MEMOIRS OF SHERESHEV

By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ

 

 

  Chapter 8.A

 

 

They came named “Easteners” by the local people, as they came from Russia, the East.  Almost two weeks after the Red Army crossed the Polish border, some dozen Easteners came to Shershev.  They rented rooms from the locals.  Those with families rented part of homes and moved in with their meager possessions.  Shortly after, more and more started to arrive in small groups or individually.  Meantime, in the last couple of weeks, the stores have been emptied or sold out.  The populace sensed that not all if anything is available in the Soviet Union as the first soldiers or civilians were saying.

 

The experience of the First World War has taught the people that the two essential items in hard times needed were salt and kerosene.  Being an agrarian part of the world, food could be obtained to a more or lesser degree for money or barter from the farmers around.  Salt and kerosene had to be bought from far away, thus making it at time unobtainable.  The demand for the two above mentioned items created a panic in town.  People began hording, as the stores one after another began to close.          

 

There were two reasons for this action.  First, the storekeepers were deprived of their source of supply which was mostly located in the western, industrialized, part of Poland, now under German control.  But even the bit of industry in the eastern part of Poland, now under Soviet control, too, came to a stop as all commerce ceased to function.  Second was that the Soviets devaluated the Polish zloty to the value of their ruble.  This made any articles dirt cheap, particularly for the easterners, who kept on buying whatever was available and in quantities never seen before.  The local population followed their example.  As a result the stores were emptied in no time, and their doors closed.

         

In that first month of the Bolsheviks arrival, so to say the “honeymoon” time, people felt free and liberated.  Jews went on Saturday to the synagogues, Christians to their churches.  In general, an elated mood prevailed all around.  On a bright Saturday morning, while my father and I were sitting in the synagogue, in walks my middle little sister Sonia (Sara), who was then eight years old and tells us that the Soviet, to be more precise, the local police, by then called “Militia”, are conducting a search in our house.  We left the synagogue immediately.  The first sign that something was taking place, we noticed, as soon as we reached the market square, on which our house was.  A fair crowd of worshippers stood by the synagogue, which was next door to our house, trying to figure out what was happening.  With pounding hearts we entered our house to find my mother standing in the middle of the living room frightened and confused, with one hand around my seventeen year old sister, Sheva’s shoulders and with the second, around my youngest, not yet seven year old sister Liba.  The house was full with men of the Militia, in singles or in twos, looking for something, opening drawers of every dresser (cupboard) and closet.  They were all over the house, in every room, attic, cellar and even in the woodsheds.

 

I have mentioned earlier that we buried liquor in our garden, but not all that we took out from our store.  Some of it we just left in the house in closets.  It was not hidden nor was it difficult to find.  When my father, my little brother and I entered the house, they had found it and all was displayed on the floor.  Yet they continued the search.  I went up to the attic to see what the Militiamen are doing there.  As I came up I noticed in a side a big cardboard box with stationary stamps and correspondence that I kept up with the “Ntzivut” (head office) of the Beitar (right Zionist) in Warsaw.  I realized the ignorance of the Militiamen, for they looked into that box several times and ignored its contents.  Would they have realized what it meant, they would have had enough evidence to send us all to Siberia. To be a Zionist under the Soviet rule was tantamount to being a counter revolutionary.

 

A couple of the men went out to our yard and with a long thin sharp rod began to prod the ground to see if it had been dug up lately, indicating that there might be something buried underneath.  But the yard had been untouched for ages, except for a small spot where some six weeks earlier, I tried to dig for a bomb shelter but gave up, because of the hard and rocky ground.  That spot looked suspicious to them and they kept on trying to stick the rod into it, but without success.  The ground remained unyielding to them just as earlier to me.  At that time a thought went through my mind.  What if they would start looking in the garden?  However, the garden was behind our neighbor’s woodshed and by all appearances looked as it belonged to him.  Not having found any more liquor the one in command ordered his men pack up whatever they found in a straw filled sac and they took it away.

 

It did not take long for us to find out what happened.  A couple Jewish young men got carried away with the enthusiasm of the new “Liberators”, the Bolsheviks and volunteered to work and cooperate with them.   Any person with common sense understood that if we did not sell out our merchandise, we had to have it.  In order to win favors and trust with the Bolsheviks, one had to prove his loyalty by being willing and ready to squeal on someone even a friend or relative.  Those couple of young men proved it by informing the Militia that we have vodka.  One of them with the ironic name of “Tzodik” which means a pious man, saint, had later the arrogance or insolence to brag about it.

 

My parents were very upset and uneasy about all this, reasoning that if the authorities, that by then were well staffed with Easteners, who held all the major positions, as managers, supervisors, including a number of Militiamen could come in the middle of the day to conduct a search for no reason at all and confiscate merchandise, who knows what else they can come up with.  The next day, Sunday, I dragged down from the attic the big box of the “Beitar” stationary, stamps and correspondence, throwing it into the oven, I slowly but thoroughly changed it into ashes.

 

As another couple days went by and we did not hear from the Militia, we began to hope that maybe they have forgotten us, that maybe being in possession of so much vodka they could not stand the temptation and drank it, annulling the whole affair, erasing it from the paper and from their memory.  We began to sleep more relaxed.  A week or so later, sometime after midnight, we were awakened from an uneasy slumber by a loud banging on the door.  In panic we all jumped out of our beds and quickly got dressed.  Opening the door, we were confronted by two Militiamen who came for our father.  Without a word, they took him to their station.

