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“The child is gone”

In the Great Synagogue, before it was destroyed in the First World War, there was a porthole up the north wall and above it the inscription “The Child is Gone”.

According to the legend, the Ba'al Shem Tov once visited Gwozdziec and met with “HaShor HaKaddosh”. The two tzaddikim gathered in the old synagogue and ordered everything not to disturb them. A group of curious children could not overcome their urge, they let one boy climb on top of them and he poked his head through the porthole, to see what was happening inside. However, the boy “peeked and was hit” and fell dead on the spot.

In memory of the event - and probably as a warning - they installed on the north wall the inscription “The Child is Gone”.

In Gwozdziec, it was not customary that the groom, who was about to consecrate a woman under his canopy, cover the bride's face, which was contrary to the accepted custom in all Jewish communities. The reason for this unusual custom lie in a tragic incident that happened there. Once during the Kiddushin ceremony, held near the old synagogue, at the moment when the groom covered the face of the bride, both - the groom and the bride - collapsed and died on the spot. The unfortunate couple, who haven't been reunited yet, were later buried next to the synagogue where it happened. Since then, a groom who was about to marry a woman was forbidden to cover the face of the bride.

Another custom, which took root in the town following the death of the couple, was throwing garlic over the grave of the two on the ninth day of Av.

Due to the tragic case of the bride and groom who died together under their canopy, which was placed in the courtyard of the old synagogue, and they were buried in the southern corner of the courtyard, on the area east of the synagogue, the area east of the synagogue remained empty and it was forbidden to build on it, even for the use of the synagogue itself.

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The penknife

The Jewish craftsman who was involved in the construction of the synagogue, used for the sculpting work of the Holy Ark the same penknife that was used to sculpt the Holy Ark in the synagogue of the Holy Ari in the city of Safed in the Holy Land.

In the First World War, when the Russian army burned all the houses in the town, the fire started after a group of soldiers found a treasure of schnaps. After they got drunk, as it was customary among the Russian soldiers, they set fire to the brewery along with all the schnaps left in it. After that they went from house to house and set it on fire, until all the houses of the town were burnt. Only one building was not damaged by the flames, and it was the large and old synagogue, even though it was also made of wood, like all the other houses that were burnt. The soldiers took flammable material and poured it on the synagogue, but it didn't help. despite that, they did not let go of their plan, and three days later they succeeded in their plot. Only a small handful of ashes remained from the synagogue.

The Cossacks carried out their plot and the synagogue, which had stood for about three hundred years, was completely burned down.

A few days before the election day of a new rabbi, one of the melamedim was engaged in several acts with the elder of the tailors in the town. First, they both went to the mikveh to purify themselves, then they prayed Shacharit with the Anenu prayer, as being done on a fast day, and then they went to the cemetery, where they walked

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straight to the grave of “HaShor HaKaddosh”. The elder of the tailors of remained standing some distance away by the fence while the melamed ascended the grave of the tzaddik.

As it was well known, this was against the prohibition of the famous will, which was accompanied by the threat that anyone who violates it, will be punished and die.

But the melamed approached and begged, saying: “HaShor HaKaddosh”, let us have the Great Synagogue, please help the election of Rabbi Malmberg!

When this became known in the town, upon the return of the melamed and the elder of the tailors, many people came towards them and began to preach morals to the melamed and it seemed that he was comforted by this act.

That day in the early evening, the melamed's son was about to go to the city of Horodenka and the father accompanied him to the train station. It was during the winter and the road was slippery and the melamed fell and injured himself. He was immediately taken to a hotel, which was near the train station, from where a doctor was called and when he arrived some time later, he could only determine a cerebral hemorrhage. That night the melamed passed away and the next day he was brought to the same cemetery where the tzaddik was buried. The elder of the tailors didn't last long and he passed away a month after the event.

Rabbi Yitzchak Shor, known as “HaShor HaKaddosh”, writes G. Shalom: “was Av Beit Din in Gwozdziec, who some of his family members were among the leaders of the sect (Shabtai Zvi), writes in response about a book of the Torah, written by a scribe from the members of the sect: “those who follow the instigator and inciter “Barkiya of Slonik”, who is one of the most famous liars, who even did not change their name, their appearance and their speech from my ways of the Law of Moses, but part of their heart was not devoted to it, They deviated from the straight path of the Torah”.

(Q&A Shor, section 31, Kolomea, 5648 (1888), page 57, 63. The author passed away on 5536 (1776). The sect had a settlement in the vicinity of Gwozdziec, there was a large number of them especially in the nearby city of Horodenka).

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At the beginning of the war between Germany and Russia, five months into the war (July – November, 1941), the town was relatively quiet. Gwoździec and the surrounding area were occupied by the Hungarians, and the occupiers' attitude towards the Jews was not very bad. At the time, we hoped that perhaps we would be able to get through the difficult period peacefully.

It was summer. There were fruits in my garden and a stock of food and clothing in the house.

The occupiers employed only the men and used the local Jewish Committee that had been established for this purpose. My two sons, Ducia and Benny, were forced to serve Hungarian officers and also worked with others in cleaning the town.

Here and there were cases of abuse, Jews were arrested and beaten and then released. They were beaten during work as well. But these were very minor troubles compared to those that happened during the later period of the war.

Summer has come to an end; the autumn winds were blowing sadly. You could almost feel in the air that tragedy was approaching. In November 1941, the Germans entered Gwoździec and the civil government passed entirely into the hands of the Ukrainians, and the enemy of the Jews, Tkaczyk, was appointed mayor of the town.

The Jewish population received a strict order: it must concentrate within a few hours in the ghetto in the east of the town. My family and I - five people - moved to live at Moshe Binder's house. There was a severe shortage of fuel and food in the ghetto. We suffered from overcrowding and cold, and we were all afraid - everyone asked what would happen?

The situation of the Jews living in east Gwoździec, whose neighborhood was declared a ghetto, was relatively better than that of the Jews who came here from other neighborhoods. Those in the east remained in their apartments with their belongings, while the Jews who were deported to the ghetto were forced to leave most of their belongings in their homes. The belongings were of great importance because in exchange for them, food and fuel could be obtained from the Gentiles.

Despite the difficult situation, which led to famine, no diseases broke out in the ghetto. The fear of death swallowed up most of the troubles. The will to live was stronger and even the natural mortality rate was relatively low. Horrible rumors arrived from the surrounding settlements and, to further the evil, they began to build bunkers in a primitive way in basements.

We built a bunker with the Binder family for seven people and we were ready to go down to the bunker at any moment. We felt that the storm was getting closer.

It happened after Passover, on the 27^th of Nisan 5702, the first Aktziya. At six in the morning shots were heard. Armed Germans and Ukrainians appeared around the ghetto and began a brutal massacre. I went down with my family

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and the Binder couple to the bunker. We lay close to the ground and were terrified. We heard terrible shots and screams and felt suffocating smoke. Sweat, heat and shivering from the cold mixed in me. My head was heavy. I remained almost unconscious. Has the end come? The German-Ukrainian Aktziya against the Jews of Gwoździec lasted for eight hours. Time is different if you measure it by the suffering of hell on earth. At about one o'clock in the afternoon the Aktziya stopped. Its results were terrible: half of the Jews of Gwoździec were killed by gunfire, hand grenades, fires and smoke suffocation.

