Rescued
A pparently, a woman from the group who left my side of the river went to my aunt and asked for some food. My aunt put hot soup and bread on the table. A conversation developed, and my aunt asked, “Where are you coming from?” Little by little, the woman told her that she had come from the other side of the river. As an aside, she said, “Oy vey, we left a little boy there.” After my aunt questioned her for a while, she realized that I was the little boy left behind. She practically fainted when she figured this out, and as soon as my uncle came back, she said she was going to commit suicide if he did not go and find me immediately. The Germans closely guarded the only bridge across the river and checked everyone who crossed it. I do not know what he threatened or how he persuaded him to do it, but my uncle forced a farmer he knew to cross the river to look for me. My uncle had also heard about a little girl, Faygele Welman, whose parents he knew, who was being raised in another farmer’s house as a Christian child, and he told the farmer to stop by that house and pick up the girl, too. Whatever the means of persuasion, they worked. The farmer retrieved the girl first. Then, suddenly, as I lay in my cabin, I heard somebody calling my name. I got so excited that even though I could not walk, I managed to run out of the cabin before I fell in the snow. The farmer picked me up and put me in his wagon. During the night we traveled to the River Slusch. There was only one route for him to take back over the river and that was by way of the bridge. The farmer was very scared, but my uncle must have really frightened him, and he decided to risk
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