Tag #120068 - Interview #87381 (Simon Meer)

The local Jews weren’t there. Many of them had been taken away, too, and shot. The front had already passed through there, the Germans had been there. The things the Germans did there as well – they destroyed the kolkhozes, confiscated the livestock belonging to the people, to the peasants. It was a disaster! Had we been there when the German occupation was present, all of us would have been shot. But as things were, still under Romanian occupation – we were saved.

And each of us went begging for alms in the village now and then, or we found some work here and there. There were handicraftsmen there as well – tailors, shoemakers… They went to people’s houses and sewed this and that, patched a pair of shoes or boots. Those of us – my oldest brother and I –, who hadn’t learned a trade, started gluing galoshes. For the Ukrainian peasants from those parts wore boots made from felt and galoshes. And the galoshes used to tear. I remember, we took a piece of sheet iron, drilled a hole in it, and turned it into some sort of rasp for scraping rubber, and we went to people’s homes and said: “Slusaite!” – Listen! – “Davai la taim vad (vab, vag?) galosii!” – “Give us your galoshes to glue them!” And they brought the torn galoshes and we repaired them, either with rubber bands, or with rubber, or with a piece of sole. We rasped the rubber, applied a solution to it – we had a solution made from gasoline and crepe rubber – and it glued them together, it adhered – rubber on rubber. And they gave us food. And that’s what got us through the winter.