DAVID AND SYLVIA STEINER YIZKOR BOOK COLLECTION STEVEN SPIELBERG DIGITAL YIDDISH LIBRARY NO . 1 8 6 0 3 Skala-Podil’s’ka Memorial Book SKALA ON THE ∑RIVER ZBRUCZ THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY — NATIONAL YIDDISH BOOK CENTER YIZKOR BOOK PROJECT NEW YORK , NEW YORK AND AMHERST , MASSACHUSETTS Copyright © 2009 by Skala Research Group and Skala Benevolent Society. Original Copyright © 1978 by the Skala Benevolent Society. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author SKALA BENEVOLENT SOCIETY MEMORIAL BOOK COMMITTEE NEW YORK–TEL AVIV 1978 Book Cover & Interior Design by Scribe Freelance | www.scribefreelance.com ISBN: 978-1-61658-557-0 Printed in the United States of America EDITORIAL BOARD FOR FIRST EDITION: MAX MERMELSTEIN (WEIDENFELD) Chairman CHAIM BRETTLER GEDALIA LACHMAN MUNIO FIDERER MAX PLITT BENJAMIN RESSLER ARYE SCHWARTZBACH FIG. 2 FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION he Skala Yizkor book, Sefer Skala, was published in 1978 by T Holocaust survivors from Skala who were living at the time in New York and Tel Aviv. They were members of the Skala Benevolent Society (SBS). The Skala Benevolent Society (SBS), the landsmanschaftn was founded by American immigrants from Skala. It originally was designed to address the needs of American immigrants from Skala, later to provide loans to Skala, and then to preserve the bonds of the families whose roots were from Skala. More details on SBS are contained in the chapter by Jacob Herzog in this book. The book’s aim was to perpetuate the memory of the Jewish community of Skala that tragically had been destroyed by the Nazis and their collaborators. While a few chapters of the book previously have been translated, most of the book’s chapters were only available only in their original Yiddish or Hebrew. Members of the Skala Research Group (SRG) decided to have the book translated because we felt it was imperative that we and future generations have access to the book’s content in a language that we could understand. The Skala Benevolent Society (SBS) has been an inspiration to all of us in this endeavor. In particular, we have had the pleasure of working closely with Max Mermelstein, current President of SBS and editor of the original Yizkor book. He has been a fountain of information and resources and has provided guidance, editorial review, and assistance for this translation and other SRG projects over the years. We are deeply grateful for his encouragement and friendship. The Skala Research Group (SRG) was organized in 1999 by Denise Azbill, whose initial leadership is much appreciated. It is an informal association of people who are interested in their families’ history in FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH EDITION Skala. SRG is supported by JewishGen, a website that provides resources for Jewish genealogical research. SRG is a member of Gesher Galicia and the Suchostaw Regional Research Group, which are also supported by JewishGen. At the time of publication of this translation, SRG has 85 members, all of whom have relatives who once lived in Skala or nearby villages such as Lanovitse and Berezhanka. While our focus is on family history and genealogy, we naturally have great interest in the Jewish history of Skala, including the depredations of the Holocaust. Many people contributed to this book. Among the translators from Yiddish and Hebrew were Professor Leonard Wolf, Jerrold Landau, David Farer, Paul Blank, Lancy Spalter, Sheldon Clare, and Max Mermelstein. The use of several translators partly explains the different spellings for the same person. However, even in the original edition of this book, there were spelling differences either in English and/or Yiddish. Editors included Max Mermelstein, Beverly Bord, Toba Hausner, Diane Tyler, and Tony Hausner. Photo editing was done by Eva Zang Tkatch, with contributions from Yoshi Jaeggi and Helene Kenvin. Sharon Theimer and Deanne Giarraputo typed a number of sections. We are greatly indebted to them all for their wonderful work. We appreciate all the support of Pamela Weisberger, President of Gesher Galicia, the organization that provided a vehicle for handling donations to this project. We thank YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which made available copies of photos previously donated to its archive by Max Mermelstein. We also are grateful to the many individuals from SBS and SRG who contributed funds, without which the translation and publication of this book would not have been possible. This translation of the Yizkor book will provide the reader with valuable insight into the once vibrant Jewish community of Skala. Another excellent source of information about the town and its history is the Skala website at www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/SkalaPodol. The articles on this wonderful website have been researched, written or edited, and designed by our Web Leader Helene Kenvin. The website is maintained by our Webmaster Max Heffler, who has