KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
especially if they had cooperated with the Russian government. Many young people who had been in the militia, had sympathized with the Russians ideologically, or had been happy during the Russian occupation felt that remaining behind would be unsafe, in fact feared for their lives. A number of people from our town left for Russia and most of them survived the war. Tibel Kleinman, who worked for us in my mother’s photography studio, and her family escaped to Russia with the retreating Russian soldiers; her father had worked for the Russians and they gave him two horses. Tibel took some photographs from my mother’s studio with her — only because she rescued them do I have them today. At this time, my family was in a unique position to escape be- cause, since my father was in charge of the lumber establishment, horses, wagons, and provisions were at our disposal. My father had the key to the store of provisions, and could have loaded whatever we needed, and extra to sell along the way. We could have driven to the railroad station and then taken a train deep into Russia. But my father had been so hurt and humiliated by the Russians that he said to my mother and us, ‘’After the treatment I received from the Russians, why should I run after them? I’m glad to be rid of them.” He did not know what was coming next. So we remained in town. We were not the only ones staying. Most of the town stayed because they were afraid of becoming refugees. The feeling was, “We’re going to stay and whatever God is going to give, that’s what we’re going to take.” People asked each other, “How bad could it be?” Who would ever have believed that the Germans were going to kill innocent people and burn them to death? Think of September 10, 2001: who would ever have believed that the next day someone was going to blow up the twin towers of the World Trade Center and kill three thousand innocent people? Perhaps you could believe that someone might hijack an airplane and make some sort of de- mand, but to use the planes as bombs, to such awful effect — who would believe that? Only the first time an unimaginable atrocity occurs do you know how bad it can be. “
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