KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
We were very, very nervous and very frightened, but we were delighted that they did not kill us. We continued running into the woods. My father remembered that one of our loyal workers, the Polish mechanic named Masik who used to run the factory and had collaborated with my father in happier times on ingenious solutions to factory problems, lived not too far away. We went in the direction of his home. It was still the middle of the night, and we knocked on his door. He received us fairly well. He put us in the barn, and he gave us some blankets and food. We had stayed for about two days in his barn when he came in, white and trem- bling. He said that there was serious danger to him, his family, and to us. He said that if one of his neighbors suspected that we were there and told the police, we would all be slaughtered. He suggested that we go into a secluded area of the forest that was two miles away. We went. Masik’s wife brought us food for about a week. The peasants in that area used to pick berries in the woods at that time of the year, early September. They collected berries in pails and when the pails were full, they would cover them with a white cloth to take home. Masik’s wife would put the food into a pail and make it look as if she was going to collect berries. Then Masik came and said that it was too dangerous to stay where we were. The forest there was small, relative to all the other forests in the area. He said he had heard that in another forest, quite a distance from where we were, there were other Jews hiding and perhaps if we went into that area, we would feel safer because we would be with other people. We understood that he wanted us to go because he could no longer risk his wife bringing us food, and he was afraid for their lives. We thanked him for his help, and we walked, mostly during the night, to find the gathering place. Jews who had run away from Koretz, a group of about forty people, were hiding there, and we settled next to them. What else could we do? The High Holidays had just passed and the nights were getting chilly. My father had a
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