The Bialystoker Memorial Book - Der Bialystoker Yizkor Buch, the Bialystoker Center, New York 1982
(c) Copyright by the Bialystoker Center

 After the Liberation

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JEWS IN BIALYSTOK AFTER THE WAR

(Page 117-119)

Editor's Note: The list was originally published in the Bialystoker Stimme in March-April issue 1946. It was compiled by Jakow Pat and Dr. Chaim Szoszkes who visited Bialystok in 1945.

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IZCHOK BORNSZTEJN

MEMORIAL IN TRIBUTE TO THE VICTIMS

(Pages 119-120)

The week of August 16-24, 1944, one year after the Nazis liquidated the Bialystok ghetto, was proclaimed a mourning period for the Jewish community. Approxi­mately five hundred Jews who returned to the city wished to demonstrate that the Nazis had failed to exterminate all Bialystoker Jews. Furthermore, in a short time, the renascent Jewish community created several cultural and economic institutions — the best proof that Bialystok was still alive.

*  *  *

A group of partisans, Jewish survivors from Bialystok, traveled from Warsaw to Bialystok with me in a train. Earlier they had fled to many cities in Poland after those tragic days in August 1943, barely escaping liquidation. They reminisced about their gruesome experiences as the Bialystok ghetto was destroyed — stories that could make one's hair stand on end. One man was accompanied by his brother-in-law, on the way to Bialystok to visit their friends' graves.

As the train moved out of the Lapy station, one stop before Bialystok, this man ran over to the window and pointed out the spot where he had jumped from a train, a year before, destined for Treblinka. The rail­road bed was covered with sand. Twenty-five Jews had leaped here from the death train, including his brother-in-law traveling with him. His sister had also jumped, but she was less fortunate than the others. She had hit her head against a telephone pole and, before his eyes, bled to death.

Only three of the twenty-five who had jumped from the train remained alive. SS officers and their Ukrainian henchmen opened fire on all who tried to escape from the trains. This person had served many bodies, shot to death, along the railroad tracks.

Bialystok in Desolation

It was a sunny, beautiful day as we arrived in Bialystok. We walked through what were once major streets. Now they were desolate and hardly recognizable. Where numerous homes, synagogues, batei midrashim, schools and other institutions had once stood were only a few dilapidated structures. Kupiecka Street, where Jewish homes and stores abounded, was renamed Izchok Malmed Street in honor of the hero who hurled acid in the face of a Gestapo officer. The building in front of which his body hanged on the gallows for three days was now a shrine, a plaque affixed on its facade bedecked with flowers. The Jewish Reconstruction Committee was now headquartered in the former Judenrat building with various agencies, such as the his­torical society and the social welfare organization.

A Commemoration in the Synagogue

Bialystok had lost 60,000 Jews and, counting the provinces, 200,000 Jews. A few hundred survivors who returned after the war gathered in the Great Synagogue on the Sabbath, August 23, 1944, to commemorate the dead. The chief cantor of Warsaw led the services. As he chanted the memorial prayer, the entire congrega­tion sobbed.

Before the Torah reading, the chairman of the Culture Department of the Jewish Reconstruction Committee, Jacob Cohen, mentioned the names of prominent personalities who lost their lives in the Holocaust.

The Procession to the Ghetto Cemetery

Early on the morning of Sunday, August 24, survivors gathered in front of the Reconstruction Committee building and proceeded toward the ghetto cemetery, carrying flags and wreaths. Although this cemetery had opened only two years before, it was already filled with ghetto victims.

Many Jews from other towns and cities also marched to express their solidarity with Bialystoker Jews. They represented the political spectrum from right to left. The Polish flag appeared along with banners of the various parties. Each delegation brought floral wreaths with ribbons bearing Yiddish, Hebrew and Polish inscriptions, paying tribute to Bialystok's martyrs. Bialystoker Landsmanschaft representatives from other lands also participated. One religious orga­nization hoisted a placard reading "May God avenge the blood of our loved ones".

The cortege extended the entire length of the barren street. As it passed the building where Malmed perished, the procession stopped to lay a wreath. Later the people arrived where the Great Synagogue had been set ablaze with two thousand Jews inside. All that was left of this magnificent edifice were a few bent iron beams. A plaque was placed to mark the site of this tragedy. Further down the road, the parade approached the ghetto cemetery, passing many Poles who removed their hats out of respect. As the people entered, they noticed many new gravestones.

A towering monument stood over a mass grave. Not long before, one hundred twenty-five Jews, whose bodies were exhumed from various places, had been buried there. Among them were the seventy brave fight­ers who greeted the final Nazi assault upon the ghetto on August 16, 1943, with gunfire and grenades. They tried to breech the wall around the ghetto to enable the Jewish masses to escape, but failed when the Nazis called in tank reinforcements. Subsequently, the resis­ters hid in an underground bunker that the enemy quickly discovered, shooting the seventy to death.

