David Parnes

The Museum’s Behind Every Name a Story project gives voice to the experiences of survivors during the Holocaust.

MAGIC YOU CAN DIE FOR (YOU PAY FOR WITH YOUR LIFE)

Der shnayder neyt, di nodl geyt, Der moyekh dreyt, s'iz groys di noyt. Nito in shtub keyn broyt, Nito in shtub keyn broyt. As dos heyst lebn, vos is toyt? This song “Der Schneider” by S.Ansky (pseudonym of playwright Solomon Zanvel Rappoport (1863-1920) music maybe Khanan Gleiser has become a folk song.

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I was 7 at that time. It was in May, about a month before the war broke out (in the Soviet Union the war started on June 22, 1941). In Bessarabia there was an earthquake and it eventually came down to Balti (Beltsi), where my family lived at that time. In a month -on June 22 there was that roar again – and we rushed outside again. It was dawn again…We did not understand what was happening. My mother asked my father, “What is it, Izchak?” And my father, a highly educated person, responded, “An earthquake! What else?! When a house next door caught fire, mother had another question, “Why is the house on fire?” My dad answered, “It’s lava!”

At that very second, a neighbor of ours charged outside the door and got on his motorcycle. My dad cried, “Where are you heading to?” And the neighbor yelled back while on the go, “It’s a war, I am off to the airport.” In my father, faith in peace was so strong, that he took bombing for lava.

The very next day, my father, Izchak (Isaac) Parnes, a well-known doctor in the Balti (Beltsi) area, was called to colors. He was to work at a war hospital. As for us, we immediately left everything and started walking as far away from the war as possible. But in about 10 days, father was fired from the hospital. There was an order issued by the Soviet commander-in-chief that those who lived in “newly acquired” territories (Bessarabia, Western Ukraine, Baltic Republics were invaded in June 1940) could not be trusted. And father went to look for us. Miraculously, he found us, and we joined crowds of refugees, and my father Isaac, mama Rosa, mother’s brother Boris Trachtenbroight and mother’s mother, Betty Trachtenbroight – got to a small place Dombroveny.

Our evacuation was an emergency, so  we had almost next to nothing on us and with us: we traveled light holding everything we had in our hands. We walked the most part of the way, sometimes we traveled on drays or carts. To get on a train was impossible. On top of that, the railway junction was bombed out.

And in Dombroveny, on the right bank of the Dniester river, there were crowds of thousands and thousands of people. Everybody wanted to get to the left bank. But the crossing was not working any more. The last Red Army units had already crossed the river – and the crossing was blown up. No people who owned boats agreed to take anybody to the other bank. For any money. And we stayed where we were. Nobody knew what to do and what lay ahead.

I remember that evening – there were no soldiers, either Soviet, or German. We and some other people were all in a house belonging to a Jewish family of that small town. At dawn - there was no shooting – there were sudden sounds of broken glass, some hysterical cries, and fluff of torn pillows. We rushed out of the house – the whole family. I remember mom holding my hand, and I lost my sandal. I wanted to pick it up and pulled my mother back. And mother kicked me – it had never happened before. I felt so hurt! What did she hit me for? I was just going to pick up my sandal. I might not have been an obedient child, but at that moment I wanted to be obedient and pick up my shoes. But mother pulled me after her and we ran away to the field where they grew rye.

Suddenly a three-horse coach caught up with us with two men in white shirts. One of them in a black kushma hat shouted in his language: “Stop, Yids [Jews]!” We did not think of resisting. Those local people took away all our suitcases with everything in them and got us undressed. Mother asked for at least a long shirt. And father pleaded to give him his diploma. Only diploma. Nothing else. The marauder broke into laughter, whipped father with his lash and yelled, “Why do you need the diploma? Do you have the right to live? Your days are numbered!” He nickered [laughed] and darted away with his friend and their horses.

