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My mother became a widow again with three children. It was a hard period of the civil war [3], famine [4] and devastation. There were no pogroms [5] in the village – there were only a few Jewish families – but bandits robbed villagers of whatever little they had.
Once, my mother told me that her brother Boris was taking his cow to a bull in a neighboring village. All of a sudden a bandit came out of the forest, took the rope and began to pull the cow. My uncle was a strong and big man – he took the white guard [6] gangster by his hand and squeezed it so hard that he let go of the cow. Then he snatched the bayonet of the bandit and stabbed him to death and continued on his way. There was nobody around and my uncle was beyond any suspicion. Besides, he didn’t tell anyone about what happened until many years later.
Once, my mother told me that her brother Boris was taking his cow to a bull in a neighboring village. All of a sudden a bandit came out of the forest, took the rope and began to pull the cow. My uncle was a strong and big man – he took the white guard [6] gangster by his hand and squeezed it so hard that he let go of the cow. Then he snatched the bayonet of the bandit and stabbed him to death and continued on his way. There was nobody around and my uncle was beyond any suspicion. Besides, he didn’t tell anyone about what happened until many years later.
Period
Location
Zhytomyrska oblast
Ukraine
Interview
Natan Shapiro