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Ida Mazover-Rak

Ida Mazover was born in Volkovysk, spent the best years of her youth there, and lived a quiet life with her family until that black day, when the Germans entered Volkovysk. Immediately, the well-known Nazi decrees against the Jews were promulgated, which hall pointed in one direction – the complete extermination of the Jewish people.

On November 2, 1942, Ida Mazover and her family were driven into the bunkers outside of the city, along with all of the other Jews of Volkovysk. Three hundred young girls from Bialystok were driven into the bunkers along with the Volkovysk Jews, who by order of the Nazi Command in Volkovysk, were brought down from their home city to Volkovysk to do forced labor. The Head of the Bialystok Judenrat, Engineer Ephraim Barash, immediately after the Volkovysk Jews were driven into the bunkers, began to work on the Bialystok Nazi Command to obtain permission for the Jewish Bialystok girls to return to their home city. This finally took place after a long effort. In between, thanks to their own efforts, a number of the Bialystok girls managed by various means, to save themselves from the Volkovysk bunkers and return home. The Nazi Command was unaware of this, and it enabled Engineer Barash to demand the original count of girls from the Volkovysk bunkers, that had been lent by the Bialystok community for work in Volkovysk.. The Volkovysk Judenrat then decided to fill out the quota with girls from Volkovysk, because saving oneself by going from the Volkovysk bunkers to Bialystok was at that time considered a great achievement.

A dispute then broke out among the girls of Volkovysk. They began to offer money and jewelry in order to get selected for the Bialystok list. The girls had to be young, and only one member of a family could be included in the list. The work overseer of the Bialystok girls was Rita Kinishevska, and the fate of the candidates designated for Bialystok was strongly dependent on her. She set the price, and parents gave her whatever she asked in order to save their children by taking them to Bialystok. She divided the money up with the Chief of the lager. It happens that she was intensely hated by the Jews of the camp for her cooperation with the Nazis, and later during an aktion in Bialystok, on February 5, when she informed to the Gestapo about a number of Jews that had hidden themselves, she was stoned in the streets, and wounded. After this incident, the Nazis sent Fraulein Rita Kinishevska to Warsaw, where she again worked for the Germans.

From the Mazover family, the eldest daughter, Fanya, left Volkovysk together with the girls from Bialystok. Her sister, Ida, remained in the Volkovysk bunkers with her parents.

Among those, committed to the list of the Bialystok girls were the following: Fanya Mazover, Shosh'keh Goldberg (Kvachuk); Kha'leh Margolis (the older daughter); Liebeh Lashowitz (Meshel's granddaughter);

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Rachel Lev and her younger daughter Musia^[1]; The wife of Velvelsky's older son, who had been sent to Russia; Elkeh Neiduz (from Kartuz-Bereza); Sarah Levin (from the ready-made Clothes); Mrs. Bedanken (from Slonim); Yudkovsky's two sisters from Slonim, and others.

At the end of November the transports commenced from the bunkers. Ida Mazover carried around the thought of saving herself by getting to Bialystok for the entire time, in order to meet up with her sister Fanya, who was working with the people in Bialystok, and lived in the ghetto that was there. The conditions in Bialystok, according to the news we used to receive in the bunkers, were much better than those under which the Jews of Volkovysk lived at that same time. At the beginning of December, the Germans decided to liquidate the lager. It was barely possible to persuade them to allow the young and able-bodied people to be left behind. It worked out for Ida Mazover, that she was selected to be among the “fortunate” number of the seventeen hundred Jews, who were given permission to remain in the Volkovysk lager. Unfortunately, her parents went into the general count which had been designated for the transport. Ida Mazover was sent out to work in the city, thanks to the intervention of a friendly policeman, and she was given permission to sleep in the work camp, in the building of the slaughterhouse.

At 5:00AM on December 8, 1942, the people in the municipal concentration camp in the slaughterhouse were awakened, to the daily roll call, and then under a heavy guard, were taken in the direction of the bunkers. In that group, were found: Rosa Einhorn with her husband and daughter, and Ida's friend, Esther Markus. On the way, they added four more men who had been in jail. On drawing near to the bunkers, they saw a large mass of Jews, being led by a heavily armed military guard, in the direction of the railroad station. These were the people of Volkovysk designated for transport. Ida's parents were among them. This was all of them going on their Last Journey – to the gas-chambers of Treblinka. Ida did not know what to do with herself – to join up with her parents and share in the general fate of the entire mass of Jews, or to remain in the work camp and in this manner, stretch out for a while longer, this tortured life under the Nazi yoke. A few days before, when she saw her parents in the bunkers, her mother demanded of her that she should remain in the work camp, and if she should be privileged to survive, that she should tell her sister Fanya, and her brother in Israel about the last moments of their lives in the bunkers.

