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About The Shoemaker’s Law

The Shoemaker’s Law” ”
Aaron was a young businessman living in the city of Chernovitz, the capital of the Bukovina region. He and his wife Hermina, who was in her ninth month of pregnancy, lived a fairly quiet and comfortable life in a city that was considered multicultural because of the different peoples who lived there for generations: Romanians, Ukrainians, Germans, and over 50,000 Jews who made up about half of the city
Their lives took a sudden and cruel turn on July 5, 1941 when the armies of Romania occupied the city. Life immediately became hell. During the first days of the occupation, the mass murder of Jews began, looting of their property and the humiliation of the Jews to the ground. The ghetto in the city was soon established, into which all the Jews were admitted without exception. The ghetto was a staging post for the deportation of Jews to death camps in the Transnistrian region of Ukraine. The Romanians announced a “cleanliness of the area” policy. This was the Romanian equivalent of the German version for the “Final Solution”.
Aharon and his wife, with a two-month-old baby, find themselves in the ghetto. Everything seems lost and they are already in a convoy on their way to the Transnistrian camps. As they pass a small, narrow alley, Aharon sees that there is only a lone Romanian soldier standing there trying to keep warm and keeps no one from escaping from the convoy. He decides to take a step. Have to decide fast and now, there will be no other chance. He approaches the soldier and knows he can die in a few seconds. He turns to the soldier and asks to leave the ghetto. In his hand he holds a pair of gloves with a fur lining and offers them to the soldier. He knew the punishment was death on the spot. The soldier hesitates and begins to hold the rifle, and Aharon waits for a shot. The soldier opens the checkpoint and the family goes out to the alley and from there to the city. They are currently rescued but what awaits them around the corner? Everyone who escapes from the ghetto is shot immediately.
Aaron and his family find themselves in a city that has been emptied of Jews, alone, with no means of subsistence. The danger lurking for them this time is not deportation but immediate execution. Aharon begins to think about how to survive and who to turn to. The friends from yesterday have become bitter enemies. What to do? He decides to remove the yellow Star of David from his clothes, which every Jew was required to wear. He knew that if he was caught without the yellow badge, he would be charged as an impostor to Romney and sentenced to a bullet in the head. Dressed in elegant clothes and a hat on his head, he takes to the streets and begins to walk safely through the city streets, passing a military patrol, until he reaches the Romanian army headquarters. There he stands in front of the sentries at the entrance, pushes into the hands of each sentry a warm scarf, and demands to meet the responsible colonel. “I’m a friend of his” he introduces himself. Aaron knows he’s playing hide and seek with death but he has no way back. No one has yet identified him as a Jew. He is ushered into the colonel’s room, and, he was very surprised to see Aharon in an elegant appearance and without a Star of David on his coat. At the end of their brief meeting, Aharon receives a work permit in the headquarters building, which gives him and his family some protection but not for long.
Against the background of the daily deportations of the city’s Jews to Transnistria, another dramatic struggle is taking place between the Christian mayor of Chernovitz and the Romanian military authorities entrusted with carrying out the Romanian ruler’s order to “clean the territory”. The mayor, who vehemently opposes the deportation, is trying to protect the Jewish population. He does not hesitate to confront the generals of the army and even turns to the ruler of Romania directly even though he is aware that he is endangering himself. At the end of this confrontation, the mayor manages to obtain the army’s consent to keep 20,000 Jews in the city, claiming that they are needed for the maintenance of the city. Without it the city would collapse. The Jews are the artisans who are able to maintain the functioning of the city.
In the large central hall of the Chernovitz municipality, a spectacle takes place that is hard to imagine in those days. The registration work begins: identifying and sorting the Jews who will remain and work in slavery conditions, and the rest, who will be sent to the camps until their deaths. The mayor manages to harness the heads of the Jewish community who sit in the city hall next to the city officials, and next to them sit the army soldiers who help with the sorting and issuing of permits.
Part of Aaron’s family remained living in his hometown of Kimpolung, in the southern part of the Bukovina region. His mother, his brothers and sisters, are deported while pounding the drums of the municipal announcer informing them to report to the train station by noon in the afternoon at the latest. In less than a day they are deported from the town to Transnistria. They arrive in the town of Shargorod where they are imprisoned inside the ghetto and people begin to die of starvation, typhus, and colds.
Joseph, Aaron’s younger brother, was sent by the Romanian gendarmes, from Shragorod to forced labor near the town of Ataki, where the Germans built a bridge over the Bug River for the German army. He desperately tries to get food to survive, and works in slavery conditions to build the bridge. One day a strange case occurs. A Romanian soldier who was on his way to the front stops next to him and hands him a sum of money from his brother Aaron and tells him that his brother Aaron has meanwhile survived and remains in his apartment in Chernovitz.
Joseph does not understand how his brother managed to help him. The money helped him get out and return to his family in Shargorod.
Aaron and the family who stayed with him in Chernovitz continue to barely survive. The situation is constantly changing and the dangers are increasing. The mayor is fired. He is accused of providing aid to the Jews and in his place another man was appointed who was eager to expel them all without even considering the permits provided to them by the deposed mayor.