The surviving Jews loaded the bodies and bones of the dead onto vehicles and buried them in a mass grave in the cemetery. It was the hand of fate that Fate the first day of destruction of the Jews of Gwoździec, the 27th of Nisan, was declared by the Knesset of Israel as Holocaust Day - a day of remembrance for generations.

We were shocked and helpless. The tragic reality quickly brought us to our senses. Gwoździec was declared a “Judenrein” and we were deported to Kolomyia. Old people and children were taken by car and the young people walked. When we arrived at the Kolomyia ghetto, we were horrified by what we saw. Crowds of Jews from Kolomyia and the surrounding area were crowded into a small area, in apartments and courtyards. Poverty and filth, hunger and misery. Natural and unnatural death, in short - hell.

My sister Esther had an apartment in the ghetto - a stroke of luck in a time of disaster. We moved into it and after a dramatic meeting, we regained our spirits. My daughter Genya and I did not leave the house, while the boys Ducia, Benny and my daughter-in-law, Fanny, worked in the fields of the noblemen with other young Jewish men and women. In exchange for working in the fields, we received a little food.

It was already the second summer during the occupation and the chances of staying alive were already slim. Kolomyia ghetto was a cruel place, and we knew we had to escape from it.

A few Jews from Gwoździec were given permission to buy goods for the occupiers, they were called “lucky ones” – “mit di blachlech” – as they had licenses to move freely. They took advantage of the license to move freely for trade and returned to Gwoździec. Others followed them and settled in the apartments that remained from the first destruction of the ghetto. Dressed as a Ukrainian women, I fled from Kolomyia to Gwoździec and returned to my previous place, the apartment of Moshe Binder. A few days later, my daughter Genya also came and we lived together.

We then learned from local Ukrainians that my son and daughter-in-law were in the village of Slobodka (near Kolomyia).

After some time, more families and individuals returned from Kolomyia to Gwoździec by tortuous path, and occupied apartments in the ghetto area. Our hope was that

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since Gwoździec had already passed the Aktziya, the Jews there would probably no longer be bothered, and it would be possible to obtain a little food from the Gentiles who were happy to sell on credit until the end of the war. We thought of a way to escape and hide with humane and brave Poles and Ukrainians.

My daughter Genya dared and succeeded in this. She hid with her Polish friend Anila. I was left alone in Binder's apartment. A short time later, we learned, to our great regret, that the hopes of the Jews of Gwoździec to remain in the town were in vain. A new order was issued by the cruel government to gather all the Jews, register them and deport them.

It was Monday, eight days before Rosh Hashanah 5702. We were gathered and taken according to the previous method to Kolomyia. On the way before the village of Podheychik, the convoy stopped. I was in a wagon when the idea of “escape” suddenly occurred to me. I got out of the wagon and hid in a nearby shed. I heard them looking for me. Finally, the search stopped and the convoy continued on its way. As is known, the Jews were taken to the Kolomyia train station, where there were many Jews from Kolomyia ghetto, including the people of Gwoździec, who had not returned to the town. They were all surrounded by armed Germans and Ukrainians. The wait here at the train station was terrifying. The masses of Jews, men and women, young people, children and babies, were waiting for their funeral. They put this helpless crowd into freight cars and took them to the Belzec death camp. From the survivors who managed to jump from the freight cars, it was learned that many of the victims died during the horrific journey.

As mentioned, I stayed in Podheychik. At nightfall I began walking through fields towards Gwoździec. My goal was to get to my daughter Genya, who was hiding at Anila's house.

I walked among the grain, which was already ripe and ready for harvest. I walked and rested. Farmers took pity on me and gave me food. I wandered around the fields for several days and slowly approached the town. I arrived at the village of Mali Gwoździec. I approached an unfamiliar house and knocked on the window. A woman came out to meet me and I asked her to give me a place to sleep. The woman was frightened, but she quickly understood what was the matter, took me into a small warehouse and served me food. Early in the morning she woke me up, gave me a bottle of milk and a pita made of wheat flour and sent me on my way. I went to Gwoździec. I did not see a living soul on the way. The town was empty of people. I arrived at the house of Dudi Fishman, where Anila lived.

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I knocked on the window and heard the voice of Anila's husband - Ketu Tam (who is it)? I answered: “Geanya's mother”. He opened and let me into his house and when Genya saw me, she fainted.

There was a small storage room in Anila's basement and it was used as our living space. During the days, we didn't dare stick our heads out and only went out at night to get some fresh air. Anila provided us with food as best she could and occasionally brought us hot water to bathe.

Through the Ukrainian Les Wobczerik, I established contact with Ducia and Fanny, who were in Kolomyia ghetto, and we learned about the bitter fate that befell the Jews of Gwoździec, and also that my youngest son was deported and taken to an unknown location.

Winter 1943. Ducia and his wife fled from Kolomyia ghetto and looked for a way to escape. Ducia hid at Anila's house, while Fanny stayed for a while in a pigsty with Wobczerik. At our request, Anila agreed to give a hiding place as well to Fanny, who did housework for Anila at night, and spent the day with us in hiding.

Anila's daughter, Jancia, hid five Jews at her house: the three Bergman brothers – Mendel, Friedel and Moshe, as well as Zalman Perschel and Stella Leitner. Jancia's husband, Karol, was the brave man who initiated our rescue. He was the one who influenced Anila and her husband Piotr to take on the task.

These two Polish families, in danger for themselves, hid us and also ensured our survival. We stayed with them until the end of the dark period, when every Jew was condemned to death simply for being Jewish.

The Red Army captured Gwoździec at the end of March, 1944, and we were liberated. Slowly I got used to walking and I was breathing free air again with my family. We entered our house, got settled in, and on Passover 5704, we felt that we were free again.

A military doctor, a Hungarian Jew, stayed with us, treated us, healed us, and helped us obtain food.

The town looked like a cemetery, with strangers wandering around. We only knew a few who were Holocaust survivors and seemed like shadows of people.

My house was then used as a hostel for the poor remnant of the Jewish refugees. The young people started working to earn a living, but we didn't want to stay and a year later we moved to Poland and from there we immigrated to the Land of Israel.

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It was early in the morning, before five o'clock, on the 22^nd of June, 1941. Suddenly, the thunder of cannons was heard, getting closer and closer. The sounds heralded the outbreak of war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

When the Jews of the town realized the meaning of what was happening, some had already begun to flee to save their lives. The first to flee were the Russian citizens, who had recently come to work and live in the town - some on foot and some by car - all fled from the enemy, most of them in groups and in panic. The people set off in the direction of the river, on their way to Russia beyond the Dniester River. The next day, the Red Army, the previous army of occupation, began its flight. Tanks, cannons and soldiers with their equipment, moved towards the train station. Those who had not yet decided what to do, or those who had not managed to escape with the first wave, stood in groups, gathered together and talked among themselves excitedly and silently - what would happen tomorrow? What should we do now? Different opinions were heard; the Germans send people to work… the Germans imprison in concentration camps… the Germans deprive freedom… and on and on.

