Historical Background and Interviews
II. The War The War
only interested in surviving, and they were the people I could stay with.” Although Furshpan was a Tarbut School student, he did not re- call being acquainted with Aharon before the war. He remembered Aharon hiding with the Grosspish family for a while and that “he already had frozen feet.” Asked how he felt about that, he said, “It’s hard to explain my life. I was just a child, and mixed up at that time, but I remember that Aharon was left alone in the forest. We had to leave the area because the Germans were not far away, and were going into the forest and killing a lot of Jews.... I remem- ber they gave Aharon a place that was a hole in the ground with branches for a roof.” Later, after the Russian partisans took over the area, Furshpan became separated from the Grosspish family. He said, “The next time I saw Aharon, he was with his uncle and aunt, the Edelmans, on the other side of the river. I happened to meet them in the village, when his aunt was cleaning his feet. It was terrible. I remembered them from home and they told me we had been close neighbors. I was very sick, and was going from family to family. I was falling on my face from illness when I went to the Edelmans. They did not have room for me. It was a situation where you cannot blame anyone — everyone had to help himself. But then someone else I went to said OK and helped me, and after about ten days, I could walk again. I stayed over the winter with a family who knew my parents, especially my father. I worked for them in their house, doing whatever they asked me to do. My parents, maybe, were like angels above me and gave me the right directions.”
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