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OIL PRODUCTION IN THE GHETTO
By Nathan Sobel
My father Avrom (Avrum) Sobel and Motl
Royzman were very close friends. They were of
the same age, with the same aspirations and inclinations.
Both had an interest in their common
occupation as mechanics.
The ties between our families became even
closer during the tragic days of the Holocaust,
when one day a "messenger" came to us from
Chelm (he was a German), and told us that Meshl
Sobel, my father's younger brother, and Chayim
Royzman, Motl's younger brother, had been put in
prison by the German army. They had been drafted
with many other Libivner Jews when the German-
Soviet war began. The "good messenger" let us
know that with money we would be able to
ransom both prisoners.
Both families immediately held a meeting with
the messenger. Some time later, after we had collected
and given him a lot of money, we discovered
that both Chayim and Meshl, together with
other Jewish prisoners of war, had perished tragically
in the neighborhod of Chelm.
My father and Motl continued to work together
in the ghetto. They met in secret quite often
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and measured and weighed things, but we children
did not know what was going on. One night
the two families met for consultation, and it was
then that the secret plan was disclosed.
The plan was to set up a small oil press (to
extract oil from crushed grain), which would just
fit into our kitchen. The machine consisted of
many separate parts, and each one of us, including
the children, had a particular task to perform.
Each one of us was in charge of a particular part
when the machine was put together or taken apart.
Assembling and dismantling the machine took
only two or three minutes, and the parts were
dispersed and hidden.
My father made special rollers for squeezing
the oil out of the crushed grain. The greatest
danger was in buying the flaxseed from the peasants
and in bringing the squeezed grain from the
machine shop to our house for the final pressing of
the oil.
The oil was produced for the Jews in the ghetto,
where there was almost no oil or fat for cooking.
This secret oil production in the ghetto continued
until the ghetto was liquidated in 1942.