The monument bore inscriptions in Yiddish, Hebrew and Polish, stating:

Here are buried

One hundred twenty-five people,

Seventy resistance fighters of the Bialystok ghetto

Fifty-five victims murdered by the Nazi tyrants

One hundred eight were men

Twelve women

Four children

One infant

Several speakers vowed never to rest until Fascism was eradicated.

 A REMEMBRANCE

A special white granite monument to the 200,000 vic­tims was unveiled in the new library named for the late Pejsach Kaplan, prominent Bialystoker publicist and editor, bearing a golden menorah and extending along an entire wall of the lobby. It glorified Bialystok, con­demned its German conquerors and encouraged survi­vors to perpetuate the city's traditions wherever they lived.

That evening, people assembled to remember Bia­lystok's resistance fighters with eulogies, dramatic reci­tations and ghetto songs. The week of mourning concluded with the reconstruction committee dedicating the new Kaplan library, which contained about 2,000 books in August 1944 - most donated by landsleit in the United States and Argentina. A Pole in Bialystok contributed two hundred books he received from ghetto victims who entrusted them to him before they perished.

Polish Jews were forced to dig their own graves before being shot, as Nazi soldiers stood by.

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SROLKE KOT

BIALYSTOK IN AUGUST 1944

(Excerpted from his book, The Destruction of Bialystok)

(Pages 121-122)

In 1944, I returned to Bialystok, my hometown. I was happy that I would see it again, but I was filled with pain and gnawing doubts about what I would find. Logic and the information available to me dictated that I would come upon desolation. But my heart said otherwise. Maybe I would find someone, a loved one or a friend.

Coming to the outskirts of town, I saw chimney stacks that had been torn from destroyed houses, blown up bridges, the railroad station gutted. Whole streets lay empty before me; other streets had entirely dis­appeared. It was hard to believe anyone had ever lived here.

Then I walked toward what had been my home. I had left it the year before, without my brother and sis­ter. The cobblestone pavement leading to the house was almost completely covered with grass, a sign that people had not walked there in many months. It was as if the stones cried out in anguish: the grass cannot cover us! People will once again tread here! Generations of Jews had made a life for themselves here and we must tell their saga!

Homes were demolished, walls absent, windows and doors missing. Jewish books were strewn every­where. Furniture was damaged - chairs without legs, dressers without drawers, broken beds. Feathers from torn mattresses covered photographs of the people who had once lived in these houses: men with beards and sidelocks, or with heads uncovered, women with their traditional wigs or sporting the latest hairdos. I noticed a picture of a child laughing and another of a mother contentedly holding her infant. Surely all this could not have been wiped off the face of the earth. The victims' spilled blood cried out: What did they do to us and why?!

I approached my house slowly, as if I were being led to execution. I noticed that not even the shell remained intact, denying me the opportunity of getting down on my knees, having a good cry, holding on to a wall like a child who, having fallen, seeks to get back on his feet by supporting himself against something sta­ble. All I found were some broken foundation stones and half a chimney. Looking about, I tried to pinpoint where the window and the door had been. Where was the bed in which I had slept? I tried to spot where my parents' wedding picture, happiness and hope brighten­ing their faces, had hung. Pain surged within me. Stand­ing on top of my home's ruin, I could not help but recall the tragedy that had befallen my family and the rest of the Jewish people. Why did they have to suffer such brutality needlessly, except for the fact they were Jews?!

The air I breathed was filled with the smoke of the crematories of Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz and other death camps. At that moment, I felt utterly pow­erless. My feet, which had carried me thousands of miles through forests and highways, muddy roads and underground passageways, seeking to escape the grim fate of my people, buckled. My survival seemed mean­ingless as I spotted a portion of the barbed wire fence, a remnant of the destroyed Bialystok ghetto.

I felt guilty that I survived and my loved ones did not. What meaning could my life have when all the love that I had known from childhood had been wrenched away by the Nazis. I was torn between wanting to enter the broken frame of my house in which, to my horror, I might find the skeletons of my lost relatives, and leaving — which I could not physically bring myself to do.

Nightfall arrived. I wondered how and where I would spend the night. Walking through the wide-open streets, I searched for other human beings, feeling marooned as if on a faraway planet. I asked a Polish woman whether she knew any Jews. She answered that she did not. Then, after many inquiries, I was told that several were staying at a building on 24 Kupiecka Street, which I found in a state of total disrepair, mak­ing it difficult to enter. Climbing the stairs, I went into a dark room and found an emaciated old woman sitting on a broken chair near a table listing to one side because it lacked one leg. I asked her whether Jews lived here and she replied, in a barely audible voice, yes.

Then her husband entered the room, so ravaged that he seemed like a pair of pants and shoes covering a skeleton. We talked at length about who had survived and who had died, wanting more information about anyone we might know. It was horrible to imagine that no one knew anything about the thousands of Jews who might have survived, who had populated Bialystok only a year before. Only a few returned, some entering this building to spend the night after rummaging through the streets for a few morsels of food. Only one woman who had been our neighbor recognized me. She vouched that I was a Bialystoker, which was very important, because, understandably, the survivors regarded the unfamiliar with suspicion.

