How Solomon Bernfeld Survived (told by his son Henokh Bernfeld)

My father Solomon Bernfeld was a very smart man. He did not have much formal education, but he had common sense, read newspapers, spoke several languages (Yiddish, Polish, German, and Russian), and had a positive mental attitude. He had survived World War One as a prisoner of war in a Siberian camp. He settled in Vizhnitsa after the war and set up a window and door factory in Katarinadorf, a German village close to Vizhnitsa, and later in Vostoky, a Hutzul village. When the war started he reassured us that the Russians would win because they are a tough people. Moreover, he emphasized that we should be optimistic like him. We soon saw that people who became depressed gave up. They stopped washing themselves and caring for themselves, saying that it was pointless. Those were the first ones to die. Papa did not think this way. For example, he tried to shave on a regular basis. Even when the razor became dull he figured out a way to sharpen it against the inside of a glass mug. As for food, he always believed in eating small meals and to walk away from the table when he was still a little hungry. So when we had little food to eat he learned how to make due. When we were taken to Rudansk, near Shargorod, we (Papa, Mama1, Yasha, Gersh2, Golda Ringel3, and myself) lived in barns for about five days until someone finally agreed to help us: Marie Tarnavski took us in. By that time my legs were swollen from starvation. This simple Polish peasant woman saved our lives. Her two sons were in the Soviet army. I became her letter writer. She always wanted me to start the letters with Dear son, good morning or good night, because she said she didnt know when they would be reading the letters. I only wrote Dear Nikolai or Dear son but I told her that I wrote good morning or good night. One day during the spring of 1943 the police came looking for Papa. Because he was a master carpenter his skills were needed. He was one of four thousand Jewish prisoners who were taken to build the bridge at Trikhaty, near Nikolaev. The group was about half Jews and half Gypsies; one group worked on one side of the Bug River, the other group worked on the other side. Because of his ability to speak many languages, and his building skills, he was made a foreman. They worked on the bridge for months. He had an accident when his right hand was crushed as the workers tried to drive a support into the ground. The Germans sent him to their local infirmary. He rested there for almost ten days. However, a friendly Romanian doctor (who
1 2

Klara Ringel Bernfeld. His brothers Yakov and Gersh Bernfeld. 3 Widow of Mekhel Ringel.

spoke to him in German) told him that if the Germans see that a man is not fit for work after ten days of rest, they kill him. The doctor advised Papa to escape. It just so happened that a German freight train was nearby, delivering the rails for the bridge. The doctor told him where the train was, when to escape, and to stay hidden for at least three days. His hiding place was to be in one of the open cars used for transport. The doctor assured him that the Germans would never bother checking there. So Papa took his advice and escaped. This was during the heat of the summer, possibly in July. He stayed down in the freight car for many days, with no food or water. By day he was in the open sun as the train continued its unknown journey. In severe pain, famished, dehydrated, and sunburned, he thought that if he stayed too long on the train he might wind up in Germany. Probably about the fourth day he climbed out from the train and was relieved to see that the town sign read Zhmerinkaabout 50 kilometers from Rudansk. He managed to get some food and water in the town, and he began walking. It must have taken him a few days to walk to Rudansk. Marie Tarnavski recognized him. She said to us, your father is here! but we did not see him. All we saw was a sunburned, dirty, emaciated man, with his right arm in bandages and a sling. Yes, this was Papa. By this time he weighed 45 kilos (about 100 pounds). When we got inside and unwrapped his bandages, we were all shocked to see that his hand did not look like a hand. We could not make out the fingers. What was worse was that it was infested with worms. We tried picking them out. But Marie Tarnavski told him to soak his hand in a solution of a disinfectant (red granules). This worked, slowly but surely. The worms died, the infection cleared, and his hand healed. He never had normal use of his right handit remained like a claw with only very limited movement of his fingers. By the way, all of the four thousand Jews and three or four thousand Gypsies who worked on the bridge were killed by the Germans when it was completed. The bridge itself was destroyed in a Russian bombing raid.4 After the war my father worked as a carpentry instructor in a local school for deaf-mutes. He died in 1962 and was buried in Chernovtsy. Henokh Bernfeld, January 2005

Additional details of the horrors of the building of the Thrikaty bridge can be found in the following book: Jean Ancel, Transnistria, 1941-1942, Tel-Aviv, Israel, 2003.