Table of Contents
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Site Page Counts
Public: 229
Restricted: 51
- Overview
- NY Kletsker Cemetery Data
- Searching for KIRZNER
- UKR 1946
- Benari Memoir
- Kletsk to Zaostrovechye
- Recreating Kletsk
- Pshepyurko Interview
- Sonia's Places
- Gelfand Memoir
- Yizkor Book
- Contributors Only
Site Page Counts
Public: 229
Restricted: 51
Elimelech Benari's Kletsk Memoir
Eulogy For The Jews Of Kletz
Fifty years have passed since that bitter tragic day when the Jews of Kletzk were concentrated into the market square. They were divided into two groups. One group, with about 2,000 Jews, was led into the Kalte Shul, the large synagogue of the city. They were pushed inside and the door was closed on them. The rest, about 4,500 Jews, were led to the sand mines (stone quarries) at the end of Neshvez Street. The Jews took their clothes off in these ditches. They were old people, young people, youth, children, and babies. They were brutally murdered and in cold blood.
Here with us on this Memorial Day (Askara) are people who witnessed that tragedy: The partisan Yosef Shepeyorko Borisovich who excelled as a fighter in the battles against the Nazis, and the partisan Nissan Israelevich who was one of the fighters in the illustrious Kovpak units.
After the murder in the ditches, the remaining 2,000 Jews, who had been previously concentrated in the large synagogue, were taken out. After a short time, theywere imprisoned in the Ghetto compound which was located in the big Shulhoif Yard and, the streets surrounding this Yard. They 1ived and existed in this Ghetto in overcrowded conditions, impoverished and with shortages of basic commodities, until the 22nd of July 1942. On this day, the Ghetto was surrounded by the Nazis and their supporters. They fired indiscriminately into the area of the Ghetto.
The Kletzk Jews did not give up. They returned the fire with the few arms that, they had -- stones and axes. A tin of kerosene was prepared in every house. The Jews set fire to the houses in the Ghetto in order not to fall into the hands of the bestial enemy
Alter Mierovich, a partisan who took part in this struggle, describes these last minutes of Ghetto Kletzk in his book Kletzk:
At four clock
in the dawn light of the 21st of July, the police surrounded the Ghetto
on all sides. The adults took up positions and threw an avalanche of stones,
which had been prepared before the battle, at the murderers. Every man,
in his heart, felt: The enemy will not destroy us so easily. It is better
to die fighting in the Ghetto than be massacred.
Hundreds of Jews
broke through the walls of the Ghetto and tried to escape. Unfortunately,
only a few of them survived. They joined the Partisans and continued to
fight the Nazi beast and to take revenge for the martyrs of the Holocaust.
Some fell in battle in Russia and a few reached the Berlin Gates. Y'heye
Zichram Baruch Blessed Be the Memory of the Fighters |
Elimelech Benari