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My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My name is Alexandr Borisovich Nepomniaschy. I was born on 20 September 1910 in the Jewish town of Dmitrovka Elisavetgrad province (Kirovograd region after the revolution), Ukraine. At my birth I was given the name of Shaya.

I’m almost 92 years old now and I don’t remember much.

My father told me about the origin of our family name Nepomniaschy. In the XVIII century there were cantonists in the army. My great grandfather was a cantonist, too. The first cantonists were in the Russian Empire during the reign of Alexander I. The first school of cantonists was established by General Arakcheev. At that time the service term was 25 ytears and the recruitment age – 18.  Boys were taken to cantonists’ schools at 12. They were living at the barracks at schools. They were taught main military disciplines and march songs. They also got some general education. When they became of recruitment age cantonists went to the army. Cantonists were also required to be tall and well-built handsome men. Poor Jewish families with many children used to send their sons to become cantonists. Not all young men could bear 25 years of military service. They sometimes ran away from the army. When they were captured and asked their name they usually replied “I don’t remember, I’ve forgotten”. In this case they were registered as Nepomniaschy (meaning “does not remember” in Russian. Cantonists were of different nationalities. Therefore, this last name is quite common with Jewish, Russian or Ukrainian people.

My father’s name was Boruh Nepomniaschy.  He was born in the town of Smela, Cherkassy province, in 1880.  He was a blacksmith and so was my grandfather. My father told me that after the ritual of Barmitsva at 13 his father asked him what profession he wanted to learn. My father assisted his father at the forge and he chose the profession of blacksmith. My father’s parents lived in Smela Cherkassy province. My grandfather’s name was Moishe, but I don’t remember my grandmother’s name. My grandfather was born in the early 1850s. My grandmother was few yeas younger. I believe, she was born around 1855. I don’t know about where they were born. 

My grandmother was a housewife. They had 4 children in the family. The oldest was Leib, born in 1876. He was called Lyova in the family. The second son was Nuhim, Naum, born in 1878. My father Boruh was born in 1880 and the youngest in the family was daughter Haika, born in 1884.

            My father’s family was religious. They observed all Jewish traditions, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My father’s parents went to the synagogue every week. The boys studied at the cheder and the girls got education at home. According to the Jewish tradition the boys were circumcised when they were 8 days old. When the sons reached 13 they had Barmitsva. I know about it from what my father told me and know no more details. They spoke Yiddish in the family. After Barmitsva the boys were to learn a profession. My father Boruh and his brother Nuhim chose their father’s profession. Both of them became blacksmiths and their brother Leib became a carpenter. 

            My father worked with his father in the forge and Nuhim decided to go on his own. In 1906 he moved to Vinnitsa and married a local Jewish girl. She was the daughter of an aging blacksmith that couldn’t work any longer. He didn’t have any sons and he was glad to get a chance to give his forge to his son-in-law. Nuhim was a good blacksmith and his wife and 3 children were well provided for. Nuhim and his whole family were shot in August 1941 when Germans occupied Vinnitsa.

My father’s other brother Leib moved to Elisavetgrad and got married. He had three sons, born one after another.  Leib died from pneumonia in the Ural where he was in the evacuation with his wife in 1943. His sons live in Germany.

My father’s younger sister Haika  got married in the early 1900-s and moved to Smela to join her husband. Haika was a housewife. She had a daughter. Her daughter works at the Hesed in Smela. Haika died, but I don’t remember the date of her death.

My grandmother died in the summer of 1917. My grandfather died in 1920. My grandmother died in summer 1917. Both of them were buried at the Jewish cemetery in Smela.

            My mother’s nee name is Ostrovskaya. I know very little about her parents. Her father Nuhim Ostrovsky was born in the 1860s. My grandmother was born also in the 1860s. I don’t remember her name or the place of birth of any of them. Their family lived in the town of Dmitrovka Elisavetgrad province. My grandfather was a timber dealer and my grandmother was a housewife. They had four children and my mother Rahil, born in 1884, was the oldest. Golda was born in 1886. Later they began to call her Olia. After Golda came sister Haya, Klara, born in 1890. Isaak was the last child. He was born in 1892. They had a traditional Jewish religious family. They observed Sabbath and celebrated all Jewish holidays in the family. My mother’s sisters got married, were housewives and had children. Klara died before she was 40. I guess her brother Isaak was a carpenter, but I don’t know for sure.  Isaak’s children live in Moscow.  My grandfather died in the 1910s and my grandmother died in 1919. Both of them were buried at the Jewish cemetery in Dmitrovka.

            My father moved to Dmitrovka when he was 24. There was a job for a blacksmith there and my father decided to try things on his own. He met my future mother Rahil Ostrovskaya there and they got married in 1904. They had a real Jewish wedding with a huppah. My mother was the oldest daughter and was the first of the girls to be getting married.

My parents were renting a house in Dmitrovka. It was a big house built from oak wood in the central street of the town. There were 3 rooms and a big kitchen in the house. There was a pantry near the kitchen. My parents had a room and my sisters and my brother and I had nursery rooms. There was an orchard and a flower garden near the house. My mother didn’t work and had a housemaid to help her about the house. There were 4 children in our family. My oldest sister Tsylia was born in 1905. My second sister Elizabeth was born in 1908. I was born in 1910. My younger brother Yakov was born in 1913. His Jewish name was Jacob and we called him Yasha. My younger brother was very ill. He had flu when he was a child and it caused chronic meningitis. Yasha was a very bright boy. When we were doing our homework he was very quick to grasp things and then helped us. My mother was looking for the doctors that could cure Yasha. She took him to Kiev, Moscow and Petersburg and even Germany. But the treatment was no success: after a short remission the disease came back. Yasha was suffering from splitting headaches. He died in 1933 before he reached 20 years of age.

My father owned a forge in the town. He had two Jewish young men as his assistants. When I grew older my father used to take me to his forge to teach me his business.  My father was a highly qualified blacksmith. Besides hammering he also shoed horses. My father earned a lot. He was highly valued as a specialist in the town and a respectable man.

Growing up

Approximately two thirds of the population was Jewish. Dmitrovka and a few neighboring towns were built as Jewish colonies in XVIII century. During the reign of Elizabeth II the population was Jewish. The Jewish families that were willing to move received allowances from the treasury to start their life in the colony anew. Each family received a house and a plot of land. Each town had one or two synagogues, cheder and a hospital. Gradually representatives of other nationalities were joining the Jewish population of the towns. However, the Jews were prevailing. There was a synagogue in Dmitrovka. Around the middle of the XIX century a Christian church was built in the central street of the town. There was a market near the central square where the local people were selling their products. My mother rarely went to the market – it was the responsibility of the housemaids. Besides, my father often received food products as payment for his work.  My mother sometimes went to the market taking me with her to help her carry her bags.  I remember the long rows of stands made from planks. The stands were always washed and the planks were almost white. Elisavetgrad was a southern town and there were lots of products at the market. I was always happy to go to the market, because I enjoyed the bright colors of vegetables and fruit. Each vendor had his or her own customers. I remember the poultry row where they were only selling live chicken. These hens had their legs tied and were all in big baskets. Sometimes they started flapping their wings. I knew that after someone bought them they took them to the shoihet to have the chicken slaughtered. I felt sorry for them and each time had a hope that at least one of the hens would manage to fly away.  I even remember the local chicken breed – they were of bright colors, especially roosters. The hens were red and there were dark-blue, green and black feathers in their tails. I also remember vendors selling pieces of butter wrapped in big cabbage leaves. There were drops of water on green leaves and the little rainbows were playing in them. I have never forgotten those reminiscences from my childhood.

My parents were religious people. Each Saturday my father and mother went to the synagogue. My father was a tall, strong and broad-shouldered man. He looked very handsome to me when he put on his black jacket and his black wide-brimmed hat to go to the synagogue. My mother had two fancy gowns to wear them to the synagogue. She wore the black woolen gown in winter and the black silk one in summer. My mother covered her head with a black lace shawl before leaving home. When I grew older my parents began to take me to the synagogue with them. I had a black suit with long trousers tailored for me and I was very proud of it. We celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. Mama lit candles on Friday evening, then moved her hands above them and covered her face with her hands. On Friday morning the  housemaids (non-Jewish) cooked Saturday dinner and meals for the following day. It wasn’t allowed to start a fire on Saturday to heat the meal; so, they made a dish with meat, potatoes and beans in a big ceramic pot to leave it in the stove overnight.  It stayed warm until the following day. White halas were mandatory for Sabbath dinner. The dough was getting ripe in a big oak tub from morning, and the baking was done in the evening. They were still hot when they were served. They were supposed to be broken rather than cut. At Pesach the house was to be thoroughly cleaned. They were sweeping and burning pieces of bread and bread crumbs. The Easter dishes were taken down from the attic – Pesach was the only time when we were using it. We brought big bags of matsa from the synagogue. We had no bread in the house during these days. My mother and housemaids were cooking all traditional Pesach dishes: chicken broth and stuffed fish. I always helped them to crush matsa in a big copper mortar. It was sifted and then they made sponge cakes and cookies from this flour. At Hanukkah we, kids, always got the Hanukkeh gelt. I also remember the Purim holiday. There were always performances of Purimshpil in the town.  There was a stage installed in the middle of the town and actors came from Elisavetgrad – it was all so interesting. My mother always made delicious triangle little pies with poppy seeds at Purim – gomentashy. They had a funny name – Aman’s ears. When I was small I couldn’t understand why such an evil creature would have such delicious ears.

