The Heavens Are Empty - Avrom Bendavid-Val [12]
To this day a glance at the map shows the Kovel-Rovno railroad line bearing southward unnaturally from Kovel to Kivertzy station northeast of Lutsk; then continuing on its southeast path until it meets up with the Lutsk-Rovno highway about eight forested miles south of where Trochenbrod used to be. From there the tracks follow a path east and then southeast to Rovno and beyond. Kivertzy station was twelve miles from Trochenbrod by unpaved road. Though it took half a day to get there by horse-drawn wagon, it made Warsaw, Kiev, and the world accessible to Trochenbrod. The railroad figured heavily in partisan activities in World War II, since the Nazis made Rovno the administrative center for their Reichskommissariat Ukraine, and, as we’ll see later, the forest provided good cover for partisan demolition squads.
According to census data, by the end of the century the combined population of Trochenbrod and Lozisht was over sixteen hundred Jews. The town’s population was growing steadily because it was enjoying a relative economic boom. As Trochenbrod passed into the early twentieth century it boasted flour mills, oil presses, long-distance cattle traders, an extensive leather and leather-goods sector, dairies and a flourishing dairy-goods sector, a glass factory that took advantage of the sandy soil and nearby forests, and close commercial relations with markets in the three cities and a number of towns in the region.
Trochenbrod began to have more regular contact with the outside world than before, and its people were becoming more aware of the major military, diplomatic, and political happenings in Europe, and even, to a degree, in the United States. Many Trochenbrod boys and young men studied at yeshivas as far away as Lublin, Lodz, and Mezerich in modern-day Poland, and Vilna in modern-day Lithuania. To deal with administrative issues, like placement of the railroad tracks, Sofiyovka emissaries traveled as far away as Moscow. Trade interests took some Trochenbrod businessmen to cities hundreds of miles away, to Warsaw, Kiev, and beyond. Jewish newspapers from Warsaw and other Polish cities, carrying news of both the Jewish world and the larger world, now reached Trochenbrod. Emigration from Trochenbrod to the West, especially to the United States, was fairly brisk in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, and the immigrants sent letters home to Trochenbrod about life and events in their new countries.
And so, despite its relative isolation, as the new century began Trochenbrod was entering the modern world step by step. And yet this unique little town called Trochenbrod remained essentially what it always had been: most young men were sent to yeshivas to study Torah; the whole town celebrated weddings; farming activity was central to community life; being a rabbi and a scholar was the highest and most respected achievement; and when a famous rabbi visited from a big city, the whole town went out to greet him, families would compete to have him as their guest, and his visit was celebrated night after night during his stay. And on the Sabbath, Trochenbrod’s Jews did no work, lit no fires, bore no burdens. Despite the relentlessly encroaching world, in the whole town of Trochenbrod, Saturday, the Sabbath, remained a day only for peace, rest, and prayer. In Trochenbrod,