Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Eugene Feldman - July 15, 1991

When you were with the Partisans before, and you were just staying with them, right, was there any evidence of anti-Semitism among the Partisans? Did they threaten you?

They, they didn't really threaten us, but we knew we weren't, they weren't, really we weren't liked. Nobody, nobody, nobody in there, in Europe liked the Jews. I don't care what anybody says. You cannot find anybody that liked the Jews. They are taught not to like the Jews. They are all Catholics in Poland, especially in White Russia--Ukraine, they are Catholics. And whatever the priest tells them... I mean, they are very ignorant people. Now the cities might be a little bit different. I don't know anything about a city, the large cities. But I do know enough about the small villages that the priest decides everything. He is God.

While you were with them did you have any contact with any of the Partisans?

No.

You personally? Did your father?

I don't think so. Just the ones that were with them, fighting with them. They weren't even there, they were mostly in the woods. The partisans were not really in the village. I remember one partisan, I--he was in my, in our house with that woman that lived there because she was his girlfriend or something. But otherwise they are not in the, in the, they were not in the village. They were fighting the Germans.

So this was with the White Russian partisans.

That's the White Russian partisans.

And then you followed them and what happened next?

That, that's when we were liberated. We were, we walked right in the Russians uh, Russian army. We could see, the Russian army with, we could see 'em drive and they would wave to us. Keep going, they would say, you'll be free. And we were. We got a, we got to, what do, I think it's called ??? it's a town. That was the front line. That's where the front line was. We came right to the front line almost. That's where the tr...the last of the trains would stop. I remember there we lived in a house already. And uh, the train didn't go any further than that. They would bring all the soldiers to the ???. From there they had to walk to the front line, because we were right close to the front line.