The revolution of 1917 was appreciated by the population of the town. They trusted the promises of the new power about a better life for the working people.

In 1918 there were Jewish pogroms1 in the town. The gangs of Ataman Grigoriev attacked the town most often. My father had weapons and could fight well. When the gangs of Grigoriev were in town he defended our family and other Jewish families that were hiding in our house. When the bandits were trying to break into the house my father started shooting and the bandits went away, saying that those should not have been Jews if they were shooting. They killed many Jews in the synagogue. After this pogrom my father decided to leave this town.  He realized that the bandits would be back to the house where they faced resistance.  My father’s brother Leib, Lyova, lived in Elisavetgrad. My father took his family there in 1918 leaving their belongings in the house. There were no pogroms in bigger towns. Bandits attacked smaller towns where they found no rebuff.

We rented an apartment in the center of Kirovograd. My father worked as a blacksmith. I went to the cheder when I was 8. Cheder was only for boys and my sisters didn’t go there. Our teacher was teaching us to read and write in Yiddish and Hebrew.  We studied arithmetic and knew our prayers by heart. When I reached 13 I had Barmitsva at the synagogue. I read my prayer by heart. I don’t remember the whole ritual, but I remember feeling myself very mature after it was over. I believe it was for the ceremony that my father gave me his thales and tfillin, but at that time it was a mere formality for me and I never put them on afterward.

My parents went to the synagogue and celebrated Jewish holidays at home, although it was the period of anti-religious propaganda already

Beside cheder I and my sisters, went to a Ukrainian lower secondary school. I became a pioneer at school – we were called young Leninists. I was doing well at school. There were children of various nationalities at school, but I didn’t know any difference between a Jew and non-Jew then.  We were friends, played football, went tobogganing in winter and swimming in the river in summer.  There was no national segregation. At home we lived our routinely life celebrating Jewish holidays, going to the synagogue and celebrating birthdays. However, I didn’t observe Jewish traditions any more. They convinced me at school that there was no God and that religion was vestige of the past. After finishing school at 16 I entered the Jewish College in 1926. Besides academic subjects we also studied profession. Teaching was in Yiddish. I got the profession of a turner. I also became a Komsomol member at College.  After finishing this College I got a job at the Kirovograd agricultural machine building plant. I was 19 years old then. My father went to Petersburg looking for a job. He wrote that it was an interesting and beautiful town.

             By that time my sisters were at various locations as well. Tsylia married Aron Grossman  and moved to Leningrad with him. Elizabeth entered Department of Economy at the Novgorod Institute of Commerce after finishing school.  She met there a Russian young man Pavel Liapunov and they got married. My parents welcomed their marriage regardless of their religious convictions. It was a common idea after the revolution that there should be no nationalities in the new world free from rich people and that we were all Soviet people. My sisters didn’t have any wedding parties. They had civil ceremonies to register their marriage. Elizabeth and her husband got a job assignment in Odessa. They lived there before the war working at the department of commerce. In 1938 their son Yury was born. 

I decided to go to Leningrad. We didn’t have any relatives in Leningrad. I went to the employment agency  and told them that I was a turner. They asked me whether I was a Komsomol member and sent me to work as a turner at the military plant “Bolshevik”. I had good performance records and was a Komsomol activist. I attended Komsomol meetings, followed all political events in the country, read proletariat newspapers, helped the newcomers to learn the profession, conducted political information classes, speaking for the Soviet power. I believed sincerely in the idea of building communism in the whole world. In 1930 I became a candidate to the party and in 1931 I became a member of the Communist party. Once I was called to come to the district Komsomol committee. They told me that they wanted to send me to study at the Institute.  I agreed and was admitted to the Mechanic Engineering department at the Leningrad Mining Institute without having to pass any exams in 1931. I lived at the hostel of this Institute. About half of students and lecturers at the Institute were Jewish. There was no national segregation between us. There was no anti-Semitism at all at that time. I graduated from the Institute with honors in 1936 when I was 26.

1932–33 was the period of horrific famine in Ukraine2. We didn’t have it in Leningrad, but my parents were in Ukraine where the situation was very hard. I sent them parcels with food and my father went to work in Russia and brought some food home. In this way they survived.

When Hitler came to power in 1933 there was information in mass media that Germans were chasing Jews out of the country and killing them. I didn’t quite believe it. I was convinced that Germans were reasonable and educated people. Many people thought so, too. 

In 1936 I graduated from the Institute and came to see my parents and have some rest in Kirovograd. I met my future wife in Kirovograd. She lived in the same street as my parents. My best friend turned out to be her relative. We were having a walk with him once and met her.  We began to see each other. My wife’s name is Revekka Mendeleyevna Mexina, a jewishJewish girl. She born in Novo-Ukrainka Kirovograd region, in 1913. Later her family moved to Kirovograd. They also lived in Donbass where she finished a college and got a profession of electrician. Her grandfather lived in Kirovograd and she was visiting him when we met.  I left Kirovograd and we wrote one another for some time. In one of my letters I proposed to her and she sent me a cable with one word “Yes”. 

We got married in Dmitrov, Podmoscovie, where Revekka was living with her family, in 1938. We had a civil ceremony at the registry office and then had a small dinner party for the closest people at Revekka’s home. My wife’s parents were religious: they celebrated Sabbath and always lit candles, went to the synagogue and celebrated all Jewish holidays. I don’t think they strictly followed the kashruth, but they kept dishes for milk and meat products separately. Of course, I became an atheist when I became a party member, but I’ve always had a respect towards religious people. I’ve never spoken against religion, because I believe that religion does no harm. Religion keeps many people from evil and they do their duty. Believers do not become evil people.

 After graduation from the Institute I was sent to work in the town of Shahty, Rostov region. I worked as a mechanic at a mine and then had to serve in the army.  I had a higher education and my service term was one year. I was a private and then I became a senior sergeant in Stavropol region, Caucasus. This was the time when repression began3. None of my family suffered. At first I believed that the people that were arrested were guilty, but when they arrested and shot such great commanders as Yakir and Tukhachevsky I began to doubt that the authorities were fair.  I couldn’t believe that the professional military that gave so much effort to their service in the army were enemies of the people. It was then that I began to have big doubts that Stalin was doing everything right.  

In 1938 I returned to Leningrad and got a job at the Voroshylov machine building plant.  Later management of the plant received the task to select a candidate to study at the Armed Forces Academy and they selected me. I studied at the Academy for a year and became designer of large caliber cannons. I got a job assignment in Stalingrad and my wife and I moved there. In 1939 our son Valery was born in Stalingrad. Although my wife and I were raised in the religious families we didn’t observe Jewish traditions. We didn’t celebrate any Jewish holidays. We celebrated Soviet holidays and the New Year and also birthdays. My wife and I spoke Russian to our son and with each other. .

In 1940 I got a job assignment as a weapon designer in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region. They were developing new types of weapons. They were in need of specialists to design large caliber weapons. They did not only design weapons at this plant – they also manufactured it. They had shops with endless rows of cannons. 

My wife worked as an electrician at the station. At first my mother-in-law was looking after my son. Later she had to return to Dmitrov and we hired a nanny.  Revekka’s father died in February 1941. We decided that it would be better for her mother if she moved in with us. In March 1941 my mother-in-law joined us. 

 Although in 1939 Hitler occupied Poland we didn’t think that Germany would start a war with the USSR. Molotov and Ribbentrop executed the Non-Aggression Agreement4 that convinced us that here was going to be no war.  We had a well-armed army and it even didn’t occur to us that somebody would dare to attack us. We believed one thing, but another thing happened. Of, course, the leadership of our country was to blame that they believed in all these agreements. They should have taken care of our defense. They didn’t and that was why so many people suffered. Hitler broke into our country easily when he could have been stopped.  

During the war

22 June 19415 was Sunday. We were living in the working neighborhood in the outskirts of the town. My wife and I went shopping to the town. When we returned home at 12 the speech of Molotov was already on the radio6. He announced the perfidious attack of Germany of the USSR.  On that same day I was summoned to the recruitment office where they told me that I was to mobilize to the front. I was given the rank of senior political officer that was equivalent to the rank of captain. 

My wife, my son and my mother-in-law were staying in Kramatorsk.  I was sent to infantry division 823 of the South-Western Front near Kiev.  I went to the Headquarters to tell them that my profession was mechanical engineer and that I wanted to serve in the artillery units. I was appointed as artillery unit 823 deputy commanding officer for technical services. This regiment was defending Kiev and the suburbs. In September 1941 the South-Western front was encircled by fascists and they occupied the whole Kiev region area. The Germans got many prisoners-of-war. Once we tried to break through the encirclement of the Germans, but I failed. I was wounded. It was my leg – fortunately, I had all necessary medications and bandages to treat the wound. We decided to hide in the haystack during the night and then look around in the morning to find a spot to cross the front line. Early in the morning I woke up from the smell of smoke. The Germans were burning haystacks where soldiers were hiding. I was captured as well as many of my comrades. All prisoners-of-war were taken to the collective farm yard in Bykovnia near Kiev. They gave the order for “Yuden’ – Jews to make a step forward.  One Jew came out of the line and told the others to do the same. He said that the Germans were a civilized nation and did not intend to do any harm to the Jews.  Other Jews began to step forward. I stayed where I was. Then one German began to walk between the lines looking at us. He came near me and asked whether I was a Jew. I said “No, no – Caucasus”. (Of course, all of my comrades knew that I was a Jew, but they didn’t give me away. We didn’t have any national conflicts and we were faithful to our front-line brotherhood ties that were stronger than any blood ties could ever be). This saved me. Almost all Jews stepped forward, because nobody knew that they were executing Jews.  There were over 50 Jews: a general, few colonels, officers and privates. They were told to take off their clothes and then they were shot. Their bodies were thrown into a trench.  The rest of us were escorted in the direction of Ovruch, Zhytomir region. My Ukrainian friends were holding me and I managed to walk as far as Ovruch. We didn’t get any food or water on the way. A Slovakian regiment was located in Ovruch. After they occupied Czechoslovakia the Germans made Slovaks fight on their side. We were left under this Slovakian regiment supervision. The Slovaks gave us food and asked us what our profession was. I began to work as a locksmith and mechanic. Soon our group consisting of about 30 people was sent to Byelorussia via Kiev. I was the only Jew left in this group. In Kiev another Jew that ran away from the crowd that was taken to the Babiy Yar7 joined us and the guard didn’t notice it. He came to Byelorussia with us. There is a military town of Kodynki near Mozyr and we were taken there. I made a closer acquaintance with the Slovakians and found out that there were anti-fascists among them. We were accommodated in the barracks and were fed well. I worked as a locksmith fixing locks, etc. One Slovakian – Yan Bystran – became my friend. I decided to form a group to arrange an escape from the camp. The camp was guarded by Slovakians. Germans came every week to check whether all of us were there. We were lucky that the Slovakians were our guards. But I still decided that we had to escape.

