-

VFVUNARrielM'a,M,

brothers, serving together as parti-
sans in the forest. Their job, he says,
was to "blow up trains and bridges,
destroy crops, destroy anything we
can so it wouldn't go to the
Germans. We dumped grain in
rivers and blew up a milk factory"
Abe survived the war, as he always
believed that he would. None of his
siblings did.
In 1948, Abe settled in Windsor
and worked for the Chrysler Corp.,
raised a family, and remembered.
One of his dreams: to return for the
sefer Torah that he had hidden.
Originally, the scroll had been
used at the synagogue in Nacha.
Then it came to the Asner house,
which hosted a regular minyan.
Because it had been part of his
home, Asner felt especially protec-
tive toward the sefer Torah and was
determined to see to its care. When
he became a prisoner in the Radom
Ghetto, Asner even managed to
sneak in the scroll, where he kept it
in a secret spot for safekeeping.
Jewish life was important in the
ghetto, he says. "Before Pesach, in
1942, we used to make matzah,
though if they caught us they would
have killed everybody. We went out to
cut wood from the fences to use to

[make the fire] to bake the
matzah."
When he traveled to Radom,
Asner went looking for that sefer
Torah; those who watch the
documentary will learn its fate.
For Asner, the trips back to
the Poland of his youth were
startling. Nothing looked
familiar.
"It's a closed book for me
there now," he says. "I went to
look for the sefer Torah and
for my three brothers [who
had been killed in the forests].
I wanted to bury them in a
cemetery But I couldn't find
them. I give up with this now.
"Where there used to be
large trees, there's nothing. My
mother's house, now it's nothing —
nothing but a pile of rotten wood
with some bricks. When my daugh-
ter Cheryl saw it, she started to cry"
"I was so excited about seeing the
house," Wiener says. "But it was
nothing, empty and caved in. I took
a few things — I don't know why
— pieces of brick and shutter, and a
piece of wallpaper."
Wiener describes much of what
she saw as empty, filled only with
haunting memories, like the wallpa-

Right: The documentary
"There Once Was a Town" traces
the lives of four survivors of Eishishok.
Here, Asner, center, with his cousin
Reuven Paikovsky of Israel, converses
with a local townswoman.

per, of a vanished world. "The old
Jewish cemetery, where most of the
European Asners had been buried, is
a school now," she says. "How can
people be so callous?"
Her first impression of Lithuania:
"Everything was lacking in color.
The security officers at the airport
were all in green and looked very
regimented, very scary. I was afraid
to even breathe."
And as she stepped outside, out of
the airport, she realized it was
warm. But she couldn't feel it.

"Wherever I went, I saw death in
front of me," she says. "I saw mass
graves, I imagined I heard people
walkinc, to their deaths."
Yet now she understands her par-
ents, and her own life, much better,
she says. The missing pieces have
been filled.

❑

There Once Was a Town airs 10

p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1, on
WTVS-Channel 56.

Above: When he became a prisoner in the
Radom Ghetto, Asner managed to sneak in a
sefer Torah, which he hid in a secret spot in this
house for safekeeping. Of the trip, he says, "I
went to look for the sefer Torah and for my three
brothers who had been killed in the forestsJ. I
wanted to bury them in a cemetery"

Left: Cheryl Gold and Abe Asner on
the way to Eishishok: "It's a closed
book for me there now," he says.

9/29
2000

R49