Abraham Werses — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Avraham Werses – Which one of them? /Elisheva Cohen-Tzedek 

In the period following the declaration of the State of Israel, I turned on the radio, tuned into Kol Israel, and encountered a program in Yiddish for the first time, making daily attempts to hear something above the noise and distractions around me. Suddenly, I heard the familiar name of the newscaster, Avraham Werses, and immediately recalled the voice I had known long ago – from home.

I remembered Avremik, the redhead, and saw, before my eyes, the lines of one of the letters about our comrades who had fallen in battle against the Germans, which Michke Weiner had written to me prior to joining the Lithuanian division. In each letter, he would tell me about the guys from our crowd that he had met. He wrote: 'Today, Avremik, the redhead, made an appearance, after already having fought in various Russian units'. I had already heard about Avremik’s wounds sustained in Alexeyevka, but not what had happened to him afterwards. When I heard his voice on the radio, I recalled that, when I first visited my parents in Israel in 1981, the guys had told me that Abraham Werses had probably been arrested in Moscow.  I was sure that Avremke was talking in Yiddish on the radio, but when I met him, he said that I was mistaken, and corrected me. “No, it wasn’t me, it was my cousin who is also called Avraham and is also a Werses”. “But”, I said, “the voice was exactly the same as yours”. “That could be”, he said, and went on to explain that “there were four of us called Avremeleh Werses – four grandsons of grandfather Avram. Motel’s Avremel, Yankele’s Avremel, Avremel Lazarus and Avremel the redhead. One of them died at the hands of the Germans, two of them ran away and fought against the Germans and the last one, the one who spoke on Kol Israel, recently passed away. Before immigrating to Israel, he had had a taste of Stalin’s torture camps.

He had been arrested as an activist of HaShomer Hatzair in 1939. The redhead was arrested in 1947. I said, “Avremel, they probably arrested you for no apparent reason, as was prevalent during the Stalin era – it was not for any reason. You surely remember our state of mind after all our loved ones had been slaughtered by the Germans and the Lithuanian collaborators.

Thoughts raced through my head. We were proud to have participated and be part of the Red Army fighters, who strangled and exterminated those in brown uniforms. However, already then, we sensed antisemitism all around us. We thought about our fate, our people and the future. Avraham Werses was wounded in battle three times. He was in a military hospital in Moscow for eight months after which he was apparently released from there.  However, he was quickly recruited into a Russian unit. He even took part in the battles over Berlin and, at war’s end, he was in Prague and served till 1946, spending some of that time with a special unit necessitating a lot of traveling. He talked about his initial contacts with operatives from the Bricha (Escape) Movement: "At the end of 1944, when I returned to the front and was with my unit in Poland (I served at the headquarters and had access to documents, stamps and forms), I held the rank of major. On the outskirts of Warsaw, two young men approached me. One was wearing the uniform of a Polish officer and the other was in civvies. I immediately realized that they were both Jewish and that they knew more about me than I knew about myself.

Without further ado, they told me about the Bricha. I had already heard a little about this illegal organization which was set up to assist Jews reach Eretz Israel, but until then had never met anyone connected to it. The Polish officer was active in organizing the escapes. The other operative had been sent from Israel. They suggested that I work with them and that I should think about it. If I refused, they wouldn’t hold it against me, just not to give them away, as by doing so, hundreds of Jews would suffer. I asked how I could be of help and they responded with a request for a stamp for 24 hours. I acceded to their request and kept quiet about it". His answer astounded me as it was so unexpected.  How could this be? He was one of the most devoted soldiers of the Red Army and was also a Jew.

I didn’t say a word, but he could read the question in my eyes, and went on to say: "It was already 1944, Vilna had been liberated and, although I had not yet reached Vilna, I had been searching for those close to me. Friends had told me that none of my family had survived. Not a single one. You can imagine my mental state, particularly as I was living so far from Vilna. The war was still going on and the few remaining Jews were looking how to survive. So, perhaps it was still possible to help some of them. I took stock and did what the Bricha asked for. As I had no family left, this wouldn’t have any unwelcome repercussions on them.

