In this video, Freda Shiel tells the story of a nerve-wracking encounter with two Ukrainian men on the road when she and her father escaped the Przemyslany ghetto. Source: Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, 1989
[00:00-00:06]
Video begins with inter-title in white text on black screen while instrumental music plays and fades into the next frame: In 1943, Freda Shiel and her father managed to escape the Przemyslany ghetto (Ukraine) on foot with other family members.
[00:07-00:27]
Cut to Holocaust survivor Freda Shiel, sitting in front of a grey background, and looking to the right of the camera. The camera shows her face and shoulders as she speaks during an interview conducted in Winnipeg in 1989.
>> Freda Shiel: We're going towards the town of Dunaiv…
[00:12-00:19]
The name “Freda Shiel” and the location of the filmed interview, “Winnipeg”, appear in white text above Freda's right shoulder.
>>…and I guess along the way you pass other villages. And at one point we were stopped. Two men walking. They saw my father and me, and my aunt and her two girls. Her girls were a little older than I was.
[00:28-00:35]
Cut to black-and-white photograph of a young girl resting her face on her hand, looking at the camera. She has a bow in her hair. The photo caption appears in white text in the top-left corner, “Freda 8 years old”.
>>And they stopped us. They were carrying shotguns with them. They were going hunting. And they stopped my father, “Where are you going?”
[00:36-00:56]
Cut to Freda Shiel in front of the camera.
>> My father didn't say Dunaiv, he mentioned another village. And he said, “Well, why are you going there?” And he said, “Look,” he says, “my town has cleared out the Jews, I have to run!” And so the two of them said, “No, we want you to go back to where you came from. Otherwise we are going to shoot you.”
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Cut to black-and-white photograph of a man in a suit, standing outdoors with trees in the background. The photo caption appears in white text in the top-left corner, “Israel, Freda's father, 1947”.
>> And my father was talking to them, he said he refused to go back to Przemyslany, he was going to Svirzh, and that's all there was to it.
[01:11-02:22]
Cut to Freda Shiel in front of the camera.
>>My father was 5'1”, 5'2” maybe. And he just went down flat on the ground with his arms stretched out, and he says, “Here, shoot me now.” And I was standing there, I don't know, five, five and a half, with a windbreaker. And I started to cry. And I started saying, “Tata, tata!” And they I guess started feeling sorry about what they were doing here. Because basically I don't think they were killers. They were two men going hunting, and they were perhaps wanting to give him a hard time. So they told him to stand up. And they searched him to see if he had any valuables on him. He didn't have anything because I was carrying whatever he had. But they didn't search me. So they searched him. And they said, “Okay, you can go.” They went on their way, and they kept looking back to see if we were going in the direction that we were going.
[02:23-02:33]
Music plays for the remainder of the video. Three credit pages appear in white text on black screen: Interview conducted by Emily Shane, Second Generation Group, Winnipeg, 1989, Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada
Images: USC Shoah Foundation
Directing: Helgi Piccinin; Editing and Colorization: Michaël Gravel, Helgi Piccinin; Audio Mix and Original Music: Pierre-Luc Lecours. [Logo for Chaire de recherche du Canada en patrimoine ethnologique]
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, copyright 2017.
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End of transcript.