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My parents had mixed feelings, when they saw me, they felt happy that I was alive, even if I was wounded, but also, they were concerned about my safety: besides being a Jew, I was a commanding officer of the Soviet army. Our village happened to be within the Transnistria zone [16]. We were the only Jewish family in the village, but fortunately, there were no German or Romanian troops in Lesnichevka. They assigned a senior man in the village, but he knew my father well and respected our family warning us about any arrivals of fascists into the village. Unfortunately, I cannot remember his name. Other Ukrainian villages also helped us as much as they could. They knew that we were Jews, but none of them ever reported on our family. Life was hard like anywhere else in the occupation. My father didn’t have a job and all we had to eat was actually what we could grow in our miserable vegetable garden. Occasionally other villagers brought my father eggs or some milk or a piece of pork fat. My mother or father never had any forbidden food while my brother, my sister and I were glad to have this non-kosher food that was forbidden by our religion. So we lived in Lesnichevka for a whole year, but in January 1943 fascists on motorcycles and policemen broke into the village capturing villagers to send them to Germany. They found out that there was a Jewish family in the village. My parents, my brother and sister were taken to the ghetto in Bershad, and set me to the construction of a bridge near Nikolaev.
Period
Interview
Anatoliy Shor