 

Not having overcome last weeks horrifying event of the search, confused and scared with the mid-night crude awakening, in despair of her husband just being taken away, remembering the ruthlessness of the Bolsheviks during their retreat in 1920, when their soldiers took away her wedding ring at which time she almost lost her finger, my mother grabbed me and my sister Sheva and with fervent intensive words said to us, “run to the Militia and don’t let them shoot your father.”  Her words left me stunned for a minute.  The thought of my father being arrested was frightening enough, but to be shot?  It never entered my mind.  The two of us set out immediately for the Militia headquarters.  On the way many frightening thoughts went though my mind, even the sight of my father being shot, which speed up our run.  Getting breathlessly to the door of the station Militiamen barred our way in, telling us to wait outside.  We remained outside not knowing what to do.  We did not want to come back to our mother not having anything to say.  We also understood that they would not shoot our father in the building but take him outside in the yard, in which case we would see him and implore them to have mercy on him, not to shoot.

 

With those dark thoughts, we remained standing on the sidewalk in front of the Militia station.  The yearlong minutes changed into hours.  After many hours, the front door opened and we saw our father coming out alone unescorted.  We ran over bombarding him with all kinds of questions.  Our father answered calmly, that the chief of the Militia said that, as the merchandise was not hidden, but simply in the house, he should come in the morning to pick it up and the following day to sell it in the store.  It is needless to describe our joy having our father back alive and free.  Yet it is difficult to fathom the policy of a system where even a positive or benign message had to be delivered in such a frightening way.

 

In the morning my father hired a man with a horse and buggy and picked up the vodka taking it straight to our store.  The next morning my father and I went to the store.  The news that there will be vodka on sale spread around the town the previous day and now there was a line up in front of the store.  As the Soviet “Ruble” was valued even money with the previous Polish “Zloty”, and vodka was in general not to be gotten, there was no wonder that a huge line up formed early in the morning.  Fortunately, there appeared a couple Militiamen to keep order. At first the crowd grabbed vodka.  When this was gone, one to a customer, the next went the liqueurs.  I looked on as the shelves were being quickly emptied of the goods and expensive “Baczewski” liqueur that were being sold before the war between fifteen to thirty zloty a bottle and are now being given away for the same amount of almost worthless now Soviet rubbles.  When this was gone the crowd began to buy wine, which to be honest, was of poor quality.  Next went the cigarettes and tobacco.  At the end, went whatever there was left in “Denaturat” (methylated spirit).

 

In a matter of a couple of hours, our store was emptied out.  We remained with a drawer full of nearly worthless rubbles.  It is my opinion that, that was the last time that liquor of such quality as “Baczewski” or tobacco, the quality of “Turecki Najprzedniejsze” was sold in Shershev ever again.           My parents looked around the empty shelves and walls of the store with a heavy heart, locked the triple doors that guarded nothing behind them and went home in a depressed mood.

 

The Bolsheviks wanted to show that “everything is available” in the Soviet Union, as they said.  And as there was a great demand for salt and kerosene, the two items that were plentiful there, they started to deliver.  First arrived a fifty-ton carload of salt on the rail way station Linow Onancyce, thirty kilometers away.  It arrived in bulk, like gravel or sand.  A hundred local farmers were ordered to go there with their horses and buggies and take along their own bags.  The salt was unloaded in the front part of Kolosko’s house, a Christian, who owned one of the two Christian houses in the market square.  Before the war, this part of the house was a co-op store opened with the initiative of the Polish government, to take away business from the Jewish storekeepers.  The next day, from early morning there was a line up for the kilo salt per customer.  The fear of the population that there might be a shortage of salt drove them to get in line time after time until the fifty tons of salt was gone.  Each customer had to bring his or her own container, or little sack, for there were no bags available.  I looked at the salt and thought to my self that nobody would have touched this coarse and lumpy stuff before the war.  Now they are willing to stay in line for hours to buy a kilo.  Yet to think that 50 tons of that stuff was sold in a matter of a few hours, more than it would be sold in Shershev in a year in normal times.  After this was sold, Shershev had to wait another two months for more.

 

Suddenly to me and my parents something became clear; it happened a couple weeks earlier, before the search.  With the first group of Easteners (Soviets) that arrived in Shershev was a single tall man with a face scarred from small pox that made him look very stern and anti-pathetic.  His name was KULAKOV.  Shortly after their arrival one evening we heard a rap on the door.  It was KULAKOV.  Coming in he introduces himself to my parents politely and asked forgiveness for barging in.  Getting the expected answer that he is welcome, he asked if he might sit down.  My parents spoke a fluent Russian, not like the majority around us who spoke with a white Russian (Belarus) dialect.  It did not take long for a conversation to develop.  It turned out that he heard that my father used to sell vodka and he was wondering if by chance we might have a bottle left.  My father obliged him with a bottle and a lengthy conversation ensued, during which KULAKOV asked my father how many bottles of vodka did he sell a day.  My father answered about one hundred and one hundred and fifty a day. KULAKOV ’s face showed no expression, a conditioning or training that every Soviet functionary must teach himself, in order not to betray his inner thoughts, so as to assure his survival under the Soviet regime.  Instead almost with a boastful tune, he said: in the Soviet Union we can sell a carload or two a day.  We were stunned, how is it possible? It can’t be!  The conversation finally ended.  KULAKOV thanked my father for the vodka and left.   When the door closed behind him, my father turned to my mother and said: A carload a day? Impossible!

 

It did not take long for us to realize that KULAKOV was not boasting.  When two months later a second carload of salt arrived, the line-ups were even longer than the first time.  It was no secret that every family had enough salt to last at least a year or two, but the fear of a shortage compelled people to buy more.  Now we understood what KULAKOV meant when he said that in the Soviet Union they could sell a carload of vodka a day.  Shortly after the salt, arrived a cistern with kerosene.  But how does the kerosene get out of Shershev?  You cannot pour it out of the cistern into sacks or boxes.  So the local Militia went around the shtetl confiscating from the former storekeepers the barrels that they used to bring the kerosene in.  Again some of the local farmers and Jewish wagon drayers were sent with the empty barrels to the rail way station, where they pumped out the kerosene into the barrels and brought them home.

