[Page 114]

Since 1933, when Hitler came to power in Germany, we knew that German Jews were leaving the country or being expelled. First, there were mass expulsions of Jews who lived in Germany with Polish passports. They were taken to the Polish border and left in a kind of no-man's-land near the Polish city of Zbaszyn. The Polish government refused to let them enter Poland. I remember that they had to wait there for months while living under terrible conditions. I don't remember when and how their problem was solved.

Then, the Gestapo started arresting and deporting to concentration camps, Jews who were German citizens. There was still time to emigrate but there was nowhere for a Jew to go. No government would accept Jews trying to leave Germany. Countries which had been used to immigrants for years, suddenly closed their borders: the United States, Canada, Britain and most South American and Caribbean countries. These countries now only gave visas to a few wealthy people.

We knew all that. But during my trip home, for the first time, I came face-to-face with the situation. At the train stops I now saw for myself the signs in store windows: “Juden unerwünscht” (Jews not wanted) and “Juden Eintrit verboten” (Jews not allowed in). I also saw large posters saying: “Die Juden sind unser Unglück. (The Jews

[Page 115]

are our misfortune. I did not dare to take a walk near the train stations, even when the stop gave me enough time to do it. I was in shock.

I arrived home on July 28^th, 1939, only 33 days before the German army closed the Polish border at several different points. For a whole month, I rested and enjoyed being with my family and friends. I was glad to be surrounded by familiar faces and to be in a familiar landscape again. However, this good feeling didn't last long.

A few Jews had succeeded in emigrating during my three-year absence. My best friend, Bubi Falkenflieg and his family got a certificate for Palestine through the intervention of an older brother in London. My cousin, Zoniu Krämer, as part of an illegal group of chalutsim (pioneers) also entered Palestine. Two other families went to Bolivia.

Finally, we awoke on the first day of September to the news that the German army had crossed the border in Poland and was advancing rapidly. A few days later, the Polish government mobilized. All those who were in my category (Category-A) were called up. In my case, this was the infantry Regiment 49 in Kolomyja. On the roads to Kolomyja, there was chaos and when, after much difficulty, I reached the regiment, there was chaos there too. The Polish army was in retreat, refugees started to come in from the west, and it was impossible to send troops westward. So, we were sent back home. The Polish army's defences broke down after a few more days. When I got back home from Kolomyja, I could already see the remnants of the Polish army retreating to Rumania through the two cities on the Rumanian border of the Czeremosz – Kuty and Sniatyn. For

[Page 116]

two days, several Polish regiments, which hadn't even reached the battlefield, crossed the Czremosz. There were also some high government officials along with them: ministers, members of parliament, etc. I even saw Mr. Beck, the prime minister. The Rumanians disarmed the soldiers and sent them to camps in southern Rumania.

On September 3^rd, Britain and France had declared war on Germany. We thought that their declaration of war, together with the advance of the Soviet army, would save us. It was not to be. Lwow, Stanislawow and other eastern Galician cities were full of refugees from the German side and they brought the bad news with them.

In Kuty, the first thing the Soviets did was to round up Poles from the now former Polish administration: those who couldn't flee and those who stayed, hoping that things would not be as bad as they feared. I remember seeing three policemen, the principal of our school, the head of the post office and a few others whom I knew, lying on the ground in the schoolyard, waiting for immediate deportation.

Our own local communists danced with joy, celebrating the “liberation” of our city. They organized a revolutionary committee and spent

[Page 117]

days making plans, thinking that from now on they would be the new leaders. After all, not having a clue of what like looked like in the Soviet Union, and after having been brainwashed for years by Soviet propaganda, they were convinced that an era of bliss was just beginning. They quickly prepared lists of new administrators for the city and named people to different posts. They made lists of buildings to take over from middle-class people and to convert to housing for the poor. Our next-door neighbour, Menashe Steinbrecher, became the chief of police. Other acquaintances of mine took over other official duties. However, their reign did not last long.

A month later, a Soviet commissar arrived from Eastern Ukraine. With the help of others like him and with the local communists, he started immediately to reorganize the economy of the city according to the Soviet methods. Almost every day, there were new decrees, which in an open or concealed manner, meant the nationalization of businesses and other private professions. First, they forced the storekeepers to keep their stores open and to sell their merchandise at pre-war prices using an artificial exchange rate of 1 zloty = 1 ruble. People had no confidence in either currency, so they swarmed the stores, buying whatever they found. Businessmen could no longer find new merchandise so at night, they took most of their goods off the shelves and hid them, waiting to sell them later on the black market.

The owner of one store, Mr. Avrumciu (another version of Abraham) Schechter, a short man with a red beard, was a wholesaler of leather (box calf and other kinds of leather for shoes and

[Page 118]

jackets). There were enormous stacks of tanned calfskins in his depot. His clients were all local shoemakers (and there were several of them in town) and occasionally people who wanted a leather coat or jacket made to measure. Soviet officials and officers stood in line in front of his store, went in before everybody else and came out with bundles of skins. They all dressed in leather and they sent the surplus home to their families. When we saw their eagerness to empty all the different stores in our small town, we understood that these people lacked everything at home. We understood it in spite of the vigorous denials of the Soviet officials and the local communists. When Mr. Shechter tried to do what every other storeowner was doing, transfer his goods from the store to a hiding place, he was caught and arrested. And it took several interventions and bribes to get him out.

Soon, all the local industries (flour mills, saw mills, tanneries) were nationalized as well as big buildings and businesses. Directors and administrators were chosen from among the former workers, none of whom had any administrative experience (at least up to that time). This was until Soviet administrators could be sent in from Soviet Ukraine or some other Soviet republics.

All business people were given internal passports, like everyone else, but with one difference: they were stamped: “businessman”, a dangerous identification now. My parents got passports like this. Mine was stamped “Gov. Employee”, which was considered safer. (I will explain why later).

[Page 119]

Kuty now got two new “department stores” called Univermags (Universalnyi Magasin) where one was supposed to be able to find everything: bread and other food, clothing and other necessities. However, it sometimes took hours of waiting in line to buy something. So even people who still had enough food or clothing at home, now stood in line because they were afraid that in a few weeks the Univermags would have still less goods for sale. We ourselves had two bags of flour in our attic which we had bought at the outbreak of the war. But I often stood in line anyway (sometimes for four or five hours) to buy a loaf of black bread which had the consistency of clay. And we were only allowed one loaf per person.

In 1940, the Soviets made an arrangement with Germany for an exchange of populations. There were three German villages around Kolomyja: Baginsberg, Rosenheck and Maria Hilf. These villages had been settled during the reign of the Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa, in the 18^th century with Germans from Swabia and other Laender. According to the new arrangement, these Germans were to be repatriated to Germany and the villages would be resettled by peasants from Western Ukraine. And so it was. One day, we saw a long convoy of horse-drawn wagons pass through Kuty. The wagons carried families of Hutzuls piled with their meagre belongings, and sometimes with a cow tied to the wagon following behind. This convoy took two days to pass through the town. When we asked where they were going, they answered: “we were suddenly informed that we have to be ready to leave our homes tomorrow for a new home that will be much better. We don't know exactly where this

[Page 120]

Will be”. These people came from a series of villages on the Soviet side of the Czeremosz. They cried because they knew what they were leaving behind, but they didn't know what was awaiting them. Besides, nobody likes to be forced to leave his village and be suddenly thrown into the unknown. The reason why they were the first to be subjected to this population exchange was that the other shore of the Czeremosz, although already occupied by the Soviets, was still considered a border under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

And the Soviets didn't like to have people living close to a border. It was customary in the Soviet Union to remove people from a border with another country, especially a capitalist one. That policy spread panic in Kuty itself where some people were already being deported: Poles, Ukrainian separatists and a few Jewish businessmen. We were all near the border in Kuty.

After a few months, many of the local communists lost their illusions. The first disappointment came from Eastern Ukraine. At the beginning of 1940, advertising pamphlets arrived from the Donbass (Donetzki Bassein or the Don region) asking for miners and heavy industry workers, and offering excellent working conditions. Some young people believe the pamphlets and after being offered a free trip there, they set out for the Donbass accompanied by a big parade of relatives and friends. It took only a few weeks before letters started to come back with complaints about the terrible living conditions in the “workers' paradise”. In disguised language (because of censorship), these

[Page 121]

expatriates begged their parents and friends to do everything possible to bring them back home. It took a few months of interventions and “baksheesh” to get them home. They came home secretly and were ashamed to show their faces on the street for a few weeks. They were pale and thin.

Now what concerned our family was the fact that the old way we ran our business with the mountain people, was over. It was impossible to advance money in the fall and wait for the next crop. Buying cattle was also no longer possible. We still had our store but most people bought whatever they needed in the Univermags. The goods were cheaper there, although of very low quality and often non-existent. The Soviets were continuously raising taxes so that the private stores were forced to close little by little. And so, we also closed ours in the end.

Our tax bill was increased to the point where it became impossible to keep the store going. I heard that the Finance and Tax Inspector was the son of the former chief of the municipal police department (which consisted of three policemen). This inspector, whose name was Plawiuk, was a student in a college in Stanislawow when I was living in Kolomyja. I remembered that one time when I came home from college, he asked me where I intended to go and continue my studies and in what faculty I intended to apply. He also wanted some information which I gave him.

[Page 122]

Remembering this, I thought: “Let me try. Maybe he can help us”. I went to his office and gave my name to his secretary. Although no one else was waiting to see him, he made me wait for more than an hour before he called me in. At first, he pretended not to recognize me. So, I reminded him who I was and how I knew him. He was very stiff and uncomfortable. He told me that he was under orders and could not do much for me, but that he would try. But it was obvious to me that he would not even try to help us. And that was why we were forced to close the store, doing what the Soviets wanted. As for Plawiuk, he was soon arrested for Ukrainian nationalist agitation and was put in prison. He was among the prisoners who were taken away by the retreating Soviet administration, never to be heard from again. His father, who used to have friends among the Jewish businessmen and storekeepers, became very bitter. When one of these Jewish storekeepers went to see him one day to ask a favour, he slapped the man's face and threw him out. All these local Ukrainians like the Plawiuks, father and son, were only employed temporarily by the Soviets until they could be replaced by people brought in from the Soviet Union.

Another thing that happened was that we had to send away our Jewish maid. People were not allowed to have a maid. Still, for months, she used to come on Fridays and my mother would give her some food.

As for myself, I was lucky to find a job. In the first few weeks, I went to the University of Lwow to see if I could finish my studies. In inquired about other universities in Eastern Ukraine, but I understood that there was one school in

[Page 123]

Dniepropetrowsk for my field and that it was out of the question to go there. The local Jewish communists founded a public school where all instructions were in Yiddish. Such schools existed in the Soviet Union during the early years of the Soviet regime when they permitted every ethnic group to have education in its own language. After the first few years, these schools almost completely disappeared. Now the new school in Kuty hired some teachers and I became one of them. As in all public schools, I had to teach every subject. The principal was a self-educated man without much formal schooling. He didn't last very long. After a short time, another principal came, a law student. But soon the school closed for lack of students. People wanted their children to be educated in Ukrainian and now also in Russian. They wanted to give them every advantage in life, and especially not handicap them in their pursuit of higher education (this phenomenon is not new). After the school closed, I soon found a job as a teacher of mathematics in a Ukrainian high school, and I stayed there until the middle of the next school year.

There was a cooperative of carpenters in Kuty. They produced mainly office desks. The Russians needed a huge number of desks to fill the innumerable offices they had, since everything was nationalized. A neighbour of mine, Rosa Shatner, a college graduate, was the cooperative's bookkeeper. She decided to change jobs or simply quit. She proposed to me that I take over her job, or rather she begged me to do it. I hesitated at first because I wasn't a bookkeeper. But when the Soviets started to send in more teachers from the East, I began to fear for my job,

[Page 124]

And I gave in. She stayed with me at the cooperative for two weeks to teach me the job and before leaving, she said to me: “don't worry, I am not a bookkeeper either, but I managed”. And so, it was that I learned to make reports which showed what we wanted them to show, rather than the true figures. In the Soviet Union, the director of a company and the bookkeeper could do whatever they wanted: lie, cheat and even steal, under one condition – they had to work together! Both their signatures on a document were a “guarantee” that everything was all right. My job as a teacher and then as a bookkeeper in government institutions earned me a passport stamped “Employee”.

In the winter of 1940-41, after a short illness, my maternal grandfather passed away at the age of 81. I had to stay at work and could not even accompany him on his last journey. We were allowed to go to the funeral of parents or children, but not of grandparents. There was a law called “progul” which means: “take a walk”. According to that law, you were accused of progul if you left work without authorization, if you came in late or if you skipped a day. It made me feel terrible not to go to the funeral but as the Romans said: “Dura lex, sed lex” (the law is hard but it's the law). My great-uncle Leiser Kasner said, prophetically about my grandfather: “he is lucky. The worst is still to come”. As we see later in this account, my great-uncle was right. Most terrible of all he was even right about was his own future.

Leiser Kasner was 84 or 85 years old at that time. He was losing his sight and a few weeks before the German attack, he decided to go to

[Page 125]

Lwow (Lemberg) to have a cataract operation. Cataract surgery in those days was something much more serious than it is today. There was no hospital important enough near Kuty to have an ophthalmology department with the expertise to perform this surgery. We never found out if his operation had been successful, but that was of no importance. Even a serious operation didn't matter anymore.

My great-uncle was still in the hospital when the Germans entered Lwow and it didn't take them long to start their Judenaktion. The first victims were hospital patients, especially the old and sick people. One day, my great-aunt Rivtzia received a postcard from Lwow about her husband. It was signed by another patient in the same hospital (a patient who was himself probably deported and murdered later). The letter told her that in a raid by the SS, her husband was shot in his hospital bed.

[Page 126]

This was how we lived under the Soviets. Although we had more than enough reason to complain about the treatment we received from the Russians, we could not imagine that in the coming days, this miserable life would seem to us as life in paradise.

Early in the morning of June 22^nd, 1941, we awoke to unusual noise of explosions and of planes passing over our heads. Officers on horseback were running in all directions and giving orders. There was tension in the air. Soon, it became clear that the German army was attacking and advancing rapidly. Two days later, the Soviet military and administration started leaving Kuty. Before their departure, they ordered the population of the surrounding villages to come and bring their horses and carriages. This requisition served to transport the civil administration to Kolomyja. From there, they would take the train east towards Kiev. The Soviets took with them a few prominent local communists and also several Ukrainian separatists who were in prison. The last Soviet civilians left town on July 1^st. Before they left, they destroyed some fortified places in the area and burned whatever they couldn't take with them.

Among the local communists who fled with the Soviet army were Rosa Shatner and her two sisters. In spite of the continuous bombing, they succeeded in passing into Soviet territory. They spent the war in Russia, but after the end of the

[Page 127]

they chose not to remain there and came back to Communist Poland (not to Galicia). All three sisters became minor officials of some sort. They lived in Poland until the 1960's when the anti-Semitic purges forced them to emigrate. Two sisters went to Argentina and Rosa moved to Israel. (What a shame for a former and still unrepentant communist). We met Rosa in Israel in 1971 where I noticed that although she was by then an Israeli citizen, her anti-Zionism came out in all our discussions.

Soon after the Soviets left, local people rushed to the abandoned depots and started to carry away food and other goods which the Soviets had not had time to burn. We saw men and women with wheelbarrows carry away bags of flour, furniture, kitchen utensils, construction material, etc. It was chaos. No administration, no police, a frightful situation. Panic seized the Jewish population. It didn't take long before the local Ukrainians started to profit from the days of the “interregnum”.

A few days after the retreat of the Soviets, I found myself in front of the City Hall in the “rynek” (marketplace). There, in front of the City Hall, stood a statue of Stalin. Suddenly, a group of Ukrainians, including a few former Soviet militiamen, seized me and a few other young Jews. They gave us ropes and sledgehammers. We had to attach the robes to the statue and pull it down. The statue fell to the ground and then they made us break it into pieces and carry the pieces away. As soon as I could, I ran away from there. At home we closed the doors and barricaded them. An hour later, we saw and heard bands of Ukrainian youths running wild through the

[Page 128]

streets, knocking on Jewish doors to rob and beat the people inside.

The first news of murder came from the Hutzul village of Jablonica, in the high Carpathians on the Rumanian border with Czeremosz. About a hundred Jews lived there. In the pre-war days they lived in peace with the Ukrainians of the village, doing business with Hutzuls, or working in the sawmills of the region. Soon after the Soviets left, the local village priest urged the Hutzuls to kill the Jews. He told them: “We got rid of the Soviets, now it's time to get rid of the Jews. This is a holy task. God will repay you and bless you”. They listened to him and a few days later, they murdered the entire Jewish population. Only one woman escaped and ran away to the village of Zabie, where she later perished at the hand of the Gestapo. The murderers bound the victims in pairs with barbed wire and threw them, sometimes still half alive, into the Czeremosz. Needless to say, that they took all the possessions and cattle of the victims. A few days later, somebody in Kuty saw some bodies floating in the Czeremosz. The Jewish community buried them in our cemetery.

We were sure that in a few days, the Germans would enter the town. But the first soldiers to arrive were part of a Hungarian detachment that came down from the mountains. Some companies were on horseback and others on mules. In the Carpathians, we saw neither mules nor donkeys.

[Page 129]

There was no need for these beasts of burden there because the local horses were a special race of very sure-footed animals. I didn't think there were any mules north of the Balkans, but there were.

