Manya Auster Feldman - August 11, 1998
Leaves Home
So you set out for a displaced persons camp.
Well, at first I set out for Poland. We couldn't get into Germany. Don't forget. It was a border. There was Poland. There was Poland. So we set out to Poland. And we came to Stettin. Stettin is on the uh, German-Polish border. And uh, at that time, was how do you cross the border? So they had already black marketeering groups that were uh, hiring trucks and, and um, bribing the guards, bribing the, the guards on the, on the border--border and transporting Jews from Poland into Germany. That's how I came into Berlin. And in Berlin there were three displaced persons camps. Each camp--two camps were about 3,000. And I lived in a small camp, about 200.
Under which, which jurisdiction?
I lived in the, the camp of the 200 was in the French. You know, Berlin was divided into four. So two were in the American zone and I was in the French, in the French zone. And there was the Russian, the Russian, we were afraid of the Russians.
Well, well how did you feel about the Russians?
I, I have a sentiment for the Russians. When I think back, when everybody abandoned us, nobody wanted us, the Russians put out trains and they said, you come to us. You come to us and we'll, and we'll live together. I'll never forget that this is true. That was in 1941 when the war started. Nobody wanted us. And the, and the Jews that, that um, that um, evacuated into deep Russia, they survived. That's a plain uh, fact.
And they were the partisans?
Pardon me?
And they were the Russian partisans?
And they were the Russian partisans, yes.
Some of them.
Some of them. A lot of them were killed, a lot. By the thousands. There--it was an exceptionally good organization, the partisans. It was an excellent organization. You know, it's, it's, it's a--it's a wrong comparison, but fight terrorists they're--partisans were terrorists...
Hm.
...for the--you know, for the Germans, they were terrorists. It's hard to fight terrorists in the background. And that's where the partisans were. They were--they, they really were a hindrance to the German Front.
Have you--did you keep in touch with any of these people?
Yes. I, I have friends in Israel. I have friends in uh, Chicago and in Cleveland. And we come together in the wintertime to Florida. We sit and we reminisce about the times--the, the ones that I was in the forest with.
But none of the Russian partisans, you keep in touch with...
No.
...just the Jewish partisans.
No, none of the Russian partisans.
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