RelatioNet DO PE 27 OS PO

Survivor: Dov Peled

Interviewer: Yotam Steinberg , Bar Ziv

Email: syotam2@gmail.com
Address: Kfar saba , Israel

Survivor:

Code: RelatioNet DO PE 27 OS PO

Family Name:Patashnik / Peled
First Name: Dov
Father Name : Zalman
Mother Name : Hiyana
Birth Date: 10/11/1927
Town In Holocaust:Reymsdorf
Country In Holocaust: Germany

תקציר קורות חיים [בעברית]: .

Interview:

On 13 of April, 4500 prisoners left the concentration camp that was located in Reymsdorf, Germany, and went to their death. The destination was camp Treiznshtat, Czech. It took 6 days of walking. Almost everyone died on the way, and only 500 survived the journey. I, Dov Peled, was one of the survivors.

I was born in Oshimiana, Poland, 50 kilometers from Vilna, on the 10th of November 1927. When the Nazis attacked Russia, I was already 13 years old, my parents told me to escape to Russia. I went with a friend on a truck and left. On the way there was a bomb and we hid in a field of grains. Finally, I got to Gordok and from there went on a wagon to Redshkovich, near Minsk, on the border of Russia-Poland. It turned out that the Germens had already taken over the place. They had bypassed Minsk and parachuted to surround the Russian force. It was impossible to go through the border, and with no choice we went back to my hometown, Oshimiana. After 2 weeks in town, which was already under the control of the Nazis, some horrible acts started the SS Company raided all the houses and in every house they went in, they took out all the men. The recognition sign was the yellow patch because of my age. My father, who was in the synagogue, ran away and hid in a barn. A non-Jew turned him in and he was taken to the collection place. It was also my brother's fate. All of the men were taken to the woods while holding a shovel. In the woods 5 kilometers from our city all the men were murdered.

My mother was sent to work. And also me, in the camps Miligan and Yonishki. At 1943 all the children were taken to the final elimination. My mother, my sister and I passed on to the camp of Raizenrooald in Riga. There my mother was taken to the concentration camp and was killed. It happened in 1944, when the Russians where close to Lithuania. By chance I was at work that day and I was saved.

I was 16 years old then, still young for the work requirements, but I looked older – that's why I stayed. All the others were killed and only the employees survived. I remember how we walked in fours and the SS asked our age. I said 21, agein I survived. From there we were sent in trains to the concentration camp of Raymsdoph. We worked there, 4000 prisoners, but most of them died from hunger. We had 1 kilogram of bread for 8 people for a day. I wanted to work outside the camp in clearing away bombs. It was a dangerous job but there was a chance of finding a little bit food in the fields. In the camp people try to rebuild a factory to create fuel from stones, we spent all winter, 8 months, there.

In April 1945, they loaded us on the trains towards Traizenshtat. On the way the train was bombed by the Americans. Some of the people died , and some of them, like me, ran to the woods and looked for food. The Germen soldiers caught us, and they brought us back to Trancport. Then the death march began, it was in Czech, towards the final destination. People died all the time. The weak people immediately died from the shots of the Nazis. A lot of people died from diseases and from an inability to continue, and of course from hunger. On both sides of the path we saw dead prisoners. We walked with wooden shoes 20 kilometers per day. The Czechoslovakians threw food our way and only the first people got to eat it, I was one of them. When we got to Trazinshtat we were only 500 people, and they led us to a special ghetto. Hitler gave an order to kill all the people there. The Russians helped us and we were freed. I was cured I was cured of the malaria, and we toke a train to Poland. From there we got to Lodz. People told me that my sister was alive.

I didn’t got back to my city, I had nowhere to go so I joined a kibbutz "Dror". After some trouble we got to Vienna. After Russia's road blocks we got to the camps in Germany and from there a group of people went to Geinlin. It was at the time of the Zionist congress in 1947. People got recruited to guide teenagers towards immigration to Israel. I recruited myself and worked as a guide in the Amadan and Weilhamshfen camps in Germany. There were a lot of people who returned from ships. We left the country and on 28TH of April 1948 we got to Israel. When we got there they asked us if we wanted to go to the kibbutz or to the military. I enlisted to Golani. I took part in the wars until we freed Eilat. It was an automatic enlistment: from the boats straight to the army. I was in unit 14, that suffered loses in Libia and Sagera battles. I fought in the artillery with half – trucks. I fought with "stan" and later I was the commander of the half-truck.

