Dr. G. Waldhorn
Hi everybody!
I have been a member of your group for just a few months and I so would
like to introduce myself briefly and ask some questions to those who
may
have the answers.
I am a dentist and I have been living in Switzerland since 1972.
I was born in Czernowitz in December 1937 and deported together with my
parents to Transnistria in 1941. We were comparatively lucky.
First we got
to ATAKI and then to a village called DEREBZIN, where we survived
because my
father’s skills as a dentist were badly needed. . In fact most
Jews there
were lucky because the director of the local sugar factory was a kind
of Shindler, giving work to Jews. We were liberated by the Soviet army
in 1944,
returned to Cz. and then my father worked as a dentist in a
neighbouring village called MILI for a while.
But before the liberation a horrible thing
happened to the Jews: the so called DOBROWOLZES ( I do not know
how to
spell the word properly) - Soviet soldiers who fought together with the
Germans
against their own brothers - had to flee from the advancing Soviets and
passed our village where they stayed for a few days. In one night
they killed about half of the Jews in the village. Our family of 3
persons
were lucky again. The Rumanian authorities protected us: every night
they
took us to the municipality, so the Russians were not able to kill the
rest of
the survivors.
So after the liberation, we went back to Cz. but as our own
apartment was occupied by a Russian officer we left for MILI.
Later we returned to Cz, where we lived for a short time before we left
for Rumania on our way to Palestine. Unfortunately the communist
Rumanians
kept us there. They did not allow the Alia to go to Palestine till 1961
-
after Israel had become 1948 an independent State.
I started my medical
studies in CLUJ in 1956 and submitted with my parents for departure to
Israel
again in 1959 so I had my name removed from the university register and
had to
wait until May 1961 to go with my parents to Israel, where I continued
my
studies and graduated as a dentist in 1965. I had to go to the army,
where I
worked as an army dentist and anaesthetist at the hospital for
the next
3 years.
I married my present wife LEA in 1966 and our first son ADAM was born
in Eilat in 1967 before the 6-day-war. At the end of 1971 we came
to Switzerland. We then planned to stay here for 3 years, but
eventually we settled here. In 1975 I opened my own dental office in
Flüelen,
Kanton Uri, in the centre of Switzerland. When our second son
THEODOR (born
1973 in Basel) graduated as a dentist in 1978, we moved to
another new
big dental office in Flüelen, where we have been working as
partners ever
since. If somebody is interested, we can be seen under
www.dr-waldhorn.ch <http://www.dr-waldhorn.ch/> . We are
proud to have a very big
sophisticated modern office. Finally I do not want to forget to mention
that our
daughter DENISE was born here in the Kanton Uri in 1979.
Now to my questions (I hope that some of you may have an answer):
1. Who knew my parents WALDHORN? My grandfather Waldhorn
Jacob was a well-known personality in Cz and died in 1934 (both my
parents
Maximilian and Sara Waldhorn died in 1984).
2. Who can give me some information about the village of DEREBZIN
in Transnistria? Maybe someone of our group or their relatives were
also
there?
3. Who knows something about these DOBROWOLZES? Were these the
solders of General Wlassov? Does anyone in our group have victims who
suffered
from the Dobrowolzes?
4. Does anybody know the village of MILI, (cannot be far from
Cz., less far than Wijnitz)?
5. Our apartment was in the MASARIK GASSE NR. 8, a side street of the
bigger street called Stefan cel Mare. Does anyone know where it
is?
If anyone of the group could answer one or more of these questions, I
would be very grateful.
I am looking forward to seeing (at least some of) you in May,
Gerhard