22 February 1942, Izbica Lubelska, Freyde Sznejerson. Letter to a cousin
[Yitskhok Giterman?] in the Warsaw ghetto; a request for intervention
by the Judenrat in Staszów with regard to a job.
[1] Izbica³⁴⁰, 22 February [19]42
Highly esteemed Cousin,
Putting pen to paper and remembering the great misfortune that has befallen
us, my blood curdles in my veins at the thought that we have been orphaned
and that the best and most beautiful that we had in our lives has been torn
away from us. The grief is great; I am unable to express it with my pen, yet the
pain is even greater when we remember that if we were not resettled and living
in dreadful conditions, his gentle soul would have been kept alive. We just
cannot come to terms with the great loss that has befallen us. Our pious father
was supposed to go to hospital and be observed by the best doctors, he was
very weak and eating poorly, so he developed additional complicated health
conditions, above all, because his heart was weak. It is painful that this pious
man passed away in a foreign place. It is self-evident that in Lublin he would
surely have received the appropriate last honours, which he certainly deserved,
having lived there for 56 years. It appears that such is our fate because our
great-grandfather,³⁴¹ the rabbi of blessed memory, also died in war-time away
from home in Hadyach.³⁴²
At the moment our situation is very sad when we see what consequences
this kind of life brings. Mother is ill; it has been 5 weeks since she has been
unable to leave her bed, and we don’t have the slightest possibility to attend to
her as a sick person. We are in a bad way, because we are in a place where one
can’t earn anything. There is no work and going to the village to earn something
there is strictly forbidden. In a word, it’s hell. So, the question arises:
How does one survive? Until now, whatever we had we sold; at the moment
340 Name of the town in Latin characters.
341 Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1734 [1745]–1813), a tzaddik, founder of the Chabad Lubavich Hasidic movement. The name of the author of the letter, Sznejerson, derives from his name.
342 Hadyach (Hadziacz), Poltava region, Ukraine.
