Frozen Mud and Red Ribbons

A Romanian Jewish Girl's Survival through the Holocaust in Transnistria and Its Rippling Effect on the Second Generation

When Sophica was six years old, she was deported together with her mother and the whole of the Jewish community of Mihaileni, Romania to a strip of land in Eastern Ukraine called Transnistria. Death, illness, brutality, and shame became her daily life. Hungry and afraid, she held on to her sanity and hope, albeit losing her sister and her father and witnessing a vicious attack on her mother. She met Herman on her way to the Promised Land.

Herman didn't mind wearing the yellow star and staying home from school. He played outside with his friends while his father and brother were sent to a labor camp. After the war ended, he joined a Jewish youth movement and embarked on a ship to Israel. However, his journey was interrupted and he was taken to a British detention camp in Cyprus where he met Sophica. They were renamed Shulamit and Tzvi and made a home together in Israel. Shulamit/Sophica never mentioned her sad childhood. Sixty-five years after the war and her deportation, Sophica's daughter comes across a family secret and starts asking questions, inducing Shulamit to break her silence and become the frightened little Sophica once more. This book tells her moving story.