This chapter is a transcription of an 1997 interview with Holocaust survivor Boris Kamenko (b. 1923) that was conducted for the USC Shoah Foundation. The first part of the interview is about his life before World War II — his relatives, hobbies, and awareness of himself as a Jew. The central part, however, is the story of the war period, that is, the Nazi occupation of Stavropol (Voroshilovsk) and Kamenko’s survival of the Holocaust.

After the Jewish population, including the Kamenko family, was registered in August 1942, members of Einsatskommando 12 selected Boris as one of the thirty physically strong men tasked with burying the corpses of Jews on the outskirts of the city. The men who survived this ordeal were placed in an SD prison. In December 1942, after four months in captivity, Boris and another prisoner managed to escape. His recollections of hiding out in the Stavropol area ends with the liberation of the city. The final section of the interview covers Boris’s post war life — his studies, work, and struggle against the state and everyday antis emitism. The interview is followed by detailed historical analysis.