MEMORIES FROM UZBEKESTAN FROM DOW MARMUR

The Schnalls that survived went first to Siberia, then to Uzbekestan. We know most about the time in Uzbekestan from Rabbi Dow Marmur, who was in the same tiny hut with 15 people for 5 years with the Schnall family. He was a child, there age 6-11.

Here are rememberances from him:

In Ukraine we were in a small town called Glinany which is near Lviv (Lwow, Lemberg). In Uzbekistan we were in the Fergana Valley, in a kolchoz (Soviet collective settlement) called Achum Babayev (who is said to have been an Uzbek Communist leader) near a small town called Altarik. 

I think we happened to find ourselves in Ukraine in the same place, but I'm not sure how and why. I'm sure, however, that we lived in the same hut (yes, 14 people, including your mother, your two uncles Shloyme and Shulem and your grandmother, who died there). We came to Uzbekistan because in 1940, as the Soviet Union was preparing for war with Germany (despite their early agreement that carved up Poland between them - that's how we came to be on the Soviet side as we fled from the German invasion in September 1939), the Soviets asked the refugees from Poland if they wanted to stay or return to Poland. Your family and mine decided - in 1940, a year after the Nazi invasion! - to return to Poland. The Soviets assumed, therefore, that they/we were unreliable citizens and banished us to Siberia. Your family was there, too, but I don't remember them. Thanks to the utter stupidity of my parents and thousands of others, we survived. Had we been prudent and stayed put, the Germans would have come in to Ukraine and killed us like they killed the other Jews. 

In 1941, the Polish government in exile agreed with Stalin's Soviet Union to allow Polish citizens to move freely in the Soviet Union. Your family, like my parents, decided to move to a warmer climate (we were in Siberia!) and to be closer to Palestine. Hence Uzbekistan. Once we got there, we were sent to the kolchoz.

Your uncle Shulem was my big hero. He could climb trees and do many remarkable things. He also cut my hair. Your uncle Shloyme taught me the first bit of Yiddishkeit: The Four Questions. In Canada, we actually met Shulem once when he was visiting your family.

Your can read more about it in my autobiography, "Six Lives" published more than a decade ago by Porter Books and available onAmazon