Tag #152827 - Interview #78127 (Makhlia Khalzova)

Itta and I learned about what happened to our parents after we returned to Pristyn from evacuation in 1945. Our Ukrainian neighbors told us the sad story. When Romanian troops came to the village some local Ukrainian villagers began to rob and abuse their Jewish neighbors Even Romanians came to protect Jews from abuse. In September 1941 the Germans came to the village. On 16-17 October 1941 they captured almost half of the Jewish community of the village to take them to execution in the vicinity of the village. Our father, mother and Idlei hid in the cellar. A 'bukharka' - slang for 'drunkard' - Galia, a local Ukrainian, saw them and began to shout, calling the Germans to 'come here immediately: there is a 'zhydivka' hiding'. The Germans pulled my mother outside by her hair and my father by his beard. Idlei was running after them yelling in Yiddish, 'Don't touch my mother or I will kill you', but the Germans only laughed at him. When they reached the shooting ground the Germans forced my father to bury those Jews that had been shot there. I'm still terrified to think what my father must have felt while burying his Jewish neighbors and acquaintances. Then the Germans put my father, mother and handicapped Idlei into a gas chamber truck and left the truck somewhere. When they were dead, their bodies were thrown out some place - nobody knows where. The rest of the Jews were taken to Kolomyia where they were gradually exterminated. Our neighbors told us this story when we visited Pistyn after the war. They witnessed what happened.