The cities and towns of Bukovina almost died out during the 1914-1918 war. All able-bodied men were drafted into military service. In the summer of 1916, after the Russian offensive and the collapse of the Austrian Front, families fled out of fear of the invasion. Only a very few remained in their homes. Those in the rural areas (like Oprischeny) came into the towns for protection. Eventually even those in towns fled to the western sections of the Empire, most commonly Vienna, and Moravia (Czech). About two thirds of the population fled west, and after the war, less than half of those refugees returned.

By 1918 most houses in Bukovina were destroyed or had become uninhabitable ruins. We can be sure Oprischeny was destroyed, as the Russian army advanced from Czernowitz to Sereth via Tereblecea, and therefore the road also passed Oprischeny.

People who returned home after 1918 found none of their belongings and were dependent on philanthropy to survive. The Austrian Empire was dissolved, and because Romania left the Central Powers in 1916 and joined up with the Allied Forces, at the end of the war in 1918, it was rewarded by receiving three regions of the defeated Empire. Bukovina became part of Romania, located in the north central part of the country, with Moldavia on its eastern border. It was also rewarded by receiving administration of Russian Bessarabia.

Until 1919, the Jews in Sereth and Czernowitz regions, as in the whole Empire enjoyed rights, guaranteed by the laws of the state. At the end of the war, the Romanian military occupied Bukovina and the Jews very quickly lost their rights. Small merchants became the victims of decrees issued overnight. Their interpretation and implementation depended the arbitrariness of the Romanian officials. Doctors and lawyers lost their jobs. The rural Jews were compelled to leave their property. The measures against Jews reached their peak just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Jews, who had possessed Austrian citizenship, became stateless and were often shipped over the border.

Romanian records show the new political and territorial divisions of the country based on their land acquisitions in 1918. Here is the entry for Oprischeny:
Locality ... Opriseni ... County ... Radauti... Department ... Siret ... Judicial District ... Siret ... Post Office ... Tereblecea ... Railroad Station ... Slobozia (3)… Distance to Department Seat... 32km.
Here they claim the distance from Oprischeny to Sereth is 32km not 10km.

German troops occupied Romania by October of 1940 and Romania joined the German side of the war. At the same time, the Russians were moving westward into Bessarabia and reclaiming land they once ruled.

Nazi records show plans for the relocation of ethnic Germans as agreed upon between the Soviets and the Germans. These Germans, living in Bessarabia and Bukovina, were transported westward into the German Reich. This work would be carried out mainly by the German SS in 1940. There is a great irony that the SS was deporting Germans by train from Bukovina a year before they began to deport the Jews. The records show:
From the Czernowitz area: the Terebleschtie railway station (blue dot on 1910 map). 1,708 Germans transported. 1,613 from Terebleschtie (i.e. the entire town). Among the other towns, one person from Oprischeny was transferred, a town listed as six kilometres from the train station at Terebleschtie.

In June, 1941, the city was evacuated by the Soviets, and by October, all the Jews (over 50,000) were confined to a small ghetto, while thousands were also deported to Siberia. The Germans arrived on July 5.

In 1941, the Czernowitz Jews were concentrated in a ghetto, and all their property was confiscated. On an order of the German rulers from Bucharest in July 1941, the Jews of Bukovina were loaded in cattle-wagons and evicted to Kalafat. The survivors, over 30,000 Jews, were ultimately deported to Transnistria (Ukraine), where 60-80% perished due to illnesses and hunger. Many of the remaining Jews were murdered by Rumanian soldiers during their retreat from Bukovina and by incited Rumanian peasants. They were shot and their corpses thrown into a ditch. These victims from the Sereth region were buried eventually in the Sereth Cemetery in a common grave, with tombstone and common inscription. In October, 1943, restrictions on Jewish movement were abolished, and the quick liberation by Soviet forces in early 1944 saved the 15,000 Jews remaining in Czernowitz. Despite these atrocities, Bukovinian and Romanian Jews had the highest survival rate in Europe.

A wooden tablet in the Synagogue of Sereth, which still stands today, has the names of more than 700 Jews who died. It is certain that no community inhabited by Jews was spared. After the war, the town of Storozynetz was just a pile of rubble. Just ten Jewish families still lived there -some who survived in Storozynetz or in the Transnistria death camps. A list of Bukovinian Jews who died at Transnistria includes the names of several Blums.

Still, at least 50,000 Bukovinian Jews returned to the towns after the war. Over the next decade, most of these families found their way to Israel. It is very possible that members of the Zuckerman family emigrated to Israel in the 1950s. Lists of Zuckermans in Israel (of which only sons of Max’s brothers would be listed as such), are very numerous. There is no way at present of knowing if any of these came from Bukovina.

In any event, I found the following interesting piece of information. The famous author, Martin Gilbert in his book “Atlas of the Holocaust”, lists all the Jews of the Bukowina on the eve of WW II. Czernowitz had 43,000, Sereth had 2,120, and Toraceni (Tarascheni) as 58 Jews. Villages with as few as 4 Jews are listed, but Oprischeny is not listed at all.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, a Jewish Cultural Society has been formed in Czernowitz (today called Chernivtsi, Ukraine) for the new community of 3,000, and to protect the historical Jewish places. There is even a Jewish school with 150 students (mostly of mixed families), and a synagogue with a rabbi.