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Kopaigorod National local councils in both Ukrainian and Yiddish.
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Almost all of the houses in Kopaigorod had shutters that were closed at night. There were some well built houses in town. One beautiful house, for example, was built by Avrum Katsura in the 1860's. He had served in the royal army for 25 years and the authorities allowed him to build a big house.
After the establishment of Soviet power, in 1923, Kopaighrod became the center of the Jewish national village council. Administrative work, as well as education in the local school, was conducted in Yiddish. In the 1930s, Groiber Yankel Shenshevych worked as the head of the Jewish village council, and Ruvim Elevich Ostrovsky served as secretary. There were twelve members of the executive committee and three candidates for members of the executive committee.
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Kopaigorod National local councils in both Ukrainian and Yiddish. |
Duvid Hershkov Grebelsky, resident of Kopaigorod, registered in Yuzvin in 1888, doesn't vote. He was convicted for banditism, has been in prison for three years. He owns two houses, (but only one legally), as well as a cab and three horses. He is a wealthy peasant {which at that time was a bad thing}.
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| This certificate was issued to A. Fushman, by the Kopaigorod Jewish local Council about his remaining in the ghetto, dated 1944. Reference given to Aron Davidovich Fushman that he came to Kopaigorod with the columns of Jews who were expelled from Bessarabia in October 1841. He is here now. |
In 1922, there was an orphanage in Kopaigorod. The American Relief Administration sent food and necessities which helped the children to survive in those difficult times. A children's shelter had existed in the town since 1901. It was opened by the Mogilev district guardianship of children's shelters. It was a nursery shelter for children whose parents worked in the fields. It was opened at the expense of the landowner F.I. Skorobagach-Bogutskyi. In 1923, the Kopaigorod district was organized. The Komsomol organization of the town and volost in 1918 was headed by Boris Kaplan, who had previously worked in the Zhmerinsky locomotive depot. He was one of the first, along with other Komsomol members, on February 17, 1923 to create an agricultural cooperative for joint cultivation of land (known as the TSOZ). The Kaplan family used to live in the village Perepilchentsi. They fled the pogroms, and moved to Kopaigorod. Boris (Burykh) studied at the vocational school on a Komsomol mission after the end of the civil war.
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From left to right in the first row of the photo: Galchynskyi, K. Konovalov, Doroshenko, B.Ya. Kaplan, I. Garber, H.S. Fishelevich. Second row from left to right: M. Dzyubov, M. Zilberstein, A. Chipakiy (who betrayed the Komsomol and was killed in a battle), Y. Khabi, V. Korenfeld, Sh. Shnerer, (unknown), A. Bogutskyi |
Hitman, who worked in a cooperative, was one of the first Komsomol members. When Hitman was in the seventh grade in our local school, B. Kaplan came to visit the school. He spoke at a meeting about the difficult years of the 1920's and 1930's, about life in the town, about Komsomol members and many other things. The Komsomol district organization was written about in the newspaper Komsomolets of Ukraine in December 1925. The article said that the organization was developing at a rapid pace, and establishing ties with other Komsomol centers of the district. It also conducted political education among young people and increased the number of members of the Komsomol organization bringing in non-union youth.
After the civil war, life was relatively quiet, although various gangs were active. As I have already written, my grandfather on my mother's side was severely beaten and robbed by bandits and died from the injuries sustained from the beatings.
Bandits had been heard of in the Kopaigorod area before. In 1909, an article in the Rada newspaper reported that bandits attacked the Royzentul brothers near the town. They were beaten and robbed of 125 rubles.
On July 13-14, 1925, a thirty-five member gang of Ovcharuk brothers captured Kopaigorod at night. Police officers were beaten, the police chief was wounded, and the police premises were burned. The offices of the district committee, the district executive committee and the post and telegraph office were looted; all the goods were taken out of the stores. A member of the gang was doctor I.Yu. Matruk, who knew Kopaigorod well. He had been treated here for typhoid in 1918. This gang was helped by K. Karman, a resident of Kopaigorod, who provided food and a cart for the gang. He was sentenced to 3 years. I.V. Lysak was sentenced to 10 years for taking part in the armed attack on Kopaigorod. One of brothers, Yevhen Ovcharuk, died in battle in February 1926. He was originally from the village of Snytkiv, in the Murovani Kurylivtsi district.
