HOLOCAUST

 

Testimony by Uri Finkel ,Translation by Sonia Kovitz

Thus did our shtetl lose the active ones of our Jewish community still in the first days of the fascist occupation.  Further on, in addition to the 255, the shtetl lost the active Soviet educators from the Jewish school and a few other employees, who were evacuated and then overtaken by the Germans near Minsk and were with the Minsk Jews as the first victims.  Among them were the teacher Kehas Goldshteyn, the natural science teacher; a student from Vilna; and my brother Itzhak Finkel.  Together with them were about a dozen Rakov intellectuals and a dozen young men who arrived to be mobilized into the Red Army and ended up with the rest.  Of these I know Sholem Finkel (Fayves), M. Chayet (Ade…), I. Kaplan (Israel Moshakhezes), Aizik Katz, and others.  The ten who remained alive escaped from the Minsk ghetto.  The relatives of 50 Rakov families were in the Minsk ghetto.  A much larger number ran away to other shtetls, many to Krosne, not believing the provocations of the commander, that the Jews who were sent to a work-camp would not be killed.  Many of these were murdered along the way, not knowing where to turn.

In the shtetl remained the sick and elderly, weak women and children, the rabbi, and yesoymim [orphans].  One element stayed healthy, the rich storekeepers and factory owners, people with initiative who handled their difficulty with gelt.  No one can say that the gelt did not help them.

Yes, at one time it did help them.  They were not included in the 55 and not in the 200.  They were in the Judenrat.  They exacted a harsh price from the population, they did not know how to “thin out” the ghetto, and they succumbed to the various provocations spread by the Germans, for example that America and England wanted to make peace with the Germans and that the National Socialists would move the Jews to Palestine. Many such shameful and worn-out lies guided the activity of the Judenrat.  Meanwhile hundreds of children, women, old people and weak and sick men were living in great hunger and need.