Anna Mass' father Jankiel Szwarc in Ukraine

It’ s my father, Jankiel Szwarc, in 1946. We spent two years in Ukraine. At first we worked on a farm, or rather a kolkhoz near Bakhmach [small town 100 km north-east of Kiev]. It was two hours' way to town. 

We spent the summer in that kolkhoz. Then they allowed us to move to the village, so we moved there to work as watchmakers. But soon we decided there wasn't much to do there and it was decided that my father would go to Bakhmach. He went there and at the station got all confused: where he should go, what he should do. He met a young man at the station. The man saw that my father stood helpless, so he asked him in Russian whether he was looking for something. When he heard my father's Russian, he switched to Polish. But my father's Polish wasn't much better. So they switched to Yiddish and they were home. That young man told my father where he should go, what he should arrange. Upon his return, my father told me he had met a very good man at the station, his name was Mass, and that he liked him very much for helping him. And as I have good intuition, I thought, 'That Mass will be my husband.'