When we came back to Cuciurul Mare in 1944, we just found wasteland: our house had been demolished. But we had a surprise: the school's principal, Cimbru, had saved from our house the only thing he could and brought it to my father. It was the book into which my father had written all his debtors; the people he had given merchandise on credit. And shortly afterwards a neighbor came and told my father he owed him money from before the deportation. He gave my father rubles - Cernauti and Cuciurul Mare were already Russian territories by then. My father told this neighbor who else owed him money, and word spread around. People came and brought the money they owed. They knew we were poor now; and we had been very well respected in Cuciurul Mare before the war.
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manin rudich
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The Ukrainian woman who had helped me, Irina, came to the gates of the ghetto and told us to stay still because the Soviet army was drawing near; it was just a few kilometers away. The first to arrive were the Cossacks [12] on horseback; lots of them. They dismounted, and their commander ordered to remove the barbed wire, and people braced up and came out. Then trucks started coming, and my father went up to them and talked to the people, and we rode with the front. It was the first time I was in a car. I remember it was very weird for me to see the bow of the car moving before we actually did. They fed us as well. I said goodbye to Irina. She gave me a loaf of bread for the road. I wrote to her when we got home, but I never received an answer.
I left the ghetto with a cousin of mine, to gather firewood, somewhere near some bombed houses, and some Romanian soldiers caught us and beat us both. I took the most of the beating. They threw us to the ground, my cousin over me, and they beat us with the belt, and it had an iron buckle. My cousin was twisting and turning, and the buckle hit me almost most of the time. It was some beating, I can tell you! After a while they let us go. I couldn't sit up for a few days.
We were on the Romanian side, in the spring of 1944 - it was April, I think - when a Russian armored car with the red star on it appeared, and a big fat Russian woman looked out through the cock-pit and shouted, 'Comrades, liberation!'. Some among us said we should open the gate of the ghetto and get rid of the barbed wire. Others were afraid; they said you never know what would happen. And the armored car left, and for three days nobody, neither the Germans nor the Russians, came. Everybody in the ghetto stayed behind the barbed wire and was afraid to go out. All the sentries were gone and the men who usually went out of the ghetto for work didn't go anymore: you never knew whom you would meet. They were afraid of getting shot.
I remember we were also in a place called Shargorod [11], but only briefly; it might have been that place where they dug the common grave, I'm not sure.
The colonel took us to live in a house, and after three days he came and talked to my mother and father. He said, 'I will not be able to protect you much longer. We will leave with the front and I cannot guarantee that you'll make it.' And he went on, 'Are you Romanian citizens?' My father said we were. 'Then I will take you over to the Romanian side.' The ghetto was split in two parts, and the colonel took us to Copaigorod, to the Romanian side. [Copaigrod was a ghetto in Transnistria.] He talked to the Romanian commander, who, as you can imagine, was scared of a German officer, who ordered, 'These people will get a house, and I will come to check on them. If something happens or if they aren't happy, I will send you to the front.' And my father was the one to translate all this to the Romanian officer, who was shaking! But he did what he was ordered to do. The colonel didn't do us much good, although he wanted to. The Romanians put us in the ghetto, where indeed, we had a nice house, but all the other Jews were afraid of us; they thought we were spies.
One night, when the colonel was away, the SS-officers gathered all the Jews and took them to a place, where a common grave had already been dug. They started selecting us - the old and the very young were to be shot, and the young and strong were to be sent to work. I was sent to the children's row, to the ones to be shot, and my sister was sent to the other. And I say, it was a miracle, you could find kind humans among the Germans as well, because the colonel [Lange] had meanwhile come back and talked to the SS- officer. He said that he needed a translator, that it was impossible to manage without my father, and that he needed his children as well because they were sent to gather information about the partisans, and so on. I didn't hear him word for word, I was too far away, but my father told me later. I just saw my father waving at me and calling me to join them; in the row of people who were going to live. So the colonel took us all back.
On the way back, we heard tractors, but only later we understood why, somebody told us: those tractors, usually used to plough, were let to run in order to cover the noise of the shots and to hide the mass grave. In the whole ghetto, the only Jews left were us.
On the way back, we heard tractors, but only later we understood why, somebody told us: those tractors, usually used to plough, were let to run in order to cover the noise of the shots and to hide the mass grave. In the whole ghetto, the only Jews left were us.
