Remember Us

by Vic Shayne

  The story I have to tell is true, but I am leaving out the great many details and occurrences that include gruesomeness and the depths of dehumanization that I, my family, my friends, and my fellow Jews suffered. I shall not dwell on the hell I witnessed in Mauthausen concentration camp. I want to spare you the ghastly details of what went on. Photographs, films, and testimonies of survivors, victims, and soldiers abound to offer you some idea of the ugliness of what transpired during the Holocaust years. Instead, I am choosing to make this book a commemoration. I want to remember the goodness from which I came. I am recalling the special people who shaped my life and the lives of others. Without such a memory, there is nothing with which to compare the extent of the loss and tragedy.

  In the pages to follow, I remember my wonderful childhood, my loving family, my nurturing shtetl, and everything else I had to leave behind—everything else that was taken from me. I remember a world that no longer exists—the world of the shtetl—so that you can understand the calamity of cultural extinction. But most of all, I remember the people who made our shtetl civilization unique and prosperous. We must think of the value of human lives—real people with real faces. They had voices, sang songs, danced, worked hard, laughed, prayed to God, basked in the sun, performed in theaters, worked the farms, ran aimlessly in open fields, and worried about the safety and welfare of their children. I remember what is all gone. I alone, as a survivor, am left to remember.

  To remember is to be faithful to the teachings on which I was brought up. We remember to pay tribute, to honor, to learn, and to share with others. We light the candles for Shabbos and Chanukah to remember our connection to God and to one another. Each year we light a Yahrzeit candle to remember our loved ones who died. We remember to validate the experiences of others. When I stand in my synagogue and say kaddish for my mother, my father, my sisters, my grandparents, my uncles and aunts, my cousins, and for those who died beside me in the concentration camps, I am simply remembering and honoring them. There in the synagogue, I am transported to another time and place. I cannot forget them; I don’t want the world to forget them. I want to see their faces and hold them close. I want to remember, even if it forever robs me of my sanity and sentences me to unexpected visions and sleepless nights. I must remember because I am a part of it all.

  My name is Martin Small, and I am a Holocaust survivor.

  My Little Shtetl, Maitchet

  Once I was a Yeshiva bocher, a religious scholar, in a little town—a shtetl—called Molczadz, in Poland, before World War II. Molczadz was a miasteczko, a small city, surrounded by scores of little villages nestled along rivers running beside thick forests, winding in and out of the Russian borderlands. The nearest seat of government was in Nowogrudek, a town that would later gain a reputation as a very different kind of village—one where Jewish partisans hid from Nazis and their collaborators and lived as a subculture of people with death at their heels. These people were to become the last vestiges of Jewish life along the Polish–Soviet border. But this was to come later.

  Molczadz, which would change hands from the Russians to the Poles a few years after my birth—following World War I—had an electric power station, a tannery, a pitch factory, and mills. We weren’t by any means modernized when I grew up in the 1920s. We had no motorized traffic, and the only ones with a telephone were the police, the postal worker, and the richest merchant in town, a man named Mr. Lieberman. There was no electricity available to the homes, and to get around we would either walk or take a horse-drawn wagon from here to there. Venturing out of town was a rare and big adventure. Automobiles were as foreign to us as asphalt roads, airplanes, or indoor plumbing. Without the amenities that, today, are so familiar to modern people, to survive in our lost world we had to know every one of our neighbors and to rely on them. As a small town, this mutual dependence was taken in stride, because generations before us discovered how to work hand-in-hand to meet life’s basic needs. This guy would help you load your wagon and that guy would take your flour to the mill for you. Cooperation wasn’t a luxury.

  Politics shaped our part of the world more than any other area on the continent. The maps of Eastern Europe were redrawn every now and again so that once we were Russian and now we were Polish. Over the past five hundred or six hundred years, Molczadz had seen its share of tyrants, monarchs, feudal lords, and communist bureaucrats. But despite who was in charge, we were always relatively poor—not really wanting, just poor. To be a Jew in this region was to be a second-class citizen whose future was always uncertain and whose safety was never secure. We had every disadvantage of our Gentile Polish neighbors, and then some.

