Tag #154746 - Interview #103607 (Riva Pizman Biography)

In early 1941 German troops entered Mogilyov-Podolskiy and stayed till middle August, when the Romanian troops replaced them. Mama hated it that Germans behaved as if they were masters of the town and mentioned to some neighbors that Germans had no rights here. They reported on her that she was agitating people against the German regime. Few Germans and Ukrainian policemen came into our apartment one day. One of the policemen was our neighbor Kushniruk. Mama said something to him that he didn’t like. He hit her on her arm with his rifle butt and broke her arm.  Mama was taken to the town prison where she was kept few days. My mother sister Lisa’s daughter Riva came to her rescue. Riva worked as a teacher. Director of her school Ivanov had the German commander of the town staying in his apartment. Riva asked her director to talk to the commander about my mother. All I know is that on that very day my mother was released. At night the Dnestr flooded the riverside where the jail was located. All prisoners drowned.  Our neighbors who had reported on my mama, started telling all that the God punished my mother and that if Germans failed to kill her, she drowned in the Dnestr. How surprised they were to see my mother alive! In late July there were German and Romanian forces in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Once mama went to see an old tailor, who was an acquaintance of hers. He was fitting a coat on a Romanian officer. Something was going wrong and his hands were shaking. Mama offered her help and finished the trying on. The coat came out all right, and the major came to mama’s home to thank her. He mentioned that she could count on his help, and mama needed his help very soon.  In early August a Romanian soldier came into our house. He wanted to take something from our home. Mama pushed him outside saying that he was not the one to have a word in her home. She was arrested again and taken to the school that was converted into a barrack for Romanian soldiers.  She was forced to sit on a big stone in the school yard. They placed a bunch of grenades beside her. Mama was sure they would blast her, but at that moment the major was passing by. He asked mama why she was sitting there. The Romanians wanted to give him an explanation, but he ordered them to let mama go and never again come into our apartment. Mama avoided death for the second time. 
 
Our Ukrainian neighbors supported us well. Even before the ghetto was established, they often brought us vegetables, milk and flour. Zbarskiy, a teacher from school, also visited us. They helped us to survive.