When Samuel Boymel tells the story of his childhood and how he escaped death in Turijsk, Ukraine, tears trickle down his cheeks.

        The memory of running as a 12-year-old to escape death still haunts him. One a recent trip to his hometown, Mr. Boymnel collected human bones as a reminder of the 12,500 Jews killed there, including his family.

        From his office at the Tri-County Extended Care Center in Fairfield, he talked this week about getting some closure Sept. 10, when he buried bones brought back from Turijsk in the Kneseth Israel Cemetery in Covedale.

Boymel

        Mr. Boymel said he; his wife, Rachel; their son Steven of Indian Hill; and his brother-in-law, Simon Czerkiewicz of Golf Manor, visited his hometown of Turijsk for 10 days in August.

        “I went to a mass grave where Jews had been slaughtered in 1942. I saw human bones scattered everywhere,” he said. “They didn't even bother to bury the bones.

        “I didn't know if they were bones of my grandfather or my sister or my own mother,” he said. “I decided to bring them back to Cincinnati.”

        As Mr. Boymel sat in his office, surrounded by pictures of him with presidents Reagan, Ford, Bush and Clinton, he reflected on his childhood.

        The pictures were taken when Mr. Boymel was a member of the Advisory Board of the American Security Council, the Republican Presidential Task Force, the Presidential Foundation and the Republican National Committee.

        “Loif, mine kindt, loif,” he said, repeating the words his mother shouted to him when he was 12. Translated, it means “Run, my son, run away.”

        It was Aug. 23, 1942, when 6,000 Jews were being marched by Ukrainian police and militia and German soldiers to the Walner brick factory, near the town of Kovel in Ukraine.

        “As we were turned uphill to a dirt path, panic broke. There were screams because all of us believed we were being marched to our ultimate destiny,” Mr. Boymel said.

        He ran into Rostov Forest in the town of Rostov, about nine miles away. That was the last time he saw his family.

        On that day, 6,000 Jews from Turijsk and 6,500 from the nearby village of Shtetis were executed. He spent much of his life from 1942 to 1945 on the run, sleeping in pig pens and cattle barns. He said he was given food by a Ukrainian farmer and his daughter, and that a Ukrainian soldier helped him escape.

        He said he was liberated at age 17 and lived in a camp in Ferenwald in Ukraine, where he met and married Rachel in 1949.

        Mr. Boymel said they were helped by Jewish, Catholic and Protestant religious groups that arranged visas to get Jews to America. He said he came to New York in 1949 and was told he would be sent to Cincinnati.

        “I had never heard of Cincinnati.”

        He and his wife lived in Avondale. His first job was as a butcher, making $18 a week. He eventually started his own butcher shop in Roselawn.

        In addition to Steven, the Boymels raised two daughters, Patsy Kohn and Faye Sosna, both of Montgomery.

        Today, Mr. Boymel lives in Amberley Village. At 76, he is chairman of the board of a corporation that includes five nursing homes and an investment company.

       Allen Howard's column runs on Saturdays. Call: 768-8362. Mail: The Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati, OH 45202.

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