Tag #151792 - Interview #84041 (Yacob Hollander)

I studied in the yeshivah for a year. It was closed in 1944 and I returned home to Kamyanske. In late 1944 Hungarian gendarmes came to every Jewish house ordering Jews to get packed for the road. They allowed taking 10 kg of luggage, food and clothing, per person. The Jewish gendarmes convoyed us to the station where we boarded railcars for cattle transportation. There were 70 of us in each railcar. We were taken to a ghetto in Beregovo. There were Hungarian gendarmes to meet the train in Beregovo. We were convoyed to the ghetto. Our family was taken to the ghetto in a brick factory formerly owned by Wais, a rich Jewish man. There were my parents and brothers and sisters, except my sister Roza who was with my uncle in Budapest. My grandmother and grandfather Klein, my mother’s parents, were with us. Life conditions in the ghetto were terrible. There were big barracks made from planks with 2-tier wooden beds for the people. There were 2-3 individuals on each bed. Those who didn’t fit in the barracks were accommodated in big tents for soldiers where they had to sleep on the ground. There were no toilets and there was sewage around the barracks. There was a terrible smell. My mother’s father, my grandfather Isroel, died in the ghetto. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to leave the ghetto and my father made arrangements with local villagers and gave them his and my mother’s wedding rings and they took the corpse of my grandfather to Kamyanske where my grandfather’s Ukrainian neighbors buried him. Of course, they didn’t bury him according to the Jewish ritual, but they buried him in the Jewish sector of the cemetery. They showed me his grave when I returned to Kamyanske after WWII. I visit his grave every year.