After the military I lived in Kfar Saba, and worked in Herziliya, I worked there my whole life, until I went in to retirement. I got married to my wonderful wife, Shoshanna and we have 2 girls and from them we have 3 granddaughters and 2 grandsons.

The town:

Oshimiana is a capital town in Belarus (previously in Vilna Governorate, Imperial Russia), lying near the mountainous Osmianka river basin, 49 miles from Wilno, on the highway to Minsk. Its name is taken from the Lithuanian word "ašmenys", that means "the cutting edge". It contains the wooden Orthodox Church called "Bogojawlenska" recognized in 1840, the brick Holy Archangel Michael Catholic Church, 4 Jewish prayer-houses, a hospital, 4 tanneries, 3 breweries, and 33 shops. Public revenues in 1859 totaled 1,214 rubles. Educationally in Oshimiana, there was a second-class provincial school, a Catholic parish school and a Jewish school.

An old settlement in what is now Oshimiana was first mentioned in chroniclers in 1040, during one of the raids by the forces of Prince Yaroslav I the Wise. At first a part of the state of Polotsk, by the end of 13th century the town became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as mentioned by the Lithuanian and Samogitian Chronicle of 1341. In 1384, the Teutonic Knights tried to attack Oshimiana as a trial to try and destroy the hereditary state of Jogaila. The Teutons managed to destroy the town, but it quickly recovered. In 1402 another Teutonic attack on the city happened, but was bloodily repelled and the Teutons were forced to return to Medininkai .In 1413 the town became one of the most notable centers of trade and commerce within the Vilnius Voivodship. That’s why it became a battlefield for important battle between the royal forces of Jogaila under Žygimantas Kęstutaitis and the forces of Švitrigaila allied with the Teutonic Order. After the royalists took the town, it became the private property of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania and started to develop fast. However, less than a century later the town was yet again destroyed and burnt to the ground, this time by the forces of Muscovy in 1519. The recovery did not as quickly as before and in 1537 the town was granted with several royal privileges to help the reconstruction. In 1566 the town finally received a city charter based on the Magdeburg Law, which was later confirmed by King Jan III Sobieski in 1683. In the 16th century the town also became one of the most notable centers of Calvinism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, after Mikołaj "the Red" Radziwiłł founded a collegiate and a church there.In 1792 king Stanisław August Poniatowski reestablished all the previous privileges and the fact that the town of Oszmiany, as it was called back then, was a free city, subordinate only to the king and the local city council. It was also then that the town received the first Coat of Arms in its history. Composed of three fields parted, it featured a shield, a hand holding a weight and the Ciołek Coat of Arms, a personal coat of arms of the monarch.As an effect of the Partitions of Poland of 1795, the town was annexed by Imperial Russia. During the November Uprising it was liberated by its inhabitants led by a local priest Jasiński and Colonel Count Karol Przeździecki. However, in April of 1831 the freedom fighters were forced to withdraw to the Naliboki forest. After a minor skirmish, a Russian expeditionary force of some 1500 men at arms arrived to the town, burnt it and killed its inhabitants. After that the town received a new coat of arms in 1845. Gradually rebuilt, it never recovered from the losses and by the end of 19th century it was rather a provincial town, inhabitanted primarily by Jewish immigrants from other parts of Russia. In 1912 the local Jewish community was allowed to build a large synagogue. After the World War I and the Polish-Bolshevik War, the town returned to Poland. Between the Polish Defensive War of 1939 and 1941 the town was occupied by the USSR and then until 1944 by Nazi Germany. During the Nazi occupation the Jews of Oshimiana were restricted to a ghetto; their spiritual leader was Rabbi Zew Wawa Morejno. In 1945 it was by the USSR to the Byelorussian SSR, and since 1991 it is a part of Belarus.