RelatioNet NO WE 44 BE UK
Nosia Weiss
Holocaust Project Katzanelson High-school
Kfar- Saba, ISRAEL
mail: lirongo12@gmail.com
First name: Nosia- Nurit
Country of birth: Romania
Last name: Golan
Previous name: Weiss
Date of birth: April
4th1944
City of Birth: Bershad
Bershad
Bershad is a town in the Vinnytsia Oblast Province of Western Ukraine. Jews started settling there in 1564.
On July 29th 1941, Bershad was occupied by the Germans and Romanians. A ghetto was established in the town in September 1941. It became the largest ghetto in Transnistria. This Ghetto was considered having the most difficult living conditions, especially in winter. From 25,000 inhabitants, by August 1942 only 10,000 Jewish inhabitants survived. During this period, the occupants of the ghetto worked with the underground and maintained contacts with the partisan units around the city. Some members were later caught and executed. 25,000 Jews were deported from Bessarabia and Bukovina and were sent there. Most Bershad Jews were murdered in the Holocaust during the World War II Nazi occupation of Ukraine. The city was occupied by the Germans and Romanians, which imposed various decrees, including the obligation to wear a patch, the duty of delivering valuables and the obligation to carry out forced labor.
With the annexation of Transnistria in Romania in the spring of 1943, 1,203 Jews from the ghetto were sent to forced labor in Bmikoliib. Very few survived.
On February 2nd 1944, 148 Jews in the city were executed, because the Gestapo received information that they or their families were associated with the partisan units. 80 other Jews from the ghetto were executed a few days later.
The city was liberated by the Red Army; however, many were killed before liberation. By August 1942, only 10,000 Jews remained in.
Nosia Weiss- Golan
Nurit Nosia Weiss Golan was born in Bershad, Ukraine in the ghetto on April 4th1944. Before the war, her family lived in Storozhinets in Bukovina in a Jewish neighborhood. They had a small house with a garden and a small farm. The family was religious and spoke Yiddish at home. Her grandmother worked as a seamstress. They were taken on the death marches in Romania. "Those Nazi criminals took them out of their houses and led them with weapons. When the Jews asked 'Where are you taking us?' the Nazis nodded and pushed them with their rifles. They walked 20 km on foot to Ukraine. "Only those who had God in their hearts could survive it." Many died because of the harsh conditions and lack of nutrition. Nosia and her mother were alone in a room in the ghetto.
After the Holocaust, Nosia's family lived in Romania for 15 years. When Nosia and her parents left Ukraine, she was two years old. When they were on move, there was a Blizzard outside. Her mother was pregnant, so her parents gave her to her aunt. They moved across the border to Romania in a closed carriage with horses. Her aunt held her inside the carriage, and her uncle led the horse from the outside of the carriage. Her mother was about to give birth, so they stopped at Midway. They knocked on a door of a Christian couple. They let them in and gave her mother a bed so that she could give birth. She gave birth to Rutty in their home.
The whole family arrived to Bacau and found a small house. In the compound where she lived, the houses were a row of apartments with a common garden. All these houses once belonged to a rich man in Romania. The house they lived in was once the lodging of the servants. In the compound lived Jewish families and one Christian family. The house was one room, not large, and everyone lived together. There was a hall that served as a summer kitchen and a small storage room that was about to collapse. Later, they left this compound, but stayed in Romania. The garden seemed to her like paradise, because it was very beautiful. There were many types of wood: white and purple syringa, tea trees, apples, plums, walnut and more. There were "carpets" of grass and she was sitting there with all the girls and it felt like a bathtub and the sun was overhead. If someone passed by he couldn't guess that the girls sat there and played with dolls. It was a hiding place for them.
When she was twelve, her sister Tova was born.
The family decided to immigrate to Israel.
They waited 15 years to obtain an Israeli passport, by then she was at the end of 11th grade. On April 14th,1961, they arrived to Israel. The breakup from everyone in Romania was hard for her. All her friends and teachers escorted her to the train, everyone came to say goodbye.
Nosia also told me about her good friends from Romania. Marioff is a Christian young man who was her friend before high school. A boy with a talent for stage arts. He was smart, intelligent, nice and positive.
Daniella is a Christian girl. They were doing homework together and Nosia called her Dana. She was a brunette with small braids and black eyes. She was a naughty girl and studied after high school building engineering.
Nosia had a group of four friends and they all sat next to each other in class, Dita, Mariana and Bruno.
Bruno was a nice Jewish and sensitive boy. All the children laughed at him that he was always playing with girls. In their gang, he was called "the girl", but he wasn't hurt. He studied dentistry after high school.
Marianna was a Christian girl from Romania. Nosia remembers her as a lovely girl, very connected to the Jewish children and they spent a lot of time together.
Today, Judith, Dita, is a dentist and she lives in Jerusalem. They attended the same class from first grade to seventh grade. In high school, they went to the same high school, but weren't in the same class. In ninth grade, they were in the same class again and shared a table in the last two years Nosia spent in Romania. In addition, they set out together on a trip of two weeks in Romania from school and they have become like sisters. They stayed in touch even when Nosia was in Israel. Dita came 20 years after Nosia to Israel. And even when Dita got engaged, she wore a dress that Nosia bought her and Dita really loved the dress.
When Nosia came to Israel, she lived in Ein Shemer, a kibbutz in northern Israel. She was the only one from the kibbutz who learned intensive Hebrew at school. She studied at a Hebrew school for 5 months. Every school day was 4 hours and they paid for it by working 4 hours on the kibbutz every day.
In 1974, she married David Golan and on 1976 she gave birth to Oren. When they married, David had already 2 children, Ronen and Yuval. Yuval passed away in 1980.
They divorced and David died on 1992.
Nosia has 3 grandchildren: Liron, Shay and Matan.
