This is my husband Sholom Ruvim Rozenberg. The picture was taken in Kaunas in 1970.
In spite of our Communist beliefs both I and Sholom observed Jewish traditions at home. Of course, my husband and consequently I had to go to work on Saturday and we couldn’t observe the kashrut as there were problems with any food products, not to mention the kosher ones. I have always fasted on Yom Kippur and on Jewish holidays I made a feast for my family and Jewish friends. Following my mother’s tradition I made the biggest feast on the holiday of Simchat Torah. We always celebrated Pesach, even in the hardest years for the Jews. We bought matzah from women, who ran the risk of baking it at home.
We spoke Yiddish at home so it was the mother tongue of my children. My children were raised as true Jews. They were proud of their purely Jewish names and even didn’t try changing them for any comfortable European ones. When our children left home in the mid-1960s, it was hard for us to live far away from them and my husband started looking for a job in Kaunas or in Vilnius. He was offered the position of the director at a ceramics plant in Kaunas. The plant was in a deplorable state and in half a year, under Sholom’s management, it exceeded projected performance rations. Then the minister of construction of Lithuania, Brazgauskas, called my husband and gave him a good five-room apartment in the heart of Kaunas.
We have lived in Kaunas since then. I moved to my husband and found a job as a technical controller at a textile factory. I worked there until my retirement. Our family did well in that period of time. My husband bought a car. We had a plot of land for gardening, but we had to sell it as we had no time for it. My husband was a true workaholic. Having a chance to spend vacations in the spas every year, he took vacation once in two-three years. I went with him only once. I devoted all my spare time to my children, and later to my grandchildren. I can say that my fate rewarded me for my ordeals and destitution. I have lived a wonderful life with a caring and loving husband.
