KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
partisans because they were anti-Semitic.” Leon Rubinstein survived the war by hiding in the home of an unlikely friend, a young Ukrainian partisan. Even though the Ukrainian partisans hated the Jews, these two were old friends. “He was about a year older than me and was in charge of the household because his father was fighting in the Russian army. His mother did not want to take me in, but he was in charge and made her,” he said. “The Ukrainian partisan’s home was a small isolated farm with two cows, two horses, and two pigs. The house consisted of a kitchen that served as a bedroom, and a small bedroom that was about six feet by six feet. The floors were dirt with a clay mixture spread on top which made the floor hard enough to sweep, and there was a cast iron woodstove in the house. His mother was afraid I would be discovered. I had two hiding places. One was a hole in the floor of the barn, underneath the cows and manure. The other was a hole in the ground of a potato patch. They would come once a night to see me.” Rubinstein stayed there for three years. About six months after the Russians had liberated the area, they came to look for his friend because of his membership in the Ukrainian partisans. They found Rubinstein instead, still hiding in the hole in the field. Rubinstein immediately knew they were not Germans. “They took me, fed me, gave me a machine gun, a Russian uniform, and kept me with them. I was very fortunate. It was about 1944 and I was fourteen years old.” He stayed with the Red Army and went with them to Rovno.
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