[Continuation
--2]
Bety Petrescu Shechter
from Dorohoi (now living in Bucharest,) together with
her mother, a younger brother, and others from Dorohoi
was evacuated in October 1942 from Moghilev to the camp
Peciora.
Here is what she relates as a
surviving witness.
"In the camp there
wasn't any organization. The place was surrounded with
barbed wire and sentries guarded day and night any
exit from the camp, so that nobody could escape from
this hell.
We had no sleeping places;
everybody tried to find something on which to sit
down. Some were lying on corpses which had to be taken
away the next days.
There was no means for
supplying food. People were in tatters, dirty and
starving. In order to survive, many ate the meat of
nearby human corpses.
During the night,
despaired screams of detainees, who suffered of
starving or other illnesses that ravaged the camp,
could be heard.
Sometimes, Ukrainian
peasants came and by charity threw over the fence of
the camp vegetal left over that for us was veritable
delicatessens.
The situation was
desperate and hopeless, each of us awaiting the end."
The camp at Peciora is between
the very few sites, known in Europe, where Jews driven to
despair by starvation were obliged to become
cannibals.
The camp at Scazinet was
set up in the spring of the year 1942, and was destined
for the Jews who were to be removed from Moghilev. In the
months of May-June 1942 nearly 400 Jews were evacuated
from Moghilev to this camp.
The misery that reigned here,
the relentless famine and all kind of illnesses but
mainly diarrhea and scab made hundreds of
victims.
Some Jews were shot, because
they tried to pass through the barbed wire fence, which
surrounded the camp.
In the autumn of the year 1942
an end was put to the camp from Scazinet, the Jews who
remained alive were driven on foot to the Bug into the
villages Vorosilovca, Tivriv and Crasna, where more than
one half died of starvation and illness.
The camp at Vapniarca was
created for those suspected to be linked to communists,
socialists, or having left oriented
ideologies.
If in August 1942, the camp had
only 100 inmates, in the middle of September the number
increased to 1.135, to reach at the end more than 1,500
detainees.
It was here where they brought
407 Jews from the camp Tg. Jiu, 85 Jews from prisons, and
554 free Jews, but suspected for having left wing
orientations. The rest of detainees belonged to other
nationalities.
In the camp the hygiene was
poor, the detainees suffered from thirst and starvation,
some of them were tortured.
On the order of colonel I
Murgescu, commander of the camp, the detainees were fed
nearly exclusively with fodder pea; consequently they got
ill of "lathyrisms".
In April 1943, a number of 427
Jews from the camp were transported into the districts
Balta and Golta, to be used as labor force.
After there was put an end to
the Vapniarca camp, the remaining Jews were confined into
the camps Grosulovo and Slivina.
In the district Golta, the
well known camps Bogdanovka, Domanovka and Acmecetka were
organized. In these camps mostly local Ukrainian and
Basarabian Jews were confined.
According to the order of Modest
Isopescu, the prefect of the Golta district, in the
period of December 1941-February 1942, in these camps
thousands of Jews were massacred by Romanian gendarmes
and Ukrainian police, enlisted in the SS
troops.
The sick and infirm were
housed in stables, which were set on fire; the rest of
the detainees were massacred in groups of 300-400, using
explosive cartridges. The corpses of those that had been
shot were burned. The operation lasted nearly 2 months
and was fulfilled by a group of about 200
Jews.