by Judy Patkin
BELARUS
Overview
The trip to Belarus was a wonderful experience, considering that I knew next to nothing about my hosts, Frank and Galina Swartz, and had not been in Minsk since the Soviet Union had fallen apart. Belarus is very different from Ukraine, or even from Russia. I knew from past trips that people take pride in their public buildings and homes – they plant flowers and grass, which is trimmed and neat. I saw all kinds of lawn mowers in Minsk – not just people hacking at the grass with scythes. This was spring, and flowers and trees were in full bloom.
Belarus has not gone through the reforms which Russia and Ukraine undertook and, as a result, there is not the level of corruption which has so demoralized the population in other places. Lukashenko has his faults, but the city is clean and the streets are safe, even late at night. There is no super-wealthy class. Yes, there is plenty of poverty among the pensioners, but there are jobs for those who can work. The pay is not great, but neither is there is 80% unemployment which was prevalent in Ukraine. There are some small private businesses in the large cities and they are colorful. There are several McDonald’s with their golden arches, and we ate at a joint German-Byelorussian venture, a good restaurant in the center of Minsk. There are plenty of expensive cars on the roads, and many are used German vehicles. But, by and large, enterprise is government sponsored and all farming is communal and run by the government. The government is not wealthy, so hospitals and communal homes are generally clean, but poorly equipped. The government tolerates no political opposition.
There is very little grass roots antisemitism in Belarus. This was a pleasant surprise to me, and it was pointed out again and again as I visited different communities. Byelorussians help one another and generally do not belittle other ethnic groups. Yes, there are some exceptions, like the RNU (Russian National Unity - a nationalist, chauvinist, antisemitic movement), whose leadership seems to be Russian and has a very small presence in the country. There was the publication of an antisemitic book and there are articles in some newspapers, but the government will not squelch free speech and does not condone these publications. In fact, the comments about Hitler, which were attributed to Lukashenko five years ago, cannot be verified and no one seems to be able to find the speech where he was purported to make these remarks. Lukashenko works well with the Jewish community and buildings have been returned in several cities. He encourages humanitarian aid projects. Problems over the return of buildings are more likely to occur with local authorities than with the national government.
The country is aware of its terrible losses in WWII, and mourns for the Jews lost as much as for other Byelorussians. Belarus was overrun early in Germany’s invasion, so few people were evacuated. Byelorussians were not used in killing squads by the Germans because they refused to murder their own citizens. So the Germans were forced to bring in Lithuanian and Ukrainian death squads. There is a letter in the archives from a German officer in Belarus to Berlin complaining about the poor performance of Byelorussians. The Museum of the Great Patriotic War clearly displays the catastrophe of the Holocaust through pictures and displays, and every Byelorussian school child goes through this museum as a part of their education. The broad participation of ethnic groups in the war is illustrated with Asian and Muslim faces along side other soldiers. Byelorussian partisan groups accepted Jews in their midst. The common enemy was the German. The failure to mention Jews on Holocaust memorials is due more to the work of Leonid Levin, a Jew, than to government policy, and many Jews are angry with him for his omission. The original Minsk memorial to the Holocaust, which has a Yiddish inscription, was built right after the war, and persists to this day. Stalin executed the Jews involved in designing and installing the monument, but it has never been removed or destroyed.
Many Jewish pensioners are helped by their non-Jewish neighbors. Neighbors do not discriminate between Jewish and non-Jewish friends. Children get along with one another in school, and Jews are accepted at the university level. The atmosphere is very different from that in Ukraine, where Jewish children are commonly picked on in public schools.
One of the main differences I found between the Jewish community in eastern Ukraine and the community in Belarus, is the way the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (Joint or JDC) operates. Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, is a showplace for Joint activity, and many programs tried out in Dnipropetrovsk can be found in smaller Jewish communities as well. However, Belarus seems to be a backwater of Joint activity, and I heard many complaints about the large budget which Joint enjoys and the poor quality of their programs. Fewer people are being fed in their canteens and fewer and poorer food packages are sent out. There is a ruble limit for those who can receive food from the Joint, and anyone with a pension over this limit has been recently cut out of the program. The limit is around 32,000 rubles/month, which equals about $25. The elderly with higher pensions than this have a very hard time purchasing food and medicine, let alone paying for utilities. This directive is perpetuating real hardship. Pensioners are unable to emigrate to Israel or to the U.S., and now the Joint, which has been given the task of caring for the poor pensioners is cutting back their aid. In addition, the food packages have been cut back, so those who do get them get less and often receive a very poor quality of food choices – a very short-grain rice which boils up into a gooey mess, tinned fish which is horribly smelly, etc.
Friday, May 18th – Arrival in Minsk
The plane from Kiev to Minsk was medium size, a propeller model, and seated about 40 people. It was quite full of passengers, but there were still plenty of empty seats. I noticed as we deplaned that the left side tires were absolutely bald, but we did land safely. There was no checking of passports once you left the airport passport control area – no one standing at the foot of the plane to look one more time at your papers. Passport control was slow, but no problem. There was a sign about purchasing health insurance, but no one was at that counter and it never came up. Galina said later that if you showed them a card that you had medical insurance, that fulfilled the requirement
My bags went through without a comment, but they corrected my customs form because they considered my laptop computer a temporary import and I had checked no - that I had nothing to import. All this was in Russian, so it took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about, but it was amiable and I signed where I made the change. Galina Swartz was waiting just outside the door, holding a sign with my name and with a driver who helped me with the luggage. I thought that the driver and van were hired for my trip, but the van is the one we donated money for and the driver is a regular employee who keeps the van in shape and is paid $100 a month – not much in this economy, but all they can afford to pay him.
Galina and Frank Swartz live on the 4th floor of an apartment building in a lovely Minsk neighborhood with lots of trees and very quiet. They both speak English. Frank is in London right now, but is due back in two days . They have a dog named Mark after Mark Chagall, who wandered into their apartment last November. He is very quiet and affectionate – never barks. The children were at school – their daughter, Sasha (Alexandra) is studying linguistics at the university and their son, Paul, is in high school. Sasha speaks English. Galina is quite fluent. She grew up in a small town in the northwest of Belarus – Postava. When she was young, the house had no indoor plumbing and she remembers washing clothes in the river. Now it is much more up to date. Her mother was visiting from there when I arrived, and had cooked a delicious lunch – mushroom soup, pilmeny, perogie stuffed with cabbage or cheese, and a baked desert. Galina said that it’s a treat for everyone when her mother visits because she is such a good cook.
Before WWII, 140,000 Jews lived in Minsk, and made up 52% of the city’s population. Now there are at least 20,000 Jews here, and between 60,000 and 90,000 in all of Belarus. As usual, due to intermarriage and assimilation, it is difficult to know exact numbers.
Holocaust:
Galina arranged for a friend, Frieda Raisin, who is a Holocaust survivor (she has a birthday two months before mine in the same year) to take us on a driving and walking tour of the old Jewish ghetto and the Holocaust sites. The ghetto was a small area where Germans contained the Jewish population – there was no Jewish ghetto in Minsk and Jews lived scattered throughout the city. It was eerie to hear someone my exact age talking about the atrocities – there but for the grace of G-d, etc. I have always thought that I would never have survived, but here was Frieda who was also a child then. Since Frieda grew up is this city, she vividly recalled where people lived and worked. For instance, a bread factory is still functioning where it was during the occupation. The Jews were starving and not allowed to eat bread, but they could smell it baking all the time, as I did today.
Left to Right: Frieda Raisin & Galina Swartz standing in midst of what was used as a Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust. In the foreground are old formerly Jewish buildings in Minsk with a newer apartment building at the end of the street. This area was used as a ghetto during the Holocaust.
A building that was a synagogue is something else now. Apparently, there is a regulation that synagogues which were used for public purposes, like a school, a museum, theater, or a sport club, cannot be returned to the Jewish community unless you provide them with an equal alternative. Of course, most synagogues were not used as factories, so that ends that discussion. The Jewish community does not have funds to maintain these buildings, even if they were returned.
The Germans entered Belarus early – at the end of June, 1941, and were not pushed back until 1944, a year later than in Ukraine. There was no time for people to be evacuated, unless they were in critical industries and were moved with their factory, or were connected to the government. Frieda pointed out where she lived and looked out the window at Jews being killed. One woman called Maya saw her mother hung in a public place for 10 days and no one was allowed to take her body down. A group of pretty teenage girls were dragged out of their homes and beaten in the head and then shot with bullets which expanded as they entered their brains. She still sees the blood and brains spreading over the street. There are many places where she cannot bring herself to walk anymore. Her family moved into the two-room apartment of an aunt when they had to enter the ghetto. There were around 10 people in this one apartment. The aunt and her family were killed, but four members of Frieda’s family miraculously survived it all.
The obelisk, barely visible at the left rear, is the original monument to the Jews murdered in this hollow near the Jewish ghetto on Purim, March 2, 1942. A newer sculpture of marching naked bodies is seen on the right. Monument to the Jews from Hamburg and Dusseldorf, Germany, who were shipped by train to the Minsk ghetto and liquidated at Maly Trostyanetz, the large killing site on the outskirts of Minsk. These monuments are on the edge of an old Jewish cemetery, which no longer has any gravestones.
The main Holocaust killing area is at Maly Trostyanetz, the name of the small village near this spot, not where the Minsk monument I am familiar with is located. There was a large concentration camp here on the outskirts of the city. Now it is a large grassy area with trees and paths and one large monument which says nothing about Jews. The Germans built a rail line to it and shipped Jews there from Hamburg and Dusseldorf , as well as other parts of Europe. The main killing date for Minsk Jews is March 2nd, 1941. The ground was covered with snow and was red with blood and steamed and heaved for several days. Many were buried alive. I had been told about the existence of this camp before, but I had never seen the area. I know I heard in the past about Jews from Holland being brought there and also Minsk Jews. They estimate that 500,000 were killed in this area. It is the fourth largest concentration camp in Europe. No barracks were built here – just the killing pits. There are only partial lists of those killed available because the Germans began destroying records before they retreated. Galina said that Leonid Levin, the official Jewish representative to the government and an architect, designed this monument as well as the one at Katyn. The Jewish community is disgusted that none of his grand works says anything about Jews. They consider him a “court Jew” and not a useful person at all. Levin has visited the Boston Jewish community.
Frieda thinks this site includes one of her brothers who disappeared and has never been accounted for. After the Germans left, they found large pits which were dug which contained partially burned bodies. There was also a barn in which the last remaining thousand or so Jews were stuffed and burned alive. Frieda was active in protesting the development of the land. She is working to move the monument to the exact killing place, about 300 meters further in.
