Partisan Life

Living in the partisans, to me, it was like a picnic already after what we went through before the partisans. The partisan life was actually very good for us because living by ourselves in the forests and hungry and wet and not being able to get any clothes or to wash ourselves. For a whole year, we did not wash ourselves.

And the water, we had to dissolve the snow in order to get a little bit of water. And if we begged a little bit of bread and we brought it back to the forest, we hung it up. We left it on the ground-- the animals ate it. So we used to hang it on top of the trees in order to preserve it. It was difficult. My legs were burnt completely because it was so cold. When we sat in front of the fire, I did not feel them, my flesh was burning my legs. It was a horror.

But when we came to the partisans, to me, that was a good life. I was not alone. And if I was going to die, I was going to die as a fighter, not because I was born a Jew. I was going to die as a fighter. And that kept us going.