Tag #139831 - Interview #88324 (Suzana Petrovic)

My father was taken, in 1942 to a work battalion, Munkasi, they were called then in Hungarian, to the Russian front from where he wrote the last time in January 1943.  He wrote from near Kiev. Mother from time to time managed to send him packages and letters, however from January 1943 no letters nor information arrived and after the war she heard from one of the rare survivors that he died but it is unknown how. Winters were severe there, did he die from cold? Some told us that one group went to clean mine fields in front of the German soldiers so that the Germans would not step on the mines instead the Jews would. Which means maybe he died of cold, maybe he stepped on a mine or simply wandered off somewhere.

When they took my father away my mother tried as much as she could to continue his work, but then in April 1944 all the Jews of Novi Sad were deported.

Luckily she was not deported to Auschwitz, rather to Austria where she was put in forced labor digging irrigation canals. Then she was taken to Theresienstadt where we were reunited.