The Miracles That Befell the Licht Family

The very fact that I was saved from certain death teaches me that it was not necessarily the heroes and the great and wise who survived. Whoever escaped the clutches of death may call it a miracle.

I want to tell of three events that show what my father meant — three times he was saved from certain death.

The First Miracle: Baran

This is how my father told it: For a time we hid with a gentile who was known for the great help he gave to Jews. One day some Jews came and suggested that we move to the village of Baran, where the town doctor, the family of my brother-in-law Bartnisky, my mother and my sister were already in hiding.

I asked that we wait before leaving, and that delay saved our lives. Why did I want to delay? Because the gentile we were staying with had slaughtered a cow, and I had a craving for liver. It took about two hours until the cow was ready, and then we ate our fill of meat and liver, which were no small thing in wartime. My wife was angry with me for putting off our flight to Baran.

When we set out toward Baran, we heard machine-gun fire. We went straight back to the gentile. A few hours later we heard that the Germans had murdered all the Jews in the house we had been heading for, and other Jews in the village and around it.

If that is not a miracle, I do not know what a miracle is.

The Second Miracle: The Kemelishok Ghetto

The second incident, my father said, took place in the Kemelishok ghetto. My family — my wife and my daughter — were outside the ghetto. One day I set out for the ghetto, to see and hear how our relatives and friends there were faring. On the way I decided to stop at the house of the forester I worked for. I sat down to rest and we talked about the wretched state of the Jews.

Suddenly we heard shots. The forester’s wife rushed in and shouted: “They are liquidating the ghetto, they are shooting everyone!” I was petrified. The woman shouted: “Get away from here as fast as you can, maybe you will manage to save your lives.” I do not know where I found the strength to run and to crawl, to reach my family, take them and hide. We kept hearing shots, and we knew whom they were meant for. We were filled with dread, worry, pain and shock.

That, then, was a miracle in the fullest sense of the word.

The Third Miracle: The Burning Village

The third incident was when the Soviets were 30 kilometres from the village where we were hiding, and the Germans were already retreating and fleeing. As they withdrew they set fire to the village. The gentile we were hiding with fled to the forest to wait for the Russian army. Had we stayed in the pit where we were hiding, we would certainly have burned; but I decided that we too would leave the hiding place and flee to the forest.

We heard shots, and after a while we heard German-speaking soldiers. We were gripped by fear and trembled: was it now, of all times, with the Russian army close and coming to liberate us, that we would fall into German hands? Luckily for us the Germans did not find us. And so we were saved both from the fire and from the Nazis.

The Holy One, blessed be He, wanted us to survive and to live. The families we raised and educated in the way of the Torah and Judaism — that is our revenge.