I had to be very careful about forming a group of people. If fascists found out that somebody decided to escape they hanged the suspects. It took me almost a year to find the people I could trust and that wanted to escape from this camp. 

There were about 15 of us in the group, including one Slovakian. In September 1942 I got the information that there was a big partisan unit near Mozyr that was moving at night. I decided it was time to escape to the partisans. Bystran helped us to pass the guard at the gate. We were moving at night and hiding in the woods during the day. Bystran supplied us with food, clothes and weapons – rifles and few grenades. Bystran also showed the Germans the opposite direction of our escape – this helped us, too. 

It took us 3 days to reach the Headquarters of the partisan unit of General-major Kovpak. I reported to the guard that I had brought a group to join their partisan unit. The guard took away our weapons and took us to the commander of the unit. Kovpak told me that they had the direction of Stalin to reduce anyone returning from captivity to the rank of private, even the generals. I replied that I was ready to join his unit as a private. We were distributed between the subdivisions. I was enrolled into a cannon company to handle shells.  I got acquainted with my comrades and fixed some anti-tank cannons. Our commissar was Semyon Vassilievich Rudnev, a very nice man. One day he told me that it was time for me to take an officer’s position.  I became the political officer in a company and then the commissar of a battalion. I took part in all battles. We were moving to Ukraine from Byelorussia and then we were directed to take a march  in Western areas of Ukraine. There was a ghetto and a camp for political prisoners-of-war in the town of Skalat, Ternopol region. We liberated the town from Germans and opened the gates of the ghetto and the prison. The Germans had big food storage facilities in this town. We gave the food products to the local population. We had horses and were a well-armed unit. 

At the beginning there were about 600 people in this unit, but later their number exceeded 1000 people. There were 150 Jews in our partisan unit. Some Jews were hiding in the woods from Germans waiting until we came. Many families came to join us, but we couldn’t afford to keep families with us, because we were a military unit. We were arranging settlements for them in the woods to give shelter to women and children. We used every opportunity to supply them with food and medications. We also had our hospitals in such settlements.  We also provided quite a few people with false documents.

In 1943 the Germans threw big forces to destroy us near Yaremcha, Ivano-Frankovsk region. We were in the woods and our commander was commissar Rudnev. He was killed in one of the battles. We separated in smaller units and moved to Zhytomir region. General Kovpak was wounded and taken to hospital by plane. This happened at the beginning of 1944. Then Pyotr Petrovich Vershygora, the former actor of the Kiev Russian Drama Theater, became our commander. At the beginning of the war he was an intelligence officer and then became a commanding officer of the intelligence unit in the Kovpak partisan unit. In 1944 we were fighting with Germans in Poland under his commandment.

I didn’t have any contact with my family throughout this period. The only thing I knew was that Germans occupied Kramatorsk in November 1941. I didn’t know whether my family survived.

When we were in Poland we were visited by Korotchenko, secretary of the Communist party of Ukraine. He talked with me and asked me where my family was. I replied that I didn’t know – they were probably somewhere in the evacuation. Korotchenko found my family through the evacuation agency in Buguruslan and sent me their address. I sent them a letter to let them know that I was alive. They wrote me that my sisters’ husbands were at the front and that my parents and my sister Elizabeth and her son Yury were in Kramatorsk with my wife. My older sister Tsylia that lived in Leningrad was evacuated to Novosibirsk where the plant where she was working moved. All other members of my family evacuated to Novosibirsk from Kramatorsk. My father worked as a blacksmith, my sister Tsylia was an accountant at the plant and my other sister Elizabeth was working at the municipal department of commerce. My wife was working as electrician at the power plant. Her mother was looking after our son Valery. At the end of 1944 when our unit returned to Ukraine from Poland I got a vacation and went to Novosibirsk to visit my family. I was really happy that I could see them. After I returned to the army headquarters in Kiev I was told that the war was over for me. Officers from the partisan units were sent to restore the public economy that was actually destroyed. I went to Western Ukraine. Even before the war I heard that Chernovtsy was a nice town and there were many Jews living there. At the beginning of 1945 I got a job assignment in Chernovtsy and received an apartment there. 

After the war

In July 1945 I went to Novosibirsk top pick up my family and bring them to Chernovtsy. I brought back my son, my wife and her mother, my parents and my sister Elizabeth and her son. Tsylia and her son returned to Leningrad along with the plant where she was working. Her husband returned from the front. After the war they had another son. Tsylia died in 1985. Her older son got married and he and his wife emigrated to Israel. They live in Jerusalem. He works as a designer for an architectural company. His daughter Masha was in the army and then entered the university. Tsylia’s younger son lives in America. He and his wife are programmers.

I found an apartment for my parents not far from where we live. Elizabeth’s husband perished at the front and she lived with my parents. I supported them. My mother died in 1972. My father died on 5 January 1975. Elizabeth was working at the regional department of commerce and her son, Yury was studying at school. After finishing school Yury entered and graduated from the archive institute. He was Chief of Regional Archive Department in Chernovtsy. Her son Yury Liapunov is a volunteer in Hesed now. Elizabeth died in 1997.

Chernovtsy regional party committee sent me to “Enamel dishes” factory as Chief engineer.  Then I got a job as Chief engineer at another factory and worked there several years. My wife got a job of electrical engineer at the Chernovtsy garrison where she worked until she retired. My mother-in-law was living with us. In 1947 she went to her older daughter Ida in Moscow. She returned in 1957 when she was deadly ill. My wife and I took good care of her. She was a religious woman and we began to celebrate Jewish holidays for her sake, and kept celebrating the Soviet holidays. At Pesach my wife was buying matsa and cooking traditional meals. My mother-in-law fasted at Yom-Kipur. She died in 1961. It was a big loss for us. After her death we didn’t observe any Jewish traditions or celebrated holidays for a long time, because we were atheists.  

 1948 was the period of struggle against cosmopolitism. It didn’t touch anyone in our family. They persecuted culture and art workers and lecturers of higher educational institutions. They closed the Jewish theater and the Jewish school in Chernovtsy. The population didn’t believe that those accusations were true. I also understood that the «case of the Kremlin doctors»8 in 1953 was just a game to justify the state anti-Semitism after the war. I can’t say that my family suffered from the state anti-Semitism in one way or another. But we were in a privileged position in comparison with the others. I was a veteran of the partisan movement and was awarded many orders. They just couldn’t reach me just because I had too many privileges. But many of my acquaintances did face anti-Semitism.   But I can say for sure that there has never been any anti-Semitic attitude in everyday life in Chernovtsy. People have always been friendly towards Jews here.

My wife and I were very happy to hear about Israel. We’ve never forgotten our Jewish roots. I am proud that Jews managed to turn a desert into oasis and that they can defend their country. I am very concerned about the current situation in Israel.

I didn’t care much about Stalin’s death in 1953. Many people didn’t know how to go on. I was far from thinking anything like this. I had a son and my family – with or without Stalin. I realized that things were far from fair in the country and I knew the final truth after the ХХ Party Congress9.

My son went to a Russian school in 1947. He studied well and was especially fond of mathematics. In 1957 he finished 10 years of school with a silver medal. He wanted to study at the university in Moscow, but he failed to enter it. In 1958 Valery entered the department of cybernetics at Chernovtsy university.  In 1963 he graduated from the university with honors. Later he finished post-graduate studies at the Novosibirsk Institute of Cybernetics and became a candidate of mathematical sciences.  Now he is director of the laboratory at the Institute of Cybernetics in Novosibirsk. He has over 150 publications.

Valery got married in Chernovtsy in June 1966 when he was visiting us during his vacation.  His wife Anna Yahotinskaya, a Jew, also graduated from Chernovtsy University. They knew each other since they were students. Valery and Anna had a civil registration ceremony and had a small party inviting their closest friends and relatives. Then they went to Novosibirsk where they live now. Anna had a difficult childhood. She was born in the Khotyn ghetto in 1942. Anna’s sister Klara was also born in the ghetto in 1944. When in 1944 the Soviet army liberated inmates of the ghetto Anna’s father was recruited to the army. He perished at the front. Her mother was raising her two daughters alone. Anna is a candidate of science now. She goes to international conferences, has many publications and reads a special course at the Novosibirsk university. Unfortunately, Anna’s difficult childhood had its impact on her life – she has no children. [Alexander asked us take tale about his son from his wife Revekka Mexina’s interview. Alexander is agree with her words.]

