For the rest, all I remember is flames in the night — the three of us scurrying past burning houses, over dead bodies littering the streets — and hiding by day. Somehow we found ourselves in an underground bunker where some thirty people had been holed up for days. By the glow of a candle I made out the features of my teacher of Latin and history. Professor Bergman, a fragile and kindly man, was rocking his infant son, trying to stop his coughing. On the other side of the trap door above us came the shouts of German search parties and the barking of their dogs. We all fell silent; only the baby’s coughing continued. ‘“‘Shhh,’’ hissed a burly man near the door. The coughing did not stop. The man crawled over and placed a hand over the baby’s mouth. The coughing ceased. Minutes passed. The child sank limply to the ground. All the while, Professor Bergman sat petrified. I knew he was not a coward. Even then, I understood that if he could think or feel anything at all, he was weighing one life against thirty, even if that life was his own son’s. The next day we found refuge in a private hospital. Its director, Mr. Kniazeff, had been Uncle Nachman’s best friend. Other fugitives also clamored for shelter. He let us in when he saw Mother at the gate. Another night passed. At dawn, an announcement was made that the SS would evacu- ate the hospital compound. We were to-be taken elsewhere. The men, we were told, would go separately from the women, the children, and the sick. We had fled our room with our last few belongings. Now my mother folded my clothes for me as calmly and methodi- cally as though she were sending me off to summer camp. ‘Do you think you ought to wear your short pants or your long pants?’ She was thinking out loud. She hesitated for a moment, looked at my sister then again at me, and said, “If you’re dressed in short pants, they'll let you go with Frieda and me. If you wear your long pants, we'll probably be separated. You will go with the men. You're a big boy now, maybe it would be better if —” ‘*And you?” I asked. ‘“‘And Frieda?” She did not answer. א אי * We were marched off. Helplessly I looked back. Mother and Frieda were being marched the other way. My eyes were glued to the two frail shapes as they moved off in the dis- tance. With one hand my sister held on to my mother; with the other she clutched her favorite doll. They too looked over their shoulders. Then they disappeared from sight. Could my mother have sensed — she could not have known; none of us knew anything — that a young man able to perform physical labor for the Nazis had a better chance of surviving than a child classed as useless, unneeded, an extra mouth to feed? Did she, in pushing me away from her into the cruel adult world, hope to give me a chance at life, if only one chance in a million? That moment when I saw her for the last time pursues me to this day with its load of agony and guilt and unquenchable anger. When the two lines of prisoners separated and 1 could see them no longer, a rage against man and God tore through my 146 breast. Choking with tears, I raised my fist to heaven in a blasphemous cry against the Almighty: ‘‘Gazlen! — Monster! How dare you!” ISRAEL BEKER MY BELOVED HOME (Editor’s note: The well-known Bialystoker stage actor, Israel Beker, lives in Israel, a prominent director of the Habimah National Theatre in Tel Aviv. His dramatic presentations in the United States, Europe, Latin Amer- ica and other parts of the world have made major con- tributions to Yiddish theater. Beker spent World War II exiled in the Soviet Union, studying acting in the Jewish “State Theater in Moscow. He also achieved fame by producing and appearing in a number of films. He is an artist of renown in Israel and in other countries; his paintings and drawings are well received. His art book appeared as part of the festivities in connection with the sixtieth anniversary of Habimah. At the beginning of this album, titled The Stage of My Life, Beker wrote a long introduction. We reprint excerpts below, describ- ing Beker’s relationship with Bialystok.) I was born in Bialystok, a mother city for the Jewish people. Had I spent my youth in another place, my life would have been quite different. No, I don’t come from Bialystok; I am a Bialystoker, and that is something more. The street and neighborhood where I lived, the things and happenings etched in my memory, have great significance for me. My family lived in the tallest building in town, a “skyscraper” consisting of 4’4 stories, which looked down with pride upon the entire area. As I peered through the attic windows at the large city lying at the foot of my house, I beheld roofs in various forms and colors: roofs of batei midrashim and factories, for-and three-cornered roofs, the pointed tops of churches that pierced the clouds, and chimneys atop factories. The streets below appeared distant; the people seemed like ants. I remember best a yibrant, bustling Bialystok from that vantage point.