I wasn’t able to return to my native village, Sipot, because the front line was right there. Passage was forbidden beyond Berhomet. The Germans had relocated in the mountains.
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Samuel Eiferman
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The others weren’t as lucky as I was, because the Russians decreed a general mobilization and drafted all the men below 55 years of age to the Red Army. Most of them died on the front. The women stayed behind and gradually went back to Bukovina and Bessarabia, which had returned under the Soviet administration. The Romanian army only repatriated the Jews from Walachia and Moldavia; those who had come from Bukovina and Bessarabia were left to the Russians. It was a political move.
Two days later, the Germans lost an important battle on the River Bug and were pushed back. They blew up the bridge on 17 March 1944. That is the day when I finally considered myself liberated. The Russians were here. I took off with the first Red Army unit that crossed the Dniester.
One day I reported to the station agent who was also the customs clerk, since the Romanian border passed through Moghilev. 4-5 German officers ranging from second lieutenant to captain had gathered there. None of them looked older than 45. They could only speak German and needed me as an interpreter. They wanted me to tell the customs clerk that they had things to sell. “Well, get them o’er here to show me what they’ve got!” the clerk ordered me. I didn’t feel too comfortable, but I thought that, given the fact that they were communications officers, not SS, I shouldn’t be afraid of them. They had leather coats, winter jackets and many other things to sell. I asked them what kind of money they wanted. “Lai, lai” they replied, as they couldn’t pronounce “lei”. [Ed. note: “Leu”, plural “lei”, was the Romanian currency of the time. It still is nowadays.] The customs clerk was loaded with money, so he bought everything. Then I asked the Germans where they were heading. “We’re communications officers and our unit is the first to withdraw. We’re going to Bacau.” The customs clerk withdrew that same night too.
That night I was in the railroad station, watching the trains filled with retreating German troops. It was 15 March 1944. I was approached by a German captain. He was dragging two large suitcases, was full of sweat and was carrying his service cap in his hand, despite the cold. He hadn’t managed to get on the train – the enlisted men held hand grenades and prevented him from boarding, saying “You’re the one who brought us here, you stick around and wait for ‘Ivan’ [the Russkis]!” The captain had me negotiate with the Romanian engine drivers. They agreed to take him in the engine.
That night I was in the railroad station, watching the trains filled with retreating German troops. It was 15 March 1944. I was approached by a German captain. He was dragging two large suitcases, was full of sweat and was carrying his service cap in his hand, despite the cold. He hadn’t managed to get on the train – the enlisted men held hand grenades and prevented him from boarding, saying “You’re the one who brought us here, you stick around and wait for ‘Ivan’ [the Russkis]!” The captain had me negotiate with the Romanian engine drivers. They agreed to take him in the engine.
In the beginning, there were two companies of Romanian enlisted men. But the Germans said: “Pull them out and send us Jews instead.” So the gendarmes’ commander started to gather as many Jews as were needed. Anyone who was below 50 years old was considered fit for work. The work included digging out the German phone wires from the fields, since the Russians were approaching, or leveling the roads using charcoal, to secure the German retreat. There was plenty of work to do. We dug out the phone wires because the communications unit was among the first to retreat. The armored units were the last to retreat.
However, the cases of Germans mocking the inmates were quite common. For instance, they would have an inmate sit on a moving conveyor belt; or load some logs in a small carriage, have some inmates climb on top of them and launch them into the River Dniester – which, fortunately, was quite shallow; or boarding 10 inmates in a boat instead of the maximum required number of 4. Things like that.
In a way, we were lucky we had to deal with the Wermacht, the German regular army, not with the SS or the Gestapo. I can only remember one instance when the Nazis shot a Jew: a nasty warrant officer dressed in the SS uniform shot an inmate because he wore red pants, which made him, in the German’s opinion, a Bolshevik and a Communist. The leaders of our community reported the incident to the gendarme colonel, who was Romanian. The commander of the German battalion was summoned and he promised that the warrant officer would be sent to the front. I think he really kept his promise, because that warrant officer soon disappeared and was never seen again in the area. Anyway, that was the only case of a Jew being murdered while working for the Germans.
Those who could speak German were better off than the rest. I, for instance, was on good terms with the Germans and I had even made a friend among them. He shared his food with me. They would have goulash, pea soup with vermicelli and all sorts of canned foods from Holland and Denmark. He belonged to the Todt Organization [11], which was part of the Wermacht. They wore the same uniforms as the regular soldiers, only their insignia displayed a pickax. They were combat engineers and their job was to build bridges, roads and railroads. The Romanians had pontoniers.
