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In Jewish Khotyn there is a mass grave, a memory of the rampage by the Romanian army – a beast of prey, an admirer of Hitler, and his ally.

On Har-Tzion in Jerusalem there is a symbolic mass grave in memory of the six million, called the “Chamber of the Holocaust,” in which there are tombstones, one for each community in the Diaspora. There is also a tombstone for Khotyn in the chamber of the Holocaust.

Six million Jews were killed, butchered, burned, executed in the cruelest manner.

In this sea of tears and ashes there is a drop called Khotyn.

Any community yizkor book has to mention all the Jews who were massacred.

The European diaspora became a cemetery, scattered with holy graves; the mass grave in Khotyn is a link in the chain of the great disaster.

We have to remember and not forget that the terrible oppressor wanted to erase the Jewish people from the earth.

The cursed soldiers of Hitler arrived to the gates of Eretz Israel. Hitler's ally, the Arabs, said publicly: “The old men, the babies and the men will be massacred, we will take the properties and the women will be slaves.”

The oppressor was defeated before entering Eretz Israel, saving us from a third destruction. On the land of Eretz Israel arose the State of Israel. The Israeli army is the symbol of Israel's security. The link between the generations from Yehoshua Bin Nun, King David, the Maccabean, Bar-Kochba, the diaspora, deportations, pogroms, the return to Zion, the Holocaust, the ghetto rebellion, the revolt in Zion until the State of Israel.

Here, in Israel, we can remember our cherished ones who perished. This is not possible everywhere in the world. We can remember thanks to those who fought to create the state of Israel, while most Jews lived their day-to-day life in the Diaspora ahead of seeing the destruction clouds, or not seeing them at all, for the majority of the Jews. The few who anticipated the future, rejected the “calm and prosperous” diaspora, they dreamed of national honor, freedom and liberty in the land of Zion.

There were also people from the Jewish section of the communist party who hatred Zionism publicly. I am speaking of “Yevaskim”^[1] who took any occasion to denounce and turn in Zionists to the Soviet Authorities. We should not forget the prisoners of Zion. They gave their lives to the honor of Israel. Today, in the Soviet prisons and in the Arab countries' prisons, they carry the flame of the Israel revival.

On this national background and on the national disaster, we have to raise the memory of Khotyn.

In this book we remember Khotyn, our cherished ones, the close and the distant ones. The adults between us remember the Tsarist regime, the young ones remember the Romanian regime and both of them did not forget the Soviet “paradise.”

In Khotyn people spoke of course Russian, Romanian and Yiddish. Some people learned Hebrew that was the language of those who dreamed of the Israeli revival in the land.

At school we learned what is to be a Jew. “Zhid farshiv,” bastard Jews, that is what we were called. When Koza-Goga arised to power, the swastika was the official emblem of the country fluttering in the streets, then the “green shirts” demonstrated shouting antisemitic slogans. At twilight the fascists gathered at the “town garden” tried to attack us, but were beaten and dispersed by the Jewish youth, in particular by the working Jewish youth who understood what was going to happen and prepared themselves to fight.

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However, this situation quickly enough came to an end and the Jews were saved from deportation and pogrom. King Karol who brought Koza-Goga into power to stop the anarchy caused by the “Iron Guard,” gave way to the voice coming from the other side of the Dniester, and ended the fascist regime. The “Iron Guard” head, Codreanu, was killed. Nevertheless, the Hitler supporters in Romania hoped that their day would come.

Following the ultimatum sent by Moskva to Bucharest, the Soviets invaded Bessarabia and in Romania there were pogroms against the Jews, who were accused of selling Bessarabia to the Russians.

Those who for any reasons did not fulfill their dream to emigrate to Israel, and stayed in Bessarabia, were persecuted, jailed, deported to Siberia or had grey day-to-day living. When the Germans attacked the Soviet Union, the Romanians came back to Bessarabia and started new persecutions and deportations. Synagogues were burned, every Jewish home was robbed, day and night – blood and fire.

In raising the memory of Khotyn, we should remember and not forget what happened to us there, and what happened elsewhere to our brothers.

In June 1940, Friday morning, the communist youth paraded towards the Dniester bridge, holding red flags to welcome the Soviets, freedom seekers. The Romanians retreated and fled.

The Soviet presence silenced the town. People disappeared, factories and shops were nationalized, and the economy crashed. Every day the queue to buy food got longer. The Romanian identity document was replaced by a Soviet identity document with an identifying mark according to the status of the ID bearer, known only by a few.

On June 13, 1941, at night, two Soviet soldiers came to me and confiscated all my belongings including my ID documents; thus I lost my identity and ceased to exist. When we came to the regional headquarters, we found others with the same misfortune: Tzvi Furman, Berish Gitelman, Yossef Mednik, Shlomo Doiman, Shmuel Barak with his family, Shlomke Feldman, Gershon Levinson and Shabtai Kleinman with his family. We were sent to Lanobo-Slitsh, where we were put on a train wagon and on Saturday night the train moved. However beforehand some of the men were separated from their wives. Several men were taken out of the train and no trace of them was found until today. Our family was not separated; after a two-week journey we arrived at the place that was assigned to us, there we suffered seven levels of hell and part of our group died there.

Looking backwards I can say that the cold of Siberia saved us of the heat of the German furnaces.

The Bolshevik government, which fell on us in 1940, tried first to change our spiritual life. Although the new administration did not behave according to our prophets, they fulfilled the prophet Jeremiah's verse “to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow.” In their view, first they wanted to destroy the old culture then build a new one. They started the destruction with the help of local operatives.

A commission was set up for the work of destruction. First it removed the blue and white banner from the library. They demanded to close the “Tarbut” school. They claimed from the school head to reimburse the community for all the money it received to support the school during that time although in fact the community was already destroyed and full of debts.

This was not enough. They said that the head of the school would have to be tried for the “distorted” education he gave to the students.

The commission operatives thought that all the bridges to Judaism are bridges of paper and in order to cut out from Judaism it was enough to burn all paper bridges. It was not enough to uproot; they wanted also to tear down and the destruction was merciless. They threw out in a muddy yard all the Hebrew and Yiddish books of the Zionist library and the pigs sniffed and trampled the books. We implored the former representatives of the “Kultur-Ligue” to put these books inside their houses but they refused and said: “We do not need Zionist culture.”

The commission succeeded in destroying but did not manage to build, as our Sages said: “There is no prosecutor becoming a defense attorney.”

A commission was set up to liquidate the community, which was headed by Shaul Osher and Shaulikel Herkdan, the uncle of the famous cantor Moshe Osher. On one occasion Shaul said: “It is too bad that we are not in 1918, since then we would put all the Zionists and community leaders to the pillory in the streets.”

Among other things, the commission decided that the Zionists should give back all the revenues from the community from all previous years. The community leaders were required to repay a sum of 126,000 lei, registration fees in the golden book of the Jewish National Fund, renovation fees of the community house and also the sums given to help youth to emigrate to Israel.

The sum of 126,000 lei was imposed on six people: Yossef Apelboim, Moshe Weisman, Chaim Weisman, advocate Feldman, Avraham Robinshtein and Moshe Roizman. Since Feldman was already arrested, his wife had to reimburse 21,000 lei.

In conclusion the community was completely destroyed.

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Under Soviet Regime

Although the reign of Goga-Koga lasted only 6 weeks before it collapsed, the decrees against Jews were not abolished. The Romanian language was to be used as the only language in the country. It also meant removal of Jews from institutions and newspapers. Bessarabian Jews had to submit documents for Romanian citizenship. Also, the Jewish trade, once flourishing, collapsed completely.

In the late thirties terrible events took place. Poland was invaded and the Germans were at the Romanian border, war erupted between Finland and the Soviet Union and so forth.

