Agents of Hope: The Righteous Gentiles of Novogrudok

On September 26, I led a webinar sponsored by the London-based Jewish heritage organization The Together Plan. This webinar commemorated the 80th anniversary of the Novogrudok tunnel escape which took place in a forced labor camp in present-day Belarus. The breakout was one of the greatest escapes of the Holocaust, perhaps even the greatest, while also appearing to be the greatest hand-dug escape tunnel of World War II.

During the webinar, I celebrated the survival of 130 out of roughly 240 escapees who crawled out of their self-made 200-meter tunnel. While I also honored the memory of those who didn’t survive, I especially wanted to honor the memories of the Righteous Gentiles of the area who made the breakout possible.

Without the knowledge that there were some good people outside the camp who could be relied on to help them reach the Bielski partisan detachment, the escapees never would have hoped to reach the forest where they were assured safety. Without this hope, it is highly unlikely that they would have built their secret tunnel with bare hands and the most rudimentary hand-made tools.

I also wanted to convey the great debt that we, the second generation, owe these righteous individuals who helped Jews by listening to their conscience and doing what they felt they ought to do. Some were known to the inmates prior to the war; others were strangers distinguished by their conscience and humanity. Stressing the current relevance of the actions of the Righteous Gentiles in our hate-filled world, I never dreamed that the hope embedded in their actions would resonate less than two weeks later as the world witnessed the unspeakable atrocities of October 7.

During the 16 years that I researched the Novogrudok tunnel escape, I worked with a genealogist to locate survivors and their children all over the world. The results of my research and the personal stories of all identified escapees will appear in my upcoming book Tunnel of Hope: Escape from the Novogrudok Forced Labor Camp, which will soon be published by Gefen Publishing House. It will be the first book published on this little-known yet remarkable and unprecedented escape.

It was Martin Luther King who said, “If man hasn’t discovered something to die for, he is not fit to live.” Tunnel escapees were willing to die while attempting to live. Righteous Gentiles endangered their own lives and those of their family members while helping others to live. It was at a great risk to their lives, as well as to their family members, when they obeyed their conscience. According to a Nazi law passed on October 15, 1941, all Jews who left their homes were to receive the death penalty, with the same punishment applied to persons who knowingly provide(d) hiding places for Jews. This law was reportedly publicized in the smallest and remotest of villages. With the Germans understanding that official reports of executions would be less effective than eye-witness accounts, public executions were reportedly commonplace.

In her ground-breaking book of almost three decades ago, Conscience and Courage, psychologist Eva Fogelman makes us aware of the challenges faced by Righteous Gentiles. Rescue activities are said to have provoked many inner crises for those involved. Feelings of guilt for risking the lives of their own children often existed alongside feelings of sadness, both for the losses experienced by those they rescued and for the inhumanity witnessed around them. Anger at the Germans, as well as fear for their own lives and for the lives of those entrusted to them, are also reported to have been common emotions.

Familial tensions often arose as all family members adjusted to the rescued individual in their midst. Loss of privacy became prominent, and children often needed to sleep with strangers they learned to call brother, sister, aunt, uncle, etc. For some parents, it was extremely stressful to teach their children how to lie in relation to those rescued, while generally insisting on honesty.

There was the daily struggle of obtaining food in quantities greater than had previously been purchased. Shopping hours were often varied so that neighbors would not notice large quantities of food being brought into the home. In order not to arouse suspicion, rescuers often had to spread their purchases among many shops, some out of their immediate vicinity. One can only imagine how difficult this could be in a small town with few shops.

Even when disposing of human waste was problematic, illness among those in hiding provided special challenges. As sociologist Nechama Tec rhetorically asked: “How does one call a doctor for someone who doesn’t exist? Worse still, how does one bury a body of someone who isn’t there?” Tec shares with us the brutal story of an old woman dying while being hidden with 13 others by a kind, elderly Pole. In terrible pain and recognizing that her end was near, the woman was most preoccupied with the fact that the disposal of her body would endanger the others in their hiding place. Eventually, her dismembered body was buried in the garden.

The power of hope

Against this extremely challenging background, the story of the Righteous Gentiles of Novogrudok, like that of all Righteous Gentiles, may be summed up as the story of the power of hope. In his magnum opus, Man’s Search for Meaning, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl noted that from his observations in the camp, those prisoners without hope for a future were more likely than others to die of hopelessness than from lack of food or medical care.