In the report by the head of the police department of Mogiliv-Podilsky DPU in April 1929, it was noted:
A gang was liquidated in the Kopaigorod district, consisting of 27 people, which, according to the task of the Ukrainian overseas center, set itself the task of raising an uprising against the Soviet power. At the head of the organization was Shportiy, who had been hiding from Soviet power for a long time and escaped from the Solovetsky concentration camp. This organization already had its headquarters, and also organized criminal elements of the Kopaigorod district around itself, with the aim of using them in a mass action against the Soviet power.
My mother shared her memories of Jewish life in the town in the 1920's. Before Shabbat, bean or carrot soup, chicken broth, challah, cookies were baked as well as pies with cheese or meat. Dishes for meat and dairy dishes were placed on the table separately. You couldn't mix it. God forbid if someone mixed it up! And all this was observed, everything was kosher. They did not slaughter the bird themselves, but went to the shochet (butcher.)
They celebrated all the days of the Passover holiday. The first Seder was held till the morning, until the end Haggadah was read. Everything required was put on the seder plate. There was charoset, zeroa - the shankbone, beitzim - eggs, karpas - green vegetable for dipping in salt water, hazeret and maror - bitter herbs or horseradish to feel the bitterness of slavery of our ancestors in Egypt. Wine was specially made from grapes or raisins.
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This book of Tehillim (psalms) was published in 1889. |
On Purim, the community organized a Purimshpiel and baked hamantaschen. On Sukkot, everyone built a sukkah in their yard. Festive prayers were held in the synagogue, and the Jews ate a festive meal for seven days.
Old people dressed in traditional Jewish clothes. Women wore a kerchief on their hair when they went out. Sometimes older women wore a wig. Men wore a black, Jewish cut cap with a yarmulke under the cap, and a frock coat - a suit with a waistcoat, and a watch on a silver chain.
In the town of Kopaigorod, where 1078 Jews lived in 1925, only fifty percent of the Jewish able-bodied population worked in various types of cooperatives.
In the 1920's the woodworking workshop Obodiar was organized at Kopay station. After the war, the artillery depended upon the output as it increased its power, and the workshop was called a woodworking plant. In the 1950's Raidun worked as the plant director. The locals called this plant Obodyarnia.
Before the war, many different enterprises and organizations carried out business in the town, such as the Budivelnik food plant, the water mill, the oil plant, the harvesting office, as well as other various societies.
In the 1920's, Trudovyk, a multidisciplinary plant, was organized in Kopaigorod. Mainly Jews worked in this plant that included a bakery, workshops for shoemakers, tailors, coopers, glaziers, blacksmiths and other professions. A member of the Komsomol, a deputy of the village council, Moisha Yampolskyi, was elected as the head of the plant.
An agricultural society called Nezamonzhynk (meaning poor people) was organized in the Kopaigorod Volost in 1923. Its founders gathered the 2,820 poor people in the volost and organized them as an agricultural credit society that was approved with a charter. The shares were defined as 2 poods and 20 pounds of grain and an introductory 20 pounds. The introductory 20 pounds, and the share 20 pounds, had to be paid during February, and the rest after collecting the harvest. This organization allowed the poor an opportunity to get back on their feet. The people gathered together and started a beetroot business, and agreed to sow 50 acres of beets for the sugar factory. Later on the sugar area had to be increased. The Kopaigorod Agricultural Society was a large economic organized power in the area.
