The second child of my grandparents, Isidor Korber, studied medicine in Vienna, and in 1936 he emigrated to Canada.
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Displaying 27841 - 27870 of 50826 results
Miriam Bercovici
The oldest daughter was Ana Sternberg, nee Korber. She was a war-widow as her husband, Izi Sternberg, died at the end of World War I. I know he was a typographer.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Even during the deportation my grandparents tried to respect the traditions, lit candles, fasted and tried to observe the holidays.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
She was religious, wore a shawl and had a kosher kitchen.
He used to go to the synagogue twice a day. He was a gabbai at the Temple – there were two synagogues, the old one, built a very long time ago, and the temple, built more recently; he used to go to the temple.
She used to go to the synagogue, where there was a group of women one of who used to read the prayers. These prayers were written more plainly, that is, the stories with religious subjects were narrated in a simpler way, so even those who never went to school could understand them.
He was a very open-minded person. He used to read daily the Allgemeine Östidische Zeitung [The Eastern Journal] and the Morgenblatt [The Morning] newspapers, both in German, and all kinds of books, without any particular preferences – anything we could get him or that was published those days in Campulung. For example, a whole series of small volumes called Crimele Inchizitiei [Crimes of the Inquisition] was published, and he couldn’t wait to read them.
My paternal grandfather, Abraham Mendel Korber, was born in Campulung Moldovenesc in 1857. He finished elementary school and became a tinsmith and glasscutter.
We managed to pull through the house-search, but the weather had broken, it began to rain and the mud was more than ankle-deep. We arrived by carriage at the Dnestr, at the place of embarkation. First my mother and my grandparents crossed, then me and my sister Sisi, and then my father with the luggage and Horovitz the pharmacist. We arrived in Mohilev-Podolsk [11], where everybody talked in Ukrainian, and among the Romanian soldiers one could see a few scattered Ukrainian militiamen.
Through rumors we found out we should stay away from the convoys; these would have taken us to the camp, so we tried to go or run away as far as we could. We struggled to carry our bags from the Dnepr to a yard where we stayed shivering for two hours until we found ourselves a shelter: 30 people in a room. We stayed in the same room with the Hausvaters, the Horovitzs, the Hellers, the Segals, the Javetzs and the Tartars, all of them Jews from Campulung. We exchanged our money in Ataki, at a rate of 40 lei for a ruble. In Mohilev we had exchanged our money at the rate of 10, 7 and 6 lei, so this reduced us to almost complete poverty. The first news we got was that we would walk, so we sold everything we couldn’t carry. We paid more than enough because we lived in constant fear of being taken to a camp, and the Russians knew how to exploit us.
When those deported to Mohilev began to organize themselves, they established an asylum for the helpless from all over Bukovina, people who were really unable to go further. I left my grandparents there with some money, and my aunt from Cernauti remained there to take care of them. Everything had to be done without papers because there weren’t any, only passes. The other deported brought them food three times a day; otherwise they would have perished, as they were unable even to get themselves a cup of tea. One of the leaders of the asylum was a doctor from Campulung my father knew, Theodor Melman, and he helped us with our grandparents.
Through rumors we found out we should stay away from the convoys; these would have taken us to the camp, so we tried to go or run away as far as we could. We struggled to carry our bags from the Dnepr to a yard where we stayed shivering for two hours until we found ourselves a shelter: 30 people in a room. We stayed in the same room with the Hausvaters, the Horovitzs, the Hellers, the Segals, the Javetzs and the Tartars, all of them Jews from Campulung. We exchanged our money in Ataki, at a rate of 40 lei for a ruble. In Mohilev we had exchanged our money at the rate of 10, 7 and 6 lei, so this reduced us to almost complete poverty. The first news we got was that we would walk, so we sold everything we couldn’t carry. We paid more than enough because we lived in constant fear of being taken to a camp, and the Russians knew how to exploit us.
