Tag #154258 - Interview #78012 (Fenia Kleiman)

The three of us walked back to Briceni. We had survived and we believed it to be a miracle. Our house was there, but my parents didn't want to live in a place, where everything reminded them of Joseph and his family. They couldn't sell it either because it wasn't their property any longer: now it belonged to the state. We settled down in an outhouse with my mother's cousin. She had seen our family pictures and my grandmother Feina's picture in one of the houses. We demanded them back and we got them, but we didn't get back any of our belongings. We didn't have anything left. My mother bought an old uniform overcoat at the market. She altered it to make a coat for me. My father worked as an accountant in the district department of health and I went to school.

There were a few Jews left in Briceni but no synagogues. My school friend Benia's father, a tailor, arranged a prayer house in his home. They got together to pray on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. They made matzah on Pesach in this house. Baker Shymon baked matzah for those that brought him flour. Our neighbor was a militia officer, and my father couldn't take the risk of having matzah made for us. If that neighbor had noticed my father taking matzah home, we might have had problems with the authorities. Baker Shymon brought matzah to our house at night and stored bags in the shed pretending they were just some tools. When our neighbor went to work we took the bags with matzah home.