THE PROTECTORS

In my town, as in most shtetels, the danger of bad things coming to pass was always present.  Certainly there were the very real concerns of Pogroms and invading armies.  We prepared our cellars to hide the women, and hopefully to keep the men safe from being taken away to slave labor camps, or to involuntary service in the armies.

Pogroms against Jews were regularly organized by the authorities to assuage the population's general anger and frustrations of bad times, high taxes, and their own failures of any sort.  It was felt that the Jews were "guilty of everything," and therefore physical violence against them was justifiable. 

In my childhood, after one very bloody pogrom in Kishiniev, Russia, the great poet Bialik wrote an epic poem decrying the sorrow, and voiced a call for self protection.  My father memorized, and made me memorize, this long poem.  Zhabotinsky, a Russian writer, openly called for young Jews to learn how to use arms and strike back.

All this had very little impact on most shtetels, but somehow, in Shebreshin, we started to depend on some of our own strong men.

Notable were the few "tregers."  I  have mentioned them earlier, in other stories.  These were powerful men who did the difficult hauling of heavy objects; carrying everything on their backs.

They wore heavily padded jackets with thick ropes around their shoulders.  They normally could be found near one of the soda dispensing structures that the city built in two corners of the square.

If someone needed anything hauled he just had to point to a "trager," and he was at their disposal – all for what we would now call pocket change.

The second group of Jews that we felt could help in the occasional small skirmishes with some of the rough hooligans were the kosher butchers.  These were men with blood on their clothes, and who carried knives and small sharp hatchets at their sides.  Their smell and their looks alone could put fear into someone’s heart.

And then there were the "Horse Traders" – a closely-knit unit living in an almost totally concealed courtyard in a largely isolated section of town.  This was in the oldest section of the shtetel, right behind the old Shul.

These men were fierce!  Handling horses of all kinds of dispositions made them unafraid.  They were often intermarried, and they spoke Polish in the same manner as the peasants with whom they traded. 

On market days, when the country people came to buy or trade their horses, or sell their young colts, there was much hand clapping, swearing, cursing, looking in horses mouths, and running with the nervous animals.  At a quick glance one could hardly note the differences between the Polish peasants and these Jewish horse traders.

But they were also very religious, and especially protective of their women.  Woe to a Goy that said something inappropriate, or even looked at one of their females.

When my Uncle Avrohim came back from serving in the Russian army, he chose a bride from this group and took her to America.

From that time on the horse trader group considered our family as part of their own kin, and they often reminded us of that fact.

In my childhood, except during the war, life was pretty quiet in town.  There were a few scares, but nothing really bad materialized.  But we were always wary as nobody knew when or where the next danger would present itself.  

Every Tuesday was market day, and in our family, we usually made some beds or trunks during the week to sell to the passing country men.

I remember one special day.  A big oak bed was on display for sale.

My Zaida was outside talking to some Poles he knew when a big, obviously drunk young man grabbed the bed, shook it, and announced that he wanted to buy it.

My grandfather told him the price, but the potential buyer offered far less than half the price quoted.

"My price is the only one, and the right one," bellowed this young man. 

"And you will give it to me for the price that I have told you,"  he said in a most menacing way.

While saying this he moved near to my grandfather, and then grabbing hold of Zaida's beard, the Pole then reached into his pants pocket.

The women started to scream.  Nobody knew if the man was reaching for a knife, or even a gun.

I did not wait to find out.  I quickly ran into the crowded main street and found a policeman and nervously started to tell him what was happening.

"And what is in his hand, a gun, a knife, shears?  I will not move until I know what the weapon is."  

I knew the coward would not help, but then I spotted a trager  with a huge sack of grain tied to his back with ropes.  There was a Jewish trader following him.

I blurted out my story, and within a second or two the treger  untied his burden, asked the merchant to guard it, and with my hand in his, we rushed to our house.

By this time one of my uncles had appeared, and now this treger!  The hooligan started to back off.  He became visibly scared.

"You damn Jews stick together," he  mumbled. 

The treger, with a rope in his hands, ordered the young man to leave and never come back.  He obeyed, staggering back to his wagon where he fell asleep.

The treger went back to his chores, and for this day at least there were no more incidents.

The bed was sold, at my grandfather’s asking price, to a prosperous peasant.

Zamosc, the "big city," was about 20 miles from our hamlet, and we had a regularly scheduled transport connection to it for every day of the week except Saturdays, the Sabbath.  Each morning, between 8 and 10 a.m., an ancient canopy covered wagon pulled by two tired old horses left our shtetel, and returned early in the evening.

Sometimes there were many passengers, sometimes very few, but the "Baal Hagole" (the horse master) never changed his attitude.  He received the few coins from his travelers, never saying a word.

I was told that he took over his trade from his father, and his father's father, who both did the same work before him.

Of course there was another way to travel to Zamosc.  It was by train.  It took only about 45 minutes, but the authorities in their wisdom built the station some four miles away from the  shtetel , right in the middle of some farmland.  So, if you missed the regularly scheduled covered wagon you had to hitch a ride with any wagon going in the right direction, or you started to walk, hoping someone would pick you up along the route.

But progress finally came to the shtetel.  It was in the form of a wooden, gasoline powered bus that made the journey to Zamosc twice a day.

This put the Jewish Wagoner out of business.  Yes, he tried to compete.  Some old people were afraid to travel on gasoline smelling, fast moving vehicles, but their number was very few, and he soon gave up and died not long afterwards.  I remember seeing the ancient wagon, abandoned, and rotting away.

The bus service became very successful.  Soon a second bus was added, and two more places besides Zamosc were added to the schedule.  The bus line now also serviced Zwiernich and Bilgoray to the west.

On the main street in the shtetel were two rather ornate, small wooden buildings surrounded by little parks.  They were on opposite sides of the square.  Jews who dispensed soda water, cigarettes, and tobacco ran these shops.  Occasionally, when it was permitted, they sold newspapers, and these shops became gathering places for the men who came to gossip, read the papers, or to order a glass of tea for a penny.

One of these "budkahs" (as these small shops were called) became a stop for the buses that crossed our township.

One day, a bus carrying a group of young Poles to Zwiernich for a patriotic meeting stopped long enough to make a rest stop, and these young men collectively decided to harass and beat up Jews.

In the beginning, there was little more than talk and threats, but this continued to escalate, and soon the fear became very real.  The owner of the budkah was violently thrown out of his stand,  and they broke apart his cabinets and stole cigarettes and other merchandise.

Within seconds, the tregers, the butchers, and the horse traders emerged.  They all  ran towards the Poles, shouting and cursing. 

The driver called out, "I am leaving,"  and he started his engine.

The group of young Poles, seeing their opposition, ran in fright towards the vehicle, but our Jewish coalition didn’t let them go until they paid for all the stolen merchandise, plus the damage to the cabinets.

From then on, if there were rowdy people on the buses, the drivers refused to stop in our shtetel.

We knew then that we had the strength to resist, to fight back,  yet most young people at first opportunity abandoned their birthplace and went to other countries for the promise of a better life. 

Sadly more didn’t leave.  My hamlet became a killing field in the early nineteen  forties.

Even the remaining  tregers, butchers, and fierce horse traders could not hold off  the Nazi machine guns.