Yedinitz, Bessarabia, compared to where we live today, was a small shtetl. Yet for us, it was a city. I can still see the streets and small lanes. Here is the small marketplace, the Torhovitse as we used to call it, where the peasants' fair used to take place. In the center was the church, whose bells, whenever they rang, would strike a feeling of fear in me. A few streets further away was the 'Patchova', a street where one simply took walks, where you could have a conversation with your friends, where one discussed and argued with those of opposing views, and where the meetings of young couples in love took place. This main street, more than a kilometer in length, had everything. Here could be found both small and large grain merchants. Here were displayed the workshops of blacksmiths, barrel makers, carpenters, furriers, and other workers.
Here one could find little stalls, and all kinds of stores and shops. It had a bathhouse, a poorhouse, a large synagogue, and the main street going in front of and behind the marketplace. Gates. A tailor street and a Gypsy Street. Yedinitz had prestigious Jews, merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and menial laborers. Jewish merchants and Jews in the marketplace who would sell cheese, whey, and honey. There were grain merchants, moneylenders, business owners, and numerous poor people. There were doctors and feldshers (paramedics) in the shtetl.
(Excerpt from In Our Shtetl We Had... by Gedalye Gruzman).
Compiled over a period of 20 years, this is the Memorial Book of Yedinitz, written by survivors and landsmen, finally available in an English translation. These voices speak to us from the past, vividly recounting the life and destruction of a once vibrant Jewish community.