The others who arrived were barefoot, without any possessions. They found a corner of the floor to sleep on. Some placed their clenched fists underneath their hands as an uncomfortable pillow and covered them­selves with papers and books scattered throughout the apartment. It was exceedingly difficult to accept this reality to which we had come, after enduring years of incredible suffering. My Jewish neighbor took me into a room with a bed, which I hadn't seen for a whole year. She covered it with clean linen and I went to sleep, awakening late the next day. The others who spent the night had already left, in search of a bit more food, hoping to survive for another day.

THE FIRST YOM KIPPUR

AFTER THE WAR

(Page 122)

The first Yom Kippur in Bialystok after the war, only forty people attended synagogue services. I wondered why some Jewish officers of the Red and Polish armies stood with a siddur in their hands praying and what a man wearing a cross around his neck was doing in shul. To whom was he praying?

I had found a room on 39 Kupiecka Street, an old dark building, windows knocked out, wallpaper torn, a kerosene lamp providing dim light. In the room was a bed without a blanket and a broken table with three and a half legs, which collapsed at the slightest distur­bance. I shared the space with a few other Jews and we became absorbed in our own reminiscences. Suddenly, someone suggested we go to synagogue to participate in the Kol Nidre services. It didn't take long to persuade me. After all, there wasn't anything else to do.

The room was cold because there were no window panes. Reaching the synagogue was easy. No longer did one have to pass through streets around buildings. The way was open; one could walk straight to his destina­tion without detour.

We entered a converted synagogue. Inside stood a table facing eastward upon which candles burned. Jews, mostly men and some six women, filled the room. They all wept, their faces unshaven, wearing old and tattered clothes. They were between twenty-five and forty-five, among them soldiers from the Red and Polish armies, some sporting medals and others who were invalids. The person leading the services could barely be heard; his voice was drowned out by uncontrollable sobbing. The worshipers had no taleisim or the customary white robes for Yom Kippur. But everyone carried the wounds of war, choked up, eyes swollen, glancing about in different directions. I watched a senior Russian officer crying, a siddur clutched to his chest, which bore war medals. I couldn't believe that he was praying to God. But one thing was clear - the rough edges of reality had shattered reliance upon man's reason and compassion. The fighting at the front apparently had so affected this soldier that he needed to vent his emotions in shul.

Then I looked at the Jew dressed like a Pole with a large moustache, a Polish cap, boots and a cross on his chest. Was he a Jew or not? His eyes were swollen from crying. He held no siddur, only a cane. What was he doing here? I guessed he was totally broken, after enduring terrible suffering. Never having identified with Jews and having converted to Catholicism, he now stood in the synagogue, crying along with everyone else, answering amen to the prayers. He did not remove the cross, but he was interested in everything Jewish. He was subsequently killed in a Polish pogrom in a town where ten Jews had returned from the war. Ironically, he died with the rest.

In that synagogue on Yom Kippur, everyone came to express his feelings, not to ask forgiveness but to seek answers from God, the others, or even from him­self. People needed to ponder the events of the past years - to find some meaning to it all.

Those of us who participated in that pathetic service, representing all levels and classes of prewar Bialystok society, had joined together not so much to pray but to comfort each other. We thought this shared experience would make things easier. But, on the contrary, as we saw more clearly what had happened, some felt even worse than before - conquered and vanquished.

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RABBI DR. AWROM KRAWETS

THE FIRST PASSOVER AFTER THE WAR

(Page122-123)

God decreed that my youth should occur during a terrible transition, at the crossroads of life and death. I witnessed a well-established Jewish community perish. Brilliant rabbis, educated laymen, wonderful plain peo­ple were destroyed. The reservoir from which our peo­ple had drawn inspiration dried up.

After liberation by the Red Army in 1945, we, the first forty Jews, returned to Bialystok. We gravitated toward each other, sharing the gruesome memories of the recent past. I would like to describe the first Pas­sover we spent together in Bialystok after the war.

My family and I lived in a small apartment on the third floor of a modest building. Desolation surrounded us. Because very few structures remained, I was able to see the distant forests directly from my window. All that was left of the Great Synagogue, burned by the Nazis when they first arrived, was its large dome, now a memento of death clamoring for revenge from its rest­ing place on the ground. It was spring; warm weather encouraged the broken Jews to hope for better times. Each day we heard bulletins on the radio about new Allied victories. The Third Reich, which had looked forward to a thousand-year reign, was smashed.

As the Red Army advanced, more Jews arrived in Bialystok from the liberated concentration camps. Our town was a transit point for these survivors. The former home for incurables at 1 Minski Street served as a reception center. We met with them and exchanged information, warmth and friendship. At the same time, we conducted a regional convention in which sixty elected delegates chose an area-wide Reconstruction Committee, of which I had the honor to serve as Vice-President. Our work received much favorable notice in all parts of liberated Poland. We organized a kosher kitchen, which served three to four hundred lunches a day, and a kosher butcher shop. We founded a small yeshiva for those former students who had joined the Partisans in the forests. Our committee was considered a mini kehilla. Our activities on behalf of Jews did not please our Polish neighbors, who attempted to disband us by complaining to the authorities in Warsaw.

