The German enemy was now at the very gates of the "Jerusalme of Lithuania"...the city of Vilna. The beaten Russian Army of the Northwest Front was in rapid retreat. All roads were clogged with people in flight. Soldatn, on foot and on horseback, were running like the devil, one after another, with such recklessness, as though the earth was burning beneath their feet. Everywhere they robbed, murdered, and burned, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction.

And now they were all converging, like dark storm-clouds, from all sides, on the small village of Rakov, which lay on the road to Minsk and Smolensk. The air in the village was filled with the clamor of voices; shouts, screams and curses, which rose from the throats of thousands of soldiers, mixed with the cracking of whips and the neighing of horses. Heavy transports, wagons laden with cases of ammunition, and convoys laden with provisions, thundered over the old stone bridge with sparks flying from their iron wheels. The roads shook, and the windows trembled in Jewish houses...

Mixed in with the confused masses of retreating soldiers, there were thousands of refugees, the homeless, the greater portion of them Jews. Whole villages had taken flight, with their religious leaders and leading citizens at the head.....whole families travelled on foot, old and young, holding their small children by the hands, their older ones by their sides, all of them weighted down with baggage.

An old Jew with a dishevelled appearance trudged down the road, carrying in his arms a Torah-scroll, wrapped in an old, yellow prayer-shawl. He must have rescued it, at great personal risk, from a burning synagogue somewhere, which the retreating Russian soldiers had set afire.

A Rabbi with a peaceful expression and a long beard, carried under his arm an old gemorrah. He must have been right in the middle of a difficult passage, when he had been suddenly interrupted in the midst of his studies. The Rabbi seemed pre-occupied, his brow deeply furrowed, as though in spite of everything, he was still immersed in the tangled reasoning of the Tanna'im.

A working-class Jew, with a sweating face covered in stubble, led an animal by a rope. The animal looked out with such confused, frightened eyes, as though she understood and shared the tragedy of her Jewish master.

An old Jewess, who could barely shlep her feet, carried in one hand her most treasured possession: a "tzeneh-urenneh", and a little book of supplications by Sarah bat Tovim, tied up in a kerchief, as though she were just returning with them from synagogue. And in the other hand, she clutched a tied-up hen, probably one she'd raised herself.

Young women, whose husbands had long since gone off to war, carried in their arms there tired little "chicks". Beside them walked their older children, bent under the weight of heavy bags and suitcases, which were bigger than they themselves.

And so they came, all together. Most of them were on foot, the richest once having rented peansants’ horses and wagons, and loaded up their most essential posessions, their precious heirlooms, which they had hastily rescued at the last minute. Up on top, on a pile of suitcases, pillows, and blankets, a small child would be sitting in his mother’s lap, or his grandmother’s or grandfather’s. The men, with dark, unshaven faces, walked beside the wagons, holding on by the railings.

The whole Rakov market was packed with wagons, strewn with luggage, bundles, baggage from the army of homeless. From a distance, you would think the great crowd had come together here for some kind of a country fair. But when you got close enough you could see that no one was here to buy and sell...instead, they were escaping, some barely with their lives, from cruel misfortune. Their frightened eyes and dark faces described the turmoil they were going through. From every direction, you could hear groaning and moaning.

They sat on the wagons, on the ground, or on their baggage, like beggars...weak, hungry, and thirsty. Each one was looking for something with which to still his hunger. This one chewed on a dry piece of bread; that one, a cucumber; others, a beet - whatever they had hastily brought along as last-minute provisions.

Everyone went to the water-barrels, with pots, with copper vessels, with tea-pots. The barrels were mobbed, and the water was soon gone. But the thirsty crowd could not tear themselves away from the empty barrels. They kicked and shoved, pushing each other with fists and elbows. They all but tore the wooden barrels to pieces.

The Rakover Jews, seeing how their market square had suddenly, in broad daylight been taken over by a great Jewish exile caravan of need, hunger, loneliness, and despair.....were overcome by a sense of dread: the appearnce of these Jewish homeless had brought with it the dark premonition, that their own hour of reckoning was close at hand! They suddenly felt that the ground underneath their feet had shaken....even though they were still, at that moment, established householders with shops and homes, they could already see, that the same fate was awaiting them.

Soon the whole village of Rakov was caught up in the same turmoil. People couldn't decide what to do first... Jewish mothers rushed to their young daughters, in whose beauty they had so recently taken great pride, and covered them with rags...locked them in dark cellars, to hide them from the hungry soldiers' eyes....and everyone huddled behind locked doors and shutters.

