I was born on September 16, 1938, in Belarus Republic of the Soviet Union, in a small town called Glusk. When the war began, I was only three years old, and that’s how I ended up in the “Glusk Ghetto” in 1941.
We stayed in that ghetto for one year, from 1941 to 1942. When the German officers captured our town, they evicted our family from our home and proceeded to move in and occupy our houses.
We had a good house that contained sewing machines for high-quality tailoring, because my father was a professional tailor. The senior officer specifically chose our house and he moved in!
When the rest of the German army began arriving at our ghetto, they were dressed very lightly for our climate, and they needed warm clothing. The senior officer asked my father to sew him an “officer’s greatcoat.”
My father replied that if he was going to sew, he would only do it together with his whole family. There were five of us: me, my older sister, my brother, my mother, and my father, all living in the ghetto by that time.
At first the senior officer flatly refused to bring us back to do the sewing. However, later he ordered us to get ready and come back to our home to sew him his greatcoat.
He took us out of the camp late in the evening and brought us to our house. There my father sat down at his sewing machine and sewed a warm greatcoat for him in just one night. The officer was delighted! He said he had never seen such excellent work. It was truly an act of God’s mercy.
But shortly after that, for some reason they took all of us into the forest.
When my parents realized the road was leading into the forest, they began saying goodbye to life, thinking we were being taken to be shot. But a miracle happened: the officer released us, saying he could not allow such a skilled professional as my father to die.
They even gave us some food to take along and instructed us not to appear at any train stations, settlements, or towns, because the entire area was occupied.
That’s how we ended up in the forest and lived there for a whole month, where my father built a shelter out of fir trees. During that time the Belorussian city of Brest was destroyed, and many young people also began hiding in the forest. That was how our partisan detachment was formed; together with our family it numbered 20 people.
We obtained weapons however we could. Our commander was a man named “Storozhenko,” because my father refused to take command. Time passed, and the number of people in our detachment kept growing.
When it reached 200 people, a professional commander was sent to us from Moscow: Dmitry Timofeyevich Gulyaev. He was delivered to us by plane.
By the end of the war, my entire family survived. Thank God for this mercy! I have been living in Israel since 2000; we moved here as a family together with my husband and children. I like it here, the children have grown up, and now I have grandchildren.
When I met a friend Boris, he told me about Christ, and I finally realized that it was God who saved me and my family from death during the war.
Today I believe in Jesus Christ and that God has given me life, both here on earth and in the Kingdom of Heaven.
I am also very grateful to God for the gifts that your organization provides us. Thank you to brother Boris, sister Anna, the leadership, and to everyone, everyone!
