Against all Odds - A Survivor’s Story

“Luck, lots of luck. That’s what kept my family together”, was Moshe Trosman’s response to the inevitable question of how he and his family had survived in the forests for so long. Against all odds, he, his father, brother, his mother, and his sister managed to flee from the market yard where the Nazis had gathered the inhabitants of Rokitna and its vicinity (Rowno district) to deliver them to extermination. Moshe’s account is, in fact, that of a family determined to survive and stay together.

Before the war, the Trosmans lived uneventfully with their extended family. “My father had a business, selling barrels of oil and food, that he had built from nothing. We had a large house and were definitely well off.”  Moshe recalls the Jewish and Zionist ambiance of his home at that time: “We went to synagogue every Friday and Saturday, we attended a Jewish school, and we spoke Yiddish. Father even wanted to settle in Palestine and give up his property, but under pressure from the family, he stayed.”

Moshe was only seven years old in 1939, when the advent of Soviet rule in Rokitna transformed his life: “When the Soviets came, father lost his business and became an employee at a meat factory.” Moshe describes the family’s deep concern about his father’s life, which was in danger. Even then, Moshe says, only his father’s great resourcefulness and experience as a seasoned merchant kept him alive.

Moshe Trosman

Life under Soviet rule was undoubtedly difficult, for the Trosmans, as for many other families. However, it was only the beginning of an unendurably grim period, one of imminent death, when the Nazis entered Rokitna in 1941.

When the Germans reached Rokitna, one of the first events was the establishment of the Judenrat. “The Germans wanted someone who would run the business for them,” Moshe relates, “so every now and then the Judenrat would hand us new decrees - to turn over house pets, to gather jewelry, to wear a yellow patch, etc.”

When rumors about the establishment of a ghetto in Rokitna began to circulate, Moshe’s father, Yehiel, swapped houses with a Gentile who lived in the intended area of the ghetto. Thus, their future bleak, the extended Trosman family moved to the ghetto. As time passed, the Nazi decrees made their lives intolerable.

On 26 August 1942, the Jews were ordered to assemble for the last time. The purpose was to liquidate the ghetto. “The day they summoned us to the yard, there was already a feeling in the air that something was about to happen,” Moshe recalls. “That very evening, Mother dressed us in an extra layer of clothing, and that is how we reported to the yard. There we were separated into men and women and were counted.”

What prompted you to escape from the yard suddenly?

“They hadn’t closed the exit from the yard. If they had, we would have been killed. In any case, one woman saw soldiers approaching with rifles and she began to scream. Shema Israel!  A mass escape began at once.”

How did the Germans respond?

“They fired in all directions. A bullet struck me in the knee; if my father had not come back for me, I would have been left there to die.”

Amidst the commotion, Yehiel Trosman and his injured son Moshe fled into the forest. Shortly afterwards, they were joined by Moshe’s older brother. However, almost three months went by until they located Moshe’s mother and sister, who had managed to escape from the inferno into the forest. Throughout that time, his mother had carried her daughter on her shoulders.

When the family was reunited in the forest, they faced a harsh winter. Frozen, starving, and ill, the Trosmans endured by joining the partisans and depending upon the help of local inhabitants.

Did your father have a specific plan? Was there a destination he wanted to reach in order to survive?

“There was no plan. How could there be?” Moshe says in amazement. “The only thing that concerned us then was how to find food and shelter in order to make it through that day. No one thought about the next day, let alone the day after.”

While in the forest, the Trosmans discovered what had become of the Jews of Rokitna. From the yard, they had been led to trains that delivered them to a killing valley in Sarny (Rowno district). Moshe’s uncle, who had fled naked from the valley and reached the forest, told the Trosmans what had happened.

“After two winters, in January 1944, Rokitna was liberated and we were able to return,” Moshe relates. This, however, did not mark the end of the family’s agony. Moshe’s father, Yehiel, was shot by the Banderists (a band of Ukrainians who fought against the Soviets) and was buried there where his remains lie to this day.

“My father was a special man who helped many people at a time when helping people was hard,” said Moshe in his testimony to Yad Vashem.

The Trosmans’ story did not end with the liberation; after the war, they struggled to resettle in Palestine. They were deported from the coast of Palestine to Cyprus, and Moshe, then fifteen years old, was smuggled in a sack into the country by his brother and sister-in-law.

“I have visited Rokitna four times with my brother, sister, wife, and children, and together we built a memorial to my father,” he says, summarizing his miraculous tale.

“Lots of luck.” At the end of our conversation I was reminded of Moshe Trosman’s remark about the luck and intuition that delivered the Trosman family from the inferno to the only possible consolation: the new home that Moshe Trosman built in Ramat Gan with his wife, the four children they raised, and their ten grandchildren.