Kaddishel: A Life Reborn by Aharon Golub with Bennett W. Golub
Kaddishel A LIFE REBORN
AHARON GOLUB with Bennett W. Golub
MODERN MEMOIRS, INC. Amherst, Massachusetts
Aharon, Bennett, and Phillip Golub, 2016
Digital edition of Kaddishel: A Life Reborn © 2024 Bennett W. Golub and Phillip J. Golub Originally published in Israel by Devora Publishing Company, 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written consent of the copyright owners.
Modern Memoirs, Inc. 417 West Street, Suite 104 Amherst, Massachusetts 01002 413-253-2353 www.modernmemoirs.com
Foreword to the Digital Release of Kaddishel
It has been nearly three years since Grandpa Aharon’s passing; and his resilient spirit, humor, and tremendous strength of personality endures. On July 5, 2021, at age 94, Grandpa Aharon joined his parents, sisters, and beloved wife, Grandma Ruth, in the time after life. His loss came less than a month before his granddaughter Jill’s wedding, where he was slated to be the guest of honor. And also two months before the birth of his first great- grandchild, Tara Erin Golub, my daughter, who he was eagerly anticipating. Her middle name, Erin, is in honor of his memory. Growing up as the grandson of Aharon Golub, I did not appreciate the uniqueness of his life. Whenever he and Grandma Ruth would visit our home for the weekend in Mamaroneck, New York, my sisters and I would curl up in their bed early in the morning. He would engross us with rivet- ing stories of David and Goliath, King Solomon, Samson, and other bibli- cal heroes. We were accustomed to seeing his stump on one leg, and what remained of his toeless foot on the other. From a very young age, we learned that his feet had frozen off and he had starved in the woods of Poland, where he was hunted “like an animal.” Therefore his compulsion for covering us head-to-toe every winter, his penchant for taking breadsticks home from restaurants, or ensuring that we overate at every meal, seemed normal. As children, we didn’t know otherwise. In many ways, our childhoods were very similar. We both grew up in tight-knit families as the only son, with two sisters. Raised by devoted moth- ers who doted on our every act and powerful fathers who were success- ful businessmen, we both attended Zionist Jewish day schools, where our parents were very involved. So I would often wonder, why? Why was he forced to suffer unimaginable violence and cruelty, while I lived a happy and safe childhood? How come he witnessed his family murdered before his eyes, while I deserved an upbringing free from pain? This question still haunts me. As the Holocaust fades from our collective view, and those direct
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witnesses to its horror pass on, it is imperative that we preserve their memory. We are all incredibly grateful to my father, Ben Golub, who pushed, organized, financed, and oversaw the creation of Kaddishel for its printed release in 2005. If not for his efforts, many of the powerful details of Grandpa Aharon’s story would have been erased from history. Fortunately, his work, and the release of this digital edition in 2024, can hopefully allow his story to live on in perpetuity. Grandpa Aharon also recorded several testimonial videos for the Univer- sity of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation in 1995, where he describes his privileged childhood, the Holocaust, and his participation in the founding of Israel. I highly recommend hearing the testimonials in his own captivating words (and accent) freely available on their website. These videos are the closest thing bringing him back to life. Below are some words from my eulogy for him in 2021: Magnetic, charming, handsome, charismatic, with keen intellect, astounding (compulsive) attention to detail and an elephantine memory, Grandpa Aharon often electrified a room with his larger-than-life presence. As he told stories ranging from several thousand years ago to several hours ago, each with stunning ease and vivid clarity, his big smile instantly warmed a crowd. Sprinkling in mischievous grins, melodramatic seriousness, and infectious bouts of singing, he was adored by everyone he met. Family, friends, neighbors, distant relatives, members of his synagogue, waiters at the Plainview Diner, nurses in the hospital, car drivers and many more showered him with praise and affection. To quote Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Well, he made everyone feel special. It was his greatest gift. And no one did he make feel more special than his children and grandchildren, of which I was unbelievably blessed to be. He was a man so deeply woven in human history and a man so deeply woven into the fabric of our existence. And today, his final identity is his legacy. His story, as written in Kaddishel , needs to be told and retold. It must become embedded deep within our psyche. His body, disfigured by the horrors of the Holocaust, was one of the last living testaments to this terrible tragedy inflicted upon
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the Jewish People. Sadly this was not the last tragedy inflicted upon the Jewish People. The savagery of October 7, 2023 and the resulting Israel-Hamas war has sparked a frightening torrent of global antisemitism. Grandpa Aharon’s final reflec- tions in the book ring louder than ever: “By knowing what happened, future generations of Jews will be more vigilant and understand the necessity for strong support for Israel, so that we are never again as vulnerable as we were in Europe. Perhaps they will be able to prevent another disaster before it occurs.” He goes on to posit, “In this world, the weak do not get privileges. Thus Israel must be a nation equal to other nations. Only by being strong and having our own state, one that is economically viable and militarily strong, will our people be respected.” But Grandpa Aharon’s tale of survival and the legacy of the Holocaust is more important than just that. It is a savage reminder of the most horrendous cruelty some humans can inflict on other humans; ones who are considered subhuman or part of “the other.” Recalling the Holocaust is jarring not only because of the terrible deeds done, but also because it highlights something dormant within each one of us. The most monstrous demons within our own human nature. The ability to overlook empathy in favor of tribalism. His tale should serve as a reminder that hatred has no bounds, and must be carefully safeguarded against with education, compassion, and love. However, Grandpa Aharon’s legacy is even greater. His nearly mysti- cal ability to rise from the ashes, like a phoenix, and overcome his losses is monument to the resilience of the human spirit. His indefatigable determi- nation to carry on with love, warmth, and humility has forever changed us. He was an inspiration to all, and I was very proud to be his grandson.
