The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod (25 page)

TOP:
Trochenbrod’s post office, late 1930s. Originally built as a house, a section of the roof (above the postman, standing) could be opened to the sky for the
Sukkot
holiday, the Feast of Tabernacles. Polish postmistress Janina Lubinski is standing in the doorway. She hid Jews in the attic during the murders in 1942. Ellie Potash, Basia-Ruchel’s father, is standing on the steps of a house he owns next door that serves as his leather workshop.
Photo provided by Ryszard Lubinski
.
BOTTOM:
The “Talmud Torah,” Jewish day school, in Trochenbrod in 1935. Don’t overlook the two girls who must have sneaked inside while the boys and teachers were preparing for the photograph, and peak through the window adding a note of cheerfulness to the otherwise solemn portrait. Many people in both Israel and the United States provided copies of this photograph, and it also appears in
Hailan V’shoreshav
(
The Tree and Its Roots: The History of T.L., Sofiyovka-Ignatovka
), the Trochenbrod-Lozisht memorial book published by the Israeli Bet-Tal organization in 1988.

TOP:
A built-in cooking and heating system of the type Trochenbrod craftsmen built for villagers in the region. Heat passed through clay ducts to other rooms of the house.
Photo by the author
.
BOTTOM:
A procession of Polish Catholics passing through Trochenbrod on their way to the church built for them by Prince Janush Radziwill. Notice the poles set up for telegraph and telephone service.
Photo by Janina Lubinki; provided by Ryszard Lubinski
.

TOP LEFT:
YomTov (Yonteleh) Beider at work as a Jewish pioneer in Palestine, 1933. He had arrived from Trochenbrod the year before, and was one of many Trochenbrod pioneers in Palestine in the 1930s. Like many of his friends he discarded his “diaspora name” and adopted a Hebrew name, Chagai Bendavid.
TOP RIGHT:
The new automobile of the Silno District Administration, late 1930s. This auto would visit Trochenbrod from time to time, and some claim that it was in part to facilitate those visits that the decision was made to pave Trochenbrod’s street.
Photo by Janina Lubinki; provided by Ryszard Lubinski
.
BOTTOM:
A Trochenbrod funeral in the mid 1930s. Rabbi Moshe Hirsch Roitenberg can be seen near the upper left edge of the photo. Photo copied from the book,
Hailan V’shoreshav
(
The Tree and Its Roots: The History of T.L., Sofiyovka-Ignatovka
), the Trochenbrod-Lozisht memorial book, and appears here courtesy of the Israeli Bet-Tal organization.

TOP:
Girls performing at a Zionist summer camp in Trochenbrod in 1939. Did any of them survive the slaughter three years later?
Photo by Janina Lubinki; provided by Ryszard Lubinski
.
BOTTOM:
Ribbon-cutting ceremony in 1939 for the first small section of Trochenbrod’s street that was paved. Notice the wooden structures protecting newly planted saplings on the right and left sides.
Photo by Janina Lubinki; provided by Ryszard Lubinski
.

ABOVE:
1939. Young Jewish men and women from Zionist organizations all over East Europe made their way to this shelter, the “Internat,” in Vilna (Vilnius) on their way to settle in Palestine. About 200,000 refugees are said to have passed through here.
Photo provided by Hana Tziporen
.
OPPOSITE:
Trochenbrod’s street, 1939. Notice the man standing in the drainage ditch near the upper right edge of the photo. Notice also the bollards on the sides of the street to keep passing wagons away from the ditches, and horse-drawn wagon traffic in the distance in line with the wagon tracks in the upper left. The girl in the foreground is Basia-Ruchel Potash. Less than three years after this photo was taken she hid with her family in the forest during the Nazi slaughters, and was one the few Trochenbrod survivors. But here Basia-Ruchel stands shyly next to her playmate, Ryszard Lubinski, son of the Polish postmistress.
Photo by Janina Lubinski, the postmistress; provided by Ryszard Lubinski
.