In this, our Tisha b’Av issue, we present edited excerpts from Fire, Ice, Air: A Polish Jew’s Memoir of Yeshiva, Siberia, America, by Baltimore’s own Rabbi Simcha Shafran, with Avi Shafran. In this selection, Rabbi Shafran, a 14-year-old yeshiva bachur, has been captured by the Soviets and sent to Siberia, along with others who chose not to accept Soviet citizenship. Traveling with them is Rabbi Yehudah Leib Nekritz, zt”l, their leader and spiritual mentor.
June-July 1941 (Sivan-Tammuz, 5701)
Our train began to move, and gained speed as it headed eastward. The journey took weeks. Although the car was crowded, we would make our way to a corner when it was time to pray, and did so with a minyan. We would also study with Rabbi Nekritz when we could. Much of the time we lay on the makeshift bunks that lined the walls of the train, and pondered our lives, our responsibilities as Jews, and what trials the future held for us….
Finally, we arrived in Novosibirsk, the large city at the onset of Siberia, the easternmost end of the rail line. The guards took us off the train, and put us on a barge, since the only way deeper into Siberia was by river. That water journey also seemed to take weeks, although time had become a slippery thing. Our particular group’s destination was a town called Nizhna Machavaya – Lower Machavaya. There we were to stay, 10 young men – boys would better have described most of us – and their teacher, Rabbi Nekritz; his wife, and their two daughters; and several other Jewish families.
When we reached Nizhna Machavaya and disembarked, the guards told us “This is where you will be living.” Then they added: “And you will have to work hard to do any eating.” It was a message that had clearly been delivered to many who had arrived there before us.
The vast western part of Siberia, where we found ourselves, is taiga, a dense forest of spruce, cedar, pine, and fir trees. The forest floor is covered with moss and, of course, in winter – a long season, lasting from September to May – snow. A few weeks into the cold season there would be several feet of it, and it would remain until the late spring thaw. During the warm season, birds seen nowhere else on earth for some unfathomable reason make the Siberian taiga their home, or at least a way station, and a host of insects – beautiful butterflies as well as stinging gnats and mosquitoes – had also preceded us to Siberia. Squirrels, voles, and other rodents skittered around, and the forest harbored foxes, deer, and brown bears – the latter often a concern of ours when we were at work in the wilderness.
The “natchalnik,” or “boss” – the government functionary for the village – assigned all the newcomers to their lodgings. He reported to the NKVD, the feared Soviet secret service, whose regional office was based in Parbig, a city several miles to the west. We nicknamed the boss “Bez Noza” – “missing a nose” – as it well described his unfortunate but hard to ignore physical appearance.
A friend, Shlomo Figa, and I were assigned to a family of Russians who lived in a one room hut; we slept in one corner, on the floor. Our hosts did not treat us badly in any way, although they made sure we realized how good we had it. As did all the locals. “When we were brought here years ago,” they told us new arrivals, “the authorities gave us axes and shovels and saws, and left us to clear the taiga for fields and build our own houses. You are the lucky ones.”
We were put to work, overseen by the Russian natchalnik. Whatever they ordered us to do, we did. There were trees to fell, wood to chop, and grain to harvest and grind. There were potatoes and onions to dig up and wagons to load. Sometimes, we were fortunate to be assigned to work in pairs or as a group – harvesting grain and chopping down trees. Then, we would review pages of Talmud or recite tehilim together.
We arrived in late summer, and during those hot months, we would supplement our meager bread ration by picking what fruit, berries, or wild vegetation, like small onions, we could find. Some of us were able to eat a bit of the raw grain we harvested or the flour we ground. But there were quotas that had to be filled in order for us to receive our bread rations, so helping ourselves to even that unappetizing nourishment was not a regular option.
During the Siberian summer, the insects were a constant plague. There were times when one of us would be almost unrecognizable, his face swollen with insect bites. We thought that the summer must be the most trying season in Siberia – until winter arrived, of course, which happened well before the High Holy Days. Then we quickly realized that the worst was yet to come.