Following the treaty between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, in 1940 Bessarabia was annexed to the Soviet Union and the Jews of Bessarabia believed that days of freedom were coming. But slowly bit by bit they realized that the source of income dried up. With noise and turmoil, the young people were sent to the Donbass mines; however, they came back from there in silence and secret.

A new profession came in: calumny, which became a tragedy for the Jews of Khotyn.

The income of the famous coachmen was controlled. The villagers stopped bringing their products to the cities. The crippled Soviet trade brought commerce to a halt. Spiritual, religious and national operatives were deported to Siberia. The synagogues were empty, and only one religion ruled: Stalin the father of the people.

As it was reported in another chapter of this book, Feldman, the owner of the tobacco factory, did not expel his tenant the Rebbe for not paying the rent. However the Soviets fixed this “wrongdoing.” This was done without a trial, with the help of the police.

On the other hand, a show trial was set up against advocate Feldman. The faithful of the new regime: Motti Berlam, the teacher Nakman and others presented Feldman as an enemy of the people and he was deported to Dneiproptrobesk and later died in Czernowitz.

During the first days of the war the Soviet administration enrolled everybody in the army without any exception, Jews and non-Jews, but after a few days came an order not to send the Jews to the front. When the Soviet army retreated from town, almost all the houses of the Jews were torched, from the fields to the bridge, home of the coachmen.

The fire expanded in all the streets where the Jews lived and it was forbidden to extinguish the fire. The people had only one concern: to run away.

Hundreds of Jewish families - women and children - found a refuge in the garden of Hirsh Tcherkes. Other families hid close to the small church, at the house of Asher Tchobiti near the small bath house, and also were hidden by Christian acquaintances. The Red Army went wild, torched, fired and robbed. We guessed that they knew that the Germans would expel the Jews, they did not want the Jewish houses to be in the hand of the Germans. The Christian houses were not torched.

The Red Army did not leave the town empty-handed. They took everything they could: food, clothes, furniture. They loaded trucks and left the town. The Christians were indifferent to what happened: they fled to the surrounding villages until the terror was over. The Jews remained homeless, without linen, without food even before the Germans and the Romanians entered the town. A masterpiece of Soviet honesty!

The Russians fled and the Germans and Romanians got closer. The town became a battlefield. Bodies were left lying on the streets, among them the couple Apelbaum, Yossef Shimon and his wife, and the son of Matityahu Lerner. People looked for ways to save their own lives. Some people fled with the Russians and were shot on their way. My sister Rosa with her husband, Moshe Wartikovski, and all the family died in this tremendous retreat.

Terrorized by the bombardment of July 12^th, about thirty people took refuge in my father's stone house. We thought it was safer than the cellar which ran the risk of collapsing. My mother feared staying there and shivered from fright. Suddenly a beam fell from the ceiling and she died on the spot. Close to her, Chaim Shepsel Targeman, an eighteen-year-old young man, a relative of mine died also.

People started to flee the room but we stayed with two fatalities. Later, when the bombing got stronger, we left the two corpses and took shelter not far away. We were compressed like salted fishes in a barrel.

Even on the second day the shooting did not stop, Despite the peril we decided to go out and bury our dead. My father had difficulties finding a coachman, my father and the father of the dead young man went to the cemetery, dug the graves by themselves and buried the corpses in a Jewish grave.

The shooting lasted three days; the murderers went wild and killed Jews. The Christians pointed out the Jewish hideouts and the murderers took out the Jews from there and killed them. The daughter of Reuven Rosenzweig tried to save her father and sacrificed herself but the bandits killed both, the father and his daughter.

On July 30^th the episode of “Exodus!” began. The Jews of Khotyn were expelled in order to die in large number on the roads.

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The Germans Entered Khotyn

We crowded together with all the family members in one of the houses that remained intact as a refuge after the Russian army retreated and left scorched earth. My Aunt Binah, my young mother's sister, and her sister-in-law Feige argued that the crowding was too great and they went out in the street. Suddenly a car arrived with four Germans. One of them asked my aunt if she was Jewish. When she answered yes, he demanded to be conducted inside the house. The Germans poked around the whole house and ordered us to go out into the street. One of them, with a revolver in his hand, ordered several people to stand out of the line. He hauled them to a wall of a burnt house and shot at each one a bullet in the head. Only one remained alive. He fainted before the shot and fell on the ground.

My uncle and aunt implored the commissioner Samido, who kept getting bribes and a lot of food from Jews all the time, to allow the burial of the dead. Samido spoke Yiddish like a Jew. But he rebuked them and said he was not any more Samido and now he was Hitler.

With great difficulties we got a cart and conveyed the dead to the cemetery. With my own hands I dug a grave for my father and I also buried my two cousins.

We were expelled from the place we used to live for generations. We were doomed and had to wander on familiar roads.

In Sicoren we were put in the ghetto, where we gave all we had in order to get a piece of bread or a potato. A lot of peasants took advantage of our situation in order to steal our belongings.

After two months we wandered again in order to reach Mohilev. The Romanians said that the ones that are too tired to walk can climb on the carts they pointed out. Most people did not understand this scam of our enemies. My aunt hardly removed my uncle from the cart and thus saved his life, because all the tired people were shot.

When we arrived in Mohilev we had a lot of dead people. Just after we arrived, we had to go back to Sicoren. Luckily, my young brother and I found paint cans in an attic, that we swapped for potatoes in order feed ourselves.

In a short time we had to go back to Mohilev. All this was done to bother us. This time we crossed the Dniester and continued to walk in mud under the rain until we reached Kofaigorod.

After a few days we were expelled and conducted to a railway station in a nearby town. I remember my grandfather, Shmuel Foksler nicknamed Shmuel Abeles, repaired a couple of boots of the station master, who let him stay in a house close to the station.

In this town a lot of people from Khotyn died from hunger and cold. I sneaked out of town to the surrounding villages begging a piece of bread from peasants, in order to feed my family. More than once, I was beaten by bully gentiles who broke my bones.

In fact, the Germans could have entered our town without shooting even one bullet. The Soviets retreated and there was nobody to fight against the Germans. Nevertheless, they came in with rage and thunder. The first bomb fell on the Christian hospital. Among the victims there were a lot of children. Generally, the number of victims from bombshells was small, because people were hiding in cellars. Among the Jews who died were Shmaya Apelbaum, his wife, and Zalman Lerner.

When the Romanian army came in, there was a lull. The Jews thought that with the Romanians it would be possible to get along. People came out of the cellars. But about fifty people remained in the cellar of Mrs. Kini, on the square. They did not trust the Romanians and paid with their lives, a very high price. A few soldiers broke in the cellar and killed all the hidden people. On Sunday about three hundred Jews were killed and among them: Noni Krijner, two daughters of Shlomo Foigel, three children of Shmuel Abeles, three sons-in-law, two daughters-in-law and two grandchildren.

On July 7^th, 1941, 13 of Tamuz 5701, the Jews of Khotyn were conducted to the high school, led by the educated people. While the Jews were expelled from their homes, bully gentiles robbed the Jewish homes as they pleased. Then the educated people registered and were led outside the town to be shot.

A group of people chosen by the Germans were taken as hostages and were imprisoned in the Yatke synagogue, strictly guarded for two weeks. Other Jews were taken to work to clean the streets, clear away the destroyed houses, and fix the road to Ataki-Zwanitz-Khotyn. Jews carried logs to the Dniester to build an improvised bridge.

On July 31^st, 1941, 9 of Av 5701, carts were brought and all the Jews of Khotyn had to leave the town. The soldiers expelled the Jews from their home, loaded four people on a cart and the deportation started.

