The Heavens Are Empty - Avrom Bendavid-Val [51]
Alex said we should go to the Pripyat swamps in the north, in Byelorussia. Because of what he learned on his travels he was sure there we would find large partisan camps which we could join, and they were receiving Soviet support and Soviet weapons. Our Russian paratroopers did not want to go, they wanted to stay and continue their sabotage work. Although it was Alex’s idea to go north, he decided to stay in the Klubochin area, so he went with Medvedev’s partisan detachment. This Soviet detachment was based at Lopaten, not far from Klubochin and Trochenbrod. Their main activity was to sabotage high-level German officers and operations in Rovno, which the Germans used as their central administration center.
As we moved north we came across another group of Jewish partisans from Kolki who were also looking for a larger Soviet partisan detachment. We continued north together, and found village after village and town after town where the Jews there were murdered and their possessions were stolen or destroyed. Although I taught Jewish studies, in my heart I was not really a very religious man. But when I saw what happened to the people in Trochenbrod and when I saw what happened in all those other villages and towns and when I heard about what happened in the cities I knew that never in my life again could I even think about a God who saw and heard all this but just sat there watching.
In Byelorussia we found scouts from a Soviet partisan group, and they took us to the base camp of Kovpak’s partisan detachment. This detachment was commanded by General Mayov Kovpak, a sixty-year-old fighter from World War I where he fought against the Germans and the White Army. We talked with Kovpak and agreed to become part of his group; we would be a unit of Kovpak’s Third Battalion. That night in December 1942, our Jewish partisan group, Trochenbrod’s partisan unit, was no more.
One day months later there came a decision from the high command that we should move to the Carpathian Mountains to conduct certain operations there. On the way, we passed through the Radziwill forest. The Jews in Trochenbrod and Lozisht had all been murdered by then. We made up a unit of four hundred raiders to hunt down the Schutsmen and Ukrainian Nationalists who helped the Nazis in their work. We killed many of them and burned their houses.
We decided to burn everything we could that was left in Trochenbrod because we didn’t want the Nazis or the Ukrainians to use any of the houses, to benefit from any of the buildings. Jews had owned the flour mill. After they killed the Jews, Ukrainians took over the flour mill. We didn’t want them to have it, so we burned it. We took some straw and spread it around, and we spilled fuel all around—there had been fuel there to run the machinery. Then we lit the fire and burned down the flour mill. I tell you that it was sad, but the feeling of revenge was very strong, very strong and very satisfying.
Ryszard Lubinski, postmistress Janina Lubinski’s son, was not only the sole non-Jew born in Trochenbrod, he went to school there, all his friends were there, and he grew to the age of twelve there; although he’s Catholic, Ryszard thinks of Trochenbrod as his hometown. Ryszard and his mother remained in their home, the post office that was closed down by the Soviets, until the winter of 1942. They were the only ones who lived in Trochenbrod before, during, and after the Holocaust there. He remembers Trochenbrod with deep affection, and he remembers the days of Trochenbrod’s descending darkness with great clarity.
Because of Jews, we were in Sofiyovka. Jews made Sofiyovka and developed it