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My parents came from villages near Ivye. As a young, unmarried man, my father, Zelik Federman, lived at a nearby estate, Krasovshtsizne, where he held the lease for the farm of the porets [nobleman], Letunke, and manufactured Dutch cheese. After he was married, he settled in Ivye. He was murdered, along with the entire Jewish community, at the hands of Hitler's death squads, may their names be wiped out.

I was born in the small town of Ivye, where I studied in the Hebrew elementary school. I was for a time a member of Hashomer Hatzair [“The Youth Guard,” a Socialist-Zionist organization] and even belonged to the leadership. After my marriage, we earned a modest living with a small fabric store. But the quiet times did not last long. The Christians became infected with the spirit of Hitlerism and said openly that they were waiting for the day when they would get their revenge against the Jews. They were already dividing up the Jewish possessions, and each one picked out a house that he would take over, when the long awaited day arrived. We felt as if a great storm was about to engulf the world.

On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland and conquered it in a matter of weeks. Under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact [between Germany and the Soviet Union], which divided up Poland, our area became part of Soviet White Russia. On September 18, 1939, the Russian army entered Ivye. Despite the fact that the oppressive Soviet regime caused a great disruption in our way of life, it nevertheless staved off Hitler's reign of death for a year and a half. Private businesses were nationalized, and everyone became an employee of the state. Those who received a Soviet passport identifying them as “bourgeois” did not get work and lived under the threat of deportation to “the white bears,” to Siberia. [“White bears” is a pun in Yiddish, since it is pronounced “vayse bern,” which sounds like “vays Siber”.] But despite everything, we managed somehow to live under the Soviet regime and hoped that the war would spare us.

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The German attack on Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941, struck us out of the blue, like thunder on a clear day. A few days later (the end of June, 1941), the German army occupied Ivye. For us Jews, there began a horrific reign of continual murder, robbery, bullying and insults. We were helpless before humiliation and mockery from our Christian neighbors.

Six weeks after they invaded (Tishabov 1941), the Germans carried out the first slaughter, which became known as “the slaughter of the intellectuals.” At the selection of the men at the market place, they sent to their deaths merchants, shopkeepers, and primarily the religious and secular intellectuals. 220 men were loaded onto trucks and driven to a place near Stanievitsh, where they were shot. (Among them was my husband.) For months, we widows did

not want to believe that our husbands were lying in a grave several miles from the town.

Instead, we believed the rumors that they had been sent to forced labor. Only later did we become convinced of the sad truth.

It was a bad sign when the Jews from the surrounding small towns (Lipnishok, Trab) and villages were forced into Ivye, in the fall of 1941. We crowded together, suffered together, and waited for better times. The oppressive decrees, robberies and murders of individual Jews did not cease and the mood of panic did not subside. We constantly heard appalling news from nearby towns about small and large murder actions. We felt that a horrible catastrophe was approaching.

It was right after Peysakh (May 8, 1942). I woke up in the morning and saw that we were surrounded by German soldiers and police. We were not allowed to go outside. The Germans called this “shpere.” They kept us shut up in our houses for four days. On the fourth day (May 12, 1942), at dawn, everyone was driven out of their houses to the market place. There we sat, in family groupings, on our knees, and waited in fear for orders from the police and gendarmes [civil police] who surrounded us in a deep cordon. Later we were sent in groups to Bernardiner Street.

Near Shishke's house stood the murderers' selection committee. They began to sort us out. “Right” or “left” meant you would live, and “straight ahead” meant you would die, sent to the graves near Stanievitsh, which the Jews had had to dig by themselves the day before (May 11, 1942). I, my father, my child --whom I was holding in my arms--, and my [female] cousin were sent “straight ahead” – i.e., directly to death. At that point, I called out, “Let's run away. Better to be struck down on the road than to go to the graves.” But no one answered me. They were frozen in fear!