When those deported to Mohilev began to organize themselves, they established an asylum for the helpless from all over Bukovina, people who were really unable to go further. I left my grandparents there with some money, and my aunt from Cernauti remained there to take care of them. Everything had to be done without papers because there weren’t any, only passes. The other deported brought them food three times a day; otherwise they would have perished, as they were unable even to get themselves a cup of tea. One of the leaders of the asylum was a doctor from Campulung my father knew, Theodor Melman, and he helped us with our grandparents.
Two days later we arrived in Ataki. We stayed in the open until the evening; then we went into the town. On the way we saw thousands of people, hundreds packed in each house, all destroyed, without roofs and windows, houses of murdered Jews, because on the walls the names of the killed ones had been written with coal. We were stuffed some 30 in a room, together with Garai, the pharmacist.
During our first night at Ataki we saw what human misery means: people with inhuman faces, children with swollen eyes, frost-bitten legs, mothers holding their dead children, elderly and young people covered in rags. They were the Jews sent away from the Edinets camp because of typhus symptoms or lice, and almost starved to death. They overran Ataki without having the permit to stay there. That night Garai the pharmacist went mad. At 5am we came out of the house and found a host on the hill. We washed up ourselves in the Dnestr in stale and unclean water, we paid 20 lei for a bucket of clean water and my mother gave a ring with a gemstone for a hen. People were throwing their jewels in the toilet in fear of the house-searches. The weather was nice, so those who arrived after us were lucky to stay in the open air. In Ataki I saw hunger knows no shame.
During our first night at Ataki we saw what human misery means: people with inhuman faces, children with swollen eyes, frost-bitten legs, mothers holding their dead children, elderly and young people covered in rags. They were the Jews sent away from the Edinets camp because of typhus symptoms or lice, and almost starved to death. They overran Ataki without having the permit to stay there. That night Garai the pharmacist went mad. At 5am we came out of the house and found a host on the hill. We washed up ourselves in the Dnestr in stale and unclean water, we paid 20 lei for a bucket of clean water and my mother gave a ring with a gemstone for a hen. People were throwing their jewels in the toilet in fear of the house-searches. The weather was nice, so those who arrived after us were lucky to stay in the open air. In Ataki I saw hunger knows no shame.
Several days later, on 10th October 1941, rumors began to arise, then the next day a mayoral order was issued through which we found out that we would be deported from Campulung, along with all the Jews from Bukovina, regardless of age, health condition and social status, within the following 24 hour. It said that one should take only what one could carry, but no money or jewels, under the threat of prosecution and condemnation. Only one Jew was left in Campulung, one of the two pharmacists, who was to be replaced only after three months. We knew we would be taken to some town in Transnistria, where we would be reintegrated through work and could rebuild our lives. I thought this would only last for a short period, and it would be like a trip, just until things would settle down. We didn’t even think of hiding.
We left our houses open even though we were instructed to leave the keys for those who began to empty them even while we were still there: neighbors and friends with whom we used to spend Christmas or Purim. Suddenly we became ‘others,’ people who had to be sent away, and for whom no one felt, apparently, compassion or sorry anymore. Even the prosecutor of Campulung came to my father saying that if he had to leave the crystals and the Rosenthals [porcelain ware] behind anyway, it would be better to leave them with him. That’s how it all began. We set off with all the other Jews from Campulung, with the two 84-year-old grandparents, the asthmatic grandfather and the blind grandmother.
Accidentally I took with me a notebook with a leather cover that normally would have become my album of memories, just like the ones girls in my time used to have. The first note was by H. Bondy, the one who gave it to me. I also took something very dear to me: the transcription for piano of one of Ciprian Porumbescu’s ballads, a thin partition, one of the last things I had studied before we left. [Ciprian Porumbescu, (1853–1883) was a Romanian composer.] I didn’t have much luggage, on one hand because we only had one day to decide what to take with us, and on the other hand because I was responsible for my grandparents. When I finished packing, just like for a trip, we couldn’t imagine we could be driven out of our house.