On the way, it became clear that the soldiers and the peasants agreed together to rob the remaining belongings of the Jews. After approximatively ten kilometers, the robbers took “pity” on the horses and ordered the Jews to get off the carts to allow the horses to rest. As soon as the Jews got off the carts, the coachmen hurried the horses and disappeared with the Jewish bags. The deported people went on by foot under a heavy rain.

At night, in the darkness, the soldiers completed the looting, beating and killing, until the Jews thought it was their last moment.

During the night people thought they would die but when the sun rose, we had to walk again in the mud, the situation was not better. The people lagging behind were shot to death. People who stopped

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in order to drink a little water were also shot to death. Again, we prayed for the night to come in order to have a little rest. We fulfilled the verse: “In the morning you will ask who will give us night and, in the evening, you will ask who will give us morning” (Deuteronomy chapter 28 verse 67).

The town Rabbi, Reb Burka, was an invalid and could not walk, so his son was carrying him in his arms. The murderers did not accept this and acting with “compassion” killed both of them.

Wallach, the dealer in animal skins, drank water from a well and was shot on the spot.

Suddenly a Romanian officer came who brought good news: everybody would go back home. People rejoiced hearing the news. On our way back, we met Jews from Lipkan who told us that a week ago, they went to Zhamrinka and back. Most of them were barefoot and their feet were swollen. We gave them some of what remained to us, thinking that we were going back home. In fact, we came back to Sicoren. On the way we saw a lot of Jews killed without burial. A hundred Jews were forced into the Dniester and drowned there. On our way we learned that the officer deceived us - there was no intention to bring us back home.

In Sicoren we stayed two months in awful conditions. People died from hunger, from cold, from typhus and from the murderers' bullets. The peasants did not want to sell anything for money, they only wanted goods: shirt, dress, suit for a bottle of milk or an egg. Often the peasants were in agreement with the soldiers on guard: after the Jew removed the clothes beyond the barbed wires for the peasant, a soldier came and expelled the peasant. The Jew remained without the clothes and without the bottle of milk he needed so much.

On the Hoshana Rabba morning, without a cloud, we were ordered to go toward Transnistria. This was the “kvitel”^[2] of this year, fruit of our prayers.

People went out in three groups: from the first group six hundred people succumbed. From the second group about a thousand. The fate of the third group was terribly awful. On the top of a hill a murderer was waiting dressed in a blue coat and like a bandmaster ordered to the refugees to go right or left. Whoever turned left was immediately executed with one shot. When we left Sicoren, the old people were allowed to get on a cart. A few young people also got on these carts. After about ten kilometers they were ordered to go left. The murderers left nobody alive.

On our way we saw terrible incidents. People became wild beasts whose only preoccupation was staying alive. Parents left sick children on the road; old parents were abandoned by their sons. In this situation we arrived in Ataki.

They were people that could not stand anymore and went mad, among them doctor Helman, and the son of Meir Lutzker.

We crossed the Dniester at Mohilev, we started another journey. More people died. People fell like fleas. Among the dead were Israel Charif (Gitsis), Tzvi Shweiger, Chaim Potekamin, Yankel Deutsch, Shmuel and Ita Genies and a lot more. In Tzintz, after we crossed the bridge, several people jumped in the water, becoming crazy and among them Anita Kalpakshi.

In the camp at Kofaigorod the persecuted Jews had some kind of false autonomy. There were Jewish police and a Jewish mayor. This Jew, Kopferberg, was a partner of the Romanians and their faithful servant. He was cruel to his tortured brothers. He robbed and stole from Jews in order to get wealthy. He took for himself the packages and the money sent to the people by their family in Romania.

All of a sudden a German officer came to Kofaigorod who wanted to kill all the Jews in the camp. In order to fulfil his plan, he sent all the Jews from Kofaigorod to the town in a place surrounded with barbed wire, where typhus and hunger killed hundreds every day. We were saved from the town thanks to the new Jewish mayor Arenshtein (moizhnitz) an honest and devoted man who was busy for the good of all. More than once, he risked his life to save people from death, by intervening with the Romanians, with Mohilev and to whom he could reach. Arenshtein survived this terrible period and emigrated to Israel.

Finally, we were saved and liberated by the Red Army. Immediately they enrolled all the men up to forty-five. However, most of them were discharged being weak, sick and swollen from hunger. Those who came back to Khotyn, and were sent to the coal mines in Donbass. Also, over there the living conditions were very difficult and the people started to think about what is a true liberation.

In Khotyn the Jews felt themselves strangers and without roots. We learned that the gentiles stayed the same as they were before and the war did not affect their lives. On the market days they handled stolen goods from Jews: silver candlesticks, glasses, samovar, linen and so forth. Nobody asked them where they stole these goods, nobody disturbed their business. On the other hand, a Jew who did not work was immediately asked from what he is living.

In the evening people feared to go outside their homes. Whoever did was beaten and robbed. There was nobody to complain to, nobody would sue for an offended Jew.

We stayed two years in Khotyn, until we learned that it was possible to go to Romania and in Czernowitz people were waiting in line to register for the journey. First, we sent two adults: Tzirel Zeltzer and Shalom Kushnir in order to check if this story were true (the sons of both of them were in Israel). When coming back they announced that there was a registration list, people started to go to Czernowitz. We thought that the true liberation was in Eretz Israel, in order to get there, we had first to leave the Soviet Union.

In Khotyn only fifty families were left, that did not want to go away anymore. From twelve thousand Jews in Khotyn only seven or eight hundred survived, most of them went to Israel, the place of tranquility.

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Memories – Transnistria

On June 28^th, 1940 when the Soviets entered Khotyn, began an ecliptic period for the Jews of Khotyn. This was the beginning of a long and dark night.

The first night two people of the N.K.V.D^[3] came to my brother Shlomke and arrested him. They knocked at the door and said that they were honest people (I wish their fate should be like their honesty). Afterwards it turned out that they were looking for somebody else called Shlomo, but this was a bad sign for all of us. When my brother was released from jail, he was very angry at my father who gave him the name Shlomo. But this was not the end of our misfortune. My brother, his wife and their children, were deported to Siberia, because he was Zionist. “The honest people” could not forgive such a sin. My sister Chana Fichman and her husband had the same fate.

Afterwards my husband was enrolled in the army and could not find his way back home. I was left alone with two children, one ten years old and the other two years old and I went to the camp with them. My father was jailed by the Russians because he took ten kopecks more than the cooperative price for a bundle of strings. They also seized all his sundries.

When the Russians left, they torched our house and I was left alone and homeless: my father in jail, Shlomo and his family in Siberia, Chana and her family in Siberia and my husband somewhere in the army.

I was deported from Khotyn with all the Jews and we arrived in Sicoren and from there we went on to Andod. I left my personal belongings on the road, in Ataki, and carried my young son in my arms. So, we arrived in Mohilev and from there to Kofaigorod. When the police started to take out people from Kofaigorod, I hid myself with my two children until all the refugee convoys went out the town. By chance I met my brother Hershke Feldman and his family.

In Kofaigorod we suffered from hunger and cold as we stayed deprived from everything. Hershke decided that we should go to Krilovitz, to the Germans, because they gave bread for work. Several families from Khotyn came with us: Geller, Chaim Rechter, Shalom Milman and others.

In Krilovitz I worked for Jewish residents: I repaired furnaces, I ground wheat and in return I received food. The Jewish residents were afraid to go outside of their houses because of the Germans, I was not afraid. I spoke Russian and pretended to be a gentile. My brother Hershke worked for Germans and got bread.

However, this peaceful time did not last long. The Germans brought the Jews of Sniktov and Werbebitz to Krilovitz and murdered them. People were saved from death by hiding.

The Germans said that the survivors should not be afraid because they stopped shooting, however we feared a new massacre that would kill us all. We decided to flee back to the Romanians in Mohilev. Sonia's brother and his family lived there.

