Tag #155599 - Interview #103607 (Riva Pizman Biography)

We marched as far as a railroad station where we boarded a train. The closed railcars were stuffed with people. I sat on somebody’s backpack and mama was standing. This was a hot summer and there was stuffy in the railcar. People were fainting, but there was no space to fall. We got no food or water. We got off the train on the Rokhny station from where we had to march again. One day later we reached Pechora. This camp was in the territory of a former recreation center for the military in the suburb of Vinnitsa.  There were many trees and flowers in the area. The place was surrounded with a high brick wall. There were armed German guards at the gate. The first thing catching our sight was exhausted and dirty children stretching their hands to us.  It was hard to survive for all children, but if they lost their parents they were destined to starve to death.  The building of the recreation center was very nice. It housed the guards of the camp, and the inmates were taken to the stables with small windows under the ceiling. There were ground floors and the inmates slept on straw on the floor.  There was manure that nobody cared to clean. Mama decided we would stay outside while it was still warm. On the first night we woke up from screams and shooting. German soldiers went inside the stable building to take away the people’s money and valuables. To scare them more they were shooting into the air. I was so scared that my hand twisted in the morning. Mama was very concerned about it, but later it passed. We had very few belongings left.  He robbers even took away my new coat. There was no food provided to the inmates of the camp. Occasionally local villagers came to the fence bringing food products that they wanted to exchange for things. We didn’t have anything for this kind of exchange, but even those who managed to get some, did not always had a chance to eat it. If German soldiers saw somebody cooking on the fire, they used to turn over the pots. We came into the camp wearing our summer clothes and shoes. When it got cold, mama got some sacks, made holes in them for us to put them on and we wore them. We also wrapped our feet in pieces of these sacks.  
 
About one month after we came into the camp, Germans took my sister Anna and other young people to a work camp. One young man hid behind a tree and they shot him. Germans were building a road in Vinnitsa region. The camp was in Varnovitsy village, but later, when the construction advanced, they moved it to Zarubintsy village. They provided some food to the prisoners. We didn’t have any information about Anna.