The next day at 11am carriages began to set off to the railway station located at the other end of the village. A long, muddy road, full of carriages packed with sacks, bundles, children and elderly. On foot, by the carriages, were the young people. Gypsies were doing better because they had carriages. We arrived at the station where crying and screaming awaited us. They entrained us on trucks normally used for horses: 38 people in a truck, including four elderly over eighty and a paralyzed child. We set off for a remote village in Bessarabia [10] called Ataki [Chernovtsy province, today Ukraine], where we would be colonized and could pick up a living. This much we knew.
We left our houses open even though we were instructed to leave the keys for those who began to empty them even while we were still there: neighbors and friends with whom we used to spend Christmas or Purim. Suddenly we became ‘others,’ people who had to be sent away, and for whom no one felt, apparently, compassion or sorry anymore. Even the prosecutor of Campulung came to my father saying that if he had to leave the crystals and the Rosenthals [porcelain ware] behind anyway, it would be better to leave them with him. That’s how it all began. We set off with all the other Jews from Campulung, with the two 84-year-old grandparents, the asthmatic grandfather and the blind grandmother.
Accidentally I took with me a notebook with a leather cover that normally would have become my album of memories, just like the ones girls in my time used to have. The first note was by H. Bondy, the one who gave it to me. I also took something very dear to me: the transcription for piano of one of Ciprian Porumbescu’s ballads, a thin partition, one of the last things I had studied before we left. [Ciprian Porumbescu, (1853–1883) was a Romanian composer.] I didn’t have much luggage, on one hand because we only had one day to decide what to take with us, and on the other hand because I was responsible for my grandparents. When I finished packing, just like for a trip, we couldn’t imagine we could be driven out of our house.
The next day at 11am carriages began to set off to the railway station located at the other end of the village. A long, muddy road, full of carriages packed with sacks, bundles, children and elderly. On foot, by the carriages, were the young people. Gypsies were doing better because they had carriages. We arrived at the station where crying and screaming awaited us. They entrained us on trucks normally used for horses: 38 people in a truck, including four elderly over eighty and a paralyzed child. We set off for a remote village in Bessarabia [10] called Ataki [Chernovtsy province, today Ukraine], where we would be colonized and could pick up a living. This much we knew.
In September 1941 the frictions reached the peak in Campulung when every Jewish house was searched, exactly on Yom Kippur, searches in which, beside the soldiers and policemen, even our former colleagues and friends took part. I don’t know whether they had a permit for it or whether they did it only because they weren’t Jewish, but this hurt me even more. The way Rabbi Rubin was treated, a well-known and learned man, came as a warning for the Jews, but we couldn’t realize the gravity of the events that followed: he was harnessed to a barrow to carry everything discovered during the search, some food usual for any household, to the ‘Green House.’ It got its name from the color of the legionary uniforms, as it was a legionary [9] nest. I don’t know what happened to my parents’ house. I don’t want to talk about this any more.
It is necessary to bring to the surface everything that happened because the ghettos and camps, and even the deportations of Jews to Transnistria are either denied or, if admitted, are considered mishaps that should better be forgotten and for which solely the Germans should be held responsible. The horrors were committed by those who governed the country then, and everybody should know about the past as it really was, and these deportations to and crimes in Transnistria are part of that past.
Now I’m working at a German kindergarten called Lauder and I have a part-time job at the policlinic of the community. I visit the community very often, on each holiday, but also every time there are some cultural or other events I find interesting.
By a happy occasion the diary I kept in Transnistria, the book with leather-cover Bondy gave to me before the deportation, its German translation, was published by the Hartung-Gorre publishing house in Konstanz [Germany] in 1993, along with a comprehensive historical documentation of that period. In 1995 it was published in Romanian by the Kriterion publishing house in Bucharest, with the support of the Soros [18] Foundation.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
The events I lived through affected me deeply and, among other things, I’ve got a recurrent, incurable insomnia, and recurring nightmares in which the ghetto and my dead grandparents, along with different episodes I went through, appear with unbelievable accuracy.
A psychologist told me I should revisit the places of these events, and in 1967 I managed, despite adverse conditions, to visit Dzhurin and the town of Mohilev, the graveyards and common graves in which the remains of my dear grandparents are resting, and who, in my nightmares, are calling me to help them. But there is no cure for me and probably this is my condemnation.
