Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Fred Kendal - May 25, 1983

Nearly Getting Caught by Germans

Did you get weapons at all while you were, uh...

They were some, some of the people that had weapons--where they got them, I don't know, but some did. But really there were no weapons until we got to the point where the Russian partisans were at. Then there were more and more weapons available but up until that point, there was very few weapons per se, you know. Now there was my grandfather's brother, which was in uh, well that's part of the family but it was my grandfather's brother and he had a big family and they were also in the woods--they survived. And they also lived on--not too far from grandfather's farm and of course my grandfather's brother was--they had three or four sons and daughters and so on. But they were not with us in the same group because we didn't--and when we were in that--in hiding, we tried--I guess they didn't want to have big groups because we have a big group then, then you are vulnerable so they split up in different--well, their family and some people that were with them were in the separate group--they were not too far from where we were but they were a separate group. Uh, while we were in the forest--in the woods in hiding uh, one morning we heard shooting and, and it was very, very early in the morning and in the forest, the echo is very, very loud. I mean, when you hear a shooting uh, five kilometers away, the echo could--it sounds like it could go--it's almost--almost on top of you.


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