"Thanks to this rebellion I am alive."
Yossi Chen (Photo: Reuven Castro)
At the age of 6, Yosef Hinitz woke up next to his family in the Lahva ghetto, on a morning that was going to change his life.
"My mother gave me a coat and told me, 'You will still have enough time to sleep.' Let's hope in his eyes to break through.
Later that morning, the Jews of Lehva - a forgotten ghetto whose story is known to few, dared to do an unimaginable act: fight the Nazis, and become one of the first ghettos to gather courage and start a rebellion.
Khava, now in the territory of Belarus, had a small, simple and swampy town, near the Pripyat River.
Between the two world wars it was part of Poland.
In 1939 it was occupied by the army of the Soviet Union, and about two years later, about two weeks after the start of Operation Barbarossa, it was occupied by Nazi Germany.
The inhabitants of the town worked mainly as blacksmiths or cobblers, butchers or fishermen, as bookkeepers and watchmakers.
Before the war, about 1,200 Jews lived there, a third of its population, who studied Hebrew at the "Yavna" school, were helped by two Hebrew libraries located in the municipality and prayed in three synagogues.
The youth joined one of the many Zionist youth movements in the town, ranging from Shomer Hatzair on the left to Beitar on the right. There were Orthodox religious people in the town, including a Hasidic minority, a branch of Bnei Akiva and even communists. It's hard to imagine, but according to Yossi Chen, Hebrew was very common in the town, And many talked about it.
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Chassidim, Bnei Akiva disciples and communists.
A memorial to a Jewish farmer who perished in the Holocaust (photo: official website, David Shai)
He himself was born in 1936 in the same town, the son of a father who worked in the forests and a housewife mother.
A few years later he had a little brother.
In fact, his first memories as a young child are from the reality of war.
He remembers how his daily life was suddenly interrupted.
The many youth movements stopped working;
The same goes for the "Yavna" school, the Hebrew libraries and the cultural life, which were lost in an instant.
On July 9, 1941, the day after the farm was captured by the Nazis, the 41-year-old Dov Loftin, until then the chairman of the Zionist Organization in the city and one of the leading businessmen in the city, was announced as the head of the Judenrat there. A few months later, on the eve of Passover, 2,350 Jews were transferred to the ghetto, Some are residents of the town and some are refugees who were brought to the place from the neighboring towns. Each person was allowed to take a package with him. Some of the Jews only took a package of unleavened bread. There Loftin proved his talent: he spoke to the Nazi policemen in their language, managed to "tame" them, as Yossi describes it, and avoid expenses It is said that until the day of the uprising, not a single Jew was murdered in the Lahva ghetto.
Everyday life was suddenly interrupted.
A map of the ghetto for a farmer (photo: official website, public domain)
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During our conversation at his home in Ramat Hasharon, Yossi rarely uses the term "fear".
He dismissively states that it is only an emotion.
who overcome him.
Even at the age of 5, when he encountered the Nazis for the first time, he was not afraid.
"The distance between the house and the ghetto was several hundred meters," he recalls.
"They dressed me in a coat, and underneath it I hid things from the house. Three Germans stopped me, asked me what I was doing, made me open my coat and everything fell out."
The hard work and overcrowding left a mark on Yossi's memory, but food was actually smuggled into the ghetto frequently.
"Hunger didn't get to me, apparently the smuggled bread got to me," he says, pausing for a moment to ask if I and the photographer I was with wanted something to drink.
We politely decline.
"We were in the ghetto for six months," Yossi continues.
"People smuggled things, there was a trade in bread and fish. Then came rumors that something was happening in the area."
These rumors were about a mass slaughter of Jews in the area.
Organizations of members of youth movements began even then.
At first only five people, who were led by Yitzhak Rochchin, a sharp and charismatic young man who served as the head of the Beitar branch in the town.
The term "fear" is rarely used.
Yossi Chen (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Holocaust and Heroism Day schedule (photo: Walla! system, no)
On September 3, 1942, Germans and the local police surrounded the Lakhava ghetto.
Luftin learned that the Nazis were going to murder the Jews of the ghetto.
He was told that he, his family, the other members of the Judenrat, the ghetto doctor and 30 other people of his choice would remain alive.
He refused.
"Either we all live, or we all die," he stated.
Yossi emphasizes: "The goal of the rebellion was not to defeat the German army, simply not to go as sheep to the slaughter. The intention was to save as many people as possible. No one thought of how to defeat the German army, the goal was to be saved first, to save as many as possible."
Planning the rebellion was not simple.
Where there are two Jews there are three opinions, and in the ghetto the farmer had many more.
Rochchin called for battle that very night.
"We have nothing to lose", his words were later quoted, "it is better to fall running from a ball than to run to the grave".
He was supported by some residents, but Loftin asked to wait, and so it was until the morning hours.
"It is better to fall running from a ball than to run to the grave."
Rochchin (photo: official website, public domain)
When dawn broke, the Jews ran out of their homes in order to escape, but guards were posted on all the fences.
In front of the shocked eyes of 6-year-old Yossi, for the first time, stood the cold barrel of a rifle, aimed directly at him.
Eventually the Jews gathered in a narrow alley inside the ghetto and watched the SS soldiers enter.
The Nazis' intention was clear to them - to bring all the residents of the ghetto to the pits, which had already been prepared in advance.
But the Germans who broke into the ghetto were surprised to encounter the Jews, who did the last thing they expected of them: fight.
The Jews had no firearms.
They fought with sticks, sticks, rakes.
They had a spark of hope, which they turned into a burning fire.