A psychologist told me I should revisit the places of these events, and in 1967 I managed, despite adverse conditions, to visit Dzhurin and the town of Mohilev, the graveyards and common graves in which the remains of my dear grandparents are resting, and who, in my nightmares, are calling me to help them. But there is no cure for me and probably this is my condemnation.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
After my husband died I asked the community for help because I didn’t want to lose the books in Yiddish my husband had in the bookcase. I went for a meeting with Rabbi Rosen, who told me he couldn’t help me to send those books to the university in Israel because the community had no money, and that they barely managed to preserve the Torahs. Despite all this a series of my husband’s manuscripts and notes are in the Dramatic Art department of the University of Tel Aviv. The books ended up in Potsdam [Germany], in the Hebrew section, which now includes the donation of Israil Bercovici: 3,000 volumes in all, placed in a beautiful room.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
Times are changing rapidly. It took two years until Rabbi Rosen [17] gave me a part-time job at the community. In 1976 there was some misunderstanding between my husband and Rabbi Rosen – I still don’t know why and how it started – and we were put aside. The rabbi was stubborn, but my husband outdid him. Mr. Rosen asked my husband to bury any misunderstandings they had had, but he refused. Despite all this, when my husband died, Rabbi Rosen, who was abroad at that time, called us and saw to it that my husband would be given a resting place in the front row of the Jewish cemetery in Bucharest; I requested a place further back.
Romania
In the first days of the revolution I was extremely happy: I felt like I was 20 again and I would have wanted to go to the Revolution Square. But I was cooled down by telephone calls in which they called me all kind of things: kike bitch, communist, etc. I didn’t know who was calling me; I changed my number and calmed down.
Romania
I was a member of the Party. I was enlisted in honor of Stalin’s birthday, when a certain number of students had to join the party. It would be interesting to see my husband’s file. We were watched all the time; my husband was kind of an exhibition Jew.
Fani Cojocariu
A young Russian came once, a handsome man, and he placed an order with my father for a pair of boots. The Russians had their own shoemaker’s workshop next to our house, but he didn’t place his order with them, he placed it with my father, he came to us for the boots. And my father made them just like that, in no time. They looked as if they came right out of the store, that’s how good his workmanship was. Perhaps he paid my father, I don’t know. But he was no common soldier, he was a higher-ranking officer. We stayed for 2 years in Moghilev, we started to understand a word or two, but we didn’t speak Russian properly.
And things still weren’t well – the Russian army entered our country then. God, you were afraid to stay at home, for soldiers came and settled in most houses. A Russian soldier came to our house and took the door off its hinges. And do you know what they were doing in the countryside? People said: “They simply go and take a calf, a sheep, whatever there is, in order to slaughter it.” That’s how cheeky they were. They slowly discovered that my father was a shoemaker, that he worked as a shoemaker. And the Russians opened a shoemaker’s workshop next to our house, they employed Russian shoemakers. We, girls, were quite big by then, all three of us, and, whenever a Russian entered our house, we used to hide behind our mother, stay close to her. But one of them said in Russian: “This is how Jewish girls live, under their mother’s skirt?” In Russia, women too were enrolled in the army as soldiers. For there were actually many companies like that here, made up of Russian women. But I was so afraid…
I have a heart condition, I have a case of hernia, I have asthma just like my mother, and this is only to list just a few things I’m ailing from… But I have endured hardships ever since I was a child, I lived in the cold for so long in our home… I used to go to sleep with my feet numb with cold, and they wouldn’t get warm all night long. That’s how they stayed until I woke up in the morning, numb with cold. Where do you think my rheumatism comes from? And to think I still wish things were well.
I can buy long yellow candles, but you are allowed to burn yellow candles only on Chanukkah – you must light candles for 8 successive days on that occasion, but I don’t really do that, to be honest.