No one imagined what was really expected the future that awaited them, what the Nazis intended to do to us, the Jews. No one properly evaluated the meaning of the term “Germans”.

Several days after the hostilities, the town was occupied by enemy forces. The first to arrive in the town was a company of Hungarian soldiers. Their behavior did not even inspire fear; on the contrary, they behaved correctly, and many of their officers even stayed with Jews, and some even became friends with us.

I especially remember one of them, originally from Karpatska - Ukraine, who lived with the Zandbrand family, whose daughter Mina z”l was my best friend. This soldier spoke Ukrainian, was a nice guy and often

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brought us all kinds of candies as gifts. But the period of occupation under Hungarian command, which was calm and almost “idyllic”, passed quickly.

The Hungarians left the town and were replaced by the Germans.

Upon their arrival, they appointed the Ukrainians from the local population, who, as is known, were among the most outspoken haters of Israel, as the town's bigwigs. Through the “Judenrat” they conveyed their new demands and orders to the Jewish community, and as the representative of the Jewish community, it was also responsible for its community before the occupier.

The members of the first Judenrat were among the town's dignitaries, and its first chairman was a Jew named Greenberg. My father also “received this honor”, but only for a short period. The Jews imagined - mistakenly, of course - that the Judenrat would act solely in their own interest, being a kind of communal body, as they were accustomed to it and its action for the common good. But they quickly realized that they had made a bitter mistake. Each member of the Judenrat must have thought in his heart that by joining this body, he would be given priority in saving his own life and the lives of his family.

One of the first to resign from this “high-ranking” organization was my father. It was only after two weeks of belonging to it. After he had been beaten by a German commander, he understood that, in fact, the main role of the Judenrat was to help the enemy regime, and for its own sake only, it should cooperate with the occupier, and not for the benefit of all of Israel.

And then one day an order was issued by the occupier, ordering the Jews to establish a ghetto, and only in it the Jews of the town were allowed to live. The ghetto area was supposed to encompass the streets near the train station, which led to the main street that ran through the entire town, which is the road that leads from Obertyn to Zlabalothov. This street was supposed to mark the border line of the two parts of the town, that is, the first part was “Aryan quarter” from which all Jewish residents were obliged to move to the Jewish quarter - and the ghetto was the second part. I still remember well how Ukrainians came to live in the Jewish houses and opened shops in the front part of the houses facing the street, while we Jews were only allowed to stay in the back part of the house facing the ghetto. Despite the “neighborliness” in reality between us and the “new settlers” who had recently arrived, there was no human connection between them and the legal Jewish owners of the houses.

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In the ghetto

Due to the establishment of the ghetto, many Jews were left homeless, as they were forced to move out of their homes, which were located in areas that had just been declared as “Aryan” territory - as “Judenrein”. Therefore, all the displaced, having no choice, moved in with Jews whose homes were located in the ghetto area, and the owners of these homes were now considered “happy”. We were among the latter, and two families came to stay in our house - the David family, the father, the mother, and their son Peisi, who was about my age, and the Perschel family, who had been deported from Germany to the infamous Zbondzin camp in 1938 - the mother and sons Zalman and Bunya.

While we were still confined and closed in the ghetto, horrifying news and rumors began to reach us about “aktzias” (mass executions) that had taken place in many places - in Kolomyia, Zabolotiv, Saniatin and other nearby towns. As a result of the news, the Jews of the town began to flee to those places, which according to rumors had been subjected to “aktzias” and therefore these towns were considered “safe” in their eyes, as if the wrath and decree had already passed over them. However, they soon realized their mistake and after a few days they began to return, because the food had run out and the first signs of hunger were beginning to take a heavy toll.

In our “home” the situation was similar to the situation in the towns after the aktzia. Food supplies were running low, firewood was also running out, while winter was in full swing. Despite all this, there was still a glimmer of hope in us - because we were still at home.

According to rumors, these “aktzias” were mass killings carried out brutally. That's why everyone decided to build bunkers - basements - hiding places to escape to and hide in until the fury passed. They dug pits under the ground floor floors of the houses. The pits were dug in the form of tunnels, the walls and ceilings of which were reinforced with planks and beams, benches made of dirt were used for sitting and sleeping. Digging the pits created a problem of excess soil, which had to be cleared out into the garden or into the public domain. Because of the “Eina Bisha” of the foreigners, it was decided, therefore, to take the excess soil out to the attic, and so we did. We sat filled with anxiety and awaited what was to come, because we knew that “aktzia” would come.

One early morning in the beginning of April 1942, we suddenly heard bombings.

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We immediately entered the bunker, we - my father and I, the David and Perschel families, and Yosef Strum, who happened to be at our house that day. There were about fifteen of us together. Hearing the sound of gunfire outside, we went down into the pit. We entered the bunker through an opening created by lifting several floorboards, which we carefully put back into place after the last person entered the bunker. In order to disguise the entrance, we took care to place a table and chairs on the floor of the room, which had previously served as a passage to the pit. The floor of the room now became the ceiling of the bunker where we sat, filled with fear and utter helplessness.

We could hear the voices of the German soldiers above us, as they conducted a thorough search of the entire house, assisted by their Ukrainian collaborators, who were taking care of the murder and looting. We heard them chatting among themselves and felt how they “collected” everything they could find. Finally, they came to the conclusion that “there were no Jews here”, and left the house and moved away from it. We breathed a sigh of relief, but it wasn't for a long time. We continued to sit in the bunker, literally holding our breath the whole time. Fear and anxiety gripped those trapped in the bunker the entire time the murderers were circling above our heads. Suddenly we felt the heat begin to spread around us, and the smell of smoke reached our noses. We immediately guessed the meaning of it and realized that a fire had broken out outside and engulfed the entire house. We were shocked and didn't yet know what to do, how to act. However, a few minutes later we heard the voice of Israel Auerbach, who was a member of the Jewish militia on behalf of the Judenrat, one of the friends of the Perschel family, shouting: “Jews, flee the bunkers, the Germans have set fire to the ghetto, get out quickly, otherwise you will burn alive” - the pathetic voice of I. Auerbach continued to echo in our ears as we rose from our place in the bunker and without saying a word, we burst out. The first moment we stood outside, we were blinded by the strong light of the flames that suddenly appeared before our eyes after sitting for a long time in the darkness of the bunker. We didn't know what to do, where to turn, because all around us tongues of fire danced from the burning houses, the sound of falling beams and their crackling was heard like an orchestra of demons, the smell and thick smoke spread and caused suffocation, and all this was spiced up with the screams and cries of the trapped, the wounded, and the dying.

