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They went one way, and I and my brother Menasze found ourselves in a camp in Komi ASRR, near Vorkuta [160 km south of the Arctic Circle, the region with the biggest forced labor camps in the European part of the USSR], and we didn’t get contact with the rest of our family. In 1944, when I met Ida Kaminska 28 in Moscow, she gave me contact with Ksil, and then he gave me the address to Ryfka and to Rajzla.
In the camp we worked, we hacked wood. But when I came to the camp, I had dysentery, from the journey on the barge. I gone to the doctor, well, I didn’t know Russian yet. So I ask him if he knows any other language, and he says he knows Jewish. He was from Bukovina. He asked if I didn’t want to work with him, as an assistant – clean, wash the floor. So I was pleased, and I worked in the hospital. One day a commission came round to see what was going on in the hospital. I was reading Pushkin for my patients. And they ask what I’m doing here, and the doctor says I have tuberculosis. But they sent me to work, made me a brigadier [gang foreman]. I worked for 20, and I told them I didn’t want to be a brigadier, that I’m no good at holding a truncheon to beat people over the head. So they sent me to the horse base to water and wash the horses. And I never went back to the heavy work any more, I come out of the camp in good shape.
In the camp we worked, we hacked wood. But when I came to the camp, I had dysentery, from the journey on the barge. I gone to the doctor, well, I didn’t know Russian yet. So I ask him if he knows any other language, and he says he knows Jewish. He was from Bukovina. He asked if I didn’t want to work with him, as an assistant – clean, wash the floor. So I was pleased, and I worked in the hospital. One day a commission came round to see what was going on in the hospital. I was reading Pushkin for my patients. And they ask what I’m doing here, and the doctor says I have tuberculosis. But they sent me to work, made me a brigadier [gang foreman]. I worked for 20, and I told them I didn’t want to be a brigadier, that I’m no good at holding a truncheon to beat people over the head. So they sent me to the horse base to water and wash the horses. And I never went back to the heavy work any more, I come out of the camp in good shape.
Period
Location
Russia
Interview
Szulim Rozenberg