Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Eugene Feldman - July 15, 1991

Did you meet any of the soldiers, any of the Russians?

Oh yeah. The Russian soldiers? In fact uh, I worked with them. I, I, I didn't get paid or anything, but I worked in a bakery with them. I remember that. They were, they were very nice to us--to me. They were very nice to me. I worked with them and uh, baked bread and they were sending it to the front line, I guess. They were very nice. I can't say they weren't. In, in ??? one time they came in, they were going to the front line and they stayed in our house. Just stay over night to sleep and get some sleep. And there was an air raid, German air raid. So we would come to them and say, "Hey, let's go." We had some ditches in the back down there in case of an air raid we were running to that hole there, a ditch. They said, "No, forget it. We gotta get some sleep. It doesn't matter where we get killed." They wouldn't, they wouldn't even go out. They said, "If we get killed here or there, what's the difference? And after awhile, we quit even going, going out because the air raids, were there constantly air raids.

Do you know what year this was? How old you were then?

Well, that would be...

Forty-four?

When did the Germans start retreating from uh, from uh, Poland or Russia?

Forty-three.

It would be forty...

Forty-three.

three?

Stalingrad.

Forty...about '43 then. 'Cause we were the first one to run into the Russians there.

So you worked with them then.

I just worked, as a kid you know, working, helping 'em out, bringing water, whatever.

What about your mother and father?

I don't know. I don't know what they did.

Your cousin, was he still with you?

I don't know what they did for a living or they had to, to, or where we got food. I haven't got any idea.

And your cousin Osher, was he still with you?

I don't even remember what happened to Osher.

But he was in the woods with you.

Oh yeah. He must have been there with the p...oh, he joined the partisans, I think or something. I'm going to have to ask him. He keeps asking me questions. I'm going to have to start asking him.

So what happened next? The Russians kept moving and...

They, they stopped at uh, ??? that little town or, it's a big town too uh, you know. Like I say, the train didn't go any further. That was it. And we had, and they had the whole army there. The Russian army was there. They had a fort down there, I remember. And German planes would every night come and bomb the city, bomb the city. We stayed quite awhile down there. In fact, one time--and they, af...anti-aircraft would shoot at them. Never hit a goddamn plane. One day I could hear the airplane real heavy, like he's got a real heavy load flying over the city. And I could see him real low. Maybe five hundred feet--whatever, real low. Big one, four engine job. And everybody thought he's going to be you know, bombing again, you know. And hear the anti-aircraft start shooting and they hit 'em. They hit the airplane. You could see the airplane going down and felt, dropped and exploded. Everybody was happy, finally got a German airplane. Next day we get up, we find out that it's a Russian airplane. We shot down our own, our own airplane. It was so sad. You could--we walked around there, big hole that they made. You could find fingers and the arms from the pilot. All over, strewn all over the place. That was the shooting down finally of one plane, so they had to have our own plane. That's sad. That was very sad.