[Cz-L] Ghetto and Deportation

Erev Yom Kippur,

The protracted discussions regarding "the number of Jews saved by the
actions of Mayor Popovici" omitted an important fact: many Jews remaining in
Czernowitz succeeded (with great difficulties) in sending money to
relatives and friends in Transnistria, thus saving perhaps thousands from
starvation and death. Indirectly, these Jews were also saved by TP.

A personal reminiscence from those days, sixty-seven years ago:

A few days after the deportations from Czernowitz started, I found myself in
a cattle car on a railroad siding below the Jewish Hospital with my two
uncles and their families, including the elderly in-laws of one uncle. We
had walked to the train voluntarily, the popular wisdom being that the
chances of finding a place to live in Transnistria were better if you left
sooner. We had just made ourselves "comfortable" in the car, when two of my
teen-age cousins arrived and told us that the news are rapidly spreading
that authorizations will be issued to various groups and that we should get
off the train and return to the ghetto. My uncle's father-in-law refused,
because the Boyaner Rebbe had left a few days earlier and not following him
was inconceivable for a loyal chassid. (This gentleman was not a primitive
shtetl Jew, he had been the eastcentral European representative of a major
Canadian shipping company.) Of course, my uncle would not leave his elderly
in-laws and my other uncle would not part from his brother. Since I was only
fourteen, my cousins grabbed my rucksack and my accordion and pulled me out,
the rest of my relatives left, some never to return...

Alfred (Fred) Schneider
Professor Emeritus
Georgia Tech and MIT
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Received on 2008-10-08 20:48:56