Monument at Maly Trostyanetz, the 4th largest killing site in Europe, where 500,000 Jews were put to death between 1941 and 1944. The monument is inscribed, but says nothing about Jews.
The small obelisk monument I have seen before is one of the earliest to be erected in the Soviet Union which stated that Jews were killed, and not just Soviet citizens. It has wording in Russian and Yiddish. It is located close to the Jewish ghetto and has had another striking piece of sculpture added – a long line of naked people trudging down a hill to the bottom of the pit. Galina told me that the original monument was put up in 1946 and everyone involved in the project was eliminated by Stalin. About 10,000 Jews were killed here early on. Frieda also showed me where trucks were parked in the Jewish ghetto which gassed their victims. Others were made to wait in the snow on their knees behind a fence in a yard until it was their turn or until they were sent home at the end of the day. They knelt all day like that in the cold snow, adults and children. Frieda and her father were held here and sent home. The gassing was slow and wasn’t a very efficient system, and it was replaced by shooting and burning the bodies in pits.
The Minsk ghetto was really a concentration camp right in the city. Jews did not live in a ghetto before the war. They lived along side non-Jews, but some sections of the city held more Jews than others. When the Germans wanted to keep them in one place, they moved out all non-Jews who took over homes in other parts of the city which used to be occupied by Jews. They moved Jews into a fairly small area until they were killed, usually several families to a room. The ghetto area was carefully patrolled with soldiers and dogs to prevent escape.
Frieda is part of a group of child Holocaust survivors, which has about 160 members. Some are children of partisans who lived underground. We were shown a building which is half wrecked now where her father hid with the partisans on the second floor. He joined them early on. She also hid here with her mother for a while. The Germans eventually discovered the site, but Frieda’s family managed to survive. The partisans had a lot of ammunition stored here.
There is a park where the old Jewish cemetery used to be and a monument is there to the German Jews from Hamburg and Dusseldorf, who were packed into nearby apartments and homes until they were killed. Frieda said that the German Jews considered themselves more cultured and civilized than the local Minsk Jewish population. They lived apart. All of the old grave markers were removed, but interestingly, several have been mysteriously returned there in recent years. I counted 15, which were badly worn and broken. They are very heavy blocks of stone, so it must have been difficult to move them. No one knows where they appeared from or who took them. The Hebrew inscription is clearly visible. An orphanage used to be next to the cemetery, and Germans entered it early on and killed all the orphans. There also used to be Jewish hospitals nearby. One still functions as a hospital, but is not Jewish. There were many political battles to prevent the development of the land bounded by the old cemetery. The city wanted to build a stadium here, etc.
Frieda gave me a paperback book which she wrote about the Holocaust in Minsk. It is in Russian, but I will have to have it translated. It has many pictures and tables, as well as text. The title is “Judenfrei!” She has written three books on her Holocaust experience and the Minsk ghetto.
Frieda complained about the money which Holocaust survivors are receiving from Germany. People in Belarus get far less than even their own relatives receive in Western Europe or in the U.S. Most people in her group of survivors do receive compensation. These people can never be compensated for the hell they lived through, but they do need the money badly just to survive. She gets $250 every three months. She knows people in the U.S. who receive $500 every month, notably the two brothers of her friend, Maya. She leaves with a delegation which has been invited to Germany soon, where she will bring this up again. People like herself live in far more difficult circumstances than their counterparts in the U.S. Why shouldn’t they be compensated the same way?
She was also very critical of the Joint which does not treat the elderly with dignity. She gets a food package several times a year, and its contents are humiliating. I saw her food package. It contained a package of rice, which was a very tiny grain and cooks up into a gooey mess, a package of beans, a package of kasha, a package of very poor quality macaroni, two tins of very smelly fish (not sprats or anything I recognized), a tin of peas and a bottle of sunflower oil. People in the small villages are so happy to receive it because they don’t know anything else, but people in Minsk know well what is in their markets and are insulted by the choices made by Joint. The package costs around $3 and they are distributed four times a year. It is certainly not enough to sustain anyone for several months. They also know the millions that the Joint has in its budget and the relatively high salaries which their workers receive, around $200 per month.
Also, Frieda said that the limiting of immigration to the U.S. to close relatives is a shame (I agree with this.) The world accepts the German definition of close relatives, the one they used to define who is a Jew for extermination purposes, and doesn’t think about it at all. If she had left when she was 37 years old, she could have earned a living by now and not been a ward of the Joint or the State. Is it their fault that so many close relatives died in the Holocaust? Galina said that Frieda is quite an activist and her efforts are badly needed by the Jewish community she serves.
Comments:
Galina said that the Jews have a good relationship with most of the local inhabitants and there is not as much antisemitism here as in Ukraine or Poland. Those who are antisemitic are a minority and not representative of life here. Even the Jewish partisans during the war were accepted more readily into the non-Jewish units and appreciated. Minsk itself was never a part of Poland. However, Baranovichi, which I visited the next day, did go back and forth between Poland and Russia. Many local people were active in saving Jews and one village sheltered a large group of children for several years, who later erected a monument in the center of the town to the people who saved them.
She also said that, despite many comments to the contrary, the Lukashenko government does not run a Stalinist-type regime. There is a lot of latitude for free expression and independence within this framework. It is not perfect, but it is not as bad as people make it out to be. She is often annoyed at the impressions which outsiders bring when they visit. She said that it is only part of the story.
Galina told me many incredible stories about people she had met and some of the people they have helped. She went through a shoe box of photos with me for several hours and each picture seemed to have its own special tale.
One was a fascinating tale of a man, Alex, who as a six-year-old boy, hid in a potato field when the Nazis came to liquidate his small shtetl. We passed by this place and could see a few houses in the distance. He saw his parents and sister walk off towards the killing place and he followed their trek from a distance, hidden from view. He saw the killing – the shooting, the burying of the bodies and realized he was absolutely alone. He knew that it was bad to be known as a Jew and suppressed his own identity for so long that he forgot his own name and that of his parents. He wandered off after hiding and took food from fields until it became too cold to forage any more. He approached peasant families for food and some helped and some didn’t, but he had to keep moving because people were too afraid to take him in.
Alex was blond and blue-eyed, and didn’t look particularly Jewish. He was eventually befriended by an SS squad, and he became their mascot. He acquired another name and identity. They had a uniform made for him in a small size, boots and all, and they even gave him a small gun. He accompanied them on their killing forays and Alex saw everything. As the war was coming to a close, one German officer wanted to adopt him, but he held back. After the war, he wandered. He eventually ended up in Australia, where some of the SS squad had settled, married there and had children. The ex-SS Germans became his friends, but he gradually distanced himself from them. He never told anyone about his war-time experience, but it weighed heavily on him.
Alex did not do well financially, but he got by. He loaned a friend money by mortgaging his home and the friend absconded with the funds and he lost his house. He finally found a rabbi in Australia and told someone for the first time what had happened to him during the war. The rabbi denounced him as a traitor and told him he was the worst kind of person and never to come back. He was hospitalized with a severe heart attack after this.
Later on he tried applying for German reparations money and his son, who was grown by now, helped him to fill out the papers and talked to representatives who dealt with this process. Alex was turned down flat because some of his witnesses were SS men. The bureaucrat told him that he would stand trial for his atrocities and not to ever apply for reparations money again – he belonged in prison. Alex’s son took over at this point and called back a week later to say that if the committee did not grant his father a stipend, that he would go to the press in Australia, America and all over the world with the story of his father’s plight. He would take them to court and they had one week to reverse their decision. The committee called back in three days to say that they had reversed their decision.
Alex had never looked for his family because he believed them to be dead. However, his father had actually survived and remarried after the war and had another son, a half-brother, who began looking for family members. He located Alex in Australia and they had a reunion in Belarus rather recently. A film crew was hired to follow their story, but so far nothing has ever come of this. The half-brother took Alex back to the little village he had left around 50 years ago. Alex had blocked so much of it from memory, that he had difficulty recognizing anything, but the one thing he did remember was the name of the village, although he didn’t know the significance of the word – it was just a sound to him. He went to the village and was shown his father’s house, but didn’t remember it. Then he was shown his uncle’s home and recognized everything about it and where a well was around the corner. It was still there. Apparently, Alex had grown up in the uncle’s home. The step-brother was able to show Alex pictures of his father, who by now was deceased, but had lived into the late 1960’s. They might have met had they known about one another. He also had pictures of other relatives whom Alex recognized – cousins and aunts and uncles. Alex could put names to pictures that the half-brother didn’t know at all. It was a bittersweet story of horror and deprivation and trying to cope.
Galina also told me a story about a film crew from Canada which was led by a woman, Shelley, who was interested in filming women and the war. She found a woman from Belarus who now lived abroad and had fought with the Byelorussian partisan’s. This woman was so distressed by her war-time experience, that she never wanted to return to Belarus and did not want to remember any of it. After much coaxing over a long period of time, the woman, Fay Shulman, finally agreed to go back. This film has been produced and should be available in the U.S. There was a lot more to the experience, but I don’t remember much of it. They filmed in the same woods where she had lived and they located other members of her unit.
Galina also participated in a project of the wife of a former British ambassador to Belarus, who is a psychologist and who wanted to interview Holocaust survivors for their stories and also to study their emotional adjustment to life. Galina introduced her to clients and acted as a translator.
Galina told me about their work with orphans. Apparently, abandoned children have to stay in a hospital in quarantine for several months before they can be moved to an orphanage. She found several teenage children in a hospital with nothing to do, no schooling and no possibility to leave their hospital room because of the quarantine. They came from severely distressed families and looked forward to going to the orphanage. She visited them in the hospital and found some help to give them clothing and audio cassettes and radios to entertain themselves.
They have also helped children who are hospitalized for cancer. There are still many victims of Chernobyl who are in pitiful circumstances. There is a very fine oncology center for them in Minsk, but they lack the resources to give the children follow up medicines after surgery for bone marrow transplant. Many children die because they lack antibiotics and other expensive anti-cancer drugs.
Apparently the Mormons from Utah send over a great deal of medicine and other humanitarian aid in containers. This last year they sent at least three containers. One of their members is John Hess, a potato farmer from Idaho, who came over to work with potato farmers here. He was given an odd plot of land to work for one crop and spent a lot of time clearing it of rubbish. He planted seed potatoes from Belarus through a connection he had with an agricultural academy, using his own mix of fertilizer and his own mechanized machinery. His yield was 16 times that of the local collective, and they really appreciated his expertise. A local potato farmer who designs heavy equipment, noted the improvements John had in the machinery he brought with him, and was going to incorporate some of these in his own equipment. Galina was suspicious of him when he first came, but was quickly won over by his quiet manner and the expertise he shared.
