[Pages 110-116]

Although doing this was against the wishes of my father -- who did not want to be separated from me -- I convinced him to allow me to go. He knew that, due to his difficult financial circumstances, I would never be able to continue studying, in spite of my strong desire to do so -- and I would certainly never be able to obtain a technical education. And so he agreed.

Leaving Shumsk with me were Todros Mazur, Avraham Geilichen from the neistadt² and another fellow, Lazar, whose last name I do not remember.

This was a beautiful period for me. We were well fed and clothed and our living accommodations were in railroad cars that were not in use. Four boys lived in each railroad car and we were pleased with our living arrangements.

The first thing we learned was how to lay railway tracks .We quickly reached a high level of competence in our work and we lay the Lvov-Kiev track almost by ourselves. Our feeling of satisfaction knew no bounds. Who dreamed that one day we would be saved from the future awaiting a boy from Shumsk -- that of a petty merchant, struggling all his life for a livelihood.

But suddenly, when we had gone too far from our home with our traveling school, in a childish way we began to miss our mothers and fathers, our homes and our town, Shumsk.

The old border that ran between Volochisk, which had been a part of Soviet Russia since 1917, and the Polish town Podvolochisk, which had just been transferred to the Soviet Union in the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, was heavily guarded and it was impossible to cross it. We were stuck there without work. Our homesickness grew, especially because we were not busy. We decided to go to Shumsk even without the permission of our supervisors.

On the seventh of June, two weeks before the outbreak of the war between Germany and Russia, we set out for Shumsk. We planned to go there and then return to our studies. We just wanted to see our parents -- just that -- only to feel the warmth of our homes and then to return.

We reached Shumsk and were there for four days. Our formal school uniforms were very impressive and we were received warmly. We were a sensation in town and propaganda for the new regime which enabled children from poor families to study. These were days in which we felt pride and good feeling in our beloved town that bestowed such warmth on us.

After four days we were notified that we had to return to school, and so we started back. My father accompanied me to Krelitz on foot. We walked without speaking, but when he took his leave from me he said, “In the case of war, come back to us to Shumsk. Don't remain alone, separated from your family. It's not good for you.”

It was early morning. From the hilltops of Krelitz, Shumsk looked as if it were sleeping, waiting for my return. For some reason the thought crossed my mind, “Would I ever see Shumsk again?”

We walked until Lanowitz where we boarded a train for Ternopol. There we were supposed to change to the line going to Podvolochisk. We didn't have any money and we wanted to continue traveling, that is, to board a different train and get on with our trip. Suddenly we noticed a soldier with a bayoneted rifle standing tensely in the corner of the railroad car, counting people. We entered the car and were included in his head count. The door of the car shut and we found ourselves locked in a kind of prison.

We began to ask people in the railroad car what was happening and they explained that they were prisoners who had been arrested by the Russians and that they were being sent deep into Russia to pay for their misdemeanors in the form of forced labor.

We began to bang on the train doors to let someone know that we had been jailed mistakenly. At the sound of the noise a soldier approached and said, “You young criminals, keep quiet, damn it!” But I didn't give up and continued banging on the door until one of the NKVD³ people, who wore green hats, approached. When he understood what had happened he opened the doors, freed us and took us into his office, which was in the same railroad car. He questioned us to understand how we had come into this car. We told him our story including our error of entering this car, and during his lengthy interrogation the train started to move. When he checked our school reports he said that we had to get to a different car on the same train but that this would have to be done while the train was moving. But since there was no passage between carriages in a prison train we would have to go out and jump from place to place carefully so as not to fall and be killed. I was frightened to do this and began crying but the man demonstrated to us how to move while jumping. With pounding hearts we moved from car to car until we reached an open car, and from that car to yet another one.

In the second carriage we were asked for our tickets. We didn't have any so we were ordered to get off at the next station. It was one o'clock at night, very foggy, pitch black and terrifying. We knew that if we remained in this place we were doomed. We jumped back on the train from which we had been ejected. The same soldier was there. He took pity on us and told us how to behave when a conductor arrived. We traveled to Podvolochisk, sitting on the train floor, concealed and quaking.

At 2 a.m. we reached our destination.

The next morning we were already at work. During the nights I sensed the increased movement of troops. During the day I discerned armed civilians, moving in a never-ceasing flow near us. It was clear to me that we were on the brink of war.

On the morning of June 21, 1941, we heard Molotov's speech on the radio announcing that the Germans had betrayed Russia and declared war on her.

Our hearts were heavy. We continued working but it became more and more difficult. The roads were jammed with heavy weapons and tanks. Enormous horses pulled cannons and our work was constantly interrupted.

