The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod by Avrom Bendavid-Val Read Free Book Online

way back from church—they had to pass through our shtetl, the Gentile people—and on the way back from church a bunch of Polish men attacked a bunch of Jewish boys. My uncle was one who was attacked. He was pretty beaten up, black and blue, real real bad. Everyone started to run and close their doors and hide inside because they were afraid for their children and themselves getting beaten up. I saw that with my own eyes. I was screaming, I was hysterical, I was crying. I witnessed other things like that many many times. Mostly it would take place on Sundays, when they would go to or from church through our town. They would call out, “Dirty Jew,” or call us names, or hit us. We tried to stay out of their way. It wasn’t that bad yet. But through a child’s eyes, whatever I saw had an effect on me: I realized that I’m Jewish and I realized that they don’t like us. I realized that I had to be careful and stay out of their way.
    Peshia Gotman remembers the church as the object of an adventure more than in connection with the processions:
    I remember that church, and how! My mother gave me a good beating because I ran to be at the “otpus”—it’s when they have their services outside, it’s like a big picnic, it’s some kind of ceremony—I was maybe ten years old. I was with a whole bunch of kids. They usually had ice cream, and all kinds of toys; it was like a big picnic, the whole church was having a picnic outside. I got a big spanking for that, because I was not supposed to go to the church.
    Perhaps Prince Radziwill had devious intent when he set things up so that Trochenbroders would be drawn to their windows and yards by weekly church processions and would have a relatively good view of the church and the goings-on in its yard. While there were many different perspectives on the subject, there’s no escaping the fact that in the 1930s, the Polish Catholic church and the weekly churchgoer processions were prominent in the life of the Jewish town of Trochenbrod.
    By the mid-1930s, many Trochenbroders who had emigrated before World War I, particularly to the United States, managed, despite the Depression, to return to Trochenbrod to visit the town and their relatives. David Shwartz was one of those people. His memoir was inspired by a visit he paid to Trochenbrod with his wife in 1934. Basia-Ruchel Potash remembers with great clarity even today a visit by American relatives well over seventy-five years ago:
    In 1933 an aunt and uncle of ours came to visit us. Of course we had a big open house, all of Trochenbrod was invited, and everybody came to the party to honor my aunt from America who had been sixteen or seventeen years old when she left for the United States. They were like big celebrities today. It was so much fun. I was asking her stories about America. I was so curious; I remember her telling us about black people in America, and I couldn’t understand what she was talking about. At the party we took a picture of everyone; and what do you think happened in the middle of taking a picture? The cow came and left some droppings. Everybody laughed; that was funny—in our backyard.
    Those who visited reported mixed stories. Most remembered their Trochenbrod with fondness and a rich sense of community and Jewish life that was missing for them in America, and felt freshly the pangs of longing for that way of life when they visited. But they were Americans now, and many saw Trochenbrod’s relative prosperity through American eyes as unacceptable poverty, primitiveness, and removal from modern urban living. Visitors from abroad often brought with them envelopes of dollars, some for their own relatives and some for relatives of their Trochenbrod friends in the States. Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the United States were getting increasingly nervous about Hitler’s rise, and many of the visitors came to Trochenbrod with the aim of convincing relatives to leave. One family tells of their