Mormons have been very helpful to them in many ways. Galina was able to get them to help the home for the mentally ill with equipment and fertilizer for a kitchen garden, one of Galina and Frank’s projects. They even helped the school in Postava, where Galina grew up, by supplying school furniture and decent textbooks in English. The government just doesn’t have enough resources to help these schools, and nothing new had been put into the school since it was built in 1984. The English texts they used were written by Byelorussians, and not written in proper English.
Frank does a lot with prescription eyeglasses. They collect prescriptions here from many centers and send them to England. They have a retired optician there who makes up all the glasses, at no charge. Then the glasses are shipped back to Belarus for distribution. Last year they distributed 10,000 pair of glasses this way. They tried to get Chesed in Minsk to offer this service to their list of Jewish pensioners, but got nowhere with them. After much prodding and coaxing, Chesed finally came up with a list of 65 employees of Chesed, who could well afford to buy their own glasses, who presented prescriptions for the free service. No one on their list of pensioners was ever told of the opportunity. I told Galina about the possibility of getting equipment here to grind lenses, as Dr. Paul Hart had wanted to do after we had our eye clinic in Dnipropetrovsk. At the time I couldn’t figure out how to get such heavy equipment shipped. Dr. Hart had figured out the cost of the final pair of glasses was around $2 a pair. It would also be a way to give someone a small business and support themselves with a modest salary.
Frank thought it might work as a non-profit business. Everything in Belarus is still state run. He thinks that the Mormons could ship heavy equipment in their containers. John Hess shipped whole tractors when he came. I’ll have to look into it when I get home. I thought that Paul Hart had already ordered the equipment when we ran the eye clinic in Dnipropetrovsk.
Galina told me that Frank is bringing back a lot of medicine from the 35’s (the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jews, led by Rita Eker and Margaret Rigal) in London, England, when he returns on Sunday. He works closely with them and some of them are due to come here in a few weeks. They help him in many ways and finance some of his work. Frank did graduate work at Oxford in intellectual history, and has spent a lot of time in England. He also knows Martin Gilbert well, and met with him on this last trip. He has plans to meet him again in Vilnius sometime in September.
When they were first starting to help people, they wanted to find out how to bring large quantities of medicine into the country. Frank went to talk to the person at Joint who was in charge of this. This person quickly told Frank that it was absolutely impossible to do it. The Joint used to import large quantities, but no longer because of government obstacles. Then Frank went to speak with a Christian group which works with child victims of Chernobyl and also deals with large quantities of medicine. They said of course it could be done. It was quite simple and they showed Frank how to fill out the proper forms for it. This is what Frank does now. Joint has also tried to destroy Frank’s program here by going to government officials and badmouthing what they do. It was difficult for a while, but Frank has a large aid program working and the government is quite pleased with it. You can see that there is no love lost between the Joint and Frank’s efforts.
I asked Galina how they keep up with all their different projects. She said that it is not easy, but Frank keeps on coming up with new ideas and she is coaxed into trying them. They earn money by taking people on genealogical trips, but it is not very much. They have an incredible network of people who help them out, both here and in other countries. Galina mentioned a Risa Haywood who is trying to get a container full of medicine shipped. She is from Boulder, CO, and has helped them a lot.
Frank is an excellent photographer and they recently framed several of his pictures which they want to hang in the apartment. He likes to work in black and white, so he can develop them himself.
The used Ford van for which Action for Post-Soviet Jewry provided funds to purchase and repair. It is used for Frank and Galina Swartz's work with the Jews in Belarus. Frank Swartz, the director of the East European Jewish Heritage Project, at his computer.
Saturday, May 19th – Baranovichi
We drove to Baranovichi in the used Ford van which APSJ enabled Frank Swartz to purchase and repair. It is comfortable and rides well. They have a driver, Vlad, who makes minor repairs. Baranovichi is about a two-hour drive from Minsk on main roads. The road even has a number (M1) and a tollbooth, the first one I have seen in the FSU. However, Byelorussians do not have to pay a toll. Tolls are for foreign vehicles and trucks.
Baranovichi is a small city which grew up on a major rail line which connects Belarus to Poland and which eventually goes north through Minsk to Moscow. It became a major manufacturing center, rather than having an agricultural base, as most small cities do. Many of the people who originally came to Baranovichi moved from the smaller village of Novo Myzh, which is just to the west. Baranovichi itself is southwest of Minsk. I am especially interested in this city because my grandfather, Israel Kantrowitz, emigrated from here as a young teenager in the late 1800’s.
There are about 450 – 500 Jews in Baranovichi out of a total population of 180,000. Before WWII, 60% or 24,000 of the population were Jewish out of a total population of 40,000.
Holocaust: They know that at least 12,000 were killed in the Holocaust, but it is difficult to keep track of all the killing. Most likely, many who served in the army were killed in battle, but are not included in this number.
Grigory Doroshov unlocking the gates to the former Jewish cemetery. The gravestones were taken for building material after WWII. Monument donated by former Baranovichi Jews who live overseas to the memory of the Holocaust victims. The remains of Baranovichi Holocaust victims have been re-buried in this cemetery.
Since Baranovichi is on a major rail line, Jews were shipped here in cattle cars from other parts of Europe to be killed. There is a special monument which was built to commemorate the slaughter of 3,000 Jews from Czechoslovakia, who arrived on May 20th (I don’t remember the year) on a single train. They expected a group of Czech dignitaries the next day for a commemorative event. Two men were painting part of the monument in preparation. Jews were shipped directly to a place next to the woods outside of the city and were made to strip naked before they were shot and buried in pits. The monument does not say anything about Jews – just Czechoslovakians who were killed by the Nazis. Many of the killing squads were Lithuanians and Ukrainians. Galina has a copy of a letter in the archives, which was written by a Nazi officer, complaining that Byelorussians could not be trusted to kill Jews. They didn’t like to participate, so it was necessary to import other police squads to do the killing. As you can see from the numbers, the Nazis managed to kill just as well with outsiders.
The main Holocaust site on the outskirts of Baranovichi. The railroad tracks led right to this site and are a few yards behind the arch in the rear. There is a monument to a trainload of Czech Jews killed here. The Holocaust site called the "Green Bridge," which is right next to railroad tracks. People still find bone fragments in the soil. A factory road which ran through this area was re-located further away from this site.
There is another area in the woods near the railroad tracks, which is known as the “Green Bridge.” It used to be outside the city, but now buildings are going up around it. A nearby factory began to use the strip as a road for their large trucks until the Jewish community complained and they built another road a short distance away. Grigory said that you can still find bones in the woods. Someone is growing a small plot of potatoes there, too. There is a new development of single homes nearby.
Many of the original Jewish homes are still lived in. They are distinctive architecturally. Brick homes were always built by Jews. Also, the fancy lintels over the windows in wooden houses were a sure sign of a Jewish home. We went to a former Yeshiva building, which used to be a famous Jewish center of learning and is now a school for elementary grade children. The building is a single story, but was added on after it became a public school, doubling its size. Tall windows indicate the original section. The city is willing to give it back to the Jewish community, but first they would have to find an equal building for the school and also afford to keep up this building. It’s an impossible request for such a small Jewish community.
The main business street in the old section of town is still paved with cobblestones which were in place under the tsars. They are laid in a pattern and are in pretty good shape, except for some depressions where buses now pull up to the curb, and these were filled with water from recent rain. Most of the town buildings were destroyed in WWII, so many of the buildings we saw were early Communist design. Newer sections of the city have the typical high-rise apartment buildings, which have gone up more recently. They were putting up stands in the city to celebrate its 130th anniversary. It was founded in 1871.
The chairman of the Religious Jewish Community is Grigory Doroshev, a pensioner who fought in WWII and rose to a rank just under colonel. He has many medals on his jacket. He speaks Russian and Yiddish. Grigory fought as far east as Kharkov and Sumy in Ukraine, and also fought in Baranovichi.
Grigory Doroshov, leader of the Baranovichi religious community. Grigory stands in front of what used to be a famous Yeshiva. It is now a public school, which added on to the original building.
We met him in an apartment which is rented for the community for $35/month by Yuri Dorn, head of the Union of Religious Jewish Communities in Minsk, and is used for meetings and services. They pray on Monday and Thursday mornings and on Friday afternoon. The religious group numbers 15 and they only have one set of tefillin and would like at least five more sets. They also need mezuzahs complete with parchment. There is only one mezuzah in this apartment and some members would like to have one at home as well. They have plenty of tallitot.
Grigory also works with people who need help. He knows the community well. He told me that they have a patronnage person (a nurse or home aide who visits people at home) ready to work, but need to find money to pay her. Yuri Dorn, who heads the Union of Religious Jewish Communities in Minsk and dispenses aid to other communities in Belarus, was trying to find funds for this, but so far, no luck. I talked to Grigory for quite a while about our program to help needy Jews and left him $600. Just under $400 would cover the cost of a patronnage worker for one year and the rest would be used for individual aid to Jews in the community. He wrote out a receipt for me and wrote a copy for his own records. He said that he will send photos and a record of what they do with the funds to Galina Swartz in Minsk and she will forward it to me. I plan to meet with Yuri Dorn on Monday and I can find out more about his work in Minsk and other parts of Belarus.
I also left Grigory with some sugar-fee candy and wafers for diabetics, some coffee for the group, Sweet and Low packets and a large bottle of generic Tylenol. He was planning to distribute the generic Tylenol the next day and was delighted to have it. They do have doctors available to work, but I decided to start slowly with him and see how it develops before we add another layer. I am leaving a small amount of medicine with Frank Swartz, who already has a program in place to dispense it. Grigory already has a committee of three people who decide who needs help the most and how to obtain it. He will use this same committee for our program. He said that the patronnage person they hire will keep a diary of her work and he’ll send a copy to me. This person will be able to give injections at home, which otherwise would usually cost $3 per visit.
I asked Grigory Doroshev what the Joint did in Baranovichi. He said that Chesed runs a canteen, but only nine people are able to access it. They used to feed many more, but now they limit the program to people with pensions below 30,000 rubles/month ($25). Others get packages a few times a year. Through Yuri Dorn in Minsk, they are able to obtain some medicine, but supplies are limited. There are many diabetics and most men have adenoma (prostate problems). They need everything. Grigory himself has a relatively high pension of $90/month due to his war service. He was a career officer and served for over 30 years.