Even while acutely suffering, those whose hope was not utterly destroyed and were somehow able to look to the future were most likely to survive. “Futurelessness,” or the total absence of hope, was seen as one of the most dangerous conditions for the inmates.

Elie Wiesel viewed hope as even more than a determinant of the future. For him, it was an essential ingredient for living: “Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope.” He posited: “If dreams reflect the past,” it is hope that “summons the future.” It was the existence of the Righteous Gentiles that allowed the inmates in the Novogrudok labor camp to hope and to look forward to a future made possible by digging a tunnel right under the noses of their German captors.

Former UK chief rabbi and philosopher Lord Jonathan Sacks described Judaism as “the sustained attempt to make real in life the transformative power of hope.” He found it not at all accidental that Israel’s national anthem is called “Hatikva” (“the hope”). Rabbi Sacks also wrote that “the greatest achievement in life is to have been for one other person, even for one moment, an agent of hope.” The Righteous Gentiles of Novogrudok were indispensable agents of hope for the approximately 240 Novogrudok labor camp inmates.

Based on personal interviews that I carried out, the following are just some of the stories of tunnel escapees and their rescuers that will appear in my upcoming book.

Tunnel escapees and their rescuers

Fanya Dunetz did not speak about the Holocaust and the tunnel escape as her children were growing up. Her daughter’s earliest memory of hearing a story of that era was sometime during her university years. What the daughter remembers was the sense of drama, excitement, and wonder on the part of her mother that Baptist Christian farmers would, at great risk to their own lives, open their hearts and their barn to a group of three ragged stragglers who were on the way to the Bielski partisans deep in the Naliboki forest. The tale of the farmers’ kindness, the chicken they cooked, and the soft, white pillow they gave her for the hayloft accommodation was one of the few war-time accounts Fanya would relate for many years. Thanks to the farmers’ detailed directions to the Bielski detachment, the three safely reached the forest, where they survived the rest of the war.

Years later, Fanya would relate another story, of how, prior to the tunnel escape, another non-Jew offered to save her life. Left alone in the world and in the Novogrudok forced labor camp with only her younger brother Motl – after the murder of their parents, older sister, and 10-year-old brother – Fanya was approached by Josif Wargan, one of the local camp guards. Wargan had known her family in Zhetl during pre-war times. Offered by Wargan the priceless opportunity to escape with one other inmate of her choosing, Fanya feared that neither she nor Motl could successfully navigate the war to get to the Bielskis. Willing to give up her life and the opportunity to escape in order to save the life of her brother, Fanya arranged for Motl to take her place, but only after choosing a Novogrudok native who was familiar with the terrain and the way to the Bielski partisans. Even though Fanya remained in the labor camp until the tunnel escape, Wargan actually saved her life, as well as that of Motl. By saving Motl’s life, he gave Fanya something and someone to live for. Knowing that Motl had safely reached the partisans gave Fanya hope that should she survive the planned tunnel escape, she and her only surviving family member might yet be reunited.

Fanya was my mother. Motl was my only uncle. If neither the Baptist Christian farmers nor Josif Wargan had come to my mother’s aid, in all likelihood she would not have survived. I, too, owe these good people my life and that of my children and grandchildren.

IN A 2020 personal interview, Yanek, the son of escapee Shlomo Okonski, recalled that in spite of all the atrocities his father witnessed, he did not leave a legacy of hate. Shlomo reportedly always emphasized that among the local population there were Righteous Gentiles who tried their best to be good human beings and to do whatever they could to help the Jews.

While children who took initiative without being enlisted by their parents are reported to have been extremely rare, he often spoke of the 12-year old girl who, at the risk to her own life, would slip food through the fence. And the Polish foreman of the carpentry workshop who turned away whenever his workers stole wood that was used in building the tunnel. Shlomo also spoke of the two guards at the gate, a Pole and a Belorussian, who would allow him and his brother Efraim to leave the camp at night in order to forage for food. They would also sell the leather and soles they would take from the shoemaker’s workshop in order to bring provisions into the labor camp.

