This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Part One

In 1938, on the outskirts of the city of Kolomyja in what was then Poland, 5-year-old Herman Spiegel fished for carp in well-stocked private lakes. He spent family vacations in the lush Carpathian Mountains and in winter chipped ice to draw water from a well. Herman had three sibling: Hilda, Jacob and Lunia. Life was good.

Their parents, Moses and Sally, owned land they leased to Ukrainian farmers, a warehouse and two homes. In one, they rented out shop space and ran a general store and tavern. Business was good. Then not.

In 1939, the family weathered four years of Russian occupation and economic nationalization. They became farmers. When Nazi Germany seized the city in 1941, they tried to become invisible. Then they ran for their lives.

"My father was hardworking, opinionated and gregarious," Herman told me when I visited his Salt Lake City home. "He had friends — Polish, Ukrainian and German — spoke several languages and loved to debate. He didn't think Hitler would amount to anything more than a corporal and painter."

Under German occupation, Jewish property and assets were immediately confiscated. Intellectuals were arrested and tortured. The infirm and elderly were imprisoned and infants used for target practice.

In March 1942, the Kolomyja ghetto was assembled in three appalling sections, each surrounded by barbed wire and walled off from the rest of the now "Aryan" city.

Streams of bewildered and frightened Jews were deported into the congested ghetto. About 3,000 Jews were destined for extermination in the Belzec death camp operated by the German Schugtzstaffel (SS), while the nearby Szeparowce Forest seeped with blood graves, mass murders and "forest liquidations."

"We walked into the ghetto wearing everything we could and carrying everything we had," Spiegel said. "My father found a room with a [concealed] storage space in the bottom floor behind a small house."

Fortunately, one Ukrainian friend hid his possessions and another who was "a German but never a Nazi," gave Moses proper work papers to come and go. "Every time my father left to work, he'd smuggle back food."

Police aktions (raids) occurred often during Jewish holidays and in the dark.

"On the first raid, we escaped by hiding in the small room," Herman said. "We had to be quiet and sit still for hours. Luckily, the police didn't know we were there. But a thousand other Jews disappeared."

In a September aktion, 8,700 more were taken.

Herman and his father were outside the ghetto when a surprise raid took the life of his youngest sister. "When we returned, I saw blood coming from Lunia's ear," he said. It happened so fast the slight, sleeping child who was deaf could not be saved. "My mother never stopped grieving."

Everyone was given notice to register. "My father wouldn't," Herman said. "He knew what it meant." Instead, Moses scrambled to find one safe place after another.

When the SS burned one ghetto to the ground, they shot hundreds of Jews as they tried to escape. By October, 4,500 more were transported in cattle cars to Belzec. When they closed the second ghetto, people were crammed into the last remaining one.

It was during a raid that, hidden in an earthen basement with 20 or 30 others without food or light, Moses knew there was no other place to go but out.

"He tried to convince them to do the same, but they couldn't — didn't — move," Herman said. "You have to understand. Traditions were gone. Many had lost their families. They were starving and exhausted. They were being chased and they didn't know where to go or who to trust. They couldn't think."

It was wintertime and bitter cold.

"It was midnight," Herman said. "We were wearing all our clothes when we walked in a line towards an open board in a wooden fence. I believe my father knew it was there. We followed him into the deep snow."

Part Two: Surviving will run in early November.

Eileen Hallet Stone, an oral historian, may be reached at ehswriter@aol.com.