On January 14, 1943, an opportunity presented itself for Ida Mazover, and a friend of hers, Alia Glickfeld, to leave the bunkers. A policeman known to them assisted them in carrying out their plan. That same morning, when the police assembled the work force, they presented themselves as usual, only they stayed behind as the work force left the lager, then they ran after the work force, so to speak, and on their way into the city, they disappeared. They were able to reach the house of the Christian, Maria Rodnitska, who was a friend of the Mazover family. The Christian woman took them in, and promised them she would conceal them until an opportunity presented itself for them to flee to Bialystok.

However, they came to the Christian woman infected with typhus – which by that time had spread itself throughout all the people in the bunkers – and they both walked around with a high temperature. Alia Glickfeld developed a typhus with a rash. Maria Rodnitska took care of them while they were sick, but when she found out that the Germans were going to completely liquidate the camp in the bunkers, she became very frightened, and wanted both girls to be taken to the Sejmikover Hospital. The sick girls, however, did not want to go to

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the hospital out of fear that they will be recognized. On January 26, when the last Volkovysk transport was dispatched from the bunkers, Maria Rodnitska worked on the girls to leave her home. Along with this, she hid the fact from the girls that the lager and the bunkers had been emptied.

On January 29, both girls left the house of the Christian woman, and went on the road to the bunkers. When they arrived at the bunkers, they found no one there at that time. The watchman told them that a mere two days ago, the lager had been shut down. They both then returned to the Christian woman. However, she didn't let them back into the house, and advised them to go to the hospital. Alia Glickfeld then went to acquaintances she knew in the city, by herself. What subsequently happened to her, is not known.

Despite the fact that she was going around with a high temperature, Ida Mazover then decided, in the cold winter, not to go to the hospital, and she set out on foot in the direction of Bialystok, where she hoped to run into her only sister, who was still alive. Walking the entire day in the cold, by evening she finally reached a village on the road to Bialystok. She knocked on the door of a peasant's small dwelling, and asked of him to permit her to spend the night. The peasant, however, forcibly took her to the Head official of the village (Soltis). The Soltis gave her a place to lodge for the night, and because she had no documents with her, he ordered her to come to him again, early in the morning, in order to be sent to Volkovysk, from where she had come. Ida awoke at four in the morning, while it was still good and dark outside, and she left the peasant's house and again resumed her way. She took pains to avoid the Gestapo house, which was located on the border between the Volkovysk district and Bialystok. After the Valil station, a number of gentiles who worked in the area detained her. She bribed her way out of their hands, but they sent a number of Germans after her, and she was brought back to Valil. They demanded documents from her, and when she offered that she possessed no documents of any kind, the placed a telephone call to Horodok, and in the space of a half hour, two Germans came to Valil with a Polish policeman, and she was taken to jail in Horodok.

She was kept in jail for six days, and interrogated under all a variety of threats. Ida Mazover argued the entire time that she was not a Jewish girl. When she was asked why she had no documents, she argued that she came from Slonim (then White Russia), where they wanted to send her to work, and she decided to run away, and in order that she not be sent back home, she did not take any documents with her. They then got in touch with Slonim, in connection with the name and address that she had given them, but even before the reply came back from Slonim, the matter became clarified, and they concluded in any case that she was a Jewish girl. This happened by coincidence. She was sitting in the Chief's office, where a translator sat the entire time, who translated everything that she said in Polish into German. The Chief actually dealt with her in a civilized manner, and even did not permit the others to beat her. She then had a high temperature, which she tried with all her might to conceal from the Germans. She was cold, and she went over to the oven to warm herself up. Suddenly, she hear an inhuman shriek: “What are you doing sitting near the oven, stand up!” Instinctively, she stood up, but she did not lose her composure. Seeing how she reacted to his approach in German, he quickly ran over to her and started to hit her in the face, shouting at the top of his voice: “You understand German –Jawohl! You are Jewish – Jawohl!”She was immediately taken to a cell. A day later, he called her to him again, and demanded an explanation from her. It was at that point that Ida Mazover told him that she was from Bialystok, and that she had been brought to Volkovysk for forced labor, where she had become ill with an inflammation of the lungs, and for this reason had remained in Volkovysk. However, because she was very lonesome for home, the Chief permitted her to return to Bialystok. He gave her no written permission, because this was certainly against the decree. In about a day later, Ida Mazover was taken away in chains along

