MEMOIRS
OF SHERESHEV
By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ
Thursday, August 31\39 about four in
the afternoon, the local government plastered large announcements on many walls
that were proclaiming a total mobilization.
Groups of people began to form around each proclamation, reading the
large print carefully over and over, as if by rereading they would get some
more information out of it. Those
proclamations were over a meter in size and had a heavy red slanted line across
it. An exact replica that every man serving in the army
used to get on his day of being discharged from the army. It even had the same wording which said that
if such a card appears in public places, the bearer should proceed to the nearest
train station and await further instructions.
The forming groups of people seemed
apathetic, they just stood there, looking at the announcements in silence or
whispering one to another. Nobody seemed
to want to go home. They just stood
there as if waiting for something or somebody.
My friend, Laizer ROTENBERG ran home coming
back in a minute with a camera in his hand to take a picture as he said, for
posterity, of this important moment.
Eventually, we all dispersed
home. I, admittedly,
with a fair measure of apprehension but also with excitement.
The next morning
My father went to open the store at
eight as usual. My mother was busying
herself in the kitchen and my older sister Sheva was
helping her. It was to
early to start visiting my friends, so I walked out into the yard.
A few minutes later, I see our neighbour’s son Leibl FELDMAN
pull up to his parents house on a bicycle, which was surprising. This Lebil, our
neighbor Nachman Feldman’s son, was a bachelor in his
mid thirties. A broad shouldered robust man who at his age
had a fair amount of life experience.
He lived in Bialowieza where he and a partner
had a trucking business. There were
rumors that he is a well to do man.
He used to come home, to Shershev, to visit his parents every couple of weeks, but
it was not his way to come on a bicycle.
He used to come with one of his vehicles. I went into the house and told my mother, who
too was a bit puzzled.
We did not have to wait long for
the reason. Within minutes, our
neighbor, his father came in and in a quiet voice asked if there are any other
family members in the house, when we assured him that there were none, he said
that his son Leibl just came from Bialowiza
that was bombarded early this morning.
When he, Leibl wanted to take one of his
vehicles to go to Shershev, the police would not
allow him, having
orders to confiscate all private vehicles for the army, so he came on a
bicycle.
The situation was tense and so
was the population particularly from the previous days
general mobilization. People began to
gather around the few radios in town with loud speakers. There were three in Jewish homes; one the
druggist, the doctor and one at my uncle Reuben’s, which were put in front of
the open windows for all to hear.
At ten on that memorable morning
the president MOSCZYCKY addressed the nation. It was a patriotic speech in which he
officially announced that
As expected finishing the speech
with a promise of victory, “For G-d and justice is on our side.”
One of the first functions of the
police was to order my father to lock our store so that alcohol should not be
available. The same applied to the other
four restaurants in town, who submitted to the order without protest. They remembered only too well the First World
War, when alcoholic drinks were the best commodity to have.
The townspeople remembered other things from that war, like fires that burned houses and all possessions and the plundering of undisciplined and unscrupulous soldiers.
To protect oneself from such things
people came up with all kinds of ideas.
In our case, we had two large trunks with forged metal straps all
around. They must have belonged to my
mother’s parents, my grandparents AUERBACH, who could have used them in the first world war.
I and my sister Sheva, helped my parents to
fill them up with better clothing, tablecloths, linen, some underwear,
silverware and other considered valuable or precious items. We even used a couple of large wooden cases
in which we used to ship vodka to pack other stuff in. My friend, Meir KALBKAUF’s father had a horse and wagon. He came to take it to his large orchard where
we buried it all and concealed it so well that a stranger would not be able to
tell that the ground had been touched.
Thus we had protected some of our household items from fires and
plunder. Of course we were not the only
ones. Every family did the same thing to
a larger or lesser degree.
A good many pages earlier I mentioned
that my father bought in partnership with our neighbour
Nachman FELDMAN, a garden from Pelett
Aprik, before he left for the land of Israel with his
daughter Mali. The garden was directly
behind the stall of Nachman Feldman, who used it as a
wood shed. A stranger would take it for
granted that the garden belonged to Nachman.
The last couple of years, since my
father and Nachman bought the garden, they pretended
to play in gardening. Successful it was
not. Simply, they did not pay attention
to it. That year however, as if in spite, it was a plentiful
year. The tomatoes grew many and big on
tall stems and the garden beds were thick with thin long wooden sticks around
which bean stocks were wrapped around.
My parents knew that our store full
with alcoholic drinks and cigarettes make a tempting target for thieves and
robbers, particularly groups of robbers and soldiers who would throw themselves
at liquor sooner than at gold. They also
knew that for liquor one can get just about anything in time of war.
In the quiet of the night, my father
and I made a few trips to the store bringing out a couple hundred bottles of
liquor, among them some two dozen bottles of spirit 96% pure alcohol which was
twice as strong as vodka and twice as valuable.
The spirit and half the vodka we packed in sacks in between straw. Under cover of night we pulled up carefully
the bean plants with the long sticks that they were wrapped around, dug a hole
in the ground and carefully lowered the bags with the liquor in it. After covering the hole, we spread the excess
soil over the garden beds, replanting the beans, and putting the long sticks in
their original places.
