110503 SURVIVAL: SELLING BLACKMARKET CIGARETTES

YOM HASHOAH 2011: IN MEMORY OF YURIK

by Ruth Lichtenstein

In August 1942, the Germans began liquidating the ghettos around Warsaw, among them the ghetto of Otwock. At that time, my grandfather, Reb Eliezer Yischok Mostovitz, Hy’d, who was then only thirty-eight years old, was caught carrying a sefer Torah and was immediately deported to Treblinka, where he perished. For many years I longed to find out additional details of his capture and deportation, but of course there was no one to ask.

Eventually, I contacted Dr. Nili Keren in Israel who told me to get in touch with Yurik Plonsky from Mishmar HaEmek, a secular kibbutz in Israel. My family and I visited Yurik on Succot the following year, and he told me his story.

His father sat and learned Torah while his mother took care of the family’s material needs. As soon as the Jews of Otwock were forced into a ghetto, Yurik’s mother sewed for her ten-year old son a body belt with many secret compartments, filled them with bits of meat, and sent him by tram, under cover of darkness, to the Warsaw Ghetto, about a 45-minute ride away. Once in the ghetto, Yurik sold the meat since there was precious little meat to be had in the city. In this way, he kept his family alive. Never during the more than two years that Yurik trafficked in meat did he question why he was forced to face such danger.

One day, when he was near his Bar Mitzvah, Yurik’s father told him that he needed his help in Warsaw. Word had gotten out that the ghetto in Otwock was about to be liquidated and they needed Yurik’s help to rescue the seven sefer Torahs in their boarded-up shul. To accomplish this, Yurik climbed a tree that grew near the shul, jumped onto the shul’s roof, made his way down two floors, removed a sefer Torah, tied it to his body with rope, climbed back up to the roof, jumped down from the roof onto the tree, scrambled down to the ground and handed the Torah scroll to one of the Jews hiding nearby. Yurik did this six times successfully. But on his seventh trip, as he climbed down the tree with the last sefer Torah, he heard noise and realized that the Nazis had caught wind of what was afoot and had arrived.

Frightened, he quickly untied the Torah from his body and handed it to a Jew whose outstretched arms lovingly received it. And as Yurik finished his story, I finally knew why my grandfather had been captured and the mitzvah in which he had been involved in those final hours.

Yurik escaped that night and fled to Bialystok where he took refuge in the Warsaw Ghetto and became a vendor selling black-market cigarettes. A number of Jewish boys disguised themselves as Polish boys and stealthily smuggled themselves out of the Warsaw Ghetto and into the Aryan side to sell the goods.

Yurik survived the war, immigrated to Israel and became a kibbutznik. Sorrowfully, many years later, he lost his son in one of Israel’s wars of defense. Yurik passed away only a few months ago.

YOM HASHOAH

The Hall of Names is the place where names & details of Holocaust victims are preserved.

From Yom HaShoah 2009

"Son of man, can these bones live? …
"Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; and they say, 'Our bones are dried , our hope is lost, we are cut off for our parts.' …Therefore, prophesy and say unto them, 'Thus says the L-rd G-d, Behold My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves and bring you into the Land of Israel. And you will know that I am the L-rd!'" (Jeremiah's Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, XXXVII:1 -14)

Traffic came to an abrupt halt. Vehicles idled in the middle of major highways and city streets. Drivers and passengers bailed out and stood at attention. It was 10 AM on Yom Hashoah when the eerie sound of alarms whistled across the nation of Israel, reminding us of 6 million Jews who died in the hellacious fires of the Nazi Holocaust.
In a transfixed state of mind, I wondered if even HaShem was standing in silence for those two minutes to recognize those who had been martyred in order to sanctify His Name among the nations.
I made my way through the forest until I reached Yad Vashem with throngs of others who came to pay their respects. At first glance, I had the feeling it would be easier to get through security at Fort Knox than the maze of security one faced getting through to the Holocaust Memorial grounds.
I took my time walking via the Pathway of the Righteous Gentiles, recognizing historical names of individuals who were caught up in the downward spiral of the decadence of humanity. They sought no fame for their deeds of kindness which they extended to the needs of the less fortunate, often becoming a sacrifice themselves. Every year there are newfound stories uncovered, family members and friends who are reunited after so long a time, and genuine heroes and heroines are still being discovered. A very moving appeal to the Jews by one who cared was by Dr. Giovanni Pesante of Italy: "I ask you to remain with us for MY sake, not yours. If you leave, I shall forever be ashamed to be a member of the human race."

From Yom HaShoah 2009

I find it difficult to get all the way through the museum's massive structure flowing with detailed information, facts, eye-witness accounts, films, and news footage of the blackest days of world history during my lifetime. So, this year I started at the end. It was a sober realization that the time prior to the Holocaust was not much different than headlines creeping to the forefront of the media today. Warnings of anti-Semitism on the rise, and even with all the evidence we have at our disposal, Holocaust deniers are given the platform to publicly spew out their vile, vehement denials. I wondered, with a chill up my spine, "God in Heaven! What has changed?" I, along with many others, never thought we would see such another day on the face of the earth, much less in such a short time, as we still have living witnesses of the truth of what happened during those fateful days to mankind. But, we have to ask ourselves, what is to come when there are no longer any living witnesses?
Here are just a few notes taken on my visit:
The majority of the local population reacted with apathy (during the Holocaust)
1. Both traditional and modern anti-Semitism manifested (in communities and businesses)
2. An atmosphere of fear imposed by the Nazis caused the apathy.
3. Conformism especially among the youth.
All led Europeans to consciously deny the obvious crimes against their Jewish neighbors.
After the liberation of the death camps by the allies, Doctors tried to diagnose the ailments of many surviving sick, only to conclude the symptoms were the 'onset of death'. Therefore, more than an additional 20,000 victims died.

A sober reminder was when Esther, a Holocaust survivor wearing the yellow star, hysterically stated to the media: "We (Jews) want nothing more than our own country! We must have our own homeland! There's nothing more important for the Jews!"