I went to work as Chief engineer at Chernovitsles (timber company). It took me too long to get there. I was offered a job of the teacher of car repairs course at the Construction College and I accepted it.  There were many Jews among the teachers there.  In 1986 I retired. I created the organization of veterans of the war in my neighborhood. I arrange meetings with schoolchildren and students to tell them how we came to the victory and what price we paid for it. Young people listen to me with interest and attention.

After the war I met with Yan Bystran that helped me to escape from captivity. I invited him to Chernovtsy and he came with his family. He spoke at the meeting in our college. He invited me to come to Slovakia and my wife and I visited him there. Regretfully, Yan died.

When the Jews began to emigrate to Israel I sympathized with them and was a little bit jealous. My wife and I can’t move there, because our son lives here. Valery likes his work and doesn’t want to go anywhere. My wife and I shall be where he is. At least, he can visit us once a year. If we were in Israel we wouldn’t be able to see him. It is not good that he is so far away from us. Our son and our daughter-in-law invite us to move to them, but we are too old to take such long trips. 

I was in Israel in 1996. I had a phone call from Koen, Chairman of the Union of Invalids of War in Israel.  He told me that my comrades asked him to invite me to Israel for the 9th of May, Victory Day.  I said that it was my dream to see this country and I would love to come. I was 86 at that time. There were 3 other people from Russia and Ukraine invited to visit Israel. We had a very warm reception. We had a car and could go on tours and everywhere. I admired the standards of living in this country. Veterans of war have everything they need. They attended parties at restaurants, they danced and sang and enjoyed life. I didn’t see one single veteran begging in the streets as it happens in our country.

I take an active part in the Jewish life. I founded “Veteran Club” in Hesed. I am a honored Chairman there and make reports on participation of Jews in the war. Many people are of the opinion that Jews weren’t at the front. It is not true. Many Jews were struggling heroically and many perished at the front and in partisan units. People do not forget about the war and I do not forget it either. We were at the war, many people perished and I believe that my biggest award is that I’m still alive.

My wife and I used to attend Jewish concerts and performances recently. We understand Yiddish well. But my wife hasn’t been out of the apartment for some time. She is ill and we have a coming in nurse from Hesed. We are well provided for. We are a small garrison now consisting of the two of us. I’m logistics manager at home. I do the shopping and my wife cooks and washes dishes. I help her, too. In 1998 we had a diamond wedding anniversary and a festive celebration at the Municipal Registry Palace.

I have been a member of the Council of the Jewish Culture society for many years. My wife and I read Jewish newspapers and magazines. I receive the “Word of the Invalid of War” magazine from Israel. It’s a very good magazine. I’m in good terms with our rabbi, he is a very nice man. I can’t say that I’m religious, but I’m not anti-religious, either. I don’t go to the synagogue, because I can’t just be sitting and listening, I must be doing something. But I know prayers and all rituals. My wife and I celebrate Sabbath and Pesach at home. Although I was a pioneer, a Komsomol member and a communist, I have always been and remained a Jew.

Glossary

1 In 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children. 

2 In 1920 an artificial famine was introduced in Ukraine that caused the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress the protesting peasants that did or want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful forced famine  in 1930-1934 in Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the farmers. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious farmers that did not want to accept the Soviet power and join the collective farms.

3 In the mid-1930s Stalin launched a major campaign of political terror. The purges, arrests, and deportations to labor camps touched virtually every family. Untold numbers of party, industrial, and military leaders disappeared during the “Great Terror”. Indeed, between 1934 and 1938 two-thirds of the members of the 1934 Central Committee were sentenced and executed.

4 Non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, which fall into history under name Molotov-Ribbentrop pactum.  Engaged in a border war with Japan in the Far East and fearing the German advance in the west, the Soviet government in 1939 began secret negotiations for a nonaggression pact with Germany. In August 1939 it suddenly announced the conclusion of a Soviet-German pact of friendship and nonaggression. This pact contained a secret clause providing for the partition of Poland and for Soviet and German spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.

5 On 22 June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring a war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War.

6 MOLOTOV (Skriabin) Viacheslav Mikhailovich (1890-1986) , a Soviet political leader During the October revolution he was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee. He was belonged to the closest political surrounding of I.V. Stalin; one of the most active organizers of repression in the 1930s - early 1950s. He spoke against criticism of the cult of Stalin in mid 1950s.

7 Babiy Yar is the site of the first mass shootings of the Jewish population that was done in the open by the fascists on September 29-30, 1941, in Kiev.

8 «Doctors’ Case» - The so-called Doctors’ Case was a set of accusations deliberately forged by Stalin’s government and the KGB against Jewish doctors of the Kremlin hospital charging them with murder of outstanding Bolsheviks. The “Case” was started in 1952, but was never finished because Stalin died in 1953.

9 The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. Khruschov publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what was happening in the USSR during the period of Stalin’s leadership.

Alexandru Kohn

Arad

Romania

Interviewer: Oana Aioanei

Date of interview: October 2003 and July 2007

Despite the fact that the apartment of the Kohn family is situated in the city center, it lies behind some high buildings. This gives you the feeling that you are in an oasis of quietude, a feeling enhanced by the great number of flowers that enchant the senses. The walls are covered with paintings, which contribute to the agreeable atmosphere. Mr. and Ms. Kohn, both extremely hospitable, rejoice over each occasion when they can have a talk with somebody. Mr. Kohn is tall, likes to play chess and particularly enjoys debating all kinds of subjects.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

What I remember about my great-grandparents from my mother’s side, whose family name was Schillinger, is that my great-grandfather was very religious. He was sort of an autocrat. He was well to do, owned some 60 hectares of land, and was very much concerned about his offspring, both his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Great-grandpa helped one of his grandsons, who would become Doctor Schillinger, finance his studies and finish university. To his great astonishment, this doctor became the first Jew in the Schillinger family to marry a non-Jewish woman. A great scandal came out of this, and great-grandfather, as he was an authoritarian character, forbade his grandson to ever visit him again, disowned him and sat shivah for him. I know that great-grandfather wanted to maintain tradition by all means.

Great-grandfather was very much the center of the Schillinger family. Everybody came to congratulate him and greet him on his birthday, and he gave presents to each grandson and granddaughter when they got married. Great-grandfather was the center of the family because he had the most money and the most open mind. He wasn’t interested in politics, but he was religious. He died before my mother got married – so sometime before 1926 – and is buried in Chisineu Cris. [Editor’s note: Chisineu Cris is a town situated in northwestern Romania, around 42 km from Arad. Arad is approximately 550 km from the Romanian capital city of Bucharest.]

My maternal grandfather, Emanuel Schillinger, was born in Elek, Hungary, in 1858. [Editor’s note: Elek is a town located in southeastern Hungary, approximately 248 km from the Hungarian capital of Budapest.] He grew up with both German and Hungarian as a mother tongue. He had five brothers and two sisters, and I know many of them only from pictures. [Editor’s note: upon further inspection, it seems that the grandfather had three sisters instead of two. There names are Elza, Nina and Etel.] One of Grandfather’s brothers was called Desideriu Schillinger, but I don’t know anything else about him. His other brother was Ervin Schillinger. I do have a photo of him, which was originally a greeting sent from Italy to my grandparents for Pesach in 1917. It is written on the back of the photo that it was sent while Ervin was in the army.

I also have a photo of Elza Erdos, one of Grandfather Schillinger’s sisters, together with her husband, Artur Erdos. They had two daughters, Clara and Vera. The photo was taken in Budapest and it was sent to my mother, Gizella. The other sister of my grandfather was called Nina. She eventually married a man by the name of Schwartz, and they had a daughter, Rozalia, who married Doctor Bercovici. Together they had a son, Pisti. My mother’s other cousin was Ileana; she got married to Isidor Wolberg, and they had a daughter, Eva, whom I eventually met in Israel. Ileana Wolberg’s mother was called Etel. Schillinger was her maiden name. Her sister was Nina Schwartz

My grandfather did his army service in the Austrian-Hungarian Army 1. Grandfather finished seven grades – finishing the agricultural school – and became a tenant farmer. [Editor’s note: at the time of the grandfather’s childhood, the first six grades of school were compulsory. It is probable that he finished sixth grade and possibly spent some additional time at an agrarian school of some sort.] Grandfather leased a tract of land from a baron and managed an estate; that’s how he could eventually afford to buy land in Sintea Mare [49 km northeast of Arad]. What I remember of the house in Sintea Mare is that my grandfather did the farming and my uncle Iosif, my mother’s brother, had a tinsmith workshop in the house. My grandparents were on good terms with the neighbors, and the family was united and prosperous. My grandfather was interested in politics at the time, but he didn’t get involved in any way.

My immediate family and I went to Sintea Mare two or three times a year after holidays. My grandparents – who lived in Sintea Mare – would, however, go to Chisineu Cris for holidays. Great-grandfather had a brother there, whose family name was also Schillinger, and he and my grandparents spent holidays in each other’s company. My grandparents went to Chisineu Cris because it was considered a town, one with a significant Jewish community and a synagogue. Sintea Mare had neither of these things.

My mother, who was in better financial shape than Grandfather, supported her parents because Grandpa’s business never went particularly well. Farming depended on the seasons and the weather. In times of drought, things were particularly difficult. In those times irrigation didn’t quite exist, meaning that agriculture hinged very much on nature.

