Even more depressed and downcast were the village youth. They felt that they were being watched from all sides. They would get together less and less frequently, as though afraid to face one another.

I, the stranger, who carried the additional stigma of an assumed name, virtually stopped showing my face in the streets, never mind visiting a friend's house. I had the feeling, that when those worried mothers and fathers saw me going about free and sound in all my limbs, that they would be jealous of me; I didn't want to remind them of their own sons, who were rotting away in the trenches, while I, the stranger, strutted about "free and easy" over their streets.

I stayed cooped up in my small room, with my troubled thoughts to keep me company. In this isolations of mine, I felt for the first time the full weight of my loneliness. The wintry silence of the small village of Rakov gave me the eerie feeling that the residents were all inmates of an insane asylum, with each one isolated from the others, and all of them suffering from the same sickness.

I found myself searching deeper and deeper within my own soul. Things that were locked inside of me, that I had been ignoring until now, began once again to gnaw at me like a worm, forcing me to take stock again:

"Millions of young men like you are away spilling their blood, and here you are hiding out behind a false name....this is cowardice! If you bear a grudge against the Russian Czar for all the persecutions, which he has carried out and continues to carry out against your people, how is the Fatherland to blame whose soil is now besieged by a bitter enemy? Go! Pick up a rifle and defend your homeland like everyone else, because you are also a part of her!"

But then another voice pushed its way forward, which argued just the opposite:

"You say "earth" and "soil"...fine, where then is your share of earth in this great "Fatherland?" Haven't you seen for yourself what happened to your brothers, the Jews of Kovna and Souvlak, who had occupied their land for generations, who had made it fruitful with their shveyss un blut, and suddenly, without so much as an "if you please", they wre uprooted from their soil and scattered like straw in the wind?"

And so there continued within me a bitter struggle. One voice screamed at me:

"Go! Go! You have to show everybody, that the things they say about us Jews, that we are cowards, is a lie! A slander!"

And a second voice answered back:

"Don’t go! Don't throw your life away! Enemies will always be enemies! Your sacrifice will never be acknowledged, because that has always been the fate of us Jews!"

These thoughts continued to rage against each other in my mind. Confused feelings raged within me, keeping me awake all night. The angry voices wrapped themselves around my neck, all but choking me to death...

During those uneasy times, I used to go to the House of Study, to the Women’s Section, where there lived a homeless familiy, consisting of an older couple and a daughter with four small children, who had found their way here all the way from some distant border town in Polish Galicia. They were actually following the daughter's husband, the son in law, who was here as a soldier behind the front lines, baking bread for the Russian Army.

To this particular family I felt a special closeness. Something about them cried out of such pain and sorrow, more than the other homeless, as though they were a symbol of the whole Jewish Exile. Whether it was their appearance or their manner of speaking, something separated them the great mass of homeless Lithuanina Jews among whom they lost and strange.

I often brought them their "dole", so they shouldn't have to stand and wait in line. More than once, I brought them the military doctor with medicine for their old grandfather, or for their sick boy, the youngest, who suffered from ashthma. Whenever I came, the sad pale faces of those homeless children would light up...they would rush to greet me, just as though I were their own brother. Even the very sick 6-7-year-old boy would manage a weak smile.

One day, when I came to visit them, as soon as I opened the door of the House of Study, I heard a wailing, a cry from the children. I ran inside, and saw before me a shocking scene, which made my blood run cold:

The young mother of four children was sitting on the ground, with the sick child in her arms. The child’s face was yellow, the eyes glazed, the body a stick of wood....dead. The unfortunate mother was sitting motionless, staring with unseeing eyes wide open. The children, clearly in shock from their mother’s mute silence, were clutching at their elderly grandparents, who were whispering prayers. The children cried out to their dead brother:

"Yankel, little brother, open your eyes! Uncle is here! Uncle is here!..."

I was horrified. The cries of the children stabbed me to the heart. I ran off to get help. They were barely able to pull the dead child from the mother’s arms.