With great appreciation,
Phillip Golub May 2024 With support from my sisters Alex and Jill Golub, and wife, Mojgan Rastegar
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Aharon Golub, Mamaroneck, New York, circa 2020
Kaddishel A LIFE REBORN
AHARON GOLUB with Bennett W. Golub
DEVORA PUBLISHING JERUSALEM NEW YORK
Kaddishel is based upon extensive interviews with Aharon Golub, with additional material from other interviews and research. We hope that there are no instances where we have misquoted or failed to properly credit a source, and respect all of them. Kaddishel makes use of subjective personal memories and opinions. We apologize for any statement interpreted as unfair, injurious, or inaccurate. Kaddishel Kaddishel KADDISHEL: A LIFE REBORN Published by DEVORA PUBLISHING COMPANY Text Copyright © 2005 by Aharon Golub with Bennett W. Golub Cover and Inside Design: David Yaphe Editor: Kitty Axelson-Berry, Modern Memoirs, Inc., 34 Main Street, #6, Amherst, MA 01002-2356, (413) 253-2353, kitty@modernmemoirs.com, www.modernmemoirs.com Editor: Fern Levitt, Devora Publishing Company Author Credits Gilbert, Sir Martin , Routledge Atlas of the Arab Israeli Conflict, Thomson. p.38 Hoffman, Eva, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews , New York, © 1997 Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Co. Sachar, Howard M., A History of Israel © 1976 Alfred A. Knopf, Random House, Inc. Segev, Tom, 1949: The First Israelis, © 1986 New York The Free Press, Palgrave Macmillan Inc. Van Creveld , The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israel Defense Force , New York, © 1998 Perseus Book Group Yahil, Leni, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, translated from the Hebrew by Ina Friedman and Haya Galai. © 1990 Oxford: Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Control Number: 2004112406 Cloth ISBN: 1-932687-47-5
Email: publisher@devorapublishing.com Web Site: www.devorapublishing.com Printed in Israel
To the members of my family, of blessed memory, who were murdered by the Nazis and their
Ukrainian collaborators: Baruch Golub, my father,
Gittel Yanoshifker Golub, my mother, Chava and Esther Golub, my sisters.
And to my beloved wife, Ruth Silverstein Golub, without whose dedication and active participation this book could not have been written.
“And thou shalt relate to thy son on that day saying, ‘This is on account of what the Eternal did for me when I went forth from Egypt.’”
“...for not only one has risen up against us, but in every generation some have arisen against us to annihilate us, but the Most Holy, blessed be He, always delivered us out of their hands.” - PASSOVER HAGGADAH
Table of Contents
iii
Foreword to the Digital Release of Kaddishel
7 9
Foreword Preface
Acknowledgements Editor’s Note to Readers
25 28 57 64 71 79 91 92 17 19
I. Ludvipol: a Modern Shtetl
A Happy Childhood The Family Business The Zionist Dream Our Two-Year Reprieve Jewish Life
II. The War
On the Day of My Bar Mitzvah
The Mass Murders and Our Escape into the Forest
101 117 125 136 144 155 156 182 186 195 196 212 214 223 227
Rescued
Boris Edelman’s Story For Us, the War Ends Legal Papers for Palestine
III. A New Beginning
New Life in Our Ancient Land The War of Independence The Beginnings of a Normal Life
IV. Starting Again
Another Country, a New Family
The Yizkor Book
The Bones of Ludvipol
Reunions
Chava’s Rosh Ha’Shana Card
V. Reflections on My Life and Times
231
Historical Background And Interviews
243 244 276 330
I. Ludvipol: A Modern Shtetl
II. The War
III. A New Beginning
Bibliography and Sources
369
Foreword
A haron Golub’s life is a consistent story of coherence and con- vergence: his happy childhood that ended in mutilation and endless pain; his adolescence and journey from the darkness of the Diaspora to the light of the State of Israel; and finally, happiness and a family of his own in the United States. Divided into four parts, this book by Aharon Golub depicts a satisfying life in a shtetl that prided itself not only in the usual synagogues but also in its Tarbut School that nourished Judaism and Zionism, and finally the disinte - gration of Ludvipol into a cruel inferno during the Holocaust. Although Arieh (as Aharon was called) Golub’s narrative is au- tobiographic, anyone who went to the Tarbut School and experi- enced the intransigence of the Ukrainians will be compelled to rec- ognize himself in this story and reflect on his own past. Readers who never lived in Ludvipol and associate the Holocaust mainly with Auschwitz and its cruelty can hardly imagine Ukrainian bes- tiality. If you compare and “measure” atrocities committed by var- ious groups, you will find that the Ukrainians were crueler than all others. Arieh Golub makes a skillful transition from the liberation from the yoke of the tormenters to national resurrection. It seems as if the Holocaust had been the labor preceding redemption by the Messiah. Although this is a rather “vague” claim, it is quite obvious to any- one from Ludvipol because the meshuganer of the town, known as Dovidl Meshiakh, used to announce this kind of redemption all the time. Another miracle was that Arieh Golub, a child from a loving family, now exposed to permanent persecution, managed to escape his persecutors through the forests on mutilated legs.