The colonel of the military unit in Snitkov - Lange was his name - asked which one of us spoke German and Ukrainian. My father knew Ukrainian and he had also studied German in school, so he became a translator for the colonel, and my mother was a cleaning woman for the offices because she was considered trustworthy with her husband working as a translator. It was better than what the others had, at least we got some extra bread there. The others had to go to work; there were a lot of bombed houses and they had to clean and gather materials.
Snitkov was a ghetto. And it happened in the fall of 1941, that one morning I got out underneath the barbed wire and went to beg in town. I was on the outskirts of Snitkov, and I went to a house. It belonged to a Ukrainian woman, and I asked her for something to eat. She asked me to come in. I was afraid at first, but then I did. She warmed a mug of milk and gave me a slice of bread, and then I started crying and I couldn't stop. And she comforted me. She wrapped some bread and some cheese in a newspaper. I spoke Ukrainian because I was from Cernauti. And she told me to be careful not to be caught and asked me to come back. Her name was Irina Petrovna, and her husband was at the front - a huge Russian, she showed me photos of him. She had a small boy, three years old I think he was. I went back to my parents, who were scared because they didn't know where I had been, and gave them the food. It was a true joy for them; in the ghetto we only got to eat a piece of pea-flour mush, the size of half a brick, and that was all our food for one day. The food was very bad.
I told my parents I would go back to that woman because she asked me to, but they said, 'No'. They feared I would be caught. But I went anyway. The winter was drawing close, so she took a padded coat that belonged to her husband and cut its sleeves, and gave it to me, along with a pair of big rubber boots, and some food. And again she told me to return. I went back only one time after that because in the winter of 1941 I fell ill with typhoid fever. It was a very hard winter, I remember the sacrifices my parents made for me: they didn't eat so that I could have something to eat. My mother was crying because she couldn't help me more. I wasn't afraid of dying, I had seen death one too many times and I knew it didn't hurt, people mostly died silently. But I was lucky, my days weren't over yet.
In the meantime Irina had found out my name, came to the ghetto, bribed the sentry and showed him what she brought into the ghetto. She came weekly, and she brought milk, food; it was unbelievable. Other Ukrainians were very mean, especially to Jews. Thanks to her, I recovered and when spring came, I went back to her. She offered me some work - to graze her cow - and I accepted. Many people went out of the ghetto to work. There was a list at the entrance and on that list there was also my name, a nine-year-old child! I went to graze cows with some six or seven Ukrainian boys, and Irina asked them not to say anything about me if a patrol should come along. Indeed, we became friends. We met a patrol once, and they shouted, 'Deutsch? Deutsch?'[German, German?] But we all shrugged our shoulders. Then they said, 'Partisan?' - there was a forest nearby where they thought partisans were hiding. But we didn't say a word, and they left saying, 'Ach, Scheisse!' [Oh, shit].
I told my parents I would go back to that woman because she asked me to, but they said, 'No'. They feared I would be caught. But I went anyway. The winter was drawing close, so she took a padded coat that belonged to her husband and cut its sleeves, and gave it to me, along with a pair of big rubber boots, and some food. And again she told me to return. I went back only one time after that because in the winter of 1941 I fell ill with typhoid fever. It was a very hard winter, I remember the sacrifices my parents made for me: they didn't eat so that I could have something to eat. My mother was crying because she couldn't help me more. I wasn't afraid of dying, I had seen death one too many times and I knew it didn't hurt, people mostly died silently. But I was lucky, my days weren't over yet.
In the meantime Irina had found out my name, came to the ghetto, bribed the sentry and showed him what she brought into the ghetto. She came weekly, and she brought milk, food; it was unbelievable. Other Ukrainians were very mean, especially to Jews. Thanks to her, I recovered and when spring came, I went back to her. She offered me some work - to graze her cow - and I accepted. Many people went out of the ghetto to work. There was a list at the entrance and on that list there was also my name, a nine-year-old child! I went to graze cows with some six or seven Ukrainian boys, and Irina asked them not to say anything about me if a patrol should come along. Indeed, we became friends. We met a patrol once, and they shouted, 'Deutsch? Deutsch?'[German, German?] But we all shrugged our shoulders. Then they said, 'Partisan?' - there was a forest nearby where they thought partisans were hiding. But we didn't say a word, and they left saying, 'Ach, Scheisse!' [Oh, shit].