During these “excursions,” the two youths would frequently spend the night at the home of a local woman referred to simply by her surname, Rajeska. She had known Shlomo and Efraims’s father, Yosel, in pre-war Novogrudok due to his work as a shoemaker, and she decided to do whatever she could for his children, even if it meant endangering her own family. Although Yanek tried to find members of the Rajeska family during his several visits to Novogrudok, he was told that they had left the area and could not be located. As for looking for the workshop foreman and the two guards, there was no one to search for. All three were hanged in the labor camp as an example to others.

IN A 2016 interview, Yisrael Kolachek recounted how, after leaving the labor camp, he, his father Shmuel, and fellow tunnel escapees Eliyahu Berkowicz and Chaya Sara Luski, were met by a partisan representative as they wandered in the hope of reaching the Bielski partisans. This representative shepherded them to the way station for escaped Jewish and Russian partisans run by the Belorussian peasant Konstanty “Koscik” Koslowski. There, they were provided with water and shelter until the following morning, when Kozlowski sent them on to yet another way station. With a message having been passed to the Bielskis of the escapees’ desire to join the detachment, another partisan representative arrived to guide them to a meeting place in the forest from where they were led to the Bielski detachment.

As a young man, Kozlowski had lived and worked in the town of Mokrets, on the farm of a Jewish shoemaker named Velkin. Besides learning to make shoes and to farm the land, he also learned to speak Yiddish fluently. A fan of the Jewish people and its culture, he was vehemently opposed to the Germans and their murderous policies and welcomed any chance to oppose them. Besides offering his home as a stopover where labor camp runaways could be picked up by the Bielskis and taken to the forest, he also risked his life by serving as a courier, bringing messages and letters from the Bielskis to the inmates.

Supported in his position against the Germans by his family, Kozlowski’s brother Ivan even joined the police with the specific intention of supplying information to the partisans and to help Jews escape from the labor camp. He also supplied them with weapons and medicine. Extremely close to the Velkin family, when he saw the granddaughter Dvosha in the camp, it was he who helped her escape to the partisans. As a parting gift, he presented her with a jar of melted animal fat, which helped her survive the trek to the Bielskis.

In August 2012, six years prior to this death, Kolachek returned to the site of the Novogrudok forced labor camp. He was accompanied on the journey by his daughter Bronia, fellow survivors Idel Kagan and Riva Kaganowicz, as well as 50  descendants of escapees for the filming of the 2015 documentary film Tunnel of Hope. During the trip, the group met with Irena Michailovna Kozlovskaya, the daughter of Konstaty and Ivan’s brother Michael.

During the meeting with Irena, Kolachek was able to corroborate the existence of a pit that Kozlowski had prepared near his house in order to hide escapees while they waited to be met by partisans. In a spontaneous gesture, Kolachek pulled out some dollars as he humbly attempted to repay a debt he felt he owed for the food given to him by the Kozlowski family more than 70 years earlier.

The Kozlowski family paid a high price for their goodness. Ivan and Konstanty’s father, Gregory, was beaten by the Germans in an attempt to find out where the partisans were located. Their brother Michael, who was also apprenticed to the shoemaker Velkin, was badly beaten while carrying boots he had made for the partisans. Ivan, however, paid the ultimate price when he was murdered by the Germans.

It has been estimated that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Jews found shelter and encouragement with the Kozlowskis prior to making contact with the Bielskis. Among those labor camp inmates temporarily sheltered by the family was my uncle Motl.

Konstanty and his sons Genady and Vladimir were granted Righteous Gentile status by Yad Vashem on February 1, 1994.

I BELIEVE  that every Jew who survived the Novogrudok slaughters and the tunnel escape, as well as every Jew who survived the Holocaust, had to have been helped at some point by a non-Jew. While we don’t know most of their names, we do know of their kindness, courage, and morality.

In Judaism, “Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” Gratitude is offered to all those whose conscience led them to save 130 worlds, the survivors of the Novogrudok tunnel escape. As a result of their goodness and their courage, almost 700 descendants of the tunnel escape also owe their lives to them and to the partisans they were helped to reach.

It has been said that “courage does not always roar. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day.” I want to salute all the quiet voices of the Righteous Gentiles of Novogrudok, as well as the rescuers of every Holocaust survivor. May they serve as reminders of the best of mankind and continue to give us hope that goodness may yet triumph over evil.

Elie Wiesel refers to Righteous Gentiles as those “whose spirit of sacrifice saved mankind’s honor” during the Holocaust. May the memory of their spirit now help us preserve humanity’s honor in this current painful moment.  ■