Passover was fast approaching. How would we provide matzah for the community? After all, we had no connections outside Bialystok. Oddly, when Jews were not interested in material possessions they wanted to restore religious tradition. Thus we were resolved to bake our own matzos. We sent letters to Jews in the provinces around Bialystok, who were slightly better off financially than we were, requesting they contribute money to our Maos Chitim campaign (matzah fund). They responded generously. In two weeks we got four­teen hundred kilograms of flour. Dr. Szymon Datner, Chairman of the Jewish Reconstruction Committee, found other sources of financial assistance, enabling us to begin baking the matzos. With the help of a former haberdasher, Oszer Wajn, we acquired a bakery at 11 Jatka Street and obtained permission from the authori­ties to begin the baking operation.

On the day before Passover, Jews from the sur­rounding towns came to Bialystok to buy matzah. We supplied everyone.

Dr. Datner and I led the seder services at our head­quarters. Tables were beautifully decorated, featuring the traditional fish, meat and other delicious Passover foods. In addition, we were able to offer kosher wine, which we prepared ourselves. The people were well sat­isfied. We spent a most enjoyable night. That Passover was indeed memorable, because it filled us with hope after so much tragedy. We looked forward to a brighter future.

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PEJSACH BURSZTEJN

WITH THE JEWS AFTER THE WAR

(Page123-124)

In the last few weeks a large number of Jews repa­triated from the Soviet Union returned to Bialystok. The Jewish Reconstruction Committee has provided them with food, clothing and a roof over their heads. We need a large sum of money to support this work. Our problems deserve the attention of our American Jewish brothers. It is to be hoped our landsleit there will not allow the survivors of their hometown to fall.

Our committee, as well as all the Jews of Bialystok, is most thankful to the Bialystoker Relief Committee in America for forwarding many care packages to our Committee, which distributes them to needy Jews. Surely, the food products, clothing and other items given to us are most useful. Many thanks to our lands­leit in New York, Paterson, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Montreal and Toronto in Canada

*   *   *

We have received the monthly magazine issued by the Bialystoker Center in New York, the Bialystoker Stimme. It is a pleasure to read this beautiful publication. We marvel at the efforts invested in preparing each issue, as well as the noble activities described in the magazine.

We await each edition with bated breath. After all, we yearn for Yiddish culture, books and magazines, so scarce in Bialystok. The articles in the Stimme ade­quately reflect the magnitude of our tragedy and warn of future Fascist resurgence in Europe. Reports about the Bialystoker Center and Home as well as the Bialy­stoker societies in America describe in great detail their monumental work. You are planning to publish an his­toric issue marking the magazine's twenty-fifth anniversary. We will provide much material to you concerning the Nazi occupation of our town. In fact, we have recently discovered the late Pejsach Kaplan's ghetto memoirs, which will make a major contribution to the historical record of Bialystok's destruction. Further­more, Dr. Datner is heading a committee researching the entire subject.

Our Brothers in Bialystok

I shall try to describe briefly the current situation in Bialystok with a population of 39,000.

It suffered tremendously from and was severely damaged by the Nazis. Entire Jewish neighborhoods were destroyed. Famous symbols such as the town clock have disappeared. The former ghetto - including Neuwelt, Gumjener, Bialystoczenska, Czestochowska, Linas Hatzedek, Jurowcer, Fabryczna, Strykowska, Jatka, Owents, Prages, and Mazurs streets - was ninety percent demolished. Only the old age home, where our committee's headquarters are, the Jewish hospital, some stores, houses and the social welfare agency still exist. One or two batei midrashim remain, as well as our community center and theater. Most of the textile factories were razed.

Lately some have begun rebuilding the Jewish community. We ought to give much of our attention to restoring the cemeteries, which have been horribly dese­crated. Already we have erected monuments to the 60,000 Jewish martyrs of Bialystok and vicinity as well as to the resistance heroes.

*   *   *

About 712 Jews live in Bialystok today. Two hundred ninety two of them are native Bialystokers, the remainder from surrounding towns. All of the Jewish provincial communities were totally destroyed, with the exception of Bielsk, where seventy-six Jews live, and Suwalk, with thirty-six. Nearly 300,000 Jews from the towns around Bialystok were exterminated.

Most Jews live in buildings owned by our commit­tee, others in private dwellings. Living conditions are terrible. Of the 712 Jews, forty-eight elderly people and sixty-nine sick and disabled depend on welfare. Eighty-seven Jews are employed by the committee. Sixty-two work for various government agencies such as the military and civil service. Eleven work for the Jewish bakers' cooperative, eleven for the tailors' cooperative, fifteen for the metal and construction cooperative and five as cobblers. Our committee founded these coopera­tives, assisted by our landsleit in America. The follow­ing are self-employed: ten tailors, ten shoemakers, twenty-four butchers, three painters, two glaziers, two tinsmiths, two hairdressers and one dentist. Three Jew­ish doctors work in our hospital.