A production workshop for the disabled was registered and started making sausages in 1925. David Shor worked as a photographer in the 1930s; Idle Roif and Rud were hairdressers; Velv Schneiderman worked as a chief accountant in the regional consumer association, and D. Grentel was the merchandiser; Mykhailo Schneiderman was also the chief accountant, but at a different enterprise; Isaak Bilenkyi, Yosyp Kodner, Ya. Mesonzhnik, Moshe Kats, B. Zaidman, Ya. Mesilchenik were accountants; Aron Braverman worked as a baker, R. Blitman was a cooper, and Haskel Braverman worked as a shoemaker. In 1932–1933, Isaak Glikin was in charge of the bakery. Yasha Gelin worked as the head of the procurement office. M. Handelman was a therapist, and A. Handelman worked as a surgeon. B. Krasik, and Roif Nesya worked as paramedics, and M. Hershkovich was a nurse; I.I. Averbukh, a doctor and captain of the medical services, died in the war in 1943; Velv Schneider worked as the director of the bank, and P. Nemyrovska was an accountant in the bank where R. Tesler worked as a cashier. I. Krakopolsky was the arbitration judge.
Employees of various organizations were: I. Tsodikovych, H. Shafir, Sh. Schwartz. Tailors: Alter Sharun, Shmil Schwartz, Leiser Schwartz, and E. Nemyrovska. Craig Usher was a tailor before the 1917 revolution, P. Berenzon sewed hats and caps. E. Katz was a seamstress, and P. Shvachman sewed exquisite things. J. Shteinman worked as the director of the printing house. He was said to be able to fix any malfunction in the printing press, he could type any text himself (it consisted of individual lead letters), knew how to make linoleum prints, of clichés, friendly cartoons, caricatures, etc. for the district newspaper.
Hana Tselman worked as a teacher in the kindergarten, and Riva Hetsilevich was the head. Sh.P. Oksman worked as a manager of the district communications department, Lasutra worked in the district newspaper editorial office, and then the head of the Union Printing Office, A.B. Steiman was the head of production of plant Trudovyk, and M. Avis was an accountant there. U.I. Avis worked as the head of Robsilkop, and before him Lazar Zakashanskyi presided. Manya Shor, Hayka Koifman, Sharman Vexler, E. Nischy, H. Solomenskyi, E. Hershkovych, and I. Kipershlak worked as salesmen in the buffet, where P. Gelin was a waitress. The Shuster family made various fur products. Lisa Feferman, and Zeylik Milinevsky taught at the school. Ilya Isaakovich Frenkel from Medzhibozh taught the German language and arithmetic. G. Polyanker wrote about his amazing fate in his book, Teacher from Medzhibozh. Engineers at various enterprises of the town were Yakov Kotlyar and Taybl Schniper. Herschel Hetsilevich worked in the village council. Shteiman was the head of the district executive committee in the early 1930s. The cab drivers were F. Libergot and Davyd Grebelsky.
Grebelsky was arrested in 1931 for anti-Soviet agitation and smuggling. He was rehabilitated in 1989. In the 1920's, Grebelsky built a slaughterhouse in the town on agreement with the executive committee. He financed it with his own money and kept it on lease for three years. He was deprived of electoral rights for speculative trading. When he worked as a coachman, he had two pairs of horses, a phaeton and a sharaban (stroller), and a sleigh.
Herschel Zaliznyak was a good craftsman in his work as a furrier. He sewed coats, leather jackets, and warm shoes. Anshil Sames worked in forestry as a forester. K. Spector managed the mill. I. Degin, and H. Shafir were employees at various enterprises. I. Sharman worked as a carpenter, D. Shkolnik worked as a freight forwarder in the district consumer union, N. Brecher worked as a projectionist, he was also a musician. Zus Spivak, the last rabbi in the town, died in 1943. He lived in the town of Soifer and worked as a sofer, copying sacred books. Yitzhak Malamud was killed in August 1941 while praying. Jews worked in various jobs; it is hard to remember them all.
