"Pain is a terrible thing to waste." Writer Annie Dillard is

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"Pain is a terrible thing to waste." Writer Annie Dillard is

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John Sanders

Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2004 2:06 am

Guest

The writer Annie Dillard once said or wrote, "Pain is a terrible thing
to waste." I am trying to identify the book title of the book in which
this quote appeared. Could it be "Holy The Firm?" Or was it another of
Annie Dillard's books.

Thanks.

John

Joe Hine

Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 11:10 am

Guest

4. Refugees

I was ten years old when the war broke out. It broke like a thunderbolt into a sunny summer day. The culture, religious and ethnic life of Rozwadów was shattered forever. People were glued to their radios. We soon realized that the invading Germans were advancing rapidly through Poland, and the Polish army was defeated. Masses of Polish soldiers started retreating through town -among them many Jews. Mother and a few other women set up an outside kitchen to cook food for the soldiers.

My father’s business was destroyed long before the Germans arrived. First, Polish army officers came and requisitioned most of the sugar and rice. They gave us receipts, but even at the time we had no hope of ever receiving any payment. Afterwards, chaos and riots broke out. Mobs of Polish people wandered the streets breaking into shops and looting. They stole everything that was left in our shop.

Joe Hine

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 11:10 pm

Guest

After about a week, we managed to reach Russian-occupied territory. The distance was not great, but it was slow going. We travelled by day through the forests and rested at night in the villages. The advancing Germans actually overtook us during that week, but they didn’t hinder us.

We all rejoiced to see the Russian soldiers at last and know that we had escaped the Germans. That place - called Lanzit, I think - was overflowing with refugees, so we squeezed into a train to Lvov hoping to find lodging there. Lvov was also crowded, but we had a distant relative, a merchant who let us stay in one of his storerooms.

We were grateful to have a roof over our heads, but our winter ‘home’ in Lvov was not a happy one. The storeroom must have been about five metres wide and about fifteen metres long. We shared the room with my Uncle Milech and his wife Rahel; but our two families often quarrelled. That storeroom was dim and cold. I can’t remember any fire, but we may have had a wood stove - also for cooking. I don’t remember going to synagogue in Lvov; in fact, I can’t remember any religious life there at all. I suspect we were all more concerned with survival during those six months.

Joe Hine

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:00 pm

Guest

After some days, they at least opened the cars from time to time and let us out to find some food and water. I don’t think Milech and Rahel were with us in the same boxcar, but they must have been in the same train because we all ended up in the same place. Finally after about two weeks in the boxcar, we arrived in a Siberian town called Sosva. There we were ordered off the train and we were sent several kilometres down the River Sosva. Several more kilometres inland, we found about one hundred log houses arranged in two double rows; this was Camp Forty-Five where we were to settle.

On our arrival, the Commandant of the camp addressed us from a platform. He spoke Russian and somebody translated. He said, ‘You probably think that you won’t stay here long. But I have been here twenty five years and I can assure you that I have never seen anyone leave this place. You had better get used to it. If you do, you will survive; otherwise you will perish.’ That was our reception. We were now in ‘forced exile’, a status only slightly better than that of the infamous Siberian labour camps.

Joe Hine

Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 11:10 am

Guest

At that time, we were still disappointed that we had been tricked and sent to Siberia instead of to Poland as promised. But ironically, our longing to return to Poland probably saved our lives. The Jewish people who chose to remain in the Soviet Union were re-located in the Western Ukraine. Most of them were later murdered when the Germans invaded, while those of us who tried to return to Poland were by then removed to the relative safety of Western Siberia. It was one of those times when God somehow used our own foolishness to protect us.

The log houses of the camp had been built by former exiles. Every log house had two rooms, and every family was to get one room. My father immediately set about making the best of the situation. He first tried to occupy one of the best houses in the centre of the camp, but we were soon evicted and told that it was reserved for privileged people. So we ended up in the very last house in one row.

Joe Hine

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 11:10 am

Guest

By morning, Father was able to respond a little. Then he slept all day, still drooling out of his mouth. Finally, he woke up, looked around, and recognized us. So he was unconscious for a little less than twenty four hours. He may have been hindered on one side of his face, but very soon he was able to stand on his own feet. He was definitely weaker, but he was not seriously disabled. There was no medication for high blood pressure, but Mother watched him like a hawk to make sure that he didn’t get too excited.

