Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Zivia Fischler - February 4, 2008

Lithuania.

BS: ... to uh, west Latvia-Lithuania.

ZF: No, no they didn't go yet to Lithuania. That's another story. We got to get it all in order to tell them. They had a-it was a-she, she-first of all she arrived-when she came across the border she had to walk through a, through a river. She walked through the, she walked through the river. She only had on clothes-she didn't have anything, everything was taken away from-and uh, there was a little village there and she wanted to get in so somebody-so she could get dry and get-and she found a Jewish man there and she took her in. He brought her to, he brought her to a railway station and he gave her money so she could uh, reach my father. The day that she arrived there-she arrived in ??? or she arrived in Warsaw.

BS: What?

ZF: He-they met on the train, they met on the train in Warsaw. He wanted-my father wanted her to get off, she said, "I'm not getting off the train." That was the day that the Germans started their march into Poland...

September 1st.

ZF: ...first of September. And he said, "I see all these army ??? this will probably be the last train that you can get out of here from this part." And she said, "No, you're coming with me and we are going on as far as we can get." And then they went on and on and on until eventually they came to Wilna and there the Russians marched in and when the Russians marched in-until the Russians marched in there was contact with England. You could-it was free. You could, you could write to England, you could phone to England and so forth and her sister sent her a permit for-a visa for Palestine.

BS: Certificate.

ZF: Certificate, what they called certificate. And the Russians were already there and she needed their permission to go with the train through Russia in order to reach Russia, Constantinople, uh, and uh, Lebanon, you know, to go to Palestine.

BS: It cost a lot of money this certificate. Had to pay-my aunt paid a thousand pounds sterling and that was a lot of money then, for each of them-for my mother and for my father so, uh...

ZF: And that the Russians let them through because some of the people who wants to go they just send them right to Siberia so it, it was question of luck and we were lucky, lucky family.

BS: We were really lucky.

ZF: And we met them after the war.

Where?

ZF: Here.

In Israel?

ZF: ???

Palestine.

ZF: Yes, Palestine. In the war we were not together. He was in a different place, I was in a different place.

BS: I was, I was-when, when, when it proved impossible to go to Palestine, they uh, they disbanded this hachsharah. Was really a hachsharah for Palestine, they disbanded it and the, the boys went home. Everyone went to some kind of family or-I went to, to London and started working. I worked in a, in a factory.