The rest of us had to fall into line and march all the way to Transnistria. We had no time to take anything with us. It was the end of June or the beginning of July, but it was already getting cold. At night we slept in the field, no matter where we were, and in the morning, when we woke up, they were counting the dead: one, two, three... We were escorted by Romanian gendarmes; some of them let us bury the Jewish deportees who had died during the night and say a prayer, others just buried them quickly and rushed us on. There were people and people, even among them. I remember once or twice, when there was cold rain, the gendarme said, 'Just so that you won't say we're accursed people...' and they let us sleep in the barn of some peasants, on straw. It was terrible and crowded, but it was better than outside. We got one slice of bread all day, and that was it; we only stopped for water at fountains. We walked for almost three months, it was already fall, September, when we reached Snitkov. [Snitkov was a small camp in Transnistria.] Many Jews were left behind in Mohilev-Podolsk [10], but we were taken to Snitkov. We had reached Snitkov only a few days before they brought that family as well; the one that had abandoned Judaism.
In the morning we heard that all Jews were asked to come to the city hall, to have their names taken down, and the Romanian authorities promised that nothing would happen to them on the way. So we went to the city hall, and in the courtyard there were already lots of people: you had to go to a clerk, who put your name down on a list. We all had to sleep in the courtyard, on the ground, till the next morning. Then another official came and said, 'Whoever wants to abandon their religion and become a Christian, let them come inside, and they will be released at once and will be free to go wherever they please!' There was one family - they had a son - who accepted immediately. My parents knew them, and I remember they were cursing them.
In 1941, I remember it was afternoon, a neighbor came to us hastily and said that the German troops that entered the village, had shot my aunt Cecilia, her son Ficicu and my uncle Bubi, and told us to hide in his house. We did so. We ran out of our house with our clothes on and nothing else. After a while he came inside as well and told us that our Christian neighbors had started robbing our house. One took our counterpane, one other things... And this neighbor, who came to us - I don't remember his name - had a house with a garden, and we heard that they were shooting other Jews as well, so we, the whole family, hid there, in the garden, under some berry bushes, and we slept there, on some blankets, all night.
I think that, if it hadn't been for the Russian occupation in 1940, we would have never been deported. Some young men, like my cousin Leopold, welcomed the Russians, and wore red buttons on his coat; he thought Russians were a marvel. And when the Russians retreated, some of the older boys, like my cousin, who was ten years older than me, left with them. And everything was perceived as if we, the Jews, had brought the Russians, and that's why the Romanian authorities deported us.
Our family wasn't affected by the anti-Jewish laws in Romania [9], and neither was the shop.
When I was in the third class of elementary school, the Russians came to Cuciurul Mare. I still remember the day I first saw them, in the summer of 1940. They came during the night, and took over our courtyard with their carts and horses. There was this silly hearsay, especially among kids, that Russians had a horn on their foreheads. And my mother came to wake me up and told me, 'You know, it's not true Russians have horns. Don't be frightened, they are in our courtyard!' But I was frightened. Then I went to the window and saw they were normal people. The story with the horn was because of the fur caps the Russian soldiers wore in winter.
They took over Bukovina, Bessarabia [8] and Cernauti. They immediately imposed Russian in schools, so half of that year I studied in Russian. I can't say it didn't help later: when we were deported, I could already read in Russian. A lot of people, like the mayor and other functionaries, ran away with carts, with what they could take along, and I remember the mayor came to our house and asked my parents to store a trunk for him, until he came back. The trunk was closed, and we didn't look what was inside. He came back in 1941, before we were deported, and took it back. He opened the lock, and I saw there were papers, files, and stamps. He said everything was alright and thanked my father.
They took over Bukovina, Bessarabia [8] and Cernauti. They immediately imposed Russian in schools, so half of that year I studied in Russian. I can't say it didn't help later: when we were deported, I could already read in Russian. A lot of people, like the mayor and other functionaries, ran away with carts, with what they could take along, and I remember the mayor came to our house and asked my parents to store a trunk for him, until he came back. The trunk was closed, and we didn't look what was inside. He came back in 1941, before we were deported, and took it back. He opened the lock, and I saw there were papers, files, and stamps. He said everything was alright and thanked my father.
