” – now, the Amalek of the 20th century.

This is in fact the role and purpose of this very book, which is an expression of the obligation which we have assumed to perpetuate our inheritance, the golden chain of hundreds of years of Jewish life in Tarnogrod.

So hold dear and sacred this book of remembrance which reflects the spiritual life of our parents and ancestors, the special nobility and good heartedness of the simple Jews in our shtetl. May this book provide for future generations a deep appreciation of this destroyed beauty.

May this Yizkor book be an eternal reminder providing a portrait of a pure way of life which no longer exists.

May the cry that rises from this book never be silenced.

Footnote:

1. This is a partial quote from Deuteronomy 25:17, which commands the Jews to “remember what Amalek did to you on your way out of Egypt,” and “not to forget it”, as well as “to blot out the remembrance of Amalek,” which the author also cites in this section. The name of the Biblical Amalek is used as a synonym for any enemy of the Jewish people throughout history. Return

[Pages 493-500]

And then came the day for which I had waited so long. My wife and I packed our bags, took leave of friends and comrades, and left Sao Paolo, Brazil, bound for Poland. On July 11, 1964 we sailed on the ship Augustus to Italy, where we took a train to Warsaw. We spent two weeks in Warsaw, where we met with acquaintances, visited various institutions and laid a wreath of flowers at the Warsaw Ghetto monument.

From there we went to Lublin, where we visited the Jewish Committee. Among the Committee activists I found many comrades ^[1] and acquaintances from my past. Since I was in Lublin, I decided to see the death camps where the German beasts killed our sisters and brothers. We took a car and within ten minutes we were at the Majdanek death camp.

There we encountered thousands of visitors from various parts of the country as well as many soldiers. I noticed that several soldiers wrote notes and placed them upon the graves. Curious to see what the notes said, I picked one up and read: “My dear people, I will never forget you, from me, Vasilevitsh.”

Passing through the housing blocks I saw in some of them packs of hair and braids that the executioners had shorn from the heads of their victims before they gassed them. My heart bled at this horrifying sight. I thought about how much love and tenderness their mothers gave their children, their family and friends. Now all that remained of their memory was a museum.

I did not have the strength to visit the other blocks. I broke down and wept bitterly. When I had recovered somewhat from the pain, we continued on. One of our escorts pointed to a hill and told me that under that hill were buried 18,000 Jews killed by the Nazis two days before liberation.

I was devastated by what I had seen and wanted to leave. I parted with my companions and one of them took me to the bus that went to Tarnogrod. When I got on the bus, I decided not to take it directly to Tarnogrod; it was a Sunday and I didn't want to arrive on a Sunday. So I decided to stay overnight in Bilgoraj. On the way, we drove through many towns familiar to me. Unfortunately, no Jews remained there. My heart was aching. Could it be true? Where did they go, my beloved Jews, comrades and friends, the young people who had filled these towns with life and struggle?

We arrived in Bilgoraj in the evening. I didn't recognize it, but the bus driver convinced me that we were in fact in Bilgoraj.

One of the passengers who got off the bus with me saw that I was a foreigner and asked me where I wanted to go and what I wanted to see. I told him that I wanted to find a person who had lived on Tarnogrod Street. He took me there and found the person I was looking for. This was a close acquaintance and a former comrade. We had a short conversation. She asked if any of the comrades from Bilgoraj were still alive. I told her that sadly they had all died. I felt that this was very painful for her, and that she was suffering greatly. She asked me to forgive her for not being able to invite me to stay with her as her guest for at least a few days. She explained that her son, his wife and children had come from England to spend their vacation with her. We said goodbye, and I went back to the hotel, to wait for the next day's trip to Tarnogrod.

I waited a long time for a bus to Tarnogrod. There were no taxis or cars to rent, so I continued to wait. Suddenly a military vehicle with soldiers drove up. I asked them to stop and asked if they were driving to Tarnogrod and if so, if they would take me with them. They were going to Tarnogrod, and said I was very welcome to come with them.

When we arrived at Knishpoler Street I saw a sign. I asked the driver to stop for a moment so that I could take a closer look. I saw that it was the same sign that had been there several decades ago, just as I had left it. We drive on, and I started thinking: this little piece of tin had been luckier than a living person. The sign remained but the young people who frequented this spot, singing on this very street, no longer existed. The Nazi beasts destroyed their home and cut short the lives of the Jewish youth. From the car I could see peasants in the field harvesting grain, gathering the golden stalks. It seemed to me that the stalks were crying along with me over the misfortune that had befallen us.

We drove through a crossroads between Bilgoraj and the village of Bishte. I knew it well. The Jewish youth of the town would come here on the Sabbath to get together and enjoy themselves. How many wonderful songs were sung here, how much hope and yearning they experienced here.

At this same crossroads, on this very place, the crucifix with the figure of Christ still stood. Nothing had changed; he did not turn his head away from me, he did not feel guilty before me. The bridge was also the same. Under it there used to be a steady flow of cool water, but now it had dried up, even though it was raining. It appeared that no one came to swim in the waters of the stream. The church, too, stood in its place. It seemed to be asking, “To whom is he travelling, whom is he going to see?”