The Jew hunt is renewed. The new mayor spurs the army to expel the city’s Jews. The army and gendarmes attack the few Jews left in the city and send them directly to the camps in Transnistria. Every Jew captured by the army is no longer returned to the ghetto as it used to be, but is transported directly to the train station, where the trains with the stinking freight cars waited, and as soon as the train fills up it sets off straight to the camps. It is clear that there is no possibility of being saved from such a situation. Aaron does not give up and continues to lead his family’s struggle for survival, while helping others as well. He is in a constant dilemma of how to stay alive? He set for himself one and only law: to do everything to stay alive. In view of the vigorous activity of the new mayor, Aaron manages to achieve the unbelievable – during the arrests, a sentry; a Romanian soldier was placed at the entrance of his apartment and guards Aaron and his family. When the army’s arrests began, Aaron arrived at his home a few minutes before they began, but he did not know that that day the army was ahead of schedule. Very close to his house, a Romanian soldier appeared suddenly from nowhere with a rifle in his hand and shouted at Aharon, “Jew, go to the end of the street and get on the truck.” Although the soldier surprised him, Aaron remained in place and in a confident tone replied “I am a pure Romanian, and the Colonel will not be pleased with what you do to me.” Aharon, as usual, walked without a Star of David on his coat, and that alone could have cost him his life. The soldier briefly considered Aaron’s words and preferred not to get involved with the colonel. He pulled the shotgun away from Aaron’s face and kept walking. Aaron was again within walking distance of death and entered his apartment with a sentry already on duty at the entrance of the apartment, to keep him from doing any harm. But the arrangement with the sentry was only good for a short time. The German army takes over the city and the SS units begin to collect the Jews in a systematic way that is characteristic of them. In the face of the new reality, the Romanian army could not intervene because the Germans did not consider their Romanian allies. Once again, Aharon is facing an old new dilemma: “How do you survive”? What else can be done? What else can you think of? What can he do alone against the strong German army? Having no choice, Aharon and his family hide in the basement of the house, which was somewhat camouflaged. At night, the Germans came to the street to look for Jews. From the basement you could hear them screaming, cursing and running around. They hit the Iron Gate at the entrance and screamed “Open right away, here’s the SS.” Aaron and the family sat in complete darkness drenched in sweat and fear, certain that their bitter end had come. The mothers shut the babies’ mouths so that they would not hear their cries and thus betray them, but the German soldiers were unable to detect the fugitives and left the place. Before going down to the basement Aaron reinforced the iron gate at the entrance to the house and forged an order of the Romanian army stating that the house belonged to the Romanian government after the expulsion of the tenants. He hung the order on the reinforced gate. Apparently the order convinced the Germans that the place was abandoned.
A few days later, in the spring of 1944, Aaron decides that the place has become dangerous and it is no longer possible to stay there. He was sure the Germans would come back one more time. He goes out with his wife and baby to the deserted streets and decides to look for another hiding place in one of the suburbs. He is amazed at the sight of empty streets. Maybe there is a curfew and he does not know? If he encounters a curfew patrol their fate is doomed. After marching a long way, they suddenly encountered soldiers with automatic weapons drawn. Aaron was sure their end had come. A few seconds later he noticed that these were patrol soldiers of the Red Army and realized that they had expelled the Germans from the city without fighting. Aaron breathed deeply full of his lungs and thought of one word: “We were saved.” Aaron his wife and baby returned to their apartment.
After the conquest of the city by the Red Army, Aaron began working for the Soviet army in the same building that had previously housed the Romanian army headquarters.
Yosepf, his younger brother, manages to get to Aaron’s apartment in Chernovitz. Almost exhausted, he says that part of the surviving family is stuck in one of the remote villages in Ukraine and the Russian army forbids them to leave the village. The instruction is not accompanied by explanations and must be obeyed. Anyone who violates instructions in time of war is subject to heavy penalties including the threat of exile to Siberia, from where they will probably not return.
Aaron and Joseph begin a long journey to rescue the family from Ukraine. After the dangerous rescue from Ukraine, the second and more important part for the family is the journey from Chernovitz back to their hometown of Kimpolung, where the family has a home and a small farm where they lived before the war. If they manage to get there and return to their home, there will be something to live on and a roof that will provide shelter. Getting to Kimpolung has become a coveted goal in the eyes of Aaron and the whole family. The war is not over yet and despite this, Aaron and his family set off while evading Russian neighbors and security forces. Meeting a Red Army patrol was a dangerous thing in itself. Aaron considered more than once whether to dare to set out or to postpone it. If he refuses, they may never be able to get to their home again. If caught on the way, they will end up in Siberia. The dilemma was not simple. He should decide to risk or not taking off. With convulsions and heavy worries about what will happen to them if they are caught, they embark on the dangerous journey home. On the way, a Jewish soldier from Chernovitz, whom Aaron had known before the war and arranged a meeting with at an agreed point outside the city, helps them. Aharon was sure that the soldier, with all his experience, would be able to smuggle them through the army guards and cross the new border between Russia and Romania. The soldier fought in the Red Army against the Nazis from the outbreak of the war until almost the end. He took part in the terrible and cruel campaign in Stalingrad. Despite the many and bitter battles in which he participated, he survived and returned home to look for his family.
The journey home of Aaron and the family takes place on a cart drawn by two horses in the Carpathian Mountains with little food, in the rain, in the thick of the forest along hidden paths as they try to get away from the army guards. The Jewish soldier was well acquainted with the trails and knew the right direction to lead Aaron and his family home. The cart loaded with the whole family arrives in town in the middle of the night, crosses it and stops at the door of their house. Did their dream come true? They are at home. Aharon gets off the cart and goes to open the door and then it turns out it is locked from the inside. Other people, strangers, now live in his house. After all the hardships and suffering, after the ghetto he comes to a dead end. This time, too, Aharon does not give up. A struggle develops with the invaders being expelled from the house and the family finally enters her house. The house was looted, there was not much inside but it was their house. After all they had been through, they returned home.

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