Of all of my family only I survived
When the Nazis sent Helena Esterkés to slavery work on the Peremilovka farm, she was in fact happy. It was still better than to be with other Jews imprisoned in the Ostroh ghetto, despite the fact that even here she had to work hard under the surveillance of Ukrainian guards. They toiled from early morning to night, for eating Helena stole potatoes that were cooked for pigs, sometimes she managed to steal an onion or an apple. One evening, after she returned from the field, a surprise awaited her. Her parents managed to flee the ghetto. They had to leave the grandma behind though, since she lost her eyesight during imprisonment. By escaping they got just another week of life. When they fled Premilovka, her father asked Břeň, a Volhynia Czech and their neighbour of her birth village Ledochovka. He, however, reported them to the Nazis who captured Helena’s parents and killed them. Helena managed to hide on top of a stack of straw, where the German soldiers did not find her.
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Helena Esterkesová, née Rivcová
She was born in 1926 in Ledochovce, Volhynia region, in a Jewish family. When Volhynia was occupied by the Soviet Army in 1939, her family was selected for a transport to Siberia. The transport did not take place since the Germans came. First they stripped the Rivc family of all their property and then sent them to the ghetto in Ostroh. From there she was sent to forced labour in the garden of Kreislanwirt Fritz Vogel and then to Peremilovka. It was there where her parents fled to join her due to Nazi murdering of the Jews. Eventually she opted for another escape and hiding. In their home village of Ledochovce, most people chased them away and refused to help. Eventually here parents were reported and shot. The Nazis murdered also her sister Pavla and brother Michael. Helena fled and at 15 she hid, in heavy frost and with scarce clothes, in a forest. Eventually she ended up with the Polish family of Lipskys, the only ones who did not refuse to help. For five months she hid in a dark room under straw. Then she hid for some time with some relatives of the Lipsky’s family before joining the Pole Bišk at Juláni. It was where she worked as a connection with Polish partisans. At the end of the war she witnessed bombing of Lutsk and Rivne. She contracted typhus fever and when in hospital, she was nearly killed by a German bomb. In September 1945 she married Adam Esterkes, who, like her, lost all of his family and shortly after re-emigrated to Czechoslovakia. At present (2010) she lives in Nový Jičín.
