The Freidkes Family from Bielsk Podlaski

Bielsk Podlaski

The Freidkes family from Bielsk Podlaski in Siberia

My name is Nahum Freidkes (in Polish Frejdkes). I was born on June 3rd, 1931 in Bielsk Podlaski where I spent my first ten years. The following is a testimonial of my memories as well as on behalf of my sister, Gita Kogos, who was born in Bielsk on July 25, 1933. Nowadays we both live in Holon, Israel.

Our father’s father, my grandfather Moshe-Nahum (Moses) Freidkes was born in Bielsk as well. He married Ms. Gita Kaplan of Bialystok and they had seven children. Our grandfather Moshe -Nahum died during the First World War (probably in 1916) from the Typhus epidemic. A few months later our grandmother died as well. The family made a living by selling fabric in nearby villages and towns. Our grandfather would pass through the villages with a horse-drawn carriage and sell his goods. After a while he opened a shop in the city.

After the passing of our grandfather, our father, Kalman, the youngest of the seven children, along with his brother Jankel took on the family textile business. They ran the store which was located on 68 Mickiewieze, opposite the city square and the city’s municipality. My father’s brother Jankel with his wife Ester and his two children (Misha and Bella) resided above the store. On the roof of the house, our father built another apartment where my parents, my sister and I lived until 1939 when the house was burned down. Over time, additional buildings were built in the long courtyard that ran from behind the house to the parallel street. These were used as storage spaces and apartments for rent. Among the tenants were the branch of the Beitar movement and the He halutz Hazair (a Zionist youth movement) branch in the city.

Our father, Kalman, got married in 1930 at the age of 32 to Shejna (born 1903), daughter of Benjamín Kowienski and Nehama from Lida. Our mother’s father (our grandfather) Benjamin was a textile merchant as well who owned a large store in the city. Our mother Shejna, had two brothers: Zorach and Abraham. Both were married with children: a girl named Raja was born to Zorach and his wife Sara; Abraham and his wife Frida had a baby boy who was born just before the war started.

In addition to his business, our father Kalman, was a very active public figure. He was a member of the city council as a representative of the Jewish community. He was an activist at the Zionist movement and served as Chairman of Keren Hajesod in the province. Among other things, our father Kalman established, together with others, a social-cultural club of the Jewish community for mutual aid institutions in the city. The World Zionist Movement, in its early days, established a company called "Hachsharat Hayeshuv" which served as a financial instrument to finance its activities. On the list of founders of the company appears the name of our father and the name of our grandfather Benjamín Kowienski. Apparently, both were among the founders of the Zionist Movement at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Our family was very socially active, accepted and respected by the Jewish community in the city.

For example, on Friday nights, our family hosted students from a local yeshiva at our home for Shabbat dinner. On other weeks, members of the He chalutz Zionist Group, who held very different ideas, would be our guests for Shabbat dinner. Our family had close relationship with Christian community as well. I remember, for example, that when I returned from school, I saw people from ND (a nationalist-anti-Semitic party) holding a sign saying, "Do not buy from the Jews." But that evening a Polish neighbor from the Maziuk family, who also had a shop by us, came to apologize and explain that the sign holders were strangers and that the residents of the area had nothing to do with them.

In Bielsk there were two Jewish schools: a Hebrew school of the national Tarbut schools chain, established by the Zionist movement in Poland where the language of instruction was Hebrew; and the Yavne school of the Bond movement where the teaching was in Yiddish. My sister Gita and I studied at Tarbut. The schools chain operated schools and kindergartens in most Polish cities and high schools in the big cities. In Bielsk there was an elementary school and a kindergarten by Tarbut. Tarbut's nearest high school was in Bialystok. The Bialystok Tarbut high school, established by the Kaplan family of our grandmother Gita, was the first Gymnasium in Poland to teach in the renewed Hebrew language. By the outbreak of the war, I had just completed my 2nd grade of elementary school while my sister graduated the Tarbut kindergarten.

Our family would travel every summer to Nowojelnia and then, on the way home, visit Lida at our maternal grandparents. On September 1, 1939, the war caught us in Lida. But even before this visit, in April 1939 when we visited Lida for Passover, we all felt the winds of the approaching war. I remember how everyone talked about the approaching danger, while the Polish authorities carried out civil defense maneuvers. During Passover holiday dinner in 1939, while I, as a youngest grandson, got up to ask the traditional questions, the electricity suddenly went out and instead a siren sounded. The darkness was illuminated only by the papers lit by grandmother Nehama. A few minutes later there was a lull and the Passover Seder continued as usual. Later that week, as I was walking down the street with my uncle Abraham, another siren sounded and this time, gas grenades were thrown on the street to demonstrate to the population the possibility of a chemical attack. After that, I remember that my uncle purchased gas masks for the whole family and demonstrated at home how to wear them.

September 1st, 1939, The Germans attacking Poland

The bombing blast was very strong so the windows of the room opened wide. I fell out of bed and woke up. It was still a dark night, but the black threatening horizon was illuminated by the explosions from the military airport near the city. Ammunition and fuel went up in flames and the air filled with heavy smoke which we felt from a distance.

At the time, my parents, sister and I were at LIDA at our grandparent’s house, where we stopped on the way home from vacation in Nowojelnia. I was eight years old and my sister Gita was six years old. My uncle called to hurry down to the shelter in the basement. We all gathered together: my sister, my parents, my grandparents, two uncles with their spouses and my cousin. Our maid sat down on the stairs and did not want to join us at the bomb shelter saying she was not afraid. Only when my uncle shouted that the Germans might use gas she complied and joined us at the cellar where we closed the door. All day long there were bombs and sirens. All day, while the Germans invaded Poland from the west and from the north (from Prussia), the Polish radio broadcast made desperate pleads and appeals to the allies of Poland (England and France) who pledged to stand by it and help it fight against the Nazi invaders.

The airport continued to burn all day and in a short distance from our house, the city's train station was destroyed as well. Through the window, I saw two soldiers with bayonets carrying a man who was raising his hands. They turned around the corner and shots were heard. The adults told us that a German spy was caught signaling the German bombers where to bomb from the roof of one of the buildings. Most of the day we ran to the shelter and in the evening, there was no electricity. Only paper was lit.

Two days later, my father had managed to get a taxi for a trip to Bielsk which was hundreds of miles away. On the way, we heard the bombardments. When we passed on a bridge full of vehicles and people near Grodno there was another siren so the driver turned the car into a side alley and stopped. We heard explosions. As the siren ended, we returned to Main Street. I clung to the rear window of the car and saw the bridge where we had passed minutes ago, destroyed, sinking into the river with all the vehicles, horses and people on it.

In the evening, we arrived to Bielsk. We did not have a house because it was burned down earlier and so we lived in a small apartment that our parents rented. The war continued and when we looked up at the sky we saw the Messerschmitt bombers over us again and again. The radio was open all day and night, and it gave information and instructions to the people. About two weeks later, we heard artillery shelling and approaching echoes of battle. A Polish officer in a torn uniform knocked on the door and asked for "water and civilian clothes." My mother gave him to drink and my father opened the wardrobe for him. He parted from us with a blessing "Szczesc Boze" (God bless you) and disappeared. A short while after, Germans entered the city on a victory parade. From the basement window, I saw the tank chains and German boots marching and singing: "Today only Germany is ours, but tomorrow the whole world." A curfew was imposed and it was forbidden to walk around the streets except during defined hours. The Germans remained in Bielsk for about two weeks until they transferred the city to Soviet rule under the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement known for the partition of Poland. During their stay, they searched our apartment where there was a safe belonging to the owner. A German officer demanded to open it but our parents did not have the key. He shouted: "If you do not open in ten minutes I will shoot." My father ran for the keys and came with them at the last minute. On another day, German soldiers broke the locks of the freight cars at the railway station with merchandise that arrived for our parents' shop on the eve of the war and had not yet been unloaded. They called the villagers from the area and passed through the street and handed them the fabrics they had stolen from the cars. When they told my father, he stopped a military police patrol in the street and told them in German that their soldiers were robbing at the train station. The patrol took my father to the station when the robbery was almost over and they wrote a report to several soldiers. The officer then turned to my father and said: "We did not come here to defend Jewish property. I write a report only because I do not want a German soldier to be a robber."

Two weeks later the Germans left and the Soviets arrived. I saw the Germans again only when they arrived to take the bodies of their soldiers killed in the battle to conquer the city whom were temporarily buried in a churchyard. After a while, during the period of Soviet rule, a German delegation arrived to Bielsk to transfer the bodies for burial in Germany.

Soviet occupation period

The Soviet regime had been in our region for almost two years and our lives have changed in every way. My school, like all other institutions of the Jewish community, was shut down and I went to study in a government school where the teaching was in Russian and Belorussian. Before the occupation our mother was busy working in the family store, and so when we were born, my sister and I were cared for by a hired nanny named Anna Klimowska. Anna lived and spent most of her time with us. Anna was Russian, a widow of a Pole who was a railway station manager who was murdered during the October Revolution. She was very educated and knowledgeable in Russian literature. From her we learned Russian, which was my first language. My parents spoke Yiddish and when I grew up I started speaking Polish as well. At kindergarten and later in the "Tarbut" school, the studies were taught in Hebrew and Polish. After the occupation and the partition of Poland I moved to a government school where Russian returned to be my principal language.

Our parents and relatives and all their friends were persecuted by the Communist establishment. For the communists, my father was persona non-grata as he was a rich merchant and an active Zionist. His business property was confiscated and his brother, my uncle Jankel, was arrested by the police. Nevertheless, our father was given a decent job most likely because the Russian authorities needed his expertise. He knew Russian well and had excellent organizational and managerial skills and experience. Therefore, he was employed as an accountant in a construction unit that worked on the construction of a new border between Russia and Germany on occupied Polish soil. This job, however, did not last long; at the beginning of 1941 the communists informed my father that he was let go and that soon a replacement worker of "their own" would come from Russia. This was an alarming sign and so my father decided to look for a way out of the Soviet Union.