By the end of our second summer in Siberia, we heard that the Germans had invaded Russia. At first we worried what this news might mean for us, but it actually brought unexpected relief. Stalin was forced to turn to the Allies for help, and the Polish government in exile used this opportunity to demand the release of Polish refugees held in Siberia. Suddenly we heard that we were free to go as we wished! But of course we were still in the backwoods of Siberia and our homes in Poland were still under German occupation.

Joe Hine

Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 7:00 pm

Guest

So somehow we managed to get enough food to survive. Many others simply died of starvation, or of the typhus epidemics that raged through the crowded quarters. Trucks would pass through the streets each day to collect the dead. Leo was the first in our family to have typhus. He had always been a healthy boy, but quite suddenly he came down with a high fever and hallucinations. Mother took care of him; I remember seeing her crying. At great expense, we managed to get a doctor. We tried desperately to keep him out of the overcrowded hospitals where the authorities isolated those with typhus. People were mostly just left there to die.

Then my mother caught the disease - probably from Leo. We were determined to keep Mother out of the hospital. We were prepared to sell everything to pay for a doctor and medicines. We even stood guard at the door in case the health inspectors came near; then we would lock the door and pretend no one was at home. But Mother’s condition only worsened. Worrying for us more than for herself, she sometimes cried out: ‘What will happen to my children and my husband?’ We were all gathered around her bed the night she died. It was the second day of Passover, the anniversary of Leo’s birth.

Joe Hine

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 7:00 pm

Guest

7. The Teheran Children

In August 1942, the Polish government in exile made efforts to evacuate Polish orphans from Russia. Many had already died from starvation and epidemics and the rest were barely surviving. Among some ten thousand evacuated children, there must have been eight hundred to one thousand Jewish children. We heard at the orphanage about this chance to get out and we debated among ourselves what we should do. It was not an easy decision, because it meant that I might never see any of my family again. Later I reproached myself for having left my father.

We were put in trains and brought to Krasnovodsk, a town in Turkmenistan on the Caspian Sea. There we were loaded onto ships. We must have been ten thousand people on that ship and we were packed in like sardines. There were no cabins or anything; we just lay on the deck or under the deck. I don’t know how long we were on that ship - maybe thirty six hours. Then we came to a port called Pahlavi in Persia (Iran). It was summer, so we camped on the sandy beach.

Joe Hine

Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 7:00 am

Guest

After six to eight weeks of recuperation, they started to decide where we should all go. The mother of Youth Aliyah, the youth immigration movement, was a famous Jewish-American lady called Henrietta Szold. She was quite old, but she had these young children on her heart and she made a point of interviewing each one of us. She asked us about our parents’ background, what they would have wished for us.

They asked Judith and me if our parents were religious orthodox, and we told them they were. In the end, they sent us to a cooperative village called Moshav Sde Yaacov. This was a modern orthodox Zionist village. They were religious, but not like the Hasidic Jews with beards and side locks. They were mostly shaven and they were very Zionist, very dedicated people. I also went to school there and learnt Hebrew. This was new. Some of us had learned written Hebrew already in Poland, but none of us knew how to speak it.

Joe Hine

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 7:00 pm

Guest

Why did I start to rebel against the Jewish religion? I think part of it was my picture of a strict God who will punish us. I felt guilty for my mother’s death and for leaving my father in the Soviet Union. I was afraid.

In any case, many of us were unhappy at the co-operative settlement. After 8 months, we sent a delegation to Jerusalem and expressed that we were not happy. They decided to send the older ones away, and the younger ones stayed. I went with the older ones, fourteen to fifteen years, to the agriculture school at Mikveh Israel. So Jakob and I left Moshav Sde Yaacov, but Judith and Zahava stayed there for about three years.

Joe Hine

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:00 am

Guest

9. At the School of Agriculture

Mikveh Israel is said to be the oldest Zionist settlement in Palestine, though there were some Jews living among the Arabs before that. Charles Netter, a Jewish philanthropist from France founded it in 1870 to train young people in agriculture. This settlement later became the most renowned agricultural school in the whole of the Middle East. Besides teaching the students, the extensive farm covered all areas of agriculture: a dairy with sixty to eighty cows, sheep, and an orchard with all kinds of trees. They even had a botanical garden with many rare plants.

In the school were two sections: the religious section made up mostly of immigrant students like ourselves, and the secular section made up mostly of students from kibbutzim and cooperatives. These secular Jews were the majority of the Jewish population in Israel at the time. The two groups lived separately and had separate classes although it was all in one school.