 

The kerosene arrived in Shershev early in the morning.  They were ordered to unload the barrels near our store. At seven in the morning some official knocked at our door and told my father that the kerosene will be sold from our store and if we, that is, my father and I want, we can help with the distribution.  I dressed quickly and went to our store.  By that time all the town knew of the kerosene and the line seemed to be a kilometer long, men, woman and children, each with some vessel in hand waiting for that liter of kerosene.  As expected, as soon as they got it, they went back in line for another liter.  Although the electricity in town was restored shortly after the arrival of the Bolsheviks, the demand for kerosene did not slackened.  By six in the evening, all the kerosene was sold out.  Some bureaucrats took the keys of the store and never returned.

 

We, with the arrival of the Bolsheviks, did not see the Red army as such.  The small groups or detachments of soldiers that used to pass by and at times stop over for a few hours, consisted of village boys or peasant boys, good natured, good humored and warm-hearted.  That manifested itself often among the Russian masses.  Their simplicity or primitivism and poverty used to awaken sympathy, even compassion among the locals.  The new authority took over the few former Polish government buildings and rented some space in some private homes.

 

The school year started late and did not co-ordinate with all the new Soviet acquired territories.  I went back to Brest-Litowsk.  Back to the dorms on 66 Trzeciego-Maja Street, there were changes being made at school and in the dorms.  The dorms that were under the management of the Jewish Ort and were Kosher became a government institution.  The same happened to the school that was compelled to conform to Soviet whim.  On the very street where our dorms were located and no more than half a kilometer down the road, was a pure race Polish technical school, which was known in the city and its environs as a hot bed of anti-Semitism, and where a Jewish student would not dare set foot.  The Soviet education department decided to unite the two schools, the Jewish Ort school with that Polish school, so called “Technical” school.

 

But before I continue with the events in school, I would like to set apart a few lines to describe the changes that took place in our dormitories under Soviet rule.  The personnel that worked there before, that is, the kitchen staff, cleaning staff, even the house keeping staff, remained the same.  After all, they were the working class.  But the manager, the so-called director, was replaced.  The new director was a Jew from central Poland, who apparently had a past association with communism in order to get such a responsible job.  I must admit however that if he had, he did not belong to the barely literate Bolsheviks that came from the east (Soviet Union) to manage, bully and rule over us.  He belonged to the rare category of human beings that became communists out of deep conviction and with the holy goal of improving the lot of the oppressed masses and creating a better tomorrow for humanity.  He was the sort of idealist who can attain his belief only with the help of the highest intellect and boundless faith.  He was also a good administrator.  The most outstanding quality, which did not escape our notice, was his approach to us students.  He saw and understood each and every one of us and tried hard to do and help as much as it was possible.  It was obvious that he had experience in this field.  One evening shortly after my return, the director called us students together and delivered a short speech.  The contents of that speech I do not remember any longer, except for his closing remark, which went something like this: “It is said that life is short, but three years is a long time.  Remember that you come here to spend three years together, so see to it that you make those three years as comfortable for yourself and the others as you wish them to be.”  For a sixteen year old, as myself, those were impressive words so that they remained in my memory.

 

When I think sometimes of those days, this man comes to my mind and I wonder what happened to that gifted, talented and dedicated man.  My assumption is that he perished together with the old established and numerous Jewish community of Brest-Litowsk.  Taking in consideration, that the city fell to the Germans within the first hour of the start of the war.  But then in October of 1939 and despite the fact that the entire population, Jewish and Christian, already understood that the Soviet Union is not the dream they conceived it to be.  Never the less, the mood among the people, especially the youths, was exalted or elated.  As the dorms were under Soviet control and not any more under Jewish, some twenty-five non-Jews enrolled there.  Those were Polish high school students of the upper grades from western Poland, who escaped the Germans and now found themselves trapped under Soviet rule.  They felt uncomfortable among a majority of Jews and due to the Soviet law of equal minority rights, they had to put up with us unable even to utter the word “Jew” (Zyd in Polish), but refer to a Jew as “Yevrey” (Hebrew or Israelite.)

 

In the late months of 1939 great mass exchanges took place on the newly acquired Soviet territories, especially on the new-formed borders of the Soviet Union and Germany.  Jews from central and western Poland found themselves under Nazi occupation.  They ran eastwards towards the Soviet Union.  Poles from eastern Poland who found themselves under Soviet rule ran westward, towards German occupied Poland.  Here one could see the hate and contempt the Poles had for the Russian Bolsheviks.  Although it was the Nazis that attacked Poland and destroyed its army and occupied its land, while the Bolsheviks entered a non-existing any more Poland.  Abandoned by her leaders and defenders, they preferred to live under a Nazi Germany rather than the Soviets.

 

One late fall day, the twenty odd young Poles failed to show up in the dorms.  Following the example of many other Poles, they crossed the border to Germany.  Up to then, in all the sixteen years of my life, I have never tasted “Traif” (non Kosher forbidden by Jewish dietary law) food.  Although the look of pork used to intrigue and puzzle me, that was the staple food and source of meat and fat of the local non-Jewish population.  Nor did I know of any Jew in Shershev that had ever tasted it, except for those who served in the army but used to give it up as soon as they returned home.  There was the general belief among Jews that pork fat is very healthy.  Rationalizing it with the fact that non-Jews used to apply it on sores or wounds to speed up the healing.

 

Our breakfast used to consist of bread and butter with tea or black coffee.  When there was not butter, each used to get a piece of cheese or sausage.  One could have all the bread he desired, but the rest was allocated.  With the Bolsheviks, even the bread was rationed for a month, but later there was bread aplenty.  In the morning we used to get three slices of thinly buttered bread for breakfast and three dry slices of bread for lunch.  Fortunately, my parents used to send me from home dry cheese and honey for my bread.  For the boys from further away like Volinia or places like Baranowicz, Slonim, Wolkowisk, Mejczade, Nowogrodek getting food from home was more difficult.  The distance was too great to send perishable food.  It was even more difficult for boys from the west side of the river Bug, who were cut off from their families by the newly created German Soviet border.  Slowly our food began to improve, we started to receive cheese for breakfast.  One morning we unexpectedly received a piece of sausage.  Immediately a rumor started circulating that the sausage is “Trief” (non Kosher).  I look around my table and others to see that many eat it with gusto, but others hesitate.  Finally unable to resist the temptation they start eating it.  I see at my table everyone is eating and, as far as I can see, so are the others.  I bite into it.  The taste is the same as last years kosher one.  I console my self that it may be Kosher.