The commander of the rebellion, Rochchin, hit a German in the head with an axe.
Minutes later, he was shot dead.
"This is where the opposition arose," Yossi says with a kind of pride.
"As a soldier, I know one thing, when you make a plan and everything goes well, it's great, but when your plan is disrupted, there is a terrible commotion," explains Yossi.
"In my estimation, the main achievement in this rebellion, which did not last more than half an hour, was that we disrupted the Germans' plan. Andralmusia was created. They started shooting in all directions and we tried to save our lives."
Loftin set fire to the Judenrat house he commanded.
The youth of the ghetto listened to him and set fire to the rest of the ghetto houses and the warehouses where the confiscated property was kept.
Yossi held his father's hand, while his mother held his younger brother in her arms.
This was the last time he saw them.
"Terrible urges began and my hand was severed from my father's," he recalled.
"A mass escape started through the fences. The Germans just shot at people."
The Jews started running, and 6-year-old Yossi ran alone into the unknown.
Run alone into the unknown.
Yossi Chen as a child (Photo: Reuven Castro)
"I don't remember anything that was in my head," Yossi repeated.
"I felt danger. I don't remember if I ran out of instinct or because I wanted to look for my father. I don't even remember if I was scared or not. I only remember people falling and not getting up, or people falling, getting up, then falling and not getting up. I wasn't hurt I saw people turning to the left, so I also turned to the left, I got out of the range of fire little by little."
During the experience he felt real fear for the first time, in the shadow of an unexpected threat.
A farmer outside the town was angry at the fleeing Jews who dared to run on her lawn.
It is not known if she even knew at those moments about the horrors they fled from, but she decided to chase after them with a rake, which was burned into Yossi's mind - perhaps because of the tangibility of the danger, which even a 6-year-old child can understand.
Half an hour later, he was already far away.
"I was almost alone in an open field," he recalls.
"Suddenly I saw my uncle tens of meters away. I started shouting his name and he didn't hear me. But then someone passed by, he heard me and ran towards my uncle, said something to him and then my uncle came to me and took me. Thanks to him I'm actually alive" .
Yossi's uncle, Hirsch-Leib, took him under his wing and they both started running towards the woods.
"He asked me to take off my coat and I did as he wished," he recalled, "after some time I asked where the coat was and he replied that he had thrown it away, so that it would be easier to run. Then I cried terribly, I fell apart."
During their escape, they met other Jews who managed to escape, and then they hear that someone saw Yossi's father.
They searched for him for a long time in the river area, trying to ignore the bone-piercing cold and avoid encounters with a hostile population, Germans or collaborators.
The next day, Friday, they found him.
Yossi testifies that the first words his father shouted when they met again were "There is no God" in Yiddish.
Yossi's parents (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Immediately after the uprising, they began hunting for the fleeing Jews, mainly with the help of collaborators and local residents.
"Like those who helped us, there were also others who received a kilo of sugar or a kilo of salt for each Jew's head," Yossi pointed out.
"When we were outside the ghetto we had to overcome three things. One is fear, it's just an emotion, you can overcome it," he smiles.
"The second is hiding or shelter. The third thing is the cold. We overcame the hunger. We ate oat grains, currants. I went to 'snore' farms in the area, I always had an older person with me. There were farmers who went out to work in the field and I looked after the cow or the pig for them , so in the summer I would go out and work there, and get a slice of bread, cheese or milk."
After some time on the run, Yossi lost his uncle while holding his hand.
"We got out of the swamp, we started walking, we only heard one shot and that was it," he recalled.
"My father grabbed me and threw me behind a bush, we hid a few meters from the person who shot my uncle. He asked him if he had any money, looked in his pockets, found nothing. My uncle shouted 'kill me' in Russian. He shot him two more shots , and that's it."
It was another one of the few times he admits he was scared.
"I remember my teeth chattering, I thought it was cannon fire. I know for sure I was scared then. I don't remember any fear during the escape, but then I remember being scared."
He and his father were left alone, but never separated.
In total, about 650 Jews were killed in the fighting or in the flames, and about 500 more were taken to the dug pits and shot there, but about 1,000 Jews managed to break through the ghetto fences.
About 400 of them were killed by the Nazis, and about 600 ended up in the forest.
Even among the escapees there were many who were caught or imprisoned, and met their death.
About 120 joined the partisan forces, including Loftin himself, who was killed two years later by a mine.
14 Nazi soldiers were also killed in that small rebellion in Lahva.
In July 1944, almost two years after the uprising, the town was liberated by the Red Army.
"I try to tell as much as possible."
Yossi Chen from Shya Mashua at the memorial ceremony at Yad Vashem, 2021 (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Only about 100 of the escapees remained alive at the end of the war, about three years after that rebellion.
Yossi is the youngest of them, and among the last ones left alive.
He immigrated to Israel at the age of 12 and lived in Holon, where his father's sister was found.
He studied at Kadori School, was in Shomer Hatzair and enlisted in the IDF. He then transferred to Unit 504 in the Intelligence Division, and from there he continued to serve for a long time in the Mossad. Today he lives in Ramat Hasharon with his wife, to whom he has been married for 60 years, and together they are the parents of three daughters, and grandparents to nine grandchildren.
To this day, the story of Ghetto Lekhava remains on the margins of the stories from those shocking years. Yossi does not have a single explanation for it, but he clings to a solution. "I try to tell as much as possible," he says almost with a promise, ending with a message. Lived, following the disruption of the Germans' plan, thanks to unity - how important that is today," states Yossi. "It was something organized, by a group, an organization, a community.
Everything was in full cooperation."
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