Surviving
the Holocaust in her own
words:
I
was born in 1929, Shulamit Perlmutter, and I was
known as Musia. I was the youngest of two
daughters born to a Jewish family in the town of
Horochow, 50 miles northeast of Lvov. My father
was a philosophy professor who taught at the
university in Lvov, and both of my parents were
civic leaders in Horochow. I began my education
with private tutors at the age of 4.
In September 1939
Germany invaded Poland, and three weeks later
the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland, where
our town was located. Hordes of refugees fleeing
the Germans streamed through our town. Soviet
rule didn't change our lives very much. We
remained in our home and Father continued to
teach in Lvov. The most important change for me
was at school; we were now taught in
Russian.
In 1941 the Germans
invaded the USSR and set up a ghetto in
Horochow. In 1942, with rumors that the ghetto
was about to be destroyed, Mother and I fled. We
had just hidden in the underbrush at the river's
edge when we heard shots. We hid, submerged in
the water, all night as machine guns blazed in
the ghetto. By morning others were hiding in the
brush and I heard a Ukrainian guard scream, "I
see you there Jews; come out!" Most obeyed, but
we hid in the water for several more days as the
gunfire continued. Sometimes we would doze; once
I woke to find Mother had vanished.
I never saw my mother
again and never found out what happened to her.
I spent the rest of the war living in the
forests near Horochow. I was the only survivor
of my family.
In 1941, in the summer,
all of a sudden we heard bombs and the airplanes
flying overhead, and after a few days the
Germans marched in very much like the Russians
did a few years ago, and again, I mean there was
no bloodshed as far as I can recall. They came
in with tanks. They came in--the soldiers looked
much, they were much, uh, better dressed--and
they came in and people again greeted them with
flowers, and they were very welcome in our town.
A lot of people were very happy that the Germans
came in, and that the Russians were leaving. If
there were fights, they were outside of the town
so really, there was very little fighting in
Horochow. But 1941, early summer, was when the
world became completely topsy-turvy for the
Jews. When the Germans came in, from the very
beginning, they concentrated and they let it be
known that the Jews are the ones that they are
going to try to murder, all of us. What they
did, I don't recall if it was the first or
second day after they come into, came into
Horochow, they went around with a list and they
looked for people by name. These were people who
were leaders, the Jewish leaders, and my beloved
father was among them. They came into the house,
they burst in, and they asked for him, and my
father saw them, he tried to get out the back
way. They caught him, and they led him away. He
never even said goodbye. I'll never forget that
look in his eyes.
In the very beginning,
my mother and several other women organized a
clandestine school for children who were below
the age of work, and it was a wonderful thing
because we had something to look forward to. It
made us forget about the hunger and about all
the, the inadequacies of living such a primitive
life, and this school existed for several
months. Several of the ladies, including my
mother, would barter on the outside and they
came home with crayons, with writing paper, with
some books, and I mean they would tell stories,
we would sing and we would color, and it was
something to look forward to. It was really, uh,
if it, if it only could have lasted, but it
didn't. It lasted a few months, and pretty soon
there was not enough, uh, uh, jewelry or money
to barter with, there were no more supplies,
school supplies, and the morale sort of sagged
in the ghetto. And the women came home, and they
were too tired, and too hungry, and too beaten
up to be able to go and, and put on a happy face
for us kids. So that disintegrated into nothing
also.
I was, and I'm speaking
from a personal point of view, and I know I'm
not the only one, there I was, an orphan, a
survivor of unspeakable pain and atrocities of
the war, and nobody extended a helping hand
during the war. Now, after the war, wouldn't you
think we would have priority to go out or to get
out of Germany? But no, I had to wait three long
years. There were quotas. There were always
quotas.
There were quotas to
get into the United States. My...when I finally
did get a hold of my family in the United States
--because I remembered my grandmother's
address-- I still, I mean, they guaranteed that
I would not be a burden to the government, and
yet I had to wait three long years before I was
allowed to come to the United States. Meanwhile,
I, I tried on my own to get a student's visa,
and I attended the University of Heidelberg for
almost--well, over a year, but, uh, that would
have given me a student visa. I must say that
the people at the University of Heidelberg bent
backwards to accommodate me. There were such a
gaps in my education, formal education. It was
nonexistent, and yet I took some tests and they
helped me and I was accepted as a full-time
student. And, uh, I will never forget that. I'm
grateful for that. But I still had to wait three
years to come to the United States, and I don't
think that was right, to treat us in such a
way.
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