RelatioNet BR DO 20 PO PO
Bryir Dov

Interviewer:

Shaked Barak, Neta Halfon.
Telephone: +972-972-09-0000000 Fax: +972-972-09-0000000
Mobile: +972-972-052-3333333 Email: shaked_cami@walla.co.il

ICQ: No
Messenger: No
Address: kfar-Saba, Israel.


Survivor:

Code: RelatioNet BR DO 20 PO PO
Family Name: Bryir First Name: Dov
Father Name: Bryir David Mother Name: Zak Zisel
Birth Date: 20/10/1920
Town In Holocaust: Podwolocysk Country In Holocaust: Poland
Profession (Main) In Holocaust: music

The Interview

Dov was born in a small town in Poland, called Podvolochisk on the 20th of October 1920. His father was a photographer and had a Photography Gallery. At the age of 9 Dov began working with him in the store and discovered his love of photography. Because his photographs were good, his father sent him to work at a photographers in town. There, Dov worked for a year, and learned the profession well and returned to work with his father. At the same time, during his youth he was a member of "BEYTAR". "Not out of ideology," says Dov, "but only for social reasons." Dov told us that they all were in the youth movement and together they went camping and it was a wonderful experience.

At school it was a different situation. He suffered from derogatory names such as "JID" which means "Jew". Dov successfully finished 8 years of school, and then went on to study in high school. However the rumors started about the war but no one knew what was really going to happen. All of a sudden the war broke out and the Nazis invaded Poland. They knew that the situation was going to be exacerbated even more, so his mother wanted to protect him and told him to run east to Russia. Dov understood there was no choice left so he left with his friends. Dov told us about the difficult separation from his mother. His mother escorted him up the street, and told him, "Dov, in a week the war will end." He believed her. They were 5 friends who left the town. Together they managed to escape the Germans' bombing of their town. In retrospect when Dov thinks about his separation from his family, he says, "For God’s sake, I left them all alone and I saved myself."

When Dov and his friends reached Russia, they went to the town of "Stalinra". Immediately the manager of a factory offered them a job. The four friends went to work in the factory that made tractors and them became a tank factory. Dov was recruited to the “Kolkhoz”. In the Kolkhoz their were 11 people and he was the only Jew. The people in the Kolkhoz spoke with no sympathy about the Jews so Dov hid the fact that he was a Jew. He worked on a farm where he never had worked before. After a period of time, the five friends decided to leave the town. They went to "Uzbekistan" and there someone offered them a job working with cotton. They picked and arranged certain types of cotton. One day the manager asked who wanted to work in the factory and of course Dov volunteered.

After some time, he got typhus so they moved Dov to a hospital and that was very hard for him. There were no drugs, and Dov had a high fever. He tried to run away from the hospital, but he was caught and was returned. The doctor was Jewish and she took care of him until the fever went down and said that it was a miracle that he had come out of it. Dov told us that the thing that helped him overcome the disease were his optimistic thoughts. The fever went down, but the disease came back and Dov swelled again, "You look good," the doctor told him.
After recovering from his illness, Dov returned to the town and began working in a frame factory. Dov received only 500 Grand as a salary working as a porter. One day, near the end of the war, the manager called Dov and said that he wanted Dov to be the spokesman of the factory. Dov accepted the job and he began to work at night, from about 20:00 to 02:00 o'clock. Every day he received a report on how much cotton had been collected in the “KOLHOZ”, and than he had to report this to the secret police. After this Dov became the manager of the club in the factory. There he played the mandolin to an audience. Dov told us that when they were playing music, it was very difficult to hear them, but the youth always said, "We do not need to hear, it is enough to see you play and that there is a happy atmosphere. "

Dov studied at the conservatory for one year. After the war, his friends said Dov that he should stay there and that there was no point in coming back to his town in Poland. Dov wanted to go back to his town so off he went. He took a cattle train and arrived in “Shlayaza”. The road was difficult, but once again his optimistic nature helped him to continue. "It can’t be possible, I have to continue." When Dov arrived in Shlayaza, it was very difficult, he didn’t have anywhere to sleep. A couple of Jews saw him and told him that he could come sleep with them. There he met his future wife's mother. At this point he didn’t know his future wife. Dov wore sloppy clothes so the mother asked him "Who are you? Where are you from? Where do you live?" She invited him to her home and Dov ate lunch there, and the father brought Dov some clothes.

