Eugene Feldman - July 15, 1991
Hiding From Germans II
So you and your mother went with your cousin into the attic.
That's it, the three of us went there. And the other three, I don't know what happened. Why they didn't go up with us, I don't know. I hope I remember asking him that. I keep wri...I keep writing him, I never ask him. I never ask him in a letter either.
What happened that night?
That night, like I said, uh, when the--all the Germans left that camp. I guess they were scared to stay in the camp in case some Jews survived and they going to kill 'em.
All the Jews.
And mostly it's not Germans though. You see, the ones that were downstairs they were not Germans.
Ukrainians.
Yes, White Russians, you know. I, I think there was only a few Germans around. When they--there was a guard, of course, walking the fence, from the ghetto fence. But it was only, I guess, one guard, with a dog. I could hear the dog bark. So when I could hear the dog bark way at the other end, that's when we went through the fence. And, of course, when we went, were maybe half a mile down already on the other side of the fence, we could hear shots. I, I assume a lot of people still survived the first night, you know. The first day I'm sure there must have been about five hundred people survived. And they were trying to go through the fence. And you could hear shots fired.
Do you remember when this was, what month?
Not the slightest idea.
Fall?
Oh yeah, it was warm. It would, would have to be fall or summer.
September maybe?
But it wasn't, it wasn't in the cold weather, no. Good thing for that I guess, 'cause I don't remember having any clothes or anything.
In September in 1940--'41 there was--'41 or '42-- there was a massacre in Stolin. They killed 7,000 Jews.
I haven't got any idea about it.
It may have been the same night. One night.
One night?
One night they killed 7,000 Jews in Stolin.
Well, that, we talk, that's probably what we're talking about. It's not, you don't call it a massacre.
Well, that's what they call it.
It's not a massacre. They just took all the Jews out to that ditch and just shot 'em all. To me a massacre is the you know, a bunch of people that go wild and they kill ev...you know, anybody they catch. That was a systematic killing. That's not a massacre. That's, that's the one we're talking about. Seven thousand? Well, that's how many Jews were in Stolin. With a, with a little few villages. Villages don't mean nothing. All the villages put together probably a thousand Jews or less.
So did you hear shots in the night?
Yeah. I imagine people tried to get, get out of the ghetto and they were shooting 'em.
What was it like in the attic?
Oh! That was kinda scary. That was scary. I was pretty well shaking. I, I was worried they will come up. I sort of by then knew that it's dangerous. But we didn't panic. You know, we were quiet. We didn't say anything. We didn't--you couldn't go to the bathroom so you went in your pants. That...
No one talked.
No. But you be...no, we used to talk. We talked between you know, with each other, but not in a lot, we knew when we can--we could see what's going on outside through a little hole. So if you didn't hear the, the Gen...the, the Gentiles they are coming in or... You knew you were safe enough to talk. Whatever it was there to say. We knew we had to leave that day. That's all we, we do, that night.
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