At the time, my mother’s parents lived in Wilno after they moved there from Lida. The Soviets gave Wilno as a "gift" to independent Lithuania before they took control of the three Baltic countries. During the interim period, Grandpa and Grandma thought that Lithuania would belong to the free world, and therefore fled from Lida to Lithuania. Unfortunately, it turned out that this was a deception of the Russians and Lithuania soon became a Soviet republic. During the interim period, in Wilno there was a Japanese consul who helped many Jews leave and stay away from Nazi danger. He issued thousands of Japanese visas and many traveled through Russia to Manjuriya and from there to Japan. Our grandfather informed our parents that in Wilno a group of Jews had managed to rent a Russian plane that flew them all through Russia to Manjuriya and from there they arrived in Tokyo and later to Israel. There were also Jews who went to Manjuriya by train through Siberia. It was illegal and extremely dangerous under a communist regime that oversaw the movement of every citizen. (Incidentally - I met a person who was on that plane, in Israel). Right after Passover in April 1941, our parents left my sister and I under the supervision of a family member and went to Wilno to organize another group that will fly out. But things got complicated and dragged on for too long so our mother decided to return to Bielsk to take care of us, the children, while my father stayed with her parents in Wilno to continue trying to organize a group to leave the Soviet Union.

Deportation to Siberia and war again

On June 20, 1941, early in the morning, NKVD people appeared at our door steps and asked about my father. My mother gave them a wrong address in Lida, they wrote a protocol and then told us to pack everything we could. My mother was in shock and couldn’t function. The young soldiers helped us pack and then took us by a truck to the train station. There, we met many other Jewish and Poles families. We were all put on a freight train that was guarded by the NKVD. Each car, had three level plank beds installed, as originally it was intended to transport animals and goods. The cars were packed with dozens of people and were locked from the outside. On June 22, the train passed through Minsk city of Belorussia and stopped at a side station to obtain drinking water and food. But suddenly we heard another siren and saw, through the narrow, barred windows, people running in all directions. We tried to communicate with them and they told us that the Germans attacked Russia that morning and we are back in the war. Nevertheless, the train, its passengers and guards kept on its way.

No one told us where we were heading, and for several weeks we were riding east. People on train managed to read only through the narrow windows the names of the stations we passed along the way. Luckily, when the Russian soldiers took us from our home, I took my school bag which had my atlas. In the atlas I found the map with the names of the places we passed. This is how I figured we were going to Siberia. I remember sitting on the floor of the car and explaining to everyone that the train was heading to Siberia. On its long way, the train stopped in several stops but we were not let off. Only a few people whom from time to time, went under guard, to bring water and some food were allowed to leave and quickly return. The wagons were very crowded and the sanitary conditions were very poor. Our journey to Siberia lasted several weeks.

As noted before, our father was not with us on the train and we never saw nor heard from him again. Only after the war we learned that our father had returned from Wilno to Bielsk by foot through the front lines, during the war and risked his life to return to us. He did not know that we were sent to Siberia because two days after our deportation, the war broke out. We learned that he was in a ghetto in Bielsk and his fate was like that of other Jews. Recently we were told that his name appears in German archives on the list of Jews murdered in Treblinka in November 1942.

In Siberia - the beginning

Our train arrived at its final stop in Biysk, Altayskiy Kray. From there began a mountainous area without railway lines. From the station, we were transported hundreds of kilometers by wagons on rough roads in the mountains, the valleys and forests, through bridges and in places without defined paths. A few days later we had arrived at a detached from the world village named Solonowka among the high mountains of Altay. We lived in a two-room house where two families resided in each room. We shared our room with the Pomerantz family while two Polish families from Bielsk whose names I do not remember, shared the other. Each family consisted of a woman and children. We did not know what was Mr. Pomeranz’s destiny. Mr. Pomerantz owned a flour mill in Bielsk and from what we knew, he was arrested by the Soviets. The families in the other room were families of officers of the Polish army who did not return to their homes after the war in 1939 and their fate was unknown.

Our mother was forced to work in physically hard labor at a factory which made bricks. However, at the end of August all were mobilized to harvest the grain. Our mother, who grew up in the city, failed in tying the wheat. When one of the Russian workers from the kolkhoz company asked her: “So, what did you do in your home”? One of the Poles responded: “They did not do anything. Others worked for them.” That day, my mother returned from work exhausted and very upset as she did not expect a Polish woman who was in the same situation to make such an anti-Semitic remark.

Luckily the situation did not last for long. At the end of the summer the Polish government-in-exile in London signed an agreement with the Soviet Union and joined the war against Nazi Germany. As Polish citizens, we were released from detention to the place we were originally sent to and were given permission to move to another place.

The cow ate the photographs

To use our rights as Polish citizens we had to obtain identity cards with pictures. A photographer arrived to photograph the adults and promised pictures for the next day. But the next day, my mother received a photo from him that was not hers. She asked for her own photo but the photographer replied that "That's what was left, and he does not have her photo as the cow ate it all." It turned out that the photographer hung the negatives to dry at the yard and a cow that was nearby, ate some of them. The process of issuing the IDs was delayed but eventually we received them along with the rights of being free citizens.

In Solonesznoie

We were happy to leave Solonowka and move to a larger village called Solonesznoie. Life there was also very difficult. Freedom of movement was practically challenging even for residents. There simply were no means of public transportation and everyone had to manage by themselves. Our one-room house had a large brick oven in the center. Inside the stove, we would light a fire from trees and dry branches. During the winter the oven was used for cooking and baking as well. Above it was a large surface, about two meters long and very wide that was a bed for the whole family. We used a ladder to go up to bed. In the corner of the room was a cooking facility for the summer, when the central oven was not lit. A "samovar" that boiled drinking water was there as well.

In the yard of each house was a bathhouse called Banya. It was a round or square structure built of wood, with a tiny dressing room and a central wash room with a bench next to the wall. In the center of the Banya there was a place to light a fire and above it hung a large pot with water. There were no windows and the smoke would come out through a chimney in the center. After a while of burning, we would pour water on the fire and the room would be filled with steam. Next to the Banya, we stored the logs we would collect and kept it for the winter. The houses were heated with these logs as well.

