 meeting of our inner committee. After I rendered my report I told Abe Fischer who together with his brother Moishe, had bought 350 copies of my book, The Odyssey of an American Zionist, in the Hebrew language to be given on graduation day to the graduates of the public school in Raanana, in which the Fischers are very much interested, it would be a fine thing if they would buy an additional 100 copies of the 200, which I had donated to the Boibekker committee in Israel in the names of my brothers Samuel and Abraham Haber. The committee in Israel has sent one copy to each family of Boiberke who resides in Israel as a gift. (It turned out that they are getting donations for these books, and this money is also added to the Free Loan Fund in Israel.) Abe Fischer draw a check for $350.00. With this I was repaid the major amount of the loan which I advanced, and the balance of $100.00 was repaid to me from the collection on the Yahrzeit day of March 25, 1962. We actually collected $1,060.00 that day, but when I reached Israel to my grandsons Bar Mitzvah I handed to the committee in Israel in the middle of April 1962, $960.00. With this act, the loan of $450. which I made to the committee on July 7, 1961, was fully repaid to me.
At the meeting which we held on June 24, 1962, in the meeting room of the Boiberker Sick & Benevolent Society, individual receipts were handed out to those who donated to the fund on March 25th. These receipts was brought from the Boiberker committee in Israel.
When we orgnized our committee in the United States on September 11, 1960, our intention was to collect donations from Boiberker in America in order to place the Free Loan Fund for the Landsleit in Israel on a sound basis, and also to assist in publishing the Yizkor-book, in which the story of the Boiberker ghetto, where more than 6000 Jews were slain by the Nazis, is to be told. It was explained that the committee in the United States would be a temporary one, as we do not believe in committees which consume time and affort for something which no longer exists.
At our first meeting, we made clear that of all collections for the two projects, not one dollar should be deducted for expenses in connection with calling meetings of the committee or of arranging the Yahrzeit for the martyrs who were slain in the ghetto of Boiberke. Since such meetings entail expenses, our good-hearted Boiberker Sam Marcus, Moishe and Abe Fischer undertook to cover all expenses from their own pockets. We are fortunate that all notices in the Yiddish press as well as on the radio announcing the meetings were give to us gratis.
On June 1, when I returned from Israel, I rendered a report, telling of the Yahrzeit (Memorial) which we attended on April 8th at the Culture House which Abraham Fischer had erected in the colony Raanana. There we met than 100 Boiberker Landsleit who came from all parts of Israel to honor the martyrs. It was good to see that a financial report of the committee in Israel was enclosed to each of their members together with the invitation to the Yahrzeit meeting. The report shows how much money they received from the committee in the United States as well as from Boiberker landsleit in Israel. I was told that such reports are rendered annually. It prevents suspicion that some of funds may not be expended in the best interest for which they were collected.
At the conclusion of my remarks about Boiberker on the American scene, I took the liberty of correcting as to the name Boiberke which the great Yiddish writer, Sholem Aleichem, used a similar name Boiberik in his writings, like he used the names like Yehupitz and Kasrilowky, making them the butt of much of his humor felt it was high time to take the town of our birth from the comic fiction world and explain that in reality, such a town as Boiberke actually existed and that our cradle stood there. Today our town is Judenrein (without Jews) but its Jewish history extends back at least five centuries. According to historic records Jewish merchants visited the Annual Fairs of Boiberke since the year 146