The Jews in Moghilev would pray on occasion, but they couldn’t observe their holidays properly, because they were never given a break. We weren’t given any day off. The Romanians kept saying: “Our troops are dying on the front, so the least you can do is help the war effort here”. What could you say to that?!
I stayed there until March. My work consisted of cleaning snow and collecting German telephone wires.
The Germans were in the process of withdrawing, with the Red Army approaching from the direction of Kiev. They were only a few hundred kilometers away. At noon they gave us food and let us rest. While others were smoking, I fell asleep. I only woke up in the evening. I found myself alone. They had assembled the workers, but hadn’t counted them, so they had no idea I was missing. I hid in a nearby forest and spent the night there. In the morning I noticed I was close to a cemetery; it wasn’t older than 2 years. Romanians, Germans, Hungarians, Italians and Russians were buried there. I couldn’t make it back to the camp, for I wasn’t familiar with the surroundings. I went up to a Ukrainian local who was harvesting in the field. I was certain he wouldn’t turn me in, since the Russians were close. He took me to his place, fed me and, in the evening, he returned me to the camp in Moghilev.
I often go to the Jewish Community in Braila. We have a local club where we gather with our spouses, many of whom aren’t Jewish. There’s also a women’s club where members reminisce about the old days. Unfortunately, there are so few of us left.
In the 1960s I wanted to leave for Germany, but they wouldn’t receive me – they didn’t say why. I never tried to leave again.
I also get help from an organization in Switzerland that supports German-speaking Jews.
5-6 years ago, in July 1998, I started to receive a pension from Germany and things got better for us from that day forward. I was 16 when I was sent to the camp and I did forced labor at the railroad bridge over the Dniester that connected Moghilev and Atachi. I worked there for a year and a half, from April 1942 until July 1943. It later turned out I was registered on the lists of the Wermacht’s combat engineer corps. They didn’t pay us back then, but they’re paying us now. I first got Deutschemarks, and now I’m getting euros. They also paid me war compensations in Deutschemarks. But money can’t reverse the hardships I endured.
In the summer of 1943 they had us level some trenches near an airfield.
In 1943 we were taken to another camp in the town of Scazinet.
My mother was sent to labor once, but she broke her arm. In fact, very few women actually worked. Two or three young women were working alongside their men at the bridge, by the concrete mixer, when the engine caught fire. They got away with a few minor burns, but, after that incident, women were exempt from work. We spent one year and a half in Moghilev.
However, other Ukrainians were good to us and gave us food. One of them even kept me hidden for more than a month.
The locals were anti-Semitic. I remember this young Ukrainian who was about my age and lived on a street near the camp; he kept making fun of me for a while. But, when the Russians began to close in on us, he tried to make up with me. I told him: “So now that ‘Ivan’ is near [that is, the Russkis are near], you’re getting all nice on me? Why couldn’t you behave like that before?”.
In February 1944 a Jewish delegation sent by the Romanian government was allowed to gather 5,000 orphans from all Transnistria. They were taken by train to Constanta, then by sea to Turkey, then again by train to Palestine.
,
1944
See text in interview
In 1942 the Jewish community in the camp began to receive aids from the Joint [10]. The Queen Mother had pleaded for us in front of Antonescu, begging him to allow the sending of clothes and medicine.
The camps were all about weeping and graves. Many people died before we were liberated and many others died after the liberation, as a result of the horrific conditions in which we had lived. Of the Jews who had been brought from Bessarabia and Bukovina, some 180,000 perished; they were murdered or they died of typhus and other diseases, starved to death or froze to death. Uncle David was hit by the gendarmes and he died the following day; they had broken his lungs.
In the camp we would eat boiled potato peels. We would steal wood and sell it in winter to make small money. Uncle David had some gold he helped us from time to time. My mother sold her gold teeth. We also came across some gold in an abandoned house in Bessarabia, where we stopped along the way. By the looks of things, the looters had left in a hurry, before finding the jewels. Our buyers were Romanian invalids who came there to purchase everything the Jews were forced to sell in order to survive. The invalids had the right to travel free of charge anywhere, so they came from Romania and bought clothes, jewels and everything else the Jews would sell. I remember this mixed family – the husband was Jewish and the wife, who was not, chose to accompany him to Transnistria instead of staying home. They survived thanks to the parcels they received from their relatives.
