Moyshe Kupershmidt
(Bratslav, 2002)

Moyshe Aronovich Kupershmidt was born in Bratslav in 1914. His father was a drayman. Moyshe attended four years of Yiddish school.

Kupershmidt served in the Finnish War. Prior to the Great Patriotic War, he had been trained as a chauffeur, which helped him to survive the war by working as the personal driver for a German officer. He was put into forced labor in Zhytomyr, fled from the massacre at the mass grave near Zhytomyr after the Germans ordered him to dig his own grave, spent time in a prisoner of war camp in Rivne, the Pechera concentration camp, the Nemyriv ghetto, and the Mohyliv-Podilskyy ghetto. He ended the war serving in the Red Army.

Photographer: Artur Frątczak