[Cz-L] Re: Force labour 1941- 1944

I remember I was 11 when the Roumanians - German forces occupied Czernowitz. It would have been in July
there was after the slaughter in the Judenviertel after the corpses have been cleared the then army and civilian authorities took Geisel( hostages) to repair the bridge over the Prut my father Mendel Weisinger and others mainly business men were herded to that area. The work was arduous these people never had a hand on an shovel let alone bridgework many drowned, some beaten to death and at the end every 10th man was shot. On return home they looked like ghosts, fear and terror in their eyes. The mass graves are in the vicinity of the bridge.

My brothers Joseph and Paul were sent to a stone quarry with a lot of other remaining young men. I am not sure but it may have been called Califat where they were kept until the close arrival of the Russians.Again the authorities tried to blow up that quarry with the the slave labour in it. The Russians were to close so they the fled.

The Russians were not better as some of you know half the Ringplatz was burned down and cleared during the Roumanian period but wanted to make it into the Krasnaya Ploshchad they had in mind and I remember the English Garden outside the Jewish Kulturhaus and where there is the Kobilianky Theater again households had to provide one member for labour.So the Jews of Czernowitz learned the hard way to clear the debris and work the soil.

Also if some of you remember the unflinching memory of the Russians who did not manage to deport many Jews to Siberia in 1940 launched another raid rounding up many in the middle of the night,locking them the new established militia(private homes) again my father and others were deportet in inhuman conditions to Siberia (Swerdlowsk,Cheliabinsk and other places. Czernowitzer Jews realy understood the meaning of" from the frying pan into the fire) 
                                           yours Fred.Weisinger

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Received on 2009-10-01 22:15:02