The Bialystoker Memorial Book - Der Bialystoker
Yizkor Buch, the Bialystoker Center, New York 1982
(c) Copyright by the Bialystoker Center
The
cover of this Memorial Book depicts the chimneys of the factories smoking as
they manufactured textiles to be distributed throughout the world, the main
synagogue in flames in which the Nazis murderers burned to death 2000 Jews on
June 27, 1941 and in the background, the famous Bialystok town clock.
Paining by the famous Bialystoker artist Benn from Paris.
The Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged has a
small number of copies of The Bialystoker Memorial Book (1982) for sale. They
are selling copies for $50 (there may also be a shipping charge). If you are
interested in acquiring a copy, please call Rabbi Leonard Blank at 212-475-7755
or write to him at:
THE BIALYSTOKER CENTER AND HOME FOR THE AGED
Attention: Rabbi Blank
228 E. Broadway
New York, NY 10002-5601
USA
BIALYSTOKER
MEMORIAL BOOK
Published by
BIALYSTOKER CENTER
New York
1982
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The title page features a painting of the town clock (stadt zeiger) in Bialystok by our renowned landsman, Benn |
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The Bialystoker Memorial Book - Der Bialystoker Yizkor Buch, the Bialystoker
Center, New York 1982
(c) Copyright by the Bialystoker Center
Max Ratner I. Shmulewitz Izaak Rybal Sam Solasz
Editorial Committee
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I. Shmulewitz |
Izaak Rybal |
Rabbi Lowell S. Kronick |
Book Committee of the Bialystoker Center in New York:
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Max Ratner |
Sam Solasz |
Izaak Rybal |
Sam Solasz, Rubin Bindler, Abraham Mintz, Paul Schochet, Harold Talin, Diana Medvedev, Charles Schwecher, Yedidia L. Hamburg, Sol Krim, Mike Kremer, Jacob Beren, Dora Mintz, Morris Molosofsky, Harold Morrow, Raya Zak, Yehoshua Schachter, Rabbi Lowell S. Kronick
The Bialystoker Memorial Book
Was Published By
Empire Press
550 Empire Boulevard
Brooklyn, New York 11225
(212) 756-1473
INTRODUCTION
It is with great pleasure that we bring to Bialystokers around the world access to The Bialystoker Memorial Book. The entire English language part of the book (originally published in both Yiddish and English), including all photos and captions, is included in on this website.
Our objectives in making this book available to those from around the world with interest in Jewish Bialystok are:
Enable those interested to learn more about this city and its Jewish residents from the early days to the destruction of this beloved city by the Nazi oppressors.
As a tribute to Jewish Bialystokers and others who perished during the Shoah and those who survived and made a new life for themselves and never forgot.
This Internet publication is a joint project of The Bialystoker Center and Bikur Cholim in New York City, Ada Holtzman and her Zchor.org website, and BIALYGen, the Bialystok Region Jewish Genealogy Group.
We are very grateful to The Bialystoker Center for their permission to publish this important historical document on the Internet. We especially thank Barry L. Winston, President; Alys Kremer Grossman, Secretary; and Daniel Muskin, Administrator for their interest and support.
Ada Holtzman
Tel Aviv, Israel
Mark Halpern
West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA
SURNAME INDEX AT BIALYGen Web Site
The English Part
TO OUR BIALYSTOKER LANDSLEIT AND FRIENDS
At last, after arduous effort, we present our landsleit and friends with this Bialystoker Memorial Book, to honor our once vibrant hometown and the brave resistance and ultimate destruction of its great Jewish community.
Our landsmanschaft was unable to publish this book earlier, as planned. At the 1970 Bialystoker world convention in Israel, it was decided to issue a memorial book as soon as possible. In the following years, our Center in New York carried on negotiations with our counterparts in Israel to prepare and issue the book jointly. Regrettably, this attempt at collaboration failed.
Nevertheless, we were not discouraged and took it upon ourselves – as a sacred task – publish the volume. We knew in advance the difficulties that lay ahead, and that did, in fact, materialize.
The Bialystoker Memorial Book appears at a time of resurgent neo-Nazism, anti-Semitism and increasing worldwide opposition to the State of Israel from the political left and right. Furthermore, we have witnessed the spectacle of so-called “experts” – some respectable academicians among them – denying the Holocaust ever occurred and minimizing the extent of Jewish victimization. We can expect such denials to continue. This book contains eyewitness accounts of the brutality and suffering; Bialystok is an example of what went on in Europe during the late 1930s and 1940s. We hope we have made it harder for the falsifiers of history to do their work.
Although much has been written about the Jewish community of Bialystok, its destruction and the resistance, this volume has gathered scattered articles and documents into one anthology. It wasn’t easy to organize them into a coherent unit.