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The first place of rest he found on his long journey was a kibbutz in the newly founded State of Israel. It seems that the adolescent devot- ed all the love that had built up inside him to this kibbutz. Although he had to overcome many problems, the proficiency in Hebrew he had acquired at the Ludvipol Tarbut School provided a solid founda- tion for his integration into his new environment. Everything he had missed during his life among the partisans in the forests, all the suf- fering his frozen limbs had caused him was now repaid to him with joy and friendship. Although Aharon’s narrative and his suffering seem to be similar to what we, the other survivors, particularly the former Tarbut students, went through, his suffering was different and he experienced it as such. The establishment of the State, the transi- tion from the damp and dark forests to sunny Israel was something holy, something truly Messianic, for Arieh. If America became the Golden Land for him, Israel remained the Promised Land to which he is strongly emotionally attached. His is the kind of attachment that Chaim Nachman Bialik described in “ El Hatzipor ” (“To the Bird”). It is also, however, a kind of love that no one else from Ludvipol has managed to give to their children yet. Arieh succeeds in passing this almost Messianic attachment on to his children and grandchildren as their heritage. Having started to read this book because I had to and be- coming more and more enthralled as I read on, I can only wonder how this boy from my former school could muster so much strength and love. I was also wondering whether Arieh, who is younger than I and finished neither the cheder nor the Tarbut School, would appreciate all that in the same way I did. Would Arieh reserve the same place in his life for our school as we, the graduates, did? Arieh Golub has managed to remember the Tarbut School in his American life in the same way as I do in my Viennese life as a professor. Arieh is a miracle to me, as is his book, so yasher koach , Arieh! Professor Dr. Jacob Allerhand
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Graduate, Tarbut School, Ludvipol
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Preface
O nly as you mature and gain perspective on life do you realize what was unique and different about your childhood. Being Aharon Golub’s son, my life was necessarily impacted by my fa- ther’s life history. As I was growing up, I realized that in certain respects, my experiences were different from those of my friends. Some differences were superficial. For example, as a young child, I came to realize that sports played only a small part in our family life. My father did not know or care about the primary pastimes of American boys, baseball and football, which I attributed to his growing up in Poland and then living in Israel. Also, his feet caused him a lot of pain, so though he was quite a good bicycle rider, he did not participate in other sports. When he went swimming, he always wore sneakers. Our home was filled with the sounds of many languages. My dad would speak in English if all of us were to be includ- ed in a conversation, Yiddish if my mother was to be includ- ed but not my sister or me, and Hebrew if even my mother was not part of it. On rare occasions, he spoke in Russian or Polish. Although I never heard it myself, people told me my father spoke English with an accent. They sometimes tell me that I do as well. Visitors frequently stayed in our house for extended periods of time. My father’s cousins from Montreal and California would of- ten visit. His Argentinean cousins would come for weeks as they sought out the latest in New York fashion to bring home to their customers. I remember watching with fascination as they sipped maté out of a gourd. Often visitors from Israel stayed with us. My
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father’s friend Ezra, from Haifa, would live with us for weeks at a time as he learned about America. In fact, when he eventually moved his family to the United States, they lived only two blocks from us for the first few years. Other differences were more profound. I learned that there were two kinds of people in the world: Jews and goyim (non-Jews). There were good and bad Jews and good and bad goyim. Bad goy- im, the Nazis and Ukrainians, had murdered my father’s family and had almost killed him, leaving him with severely frostbitten feet. Good goyim had helped my father stay alive by bringing him milk to drink when he was abandoned to his fate because some bad Jews would not risk taking a crippled child along with them. My father’s personal experience, as well as the holidays of Purim and Passover, taught me that bad non-Jews repeatedly set out to murder Jews on a collective basis. Their most recent attempt to annihilate Jews had almost been successful and had created ma- jor gaps in our family. My father’s parents and his two sisters were murdered for no other reason than that they were Jews. While other kids read about the Holocaust and understood it in an interested but emotionally detached manner, for me it was very real in the most visceral sense; I saw the damage to my father’s feet, and was haunted by old photographs. In his desk, my father kept a worn gray leather billfold filled with those old photographs of people I never knew. Every so often, he would show me these black and white photos and tell me about the people in them. They were, for me, ghosts of a life and world beyond my grasp and comprehension. My father also had (and still has) a large rifle, a British Enfield 303, and a large jar of bullets. I remember the rifle from the time I was as tall as it was. My father told me that he had sworn to himself that he would always have a gun to protect his family, and if anyone came to hurt us, he would make sure that they would die before we would be taken away. He encouraged me to handle the rifle. His father had not had a rifle, he said; Jews always needed to have guns. Today I own both a rifle and a shotgun.
