The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod (22 page)

SOURCES

A Grandfather’s Memories
. Memoir of Morris Wolfson, as told to his grandaughter, Geri Wolfson Fuhrmann, in November, 1974; submitted by Geri Wolfson Fuhrmann as a term paper to Sol Gittleman, Professor of Yiddish Literature, Tufts University, in December, 1974. The manuscript was given to me in 2008 by Laura Praglin, cousin of Geri Wolfson Fuhrmann; Laura and Geri subsequently provided a tape and CD of the full interview and related material. Morris (Moshe) Wolfson was the son of Wolf Schuster, a shoemaker in Trochenbrod. Wolf immigrated to the United States, and in 1912 brought over his son Moshe. When during immigration processing Moshe was asked his father’s name in order to establish the surname, Moshe said he was Wolf’s son: duly recorded as Wolfson, and that remained Moshe’s legal family name forever after.

A Voice from the Forest
:
Memoirs of a Jewish Partisan
. By Nahum Kohn and Howard Roiter; published by Holocaust Library, New York, 1980. Like many Polish Jews, after the Nazis arrived Nahum Kohn fled eastward, to what a short time before had been eastern Poland. He eventually found his way to Trochenbrod. After a few months he left Trochenbrod for the forest and established a Jewish partisan unit that included young men from Trochenbrod. He operated in the region around Trochenbrod for the duration of the war, and afterward settled in Canada.

And I Still See Their Faces
:
Images of Polish Jews
. Published by the American-Polish-Israeli Shalom Foundation, located in Warsaw, Poland, 1997. In 1994, the Shalom Foundation appealed throughout Poland for photographs of Jewish friends and neighbors before the Holocaust. More than seven thousand photos came in, accompanied by notes telling what the submitters knew about the people in them. A jury selected photos, editors refined the notes, and the result is this beautiful and moving book. As I explain in the Epilogue,
And I Still See Their Faces
ultimately brought Basia-Ruchel Potash and Ryszard Lubinski back together; this in turn led me to most of the photographs of Trochenbrod in the 1930s that appear in this book.

Ani Ma’amin
:
Eidut V’Hagot
(
I Believe
:
Testimony and Meditations
). By Tuvia Drori; published in Hebrew by Yair Publications, Tel Aviv, Israel, 1994. The author gave me an original edition of this book in 1997. Joseph Blau translated the manuscript to English, and a copy of that translation was given to me in 1998 by Marvin Perlman, a Trochenbrod descendant living in Potomac, Maryland. I have edited the English translation of quotations that appear in this book. It was in
Ani Ma’amin
that I found a reference to Jacob Banai’s book, “Anonymous Soldiers” (Hebrew, Friends Publishing, Tel Aviv, 1978) in which he records his impressions of Trochenbrod while on the 1938
Etzel
officers training course.

Esh Achazah B’ya’ar
(
A Forest Ablaze
). By Gad Rosenblatt; published by HaKibbutz HaMeuchad Publishing House, Ltd., Kibbutz Lochamei Haghettaot, Israel, first published in 1957, corrected second edition published in 1976. In 2008, Burt and Ellen Singerman provided me with an informal translation into English.

Findings of the [Soviet] Commission Documenting Fascist Atrocities
. Report of a local commission set up by Soviet authorities, February 1945. This report, which is based on witness testimony, describes Holocaust events in the Sofiyovka area and provides some interesting insights into the Soviet view of what transpired. The report, housed in the State Archive of Volyn Region in Lutsk, Ukraine, was translated for me by Alexander Dunai of Lviv, Ukraine.

Hailan V’shoreshav
(
The Tree and Its Roots
:
The History of T.L., Sofiyovka-Ignatovka
). Edited by Y. Vainer, T. Drori, G. Rosenblatt, A. Shpielman; published primarily in Hebrew and Yiddish by Bet TAL, Givatayim, Israel, 1988. Bet TAL is the organization of people from Trochenbrod and the neighboring village of Lozisht and people descended from them;
Hailan
is the “official” memorial book for Trochenbrod: it can be viewed on the Bet Tal Web site,
http://bet-tal.com
.

The Holocaust by Bullets
:
A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews
. By Father Patrick Desbois; Published by Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2008. In this book, Father Desbois describes his mission to document the murder of the Jews of Ukraine, particularly western and southern Ukraine, by German killing units (
Einzatsgruppen
). Some of the details of his findings helped me sort through disparate reports of what actually happened in Trochenbrod and arrive at the probable facts of that case. Father Desbois’s organization is Yahad-In Unum,
www.yahadinunum.org
.

Ilustrowany Przewodnik po Wolyniu
(
Illustrated Directory of Volyn
),
1929
. I have an excerpt of pages from this document—including a photo of a Volyn landscape—that describes Sofiyovka, Kivertzy, Rozische, and other towns in the Trochenbrod area. I have no record of how this came into my hands.

Ksi
ȩ
ga adresowa Polski
(
Polish Address Directory, 1929
. By W. M. Gdanskiem; published by Towarzystwo Reklamy Miedzynarodowe, Warsaw, Poland. A portion of this directory, containing businesses by town in Volyn Province, including Sofiyovka, was first provided to me in 1999 by Dr. Yale J. Reisner, who was working for the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation in Warsaw, Poland.

Mennonite Historical Atlas, Second Edition
. Text and some maps by Helmut T. Huebert, and maps by William Schroeder; published by Springfield Publishers, Winnipeg, Canada, 1996. An excerpt from the Atlas dealing with Volyn, together with several maps, was sent to me in 1998 by Helmut T. Huebert.

