Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Regina Silver - June 21, 1982

Can I take you back to Russia or would you rather not?

Oh, yeah sure. Ask me what you want.

Okay. You had talked about the first camp you had gone to, um, Dik...Dik...

Diktarka.

Diktarka.

Diktarka, yeah.

And that you had stayed there a year and a half and then you said you moved to another camp?

No. We didn't move then that would have been when the war broke out with um, Russia and Germany we uh, you could uh, live free.

Oh, then you could live free?

They freed the Polish citizen and we could go by ourselves and we went away to Turkestan like I told you and there in Turkestan I came with my ten month old baby and then when I lost my baby.

Okay. I'm sorry I, I misunderstood that part.

Yeah.

Uh, totally, how long did you live in, in Russia. Do you know?

Oh yeah, in Russia we lived from uh, from uh, 19 uh, uh, from 1940 till 1945--five years we were in Russia.

You were in Diktaua...

Diktarka.

Diktarka.

Yeah.

For a year and a half?

Yeah.

And Turkestan for the rest of the time?

In Turkestan for the rest of the time, yeah.

Okay. What did your husband do in Turkestan?

He was um, he works he was working on um, he do, he did a lot of things he was uh, working in a, in a drug, a drugstore like he supplied the drugs he went with a truck to other places and they brought the, the drugs to this, to this place--he was working he did a lot of things. We managed to sell a little from ourselves of what we have. We had a, I had a costume that my uncle sent me before I left in Pruzany so I sold it, I got um, uh, 16 pounds of flour to bake uh, bread to eat und uh, we survived as much as we can. A bit of koyfn and farkoyfn.

Don't do that you're talking to me in Yiddish talk to me in English--a bit of what?

Like you uh, a little bit like uh, buy and sell things you know.

I'm sorry when you go off on another language I'm lost.

That's okay. We did a little buying, selling you know like a, like a...

Merchants.

To, to survive that's all. That's all what we wanted to survive und have food on the table we didn't ask for luxury.

In this Turkestan were there Russians there?

Sure.

A Russian town?

Oh yeah, this was middle Asia.

Um, how did the Russians react to the Jews was there any anti-Semitism?

Oh, to tell you the truth uh, there wasn't anti-Semitism. Like the, the women there, their, their men were fighting in the front and they saw uh, the people, the Polish people going in the streets they not on the front lines they were a lot, there was a lot of jealousy, you know, but uh, not especially openly like they wouldn't, would be afraid they were going to do something to you, no I don't think so.