Tag #155637 - Interview #77997 (dora slobodianskaya)

In the summer of 1943 a group of men, including my father and Mindl's husband, were sent to the construction of a bridge across the Dnieper river in Nikolaev. Before they left the ghetto the Romanians ordered all men to line up near the gate to the ghetto and then every tenth man had to step forward - in effect taking two steps towards death. They were hung on gallows erected along the fence. Our co-tenant, a Roumanian Jew, fell from the gallows three times, and every single time he was hung again. The rest of the men walked to Nikolaev, 300 kilometers from the ghetto. They lived in terrible conditions there. They were ordered to make holes in the ground and lived in those holes. The Germans provided one meal per day - they brought potatoes and threw them in a bowl with water. Prisoners starved and died of diseases and hard work. The Germans usually killed exhausted prisoners, but for some reason they let the group of my father go home. They probably thought the prisoners would die on the way anyway. My father was either dragging Uncle Avrum or carried him on his back all the way home. They managed to get back to the ghetto.