In the first week of July, 1941, the Hungarians tried to organize a temporary administration which was supposed to be better than the reigning chaos. But it was only chaos with the stamp of approval of the Hungarians. They organized a Ukrainian militia. But this militia's main task was robbing Jewish houses and dragging away some Jews to work for the military. The militia was recruited mostly from the former local Soviet militia, and so they already knew this kind of work well.

Individually, the Hungarian military, with some exceptions, was not hostile towards us. The officers were lodged in Jewish homes, in the best rooms, or sometimes took over an entire apartment. But robbing of Jewish homes continued. As the Hungarians did not intervene, it was obvious that they also profited from these robberies.

There is another story that is part of the Hungarian occupation. The Hungarian government took advantage of the temporary occupation of the region to order the expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews from Hungary. Although they had been living in Hungary for years or had even been born there, they had never bothered to acquire Hungarian citizenship. These Jews (or their ancestors) originally came from Galicia and settled in Hungary when it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. And since they were citizens of the Austro-Hungarian

[Page 130]

Empire, they had no need then to request a special Hungarian citizenship. But after 1918, when Galicia joined Poland and Hungary became independent, these Jews were declared to be Polish citizens by the new Hungarian government. This was so even if their children were born in Hungary, or if they had married Hungarians, or if they were now converts to Christianity. The Hungarian government sent them into our region expecting the Germans to occupy these towns and villages, knowing full well that the Germans would then dispose of these Jews in their usual manner. A group of these Jews were sent to Kuty and held in a place that I never saw. What I know is that a few hundred Jewish families in town received orders to feed a refugee.

We were also assigned a refugee, who turned out to be a lady in her seventies, still dressed “à la Hongroise” and of an aristocratic manner. It was already a time when our supplies were almost gone and we lived on what we could find, at the risk of going out to get it. And what a risk it was! If we got a bag of carrots, we ate carrots for a few days. If we found cornmeal, then it was mamaliga for a week. When our refugee 'guest' came to eat with us for the first time, we were in a barley period. We would pass the barley through a coffee grinder and the result was a kind of coarse barley kasha from which we made soup. Our refugee, like all of us, got a bowl of this barley soup and a carrot or two. That was all we had. Later, the “menu” changed in accordance with our supplies. These refugees remained in town and ate with us, their assigned Jewish family, until the Germans arrived. I don't remember how many times this lady came to eat with us. I only know

[Page 131]

that one day, when she didn't appear, we knew that it was the end. A few days later, we heard that these refugees were seized during the night and taken away by the Gestapo agents.

[Page 132]

The Germans arrive

One day at the end of August, the Hungarian troops and officials started to retreat. After the last Hungarians were gone, it took only two days until the first detachments of German soldiers entered the town. There were companies of border patrol, regular army soldiers and some policemen.

From the first days of September, a flood of decrees was published in order to humiliate, persecute, rob and starve the Jewish population. Every Jewish person from the age of 12 on, had to wear a white band of about 3”with the green Star of David on it. He had to wear it on his left arm and it was made from woollen thread. This white band replaced the yellow band the Ukrainians had forced us to wear. It was forbidden for Jews to go out into the street at night from 19hr to 07hr. No contact was allowed with the non-Jewish population. Jews were not allowed to go to the market. A new Ukrainian militia was organized, under the leadership of a certain Cholewchuk (who had also been on the Soviet payroll), in order to help the German police.

Under the Soviets, one could still travel out to the villages and buy food in exchange for dollars or for household items. But since the arrival of the Germans, the new decrees forbade all this. We

[Page 133]

were now practically in a ghetto. It was a ghetto with invisible borders, but a ghetto none the less. We had no more contact with the villages. It was the beginning of a period of near starvation. The Germans introduced rationing, but it was a very selective rationing. The Ukrainian population got one ration per person and the so-called “Volksdeutsche” got two per person. The Jews got none. The Volksdeutsche were really a riff-raff of Poles and Ukrainians who suddenly “discovered” that they had a German ancestor. Sometimes, simply because of their German sounding names, they pretended to be of German descendants.

The Jews were now condemned to starve. We knew a lot of Ukrainians and Poles with whom we used to do business before. Many of them wouldn't risk coming to our house now to buy or sell something. But a few did. However, they would never bring the food themselves. We had to go out and get it and it could only be at night. As we were under a curfew at that hour, it was extremely dangerous. We succeeded in trading pieces of furniture and clothing for food, for a certain time. One day we sold a linen cupboard for 25kg of corn. But as usual, the villager refused to bring the food to our house. He said that it was already enough to take the cupboard from us. The village called Stari Kuty (Old Kuty) was about 6km from our house. I got up at three o'clock in the morning and went to the man's house. There I loaded the bag on my shoulder and brought it home by following a slalom-like route of small paths well known to me. I was scared. Every sound made me shudder. During these months, I made a few similar expeditions. Many other

[Page 134]

people took the same risks but not all of them succeeded.

A few days after the Germans arrived, they ordered the Ukrainian militia to supply them with workers to clean up the mess the Soviets had left behind. The buildings they took over for the German administration were neglected and dirty. The workers they used were mostly young Jewish women. I remember one incident because I was a witness to it. One day I went to the house of my cousin Ruska Kahane. My cousin had three daughters, 24, 22 and 19. I don't remember for what reason I had gone there. Suddenly a German border patrol soldier and a Ukrainian militiaman came in with a list and took away the three girls for work. At the entrance of the bridge spanning the Czeremosz, stood a building the Germans now used to house the officers and the administration of the border patrol of the region. The next day, I learned that my three cousins and other Jewish girls had to clean the whole building, scrubbing the floors, cleaning the equipment inside, etc. They were there for a week from eights in the morning to four in the afternoon. Every day they came home from this work crying like babies.

After starting with Jewish women came the recruiting of Jewish men. Every section of the German administration needed people. I was called up to work at another border patrol station in the village of Slobodka on the Czeremosz. There were several border patrol stations on the way from Kuty to Sniatyn, which is about 40km from Kuty where the Czeremosz flows into the Prut. Slobodka is six or seven kilometres from

[Page 135]

Kuty. There was no transportation for us and we had to walk there and back. We cut firewood, tended the garden, cleaned the horses and the stable. The only positive thing was that we were given enough to eat, which was not the case at home. I worked in Slobodka for several weeks before being sent to other similar places (police, military or private houses used by some German VIPs), where I would stay for short periods.

In Kuty as in other towns and cities, the Germans ordered the Jews to set up a Judenrat (Jewish administrative council. It was supposed to administer Jewish affairs in Kuty. According to the Gestapo, Jewish life and Jewish property were under the supervision of the Council which, supposedly, had complete authority in these matters. But in reality, the Judenrat had to blindly follow the orders of the Gestapo. The Judenrat was a tool of the Germans in order to squeeze out of the Jewish community as many contributions as possible. Contributions to supply a work force and to make the selections for deportation to the death camps. After a Jewish community was destroyed, there was no more need for a Judenrat. Its members, now called by the Gestapo: “die letzte Juden” (the last Jews) were then deported themselves in the last transports.

The first president of the Kuty Judenrat was Dr. Menashe Mandel, a known Zionist, lawyer and an excellent orator. I remember his

[Page 136]

speeches from before the war, every 20^th of Tammuz, the anniversary of the death of Dr. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. They always took place in the Great Synagogue and the hall was always packed. One day, Mr. Horowitz, the president of the Kolomyja Judenrat, asked Dr. Mandel to contribute and help raise the sum of $5000 which the Gestapo had imposed on the Jewish community of Kolomyja. Dr. Mandel refused, arguing that Kuty had already contributed to the impositions of the Gestapo and had not asked other communities for help. Mr. Horowitz, empowered by the Gestapo, then deposed Dr. Mandel and name a successor, Mr. Zygmunt Tillinger. Mr. Tillinger was a good administrator and created a militia of helpers divided in sections. One section was for finding goods when asked for; another for selecting people to work, etc. Unlike Dr. Mandel, he carried out the orders of Mr. Horowitz and the Gestapo, fully and completely without any bargaining or questioning. Sometimes the goods requisitioned were boots, sometimes they were mattresses or bedspreads for a German military hospital, and so on.

From August to October of 1941, we heard of massacres and deportations in the region. These “Judenaktion” would happen two, three or four times in the same locality until there was almost nobody left. This was a deliberate policy of the Gestapo. It was meant to give the people a glimmer of hope, to make them believe that this time the Judenaktion was the last one. People were running to a town or village where an important massacre had taken place, thinking that this must be the last one, and that they

[Page 137]

would be safe there (at least for the time being). Shortly after entering Stanislawow, the Gestapo, S.S. and Ukrainian militia came with a prepared list and dragged away Jewish doctors, lawyers, engineers, dentists, teachers, businessmen and known intellectuals. They all disappeared and no inquiry or intervention on their behalf was successful. Shortly after their disappearance, which meant their certain death, the Gestapo announced that these people were taken away for “work”, and that their families could now send them food, clothing and other necessities. There is no need to say that Jewish mothers and spouses brought the Gestapo packages filled with the best of what they still had. They believed that the Gestapo's announcement was proof that their dear ones were still alive. A few weeks later, the families discovered that their relatives had been murdered immediately after their arrest. The Gestapo's announcement was a scheme to extract from the families of the victims, food, money and clothes for themselves and their own families and their helpers. This was one of the numerous Gestapo tricks to extract the last possessions from the Jewish communities before the ”final solution”.

