Travel

Janet Arguete
Istanbul
Turkey
Date of Interview: August 2006
Interviewer: Feride Petilon

If you see someone with silver hair, sparkling eyes and a young heart on the streets of Buyukada, do not refrain from approaching her. She is Camila Arguete. Even if her name on her birth certificate is Camila, this sweet lady who goes by the name Jana or Janet, has without fail, a message to give to you, or a joke, or a riddle. I shared a few summer mornings with her pleasantly. Here is what she recounted...

Family background

Growing Up

During the War

After the War

Glossary

Family background

I never knew my father’s father Menahem Sages and my father’s mother Camila Sages. The only information I have about them are their images on faded pictures. My grandfather with a fez, and my grandmother with a headscarf, they had to live during the time of the Ottoman Empire.  During the period of Ataturk’s 1 reforms 2 Menahem Sages and Camila Sages was a family who observed religious rules meticulously, who spoke Turkish but did not consider Turkish to be their mother tongue. They lived in Bursa [It is a city in the region of Marmara. It was the capital for a period of time during the Ottoman Empire, with an old historical background, famous for Uludag (Mt. Olympus), its hot springs and silk commerce. Today Uludag is a ski resort]. 

Menahem Sages and  Camila Sages were members of the Jewish community who resided in Bursa (Bursa was the most advanced Jewish community of its time. There were 3 synagogues. Yirush, Mayor, Etz Hayim. All of these synagogues served their own Jewishs population flawlessly. The community in Bursa had a Jewish club also. Balls would be organized in these clubs). Among the family members I can remember are Tia Sultanicha and Tia Mazaltucha (Tia: aunt in Judeo Spanish). While my older brother got a spanking for his misdeeds, I would silently laugh to myself, and Tia Sultanicha or Tia Mazaltucha would say “I tu mereses haftona” [Judeo-Spanish term for: And you deserve a spanking] and incite my father needlessly. Words and discipline methods were futile, they did not serve anything. My father would insist doing it his way and showed me preferential treatment over my older brother.

Since Tia Mazaltucha and Tia Sultanicha’s financial situation wasn’t too good, on Thursday evenings, they would take their share of the food cooked for the Sabbath. Even though I don’t have much information about their spouses, I know that Tia Mazaltucha had two children named Michel and Ester, and Tia Sultanicha, Leon and Viktorya. I did not see these children very often in the following years.

My mother’s mother Flor Abravanel and father Senor Abravanel on the other hand were a family from Salonika [Today it is a city in Greece. But during the years we are talking about Bursa and Salonika were cities of the Ottoman Empire]. My mother’s father Senor Abravanel was a manager of a bank in Salonika. In those days, being a highschool graduate was quite a big deal. His brother Jozef Abravanel was the ambassador for Portugal. His wife Viktorya and only son Jak were the other members of the family. My maternal grandmother Flor Abravanel was a teacher in Salonika. [The information given uses the term “profesora de eskola”: school teacher. This indicates an elementary school teacher rather than a teacher of a specific subject]. 

I remember my maternal grandmother living across the fire station in Sishane [Sishane is the district where Neve Shalom synagogue 3 is today. During that time the Jewish community lived in this district. The area they called “Kula” was the surrounding area of Galata Tower. A lot of merchants from the fish seller to the sundries/notions store manager were Jewish. The largest fire organization of Istanbul was at the Sishane plaza. Only Jews lived in a lot of the houses then.  Fresh Han is an example of this]. When I came to Istanbul from Bursa, the city that looked so big to me would seem even bigger from the iron-barred windows of my grandmother’s. Flor Abravanel who remains in my memory with her wrinkled face and the pieces of cake she gave me would seat me on the corner of the window at her house with a pillow and enable me to see the  surrounding area. I still like sitting at the window, watching the people passing by in the street probably as a habit acquired from those days.

Through the eyes of a child, Sishane appeared to be fun, mysterious and quite entertaining to me. Across the largest fire organization in Istanbul, the red trucks that moved with sirens, the Jews that lived all together in this neighborhood that was at the heart of Istanbul, moved me.

When we compare my father’s and my mother’s families, we encounter different things. The Jews of Salonika, that is to say, my mother’s side were people with a more modern outlook. There were differences in the education levels as well.  Salonika was a European city nonetheless, whereas Bursa was an Anatolian city. [This difference wasn’t really considered in those days because both cities, Bursa and Salonika were cities that belonged to the Ottoman Empire.  With the downfall of the Ottoman Empire and the declaration of the Turkish Republic, Salonika and Bursa took their place in history as a city in Greece and Turkey respectively].

I do not know how Menahem Sages and Camila Sages, and how Senor Abravanel and Flora Abravanel met or married.  These subjects were not broached next to us.
.
My father Jak Sages was the son of a very crowded family with 9 siblings.
The oldest brother Albert Sages was married to Kler Bensason. He had two sons named Menahem and Moshe. When the older son was in the military, Kler Bensason started having irregular periods. While the various doctors they went to recommended different therapies, Kler was pregnant with her third baby.  And Michel was born 9 months later. This child who could only be circumcised three months later, whose arms looked like pencils and his fingers like strings brought luck to the family. Their financial situation improved. The children of Albert and Kler Sages, who immigrated to Israel continued living in Israel. Today Michel who still calls me often, has a personality that values family relationships.

My father’s second brother, Michel Sages had contracted tuberculosis. Michel married a lady named Margeurite and passed his illness to her. When Margeurite died, Michel Sages married a lady named Judit this time. Judit took very good care of my uncle Michel. When my mother was warning us not to even drink water when we went to my uncle’s house, Judit would use the same handkerchief she used to wipe my uncle’s sweat, to wipe her own. And Judit did not contract the disease. Judit was left alone with the death of my uncle Michel and remarried. You can only call it fate that she infected her new husband with tuberculosis. My uncle Michel Sages did not have any children from his first wife Margeurite or his second wife Judit.

Another one of my father’s siblings, Isak Sages went with the flow of the times and ran away to France at the age of 17.  [It was very common for the young people to seek their future out of the country. At times you even lost communication with the people who left. Because the only form of communication at the time was letters. Letters sometimes got lost in the mail and you might not hear from the person who left for a long time. France, Canada, Argentina, and the United States were the countries that were favored]. He married Albertine Elkabes; had three daughters named Janine, Arlette and Suzi. He and my father never lost touch.

Now it is the girls’ turn. Ester married and went to Adana [a city on the south of Turkey, on the coast of the Mediterranean] as a bride. She had a daughter named Leonora.

Sinyora went to the United States for a marriage arranged by matchmaking. Matchmakings like these were done in those days. First they would send each other pictures, then either the girl or the boy would travel and try to get to know their spouse. Sinyora went to the United States for such a prospect. After an unsuccessful attempt, reason unknown, she returned “Kon los mokos enkolgados” [Judeo-Spanish idiom meaning: “with her mucus hanging”; that is to say “without gaining anything from this enterprise”.] She married Monsieur Semo in Bursa and had four sons named Menahem, David, Sami, and Nesim.

Oro married Isak Tovi in Bursa; had children named Kemal, Sara, and Camile.

Coya married Monsieur Sevia and had two children named Janet and Jak. Jak served as ambassador of Israel.

Rebeka married Monsieur Bensason. She had three sons named Menahem, Rıfat and Albert.

My father Jak Sages was born in Bursa (1881). He came and went to Istanbul often. He wasn’t very educated but he was an esteemed merchant. My father’s good looks were legendary. He had good relationships with the women in his factory. He was a tough father. He had an authoritarian attitude with his wife and son, but when it came to me, he melted down. He was cool toward religious matters, some of the arguments he had with my mother were even about how to apply our religious traditions. When the usher knocked on our door on Saturday mornings and yelled “Monsieur Sages al kal” [Judeo-Spanish term for: Mr. Sages to the synagogue], I would respond “En la fabrika de Paskal” [Judeo-Spanish term for: at the factory of Paskal meant to rhyme with the previous sentence in a mocking way]. During the hours when the usher came to the door and encouraged the community to go to the synagogue, my father would be at the factory to prevent the silk cocoons from tangling with each other. Silk commerce was his life. There was a concept of  spinning wheel for silk. He was an expert in this subject. He knew how to produce more silk from less cocoons. [Even today Bursa is at the heart of textile commerce]. He always protected his good name in the commercial circles.

In the last years of his life, he moved to Istanbul with my mother at the insistence of my older brother. Unfortunately the disagreements between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are like a law of nature and happened between my mother and my sister-in-law. Of course quietly... In those days the problems within a family were not brought out to the open.  They were kept within the family as much as possible or the saying “les linges sales se lavent en famille” [French for: dirty laundry is washed within the family] was observed. My father died in Istanbul in 1975.

My mother was also the daughter of a family with a lot of children like my father.

The older daughter Rasel Saporta was already a widow when I knew her. She did not have children.

Another sister, Henriette Konfino lived in Romania. What took her away from Turkey was marriage chords. But the nostalgia for her native country was an unbearable longing for Henriette. She burned with the desire to come to Turkey.  When her older brother fulfilled her wish, it probably was too late already because Henriette was too sick to even know that she had come to Turkey. And she closed her eyes here for the last time. She did not have children.

Lucy Abravanel married David Abravanel. The fact that Lucy and David had the same last name was not a coincidence, it was an indication of an interfamily marriage. Lucy and David were cousins. Even though their first child Arman Abravanel was a healthy child, the second child Neli was deaf and mute. Lucy Abravanel left her spouse in Istanbul and went to Israel with her daughter Neli. She provided a special education for her daughter in Israel and she learned sign language.  Neli married there. Neli’s first child was born normal and learned how to talk from grandmother Lucy. Unfortunately the second child was also deaf-mute and the grandhild did not learn how to talk because the grandmother was not alive.

Ester Molho used to live in Salonika. They were a family affected by the horrors of Second World War. Her son who was a bank manager and her husband were deported. No one heard from them again just like no one heard from the 6 million Jews...

Another sibling was Anjel Karako. She was married to Isak Karako. Their daughter Ester Cakartas and her husband lost their life in a traffic accident. Ester’s daughter Gila married a prince in France. I think this prince was Jewish because the maternal grandmother Anjel Karako went to Paris to hold the thallis over her grandchild. Everything really started like a fairy tale. But just as everything that shines is not gold, this reality was also true for Gila. Gila stayed married for only 6 months. The prince was not a good man. Maybe he was a fake prince, it was rumored that “no era ombre ansina diziyan” [Judeo-Spanish for: “he was not a man”, this saying is used for homosexuals]. Gila suffered a great depression and paid for this marriage by sinking into darkness. Gila had therapy in La Paix [one of the Mental Hospitals in Istanbul] and in other places after returning to Istanbul. She is currently hospitalized in Balikli Greek Hospital [one of the mental hospitals of Istanbul]. Ester’s son Isak on the other hand left the country. No one heard from him again.

Jak Abravanel was the oldest of the brothers. He searched his luck in Argentina. None of his siblings saw Jak except in photographs. Even if some pictures were received from the communications with his sons, the siblings were never able to reunite.

Another one of the older brothers, Isak Abravanel was married to Viktorya Levi. He had four daughters named Flor Benzonana, Eliza Elver, Sol Bener and Coya Kohen. Coya Kohen and her husband took their daughter-in-law to France to prepare her dowry. The plane that crashed on the return trip was the end of this story. They all lost their lives together. (Coya Kohen’s son had stayed in Istanbul. The mother and father of the bride never lost touch with the son-in-law throughout their lives. This young man even married and had children. The mother and father of the girl who died remained as part of this family).
  
Ida - David Tasman are another sister and brother-in-law of my mother. David Tasman was a Russian refugee. He was a true Russian aristocrat. He had studied dentistry in Russia and practiced this profession for a long time. Later he ran away from the mismanagement of Russia and the pogroms and came to Istanbul. Rumor had it that David Tasman had a son named Boris that he left back in Russia. His wife had died but this child never came to Istanbul. There was no communication between father and son. After David Tasman came to Istanbul, he worked with another dentist since he did not have the right to open a clinic. He was a very well-mannered and dignified man. He provided very well for my aunt. They celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. He died at the age of 80. He loved me a lot too. Only, you should never play cards with him. Because he always wanted to win. This is a joke I remember about David Tasman. Ida’s child died while still in her womb because of the cord that was wrapped around its neck. She did not have a child again.

My mother Mari Sages’ last name before she was married was Abravanel. Mari Sages was an educated woman. She was a teacher. When she came to Bursa as a bride, the siblings of her husband were not married yet. They all started living together. My mother’s French was advanced. Her religious beliefs were very strong. She used to light the Sabbath candles, she tried to observe the rules of kashrut. The hardest days of our home were the days close to Passover. My mother would clean the whole house from top to bottom and did not want us to enter the place she cleaned until Passover. This was called “Ya entro pesah en esta kamareta” [Judeo-Spanish for: Passover has arrived in this room].  When it was the turn for the diningroom, my father would start getting upset. Because he did not like eating in the entrance hall that we called kortijo at all, he used to topple the table over. My mother, on the other hand, continued Passover preparations with a lot of calm. My mother who liked to get dolled up never refrained from putting on her lipstick before my father came home from work, and would put on her necklace and earrings a lot of the times too.

When there was a wedding in Bursa, the women of Bursa would go to Istanbul to have an outfit sewn. All the ladies would seek  a tailor that was popular in those days at the same time, and the tailor would sew the same outfit for all of them, and all of them would be identical during the wedding. They would not learn a lesson from this and continue the same procedure in the next wedding. When the smell of coffee started to permeate from one of the gardens in the afternoon, it was the sign of the women of the neighborhood starting to congregate. The biggest pastime during those days was to gather together to prepare the homemade pasta, to prepare tomato sauce or talk about the food that was going to be cooked for Friday.  All this important business was embellished by coffee breaks. My mother died just as she wished. One night, when they were returning from an outing, she did not feel good, and that was it. The calendar showed the year 1968.

When the children of two large families, the Abravanel’s and the Sages’, were married, they started living in Bursa. I know they married in the matchmaking style. My mother came from Salonika, my father lived in Bursa. In Bursa, family gatherings were important. There was a Jewish association. Balls would take place and my mother and father participated in these balls. There wasn’t a luxurious life in Bursa, but there was an orderly and good life. 

I am the second child of this family.

My older brother Menahem Sages was born in 1921 in Bursa. He continued his education in St. George High school [Austrian missionary school]. But he could not finish it. I know he went to this school for a few years but I do not have any information as to why he wasn’t able to finish. In reality, it wasn’t possible to question some things, especially by children. If he quits school, he quits, and if he continues, he continues. “No es komo la espesutina de agora” [Judeo-Spanish for: It isn’t the same hassle as today]. His wife Rene Nahmias was the sister of my uncle Michel’s first wife Margeurite. She was a very beautiful woman but she was too meticulous, she was obsessively meticulous. When we went to her house, she would look at your shoes before she looked at your face. She had a very good relationship with her son. She took care of him like a baby, she paid a lot of attention to her husband too but we generally did not go to my older brother’s house, he would come to our house to see me. My brother and my childhood were not alike at all. Because our personalities were not alike. He was calm whereas I was naughty and mischievous. He did not like drinking alcohol or gambling. He did not smoke. But for whatever reason he was always the one spanked during the childhood years. I would climb trees, he would sit at home.

His son Jak Sages was born in 1946 in Istanbul. After attending elementary school in Kurtulus Elementary School, he went to the British High school 3. And then he went to Israel. Adventure. Later he immigrated to Canada. Currently he lives in Canada, in the city of Victoria. In those days naming after the grandfather or grandmother was a tradition.  Meaning the son of Menahem carries my father’s name. My older brother did not want his son to do military service in Turkey, for that reason, especially encouraged him to go out of the country. His going to Canada was an adventure like his going to Israel but it was as if my older brother continually encouraged this adventure. My older brother died in Canada where he went to see his son in 1984.

Even though I carry my grandmother’s name according to traditions, Camila is only my name on my birth certificate. I am called Janet or Jana in my daily life. I remember being Camila only when I use my passport. 

Growing Up

I was born in 1924. The house where we lived when I was born was the same as the house I lived in when I went to Istanbul as a bride. That neighborhood was called “La Juderia”.  All of the Jews in Bursa lived on the same street. On both sides of the hill full of trees houses were lined up. Only Jews lived there until the place we called Catalfirin [Forkbakery]. We had 3 synagogues: Yirush, Mayor and Etz Hayim. We were crowded, we were like siblings. We would eat and play together with the daughters of the poor families who came to our house as helpers. Mrs. Hanife who came from the factory every day would take food to my father.  Mrs. Hanife was one of the workers in the factory. My father who liked to eat fresh food, preferred eating lunch with the food that was cooked that day rather than the leftovers from the previous night. When Mrs. Hanife came, the food that was placed in the thermos would go to my factor at the factory. 

On a day I took advantage of the fact that my mother was making dessert. I ran away and continued walking in the street. When my mother realized I was not home, she rushes out to the street with her apron and finds me in the hands of a woman. My mother screams “Give me my child”. The woman calls the police and invites my mother to prove that she is my mother. My father being a well-known person and his good relationship with the people around him enables the problem to be solved. Is there an end to my mischievousness? One of my favorite things was our hill that would be under snow on cold winter days. When I put my bag under my butt, I would slide quickly from top to bottom.

In our street, the yoghurt-seller, the poultry man, the egg-seller would pass. The yoghurt-seller would carry his pans full of yoghurt on strings that were attached to a pole. We would buy this yoghurt sold by kilogram into our pans. We would joke saying “Los guevos del dede son grandes” [Judeo-Spanish for: The grandfather has big eggs, meaning balls]. The poultry man would bring the chickens, my mother and her neighbors would bring the chickens to the rabbi to check if they are kosher or not and would cut them according to the rules of kashrut. They would put aside some chickens as non-kosher. The chickens that were cut were taken to Jewish women to have their feathers removed this time. Those women would almost memorize which chicken belonged to whom but once in a while, the chicken of Madam Rebeka would get mixed up with the chicken of Madam Zelda. But the smell of the cooking chicken would spread to the neighborhood. On Saturdays the firesetter would pass through the neighborhood. The Jews who did not consider it appropriate to light a fire on the Sabbath were able to light the lamps or stove thanks to the firesetters who were Muslim.  Even though this tradition was applied by my mother, my father would turn on the lights before he left for the factory.

We have to add the cotton fluffer who was a tradesman of those days who passed through the neighborhood. The fluffer was the one who renewed our mattresses at certain times, who beat the cotton inside with a mallet to air it. The same person sewed the comforters. The work of the cotton fluffer would be very intensive especially in summer and fall cleanings.

Even if shopping was done from retailers in Bursa, the heart of commerce was in the Closed Bazaar. Towel sellers, fabric merchants were inside this bazaar. At the end of the Closed Bazaar you could find Salt Bazaar. Silk cocoons would be displayed as if in an auction during the season. There would be lawyers’ offices or offices associated with commerce on the top floors. My uncle was a representative of Michelin [French tyre company] and had an office in the Closed Bazaar.
 
The house we lived in had three stories. Like the twin houses of today, we could go to the neighbor’s house from the stairs in between. The basement of this house where the ground floor was a grocery store, served almost like a refrigerator. Every kind of document and food was kept there. On the top floor, in the entrance which was called “kortijo”, were the kitchen, bathroom and laundry. We even called the laundry lady who came to the house Tia Rahelina. [She indicates that they considered the lady who came to do the laundry part of the family and addressed her as tia-aunt].  When Tia Rahelina tackled the laundry, the whole place would smell clean like white soap, the whites would be boiled in large pots with bluing [a substance used in the old times to whiten laundry]. The laundry that was hung to dry in the garden would sway in the wind. Coal stoves and braziers would be lit on laundry days, food would be cooked on the same stoves. Tia Rahelina’s sons later became very rich and saved their mother from this job. In reality, after we came to Istanbul, we did not see Tia Rahelina for very long years. Later on they became in-laws to some distant relatives and we saw her sons and her at a wedding. We learned that her sons were in the tin and oil business. In our times the women did not know much the work that the men did. Men did not explain, and the women would not be interested. But I know that Tia Rahelina’s sons were in commerce.

We had a sofa, armchair and a table with a golden mirror in our living room. When I see these end tables in decorating magazines, I understand that the saying “If there was a demand for old things, flea markets would flourish” is not very valid. The floors were linoleum, the stairs made of wood. Sparkling the linoleum was a symbol of cleanliness. The wooden stairs, on the other hand, squeaked. The cleaning supplies were not as strong probably. Soft soap, white soap, bleach was used. Clean water flowed from the taps always, there were heating stoves in each story, and in the kitchen stoves were lit.

In those days, the traffic did not resemble today’s mess, there were few motorized cars, and one horse-carriages were vehicles that were used [she used the ladino term “talika brijka” for the horse-carriage]. Obviously in a neighborhood where automobiles were seldom seen, even if there weren’t playgrounds designed for children, the streets, the gardens were our play areas. We grew up with this distinction, the orchards and gardens were ours. We would play hopscotch (We would draw squares in the street with chalks, would skip on one foot to move the stone while not letting it touch the lines. In every neighborhood, different rules would be applied to the game of hopscotch. We would explain those who came from other neighborhoods the rules of that neighborhood. For example, holding the stone on top of your foot while playing would make it more difficult, but that was another rule) in the streets, jump rope.

The hamam is one of the biggest features of Bursa. The mikveh habit of older ladies would be satisfied in the hamam too. It was customary to prepare food for the hamam entertainment. One of the favorite pastimes of those days was for a few families to get together to go to the Gonlu Ferah Hotel in Cekirge [Cekirge is a district of Bursa famous for its hot springs. It has hamams that are left from the old times. It is known that these waters are therapeutic and you could go there for medical purposes. Until a short while ago, taking baths as a cure for rheumatism with a doctor’s recommendation was a valid procedure].

Going to the Gonlu Ferah Hotel was the favorite entertainment of those days. There were one-story hotels, rooms with their private hamams, and multiple room hotels also in Cekirge. When you went to Cekirge, you would sit in the gardens. Chatting in gazebos covered in vines was one of the preferred pastimes of our elders. Sometimes these outings were not for one day, but could last a few days, because the men went to and from work in Cekirge.

Picnics were part of life in Bursa that you couldn’t do without. We would go up to Uludag with buses. Barbecues were brought but the meat would be carried from home. The rules of kashrut were always in effect. Even the dolmas and salads were prepared from home. The breaking of the ropes of melons and watermelons that were thrown down wells to keep them cold at times would cause disappointments (Because using refrigerators wasn’t widespread in those days, melons and watermelons would be tied up and lowered to wells in summer to keep them cold. Sometimes the watermelon or melons would be too heavy, the rope would break and the watermelon and melons would fall into the well).

I used to go to a school named “mestra” before I started school. Mestra was a kind of preschool like the ones that exist today. Ms. Suzan who spoke French would gather a few kids in her house, play games, and supposedly teach them French. Ms. Suzan was a spinster, she was thin and scrawny. Whoever saw her would utter “poor thing”. Mr. Geron on the other hand was big and burly. When you compare it to the preschools of today, the children were raised in primitive conditions there. 

I started school in a Jewish school, then I transferred to Istiklal School. We met again with friends with whom we studied together, years later. None of us had changed, only our birth certificates had grown old. We would visit each other with these friends. They would not look down on us. They would not regard us as inferior because we were Jews, on the contrary, they wanted to be with us. In Bursa, the holiday visits were important too. We socialized with our school friends and their families. They were all children of intellectual families. We had very good relationships with the teachers in our school too. I remember Mr. Halit and Mrs. Muazzez among the teachers. We thought that these two teachers flirted with each other in school. When we saw them next to each other, we would start giggling right away. But we were never disrespectful toward our teachers, we did not step over our boundaries. I loved Mr. Halit most among the teachers. We would go to kiss their hands on holidays.

I loved reading a lot. I bought all the magazines that came out in those days. Solving puzzles is a habit left over from those days. There were no puzzle books of course, we waited for the puzzles section of the newspapers impatiently.  Afacan Çocuk [Mischievous Child], Ses [Voice], Hayat [Life] magazines, Dogan Kardes [Brother Dogan] were among my favorites.

Among my childhood memories, the bar-mitzvah of my older brother is prominent. We had visitors at home for three days and three nights. We distributed food to family and friends for two days, and to the needy for one day. We the children, played around. Towels, pyjamas and socks were among the preferred gifts. 6 monetary units (of the time) were considered a good gift, and would be saved by the mother. My older brother had gone to the synagogue with only my father. My mother waited for them at home, and immediately started giving out sweets. The children of that time had limited means but were happy, today they have everything but they are tense.

Bursa’s summer resort was Mudanya [A neighborhood on the border of the sea around Bursa]. When my uncle’s family went to their summer resort, they would take me with them. I would show my wild side over there too, and would climb to the top of trees. My father loved Buyukada a lot. [Buyukada is one of the islands in the Princess Islands group on Marmara sea. The others are named Kinaliada, Burgazada, and Heybeliada. Today Burgazada and Buyukada are summer resorts that are in demand by Jews]. In those days, the upper crust people especially went to Buyukada for the summer. Attire and clothing was important in Buyukada, ladies went around with hats, and would go to meet their husbands from the dock.

We would go to the Cankaya Hotel in Buyukada for a month. Such a vacation was a luxury in those days. My father would rent a room every summer in the Cankaya Hotel for 1,5 months. The hotel was all inclusive. We ate our meals there, in the hotel. When summer came, we would take our suitcases and settle there. The clothing to be worn in Buyukada was separate. A separate shopping was needed. Because my mom liked to dress fancy and would not go down from her room without her necklace and her earrings. I would go to Degirmen Beach ever morning with my friends [One of the most famous beaches of Buyukada. Now it is a club, only members can go in. Another one of the beautiful beaches in Buyukada at the time was Yorukali Beach]. My mother did not swim in the sea. My father only came in the weekends. My mother would play cards with her friends or go down to the dock to sit in the tea gardens. I and my friends would enjoy summer vacation thoroughly.      

During the War

When I became a young woman, around the 1940’s, it was the period when antisemitism was prevalent in Bursa. They called us “Chifut” [Jew]. When we returned home from school we would walk without looking around. All of us (my cousin Ester Carktas, myself and the other Jewish girls) were attractive girls. That is why we were very scared of being approached or made improper advances to. “Citizen, speak Turkish” 4 was one of the most important events of our time. There was a fine of 5 units of money for people who did not speak Turkish. There is even a joke about this subject.  An official from the public registrar’s office came to a house and asked what is your name. Rebeka asked Moshon: “Ke disho, ke disho? [Judeo-Spanish for: What did he say, what did he say?]  “Komo te yamas?” [Judeo-Spanish for: What is your name?]  Moshon answers “Rebeka and Moshon”. The official continued asking. “Your year of birth?” Rebeka asks  “Ke disho, ke disho? [Judeo-Spanish for: What did he say, what did he say?] “En ke anyo nasimos” [Judeo-Spanish for: What year we were born]. Moshon answers again. While this continued, the official asks “What is your mother tongue?”  Rebeka asks again “Ke disho, ke disho? [Judeo-Spanish for: What did he say, what did he say?] Moshon: “Kuala es muestra lingua maternal?” [Judeo-Spanish for: what is our mother tongue?]. Rebeka immediately answers “Turkchas, turkchas” [Turkish, Turkish].

We were very afraid during the 2nd World War, there were even rumors that ovens were prepared for us. From our family, my aunt Esterina Molho who lived in Salonika, her husband who was a bank manager, her children and her grandchildren were all sent to concentration camps. They were a very esteemed family, and they were very wealthy.  Unfortunately in the following years, this money was squandered on attorneys. When the sisters researched this wealth they took part of what was theirs but they did not fight hard enough. The real estates was all lost. Whatever the lawyer wanted to show that is what he showed and that was it. What could my mother do other than grieve. We were not aware of this right away. We became aware in time. When we were made aware it was too late anyways. When the sisters looked for this wealth, they received a portion of what was rightfully theirs.

My mother-in-law had two brothers. One was named Leon Ancel, the other Jojo Ancel. Leon Ancel lived in France. He was able to hide himself by marrying a Christian woman named Helen. I had the opportunity to meet Dominique, the son of Uncle Leon who was saved thanks to his wife in the later years. The other brother Jozef Ancel lived in Switzerland anyways. He was not affected by the war.

I heard about the Thrace Events 5, but noone from our family was unjustly treated.

The Wealth Tax 6 left a lot of people in hardship. My father was registered as a janitor in the factory, therefore he was not affected much.  But some families had everything taken from them. There were those who went to Ashkale and of course those that were not able to come back.

I was already in Istanbul during 6-7 September events 7. I had come to Istanbul in 1946. There was a Greek grocer under the home of my mother-in-law, Lucy Arguete in Dereboyu [Main street of Ortakoy. Greeks, Jews and Muslims lived alongside each other on this street. A river ran through the middle of this street, and crossing from one sidewalk across to the other was by bridges. Ortakoy is one of the first places in Istanbul that the Jews who ran away from Spain settled in when the Ottoman Empire accepted them. It is situated on the shores of the Bosphorus in Istanbul]. Looters entered the house and cut up my mother-in-law’s rugs. My mother-in-law escaped with her nightgown and came to us. When I went out the next day, my heart ached. There were refrigerators, washing machines, rolls of fabric, sacks of all kinds of produce dragging through the streets. It looked more like a war zone than a looting zone. What attracted my attention most was the Greeks still continuing to speak in Greek fearlessly.

My husband Avram Arguete was a very principled man, hard-working and honest. At first they were very rich. His father Albert Arguete’s nickname was “Golden Bee”. They had a haberdashery store in Ortakoy. He was born in Ortakoy. That store was the one with the most variety at the time. But I was not around for the times of wealth. Yo me topi en la aniyud [Judeo-Spanish for: I was around for the poverty]. The Wealth Tax erased all of this wealth. My father-in-law did not have a single experience with the police in his life. Police officers came to his store during the Wealth Tax. He fell ill with that stress and died in 1946. 

His mother Lucy Arguete’s maiden name was Ancel. Lucy Arguete was of medium height, could be considered on the short side and had gray hair. Lucy Arguete’s story is quite interesting. When my mother-in-law was in her first marriage, it was the time for the flu epidemic. This epidemic was called the Spanish flu. This epidemic was in the news in the newspapers too. Her husband died on the night of the wedding before they could even have any relationship. Lucy became a widow with her wedding gown, as a virgin maiden. This flu that was called the Spanish flu, is considered an epidemic historically. A high fever and sudden death were the typical symptoms of this illness. Lucy Arguete lived through such a tragedy on the night of her wedding to her husband.

Lucy turned her back to life with this disappointment. She went to visit her relatives in Ortakoy. In reality the reason they called her to Ortakoy was to introduce her to my father-in-law Anri Arguete. At the time, a widow had to be very careful about the steps she took. Lucy, in reality, was a very optimistic and luminous woman. She loved giving out presents.  That is why her purse was always full of candy and chocolates. When children saw her, they always approached her.  This woman who was of short stature, who put her long gray hair up in a bun on her neck, agreed to marry my father-in-law Anri Arguete who was a widower with one child, with the mentality of those days. Anri Arguete had lost his wife in Ortakoy. He was a very religious, quiet and inoffensive person. There was an age difference with Lucy. Along with the age difference, there was a cultural difference and a difference in life style. Lucy was a modern person who liked to go out, to spend money, to strengthen her dialogue with people. My father-in-law Anri on the other hand, was an introverted person who was lost among religious books, who spent his life within religious books. There were differences from their family structures. Lucy had an aptitude for western cultures, due to her siblings and her connections outside the country.  Anri on the other hand, was a good person, and that was it. Lucy never treated Anri’s daughter from his first wife Suzan  any different from her own children. When Lucy was married, Suzan was 5 years old. But she became the apple of Lucy’s eye. Suzan knew that Lucy was not her mother. Besides, the mother’s family used to come to see Suzan. But because Lucy did not distinguish Suzan from her own children, she even showed her preferential treatment at times.  When she went out, she always took Suzan with her.

Suzan was a lively, cheerful girl. In later years, she turned out to be a very capable woman. Suzan shared a similar fate with my mother-in-law Lucy. When Suzan married Albert Cukran, Albert’s wife had died in childbirth and left her daughter Beki without a mother. In those days, Beki was given her dead mother’s name. Suzan took the baby to her heart since she knew the feeling. She did not even tell the three sisters she gave birth to, Juliet, Sara and Zelda this step-daughter situation for years. Beki was told the truth by her fiance. Beki’s first reaction was “It does not matter, Suzan is my mother. Please don’t tell it to my sisters”. Every sister was told that they were of different mothers by their fiance, and the sisters never talked about this amongst themselves during their lifetime, in reality. In Suzan’s old age, her sons-in-law competed to take her into their house.

Juliet married Jojo Franko (another last name is Aker). She has two children named Sami and Ari. Sara married a gentleman named Ibrahim, she has three daughters. Zelda married Refik Celik.  Refik also had a daughter from his first marriage. (When Lucy Arguete married, she found Suzan.  When Suzan married she found Beki.  Suzan’s one other daughter Zelda, when she married, she married a gentleman who had a daughter from his first marriage.  In this way, three generations of women married men who were on their second marriage and found a daughter each).

My mother-in-law’s daughter Ceni Arguete was married to Marko Uziyel.  She had one daughter named Bella.  Ceni was a chubby woman of medium height.  She lived with her mother Lucy.  Marko Uziyel’s financial situation was not very bright.  Ceni-Marko Uziyel lived in Nisantas [One of the best neighborhoods of Istanbul] in a basement flat.  That house was a humid house.  My mother-in-law had succeeded in making that house cozy.  Lucy used to receive financial help from her siblings who lived in Switzerland.  She in turn gave it to her daughter.  Ceni’s daughter Bella did not grow up as the daughter of a family with no means.  The best of everything was always at Bella’s disposal.  Bella married but became a widow at a very young age.  She had only one son.  Her son is a tutor who prepares students for the university exam. 

Yomtov Bonjur Arguete on the other hand, was the apple of the family’s eye.  He was married to Keti Frankfort.  Keti was a German Jew.  Her father owned a bank.  He did not know Judeo Spanish 8, when this language was conversed within the family, his face became sullen.  The Frankfort family was an aristocratic family.  Komo se dize, guantes blankas [Judeo-Spanish for: How do you say this—white gloves.  It is a saying indicating you were speaking to someone from the upper crust, i.e. you need to have white gloves to be able to address them].  I would be amazed when I went to their house.  Starched white table cloths, starched napkins.  I would be face to face with a different world view.

My husband Avram Arguete had the nickname “Fuhrer” in Ortakoy because of his adherence to his principles and his harsh reactions.  Just think about it.  He was of short stature, always in a hurry, someone who walked fast and who was anxious.  Our meeting was the result of a coincidence.  In reality, when I started to grow up and to develop, it was an indication that it was time for matchmaking for me.  I came to Istanbul for this purpose, but when it was found out that the person they were thinking of introducing me to wasn’t appropriate, I started waiting for the return trip.  They had told me that the hand of the boy they were proposing for me was disabled.  In the meantime, my husband had broken up with his first fiancee.  I do not know the reason for this separation, but within years, when the two ex-fiances met, they would greet each other in a civilized way.  I also would greet this lady and talk to her on the streets of Buyukada.

My husband encounters a friend while walking absentmindedly in the street after this separation.  He tells him of his troubles, the solution is a new matchmaking, looking for a new fiancee.  Mrs. Rosa Palashi was our neighbor.  She was a family friend of theirs.  When Mrs. Rosa Palachi learned about Albert Arguete’s situation, she opened her house to us.  We met there.  My husband was a handsome, well-dressed man.  I was there too.  My father and my husband went to the back room.  I waited in the livingroom.  When their discussion was finished, they told me I was promised.  My father did not even ask me, the apple of his eye, if I liked Albert or not.  I did not react at all to this event, it was as if what needed to happen, happened.  It seemed to me that that was what was supposed to happen.  My husband did not react at all too.  He accepted it very coolly. 

The next day, there was a meeting again, tratos [Judeo-Spanish for: negotiations, i.e. the money that the girl’s side is supposed to give to the man for a marriage] started.  My husband’s aunt Tant Regina acted as the go-between.  My mother-in-law had a voice, but she never used it.  Tant Regina finished it.  They settled on three thousand liras.  Because my husband was a very honest man, he clarified that he was going to give one thousand liras of this money to his sister Ceni who was going to get married before us.  In this way, two thousand liras would be left in my husband’s hands.  When the negotiation ended, we, the two fiances, went out.  My husband took me to my aunt’s house whose housekey I had, upon a pretext, and asked me to clean up all the make-up on my face.  His jealous nature was evident at that moment.  Yes, he really was very jealous, he did not even want me to go to Bursa.  No seya ke me arevaten los flortes de Bursa [Judeo-Spanish for: Maybe the boyfriends of Bursa would grab me].

After the War

The engagement party took place in an establishment called Belle Vu.  I don’t even remember if there were rings exchanged.  We got engaged on June 24th, 1946,  the civil marriage was on October 24th, 1946, and the wedding on November 24th, 1946 in the Zulfaris Synagogue 9.  One of the most famous traditions of Bursa was the showing of the dowry. My mother prepared a beatiful dowry, the dowry was shown in the accompaniment of the lute.  My mother-in-law did not pay much importance to such stuff.  She had just been widowed when I got married anyways.  She did not have the state of mind to deal with this stuff.  But tradition was tradition and it was done.  A black coat, light-colored coat, black suit, light-colored suit, silk broidered nightgowns, tablecloths were integral parts of a dowry.  On the wedding night we went to the Park Hotel [in Taksim, one of the most luxurious hotels of the time] in great secrecy.  The two of us were alone and no one had been made aware.  I still haven’t understood the reason for this secrecy.  Nothing was ever told to anyone in the family.  As if, if it was kept secret and nobody knew, my husband’s business would go better.  He thought this way.  He was afraid of a lot of things, the evil eye, the jealous eye, he did not like to be talked about.  From this point of view, he would do everything in secrecy, and prevent being talked about in his own way. 

Our first house was behind Tokatliyan Passage [a passage in Beyoglu.  The area where the entertainment places were in the old times] for a rent of 40 liras.  My husband was paying half the rent and my father the other half.  This wasn’t a dowry agreement but my father did everything in his power so we would not have difficulties.  Even the laundry would go to Bursa, get washed and ironed and return.  Some of our basic necessities like cheese or butter would come from Bursa too.  Everything was a principle for my husband.  He would do anything in the name of honesty.  He did not like debts or such.  When we were setting up our house a lot of things came as gifts.  Lamps, tables, chairs all came as gifts.  We bought a bedroom for 400 liras that someone had been using for 40 years.  Right now, a piece of that bedroom set still exists.  It is almost an antique piece. 

My older brother wanted me to choose between an armchair and a radio for a wedding gift.  I was already feeling wretched and preferred the radio.  I made a divan from orange crates.  My husband opened a hardware business with whatever was left from the dowry.  He started commerce with two thousand liras.  My husband’s business slowly took off.  He always said “you brought me luck” to me.  He never let me work, I wish I had worked, but his jealousy exasperated me.  No going out, no coming in, going to Bursa absolutely not.  We fought a lot.  My husband, in addition to sticking to his principles, was very easily offended.  For example if I didn’t say “to your health” after he shaved, he would get cross with me.  Another thing that is a reality is that a girl who has been raised in a wealthy family, if she marries someone of lesser means and cannot find what she is looking for, gets stressed.  This stress amplifies in the woman, the struggle of the man who is trying to attain that lifestyle makes her irate.  Sometimes I would win these fights, sometimes my husband.  That is how a life was spent.  

My husband adored children.  When I had my period, all hell would break loose.  He would wail “I won’t have children”.  My mother-in-law consoled him “be smart Albert, there is no reason not to have any”, she would say.  When I became pregnant with Lucy, it meant the world to him.  But I had such a difficult pregnancy, such a difficult birth, and a difficult postpartum period that the guy did not want a child again.  When Lucy was born she was the sweetest baby in the world, or it seemed that way to me, but I would faint all of a sudden.  My mother took me to Bursa during this period, cured me and sent me back to Istanbul  again.

My house during this period was at Kuledibi.  It was very small, humid and full of mold.  We changed houses within a short period and moved to our house where we resided for 11 years.  A house in Cihangir [A neighborhood in Istanbul.  This neighborhood underwent a lot of changes with time.  First it was one of the most exclusive neighborhoods of Istanbul.  Good families resided in the homes with a view of the sea.  Later the image changed.  This time it became the place of transvestites.  Nowadays it is a candidate to be an artists’ neighborhood.  Those beautiful homes are finding the old owners back] with a sea view, but the moving-in price is 500 liras.  Where would we find this money.  Friends prove their friendships in such days.  A friend, again from my family’s side lent us money.  We paid back the money we owed in a short time.  My husband always said that I brought him luck anyways.  Later on we moved to Pangalti [A neighborhood in Istanbul].

My daughter Lucy (naturally she carries my mother-in-law’s name) was born in 1948.  Just as is the case for every baby, a festive wave spread through the family.  But I remained very weak after the birth, and I would faint all of a sudden while nursing the baby.  My mother came from Bursa and took care of me.  After a while, she had to go back to Bursa because our house was very small.  She took me and the baby, and cared for us in Bursa, returned me to my good health and sent me back to Istanbul.  During this period, my husband used to come to Bursa too in the weekends.  I prepared wonderful birthdays for my daughter.  The neighbors, the cousins would come.  I would go to Beyoglu on every birthday [The favorite shopping street in Istanbul.  Stores were lined on both sides of the sidewalk.  Famous restaurants were lined on this street alongside stores with European merchandise.  Movie theatres were in Beyoglu too.  Women do not go out without wearing a hat.  Men went around with canes and felt hats.  The tram was also a mode of transportation], I would buy her a dress from the best store, take her to a studio and have a picture taken.

My daughter was a very good student starting in elementary school.  According to her father, her grades had to be 9’s or 10’s all the time.  It was that way anyways.  After finishing Saint Benoit French Junior High, she entered Notre Dame de Sion [French Catholic schools].  My daughter became engaged to Eliya Barokas before she turned 18.  I can say she was obliged to get engaged, to say it more correctly.  My husband investigated and found my daughter’s spouse from the commercial circles.  As you can understand, she married through matchmaking in 1965 at the Neve Shalom synagogue.  We went to Lido in the evening, very few people, no friends, there were limited amount of people from the family. Of course my daughter’s matchmaking was not like mine.  My son-in-law would come, pick my daughter up and go out.  On their first meeting, Eliya came and picked my daughter up.  We went out, they in front, and us in the back.  Later they stayed engaged for 1.5 years, and had opportunities to meet each other during that period.  One day before the wedding my husband told me that we were having our son-in-law as a live-in [“mezafranka”: to help curb the expenditures for the newly weds, the girl’s family takes in the son-in-law and takes care of all their needs].  He had decided this without asking me, as was the case in a lot of other occasions.  Even if he asked, I did not have the luxury of expressing my opinion.  I wasn’t asked my opinion very often.  Of course this upset me a lot.  But because I did not know otherwise, this seemed right to me.

I rearranged my house for the newlyweds.  I allotted them the main room and bought a new bedroom set.  They lived with me for three years, summers and winters, and 5 years only summers.  But my son-in-law is truly a great kid.  He had asked for the dowry before getting married.  These procedures were not looked upon warmly then.  Some said “Albert loko sos tu dota se da de antes?” [Judeo-Spanish for: Albert, are you crazy, dowry shouldn’t be given before the wedding].  My husband said “Si me las komyo las paras ke me las koma, ma a la ija ke no me la keme” [Judeo-Spanish for: if he burns through my money, let him burn it, but my daughter let him not burn].  I cut up a very beautiful fabric for the wedding and took it to a tailor.  The fabric was a little expensive.  I did not know how to tell my husband.  But he liked it too and did not say much.  My husband in the meantime started becoming successful in commerce.  He dabbled in a lot of stuff like textiles, and dry goods and notions.  In the end, he was in the underwear business before he retired.  He used to send undershirts and underwear to Anatolia.  He died in 2003.  He had difficulty breathing.  He had a problem in his bronchial tubes.  He passed away after a short period of illness, around 6 months.

Lucy Barokas has a son named Semi born in 1969 who currently resides in Israel, and a daughter named Zelda, born in 1972 who lives in Istanbul.  My husband Albert Arguete was a man devoted to his children, he would especially die for his grandchildren.  When my daughter Lucy went on a trip, the children would stay with me.  Then Albert would act like a child, even more than they did.  He would exhaust me with his nagging “Ya komyo no komyo, ya tosyo, ya sudo” [Judeo-Spanish for: he/she ate, didn’t eat, he/she coughed, sweated].

My grandchildren mean everything to me.  I love them very much.  Semi studied hotel administration.  He served as bartender in the Sheraton Hotel.  Later he decided to live in Israel where he had gone for an internship.  He went to Israel right after his mother’s 25th wedding anniversary to realize his dreams.  He married Ronit Simonpur.  I have two grandchildren named Linoy (born in 1998) and Maya (born in 2003).

Zelda (she was born in 1972) on the other hand grew up in my house.  She is an extremely pleasant girl.  Las piedras de la kaye la konosen [Judeo-Spanish for: Even the stones on the street know her].  She was living apart from her family, keeping up with the times.  When she started earning her own money she moved to her mother and father’ flat in Ortakoy [a neighborhood in Istanbul on the shores of the Bosphorus].  Her father was a little conservative.  But he could not deal with her.  There would be a row at every Sabbath meal. “Who are you going out with? What time are you coming back” were among the questions asked in raised voices.  One day when she was out with the boy she was dating, she realized she had lost the ring her mother had given her and she was very upset.  Her friend Vedat Eskinazi claimed that she was a messy person and that she lost everything.  Later on they went on a trip to the far east together.  At dinner, Zelda saw a bouquet of flowers on the table, she thanked her friend.  Her friend suggested she take a look inside the bouquet.  There was a box and a ring inside the bouquet.  After this romantic proposal, they called us and told us they were engaged.  The mystery of the lost ring was solved too, her friend had taken it to have it sized.

I was very happy when Zelda Barokas and Vedat Eskinazi had their civil marriage.  This ceremony was done in Bozcaada [Bozcaada is an island on the Aegean sea famous for its grapevines], they loved Bozcaada a lot.  They wanted it to be different.  All the guests made their reservations in the hotel.  A private van was rented and we went to the place where the civil marriage was going to take place.  All the guests, men and women had worn white.  The bride came on a tractor.  Even the geese had bows on.  The friends of the groom carried white pigeons from Istanbul and released them in Bozcaada in honor of the young newlyweds.  The offerings were like the offerings of the most luxurious hotel.  Vedat Eskinazi exports handbags, belts and accessories.  Zelda works at a bank.  She went to the United States to learn English.  She went to Italian classes in Istanbul.  My husband could not see all these wonderful things..  But according to my grandchild, he was watching us from wherever he went.  She told me that she  went to his grave, and told him about her engagement, her civil marriage and her wedding.  She had “Lokum [Turkish delight—a type of candy] papi, I love you very much” inscribed on his tombstone.

My husband, that is to say, Albert Arguete was a very good Jew.  He went to visit the dead every year. First we would visit his mother and father in Ortakoy cemetery, and later his sibling and my mother and father in Arnavutkoy [the largest cemetery in Istanbul is in Arvavutkoy.  There are two cemeteries adjacent to each other, the Ashkenazi and the Sephardic].  He wished to ask for a haftorah at the synagogue for all the deceased members in his family in the month of July [one of the prayer rituals].  He reminded his son-in-law about this as soon as July came around.  In any case, when he died, there was a notebook found in his pocket showing the death and burial dates of all the members of the family.  Our family is very sensitive on this subject.  I still remind my husband’s brother, Yomtov Arguete about his mother and father’s yartzheits.

My daughter Lucy Barokas and son-in-law Eliya Barokas try to obey the religious rules.  My daughter eats kosher meat, and prepares  for crowded tables on holidays and Shabbat evenings.

I was in Bolu [A city between Istanbul and Ankara.  It is a mountain.  It has several hotels.  It is a place that a lot of people go to relax] during the 1986 massacre in Neve Shalom 10.  We were shaken by the tragedy we heard on the radio.  The name of Eliya’s uncle was read.  Our family had a victim of terror.  We cut our vacation in half and returned.

I was at my home during the bombings in November of 2003 11.  First there was a loud noise.  We thought it was a gas tank explosion.  Then sounds of ambulances, sirens and chaos....  I grabbed the telephone, called Lucy.  “Where is Eliya?”, I asked.  “Mommy, hang the phone up immediately, Eliya is wounded” she said. My son-in-law was at the Sisli synagogue 12.  He was taken to Florence Nightingale Hospital.  My husband had just died and I was wearing black clothes that are a sign of mourning.  My first instinct was to take off the black clothes, get a box of chocolates and rush to the hospital where my son-in-law was.  Thank G-d that he recuperated quickly.  Eliya is a gem of a guy.  May G-d grant peace to all the deceased, and patience to their loved ones.

