RelatioNet ZE DO 42 MU UK
Full Name : Dov Zeichner

Interviewer: Lihi Vaknine and Sapir Yaron.

Full Names
Email: sapir_yaron1@walla.co.il
Adress: Kfar Saba Israel



Survivor: Dov Zeichner

Code: RelatioNet ZE DO 42 MU UK
Family Name: Zeichner First Name: Dov
Father Name: Izek Mother Name: Annie
Birth Date: 18/01/1942
Town In Holocaust: Murafa Country In Holocaust: Ukraine

My story- Dov Zeichner

My name is Dov Ziechner and I’m 66 years old. I was born on the 18th of January 1942 to my father Izek (Itzhak) and mother Annie (Hannah) in the town of Murafa in the Ukraine (today Belarous). After my birth in the hospital, my mother luckily heard a conversation between the nurse and the doctor. They said that they wanted to kill me by poisoning me because “there’s no need for another Jew in the world”. After hearing this, my mother decided, courageously to leave the hospital with me immediately. During the same period of time, the Jews who lived in the area were moved towards the town of Murafa and from there they were transported to concentration camps. I was sent with my mother and my two aunts to the camp “Transnistria” that was located near Romania. At first, my father and uncle were sent to the same camp as well but we were later separated and I didn’t see them until the war ended.

The living conditions at the camp were horrible, there was almost no food so my mother breast-fed me until I was 4 years old. She also used to eat what she could find, even potato peels and beetroot so that she could feed me. My father and uncle were sent to a labor camp called “Tulchin” but they escaped from there and hid in different corn fields while ferocious dogs were chasing them. They also hid in a river where they breathed through reeds to escape. Out of fear getting caught, they separated, my father joined the Partisans and I don’t know what happened to my uncle.

When the war ended the Russians rescued us from the concentration camp. All of us from the camp walked in the freezing cold weather along a river. Because there were so many people, I fell into the river. I was lucky, I was only 3 years old and a couple of people jumped in to pull me out. They saved my life. During the war we lost connection with my two aunts and I don’t know if they survived.

The war ended, and my mother and I moved to Romania. There we were reunited with my father but he left us again after a short time. We lived in Romania where my brother was born and 6 months later the three of us immigrated to Israel. When we got off the boat in Israel all of us were put in tents. Despite all those people, it was like a miracle, and we found my cousin who’d come to Israel in 1945. It was a very emotional moment. I saw that my cousin was a soldier in the Israeli Army. At first we lived in “ Sha’ar Aalia” and later we were sent to a ma’abara in Pardes-Hanna and from there to Holon.

Between 1951-1952 there was a rough winter in the country and it caused many houses to be flooded and many families moved to a building that once belonged to the Australian Army. We lived there until we received apartments in a neighborhood called “Tel Giborim” in Holon. In 1953 my father immigrated to Israel. With the help of a department searching for relatives and rumors that people passed on, he showed up where we lived. This was when I truly reunited with my father and saw him after many years living apart.

I grew up in Holon and I studied in a school with other Holocaust survivors as well as Israeli students. These days, I meet them, usually at memorial ceremonies and we share our memories from the war and childhood. The treatment that Holocaust survivors received from the other kids was not unusual and the Holocaust was talked-about in school just like it is now. After I graduated from school, I joined the army and worked with viehicles which I had before. One day, after completing my army service I went to the beach in the evening, where I met my wife to be and in 1964 we got married. We used to live in Holon and there our three children Nitzi, David (of blessed memory) and Tzefi were born. After leaving Holon, we moved to Bat-Yam into a
bigger apartment where my forth child Pazit was born.

Since I was very young during the war, my parents and other family members who survived, told me most of the stories that I know today. My parents never mentioned the Holocaust and what they had been through in front of my kids. They used to tell me that one day when I have my own children I would tell them the stories that I was told, and that is what I did. When my kids were old enough to understand, I told them the stories, even though I didn’t like to talk about it for many years. In 1996 I moved with my wife and children to Kfar-Saba and I have lived there ever since. I work as a security man in a kindergarten. I love my job and enjoy the kids company very much, they make me happy.

The town of Murafa

The town of Murafa is small town which is located in Mogilb County in the Ukraine. Murafa is placed on a river bank which is named after the town and you can barely find it on the map. The town has a Roman Catholic cathedral built in the eighteen hundreds and an Orthodox church, both on the main street. There is also an old Jewish cemetery that was destroyed during the war, but not completely. In the center of the town there are three synagogues that were also near the Jewish houses and Jewish shops. Along the road in Murafa there are memorial signs of the massacres of World War II in memory of the victims who died there.

Murafa has a historical past of the Jewish community which lived in it. In 1926 there were 1421 Jews in the town and in 1941, when World War II begun, 3500 Jews were expelled from Suceava, Campulung-Moldovenesc, Radautz and Dorohoi. Those exiles moved into Murafa and as a result, 4500 Jews lived in Murafa. 3700 from them were exiles and about 800 were locals. The Jews who arrived in Murafa came in convoys and the luckier ones came in German trucks that were bought with bribes. The convoys were under the Romanian soldiers who forced the Jews to walk in the rain and snow. These long walks caused many deaths.

Murafa was under the authorities of the nearby town Shagorod. Since 1914 the Jews in the town suffered from anti-Semitism. Almost everything was forbidden to them: to move outside their area, to own land, to go to school and they were blamed for everything as well. This gives us a background behavior towards the Jewish community during World War II in Murafa. In the war the mayor of the town was Nikita and the Jewish community was managed by a special board that organized life in the Ghetto in different areas, for example: public order, social help and medical help. The Jewish police recruited people for forced labor that was done by command of the Ukraine and Roman armies. The commission of the Jewish community also established a number of social institutions like a soup kitchen and a pharmacy.

The Jews had to work in horrible conditions. They removed snow that sometimes reached up to 2 meters high, when the temperature was down to 30 degrees below zero. In 1942 when the snow removing was finished, Jews started to pave the road between Murafa and Yerushshanka. In order to build that road they had to work out of the town for many hours a day, and they left their families without food at home. The Jewish commission had to send about 1000 people to do construction work for the Germans which was the worst job of all. People were also sent to work in the labor camps Tulchin and Verakova. In Verakova the working conditions were the worst, with all of the tough work in the freezing cold the people also suffered from hunger and bad living conditions.

Most of the exiles from the camps were housed in the town in houses of the local Jews; some of them were put in farmers’ houses in a village by the town and in public facilities. In those facilities there was over crowding and awful distress that caused many people to get mentally ill. The bad health conditions and the over crowding caused the Typehus plague to spread and brought many people to die in winter 1942.

The Jews used to pray in the towns' synagogues every day and on holidays. Children received lessons in small groups in different subjects. Since there were no books allowed, the teachers taught the material by heart.

In the summer of 1943 the Partisans started to operate. One day 12 Romanian soldiers got caught and with the commander, they were all killed eventually. In March 1944 the Romanian soldiers retreated from Murafa and recommended that the Jews hide from the Germans who were getting closer. The Jews were lucky because the Germans were too tired and continued escaping with out hurting anyone. Only on the 19th of March 1944 did the Partisans get to the town and fight against the Germans. The population accepted them with great enthusiasm. The next day the Russian army got into town and the exiles began to leave the town and go back to their houses.