Shimon Greenhouse
“The devastating memory of my father’s murder still haunts me to this day.
I was only thirteen when Nazi soldiers executed him in front of my eyes. It was during one of the German ‘Aktion’ at the ghetto and my father was ‘chosen’ randomly to be shot. I was standing next to my father, holding his hand firmly hoping that our lives will be spared but the Nazis had no mercy, and with a shot to the back of his head he collapsed pulling me down to the ground with him. I was covered with blood lying beneath my dead father’s body and before I fainted I remember asking myself if I had arrived in heaven or whether I’m still in hell.
After the shooting, the Jewish undertakers of the ghetto gathered all the bodies and put them on a wagon so they could bring them to burial at the Jewish cemetery. Luckily, I woke up before the wagon reached the cemetery and even though I was in a state of shock I managed to move my leg. When the undertaker saw a leg moving beneath the pile of bodies, he stopped the wagon and pulled me down. If it wasn’t for my father’s instincts who tried to protect me and that Jewish undertaker that saw a ‘body’ on his wagon moving its leg, I would surely die.
When people ask me how this event affected me, I say that whoever managed to keep his sanity in the ghetto is probably a man that went berserk. Living in the ghetto under such extreme mental and physical conditions for such a long time means bringing out a different state of mind: Trying to live a normal life under abnormal conditions.
Getting out of the ghetto was dangerous but when you do not have any food to eat you take risks. One day, my mother and I made a bold decision to get out and we went to the house of a Polish friend who had been our neighbor in better times. She provided us with much-needed food, but as fate would have it, our desperate escape did not go unnoticed. A Nazi officer suddenly appeared, and the gravity of the situation was overwhelming.
Until this day I can still see the chilling image of the gun barrel pointed directly at our foreheads. Our Polish friend ran out of her house with Vodka and sausage, fell down on her knees, kissed his boots, and begged for our lives. The officer took the Vodka and sausage, beat us, and brought us back to the ghetto. Our lives were spared.
On the eve of Purim (a Jewish holiday) in 1943, The Nazis decided to liquidate the ghetto. My mother and I managed to hide in a pit with thirty other people but my sister and brother weren’t that fortunate. They were put in a barn and burned to death alive by the Nazis. They didn’t survive.
After four days, we got out of the pit, and because I had typhus I couldn’t really walk. I don’t know from where my Mom had the strength but she managed to carry me on her back while walking in heavy snow. We joined the Jewish partisans that were hidden in the forests around Minsk and we fought the Nazis the best we could. Eventually, the Red Army saved us and we came back to our hometown, Krasna.
In 1960 my mother and I emigrated to Israel. I had the privilege to marry Aliza, a Holocaust survivor, and create a beautiful family. I became an educator and throughout my career, I taught over 30,000 students. I am recognized as the oldest teacher in Israel still teaching at the age of 93+ for over 64 years and counting.
Today, at the age of 93 I still do.
In my eyes, Education and love for the other is the best tool for creating decent human beings.”