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There had never been many peaceful times for the
Jews of Libivne. Troubles, epidemics, and attacks
often plagued us. But if we compare them to the
days of the Nazi occupation, then they were very
calm dayswe could even say idyllic.
Several thousand Jews worked hard to make
a living, educated their children in Torah and to
do good deeds, and carried the burden of their
Jewishness, more beloved than heavy. They married
off their children, and these continued to lead
proper Jewish lives, which had been planted in
Libivne hundreds of years ago. The weekdays
were hard, but the Sabbath and holidays enhanced
the grayness and softened their worries.
We lived through World War I with affliction
and pain, but still survived. At that time, in 1915,
Libivne was occupied by the Austriansand
though they were different Austrians [from the
later occupiers], the Jews nonetheless suffered
from them a great deal.
When the Austrians and Germans entered
Libivne in 1915, they received a friendly welcome.
People came out to greet them, carrying
bread and salt. The majority of the city's representatives
were Jews.
After several weeks in Libiyne, the Germans
moved 15 miles away from the shtetl. There they
put up an artificial boundary line between themselves
and the Austrians, the latter remaining in
Libivne until Germany's defeat.
A few months after the German -Austrian occupation,
we began to feel the war. The small
supply of food the Jews had prepared was used
up. A new war began for the majoritya war
against hunger, which began to plague Jewish
families more and more severely. People began to
IN PEACEFUL TIMES
By Wolf Sheynwald
120
try to remedy the situation by smuggling, but that
was fraught with danger.
Then there was the added trouble of chapenish
[capture]. The Austrian authorities instituted a
system of forced labor. When they did not have
enough laborers, they simply began to kidnap
people from the streets and even from their homes.
The kidnappings especially harassed the refugees
who had come in large numbers into Libivne
from the surrounding areas.
In the third year of the war, a typhoid epidemic
broke out in Libivne. It was followed by a
cholera epidemic. Many people fell victim to these
two epidemics, and the population was helpless
against the plagues. Here I must tell a story of
what many considered to have been a miracle.
The rabbi of the shtetl proposed that the Jews
marry off a poor couple in the cemetery and that
they read psalms during the ceremony. He said
this would stop the epidemic. There was a poor
widow in the shtetl who was a cripple. She had a
daughter, fast reaching the age of being called an
old maid. The good people found a groom for her
daughter, the son of Pinchas-Yosye Binyomen's.
They brought the couple to the cemetery and married
them off.
All the Jews of the shtetl read psalms during
the ceremony. In a short time, the epidemic lost
its fury; fewer people got sick and the pious Jews
attributed this to a miracle sent down from heaven.
During the Austrian rule in Libivne, the mayor
of the town was R. Dovid Veytsfrucht. He was a
great scholar and an ordained rabbi. He did everything
he possibly could to make the lot of the Jews
easier during the war. Naturally, the possibilities
for reducing suffering were very limited because