Tag #154747 - Interview #103607 (Riva Pizman Biography)

In August 1941 a ghetto was established in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. This was when I realized I was a Jew. The central part of the town and the riverside were fenced, and there were guards at the gate.  The Ukrainians within this area were forced to move out and instead, Jews from outside the area were accommodated in their houses. Our house was outside the ghetto and we were to move out of there, when the Romanian major came to our rescue again. He helped us to obtain a residential permit to stay outside the ghetto. We didn’t look like Jews. My sister and I wore casual clothes and had long plaits. My sister, my mother and I had to go to the central part of the town looking for clients and buying food products. This was dangerous, but we had to support ourselves. When German troops left, the Romanians ordered all Jews to wear black armbands with yellow hexagonal stars, but we didn’t obey. Of course, the risk was big, but mama hated to obey the occupants’ orders. 
 
There was a network of concentration camps and ghettos all over Vinnitsa region. This area between the Dnestr and the Bug Rivers was called Transnistria 25 where Jews from Bessarabia and Romania were kept. There were few families stuffed in each house. Many inmates of the ghetto were taken to the Pechora camp. They said there were no survivors there. There were raids in town. People were captured to be sent to the Pechora camp. My sister was captured during one raid in May 1942. She went to the market, when gendarmes captured her. The group of captives was convoyed past our house and Anna screamed: “Mama, they’ve seized me!” Would any mother leave her child in trouble? Mama jumped out of the house, the convoy put my father on the wagon, and we joined the march to Pechora 26. My mother only managed to grab her sewing machine hoping that she would manage to earn a little by sewing.