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Preface
All things having to do with Israel were a passion for my fa- ther and our family. I remember the tension leading up to the Six Day War, when I was ten, and our exuberance after Israel sur- vived this threat to its existence. My dad had many close friends in Israel, and he spoke to them on the phone and visited them, or they came to visit us. While I do not remember a lot of discus- sions about U.S. politics in our house, I do remember an intense focus on what was going on in Israel. My father would often talk about what a distinguished and re- spected man was his father, Baruch Golub, after whom I was named. He would describe in great detail his father’s businesses and his ac- tive support of the Tarbut School, the Zionist Jewish day school my father attended in Ludvipol, where he was raised. He told us with pride that my grandfather was one of the most prominent citizens of Ludvipol. Sometimes, we teased my father about being from the “aristocracy of Ludvipol,” caricaturing it as a primitive little town. Yet it left an impression on me when I heard two old women at a get-together of Ludvipol landtzmen refer to my father with respect as “Golub’s son.” More recently, my father was seated in a place of honor at a meeting of landtzmen that we attended in Israel. This intrigued me. My father was, and remains, a gifted storyteller. Somehow, whatever he described became interesting and exciting. This had two impacts. First, it made the world of Ludvipol, the shtetl he was born in, come alive for me. His reminiscences made other sto- ries, like Fiddler on the Roof , very meaningful, beyond the fact that he does an excellent rendition of Zero Mostel’s song, “If I Were a Rich Man.” His stories fascinated me and always made me want to know more. But they also brought it home that in some respects, my father was bom to a world of two centu- ries ago, a world very different from that of my contemporaries’ parents. Learning as much as I could about my father’s past became one of my major interests. My dad says he had trouble talking about his past, but I do not remember it that way. Perhaps he felt more
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comfortable talking to me than to other people. Or perhaps on those occasions when he talked about the past, his words were engraved in my mind and became an integral part of me. Part of my life jour- ney has involved trying to understand his journey. The summer after I graduated from college, I attended an ulpan (an intensive Hebrew language course) at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I have always felt that my limited knowledge of Hebrew is a great personal inadequacy. That summer, I had the opportunity to spend time with some of my father’s Israeli friends, which made me feel closer to him. At the end of the summer, I almost stayed on for a year to work for the Israeli government. In 1988, ten years later, I made contact with a distant relative, Samuel Tiktin, who lived in Rovno, a city close to Ludvipol, and who fortunately spoke fluent English. After corresponding with him, I decided to “return” to Ludvipol and see it with my own eyes. My new and accommodating wife Cindy and I went off in search of my roots. The trip was memorable for many reasons, but when I went to Sosnovoye, as Ludvipol had been renamed, instead of feeling a sense of fulfillment or triumph in the knowledge that our family had survived, a tremendous sense of emptiness set in. Ludvipol felt like the far side of the moon, devoid of any personal connection or of anything Jewish, and I realized that whatever I was looking for was not there. In 1998, for his seventieth birthday, my father and I traveled to Israel. This was the first time we had been there together. We visited Kibbutz Yagur and met with many of his friends, both his Ludvipol landtzmen and the group of orphans he had lived with when he arrived in Israel, who had become his extended fami- ly. Along with one of those friends, Moshe Trosman, we threw a surprise seventieth birthday party with over eighty guests. This was a very special evening for my father and for me, and it helped me understand where to find the roots for which I had been searching.
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Preface
The Book After hearing about my father’s life, whether directly from him or indirectly from me, many people have suggested that he write down his story for future generations. To his credit, my father had already gone through the painful process of giving interviews on videotape to Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. But a serious, comprehensive book would lend rigor to the process, as well as incorporate the positive as- pects of my father’s life before and after the War. His life has been defined by many other forces besides the Nazi atrocities. I also wanted to really understand his story, perhaps because a son has an intense need to understand his father; I have always judged myself relative to him and, in view of the sheer amount of life he has lived, always felt somehow shallow. Such a book would also give my fa- ther some degree of immortality which, I think, every son desires for his father. I am now a father myself, with three young children. But I was born and raised in America. I knew that I would never be able to convey to my children the richness of Jewish history that my father could. He has lived through three important historical eras — tra- ditional Jewish life in a town in Poland on the verge of modernity; the mindless horrors of Nazi mass murders; and the rebirth of a Jewish nation in the land promised to our forefathers. I felt a direct visceral connection to these events, but part of me felt like an im- postor or voyeur, talking passionately about things I had not per- sonally experienced. I believed that I could accomplish many goals at once by systematically documenting my father’s personal his- tory: demonstrating that his memories were objectively accurate, juxtaposing his with the intersecting stories of his contemporaries, and identifying the historical context of Eastern Poland, Ukrainian atrocities, and the excitement and challenges of reestablishing a Jewish presence in the land of Israel. I knew that I would learn a lot from this process, and that my father could give future generations the ability to understand these periods in a personal way.
