When the Nazis began their reign of terror, these four women were just young girls. Yet despite their age, they risked their lives for their fellow Jews.
It was Erev Yom Kippur 1940 in the shtetl of Goworowo, Poland. The Nazis had marched into the city, leaving destruction in their wake. Most of the 500 Jewish homes had been razed to the ground.
This was not the first act of anti-Semitism that the local Jews had endured. During World War I, the citizens of Goworowo — situated on the Warsaw-Lomza railroad line — were accused of espionage by the Russian army because the eiruv around the shtetl was made with the use of a telegraph pole. As a punishment, on Shabbos Nachamu of 1915, the town was burned to the ground.
Ever resilient, the Jews rebuilt the community, likely aided by two wealthy brothers — Nota and Isser Rein — who owned a flour mill and the town’s electric company. Decades later, these two men invited the entire community, now homeless, to take refuge in the flour mill, which had been emptied by the Nazis when they confiscated the entire stock of flour. Even so, there wasn’t enough space to house the entire Jewish community; some families were forced to rent rooms from non-Jews in the surrounding area.
With no food to be found and Yom Kippur fast approaching, the rav of Goworowo — a prominent talmid chacham named Rabbi Alter Moshe Mordechai Bursztyn — began to worry. He feared that since no one had eaten, the Jews of the community would be too hungry to pray and fast properly on Yom Kippur.
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