PRUZHANY YZKOR BOOK
1983
THE PRUZANA LANDSHAFT
ASSOCIATION IN ISRAEL
By Yitzhak
Zutta
Most of the Jews of our town were members of the Zionist movement and educated in Hebrew institutions. Some immigrated to Palestine at the beginning of the century in the Second Aliya. They were absorbed in the towns and in the pioneering settlements and not only maintained contact with their home town but also among themselves. However, they did not maintain any real organization until they received the reports about the fate of Pruzana Jews in the Holocaust. They were aroused to action to help the survivors, and established an organization of land shafts men in Palestine for locating survivors and providing them with organized aid in all possible ways.
On March 1, 1945,
all our townsmen met in Tel Aviv and discussed how to take care of the remnants
of the Pruzana “ kehila ”. The conference decided: to distribute a report of
the discussion to all Pruzana Landshaftsmen, immediately send food and clothes
parcels according to the addresses already located, maintain contacts with
landshaftsmen in the United States and other countries and organize all aid
work through volunteers. A committee was set up that included Eliyahu GELMAN
chairman, Aryeh HADAR secretary and Zvi LUBOSHITZ -treasurer; the other members
were Reuven VINOGRAD, Yehiel ZUTA, Asher POMERANIEC and Zorah RUDY.
The committee
members sought ways to make contact with the survivors in Europe and used all
the possibilities for getting information about their location and condition.
The committee also appealed to Pruzana men serving in the allied forces to
locate the survivors and submit all possible help. The first survivors were
located in this fashion: Avraham BRESKY, Ephraim ZEIDMAN, the MANDEL brothers
and Baruch AUERBACH, Yaacov VOLOVELSKY, Yosef BRESTOVICKY, Dr. Olya GOLDFEIN
and others.
The second conference was
held on October 11, 1945, with the participation of the first survivors Avraham
BRESKY and Yaacov VOLOVELSKY. They reported the whole story of Pruzana Jewry,
told about life in the ghetto and the camps, the exemplary organization of
mutual help mainly to the weak and the organization of groups of partisans
among our townsfolk. The descriptions of the survivors shocked all those
present.
The meeting decided: to
convene Pruzana landshaftsmen annually on the memorial day of the destruction
of Pruzana Jews, publish a Pruzana Pinkas for immortalizing the life and death
of the Jews of our town, extend help to the survivors everywhere, help the
survivors who wanted to immigrate to Palestine and ensure their placement in
work. Since that year, memorial meetings are held for the martyrs of Pruzana.
Landsmen in Israel
gladly contributed funds to the committee, which continued sending money and
parcels to all survivors of the Holocaust whose address was tracked down. The
flow of survivors who immigrated to Israel increased and the committee was
fully employed in providing help to the new immigrants. The help was not only
financial or finding sources of work and livelihood, but also social and moral
to encourage the survivors after they had been liberated from the terrors of
the ghetto and the death camps. The number of immigrants reached several
hundreds.
Over the years,
new members joined the committee: Yaacov SCHREIBMAN, Avraham BRESKY, Dov
KIRSHNER, Yitzhak ZUTTA (KLEINERMAN), Kalman GOCHMAN, Asya LUBOSHITZ, Zvi
BEN-DOV and Avraham HARSHALOM. Eliyahu GELMAN (GALIN) served as chairman until
his death in 1979. Yaacov SHREIBMAN fulfilled the role of secretary and
treasurer until the day he died.
As the years
passed, the committee established several enterprises in cooperation with
landshafts men in the United States: a clinic of the Histadrut Kupat Holim in
Kiryat Ata, a memorial plate in the Holocaust chamber at Yad Vashem in
Jerusalem and the planting of a wood in memory of the Pruzana martyrs in the
Martyrs forest.
The committee
maintains strong links with Landshafts in New York and Buenos Aires in
Argentina. The committee also helps needy Pruzana people in Israel. The main
activity in recent years has been to publishing of the Pruzana Pinkas in Hebrew
and English, with the participation of our townsmen in New York and
Philadelphia.
The members of
the committee today are: Yitzhak ZUTA chairman, Asya LUBOSHITZ secretary, Kalman GOCHMAN treasurer, Zvi BEN-DOV, Avraham BRESKY,
Avraham HARSHALOM, Zvi LUBOSHITZ and Dov KIRSHNER.