Something similar happened in Kolomyja in October, 1941. It was the 7^th day of the holiday of Succoth. Suddenly, Gestapo helpers surrounded the Jewish quarter, going into houses and dragging away people and loading them onto trucks. They carried them away to the forest of Szeparowce, shot them and three their bodies into mass graves that they had dug out before. The Great Synagogue of Kolomyja was set on fire and whoever tried to run away was shot. In the first

[Page 138]

Judenaktion in Kolomyja, several thousand Jews (seven to ten thousand) perished; they were shot or burnt to death.

The most frightening (for us) Judenaktion was that of the town of Kosow. Most frightening because of the immediate proximity to Kuty. Kuty and Kosow were like twin cities. Many families in one city had relatives in the other. In normal times, there was a lot of economic activity between the two cities. So, when the disaster struck Kosow, we knew that we would be the next ones. The hope against all hope that we had, the “contra spem spero” that we would miraculously escape, was dead. On October 17, 1941, a few trucks with Gestapo, S.S. and militia drove into the city and closed the roads leading into and out of Kosow. In the morning, we heard rumours that the Gestapo was carrying away the Jews to a concentration camp. And that they allowed everybody to take with them a small package of their personal things. A Ukrainian was paid to go to Kosow in order to find out what really had happened there. He brought back the terrible news. He said: “The Gestapo drags away the Jews, loads them onto trucks, carries them away to the mountain (auf'n barg) on the road to Pistyn, shoots them and throws the bodies into mass graves prepared the night before.

The Jews of Kosow believed (or wanted to believe) the rumours spread by the Gestapo that they would carry away the men to work

[Page 139]

somewhere. Many men ran away into the forests, on the insistence of their spouses and children, who thought that they (the women and children) would be spared for the time being. So, in this first Judenaktion, most of the victims were women and children.

Some of the Jews succeeded in running away to hide with Ukrainian or Polish “friends”. These were people whom they trusted and to whom they had already given their valuables to hide. But these former “friends” now saw a possibility of getting rid of these Jews and to “inherit” their possessions. So, they turned them over to the Gestapo. The same thing happened to Jewish families who lived in a house (like a duplex) with a Ukrainian or Polish family who now wanted to grab the Jews' possessions.

We later heard that a Ukrainian militiaman boasted that he saved the Gestapo a lot of ammunition. “I didn't shoot the children. I grabbed them by the hair and threw them into the mass grave”, he said.

The same fate was met my most other towns of the region. In November, it was Zablotow. In Zablotow my cousin Saltzia, Zonia's sister lived with her husband Meir Sojcher and five children aged between 10 and 19. Saltzia was in her twenties. They were all killed.

In December it was the town of Zabie. Those who ran away into the mountains and forest were caught and murdered by the Hutzuls. Other villages in the Carpathians that lived mostly from tourism were soon destroyed. Worochat, Tatarow, Mikuliczyn and Jaremcze were all made Judenrein after Zabie. These were the same

[Page 140]

beautiful villages that I had hiked through several years before with my friend Bubi Falkenflieg.

Everywhere, the Gestapo used some tricks to lure some Jews out of hiding. In Horodenka, a town not far from Kolomyja, they called the people to show up for injections against smallpox. As unbelievable as it seems, some obeyed. As for the others, they dragged them out of their houses and then led all of them to the mass graves dug in secret the night before.

After the first Judenaktion in Kosow, and after the destruction of the Jewish communities in the neighbouring villages, we, in Kuty, lost all hope for a miracle. It became clear that we would be the next victims and that it was only a question of days or weeks. People became more vigilant, observing every unusual movement of vehicles or troops. We hoped we would not be taken by surprise. Those who could, built themselves underground or concrete rooms to serve as temporary hiding places.

Our house had a huge attic and a very deep cellar. The entrance to the cellar was in the hall and was closed with strong steel doors. There was also a stable where the Hutzuls used to leave their horses, if they had to stay in town for long,

[Page 141]

in the days when we used to do business with them. We used these three elements to build our hideout.

The stable had a hardwood floor. We took out several planks and dug out a hole of about 5ft on a side (1.5m). We then covered the hole with planks resting on posts about 1m high placed in the corners. We then covered this with earth and put the original planks back on top so that the roof of the hideout wouldn't sound hollow if someone walked on it.

The entrance to the hideout was under the stairs in the stable leading up to the attic. There was a small space under the stairs, a kind of storage place for junk. Here too, a plank was removed, covered with dirt and put back in place. And the junk(small tools, rags, etc) that we kept there was returned to the storage area

Inside the hideout, steps were added and benches were placed along the walls of the hole. The soil that was dug out was spread over the floor of the attic. The floor up there was always covered with a thick layer of dust. There was no wood. We pushed the dust into a corner and spread the soil evenly across the whole surface of the attic. After that, we put the layer of dust back on top. The change was not noticeable after only a few days.

We also reinforced the doors of the cellar. They could be closed from the inside with bars which were hooked to rings in the wall. We took out the hooks and after enlarging the holes, replaced the hooks and poured molten sulphur in to hide the anchoring place. So, if somebody now hid in the cellar, the door could not be opened from the outside.

[Page 142]

The situation in Kuty

The situation became worse from day-to-day. It was more and more difficult to get food. The Ukrainians, who until now used to come to trade some food for household items, were now afraid to do it, given the stricter orders from the Germans.

The portions of food, watery soup, carrots, mamaliga, etc., which my father or my mother allocated to each of us, became smaller and smaller. They were distributed to us after being weighed on scales. This way everyone of us would get exactly the same quantity of food and no one would be wronged.

Going out to search for food became more and more dangerous. There were cases of people being shot when they encountered a German, or more often, a Ukrainian militiaman. Like in Kosow, some people entrusted their last valuables to Ukrainian “friends”, hoping that if they were deported for forced labour, they would recover their assets, if they returned on day.

A few young people tried to escape to Rumania, but all of them were murdered by Ukrainian villagers on the other side of the Czeremosz. Those who tried to run into the forest were murdered by our own Ukrainians, by Hutzuls, or by people of the plains. Besides, snow covered the ground and you could not hide when, like an animal in his den, you were betrayed by your footprints.

As for the Christian clergy, the Ukrainian priest was hostile to Jews. This priest had been hidden for a few months by a Jew when the Soviets were looking for him in order to deport

[Page 143]

him, in the spring of 1941. This priest was now spewing hatred against Jews. He warned his parishioners not to sell anything to Jews and not to hide a Jew. “You see”, he said, “God himself abandoned them”. The Polish priest did not preach directly against the Jews but did not life a finger to help. The only one who had the courage to show sympathy and to help Jews was the Armenian Catholic priest, Mr. Manuguevitch. He exhorted his parishioners to help the Jews. He asked them to sell food to Jews. He himself hid a group of Jews for weeks. He also hid several Torahs brought to him from different shuls.

Between January and March, 1942, the Gestapo, through the Judenrat, ordered the Jewish community to collect and deliver different items for the German army on the Russian front. I can remember two collections. The Judenrat announced that everyone had to bring to a designated place, all the wool they possessed. The other collection was for every piece of fur that people had, be it a fur jacket, a fur coat or even old pieces of fur from the linings of old coats. The German army had its first taste of a Russian winter; the second one would bring its defeat at Stalingrad.

This was the situation as the Passover holiday approached. On April 2^nd, the eve of Pesach, we made the seder with potatoes, pancakes made from corn meal, a barley matzoh and four cups of borscht as our wine. During Chol Hamoed, we heard that Judenaktions had just taken place in Pistyn and Jablonow. We realized that our turn would come in a few days. We were the last community in the region, and in spite of many disappearances, we had avoided a massacre and

[Page 144]

a deportation in a Judenaktion, thus far. We were already “The Chosen People”, could it be that we were the “Chosen among the Chosen”? It was clear that this was impossible. And so, it was.

The disaster struck us on April 10^th, 1942. It was Achron Shel Pesach, the last day of Passover. This spring holiday, the holiday of liberation, the holiday of renewal and of joy, became our doomsday. A prisoner on death row even if the day of execution was already decided by the court, still had a glimmer of hope. Maybe the next appeal would save him, maybe the head of state would commute his sentence? There were no courts here, there were no appeals. If there were heavenly courts, they were not listening. Is not God the God of Justice? And, doesn't justice mean equal treatment for everybody? If the answer is yes! How could He spare us when hundreds of communities were already destroyed? It would have been an insult to the tens of thousands of Jews already shot, burnt to death or gassed.