My maternal grandmother, Iuliana Schillinger – nee Blum – was a housewife. She also lived in Sintea Mare and spent one year – after she fell sick in Beliu – with me and my parents. She didn’t stay with us for long because she was extremely ill. We were better off, and, as she didn’t have the means to pay for her treatment, we brought her a doctor. My mother’s brothers could not stand to watch my grandmother as she struggled with her illness, and they stood outside with my grandfather. It was my mother who actually took care of her, but she died nonetheless in 1938.

My mother, Gizella Schillinger, was born on 31st January 1904 in Sintea Mare. She grew up in Chisineu Cris. My mother finished high school, and, before getting married, she worked as a cashier in Chisineu Cris. My mother had one brother and one sister, both of whom were younger than she was. Iosif, who was born in 1906, had a tinsmith workshop, as I have already mentioned. He married Magdalena Gros and died in Arad in 1974. He didn’t have any children. My mother’s sister, Liliana, was born around 1909. She was a housekeeper, never got married, and lived in Arad, where she died in 1947.

My great-grandparents on the Kohn side of the family are originally from Vienna. My paternal grandfather, Alexandru Kohn, was born in Vienna. His mother tongue was Hungarian because at that time Hungary constituted a principle part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He finished four grades and did his army service with the Austrian-Hungarian Army. Later he worked as a trader. My grandfather lived in Sebis. [Editor’s note: Sebis is located in Arad County in western Romania, near Arad.] He died when my father was two years old, so I know very few things about him. I know only that he had a brother in Vienna who was a supplier to the court of Emperor Franz Joseph 2 and a sister who worked in the fur trade in England.

My paternal grandmother, Netty Kohn – nee Blau – also lived in Sebis, and she had a brother in England. She met Grandpa there. My grandmother was a housewife. The house that my grandparents owned in Sebis wasn’t any different from the other houses in the village. It was a simple middle class home, complete with a shop, a store and two or three rooms. In those times the trade was a mixed one. My grandparents sold everything, from nails, to bread, shoes, brandy and other spirits. They also ran an inn. They didn’t have animals and the garden was very small, with a few fruit trees and assorted flowers. Grandfather Kohn died in Sebis in 1898, and grandmother died in 1931. Both passed away before I was born.

My father, Eugen Kohn, was born on 14th August 1896 in Sebis. His mother tongue was Hungarian. My father completed four grades of school and two years of apprenticeship. [Editor’s note: it’s very likely that he actually finished six grades.] He was enrolled in the army at the age of 17, in 1913. My father has told me that he fought at Monte Cassino, Italy during World War I with the Austrian-Hungarian Army. [Editor’s note: Monte Cassino was not a theater of operations during World War I, but rather World War II; the interviewee’s father more likely served at the Isonzo front.] Shortly thereafter he lived in Budapest with the army until the communist revolution of Bela Kun 3. I don’t know exactly when he came home to Romania, but he told me that the Romanian troops – for Romania was on the side of France and England – had entered Budapest 4 and defeated the troops of Bela Kun. This enabled him to return to Romania.

My father had five sisters: Sarolta, Gizella, Reghina, Roza and Netty, all of whom were housewives in Sebis. At that time the three ‘Ks’ applied to women, meaning Küche, Kirche, Kinder – kitchen, church and children. Sarolta married a Mr. Haas, who was a driver, and they had two children: Bandi, a trader, and Caterina, a housewife. Gizella was married to Emanuel Schwartz, the Neolog rabbi from Sebis 5. They had a son named Fredi in Jerusalem. He eventually became a clerk. Reghina got married to Alexandru Steiner, a trader, and they had three children: Iosif, Alexandru and Irina. Alexandru had a daughter, Elena, whom we used to call Bobo. Today, she’s a doctor in Israel. Irina married a man by the name of Roger. They left for the USA and eventually had a son, Tibi. He was born around 1926 and became a dentist. Tibi’s son came to Romania and studied here, also graduating with a degree in dentistry.

Roza married Bela Marton, a trader. They too had three children: Alexandru, an electrician, Rudolf, a merchant, and Elena, a housewife. Netty got married to Klein, a merchant, and they had a daughter, Maria, who also became a merchant. From a financial point of view Aunt Gizella was the most comfortably off. My cousins and my father worked as her employees.

My father and my mother met each other through mediators. My father was a merchant at the time, and my mother was a cashier in Chisineu Cris. The marriage was arranged because this was the custom among Jews. My parents got married in 1926, and the wedding took place in Sebis at the local synagogue. Shortly thereafter they moved to Beliu because they had found employment there. [Editor’s note: Beliu is located in the western part of Romania, some 29 km northeast of Arad.] My mother became a housekeeper, as she was busy raising us at the time, and my father worked as a trader. My brother Toma Nicolae and I were both born in Beliu, where we lived until 1940. I was born on 19th October 1932, my brother on 16th March 1936.

While in Beliu my parents opened a mixed and textile shop. My childhood home was located at a corner opposite the Catholic church. The house was actually owned by a Romanian citizen who worked in the United States, and we rented it from him. We had three rooms: a kitchen, the shop and a very nice yard with flowers. We didn’t have a vegetable garden or any animals at home, only flowers. Our carpets were hand-made, manufactured by my mother. We heated with wood, as we had tile stoves in the rooms. We also had two servants, neither one of whom was Jewish. One of them worked in the kitchen, and the other helped take care of us.

My parents had taken over a bankrupt shop from a Jew and made it prosperous. And indeed, the shop went very well. At the beginning Uncle Schwartz vouched for them and enabled them to get a loan. By 1940 they managed to pay back all the debt and buy a house in Arad. At first they had tenants in the house, but later it was nationalized and confiscated by the Antonescu regime 6.

The shop did so well, in part, because of my father’s work ethic. I remember that in those days peasants would go to the fields at four or five in the morning, and they often knocked on our windows early in the morning in case they needed sugar, bread or cigarettes. My father got up and served them – many times even without getting money for it. Merchants were fighting for clients, and my father’s generosity proved to be a useful means of attracting business.

Market day in Beliu was always on Wednesday. On that day all the villagers from the surrounding area came to purchase industrial materials and textiles. People also sold their agricultural products. It was thus on Wednesdays that my parents sold the most, and the shop was always full. We had three apprentices, as there was a lot of work. Beliu was a district center, which explains why so many people came to the city on market days. The district, a subdivision of the county, consisted of ten or fifteen villages. Thus Beliu had its own court and local police force. There was a glass factory in Beliu, two mills and a sawmill. It was a developed village where Romanians, Catholic Hungarians and Jews all lived side by side. Everybody had their own house and a shop where they carried out their activities. Most of the Jews living in Beliu were merchants. A rare exception was a man called Werner, who collected leather and was a tanner, although there was also a Jewish physician, a Jewish clerk and a Jewish driver.

My parents wore modern clothes, not traditional ones. [Editor’s note: this is to say that they wore neither typical Orthodox Jewish clothing nor Hasidic Jewish clothing. The father did not, for instance, have a beard, and the mother didn’t wear a wig.] They were interested in politics but weren’t members of any party. They did, however, support Israel and purchased a piece of land in Palestine. Zionists had long been wandering around in the village spreading their point of view, and my entire family could see that one certainly couldn’t live under the increasingly virulent and anti-Semitic legionary regime 7. My father thus realized that a Jewish country was needed. When one particular group of Zionists came to Beliu, they gave him a ‘dunavi’ in exchange for a sum of money. ‘Dunavi’ refers to the measurement of land that was bought in Israel.

I remember that we had many books growing up because my mother always read a lot of literature. My parents read newspapers as well – these were in Hungarian. We also had religious books, including a prayer book belonging to my mother. At the end of the prayer book all of our birthdays were written in – my parents, myself, my brother, my grandfather, etc. I don’t know what happened to the book, although I imagine it’s with my brother.

Most of our relatives, including my father’s sisters and their families, lived in Sebis. We kept regular contact with these relatives but spent most holidays and the weekends in Beliu. When the Sabbath started my mother always lit the candles – this was something unalterable. On every Friday evening the candles were lit. It was my father and I, however, who went to the synagogue, as neither my brother nor my mother came along. We went to the synagogue on Friday evening and on Sabbath morning. On holidays a cantor came to assist the rabbi, who didn’t have a good voice. I remember one cantor came and slept in our house. He came on Yom Kippur and was a relative of Schwartz. He, like most Orthodox Jews 8, was much more of a traditionalist, better in music and more attentive to detail in religious matters. [Editor’s note: it is probable that this cantor may have been a Hasid 9.]

My parents were Neolog Jews. As such, we observed Neolog customs, not Orthodox ones. We ate pork meat, but not pork fat. Animals were cut in the kosher fashion. When we cut a goose or a chicken, my parents took it to the rabbi, or ‘hakham’. [Editor’s note: according to Alan Unterman and the “Dictionary of Jewish Traditions”, Sephardic Jews often referred to rabbis as the ‘hakham’ – meaning wise in Hebrew. According to Dr. Slomo Leibovici-Lais, the President of the World Cultural Association of Jews from Romania, the term ‘hakham’ in Romania refers to the ‘shochet’, a book supported by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Biroul pentru Comunitati din Agentia Evreiasca – the Office for the Communities of the Jewish Agency Liscatha Kehiot.] I remember that for the Sabbath my mother often prepared goose liver, something I liked a lot. The chest and the legs were smoked and preserved over the winter, and the fat and the liver were cooked fresh. Liver was a very delicious and traditional meal. We rarely had fish then, although occasionally we ate stuffed fish.