Some Ukrainians knew how to speak Yiddish. Ukrainian women who sold products at the bazaar knew several dozen Jewish words. My perspective about the local Ukrainian-Jewish relations follows. The population of the town was mixed among Jews and Ukrainians. A Jew could not do without a peasant, just as a peasant could not do without a Jew. These were the vital relations that nullified enmity between the groups. Each peasant had a relationship with his or her own Zhidok, or Jew. Every Jew had a particular relationship with his or her own Goy, or non-Jew. No one paid attention to these nicknames, because it was human life. If there was a quarrel, it arose on the basis of neighborly material envy and not for their Jewish or Ukrainian status. Whoever lived better had more enemies, regardless of nationality, because such was a human essence. If not for anti-Semitism from above, which reared up from time to time before the war, the racial theory brought by the Nazis to Ukraine, and what happened here in occupation, would never have happened. Some Ukrainians knew Jewish language a little because there was a practice in the town of involving non-Jews in household work on Saturday and on a regular basis. Most often they were called the Shabbos goy, and hired workers became practical members of Jewish families. They were proud of their work, and how they mastered the rules of behavior within a culture foreign to them, subtleties of everyday life, and also language.
The Jewish local council was reestablished immediately after the war. Its head before and after the war was Rahil Letynska. She was evacuated with the party archive of Kopaigorod to Kuibyshev. (Interview with her daughter Sofya Pshenichna, who was born in Kopaigorod in 1928).
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| Excerpt from an order to liquidate the Jewish National Council, December 15 1945, signed by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR M. Grechuha and the Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR A. Mezhzherin, of the Verhkovna Rada of the Ukrainian SSR.
Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
About the liquidation of Kopaigorod National Village Council of Kryzhopol district Vinnitsa region
To liquidate Kopaigorod national village council and include its territory into Kopaigorod village council of Kopaigorod district Vinnitsa region |
In 1926, eight families from Kopaigorod moved to Kherson district where they founded a collective farm named after Hersh Leckert. Thirty-two people from the families of M. Vayner, A. Vayner, D. Holstein, P. Shlemovich, Sh. Shmukler, S. Khaby, S. Tadolis, (32 people) moved to the collective farm. Assistance in resettlement was provided by TZET. On January 17, 1925, the Agrarian Workers' Land Management Society (TZET in Ukrainian) was established in Moscow. It was a public organization to promote KomZET, an organization to help Jews adapt to agriculture, and the Agro-Joint. TZET collected and distributed funds to help displaced people, engaged in mobilization of public opinion, propaganda, organization of general and professional education, cultural life, medicine for displaced people, and interacted with international Jewish organizations. In order to collect funds, TZET held lotteries in 1928, 1929, 1931, 1932 and 1933.
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| Vouchers, such as this, in Yiddish and Ukrainian, were issued by TZET to immigrants. Inscription in Yiddish and in Ukrainian. For sending the immigrant OZET |
A TZET branch was organized in Kopaigorod. It contributed to the resettlement of local Jews in Kherson district and distributed the Jewish magazine, Tribune, among local Jews. In 1932, the condition of affairs in this society changed for the worse. On August 25-27, 1932, Ukrtzet instructor Milman inspected the condition of the Kopaigorod TZET. It was found out that the last re-election took place in June 1930. Out of 8 members of the board at the time of the inspection, only three remained: Duchovny, Groysman and Spector. There were 7 centers in the district: 3 – in artisanal plants and 4 – in collective farms, including one in a Ukrainian collective farm. The total number of members reached 155. There were also two “children - friends of TZET” centers at Kopaigorod and Luchynets Jewish schools. After completing the inspection of the branch many changes were suggested. It was decided to introduce active members to the board, to increase the number of cells to 12, and TZET members to 600 people, the number of “children - friends of TZET” cells to 5, to intensify work on the resettlement of the Jewish poor to the South, improve the work of the branch committees, and increase the subscription to the magazines Socialist Furrow to 12 copies and the Tribune to 25 copies.
