Testimony of Lea Lurzia (Leker) Doitsch, born in Vijnita, Romania, 1920, regarding her experiences in Vijnita, on a march to Transnistria and in Derebchin

Testimony of Lea Lurzia (Leker) Doitsch, born in Vijnita, Romania, 1920, regarding her experiences in Vijnita, on a march to Transnistria and in Derebchin Orphaned; attends a Romanian school and Beit Yaakov for seven years; Maccabi activities; neighborly relations between Jews and non-Jews. Outbreak of war; anti-Jewish legislation; restrictions; ban on employing housemaids and on running businesses; professional training; draft of men to forced labor; deportation to Transnistria; transport on freight trains for about seven days; crossing the Dniester; deliberate drowning of Jews; march to Shargorod; Shargorod after air-raids; lack of sanitary conditions; hunger, diseases; typhus, deportation to the Derebchin village; labor in a sugar factory; improvement of conditions; barter of objects in exchange for food; mutual help from local Jews and Ukrainians; news from the partisans regarding the defeat of the German Army. Return to Romania, fall 1944; aliya training activities; unsuccessful aliya attempt to Eretz Israel on the ship "Pan York", 1947; detention in Cyprus; return aliya to Israel, 1948.