[Cz-L] Re: dates in czernowitz history -- long

[Attachment and message converted by moderator]

======================================================

Dear Hardy,

Just another old but now highly up-to-date (as of end of last week) quite surprising (the somewhat happy end of it) tragic tale, but so typical of the fates of Czernowitzers. Because it is really long, I am sending it as an attachment

Regards

Mordecai

Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:44:31 +0300
From:lapidotm_at_inter.net.il
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] Re: dates in czernowitz history.
In-reply-to: <000901ce665c$5cddfec0$0b01a8c0_at_breieronh17wl0>
To: HARDY BREIER<HARDY3_at_BEZEQINT.NET>
Cc:IrisJune11_at_aol.com,czernowitz-l_at_list.cornell.edu

For a change, a rather long tale that started in those horrible times,
but found last week a somewhat good, or shall I say consoling ending.

As I now learned from you, the Red Army reentered Czernowitz 29 March
1944. As soon as they got organized they ordered all men 18 and above
and possibly under 40 or 45 (this I do not recall exactly), to register
at a Red Army drafting office.

This created quite turmoil amongst the Jewish population. We had just
passed the horrible Romanian fascist occupation, with many survivors
just returned from Transnistria, and now immediately to be drafted into
the Red Army.

I recall that the youngsters were very eager to volunteer – they saw in
this a God-sent opportunity to take revenge from the Fascist and Nazi
oppressors of yesterday.

However. the older men, with families, were quite reluctant. But there
was a terrible alternative – if caught hiding - you would be executed as
a deserter. This did not prevent part of the fathers of families to try to:
a. either hide, or
b. because all documentation had been obliterated by the Romanians (so
we thought at the time) - to register at an older age so as to be exempt, or
c. to use the age old tool of bribing (provided you found the right
person in the drafting office’ and had the right connection to a Macher).

To take a personal attitude – my father, who was 43 at the time –
succeeded to get an exemption from the draft. I do not know whether he
had registered as older a few years, or used a bribe, or both, but the
fact is that he exited that enclosure - exempt.

Unfortunately, my uncle, who was 40 at the time, was unsuccessful. I
recall some conversations with my dad, who tried to persuade him to try
and get an exemption, but he refused to either report a greater age, or
to use a bribe and, to our consternation, he was drafted on 28 April,
i.e. just a month after liberation by the Red Army. I recall our
standing at the gates of the enclosure, waiting for him to come out, and
then receiving from a comrade of his a note that he had been drafted.
You can imagine how my mother’s sister, her 8 years old son, and all felt.

In the course of a year we had here and there a letter from him. My
father took now care of two families – ours and my aunt and my 8 year
old cousin, and of course the elderly father of the two sisters, my grandpa.

As fate has it, by the end of 1944 the YPA (Yiddische Plotkes Agentur as
we called it; in English for those who do not recall this - the Jewish
Rumors Agency) advised us that: those who were born originally in
Romania (i.e. as for instnace in South Bukovina, or Moldova) would be
given permission to repatriate.

At first, and remembering the Fascist days, everybody feared it was a
trick to get those who would come forward shipped to Siberia. But soon
YPA advised that this was Kosher (as a result, I suppose, of some
bribing and some political decision of the Soviets to please American
Jewry – remember – the war was still on, while being aware that they
were already taking over Romania gradually, in a surreptitious way).

Now, remember we had not documentation? So everybody claiming to have
been born in Romania had to bring one or two witnesses. Well, I do not
know how many hundreds of Romanians populated Suceava at that time, but
they were a tiny minority, because some thirty odd thousands of Jews
gave evidence on each other that they had been born in Suceava, and had
been brought to Czernowitz as a working force by the Romanians.

By end of April 1945 our turn came. I recall we could take with us some
belongings on a truck, that brought us to a place near the border, where
we saw on the one side similar trucks from Czernowitz - and on the other
a large group of horse drawn agricultural carts.

Between these was a row of tables, at which sat clerks who checked our
“repatriation” permits, and soldiers who checked our belongings for
valuables and other items that were confiscated. To our great relief,
after an hour or so, we were passed through. My father negotiated with a
cart driver the fee to Dorohoi (the nearest Romanian village), put my
grandpa, my little cousin and myself on the heap of belongings, and he
and mum and my aunt walked behind us. Soon our cart left them behind and
we were driven through the unending wood to Dorohoi. There we were
joined after some hours by my parents and aunt, and received a temporary
room in a house of a Jewish family.

As most of you who passed this way to freedom know, the Joint Jewish
Community of Romania distributed us, after a few days or a week or so,
to different cities in Romania, and our fate took us to Craiova, Oltenia.