In the early 1930s, Duchovny was the head of the TZET regional branch, and Groysman was the responsible secretary and member of the board. In 1931, two families from plot 117 of Kherson district left the collective farm to return to Kopaigorod. After some time, a letter written by these families was published in Tribune # 8 in 1932. “We want to return. Will you accept us? Everything is expensive here in Kopaigorod. If you don't have time to make money everything goes away. It was better in the collective farm.” KomZET also sent Jewish youth to study. The commission for the selection of cadets in Kopaigorod, consisting of Avis, Bronshtein, Blechman and the secretary of the Snitkiv KomZET Mudryk, considered the qualifications of all those who applied, and recommended in May 1929 to send several students from the Kopaigorod district to study at the TsIP agronomy courses in Kamyanets-Podilskyy. Those who were accepted were L. Tarka, from the city of Snitkiv, A. Shkolnyk, 18 year old M.Sh. Rosinberg who was unemployed and declassified, I.Sh. Sigal, declassified, employed, and G.Sh. Bilenko, 18, declassified, unemployed, came from Kopaigorod.
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Protocol # 41
Of the meeting of commission for the selection of cadets for courses TZET to Kamyanets-Podilskyy from 19.05.1929 in the presence of Bronshteyn, Avye, Blekhman and secretary from Snitkov Murin.
Listened; residents of Snitkov - Leyb Tuck, Abram Shkolnik, Moyshe Rozenberg; from Kopaigorod Yos Sigal, Hersh Bilenky about selection for the courses.
Approved: Recommend the following people Leyb Tuck, Abram Shkolnik, Moyshe Rozenberg,
Yos Sigal, Hersh Bilenky. |
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Family Form For those joining the immigrant communities in the immigrant campaign 1925-26
Kopaigorod
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In 1939, there were 1,075 Jews living in Kopaigorod, which was 37.4% of the entire population of the district center. A Jewish collective farm called Jewish Peasant, was organized in Kopaigorod. This collective farm, which was disbanded in the late 1930's, was part of the Kopaigorod district collective farm union. It consisted of 67 hectares of arable land, 5 horses, various livestock and 35 workers.
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Jewish Peasant was united with the Perebudova collective farm. Zakutner Benzion worked as an agronomist on the collective farm. There were other Jewish collective farm workers, among whom was Avrum Zalizniak and Herschel Tkach, who was a veterinarian. The collective farm grew sugar beets, tobacco, wheat and some vegetables. In February 1932, the KomZET (Committee for the Settlement of Toiling Jews on the Land) reported on the condition of the Jewish collective farm as of January 1, 1932. Full name: Kopaigorod Agricultural Plant “Der Yidisher Poyer”, organized on October 15, 1929. The total land area is 132 hectares. There were sixteen members of the collective farm over the age of 16, on January 1, 1932. There were seventeen families and 75 eating members all together. On January 1, 1931, there were 32 members of the collective farm. Fifteen people left the team in 1931. The farm had 10 horses, 5 plows, 2 cultivators, 1 seeder, 1 reaper, and 4 carts. The distance from the plot to the home of the members of the plant was 1 km. There was an oil mill in the household, which was not working at the time of the inspection. In 1931, one working day cost 33 kopecks of products. Members of the team received 125 centners (1 centner = 50 kilograms) of grain crops for 1931. Only 8 hectares were plowed, which was 10% of the plan. The plan for sowing winter crops for 1932 was 80% of the plan (35 hectares). Hired labor was used in the cultivation of sugar beet. The grain distribution plan was 100% fulfilled in 1931. And in general, the plant was poorly prepared for the spring sowing campaign.