 

That night lying in bed I torment myself with the thought that I made myself unclean because of a piece of sausage.  I waited six weeks for a piece of sausage and it will most probably take another six before they will serve it again, if not longer.  Was it worth it?  I decided that night, or whatever was left of the sleepless night, not to eat it again.  This time we did not have to wait six weeks.  Within a couple of days sausage was served again.  This time I did not vacillate this much and ate it, as I realized that sausage will become a frequent part of our diet.  That night again I felt a twinge of conscience, more than that, outright remorse, but I slept.  When sausage was again served a couple of days later I did not make a big deal of it, but I felt that I had lost something decent, something humane.

 

We used to spend eight hours at school, four with theoretical lessons and four with practical.  The theoretical ones consisted of subjects like mathematics, geometry, physics, metallurgy and the Russian language. Most of the teachers and instructors were the same pre war Polish ones.  I have however, to admit, that despite the reputation of that technical school as an anti-emetic reptile hole, the teacher personnel behaved towards the Jewish students correctly.  The non-Jewish students found it more difficult, but all they could do was to grin and bear it.

  

There were quite a few families in Shershev whose joy of being under Soviet rule instead of German did not lift their spirits.  I am referring to the families whose husbands and sons were serving or were mobilized into the Polish army and did not return after the war.  Among them were my paternal grandparents whose son Eli was mobilized in March of 1939. This fact affected all of us, his extended family.  My grandmother, Chinka, used to putter around the house crying all day.  My father and his brother, Reuben, used to come to them almost every day to encourage them and give them hope.  Finally my father decided to travel to Brest-Litowsk to see if he can find out something in the provincial capital.  There was no time to write me that my father was coming, so he called me by telephone.  This in itself was no easy task.  The couple private phones in Shershev were disconnected.  The only way was to call from the post office in Shershev to the one in Brest-Litowsk, which entailed my being there at the specified time.  It would take too much time to describe the process.  Eventually we got together on the phone, my first in live conversation on the phone in Yiddish.  I knew then the workings of a telephone, why I was surprised to hear his voice and in Yiddish, I did not know then nor now.

 

My father arrived with a “small” delay of twenty-four hours, due to the chaotic railway schedule.  After finding a place in a boarding house, which some locals secretly ran, my father came to see me in the dorm.  After a long conversation my father left with the hope of finding out something about his brother.  We also decided to meet tomorrow in a restaurant which was already all government owned.  When I met my father the next afternoon at the appointed place, I found him very discouraged after telling me about his encounter with the Soviet bureaucrats that got him nowhere.  He decided to leave for the railway station that very same evening hoping to get a train for home.  As we were leaving the restaurant I noticed in my father words, a sense of resignation that I have never known before.  I felt heavy at heart bordering on anguish.  This feeling was not strange to me concerning my mother whom I loved more than anything in the world.  As I watched her busying in the kitchen and house from early morning to late at night, she used to make sure that everything was in order and in place and that each of us was looked after.  She manifested so much tenderness and sympathy not only for us but for strangers whose troubles and suffering used to move her to tears.

 

 

My father, like most fathers in those days, must have learned to control their emotion, at least outwardly, not to show them, not only in relation towards other, strangers, but even towards their own families.  While I never let my children and grandchildren forget that I love them, demonstrating it by kissing and hugging, my friend, my contemporaries and I in those days never heard it or had it from their fathers, not even a compliment.  I took leave of my father with the usual handshake and turned in the direction of the dorms.  Before I made ten steps, I suddenly felt an acute twinge, a sort of pang of sympathy and love for my father, which was more intense than I ever felt before.  I turned back to watch him go in the direction of the rail way station.  To my surprise I noticed that at the very same moment he turned away from watching me walk away.  Not wanting me to know that he was watching me, but by it betraying his weaker side, namely that he cared for and loved me.  At that very moment I asked myself the question; Why did I have to wait almost seventeen years to find out that my father really did care and love me and by the same token all my siblings.  Why didn’t he give at least a hint, besides providing us with all the things we needed, which at that time we foolishly took for granted.  Actually I shouldn’t have been surprised, for I knew none of my friend’s fathers or other fathers in shtetl acted differently.

 

Shortly after we were informed in school that with the approaching October revolution celebration, there would be a parade in which all schools will participate, including ours.  And so it was that on the October day our school took up its assigned place in the line.  Besides schools, there were military units and workers of all sorts.  It seemed that there are more participants in the march-by than onlookers.  We marched by a platform of high Soviet civilian and military officials.  To my surprise after this platform there was another one much smaller on which there were German military men.  Some hundred meters or so past the two platforms we were told to disband and join the mass onlookers.  We tried to get as close as possible to the platforms, being interested in seeing the Soviet big shots more than the parade itself.  As soon as the march-by was over cars began to pull up in front of the two platforms and the distinguished guests started to get in.  Something happened suddenly which neither I nor the other bystanders expected.  While the Soviet big shots started getting in to their limos, the crowd started to approach the smaller platform of the Germans threatening them with fists and showering them with all kinds of curses, swearing and abuses in any languages, like Yiddish, Russian, Polish and even German.  It is possible that that was the only time when Jews had an opportunity to swear at Germans undauntedly.  The circle of the threatening mob was getting tighter around the Germans and it seemed that within seconds, they would reach them.  Apparently the Bolsheviks foresaw such a possibility and were ready for any eventuality.  From nowhere, appeared a detachment of N.K.V.D. (Security Police.) and surrounded the platform.  The crowd knew better than to start with the Soviet security police and stopped in their tracks.  Considering that 75% of Brest-Litowsk’s population was Jewish and that the German army did get into the city, where in the three day stay there before the Bolsheviks took it over, the Germans emptied every Jewish store and many houses of everything, is it then a wonder that Jewish Brest-Litowsk reacted with such hostility towards the German representation.  However, the fact that the Soviets have invited Germans to celebrate with them did not go well with the local Jewish population.

