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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT

ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 24

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is March 9th, 2008. We are in Tel-Aviv meeting a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself and tell us the year and place of your birth. Please, go ahead.

My name is Yakov Shepetinsky, son if Itskhak and Khana. I was born in Slonim, formerly Poland, but now part of Belarus, in 1920. On 24th November, 1920 to be more persice.

—Could you tell us a little more about your family and your parents line of work?

Ehh, my mother was… every two years she was… I remember her always being pregnant. My father worked in the forestry industry. He worked for foreign companies. Until 1937 he worked for a German firm, but then worked for a Durch company. He was their representative when they would buy tracts of forest, he was their trustee.

—How many brothers and sisters did you have?

I’m sorry, can you please repeat the question?

—How many children were there in the family?

Ah, there were six children. I, Yakov, was the oldest, born in 1920. Pay attention now, in 1922 there was Gerts, then in 1924 Rubin, then 1926 my only sister Raya, then in 1928 there was a miscarriage, I remember I was eight years old, and then in 1930 Ikhel was born. Then in 1930 and 1937 there were two other miscarriages, and later in 1937 the youngest son Uri was born. So there were six of us, five sons and one daughter.

—What was your school like?

What was what like?

—Your school.

Ah, yes the school. After finishing four grades I transferred to a Jewish gymnasium. It was coeducational, meaning that the girls and boys were integrated into the same classes. I began studying there in 1930 and in 1938 I graduated with a matriculation diploma. This was still under Polish rule.

—Yes. Was your family religious?

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

No, it was not religious, but we did have lessons in religion. There was a class on religion. The teacher was named Kveller, he was from Lviv and perished during the war. He made the lessons very interesting. He conducted the lessons entirely in Hebrew. It meant that the class combined the study of religion and Hebrew.

—Please tell us how the war started for you?

Which war?

—The one in 1939 On September 1st, 1939, yes? It was a Friday. Do you remember that day? No? I was working in Bialystok then. Bialystok is now in Poland. I… No, sorry, what am I saying? You see, I have gotten mixed up.

On September 1st, 1939 when the war broke out I was of course in Slonim. I was in Slonim. The German armed forces attacked Poland. Before that they had taken Czechoslovakia and Austria. By the way, Poland was a friend of Germany. Poland also participated in the partition of Czechoslovakia. There was a small area called Zaolzie, maybe you have heard of it. When the Germans swallowed Czechoslovakia, Poland took that area as if it was theirs.

We Jews were surprised at that. We wondered why the Poles worked with their enemies, the Germans. However, events developed very rapidly and I had nobody to discuss them with. I remember that in March 1938 he [Hitler - ed.] issued Poland an ultimatum. If you look at a map of Germany at that time, you will see that Germany was divided into two parts, the main part and East Prussia. What was there between Germany and East Prussia? A corridor. This corridor went to Poland. Therefore, Germany had a problem because in order to get from one area to the other one had to cross the corridor or go by sea. So the Germans issued Poland an ultimatum to hand over the corridor. Well, you know the Poles and their honor, they said no. The French and the English supported them. “This is ours, we are not giving it up.”

Then the situation began heating up. I remember that on March 30th, 1939 Hitler gave a speech on the radio. We had an old Philips radio. We heard him speak live. He said in a hysterical tone of voice that he can only promise that if war breaks out, the Jews of Europe will be exterminated.

Have you heard about this? Play along with me, you’re not asking any questions.

—Of course, I have heard of this, but it is much more lively when you talk about it.

Since you have read about it, you can imagine how we felt hearing it. He was not only promising to kill all the Jews of one country, say Poland or Romania. He said that “The Jews of Europe will be exterminated.”

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

Period.

I was around nineteen years old, I had graduated from the gymnasium. I remember my friends and I… I had had four close friends and remember their surnames: Fainbernike, Laszkruzanski, Szalkburetski, and Abram Enoszmajevski. They were my close friends. We were members of the same Zionist organization. We met up and decided that Hitler made a clear threat to kill us all, and started wondering what to do.

On top of that, we had read the German original of his book Mein Kampf. You understand, yes? We obtained a copy and read it. It is important to understand that there is a big difference between hearing his voice on the radio and reading the book. This is because if you hear his voice, you can forget what he said five minutes later. If you see a picture on the screen or somewhere else… you do not need a lot of time to forget it. But a book, you can reread the same page over and over. I remember we read Mein Kampf together and our hair stood on end. His intentions were written black on white. He wanted to enslave the Slavic peoples and exterminate us. [Phrase in German]. Do you understand? He was going to kill us. What were we to do? Where could we go for advice? We asked people at home. I had a grandmother and parents. I remember them telling us that 20 years ago the Germans were there during WWI and that they treated everyone well. There were no SS men. We worked and they paid us. They would visit our homes. Maybe there was a pogrom here and there, but they insisted it was a part of Jewish life. But, to kill children?

—So the older generation did not believe you?

They did not. They dismissed our concerns as nonsense. You know, our parents didn’t have time for such trifles. That is what they told us.

Me and the guys got together in order to figure out who to talk to next. We had one teacher at the gymnasium who taught Latin, Greek history, and other similar subject. He was a great teacher and was respected. After all, there are different kinds of teachers, but there are those you like.

There are some teachers whom you really like and you take each of their words as an axiom, and not in any other way. We would come to his classes even when we were sick. He would tell us about ancient Greece, his lessons were extremely interesting. We decided we should talk with Professor Cin from Krakow. We made a decision and stuck to it. We ran into him on the street and said in Polish: “Mr. Professor.” Do you speak Polish?

