Hello everyone.
I have a story to tell. In August 1939 my parents left Cz. and sailed to New York on the Staatendam, which was either torpedoed or scuttled on its return to Rotterdam. They had a transit visa to Canada, and were detained until they travelled. They crossed into Canada on August 27, one week before Canada declared war. They held an entrepreneur's visa - because they had promised to start a business and provide jobs. Their parents remained in Cz.
My mother's father, Max/Meir, wrote from Pedoulas, Cyprus in December of 1942. He had come down with serious heart desease. He wrote of massacres and a 10,000 death one in in Cz. He wrote that they were forced to move into the ghetto, and slept on the floor "like herrings". They had passage on the Struma (200,000 lei per person), but could not get exit visas in time. The day after they moved into the ghetto, the transports to Transnistria started. He wrote of the sweeps picking up Jews for transportation, which came by street. My father, I remember, told me that they "escaped" because, when he - my father - had worked in Cz, he travelled to Hungary as a Baptist, and the sweeps started from the Hungarian side - presumably using border crossing information. Once the transportations started to sort out, everyone had to appear before a Judenrat commission, to either be listed or exempted - industrialists, specialists, essential workers got the exemptions. His wife's brother, Sigmund, was on the Judenrat, and got him a work permit based on owning a business, an exemption from transportation. The grounds for exemption were, interestingly, not only business owner, but cultural councillor or living in mixed marriage (married to a Christian). In October (1941 ?) the Rumanians began to seize businesses, and around October 20, he found out that his factory was now owned by a certain Dr. Balceanu - "the one with the long beard". But luckily, he got a job working there - as did some other family members - thanks to Sigmund, who had secretly negotiated the terms of the seizure. Finally July (1942 ?) arrived and they booked passage. A few days later he was rounded up and taken to Maccabiplatz to assemble for transport, but was released in the evening - because he was on the list of ones to be "scratched" (I have the German original that was translated by Henry Wellisch, but I can't read the old writing to try to pick the German word that was used.). I presume he meant he was exempted from transportation.
My grandparents did sail - on the Vitorul - a coastal boat - that broke up in Constantinople harbour, and Max went into the water. They got emergency 30-day visas, but could not get visas for Cyprus right away, and Turkey only reluctantly extended the visas - two extensions. By December 1942 they were in Cyprus. Max died there in 1943 - at the time the third Jewish grave. My father's parents, who were with them, were able to fly to Beirut and then to Palestine (I have the passports). I don't know how, but Max's widow, Regina/Rachel also got to Palestine. My mother's sister who had married and moved to Bucharest, made it overland to Palestine with her husband. By 1951 they were all in Toronto, together with my mother's brother, Edward (frenchified to Edouard), who had gone to France to become a doctor, and who married a French Catholic nurse - who had carried the seal of the Free French Government in Exile in Occupied France. My father told me, though, that it was only when Rommel was defeated at El Alamein in 1943, and the tide of the war had turned, that he felt he had run far enough.
Rehards to All.
Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-121548217-78183283_at_list.cornell.edu [mailto:bounce-121548217-78183283_at_list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Miriam Taylor
Sent: May-21-17 11:41 AM
To: Maurice Linker
Cc: Czernowitz Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] 1941 deportation selection method
I believe that there was not one particular selection method, but rather a number of them.
For example; My parents and I were in the ghetto when a rumor came to my father's attention.
the rumor was that sickly people would not be deported. My mother, when a teenager had had pneumonia.
Because of this she had calcified spots on her lungs. So my father urged my mother to go to the doctor thinking that the doctor would give her a certificate that she was ill and not fit to be deported.
What he gave her, is a piece of paper on which he wrote "bolnav" ( "sick" in Romanian).
He also wrote down the address in the ghetto at which we lived - Str.
Prezan #15
I still have the piece of paper.
That evening two soldiers came to the apartment in which we lived, they had come to deport the Reifer family.
Luckily my mother was able to convince them that she did not know anyone by that name, She claimed that our name was Salomon (my father's first name) and the reason for her not having any documents, was that my father had gone to obtain his Popovici authorization, which on that day was given to people whose names started with the letter R or S.
I think that when the deportations resumed on June 7, 1942 and in July of that year, soldiers searched all buildings in a given street and picked for deportation anyone who did not have the new Calotescu authorization to remain in Czernowitz.
Mimi
On May 20, 2017, at 8:11 PM, Maurice Linker wrote:
> Hi All
> I want to find out how the people were selected for transportation
> From what I remember? the gendarmes came in the middle of the night to
> a selected street and gave the Jewish people a short time to collect
> some belongings before they took them to the trains or gathering
> point?
> Please correct my memory I and my family lived in Landhauss Strasse
> with the Horniks my uncle Abraham and Aunt Marie and Daughter Lottie
> We stayed behind in Czernowitz
>
> Sent from my iPad
> Maurice Linker
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Received on 2017-06-01 13:06:06