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.