RelatioNet EM GU 41 CH RO
Interviewer: Alon Lerner
Email: tvanounou@gmail.com
Code: RelatioNet EM GU 41 CH RO
Survivor: Emanuel Gurovitz
Family Name:Gurovitz
First Name: Emanuel
Birth Date: XX/XX/1941
Birth Date: XX/XX/1941
Town In Holocaust: Chernovitz
Country In Holocaust: Romania/Ukraine
Address Today: Kfar Saba, Israel
Emanuel's Story
Emanuel Gurovitz was born in 1941 in Chernovicz, Ukraine. In those years, before the war had begun, there was a large number of Jews in Ukraine in that city. More than a third of the population of the city were Jews, around 50,000 people.
Emanuel doesn’t remember much about the city he was born in because he was only two months old when he was taken to the work camp. The work camp was placed at Mogilev, Romania and it was called Transnisteria. Emanuel, who had no brothers, was taken to the work camp with his parents, his grandparents, his uncle and daughter. The only ones who survived the war were Emanuel, his parents and his uncle.
Emanuel has a hard time recalling what happened during his stay in the camp. But one of his greatest memories from that time is a small square room with a big window, and behind the window there was a wall where the Nazis shot the Jews. He also remembers a bed placed in one of the room’s corners and a sick woman lying on it. After the war, Emanuel told his parents about it and his parents told him that the sick woman was his mother who had got sick with Typhus. In addition to his mother being sick with Typhus, his father had to work so he could bring Emanuel milk because his mother couldn’t give him any milk.
Emanuel said that many years after the war, when his father wore shorts, he could still see all the scars and bruises on his body from the horrors that he had been through during the war. When Emanuel had asked his mother about her memories from the work camp, she mainly remembered the severe hunger that made people eat the peel off the potatoes from the garbage.
In 1944, Transnisteria was liberated by the Russians and Emanuel, along with his parents and his uncle were set free. At that time, Emanuel assumes that he was about the age of 4.
In 1946 Chernovicz was part of the U.S.S.R therefore Emanuel and his family decided to move to Bucharest in Romania. In Bucharest, Emanuel first went to kindergarden and then to elementary school. The elementary school in which he learned was a Jewish school but after a year it became public and non-Jewish children joined the classes. Emanuel’s high school was called “Spiro Haret” and he graduated successfully.
After graduating Emanuel decided to go study medicine at the university but got expelled because the university found out that he was planning to make “aliya” to Israel. After he was thrown out of the university he went to a medical assistant's school also located in Bucharest but during the year he was given the opportunity to move to Israel and he abandoned medical school and made “aliya”.
In Israel Emanuel stayed in the medical profession and learned to be an X-Ray technician in “Ichilov” Hospital. After finishing his X-Ray course Emanuel started studying for his MBA in the “Technion” in Haifa and graduated successfully. Today Emanuel has 3 kids and 5 grandchildren and they are all living in Kfar Saba. Emanuel tells us that he thinks it is very important to share his story with our generation because there aren’t many Holocaust survivors alive and it is important people hear the stories from a first source. These days Emanuel plans a trip back to Transnistria but he is doubtful if he will really go because it is very hard for him to go back to that damned place.
Survivor’s Town- Chernovitz
Jews were the biggest population group of Chernovitz. On the eve of WWII 50,000 Jews lived in Chernovitz. The Jewish population was very diverse beginning with Hasidiks and up to anti Zionists and the language they spoke was based on Yiddish. During the war there were almost no Jews left in the town. In 1941, a Romanian military dictator ordered the creation of a ghetto in the poor part of the town where 50,000 Jews were staying. Afterwards two thirds of the Jews were deported to Transnistria. A Romanian lawyer and reserve officer, Theodor Criveanu, supported by the city mayor and general Vasile Lonescu saved 19,689 Jews. By the end of the war, only a third of all the 50,000 Jews of Cheronitz had survived.
There were many famous Jews who lived in Chernovitz before the war, including the writers Moshe Altmann and Eliezer Steinberg, Joseph Schmidt the famous cantor who sang in the temple, Sidi Tal who worked in the Philharmonic and Paul Celan the poet.
In the town's square stands the mighty synagogue temple, it's dome and towers destroyed by the Germans in the war and it is now being used as a cinema. These days Chernovitz is Chernivtsi, a Ukrainian provincial capital with a population of 263,000 people, 5000 of whom are Jews.