Life in Solonesznoie was difficult and there was a shortage of food. The terrain was mountainous and hard to walk. In winter, we did not see the paths and we all walked in the deep snow. In the summer, there were plenty of snakes and predatory animals that would reach the houses.

Like us, most of the families’ deportees, after becoming "free citizens," left the rural areas and moved to the cities. Leaving was challenging as there was no transportation and so all needed to exploit random opportunities. Eventually, my mother, sister and I left Solonesznoie and set off for the big city, Biysk.

Altayskiy Kray and the city of Biysk

Altai is an area in southwestern Siberia bordering Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Most of its territory is mountainous and is a continuation of mountains from Mongolia and China to Tibet. Biysk is located at the edge of the mountainous region on the banks of the broad river Biya. The river descends from the mountains and is one of the water sources of the river Ob. The Ob crosses all Siberia from south to north and eventually spills into the Arctic Sea. This is where the railway lines end. From there, to reach Mongolia, there is only one mountain road that leads up to Ulan Bator (the capital of Mongolia). To reach this mountain road, one must cross the river to the other side of the river. The distance to Mongolia was hundreds of kilometers, but the area across the river, where the mountain road was, was declared a "border area" and a special permit was required to cross to the other side of the river.

A wooden bridge of several kilometers long was built across the river Biya. Each year before winter, the bridge’s central part was dismantled and then reconstructed after the winter and the thawing of the ice. In the winter, transportation was conducted only on ice. In the spring and autumn when the bridge was still dismantled and the ice was only partially melted, it is impossible to cross the river. In 1941, after the outbreak of the war, no one was available to dismantle the bridge before the frost. Consequently, it was destroyed by floating ice floes after the winter, during the thaw. As a result, for many months the passage to the other side of the river and the road to Mongolia were cut off. Biysk also had no public transport and most of its streets were unpaved. The main street paves were made from partly rotten wood on which we walked everywhere. In spring and autumn everything was covered with deep, difficult to pass mud.

In winter, the temperature would sometimes drop to as low as minus 44 degrees. On such days, a municipal siren would be activated in the morning to let all know that on that day, all should stay home and not leave the house for any reason be it work, school or otherwise. Up to when the temperature reached minus 40 schools and work places were open. The most difficult month was February. Around that time, the temperature would drop to around minus 30 degrees accompanied by strong winds and snow storms known as "PURGA." The wind stormed and the snow would rise and turns in the air. It was impossible to see anything at a meter’s distance and it was extremely difficult to find one’s way. There were stories about people who froze to death just a few meters from their houses because they did not find its direction. In the summer (July - August) the temperature would reach 25 ° C and higher. But even then, the high mountains remained covered with snow. The local agriculture adapted to the climate. For example, there is a certain type of wheat that is seeded in autumn. The seeds remain frozen in the soil all winter and the wheat grows only in the spring.

At the end of every summer, in August there were electromagnetic storms. The air was full of static electricity that would break up with lightning day and night even when there were no clouds in the sky and no rain fell. The animals, especially the cows and the dogs, would feel the electricity in the air a few days before the storm and they would make loud noises.

During winter, all wore special clothes. Our boots were made from especially compressed wool as were the rest of the clothes such as coats, hats with earmuffs and gloves. One had to make sure to tie and close every garment well before going out into the street. At the time, I met at least two people whose ears had frozen and fallen.

Most of the houses in the city were wooden houses of one or two floors. All entrances had double doors where one had to enter the outer door, close it behind, and only then, about half a meter away, open the inner one. All windows were double windows as well, and were protected by an external shutter. There was no running water at the houses so residents would bring water from the river in buckets. In the winter, a window would be opened in the ice to reach the running water. People would store the water in the house in a barrel and replenish it every few days. Once a week we would bathe in a public bathhouse, not far from our house. There, every bather would get a metal bowl and fill it with hot water that was used for washing.

Every apartment had a radio or, rather, a speaker that had only two stations: the Moscow station and a local station that would announce local events, the weather forecast, and so forth. The Soviet Union was disconnected from the world and it was impossible to listen to foreign stations, to receive newspapers or any information from abroad. The authorities made sure the citizens knew and heard only what they were permitted to know and hear. It was permissible to correspond with people abroad but all letters went through strict censorship. Therefore, we had to write that in Russia all is well and especially that there is everything one might need and there is no need for anything else. Nevertheless, we wrote to our relatives in Israel (Palestine then) and South Africa , and hinted gently, sometimes using a word or two in Hebrew and symbols and codes that we needed help and what was our real situation. Our relatives understood, and sent us packages mainly of clothes that we sold or replaced for food.

In Altay, there is an autonomous region of Oyrotim. The Oyrotim live in tribes and are mainly engaged in hunting as well as in some agricultural activities. Some of them are nomadic. Externally Oyrotim are very similar to the Mongols and are in fact a mixture of many peoples who have wandered for hundreds of years between mountains, countries and regions of government such as China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and even Turkey. A small number of them settled over time in the cities and engaged in conventional professions. I only knew one of them. He was a sports teacher at our school after he was wounded in the war and was discharged from the army as a cripple.

