In the fall of 1941, over 150,000 Jews from Bukovina, Bessarabia and northern Moldova in Romania were deported to Transnistria – the area between the southern Bug and Dniester Rivers, annexed to Romania in return for aid to the German army during its war with the USSR. They were concentrated there, under terrible conditions, in ghettos, camps and far-flung communities, and lived as refugees – with no source of income, exposed to persecution, abuse and exploitation by the Romanian army and the local population.
Under these circumstances, the orphanage in the Djurin ghetto, in the Mogilev county of Ukraine, was established. The institution, which was opened in October 1943, came to address – albeit partially – the plight of orphans in the ghetto. What did it mean to run an orphanage in Transnistria during WWII?
Life at the orphanage and the challenges of its management are revealed through a copy and translation of the papers of its director, Dov Hart, which were recently submitted to the Yad Vashem Archives through its national Gathering the Fragments campaign (the originals are in the Ghetto Fighters' House archives). The translator's comments provide the context for understanding the documents and reveal the sophisticated and creative way that Hart found to document his protégées' experiences as deportees – through a seemingly innocent writing exercise.
When the 34-year-old Hart, one of the deportees from Rădăuți, Bukovina, was asked to take over the management of the orphanage in the Djurin ghetto, he did not think twice. Though he was no educator, he ran the institution with great resourcefulness, and for no payment, for some six months, until May 1944. A lawyer by profession, Hart took responsibility for the needs – material, educational and mental – of dozens of young girls and boys entrusted to his care. Hart had to take care of discipline and hygiene – he even personally picked lice out of the heads of the children. The presence of family members (or one parent), in some of the cases, only added to the complexity of the situation for both Hart and his charges. He operated under dire budgetary constrictions, with a very limited personnel – and even then, was compelled to give up staff members, when requested, to forced labor.
Yet despite the difficult state of the student population, Hart insisted that the orphanage hold orderly classes – which, despite the inherent danger, included Hebrew and Jewish studies lessons. Yiddish became the language of instruction. Under Hart's direction, the institution even held events and activities for the general community, and managed to raise funds.
Hart was completely devoted to his charges: He accompanied some of the children home after they were permitted to return from Transnistria; and embarked on a rescue mission of two orphans, a brother and a sister, after receiving alarming information about the difficult conditions in the institution where they were living, carrying them on his back for miles.
Hart's diary – essentially an official report to the ghetto authorities on the conduct of the orphanage, and thus written in Romanian and then, after liberation of the area by the Red Army, in Ukrainian – is written in a matter-of-fact, task-oriented tone. Attached to the diary is a file used to keep track of the children's history, behavior and whereabouts. The file expresses Hart's devotion to the children, his perceptiveness and attention to the slightest aspects of their characters, and his rigor in relation to the circumstances of their lives.
In his official diary, Hart had to choose his words carefully and his observations concerning the children's hardships thus could not be fully expressed. This is why, according to the translator, he initiated a writing project. In this way, Dov Hart allowed those in his care to describe what he himself could not officially record: the reality of life in Transnistria following the deportation. Hart's diary and the children's file, along with the children's essays, were preserved by Moshe Salomon, who conducted the orphanage choir and taught music at the institution. All of these materials were submitted to Yad Vashem by Salomon's heirs.
A small group of nine students participated in the writing project, in which they were encouraged to describe their lives before they had been admitted to the orphanage. The project was led by Dov Katz, a medical student and an idealist, who, besides working in the orphanage, took part in assisting the ghetto hospital's medical staff as well as in the production of local underground newspapers circulating through the ghetto. (Katz survived the war, completed his studies and worked as a physician in Israel.) The essays, written in Yiddish in the format of short autobiographies, present the experience of deportation to Transnistria in all its severity and extremity, from the point of view of young girls. In shaky language and a variety of styles (depending on the background, abilities and writing skills of each girl), the authors share shocking and traumatic experiences: from family cell rupture and their difficult living conditions as refugees to exposure to abuse, severe violence, death – and the loss of their loved ones.
Encouraging the students to express their experiences as testimony allowed their voices to be heard and their personal stories told, and exemplifies the extraordinary humane and educational sensitivity of both Hart and Katz. Furthermore, it demonstrates their acute documentary and historical awareness, which are not be taken for granted considering the existential conditions to which the staff of the orphanage itself, and the ghetto community as a whole, were exposed.
Twelve-year-old Pearl Postilnik from the Chernivtsi region of Bessarabia was one of the girls who took part in Hart's writing project. In her file,
Hart characterized Pearl as "intelligent, talented, with a distinct writing style."
Her biography opens with a shocking dilemma of existence and rescue: "A farmer's wife kidnapped my five-year-old sister, and wanted to adopt her. We were almost starving back then. However, we did not agree."
Pearl's short story – one page, condensed, and filled with intense and disturbing events – presents the very essence of a refugee family's fight for survival: the destruction of the fabric of family life and the reversal of roles between parents and children.
Of the orphans from Bukovina and Bessarabia staying in Hart's institution, Pearl is the only one who chose to remain there, even after they were given permission, in February 1944, to return to their districts of origin. She probably did so in order to take care of her father, who had found shelter in a synagogue in Djurin. Pearl's special connection to her father did not go unnoticed by Hart. "Deep affection for her father," he notes in her file. Indeed, Pearl saved precious food to sustain her father. In her testimony to Yad Vashem, she said, "I always took two slices of bread. And no one [from the orphanage] ever asked me, where are you taking it? Not once."
Pearl loved the orphanage. In her testimony she recalled, in tears, a song in Yiddish that she had studied there 55 years before, under the guidance of Moshe Salomon. "Here, I have been rescued from torture and dirt," she wrote at the end of her essay.
"I am clothed. I receive instruction, food... [but] all this does not make me happy, since I know that Father is still suffering. It is unbearable to me, but I cannot save him."
Pearl did her best to help her father, but there was only so much she could do. She survived the war, married, and immigrated with her husband to Eretz Israel.
In her testimony to Yad Vashem, Pearl related how precious and significant her composition folder was to her, and how much she was moved and touched by writing about her life.
"Since then, I always wanted to write, [although] life did not allow me to."
That simple, spontaneous recollection reveals so much about the power of writing, even in the most difficult circumstances, for the human spirit.
Dov Hart, his wife and daughter survived the war and immigrated to Israel in 1948. He kept in touch with his former students for many years, and did much to preserve the memory of the Rădăuți community and to further document the complex, tragic story of the deportation to Transnistria.
Since the “Gathering the Fragments” campaign began a decade ago, 14,000 people have donated some 315,000 items, including 185,000 documents, more than 120,000 photographs, 5,500 artifacts, 785 works of art and some 200 original films. Even during the pandemic, representatives of Yad Vashem continue visiting Holocaust survivors or their family members in their homes in accordance with Health Ministry directives, in order to gather Holocaust-era personal items. To schedule a meeting in Israel: +972-2-644-3888 or collect@yadvashem.org.il.
Yad Vashem runs the “Gathering the Fragments” campaign with the support of Israel’s Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage.
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 94.
