The snow had melted. Green grass was starting to poke through the black earth. Here and there you would see a summer-bird, returning from the distant south. The village peasant was starting to attend to his farm machinery, which had lain all winter rusting under a pile of straw. As soon as the ground was dry, he would be going back out to the field with his plow. The freshly-plowed soil would swallow up the farmer's seed-kernels, and it wouldn't be long before the face of the earth would be covered with waving fields of wheat, with fruit and vegetables. The air would be filled with the chirping, buzzing, and sounds of all God’s creatures, as they made themselves fruitful and multiplied.

Soldiers with bearded, ash-grey faces, who had lain all winter buried in their deep trenches, began to quietly, cautiously peek out from under the dark baarricades, and with bleary eyes began to look around at God’s world. With wide-open nostrils, they sucked in the smell of fresh earth, that reminded them of their own fields back home. Even the sound of bullets whizzing here and their reminded them now of the birds and the bees, carrying them back to their quiet, peaceful villages.

Mother Russia was preparing now to drive back the enemy, which had sunk its wolfish teeth deep in the body of the motherland. Everywhere, on all fronts, energetic, feverish preparations were underway. People were sharpeneing swards, polishing their rifles and bayonets, that they should shine more brilliantly in the light of the sun.

From all over Russia, whole new armies of middle-aged fathers were being called up, along with new reserves, young sons, recruits. In the cities, legions on young people, carrying their belongings suitcases and valises. Together with the arriving legions of peasants from the villages, they all converged to the central military camps.

Around those military collection-points for new recruits, there could be heard a great wailing....parents seeing their sons off, husbands leaving their wives behind, bridegrooms with their brides, children with their fathers. The commontion was terrible. Heart-rending scenes were played out: here, a mother suddenly fainted; over there, a young girl couldn’t pull herself from the arms of her beloved. Here a child was crying, with his hand stretched out towards his departing father. Military patrols kept everyone moving...quickly, quickly. And from up above, as though nothing were wrong on earth, there shone down a warm, springime sun.

In the towns and villages which lay near the front, the police began to intensify their search for deserters, the so-called "rabbits", who had gone into hiding to save themselves from the killing fields. No young man could walk the streets without fear that he might be seized. The police and the gendarmerie were no longer bothering to look at documents...it was all the same whether you had a real passport or a fake one: everyone had to go defend the Fatherland. There was panic and confusion.....people rushed here and there, like frightened dogs trying to run away from the dog-catcher.

My false name "Yitzkhak Taytsh", still following me around like a dybbuk, was, like me, also another year older. I was expecting any day now that either I would be called on to report to the military for my "day of judgement. Or maybe they would just grab hold of me in broad daylight, and haul me off to one of the enlistment centres. The thought that I would have to go off to war, to lay down my life under a false name, all but drove me to distraction. I used to envy my comrade, the former Novordak yeshiva-boy, who was also living under a false identity. He was better off than I: with his puny, scrawny appearance, he could easily be taken for a young boy...but what was I to do with my tall figure and broad shoulders?

Nighttimes I would go to sleep in an attic, a cellar, or a barn. The smallest noise would make me jump...life had become unbearable. Fortunately, the beautiful, kind-hearted Jewish daughters of Rakov, my "listeners", stood watch for me, keeping me safe. As soon as they sensed danger, that the police were making a "roundup", they would warn me, in I would hide myself in a new attic somewhere. And a very special watch was kept for me by my dark-eyed angel, Sonia P., who hid and protected me like a faithful sister. Secretly, she provided me with food and cigarettes. More than once, she let me hide for the night in her parents store, in a dark cellar, which was packed with merchandise, and in doing so all but brought down mis-fortune on her unsuspecting parents.

I resolved to get away from there as quickly as possible...but where to run, with the police lurking at every turn? Perhaps to Minsk? There, I might disappear into the vast crowds of homeless, and nobody would see me or hear me. Also, I had heard that after the expulsion of Kovno, many of my friends from my Slobodka yeshiva "Knesset Yisroel" had found in Minsk a temporary "city of refuge". It would in fact be good to be together with them once again! But there was a bigger problem in Minsk: the Minsk Governor-General Hirsh, apparently a German, and a dreadful Enemy of Israel, had given orders to seize any Jewish youth and send him straight to the front. Di Rakov wagon-drivers, who went there twice a week for supplies, told stories of horrible things that would make your hair stand on end.

What was one to do? What kind of solution was there?

But my salvation came altogether unexpectedly; my dear, clever auntie, the Cantor’s wife in Molodetchno, had been working all along on a new plan for me, to save me from falling into Gentile Hands. She wrote me, that I should leave as soon as possible, to go to her daughter Fanya, the teacher, who lived in the great Russian city of Yaroslavl, which lay on the far side of Moscow, on the very banks of the famous River Volga. There, her son-in-law, Shmul Voltchok, would get me a job in the same leather factory, where he worked, for which he had been freed from active service. It was actually a very good plan.....but how does the cat cross the river? That was something I would have to figure out for myself.

