On the day of Hitler's invasion of the USSR, June 22, 1941, Hirsh Israelevich was on an editorial assignment in the city of Volkovysk in the Grodno region. The German advance developed rapidly, and people barely managed to escape from the Nazi advance units. Joining a group of refugees, Hirsh Israelevich spent about two weeks making his way to the Belarusian capital.

Minsk was captured several days before Dobin could get there. Arrested by a patrol, the Jewish writer was placed in a large filtration camp on the outskirts of the city on July 6, 1941. Thousands of civilians and prisoners of war were herded into the camp. Dobin witnessed a terrible sight: the Nazis beat people with rifle butts and shot into the crowd that rushed for dried bread that the Germans scattered from a truck.

After four days, they began to divide the camp according to nationality. Hirsh Israelevich ended up with other Jews in a small section of the camp, enclosed on all four sides by ropes and guarded by reinforced security.

In the evenings, the guards entertained themselves by firing machine guns over people's heads, accusing Jews of trading with prisoners of war and not sharing food with former inmates. As someone who had already experienced prison cells, Hirsh Dobin tried to calm people who often reached states of insanity. He began teaching one of his fellow unfortunates how to beg from those whose wives could still send packages through the guards. From the first days, Dobin understood that Jews were facing not just hungry days ahead, and that everything happening around them was just the beginning.

In the middle of July 1941, about two thousand Jews remaining in the camp were transferred to the capital's prison. Those who survived the difficult journey and the "thinning out" by executions on July 20, 1941, were released to the Minsk Judenrat, which became the official representative of the ghetto established in the city from August 1.

Hirsh Dobin couldn't simply give up and surrender. His family was waiting for him in Białystok, and the violence happening around called for immediate action.

In August 1941, Hirsh Israelevich connected with several communists who found themselves in the Minsk ghetto. Soon after, activists held their first meeting, which was meant to initiate organized underground work. The underground members resolved to assist Jews in escaping from the ghetto and joining the nationwide resistance. Everyone received specific assignments: for example, Notke Weinhaus was to organize regular radio reception of operational reports, Yasha Kirkaeshto was to establish an illegal apparatus, underground apartments, acquire a typewriter and establish communications, while Hirsh Smolyar, one of the leaders of the ghetto's underground combat organization, was to establish contact with the city's "Russian district" and partisans, as well as organize underground cells known as "tens."

Hirsh Dobin couldn't attend the first underground meeting. Immediately after registration with the Judenrat, the Germans assigned him to forced labor. But, assigned to sew boots and patch shoes for the police, Hirsh Israelevich, along with his assistant Zaskin (a former secretary of one of the district executive committees) and tailor Gelman, joined one of the underground "tens."

A significant portion of the Jewish resistance participants suffered terrible poverty. The underground members agreed that those who had work would give part of their earnings to help needy comrades. This resulted in a fund that made it possible to provide assistance to many comrades and their families. As a "specialist," Dobin could count on at least some rations, and his help to families in need was specifically noted by Hirsh Smolyar, who wrote the book "Ghetto Avengers" after the war.

However, the main task facing the writer and his companions in the shoe and tailoring workshop was to discover what was happening in the police battalion. This primarily concerned the Nazi "actions" being prepared, about which ghetto inhabitants needed to be warned.

Dobin passed the information to the underground organizer, Hirsh Smolyar. It was writer Hirsh Dobin who managed to warn Smolyar about the pogrom being prepared for March 2, 1942. The writer himself managed to survive thanks to an Austrian Wachtmeister who was responsible for their workshop. The Austrian, either unwilling to lose good workers or due to awakened compassion, didn't let the Jews go home, making them stay overnight at their workplace.

After the terrible massacre of March 2, 1942, even the most incorrigible optimists realized: the Germans weren't planning to leave anyone alive in the ghetto. The dispatch to partisan units, with whom Jews had managed to establish contact by then, intensified even more. The group that included Hirsh Dobin, along with active underground members Motya Pruslin, Chaim Alexandrovich, Meyer Feldman, Lena Maizelis and others, was sent with a special mission – to create a new partisan base, the Jewish 406th detachment, which later merged with "Uncle Vasya's" partisan brigade, and then with the "People's Avengers" Voronyansky brigade.

