The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod (18 page)

1
. This poem, originally in Hebrew, was found among newspaper clippings that Yonteleh Beider had saved. It was written by his brother and probably published around 1939 in
HaKochav
(The Star), a Hebrew-language monthly published in Poland.
HaKochav
published many Hebrew poems by Yisrael Beider.

WITNESSES REMEMBER

S
ome recollections of people in this appendix appeared earlier. What follows are additional memories that further enrich one’s sense of what Trochenbrod was and what took place there.

S
HOIL
B
URAK

One thing many Trochenbrod natives remember clearly about Trochenbrod is mud. Because Trochenbrod was established in a marshy lowland area, the street through town became impassible to wagons after a rain. Shoil Burak was born in Trochenbrod in the late 1870s; he immigrated to the United States in the early twentieth century. He reminisced to his family a sentiment, as captured by his granddaughter Alyn Levin-Hadar, that other Trochenbrod families reported hearing from their immigrant forebears as well:

When it rained, I’d be up to my knees in mud. Mud and dirt—these are my most vivid memories of Trochenbrod. We found excuses to take baths because of the mud. You ask would I would want to return to the old country? Not to all that mud and dirt—I’m an American now.

In America, Shoil used to tell his children made-up bedtime stories set in Trochenbrod. Although the stories were made up, they nevertheless somehow always included in them a reference to “blota,” Yiddish for mud.

– –

M
IKHAILO
D
EMCHUK

Mikhailo was born in the village of Yaromel, near Trochenbrod, in 1932. He lives there with his family even today. I spoke with him in 1997, and again on several of the later trips I took to the area. Mikhailo had clear memories of Trochenbrod and the war years.

A lot of people used to go to Sofiyovka because they wanted to buy different things for their houses, and clothes. There were shops selling shoes, clothes, a bakery—they baked a lot of kinds of bread—leather, mills. The merchants in Sofiyovka really trusted us: they gave us things without money, because they knew we’d give it to them when we had money. If Sofiyovka had survived, it would be a big city by now.

There were good house-builders, good painters, and very good specialists of all kinds, especially related to construction and house repair, that would work in all the villages around here.

There was a Jewish family that that we knew in Sofiyovka, and they had kids, and I was friends with them. We used to play together: a girl, Esther, and two boys, Yoshko and Itzik.

In Sofiyovka there were a lot of geese, and the people had good houses, mostly new ones but some older ones. Wealthy people there had better houses, people with less money had simpler houses. On the whole, it was more or less like our houses—not exactly the same, but similar. There were trees along the street. Also, a lot of the houses had fruit trees on their land: cherries, pears, apples.… Everybody had a piece of land there, and they worked on it. It was a nice town.

To make some money young girls and ladies from villages like Yaromel would go to Sofiyovka to help people with the fruit, with their gardens, and around the house. Everyone was happy with that arrangement. It was a good time, but then it changed.

Before the war there were really good relationships between the Polish people, the Jews, and the Ukrainians. Relations between the Jews and Ukrainians were probably better than the relations between the Poles and the Ukrainians. But everybody was friendly with everybody. For example, there were lots of Polish houses in Yaromel. But after the war started, something happened: Polish and Ukrainian people attacked each other; everybody became enemies.

Of course, I was very young during the war, but I remember seeing trucks filled with people being driven past our house into the woods, hearing shots, and later seeing empty trucks return. Day after day they drove past my house. When things began to heat up for us we prepared to run away. We ran away to the nearby village, Mikove. But my father was killed by Polish people there. They saw we were running away so they attacked us, and only I and my two brothers survived, with nothing. We came back and found Yaromel burned down: only two houses left, and the little lake. So we were really very poor.

Ukrainians and Poles attacked each other and Jews. There were three armies, German, Ukrainian, and Polish, and they were attacking each other. Those Polish people who attacked us came from Przebradze, a Polish village not far from here.

