Two visits

Sokolow Podlaski - a town without a past? (1998)

After 60 years, in a blue shining mercedes dad comes back to his old hometown, to the house he was born in, to the street he played in. He comes back to the grave of his little sister, Rachel.

Rachel Tzudiker was only 10 years old when she was killed by German air bomb on the street on her way to school. It was the first of September and Rachel, being a hard-working student, was walking gladly to school with her friend, who was also killed that day. The bomb hit an electricity column, which fell on both of them, leaving their school-bags and families alone and in grief.



Rachel Tzudiker-my fathers little sister with her 2 school friends


Rachel was the youngest daughter of Moshe and Chaya-Gittel Tzudiker - my grandparents. She had black hair and blue eyes-like my father's. She had a smile like an angel. The whole family, together with their plenty of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, lived in the same town of Sokolow Podlaski in the heart of Poland.

I will never know Rachel. I will neither know any of the dozens other family members my father grew up with. They were all humiliated and murdered in the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz. Some of them were writers, some of them doctors, artists, shoemakers, butchers. Most of them were tailors- a talent that ran in the family for generations.

Among them there were lots and lots of kids. Kids with blue eyes and black hair-exactly like my father's: Masha. Eli, Srul, Akiva, Tauba, and many others.

My father and his family succeeded escaping the Nazis' gas chambers. Thanks to his father's intuitive understanding that this time the Germans weren't going to be as civilized as they were during the first world war, the family escaped to Russia. Even tough most of people thought differently, my grandfather took his family (he had to take his wife by force because she wouldn't leave her new wooden house and her old parents behind ), crossed the Bug river-being the border now after the Molotov agreement -and went to live in Ukraine. There they lived like refugees. When the Nazis came close the Russians deported those who didn't have a viza to Sebiria. A lot of people thinking rationally-thought at the time that having viza was good and legal so a lot of people who didn't have one, "arranged" themselves a viza- thus dooming their destiny to be shot and thrown to the notorious pit in Babi Yar. During their stay in Sebiria they were frozen, sick, hungry. They used to eat potatoes' peels and in the springtime they ate wood fruit. Most of the time they were sick, weak and suffering unimaginable cold.

We are coming to Sokolow in October. It's very cold. Dad is looking for ul. Piekna (Piekna street) where he lived. Dad is looking with unbelieving eyes and can't find the house. It can't be, he says, it was here, next to the water pump. It's the same street, the same corner but yet it's not. Nothing looks the same. Eventough in his mind dad knew he wouldn't find the same place, he is looking for the things that exist in his memory- a memory of a child who wants to see his home again. A memory that is lost in the darkness of this unconscious town.

There's an old man passing us by and dad tries his luck. Now he speaks Polish - almost fluently. Where is the synagogue? he asks the man, the Jewish cemetery? The man says - it's ruined and his eyes, which saw the horror-are getting away from us, far away, avoiding our look consistently.

Very quickly we start understanding that what we are looking for doesn't exist. We knew that. We knew there was no synagogue. It was burnt along with the last Jews of Sokolow on Yom Kippur night. what we didn't know and shocked us most was the lack of mentioning of all of this history. Not a sign to mention the great Jewish community who lived here for so many years and was part of this town. There's no respect here - not to its Jews and not to itself - to its past. These people who now live in houses that belonged to their neighbours don't care whom the house belonged to? What happened to him? Whose was the backyard in which they plant flowers now?

No respect for human emotions like empathy, sorrow, brotherhood.

Apart from a few wood houses that still stand still in spite of the 60 years that passed, nothing in this town wants to remember.

I wonder- is dad really looking for his home? Is he really looking for his synagogue? No, the truth is he's looking for Rachel, his sister, and his loving aunts and uncles, he is looking for his lost language and culture that were long erased forever from his homeland, Sokolow Podlaski. He's looking and doesn't find, comes back barehanded. Talk to me, dad, tell me what you're feeling. I'm asking dad on our way back. How can words express what the heart can't understand? He asks me sadly and keeps his feelings to himself.

Sokolow Podlaski, September 2011

The new bright colors of the houses in Sokolow seem to me new, as if I hadn't been here 3 times before. It doesn't look at all like the town I first saw back in 1998.

It is sure different from the place my father and his family knew when they had lived here in their small wooden house in Piekna street, down by the water-pump.

The streets of Sokolow look also different to me. There are a lot of people on the streets. Most of them young. Maybe I am just imagining it, I say to myself. But then the 22nd of September comes and we are gathering in the old Jewish small market - maly rynek. At the beginning there are only about 2 dozens people, most of them kids from school. But then I see their teacher and their headmistress and some of the parents. The number of people is growing steadily. I start shivering. Yes, it is cold but not that cold to make me melt like that. I am looking up to the sky and think to myself: Can you, Rachel and Henia, see this? Can you hear what's going on, Eli and Srul? My father's beloved nephews who were sent that same day 69 years ago to be burned in the flames of Treblinka's Krematoriums together with the rest of their family and Jewish community.

 

The town's youth movement is leading the ceremony and when the young boys start to read some testimonies of the human slaughter that happened right here in this place, I start realizing that not only the houses of Sokolow look new.

No, of course, not all the citizens came to the ceremony. Not even the majority of the population but this, together with the growing awareness of the young generation and the beautiful projects of the school headmistress and Kasia; this with the fact that the owner of what used to be Beith-Hamidrash - a historical vivid evidence of the town's Jewish history-decided to renovate it instead of destroying it and make more money- this is a good start!!

Shoshi Shatit