Czernowicz

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"So, with a Russian army truck, we made our way across the border to Romania, and there I remember being very tired and falling asleep on the floor of some empty apartment. I remember waking up in the morning and looking in the window I thought I died and went to heaven. I couldn’t believe it, that there were streetcars running in the street, people were properly dressed, women in lipstick and high heels-- I just couldn’t believe it. Only forty miles from where I was, such devastation, and here life was more or less normal. So a few of us bewildered Jews came, and we stood down in the street, and some other Jewish people surrounded us who had family across the border. There were a lot of families on both sides and they wanted to hear of course of what happened in Poland. We didn’t bring any good news at all, yet one of the people who was there was a cousin of my mother's. And he took me home with him. So that’s how my roaming started...

They tried to adopt me and I stayed with them for some years. We made our way to the American zone in Germany, and I had a cousin in Peekskill, New York, and she sent me papers to come to the United States in 1949."