I recall we arrived in Craiova on the day before the war officially
ended, i.e. 9th of May 1945. My aunt and cousin were by now relieved and
expected that my uncle would be soon released to Czernowitz, and would
find a way to “repatriate” as well, and join us in Craiova.

The weeks went by - and no communication from him. We were not yet
worried, because it was evident that in Czernowitz he could not find out
to where we had been transferred. But after several months the terrible
news reached us: a comrade of his, who had been released, and had
reached Romania, somehow found our address’ and advised my aunt that my
uncle had taken part in the dreadful murderous attack on the Reichstag
on the 1st of May (the Red Army troops did break into the Reichstag that
night), had told him under the rain of bullets and shrapnel that he felt
he will not survive this day, and that he should give his love to my
aunt and cousin.

This was quite a deathblow to them – she now widowed and my cousin an
orphan. My parents did what they could to console and keep up their
spirits, and although we had been provided by the Craiova community
rented rooms at different houses to live in, we saw each other almost
daily.

Father saw to it that both my cousin and I joined a Zionist youth
movement – Gordonia-Makabbi Hatsair, as it was called at the time.

Just a year and a half later the World Jewish Organization (I suppose
the Joint as well as the Jewish Agency) organized a “summer camp” in
Appeldoorn, the Netherlands and received permission from the Soviet
authorities to collect orphans and other children from Soviet occupied
countries in central and Eastern Europe, in one train, and bring them to
a summer vacation of two months, to recover from their sufferings during
the war. As some of you are aware of, this vacation extended over
one-and-a half years.

My father did everything possible to persuade my aunt to separate from
her only son, 10 years old at the time, in order to save him, and was
able to put him on that train, with support from the local Gordonia
leadership and the fact that he had lost his father in the war.

In September 47 I made Haapala on the Hagganah Ship “Medinat Hayehudim”.
I suppose the fact that my aunt had released my cousin months before,
enabled my father to persuade my mother to release me, to take the
chance with Haapala – this was quite risky at that piece of time because
the Exodus Maapilim had just been returned to Europe), and was caught
and exiled to Cyprus. My parents, together with my aunt, made Haapala 3
months later on one of the Pans.

I reached Israel 1st January 48, my parents and aunt on 1st May 48, and
my cousin joined us half a year later. He had suffered awfully during
the year and a half in Appeldoorn, as a double orphan, and now here he
still suffered because aunt remarried only a year and a half later, when
he finally had again a home, a good
stepfather, a stepsister, and a stepbrother. However he and I continued
to feel like brothers to each other and spent a lot of time together,
but he continued to feel the loss of his father, and in particular the
awareness that he would never know his grave and be able to pay his
respects to him at such a grave.

Tens of years passed, we married, had children and grandchildren, when
suddenly my cousin found a Testimonial Page at Yad Vashem, that had been
filled by someone in Czernowitz in the fifties and stated there that my
uncle had died on 1st May 1945 and was buried in Wuthenow, Potsdam.
There also were two numbers each followed by Cyryllic initials
transcribed in English as cd and cr. Although I read and understand a
little Russian, I could not make anything from these letters, neither
could some Russian colleagues whom I consulted.

I started to bombard various organizations in Germany, including Jewish,
I found on the internet, with requests to help me find my uncle’s grave
in Wuthenow, Potsdam. This was a bit far from the Reichstag, 60 km
North, but I had faith in the registry made in Czernowitz just several
years after his decease. It turned out that in 1945 Wuthenow was a
little village, close to Neu-Ruppin, but was now just a part of
Neu-Ruppin. I approached the local churches and the local municipal
authorities, that advised me that there were no graves of RedArmists in
the Wuthenow graveyard at the church, and that there was an official
graveyard of RedArmists in Neu-Ruppin into which all corpses of
Red-Armists that had been buried temporarily in April-May 1945 in the
neighbouring villages had been reburied, but no registration of my uncle.

While doing all this research I found that there was an organization,
started in the course of the DDR period that was responsible for
caretaking of the RedArmy Honour Graveyards and Memorials in Germany. I
located the Potsdamer branch and again understood that they could not
confirm any such name in the neu-Ruppin graveyard.

We had almost given up hope when I happened to lay my hands on Anthony
Beevor’s book – The Fall of Berlin 1945. I am an avid reader of history
books and, obviously, have read many many depicting different parts of
WW2. Near the end I reached the part describing the capture of the
Reichstag, and my eyes noted suddenly the two magic numbers I had seen
in the Testimonial Page of Yad Vashem some years ago – 380 and 171. This
time it was spelled out plainly: the 380th rifle regiment of the 171st
rifle division, as one of a couple of regiments that stormed the
Reichstag on 1st of May.

