Tag #120067 - Interview #87381 (Simon Meer)

Afterwards, we – 500 Jews from Dorohoi – were taken from Sargorod [Shargorod] and sent to Caposterna – it was a village close to Shargorod. [Today, Kopystirin, Ukraine, it is located approximately 15 km north of Shargorod]. There, they put us in some stables for livestock again, for pigs; it was part of a kolkhoz located at the outskirts of a forest. And what do you think, this Jew, a certain Zaharia Pitaru, a small shoemaker who had more guts – I remember it to this day –, said: “If they shoot me, they shoot me.” For what do you reckon, were you allowed to leave the camp – the ghetto, as they say –, and go as you pleased? And he went to Moghilev, where the gendarmes legion was, the headquarters for the entire Moghilev region.

He went there, poor soul, and he made it, he managed to find the commanding officer’s aide-de-camp, major Orasanu. On hearing they put us in stables during the summer [it was the summer of 1942] – which meant we would have all melted away and died there, major Orasanu took this Zaharia Pitaru and said: “Get in the car and come with me!” The major came to Caposterna, called the gendarmes station – for there was a gendarmes station there –, and ordered them: “You will take everyone out of here and put them inside the peasants’ houses at once!” And we were very fortunate that the Ukrainian peasants took us in and we spent the winter in their homes.