My brother Hershke hired a gentile to transfer us to Yiaroshetz. The gentile did not want to take everybody in one journey, six adults and two children. It was decided that I would go first with my two children and if I got there safely, I would send a pencil with the gentile as a sign for Hershke to come.

I left during the night, barefooted with my children and I crawled in the darkness. At dawn, I was caught by Romanian border guards and arrested. The gentile fled before I could send the sign to my brother. I was scared to death. The Romanians took the pelt my brother gave me and they allowed us to go on our way.

Hershke did not get the sign and thought that probably we died on the way. Afterwards I was informed that nevertheless he decided to flee from Krilovitz, but another massacre was already its way. He hid for twenty days until a Ukrainian reported him to the Germans. They came and torched the hideout and all the Jews in hiding were burned alive.

Ester Zaidman's identity card

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Tulchyn – a Place of Torture and Death

A lot of Jews of Bessarabia, including Jews from Khotyn, incurred hard torture from the Romanians during the years 1942-43 in the Tulchyn camp, where Jews had to dig terrace soil.

The police knew only one thing: fast, fast! The working conditions were terrible. People were hungry, naked and barefooted. During the summer it was possible to withstand these conditions but in the rainy and snowy days the situation was unbearable.

The Romanian police demanded from the people to fulfill a standard, and since it was impossible to fulfill, they were cruelly beaten. They did not give shoes, clothes, a warm place to sleep; instead they gave blows with their rubber truncheons.

Since there was no sanitation in the camp, a lot of people died from diseases. Nobody gave medicine to the Jews. The Romanians knew that other Jews would replace the dead Jews as new slaves.

We looked for a way out – and none. To escape? All the roads were blocked. It was forbidden to the residents to hide Jews in their houses. Furthermore, the Jewish police will find us and will hand us to the Romanian police. Some of us spoke about getting crazy but the majority were against. On the contrary, the majority said that we have to find out a way to survive.

Without taking into account the numerous risks, a lot of people set out on the road. Among them also people from Khotyn: Israel Kilimnik son of Leib-Gershon the shoemaker, Yaacov Kirzhner son of Fanie Kantragi, Moshe Bez-Nas, Abba Kalataras and others.

We should fix a terrible mistake that took root in the thinking of the Jews of Bessarabia: at the beginning of the war everybody (Germans, Romanians and neighbors) was involved in robbery and looting. This is wrong and the exact truth needs to be reported.

In fact, there were gentile neighbors, Our friends from always were the first to exploit, rob, loot, kill Jews before Hitler set in place his automatic infernal murder machine.

We have firstly to remember the Russians. They came in 1940, they worked with diligence to destroy the Jewish community, the trade and to uproot the Judaism itself.

In 1941, when the Romanians-Germans were about to invade, we noticed in Khotyn, that the Russians prepared themselves to an ordered retreat: all the officials with their families and possessions left the town together with the Russian garrison. The Jews of Khotyn went to the military governor and asked not to be abandoned. He promised to take into account our situation but did not fulfill his promise.

Several Jews tried to cross the bridge on the Dniester but were stopped by Russian soldiers and had to go back. Only a few succeeded to cross the Dniester through a different way and they paid with their lives: they were killed by the German air bombing on their way from Kaminitz to Proskorov.

While the Russians retreated, a cover group remained in order to leave a “scorched earth,” meaning torching all the fields and to hand the invaders a scorched earth. This did not affect the Germans much and also did not benefit the Russians. At this point the Jews did not have more sympathy for one side or the other, because the Jews suffered the most from anybody else. The last Russian cavalry soldiers galloped through the streets and threw incendiary bombs on the Jewish roofs and torched the town from all sides. The gentiles who lived in the suburbs did not suffer from the fire.

When the fire started, a lot of people fled to the Dniester, digging into trenches and pits, stayed there the whole night while from the other side, the Romanians shelled the town this same night.

The next day the Romanians entered the town. The Jews whose houses were burned had to squeeze themselves and several families in the few remaining apartments still in good shape. We knocked on our gentile neighbors' doors to ask for some bread or a room, but yesterday's neighbors became hostile, closed their doors in front of us, locked the gates of their courtyard, set their dogs on us.

The Romanian police, armed with sticks, truncheons and guns entered the Jewish houses, cursing, insulting and hitting, dragging the Jews to the high school and the police station. The Jews had to hand over their silver and gold jewelry, the ones that would not comply would be shot. During the two days that the Jews were imprisoned in the high school and the police station, our neighbors broke into our homes through the windows and the doors and took all our possessions, gained through the hard work of years. It is possible that we were arrested in order not to disturb the organized work of the robbers and looters.

The day-to-day expulsion of our homes lasted about ten days. This was intended to weaken our strength and our desire to live on this land. Men, women and children were enrolled in various useless tasks, whose only purpose was to make our lives bitter: we removed stones, cleaned streets and the lavatories of our new masters. During those days a lot of Jews were killed in the streets and their corpses were piled outside of the town without having a Jewish burial.

In the beginning of August 1941, we felt that a terrible period of calamity was starting without knowing the exact outcome. We kept using the old trick: bribes. We went to the town governors, the Romanians, but they received us with shouting: “Come here.” We were in the hands of dangerous wild beasts and we lost our hopes.

One day in August 1941, five hundred carts

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harnessed with horses were gathered with peasants as coachmen. Next day at dawn, we were ousted from our homes by the police who behaved with coarseness and warned that if one wanted stay at home he would be shot immediately.

This terrible and painful episode left our former neighbors indifferent. They gloated, laughed and joked at us. The gloomy scene of men, women, children and oldsters, sick people thrown out from the hospital crying, screaming, yelling did not stir any compassion from them. We got in the carts; we got a piece of 800-gram bread. There were not enough carts to contain all the deported people and a lot of people followed the carts by foot.

Also, in the carts our lives hung by a thread. First all the oldsters were thrown out of the carts, people seventy or eighty years old, they were almost dying. Together with the people, their belongings were also thrown out.

Finally, we had to go on by foot towards Yanovitz. When we arrived in Auknitza, the young people of the village, lined up on each side of the road with stick and whips in their hands and beat us, while their parents stood on the side watching and laughing.

The second day, the numbers of our dead increased. After four days of travel, we arrived in Sicoren. The Jewish homes were empty. Also the residents were expelled or were dead. Three streets were surrounded by barbed wire; it was a kind of ghetto for us, it was unbearable. Two hours per day the gentiles were allowed to get close to us in order to trade clothes, shoes, watches, valuable goods were exchanged for a piece of bread. The ones without belongings, were starving; a typhus epidemic spread. The angel of death was very busy: between ten and fifteen deaths a day. After we spent five weeks there, we were deported to Ataki. We went out, not everybody together, but by convoys. The first convoy left one day after Yom Kippur. At least hundred people were shot in each convoy until we arrived in Ataki. The police killed the Jews and robbed their poor baggage, selling it to the neighboring gentiles or even giving it away for free.

In Ataki we stayed only two days and we went on to Nandod. In Ataki we left the sick people and the weak ones that were impossible to move; we never saw them again. It was easy to understand their fate. Finally, we arrived in Mogilov. We were ushered into a very large house surrounded by high walls. The rooms did not have shutters, windows and doors. The dirt in the rooms - human excrement and rubbish - was oppressive. We tried but did not succeed in sweep out the garbage and cleaning the rooms.

Here also we could not rest. The rainy days came with floods. We had to march in the mud and sticky clay. On the way, the police attacked us, kicking with cruelty. A few times we gathered some money - gifts to the police - but it did not help. They had one complaint: you, the Jews are guilty of everything of what is happening to the world and thus we, the police, are separated from our families and from our place of work.