All the survivors who lived there with Dov began to return to work, every man to his old job. Dov returned to work in photography during the day. At night a group of players was arranged and began playing at a coffee shop 3 times a week. He continued to live like that until he immigrated to Israel. In 1946 Dov went to his home town and went to his old home. When he got there he saw that someone else lived there. He hidden and didn’t dare to go in. He saw that the new owner had kept his old curtains hanging and that made him very emotional.

After he met his wife in 1946, they married in 1947 and lived together in an apartment. Dov and his wife told us a story that Dov came back from the coffee shop where he played his band, two guys started to follow him when he was with his clarinet and accordion. He was afraid they would steal his instruments but he succeeded in opening and closing his gate at home before they caught him.

Dov and his wife began to plan how they would escape from Poland. In 1949, David, their oldest son was born. To get to Israel, they needed to ask for approval. The second or third time they asked for it, they received their confirmation and went from Poland to Italy and from there with a ship called "GALILA" they arrived in Israel in 1950. When Dov came to Israel there were 120 survivors from his town, today there are only 3. They all went through a difficult situation. At first they lived in tents in "PARDESIA". It was crowded there - 5 family in a tent, and they were with their baby.

When Dov came Israel, he started working in construction. Dov told us about a situation when someone asked him if he was involved with music. Of course Dov answered yes, and he began to give music lessons. After they left "PARDESIA" they moved to "KFAR-SAVA" to live with friends in one room. Because thay left their “BEIT-OLIM” the place with all the others immigrants, they have lost all the rights that immigrants received with coming to Israel. So they didn’t receive money and protection. Therefore, their situation was very difficult and they had to live in a small storage. The rain was leaked in it, but they were satisfied that they were in Israel. When their situation got harder, they contacted “the Jewish Agency”, and with a lot of compassion, “the Jewish Agency” agreed and made them new immigrants and they received their rights as immigrants, and they received a Swedish shed. The shed was strange for them. So they built their own kitchen from crates in the small shed and made it their little home.
In the fifties Dov worked as a photographer in Tel Aviv. When he live in "KFAR-SAVA", the manager of the elementary school "Ussishkin" offered him a job there, to be a music teacher. Dov was one of the only ones who knew Hebrew well because he had studied it in elementary school and he even knew punctuation. Even at age of 72 Dov has continued to teach choirs, organized memorial Ceremony, and been active with things he likes.


The town - Podwolocysk


When World War II broke out there were about 7,000 people in Podwolocysk and the town of Zdanishovka. They consisted of 20% Poles, 20% Ukrainians and 60% Jews. The town had about 4200 Jews, which comprised about 60% of the population. The town of Podwolocysk is about 18 kilometers from the town of Skalat and about 50 kilometers from the county seat, Tarnopol.
After the children finished the local grammar school, they moved to high school at Tarnopol. They would travel there daily, although some stayed with local Jewish families. There were three high schools for boys, two for girls and one for them both.

The town had a thriving cultural life. A theater company of amateur performers put on some plays every year. The intellectuals of the town would lecture in the meeting places of the various parties on subjects such as politics, literature, philosophy, and science. The Zionist congresses provided a forum for organizing lectures on Zionism and Jewish history. At the Bund library in the Kokun house there would be lectures on the writings of famous writers and poets. The Zionist youth movements would hold lectures on the great Jewish thinkers, about the various schools of classical art such as expressionism, impressionism and more.

A special theater was the Yiddish theater, which would come to town a number of times during the year. The Jewish audience would attend the plays which were held in the auditorium which was rented for that purpose. They always enjoyed them greatly. Sports were trimmed during the years between the world wars. There were two soccer teams in town at the time.