We hope the Bialystoker Memorial Book will serve as a worthy monument to Jewish Bialystok, whose memory remains so precious to us. We have not been content to provide just the history of Bialystok, its development and, finally, its end in the Holocaust. We have also included the story of how surviving Bialystoker Jews tried to rebuild their community – to no avail – after the war. And we have traced to the present day the activities of landsleit in the United States, Israel, Argentina and France, which demonstrate the unconquerable Bialystoker spirit.
Had this volume been published ten years ago, it would have included the valuable perspectives of many who are no longer with us. Nevertheless, we believe we have faithfully presented a comprehensive and accurate picture.
Many thanks to our wonderful supporters, who responded generously to the appeal of our Board of Governors for financial assistance. We wish to credit the following individuals, whose participation in the project was indispensable: Max Ratner of Cleveland, our distinguished Bialystoker landsman and leading activist in the American Jewish community, who was the driving force behind this book; Izaak Rybal-Rybalowski, General Secretary of the Bialystoker Center, Home and Infirmary for the Aged, who invested much time and energy in the preparation of the volume; I. Shmulewitz, the well-known Yiddish journalist and specialist on Holocaust themes, who edited the Yiddish manuscript of the volume; Rabbi Lowell S. Kronick, who rendered the English translation, making the book accessible to the children and grandchildren of survivors; Hirsh Gansbourg of Empire Press, whose expertise as a printer guaranteed the quality of the production; Louis Evans, a master Yiddish proofreader, whose attention to detail assured the accuracy of the Yiddish manuscript; and Ginger Bramson, a professional copy editor, who made valuable stylistic suggestions for the English text.
We should like to thank our landsleit in Argentina, Israel, Australia and other countries for their help in bringing this book to light. The Bialystokers in Argentina will translate this work into Spanish so their children can know their heritage.
We hope the readers of this volume will feel that the Jewish community in Bialystok has been effectively memorialized. And we trust that those who survived the Nazi era and lost loved ones will be satisfied that their story has been properly told. May Bialystok remain a shining example of Eastern European Jewish life for generations to come.
The Bialystoker Memorial Book Committee
New York, December 1981
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CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE BIALYSTOK MEMORIAL VOLUME IN MEMORY OF THEIR LOVED ONES: |
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In loving memory of Our Parents BEJNUSZ AND FRUME LEJA FEJGIN SZYMON AND MIRIAM KNYSZINSKI by Hirsz and Stela Fejgin
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In loving memory of Our Parents MOJSZE AND PESZE RATOWCER by Max and Betty Ratner
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In loving memory of Our Parents ABRAHAM AND MINNIE PODOLSKY by Max and Tibby Podell
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In loving memory of Our Parents ABRAHAM AND SOPHIE DANE by Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell Dane
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In loving memory of Our Parents JEAN AND HYMAN GOLDBERG DWEJRE AND MEIR RYBALOWSKI by Izaak and Molly Rybal |
In loving memory of Our Father DANIEL ABELSON by Herman and Jane Abelson Maurice and Lorraine Abraham
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In loving memory of Our Grandmother GOLDIE KATZ and our family that perished in Bialystok by Sonia Abelson and Diana Medvedev
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In loving memory of Our Parents SZAJA AND FRIEDA DOBRYMAN ABRAHAM AND JUDITH GOLDBERG by Joseph and Nettie Dobryman |
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In loving memory of Our Husband and Father GEORGE GERING by Edith, Sheldon and Norman Gering
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In loving memory of Our Parents SZAMAJ AND ESTER SOLASZ by Rose and Sam Solasz
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In loving memory of Our Brothers SZLOJME AND JANKL ZYLBERSZTEIN And their families by Abe and Dora Zylbersztein-Mintz
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In loving memory of LAZAR SHABRY (SZABRYNSKI) by Felicia Dresner and Karl Shabry
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In loving memory of My Grandparents LOUIS AND MARY DAVIS by Michael Saperstein
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Book Committee of the Bialystoker Center in New York
First Row, L. to R.: Diana Medvedev, Rubin Bindler, Sam Solasz, I. Shmulewitz,
Raya Zak, Yedidia L. Hamburg. Second Row: Yehoshua Schachter, Morris Molosofsky,
Paul Schochet, Dora Mintz, Abraham Mintz, Izaak Rybal. Third Row: Sal Krim, Mike
Kremer, Charles Schwecher, Rabbi Lowell S. Kronick, Jacob Beren, Harold Talin,
Harold Morrow.
While contemplating this volume, I recalled my gentle childhood days. Among my cherished memorabilia is a notebook from my fourth-grade class at the Bet Hasefer Haamimi Haivri Harishon in Bialystok, the forerunner of the Tarbut Schools. On the first page in Hebrew is a song titled “The Promise” and on the next page, Hatikvah, “The Hope.” These two titles capsulize the meaning of this publication for me.