The entire ghetto, most of whose houses were built of wood, caught fire before our eyes. Everything was consumed by the fire, the entire ghetto was on fire. At that moment, we all felt that we were at the mercy of God, at the mercy of fate. Thick smoke continued to rise around us. The wind spread the pungent smell of burning material and at intervals were heard the echoes of

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shots, which pierced the air with sharp whistles. All that time, the Germans were killing with their murderous machines any Jew who tried to break out of the trap of his burning house. They shot anyone who tried to escape the collapse of the bunker, because the Germans had surrounded the entire ghetto area with their soldiers in a tight belt. Their entire impure desire was to murder and destroy us all.

We all started running, each in a different direction. Dad told me, “Let's run to the synagogue”, which was behind our house. I didn't answer him, and I turned to run in a completely different direction, jumping through courtyards toward the Polish church. I ran as if I were mad, as if the demon had forced me, and I didn't look back even for a moment. I knew that everyone was running after me. We arrived at the house of the rope maker. The house had been drafty on all sides, the owner and his wife were lying on the floor of their house, dead in a pool of their blood.

They only had one room and in the corner of that room there was a high pile of dirt, which they probably hadn't had time to clear when they dug the bunker. We looked for a ladder to use to climb up to the attic - but in vain. So, we climbed up onto the pile of dirt and with our last strength we held on to the walls and climbed them until we reached the attic. We helped each other and each climbed onto the shoulders of another and crawled through a small opening into the attic. Here we had already met several people who had managed to get ahead of us, among them my neighbor Akia Klein with her little daughter Ita and others. There were two other brave young men with us; Yosef Strum and Bunya Perschel couldn't stand sitting around doing nothing while death was raging outside. They came to the conclusion that now “there was nothing left to lose”, so they wore white ribbons on their shirt sleeves (the symbol of the Jewish militia) and went to help, supposedly, by putting out fires, under the guise that they intended to help and save those trapped in the flames. We continued to sit in our places, full of anxiety and waited for what was to happen…

Outside, the sounds of single gunshots could be heard all the time; a fleeing Jew who was shot in his flight, the noise of the raging fires outside added to and mixed with the entire horrifying commotion.

At exactly 4 p.m. (the German time accuracy), the sound of the horn was heard - the signal that came to announce the end of the aktzia. For now, the killing had officially stopped - and the survivors could now come out of their hiding places, walk around freely and without fear of gunfire and murder. We were exhausted and in a state of

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helpless. We descended slowly and silently from the attic, as if groping in the darkness. We have not yet recovered from everything we have gone through before, and now a new vision is revealed to us, horrifying and shocking. What a dreadful sight the people who had survived by a blind fate had to see, the panorama of death painted by the cruel Nazi angel of death. All the houses that stood along the main street on the ghetto side were engulfed in flames and consumed by fire, burned to the ground. All that was left of them was charred. Here and there, charred parts could still be seen, raising smoke, which the wind spread in all directions, over the entire area of the town. But worse and more horrifying than that were the piles of corpses of the dead and the piles of masses of the half-burnt bodies. These dead gave off a special smell of burnt flesh mixed with blood, and this smell filled the air, penetrating the nostrils and further into the human soul. We breathed the air and the smell of death. I will never forget the expression on the faces of those trapped in the fires with their distorted faces; the marks of their last efforts, as they fought desperately to break through from the burning traps and to be free from suffocation and fire, were visible on their hands and feet.

We wandered through the ruined streets of the ghetto, among the dead and the survivors, searching for relatives and friends. Slowly, our spirit returned to us and we began to seek shelter in one of the houses that remained, where we met other Jews. Here we took the first Death toll of the aktzia; most of the residents were trapped in bunkers and there they were suffocated and burned alive. Those who managed to escape from the pits were captured by German guards, taken to the nearby forest, and shot there. We heard the stories of horror from eyewitnesses, who sat across from us and silently lamented for the loss of their loved ones; the story of the son who handed over his father to save his own life, but the bullets caught him as he fled into the forest… someone who was taken to the forest, a man who begged for the life of his little child… and more.

When we returned to the ruins of our home, I saw the fence that separated our home from the house of our neighbor, Zandbrand, and on it hung the body of a woman I didn't know. She must have also tried to save her life, but the murderers had caught her over the fence. I hated our fence. We passed the synagogue area and the whole place was covered with dead bodies… the more dead bodies… and more dead bodies.

Another tragic scene is etched in my memory, which we witnessed when we left from the bunker.

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Ita Koren speaks to the Nazis

A girl named Ita Koren stood on the porch of her house and gave a fiery speech to the murderers while her house was burning. “If all your great heroism is to kill and burn defenseless and helpless people - your fate will be bitter, the atrocities you are committing against us will not bring you victory”. She hurled these words at the murderers and then threw herself into the flames.

Hunger began to plague us, so we began to search for food in the ruins of the houses. If we found some food and we ate it, it was not pleasing to our palates. We were fossils. We were mute and orphaned, and everything we did, we did mechanically, like robots.

The next day the Germans ordered us to bury our dead. Before We loaded them onto carts to take them to the Jewish cemetery, where they were buried in a mass grave. We saw them and felt their bodies for the last time and looked at their sad and tortured faces for the last time. I will never forget the look on the face of one girl, Miriam Greenberg, who was lying on the ground, her eyes wide open - she had blue eyes! The burial work caused great distress in our souls, so we had a great need to talk and the people began to tell each one their personal and special story of salvation.

After a few days, we found on the fences of the houses notices from the occupier, on which were printed new instructions for the Jews. The notes were in three languages: German, Polish and Ukrainian. We were to show up on April 24, 1942, at the lot next to the Judenrat seat, in order to evacuate the town in a concentrated manner and turn it into a “Judenrein”. Each of the deportees would be allowed to take with him luggage weighing no more than 15 kilos.

This was brought to our attention while we were at the house of the grandfather, Hersh Stengel. His house remained standing, because it was built of burnt bricks. We gathered at his house in a mourning gathering, because the grandfather died of a heart attack during the aktzia, and therefore the people said of him with envy:

“What a blessing, to die in his own home and in his own bed, he passed away like a righteous man”.

We immediately started the preparations for our departure, which was to be the next day. I had no intention of going with all the people like a herd being led somewhere.

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Therefore, I decided to run away and I made up my mind to hide my Jewish origin, by planning a new identity, that is to disguise myself as a Christian. I looked for fancy clothes of the kind that Christian girls are used to dressing in and I thought of traveling by train. Where? I did not know. Father heard about the plan and encouraged me, saying: “Go, my child, save your life”. Aunt Beila, my father's sister, found me a fancy hat and beautiful clothes, and she also said: “Let the child go and hopefully she will save her life”. But nothing came of it. At the last moment, I recoiled and was frightened by the very idea - and I did not travel.

