Albert Fein - February 19, 2005
Arriving at Kamenetz-Podolsk
Who, who is "they"?
The Hungarian.
Hungarians.
Yes. Gendarmerie. They said gold, watches, money--they says, "You, you don't, you don't need the money anyway. This is Hungarian money, you, you can't use it here." So they tried to take whatever--who suppressed something so he had it. Some people didn't have it and they give it away, you know. And we stay overnight around the church. Good it was not raining and so far. In the morning they tell us, "Go there to city, and you find yourself to live wherever you want," and they turned around and left. So we went to the city and we saw the city was bombed. There was a lot of empty, empty houses. There was no people in. So wherever we want we could settle down.
Did anybody think about running away?
Where?
Where--okay.
Where? There was no place to run. There was--later on, we uh, already find where to stay overnight, we need food. So we start to go in, you know, looking for food. Well, going in near little towns--there was all kind of villages, you know, we came to, to people and asked for food, you know, in, in small villages. And they was giving us potatoes, beans, corn, whatever, you know, they have. They didn't have much. Lot of places they would say the Russians took it away. Whatever they could get, that's what they ate and that's how we lived.
So you took over apartments in the city.
Yeah.
And were there any guards, military police, anybody there?
Later on, later on. When the--because the city where we are had a couple hundred people only. There was always more and more... Woman: You want sugar? Yeah? Okay.
...more people you know was filling in, so I met, met people already uh, my teacher, even, from the Hebrew school.
From Uzhorod.
From Uzhorod. He was Otto ???.
So what did you do there?
We was--we were doing, you know, cleaning, because after bombing there was always...
So you cleaned the rubble. F
Yeah.
[interruption in interview]
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn