The monument at the mass grave in Bialystok erected in 1947. After the war, Jews who returned to Bialystok 001- lected remnants of the synagogue. I discovered that even this modest attempt to memorialize the destruc- tion failed. On the site of the singed iron remains of the CHAJKE GROSMAN shul stand modern houses. If you look carefully, you can find an inconspicuous inscription stating that there was once a synagogue there. Similarly, Cytron’s Bet Hamidrash no longer exists as such; the building is intact but it now houses the Polish Center of Culture and Art. The Hebrew Gymnasium, that remarkable institu- tion where hundreds of boys and girls received a fine Jewish education, has been replaced by a hospital. Dr. Datner, who accompanied me on the visit, had taught there for more than 25 years. Seeing what happened to his beloved school, he sobbed uncontrollably. His dis- play of emotion overwhelmed me. I left Bialystok heartbroken. After Dr. Datner and I said goodbye to Szyja Bartnowski, we rode away in Our taxi, turning around for a last glimpse of the town where we spent our youth and where so many of our beloved relatives perished. In our subsequent talks with the Polish Govern- ment, we emphasized the disgraceful condition of Jew- ish cemeteries. The ministers assured us that they would restore many of these burial places and, upon my insis- tence, they promised to rehabilitate Bagnowke Ceme- tery in Bialystok. Jewish Bialystok no longer exists in Poland. Rather, it survives in the form of our great Bialystoker Center in New York, which perpetuates its hallowed traditions. It is our obligation to uphold its ideals, her- itage and aspirations in America and other countries where Bialystokers live. Let us pledge to fulfill this sacred responsibility that our martyred families passed on to us. FOR US THE WAR HAS NOT YET ENDED (Editor’s note: The following is the text of an address Chajke Grosman delivered at the Zionist conference in London in September 1945.) A colleague asked me, ‘“‘How do we come by our calm and restraint?”’ I answered that we were calm all along. Our friends who resisted in the Bialystok ghetto demon- strated the same serenity at the time of the Nazi slaughter. Planting mines is easier than speaking before an audience. Our resistance movement was great and mighty. Even when crushed, it retained its nobility. We live on. To live requires no great talent. We must rather know how to live and, even more impor- tant, how to die. We knew that our death did not spell the end of everything; that our martyrdom would become an exalted model for our young people to fol- low. We gave much thought to this in the ghettos; our not fearing death became a gospel that we calmly stud- 144 ied throughout. The heroes of our people were not only the political leaders; they also included small peo- ple, the gray-haired and silent. I recall the days of the first liquidation in Bialystok in February 1943. We did not fight then, before the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Thousands of Jews perished in the ghetto without commotion. We, the pioneer movement, never considered our- selves leaders and politicians. Hundreds of our friends died quietly with a profound belief in the land of Israel as the Jewish homeland. The saga of our catastrophe in Poland is lengthy and complicated. But we survived, in spite of the suffer- ing, horror and annihilation. We claim the right to live that we and the entire Jewish people earned. We shall never rest; for us the war has not yet ended. Despite the mass grave which 1s Poland, we established a Zionist youth movement there, determined to settle in Israel by any means. We are not broken and depressed but The Bialystoker Memorial Book