I estimate that seventy-five percent of our small Jewish community is employable. The rest, unable to work, are assisted by relatives in other lands and by our committee.

The Jewish Reconstruction Committee in Bialystok was created after the city was liberated from Nazi occu­pation. In fact, our committee was the first of any Jew­ish city in Poland to organize after the war. At first there were only fifty Jews in Bialystok. Then others who had hid out in the forest and the bunkers arrived, followed by Jewish repatriates from the Soviet Union.

No one can predict whether a Jewish community can be rebuilt in Bialystok. Only time will tell. In the meantime, we are doing everything to reconstruct our community with modest means after such terrible devastation.

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ELIEZER NEWDOW-NEWADOWSKI

BIALYSTOK — A LAMENTATION

(Page124)

Days of my youth, of summer, of winter,

Remembered once again — they live on;

Streets, alleys, a home filled with warmth

My heart pounds furiously with a secret strength.

Behold I see my grandfather, imparting his blessings,

The stern face of my father,

My loving mother with her soft touch,

They capture my dismal soul.

My imagination carries me back to my youth,

To Sabbaths, holidays, happy days of yesteryear,

To Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,

To a congregation in prayer,

To joy and to suffering and to everything gone forever!

My home is now empty,

Completely in ruins wrought by alien occupiers;

Houses of worship, relatives, family;

The honor of God and the Jews has been violated.

In your mind you go

To the holy burial ground — now a pasture for goats,

From your own house, and from your neighbor's,

Laughter and mirth are heard, strange children being rocked!

The gates of Bialystok stand in mourning,

A town emptied of Jewish footsteps,

Unclean boots, treading on pieces of gravestones,

On God's own letters, His own words.

Exterminated, vanished, no remnant of bones;

Brothers and sisters, a storm carried them away;

No one survived in the entire city, save one!

Oh my God, how could you have allowed it?

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YEDIDIA L. HAMBURG

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LIFE

(Page 125)

As the former Vice-Chairman of the Jewish Recon­struction Committee created in Bialystok immediately after its liberation from the Nazis, I want to describe our activities.

Postwar Bialystok found itself isolated from the rest of Poland, because the rail route between it and Warsaw was exceedingly dangerous for Jews. Polish bandits would often forcibly remove Jews from the trains at stations along the way and shoot them, despite protective escorts provided by the Polish military. Frequently these soldiers were unable to carry out their function. For example, two days after a pogrom in a town on the Bialystok-Warsaw route, four guarded cha­lutzim (pioneers preparing to settle in Eretz Israel) from the Gordonia Kibbutz in Bialystok were removed from their train and shot. Their bodies were buried in the ghetto cemetery on Zabia Street.

The few surviving Jews who attempted to restore Jewish life to Bialystok after the war were courageous. Overlooking obstacles, they did everything possible to continue the sacred traditions of their forefathers, hop­ing that their determination would help them achieve their goal.

The Jewish Reconstruction Committee, led by Dr. Szymon Datner - M. Turek, director; Sz. Lewin, direc­tor; Pejsach Bursztejn, director; A. Dereczynski, direc­tor; Jedidja  Hamburg,  director;  H.  Bratmacher, director; Jehuda Grynhojz, director; Mira Grosman, director; J. Czernychow, director; D. Kolesznyk, direc­tor; Chana Rabinzon-Berkowicz, director; A. Grodzki, director; A. Goldman, director; S. Lewin, director; S. Grynsztejn, director; A. Erdepel, director; A. Ostro­burski and A. Gerszuni, directors; A. Berkowicz, director; J. Bialostocki, director; chauffeurs training school, Z. Konjucki, director - was the only such body recog­nized by the Polish government. Jewish political parties of all persuasions, from "Mizrachi" to the Jewish commu­nists, were represented. The committee was divided into subcommittees that served the Jews returning to Bialy­stok. Moreover, labor cooperatives provided a living for a number of families and helped the small Jewish popu­lation in every possible way.

The subcommittees included the following: histori­cal research; production; social security; children's wel­fare; the secretariat; landsmanschaft; youth; schools; health care; drama; library; newsletter; exhumation and reburial of Jewish martyrs; vital statistics; correspon­dence; public kitchens; home for the aged; public safety; administration; accounting; bakers' cooperative; tailors' cooperative; metal and construction cooperative; shoe­makers' cooperative; and training communes for even­tual settlement in Israel.

Our committee received substantial assistance from Bialystoker landsmanschaften throughout the world, especially from the Bialystoker Center in New York, under the leadership of the late David Sohn. Moreover, our Australian landsleit, led by Awrom Zbar, sent many survivors visas and paid for boat fare to Australia. Some used these opportunities. Finally, Bialystokers in Israel constantly encouraged us to continue our rebuild­ing efforts.