I am slowly getting to the end of my story.  I want to wrap it up with a beautiful event.  One of the important days of my life is my 50th wedding anniversary (1996).  One Sabbath evening, Eliya put two tickets in my hand.  He said “I want you to celebrate your 50th wedding annivesary in Israel”.  My grandson Semi Barokas picked us up at the airport and took us to his home.  We were in Israel for more than 20 days.  We went all the way to Eilat, my husband bought me a necklace [she showed the necklace around her neck and said that she never took it off after that evening].  Another Sabbath evening, my daughter said “we are going out to dinner on Sunday night, get ready, I will come and pick you up”.  When we went to a fish restaurant on the Bosphorus, we saw the surprise; every member of the family apart from me had helped Lucy organize this.  It was a wonderful evening.  We celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary by cutting a cake.

Now my life is spent among my grandchildren, my children, my memories and my friends....

We wish dear Camila Jana Arguete all the best...

Note: Jana was so happy while this interview was taking place, that at times, when she received phone calls, she would say ‘’No te puedo avlar tengo echo. Me estan azyendo reportaj vana eskrivir la vida mia (I cannot talk to you now, I am busy.  They are interviewing me, they are going to write about my life). She answered the questions with a lot of care and sincerity

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Aron Pizman
Mogilyov-Podolskiy
Ukraine
Date of interview: May 2004
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Aron Pizman is a stout man of average height with black moustache with gray streaks in his thick black hair. Despite his severe heart disease that made it hard for him to go through the strain of this interview he willingly agreed to talk about his life. Aron’s wife Riva listened to his story and added details to it at times. The Pizmans live in a two-bedroom apartment in one of the 1970s built houses on the bank of the Dnestr River within the area of the former ghetto where Aron and his future wife’s family lived during WWII. Their apartment is modestly furnished, but clean and cozy. Aron has his own work area with a desk and shelves with tools. He is very handy and likes crafting at his leisure time. Aron and his wife care for one another Their younger son Mikhail, of whom his parents are very proud, lives separately with his family, but he comes to see his parents every evening after work. Mikhail’s book of poems was published recently and Aron recites his poems with pleasure. He reads a lot: technical publications, fiction and scientific popular books. Aron is interested in politics and the situation in the world.

My father’s family lived in Chernivtsi town Vinnitsa region 30 km north from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My grandfather Leib-Shikes Pizman was born in Chernivtsi in the late 1860s. I don’t know my grandmother’s name. She must have been the same age as my grandfather. I can hardly remember my father’s parents. I don’t know what my grandfather was doing for the living. My grandmother was a housewife, which was quite common for married Jewish women.

Chernivtsi was a small Jewish town. There were many such in Ukraine before WWII. Jews constituted about 70% of its population, I guess. Jews lived in the central part of the town. The houses adjusted closely to one another and there was space enough for a little garden where they grew greenery and 1-2 fruit trees. Ukrainians lived in the outskirts of the town having vegetable gardens and fruit orchards. There was a synagogue in the center of the town and a cheder nearby, which was closed after the revolution of 1917 [1] and the building was given to a 4-year Jewish primary school. There was a shochet and a market on Tuesday and Friday in the town. There were few stores owned by Jews selling day-to-day goods: salt, matches, kerosene and cereals. Jews spoke Yiddish to one another and Ukrainian with their Ukrainian neighbors.

My father Isak, Itzyk in Jewish, was born in 1909 and was the youngest in the family. He had two older brothers and 5 sisters. I didn’t know my father’s brothers. One of them, whose name I don’t know, perished during the Civil War [2]. His brother Moishe Pizman moved to USA before the revolution and the family had no contacts with him. The oldest of the children was my father’s sister Haya. Then came Mariam and the next were Ester, Pinia and Leya and then the sons were born. My grandfather and grandmother were religious like all other Jews in the town. The sons studied in the cheder and had bar mitzvah after turning 13. The family celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed kashrut. I don’t know ay details since all I know is what my father told me. The family was very poor and my father became an apprentice of a shoemaker at 8 and began to work at 10 years of age. Under the influence of his older brothers my father got fond of revolutionary ideas. His older brothers were the first to join the Komsomol [3] in the town, and my father followed into their steps, when he turned 14. Of course, my father and his brothers became atheists. I don’t know whether my father’s brothers had any education, but my father only finished cheder. He could not read or write in Russian or Ukrainian. My father moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy at the age of 18, in 1927. He went to work as a shoemaker in a shop. At the beginning he worked in a crew of shoemakers and then got his own booth shop near the fire brigade in the town. My father did well at work. He was hardworking and had fair thinking, but he had no education.

My father’s sisters, except Leya, married Jewish men and lived in Chernivtsi. They were housewives. Haya’s husband, whose surname was Tepp, was a blacksmith. They had four children. My father sister Mariam’s husband Preger worked in Haya husband’s forge, but I don’t remember what exactly job he did. They had three children. Samuel, the younger son, was born in 1925. I don’t remember the names of two daughters. My father’s sister Ester Bakaleinik divorced her husband and never remarried. She didn’t have any children. Pinia, Zozulia in her marriage, had two sons: Abram, who was 5 years older than me, and Aron, the same age with me. Her husband was a butcher. My father’s younger sister Leya married a Jewish man from Yaryshev, a Jewish town. I didn’t know her first husband. He died young leaving Leya with three children. She married Brener, a tailor from Yaryshev and had four children with him. My father’s sisters also became atheists under the influence of my father’s brothers.

My grandmother died in the early 1930s and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Chernivtsi. My grandfather died few years later, in 1939, and was buried in my grandmother’s grave. I was 8 years old and my parents took me to my grandfather’s funeral. He was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions. My father recited the Kaddish over my grandfather. Nobody sat shivah after my grandfather. Their gravestone is still there in the cemetery in Chernivtsi.

My mother’s family lived in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. This was a nice green town. The Jewish population constituted about 70%. There were few synagogues in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Two of them operated until the start of the Great Patriotic War [4], and the others were closed during the period of struggle against religion [5]. There was a Jewish cemetery, few cheders and Jewish schools. The cheder was closed before the revolution, and one Jewish school worked as long as the start of the Great Patriotic War. The Jewish school was more primitive than general education schools. I remember pupils of this Jewish school. They carried their textbooks and notebooks in wooden boxes on a leather thong that they carried over their shoulders. There was a hexagonal star on their boxes painted in ink. They looked like white crow among other schoolchildren. Since children needed to know Ukrainian and Russian to be able to continue their education, gradually Jewish children switched to Ukrainian schools in the town.

Mogilyov-Podolskiy is surrounded with the mountains. The Dnestr River divided the town. There was Moldavia on the left bank. Before 1917 Moldavia or [by its historic name] Bessarabia [6] belonged to the Russian Empire. In 1918 it was annexed to Romania and Mogilyov-Podolskiy became a border town. There were special permits required to enter Mogilyov-Podolskiy. In 1940 Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR.

Jews resided in the central part of the town. There were few market places in the town. The biggest market place in the center of the town worked 3 times a week. There was a shochet working nearby and housewives took the chickens they had bought to him to have them slaughtered. On Thursday and Friday villagers sold living chickens and fish at the market. They knew that Jewish housewives made chicken broth and gefilte fish for Sabbath and took their chance to earn more. Housewives often ordered dairy products from farmers and they delivered them to their homes. Jews in Mogilyov-Podolskiy were craftsmen like my father and owned small stores. There were also Jewish lawyers, teachers, doctors. My grandmother told me there was a big Jewish community in Mogilyov-Podolskiy before the revolution. The community supported the needy. The community made arrangements for funerals, supported the Jewish hospital and the children’s home for Jewish children. They also provided dowries to Jewish girls from poor families and covered expenses for weddings. They collected contributions before Sabbath and Jewish holidays for poor Jews to have decent celebrations. The community stopped its existence after the revolution.

During the revolution and Civil war there were pogroms [7] in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My mother’s mother Surah told me about one. There was a boy and a girl in the town – they had loved each other since they were children. They came from poor families and had no money for their wedding. The Jewish community and sponsors collected money for the wedding, bought a house with everything necessary for living for the young people and arranged a grand wedding party, when suddenly a Petliura [8] unit came into the town. They broke into the synagogue and killed the bride and bridegroom, the rabbi and all guests with their sables. There were no survivors. This was a gang [9] from somewhere else – there were no local pogrom makers. Jews and other people had good neighborly relations with each other.

My maternal grandfather Leib Abramson, whom I didn’t know, was born in Mogilyov-Podolskiy in 1870. Grandmother Surah was born in 1872 in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Grandfather Leib was a cook and confectioner and cooked for weddings, birthday and other parties. He usually had a crew of assistants. My grandmother was a housewife. I cannot tell how much religious my mother’s parents were. Before the war we had their only photo where my grandfather was wearing a yarmulke, a black suit and had a big beard. They observed Jewish traditions. My mother didn’t tell me much about her childhood. She had a poor, hungry and hard childhood and these memories must have been hard for her. At the time that I remember my mother, her brother and sister and grandmother were not religious. They spoke Yiddish in the family and knew Ukrainian.

There were six children in the family. My mother was the youngest. My mother’s oldest brother, whose name I don’t know, moved to USA. The family had no contacts with him. Her two brothers were in the Red army and perished during the Civil War. I was named after one of them, whose name was Aron. I don’t know the name of another brother. My mother fourth brother’s name was Duvid. My mother’s sister Rosa called Rosia in the family was born after Duvid. I don’t know whether my mother’s brothers had any education, but my mother and her sister had no education whatsoever. My mother Nehama was born in 1909. When she was six, her father Leib died in an accident in 1915. He was 45. When he was cooking for a wedding, the floor and the Russian stove [11] collapsed. My grandfather fell into the basement and pieces of the stove fell on him. He had many injuries. He was bedridden for some time before he died. The family spent all their savings on his treatment. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Mogilyov-Podolskiy according to the Jewish traditions. His grave and gravestone with an inscription in Hebrew are still there.

My grandmother began to work in the same crew where my grandfather worked before he died. The sons went to work, but then they joined the revolution. The younger daughters had to work around the house.

My mother’s older brother Duvid got married and moved to a village in Vinnitsa region. He worked fixing and altering old clothes. Duvid’s family had a good house, a vegetable garden and an orchard. Duvid had four daughters. During the Great Patriotic War the family was in the ghetto in their village. After the war Duvid’s wife died and he remarried. His older daughter Rosa and her family live Luzhany village of Chernovtsy region and his three younger daughters moved to Israel. Duvid died in the 1980s visiting his daughter in Luzhany.

My mother’s sister Rosa worked as a seamstress at the factory before the war. She had a prearranged wedding few years before my mother got married. I don’t remember her family name. Her husband Shmil sang in the choir at the synagogue, when he was young. He was not religious, but had a nice tenor voice and knew music. When the synagogue was closed, Shmil went to work as a tax inspector. They had no children. Mama and Rosa were very close.

I don’t know how my father and mother met, but this happened after he moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, of course. They fell in love with one another and decided to get married. My father’s sisters were hoping that their brother would marry a wealthy girl and would support them, but he married a girl from a poor family who had no dowry. They could never forgive my father or mother for their lost hopes. Even when my father’s sisters lived with us during the occupation since our house was within the ghetto, they were still very cold toward my mother.
My parents got married in 1929. They had a civil ceremony in a registry office and then had a small wedding dinner with their closest ones. My father’s sisters and their husbands came to the wedding from Chernovtsy.

After the wedding my parents lived in the room that my father received from his work. They lived in the private house that became public property after the revolution. The former owner of the house also had an apartment in this house. She was a very beautiful and kind woman earning her living by handicrafts. Her surname was Kipnis. She and my mother became friends. I was born in 1930. My mother’s older sister Rosa lived with her husband and grandmother Surah nearby. She was ill and could not have children. She offered my mother to move into their house to have more space and that they would move into our room. Rosa lived in a small house near the Dnestr. My father decided to build an annex to the house to make it bigger. We moved into the house in 1935. My father bought construction materials for the house, but the problem was that the area near the house was flooded every spring and my father decided it didn’t make sense to start the construction, if the territory was flooded. In 1938 he sold this house and bought a part of the house in the center of the town near the market place in Stavisskaya Street. My mother wanted grandmother Surah to live with us. My father gave his consent and grandmother Surah moved in with us. There were three rooms and a kitchen with a Russian stove in the house. There was my parents’ room, my grandmother and I lived in another room, and the third room was a living room. My younger brother David was born in 1939.

My father was an atheist and so was my mother. My brother and I were raised like all Soviet children. We celebrated Soviet holidays at home: 1 May, 7 November [12], the Soviet army Day [13]. My parents wore ordinary clothes and didn’t have their head covered. We didn’t observe Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays at home. When my grandmother moved in with us, we began to celebrate Jewish holidays, but this was a tribute to tradition rather than religiosity. That is to say, I think we celebrated Jewish holidays then, though I don’t remember them. On Sabbath my grandmother lit candles and prayed over them. She also cooked a special dinner and the family got together at the table. There were traditional Jewish dishes on the table: gefilte fish, chicken broth, chicken neck stuffed with flour and onions, it was particularly delicious, some potato puddings, but I can hardly remember. However, my mother did work about the house on Saturday like she did on any other day, and my father always worked on Saturday. He had a day off on Sunday. I remember that we had matzah at home on Pesach. It’s hard to say whether we had traditional Jewish food at home. I had a poor appetite and any food looked repulsive to me. I felt obliged to mother and grandmother to eat and I did for their sake.

My parents had no education and in 1934 a visiting teacher began to teach my father under the likbez [14] curriculum. My mother and I were also present at these classes, and we also learned to read, write and count – everything that my father studied. I could read and write at the age of 5. In 1937 I went to a Ukrainian general education school. There was a 7-year school in our district, but my father wanted me to go to the 10-year school, but to be enrolled there I had to officially live in aunt Rosa’s home since this school belonged to her district. So I was admitted to this school that was considered to be the best in the town. I liked going to school. Our young teacher Rosa Goldsmidt noted that I had been taught before school and made me her assistant. I was very proud of it and behaved decently in class. Only during the war, in the ghetto, I got to know that Rosa was a Jew. Before the war we didn’t think about nationalities. I didn’t identify myself as a Jew. We were taught that all citizens of the USSR had one nationality – Soviet. Now, when I recall school, I understand that there were many Jewish teachers and school children.

We were taught from the first form that there was no God, but this was nothing new to me since I heard it before from my father. We were also taught to explain that they were wrong believing in the non-existent God. I became a pioneer in the 3rd form. I was one of the first to become a pioneer – only pupils with good marks were admitted. Some children didn’t care about their studies and some, like Yakov Epelbaum, whom I shared my desk with, just had no talent to study.

We were fond of reading and there were always lines in town libraries. I was fond of astronomy and learned by heart many astronomic constants. We didn’t study physics and when I wondered why it was so that when women were washing sheets on the opposite side of the Dnestr and I saw them slapping their sheets on the water, but heard the sound of it later, I asked our school teacher of physics and he explained about the velocity of light and sound to me. Our teachers always answered our questions, even when they had to stay after classes to do it. We, kids, shared our interests with friends. We tried to read and know more. There were many hobby groups in the house of pioneers in Mogilyov-Podolskiy: the group of Voroshylov [15] rifle mark guys, airplane design group and music studios. To get enrolled in the group children had to show their pupils’ mark books with good marks. We spent a lot of our free time in the house of pioneers. We learned a lot there, more than we did at home. I remember how happy I was, when I made my first flying model. My father helped me to make it. I think, he could have done more, if he had got education. Once I discovered that the projection of sketches painted on glass in ink sort of moved, when lighted by the flame of a candle. I showed it to my father and he made me a plywood box with inserted glass and a candle inside. My father and I made sketches and projected them onto the wall. My father did everything very efficiently. He was a pace-make worker at work and had awards of honor and also was given incentives like free trips to recreation houses. However, my father never joined the party. He believed sincerely that only the best could be communists while he, a common uneducated worker, did not deserve such honor.

Our family did not suffer from the arrests that started in 1936. [Great Terror] [16] Perhaps, some of my parents’ acquaintances were arrested, but I was too young and did not think about it. Every now and then our teachers told us to over paint a portrait of a political activist or military commander in our textbooks, because he happened to be an enemy of the people [17]. We, kids, believed this was the right thing to do and everything was right in our country. Our teachers, radio and newspapers stated that our army was invincible and those who dared attack us would be in trouble. We would defeat the enemy on his territory and win a victory. Children and adults believed in it. We, junior pupils, were trained to march to march songs and handle gas masks. Senior schoolchildren studied military disciplines, assembly and disassembly of weapons, types of weapons, training grenades and first aid to the wounded.

In May 1941 I finished the 3rd form. On 18 May I went to the children’s recreation center near Odessa. I was to come back home in the middle of July. On Sunday, 22 June 1941, around noon we noticed strange nervousness of adults: tutors and teachers. They were whispering and had the looks of concern. In the evening we had a gathering where they announced the start of the war and said that Hitler attacked the USSR without declaring war. The management of this recreation center did not have any directions for evacuation and they didn’t quite know what they were supposed to do. Then they began to make groups of children to take them to their homes. I was the only one from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. They took me to the railway station and then the group moved on and I stayed waiting for a train to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. There I found out that there were no passenger trains moving in my direction. I waited four days at the railway station until a captain, who came to the railway station to meet his family took me to his home and few days later he put me on a military train to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My mother met me. My father was recruited to the army on the first days of the war. He was still waiting at the gathering point in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. The recruits were trained in military disciplines. On our way home my mother and I saw the oil terminal on fire. There were air raids and firing. In the evening my father came home. His commanders allowed him to go and see me. My father never smoked before the war, but this time I saw him making a makeshift cigarette to smoke. He had to go back and before leaving my father said to mama: ‘Take care of the children and try to take them as far as you can from the town’. We stayed at home few more days. One morning another air raid began and when it was over the radio announced that there was a train at the railway station for those, who wished to evacuate. My mother packed some clothes in rush. My grandmother refused to go with us. She told mama she would manage alone while my mother had to take care of her sons. At that time we already knew that Germans were killing Jews. There were no official announcements in this regard, but there were convincing rumors. Those, who remembered WWI, believed Germans to be a civilized nation and would do no harm to innocent people just because they were Jews. The three of us ran to the station, but there was no train there. Only after the war I got to know that the radio announced the evacuation after the last train had left Mogilyov-Podolskiy. At that time the radio was convincing people that escapists were creating panic working in favor of Germans while the party officials from the town council and town party committee were leaving with their families, but nobody knew it.

We went back home, but on our way we bumped into my grandmother. She said: ‘Go away, go, run from Germans’. We went to Chernovtsy where my father’s sisters Haya and Mariam lived. My grandmother stayed home. My brother was 2 years old and my mother carried him. He was a very handsome child. When we reached Karpovka village another bombing began. There was a column of retreating units walking along the road and one soldier took my brother from mama and carried him as far as the highway. We stayed a couple of days with aunt Haya. Few days later our retreating troops came into the village. My father was with them. He stayed that night with us and we all stayed awake talking with him. My father left with his unit shortly before dawn. This was the last time we saw him. In 1944, after liberation of Mogilyov-Podolskiy, we received a notification from the military registry office. It said that my father perished on 6 August 1942 near Semyonovskaya village Rzhev district Kalinin region and that his grave was in Bakhmutovo village: the local residents buried the deceased after the battle.

My mother went to Mogilyov-Podolskiy and picked my grandmother to come to Chernivtsi. Few days later German troops came into the village. The first few days were quiet, but then another troop came to baptize, the Jews of the town turning them into Catholic belief. The local residents were aware of some action to be. A Catholic priest came into the town, which meant there was something brewing up. Perhaps to conduct the ceremony – at least this raised people’s concerns and doubts. [Editors’ note: This must have been a popular fear that the Germans wanted to convert the Jews by force before they actually appeared in the town.] People took hiding in basements. The catholic priest wanted 10 people. The Germans started looking for Jews. Aunts Haya’s neighbor, I think his surname was Mariasin, and his wife were captured. They were at home: his wife was baking bread and he stayed at home as well. So they opened the door, when Germans knocked on it and were seized. So there were 10 people seized in this way. They were taken to a dam, about 20 m high. At first they wanted them to lie along the dam so that the priest rode over them in his cab, but then they decided that horses could get scared and decided to throw them from the dam. They also fired at them. 10 people were killed so. [Editor’s note: It is unlikely that a priest took such a role in the massacre.] This was middle of July 1941. We decided we had to go back to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. A group of about 60 people started on our way before dawn. There was an elderly woman with us. It was difficult for her to walk. My mother was carrying my 2-year old brother. I was carrying two sacks with our belongings. We were to go across Karpovka, 4 km from Mogilyov-Podolskiy, where there was a transit camp of Jews from Bukovina and Bessarabia. They were the first to arrive in Vinnitsa region, Transnistria [18]. We were told back in Chernivtsi to share something with those poor people since they were starving. So I had potatoes for them in my pockets. In the village three teenage boys, shepherds, attacked me whipping me and trying to take away the sacks. I knew that we would starve to death, if we lost what we had and tried as much as I could to resist. They were older than me and I was desperate, when my mother and grandmother began screaming. Then our fellow travelers caught up with us. Men began yelling and the boys ran away.

In Karpovka we walked along the fence of the camp and I saw the inmates. They were living skeletons. I threw the raw potatoes that I had for them. They pounced on them and ate them instantly. When we passed the camp we saw a car with a Romanian officer, who started to say something in a loud angry voice. My grandmother and mother began to cry. He began to take out his gun pointing all the time in the direction of the ghetto. We were dirty and shabby and he thought we escaped from the ghetto. We were sure he would kill us. Then another vehicle drove by. We knew this was a German military in it. Romanians had green uniforms and Germans had gray ones. My mother told him in Yiddish that we were going home. I don’t know whether he understood or not, but he turned to the Romanian officer and slapped him on his face and left. We thought the Romanian would kill us for this slap, but he turned his car and left, too. We got home.

There was nothing left in it. There was a layer of feathers from pillows on the floor. We found my awards for 3 years of study, some textbooks and few books. The only food we had was the bread that we had from Chernivtsi. There was a rumor that the town department was going to release some herb, I don’t remember the name, they feed horses on it. There was a cavalry unit in Mogilyov-Podolskiy and thee were lots of stocks left. I ran to Ivanov, the town head, a Greek man, a former teacher of the 1st school. There were no people there yet. Perhaps, they didn’t believe this rumor. Ivanov asked me questions about my family. I told him that my father was at the front and he directed to give me 10 kg of this grass for 5 of us, including my father. To cook it we had to keep it soaking in water a whole night and boil for a long while in the morning, but this was good food. We could not buy food at the market. Neither Soviet nor German money worked. We had no money whatsoever, but even if we did have it, there was nothing to buy for money since only goods or food products mattered. People exchanged food products for things. The only thing we had plenty of was salt. Salt was a big deficit then. When we returned from Chernivtsi, we saw bombed stores in the market square and in one I saw a heap of salt. I made few trips bringing it home in my short. We stored it in the attic. We had enough salt to last through the occupation. Our neighbors also could take it for free – my mother was no good at selling things. Even before the ghetto we were forbidden to go to the market place, so we could not exchange salt for food. Once I went to the market to buy something, when a Ukrainian policeman grabbed me and asked: ‘Are you a zhyd?’ I kept silent and he pushed me hard. I fell on the pavement and got injured. I came home bleeding and since then my mother was afraid of sending me to the market.

There was a flood in August 1941. The Dnestr flooded the nearby area and we went to stay with aunt Rosa for three days of the flood. Some houses were destroyed. Only stone houses survived. The walls and the floor in our houses were covered with a thick layer of silt and the walls were partially ruined. We went to stay with the Altmans, our neighbors. They let us have one room. My mother, my brother and I were sleeping on a bed and my grandmother slept on a narrow wooden trestle bed.

In July 1941 Jews from Bessarabia began to be going to Transnistria across our town. There were concentration camps and Jewish ghettos covering the whole area between the Dnestr and Bug. Many Jews were dying on the way, some of them stayed in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Those, who died in the town were buried in the new Jewish cemetery. According to the officials data there are 20000 burials in this cemetery. There were few Jewish families staying in the house where we lived. Everybody asking for help found shelter in the house.

We had to somehow earn our living. Those Bessarabians staying in the Altmans’ house had acquaintances in Ataki, a Moldavian town on the opposite bank of the Dnestr, bringing them contraband cigarettes and tobacco leaves. I learned to cut them finely. At first my hands were sore, but then I got used to this work and did better. I could earn 1-2 mugs of corn flour per night’s work. My mother boiled it and this made our basic food. There was a Jew from Bukovina living with our neighbors. They were the family of Shames. He was a roofer, but since there was no roofing work he became a tinsmith making buckets and painting them to make them fit for keeping potable water in them. I watched him working and learned to make tin items. I could even earn 2 marks per day. A mug of corn flour cost 0.5 marks.

That winter when we lived with the Altman family, Germans killed all Jews in Bar town near Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Altman wife Mania’s brother Aron and his family lived in Bar. Mania cried and cried knowing that there were hardly any survivors. A week later Aron came. He wasn’t even wounded. He fainted and fell into the pit. His family perished. There were dead bodies falling on him and he almost suffocated. He was covered with somebody else’s blood that dried out on him. He could only walk at night, and it took him a week to get to our place. He looked like crazy: he didn’t talk to anybody a whole month and had a wild look in his eyes. It was hard to look at this young handsome man. When Mogilyov-Podolskiy was liberated he volunteered to the front. He perished in 1944.

There were continuous shootings in surrounding villages. I don’t know by what miracle Mogilyov-Podolskiy avoided it. There were about 500 Jews in Yarysev town in 18 km from us. On 21 August 1942 they were shot on the outskirts of the town. There were no survivors. Our 18 relatives and my father sister Leya Berner’s family perished there. The shooting was done by Ukrainian policemen and volunteers. Germans only issued the order. The Ukrainians moved into the houses and kept everything in them in their possession. We must not forget this.

Shortly after the flood a ghetto was made in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. There was an order for all citizens living beyond the boundaries of the ghetto to move to the ghetto. We were not allowed to leave the ghetto and Ukrainians were not allowed to come into it. In spring 1942 a high wooden fencing with barbed wire on top of it was installed and the ghetto was guarded. People said the barbed wire was powered. There was one wide gate and two smaller ones with armed policemen guarding them. There was a children’s home on the other side of the fence. There was a tap in the yard where we could take potable water. The children were dying every day. Standing in line to get water we often saw a horse-driven wagon loaded with dead bodies They tied them with ropes to fix in the wagon and buried them in common graves in the cemetery far away from the town.

During spring and summer 1942 my mother and I were putting the house in order. We cleaned the silt and dug some clay mixing it with horse manure – this was the only construction material available. I picked manure in the streets beyond the ghetto. I walked with a spade and a sack picking manure. Once I bumped into Shpakovskaya, the worst pupil in our class. Another boy saw me and began to yell: ‘Let’s feed this manure to this zhyd!’ and Shpakovskaya said: ‘Leave him alone. This is zhydovsky [Jewish] jam. Let him take it home’. Then I found some stables where there was a lot of manure. I could take home half a sack. Once I was captured by a Romanian officer. He began to whip me. At that time another Romanian man came in and said something. This Romanian that was whipping me, left and the other one poured some water on me to make me regain my senses. He let me go. I got to a yard and lay down. I couldn’t walk. I don’t know how long I was there, but then I brought this sack home. This was the last time I went to the stables. My mother and I restored the house, the walls and windows and moved in it in autumn.

My father’s sister Ester and Pinia and their sons Aron and Abram also were taken to the ghetto from Chernivtsi. They stayed in our house. Our family of four of us lived in the smallest room in our house – about 6 square meters. Some time later my mother’s sister Rosa and her husband Shmil came to live with us. Their house was beyond the boundaries of the ghetto and they had to move to the ghetto. They lived in a big room. Rosa’s neighbor Riva Snitman, her son Haim and daughter Hana lived in the kitchen. There were few families in the bedroom: Riva Snitman husband’s sister with two children, the Dorf couple with their daughter and Dorf wife’s sister, and my aunt Ester. Pepi and Malvina, a brother and sister from Bessarabia, were also there. There was a family from a village living with my aunt Rosa, I don’t remember their surname. There were 5 of them: the father of the family, his wife called Rosa, the Tall one, to distinguish between her and my aunt Rosa, the short one, and their three children. There was also David, a young man from Bukovina, living with them. He had a big bag full of religious books in Hebrew and no other belongings. David slept coiling up on a low table in our room. Aunt Haya and her children and aunt Mariam lived with the Altmans.

We were trying to exchange food products. My mother’s sewing machine saved us from starving to death. It was buried in saw dust and got a little rusty during the flood, but I polished it for my mother to work on it. My father had some underpants and my mother colored them and made some simple blouses and pants. She also altered old clothes. My mother sister Rosa’s husband Shmil exchanged my mother’s pieces of work for food at the market. I also made rings with little hearts and Shmil sold them. We were all swollen and had swollen feet since we drank lots of hot water to mitigate the hunger.

My mother became religious in the ghetto and remained religious till the end of her life. There was my grandmother’s prayer book in the house, and my mother began to pray every day. She always prayed during air raids or firing. We could not celebrate Jewish holidays in the ghetto, but my mother tried to follow the rules. We all, even my little brother, fasted on Yom Kippur. However hard life we had, my mother always tried to make matzah for Pesach.

A Jewish religious school, talmud torah, began to work in the ghetto in 1942. There were all levels of education: from primary to the higher level enabling to work as a rabbi at the synagogue. We were attracted to it since they gave two slices of brad and jam to its pupils and the best students had four slices. This school was funded by the head of the Romanian Jewish community. I don’t remember his name. My brother and I attended it through the whole time of its operation.

In autumn 1943 there was an epidemic of enteric fever in the ghetto. My mother and I, my grandmother, my little brother and David, who lived with us in the room, fell ill. Many of our neighbors were also ill. Many people died from it. We survived thanks to our dairy woman, who used to bring us milk before the war. She found us in the ghetto and brought us milk. She came few times. My grandmother died a week later. My mother had high fever and could not even come to the cemetery. Uncle Shmil buried my grandmother in the cemetery. Later we installed a gravestone on her grave. David also died. Every day 150-200 people died in the ghetto. We were on or way to recovery.

Soon after we recovered we got in a big trouble. One night we saw that one wall in the shed in the yard was gone. Somebody must have taken it for the wood to stoke a stove. We decided also to use it for wood, but then a policeman came by. He said that all facilities were the property of German Empire and we had no right to pull down the shed. He put down our name and said that my mother would be taken to jail in Tiraspol. My mother asked our neighbors whether they knew this policeman. Our neighbor Haim Gorin happened to know him well. He went to talk with the policeman and asked him to not send my mother to jail since she had two small children. The policeman said he would stop the proceedings, if we paid him 150 marks. This was a lot of money and we had to ask our neighbors to lend us the money. We gave him the money and later we had to return the debts in money or doing work for people for a whole year. But my mother stayed at home.

I remember a terrible happening in winter 1943. There were severe frosts and the Dnestr froze. There was an ice-hole from where we fetched ice for cooling cells where we kept food products. There were always people lining to get water and ice. A young woman from Bukovina filled one bucket with water and bent to fill another, when she slipped and fell into the hole. She drowned. No one took water from this hole on that day. On the next day people made another hole farther from the previous one.

There was a rumor in the ghetto about the Vlasov troops [19] coming. They were worse than fascists living bloody tracks behind. We made a shelter in the house between the kitchen and the adjusting room. It closed with shelves kitchen utensils on them on the side of the kitchen. To enter it we removed utensils from the lower shelf to remove the wall. That opened the entrance to the shelter. My mother and I made this shelter and also made one for the Altmans.

There was a judenrat [20] and Jewish police in the ghetto. They were the most brutal ones. To Romanians we were all alike while the community and the police were local and knew each of us. The community was responsible for making lists for deportation to the Pechora death camp [This concentration camp is known as the ‘Dead Loop’. In total about 9000 people from various towns in Vinnitsa region were kept in the camp. Inmates hardly got any food and the building had no heating. About 2 500 Jews were taken away by Germans for forced labor. None of them returned. In March 1944 Soviet troops liberated the camp. There were 1550 survivors left.] receiving this order from Romanians. There were Bessarabian inmates to be sent to Pechora, but the community sent inmates from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Bessarabian Jews had money and valuables to pay ransom. The Romanians called such bribes ‘gifts’. Bessarabian Jews also spoke Romanian and had no communication problems. We heard that we were to be deported to Pechora. My mother knew this meant death to us. The locals supported each other as much as they could. Soviet people learned to help each other charging no money for it. When we heard about the deportation, my mother felt like committing suicide, but my aunts told her that she had children to think about. We decided to ignore the order. Early in the morning on the day of deportation we walked to Ozarintsy 10 km north-east of Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My mother dressed up as a Ukrainian farmer woman. Our distant relative Aron Shisman lived there. He accepted us all: aunt Ester, aunt Pinia and her children and us. My mother began to sew for Aron and clients. She was paid with food products and so we earned our food. My mother and I also made a shelter for them.

Two months later we returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. The deportation was over and we were hoping that Romanians would not send us to Pechora. Hey killed those who ignored their orders, but if some time passed, they forgot about such faults. There was also a risk that one of the community would report on us. There were such incidents, and then such inmates were sent to Pechora anyway, but nobody reported on us, and we kept living in our room. Then my mother fell ill. She had a big furuncle in her armpit. It hurt and she had fever. A Jewish doctor from Bukovina visited my mother, but since there were no medications available, he told my mother to stay in bed and left. After he left we found 3 marks under my mother’s pillow that he left. This was the cost of 6 mugs of corn flour – quite a fortune. Few days later this doctor returned. He said my mother could go to the town hospital department for Jews. I took my mother to the hospital. Aunt Rosa took care of my brother and me in my mama’s absence. She began to sew and provide food for us. My mother had meals in the hospital. I went to visit my mother every day. On my way to the hospital I picked apricots for her, though they were not ripe. Mama left her bread to give it to me, when I came. Two weeks later mama returned home and began to sew.

On 18 March 1944 there was news that the Soviet army was advancing and that the ghetto was to be eliminated before they reached this area. There was an order issued to eliminate the camp. Germans and Romanians were retreating crossing the Dnestr over the bridge. All inmates of the ghetto hid in their shelters standing close to one another. There was no air to breathe and if somebody felt like sneezing he had to leave the shelter to save the others. My brother and I were on the attic ready to escape to the shelter every instant. We watched the bridge. Germans and Romanians were arguing who was the first to walk on the bridge. They started shooting. Later that night the bridge was blasted with all Germans, Romanians, horses, wagons, tanks and cannons on it. About an hour later the railway bridge was blasted and everything got quiet. My brother and I stayed in the attic. At dawn there were few shots heard in the vicinity of the cemetery and then everything got quiet again. Soon 3 Soviet tanks entered the town. This happened on 19 March 1944. One tank stopped near our house. My brother and I went down and climbed on it. The tank men gave my brother and me their earphones and turned on the radio ‘Moscow speaking’. We hadn’t heard it for 3.5 years. “Moscow speaking’ – and this was a miracle.

There were heaps of weapons and ammunition in the streets that German left. People were picking them. Then there were ‘heroes’ searching for the Romanians that hid away. My mother and we were standing near our house, when 3 Romanians went by convoyed by a local Jewish man with a gun. When they were passing by, he shot one Romanian on the back of his head and he fell in front of mama. She screamed and the Jew pointed his gun at her. One could tell this man was out of his mind. He shot another Romanian, when they were passing the next house.

Soviet troops came to Mogilyov-Podolskiy and people came out into the streets. They were happy. A crowd of people came to the bank of the Dnestr to greet their liberators. Then snipers began to shoot from the opposite bank of the Dnestr. Germans left many snipers. They shot with explosive bullets that were deadly. They wounded many people. There were no doctors or medications. The doctors, who were on the bank, could only apply iodine on the wounds. The snipers were shooting for few days before few young soldiers swam across the Dnestr and killed them.

After liberations the town was bombed several times. One night the bomber planes dropped termite balls that were burning hanging in the air brightly lighting the whole town. There were few buildings ruined near our house. We discovered deep pits in the morning. Fortunately, our house was all right.

About a month after liberation bread cards were issued. We received about 1 kg bread for the three of us. Besides, we received about 100 or 200 g fat per month, and occasionally we got jam and herring and also, 20-30 matches. So, we were safer and did not fear starving to death any longer.

In April 1944 schools opened and I went to the 3rd form. The children had forgotten a lot and even made mistakes in counting. There were no notebooks. I found a pile of Romanian orders printed on cigarette paper in an abandoned archive and wrote on the backside. Then there were thin 4-page notebooks sold in stores. We wrote in small letters to save the paper. We also made ink buying methylviolet at the market and making a solution with water. A year later my brother went to the 1st form of my school.

Aunt Rosa and her husband stayed with us. My mother and aunt sewed and Shmil sold their products at the market. After receiving the notification on my father’s death my mother began to receive a pension of 340 rubles. This was good money for this time. We bought potatoes and corn flour at the market. The most important thing was that we were confident of our future and had no fear any longer. We had all rights and understood that we had them. Young people can hardly imagine the life, when one fears being killed day after day.

After Vinnitsa region was liberated my sisters returned home to Chernivtsi. Aunt Haya became very religious after the war. She celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut strictly. Her husband was not religious, but he was loyal to her religiosity. The rest of my father’s sisters remained atheists. Aunt Rosa died in 1962. She was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery in Mogilyov-Podolskiy, near my grandmother’s grave. Her husband remarried after the mourning and moved to live with his wife. We didn’t keep in touch with him.

After finishing the 3rd form I passed exams for the 4th form that same summer and went to the 5th form in autumn. On 22 February 1946 I quit school before finishing the 6th form. My mother managed to find me an employment as a clock repair man apprentice. My friend’s father was a clock repair man in this shop. My mother sold my father’s coat that he got before the war and paid the man to employ me. I received a worker’s food card at work. The shop I worked in worked for NKVD [21] employees. I bought 6 loaves of bread receiving my first salary and there was no money left. We ate them in one day.

There was famine in 1946. The draught ruined the crops. Each organization was given a plot of land and seed grains to grow their own crops. Employees went to fields to seed potatoes and corns. I picked river oysters on the Dnestr that we cooked. They didn’t taste well, but at least they satisfied our need in proteins. We somehow survived through this year, and in 1947 the card system was cancelled and there were many food products including an assortment of bread in stores. Besides working in the shop, my friends and I worked on the Dnestr. The bridge across the river was ruined. There was a ferry, but it commuted rarely. My friends and I took people across the river in boats. Many people from Mogilyov-Podolskiy had jobs in Ataki or vice versa. The border existed no longer. We came to the Dnestr after worked and took 8-10 people in one trip across the river. 8-Life was hard. We didn’t have any clothes or shoes, but many people lived like this at that time and we didn’t feel disturbed about it.

In 1948 we heard that Israel was established officially and acknowledged by all countries in the world. We were happy to know that we had our own country. I had a dream to go Israel and take part in the construction, but this was no more than dreaming since I was the only breadwinner in the family and could not leave my mother and brother behind.

In 1949 I was appointed a crew leader. I passed the qualification commission and received a crew of four people. I was awarded the highest category of qualification and got a raise. I found it interested to restore old clocks, even those that older masters refused to restore.

I had many friends: my former classmates and my colleagues. We went to a gym together and in summer spent time on the Dnestr. I also met my future wife Riva Gershberg in this company of young people. Riva was the same age with me and came from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Her mother Golda Gershberg, nee Weinstein, was also born in Mogilyov-Podolskiy in 1891. I didn’t know Riva’s father, whose name was Shloime Gershberg. He was born in 1891. Riva’s mother owned a small food store before the revolution. After the revolution the state took away her store and she learned to saw. This is what she did for a living. There were four children in the family. Riva was the youngest. She had two older brothers Gersh and Moisey, born in 1920 and1921, and sister Anna, born in 1926. Riva’s father fell severely ill, when she was small. He was paralyzed. Riva’s mother had to raise four children and look after her paralyzed husband. Before the war Riva’s brothers were recruited to the army, and Riva and her sister and mother stayed in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. They were kept in the ghetto until 1942, when Riva’s parents and Riva were taken to the Pechora concentration camp, and Riva’s older sister Anna was taken to a German labor camp in Vinnitsa region. Riva’s father died in Pechora in 1942. Riva and her mother managed to escape from Pechora and return home. They stayed in the ghetto in Mogilyov-Podolskiy till the end of the war. Riva’s sister also managed to escape from the concentration camp. The prisoners of this camp worked at the construction of a road in Vinnitsa region. They died from hunger and diseases and were replaced with others. Anna was a pretty girl, and Ukrainian policemen helped her to escape. After the war Anna married a Jewish man from Vinnitsa and moved to her husband. Her family name was Nudrina. Riva’s brothers perished at the front: Gersh – in 1944, Moisey – in January 1945, shortly before the war.

Upon liberation of the town Riva went to work as a lab assistant at the buttery. She also studied in an evening school. The school was far from her house. I met Riva near her school after classes and accompanied her home. I met Riva’s family and they liked me. In 1949 we got married. Riva’s mother was an atheist while my mother became religious during the war. My mother insisted that Riva and I had a traditional Jewish wedding. The synagogue did not operate after the war, but there was secret prayer house. The rabbi lived across the street from our house. He often came by asking me to fix household things for him. He was a very nice and intelligent man and we often had interesting discussions. Riva and I had a civil ceremony in the district registry office, but lived at our homes for a whole month before the Jewish wedding.. I made my wife a wedding ring from a silver spoon. We had a chuppah installed in the yard. My mother invited the rabbi to conduct the wedding ceremony. After the wedding Riva moved in with us.

I remember only one occurrence related to the struggle against cosmopolitism [23] that started in the USSR in 1948. I liked Ilia Erenburg [24], a writer. He wrote a book “War” after the war. Since he lived in France for a long time he described what was happening in Paris. He was accused of cosmopolitism and declared guilty for describing events in Paris rather than what was happening in the USSR. There was a meeting of the Union of writers where many of his colleagues made accusing speeches about the book and the author. Erenburg asked the floor at the end of the meeting. He was allowed to take the floor and said he wanted to read a reference to his books written by one of his readers. They said they didn’t want to hear any references since Soviet writers had to educate their readers, but not vice versa. However, Erenburg read the letter: “I read your book, when I was on vacation. This is a very good book and I will read it again if I have time”. And signature: “Iosif Stalin”. And the meeting ended at that. There may have been innocent people among those who suffered at this period, but I don’t agree that all of them were innocent. One can say whatever nowadays, but I do not believe that all “cosmopolites” were innocent.

In 1951 I was recruited to the army. I passed the military commission in the military registry office and was sent to an Air Force unit as a gunman. I went to a military school in Poltava [250 km from Kiev]. However, they had already completed the department of gunmen and I was not admitted. I was sent to the school for motor mechanics in Poltava, but later the school moved to Mirgorod [about 300 km from Kiev]. I joined Komsomol at school. I finished the school with honors in 1952. I learned the mechanic part of planes promptly and was authorized to prepare a group of 10 backward cadets to the exams in aerodynamics and operation of planes. I spent a lot of time with these cadets and they passed their exams well. I was promoted to a sergeant and had the right to choose the location of my further military service. I requested Poltava. For excellent finishing school and support of my fellow students I was allowed a leave. I spent it with my wife at home, of course. She was pregnant and the baby was due soon. On 11 January 1952 I got news from home that I had a son and on 13 January I took my military oath. We named our son Igor. My wife quit her evening school. I insisted that she did. 9 forms at school are sufficient for a housewife, and I didn’t want my wife to ever go to work. I believed I was capable of providing for the family, and a wife is to be a good housewife, mother and a family guardian.

There were not sufficient air planes in Poltava, and I worked as a part-time motor mechanic for some time. Later they received new planes and I was made responsible for technical maintenance of one plane. I have the very best memories of my 4-year service in the army.

I was the only Jew in the squadron. I only faced anti-Semitism twice. The first time was in the train on the way from Poltava to Mirgorod after finishing the motor mechanic school. We were traveling in freight train roofless railcars. The orderly replaced each other every two hours. When it was my turn, I saw that my predecessor had not cleaned the railcar. I told him that I would only start my shift after he cleaned the railcar and he replied: ‘You, zhydovskaya morda! [mug rude], can sweep the floor yourself’. I went crazy, grabbed him and dragged him to the door. I felt like throwing him off the train, when my fellow comrades interfered and pulled me away from him. When the train stopped, our company commanding officer asked what it was all about and I told him. My fellow comrades confirmed that I was telling the truth. This guy was taken away from us. When we arrived at Poltava, he was put in a guardhouse and later taken to another military unit.

Another incident happened during my service in Poltava. I was assigned to an airplane to support its maintenance. There is also a board engineer, and the one, who worked with me, happened to be an anti-Semite. He kept picking on me without reason, and it upset me, until finally something happened that was the last drop. When we were to step onto the wing of the plane, we had to put on valenki [warm battered sheep wool felt boots] boots to prevent the surface from scratching. This was late summer, and it was frosty. The plane was covered with a tarpaulin tent that froze to the plane at night. The board engineer ordered me to get on the plane and hit the tent with a rubber hose to break the ice. We broke the ice, but there were pieces of it left and I said I would not remove the tent since the crystals of ice might turn the surface of the wing into a grater. He commented: “You, zhydy, don’t want to do anything, and you are great in finding reasons for doing nothing’. This drove me mad. I grabbed the hose and ran after him. He ran away. The guys from our crew captured me: ‘What are you doing!” I was screaming that I would kill this beast. They took me to the barrack, and the rumor about this spread in the whole squadron. The board engineer reported to the commandment that I threatened him with physical violence, and he was an officer. This was a direct violation of the statute. In the evening Colonel Kobkin, commander of the squadron, a tall and handsome man, 1 class pilot called me to his office. I told him about what happened and about the previous fault-findings. I asked him to not send me to work with this engineer threatening to kill him. I said, even in fear of prison or death sentence I would kill him. He must not live and he had no right to live after what we had to endure during the war. I was kept in the ghetto 3.5 years and heard the word ‘zhyd’ from fascists, but I did not want to hear this from a Soviet anti-Semite officer! Kobkin listened to me and ordered me to stay in the barrack. Few days later I was notified that as a punishment I was transferred to another air field in Melitopol [about 350 km east of Kiev]. My offender was ordered to resign, though I was just a sergeant and he was a lieutenant. So one had to fight against anti-Semitism to find justice rather than keeping silent and hanging one’s head to it.

In January 1953 the ‘doctors’ plot’ [25] began. I was serving in Melitopol. We had political classes each week where they read us articles about ‘murderers in white robes’ and readers’ letters. I believed this was true and so did many others, I guess. We used to believe newspapers, particularly, such serious things. After Stalin’s death and Beria’s [26] denunciation we were told that everything that had been said about these doctors was wrong. They were rehabilitated [27], though some of them - posthumously. After Stalin’s death and Beria’s arrest the party organizer of one squadron said at a meeting that he was indignant at how mean Beria was starting this ‘doctors’ case’ since we all thought then: ‘here what Jews can do!’ I stood up and said: ‘You thought so and we didn’t. Even if these Jewish doctors were murderers, what does it have to do with all Jews? General Vlasov gave up 2 armies to Germans, but this is no ground for us to think that all Russians are traitors. Maybe these Jewish people are criminals, but because few people are criminals you cannot believe the whole nation to be such’. The party organizer reported this case to the commandment. There was a Komsomol meeting where they discussed what I said. I repeated what I said and the political officer of the regiment supported me. The party organizer was transferred to another military unit.

When Stalin died, there was no indifferent person in the whole regiment. This was a common grief and everybody cried. We loved Stalin dearly and believed him to be the greatest of men and I still believe the same. The arrests that happened were justified. I don’t know – perhaps, there were innocent people among them< I wouldn’t say there weren’t, but on the whole, these arrests were justified and necessary. We could hardly imagine our life without Stalin. All leaders of our country after Stalin looked miserable. After the 20th Party Congress [28], when Nikita Khrushchev [29] denounced the cult of Stalin, many people changed their attitude to Stalin, but not me.

