Dora Guzman attended both a Ukrainian and a Yiddish-language school. During the famine of 1932–1933, she moved to Pishchanka to live with her aunt and uncle. Her father, born in Tomashpil, worked as a postman. Her mother was born in the Odessa region. She had one younger brother. She survived the war in the Tomashpil ghetto. After the war, she worked as an accountant and as an inspector.
Good Christians
Tomashpil, Ukraine
In Tomashpil, Romanian gendarmes stablished a ghetto by stringing barbed wire around two streets and ordering the Jews to stay within the confines of the wire. Those, like Dora Guzman, who already lived within the cordoned-off area were able to stay in their own homes, and thus had access to some familiar comforts. The semi-porous barriers of barbed wire that surrounded the Tomashpil ghetto allowed for continued interaction between the Jewish and non-Jewish world. Although Jews were prohibited from leaving the ghetto except for work, those inside could receive assistance from non-Jews outside the ghetto, or trade what little they had food. In this clip, Dora Guzman remembers the good Christians who helped during the war.