Kletsk was populated mostly by Jews.

The shops were in the middle of market square. One non-Jew lived there and he spoke Yiddish

Shabbat was observed; Jews did not work on that day.

Food – whole wheat bread, potatoes, vegetables; and barley, grits, groats. No meat. Mostly dried fish brought from afar. They were cheap.

Wood houses. No curtains on the windows.

In the summer of 1876, a big fire. A great part of the city was burnt down. No means to quench the fire at that time.

Changes in the way of life were fast and drastic.

The big beit midrash was near and facing the Jewish street

On Sabbath I used to pray in the first [earliest] minyan in the shulkhl – a small synagogue that stood almost opposite [across the street] the Great Synagogue. The congregation attending it regularly were workers – among them most of the town's horse merchants. Since it was a synagogue standing close to the street,near the market square, people used to pray there on weekdays one minyan after the another in the morning and in the evening. Magids used to come there to deliver their sermons from the steps leading to the holy ark.

Sometimes I used to pray in the shtibl that was an annex to the Great (Cold) Synagogue. The shtibl and the Great synagogue shared the same palush [hall, anteroom in synagogue]. Many people prayed in the shtibl. It had double-latticed windows.

Sometimes I used to pray in the Beit Midrash

I was born at the end of WWI.

The Germans arriving in 1918 saved our shtetl from widespread pogroms, robbery, and poverty.

Following the Bolshevik revolution, the peace treaty in Riga between Russia and Germany, started a new war between the Poles regaining their independence, and the Soviets

[During the Polish-Soviet war] xyzzy the Polish legionaries treated the Jewish population horribly.

A local defense squadron was established, located themselves in the building of fire-brigade in the center of market place.

The peace treaty in Brisk settled the border so that Kletsk was included in Poland and Timkovitz and Slutzk were in Soviet Russia. This border line was 10 km east of Kletsk.

The new situation put us in the center of aid to those Jews who fled the Soviet regime trying to get to free Poland and then to go to Israel. They were helped with food and clothes and with necessary documents. I was then 6 or 7 years old and heard it told to me.

I was educated first in the kindergarten established by the teacher Rivka Margolin. Then transferred to the reform Kheder of R’ Berl Katzenelson.

We lived on Radz’imont street, quite a distance from the old Beit HaMidrash which was located in the center of the shtetl in the shul-hoif where the best of the scholars and honored people prayed.

The shamash was also a person of Torah knowledge. Except for the cleaning work that his helper did, he fixed the lamps, straightened the wick in the lamps, memorial candles.

The bima [platform] of Beit Hamidrash was like a “divider” between the “classes” of people. On the east side - the homeowners, according to their Yikhus [family status], wealth, scholarship, etc. On the east side were the artisans, craftsman, wagon drivers, horse dealers, plain people.

Kletsk on the whole was a shtetl of mitnagdim.

Shlomo Tarbur returned to Kletsk from South Africa rented a shop in the market and started production of shoes.

He saw in Africa the Goldfaden’s musical show Shulamit and wanted Kletsk to enjoy that as well.

He recruited the Khazan’ choir youth and girls who could sing and took for himself the main role of Avshalom. He wrote the notes and the violinist who was invited could play it.

The rehearsals took place in the alley between the Jewish street and the street of the shulhoif, in the private house of Hishiye, the kleizmer [professional musician], whose daughters excelled in singing. - - - the announcements of the first production of the show on stage, hung on walls of houses. Tickets were bought in Katzav’s pharmacy. The income was to go to the fire brigade.

The show Shulamit was the seed to the amateur group that was established later in Kletsk by Itche Feder.

The river Krasnostav was used for recreation. - - on the way to the river there were columns of tall trees with grass around them and on Saturdays people came to rest there in the clear air.

The Vaal bordered on my father’s house. Next to it was our apples and pears orchard. We children used to enjoy sliding down the mound…

[names of villages mentioned by Glazer after breaking from the ghetto through breaking the gate]:

We reached the Vaal. We crossed the Niesviz’ road towards the villege Horbonveshshtzizna. Aiming to the forests passed the village Biliachin. - - wanted to Join the Partizans in Zarakev forest. led by a farmer to the village small Sovitch - - - forest Rayovka – - 5 meters from Kapolia - - close by: village Staritza. - - From Kapolia district went farther to forests of Tsutsevitz.