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with two Christian partisans, to the Gestapo in Bialystok. This took place on February 4, 1943, on the eve of an aktion in the Bialystok ghetto, which by that time was entirely sealed off from the [outside] world. They were all stood against the wall, and were certain they were going to be shot on the spot. Suddenly, a man from the Gestapo approached Ida Mazover and asked her if she wants to go to the ghetto. This offer was as if it had dropped from heaven. The thought that she would finally be able to meet with her sister Fanya was literally drowned in great joy. A few minutes later, she was in the ghetto already. Tragically, that night, one of the sorrowfully famous aktions by the Germans commenced.

Immediately upon arrival in the Bialystok ghetto, she was sent to the ghetto baths, and when she emerged from their overheated, she immediately caught a frightening cough, which followed her for many months and caused he a great deal of trouble for her and her sister.

Ida Mazover met many other Volkovysk people in the Bialystok ghetto, besides her sister Fanya. Among them were: the Smazanovich Family (from the boards); Shosh'keh Goldberg (Kvachuk); Liebeh Lashowitz (Meshel's granddaughter); Kha'leh Margolis, Hanokh Rappaport; The Dentist Sarah Peisik and her daughter, Ruth; Moshe'l Shereshevsky; Tzil'ikeh Zuckerman with her daughter; Wolsky; Shosha Rubin; Rachel Lev and her daughter Musia. Sonya Botvinsky (from the Movie House) was no longer in the ghetto, because she was sent out with the first aktion. The Patriarch of all the people from Volkovysk was Smazanovich who took a great interest in the fate of his landsleit, and offer them help wherever it was possible. The condition of the Jews in the Bialystok ghetto, when Ida Mazover arrived there in February 1943, was already a very bad one. The ghetto there was no longer a place of refuge, as it was during the initial period of the German occupation. The Jews in that ghetto, at that time, already were looking for various ways to get out and save themselves from Bialystok.

Ida Mazover and her sister Fanya also went around with that very same thought. The only way out was to flee the ghetto and join up with the partisans in the forest. But this was a difficult thing for them to do, because as girls from Volkovysk, they were not acquainted with the local people and their ways, and simply did not know how to make contact with the local partisan movement. And so, a few months went by this way, consisting of hard forced labor and sleepless nights, when they occupied themselves with looking for ways and working out plans for how to flee the ghetto. Finally, they were fortunate in making a contact with the young man Sulkes, from Volp, who promised to put them in contact with the partisans.

However, nothing came of this plan, because on August 18, 1943, both sisters, Ida and Fanya Mazover, were sent with a transport of Jews from Bialystok to Maidanek. The train cars were packed with people. When the train stopped in Lublin, near the Maidanek camp, the Gestapo people opened the doors to the train cars. From one of the cars, practically no one appeared, and when the men of the Gestapo jumped in there, they saw several tens of dead bodies of girls. According to the recounting of two girls who were in that car, a mass suicide was carried out there. The girls in that car were young and beautiful, and they knew fully well what awaited them when they would fall into the hands of the enemy. They decided that it would be better for them to kill themselves by slashing their wrists. There was a lady doctor in that train car, who carried this out. Also, the two girls who remained alive from that train car did the same thing, but in their case, the blood vessels in their hands were not cut deeply enough, and they were spared.

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According to what Ida Mazover tells, shortly before this, prior to the train coming to a stop in Lublin, she saw how her sister Fanya and her friend Sarah Levin (from the Ready-made Clothes) jumped from the train in a last -ditch effort to save themselves. Sarah Levin was shot by the Germans on the spot. Fanya manages to run a distance, but Ida never heard from her again, and she doesn't even know what finally happened to her, whether she realized her dream and joined the partisans, or fell along the way from a German bullet.

After coming out of the wagons, the people were ordered to fall into rows of five abreast, and they were driven to the general imprisonment camp. The two girls who had cut their wrists were in Ida's group.