We paid special attention to returning Jewish children, cared for by Christian families during the war, and to their Jewish mothers and fathers. We found out about these situations when the Christian foster parents approached the committee for financial support, doing everything possible to bring these children back under Jewish influence. We also exhumed Jewish corpses from mass graves and reburied them in the Jewish cemeteries.

Digging up these large pits, our exhumation brigade found the bodies of several resistance fighters murdered by the Nazis. Among them were the corpses of a woman about thirty years old, a small child next to her, a man and a girl about twelve years old. Further­more, the gravediggers uncovered bullets as well as a passport belonging to a Jechezkel Zolti. Another cadaver was riddled with twenty-eight bullet holes, his name Zecharja Kaplan. The total of exhumed corpses soared to 230. Evidently some of them had been forced into the pit and buried alive. They were all interred in the Zabia cemetery on November 22, 1945.

At the end of 1946 and early 1947, the Jews in Bia­lystok seeking to rebuild their community decreased, many leaving for Israel, the United States, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Latin America and other lands. The noble attempt to re-establish Jewish life on top of the ruins brought about by Hitler ended in failure. Tragi­cally only nine Jews remain in Bialystok - the remnant of what was once a massive and thriving Jewish population.

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AFTER THE WAR

(Page 126)

(Editor's note: The following are excerpts from minutes of the Jewish Reconstruction Committee's meeting on April 10, 1949. One gets a clear picture of Jewish rejuvenation in postwar Bialystok that ultimately did not succeed.)

At the end of 1948, there were 520 Jews in Bialystok. One hundred eighty-two were employed as follows: forty-two in the four cooperatives (tailors, bakers, shoe­makers and plumbers), fifty-one in private crafts, two in government factories, eleven in private companies, two in agriculture, thirty-five in community work, thirty-two in government and seven in professions. If we add seventy-five wives and sixty-eight children, we get a total of three hundred and twenty-five people, sixty-two percent of the total Jewish population on employees' salaries.

There were no unemployed Jews. Anyone wanting to work received assistance from the committee.

In the four labor cooperatives, one hundred eight­een non-Jews and forty-two Jews were employed; this was to promote good relations between gentiles and Jews. The work place was the best training ground for harmony and fighting anti-Semitism. The Jewish citi­zens of Bialystok did not want to create a second ghetto in which they isolated themselves by choice from the rest of the population.

In 1948, the Jewish community of Bialystok had an income of 3,698,555 zlotys and expenditures of 3,338,174 zlotys. Thus, on January 1, 1949, there was a surplus of 360,381 zlotys.

Bialystoker landsmanschaften in various countries contributed to the small Jewish community in Bialy­stok. The New York relief committee gave 1,070,000 zlotys; the Bialystoker Center in Argentina, 825,000 zlotys; Uruguay, 85,000 zlotys; South Africa, 250,000 zlo­tys; Mexico, 130,000 zlotys; miscellaneous, 140,000 zlotys - for a total of 2,500,000 zlotys. Jews in Bialy­stok contributed 1,190,000 zlotys, which would be allocated to restore the ghetto cemetery. Considering the difficult circumstances in which the community found itself, this was a colossal sum.

On February 29, 1948, the Jewish Culture Society was founded. Its jurisdiction was Jewish social institu­tions and cooperatives. It operated the library, which contained 2100 books in Yiddish, Polish, Russian, etc. It also convened annual memorial meetings to mark the liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto. A public assembly celebrated when the State of Israel was proclaimed.

The community ran a Jewish school, which, at the beginning of 1949, enrolled twelve children divided into three classes. Because of this small student body, the school was terminated at the end of the year. The Jew­ish Reconstruction Committee prepared these pupils to transfer to Polish schools.

On July 1, 1948, the public kitchen was closed because of insufficient demand, indicating that Jewish families had rehabilitated themselves and no longer needed this assistance.

The committee also conducted programs in the fol­lowing areas: bringing Nazi war criminals to justice; memorializing the martyrs of Bialystok; restoring the Jewish cemeteries; paying social security and unemployment benefits, which, in 1948, had decreased because of improved economic conditions; a home for the aged, caring for twenty-three residents; a medical-social wel­fare agency employing an internist, pediatrician, dentist and pharmacist; and a historical society to preserve the ghetto records and promote further research into the Nazi period in Bialystok.

The committee adopted the following resolutions at its April 1949 meeting:

1) The Jewish population is pleased that the ghetto cemetery has been restored.

2) The site of the Great Synagogue has been set off by brick walls and restored to an acceptable condition. A plaque attests to the fact that 2,000 Jews were burned alive there by the Nazis. The synagogue area has been renamed the Ghetto Heroes Street.

3) Financial assistance from landsleit abroad has been substantial.

4) The entire Bialystok Jewish community will maintain the monuments and memorials.

The Bialystoker Synagogue, destroyed togeher with 200 Jews, by the Nazis. In the background stands the church.