And in the minds of the village Jews, there arose the painful question: was it now their turn to abandon their homes and set off on the road, to run with wife and children to wherever they feet could carry them?

But who should we really be running from? From the distant enemy, the German....or should we be more worried about the more immediate danger....the Russian soldire, the Don-Kuban Cossack and Siberian, who had been whipped into a frenzy day-in and day-out by the Black Hundreds and the anti-semitic press, with slanders and accusations against the Jews: "The Jews are sending messages to the Germans from their synagogues"; someone claimed to have found, in the beard of a Jew, a hidden telephone; "Jewish soldiers are surrendering en masse to the enemy"; "The Jews have stolen all the gold in the Russian Treasury and buried it in the ground", etc.

And as clear proof, that the Jews had secret telephones, they would "discover" the "eruv", which every Jewish village possessed, and which served to permit one, on Sabbath, to carry his prayer-shawl to the House of Study, and after prayers, to carry the Sabbath lunch from the neighboring bakery. And for those "secret Jewish telephones", more than one Rabbi and more than one ordinary Jew had already paid with their lives.

These vicious slanders, which had been intentionally spread among the people and in the army against the Jews, had already led to tragic results: more than one pogrom, more than one fire that the Russian soldiers and Cossacks had carried out in the Jewish towns and villages which lay near the front, especially in Poland and Galicia.

Those who had houses facing the market were the first to start packing: the quilts, pillows, the brass and copper, the silverware and such. Any other valuables, which they couldn’t take with, they went out at night and buried in a hole. The wives and children, especially with the adolescent daughters, together with their luggage, were sent off to the big city of Minsk a distance of some 30 to 35 kilometers. There, in the big city, they hoped, one might be more certain of his life.

The fathers, meanwhile, stayed put, to wait until "this too shall pass", in case the army should stop retreating, and the "state of emergency" should be called off. In that case, one might bring one’s wife and children back again. And if not, he could at least save a remnant from his meager possessions, the merchandise in his shop...

And so they stood in their shops with frightened eyes, white faces and pounding hearts, and pretended not to see as the blond Cossacks and Russian soldiers took from the shelves whatever they saw, on the authority of the "Tsar Batyoushka" and the "Holy Fatherland"....and meanwhile, pale trembling Jewish lips whispered a prayer:

"Lord of the Universe, spare me my life and I will relinquish all my property...."

From the House of Study we could hear the thundering of the heavily-loaded wagons of the retreating Russian Army, and the clamour of the retreating armies of the homeless. My friend Yankel Novoradocker and I, both of us with false passports, were sitting there the whole time, supposedly studying the Gemorrah....but in fact, we were immersed in all kinds of illicit reading material....Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian books. We quickly put down our gemorrahs....and also, the other books, and forgot about our pupils, from whom we had been earning such a "comfortable" livelihood. We rushed off to the village market. There, sitting and lying everywhere, on the ground, on their baggage, were hundreds of Jewish homeless, who reminded us of the "Exile of Judah" by the Rivers of Babylon.

In that moment, we completely forgot about our constant fear of beeing apprehended as "rabbits", deserters, and being sent to the front. We mixed freely with the homeless, as thought we were the "guests of honor" at this bizarre "wedding". In the faces and in the eyes of these broken, unhappy people who had escaped from fire and sword, we coulds see our own parents, our own brothers and sisters....who for all we knew, at this moment might also have been standing outdoors in a strange market.

With all our youthful fire, we threw ourselves into the work of bringing the necessities of life, to help as best we could to aid and comfort the faint, the weak, and the hungry.

Above all, we began hauling buckets of water from the river, bringing hot, steaming pots of tea and loaves of bread from the neighboring hourses. Soon we were canvassing the whole village, going from door to door, mobilizing Jewish homes and hearts to carry out the relief work. The Rakover Jews, descendants of generations of Sons of Mercy, responded warmly to our appeals. Every householder agreed to take in as many homeless as he possibly could. vifiel er hot nor gekennt. More than one of them contributed the very pillow from his own head...many gave up their own beds, their own piece of bread, for the sick and the weak. Other homeless were lodged in the two Houses of Study, and in the cold synagogue. But as for the majority, we could only watch sadly as they went off on the road again.

And then the flood of refugees came to a halt. The Russian-German front had stabilized a little closer to the village, and now both armies were digging new trenches, in which to spend the second winter of the war.