Return to Rivne

Summary

Shelly Weiner and Riya Kershner recount their childhoods, survival during the Holocaust, separation after the war, and return decades later to the place where they were hidden.

Before the War

Shelly describes a happy childhood in Rivne (called “Rovno” or “Rovner” in the subtitles), where her father was a businessman and her mother ran a grocery store. Riya remembers a pleasant childhood in a village near Hrodna, where her family had a small lime business. The girls were cousins and close companions.

German Occupation and Persecution

After German forces arrived, anti-Jewish restrictions were imposed. Shelly recalls men in her family hiding from forced labor roundups. When German soldiers came to the house, they beat her uncle.

Riya describes the massacre of Jews in Hrodna, which the subtitles say killed 17,500 people in three days. Most of both girls’ extended families were killed. Riya’s father survived after being taken into the Soviet army.

Escape and Hiding

Riya’s mother took her out of the surrounded city and went to a village. Shelly, her mother, Riya, and Riya’s mother were sheltered by a local family identified in the subtitles as Natalia and Nicanor. The rescuers hid them in a cramped space in a barn for about 20 months.

The girls endured hunger, heat and cold, darkness, rats, mice, and lice. They made toys from straw and listened to stories from their mothers. When the hiding place was discovered, the girls urged their mothers to flee. They spent three days hiding in fields, surviving on raw rye, before returning and later moving into an underground bunker.

After the War

The families’ paths diverged. Shelly and her mother went to Poland, where Shelly’s father eventually found them. They later lived in displaced-person camps in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1949.

Riya and her mother stayed in the Soviet Union, first in a small town and later in St. Petersburg. The cousins had no contact for many years. They eventually reconnected after a chance encounter in Tel Aviv led Shelly’s family to learn where Riya was. Shelly visited Riya in 1974, and they were reunited.

Return to the Hiding Place

In 2013, the cousins returned to the farm where they had been concealed. Seeing the barn and house brought back vivid memories and helped Shelly feel that she had closed a chapter of her life. Both women expressed gratitude for the rescuers’ courage: the family risked death and the loss of their property to shelter them.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Shelly Weiner — Holocaust survivor and narrator.
• Riya Kershner — Holocaust survivor and narrator; her surname is rendered this way in the subtitles.
• Music — Appears between sections; no other speaking source is identified.