It was forbidden to go through the main roads, we had to go on side roads full of mud. The police rode on horses and we walked, if somebody was tired from the way and fell in the mud, he was shot to death by the police. That's the way the father-in-law of Dr. Sheinberg and many others were killed. I saw with my eyes a woman with her packs, who fell in the mud and could not rise. A policeman knocked her head with his stick and she remained recumbent in the mud. The convoy went on without her. In the evening, we arrived in Azarinitz in a pouring rain, with thunder and lightning. Exhausted and broken, starving and wet. We were pushed into empty houses; dead and dying people were kept outside. We could not sit because of the crowding, only stand. Two courageous young men climbed to the roof; thus, several dozens of people could spend the night on the roof after cleaning it from the garbage and dirt. In the morning, we could not rest anymore, we had to go on our way. Once more we were pushed into empty houses to spend the night, in the morning we went on wandering from village to village. We were not allowed to enter the villages and the kolkhoz. If we were lucky to find empty stables and stay there overnight, at dawn the kolkhoz head or the village mayor accompanied by the Ukrainian militia ordered us to leave the premises at once.

The Romanian police escort disappeared suddenly; we were left like cattle without a shepherd and without a master. We were like a sect of ghosts inspiring horror. This was a death march. A lot of people died on the road, from hunger or exhaustion. Part of us begged for food and part of us found work in the villages.

On the way we passed a wooden bridge above a river. Suddenly we heard screaming: Mrs. Aniota Kofalkshi committed suicide by jumping into the water and said to us: “now I feel better than you.” We went on; we had the feeling that she ordered us to live without knowing what for and why.

We arrived in a village close to Zhmirinka, wet and hungry, we entered in an abandoned stable, in order to rest from the journey. After half an hour a gentile came in from the surroundings with food: bread, polenta, boiled potatoes. It was like in paradise. We bartered the food with some valuables still left with us. Those who did not have valuables left scattering themselves in the surrounding villages to beg for food, including myself. Some gentiles gave us something, other ones locked the doors in front of us, or set dogs on us. In the evening the village mayor came with the Ukrainian militia, communist trainees, and demanded from us to get away from here. They hardly accepted our supplication to stay overnight until dawn.

In the morning, they came back, after a difficult bargaining, they accepted in return of five hundred rubles that hundred people among us could stay, working in the kolkhoz. The speakers on our side were Wallach, the cinema owner in Khotyn and Yachmiel Wasserman. They pledged to put together a list of only people of Khotyn. A problem arose: who will be the lucky ones included in the list that will gain the kindness of the kolkhoz people. My family and I were outside of the list, because I was with relatives from Britzan and I did not want to be separated from them. We went on to Zhmrinka, and after numerous wandering we arrived in Kofaigorod.

The happiness of the hundred people did last for a long time. The third night being there, the people of the kolkhoz attacked them. My family and I were outside of the list.

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People fled and scattered all over. They arrived close to Kirilovki, without knowing that the Germans were already there. They went from Scylla to Charybdis. At this time there was a large-scale slaughter in Kirilovki of about a thousand people. The hundred ones that fled were also killed during this awful massacre.

In the terrible jungle there was no difference between the kolkhoz people and the Germans.

In Kofaigorod we were two thousand people from Bessarabia and Bukovina. We were expelled from there three times during the harsh winter and a lot of people died on the way. In Kofaigorod itself a lot of people died of cold, hunger and typhus every day.

One day of snow and frost, more than eighty people died and were left unburied, food for the dogs. Only afterwards they were buried.

Interestingly, a lot of typhus victims remained alive despite the cold and hunger.

During our wanderings we met a lot of Jews, half naked, hungry and shivering with cold. Their wounded feet were wrapped up in rags and their bodies were enveloped in sack clothes.

Many troubles did not bring people together. On the contrary, madness dominated everything. Quarrel and brawl overcame even the closest family members. Instead of peace and brotherhood there was only gloom and depression.

We stayed three years in Kofaigorod. It is true that the Romanians did not conduct mass extermination, they did not kill a thousand people in one go, but they murdered us little by little with all kinds of tortures. The mass extermination technique came from them. They used primitive means to exterminate us. They imposed hard labor on us and great hunger conditions. All efforts from our side brought murderous blows. Often, they pounced on us during the night, and removed young people from their sleeping during frozen nights and conducted them, half-naked, to the Triata forest to chop wood. Only a few came back.

The second year being in Kofaigorod, in June, during the hot summer days, all the Jews were expelled - refugees, banished from Bessarabia and Bukovina, Kofaigorod residents, Ukrainian Jews - and gathered in one of the nearby forests. Two thousand deportees were packed inside a small barbed wire enclosure. Fifty percent died from hunger and thirst.

All this testimony is only a drop in the sea of all the big troubles we went through; only by a miracle, people remained alive.

The Soviet invasion of Khotyn on June 28, 1940 made all the Jewish institutions illegal, changed the way of life of all the Jews in town, liquidated the high council, the community committee in all its facilities, confiscated the Jewish schools. The synagogues yet did not suffer, but were empty. People were afraid of the Soviet authorities. One month before the war between Germany-Romania against Russia in May 1941, the Soviet authorities deported about a hundred and fifty families to Siberia. The Soviets succeeded to disintegrate the Jewish life by seeding bacteria of hate between each other, promoting denunciation which led to denunciations. Public people, Zionists and traders, were deported. Among the deported Zionists: Yosef Apelboim, lawyer Moshe Feldman, the heads of the town Zionist movement, Dr. Yaacov Lerner, Shlomo Feldman.

On June 22^nd 1941, the Soviet army retreated, and about fifty percent of the town Jews ran away along with the Soviet army, approximatively four thousand people, afraid of the Germans and the Romanians. However, since the Soviets did let people leave the town except at the very last moment, most of the fugitives did not succeed in getting to a safe place. Almost all of them fell under the German shelling of the roads or were overtaken by the German troop advance and shot to death.

We heard about the relations with the Germans and the Kaminitz-Poldosk massacre from a witness, a Christian woman who was arrested as a Jewess. There were Jews from Hungary, Bukovina, and Bessarabia. At the beginning the Jews were treated correctly more or less. They got paid working for the Germans on various tasks. This blinded the Jews who did not think about escaping when it was still possible. One day, the Germans gathered all the Jews outside of the town to dig pits. Along the pits were boxes where the Jews had to put their valuables and their clothes. A German high-ranked officer gave a lawful decree of the massacre. All the Jews were shot. The witness was the only one left alive being Christian. I forgot her name. In September 1941 she came back to Khotyn and told us about this most tragic event in our history.

The Romanian army came to Khotyn; it was a regiment of mountain hunters, including six Gestapo officers. They entered the town at twilight. Four thousand Jews remained in Khotyn. The next day the Jews were pushed to the girls' high school, standing there overcrowded almost suffocating. Some Jews were taken out of the building to the school yard.

The Gestapo officers gathered the leaders of the community, the educated people, rabbis, public figures, well-known people and added all those suspected of communism by the Romanian Authority. There were eighty people in this group, including two women. Different rumors floated around: they are hostages, they will be sent to work; there was also far-reaching suspicion that they will be shot. There were people that tried very hard to get into this group in order to save their lives. The Romanians did everything on purpose to create this illusion.

I was also chosen to be in this group, but at the last moment, ten doctors, two pharmacists and a nurse were taken out. This change was known to me later from Samida, a police officer

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I knew very well (all his family was under medical care). In the meeting of the Romanian garrison, colonel Bradaciano (killed next day in the shelling) and Romanian officers, the veterinarian demanded to free all the medical Jewish professional people, afraid of a possible epidemic outbreak. Indeed, after the bomb shelling, corpses and animal carcasses were lying on the streets.