When we went into the dining room we saw wounded people lying on stretchers and next to me, at the place where I ate, there was even a corpse covered with a blanket, his bare feet exposed.

I felt nausea and couldn't continue eating. In the meantime we were urged to stop everything and begin to transfer the wounded,who arrived that day in wave after wave.

While I was carrying a wounded man I began to question him. Has war broken out? Where were you wounded? Did you see any Germans?

His answer was shocking, “One can not see anything because waves of fire have covered the entire area and panic is spreading rapidly.”

The next day I saw an air battle with my own eyes in the sky above Podvolochisk. I saw airplanes fall and go up in flames along with the pilots who were burned alive, having crashed with their planes.

In our school there were over 300 students, but among these we were only 12 Jewish students. From their airplanes the Germans threw handbills which spoke about the necessity to kill all the Jews, “a parasite nation, instigators of war, blood suckers, etc.” This influenced our schoolmates and our situation deteriorated from minute to minute. We felt we were in a life-threatening situation and sensed that something ominous was being planned by our gentile classmates.

On the evening of July 1, 1941, the principal of the school appeared and announced at an assembly that the school was being evacuated and that we were to be transferred to the area of the Don.⁴ Whoever wished could join the evacuation but it was not compulsory to do so.

He said that the plan was to join a locomotive to our sleeper carriages and to continue in them on our way east.

We were afraid to remain among our classmates any more, but the presence of the principal eased our anxiety.

We lay tracks with our own hands so that we would be able to move our dormitory cars to the general tracks.

When the train began to move the Christian students began to leave, one by one, for their homes. Only we, the Jewish students, remained, and we were joined by some 50 gentiles, who were not students.

We traveled day and night until we were a few kilometers from the Festov station just before Kiev.

The railroad cars were packed, the temperature was very high and it was difficult to breathe. Todros and I decided to climb up on the roof of the car so as to be more comfortable in the clear air.

It was now morning. We were lying on the roof when suddenly I saw two airplanes flying very low. I didn't panic at all. I thought that we were deep in Russian territory and that these were our planes. But when I looked up I saw people running in terrible panic in the direction of the nearby forest. We also jumped off the train. I suddenly heard a terrible explosion. I fell down and waves of dust piled up on me. I was certain that I had been killed. I was a child and didn't know how one is killed. My head was in shock and my ears were blocked. (For about a month after this I couldn't hear in one ear.)

I knew that there was no going back to the train. I ran in the direction of the forest together with Todros.

On our way to the forest a plane flew low over us and someone uttered a cry, “Lay flat!” We lay down and the plane rained waves of machine gun bullets. Fortunately the plane aimed at the train and we were saved.

In the forest we ran for three kilometers in shock. We weren't hungry. We wanted only to run, to run and escape, but the forest was full of red wild berries. They made us forget the horrors and we picked them and gobbled them down as we walked on.

In Festov we found our railroad cars which had meanwhile also arrived there. In my car I found the soup pot upside down and the car full of bullet holes. I found a Jew there and asked him why he had not escaped with us. He explained that he had decided to live or die with all the other passengers. My suitcase was so full of bullet holes that it looked like a beehive and to this day I do not know how that man succeeded in surviving among the hail of bullets.

In Kiev we were not allowed to disembark and we continued on to Donbas. In the the town of Sergo, a coal mining town, we got off the train and were ordered to work in the coal mines, although, being students, we were immediately assigned to the PZO school, the same type of school we had attended previously.

We worked there for two or three weeks. In the meantime the German front advanced and came closer to us. We were secretly transferred one night to the area of Krasnov, which is near Charkov, to dig defensive trenches.

It was now fall. Rains fell non-stop, the trenches filled with water and became a growing swamp, the dampness and cold affected our strength and the thunder of the cannons reached us. I saw that Russian soldiers passed us in panic-stricken retreat and none of them used our trenches, but we were forced to continue digging them because there was no one to rescind the order.

After some days I noticed that only a few of our group remained. Most had fled. We too decided to escape and we hid in an overcrowded train and again reached Donbas. I didn't recognize the place. The city was full of the military, completely dug up and covered with trenches.

The municipal supervisors ordered us to unload a cargo of wood from a train so that we would be able, in his words, to “travel in these railroad cars to Kazakhstan, to the city of Karaganda.” When I looked at a map I saw that this was a distance of 7,000 kilometers.

But after unloading these railroad cars they were taken from us to be used for a different purpose. We walked to Stalingrad on foot. For two weeks we walked day and night, from Voroshilov to Stalingrad. We used side roads for fear of the bombings and we ate in Kolchoz⁵ that were on the way.

