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There was a happy ending to the journey I made to my village eighteen months ago.
I was the first Jewish person to visit it since the war. I was born in a village called Volchin, near Brest, which belonged to Poland before the war. It was a sad experience hearing the stories of how much my family suffered during the war and how they were tortured before they were killed.
The worst day of my life was when I found a grave of 395 Jewish people from the village.
When my husband and I visited that grave I promised the people in the grave that when I returned home I would do everything in my power to make sure that they would have a memorial stone in Israel, like the rest of the Jewish people in Europe that were murdered by the Nazis.
When my husband and I returned home, I wrote a letter to my cousin in Israel and told him all that I had heard and seen in the village and the grave I had found. I asked him to contact the rest of the survivors in Israel to tell them about my visit and suggest that we do something about it. I wrote a letter to one of the survivors who lives in the USA, telling her about my visit.
A few weeks later I had a telephone call from her. She wanted to know and hear more about the visit to Volchin. We both felt very sad and cried, because she lost all her family. Then her husband said that we must do something about it --to me it was like music to my ears. I could not believe that my dream would come true, quicker than one would have expected. I told him to contact my cousin in Israel. Months followed and things started to move. I received from my cousin a plan of the memorial stone. When I actually saw the plans I could not hold my tears back, but of course, this time they were tears of happiness that at last, after 50 years, my family and the Jewish people of my village would have a resting place in Israel. I know it was my dream and strong ambition to do something for my people, but of course without the help and generosity of Hanna and Mike Kremer it would still be a dream. They donated the money for the stone.
It is hard for me to find the right words to thank them, but I would like to thank them from the bottom of my heart on behalf of the survivors and the people who lay in that grave or were buried in other places.