Two officers came to the courtyard of the high school, with a murderous look. They came after a slaughter in town. After gathering all the Jews in the girls' high school in the morning, the two officers went in the town, that was burnt after the bomb shelling, penetrated in the cellars where the Jews were hidden. One officer took out children with their parents in groups of seven, and in front of the parents murdered the children. When a group had only five members, he went to bring two more in order to complete the number seven. They thought that murdering Jews, even children, was a high sublime holy task, that is why they chose the number seven, in order to add a small shade to the murder sanctity (may their names and memories be erased forever). The last group of five children was saved thanks to the second officer that shouted to them: what are you waiting for and not fleeing?

The Jewish medical professional people and their families were sent back home. Everybody was instructed not to go out from home, and the next day they had to report to the garrison officer in order to receive instructions about the sanitary situation of the town. The town was separated in five districts, two doctors per district. Two sanitary soldiers were added per district. We started to search each house and deal with the situation.

The group from which we were saved, was led to a lake close to the town where pits were already prepared and everybody was shot to death. Two people succeeded in escaping: one young man called Geller, when a car went by the group, left the line and entered a gentile courtyard, and took shelter until the deportation. The gentile told Geller's parents where their son was hidden. The second, a woman, named Kohen, born in Bucharest, who was a high school German teacher. On the way, she had a bad feeling, spoke with the German officer in charge and asked him: is it possible in the twentieth century to lead people to be massacred only because they are born Jews? The officer did not answer but a soldier that heard her, was influenced by her words and decided to leave her alive. He stood behind her, shot above her head, she, of course was not hurt, fell like the other ones.

The officer in charge ordered to the soldiers to stick their spears in the heart of the victims in order to complete the massacre, according to the German precision. Again, the soldier took care that the woman would not be hurt. After the soldiers left the place, Mrs. Kohen emerged from the grave, slipped away and succeeded to sneak back into the town.

She was deported to Transnistria and after the war came back to Bucharest. She died in 1947. She told me all the events I reported. After the war during the trial of the war criminals, she gave evidence against the officer. From the details she gave me I wrote that the officer was arrested as a “criminal in uniform” as she nicknamed him.

Gitelman was a communist and a member of the social-democratic party who was disappointed more than once from malicious regime, lost his temper. The day after the massacre of the eighty people, he came to me to know what happened the day before, since he was hidden when everybody was gathered in the high school. He left me, depressed and he lost his mind.

Three weeks after the massacre, the Jews were deported to Transnistria. In town there was only twenty-two families left, about eighty people, essential for the town sanitation. These were: one doctor (undersigned hereby), two dentists, one pharmacist, one watchmaker, one tailor, one tinsmith, one photographer, one mechanic, one radio specialist, one driver, one furrier, one glazier, one painter, five print workers, and the family of Dr Ravitz who was enrolled as a doctor in old Romania. Also a few garbage collectors stayed in town who committed themselves to wear the yellow star.

A branch of “Jewish Center” was created, headed by advocate Leibo from Baku, a print worker specialist. He got this honor because of his father who was a veteran of the 1877 war. Another two doctors' families stayed in the Khotyn distict.

The mayor, Jon Marku, former manager of the power plant, before 1940, came back with the Romanian forces; he was against the stay of my mother and sister, two pharmacists, with the twenty-two families in Khotyn. He did not at all agree to leave five members of the Zeidman family in Khotyn. I have to emphasize that Jon Marku, a member of the Koza fascist party, lived before in Germany and then in Khotyn, was in direct contact with Hitler's ambassador in Bucharest: Manfred von Kilinger. Members of local institutions were afraid of Marku because of his relationship with the Germans.

The garrison commander, Major Dragolsku, tried to keep my mother and sister in Khotyn, but did not dare to oppose Jon Marku. Dragolsku promised me to bring them back and so he did. He sent a soldier with a cart to bring them back, but because of a typo, two women called Zeldman instead of Zeidman, came back. Because of this error, these two women survived, that also was fine. Meanwhile, my sister understood what happened. She succeeded in convincing the commander of the deportation squadron to call Major Dragolsku, who gave the order to bring them back to Khotyn.

I have to mention that Major Dragolsku treated the Jews fairly. Some people said that his wife was Jewish and he refused to divorce her.

Nevertheless, at the end of the war, he was arrested as a war criminal because he gave a verbal order, transmitted from above, to the deportation squadron commander to make sure that only a minimal number of Jews should arrive at the destination. According to this order

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all Jews delayed on the way for any reason were immediately shot to death. The corpses were buried every two kilometers. There was no official document to charge him, and he did not show up to the trial because he died earlier in jail.

Two months after the mass deportation, an order arrived to deport the twenty-two families. The district commander was not here, the deputy commander did not dare to object to the order, so the twenty-two families went to Transnistria. The guard commander received an order from Major Dragolsku to prevent any mishap on our way. He added and said: “if you don't bring me back a letter from Dr. Zeidman, do not dare to come back.”

After our deportation, Colonel Popovitz, the district commander, came back to town, when he learned the matter, he immediately obtained a cancellation of our deportation an issued an order to bring us back. Meanwhile we arrived in Lipnick. The local commander firmly opposed the order and said that Jews are only going forward and not backward.

By the way, this is a complete lie, from Tefer's story related in this book; it appears that the March of Death did go back and forth. Sergeant Major Ansku pretended that he accepted the order but in fact we arrived indirectly back to Sicoren.

There we were separated, people were assigned to various district of the region. My sister and I went to Kalmentzi; my sister worked there in the medical service.

My wife, my son and I went back to Khotyn. On December 25^th 1943 my wife died after an operation. On March 20^th 1944 I succeeded with my son to arrive in Czernowitz. We stayed in Czernowitz until May 13^th 1945; from there we got through Romania.

From all the Jews who were deported to Transnistria, only 25% survived. A large part of the survivors succeeded in getting to Israel, but a minority stayed in Khotyn.

L. Konshtat

After the Sukkot festival 5702 (1941) Zhorin the first refugees arrived from Eidinetz. About a hundred and fifty shadow people, shabby, full of lice, bare footed, wrapped up with sack clothes and worn rags. In Zhorin we gave them the nickname “Khotynaim,” because most of them were from Khotyn; of more than ten thousand Jews, after the massacre of July, only two hundred survived.

Their first stop was the old synagogue. They were brought by Reb Hershel. A dozen of town elders and the Rabbi (they continued to see him as the Rabbi), carrying tubs and hot water, ordered the refugees to undress completely, first the men and then the women, to remove the filth sticking to them. The worn rags full of lice were burned in the synagogue courtyard. At once immediately there appeared a bunch of underwear, old garments, boots, shawls and hats - gifts of the town residents, although they were poor and beggars without livelihood. After they washed and dressed, most of the people from Khotyn asked to stay together. On this occasion, Reb Hershel pronounced one of his “heretical” sayings:

“Nu, it is not worth arguing, if the Master of the World exiled his sons, Jews of Khotyn to Zhorin, better to give the suffering Khotyn people a holy place, that is of course, all the empty synagogues.”

So it was, the people of Khotyn lived in the synagogues except for a few families that were housed in miserable apartments of Khotyn residents. Reb Hershel handed his large room to a widow and her daughter; her husband and two children were killed by the Iron Guard of Antonescu. Reb Hershel settled for a narrow hallway as a place to live.

After all, people of Khotyn had a place to stay. However, their shrunken stomachs, used to hunger, were demanding. Immediately, Reb Hershel found a solution to their cackling stomachs. He took a big pot, put it on a cooking tripod in his apartment kitchen and gathered people of the town and told them, by the way, the rule that “if you don't put in you cannot put out” and added that the pot would stay on the cooking tripod twice a day. The town residents understood the hint and brought immediately potatoes, various vegetables, loaves of bread, dried pears, millet and the like, in handkerchiefs or by handfuls according to their generosity or means.

