apartment. It was exceedingly difficult to accept this reality to which we had come, after enduring years of incredible suffering. My Jewish neighbor took me into a room with a bed, which I hadn’t seen for a whole year. She covered it with clean linen and I went to sleep, awakening late the next day. The others who spent the night had already left, in search of a bit more food, hoping to survive for another day. THE FIRST YOM KIPPUR AFTER THE WAR The first Yom Kippur in Bialystok after the war, only forty people attended synagogue services. I wondered why some Jewish officers of the Red and Polish armies stood with a siddur in their hands praying and what a man wearing a cross around his neck was doing in shul. To whom was he praying? I had found a room on 39 Kupiecka Street, an old dark building, windows knocked out, wallpaper torn, a kerosene lamp providing dim light. In the room was a bed without a blanket and a broken table with three and a half legs, which collapsed at the slightest distur- bance. I shared the space with a few other Jews and we became absorbed in our own reminiscences. Suddenly, someone suggested we go to synagogue to participate in the Kol Nidre services. It didn’t take long to persuade me. After all, there wasn’t anything else to do. The room was cold because there were no window panes. Reaching the synagogue was easy. No longer did one have to pass through streets around buildings. The way was open; one could walk straight to his destina- tion without detour. . We entered a converted synagogue. Inside stood a table facing eastward upon which candles burned. Jews, mostly men and some six women, filled the room. They all wept, their faces unshaven, wearing old and tattered clothes. They were between twenty-five and forty-five, among them soldiers from the Red and Polish armies, some sporting medals and others who were invalids. The person leading the services could barely be heard; his voice was drowned out by uncontrollable sobbing. The worshipers had no taleisim or the customary white robes for Yom Kippur. But everyone carried the wounds of war, choked up, eyes swollen, glancing about in different directions. 1 watched a senior Russian officer crying, a siddur clutched to his chest, which bore war medals. I couldn’t believe that he was praying to God. But one thing was clear — the rough edges of reality had shattered reliance upon man’s reason and compassion. The fighting at the front apparently had so affected this soldier that he needed to vent his emotions in shui. Then I looked at the Jew dressed like a Pole with a 122 large moustache, a Polish cap, boots and a cross on his chest. Was he a Jew or not? His eyes were swollen from crying. He held no siddur, only a cane. What was he doing here? I. guessed he was totally broken, after enduring terrible suffering. Never having identified with Jews and having converted to Catholicism, he now stood in the synagogue, crying along with everyone else, answering amen to the prayers. He did not remove the cross, but he was interested in everything Jewish. He was subsequently killed in a Polish pogrom in a town where ten Jews had returned from the war. Ironically, he died with the rest. In that synagogue on Yom Kippur, everyone came to express his feelings, not to ask forgiveness but to seek answers from God, the others, or even from him- self. People needed to ponder the events of the past years — to find some meaning to it all. Those of us who participated in that pathetic ser- vice, representing all levels and classes of prewar Bialy- stok society, had joined together not so much to pray but to comfort each other. We thought this shared experience would make things easier. But, on the con- trary, aS we saw more clearly what had happened, some felt even worse than before — conquered and vanquished. RABBI DR. AWROM KRAWETS THE FIRST PASSOVER AFTER THE WAR God decreed that my youth should occur during a ter- rible transition, at the crossroads of life and death. I witnessed a well-established Jewish community perish. Brilliant rabbis, educated laymen, wonderful plain peo- ple were destroyed. The reservoir from which our peo- ple had drawn inspiration dried up. After liberation by the Red Army in 1945, we, the first forty Jews, returned to Bialystok. We gravitated toward each other, sharing the gruesome memories of the recent past. I would like to describe the first Pas- sover we spent together in Bialystok after the war. My family and I lived in a small apartment on the third floor of a modest building. Desolation surrounded us. Because very few structures remained, I was able to see the distant forests directly from my window. All that was left of the Great Synagogue, burned by the Nazis when they first arrived, was its large dome, now a memento of death clamoring for revenge from its rest- ing place on the ground. It was spring; warm weather encouraged the broken Jews to hope for better times. Each day we heard bulletins on the radio about new Allied victories. The Third Reich, which had looked forward to a thousand-year reign, was smashed. As the Red Army advanced, more Jews arrived in