|
|
|
 |
 | ||||
|
"I drank water from puddles. Snow. Anything that I could get a hold of." | |||
|
Charlene Schiff Born 1929 Horochow, Poland 
|
|
How I lived in the forest, or in the forests, plural. I don't know, but it's an amazing thing, when one is hungry and completely, uh, demoralized, you become inventive. I never...when I even say it I don't believe it. I ate worms. I ate bugs. I ate anything that I could put in my mouth. And I don't know, sometimes I would get very ill. There were some wild mushrooms, I'm sure they were poison, I don't know, poisonous ones. I was ill. My stomach was a mess, but I still put it in my mouth because I needed to have something to chew. I drank water from puddles. Snow. Anything that I could get a hold of. Sometimes I would sneak into potato cellars that the farmers have around their villages, and that was a, a good hiding place because it was a little warmer in the winter. But there were rodents there and all. And, uh, to say that I ate raw rats, yes, I did. Apparently I wanted to live very, very badly, because I did undescribable things. I ate things that no one would dream of being able to. Somehow I survived. I don't know why. I keep asking myself. But I did. | ||
|
Frima Laub Born 1936 Volochisk, Soviet Union 
|
|
My mother had left before...but before she left she told me that she has to go away with my sister and...uh...she gave me a hundred rubles and she told me that...uh...in the springtime this gentleman whom I knew will come and he'll bring me back to my mother. That it's only going to be a little while and...uh...I'm safer staying with this lady and her grandchildren here. My mother left, but before she did I cried. And I said, "I have a headache. Don't leave me." But she said she has to go. I guess I understood. And so she gave me the hundred rubles and I remained in the lady's house. With her grandchildren, I used to play. After two weeks the lady became a little panicky and she was really afraid to keep a Jewish child in the house because...uh...the Germans notify everyone that if a Jew is found in their house that their house will be burned and the family will be killed. You know, this whole thing. So she was really afraid. And so she...uh...she told me I had to leave her house two weeks later. Well, at that time I was infested already with lice because nobody gave me a bath and I slept in the same clothes and I lived in the same clothes and I lived in that pantry with the mice. And so, I walked out of the house. And the first thing I did was go into a...uh...toy store...a religious articles store, and I bought a big cross and I spend my hundred rubles. And then, I was so infested with the lice that my head, my skin was all rashes and bloody from scratching it so much. And so I felt that I really needed help and I remembered this lady whom my parents were friendly with and I remembered that we used to visit them every so often. They lived quite a bit outside the city. I didn't remember the address and I didn't remember the name. But I just remember how we used to walk. And I...that's how I walked. And I made it to the house. And it was winter and cold and the snow was...uh...snow maybe five, six inches of snow. And I made it to her house and as I got to her gate...uh...her dog started barking so she came out to see who was at the gate and she sees me and she says, "My God, come in quick. Come in quick." And she takes me to her barns because obviously she must have noticed that I have lice crawling all over me. So she wouldn't take me into her house but she took me into the barn and she...quickly she took off my clothes and put on other clothes and she said to me, "Where are your parents?" I said, "Everybody is killed. Everybody is dead." Because I wanted her to have pity on me. And so she did. | ||
|
Shulamit Perlmutter (Charlene Schiff) Born 1929 Horochow, Poland 
|
|
Shulamit, known as Musia, was the youngest of two daughters born to a Jewish family in the town of Horochow, 50 miles northeast of Lvov. Her father was a philosophy professor who taught at the university in Lvov, and both of her parents were civic leaders in Horochow. Shulamit began her education with private tutors at the age of 4. 1933-39: In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and three weeks later the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland, where our town was located. Hordes of refugees fleeing the Germans streamed through our town. Soviet rule didn't change our lives very much. We remained in our home and Father continued to teach in Lvov. The most important change for me was at school; we were now taught in Russian. 1940-45: In 1941 the Germans invaded the USSR and set up a ghetto in Horochow. In 1942, with rumors that the ghetto was about to be destroyed, Mother and I fled. We had just hidden in the underbrush at the river's edge when we heard shots. We hid, submerged in the water, all night as machine guns blazed in the ghetto. By morning others were hiding in the brush and I heard a Ukrainian guard scream, "I see you there Jews; come out!" Most obeyed, but we hid in the water for several more days as the gunfire continued. Sometimes we would doze; once I woke to find Mother had vanished. Shulamit never saw her mother again and never found out what happened to her. Shulamit spent the rest of the war living in the forests near Horochow. She is the only survivor of her family. |
||
| Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. | ||||
