Haia Sulimzohn as a mature woman

This is my mother as well, Haia Sulimzohn, but she is a mature woman here, she is around 40, right before 1940.

The deportation of the Jews from Dorohoi was scheduled in three stages. Two groups of people left while the third stayed waiting. We left with the second group. They were probably choosing certain parts of the town. And since we lived in the old town center, we were included in the second group. Actually, I didn't even know much about what was happening, for I stayed mostly inside. Afterwards, I was deported to Transnistria together with my parents, my sister and my grandmother. The street sergeants let us know. They would come and tell us to have our backpack ready as we were about to be deported.

The trip to Sargorod lasted for 3-4 days; we were locked in cattle carriages watched by the army. The carriages were crowded, there were, say, approximately 40 persons in one carriage. The train stopped a few times, but we didn't get anything [we weren't allowed to get off the carriages]. We left in November 1941 and returned in December 1943. We stayed in Sargorod the whole time. The first winter was… [awful] My grandmother died - she was elderly. And then - my father. Our father was suffering from a heart condition, he had a stroke and died. The filth killed him soon after our arrival in Sargorod. We arrived in autumn - he died in winter. He was around 50 when he died.

When we returned from Transnistria, my mother didn't get a job. She was a housewife, she had no qualification. My mother came to Botosani when I got merried and lived with me. She died here, in Botosani, in 1963 or 1964. She is buried in the Jewish cemetery - she has a grave, unlike my grandmother. I used to go to her grave when I was still able to do so, now my health no longer allows it.