– –

T
UVIA
D
RORI

Tuvia Drori was born to Trochenbrod’s Antwarg family in 1918 and fled for Palestine in the autumn of 1939. He now lives in Givatayim, just east of Tel Aviv, Israel.

When the Polish came back for good in 1921 and 1922 they took Jews for forced work. They came to take my father on
Shabbat
, and he refused to go. My father work on
Shabbat
? So they beat him, and I remember well as a child the horror of watching my father being beaten—that’s stayed with me all my life; I can see the image clearly before my eyes today. My father would never work on
Shabbat
. My father went to America, but found he had to work on
Shabbat
, so he came back, and stayed in Trochenbrod to the end.

In 1988, when I went back to Trochenbrod the first time, I found the two mass graves. I saw a small monument with a fence around it. On the monument was written that here were buried the people murdered by Nazis, from Trochenbrod and Lozisht. It was very emotional for me: I fell to the ground and cried.

When I returned to Israel, no one believed what I had seen; and anyway, they were afraid to go to Russia. A year passed. Then a few of them went, and it opened up, and then people started to go from other towns in the area—Lutsk, Kolki, Olyka—to visit and set up monuments. We arranged for the monuments to be built there in Ukraine, working with the head of the local council. It was a joint undertaking. I was the chairman of Bet TAL at that time. A committee of people organized it here in Israel: Anshel Shpielman, Gad Rosenblatt, others … not me alone.

– –

B
ETTY
G
OLD

Betty was born Basia-Ruchel Potash in Trochenbrod in 1930, and spent the first twelve years of her life there. She fled into the forest with her family during the mass murders in August and September 1942. Betty now lives in University Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.

Everyone in Trochenbrod was Jewish except the postmistress, the gentleman who sold schnapps, and another gentleman who was busy doing things for the Jewish people they were not allowed to do on
Shabbos
. We were surrounded by Polish and Ukrainian villages. It was a one-street
shtetl
. Everyone knew everyone and everyone was related to everyone, and we all lived very close to our aunts and uncles, just crossing the street or walking next door to them.

I remember my grandparents on my father’s side very well. But my mother’s mother lived alone across the street—her husband died many years earlier. We used to love to go there, to my grandmother’s house, and sleep there and live with her, and so on. I had two brothers, Shimon and Baruch, both older than me.

My mother had a very nice life. They considered her the society lady in Trochenbrod. She was involved in
Beitar
, she was involved in Jewish organizations, and she would write some plays, and she was always very very well groomed. She was very beautiful, and she always took a great deal of pride in how she presented herself to the people in the
shtetl
. She never worked, because my father really provided well for her, she didn’t have to. I don’t remember any women working in the
shtetl
when I was a little girl, at all—unless they helped their husbands a little bit in his business.

My father worked in his business. I loved my dad a lot. We used to go together on the way to school, and he’d go to the shop, and I’d continue on to the school—and stop in the bakery on the way and buy a
kichel
[sweet cracker] and put it on my father’s bill. We had a pretty decent life until the war started.

The best part of course, was when all the families would be together, and visit, and go to the park on
Shabbos
afternoons, and sing the
Shabbos
songs. The house would light up on Friday night, before
Shabbos
. Everybody would be bathed, and dressed, and candles were shining.

I used to sing at the weddings when I was a little girl. They would be outside, and the whole
shtetl
would come. I don’t know why they picked me to sing a song or read a poem for the bride and groom. I really loved the weddings. I also participated with my brother in a lot of children’s plays at school as well as in the
Beitar
organization.

We had lots of cousins. A cousin wasn’t a cousin, like here; a cousin was a sister or a brother—there was no difference. We lived together, we slept often together, and played together, and went to school together. We didn’t know the difference between sisters or brothers or cousins.