The widow and her daughter, the Rabbi's tenants, rolled up their sleeves and started to cook a meal. Rabbi Hershel himself helped to bring the pot to the synagogue, a range of half a kilometer although people tried to prevent him.

“I almost would not feel the weight if the pot was light, but if the pot was heavy and full I will feel it light like a feather,” said Reb Hershel.

However, town residents got tired of bringing food every day to put in the pot. Reb Hershel also found a solution for this problem. Isn't there a market in town every morning, where the surrounding peasants bring all the best food to buy? And you ask from where the money? No problem, first of all Reb Hershel took out from a copper box a bundle of five hundred rubles, that were intended for to pay for his burial and his tombstone when he would be one hundred and twenty years old.

“It does not matter,” said Reb Hershel, “when the time comes, it is unthinkable that the community will do me a disgrace and will have to take advice. About the tombstone, you might as well put on my grave this pot and engrave on it: ‘this is the tombstone of the ritual slaughterer of Zhorin.’”

It is true that it is possible to buy bargains for half-price from the peasants that come to the market.

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And five hundred rubles is a real treasure, but hundred and fifty mouths of the Khotynaim emptied this well very quickly. The pot did not take this into account and demanded to be filled every morning.

Reb Hershel had a new idea. “Where is written,” he asked himself, “that a ritual slaughterer from a lost village needs a cupboard, a bed, linen and other nonsense? Is there any danger sleeping on a bench with the hand as a pillow?” Certainly not, he answered to himself. The same day, peasants took all his belongings out of his apartment and gave him the barter: some gave a sack of potato, some gave a sack of flour, a bunch of onions, a handkerchief full of millet. In short, suddenly Reb Hershel became a trader among traders.

“Better that my apartment be empty and not God forbid, without opening Satan's mouth, rather than the Khotynaim's pot being empty.” This was Reb Hershel's answer with shining eyes to his acquaintances asking: Is it possible, why?

This is the portrait of Reb Hershel, the ritual slaughterer of Zhorin. And if you ask, what happened afterwards, when Reb Hershel had nothing more to sell? Unfortunately, the people of Khotyn became dust and ashes. Hunger and typhus killed the tenants of the synagogues and after less than half year, the synagogues were empty and the Almighty could reside again there.

The arrival of Jews from Khotyn to Zhorin was a kind of prelude. One month later, convoys of two to three hundred people per day started to arrive, Jews from Bukovina and from Dorohoi district in Moldova, until Zhorin, the small town, with three hundred huts had to absorb more than three thousand people.

The first convoy was welcomed by Reb Hershel and his acquaintances as told herewith, giving them a shelter. However, when the series of convoys arrived every night, (because these fragile goods did not travel during daylight fearing the evil eye), Reb Hershel did not have good advice for them. This tidal wave of troubles was above our will and strength. In the convoys there were a lot of Jews from the south of Bukovina, a piece of land that was never conquered by the assigned authority. Thus, these Jews were privileged by the Romanian rulers, compared to Jews from the north of Bukovina who were one full year under the red star and were influenced by dangerous theories. As such, the Jews of south Bukovina and from Dorohoi could carry their belongings, and at least they succeeded to bring part of it with them to Zhorin.

There were among them a lot of formerly rich people who succeeded in smuggling cash in Romanian currency, although an offense was punishable by death. When they arrived in Zhorin, the privileged ones settled in the Ukrainian part of the town and paid a fair rent to the Ukrainians, in cash or with valuables. Most of the newly arrived were poor people without belongings, or cash, miserable, with torn rags, who barely succeeded in escaping; they did not have even enough food for one day. They did not rent apartments and had to be satisfied to live in stables, attics, in empty streets without light or air, twenty to thirty people in one room without a window. However, it is true that immediately a “Judenrat”^[4] was established and opened a soup kitchen; it seemed like somebody tried to extinguish a fire with saliva.

Reb Hershel had no power to save these people with the pot, his tables and benches were gone, also he could not find cheap kosher food. However, to sit just looking at a major disaster and do nothing was not in the temper of the Rabbi of Zhorin. The Rabbi remembered that a long time ago, before the Soviet revolution, people were listening avidly to his sermons; his reputation preceded him as a gifted speaker. Here, now, without the evil eye, there was a listening audience. In each corner he could hear prayers and there was a minyan. Also, there were a lot of things to preach for. Who will give and there is nothing to ask for. So why not return to the art of the old times?

Indeed, Reb Hershel started to preach every Shabbat, when the synagogue was full with no empty seats. These were unusual sermons, that angered the half dozen Rabbis and Admorim, Hasids sitting between the audience of the refugees and various observant persons. Especially the rich and satiated ones that were ready to uproot him.

The guardians of the Almighty and the complacent ones could not stand that Reb Hershel was harshly preaching morality, smiting with the rod of his sarcastic mouth. They were snobs - the important and the sophisticated, and not the poor refugees - who forgot that there is a law and a judge.

Why was Reb Hershel mentioning charity, by saying that the last piece of bread has to be shared with the needy.

“It is forbidden to increase the price in the market, that it is forbidden to waste money without shame, that it was appropriate not to have the Ukrainians envy you with your latest fashion and jewelry, that you should not hang out at night playing cards, when people are starving from hunger and longing for potato peel soup and other nonsense and so forth?”

“Why does the ritual slaughterer, who wears gentile boots and a peasant hat, does not speak out when he sees people not joining the public prayers even on a ‘Yahrzeit,’ when young women are strolling with young men in the streets towards the river during the night, when in a lot of apartments there is no mezuzah, when young bar-mitzvah boys wander aimlessly and trading cigarettes instead of sitting in the ‘Cheder’ and learning Torah? Other serious offenses flooded the ghetto and made the hair stand on end, because of all these sins the fury is pouring out on the observant people who pray mincha and maariv (afternoon and evening prayers) and have kosher tzitzit.”

“For these fine words that the kosher preacher utters, may his tongue stick to his palate. Is it possible to hear such a thing from a Rabbi?”

“You, with the fat belly and shiny double-chin, you surely think that you catch the Almighty's tail when you put on tefillin and utter a long ‘echad’ in Shema Israel. People like you that do not give a hand when people are in trouble, you would better off putting tefillin onto a dog's head.”

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“The dog's barking will reach the mighty throne before your disgusting stutters.”

“When I see your shiny crowns that hide your gloomy souls, my eyes are dark.”

“Antonescu made a mistake when he exiled you to Zhorin, your place is in Sodom, there you would be in appropriate society.”

Reb Hershel added even more heretical barbs in his passionate preaching. But his speeches found sealed ears. Instead because of his preaching the God-fearing Rabbis and Admorim^[5] looked to the sky with glazed eyes, moaning about the Divine Presence in exile, fought the heretic with gentile boots with all their weapons, they forbad his ritual slaughter and warned people not to be in touch with him. The guy that said to put tefillin on a dog's head and lives alone in an apartment with a widow and her daughter!

Until this very day, all the holy vessels in Zhorin are making noise and tumult, fire and sulfur against Reb Hershel. The poor ones are dying like fleas, rich people are praying with devotion and don't care about the beggars' poor situation. Reb Hershel does his duty, preaches, admonishes, tears masks from two-faced people, runs around crumbling ruins to bring some comfort to the sick and hungry people. He does not move from the Judenrat gates in order to get kitchen soup or medication for poor sick people. He dares to ask for mercy the “Arbeitamt”^[6] for old or sick people that were caught to work. If he gets his request or not, he is doing his duty, this is the way of the old Rabbi of Zhorin, new edition, the 1941 version by Reb Jozefl Shalom-Aleichem in his book “A Thousand and One Nights.”

