Fishel Vainer
1905- CONFISCATION
OF A PRINTING
This way we
printed proclaims in 1905. We decided that the peasants, gentiles of the
villages, proclaim on their behalf that they are against the tsar, in favor of
private property and of land partition. The BUND organization chose members to
form a Committee. I was the President, and what I remember was that of the
first members of the Union were LEIBEL BREZNIK, BERELE HORWITZ, YTSHKE NOMBERG,
RACHMIEL (he lives in Philadelphia), YRMYE BERGER (I do not know where he is) and MORDECHAI BERZUT (it was his
name).
On Friday at dusk,
I entered the only sulky that was in Pruzhany, that of MICHAS, and made a trip
to Sheny. There we had a gentile friend called MIKOLAI. We were told that he
had been expelled of San Petersburg because he directed popular groups. He
organized in Sheny a peasants movement. We came to his house. I had traveled
with YRMYE. He received us very kindly, listened to us, agreed with our
proposal, and formed a committee with four gentiles that were to our
disposition.
We returned to the
city and had weapons. It was a very
dark night. At 12 p.m. our Committee was arriving to YASHE ABRAMOVITZ's house,
the printing. I hit the door, IASHE opened it, I put in a leg in the house and behind me entered the
gentiles. I addressed him the gun and
told him: "On behalf of BUND, you are detained"!. He began to beg,
saying that this makes him very unhappy.
With severe voice, I said: 'if he and his family want to live, they
should not make scandals". We entered their house, and we detained his
wife and daughters BASHE and
ZLATKE. We force them to get dressed,
and we sat down all three in a room during the whole night guarded by two armed gentiles.
We entered the
whole Committee. We opened the lateral door, and YRMYE and YUDEL BARENSHTEIN
(he lives now in US) entered. They worked in
the printing, and the owner should not know that they printed the
proclaims. We began the work.
Happened that
night many things. The lamp run out of kerosene. I left to the Bet Medresh
Kadisha. I broke a window, took the gasoline of the lamps, and took it
to the printing. When we finished a copy, we take it to that of
"the outstanding leaders". They waited for us during the whole night,
they read and corrected. When machine began to print, was at dawn and made a
lot of noise. The policeman LIGAROV marauded for the area. I took him to
TEVIE's tavern, woke him up, we gave policeman some alcoholic drinks and I sent
him to watch over another area of the city. We came undone of him. When we
hardly had some copies, LEIBL BREZNIK
ran to ABA SELTZER's yard for
its distribution. We took turns to give the blow to the printing machine, as it
was manual.
We worked this way
until Saturday 11 p.m. and when Jews returned of Sabbath prayers, we returned
of work. On Sunday, market day, we planned to disclose the proclaims.