The memories – how do they manage to force us to go experience, again and again, what we have forgotten long ago, and how we can't escape the memories of the horror and the scars are etched into us forever.
I was born on August 25 1925, in Odessa.
It was June 1941, in Odessa, grade 7 summer vacation. The Germans began massive occupations and we decided to quickly run away from the city and to move to Sertivi. We went through Dnepropetrovsk, but the Germans got there before us and we found ourselves under German occupation.
The local inhabitants helped us hide, but the Jews who hid were found and shot.
The Germans dug an enormous pit in the main square of the city, gathered all the Jews and shot them. To this day I can remember the sound of the bullets mixed with the agonizing screams. Luckily, my two brothers and I survived. The Germans thought we were Ukrainians and gave us temporary IDs.
I was taken to care for small children and my brothers were taken to an orphanage. I never saw them again.
At night we waited in trepidation for the German raids when they searched for Jews, and it continued until the summer of 1943.
Eventually I was turned in to the Nazis and was sent to the Breslau concentration camp in Germany. They made us work like slaves. As a child I did hard labor 17 hours a day, almost without food. I was abused by the Germans and they sent me from camp to camp. I managed to escape from one of the camps a few days before the end of the war. I was recaptured, this time by the Russians and I was sent to a forced labor camp in Russia. I thought I had reached a safe refuge, but I was wrong, and I was again sent from camp to camp.
In August 1945 I was sent home to my hometown of Odessa. Only a few members of my family survived, including my mother. She was 43, her hair had turned white, and our home had been burned down.
It took many years before we could resume a normal life, but sometimes I wake up at night from the barking of dogs and the sound of Germans. I shiver with fear and then I realize that it is only a nightmare.
