Tag #146005 - Interview #78192 (Iosif Bursuk)

After two months they stopped moving Jews to Transnistria. The ghetto was eliminated and about 15,000 Jews out of the original 50,000 stayed in town. 35,000 were deported. About 10,000 obtained an official permit to stay in Chernovtsy. Those were the ones that couldn't move out for some reason or specialists that couldn't be replaced. After the elimination of the ghetto in June 1942 they began to deport the 5,000 Jews that didn't have a permit to live in Chernovtsy according to the list to Transnistria. We were on the list. We were hiding in the attic of our acquaintances'. They were Romanians and the police didn't search their attic. The authorities issued certificates to the Jews that remained in the town. Such a certificate was called authorization. My father had money and connections, but it was still a problem to obtain this certificate. The individual helping my parents to obtain this authorization was under a certain risk. He would have been shot if this had become known. But everything went well and we were able to stay in Chernovtsy until 1944, when Bukovina was liberated by the Soviet army, and we had the authorization to do so.