 

In the fall of that year 1939 the Jewish population of Brest-Litowsk had increased tremendously.   Many Jews came there that were retreating from approaching Germans and even more from the occupying Germans.  The new border between Germany and the Soviet Union was half a dozen kilometers from the center of the city.  It seems that the Germans left the border poorly guarded deliberately so the Jews could get across to the Soviet side.  Brest-Litowsk was full of refugees.  Many succeeded in finding a room or rooms or any kind of accommodation others unfortunately no.  They moved into synagogues, Jewish public buildings into hallways of apartment buildings.  The saddest sight for me was when I used to go home by train and see those refugees packed together on the floor and, to get to the door leading to the train, one had to be very careful not to step on some refugee laying one next to the other on the floor.  And in such crowded quarters, they lived, not knowing what to do.  The sanitary conditions were appalling and rumors of spreading diseases began to circulate.  Their situation became so intolerable that some decided to return home, under Nazi rule.

 

The winter 1939-40 was the coldest in my memory.  The temperature went down to -35c and stayed there for a long time.  In those bitter cold nights the Bolsheviks decided to solve the refugee problem.  By then the border between the Soviet Union and Germany was shut tight.  The Soviets brought many cattle cars and, in the middle of the night, started rounding up the refugees and locked them up in those cars.  This rounding up lasted three days and the Bolsheviks succeeded in emptying the city of Brest-Litowsk of refugees.  Apparently the Bolsheviks had a lot of experience with transporting large masses of people.  I found out later that this happened in many cities and towns in the newly acquired territories.  Why the Bolsheviks did it was not explained, nor did anybody dare to ask.  What is true is, that there was a law in the Soviet Union that forbade foreigners to even be within one hundred kilometers from a border.  It is also possible that they feared that among the many thousands of refugees, there might be German spies of which the Bolsheviks were watchful.  No matter what the reason, that cruel act of shipping as many as one hundred thousand innocent people to Siberia, that seemed at that time so gruesome and hideous, turned out to be for them a favor.  For despite their hardship and suffering in Siberia, the majority of them survived the war.

 

Coming back to October 1939, at the end of the month a Soviet manager arrived, a man of about forty in a well-tailored military uniform with the rank of lieutenant.  Taking into consideration his low officers rank, I must admit that he had experience in his assumed duty.  He stepped into his role with true idealism and exemplary zeal.  For example, we had a delivery of firewood, which arrived in one-meter long chunks.  The wood was dumped in the middle of the yard and but was supposed to have been piled into the woodsheds.  The Soviet manager could have ordered us to bring it in and stock it up properly.  Instead he set an example and started doing it himself.  It moved us to join him voluntarily and thereby earning a lot of respect among us.  I will add that to us, boarders of the dorms, he conducted himself more like a comrade than a superior, taking in consideration that he was at least twice as old as the oldest among us and an officer used to giving orders.  Apparently, he had influence or pull in high places, for with his arrival our food had noticeably improved.  By that time we all knew that it is advisable to keep ones mouth shut and not to talk too much, particularly about politics and criticism of the Soviet Union.  However, the event that took place during the October parade remained a topic of conversation in the dorms for weeks.  Some evenings later, the new manager himself remarked during a talk to us, how hated the Germans were, giving as an example that event.  He must have felt that it is safe to show his antipathy towards the Germans to an entirely Jewish group of students, considering the fact that the Soviets only friendly link with the outside world at that time was Germany and Outer Mongolia.

 

        From home, I used to get mail and parcels regularly so to speak.  In fact, there was nothing that was regular.  There was no more any means of transportation by bus from Shershev to Pruzany.  The buses that used to commute between Shershev  and Bialowieza, or Shershev, Pruzany, Brest-Litowsk were mobilized at the outbreak of the war and never replaced.  All that was left were a couple of horse and buggy owners. (Wagon drayers) that were trying to eke out a living by driving people from Shershev to Pruzany.  At times one could hitch hike a ride with a passing by Soviet vehicle.  If one managed finally to get to the rail way station in Oranczyce-Linovo, the train was never one time.  The waiting time could be anywhere from six hours to a couple of days.  It took many months till the trains became more dependable.  I used to correspond often with my parents.  One day I got a letter from them in which they informed me that the local officialdom ordered them to vacate the house, giving them three days time to move out.  This event needs a little explanation.  There was a law in the Soviet Union that one family cannot own a house bigger than one hundred and thirteen square meters.  As ours was bigger and one of the most recently built they decided to what they called “nationalize” it.  In simple words, take it away without any compensation.  No court and no appeal could help.  Besides, there were a few points stuck against us.  Firstly, my parents were considered Capitalist, secondly, being a merchant and thirdly my grandfather was the town mayor.  Those points made us a very undesirable element in the eyes of the Bolsheviks, an element that could at any time expect a one-way ticket to Siberia.  Not wanting to antagonize them, my parents hired our former wagon drayer that used to haul the liquor for us from Linowo-Oranczyce.  The same young man that took a loan from my father to buy a partnership in a truck a couple years before the war.  During those three days, he moved our furniture and everything else to my paternal grandparents.  They moved into the same three rooms we used to live in when I took sick at the age of three.