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Convincing my father to undertake this project was no simple matter. Clearly, some of his memories are extremely painful. Also, the work would be time-consuming and considerable. There would be interviews, edits, questions, and interactions with friends, es- pecially around contradictory recollections or unflattering mem - ories; all of these would be draining. For quite a while, serious medical problems prevented my father from feeling up to the task. Fortunately, after a series of major medical procedures and opera- tions, all of which turned out successfully, my father was ready to proceed. I was fortunate to come into contact with Kitty Axelson-Berry from Modern Memoirs, which is specifically in the business of writ - ing and publishing commissioned personal memoirs. Although the project I had in mind was of a different scale and scope than those the company had undertaken before, she enthusiastically agreed to work with my father and me. While I certainly wanted to capture my father’s personal story in his own words, my goal was to cre- ate a document involving a high level of research and scholarship. Personal recollections, particularly after sixty years, can fade, and my father’s perspective of pre-war Ludvipol was primarily that of a ten- to thirteen-year-old boy. As the father of two ten-year-olds, I had a sense of how he must have perceived his daily life at that age. I also wanted to be sensitive to the innocence and poignancy of his retelling of his childhood, given how tragically things turned out for his family. Therefore, extensive interviews with my father’s contemporar- ies on three continents were conducted in a variety of languages. Historical archives were researched to capture the context of the places and periods. All of these materials were then compared to clarify what actually happened or, where facts could not be estab- lished, to describe the range of possibilities. In that process, many facts were clarified and old memories were revived, resulting in a richer, deeper, and more accurate stoiy. This book is notable for what it does not contain. Readers who story.
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Preface
know Aharon Golub might not be aware that throughout his life, he has had to endure constant pain and limitations on his lifestyle due to the injuries he sustained during the War. By the dictionary definition, he is severely crippled. But other than to state some of the facts surrounding what happened to him, his narrative is silent of any sense that he sees himself as different from others. I believe that this speaks to the fact that despite his damaged feet, my fa- ther never assimilated into his psyche the concept that he was less worthy or able than anyone else, or that he needed or deserved sympathy. What is also missing from this book, and not as a result of zeal- ous editing, are expressions of anger, rage, or hatred. One would not begrudge a person a fair amount of anger for having lived through the kind of suffering he did, seeing his own mother shot as she tried to save his life. Even sixty years later, such anger would be understandable. Instead, we hear clearly the positive conclusion my father has reached: that the Jewish people need to be a normal people with their own state, Israel, and have the power to protect Jewish interests across the world. This story, I believe, matters. Clearly, it matters to all family members and friends of Aharon Golub. But also, since it describes in a very human way a world that no longer exists, a series of pur- poseless horrors, and a sense of what personal rebirth is all about, the story of his life and times may be of importance to many others. For example, catching a glimpse of Ludvipol raises some intrigu- ing questions. The strong pull of Zionism in places like Ludvipol makes us consider an alternative history, one in which the re- turn of the Jews to Zion might have occurred, had the Holocaust not intervened. The desire and energies of the people of Eastern Europe were greater than the stereotypes often evoked of Tevye or of sheep being led to the slaughter. Tragically, we will, of course, never know. Through these pages, visit, through the eyes of a young boy, a world that is no more. Admire those few people who lived through
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unimaginable horrors, and then understand those servivors who went on to create a new homeland for the Jewish people. In the process, meet someone I am proud to call my father. Bennert W. Golub August 2004 survivors Bennett
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Acknowledgements
I want to thank and acknowledge my son, Ben Golub, who in- spired me to write this book adsen obligation on my part to my grandchildren and future generations to inform them of the atroci- ties committed against the Jewish people in Europe. This knowl- edge should help them prevent future disasters against our people. It should also encourage them to support the State of Israel, our most reliable protector. My daughter-in-law, Cindy Golub, sup- ported my son in this endeavor, which took so much precious time away from his family. My daughter, Elizabeth, provided important moral support to me during the stressful period during which this project was completed. My landtzmen from Ludvipol greatly contributed to the creation of this book. I would like to thank those who contributed to the creation of the Yizkor book, many of whom are no longer alive, which was an important reference. Their farsighted actions have helped keep the memory of Ludvipol alive. In addition, I would like to thank Moshe Furshpan, Itzak Gurfinkel, Leibel (Arje) Katz, Pesach Kleinman, Shmuel Shafir, Abraham Shapira, and Yona Tuchman for agreeing to be interviewed for the book. My cousin Boris Edelman, whose courageous actions helped keep me alive during the war, contributed a chapter to this book telling his own story, including how our two paths crossed. I also want to thank Professor Dr. Jacob Allerhand for agreeing to read the manuscript and for contributing a beautiful foreword. Many of the Dror children, who became my new family at Kibbutz Yagur, also agreed to be interviewed for this book. I would like to thank Hannah Haklay, Arie Medlinger, Shmuel Peleg, Leon as an