Sunday, May 20th - Frank arrives from London
I finally met Frank Swartz in person. Frank is head of the Eastern European Jewish Heritage Project. He had been traveling since 4:00 A.M. and is still talking to people on the phone and dealing with e-mail late into the evening. He asked me whether I noticed the time of the e-mails he sent me because he is often up at 3:00 A.M. typing away. We have been talking about a variety of things – telling him about our work in Ukraine and listening to some of his programs in Belarus. They have helped a hospital for disabled children purchase a large washing machine/drier for laundry, their first. The patients are often incontinent and all laundry is sent out or done by hand. They work with the children’s infectious hospital, supplying them with medicine. Frank brought back a large duffel of medicine donated by the 35’s and had no trouble at all going through customs. No one checked his bags.
The physician who works with them at the synagogue came to dinner this evening, Dr. Maria Alexandrovna Denisenko. She is a pulmonary specialist, not Jewish, and very dedicated to this work. She works in a Minsk hospital and still makes time for a clinic at the synagogue and home visits with people too frail to travel. I have plans to meet her on Wednesday to follow her home visits. Maria picked up a lot of the medicine which Frank had brought. I asked whether the small amount I had brought should go to her as well, and was told that would be a good idea. So she has the Hytrin, Tagamet, Bactrin and generic Tylenol. Maria took a small amount with her and we’ll bring the rest by van on Wednesday.
Dr. Maria Alexandrovna Denisenko, physician to the Jewish community in Minsk. She is looking at new medicine which just came in. Two of Dr. Denisenko's clients, Abram Abramovich Zhitelzayev and his wife, Bella Grigorievna. Bella holds Abram's jacket with his medals from WWII. They live on the 5th floor with no elevator, and Abram can no longer climb the stairs, so he rarely goes out.
Accompanying Synagogue Physician, Maria Denisenko on Home Visits
Natalya Mamonova, born on April 30, 1910. Natalya is the oldest member of a large, close-knit family. Her pride and joy is her 10-year-old great-grandson, Evgeny, who was born severely disabled with cerebral palsy. The mother, a much loved granddaughter, died in childbirth and the father is nowhere in sight. So Natalya, her daughter and other granddaughters have been bringing up Evgeny.
Left to Right: Natalya Mamonova, a woman in her early 90's who cares for her great-grandson, a severely disabled boy. On the right is Katya, our translator. During this visit, the boy had been hospitalized with a severe case of pneumonia. Dr. Denisenko cares for both Natalya and the boy.
Evgeny was in the hospital when we visited because he has a very severe case of pneumonia which had not been responding to treatment. Natalya was pleased that his temperature was finally beginning to come down after several weeks. Natalya’s whole life revolves around the boy. Frank asked her what she wanted for her 90th birthday, and she said a juice extractor so Evgeny could have fresh juice. They bought one for her. Frank is concerned that if Evgeny dies, Natalya will give up the will to live. She showed us her photo album with pictures of herself at a much younger age, her granddaughter who died, and Evgeny as a baby.
Natalya has health problems of her own. Her leg and foot were wrapped in an ace bandage and was quite swollen, but she said that it was responding to treatment since Maria began helping her. She said that she takes a lot of medicine. Natalya gets free medicine from the State after age ninety. Her pension is around 73,000 rubles/mo. ($65), and her daughter’s pension is around $30/mo.
Vladimir Abramovich Chaikin was born in 1933 and is 68 years old. He comes from Bobruisk and has lived in Minsk since 1956. He is a 2nd degree invalid and a diabetic. He had a stroke many years ago, and seems to have recovered, but he has many problems – high blood pressure, heart trouble, pneumonia, aches in legs. He has had surgery several times. He does not take insulin, but does take tablets. He needs a glucometer and strips. He has enough medicine right now. The State pays 90% of the cost of medicine. Maria also helps him with this.
Vladimir Abramovich Chaikin, a 2nd degree invalid who is a severe diabetic. He receives a package every month from the Joint with kasha and sugar. He also receives a year's supply of artificial sweetener. Dr. Denisenko helps him with medicine Dr. Denisenko goes over a question about medicine for Vladimir with a friend of his who is helping with his care.
His health was severely damaged during the war years. His mother died of starvation when they were evacuated to the Orenburg region. His father fought at the front, was wounded four times, but survived. Vladimir and his brother were sent to an orphanage. After the war, his father re-married and the boys came home. He suffered a lot from antisemitism in the early 50’s with a last name of Chaikin. Even now he is afraid to go to a hospital because of his past experience with antisemitism. He never married.
Vladimir’s pension is 45,000 rubles/mo. ($40). He receives help from Chesed in small packages he gets every month with porridge and sugar. They also gave him tablets of artificial sweetener, 1,000 tablets/year. He rarely gets fresh fruit or vegetables. A woman friend, who used to be a neighbor, was there from Grodno to help him. He is grateful for the help. His brother is a pensioner in New York – he left for the U.S. five years ago, but cannot afford to help him.
Vladimir goes to the synagogue on Shabbat and showed us his prayerbook which he uses at home. It is too difficult for him to walk to get to synagogue more often.
Moise Gelfond, born in 1948, has cancer of the lungs and is very ill. The cancer has metasticized. He was a sportsman and a non-smoker. One lung has been removed and he has been undergoing chemotherapy. He starts another course on June 5th. He spoke in a whisper because the cancer has affected his voice box.
He lives with his father-in-law, Moise Eisen, born in 1914, and his wife, who was working when we visited. If Moise’s treatment is successful, he hopes to have his right leg amputated below the knee. He is on crutches which were supplied by Frank through the synagogue, but he needs a longer pair. These were marked165b. If he has the surgery on his leg, he will need a prosthesis, but he knows he needs to wait and see how his treatment goes. He will need anti-nausea medication when he begins the next course of treatment. Frank asked Maria to provide this when the time comes. He is not on pain killers, although he probably could use some.
Left to Right: Katya, our translator, and Moise Gelfond, who has lung cancer which has metasticized. Moise requested help in obtaining longer crutches. Action for Post-Soviet Jewry purchased a radio/ cassette recorder for him because his had broken and it was his main source of entertainment. Moise Eisen is Gelfond's father-in-law. His glasses were provided free of charge by Frank Swartz's program. Frank sends prescriptions to England, where a retired optician makes up the glasses without charge. Last year they supplied 10,000 pair of eyeglasses for Jews all over Belarus.
Moise has had his disability category changed to 1st degree invalid, so his pension should increase. Now it is 63,000 rubles/mo. ($45). His father-in-law receives a pension of 79,000 rubles/mo ($56). Moise used to be a building engineer. He has a brother in Chicago who writes and calls from time to time, but he has not told the brother of his illness. His father-in-law was wearing eyeglasses provided by Frank’s program. We purchased a radio-cassette player for Moise, a donation from APSJ, because his own unit had broken. Frank will pick up a longer pair of crutches and bring both items to him.
Abram Abramovich Zhitelzayev was born in 1926 in a village in Vitebsk region. His wife, Bella Grigorievna Zhitelzayeva, was born in 1929 in Gomel. They have been married for 54 years, and have lived in their present apartment over 40 years, on the 5th floor of a walk up building. Abram became a diabetic over 10 years ago. Bella used to work in a laboratory in the medical academy. Bella showed me an ivy plant which was given to her when she retired. It now grows all around one of their rooms. Abram does not go outside often, but uses the balconies in their apartment for fresh air. He is very slow on the stairs.
Abram is a Holocaust survivor, and fought with the partisans. He saved over 60 Jews by coming to the Minsk ghetto and getting people out to the woods. However, he does not receive compensation from Germany because he only stayed in the ghetto for six months and not the required 18 months written in the regulations for compensation. His mother was hung by the Germans not far from where he lives now. The people he saved receive compensation, but not Abram. Frank discussed his case when he was in England and will try to help sort it out and apply again. Bella showed us his jacket which is covered with medals.
Spielberg interviewed him for many hours, but he never saw the taped result. Abram’s father was burned to death when their house was burned during the Russian Revolution in 1923. Everyone made it out, but the father, who was killed when the roof collapsed.
Bella was evacuated to Stalingrad and later to Kurgan in Siberia, where it was 50 degrees below zero in the winter. Her father was an officer during the war and was killed. Her mother brought up three children, and died just a couple of years ago at age 93. She could thread a needle right up to the end of her life. They have a son in Bobruisk, who is unemployed right now. A second granddaughter just got married and kept Abram’s family name.
Abram is very grateful for glasses he received from Frank’s program. He showed me his old glasses, which were very heavy. He asked for another pair, which Frank will get for him. Abram had cataract surgery, but no lens was implanted, so he wears a very thick pair of glasses. He has had glaucoma for 17 years and takes drops for this. They used to go to Moscow for eye treatment, but can no longer afford this. Bella also asked for glasses and she will get her prescription to the synagogue for Frank’s program. Bella also has intestinal pain and has had her gall bladder removed.
Abram complained about the long walk and longer wait to get to the Polyclinic. He has a lot of trouble walking. Frank offered to have him picked up and driven there, but Abram refused to ask for help. Maria will keep in touch with him and see if he will accept more help.
Abram commented that people like himself who won the war are now receiving humanitarian aid from those who lost the war. He was deceived by the Soviets all those years, although he was a good Communist and an active party member for a long time. He had to be a Communist to be a labor leader, which was one of his jobs.
Galina discussed a couple of letters which she had received from people asking for help. These are from people in other cities who have heard about their program and need particular medicines, but cannot afford to purchase them. She usually receives around two requests a week. Maria will follow them up with phone calls to ascertain whether the requests are legitimate. If she is reassured, she will get the medicine from her clinic supply and send it to the family. She also follows up patients through their doctors and looks at past patient records. Galina Swartz says that often physicians here see patients for one complaint at a time and don’t look at the whole person. Also, the Polyclinics and hospitals are set up so a different physician sees the patient at each visit. There is no one person following them. As a result, they may be prescribed medicines which have bad interactions or may be taking too much at one time. Maria is careful about reviewing the whole situation and has sometimes taken clients off of certain medicines with good results. She also likes to prescribe herbal products which are usually harmless and give the client a feeling that something new has been done without loading them up with more drugs. Also, the herbal products are usually affordable and available locally, and many of them really do have a function.
I gave $500 to Frank Swartz for his charitable work. He immediately wrote out a receipt on the computer. He said he would send me pictures and something in writing on what was accomplished with the funds.
