Tag #149872 - Interview #78066 (Yakov Driz)

Two weeks passed and we were ordered to move to
the ghetto. They fenced one street and all Jews from Tomashpol and the
surrounding villages were moving there. There were several families living
in each house. Our family got accommodation in the basement of a wooden
house. This basement was formerly used to store coal and wood. We moved
beds from our house and took apart wardrobes for wooden planks to install
on the ground floor. My parents, my sister Polia, a distant relative from
Yampol, Manya and I lived in this basement. There were over one thousand
people in the ghetto. Half of them starved to death or died from diseases.
On 19 May 1941 Manya gave birth to two twin girls: Polia and Dora. Manya's
husband and his two brothers went to the war where they perished. Manya and
her children lived in this ghetto for two years and eight months. We lived
behind the barbed wire fencing with no money or food. It was so hard to
raise these baby girls. Manya died in 2001 and her girls are still living.
Of course, the years they spent in the ghetto had an effect on them; they
are sickly, but they are still alive.