I got another leave in 1954. My son was 2 years old. I spent a month with my wife and son and was happy. The last year of my service was in Germany, at an Air Force aerodrome in a little town near the Eastern Berlin. I was an electric mechanic there. A year later I demobilized and returned home on 12 November 1955. On 7 December I went to work at the food industry equipment plant in Mogilyov-Podolskiy and worked there 46 years. I started as a laborer, then I worked as a tinsmith and a mechanic. I joined the party in 1958. I also passed exams for the 6th form of school and went to the 7th form. I always liked to study and had all excellent marks at school, though I was always pressed for time. After finishing school I wanted to go on studying. In 1960 the plant sent me to study in Moscow extramural all-Union machine tool College. My wife was pregnant. My younger son Mikhail was born in 1961. My wife and I were atheists and did not observe any Jewish traditions, including circumcision.

My wife and sons moved into my wife mother’s house near the railway station. My younger brother lived with my mother while my mother-in-law suffered from loneliness. There were hardly any comforts, but we were young and healthy and took it easy.

I passed my entrance exams to the College and entered the machine tool manufacture faculty. I also worked as a tool mechanic at the plant and studied by correspondence doing written tests during a year and then I had exams in June. I stayed 40 days in Moscow, doing practical work and taking exams and credits. The plant covered a part of my expenses. My younger brother David also entered this college with me after finishing 10 forms of school. On 13 April 1964 my brother and I obtained diplomas of production technicians of instrument manufacture. I was promoted to the shop production engineer and soon afterward I became a shop foreman. In 1969 I was appointed tool shop superintendent. I was always interested in design. Few years later I went to work as a design engineer in the design office of the plant.

My brother went to work as a dispatcher at this same plant. He was doing well at work. In 1965 my brother married Anna Narolskaya, a Ukrainian girl from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. They had a secular wedding. My brother went to work at the wine factory in Bronnitsa village near the town. In 1969 our mother died. At her request we buried her according to Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My mother’s grave is near grandmother Surah and my mother sister Rosa’s graves – 3 graves within one fence. My brother recited the Kaddish over our mother’s grave. He learned the words by heart since he didn’t know Hebrew. That same year my brother’s first baby was born. He was named Nathan, after our mother – the first letters of their names are the same. My brother’s daughter Zhanna was born in 1972. During perestroika [30], when an anti-alcoholic campaign began, many vines were destroyed and wineries closed. My brother’s factory was closed. My brother went to work as a production engineer in the assembly shop at the plant. In the late 1980s my brother and his family emigrated to Israel. They live in Ashdod. David and his wife Anna are pensioners. David’s son Nathan perished in the Israel army in 1992. Zhanna is married. She and her husband work. Zhanna has two children. My brother became religious after our mother died. He learned Ivrit, read the Torah, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut and continued this in Israel. We correspond, but my rather hardly writes anything about their life and his family. We rather have a theoretical correspondence: I stand to my atheist views and my brother defends his religious views.

My sons were raised like all Soviet children. They became young Octobrists [31], pioneers and then joined Komsomol at school. We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays, but we celebrated Soviet holidays at home and at work. We had guests at home. On 1 May and 7 November my wife and sons and I went to parades with other employees of the plant. On Victory Day [32], 9 May, we went to the meeting with veterans of the war on bank of the Dnestr, near the tank that was the first to enter Mogilyov-Podolskiy on 19 March 1944. We also celebrated New Year and family birthdays.

We usually spent family vacations at the seashore in the south. We sometimes bought tours or just rented rooms there. Sometimes my wife and I and later our sons joined us to go to Bakhmutovo village where my father was buried. We installed a gravestone on his grave. The villagers take care of the graves – they are good people. They keep the area in order and plant flowers.

My sons studied in a Russian general education school. After finishing school my older son Igor was recruited to the army. He served in the communication forces in Subcarpathia. We visited him on the day, when he took his military oath. Occasionally I stayed few days with him. After demobilization Igor returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. He went to work at the plant as a turner apprentice and later became a turner. My younger son wanted to continue his studies. We knew that he would have problems with entering a college in Ukraine. There was still strong anti-Semitism and it was hard for Jews to enter higher educational institutions. The situation was better in Russia. I went on business to a plant in Voronezh back in 1970. I liked the town and the people, and when it was time for Mikhail to take a decision, I said we would go to Voronezh. Mikhail passed exams to the Voronezh Polytechnic university and was admitted to the Engineering Mechanic Faculty. There were no vacant beds in the hostel and we rented a room for my son. My wife and I visited him in Voronezh and so did his older brother. My wife and I also spent vacations in Voronezh. My older son met his future wife in Voronezh. Yevgenia, nee Minkin, was born in Voronezh in 1948. She was a little older than my son. She worked as an accountant in a construction department. They got married and my son moved to Voronezh. In 1982 their son Pavel was born, and in 1985 – daughter Svetlana. My son worked at the Voronezh mechanic plant. Now they live in Haifa in Israel. They had to move to Israel. Their son Pavel didn’t have appropriate attention from his parents. They were busy at work and did not watch how he was doing at school. I believe that parental control is necessary. After finishing school my grandson was going to enter a college to avoid the mandatory military service. At that time Russia was in the state of war with Chechnia. There are many colleges in Voronezh and Pavel would have managed had he proper knowledge, but Pavel failed at the entrance exams. This meant that he was to go to Chechnia, and there was little chance that he would survive, particularly that he was a Jew. Chechen people are Muslims. Then Pavel heard that in Moscow they were generating lists of Jewish young people, who wanted to study in Israel after finishing school. He passed the interview successfully and went to Israel. My son and his family decided to go with him. I didn’t approve of their departure, but this was their decision. They live in Haifa. My son works at a factory, but his wife cannot find a job. Pavel served in the army. He is going to enter the university of Tel Aviv. Svetlana is finishing school and will go to the army. She will have time to decide what she wants to do in life.

My younger son returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy after finishing his studies. He went to work at the design office of our plant. My son is a very talented engineer. In 1986 Mikhail married Lilia Weinstock, a local Jewish girl. They had a secular wedding. My son and his wife decided to live separately from us. In 1988 their older daughter Tatiana was born and in 1992 – their younger daughter Nathalia. Lilia is a housewife. Mikhail works at the plant. Mikhail has been fond of poetry since childhood and composed poems. He recently had a book of his poems published and the book had positive references from critics. We often visit Mikhail and his family, and our granddaughters often come by. They play the violin. Tatiana finished a music school and took part in contests of violinists. This year she is finishing school, and will go to a music vocational school. Our younger daughter studies in a music and general education schools. She goes on tours with our town ensemble of violinists.

When Jews began to move to Israel in the 1970s, I didn’t approve of this. I don’t approve of it now either. Some time ago I lectured on the international situation at the plant. I was a member of the town party committee and this was my chore. I also prepared a lecture about Israel. The party organizer gave me literature that was not available in common libraries to prepare this lecture. From there I learned about Israel: this country is unable to take care of employment of its population, provide free education and medical care. When people have to pay for everything – such country cannot ad must not exist, it cannot develop. This is my personal point of view and it may be wrong, but my wife and I never even discussed emigration.

When Mikhail Gorbachev [33] initiated perestroika in the USSR, I was on his side at first. I liked it, when he said it was time to start telling people the truth. It’s true, there have been too many lies, and the lower party staff was the source of these lies. I often spoke against lies. However, later, when I saw what direction this perestroika took, I understood that all these promises were just soap bubbles and that Gorbachev was an carpet bagger. However, I still kept hopping of some good to come, but later I gave up hopes. They say, perestroika gave us freedom of speech and press. This is not true. We had freedom of speech in the USSR before perestroika. Everything is based on interpretations. My grandson failed to enter a college in Voronezh, because of his Jewish identity. Th8is is what his father thinks, but I think that he didn’t have sufficient knowledge. And I am right. And I believe that the final step of perestroika – the breakup of the USSR was a crime, and this is what I think it to be. The USSR was a big and powerful country and today we have a number of smaller states that nobody in the world believes to be states. Only their presidents, who want to rule them need them, but nobody else. Nobody benefited from the breakup of the Union and nobody will. A state must be big, strong and rich and we had such state, but not any more. I believe this throws us decades back. In the USSR I, a son of a shoemaker, had the right for education and managed to implement it. And my children got a higher education, while now many talented children have no such opportunity since their parents cannot afford to pay for their children’s education. This is not true that life was bad in the USSR. This whole propaganda yelling about the totalitarianism, fears of this time and arrests – I think it’s a lie. They were minor and they were historically justified, but when the USSR collapsed, we lost it all.

They say the Jewish life has revived in the independent Ukraine. This is not true. Yes, a religious life has revived, but I don’t know about the Jewish life. Yes, there are performances in Yiddish in theaters and there are newspapers in Yiddish, but who needs them? There are hardly any people, who can read in Yiddish, but cannot in Russian. The former USSR also published works by Jewish classics. Of course, there is a Jewish community now and I must admit people need it. The community provides assistance to old and ill people: they deliver food products and meals and fuel. Community members visit lonely and ill people asking them what they need and providing assistance. This is a very good and necessary cause.

As for religion, I believe religion must be strictly restricted in the country. Religion works for the good of people to some extent, but then religious officials, clergymen of all religions want to gain power at any cost makes religion unacceptable for me. Though I am an atheist, I cannot state that there is no God. It’s not that I can prove that there is no God. I recently read about a flower. Its pistils and stamens are so deep inside that only one insect with a long proboscis can pollinate it. They cannot exist without one another. This could not have developed in the course of evolution. This flower and insect must have appeared at the same time. One can feel the doing of some force, intellect. This speaks in favor of the God, but I would never believe that the God demanded glorifying Him all around. Such significant being needs not this petty glorification. The religion itself teaches good things and I am loyal to religion as long as they don’t use it as means for reaching a goal. However, I have a hostile attitude to any clergymen of any religion, with no exceptions. I respect deeply religious people, who try to live as God tells them – they are honest people, but I do not accept professional clergymen. One must not earn his butter on ideas. Ideas must rule a man and they must propagate them, but not for money, but for their convictions.

Glossary:

[1] Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

[2] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

[3] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

[4] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[5] Struggle against religion: The 1930s was a time of anti-religion struggle in the USSR. In those years it was not safe to go to synagogue or to church. Places of worship, statues of saints, etc. were removed; rabbis, Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests disappeared behind KGB walls.

[6] Bessarabia: Historical area between the Prut and Dnestr rivers, in the southern part of Odessa region. Bessarabia was part of Russia until the Revolution of 1917. In 1918 it declared itself an independent republic, and later it united with Romania. The Treaty of Paris (1920) recognized the union but the Soviet Union never accepted this. In 1940 Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the USSR. The two provinces had almost 4 million inhabitants, mostly Romanians. Although Romania reoccupied part of the territory during World War II the Romanian peace treaty of 1947 confirmed their belonging to the Soviet Union. Today it is part of Moldavia.

[7] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 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.

[8] Petliura, Simon (1879-1926): Ukrainian politician, member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Working Party, one of the leaders of Centralnaya Rada (Central Council), the national government of Ukraine (1917-1918). Military units under his command killed Jews during the Civil War in Ukraine. In the Soviet-Polish war he was on the side of Poland; in 1920 he emigrated. He was killed in Paris by the Jewish nationalist Schwarzbard in revenge for the pogroms against Jews in Ukraine.

[9] Gangs: During the Russian Civil War there were all kinds of gangs in the Ukraine. Their members came from all the classes of former Russia, but most of them were peasants. Their leaders used political slogans to dress their criminal acts. These gangs were anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

[11] Russian stove: Big stone stove stoked with wood. They were usually built in a corner of the kitchen and served to heat the house and cook food. It had a bench that made a comfortable bed for children and adults in wintertime.

[12] October Revolution Day: October 25 (according to the old calendar), 1917 went down in history as victory day for the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. This day is the most significant date in the history of the USSR. Today the anniversary is celebrated as ‘Day of Accord and Reconciliation’ on November 7.

[13] Soviet Army Day: The Russian imperial army and navy disintegrated after the outbreak of the Revolution of 1917, so the Council of the People's Commissars created the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army on a voluntary basis. The first units distinguished themselves against the Germans on February 23, 1918. This day became the ‘Day of the Soviet Army’ and is nowadays celebrated as ‘Army Day’.

[14] Likbez: ‘Likbez’ is derived from the Russian term for ‘eradication of illiteracy’. The program, in the framework of which courses were organized for illiterate adults to learn how to read and write, was launched in the 1920s. The students had classes in the evening several times a week for a year.

[15] Voroshylov, Kliment Yefremovich (1881-1969): Soviet military leader and public official. He was an active revolutionary before the Revolution of 1917 and an outstanding Red Army commander in the Russian Civil War. As commissar for military and naval affairs, later defense, Voroshilov helped reorganize the Red Army. He was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1926 and a member of the Supreme Soviet from 1937. He was dropped from the Central Committee in 1961 but reelected to it in 1966.

[16] Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public ‘show trials’. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

[17] Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.

[18] Transnistria: Area situated between the Bug and Dniester rivers and the Black Sea. The term is derived from the Romanian name for the Dniester (Nistru) and was coined after the occupation of the area by German and Romanian troops in World War II. After its occupation Transnistria became a place for deported Romanian Jews. Systematic deportations began in September 1941. In the course of the next two months, all surviving Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina and a small part of the Jewish population of Old Romania were dispatched across the Dniester. This first wave of deportations reached almost 120,000 by mid-November 1941 when it was halted by Ion Antonescu, the Romanian dictator, upon intervention of the Council of Romanian Jewish Communities. Deportations resumed at the beginning of the summer of 1942, affecting close to 5,000 Jews. A third series of deportations from Old Romania took place in July 1942, affecting Jews who had evaded forced labor decrees, as well as their families, communist sympathizers and Bessarabian Jews who had been in Old Romania and Transylvania during the Soviet occupation. The most feared Transnistrian camps were Vapniarka, Ribnita, Berezovka, Tulcin and Iampol. Most of the Jews deported to camps in Transnistria died between 1941-1943 because of horrible living conditions, diseases and lack of food.

[19] Vlasov military: Members of the voluntary military formations of Russian former prisoners of war that fought on the German side during World War II. They were led by the former Soviet general, A. Vlasov, hence their name.

[20] Judenrat: Jewish councils appointed by German occupying authorities to carry out Nazi orders in the Jewish communities of occupied Europe. After the establishment of the ghettos they were responsible for everything that happened within them. They controlled all institutions operating in the ghettos, the police, the employment agency, food supplies, housing, health, social work, education, religion, etc. Germans also made them responsible for selecting people for the work camps, and, in the end, choosing those to be sent to camps that were in reality death camps. It is hard to judge their actions due to the abnormal circumstances. Some believe they betrayed Jews by obeying orders, and others think they were trying to gain time and save as many people as possible.

[21] NKVD: People’s Committee of Internal Affairs; it took over from the GPU, the state security agency, in 1934.

[23] Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’, i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. ‘Cosmopolitans’ writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American ‘imperialism’. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin’s death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’.

[24] Erenburg, Ilya Grigorievich (1891-1967): Famous Russian Jewish novelist, poet and journalist who spent his early years in France. His first important novel, The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurento (1922) is a satire on modern European civilization. His other novels include The Thaw (1955), a forthright piece about Stalin’s régime which gave its name to the period of relaxation of censorship after Stalin’s death.

[25] Doctors’ Plot: The Doctors’ Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the Party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin’s reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership.

[26] Beriya, L. P. (1899-1953): Communist politician, one of the main organizers of the mass arrests and political persecution between the 1930s and the early 1950s. Minister of Internal Affairs, 1938-1953. In 1953 he was expelled from the Communist Party and sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of the USSR.

[27] Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union: Many people who had been arrested, disappeared or killed during the Stalinist era were rehabilitated after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, where Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin’s leadership. It was only after the official rehabilitation that people learnt for the first time what had happened to their relatives as information on arrested people had not been disclosed before.

[28] Twentieth Party Congress: At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin’s leadership.

[29] Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

[30] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

[31] Young Octobrist: In Russian Oktyabrenok, or ‘pre-pioneer’, designates Soviet children of seven years or over preparing for entry into the pioneer organization.

[32] Victory Day in Russia (9th May): National holiday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II and honor the Soviets who died in the war.

[33] Gorbachev, Mikhail (1931- ): Soviet political leader. Gorbachev joined the Communist Party in 1952 and gradually moved up in the party hierarchy. In 1970 he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, where he remained until 1990. In 1980 he joined the politburo, and in 1985 he was appointed general secretary of the party. In 1986 he embarked on a comprehensive program of political, economic, and social liberalization under the slogans of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The government released political prisoners, allowed increased emigration, attacked corruption, and encouraged the critical reexamination of Soviet history. The Congress of People’s Deputies, founded in 1989, voted to end the Communist Party’s control over the government and elected Gorbachev executive president. Gorbachev dissolved the Communist Party and granted the Baltic states independence. Following the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1991, he resigned as president. Since 1992, Gorbachev has headed international organizations.

Israel Shlifer
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: June 2003

Israel Shlifer is a gray-haired skilful man with keen eyes. He lives alone in a two-room apartment in the very center of Kiev. He has many books placed in bookcases and on bookshelves; most of them are Russian and Soviet classics. There are two portraits on the wall: Israel’s mother and wife. He also has a collection of pictures by Feldman, a Russian watercolor painter. Israel talks with me in a friendly way. He tells me that he is not going to tell about his own life since he had a sensitive governmental position related to weapon-development and he has signed a non-disclosure document. As for his personal life, he said, it is not meant to be known by outsiders. However, he thinks, it is his duty to speak about his relatives and tell the story of a Jewish family.

My parents came from the town of Rzhishchev on the Dnieper in 70 km from Kiev. It’s a picturesque town on the Dnieper where the Legvich River flows into it. The population of Rzhishchev at the beginning of XX century was about 20 thousand people and over 12 thousand of them were Jews. Most of Jewish families resided in the central part of the town. There was a church in the central square and there was a market place open on weekends. Farmers from neighboring villages sold their products: meat, dairies, vegetables, potatoes and honey. Jews had small shops selling tools, hardware and haberdashery. Jews also had professions of tailors, shoemakers, joiners and glasscutters. There was a synagogue in the town. It was a one-storied wooden building located at the spot where the Legvich flows into the Dnieper. In general Rzhishchev was no different from dozens other Jewish towns within the Pale of Settlement [1] in the south of Russia. Nicknames were so common that often people forgot each other’s names given at birth. I liked one man’s nickname. He was Yania Papadoma. When he was returning home after his service in the tsarist army he asked some people that he met on his way, ‘Papa doma?’ (Russian: ‘Is Father at home?’) in Russian since he forgot his Yiddish a little. From then on he was called Yania Papadoma and his children and grandchildren adopted this nickname as their last name. There was Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and German population in Rzhishchev. Germans lived in their colony and there was even an enterprise with only German employees in the town.

My father’s parents Idel and Basia Shlifer lived in the lower town that was a Jewish district. They were born in Rzhishchev in 1870s. I knew grandfather Idel when he lived in Kiev and my grandmother died long before I was born. My father and our relatives told me that grandfather Idel came from a Hasidic [2] family. One of his cousins was a rabbi of the Moscow synagogue. My grandfather was deeply religious and could interpret the Torah and the Talmud. He spent his days at the synagogue. He had a big thick beard and payes. He wore a kippah or a big black hat when it was cold. My grandmother was as religious as my grandfather. She prayed at home, went to synagogue and always wore kerchiefs: she had different kerchiefs for cold and warmer days, for wearing at home or going out. Grandmother Basia was a housewife. My grandparents had six children. My father told me that his family was poor. They lived on what the community provided. Of course, they observed Jewish traditions: followed kashrut and celebrated Saturday and Jewish holidays. Grandfather Idel tried to raise his children religious, but the Revolution of 1917 [3] changed their life. Young Jewish people from poor families got fond of communist ideas. They wanted to leave smaller towns for bigger ones. They became communists and apologists of the new communist society.

My father was the only son in the family. His oldest sister, whose name I don’t know, died in infancy. My father had four younger sisters: Esther, born in 1900, Bertha, born in 1902, Nechama, born in 1904, and Bluma, born in 1906. All girls were taught Jewish traditions and holidays and were raised to become housewives and housekeepers. In 1918 grandmother Basia died. All children accepted the Soviet power. They went to a Russian school and gave up religion as vestige of the past. In early 1920s my father’s sisters joined Komsomol [4]. Bertha, Nechama and Esther went to work at a communist construction site in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan in Central Asia [about 3200 km from Kiev]. They lived their life there. Esther became a doctor. She got married and her children Yuliy and Sophia got a higher education. Yuliy lives in St. Petersburg and Sophia and her family moved to Israel in 1990. Bertha, affectionately called Busia at home, became an economist. Her husband Medzievich, a Jewish man, was a doctor and was at the front during the Great Patriotic War [5]. He was wounded and stayed in a frontline hospital. Their older daughter Sarra lives in Israel, Mila lives in Samarkand and their son Lyova lives in Tashkent. They also got higher education. My father’s sister Nechama was single. Esther and Bertha died in Tashkent in 1970s and Nechama died in Tashkent in 1980s. My father’s sister Bluma stayed in Rzhishchev. She became an economist in a book agency in Kiev. She died in the middle of 1980s. Her son Yuri Rentovich lives in Germany.

After my grandmother died my grandfather stayed in Rzhishchev for few years. When in the middle of 1920s struggle against religion [6] began and the synagogue in Rzhishchev was closed he moved to Kiev where he remarried and had two children: daughter Raya and son David. I had no contacts with them. My acquaintances that knew them told me that Raya lives in Germany and David lives in Tashkent. My grandfather’s family in Kiev was poor. Grandfather’s older children and my father supported them. Grandfather Idel died in 1934.

My father Iosif Shlifer was born in 1899. He received a religious education. He finished cheder and a Jewish primary school in Rzhishchev. Then he finished a Realschule [7] in Pereiaslav Khmelnitski. In early 1920s my father moved to Kiev and worked in the system of public education. He also joined the Bund [8]. It merged with the Communist Party in 1920s. My father was a devoted communist for the rest of his life. I don’t know how my parents met. I think they met through matchmakers that was a customary way in Jewish families. They got married in 1921.

My mother Reizl Polisskaya, Rosa, as she was commonly called, also came from Rzhishchev. Her father Beniamin Polisski was a wealthy man. He owned an agricultural equipment plant that he inherited from my great grandfather Gershl Polisski. The plant was on a hill and there was also my grandfather’s house where I grew up. There were Russian and Ukrainian employees at the plant. My grandfather was born in Rzhishchev in 1870. He used to joke that he was born in the same year with Lenin. My grandfather got a religious and professional education. He was good at engineering and management. I know that my grandfather had many brothers and sisters that also worked at his plant. I don’t know their names. The surname of Polisski was quite known in the area. Children of my relatives became engineers, literature critics and one became professor of cardiology in Kiev.

My grandfather and his family lived in a big brick house. There were four big rooms and a big storehouse where the family kept food stocks. There was a kitchen garden and an orchard near the house. They also kept chicken and ducks. Russian and Ukrainian employees came to take care of the garden and livestock and my grandfather repaired their agricultural equipment at his plant in return for their services. My grandfather got along well with his Russian and Ukrainian employees and customers. They rescued my grandfather’s family when in 1918 gangs [9] of ataman Zeleny [10] made a pogrom in Rzhishchev. A Ukrainian family gave my grandfather and grandmother shelter in their house. Only their son Mutsia, one of their sons, stayed at home. When bandits came to the house he treated them with self made vodka and they got drunk and left the house saying that they did not rob good people.

My mother’s family wasn’t as religious as my father’s parents. However, they observed all Jewish traditions: they followed kashrut. They also celebrated Sabbath, but it was more like tribute to tradition and an opportunity for the family to get together. In summer my grandfather and his sons had to do work on Saturday. Grandfather Beniamin prayed every day with his tallit and tefillin on. Grandmother Chaika was a housewife like all Jewish women. She also managed housemaids and employees in the house.

There were seven children in the family. My mother was the only daughter. My mother’s older brothers were married and lived in their own houses. My grandfather built houses for his sons when they were getting married. All of the sons had Jewish wives. It couldn’t have been otherwise. They had Jewish weddings with a rabbi, chuppah and klezmer musicians. I knew my uncles’ affectionate names, by which they were called in the family. The older one Elia, Ilia Polisski, was born around 1895. The next was Bozia, Chaim Moshka, born in 1897, and then came Lev, born in 1898. They were my mother’s older brothers. They finished cheder like all Jewish boys in the town. My mother’s brothers weren’t religious when I knew them. They were highly skilled craftsmen. They had no problem fixing any piece of equipment and they could work at lathe units and could do joiner work. They worked at my grandfather’s plant until early 1930s when it was liquidated after the NEP [11]. Then they went to work at state owned enterprises. During the Great Patriotic War my mother’s brothers and their families were in evacuation in Tashkent. Lev didn’t have any children. He and his wife died in the middle of 1970s. Ilia and Chaim both had a son with the name Mark. Ilia’s son became a professional in the military. He was at the front during World War II. After the war he was a foreman at a military plant in Kiev. Uncle Ilia lived with his son Mark and his family after the war. Uncle Ilia and uncle Chaim died in Kiev in the middle of 1960s. They buried at the Jewish part of the town cemetery. Mark, uncle Chaim’s son, finished a Polytechnic in Leningrad and worked at the aviation plant in Kiev. He died young of infarction.

My mother’s younger brothers Avraam (affectionately called Mutsia), born in 1902, Boruch (Boris), born in 1904, and Mendel, born in 1907, got higher education. They were at the front during the Great Patriotic War. After the war they lived in Kiev. Avraam was a foreman at the Arsenal Military Plant in Kiev and lived in a nice and big apartment. He died in the middle of the 1980s. His son Arkadi lives in Israel and his daughter Maya – in Germany. Boruch finished the Polytechnic and lived in Kiev with his wife Liya and daughter Sophia. He died a long time ago. Sophia lives in Israel. Uncle Mendel, whose common name [12] was Michael, finished a Construction College and built bridges. He got married before the war, but when his wife heard that he was severely wounded and became handicapped she left him. After the war Uncle Mendel lived with me in a small 16 square meter room that the plant where I was working gave me when I was a young promising scientist. Мendel died in 1982. He was buried near his older brothers’ graves.

My mother was born in 1900. The only daughter, she was everybody’s favorite in the family. She finished a Jewish primary school and a school for girls. She had music lessons at home. She had Karl Bluthner grand piano bought particularly for her to study music. She also had German classes with a teacher that came from the German colony [13]. In 1917 my mother moved to Kiev. She lived in grandfather Beniamin’s apartment in Nizhni Val Street in Podol [14]. Grandfather supported her. I think it was probably there where she met my father.

They got married in Rzhishchev in 1921. Although my father wasn’t religious they had a traditional Jewish wedding with a rabbi and chuppah and everything else that had to be at a Jewish wedding. After the wedding my parents went to Kiev where my father worked at the department of education and studied at the Faculty of Mathematics at the University. They lived in the apartment where my mother lived before she got married.

I was born in Kiev in 1922. It was a hard time shortly after the Civil War [15]: destitution, hunger and destruction. My father worked and studied and came home late at night. My mother and I went to Rzhishchev. I stayed there until the age of 6 and my mother returned to Kiev. She entered the Faculty of Philology at the University and I stayed with my grandfather and grandmother. My parents came to visit us on my birthday and on Soviet holidays when they didn’t have to go to work or study. I enjoyed being with my grandparents. I was their favorite. My grandmother and grandfather and numerous relatives were spoiling me. Even when I banged on my mother’s grand piano with my feet or stole my grandfather’s little boxes [tefillin] that he put on his hand and head to pray they didn’t tell me off. My mother explained to me that there were little scrolls of the Torah in those boxes and that I was not allowed to touch them. [Editor’s note: Not the whole Torah, but two passages from Deuteronomy and two from Exodus, in which Jews are required to put ’these words’ (of the Law) for ’a sign upon thy hand and a frontlet between thine eyes’ are put int he teffilin.] From then on I enjoyed watching my grandfather putting on his beautiful tallit and tefillin, taking his book of prayers and praying rocking to the sides. While doing this he kept watching workers in the yard giving directions to them every now and then. Even then it seemed to me that my grandfather was praying following the rules rather than feeling the need to pray. On Saturday my mother’s family got together to have a festive meal. Her older brothers came with their families. I do not remember my grandmother lighting candles on Friday. Perhaps, I was too young to pay attention to this. The family also celebrated Jewish holidays. The only one I remember was Chanukkah. I remember it since we got money gifts on this holiday. It was a joyful holiday, but I only learned the history of this holiday as well as other Jewish holidays recently. At the age of 6 my parents took me to Kiev where I went to kindergarten since my parents believed that a child had to get used and develop in a collective of other children.

My father finished the University and became a financial officer within the Ministry of Industry. He often traveled on job assignments to other towns and then I went to Rzhishchev since my mother followed my father. My parents traveled to many towns: Dnepropetrovsk, Dneprodzerzhinsk and Kharkov where my father held official posts.

In early 1930s the state nationalized [16] my grandfather’s plant and house. We were happy that they didn’t arrest him. My grandfather Beniamin and grandmother moved to Kiev and settled down in their apartment in Nizhni Val. My parents had their own apartment and when they had to travel to another town they left me with my grandparents. My mother’s younger brothers Avraam, Boris and Mendel lived with them. In sometime my grandfather’s plant and house were burnt down. I don’t know who or why did this. During famine in 1932 [Famine in Ukraine] [17] my uncles, grandmother and grandfather returned to Rzhishchev where they hoped it was easier to survive. They only found ashes of their big house with my mother grand piano’s frame. We moved into one of my uncles’ house. My mother’s brothers and their wives worked hard growing vegetables to feed the family. In winter we found dead people on the porch of our house. They knew how kind our family had always been and hoping to find shelter they fell asleep and died from cold and hunger. My grandmother kept her door open for starving people and shared no matter how little we had. Fortunately, all members of our family survived.

That same year my father got a job assignment to Mariupol and took me with him. From then on I lived with my parents. We often moved from one town to another and I changed schools. My first school in Kiev was Russian, then I went to a Ukrainian school in Rzhishchev and then I lost count of them. We lived in Ukrainian and Russian towns. One of them was Magnitogorsk in Siberia. I enjoyed my studies and liked all subjects.

In 1937 we moved to Kiev for good. My mother and I came first and then my father returned in a year’s time. We lived in my grandfather Beniamin’s apartment. Grandfather returned to Kiev in 1934 after the famine was over. Grandfather sold his apartment in Nizhni Val and bought a smaller one in Spasskaia Street. Grandfather worked in a joiner shop. My grandparents didn’t have much to live on. I liked to go to work with him. I liked it more than going to school. In Kiev my grandmother and grandfather celebrated Jewish holidays. One of them was Pesach. However, my grandfather stopped praying. He didn’t wear a kippah any longer and my grandmother didn’t cover her head. On some big holidays she went to synagogue. Sometimes I went to visit my paternal grandfather Idel with my grandfather Gersh. If we had to wait until grandfather Idel finished his prayer my grandfather Gersh winked at me mocking the excessive, as he saw it, religiosity of Idel. Nevertheless, grandfather Gersh treated Idel with respect and sympathy and often supported him. In early 1941 grandmother Chaia died. All relatives, even my father’s sisters from Tashkent came to her funeral. They all loved and respected my quiet grandmother that dedicated her life to her husband and children. From hospital the coffin was taken to the synagogue in Podol where a rabbi recited prayers. After the funeral Beniamin moved in with us. My mother didn’t want him to live alone. He lived with us until the Great Patriotic War.

I became a pioneer and joined Komsomol at school, but I didn’t feel like taking part in any public activities. I didn’t make friends at school. When my father received an apartment in Saksaganskogo Street I made friends with my neighbors and we were lifetime friends. There were two rooms in the apartment that my father received. There was stucco molding on high ceilings. We had neighbors: an old woman that came from a noble family that owned the house before the Revolution of 1917 and her son. My mother became her friend and often went for a cup of tea with her. My mother had a philological education and taught Russian literature and language at school and they had common subjects to discuss with this woman. I also liked listening to her. She told interesting stories about the past, about artists and poets.

At that time I got fond of poetry. My friends were intelligent boys. I learned a lot from them. At first I felt like a ‘black sheep’ with them since I came from a smaller town and my friends were more knowledgeable than I in many areas, but gradually I caught up with them. I became interested in literature and poetry. We were fond of forbidden poets for the most part. At that time all poets, but Mayakovsky [18], Yesenin [19], Gumilev [20], Mandelshtam [21], – were forbidden. We got copies of poems that we read and learned by heart. Somehow the Komsomol organization of my school got to know that we read forbidden poets. Probably one of us reported to them. My friends were called to the leaders where NKVD [22] representatives were present. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go there. They asked the boys where they got copies, but my friends answered that they just heard these poets and remembered them. The officers probably didn’t believe them, but they left them. One boy’s parents were so scared that they sent their son to Moscow for a whole year. We could understand their fear: this was the period of 1937-39 [Great Terror] [23] - arrests of ‘enemies of the people’ [24] that emerged all of a sudden from nowhere. Nobody in our family suffered during this period, but my father expected arrest every day. I don’t think he understood that Iosif Stalin himself was to blame for this outrage that took away millions of innocent lives.

The majority of my mother's relatives and some of my father’s relatives lived in Kiev. They often visited us. We met on birthdays and wedding anniversaries. We also celebrated Soviet holidays: 1st May and the October Revolution Day [25]. The adults danced to Jewish and Soviet records and sang. We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays at home. Only once a year relatives came to celebrate Pesach with grandfather Beniamin. I didn’t attend the celebrations, and not know, as it was. I preferred my friends’ company.

My friends and I often went to theaters. One of my friends was a son of director of the Theater of the Red Army that was popular before the war. This boy often got free tickets to his father’s theater, Russian or Ukrainian Drama Theaters. Sometimes we had to stand in passageways, but this didn’t matter much to us. We were young and loved theater. We watched Ukrainian and Russian drama performances. We also went to the Jewish theater. Though some of my friends were Russian and we didn’t understand Yiddish we sat beside an old man that interpreted for us. We didn’t give much thought to nationality that actually didn’t matter to us.

In 1939 I finished school with a so-called ‘golden certificate’. There were no medals then and a golden certificate had a golden frame. I was eager to study science – physics- and went for an interview to the Leningrad College of Physics. I had a successful interview, but my mother was against my studying away from home. I obeyed her and submitted my documents to the Kiev Polytechnic College (it was called Industrial College then) to the Faculty of Radio Physics. I was admitted and studied two years in this College. My friends and I knew that fascism came to power in Europe. We saw Professor Mamlock [26] a film about Hitler’s view on Jews. Besides, we, radio physics, always listened to foreign channels. We made radios by ourselves. We had more information about the war in Europe than our newspapers published or radio broadcast. ‘The Voice of America’, ‘Svoboda’ [Freedom in Russian] and a number of other western radios broadcast in Russian, but very few could listen to them due to Soviet security agencies that jammed their programs. Only those that had special radios had an opportunity to listen to western radios. Nevertheless, we didn’t have a feeling that the war was near or that Hitler would attack the Soviet Union. Even lecturers of the Military Faculty in our College said that we had to learn to defend our country, but they never mentioned a possibility of war against fascism.

On 22 June 1941 I came to College to take an exam. All students were requested to gather in a big lecture room. We were told that the 43rd Distillery had been ruined by bombing the previous night and that the war began. Then the military registry office mobilized us to deliver the call-ups. The boards with number of buildings and names of streets were removed from houses for some reasons probably to confuse potential German spies. However, we were the ones that were confused. We had to ask pedestrians about numbers of buildings to deliver subpoenas. Some teenagers that were watchful about spies took us to a militia department. Of course, militia found out who we were in an instant.

In early July my parents moved to Kharkov where all managerial offices, including my father’s Ministry, moved. My grandfather and other relatives went to Tashkent [Uzbekistan, about 3200 km from Kiev] to my father’s sisters. My co-students and I were mobilized to Kiev Territorial Army [Fighting battalion] [27]. We excavated anti-tank trenches in the southern direction. For many years there was a lake formed where we excavated trenches. There were continuous air raids and in the middle of August I was wounded in my back with a bomb splinter. I was taken to Kharkov by a sanitary train. I found my father there. I was released from military service due to my wound. My father sent me to Tashkent. I traveled in a sanitary train for slightly wounded. Our trip lasted 10 days. We were taken to a hospital in Tashkent where I stayed another month. Then I stayed with my paternal aunts.

In late September 1941 my parents came to Tashkent too. We were glad to be together, but we were sad that fascists occupied Kiev.

My father went to work as Financial Manager at the Ministry of Light Industry and my mother became a teacher in a Russian school. My father got a good apartment and my grandfather stayed with us. My father received a special food package as a high governmental official.

In some time I went to Polytechnic to continue my studies as a third-year student. This College was formed by Kiev, Tashkent and Leningrad Colleges. By that time my mother’s brothers and their families, my father’s sister Bluma and her son and uncle Mendel that returned from the front as an invalid were living with us. There was too little space and I went to live at the students’ hostel. I received a stipend and did some work to earn additional money. Third-year students worked as electricians at food enterprises. I worked at the confectionery and my friend Tolia worked at a bakery. Girls wrote synopsis of lectures for us and we shared with them what we stole at work. We read poems and went to theaters. I liked the Moscow Jewish Theater that was in evacuation in Tashkent. I watched all performances with the legendary Mikhoels [28] playing main roles. Mikhoels greeted me when he met me in town. He probably remembered me seeing me so often at the theater.

In 1944, few months after Kiev was liberated the Kiev Polytechnic College reevacuated to Kiev. We had a choice between Central Asia, Kiev or Leningrad Colleges. I got an offer to go to Kiev. They promised me work in College. The train trip to Kiev took us almost a month, but the feeling was very different from when we were leaving the city. My parents, grandfather and uncle Mendel stayed in Tashkent. My father didn’t want to leave his high post. Kiev was in ruins. Our house was ruined, too. I stayed at a student hostel. In some time I found some of my friends. We were together again. I finished College in 1945. I was a promising employee and got an offer to write thesis in College, but there was no chance for me to get an apartment working in college. Therefore, I went to work at the military instrument manufacture plant called Communist where I became head of laboratory. I also worked part-time in College. The plant gave me a 16 square meter room in a shared apartment [26]. My grandfather Gershl and my uncle Mendel came back from Tashkent and stayed with me. My grandfather was cheerful and optimistic until his last days. He made friends among our neighbors. They were older people. They met and had long discussions on a bench near the house or having a cup of tea at home. Grandfather went to synagogue on Sabbath and Jewish holidays, but he didn’t pray at home. We didn’t follow kashrut. We were glad to have any food at all. I had meals at the canteen at my plant. I bought hot meals to take home to my grandfather and my uncle. My grandfather died in 1952 at the age of 82. We buried him at the town cemetery.

I worked at the Communist Plant several years. I had a sensitive job and often met with high officials. I met several times with the General Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev [30] that became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR in 1953. Those were business meetings, but I liked Khrushchev. I still know no explanation of how I kept my job when in 1949, at the height of state anti-Semitism and during the campaign against cosmopolitans [31] my father was arrested in Tashkent and sentenced under a political article of the law. My mother wrote me that he was charged of espionage for Germany and nonsense like that. I understood that my father was innocent. I knew this was a state policy against Jews, but what could I do? I knew that my management had to know about my father’s arrest, but they showed no sign of this and I pretended nothing happened. My father never told me about what he was accused of. They might have remembered his Bund membership. To tell the truth, they didn’t beat him. They used another thing: they kept him in a single cell for the first year. Then his friends managed to help him and my father was taken to a camp near Tashkent. My father actually performed the duties of chief accountant in the camp. He had a privilege: he was allowed to sleep on the sofa in his office instead of going back to the barrack. Besides, he made reports to the bank management. They spoke to him rather than calling an official chief accountant. My father went to the bank with a guard and my mother was waiting there for him with hot lunch. Then my mother moved to Kiev. My father was released in 1954, a year after Stalin died. He was exculpated from all charges.

I went to work at another plant and then changed my job again. I went to work at the New Problems in Physics Academic Institute. I often went on business trips to other plants, Navy bases and airfields. I worked with people that valued talent and work capabilities. They never asked me about my nationality. They had other things to think about. I’ve never faced anti-Semitism in my life. I heard about the Doctors’ Plot [32] by chance when I was on a business trip in Moscow. I was having lunch in the canteen of our Ministry. A colonel at a nearby table said unfolding a newspaper ‘Now they will finally deal with Jews’. I kept silent, but my companion attacked this colonel and gave him a lecture about morals, equality and fraternity of peoples in the USSR guaranteed by the Constitution. In 1953 Stalin died. On the day of his funeral I was on a short stay in Moscow traveling from a business trip from the Far North. I wore a sheepskin coat and deerskin boots. This outfit saved my friend and me when we got in a jam in Pushkin Square during the funeral. We got under a trolley bus and stayed there. Otherwise we would have been smashed by the crowd. Hundreds of people died there. Stalin’s death wasn’t a tragedy for me. I understood that Stalin was to be blamed for my father’s arrest and for the suffering of millions of people. I also knew that he must have been aware of the recent anti-Semitic campaigns. Denunciation of the cult of Stalin and the speech of Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 at the 20th Party Congress [33] were not big surprises for me. Although I wasn’t a member of the Party, we knew about this secret Khrushchev’s speech that was only to be read in Party organizations, on the first day after Congress from our friends that were communists. It was like new wind blowing in our country. Nevertheless, I still think that Stalin had a strong personality and was an unusual man. It’s a different story where he applied his strength and talent.

In 1954 I went to Moscow to pick up my father. He came to Moscow after he was released and stayed with his distant relative that was a rabbi in a synagogue in Moscow. My father was eager to go to the Mausoleum to see Stalin: imagine this devotion and faith after all he had to go through! Until the end of his days he thought that his arrest was a tragic mistake. My father said he wasn’t going home until he saw Stalin. We had to stand in a long line and my father calmed down after he saw dead Stalin.

In Kiev we lived together for some time and then my father received a two-room apartment. My mother and father moved to that apartment. My father went to work as chief accountant at the weaving mill. His arrest and stay in a single cell change my father dramatically. A cheerful man that he was changed to a withdrawn and despondent man. He began to pray. He didn’t pray in the Jewish manner. I don’t think he had a tallit or knew any prayers. He said his own prayers and prayed to his god that he got to know when he was in his cell. Sometimes he went to synagogue, but he didn’t pray there. He just sat there quietly. In 1960s my father got severely ill. He had lymphogranulomatosis that was incurable. He consulted doctors in Kiev and Moscow, but they offered no cure. My father died in 1970. My mother lived many years longer. She died in 1986. Uncle Mendel that lived with me died in 1982.

I cannot talk about my work. My achievements are highly sensitive. Besides, I shall not boast. In early 1950s I defended my candidate dissertation [doctorate]. I was awarded the title of doctor for my scientific achievements. I dedicated my life to my work, although I don’t think I am a scientist, rather just an engineer. I have my achievements and saw the results of my work applied. I have many patents for development that were implemented in industries.

I was a bachelor for many years. Of course, I wasn’t ascetic, but I got married at the age of 45. I married my friend’s sister Alla Bialik, a Jew. Alla is much younger than me. She was born in 1937. Her parents came from Rzhishchev. They were intelligent people. They didn’t observe any Jewish traditions. Alla’s father Wolf Bialik was a distant relative of Chaim Nachman Bialik [34], one of the greatest Jewish poets. There were literary and theatrical critics and doctors in Alla’s family. During the Great Patriotic War Alla and her parents were in evacuation somewhere in the Ural. After the war they returned to Kiev where she finished secondary school and the Kiev College of Economics. She worked as chemical engineer. We exchanged my small apartment into the one where I live now. We had a good life, although we didn’t have children. We got married at a respected age and we just shared the warmth of our souls. I earned well and we could afford to spend vacations at the best recreation homes in the country. We went to concerts and theaters. We also had a dacha [cottage], but we had to sell it since doctors didn’t allow me any physical strain after an eye surgery. We didn’t have a car since I could use my office car if I had such need. I’ve collected pictures of my favorite German watercolor painter, Feldman. Regretfully, Alla died of cancer in 1992. Now I am alone.

I still do some consulting at the Military Academy and write articles and books. I cannot live without work. For this reason I didn’t emigrate to Israel in or the USA where I have many relatives. Of course, I was interested in Israel as a historical motherland and the nucleus of the Jewish People. In 1960s-70s when Israel was in the state of numerous wars with the Arabs, when just the word ‘Israel’ provoked a mock and hostility of our official policy, I was for Israel like all reasonable people. I watched this country develop and wished that it gained victory. For many years I was not allowed to travel abroad due to my knowledge of state secrets. I did know many developments of weapons. Finally in 1996, when our human resource manager was on vacation, the director of my institute signed my permit to travel abroad. He had known me for many years and was sure that I was not going to share any secrets. I traveled to Israel. I liked it there, but I understood that I could only live in my country where I was born and had lived a long life.

I have a twofold attitude to perestroika [35] that changed the life of the country and its people dramatically. It’s not that I worry about the material part of life. I still work and can earn money and I receive a sufficient scientific pension, but I feel sorry for other old people tat have to lead a miserable life after they had worked for 40 years or more. I am glad that perestroika opened up opportunities for the development of national cultures, including the Jewish one, the so-called minority culture. I am also glad about democratic principles coming into our life and that the iron curtain [36] collapsed and people have got an opportunity to see the world. However, I still feel sorry for the downfall of the Soviet Union. I loved the integral country. I have many friends all over the country [the former Soviet Union]. Now there are borders and customs between us. I cannot jump on a train to go to the Baltic Republics. I need a visa and a foreign passport… I cannot accept this.

Now that independent Ukraine gave a real opportunity for the development of the Jewish cultural life I began to participate in it. I am an active member of Bnai Brith [37] I take every effort to make this organization a real hearth of Jewish culture. I celebrate Jewish holidays, go to Seder at the synagogue and read Jewish newspapers. Besides, I collect Jewish folk music and study Jewish traditions from tapes. This is all very interesting, but I’ve never concentrated on purely national attitudes. I have many Russian and Ukrainian friends. They are active in science and culture. I believe I am a citizen of the Universe and I value every human being regardless of their national origin.

GLOSSARY:

[1] Jewish Pale of Settlement: Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population (apart from certain privileged families) was only allowed to live in these areas.

[2] Hasid: The follower of the Hasidic movement, a Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century that reacted against Talmudic learning and maintained that God’s presence was in all of one’s surroundings and that one should serve God in one’s every deed and word. The movement provided spiritual hope and uplifted the common people. There were large branches of Hasidic movements and schools throughout Eastern Europe before World War II, each following the teachings of famous scholars and thinkers. Most had their own customs, rituals and life styles. Today there are substantial Hasidic communities in New York, London, Israel and Antwerp.

[3] Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during WWI, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

[4] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

[5] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[6] Struggle against religion: The 1930s was a time of anti-religion struggle in the USSR. In those years it was not safe to go to synagogue or to church. Places of worship, statues of saints, etc. were removed; rabbis, Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests disappeared behind KGB walls.
[7] Realschule: Secondary school for boys in Russia before the revolution of 1917. Students studied mathematics, physics, natural history, foreign languages and drawing. After finishing this school they could enter higher industrial and agricultural educational institutions.
[8] Bund: The short name of the General Jewish Union of Working People in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, Bund means Union in Yiddish). The Bund was a social democratic organization representing Jewish craftsmen from the Western areas of the Russian Empire. It was founded in Vilnius in 1897. In 1906 it joined the autonomous fraction of the Russian Social Democratic Working Party and took up a Menshevist position. After the Great October Socialist Revolution the organization split: one part was anti-Soviet power, while the other remained in the Bolsheviks’ Russian Communist Party. In 1921 the Bund dissolved itself in the USSR, but continued to exist in other countries.
[9] Gangs: During the Civil War in 1918-1920 there were all kinds of gangs in the Ukraine. Their members came from all the classes of former Russia, but most of them were peasants. Their leaders used political slogans to dress their criminal acts. These gangs were anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic. They killed Jews and burnt their houses, they robbed their houses, raped women and killed children.

[10] Zeleny, one of the atamans (headmen) loosely associated with the Ukrainian nationalist military leader Simon Petlura. His real name was Danilo Trepilo. Zeleny, which means green in Russian, was the nickname he received during the days of the Hetman, since he spent time hiding in the green valleys near his village. This would remain his pseudonym. Green, the color of the fields and forests, became the symbolic color of the peasant uprisings. Zeleny appeared at the same time as Atamans Angel, Sokolovski, and Struk, but he played a much more important role than they did. He had greater organizational skills and more ambition. He surrounded himself with a larger group of rebels and spread himself over a wider territory. Ataman Grigoriev, who began the large uprising in May, strove harder than Zeleny, but his rule did not last long. He was quickly liquidated, while Zeleny’s uprising lasted from the end of March until September 1919. Zeleny was the prototypical representative of the rebel movement from the Ukrainian villages of this period.

