|
Dear only brother,
With sadness and heartfelt pain I have to
write to you about the calamity that befell us lately. Hundreds of
lives were lost in German camps. Our township is empty. Many died
in their homes and tragically our own father among them.
Today, on the third day of the month of
Nissan we got up from the seven days of sitting shiva [mourning]
and I was directed by our Rabbi to advise you about our loss. This
is my sad new situation - to be alone and to have to share the
pain with you.
It happened on Tuesday, the twenty-sixth day of Adar
- the twenty-fifth of March. At five in the morning our father exhaled his
last breath. Two months prior, our mother had taken ill and three
days later our father too took to bed. When I asked him what was
wrong he answered that it was nothing - that the frost and chill
made him weak and it was better for him to be in bed. Mother
stayed in bed for six weeks and father used to help me try and
persuade her to eat. That is how, on my own, I went from one bed
to the next. At one stage, mother regained some strength and got
out of bed. Father also left his bed from time to time. On the
eighth
day of Adar father had yahrzeit [the anniversary of the death of
one of his parents] so he got out of bed. I got a minyan [ten adult
Jewish males] into the house and he said Kaddish [the prayer for
the dead]. On Purim he listened to the reading of the Megillah.
But in the last week he deteriorated. From day to day it was
harder for him to breathe. Two doctors visited him. I asked them
about taking father to Bialystok but they told me that the state
of his heart and lungs was beyond saving. After some terrible
suffering he passed away at the age of sixty-nine.
So may it be that "death disappear forever"
[we hope there are no further deaths in our family] and we should
find consolation in our very weak mother, may she continue to live
and be healthy.
Your distraught brother,
Nison |
