[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The kitchen was dominatedby a black potbellied stove that sat in the middle like a headless darkBuddha.The dining room boasted a white-brick wall oven that allowed mybabba (my maternal grandmother) to prepare cholnt over the weekend.Cholnt was East European manna: a thick stew made of pieces of beef,potatoes, onions, carrots, beans, and a host of spices mixed together in athick pot and cooked overnight.The house also had an attic where babbaslept and a cellar where she stored the bottles of pickles and preserves thatshe prepared during summer months.We also enjoyed indoor plumbing,a luxury seldom found in Jewish homes.My father, who, along with mymother, was a teacher by profession and who, in my childish mind coulddo almost anything had built the washroom, complete with a pull-chainfor the overhead water box.That room lifted our family well above thestation of our neighbors.To my surprise, although most were abandoned, we found a number ofsuch chaates still standing in what once was the Jewish quarter.I was nowfaced with the moment of truth I had often contemplated my reaction toan encounter with a close and personal object of my childhood.Sightingthe Bialystok stotzeiger was exciting but had brought on no deep emotionalresponse.However, seeing the row of old dilapidated wooden houses, anyone of which could have doubled for the house I was born in, suddenlybrought forward unexpected waves of nostalgia that were as frightening asthey were welcome.I experienced an immediate rush of disparate childhoodmemories the youthful faces of my parents; my mother s white satin blousethat she sometimes wore to work; my babba s black woolen shawl, and howshe placed it over her shoulders on the Sabbath; the outline of our kitchencabinet; the voices of my friends some of whom I didn t know that Iremembered shouting out my name in Yiddish and calling me to comeoutside to play all these came at me at once, causing gooseflesh alongmy spine and for the first time in many, many years bringing tears tomy eyes.A similar effect, perhaps in combination with the wooden relicsfrom the past, came from seeing the cobblestones beneath my feet preciselyas I had remembered them on Fastowska Street where we lived.If I hadany remaining doubts that I was again standing in the neighborhood ofmy childhood, they were completely dispelled by a nearby structure thatwas amazingly similar to the little Beth Midrash synagogue that had been at P1: OTA/XYZ P2: ABCc18 JWBT139-Melamed June 25, 2009 13:14 Printer Name: Courier Westford176 Messenger from the Futuresthe foot of our block.The plaque on its wall confirmed that it was indeedthe former Piaskower Synagogue.Built in 1890, it had survived the decadesalmost intact.Its renovated structure now serves as offices for a constructionfirm and for the Zamenhof Esperanto Society.The entire episode was forme an emotional watershed.In our search for the area where the Great Synagogue of Bialystokonce stood, we were directed to the wall of a small building, where aplaque memorialized the victims who died when this illustrious house ofworship was burned.Designed in 1908 by a renowned architect, ShlomeJakow Rabinowicz, the Great Synagogue s dome exhibited a Byzantine-Muslim influence and was famous throughout Europe.In this synagogue,open only on Saturdays and holidays, women prayed together with men,although in separate halls.Between World Wars I and II, national holidayswere celebrated there and the services were attended by such authorities asthe mayor and the governor of the region.15 I was suddenly confronted by aflashback of tragic proportions.The Nazis recaptured Bialystok on June 27,1941.Six days later, to celebrate their victory, German soldiers, at gunpoint,forced 800 Jews, mostly women and children from the neighborhood, intothe Great Synagogue.They locked the doors and then set the structure onfire.Both of my grandmothers and my only aunt, Bobble, were among thosewho burned to death.How was it determined, I wondered, that I shouldescape their fate?There is another visible commemoration of the Great Synagogue ofBialystok.On the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, a monu-ment was erected in its honor in a small square near its original location.The monument corrects some of the errors contained in the original plaqueand exhibits the only remaining part of the structure: the iron beams thatonce supported its magnificent dome.In another flashback, my father s de-termined face appeared as he lectured me about the