[11] NEP: The so-called New Economic Policy of the Soviet authorities was launched by Lenin in 1921. It meant that private business was allowed on a small scale in order to save the country ruined by the October Revolution and the Civil War. They allowed priority development of private capital and entrepreneurship. The NEP was gradually abandoned in the 1920s with the introduction of the planned economy.

[12] Common name: Russified or Russian first names used by Jews in everyday life and adopted in official documents. The Russification of first names was one of the manifestations of the assimilation of Russian Jews at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. In some cases only the spelling and pronunciation of Jewish names was russified (e.g. Isaac instead of Yitskhak; Boris instead of Borukh), while in other cases traditional Jewish names were replaced by similarly sounding Russian names (e.g. Eugenia instead of Ghita; Yury for Yuda). When state anti-Semitism intensified in the USSR at the end of the 1940s, most Jewish parents stopped giving their children traditional Jewish names to avoid discrimination.

[13] German colonists: Ancestors of German peasants, who were invited by Empress Catherine II in the 18th century to settle in Russia.

[14] Podol: The lower section of Kiev. It has always been viewed as the Jewish region of Kiev. In tsarist Russia Jews were only allowed to live in Podol, which was the poorest part of the city. Before World War II 90% of the Jews of Kiev lived there.

[15] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.
[16] Nationalization: confiscation of private businesses or property after the revolution of 1917 in Russia.

[17] Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

[18] Vladimir Mayakovsky: Born in July 19 [July 7, Old Style], 1893, Bagdadi, Georgia, Russian Empire—died in April 14, 1930, Moscow), the leading poet of the Russian Revolution and of the early Soviet period. Mayakovsky was, in his lifetime, the most dynamic figure of the Soviet literary scene, but much of his utilitarian and topical poetry is now out of date. His predominantly lyrical poems and his technical innovations, influenced a number of Soviet poets, and outside Russia his impress has been strong, especially in the 1930s, after Stalin declared him the "best and most talented poet of our Soviet epoch."

[19] Yesenin, Sergei Aleksandrovich,1895–1925, Russian poet. Yesenin was the most popular poet of the early revolution and the object of a considerable cult. He belonged to the imagist school, advocating absolute independence for the artist. Yesenin is known for his simple lyrics about village life and the Russian landscape. His epic Pugachev (1922) is a verse tragedy concerning the peasant rebellion of 1773–75. After welcoming the revolution, he rejected the policies of the Bolshevik regime. In 1922 Yesenin married Isadora Duncan and toured the United States and Europe. After they separated he married a granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. At 30 he committed suicide.

[20] Gumilev, Nikolay Stepanovich, born April 15, 1886 , Kronshtadt, Russia
died Aug. 24, 1921 , Petrograd [St. Petersburg] Russian poet and theorist who founded and led the Acmeist movement in Russian poetry in the years before and after World War I.

[21] Osip Mandelshtam (1891-1938) Soviet poet, who was born in Warsaw, but raised with his two brothers in the cultural milieu of St. Petersburg's bourgeois intelligentsia. In St. Petersburg, he attended both Vyacheslav Ivanov's Tower and meetings of the St. Petersburg Society of Philosophy. His first published poems appeared in August 1910. In 1933 Mandelshtam wrote a poem, which will be the cause of his arrest and, ultimately, death. The official date given on Mandelshtam's death certificate is 27th December 1938. The poem, called "We are living, not feeling the country under us" talked about the realities of Stalinist Russia.

[22] NKVD: People’s Committee of Internal Affairs; it took over from the GPU, the state security agency, in 1934.

[23] Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public ‘show trials’. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

[24] ‘Enemy of the people’: an official definition for political prisoners in the USSR.

[25] October Revolution Day: October 25 (according to the old calendar), 1917 went down in history as victory day for the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. This day is the most significant date in the history of the USSR. Today the anniversary is celebrated as ‘Day of Accord and Reconciliation’ on November 7.

[26] Professor Mamlock: This 1937 Soviet feature is considered the first dramatic film on the subject of Nazi anti-Semitism ever made, and the first to tell Americans that Nazis were killing Jews. Hailed in New York, and banned in Chicago, it was adapted by the German playwright Friedrich Wolf - a friend of Bertolt Brecht - from his own play, and co-directed by Herbert Rappaport, assistant to German director G.W. Pabst. The story centers on the persecution of a great German surgeon, his son’s sympathy and subsequent leadership of the underground Communists, and a rival’s sleazy tactics to expel Mamlock from his clinic.

[27] Fighting battalion: People’s volunteer corps during World War II; its soldiers patrolled towns, dug trenches and kept an eye on buildings during night bombing raids. Students often volunteered for these fighting battalions.

[28] Mikhoels, Solomon (1890-1948) (real name Vovsi): Great Soviet actor, producer, pedagogue. He worked in the Moscow State Jewish Theater (and was its art director from 1929). He directed philosophical, vivid and monumental works. Mikhoels was murdered by order of the State Security Ministry.

[29] Shared apartments: The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning ‘excess’ living space of wealthy families after the revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants. Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of shared apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.

[30] Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

[31] Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’, i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. ‘Cosmopolitans’ writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American ‘imperialism’. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin’s death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’.

[32] Doctors’ Plot: The Doctors’ Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin’s reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership.
[33] Twentieth Party Congress: At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin’s leadership.

[34] Bialik, Chaim Nachman: (1873-1934): One of the greatest Hebrew poets. He was also an essayist, writer, translator and editor. Born in Rady, Volhynia, Ukraine, he received a traditional education in cheder and yeshivah. His first collection of poetry appeared in 1901 in Warsaw. He established a Hebrew publishing house in Odessa, where he lived but after the 1917 revolution Bialik’s activity for Hebrew culture was viewed by the communist authorities with suspicion and the publishing house was closed. In 1921 Bialik emigrated to Germany and in 1924 to Palestine where he became a celebrated literary figure. Bialik’s poems occupy an important place in modern Israeli culture and education.

[35] Perestroika: Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s. Perestroika [restructuring] was the term attached to the attempts (1985–91) by Mikhail Gorbachev to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratise the Communist party organization. By 1991, perestroika was on the wane, and after the failed August Coup of 1991 was eclipsed by the dramatic changes in the constitution of the union.

[36] Iron curtain: Iron curtain: political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas. In the USSR this was the word for the ban to travel abroad and communicate with foreigners or relatives living abroad. This ban existed in the USSR for over 50 years.

[37] Bnai Brith - the oldest Jewish charity oranization. The name means ‘sons of the Testament’ in Ivrit. Its purpose is to unite people professing Judaism and present their interests and the interests of mankind, develop spiritual and moral education of coreligionists and spread philanthropic ideas. It was founded in USA in 1843. It opened its affiliates in the former Soviet Union and in Ukraine in early 1990s. Its members are activists of science, culture and the goal of this organization is provision of assistance, but even more so - restoration of the Jewish culture, interest to Jewish history, religion, etc.

Maya Pivovar
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Oksana Kuntsevskaya
Date of interview: December 2003

Maya Pivovar is a nice short lady with a short haircut. She lives with her second husband in a small two-bedroom apartment in a remote district in Kiev. She is a very lively woman with a great sense of humor. Maya is a good housewife. Her apartment is in ideal order. She manages all housework by herself despite her age of 76 years. She does the cooking and often bakes pastries – her husband is a hearty eater. She has no children and has dedicated herself to her husband and his children. Maya speaks very correctly and with a good rhythm. She willingly told us about the events of her life.

My mother came from a small town of Narodichi [about 150 km from Kiev] Kiev region. My grandfather’s, my mother’s father, name was Boruch-Benicion Freidman. He was born in 1878. I don’t know where he was born. My grandfather was a teacher of the cheder in Narodichi. My grandmother Malka Freidman, her maiden name was Chuzhaya, was born in 1876. I don’t know where she came from. I don’t know how or when my grandmother and grandfather met. They had nine children: three sons and six daughters. My grandmother was a housewife. My grandmother and grandfather spoke Yiddish. They probably celebrated Jewish holidays, but we didn’t know about it.

I know little about my mother’s brothers. They left Narodichi in the 1920s. –One of my mother’s brothers lived with his family somewhere in the Krasnodarskiy Kray in Russia, another brother was an agronomist and lived in Kherson region, and the third brother lived in the Crimea. They all perished during the Great Patriotic War [1]. We have no information about them.

My mother’s older sister Sophia Min’kovskaya (nee Freidman), was born in Narodichi in 1901. She was the only one of all children to learn Hebrew from her father, my grandfather. She moved to Kiev in 1921 and began to teach Hebrew as a private person. Sophia didn’t have a higher education, but she was well-read. In Kiev she met a Jewish man named Yefim Min’kovskiy and married him. After getting married Sophia was a housewife. Yefim must have had a higher education in economics. Before and after the Great Patriotic War he worked as chief accountant of the Darnitsa railcar repair depot. In 1924 Sophia’s son Alexandr was born. During the Great Patriotic War Min’kovskiy, his wife and son evacuated with the depot to Omsk [Russia, about 3400 km from Kiev]. After the war Sophia continued to be a housewife. She died in Kiev in 1980. Her husband Yefim worked as chief accountant at the plant till he retired. He died in Kiev in 1975, it seems. Their son Alexandr finished a therapeutic Faculty of the Medical College and became a doctor. He lives n Kiev and works in a town hospital now.

My mother’s another sister Ida Freidman was born some time in 1904. I don’t know whether she had any education. In the 1920s she left Narodichi for Kiev and settled down not far from where her sister Sophia lived. Ida went to work as a seamstress at the garment factory. In the late 1920s she married one of my maternal grandmother’s distant relatives. His name was Solomon Chuzhoy. Ida had a Jewish wedding with a chuppah. My mother laughed talking about Ida’s wedding. She said Ida was already pregnant, when she was getting married, and either my mother or Sophia were standing under the chuppah on her wedding since it was an unsuitable situation with this pregnancy. In 1939 Ida’s husband was sent to work in Rovno [324 km from Kiev], when after the division of Poland [2] the Western Ukraine was annexed to the USSR. He was chief of the trade department in the regional executive office [3]. After moving to Rovno Ida was a housewife. They had two children: a son and a daughter. Ida’s husband was a soldier at the front line during the Great Patriotic War, from the first to its last day, and was at the avenue of approach to Berlin, when the war was over. Ida and their children evacuated somewhere to the Volga, to the town of Engels, I guess. She worked at a bakery there. After the Great Patriotic War her husband, Ida and the children returned to Rovno. He continued to work as chief of trade department. Ida was a housewife taking care of the children and the house. Her husband died in 1977. Ida died at the age of 89 in 1993.

Ida’s son Alxandr and I were of the same age and we were close friends before the Great Patriotic War. Our relatives even wanted us to get married, but I didn’t want to marry him. He finished a college in Rovno, I don’t remember, which one. He worked then as chief of the inter town telephone station. Now he lives in Germany with his family. They left in 2002. His younger sister Bronia finished the Polygraphist College in Kiev and stayed to live here. She was chief of technical editor office of some magazine. She didn’t have a family. She died in April 2003.

My mother’s sister Fania Freidman, born in 1910, also left Narodichi some time in the 1920s. Se went to work at the knitwear factory in Kiev. She was a common worker there. Later she entered and finished the extramural Faculty of Economics of the Textile college. She was chief of the planning department of the knitwear factory. She was single. She died in Kiev in 1990.

My mother’s sister Genia Freidman, was the prettiest. She was born in Narodichi in 1912. She was an accountant. Genia didn’t have a higher education. She finished a secondary school and a course of accountants and worked as an accountant, but I don’t know where she worked. Genia got married before the Great Patriotic War. Her husband’s name was Yakov Gol’man. He had some medical education, since when the Great Patriotic War began, he was mobilized to a hospital. Shortly afterward Genia and her husband followed the hospital to Kharkov. Then my mother’s younger sister Lisa joined them there and they all evacuated to Krasnoyarsk in late 1941.

From Krasnoyarsk Yakov was sent to a training course in Omsk and he was supposed to go to the front. My mother’s older sister Sophia and her family were in the evacuation in Omsk. Before departing to his military unit Yakov visited her and complained to her of a pain in his stomach. Sonia advised him to go to see a doctor, but he replied: ‘You know, I am about to be sent to the front, and if I start complaining, it will look as if I am trying to get out of it’, and from them he left for the unit where he was to take a course of training. Some time passed and there was no news from Yakov. Sophia was worried and went to his military unit somewhere in the suburbs of Omsk. When she arrived there they said: ‘He died and we buried him’. What happened there was that Yakov had a ulcer and there was another attack of it and he was operated on. It was cold in the hospital and he was coughing, at least, this is what they told, and his seams opened. Some time later Genia and her younger sister Lisa moved to Omsk to Sophia. After the Great Patriotic War Genia returned to Kiev and worked in the regional committee of trade union of builders in Kiev. She was agreeable and pretty and everybody liked her, but she never remarried and she had no children. In the early 1950s she fell ill and died in 1953.

My mother’s youngest sister Lisa was born in Narodichi in 1918. She moved to Kiev with her parents in the late 1920s. My grandmother and grandfather moved in with their oldest daughter Sophia and her family. When in 1939 Ida and her husband moved to Rovno, grandmother and grandfather and Lisa moved into her apartment and lived there before the Great Patriotic War began. In Kiev Lisa finished a secondary school and entered the Faculty of Economics of the Light Industry College. She defended her diploma on the second day of the Great Patriotic War, on 24 June 1941, and got a job assignment to [3] Poltava. She didn’t work there long since the Germans were advancing. Genia was in Kharkov with her husband. Genia convinced her to evacuate to Krasnoyarsk with her family. After her husband perished Genia and Lisa moved to their older sister Sophia in Omsk. About 1942 their cousin brother on my grandmother’s side. I don’t remember his name, but his surname was Chuzhoy. Later he married Lisa. In Omsk Lisa’s son Arkadiy was born in 1943. After the Great Patriotic War Lisa, her husband and their child returned to Kiev and lived with us for some time. Lisa had a hard life. Her husband finished an extramural department of a Law College and worked as a lawyer at the Darnitsa railcar repair depot, but he must have had a mental disease since he committed suicide in the 1960s. Their son Arkadiy had poor sight since childhood. His parents decided that it was best for him to become a teacher of history. Arkadiy graduated from the History Faculty of the University, when he was totally blind. Lisa and other women, whom they paid, read to him, and they mainly read the first sources to him. Arkadiy was well developed. He taught in schools at first, but then he fell mentally ill. He had all diseases imaginable: schizophrenia, diabetes, anything one could imagine. He died in 1999, I guess, and then Lisa died in 2000.

My mother Buzia-Rivka Freidman was born in Narodichi in 1902. She left Narodichi at the age of 17 looking for a better life. I don’t know what she was doing before her departure to Kiev. My mother hardly told me anything about her life. In Kiev my mother entered the rabfak [5]. She worked as a tutor in Kiev Jewish children’s home and later she went to work at the garment factory in Podol [6]. My mother met my father at the rabfak.

My father’s name was Mikhail Pivovar. He came from Kornin Zhytomir region [about 160 km from Kiev]. My father’s parents died from some disease and hunger in 1919. I don’t know exactly where this happened. All I know about them is that my grandfather’s name was Yakov. My father had eight brothers and sisters, but I have no information about them and don’t even know their names. My father was the youngest. He was born in 1904. He finished four years of the Russian state school in Kornin. There was an annual quota in this school for one Jew to be admitted each year. My father managed to enter this school and finish it. My father was 15 years old, when his parents died. He had to earn his living somehow. He became a teacher. So, in 1919 he was a teacher. My father traveled from one village to another where he had pupils who were children of wealthier farmers, or kulaks, [7] as they were called at the time. He taught them to read and write in Russian. Then he moved to Kiev. I don’t know how it happened or why, he probably told me, but I don’t remember. My father entered a rabfak school and worked as a clerk in the regional pharmacy department. My father was a very nice person and a very sociable one. Everybody liked him. He met my mother in 1925 and they got married. They didn’t have a traditional Jewish wedding. They were the children of their time and didn’t observe any traditions. My parents lived not far from where my father was working, in the center of the city, in a communal apartment [8] with neighbors.

My father worked in the regional pharmacy department till the middle 1930s, I guess, before he went to work at the Kiev experimental institute of endocrinology. He was production manager. In Ukraine, and probably in the USSR there were two such institutes: one in Kharkov and one in Kiev. My father finished the extramural department of the Pharmaceutical College in Kiev. In 1941 he failed to take state exams due to the war and he never obtained a document about graduation from this college. My mother continued to work at the garment factory where he was promoted to the position of a forewoman and she earned well already. My parents earned well and we were a family of an average wealth. We didn’t live in luxury, but we were not needy either.

I, Maya Pivovar, was born in 1927. I was born and grew up in Kiev. I didn’t have a nanny. I went to the kindergarten, but there was a period of time, when I didn’t go to the kindergarten, and my mother and father had to go to work. There was a woman in our house, who had a group of 5-6 children in her care. She told us something, I don’t remember. She was called ‘frebelichka’ tutor and she had finished a Frebel school [9].

Our family didn’t celebrate Jewish traditions. My parents were members of the party and atheists. In 1926 my father joined the Communist Party. My mother was a member of the communist Party since 1932. Our family spent our leisure time like many other Soviet families. My mother’s relatives visited us – they were a big family. We got together on birthdays, on Soviet holidays and new Year. Of course, we went to the theater and to the cinema. I remember the theater of Red army in Merngovskaya, present Zankovetskaya, Street, and the Children’s Theater in Karl Marx Street. Once all school children went to the theater. I don’t remember what we watched, but I remember having bought an ice cream during an interval. It was wrapped in cellophane paper. I didn’t finish my ice cream during the interval and was still having it, when the performance started. I was a brought up child and couldn’t throw the cellophane under the chair, so I ate it slowly…

My father took me to the first form: my mother was working. This was an ordinary Russian school, the nearest to our home. There were no school uniforms. I remember as if it were happening now – I was wearing a white dress in blue polka dots. The desks were freshly painted, and the paint had not got dry. I sat down in my white gown and stuck to this chair! Fortunately my father was still there and brought me another dress to change. I studied well and enjoyed it. I was good at all subjects. There were 40 children in my class, there were also Jewish children, but we never gave it a thought then, we were friends, ran to the beach in summer, played with a ball and there was no segregation before the war.

We lived with our parents in a huge communal apartment before the Great Patriotic War. There were five other families living there. There was a big kitchen in the end of a long corridor. There were six tables in the kitchen, one table belonged to each family living in the apartment. There must have been a stove, but I don’t remember. Each family had a primus stove [Primus stove - a small portable stove with a container for about 1 liter of kerosene pumped into burners]. There was no gas then. Gas appeared after the war. We had two rooms in the very beginning of the corridor. There used to be steam heating in this house in the past, but when I remember, for example, in 1932, there was no steam heating. There was a small stove and smoke from it was crawling to a neighbor’s apartment across the room: there were no chimney flues that were not necessary for steam heating. Probably, there was a smoke duct in another apartment, there was a tube going there and it dipped, this was such nuisance! I remember somebody brought potatoes to my father and it was dropped on the floor. I and our neighbors’ children used to bake these potatoes in a small oven. We had plain furniture: a desk, a divan with a high back and a cupboard. There was plain crockery. There was a plate-shaped radio hanging almost under the ceiling on the wall. We liked listening to the radio: there was always merry music on it. The desk was right beneath this radio plate and when there was an interesting program, I got onto this desk to be closer to radio to listen to the program.

I remember famine [10]. Our family hardly suffered from the famine. My parents received some miserable food packages each on his work. There was no sufficient food, but enough to not die from hunger. In 1932 starving people were escaping to towns from villages. There was bread sold at markets in towns, but it was impossible to buy any food in villages. Somehow those people managed to get some money to buy bread, they ate it and were dying in the streets. I remember I was 5 in 1932, I was sitting on the window sill in our apartment and saw how they were loading something on a truck. There was a club of homeless children across the street from our house. I didn’t understand then what they were loading, but now I know those were corpses. Starved exhausted people came to this club where they could get some food. They ate it and died. From overeating.

I had finished seven forms before the Great Patriotic War. As far as I can remember, my parents were talking about a war somewhere abroad, but this seemed to me to be far away from where we lived and was not going to happen to us. I don’t think my parents realized how serious this was, or they wouldn’t have allowed my grandfather and grandmother (on my mother’s side) to stay in Kiev when Germans came. I remember well beginning of the war on 22 June 1941, I was already 14 years old. We were on vacations and were walking with our neighbor in a park, it was in the morning and she said: ‘They say, they were dropping bombs at night on the Post-Volynskaya station out of town’. His was something wild to me: bombs in peaceful time! We went home, and at 12 o’clock in the afternoon Molotov [11] spoke on the radio, he announced that the war began. My father was a reserve officer and he had to make his appearance at the military registry office in case of war. He went to the registry office on Monday and they told him to pack his luggage and come to an induction center. Then somebody told us that the recruits had not been sent to the front and were waiting at the railway station. My mother and I took his coat, it was still cold at night, and went to see him. We met with him. My mother was working at the factory round the clock. She sent me to my grandmother and grandfather since I was on vacations. When the time came for my mother and me to evacuate she was trying to convince her parents to come with us. My mother and I were the last of the family to leave Kiev. But they didn’t want to leave. My grandfather as ill. He seemed to be old to me, but he was only 63 years old. He said: ‘I am going to die on the way. I want to die in my bed’. If only we had known that our army would leave Kiev. We would have been more insistent, but since we weren’t, they stayed and perished in Babi Yar [12], but we only heard this from our neighbors in 1944.

My mother and I evacuated with my mother’s factory where she was working on a barge in July. The factory products were dumped into the hold of the barge and we were sitting on those bales. We were heading to Dnepropetrovsk [500 km from Kiev]. It was believed that Germans didn’t bomb Dnepropetrovsk as much as our town and that factories could operate there. To describe our trip on those bales in the hold, I would give an example. One night I woke up having the feeling of suffocation. Somebody’s leg in a boot was on my chest. I tried to throw down this leg, when a man’s voice said: ‘Why are you pulling my leg?’ This happened to be a man stretching his legs to feel more comfortable.

When we arrived in Dnepropetrovsk, we were not allowed to get off: there were two lines of military men, and they made us board some freight railcars for transportation of coal – there were no roofs in them. We moved on we didn’t know where. It was pouring with rain, we got black from coal dust all over. I don’t remember how long the trip was: two or three days… At night we were told to get off. In the morning we were taken to a kolkhoz [13]. It turned out we were in Krasnodarskiy Kray. Starominskaya village [over 1000 km from Kiev]. We worked in the kolkhoz there till another party of workers of the factory evacuated to Zlatoust town [about 900 km from Kiev], and we were taken there. We changed few freight trains for transportation of cattle to get to Zlatoust. The conditions were terrible. Our trip probably lasted five days. This was a beginning of the winter 1941.

In Zlatoust we were accommodated in local apartments. The owners of the apartment where we accommodated, an elderly couple, were nice people, and they treated us kindly. My mother continued to work at the factory that worked for the needs of the front: they made military overcoats, uniforms and tents for the front. I went to the local school but gave up my studies very soon to go to work at my mother’s factory. We didn’t hear from my father and were very concerned about him at the time.

My father was in the 5th Army. At the very start of the war he was wounded and sent to a mobile field hospital. In the fall this Army got in encirclement somewhere near Kiev. When it became clear that they were in encirclement chief of the hospital said to the patients and personnel of the hospital: ‘Drift apart! By whatever means drift apart!’ My father told us later that he was in a field with a group of military. They were lying in hiding. Germans encircled the field and shouted: ‘Russ, surrender!’ Someone lying beside my father said: ‘Why lying here, I will surrender!’ My father didn’t know what happened to him. Then Germans sent tanks onto the field. My father said one tank drove beside him on one side and another tank – on his other side, in few centimeters that saved his life! He stayed in the field till dark and then he came to a village where people gave him some civilian clothes. He was 37 years old, but the children in the village said: ‘God, what a scary looking old man!’ He wasn’t shaved and he was thin after he had been wounded. My father was going from one village to another till he reached the front line that was along a river. One villager was bringing soldiers from encirclement across the river on his boat. The boat was small and they were taking turns to go across the river, when somebody ran from the village shouting that German troops were already coming to the village! ‘You may be punished for this!’ but the villager said he would remain till he transported all those waiting for his help. And indeed, he transported all troopers.

My father was in encirclement 18 days. Later he had problems in this regard. Near Kharkov. He was looking for a toilet at the railways station. He went to and fro once, then another time, when somebody paid attention to him. They took him to the commandant’s office. My father didn’t have any documents with him and had civilian clothes on. They decided he was a spy, but he managed somehow to get out of it. The group of military who had been in encirclement with my father gathered in Kharkov. They were sent for retraining in the Ural. Then my father was sent to the Moscow Front and was wounded in January 1942. His right arm didn’t function and he had lost thee fingers on his left hand. My father was sent to a hospital in Novosibirsk [about 3000 km from Kiev]. When he was released, he decided to look for my mother and me. From my grandmother and grandfather’s letters my father knew that we were in Krasnodarskiy Kray, but we had moved to Zlatoust before then.

When my father was being released from the hospital in Novosibirsk, the chief doctor of the hospital, hearing that he had worked in the Institute of Endocrinology before the Great Patriotic War, advised my father to go to Biysk town where the Kiev and Kharkov institutes of Endocrinology had evacuated. But my father decided to first go looking for my mother and me and asked that they gave him a ticket to Krasnodarskiy Kray. Biysk town was near Novosibirsk and my father visited it on his way. There he was told that his Institute had moved to Frunze [about 3000 km from Kiev]. My father went to Buguruslan where there was an evacuation information agency where he submitted the information about his and my mother’s relatives. Of all our family he got the address of my mother and me in Zlatoust from this agency. He came to Zlatoust and we all moved to Frunze. In Frunze we first accommodated in a club building till my father rented an apartment for us. Our main food was bread and vegetables, but we didn’t starve, actually. I hardly saw any local residents there. It happened so that in the center of Frunze where we lived, there were mainly those who came in evacuation. Several times we, schoolchildren, were sent to pick potatoes where I aw the locals. They could hardly speak Russian, those, whom I saw, but they were quite friendly.

In Frunze my father was chairman of the local committee [14] of the institute trying to make the life of employees of the institute easier. For example, he found a jobless shoemaker and the management of the institute managed to get pieces of leather, and this shoemaker fixed employees’ shoes. It was important during the war! My father also made arrangements for opening a canteen for employees at the institute, and my mother went to work there as a cook.

I finished the 8th and 9th forms at school in Frunze. I hope you don’t think that we, school children, didn’t do anything during the war! One day a week at school was a work day. We worked at the construction of a railroad spur. Military plants were evacuated to Frunze. Of course, we were silly. I remember competing who carried more soil on a barrow. Two girls, besides, we were 15-16 years old, carrying this heavy barrow curving under the heavy load. A man passing by said: ‘Girls, what are you doing? You better take two trips than carrying such heavy barrow!’ And then construction of the Chuyskiy channel! The builders were preparing the pit for concreting – this was going to be the Chuyskaya hydro power station. There was not enough workforce, and the construction management organized a Komsomol group of young people. We, school children, were sent to the construction of this channel for 10 days during vacations. We were to carry soil up the slope. I remember working with a teacher. She was probably about 5 years older than me. She, poor thing, was not used to this kind of work. And I got angry with her, it was hard for me to work with her! So, when we had the barrow loaded I was dragging it along with her. I thought, the quicker I got to the top, the easier it would be for me. Later I carried the barrow with a boy from the tenth form. He was pushing the barrow and me up the slope – this was better.

In 1944 my parents and I returned to Kiev, but we had no place to live. Kiev was liberated on 6 November 1943 and our house got burned on 5 November. It was hard. Though my father was an invalid of the war and had the right to receive a dwelling, he was not that kind of a person who knew how to get what was his due. The institute of Endocrinology helped us. When the institute received a building from the town authorities, we also got a little place there. There were two rooms where two families lived. In the late 1940s the institute restored a small house near the Victory Square. Director of the institute received two rooms in a communal apartment in this house, but he got another apartment in a short time, and let my father have these rooms.

My father worked at the Institute of Endocrinology, and my mother worked at the factory. They worked from morning till night, left home early in the morning and came back late at night. My mother also had to cook. There were no fridges. She cooked soup or borsch in the morning and left the pot in the corridor, in the darkest, and coolest spot accordingly, and our old neighbor fished for pieces of meat in it.

In the late 1940s – early 1950s almost all of my mother’s relatives went through our apartment. They were returning from evacuation and didn’t have a place to live. Lisa, her husband and child lived with us, then Genia, and Fania. Later they all received some kind of dwellings, but they continued to keep in touch and meet like they did before the war. My parents got along well. Though they didn’t observe Jewish traditions, they spoke Yiddish among themselves. I can say this was their native tongue. I understood what they were saying. I feel ashamed though, that I still cannot write or read in Yiddish. Maybe it’s my fault, maybe theirs. Even though my grandfather was a teacher in the cheder. Though we lived separately from my grandfather and grandmother.

In the early 1950s gas piping began to be installed in Kiev. My mother’s sister Genia lived in the center of the city, and they had gas supplies before it was arranged in other districts of Kiev. I remember her telling excitedly: ‘You take a pot off the gas stove and can put it right on a white tablecloth – and it won’t get dirty!’

When we returned to Kiev from the evacuation I entered a preparatory course at the Polytechnic College and concurrently I was finishing a secondary school. In 1945 I received my school certificate. We took exams upon finishing school and the results were accounted for during admission to colleges. I entered the Chemical Technological Faculty, department of paper and cellulose, of the Polytechnic College. I didn’t have any problems with admission. I was just lucky. It was quiet in 1945. Since I had finished a preparatory course, I was admitted to the college almost automatically. In this regard everything went well. I remember how we, students of the preparatory faculty had to work at making wood stocks near Kiev for a month. I have no idea, whose direction this was. We cut trees, sawed them and stored in the store metering boxes. The most ridiculous of this was that all students of the preparatory faculty were supposed to go there, but they didn’t actually. Those who stayed in college continued having classes and when we, the enthusiasts, returned, we had to catch up with those who were staying. However, I recall this time as a very romantic period. We lived in tents, baked potatoes in the open fire in the evenings, it was fun. Then it seemed there was going to be nothing bad in life, and the most scaring thing – the war – was in the past. I was the only Jew in my group and in college. Still, everybody treated me well and we still call each other and meet with my fellow students. I had Russian and Ukrainian friends. It took me a short time to catch up with my fellow students after this event with making the wood stocks. I cannot say that I had only excellent marks, but I wasn’t among the worst students. I liked to go to the cinema and theater and I particularly like the Russian Drama Theater. I often went there with my parents and friends. I read a lot. I read classics and modern Soviet literature.

After I finished the college in 1950 I got a job assignment to the Kamskiy cellulose and paper factory in Perm region Krasnokamsk town [over 3000 km from Kiev]. I worked there 7 years. I took part in public life. In Krasnokamsk I joined the party. It somehow happened there. I knew this was good for my career, but I actually didn’t have anything against the party. We were raised patriots and we piously believed in communism and its ideology.

The events in the early 1950s, the doctors’ plot [15] had no impact on me whatsoever. I was in Krasnokamsk and things were quiet there. Well, actually, there was chief engineer, a Jew, Rappoport, in 1952 they reduced him in his position appointing him production manager, and the former production manager was appointed chief engineer. I think they did it for a show to demonstrate that they responded to the events happening at the time. At meetings this new ‘chief engineer’ was sitting beside the new ‘production manager’ asking him one ach issue ‘What’s your opinion?’ Since Rappoport was more qualified, of course.

The echo of the doctors’ plot had its affect on my father at the institute of Endocrinology. My parents never told me what actually happened. I only know that there was a big problem, they had fabricated a case and my father didn’t work for a year and a half. Then he went to the pharmacy department where he had worked in the 1920s asking for help. They employed my father in the prescription department in a pharmacy. My father retired in 1970.

I liked working in Krasnokamsk very much. There were common nice people there. I made many friends. We had a good time together, went to the woods to pick berries and mushrooms, baked potatoes, sang songs to the guitar, but my mother rebelled and said: ‘That’s enough. A little bit of good at a time is enough. Resign and come to Kiev’. In 1957 I quit and returned to Kiev to my parents, but here I faced a problem: I couldn’t obtain a residential registration [16] in our apartment. I couldn’t get employed since I was not allowed a residential registration and couldn’t obtain this residential registration without having a job.

Somebody mentioned to me that a friend or a relative of my deceased grandfather lived in Boyarka near Kiev and I could get a residential registration to live in his house. We went to Boyarka and I had this registration there. We paid a monthly fee for this registration, but I still couldn’t find a job. I kept looking for a job for a year. Once my co-student’s mother came by, her husband worked in the Polytechnic College, he was chief of department of organic chemistry. The Soyuzreactiv office rented a facility on the territory of this department. They organized a laboratory of reagents and my friend’s father said to his wife: ‘Tell Maya if you happen to go past their house to come over here’. He introduced me to the future manager of this laboratory. The manager took me to supervisor of the Soyuzreactiv office and I became his first employee! I had absolutely nothing to do with organic synthesis: I had finished the chemical technological faculty, but I dealt with paper! I remember this supervisor taking my passport looking at my residential registration in Boyarka. He said: ‘So what, your Mom and Dad could not arrange a registration for you in their home?’ I said: ‘No, there was no permission!’ Basically, he employed me. At first I worked in the laboratory of reagents and when the factory of reagents was built, I went to work there.

My parents and I went on living in our apartment in Decabristov Street till in 1970, in summer during a terrible rain storm the Victory Square was flooded and there was water in our apartment 60 cm deep. I woke up hearing the water babbling in the room. I awakened my parents, they got up and their sofa sailed across the room. Then we received a three-bedroom apartment in Borschagovka (the most remote and the least prestigious district in Kiev) and lived there.

My mother retired in the late 1950s. She became a housewife. She was ill for a long time. I had to retired in 1982 due to my mother’s illness, or I would have continued to work. My mother died in 1983, but I never returned to work. My father’s sight got much worse when he grew older and he felt ill from his wounds, but he was a sociable man and had to do something. My father asked chairman of the Party veterans association to give him a task to do. Being an invalid of the war, my father could do his shopping for food in a special store for invalids of the war [in the USSR there was a network of special stores for veterans of the war, and veterans having a special certificate could do their shopping there. Once a month they could buy a food package including deficit products such as: mayonnaise, buckwheat, tinned fish, smoked sausage that were not available in ordinary stores]. Veterans of the Party also did their shopping there. Chairman gave my father the list of veterans, their phone numbers and authorized him to make phone calls to tell them when food packages were ready. My father could receive his package before everybody else being an invalid of the war, but since he was blind, I was his ‘secretary’. Father died in 1996.

I got married at the age of 59. My husband Yefim Karpinskiy, a Jew, was born in 1916. Before retirement he worked in the Institute of Electric Circuits. He was chief specialist in power supply network in the town. Yefim became a widower few years before we met. We had no wedding party, we just decided to register our marriage in a registry office and began to live in my apartment, in perfect harmony, and we never said a rude word to one another. I hardly knew anything about my husband’s family. We lived together for too little time, only a year and a half. He died from stroke in 1988. I didn’t remarry for two years, but I had a very good husband and I liked being married. I talked to my friend. Her husband had many friends. I said to her: ‘Perhaps, there is some product in no demand around?’ (laughs). The wife of my current husband, a Jew, Yefim Volodarskiy, had died. My friends introduced us to one another. She is now in Germany. When she writes me, she always reminds us who we owe for our happiness. I liked Yefim. He was a very sensible and educated man. He had worked as leading engineer at different plants. By the time we met, he was a pensioner. We had a lot of free time and we walked and went to theaters. We lived together for three years before we decided to get married. Thank God, we’ve been together for ten years already. We live in harmony and even merrily. Yefim has a wonderful sense of humor, he has a joke for each unpleasant event in life and then we stop brooding and begin to laugh. This helps very well in life. I wasn’t good at cooking before, but now I can cook gefilte fish and sweet and sour meat. It is for my husband. I try to cook something of Jewish cuisine every Friday. We don’t observe any other traditions. Every week my husband’s younger son Alexandr and his family visit us. They live nearby. My husband and I worry about them when they have problems and try to help, and share their joy when they tell us about their successes. We used to have guests go went out to see my husband’s colleagues and my colleagues. We got together on Soviet holidays, New Year and birthdays, but for the recent six years our life has quieted. We and our friends have grown older. My husband and I hardly go out, but we stroll around the house every day. We rarely read fiction. Yefim occasionally quotes a poem in Yiddish, he know Jewish literature wonderfully. We mainly read Ukrainian newspapers, like to watch news on TV and discuss this for sure. We occasionally play cards. I’ve never been abroad or considered emigration, and I would like to visit far away countries, but we cannot afford it. There is much interesting on TV, so we watch it. I wouldn’t want to depart for good. However bad it may be here, but it’s best at home. Who needs us elsewhere?

I didn’t quit the Party. When I was a pensioner, I continued to pay monthly fees. Some time in 1990 I guess, our, former already, Party unit secretary brought me my record book – the Party was dismissed. My membership was over, but I do not consider myself a real communist. Now I am aware that I had joined the Party since it was believed to be an outstanding deed, it was good and prestigious for a career. It was my father who was a real communist. He piously believed in the bright future for all workers and tried to do only good. At first I wasn’t quite enthusiastic about perestroika [17]. Everything seemed to be ruining. The first thought was – that’s it, I will not travel to the Caucasus since it’s a different country now. Then this confusion in the economy! But now – I don’t know, as long as the children will get used to the new system, as for us – as long as everything is fine with them!

Of course, I can feel that I belong to the Jewry. It’s bad that I didn’t know anything about our culture and traditions. I feel sorry for not having talked with my grandfather, my mother’s father, about the history and the Torah. I was too young, but I still remember how carefully my youngest aunt Lisa’s friends were listening to him. Now there are many Jewish organizations arranging interesting lectures about the Jewish people and traditions, and my husband and I can borrow books and read them with interest about our people from whom we’ve been apart for so many decades. Hesed provides assistance to us, giving food and providing medications, it’s sufficient assistance. Now, of course, we know more about our culture and holidays, but my husband and I do not celebrate them strictly following the rules, but we sometimes light candles on Friday and we know about holidays and are sure to give our grandchildren coins on Chanukkah.

GLOSSARY:

[1] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[2] Annexation of Eastern Poland: According to a secret clause in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact defining Soviet and German territorial spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Poland in September 1939. In early November the newly annexed lands were divided up between the Ukranian and the Belarusian Soviet Republics.

[3] Ispolkom: After the tsar’s abdication (March, 1917), power passed to a Provisional Government appointed by a temporary committee of the Duma, which proposed to share power to some extent with councils of workers and soldiers known as ‘soviets’. Following a brief and chaotic period of fairly democratic procedures, a mixed body of socialist intellectuals known as the Ispolkom secured the right to ‘represent’ the soviets. The democratic credentials of the soviets were highly imperfect to begin with: peasants - the overwhelming majority of the Russian population - had virtually no say, and soldiers were grossly over-represented. The Ispolkom’s assumption of power turned this highly imperfect democracy into an intellectuals’ oligarchy.

[4] Mandatory job assignment in the USSR: Graduates of higher educational institutions had to complete a mandatory 2-year job assignment issued by the institution from which they graduated. After finishing this assignment young people were allowed to get employment at their discretion in any town or organization.

[5] Rabfak: Educational institutions for young people without secondary education, specifically established by the Soviet power.

[6] Podol: The lower section of Kiev. It has always been viewed as the Jewish region of Kiev. In tsarist Russia Jews were only allowed to live in Podol, which was the poorest part of the city. Before World War II 90% of the Jews of Kiev lived there.

[7] Kulaks: In the Soviet Union the majority of wealthy peasants that refused to join collective farms and give their grain and property to Soviet power were called kulaks, declared enemies of the people and exterminated in the 1930s.

[8] Communal apartment: The Soviet power wanted to improve housing conditions by requisitioning ‘excess’ living space of wealthy families after the Revolution of 1917. Apartments were shared by several families with each family occupying one room and sharing the kitchen, toilet and bathroom with other tenants. Because of the chronic shortage of dwelling space in towns communal or shared apartments continued to exist for decades. Despite state programs for the construction of more houses and the liquidation of communal apartments, which began in the 1960s, shared apartments still exist today.

[9] Froebel Institute: F. W. A. Froebel (1783-1852), German educational theorist, developed the idea of raising children in kindergartens. In Russia the Froebel training institutions functioned from 1872-1917 The three-year training was intended for tutors of children in families and kindergartens.

[10] Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

[11] Molotov, V. P. (1890-1986): Statesman and member of the Communist Party leadership. From 1939, Minister of Foreign Affairs. On June 22, 1941 he announced the German attack on the USSR on the radio. He and Eden also worked out the percentages agreement after the war, about Soviet and western spheres of influence in the new Europe.

[12] Babi Yar: Babi Yar is the site of the first mass shooting of Jews that was carried out openly by fascists. On 29th and 30th September 1941 33,771 Jews were shot there by a special SS unit and Ukrainian militia men. During the Nazi occupation of Kiev between 1941 and 1943 over a 100,000 people were killed in Babi Yar, most of whom were Jewish. The Germans tried in vain to efface the traces of the mass grave in August 1943 and the Soviet public learnt about mass murder after World War II.

[13] Collective farm (in Russian kolkhoz): In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

[14] Mestkom: Local trade-union committee.

[15] Doctors’ Plot: The Doctors’ Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the Party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin’s reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership.

[16] Residence permit: The Soviet authorities restricted freedom of travel within the USSR through the residence permit and kept everybody’s whereabouts under control. Every individual in the USSR needed residential registration; this was a stamp in the passport giving the permanent address of the individual. It was impossible to find a job, or even to travel within the country, without such a stamp. In order to register at somebody else’s apartment one had to be a close relative and if each resident of the apartment had at least 8 square meters to themselves.

[17] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

Laszlo Ringel
Uzhgorod
Ukraine
Date of interview: October 2003
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Laszlo Ringel is a short thin man. He wins my favor from first sight. He is friendly and sociable. He is an interesting conversationalist. Laszlo reads a lot and takes vivid interest in everything happening in the world. Though he cannot see with one eye, he draws a lot. There are his oil paintings on the walls and graphics of old buildings in Uzhgorod. I admired the figures he makes from intricately curved tree branches and roots. Laszlo lives in a two-storied house that the family built in the 1970-80s on the site where the Ringel family had their old house before WWII. It’s a comfortable and cozy house with bright spacious rooms. Laszlo lives with his son Mihaly and his wife and Mihaly’s daughter Yelena with her husband and two children. They love and care for Laszlo and he shares their feelings to him.

I didn’t know my father’s parents. They lived in Transylvania. It belongs to Romania now, but before WWI Transylvania was a part of Austro-Hungary [Trianon Peace Treaty] [1]. My paternal grandfather Manó Ringel was born in the 1860s, but I don’t know where. All I know about my grandmother is that she died young, and that her name was Eszter, nee Feuerwerker. I don’t know where exactly in Transylvania my parents’ family lived or where he was born. My father Mór Ringel was born in 1881. There were few children in the family, but the only one I know was my father’s sister Maria, who lived with our family for quite a while. Maria was few years younger than my father.

It’s hard to say how religious my father’s family was. My father and his sister were neologs [2]. They spoke Hungarian. My father must have finished a school well since he managed to enter the Trade Academy in Transylvania. There was no anti-Semitism and there were liberal attitudes toward Jews, but still there were some restrictions for Jews in educational institutions. [editor’s note: There were no such restrictions in the Austro-Hungarian double monarchy. The interviewee probably refers to the numerus clausus law introduced in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1920 to limit the enrollment of Jews to higher educational institutions.] My father and grandfather served in the Austro-Hungarian army [KuK army] [3] during WWI. At that time men with secondary and higher education were promoted to officers’ ranks in the army after having some short-term training, but this did not refer to Jews. The highest rank they could expect was a corporal. [editor’s note: There were no such limitations in the KuK army and Jews were equal with non Jews in theory. However, for various other reasons, the military never became a typical Jewish career path.] The only exception was granted to doctors. They were not subject to this kind of restrictions. My grandfather Manó and my father were corporals at the front. I have two letter: one of those letters my mother wrote to my father in 1915, when he served in the Hungarian army at the front during WWI, and other one my father sent to my mother from the front in 1917. My grandfather also sent us letters from the front which she used to sign as Emanuel. [Mano is short for Emanuel in Hungarian.] My grandfather Manó died in the 1930s. I don’t know where he was buried. After my father got married his younger sister Maria followed him to Subcarpathia [4] where she lived with us. Maria was a dressmaker. She didn’t marry for a long time. In the late 1920s Jonas, whose family name I do not remember, a Jewish man from Uzhgorod, proposed to Maria. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. Maria moved to Uzhgorod to live with her husband. Their only daughter Magda was born in 1930. In 1944 Maria and her husband were taken to the ghetto and from there to Auschwitz. Maria and her husband perished in the camp, but their daughter Magda survived. After WWII Magda, a young girl then, moved to Palestine with other young people. On the way there the ship they sailed on was captured by a British military ship, and all passengers were sent to a camp in Cyprus, a Greek island where Maria met her future husband, who was also kept in this camp. In 1948 they managed to move to Palestine. Magda got married in Israel. Her family name is Friedman. She lives with her family in Qiryat Yam and we correspond.

I knew well my grandfather on my mother’s side Menyhert Bergida, who used to be called Menyus in the family. [Short for Menyhert] His Jewish name was Menahem. He was born in the 1850s. My grandmother died before I was born. She was called Betti Moskovits. I don’t know where my grandparents were born. The Bergida family lived in the Uzh Valley in Subcarpathia. There as at least one name of Bergida in every village and they were somehow related. They were craftsmen: shoemakers and tailors, but the majority were tradesmen. My grandfather Menyhert owned a pot-house, an inn providing hot meals, drinks, accommodation and a shed for cattle in a village near Uzhgorod, called Onokovtse. During the Czech rule it was called Domanince Hroni, but during Austro-Hungary it’s name was Felsodomonya. Onokovtse is a part of Uzhgorod now where people have cottages and dachas [summer house]. There were pot houses, taverns and restaurants in Subcarpathia. The difference between pot houses and taverns was that taverns served cold snacks and drinks while pot houses offered lunches and dinners. Besides, my grandfather also cured cattle in Onokovtse and surrounding villages. I don’t know whether he studied to be a vet or he had a gift, but villagers always turned to him when they needed a vet.

Felsodomonya was an old village. The Roman Catholic church in the village was built in XIV century. It was a small village: 80% of its residents were Slovaks and the rest were Ruthenians. There were also few Russian Orthodox Christians, who had been captives during WWI and got married and stayed in the village. The Slovaks were Roman Catholics and Ruthenians were Greek Catholics. There were only 3 Jewish families and there were not even enough men for a minyan. On holidays, at the permission of the Mukachevo rabbi Spira [Chaim Elazar Spira, Rabbi of Munkacs from 1913 until his death in 1937.] went to pray in the prayer house in Nizhneye Domanintse. This village became a part of Uzhgorod in due time. The prayer house was a big one. There was a Jewish family living there. There were two rooms assigned for prayers in the house: one for men and one for women.

There was no anti-Semitism in Onokovtse during the Austro-Hungarian or Czech rule. Jews were respected in the village. Roman and Greek Catholics didn’t get along and sometimes there were fights between them to prove whose belief had more truth, but it had nothing to do with Jews.

I wouldn’t say there was no anti-Semitism in Austro-Hungary. However, it was far from anti-Semitism that developed when in 1938 Subcarpathia was annexed to Hungary. [Hungarian troops occupied Subcarpathia in March 1939. The western part where Ungvar/Uzhorod/Uzhgorod is was attached to Hungary as early as the 2nd November 1938, together with Southern Slovakia as a result of the First Vienna Decesion.] We had a book at home published in Budapest in 1900. Its author Egon, regretfully, I don’t remember his last name and the title of the book, was an official in Subcarpathia for some time. He returned to Budapest and wrote a book of his impressions about life in Subcarpathia. In his book he called Jews petty tradesmen and wrote how they exploited the Ruthenians. I remember one example he gave: how a Jew leased a cow to a Ruthenian and when it had a calf he took the calf away. However, he forgot that at the beginning of his book he wrote that Ruthenians had no education and worked hard to make their living before Jews settled down in Subcarpathia, but then Egon writes that Jews came to live there and began to exploit the Ruthenians and this was not the only book of this kind.

Grandfather Menyhert was a neolog. My mother’s family always celebrated Sabbath, lit candles, and the family got together at the table. However, my grandfather worked on Saturday like the majority of neologs. They celebrated Jewish holidays in accordance with traditions. They spoke Hungarian.