Sometime later Romanians surrounded us and decided to shoot us. And my grandmother Betya dropped to her knees in front of them and begged in Romanian: “You have a mother and kids too, why would you want to shoot us away?!” Might have her words been heard? Or could it have been another miracle? And we were taken to an enclosed place where a huge crowd already waited. And then our column was driven to Balti (Beltsy) of all places. That was the very town where generations of our family had lived and where my father was healing patients as a doctor.

On the way, a countless number of people died. Local guards shot down those who were exhausted. Amazingly, there were local people who started pogroms, while other local peasants tried to help us and gave food to those in our column. We lived on those crumbs. In the long run we reached Balti (Beltsy). We were in the street where we used to live. We were ordered to stop. A miracle! We were across the street from the house of a  doctor, a gynecologist. We used to be friendly before. We were neighbors, and every week he would stop by at our house. He played with me, and I loved him dearly. Here the column of exhausted naked people was given a chance to take a breath. The column was guarded by only three or four soldiers (where could a Jewish person run?) And mother taking me by the hand went into front yard of that good acquaintance of ours. 

She knocked on the double door, and I remember it as if it happened right now. Our neighbor looked out. He never asked what we were about to ask him for, water or food, or some clothing. He started yelling in Romanian: “For Yids and communists the door to my house is closed!” And we went back to the column.

Then we were taken to the town prison. The night was coming, and with crowds of people, we found ourselves in the prison yard. It was an awful night. I remember, mother was on the ground, and we were sitting on top of her. We were covering her for her not to be seen.  Nobody explained to me why we were doing it, but from the whisper of other people I understood that officers came out into the yard from top floors of the building where they were stationed, took young women and led them upstairs. There they raped them, then threw them away or killed them. And my mother was very young and beautiful. She was only 26. And the whole family of ours were hiding her from Romanians. So it seemed to us then.

A few days later we were driven to Reutsely near Balti. Earlier there were field camps of the Red Army there with wooden tents. A huge number of Jews were taken to that place. Not everybody survived. Not everybody could walk on to Marculeshty. That was a small place with three-four thousand Jewish people. Now there were thirty-fifty thousand of us there.

Our way to Marculeshty I remembered very well. Mainly, that meeting on a square where either the head of the mayor’s office or the commandant was talking. He said that Jewish people had mocked Romanians who were Christian Orthodox for ages, and the patience of the Romanian people was wearing thin. The time to pay the piper came. But, he said, the outstanding Prime Minister Antonescu and Romanian tsar Mihai (Michael) were willing to give Jews a chance to improve– to stop freeloading!!! Very soon they would be sent to Transnistria – and there Jewish parasites would be given a chance to work. Life would not be easy, he said. It would be hard, but those who would work, would get bread, a place to live, and an opportunity to prove that they were worth something. But the most important was that Jews had to redeem themselves, make up for all they had done to Romanian people.

We Jewish people were so happy – there was something definite ahead. So what? We will live in Transnistria. (In Marculeshty I remember Hungarian gendarmerie. Where were the from? They might have been from the part of Hungary that became Romanian. Hungarians had huge calf-like dogs. I was so afraid of those dogs!!!)

Soon there was an announcement that we would be moving in columns for the sake of order. And people from certain places in Bessarabia will form the first column. And all the rest will follow. There will be 9 columns all in all.

By morning they broke into houses where we slept and made people move outside with whips, lashes, and dogs. Columns were formed again without any order by place of birth or any other. Our family happened to get to different columns. Mother got us out of different columns and hid us in a basement or a tent… She was gathering us together – into one column. We never saw any other people from previous columns. Only our column survived. In that crowd we found some other relatives of ours.

In one of the previous columns there were two brothers of my grandmother. They died. In another column there was my father’s sister’s family. We know nothing about them. Only our column reached the place we were supposed to go to. All the way we were holding hands. When those of us who were weak or too young to walk on were offered to go on by cart, I refused. And my uncle Borya (Boris), black with fatigue, kept me on his shoulders. He never gave me to Romanians. Those who agreed to go by cart were shot down on the way. At first, we did not know that, but we knew we could not be separated from each other – and were holding on to each other for the life of ours.