We talked about the Warm House program, which is not used much here. Frank thought that it might be a good way to introduce some lectures on health. He said that people here seem to find it easy to get in touch with friends and family. Even single people have lots of options to mingle. When I first mentioned the idea, Frank said that the Joint used to organize it, but people brought their own food to the gathering. I thought one primary reason for a Warm House was to offer funds to pay for food for the group so everyone would have a nourishing hot meal. Our Warm Houses usually cost about $10 a session and feed around a dozen people.
The more I talk with Frank, the more he thinks of things for me to see while I am here. The week, which seemed like a long time, is suddenly beginning to fill up and time is running short! He wants me to see a ballet or an opera.
Galina is busy with many foreign visitors. Yesterday she picked up Frank at the airport and this morning she will meet more guests flying in. She is at the airport several days every week, and often on the phone talking to them during the day. She invited John Hess, the potato farmer from Idaho and his wife to meet me. I think they leave for home tomorrow. She likes the Mormons, because they do what they promise. The Hess’s have 14 children and are brimming with energy. Also, there are foreign guests from the U.S. coming to dinner tonight. Galina translates for the guests, and this is one of the ways the family earns a living. Galina has planned some museum excursions for all of us. There are two good museums in Minsk – the art museum and the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, a must to visit.
Galina showed me a photo of a talented artist who is painting the interior of a very old and beautiful orthodox church in the center of Minsk. He does icons and all kinds of large wall and ceiling paintings in the church. He is not just touching up old work, but creating from scratch. Hopefully, I will see the church and meet him. She also showed me a book of artwork by an artist from Belarus who now lives in the U.S. His son is also a fine painter, but prefers to stay here and work. He is successful as an artist in his own right.
Frank showed me a catalogue for ECHO International, a British company which provides low cost medicine and equipment for non-profits only at vastly reduced prices. The catalogue prices are in pounds, which convert now at around 1.4 to the dollar. Frank said that equipment seems costly, but medicines are quite reasonable. Here are a few sample items:
Atenolol (blood pressure), 50 mg./tablet, 1,000 tablets = $5.68
Hydrochlorothyazide (blood pressure), 50 mg./tablet, 1,000 tablets = 1.75
Glucotrend Blood Glucose Test Kit – 1 17.00
Glucostix Test Strips – 50/package 13.50
Of course, shipping costs have to be added. Frank spoke about perhaps driving a load of medicine from England to Belarus, an interesting idea. The company does a lot of air shipping and provides special packing for refrigeration.
Monday, May 21st – Minsk
Yuri Dorn, Head of Union of Jewish Religious Communities
There are 60,000 – 90,000 Jews in Belarus. Half of these, or 30,000 – 45,000 Jews, live in Minsk. Yuri’s group covers 17 cities: Baranovichi, Borisov, Bobruisk, Brest, Grodno, Gomel, Kalinkovichi, Minsk, Mogilev, Molodechno, Mozyr, Orsha, Pinsk, Rogachov, Slutsk,Vitebsk, and Zlobin
We drove to the synagogue, a building which I had not seen before, which was established in 1994. In 1914 it was a police station, which was taken by the Soviet government after the Revolution. It went through several iterations until it became a shoe factory, owned by a Jew. It was given to the Jewish community and needed extensive repair work. Non-Jews stripped the building of everything before it was given back. It now serves as a major communal site for services, meals, children’s clubs, a warehouse and for a Sochnut office. The building looks small on the outside, but has many levels and a few additions. Steps keep leading up to different rooms, some of which are quite large. Every square inch is used.
Yuri Dorn, head of the Byelorussian Union of Jewish Religious Communities, in his synagogue office. The Minsk Synagogue building, acquired in 1994. It used to be a police headquarters and later a shoe factory owned by a Jew.
The rabbi at the synagogue is Rabbi Sander Uritsky, who is orthodox, but not chabad. He alternates between two weeks here and two weeks in Israel. During my visit, he was in Israel. Rabbi Gruzman is the chabad leader in Minsk. There are about 500 Jews (men?) who pray every morning in all of Belarus.
Yuri said that there were two conservative congregations now in Belarus – one in Mazur and another in Polsk. There are many progressive congregations as well, but most are small. As head of the Union of Religious Jewish Congregations, Yuri is the leader of all of these groups. However, chabad has its own hierarchy and has the first synagogue to open in Minsk after 1990, an old two-story farmhouse which was left to the Jewish community and rebuilt to have office space and a sanctuary. I visited this synagogue twice on previous trips. So far, neither of the two orthodox rabbis in Minsk seems to be a strong leader. There was a rabbi in Pinsk, but he left for Israel. There is a progressive rabbi in Minsk, Nelly Shulman, but I have been unable to reach her because she is traveling. She provides leadership for the many progressive congregations.
There are a few Jewish Day Schools. The wife of the chabad rabbi works with the Lauder School in Minsk, which has 70 children. A day school in Pinsk has 35 boys. They are opening a day school for girls next year in Mogilev, which has the second largest Jewish population in Belarus. I remember that it was always Yuri’s dream to have a Jewish day school in Minsk. Sochnut operates classes in Hebrew and Jewish tradition and history for 300 children. There are 22 children attending Sunday school out of a children’s population of 2,000.
Every three months, Yuri holds a meeting in Minsk for volunteers from the outlying communities across Belarus. They disseminate information on Jewish topics, discuss welfare efforts, etc. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee refuses to open their lists of welfare clients to Yuri, so they gather their own information.
There are no local wealthy Jewish businessmen who support the Jewish community financially. Belarus has a conservative government and 90% of business is still government owned. There is very little private enterprise. The Jewish community receives some support from tourists – one-time gifts. Sochnut pays rent for space in the synagogue building - $1,600 per month, which must be a major source of income. Sochnut has been talking about looking for larger quarters, which would be a real blow to Yuri’s finances. They work with 130 volunteers who are not paid. Yuri works to develop leadership skills among his volunteers. The aim is to have an indigenous group of Jewish leaders and not to depend on outside help.
On major Jewish holidays they rent space for $250 - $300 per hour in large buildings, and they fill these halls. Some non-Jews come because free entertainment is limited, but most people are Jewish. For Pesach, 300 were served on the first night, mostly adults, and another 300 served the second night, mostly young people. Every square inch of the synagogue was set with tables for this. Their dining area probably holds 50 people at a time when it is filled. During Pesach, Yuri’s organization held seders for 7,000 people all across Belarus.
They serve somewhat more than 60,000 people – the numbers keep on going up. Yuri Dorn’s budget is $10 - $12,000 per year. Frank’s group, the Eastern European Jewish Heritage Project, channels aid to Yuri’s organization, mostly from England, and they work together closely on various aid projects. For instance, the doctor at the synagogue clinic is Maria, whom Frank supplies with donations of medicine and whom he works closely with to feed back information on patients and their needs. Galina collects letters from people who need help and also prescriptions and requests from many parts of the Jewish community, both in Minsk and across Belarus. Frank has also solicited funds through the European Council of Jewish Communities, of which Belarus is a member.
There is no direct aid from the U.S. or from United Jewish Communities, the major American Jewish fund raising arm. This sounded incredible to me, considering the number of American Jews who trace their roots back to Belarus and who travel here as individuals on a regular basis. Galina earns money from American Jews who come to see the towns where their families came from, and she is working this week with two related American families who flew in yesterday and today for this purpose. Also a number of famous American families came from Belarus: head of Brooklyn City Council is from Minsk, Lauren Bacall is from Volozhin, Kirk Douglas’ father is from Mogilev, Larry King is from Pinsk, David Sarnoff (deceased) was from Minsk, someone high up from Microsoft is from Pinsk, etc., etc. Some people from the Atlanta Federation are active here, but not major donors. Frank mentioned involvement in Mark Chagall University, a Jewish department within the Byelorussian University, (but he felt it is not a serious effort) and a Howard Margol, who is active in Lithuania. Steve Kutner has also been here, but not in a very active way.
In contrast to the bare bones operation of the Union of Religious Jewish Communities, Joint pays its Chesed workers $1.50 per hour and spends $240,000 per year in Belarus. People believe that a lot of this is spent on overhead – not direct aid. All of this comes from either the U.S. or from Claims Conference funds from Germany. The Joint is scaling back its aid here – fewer people receive regular hot meals, packages are of a poor quality and are sent out less frequently each year. A new directive limits hot meals to pensioners who receive less than $25 per month in pensions. It is next to impossible to exist on $35 or $40 per month. Hillel activity is controlled by the Joint and is largely inactive in Belarus. There didn’t seem to be a Hillel effort around Pesach seders.
1) Joint has 19,000 clients in all Belarus 2) 550 eat six times/week in Minsk 3) 2,000 eat six times/week in Belarus 4) The rest receive food packages three or four times/year. 5) 40% of the money which goes to the Joint stays in Israel.
I left $500 with Yuri Dorn for his work.
Clients who come to the synagogue canteen receive a very tasty meal – several told me this in person, and the meal I was served was quite simple, but good. Many complain about the quality of the food which Chesed serves. Yuri was unable to tell me exactly how many people are fed at the synagogue, but it must be well over 500 from the kinds of activity going on there. There are many programs which bring people there, and all of the people are fed – adults and children – on a regular basis. No one is turned away. After morning services, 30-40 people are fed. After Shabbat services, 70 – 80 people are fed. People who come to learn are fed. The kitchen is kosher and there is another smaller kosher kitchen upstairs where children gather.
There are about 1,000 people per week who visit the synagogue. Of course, some of these are repeat visits. The physician, Maria Denisenko, a non-Jew and pulmonary specialist who is very dedicated to her work, sees about 10 patients a day in her clinic at the synagogue. The clinic is open six days a week and on Shabbat. They distribute vitamins, as well as other medicine. Maria also makes home visits to shut-ins. She calls ahead and checks on them.
Mikhail Khodorovsky: Mikhail is a Holocaust survivor, who works with Galina and Frank to keep track of pensioners who are ill at home. He checks on them and passes information to the synagogue physician through Galina.
Mikhail Novodvorsky, who survived the Minsk ghetto. He helps Frank and Galina Swartz by keeping in touch with sick people who are housebound, and passes along information on how they are or what they need.
Mikhail was 12 years old when Minsk was occupied and was in the Minsk ghetto. He was born in 1932.