There were three daughters in the family. My mother Anna, Hanna in Jewish, was the youngest. She was born in 1885. The oldest was Karolina. I don’t remember her Jewish name. Te middle sister was Rozsa, Reizl in Jewish. I don’t know what education my mother and her sisters got, but I think it was a secondary school or grammar school. At least my mother helped me to do my homework when I studied in a grammar school. My mother’s sisters were married. Karolina Braun, who used to be called Linka at home lived in Uzhgorod. I don’t remember her husband. He owned a furniture shop and they were quite wealthy. Karolina had two sons, much older than me, Miklos and Sandor. Miklos worked in Budapest as a dentist. When he studied in Prague beforehand he changed his family name from Bran to Cerny. My mother’s sister Rozsa Weiss and her family lived in [what is today] Slovakia, in the town of Kralovsky Chlmec. She also had two children: son Tibor, older than me, and daughter Edit, about the same age with me, who was called Editke in the family [diminutive of Edit]. Her husband owned a trade business. My aunts were housewives. Except for Tibor they were all killed in the Shoah.

My parents met and fell in love with one another before WWI. When my father studied in the Trade Academy, he came to Onokovtse for training in my grandfather Menyhert’s pot house where my parents met. In 1914 my father went to the army and they corresponded till 1918. After the war my father went to Onokovtse and asked my grandfather’s consent for marrying his daughter. My grandfather knew that they were corresponded and loved each other and he gave his consent. My father stayed in Onokovtse till the wedding. My grandfather arranged a traditional Jewish wedding for them. There was a chuppah in front of the pot house, and the rabbi from the Uzhgorod synagogue conducted the wedding ceremony. There was a big wedding party in the pot house. After the wedding my parents moved to Uzhgorod. My father worked as an accountant in 3 stores owned by Jews. My mother was a housewife.

My father had beautiful thick auburn hair. He didn’t cover his head. He wore a hat in cold weather, but it had nothing to do with Jewish traditions. He wore suits in fashion of the time. In spring and summer he was fair-color clothes. My mother only wore a shawl to go to the prayer house. She had thick dark hair that she wore in a knot. My mother wore fashionable clothes and high-heeled shoes. My parents were neologs. They observed the main Jewish traditions and went to the synagogue on holidays. We spoke Hungarian at home. My parents rented an apartment in a 3-storied house. I was born in Uzhgorod in 1920. I am called Laszlo, even today everybody calls me as such. When the Czechs came to Subcarpathia they made me Vladislav, when the Russians came they made me Vasiliy. I have three birth certificates in three different languages. [i.e. Hungarian, Czech and Russian] I was called Laci, Lacika, at home. [affectionate of Laszlo] My Jewish name is Leizer. I had a brit milah at the synagogue in Uzhgorod in accordance with the tradition. There was an entry made in the roster of the synagogue about this event.

In 1918 Subcarpathia was annexed to Czechoslovakia [First Czechoslovak Republic] [5]. [Subcarpathia was annexed to the newly created Czechoslovak state as late as June 4th 1920 by the Trianon Treaty.] Hungary was an agricultural country while Czechoslovakia, particularly the Czech lands [Bohemia and Moravia], were highly industrial. In about 20 km from Uzhgorod the Czechs built a chemical plant and a furniture factory. This factory manufactured furniture for export: for example, they manufactured chairs with folding seats for cinema theaters in America. They built a tobacco factory in Mukachevo [40 km from Uzhgorod, 660 km from Kiev]. They grew some tobacco in Mukachevo and imported the rest. Czechs also organized big wineries to export wine. There were also salt mines in Rakhov district in Subcarpathia where Czechs organized a resort. There are still salt baths there that are a wonderful cure for radiculitis. There is a health resort in the abandoned mines where the air is saturated with salt vapors and this is a great cure for respiratory organs. They also built a big brewery in Mukachevo. Resorts on mineral streams is also an accomplishment of the Czechs. Svaliava district of Subcarpathia was known for its mineral streams. This water was used to cure gastro enteric diseases. Czechs also exported bottled water to other countries, even to the USA. In the village of Vyshkovo in Khust district near the Romanian border Czechs built a health center by a mineral water stream for the cure of kidneys and liver, named ‘Shayan’, They also discovered a stream and built a health center near Mukachevo. This created jobs for many residents of Subcarpathia. Czechs built many comfortable houses. These houses are valued high even now. There was no anti-Semitism during the Czech rule. Vice versa, they supported and appreciated Jews promoting them to official posts. Jews were allowed to serve in the army and there were no restrictions as to the ranks. Many Jews studied in higher educational institutions. Local residents of Subcarpathia had always been loyal to Jews.

In 1922 my parents decided to move to Onokovtse. Grandfather Menyhert asked my mother to help him in the pot house. Onokovtse was in 5 km from Uzhgorod and my father could keep his job in Uzhgorod. My father bought an open carriage and horses to ride to work.

The building housing the pot house was 250 years old. It was a brick building with 1m thick walls. We also lived in the rooms of this house. There was an annex to the house where there was a food store. There was a big dinner room, a living room for parents and children where it was not allowed to smoke or drink, there was a room where one could play chess or cards and another room, something like a bar. The big room was often rented for weddings or birthday parties. There was a big kitchen in the building. Before my sister was born we lived in two rooms in the pot house: grandfather Menyhert in one and my parents and I in another. There was another building adjusting to the house. It was made from air bricks, a mixture of clay and straw. Air bricks are strong and warm. After WWI this house was a distillery where slivovitsa, a local plum brandy was produced. There were 2 m high, 1.5 m in diameter barrels in the cells: red plums purchased in surrounding villages were kept in them for fermentation. There was special equipment to process the fermented plums into slivovitsa. We, children, used to sip this fermented juice through a straw. It was delicious, but heady. In the late 1920s Czechs introduced state monopoly for production of alcohol, and the equipment from this distillery was shipped to a distillery in Uzhgorod. The building was reconstructed. There were two one-room apartments made in it with all comforts and separate entrance ways. One was leased to a clerk from the village hall and another – to a teacher of the local Slovak school.

There was a big yard in front of the pot house. As soon as it got warm before Pesach the local authorities installed merry-go-rounds there and paid my parents for using the land. Children and their parents could have a meal, ice cream, coffee or cold drinks in the pot house. There were lotteries in the foyer. Lottery tickets cost 1 crown. I remember that the main prize in lottery was a live piglet. There was also a prize hook where prizes could be fished out. A bowling club owner also rented a spot in the yard and pad their rental fees. Spectators made bets and the stake was a barrel of beer that they also bought in the pot house. This was a beneficial business.

There was a big orchard in the backyard and on the other side there were sheds for cows, horses and pigs. Ay for the livestock was stored in the attic or in haystacks in the yard. People in this area dealt in wood cutting for the most part. They shipped their wood to Uzhgorod on horse or bull-ridden wagons. On their way they stayed in our inn. There was a spot for them to leave horses for a night. There was a trough for the horses. Visitors had dinner in the pot house and slept in the hayloft and in the morning they went to the market in town. Local people followed them to earn some money by cutting the wood they were selling and townsfolk paid them for this work. In the 1930s Czechs introduced the land reform, dividing the area around Onokovtse into plots of land to give them to farmers who stubbed up the trees to plough the land and row grains and vegetables.

We kept livestock: two cows and my father had two horses, pigs and piglets to have fresh meat for the pot house. There were Hungarian pigs grown in the village. There was little meat but fat on them. In two years they were fed to grow 10cm thick fat. My grandfather bought pigs of English breed. They had thin hair and were very delicate. They didn’t bear the sun or the heat while the local breed was very strong. My grandfather interbred English pigs with local pigs to make them stronger. A local Ruthenian man fed the pigs and the cows.

When it was time to slaughter pigs my grandfather invited a Czech butcher from Uzhgorod. Usually in the village people didn’t skin the pigs, just burned down the bristle, but this butcher skinned the pigs and the skins were delivered to a supply office. The butcher made homemade sausage with meat and rice and liver filling. [called hurka in Hungarian] He marinated pig fat and meat for about a month and then smoked them in the smoking shed in the attic arranged in the spot where all chimneys came together, it was 3 х 3 m, 2 m high. This food was to be sold in the pot house. We didn’t eat pork fat or ham, but my father did. He said that the rabbi of Mukachevo allowed him to eat ham, just a little, as much as fit in an egg shell. I don’t know whether this was true. My father joked that Spira didn’t mention to him whether it had to be a chicken, goose or ostrich egg shell. The only Jewish dish served in the pot house was chicken soup with homemade noodles.

There were 2 Slovak women working in the kitchen. One was a cook and another one was her assistant. The cook did the cooking. My mother tasted the food and added spices. There was a waiter working in each room of the pot house. My mother worked in the food store selling cereals, sugar, salt and all other day-to-day goods. Later she also sold bread baked in the pot house. There was a 2m wide oven in the stove. After the wood burned down the coals were moved to the front of the oven and bread on trays was placed inside: 10 2kg loaves. It was baked several times a day. On Friday my mother also baked challah loaves for Sabbath. She also made them for 3 other Jewish families living in the village. After the last portion of bread was ready in the evening, my mother placed a pot of cholnt into the oven for our family for the next day. On Friday my mother cooked gefilte fish for Sabbath, chicken broth and potato and corn flour puddings.

Besides working as an accountant in the stores, my father began to work in the town court in Uzhgorod as a wine expert. There were may wine yards in Uzhgorod and in districts. When there were complaints to the quality of wine submitted to the court, my father was to make a statement whether it was low quality of wine or it was the result of poor storage. Once his statement saved a bishop from a big penalty and in his gratitude he gave my father a trip to a very good health center in the Tatras in Slovakia. This health center was built by the Greek Catholic Church for monks. Probably, throughout the history of this health center my father was the only Jew who had ever stayed there.

On Friday evening none of our family worked in the kitchen. The cook, her assistant and waiters managed there. The family got together at home for dinner. My mother lit candles and prayed over them according to the rules. On Saturday, however, all worked. Neologs worked Saturdays in Uzhgorod. The stores where my father worked were open on Saturday, though their owners were Jews. On Saturday morning we went to the prayer house in Nizhneye Domanintse. Then we went home and my father went to work. In the evening, after he came home from work, my father conducted the Havdalah, separation of Saturday from weekdays. We got together and my father lit a candle, smaller than the one to be lit on Sabbath. There was wine served and men had vodka in front of them. My father recited a prayer, then poured a little wine from somebody else’s glass or vodka into the saucer to put down the candle in it. Once vodka poured over onto the table and inflamed. There was a burnt spot on the table that over lived my father a long time. My father smoked and he also smoked on Sabbath. My grandfather grumbled about it, but my father joked back that there was nothing said about smoking in the Torah. It wasn’t allowed to work on Sabbath, but smoking was for pleasure. However, when we went to the prayer house, my father hid in the bushes to smoke so that other Jews didn’t see him smoking. Most Jews in Nizhneye Domanintse were Orthodox and didn’t appreciate any deviations from traditions.

While my grandfather lived we celebrated 5 main holidays beginning from Rosh Hashanah. My mother made traditional Jewish food: chicken broth with homemade noodles, gefilte fish, potato pancakes and strudels. On holidays we went to the prayer house. When we returned home, my mother put a dish with apple pieces and honey on the table. We dipped apples into honey and ate them and we also dipped challah that is usually dipped in salt into honey. After Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur started. Before the holiday we conducted the Kapores ritual. My grandfather taught me to ask forgiveness from those whom I hurt intentionally or unintentionally before Yom Kippur. We had a sufficient dinner before the first star appeared in the sky, when 24-hour fast began. Children started to fast half a day at the age of 6 and at the age of 13 they were to fast like adults. Next day we went to the prayer house to pray there until the first star appeared in the sky. My mother gave my father some cookies to give me in the prayer house, but my father and grandfather observed the fast strictly. In the evening we came home for dinner.

The next holiday was Sukkoth. We made a sukkah in the garden in the backyard. According to Jewish customs installation of a sukkah was to start right after Yom Kippur. There was a special site for the sukkah in the yard. We had a folding sukkah that we could use one year after another. There were green branches placed on the roof so that the sky could be seen through them. The sukkah was decorated with ribbons and paper flowers. There was a table and chairs brought into the sukkah. We had meals in the sukkah through all days of the holiday and after the holiday we folded the sukkah back to store it in the storeroom till next year.

There was Chanukkah in winter. My mother lit two candles in a big bronze chanukkiyah: one central candle – shammash, and the candle of the 1st day. Then every day she lit another candle. Children were given Chanukkah gelt. My grandfather was the first to give me some money. My father’s sister Maria and sister Karolina, who came to visit us on holiday with her family, also gave me Chanukkah gelt.

Then came Pesach, the last in the calendar, but not the least in significance. My father brought matzah from Uzhgorod and bought in the synagogue special wine, red and very sweet. The house was washed and cleaned. There was not to be a single breadcrumb in the kitchen before the holiday. Everyday rockery and utensils were taken away. There was special crockery for Pesach kept in the attic. My mother cooked traditional food: chicken broth with matzah, boiled chicken, gefilte fish, potato pancakes, puddings and cookies from the matzah flour. In the evening the family got together. There was a prayer recited. Besides other traditional food there was particular food to be eaten on Pesach: a piece of meat with a bone, hard-boiled eggs, ground apples with honey and cinnamon, greenery, horseradish and a saucer with salty water. My grandfather usually conducted the seder. I learned the 4 traditional questions to be posed at seder long before I went to the cheder. I knew them by heart without knowing what they were about. In the center of the table there was a nice wine glass for Elijah the Prophet. Some neolog families just had a prayer on Pesach without conducting the seder. Dinner started with greeneries dipped in salty water and eaten with a piece of matzah. Through all days of Pesach there was no bread in the house. We only ate matzah or potato and corn flour puddings. My father didn’t go to work on the first and the last two days of Pesach. My mother and grandfather didn’t work either. The store was closed, and in the pot house employees worked.

I went to cheder in the neighboring village at the age of 4. My father took me to the cheder when going to work, and then I returned home with other Jewish boys after classes at 3-4 pm. We took lunches from home with us. Local boys had lunch at home. The rebe spoke Yiddish to us, and I only spoke Hungarian, but by the middle of the first academic year I picked up sufficient Yiddish. Perhaps, the method of stick teaching in the cheder helped. I had never been beaten at home. My parents didn’t allow me to go play in the street for punishment. The rebe had a bamboo stick to punish the boys. In the first year we studied the Hebrew alphabet. In the 2nd year of studies we began to read prayers in Hebrew and translate them into Yiddish. In the 3rd form we began to study the Torah. We read chapters from the Torah, translated them into Yiddish and then discussed what we had read. When I turned 7, my parents sent me to the Slovak school in our village and I had to stop my studies in the cheder. It was a Roman Catholic school. The pupils greeted their teacher saying ‘Glory to Jesus Christ!’ in Latin, a traditional Roman Catholic greeting. [Laudeter Jesus Christus] Jewish children didn’t have to attend the religious classes. I finished my 1st form in this school, and went to the 2nd form of a Slovak school in Uzhgorod. I rode a bicycle to school and later to a grammar school. We also had classes on Saturday. There were no Orthodox Jews in Onokovtse, so nobody cared that I rode a bicycle on Saturday. However, I had to ride across Nizhneye Domanintse to get to Uzhgorod, and there were Orthodox Jews in this village that were angry that a Jewish boy rode a bicycle on Saturday. So, I came home on Friday evening, had dinner with the family and rode back to Uzhgorod to my aunt Karolina where I stayed overnight to go to school on Saturday and returned home on Saturday evening. On Friday evening Karolina’s husband went to the synagogue of neologs near the market in Uzhgorod and sometimes took me with him. Now it is an apartment house, but there still can be seen a big relief mogendovid [magen David] under the roof on it.

My parents knew that I needed to know the state language well to continue my education in a grammar school. So I went to the 4th form to a Czech school in Uzhgorod. After finishing my 4th year I went to the Czech 8-year school in Uzhgorod.

I didn’t have close friends in the village, though I got along with all children. I had friends in Uzhgorod. Not all of them were Jews, but my parents didn’t mind it. They taught me that it wasn’t nationality that mattered about a person, but his human virtues.

I was quite young when my grandfather began to teach me veterinary discipline. He was with him at his work and he commented me on what he was doing, but then something happened that I gave up the thought of becoming a vet. An apple stuck in a cow’s throat. The cow was suffocating. Its owner was trying to push the apple inside with a stick, but it even got worse. The owner called my grandfather, and my grandfather took me with him. My grandfather put a ring from a wagon’s wheel into the cow’s mouth to keep it open, and then probed for the apple in its throw. Then he told me to try take it out, but I failed. What were we to do? My grandfather told me to bring a tea spoon from home – we were the only family in the village who had tea spoons. My grandfather tied the spoon to my hand and told me to try and make a hole in the apple with this spoon. I did manage to make a hole, my grandfather hit the cow on her head so that the apple fell out of there, and the cow’s stomach content poured all over me. It took me half day to wash it off me, and this was the end of my veterinary career.

My sister was born in 1927. She was named Agnes, and at home we called her Agi, Agica in the Hungarian manner [diminutives for Agnes]. After she was born, in 1927 grandfather Menyhert died after an unsuccessful surgery in the hospital in Uzhgorod. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Uzhgorod and the rabbi of the neolog synagogue in Uzhgorod conducted the funeral. My father recited the Kiddush over my grandfather’s grave. Nobody sat shivah after my grandfather – this is not a custom with neologs.

After my sister was born we moved into a small house from the pot house inn. My parents made a two-room apartment from two 1-bedroom apartments. The 2 rooms in the inn were modified to serve as guestrooms. My father left the pot house to my mother. After his death the sign ‘Menyhert Bergida’ was replaced with ‘Anna Ringel’.

I had many friends at school and later in grammar school. Not all of them were Jews. There were good teachers and professors at school. We studied biology, mineralogy, astronomy, botany, natural history, history, geography, mathematic and physics. We studied languages. Our Latin teacher was an aging man. He called 3-4 pupils to the blackboard and we asked each other questions. We had a good conduct of French and German, and a good knowledge of Latin helped us to understand other languages: Spanish, Italian and Romanian. I remember our teacher of the world history. We always looked forward to his classes. Besides history he taught us to think and consider possible consequences of insignificant a6t first sight steps. He told us about ancient people and gave an example of the Jewish people as the nation that preserved its traditions. He said that if Jews managed to survive as a nation, this meant they were strong, but he also said that a big enemy of Jews was assimilation. There were also religious classes in the grammar school. At first a teacher of other subjects conducted religious classes for Jews, and his classes were dull. He explained the Torah, told about Jewish holidays and religion, but it was boring. Later a doctor of theology, a rabbi who had finished a higher religious school in Jerusalem, became our teacher. We enjoyed his classes very much. He also taught Hebrew. He was not the only Jewish teacher in the grammar school. I also remember Blan, Doctor of Philosophy, Czech teacher, who was a Jew. He was a neolog.

There was a Jewish grammar school near our school where they studied in Hebrew. This building houses a Hungarian general school now. In front of this building there were few colums and there was a big mogenduvid [magen David] on the fronton of the building. I don’t know whether it is still there. My future wife studied in this school.

During my studies in elementary school I began to attend the Makkabi [6] club in Uzhgorod. It rented a gym near the school. I went in for track-and-field events. There were only boys in this club. We ran and jumped, played volleyball and basketball. We had two instructors, one was Czech, champion of Czechoslovakia in gymnastics and worked in a bank in Uzhgorod. Another one, training us to run and jump, was a Jew, a tailor. They both only spoke Hebrew to us.

I also was a boy scout. Our neighbor in Onokovtse organized a Czech boy scout group. On summer vacations we went hiking to the woods or mountains and lived in tents. Older boy scouts cooked for us. We learned to march singing songs, swim and mountaineering. We wore dark shorts and white shirts. Scouts wore dark-blue triangle neckties. When I studied in the grammar school in Uzhgorod ,y friends talked me into joining the boy scout organization in Uzhgorod.

When I turned 13, I had a bar mitzvah at the neolog synagogue in Uzhgorod. A rebe from the cheder that I went to before school trained me for the bar mitzvah. On Saturday following my birthday the family went to the synagogue. After the prayer the rabbi called me to the Torah. There is a special chapter that a boy should read at his bar mitzvah. I remember it by heart, so many times we read it with the rabbi. I had a tallit on for the first time in my life. Then my father treated all those who were at the synagogue with shlivovitz and honey cake. In the evening we had a dinner party at home. My parents invited the Jewish families living in our village, and my mother’s sister Karolina and my father’s sister Maria and their families came to the party. Everybody greeted me and brought me presents.

In 1938 Hungarians came to power in Subcarpathia. At first the majority of population was happy about it, but then this welcome began to fade away. Food products and other goods became more expensive. Unemployment developed. Many people were saying that it was good during the Czech rules and wished the Czechs came back. A part of Czechoslovakia, a part of Romania [Hungarian Era] [7] and Northern Yugoslavia [Hungarian Occupation of Yugoslavia] [8] were also annexed to Hungary. Hungary restored its borders it had before WWI. [not completely but partly]

In 1938 I was supposed to finish my grammar school, but when Hungarians came to power they closed Czech schools and grammar schools. I went to a Ruthenian school in the town of Perechin in 20 km from Uzhgorod. I commuted there by train every day. Later this school was also closed and there were only Hungarian schools left. I wanted to go to a Hungarian school in Uzhgorod, but they started preparations for graduation exams and I didn’t want to repeat going to the 7th form. Later they opened one class in one of the schools for those who had studied in Czech schools. In September we passed our graduate exams and obtained secondary school certificates.

In 1938 anti-Jewish laws [7] began to be introduced in Subcarpathia. The authorities took away stores, factories, shops from Jewish owners. The Jewish owners had two options: one was to give a store to a non-Jewish owner. They were Christians and for the most part they were nominal owners since former owners still managed their businesses, only they received salary for it. However, if a Jewish owner failed to find a new master of his business within specified terms, the state confiscated his property without any compensation. Jews were forbidden to study in higher educational institutions. Instead of military service they were to serve in work battalions. My father lost his job in Uzhgorod since his Jewish masters lost their businesses. We also had to give away our pot house and store. My father was at WWI and had many awards. He submitted a request for keeping his property considering his services during the war. They kept him in the unknown for a long time before he received a response that his request was gratified. We remained the owners of the store and pot house.

Many Jews in Subcarpathia didn’t have a Hungarian citizenship. They had moved to Subcarpathia from Poland during the Czech rule and in their majority didn’t have a Czech citizenship either. It was not needed during the Czech rule and they remained Polish citizens. When Hungarians came to power only those who had been Czech citizens could obtain the Hungarian citizenship. In 1942 Hungarians took those who didn’t have their citizenship to Ukraine in the USSR. From 1941 Ukraine was occupied by fascist armies [8]. They were moved to Ivano-Frankovsk region where they were exterminated. There were few survivors. There was one family of Jews from Poland in our village. They had a very nice daughter and we were friends. They were all taken away. This girl sent us a letter with a Hungarian soldier. She wrote that some people had been killed and they were waiting for their turn. We never heard from them again.

After finishing school I couldn’t continue my studies. Jews were not admitted to higher educational institutions. I went to Budapest where I became an apprentice in the joiner shop. From there I was recruited to the army in 1938. The military commission sent me to a field engineering battalion where I served half a year. We were trained to build pontoon bridges, studied blasting, search and removal of mines on an island on the Danube near Budapest. After the law on work battalions was issued all Jews from 4 field engineering battalions were gathered in one battalion that they called a forced labor battalion. A Hungarian officer became its commander. We wore soldiers’ uniforms, but had yellow armbands on our sleeves. Once a week we were given a lease to go to the town. It was necessary to have 20 Fillers [100 Fillers was one Pengo, the currency in interwar Hungary] and one condom to obtain a pass. When we returned from the town we were given injections against venereal diseases. Residents of Budapest often asked us about the yellow bands and we replied that this was a sign of the chemical battalion. Later many of them knew what it meant and sympathized with us. Once I wanted to go to a casino in Budapest. The porter stopped me pointed at the armband and quietly told me to take it off. I put it in my pocket and went in. In Budapest I met a Jewish family who began to invite me on weekends and Jewish holidays. Later I lost contact with them. We were taken to another camp down the Danube where we built dams on the river. In 1942 we were moved to Ukraine to dig trenches near the front line and removed mines. We kept moving from one place to another. Many people perished there and there were many who lost their arms or legs. Every day before going to bed I begged God to allow me an easy death rather than make me a cripple. In 1943 Soviet troops began an attack and we were taken to Romania to build fortifications on the border and shelters in the mountains. [He probably refers to Northern Transylvania, that is a part of Romania now but was a part of Hungary during those times.] Later we moved to work on a railroad construction. We installed 40 km of the rail track in Northern Transylvania. From there we moved back to Subcarpathia, to the village of Volovets [70 km from Uzhgorod, 600 km from Kiev], in the Carpathian Mountains where we built bunkers and fortifications in the mountains. I was fortunate to have leaned the blacksmith’s work in the shop in Budapest. I was sent to work in the repair shop where we fixed spades, picks and other tools.

There was happening in Volovets. Once a month Jewish battalions got a 2-day eave. Before another leave Jewish residents came to the commanding officer asking him for help. There was a mikveh in their village, and the water heating boiler got rusty and the water from the pool leaked inside it and put down the fire. The Jews asked the officer to assign workers to help them repair the boiler. The officer sent me and another mechanic to go take a look at the boiler. Only the two of us were from Subcarpathia, the rest were from Budapest in the battalion. The boiler was covered with rust, and we couldn’t do anything about it. We told the locals that the body of the boiler needed to be replaced. We told them to ask the officer for a truck to transport the boiler to Uzhgorod for repair. The officer gave us a truck and we went to Uzhgorod. He ordered us to stay in Uzhgorod while the boiler was in repairs. We left the boiler in the shop where they told us that the repairs would take two days. We told the driver to come back a week later, when the boiler was ready, and went home. My companion lived in Mukachevo and I went to Onokovtse. My family was at home. I spent a week with them and then went to Uzhgorod. We took the boiler to Volovets and installed it in the mikveh. While we were in Volovets the two of us got invitations to Jewish families every week and were given a hearty welcome.

In spring 1944 commanding officer of our battalion received a telegram from his commanders that our battalion was to be transferred to Hungary, Szerencs town. We went there by train. There we were given civilian clothes, but we still had the yellow armbands. When we arrived, it turned out tha6 nobody was aware that we were coming and they didn’t what to do with us. It turned out that parents of few Jews in the battalion from Budapest talked somebody in the headquarters in Budapest to write Szerencs instead of Szentes. In Szentes, in the south of Hungary, battalions were formed for the front or some mines in Yugoslavia. There were rumors that there was very hard work in those mines and that Jews were treated very badly and sent to the most dangerous sites, but while this all was cleared out, we stayed in Szerencs about 2 months. Since there was nothing else for us to do, we worked at the sugar factory. Then we moved to Szentes when this confusion was cleared. However, the battalion formation there was over and there was no place they could send us. We stayed in Szentes. At that time they began to send Jews to ghettos. They also captured those who tried to hide away. There was a term: ‘inspection of pants’. If gendarmes captured a man who said he was not a Jew, but they suspected otherwise they ordered him to take down his pants to check whether he was circumcised. Our battalion was sent to sort out things in the Jewish houses whose owners were taken to the ghetto. We worked in groups of 5-6 men and 2 Hungarian gendarmes watched the workers. We sorted out the things and hauled them to the synagogue where the town authorities made storages. People were allowed to take some food and few clothes to the ghettos. There were clothes, furniture, household goods, pictures and valuables left. Gendarmes allowed us to take food products and the rest of things we sorted out, packed and loaded on trucks. Other groups unloaded the trucks at the synagogue. Jews were taken to ghettos and then to concentration camps all over Hungary, but in Budapest. In Budapest they were accommodated in so-called Jewish yellow star houses [9]. There were fences around these houses and the inmates were watched by gendarmes. I corresponded with my family. From the last card I received from my father I knew that Jews of Uzhgorod had also been taken to the ghetto. I went to Uzhgorod. The train went as far as Chop [25 km from Uzhgorod, 690 km from Kiev], and I walked about 20 km. In Uzhgorod I was told that the ghetto was in the former brick factory. At quite a distance from the ghetto I heard the buzz of human voices like bees in a beehive. The Hungarian guards didn’t allow me to go in there, but they called my mother, my father and sister to the fence. The fence was made from bricks in chess order with openings trough which we talked. My father tried to give me a letter through the opening, but the gendarme watching us took it away. This was the last time I saw them. When I returned to Szentes I received a card from my father where he wrote that the following day all Jews were to be taken away from the ghetto. He asked me not to worry. I never heard from them again. After WWII my acquaintances returning home from concentration camps told me that right upon arrival to Auschwitz my father was taken to a gas chamber. My mother looked young for her age. She and my sister were taken to a work camp in Stutthof on the Oder on the Polish-German border. [Stutthof is on the Vistula, near Gdansk.] People who returned from there said there were shootings and bombings and they didn’t know for sure how my mother and sister perished. They worked in the woods, on wood processing sites, in this camp. Since winter 1945 Soviet Air Forces were continuously bombing this camp. Many inmates perished then.

From Szentes we were sent over the [former] Yugoslav-Hungarian border, to the Hungarian occupied a part of Yugoslavia. We built fortifications on the right bank of the Tisa river, and lived in the Ada on the bank of the Tisa. I worked in repair shops where we fixed tools. It was October 1944. There was firing heard in the town and locals said that those were partisans shooting in the town. All of a sudden one day Hungarian and German troops began their retreat. Our major told us we were not retreating, but going to build fortifications on the bank of the Tisa to defend our Hungarian motherland. We laughed, but what were we to do – an order was an order and we all went there, even those who had worked in the shops before. Junior officers – corporals and sergeants were already on the bank. We found a German cannon that they dropped since there was something wrong with a wheel and we also found few shells. Germans had removed optical sights from the cannon and it was no good for shooting. The Tisa was wide at that spot and there was a small village, 3-4 houses, on the opposite bank. We were told there were Soviet troops there and we had to shoot at them. There were no artillery men in the battalion. Our officer recalled that his deputy had red shoulder straps, so he was an artillery man. The officer ordered him to take the command! The man tried to explain that he was not an artillery man and that he just had this uniform. What were we to do? Then they recalled that our work battalion had been formed from army troops. There was an old man from who was a spieler in a park of attractions in Budapest. He had boasted that he was an artillery man during WWI. The officer called for him. He said we had everything but the sights for shooting. The sergeant climbed a high weeping willow over the Tisa to correct the shooting. A cannon is even more plain than a rifle. The old man took a 105 mm shell, put it in the cannon, closed the lid, targeted it conventionally onto the village and pulled something there. He also told us to plug our ears and open the mouth to save the hearing. This was the way with artillery men, he said. Bang! The sergeant shouted from the weeping willow: about one kilometer shot over the target! The old man turned something, lowered the barrel, took another shell, shot it - the shell flew to the left. Another shell – undershoot again. When all of a sudden mines from the opposite bank began to fall on us! It turned out the Soviet troops had their mine cannons installed and began to shoot at us and at the town. The sergeant fell from the weeping willow into the river – it was his luck. We fell onto the ground. Nobody was wounded, only two were shell shocked. The officer ordered us to retreat. We packed and loaded the kitchen facility onto a wagon. We walked about 80 km to the Danube where we stopped to cross the river. Soviet planes were dropping bombs on the bridge and blasted it finally. Then there were pontoon bridges installed. We were waiting for our turn to cross the river, when I decided to escape and hide in the town. A military patrol seized me in about one kilometer from the crossing spot. They sent me back. I was lucky since they might have killed me. We crossed the river and walked on to the Austrian-Hungarian border, over 300 km. Soviet troops were in Uzhgorod already. They were advancing. We were sent to dig trenches, obstacles and tank ditches. We were moving away from the border and worked on the territory of Austria. Tank ditches were 2 m deep V-shape pits narrowing at the bottom. There were work battalions, and 15-40 year-old women from Jewish houses in Budapest doing this job. There were over 2 thousand women digging ditches. There were also people from other work battalions retreating with Hungarians units from Yugoslavia. They were very miserable. It was frosty outside, and they hardly had any clothes, many of them were frost-bitten and all of them had a cold. Our guards were SS soldiers.

Chief of our camp was a German from Budapest, a volksdeutsch [10]. Parents of some of my fellow comrades from Budapest knew him and he was rather loyal to us: we got better food and were sent to easier jobs. Once I injured my arm at work and this injury developed periostitis. I couldn’t do any work and there were no medications available. All I could do was keeping my hand in the water that I heated on the fire. Once, when I was keeping my hand in water a boy from Hitler Jugend stopped before me shouting in German: ‘You, dirty Jew, you must work!’. I remained sitting and he threatened to kill me. He took his rifle from his shoulder, pulled the breech mechanism as if he wanted to load it, when all of a sudden a bullet fell out of the rifle. This means it was loaded and if he pointed it at me even incidentally and pulled the trigger, this would mean the end of me. He got so confused seeing this bullet that he forgot about everything and left.

In winter 1945 Soviet planes started firing at our positions and we evacuated from there urgently. Women evacuated separately. Only recently I read in a newspaper of the Hungarian Jewish community what happened to them. They were moving to the north in the direction of the Slovak border. Of 2000 women about 800 survived. The rest of them were either killed or died from hunger and exhaustion on their way. 300 women came to Budapest and the rest of them wandered to different locations.

We walked few dozen kilometers in columns of 5 in a row. There was one SS guard for 10 rows. The weaker ones walked in the rear of the column, in the dust raised by those walking ahead. Their clothes and faces were covered with dust. If somebody couldn’t walk and came out of the column Germans killed him. There was another advantage for those walking ahead. We found food leftovers dropped by the soldiers walking ahead of us. We were given little food. In one village we stopped to rest. The SS soldiers decided to have some entertainment. They stood in two lines and we were made to run the gauntlet. They hit us with rifle butts. I took off my coat and wrapped it around my head. I tried to walk by the fence to be at least protected from one side and managed to get through it. There was an older man running ahead of me. I knew him: he was chief doctor and owner of a private polyclinic in Budapest. He had a big rucksack on his back. The rope on its top broke and the rucksack was hanging loose banging on his knees. He couldn’t run and a German hit him on the bridge of his nose and broke it. He fell, I ran to him and dragged him with me. He happened to have books on medicine in his rucksack – they were so heavy. Other guys helped me to drag this man ad his rucksack. I don’t know what happened to him. He must have perished. All weak and sick inmates were exterminated in Mauthausen. Then we boarded a train to Mauthausen.

We didn’t know we were going to the concentration camp. We thought we were moving to another work site. The train stopped on the way. It ran out of coal. We were ordered to gather wood in the field. The train moved on, but again ran out of fuel and we walked about 2 km to Mauthausen. The weaker and sick ones were ordered to step aside. They were ordered to board trucks and taken to the camp. They were exterminated in a gas chamber upon arrival to the camp – there was no sorting out. We came to a big gate where there was a sign in German: ‘Work gives freedom’. The guards told us that the main camp was overcrowded and we were sent to a subcamp of Mauthausen. There was a long barrack. Other inmates of the camp told us to stay away from this barrack. There were prisoners from Ukraine kept in this barrack and the barrack was full of typhus lice. We lay on the ground. In about 200 m from this barrack there was another similar barrack where they kept 8-15 year old children from concentration camps in Poland. We stayed outside for 2 or 3 days before Germans cleaned and disinfected the barrack and we could go inside. Germans delivered food in big thermal containers and gave it to us in front of the barrack. In the morning we got some dark liquid that they called coffee for some reason. For lunch we got a pot of soup with rotten vegetables. Occasionally there were beans in the soup. There was one loaf of bread for 10 inmates per day given to us, 100 grams per person. Of course, we couldn’t cut identical slices: some of us had bigger slices and others got smaller ones. The children had the system, but they were having problems. When Germans brought them food, the children pounced on those thermos bottles. They often turned them upside down and Germans laughed looking at the fighting children, hit them with their sticks or even shoot at them. Children didn’t have any pots. We had the pots from the time we were in the work battalions and children had nothing to eat from. They begged for empty tins in the kitchen. When cooks opened tins with meat they made holes in the bottom to make it easier for them to push out the meat. The children kept their fingers on these holes when soup was poured into their tins. Those who took their fingers away lost their soup. They had another idea: they took off their wooden clogs that they wore in the camp and had their soup poured into them. Older children managed to get 2-3 portions of soup and some extra bread and there was nothing left for younger children. Many children were starving to death. We decided to get things in better order there. Only my companion from Mukachevo and I knew Czech. We decided that since we understood when they spoke Polish, they were to understand Czech. We went to the children’s barrack. But they began to throw stones on us shouting ‘Magyar, Magyar!’ They probably had bad memories about Hungarians.

There was a barrack where Czech inmates lived. They were in a privileged position comparing to others. The Czechs worked at a plant in the town and were given food at the plant canteen. When they had extra food they shared it with us. We left some of this food on a stump in front of the children’s barrack. Some children took the food and the others didn’t probably fearing something bad. Once we left some bread, margarine and jam on the stump and hid away. The children came close and we surrounded them. They began to scream ‘don’t touch us, we are Polish’. We told them they were not Polish, but Jewish, and that we were not Hungarians, but Jews, but they kept screaming trying to escape. We finally managed to convince them that we would do no harm to them. They agreed to let us speak to their leader, 15-year old Juzek. In the evening he came into our barrack with two other boys. We explained them what our intentions were emphasizing that there was a blaze of artillery cannonades visible in the evening, which meant that the Russian troops were coming and that if they continued to behave the way they did they would either die from hunger or Germans would kill them and they would not live till we were liberated. We told them we would help them to bring things to order. In the morning, before Germans came with thermos bottles we came to their barrack. Juzek explained who we were. We told the children to line up. When Germans came with food, the children were standing in line very quietly. Germans even asked what happened. The children understood this was better for them.

In April 1945 military troops were approaching Mauthausen and we evacuated to Gunskirchen town in about 20 km from Mauthausen. There were also barracks there and prisoners from surrounding camps were taken to this area. Germans were raging and we understood that the war was coming to an end. We were given miserable food: 2 potatoes in their skin per day. Many people died every day and there were corpses piling in the yard. Every other day corpses were loaded on trucks and hauled to the crematorium. It was horrific that there were meat parts cut out on some corpses. Inmates from the Polish barrack were selling meat saying it was horse meat… Germans began to watch them and discovered that they were cutting meat from the corpses. They killed 10 inmates doing this. The guards were Germans from regular army. [Wehrmacht] The SS soldiers disappeared, and these guards were rather loyal to us. The area of the camp was rather big and Germans didn’t mind that we walked around. We were not allowed to come into the barrack of Germans. We could find carrots and potatoes in abandoned storage facilities. When there were no air raids we were allowed to make food on fire. We began to receive parcels with biscuits, jam, cigarettes and matches from the English Red Cross. It was called the St. George Cross. I didn’t smoke and exchanged cigarettes for bread and biscuits. When we received the food it was better to eat it all at once since it was stolen at nights, even if we put boxes with food under a pillow.

On 5 May 1945 we woke up from the roar of shooting in the morning. I stepped out of the barrack. The Germans guard warned me to not approach the fence since he had an order to shoot. The shooting was somewhere near. I lay on the ground to not be shot by stray bullet. All of a sudden the gate of the camp open and camouflage color trucks drove in. I could’t see from afar whose troops these were, but then I saw Negroes in the trucks. American soldiers. All inmates ran out of their barracks hugging and kissing the Americans. It’s horrible to think of how we smelled – we hadn’t washed for a long time before… The Americans gave us meat cans and bread. It didn’t occur to many prisoners that after a long period of hunger they had better not eaten fat food and bread, but they pounced on the food. Few hours later many of them felt ill and even died. But we were free! We were issued certificates of prisoners of a concentration camp indicating that the US army liberated us. I said I was a citizen Czechoslovakia. I thought Hungarians were occupants. In my certificate my name was written as Ladislav in the Czech manner. I had to obtain another certificate confirming that Laszlo Ringel and Ladislav Ringel was one and the same person. The Americans hauled those who were ill to a hospital. The rest of us could do whatever we wanted. Few of us went to Linz. On our way we saw an abandoned vehicle. We got inside – there was no gasoline left. We saw a broken vehicle nearby and a canister of gasoline inside. We took the canister and drove to the town in this vehicle. We told the first patrol on our way that we were liberated from the concentration camp. They took us to former German barracks with other former inmates of concentration camps. This barrack was dirty and overcrowded and we decided to stay in the town. We lodged on the attic in a house where there was only an old woman staying. She was glad to have us. We kept wandering in the town not knowing what to do. I recalled how many people were taken to hospital by Americans and felt like helping these people somehow. I decided to find the hospital and see whether they could employ me there. I visited several hospitals before I got a job in one of them deployed in the former German Air Force School. There were 3-storied barracks where they arranged wards for patients. There were French and Slavic patients in the camp for the most part. They had been taken there from concentration camps. I knew French, Ruthenian, Czech and Slovak. At first I helped the hospital attendants to carry the patients to the reception room and then take them to their wards. I interpreted for the doctor, captain of medical services in the American army. He spoke French and I translated what patients were telling him. He put down their names and home addresses. There were many French, Belgian, Serbs, and Croatians in the hospital from all over Europe. I could understand them all. I made lists of patients for the Red Cross. There were many women. Once, when making another list, I noticed that there were 4 women with the same surname and home address in the hospital. All four had enteric typhus, high fever, all were in poor condition. One was about 50 years old, the others were much younger. We decided they were relatives. Few days later one young woman died and the rest were on their way to recovery. They happened to be the mother and 3 daughters, all came from different camps and didn’t know about each other. I worked there for about 8 months. I aw man7 people with different lives. There was a Polish woman taken to the hospital from a concentration amp. I don’t know how she survived: she was skin and bones. She was in her 9th month of pregnancy and weighed 40 kg, but the baby was born with standard weight, a good strong girl. She was born on 9 May 1945, and chief of the hospital, American, named the girl Victoria in honor of the victory. There was another story: one of the Americans working in the hospital met a girl from a concentration camp and they fell in love with one another. When she recovered they got married. The girl got pregnant. He wrote his parents that he got married and they were going to have a baby. There was a war with Japan going on, and all of a sudden he was sent to Japan. A short time later his wife received a notification on his death. This guy’s parents too her with them to the USA.

There also was German medical personnel in the hospital at the beginning. Americans captured a Germans medical battalion and doctors, nurses and attendants were assisting in the hospital, but in some cases they were trying to do harm. There was a patient in a ward. Her injury didn’t heal, and each time after a doctor’s visit the injury got worse. Her companion said that each time the doctor applied some powder on the injury. When they checked the injury after the doctor’s visit, it turned out to be salt that he applied. He was shot. There were 2 or 3 children’s wards in the hospital. Once the children attacked a German attendant hitting him with what they had at hand. The Americans tried to keep the children away from him, but it was hard. They beat this attendant within an inch of his life. As it turned out, he was an SS guard in their camp, and the children recognized him. The workers of the hospital found an SS tattoo on his hand. There was another incident. The food for employees and patients was made from tinned meat mainly. There were few German workers in the kitchen. The patients began to complain that there was too much salt in their food. An American officer hid in the kitchen to watch what was going on there. He saw a German worker adding packs of salt to the pots with food. He was also shot. There were also other German doctors and nurses dedicated to their work. They even rescued hopeless patients from dying.

There were funny stories as well. Besides, this American hospital, there was a Soviet hospital for the former Soviet prisoners-of-war on the air field. Some patients were allowed to go to town,. There was a village near the town. American soldiers guarded the air field. Every one hundred meters there were patrol jeep vehicles with guards who had radios. Soviet patients often stole sheep and calves from the village to cook them. They also took away food products from villagers. When they stole a calf they had to plot how to take it past the guards. They talked two Polish boys to help them. They found a goat, put a rope around its neck and began to pull it by the rope through the gate. The goat stood up to the boys bleating: they made a lot of noise. The guard saw this picture and burst into laughter. He called other guards to come and watch this show. 3 jeep vehicles from other posts arrived. They began to take photos of the boys pulling the goat and at this time former prisoners-of-war brought their calf or whatever else they had through the posts that the American military left unguarded. They also robbed people in the streets, broke into their houses to take away their jewelry or money.

In early 1946 the hospital was closed and we left it. Slovak border was the nearest to us and we headed to Bratislava with other companions from Subcarpathia. There were about 12 of us. We sailed on a boat along thee Danube and then walked the rest of the way. The bridges were blasted, their fragments blocked the waterway and the boats couldn’t sail. I found a cart and loaded my belongings on it and in order nobody took me for a fascist I drew a red pentagonal star on it. German and Hungarian soldiers convoyed by Slovaks were moving from Bratislava. The soldiers searched us and took from us what they liked. We were taken to the Slovakian bank, to the point where we were subject to disinfection, registration and where we were given some money for the road. From there we got to Bratislava and walked to Subcarpathia via Budapest. In Bratislava we were asked to take care of a group of Subcarpathian children, who were taken to Bratislava from concentration camps, there were 15 of them. The children were from Beregovo, Khust and Mukachevo. I wished I could get off the train and spend few days in Budapest, but I couldn’t leave the children. When we arrived at Uzhgorod, we separated. I went home to Onokovtse.

In Bratislava we were told that Subcarpathia had been given to the USSR. All I knew about the USSR was that the Soviet army bore the main burden of the war. I was hoping that after WWII Subcarpathia would become Czechoslovakian again, but these hopes failed./ I was hopping again that at least life would not be much worse in the USSR. I understood that about any regime there were people who appreciated changes and there were those who were not happy with any. So I decided to make no hasty conclusions, but wait and see.

Our both houses in Onokovtse were occupied. The pot house became a storage house and in the house where we lived with my parents after my sister was born was inhabited by some newcomers. The door of the pot house was closed, but I knew the way to get inside. There was a manhole in the attic that was never locked. I got inside through this manhole. I took few photographs and some clothes. I stayed a little among the things that were dear to me when I was a child: a chess table with the chess board made from ivory and black stone, the table with a burnt spot when my father spilled some vodka during Havdalah. On the door of the wardrobe from the inside my mother inscribed the names of cows and calving dates. There was the memory of my family living in this house. I stayed overnight with our neighbors who were happy that I was back. On the next day I went to Uzhgorod. I was hoping to find my aunt Karolina, my mother’s sister, who might know about my family. I only found Miklos, my cousin, there. He was in a work battalion from where he was taken to a concentration camp, and Americans liberated him. Miklos was working in his father’s furniture shop. He offered me to stay with him and work in the shop. Miklos told me what happened to my mother’s sisters. Aunt Karolina and her husband perished in a concentration camp and so did my mother’s sister Rozsa and her husband living in Slovakia. Rozsa’s daughter Edit was in a labor camp where she perished. Rozsa’s son Tibor survived, but I didn’t have any information about him. Miklos’ brother Sandor escaped to England in 1938 after Hungarians came to power. During WWII he served in the Czechoslovakian Legion in the British army. After the war Sandor returned to Britain and married an English woman. They lived in London. We didn’t correspond and this is all I know about him. He might have passed away. He was older than me.

I went to work in the furniture shop. I learned to work on the wood treatment lathe. I lived in a room in the shop. I had meals in the town. There was a Red Cross ‘Social care’ organization in Russkaya Street where they had a canteen to provide meals to those who returned from concentration camps. I met girls and courted many of them there. It was there that I met my future wife Lea Helman, a young girl with big back eyes. We began to meet. Lea came from Bogdan village [175 km from Uzhgorod, 560 km from Kiev] Rakhov district in Subcarpathia. She was born in 1927. Her Jewish name was Laya. My wife was born Lea, later the Ukrainians made Helena of her. Although in the town some called her Helen at home she was always called Lea. The entire family called her Lea all the time. Her father Moishe Helman was a farmer and her mother Beila Helman was a housewife. There were 11 children in the family, but before WWII 9 of them were in Subcarpathia. One died in his teens from a disease. One of Lea’s older brothers escaped to England after the Hungarians came to power, during the war he served in the Czechoslovakian Legion in the British army and returned to England after the war. When he got to know that his brothers and sisters returned from the concentration camp he decided to visit them. Soviet authorities arrested him accusing him of espionage and sent him to the GULAG [12] where he perished. The rest of the children were taken to the ghetto in April 1944 and from there they were taken to Auschwitz. Lea’s mother and father were exterminated in Auschwitz immediately, and Lea and her brothers and sisters were sent to different concentration camps. They were young and managed to survive and returned to Subcarpathia. Lea was taken to a labor camp in Schlanitzsee town in Germany. She met an Austrian Jewish girl and they became friends. When in January 1945 evacuation of the camp began, Lea and her friend managed to escape. They both spoke fluent German. Some kind people helped them to get Aryan documents and certificates of baptistery and they lived till May 1945 with these documents. Lea worked as a servant for a German family. By the way, later she got to know that her older sister Rivka also escaped in the same way. She managed to escape from the camp, get some Christian documents, and she lived in a German town and even worked as a conductor in a tram. It was easier for girls, there was no ‘inspection of pants’ for them. When American troops came to the town where Lea lived, she went back to Subcarpathia. Once my wife and I went to Bogdan village to visit the graves of her relatives. I saw the house their family lived in before the war. It was abandoned. A little decayed house. Lea came to Uzhgorod where she entered a medical school for medical nurses. In Uzhgorod she met with her brothers and sisters who returned from concentration camps. I don’t remember all of them, though I used to know them. The oldest was Laib. Then two sisters, Sarra and Liebe were born, and then three others, whose names I don’t remember. Then came Rivka, Mehl and my wife Lea. They were all very close. I don’t know how religious my wife’s parents were. Of course, the young generation was not so religious, but they celebrated Jewish holidays.