Whatever tradition I still observe nowadays is the Sabbath. What more can I do? I don’t work, don’t wash, I steer clear of those things. I light candles on Friday evening, but I can’t find those long white candles on the market, the kind that you must light o that occasion, nowadays candles come in small round metal cases, I still have some of those. I can buy long yellow candles, but you are allowed to burn yellow candles only on Chanukkah – you must light candles for 8 successive days on that occasion, but I don’t really do that, to be honest. You must light an odd number of candles on Friday evening – either 1, or 3, or 5. I light 3 candles, for 3 persons: my mother, my father, and my sister. When I light them, I pray to God in Romanian or in Yiddish to give me strength, good health, so that I can still walk on my legs, so that I can look after myself – I think about the situation I am in. But I see I pray in vain, for it is going from bad to worse.
I can’t observe the Yom Kippur fast. It happens all the time. It’s as if the devil urges me to eat during the fast. I fast until 4 o’clock in the afternoon, at most, I can’t fast longer than that, my stomach starts to gnaw – to weaken my will, wouldn’t you know it!
,
After WW2
See text in interview
Years ago, they even organized a Seder Nacht at the canteen, but they stopped doing that long ago. We had a rabbi, his name was Wasserman, but he left to Israel, for he had 6 children there – 4 daughters and 2 sons. I think he left after 1990. And they stopped organizing the Seder Nacht ever since this rabbi left.
We had a Community canteen, it was in operation for about 30 years. It was a very good thing to have, this canteen. We had a meal we could count on, a piece of meat – for there was a dish with meat almost daily, it was rare when there wasn’t meat on the menu. I had a reason to go out now and then, and it makes a difference to have the table set, ready for you. They brought me the food home lately, for I collapsed many times here, on the stairs of my block of flats. The canteen was closed a few years ago, for there are few Jews left, and there was no one to run it. In fact, I think we don’t have a canteen anymore since 1994.
I don’t really travel anywhere. I’d go to Dorna, should I be able to. For I have been there 3 times, with some free tickets offered by the authorities. But it’s hard to see myself get there, for that too is far away. I have also been to Borsec, I went there several times, but many years have passed since, this was actually before the Revolution. I didn’t have to pay for the reservations to Borsec either, everything was free of charge, provided by the Community, for we were entitled to receive support with regard to food, reservations. And the Community had its own car – an Aro, a popular car in those days –, you showed up at the Community, got on the car there, and they took us by car to Borsec, and 14 days later – I think that’s how long our stay was – the car came and took us back home. The Federation [the Federation of Romanian Jewish Communities] has 2 villas in Borsec. There is a villa that also has a canteen, and there is another one near the central bus station. We didn’t want to be under the constant supervision of the boss, and we asked to be lodged at the one near the bus station. At the other villa, they also had a mikveh, and a synagogue inside the courtyard, and many rabbis came to recite prayers there, they wore very large felt hats, for they performed a religious service every morning and evening. Very many rabbis from England, America, Israel came there for treatment with their wives and children – the children had such nice sideburns, along the ears. I used to say: “Look, this is the only place where I can still see rabbis, since I can’ make it to Israel.” So many rabbis came to Borsec until approximately 20 years ago. They performed medical procedures in Borsec, all sorts of treatments, but I heard say long ago that it no longer exists. Perhaps they still come for the local waters, for there are springs there wherever you go. [Editor’s note: Borsec, in Harghita county, is one of the most renowned regions of mineral water springs in Romania.] Borsec is very beautiful.
I wasn’t married. In fact, I mentioned this before: when you reach an older age you shouldn’t mention you weren’t married. For what would a stranger say? “Oh, the devil himself wouldn’t marry her!” It no longer sounds right, not having been married, you should rather say: “I was, but my husband died.” It is nicer than saying you weren’t married – it means no one courted you. I didn’t have any reasons for not getting married. My sisters were the ones who were picky. They didn’t want to marry just anybody. For there were Jews here, but they were poorer, more inferior – they didn’t want any of those, they wanted something better. Still, the young men of better condition wanted someone from a big family. We were in-between. And there you go, that’s why they remained single. By then, people said: “If they didn’t want to, why didn’t you marry them?” I had a saying, I used to say: “Since they can wait, why should I hurry? I can wait too, can’t I?” And furthermore, at this age, one of two would surely be no more…