Martin Feldman

I was born in Nowagrodek Poland in 1935. My brother Stephen was born in 1938. My parents Herman and Lisa had a food specialty shop. My mother’s family lived there as well. My fathers family lived in Dereczyn, a town about fifty miles away. It’s a miracle that my immediate family survived in tact.

When the Russians occupied that part of Poland, several merchants determined by the Russians to be speculators were sent to Siberia. Fearing deportation my family moved to Lida, a nearby city in 1940. In June of 1941, the Germans started to bomb Lida. My parents decided to go back to Nowagrodek, thinking that they would be more secure with family close by. Several days after arriving in Nowagrodek, the city was bombed and most of it destroyed. In July of 1941, the Germans occupied Nowagrodek. Within days of their arrival the Germans started killing Jews and committing all sorts of atrocities against the Jewish population.

In December of 1941, all the Jews were marched to the courthouse. Everybody was herded into cramped rooms and some were forced to spend the night outside. The next morning German soldiers arrived at the courthouse and the officers in charge went into each room and directed the people to go to the left or to the right. My family was in that room and my parents and I were told to go to the right. My brother was sitting on a suitcase in the middle of the room. My mother moved form her place and pulled my brother over to us. The people on the left were put on trucks and driven out of town to be shot. That day, close to 6000 people were killed. The people that remained were marched to a ghetto that was built on the outskirts of town.

We lived in the ghetto with very little food until August of 1942. My father registered as a tinsmith because he heard that craftsman received special privileges. The craftsman were then sent to the courthouse to work. My parents went and my brother and I and several other children and their mothers were somehow smuggled into a cellar at the courthouse. The cellar was locked and boards were placed over the entrance. My parents remained outside. The Germans asked for the cellars to be opened. They called for a locksmith to open the doors. It turned out that the locksmith’s family was in the cellar. He told the Germans that the lock ws too old and he could not open it. Fortunately the Germans believed him and went about their business. Later the cellars were opened and we were hidden in the living quarters. We had to hide in the uppermost bunks during inspections by the guard.

Sometime in the winter of 1942/43 my father arranged for us to be smuggled out of the courhtouse to the ghetto- in the wagon that delivered bread from the ghetto to the courthouse. We moved in with my uncle and his family and lived there for a short time. That winter on a snowy night we escaped from the ghetto through a hole in the fence into the forest. My brother, mother, four cousins, two aunts and uncle ran to a farmhouse which was a meeting place arranged by the Bielski brothers who were Jewish partisan fighters. At that time I was seven and my brother was four.

We lived in the forest until we were liberated by the Russians in the summer of 1944. Life in the forest was very difficult. We were constantly on guard for German patrons. We lived in dugouts constructed with logs and branches and existed on berries, mushrooms, bread baked in the dugout and provisions supplied by Partisans. There were manhunts by the Germans to find the partisans- at that time we had to abandon our positions and run. Sometimes we would return and other times we would find new places. Bielski partisans were a formidable force against the Germans. They blew up trains disrupted communications and ambushed small patrols. The war was still on when our family returned to Nowagrodek. In the spring of 1945 we left Nowagrodek and traveled toward Israel. The war ended in May of 1945.