The first pogrom in the Minsk ghetto began on November 1, 1941. His home was searched and everyone was forced outside to ul. Klieb or Bread Street, where the bread factory was (and still is) located. Mikhail escaped, but was caught again and put on a truck. They were being taken in the direction of the village of Tuchinka. Mikhail heard more shooting. People jumped off the truck and Germans shot them. Misha jumped off and hit the back of his head on the cobblestones. He actually fractured his skull and had a severe concussion. The fall took away his hearing and eyesight on one side. When he came to, he heard German being spoken, but was left alone. After he was taken care of, he returned to the ghetto, but his whole immediate and extended family had been murdered.
Mikhail has stories within stories. He told us about a young German soldier named Willi who befriended him. He told Mikhail that it was not a war against children and took out a picture of his own young son. Mikhail considered the Ukrainian and Lithuanian death squads more dangerous. They were animals and would do anything for a bottle of vodka. He and Willi met daily for a while and Willi gave him scraps of bread. Willi told him that his name would be Max in German. He even let him listen to radio Moscow for war news. Their relationship ended when the building the officers were in was bombed and he never saw Willi again.
Misha stayed in the ghetto until the last group was murdered. There were a group of children who managed to escape from one end of the ghetto to the other as the buildings were searched. They escaped into the forest and then to a Byelorussian village, which put their own lives in peril and took them in. There were about 100 houses in this village. Forty children were involved, both boys and girls. This is the village where the grown up children later erected a statue in commemoration of the bravery of the villagers, which is in the center of the village. Frieda and Maya were among these children.
At one point they were surrounded by Germans and hid in a marsh up to their noses so the German police dogs would not find them. The Germans finally retreated to the western front and left the partisan groups alone.
Mikhail wrote his memoirs down in a thick notebook after the war. A film was made about four years ago about the Minsk ghetto called “Kaddish.”
When the war ended, Mikhail was 16. He stayed with a Byelorussian family for almost a year, and then he was sent to an orphanage, but quickly left for vocational school to become a house painter. He lived at a hostel connected with the school. Mikhail served in the army and eventually married after the war. His wife had been evacuated with her mother to a factory. They have two daughters who are very disabled. One has severe kidney problems and the other is retarded. His wife is also rather ill.
Galina showed us a small, very thick, handwritten notebook which contained Mikhail’s present health records. He has all kinds of things wrong, but he is still helping the community. He has high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, chronic gastritis, a neurological disorder, and his muscles ache.
More Jews were saved by Byelorussians than any other group. When the Germans entered Minsk, three Germans were able to escort a column of 50 or 60 people. After the surrender, even children could arrest German soldiers and many did.
Frank and I met with Yakov Basin, the representative of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ), and also lay leader of the progressive movement in Belarus, and a vice-president in Leonid Levin’s organization, the Association of Jewish Congregations and Organizations. Leonid Levin is the official head of the Jewish community in Minsk. A number of people consider him a poor leader and a hold-over from Communist times. He is an architect by profession and designed the monument at Katyn, one of 300 villages destroyed during WWII with all of their inhabitants, 186 of which were never restored. His monuments say nothing about Jews, although several mark Jewish Holocaust sites. Yakov became the director of the UCSJ bureau in Belarus in 1998.
His office is also the meeting place for Simcha, the main Minsk progressive congregation in Minsk. Rabbi Nelly Shulman has an office off of this room, but she is away – traveling to Gomel for a Bar Mitzvah and later leaving for a meeting in Germany. The room had stacks of boxes and desks on end because they are just moving in . Actually, Simcha has now split into three groups because it is too large. The main group has 160 people. Tamar is a group of 40 young people. Sheket (quiet) is a group of 45 deaf and hard of hearing people. Their Sunday School teaches 105 children. Parents don’t come with the children, and not all parents are members. They don’t consider themselves a purely religious movement. They are trying to restore Jewish tradition. “It takes time to re-establish family traditions after 80 years of Soviet rule.”
Left to Right: Yakov Basin, lay leader of the progressive (reform) movement in Belarus and Bureau head of the Union of Councils for Jews in the former Soviet Union, with Frank Swartz.
They are having a lot of trouble now registering progressive congregations. For one thing, they need an official address now – not a home address. Orthodox Jewish congregations tell the government to register them or give them back Jewish buildings, a difficult thing to do, depending upon its current occupant. Progressive groups cannot use that threat because the original synagogues and Yeshivas were once orthodox. There is a law about religious groups saying that those who are registered can ask for the right to receive property. There is some anger against Yuri Dorn because they received their present building for their work and gave up all claim to the large Choral Synagogue in 1994. It is now a State theater, and has been for many years. This swap was done before Lukashenko came to power. However, it is extremely unlikely that the Jewish community could financially support the Choral Synagogue even if it were given back
Yakov complained about the lack of a good Jewish library in Minsk. He writes and misses the lack of reference material. He was at the Leo Baeck Rabbinic College in London when Nelly Shulman graduated, and liked the library there. Now he is working on a political and economic review of the situation in Belarus. Yakov subscribes to 60 magazines and newspapers.
Yakov has been involved in the study of antisemitism since 1988. Since 1989, he has been a member of the Vaad praesidium, the first recent all Russian Jewish umbrella group. He has published articles on Soviet antisemitism and UCSJ used these materials in their publications. His son, Yuri, was one of the first Hebrew teachers as the Communist thaw began in the early 1980’s. He is now in Israel. His son and Yuri Dorn were very friendly, and both were early organizers of the Jewish community in Minsk. Yuri Dorn’s family is in Ohio.
Many organizations deal with human rights, but the UCSJ Bureau is the only one to deal with interfaith issues. The situation in Belarus is unique because the State uses interfaith issues in its public policy. The State is very partial to the Russian Orthodox Church. Jews, who are small in number, are not that important to the State. Soon there will be another law passed on religion. This does not refer to the talk about having to be in Belarus 15 years before a religious group can register. Yakov is afraid that this law will be restrictive and he wants to join forces with Yuri Dorn to head off offensive wording in the upcoming legislation. He would like a joint letter from the two of them as leaders of Jewish life in Minsk to present to the government. Frank offered to meet with him next week to discuss this further and to strategize. Yakov is quite willing.
Yakov believes that the State does not protect against grassroots antisemitism. Antisemitic books and articles are published, TV and radio programs are antisemitic and nothing is done. RNU has a presence here and is not restricted. Frank believes that RNU is present, but it is small. It is led by non-Byelorussians and has very little Byelorussian participation. The head of RNU was murdered, but this is probably part of their own in-fighting. Yakov feels that the government likes to have some ineffective opposition around to create tension that the government can then appear to protect against.
Belarus is coming more Russified. There is less emphasis on the Byelorussian language and fewer kindergartens are teaching it. Frank thinks that the Byelorussian language was never that important in the first place. Byelorussian was introduced three times in recent history – in the 1920’s, which Stalin put an end to; after Stalin died; and in the 1990’s. It hasn’t been a wildly popular movement at any time and there are a variety of reasons why it has been dropped.
Yakov said that the biggest threat to the Jewish population is assimilation.
Leonid Levin has three functions to perform, but doesn’t do two of them. One is to coordinate the Jewish community – not done. Another is to inform the Jewish community – not done. The third is to represent the Jewish community. This he does, but poorly. Levin controls funds which go to the Jewish community, and many suspect that he holds on to part of the funding and the rest goes to the Joint.
Yakov said that Chesed has a list of 19,000 pensioners in Belarus. The last official census in 1989 listed 20,000 people who consider themselves to be Jewish, a number which they know is under-representative. If 19,000 are pensioners, there are probably three times as many Jews here, or 60,000. Frank said that he has 35,000 clients on his database. Yakov said that there are certainly no less than 55,000 – 60,000 Jews here and he has figures to prove this. The actual numbers are probably much higher. Frank believes that the real number of Jews (not necessarily halachic) is over 100,000. They take into account the number who have emigrated, which is known.
Visit to the Children’s Hospital for Infectious Disease
I toured the intensive care unit and the emergency room area with a physician, Sergey, whom Frank knows well. Sergey’s parents run a non-profit oncology group, which Frank is also very familiar with.
This is a hospital for all of Belarus, which deals with the most seriously ill children. It is very large – a sprawling complex of buildings with around 300 beds. The buildings are connected by tunnels at the basement level. There is a great deal of space, but little in the way of equipment or medicine. However, the level of medical practice here is excellent and the mortality rates are low, an amazing feat considering what they work with. It is the last resort for many sick children, who have often been misdiagnosed and are extremely ill by the time they arrive.
Frank works with them and has supplied equipment and medicine. Frank saw that the kitchen in the intensive care unit was rebuilt with modern cabinets, stove, refrigerator and a microwave oven. The total cost for this was around $800, which included new tiling on the walls and floor. The microwave unit is important for quickly heating up bottles for the babies. The old process of putting the bottle in hot water and testing it by hand took half an hour or more.
Sergey, physician in charge of the intensive care unit at the Children's Infectious Disease Hospital. He used to work in the emergency room. Frank Swartz stands in the newly refurbished kitchen for the intensive care unit of the hospital. He contributed $800 to completely modernize the room. The microwave unit on the counter allows them to heat up baby bottles quickly and safely in a fraction of the time.
Sergey explained the situation of several patients in the intensive care unit. The patients are in a room with two beds or a crib and a bed with an adjourning bathroom and a place for washing at the entrance. Glass doors and windows allowed us to see into each unit. The second bed in the room is for the parent, usually the mother, who stays with the child and looks after them. The treatment is often hampered by a lack of proper medicine.
We saw one infant who was born premature and now had pneumonia. He seemed to be doing well, and the mother allowed us to come in and photograph them together. She was holding and caressing the baby, who was swaddled and had a pacifier.
Two children from different families were admitted with herpes. They had been ill for a while before they were brought here and one already had brain damage. They needed a special antibiotic which is very expensive, about $200/dose. They would probably receive it, but the illness had already left one child permanently impaired because there was a long delay in getting him to this hospital. Sergey said that if a teenager had needed this medicine, the cost would have been prohibitive, since dose depends upon weight, and the cost could escalate to a few thousand dollars, well beyond their means. As a result, they usually don’t treat the mother – it’s too expensive – so future children can also have herpes.
One 14-year-old boy had been in the intensive care unit with hepatitis since January. He had moved back and forth to another hospital. He and his family now just wanted to be left alone, so no treatments were being offered. No one was hustling him out, either.
