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And mother improvised a sort of chair on which to place the sewing machine, and my older brothers – I couldn’t really do it, I was too little, only 2-3 years old – would take turns spinning the sewing machine’s wheel with the help of a small stick; she sewed as much as she could for the diverse population there – especially Ukrainian, Russian and Moldovan women, those who spoke Romanian, that is, to a smaller degree. As payment for her sewing we would get a handful of flour or cornmeal, or they would bring us the smaller potatoes that couldn’t be peeled – we would boil them as they were, whole –, and on many occasions my mother would ask them to bring us the potato peels as well. That was the reality of our life. I remember that. For it was because of this precarious food, and that’s what we ate most of the time, that I have always been sickly as a child. It was there that I heard for the first time the word ‘cir,’ it was there that I learned the word ‘prici,’ which aren’t Romanian words, but probably Ukrainian. Cir is a very light polenta, cornmeal with water, to which potatoes were usually added – it was the poor man’s way of thinning the polenta, of combining –, small potatoes, rejects, as they say, which are kept neither for eating, nor for planting – these potatoes are too small. But we also added potato peels. Prici is a large bed – so-called bed, it doesn’t come close to what we call bed nowadays – made of straw covered with sackcloth on top, and that was the bed people slept on using blankets as improvised pillows – as long as the blankets brought from home lasted –, and this is how we spent approximately three, if not four years in Transnistria.
At a certain point, my mother contracted exanthematic typhus, and was taken to the hospital in Moghilev, and we had no clear idea whether or not she would survive. And we, the three children and my father’s cousin – she was slightly older – practically lived from the alms the people there gave us out of pity, they would bring us something to eat now and then. From what I recall and from what my parents told me, there is quite a long distance from Djurin to Moghilev, around 15-20 km, I believe. So it was too much for children to walk it on foot. I know that we went there only once, by cart, with one of our neighbors, and we talked with mother at the hospital’s window. Even I remember that, although I was only a little child – by 1943-1944 I was 4 years old going on 5 –, but it remained stamped in my mind. Also stamped in my memory is the fact that when the front was being pushed back, the Russian armies advanced and bombed the area, as there were some resistance lines of the German army there, and my older brothers ran into the garden, hid themselves somewhere among whatever vegetation there was, and my mother took me, placed me on the ground and covered me with her body. For it was dangerous, bombs were dropping in the area of the Djurin village, too. To conclude, it was an utterly precarious episode, at the limit of existence, very hard to bear even by children, by a child less aware of what was going, like myself. But I remember that even in the latter period there I used to wear only a little shirt and walk completely barefoot – from spring till fall, this was my entire outfit. During winter, my mother improvised something for us to wear on our back, out of shreds of sackcloth or blankets. That was Transnistria.
At a certain point, my mother contracted exanthematic typhus, and was taken to the hospital in Moghilev, and we had no clear idea whether or not she would survive. And we, the three children and my father’s cousin – she was slightly older – practically lived from the alms the people there gave us out of pity, they would bring us something to eat now and then. From what I recall and from what my parents told me, there is quite a long distance from Djurin to Moghilev, around 15-20 km, I believe. So it was too much for children to walk it on foot. I know that we went there only once, by cart, with one of our neighbors, and we talked with mother at the hospital’s window. Even I remember that, although I was only a little child – by 1943-1944 I was 4 years old going on 5 –, but it remained stamped in my mind. Also stamped in my memory is the fact that when the front was being pushed back, the Russian armies advanced and bombed the area, as there were some resistance lines of the German army there, and my older brothers ran into the garden, hid themselves somewhere among whatever vegetation there was, and my mother took me, placed me on the ground and covered me with her body. For it was dangerous, bombs were dropping in the area of the Djurin village, too. To conclude, it was an utterly precarious episode, at the limit of existence, very hard to bear even by children, by a child less aware of what was going, like myself. But I remember that even in the latter period there I used to wear only a little shirt and walk completely barefoot – from spring till fall, this was my entire outfit. During winter, my mother improvised something for us to wear on our back, out of shreds of sackcloth or blankets. That was Transnistria.
Period
Location
Dzhuryn
Vinnytska oblast
Ukraine
Interview
Simon Glasberg
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