Memorial Book of Kamenets Litovsk Zastavye and Colonies (Kamyanyets Belarus)

<p>This Yizkor Book memorializes the Jews of Kamenetz‐Litowsk-a shtetl in an area that changed hands over</p><p>the centuries from Lithuania to Poland to Belarus. It was situated on the banks of the Leshna River in the</p><p>shadow of the Sloop a 14th‐century fortress tower. The Jews of the town took great pride in the</p><p>Kamenetz Yeshiva a center of advanced Talmudic learning. Young men from all over the world flocked</p><p>there to study and to bask in the presence of the renowned Boruch‐Ber Leibowitz the prodigious head of</p><p>the yeshiva.</p><p>The Jewish presence was obliterated by the Nazis during World War II. The Jews of the town were first</p><p>confined to a ghetto then expelled and transported to death camps. Only one Jew Dora Galperin was</p><p>hidden by local Christians and survived in and around the town-traumatized by her experience for the</p><p>rest of her life. A few others who had been expelled survived the brutal conditions of work camps. The</p><p>small number who returned after the war could not bear their neighbors' animosity and emigrated to</p><p>Israel and other countries. Nothing remains in Kamenetz of the centuries‐long Jewish presence-no living</p><p>Jew not even a trace of the Jewish cemetery.</p><p>The essays in this Yizkor Book also describe the thriving pre‐war Jewish community. There are biographies</p><p>of mid‐19th century Kamenetz adventurers (Menachem‐Mendel of Kamenetz Yisrael Ashkenazi) who</p><p>settled in Israel in the trying conditions of those times. One essay tells us about the 19th‐century career of</p><p>a fiery orator the Maggid of Kamenetz who emigrated to London in 1890. Two writers (Yeḥezkel Kotik</p><p>Falek Zolf) contribute colorful autobiographical pieces on life in the town in the late 19th and early 20th</p><p>centuries. We learn about Kamenetz's travails during World War I: the influx of refugees the German</p><p>occupation the epidemics the blaze that destroyed much of the shtetl and the bandits-escaped</p><p>prisoners‐of‐war who hid out in nearby forests.</p><p>Other essays describe Zionist organizations the hard‐working communal volunteers a successful amateur</p><p>theatre a self‐trained orchestra that performed when the Kamenetz Yeshiva was dedicated and the</p><p>experiences of Jewish pupils attending the Polish elementary school in the 1920s. Several articles tell us</p><p>about the last Chief Rabbi of the town the charismatic Reuven Burstein who perished in Auschwitz; he</p><p>was an enlightened tolerant leader with a profound religious interpretation of Jewish history. Another</p><p>tells the story of a brilliant PhD mathematician from Kamenetz Ayzik Gorny for whom Gorny's Theorem</p><p>was named; he was teaching in a French university in 1940 yet shared the fate of his fellow</p><p>Kamenetzers-sent from France to his death in Auschwitz. And we are told about the achievements of</p><p>those who had left: the proud new lives of the immigrants to Israel; and the philanthropic</p><p>accomplishments of the immigrants to America. Both groups joined hands to memorialize the town and</p><p>to write the Yizkor Book. Finally a detailed necrology authored by Meir Bobrowski lists all the</p><p>Kamenetzers more than 1700 in number who perished at the hand of the Nazis.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>