Tag #157103 - Interview #79440 (Leo Luster)

My wife Shoshana, born Riesenberg, was born in Milnica in 1924. Milnica was part of Galicia until 1918, which belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and after World War One it was part of Poland. Her father died very early. Milnica was promised to the Russians after the Hitler-Stalin Pact in August 1939. The Germans and Russians divided Poland back then. Today the city is in Ukraine. In 1939 my wife was 15 years old. She also learned Russian in school when the Russians occupied the region. When the Germans began their assault on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the Russians fled and the Germans marched into Milnica. First there were mass shootings of the Jews. Those remaining were deported to a giant ghetto further east where many died of hunger and illness. Shoshana’s mother was hidden by a family. The Germans found her and killed her and the people who were hiding her. My wife and her sister Sonja were in the ghetto. My wife and her sister ran into the forest as the Germans began liquidating the ghetto. There are large forests there. There they found a Ukrainian who was already harboring a Jewish family. The Ukrainian made them pay, but he didn’t betray them and saved their lives. When the Russians came, they were free.