We weren’t religious. We did observe holidays, but that was the extent of our religious fervor. We didn’t observe Seder at all, although I went to Sebis a few times to visit my uncle Schwartz, who was a rabbi, as he always observed it. I was a child, maybe four or five years old, when I experienced my first Seder. My uncle and his family were well off – wealthier than we were – and I remember being amazed that their cutlery was placed on supports made of silver. In our home the cutlery was placed on the right or on the left, but I had never seen supports like that. I also remember that I learned the song ‘Eliahu HaNavi’ from my uncle. [Editor’s note: the Havdalah ceremony, the service which marks the end of Sabbath, is often concluded by singing traditional songs like ‘Shavua Tov’ – Good Week! – and Eliahu HaNavi, whose refrain is ‘Elijah the Prophet, Elijah the Tishbite, Elijah the Gileadite.’]

My parents shared in Jewish traditions by supporting the community. In Beliu the Jewish community consisted of thirty families. These families went to the synagogue every week. We also had a local rabbi, and at the age of six I was sent to him in order to learn the alef-beys. At the time of our forced evacuation I was only seven or eight years old, so the rabbi taught me for only a little over the year. I eventually had my bar mitzvah in Arad.

Our local rabbi was called Kaufman. He conducted all the services, and he also taught children the alef-beys and the prayers. We started learning from him at the age of six. I remember he liked garlic, and he always smelled like it. I also remember that he had a son who was studying in Budapest who eventually became a notorious character. His legal predicaments appeared in the press during 1936 and 1937.

The story of Kaufman’s son is unfortunate. The young man had a degree in engineering, and, due to certain circumstances, he became involved with the daughter of Admiral Horthy 10. The leader’s family was in Budapest when their car broke down in the middle of the city. By chance Kaufman’s son was at the scene. As he was a skilled engineer, he repaired the automobile and thus inadvertently began a romance with Horthy’s daughter. The main impediment was that the boy was Jewish, and he thus couldn’t become part of the state leader’s social circle. I think both out of love and out of the wish to become somebody important, Kaufman’s son changed his name from Kaufman to Kenyeres. That’s how he started to have a new life. Horthy eventually made him a deputy in a rightist nationalist party. In order to deny or further hide his origins, Kaufman’s son started to propose anti-Semitic laws within the Hungarian parliament. The opposition party initiated an investigation and soon discovered that Kenyeres was Jewish and that his father was a rabbi.

I remember that the whole affair caused quite a stir, and some well-dressed people came to Beliu to take the rabbi to Budapest and expose Kenyeres. They managed to fool the rabbi and brought him by car to Budapest. I seem to remember that they went by car to Arad, and from there they took the train. When they arrived to Budapest they were met at the train station by a lot of reporters and journalists, who peppered the rabbi with questions.

Back then, just as it is today, the last word regarding such issues lay with the state leader, who had absolute power. In order to clarify the issue, Horthy brought the rabbi and his son together, face-to-face. When the rabbi came home, he told me with tears in his eyes that he had had to declare that Kenyeres wasn’t his son. I don’t know anymore what happened after that, but I do know that the boy sent a lot of money to his father, both before and after this incident. Before being taken away with us during the evacuation, I remember the rabbi dug some holes in the yard of the synagogue and buried several kilograms of gold. It is very interesting that, on one hand, Kenyeres denied his father, while on the other hand he clearly helped him a lot financially. I must tell you that the rabbi did not survive the war, as he was already quite old at the time.

[Editor’s note: The story of Kenyeres contains some real facts, but it is essentially a legend. In a letter from Istvan Bibo to Gyula Borbandi – Istvan Bibo: Valogatott muvek, III. Magveto, Budapest – one of the notes states that during the 1935 Parliamentary elections a swindler politician called Miklos Kenyeres was nominated as a result of pressure from the local administration in Talpan in Szabolcs-Szatmar County and subsequently elected by fraud. The election court was forced to deprive Kenyeres of his mandate because of various protests against him. Peter Sipos, in “Orsegvaltas szavazocedulakkal”, or “Guard Change by Ballots”, also mentions that Kenyeres claimed to be a Lutheran engineer, though in fact he was neither Lutheran nor an engineer. His original name was Jakab Mozes Kahan, the son of the rabbi of Beliu. It is worth mentioning that Horthy’s daughter Paula would have been alive at this time, as she did not die until 1940.]

Growing up

When I was a child, my favorite holiday was Purim. In general I liked all the holidays however, as I could meet with my friends and it got us one more day without school. I attended the state kindergarten with other children, but I didn’t manage to finish the first primary grade in Beliu because I was kicked out of school. [Editor’s note: Mr. Kohn started school in the fall of 1939, so he would have finished the first grade in the spring of 1940. It is very probable that the family was evacuated from Beliu to Beius during this period, which would explain why he couldn’t finish the first grade in Beliu. From October 1940 onwards it was officially forbidden for Jews to go to public schools. The public was, however, allowed to establish Jewish elementary and middle schools. It may have been that in some places the discrimination of the Jews had started even earlier at the behest of local politicians.]

My mother tongues growing up were Romanian and Hungarian, the two native languages of the part of Transylvania 11 that had been under Hungarian rule. [Editor’s note: Mr. Kohn refers to the fact that before 1920 Transylvania was part of Austria-Hungary.] At home we spoke both Romanian and Hungarian, although I also speak German and some French.

Before 1940 an anti-Semitic trend was already in existence in Romania and Hungary, with its center in Nazi Germany. After Hitler came to power, the anti-Semitic movement became stronger both in Hungary and Romania. One could feel the oppression and discrimination that all the Jews in neighboring countries were experiencing. In Romania anti-Semitic papers were published that imitated those issued in Germany. Even a paper edited by the German Embassy was published.

I sensed the rise of anti-Semitism throughout my childhood. When we went to bathe, for example, all the children would stare at me because I was circumcised. I was different from those of my age, and children had learned all kind of things at home that gave them an aversion to Jews. Walking through the village we were sometimes told, ‘Hey Yid, go to Palestine!’ Everything only got worse when the legionaries came in the 1930s 12. In Beliu, a lawyer and the priest from a neighboring village were the leaders of the local legionary grouping. From 1938 onwards there was an anti-Jewish atmosphere throughout the area, and many Jews realized that it wouldn’t be good for Jews.

I recall from the time of my childhood that a group of legionaries once entered our shop in Beliu and said, ‘It’s over for you, Yid! You have stolen our wealth, and what you own doesn’t belong to you! And you have to give it back!’ The presence of the legionaries probably had something to do with one of our apprentices. None of our apprentices were Jewish, but they took meals with us and were like a part of the family. My father presided over acquisition and selling, but it was my mother who was responsible for the supervision of the apprentices. She discovered that one of the apprentices was stealing and told him, ‘Listen Iosif, I kindly ask you to be honest. Be honest and don’t pilfer anymore.’ This probably upset him, and he soon became a legionary and started causing troubles for us. His name was Negui Iosif.

The whole situation with the legionaries was something of a nightmare. They came and brought us to the cemetery. They probably wanted to kill us. My parents were frightened, and the legionaries threatened to take the shop. They kept us in a state of terror in the cemetery for over an hour. At one point a car came, as the Jewish cemetery was along the road to Beliu. The legionaries weren’t happy about seeing the lights, and so they let us go. We came home, but I remember that from that moment we didn’t sleep alone. A woman or a man from the village would stay with us because my parents were overcome with fear.

All of this took a great toll on me, as did reports from the rest of Europe. We would often listen to the news before Jews had their radios confiscated. [Editor’s note: After a certain point Jews were not allowed to have a radio in their own house, one of many humiliations endured by the Jews in Romania. Jewish physicians, for example, could only continue their praxis with Jewish patients. Jews were also obliged to surrender clothes to the authorities for the reason that the Romanian army and the rest of society needed them. Jewish properties, businesses, factories, land and farms were all confiscated. And although these were governmental decisions, they were not totally legal. Usually the orders were followed on the basis of verbal commands given by the legionary leaders. With the advent of the Antonescu regime all of these decisions became official and continued during 1941 and 1942. Source: Victor Neuman, “Evreii din Banat şi Transilvania de Sud în anii celui de-al doilea război mondial,” or “Jews from Banat and South Transylvania During the Years of the Second World War,” in “România şi Transnistria: Problema Holocaustului,” Curtea Veche Publishing, 2004, Bucharest, p.152.] Every time they transmitted a discourse of Hitler it was a catastrophe, an event that saddened me and threw my family into despair. This was a period of great anxiety for the entire family, but particularly for my little brother, who was only some five years old at the time of our evacuation. He kept on having nightmares. When we were evacuated, he shouted, ‘I want my little bed, my little bed, my little bed. Why did you take me out of my little bed?’ It was terrible.

My parents’ material situation was good until 1940, and my father didn’t have any legal problems. He had non-Jewish friends who helped him and didn’t let him down. When the possibility arose that our shop might be taken away from us, my father gave the merchandise and the textiles from the shop to friends for safekeeping. This was our great luck. In 1940, when the war started and we were evacuated, Jews were forbidden from working or doing anything of the sort. Thankfully, we were able to live off of these hidden goods, as I will explain later. We were on very good terms with many inhabitants of our village, and many regretted seeing the Jews leave.

