DR. SZYMON DATNER THE SACRED ZABIA CEMETERY For us Bialystoker Jews, the grounds of the ghetto cemetery were sacred, a stretch of earth in the north- western corner. The Nazis forbade us to bury our dead in the old Bagnowke Cemetery, because it was situated outside the ghetto and we would have to leave its .con- fines. Thus a piece of land within the ghetto walls was selected as a burial ground. I recall two funerals in the Zabia (ghetto) cemetery. Both took place in February 1943, shortly after the end of the first liquidation. We, the residents of 11 Fabryczna Street, buried the instructor at the Hebrew Gymnasium, the unforgettable Dr. Franka Horowicz. She had a massive funeral with the entire Judenrat in attendance. The second funeral, which took place either a day before or a day later, was for a small girl, four-year-old Basja Bergman, the only daughter of the Latin teacher, Dr. Michel Bergman, and his wife, Nusja. This small angel was smothered to death in our bunker on the first day of the liquidation when she awakened crying and we heard Nazi soldiers searching the house above. Returning to my house at night from the factory, I bur- ied the little girl in the garden, a few feet from the win- dow, through which her mother passed me her rigid corpse covered in a white sheet. Mrs. Bergman, unable to accept the reality of her daughter’s death, asked: ‘‘Maybe she is still alive?” At the Zabia cemetery, yet another mound of earth rose, near several others containing the remains of small children who had suffocated just like Basja. Dur- ing the two funerals, I saw heaps of dead bodies after the February liquidation. Lying in two long rows, they resembled pieces of lumber, cut to precision for custo- mers. Included were men, women and children, silent witnesses to the tragedy, gaping holes in each corpse. They had been shot with dum dum bullets. Then the German nightmare passed. We, the hand- ful of survivors, returned to our hometown, finding everything in ruins — the city, the Jewish community, the citizenry. The cemeteries were not spared. Weeds and wild grass, as well as garbage and manure, covered the Zabia cemetery. Goats had grazed on this holy ground, destroying most of the gravestones. In addition to our concern for the survivors, we felt obliged to care for the dead. After all, only two or three thousand were interred in the ghetto cemetery. Most of our brethren died in the crematoria of Treblinka, Majdanek, Ausch- witz and the like. We trimmed the weeds from the graves, built a brick wall around the cemetery and hired a reliable watchman to protect the grounds. Gradually the cemetery was restored to proper condition. Further- more, we erected a small mausoleum, in which many The Bialystoker Memorial Book who lost dear ones never properly buried memorialized them by affixing plaques to its walls. On the second anniversary of the ghetto’s liquida- tion, August 16, 1945, we dedicated a unique monu- ment. Beneath a Jewish star appeared the following inscription in Yiddish: “In memory of the sixty thou- sand Jewish people of the Bialystok ghetto, murdered by the Germans, dedicated by a handful of surviving Jews. August 16, 1943-August 16, 1945. May they rest in peace.” At the bottom of the monument, or at its side — I no longer remember exactly — we inscribed: “The people of Israel lives ".מס‎ The entire Jewish com- munity in Bialystok financed this monument. In addi- tion to Jews, several Polish leaders delivered addresses, representing the Polish government and community. * * * In a letter dated June 26, 1971, I received a letter from the presidium of the Municipal National Board in Bialystok, telling me that the ghetto cemetery was now located in the center of a newly constructed residential complex. Until November 1970, the cemetery property belonged to the Jewish Cultural-Social Organization in Poland, which maintained it. As soon as a demand was made for the cemetery to meet the specifications of the new apartment complex, the administration of the Jewish Organization trans- ferred possession of the cemetery to the government. On July 5, 1971, 1 sent a registered letter from Warsaw to the Chairman of the Municipal National Board in Bialystok, indicating that I had no reason for not trusting his good will. But I mentioned facts in my letter demonstrating that the cemetery had not been preserved.