The population in the city of Biysk was mostly Russian. An Altai population concentrated mainly on villages and high mountains. During the war, the city absorbed many refugees from European Russia and other Soviet republics. Industrial enterprises (mainly military) and their workers were transferred from the center to Siberia. I especially remember ELEKTROSTAL, a large factory from Leningrad that was transferred with its employees and their families.

Many of the city's residents during the war were Poles and Jews who had been deported to Siberia by the Soviet authorities before the war and who, like us, had been able to move from where they were originally sent to, to the relatively large city.

During the war there was a severe shortage of food. Bread, for example, was not seen at all during the first years. At the end of the war, in Biysk, bread was distributed according to coupons. At the local stores the shelved were empty. Most of the shopping and especially food could be bought only in the market. What could be obtained were mainly potatoes and sometimes other vegetables like carrots, beets, cucumbers and dairy products. Luckily for us in the Altai area there were lots of bees and therefore we could sometimes get honey. In the winter, frozen blocks of milk that could be cut into pieces and thawed, were sold in the municipal market. Honey was sold in frozen blocks as well. In the summer, we collected berries and some apples. We would also get fish from the river. It was customary to buy a large amount of food that was available that season and to store it in the basement of the house. For example, potatoes were bought in bags and stored for the whole winter.

Night of the Wolves

It was a full moon night at the end of March. My mother rented a two-sled wagon harnessed to cows (because all the horses had been taken by the army) with a sled driver and a boy to assist him. The driver was supposed to take us from Solonesznoie to another residential area where the road began, and trucks would travel to Biysk. The sleds carried our belongings while my mother, my sister and I, walked by foot behind it. Sledding was the only means of transportation in our area. We walked all day long and continued at night by the light of the moon and stars. We walked about 60 kilometers in three days on the curved road between snow-covered mountains and forests. In the background, we saw a peak of the Altai Mountains named Belukha, which is over 4,600 meters high.

The night was clear and along the sides of the road we saw, from time to time, skeletons and bones of animals. The driver explained that these were beasts devoured by the mountain wolves. The mountain wolves are very large and always hide in the high mountains. The driver tried to calm us down by telling us that the wolves live in large groups and go hunting at night but usually do not attack people. We moved step by step on our long journey surrounded by frozen waterfalls that freeze in the fall and resume their flow in spring, rocks of all shapes and colors and shadows of various pine trees shadows of reflected light of the moon from the endless snow. We saw no one around except for us.

We were very tired walking in a place where we did not see any village or house where we could rest until suddenly, on the side of the road not too far away, we noticed a very large construction built entirely of uncut trees and without windows. The structure was surrounded by a high wall made of large tree trunks with an iron gate that enclosed the entrance. It was a winter cattle pen with food for the animals when there was no grass or other food outside. The farmers gathered the food for the animals before the snow and stored it in such pens. Inside this structure, a few people lived with the animals, cared for and feed them while big dogs guarded it.

We were very tired, so my mother asked the wagon driver to go into the winter farm that we saw so that we could rest until morning. He refused claiming that he didn’t have enough food for the animals for a longer journey. Nevertheless, we just could not walk anymore.

Suddenly we heard from a distance a growing howl and saw, in the light of the moon, wolves descending in a long line from the mountain in our direction. The driver pulled out a shotgun and fired two shots into the air. The wolves were not impressed and continued in our direction.

The driver then turned the sled carts and we all ran to the winter farmhouse and knocked hard on a gate that opened and closed right behind us. The wolves remained outside but did not give up and continued attacking the winter farm. The guard dogs made their voices heard from the inside, and the dialogue between them lasted all night. The wolves continued to turn around trying to break through the fence. Needless to say, there was no way anyone could sleep not to mention there was no place for it. We sat crowded in a corner that was allotted to us until morning. The farmers lit a bonfire, and to no avail threw burning torches over the wall from time to time in an attempt to drive the wolves away. They repeatedly explained to us that the wolves did not attack people during the day. Indeed, when the sun rose, the wolves went back to the mountains.

As we emerged from the farm, we saw a wide path around the farm that the wolves had created. That night we must have disappointed them and they remained hungry. We continued to our destination very tired but relieved. When we finally arrived at the village, it turned out that the snow that had begun to thaw had destroyed a bridge on a river and that the trucks could not continue. We stayed in the village for about a month until the traffic was renewed.

Our mother fell ill

Our mother got sick - she had gall bladder stones. One night, she had such a painful attack that she sat very weakly and was unable to talk. At a certain point, the village women who were standing around her bed thought that she had stopped breathing. They talked among themselves about needing to inform the authorities of her death, and how they would take my sister and me to an orphanage. My sister and I held hands, unable to cry, thinking it would be our end. But, after a few minutes, one of the women started shouting that my mother resumed breathing and is back to life. A doctor was immediately called and he concluded that the crisis was behind us and that our mother would just need to rest. My sister and I resumed breathing as well.

Life at Biysk

At the end of the journey, we arrived to Biysk where we lived until our returned to Poland in the summer of 1946. Many refugees, Poles and Jews, among them from Bielsk Podlaski, were gathered in the city. The common past and similar fate connected between all of them. Our mother was in contact with many of the people of Bielsk, both Christians and Jews, through the membership and activities of Zwionzek Patriotuw Polskich, a national organization of Polish immigrants with branches in most of the refugee concentrations in the Soviet Union. Among other things, the organization provided some information about what was happening in Poland. It distributed a Polish newspaper printed in central Russia under the supervision of the authorities, of course. Living closely with neighbors under difficult life conditions led to solidarity and mutual assistance among the Polish, Jewish and Polish exiles. We especially remember our mother and a wife of a Polish officer who often visited each other.

