Adela Jawetz with her son Fridric Iavet

This is a photo of me and my mother, Adela Jawetz - it was taken in Hlyboka in 1941. My maternal grandparents lived in Hlyboka, called Adancata in Romanian. Hlyboka lies in the south of Ukraine, former Bukovina. There were many Ukrainians, Germans and Poles. Grandfather Jakob was a bookkeeper. He had a small mustache, and was rather well off. He always wore a dark black suit and a hat. He wasn't very religious, but he went to the temple for the holidays. They were a big family. My grandparents had seven children: my mother was the eldest, and then there was Manea, Rosa, Frieda, Toni, Elsa and Berthold. We all lived in the same house. Grandfather Jakob had quite a big house, right on the way to Dymka, which is four kilometers away from Hlyboka. The house was positioned with its length parallel to the street, it had two doors and four windows facing the street, and the rest of the house faced the courtyard. The house was big, with a lot of rooms, I don't remember exactly how many. The furniture was massive, in gothic style. My grandparents had neither running water nor electricity in the house. They used gas lamps, and the water was brought from the fountain. In front of the house there was a shop and a tavern; they belonged to my grandparents. The shop was mixed. As far as I know, somebody from the family sold things in the shop and also worked in the tavern. Probably the girls helped them out when they had time. On Saturdays, neither the tavern nor the shop was open. During the war, between 1941 and 1944, we were all away in Uzbekistan. How did we leave for Uzbekistan? It wasn't our choice. There was no time for talks. Panic ruled. We traveled in a cart for two to three weeks to Ukraine and we stayed there for a month, in Zincov, Poltava region. Then they wanted to draft my father into the army. He was very desperate, I went to the commissariat and I cried and I don't remember what happened, but they let him go. In Ukraine, where we first took refuge, people received us very well. They gave us food and I think we stayed in a rented house. My father worked there for a month at the vegetables factory. After a month, the Germans drew closer. We went with the cart farther on, up to the town of Belgorod, Voronezh region, and then we got on a goods train and traveled as far as the train went. I don't know if my father knew the direction or not when we got on the train. We left the cart there. We passed through Ural, Siberia, Kazakhstan and ended up in Uzbekistan, in the Buchara region. We lived in Kermine.