The people were immediately taken to bathe, where they had to be separated from their packages of possessions, which they had brought with them. They were also required to turn over their money and jewelry for safekeeping, threatening with death those would refuse to comply. Barefoot and dressed in rags – they were driven across to the fifth field, to a women's barracks, where all the women underwent a gynecological examination, to discover whether any of them had so hidden any money.

Two transports came to Maidanek in August from Bialystok – one on the 18th of August, and the second on August 20, 1943, there was a general concentration camp there already, which consisted of five fields where Jews and Christians were kept together, and a second camp, which was called Flug-Platter, where there were only Jews – this was a work camp. Apart from this, there were many Jews in the ghetto of the Lipovo Gasse in Lublin proper.

The first Volkovysk Jews in the camp were military prisoners taken captive from the Polish Army. Among them were: Ben'yeh Berg, Yud'l Weiner, Yoss'l Yunovich, Hona Sarekshabes, David Spendler, Ravitz and others. They had been there since the camp was established. Apart from Ben'yeh Berg, they were all still alive at the time Ida Mazover arrived there in August 1943. According to what Ida Mazover was told, Ben'yeh Berg had a terrifying death. He was beaten to death with truncheons.

Among the others from Volkovysk who were in the Maidanek camp, were many Jews who had previously managed to reach Bialystok by a variety of means, hoping to find a refuge there, but later, they were driven to Maidanek along with the other Jews of Bialystok. Among them were: Engineer Bor'eh Weiner, (a son of Dr. Weiner) with his wife, brought from Grodno; Feinsod's son-in-law with his son (from the Fashion Store); Tzal'yeh Goldberg (from the mill on Kosciuszko Gasse); Paveh's son from the pharmacy (who lived in Grodno); Smazanovich from the Factory; Leibeh Barash (a brother of Ephraim Barash); Ephraim Barash, who arrived in Maidanek in September 1943, after the entire Bialystok ghetto was liquidated; Inker's older son; Chaim Tchopkin; One of the Mopsiks; Moshe Shereshevsky. Among the women found there were: Niota^[2] Bliakher, Fruma Wand, Rosa Kviatkovska (Ozernitska) and Ida Mazover. Yocheved Barash also came there in September 1943.

Niota Bliakher, Fruma Wand, and Ida Mazover immediately at the baths gave everything to Bereshel-Makherin and they were sent to a work camp called Flug-Platter. At that time, permission still was given to the girls to visit the men's camp for two hours each evening. Yoss'l Yunovich (the Butcher's son) became a

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colony leader there. He gave the girls 500 zlotys apiece with which they bought themselves things, and they still had some money left over with which they could deal. Yud'l Weiner, who worked in the laundry, always provided clean clothes and fresh water – which was a big thing there. Their work day ran from early in the morning until late at night.

And so, several weeks went by, until November 3, 1943, when one of the large local aktions was implemented in the camp. At that time, nineteen thousand four hundred (19,400) people were shot and killed. After the massacre, only three hundred men and three hundred women remained in the camp. Among those from Volkovysk who remained alive after the major aktion were: Inker, Ravitz, David Spendler, Mrs. Yocheved Barash, Rosa Ozernitska, and Ida Mazover. Moshe Shereshevsky managed to save himself from that place about two weeks after he arrived.

The plight of the several hundred men was worse than that of the women, because the women worked with the possessions of the dead where they would find money and precious stones and were often able to conceal them from the Germans. Among the men after the massacre was one Galman from Izavelin. However, shortly before the liquidation, he became ill with typhus, and died.

Under the terrifying conditions, with a perpetual fear for what the next day would bring, they lived until April 1944, when the Nazis decided to entirely liquidate the Maidanek camp, because the Red Army was in the process of getting ever closer. The Jewish men and women who remained in the last group, and were the only living witnesses to the hostile actions of the Nazis – before whose eyes the mass murder of tens of thousands of Jews took place – were all marked with the letter “A,” which stood for Aktions Juden. The Germans kept them separate, and when shortly before the liquidation of the Maidanek camp, Jews from Radom arrived, they also were kept separated, out of a fear that the ‘older’ residents of the Maidanek camp would tell their brethren about the terrifying selections and aktions that had taken place in the very same camp.

Finally, on April 14, 1944, those who remained from the three hundred men and three hundred women, were dressed in rags, and without shoes, packed sixty to a train car, were taken away from Maidanek. No one knew where they were being taken, but everyone knew what the end result would be.

