Only 35 of the several thousand Jewish children who resided in the Galician town of Drohobych, in Poland, were still alive when the Red Army liberated the city, it is reported here today.
These 35 were saved mainly by friendly non-Jews who sheltered them in their homes or schools. One Jewish woman who succeeded in remaining hidden together with her young daughter in a house where members of the Elite Guards were quartered told a Russian correspondent how for several months she forbade her child to speak for fear she would be overheard and murdered.
Many of the surviving children do not remember their names or have forgotten how to speak Yiddish, the correspondent reveals. When one little boy was asked his name by Gen. Ivan Petrov, commander of the Fourth Ukrainian Front, he replied “Stasek.” His non-Jewish teacher, however, told the general that the child’s name was “Chaim,” but for three years he had been schooled to reply “Stasek,” if anyone asked him who he was.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