On the morning of April 24, 1942, all the Jews of the town, that is, all the survivors of the cruel aktzia, gathered in the lot next to the house of Leib Shalem the tailor - the Judenrat House. Each one with a backpack on his back that had been sewn at the very last minute. For hours and hours, we stood there and waited for what was going to happen. Meanwhile, the rumor spread: we were about to be taken to the Kolomyia ghetto. At noon the signal was given and the sad procession began to move towards Kolomyia. The convoy of deportees slowly trudged along the road leading to Kolomyia. On both sides of it, the gentiles and the local people stood and looked at us, indifferent and with irritating curiosity. I think most of them wanted to see the departure of the Jews with their own eyes. Now they felt free to loot and plunder, after seeing the last of the oppressed Israelites leave their place of residence, leaving behind their homes and property. Their gazes at us were indifferent, expressionless, emotionless, and without mercy on their faces. They looked at us in silence, without saying a single word of encouragement or comfort.

Father, who suddenly fell into old age - and he was only fifty-four at the time, walked next to me, backpack on his back and cane in his hand. I could not understand him in any way, because he was considered an educated and enlightened man who knew the ways of the world. The man who before he got married had seen the world, had reached as far as Japan and the United States of America, what made him return to this remote town, settle there, and wait for what would happen? How could he not understand the spirit of the times and the signs in laggard and anti-Semitic Poland, so that he would stay away from it. Why didn't he flee with me back in 1941 to Russia or Romania?

In the evening, we arrived at that inferno, known as the “Kolomyia Ghetto”. The jam, stench and hunger in the place were unusual and unbearable. The news that we heard was not encouraging at all.

In addition to the lack of food, there was no housing for the thousands of refugees who crowded into the streets and courtyards of houses. The aktzias increased day by day, and the

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“Death statistics” of the ghetto, where the number of people dying of hunger every day reached about seventy, was just as bad.

Everyone who arrived to the ghetto began to look for relatives, and my father and I also conducted a thorough search for relatives until we finally found relatives from Horodenka, the Kamil family, and also the grandmother from Czernilice. The grandfather was killed in one of the aktzias. So, the first thing that was certain was that we have found a place to live in their house, where about twenty people were already crowded. Those we met and who had been here for a long time sat and waited, and waited… No one knew why they were sitting here and what they were expecting… The conditions and the atmosphere gave me a feeling of breathlessness - of suffocation, and I decided to leave the place. I told my father about this and he agreed with me and three days later I left the Kolomyia ghetto.

I joined a group of ten young people from Gwoździec who were about to go to a labor camp near the village of Tropanowka. The place was near “my house” - Gwoździec - I was still thinking in normal terms like “my house”, “my town”, etc., and I probably forgot for a moment that the house in Gwoździec had burned down completely, and what had once been my town was no longer there.

With us in the group (the ones whose names I remember) were Mencia Hafter and her husband Shmuel Offenberger, Yitzhak (Itzik) Strum, Chona Offenberger and the younger Hafter, Mencia's brother. I remember how Mencia was constantly depressed and in my eyes she was half-crazy. On the day of the aktzia in Gwoździec, when everyone was in the bunker, she held her baby in her hands, but so that the Germans and Ukrainians would not notice the hiding people, she covered the baby's mouth, until he suffocated and died. She would talk all the time about her baby, about his face turning blue, and she would sob with bitter cry, “I just wanted to silence him a little”, she said, as if she needed to justify her actions.

We worked all the time in the vegetable garden. Again, I felt that I had to escape from this place, and one day, after I had been here for only 10 days, I talked to the Hafter about escaping and he decided to join me. Three days later, we escaped; Itzik Strum, the Hafter and I - to Horodenka. Hafter, who had a blond beard, which gave him an “Aryan” appearance, knew all the paths and roads in the area, and he managed to lead us through the fields so that the gentiles would not notice us, catch us, or simply hand us over to the Germans. We managed to hide from most of the passers-by, but a few noticed us, and did not

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Hurt us. Once, we met a farmer's wife, who understood our situation, and that compassionate woman even gave us a whole loaf of bread…

In the evening, we arrived at Horodenka. Here they had not yet had time to hermetically close the existing ghetto and it was possible to enter and exit it “freely”. This is where my uncle Michael Kamil once lived. Here we met other Jews, deportees of Gwoździec and everyone else wandered around the place, without a place to sleep and without means of subsistence. Incidentally, my uncle's house was now the seat of the local Judenrat. Here, in Horodenka, I met friends from the past, including a Ukrainian guy, with whom I had previously played in a youth orchestra during the Soviet period. The guy once brought me bread, but he was afraid to do more than that. A Jewish girl, also a former friend, who lived outside the ghetto, named Eva Kwecher (her father worked as a carpenter for the Germans), also tried to help me, but in vain. I was only interested in sleeping in their house, but they refused because it was against the occupiers' orders, and anyone who violated them would be severely punished.

After a few days I met a Polish guy named Filek. I met him through a girl named Clara Seidman from Horodenka. After I told him about my plight, he brought me to his sister's house, who lived with her husband and two children in the suburbs of the city. I lived with them for almost three months, while the neighbors thought I was a Christian. In exchange for food and a place to stay, I had to help with all the household and field work, and in addition, teach the children to play the violin. I remember these days as days of relative contentment, security, and freedom. I used to go out with them to work in the fields as one of the girls in the family. The neighbors were told that I was a poor orphan, the daughter of Poles whose parents had disappeared during the war. These peaceful live suddenly ceased. One night I heard a knock on the door. “Police” immediately came to my mind. I got up and ran to the fields, where I hid all night. When I returned in the morning to the peasants' house, I was asked to leave their house and never to return again. I returned to the ghetto.

One day, I and Yitzhak Strum, who stayed all that time here in the ghetto, decided to escape to Gwoździec, perhaps we could settle down there in familiar places, among the gentiles we have always known, and find a hiding place with one of them. All the time, as despair grew, we would think longingly of the house in the town as a kind of safe haven and of what was associated with this concept.

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which is called by people “house”.

It was a false illusion, but this “house” attracted us like Fata Morgana - and despite everything, we pinned our hopes on it. And so, one morning we packed our belongings in our backpacks and set off in the direction of Gwoździec.

We had not yet managed to leave the city limits, when Ukrainian policemen came to arrest us. They brought us to the nearby village, where we were locked up in the prison. We sat in the detention cell for a whole day, not knowing what awaited us and what cruel fate would befall us now. The next day, they took us out of the rural prison, took us to the prison in Horodenka, and there they separated us. I was put in the women's wing, while Itzik was put in the men's wing.

In the detention cell where I was sitting, there were at that time a group of children who behaved with a strange kind of cheerfulness, as if nothing could happen to them, as if they were cut off from reality, as if they had not thought at all about what awaited them. After sitting in this place for several days, I learned one day that the next day they were going to hand me over to the Gestapo. How great was my surprise when I was suddenly informed that I could leave the prison on my own. It turned out that Itzik managed to contact (from within the prison walls) his brother Yosef, who was a member of the local militia, and he managed to persuade one of the leaders of the local Judenrat to pay a bribe to release him, but Itzik was a loyal friend and did not agree to leave the prison without me.