The next morning when I went
into the garden to see if our last night’s job was noticeable, I was very proud
of our job. Not only would a stranger
not notice anything, but even I could not see anything suspicious.
The police advised the public to build bomb shelters. Nothing elaborate, just a hole in the garden or yard, whoever can should cover it wit boards and pile earth or stones on top.
I tried to dig a hole in our yard
but gave it up shortly. The ground was
too rocky. The most impressive shelter I
saw in shtetl was at Daniel MAISTER, or Daniel the
blacksmith as he was known. His
daughter, Maya, was one of the five girls from our group. She told us that her father and brothers
built something good. We boys went to
see it. It was a ditch a meter wide by
two meters deep, dug in a “U” shape, each side some five meters long. A total of fifteen meters. Quite a roomy shelter. Besides the two openings or exits, it was all
covered with boards which in turn were covered with a thick layer of soil on
top of which there was a pile of wood, which was prepared for winter as fire
wood.
With so much room they not only
took in clothing and dishes, but even furniture.
As just about everyone had
something buried, people worried about theft, that is, somebody should not dig
up somebody else’s hole. So neighbors
organized night watches. That is, every
ten or fifteen neighbors got together and took turns in patrolling the
neighborhood. Each patrol consisted of
two-three men. In our house, we divided
the night into two. I used to patrol up
to one or two in the morning, and my father used o take over after me until
daybreak.
Apparently nobody slept well,
for instead of the expected two or three men on watch, there were always four
or five and more. In our case we
patrolled the market square, walking into yards to look for something
suspicious. So while walking, we used to
meet other groups from neighboring areas, chat a bit and sit down for a rest.
The nights were so quiet and the
moon bright even the mosquitoes did not dare to buzz. A couple of times during those peaceful
nights, I heard the distant drone of a single aeroplane
reminding us of the carnage that is taking place not so far away.
Who could have imagined how
poorly the Polish army is fairing already in the first week of the war. Newspapers failed to appear. The government
or to be more precise the local authorities took away all vehicles. The only news came from the neighboring
shtetl, Pruzany, where they knew as little as we. The only news came via the radio which kept
on playing patriotic and marshal music with constant interruptions of coded
commands.
One did not have to be a genius
to know that things did not look good.
The often announcements that the army moved to earlier prepared
positions told the story.
One the third day of the war our
mood changed for the better. After we
had heard that
The first ten days went by
uneventfully. One could not believe that
After those first ten days the
first refugees began to appear. Those
were civilian Poles that were running from the approaching Germans. Those were people well dressed and looked
prosperous. They traveled with their own
cars even limousines. Despite
the fact that all private vehicles in our part of the county were mobilized. They paid good money (prices) for whatever
they bought and were prepared to pay vast sums for gasoline that was not
available in Shershev for any price.
Among those refugees, driving her own
car, was the wife of the “Wojewoda” (Governor) of our
province “Poliesie”
Kostek BERNACKI. Her daughter turned to the local police for
help, regarding gasoline, but even they could not turn up any, for there was
none to be gotten.
Somebody suggested “Denatured”
(Rubbing alcohol). The chief of police
came to my father and ordered him to give them all the “Denatured” there was in
the store. The driver filled up the car
tank and they drove away.
The following couple days more
refugees appeared. They were mostly
young Poles, many had brand new rifles on their
shoulders made in
A day or two later we woke up to
find out that the local police disappeared.
Shershev remained without a government or
someone to keep order. Although Shershev did not experience any "pogroms” in the last
couple hundred years, the Jewish population was very much informed about the
pogroms that took place in the Ukraine and Volinia, a
hundred kilometers to the south.
What was worse, was the fact that the Christians in and around Shershev knew about it and they also knew that the pogromist were never punished for their acts.
The Shershev
Jews took the possibility of a pogrom very serious. Especially when someone of
the Christians began to talk about it in the market square, the center of the
Jewish habitat.
Some of the prominent members of the Jewish
community got together and decided to send a delegation to the nearby district
town Pruzany, in the hope that there is still a
government representation and to see what can be done.
A delegation left at sunrise by horse and buggy. To everybody’s surprise they were back before dark with ten rifles and ten cartridges. The rifles were of a very old vintage but operational. What was to be a secret is the amount of cartridges (ten) that came with them. Would the potential pogromists have known, it would not have stopped a pogrom?
Jewish men, former soldiers, that
were not mobilized, or were sent back home from the railway station during the
last and total mobilization, due to lack of uniforms or rifles, volunteered to
patrol the town square, where the bulk of the potential pogromists
used to gather, especially in the evening.
Now and then the armed men in twos used to patrol the Jewish streets and
alleys at night. In this way there were
always ten armed men in the street, day and night, which effected
both sides to a degree. It held in check
the potential pogromists and to a certain degree gave
a sense of tranquility to the Jewish population.
How long ten armed Jews with one
cartridge per rifle could protect the entire Jewish community is
questionable. There were rumors that the
villages around are organizing to join the local non Jewish population in a
pogrom. There was even an attempt to
kill the most feared Jew in town. It was
the blacksmith Srulkah (Isroel)
MAYSTER. He
was both strong and fearless.
