USSR Born Jewish Soldiers who Served in the Red Army in World War II

The interview focuses on Jewish soldiers' service in the Red Army. He was born 1n 1919 in Golta - Bogopol, Ukraine (they actually lived in Odessa). Until 1934, when the Jewish school was closed he studied in Yiddish. His father was a cultivated person; he was a director in a youth institution and visited Spain before the war. Michael Freiman's oldest brother, born in 1910, was a member in the Communist Party and served from 1935 as an officer in the Borders Guard. The second brother, born in 1913 served in the Army, also before the war. Michael Freiman was recruited in 1939 and ended his compulsory service in 1941 as a sergeant in a base stationed in Caucasus, close to the border with Turkey. In that time, when the eastern territories from Poland were annexed to the Soviet Union, he heard a higher officer saying that, despite the “political romance” with the Nazi Germany (Ribbentrop - Molotov Pact) they had to be prepared to any surprise. When the war against the Nazi Germany started in 1941, MF was recruited again as a commander over 14 soldiers in the first division of the Border Army. With that unit he was sent to fight in Moscow and in Vyazma after a 200 km. walk, he participated in the defensive fights in the “western front”. More than once he found leaflets thrown from German plains calling the soldiers to “hand over Jews and commissars”. On August 25th he was severely wounded in both legs during the battle of Smolensk. He was hospitalized half a year and received help from a Jewish doctor woman. In 1942 released from the hospital crippled, with two crutches and with a grant of 120 rubles, a jacket and a T shirt. In that time the cost of a loaf of bread was 130 rubles. As many in his conditions, he moved to the zone of Tashkent. Because of his severe condition, he lived with an uncle in Krasnoyarsk. There he spent hours in the library and read Jewish newspapers from the Soviet Union. In 1946 MF returned to Ukraine.