On 9 Av in 135 CE the last bastion of the Jewish rebels fell and the leader of the rebellion, Shimon bar Kokhba, was killed. According to the Roman historian Cassius Dionus, in the battles of that war, 580,000 Jews perished, and 50 fortified cities and 985 settlements were destroyed. Almost all of Judaea was turned into a scorched wilderness.
On 9 Av a few years after the defeat of bar Kokhba, the Roman ruler Turnus Rufus ploughed over the territory of the Temple and its surroundings. The prophecy was fulfilled that, “Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.” The occupiers forbade Jews to live in Jerusalem. Anybody violating the ban faced the death penalty. Jerusalem became a pagan city under the name of Aelia Capitolina.
On 9 Av in 1095 Pope Urban II announced the start of the first crusade, as a result of which the warriors of Jesus killed tens of thousands of Jews and destroyed numerous Jewish communities.
On 9 Av in 1290 mass expulsion of Jews from England began, and on 9 Av 1306 the same began in France.
On 9 Av in 1348 European Jews were accused of organizing one of the most widespread epidemics of plague (the Black Death) in history. This accusation led to a brutal wave of pogroms and killings.
On 9 Av in 1492 King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castille published a decree expelling the Jews from Spain.
On 9 Av in 1555 areas where the Jews of Rome lived were enclosed by walls and turned into a ghetto, and two years later, also on 9 Av, Jews from the rest of Italy were moved into the ghetto.
On 9 Av in 1648 there was a massacre of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and Bessarabia organized by Bogdan Khmelnitsky and his accomplices.
On 9 Av in 1882 pogroms of Jewish communities began in Russia within the boundaries of the Pale of Settlement.
On 9 Av in 1914 the First World War began.
On 9 Av in 1942 deportation of the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto began, and on the same day the death camp in Treblinka began operating; and that same day 500 of our nearest and dearest were shot in Emsk; But on that day 300 people were led forth from the ghetto and saved.
9 Av is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar but, despite that, Jews believe that it will one day become our greatest festival. When all Jews repent of their sins and turn to God, on that day the Messiah will be born.
INTERVIEW WITH LEJA SZPILMAN
“Tell me, please, Leja Pejsachowna, how has it come about that you are now the only Jewish woman living in Emsk?”
“After the war several dozen Jews left. They were all penniless. They had nothing left, no houses, no property. Some of it had been burned and some confiscated. We had Jews living not only in the town, many lived on farmsteads or small farms. Almost all of those were killed. My brother and his family were shot in 1942. The town Jews were mainly in the ghetto, but I did not go into the ghetto. Before the revolution, we had a servant called Nastya, and her daughter Sima was like me. We were very friendly from when we were children. When the war began, the Germans immediately came and Nastya took me to stay with her in the countryside. I was eleven. Nastya cut my hair off and told me to wear a headscarf, to keep my head covered, because my hair was so Jewish, but if it was close cropped it wasn’t obvious. At that time many children had their hair cropped because of lice. We didn’t have paraffin to rub on.”
“How is it that you are today the only Jewish woman?”
“I’m telling you, at first there were several dozen. Mama’s cousin came back and wanted to take me away, but I did not want to leave Nastya and Sima. I was crazy, afraid of everybody. I don’t think I was entirely right in the head. Perhaps I’m still not.
“That’s what my daughter says, ‘Mama has a screw loose.’ Then Nastya’s son Tolya came back from the front, an invalid, of course. I married him but he soon died. I brought my daughter up. In 1970 she emigrated to America. Everybody went off to different places, some west, some east, some north, some south. At first a lot emigrated from Belorussia to Russia. One, an engineer, went to a construction site in Norilsk. People went to Israel and America, too, of course. My daughter went to study in Minsk, met a Jewish boy, they decided to emigrate together, but Sima and I live here. My daughter keeps inviting us to come and see her but what for? We have everything here, our house, our vegetable garden. Sima never got married, she is a spinster. Nastya we buried long ago. My graves are here, all of them, Mama, Papa, my eight brothers and sisters, grandmothers, grandfathers, all murdered on the same day. That’s how I come to be on my own now.”
“Leja Pejsachowna, why do you not want to emigrate and stay with your daughter?”
“There’s no way I will do that. How could I emigrate to that America of theirs, what use is it to me? If Lilia likes it let her live there, but I don’t like anything about it. Last time she brought me a suit, but I’ve never once worn it. It’s got such a collar and it’s green! And such soft shoes that your feet slip around in them. Well, I’m just saying that, I’m joking of course. Here are all my graves, I go there every day, tidy them, keep them clean. We have our own house, and Nastya re-registered it to the two of us. Sima has attacks, how could I leave?”
“Leja Pejsachowna, have you ever been to visit your daughter in America? What town does she live in?”
“I have never been there. It’s too far to travel. If it was nearer I would go but judge for yourself, I have never in my life been even to Minsk. I’ve never traveled further than Grodno, and to go to America you have to change so many times! It’s so difficult with luggage. No, don’t ask me, nothing would make me go. If she misses me she can come and visit me herself. Her town is called, like our places here, Ostin, the place of bones. It’s in Texas.”
“Leja Pejsachowna, you go to the graves but do you know who is buried where? After all, we’ve been told 500 people were shot here.”
“What, do you think I go to the ravine? Not for anything! No, you don’t understand. I don’t go anywhere near there. I only go to the old Jewish cemetery, to the part that’s still there. Of course, many of the graves have been broken, but I clean the paths, and keep clean the railings where they have them, pull out the weeds. You see, our town was not backward. We had a lot of scholars and rabbis. There was a yeshiva here. My grandfather’s brother was educated, too. Those are the graves I tend. I don’t remember much of the Jewish language, very little now, but I know all the letters, I can make out the names and I know who lies where. The numbers, of course, I can’t translate, what year it is by our reckoning.”
“Do you have any trouble with your compatriots?”
“How could I? They’re all my people here, some in the ground, some walking around in the street. They treat me well, although I am Jewish. They never say anything bad, you know. Of course I’m glad our people have come but none of my friends or relatives among them. All the people I know are here. The dead and the living. Come home with me, I’ll introduce you to Sima. She is more than a sister to me.”
“How do you get by in material terms?”
“Very well. We have two pensions, a vegetable garden, chickens, and so much clothing that we can’t wear it out fast enough. That whole part of our street wears our clothes. We had a goat before, but don’t keep one now.”
“We were told that here in Belorussia many of the local inhabitants collaborated with the Germans during the war, betraying Jews. What you think of that?”
“People vary. Some helped against the Jews, of course, but others didn’t. They don’t like them, the Jews. Us, that is. But Nastya saved me. She had a sister Nyura, and she kept coming to her all through the war and saying, ‘I’ll denounce you, I’ll denounce your Yid.’ Nastya just said to her, ‘Go and do it, go on! They’ll kill me and Sima, and arrest you at the same time. And I’ll tell them your husband joined the Red Army.’ She would give Nyura some food or some clothing and away she would go. Life was always hard for people in Belorussia, especially during the war.