The feelings of the daughter of Yehuda Donitz (ZAL), from Stobykhovka and my dear mother Chaya (née Bresch) of Kamin-Korzcirsk, who was destined to be singled out for a long and good life. The feelings of a “second generation” daughter who only in the last few years began to sense just what they had passed through – these heroes and survivors.

I have heard for years all the stories, taken part in some of the ceremonies but for some reason a feeling was created within me – a daughter of the second generation - a substance, that perhaps filled a central role in protecting me - as it does the rest of my brothers and sisters of the second generation – and enabled us to grow and develop, in spite of everything.

As I said, in recent years a previously hidden spark has been ignited in our hearts that has pushed Dov, my husband, and me to set out and try to touch our roots. Thus Dov and I decided to visit Kamin-Korzcirsk and its surroundings. The journey began in Kiev and a visit to Babi Yar, the “Vale of Tears” of the Jewish people whose fate resembled the fate of other Jews in Kamin-Korzcirsk and tens of other towns and villages in north Ukraine and Poland. From there we traveled by train to Kovel and continued on to Kamin.

In Kamin we wandered round the streets, sensing and seeing everything, the school “Culture”, where you studied, and the remains of the hotel on Kovel Street. We visited the synagogue that remains in the ghetto, used today as a grocery store and the synagogue in the town center now used as a kindergarten. We visited the cultural center that the Soviets erected in the center of the square that was used as a trading center for the Jews. We rambled along the banks of the Zyr River and even located my mother’s house on Pilsudski Street next to the windmill. We traveled to the beaches at Jeziorki, used by the kids of Kamin for pleasure and even went far into the forests along the marshlands as far as Stobykhovka, the village where my father, Yehuda Donitz, was born. There are still Poles and Ukrainians living there who remember my family well.

But if the walls and the trees could tell what their eyes have seen the ground would shake. And thus, shaken to the roots of our being, we stood with our heads lowered alongside the “killing-pits” in the forest close to the cemetery of Kamin. We stood while before our eyes passed again mental pictures of all the stories the “aktions”, the bullying and beatings, the hair-curling stories of destruction of the Jews of Kamin-Korzcirsk. There we stood and understood, that in spite of everything and because of the survivors, we won. We won by virtue of the spirit that was preserved by those who were led to their death, and by virtue of the spirit of those who succeeded in fleeing to the forests and surviving. By the very fact that we stood there, Dov and I, perhaps as representatives of the “Second Generation” – we won. And it is our obligation to ensure that the victory is preserved here, in this, our own good land forever.

I ask from all of you forgiveness. From you, the survivors, from you mother, for the years we listened and understood not. For we could not understand all the years we heard and didn’t feel – because we couldn’t feel. But from now everything is different because we have been there and we have seen; we have been there and we have felt; we have been there and we have touched the “holy places”, touched the roots of those who remained there…….

From now on we all continue together forever.

I wish you all good health and long lives and hope to see you all here next year.