importance of holdingtrue to one s principles.That incident happened just after the outbreak ofthe war.The mayor of Bialystok asked the synagogue s rabbi, Dr.GedaliRozenman, for permission to hold a City Council meeting there because theCity Hall had been destroyed by bombs.The rabbi agreed but requestedthat all City Council members wear a yarmulke.The mayor readily agreed;council members would surely respect the nature of such a request.Well,not everyone.My father, one of the few Jewish representatives to the Bia-lystok City Council, was an ardent Bundist.Although steeped in the Talmud,my father and the legions of his fellow Bundistn had found religion too re-strictive in their battle for equality and social justice for Jews.Their godwas the Jewish worker.My father refused the rabbi s request because thewearing of a yarmulke might compromise his oath to the Bund.It was amatter of principle. P1: OTA/XYZ P2: ABCc18 JWBT139-Melamed June 25, 2009 13:14 Printer Name: Courier WestfordThere Are No Jews in Bialystok 177We visited the memorial to the leaders and fighters of the BialystokGhetto Uprising.It was led by Mordechai Tenenbaum, one of the organizersof the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters.Upon his arrival in Bialystok in November1942, Tenenbaum, convinced that the Germans meant to murder them all,advanced this credo: Let us fall as heroes, and though we die, yet we shalllive. As a youngster, I first heard those words in conversations around ourkitchen table.The motto unified the various underground factions, whothen formed the Bialystok Organization of Jewish Self-Defense.The neworganization issued the following manifesto: Don t be lambs for slaughter!Fight for your life to the last breath.Remember the example and traditionof numerous generations of Jewish fighters, martyrs, thinkers and builders,pioneers, and creators.Come out to the streets and fight.On Sunday night, August 15, 1943, the call was answered.It is a storyI know well.The ghetto fighters attacked three rings of German soldiersand police surrounding the ghetto.Two days later, Bialystok was a cityunder siege.The Bialystoker Self-Defense Organization, with more than200 armed Jewish fighters, were holding the ghetto hostage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl przylepto3.keep.pl
.The kitchen was dominatedby a black potbellied stove that sat in the middle like a headless darkBuddha.The dining room boasted a white-brick wall oven that allowed mybabba (my maternal grandmother) to prepare cholnt over the weekend.Cholnt was East European manna: a thick stew made of pieces of beef,potatoes, onions, carrots, beans, and a host of spices mixed together in athick pot and cooked overnight.The house also had an attic where babbaslept and a cellar where she stored the bottles of pickles and preserves thatshe prepared during summer months.We also enjoyed indoor plumbing,a luxury seldom found in Jewish homes.My father, who, along with mymother, was a teacher by profession and who, in my childish mind coulddo almost anything had built the washroom, complete with a pull-chainfor the overhead water box.That room lifted our family well above thestation of our neighbors.To my surprise, although most were abandoned, we found a number ofsuch chaates still standing in what once was the Jewish quarter.I was nowfaced with the moment of truth I had often contemplated my reaction toan encounter with a close and personal object of my childhood.Sightingthe Bialystok stotzeiger was exciting but had brought on no deep emotionalresponse.However, seeing the row of old dilapidated wooden houses, anyone of which could have doubled for the house I was born in, suddenlybrought forward unexpected waves of nostalgia that were as frightening asthey were welcome.I experienced an immediate rush of disparate childhoodmemories the youthful faces of my parents; my mother s white satin blousethat she sometimes wore to work; my babba s black woolen shawl, and howshe placed it over her shoulders on the Sabbath; the outline of our kitchencabinet; the voices of my friends some of whom I didn t know that Iremembered shouting out my name in Yiddish and calling me to comeoutside to play all these came at me at once, causing gooseflesh alongmy spine and for the first time in many, many years bringing tears tomy eyes.A similar effect, perhaps in combination with the wooden relicsfrom the past, came from seeing the cobblestones beneath my feet preciselyas I had remembered them on Fastowska Street where we lived.If I hadany remaining doubts