Relationet Holocaust Project

Katzenelsom High School -Israel

Herman Goldshtein 

RelatioNet HE GO 29 IA RO

mail: keskes2@walla.co.il , relationet2014@gmail.com


First name : Herman
last name: Goldshteim
father's name : Mendel Goldshtein
mother's name: Ettti Gildshtein
year of birth: 1929
city of birth : Iasi
country: Romania

Iasi

Before the war Iași had the first documented presence of Sephardic Jews from the late 16th century. By the mid-19th century, owing to widespread Russian Jewish and Galician Jewish immigration into Moldavia, the city was at least one-third Jewish left.

In 1855, Iași was the home of the first-ever Yiddish-language newspaper, Korot Haitim, and in 1876, the site of what was arguably the first-ever professional Yiddish theater performance, established by Avraham Goldfaden. The words of HaTikvah, the national anthem of Israel, were written in Iași by Naftali Herz Imber. Jewish musicians in Iași played an important role as preservers of Yiddish folklore, as performers and composers.

According to the 1930 census, with a population of 34,662 (some 34%) out of the total of 102,872, Jews were the second largest ethnic group in Iași. There were over 127 synagogues.

During the war During the war, one of the known, cruelest pogroms in the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe occur in Iasi.
The Iași pogrom stood as one of the known examples of Axis brutality toward the Jews.

The pogrom lasted from 29 June to 6 July 1941. Over 13,266 people, or one third of the Jewish population, were massacred in the pogrom itself or in its aftermath, and many were deported..

A systematic massacre by the Iași police, Romanian and German soldiers, and part of the citizens of Iași took part in the pogrom and at least 8,000 Jews were killed.
More than 5,000 Jews were loaded onto overcrowded, sealed "death trains" that drove slowly back and forth across the country in the hot summer weather until most of their passengers were killed by hyperthermia, thirst, or infection and bleeding.

Six Romanians of Iași are credited with saving around one hundred Jews.

After World War II, in 1947, there were about 38,000 Jews living in Iași.
During the Postbellum period, Iași played a prominent part in the revival of Yiddish culture in Romania, and from 1949 to 1963, it was home to a second company of the State Jewish Theater. The intellectuals of Iași included many Jewish academics, scientists, writers, journalists, doctors, lawyers, and engineers. However, the number of Jews continued to drop because of massive emigration to Israel and, in 1975, there were about 3,000 Jews living in Iași and four synagogues were active Currently, Iași has a dwindling Jewish population of ca. 300 to 600 members and two working synagogues, one of which, the 1671 Great Synagogue, is the oldest surviving synagogue in Romania.
Outside of the city on top of a hill there is a large Jewish Cemetery which has graves dating from the late 19th century; burial records date from 1915 to the present day and are kept in the community center.


Herman's Journey : 

Herman's story

Herman Goldstein was born on May 5, 1929 in Iasi , Romania. His extended family included 5 Family members: the parents Mandel and Etti Goldstein, his brother shalom, his sisters Hani and luba, and Herman himself.
His father was a tailor, his mother was seamstress.
They held a traditional Jewish home, and kept the Jewish holidays.
Until the 1940's, Herman had a happy, normative childhood.
In 1942, after 5 years of studying, Herman and the rest of his Jewish friends were kicked out of school. "I missed my studies at school because there was no place for me to be educated in".

Iasi, where Herman had been living, was divided into four districts. The head of the district where Herman lived, had empathy towards Jews, thus, Jews in that district were not harmed.
"In May 1942, when I was 12, while walking in the city center, outside the district where I lived, suddenly a policeman approached me asking to see my identity papers. I did not have identity papers, because I was not 15 yet.
The policeman marched me to a huge garden in the police station in Iasi, where e hundreds of Jews were held."

First, they gathered the people in the "Castora" building, a large police station with cellars. Many Jews were robbed and were hit to death at the yard's entrance.
According to later estimates, 5000 Jews were murdered in the "Castora" building, and thousands more in nearby streets.
.. Read more about Iasi pogrom ( in Hebrew  בעברית )

"The following day, the Nazis forced the people who survived the horrible pogrom, to enter carriages, for transporting animals, and not suitable at all for people.
In order to save space, the Germans crowded the Jews: a carriage that could contain 40 standing people (in case they were designated for people), 120-150 people were compressed."
"Since we did not have any food or water, people were forced to drink each others urine. There was suffocation"
A large number the people who were in these trains, died as a direct result of lack of oxygen. The ones who tried to run away, were shot by the Nazi soldiers.

"We were transported to the 'Transnistria'  arbeitslager (work camp) in Ukraine.
In the arbeitslager, we were taken every morning to working in excavations outside the arbeitslager, and we were returned at the end of the day.
The arbeitslager was closed and fenced by barbed wire fence and German soldiers.
There was no possibility to run away,since the arbeitslager was far from my home in Romania.
There was no way to respond or oppose. "

At the end of 1944, the end of World War II, the arbeitslager was released by the Red Army. As a result, the Nazi soldiers ran away, and the Jews tried to return to their homes.

In 1945, 3 years after he had been kidnapped by the Nazi soldiers in Iasi, Herman returned home looking for his family in Romania. He found them healthy in their home .
"The whole family was excited to see me, after 3 years they had no idea about my whereabouts."
After a year, Herman, with 4 friends and a sister of one of them, decided to make aliya to Israel (to immigrate).
They got to the border between Romania and Hungary, they rented a cart and hid in it. On that way, they crossed the bored to Hungary.
"We spend 2 days in Hungary, later on, American army trucks took us to
Vienna in Austria.
"There we were put in an immigrant camp, in a building that used to be a school." The Jewish Agency with the Joint, transported the new immigrants to Israel.

In 1948, Herman, his friends including the girl, with 150 other Jewish refugees were transported to Israel on a ship called "Tatipanama". On May 16, they arrived in Tel-Aviv port. The British left the country on May 15, one day before the immigrants arrived, so they were not caught by them.
After arriving, Herman and his friends were transported to "Biet-lid"- the largest immigrant camp is Israel.
There, they were given uniforms and were transported to Battalion 51 at 'Golani" in Hazor.

After serving in the army for 2 years, Herman was released from the army at the age of 22, and started looking for a job.
He was employed by the Military Industry where he had been working for 35 years until he retired.

Hani Goldstein, Herman's wife, immigrated to Israel in 1950.
They met in Israel ,and married after half a year , in 1951.
They had two kids, Levi, rest his soul, and Rachel,from whom they have grandchildren and great grandchildren
These days, they live in kfar saba, Israel.
They like to spend time visiting the Holocaust Survivors' club "Amcha".