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

Yet another typical moving Czernowitzer story. We have suffered in so many
ways and have gone from one agony to another not being given time to
recover, from the previous one.

I had a very dear friend, Edi Werber, died 23years ago,- I know the exact
year because he looked after my daughter's pregnancy but told her he'll not
be there for the birth, he'll die beforehand and so it was-. He was
recruited in the Cz. and fought from Stalingrad to Berlin was major in the
Red Army, was granted a scholarship by the Red Army studied in Timisoara
married +2 and was our G.P. in Israel to the day he died.
No one but we who correspond here can understand how our peaceful youth and
lives had been forced to change during that war. Abraham, your paths might
have crossed somewhere sometimes?

Regards to one and all, anny

On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 9:16 PM, Abraham Kogan <akogan_at_netvision.net.il>wrote:

> Dear friends,
> Mordecai's story is almost identical to mine. I will never forget the
> ordeal that I had to undergo to avoid the draft to the Red Army. I don't
> want to elaborate, it was really terrible.
> Regards to all my fellow Czernowitzers.
> Abraham K.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bounce-98067814-3499314_at_list.cornell.edu
> [mailto:bounce-98067814-3499314_at_list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Jerome
> Schatten
> Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2013 6:11 PM
> To: czernowitz-L
> Cc: HARDY BREIER; Iris June; lapidotm_at_inter.net.il
> Subject: [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).
>
>
>
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Received on 2013-06-12 08:13:20