At the grave of a school activist.
(For the shloshim of the true Jewish intellectual in Hantsevichi, Mr. Tobiasz Bernzon, of blessed memory)
He was laid to rest in a small town among the forests of Polesie. His death was sudden and unnatural, just as unnatural as the life of a man of such stature in a small Polesie Jewish community. When I met him as a resident of the town, I could not by any means determine which category of local citizen he belonged to. Thanks to the natural synthesis of Jewish and European education, the deceased did not represent any of the types one usually meets in a small Jewish town: not an average small-town resident, not an assimilated intellectual careerist, and also not an idle maskil. He was an ideal type of modern Jewish intellectual with crystallised, wholehearted views, and as such he remained until his last day. Tobiasz Bernzon, of blessed memory, was born in 1885 or 86 in Grajewo, a town by the German border. He studied Jewish subjects with the well-known Torah scholar Przepiórka, of blessed memory, as well as secular subjects. He showed special talent for languages and mastered Hebrew, German, Polish and Russian completely. At 18 he went to Warsaw, where he continued his studies. Thanks to his abilities he became business manager for the father of Professor Szymon Aszkenazy in a large timber business. When the business passed to Prof. Szymon Aszkenazy and his brother-in-law Ludwik Landau, Bernzon became the chief manager and often travelled to Vienna, Berlin, Leipzig and other large commercial centres in Western Europe. Later he moved to Łódź and won a name there as a wealthy and able businessman. All that time he moved in the finest circles of the Jewish intelligentsia. At the outbreak of the World War he left for Russia, and later, because of family matters, he ended up in Hantsevichi. It is no wonder that after coming to the town Bernzon devoted much time to the local Hebrew school system. The existence of a Tarbut school, where his children studied, was self-evident to him, in full harmony with his wholehearted national views. He was the ideal type of school activist, who did his public work not out of petty personal ambitions; he simply could not reconcile himself to the thought that a modern Hebrew school should not exist in a Jewish community, or should be in a vegetating state. He never spared effort or exertion for the Tarbut school, especially when some danger threatened the school. The Tarbut school in Hantsevichi went through a hard road before reaching its goal: to become the educational institution for the great majority of Jewish children in the town. The great prosperity of the small Jewish community of Hantsevichi had at that time turned the eyes of the local masses away from Eretz Yisrael, and cheap assimilation on one side and coarseness and wild fanaticism on the other shook the foundations of the school and threatened to turn it into a half-assimilated cheder, or at best a tiny little school with a negligible number of pupils. Much energy was spent in the struggle with the opponents of Tarbut, and one of the fighters was the deceased. And when the further existence of the school absolutely required its own school building, he also took part in the great undertaking, and the building was put up and secured the school's existence for years. While the school was being built it was not hard for him to go in the middle of a frosty winter night to the train to wait for a passing merchant from whom support for the building could be obtained. Being by nature a calm man, in defence of the school he did not hold back from clashing with various hostile elements. But why recall things that are past? I believe the whole town, without distinction, now feels the great loss of Bernzon's death. For he distinguished himself not only as a school activist but also as a wise, good friend, with whom a townsman could take counsel in a time of trouble. He was clever, and being educated he was at the same time wise in the ways of the world, a level-headed observer, always full of good-natured humour, even in the worst times, when he struggled with want. His interesting conversations, original opinions and humorous remarks gave spiritual pleasure. Often listening to other people's troubles, he never told anyone of his own sufferings. Calmly, proudly and with dignity he bore his fate, as befits a true Jewish intellectual. As I have heard, his last stretch of life was not strewn with roses either, and yet he continued his work for the good of the school. Merciless death tore him away in the best years of his fruitful activity; with his death a town in Polesie has lost one of its best. May his memory be blessed!
Ze'ev Spirshtein.
Note: I received the short biography of the deceased from the pharmacist Mr. Yeshayahu Kaplan in Hantsevichi, and I give it here word for word. Z. S.