During the war

In 1940, once the anti-Jewish laws 13 were introduced, Jews weren’t allowed to own land anymore. The authorities took everything from my grandfather, and he too was evacuated. According to the law regarding the evacuation procedures, everybody was sent to their county town. My grandfather lived in Sintea Mare, which was in Arad County, so he, together with my mother’s brother and sister, was sent to Arad. I don’t know how my grandfather got there, although he probably took the train. He lived on very moderate means in Arad. He was given some support from the community, and later my mother helped him as well.

The whole evacuation process was more of a forced resettlement, even if it was called ‘the evacuation of Jews from the rural environment.’ The authorities didn’t actually care about where people lived. Jews were gathered and registered in the registry of the Jewish community of the town or village where they were evacuated from. If you were very poor, the community supported you if it could.

In 1940 we were evacuated as well. A gendarme came and told us that according to the order of Marshal Antonescu 14, the leader of the state, we only had the right to take 20 or 30 kilograms of belongings with us. They gathered us and took us by cart to the forced residence. We were taken to Beius, as the Jews of Beliu belonged to Bihor County. Between 1940 and 1944 we lived in Beius, Tinca and Ginta at different periods. [Editor’s note: Tinca is located some 60 km northeast of Arad, while Ginta is similarly located and only around 55km northeast of Arad.]

First we had the forced residence in Beius, where all the Jews from Bihor County were taken. I remember that the route getting there was quite complicated. First we had to go to Santana, and from there to Ciumeghiu, which, after Transylvania’s annexation in 1940 15, became a border village. [Editor’s note: Santana is a little over 20 km northeast of Arad. Ciumeghiu is approximately 50 km northeast of Arad.] Had the original borders been in place we would have been evacuated to Oradea, but instead we went to Beius. [Editor’s note: Beius is situated 64 km northeast of Beliu, yet the route described by Mr. Kohn would imply a detour to the southwest towards Santana, then to the north towards Ciumeghiu, and finally to the east and Beliu. This distance would total 94 km. It should be added that Oradea is located in extreme northwest of Romania, some 600 km from Bucharest.] We traveled some 100 kilometers by cart in mud, as the roads were not asphalted.

The cart went to the courtyard of the synagogue in Beius, where we found ourselves amongst all the Jews of the entire county. Upon arrival we had to find our way through town all alone. And so my parent walked the streets of Beius to find a place to rent. At the beginning we stayed with a Jewish family, and after a while we found another place. Eventually a prefect complained that prices would go too high if Jews were brought in, and the authorities said they would find us a different location.

A special system was applied to Jews within the resettled areas. Everything was carried out in accordance with the government’s representative, the prefect. How did Jews find out about the decrees? There was a registry kept by the communities, which were subordinated to the authorities, which informed Jews of the various decrees. Within the framework of the state authorities there was also a representative who was responsible for Jewish issues.

From Beius they took us to Tinca, where the same story reoccurred. We all had to find a host, and then the local authorities accused us of raising prices. After that they moved us to Ginta, where we lived until the war ended in 1944. Grandfather Schillinger joined us in Ginta. I have a photo taken in Ginta in 1941. One specific memory I have of this period is of being assembled in the yard of the gendarmerie because of an unexpected census. I remember them calling us – the gendarme was shouting out the names of Jews – and we had to present ourselves with our families. We worried about whether they would ever let us go home.

My father was better off, so my grandfather came to join us in Ginta in 1941. He had to be provided for due to his advanced age, and my mother’s sister and brother didn’t have the means to take care of him. My grandfather was very deeply affected by the fact that his land was taken and that he no longer had anything to live on. Eventually he went mad. He would leave home and say all kinds of dangerous things about the leadership on the street. He died in Ginta in 1942.

Until 1944 my parents lived on their savings. My father had worked very hard after he got married, and he had saved a fortune big enough not to feel the want of anything. He even had bought a house in Arad, and he had his shop full of goods. When we were evacuated, as I already mentioned, we gave many of the goods to our loyal neighbors. Some of them gave these goods back to us later on, and the value of the merchandise increased dramatically during the course of the war. Indeed, after the war started in 1941 one couldn’t buy anything, not even shoes. Textiles were out of stock, and no one was delivering cotton anymore. My father began selling some goods under the counter, and that’s what we lived on. Meanwhile, those that had their fortunes in cash grew poor as the money depreciated in value. 100 lei were good for nothing, and banknotes of millions and tens of millions were issued.

During the Holocaust my father also did work service in Varciorog. [Editor’s note: Varciorog is located some 44 km north of Beius.] He managed to come home for visits through bribery. If you gave something to the chief of the work department, for example, it was widely known that he would let you go home for a few days. In Varciorog my father worked at excavation sites. What he did I do not know – I imagine he was constructing fortifications to impede the Russians or something of that nature. In 1942 he was sent to do work service in Tinca, where they manufactured cement and concrete tiles.

During the evacuation they established a school for Jewish children. There was a schoolmistress who had also been evacuated, and she taught the children under the community’s guidance. This is how I learned until the fourth grade, after which I learned privately. Thank God we were in a decent financial situation, which enabled my parents to hire a private teacher who prepared me for the first year of high school. I started with high school at the age of eleven or twelve, in 1943. I finished the first year of high school – which corresponds now to the 9th grade – at the Jewish Theoretical High School in Timisoara. I only actually went to Timisoara for the exams. During this period my parents lived in Ginta. [Editor’s note: there were no “theoretical” high schools at this particular time, so Mr. Kohn is using a modern day expression for the 1940s.]

In Timisoara I stayed with a relative on my father’s side of the family. Roza Marton, my father’s sister, had a daughter, Elena, married to a man by the name of Bela in Timisoara. They had one child, who was some two years older than me, and whose name I can no longer recall. I do remember that they lived in the Mehala district, where I stayed with them.

After the war

In 1944, after the war had ended, I came to Arad, while my parents returned to Beliu. I stayed with my aunt Rozalia Bercovivi for a while. She was my mother’s cousin, and she lived on the street parallel to the one where our house was. Her husband was a physician, but since he didn’t have Romanian citizenship he had left for Hungary during the war. He was killed there. I took meals with Aunt Rozalia, but, because she was living in quite harsh conditions along with her son, her mother and her father, I didn’t sleep in her home., Instead, her son Pisti and I slept in the house my father had bought. The house was quite large; it is a nice house even today. It had a garden, three rooms and a kitchen. It was located on Eftimie Murgu Street. In 1940 a police superintendent called Barbat Corolian had moved in. Later he was transferred to Odessa. In 1944 a law was introduced stating that all properties taken by the Antonescu regime in 1940 had to be returned, and we thus got the house back.

At first all the Jews were happy when the Soviet army arrived, as we thought they had saved us from death. This is what we heard from our parents. One day Pisti and I woke up with Russian troops surrounding our house, calling us ‘fascists.’ They took us away, calling us ‘fascists’ the whole time. This was after 1944, and my parents lived in Beliu in those days. Pisti and I were taken to the police station, where the Russians put us in a room down in the cellar and refused to even talk to us. Eventually they saw that we weren’t fascists, but they were so brutal. At that moment I became completely disenchanted with the Russians. It was not long before we saw them stealing in the night as well. I kept to my conviction that Zionism was the best option for all of us in the Jewish community.

From 1944 until 1945 I attended the Jewish high school in Arad, where I finished the second grade of high school. We had two subjects relating to Judaism in the Jewish high school: religion and Hebrew. The school was located in the city center, next to the present headquarters of the Liberal Party. We were some 23 in my class – quite a lot. Upon graduating we had the right to enroll in a state school, so from the third grade onwards I attended the Moise Nicoara College. In school I always liked chemistry a lot, although my favorite teacher taught Romanian and grammar. Of course I liked the chemistry teacher as well. My least favorite subjects were those relating to accountancy. After graduating from Moise Nicoara I attended the Textile Technical School in Arad.

During school I had both Jewish and non-Jewish friends, although, truth be told, I had more Jewish friends. This was partly due to the fact that I was active in the local Zionist organization in Arad after 1944. I was a member of the Hanoar Hatzioni 13 organization, providing me with a group of Jewish friends that I met with after school. In my free time I also went to Hanoar Hatzioni for sports. I played table tennis, and canoed.

In the summer, on the weekends, we often went to Trei Insule – Three Islands – a place along the Mures River around five kilometers from Arad. We went there with Jewish friends for excursions in the hills around Siria [30 km northeast of Arad]. In the mornings we would meet at the Zionist organization’s headquarters, and we spent the day singing, playing and just generally having fun. During holidays we also went to ski with Jewish friends. I still have one very good friend from my childhood, but I don’t even know if some of the others are still alive. I believe two of them are in the USA, but we are not in contact anymore.

Following school I worked as an unqualified worker in construction for some time, then as a technician at a textile factory. I did my army service in Bucharest – in the air defense – between 1951 and 1954. I liked the military and the outdoors, and I wanted to make a career as an officer. Unfortunately, I couldn’t become an officer because of my origins. They told me: ‘Mister, you don’t have a good background, and you can’t become an officer.’

Life was very hard in the army. Indeed, it was miserable. We wore deplorable clothing, with equipment from World War II that had been mended because of the bullets. On top of that the food was awful – we ate only barley water. Sometimes when we were free we bought bread together with the privates. It was a ‘brick’ type of bread, ‘Stalin’s bread,’ as they called it. Despite its horrible taste, I often ate two kilos of bread at once.