That's how I escaped the Gestapo, and that's how I returned to the ghetto.

In my wondering in the ghetto while searching for a place to live and work, I met one day a former resident of Gwoździec, a Jew named Friedpertig, who tried very hard on my behalf, and he was the one who found me a room and arranged for me a place to work as a waitress at the local soup kitchen. The soup kitchen was established by good Jews for the many refugees who had fled the ghettos that had been completely destroyed. Here, everyone was provided with only one meal of soup at noon and a portion of bread in the morning. In the makeshift “dining room” sat many refugees, young and old, all in shabby clothes. Not long ago, all of them had been living in their homes with their families, dressed properly, eating as much as they wanted, eating to their hearts' content. Now, the families were cut to pieces, some of them were killed in all sorts of ways, and

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the rest scattered to the winds. Their property was looted from them, their jobs were taken, they were in endless deportations and persecutions, their clothes were torn, their shoes were worn out, they were all without a roof and without food. I met many of the people of Gwoździec in the soup kitchen. I saw others in the streets of the city. They all “lived” on the streets, slept on the streets and died on the streets.

One of them, I think his name was Zackler, whose death I saw, after a long and painful dying, was one of a thousand whose deaths were similar, whose deaths came in stages; at first, the people swelled up, then their weight dropped dramatically and they were literally skeletons (then they looked as if they had risen from their graves) and finally, after only a few days, the dying itself began. One day, Meirke Flick, my cousin, a boy of about eleven years old, came to me with “news”: “I found a gold watch”, he told me, and continued, "This watch will save me from death, wait, you'll see”. He was a young, skinny and very thin boy, because of the hunger, from which the children suffered especially. After the Germans ordered the ghetto to be closed and no one came or left the ghetto street anymore, everyone started talking about aktzias again and the air was full of guesswork, and I again considered escaping. I came to Meirke and asked him to accompany me, on my way to local acquaintances with whom I wanted to hide in the bunker. Meirke, the owner of the “gold watch”, did not agree and left me. I never saw him again.

The aktzia in Horodenka was of horrific proportions and thousands of Jews were murdered in it. For three days the Germans meticulously searched house by house and rounded up all those who remained alive. First, all the “A” type Jews were sorted out, that is, the “A-JUDEN” (important Jews), to which the members of the Judenrat and the members of the Jewish police belonged. They were arrested, locked in freight cars and deported somewhere. This shattered another illusion of many. Many Jews assumed (to themselves) that they had found a shield against the calamity, as if the ribbon with the “A” symbol gave them immunity from deportation and killing. Now they knew the truth. The only one who managed to escape from one freight car was my friend Yosef Strum, who arrived to the destroyed ghetto sick with typhus.

During the entire aktzia, I hid in the bunker that a local family had prepared. The place was very close to the collection point for the captured, and all the happenings outside

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were heard clearly from inside the pit. The bunker was built in a very sophisticated way; two narrow basement rooms that were connected to each other. The first room, the passage room, served as camouflage, and only behind the wall was the second room, which had become a bunker. We crawled into the bunker on our stomachs and were “buried” there for three days. But from our hiding place we heard every word spoken outside, every order given in a shrill voice by the German soldiers, and the echoes of the shots could be heard clearly. In the hearts of all those hiding there was fear and anxiety about the atrocity outside, about the relatives and friends who were being harmed, and the uncertainty that awaited us. Will we manage to get out of here alive? The slaughter was great in this aktzia. The houses were looted, doors and windows were torn out with their frames, and the robbers and looters left nothing. We walked around the streets of the destroyed ghetto after the aktzia, back and forth, in the special atmosphere that follows the aktzia, an atmosphere that was saturated with a feeling of emptiness, hopelessness, and despair.

It didn't take long, and a few days later, by order of the Germans, all the survivors of the aktzia were deported and taken to Kolomyia ghetto.

When I heard what was about to happen, I was terrified just by hearing the word “Kolomyia ghetto” and fled with a few survivors to Putor-zloty, a town near the Dnister River. There I met my mother's cousin, Israel Oliver, and I stayed in their house for several days, until a new aktzia broke out. My relatives had a bunker on the attic, but I no longer believed in the safety of hiding places and fled to the fields again. While wandering in the fields, I saw a (Polish) family gathering potatoes. Somehow, I also joined this work that continued without interruption until evening. It turned out that they knew very well who I was, that is, they discovered my identity, although they did not treat me like many people of their nation and did not report me to the authorities.

In the evening, I returned to the ghetto and to my surprise I found no one there. I learned that everyone had been deported and taken to an unknown location.

With no people around, I started walking alone along the only road I saw before me. After walking for several hours, I reached the ghetto in the city of Buczacz. Only when the morning light came did I start to meet Jews, who came here from nearby towns, from Horodenka and other towns, and they all mixed with the local Jews. However, I only managed to stay there for only one day before there was an aktzia in the city of Buczacz. All day

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I walked and walked; I think I walked about forty kilometers that day until I entered the city of Tłuste.

There was a Judenrat and a Jewish militia in the city, but the establishment of a ghetto had not yet been announced here. The local Jews also knew about the existence of ghettos in other cities and their fate, from information brought to them by the stream of refugees who fled from there and moved here. However, the local people had one custom with every Jew who happened to come to their city, which could only be entered via one road that led to the city. They took him and brought him to the Judenrat seat, and here he was required to hand over silver, gold, or any other valuables in his possession, to be handed over to the Germans as a ransom. The same happened to me when I came to Tłuste. When I arrived at the Judenrat, I didn't have any valuables. The militia searched my belongings and over my body. Indeed, they did find something valuable I had, a forged certificate in the name of a Polish Christian woman, Helena Zaycz. I intended to use this document at the first chance I got and live as a Christian among the Gentiles.

When the chief of the militia returned the document to me, he asked me in astonishment how and why I had not taken advantage of such a useful and good certificate. I replied: “if I had what you were looking for in my possession, namely money and gold, I would certainly have taken advantage of the certificate long ago, but without money, what is the value of the certificate?” My words apparently set his mind at ease and also explained my situation, and he took me to his house.

The house was large and refugees from all over Poland lived there. I even found people there who had fled from Romania and Bessarabia. All Jews who had been deported from their homes. His family included three more brothers (one of whom lives with us in Israel today), the sick mother, and an aunt with her two sons.

In exchange for the food and a place to sleep I received from them, I had to serve the entire family. That is, eight people, clean all the rooms, do laundry, iron, etc., etc. In addition, an orphan girl from Stanisławów and a Jew from Vienna, who had a professor's degree, lived here. The atmosphere in the house was special and strange, as if it was detached from reality. Everyone laughed loudly, were cheerful, and used to get drunk. But all this was nothing more than a disguise to cover up the bitter reality, to numb the senses, to temporarily put them to sleep, while

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despair was deep within everyone's heart. It seemed as if these people sensed the approaching death, so they said to themselves: “Eat and drink today, while you live, for tomorrow we die”. So, everyone reveled and got drank - and to a stranger who came to this house, it seemed as if they had stumbled into a city in another country, where everything was going on as if in times of peace: business was booming, everyone had money and did not feel deprived, and nothing seemed to be coming to disrupt the normal course of a prosperous life.

