Tag #154016 - Interview #90540 (Frida Muchnik)

When fascists came into the town, they gathered all Jews in the ghetto that occupied the central part of the town. Our house was beyond the boundaries of the ghetto and we had to leave it. We moved into the house of a Jewish family that had evacuated from the town. The ghetto was fenced with a barbed wire and there were policemen guards at the gate. The inmates were not allowed to leave the ghetto. Bershad belonged to the so-called Transnistria19 zone that was annexed to Romania. The Romanian occupants replaced the German troops. Many people think that the life was easier under the Romanian rule. It is true that the Romanians did not conduct actions aimed at the extermination of Jews, but we lived under the constant threat of death from hunger, infectious diseases, and hits of drunken Romanian policemen with their batons. Our lives were within a hair’s breadth from death. The girls of my age were abused in a beastly manner, and my mother decided I should stay in hiding from the very beginning.  It’s hard to imagine that I stayed in shelters for two and a half years: in the basement, in the attic or in the shed, when fascists or policemen searched the houses. My parents managed to hide me so that I didn’t go to work one day through this period. Girls were taken to wash floors in the commandant office and hospital, wash blood-stained bandages, they were beaten and abused. Mama rescued me from this. She gave money to representatives of the Jewish counsel Judenrat,20 established in the ghetto and responsible for supplying workforce to the occupants, when they came to the house searching for me, or she just kept me in a shelter. Mama was also our breadwinner. She bribed policemen to get out of the ghetto where she could always find some Ukrainian friends willing to help us. Mama gave them money or things, or worked for them and they gave her potatoes, bread, beans that mama brought to the ghetto. At least, I did not starve, and mama and papa pretended they had enough food: for them the most important thing as to provide sufficient food for me. Many Jewish families gave shelter to Jews from Bessarabia21 that had been deported here. They were in a terrible condition. They were not so used or adjusted to hardships. They were exhausted after their long walk here. Many of them had died. When they arrived at Bershad, they brought typhus and tuberculosis to the ghetto. Many inmates were dying. Their dead bodies were removed by a wagon and buried in a common grave in the vicinity of the ghetto. Mama refused to have Bessarabian Jews where we were staying. She was afraid of diseases, but she tried to support them sharing whatever little food we had with them.