On April 10^th, since dawn, we felt a special tension in the air. It was quiet, but there was a kind of stillness before the storm. We went to the synagogue early and were back home at eight. We knew the habits of the Gestapo. They usually came around nine. Some men who were requisitioned for forced labour were already at work on the street. Suddenly, around nine, we heard the sound of trucks rolling by and gunshots.

Right away we closed all the doors. Then, together with the neighbouring family who had helped us in the construction of the hideout, we crept down into the hideout and masked the entrance. Then, at the last minute, my

[Page 145]

cousin Esther Kramer-Schnitzer appeared with her husband Aba and their six-year-old son, Yosele. They asked us to hide them too. But there was no space left for them in our hideout, so we let them into the fortified cellar. In our own hole, there were now nine people: the four of us (my parents, my brother and me), our neighbour Manale Sender, his daughter Esther with her husband Pitziu and their two daughters, Tina, aged 12 and Sally aged 10.

It didn't take long, half an hour at most, when we heard banging on the doors and heard people walking up and down the steps over our heads, running inside the house, yelling and making terrible noises. We couldn't distinguish if they spoke German or Ukrainian. We also heard loud sounds without distinguishing the words.

There were a few of these periods of loud noises during the morning. When these sounds stopped, we understood that several groups of murderers had come and gone during the day. In the afternoon, we started to hear another kind of noise – a crackling or sputtering, and small explosions. At first, we though that they were burning the Torah which we had brought home from our shul and that this was the sound of the burning parchment. As this noise lasted for hours, we understood this must have been something bigger.

The air inside our hideout was thick, hot and smelly, and it was difficult to breathe. This hole with nine people inside, had almost no ventilation and no place to relieve oneself. We knew the habits of the Gestapo and that this was a hiding place for 24hrs at most. Manale Sender, our neighbour, a man of 70, collapsed and started raving. When he raised his voice and

[Page 146]

his daughter Esther put her hand over his mouth, he tried to cough. Everyone of his sounds made us nervous. Finally, Manale fell asleep. The children were old enough to understand the situation and behaved perfectly. We remained there until the next morning.

Somewhere between six and seven o'clock in the morning, after all the noises had stopped, I pushed away the planks masking the entrance to the hideout under the stairs, and crawled out. I went up to the attic and passed into the adjoining house of my grandfather, opened a window and looked out. I couldn't believe me eyes. The whole row of houses facing my grandfather's were burned to the ground and still smoking. The street was almost empty except for a few people here and there, running in different directions, apparently aimlessly, but like ants, they knew where they were going. A few hours later, I understood everything. But first, I returned to the hideout telling everybody that it seemed that the Judenaktion was over and people were now coming out onto the street. Everyone then came out of our hideout. Our neighbours went back to their house and the Schnitzers left too. Our cellar's doors were open.

When later I ventured out a little further, I saw from afar a pair of border patrol soldiers leading two young Jews carrying a dead man. I didn't know if they were only picking up the dead bodies or also looking for survivors to send to the Gestapo in Kolomyja. So, I tried to run away but I was caught by another pair of uniformed men. They took me and another Jewish youth and led us into the Jewish houses to pick up the dead and made us carry them by hand (no vehicles, no

[Page 147]

stretchers, to the Jewish cemetery, one and a half kilometres away. I remember two houses where I was led, among others.

Near the marketplace stood the house of the Sperber family. We went in and everything was upside down, cupboards and drawers open and almost empty. It was clear that everything had been carried away. In a corner, in a small bedroom was an old woman, shot twice through the head. Her face was covered with streaks of blood. The two of us were ordered to lift her. I seized her hands and the other youth grabbed her feet and we carried her out. It was clear that the Gestapo or the Ukrainian militia took away all the members of the family, either to shoot them in the vicinity or for deportation. But, as this woman was very sick, they finished her off in her bed. She was only wearing a short night gown and I looked for a piece of cloth or linen to cover her, but they ordered us to hurry. We carried her through the streets. As we approached the house of Mr. Plawiuk, a Ukrainian butcher, owner of a café and of a hall for weddings and other celebrations, he was standing on the sidewalk waiting for us to come nearer. Point to our “load” and with an expression of disgust, he said: “don't come near my house to mess up the entrance. People come here to sit down and relax or to buy something”. I can still see his outstretched arm and the disgust on his face.

Another house was the house of the Halpern family. The doors were wide open when we came there. The house was upside down, the same way as the first house. The doors of the cellar were open. On the stairs were two dead and, on the floor, a third one. How many they took away alive, I

[Page 148]

don't know. This family, which lived in the Dolina, was not among our acquaintances.

All the dead we brought to the cemetery were laid out on the edges of the prepared mass grave. Many of the dead were found in the ruins of the burned houses and brought to the cemetery.

On our street, Ulica Kamienna (the stone street), a block further away, lived one of the Moschkovitz families. There was an elderly widow, Necha, her three daughters, Minia, Esther and a third one whose name I don't remember. There was also the daughter of that third sister, Andzia, and also Minia's husband and Andzia's husband. Seven people in all, as far as I remember. Their house was burned and had completely collapsed. The next day I went there with a relative of theirs who had survived the slaughter. At first, we didn't see anything but charred wood and bricks. When we brought shovels and a pick and started to uncover the ruins, we suddenly saw a leg sticking out. We quickly cleaned away, layer by layer of blackened wood, bricks and concrete. There appeared the whole horrible picture. The entire Moshkovitz family lay there, in each other's arms. Their faces were blue and their eyes bulging. Their heads were bigger than normal. They had hidden, like us, in a cellar hideout, and when the attackers hadn't found anyone in the house, they three in a fire bomb and burned the house down. It probably collapsed so quickly that they had no chance of escaping. They didn't burn to death but were asphyxiated by smoke and lack of air. If our house had been burned down, we wouldn't have had any chance either.

Only after coming out of our hideout and venturing into the streets, did we hear how it all

[Page 149]

began on April 10^th in the morning. Between eight and nine in the morning, four trucks full of Gestapo, S.S. and Ukrainian militia (Einsatzcommando) came into Kuty through the Kosow street. They got off at the marketplace and spread out throughout the streets, shooting the few Jews they encountered and entering the houses they passed. Many local militia and Ukrainians, waiting to steal and grab whatever they could, suddenly appeared and followed them. The Gestapo knew that if Jews were hidden somewhere in a house, they wouldn't come out when they heard the Gestapo order: “Juden heraus!”. They couldn't spend too much time for thorough search of every house, so if they had any doubt about whether there were Jews hidden inside, they three in a fire bomb. Then, they waited for a few minutes and if somebody came out, they shot them immediately. When they found people, they took them away and made the selection, whom to shoot and whom to ship to Kolomyja. The Ukrainians seldom bothered to make a selection. They shot people on the spot. They burned some shuls with the people inside and shot those who tried to escape.

A week later, the Gestapo sent the Judenrat a list of a number of people they needed for work. They would be sent away and it was clear that the expression: “for work”, was a euphemism for the word deportation, probably to a death camp.

[Page 150]

Before the escape, Czernowitz under the Rumanians

Even before the Judenaktion on April 10^th, the Jews learned from the Ukrainian smugglers that in Czernowitz, Bucovina, there were still some 40,000 Jews left, still living in their own homes. Even after periods of deportations across the Dniester and after being subjected to constant persecution and harassment.

Some young Jews who wanted to escape, tried their luck by hiring a smuggler and crossing the Czeremosz. Some succeeded in crossing the river, others were robbed and murdered by their guides, still others were caught by the Rumanians and deported to Transnistria or driven back to the Gestapo. Staying in Kuty meant certain death in the next few weeks, feeling to Rumania meant a slim chance of success. So, small groups of Jews banded together in secret and risked the dangerous journey of crossing into Rumania.

No family was deported together. Soon after being taken away, together or not, the Germans separated people according to age, sex, profession, state of health, etc. No one who stayed in Kuty could save anyone else. And so, families encouraged their younger members to try and escape. Naturally, not everybody could escape. It took a little money or some valuables. Some people were too sick or weak. The worst thing was that the Germans used different tricks

[Page 151]

to deport some people immediately and to reassure others with the idea that, for the time being at least, they were safe. And people desperately wanted to believe their lies. For those who escaped and their families who stayed, there was the hope that the ones who fled would find a relative or an institution who would help bring the rest of the family across the Czernowitz.

A friend of mine, Meinhardt Sojcher, came to talk to me about escaping. He said that he knew a person, Chaim Demner, who, before the war owned a bus and used to go often to Rumania. And that Mr. Demner knew some Ukrainians and Rumanians in the small towns between Wiznitz and Czernowitz. So, it would be easier to get help on the way to Czernowitz. Meinhardt had a girlfriend, Shayndel Vogel, and he wanted to bring her too. We had to act fast. I talked to my parents and my brother, and they agreed that I should try and go. Chaim Demner brought the smuggler. I don't know what the others paid him, but from us he wanted $50 U.S. The few dollars we had before we long gone. So, my parents went to see my great-aunt, Rivtzia, the widow of my great-uncle Leiser Kasner. Her son Jack lived in Buenos Aires and for years, sent them money regularly. We supposed (and we were right) that she must have some U.S. dollars. She bargained with my parents and then she gave us the $50, which she kept hidden in the wooden frame supporting the roof of her house.