 

Fortunately, my parents did not write how they felt or feel now having to leave their own house.  I remember a little of my thoughts.  Seeing before my eyes, the attention they were paying while the house was being built.  The local people used to say that my father is putting into it his body and soul, as if he is going to live forever.  (How right they were.)  Here comes total strangers and tell us to leave it and get out.  In a way I was glad that I was not there.  To have to look at my mother’s tears would have hurt me much more than the loss of the house.  It was difficult for me to imagine what it will be like, to come now to Shershev and instead to go to our large and comfortable home to drive up or walk up to my grandparents house and be content with three rooms and a shared kitchen.  As life has taught me time and time again, the proverb that “if you spend a night with your affliction it becomes your own.”  So it was with me.  Slowly I got used to the idea.  From my parents later letters I found out that the Bolsheviks “nationalized” seven houses in town, six Jewish and one Christian.  All were in the market square, where they were the nicest and biggest houses.  I will start with ours, one, Alter GELERSHTEIN (known as Alter Esther-Goldes), two, Pavel SETAR (Christian), three, Shalom ARONOWICZ, four, his brother Reuven ARONOWICZ, five, Yoshua PINSKY, six, and Chatzkel (Jehezkel) KRUGMAN, seven.

 

The largest house in town, Joshua PINSKY’s, where he lived and where he had his store, the Drogyst lived with the family and drugstore.  All this was converted into the headquarters of the Bolsheviks party.  There were separate offices for the first, second and third secretary of the party, as well as offices of the smaller functionaries.  Joshua PINSKY was permitted to live in his second small little house behind his big one.  The pharmacy moved to Chatzkel KRUGMAN’s house.  He, KRUGMAN, was permitted to remain in two rooms attached to his house.  The pharmacy owner with her daughter, Lola, and older daughter, Mary with her husband, the town doctor, rented some rooms in the Chazir Alley and the ARONOWICZ brothers moved in with one of their brother-in-law’s Israel WISOKER.

 

The Hebrew School was closed and it was forbidden to learn Hebrew.  They returned to “Mammah-Loshn” Yiddish.  In November, I received good news that my father’s youngest brother, Eli, (Eliyahu) returned from German captivity.  He was home and well.  A couple weeks later, he came to Brest-Litowsk to complete some formalities.  We spent that evening together on the run, as he had a few place to go.  I admired his collectiveness.  After all, only two weeks earlier he was in German captivity.   How soon he adjusted to normal life.  To his experience in the short war and German captivity, I will come back later.  Meantime I want to return to the settling in of the Bolsheviks on our territories.  Brest-Litowsk was known to have a formidable fortress.  As a result the city suffered much destruction in the First World War.  Between the two wars, the Polish government rebuilt the fortress and the city.  In 1939, the fortress was bombed by the Germans, inadvertently and, to a small degree, the city.  However, the city became even of more important strategical value, due to the fact that it was right on the newly created German Soviet border.  The Bolsheviks not only rebuilt the partly destroyed fortress but extended it greatly.  The city was full of military personnel and many Jewish families rented out rooms to them.  The Soviets were not very fastidious and I am speaking about officers, the ordinary soldiers lived outside the city.  The officers were content with two rooms per family.  They were not used to anything better.  The single men lived two or even four to a room.

 

What did impress the local population was the size and number of the Soviet tanks and motorized artillery.  What we have seen before the war of Polish tanks would look like toys in comparison to the Soviet tanks.  What concerns motorized artillery, I doubt if Poland had any.  Almost opposite our dorms were large barn like sheds surrounded by a high fence.   Before the war, the Poles kept some dozen tanks and a handful of armored vehicles.  That was all that Poland could afford to keep in such an important strategic place like Brest-Litowsk.  The fenced in yard around those sheds was big enough to conduct maneuvers.  The Bolsheviks filled those sheds and the entire yard with tanks and other military equipments, but nobody had an idea what was really in there, because of the high fence.  In the meantime, the Soviet Union became entangled in a war with its neighbor in the northwest, Finland, a country with three and a half million people, a tenth of the population of Poland, but they resisted the Soviets with ferocity as if it had ten times the population of Poland.  The Soviet did not expect such opposition, nor did they expect that this small-in-number country would put them to shame in front of the whole world.  They decided therefore, to use all the forces they had available at hand and over run Finland.       Apparently, a large portion at hand was then on the newly acquired territories of Poland. On a bright frosty morning the gates of that eternally closed yard opened up and Soviet tanks started to spill out.  The gate was on a small side street that led to our, wide street “Trzeciego Maja”.  The tanks turned right on our street, passing our dorms, and continued on.  The secret that they are going towards Finland could not be kept and did not surprise anybody.  What was a surprise was the amount of tanks that were there.

 

As everything in the Soviet Union was secretive, they kept the tanks parked during the daytime hours.  But at night, they kept on going without a break until morning for three nights.  Despite the thick snow on the ground, the buildings on the street seemed to shake.  In the middle of the third night we were awakened by an unusual loud and strange sound.  We jumped out of our beds and ran to the four windows in our bedroom.  Looking down to the street we saw what seemed like buses, but instead of wheels they were gliding on skies and were propelled by propellers that were mounted to the tops of the roofs.  The noise was that of an airplane from ten meters away.  Several dozens of such machines passed by and we spent the rest of the night talking and admiring the Soviet war technology.  During that early winter a few of the students-cohabitants of the dorms were expelled.  It started when a government commission appeared one evening and started to investigate everyone’s what they called “social background”.  Not so much ours but our parents.   For example: What was your parent’s occupation before the war?  What are their holdings?  How big is your house?  Have you any relatives abroad? And so on.  After that investigation we were told to write home to get from the local authorities a statement of their “social background” and forward it to the director-manager of the dorms.  When my turn came next, I already knew that to have been a Zionist was not advisable. All I told them was that my father was a Czarist soldier in the war, was badly wounded and is an invalid.  To their question if I have relatives abroad, for some unexplainable reason or sixth sense, the word “no” came from my mouth.  The bigger problem was to get the letter on social background from the authorities in Shershev.  My father went to that office not expecting miracles.  Entering the main room, where a few secretaries were sitting, each at his own desk, he noticed a familiar face.  It was a local farmer’s son who before the war used to make violins in his spare time.  When I, at age ten, began to learn to play violin, my father bought from him a violin, paying him the full price without arguing. My father went straight to him.  After telling him what he came for, the secretary, a bright young man who apparently remembered the fact that my father paid him his asking price for the violin, wanted to reciprocate.  He wrote as my father asked, it read as follows: Moysey (Russian for Moishe) KANTOROWICZ, is the son of Issak who has no home (not mentioning the fact that it was nationalized) who used to receive a wars invalid pension.