After travelling on for a while, we stopped and the driver announced that we were now in Tarnogrod. From what I saw, I didn't believe that I was already in my hometown. But this first impression changed as I gradually began to recognize the town. First, I recognized the small shops that had been built decades ago. I encountered a Christian and asked him where Lakhower Street was. He said I was standing on it, but that it was now called Kosciusko Street.

I still wanted to see the post office, which would help me better orient myself. Lost in thought, I suddenly realized that several Christians had approached and asked the man with whom I had been talking who this stranger was. In truth, I became a bit frightened and asked where the police station was. I soon arrived there, knocked on the door, and heard, “Enter.” I introduced myself, said that I was from abroad, had been born here in Tarnogrod and wanted to be taken to see my former home, the synagogue, the besmedresh [house of study, also used for worship], and the rabbi's house.

They said that they were all too young to know these things, that I should go to the municipality, where I would find people from the older generation who could give me information about the things I was interested in. One of the young police officers accompanied me there.

Inside the municipal offices, when I saw the new leaders of the town government, I didn't need any introductions. I recognized all of them. I almost shouted, “Oh, are you here?” I encountered all the old Tarnogrod residents I knew so well: Bien, Karpol, Tzap and others. We chatted. They didn't immediately recognize me and I told them who I was, that my mother's name was Khane and what merchandise she dealt in. They immediately remembered and told me that she wasn't called Khane [by the Poles], but Yosvova. We argued about her name for a while, until I recalled that she was in fact known as Yosvova.

While we were talking a young man came in, greeted me, and said that his colleague had told him about my arrival, and that I had worked for Yekl Magran. Hearing this, I wanted to get more details and, excusing myself to the members of the municipality, asked the young man to join me for a glass of tea. We went to a bar–restaurant where all the tables were occupied by peasants drinking beer, many of them already quite drunk. I withdrew from the conversation, said goodbye to my acquaintance and set out to return to the municipality.

On the way, I encountered a lot of people. Each one introduced himself. I didn't want to call them by their names –– that would have shown more respect than they deserved. Soon there were about ten people standing around me; they accompanied me to my former home.

When we got to the house a Christian woman emerged. She was living in the house formerly owned by Sakhile the tailor, which stood behind ours. My companions introduced me to the woman and told her that I was born and had lived in this house and had come from abroad to see the town of my birth. The woman asked, “What do they want, the crucifiers[i.e., the Jews]? There aren't any of them left here.” I saw with whom I was dealing so I refrained from talking to her. One of my companions indicated to her, with a gesture, that she shouldn't say anything more.

From there I set off with my companions to look around the town. On the land where there had once stood the houses of Shaye–Leib, Shmayele the Tailor, my uncle Faiwel Bas, the cripple Yankl the tailor, where they used to bake matzo – that entire area was now an empty parcel overgrown with weeds.

We came to the place where the besmedresh had once stood; it had been converted into a hotel. The women's section had been completely dismantled by the Germans; a few stones were the sole remaining trace.

The Tailors' Synagogue was empty and desolate. Outside the synagogue, they had set up a green market where a Christian man was selling potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes and other fruit. I wanted to see the inside. One of my companions obtained a key and we went in. It was heartbreaking to see what the Fascists had done to our property. The balemer [desk from which Torah is read] was gone; the Torah ark was in pieces. The lonely wind whistled and wailed.

My thoughts brought me back to my town as it was years ago. I pictured the time of the high holidays Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, how the Jews packed the synagogue, praying for health, livelihood a year of peace. I imagined the women in the gallery, standing and praying, reaching out their hands to me in greeting. I could not answer, my tongue froze. I leaned against the wall and wept.

A voice inside me called out to my landslayt [fellow townspeople] all over the world not to forget, not to forgive the Nazis, to take revenge on them for spilling the blood of our people and destroying our homes.

We left the synagogue and arrived at the rabbi's house, with its large courtyard and garden. The rabbi had a big family and in the house there had lived sons, daughters, sons–in–law, daughters–in–law and grandchildren. The house was always filled with visitors who came to the rabbi to consult on various matters. Now none of them was left. A Christian now lived there. Oh, what had become of it!

We continued on. A radio station had been built where there once stood Ite–Leibele's house. Not far away stood the house of Yankele the Royfer [a medical paraprofessional], now boarded up. The building that had belonged to Fishl Koniazh had been converted into a hospital. The large market square no longer existed. The entire area – once occupied by the municipality, the buildings owned by Yekl Magram, Hersh Shaye–Leib, all the way up to the Mantl family's house – all of it was under construction. I wasn't interested to know what was being built there.

We walked on. I encountered many people who asked me, “What is the gentleman doing here?” I asked them where I could find the mass grave [in which the Jews were buried]. They said they didn't know. I asked them to show me Leibish Koval's house. We arrived there, but no one was there. Near it stood the house of a village Jew named Leibish Flis; no one was there.