—No

We told him in Polish that we needed his advice. He was kind of… you know how people are. He asked us why we needed to talk. Instead of just telling him the answer we took out a pocket copy of Mein Kampf and

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN showed it to him. He took a look at the book, bulged his eyes out, and turned white as a sheet. He was really frightened. His first question was how we got a copy of the book. We did not know how to respond and stayed silent. There is an interesting story about how we obtained it, but that is not important. He quickly understood that his question was irrelevant and said that it did not matter. He said that he understood what we were concerned about, but that this was not a good place to talk. It was Thursday and he told us to come by his house on Monday so that he could answer all of our questions. We spent three days pouring over questions, reading together, and finding key points to discuss. We were terribly anxious. We wanted to meet our teacher so that he could explain everything to us. Then that Monday arrived, I think it was in April of 1939, yes.

We came up to his house and he let us in. There was a large carpet in his room where he invited us to sit cross-legged. On the wall there was big map of Europe. We were ready and had divided all the questions up amongst ourselves. He raised his hands up and said: “My children, there is no need for questions.” We opened our eyes and thought what he meant by that, after all, he had asked us to prepare questions. We were dumbstruck. He told us to listen to him carefully. He said to us “I have read this book and I know what you are worried about, so listen to me carefully.” There were five of us and we were all good students, but Chaim Birniker was a straight A student. If he had survived, I assure you he would have received some kind of award. Sometimes teachers would consult with him on questions about physics, math, and chemistry. He was just gifted, you know.

Our teacher looked at us and said “Birniker, you were our best student, so please come up to the map. What did Hitler promise?” Birniker stayed silent, as did the rest of us. “Did he promise to exterminate all of the Jews if war broke out?” We stayed silent, but he answered his own question. “Yes. Now look at the map.” Birniker kept standing there and did not look at the map. “Look at the map” said the teacher again. Birniker glanced over at the map. “Please show me a country where there are no Jews. There are no such countries. There are some northern countries where there are very few Jews and some other countries where there are many of them, but there are some Jews in every country. So tell me, how can he kill all the Jews of Europe? Will other countries serve them up on a plate for him? In order to kill all the Jews, what does he need to do?” We were still silent. “What does he need to do? Go to war. And do what with those countries? Enslave them. Does he have the forces to do so?” This was in 1938. “Does he have the forces to do so?” We did not know the truth yet and perceived the Soviet Union as an enemy. “Can he really conquer Poland, France, England, Romania, or even Yugoslavia? Finland and Sweden, can he conquer them too?Can he or not?” We were still silent. He had hit the nail on the head because his argument was truly logical. We took a look at the map and saw all of the countries of Europe. In order to kill all the Jews he would have to conquer all of them. That would be impossible. Our teacher looked at us, folded his hand like so and flashed us a smile.

To tell you the truth, we thought that our talk with him was over and that we could now get up and leave. As we began getting up to leave, for the first time he addressed us as “gentlemen.” We had just graduated

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN from the gymnasium and were all 18 or 19 years old. “Maybe I am mistaken” he said in Polish. “Maybe this scoundrel will start a war and conquer all of Europe. So what? You may say that it is a big deal that he will conquer Europe and kill all the Jews? There could be pogroms here and there as there always were. There could be always be unfortunate incidents, but to enslave all the Jews is impossible. Think about public opinion, you could not do something like that secretly. On top of that, no country will willingly surrender its citizens to him. Even though we have anti-Semitism here, how will Poland even attempt to transfer 3.5 million of us ‘here, please take them?’ Additionally there are also good conscientious people in Germany. Who would let him do such a thing? It’s nonsense. You know what nonsense means? This means it is just a trifle, it cannot be.” We remained silent. Did I make a convincing argument? What do you think? What would you have done in my place?

—I would think that such a development is impossible.

Yes, his argument was logical. We wanted to get up again, but he raised his hand and motioned for us to stay seated. “Maybe I am mistaken.” You understand his approach? “Maybe he will conquer all the countries. Jews are outsiders in those countries, so maybe the governments couldn’t care less about them and will let them die. So just imagine his forces going from town to town, village to village, and shooting people, children, women, men in plain sight. Who would let him? He could try, but the whole world would scream in indignation. Public opinion has to be considered. There are educated and cultured people in Germany. Would they let him? The whole world will be up in arms immediately. No.” We heard a tenseness in his voice. He paused and then I clearly remember him saying that “in order to do this, he must first gather all of them up and keep in them in a secluded place.” He did not say the words “concentration camp,” we had not heard that word yet, but he did say that the victims must be gathered. This was to be done so that it would be easier to kill them in secret. However, this was impossible. Was he going to just going to take people away without anyone noticing? Nobody would let him. Public opinion has to be considered. You understand? In short, he managed to convince us and we left… If only that professor or a rabbi in a synagogue, had said to us, 19 year-olds “Lads, a great danger is approaching.” If he had said that there was a serious threat. If he had only told us to learn to defend ourselves, to find means of protection, of resistance to the imminent danger. If only he had told the youth to get of their rear ends and do something.

I’m not sure what we would have done, but he managed to allay our fears.

—Because he was a logical person.

Yes, he was.

—Everyone thought this way.

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

I wish he did not convince us, but we believed him.

On September 1st, 1939 Poland was attacked. By the 17th Warsaw was surrounded. By the 19th Hitler’s forces were already near the city of Brest on the Bug River. Do you know this city? We heard on the radio that the Germans were only 180 km away from Slonim. Just 180 km! You know when the war is somewhere far away in Europe, everything is still calm here, but when it is only 180 km away. It would take a tank only 12 hours to get here. It is only then that you remember what Hitler had promised to do and you begin to get nervous. By that time… my mother and father were gathering all our things in fear of a fire. Our home was built out of wood. They tried to save the food and some possessions. I remember on that day I went to be quite late, at around midnight. We lived on what was later named Pushkin Street, but back then it had a Polish name. Suddenly we heard a noise and saw some movement on the street outside. It was not the Polish cavalry, but rather the sound of tanks rolling in. We knew that there were almost no tanks in the Polish armed forces, only those… what do you call them, not tanks, but…

—Yes, not wheels, but . . .

