Alex Levin – then called Joshua Levin – was born in 1932 in Rokitno, a small town in Poland (now in modern-day Ukraine) of five thousand inhabitants. The Jewish community of Rokitno lasted for a short time- less than 50 years. However, in this short period a vibrant town was built. A town that produced successful business owners, active political organizations, and was a spiritual centre for the surrounding villages.
Set in what he describes as “majestic and beautiful surroundings,” Levin’s early years were bucolic. He lived in a large house with a garden and domestic animals and swam in the river that flowed through the town. He enjoyed exploring the lush oak woods nearby – forests that would soon play a key role in his life and very survival. In 1939 approximately 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland, by far the largest Jewish population of any country in Europe. Jewish cultural and religious life had flourished there for hundreds of years. Compared to the Jewish experience elsewhere in Europe and Russia, Polish Jews had lived in relative peace with their neighbours. The Jews of Poland were able to develop important religious and national movements, to establish renowned centres of religious learning, and to develop the rich cultural heritage of the Yiddish language – the daily language of Eastern European Jews. By the middle of the twentieth century, the Jews of Poland could boast a distinctive literary tradition that encompassed Yiddish fiction, poetry, theatre and cinema. Moreover, as Poland modernized and urban centres grew, many professions and industries became less restrictive, and opportunities for Jews opened up.
Jewish life in Poland was full of contradictions, however. Polish Jews were often subject to discrimination and persecution, and even physical assault by their non-Jewish neighbours who harboured prejudice against them. With the rise of Polish nationalism between the two world wars, ethnic minorities – Jews among them – found themselves the target of discriminatory practices. Even though the Polish constitution guaranteed the rights of minorities, Jews were barred from holding jobs in government, one of the largest employers at the time. With the impact of the world-wide economic Great Depression that began in the early 1930s, the condition of Polish Jews steadily worsened.
Yet Alex Levin remembers a comfortable and happy upbringing amid Rokitno’s 2,000-member-strong Jewish community. As a child, little Shike – a nickname for Yehoshua – was aware of, but not directly touched by, the pernicious anti-Jewish sentiments around him. Like many Jews in the small towns and villages of Poland, Levin’s family valued religious education, observed Jewish holidays and other rituals, and savoured the special taste of Sabbath foods. Zionism – the movement to build a Jewish state in the Jews’ historic homeland, then under control of the British – was also important to his family. Levin fondly recalls meeting with his youth group, Betar, on the edge of town, singing Hebrew songs and listening to stories of Jewish heroes in their homeland. Founded in 1923 in Latvia, Betar was one of several youth groups that played an important role in the history of Polish Jews in the inter-war period. These groups fought antisemitism and fostered a sense of Jewish identity. Their leaders later played an active part in Jewish resistance in the ghettos and camps during the war. The youth group gatherings were, in Levin’s words, a “magical” time in his life.
In June 1941, however, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, reneging on the Nazi-Soviet pact and ending the alliance between the two countries, the situation changed drastically. Rokitno was soon occupied by Germany. As the German army moved eastward, special units of the SS and the military police followed behind them, waging an unprecedented campaign of murder against the Jewish civilian population.
On August 26, 1942, after living under a reign of terror for just over a year in the Rokitno ghetto, the Jews of Rokitno were ordered to gather in the central square for deportation to a killing site outside the town. When many of them realized what was about to occur, the crowd began to panic. As people began to run, Nazi and Ukrainian police began to shoot. In the chaos that ensued, young Alex and his older brother Samuel ran – as fast and as “far away from that murderous place as possible.
Those who were not massacred that day in the town square were deported to Sarny, some forty kilometres away. There, over the course of four days in late August 1942, Nazi killing squads claimed the lives of over 18,000 Jews.
Through his evocative and touching description of his hometown and childhood, Alex Levin brings back to life this community that was destroyed in the systematic mass murder of European Jewry.