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My grandmother and my two sisters burned to death in the ghetto.
My father, mother and older sister escaped from the ghetto.
My father was wounded. They were captured in the town of Woskodaw,
where the locals were antisemitic. So they didn’t just shoot them.
They slaughtered them by the flour mill.
If I hadn’t left Tuchin and its environs, I would not have remained alive.
I approached a couple. He was a cobbler.
He immediately realized that I was Jewish.
He said to his wife: “Let’s give him the name of a Polish boy who was killed.”
And he would grill me: What’s your mother’s name? Elena
What’s your father’s name? Aleksander What’s your family name? Krycinska
I couldn’t pronounce the “K” in Krycinski.
He took a cobbler’s needle and scratched the K onto my arm,
so that I would say “Krycinski”. Not Tycinski, not Szycinski. Krycinski.
So I became a Christian.
I believed him when he told me – “If you say these things, you will stay alive.” So I did.
For almost 4 years I had to hide the fact that I was Jewish.
One day I was Ukrainian, the next day, Polish.
Whenever I heard the word “Jew”, Zyd, I was overcome with fear.
I knew I was Jewish, but didn’t understand why they were killing Jews.
I was worse off than a hunted animal.
The fear haunts me to this day. It’s with me when I eat. I live with it.
I cry out at night. To this day I still cry.
When I came to Israel, I didn’t want to get married.
I had suffered and I didn’t want….
I thought that if I’d get married, then afterwards my children would suffer.