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1930s, there were about 5,000. Luboml was almost
entirely Jewish. Today, there are about
9,000 people in Luboml, including one Jewish
woman who was not born there.
I trace my ancestors at least to the early 19th
century there and in Masheve, a nearby village.
"Aaron Masheve" was the nickname of my
Zede's father, a rabbi; Zede's mother was Tauba.
They had six children: Leibe, MaIke, Henia,
Sheftl, Yisroel and my Zede, Yankl, who was sent
off to yeshiva for rabbinic training.
In 1921, he married Bela Lichtenshteyn of
Luboml. Her mother, Chaye Sura, had asked
Zede's father, "You want a nice girl or you want
gelt?"
The couple made a living from one of four
shops owned by Bela's mother. Chaye Sura gave
a shop to each of her children as a wedding gift.
In 1923, my father, Itzie, was born. "And they
made a party, oh boy. If we didn't have 1,000
people we didn't had one," my Zede told me in
his heavily accented English. "They said when
you come to a pidyon haben, God forgives the
sin s what you done for years. So everybody
came."
Zede's mother, Tauba, "was a wonderful person.
You are the name of her," he often reminded
me. "They was 100 percent Jewish," he said. "If
you will be 10 percent what she was, I will be
happy.
"I remember when I had to go to America,
they came to say goodbye to me. Huh. That was
rough. Mama was crying terrible. She said, 'God
know if I'll ever see you again.' Those words still
hang on me."
When Germany attacked Soviet-occupied
Poland in June 1941, Luboml immediately was
taken. As in virtually all shtetls and cities they
overran, the Nazis established a guarded Jewish
ghetto. Fourteen months later, after Simchat Torah
in October 1942, the Jews were killed. They
were forced to strip and walk down Matseyuska
Street, surrounded by German and Ukrainian
police and dogs, 20 minutes to a brick factory
outside town, where large pits had been dug.
Most were shot at the edge of these ravines, falling
in on top of each other. People say blood rose
APPENDIXES 417
from the earth for days, maybe weeks.
We found the yellowed letter, written in Russian
and dated April 8, 1945, in Zede's dresser
drawer after he died.
"Dear and beloved and only brother to survive
the war," it begins. Yisroel had fled to the
Soviet Union. He described the fate of the family.
Our beloved mother... stubbornly didn't want
to go out to the pit, to avoid getting undressed. So
the Germans murdered our most beloved Mama
near the mill.
Our dear sister Henia hid [for a year] with her
little son . . . but a woman from the village turned
her in (the name of the woman who turned in our
sister is Domka Stoyanovich) . . . and as a consequence
the last of our family was also murdered.
This is the result, my dear brother, for our parents,
family, and all the Jewish people during the
occupation of the German bandits. I cannot be at
peace or be calm, and I will not be at peace for as
long as I live . . .
I have two goals in Luboml: to help
"Frrredah" and "Meester Zeegelmun" gather testimony
for the project and to find my own roots
(I am "Tawbya"). The tasks braid together: As
older citizens tell what they remember, Aaron
Ziegelman and I see faces of our own families.
Most of these people are just old enough to remember
the very end of Jewish life here.
While recollections have endured, most Jewish
structures did not. Years after the Germans
killed the people, the Soviets destroyed the 17thcentury
synagogue and old cemeteries, reusing
their stones.
Anatoly Vasilovitch Drosdovitch grew up in
Luboml. As a boy, he had a favorite teacher, Rosa
Friedman, who taught German in the Polish
school. She was Jewish. "I loved her very much,"
he told us. The last time he saw her was on the
day of her death, under Nazi guard. She was with
her daughter, Janka, and called out to him and
another Ukrainian student: "Come and kiss me."
They ran to her.
She was killed by one of her former students,
he tells us. He talks while sitting with three
women in a building that was a Jewish school.