Of course, here too I met many refugees of my town, and most of them were in a kind of a commune, among whom I remember the Greenberg sisters; Balima and Sobela, Shlomo Bertfeld, Bunyo Shapira, one man from the Shalem family, and others whose names I no longer remember.

Several Poles would come and go from my host's house, and I remember one of them in particular fondly, Anna Domanskaya, who later saved my soul, my life.

Finally, the fate of the aktzia did not escape Tłuste either. It was known about it for weeks, when rumors and various versions from the nearby cities of Zalishchyky, Tarnopol, and Chortkov began to reach our ears.

At night I always slept in my clothes. This time, when the aktzia started, early in the morning at 4:00 (the aktzias always started at that time), it surprised me because, unlike all other nights, I slept in a nightgown. I was standing in my nightgown when I heard the first shots. I started running towards the suburbs, on the way to a small suburb on the outskirts of the town, which was populated by Ukrainians. There I had to pass a small bridge that was crossing a stream. A German soldier stood on the bridge and, seeing me, shouldered his rifle and aimed it at me. At that moment I decided to run towards the German soldier, although I knew it would probably end my life.

As soon as I got really close to the bridge, the soldier raised his rifle and fired into the air. I ran past him, without slowing down. I continued running to a barn that stood next to one of the farmer's houses, and immediately crawled into a pile of straw inside the barn. I was out of breath and exhausted. I lay like that for several hours, and all the time I heard the incessant shots coming from the direction of the town. Suddenly I heard a voice. A farmer was standing outside and said to me: “I know you're hiding there, come out quickly, they say, the Germans will come here soon”, I got up and came out of the darkness of my hiding place, and at the first moment

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I was dazzled by the strong sunlight. As I wanted to leave, the farmer, who was now standing in front of me, offered to send a boy to accompany me and show me the way across the fields, because at that time the grain was high and one could hide in the grain before the harvest. But at that moment only one thought came to my mind, “The gentile wants to seduce me and lead me straight to the Gestapo”. And so, I thanked the farmer politely, and intended to walk in the direction of the fields, alone. The fields stretched parallel to the cemetery of Tłuste. It seemed like every shot that was heard - as if it had been fired from the cemetery -and indeed, as I later learned, the cemetery was too small to contain the three thousand Jews who were murdered that day in the aktzia in the city of Tłuste.

In the evening - while I was still afraid to walk upright, I approached the city while crawling and here I was again in one of the suburbs, I knocked on the window of a farmer's house, and the landlord came out. When he saw me, he understood the situation immediately and told me that now the aktzia was over. Full of anxiety and apprehension, because I did not believe what the farmer had told me, I went to the city anyway. Once again, I saw the vision that I knew so well: the empty and looted houses, feathers that flew in the peaceful air, the orphaned houses and the street. The family that hosted me survived in the bunker in their house.

The ghetto was closed. The young people were sent to concentration camps in the vicinity of Tłuste.

The adults remained in the closed ghetto and three days later they were all killed in an aktzia, and then the ghetto was also completely eliminated. The rest were taken to Kamionka-Strumilowa.

This time I arrived at the concentration camp in Lisowice, which is about five kilometers from the town of Tłuste. There were about three hundred Jews there. We lived in wooden huts; we worked in the fields every day for twelve hours. When winter came, we started to work in threshing. The camp commander was a German citizen named Frank, and he is noteworthy because he was by nature a kind-hearted man and treated us Jews in a humane manner. But Frank did not live long and to our great regret died of typhus - apparently fate decreed that this good German would contract the disease, which only Jewish prisoners suffered from and died from, and from which he contracted it.

Despite the camp commander's sympathetic attitude, conditions were extremely difficult. Our entire daily ration consisted of one hundred grams of bread

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and a bowl of soup. In order to survive somehow, we learned to steal food, or in the language of the camps, “to organize”.

But besides the constant scourge of hunger, we suffered similarly from another scourge, perhaps no less severe; the lice, which ate us alive. They penetrated deep into the flesh and caused a sharp and constant irritation, which caused the development of deep wounds that spread beyond the infected areas. I had many wounds that were filled with pus and spread along my legs and over my stomach. Of course, we had no medical care and no medicine. Wounds that healed left permanent marks. I would treat them myself with urine, and I wrapped my legs in rags due to lack in bandages.

As if all these troubles were not enough, during the winter a typhus fever and a dysentery epidemic broke out. Many fell ill, including myself. But we continued to go to work, even the one who had a fever of forty degrees, so that the gendarmes would not surprise us in the huts, and thus give the Ukrainian police and Israel-haters an opportunity to destroy the sick as “unproductive elements”. I managed to make contact with some villagers, when I would sneak out of the camp and escape to one of their houses, I would then sit with them in a heated house and for a piece of bread I would knit them all kinds of woolen clothing.

My luck ran out and once, when I was sitting in a farmer's house, the village secretary surprised me in the place. He hit me hard, and that's ended this episode.

One clear night, in the early summer months, when we were working late into the night in threshing, shots were suddenly heard. Without thinking much about the meaning of the noise, we began to flee from the workplace. Some managed to slip away towards the fields, where the grain was already in the height of a person. We, a group of young men and the sisters Blima and Suvela Greenberg, crossed the Strypa River (one of the Dnister's tributaries), which was quite deep at that time. Although I did not know how to swim, two young men, Herschele Reiter and Reuven Friber from Horodenka, managed to pull me over and carry me to the opposite bank. We continued walking towards the village of Shapovtsa when suddenly it started to rain heavily, soaking us completely. Only after hours did the rain stop and, in the morning, we were resting in the fields, extremely tired and thirsty. In my backpack were the farmers' clothes, which I

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Never parted with - now I took them out of the backpack and dressed in them like one of the gentile peasant women - and went to the village to find water.

At the edge of the village lived a peasant woman I knew, whose husband was a shoemaker. I entered her house. I found a guest in their house, an esteemed man chatting casually with the owner of the house. I saw how the landlady suddenly stood behind the guest and began to give me signs and as if to signal me with her eyes and hands. My senses were extremely sharp and I immediately understood that I should beware of the stranger. I pretended to be an innocent Gentile and to the stranger's question, what was going on in the village (Earlier I mentioned offhand that I am from the village of Hołowczyce), whether Jews were being killed there too, etc. - I answered affirmatively and emphatically. Finally, the man left and then the woman, full of excitement, told me that the man who just left her house was the head of the village. She also told me that they pasted notices on the walls of the houses in the village, in which it was announced about a cash reward for any villager who would discover a hiding Jew and bring him to the police. If so, I understood, the future here was very “promising”!

