Tag #155635 - Interview #77997 (dora slobodianskaya)

We proceeded to Vinnitsa region: Yampol, Olshanka, Obodovka, Ustye. We stayed in Yampol overnight. My brother and I sat down on the ground. A Romanian officer asked us where we came from and how we happened to be in Yampol. We talked with him in Romanian. The officer ordered his fellow soldier to give us food. We couldn't stop eating. A Jewish ghetto was set up in Ustye village and fenced with barbed wire. The German troops moved on from Ustye, so the ghetto was guarded by Romanian gendarmes. We were accommodated in former cowsheds with ground floors covered with a thick layer of frozen manure. There was no heating and no door. We put some straw on the floor and slept there side by side. Men were taken to do road repairs every day. They didn't get paid and weren't given food for their work. The only way we could get food was to exchange clothing for food products in the village. My mother and I knitted socks, sweaters and mittens for villagers. They gave us yarn and paid us with food for our work. My brother Shmil fetched water and brushwood for villagers and helped them with the harvest in the fall.