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With my child in my arms, I ran between two policemen, into an empty house. I hid under a bed, trembling in fear, thinking that soon I would be killed. But a miracle happened; no one pursued me. After lying there an hour, I dared to go out into the courtyard. I saw in the distance the people who had been chosen to live. I saw how the Germans were searching and taking everything they found, and how they were recording the names of those who remained alive. I wanted to go over to them and be recorded as one of the living, but they noticed me at once, and sent over a policeman who pointed his rifle at me.

I immediately ran into an outhouse and locked myself in. Holding my breath, I peered through the cracks, to see what would happen. The policeman went past the outhouse, searched for me in the neighboring houses and courtyards, and then went away. I sat there in the outhouse until it became very dark outside. I wanted to leave, but where should I go? I didn't know if they had taken away the people who remained alive, or had they stayed in Ivye? What should I do? At that point, I envied the Jews who were already dead. I decided to go into a nearby stable, where a goat was bleating, and there I spent the night.

The next morning, I heard people speaking Yiddish and was of course overjoyed. Through the cracks, I called to some of them by name, and asked them how I could join up with the Jews who remained alive. They advised me to keep quiet, and promised me to come back a little later and take me to the ghetto. These were Jews who had collected the bodies of those who had been shot all along Bernardiner Street on the way to the graves. A couple of hours later they came to get me and I went with them to the ghetto.

There I saw for the first time the enormity of the catastrophe. Out of more than 4000 Jews before the slaughter, there remained about 1200-1300. The grief, the lamentation, the despair in the ghetto was indescribable. Everyone had lost their family. We went about disoriented and in turmoil. Everyone was searching – perhaps someone else from their family was left, perhaps someone would come out of a hiding place somewhere? But it was in vain.

I went to the Judenrat [council of Jews who ran the ghetto] to have them register me among the living. I gave them some fabric and a couple of suits of clothing and they registered me. Life in the ghetto was horrible. We knew that our fate would be the same as those who had been sent to Stanievitsh. The young people began to prepare to join the partisans in the forest. I also

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began to think that that was the only way to save myself. But what would I do with my little child? Where could I leave her?

I began to negotiate with Christians to whom I could entrust the child. Finally I found a Christian who lived on a farm in the woods. He had 9 children and I thought that my child would blend in with the others and in that way perhaps survive the war. I gave him fabric, gold and money to hide her. He kept her for just a week and then brought her back to the ghetto. He told me that she hadn't stopped crying and he was afraid to keep her. Of course, he kept the valuable things I had given him. I then made a firm decision never again to part from my child. Whatever happened to me would happen to her.

People began to say that the ghetto would soon be liquidated and that Ivye would become Judenfrei [free of Jews]. I tried to persuade my uncle, my Aunt Rokhl and her child, that we should all leave, go stay with a Christian, or in the forest, not far from the village of Dud. where they had lived until the war. [Dud is 6 kilometers, a little less than 4 miles, from Ivye.] But my uncle didn't want to hear of it. He said that the Christians themselves would kill us.

But then came the decisive day. They told us that tomorrow the ghetto would be surrounded and everyone would be taken to Borisov. I again began urging my aunt Rokhl the Duderin [woman from Dud] to escape from the ghetto. We took what we could and at midnight, along with our children, we left the ghetto, slipping through the [barbed] wire. A few hours later, the ghetto was surrounded. Everyone was put into waiting wagons. This was in January, 1943. It was very cold. We could hear the screams and weeping of the children from the stable outside the ghetto where we remained in hiding the entire day.

When it got dark, we went to a keyder [I can't find a definition for this word] and asked him to lead us through the woods to the village of Dud. He dressed us in non-Jewish clothing and for a large sum of money he led us to a place not far from the village, and left us in the middle of the forest. The snow was deep and it was hard to take a step. We entered the house of a Christian whom we didn't know. He gave us something to eat and ordered us to leave. We didn't know where to go. We sank deep into the snow, which reached above our knees. Helpless, we kept falling into the snow, and helped each other to get back on our feet. My child begged me: “Mama, let's go back to the Germans. Let them shoot us, and put an end to our troubles.”

I felt that my strength was about to give out. I was carrying a sack full of things on my back. I emptied it and put my child in the sack. She was frozen and half dead.

