Tag #132346 - Interview #78789 (Ivan Barbul)

This was no ghetto in Bogdanovka. It was beyond comparison. This was an area with no rights or rules, where people were exterminated for no particular reason. Every day wagons hauled out hundreds of dead bodies. The inmates placed their dying relatives in passages between cells so as not to have them die in the cells where they lived. Often these dying people had no clothes on, since their relatives would pull off their clothes to trade them for food products. Villagers from Bogdanovka used to bring food to the barbed fence for the exchange. My mother and some other women found a hole in the fence and used to go to the village to get some food. My mother was ashamed to beg for food and she asked for work to do for food. Occasionally, people asked her to do washing for them and she washed their clothes in the ice-cold Bug River for bread or potatoes. She brought us whatever she could get. My father grew very weak and couldn't get onto his feet again.