In one of those lawless nights he
was sitting at his brother Daniel’s house on Kamieniecka
Street, which was except for a few houses, entirely non Jewish. He most likely came to his brother to discuss
the uncertain situation in town, when somebody fired at him from the
street. That Srulkah
had the presence of mind to slam his heavy callous hand on the glass kerosene
lamp, shattering it and throwing the room into darkness. Thus depriving the would
be assassin of another chance to fire at him.
The people in the house could see a man running away but did not dare
give chase to a man with a gun in his hand.
From the only operating at
times radio station in
On the 17th of
September radio Muscov announced that there is no
more Polish army and that the Red Army crossed the Polish border.
The following day, the 18th
of September the day the German army closed the ring around Warsaw, the Soviet
foreign minister Molotov delivered a speech on the radio reiterating the fact
that the Red Army marched into Poland in order to protect their brethren, the
Ukrainians and Belarusians in time of need. A day or two later the Muscov
radio announced that the artificial Polish government left the country, leaving
our brethren to their fate.
I am not sure if it was
the same day or a day later, at about three in the afternoon, a group of a
couple dozen peasants drove on bicycles into town with rifles on their
shoulders. It was a diverse assortment
of weapons one had ever seen, except in a museum. Some really belonged there. They came from the north western direction,
the only sandy approach to the shtetl. Some of them were known to the local Jews as
belonging to the
They drove right into the
main street Mostowa, which was entirely Jewish. They encountered the first two man patrol, one of them was my father’s brother Reuven. The two man
patrol, finding itself surrounded by a couple dozen armed mean, realized their
situation and gave up their rifles.
Having disarmed the first patrol they proceeded in the direction of the
centre, the market square, disarming on the way the other patrols.
Entering the market square,
where, they found a large crowd of people who did not know what to make of it, they ordered the store keepers to open the stores and
continue to do business. Our store remained closed because of what we were selling.
Their spokesman announced in
front of a still growing crowd, that they are part of an underground communist
organization which is taking over the law and order in town until a
representative of the
In a sense the crowd
sighed with relief, for if they were pogromists they
would not need this performance. They
had already disarmed the patrols.
Secondly some of the local Jews knew some of those men as decent people.
The store keepers opened up
the stores. Not being able to enter our store, I went over to see what was
doing in my grandfather’s store.
A short while later a part of
the armed men came in. The one that seemed to be in charge told my grandfather to make
sure to stay open until six and to open tomorrow at eight. The spokesman seemed to enjoy his new
acquired importance pronouncing each word with exaggerated authority. Still he left every one in his charge to add
a remark or two.
Despite my sixteen years and lack of life
experience, I watched with a keen eye the attitude of the group of armed
men. They strode across the heavy wooden
floor with a new acquired confidence walking over to the shelves, opening
little and large boxes, looking into every carton and corner. I heard one exclaiming “Eto nashe, eto vsio nashe.”
(It is ours, it is all ours). I felt
that all it would take to transform this supposedly communist, the defender of
that beautiful ideal, into a potential pogromist was
a word or a nod from his superior.
I suddenly saw how volatile the temperament of those people is and how easy it is to convert it from a human into a beast.
That night Jews did not patrol
their streets, nor did they sleep restfully.
The next morning those very men
made an attempt to organize some order and temporary governing body in shtetl. They took
over the police station and even recruited a few local young men into their
ranks among them a couple of Jews.
A day or two later rumors
began to circulate that the Soviet army entered Pruzany.
Still it took a couple more
days before we saw representatives of the
Their looks and attire was
not impressive. The uniforms were very
simple and devoid of any decorative addition Their
boots well worn, Russian style, pushed down accordion like. The hat unattractive with a
cloth point on top.
The riffles long and the long bayonets
on them made them look even longer, towering over the soldiers. The unusual long bayonets had no sheaths and
dangled pitifully from the soldier’s belts or tied with a piece of cord to the
gun barrel. The soldiers smoked self
rolled cigarettes, rolled in newsprint, for tobacco they used what they called
“Koroshky”, chopped up tobacco stems. This picture evokes sympathy, even compassion
among us, but I will admit some smugness.
The soldiers conducted them
selves decently even politely, without using a single offensive or vulgar word
which is unusual for soldiers. Yet
looking at them closely the crowd detected a hidden want and began to shower
them with questions about availability of all sorts of items in the
This answer became so automatic
and popular everywhere in the first few weeks of the Soviets arrival that it
turned into a joke, which goes like this:
A group of locals who started to ask them the usual questions; is there
enough bread in the
Still, that first day the few
Soviet soldiers were welcomed guests. We
realized that they represent a country and government that came to stay
permanently. After all, they have been
here for a couple hundred years before and under Bolshevik rule where Jews are
not being persecuted, what can go wrong?
Meantime we remained under the
supervision of the temporary committee, the armed group from Krinica including the few local men under the command of a
man from Krinica with the name of Liesicky.
Now the only source of news was
radio Moscov to which we listened regularly. On the 28th of September radio Moscov announced that
On
In the nearby town of