Roman Shvartsman

Roman Markovich Shvartsman (born November 7, 1936) is chairman of the Odesa regional Association of Jews – former prisoners of ghetto and Nazi concentration camps.

He is Vice President of the Ukrainian Association of Jews - former prisoners of ghetto and Nazi concentration camps, and Chairman of the Association of Boris Zabarko.

He is also Deputy chairman of the Council of Odesa society of Jewish culture and Manager of its social and cultural center.

Roman Markovich Shvartsman was born in 1936, in a simple Jewish family in the city of Bershad, Vinnytsia Oblast.

The family had nine children, the seventh of whom was Roman Shvartsman.

His mother was a housewife, his father worked at the Bershad distillery as a security guard.

When the Second World War ended, all archival and personal documents were burned and then, to restore the age of Roman, a doctor of the local clinic conducted an external examination.

In 1941 the whole of Ukraine was occupied by German and Romanian troops.

In the early days of the outbreak of war Roman's father and older brother went to the front.

In early July, his mother, with her eight young children, tried to evacuate.

After two weeks attempts at evacuation, they were forced to return home, because of active offensive fascist troops.

In late July, early August in Bershad the Germans came.

And in early September by the decree of the commandant of the German administration, two ghettos were organized in the territory of the city, in one of which was Roman's family.

In the Bershad ghetto Jews were deported from Bessarabia and nearby areas of the Vinnytsia region.

The total number of Jews amounted to 25,000 people.

For the period from June 1941 until March 1944 German and Romanian fascists killed 13,871 Jews.

During the occupation in 1942, an operation on repair of the bridge across the river Dohno, at the hands of Romanian caretakers one of Roman's older brothers was shot.

Slightly later this history formed the basis of one of the films of the Israeli film director Boris Maftsir.

Intolerable living conditions in the ghetto has left its mark for life.

On March 29, 1944 the city of Bershad was liberated by the Red Army.

In 1945, after the liberation of Europe from the fascist plague, Roman's father was mobilized from Berlin for the war.

He returned home only in 1946, after the Red Army defeated fascist Japan.

Roman's elder brother joined the army and did not return.

It was only in 1953 that his family received notice of his death, in which it was claimed that he died heroically on the Northern front, defending Leningrad.

His name is recorded in the "Black Book", a compilation of documents and testimonies of Jewish victims of the Holocaust edited by Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg.

In Odesa the first constituent Congress was created, in which was created the International Union of Jews - former prisoners of ghettos and Nazi concentration camps.

And only a few years later such associations opened in Kyiv and Moscow.

In 1955, he moved to Odesa, where he entered the vocational school № 2, in 1956, he received a specialty fitter.

From 1957 to 1963 he studied at the Odesa National Maritime Academy, with a speciality as engineer-mechanic.

Roman began his career at the Odesa plant Poligrafmash, where he works now.

There is only one entry in his workbook.

In 1959, Roman married.

In 1991, at the first Congress, the members of the international organization decided to create a regional Association of former prisoners of ghettos and concentration camps, and the headquarters of the international Union was moved to Moscow.

In 1991 the Odesa regional Association of the former prisoners of the ghetto was created, where Roman was Deputy Chairman, which at that time was Leonid Sushon.

In 1991 the Odesa regional Association of the former prisoners of the ghetto and concentration camps was created.

In 1992 Roman became a member of the international organization of former ghetto prisoners and concentration camps, which was founded in Odesa in 1991.

Currently, he remains a permanent and active member of the organization.

In 2002, at the Odesa regional conference, dedicated to the results of the Association, Roman was elected Chairman of the Association, the head of which he is to date.

He contributes to the annual commemoration on January 27, in the Prokhorovsky square, of the International day of remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust He has been a guest of honor at international conferences on the topic of the Holocaust.

He was involved in the development and improvement of the Holocaust Museum, which was created and opened by the Association of prisoners in 2009.