Sergey showed me the labs which support the hospital, which were on another floor and in another building. They are bare bones with a few instruments and fewer supplies. Blood counts are done by hand with ancient microscopes and poor lighting. In fact, Sergey complained about the poor lighting throughout the hospital. It wasn’t so evident during the day, but it could be pretty dim at night. The workers have several hundred blood samples to complete each day. In the U.S., all of this has been automated. As a result of the handwork, it takes at least 40 minutes to get a test result back for a severely critical case, and it often takes much longer. The lack of good equipment makes diagnosis much more difficult, but the physicians are amazing in their ability to work with their hands and a stethoscope.
I also toured the emergency room area, where Sergey used to work. It was very quiet. The rooms have entrances directly to the outside, so infectious patients can be brought directly to a small examining room. Of course this hospital deals with all kinds of illness – not just infectious disease – because it has a very good reputation. Any physician in another hospital anywhere in Belarus will send patients here if they are at all baffled with a particular case. The examining table is covered in plastic, and needs to be washed with bleach between patients. There are a number of these rooms. There are no latex gloves anywhere in the hospital right now. They had a supply, but it was used up.
Sergey said that they generally see 60 patients a day/night in the emergency room. Two physicians are on duty during the day, and often one at night. They are allowed 40 minutes/patient, regardless of the problem. They are rated by their efficiency and are rebuked if they spend more time on a particular patient. All of this is done without benefit of lab tests. Fortunately, the physicians here are highly skilled and very hard working. Sergey said that many physicians come here from other countries for the experience in handling so many interesting cases on such a large scale. He mentioned one child who came in with paperwork complaining about diarrhea, but showed signs of intestinal bleeding and was immediately sent to surgery. Patients don’t necessarily come in with a clear history. Sergey remembers one time when he had to process 98 children in one night, due to salmonella poisoning. The work is interesting, but very taxing.
Sergey’s work day now starts around 8:00 A.M. and ends around 3:00 or 4:00 P.M.
The many sinks in this hospital often have small scraps of soap available for washing. Sergey showed us tiny cubes of a yellow soap which he said were terrible on the hands and he avoided it. There were all kinds of soap, but often only small broken pieces were all that was left.
Museum of the Great Patriotic War
There is a large museum in the center of Minsk with exhibits just on WWII - the build up to the occupation, the battles, the Holocaust, the partisan movement, heroes of the war and the aftermath. It is a fascinating group of exhibits with room after room of artifacts, reconstructions, actual guns, and maps. The museum was closed when we approached, but Galina is here very often with groups and was able to get them to open up for us. Each room had its lights turned on as we entered, and turned off as we left.
Galina gave us a tour (there were four other American guests on a Jewish genealogy tour). She is a fount of information, which we needed because everything was explained in Russian or Byelorussian. Galina said that all school children in Belarus are taken through this museum.
The exhibits cover the extermination of the Jews and other ethnic involvement. For instance, there are pictures of Moslem Byelorussians, as well as Asiatic looking people who also fought. Everyone fought as one. There is a large reconstruction of the concentration camp at Maly Troystyanetz. This is a camp that no one outside of Belarus seems to know about, but it was the fourth largest concentration camp in Europe – larger than some of the more publicized camps in Poland. There were no buildings there, except for one large barn where the last Jews were burned alive just three days before liberation, which took place on July 2, 1944.
There are many photos in the exhibit from German cameras which showed the progression of people arrested, marched to the gallows and hung. One small group included hospital workers who assisted injured soldiers – a teenage girl, a young boy and his uncle who led the soldiers back to the woods to the partisan camp.
Interestingly, French pilots were in Russia flying Russian planes during the war.
Wednesday, May 23rd – Visit to the Novinki home for disabled children where Frank works on various projects
Novinki is about half an hour outside of Minsk. Its official title is the Minsk Children’s Boarding School. It is a home for disabled children from age four up until age 16, but they have several youngsters in their 20’s. There are 194 children in the home and 159 staff, including the director. The pay is very low, especially for the aides.
The State allots each child 20,000 rubles/month ($14) when they are cared for at home. Children in a State home are allotted 15,000 rubles/day ($10). Everything is included in this. The State also provides clothing for children – four pair of underwear and four pairs of socks/year, one pair of sweatpants and shirt/year, one woolen sweater or coat/three years, one pair of shoes or boots/year, one pair of gloves or mittens/year with no replacement for lost items. They said that shoes are the most pressing problem because they wear out, and donations come in for clothing, but not for shoes. They will submit a list of sizes and the number they would like to have. They hired a cobbler today to repair shoes, but are having difficulty finding a place for this person to work because the building is so crowded.
The home is set on a large grassy area with plenty of playground space and some nice flower gardens. The home itself is large, but is filled. Children sleep in bedrooms which can hold 21 beds. There are many wheelchairs and specialized chairs there, but many youngsters are on the second floor with no elevator or ramp to reach the ground level. It is really difficult for staff to take children downstairs and outside in wheelchairs as they get older and heavier. They built a solarium on the top level to give them some sunshine during the cold weather.
Frank Swartz with Pasha, who lives at the Novinki Home. Pasha has cerebral palsy and seems quite bright. A group of children with Down's Syndrome having lunch.
To call this facility a school is really a stretch of the imagination because there is little learning going on there – mostly taking care of and feeding all kinds of disabled children. Some are severely retarded and others seem rather intelligent, but receive no real education, although they are happy and well taken care of. They are supposed to shift to an adult facility after age 16, but that place is really dreadful. They are beginning to work with younger children to try to teach them a little. It is probably too late for the older ones because they have not really been taught the discipline of sitting still and listening, and many are hard to manage.
The director of the school is Viktor. His deputy is Ludmila Savitskaya. The physician in charge is Svetlana Arivakova. Their physical therapist is Valentin Chernyakuge.
There is a high level of involvement with Great Britain and Ireland, and German groups have come in to build playground equipment. This help has enabled them to clean up every area with fresh paint, tiling, new bathrooms and showers and some toys for the children. It is really attractive, which Frank says is something new. He used to be hit with a stench of urine, but that no longer happens. The State also helps with some funds for painting, but it is very limited, and by itself would not be nearly enough.
The staff is very proud of the changes and they really want to do more than maintain a warehouse for the disabled. The State does not really consider these children educable and is not expending any resources for that purpose. They lack technique and equipment for the best physical or occupational therapy. By and large, the children do not feed themselves. The more mobile children move around within their own area on a floor and go outside to a playground. Those less mobile are placed in bed, on floor mats, on the toilet, or tied to a wheelchair. Many of the cerebral palsy children were being feed lying down on floor mats or in bed. There are no adapted feeding implements for them to grasp. There are no grab bars for them to hold on to. Valentin, the therapist, is interested and quite amenable to training in other methods, but there are no funds for him to travel or to bring in experts.
Frank spoke with them about constructing a mobile container to be used as another room with equipment for physical or occupational therapy. There is not much space left inside. He also talked about bringing in some physicians from England at his own expense. Frank arranged for a commercial size combination washing machine and dryer for them. It is there, but has not been connected yet. They now send their laundry to a central laundry facility somewhere in Minsk, which is less than ideal for the quantity of clothing and bedding which these children need cleaned. The only other alternative is to wash by hand.
Our translator, Katya, worked at this home for five years as an aide and also training other aides. It is a very hard job. Many of the children went up to her and hugged her as we toured the home.
I talked to Frank about visiting the set up at Beit Hana in Dnipropetrovsk for ideas and possible resources.
Thursday, May 24th – Bobruisk
Bobruisk is about a two and a half hour drive east of Minsk. The city has 10 buildings which are former synagogues or Yeshivas. It is difficult to obtain a building back because there are no documents which state that these buildings were actually synagogues. The leader of the Jewish community, Leonid Rubenshtein, is due to meet with city officials at noon to ask for one particular synagogue. They have been working on this for a while.
We met people at a two-room apartment rented for them for $45/month by Yuri Dorn of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities. This is the synagogue, Bas Yisrail, which was established four years ago. Between 30 and 50 people come to pray. There are two rooms which are used for meetings. When it is in use for services, men use the larger room and women sit in the smaller one. Today only men came and there were 21. On holidays they rent a larger building.
Faina Polei is the unofficial leader of the community and she has been active for about 10 years. Faina used to teach Russian in a school for the deaf, and that is where we had the connection with Dr. Nick Vandermoer, one of our physicians who supplied hearing aides.
These are the other people, mostly pensioners, who met with us this afternoon:
Solomon (Simeon) Gorash, born in 1946 in Politsk, Belarus. Solomon is the leader of the religious community. Faina indicated that he is not well – a diabetic - but the doctor refused to certify him as an invalid, so he receives no benefits. Although Solomon is very poor and lives alone, Chesed refused to give him food parcels because he is not a pensioner. Solomon trained as a builder and worked at that until he found employment at a car factory. Since 1988, he has been interested in Jewish culture and history. For the last four years, he has been involved with religion.
Solomon recently began a program to teach Yiddish to youngsters at the synagogue. He has a group of 30 children, age eight to 14. He started the class around Purim, in March. There is no financial support for this. The interest grew out of a club. Last year oral Yiddish was included in Sunday School. Faina spoke and read to the class. The first Festival of Jewish books was performed in Yiddish. It is the language of their families, and has been around for over 1,000 years. The have a Yiddish book by Abram Isakovich Rapkin, an artist and writer, who wrote about pre-WWII Bobruisk. They have been translating the book, and they often read from the book at holiday celebrations. They even perform for other towns in Belarus. This year they didn’t have funds to rent a bus, but in the past they have had 36 people participating. All age groups performed. Frank said that he would try to obtain some Yiddish books for them.
Left to Right: Solomon Gorash, leader of the Bobruisk religious community, and Mikhail Isakovich Lazerevich, the oldest member of the Jewish community Left to Right: Solomon Gorash, Faina Polei, a Bobruisk Jewish activist for 10 years, Frank Swartz from Minsk
Mikhail Isakovich Lazerevich, born in 1914 in the Gomel region, Karmah district. Mikhail is the oldest member of the synagogue. Before WWII, he was an accountant in different small enterprises. He ran from Bobruisk as the Germans were invading and went to Mogilev, but he was caught there by Germans. He spent years in a concentration camp in Norway and changed his name to Vasily Antonovich Nikishin, very Russian sounding. He lived in Karmah district after the war, and when it became contaminated by Chernobyl, he moved to Bobruisk. His wife died in 1993. Mikhail used to play the violin very well. His pension is about 100,000 rubles/mo. ($71). Moise left a poem for us in Russian, expressing his feelings.