Life was difficult in every way. Our mother tried to get a job as a librarian in the municipal library, but during the interview she was asked how come she knew Russian so well. She said she had finished school in Lida during the time of the Czar's rule. Unfortunately, this was a trick question. My mother was placed on a list of suspects disloyal to the Soviet government. Consequently, she was refused any sort of office work. Due to health issues, our mother was unable to do physical work, so we made a living by selling the objects we had managed to take during our exile to Siberia and from the help we got through packages sent by relatives in South Africa and Israel.

Some of the Jews and the Poles could make a living from their profession. Such were tailors, shoemakers, bakers (who baked in their homes and sold the baked goods on the market), doctors, dentists and more. There was someone who created wooden spoons and sold them. There were musicians who performed in halls. Next to us lived a musician who played the saxophone. Many worked in various factories in the city. A Yiddish writer named Jasny who could not publish his works, found a different "cultural" job and worked as a guard at the theater.

My school in Biysk

In Biysk there was a small Polish school where several grades were taught together. But since my sister and I knew Russian well, we attended Russian governmental schools.

Other schools were of single gender schools, boys or girls only. There were great differences in the schooling level among the different schools. Fortunately, I studied at Urban School Number 3 which was intended for the best students who passed challenging admissions exams.

There was only one other Polish boy in my class, the rest were Russians. The school was located 4 kilometers away from our home, but I insisted attending it and walked there every day. There wasn’t public transportation that got there, so it was especially difficult during winter. In this school, however, we studied more hours per week than what was customary in the others. We also studied extra subjects such as technical scribbling, agrobiology, world literature (in addition to Russian literature and Soviet literature taught in all other schools), the constitution of the Soviet Union and more that were not part of the curriculum in other places.

The teachers in this school were also better than the ones in less challenging schools. I especially remember the pedagogical director, who was a refugee from Estonia and apparently knew the world even outside the Soviet Union. There were two principals in the school: the pedagogical director who oversaw the teachers and the political indoctrination, and next to him was an administrative director who was in charge, among other things, of discipline which was very strict. I was a good student and always helped the others. In the past year, I was chosen by the students to be the secretary of the school’s student council. I was also the editor of the student newspaper. The pedagogical director suggested that I join the Komsomol. He told me that usually one could get accepted after turning 16, but because I was an outstanding student, even though I was only 15 years old (the only one in the class), he was willing to approve my joining. I did not want to join and excused it by claiming that we are Polish citizens and will return to Poland after the war. A few days later, he came to speak with me again and said that he had inquired about it in the "high windows" and he was told that since after the war Komsomol would also be in Poland, I could join. I dodged again and he must have understood that it was just an excuse. Nevertheless, he accepted it and I was off the hook.

During the war it was impossible to print textbooks. Therefore, at the end of the school year, the books from each class were collected and where handed over to the next entering class. In a history book of the Soviet Union that I received, I noticed that several pages were glued together and that other pages were missing. I turned to my classmates but apparently, the same pages were missing and the same pages were glued. My friends advised me to ignore this and not ask questions. But I couldn’t resist and carefully and secretly opened the glue and found pictures of former heroes and leaders presented to us in classes as traitors. Apparently, their status changed in the eyes of the authorities after these books were printed. The policy change required an update and it is likely that an instruction has been received to update both the books and the history retroactively.

At the time, there were not enough notebooks as well, so and the teachers had found a method to whiten and erase printed text from newspapers and use it instead of notebooks. It was done in the school lab with Calcium oxide. The resulting paper was of very poor quality and could only be written on in pencil as ink would stain it too much. Still, it was better than nothing.

During the summers, we, the students, were required to come and help with the school’s maintenance. We arranged logs for the school’s winter irrigation, fixed and painted the fences in the yard and the like.

The students decided there was no God

One day a lecturer from an organization of "young atheists" arrived in the city. Students from all the city’s high schools gathered in a cinema to listen to his lecture. He spoke against the church and religion, quoted from newspapers of the czar period and presented examples of "miracles" that modern science can explain today as natural phenomena. At the end of his lecture he turned to the students and asked that if there was still someone who believed in God to raise his hand. Everyone were silent and I heard him say to the secretary sitting next to him: "Write down unanimously." The following day I read at the Chronicle of the City section of the local newspaper: "The schoolchildren of the city gathered for a special meeting and after listening to a lecture and holding a discussion, decided unanimously that there was no God."

The Typhus epidemic

The health care system has worked to prevent various epidemics, mainly through vaccinations. Health nurses would occasionally come to the schools to vaccinate all the students. Unfortunately, for some diseases there wasn’t a vaccine. A severe plague of typhus spread in the city and many who fell ill, died. At the beginning of 1943 I became ill and as a result stayed home in bed for almost six months. I was exhausted, could not eat or stand on my own feet. Given that the conditions at the city’s hospital were unbearable, and was not very sufficient in caring for the sick, it was decided to keep me at home under the care of a doctor who was a refugee from Leningrad. At the time, there were no cure for Typhus, so the doctor’s advice was just to hold on. After many months of being home, my mother had found a Polish doctor who lived across the river and went to seek his advice. Despite the danger of crossing the river when the ice was already moving, the doctor came and after checking me concluded that the crisis was over and that I needed to eat to get better. According to his recommendation, we got a fruit called "kaluquva" and I began to drink its juice in large quantities. A few weeks later I gradually started walking. After almost six months of absence, I was finally able to return to school. The teachers suggested that I would be held back a year as in any way I was younger than the rest of my class. Nevertheless, I insisted on not losing the school year and made a significant effort to complete what I had missed. Thankfully, at the end of the year, I passed the exams successfully.