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Rubinstein, Ezra Sherman, Moshe Trosman, and Behira Zakay for their valuable memories and lifelong friendship. Finally, I would like to thank Kitty Axelson-Berry for her in- valuable help in collecting, assembling, and reviewing all of this material, and for her sensitive handling of the emotions and chal- lenges of this project. She and her team helped make this book both a deeply personal story and a reference source on three of the historical periods through which I have lived. Also thanks to Fern Levitt who did an excellent and timely job preparing the text for publication, both in improving the text and in restructuring it to improve its flow. The title of my book, Kaddishel, is perhaps mysterious to those not familiar with Jewish customs. Kaddishel refers to a son who will, when one or both of his parents die, recite the prayer for the dead on their behalf; the prayer is said daily for eleven months and then every year on the yahrzeit (anniversary) of the parent’s death. As the only boy in our family, my mother used to call me her kad- dishel , the one who would say Kaddish for her. It was a term of en- dearment. I did not want to call my book Kaddishel at first because every time I hear that word I am reminded of my parents’ death, but I realized that it is a good, short title that might help people under- stand our traditions as well as what I went through. Aharon Golub
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Editor’s Note to Readers
R eaders will notice that Kaddishel utilizes two distinct “voices.” Aharon’s first-person narrative is based on my audio-taped interviews with him, the transcripts of which were edited, reorganized, and reasonably augmented. The background sections, located in the Historical Background and Interviews, are based on interviews with individuals whose lives intersected with Aharon’s life before, during, and after the Holocaust, supplemented by extensive archival research in Poland and Germany and previ- ously published reports. These two “voices” speak back and forth, but appear in separate sections. The background sections located in the Historical Background and Interviews provide additional de- tails or corroboration to Aharon’s first-person story. Through this device, the reader can access useful historical information and con- textualize Aharon’s personal experiences. The statements by his contemporaries enrich Aharon’s story and, we hope, provide per- spective. When Ben Golub first approached me to interview his father and produce his as-told-to memoirs, with additional research to fact-check and add context to the story, I little realized how deep- ly involved I would become in all aspects of Aharon’s story and the history of Poland, the Holocaust, and Israel. Nor did I foresee how much I would come to admire Aharon, his wife Ruth, and Ben himself. It was, perhaps, basherte (meant to be) that facilitating this book coincided with my becoming an adult bat mitzvah. It is my sincere hope that Aharon Golub’s story will not only keep the memory of his family alive, but will so enlarge our
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understanding of history as individuals that we never feign ignorance and allow another Holocaust to take place, and never callously dismiss the complex challenges Israel faces in its struggle to survive and honor the needs of its diverse people. I would like to warmly acknowledge the following individuals for their participation in this project. Aharon has proven himself to be a veritable library of information and a delight to work with, indefatigable in his review of drafts, and always willing to delve further into his memories. Ben has been the impetus, catalyst, and enabler of Kaddishel in its entirety. He provided invaluable insights and ideas, as well as unstinting attention to a myriad of details, in- cluding research, editing, and reviews of drafts. He involved him- self to good effect at every step. Also to be acknowledged are the individuals on the team referred to earlier by Aharon. They include journalist Stephanie Kraft for Polish translations, research, and reporting for the Polish section of the book; Hadas Ragolsky for Hebrew translations, research, and reporting; Pnina Ragolsky and Bluma Aloni for Yiddish trans- lations; Laurie Salame for fact-checking and other services as needed; Laurie McClain for transcriptions; Susan Rosenberg for web-based research; Shaul Ferraro from Yad Vashem for encour- agement and relevant documents; Sherry Hyman and Misha Mitsel of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee archives in New York for relevant documents; Susan Elbow for establishing communication with Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen archive, Dr. Borgert of that institution for relevant documents; Roger Stenlund, as well as Erkan Emre and Alex Paige for German translations; Shmuel Bolozky and Tal Even for correspondence in Hebrew; Joel Zoss and Jocelyn Axelson, as well as David Perkins, David Quinn, Art McLean, and Steve Diamond for helping copy edit drafts; Art McLean, as well as Michael Burke for proofread- ing; Jess Meyers for assistance with footnotes; Audrey Markarian for typing; Lynne Adams for complete design and formatting pri- or to the association with Simcha Publishing Company; cartogra- pher Mike Kirchoff for map preparation; and Michael Berenbaum,
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Editor’s Note to Readers
Andrew Krull, Elliot Rabin, Jim Wald, and others for reading drafts and suggesting helpful changes. And last, but not least, the many survivors in both the United States and Israel who so willingly opened their hearts, minds, and memories to us.
Kitty Axelson-Berry Modem Memoirs, Inc. 34 Main Street, #6 Amherst, MA 01002-2356 (413) 253-2353 kitty@modernmemoirs.com www.modernmemoirs.com Modern
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I Ludvipol: A Modern Shtetl
KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
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Ludvipol: A Modern Shtetl
Editor’s Note to Readers A Happy Childhood
“ This is your grandchild, Arieh Golub, age two. Ludvipol, Municipality of Kostopol, Province of Volyn. Year, 1930 .” Baruch Golub wrote these words on the back of the photo (above) that he sent to his father in Brooklyn. The information was later used to help establish Aharon’s correct age.
