(Ynet News) Attila Somfalvi - Ben Zion Drutin was 8 when Nazi soldiers invaded his home town of Chelm in eastern Poland in October 1939. In December, there was a call for all of Chelm's Jews practicing free professions (lawyers, accountants, engineers, etc.) to report to the town's square. Drutin's father, a merchant and store owner, was one of those required to report. "I remember hearing my parents fighting, my mother blocked the house's door, yelling at him that he's not going anywhere," he says. "My father insisted on going along with the other Jews in town." In the end, Drutin's father answered his wife's demands that he seek shelter in the nearby village where his grandfather lived, and his life was saved as a result. "My mother had a very good understanding of the situation," says Drutin. "Out of the 2,000 men - who'd been gathered in the square and taken to the Bug River - only 150 managed to escape." The head of the Chelmer Organization of Israel, Benzi Labkovich, whose grandfather was among those killed in the Chelm death march, noted that the "march occurred only 3 months after World War II started....It's important to remember when the first mass murder of Jews happened."
2019-12-27 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive