HOLOCAUST

 

Testimony by Uri Finkel ,Translation by Sonia Kovitz

Our heroic Red Army drove them into a cul-de-sac, from which they managed to extricate themselves intact.  For a few days after the battle, hundreds of troops stampeded over the cobblestones through the khoreve [ruined] streets.  Around the Jewish besoylem [cemetery], where the Germans had carried out the hariges [killings] of Jews and honest Soviet citizens, were about 500 of their accursed henchmen.  The hundreds of the Germans’ henchmen lay in a half meter deep ditch in the street.

Of the Jewish population of the shtetl we found the following persons alive:

• Masha Heyvich, a daughter of Itzhik Botvenik (mechanic) with her 12-year-old daughter Nechama and son Benyamin.  The latter was in a partisan otryad [detachment], where he distinguished himself and was awarded a medal of the first degree.  Masha and her daughter served in the same otryad.
• The partisan Hillel Eydelman, a grandson of Vigdor Losetser.
• The partisan Tevel Hashbuz, a grandson of Yoshe Gunevicher.
• David Grenholts and his son Oren.  These two were sustained at the home a Polish nobleman for a lot of money. 
• Shmerl Pashrelianiets and his brother.  They were sustained by a White Russian peasant woman from the dorf [small village] Girevich.  Later Shmerl married her. 
• Motl  Kaplan (of the Bershters) was a partisan. 
• Berl Bonievitch was a partisan.
• A daughter of Mashe Raskin and her husband, who was from Lodz. 

All these people were already living elsewhere, no longer in Rakov. They had moved to other places – “We cannot stay in a place where our blood was spilled,” they said.

Rakov, November 10, 1945.  Uri Finkel.

P.S. a sorrowful pinkes: the Rakov ghetto was not saved.  U. F.