I thought that, at such moments, Avremkeh was putting his life in danger. If he had been caught, he would not have been able to avoid a death sentence. Then I asked what had happened next.  "I would receive forms to be filled in, enabling Jews to leave the Soviet Union for Poland, from where they would continue to Eretz Israel. The war was already over. But then, after all the devastation and suffering our people had gone through, the gates to Palestine were closed to them. The Soviet Union did not release anyone except for foreigners. As for England – you surely remember that those declarations made by the British to the Jews who wanted to immigrate to Eretz Israel". I then asked him whether he, himself, had intended going. He said: "I wanted to and, as a Polish citizen, I perhaps could have, but the Bricha operatives asked me to stay in the Red Army for as long as I could". And then what? "I stayed until August 1944, serving in Moscow. Then in November 1947, I was arrested and imprisoned. Lubyanka betrayed me. By the way, he was one of ours, one of the ‘children of Israel’. I was judged in Vilna, sentenced to 10 years and sent to the far north, to a town called Inta where there were many camps. Six months later I was transferred to an even worse camp. This was where they transferred special prisoners, famous ones, such as the film directors Kepler and Fried; and Lenin’s secretary, a small man with a goatee just like Lenin, spoke like Lenin and was his close friend for many years; Prof. Viktor Moiseevich Dalin – I felt like an ignoramus in their company, but I tried to help them as much as I could". How could you help them? What was your job there? "At first, I was in the mines, where I suffered from hunger and cold but, although I am not a hero, I managed to survive. Our head bookkeeper, Pavel Vasilovich Aksyonov, who had been there from the thirties, quickly got me transferred. He was the father of the author Vasily Aksyonov, and husband of the author Yevgenia Ginzburg, and he took me to work with him in the bookkeeping department".

Stalin’s death expedited the release of Abrashke Werses from the Lager and, as a former Polish citizen he left the country and immigrated to Israel. For nine years, his plans for rebuilding his life had been put on hold. Then he met his wife, a sabra, had a son and daughter and grandchildren. Avraham was active and worked for the ORT network for many years. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for his work from President Ezer Weizman. During a conversation about life in the camps, Avraham once told me: "it cost me nine years of my youth, but it was worth it". This unexpected remark astounded me. Avremel explained that, if he hadn’t been through all that, he would not have been able to appreciate the good in life compared to the bad. Is it possible to forget that, every year on his birthday at the camp, he would receive a food parcel – fat, sweets, tobacco, and other goodies, together with a letter in Yiddish in which a number of lines had been redacted by the censors. It had been sent by a childhood friend, Nocha Korisky Schneider. On one occasion, she had sent him a photo of herself with her son, and added: Vobe and I are going to come and see you. I remember Nocha, our young friend from the Sofia Gurevich school, a lovely girl with long, blond plaits. After she and her husband returned to Vilna after the war, they worked in a shoe factory called Betts. They were ordinary workers and both of them were communists. She was an activist and was elected secretary of the Workers’ Committee at the factory. She was very proud and knew where she was heading. Have you ever heard of anyone who would dare to send a parcel to someone in one of Stalin’s camps who wasn’t a close relative? Parcels, letters, personal photographs with her son? This meant more to me than a million dollars. Nocha recently died in Vilna and she is remembered lovingly by everyone who knew her. Avraham talks about acquaintances, friendships and closeness with prisoners at the camp – generals in the Red Army with whom he would not normally have come in contact had it not been for Stalin who had wanted to get rid of them. Once the subject of famous people had been broached, he said: "undeniably, besides the white bears in the terrible conditions of captivity in the camps, I gained friends who were closer to me than brothers, and still are to this very day. I have been to Moscow twice in recent years, the second time with my wife. I didn’t have any free time – I was overwhelmed by my friends from the camps. Information was passed from one to the other about my arrival and, when we met, it was like a resurrection. Try to imagine how I felt.

Speaking of celebrities, I go back to the stories of my friend and his family. His grandfather, Shlomo Leib Werses, who lived in Antokol, Vilna, was a legendary figure. Besides being a contractor, he was an adjudicator and arbitrated between the tradesmen. He was renowned to Jews and Poles alike for his integrity. The Poles called him ‘the Messiah’. He had a long, white beard, didn’t need glasses or a walking stick, until the age of 95 when the Germans and their Lithuanian lackeys killed him in the Vilna Ghetto. They killed him and all his 15 children. 13 in Vilna, a daughter in Riga and a son in Peskov.

Abrashe: “Here, in Israel, we often hear about the famous professor from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Israel Prize recipient, Shmuel Werses”. Is he also a relative? He is a cousin and a professor of Hebrew Literature, but he also loves Yiddish – in a big way. He went to the Real Gymnasium in Vilna and was two years ahead of me. Don’t you remember him? He already had a name for himself then, and went to Israel in 1935. Once the war was over, I started writing to him from Moscow. This was possible just for a short while! In 1947, during my imprisonment in Moscow, I received a letter from him. Just imagine, my commander who returned the letter to him, had written on one corner of the envelope ‘has left’ in small letters, and on the other corner, also in small letters, that the addressee was ‘incarcerated’.

After my release, when I arrived in Israel, my relatives handed me a bouquet of flowers with the letter that my Russian commander had returned, thereby endangering himself. He was an honest man. Some time later, when I went to Russia, I looked for him but was unsuccessful. Can you believe it? asked Avremel. When I think about all that I have been through, I only remember the good things.

Would it have been possible for our people to have withstood the suffering and everything they had been through if they hadn’t had the special aptitude to see good and believe in the future?