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Manya Auster Feldman - August 11, 1998

The Kovpaks?

Yeah. Otriad is the group, its in Russian. The Kovpa. . . theywere at, at that time when we joined them, they must have been already likethree thousand people—Yeah! So they came and my father said, "Now that's,that's my redemption. I am going—whatever will happen, I don't care.I'll, I'll, I'll get killed but I'll kill somebody too, I'll kill some Germanstoo." So the four of us joined the partisan—it wasn't, it I, I, say itin one word we joined. We had to march a whole night, we had a herd of cattlethat we were chasing, they needed food, the partisans. So we were chasinga herd of cattle to the uh, headquarters of the partisans where they stat.. . where they were stationed. And and we had an encounter with Germans. Theystarted—yeah we had a fight so they, they took away our cattle and weescaped. And we came into the, to the Kovpak group.

Your father had a gun now?

No, now we came into—my, my father, my father couldn't handlea gun he, he didn't have his uh, but we came in and right away they gave usuh, weapons. But my sister and I not. They—we were working in the um,in the domestic area, you know the—we cooked food, washed the partisan'sclothes. They, they grew to five thousand people. Their object was not tocapture territory, they were stationed in, in—they were marching—they,they had uh, um, commands of when to move or when to stay you know they had—allthis was uh, organized very well. There were five battalions, each battalionhad a hundred uh, had a thousand people. And each thousand people had a leader.And the leader got uh, commands from the headquarters of the part. . . ofthat, that group. "Tonight we're staying in the forest." We're staying. Howlong we don't know. Then when the Germans attacked us we had to move. So wewere on the move we, we joined in November and November, December, January,February and March, this is when I, I got s. . . contantly on the move. Sometimestwo days in one place. They also occupied simultaneously two, three villagesin one area. And and they, the, the inhabitants of the villages had nothingto say, because this was a regular army like. . .

This is five—so now we're talking five thousand people.

Right and they—so, so what was their job? They were doingall kind of uh, uh, diversified work. They were um, dynamiting bridges Theywere um, doing ambushes on, on uh, convoys of Germans that were travelingfrom city to city. And they were killing them and taking away their, theirweapons. Or, they were, they were uh, they reached a little town where theyhad they, they, reached a little toen where the head. . . they, they reachedthe headquarters where the Germans were stationed, they killed them and tookaway all their food and brought them into the forest.

And you were with them?

Yeah we were with them. Now. . .