At the same time, another thing was arranged and here is that story. In between all the deportations, the people remaining in town tried to get work permits. It is a sad story with these work permits. These were permits issued by the

[Page 152]

Judenrat, by the City Hall, by the border patrol, by the police or by the manager of a company. There was a black market for these permits. They were given to people but they could also be taken from them. The head of one of the local flour and saw mills was a German who had the reputation of being “not the worst” of the ones. Perhaps because he lived with a Jewish girlfriend. I don't remember how my parents got in contact with her. But my aunt sent this girlfriend, through my parents, her own beautiful Persian lamb coat, which was known to be the finest coat in town (there were not many Persian lamb coats in Kuty). And in exchange, my parents got a work permit for my brother stating that my parents and my aunt were being supported by him.

I don't remember the exact date but it must have been at the end of April or in the first days of May when, one evening, our group and the smuggler came together and we set out to the Czeremosz. It was late and dark. We wandered around on the shore of the river until our guide found a place to ford the river. We started across and the water got deeper and deeper until it reached our shoulders. Fortunately, the current was not very strong. We reached the other side, outside the town of Wiznitz. We waited a little while to dry ourselves a bit and then, still dripping water, we set out on the road to Czernowitz.

[Page 153]

Chaim Demner told us that he knew a farmer in the village of Berhomet, half way on the road to Czernowitz and that it was better to stop at his place. This farmer could then bring us to Czernowitz in one of his horse-drawn wagons. This way we wouldn't have to walk all of the 75km to Czernowitz. We reached Berhomet in the middle of the night. Demner knocked on the farmer's door. The farmer came out and greeted Demner in a friendly way that made it obvious that they had known each other for a long time. Demner told us that at dawn, the farmer would put us on a wagon and hide us under some hay and various farm products and that he would bring us to Czernowitz. The farmer gave us a snack and a place to sleep and we went to bed.

We slept only for a short time, maybe an hour or an hour and a half when we were woken by some strange noises. When I opened my eyes, I couldn't believe what I saw: two armed Rumanian policemen standing over us. They ordered us to get dressed. As soon as we put on our clothes, they loaded us on their carriage and we drove away. When Meinhardt asked them (he spoke Rumanian where we were going, they said: “You will see”.

In the morning, we reached Wiznitz. At the police station in Wiznitz, they told us that soon (in a few hours) they would take us back to Kuty. You, the reader, can imagine our state of mind. We were certain that this was the end. Whichever German unit they would turn us over to, border patrol, police or army unit, this unit would surely ship us off to Kolomyja and the Gestapo. And so, a few hours later, they gave us something to eat

[Page 154]

(bread, butter, eggs and coffee), and took us across the bridge on the Czeremosz to the border patrol who immediately turned us over to the army post. The captain received each one of us with a slap in the face, yelling and insulting us in front of his subordinates. He ordered two of his men to throw us in the cellar and lock the door.

It was obvious to us that in a few hours or the next day, we would be shipped to Kolomyja. But late in the night, we heard someone unlocking the door. The captain stood before us with his fingers to his lips asking us not to make any noise. In a low voice he said: “Geht jetz und das nächste mal läst euch nicht erwischen“ (you can go now and next time try not to get caught”). He then showed us how to get away from there through a path that was unguarded.

I still cannot understand the two events of that day. First, who betrayed us in Berhomet? Was it our guide who, after being paid, alerted the Rumanian police? Or, was it Demner's farmer “friend”? And secondly, what about the behaviour of the captain in Kuty? He yelled at us, beat us in front of his men and then came back alone to free us. Maybe he was afraid of his own people. Saving a few Jews was a dangerous business. Later, I learned that his name was Lehman and that he was Austrian. And the Austrians had a bad reputation towards the Jews, usually, they were even worse than the Germans themselves.

[Page 155]

The second try

I returned home. The next days were filled with a series of disappearances of Jews delivered by the Judenrat to forced labour for the Gestapo. There were children's days, old people days, sick people days, etc. These were, as usual, only small-scale selections in between the major massacres.

Two weeks later, two brothers who were next-door neighbours, Nusiu and Maniu Tillinger, told me that they knew a smuggle who, for a fee of money or household goods, was ready to bring us over to Czeremosz. They asked me if I was read to join them. Once again, I spoke with my family and once again, it was agreed that I would try to escape for a second time. The Tillingers were good friends of mine (you never talked about flight with people in whom you didn't have absolute confidence). They had some silk cloth (enough to make several women's dresses) and the smuggler was willing to take this material in payment for his services.

A few days later (it must have been in the middle of May, 1942), we repeated the same procedures as the first time. In the night, we forded the Czeremosz and set out on the road to Czernowitz. This time our guide chose a road that passed, not through Berhomet, but through the village (or small town) of Storojinetz. It was also very late at night. After a few hours of walking, we sat down in a clearing between the village and the forest to rest for a while. Suddenly, our guide said. “I need some money too, not just the silk fabric”. We told him: We are willing to

[Page 156]

bargain and maybe we will give you some more money, but not here. We will only pay you when we reach Czernowitz”. He agreed, but he also added this: “I am going to leave you here for a while. I have to see somebody in another village not far from here. I'll be back soon. Wait for me”.

He left and we waited. But when it started to get light, we got scared. We couldn't afford to wait any longer. Being seen by any human being, a policeman, a villager (Rumanian or Ukrainian) could spell disaster for us. We decided to take the risk and move on alone even though we were in unknown territory. We got up and left and after walking for only five minutes, we noticed that we were at the edge of the village. We headed towards the first streets which we saw and went over to one of the houses there. (The few houses there were not very close to each other). We knew that this was dangerous, but we had no choice.

We knocked on the door and a young man appeared. Before we even said anything, he looked at us and had probably recognized who we were and where we came from. He didn't ask questions and just said: “You can come in”. He took us up to the attic and made space for us where we could lie down and leave our things. He then brought us back down to the kitchen. His mother made a huge mamaliga and set it down in front of us with milk, cheese, eggs and vegetables. It was my first decent meal in months and months. I never forgot the taste of that mamaliga.

We then told them our story. The young man said to us: “Finish your meal, it is still early. We will have to hide you during the day and in the late evening, we will lead you out of the village to the road to Czernowitz”. So, we finished our meal

[Page 157]

and he took us back up to the attic and arranged a primitive hiding place for us. He told us: “Later this morning, I'll go out and bring you any news I hear. First, we will see if anyone is looking for you”. And so, it was. Around ten, he came back and told us the news that a man was running around town asking everybody if they had seen “three escapees from the other side”. The man, he described, was our guide. Later in the day, the police also made some inquiries. He asked us to stay quiet because it was possible that someone could come to the house to ask questions.

In the late evening, his mother led us through the dark streets of the village and brought us to the railway tracks. She said to us: “Just follow the tracks until they cross the road. This is the road which goes to Czernowitz”.

We followed her instructions and soon the road appeared. There was no traffic. We passed a few other villages and some farm houses near the road. Most of the farms had dogs, usually attached to a chain. Every time we passed a farm like that, the dogs would start to bark. This would scare the wits out of us and we would run as fast as possible down the road until we couldn't hear any more barking. Somewhere around five in the morning, we reached the outskirts of Czernowitz.

According to the signs, we were about 8-10km from the centre of the city. We saw some abandoned houses with doors and windows torn away. We entered them and decided to wait there until later in the morning. We would then blend in with people going to the city centre. We didn't understand then why there were so many abandoned houses. We would only

[Page 158]

understand this later when we reached the city. Soon, everything would become clear to us.

At around 9 a.m. we left the abandoned house and joined the crowd of people heading to the city, mostly peasants on foot or on horse-drawn carriages, bringing their products to sell at the city markets. We reached the city centre and went straight to the house of Mr. Gedalia Landwehr, a former neighbour of ours in Kuty, and a relative of the Tillingers. We had his address and we had gone there hoping that he could help us.

[Page 159]

My father's reaction before my escape

When my father received the few dollars to pay the smuggler from my great-aunt Riftzia Kasner, he called me and took me up to the attic and gave me the money. I saw he wanted to tell me something, but he remained silent for a while. Suddenly, in a plaintive voice, he said: “Auf wemen lost du mich yber”. In Yiddish, “mit wemen” means “with whom”, but “auf wemen” means “in whose care”. His word struck me like a thunderbolt. My father who had always cared for me, who was always very strong, now felt abandoned. He, who until the last day, did everything to prepare my departure, suddenly broke down. His question: “In whose care do you leave me?”, never left me, even to this day. It haunted me for years. I heard it even in my nightmares.

