Historical Background and Interviews
II. The War The War
and when they were warned that Germans would soon be hunting goats nearby, he was almost left behind. However, when his feet were rubbed with salt, he was able to walk. Chava Edelman set him by the warm oven at the forest keeper’s hut for a few hours, and then he proceeded with her on foot to Mokreh, which was con- trolled by the Naumo Russian partisans. There, he was sheltered by a villager during his convalescence. With the winter rain, ice, and cold, they went deeper into the woods and eventually came across a group of survivors from Lud- vipol and Koretz, including relatives of Chava Edelman, Alter Tik- tin and his twenty-year-old son, Samuel. In all, there were about twenty people. They dug a bunker together, but it was too small for all of them, so ten people left. These ten people were never heard from again. The others traded their remaining possessions for food from friendly villagers and built an oven for heat, cooking, and hygiene. 14 Itzak Gurfinkel said that in the woods, the survivors would meet up, separate, and then meet up again. When they left Ludvipol, he recalled, “Aharon’s legs were fine. Then, when we met again in the Ukrainian forests between the Mazurian villages and the Riv- er Slusch, Aharon could not walk. It was just a fact — we did not have time for feelings like pity or fear.... In the forest, we dug into the ground to stay warm. Sometimes, we made a fire and sat near it; we had matches. But usually, we did not make fires because we did not want to be seen. We foraged for potatoes and roasted them. We went to villages, asked for food, and took what we could when we had the opportunity. Everyone was afraid. We were afraid the villagers would give us away to the Germans, but the villagers were afraid the Jewish partisans would seek retribution if they in- formed on us. I was with the Medwiedow Russian partisans, and so were a lot of other Jews. We went from place to place, traveling at night and sleeping during the day. When the partisans stopped, we stopped. We tried not to have anything to do with the Polish
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