Yes. “Oh my G-d, the Germans are here” we thought to ourselves. You know our teeth were rattling out of fear. We did not know what to do, the Germans were already here. Only six hours ago we heard that they were in Brest, so how could they have gotten here so quickly? I remember putting my forehead against the window to see better, all the lights were blacked out. We were all looking out the window, but our eyes needed time to adjust to the dark. We watched and waited and suddenly all the windows and doors flew open and people ran out onto the streets to celebrate their deliverance. Hurray! You see we went from fear and nervousness to joy in just a few hours. I don’t have to tell you what happened, do I? You understand it yourself?

—These were Soviet forces?

Exactly. We saw tanks, but what was drawn on them? A red star. We ran out onto the street. You see, we had not yet heard of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It was a secret to all of us back then, so we did not know that Poland had already been partitioned. We thought that the Germans were coming, but the Soviets arrived instead. A whole crowd gathered to meet them, the parents stood by the houses, while the children walked near the tanks. The soldiers did not get out and we threw chocolates to them. Then they started to come out of their tanks and waved to us. The armored unit took four hours to pass through our town. It took them from two in the morning to six in the morning. We had never seen such military power before, just imagine our impressions from the whole thing. It was astounding. I saw a girl who I had respected, but was always afraid to approach, and suddenly we were hugging and kissing in the street.

After the tanks drove through there was a short break and then the infantry entered the town. Afterwards I

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN was in the Soviet Army and fought as a partisan. I speak from experience when I say that it is very difficult to serve in the infantry. You always have to carry about 30 kg worth of supplies including ammunition and rifle or assault rifle with you. You are always tired, but have to move quickly. You have to walk at least 30 km, maybe 23-30 per day and sometimes you are so tired that you are literally sleepwalking. However, when you enter a village or a town your company commander gives the order to straighten out. Everyone has to perk up and be awake. Then he would order to lead singer to the front of the column. You know what the lead singer does? It is very difficult to explain. Well, I will tell you because it is not a secret. This was always a soldier with a good singing voice, whose job was to start singing a military song or march and get the rest of the men to join in. You know, this has a certain effect. Later I . . . no matter how tired you are, if someone starts singing fight song, a march: If tomorrow ["If Tomorrow War Comes" is a famous Soviet WWII song and film - ed.] . . . then it is easier to walk, you feel alive. Everyone is watching and applauding as you walk by.

I walked right next to those soldiers as they were singing. I did not know a word of Russian back then. I would walk some 400-500 meters from my house, didn't want to go to far, and would turn around. Since the column of troops was so long, I marched with the singing soldiers about four times. On the third or fourth time I understood that they all hid rifles with these dangerous-looking bayonets. The Polish Army did not have ones like these, they were very sharp. As one soldier walked by me singing, I realized that he was one of our neighbors. He lived on a nearby side-street called . . . there was . . . a laundry soap factory there. What was he doing here? It turned out that it wasn’t him, but a someone who looked almost identical. You understand? I gathered up the courage and asked him in Yiddish how he was going, and what should I do as a Jew. He stopped singing and answered back in Yiddish. You… you have to understand me here, we were waiting for the Germans, the fascists, and then the Soviet Army arrived with tanks and singing soldiers. Among these soldiers there was a Jewish soldier! I nearly lost it. I stopped marching and ran back home where my mother and father were already getting worried. I shouted in Yiddish “Mother, father, there is a Jewish soldier! I saw a Jewish soldier!” It was as if I had more air to breathe now. We were waiting for the Germans, the fascists, but instead the Soviet Army arrived and there was a Jewish soldier serving there. From that day onward we automatically became citizens of the Soviet Union.

You must understand that there was a big difference between being a citizen of Poland and a citizen of the Soviet Union. First of all… we won’t talk about democracy. It was a time of war and Poland was essentially a weak country that only had allies on paper who did nothing to help in reality. However, the Soviet Union was a large and powerful country. Just look at a map and see that it stretches from Brest to Vladivostok, it was almost endless. We became citizens of this country and were now powerful. However, the most important thing was that the powerful Soviet Union was a friend of Nazi Germany. They had a nonaggression and mutual assistance pact which mean that they would not have a war. That was all. We were calm because we knew that there would be no war. Hitler took the war westward to Belgium, Holland, France, Denmark, Norway, and then to the south, along with his allies Romania and Hungary, to

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

Yugoslavia. He took it far from our shores. Everything was calm where we lived, we only heard praise from our government.

We began to receive refugees. Many managed to cross the border into our country. They told us terrible stories, but we did not believe them, we read Izvestia, Pravda, Trud, Literaturnaya Gazeta, and listened to the radio which did not corroborate their stories. We were afraid because Nazi Germany was an ally of the Soviet Union and insulting an allied state was punishable under the law. You could wind up in the camps. One hand we did not believe the refugees, but on the other we were scared by what they told us. Life went on. We became citizens of the Soviet Union and that was it, the war was far away from our calm town. We did not believe the rumors about the treatment of Jews and did not have facts to support the stories. We also had no contact with the Jews in those areas, only with the refugees. That was that…

—Did the refugees continue onward?

What?

—The refugees continued deeper into the USSR?

No, the refugees stayed. The border guards in Bialystok and Brest let them through, but they settled in Slonim. However, they were not allowed into the eastern regions, the ones that were part of the USSR before the expansion. They stayed in the western regions until they were given a choice to either apply for citizenship, or be deported back to their place of origin. This meant going back to Poland, Czechoslovakia, or elsewhere. You know, 90% of Jews wanted to return to the German-occupied territories. Ironically, there were probably negotiations that I was not aware of, the Germans thankfully did not want to take them back. So the Soviet authorities loaded those Jews onto trains and took them to the east, thereby saving them. Of course, people died during the journey from hunger and difficult living conditions, but the majority were saved. Meanwhile over 99% of those who stayed behind perished.

The two years of Soviet rule passed quickly.

Many of us wanted to continue our education thanks to newly available opportunities. I had a high school diploma, but under Polish rule very few Jews were accepted into universities. I also had no money to study abroad. Now there were new opportunities, for example the university in Lviv. Even though it was part of the Ukrainian SSR, there were no borders back then, so I applied to study in Lviv along with a few friends of mine. After passing my exams I was accepted and became a student at the University of Lviv.