Ida Mazover and Dr. Yocheved Barash, the wife of Ephraim Barash, were in this group. It was at that point very clear to Ida, that if she didn't use this final opportunity to tear herself out of the enemy's talons, her path to the gas-chambers is a certainty. She decided to do what her sister Fanya had done at an earlier time – to jump from the train car. She had nothing to lose: even if she was killed – it would still be better than a gas- chamber. This time, she decided to carry out her plan under any circumstances. It was, however, not one of the easiest things to do. According to her description, each train car was divided into three sections, with thirty girls in the forward and rear compartments, and in the middle were the Gestapo troops, armed to the teeth. The girls were forbidden to move from their spot. The Gestapo troops took notice of every move. The situation eased in the evening, when the Gestapo troops doused some of the lights in the car, because one of them wanted to sleep. It became midnight, and the train raced ahead into the deep darkness of the night.

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The Jump from the Train

It became still in the car, and Ida decided to carry out her plan. She jumped off into the field and remained lying there. She wanted to begin running, out of fear that if they looked around in the train car and see what had happened, that they would start shooting, but she couldn't move from the spot. She then saw that her leg was broken in two places. After she regained her composure, she didn't know what to do. One thing was clear to her, that she should not remain there much longer, because the Germans will find her in the daylight and shoot her. With all her might, Ida got herself up, and limping, she set off in the direction where she saw the light of several houses from a nearby village. Again, she decided, that she must play the part of a Christian. Only this could save her from certain death. She finally reached a peasant's little house, and knocked on the door. The peasant opened the door, and she told him that she is near death, and that he must fetch a priest to hear her last confession. The peasant carried her into the house, and laid her down on straw. He gave her some water and immediately began to pepper her with questions. Ida then decided that it would be much better for her if she gave the impression of being unconscious, and immediately fell asleep. Very early in the morning, the Village Head (Soltis) came to the peasant, and they both took her to the nearby village of Vovolnitsa, where a priest could be found, and a first aid station. The police immediately set up a whole protocol, in which she identified herself as Helena Rodnitska from Volkovysk, and her aunt Maria Rodnitska as her next of kin. A religious young woman from that village immediately took an interest in her. Ida, who was then called Helena Rodnitska, was transported to a nearby village called Apola Lubelskia There was a hospital there, where it was intended to give Ida the necessary medical assistance. Regrettably, the local doctor was firm in his decision that it was too late to save the leg, and he carried out an amputation.

After the operation, Ida wrote a letter to Maria Rodnitska in Volkovysk, and told her what had happened to her. Maria Rodnitska replied to Ida's letter, and verified with the police that she was her aunt. She also wrote a letter to the hospital administrator, and asked him to keep her niece there, until such time that someone from Volkovysk would come to get her. Ida's religious acquaintance from Vovolnitsa used to come and visit her in the hospital, bringing gifts for the patient. Once, she also brought her a Catholic missal, and also worked out the necessary documents on her behalf. However, a crisis came in the hospital, where rumors began to circulate that Helena Rodnitska was really a Jewish girl. It appeared, that during the operation, when she did no completely have control of herself, Ida cried out a number of times in Yiddish, and this cast suspicion on her true origins. The matter underwent scrutiny and investigation. The suspicions about her true origins became stronger, when in the course of several weeks, nobody from her family came to visit her in the hospital. The head doctor of the hospital, however, treated Ida finely, and to all the accusations replied that it is his responsibility as a doctor to give her the necessary medical help, especially since the police themselves had brought her to the hospital. Also, the commandant of the local police was not in a position to occupy himself with this issue and reveal the truth, because the strengthened activity of the partisan movement literally tied the hands of the police.

In the meantime, several weeks went by, and the wounds from the operation were practically healed. The doctor then told Ida that he would no longer be able to keep her in the hospital. Because she had no other place to run to, and out of fear of showing herself to the Christian world, she began to irritate the not fully-healed wounds, in order to get a favorable opinion from the doctor to extend her stay in the hospital.

In the meantime, the liberation came….

After the liberation, Ida Mazover went to Lublin and from there to Posen, where she married.

The transport with the three hundred girls, from which she was saved by a miracle, was brought to Auschwitz, and as related by survivors of the Auschwitz camp, all the girls were killed in the gas-chambers.

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