From March 14, 1942, Hirsh Dobin became a fighter in "Uncle Vasya's" brigade, led by former Soviet commander Vasily Voronyansky, one of the leaders of the partisan movement in the BSSR. The brigade operated in the Logoisk and Pleshchenitsy districts of the Minsk region. The Jews who took the partisan oath soon had to enter into battle with the Nazis. What the prisoners had dreamed of finally became reality.

Hirsh Israelevich directly participated in battles to defeat enemy garrisons in the towns of Dolginovo, Myadel, the neighboring villages of Kurenets and Luban near Vileyka, Pleshchenitsy, and many other places. Often, the mission to destroy an enemy garrison had an additional goal – to liberate Jews from ghettos. The battle for Myadel, in which Hirsh Dobin participated, lasted five hours. The partisans suffered serious losses but managed to replenish their unit with young Jewish fighters. The rescued elderly, women, and children were taken to a family camp to be later transported across the front line.

Hirsh Dobin kept his diary right in the partisan unit, where he described the smallest details of partisan life and combat operations. The people's avengers weren't always able to accomplish their assigned tasks, sometimes having to settle for only partial successes. Real war bore little resemblance to pre-war films about the thunderous victories of Soviet weapons.

Such was the operation against the police garrison in the village of Luban in the Vileyka district, which took place on April 26, 1943. Hirsh Israelevich and several fighters were in ambush. They were tasked with occupying the road leading from Luban to Kurenets and Vileyka. The strike group, consisting of fighters from the second company, was supposed to storm the police station at 11 o'clock at night. The commander assigned an equally important task to the first company – to remove all property from the old manor house where the traitors were holed up. What couldn't be taken was ordered to be burned.

Dobin and his comrades were already starting to doze off when suddenly rifle and machine gun fire broke out. The assault group was late but started vigorously. Hirsh Israelevich clearly heard the cry "Hurrah!": it was Yashka, a good partisan and excellent horseman who had escaped from the Vileyka ghetto to the forest, attacking the police lair so dashingly. The night silence was filled with machine gun and rifle shots, and heavy artillery explosions could be heard. Around two o'clock in the morning, the chatter and explosions ended.

At the gathering point, the guys frustratedly told Dobin: they failed to drive the garrison out of the stone building. When the partisans crept up under the windows of the stone building and began shooting, the police cut off the lights and started returning fire. One partisan who had defected from the police shouted, "Zhenya, kill the Germans and come join us!" But instead of an answer, a grenade flew out of the window. One partisan was wounded. The enemy moved to the second floor and started throwing grenades from there. The only compensation for the failure was several killed and wounded "bobiks" (police collaborators), a burned distillery, and a large number of cattle that the partisans led out of the village.

While participating in ambushes, blowing up railways, bridges, and communication lines, Dobin didn't forget about his main craft. He wrote materials for several partisan collections distributed among the "Avenger" and "Struggle" units, as well as for the monthly literary and artistic magazine "People's Avenger," becoming a member of its editorial board in March 1944.

Hirsh Dobin met the day of liberation of the Minsk region from the fascists in the commandant's company of the "People's Avenger" partisan brigade named after Voronyansky. After the partisan brigade was disbanded, the writer was sent to the Union of Soviet Writers in Moscow. From there, he was mobilized into the Red Army, where he served until August 6, 1945. For the courage shown during the war years, the writer was awarded the Order of the Red Star, medals "To the Partisan of the Patriotic War" 1st class, "For Victory over Germany," the "Front-line Soldier 1941-1945" badge, and the "Zhukov Medal."

After the war, Hirsh Israelevich learned that his wife Klara and young son Izya had perished in Bialystok. His sister Sarra and her husband Moishe Fradkin were killed in Zhlobin, his sister Zelde and her family in Kharkiv, and his brother Zyama, who had been drafted to the front, died fighting against the Nazis.

After demobilization, Hirsh Israelevich settled in Lyubertsy near Moscow and married for the second time – to Malya Jos-Volkovna Olidort. In 1946, the couple had a son Vladimir, and three years later, a daughter Raisa. Malya worked as an accountant at the Ukhtomsky Agricultural Machinery Plant, while Hirsh Israelevich actively wrote. In 1947, he published his first post-war book of stories "Oyf vaysrusisher erd" ("On Belarusian Land"), in which he wrote about his time in the ghetto and fighting against the Nazis as part of the partisan unit. However, soon after, like many of his colleagues, he had to stop writing for a long time.

