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World Jewish News
Life and Death of Belyi Pit Mine
02.05.2009
There are such mournful dates that cannot be erased from people's memory neither for years nor for centuries. It's been 67 years since the time when Jewish ghetto in the city of Yuzovka (now Donetsk) was destroyed.
On the night of the 30th April/1st May 1942, the ghetto that had been existing for two months, was sent to its last journey from the Belyi (white) pit mine, a place in today's Lenin district of the city. None of the thousands of Jews were spared. Everyone was thrown alive down the pit of the mine 4/4 bis'.
An enormous granite stone was mounted in the former Belyi pit mine 3 years ago as a commemorative sign to Holocaust victims.
Soft music is interlacing with traffic noise (there is a busy Lenin avenue nearby) and roaring of lawn mowers. Scores of people have assembled for a mourning gathering, children, young people, and war survivers among them.
Efim Gelfond, the present Head of the Council of Minor Prisoners of War, spent two years and seven months in the concentration camp and ghetto. He saw everything. He will remember the massacre made by the German occupants and their home-bred accomplices till the day he dies.
Adressing the assembly on behalf of Donetsk Jewish community, Reb Reuven Milman bitterly said that swastika had appeared near his apartment a week earlier. His grandfather participated in the war, and his father together with the family was kept in the similar ghetto.
"We must have a goal - to never let it happen again. We have sacred words of the Torah given to us by God, and through these sacred words we were given the strength to defeat the enemy. For our life and our faith not to fade away. For us to wait the arrival of Moshiach. The dead will rise then, and we will, finally, see our relatives and friends."
A prayer is said in memory of those who are not with us. Pebbles are being placed to the commemorative sign. Music from Schindler's List movie is playing. Many people cannot hide their tears.
One of those who miraculously escaped death is whispering the words engraved into the granite stone: "May their souls rise."
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