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DR. SZYMON DATNER

THE SACRED ZABIA CEMETERY

(Page 127-128)

For us Bialystoker Jews, the grounds of the ghetto cemetery were sacred, a stretch of earth in the north­western corner. The Nazis forbade us to bury our dead in the old Bagnowke Cemetery, because it was situated outside the ghetto and we would have to leave its con­fines. Thus a piece of land within the ghetto walls was selected as a burial ground.

I recall two funerals in the Zabia (ghetto) cemetery. Both took place in February 1943, shortly after the end of the first liquidation. We, the residents of 11 Fabryczna Street, buried the instructor at the Hebrew Gymnasium, the unforgettable Dr. Franka Horowicz. She had a massive funeral with the entire Judenrat in attendance.

The second funeral, which took place either a day before or a day later, was for a small girl, four-year-old Basja Bergman, the only daughter of the Latin teacher, Dr. Michel Bergman, and his wife, Nusja. This small angel was smothered to death in our bunker on the first day of the liquidation when she awakened crying and we heard Nazi soldiers searching the house above. Returning to my house at night from the factory, I buried the little girl in the garden, a few feet from the win­dow, through which her mother passed me her rigid corpse covered in a white sheet. Mrs. Bergman, unable to accept the reality of her daughter's death, asked: "Maybe she is still alive?"

At the Zabia cemetery, yet another mound of earth rose, near several others containing the remains of small children who had suffocated just like Basja. Dur­ing the two funerals, I saw heaps of dead bodies after the February liquidation. Lying in two long rows, they resembled pieces of lumber, cut to precision for custo­mers. Included were men, women and children, silent witnesses to the tragedy, gaping holes in each corpse. They had been shot with dum dum bullets.

Then the German nightmare passed. We, the hand­ful of survivors, returned to our hometown, finding everything in ruins - the city, the Jewish community, the citizenry. The cemeteries were not spared. Weeds and wild grass, as well as garbage and manure, covered the Zabia cemetery. Goats had grazed on this holy ground, destroying most of the gravestones. In addition to our concern for the survivors, we felt obliged to care for the dead. After all, only two or three thousand were interred in the ghetto cemetery. Most of our brethren died in the crematoria of Treblinka, Majdanek, Ausch­witz and the like. We trimmed the weeds from the graves, built a brick wall around the cemetery and hired a reliable watchman to protect the grounds. Gradually the cemetery was restored to proper condition. Further­more, we erected a small mausoleum, in which many who lost dear ones never properly buried memorialized them by affixing plaques to its walls.

On the second anniversary of the ghetto's liquida­tion, August 16, 1945, we dedicated a unique monu­ment. Beneath a Jewish star appeared the following inscription in Yiddish: "In memory of the sixty thou­sand Jewish people of the Bialystok ghetto, murdered by the Germans, dedicated by a handful of surviving Jews. August 16, 1943 - August 16, 1945. May they rest in peace." At the bottom of the monument, or at its side - I no longer remember exactly - we inscribed: "The people of Israel lives on." The entire Jewish community in Bialystok financed this monument. In addi­tion to Jews, several Polish leaders delivered addresses, representing the Polish government and community.

*  *  *

On June 26, 1971, I received a letter from the presidium of the Municipal National Board in Bialystok, telling me that the ghetto cemetery was now located in the center of a newly constructed residential complex. Until November 1970, the cemetery property belonged to the Jewish Cultural-Social Organization in Poland, which maintained it.

As soon as a demand was made for the cemetery to meet the specifications of the new apartment complex, the administration of the Jewish Organization trans­ferred possession of the cemetery to the government.

On July 5, 1971, I sent a registered letter from Warsaw to the Chairman of the Municipal National Board in Bialystok, indicating that I had no reason for not trusting his good will. But I mentioned facts in my letter demonstrating that the cemetery had not been preserved.

"A terrible thing has happened. The ashes of our heroes and resistance fighters, murdered after the Nazis brutally suppressed the Bialystok ghetto uprising, were placed in a mass grave. This military grave was dese­crated, violating Polish tradition of paying special honor to fallen soldiers. In no other ghetto or concen­tration camp - Warsaw, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz - were there remains of fallen heroes. Only Bialystok preserved a mass grave of its dead until 1971. The Germans had, after all, not burned the bodies of our victims. Rather, they threw them into a pit, a gar­bage dump as it were, and on top of their corpses shot another fifty-five, captured after the ghetto was liqui­dated in 1943. With the greatest respect, the Polish and Jewish communities of Bialystok honored their memo­ries on April 11, 1946, exhuming their remains and re­burying them in a mass grave. "Polish and Jewish leaders eulogized these martyrs". It was an unforgettable day, when everyone shared the anguish of the struggle that had ended only recently. I said at that time: "I address you, dear friends, who represent the Polish authorities. Your warm words ease our pain. We feel that you are our brothers. Under the protection of the valiant Polish people, our most cherished possession will endure - the remains of our heroes and martyrs".

