Reference Type: Audiovisual Material
Author: Yad Vashem
Year: 2000
Title: Torchlighters at Yadvashem, 2000 - Nata Osmo Gattegno
Type: Short Film, Documentary
Size/Length: 3'
Keywords: Jewish minority, Holocaust, Short Film, Documentary
Abstract: Sylvia Shertzer Aharon, the youngest of three children, was born in Czernowitz (Bukovina) in 1936, late in her parents' life. In 1941, her mother died of a severe pulmonary infection. A year later, the rest of the family, along with the other Jews of Czernowitz, were ghettoized. From the ghetto, they were removed by train and afterwards on foot to Transnistria. During the journey, the family members held each other's hands to stay together, but Sylvia's grandmother weakened en route and her father was forced to abandon her along the way, as a rifle butt was pressed into his back. After many days of wandering and grim nights under the stars, the family reached the Ivashkovtsy camp. Sylvia and her family, following advice given them by partisans, fled from the camp and went into hiding in an abandoned peasant house. Sylvia's father, brother, and sister ventured into nearby villages to obtain food. Sylvia's eleven-year-old sister, Etka (Beathe) took care of the six-year-old like a mother. The family members returned to the camp, where they endured cold, thirst, hunger and lice until the spring of 1943. All of them died other than Sylvia, her sister and her eleven-year-old cousin Didi, who at that point were transferred by members of the Jewish community committee to an orphanage in Shargorod. In mid-February 1944, when authorization to repatriate 3,000 orphans from Transnistira was given, Sylvia and her sister were taken back to Romania and spent time in various institutions and among foster families. At one point they were sent to Russia, but they managed to return to Romania, applied to immigrate to Israel, and were refused. Sylvia and her sister struggled desperately to move to their homeland, and in 1950 they did immigrate and were taken in by Youth Aliyah. Sylvia married Mordechai Aharon, and the couple has two daughters and a son, and four grandchildren.
URL: http://db.yadvashem.org/films/item.html?language=en&itemId=10033030
Access Date: 30.09.2014
Name of Database: The Visual Center - Online Film Database
Database Provider: http://db.yadvashem.org
Language: Hebrew