Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Fred Kendal - May 25, 1983

We were with them--with the partisans until almost--well, until the end of the war, until um, the Russians took over, came across that in it and one day the partisans--the able bodied persons whether they were Jews or Russians or whatever, were drafted into the force--were taken into the army like um, the Russian Army. Also the older people, like my grandfather, and the women and children and so on and so forth, they were sent back on the empty trucks that were going back to ??? in ??? but they came back. I remember days we were on trucks. Of course, the one I must--they were good to us when the army--when the regular army came in and liberated, they were really good to us. We had food and we had clothing. Funny incident that was--occurred many times--my brother was really young and he didn't have any sugar for all through this time and uh, when they gave him sugar--lumps of sugar, he spit it out. He didn't like the taste of it because he didn't--he hadn't tasted it before. When we--these trucks that carried us to ??? and, of course, we really didn't know exactly uh, what to do at that point and we just went as far back as we could. We ended up in ??? which is near, near Kiev--not too far from Kiev. It was a big city. Well, that city was all bombed out completely. It was a main, well, it was a main railroad depot. It was a train--the train supplies coming from ??? and going to be reclaimed ??? back and forth. It was like a ??? and I supposed the Russians before when the Germans was there and then the Germans were bombing up when the Russians were there so and, and when we got there, we found this old house that was half standing and we moved in to it. We didn't know we do ???. And there was another family that came on those trucks and my other uncle, he and his wife and daughter went back to Berezne. I don't know why but they went there and he was drafted into the service, my uncle was, immediately. And then my other uncle, David, he was drafted into the service--into the Russian military.