My parents weren't politically involved, but they went to vote when there were elections. I remember that before election days, my father told my mother that they would have to get up very early the next day, so that they could vote before the brawlers appeared. They were back before we, kids, were up. They never had problems with voting, as far as I know, but I remember they used to say - they probably exaggerated for us, kids - that when you went into the booth to vote, someone was looking over the booth wall and marked your coat with chalk if you didn't vote for the National Peasants' Party [7]. Their supporters were usually causing rows, and my parents said that if you had that mark they would hit you on your way out.
I remember the flight of the Poles; there were many who came our way, to Cernauti or Cuciurul Mare. Some of them even settled here. There was a Polish family with two children who rented a house near ours. I don't remember their names, but I remember that he was a handicraftsman. It was easy to make contact with them: Polish people spoke German very well, and so did I; and children always relate very easily to other children, even if they don't know the language. I learnt a few Polish words from them, like 'pan polski' [mister Pole], and some others I can't remember right now. In our house, my parents were discussing the invasion of Poland [6], or the arson of the temple in Germany [Editor's note: the interviewee is probably referring to the Berlin Great Synagogue being in flames on Kristallnacht]. They said it was bad news, that they killed Jews. But I, a child, didn't fully understand the threat of those events.
Before World War II started, there were many Jews brought to our town from Transylvania; this was back in 1939 or 1940. One could feel the war approaching, and there were all these Jews who had to dig up trenches. They were forced laborers, brought by the Romanian authorities I think. They lived in some barracks, but they could say their morning prayers, and I remember some of them paid not to be forced to work on Saturdays. Some of them, not all, wanted to eat kosher food, and they ate in our house and paid us for it. My mother couldn't understand a word they said: they spoke mainly Hungarian, but some spoke Yiddish as well, so they understood each other.
All the Jews in Cuciurul Mare met in the synagogue on Saturdays and on the high holidays. They lived everywhere in the city, and many were watchmakers, jewelers, barbers or tailors; they had easy jobs. I remember the father of a friend of mine who was a tinsmith.
I remember my father went to see the rabbi in Cernauti. He needed advice because a Christian had opened a store across the street, and our business was going worse because most Christians would go shop there. And the rabbi told my father, 'Go home and be patient. He will mess up his business himself with his problems.' And so it was: he started drinking and in the end the shop was closed down.
I went to the mikhveh in Cernauti once or twice, and I remember going there with my father, and sitting on benches. We had to pour water on ourselves, and use some small branches with leaves on them for our backs.
There was a shochet and a chazzan in Cuciurul Mare, and we had a cheder, but we had no rabbi and no mikveh. An old Jew was teaching at cheder. I remember he had a stick he used on us sometimes.
Cernauti was a beautiful town, and there were a lot of Jews. I don't know how many, but there were two beautiful synagogues. In Cuciurul Mare, where we lived, there were also two, but not as big as the ones in Cernauti, where one was for those who were well-off, and one for the poor Jews.
Once, in the late 1930s, when I was already in school, I went to see a movie with my parents in Cernauti. I was so scared, I cried all the time! We were sitting in the front of the theater, and I had the impression that all the carts and horses on the screen were really coming into the room.
My cousin Izu had a problem in school. The teacher pulled him by the side whiskers and said, 'You Jew, I will thrash you so badly you won't know your own name anymore!' My uncle was very upset, and he went to speak with the principal, and the teacher was sent away. He was a rather influential person, my uncle; he had a restaurant and many good relations.
, Ukraine
My sister was also in school, in a higher grade, and she studied Orthodox Christian religion with Gica Petrescu. [Gica Petrescu is a well-known Romanian singer.
I went to the regular state school when I was seven; it was compulsory to go. I got along well with my classmates. We would meet on the way to school - all the boys from my neighborhood - because someone had a gander and let it loose. We were afraid of it because it pinched. I had no problems in school, but I remember the teacher slapped me with the ruler over my palm one time - I don't remember why, but I probably deserved it.
I never actually studied with my father, although he explained a lot of things to us; but it was mainly my mother who told us stories about Esther and the exodus from Egypt. For us, as kids, it was a miracle how Moses managed to part the waters with just a stick.
On Christian holidays, my father always sent packages with gifts to the mayor, the prefect, the chief of the police. All Jews did that, not just my father. But they, the Christians, respected our holidays as well. We were closed on Saturdays, we had a special approval from the city hall, I think. We were open on Sundays though. They used to greet and wish us happy holidays. The world was more civilized then, and Cernauti had been under Austro-Hungarian rule for a long time. It was a different education.
There was also the chief of the railway station, a Romanian, who visited us a lot.