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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