  Molczadz is a Russian word that means “to keep quiet.” I don’t know whether the town founders wanted to enjoy peace and quiet in this corner of the world or whether it already was quiet and they wanted to keep it that way. Historically speaking, Molczadz didn’t exactly enjoy much quiet, though. Russians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Slavic tribes, Poles, and Tartars fought over the region for reasons that are hard to understand. All of these conquering people left a part of themselves behind in buildings, languages, fortresses, and customs. Left standing were the tall pine trees lining the forests that drew health-seeking visitors from all around and, of course, the Jews. The area was never without its Jews.

  How did I come to Molczadz? I was born there along with the rest of the people in my family. I was born into a world that was the last of its kind: a world that would become as extinct as the dinosaur. Our world was the world of the shtetl, where time stood still and life was all about people, family, relationships, and learning.

  I come from the seat of Yiddish civilization, where life was guided by Jewish teachings and customs. I come from a place and time where you lived life to the fullest, worked very hard, but always made a point to stop and drink in the richness of family life. Those who are old enough to remember shtetl life, before the Holocaust, frequently use the word “rich” to describe their culture. For people without money, means, connections, or power, we were the richest people on earth.

  I didn’t come from a big town. A census from the mid-1800s says that Molczadz had only 350 people or so. Fifty years later, there were more than 1,700 residents, most of whom were Jews. By the time I was born, in 1916, there were a few more. It was a place of little industrial action but plenty of very busy people. By today’s standards, Molczadz was tiny.

  We Jews called our town by its Yiddish name, Maitchet. This is the name I wish to remember in connection with my childhood and my family. Molczadz was a town; Maitchet was my home. I guess the Jews a few hundred years before us figured that if our government was bent on forcing us into poverty, discrimination, and oppression, the least we could do was give our town our own name. Molczadz was a Polish (sometimes Russian) village, but Maitchet was our own little shtetl of Jews trying to live according to the law of the Torah and in harmony with our Christian neighbors and friends. We were always fighting a losing battle in this respect. In the years to come, we were all to learn the difference between tolerance and acceptance. For the time being, we Jews were tolerated by our Christian neighbors—who secretly despised our way of life, our religion, our schools, our customs, and our language.

  Although we lived in a Christian country, like many other shtetl dwellers in Poland, half the people of Maitchet were Jewish. But if you looked down at us all from heaven, you’d hardly see the differences. All you would see was a community of men, women, and children who scurried about doing this and that—all the things that had to be accomplished from sunup to sundown—plowing fields, chopping wood, making deliveries, repairing roofs, feeding the chickens, shoeing horses, chasing geese, building coffins, sewing clothes, and planting seeds for the future. We were all children of God, even though it wasn’t always clear that we shared the same God; the Poles had their churches and we had our synagogues.

  But on the street we were neighbors, friends. This is the way it had been for centuries—people just trying to live in
peace and quiet, to eke out a livelihood, raise a family, and breathe the fresh air right up until it froze in the Siberian winter wind.

  Maitchet was familiar, colorful, vibrant, and the center of my life. That’s how I remember it. It was home. This is how I want to remember Maitchet. My little shtetl always lives with me, as do the warm, expression-filled faces of my family. This warmth is suspended in time. My Maitchet meant green, warm summers, rainy springs, snowy winters, rich earth for farming, and thick, shadowy forests.

  Once winter set in, Maitchet was cloaked in white until April, or later. The patchy, rutted ice on roads and the blanket of snow and sheets of ice in gutters, in fields, and on the forest floor would melt only in the spring. In the meantime, if you didn’t slip and fall on your tuchus just trying to cross the street, then maybe you were a little more blessed by God.