Shortly after establishment of the Soviet power in Subcarpathia, before Soviet passports were issued and before registration of the population, my wife’s brothers and sisters moved to Israel. As a rule, a big group of those who wanted to emigrate, went to Romania where they rented a boat to sail to Israel. They settled down in towns and kibbutzim. One of them, Leib Helman, a lawyer, was even a mayor of Beer Sheva. Under his guidance a block of houses was built. It’s called Helman. There was his bust installed in front of a supermarket in Beer Sheva. There is only one sister living now – Sarra. The rest of them have passed away. Their children and their families live in Israel. Lea didn’t go with them. She wanted to obtain a diploma of the medical nurse and then follow them to Israel. I also thought it was right to move to Israel having a profession. It never occurred to us that we would live behind the ‘iron curtain’ [13] for so many decades. My cousin Miklos didn’t stay in Subcarpathia either. The Soviet power expropriated his furniture shop. Miklos was afraid of being arrested and crossed the border with Hungary where he lived his life. He married a Jewish girl from Budapest and they had children. They lived in Budapest. Miklos died in the 1980s and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Budapest.

I married Lea in 1946. There were no relatives of ours left in Subcarpathia by that time. My wife’s cousin, a tailor, who lived in Uzhgorod in a cottage, made a real Jewish wedding for us. There was a chuppah in the yard of his house, and a rabbi from the only synagogue in Uzhgorod conducted the wedding ceremony. There was a funny incident during the registration of our marriage in the registry office. They required our birth certificates. Lea didn’t have one and we went to the registry office in Rakhov, to obtain a copy from the archives. It turned out that her brothers and sisters were registered there, but not Lea. Later we figured out that there was a grandmother or grandfather registering the children, or the mother or father, and they missed Lea. Lea had to go for a medical examination to the polyclinic. They put down the year of birth that she indicated and the day and moth when we came to the polyclinic. After the wedding we settled down with my wife’s cousin. She studied at school and I worked in the furniture shop that belonged to the state already. We obtained Soviet passports. My wife was written down as Helena. Was told in the passport office that the Russian equivalent of Laszlo was Vasiliy and issued my passport with the name of Vasiliy Ringel. I tried to protest telling them that if Laszlo was not all right for them, then let them right down the Czech name of Ladislav, but chief of this passport office stood his grounds. At that time they introduced the Russian language and Russian names in use. My wife convinced me that it didn’t make sense to put one’s freedom at risk for the sake of a name. We already saw what was happening during the Soviet rule. After Lea’s brother was arrested and exiled I understood that this regime was capable of anything. They were closing the synagogues and Christian [Eastern Orthodox] and Catholic churches in Subcarpathia turning them into some storage facilities. They were ruining, of course. Religion was announced outlawed and believers were persecuted. There was a Bergida man in Uzhgorod, perhaps, even some distant relative on my mother’s side, I don’t know. He was chief of logistics of a big synagogue in Uzhgorod. He was charged with something political and sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment in camps in the GULAG. It was clear that it was only related to his religious activities.10 years later he returned. He was very ill and died a short time later. It was dangerous to have relatives abroad during the soviet regime. They might fire from work or put to prison on charges of espionage [Keep in touch with relatives abroad] [15] for correspondence with them. We couldn’t keep in touch with my cousins or my wife’s relatives. The Russian language was mandatory: we had to study it and speak it. Adults also had to learn the language: they couldn’t get a job without knowing it.

My wife and I were not strongly religious, but we always remembered that we were Jews and tried to observe Jewish traditions as much as we could considering the Soviet restrictions. We celebrated major Jewish holidays at home. On Friday evening Lea lit candles and prayed. She hadn’t finished the Jewish grammar school due to the war, but she knew Hebrew better than I did. We always had matzah on Pesach. Lea and her cousin’s wife baked it at home. Later we could buy matzah shipped from Budapest. We celebrated Soviet holidays at work, but not at home. It was just another day off for us. The only Soviet holidays that my wife and I recognized was Victory Day, 9 May [16].

In 1947 our daughter Vera, Dveira in Jewish was born. In 1950 our son Mihaly, Moishe in Jewish, after his grandfathers, Lea’s father and mine, and Mikhail in his Soviet passport was born. During the Soviet period we couldn’t have our son circumcised at the synagogue, but my wife and I believed that we had to do it. We went to the children’s hospital and made arrangements with the children’s surgeon to make circumcision. Circumcision is prescribed in case of phimosis. The surgeon put down this diagnosis in the medical records of my son and operated on him for medical reasons. Of course, it wasn’t quite like the ritual of brit milah. It was a surgery in a surgery room. No relatives or a rabbi were present. This doctor must have sympathized with Jews and was not positive about the Soviet power. My son was not the only baby that he operated on. He didn’t charge any money from us.

After our son was born, there was too little space for all of us to continue to live with my wife’s cousin. We decided to move to Onokovtse. I managed to get back our little house. To my surprise, it took little time. I repaired the house as much as I could and we moved in there. I was surprised and moved, when local farmers began to bring the things that they had taken from our abandoned house. They returned pictures, portraits of my father and grandfather and some pieces of furniture.

Lea finished her school and went to work as a medical nurse in the children’s tuberculosis health center in Onokovtse. I worked in the furniture shop for some time, but then I was sent to work in a village not far from Uzhgorod, where they were restoring a saw mill. I don’t remember the name of the village, all I remember is that it was on the bank of a river and there was a high hill by the river. On the opposite bank there was a training field of Soviet tanks and mobile units. During their training they used to shoot at this hill across the river. Once we were sitting on a log during a lunch break, when there was an explosion in the river. At first we thought somebody deafening the fish, but then shells began to fall near where we sat. I shouted for everybody to lie on the ground. One guy kept standing and a shell cut him apart. When it became quiet I ran away. When the blasts repeated I lay on the ground again. Then it became quiet. Besides the guy killed by a shell, there was a wagoner killed near the gate to the mill. When explosions began, the horses got scared and dashed off to the closed gate. The horses and the wagoner perished. There was one wounded in his arm. Officers from the training field came to see what happened. One of them, a major, asked me why I ran. I told him I was running away from shells. He turned away and I heard him saying to his comrades: ‘Cowardly zhyd!’. I asked him, when there were bombings during the war, did he lie down or jump up to be seen better? I didn’t wait for his answer. I submitted a letter of resignation and returned to Onokovtse. This was the first time that I heard the word ‘zhyd’ [kike] addressed to me after I returned to Subcarpathia. This word was not new to me: there are similar words in the Czech, Hungarian or Ruthenian languages, but without such abusive connotations. I remember our teacher of history at school saying to us: a word is like the scissors – you can use them to make manicure and also, to kill a person. Everything depends on the meaning you put in it. Later I heard the word ‘zhyd’ many times and always in the abusive meaning. Soviet people who cane to Subcarpathia from the USSR brought anti-Semitism with them. At first it was of everyday meaning, but in 1948 when struggle against cosmopolites [17] began, it reached the state level. It became difficult for Jews to find jobs and enter colleges. I went to work as an accountant in the kolkhoz [18], organized in Onokovtse. Some time later elections of chairman of the kolkhoz took place. The local villages who knew me since I was a child nominated me for this position. I wasn’t a member of the party, but this did not become a decisive factor. Secretary of the Party organization who had come from the USSR announced before voting that he wasn’t putting me on the voting list since the kolkhoz didn’t need a Jewish chairman. This was said openly at the meeting. Anti-Semites didn’t have to conceal themselves any longer.

My wife and I tried to stay away from those who had moved to Subcarpathia from the USSR or anything occurring in the USSR. We had little in common with them. We didn’t care of what was going on in the USSR or from what concerned them in this regard. We had many Jewish and non-Jewish friends in Subcarpathia. When in January 1953 the ‘doctors’ plot’ [19] began, none of residents of original Subcarpathia believed what newspapers were publishing. Our best doctors were Jews and nobody lost trust in them because of the lies published in newspapers, while when those who had moved from the USSR, when they came to a polyclinic, demanded to have a non-Jewish doctor. There were meetings condemning the doctors poisoners. We understood that this was the first step, preparation for further persecutions. I think that only Stalin’s death saved us from exile like deportation of other nations in the USSR. I and many of my friends and acquaintances took Stalin’s death with relief. We knew that under Stalin’s orders many peoples were deported: Crimean Tatars, Chechen and Germans of the Volga region. We were hoping that things would be better after his death. We couldn’t understand why those comers from the USSR were crying and lamenting as if their closest person had died. After the speech of Nikita Khrushchev [21] on the 20th Party Congress [22] we believed that there was no way back for the past and that a new life was beginning in the USSR. At first it seemed that our hopes might come true. Innocent people began to return from camps. Anti-Semitism was reducing, but it didn’t last long. Of course, it wasn’t like it used to be during Stalin’s regime, there were no public trials or mass shootings. The term ‘enemy of the people’ [23] that Soviet people were used to was gone. But this was all about it. Anti-Semitism was there and also this terrible poverty that we lived in from the time Subcarpathia was annexed to the USSR didn’t disappear. The leading role of the Communist Party stayed in place. It wasn’t an agronomist assigning the sowing dates, but secretary of the district Party committee. It was ridiculous for us. We grew up during the Czech rule and knew what a good decent life was and what love to one’s own country was about. How could one love the USSR? Perhaps, if one was born, grew up there and didn’t know anything different. That they cut off any opportunity for communicating with foreigners and learning about life in other countries from somewhere else, but Soviet newspapers had its reasons. People had nothing to compare their life with, but we lived our own life, apart from the life in the Soviet Union. I didn’t want to know anything about what was going on there. The only event touching me was invasion of Hungary [1956] [24] and Czechoslovakia [Prague Spring] [25]. When in 1956 the USSR troops invaded Hungary and in 1968 – Czechoslovakia, I was indignant to the bottom of my heart. It was rather similar to Hitler invasion of Europe. Could anybody believe that Hungary and Czechoslovakia could not resolve their problems and requested the USSR for bringing in their troops? I understood that the USSR has suppressed and would suppress any efforts of any country to get out of the ‘socialist camp’ and build the life of their people on their own will and that everything that happened was natural, but I understood this in my mind and in my heart there was indignation.

My children were growing up like all other Soviet children. They studied in a general school and were pioneers and Komsomol [26] members which was usual. They had Jewish and non-Jewish friends. For my wife and me nationality didn’t matter. What mattered was the person. However, we raised our children Jewish. My wife taught them Hebrew and told them about the Jewish history, traditions and religion. At about the age of 4 my son knew 4 traditional questions in Hebrew by heart. When I conducted seder at home on Pesach he posed four traditional questions to me according to the rules. Of course, my wife and I told them that they shouldn’t talk about it in the kindergarten or school since we might face problems if they did. It’s strange, but the children understood this. We organized a bar mitzvah, when my son turned 13. Our friends, Subarpathian Jews, attended it, and the ritual was conducted according to the rules. My wife and I spoke Hungarian and Yiddish at home, and spoke Yiddish, Hungarian, and sometimes Russian to the children. I didn’t know Yiddish as well as my wife: it was her mother tongue while I only studied it in the cheder, but I picked it promptly from my wife. My wife believed that our children had to know Yiddish.

After finishing school my daughter went to work as telegrapher at the post office and studied at the Electric Engineering College in Zaporozhiye by correspondence. When she received her diploma she was promoted to the position of electrical engineer. She worked at the post office till she moved to Israel. When she was a student, Vera got married. Her husband Viacheslav Dolburd, a Jew, was born in Uzhgorod in 1945, his parents had moved to Subcarpathia from the USSR before. Viacheslav was an engineer, he worked at the Uzhgorod instrument making plant. They had two sons: Iosif, born in 1981, and Yefim, born in 1983. Both grandsons had circumcision according to the rule. We had to make the same trick that we used when having our son circumcised. The same surgeon circumcised my grandsons in the polyclinic.

My son was recruited to the army after finishing school. He served as a mechanic in an Air Force unit. He finished a course of driving there. After returning to Uzhgorod Mihaly worked as a driver in the health center where my wife worked and later – in a fire brigade. Mihaly married Sofia Yakovleva, a Russian girl. She and her parents had moved to Subcarpathia somewhere from Russia. Sofia’s father was a military, and the family moved from one place to another. They settled down in Uzhgorod, and Sofia’s father served there till he retired and the family stayed to live here. Sofia and Mihaly have daughter Yelena, born in 1978 and son Leo, born in 1985. Sofia works in the restaurant built where the pot house used to be. When Hesed was organized in Uzhgorod, Mihaly came to work as a driver in the Hesed.

When in the 1970s Jews began to move to Israel in great numbers, we decided to move there as well. The USSR never became a Motherland to us and we did not get used to it. We were hoping to have a decent life in Israel and that our grandsons would grow up in the country that will become their Motherland. There were relatives and friends in Israel and we would not suffer from solitude. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen as we thought. When our son returned from the army, we submitted out documents for departure to Israel. My wife’s relatives sent us an invitation letter. Some time later I was called to the office where we submitted the documents and they told me that my wife and II could o, but my son could depart from the USSR only ten years later due to his service in the army, because in their opinion he was aware of state secrets. This was ridiculous, he was a soldier, but it was impossible to prove anything. We didn’t want to leave out son and we stayed.

Few years before retirement I quit my job and went to work at the souvenir shop of the Uzhgorod factory in the small village of Seredneye near Uzhgorod. I worked with wood and later began to make wooden souvenirs and design samples for further manufacturing. I learned drawing in the grammar school. This proved to be handy in my work on souvenirs. For the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 I made a souvenir: 2 wooden football players 10-12 cm high, on the round stand from birch wood. There was an inscription on the stand: Moscow 80, and 5 rings, the symbol of this Olympic Games. Moscow approved this sample for manufacture. For this souvenir I was awarded a bronze medal at the Exhibition of Achievements of the Public Economy in Moscow. This was work by orders and I could earn up to 500 rubles per month [The average salary in the USSR was 130 rubles at the time]. Of course, my family was assisting me. I took work home and my wife and daughter helped me to glue the figures together, but this didn’t last long – they introduced restrictions on salaries limiting them to 250 rubles. I employed my son – he was a driver in the fire brigade at that time. He worked one day every four days.

We still lived in the small house that was not sufficient for three families. My wife and I were saving money for a new house. We started construction in 1975 on the site of our old house. We wanted our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to live in this house. We made a 2-storied building: 3 rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom on each floor. We also planted a big orchard and vineyard around the house. My wife and I and our son with his family lived on the first floor and on the 2nd floor – our daughter with her husband and sons. There are children’s voices in the house. My granddaughter Yelena and her husband Ivan Nestor, Ukrainian, live with us. They have two children, my great grandchildren: Mihail, born in 1997, and Yelena, born in 2000 after my wife died, named after my wife Lea.

At leisure time I often went to the mountains to draw. I liked making landscapes and draw old houses of Uzhgorod. When I began to work at the souvenir shop, I got another hobby. I gathered branches and roots in the woods to make figures or candle stands from them – the shape of snags gave me ideas of what was to be made from them. I only keep few of them – I gave away most of them for presents.

My daughter and her family moved to Israel in1992. They settled down in a kibbutz not far from Qiryat Yam. In this kibbutz they raise poultry, keep a dairy farm and grow flowers and citrus plants. There is also a plant of plastic goods there. My daughter works as a cashier in a food store in the kibbutz. Her husband works at the factory of plastic goods. Their both sons serve in the army. After their term is over they plan to enter a university. They are happy with their new life and love their new Motherland. Last year after finishing a secondary school my grandson, Mikhail’s son Lev, moved to Israel. He wants to continue his studies in Israel and is going to stay there. Lev has finished his service in the army. Recently he came to Uzhgorod to visit us. He lives in Ashdod.

When in the late 1980s perestroika [27] began in the USSR, I had a doubtful attitude to it like everything else happening in the USSR. Some time later I saw that I was wrong this time. Freedom came to our life. Newspapers published such things, for which people were imprisoned in the GULAG recently. It became possible to correspond with people abroad and even travel to other countries and invite people from other countries. The ban on religion was gone. People were allowed to go to churches and synagogues and celebrate religious holidays. The only problem was that the people didn’t have a need in religion any more during the years of the Soviet regime. In Uzhgorod there were not enough men even for a minyan, but gradually religion began to revive. During perestroika in Uzhgorod the Jewish community was organized. Of course, it couldn’t do as much for people as Hesed is doing now, but we were happy about it. The community began to attract people to the synagogue, teach them prayers and traditions. The community arranged for matzah to be delivered from Budapest and provide prayer books to people, tallits, tefillins and everything they needed. When my wife fell ill, the community helped me with food and medications. Lea died in 1996 and the community made arrangements for the funeral. My wife was buried in the Jewish sector of the town cemetery in Uzhgorod according to Jewish traditions. The old Jewish cemetery was closed long ago. The cemetery is not far from our house and I often visit the grave. On the anniversary of Lea’s death I recite Kiddush at the synagogue and treat everybody with honey cake. The rabbi demands that the treatment is kosher. Of course, it’s hard to do so. I take vodka with me and my daughter-in-law makes honey cakes and strudels.

I’ve traveled to Israel twice recently, I visited my daughter, grandchildren, saw my relatives and friends. Israel made an unforgettable impression on me. It’s an amazing country and there are amazing people living in it. I was very happy and touched that they love their country and believe it to be an honor to serve in the army defending their country. I was very sorry that I was not destined to live in Israel. Now it’s too late for me to think about it, but I’m very happy that my daughter and grandchildren are citizens of Israel.

I go to the synagogue three times a week: on Monday, Thursday and Saturday. People also get together at the synagogue on Friday evening, but it’s difficult for me. I cannot see with one eye and it’s hard for me to get home in the dark. I am used to walking keeping my head high, but now I have to look down when walking. I am often called to the Torah – they show respect to my age. We celebrate all Jewish holidays. I confess I haven’t fasted on Yom Kippur for a long time since Lea died. My family convinced me that I cannot do it due to my health condition, but this time I fasted and I managed all right. Nothing bad happened.

In 1999 Hesed was established in Uzhgorod. They take a lot of efforts to revive the Jewish life in Subcarpathia. In Hesed there are Hebrew clubs and clubs where they teach Jewish history and traditions. People of different ages – young and old people attend them. There are studios of Jewish dancing and singing, literature studio, a club for elderly people and many interesting events in Hesed. Hesed takes care of the most unprotected: old people and children. They receive food packages and those who are in poor condition have packages delivered home. Visiting nurses take care of them. There is a canteen in the Hesed where old people can have a meal, read and discuss newspapers and just talk. There is a summer camp for Jewish children where they take a rest and also learn to be Jews and study foreign languages. Life is very interesting in the camp and children always look forward to summer vacations. Hesed rents two wards in the hospital of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the best in the town. Everybody who needs a medical examination or treatment, can stay in this hospital. I also stayed there once, but I don’t like hospitals. I think, it’s much better for health to have a good laugh, say a joke, have a glass of homemade wine than swallow pills. Of course, I am happier than many others. Three generations of my family live with me: my son, granddaughter and great granddaughter. They fill the house with life and I get younger with them.

I still like going to the woods looking for branches and snags. Sometimes I draw still life. I do exercises and go for walks. My great grandchildren often accompany me. I try to do what I can for the community and Hesed. I made a big Jewish calendar in the past in Hebrew. There are also Russian names of months on it so that a person who doesn’t know Hebrew could still find the date of the holidays. There are sights of Israel on each page. It is also indicated which part of the Torah is supposed to be read. 7 people are called to the Torah on holidays, fewer on Sabbath and on weekdays, and every time there is another section from the Torah to be read. Now I need to make another calendar before Rosh Hashanah for next year. It’s hard work for me considering that I can only see with one eye, but people need it to be done and I enjoy working on it.

Of course, I wouldn’t say that since Ukraine became independent anti-Semitism disappeared, but now Ukrainian laws allow to struggle against it. Also everyday anti-Semitism occurs, though not so often as it used to. Of course, it’s hard to believe that anti-Semitism in Ukraine will disappear one day, but one cannot help hoping for it.

Glossary:
[1] Trianon Peace Treaty: Trianon is a palace in Versailles where, as part of the Paris Peace Conference, the peace treaty was signed with Hungary on 4th June 1920. It was the official end of World War I for the countries concerned. The Trianon Peace Treaty validated the annexation of huge parts of pre-war Hungary by the states of Austria (the province of Burgenland) and Romania (Transylvania, and parts of Eastern Hungary). The northern part of pre-war Hungary was attached to the newly created Czechoslovak state (Slovakia and Subcarpathia) while Croatia-Slavonia as well as parts of Southern Hungary (Voivodina, Baranja, Medjumurje and Prekmurje) were to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians (later Yugoslavia). Hungary lost 67.3% of its pre-war territory, including huge areas populated mostly or mainly by Hungarians, and 58.4% of its population. As a result approximately one third of the Hungarians became an - often oppressed - ethnic minority in some of the predominantly hostile neighboring countries. Trianon became the major point of reference of interwar nationalistic and anti-Semitic Hungarian Reginames.
[2] Neolog Jewry: Following a Congress in 1868/69 in Budapest, where the Jewish community was supposed to discuss several issues on which the opinion of the traditionalists and the modernizers differed and which aimed at uniting Hungarian Jews, Hungarian Jewry was officially split into to (later three) communities, which all built up their own national community network. The Neologs were the modernizers, who opposed the Orthodox on various questions.
[3] Kuk (Kaiserlich und Koeniglich) army: The name ‘Imperial and Royal’ was used for the army of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, as well as for other state institutions of the Monarchy originated from the dual political system. Following the Compromise of 1867, which established the Dual Monarchy, Austrian emperor and Hungarian King Franz Joseph was the head of the state and also commander-in-chief of the army. Hence the name ‘Imperial and Royal’.
[4] Subcarpathia (also known as Ruthenia, Russian and Ukrainian name Zakarpatie): Region situated on the border of the Carpathian Mountains with the Middle Danube lowland. The regional capitals are Uzhhorod, Berehovo, Mukachevo, Khust. It belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy until World War I; and the Saint-Germain convention declared its annexation to Czechoslovakia in 1919. It is impossible to give exact historical statistics of the language and ethnic groups living in this geographical unit: the largest groups in the interwar period were Hungarians, Rusyns, Russians, Ukrainians, Czech and Slovaks. In addition there was also a considerable Jewish and Gypsy population. In accordance with the first Vienna Decision of 1938, the area of Subcarpathia mainly inhabited by Hungarians was ceded to Hungary. The rest of the region, was proclaimed a new state called Carpathian Ukraine in 1939, with Khust as its capital, but it only existed for four and a half months, and was occupied by Hungary in March 1939. Subcarpathia was taken over by Soviet troops and local guerrillas in 1944. In 1945, Czechoslovakia ceded the area to the USSR and it gained the name Carpatho-Ukraine. The region became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1945. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, the region became an administrative region under the name of Transcarpathia.
[5] First Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938): The First Czechoslovak Republic was created after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy following World War I. The union of the Czech lands and Slovakia was officially proclaimed in Prague in 1918, and formally recognized by the Treaty of St. Germain in 1919. Ruthenia was added by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Czechoslovakia inherited the greater part of the industries of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the new government carried out an extensive land reform, as a result of which the living conditions of the peasantry increasingly improved. However, the constitution of 1920 set up a highly centralized state and failed to take into account the issue of national minorities, and thus internal political life was dominated by the struggle of national minorities (especially the Hungarians and the Germans) against Czech rule. In foreign policy Czechoslovakia kept close contacts with France and initiated the foundation of the Little Entente in 1921.

[6] Maccabi World Union: International Jewish sports organization whose origins go back to the end of the 19th century. A growing number of young Eastern European Jews involved in Zionism felt that one essential prerequisite of the establishment of a national home in Palestine was the improvement of the physical condition and training of ghetto youth. In order to achieve this, gymnastics clubs were founded in many Eastern and Central European countries, which later came to be called Maccabi. The movement soon spread to more countries in Europe and to Palestine. The World Maccabi Union was formed in 1921. In less than two decades its membership was estimated at 200,000 with branches located in most countries of Europe and in Palestine, Australia, South America, South Africa, etc.

[7] Hungarian era (1940-1944): The expression Hungarian era refers to the period between 30 August 1940 - 15 October 1944 in Transylvania. As a result of the Trianon peace treaties in 1920 the eastern part of Hungary (Maramures, Partium, Banat, Transylvania) was annexed to Romania. Two million inhabitants of Hungarian nationality came under Romanian rule. In the summer of 1940, under pressure from Berlin and Rome, the Romanian government agreed to return Northern Transylvania, where the majority of the Hungarians lived, to Hungary. The anti-Jewish laws introduced in 1938 and 1939 in Hungary were also applied in Northern Transylvania. Following the German occupation of Hungary on 19th March 1944, Jews from Northern Transylvania were deported to and killed in concentration camps along with Jews from all over Hungary except for Budapest. Northern Transylvania belonged to Hungary until the fall of 1944, when the Soviet troops entered and introduced a regime of military administration that sustained local autonomy. The military administration ended on 9th March 1945 when the Romanian administration was reintroduced in all the Western territories lost in 1940 - as a reward for the fact that Romania formed the first communist-led government in the region.

[8] Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia: In April 1941 Yugoslavia was occupied by German, Hungarian, Italian, and Bulgarian troops. Hungary reoccupied some of the areas it had ceded to the newly formed Yugoslavia after World War I, namely Backa (Bacska), Baranja (Baranya), Medjumurje (Murakoz) and Prekmurje (Muravidek). The Hungarian armed forces massacred some 2,000 people, mostly Jews but also Serbs, in Novi Sad in January 1942. The Hungarians ordered the formation of forced labor battalions into which all Jewish and Serbian males aged 21-48 were drafted. Many of them were sent to the Ukranian front, others to Hungary and German-occupied Serbia (the infamous Bor copper mines). After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 the Jews of the area were deported to Auschwitz.

[7] Anti-Jewish laws in Hungary: Following similar legislation in Nazi Germany, Hungary enacted three Jewish laws in 1938, 1939 and 1941. The first law restricted the number of Jews in industrial and commercial enterprises, banks and in certain occupations, such as legal, medical and engineering professions, and journalism to 20% of the total number. This law defined Jews on the basis of their religion, so those who converted before the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, as well as those who fought in World War I, and their widows and orphans were exempted from the law. The second Jewish law introduced further restrictions, limiting the number of Jews in the above fields to 6%, prohibiting the employment of Jews completely in certain professions such as high school and university teaching, civil and municipal services, etc. It also forbade Jews to buy or sell land and so forth. This law already defined Jews on more racial grounds in that it regarded baptized children that had at least one non-converted Jewish parent as Jewish. The third Jewish law prohibited intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews, and defined anyone who had at least one Jewish grandparent as Jewish.

[8] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[9] Yellow star houses - Yellow star houses: The system of exclusively Jewish houses which acted as a form of hostage taking was introduced by the Hungarian authorities in June 1944 in Budapest. The authorities believed that if they concentrated all the Jews of Budapest in the ghetto, the Allies would not attack it, but if they placed such houses all over Budapest, especially near important public buildings it was a kind of guarantee. Jews were only allowed to leave such houses for two hours a day to buy supplies and such.

[10] Volksdeutscher (ethnic German): Early 18th century German colonists from southern German states (Baden-Wurthenberg, Bavaria) who settled, on the encouragement of the Habsburg emperor, in the sparsely populated parts of the Habsburg Empire – especially in southern Hungary. Thanks to their advanced agricultural technologies and and hard work they became some of the wealthiest peasants in Hungary. Most of them lived (and partly still live) in Tolna and Baranya counties in present-day Hungary, Baranja in Croatia, Voivodina in present-day Serbia and the Banat in Romania. After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, following World War I, many of them came under Yugoslav and Romanian rule on the territories disannexed from Hungary on the basis of the Trianon Peace Treaty.

[12] Gulag: The Soviet system of forced labor camps in the remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, which was first established in 1919. However, it was not until the early 1930s that there was a significant number of inmates in the camps. By 1934 the Gulag, or the Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps, then under the Cheka's successor organization the NKVD, had several million inmates. The prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals, along with political and religious dissenters. The Gulag camps made significant contributions to the Soviet economy during the rule of Stalin. Conditions in the camps were extremely harsh. After Stalin died in 1953, the population of the camps was reduced significantly, and conditions for the inmates improved somewhat.

[13] Iron Curtain: A term popularized by Sir Winston Churchill in a speech in 1946. He used it to designate the Soviet Union’s consolidation of its grip over Eastern Europe. The phrase denoted the separation of East and West during the Cold War, which placed the totalitarian states of the Soviet bloc behind an ‘Iron Curtain’. The fall of the Iron Curtain corresponds to the period of perestroika in the former Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, and the democratization of Eastern Europe beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

[15] Keep in touch with relatives abroad: The authorities could arrest an individual corresponding with his/her relatives abroad and charge him/her with espionage, send them to concentration camp or even sentence them to death.

[16] Victory Day in Russia (9th May): National holiday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II and honor the Soviets who died in the war.

[17] Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’, i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. ‘Cosmopolitans’ writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American ‘imperialism’. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin’s death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’.

[18] Kolkhoz: In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

[19] Doctors’ Plot: The Doctors’ Plot was an alleged conspiracy of a group of Moscow doctors to murder leading government and party officials. In January 1953, the Soviet press reported that nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, had been arrested and confessed their guilt. As Stalin died in March 1953, the trial never took place. The official paper of the Party, the Pravda, later announced that the charges against the doctors were false and their confessions obtained by torture. This case was one of the worst anti-Semitic incidents during Stalin’s reign. In his secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 Khrushchev stated that Stalin wanted to use the Plot to purge the top Soviet leadership.

[21] Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971): Soviet communist leader. After Stalin’s death in 1953, he became first secretary of the Central Committee, in effect the head of the Communist Party of the USSR. In 1956, during the 20th Party Congress, Khrushchev took an unprecedented step and denounced Stalin and his methods. He was deposed as premier and party head in October 1964. In 1966 he was dropped from the Party's Central Committee.

[22] Twentieth Party Congress: At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin’s leadership.

[23] Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.

[24] 1956: It designates the Revolution, which started on 23rd October 1956 against Soviet rule and the communists in Hungary. It was started by student and worker demonstrations in Budapest started in which Stalin’s gigantic statue was destroyed. Moderate communist leader Imre Nagy was appointed as prime minister and he promised reform and democratization. The Soviet Union withdrew its troops which had been stationing in Hungary since the end of World War II, but they returned after Nagy’s announcement that Hungary would pull out of the Warsaw Pact to pursue a policy of neutrality. The Soviet army put an end to the rising on 4th November and mass repression and arrests started. About 200,000 Hungarians fled from the country. Nagy, and a number of his supporters were executed. Until 1989, the fall of the communist regime, the Revolution of 1956 was officially considered a counter-revolution.

[25] Prague Spring: The term Prague Spring designates the liberalization period in communist-ruled Czechoslovakia between 1967-1969. In 1967 Alexander Dubcek became the head of the Czech Communist Party and promoted ideas of ‘socialism with a human face’, i.e. with more personal freedom and freedom of the press, and the rehabilitation of victims of Stalinism. In August 1968 Soviet troops, along with contingents from Poland, East Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria, occupied Prague and put an end to the reforms.

[26] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

[27] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mihaly Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

Alexander Ugolev
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Nadezhda Lipovskaya
Date of interview: September 2004

Alexander Efimovich Ugolev is a grayish-haired person, not tall and heavily-built. He dresses with negligent grace and elegance: a dapper shirt and carefully ironed trousers. He walks slowly, using a walking stick. He lives in a small two-room apartment with his wife and adult son (a student). His room is very tidy; everything is put in its place with love – to please the owner. The window of Alexander’s room looks to the south. The room is warm and light. The furniture is very simple and comfortable: a large writing-table, a spacious bookcase,  full of books up to the top, a soft sofa  situated opposite the bookcase. Alexander Efimovich is a deliberate and interesting story-teller. His narration is thick-sown with geographical information and historical digressions. Sometimes he is rigid and hot-tempered in judgments and comments. Being carried along by his memories, he gives  way to his feelings and immerses his interlocutor  in an atmosphere of a past age.

My kin of the Ugolevs–Tsypkins came from Belarus. Probably all my ancestors are from there. Before the [Russian] Revolution [of 1917] 1 Jews were permitted to live only within the Jewish pale [of settlement] 2: on well-marked territory. There were settlements in Belarus, Ukraine, and somewhere else. But I guess that all my ancestors came from Belarus. 
The Tsypkins, the parents of my mum, lived in Krichev [a city on the Sozh River in the east part of Belarus]. I don’t remember the name of my maternal grandmother. She wasn’t tall, even small. The Tsypkins had a farm, even a cow. My maternal grandfather’s name was Haim Ayzikovich Tsypkin. As a child I spent every summer in Krichev at my grandmother and grandfather’s [the Tsypkins]. Abram Berkovich Ugolev and Haya-Ghita Israilevna, my paternal grandfather and grandmother, lived near them, in the village of Komarovka. When Abram Berkovich died in 1941, my grandmother moved from one daughter to another as a prize. She loved me. Both my grandmothers were very nice. 
Both grandfathers of mine were Jews in the full sense of the word: they went to the synagogue, prayed at home, put on tefilin, and wrapped small leather strap [tefillin] around their hands. My grandmothers and grandfathers were religious. In order to prepare a chicken, my grandfather Haim Tsypkin took it to a shochet. Grandfather Haim took my hand, we went across Krichev and carried a hen to the shochet. The shochet did his part, and then stroked my head. In Komarovka the Ugolevs – my grandfather and grandmother – observed the kashrut strictly, and in Krichev, where the Tsypkins lived in the 1920s it was difficult, because in the town there were a lot of Soviet officials who kept a vigilant watch on every citizen. 

Both grandfathers were patriarchal and hard-working. Haim Tsypkin was a small shop-keeper, and Abram Ugolev was a smith. At home my grandfathers and grandmothers spoke Yiddish. Both grandfathers were bearded, but wore regular clothes.They prayed regularly, at set hours. My grandmothers didn’t wear wigs, they didn’t cover their gray hair. They were dressed in long skirts with elastic webbings and jackets with long sleeves. Grandfather Abram had a large house in Komarovka. In Krichev Grandfather Haim also had a house: two rooms and a kitchen. Both houses in Komarovka and in Krichev were heated by furnaces. In Krichev the furniture was old-fashioned. I remember a large bed. Both in Krichev and in Komarovka my grandfathers had vegetable gardens. Grandfathers worked in vegetable gardens rarely: for the most part women did it. We, the children, were not forced to work in the vegetable garden. In Krichev there was a cow and hens. In Komarovka they kept cattle, too. My grandfathers and grandmothers had no farm hands: they were poor Jews. 

Probably, my grandfathers had their own opinions on the political situation in Soviet Russia, but they made no comments. They lived like other people, worked, and affiliated with no parties and societies. 

I don’t remember the neighbors of my grandfathers and grandmothers. It seems to me that both in Krichev and in Komarovka people lived in their own separate houses. I think they had good relations.

Usually, after staying in Krichev for several months I easily started to speak and even think in Yiddish. Almost all neighbors were Jews. They dressed the same way as my grandfathers and grandmothers, and men wore beards. I think their lifestyle was Jewish, traditional. 

I keep a few bright memories about that time. I remember myself in Krichev pilfering hay from a passing cart just for kicks. The driver noticed it. Well, I caught it from him! All children liked to do it with hay. Well, how can you keep from getting a tag of hay for your cow! Everyone pilfered, and so did I, following their example. I had friends among the boys in Krichev, we went together to the Sozh river for swimming. 

I know nothing about the brothers and sisters of my grandfathers and grandmothers. But, probably, my grandfathers sometimes visited their relatives.

My grandfathers and grandmothers didn’t tell me anything about their childhood and I was silly enough not to ask them about it. At that time I wasn’t interested in it, though my grandparents didn’t keep it from me: they would have probably told me about their childhood and their parents, if I had asked. I remember, when I wanted to learn to count, I managed to count up to 39 and didn’t know the next figure. My grandfather Haim from Krichev prompted me, and then taught me to count up to hundred and further. 

I also heard nothing about the army background of my grandfathers. Possibly in tsarist days my grandfathers could have borne arms, I don’t know exactly. At that time they didn’t draft Jews into the army willingly. 

Abram and Haya-Ghita Ugolev had ten children. Their eldest son was lost during the World War I. I don’t know his name. Their eldest daughter, Vera, born in 1896, Milkina after her marriage, has already died. She had two sons. Unfortunately I don’t remember their names. The second son of my Ugolev grandparents was Lev, born in 1901, and he also died a long time ago. He had two sons: Mikhail, born in 1926, and Grigoriy, born in 1925. All members of their family lived in Kazan. Mikhail died five years ago [1999]. Another brother of my father, Pavel, was lost during the Civil War 3. Someone else was lost together with him, his brother or sister; today there is nobody to ask about it. My father Haim, born in 1903, was the fourth child in the family. He perished at the front during World War II, in 1944. Before the Great Patriotic War 4 he worked at a military prosecutor’s office of the Leningrad military district; during the war he was appointed a commissioner, he excited soldiers to go into the assault. He was lost near the city of Novgorod in action, near the village of Koptsy.

Another son, Ghirsha [affectionate for Grigoriy], born in 1908, also went through the Great Patriotic War and died in peace time. He had a son, Mikhail, who was born after the war, but he has also died by now. My father’s sister Dorah was born in 1906; after her marriage she was called Khutoretskaya. Before the war her husband, Yosif Khutoretsky, was a director of a sovkhoz 5 in Luga district near Leningrad. Before the war he held the position of administrative deputy director at the Veterinary College. Dorah and Yosif had two children: Semen, born in 1927, and Maya, born in 1932. One of my father’s sisters died at a very young age in 1910. Her name was Sofia. 

The younger sister, Eugenia, Bryskina after her marriage, was born in 1913. When she divorced her husband Nikolay Bryskin, she decided to get her maiden name back, but the registration service employee muddled up things and wrote her family as Ugaleva. At present she lives in America in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last year she reached the age of ninety. She left for the USA in 1992 together with her son Leonid, his wife Lyudmila and their sons Daniil and Eugeny. Sometimes they call me and my relatives. All of them are fine. The youngest sister of my father, Esther-Slava, Epstein after her marriage, was born in 1919. She died in 1999. She had a son Lev, three grandsons – Irina, Mikhail and Ilya – and one great-grandson, Mark, who is Mikhail’s son. 

My grandmother and grandfather Tsypkin had four children. Their eldest son, Yakov, born in 1901, was an economic engineer. He died during the siege of Leningrad in 1942. He was about two meters tall. He had two children: the elder daughter Galina, who was born before the Great Patriotic War and the son Alexander, born in June 1941. My grandparents’ next son, Meir-Yosif was called by his family members Misha,sometimes Yosha. He graduated from the Polytechnic College in Leningrad as an engineer and research worker, technologist. He supervised the LAMITOMASH educational courses [courses for engineers of the Leningrad Society of Mechanical Engineering]. He was found guilty of some administrative infringement and was put in prison for half a year for it. By now he has already died. He had two daughters: Lyudmila and Margarita. Both of them live in Germany now. 

My mum had one more sister, Sofia, Naimark after her marriage. All her life she worked as a bookkeeper. Before the war she married Oscar Naimark. He served at the front. After the end of the war he came back, and their daughter Lyudmila was born in 1948. Lyudmila has already died also. 

I have only a distant memory of my stay in Komarovka at my Ugolev grandparents’. I remember that there was a large earth-road, very clean. The houses stood separately from each other. Right around our house there were large public apple orchards [they had no owner, the authorities used to appoint responsible persons in turns]. We went there to eat apples.

It seems that Komarovka was a large village. They moved about it using horse-drawn vehicles. My grandfather went to Krichev by horse. Sometimes I was put next to the driver and enjoyed the ride. I came to Krichev from Leningrad each summer. I remember that in 1939 we had a long stay in Komarovka. By that time my grandfather and grandmother Tsypkin had already died.

I remember Krichev a little bit better. Houses in Krichev were not high, but well-set. A cement factory was located there. In Krichev there lived probably tens of thousands of people. There was a road paved with concrete, homesteads; each house had an enclosed ground. The cows were taken to fields for grazing. There was no electricity supply yet. Both in Krichev and in Komarovka houses were illuminated by petroleum-lamps. At that time they hadn’t even heard about a water pipe. Each house had a well.

Probably in Krichev there were both synagogues and special prayer houses. And most probably in Komarovka there were not. It seems that my Krichev grandfather took me to the synagogue with him. At that time I was about six or seven years old. I have only a distant memory of that time. In Krichev there were Jewish schools. Someone of my friends-boys studied at a Jewish school in Krichev. I played games with them and got to know about Jewish school.

A lot of Jews lived in Krichev. They were employed in different businesses. Most often Jews were engaged in retail trade. My grandfather Haim also was in the small grocery business. 

My father Haim Ugolev was born in 1903 in Komarovka. Up to the 4th class he studied at the rural school, and then he finished a seven-year school in Krichev. I guess that he never studied at a Jewish school, because there was no Jewish school in Komarovka. He was a good-tempered person, very honest. It was possible to ask him any question you liked and receive a detailed answer. He was well-informed about historical events; he had many books on history of the 19th century. He had books in English and in Persian languages – he could read English and Persian – but no Jewish ones. My father was a man of average height, he was heavy-browed, had not very thick hair. He was a pleasant man.

My mum [Pessya Ugoleva, bee Tsypkina] was born in Krichev in 1903 and lived in this city until her marriage. She was a tall, dark-haired woman with high cheekbones. She had authority with her colleagues. She was a hard-working, devoted mother and wife.

My parents were introduced to each other by their parents. My grandfather and grandmother from Komarovka and those from Krichev were acquainted with each other long before the wedding of my parents. When my father arrived in Krichev to continue his studies at the seven-year school, he stayed with an old friend of his father. This old friend was Haim Tsypkin, a tradesman. In the house of the Tsypkins my father met their daughter Pessya. Haim and Pessya fell in love with each other.

When my mum finished the seven-year school, she decided to leave for Leningrad to continue her studies together with my father. Mother decided to study at special courses, where she skilled in the profession of chemist/laboratory assistant, an analyst. My parents got married already in Leningrad. They simply went to a civilian registry office and registered their marriage. 

My father was a member of the Communist Party [the All-Russia Communist Party of Bolsheviks]. He joined the Party when he arrived in Leningrad. He graduated from a faculty for students-workers and the Oriental College named after Enukidze, Persian department, in 1932. As he was a Jew, they didn’t send him to Persia for work [authorities did not trust Jews to work abroad]. But he was a highly educated person and they had to place him in a job somewhere. So after he graduated from the College, they sent him to expand the collectivization process. He was an editor of the Machine and Tractor Station newspaper, then of a regional newspaper, and later  an editor of municipal newspaper in the city of Krasny-Sulin. This city is rather large; there is a large Metallurgical Industrial Complex. It was not renamed [after the breakup of the USSR in 1991]. My father made a long business trip: from 1932 till 1936 he worked in Azov and Black Sea territory. We visited him in Ghelendjzhik. 

When my father came back to Leningrad from his business trip in 1936, he was appointed an editor of a newspaper at the printing house named after Volodarsky. My mum worked as a chemist/laboratory assistant at a factory in Kirov. 

My parents were atheists. They didn’t observe Jewish traditions. Possibly we ate matzah – I don’t remember exactly, but most probably we did. We lived close to the synagogue, but never visited it. We had no Sabbath celebrations: at that time we had no Saturdays off – we had six-day weeks.

When my grandfather and grandmother Tsypkin came to Leningrad to visit us, they lived at our place. It was difficult for them to observe Jewish traditions and keep kosher in ‘the city of three revolutions’ [Leningrad was called this way by the Communists because it was this city where the Revolution of 1905 and the February and October Revolutions of 1917 took place] in the 1930s. It was dangerous: it could attract attention of active atheists and entail the arrest of all family members. I don’t remember them celebrating Jewish holidays, neither in Leningrad, nor by themselves in Komarovka.

My parents told me nothing about my grandfathers and grandmothers. At that time I – and my parents too – had different interests and troubles: I attended a kindergarten, later a school, and daddy and mum worked. 

Daddy and mum spoke Russian. Sometimes, when they wanted to keep a secret from me, they spoke Yiddish. They didn’t teach me Yiddish though. I studied it during my visits to Krichev, talking to local boys. When I came back to Leningrad I used to forget Yiddish words.

I loved my mum very much. Every day she bought me cakes: real creamy cakes. Other children from our yard could have such cakes only once a year. The boys didn’t believe that my mum bought cakes for me in the nearest confectioner’s shop [cakes were very expensive at that time]. One day, when my mum was going home through our yard, I asked her to give me a cake. And she gave it to me immediately. Then I took it and gobbled it up. She asked me why I ate the cake right in the street. I answered that I wanted it very much. The next day I approached her again and asked her to give me the cake. Mum asked why I was going to eat the cake right on the spot. I answered, ‘Give it to me, I will show it to the guys.’ She gave me the cake and I showed the cake to the guys. They were amazed: ‘Terrific! Each day he has a cake!’

My father was a member of the Russian Communist Party, the Bolshevik party, and my mum was only a member of a trade union. They didn’t talk about politics at home. They taught me to look for human values. For example, at that time [in the 1930s] near Kirovsk [up-stream the Neva river] there was a Jewish collective farm. My parents held up Izya Feiggin, a boy as an example for me. He was a kind of relative, who industriously worked at this collective farm all summer long and earned money to buy boots for himself. 

Our neighbors appreciated my parents very much. My mum was held in high respect. She had female friends at work, most of them were Russian. Most probably my daddy also had Russian friends.

My parents often met with their relatives. Uncle Yakov, the brother of my mum lived next to us. Most often we associated with the family of my father’s sister – the Khutoretskys: Dorah, her husband and children Maya and Semen. They lived next door. We also visited two of my father’s other sisters: Esther-Slava and Eugenia.

I was born on 16th April 1928. Now it is written in my passport that my name is Ugolev Alexander Efimovich. I changed my name after my son’s birth: I wanted to make his life easier.

I was born in Leningrad, attended all children’s educational establishments: a day nursery, a kindergarten, a zero class [a special class for children’s preparation to school]. 

I never went through the ceremony of bar mitzvah. But they arranged the brit for me. I guess my grandfathers initiated it. You see, my parents were atheists. It seems that among my family members only grandfathers Abram Ugolev and Haim Tsypkin observed Jewish traditions and practiced Judaism. Nobody else did. On the contrary, a lot of my relatives became Communist Party members and atheists. Probably, in the terrible time of revolutionary changes and Stalin’s mass repressions my uncles and aunts followed the law of self-preservation. 

Since my childhood everybody called me Alexander, and Sasha or Sanya as a term of endearment. I found out that my Jewish name was Isaac only when I went to school. At first I didn’tlike its sound and became upset. But my father was a clever man. He showed me a portrait of Isaac Newton and told me how talented this scientist was, and I calmed down. I even took pride in my Jewish name.

All my life I’ve lived in the same house on Kurlyandskaya Street. As a child, I lived with my parents in the apartment no. 9, and now I live in the apartment no. 4, which is smaller. As a child, I lived in a two-room apartment. One room was 19 square meters large, and the other one – 12. Both rooms got all the sun. Two small gardens were located in front of our house. All windows of the apartment faced south. The kitchen was small. For its time that apartment was very good. There was no bathroom though. In the courtyard there was a cesspool and a laundry. The house was heated by stoves; a woodshed was situated near our door. In the house there was a sewerage system and cold water supply; we cooked meals by means of kerosene stoves. The house had an electric power supply. Gas appeared in houses only after the war. The furniture was good, both modern and old. The cupboard was mahogany with statuettes of horses – an antique one. 

