The forest is my hospital "

Recently our daughter and her husband and two children went abroad. The hardest thing was to leave with his grandchildren. If you saw these boys, you would understand me!

But that's what I want to tell. They drove to the airport on three machines: things, belongings, children, suitcases. What is called for permanent residence. One of the cars, it led our own grandmother-in-law, on the way from Jerusalem drove to our city, to a three-year Muli said goodbye to grandfather (I) and the second to take her grandmother (my wife) in Lod on the wires. We arrived, sat with us and departed. And I stayed.

our daughter in Lode (Muli mom) asked my mother (my wife) stay a little longer with the second grandmother, so she is very agitated. She pobyla. We come back to us, drank tea, and then my wife remembered that she had in Jerusalem have a case, and they both went into the evening. And having arrived, that's what the wife told me.

The trek was easy, we went to the library with Russian books, changed the old portion of the subscription to the new literature, then stopped at a cash some Philharmonic, extended subscription, and then she invited our grandmother grandmother home.

Women talk leave aside, for me, as always, lack of time, the lesson soon, write "to live". And even in the editing not have a minute.

Inside, the apartment at that grandmother was standing on a table wooden sculpture (a thing, of course, not permitted by the Torah, but now is not about that). And carved plinth (in Russian) "Forest is my hospital." Language proved to be Polish.

Short retelling of the story. Father-in-law of our grandmother, Arkady L. Feldman, during the war, was seriously wounded. It happened June 26, 1941 at Bialystok, Poland. He was 19 years old.

I woke up in a hut, where he dragged the local farmers, villagers buzzards. They said that the Germans finished off the wounded, and he and several men left in the field, saying that they killed.

In a tent, he spent just over a month, and his companions in the same huts in the same forest. Poles are taking care of them, they changed the bandages brought clothes, food. Somehow out. And then sadly announced that tomorrow it consists of Germans and they were warned that if they find the Russian - the whole village will be shot. Especially if you find a Jew - and the fact that he was a Jew, you knew all this can not hide, why the Soviet soldiers have to go, sorry.

We parted with tears. A little boy asked Feldman, who made the two crutches: You're leaving the hospital? He said, now the forest is my hospital.

Made his way to her. And its rolled to Moscow and the Volga. That was Feldman on broken legs almost two thousand kilometers. And he went to Tver to the end of October. Yes, the road passed by his village, where I came from - the village Selib that at Berezino, between Mogilev and Minsk. Even I went into it, where he learned that his entire family with his father, mother and six children were shot. He remained only, so even an older sister, who had married before the war and, as it turned out, had time to evacuate.

Once their was questioned Smersh. Everyone who was with him, were taken and possibly shot, and he was sent to the hospital, because even the NKVD did not occur to suspect a Jew that he was a German spy.

Lie down on the hospital, his leg healed, he remained in the army as a volunteer. Then he served as an officer of visual intelligence, or as it is called. The war ended in Berlin, where he remained in occupation parts. There and his wife currently I brought from Dnepropetrovsk. And continued to serve until Khrushchev was not demobilized.

I am receiving, by the way, retired as a war veteran. And in 1995, he moved to his granddaughter (it's our mother-in-law and daughter-grandmother of our narrator) in Israel. But before his family was in the Holy Land, he received in 1988 a letter from Poland. Wrote those residents most buzzard. For a long time it looked for and finally found and invited to him to visit the manner of man. He went, taking with him his daughter (our grandmother).

We arrived. Joy had a lot of the people there are friendly, many of his remembers. Especially the former boy who was saying goodbye to him, asking where he will now be treated. It was he who ran continuously from the village to the hut, wearing all that could please the sick soldiers. And it was crying when he went into the forest.

For 47 years, all grown up, the boy became known in Poland woodcarver. And she presented him with one of his works. Immediately asked not to disclose of securities. Get to Bialystok, we'll see. Where there, our grandmother, then still a young woman - and now it will give odds to many - it was immediately pulled out of the wrappers in the car. Sculpture centimeters in size 30. Just a soldier in the Soviet form of spikes on the sides, the bandages on all sides. And the face - very similar to his face, turned out to be such a talented carver, many years have passed, and he remembered all the details.

Well, he settled in Israel. I went to draw a military pension. He said that we need a paper from the military hospital of the time, information about injuries and other accounting, which, of course, never happened, because it is not designed anything when rushed to the hospital bed back to the front.

Said apply through the courts. Again, nothing happened. After a couple of useless appeals our grandmother - and she already had a grandmother - has decided to take on hearing the wooden crafts. And even cutting of the Polish newspaper describing their visit to the village of saviors.

And the miracle happened! Israeli court a newspaper article together with the demonstration of a wooden image received as evidence and sentenced him to a military pension, which in those days were not small money.

All final.

What I see here a conclusion, except for the story of the heroism of the Jewish man who fought against fascism? That's what. All the years that mister Reb Aharon ben Aryeh Leib, who is also Feldman, had to live in Israel, he provided himself, living on a higher pension. This removed the economic power of the family, and when his grandson decided to study on their own are not in a regular school, and in the yeshiva, which cost some money, nobody objected. So we can say that the pension has helped our son-in to become what he became in the end - the rabbi, who was invited to teach in a foreign Kollel. Who helped this part? Polish farmers, who saved him from death. And a simple sculpture, carved from Bialystok beech.

And one more important, it seems to me, a moment. I once pointed out here that the majority of my texts are written in one thing - they do not hurt each other. But sometimes, they say, I write on other topics, for the expansion of the total Jewish outlook. Today? Where is the ethics of the Torah?

And that's where.

Feldman who rescued and out? Who worried about him? Who then almost half a century later to find him, and invited me to visit? - The most simple poles. And our huge thanks to them. (It is necessary to Yad Vashem request. Village buzzards have listed in the list of the righteous? After all, the Jew carried from the battlefield!)

So speak now about Polish anti-Semitism. Gd gave the world so that all people will be from the heart to help the Jews, if they deserve.

We deserve!