The ongoing war in Ukraine has also severely impacted neighboring Moldova, which is already impoverished. Nearly a third of the population has now left the once-prosperous country. Yet, the former Bessarabia still holds untold stories of Jewish survival. CSI staff members Alina and Anemone regularly visit the region.
Stepan is wearing a black leather jacket when we first meet in Belz. But his cool demeanor quickly fades. We explain that there are people in Germany who love the Jewish people and want to help in a practical way. "Finally, I'm hearing some sensible words!" Stepan exclaims, immediately fighting back tears.
Then, right at the beginning, we learn a disturbing detail from his biography, one of many to follow. "I was born in 1950 in the Gulag, in Siberia." How does one end up beginning their life in one of Stalin's infamous penal camps? That's a long story…
Persecuted by Bolsheviks and Stalinists
“My mother, Klawdia, was 17 when she married a Romanian officer named Ivan,” Stepan recounts. “What I inherited from him is his family name. He had served in the Tsarist army. After the October Revolution, he had to flee. He escaped to China, from there to France, and finally to Moldova, which was then Romanian and still called Bessarabia.” In 1940, the Soviets invaded, in accordance with the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Ivan had to flee again. A year later, he returned.
“Ungheny was the border town back then,” Stepan recounts. “When he saw Mama, he wanted to run to her. At that moment, the Soviets arrested him. He was deported to Siberia with thousands of people who were arbitrarily rounded up, including his entire family—Mama and my nine-month-old sister, too, in a separate train car. Then they abandoned the men in the Urals. They poisoned them there with fish. No one survived.”
In Siberia alone
Stepan's mother, Klavdia, found herself with her infant in a labor camp in the unforgiving wilderness of Siberia. Another family was also deported there, a family whose path would later cross Klavdia's – a certain Iosif, a Jewish man from Belz, Moldova, with his wife Fejga, a wonderful violinist, and their 17-year-old son Pejsich, who was also highly musically gifted. Iosif owned two shops in Belz. That was his crime.
“They were on the same exile train,” Stepan continued. “Grandpa Iosif was murdered in the Urals, just like Mom’s first husband, Ivan. Grandma Fejga and her son Pejsich ended up in the same camp as Mom. There, in the icy wilderness near Tomsk, the prisoners died like flies, first the deported Jewish women. They were all ‘Pani’ – ladies of the world from wealthy Bessarabian families. The Jews here all had a little bit of property, a modest prosperity.”
The violinist
Three thousand intellectuals, leaders, and shopkeepers from Bessarabia were crammed into the camp. There was no accommodation; the prisoners had to dig their own kind of earthen pits—mud caves, some of which were partially sunk into the ground. There was hardly any food.
“Mama always told me, ‘Son, if you hear a violin, listen to what it has to tell you,’” Stepan recalls. “Papa had brought his old violin with him. Everyone loved him. ‘Petja, play!’ the prisoners would beg him. He could also play the accordion. Even the guards always asked Papa to play at their parties. He had to entertain them. Then, from his meager wages, he would give food to Mama and her child.”
By 1944 at the latest, word had spread through the camp that none of the men who had been taken to the Urals were still alive. Stepan was born in 1950. It wasn't until 1956, three years after Stalin's death, that the prisoners were rehabilitated and sent home.
Return to a foreign homeland
“After the camp, Dad went to work in a factory in Tomsk,” Stepan continues. “The factory was built by German prisoners of war. There, he must have become friends with one of the German prisoners. Shortly before the prisoner died, he gave Dad his violin.”
Pejsich did not return to Moldova. “He started a new family there… Mama never blamed him. She returned alone with us two children in 1956,” Stepan recalls, his eyes filling with tears.
We listened intently to his tragic story. But now he will no longer be alone. Someone in Germany will take it to heart, pray for him, and support him. Stepan still can't believe what's happening to him: "I've never heard of Germans who love Jews!"