  Even large parts of our river—the Molczadaka—froze in the winter. The river encircled our village, supplying us with a neverending source of water to meet all of our needs. When it grew cold and the dewy clouds hung low enough to touch the earth, the river turned into a plane of glass that, for months on end, reflected the gray-white sky.

  As children, on milder winter days, we’d play on the Molczadaka with makeshift sleds, daring to venture further and further, pushing our luck against the inevitable soft spot that might cave through at any minute. Children love to live on the edge. There were times when fate took the upper hand and a boy from the village plunged into the icy water, sending a gang of screaming, excited children running at full speed back into the shtetl, crying for help. In moments, a torrent of people came running to the Molczadaka, sliding down the banks and working furiously to retrieve the boy from the water. Jews and Gentiles formed a human chain with outstretched hands and farming tools. Mothers would huddle together holding blankets, anxiously waiting for the shivering boy to be pulled from the river. But in the end these things could be tragic, resulting in the death of the boy and a little town lost for days in grief. Prayers were said the next day in church and in the synagogue. Our differences melted in our shared sorrow.

  The Molczadaka River in the winter gave us reprieve in the summer, as a number of people came out to scrape up buckets full of ice. The ice was collected for storage in basements and cellars to be used well into the warmer months. I remember how year after year my father, Shlomo Chaim Shmulewicz, would go to the marketplace and enter the Wolinsky’s seltzer store, where steel containers filled with ice sat in the basement. He’d buy as much ice as we could carry home to make ice cream. As my father added salt, chocolate, nuts, and other ingredients, I helped churn the ice cream machine over and over until my arm went numb. But the end result was well worth the effort. We sold the ice cream as summer refreshment and made a few cents here and there.

  In late spring and early summer, our little river thawed and began to roll along at a lazy pace. Though it wasn’t too deep, there was a steady current from the place where it flowed into Maitchet until it reached a small dam at the other end of town. This upstream dam was erected to increase water pressure and move the great wheels of two mills, where grain was turned into flour. The mills were owned by a Jewish family named Boretsky, who inherited them from their forefathers. Maitchet’s mills enabled farmers to bring wagonloads of wheat, corn, or barley and have it crushed into a fine powder for baking, stored away for future use, or sold on market day. The Boretskys also had an oil press so that linseed oil could be squeezed out of flaxseeds.

  I am reminded of the times I used to go out into my family’s fields, chop down corn or wheat, load it into the back of our wagon, and haul it off to our great big barn. It still makes me smile to picture myself sitting on our wagon, driving our horse as my Zayde—my grandfather, Avraham Shmulewicz—was right there with me, always walking a few paces behind my wagon to catch the corn that fell onto the ground. “Nothing should be wasted,” he used to say. While I bounced around on the long and bumpy ride, Zayde trudged along, bending over, picking up the corn, and throwing it back onto the wagon. When we reached the barn, I went to work unloading the whole wagon before bringing the corn and wheat inside. We had a technique for knocking off the grain of the wheat from the rest of the plant before sweeping it into a big pile. From the pile, we’d take a large shovel and toss the grain several feet away so that it would separate from the lighter plant fibers that fell to the floor. We’d collect the edible parts of our harvest, let them dry, put them back onto the wagon, and head off to Moshe Aaron Boretsky’s flour mill. Inside the mill was a series of large, flat stones used for crushing grain into flour, employing the current of the river to power the mill. When the grain was pulverized, we poured it into our sacks and took it away to be made into the best bread, bagels, rolls, and cakes.

  The Molczadaka River not only drove the mills but was our “river of life” in other ways as well. It gave us water when we were thirsty, and on its muddy banks we washed away our sins for Rosh Hashanah, our New Year. On Rosh Hashanah, we made quite the spectacle. In hordes we made our way to the river—mothers, fathers, grandparents, and children of all ages. While the adults stood facing the water, singing, praying, holding their open palms to the sky, and pulling their pockets inside out to empty them before God, the children ran around screaming and playing. After hours of this pilgrimage to the river and the outpouring of faith, hope, and expressions of love for God, the Jews of Maitchet trekked back home and returned the river to its peaceful solitude.

