“People who betrayed a Jew were given 20 German Marks and clothing taken from the person. Our neighbor Mikhei betrayed the taylor Nuchman to get a good sheepskin jacket. They looked for Poles as well, but less.
“I wish more people were good and that there were no wars, that’s what I have to say to you. Good-bye.”
DANIEL STEIN’S ACCOUNT OF THE CHURCH SERVICE IN EMSK
No church service was planned. All the former captives of the ghetto were Jews to whom Christianity is entirely alien. First there was a memorial service, the Kaddish was celebrated beside the stone we erected at the place where our brothers and sisters are buried. Then we went all together into the town. I wanted to show my Christian brothers from Germany the Catholic Church. A stone wall surrounded it but the gate was open. We went in. The church was a building site, covered in scaffolding, and the courtyard was strewn with building materials. Perestroika was going on here, too. Women were sitting on stone slabs and they said they were waiting for the priest because the service was to take place at 5:00 pm. I wanted to go in and perhaps assist, but the verger came out to me and said there would be no service. The priest had phoned to say he was ill and could not come.
I told him the last time I was in the church was during the war. I had survived and become a Catholic priest and would like to conduct the service. He unlocked the church and we all went in. Inside, the church was also covered in scaffolding, but it was possible to have a service in a side chapel. I put on the stole. I began the Mass with the reading for the day from the Prophet Nahum. I must quote this text, because you couldn’t have found more appropriate words for that day:
“Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy vows; for the wicked shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off. For the Lord bringeth again the excellency of Jacob, as the excellency of Israeclass="underline" for the emptiers have emptied them out, and marred their vine branches. Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not; The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots. The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses.”
I finished the Mass and then preached a sermon. Hilda recorded it on a tape recorder. Here it is:
“Brothers and sisters! Fifty years ago I sat for a long time here in a pew during confession and was afraid that the priest would recognize me as a non-Catholic. Circumstances developed in a way which meant that I had to flee the town, but later I returned and nuns took me in. They hid me for fifteen months. A few days after they admitted me, I was baptized.
“Today I would like to thank the Lord for three things: for the saving of those people who came at that time out of the ghetto, and for saving me also, for the fifty years of my Christian faith and the thirty years of my work in the country where Jesus was born and performed his service, in Galilee, for he was a Galilean and spoke the Hebrew language. Today we once more have a Jewish Church in Israel.
“I did not specially choose the texts for today’s reading. If you were listening carefully, it was a description of what occurred here in August 1942.
“Today we have come from the land of Israel to remember the dead. Their blood, shed here, served the arising of new life, as it is said in the reading: ‘For the Lord bringeth again the excellency of Jacob, as the excellency of Israel.’
“Here, between two churches, in November 1941, before I came to Emsk, fifteen hundred Jews were murdered. Their blood is here. In August 1942 not far from this place in a ravine a further five hundred Jews were shot, old men and children who had not the strength to flee the ghetto.
“Here, too, was shed the blood of our brothers, Poles and Belorussians, Russians and Germans. In my heart I always pray by name for those who were kind to me personally, the Poles Walewicz, the German Reinhold, and the Belorussians Harkevich and Lebeda.
“I would like to thank all of you, because the nuns who hid me were also members of your community. The Lord will reward you for what you did for me and my fellow citizens.”
Then Hilda sang in a delicate voice the words of the Patriarch Jacob which he spoke in Beit El, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.” Then there was the concluding prayer:
“Fortified by your food, O Lord, we ask that your servants our brothers and sisters who left the world in agony in this town, freed of all guilt, should rise together with all of us to eternal life. Amen.”
Then we came out of the church and an old lady who was weeping bitterly came over to me. I remember old Belorussian ladies like this very well, wearing a headscarf, felt boots even in the middle of summer, with a staff and a sack. She pressed a large green apple on me and said “Father, accept our poisoned apple …”
She put the apple in my hand, knelt down, and said, “Ask your God to forgive us and no longer be angry with us. For those innocent Jews who were killed he has sent his wormwood star upon us.”
At first I did not understand, but a German journalist explained that among the people, the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station was being linked to an apocalyptic utterance about a wormwood star which would fall to earth and poison it.
“Don’t cry, grandmother,” I said. “God does not bear grudges against his children.”
She reached for my hand holding the apple. It is the custom in Orthodoxy for the people to kiss the priest’s hand. I offered her the apple to kiss and she went away as she had come, very tearful.
No, I really cannot accept the idea that God punishes peoples. Neither the Jews, the Belorussians, or any others. It is impossible.
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN BY HILDA ENGEL
Captions
1. This is what Emsk Castle looks like 50 years after the ghetto was housed within its walls. On the right are the two buses in which we came from Minsk.
2. The memorial stone erected by those who escaped from the ghetto in memory of those who were unable to leave.
3. A group of reunion participants.
4. The meeting in Emsk town square. Speech by Mayor Rymkevich.
5. Amateur performance. Children’s choir, dance company, folk music band.
6. Kaddish. In the center is Rabbi Chaim Zusmanovich.
7. Leja Szpilman, the only Jewish person in the city of Emsk, with her adopted sister Serafima Lapina.
8. The square where mass extermination of the Jews took place in November 1941 (1,500 people, and there is no list of the names). To the right, the Catholic Church behind wooden scaffolding; to the left, the Russian Orthodox Church.
9. Ruvim Lakhish, organizer of the reunion.
10. Brother Daniel and Ewa Manukyan, born in winter 1942 in Czarna Puszcza. Her mother, Rita Kowacz, escaped from the ghetto with others on 10 August, but a few months later left with her children to fight the Fascists in the Armia Ludowa.
11. Esther Gantman, widow of Isaak Gantman, the doctor who operated on all who lived in the forests and on the partisans. She, too, was a doctor and assisted her husband during operations.
12. Other young people, born after the war to those who escaped from the ghetto. Their children and grandchildren. (These photographs have been provided by reunion participants.)