Memoirs of the Ghetto
L.M. Simanovsky was born in Mogilev in 1932. His father Meer, mother Vikhna and sister Esther were killed during the war. The boy was miraculously saved. For three years he lived in Mogilev and its neighbourhood. After the liberation of the city he entered the Mogilev special boarding school, where he was brought up until 1949, when he graduated from a seven-year school. In the same year he left for Leningrad and entered the Leningrad Higher Art and Industrial School. After graduation, he worked mainly as an artist at the "GOZNAK" paper factory in Leningrad.
From his memoirs:
"Before the war we all had something in common, but when the Germans came, they brought a pig from a neighbouring fair and began to roast it alive, and a neighbouring boy, Revka, ran up and shouted: "Sir, Sir, you'll suffocate from the smoke. Go away, the Jews have dry birch trees!" and brought them to our yard. So we immediately became Jews, we immediately became different... We were moved (to the ghetto) almost immediately, towards the end of August. However, initially, Jews from the surrounding villages streamed there as well. They were almost barefoot. Only they didn't march in a column, they stretched out. With their bowls...
My mother would wake me up in the morning, when the darkness of the night still frightened a child, and I would go to town. Mum told me to come only in the evening, when it was dark. But if there would be Fritzes standing on the perimeter, I shouldn't come. "Go back, don't come any closer! And leave the town!" She gave me a piece of bread and instructed me that after a while I should eat it.
And once I came up, the Germans were standing there. And there was a crowd of young guys, 30-50 people, and there were adults too. They were shouting: "Sir, sir, get out..." And they were chanting: "Jews, Jews, they ate a poodle of food with butter." And I huddled among them. This is a form of self-preservation, since fear, and terror, apparently, destroy a person. An acquaintance of my father's from a neighbouring collective farm moved into our house on the condition that he would take my sister Fira. But he also betrayed Fira as soon as the ghetto was destroyed. I know it well. I didn't know where to go for a long time. The night was cold... I went to Shkolishche and looked at our house on the other side of the Dnieper. In case someone would be looking. One day I dared to go into the house and asked: "Where's Fira?" I was told, "Well, Father brought her to the institution". I was very little, but I understood everything. In me, I awoke those spare cells that a person does not need for a normal life. I became a "little gypsy", I told myself that this was something to be avoided, and this was something not even to be seen. But there was another moment of duality that others find difficult to understand. Someone told me that I needed to leave the city in order not to be recognised here. And so I'm walking, walking, but where to, I don't know. There's a field all around. The road looks like an old pair of sweatpants. Suddenly a man appears from behind the alder bushes. I see a silhouette, and I have only one wish - to disappear.
I wanted to take off like a bird. And that's what I used to do. When I met someone, I'd start reading them right away. Reading their eyes, their ears, their hands, even their ankles. All seven senses are awakened. They all go into synthesis. Ah, it's a woman, and my heart calms down. I've been wandering for three and a half years, about four years. I had already learnt to feed myself, and the fairgrounds were a good place to feed myself. I was caught there. There were no Jews then. I was stealing. I remember how I survived the theft. I've lived through a lot of things. My father was handicapped. We didn't leave because he didn't have a leg, it was cut above the knee. My father had a prosthetic, it was a leg made of leather. Ever since then I have smelled the smell of leather so acutely! I rarely lost consciousness or rather lost control of myself. But that was the case when I went into our room and I saw my father's prosthesis there. And I became mentally out of control. I sat down, I hugged it... And I screamed: "Daddy!"