Joe Hine

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:00 pm

Guest

The Children of Teheran were together as one group within the religious group. We had a two-year course. Each student had a chance to work in all the branches of agriculture in the first year, and then in the second year we could specialize in one area for six months, and a secondary branch for a further three months.

Our teachers were also our guidance counsellors and tried to help us. Most of them were modern Orthodox Jews from religious kibbutzim. I made their lives hard - I was restless and often a disturbance in class. At the same time I started to ask many questions, also about faith. On the one hand, I was still rebelling against my idea of a strict God, but I was also beginning to grapple with the Holocaust - to ask why God had allowed that to happen. Some of the other children had come almost directly from the concentration camp of Buchenwald. They started to tell about what had happened in Germany. These children were our age, maybe even younger, but they looked like old men: the way they talked and the way they acted. All of us were shaken up by this.

Joe Hine

Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 11:10 pm

Guest

When we returned to Mikveh, some of the other students started a group (hachsharah) with the idea of starting a kibbutz. They eventually joined Kibbutz Kfar Ezion which is south of Jerusalem. (During Israel’s war of independence, the Jordanian legions overran their kibbutz, so many of them lost their lives later or were captured.) Some of my fellow classmates were part of this group, but I was against it. I couldn’t accept their religiosity and I was just too rebellious.

At about this time, I made a conscious decision to oppose religion altogether. I said that I didn’t believe in God, I didn’t believe in a supernatural power, I wasn’t going to accept anything that I couldn’t grasp with my head. I had many questions and we had heated discussions in class.

As Yom Kippur, Atonement Day, approached, everyone in the religious group prepared for the fasts, but as a consequence of the convictions I felt at the time, I decided as a fifteen-year-old to break with that also. That was no small thing: among religious people, Yom Kippur is an awesome experience. But I decided that I wouldn’t fast on Yom Kippur, I would switch on the lights and drink whatever I wanted. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it anymore. When I felt something was right, then I felt I had to do it - not just talk about it - and then accept the consequences.

Joe Hine

Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 11:10 pm

Guest

They actually prohibited Jakob and me to be together. Jakob stayed at the school, but we still met in the dark. We walked together and decided that we were going to stick together. I would go out and find a job, and earn some money, and then he would come out and we would make it together. We would pool our income. Neither of us were interested in agriculture. He wanted to become an electrician, which he eventually did.

There was another Polish boy at Mikveh named Benjamin Bodner, who had escaped from a train travelling to a concentration camp, and then found his way to Israel. He was also unhappy at the school and we had talked together about leaving. He told me about the Palmach, the most elite group in the Haganah, the Jewish resistance army. He thought we should enlist in this group, so we went together. Maybe I thought there was some glamour in it, but I was not very motivated. He was accepted and I wasn’t. I don’t know why I was rejected, but I was very high-strung and I was also a year younger than Benjamin. He was later killed during the last days of the war of independence. His father survived concentration camp and came to Israel only to find that his son had been killed.

At Mikveh Israel, we had been trained in weaponry. We learned how to assemble rifles and revolvers. We practiced target shooting. We learned how to climb and jump over houses and held exercises as if we were attacked. We even went out into the desert together and did different military exercises. At that time, there was a lot of trouble with the Bedouins. They used sticks as weapons, so we learned how to fight with sticks - how to hit and how to defend ourselves. Through that training, I was already an unofficial member of the Haganah, but when I left the school I lost contact with them for the time being.

Joe Hine

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2005 7:00 pm

Guest

At the same time, I was convinced that people could only be happy by living together in harmony with others. I dreamed of an ideal society where people would live together in peace. I knew that hate had no place in such a world. Nevertheless, I could not forget the Holocaust. I wanted to dedicate my life to fighting for the survival of our people. I was quite prepared to fight the British with any means.

With Sammy’s help, I had found work doing different odd jobs in and around Tel Aviv. I swept streets, dug holes, repaired roads, and did various kinds of building repair work. It was hard physical work. Then I met up with a group that did similar work for the town with a mule and wagon, so I got a job with them. I earned around £1.70 per day and worked six days a week, so that was quite a step up for me. When I got paid on Friday, I would usually go and buy books. I also read a lot from the newspapers as I sat in a café with my workmates while waiting for the next job. I was interested in all that was going on underground, but in general the news of the day enraged me more and more until I felt that I simply had to act.

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