I studied there for six or seven months in 1940, but then received an urgent telegram from my father “You

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN can become professor five years. Come home. Help family.” My father said that he could not provide for the family on his own. He told me that if I was a good worker I could learn a trade, make money, and help the family. What was I to do? My father told me to, so I returned home. I attended a three month accounting course in Baranovichi, and luckily was appointed to an accounting office in Bialystok, a big and beautiful city. However, I was particularly lucky because my favorite aunt Tsilya, my mother’s youngest sister, lived there, so I would not have an issue with housing. I stayed with her and began working. The head of the office was a man named Mr. Kalev. There was also a recycling union there that would collect metal and cloth for reuse in Bialystok’s large textile sector. When I began working, I discovered that in the Soviet union you could not do anything without oiling someone’s palms. So if the boss was a fool, the accountant suffered too. In any case, I began working and helping my family.

The two years of Soviet rule passed very quickly because I began my studies in 1939, went to work in 1940, and then 1941 came. The war was basically over in Europe, and Hitler was supposedly making preparations to conquer England. The newspapers wrote that he was massing his forces up on the Soviet border in order to protect them from English bombers. I remember very well how my friends all thought that they would live peacefully here. As I lived and worked there I became acquainted with a very beautiful girl. I was the senior accountant and she was a bookkeeper. Back then I was 21 and she was 18 going on 19. We became friends and began thinking about starting a family. However, I had military service coming up in August, so we decided to get married after my service. Both of our families came in order to meet one another as is customary in the Jewish tradition. Then they left and life went on as usual until that fateful Sunday, June 22nd, 1941. I have nothing else to say on this subject, do you have any other questions?

—I want to know what you did from 1941-45.

Can we take a five minute break?

—Of course, take as much time as you need.

—We stopped on June 22nd, 1941.

Yes.

—Please tell us about that Sunday.

On the eve of that day, I was out for a walk with my girlfriend Esther and brought her back home quite late. We kissed on her doorstep, she went inside, and I ran home. My aunt was waiting for me in the doorway because I was late. I saw her notice me, but she pretended that she did not see me. I went inside, opened the door and laid down to sleep. This was at about midnight or 12:30. At about 2:00 our house shook

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN forma loud explosion. We lived close to the railway station. We heard a terrible explosion, but did not know where it came from.

We did not understand what was the matter, you see? I heard everyone get up at home. From the neighboring windows, I could hear children crying, they were frightened. People came in. Back then we did not have pajamas, so I was wearing a long nightgown. I remember, as if it was yesterday: I grabbed my pillow, pulled it over my head, and ran out into the street. All of this was frightening and caused me to have diarrhea. I ran to the bathroom. Explosions, bombing, was happening all around me. I changed my clothes, put on some pants and . . . Explosions. The bombing lasted, maybe 15 minutes, not more. Then everything calmed down. Everyone came out to the street. I knew that our neighbor, was a Soviet major. He was . . . he worked . . . I don’t know if he was the commander, but he worked, in the office where new recruits are received.

—Military enlistment office.

Huh?

—Military enlistment office.

Military enlistment office. He worked in the military. He was a major. I don’t believe he was the head of the military enlistment office. In any case, I thought - this is the person in charge, I can turn to him. I said:” Comrade!” I do not remember his name and patronymic, but I addressed him by name, something like Nikolai Petrovich, “comrade major what is happening? Are we at war?” He opened his mouth and let me have it. “Idol talk! What war?” I was frightened. I said: “But the explosions…?” He replied, “This is not war, this is maneuvers.” He was an official person. Do you understand? If he says its maneuvers, then that is what I will believe. That was my initial line of thinking.

I reassured all my relatives: my aunt, uncle, and cousin. I was already dressed, and quickly made my way to my girlfriend. My goal was – whether these were maneuvers or not – I have to return to my homeland, to my town, where I was born, about 150-180 kilometers from Bialystok. I went to my girlfriend, and said to her: “Esther, I don’t know what is happening, the official says its maneuvers. And then I saw a department store with the windows shattered. People were breaking in and looting groceries, not paying for anyone, robbing. They told me: “there are dead and wounded.” [I thought] what maneuvers?! Look at what is happening in the city. I went back to the major’s house, and what did I see? His house was empty. He had a car. A service car. He packed up his family and his stuff and set off east. That’s when I realized: war.

You know, I went home. At home my aunt and uncle say: “well, no one has announced war.” From the Soviet side, when I turn on the Moscow radio station, Mayak, I hear only music. No news. No declaration of war. I see planes flying west. They stopped bombing us but continued bombing nearby. It was as if all

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN quieted down. I had already made my decision: I will go home, to my family, I said goodbye to Esther. She said “You know, my parents will come tomorrow from Lomza, they are from Lomza, and I will meet up with you after that.” My aunt said “You should go, get there however you will, but I have my household, my child, my husband, we need to pack.” You see, no one expected things to unfold so quickly. “We will join you later,” she said.

I made my way to the east-bound highway, the main road. I figured I would hitch a ride with someone and head home, to the east, to my family, mother, brothers, to my sister, my father. I walked out onto the highway and began trying to hitch a ride. There were plenty of cars: servicemen, officials, with their things, on trucks, with barrels of [extra] gasoline, on their way out. I tried to cling onto the trucks, the bumpers, but people slapped my hands away. Wouldn’t let me jump on. Somehow, I managed to get onto one car. I said, “I will be useful to you, I will be helpful along the way.” I got onto the car. And we headed east. On the way we had to procure gasoline. We bought some from the tankmen for something. Tankmen sold gasoline and diesel fuel.