Late one evening, the youth of Rakov gathered with me in my room, behind covered windows and locked doors, to prepare me for my journey. The dark-eyed Sonia P., who was known in the shtetl as a very capable young woman, undertook to accompany me as far as the other side of Minsk. They wrapped my head in bandages, smelling of carbolic acid, as though I were dangerously ill. My dear friends provided me with all necessary provisions for the road, just as my mother used to do when she sent me off to the yeshiva.

I had one important question left to resolve: what should I do with my manuscripts, with my own writings? Take them with me? That could be very dangerous, because in those days the Yiddish word, in printed form, and even more so in written form, was strictly prohibited...every Jew was suspected of being somehow a German spy. My friends were throughly convinced, that I should leave it with them, under their supervision, and as soon as the war was over, God willing, I would return and be re-united with the fruits of my Muse. But it was very hard for me to leave my writings behind...I felt at that moment as though someone were going to cut off my hand or my foot.

After much discussion, I resolved: "Come what may..." whatever happened to me, would also happen to my manuscript. Because we were inseparable! We were of one body and one soul!

I tore opens my mother’s pillow, which she had made hersef on one of those long winter nights, on her warm seat by the fire, plucked feather by feather with her own hand......and inside it, I laid my bundle of manuscripts, that I had plucked from my heart and soul....and so I departed from my beloved village of Rakov, which now had its own place deep in my heart, and placed myself in God’s hands, in the wide world.

The long trip to Moscow went by without incident. There I changed trains to continue on to Yaroslavl. It was late in the afternoon. All the way to Moscow, I had been staring out the window of my rail-car, soaking up pictures of the new Russia, which I was seeing for the very first time. Her great cities and spacious fields, which lay along the route from Minsk to Smolensk to Moscow, made a deep impression on me.

What a country! How satisfying it must be to walk freely on Russian soil! I was overcome by a longing, and at the same time a feeling of envy, that I, one who was born in this same land, should have absolutely no sense of belonging, as though I were nothing but a stranger passing through.

The whole time, I saw long trains packed with thousands of soldiers, rushing towards the front, to drive the enemy from their mother earth. Deep in my heart, I envied them for what they felt and what they knew...that they have their own, "rooted" home, that they live on their own land, and for the sake of that beloved soil, they were now prepared to lay down their lives. And here am I, a son of that same Fatherland, no better than a stranger, burdened on top of everything else with the brand of a traitor, a spy, an internal enemy who had made common cause with the external enemy, the German.

And while I was sitting immersed in my depressing thoughts, looking out my window at the great Moscow train-station which was swarming with thousands of people, there suddenly appeared in my empty carriage a limping soldier, hobbling on a pair of wooden crutches, his head wrapped in bandages. With a fit of coughing, he seated himself with difficulty on the hard wooden bench, right across from me. He immediately struck up a conversation with me. He tild me about the bloody slaughters that he had already been through on various fronts; how we was wounded, how he lay for weeks in hospitals, now he was headed home on leave; and as soon as he had recovered, he would return to the front, to defend his "Tsar Batyoushka" and his "Mother Russia".

I was overcome by pity for this wounded soldier. I was tormented by painful thoughts: I felt as though I, the deserter with the phony name, was to blame for his suffering, for his lame, wounded legs. I offered him a first a cigarette, then some chocolate. I shared with him the tasty egg-tarts, all the provisions that the lovely, kind-hearted Daughters of Rakov had provided me with when I set out on my way. The soldier, the invalid, took great pleasure in them all. He blessed me and thanked me profusely. He then asked if I might be so kind as to bring for him from the station a pot of hot water, because he was, alas, terribly thirsty. I gladly went off, eager to help this unfortunate war casualty in any way I could, thereby making up somehow for my own guilt, that gnawed at me like a silent worm......

When I came hurrying back with the pot of hot water, my new friend, the wounded soldier, was nowhere to be seen. And along with him, my baggage had also disappeared.

I stood there dumbstruck, unable to move, as though my legs had been cut off. The station clock began to chime; the heavy locomotive let out a whistle. Hot, bitter tears flowed from my eys. I hardly cared that I had lost all my posessions, my winter clothes, the sack with my mother’s pillow, the only connection I still had with my long-lost home, wherein my passport with my true name was hidden. ll these things paled into insignificance next to the loss of my first manuscripts, that I had written with all the fire of my young heart. I felt broken, ashamed, devastated, orphaned....I wanted to run away, to cry out, make an outburst, so that heaven and earth should hear my pain...but at that moment, my eyes fell on the two wooden crutches, which still lay there on the bench, as though to mock me. I sat down on the heard wooden bench and wept uncontrollably....