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A Happy Childhood
I was born in 1928 on the second day of the Jewish holiday Shavuot, which fell that year on May 26. Jews often had names in more than one language; my parents named me Leibel, but everyone called me Arieh. Leibel is Yiddish for lion, and Arieh is lion in Hebrew. Later in life, my name appeared on documents as Aharon, but to this day, the people from my hometown call me Arieh. My father, Baruch (Baruch in Yiddish and Hebrew, Boris in Polish) was a handsome young man, a modern thinker for those days and a successful businessman who had a thriving lumber mill and granary. 1 My mother, Gittel (Gittel in Yiddish, Genia in Polish) used to tell me that when my father came by on horseback, all the girls would flirt with him. When she met my father, my mother was already a graduate of a two-year Russian college in a town called Gorodnisa, where she was born and grew up. This was an unusually distin- guished education for a woman. She was an intellectual, sophisti- cated lady and a skilled photographer who ran her own studio. My parents married in 1924 when she was about twenty years old and my father was twenty-seven. My father promised my mother that she could continue to work in her profession, though the family did not need her income, and she always maintained her photography studio. She was a progressive career woman, both a housewife and a photographer. My father was the eldest of five children. To my sorrow, I did not know my paternal grandparents because they had already emigrat- ed to the United States by the time I was born. Most of my father’s family had left Poland, his parents in 1918 and his three younger
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A Happy Childhood
brothers sometime between 1922 and 1925. It had been a difficult time in this part of Poland, and my grandfather had set out to find a better life for his family. But my father and his sister, my aunt Chava, remained. Chava was married to a successful businessman and my father also had a thriving business; there was no motivation for them to seek a better life at the time. I know even less about my mother’s family. My mother’s par- ents were dead. I know that my mother had brothers and sisters, that her maiden name was Yanoshifker, and that her father’s name was Arieh. I believe I was named after him. Before the war, we were comfortable and we had a good, happy life. We lived in a small, old Jewish town in Poland named Ludvipol. Today, this town is in the Ukraine and is called Sosnovoye. Ludvipol was surrounded by Ukrainian and Polish villages, but most of the people were Ukrainians because this section of Poland was almost a Ukrainian province near the Russian border. In our town, there were approximately two thousand inhabitants, including some 150 non-Jews, mostly Polish and some Ukrainian. The Ukrainians had been trying for generations to gain their in- dependence. After the First World War, new borders had been es- tablished and the Ukraine was split, with half given to Russia and the other half, where we lived, annexed to Poland. The Ukrainians were frustrated to be part of Poland and were hostile to the Polish government. Meanwhile, Poland was anxious to control the area and bring Polish settlers, osadnikie , there. To strengthen its foothold, the gov- ernment encouraged Poles from as far away as Warsaw to resettle in our area, Volhynia, and gave them subsidies and excellent farm- ing land. Poland needed its own settlements to gain control over the province. As a result, 10 to 15 percent of the farmers were Poles, and there were entirely Polish villages in strategic locations near crossroads or rivers. It was before my time, but I do not believe that any Ukrainians ever moved farther east into the Ukraine, where good land was available. In those days people did not repatriate easily. When I was born, only eighteen or twenty of the villages
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A Life Reborn
in our area were Polish and the rest were Ukrainian. We got along better with the Polish people than the Ukrainians, if only because both the Jews and the Poles were minorities; we were friends by necessity. I loved growing up in Ludvipol. The Jewish community, which consisted mostly of craftsmen, professionals, and shopkeepers, was very friendly and many people were related to each other. Life there was pleasant and the town was beautiful. Wooden boxes full of flowers bordered the sidewalks along the main street. There were lovely areas of grass with benches. Ours was a small town, but it was a commercial center with numerous businesses. Every Monday was farmers’ market day. The farmers lined up their wagons, horses, and oxen near the big square. Each wagon was like a market stand. You could barely pass through the streets crowded with hundreds of farmers who had come to sell their produce: berries, fresh butter, sour cream, sweet cream, and everything else you could imagine. There was a brisk trade in horses and a major cattle market, where the Jewish dealers bought hundreds of cattle from the farmers, mostly for meat. Herds of cows would be taken to nearby towns and put onto trains to be transported to other parts of Poland or to slaughterhouses. Ludvipol was a modern and cosmopolitan little town, unlike the shtetl portrayed in Fiddler on the Roof . People dressed in suits; the town had many stores and well-designed buildings, some quite el- egant. After farmers sold their produce, they bought supplies. They would go to a hardware store to buy shovels or picks, or to one of the stores that sold horse gear for harnesses or saddles, or to a dry goods store to buy fabric. Stores did not sell ready-made clothes, other than lingerie for women. A friend of ours, Leah Gandelman, owned a large and beau- tiful dry goods store, well-stocked with silk fabric and other fine merchandise. People would choose and buy their fabric, then take it to a tailor or seamstress to be made up. The tailor took their measure- ments, and they would come back to try on and fit the garment a couple of times. If you wanted a pair of shoes or boots, the shoemaker made
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Ludvipol: A Modern Shtetl
A Happy Childhood