Late at night, after returning from the funeral of the homeless child whom I had helped to a Jewish burial, I stumbled into my small room, threw myself on the bed, buried my face in my mother’s pillow, and cried. All the pain and loneliness I felt inside, and all the suffering I saw around me, burst forth with the force of a river spilling over its banks.

That night, I was tormented by all kinds of dreams. One dream in particular, which etched itself deep in my soul, is still clear in my mind:

I was suddenly back in my village of Zastavia, making my way towards my mother’s house. I saw a great crowd standing outside, all of them with such dark, sad faces. I barely pushed my way through the crowd, into the house. On the floor, under a black shroud, surrounded by burning candles, there lay a small, shrunken body.

"Mother!" the thought raced through my mind.

Kneeling by her head, with a lighted candle, there sat my sister Pesheh-Blumeh, with dishevelled hair, crying out loud. Holding tightly to her was my little sister Dinelleh, with the blond hair and blue eyes, whimpering softly. On the other side sat my younger brother Yitzkhak-Eyzik moaning. My father, a bent figure, stood at her feet, wringing his hands and pleading with a hoarse voice:

"Ester-Yehudit, Ester-Yehudit! Why have you left me?"

I threw myself to the ground, reached out to the black shroud and began to cry in an anguished voice:

"Mother! You can’t be dead! You mustn’t die! Stand up, look at me, I’ve come back to you! Speak to me! Let me hear your sweet voice! Mother! Mother!!"

Suddenly I am awake, drenched in a cold sweat. My teeth are chattering from the cold. I look around to see where I am. Where is my mother? Where has everything suddenly disappeared to? Was it all nothing more than a bad dread? But who is that standing by my bed? Yes, it’s just my landlord, Botvinnik the mechanic! He is standing over me with a light in his hand, trembling. Next to him stnads his wife, my landlady...she is shaking with fear.

"For the good! Let some good come of this!", repeated the frightened woman, and added for good measure, "To far-away fields and forests, let it go!"

But no sooner had my landlord left me alone, than I was once more immersed in that feverish delerium. The Angel of Dreams was not yet finished with me.

I was back home with my family. We were all going to my mother’s funeral. I hear the wheels of the funeral-wagon clattering over the stone bridge, which leads to the City of Kamenetz, to the Last Resting Place. The whole village is following us. I try to scream, to cry, but I can’t. Something is stuck in my throat. My heart is torn with pity for myt poor mothger, and for myself as well. How can this be? Will I never again feel my mother's arms around me? Will she never again clutch me to her heart, the way she always used to do whenever I came home for the holidays? Would I never again hear my mother's soothing voice, which used to calm me to my very soul?

But who is holding me back? Who won’t let me go to my mother? "Mother! Mother! Come to me!" A heart-rending cry burst out from my soul.

For the second time, I was awoken by my kind landlady, interrupting my dream. She spat in fear while mumbling the words:

"Tfui! Tfui! A dream, for the good, may some good come of this."

The night was finally over. Daylight was already coming through the window. I lay there completely drained, broken in all my limbs. When I came to my senses, I dragged myself out of bed and got dressed....from my suitcase, I pulled out my phylacteries, which had lain unused for months, and with the tired, uncertain steps of an old man, made my way to the House of Study.

That morning, I prayed with heart and purpose, like in the old days back in the Yeshiva. And when the mourners required to say Kaddish for a deceased relative got up to say Kaddish....I suddenly jerked to my feet. Without realizing what I was doing, I stood up with all the mourners and began to say the Orphan’s Kaddish:

"Yiskadal ve'yiskadash shemey robboh...."

But as soon as the words had left my mouth, I realized what I had done. A shudder came over my whole body...my legs buckled, and I fell back on the bench...

Years later, after my wanderings, when I finally made it back home again, I found out that this had not been just an idle dream. My mother’s name had been called on that very night...