On September 1, 1939, World War II broke out. Fear descended upon the Jews of Poland and the Jews of Europe. Rumors of what the Nazis had done in Germany, like the repression of Jewish culture, both spiritual and material, and the murder of Jews by the S.S. was enough to instill fear of what the Jews might expect from Hitler's messengers.

Armed to the teeth, equipped with the most modern weapons and tanks, protected by a cover of warplanes, Hitler's brigades came into Poland from the west. The Polish army was week, and it moved eastward quickly. The Polish soldiers were not enough to fend off the German armored and air attacks, since they did not have viable weapons. In a few days all of western Poland was vanquished by Hitler's army. The advance slowed only in order to allow the Soviet army to occupy eastern Poland, according to the terms of a secret agreement signed between Germany and the Soviet Union. Soviet army units, after crossing the Zbroch border into Podwolocysk, easily captured the Tarnopol-Lvov area and made their way towards Peshmishel. Sixty-ton tanks advanced effortlessly, meeting no resistance from the unraveled Polish army.

On July 5, 1941, the Germans occupied the town of Podwolocyska. Two days later, they began to systematically kill every Jew in the town.They continued onward, crossing the Zbroch River heading eastward in the Soviet Union. The Jews of the town lived in fear and terror. They immediately began cooperating with the German army, the S.S. and the Gestapo, as soon as they entered the town. The Judenraat's first job was to supply workers to rebuild the bridge over the Zbroch River, which connected Lvov and Tarnopol, by way of Podwolocyska and Volocyska to Kiev.

Many Jews, managed to flee into Soviet territory in trains, cars, on horseback, and even on foot, heading as far eastward as possible. Some of the Jews who escaped and weren't murdered by Germans or Ukrainian nationalists along the way, returned to Poland, either as civilians or wearing Soviet army uniforms. Since they did not find any surviving relatives, they went legally or illegally to Israel, western Europe, and America.

Later the Judenraat was first to supply people for the two hard labor camps, actually concentration camps, Kamiunki A' and Kamiunki B'. The people were put to work in the quarry and in building the Tarnopol-Podwolocyska- Volocyska-Kiev road. In March 1942, the Judenraat was forced to supply laborers to repave the railroad tracks for the Tarnopol-Masimovka- Bogdanovka- Podwolocyska route, under the direction of the German engineers. The work, which consisted of surveying and changing the tracks was being carried out about 20 or 30 kilometers from Podwolocyska in the direction of Tarnopol. The people had to walk the whole distance while they were hungry.

In the camps, the people went out to work in two groups from the first day under the supervision of the Ukrainian police, under the command of Korol. One group would leave at 5:00 a.m. for the quarries. The second group would leave at six for work blasting stones and paving the Tarnopol- Kamiunki- Podwolocyska road. They were guarded by Ukrainian police who accompanied them to and from the work area. The S.S. officers would come every so often to inspect the work.

The camp commandant, S.S. Optsturmfurer Ravel, lived in a separate house in the village of Kamiunki, which was guarded by Ukrainian police under the command of the S.S. He had parties there and prisoner musicians that played music while the guests danced naked on the tables. From there, the party moved to the Shigger house, which was previously the Havokin family's home, in Podwolocyska. The Ukrainian, Shigger, apparently finished three years of medical school in Italy and posed as a doctor in Podwolocyska, where he cavorted with the Germans. His wife, the daughter of a tailor from Podwolocyska was the one who held the parties and receptions for the honored guests- S.S. and Gestapo people who came in from Kamionki and even Tarnopol. When the party would be finished, at night, they would go into the Kamiunki C' camp in Podwolocyska, and by the light of a kerosene lantern, carried by a prisoner, they would tour the camp. If they happened to meet a prisoner, they would beat him with whips until he bled, as they screamed and laughed wildly. Or else they would lead him into the neighboring Christian cemetery and shoot him there. When we tell of these, we will truly understand the town of Podwolocyska.