During this trek we felt worse from day to day. The local population showed signs of hatred toward us, ridiculed us and made fun of our Jewish fear. They said that we were evading places of danger, and that we only needed “a bent gun,” the kind that shoots others. But we couldn't react and we didn't want to answer because at the time these were only words of hatred, unaccompanied by blows

Stalingrad had already been bombed before our arrival and there was nothing for us to do there. We boarded a train and continued to Kazakhstan. We traveled for two months in the same carriages, without changing trains, but we were unable to sleep. When the train stopped we would get off, steal something and share it. Once I opened a sack of flour from one of the last carriages of the train. I filled my pillowcase with the flour, which was a rare, precious find. We kneaded the flour with water and made dough and I stuck the dough to the chimney of the locomotive. When the dough was dry we had a feast.

These were very strange days. Orders changed from day to day and so did the news. Each time we were ordered to go in a different direction, but the train continued on its way as if it were not asking any person what to do -- and did its own thing.

And so we reached Chelyabinsk.

On the way to Chelyabinsk 50 passengers fell ill with typhus and 28 of them were taken off the train. We remained with those who were left. People in the train car got lice, layer upon layer of lice on a human body. It was possible to take fistfuls off a person. Every morning the counselor who accompanied us from our school would come into our car and order us to undress and kill all the lice we could find.

In the meantime a most difficult winter had arrived. Our clothes were too light. We wrapped our feet somehow in rags, but our bodies were exposed to the bitter cold and our hands froze. There were moments, and hours, when we cried from pain, unable to control ourselves. When we reached Karaganda it was a most terrible winter. There were endless snowstorms and it was doubly hard for anyone to take two steps outdoors without being blinded by the snow or without choking from the pressure of the swirling snows.

We were taken off the train and taken to a public bathhouse where we were given different clothing. Then we were transferred to a dormitory which was entirely underground, a kind of a cave covered by a roof, called Zmerianka by the Russians. We slept on wooden berths.

Immediately after we got settled we were sent to work in coal mines, 150 meters underground.

In the meantime some of us were conscripted into the Red Army, among them my friends from Shumsk and a few other of my Jewish friends. I remained alone. Actually, I was left behind because I had contracted a lung disease. I was now constantly among Ukrainians who had also come from far away and they made my life miserable. Their hatred of Jews was so great that they would even knock the soup pot out of my hands. Once when one of them approached me and said I had no right to eat there, I hit him very hard and they all ganged up on me and wanted to kill me. I was saved miraculously. Nearby was an iron shovel for the stove which I grabbed. I stood there like a crazy person shouting, “Anyone who comes near me will get killed.” They were frightened off, but I had to transfer to a different dormitory that housed Russian adults. There I was not mistreated.

I was also forced to change my place of work to a different coal mine because my being Jewish began to cause me problems at work too.

I fell ill and lay in hospital for three months. I couldn't eat because of my high temperature and weakness. But after six weeks I felt better and I was supposed to leave the hospital.

The hospital was three kilometers from the city Karaganda in Maikodor. A municipal doctor would come to the hospital to check on things. She was the head doctor. In the course of time it became clear to both of us that we were both Jews. She would examine me at length and ask me many questions. She didn't tell me that she was Jewish and her appearance was not Jewish but her last name, Malkina, made me understand that she was a Jew. She discharged me from this hospital, transferred me to the municipal hospital and ordered that I be given better food. When I wanted to leave the municipal hospital she said, “What's bad here? Stay here until the spring when it will be a little warmer.” In the meantime she found out that I was completely alone here and she asked if I would receive her mother nicely if she came to bring me some gifts. Her mother arrived punctually each day and brought me very good food and I got much better. When I had to leave the hospital this doctor forbade me to work in the coal mines and I was given work as a guard outside the mine.

She gave instructions that I was to come to her medical center for a checkup each month. She also gave me her home address so that I could come to visit her at home. At her home I would eat lunch with her parents and her son and she would give me a checkup each time.

When the war ended in 1945 she was sent back to Varonesh, her birthplace, to reorganize the ministry of health there. I accompanied her to the train and helped her board it. On the train she remembered to give me some food for a last time and to give me instructions about how to behave so as not to fall ill again.

I received a few letters from her from Varonesh but our exchange of letters stopped suddenly for some reason.