We were brought to the outskirts of a village by the name of Kosautsy. It was late fall, that awful Rosautsky forest full of fallen leaves.  We came there in the evening. People started making fires – we had to get warmer. All of a sudden there came a command for all men to get to work. They were supposed to sweep leaves in the forest. Of course, it was mockery. The order was to collect leaves. They grabbed both my father and uncle and took them to the forest. In an hour we heard shots. People rushed to the forest to look for their relatives. Every was shouting. I was walking with my mother and grandmother. I remember they were calling “Isaac!”!”Borya”! and I was yelling ”Dad”!.

In front of us there were piles of leaves made by some men. My father and uncle got out of a small pile. They heard our voices and saw us through leaves. Then they came out to meet us.

Not everybody found their loved ones though. That shooting in the forest was not a planned action. Romanians, unlike Germans, did not do it as planned actions. Romanians did that on their own initiative. There was some spontaneity: why don’t we shoot now! And they took men and shot them. Whoever escaped was lucky.

And those who were alive were driven on. And I remember snow. I was eating it. It was so cold. And when you are hungry and cold, everything is painful. My grandmother stole a bashlyk (Romanians called it a hood) to keep me warm. In 1941, winter came early.

The next stage of our life was, I believe, the most dramatic and the most wonderful. We were driven to a village of Kachkivka not far from Vinnitsa. They said we were in a kolkhoz (collective farm). There we collapsed, exhausted. Whoever could get some hay, slept on it. Whoever did not was sleeping on the ground. I remember by morning many of us did not wake up.  Many froze to the ground.

It was still Romanian territory, and a little further, in three kilometers everything belonged to Germans. On the land under Germans, the question of life and death was decided in no time at all. If you go outside, you are shot down immediately. Under Romanians it was a touch better. And my mom came up to barbed wire early in the morning. While she was standing, she saw peasants from nearby villages with loaves of bread and some food. Locals wanted to trade food for gold. They knew that Jews had been driven! (They were sure: Jews had saved something!)

A woman with a loaf of bread in her hands (her name was Aunt Marusya Stetsenko) liked my mother. She said, “You look very much like my daughter! She is in Baku though.” Looking at the bread, mother said,”I do not have anything to trade.” Then Aunt Marusya says, “No need to give me anything. I will just give it to you. ”Wasn’t that a miracle! In the middle of the war! Suddenly, Aunt Marusya was saying: “You look so much like my daughter! So much…” and then she blurted out, “You know, let me save you!” Mother responded, “I have my mother, brother, husband, and a son here.” And Aunt Marusya kept saying, “Listen, today you will all be shot and if not, you will die of hunger anyway! But I will save you. You are young, you will have more children…” “I cannot leave them.” Mother says. Aunt Marusya gave Mother the loaf and was about to leave. But as soon as hungry people saw bread in mother’s hand, they ran up and tore the bread out of her hands. Mother had only a small piece left in her hand. She was on the ground crying bitterly. And Aunt Marusya returned and said, “I will think of something.” She came back in an hour and said that her nephew was the commander of the policemen who were shooting Jews. (It needs to be noted that all the dirty work including guarding, murder, shooting down Jewish people was accomplished by local policemen, SS Galichina, and volunteer-nationalists.)

And what Aunt Marusya later told us, she persuaded her nephew to let us go when he was on duty. Late that night, Aunt Marusya brought a sled, her nephew(!) put our family there, covered with hay and straw and took to the road). We lived in Aunt Marusya’s house for two weeks. She was feeding us. What we ate was fantastic food for us: bread, corn flour, tortillas, sometimes eggs. For me, pickled apples and pickled watermelon were the best delicacy in the world.

