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She survived the hell of the Minsk Ghetto, Gestapo, Auschwitz, Maidanek, Ravensbrook, and Noistadt

Inna is 76 years of age. She lives in one of those five–storey apartment blocks that are so habitual in the Former Soviet Union. Her life is an example of many other lives of Soviet Jewish demolished by the war — torn youth and old age spent in poverty are her lot. She keeps all the sad memories to herself, but today she speaks up to tell the reader what her teenage life was like during the WWII.

“Before the war I lived together with my parents (Vulf and Rosa) and my four siblings in the Kollektornaya Street in Minsk. When the war began Germans ordered us to abandon the house as it “no longer belonged to Jews”. We did not take anything from home as we did not think that the war would last long. So, all my family members and I were placed in the Minsk ghetto just as other Jews living in the city were.

We found a shelter in a cellar and it was always dark there just like at night. We did not have water, bread or wood. The only thing that actually helped us was that I did not look Jewish and could sneak to the “Russian district” where I begged and exchanged some things that the family possessed for something to eat. I escaped from the ghetto by crawling under the wire that surrounded it. I was just 13 back then and, frankly speaking, I was the bread winner of the family.

The ghetto residents knew that all of them would be killed. It was just a matter of time. My brothers and father were killed during one of the Nazi raids in 1941.

One day in 1942 I left the ghetto to get more food for my hungry family members. Later in the day I discovered that I could not get back as the entire district was “sealed off” by mobile gas cameras. I just heard perpetual shooting. I spent a night at my friend's place in the Russian district. Next day I returned to the ghetto and saw things that no words can describe — all streets were full of dead bodies… I also saw my dead sister Berta with her dead baby. The baby had been born in the ghetto and I was the one who had brought some milk for the newborn from the Russian district. And now the baby was lying on her breast… all in blood… I thought that it would be impossible to go through…

After that I began to think about what could be done to save my other family members and on September 24, 1943, we managed to leave Minsk. We became partisans. Once I had an assignment in Minsk, but when I reached a secret address, I discovered that it was disclosed and when I opened the apartment doors the Gestapo soldiers were waiting for me… In Gestapo torture chambers I went through such cruel torments that even the keenest human mind can not imagine. But I survived and was put on cargo trains with other prisoners to be sent to Maidanek where I did not stay long. Then I was sent to Auschwitz where I spent 20 months.

The first thing I saw in the morning was crematoriums pipes emitting smoke. I can clearly remember that crematoriums worked 24 hours a day and their capacity could not destroy all the piles of corpses that were lying along our barracks.

Each morning we were turned out into the yard for a roll–call. We were to stand straight and if someone moved, all of us were forced to stand on our knees on the ground no matter what season that was. And, of course, we starved.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder how I survived in that hell…

We were forced to dig ditches and collect gravel. I do not know why they needed it, but they needed everything — human hair, skin and souls…

Later I was sent to Ravensbruk and then to Noistadt. When we woke up on May 2, 1945, there were no Nazis around but American tanks were entering the camp.

All the camp prisoners from Belarus started the journey back home. We went to Belarus on foot. When we came to Minsk, we saw that the city had been leveled to the ground. I came to our house in the Kollektornaya Street and found out that my mother and a brother had been there. They also survived. There was no furniture in the house and we began our new life from point zero”.

Today a tiny kitchen and two shabby rooms are the area where Inna lives with her grandson. After the war she did not receive any professional training and worked in a hairdressing saloon. She is one of 10,749 Nazi–victims living in Belarus. The old lady does not have any relatives that could support her and Hesed Rachamim is the agency that provides Inna with all the necessary services for her to lead her life with dignity.

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