The Last Partisan: "I Put on Tefillin Even with the Partisans, I Didn't Want to Lose the Next World"

In a special project of Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper for Holocaust Remembrance Day marked last week, the extraordinary story of the last partisan, 92-year-old Abraham Aviel Lipkonsky, was presented. Currently a widower, father of three, grandfather to nine and great-grandfather to seven.

Abraham was born in Dougalishok, Poland (now Belarus) and was in the Radun ghetto. He was taken to a killing pit and watched his mother and younger brother die. Abraham escaped, hiding in pits and a bunker in the forest. After witnessing his older brother's murder, he joined the partisans in Puszcza, fighting the Nazi occupation of Europe during World War II. Despite all the horrors he experienced and witnessed, he managed to maintain his Jewish identity, pray, and even keep kosher.

He begins his story like this: "It happened on May 10, 1942. Crowds of people and myself among them. We were all forced to sit. We sat row after row. Anyone who tried to raise their head was shot at, or beaten with a club or baton. They took a row, family after family, brought them to the pit. Then machine guns, a burst of gunfire, and they fell inside. I was in the back rows. I was on my knees. My mother held me by my right hand and my little brother, Kutiel, whom we called Kuschka, by her left. She said, "Children, say 'Shema Yisrael' and die as Jews." And her words wouldn't stick to me. They wouldn't stick."

Abraham continues to describe how at that moment everything stopped for him. "I'm not thinking. I'm only thinking about what will happen in a moment, or how to survive. No feelings. It's not a state where one can think, let's say, rationally. Everything is automatic. Even the escape, it's not out of thought. I was uprooted from the place because I saw my older brother, Pinchas, Pinke. My brother 'pushed' me. Without thinking. No thoughts. My eyesight was apparently good. I'm sitting and looking and see Pinne from afar leaving with others in a row heading to the road... As soon as I saw Pinne, I yelled to my mother, 'Pinne is alive' and left her. I didn't say goodbye. To this day, I say goodbye to her. I started running to him. On all fours, on my knees, crawling and getting up, crawling and getting up. I ran away. Not because of me. Because of my brother, who pulled me with... cords of love. I left my mother and ran to the road. And I'm getting away from the pit and I hear ratatatatattat, ratatatat. Shooting. At whom are they shooting? At humans."

"I ran to the road and joined my brother. We returned to the ghetto. Death shadows everywhere. We got home, took the tefillin and the prayer book. Me and Pinke. Each with his own tefillin. And a few slices of dried bread that we had. I kept the tefillin on my body all the time. Even with the partisans. I would sit among tall bushes as if relieving myself, quickly pray, put on the tefillin, and done. I remembered that one who does not put on tefillin has no life in the next world. I did not want to lose the next world."

Abraham and his older brother decided not to stay in the ghetto and look for their father, hoping he was still alive: "It took two weeks until we found Dad. A farmer told us, 'Your father is alive'. How was the meeting? Without talking. It was two weeks after the slaughter. Dad knew what happened. No need to tell him. He guided us on how to live in the forest, how to ask for food. We would ask for a slice of bread, a bit of milk, or a potato. But no meat. We kept kosher."

After joining the partisans, Abraham suggested to his father to come with him, but he refused. "Three to four weeks later, I came again. I didn't find him anymore. The white Poles, the Polish underground, Armia Krajowa, killed him... I knew it; I was left alone."

In May 1945, Abraham decided to make his way to Israel: "I was not a Zionist. I didn't know what Zionism was. The Germans taught me what Zionism was. In the pit, with Dad, I discovered there were Jews in Israel. A Gentile brought us a newspaper in Polish, in the German spirit. The Germans described in the paper that the British support the Jews. This was the first information about the existence of Israel in my eyes. It connected me with my mother's words. I said if we die as Jews — all the more so, to live".

At the end of the war, Abraham was in a youth aliyah house in Selvino. The illegal immigrant ship he sailed on was captured and he was exiled to Cyprus, where he met his wife Ayala, may she rest in peace. In 1946 he immigrated to Israel, was in the sixth battalion of the Palmach, and fought his way to Jerusalem.

Abraham testified at Eichmann's trial in Israel after he was captured. About the scene, he says: "I didn't pity him and I didn't get angry at him. At that moment, I only saw and remembered how my mother took me by her right hand and my younger brother by her left and said we should say 'Shema Yisrael'. He didn't speak to me. What my mother said and what was around, in the pit, spoke to me. Human beings, children, infants, elderly being beaten. Someone moved aside, he was beaten. Someone had no strength, they beat him. Threw him. Not the person in the cage. Towards Eichmann, I felt nothing. As if there stood not even an animal. Dead. Apparently, I understood one thing - several people testified before me, either they collapsed or burst into tears - my testimony must be heard clearly. And when I reached the points where I wanted to burst into tears, I bit my lips. I restrained myself so that I could tell."

To this day, Abraham keeps the tefillin given to him by his mother: "The tefillin went with me through all the way, through all the pits, through fire and water. I almost didn't put on tefillin since I came to Israel. 12 years ago, when I went to Dougalishok and Radun, I put it on, I think maybe for the first time, over the mass grave of my mother and Kuschka. And I said, 'Mom, it's your son, Avrahamle, I haven't parted from you. I came to tell you that I'm living as a Jew, I'm living as a Jew in Israel, and I have children, grandchildren, a remnant remains of the family'".