At least twice a month, every other Friday, I would go with a girlfriend of mine, and we’d both carry a basket. We’d go house to house, we’d collect baked goods and pastries and candy or whatever one could give, and we’d take it to the poor people. I started doing that when I was a very little girl; a lot of children did that in our
shtetl
. Of course I’d always steal from the things that we gave from our house, because when we started we had a lot from our house already.

In Trochenbrod there were no cars. There were a lot of merchants who had horses, and they would go to markets—there were a number of markets in different towns in the area—and they would sell cattle or buy cattle, or sell fruit and vegetables or buy fruit and vegetables; they were traders. That was a big big thing, going to market, for quite a few people in our town.

Everyone worked the land. They had big gardens, acres and acres. So besides providing food for their families, they had a lot to sell in the market, and make money this way. And also a lot of people had cows, and the milk would be picked up to make butter and cheese and so forth; so they made some of their living from that. We had a goat, and I had chickens, and I even had a horse at one time that I loved to ride, no saddle of course.

When I was little there was no electricity in our shtetl and there were no paved roads. And then, toward the end of the 1930s, they were paving the road, we had some electricity, and the town was beginning to develop more and more and more. Communication began to happen. Everybody read the
Forward
and talked politics. My father bought a radio. The first radio in Trochenbrod! That was so exciting; everybody came to see how it was being installed. There were big wires strung above and then going into the ground; I remember men working on it. We also had a phonograph, a wind-up phonograph.

I remember hearing Polish music on the radio. And then the President of Poland, Yuzef Pilsudski, was making a speech of some sort. I don’t remember what he said, of course, but I remember hearing people saying, “Ooh, Yuzef Pilsudski is going to speak, Yuzef Pilsudski is going to speak,” and that’s when I learned the name Yuzef Pilsudski.

My eighth birthday party, I think it was my only birthday party. My little friends came. One brought me a bobby pin for a present, and another brought me a ribbon, and another one some pretty colorful rubber bands. Can you imagine that today? Bobby pins and ribbons and rubber bands? But it was so exciting … I was more fond of that than if I would get today a thousand-dollar gift.

Once my father brought a rabbi—I don’t remember from what city he was—but he was a very famous rabbi, a scribe, and we put him up in our house for a few weeks. My father dedicated a Torah scroll to the
shul
[synagogue], and this scribe was there writing it. People would come and donate what they could and the scribe would write a sentence or a paragraph in their name. It meant a great deal to everyone. My father put me on top of the closet, an armoire they call them now, and I’d watch the people as they came into our house and make their donations. I watched the people coming and going, but I didn’t understand what it was all about. Then the rabbi—I can see him with his big round fur hat and long beard—explained it all to me. That was very special.

We knew about Easter and Christmas. You could go into the postmistress’s house, and they had a beautiful tree at Christmas time. They would come and buy things for the holidays—my father’s shop was right next door to the post office. There was one little play I was in at the Polish school where I played the part of an angel. I don’t remember what it was about, but it was Christmastime.

The postmistress’s son was a friend of mine. They’d invite me at Christmas to celebrate with them. We were good friends with them. I remember going to his house and seeing the Christmas tree and thinking it was so beautiful, so much fun with all the ornaments and everything, and the house was decorated, and we had cookies. I liked it, but I knew it wasn’t our holiday. Maybe I didn’t even know it was a holiday; just a celebration of some sort. Anyway, I knew it had nothing to do with us. It was just fun.

– –

B
ETTY
H
ELLMAN

Betty was born Peshia Gotman in Trochenbrod in 1921. She left when she was nearly eighteen years old, in late 1938, after the paving of Trochenbrod’s street was well under way. Betty now lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

We would go on the postal wagon to Lutsk. Once there were ten of us. The driver made a few of us get off because the horse couldn’t pull so much. So we took turns, and all the way to Lutsk we were jumping off and on the wagon.

The best thing about spring was that the mud dried up, we didn’t have to deal with the mud. Many times, walking to school, we fell in the mud, with the books even, and we couldn’t get up.