Pages of History

As told to Riki Goldstein

I

was born during World War II, in the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Turkestan. Using the “opportunity” presented by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which placed Poland’s eastern regions under Soviet control, my father fled his shtetl of Nemerov, near Lemberg, deep into Russian territory. The news from relatives under German occupation was ominous. The Nazis reeked of hate and death; their evil intent toward Jews was clear, and it seemed prudent to him to put as much space as possible between himself and Germany. Running, running, running, through Russia’s vast, inhospitable territories, he found a tiny group of Jews exiled to remote Turkestan. There he met my mother’s family, the Koschitsky clan. While the Galician shtetl Yidden were deported to Auschwitz in a long, frozen line of simple kiddushei Hashem, my parents’ wedding reestablished a Yiddishe family. Survival in the remote village was a constant challenge to their wits and faith, but my father was resourceful and gifted. Somehow, we got by.

When news reached Turkestan that the war was over, the refugees had had enough of Soviet hospitality. Together with trainloads of other refugees, my parents and I made our way back… home. Poland was scarred and reeling. The sound of Yiddish was gone from the shtetlach, and hate-filled gentiles spat in my parents’ faces. We ended up in my mother’s hometown of Katowice, moving into her family’s apartment.

The Jews who returned found their homes looted. My father, a talented merchant, went in search of Jewish items the gentiles were willing to part with, and in the Katowice marketplace, he purchased a sefer Torah and a Shas stolen from homes of deported or fleeing Jews.

In 1948, our Uncle Max in London helped our family obtain visas to England. The sefer Torah and the Shas, an original Vilna edition, came with us.