A few years ago, in one of these nightmares, I was in Kuty again. I don't remember why I was there in the dream. I was younger in the dream than I was at that time. I entered our house. My mother was there and I greeted her. My first question was: “Where is daddy?” She opened a door and I saw my father standing in the middle of a huge vacant lot. I called to him. At first, he didn't answer and just stood still for a while and then he turned around and started to walk away. I saw him getting smaller and smaller until he disappeared.

[Page 160]

This dream adds another dimension to my father's question to me on my departure for Czernowitz. What is certain is that nobody could do anything at all for anyone in those days. Also, in the deportations, the Gestapo separated the families. But, if I had stayed with my family for only one month or six weeks more, they wouldn't have felt so abandoned. I, like all the others who fled, had the illusion that somehow, I would find some help in Czernowitz to bring my parents over. But in reality, very few succeeded, and some were sent back by the Rumanians (as I had been the first time) and handed over to the Gestapo.

Another though which persecuted me for years is the question: Would my brother have acted as I did? If he could have gone away, would he have done it? I was not sure that he would have, and I am still not sure about it. What were his thoughts when he was led away by the Gestapo? I spent many sleepless nights wrestling with these terrible questions, and I still do.

I have often thought about my two attempts to escape. The first time I was caught and turned over to the Germans. And I was released by Austrian military man. The second time, I was saved by a young Ukrainian in Storojinetz. The

[Page 161]

Austrians and Ukrainians were generally known to be particularly eager to help the Gestapo in their massacres. But here I was saved first by an Austrian and then by a Ukrainian. There were a few people like them, but unfortunately too few. But we should not minimize their merit. We call them Chasidei Umot Haolam (The Righteous Gentiles).

Today, the state of Israel plants trees in their honour and names streets after them. Already in the Bible, we find the notion of a few just men redeeming a criminal generation. When God wanted to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of the wickedness of their inhabitants, Abraham pleaded with God: What if we find 50 just men in the city? You couldn't destroy them? But Abraham couldn't find 50. “What about 20?” he asked God. Again, God agreed not to destroy the city. But when there weren't 20 just men there, “What about ten?” he asked. And again, God agreed not to destroy them. Finally, Abraham asked: “What about one just man?” Once again God agreed not to destroy the city. But when Abraham couldn't find even one just man, it was only then that God sent the fiery sulphur rain which destroyed both cities.

I wouldn't go so far as to consider these heroic actions of the Righteous Gentiles as a redemption for the Nazi murderers and their leaders. But we should not forget that these courageous individuals risked their own lives and that some of them lost their lives trying to save Jewish lives.

[Page 162]

A brief historical reminder

Bucovina was part of the old Austro-Hungarian empire before WWI. After that war, the victorious allies gave Bucovina to Rumania at the Treaty of Versailles, as well as giving Russian Bessarabia to Rumania. In 1939, when the Germans attacked Poland, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact allowed Russia to re-occupy both these territories, which it kept until Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941.

In July, 1941, the Rumanian army re-entered Czernowitz with the assistance of German units. The Rumanian troops spread quickly across the city. Guided by local Rumanian and Ukrainian thugs, they entered Jewish houses, dragged out people and shot them or lead them away to be murdered in some other place. A few hundred people, among them known Jewish notables, were led away to the “Red Army Building”, newly constructed on Fischer square. There they were severely beaten and some were sadistically tortured. In the evening, they made a segregation, one group was led away, the other group was told to go home. But as soon as they started to run home, they were met with a hail of bullets. In the next few months, thousands of Jews were tortured and murdered.

All Jews were ordered to wear a Yellow Star of David, fixed to their jackets or blouses. The chief Reform Rabbi, Dr. Marks, was taken away and

[Page 163]

never heard of again. (I knew of him before the war because he was the son-in-law of Chaim Sekler, a well-known Jew in Kuty).

Little-by-little, laws akin to the Nuremberg laws of Germany were introduced. Curfews were ordered, Jews were expelled from al federal and municipal government posts, no contact with the gentile population was allowed, no travel outside the city permitted, etc. A few months later, the deportations to Transnistria started and continued for months in 1942. (The river Dniester is called Nistru in Rumanian. Transnistria is thus: “the region across the Dniester”, and is the region of Ukraine between the Dniester and the river Bug.

We arrived at Gedalia's house and he was very nice to us, but what he told us was not very encouraging. This is what he said: “You came at a very dangerous time. The deportations are not new in Czernowitz. Already, the Soviets deported people between 1939 and 1941. Then, it was the Rumanian and Ukrainian nationalists who deported many Jewish businessmen and even Jewish communists whom they didn't trust. Then, when the Rumanians came back with the Germans in 1941, they started to deport Jews en masse. These deportations stopped for a while and then resumed again. You came now in a period when the deportations are again strengthening. Those abandoned houses you saw on coming into the city are the houses of deported people. I will

[Page 164]

bring you to one of these houses in the city. There are many of them in some districts, and since they have already been completely emptied, nobody bothers to go inside. You will stay there for as long as it will take me (and people from the Jewish Council) to approach the authorities in order to try and obtain the legal “residency permit”, even though it may only be a temporary one”.

Gedalia told us all of this, and so it was.

We were led to an abandoned house, one of a cluster of abandoned houses. There were a few pieces of furniture inside as a few amenities installed by the Jewish Council after the house had been looted. We noticed that we were not the first refugees to have passed here. We were to stay inside the whole time because we couldn't go anywhere without the proper documents. Social workers from the Jewish community came by regularly and brought us food and some toiletries and just as important, news of what was happening in the city.

One day, we heard that there lived in Czernowitz a certain Dr. Szymonowicz who was, before the war, the honorary consul of the Polish government. We also heard that the government of Chile would now defend the interests of Poland and Polish citizens before the government of Rumania, now that Poland was overrun by the Germans. When regiments of the Polish army fled

[Page 165]

into Rumania, they were interned in Southern Rumania near the city of Slatina. But several Jewish soldiers defected in Czernowitz, and Dr. Szymonowicz had obtained for them a Chilean government document stating that they were under the protection of that government. These Jewish soldiers were now staying legally in Czernowitz. The Jewish community now worked to acquire the same documents for us.

This was the first ray of hope we had since our arrival in Czernowitz. However, it also happened that some people carrying this document were deported in the chaos of the deportations. It could depend on the policeman, on the amount of the bribe, or on some chance event. But, in general, the holders of these “Chilean passports” were able to move about freely in the streets of Czernowitz.

Before the Tillingers and me, a few Kuty refugees had obtained these passports: the Schmerz brothers, the Steinbrechers (mother, daughter and son – the father had committed suicide before the Passover massacre). Other Kuty refugees were turned over to the Gestapo or deported to Transnistria. Some of these deportees came back from Transnistria and eventually emigrated to Israel (where I met them in 1970-71).

We stayed in this hiding place for several weeks. Finally, around the end of June or the beginning of July, 1942, the news came that we were granted the desired document. And soon, we left the abandoned house.

[Page 166]

Free in Czernowitz

The first visit we made was to Dr. Szymonowicz's office. There, we got our Chilean passports and filled out various applications. His office was going to give us a monthly allowance. (I don't remember now how much it was). Our second visit was to the Soup Kitchen of the Jewish Community Council where refugees were given their daily meals. The allowance and the meals were just enough to let one live on a subsistence level.

After that, I went to see my great aunt Chaya Sima Goldschmidt and her daughter, Bertha. I stayed there for about a week. One day Bertha came home very agitated and said: “There are rumours that more deportations will take place again in the next few days. We have to be careful. The exact date is never known. They could even start tonight”. In the evening, she took me down into the cellar and arranged a hiding place. I spent the night there. The next day we heard that the deportations were already in progress. I stayed in the cellar during the day too. In the evening, Bertha said: “It is maybe better that you pass the night here in the bedroom. The couch opens up and there is plenty of room to hide a person inside. You will lie down on the couch. I'll close it up and make my bed on top”. And so, we did it that way. During the night we heard loud noises but nobody knocked on our door. Needless to say, that none of us could get any sleep and we stayed awake all night. In the morning, Bertha said: “The deportations are stopping and starting again. We can't live like this.

[Page 167]

You will have to look for another place to stay. With your Chilean documents, you have a chance, but if they find you here, even with your papers, we will all be deported. My nerves can't stand it”. She called up Gedalia and he promised to find me another place to stay. And he kept his promise. A few days later, I moved to 15, Brancoveanu street (the old German Liliengasse not far from the Austria-Platz). It was the apartment of a divorcee with two young sons. She had two other boarders: Chaim Mandel, another refugee from Kuty with a passport like mine, and Ms. Mina Raji, a woman who was a refugee from Bessarabia. I stayed there until our liberation by the Soviets in March, 1944.