There were a lot of books in our apartment: books written by Lenin and Stalin, books devoted to the history of the 19th century, two books of Pushkin’s 6 works and a lot of others. When my father started working in the Office of the Public Prosecutor, there appeared a lot of juridical literature. We subscribed to the ‘Leningradskaya Pravda’ and ‘Smena’ newspapers [official Soviet newspapers]. I was a registered reader of a library. When a pupil of the 5th grade, I was given a souvenir book from the library as the best reader. I was fond of reading popular-science literature, adventures. My mum read almost nothing: she had no time to read; she had to run the house. My grandfathers probably had religious books.

I remember my first voyage by car. My father worked as an editor of the newspaper at the printing house named after Volodarsky. They celebrated the 40th anniversary of service of a type-setter. He started his work as a type-setter at the end of the 19th century. My father gave a report. Then there was a banquet. Children and grandsons of the type-setter sat at a table. I was the youngest among them. They made me sit down near the type-setter. He asked me, what I prefer to eat. At that time I liked fish and meat in aspic. And cakes too. They brought a tray full of cakes. I ate three or four of them. Then I was nauseous and got pain in my stomach. Those cakes were real: made using not margarine but butter. I was taken home by a car, which belonged to the printing house. When I came to my senses, I suffered terribly that the children from our yard and our neighbors had not seen me arriving by car.

At home I remained with our housekeepers. My mum worked all day long. When my mum was alive, Olga Pavlovna from Rostov, our housekeeper, worked for us. She was 75 years old. She was very tall, like a grenadier. I liked Olga Pavlovna very much; I kissed her and called ‘my pretty face’. She was Russian, a wife of a teacher of literature. Later she left and sent me a letter: ‘Good-bye, Sanya! Kissing you, your ‘pretty face’’. 

I went to school at the age of eight, when our family returned from Krasny-Sulin. My father made a long business trip to Krasny-Sulin: he spent about a year there, and his family joined him there. When the lessons were over, our housekeeper gave me meals and I started to do my homework. I tried to do it quickly before five o’clock, because five o’clock in the afternoon was the time to listen to the radio broadcast for schoolchildren. There were no TV sets at that time. To listen to such broadcasts as ‘Theater at the Microphone’ or an opera performance over the radio, people changed their working hours with their coworkers. My favorite broadcasts for schoolchildren were presented by Valery Petrov, Yury Adamov and others. Most often they told us about outstanding revolutionaries. Most of all I liked Alexander Sergeev; his underground nickname was Artem. I liked him so much that I decided to name my future son Artem. And when my son was born, my relatives wanted him to be my father’s name-child. Understanding their determination, I decided to call my next son by the name of my father Efim, but to call my first son Artem. 

If they sent me for a walk to the yard, I didn’t object. In general, I was a very disciplined child. In the first class I received good and excellent marks, and in the second grade - only excellent ones and was awarded an honorary diploma for my achievements in studies. My mum wasn’t afraid to let me go for a walk: she could watch me from the window. Sometimes I obtained her permission to go somewhere with the boys: we played different outdoor games. 

During state holidays I went to look at demonstrations in Leningrad together with my father and mum. Before the war I went to demonstrations with my schoolmates. I liked patriotic songs by the composer Isaac Dunaevsky – they were melodious – and texts by the poet Lebedev-Kumach. 

Before my sister Polina was born, my father left for an out-of-town military camp; he was not in the army before the war with fascist Germany. I have his photo, where he is shown in the uniform of a second lieutenant. 

On 11th April 1938 my mum gave birth to my sister Polina, and died three weeks after delivery because of complications.

When my mum died, Masha Belenkova helped us about the house. We brought her from Belarus. At first she worked as a housekeeper at my father’s sister Esther-Slava. Then we took her away with us to Leningrad, because my sister Polina saw the light of day, and it was difficult for us to look after the baby and keep the house in order without my mum. Masha was Belarusian. Though she finished only seven grades, she knew everything that was necessary. I asked my father a lot of questions regarding my school studies, but my German lessons I checked only with Masha, because she was older than me and an excellent pupil. 

In some months after my mother’s death another woman appeared in our house. She had to take the place of our mother. My stepmother, Galina Baranova, appeared in the following way: We were acquainted with Boris Abramov. He had an unmarried sister of 28 years of age. At that time Boris was a manager at the municipal training center, and my father was his subordinate at the Lenin branch on Ogorodnikova Avenue. So Baranov ‘pushed’ his sister to become my father’s secretary – he told her that my father was a widower. She was an old maid – lived in a room together with her brother – and my father had a self-contained apartment and he was young – 38 years old. 

I tried to have nothing to do with my stepmother. She didn’t want me to call her Galya. And I wouldn’t have the heart to call her Aunt Galya or Galina Petrovna. She appeared in October 1938. And my sister was brought from the maternity hospital only in June 1939; she was a premature baby and physicians took care of her during a long period of time, especially knowing the fact of her mother’s death. Galina Petrovna was Russian. She had finished seven grades. She went in for sports: put the shot and was awarded a diploma for her results in a hurdle race. When she came to us, she left her job. At last she got everything she needed. 

After my sister was brought from the hospital, I was lost in thoughts: how to call my stepmother? I was eleven at that time. Certainly I could call her Aunt Galya or Galina Petrovna. But by that time they brought home my younger sister, a baby who didn’t know yet that her mum had gone and that her daddy had a new wife. I spent a sleepless night and decided that is was necessary ‘to bring myself to perform a deed.’ There appeared a child, who didn’t know who is who; but she had a father and a brother, so she had to have a mother. That’s why from then on I started calling my stepmother ‘Mum.’ I asked no advice and decided it on my own. It means that my parents brought me up well.

Before the beginning of the war I attended School no.10 7, and after the end of the war – School no.277. Now this school is situated on Kurlyandskaya Street, 29. These schools were usual comprehensive ones, not Jewish. During the war it housed a hospital, after the war, for a short period of time, the hostel of the Kirov factory. Later, in this building there was the Technical college no. 9, which belonged to the ‘Metallist’ factory. At present, they are repairing this building and will house a boarding school for disabled children in it. 

Before the war the school was mixed: boys and girls studied together, more than 30 pupils in a class. In elementary school – classes one to four – all subjects were taught by the same teacher. Nina Lorinova was our class teacher – a mathematician and a fine woman. Before the war we all together visited Andrey Kisselev, the author of the textbook on arithmetic and algebra. We visited him for no particular reason: just to get acquainted and have a talk. I liked many school subjects; in general I was an ‘omnivorous’ schoolboy. The teacher was strict, but her lectures were very interesting. I liked the lessons of Russian language, geography – when we left our classroom for the school courtyard with a compass and drew a plan of the district. I even enjoyed the PT lessons. In the first grade our teacher was often sick, and her lessons were replaced by singing lessons. At our school there was a choir and a percussion band. I wanted so much to play the castanets, but they didn’t have enough castanets for all of us – that’s why I played the bells At present I am still very sorry about it: sometimes I’d like to be able to play the castanets.

I never experienced any manifestations of anti-Semitism from our teachers. Our school staff was multinational. The head of the education department, Frida Moiseevna, was Jewish. She taught in senior classes. The director of the school, Petr Sokolov, was Russian. German language was taught by two sisters, russified Germans – their family name was Miller. My classmates never teased me or discussed Jewish topics with me.

After lessons I was engaged in additional physical training sessions at school for all comers. I liked to swarm up a rope and sway to and fro. In the gym hall there were bars and a horizontal bar for high jumps. Right at that time an idea came into my head: to try high jumping turning my back on the bar – some sort of the modern Fosbury-flop. At that time nobody tried it. As a child, I had many ideas, which later were embodied by clever people, and they took prizes for it. 

At school I had neither friends, nor enemies; I treated everybody alike. In my house there lived one Russian friend, Yura Nikiforov, and one Jewish friend, Shura Imatovich. Together with Yura Nikiforov I attended kindergarten and elementary school, but I wasn’t that fond of him: he was very ambitious and arrogant. Most often I visited Vitya Yassinovich and our excellent pupil Igor Uspensky. He was a Jew, he was a more successful pupil than me and his character was closer to me. 

At school I was a [Young] Octobrist 8, then a pioneer [see All-Union pioneer organization] 9. I was a son of a convinced supporter of the Communist Party. Though, to tell the truth, it wasn’t absolutely clear for me, why there were so many poor people and why our life was so hard. But in 1937 we didn’t even think about it: it was dangerous [see Great Terror] 10.

I have a few clear memories about political events in the country before 1941. I asked my parents no questions. I sussed things out for myself, and my opinion was formed from broadcasts and newspapers. I made conclusions myself. Some things seemed strange to me. For example, in 1935 in the USSR there were five marshals. Later only two marshals remained: a metalworker, Klim Voroshylov  11 and a Cossack junior leader, Semen Budenniy [Budenniy, Semen (1883-1973): USSR marshal (1935), Hero of the USSR (3 times: in 1958, 1963, 1968), commander of the 1st Cavalry (1919-1921), Deputy People’s Commissar of Defense department (1939-1941), commander of group of armies (1941-1945), delegate of the USSR Supreme Soviet (1937-1973)]. What happened to the rest of them? But the main public prosecutor Vyshinsky’s speeches for prosecution against ‘spies and traitors’ were so convincing … [Vyshinsky, Andrey (1883-1954): Soviet diplomat and lawyer, Professor of Law and Chief Prosecutor in Stalin’s purge trials (1934-1938), Foreign Minister (1949-1953), Deputy Foreign Minister and permanent delegate to the UN]

Each summer we left for Krichev to see my grandmother and grandfather, or for Komarovka. I remember my first journey by train: we went with my mother to Krichev, to Grandmother and Grandfather. At that time I was four years old. It wasn’t a shock for me. We went in a carriage with numbered reserved seats. We traveled for more than a day. We were eating all the time: chicken, boiled eggs, etc. 

In Krichev I went for a swim in the Sozh River. In Ghelendzhik, where my daddy worked, I swam in the Black Sea. Sometimes I took a bath with sea-water. After a while they pulled out a cork and I watched ‘the sea’ flowing away from a small bath. I fell into raptures over it. 

On birthdays all my relatives gathered, brought gifts, ate tasty meals, talked. We celebrated only state holidays: 1st May, Soviet Army Day 12, etc. We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays, because my family members and our relatives were atheists.

On 18th October 1938 the Moscow cinema was opened – the first cinema in Leningrad with three halls. In all three halls they showed the film ‘Chapaev’ [a classic from the year 1934, directed by Georgi and Sergei Vasilyev, based on the life of the Soviet military leader Vassiliy Chapaev 13. Up to that time we used to visit ‘Udarnik’ cinema – now it’s called ‘Record’. Zina Yaruk, a friend of mine, a Belarusian, got tickets for us at a low price of 50 kopecks.

I remember an episode from my school life. In our court yard there was a lath fence. Before the war I liked to play ball games in the court yard. I wore trousers, which my stepmother remodeled using trousers of my father. Its texture was very close. People called it ‘devil’s skin.’ My ball rolled under the lath fence. Looking around, to avoid reproof of adults, I started climbing over the lath fence to take the ball. Accidentally my trouser-leg was caught on the lath fence. The result was unexpected: the trouser-leg remained safe, and the lath fence was broken off. 

In 1944 I returned to Leningrad from evacuation. People, who lived in the city during the blockade 14, warmed their houses using material at hand. They used everything: books, furniture, etc. But that lath fence in our court yard remained safe as it was before the war. Only one part of it was broken – by me. Nobody touched it, though it was made of wood and could have been used for heating. 

My sister Polina didn’t attend a kindergarten, because she had ill health from her birth. She attended a seven-year school on Kurlyandskaya Street. Later she finished a secondary school [10 grades]. After that she studied at a commercial college in Krasnodar. At school she studied so-so. She had no special abilities, no schoolmates. Soon after leaving school she got married. Her husband was a senior lieutenant, Ushkov Victor. She gave birth to a daughter, Olga. After the putsch of 1956 15 they lived in Hungary, where her husband served, later in Krasnodar and other places. Polina worked as a sales assistant in different shops. She returned to Leningrad after she divorced her first husband and soon married a man, who was older than she, a captain in retirement named Alexander Alexandrov. Later they also got divorced. Then she married Valery – I don’t remember his surname – and lived at his apartment. She got acquainted with Valery during her figure skating training sessions: he was a brother of her coach. Polina worked as a sales assistant in a shop near the Baltic railway station. She had numerous customers. At that time in the context of serious deficiencies, it was her luck to work in a shop – she was able to get whatever she liked. Later she retired on a pension and didn’t work any more. Polina got ill with an oncological disease. She sank all her savings into a financial pyramid and lost almost all money. The rest she spent for treatment of cancer. Polina underwent chemotherapy, but without success. The treatment was very expensive – all our family helped her to find money. The malignant growth was inoperable, and it developed into a sarcoma. Polina died at home [in 1999] in the presence of her daughter Olga.

News about the beginning of the war reached me in Novgorod, at the relatives of my stepmother Galina. At that time I was 13 years old. In two weeks I went back to Leningrad by train and arrived there in July 1941. At that time my stepmother was recruited for digging entrenchments in the city suburbs. On 8th September 1941 the blockade of Leningrad was started.  

At the beginning of the war my father worked in the Leningrad military district headquarters [(in the prosecutor’s office, which was located in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress]). Later, at the beginning of August he was recalled to the military unit. I saw him off. When my stepmother came back from digging entrenchments, he had already left. My father left for the front in the rank of senior lieutenant. Later he was made captain. When we wrote him letters, we addressed envelopes to division headquarters [prosecutor’s office]. 

A sister of my stepmother, Valya, arrived from Novgorod. She was a student of the Leningrad Chemical and Pharmaceutical College. 

On 1st September our school was closed, several pupils and I studied in an air-raid shelter in the house next door. Someone said that the blockade had already begun. At first we didn’t believe it, but when the authorities reduced the daily rate of foodstuff, we felt it. Ration cards appeared in June. At first the daily rate of bread per capita for children and dependents was 400 grams, later 300 grams, later 250 grams, 200 grams and, at last, 125 grams. It was a small, but heavy piece. It contained a small amount of flour, but mainly cellulose and sawdust. Strangely enough it seemed to me that ration cards existed not too long. 

In February 1942 I lived at Sofia Naimark’s, my mother’s sister’s, on Chaikovskogo Street. One day I came to her and she told me that my stepmother Galina had visited and informed her, that our family would be sent into evacuation. We were evacuated in the middle of February 1942. We moved by divisional lorry, heavily loaded with something, to the front headquarters. The lorry had to return back to Leningrad. At first I decided not to leave for evacuation. By that time they had already increased the daily rate of bread up to 300 grams. It was almost wholesome bread. My stepmother raised objections against my stay in the besieged city. She said that she was responsible for me to my father. We all – me, my stepmother, her sister Valya and my sister Polina – went safely. 

My father sent me a tank man’s helmet. This helmet stood me in good stead: once on a rough road our lorry bobbed us up and I hit my head against a sheet of plywood above my head. A nail projected from it. I wore this helmet. The nail stuck in my helmet, and I wasn’t hurt. We were brought to a village near Kobona on the opposite bank of Ladoga Lake [Road of Life] 16, to back areas of division. In back areas of division there was everything necessary for normal life: hairdressing salons, shoe workshops, photo studio and so forth. We were sent to shoemakers. There we had a rest and were replete with food for several days. My stepmother’s sister Valya cooked boiled rice. Then we packed our things: we had ten packages. My stepmother left my father’s coat in the charge of her brother Boris. Boris was just going to use it to warm himself, but my stepmother Galina didn’t allow him to. She said, ‘This coat belongs to Efim. I leave it to your care. When Efim returns home from the front, he will wear it.’ 

We continued our way to Tatarstan [a Soviet autonomous republic] by train. On the way a lot of passengers died from weakness or ileus [intestinal obstruction] because they pounced on the food. We reached the town of Tutayev in Yaroslavl region. Before the revolution it was called Romanov. There we lived two weeks in a school building, grew fat, visited bath-house, cleaned our clothes and linen in a steam chamber [delousing station]. I was cold and decided not to clean my clothes – went on with lice. One day I caught a louse in creases of my clothes, and investigated it in all its bearings: its organization, the way it bites and moves – all in all, notwithstanding the war and starvation, I kept my thirst for knowledge. At last we reached Agryz – 37 kilometers to the north from Izhevsk, the capital of Udmurtia, in Tatarstan. We were placed into two rooms, in the house of a young woman. There we spent winter and spring. In Agryz there gathered all members of the Baranov family – relatives of my stepmother: Grandfather Petr Mikhailovich and Grandmother Evdokia Vassilyevna, the elder brother of my stepmother, Boris, with his family. 

I carried on a spirited dialogue with my father by correspondence. I finished the fifth grade before the war in Leningrad, I started studying in the sixth grade in the village of Muslimovka in Tatarstan, and later we (the whole Baranov family) moved to Menzelinsk, where I finished the sixth and the seventh  grade. 

Aunt Kapitolina worked in Agryz in a soup-kitchen catering for the party workers, and her husband, Vassiliy Shabokhov, got acquainted with the director of the ‘Sheepman’ state farm in Muslimovka district. They agreed, that he would work in this state farm as a forest warden, and then as a forestry chief. We lived in Muslimovka during 1942 and 1943. Later Shabokhov had a squabble with the state farm director and we had to move to Menzelinsk. We lived there on Konny Square. There I finished the seventh grade. It was a real city: there was a cinema and a cultural center, where evacuated people gathered for rest and for amateur art activities. 

We received news about our relatives. A central information bureau on evacuees was organized in Buguruslan. Several times we wrote to them and received information on many of our relatives.

Grandfather Abram Ugolev and Grandmother Haya-Ghita Ugoleva together with their daughter Esther-Slava were caught by the war at home in Komarovka, in Belarus. They moved their family out of the war zone to Russia, because the Germans could make away with them as Jews. They reached Penza. Grandfather Abram died there in 1941. 

Their daughter Eugenia was an army person; she worked in rear services during the war and was awarded medals. She was married to Nikolay Bryskin, a Navy man. One day after the end of the war we were speaking with him, and I mentioned Yury Gherman, a well-known Soviet writer. Nikolay Bryskin told me, that Yury Gherman had given him a photo as a keepsake. At first I didn’t believe him. Then Nikolay took the photo down from the shelf: Yury Gherman in the uniform of a seaman, wearing a sailor’s cap). It was signed: ‘To my friend Nikolay Bryskin from Yury Gherman – remember me.’ During the war Eugenia was in the army, in a housekeeping unit, I don’t exactly know where. It seems to me, all the war time she worked in a naval housekeeping unit in besieged Leningrad. At that time she already had a son, Leonid. They survived, thanks to the fact that she received an army ration. 

I don’t know where my father’s elder sister Vera was during the war. She also survived. After the war she returned to Leningrad, where she lived and worked in a hostel of the Leningrad College of Railway Transport. Later she left for Karelia, where she died. 

I know nothing about Lev, my father’s elder brother. 

During the war the younger brother of my father, Ghirsha, was in the front-line forces – he was a private, survived and married Mira, a Jewess. She gave birth to their son Mikhail [in 1949]. After the war they moved to Leningrad and settled in our house, in the apartment no.88. They were Communist Party members Ghirsha died in a hospital in Leningrad some time in the 1970s. His son Mikhail also was very unhealthy; he often underwent medical treatment in different sanatoriums. He loved his mother Mira very much. He was married twice. He died young in 1990. Mira outlived both her husband and her son. She kept in touch with me and with one of her daughters-in-law. She wanted to live in an old people’s home and asked me to assist her in this matter, but I refused, because I thought she wouldn’t be fine there. She died at the beginning of the 1990s.

The brother of my late mother, Meir-Yosif, was in the army during the war. Before the war he graduated from the Polytechnic College. In my opinion he was a captain of the engineering and technical department. In wartime he already had one daughter, Lyudmila – same age as my sister Polina –, and after the war his second daughter, Margarita, was born. At present both his daughters live in Germany, as for Meir-Yosif, he  died a long time ago. 

My mum’s other brother, Yakov, died during the siege of Leningrad in 1942. He was an engineer and economist. He had two children. His elder daughter, Galina, was born several years before the war, I don’t remember the date. His son Alexander was born in June 1941, in the first days of the war. Before the war they lived not far from me in Derpt Lane. Their mother was the second wife of my uncle Yakov. Her name was Alexandra Ogneva, after marriage Tsypkina,a Russian. 

My mum’s sister, Sofia Naimark, lived in Leningrad throughout the siege period. Before the war she worked as a bookkeeper. Before the beginning of the war she got married. Her husband was a soldier at the front, in a tank unit. I saw him off to the front. He survived and returned home. He was a long-liver. His sister moved to America a long time ago. After the war she sent parcels to Leningrad, and even visited us and bought a two-room apartment in Leningrad, on Nauka Avenue. It happened at the time when the Soviet authorities permitted to organize building societies [at the end of 1980s] to give people a chance to buy apartments. His sister immigrated to America before the war. Now America is crammed full of Jews.

My cousin Semen was a little older than me when the war broke out. He was born on 28th August 1927. His sister Maya was born in 1932. Their father Yosif [the interviewee’s father’s brother] also was at the front and returned home. Before the war he served at the railway guard forces,Fontanka embankment, 117. During the war he served in railway troops. During the war Dorah, a sister of my father, together with Semen and Maya, stayed presumably in Yoshkar-Ola [capital of Mari Republic]. 

During the war we lost my father. He was killed at the front. It happened near Novgorod, in the village of Koptsy, on 14th January 1944. As always, they also wrote us that he had died ‘a hero’s death.’ Later his company commander wrote us that my father had been the first to go over the top to launch an attack and was shot. 

The brothers of Aunt Dorah’s husband, Ilya and Alexander Khutoretsky, also perished at the front. Ilya was a private, and Alexander probably served as an officer; before the war he finished a college. I know that none of my relatives were taken to forced labor in Germany. 

As soon as the blockade of Leningrad was lifted, we decided to return to Leningrad. It was in 1944. My aunt Sofia Naimark got to know by chance, where we stayed during evacuation and sent us letters. She wrote that she had moved to Izmailovsky Prospekt. She had a room in a large communal apartment 17. A chief mechanic of the Kirov plant also lived in that apartment. He sent us an invitation and we returned to Leningrad, to Izmailovsky Prospekt. It wasn’t difficult to return to Leningrad. 

We had a long way by Kama River, and then by Volga River on board a motor ship. The authorities of the city had no objection to our return, because we were a family of a front-line soldier [Editor’s note: After the end of the war authorities decided to check the status of citizens and did not permit everyone to get back to Leningrad: to return one had to receive an invitation card from someone who lived in the city]. After our return my stepmother went to the housing department of the house where we had lived before the war, and got the keys to our apartment. During the war it was occupied by our house-manager, so our apartment appeared to be well-kept and available. All things were safe, except for the 5th volume of French history and two textbooks of English language. 

One day, as I was walking around the city I saw an advertisement of the Leningrad Military Mechanical Technical School. They offered two very attractive items: occupational deferment and a worker’s food-card [see Card system] 18. I didn’t worry about deferment at that time – I was only 16 years old – and the worker’s food-card, which gave possibility to receive high food norm, could be of great use for me. I quickly submitted my documents to this technical school. My school certificate was full of excellent marks, so I entered it without problems. However, all new students were forced to work on the reconstruction of the city. I was a disciplined and law-abiding person – I didn’t object. Later I got to know that a worker’s food-card was offered not only by this technical school, but practically by each educational institution. So I had a choice, but at that time, when I was 16, I didn’t think about it. When I became a student, I refused to study the German language, and chose English. 

After the war Leningrad seemed to me not that much destroyed. To tell the truth, instead of some houses there were bomb-holes, and the dome of the Troitsky Cathedral [a well-known Orthodox Cathedral] was damaged a little. 

After the war, in 1946 the Khutoretskys – Dorah, her husband Yosif, their children Semen and Maya, who still went to school – moved to our house on Kurlyandskaya Street. They lived next door. I often spent a lot of time there. They gave me food. I went back home only to sleep. I slept on a box in our kitchen, because one room was occupied by my stepmother and sister Polina, and the other one my stepmother hired out. I didn’t consider the situation to be infringing: I understood that it was necessary to have a source of income. During my studies in the technical school I lived at the Khutoretskys’, and then with Sofia Naimark, my mother’s sister. After the war with Germany the national economy collapsed, food was distributed according to special cards. There was shortage of tasty meals and good things. I remember that soon after the war someone came to my aunt Sofia and brought melted butter with honey in a braided lime bark basket. It was very tasty. 

On 18th April 1959 I moved from the apartment no.9 to the apartment no.4, as my stepmother and my sister had changed our apartment for two smaller ones. They moved to Gas Prospekt #52, and I moved to the same house and the same entrance, where I lived earlier, but in the apartment one storey lower. There was a bath-room and not many neighbors; it was good. My neighbors were elderly Russians, a married couple.

Our neighbors – not Jews – considered our return to be natural. My father was one of the first persons, who had settled in this house before the war. Our neighbors thought that our return was a sign that life in our house was all in the day’s work.

When we returned, my stepmother Galina got a job connected with the passport system. Her salary was 250 rubles per month – it was very little for that time. My worker’s food-card helped us. One day the technical school director issued an order docking me of my scholarship. All students of the technical school gathered to look at this order and at me. And the point was that I could receive either pension for my father, lost at the front, or a scholarship. My scholarship was only 25 rubles, and the pension – 170. I chose the pension. But in spite of all my efforts, we had a hard time. One day I went to the black market together with my aunt Esther-Slava Epstein, my father’s sister, to buy a coat for myself. We paid 150 rubles for it and the sum was rather large for us: my mother-in-law had to put money aside for this purpose.

Right after the end of the war I knew nothing about the emigration of Jews to Israel. I heard about it only in the time of Khrushchev’s 19 ‘thaw’ [see Twentieth Party Congress] 20. At that time I got to know that Golda Meir 21 was the Israeli ambassador to the USSR. I could not bring myself to immigrate to Israel: I never could imagine myself in another country.

I already had some experience of living in different cultural surroundings: I lived in Tatarstan from February 1942 till August 1944. Their language, literature, life, culture – everything was different. For me it was unusual and difficult. In the post-war period I thought about politics rarely. However, attacks on Jews went on. For example, I didn’t manage to watch any performance of the Jewish theater, though I wanted to so much. When Mikhoels 22 was killed they closed his theater. 

The Doctor’s Plot 23, which started after Stalin’s death, suggested to me that having killed Mikhoels, the authorities began to repress his family and other Jews. I didn’t believe that the doctors were guilty of the death of the Leader. 

I remember that when I got to know about the illness and death of Stalin I didn’t believe it at first, and later I was surprised that the medical certificate about his death was signed not by the Minister of Public Health Services, but by a doctor in charge of the case, a candidate of medical sciences [see Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] 24. I wanted to go to Moscow to attend Stalin’s funeral, but they didn’t let me go. And it was good: if I had gone there, I could have been hurt in the crush. 

I took neither the Hungarian [1956 Revolution], nor the Czech events of 1968 [Prague Spring] 25 very much to heart. During the Czech events a jazz band from the Czech Republic performed on tour here and I thought that if the Czech orchestra came here to play, it meant that in Czechoslovakia everything was fine. 

I took a grave view of the rupture of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Israel. Neither the Torah, nor the Bible tells about the Arabs, but Jews and their State are mentioned there. I didn’t like that our country supported Egypt and Palestine in their struggle against Jews. When Nikita Khrushchev went to Egypt in order to decorate Gamal Abdel Nasser and his minister with Soviet government awards, I was shocked. When Israel managed to gain victories, I obtained satisfaction. 

After the end of the International Youth Festival in Moscow in 1957 [biennial International Youth Festivals took place in different countries and included a great number of cultural, social and political events] I took a great interest in professional dancing. Up to then I played volleyball – since 1949. At that time I worked at the central design office no. 34, in the new office building on Borovaya Street. When our office was moved to ‘Arsenal’ enterprise, I played volleyball for ‘Arsenal’ championship; I was a skilled volleyball player. 

One day I was going home from a training session and saw a large board with the following advertisement: ‘Ball-room dancing parties.’ There they studied to dance foxtrot and tango, and during the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’ 26, before 1957, these dances were forbidden as immoral and alien to the Soviet people. Young people had an opportunity to meet only at dancing classical dances. In the Palace of culture named after Gorky dancing parties went the following way: a Viennese waltz, a figured waltz, waltz galop, polonaise and mazurka, and in the end – final waltz. There were five or six polka dances. We didn’t study Jewish dances. In the Vyborg palace of culture, Vladimir Shuvalin, a soloist of Alexandrov’s ensemble performed a tailor’s dance, which included elements of Jewish dances. 

After finishing the technical school, I worked in the central design office no. 34 for Navy armament named after Ilya Ivanov, as a designer. Later I worked in the central design office no. 7 at ‘Arsenal’ enterprise, and later yet, as a designer at the factory named after Kalinin. And after that at the ‘Metallist’ factory. From there I moved to the Engineering Castle to Ghipro-Energo-Prom – a State Institute for design of electro-technical enterprises. 

There were no obvious conflicts at my work or during my study because of my Jewish origins. But sometimes strange things happened, for example: I failed to enter the Military Mechanical College. They told me that I got a poor mark in the literature exam. It happened in 1952, when I worked at ‘Metallist.’ Later I passed the examinations and entered the Northwest Forestry College. I finished the first course, but didn’t continue my studies there. 

I had friends. It was of no importance for me whether they were Jews or not, but I was interested if they were Jewish or not. My first wife was Jewish. We were introduced to each other by Mira Israilevna, a friend of my aunt Dorah, elder sister of my father. Her name was Inna Moisseevna Graevskaya. She still lives in Leningrad. She is one month and 13 days older than me. I got acquainted with her in 1950. But our marriage failed. She wanted to have a child very much, me too. But she lived with her mother, who was very sick. I also lived in bad conditions: in the same room with my sister and stepmother. At that time young mothers were permitted to take maternity leave two months before and two months after childbirth. And then it was necessary to start working. What to do with a two-month-old child? Certainly, it was possible to stay at home and look after the child, but lose the job. Inna even could work at home, giving private lessons, but for this purpose it was necessary to have a separate apartment, and her apartment on Ghatchinskaya Street was not. I visited her only twice during a period of several years; I even do not remember her apartment. When she visited me, we could stay in my room together for a short period of time. So finally we decided to give up the idea of marriage. 

At present she lives at another address, behind the Polytechnical College. At that time when a man appeared near her, Mira Israilevna reported it to me. And I went to see Inna again: so, I behaved as a dog in the manger: if I can’t have her, nobody will. Until now I can find no excuse for my behavior. Now she has neither a husband, nor children. We get in touch as friends, but not often: we congratulate each other on the occasion of birthdays, call each other, and borrow money from each other during hard times. I visited her at the Conservatoire. She worked as a concertmaster in an opera studio at the Conservatoire. 

In 1981, at the beginning of April, the ‘Metallist’ administration gave me two tickets for a paid trip to a rest home in Komarovo [suburb of Leningrad]. There I got acquainted with my present wife, Elena Petrovna Shikalova. She was born in the city of Glazov on 25th May 1954. She is Russian. Her father’s name is Peter Shikalov, born in 1924. Her mother Inna, born in 1926, is a teacher. At present they are pensioners. Peter worked at Chepetsk Mechanical factory, where 80 percent of Soviet uranium was smelted. His health is poor now. He lives in the family of his younger son [in his apartment]. 

Elena has three brothers, all of them are older than her, and all of them live in Glazov. The oldest brother Mikhail graduated from art school. He has a son, Denis. At present he lives in Germany with his family. The second brother Sergey graduated from Perm Medical College. There he got acquainted with his wife. They have two children: Maria and a younger son. 

I got acquainted with Elena during my annual leave. For the first time in my life I managed to arrive in the sanatorium in time. Usually I came to have a rest in the afternoon and had second shift dinner. And that day I arrived early. I asked employees of the sanatorium, ‘Girls, what can you offer to a young handsome man of average fatness in the prime of life? I do not drink alcohol, I do not smoke, do not romance…’ I tried to publicize myself. They asked me, ‘Do you mind if we place you on the second floor, where mainly women live?  I answered, ‘Sure, I do not mind! I promise to behave properly! If I depart from my word, you can kick me out immediately!’

I lodged in a large room. To tell the truth, the room was slightly damp. Later I went downstairs and saw a man who was about 35 years old. We got acquainted, I told him about myself, and he told me about himself: he came from Petrozavodsk, visited Leningrad and arrived here to have a rest in the sanatorium. We made friends, went for a walk, talked a lot. Unintentionally I mentioned that soon I had my birthday. On that day – 16th of April – my friend arranged an unforgettable festival for me: he gave me a bottle of my favorite wine as a gift, ordered fried fish, smoked fish, etc. and treated me to it. 

Next morning I went out of my room to take a shower. I soaped myself and heard a woman’s voice: ‘Why are you washing yourself in the women’s shower-room?’ I asked, ‘And why do you think that it is the women’s?’ She answered, ‘Because only women live on this floor!’ I said, ‘Not only women, I also live here!’ She replied, ‘You are lodging on the women’s floor illegally!’ I was surprised: ‘Where did this legalist come from?’ She answered, ‘From Glazov, do you know it?’ I said, ‘I know everything: it is situated on the way to Perm and Sverdlovsk through Cherepovets, one day journey from Leningrad.’ She said, ‘You know everything indeed; I already noticed that.’ You know, several days before I had won two quiz-games in that sanatorium. 

Later I got to know that her name was Elena. We found plenty to talk about. After dinner I invited her to play badminton. It was Sunday and the rental store of sports equipment was closed. Elena got upset, but I had brought two rackets with me from Leningrad and she was delighted. Elena is 25 years younger than me. I showed her magazines with photos of well known dancing couples: elegant men and beautiful women in evening dresses with décolleté and a cutout back. Elena considered these photos to be nearly pornographic. She stayed in the sanatorium for a long time, and I came there to see her on my days off. We had a stormy romance. I used to spend nights in her room. She told me about herself: in Glazov she worked as a teacher at a kindergarten. She graduated from a Pedagogical School in Glazov and Perm Pedagogical College by correspondence. Elena is an extra-class teacher. At present she teaches one very sick child. She took a fancy to him and doesn’t want to change this work for a better-paid one. 

That summer I took her to Leningrad to my room – 12 square meters. I told her about my work, my wages. At that time her salary was higher than mine. And that was the moment when I made a stupid action. We’d better have handed in an application to a civil registry office and they would have given us two months to think everything over. During that period of time I would have got acquainted with her parents, they would have felt at peace with themselves, they would have accepted me in their house. But we were in love with each other. Elena didn’t want to wait; she told her parents that she was going to leave for Leningrad to live with me. She left her job, her apartment in Glazov and arrived in Leningrad. It turned out, that we did everything to complicate our life. They didn’t want to register Elena for a long time, therefore she couldn’t find work: she did temp work, unofficially. For a very small salary she went to nurse a child out of the city – she had to spend four hours to get there – her working day lasted ten hours. 

On 19th February  1983 we got married. It was a historic day not only for us, but also for the country: the day of abolition of serfdom[it happened on the 19th of February 1861] in Russia. But in contrast to peasants who celebrated their freedom, we celebrated our interdependence.

In 1984 our son Artem was born. By now he has already finished school and entered the St. Petersburg University, the Geographical Faculty: he is a second-year student. He is very sociable and curious. He has no family of his own yet. I tried to tell Artem about Jewry. But he and my wife don’t like to listen to my stories. I told my son that he is half Jewish very early, but he hasn’t become interested in it yet. 

After the end of the war I didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays. It seems to me that the synagogue was closed for a long period of time. Now I visit the synagogue on Jewish holidays from time to time. For some time I even had meals in a Jewish soup-kitchen. My wife doesn’t want to accompany me for Jewish holidays, meetings, concerts, but I go sometimes. My wife and my son celebrate New Year’s Day as a state holiday and Russian Easter, because my wife is Russian. 

From Jewish tradition and culture our family chose only the book ‘120 Recipes of Jewish Cuisine’. Jewish cuisine was highly respected by Inga Fedotovna, my mother-in-law, now deceased. She cooked mezenos [sweet pastry], tsimes, forshmak. 

I have few friends now, some of them are Jews. The proportion of Jews among my friends approximately equals the proportion of Jews in the population of St. Petersburg. 

When Mikhail Ugolev, a son of uncle Ghirsha was alive, he visited us. After Mikhail left for the army, his wife often came to see us. She missed her husband very much and I tried to distract her someway. Her relatives complained about her spending time with me, and after the end of the war, when her husband returned home, they divorced. 

At present Semen and Nina Khutoretsky – his wife – live in the same house with us. Sometimes we visit each other on business or for no particular reason; we help each other if we can. 

I’ve never been to Israel. I have no relatives there, except Irina Epstein, the elder daughter of Lev Epstein, my cousin. He is a son of Esther-Slava Ugoleva, Epstein after marriage, my father’s sister. He has two children born in his first marriage: Irina and Mikhail, and a son born in his second marriage, Ilya. I remember Irina as a little girl, but now we are not in touch. Lev, her father, informs me about the way she lives. I didn’t find any special opportunity to visit Israel until 1989, and I didn’t search for it because of my laziness. Though I guess it could have been an interesting trip. 

The state authorities didn’t really disturb me because of my Jewish origins. It can be explained by the fact that I didn’t make a show of my Jewish origin. I knew that the authorities didn’t like Jews, therefore I tried to hide myself: I even changed my name and my patronymic in my birth-certificate and in the passport. Earlier I was registered as Ugolev Isaac Haimovich, and now I am Ugolev Alexander Efimovich. I did it for the sake of my son. I wanted him to have the patronymic Alexandrovich, not Isaacovich. This will make his life easier. 

Before Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev 27 came to power I couldn’t keep in touch with my relatives abroad 28. It was dangerous: authorities supervised all contacts of the citizens with foreigners and didn’t approve it. At present Eugenia Ugoleva, after marriage Bryskina, my aunt and my father’s sister, her son Leonid Bryskin, his wife Lyudmila and their children Daniil and Eugeny live in the USA. They left in 1992. They live in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sometimes we call each other, I wrote to Aunt Eugenia twice. It would be better to communicate more often, you see, she is already 90 years old, and Leonid is not young either. 

Before Perestroika 29, Lyudmila – (daughter of Sofia and Oscar Naimark – left for the USA. But we are not in touch. I know that in the period of Perestroika she visited St. Petersburg. 

After 1989 life in Russia changed a lot. Capitalism came to our country. It isn’t easy for people of my age to accept such global changes in our social order. I considered Gorbachev’s Perestroika to be great nonsense. If Shatalin, G.A. Yavlinsky and other scientists-economists offered the ‘500 Days’ program [this program was created to improve the economic situation in Russia in 500 days], it is necessary to use it and carry out reforms. What is the purpose to philosophize and search for historical basis for changes in the USSR, if there is a specific program of gradual, step-by-step economic and political transformations? Why not supervise the process of reforms day by day according to this program? You see, if you sit on your place and reflect, manna would not fall down from heaven, and it was necessary to pay debts to the world community. During Perestroika there was no planning and no order, even some sort of communists’ order. 

When I got to know about the fall of the Berlin wall, I couldn’t conceive of this fact. I used to think that Western Berlin is our opponent and Eastern Berlin is our ally. I thought, that life in the Eastern part of Berlin was better, than in the Western part, but it turned out to be absolutely on the contrary. 

After Perestroika nothing much changed in my life. My personal economic stability is expressed in the fact that I live as poorly as before. To tell the truth, our cultural life became richer. It became possible to speak about politics, to express your own views, but within reasonable limits. I had a sensation of the decline in anti-Semitic policy. 

Now I go to the synagogue sometimes, I am a client of Hesed 30. I didn’t receive any assistance from foreign Jewish organizations. Sure I’d like to receive it: it isn’t easy to make ends meet. But I’m not depressed.

I feel community life to be very active. I’m pleased that we have a lot of Jewish organizations. If I were a wealthy man, I would like to join the Jewish donor’s circle. At the Synagogue and Hesed Center I receive souvenirs and food packages for each Jewish holiday, I attend concerts, I’m a registered reader of the Hesed library. 

I’m very grateful to Jewish organizations, which help me live, send food packages for holidays, arrange concerts. I thank JDC [Joint] 31, Hesed Center and Mirilashvili [a Georgian Jew – a businessman and a sponsor] personally for their charitable activities. 

Glossary:

1 Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

Irina Lopko
Chernigov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova
Date of interview: May 2003

Irina Lopko is a well-known person in the Jewish community of Ukraine: she was head of Hesed in Chernigov for many years. Now she is a pensioner. She had a surgery recently and is on the way to recovery.  Irina lives with her husband in a small two-bedroom apartment on the first floor of a 5-storied house, khrushchovka 1 built in the 1960s. There is a quiet green yard near the house. Their apartment that was recently repaired is also quiet and cozy. There are many books in their apartment. There are Russian and Ukrainian classical books and many books on the Jewish history. There are bookmarks in some of them. This means their owner works with them. There are cushions in nice knitted pillowcases on the sofa. Irina is fond of knitting.  There is nice crockery in the cupboard and beautiful pictures on the walls. There are two beautiful gobelin pictures on the walls: this is the memory of her mother.  There are many items with Jewish symbols on them. One cannot resist the charm of this lady. She is very friendly. One cannot help enjoying working with her. During our interview Irina’s acquaintances dropped by to ask her how she was feeling. Someone gave her a bouquet of flowers through the window.  Later Irina’s husband Stanislav came home and began to set the table for dinner. They always invite their guests to share a meal with them. This is what they are used to.
I saw Irina again two months after the interview in Kiev institute of social and community workers. She is as full of new plans as usual and as friendly as we know her. Now she shares her experience with heads of Heseds and other Jewish organizations. She is a great authority among them. 

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

All my maternal and paternal ancestors were born in this green town of Nezhin on the Ostyor river in Chernigov region in about 100 km from Kiev. My mother and father’s families always supported each other at hard times and were friends. There was Ukrainian and Russian population in Nezhin and there were numerous Jewish and Armenian communities. The Greek community was the biggest. Greek merchants were the richest.  In 1815 one of three Russian lyceums was established in Nezhin. This was a school for the children of nobility. Later, during the soviet regime, a Pedagogical College was formed on the basis of this lyceum. Nezhin was not within the Pale of Settlement 2, but there were many Jews in the town before the revolution. They lived among other nationalities. There were three synagogues in the town.

My maternal grandfather Isroel Silin’s family had many children like all other Jewish families.  My grandfather was born in 1881. He owned a small haberdashery store in the center of the town. He worked alone purchasing and selling his goods. My grandfather was an educated man. He always had some club gatherings at home and my mother laughed that my grandfather was a member of Bund 3, and my grandmother was a member of another Jewish party and they always had arguments at home. They were a religious family. My grandfather’s friends were religious Jews who finished a yeshivah school like my grandfather. My grandfather also studied in a grammar school. The family observed all traditions and my mother knew about all holidays. My grandfather died at the age of 44 (in 1925), leaving his widow with six children. After he died the family did not observe traditions any longer, but my grandmother remained religious for the rest of her life. 
 
My grandmother Basia, born in 1886, was a religious woman for her time. She studied in a grammar school, but I don’t know whether she finished it. She was religious and observed all Jewish traditions and customs. They followed kashrut strictly and lit candles on Friday before Saturday. There was a Ukrainian cook who knew Jewish cuisine well in the house. My mother could make Jewish food and I learned from her. We didn’t make traditional gefilte fish, for example, but we stewed it with vegetables (carrots, beetroots and onions), cooked beans in a specific manner and made chicken stew with stuffed necks. They often made strudels and pudding with honey and poppy seeds. My grandmother spoke Yiddish in the family, but she could speak fluent Russian and knew Ukrainian like everybody else in Nezhin. My grandmother was interested in politics and read books and newspapers. It’s hard for me to tell about her political preferences before the revolution of 1917 4, but I know that she was interested in Jewish movements and parties. My grandmother wore clothes that were in fashion in the early 20th century. She wore her hair popped up and she always went out with a hat on, which wasn’t based on her religious convictions, but was a trend of the time. It was improper for ladies of all religions to go out without a hat.

After my grandfather died most of the children moved to Moscow looking for a better life and they took my grandmother there.  She tried to observe at least main traditions living with her children in Moscow. She asked them to make her a special dinner on Saturday and when her son died she demanded to have him buried in the Jewish cemetery according to traditions. She didn’t go to the synagogue, but she gave those who were going to the synagogue some money to order memorial prayers for her gone dear ones on her behalf. When she evacuated during the Great Patriotic War 5 to Petropavlovsk in Northern Kazakhstan she was desperate that there was no place to order prayers. We continued lighting candles on a memorial day in our family.  She celebrated all holidays and when there was no way to have a celebration she always remembered about a holidays and observed at least what she could.  She taught her children to be this way. They were far from religious prejudices, but they always remembered they were Jews. My grandmother passed away in Moscow in 1973. Her daughters looked after her until she died. They buried her in the Jewish section of a town cemetery. 

My grandfather and grandmother Silin had seven children. The children were born every year and a half. The oldest girl Mehama was born in 1905. She studied in a grammar school and in 1917, at the age of 12 she died of an infectious disease.  
         
Then my mother Fania Silin was born in 1907. She also studied in grammar school for few years and she often recalled this time in her life. Here is an episode from her school life: on a Christian holiday all children lined up to come to a priest to kiss his hand. My mother knew she couldn’t do it and if she did her mother wouldn’t let her enter her home. She worried a lot when her class tutor came to her rescue. She said ‘Jewish girls won’t kiss the hand’. In the future she bowed when she saw a priest, but she didn’t kiss his hand. My mother did very well at school, but in 1818 the grammar school was closed and later it was reopened to be a labor school. My mother continued studies in an accounting school. After the Great Patriotic War my mother finished extramural Moscow Financial College.

The third daughter Olga (her Jewish name was Golda) was born in 1909. She also studied in grammar school few years. After  school she moved to Moscow where she went to work as a draftswoman at a plant. She married Ziama Alpershtein, a nice Jewish guy, a worker. They received a room in a communal apartment 6 where their daughter Lena was born. In summer 1941, at the very beginning of the war, Ziama perished at the front.  Olga died in Moscow at the age of 44. Their daughter Lena worked at a post office. She passed away in Moscow in 1998.

The next daughter Manya was born in 1911. She followed into her sister’s steps moving to Moscow. She became a highly qualified marker at a plant. Her husband Nikolay Zaitsev was a highly qualified worker. He came from Klin in Moscow region. They said that when Nikolay married my aunt Manya his father came to visit them from Klin. He asked Nikolay ‘Son, there are no icons in your room. How am I supposed to pray?’ and Nikolay replied ‘Father, I have a Jewish wife. We do not pray’.  The old man was full of respect. He said ‘Jews are special and important people. There was a Jewish pharmacist in our town: he was a well-respected person'.  The Russian son-in-law respected my grandmother very much and she lived with them. Regretfully, Manya had an invalid baby. She spent all her time looking after the child, but the child died. Manya was a housewife. She also took care of my grandmother. Manya died in 1978.

My grandmother’s favorite son Avraam, born in 1912, was a very decent, smart, talented and a very handsome man. He worked as a joiner at the same plant in Moscow where his sisters were working. He met his future wife Frieda at the plant. Avraam died of some infectious disease in 1929. They have lived only a few months together, unfortunately, they did not have children. This was a terrible loss for his family and for the collective of the plant. My grandmother never recovered from this tragedy.

My mother’s sister Rieva, born in 1913, didn’t complete her education. She followed her sisters moving to work in Moscow. She was a draftswoman and later she went to work at the aviation plant where she worked at the design office. Her husband Ruvim Gitiz, a Jewish man, worked at the same plant. Rieva was called with the Russian name 7 Rita (Jewish names were not popular at the time.) I don’t think they had children. She died in Moscow about 10 years ago.

Malka, the last one, born in 1915, followed her sisters to Moscow. She worked as technician at a big plant. She met her husband Polosin at the plant where he was an engineer. He was Russian. The Silin family were very proud of Malka. She was a champion of Moscow in swimming. Malka died in 2002.

The sisters were very close. They spoke Yiddish, cooked for holidays, always celebrated holidays together and supported each other. Although they moved to Moscow when they were young they kept their identity of provincial Jews from Nezhin.

My grandfather Mindel’s branch of the family originated from Lithuania. Our ancestors moved to Nezhin in the late 18th century and we don’t know any relatives in Lithuania. Grandfather Simon Yankel Mindel was a shoemaker. He was born to the family of Moisey Mindel, a shoemaker in Nezhin, in 1874. He kept hitting his little hammer sitting on a small shoemaker’s stool all his life. My grandfather was very religious. He was a senior man at the synagogue and the Jewish community of the town respected him very much for his honesty. He was a wise and reserved man. My grandfather Simon Yankel sang beautifully. He was a tenor and sang at the synagogue. Now I understand that he was a cantor. I remember my grandfather singing children’s songs in Yiddish. One of them was about a tailor singing a song and his needle followed his song. Sometimes he sang Ukrainian songs. He didn’t know any Russian songs. My grandmother had strong will and was a very determined woman and my grandfather always obeyed her.