My Townlet–Trachenbrod
:
A Chain of Memories
. By David Shwartz; published in Yiddish and English by Elisha Press, Tel Aviv, Israel, 1954. David Shwartz was born in Trochenbrod in 1880. He was already married to his wife Miriam when he left Trochenbrod alone in 1907 and began earning money in Columbus, Ohio. He returned to Trochenbrod and brought his wife and children back to Columbus just before World War I broke out. He visited Trochenbrod again, with his wife, in 1934. He wrote his memoir in 1939, but only printed it as a booklet fifteen years later. David died in 1960, Miriam eight years after him. David and Miriam Shwartz left behind what is today a large family of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and other relatives.

Pinkas Hekehilot
(
Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities from their Founding until Just after the Holocaust and Second World War
)
, Volume 5, Volyn and Polesia
. By Shmuel Spektor; published in Hebrew by Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, 1990, Jerusalem, Israel. I was guided to this volume and additional materials in 2009 by Michlean Amir, reference archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Russia to New York
. By Jeanne Glass Kokol. Jeanne Kokol was born in Trochenbrod in 1913 as Shaindeleh Ruchel Gluz. She came to the United States in 1921. She wrote this memoir for her family in about 2002, and died in Florida in 2007. Thomas C. Spear gave me this memoir in 2008, after obtaining it from Irving Kokol, Jeanne’s son. Thomas’s and Irving’s great-great-grandfathers were brothers.

Shmilike Drossner’s Trachenbrod
. An oral history by Shmilike Drossner, primarily but not only about how Jewish holidays were observed in Trochenbrod before World War I; told to and transcribed by Samuel Sokolow in the 1970s. In 2008, Burt and Ellen Singerman and Robbie Ross Tisch separately gave me copies of this oral history.

Sofievka
(
Trochenbrod
). An article originally written in Hebrew and submitted to the Yad Vashem (Shoah memorial) archives in Jerusalem by Gad Rosenblatt (see
Esh Achazah BaYa’ar—A Forest Ablaze
, above). Marvin Perlman (see
Ani Maamin
:
Eidut V’Hagot—I Believe
:
Testimony and Meditations
, above) gave me an English translation of the article in 1998.

Trochenbrod (Sofiyevka)
. An article by Eliezer Barkai (Burak) published in Hebrew in the journal
Yalkut Volyn
, (“Anthology of Volyn”) Issue #1; published by Archion Volyn B’Eretz-Yisrael (Volyn Archives in Palestine) and Irgun Yotzei Volyn B’Eretz Yisrael (Organization of Emigrés from Volyn in Palestine), Tel Aviv, April 1945. This article can be read in Hebrew or English on the Bet TAL Web site,
http://bet-tal.com
. The article was first brought to my attention in 1999 by Dr. Yale J. Reisner, working for the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation in Warsaw.

Trochenbrod
:
The Life and Death of a Shtetl in the Ukraine
. By Morton L. Kessler; a thesis paper submitted for an M.A. degree to the Graduate School of John Carroll University, Cleveland, 1972. Morton Kessler was the son of an immigrant from Trochenbrod; his paper was based in part on a large number of interviews with immigrants from Trochenbrod living in the United States.

Other sources that I drew upon for this book include:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want first to thank Jessica Case, my editor at Pegasus Books. Jessica happily took me and my manuscript under her wing and devoted untold hours skillfully helping refine the manuscript and bringing the book to the widest possible English readership. She has been a wonderful partner from whom I’ve learned a great deal, and has been a pleasure to work with.

Another person who has been instrumental in helping me bring the story of Trochenbrod to life is my literary agent, Jonah Straus. Jonah immediately understood what this book was and could be, was enthusiastic about it, and worked hard to find the right publisher and an international readership. He, too, has been a pleasure to work with.

I want also to thank Michael Millman, Senior Editor, Praeger Publishing, and all the others at Praeger who considered and encouraged this book.

It’s amazing—and wonderful—how many people gave of themselves for this project. It’s only because they gladly shared so much so freely that I was able to put this book together, and help Trochenbrod live on beyond our lifetimes. I can’t thank them enough.

In Israel there was:

Michal Barry, who helped with Hebrew-to-English translation during interviews with Shmulik Potash;

Chaim and Mira Binnenbaum, who helped coordinate with Israeli interview subjects;

Joseph Blau, who helped with research and Hebrew-to-English translation;

Yehuda and Uri Dotan, who provided key video and photographic material;

Tuvia Drori, who shared his Trochenbrod stories over the course of many years;

Moshe Goler, who provided information about the Argentine Trochenbrod-Lozisht community;

Sarit Harpaz, who helped coordinate with Israeli interview subjects;

Henia Katzir, who shared her family’s Trochenbrod stories and photos and provided information on the early days of the Israeli Trochenbrod-Lozisht community and the postwar activities of her father, Eliezer (Burak) Barkai;

Moti Litvak, who helped coordinate with Israeli interview subjects;

Shmuel Potash, who shared his stories of Trochenbrod and his journey from Poland to Israel;

Noam Rosenblatt, who provided translation and liaison help concerning Gad Rosenblatt’s partisan years;

Nachman Rotenberg, who shared his Trochenbrod stories, knowledge, and photos;

Itai Tamir, of Transfax Film Productions, who shot and made available important footage from Israel, Ukraine, and the United States;

Hana Tziporen, who shared her stories and photos of Trochenbrod and her journey from Poland to Israel; and