Victory Day, May 9, 1945

On May 9th, 1945, early in the morning, I heard loud knocks on the window shutters. My friend from the Piotr Arbusov school was outside, knocking and shouting: "Nahum, wake up! The war is over!" I opened the window. It was still dark, but the lights in the houses along the street started lighting up one by one. Their windows opened and we heard the radio broadcasts Germany's surrender. The radio broadcast was filled of cheers and enthusiastic songs. People went out into the streets, yelling, laughing, dancing and crying. A war cripple without a leg was waving his cane; a truck driver was honking. We got dressed quickly and went out to the street.

In the morning, a celebratory service took place in the school. We sang the Soviet anthem and the principal spoke and promised that the students' fathers would soon return home from the front. Everyone were extremely excited. I, however, already knew that my father would not come back. Many months before the end of the war, when Polish soil was gradually liberated, we received bitter news about the fate of the Jews. In a Polish newspaper that we obtained, we read Julian Tuwim's article, "We are the Jews of Poland," that described the Holocaust. We read more news and articles and collected information on what was happening in Poland. We tried to contact family members and everyone we knew. We sent many letters to the Red Cross, which compiled lists of survivors, as well as to the different municipalities and institutions. The municipality of Bielsk Podlaski had passed our letter to our childhood caregiver Anna Klimowska. Anna had written back to us that she saw my father during the German occupation while he was held at the ghetto. Apparently, she spoke with him several times through the ghetto fence. She told us that the ghetto was demolished by the Nazis and that all the Jews were sent to their deaths. She told us that all our relatives and acquaintances were murdered by the Nazis. The victory on Germany was too late for them, and for us.

Preparing for another war

In the summer of 1945, a few months after the war with Germany had ended, a partial curfew was suddenly declared in the city. It was forbidden to go out into the street from a certain hour in the evening until morning, and the shutters of the windows facing the street had to be locked. Every night there was noise of heavy traffic passing through. It turned out that the authorities had begun to transfer military units from Europe to Mongolia, preparing an attack on Japan. Tanks, cannons and trucks would arrive at the train station where they would be unloaded and transported at night through the city and across the bridge towards Mongolia. And indeed, the attack on Japan began soon after. The Soviets, however, did not manage to conquer everything they planned. The Russians stopped their advance after the Americans bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered and the war ended.

Back in Poland, 1946-1950

Poland and most of Europe were badly damaged and destroyed in the war. Therefore, the repatriation was carried out gradually and for long. My mother, sister and I, returned to Poland only in the summer of 1946 together with other repatriates. We took a special train from Biysk - with all the Polish and Jewish refugees who were with us in Altai. This time we traveled as free citizens. After the train crossed the border to Poland, we met with representatives of the Jewish aid organization "Joint" and the Red Cross. Some of the passengers, who had a place to go back to, descended on the way at various stations. Most of the Jews, however, no longer had a home to return to nor a family to reunite with, along with some Poles, landed at the final train stop in Szczecin city. It was a former German city annexed to Poland as part of a new international arrangement according to which part of East Germany was annexed to Poland. The German population fled or was deported to Germany. At the same time parts of eastern Poland were transferred to Soviet Union. In Szczecin we were housed in the empty apartments the Germans had left behind. The city was largely destroyed. I remember how the authorities continued, more than a year after the war, to remove the rubble of buildings and to discover and remove hundreds of skeletons of people (probably Germans) killed in the bombing.

After a short while we moved to Lublin where our cousin Raja Kowienski lived with her uncle Leon Lewinski. The uncle, who fought as a partisan in Jewish partisan’s organization FPO, in the Wilno forests, managed to smuggle her out of the ghetto when she was 5 years old and thus saved her life. Her parents and all the rest of her family were murdered. We were told that her uncle Abraham Kowienski and his wife Frida lived in Wilno outside the ghetto with false papers. Once when they were walking down the street with their baby someone recognized them as Jews and turned them over to the Lithuanian police. The policemen killed them in the yard of the house and the teller received three kilos of sugar in return (yes - for the baby as well). This was the price the Nazis set for every Jew.

Sometime after Lublin, my mother, sister and I along with Raja and her uncle, moved to Lodz where we stayed for three years until my mother, sister and I immigrated to Israel while Raja and her uncle left for Berlin, Germany where she lived until her death. In Lodz, we lived on 64 Piotrkowska Street until our immigration to Israel in March 1950.

Toward the end of the war, while we were still in Siberia, the terrible picture of the Nazis extermination of the Jews began to uncover. The shock was great and unbearable. There were lists, articles, radio broadcasts and stories about what the Germans have done. Many institutions such as the Red Cross continued to update and publish lists of survivors and lists of seeking relatives. We continued to search but found no sign of our father, grandfather or grandmother, neither my father's brothers nor their children nor my mother's brothers. No one survived. Jewish extermination camps survivors, as well as Jews that were hidden and those who returned from Russia, concentrated in the city of Lodz. The city became the main national center for Polish Jews. Many social, political and cultural institutions and organizations were established there. I joined the Hanoar Hatzioni (Zionist youth) movement where I served as a instructor and the secretary of the movement's branch in Lodz. I participated in summer camps, and held various positions organizing, training and lecturing in various branches of the movement throughout Poland on behalf of the national leadership in Lodz.

