Stories from Bukachevtsy

This story was sent to us by Zbigniew Szafraniec , whose mother, Feliksa, came from Bukachevtsy.  I have left the words and the English as Zbigniew wrote to me.  Please let us know if you recognize any of the people in this story.

My mother Feliksa, was living near Bukaczowce with her mother Katarzyna Wolnik until 1943 (part of her family was deported earlier by Soviets to Siberia).  In the summer of 1942 (or 1941) my mother, at that time 16 years old, was ordered by the Germans to travel to Germany to work. (If she refused, she would be arrested.) So one day, after saying good bye to her mother, she was walking with a suitcase to the station at Bukaczowce, to enter a special train to Germany.

At the main square of Bukaczowce, a Jewish male (20 years old) she knew a  little bit (his name was perhaps Schloma, his parents had a "restaurant" at Bukaczowce) noticed her, and asked where was she going. Then he persuaded her not to obey German orders, and to hide near her mother. After this conversation my mother took one day long lonely walk through forest (and crossed Dnieper River), and went to some distant relatives.

She was hiding for several months, until the relatives bribed a local police commander. She and my grandmother were then living at the outskirts of Bukaczowce. That time Schloma and some other Jews  were hiding in local forests. (Some of them had guns, so perhaps they formed a partisan unit.) Sometimes they would visit at night the house of my grandmother and my mother, who were preparing  bread and some food for them.  In 1943 situation got so dangerous, that my mother and my grandmother decided to escape to Lwow, and later to Krakow. They never returned to Bukaczowce, and my mother does not know whether Shloma and those other Jews survived.