The Germans established a ghetto in Dokszyce in late 1941. Rachel hid during the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942, and she and her mother escaped to another ghetto. When the second ghetto was about to be liquidated, they escaped again. Rachel and her mother joined a band of partisans in the forest. She helped her mother to cook, and also cleaned weapons. Rachel and her mother tried to leave Europe when the war ended. They eventually arrived in the United States, in 1947.
Uh...the partisan group that we were with were at the edge of the forest. We were not with the main group. What they were basically doing is uh disrupting communications, commu...communications meaning train deliveries. Uh they would go out and uh loosen the bolts to some of the railroad tracks so a train could not go on. Disrupting the delivery to the front lines, sometimes managing to blow up a couple of carloads of ammunition. It always had to be done in a manner that would not be too suspicious, that uh kind of could be accepted as possibly even an accident--because of retaliation.
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