I looked again at that Testimonial page and lo – translated rifle into
Russian – stryelok, so I now had definite proof that my uncle had been
in the 380th rifle (infantry) regiment of the 171st rifle division of
the 3rd Shock Army of the 1st Bielorrussian front – sr in Russian is rr
in English and sd is rd. This made sense, in particular as we now
understood that – to the misfortune of my uncle – this was a renowned –
in Russia – WW2 regiment, because of their involvement in the capture of
the Reichstag.

I now approached again the above office in Potsdam – the name is
Brandenburgische Freundschaftsgesellschaft e.v., Arbeitskreis
“Sowietische Ehrenmale und Friedhoefe” – with the new information. This
time they started a detailed search and last week I received from them
some amazing documents, to support their statement that the registry at
Yad Vashem was mispelled: the original place of burial was
Wittenau-Berlin and not Wuthenow-Potsdam (which made more sense because
Wittenau is just a couple of kilometers Northwest of the Reichstag)

a. A copy of the letter of the commander of regiment 380 to the War
Commissar of Czernowitz, asking him to advise my aunt that her husband
had fought valiantly for the “Socialist Country”, had fallen
“heroically” on the 1st of mMy and had been given martial funeral
honours at the divisional burial ground in Wittenau Berlin. This letter
was sent to Czernowitz on 29 May – when we were already in Craiova, so
it never reached my aunt.

b. A page from the registry of the Divisional cemetery in Wittenau
Berlin, listing several RedArmists who had fallen on April 30th and May
1st, amongst them the name of my uncle with all details of the number of
grave and the date 2nd May.

c. An advice from the Berlin Municipality Senate-Directorate responsible
for City Development and Envinroment that the remains of my uncle, as
well as those of many other RedArmists, had been collected from the
neighboring divisional temporary cemeteries in 1948-1949, and had been
transferred to a central Cemetery of Honour and Memorial constructed in
nearby Pankow. His name is noted in the registry of the cemetery, but
his own particular grave is unknown, because this was a mass transfer.
Of the 13,000 RedArmists buried there only barely 20% have their graves
identified (mostly officers). The cemetery itself had been closed for a
year for renovation and will be opened officially on 14th August.

d. A letter from the Russian embassy, the department for Caretaking of
War-graves and Memorials, confirming that according to their archival
notes the historical research performed by the Director of the Potsdam
office is correct, and that my uncle is indeed recognized as buried in
that central cemetery of honour (there are many such honour cemeteries
all over the former East Germany).

You can imagine the excitement and exhilaration of my cousin, his family
and mine, to have finally located his father’s grave. After 68 years, to
see the original two documents of the regiment, and to be able to go
there soon and arrange for a Jewish Askara ceremony and a Kaddish near
the grave (of course still not knowing which is the particular spot).

He confessed to me a year ago that although he had visited Germany
before (I have not and will not) he never visited Berlin because he was
afraid he would step unknowingly on his father’s grave.

This is an amazing consoling end to such a tragic tale, and it was quite
miraculous not only to locate one of the 1.1 Million Red-Armists who
fought in Berlin, but to locate his graveyard. All thanks to a series of
unrelated incidents, that were luckily correlated as a result of my
photographic memory (recalling the vision of the two magic figures), of
the hundreds and hundreds of detective novels I have read (I possess a
rare collection of probably nearly all Agatha Christies, Edgar Wallaces,
Simon Templars, Maigrets, Earl Stanley Gardners etc.), and also to my
quite obnoxious trait of unwilling to take no for an answer. Well,
nearly 60 years of scientific research have naturally led to this trait,
which many of my colleagues greatly disapproved off (I confess I was
always the repulsive nudnik, never satisfied with an experiment that
failed, never accepting fate, always trying again and again to correct
it, and now - so happily - my cousin benefited of this).
.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This moderated discussion group is for information exchange on the subject of
 Czernowitz and Sadagora Jewish History and Genealogy. The opinions expressed
 in these posts are the opinions of the original poster only and not necessarily
 the opinions of the List Owner, the Webmaster or any other members
 or entities connected with this mailing list. The Czernowitz-L list has
 an associated web site at http://czernowitz.ehpes.com that includes a
 searchable archive of all messages posted to this list. As a result,
 Messages sent to the list are available to the general public within days
 of posting.

Please post in "Plain Text" if possible (help available at:
<http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/PlainText.html>).

To remove your address from this e-list follow the directions at:

<http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/elist/howto/user/leave.cfm>

To receive assistance for this e-list send an e-mail message to:
<owner-Czernowitz-L_at_list.cornell.edu>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on 2013-06-11 08:20:14