My father had a fuel distribution centre with an exclusive contract to supply fuel to the Polish Army in the area. His was the only depot in the district; it had a tall petrol pump out front, which I still remember. It was just a few doors from my grandparents’ grocery store. It wasn’t long before my mother ran the place and served the customers. My father stayed out of sight, as the soldiers didn’t take kindly to being served by a Jew. Being served by a woman probably amused them. His father Moshe similarly was never seen in his grocery store as the anti-Semitism of the town would not tolerate non-Jewish customers being served by a Jew. Instead, like Yitzchak, he stayed in the room behind the store studying his texts.
My mother with me, 1934
I was born in 1934, yet have only brief early memories of my father and my time in Bielsk Podlaski in Poland. I am told my father was a quiet, unassuming man. My most distinct memory is of sitting on his shoulders going to shul (synagogue) on Shabbat (Saturday). Of my paternal grandparents I also remember little. Their general store was only a few doors away. There they sold loose sugar, salt and pickles. I still have memories of eating those pickles straight from the barrel.
While in Bielsk Podlaski, the rabbi would come to teach Chaya Jewish studies and Tanach, for she would have been ten when I was five and already a schoolgirl. I remember sitting under the table tickling her feet and being the annoying younger brother. Chaya would play with the older children, as I was of little interest to her. She knew it was no use complaining to mum about my annoying behaviour, for as she used to later say, ‘In Mum’s eyes there was G-d, and then there was you.’ Even back then I could do no wrong in my mother’s eyes.
Of the town I remember little, but I know we were not allowed out of the house on Sundays because the priest’s church services were viciously anti-Semitic. The main church was directly opposite my grandparents’ and my father’s shop, and we would have to pull down our shutters during the service, otherwise the shops might have been the first targets for the fired-up hooligans leaving church. There was open anti-Semitism in the morning, but then the shutters were lifted and business took place as usual in the afternoon when the Poles returned carrying produce to the market to sell to the Jews.
One of the churches on Mickiewicza Street where we had our home and business
As I write this I realise I don’t have a lot to tell you of those years of my early childhood. As I search my sack of stones for those memories I excuse myself, for it was nearly eighty years ago, and who can remember back so far? But yet, that isn’t how memories work, for there are those painful moments I have revisited so often they could have occurred yesterday. My early childhood years in Poland were happy times but lacking specifics, because happiness may well simply mean being content and safe and living a normal life. I cannot recall my bedroom, my toys or any children I played with. Where were my uncles and aunts and cousins whom I would have seen so frequently? Where are their smiles and laughter, hugs and kisses, treats and gifts, and love? Why don’t I recall our Shabbat table? Yet in my heart, all of these existed.
I believe I have failed to recall the details of my early years because my happiness was then crushed by the overwhelming load I carried during the following years. A blissful childhood, a loving family … such memories are unable to compete with those linked with terror and pain. Stones reduced to gravel, to be washed away by time.
7
The foundation stones of history are dates. Perhaps in the history of Europe in the twentieth century, none is more memorable than 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began.
Do I recall this day? Do I remember Germans invading Bielsk Podlaski? We were told that within eight days the German troops had taken the capital city, Warsaw, and so Poland had fallen. I was only five-and-a-half years old and the day was, in my memory, like any other day.
Map of the German invasion of Poland 1939
There is only one day I remember from that time; I was standing on the street, near our petrol pump, watching an endless row of trucks rumbling past. They were military, loaded with soldiers – so many that I still remember being stunned by this parade of might. Yet, there was no fear in my memory, for it seemed this was something not to be missed, but also not to be afraid of. It was the Russian invasion of Poland I was witnessing.
If dates are the foundation history is built on, then the façade is the subsequent skimming over of detail. The fall of Poland is often considered a straightforward event, but it was more complex. Two weeks after the Germans invaded Poland from the west, the Russians invaded from the east. Being allies, they agreed on the division of Poland with Germany retaining the west, while the east, nearest Lithuania and including Bielsk Podlaski, came under Russian rule.
The part of Poland adjoining Germany, including Warsaw, saw the rapid introduction of the German mode of dealing with its Jewish citizens: yellow badges, Jewish laws, and the construction of the Warsaw ghetto within months. It is no wonder that during the chaos of those early weeks thousands of Jews fled German-occupied Poland into the Soviet-occupied area. Bielsk Podlaski grew to having over 6000 Jews, with all these refugees from the German-occupied part of Poland. Many continued to travel further east into Russia, where the Russians, allies of the Germans, saw them as enemy aliens or traitors, and so many of these early refugees disappeared, either killed when found, or sent to work in camps in Siberia, where most them perished.
We were not fearful when the trucks rolled in. The Russians were the new rulers and, while they had their own idiosyncrasies, such as the Communist State, they were not any more overtly anti-Semitic than they had been when they had previously ruled Poland, and they were not on the pathway to murder their Jews, unlike their Nazi allies at the time.
Life continued as normal from my viewpoint as a young child and I can only assume my parents then pumped petrol into Russian rather than Polish military vehicles. Being the only petrol pump in Bielsk Podlaski, they must have been assured of ongoing business. The Lewins would have still sold groceries. While stores and businesses would have been nationalised and central State-run stores established, I doubt if much change took place in the day-to-day lives of my parents in the year or so the Russians were there.
Life must have been normal enough for my parents to consider less weighty matters than having a world war around them and instead dealt with a more personal matter. A request had come from my grandparents in Lithuania that it was time to reconcile and for my parents to travel and bring us children to meet them for the first time. Had my mother been in secret contact with her mother, Mina, over the years, or did the circumstances of the war encourage this communication?
I am uncertain when that request came, but after the Russian invasion of Poland in 1939, travel to the independent state of Lithuania would have been difficult. Lithuania controlled its own borders and behaved much as an ally of Germany. So, I suspect the request to return to Lithuania came over a year later when circumstances changed once more.
In June 1940 Lithuania was invaded by Russia and its independent days were over. The Russian invasion was accompanied by arrests and the seizure of private businesses and properties, and was deeply resented by the Lithuanians. Unfortunately, the Soviet Communists who now governed included Jewish leaders, which fuelled the tinder-dry Lithuanian anti-Semitism even further in the times that followed.
Yet, the upshot for us was that from late 1940 and into 1941, eastern Poland and neighbouring Lithuania were now both back under Russian rule as they had been
