Impressions of a Visit

By Menachem Mendel Beker

 

 

I saw Mlawa for the last time when we left the Ghetto on a transport to Auschwitz. I grew up in Mlawa and knew it as a youth and all through my school years was engaged in social activities in the spirit I was brought up in Yavne School. All my happy experiences are bound with these facts. The destruction brought on us covered it all with a dark screen under whose shadow I have been living ever since. It is human nature always to remember the world of childhood and long for it even at one's old age and one's thoughts always revert to "those days."

 

I was reluctant to visit my home town as there was nothing left to go back to, and also, I did not want to wipe out completely the memories I carried inside me. But as it happened, willingly or unwillingly, I found myself on the way to Mlawa. An unconscious drive probably pulled me to face my past in spite of myself. Descent in order to come up again, as it were, to visit the graves of the ancestors, as if I was doomed to undergo the trial. All through the way I was apprehensive that I would not withstand the experience and was indeed moved and stunned at the encounter... I could hardly believe what my eyes saw, as if I came to the wrong place, it was so, unlike my memories

 

Now you are wondering, "Well, what did you see, what did you experience"? The things I saw are a witness to what did I not see. I had been told about Mlawa today, but hearing is not like actually seeing it. The past has all been wiped out, the new has covered all the crimes of the past and the Jewish community has been wiped again. All those familiar places were not there any more. I did not see even one place reminiscent of anything Jewish, neither streets nor any houses. No synagogues or the small praying places and all the lanes around which used to be so full of life and action, did not see the thick-bearded men running to and fro whether to worship or labour, no stalls and carts in the town square on market days and no groups of women pushing around and buying foodstuffs for Sabbath. No more children flocking to school and running back home, no remnant of the Mikva and the Talmud Torah, such prominent places in our city, and gone too are the sounds and noise airways present in those places: not the din of the market, not the voices of prayer, not the joyous echo of infants running about in the school courtyard, not the crying of babies in the arms of their mother. I walked about like a sleepwalker, searching for a sign, a reminder, a memento - but there was nothing. All disappeared, wiiped out, doomed to oblivion. With the help of a local dignitary who offered to accompany me on the visit, and I am thankful to him for that, I found two bits of remnants of the ghetto wall, a sign of shame for eternity. I kept dragging my legs on and on, searching as it were for yesterday, until I came to the outskirts of town and hit upon the cemetery. There I could visualize the Jews of bygone days and all the vanished past. It was the only place where I did not feel a stranger and had the feeling that I was within my people. There were no tombs left, only here and there a scarred mossy stone, a survivor, like us. Seven memorial pillars, cast from the remains of broken gravestones which were scattered around, stood out in the area and this initiative deserves special recommendation. Let these pillars, which have the shape of the Menorah, bear witness to the memory, lives and death of all our beloved ones, perished in the Holocaust.

 

 

I was still wandering around, walking, shaking, touching the gravestones, when I closed my eyes and I had the vision of a great crowd surrounding me and felt faint, as if the ground was giving in under my feet, my head turned, my heart cried out, I felt like choking and tears ran out of my eyes; my lips uttered Kaddish. The great outcry had been stored inside me and had pressed on my heart all these years and found no outlet. Saying the Kaddish was a moment of great elation and I wished my tears to he added to the chalice of tears of all our predecessors, so there should not be any more room for tears and mourning amongst us. And I wished that my heart-felt crying may atone for breaking my vow never to return to our town. Please allow me here to quote from a poem I wrote on "A Town That Was" "עיר שהייתה" , where I wrote: "When the Ghetto was destroyed we did not look back, we left behind us a black stain, and the rest of history and all that happened, is inscribed in burnt scrolls of fire."

 

עם חיסול הגטו לא הבטנו לאחור

השארנו מאחורינו כתם שחור...

ויתר הקורות ומה שהתרחש

חקוקים בגווילים צרובים באש.

 

And now, when I left the place, I turned my head and after a long look said farewell to it: Rest in peace my cherished Mlawa community, we shall bear your memory with us for ever and ever, Amen אמן.

 

 

 

מנחם מנדל בקר: "רשמי ביקור" (עברית)

 

מנחם מנדל בקר: "עיר שהייתה"

 

מנחם מנדל בקר: "על זמן ועל מועד" לכבוד משה פלס עם הגיעו לגבורות

 

M.R.I.

 

Last Updated May 30th, 2004