The Zhorin exile finished a long time ago as a nightmare, that the world never knew before. There are no more refugees in Zhorin, no more privileged from south Bukovina nor “stepsons” from Bessarabia or north Bukovina. They are staying in the Zhorin cemetery. Oh dear, how many hundreds are staying there. Those who had the merit to survive and return to their home, that ceased to be a real home, with their souls and bodies broken down. The Rabbi of Zhorin or, more accurately, the ritual slaughter Hershel is now outside of Zhorin. The “comrades” put him in jail for only two years. It was not possible to sentence the eighty-two-year-old man for more than two years. Lest Heaven forbid he extends his middle finger before its time. His sins were unbearable. During the occupation he fed parasites, felt at home in the Judenrat and preached in the synagogue: the petty bourgeois, enemy of the proletarians.

Hershel the slaughterer did not extend his middle finger to the comrades. As an honest citizen, he spent two years in jail, returned to Zhorin and after a week dwelled in the Zhorin cemetery, close to the Khotyn people he saved with his pot.

There are very few cases in history when regimes change without a single bullet fired. Bessarabia and north Bukovina fell into Russian hands without pulling a trigger.

The youth movements were joyful about this change, but the adults were more skeptical.

Suddenly the town was full of policemen. The police, patrol after patrol, inspected the town during the darkness of night. In every patrol there was a civilian, a party member, Jew of course, a militia man or a soldier. In the autumn of 1940, they organized a hunt against enemies of the people who had to dress up, give in their identity documents and bring food for three days.

The patrols went from house to house, people were taken into cars and driven to the police station. The police convoy under heavy guard left for an unknown destination. In the morning, we arrived in Lenovo-Slitz, we were transferred to freight wagons, we stayed there until the last hours of Saturday night. The access to the wagons was strictly forbidden.

We were divided into groups: Zionists, members of political parties, civil servants of the former regime and so forth. Saturday night an officer came and according to the list he had in his hands people separated from their families were taken out of the wagons and sent to far away camps and never came back. Their wives were sent to another camp, a few thousand kilometers away from their husbands' camp.

On Saturday night, we left for Mogilov, Zhamrinka in the direction of the Urals. It was forbidden to leave the wagon, so they had to relieve themselves in a special pot in front of everybody.

During the journey we got some food through the wagon's portholes. After seventeen days of travel, the wagons were opened and we were in an open field. We received food and we were allowed to breathe fresh air for a whole day. In the evening trucks arrived that drove us to Leibstzki in the Tomsk vicinity.

After all we reached our destination, we had to chop wood in the forest. The light food ration was given according to the hard work quantity.

After three months of training, we were liberated from the guards and we could go and find work to do in the surrounding villages because there was a shortage of manpower due to the men's enrollment in the army.

After one year we sailed on a boat to Altai. Life was not easy, but fishing gave us high protein food.

In 1956, a rumor spread that anyone willing to go back to his country could make a request. This news made a lot of waves and our hearts were full of hope that the deliverance will come soon. A lot of people were afraid to wander again and stayed there.

After seventeen years the wanderings came to an end.

Riba Kaufman, the widow, did not save any effort, to provide education for her son Adoltchik. Her efforts were successful: being a high school alumnus, he became a teacher under the Soviets and started the life circle.

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The murderers, the Nazis and the Romanians according to their satanic methods, took him among the eighty intellectuals who were shot close to the swamps.

Adoltchik in his last moments was accompanied by Eliezer Roizman. I saw them when they came to the high school and never came back. One day before, I woke up Adoltchik to replace me in the fire fighter's guard. Avraham Grinovtzer and Leib Gelman asked me to help them to extinguish the fire that broke out in the neighbor's courtyard. Although there was firing and cannon thunder, we spoke a lot, we assessed the situation from all its sides. We were caught by the illusion that the wheel of fortune would reverse.

Riba Kaufman came to us to get some comfort, and consoled herself when she saw us busy paving roads.

Adoltchik's sister, Tzila, studied in Kishinev. During the retreat she was killed along with the students from Kishinev.

Once I saw Riba Kaufman in one of the convoys in Kazmatzov close to her sister Sophia Sofenboim and husband. When they saw that I had twigs in my hands, they asked me for a portion since they did not eat for a few days. Riba Kaufman perished in the Holocaust.

List of Jews in the Khotyn district on August 11 1941

It is the second time that we march from Sicoren to an unknown destination. I am looking at the people and it is difficult for me to find a similarity between them and the people I knew before. Is she Leika Gofman, our neighbor of all times? Her husband Pinchas Gofman died in my arms. A family blessed with a lot of children. Right now, Leika walks slowly, not to stumble, God forbid. It is a hazard to stumble, get out of the line and leave this world. She did not pay attention to what is happening around her. Her family moved to Israel, except one of them, Meir, a magnificent and handsome young man.

Once when I came with my father to visit the Gofman family to say farewell to one of her sons who moved to Israel, my father asked Meir, when do you plan to travel to join your brother? Meir did not hide his opinion and answered: “Palestine is too tiny to contain everybody, all the Jews, so my place is here.”

His attempt to cross the border to Russia failed. His second attempt succeeded, accompanied by his wife.

Afterwards, a rumor grew that people saw him in our district. One day, Pinchas Gofman was summoned to the police station and in a dark corner he was shown a body with torn clothes, soaked with blood and mud, and asked if he was Meir his son.

Meir was an underground operative and together with his wife, used being arrested for conspirative goals. After his release, when trying again to cross the Dniester, he came across Romanian border guards and succeeded in evading them. He hid himself in a corn field, but the next day the field's landlord found him and turned him to the police.

Meir was sentenced as a dangerous spy and was sent to jail in chains. During the earthquake of September 1940, a stone fell from his prison wall and crushed his head.

An underground newspaper announced in a few words the tragic death of Meir.

People from Khotyn knew me by the nickname Fuzis. My father-in-law Avraham Shochat was a sexton at the “Yatke synagogue.” My mother-in-law Sheindel was the daughter of Bendat the teacher.

Most of my family perished during the Second World War. Destruction and misery were everywhere. Only a few people survived. One daughter, Yaffa Toibman, arrived in Israel with the Youth Aliyah; one daughter lives in Montevideo. Toybe Wasserman and her family lives in Russia. There are the only ones who survived.

When we were deported from Khotyn and wandering towards Sicoren and from there to Ataki and back, in order to kill us, the first victim of our family was my mother Sarah; I was able to bury her. My father Moshe Fuzis, died close to Lanzaranitz. We could not rest and we were driven away constantly, thus I was not possible to bury him.

In the small town Popovitz, my brother Yehoshua died and in Kofaigorod his wife Chana died with her three children.

By some miracle I came out alive from Kofaigorod. In Khotyn we found ruins and there I was informed that my brother Avraham and his wife, who lived in France, were deported to Auschwitz and perished there.

We arrived in Israel in 1948, during the war. However, there was no possible comparison between this situation and the days of war when we died like flies. After nineteen years, during the six-day war, our son Avramele went fighting for our existence. We were proud of our son after all the suffering we endured.

Translator's footnotes:

1. Yevaskim: People from the Jewish section of the communist party Return
2. Kvitel: little note, refers to a practice developed by Hasidic Judaism in which a Hasid (a follower of Hasidic Judaism) writes a note with a petitionary prayer and gives it to a Rebbe (Hasidic Jewish Rabbi) Return
3. N.K.V.D Soviet secret police Return
4. Judenrat: Jewish council Return
5. Admorim: Our masters and teachers (Rabbi honorific title) Return
6. Arbeitamt: office to register for work Return

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