that I was again standing in the neighborhood ofmy childhood, they were completely dispelled by a nearby structure thatwas amazingly similar to the little Beth Midrash synagogue that had been at P1: OTA/XYZ P2: ABCc18 JWBT139-Melamed June 25, 2009 13:14 Printer Name: Courier Westford176 Messenger from the Futuresthe foot of our block.The plaque on its wall confirmed that it was indeedthe former Piaskower Synagogue.Built in 1890, it had survived the decadesalmost intact.Its renovated structure now serves as offices for a constructionfirm and for the Zamenhof Esperanto Society.The entire episode was forme an emotional watershed.In our search for the area where the Great Synagogue of Bialystokonce stood, we were directed to the wall of a small building, where aplaque memorialized the victims who died when this illustrious house ofworship was burned.Designed in 1908 by a renowned architect, ShlomeJakow Rabinowicz, the Great Synagogue s dome exhibited a Byzantine-Muslim influence and was famous throughout Europe.In this synagogue,open only on Saturdays and holidays, women prayed together with men,although in separate halls.Between World Wars I and II, national holidayswere celebrated there and the services were attended by such authorities asthe mayor and the governor of the region.15 I was suddenly confronted by aflashback of tragic proportions.The Nazis recaptured Bialystok on June 27,1941.Six days later, to celebrate their victory, German soldiers, at gunpoint,forced 800 Jews, mostly women and children from the neighborhood, intothe Great Synagogue.They locked the doors and then set the structure onfire.Both of my grandmothers and my only aunt, Bobble, were among thosewho burned to death.How was it determined, I wondered, that I shouldescape their fate?There is another visible commemoration of the Great Synagogue ofBialystok.On the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, a monu-ment was erected in its honor in a small square near its original location.The monument corrects some of the errors contained in the original plaqueand exhibits the only remaining part of the structure: the iron beams thatonce supported its magnificent dome.In another flashback, my father s de-termined face appeared as he lectured me about the importance of holdingtrue to one s principles.That incident happened just after the outbreak ofthe war.The mayor of Bialystok asked the synagogue s rabbi, Dr.GedaliRozenman, for permission to hold a City Council meeting there because theCity Hall had been destroyed by bombs.The rabbi agreed but requestedthat all City Council members wear a yarmulke.The mayor readily agreed;council members would surely respect the nature of such a request.Well,not everyone.My father, one of the few Jewish representatives to the Bia-lystok City Council, was an ardent Bundist.Although steeped in the Talmud,my father and the legions of his fellow Bundistn had found religion too re-strictive in their battle for equality and social justice for Jews.Their godwas the Jewish worker.My father refused the rabbi s request because thewearing of a yarmulke might compromise his oath to the Bund.It was amatter of principle. P1: OTA/XYZ P2: ABCc18 JWBT139-Melamed June 25, 2009 13:14 Printer Name: Courier WestfordThere Are No Jews in Bialystok 177We visited the memorial to the leaders and fighters of the BialystokGhetto Uprising.It was led by Mordechai Tenenbaum, one of the organizersof the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters.Upon his arrival in Bialystok in November1942, Tenenbaum, convinced that the Germans meant to murder them all,advanced this credo: Let us fall as heroes, and though we die, yet we shalllive. As a youngster, I first heard those words in conversations around ourkitchen table.The motto unified the various underground factions, whothen formed the Bialystok Organization of Jewish Self-Defense.The neworganization issued the following manifesto: Don t be lambs for slaughter!Fight for your life to the last breath.Remember the example and traditionof numerous generations of Jewish fighters, martyrs, thinkers and builders,pioneers, and creators.Come out to the streets and fight.On Sunday night, August 15, 1943, the call was answered.It is a storyI know well.The ghetto fighters attacked three rings of German soldiersand police surrounding the ghetto.Two days later, Bialystok was a cityunder siege.The Bialystoker Self-Defense Organization, with more than200 armed Jewish fighters, were holding the ghetto hostage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
