Life was very hard for my family and me.  The Nazis invaded my city in June 1941.  They bombed the city and then rounded up all of the Jews.  The Germans opened up the dam of the nearby Dniester River and flooded the city.  As bombs fell over my hometown, we escaped to my grandfather’s house.  However the house was destroyed.  It seemed that half of the city was burning.  I lost many aunts, uncles, and cousins.  My cousin and I were the only people in my family, living in my hometown.  We survived the Nazi occupation for three years.  

 

Fortunately, my mother, sister, and brother survived because my sister’s husband was an officer in the Red Army.  My father insisted that my mother go with them because she could not walk very far.  I stayed with my father.  We were forced into a ghetto and had to do slave labor.  Most people died from disease because it was too crowded and there was no food.  

 

The Nazis periodically took people out of ghetto for slave labor and then shot them near the Bug River.  My father was killed this way during Passover, 1942.  After my father was killed, I had a bad case of typhus and almost died.  I recovered after dreaming of my father.  

 

I was sent to many labor camps until being liberated in the spring of 1944.  When I was liberated I was skin and bones.  I married one of the Romanian Jews.  After the war, we fled from Russia and stayed in a DP camp in Italy before coming to America in 1949.  

 

Later I found out my mother, sister, and brother survived the war.  Because of the Cold War, I could not visit my mother in Russia for danger of the Soviets not allowing me to leave because I left the Soviet Union “illegally.”  I have had many nightmares in my life because of the terrible experiences during the war.  I miss my mother, father, sister, and whole family very much.  They are all gone now.  I was able to raise two sons and a daughter with my husband here in America.  I have many grandchildren and great grandchildren.  

 

Even though life has been hard and at times cruel, I feel blessed that G-d takes care of us all.

My children should never experience what we went through.  Never Again. 

Education is very important.  My grandchildren have shared my video of my experiences during the war with their class.