Yosef Shmeltzer

Testimony of Yosef Shmeltzer, born in Cernauti, Romania, 1926, regarding his experiences in the Cernauti Ghetto and a Czechoslovakian brigade Established secular family; work of his father as an accountant. Soviet occupation, 1940; German occupation; murder of 100 important Jews from the city in spite of a bribe to a Romanian soldier; labor cleaning the Christian cemetery; transfer to the Cernauti Ghetto; ghetto life including studies with a private teacher, busy reading and playing; labor of his father as a bookkeeper in a factory and receiving "Essential for the Economy" certificate; liberation by the Red Army, 1944. Drafted into a Czechoslovakian brigade; wounded on the Polish front from shrapnel in the back; receives medical aid from a Jewish doctor; return to Cernauti, April 1945; move to Bucharest; graduation; marriage; aliya attempt; detention in Cyprus; aliya to Israel, 1949.