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For examining of Jewish shtetl, suburb and rural collective farms
1. District: Kopaigrod 16. cultivated area 1931 and crops:
17. Orchard Area 18. If the collective farm a part of MTC (motor tractor station) 19. Number of cattle
20. Winter bean sown in 1932: wheat 32, rye 3, total 35. Plan is fulfilled for 80%
30. Capital of the collective farm: |
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Other enterprises were organized in the town during the 1920's and 1930's. There was a horse farm with 78 horses. A leather tanning factory opened in 1920. The regional consumer union opened a butter factory in 1929, which in 1946, was converted into a separator station where cream and skimmed cheese were produced. This facility was closed in May, 1974. A club with 300 seats was opened in 1936. In 1940, a district veterinary hospital was organized. An MTS, (machine-tractor station) was initiated in 1931, which on August 1, 1933 had 25 International tractors and 8 Fordzon-Putilivtsi. On June 21, 1961, RTS (formerly MTS) was reorganized into the Agricultural Machinery department. Before the war, every city or town had an OSOAVIAKHIM society (Union of Societies of Assistance to Defense and Aviation-Chemical Construction of the USSR) which was a military sports society that trained conscripts for military service. It was later called DOSAAF. Abidov Kikmak Akhmedzhanovych, a representative of the staff of the Red Army, a 1939-graduate of the junior lieutenant courses of the Kyiv Special Military District, was sent to Kopaigorod for service. As of May 9, 1939, he was in military service in OSOAVIAKHIM as the head of the Military Training Point “A” of the Kopaigorod District Council. The head of the district council was P.E. Grigorishyn who was arrested in November 1937. The case against him was dropped in 1938. In his place, the district committee of the party appointed Bohdanov, who worked as a district censor to make sure that the military training of youth was conducted properly.
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Membership card #353145 |
There was still no sense of tragedy at that time. Adolf Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, had already been published. There was outrage over Kristallnacht, the pogrom against the Jews in Germany. The film Professor Mamlock, produced in 1938, is a political drama about a Jewish doctor who became a victim of the fascists, and it was screened widely in communist areas. You could often hear the Soviet military song “If there is war tomorrow, if there is a campaign tomorrow...” on the radio. The inhabitants of Kopaigorod did not believe the words of the song. They sang a different song instead, “The beloved city can sleep peacefully”. However, some understood that something was wrong in the world. In 1940, reservists were called up for retraining. Thousands of detainees built a strategic road, later named the Stalin Highway, which passed close to Kopaigorod.
The Stalin Highway was a major construction project. According to an order of the NKVD of the USSR # 0170 dated September 4, 1938, camp # 211 was organized and the construction of the strategically important military road Yemilchyno–Mohyliv-Podilskyi–Kamyanets-Podilskyy on the territory of Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Kamyanets-Podilskyy (now Khmelnytska regions) began. This military road ran through the territory of Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Zhmerynskyi, Kopaihorodskyi and Stanislavchytskyi districts. Construction camp # 211 was subordinated to the Gulag of the NKVD of the USSR. Eyewitnesses of those events reported on the construction project:
The main camp was located near the village Ukrainske (formerly Romanka) and a second camp was located near the village of Chervone. Camp sites were fenced off with barbed wire. The prisoners first lived in tents, and then they built eight barracks. Living quarters were not adapted for winter, there was no minimum stock of firewood for heating. During the autumn rains, the floor in the barracks turned into a swamp, because the roofs leaked. During the war, the Germans kept Jews from Bukovina in these barracks. When the work on the construction of the ground surface of the future highway began, only the manual labor of prisoners was used with the help of shovels, picks, crowbars, and wheelbarrows to remove the dirt, although in general the material base of the entire construction at the end of 1939 consisted of 8 excavators, 54 ZIS which were Soviet cars, and 87 tractors from the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, known as ChTZ. Many prisoners died of hard work. The construction of the strategic road was urgently stopped and never completed. Camp # 211 was disbanded on December 31, 1940. The people called this Stalin's Road. According to archival data, at first, on January 1, 1939, there were 1,911 prisoners in the camp, a year later - 5,489, on July 1, 1940 - 6,576, and on January 1, 1941 - 2,188. Freelance workers were used for construction as well. On December 1, 1939, there were 3,871 employees. Since the construction took place in the foreign lane, the camp housed people who were arrested for criminal offenses. During the construction period, there were mass postings called “tufta” and so-called “promotes”, that is, thefts by prisoners to sell construction materials, tools, clothes, etc. to the local population. Pickaxes from the camp and other equipment were kept in the villages. Such pickaxes were also in Kopaigorod. I even had a pickaxe just like these at my home. (DaViO, f. P- 805, item 1, unit collection 30).
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The Jewish population of the town, including my relatives, could not even predict in their wildest dreams what would happen to them a year later. The war, the first bombings, evacuation panic and young people who were taken to the east on foot.
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