  For the children of Maitchet, the river was often a place to have fun or to get into trouble. On the hottest of days, with a running start, we jumped into the water and splashed around. The best swimmer in town was a boy named Moishe Volkomirsky who never lost a race. He was strong and fast and loved to show off as he dove in the water and swam along with no effort while the others tried, but failed, to keep up. If someone came into town and wanted to swim, Moishe would end up challenging him to a race. In all the excitement, while the rest of us cupped our hands over our mouths and screamed words of encouragement for our local hero, Moishe pulled far into the lead. He always came out ahead and won the race.

  All the mothers and daughters in Maitchet came to the Molczadaka to do their laundry, rubbing and twisting the family’s clothing with handmade soap against big, flat rocks and wooden scrub boards. I can still see my mother and my two little sisters washing our clothes and losing themselves in conversation with other mothers and daughters along the Molczadaka. And if fire ever broke out, a procession formed from the river to the blaze in a bucket brigade. We had a squeaky old water pump in the middle of town, but the river provided more water for less effort.

  Maitchet was paradise and it was not paradise. For certain, our life in Maitchet was not “the easy life.” Like anywhere else in Eastern Europe, as far as people were concerned, there were good and bad. But all had their superstitions and prejudices, the Polish Gentiles and Jews alike. We had to be careful to avoid the evil eye and never tempt the hand of God. But our fears of the Gentiles were far more justified. History had shown this time and time again. We knew that we had to be wary of the Poles and their thousand-year-old fear of the Jew as the embodiment of evil. Even though we worked and played and mingled together—even though half of Maitchet was Jewish—the Gentiles could not escape from a long tradition of thinking of us as Christ-killers and God murderers. They believed urban legends that warned how the Jews used the blood of Christian children as an ingredient in our matzohs for Passover, or how we were all evil money handlers. Living side by side for generations, watching our practices, sitting in our homes, helping us bake matzohs, and peeking in the windows of our shuls was still not enough to keep our neighbors from suspecting that secrets were being kept from them. Ignorance is a dangerous cancer, as we would some day find out. Why did our neighbors fear us? We were different; they didn’t understand our customs; we spoke languages they didn’t know; and their Church couldn’t control us. Jews were businesspeople, merchants, and, for the most part, educated.
These assets were held against us with a quiet, brewing contempt. We lived side by side, but we were strangers in many respects. There was an invisible wall that we had to ignore. What choice did we have?

  So how can I remember my town as a paradise? If you had your eyes open you couldn’t miss the beauty in life’s simplicity. I spent my childhood in this place that was a world away from today’s modern conveniences. I was blessed enough to grow up with gently rolling hills, aromatic pine trees that moaned as they reached to the sky, the warmth of my mother’s kitchen, loving parents, and extended family.

  And then there was the silence of Maitchet, heaven-made for contemplation. People today talk about getting back to nature. I was lucky enough to be immersed in the wonders of nature, from the Molczadaka River to the green forest and from the flower-filled fields to wide-open meadows. We were country people who appreciated a simple life. In my Maitchet, as I close my eyes, the spring snow recedes into the ground and scurries down the gutters, and God reveals a canvas of colors that no artist could duplicate. Flowers of pink, yellow, and lavender decorated the edges of our shtetl from grassy rooftops, across hills, and on to the horizon. I remember how, suddenly, the breeze would pick up and send waves through the fields, making the flowers dance and sway. Up from the black, rich earth of our farmlands would peek green buds and sprouts that would turn into fields of golden wheat and corn. Maitchet transformed itself like the weather, from silent summer nights to the clicking of leaves on breezy autumn days.