When winter arrived, 40 degrees below zero was not unusual. We were very happy when our host families on occasion allowed us to use their oven to roast frozen potatoes, the only food besides the meager portion of bread we received. We would search for potatoes that had escaped the harvest. When they thawed out, we would cut the now rubbery tubers into strips, which we placed on the top of the metal stove. Yield: a food-like substance that was our special delicacy then but might be described as a very poor relative of what we would one day know as French fries.
The frigid cold, meager food, and hard labor were simply the cost of staying alive. And we worked hard. A major part of the workload was cutting down large trees in the forest – three of us holding hands would just manage to encompass a typical tree’s circumference.
The major challenge for us came with the arrival of the Sabbath. The locals insisted that we work every day of the week, but we refused on Shabbos. They threatened to shoot us, singling out Rabbi Nekritz, knowing that if they broke him, we would likely follow his example. But he stood firm. He told them calmly in fluent Russian that he would be willing to do things that might meet the authorities’ definition of work but which didn’t violate Jewish religious law. Chopping down trees, though, or any sort of planting or harvesting, he said just as calmly, was forbidden to us Jews on Shabbos.
When a Jew’s life is in danger, he is permitted to do even forbidden labor on the Sabbath, and some members of our group may in fact have been forced on occasion to do actual work. All the same, Rabbi Nekritz must have assessed that he, at least, as the spiritual leader of the group, could safely refuse orders. At one point, threatened by our guards for such a refusal, he opened his shirt and quietly challenged them to shoot him. They backed down.
So avoiding work that would violate Shabbos became a weekly endeavor for us. We would sometimes pretend we were sick on Shabbos, although the charade was clearly transparent to the townsfolk, who not only knew we were faking but knew that we knew that they knew. I often wondered what they really thought about the crazy Jews who were willing to work hard six out of seven days but were so obstinate about that seventh. Whatever they thought, though, sometimes they accepted the ploy, and sometimes they did not. When they didn’t want to accept excuses, they would force us into the fields, where we would just stay and study or recite tehilim. They sometimes withheld some food from us for that violation of their rules, but at some point they stopped threatening us. We may have been crazy to them, but we earned our keep – and our Saturday work just wasn’t worth the trouble.
I was personally very fortunate. Maybe because I was the youngest – all of 16 – I landed the steady job of field watchman, which didn’t require me to violate Shabbos. The fields of the kolkhoz, or collective farm, were a good distance away from the village, and after the grain had been harvested, it stood in piles awaiting transport. I was charged with chasing away any animal or man who might approach the harvested crops. I have no idea what I, a small-boned, half-starved teenager, would have even done had such a threat actually materialized, but, thank G-d, it never did. During my work time, I studied what I could from the holy books that we had, and recited many, many chapters of tehilim.
The Kindness of G-d, and of a Friend
December 1941 (Kislev, 5702)
That first winter was the hardest, as we did not have the proper clothing for the severe climate. The locals had boots made of pressed wool. We sufficed with layers of rags, in which we wrapped our hands and feet. Even on relatively moderate winter days – when it was only freezing and not frigid – the temperature would often drop well below zero at night, though I had a small stove nearby that warmed me somewhat when I was on guard duty. The head of the kolkhoz would make surprise checks on me to see if I had fallen asleep, and I would recite tehilim to stay awake.
One night, something wasn’t right. I couldn’t shake the chills, even huddled near the oven. Feeling very dizzy, too, I suspected I had a fever. I managed to hitch my horse and sled together and set off for the kolkhoz. On the way I lost consciousness and fell from the sled into the deep snow at the side of the road. The horse continued on without me. I tried to shout out to the animal to stop. But it trudged on. I don’t know if my attempts at shouting even yielded any sound.
I lay there in the snow crying and reciting tehilim from memory, for I knew that remaining where I was, or trying to walk to the kolkhoz, would mean certain death from exposure. “I will lift my eyes to the mountains,” King David declared in Psalm 121, and I declared the same from my Siberian snow bank, which I considered might become my grave. “Whence will my salvation come? My salvation,” the psalm continues – and so did I – “is from the L-rd, the One Who made heaven and earth.”
The words somehow energized me and I managed to stand up. With what little strength I had left, I began to run after the horse and sled. Suddenly, and I don’t know why, the horse stopped in its tracks. I felt a surge of spirit and, running even faster, I reached the sled and hoisted myself onto it. Collapsed on my back, I looked up at the clear, stunningly star-filled night sky, and prayed with all my diminishing might for G-d to let me reach the safety of the kolkhoz.
