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After the massacre in March 1942, we moved to the place of Abram Aronovich Levin, the husband of mum’s friend – a wonderful man, very decent, in advanced years. He was a pharmacist. In this drugstore there was a so-called “malina”, a place where one could hide from the fascists.

Abram Aronovich himself stayed in the drugstore as the manager, and we squeezed ourselves into the pharmaceutical cupboard in the next room, where drugs and measuring glasses were kept, through the lower shelf, which could be pulled out; then Levin put the shelf back. This is how we concealed ourselves.

Mum came out and Abram’s wife asked her to go home and pick up certain things. We never saw her again. Later we were informed that she had been taken away with other Jews. So my brother and I were left without any means of subsistence.

I was working in a plant where one could do hard unskilled work. 75 Russian Jews were working there. They were roofers, cleaners, carpenters, and laundrymen. During the occupation German tanks were repaired here. I got a ladle of soup every day. It was nearly a liter, with rotten meat, and a small slice of bread. I ate some of it, and the rest I carried to the ghetto for my brother. Typhus raged throughout the ghetto and Georgy fell sick. But our savior Abram Aronovich procured Sulfidine for a lot of money. This at least saved the child.

This is my worker’s ID card, the “Arbeitskontrollausweis” from the Minsk ghetto, from May 1942, nearly two months after mum’s death. On the back a record of the monthly rations of the ghetto prisoners was kept. The ration was one loaf of bread and a few kilograms of potatoes.

More Photos from Rita Kazhdan

Rita Kazhdan’s Ghetto Certificate
      Rita Kazhdan’s parents, Rozalia and Abram Fridman
          Rita Kazhdan near her house in Leningrad
              Rita Kazhdan and her brother, Georgy Fridman
                  Rita Kazhdan on her third birthday
                      The family of Rita Kazhdan’s father, Abram Fridman
                          Wedding invitation of Rita Kazhdan’s parents, Rozalia and Abram Fridman