Testimony of Munia Bernhaut

In June 1943 when Skalat was, declared Judenfrei, by the Germans, I, Munia Bernhaut, my son Dunio, aged three, and my daughter Nusia, aged five, had miraculously been spared the fate of our brothers and sisters. By then, thousands of Jews from Skalat had already perished by torture, starvation or disease. The majority were murdered and buried in mass graves, or captured in 'actions,' and shipped to the extermination camp of Belzec.

After every 'action' hundreds disappeared, and those who remained surfaced from hiding places stunned and bewildered. Everyone who saw me with my two young children hanging on to me shook their heads in disbelief. Very few children remained among the living in the Skalat Ghetto.

After the first 'action' was unleashed on the ghetto, I and my friends Sima and Joseph Kofler began to build a bunker under our house. We sealed off part of the cellar with bricks and other building materials, which we smuggled in at night. A trap door hidden underneath a bed and covered with carpet lead into the bunker and the descent to our hiding place was by means of a wooden ladder. By sheer luck our bunker was never discovered during all the 'actions,' even after thorough searches of the house and its surroundings. We remained hidden in that bunker during every one of the 'actions,' in our town. It was there, after the final 'action', that we learned that Skalat had been declared Judenfrei and Jews were no longer allowed to exist, not even under the horrendous conditions of the ghetto.

The few who survived the last 'action' in our bunker began under cover of night to flee wherever they could. In spite of my pleas no one considered including me in their plans. For me, it would have been suicidal to attempt such an escape with two small children. As we were left all alone, I had weighed my alternatives: stay and perish in the bunker, give up and go out to be shot on the spot, or attempt an escape on my own, I decided to flee although I had no idea where or how to do it.

A day after the final 'action' the streets of the ghetto were deserted. Trucks driven by inmates of the Skalat Camp began rolling in to pick up whatever was left of the household belongings from the empty Jewish homes. By sheer luck, the assigned driver to one of these trucks was my cousin Isaac Gritz. After careful planning, he managed to stop by our house on his last round of the day, hoping to finding his mother who had been in our bunker. When he quietly signaled his presence in the house, I knew this was my only chance. I pleaded and implored his help to smuggle us out of the ghetto. He agreed, though with great trepidation and fear, to drop us at the edge of town on his way back to the camp. One by one he carried us out hidden underneath feather bedding and placed us on his truck. When he approached the outskirts of our town, he slowed down. I quickly threw my daughter out of the truck and then jumped out after her with my son in my arms. As he drove away, hidden by the darkness, we crawled into the surrounding fields.

My hope was to reach the forest where I knew there were groups of Jews and partisans in hiding. So began our long wandering through the fields and woods. I walked day and night carrying my son in my arms or on my back and holding my little girl close to me. We ate whatever we found, kernels of wheat from the fields, raw potatoes, beets and anything else I could dig up. Thus, we wandered hungry and thirsty; our clothes, dirty and wet from mud and rain. In despair, I took a chance and knocked at the door of the solitary farmhouses we occasionally encountered. I begged for food and shelter, but the pitiless peasants would only unleash their dogs on us and threaten to turn us in if we didn't leave immediately. A few times, in return for a little money which I still had on me, the peasants sold us bread and milk and allowed us to hide in the barn or the hayloft for a couple of nights. Harboring Jews put them at risk for had we been discovered, they too would have been shot. Therefore, our stay was always cut short with a demand that we leave by nightfall. One peasant woman was willing to keep us in return for all the money I had left and a promise to give her more when the war ended. When I gratefully agreed, she insisted on

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another condition. She demanded that I leave my little boy in the forest because his presence posed too great a danger of discovery.A three year old child, she said, could not be counted on to remain silent. That had been suggested to me before, but abandoning one of my children was out of the question. I was determined that we would either survive together or die together, and once again we took to the road.

Weeks passed and as the weather turned colder, we often found shelter inside haystacks still standing in the fields or in an abandoned cave where we would spend a few nights sheltered from the winds and the rain..At times when my children had nothing to eat for days, I summoned the courage to stop farmers on their way to the market and to beg for food. On one such occasion, they began throwing stones and hitting us with sticks while calling us dirty Jews. Fortunately, the attack was thwarted by an old man who suddenly appeared on the road and began shouting at the peasants that some day they would be punished for such inhumane treatment of a woman with small children. I felt very lucky to escape and continued my wanderings.

I still could not find the hiding place in the woods. The weather was getting worse and I was losing strength. Despondent, I began thinking of going back into town where I knew that I and my children would be killed. At the end of one such desperate day, we were approached in the cave where we were hiding, by a farmer who had spotted us while working in the fields. He waited for the others to leave and assured me that he meant no harm. He offered to take us to his farmhouse where we could hide in.the barn until the end of the war.

I could not believe my good fortune. The farmer and his wife shared with us the meager food they had while I mended and sewed clothes for their children. We spent several weeks there. One day, with tears in their eyes, the farmer and his wife told us that we had to leave immediately. The Germans had begun checking the farms to make sure that no one was hoarding products which the peasants had been ordered to deliver to the German army. The farmer took us to the side of the forest and prayed that we would find Jews to help us.

The next afternoon, as we were walking through the woods, I heard someone approaching on horseback. We barely had time to duck behind a tree when a command came loud and clear: “Juden raus” or we'll shoot. I came out with my children to face rifles pointing at us. I instantly recognized Hefner, a local German administrator in charge of agriculture, accompanied by two SS officers. They were amused when I said that they might as well shoot us and get us out of our misery. Hefner remarked' to his companions that it was the first time he heard a Jew asking to be killed. Then, turning to me, he admired my blonde children and announced that he had no intention of shooting us. He advised me to follow the path in front of us which would lead us to Jews hidden deep in the forest. I was sure that they would kill us as soon as we turned our backs. I started to walk clutching my children tightly. I told them not to be afraid and that at any moment now, we would be in heaven together with the rest of the family. As we were walking, I heard the Germans behind me riding away. For us, another miracle had taken place!

Many years later, at a wedding in New York City, I met a woman who had survived on “Aryan Papers” and worked as a maid for Hefner during his stay in Skalat. As we talked about the Holocaust, she recounted that when Hefner returned from the woods that day he announced to his wife at dinner that he had just spared the life of a young Jewish woman with two beautiful children. He then added, “If I didn't shoot them, they will surely survive this war.” And indeed we survived.

Eventually, I did reach a bunker where a small group of Jews from Skalat was hiding. During my desperate wanderings, I was often fortified by the hope of being welcomed with open arms by my own people. That, however, was not the case. The head of the bunker demanded that I leave immediately because he was afraid that my small children would expose all of them to danger. I cried and implored for compassion. Finally the majority of the group overruled his decision and allowed me to stay. I promised to pull my own weight and contribute to the search for food and water.

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My children and I were among the very few who survived the bitter winter, the starvation, the diseases, the encounters with hostile Ukrainian woodsmen, and the periodic ambushes by the Germans. We were liberated in the forest by the advancing Soviet army and returned to our devastated home town. There we were ultimately reunited with the only other surviving member of our family, my husband Joseph Bernhaut, the father of my children.

I close my eyes sometimes and imagine that the Nazi occupation was just a nightmare. I awake and realize that it really happened. Our families, our homes, our communities are gone. Nothing is left, just memories of home and family.

Munia Bernhaut nee' Somerstein
North Miami, Florida 1995

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