Manin Rudich's certificate of liberation from Transnistria

This is a copy of a document from 1944. It was issued by the Russian officer who liberated us, in Copaigorod. Some of the people in the ghetto asked for it, some did not. But my father, Iacob Rudich, realized that it will be useful later, so he got it. It says that my parents, Iacob and Gusta Rudich, and their two children, Rudich Rozalia and Rudich Manin had been deported to Transnistria between 1941 - 1944. We were deported from Cuciurul Mare, where we lived, in 1941, and we were forced to march to Transnistria. There we stayed in the ghettos of Snitkov, Shargorod, and Copaigorod. In Snitkov my father worked as a translator for the colonel there, Lange was his name, because he knew German and Ukrainian; and because of that my mother was a cleaning woman for the offices there, which was a good position, we sometimes got an extra loaf of bread. In the winter of 1941 I fell ill with typhoid fever. It was a very hard winter, I remember the sacrifices my parents made for me, they didn't eat so that I could have something to eat. My mother was crying because she couldn't help me more. I wasn't afraid of dying, I had seen death one too many times and I knew it didn't hurt, people mostly died silently. But I was lucky, my days weren't over yet. Colonel Lange took us to live in a house, and after three days he came and talked to my mother and father. He said, 'I will not be able to protect you much longer. We will leave with the front and I cannot guarantee that you'll make it.' And he went on, 'Are you Romanian citizens?' My father said we were. 'Then I will take you over to the Romanian side.' The ghetto was split in two parts, and the colonel took us to Copaigorod, to the Romanian side. He talked to the Romanian commander, who, as you can imagine, was scared of a German officer, who ordered, 'These people will get a house, and I will come to check on them. If something happens or if they aren't happy, I will send you to the front.' And my father was the one to translate all this to the Romanian officer, who was shaking! But he did what he was ordered to do. The colonel didn't do us much good, although he wanted to. The Romanians put us in the ghetto, where indeed, we had a nice house, but all the other Jews were afraid of us; they thought we were spies. We were liberated from Copaigorod by the Russian army in 1944.