Berta (Bella) Gorelik was born in 1927 in Slobin in the Gomel region. Her father was a cobbler before the war and worked with a military plant. He disappeared in the war in 1942. He and four brothers fought in Poland and Karelia. Her grandmother, mother and sister lived in the village of Kozimova, and they were all killed. She ran from the Germans and was evacuated to Orenburg to work in a military plant, starting at age 14. She is considered a participant in the war. Bella returned to Bobruisk in 1948 and worked in a sweets factory. She has a son in Israel, and a daughter who lives locally. The daughter’s son, Maxim Kovalenko, was chosen to go to Denmark to study. He comes back on June 15th and then goes to Baltimore on a student visa. He speaks English very well. Bella’s pension is 53,000 rubles/mo. ($38).
Grigory (Grisha) Wolfson was born in 1927 in Bobruisk. He lived here before the war and was evacuated to the Chelyabinsk region in Russia, to the village of Vasavaya, near a train station. His father was shot during the war. His mother was a housewife. Grisha went into the army in 1944 for seven years. He is considered a participant in the war for his army service. He worked in a cotton plant for 43 years after the army, dealing with the repair of machinery. He became a master assistant. His wife died 10 years ago. Grisha’s pension is 60,000 rubles/mo. ($43).
Meyer Norkhimovich Monushkin was born in 1922 in Bobruisk. He was evacuated to Kazakstan. In 1942, he was called into the army and sent to the Leningrad front, where he was wounded, and in a Leningrad hospital for four months and then sent back to the front. He was demobilized in 1948 and returned to Bobruisk. Meyer worked in a furniture factory for 37 years, until he retired. He is an invalid from WWII, so receives a relatively large pension of 105,000 rubles/mo. ($75).
Mikhail Isakovich Gordon was born in 1935 in Bobruisk. He was evacuated to Kerghiza to the city of Frunze, now called Bishkek. His father died in 1945 on the front in Czechoslovakia. His mother died in 1993 and is buried here. Mikhail worked as a bus driver for 30 years. His pension is 54,000 rubles/mo. ($39).
Israil Aronovich Elkin was born in 1930 in Bobruisk. He was evacuated to Narinska in Khazan and came back to Bobruisk in 1946. He worked as a plumber at the railway station plant. His parents died after the war. His oldest brother went to the front and never came back. He has a brother and sister who have three children in Mogilev. His sister died of a stroke. His pension is 40,000 rubles/mo. ($29).
Simeon Yefimovich Beder was born in 1954. His father was in the Ukrainian army and was a war invalid who died in 1993. He lives with his mother and is very ill with diabetes, heart problems, kidney stones and more. He works in a shoe factory at the conveyor belt.
Moise Samoilovich Fainberg was born in 1931 in Bobruisk. Moise was evacuated to Alma Ata. He started working when he was 11 years old as a builder in Alma Ata. His father died at the Leningrad front in 1943. His mother died in 1974. Moise continued as a builder after the war. He worked at great heights. His pension is 45,000 rubles/mo. ($32). He has no documentation to obtain a higher pension. Moise complained about not being allowed to emigrate to Israel – the line is too long at the embassy in Minsk. Faina thought that he was not willing to follow advice. Moise has a lot of family in Israel, including his daughter and he would like to visit her. Sochnut, which has an office in the Minsk Synagogue, refused to help him because they said that they were busy with 20 families who were emigrating. People are suspicious about this number – that it is too high.
There was a general discussion about no one receiving any compensation from Germany for their Holocaust experience. They said that they received notification that they are not eligible for anything. Frank spoke with them about helping them with this problem. Frank has people in England who would like to work on this as well. He told them to put their stories down on paper and he would be back in touch. He would only help people who wanted help and promised to replace any aid lost by threats.
They felt that they were only entitled to a package of food a few times a year. Chesed distributed packages yesterday, but it was not clear what criteria they were using. Faina saw someone walk away with a package who had a fairly high pension (80,000 rubles/mo. ($57). He said it was for his wife. The complaint was that this family had a combined pension much higher than that of others who live alone and who were turned down for a package. They complained that not a single person from Chesed has even come to the synagogue to offer help.
They are planning a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish community and the creation of a ghetto, which occurred on November 7, 1941. Since November is so cold, they are meeting for three days this summer – July 31st through August 1st. They invited us to attend. Invitations are being sent out to people who used to live in Bobruisk, and it will be a very big event.
Leonid Rubenshtein met us as we were having lunch at a canteen. He had met with the local government authorities and had a positive reply to his request to obtain the synagogue for the Jewish community. Now they will wait for the documentation for this. He had had several meetings today and it was only 3:30 P.M. when he met with us. He could use letters of support from Frank’s organization and from us as well. He knows he will need funds for reconstructing.
Seated: Leonid Rubenshtein, head of the Jewish community, who had just met with city authorities who promised the return of a particular synagogue building. The man standing behind him is the manager of a restaurant where meals are served for the Jewish commuity. Left to Right: Faina Paley, Jewish activist in Bobruisk, Frank Swartz, head of Eastern European Jewish Heritage Project in Minsk, and translator, Katya. The building in the background is the synagogue which has been promised to the Jewish community. It is presently a women's clothing factory and showroom.
and cleaning up the synagogue, as well as funds for maintaining the building – heating, electricity, etc. The building is on ul. Socialistiskaya 36. We went to see it after lunch. It is occupied by a clothing factory, but they were very nice to let us in to look at the space. The building has two stories and is quite large with many spacious rooms. Leonid talked about removing some internal walls where they have built office space, but much of the building could be used right away. It should be able to house any use which the Jewish community needs – the synagogue, clubs, large gatherings and more.
Leonid Rubenshtein also spoke to us about a project to refurbish a monument in the old Jewish cemetery where the remains of Jews murdered at various Holocaust sites have been collected and buried. He wants to cover the obelisk with granite and clean up the site. He estimates the cost at $2,000 – 14 square meters of granite at $50/square meter (around $300), plus other costs. Relatives wanted the remains collected in one place and re-buried. There are inscriptions in Russian and Hebrew, or perhaps Yiddish. We also visited this site. The cemetery is not generally available for burials because it is so full. However, Faina told us that some individuals could get permission to use it if there were other family members buried there and they needed a Jewish cemetery.
Leonid also told us about a visit to the village of Swishlich yesterday. There is a very old Jewish cemetery there, but the river is moving and is undercutting the cemetery. They need to shore up the land to keep it intact. They also went to the village of Elizava where there is a common grave for Jews killed in the Holocaust. They met a Russian woman in her 60’s who is taking care of the grave and doing a very good job. Her family saved the lives of a whole Jewish family and were presented with the Righteous Gentile certificate from Yad v ‘Shem. The family they saved now lives in Israel at Kiryat Grad (?), and recently sent this woman $100. Last year she received money through Faina and Chesed sends her food packages. They keep an eye on her. Faina used to be her teacher. Frank suggested that they try to involve young people to take care of the cemeteries and Holocaust sites. He has a group coming in August and will bring them to Bobruisk.
We went to see the Holocaust site at Kamenka, which Leonid Rubenshtein mentioned and which Faina already had on our list of places to visit. Leonid wanted to thank the children who cared for this site. Kamenka is a small village quite a distance outside of Bobruisk where the Jews were marched when they liquidated the Brobruisk ghetto. It must be more than five miles away, and Jews were hurried along in November in bitter cold weather to this remote killing ground. They were forced to dig two large pits. Jews were stripped and shot and their bodies burned. Once again we were told that the ground heaved for weeks and gave off steam from the still living bodies buried alive. Something like four people survived this horror. They estimate that around 14,000 Jews were killed here over a two-week period. They also brought Jews here from other villages.
The monument to mark the Kamenka Holocaust site, which rests between two long pits, which can be seen as two raised areas. This monument says nothing about the 14,000 Jews killed here, most of them from Bobruisk, but others from small villages. Newer monument inscribed in Yiddish at the Kamenka Holocaust site. Jews were marched to this site, which is quite a distance from Bobruisk, in bitter cold weather.
The director of the boarding school for special needs children, who volunteered to take care of the Kamenka Holocaust site. He told us his feelings about the Jews who died there and promised to see that the site is looked after even when he is no longer able to care for it. Katya, our translator, sits on the right. Another view of the Kamenka Holocaust site. The black stones in the cement holders are thought to be fused bones which were removed from the pits after the bodies were burned. The site is fenced and lies several hundred yards from the street, behind the boarding school.
Leonid told us that a non-Jewish school/home for slow children (with some mental impairment) takes care of the site, and it looked well tended when we saw it. The grass had been kept cut and it was fenced in with two monuments. One was an obelisk with Russian inscription and the second had a large boulder with an inscription on another tablet in Yiddish and Russian. You could still see the long mounds where two large pits had been dug and filled with bodies. Stone urns contained some burned stones, which were taken from the pits. It is surrounded by woods and open fields. The road leading to it is long and sandy with many ruts. Faina said that the authorities had promised to make a better road, so it would be more approachable. It was O.K. today, but in wet weather it becomes impossible to use.
We stopped to see the director of the school to thank this person and the children for their care. He came walking as we were waiting, wearing a dark blue jacket and apologizing for coming from taking care of the pigs. The director was a farmer, dressed in a white shirt and trousers who maintained pigs and vegetables to sell and to use to augment the school’s budget. He had sold half of his 50 pigs a couple of months ago.
He talked to us for quite a while on benches outside, telling us how important it was for him to take care of this Holocaust site. He often went there by himself just to be quiet in the presence of the people who were buried in the pits. He promised that he would always take care of the site and he impressed upon the children that they should as well. If he could no longer take care of it, he had already left instructions for someone else to take over where he left off.
He ushered us inside where he put on his tie and formal jacket. He then took us around the school, which was clean, but bare and in need of fresh paint and new tiles to replace pieces warn and broken. He took us up to the 2nd floor to a room where there was an exhibit of craft work done by students. There was quite a collection of stuffed animals which are sold in a local bazaar. Other projects included wooden pieces, papier mache finger puppets and masks, straw designs, woven fabric pieces and art work on paper. The director had initiated these projects himself. He had been in charge of this school for all but four years of its existence.
Frank asked him several times what he would like in terms of help, but the director wouldn’t say. He said he would be grateful for any help. Frank noticed that there was little soap at the sinks, and, of course, children would need clothing and shoes, and school supplies. He will see what he can do to help these children. Both Frank and Katya, our translator, noted that the school at Novinki had a dozen foreign groups vying to keep the school in good shape, while this one had no help at all. It is feast or famine. Interestingly, the children from this school attend a summer camp in Italy and some Italian couples adopt children from here.