The peasant woman gave me a bottle of water, which I brought to the Greenberg sisters who had stayed in the fields, and they were so thirsty that they finished all the water in an instant.

I promised the same peasant woman, the shoemaker's wife, whom I had known before, to bring clothes as a gift (I had a few other things in the camp) in exchange for the right to spend the night at her house. From her we learned about the aktzias that were going on in the area; in Spóbche, Hołowczyce, Srzesniewka and Lisowice. She even knew how to tell us about the efforts made by the camp commander Frank, mentioned above, to save the Jews in Lisowice. This time, all those who started to flee were shot in their flight, Frank could not protect them, but those who remained there, and whom Frank managed to reach in his car, all of whom he saved from death. Afterwards, they also said that he shouted in German, “Don't kill my Jews”. Many were killed in this aktzia, including one from our town, Yosef Strum, who was shot while fleeing, and many were murdered in the nearby camps.

After Frank's death, a new commander arrived at the camp. His appearance was terrifying. He was tall, burly, and intimidating, and he always walked around the camp with a drawn gun in his hand. With him came a young Polish girl named Wanda, who was known as a prostitute in Tłuste. Once, while I was working in the camp yard, the commander approached me and asked me about the meaning of the rags my legs were wrapped in. I answered, with fear and anxiety for my fate (lest I be considered sick and therefore a candidate for liquidation), by telling me about the wounds on my legs. Suddenly, he put his

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gun in its holster and ordered me to show him the wounds. I removed the rags from my legs and exposed my wounds, which were full of pus. He looked at them and decisively diagnosed that this was caused by lice. “I too”, he said, “had them when I served at the front”. Thus, the first and human contact with this man was established. Such a sign was rare and would immediately serve as food for thought and consideration. People in the camp decided that acts of this kind and the person who commits such acts, should be urged. A fountain pen was immediately found, a very expensive thing in those days, an object that had been remained with one of the prisoners, and I was chosen to bring it to the camp commander as a gift.

Following this act, the commander gave an order that I should be transferred to a heated place. The winter of 1944 was a cold winter, and it was in full swing. Now I moved to the carpentry shop. There they filled the stove with sawdust and the place was warm. There I sat and worked knitting woolen things for the commander.

And so, in the middle of winter, a Ukrainian who lived in the mountains named Ivasyuk came to the village. He was a young Gentile, he earned his living by doing various jobs, but when I talked with him, it quickly became clear that he was a wise and enlightened man. When he saw our suffering, he expressed his desire to help us. Although he himself was very poor, he still managed to bring us all kinds of food from time to time. I was one of a group of girls who always tried to stay together. But of all the girls, Ivasyuk decided to save only me, because I had once told him that I had papers in the name of a Gentile Pole named Helena Zaycz, and in his opinion, this would be of great help. He did manage to put me in touch with his friend, who lived in the vicinity of Stanisławów, where I was supposed to go - but at the last moment the whole thing was canceled for some reason.

Meanwhile, we could see signs that the end of the war was near. A battalion of the Hungarian auxiliary army, which had joined the Nazis, arrived in Lisowice. The Germans, together with the armies of the countries that followed it, began to retreat when the Russians began to attack them. This gave us renewed hope.

For several days we watched the battalions retreat, and among them a large group of Vlasov's men, the Russian quislings, who had now fled with their German masters. And these were the worst haters of Israel among the Ukrainian. One day they stopped at our camp, which was on the road, and ravaged it like locusts. First, they rioted among the Jews, some of us were brutally killed, and one poor man was dragged into a pit, thrown into it, and then stoned. Once again, fear and terror overcame us.

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Events now developed dramatically and rapidly, and changes happened quickly - the Germans retreated, and the auxiliary forces with them. After we saw how the Vlasov's men rioted the Jews, it wasn't long before one day the commander announced to all the prisoners that we could now leave the camp, we were no longer prisoners and each of us was free to go wherever we wanted. Each of us faced a difficult dilemma; whether to go or to stay and Wait for the future to come! And if we decide to go, where should we go? There were no means of transportation available, and finding food these days was one of the most difficult things. Here again the commander intervened to our aid, when he persuaded German soldiers, who were camped in the same area of the camp, to transport those who wanted to, to Tłuste. I found a place in one of the wagons that belonged to the German battalion and I also joined the journey. On the way we talked with the young soldiers, who even showed signs of interest in our fate. According to them, it turned out that this was their first meeting with Jews at all!!

In Tłuste there was a large concentration of Jews, the remnants of the aktzias in the ghettos and the murders. Many of them were sick, many were wounded and all were hungry - they were always hungry! Everyone was bothered by the terrible overcrowding in the camp. The place lacked any sanitary conditions and the stench was terrible. Here too, everyone was declared free and the German guards fled with the retreating soldiers, but we remained under the guard of the Ukrainian soldiers. They did not know about the extent of the Russian troops' advance as the Germans did, and they decided to stay and went wild, now being the masters of the camp, whereas before they had only been assistants to the German masters. In the chaos that prevailed in society inside and outside the camp, a number of Jews decided to escape. Their fate was bitter, because the Ukrainians shot them mercilessly. I remember that one day before the arrival of the Red Army soldiers, on the day of the liberation, I fled to one of the peasants, with whom I had previously had a connection, and I went into her house to hide in it. This good woman, whose name was Anna Domenska, hid (I learned this from a Jewish family from Tłuste), in a bunker that she herself built, nine people. The bunker was located among the fields, and Anna explained me how to get to it. In these days of the end of German rule, the Ukrainian animals still went wild, and I had a strange feeling during all those days that the days and hours were fateful.

When the Russians came, everyone came out of the bunkers - only later did I learn from Anna Domenska that her neighbors burned down the barn in revenge for daring to help the Jews.

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But once again fate refused to be kind to us. Because when the Russians arrived, the Germans bombed the ground and there were victims.

Even the Russians treated us with great suspicion, as evidenced by the words of the first Russian soldier I met. After I told him about my origins, he refused to believe me, saying, “You are Jewish? I've been walking hundreds of kilometers in Polish territory but I haven't seen a sign of a Jew yet - you must have helped the Gestapo, otherwise how are you still alive?”

The changes of the war now caused the Russians to retreat and we fled again and reached Podwoloczyska near the border between Poland and Russia. Finally, the Germans were finally defeated and all of Poland was occupied by the Russians. I went to Chortkov and stayed there until the end of 1944. With the help of a permit from the NKWD that I bought for six thousand rubles, I managed to cross the border into Romania in 1945, where I stayed until the beginning of May 1946. On May 12, 1946, I arrived on the immigrant ship “Max Nordoi” to the Land of Israel - Palestine.

[Two pictures - Jancia and Karol Kaschowitz

They saved four members of the Neuberger family were rescued, three of the Bergman brothers; Mendel, Friedel and Moshe, Zalman Perschel and Stella Leitner.]

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