done a marvelous job. We are also greatly indebted to Susana Leistner Bloch who did an viii SKALA ON THE RIVER ZBRUCZ outstanding job with the original web site for Skala. The Skala website contains articles about the town’s Jews: their history, their emigration to America and Israel, and their valiant struggle during the Holocaust. There are photographs of our relatives from Skala, of the town as it looks today, and much more. We invite you to come and learn about the vanished Jewish community of Skala. For further information, please contact me at [email protected]. Tony Hausner Shtetl Leader of the Skala Research Group ix FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION he idea of perpetuating the memory of Skala’s Jewish community and T telling future generations about its rich past and tragic demise was discussed as far back as the 1950s, when the few dozen survivors of Skala made it to their next rest stop, whether in Israel or in America. However, it was not until November 19, 1960, at the annual Memorial Meeting in New York for the “Martyrs of Skala,” that a decision was formally taken to prepare and publish a Skala Yizkor Book. At about the same time, the Israel Society of Former Residents of Skala decided to do the same thing. An America-Israel Book Committee was formed and a call went out to all of our home-town survivors to participate in the project by giving testimony, evidence, memoirs, pictures and documents as well as the necessary financial means to attain our goal. Long and hard were the birth pains of this book on Skala. To begin with we had thought that the most difficult aspect of publishing the Skala book would be financial. Soon, however, we realized that the biggest difficulty was the lack of historical materials and other documentary sources. It became clear to us that the most important sources for the history of Jewish life in Skala lay in our memories, in the memories of the small handful of Skala’s Jewish survivors in America and in Israel. This awareness, that we, the survivors, are the only and the last carriers of the 600-year history of the destroyed Skala Jewish community strengthened our resolve that the spiritual inheritance of Jewish Skala, her mores and ways of life, her communal, cultural and charitable institutions, her personalities and characters, her folklore and humor and the awesome pain and sorrow of her destruction, must be noted and perpetuated. SKALA ON THE RIVER ZBRUCZ After many years of ceaseless efforts, struggles with apathy, differences of opinion as well as disappointments, the Skala Book became a reality, thanks to the devotion, persistence and the stubborn resolve of a few individuals. The content of the Skala Book is not as rich as we had hoped and wanted it to be; this is so not only because of the already mentioned lack of historical sources, but principally because of the cruel fate of the Holocaust years which tore away from us practically all of Skala’s leaders and public personalities who surely knew more about Skala and were probably more gifted writers than we, the survivors. To the credit of those who participated in the Skala Book, we must note that not one of us is a professional writer and that each contribution is, to the best of our ability, true and authentic testimony to the lively, creative Jewish Skala of the past as well as to the final pain and suffering. In preparing this Skala Book, we kept in mind that our children as well as other interested readers do not read Yiddish, our mother tongue, and therefore almost one half of the important historical articles in the book as well as the picture captions are printed in both English and Hebrew. This, we hope, will help our children and grandchildren to draw closer to the memory of our birthplace, the town of Skala, and to the spiritual inheritance of the Jewish way of life in Eastern Galicia–a way of life which perished in the flames of the Holocaust. Max Mermelstein (Weidenfeld) Chairman, Editorial Committee xi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES 4 I. CHAPTERS IN HISTORY OF SKALA 9 The History of Skala | Gedalia Lachman 11 The Town on the River Zbrucz | Benzion Fiderer 36 II. THE HOLOCAUST 60 The Destruction of the Community | Gedalia Lachman 61 Document: Crimes Perpetrated by the German-Facist 90 Occupiers and Their Collaborators List of Martyrs: Skala Residents Who Perished During 97 the Holocaust Years (1941-1944) “These Martyrs I Remember and My Soul Melts in 148 Sorrow” | Chaim Brettler Surviving in the Forest | Max Mermelstein (Weidenfeld) 172 Chapters From a Diary | Sophie Zimmerman 193 The Yanovska Death Camp in Lvov | Abraham Brandes-Tracy 207 Humor from the Dark Days | Chaim Brettler 214 How We Saved the Torah Scrolls | Esther Yagendorf 218 List of Survivors 222 A Night in a Soviet Jail | Esther Banner-Gelbart 231 Our Remnants After Liberation | Chaim Brettler 234 The Survivors (A Poem) | Chaim Grade 243 TABLE OF CONTENTS At the Trials of the Nazi Murderers in 244 Germany | Chaim Brettler III.