[This was] On June 22, on Sunday, 1941, and at dawn on Monday I arrived in Slonim. [The people I got a ride with] continued to drive east. They dropped me off near my house and continued east. I came home at dawn. Knocked on the door. “Who is it?” I said, “It’s me, Yasha.” My mother was so happy, my father, brothers, all hugged me. Such joy. “We thought you were killed. We heard about the bombings in Bialystok. It is all quiet here for now, only planes flying above.” You know, we sat down to ponder what was going on. My father said, “You know what? Wait, wait, wait. This isn’t Poland, this isn’t Czechoslovakia, this is the Soviet Union. There will be such a counterattack, [the enemy] will receive such a blow, with such force, that they will forget what their names are.” That is what father said on Monday, the 23rd. On the 24th, Tuesday morning, the Germans were there. They occupied our city. From this day, my epoch under the German occupation began.

After being a Soviet citizen from September 17th, 1939 to June 24th, 1941 I ceased to be one any longer. I was under the German occupation. That was it. This…

—The Germans came. What was life like under the occupation?

What?

—What was it like? Their soldiers arrived, and then what happened?

Their soldiers arrived and moved west… eastward. They did not pay any attention to us and killed everyone who was in the road, women, children, military personnel, civilians. They kept swiftly advancing eastward, paying no attention to us. After about three or four days there were many unburied dead bodies

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN lying around. Some German unit stopped and forced all Jewish men to bury the bodies. One time I was forced to do such work and I saw the bodies of women, children, military personnel, and civilians who were crushed by tanks or shot. After burying them we quickly went home.

Then the Soviet [means German - ed.] occupation began with the ghettos and all of the other details with which you are familiar. What was life like under the German occupation? We had to keep living. The first order issued to Jews was that all men had to come to the synagogue to sleep at night. Miraculously I survived. Then I witnessed the Germans torturing Soviet POWs by throwing a loaf of bread to a famished group of them. They would then take pictures of the ensuing struggle. The German officers would then call them Russian pigs and say that they are uncivilized. But the POWs were underdressed and hungry when someone threw a loaf of bread to them over the fence, you understand. They… later they…

—How did you survive?

What?

—How did you survive?

Accidentally. I was shot on November 14th, 1941 and lay in a mass grave. By some miracle I managed to climb out. I was not the only one, there were ten others. However, out of the ten, nine were caught and taken away, but I somehow managed to evade capture. Then I worked as a member of an underground organization in Camp Buyte, where the Germans stored weapons that they had captured. We began to organize ourselves and thanks to by deceased brother I was accepted into an underground organization.

—How did you find this organization?

How did I do what?

—How did you find this organization, how did you find the partisans?

I did not run away. After climbing out of the pit, I went back home to the ghetto. I emerged from among dead bodies in Chapyalyeva, where we were shot. Before being shot, we were stripped naked and men were separated from women. I wrote about this in my book Sentence. Did you read a little bit of it? Have you heard of it?

—Yes, I…

It is in Russian. It describes everything in detail more or less. Later we realized that there is no end in sight, so we began finding weapons and bringing them home while trying to find the partisans. We eventually

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN found them.

—Where did you find the weapons?

The Germans had a camp nearby where they kept Soviet weapons that the Russians had left behind during their retreat. The Germans stored all of the weapons there. The weapons needed to be cleaned, repaired, and organized, so they employed Russians, Belarusians, and Poles to do this. They did this because they thought that they could use these weapons. They trusted Jews with this work because they thought that because they had families they would refuse to steal or use the weapons out of fear of collective punishment. They told us that if anyone was found in possession of a bullet or even a shell casing, then their whole family would be shot.

However, they were mistaken because there were several Jews who organized themselves to smuggle weapons. You know, if I had not been a member of this underground organization, then maybe I would not have done this. When I became a member of the organization I saw one of the easterners come to my brother’s house and hand him a pistol. I nearly soiled myself when I saw this. He then said that I should not spy on him, but that our situation is hopeless and we need to find weapons to defend ourselves. He also told me that I was now a member of the underground resistance. There were two other people in our cell and if one of us was caught, the others had to escape. If I was caught, I had to stay silent until death. If I ratted anyone out, then if not the Germans, then my comrades would punish me. You understand? Now there is a difference between a regular person and a resistance member. A resistance member is part of an organization, he had a commander who issues orders. If the commander issued me an order, what did I have to do?

—Carry it out.

Yes, I had to find the courage and strength to carry it out, even though I would have never been able to carry it out on my own. I was ordered to procure an F1 grenade and a tank-mounted machinegun which I had to disassemble and bring home bit by bit. I had no choice but to follow the order. It was very dangerous work because I did not know who I could trust at work. Then I had to walk two and a half kilometers back home from work. You could be caught, searched, and fount out. I was always tense to the point of breaking, you had to have nerves of steel, but I made it look like there was nothing out of the usual going on. I always carried either a grenade or a piece of metal tucked under my arm. I would bring them back home and hide them. At night when we hid the weapons I noticed that my brother was hiding more than I had brought which mean that other people were smuggling weapons too, but I did not know who they were. After obtaining the weapons we managed to contact a group of partisans commanded by Pavel Alekseevich Proyadin and Commissar Dubko. We began supplying them with weapons. They asked us for medical supplies too which we asked people to donate. We were given an order not to leave the ghetto unless instructed otherwise. They asked us to send them a doctor, a nurse, and a radio operator. We could

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN not go into the forest to find them without an order because the partisans would have us shot. They said that they would call us up, but for now out place was there in the ghetto. That was our predicament.

—If you had left…

Then I was to be… if we had gone on our own, we would have been disobeying orders and punished. They wanted us to keep helping from the ghetto. However, then a guy named Braychuk was caught in the ghetto with a few grenades and the Germans understood that the Jews were stealing from them. Then on June 29th, 1942 the Germans surrounded the ghetto and began burning it down and killing the inhabitants. However, to be chronologically precise, this is how it happened. First the Germans issued an order that Jews were not allowed to visit stores. The Jews and the dogs were forbidden, so we could not buy anything. So we had to buy things from the peasants who brought extra produce into town. We bartered with them. For example, if someone was a cobbler, he would fix shoes in return for produce. We would either trade shoes, coats, or furniture. We were lucky because my mother was born in the village of Zavershi where she had a family friend named Fidri whose family helped us out. My father said that he wanted to pay them, but the woman insisted that they settle their accounts after the war.