them for you to measure, although ready-made children’s shoes were available in stores. Our winter boots were made from thick, heavy pressed felt with durable leather soles to protect us from the deep snow. A bus passed through town twice a week and occasionally someone would arrive in a private automobile, which was ex- citing, but people usually traveled by horse and wagon. Only a few people owned their own horse or wagon; the rest would hire a rig from a local business when needed or they would hitch a ride with someone already driving to or through their destination. My father owned a fine carriage with two horses and had a driver on call. Everyone in Ludvipol knew each other, and many had lived in the town and known each other’s families for generations. They shared life’s triumphs and defeats. The entire town celebrated at weddings and mourned at funerals. They helped each other during financial crises and were especially generous to people making ali- yah (immigration to the land of Israel). The community donated generously to local charities, such as the no-interest loan associa- tion, and to international Jewish charities such as the KKL ( Keren Kayemeth L’Yisrael , the Jewish National Fund for Israel). The Jewish people got along well with each other. We shared a common environment, surrounded by Ukrainians and a few Poles. Everyone could speak Ukrainian, although the government was Polish and we lived in Poland. There was great respect for parents; one did not do things to hurt one’s parents, nor to drastically chal- lenge tradition. Our town was slowly emerging from the nineteenth century without abandoning its Jewish roots and traditions. In Europe, your position in society was based on your profes- sion and economic status. Social status was very important in our town and everyone knew his place. The poorest in town were shoe- makers, tailors, and other artisans, while the wealthiest were the owners of stores and mills. Since my father was a successful businessman, my family was
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A Life Reborn
well-to-do and respected throughout the community. My parents offered a helping hand to anyone who needed it. When community members were sick, a relative would come to our house and my mother would send me down to the cellar to bring up preserves. She would send a jar along because she felt sick people needed a little special treatment and nourishment. After the war, in Israel, when people from Ludvipol would invite me to dinner, the host- ess would say to former neighbors, “Do you know who this boy is? He’s Golub’s son!” This was a sign of distinction, a yiches , the Yiddish term for a prominent family background or pedigree. We lived in a beautiful house. It was distinguished by its shiny zinc roof, which few houses had. On every corner of the house there were elaborate leaders, topped by a decorative little rider sitting on a horse, and drainpipes for rainwater runoff. There was open space around the house and a big side yard. Our garden, which we shared with our neighbor, was behind our house, as was the outhouse. Adjacent to our yard was a fenced-in lumberyard, owned by a lo- cal businessman named Mr. Guttman, where he stored cut lumber from our mill for people who wanted to purchase small quantities. Our house had six rooms, but we were required by the govern- ment to rent three of the rooms to a Polish officer during much of my early childhood. We used one big bedroom, where my parents, my older sister Chava and I slept. My sister Esther, three years younger than I, slept in the large living room. It was furnished with a credenza holding books on one side and nice dishes, platters, sil- verware and household items on the other, a serving buffet, a large dining table and chairs and a couch. Our kitchen was huge. Large windows lit the house by day, and after dusk elaborate kerosene lamps provided enough light even to read music. I do not remem- ber specific family heirlooms, but I know we had valuable articles of sterling silver because we buried them in the ground when the Russians came later to Ludvipol. We lived near the border with the USSR and there was a big Polish army base nearby in the place where the Nazis later mur- dered all the Jews of Ludvipol, except the few who escaped. The
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Ludvipol: A Modern Shtetl
A Happy Childhood
commander of the Polish cavalry in our region chose our lovely house as a suitable place to live. The officer had a separate entrance and a front balcony in addition to his three rooms. After he moved in, we were crowded and our overnight guests had to sleep on the couch in the living room. We were not happy, but we had no choice. Attached to the house was my mother’s photography studio, which had a glass roof for light. There was no electricity. When you were inside, it felt as if you were in a glass house. There were curtains you could draw when it was too sunny. The studio building had its own entrance from street level. My mother kept her photog- raphy supplies in one of the unheated storage rooms, and geese in the other. A hallway led to the steps of the cellar, where we stored preserves. A big shed provided additional space. We had a radio that ran on batteries in our house. Installing a radio in those days involved putting up a huge antenna, built from two tall poles with a wire stretched between them and running down into a drum of coal. Inside the house, we had a switch on the wall. As soon as a lightning storm would start, though we had lightning rods on our roof, we ran to disconnect the antenna so that it wouldn’t attract lightning. Our housekeeper was a Polish girl who helped with the cook- ing, cleaning, and other housework. She slept in the kitchen above the big brick oven, twice the size of a kitchen table, with a sleep- ing platform on top. She lit the stove every day. We also had a kitchen fireplace with a long chimney that zigzagged behind the walls through the rest of the house; each room had a brick wall that was warm and radiated heat. The fire did not have to be burning all the time for the house to stay warm. The bricks held the heat well, sometimes all night. We would light a fire for a few hours in the morning and then again in the afternoon when the bricks had cooled. Another woman brought water every day to fill the big water tank. There were several wells in town. Next to our house was an old-fashioned well, with a big pole that was split on top, and a long stick balanced across it and anchored with a pin. A heavy metal
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