Categories: Wartime, Cheslava Gomonchuk

My relatives were engaged into communication with partisans. When they had heard about something, they transmitted it to them. Like a scout-dog.

When my brother was released from the concentration camp he wanted to come here but there was a secret military unit located here and they sent him the information about a forbidden zone again and again. When the military unit was moved away from here, so they came from the church and the documents were ready already. He told me, “Do you know what my weight was when I emerged from the concentration camp?” The Germans would conquer the whole world but the Dutch airplanes noticed that the Germans were coming up to Moscow and started to bomb them.

And then all the people in the concentration camp were released; they threw away these … like firewood (they made floats from plywood) and the Dutch steamer was passing by and they were picked up aboard. Some of the floats flopped over, but his float was lucky; they sent safeguards and they picked up them. He spent two years in the hospital until he felt better. They weighted his body at the hospital – he was 16 kilos only – skin and bones. They drew all the blood off for their wounded soldiers. My mother’s sister once left for the United States; she had been working at the chocolate plant for 15 years there; she got married there. So she took him to her house from the hospital in Holland. She was born in Byelastok. So he married there, he had five children, died and buried in the United States.

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Researcher: Alexei Zagidulin, PhD (Historical Sciences), associated professor at Yanka Kupala State University of Grodno