—Where did the food come from?

Food was brought in once a week on a horse-drawn cart. We had to come up to the cart and make it look like we stole the food, otherwise our benefactors would have gotten in trouble. My mother, father, and I would calmly come up to the cart and take the food without being seen. However, that did not last long because when the ghetto was formed Jews were forbidden from exiting it, while gentiles were forbidden from entering it. After our food supply was cut off hunger set in. Hunger was the main enemy in the ghetto, it is slow death right before your eyes. Before that there were also orders to hand over all the gold, which was collect by the Hitler Youth. Then Yudenrat was shot because it was supposedly hidden some gold. Then a second round of gold collectors was sent and they discovered gold. Then Jews began rating each other out, and the Yudenrat was shot. Then they ordered everyone to wear the yellow star.

—Please continue

Where did we stop?

—You were talking about the yellow star.

Yes, the yellow star. We had to wear one on the middle of our backs that was 10-15 cm and then another one on the left side of our chest, but I don’t remember the size. If anyone went outside without wearing the star, the whole family would be executed. Then there was another order forbidding Jews from using the sidewalks, and only allowing them to walk in the middle of the street. It was hard to even get there

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN sometimes, we had to jump over things. It was terrible. Then they put all of us into the ghetto. Imagine a space where you could house a maximum of 9,000 people being population by 35,000 people, including refugees and Jews from surrounding shtetls. You can imagine how terribly overcrowded it was. In such unsanitary conditions, complicated by food shortages, people began to die. There is a report here in Yad Vashem which states that 10,000 people had died by November. They were not executed, they died.

There were terrible instances where women would enter the ghetto pregnant, and they were not allowed to become pregnant there, and they would have to give birth in the ghetto. A hungry mother would give birth in a room with 40 people. His mother would pick him up and put him up to her breast, he would suck twice and then begin to cry. People would block their ears and ask for him to stop because they could not put up with it any longer. But what can the poor mother do? I witnessed a situation when some older people told the mother and the little child to leave so that they can have peace. She did not know what to do and chocked her baby. You understand? The mother chocked her baby. This happened several times and I witnessed it. Death was everywhere, we perceived as a sort of illness, like the flu or a cold.

When they caught one of our resistance members with weapons they understood that the Jews were preparing to fight. They surrounded the ghetto and began burning house after house, including ours. My father had prepared an underground hiding place and hid there with his family. My brother, two comrades, and I went to a defensible location. We were armed with a submachine gun and grenades. We decided that we would not let them take us alive. We saw our house burn and thought that our family had died there. It turned out that they survived the fire, we rescued them later. One Latvian wanted to burn a hideout that we had built among the trees. The hideout was designed to blend in with the trees. Then a German told him to leave it alone, that there was nobody there. We were ready to open fire and kill them, of course we would have died too. We waited until nightfall and went into the forest with our family, weapons, and anything else we could carry.

—How did you get to the forest, how did you cross the blockade?

On foot.

—What about the guards?

What guards? They were afraid to come out at night because they knew that we had weapons. They weren’t very brave either. Behind every corner there could have been a man with a rifle, ready to kill them, so they were afraid. They sent Belarusian policemen instead, but they were afraid too so they only stayed at intersections. We took alleyways to the forest. We traveled during the night and slept in the forests during the day to avoid being seen by the locals. We traveled for three nights and two days until we reached the partisan muster point in the village of Okuninowo and met up with the partisans. Our family

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN was reunited there, everyone managed to escape to the forest. We not only had weapons for ourselves, but we also brought. . . We even had to leave some weapons in the ghetto and some our comrades brought it for us. They did not manage to save everything, but they did bring some of the weapons which we had buried under our shed. Then we became partisans.

—I want to ask you about partisan operations if that is OK with you. However, first I want to ask you one question, you talked about the great strength of the Soviet Union…

Naturally.

—Did anything change in your psyche in light of those events?

You know when war breaks out, you do not think much because every day there is a new danger, new stress, you only think about survival, it is kill or be killed. You see, when I came to the partisans I was a victim, a refugee. When I was a partisan I was still a victim and a refugee, but I was also a hunter. I saw that my bullets were killing Germans, Latvians, and Lithuanians, and I felt completely differently. I viewed life as something temporary, I was not afraid of death. We had no choice because we knew that we could not afford to surrender because we knew that we would just be shot on the spot. We had to fight until the end, so I always saved on grenade for myself, it was untouchable. If something were to happen to me, if I were wounded I would have to blow myself up because I could not become a collaborator. Furthermore as a Jew, there would have been no hope left for me, only suffering and torture. It would have been better to kill yourself than to let them do it.

—The training was just…

To be honest we had no military training when we went into the forest, but life made us learn. We were lucky because our commander was legendary, Senior Lieutenant Fyodorovich, a former officer who had fought in the Finnish War, he agreed to take a group of 50 exclusively Jewish men. By the way, initially the locals did not want to fight side by side with Jews. I remember our group leader was Mishka Povar and he abandoned us because he did not want to fight alongside Jews. Later I befriended him and asked why not? He said “You are not fighters. What kind of fighters are you? You do not even know how to die. They take crowds of you to be shot and what do you do? How can I depend on you?” There was some truth to what he said. He also had another reason. He said “We know that the Germans did everything they could to catch and kill you. What will happen to us if we are together with you? We could suffer for it too.” So Pavel Vasilievich Prilyagin was forced to find us a different commander who took on our training in the art of war. We practiced running, but we could not shoot because it would make too much noise. However, he taught us how to assemble a rifle, and all the other necessary military knowledge. I still remember, if you go prone, you don’t get up or move. If you are going to attack, always first crawl off to the side.

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Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

—What about if you are standing?