In the months before the return of the Soviets, every one of the refugees, although helped by the charitable organizations, tried to find some additional source of revenue in order to survive. Some entered (broke in) into the houses of newly deported families before their apartments were ransacked by the Rumanians, and took away what was left of their belongings. Others bought these stolen goods from them to sell on the black market. Chaim Mandel and Fredi Steinbrecher were in the selling part of that business.

The Tillingers, on the other hand, got their extra income from the administration of the Jewish Community Soup Kitchen. This is how it happened. The administrator, Dr. Chusid, asked us to do different menial jobs, cleaning, hauling and carrying heavy loads, etc, between the

[Page 168]

meals. The Tillingers were very willing to do all this, but I refused. “We are refugees”, I said: “and not slaves who work without pay”. The Jewish Community had a depot from which food was distributed to needy people and also to some refugees. Later, Dr. Chusid rewarded the Tillingers for their work and put them in charge of the food distribution for one sector. And with time, they did what others in their position did, they started to sell some of the food on the black market; sugar, flour, canned food, etc.

Some refugees who had arrived in Czernowitz in 1939 and who had come with a little money, were now trading in foreign currencies. I realized that without a little money, I could not do much. One day, I noticed an ad in the paper (I could already read the Rumanian papers) asking for a tutor in French for a little girl. I applied and got the job. With time, my Rumanian got better and her French improved too. The family was satisfied with my work and they recommended me to friends. This was my source of additional income.

One still had to be careful and avoid parades, demonstrations and other public gatherings. In general, one had to avoid any place where the police could be on the lookout.

In August, 1942, a few Polish refugees came over from Kuty. They said that the selective deportations continued and that there were rumours of a final Judenaktion soon. Besides that, the Ukrainians were starting to murder Poles too.

[Page 169]

The refugees told the names of some of the murdered Poles. Among them was that of Dr. Buzath who, in 1922, had saved my mother's life.

As I said before, my cousin Esther Kramer-Schnitzer, her husband Aba and their son, the six-year-old Yosele, left our cellar hideout after the April 10 massacre. Now, in Czernowitz, I heard what had happened to them after that. A few days after the massacre, Aba Schnitzer was walking somewhere in town when he saw a Ukrainian militiaman whom he knew from having done some business with his parents.

Aba said to the militiaman: “Yourko! I am glad to see you. Maybe you can help us”. Yourko answered: “Yes, you run before me and I will pretend that I am bringing you to the Germans and we will see, maybe than I can do something for you”. Aba took a few steps when his 'friend' Yourko fired a bullet into his head.

On September 8^th, 1942, the final Judenaktion took place in several towns in the triangle Kuty-Kolomyja-Sniatyn. This time, the deportees were driven to the ghetto in Kolomyja. Many were shot on the way. Older people, sick people, severely handicapped people were shot during the marches because they couldn't keep up with the column.

In Kolomyja, a segregation took place. The very weak were taken away to be shot. The stronger people were sent to a forced labour camp near Lwow (the Janow camp). Another group was loaded onto railroad cars and shipped to the Belzec death camp. About a hundred craftsmen, temporarily needed by the Germans, were left in Kuty only to be killed a few weeks later.

[Page 170]

Searches for concealed Jews would still continue after that. For the first time in the Jewish-Polish history of Kuty, the town became, as the Nazi called it, “Judenrein” (cleansed of Jews). In one of these last deportations, my parents and brother were taken to Kolomyja. They were murdered either there or in a further deportation. There was only one Jew who survived the war inside Kuty. This was Herschel Zeiger. He was hidden by some people who lived in the Dolina and later by some peasants who lived on the outskirts of Kuty or in the villages nearby.

There came news from Transnistria. The deportees were living in appalling conditions. There was hunger and sickness and they did forced labour for the Rumanian army. All this was from the very beginning. But, when winter approached in late 1942, the Germans who occupied the region east of the Bug came more often into Transnistria. They asked the Rumanians to “lend” them Jewish deportees to work for them. However, they never brought these people back to the Rumanian side.

Then, after their work was done, these deportees were killed during the massacres of the Jewish population in the Ukrainian towns and villages under German occupation.

[Page 171]

Bad news from Dr. Szymonowicz's office

Not long after our arrival and legalization, we heard the sad news that from now on, Dr. Szymonowicz's office would no longer procure Chilean passports to new refugees. In fact, the Tillingers and me became the last Polish refugees who got these passports. This had a terrible consequence for a few refugees who came after us.

There was the case of two Kuty families, the Schmerz and the Altmans. Three Schmerz brothers had to come to Czernowitz before us and got their passports. They succeeded in bringing over their parents when the door closed and their parents had to go into hiding. A colleague of mine, Abraham Altman had brought his parents and a brother, also too late.

The Altman parents were caught and turned over to the Gestapo. The brother (Chaim, he was 19 or 20) cut his wrists in a failed suicide attempt and was put in a hospital. When, a few weeks later, the police came to deport him, he jumped out of a third-floor window, hit the pavement and was killed. Three other brothers (aged 30, 23 and 14) and an older sister and her husband were left behind in Kuty until the last deportations.

The Schmerz brothers tried something else for their parents. They heard of a scheme tried by another refugee and they tried it too. Through bribes, they found out the name of a man in prison who was accused of committing some crime. It was arranged that the prisoner would testify that he had been helped by the Schmerz parents. So, the Schmerz parents were arrested

[Page 172]

and put in prison and their trial dragged on and was postponed time and again. They hoped that the delays would last until the Soviets arrived. But it was not to be. Nobody knew why but one day they were seized and sent over to the Gestapo in Sniatyn.

The same thing happened to a classmate of mine from college, Hesiu Mahler. He arrived from Kolomyja after escaping from the ghetto, but it was too late for the legal papers.

The winter of 1942-43 stopped the advance of the German troops into the Russian SSR itself. In spite of the fact that the German army occupied 22 out of 24 districts of the city of Stalingrad, the Soviet supply route across the Volga functioned well, although, at the cost of enormous losses of men, arms and military equipment. After encircling the bulk of Von Paulus's army and taking it prisoner, the Soviet troops continued to push westward. Towards the end of 1943, it was clear that it was only a matter of months before Bucovina and Eastern Galicia would be liberated.

These were very exciting months. We spent entire evenings studying maps, sticking in pins with small flags to mark the moving front lines. Especially the Southern Ukrainian front of Marshal Koniev advancing towards Czernowitz. There were interminable discussions. People were happy to see the first Rumanians leave for the Regat (the old Rumanian Kingdom). But others, remembering their families deported by the

[Page 173]

Soviets in the years 1939-41, were uneasy. I remember one who said: “I am glad they are coming, but I wouldn't like to see them stay”. He certainly knew that this was impossible but that was his dream. And he wasn't alone in that idea.

In January, 1944, the Soviets being close, the exodus of Rumanians accelerated. The more the Red Army advanced, the more the Rumanian houses were left empty (like the Jewish houses before). In the last few weeks before the arrival of the Red Army, many houses were abandoned with large reserves of food and clothing still inside.

I heard later, when the Soviets were already in town, that some Jews also tried to flee but that the authorities ordered the railway stations and other transporters not to admit Jews. But then, as always in Rumania, baksheesh worked wonders and several Jewish families left for Bucharest, together with Rumanians.

Since mid-March, 1944, entire regiments of the retreating German army passed through Czernowitz in motorized units with motorcycles, jeeps, trucks and tanks. The city was full of German troops. The noise was unbearable. Their vehicles were dirty, covered in mud and some were severely damaged. This went on day and night for about two weeks. Now the city didn't belong to anybody. Everyone stayed indoors daring to venture out only for a moment to catch a glimpse of the retreating army and to make sure that he was not dreaming.

In the last days of March, the flow of German soldiers slowed down. They looked more and more wretched. The last to pass through were trucks full of wounded soldiers, some with bandages on

[Page 174]

their heads, arms or legs, some on crutches and some on stretchers.

At the end of March, we heard the Soviet artillery pummelling the city and suburbs, the sound of explosives destroying buildings, bridges and factories. On the night of March 29^th, a stillness fell over the city. This was much more unnerving than the artillery bombardments and the explosions.

In the morning, a neighbour came in and said: “The Russians are already in town”. A few minutes later, everybody was in the streets. We could already see small groups of Jewish youths greeting the first Russian soldiers. People surrounded them, asking questions and answering the soldiers' questions. Women embraced them. These first Russian soldiers were looking for Germans who, for whatever reason, were too late to have been evacuated, or who had simply been left behind.

In the afternoon, we went to the suburb of Zuczka, where the sugar refinery and the distillery were located. The plant was severely damaged and the bridge was partly destroyed. In the streets we saw two German tanks with carbonized bodies of German soldiers. We wandered around the whole day, breathing the new air, enjoying the liberation. At last, we were free. As for the Red Army, a whole year of heavy fighting was still awaiting them.

  Kuty, Ukraine     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2025 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 12 Jan 2023 by LA