KADDISHEL Other Survivors’ Stories
A Life Reborn
Pesach Kleinman was one of the Ludvipol Jews who, like Aharon Golub, survived the Holocaust by living in the forest. Just prior to the liquidation, his father had somehow succeeded in moving his family out of the ghetto to their grandfather’s house, which was less heavily guarded and from which he was able to find work in the nearby villages. Even so, he could not sustain his family on the food he could bring in, and so he arranged for Pesach, who was fourteen years old, and another son, fifteen-year-old Mordechai, to work as shepherds for two Polish families. “My life with the Polish villagers was easy. I got food, clothes, and good treatment from my employer as well as the rest of the villagers, even though they all knew I was Jewish,” Kleinman said. 11 One day, his Polish employer told him that the Jews had not shown up for labor on the road from Admovka to Brezno, and that there was a rumor that they were to be executed soon. Pesach stayed with his employer, but his brother crossed the river to take refuge in the woods. For a time, the employer and his family kept Pesach supplied with food as well as news that “made my head spin,” he said. “I thought about everything — my family, my friends, the life in town, school, hiking, swimming in the river, the celebrations of the holidays.” Eventually, though, the farmer no longer felt he could shelter Pesach, and the boy took refuge with some Polish shepherds in the high pastures. One day, as he was sitting with the shepherds, a group of Ukrainian policemen approached. “I was sure someone had informed,” he recalled. “One of the shepherds pulled himself together and yelled at me, ‘Piatro [Peter, in Polish, not a Jewish name] I Go see where the sheep have run to!’ and I ran away.” After that narrow escape, he looked for another location and crossed the river into unfamiliar woods and fields. First he stayed in the village of Namilia and then in Smolamia. It was in Smolarnia where, af- ter about two weeks, he met some friends from Ludvipol — Itzak Gurfinkel, and a woman named Natka and her daughter Chaia. He wandered in the woods with Gurfinkel until they met others from Ludvipol, who informed him that his father and uncle were still name]! Smolarnia.
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