At the time WW2 broke out, Jews were living in the neighborhood of Kletsk in villages and in estates of the Polish Pritzim [land owners]. There were few agricultural people among them. Most were shopkeepers, craftsmen, workers in windmills and smithies. In almost every estate there was a Jew who rented on lease milk products, and fruit orchards. They used to hire teachers to instruct their children and they were in their houses by turn. They observed the Sabbath and Holidays and gathered to pray.

Village Halinka south of Kletsk – place for vacation. The Jews of Kletsk stayed as guests in the farmers' huts and in the houses of the local Jews.

South west of Kletsk near the borders of Polesia – small shtetl Zaovstroviache surrounded by dense forests. ---Jews from neighboring villages who lost their livelihood settled there because in a short time, by local Jewish initiative there were sawmills, tar production, and projects of using mushrooms, skins of squirrels, etc. Also, the businesses and offices provided jobs for workers, clerks and tree-selectors. Many families had pieces of field and orchard.

Close to the German invation the shtetl had about 40 Jewish families, about 200 souls. They had a Rabbi, a shokhet, a synagogue, a Hebrew school , Zionist youth, etc.

In the neighborhood, there were villages such as Marich Kolk and Butshe.

East of Kletsk in the direction of Slutzk, near the Moscow-Warsaw Road, many Jewish families settled in villages, estates and various settlements. Lubenetz was a post station. Here, a famous Jewish firm of Warsaw of brothers Shifrin, originally from Timkevitz, established a saw-mill and offices. The village was full of Jews – workers and clerks. Yosef Lis was a leaser of the post station, had an inn and it was always full.

In the village close by, Nahorna-Plaskobitsh there were prayers in minyans on Sabbath and Holidays and Yom Kippur. In the neighboring village Rotsheika there were a few Jewish families.

In neighboring Horvich there were wealthy Jewish families. The owner of the mill was an enlightened Jew.

In the middle of the Road leading from Kletsk to Timkovitz and Kapolia, next to the village and estate there was an inn whose owners were R’ Moshe Z’ukhovitzki and sons. This religious merchant Jew got on lease a piece of land, garden, creamery , estate, wind-mill and an inn on the road from Vinilovitz, a Polish land owner, (was a politician and liberal activist and lover of Jews. While the president of the “Kulo” he proposed a law to to annul the limitations on Jews, and also handed a proposal to Tzar Nikolai II, who honored him).

- - - at the time of the rule of Tzarist Russia, the inn (krechmer in Yiddish) served a rest-stop for travelers between the shtetls, especially for the wagon drivers, butchers, and horse merchants who travelled each week to the market days and fairs. They left with dawn, fed the horses, prayed the morning-prayer, ate a hearty breakfast from the milk products of Yeshaya, was considered an enlightened and cultivated Jew … new custom of Kletsk Jews was to conduct marriage ceremonies simply and economically in the inn.

--- the inn served all the minyans on Sabbaths, Holidays and Yom Kippur, which were composed of village Jews from the neighborhood in the area of Timkovitz such as Dzekhtzeni, Zarakova, Bratkova, Brigada, and And.

- - - in the neighborhood of Siniavka there was the small shtetl Medveditsh with an enticing view and river, gardens and forests surrounding it. - - Jews with initiative built here plants such as for tar production and saw-mills. In 1939 the population consisted of 40 Jewish families, all very wealthy.

- - - only one whole family survived the Holocaust – Israel Prushtzitzki, wife and 6 children (all in Israel). The head of the family had a tar/asphalt plant in the forest and he took the family to hide in a shelter in the depth of the forest that he knew well. Survivors of Liakhovitz and other places joined them and they organized a small partisan group that threatened the farmers and they provided their food. They were sought after and when it became dangerous for them they moved to the thick forests near Babin in the district of Polesia.

My aunt knew to tell me exactly how Getzl the melamed happened to be there. One night he was called for the reading of the Torah. He took off his coat, put it on his shoulder, walked backwards, went up the bima [the platform], recited a blessing up to the front the bima and backwards, as should be properly done, [the customary body movements when getting to the bima and making a blessing] and saved his soul from death…