I continued with my companions toward Shaye Zeinwale's garden, where we encountered a Christian woman who said she knew where the mass grave was. I was introduced to the woman, and she recognized that I was truly Yosvove's son. We asked her to show us the location of the grave of my mother and other Jewish women murdered by the Fascists.

Leading us to the grave, she told us that once a teacher came to her and told her that the Nazis wanted to bury the murdered Jews in her garden, and he asked her to refuse. She promised to do so. Later, however, a Gestapo officer came to her and informed her that the murdered Jews would be buried in her garden.

When she told him that she didn't want that, he chuckled and said, “Why not? You can be sure that afterwards your garden will yield the best cabbage.”

In that garden lay the mass grave of our mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, all killed by the Nazi beasts. My companions gradually began to relate the atrocities committed by the Nazis, how they mercilessly killed their victims. A Nazi had thrown Yisroelke Pelts' daughter to the ground and placed his booted foot on her throat, strangling her. There were other such horrifying crimes which the murderers inflicted on the Jews.

I found several more houses that had belonged to Jews; these were Bromberger, the baker, and the Jew who manufactured oil. They were locked and nailed shut.

Walking on Lakhower Street, I saw that it had been completely reconstructed. It now had a children's school, which was closed for vacation. On the way I met a lot of women who, seeing a foreigner, wanted to talk to me. From their manner of speaking, I sensed that they wanted to provoke me, so I avoided conversing with them.

There were a lot of Christians who I knew still wanted to meet with me, but I didn't have the patience to stay any longer. I decided to leave my little town. I was tired, exhausted from my experience and I left Tarnogrod. I traveled to Lublin where my wife was waiting for me. From there we went to Wroclaw.

Let it be noted that I have written this in tears, let it be a reminder not to forget, not to forgive our deadly enemies who murdered one third of our people. Let it also be a consolation for all my landslayt, for all Jews, that we were fortunate enough to see Hitler's downfall and the regeneration of the Jewish land.

Footnote:

1. The Yiddish word translated here and elsewhere in this article as “comrade” is khaver, and has several definitions, including friend, or a fellow member of a group or organization, among others. It bears no connotation, as it might in American English, of a particular political affiliation. Return

[Pages 501-503]

It has already been 35 years since I left my home for faraway Brazil. Each passing day, my thoughts were with my home and with the people with whom I spent my childhood and who remained there, in the hellfire of the Nazi extermination of the Jews.

Just five weeks ago I saw the crematoria of Majdanek and Auschwitz, and I still cannot free myself of the distress that I suffered there.

I had always longed and tried to meet someone from my town who had survived. You can imagine my joy when I met some surviving landslayt [fellow townspeople] for the first time 16 years ago in North America. In my talks with these survivors I learned about the catastrophe that befell our town, about what happened to my family, and my dear mother, whom the Nazis killed in a mass grave. The entire time I was tortured by the longing to visit her grave and recite the Kaddish [prayer for the dead], as every mother deserves from her children.

On August 15, 1964, I arrived in the ruined town of Tarnogrod, which had once held such love and charm and where each person was bound to another as true comrades. How forlorn had you become, my dear, warmhearted little Jewish town.

I was taken around by the town's current leaders, who during the war were almost as bad as the Germans.^[1] I could have done without their help, but the Polish government wanted to honor me, as a native of the town. They – the holders of power – did not want to tell me where my mother's grave was. It was only when I pointed to the location that I had learned about from my surviving landslayt that they confirmed it by nodding their agreement.

I entered the garden of the house that had belonged to Shaye, the son of Zanvel, the shoemaker. There among the gardens, lies the shared mass grave and within it, my mother's resting place. I wanted to cry out and tell her: Here stands before you your son Yekhezkel Berish, as you so lovingly called me. I wanted to tell her that she had become a grandmother. Listen, to how your grandchild calls you, Bobeshi [Granny], and pleads with you to cuddle him, to press him to your heart.

You did not live to see that happen. I went to look for you in your house; I found only grass. I went to look for you in the synagogue, where you had a permanent seat. It was empty and abandoned. I looked to see if you had perhaps accepted my invitation to my son's upcoming wedding. Why aren't you there, tossing nuts [at the bridegroom].^[2] Aren't you rejoicing?

I looked around and saw nothing but cold stones, and a shudder shook my body. How alone you were. For the twenty years since your death, no one had lit candles at your grave.

Five weeks later, I met up with your son Avrom and we took comfort in the continuation of life, and in the thought that mothers will no longer suffer so. I am now in Israel, where your son Avrom came 40 years ago to build the land, so that Jews can be proud. Your landslayt are also here. They were fortunate to survive in a land where we finally feel at home.

So I wish my landslayt a happy and peaceful life in the secure and healthy Jewish state forever. Best wishes, my dear warmhearted landslayt, who have not been forgotten by us, survivors in far away Brazil.

Footnotes:

1. The Yiddish term used by the author to describe the current Polish leaders of the town is “the former halbe-retsikhim [literally 'half-murderers'.”] Return
2. A probable reference to the pre-wedding aufruf ceremony where the bridegroom is called up to read the Torah and is showered with candy and nuts. Return

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