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THE GHETTO OF BIALYSTOK
 JULY 1941- AUGUST 1943

(Page 128)

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DR. SZYMON DATNER

THE HEBREW GYMNASIUM

(Page129)

I arrived in Bialystok in September 1928, after leaving my position as an instructor in the Tarbut Hebrew Gymnasium in Pinsk. My wife, Roza, and daughter Miriam came to Bialystok several weeks later. In 1929, my second daughter, Szulamit, was born, a native of Bialystok. For several years, Roza was a crafts instruc­tor at the Hebrew Gymnasium, while Miriam and Szu­lamit were students until it was destroyed. Who would have thought that I would write this article decades later as the only survivor of this four-member family, or that I would eulogize Jewish Bialystok and my school, where I served from 1928 until 1941?

The Hebrew Gymnasium was the best Jewish secondary school in Bialystok, the only one where Hebrew was the primary language of instruction. Another high school taught in Yiddish and four others in Polish. The Hebrew Gymnasium was founded in 1919. It always offered pre-high-school classes. Consis­tently there was a ratio of sixty percent boys to forty percent girls. From 1926-36, 367 students graduated, of whom 144 later settled in Israel.

The school building contained sixteen classrooms, laboratories, an auditorium, a gym, an outside court for sports, a large library and an annex. Music was a popu­lar subject and the gymnasium prided itself on having a band. The school was privately owned and had a Board of Trustees.

Among the instructors of the Hebrew Gymnasium were: Tojman, physics; Awrom Nowodrowski, mathe­matics; A. Aronowicz, M. Chazanowicz, Mojsze Zabludowski,  Dr.  Franka  Horowicz,  Ch.  Szeper,  R. Salomon, N. Kaplan, G. Szkolnikow, D. Peciner, A. Bomchil, Sznaper, Szymon Datner, J. Rotenberg, Pnina Bernsztejn,  Gutke Grifel, S. Jakubowski, Hadasa Szprung, Murkes, Szmuel Rakowski, Dr. Chaim Welger, Dr. Mojsze Kacnelson, Dr. Mojsze Ziman, Mendel Kaplan, A. Kahana, and Berl Subotnik.

Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, in November 1939, the gymnasium converted to Yiddish under the Russian occupation, although most of the teachers and students remained the same. During the school year 1940-41, Russian became the language of instruction.

On June 22, 1941, the Nazis began their assault on Bialystok and thousands scattered in all directions to escape the bombs. Several instructors of my school van­ished and were presumed killed.

Many of the teachers and their families were incarcerated in the Bialystok ghetto along with thousands of other Jews. Some lost their lives fairly soon after the Nazi occupation; others survived until the ghetto was liquidated in February and August 1943.

Most of the instructors in the school were well trained, expert in their various fields and excellent pedagogues. Our students were, for the most part, of noble character, brimming with enthusiasm, national pride and a desire for translating their zeal into action. I met some of these students in the ghetto, many of whom later joined the armed resistance movement so popular among the Jewish youth.

I also recall the mothers and fathers of these youngsters. Remembering them is the only way I know of granting their souls immortality, the only monument I can erect over their unknown and nonexistent graves. They all departed this earth in an ocean of blood or in the stench of the smoking crematoria, never accorded a Jewish burial. May my memories of the Hebrew Gymnasium serve as a symbolic kaddish for the instructors, students and parents who were affiliated with this educational institution, victims of the Nazi juggernaut who were not granted the opportunity to see the enemy vanquished.

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The Hebrew Gymnasium of Bialystok, 10th anniversary, class 8 year 1930.

(Photograph from the Yiddish part, page 273, deciphered by Ada Holtzman. I appolgize in advance of any spelling error if occured. AH)

Teachers, from top, left to right: the educator David Rakowicki, The principal Dr. Cwi. Zemel, Prof. M. Szor, Dr. G. Gronman

S. Jakubowski, Dr. Ch. Szeper

Second row from left to right: A. Urinowski, Sz. Szkolnikow, Dr. Sz. Datner, A. Aharonowicz, Chazanowicz, Wilenska-Kantor, Zabludowski, Dr. Karancuk, Mosze Adler, Dr. Helfer, Dr. Ch. Welger,

Students, from top, left to right: Sz. Rajglandski, F. Sobotnik, R. Slominski, R. Fanlekewicz, R. Sochowolski, Ch. Grin?, Y. Rabinowicz, A. Okshorn, Y. Lewsowski, Ch. Swarc, Sz. Lipszyc, M. Okun, N. Biskopicki, Y. Sz. Kac, Kleinberg (?), N. Meizel, F. Shochat, M. Welwel, Sz. Gelner, Y. Halpern, H. Najman, A. Kohen,  Ch. Anckowcki, T. Kaplan, M. Sukarenko, Y. Aliszberg, D. Hendler, ?radomski, Y. Rabinowicz, D. Broida, Szapira, Goldberg, Yapkowski, N. Kac, Rabinowicz, Perlstein, M. Tanwicki

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JEWISH VICTIMS OF THE NAZIS BY COUNTRY

(Page 130)

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Last updated July 19^th, 2005