No… I should ad that the runs were short. You would run, go prone, then stay still. You then crawled to the side after figuring out where the fire was coming from. This was a great help to us. Training is good, but experience is the best teacher. There were casualties among us. There were 120 Jews who arrived with us, but when the war ended only 35 remained, all the others died in combat as partisans.

—What were the operations like? Could you describe a few of them?

There were many operations. The first assignments were to go on small raids to destroy telephone and telegraph poles, mine railroad tracks, procure food, and other such tasks. Nobody supplied us.We had to procure our own food supplies. Usually we just stole them. We would enter a village, usually one that the commander knew cooperated with the Germans. We took mostly from the wealthy, so that… I actually don’t know how exactly we got the food, but we got it from them. When a person with a gun shows up and says “Hey man, give me something to eat” he knows that if he does not oblige he could a bullet between the eyes, so he eagerly gave up the food. That is how we lived. Later we built a bread baking oven…

The war was cruel because initially when the Germans came to Belarus they were greeted with flowers. Volunteers started coming to serve as politzei, and our commander Proniagin, as he told me after the war, knew that this trend had to be stopped. The only way was to punish the volunteers. When we discovered the whereabouts of a politzei's family we would come at night, surround their home and burn it, or kill the family a different way. Then rumors started that the surviving politzei were taking their families and fleeing to towns in fear of partisan reprisal. He achieved his goal, but the Germans began punishing pro-partisan villages. Wherever there were partisans, they burned down all the villages, so the inhabitants fled to us into the forest. We began to receive reinforcements and the partisan movement grew. This is quite difficult to convey, but I need to understand what exactly happened. Partisan warfare is always brutal and difficult. On top of that, there was anti-Semitism among the partisans as well.

In the partisan unit?

Yes, there was anti-Semitism, Jews were murdered, sometimes for no reason at all. For example, if a Jew fell down from exhaustion and his weapon went off, he would be executed. If a boy of 17 fell asleep at his post, he was executed. It was…particularly difficult for women and girls because all of them had to befriend a commander, whether they wanted to or not. You understand?

—This was in 1944?

No, 1942.

Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

—1942.

In 1944 I was already a soldier in the army.

What else can I tell you? I remember one time we were on a mission to blow up train tracks. We ran into a shepherd named Nastya near the Lesnaya station. She had lost her cow and had left the pasture to find the cow or maybe a calf. She ran into us and said “Oh my! Partisans!” She began talking to us. We were only 3 km from the railroad, but we had to stay there for the day and leave at night to plant the mine and destroy the railroad. She was sitting and talking to us, very happy to see partisans. She then said something that decided her fate: “The other girls won’t believe me when I tell them I met partisans!” The commander told me to keep talking to her. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him put a bayonet on his gun and while I was talking to her he came up behind her and stabbed her in the back. That poor girl. I asked him what he did that for, but he just looked past me and stayed silent. We got up and continued with our mission. The train came near us. I was a machine gunner and he was supposed to set off the bomb. He pulled the chord and the grenade blew up, but the mine did not. The train rolled by and we failed our mission and returned to our camp. Even now it is hard to judge what happened because if she had told her friends, maybe our fate would have been different… you understand? If the Germans or the police had found out… You see what war does to people, curse war.

How did you come to serve in the Soviet Army?

—After the war, after obtaining my Party membership. I had been in the partisans for two years, my brother perished, my mother and father perished, and three of my brothers were killed. One of my brothers was killed by the partisans. He went to a familiar village and was given produce, voluntarily, he did not take it by force. He got it from acquaintances in the village of Zavierša. He was met a drunk Belarusian partisan commander by the name of Bobkov who accused him of stealing the food. He shot my brother, my father, and my uncle and took the supplies for himself.

Then my mother sent another one of my brothers, Ruvin, born in 1924, to find out what happened, but he was captured by the police and handed over to the Germans. He was tortured, but he did not know anything and had a slight stutter. He was brutally murdered and his boy lies in the village of Okuninowo.

Then during an anti-partisan raid we went east and my mother along with two of her children stayed in the family camp. My mother was also brutally killed, and now I know… all the details of her murder, but I cannot talk about it, it’s too terrible. The two children Ikhel, born in 1932 and Uri, born in 1937 were killed by Belarusian politzei. According to the locals in that area they are buried in a mass grave somewhere in the village of Okuninowo.

Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

My brother was killed during a reconnaissance mission on March 14th, 1943, the anniversary is coming up soon. You know, he had a death wish because he volunteered for a reconnaissance mission before every fight. He would raise his hand to volunteer before the commander even finished reading the mission description. The commander would always say that he needed three volunteers, but he already had one. He needed two more to go with Gerts. I asked him “Why do you wish to die, why do you always go first?” He replied “Yasha, we have to prove that we are fighters, that we are not afraid, we must earn their respect.” He went off on that reconnaissance mission on March 14th and was killed in an ambush. He was very seriously wounded. His patrol ran into a Latvian unit and the rest I know from eyewitness accounts. Two of the partisans were killed right away, a Ukrainian named Viktor, a man named Nikolai, and Kolka from the village of Kołki. My brother was wounded in his left foot. He managed to crawl a short distance away, but there was snow on the ground. The Germans saw him on the ground, wounded. Actually it was not the Germans, but the Latvians. The shouted in Russian: “Partisan get up, surrender!” My brother replied and said that he was seriously wounded and could not get up. He had thrown his weapon aside and three of them approached him in order to take him prisoner. For them a captured partisan was a big… As they were picking him up two grenades went off under him. They say that he killed one of the Latvians on the spot, while the other supposedly died while being evacuated.

At dawn we arrived and found all of the dead bodies and buried them in the village of

Čemiely. The locals asked us not to bury them at the cemetery out of fear of German reprisals, so we buried them nearby. Now his body rests in a mass grave in

Dashevichi, his name is written on the headstone, G.I. Shepetinsky.

In 1943 we had a big railroad campaign where we stopped all railroad movements in our area for about a month. The partisans helped those fighting on the front line quite a bit. When the front was approaching, the commander of the Pinsk Partisan detachment wanted to present a gift to the front, by taking two railroad stations: Liuscha and Pasty. We mustered our forces at dawn on the 23rd, a day before the arrival of the Red Army and were given the order to attack.