At the time, I had also worked at the National Bureau of the Jewish National Fund in Poland (Keren Kayemet) and was appointed secretary of the Coordination Committee of all the youth organizations of the Zionist parties.

In Lodz two newspapers of the Zionist movement were published in Polish. An editor of one of them, the monthly magazine Opinja, asked me to write a youth section called Kolumna Mlodych. I told him that my knowledge of Polish was not good enough for writing in the newspaper, but he replied that the language issue was his problem and not mine. I shell write and he will correct and edit. So, I did. I published the section several times and in March 1949, when I turned 18, my editor granted me a press card of PAP (Polske Agenctwo Prasowe). The magazine was closed by the authorities a short while after, and I immigrated to Israel. Thus, ended my journalistic career in Polish but was renewed a few years later in Hebrew in Israel.

During the last year of our stay in Poland, the Communist authorities prohibited the existence of Zionist movements and organizations. Nevertheless, we continued to operate illegally.

My sister Gita studied in the evenings at a Hebrew school named after "Ghetto Fighters" that opened in the city but was closed by the authorities after a while.

While lived in Lodz, our mother once visited Bielsk where she met the Blumenthal and Kam families, with whom she was in Siberia. She had also met with our Polish neighbors from before the war.

We made a firm decision to immigrate to Israel, but there were all sorts of difficulties made by the government which occasionally changed its policy toward Israel and the Polish Jews. At one point, we already had passports for the journey, but one morning police officers appeared at our doorstep and confiscated them, apparently according to the changing directives of the Soviet Union towards Israel.

In Israel

On March 30th, 1950, we finally arrived at Israel via Italy. We took a special train organized by the Jewish Agency from Warsaw to Venice, where we were transferred to an Israeli ship called Kommiut that transported us to Haifa port. The ship was very old and used to transport coal for the British navy. For the transport, three-story beds and ladders to the deck, were installed in it. The journey continued for a few days. On the way, near Crete island, a storm broke out in the sea. An alarm sounded and everyone was required to go up to the deck. The high waves reached the deck and we almost drowned. This was the last voyage of that ship after which it was dismantled for scrap because it was not suitable for sailing. I remember the burning lights of Haifa in the early morning when we reached the shores of Israel. There was a great excitement and many wept. From the port, we were taken to shacks in a transit camp at Haifa called Sha'ar Ha'aliya. Two weeks after, we were moved to a different camp of shacks called the "Israel camp." It took many months before we moved to a one-room apartment of 23 square meters in size. In Israel, my sister Gita and I worked and studied in different places. Gita graduated Tel Aviv University in economics and married to Leon Kogos, a Holocaust survivor from Moldavia. They have two sons Benjamin and Noam and five grandchildren. I have attended Tel Aviv University as well and received my degree in accounting and law. I am married to Rivka from Schreiber family, a Holocaust survivor who was born in Antwerp, Belgium. We have three children Dina, Anat and Itamar and nine grandchildren. Years ago, I established an accountancy firm in Tel Aviv and was active in various public and professional organizations. I served as the President of the Certified Public Accountants Organization in Israel, as a lecturer at Tel Aviv University and in many professional and social organizations in the fields of accounting, economics and business management. I have published over thousand articles in the economic and general press, mainly in Haarez, where I edited a regular weekly section for almost twenty years. I was the editor of the Certified Public Accountants Organization magazine for seven years, as well as published another professional independent journal.

Our mother, Shejna Freidkes died in Israel in January of 1989.

My visit to Bielsk

In 1996 My wife and I visited Poland. Naturally, I visited Bielsk as well. I could only identify the Cinema building and the train station from which we traveled to Siberia, but not the buildings or streets. In the town square, across the place where our house used to be, in the old town hall, a municipal museum was opened with a permanent exhibition on the history of the city. I asked to see exhibits of the Jewish community as before the war, half of the city's residents were Jews. To my great disappointment, the two young workers of the museum did not know what I was talking about. They tried to help but could only find a postcard with a photo of a Polish officer who fell in defense of the city, and said they thought he was a Jew because his name was Levi. They also found an old sketch of the synagogue that was once there and is gone. That's all that was left from the Jews in Bielsk.

Fortunately, there are people in Poland who have not forgotten the role and contribution of the Jewish community to Poland during the nearly 1,000 years of its existence on Polish soil. One of them is the historian Mr. Wojciech Konończuk, who has made a continuous effort collecting, editing, and publishing testimonies. We are grateful for his contribution. I was also very happy to hear from him that in November 2017 a square in the heart of Bielsk was officially given a new name: "Plac pamięci zydów Bielskich" or "Square in memory of Bielsk's Jews".

As a member of the Jewish community I am grateful for initiatives taken by some museums and other institutions around Poland who act to commemorate its Jewish citizens.

Back to the Bielsk Podlaski home page

This site is hosted at no cost by JewishGen, Inc., the Home of Jewish Genealogy. If you have been aided in your research by this site and wish to further our mission of preserving our history for future generations, your JewishGen-erosity is greatly appreciated.