Aunt Marusya used to work as a nursing aid at a hospital – she had only camphor left of all the medications she had in her house earlier.

And for some reason she made camphor injections to me, to my uncle, and to my father… I am not sure if camphor worked or Aunt Marusya’s warmth, but we survived.

We never saw people from that column of ours. They were shot dead  that very night when we were hiding at Aunt Marusya’s.  But the conveyer was working without any interruptions – and new columns of Jewish people kept coming to the village of Kachkivka.

One evening policemen broke into Aunt Marusya’s house. They were yelling that they were definitely going to set Marusya’s house on fire as she has “Yids” in her house. Some  remembered that her nephew was an important man but she….

Marusya asked the policemen to sit down at the table and started giving them horilka (Ukrainian alcoholic beverage) Mother, father, and brother were hiding in the basement, and my grandmother and I were on the stove. When the policemen were all drunk, she lay them to rest, called mother, father and uncle from the basement, gave us some clothing and a feedbag with food. She was far from being rich.  In the feedbag there was tallow, bread, onion and said, “Go, otherwise when they wake up, they will kill not only you, but me too. But they will definitely kill you, and I won’t be able to do anything to save you.”

And off we went. Where could we go? If there were a Russian POW in our place, he could knock on any door, and the family that would take him in, could explain it if there was a search that he as a relative of theirs, an acquaintance of theirs – and everything would be just fine. But there was no way Jewish people could do it. Such people as Aunt Marusya were one in a million. And we went on to the people of our kind. We had heard that in Obodovka (Trostyanetskiy region, Vinnitsa) there was a Jewish ghetto. There were Jews there. There were people of our flock.

We could hardly walk a hundred meters when we saw the headlights of an approaching car. The car could be either Romanian or German.  There was nothing we could do. We hid around the corner. We crouched. It was so cold.  And we knocked on the door of the house. The name of the person who opened the door was Uncle Saman. Mother told him about Germans outdoors. Mother also said that Uncle Saman could go and report us to the Germans and he could let us stay till morning. And in the morning we will leave, my mother said. He let us in. I do not remember if he gave us any food. We were not hungry because we had eaten at Aunt Marusya’s. But one detail stayed with me. 

My parents were in another room, and we were in a guest room (casa mare). There was a huge bed with nickel knobs. That showed that the household was not poor. There were lots of pillows on the bed. And I remember that Uncle Saman started rolling out the bed. His wife said, “These filthy Yids. This bed is for guests. Find a place for them in some other spot.” Uncle Saman responded with only one phrase which I, a seven-year-old boy heard but never understood at that time.. His words were: “ It might be their last night.” Much later, when an adult I understood the humanity of the phrase.

In the morning Uncle Saman put me, mother, and father into his cart, covered with hay. Uncle Borya and grandmother were sitting near the driver – it seemed to us that grandmother did not look Jewish--and ran his horses to the woods. Ten kilometers from Uncle Saman’s village there was a place where a Jewish ghetto was located in Obodovka. Jews worked the whole day there and in the evening they were driven back to the ghetto. Saman took us to that place. We go off, mixed with the crowd, and after day’s work entered the ghetto.

On the way, we met a man from Beltsy. He lived in the Ghetto. There were no barracks. That was a space in a house where one Jewish family had lived before. Now in that house there lived 8-9 families. They slept on bunk beds. We joined all the people there. I remember my grandmother, having seen a radish there, said they were exceedingly wealthy.

Then came two years of severe hardships – life in the ghetto. How did we survive? It might have been a chain of accidental happenings. And, of course, there was magic. People who were responsible for that magic could have paid for it with their lives.

P.S. In 1946 my father Izchak Parnes got a copy of the diploma given to him by University of Yassy (Iași), which was taken from him by marauders in 1941.

Reminiscences of David Parnes were written down by Yan Toporovsky English translation by Irene Aluker