Anyone who was fit was sent to work in those places. The colonel supported the Jewish initiative and he provided the spare parts that were necessary to get things moving – he brought them from Romania and from Ukraine. The three plants worked until the Russians came. Employees were even paid. But I didn’t work in any of them. I was assigned to various other sites, like fixing bridges and roads, demolitions, clearing snow, collecting phone wires or building roads for the German regiments.
In Moghilev we were sorted out by the gendarmes, who assigned us to work either for the German or for the Romanian regiments. Representatives from both armies came to the gendarmes’ station, were handed the lists of inmates that had been assigned to them and signed us out. The gendarme colonel set up a Jewish community led by a Jewish man named Jagendorf who was later replaced by Danilof. He had them fix the water station, the power station and the steel foundry, which began using Jewish workforce. Thus, many Jews stayed in Moghilev instead of being reassigned to other camps.
When we got to Moghilev, they just left us there. We took over the empty houses which they had freed for us. The houses had been flooded all the way to the ceiling, but the water had withdrawn. My mother, my cousin Roza and I lived in an empty house that had no windows and no furniture, except for a bed made of planks. My other two cousins, Coca and Sally, were taken to an orphanage, because of their young age.
All the Jews who had been gathered from Bukovina ended up in the Moghilev [9] camp, divided in several ghettos. We were 13,000 Jews in Moghilev alone. When the Romanian Army arrived, they shot many Jews. Then they occupied Transnistria and they relocated the Jews to Odessa, Rabnita [Rybnitsa] and Doaga. Moghilev had Jews coming from various areas: the town of Dorohoi, Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia; in the end, they even began to deport Jews from the Kingdom. The bridge over the Dniester was right there, in the town of Moghilev, in Atachi.
The rest of my family and I were taken to the next village. I was with my mother, with Uncle David Dauber and with my cousins. Sally was in 2nd grade, Coca was in 4th grade and Roza was in 7th grade.
In the next village the gendarmes took over us. We walked for 20 kilometers, on Siret Valley, to Berhomet. The Russians were still there, so our escort had to wait for the Romanian Army to arrive. Before they left, the Russians gave all their food supplies to the peasants: sugar, flour, chocolate. Then they burnt down the barracks and they pulled back.
They marched us via Storojinet, Chernivtsi, Novoselita, Lipcani, Ocnita, Iedinit [today Yedintsy] and Moghilev. On our way to Moghilev, we spent the nights sleeping on the ground. The journey lasted from 2 July to 1 September 1941; so it took us two months to walk some 300 kilometers. Like I said, some elderly people were shot because they couldn’t keep up. Others died of heart attack. They didn’t give us any food. In order not to starve, we had to sell the few belongings we had managed to take with us. Jewelry, shirts, linen and the likes were actual lifesavers. Also, we worked for food when we could find someone who needed us.
In the next village the gendarmes took over us. We walked for 20 kilometers, on Siret Valley, to Berhomet. The Russians were still there, so our escort had to wait for the Romanian Army to arrive. Before they left, the Russians gave all their food supplies to the peasants: sugar, flour, chocolate. Then they burnt down the barracks and they pulled back.
They marched us via Storojinet, Chernivtsi, Novoselita, Lipcani, Ocnita, Iedinit [today Yedintsy] and Moghilev. On our way to Moghilev, we spent the nights sleeping on the ground. The journey lasted from 2 July to 1 September 1941; so it took us two months to walk some 300 kilometers. Like I said, some elderly people were shot because they couldn’t keep up. Others died of heart attack. They didn’t give us any food. In order not to starve, we had to sell the few belongings we had managed to take with us. Jewelry, shirts, linen and the likes were actual lifesavers. Also, we worked for food when we could find someone who needed us.
I got separated from my father and my grandfather, who were put with a third Jew in another cart. That was the last time I ever saw either of them. They probably caught up with the Russians, who were withdrawing, and made it to Chernivtsi. But there was no one to save them there. Elderly people were usually shot because they couldn’t keep up with the rest. My grandfather didn’t make it to the camp, so I assume he died along the way, in 1941. He was about 65 years old. I later found out about my father’s end from some Jews who had been in the same camp as him; they told me he had fallen ill and was unable to work, so he was shot in 1942. This happened in some stone quarry in Transnistria. Only those who were able to work till the end made it out of there alive. This was my case too.