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We walked a bit with the sack on my back in deep snow, until I was totally exhausted and had to sit down in the snow to rest. We prayed to God for the night to come. We approached a farmhouse in the woods. We knocked on the door and asked to stay the night. The Christian woman let us come in, served us food, and said that we could stay there overnight, but that we had to leave early the next morning. We were of course very happy. We lay down on the floor, our limbs numb, frozen and soaked, and fell asleep at once.

Suddenly , her husband came home. It was midnight. He began telling us, “Do you know what people do to you Jews? They take everything you own, and turn you over to the Germans.” My aunt said to me, “Quick, let's get dressed and get out of here, because our lives are in danger.” We quickly woke the children and half-dead, we left the warm house.

The freezing cold cruelly embraced us. We walked through the snow-covered forest. It began to grow light. In despair, we sat down on a stone near a bush, not far from another farmhouse. We saw an old Christian woman going to get water. My aunt knew her and knew that she was a good person and a pious Christian. She told me, “We'll stay out here during the day and when night falls, we'll go to her house; maybe she'll agree to hide us.”

We kept moving our hands and feet to keep from freezing. Impatiently we counted the hours until evening. Finally, when it became a little dark, we snuck up quietly to the little house and knocked on the door. Frightened, the Christian woman opened the door and immediately crossed herself. “Oh, God! How awful you look. Come right in and climb up on the oven to warm up. I'll get you something to eat.”

She quickly brought us baked potatoes and we gobbled them up. She told us to take off our clothes and sleep on the oven. “In the morning,” she said, “you'll go up into the attic and spend the day there in the hay. I'm afraid to keep you in the house during the day, because the Germans come to the village very often to get chickens and eggs.” At hearing her words, we were very happy. I told my aunt, “God has taken pity on our children. Perhaps we'll live through the war here”

Our hopes were in fact fulfilled. The Christian woman

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hid us for an entire year and a half, from January 1943 to July, 1944. She was like a dear mother to us. I had money to support us for just a half year. I would give her money and she would buy food for us. The rest of the time, a whole year, she provided our food. As poor as she was, she shared her last bit of food with us. There is no pen, no words to describe this fine soul, this woman name Katerina. She put her own life in danger, as well as the lives of her husband and four children, in order to save four Jewish lives.

She erected a wall in the attic, and we lived behind the wall. When you entered the attic, you couldn't detect it. Just one board opened into the house, through which we were given our food, and our waste was taken out. She herself did everything, because we were afraid to go out because of the Germans, who circulated in that area. She also made a hiding place in the house, behind the oven. In that small, cramped space we could only sit one on top of the other. We would run in there from time to time, when the Germans would surround the house and conduct a search. In this manner we passed one and a half years, in constant mortal fear. More than once, we despaired of surviving the war and prayed that death would come soon and release us from our troubles.

Sitting there in despair, we began to hear that the Germans were under attack and were beginning to retreat. Our joy was of course great and there began to glow in me a spark of hope, that perhaps we would survive the war. Despite the fact that no one else in our families was alive, the will to live was strong. We wanted to see the downfall of our murderers and to get revenge.

And then came the great day of which we had so dreamed in hiding. The Christian woman ran up to the attic and said that he Russians had already entered our town, Ivye. But she nevertheless advised us not to come out of hiding. She went to Ivye and came back with the bad news that she hadn't found any Jews there. Several days later, she returned to Ivye, and this time she found several Jews there. She said to us, “Now you can come out.”

One day at the beginning of July, 1944, we left our hiding place in the morning. We went fearfully through the forest. Still afraid of people, we spoke quietly among ourselves, as we had become used to in the last years. Fear hadn't yet left us. We came to Ivye. The town was deserted. We encountered a few Jews, most of whom had survived

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in the partisan-controlled forest. We were very happy that we had found these few of our Ivye Jews.

I doubt whether I have succeeded in portraying even a small part of my horrific experiences; after all, I am not a writer. I only ask that this be published so that I, my children, and everyone else may read it, so that we never forget and never forgive the murderers of our people.

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