During the height of the campaign against cosmopolitanism, Hirsh Dobin was denied the opportunity to publish his works. Desperately trying to find any income, he had to settle for temporary jobs at various enterprises near Moscow. Everything began to change after Stalin's death, but after a year and a half, the writer had to face another blow. In the summer of 1954, Hirsh Israelevich, his wife, son Volodya, and daughter Raisa went on their first vacation to the Azov Sea, in Genichesk. On their way back, the Dobins decided to visit Donetsk, where Malya's family lived. On Raisa's birthday, August 9, 1954, the Dobins and Olidorts gathered for a festive lunch and went to a photo studio for a group picture in the evening. They celebrated until late evening and then settled in at Malya's sister's place for the night. Adults and children went to bed, and Dobin's wife was reading something before sleep. "It's late, let's turn off the light," said Hirsh Israelevich, when suddenly his wife's face changed. His wife became ill, everyone rushed around trying to find a doctor. Malya died five days later from a brain hemorrhage...

After burying his wife, in a depressed state, Hirsh Israelevich refused to leave his children, despite relatives' attempts to persuade him. He was a strong person. Without permanent work and having very poor eyesight, the widower with two children was determined to persevere at all costs.

During the return journey, at the station in Kharkiv, he met his first wife's sister Tuba and her daughter Lea Sulkina. Hirsh Israelevich told them about his tragedy, and sometime after returning to Lyubertsy, he decided to write to Lea in Kharkiv. In the letter, he directly proposed to the single Lea to become the mother of his children. After several months of touching correspondence, on November 13, 1954, the elderly writer and his first wife's niece got married.

In 1955, Dobin went on his first business trip after Stalin's death, to Bratsk. He began earning with his pen again. In 1958, the Dobins moved from Lyubertsy to Moscow. The writer entered a productive creative period. Hirsh Dobin's works were published in the "Sovetish Geimland" magazine and in foreign Jewish press. In his post-war collections "Stories" (1956), "In the Flow of Time" (1976), and the novel "The Power of Life," Dobin described the history of partisan struggle against fascist invaders, the heroism and courage of ghetto prisoners. These works were largely autobiographical and quite bold for those years.
Hirsh Israelevich continued to publish, and in 1983, his book in Yiddish "Erdishe Vegn" ("Earthly Ways") was published by "Soviet Writer" publishing house. However, his health noticeably deteriorated. Once he even ended up in Moscow's First City Hospital with a hypertensive crisis; doctors barely managed to "pull him through." Relatives and close ones who were with him recall that in his delirium, Hirsh Dobin thought he was in Eretz Israel, sometimes walking through Jerusalem, sometimes along the Mediterranean Sea coast.

In 1992, the writer's son, who headed the secretariat of the popular Russian newspaper "Top Secret," decided it was time for all the Dobins to immigrate to Israel. Vladimir Dobin with his family, Hirsh Israelevich with his wife Lea Shlemovna, and her two sisters from Kharkiv became Israelis in October 1992.

After settling in Rishon LeZion, Hirsh Dobin came back to life, started taking daily walks in the city park, reading local newspapers, and communicating with natives of the country, aided by the Hebrew he had learned in his youth. Until his final days, he continued working, publishing in Yiddish and in Russian translations.

Throughout his life, defending his native culture and language, fighting against the Nazis in the underground and partisan detachment, the Jewish writer Dobin believed that the people of Israel, having endured a terrible catastrophe, would definitely survive and prove themselves. In one interview, he confessed to a journalist: "Jews have no other home and never will." His youthful dreams of Eretz Israel came true. Hirsh Dobin, Jewish writer and war veteran, passed away on June 13, 2001, in Israel.

19.02.2023



Bibliography and sources:

Materials from archival case No. P-83193, archive of the FSB Administration of Russia for Khabarovsk Territory;

Memoirs of Kalina Raisa Grigorievna, daughter of Hirsh Dobin;

G. Smolyar. Ghetto Avengers. Ogiz "Der Emes", 1947.

Publications in newspapers, magazines and almanacs: "Birobidzhan Shtern", "Sovetish Geimland", "Poberezhye", and others.