 

I could not have dreamed of a better recommendation from that slip of paper.  When I faced the commission for the second time, I was asked again all sorts of questions, mostly the same as before.  Suddenly, one asked me if I have family or relative in the United States.  To my mind came my two uncles there, Uncle Shoime with his family as well as my Uncle Pesah (Philip) and his family.  Besides them I had an aunt, the wife of my deceased Uncle Lippa with her son Irving.  At that time, I did not realized how much my answer depended on my remaining in the dorms.  Remembering the answer during the first interview, without hesitation, I said “no.”  Later, when the commission concluded their work, and the rejected were gone, we started to tell each other how some succeeded in obtaining a favorable report from the authorities.  Most of them got it by bribery, which was so prevalent in the Soviet Union.  In the beginning of December I found out that the department of education which was situated on Unje Lubelskie, the most beautiful and modern street in Brest-Litowsk, was accepting applications for entry into the teacher’s seminary, but the day before was the last day to apply.  I called them on the phone and was told that if I can bring in my application before five o’clock that day, they will accept it.  I set out immediately and handed in my application before closing time.  They told me that those with better qualifications have a greater chance of being accepted.  I was not sure if I wanted to change my future profession from a technician to a teacher, but I wanted to have the opportunity of choice.  When I left that office that wintery evening, I felt so delighted, so happy, that now sixty years later, I find it difficult to describe.  I do not know even why I suddenly experienced so much joy.  The streetlights shone brighter with a holiday sparkle.  Everything around me seemed cheerful, simple glorious, all because they took my application, which was far from being accepted into the seminar.  Is it because I did not expect much from anybody?  Is it because I am grateful for even a little kindness or is it that it does not take much to make me happy?

 

Nothing came from that application anyway and I remained where I was.  Actually I settled down quite comfortably.   From the seventeen boys in our room, my closest friend became a boy from Molczadz, near Grodno, by the name of Menachem BOREJSZY.  His shtetl, not bigger then mine gave us many subjects for conversation and comparison of character and characteristics of its inhabitants.  He was a year or two older than I.  His father having lost his flourmill to the new government gave both of us reason to dislike the Bolsheviks.  Like many others, his father too had to resort to bribery in order to get a favorable note from the local authorities regarding his social background.  Among others were two boys from Volynia.  Both by the name of Shalom WIESS, they were cousins.  Not all was going smoothly among us seventeen boys in our bedroom.  There were disagreements, all because of the windows.  There were four of them.  Those who slept near the two ovens were complaining that it is too hot in the room and wanted the windows to stay open.   On the other end those whose beds were near the open windows were freezing in that coldest winter in my memory.  I could not blame them.  Fortunately my bed was in the middle of a row of beds along a wall and was not affected.

 

Shortly before New Year 1940, my father visited Brest-Litowsk and I decided to go back with him to Shershev, as it was a day or two before the start of the winter vacation.  We got to the train many hours before the train was due to depart in order to get a seat.  Despite our early arrival almost all the seats were taken.  We got however, our two seats one next to the other on the long bench along the wall of the coach.  The time of departure came and went and the train was not moving.  All that time more and more passengers kept on coming.  Not finding seats, they sat on their suitcases or bundles.  It got so crowded that it became impossible to get in or out of the coach but the train does not move.  We sat there all that afternoon, all night and all the following day.  Finally, late the second evening the train began to move.  The first station out of Brest-Litowsk was Zabinka, where the train stopped for some hours.  Next station was Teweli, where it all repeated itself.  In the morning, we reached Linowo-Oranczyce, our station where we got off.      We have covered a distance of barely one hundred kilometers by train and it took us two days and two nights.  From there to Pruzany we had to take the narrow gauge train to cover twelve more kilometers.  After waiting for two hours, the stationmaster told us that the train has not left Pruzany on its return back.  Walking back and forth in and around the station, we suddenly came across a Shershev girl by the name of Ghitle KWELMAN.  As far as every one in Shershev knew, she left home a month earlier with the intention to cross the newly created border between the Soviet Union and Lithuania, in order to get to Wilno.  For a rumor spread that from Wilno, now returned to Lithuania by the Bolsheviks one could still get to the land of Israel.   Apparently, she did not succeed in crossing the border.  Not wanting her mother “Theme” and brother “Avreml” to know of her failure to get to Wilno with tears in her eyes, she begged us not to utter a word to anybody, not even her mother that we saw her.

 

We kept that promise, my father up to his last breath in the gas chamber of Auschwitz and I until now, when I am writing it down on paper some sixty years later.   One thing I am sure of, that she never got to the land of Israel.  Would she have, she would have found her sister Tzipara (Gitle) TZEMACH-KWELMAN in Kibbutz Shahar Agolan. She disappeared as suddenly as she appeared. We remained on the station, not knowing what to do.  There was no other means of transportation.  Being familiar with the regularity of Soviet transportation, we decided to start on foot, with the hope that a Soviet big shot or a Soviet military vehicle will pick us up on the way.  The two small suitcases were not heavy, so we set out.  Before we covered half a kilometer we realized that there won’t be a lift, the snow was too deep for the unplowed road for any vehicle to pass.  Yet stubbornly we continued on that twelve-kilometer track until we got to Pruzany.  Getting there before dark we had a problem finding a place to sleep over. My father’s brother, Uncle Joshua, was driven out of his house by the Bolsheviks and rented a small apartment barely big enough for him and his family.  My Aunt Sheindl, my father’s sister, and her husband Leibl afraid they too will lose their house took in a prestigious Soviet military brain surgeon giving him and family the bigger part of the house.  It happened that in a nearby lane called Rezki lived two brothers, Nathan and David KABIZECKI with their mother.  They moved from a village a couple years earlier.  Their oldest brother, Yaakov MEIR, was married to my Aunt Esther-Liba AUERBACH’s sister, Sarah.  That made us sort of related by marriage and we spent the night there.  Next day we finally arrived in Shershev.