After a while I met a fellow from Lanowitz, Segal, who was a cousin of Shalom Segal and Malka Segal. He told me that he was working in one of the Kirov mines and invited me to come to visit him at his workplace. I was very happy with this chance to meet another Jewish boy and went there. At his dormitory I asked for him and they showed me his sleeping berth where I sat waiting for him to return. By the evening he hadn't come back. When I asked what had happened I was told that he had been killed in a landslide in the coal mine. They didn't allow me to see his body and to this day I do not know exactly how he was killed.

In 1945 the war ended. I married and continued to live with my wife. After three years we both decided to leave in order to live among Jews and to see what happened to our relatives. We first traveled to Bender (in Serbia), where her sisters and relatives were. We saw that there was no possibility of remaining there since we had no place to live and there was real famine in Bender. My wife agreed that I would travel to Shumsk to reclaim our house and then to build our family.

I reached Lanowitz at night. There was no transportation. The Ukrainians walked everywhere but I was afraid to join them because the roads were full of Bandarovtze⁶ who murdered Jews. Their fellow Ukrainians would inform the Bandarovtze of every Jew or person suspected of being Jewish.

I slept in the train station on a bench and in the morning I started out early, walking along the railway tracks to Shumsk. I didn't know the way but asked frequently and was pointed in the correct direction. I arrived on foot at a spot just before Shumsk. My feet were swollen from walking so much. A wagon passed and I stopped it. I spoke in Russian and was answered in Ukrainian. I continued speaking in Russian until one of the passengers turned to me and in Russian invited me to join them in the wagon. I told him that I was going to look for my parents and my brothers. Then it became clear that he was the present governor of Shumsk and the surrounding area. He didn't know of my family. The wagon driver interrupted us and said that he had known Jews but to the best of his knowledge there are no Jews today in Shumsk and many are missing. My heart foretold me the worst. I wanted to get up and run away but my town pulled me with a hidden magical power and I continued on.

In Shumsk I got off near the Kostziel and from there looked down on the town. The church had been abandoned, its leaning cross looking down at the neglect around it. My feet moved of their own accord and I started walking around. I met a Jew and it became clear to me that he was Azriel Dundik. I remembered that he had been the best football player in Shumsk. He was living here and said he was managing the market. He suggested that we go together to meet other Shumskers. On the way he left me and told me to walk alone in the direction of the market. As I was walking I met another Jew, Moshe Kopyt from Rachmanov. I extended my hand to him, but he did not recognize me from my father's name. We got to know each other and he did not leave me and pulled me to “his” home. I went happily.

He was living in the house of Yitzchak Chelbin. He introduced his wife, who was Ukrainian, and it turned out that I knew her from Karaganda. I slept there. In the evening Azriel Dundik arrived. He promised to take me to see all the Shumskers the next day. In the morning he came and we walked to Boris Kessel, to Krakowiak and to another person whose name I have forgotten. The latter was not a Shumsker but from Androshivka.

These were all the Jews who had remained in Shumsk. I asked Azriel to show me the graves and he led me to the way to Krelitz. He stopped on a little hillock between two hills and said, “Here are three pits. Here are your relatives and mine.” Horses and cows were grazing there, desecrating the dust of our holy ones. Two of the pits were for the adults and one for the children, the precious, innocent, holy children of Shumsk. Azriel said that they had plowed around the area so that the animals would not be able to approach but it had not helped.

I looked down, unable to comprehend how so many men had fallen like children.

But when I walked on the hill I saw thousands of bullet shells. I was told that here our relatives were told to stand under threat of death and a hail of bullets and were forced to go toward the graves themselves. I cried like a child. Afterward I received confirmation that this was what happened, and this is how the Jews of Shumsk fell.

Azriel said that according to what the non-Jews had told him, the rabbi, Reb Yossele, spoke and said that this was their fate and that they should die believing in the fate of the Jewish people. He fell first.

After all this I went to the Christian cemetery of Shumsk. There I was shown two graves and was told that these were of Jews from Shumsk who had returned here to their pitiful homes after the war. One of them was Bryk and the name of the other was not known. Banderovtze stabbed them to death on the road. On their tombstones Russian stars were carved but no names were inscribed.

Near these graves were also the graves of Banderovtze leaders whom the Soviets had caught and buried like dogs, in their clothing.

I remained in Shumsk for two days and could not bear it any more. Before I left I told Azriel that he should leave Shumsk. I begged him to leave and warned him of the danger but his answer was, “I am remaining here to avenge the death of the Jews of Shumsk.”

A few months later I learned that he had died in the hospital, ostensibly from a dog bite. But rumors were that he had been poisoned.

And so the last of the Jews of Shumsk died and I was cut off from my beloved town.

Translator's Footnotes

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