I visited Jewish cemeteries in many countries all over the world; I saw markers from almost every century of our dispersion. Occasionally, one observes an old synagogue or ruins. One finds reports by historians, government writers, quasi-professionals who try to bind bits of history together. Much is conjecture; the material is often theoretical and ambiguous. This sense became all the more pronounced when, on a trip to Israel in 1976, I stopped off to visit Bialystok, the city of my roots.
I read much of the Holocaust literature; I saw movies and spoke with fortunate survivors. But my birthplace’s transformation shocked me beyond belief.
Jews lived in the land of Poland before there was a Poland. Over the course of a millennium, they created a remarkable civilization characterized by deep piety, rich cultural achievement and outstanding intellectual pursuits.
In 1941 the Nazis invaded Poland and within four years they put to death three million Jewish men, women and children, and destroyed all that had been created over the course of a thousand years.
In 1900, Bialystok was the third largest industrial city in Russia. Of 65,000, 64 percent were Jews. In 1913, the population was 91,000 of whom 60,000 were Jewish. Over 350,000 Jews resided in Bialystok and its provinces. The Jewish community had adjusted as diaspora life and the Czar’s whims permitted. It drew on an inner creative strength to overcome assimilation; neither did it stagnate. At the beginning of the Haskalah movement, the Jews of Bialystok knew Torah and also participated in the wider cultural and educational life of this cosmopolitan community. They fought for civil liberties and established health-care and welfare networks. Cooperative effort and unity enabled them to survive with honor and dignity. They established homes for the aged, orphanages, theaters, libraries, schools, social clubs, youth groups, Zionist organizations and labor unions.
The Bialystok Jewish community produced doctors of national prominence, historians, writers, scientists and professors. There was pride in this exhilirating city.
Bialystok’s Jewry was active in the rebirth of Israel before Zionism was formally established by Dr. Herzl in 1897. In the early 1880’s, a group known as “BILU” (House of Israel Go Forth) was formed in Russia with offices in Bialystok. The first group left for Israel in 1882 and founded Rishon Lezion (with the help of the Rothschilds). My parents married in 1889. They wanted to join the second group but were refused permission to leave by the Russian government. In the ensuing years immigrants continuously flowed from Bialystok to Israel. From my class in 1920, 14 out of 29 left for Israel by 1935.
I still remember my first day of school, when I was three, in 1910; the first electrified weaving loom in our factory in 1911 that illuminated my house on Czysta Street; the 300th anniversary parade of the Russian kingdom of Peter the Great; Czar Nicholas’ visit to Bialystok in 1913; the beginning of World War I in 1914, when three hundred children on the way to school were killed by bombs dropped from German warplanes; a celebration of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, when my mother donated her gold earrings to the Zionist cause. I have vivid recollections of attending the first school in which Hebrew was the language of instruction, which opened in 1918, one day after the end of the German occupation and the creation of the new independent Poland. I remember my first membership in a Zionist club at our school. I treasure the notebooks of my history and geography courses and my Hebrew songbook. The well-known teachers Lejb Fajans and Mojsze Lewin were translating Russian books into Hebrew, since there were no Hebrew texts. In 1920, during the war between Poland and Communist Russia, my brother Kalman (Charles), while still in U.S. Army uniform, came to Bialystok and luckily we followed his advice and arrived at Ellis Island in N.Y. on January 1, 1921. In my later years, in the 1960’s and 70’s, I visited Israel and met teachers and many students of our class who emigrated there.
I wish to impart a message and an appeal to the younger, English readers of this memorial volume. You, the second generation, children of Bialystoker parents, are our link to the future. We invested much time and effort to enable you to read about the heritage of our beloved birthplace in your own language. There is much in these pages that will inspire you, affect the way you think and feel for the rest of your lives. You will acquire an enhanced sense of your origins and thereby a richer concept of your identity. I hope you will have a clearer view of the direction your lives will take, as you embark upon the 21st century. That is my message.
I also appeal to you to serve as the vehicle for your parents’ immortality. There is much in our experience, particularly as Bialystokers, that will have meaning for you. Don’t let apathy finish what Hitler started – to eradicate the history and culture of our Jewish people. Let Bialystok and all that it meant to us live on through you and your children.
Bialystok now has over 268,000 inhabitants – seven are Jews. Its historical significance to Jewish life has come to an end. It is now just another page of our people’s history. You will find Bialystokers in every corner of the world, continuing in the spirit of their birthplace. This book represents my promise and hope for future generations to be mindful of their loss and proud of their heritage.
Max Ratner
Cleveland, Ohio
SURNAME INDEX AT BIALYGen Web Site
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Last updated August 5th, 2005