There were trains at those stations and the Germans put up fierce resistance. About 200 partisans died in that attack, which failed to take the railroad stations. The next day the Soviet Army arrived and cut their escape route off using artillery, after which they all put their hands up and surrendered. From the story about this “gift” you can see how human lives were valued. Later at the front the attitude was the same, the life of a Soviet soldier was not worth anything. “Forward! For the Motherland! For Stalin!” It did not matter how many human casualties there were because tomorrow there will be a set of fresh reinforcements.

—Did you feel it back then, or is this something you realized later?

Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

I felt it back then because after battle… I was always… when they fed us after battle they would bring enough food for 200 men, but only 30 of us would remain. This was especially so in the Baltic States near Kurland… If you dug half a meter into the ground there you would get water, and the soil was full of clay. We had to charge at the Germans in those conditions, and after about 150 meters they would put up fierce resistance with mortars, firearms, and machineguns. We could not even retreat, but they did not try to pursue us. When we would finally return there were wounded and sick people lying on the ground asking for help. We only managed to help some of them while we ran back. We knew that the next day we would be sent to the reserve regiment. The day after that we would get up and see that out of a company of 250, or a battalion of 600, there would only by 100 men left. The reinforcements would bring us back up to 600 and we would attack again. That was how we were treated, you see. We always had to capture our objective quickly… especially in Poland after we crossed the Vistula and the Narew, south of Warsaw. We advanced so quickly back then and did not pay attention to the casualties. We had to quickly capture Berlin, we had to be there first. Once again, if you read the book… it is hard for me talk for a long time, but there is more information in the book.

—Did you want revenge?

What?

—Did you want revenge?

Oh yes, a very strong feeling! The feeling was so strong because we knew it was either us or them. If you saw an enemy raising his hand up, you did not want to waste your time taking him prisoner. What do you mean “Hitler Kaput?” There were cases when if they were left alive and not properly restrained they would then put a bullet in your back. Sometimes they would not surrender, for example the Swedes never surrendered. When our guys would come up to take them prisoner they would pull out their submachine guns and shoot our officers at point-blank range. One time I remember receiving an order not to take prisoners, so when the battle was over we did not take anyone prisoner. However, there were so many of them trying to surrender that we did finally take some after the battle. Then we reached Berlin and the war ended.

I spent three months in a hospital after receiving a concussion and a light wound. I was left in the service there as an interpreter since I knew Polish and German. I was supposed to be demobilized in August 1946, but on April 12th, 1946 I was arrested for treason and spent ten years in the Gulag.

—For treason?

For attempted treason, with additional charges of smuggling, which led to a confiscation of all property.

Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

They accused me of smuggling and to this day I am asking for evidence against me. They had nothing on me, no material evidence, but they had a reason for arresting me.

—What was that?

It is written in my book, I will not repeat it for you right now.

—Is this why you are compiling this archive?

You see one time I was interpreting during the interrogation of a German who had previously worked in the German propaganda machine in some capacity. I think he was only a soldier, but he was arrested in order to be recruited into working for the Soviets. That meant that he had to be arrested in secret from his family. He was sent to work in a different place than usual and was arrested on the way there. He was then coerced into working for the Soviets. Then the let him go. I was the interpreter and the German thought that I was not a Jew, but in fact a German from the Povolzhye, since I picked up the accent from those Germans. I also had predetermined questions and answers.

I asked him a question which I was not allowed to ask. I asked him “Listen, I understand that you hated the Jews, but what about the little children, why did you… he had just emerged from his mother’s belly, why did you brutally murder him?” He opened his eyes wide and said “Man, you have not understood anything. Those infants, they are our worst enemies” He took on his role as apropagandist and began explaining that if the child is blond, and if the boy is not circumcised for whatever reason, he could wind up staying with a German family. [Fragments in German – ed.]. We would then defile our race. You see they thought that the German race was pure and could be defiled by a Jewish child, even though it is total nonsense. They would tell the Germans that killing the children is their first priority when entering a new town. I do not remember what I did then, and even though I was not allowed to have weapons on me, we all had them anyways. He was unarmed because he was a civilian.

I saw my brother Uri before my eyes as he was explaining to me about his enemies… I don’t remember drawing my weapon, but I remember pulling the trigger… The bullet hit him, I killed him. The other soldier jumped up and said that I had ruined the whole operation. Then some of them tried to calm me down and tell me that I would get a reduced sentence and that I would be free in three months. I did not want to desert even though some Jewish friends of mine suggested that I do so. I had spent my years fighting in the partisans and at the front, why should I desert? They would only explain it by saying that I was Jewish… I waited and I was sentenced to ten years, but thankfully I am here talking to you. I am thankful for that.

—One last question. When did you come to Israel?

Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

In 1966, eleven years after exiting the camps, I arrived with my late wife. She died here after being very ill. I also had my six-year-old daughter. Now she is the mother of two sons and one daughter.

—What was your wife’s name?

My first wife’s name was Rivka. It is an interesting story about how we met, you can read about it. My daughter’s name was Khana in honor of my mother.

—You decided to move in 1966…

I began applying to move in 1956 and would send an application every year, but was denied both times. In 1966, a year before the war, my terminally ill wife was allowed to leave. She was taken to the hospital straight from the airport via ambulance. She was treated with cortisone and lived for another three years, which extended her life by quite a bit.

—Did you want to go to Israel right away?

What?

—Did you want to immigrate right after the war?

I wanted to move to Israel right after the war. I was in exile in Karaganda with a woman I knew, but she did not want to go. I knew that our place was in Israel, where we could defend ourselves and punish those who transgressed against us. I was already an adult, 21 when the war broke out in 1941, now I am 88. Your name is Yulia yes?

—Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Yakov Shepetinsky. Full, unedited interview, 2008

ID IS085.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4fg0v

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