Eugene Feldman - July 15, 1991
Partisans
Polish?
Polish, Jews, a lot of 'em Jews. In fact, I have an uncle from my mother's, from my mother's side. He, he died in Israel. He was a partisan, a hero. He, he was a commander of a group of partisans and they would blow up, God knows how many trains he blew up.
Gold star.
In fact he got a gold star from the Russians.
Do you remember his name?
Oh God.
It wasn't ??? , was it?
He died from a heart attack, young too. Yitzhak, his first name is Yitzhak. But I don't remember my mother, my stepmother's second name. Oshansky. Yeah, he went to Israel right after the war and he died there from a heart attack.
And he led a group of...
He was the hero.
mixed partisans.
Oh yes. He was the real hero. He blew up a lot of trains. He was at that age where he could do it. He was old enough to be a partisan. And uh, the Russians gave him a medal for it too.
So you made contact with these partisans.
Oh yeah.
How did you do that?
All I know, I lived there in a house, in somebody's ho...with, with another family. The people that owned the house, I guess, we lived with them. I guess the partisans told them you gotta keep those people here you know.
In ???,
In ??? right, a village. Except it was a larger village, I, I remember it was a long, long village, houses on each side--not real close to one another but a lot of houses and it's all occupied by partisans. And the villagers had to keep the Jews there or other people in there with the families. So we stayed with those people in that house, we lived in their house.
These were Poles?
For how...
Polish people?
No, there's no Po...that's not Poland, it's White Russia.
White Russia. But they're White Russians?
White Russians, yeah. They speak White Russian. Well you know, it's like
Ukrainian.
Polish or Russian. More like Russian, I think. I don't even remember it. It's an accent like. Uh, and we stayed there for quite awhile until the tide turned. I mean, there's no way--the, the Germans didn't bother us. They were, they were not willing to sacrifice an army to go get us outta there. So what happened, when the tide turned and the Germans starting retreating. So what happened, they retreated right through where we were. So we had to get lost. So the partisans, I guess, they knew that the Germans--what they gonna do? So they started... W...w...that was wintertime. So we all, the partisans and all the families and all, all of us, the Jewish people behind 'em. Some of 'em with various horses and, and wagons went through the ice, retreating. Uh, getting out of the way of the Germans. I remember where we lived in their house, there was a, a boy my age and he says to me--shows you the, how they hate the Jews--he says, "You better go because the Germans are coming. They gonna kill you." I said, Yeah, well maybe." I said, "Don't be so sure that you're going to get away so easily." Anyway--I got a kick out of it--they, they killed 'em all and de...and burned the whole village to the ground. Good for them. And we got away. Here he was sure they're not going to bother him. So what happened, like I said, they--we retreated. We kept going and going the whole night we were walking on the ice. There were some, the horses in the buggies w...would break through the ice and they would scream and the partisans were shooting in the air, they didn't want us to follow them, I guess. But we just continued going, what are we gonna to do? The Germans right behind us.
So the partisans didn't want you to follow them?
No, because they're an army. They don't want, I guess, kids and families. Old people and ca...but everybody, they didn't know where to go, so they had to follow the... And meanwhile the Germans came and destroyed that village. That's what ah, ah they told me. Well, that's what they always did. Whenever there's partisans they would destroy the whole village. And that's good for them. They were Jew haters anyway. So that's where we wound up uh, in a, ???. See, the Russians were there already. They freed it. They freed that section of that area. So we kept going, going, going 'til we came to the Russians.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn