This week's Yizkor book excerpt on the JewishGen Facebook page

[Bruce Drake bdrake100@gmail.com]

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The Nazi extermination camps epitomized the horror of the Holocaust,
but so did the terrifying experience and inhuman conditions suffered
by Jews packed into the trains that took them there. Some knew for
sure what their fate would be, some did not or clung to slim hopes
that they might survive.

Zvi Faigenbaum "had no illusions concerning the intentions of the
Germans" and was determined to escape. "We Jumped from the Railway Car
of Death, from the Yizkor book of Wierzbnik, Poland, is his account of
that escape, which he made with his daughter, and others in his rail
car. Then it was a long journey through country where even sympathetic
Poles feared for the lives if they helped or sheltered a Jew.
Ultimately, he reached the Lukow ghetto. "For a time we were safe," he
wrote, "but only 'for a time.'"

URL: https://www.facebook.com/JewishGen.org/posts/2443023462386461

Bruce Drake
Silver Spring MD

Researching: DRACH, EBERT, KIMMEL, ZLOTNICK
Towns: Wojnilow, Kovel
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[Bruce Drake bdrake100@gmail.com]

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A little brat appears publicly "in broad daylight before a crowd of
10,000 goyim," kept them electrified for two solid hours, openly
ridiculed Nikolai, and in order his ministers and nobles Truly the
Napoleon of Lechowitz! In this week's excerpt, Faivel Rivkin hits
Nikolai, from the Yizkor book of Lyakhavichy, Belarus Nikolai must be
Tsar Nicholas II, no friend of the Jews, who reigned from 1894 until
he was forced to abdicate in 1917 by the revolution. And the Monopoly
must refer to the monopoly the government imposed on liquor distilling
in 1897 which severely affected Jewish economic activity and was a
reason many emigrated to America. This chapter tells of the chutzpah
of 16-year old Faivel whose impassioned speech led to the sacking of
the state liquor store leaving a mess of crushed shelves and heaps of
little pieces of glass and a lot of very drunk gentiles.

URL: https://www.facebook.com/JewishGen.org/posts/2450793294942811?__tn__==3DK-R

[Bruce Drake bdrake100@gmail.com]

X-No-archive: yes
"The horizon for the young Jewish common people was very limited,"
writes Enoch Stein in a chapter on the small town of Raguva in
northeastern Lithuania (from the Yizkor book of "Lite," the Yiddish
word for Lithuania). Work could be scarce and one of the respites of
life was the arrival of the newspapers which were devoured "from the
first page to the last, including advertisements, promotions and
announcements." Another diversion was romance -- whether it was the
arranged marriage or "the flirt" which produced marriages that came
about "through love." Stein recounts one arranged marriage, which
didn't work out so well, and recounts how young people set about to
make matches on their own. This is an excerpt from a longer chapter.
You can read the full chapter on this page: https://bit.ly/2zxkdp9

URL: https://www.facebook.com/JewishGen.org/posts/2460676433954497

Bruce Drake

[Bruce Drake bdrake100@gmail.com]

X-No-archive: yes
Yizkor books are full of accounts of Jews resisting the Nazis and
other anti-Semites who persecuted them: uprisings in the ghettos of
the camps, acts of heroism against those who tried to murder them,
partisans dealing justice to the enemy. Aharon Moravtchik tells a
different kind of story in =E2=80=9CMy Small Revenge for the Heinous Crime
from the Dayvd-Haradok (David Horodoker) Yizkor book. He had lost my
entire family, my wife, my four children, my parents, brothers and
sisters, the entire Jewish community of my home town. He had kept a
list of names of those who had committed these crimes and, after the
war was over in 1946, he resolved to be the blood-avenger for my
David-Horodoker brothers and sisters, tracking down those involved in
the atrocities that befell his town.

URL: https://www.facebook.com/JewishGen.org/posts/2478112432210897?__tn__==3DK-R

Bruce Drake
Silver Spring MD

[Bruce Drake bdrake100@gmail.com]

X-No-archive: yes
Most of the Yizkor book excerpts I present each week are dramatic
ones: harrowing tales of survival, grim tales of death and struggles
of daily life. But I found myself touched by this affectionate
portrait of a father in this chapter from the Yizkor book of Rokiskis,
Lithuania. In "My Father's Nigun" (melody), Shlomo Rubin remembers how
his father - someone who had no education beyond the cheder and at a
young age "had to hitch himself up to the wagon of life" - would wake
up early, and fortified by tea, "read the Psalms with such a touching
melody that engraved itself deep inside me." He was a man who saved
the best of the fish he sold from his cart for his poorer customers.
And he was a man moved to copious tears in the synagogue, particularly
during the Day of Awe, when his cries sounded like they had been "torn
from the deepest cells in his heart - the pain that had collected in him
during an entire year."

URL: https://www.facebook.com/JewishGen.org/posts/2495202600501880?__tn__=K-R

[Bruce Drake bdrake100@gmail.com]

X-No-archive: yes
Rosh Hashanah and the Days of Awe are nearly upon us. What better way
to get into the feeling of this time of year is a chapter in the
Vasilishki section of the Yizkor book of Shchuchin, Lida District,
Vilna and Grodno Gubernii, now Belarus, titled "About the Old Home"

The approach of a holiday was felt in the air, especially when it was
Rosh Hashanah,wrote Yosef Ben-Abraham. He goes on to describe the
town's devout observation of Yom Kippur and the awe and fear for the
Day of Judgment. On Rosh Hashanah, the stores closed early, the men
with their wet beards could be seen returning from the mikveh and
dressed to the hilt, people hurried to synagogue. And, as Yom Kippur
approached, people prepared Yom Kippur Drops(ammonia) with which
to revive a faint Jew or simply wake up a sleepy one by holding it to
their nose and quickly run away so that they would not know who did it.
When the High Holidays were over, it was as though a stone had fallen
off one's heart. Everyone believed that the compassionate and Merciful
One had listened to their prayers and will probably inscribe them for
a good year.

URL: https://www.facebook.com/JewishGen.org/posts/2507335812621892?__tn__==3DK-R

Bruce Drake
Silver Spring MD

Researching: DRACH, EBERT, KIMMEL, ZLOTNICK

Towns: Wojnilow, Kovel, Bialystock

[Bruce Drake bdrake100@gmail.com]

X-No-archive: yes
During World War 1, it was the Russian Army that the Jews of Vasilishki, Belarus
feared as its soldiers made their Great Retreat as the pre-Nazi Germans advanced.
"People went from one to the other, seeking advice as to how to rescue oneself
because one heard that when the Russians leave, they cause pogroms, rape women,
destroy everything, and set fire to the shtetl. This caused everyone to be
deathly afraid."

"Yom Kippur in the Forest," a chapter from the Vasilishki section of the Yizkor
book of Shchuchin, Lida District, Vilna and Grodno Gubernii is the story of Jews
fleeing for their lives as the holiest of days approached. It was cloudy with a
light rain as they reached what they hoped was a safe haven and ate the last meal
before the fast on Erev Yom Kippur. The Russians did loot the houses before they
left, but the story had a happy ending. The people were able to return to their
shtetl. "That Sukkoth was truly a time of rejoicing for the Jews of Vasilishok."

URL: https://www.facebook.com/JewishGen.org/posts/2507385115950295?__tn__=K-R

Bruce Drake
Silver Spring MD

Researching: DRACH, EBERT, KIMMEL, ZLOTNICK
Towns: Wojnilow, Kovel

[Bruce Drake bdrake100@gmail.com]

X-No-archive: yes
The New York Times reported last week that "for years, there have been
fragmentary reports of almost unbelievable acts of faith at the Nazi
death camps during World War II: the sounding of shofars...
traditionally blown by Jews to welcome the High Holy Days." Experts
found these accounts credible and a shofar said to have been blown at
one of the camps is part of a traveling expedition with a stop at New
York's Museum of Jewish Heritage. (You can see the article here:
https://nyti.ms/2kYS0Up)

Such a memory is recorded in a chapter from the Yizkor book of
Strzyzow, Poland titled "'Kol Nidre" in Auschwitz." The Jews of the
camp had "had promised ourselves for a long time that this year we
would conduct Kol Nidrei services," and, those who could, gathered in
one of the barracks to offer their prayers. From outside they could
hear wailing -- the sounds of 4,000 suffering and naked women being
marched to the crematorium. The rabbi's "voice was heard in the
stillness of the barracks as if an echo was responding to the wailing
of the women. His voice sounded clearly and when he reached the verse:
'who shall perish by fire...' -- a lamentation came out of everyone's
throat, repeating the Rabbi's words as if from the world beyond."

"And suddenly, in the middle of the prayers, the sound of the shofar
was heard."

After the services were over ...

"The crematoriums, which were surrounded by a grove, were burning all
night. The ovens were not big enough."

URL: https://www.facebook.com/JewishGen.org/posts/2539514639404009