Tag #130149 - Interview #78421 (Gavril Marcuson)

Then we got sent to Moldavia, to Onesti, where we built fortifications. I worked by the concrete mixer day and night. It was hard work, because I was supposed to carry cement sacks weighing 50 kilos on my back, and I couldn’t even lift them from the ground. A sturdier fellow-worker used to help me – he put the sacks on my back, then I took them where I had to and emptied them. We were led by a military school cadet, a tyrant who cursed us and persecuted us severely. My father would send me money from home, and so I was able to buy things to eat. The Jews in Onesti sometimes called us for minyans, and invited us to table afterwards. They saw I didn’t have a plate, so they gave me one, and a spoon, and they gave me soup, they fed me. The Jews in Onesti were very nice to us, very humane.