Tag #116413 - Interview #78774 (Fania Brantsovskaya)

I knew there was an underground movement in the ghetto. In January 1942 a partisan organization under the leadership of Yitzhak Vittenburg was established there. I asked my friends to give me a recommendation to join it. They tried to talk me out of it at first, but then they took me to this organization. This organization helped me to get a job: in 1942 I 'sort of' turned 16 [because her father had changed her birth date from 1922 to 1926] and had to go to work. One day Sonia Madeisker, one of the leaders of the underground movement, visited me at home. Sonia lived outside the ghetto. She helped me to get a job in a shop. At the beginning we weaved straw shoes: the fascists used to wear them over their boots. Then we got knitting orders and I worked 12 hours a day. I had my own work coupon while my mother and Riva were still included on my father's work coupon [as dependants].