He answered me favorably. The horse, perhaps remembering the way from his many journeys back and forth, perhaps heeding a hidden Rider, eventually reached the kolkhoz. I was shaking uncontrollably from my fever; no number of blankets could warm me. At some point I blacked out again, and the next day, still in a daze, I was transported to Parbig, 14 kilometers away, the closest town large enough to have a hospital.
My first few days there were a blur, but then my fever broke and I began to feel a little better. One day, as I lay in my bed, I was shocked to see one of my yeshiva comrades, Herschel Nudel, standing there before me like an apparition, half frozen, his feet wrapped in the layers of rags that served as our boots, staring back, equally wide-eyed, at me. I couldn’t believe my eyes – Herschel had actually walked the frigid miles from the kolkhoz!
“Herschel,” I cried out, “what are you doing here?”
I will never forget his answer, which came after a moment or two, during which he sought his tongue. “Yesterday,” he stammered, “a townswoman from Parbig came and told us, ‘Simcha umar, Simcha has died.’ And so I volunteered to come and bury you.”
It took me a minute to digest his words. Had the rumor been true, I have thought many times since, there was nothing he could have done to reverse things. Yet he had made the long, perilous journey without delay – just to see to my funeral! The word for such friendship, such dedication, hasn’t been invented.
Apparently I had experienced a medical crisis one night, while unconscious. The doctors or nurses must have told a woman visiting from our village that I was not going to make it.
Thankfully, doctors and nurses can be wrong.
G-d, and the G-dly, in the World
When it was possible, Rabbi Nekritz would gather us and share words of encouragement, just as he did when we were back in yeshiva. The Novardhok approach to life is to aim to become a “complete person,” someone whose belief in G-d is total and whose personal characteristics and spiritual nature are honed and refined. This requires constant evaluation and re-evaluation of one’s life and moral development.
Part of the process is deep introspection, and this was not neglected during our Siberian sojourn. We would find opportunities to spend a few minutes alone in a far corner of a field, or among the trees of the forest, to think about who we were, who we should be, and how best to make the journey from one to the other….
We prayed at the proper times, whenever we could, and tried to do so as a group. We would recite tehilim, too, especially those in which King David describes the dangers and adversaries he faced during his life, and how G-d protected him…. I often repeated the aching yet confident words of Tehilim 121, the one I called out from the snow the night I took ill: “In the day, the sun will not smite you, nor the moon by night… G-d will guard over your going and your coming, for now and forever.”
Rabbi Nekritz was a paragon of calm. Whether studying with us or working in the fields, being brought to or from the interrogations to which the Soviet Secret Service regularly subjected him, he was always at ease, his face a beacon of serenity and happiness.
In Siberia, we learned what prayer really means. We had no idea how long our exile would last, or indeed if it would ever end. We never knew if we would survive the week, the month, the year – or, we shuddered to think, the years. We were specks in a vast frozen taiga, thousands of miles from our homes. No, even farther, because our homes, we knew, weren’t there anymore. They might just as well be on one of the countless, nameless stars that sparkled serenely in the clear Siberian night sky. History had spoken; things could not unhappen. And so we prayed, fervently, sincerely, with every muscle in our aching hearts – for the welfare of those we had left behind, and for ourselves.
Our prayer and our study – even out in the fields and forests – were priceless in themselves, but they also infused us with an emotional strength that banished hopelessness from our hearts. We felt that Siberia, somehow, would not prove to be our end, that there would be a future for us. Rabbi Nekritz would often tell us that, one day, with G-d’s help, we would be in a better place, and that we would look upon our Siberian sojourn as a precious time of spiritual growth. And so, whatever our future would turn out to be, a time of growth was indeed what we tried to make our present. In the Novardhoker tradition of focus on refining one’s character, Rabbi Nekritz would deliver regular lectures on mussar, and we eagerly absorbed his insights, his exhortations, and his example.
Fire Ice Air, by Rabbi Simcha Shafran and Avi Shafran is available on Amazon.com, in paperback and Kindle editions.
