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In summer 1942 Germans lined up all men over 15 years of age, took them to the field where they had a pt dug out and shot them all. Many of them were wounded, but they buried them alive. Ukrainian villagers said the earth stirred for a while, as f people were trying to get out of there. My mother’s brother Borukh, the forester and my father’s older Moishe Katz perished in this hooting. My father survived. He was wounded in his chest. When the Romanian and German guards moved farther away along the line shooting at the people he crawled away to the nearby corn field. When everything was over few people from Ozarintsy came to the shooting spot looking for survivors. My father called them and they took them back home in the ghetto. My father was bleeding and needed medical assistance. Those same people brought a doctor from the village, but he could not help my father: the bullet stuck too close to his heart. My father bled to death in his presence. The Romanian guards of the ghetto allowed to bury my father in the Jewish cemetery in Ozarintsy, but no Jewish ritual was allowed. We installed the gravestones on my father’s grave and on his parents’ graves after the war. Every year on the anniversary of his death we came to his grave. My brother recited Kaddish for my father, grandmother and grandfather. There were more mass shootings afterward: there were raids in the ghetto – the captives were taken to the suburb of the village and killed. In March 1943 the Soviet army liberated Ozarintsy. Many Ukrainians were helping Jews in the ghetto even risking their lives. There are many Righteous men in Ozarintsy. Many people owe their lives to them. There are no more Jews left in Ozarintsy, though. The survivors could stay in the place associated with such terrible memories no longer, but we all come to Ozarintsy on the anniversary of the mass shooting to go to the cemetery. The rabbi recites a prayer and relatives of the deceased recite the Kaddish after their dear ones.
Period
Interview
Bluma Katz