 

Who could have imagined that four months after the arrival of the Bolsheviks it would have taken three days to cover a distance of just over one hundred kilometers?  I will admit that it has improved by the time the winter was over.  It was so good to be back home.  True, not our house, but still grandparents house.  To be with my mother, to know and feel her love, her affection and tenderness, knowing how difficult it was for her to overcome the recent shock of losing our house.  It must have been difficult to try to disguise her feelings, in front of us and to give up wholly and earnestly her time and attention to us children.  My sister, Sheva, too came home for vacation from Pruzany where she was studying and shared her experiences with our mother.  With my grandparents lived their son Eli(Eliyahu) who had recently returned from the short Polish German war and for a couple of months in a German prisoner of war camp.  Now we had the opportunity to listen to his experiences during that time.  This is what he told me:  A few days before the start of the war, they knew already that war is inevitable.  They dug in deeper fortifying their trenches with logs.  Friday at about three in the morning, the German artillery started to bombard them.  Hs battery with the four light cannons immediately answered.  It did not take them long to realize that their shooting back was no more than a joke in comparison to the German fire.  While they were shooting with light artillery the Germans were firing with one hundred and fifty five millimeter shells and for each shell they fired, the Germans answered with ten.   Still this artillery exchange went on for three days and nights.  On the third night, single soldiers began to appear from the direction of the front.  They were ordered by the artillery officers to go back to the front.  Instead, more and more began to appear.  They too were ordered to go back to the front, but they categorically refused claiming that there is no more front.  As if to confirm their claim an order came for the artillery men to put on the bayonet on the rifles and get ready for an expected German infantry attack, as their own infantry in front of them is no more.

 

It is one thing to find yourself behind the front and fire at an unseen enemy, and something else to find yourself in the dark in the middle of a forest to try to make out an invisible enemy.  A couple of hours later, they were ordered to get the cannons out, take as much ammunition as they can and withdraw.  Once the withdrawal started there was no stopping.  It became a race between them and the Germans to see who can get first to Warsaw.  On the way they were constantly exposed to German bombardment from the air and artillery.  The soldiers who looked after the draw horses used to get on them from time to time, but my uncle Eli had only a bicycle.  Others dragged along on foot.  During the two weeks of retreat they had no rest and every soldier was tired to the extent that my uncle fell asleep a couple of times on his bicycle and fell off.  On the way some of their equipment and supply was destroyed or lost, they also lost many of the horses to the constant bombardment.  They reached Warsaw on September 15 with two of their four cannons and they immediately dug in.  Two days later the Nazi hordes closed the circle around Warsaw in an iron trap.  Much has been written about the siege of Warsaw.  I want here to note just one episode of my uncle’s experience during that time.  Their remaining two artillery pieces were in one hole standing side by side.  In a nearby hole were their shells. However, in the hole with the cannons they kept several shells handy.  During a cannonade, a German shell exploded in the hole with the two cannons, wounding four soldiers and setting the few shells ablaze.  Instinctively the other soldiers jumped out of the hole covering themselves behind the piles of earth around it, leaving to themselves the four wounded and unable to be moved comrades.  They all heard their cries for help but nobody dared to get to them for fear that the other shell will explode any second.  It was my uncle Eli who braved that challenge jumping in and coming out with one wounded soldier, repeating it three more times. The fire did not set up the expected explosion but burned itself out.  His commanding officer shook my uncle Eli’s hand and promised him a medal for bravery at a more acceptable time, which never came.  I will not describe the events that took place in the besieged city of Warsaw in the next dozen days, I will rather continue with its surrender.  On the 28th of September in the morning came an order to discard their weapons.  Some made it useless and some left it intact.  Some of the operational weapons were appropriated by the Polish citizenry, but the bulk of the weapons fell into the German hands intact.  They marched out of the city and were immediately surrounded by German soldiers who broke them up in smaller groups.  His group consisting of several thousand men, after a long march, was led into a large building and a high fence around it.  They were locked inside, guarded by Germans all around.  They used to get a piece of bread with tea in the morning, a bowl of soup at noon and tea at night.  The place was near the city of Minsk-Mazowiecki, about fifty kilometers east of Warsaw.  The several thousand soldiers were a collection of men from all over Poland, with many from the eastern part, a number from our part of Poland.  Almost daily some were taken away and replaced by others.  It began to look like the Germans were converting this camp into a prisoner of war camp for eastern Poland’s citizens. My uncle found among them even Jewish young men from Shershev, like his childhood friend Leibl NEIBRIF, others were Gotl WEINER, Rafael LEWKOWICZ, David KABIZECKI, Leizer SZNAJDER, and others.  It was rumored in that camp the Germans were gathering the eastern Polish citizens, now under the Bolsheviks to use as a bargaining chip with the Soviets.  Sometime in November, the date I do not remember, the Germans locked them up in trains cars, drove them to the newly created German Polish border at Brest-Litowsk, let them out and told them to march to Brest-Litowsk a few kilometers away.  At the border the Bolsheviks were waiting for the, took them by trucks into the city and into the bathhouse.  Their disappointment was great when they were told to put on their old and lice infested underwear and their own dirty worn and torn uniforms.  They did give them something to eat and a train ticket to go home.  This much I still remember from my uncle Eli’s experience which he told me some sixty years ago.