From war to war: how 100-year-old Yakov Goldstein avoided death

Vladimir Semenikhin

We met in the Israeli city of Ashkelon near a club for the elderly, where they are brought by their relatives for half a day. After the Palestinian rocket attacks ended and people began to go out again, I met and got into conversation with Jacob Goldstein, and he told me about his amazing life.

He was born in the Polish city of Lodz on June 12, 1921. His father, Abram, was a tailor and taught children this craft. Mother, Esther, ran the household. In September 1939, the Germans occupied the western part of Poland, and after a while its eastern part was occupied by the USSR. Soon, the Jews living in western Poland realized that hard times were coming and an urgent need to leave. So Yakov's parents decided that their sons should move to the USSR. In December 1939, they collected food for the trip, gave some money, blessed and sent Yakov with his older brother Yitzhak to the east. They themselves remained and soon died in the ghetto.

The only way to get to the Soviet Union was via Warsaw by rail. The trains were ridden by Germans and Poles, and from the back they hooked up carriages in which cattle were transported, and in which Jews were allowed to ride. The guys bought tickets and approached these cars, but the smell of manure and urine was so strong that they decided to take a chance and get into a regular car, especially since there were many empty seats. We went into one and sat down next to the door. Mostly German soldiers were in the carriage, talking loudly and drinking beer.

A drunken, hefty soldier passed the guys several times, and then suddenly stopped and stared at them with a heavy look. It seemed to Yakov that this went on for an hour, and he was expecting the most unpleasant: the soldier would begin to scoff at them, beat them, or even throw them out of the carriage. This has happened before. Finally, the soldier left, but soon returned with a bottle of beer, drank from the neck and handed it to Yakov. Yakov realized that he was checking whether we disdain or not. Took a bottle, said:

- Danke schön (German: thank you very much), took a drink and passed it to his brother.

He also drank and handed it to the German. He took the bottle, stood for a while and left. They weren't touched again. In the morning they arrived in Warsaw, immediately went to the market and there from the same refugees they learned that peasants from eastern villages who bring food to the city, after selling it, return home and take Jews for money. Thus, Yakov and Yitzchak reached the border, which ran along the Bug River.

There were already many Jewish refugees in the village where they stayed. They were transported to the Soviet side by a local resident, who took twenty zlotys from each and paid part of the German soldiers so that they would not interfere with him. And then one night about 20 people gathered at the appointed place. From behind the bushes, a raft swam quietly towards them, the owner sat them tightly, and swam slowly. When the raft was in the middle of the river, the moon came out from behind the clouds and people froze in fear. Yakov saw German soldiers on the bank looking in their direction. They could easily shoot them with machine guns, and diving into the ice-cold water of December was like death, but the soldiers who received the money watched indifferently as the Jews went to the Russians.

Having got out on the shore, the joyful refugees began to discuss where to go next: to the right to Bialystok or to the left to Brest-Litovsk? Yitzhak and Yakov were afraid to go with a noisy crowd to Bialystok and went to Brest-Litovsk. We made our way carefully, not along the road, but along the forest edge. They were lucky, and not avoiding a meeting with the border guards, they got to Brest and immediately went to the market, where they could earn some money and find out what to do next. They were advised to use the information from the advertisements on the poles, in one of which they read that in Lviv they are recruiting workers for construction and accepting refugees. It was impossible to get on the train, but they were told that they could get to one station where the trains stop and climb onto the roof of the car there. They did just that. Of course, riding on the roof of a carriage in winter is a small pleasure, the cold penetrates to the bone. The brothers lay close to each other.

They were in Lvov a day later. They found the right office and they were accepted, brought to the construction site, where the refugees were given Soviet passports and settled in a hostel. So the brothers became citizens of the USSR. The work was hard, but they were well fed, had passports and a roof over their heads. Six months later, Yakov began to get sick from overwork, and then Yitzhak decided to send him to the south of Ukraine so that he could try to get a job there. So Yakov ended up in Kirovograd, where he met an elderly Jew Lazar at the market and helped him bring his purchases home. Lazar and his wife Dina lived alone and invited Yakov to live with them. After a short time, they became so friends that the spouses began to treat Yakov like a son and offered him to call Yitzhak, who arrived in May 1941.

But the new family did not have time to rejoice at life, as the war began. Events developed rapidly. Already in July, there was a rumor that Kirovograd was almost surrounded by fascist troops, and military units and refugees were marching through the city to the east. Lazar and Dina advised Yitzchak and Yakov to leave, having decided to stay.

The stream of refugees moved to Dnepropetrovsk, they were divided into groups and led along the road so as not to interfere with military transport. A week later we approached the Dnieper. We stopped near the bridge. Itzhak immediately fell asleep, and Yakov was tormented by anxiety: he looked at the wide river and understood that salvation was beyond the river and one could only get there by crossing the bridge. While they were walking, German planes bombed the road, and Yakov had no doubt that the Germans would bomb the bridge in the morning. He woke up Isaac and began to persuade him to go to the bridge, he was stubborn, tried to postpone it until the morning, but in the end he agreed, and the brothers crossed the bridge.

After walking about a kilometer, they sat down to rest among carts and sleeping people, and almost immediately fell asleep, and woke up from the explosions: German planes bombed the bridge. He collapsed right before our eyes ...

We walked continuously for days. Before Rostov they were stopped by collective farmers and forced to help in harvesting grain. But they were fed very well, with borscht with meat. The harvest turned out to be rich, the harvested grain did not have time to take away. At the end of August, we went further. Passed Rostov. They stubbornly walked towards Stalingrad along with the stream of people. Sometimes it happened to arrive by train. On the way to Stalingrad, Yitzhak was mobilized to work in the mines of the city of Kopeisk and Yakov went further alone. Just before Stalingrad, the refugees were stopped. The city was closed. Yakov learned that the last train was leaving the nearest station to the south. He managed to sit on it. It was late autumn. Cold. On the way, Yakov fell ill and came to Samarkand dying: typhus. They picked him up on the street and took him to the hospital. A month later, still very weak, he was discharged, as the hospital was overcrowded. So in the winter of 1942, he found himself in a completely foreign city with no means of subsistence and no acquaintances. Kind Uzbeks showed him the house where homeless people spent the night. There was no money, but food was sold by ration cards. An unknown teenager Misha rescued him, who brought Yakov to the nearest collective farm, where they began to beg. The Uzbeks were served well, and sometimes they also fed soup and even pilaf. After a while, Yakov got a job in a boiler room, received a work card, a salary and a room in a dormitory. I wrote to Yitzhak in Kopeisk. He asked for leave to visit his sick brother and arrived in May 1942. It was then that the Germans launched a new offensive, and healthy young people began to be drafted into the army and digging trenches. So Yitzhak left to dig trenches near Stalingrad, where he died during the bombing.

After the war, Yakov lived in Samarkand, already working in the family profession - a tailor. In 1949 he married Rose. They had two daughters. In 1966, they moved to Moldova - in the city of Balti. In 1991 they immigrated to Israel. Yakov has three grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. He meets his centenary as a happy person and thanks fate for not perishing in the fire of war, like tens of millions of people.

PS

During the Palestinian shelling, a rocket hit the house where Jacob lived three years ago. But his family did not begin to tell him about it...