Tag #147054 - Interview #83426 (Piotr Levitas)

Then the revolution began [6] and bandits started to rage even more. In 1917 soldiers of the Red Army took the Jews who stayed alive to the village of Kocherevo to hide them from bandits. That village was in Zhytomir region, twenty kilometers from Brusilovo. There we stayed with one Ukrainian peasant family. They were very nice people; we lived with them, and my parents made clothes for them. But their son was a bandit.

When pogroms began [7], Mother gave the jewelry to one woman, not Jewish, who brought us milk all the time. She wanted that woman to keep the jewelry hidden from gangsters. When we were hurriedly taken away from Brusilovo, Mother had no time to take it back. So my parents went from Kocherevo to Brusilovo to get the jewelry, and gangsters were all around. The woman was not at home and Father didn’t want to wait and went back, and Mother stayed and waited. Besides, Daddy thought that one by one they would have more chances to slip away unnoticed. Mom waited until the woman returned, recovered the jewelry and rode back. But on the way she met the son of the peasants at whose family we lived. He ordered her to get off the cart. Mom answered that she wouldn’t do that. He shot and killed her. Then the carter came to us the following day and described what had happened. And Father with my older brother, who was ten years old then, went to the site and buried Mom right there in the woods.

We didn’t live for long with those peasants in Kocherevo. As soon as the raging calmed down a little, we escaped to another place. We would move from place to place. We could not go back home, because our houses were seized by bandits.