When we stayed in Beliu my brother was still going to kindergarten. He attended school while I was in the army. At that time I told my brother to make all possible arrangements not to get into the army because I was very attached to him. I even had the right to slap him sometimes, but nobody else in the world had the right to touch him. They didn’t dare to anyway because I was such a combative character, and I always looked out for him. So I told him to do whatever possible to go to university, as life in the army wasn’t for him. He eventually did graduate from the University of Technology in Timisoara, and he became a good engineer. [Editor’s note: Timisoara is the fourth largest city in Romania, located 600 km northeast of Bucharest.] Unfortunately, he couldn’t have much of a career because he was not a Communist Party member. And it was obvious that if you didn’t join, you couldn’t be a successor professional. This was simply reality. A lot of work and low salaries were the norm for non-party members. Exactly the opposite was true for party members.

I still have the merchant license of my father. It is dated 1939, and the text is as follows: ‘Kohn, Eugen, born on 10th August 1896 in Sebis village, is authorized to run a mixed grocery on his own account, under the firm name of ‘Kohn Eugen,’ having its headquarters in Beliu village.’

After they came back to Beliu, my parents once again engaged in commerce. They ultimately ran their shop until 1946/7. They lived with some Jews while in Beliu because they didn’t have a house there after the war. As I mentioned before, we had originally lived in a rented house before the war. My father got in touch again with traders from Arad, and he would come to Arad for merchandise. Acquisition was extremely troublesome – he had to come to Arad by train and then carry all the goods to Beliu. As such, he didn’t purchase too much merchandise. As it was, he didn’t have much money, and besides, the acquisition of goods was also becoming dangerous. I recall that once he had all of his merchandise stolen.

After they got back the house in Arad, my parents also moved there. Later we sold the house. They didn’t open a shop in Arad, instead choosing to sell at the local Serbian market. My father had a booth there. He sold textiles again, acquiring the goods from factories or wholesalers. As all this was after 1948, there weren’t private shops anymore, and my father instead got regular employment in a textile shop in the town center, opposite to the Red Church. He sold remains – pieces that were left from exports. He was paid according to how much he sold. Eventually my father moved to another textile shop on Andrei Saguna Street. The shop went so well there that people were queuing up. My father knew exactly what to bring, and many people came from the countryside to purchase goods from him. My father retired after his work at this shop.

My mother never had a job. As I have said, she was primarily a housewife. Before 1960, however, while we were living in Arad, my mother did sew bed covers and sold them on the open market. [Editor’s note: it is very probable that Mr. Kohn means that his mother was sewing bed covers between 1946 and 1960, given that his parents moved to Arad around 1946-7.] She earned quite a bit because people needed linen right after the war. The money helped her support a cousin from her maternal grandfather’s side of the family, a woman who is now married to Iosif Conta. [Editor’s note: Iosif Conta was elected freeman of the city of Arad in 1999. His son Vladimir is a well known conductor.]

My mother died in Arad on 12th July 1977, and my father passed away in Arad on 27th December 1982. My brother died on 19th May 2002. My parents are buried in the Jewish cemetery in Arad. Rabbi Neumann came to all three funerals from Timisoara. I paid him to come. I sat shivah for my brother, and also for my father and mother.

When the state of Israel was established, I felt an indescribable joy. Anti-Semites often said Jews were a parasitic nation, incapable of living by themselves and not needing a country to call their own. And even if they had one, so the saying went, Jews wouldn’t know their way about because they were nothing more than parasites living on the backs of others. Israel has proven exactly the opposite. It can be taken as a model country. Look at how much they have created from nothing! I must also add that we were always being told in my childhood that we were from Palestine and that we should go to Palestine. I think and I feel it now too that Israel is the land and the root of all Jews. Jewry as a nation has, in my mind, three pillars – one being Israel, the other consisting of the Jews from the United States, and the last consisting of the Jews of the Diaspora.

I didn’t leave for Israel because I was unfortunate or perhaps lucky to have tried to enroll in a university in Romania in 1956. I even became famous in the process, as everybody was astonished that I went to the secretariat and said, ‘Sir, there is a mistake. I’m not on that list.’ I was told I didn’t have the right to be on the inscription list because I didn’t have a good social background given that my father had been a merchant. In the Nazi era I had suffered because I was a Jew, and now the Communists made me suffer because my father was a merchant. I was told that these were the laws, and I answered that most of the Jews were and always had been merchants and that the policy amounted to discrimination against Jews, just as there had been under the Nazis. The secretary asked me how I could compare socialism to Nazism, and I answered that these were the same and walked out. Shortly thereafter I was arrested, and I got sentenced in 1956 to hard labor on the Danube-Black Sea Canal. I was there for two years, between 1956 and 1958, before they let me free. [Editor’s note: the construction of this canal, connecting the Danube with the Black Sea, began in 1949. Many of the workers were political prisoners from Communist prisons. Work ceased in 1955 and restarted only in 1975. The canal was finally completed in 1984.]

When I got back, I wanted to leave for Israel. But when I went to ask for my papers, the authorities told me that I could never leave because I was an enemy of the Communists. They feared that I was going to make anti-communist propaganda abroad. I tried many times to obtain a passport, but I didn’t succeed. I intended to flee across the border, but I never did.

At the workplace I also experienced discrimination as a result of my political leanings. I didn’t have problems on account of being Jewish, but because I wasn’t a party member. My wife too had problems for not being a party member. She was the only engineer who had to work three shifts, for example. I wanted to become a party member because I felt humiliated. I was getting bad, low paid jobs because those who weren’t party members were placed where it was worse. In order to become a party member, you had to be taken into the basic organization first and then approved by the County Committee. A party member had to recommend you. Unfortunately, Tibi, whom my mother had helped financially, wrote that my mother was a speculator who was engaged in trade. As a result, the County Committee said I couldn’t be a member because I didn’t fit in. I tried to obtain membership again in 1958, after my spell in prison, but then they said I didn’t have the proper moral qualities.

My wife, Emilia, was born in Ionesti, in Valcea County, on 16th August 1941. [Editor’s note: Ionesti islocated in central Romania, north of Bucharest.] She is Romanian, not Jewish. She studied at the Textile Faculty in Iasi, and she is now an engineer. [Editor’s note: Iasi is the second largest city in Romania, after Bucharest, and was briefly the capital of Romania during World War I. It is located in the northeast part of the country, some 433 km from Bucharest.] I met her in the factory, as she had been placed in Arad after graduation. We got married on 12th August 1971. We have never celebrated any of the Christian holidays within the family, but we have always observed all of the Jewish traditions, even though my wife isn’t Jewish. As I was already 40 at the time of our marriage, I found it difficult to change my habits and wished to continue celebrating the Jewish holidays.

Our son, Emil Dan, was born on 28th December 1971 in Arad. He took part in Talmud lessons, and in 1994 he left for Israel. He now lives in Tel Aviv. He graduated from the Technion University, the Israel Institute of Technology, and subsequently took postgraduate courses in Haifa. He works as a software developer.

In 1989, during the revolution 17, I was actually on the barricades here in Arad. In fact, I helped disarm a troop of Securitate 18 men who were shooting about in the streets. I was with a man called C. P. and one called G. I felt such a strong hate for the Securitate men that I broke down the door to their place of residence and walked right in. Until that moment I didn’t feel any fear because I was very impetuous. When I got there, face to face with them, and I saw them armed with pistols, I started to get anxious. I remember precisely that there were various kinds of license plates on a stand as well as telephones and some boxes with munitions and field beds strewn across the room. There were four of them, all armed. When they told us they stood by the revolution, I asked them why they were shooting. I suggested they call Voicila, who was in the committee of the local Council. They called him, and an army car soon came and took them away. I remember that there was a sergeant in the car, and I suspected that something wasn’t quite right. I’m afraid to say that this event, in many respects, was a microcosm for the revolution. The whole thing was a spectacle. The revolutionaries capitalized on the public’s hatred and distrust of the Communists, but it was actually the Communists themselves who were orchestrating the whole thing! [Editor’s note: Mr. Kohn is referring to the theory amongst some political scientists that Communist politicians provoked the events of 1989 in order to shift Romania to the capitalist system.]

I wouldn’t want to praise myself, but I worked a lot in the years prior to the revolution. I worked very long shifts during the evening and during the day. What’s more, it was very hard in the department where I worked. People weren’t competent at all, and those in the Party weren’t interested in the work either. When something got misadjusted or broke down, they would come for me at two or three o’clock in the morning to bring me to the factory and set things right. So I worked a lot. And I got less money than those who didn’t do anything, causing me much frustration.

1989 brought a change., After I retired from the factory, I bought myself a print shop and established a cotton wool factory. I was very successful initially because I was the only one to do something like this in Romania. The customers literally queued up at my store, although eventually I had some competition after a similar place opened in Constanta. [Editor’s note: Constanta is Romania’s largest port, located approximately 173 km east of Bucharest on the Black Sea.]

At present, though I am officially retired, I have a lot of occupations. I started to work again, and I am currently operating as the Romanian representative of a firm called Baltic Wood. I gather information regarding the purchase of wood for their factory in Poland. For this purpose I travel a lot all across the country as well as internationally, to places like Moldova 19 and Serbia.

Chess is a passion for me. I am also somewhat involved in community life because I want Judaism to have continuity. I am strongly convinced that Bolshevists are part of a mafia organization that does no good for humanity. By its very definition it renders humanity rootless through atheism, and I would like to see the Jewish communities get rid of all communist habits. That’s why I have gotten involved.

Concerning religious life, I do believe in God. This is somewhat of a problem for me, since I believe in Spinoza’s God 20. I want to know whom I believe in. Some things appear to me to be outdated, but in my soul I have a strong faith in God.

Glossary