Noach Peniel (Falantonvsky)

KARTUZ BEREZA, MY HOME TOWN

"Bereza Kartuzka" in Yiddish was simply "Bereze". It was located between Brest Litovsk and Baranovici. Through its center was Moscow-Warsaw main rout. I haven't found out the meaning of our town's complete name, but I think the word "Bereza" comes from polish language word referring to the typical tree in that area, and the name "Kartuz" is related to monastery of the kartuzian monks who lived there. I have to say there wasn't any hill of conifer while I was a child.

I saw the kartuzian monastery ruins. It was hidden on a fenced area, and there are several fruit trees growing there. I used to go with my friends on Saturdays in order to enjoy place's beauty, and buy some apples and pears to eat there (on time I wrote a sonnet titled "In the Monastery garden" about it) .

Our town had a beautiful view, it was placed near Yasolda river, that drained its waters on Bug River. In summer, town inhabitants used to take a bath in the river around the town, and over there, huge green fields extended, some sowed with rye, and other pasture fields. The town itself was full of gardens and fruit trees. Along several kilometers extended leafy woods with pine trees.

During my childhood, I would go there for redcurrant and mushrooms collecting. In town center lived Jews, and in the suburbs Christians, mostly White Russians and a few poles. We had poles as neighbors. Around the town there were villages inhabited by White Russians, called "FULISHUKIM". In my childhood and adolescence I used to visit those villages and I was very impressed by the view of fields and peasants.

In town there was a big influence of Jewish culture, and an outstanding social group of Jewish intellectuals, that apparently became very famous on local society and other social groups. Its Rabbies were famous , and they got to be very known in Jewish world. Rav ITZHAK ELCHANAN was one of the Rabbies before he was transferred to the same position in Kovno. Rav ELIOHU KLATZKIN passed to Lublin as Rabbi (his son is Dr. YAKOV KLATZKIN, who grew up and was educated in Bereza until 15 years old)

Just like every Jewish little town of the area, before WWII there were "Chadarim" for Jewish children education. Later the new learning system of Cheder began to outstand. Between both WW established two modern schools, one Yiddish and one (Tarbut) Hebrew. As I said before, there were active and smart intellectuals .

In 1905, times of revolutionary movement in Russia, Bereza was a point of revolutionary fermentation too. As I was told, the man who concentrated town's and surroundings activity was one of Lenin's assistants, later Minister of Foreign Affairs of Soviet Russia, MAXIM LITVINOV. There were a strong Zionist activity as well; among the founders of YAVNIEL settlement in Eretz Israel were the first immigrants of our town. Several political parties were active: Zionist, bundist, populist, yidishists, and Hebraist. Each political movement carried out an intense propaganda. I have to emphasize that, most of the arguments between political movements and different groups, were specially concentrated around the two schools of town: the Yiddish School and the Hebrew School Tarbut, formerly "Yavne" (although it hadn't any relation with "oriental education").

I remember with homesickness the days of my childhood in town, the baths in the river that wasn't any far from home, the runs and rides by the countryside, and the woods I will never tear out from my heart. I want to remember village Selcz, where my father was born, about 10 km. from Bereza. It was a town with a very beautiful landscape. There lived my paternal grandparents, in a little house surrounded by gardens and fruit trees. I described one of my visits, in those distant days of my youth during Pesach festivity, in my story book "Nostalgia of tale-legend", published in magazine "Something for children", and then in my book "Spending night at an empty tavern". In my early youth I used to walk there through fields and pine hills. I wrote down in the book "Over the rivers of Poland" the description of this walks to my grandfather's house.

Since centuries ago, Selcz was a very important town in the area. I read at the "Jewish Records of Lithuania" by SIMON DUBNOV, that the Council of Four Countries in Poland had its head in Selcz. There were also outstanding pupils, they even is said "Gaon (genius) of Vilnus was born there. In time, Selz lost some of its relevance and, at the end of XIX century, Bereza began to develop and grow, because of the building of railways.

Finally, I'd like to emphasize another phenomenon related to Bereza. In the suburbs were military headquarters and Russian soldiers had installed the "Piatgorsky" there. After WWI Bereza and the whole area passed to polish dominion , and Bereza passed to belong to Polesia district. The Mayor of the district took up residence at Brest Litovsk, and he took up his rights on surrounding villages.

The quarters were empty. The polish army hardly used them, but before WWII, a colonel from PILSUTZKY named KOSTEK-BAYERNATZKY began to use the quarters. A few years before the war this military man was appointed as Inner Affairs Minister of polish government. There was a "zanatzia" (reactionary regime) in the government, and they decided to convert the quarters into a concentration camp for opponents to the regime. Then the Inner Affairs Minister established the concentration camp there. Kartuz Bereza became "famous" in the world because of this camp, but to our regret, it hadn't any sense for us, since Jewish population was innocent and pure...

I left Bereza when I was a youth, and I went to Vilnus in order to study at Tarbut Teachers Seminar. Later I worked as a teacher and director of Tarbut in Poland. The news about the town and its surroundings came to me through journals and tales.