for the Jewish Villeurbanne Committee, the Lyons Uni- ted Jewish Youth Committee and the Committee to Rescue Jewish Children. I still wonder whether someone had informed on us. We spent many hours thinking that we had reached the end of our rope. None of us believed we would escape the Nazis’ clutches. Just before we were to be handed over to the Ge- stapo, we succeeded in bribing our three captors to let us go. This was the only instance, to my knowledge, that an entire resistance group was able to save itself through bribery. Our captors had, however, fooled us. They took our money and then called the Gestapo. A half hour later, when the Germans arrived, they found no one. Luckily, we fled the illegal hideout immediately after our captors left us. Later, I bleached my hair blond and, looking like a real. gentile girl, continued my resistance work using a false identity. NECHAMA (DROGOCZYNSKI) DINUR After the long-awaited liberation of France, we were horrified to learn the full extent of Jewish destruction. Each of us, we discovered, had lost many beloved rela- tives and friends in the Holocaust. I couldn’t believe I had survived. Every Jewish stranger we passed on the street was a joy for us. For several months after the liberation, I remained in Lyons to reunite families that had been separated during the war. Later, with the help of the Workmen’s Circle in Paris and the Jewish Labor Committee in New York, we estab- lished homes for Jewish orphans. With fresh energy, I went to work rebuilding Jewish communal life in France. Once again I taught Yiddish to Jewish children and told them about the heroism of our young sons and daughters during the war. Bialystok today has virtually no Jews, but our /ands- leit who survived continue its sacred traditions in all the countries where destiny has scattered them. REUNION AFTER A PAINFUL JOURNEY My maiden name in Bialystok was Laznik. I was Chone Ozder’s granddaughter; he lived at 22 Zelazne Street. My husband is Szmuel Drogoczynski. We changed our name to Dinur. Since 1950, we have lived in Holon, Israel. We have a son, a daughter and four grandchildren, who have brought us a lot of nachas. In the summer of 1941, when war between Ger- many and the Soviet Union broke out, I had been mar- ried four months. Afterward, my husband and I were in the Bialystok ghetto, where we suffered a great deal. Once, when my husband and brother attempted to smuggle food into the ghetto through the fence, they were arrested. The Nazi police brutally beat them and later sent them to the Bialystok prison, where few escaped alive. Every few days the authorities would take groups of Jews from the prison to the fields and shoot them. After four months in jail, my husband and brother — the only two Jews who remained there — were freed. They returned to the ghetto six weeks after I gave birth to our first son. Shortly thereafter, the first liquidation was launched; 12,000 Jews were transported to the death camps. We lived at 26 Jurowecki Street in the ghetto, which housed two bunkers — one in the attic and the other in the cellar. Mothers with small! children were advised to stay in the underground hideout so their youngsters’ cries wouldn’t be heard by the Nazi searchers. My younger sister, Sorele, who was ten years old, was with me. The children did not survive the first The Bialystoker Memorial Book liquidation amid the horrible conditions in the bunkers. I lost my child, who was then eleven months old. In the meantime, the Nazis exposed the hideout where my husband, my parents and his parents stayed. They were led out to Fabryczna Street. While being taken out of the ghetto, my mother caught my father’s attention in a courtyard and whispered in his ear, ‘‘Save yourself! Go to the children.”’ Somehow he managed to get to my bunker. Following the seven-day liquidation campaign, word spread that whoever had a job would be granted a permit to remain in the ghetto — a reprieve from immediate extermination. I got such a document and added my father’s and sister’s names to it. 1 went to work at Waksman’s Knitware Factory. We knitted socks and gloves for the Nazi soldiers. In this way, I hoped to get a bit of sustenance for my family. A few months later, a second liquidation was unleashed in the ghetto. Panic and confusion spread as the remaining Jews who were deemed expendable were ordered to report to Czepla and Jurowecki streets, the embarkation point for concentration camp. We wit- nessed the resistance of our brave young men and women, who showed extraordinary courage in the face of overwhelming Nazi firepower. My family and I con- tinued hiding in our bunker by day and foraging for morsels of food by night. Few bunkers remained. The Gestapo continually discovered and arrested Jews in hiding. Some were sent to Bialystok prison; others were 159