The Heavens Are Empty - Avrom Bendavid-Val [81]
ABOVE: 1939. Young Jewish men and women from Zionist organizations all over East Europe made their way to this shelter, the “Internat,” in Vilna (Vilnius) on their way to settle in Palestine. About 200,000 refugees are said to have passed through here. Photo provided by Hana Tziporen. OPPOSITE: Trochenbrod’s street, 1939. Notice the man standing in the drainage ditch near the upper right edge of the photo. Notice also the bollards on the sides of the street to keep passing wagons away from the ditches, and horse-drawn wagon traffic in the distance in line with the wagon tracks in the upper left. The girl in the foreground is Basia-Ruchel Potash. Less than three years after this photo was taken she hid with her family in the forest during the Nazi slaughters, and was one the few Trochenbrod survivors. But here Basia-Ruchel stands shyly next to her playmate, Ryszard Lubinski, son of the Polish postmistress. Photo by Janina Lubinski, the postmistress; provided by Ryszard Lubinski.
ABOVE: A bunker in the forest camp of Medvedev’s partisan detachment. The camp was located in Lopaten, about 4.5 miles from Trochenbrod. Nahum Kohn joined this Soviet partisan unit after his own small unit was decimated. The camp has been developed into a museum of partisan activity in the area. Photo by the author. OPPOSITE TOP: A scene in Yaromel, 2006. The forest area in the background is where the mass graves of Trochenbrod people are located. OPPOSITE BOTTOM: One of two monuments at the sites of the mass graves of the people of Trochenbrod. Photos by the author.
One of two monuments at the site of Trochenbrod. This one was erected in 1992 by several Israelis and an American who were born in Trochenbrod. It’s located at what was the north end of town where the synagogue once stood that was burned after the last Trochenbroders were killed. Photo by the author.
Photo of a Polish family provided by Betty Gold (Basia-Ruchel Potash). About this photo Betty says, “The man in the center of his family, Yuzef Berdnarski, and his son Yanek, the groom standing in back of him, were the ones who helped us survive. They were angels. We kept in touch with them until they died. My parents sent them packages, medicine, and some money.”
TOP: Label Safran from Trochenbrod-Lozisht, upper left, and the Ukrainian family that hid him while the Nazis were rounding up Jews for slaughter: the father Davyd Zhuvniruck, and his wife Yaryna and daughter Kateryn. Photo provided by Esther Foer. BOTTOM: At the Foehrenwald D.P. camp near Munich, 1947. Survivors from Trochenbrod and Lozisht at a gathering in memory of those who perished. Label Safran is in the middle of the second row. Photo provided by Esther Foer.
TOP: Head of a short-handled hoe found in the fields of Trochenbrod in August 2009 by cameraman Andriy Dmytruk, and presented as a gift to the author. BOTTOM: A door latch handle found in August 2009 in the area where Trochenbrod’s houses once stood. Found by cameraman Andriy Dmytruk and researcher Sergiy Omelchuk, and presented as a gift to the author. A decorative stem with branches and leaves can be discerned running lengthwise down the center. Photos by the author.
To this day Trochenbrod’s street is echoed in the landscape. The Radziwill forest east of Trochenbrod is in the background. Trees and bushes descended from those that stood in front of Trochenbrod houses remain tenaciously in place in the flat land of the Trochim Ford clearing. Photo by the author.
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