I often recall my paternal grandmother. I took from her all human values that I have. My grandmother Masia was born to the dynasty of butchers named Lempert in Nezhin in 1878. They were not just butchers. They purchased cattle across the province, slaughtered it in Nezhin and then sold meat in their shop.  My grandmother was a butcher. She cut meat in her shop and then sold it. She had housemaids to help her with housekeeping. She observed traditions, lit candles on Friday and cooked a substantial kosher dinner. My grandmother adored her husband who sat there hitting his hammer while she was the breadwinner. She gave birth to eight children: three daughters and five sons, whom she was very proud of and adored them.

In 1919, when my grandmother was 40 years old, my grandfather’s brother Haim Iosif Mindel came from the front of the Civil War 8. He had typhoid. She isolated him from her family and shut herself in a room with him to nurse him. She brought him to recovery and died saving her husband and children’s lives. They survived. She was the only one who passed away. The rich and the poor of the town took part in the procession following her casket at her funeral. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery. All beggars and handicapped came to the funeral. She always helped and supported them. My father worshipped his mother.

My grandfather was very religious and was to remarry according to the rules. Four months later a shadkhan sent him to another town where he met a Jewish woman, a widow with four children.  Her name was Miriam. She was big and beautiful. She suffered from diabetes. The children got along well and we all loved her. We called her ‘grandmother’ and she loved us, too. Only my father was devoted to his mother. It upset him that she slept in his mother’s bed and he also saw her wearing his mother’s shawls. Everything she said or did exasperated him. In 1919, when my father turned 18 he overtook responsibility for the family. My father joined his Lempert uncles’ business. I remember Barko Lempert, a huge fat man. He always spoke Yiddish using many Ukrainian words.  

The most wonderful and close of my grandmother’s relatives was her tiny sister Haya. She didn’t have any children of her own and she just adored her deceased sister’s children. When she was very old and had poor sight my father always gave her money when they met. He gave her all he had at such moments. And their meetings were all alike. My father said ‘Hallo, grandmother Haya’. She pretended she didn’t recognize him and replied ‘Hallo, and who are you?’ My father had a sense of humor and continued her game ‘Well, then if you don’t know me, may I bid you good bye’. Haya screamed ‘Don’t go, you tramp!’ fearing that he wouldn’t give her an allowance. Another thing about Haya: when a relative visited Nezhin my father harnessed a horse and took the family to the grave of grandmother. Haya approached her sister’s grave and said ‘Masia, can you hear me?’ My father said from behind ‘Yes, Haya, I hear you’. She turned and said ‘Shut up, you tramp. Do not let him spoil the whole thing’. And she started again ‘Masia, hallo, can you hear me? Here is this and that one. They‘ve come here. Of course, David brought them here. David is a graf (‘count’ in Russian). His wife Fania is a real grafinia (‘countess’ in Russian) and they’ve brought two grafinchiki [Editor’s note: this is a word game. ‘Grafinchiki’ means ‘water bottle’ in Russian], so she reported standing by the grave. On the way to the cemetery my father was trying to persuade Haya: ‘Haya, please don’t act like this’, but it was impossible to stop her. She used to say about my father’s younger brother Pyotr: ‘Your son is a pilot, He is your ‘little finger’, he is so famous’.  He was 24 at that time and he was a lieutenant and was not famous yet. She said ‘You will be proud of him and the whole country will know him, the whole ‘mishpukha’.  She loved and cared about her nephews, Masia’s children.

Unfortunately, all I know about my father’s brothers and sisters is what he told me. They kept in touch and visited one another. I know that they were not religious and they did well in life. I have no contacts with their children.

My father’s older sister Lisa (her Jewish name was Livsha), born in 1899, was a terrific person. She married Solomon Levin, a Jewish man. Before her marriage she knew she would never have children like Haya and her fiancé knew about it, but he married her anyway. He loved her so. Solomon perished at the front and Lisa remarried twice. She over lived two husbands. She moved to USA with the children of her third husband in the 1990s. She died at an elderly people’s home there at the age of almost 100 years. She was a nice lady, very sweet and pleasant and everybody loved her.

The next sister Sima, born in 1900, was lame from birth. She was amazingly smart and attractive. Yevsey Levin, Lisa husband Solomon’s brother, a Jewish man, very handsome, had to compete with other men to marry Sima, so beautiful and smart she was regardless of her handicap. They moved to Moscow where they both worked at a plant. They named their daughter Masia after my grandmother. During the Great Patriotic War Yevsey had an affair with a young girl at the front. He didn’t even think of leaving his family, but aunt Sima didn’t forgive him: she cut him off once and forever. After the Great Patriotic War Sima and her daughter stayed in Moscow. Sima died at the age of 74. She went to the kitchen to have a glass of kefir when her daughter was at a concert. She fell with this glass and died. Her daughter was smart and educated. He was an economist. She moved to USA in the 1980s. She died in New York.

My father David Mindel, born in 1901, was the oldest of his brothers. He was tall and swarthy and had fair eyes, but everybody thought he had dark eyes. My father went to cheder while the rest of his brothers studied in a Soviet Jewish school.

After my father uncle Shaya (Esaih) was born in 1905. He was different from my father. He could sing and dance well. When he was young he used to run away to gypsies.  He loved women and they loved him. He was a cattle dealer and at times he got engaged in swindling and put in prison. The family was sort of ashamed of him. After his last time in prison Shaya changed dramatically. He became very religious and reserved and led a very quiet life. In his last years of life Shaya was head of the Jewish community in Nezhin. He made arrangements for funerals. Shaya died in Nezhin at the age of 86. His two daughters live in Los Angeles, USA, and his son lives in Nezhin.

The next two children had one date of birth written in their birth certificate, but they weren’t twins. My grandfather was too lazy to go register his baby and waited until another was born a year later. He registered a brother and a sister at the same time. So it happened that Rosa and Yuzik were like twins, though they were not born at the same date. Rosa was born in 1908 and Yuzik was born in 1909. Aunt Rosa was a professional singer. She had a dramatic soprano, a very strong voice. It was too loud to listen to her singing in a room. She studied in a music school that taught all soloists of the Bolshoi Theater 9 and she entered it without any problems. She also danced beautifully and wanted to sing in musical comedy, but her voice fit in opera well. Her first husband was from Dagestan. He was a Party member, but she was his fourth or fifth wife. It was impossible to live with him. He was a despot and she ran away from him. She returned to Moscow and was in hiding there. This Dagestanian man happened to be terribly jealous and promised to kill her. Once in Moscow Rosa met her acquaintance from Nezhin Nikolai Zhuravlyov.  He was Russian. He had finished a college and was to go to work in Kursk.  He had been in love with Rosa for a long time and proposed to her right away. A few days later they arrived in Kursk. Some time later he became director of a factory and Rosa organized a choir of Russian folk songs. She became its director and a soloist. She frequently got invitations from the best choirs in Moscow, but she didn’t want to stay away from her husband and refused these job offers. It was her dream to form a Jewish choir. She and her husband moved to Lipetsk. He was director of a big plant. He was a wonderful person. During the Great Patriotic War he was a private at the front. Rosa died in Moscow in 1987. Her only son Vladimir Zhuravlyov lives in Moscow. We are friends. 

Yuzik, born in 1909, worked as a joiner in Moscow. He had a Jewish wife. During the Great Patriotic War he was at the front like all brothers. He lost a leg at the front.  After the war he worked with logistics. He became obese and suffered from asthma. He died in Moscow in 1973. His son Mikhail lives in Moscow.

My father’s next brother Mikhail, born in 1911, studied in a Jewish school and served in the Navy. Only tall and athletic young men were selected for this service. There is a family legend related to Mikhail’s service on a cruiser. The legendary military commander Voroshilov 10 visited his cruiser and there was an amateur concert. Mikhail sang wonderfully. He was a tenor like grandfather. He sang a Jewish song at the concert. Voroshilov liked the song very much. He asked ‘Is it a gypsy song?’ ‘No’, said uncle Mikhail, ‘it’s a Jewish song’. Voroshilov gave my uncle a guitar. He kept it for many years, but it was lost during the Great Patriotic War. The family tried to persuade Mikhail to study music and singing, but Mikhail didn’t have education and he was used to manual work. In his employment record book he had only one entry working as a car mechanic in a garage in Moscow. Like his five brothers Mikhail was in the army during the Great Patriotic War. He served on the ‘Road of Life’ 11. He supervised transportation of half-dead people from Leningrad. He had awards for his service. Mikhail had a Russian wife. I don’t remember her name and I don’t know whether they had children. Mikhail died of cancer at the age of 60 in 1971.  

The family was very proud of my father’s younger brother Pyotr (Jewish name Pinia), born in 1913. He studied in the Soviet Jewish School in Nezhin. At the age of 16 he moved to Moscow   where he worked at a plant and later entered an Air Force School. Uncle Pyotr was a pilot and in July 1941 he was awarded an Order of Lenin 12 for a heroic deed. He was a hero, but he was a humble person and didn’t like talking about his heroic deeds. After the great Patriotic War he finished Military Academy and served in civil aviation. He flew across the country in emergency situations. He had many awards. He was a very decent and interesting man. He was the most educated of Mindel brothers. Pyotr’s wife Yelena was Russian. She lived in Moscow. She merged with our family and adopted all our traditions like nobody else. She had a good voice and sang Jewish songs. It was funny when Yelena started Jewish songs at our family gatherings.  She didn’t know Yiddish, but she learned lyrics of Jewish songs. Pyotr died a sudden death from a heart attack when he was on vacation in Yevpatoriya. He was 67.  His daughter Tamara was an aviation design engineer in a design institute in Moscow.

In this big family my father David always had a deciding word since he was the oldest son. My father was well shaped and strong. When a circus came on tour into the town my father’s relatives tried to persuade my father to stay aside from its performances. My father gave his word, dressed up and went to the circus. When wrestlers came onto the stage and invited volunteers from the audience to take part in their performance the audience began to call ‘David! David!’ and my father went onto the stage against his relatives’ objections. He often won. My father used to say that he had an incomplete lower education. He was a cattle driver since childhood and he even had a certificate of ‘cattle driver’. Later he became a cab driver when he met my mother.

My parents met when standing in line to pay fees: my mother came to pay a fee for her dying father and my father came to pay tax for his horses. My mother didn’t have enough money and my father came and said ‘I will pay for you’.  She was confused. My mother was tiny and shy. She asked ‘How do I pay you back?’ and he replied ‘I will find you’. My mother studied in an accounting school and other boys she knew were not at all like my father. He was a big man with a whip (now they have keys from their cars with them, but at that time they had to take their whips with them) and he made a great impression on my mother. My mother told her friends about this man. She didn’t know how he would find her.  Everybody knew Mindel brothers in Nezhin. When there were girls on the beach they used to gallop their horses into the river. They were athletes and absolutely adored horses. Once my mother was dancing at a party in her accounting school when her friends said ‘Fania, there is a man standing in the doorway gazing at you. He looks like the one you described’. My mother looked back. It was him, but he disappeared. After the party my mother went out and my father stopped her. He said ‘Hallo, I’ve come to pick the debt’. She felt confused again. She never had any money. He said ‘In that case marry me’. My mother and her friends burst into laughing and got on his sledge. There was no space left for my mother and then my father grabbed her with his hand and put her on the seat beside him wrapping her in his winter coat.  My mother recalled later ‘I felt like fainting. I thought I could ride in his embrace for the rest of my life’. Such was a beginning of this great love. My mother’s father died shortly afterward. Her father died young and my mother told me later that she had my father in her dreams, although he kept his distance, but she already was tying her life to his. After the funeral he took all children home on his wagon. He took responsibility for their family.

They got married a year later in 1826. I know for sure that there was a chuppah on their wedding. It was customary for the time that bridegrooms borrowed somebody else’s clothes for a wedding. My father had someone else’s coat on to have better looks. This was the coat of Yevsey, my father’s sister Sima’s husband. When it was over my father was looking for his coat. My mother whispered to him: ‘David, you’ve come wearing Yevsey’s coat and he left in yours’.  They often recalled this episode laughing. 
 

Growing up

I was born in 1931. I was their second child. Their first girl died of some disease at the age of three and a half years. I was a white-skin baby with no eyelashes. I was very quiet. Before I was born my parents rented apartments in various parts of the town, but when I was born they bought a house in the center. It was a big house that belonged to a landlord in the past. As I understand now they bought it almost for nothing. This house was bought for three families: my grandfather Mindel, our family and my father sister Sima’s family. Sima and her family moved to Moscow some time later and our family lived in this house until my father died. I was brought to this house from the maternity hospital where I was born. I was named Sarra after my maternal grandfather Isroel. These two names sound similar. My grandfather Mindel insisted on giving me this name. He respected my mother’s father who had died by then very much. He saw that I wasn’t a pretty baby and to console my mother he said: ‘The girl looks very intelligent’.

My mother often recalled the period of hunger in the early 1930s 13, there was nothing to eat and they ate potato peels and other junk food, but my mother had a lot of breast milk and she breastfed me until the age of two. My mother had sufficient milk to breastfeed another baby. He was a Ukrainian boy from a dispossessed family 14 of Petriks who lost their home. My parents gave shelter to a few dispossessed families and they were grateful to my parents for the rest of their lives. I was very fat in my childhood and everybody thought I was swollen from hunger.  My mother always said: ‘I survived the periods of hunger in 1931-1932 and during the war and I don’t want to be hungry ever again’.  When the period of famine was over my father took a cow into the house and it stayed with us until the end of his life. It was a deity of the family. The family worshipped it and we had a housemaid who milked the cow. If the housemaid was away my father put on her apron and kerchief to milk the cow. My mother never came close to the cow. She was a softie and my father never allowed her to do physical work to preserve her appearance.

My brother Yefim was born in 1936.  I remember sitting on my mother’s lap and she had such a big belly and there was something stirring inside. Then this crying and screaming nubbin came into the world. He was big and beautiful. Eight days later my brother was circumcised. I remember this well. The baby was whining there were old people around him doing something to him and I was very worried and horrified thinking that they might harm this little baby and they were trying to calm me down. 

Something happened in 1936. This incident made me grow mature and feel for the first time in my life that we were Jews and that we were different from all others. My mother went to work two months after Yefim was born. She was a highly qualified accountant. She worked all her life. My parents hired a Ukrainian girl from a village to look after the baby. She also helped my father to look after the cow and milk it. My father’s stepmother looked after the whole household. All of a sudden this girl disappeared on the eve of Pesach. My father contacted her family, but she was not there either. Her sister came from the village, we searched for the girl, but she was not found. She was missing for three days. The whole town came to our yard. My father and grandfather were sitting on a bench and there were militiamen beside them on both sides.  Actually, they were about to take my father and grandfather to prison. There was a rumor that they killed the girl to make matzah. People were yelling ‘They always kill girls to add their blood into matzah’. We had never heard anything like that before. The girl’s brothers didn’t say anything. They kept looking for her. They looked in the river. This river was sparrow knee deep. Other people held torches for them and they searched the bottom with hooks. She was found suddenly. It turned out that she suffered from mental disorders since childhood. She suddenly fell into depression and then she found shelter where she could sleep for days. She removed a plank in the chicken house and slept there, warm and healthy, all in her urine. She was taken to hospital. There was one ward for patients with mental diseases in the hospital in Nezhin. Her sister replaced her and stayed with us until the war. Everything ended well, but we had a bitter aftertaste. We faced anti-Semitism. I kept asking ‘Who was killed when matzah was to be made?’. I couldn’t get rid of this horror for a long time.  

My grandfather and grandmother Mindel only spoke Yiddish. I visited them for a cup of tea  after kindergarten every day and they spoke Yiddish in my presence and once my grandmother commented ‘I think she understands’ and I nodded my head ‘Yes, yes, I understand’. Then my grandmother and grandfather began to speak Yiddish to me and I enjoyed talking with them in Yiddish. There we sat at the table having tea and jam, my grandfather on my right and my grandmother on my left quietly talking in Yiddish. My grandfather taught me everything Jewish I know: Jewish songs, traditions, dishes, Jewish warmth and Jewish soul. Matzah was made in his home and Jews got together to pray in his home when there were no synagogues left in the town after the Great Patriotic War as a result of titanic efforts 15 of the Soviet regime.

We always had housemaids before the war. My mother worked a lot as deputy chief accountant of the municipal trade department. This was a very important position. In late 1930 my father also changed his job. I liked the horse smell in our house, but my mother rebelled against his profession. However, my father adored horses and went to work as horse dealer at a military registry office. My father was responsible for providing horses for the needs of the army and he often went on business trips. Every spring he went to military camps where he stayed through summer.

Arrests in 1937 16 did not reflect directly our family, but my father had adamant anti-Soviet  ideas. He could speak out his ideas and my mother was very concerned about his safety. There was fear in our family when my mother was interrogated about Ms. Grudina when my father was in a military camp.  My mother said she didn’t know anything about the woman. Nothing good or bad, although she actually knew this woman very well, she was our neighbor. I do not know in what she was guilty and what incriminated to her.  My mother was kept there until morning. My grandfather was waiting for her sitting on the bench. My mother always mentioned this bench where grandfather waited for her 24 hours without any food or water worrying about her. He said ‘Fania, if they arrest you I will come there in the morning to tell them to take me instead. David will not forgive me if they arrest you’. My mother recalled that when she came home my grandfather couldn’t stand up from the shock, although he was not old then. Later this Ukrainian woman about whom my mother was interrogated was arrested anyway.

I went to school in 1939. There were no Jewish schools left in Nezhin by then and I went to a Russian school. My mother always wanted to give me good education. I studied German with a governess and had music classes at home. My grandmother and grandfather taught me Yiddish. I did very well at school. I had all excellent marks and I and my friend Yasha, a Jewish boy, were the best in our class. There were many Jewish children in my class. I was a very quiet child.  My first teacher who also knew my mother since grammar school used to say ‘Why doesn’t she speak louder? How will she live?’  

During the war

I remember some vague alarm that everybody felt at the beginning of war on 22 June 1941. My father was immediately called to the army. Before he left he managed to make some arrangements for my mother to go to work at the military hospital. She worked as an accountant and document assistant. My father thought it was better this way and he was right. The hospital evacuated to Astrakhan [a town in Russia in 1200 from Moscow where the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea] and we evacuated with this hospital leaving our home and belongings. Our housemaid took our valuables to her home in a village. We had beautiful carpets and old gobelin pictures. She kept them in a cellar where the carpets got rotten. The pictures were all right and I have them in my apartment now. Our dog, a beautiful pedigree spitz, perished. Germans killed it. They knew who the dog belonged to. They said ‘Jude’ and killed it. 

In Astrakhan we were accommodated in an apartment. My mother wasn’t on military service, but she wore a uniform with no badges of rank. On 1 October 1941 I went to school and my brother went to a 24-hour kindergarten. There was one such kindergarten for evacuated children whose mothers had to work long hours. At that time I faced anti-Semitism again, although there were no Jews in Astrakhan before the war and there could be no roots for local anti-Semitism. We lived in a terrible neighborhood for exiled enemies of the Soviet regime. They were mainly former kulaks and wealthy families from Ukraine. Their anti-Semitism went back to pogroms in the 1910s 17. Their children must have told their parents that there was a girl with a very strange name of Sarra [Editor’s note: Jewish names were targets of mockery, vulgar jokes and abuse at the time]. Their parents probably explained what it was about and they beat me brutally saying that they were beating me for being a ‘zhydovka parchataya’ [kike]. I was a weird child. I was very quiet and never fought back. I came home and told my mother: ‘Mom, take it easy, but I shall never go to school again and I shall never go out to play with children’. I didn’t go to school for a year. Teachers from school came to talk me out of it and commissar of the hospital came to talk with me, but I didn’t change my mind.

About half a year passed when the owner of the apartment Lutikova said: ‘I am so lucky that you are not Jews. Other apartment owners have Jewish tenants’. Actually, 75% of hospital employees were Jews. My mother slept overnight and in the morning she packed and said: ‘I need to tell you that I am a Jew’. The hospital sent a truck to pick us and we moved to the hospital. I didn’t go to school. I studied at home, helped in the hospital, did housework and went to help an old woman, our neighbor, to water her vegetable garden and she gave us vegetables from her garden.  I remember that this old lady gave me five apples on my birthday.

In autumn 1942 there were frequent bombings of Astrakhan. There were oil tanks burning around. Fuel was shipped to the front from Astrakhan. It was not safe to stay there. My father’s brother Pyotr was commanding officer of a squadron and teacher at a pilot school after he was wounded. The school was in the Ural, in Chkalovsk town (present Orenburg) in 2000 km from Kiev. He sent us documents to move to him. I remember that we traveled across the Caspian Sea on a bare to Gurievsk in 720 km from Astrakhan and from there we took trains to get to Orenburg. We stayed with uncle Pyotr’s family and my mother went to work as accountant.

Here was the issue of my going to school again. I said: ‘I am not going to school’. Pyotr’s wife Yelena had a strong character. She attacked my mother ‘What kind of a name is this?  Sarra is written on all fences. This doesn’t make other children feel friendlier’. She asked me ‘What name do you like?’ and I said ‘Irina’. I knew Irina in my former school and she had such beautiful plates. Yelena went to school and said ‘You’ve got the wrong name of a girl. Please change Sarra to Irina. Sarra is a mistake’. They changed my name and my family convinced me that nobody would know I was a Jew. I studied very well and got along well with my schoolmates. We received letters from my father and always waited for them. He was 40 when he went to the front. He had gout and after a year of service he was released from his front line service. He had lost many friends and grieved after them a lot. He was a great person with a great heart. He was very kind. He continued his army service as cattle supplier.  

My mother corresponded with her former colleagues from hospital.  By the end of 1943 the hospital moved to Taganrog, a Russian town on the border with Ukraine, in 800 km from Kiev. My mother got an offer to return to the hospital and she accepted it gladly. We returned to Nezhin in 1944. About this time my grandmother and grandfather returned from evacuation in Tatarstan. Our neighbors and acquaintances were happy to see us again, I recall.  They helped us with food, although they didn’t have much. I gratefully recall a bag of beans and some potatoes that our acquaintances brought from a village. There were Assyrian tenants living in our house since wartime and my grandfather thought it was not proper to make them move out. They lived in a wing of the house. It didn’t make us very comfortable. They were noisy people with their own traditions, but my grandfather and father were patient with them. I received my first lessons of humanity and tolerance. Nobody ever told them to get out. 

Shortly after we returned, in 1944 my grandfather Mindel’s second wife Miriam died of diabetic coma. The war was still on, our house was cold and she didn’t survive. I remember her funeral in the Jewish cemetery. She was buried according to Jewish traditions. She was wrapped in white cloth. There were four planks, on top, at bottom and on each side and the cloth was wrapped around. I was terrified to see my grandfather doing this. Then men took this out of the house and then to the cemetery. I stayed at home. My grandfather then sat on the floor taking off his shoes and the others were cutting his clothes. There was no synagogue in Nezhin. On Friday and Saturday old men gathered in my grandfather’s room to pray.  Matzah was baked in our house and we, children, took part in the process. Then matzah flour was made from matzah and there were dishes with dumplings. 

After the war

My father returned in summer 1945. It is such happiness when the family is together. He continued his work as cattle supplier. He never joined the Party and had anti-Soviet convictions, but he had to keep this a secret from others. His stay in Germany at the end of the war convinced him stronger that he was right. He used to say ‘How did we manage to win a victory, when there is such good order there and everything is such a mess here?’ He felt happy when Israel was established in 1948. Everybody thought that we would move there right away knowing the attitudes in our family, but this was impossible to do and my father didn’t dare. Graves were more important to him than anything else. It was his dream to get to a Jewish state. He was a real Jew.

My mother was an apologist of the landlord nobility way of life. She admired their education, culture and literature. She stressed that the Russian classical literature was created by the nobility. She hated it that all cooks, housemaids and laborers were trying to come to power. My mother hated their lack of culture, their manner of speaking. She was hurt by this lack of culture while they felt masters of this life. 

In 1945 I fell severely ill with tuberculosis of glands. My relatives from Moscow took me to Moscow. I studied at school and stayed with my father brother Mikhail’s family. All relatives took part in arrangements for my medical treatment. I was taken to an institute and then I was taken to a healer, an old man in Moscow region where I was to go once a week. I left school and missed almost a year of studies. I recovered and returned to Nezhin a year later. I went to school with another class. However, another severe illness began: psoriasis.

In 1946 a teacher of Hebrew named Ash came to our house. I don’t have the slightest idea where my father found him. My father hired him for my brother. He was a poor man, one of emigrants from Russia. He came from America and somehow happened to arrive at the provincial town of Nezhin. Five other Jewish boys came to his classes in our house and he taught them by wonderfully beautiful books. My father arranged these classes for him since he wouldn’t accept alms, but he had to support his ill wife. He taught the boys Hebrew and Yiddish, but my brother was no good at languages. The teacher used to say to my brother ‘Fima, can’t you hear one word when your parents talk?’ and my brother replied ‘I can, but talk so that I didn’t understand anything’. Other boys were as dumb as my brother. Ash didn’t accept money from widows’ children. Then my father doubled his payment to keep this teacher working. Ash lived in Nezhin several years until he disappeared. Nobody knew where he went. When I was in Israel at the 65th birthday of my brother in 2001 I met rabbe Ash’s former pupils. They spoke of him warmly. They remembered his first name, but I only remembered his last name of Ash.  

When I returned from Moscow I became more active at school. I was an active pioneer and then Komsomol 18 member. I am a funny person. I yield to convictions.  My parents were not quite happy with my fervor, but they didn’t interfere. I became a leader at school. I was Komsomol organizer and chairman of the pupil’s committee.  I devotedly participated in all activities. I conducted Komsomol meetings speaking for better studies, was eager for our school to win the first place for gathering waste paper, convinced schoolchildren to join Komsomol and was responsible for admission. I quit music school where I was very successful for the sake of Komsomol.  I studied brilliantly, but another period of wild anti-Semitism called ‘struggle against rootless cosmopolites’ 19 began. I remember cold suspicious attitudes of my classmates. There were few Jewish pupils in my class. Those girls and I felt something and tried to stay closer to one another. Many years later I analyzed why Jewish children are so active and study so well. Jewish children has always had a feeling of inferiority and they took every chance where their talents could develop.  

I didn’t have ant document proving that I was Irina. When I turned 16 my mother went to the passport office and said that her girl would have a terrible stress if they wrote the name of Sarra in my passport. She said I already got used to the name of Irina. Everybody knew and respected my mother. They knew that her daughter was Irina and that I had psoriasis. So nobody argued. They just wrote the name of Irina in my passport. 

I finished school in 1950 and had huge plans. I was going to enter the Faculty of Philosophy and Children’s Psychology in Moscow state University or Polygraphist College to study children’s publication business. My parents knew where I was going and they also knew that it didn’t make sense trying to make me change my mind.  They were very worried. The family didn’t have money to support me and they didn’t want to let me go alone to cold Moscow where I would not have enough food. We heard rumors from Moscow that Jewish children were not appreciated in higher educational institutions. It was the period of struggle against cosmopolitism. There was a very good Pedagogical College in Moscow. One day my parents came home and I said: ‘I’ve submitted my documents to the Pedagogical College’. They were so happy. I passed all exams with ‘5’ marks and was admitted. My specialty was Russian philology. I had problems with the Ukrainian language, but I studied it with such effort that before graduation I knew it perfectly.

In 1951 my grandfather passed away. My father arranged Jewish funeral for him, only there was no cerement, but a casket, I don’t know for what reason. There were older Jewish men at the funeral. My father and father’s brother, those of them who managed to come to the funeral, were not supposed to walk after the casket and had to take another road to the cemetery. Again clothes were cut and the funeral prayer recited. This was another day when our family began to light candles. 

In the early 1950s I studied in college. Since I had all excellent marks at the age of 18 I was photographed with Stalin’s portrait on the background. I brought this picture home, but my father said: ‘Throw away this photo’. He understood very well what was going on in the country and that Stalin was aware of everything and he was the one who issued orders. He often said ‘Beast, what a beast’. The drama called ‘doctors’ plot’ 20 was played in the country.  Wonderful doctors who worked with us in the hospital didn’t have patients any more. There was doctor Khizes. There were rumors in town that he instilled some throat diseases in his patients.  This situation drove my father mad. My father said: ‘Here, I told you he is a beast’. I hate those memories of this horror and all those terrible articles in newspapers.  

There were few Jewish lecturers and students in our college. They pestered us at Komsomol meetings for little things. There were village wenches and demobilized military in their uniform coats and they couldn’t forgive us for our successful studies and intelligence when they were dumb and uneducated. However, there were nice Ukrainian and Russian girls and teachers, but there were so few of them. I am sure that anti-Semitism is based on jealousy.  I remember two senior Jewish students: Bishler and Braier. They were two years senior. They were intelligent and talented guys. They were criticized at every meeting. Once I spoke in their defense. Later they said that these ‘zhydy’ [kikes] were all the same. I was the best student. I liked studying and everything was interesting for me, including the Russian and Ukrainian languages and literature and there was nothing to reproach me with.

However, I was naive like everybody else and I believed in justice. When Stalin died in 1953 I thought I was going to die too. Life seemed to have stopped.  My father felt different. He didn’t say anything and one could see not joy, but gloating delight in his eyes. He was hoping that the chief’s death would change the situation. It was true. Some time later talks about doctors came to an end.

When I was a student I became interested in the Jewish subject and began to make a log of outstanding Jewish people. I consulted assistant professor Polonski, a Jew. Then I became obsessed with it. My acquaintances always called me when they wanted to find out information about Jews. Everybody knew that Irina knew everything about all Jews. I didn’t keep it a secret that I collected information about Jews, but only Jews took interest in it. Polonski was fired from our college. He worked in Tyumen and sent me letters with new information.

I got married in 1953. I met my future husband at a Komsomol conference in Chernigov [200 km from Kiev]. His name was Boris Lopko and he was born in 1927. He studied in a technical college after serving in the army for seven years. In 1944 he was sent to the Far East. He had a hard life. His mother Mera Barkan was an assimilated Jew. His father Fyodor Lopko was Ukrainian. During the war Boris and his mother were in occupation. The burgomaster rescued her giving her a Ukrainian passport. He rescued several Jews. We met and I felt sorry that he had to serve seven years in the army and that his 20-year-old sister died and that he suffered so much in occupation. He was in love with me, but I was feeling sorry for him. His Jewish mother was not happy that her son married a Jewish girl. She feared everything Jewish and tried to conceal her Jewish identity. We registered our marriage in a registry office in Chernigov.

After graduation I taught the Russian language in a school in Nezhin for two years. On days off I traveled 90 km to my husband in Chernigov by bus. Boris worked as an electrician. Later I convinced him to enter extramural department of Polytechnic College in Chernigov. I helped him with his studies and did tests for him. When he received his diploma he said ‘I can give you this diploma. It’s yours’, but I said ‘Thanks, I already have one’. It was hard for us to be together. We were different people. He got irritated at my attachment to books and my inclination for going into the depth of things. During the period of anti-Semitism his instincts told him that it was better to conceal that he was a Jew and he never objected when somebody spoke against Jews. I was different and the first thing I said when meeting people was that I was a Jew. 

There was a vacancy in a children’s library in Chernigov and I appealed for it. I wanted to be with my husband in Chernigov. I worked in the reading hall first and later I became director of this library when my predecessor retired. I had to be on guard all the time: if a writer got arrested and there were articles in central newspapers we had to remove his books from our stocks. I had to enter the Party to keep this position and I did. It was a formal and routinely ceremony. 

At first we lived with my husband’s relatives in Chernigov. Later we rented an apartment. When our baby was due my husband worked as an engineer and received a nice room in a communal apartment in the center of the town.

Our son was born in 1957. We named him Fyodor. My husband’s father died shortly before our son was born. He was a very nice person and we named the baby after him. About five years later my mother-in-law moved in with us. Life became unbearable and I left my husband taking my son with me. I received a room and later an apartment. I had a small salary and asked my acquaintances to find me a better job. I got an offer from a geological organization. I worked there as an editor for five years. I finished editor’s training course.  Later I went to teach at the Advanced Teachers’ Training College. 

My father was a very important person in my life. My life is divided into two parts: before and after my father died. When my father died in 1967 old Jewish men came to me and said: ‘You must give your consent for us to make all necessary arrangements’. I replied: ‘My father never went to the synagogue. I think you are wrong. My father wasn’t really religious’.  They said: ‘Your father always gave money to Jews and to the underground Jewish community’.  If he met a money collector he gave his contribution and then when he met another he gave him money, too. It didn’t matter whether he was hard up at the moment or not he knew that he had to make contributions to the community and that was it. Faithful Jews washed his corps and buried and recited a prayer. His colleagues and our Assyrian tenants came to the funeral, but faithful Jews played the main role. I couldn’t allow my mother to walk 3 km to the cemetery alone, though. We were told to wear old clothes to the cemetery. They told us they were going to cut our collars. My brother and I did as we were told, although we were both communists.

After my father died I took my mother to Chernigov. She worked as an accountant until she turned 70. I was raising my son and my mother was helping me.

My brother Yefim finished a school of civil aviation in Moscow region. Later he worked as a technician in Vinnitsa, a regional town in Ukraine in 200 km from Kiev. There he married a lovely Jewish girl. However, he always missed me and wanted to live in my town.  He moved to Chernigov where he served in a military school. He was promoted to the rank of captain. He has two children: daughter Arina and son Oleg. When Chernobyl disaster 21 happened in 1986 Arina prepared to move to Israel. In 1990  my brother and his family moved to Israel. My mother thought their departure was my father’s dream coming true.  She said: ‘He couldn’t move there in 1948. Now that he died let his son go there’. My brother’s daughter is 43. She had divorced her husband before. She doesn’t want to remarry. She lives for her child. In Haifa, Israel, my brother’s wife and my niece learned Ivrit. My brother’s wife taught mathematic in Ivrit for 11 years. Arina works as an office administrator in a legal advice office. My brother didn’t want to study. He worked as a welder. My nephew moved to Eilat where he works in tourist business.  He is very happy. My brother and his wife are pensioners. They have a good live and like Israel. They’ve bought an apartment facing the sea. I’ve visited them twice.  

My son Fyodor graduated from the Faculty of Indo-European Languages in Kiev University. He is a Spanish and Portuguese translator. Now Fyodor owns a woodwork company in Moscow. He likes this business and is successful. He was married three times. There is something wrong with his marital life. His wives were non-Jewish. His older son David, named after my father, lives with his wife and mother in Kharkov [450 km from Kiev],  and his 14-year-old daughter Dasha lives in Moscow. I hardly know her.

My son knows that he is a Jew. When I ask him: ‘Who do you feel you are?’ he replies “I am who I am’.  He loves his relatives, our big family, but I didn’t develop the love to Judaism and everything Jewish in him. My grandson David is different. After I retired at the age of 55 I raised him. Later he went to live with his mother in Kharkov, but he never forgot about me and visited me every time he got a chance. He often called and wrote me.  We are very close. He even has absolute hearing and a wonderful voice taking after the Mindel branch of the family.  Recently David married Lena, a lovely Jewish girl. Now we have another dearest creature: David’s daughter, my great granddaughter Katia. She is only 2.5, but I can tell that she understands me completely. David and Katia live in Kharkov. They often come to see me on holidays and days off.

Over 20 years ago I met my current husband Stanislav Martynenko, born in 1935. When we met I was eager to keep or acquaintance, but I said: ‘I am a Jew and you must think about it’. He didn’t think. He just said he loved me and didn’t care about it. We registered our marriage and began to live together. Stanislav is a box trainer, a champion in the past.

His first family is in Kharkov. His first wife took every effort to separate the children from him. My grandson and granddaughter love him. He married me when little David was with me.  His mother feared that he might marry a woman with small children and when little David and I came to meet her she almost fainted seeing my grandson. Stanislav said: ‘Mother, you’ve always told me about a woman having small children, but you never mentioned grandchildren’. He has a terrific sense of humor.

Beginning from 1986 I dedicated myself to my family looking after my mother, my mother-in-law and raising my grandson. I lived the life of a pensioner. My mother had a poor heart. She died before Pesach in 1992. There was a prayer recited at her funeral. Not many people in town did this. There was a Jewish community formed in Chernigov. Chairman of the community was looking for a place to celebrate the holidays. He came to me and said: ‘The best memory of your mother would be if we start preparations for Pesach here’.  We prepared everything for Pesach  and celebrated it in my apartment without hiding. This was the first Jewish holidays celebrated in Chernigov after many years of oblivion. There was something subconscious in me. I began to read about it and I read about commandments, it was such a discovery for me. There is an inner voice in people and I was proud of my Jewish identity, but I wasn’t aware what exactly I was proud of.  When I began to read more I opened a whole world for me. We’ve always had many books at home and we liked to give books as presents.  My mother had a wonderful collection of books before the Great Patriotic War. She had many wonderful pre-Revolutionary books. During the war this collection was gone.  I gave my son my collection of books that I collected after the war.  Now I have another collection. I’ve always read a lot. 

I was very happy and enthusiastic about perestroika 22. I believed in Gorbachev 23. If I ever liked any politicians at all he was the one.  The independent Ukraine gave Jews an opportunity to develop our national self-consciousness. There were cultural and community centers opened.  I liked it very much. Once I attended a seminar of the women’s international association. There was a woman rabbi of progressive Judaism of USA. She said: ‘Those of you who haven’t had  bat mitzvah can have it now and adopt Jewish names’.  I decided to have my name of Sarra back. She had a form with an emblem. I was given the name of Sarra-Haya. This may seem a miracle, but I recovered from my diseases that I suffered from all the time when I was Irina.  I understood that I haven’t exhausted my potential yet. I became one of activists of the Jewish live in Chernigov. When my mother was ill I was terrified thinking ‘How do women who have no daughters leave this life? If they have nobody who takes care of them?’  My mother had friends who had nobody to help them. They were nice people. In 1996  Hesed was organized in our town with the help of Joint 24. I was offered to get involved in this. I met in Kiev with Yakov Blaich, a young rabbi, and we set priorities. He said we had to meet with old Jews.  We talked with nurses and doctors in clinics to get information. We visited our first clients at home. We saw so much grief, diseases and poverty. I am a squeamish person, but suddenly I managed to overcome this. I found the love of people in me. I do not mean material support. Moral support and human dignity are of the utmost importance. My husband supported me in everything. He helped me to go through hard moments. My husband is my happiness. People around ask: ‘How can he stand it all?’ He was the first volunteer in Hesed. He delivered food products to old women, helped them and was patient and friendly. In the first years after Hesed was established we didn’t have an office faculty. My mother’s apartment was vacant and we used this small two-bedroom apartment for the Hesed office. Nobody paid me for it. This was my contribution into tzdoka. Later, when Hesed acquired a nice new facility we made a storeroom in this apartment. Work as director of Hesed is complicated. There is a lot of pressure and it takes a lot of effort to work there, but it is a wonderful job. I met many interesting people and filled myself needed. I had a full life. I can say proudly that our Hesed was one of the best in Ukraine. We spent a lot of time to restore the Jewish cemetery. I was also involved in restoration of the Jewish cemetery in Nezhin where my father was buried. I’ve always thought that a cemetery is as important as everything else. We also installed a memorial gravestone at the place of mass shooting of Jews during the war.  I spoke at a meeting.  I was also involved in the establishment of a Jewish men’s choir in Hesed. I always recalled grandfather Mindel and his sons singing when I listened to the choir. 

Later I needed to have a surgery. I needed to have my hip joint replaced. I had a surgery in Kiev. I felt the warmth and care of my friends, employees of Hesed in Kiev. I had David’s psalms with me before the surgery. I have my prayer. I was a public person and I didn’t like it that people would see me lame, and I quit my position in Hesed. Now I learn to walk at home. I do not give up and have many plans. I have an idea of establishing a fund for the children who have no fathers and ill children. There is a synagogue I know in USA and a committee. They promised to help. I would also open a synagogue of progressive Judaism here. I’ve been a member of the community for ten years and always contribute the tenth part of my income to tzdoka. This corresponds to Jewish commandments.

I’ve visited Israel several times. I’ve been to synagogues. I’ve felt and fell in love with this country. I am eager to go to Israel. I see it my dreams. My husband also wants to go there, but I have the only son and I cannot part with him.  Besides, we can only be pensioners in Israel while I have many plans here. It is very important to realize that people need you. 

GLOSSARY:

Maria Yakovlevna Komarovskaya
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Vladimir Zaidenberg
Date of interview: February 2002

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

My family background

I, Maria Yakovlevna Komarovskaya, was born in Oster on July 19, 1925. Oster is a small town in Chernigov region, which used to be a district center. Then this center was moved to Kozelets because Oster was far away from the highway. The town is beautiful and is located on the bank of the Desna river.
My father, Yakov Chaimovich Komarovsky, was born in Kiev in 1897. My mother, Chaya-Beila Volfovna Komarovskaya (nee – Bezprozvannaya) was also born in Kiev in 1897. The parents of my father, my grandparents, lived in Oster. My grandfather’s name was Chaim Komarovsky. I don’t know exactly what year he was born in. the grandfather owned a metalwork shop. He repaired various tools, such as ploughs and holdfasts for the peasants. I remember that the workshop was across from the house where grandfather lived, and I often ran to the workshop to see how he worked. I liked watching him work very much.
My grandmother’s name was Chaya-Risl Komarovskaya. I don’t know her maiden name. 
Grandfather and grandmother lived in a one-floor house for a long time. The house had four or five rooms. They occupied a half of the house. The second half was occupied by the doctor of Oster by the name of Vegeratsky. I remember that house well. I was born there. From the entrance led a big hallway, from which was an entrance to the doctor’s rooms (to the right) and on the left were two rooms where my grandparents and parents lived. My mother told me that there was a pear tree right outside the window and she was in bed after delivery, the pears dropped almost in the room. There was a stove to heat the house, but the toilet and water were outside the house. There was also a big outhouse with a garden. And then grandfather bought another house, or rather also half a house in the central street. That house had five rooms, two of which were immediately rented out, and three were occupied by our family. There was also a fruit garden outside the house. In city was not much Jewish family. In Oster there were Ukrainians living around. Living all much amicably. Besides Yiddish and Russian, Ukrainian often sounded at our home. The town was small – two or three central streets with stores and town buildings. Farther on there were typical Ukrainian village houses. [This were small wooden buildings, on 2 or 3 rooms, with the toilet on the street. Roof was it usually covered by straw. In the house was a stove, which sank firewood’s. Usually near by the house was a garden with fruits by trees and vegetable garden, where grew vegetables for its family. In the courtyard always was a pit, whence took water and small wooden building, for the piglet and fowl.]
Grandmother took care of the house. There was a “Russian stove”   in the kitchen; grandmother heated it and cooked in it.
Grandparents had five children: four sons (my father was the eldest) and one daughter, the youngest.  The eldest son was my father, Yakov Komarovsky, who was born on April 12, 1897. He was followed by his brother Leva (Jewish name – Leibl), who was born in around 1898; then brother Gersh, born in 1901 and brother Mitya, born in 1903. The youngest was sister Rebecca, Riva, born in around 1908.
My father left the home early. He took part in the civil war. He was making his own life. During the civil war he fought somewhere in the south of Ukraine.
After the civil war my father passed high school exams and entered the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. He was able to learn there for three years. But the time was hard, he had two small children and had to provide for the family, so he had to quit studies and think of earning money. I think he entered the Institute in around 1925.
None of the brothers had university education.
Leva, or Leibl, lived in Chernigov and was a simple worker at a plant. Gersh and Mitya lived in Kiev, but I don’t know what they did and where they worked.
Their sister Rebecca finished some courses immediately after the Revolution and became a junior school teacher. I don’t remember whether any one of them attended the synagogue, but I am sure all of them celebrated all Jewish holidays.
Mother told me that grandparents were religious. Later, my parents moved out of Oster, and I came to visit my grandparents on vacation. I remember that in the morning grandmother would stand at the window and whisper a prayer in Yiddish.
With children, that is, with their grandchildren, they spoke Russian, but with each other they spoke Yiddish. I remember that there was a synagogue in Oster and mother said that grandparents went there on holidays.
In 1927 my parents moved to Chernigov, and in 1930 – to Kiev. Both of them were born in Kiev. The family of my father moved to Oster during the civil war because it was easier to survive in those hungry times in a small town. After the civil war my father went back to his parents in Oster. But he always missed Kiev and wanted to come back here.
The origin of my mother’s maiden name is very interesting. Her maiden name was Bezprozvannaya.
I’m not sure who exactly – my mother’s grandfather or great-grandfather – was an orphan. This orphan boy ran around begging for money. He was found and sent to the soldiers at the age of 13 or 14. When he was asked about his last name, he always said he was Gendelevich. But the soldiers wanted to baptize him. And every time they would force him to be baptized he would pretend to get crazy. He would bite, kick and yell at the top of his lungs, “I am Gendelevich, I am Gendelevich!” But in his documents it was written that he was “bez prozvanya” – “without last name”, that’s where his last name “Bezprozvanny” came from. So, his children became Bezprozvannies as well – grandfather, mother and father, their sisters and brothers. This grandfather became a “cantonist”, which means a service man who lived in a village but when it was necessary he could be called up to serve in the army.
My grandfather, my mother’s father, worked as a metalworker at a sausage factory in Kiev. I don’t know his name because when I was born he was dead. Neither did I know my grandmother – my mother’s mother.
My mother was the eldest child in the family. She was born in 1897, studied at a commercial school in Kiev, finished it in 1915 and taught, mostly gave private lessons. After she married my father, she did not work any more but looked after the house and children.
As I’ve already said, my mother was the eldest child. After her, her brother Semen, or Shimon was born. He was born in 1904. Semen was a military man and a political leader. Prior to the war he was an officer, then he was sent to Western Ukraine when it was annexed. He has gone through the whole Second World War and after the war he served in the occupational troops in Germany for a long time. After Shimon their sister Leah, or Liza, was born. She was born in 1908. She worked at a telephone station. Then their sister Perl was born. At home she was called Paya. Her death was tragic: during delivery (she gave birth to a girl named Zina) she got some shot from a doctor. After that she began to lose her mind and when her daughter was a month and a half, Perl committed suicide. The fifth son was Moisey, Misha, born in 1915. He graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute right before the war. He worked as an engineer at a military plant. He spent the whole war working at that plant and after the war was the main specialist there. This is all I know about my mother’s brothers and sisters.
During the civil war, when Jewish pogroms took place in Kiev and Petlyura’s and Denikin’s gangs were around, my mother’s uncle was killed. I don’t know where my mother, her sisters and brothers were at that time.
My parents got married in 1919, and in April 1920 my elder brother Yosif Komarovsky was born. I was born in 1925. I had no more brothers or sisters.
I went to school in Kiev in 1932. It was a regular Russian secondary school. Our teachers were Russian, Jewish, and Ukrainian. I studied there for three years and then I moved to another one, which was closer to my house. So, the head of that second school was a Jew by the name of Mikhail Solomonovich Kagan. And there were many Jewish teachers there: our class master Berta Markovna Ruzhinskaya and many others.
Students in our school were of different nationalities, but there were many Jews, maybe a half. We were all friends and nobody ever tried to find out who belongs to which nationality.
Our family was not religious. I don’t even remember ever celebrating any Jewish holidays at home. I remember that we celebrated every Soviet holiday though – May 1, October Revolution Day, etc. These holidays were celebrated both at home and at school. I don’t even remember ever having a matzo at home.
But I should say that people in those years refused to celebrate not only Jewish, but also Christian holidays. I can say so because even though I often visited my Russian friends, I never saw them celebrating any Christian holiday at home. All religions were forbidden then, that is why I saw neither matzo on the Jewish Passover nor cakes on the Christian Easter at my Russian friends’ houses.

Growing up

We all were Soviet children. I remember how I became a young pioneer, I even remember the words of the oath we took, “I, a young pioneer of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in front of my comrades give a solemn oath…” We wore pioneer ties of red. I was in charge of a pioneer unit in our class and organized different meetings. We sang songs at those meetings and I liked it. I could not become a member of Komsomol because the war broke out.
The very next year after I started to go to school, great famine began in Ukraine. My parents did their best to protect their children from starving. We did not have enough to eat, but we did not understand why. I remember that father got some food at his work. If he had a candy in his food “parcel” he kept it to give me. My elder brother Iosif also tried to treat me with any delicious stuff he could get. I loved my brother very much.. As I grew older, I understood that famine in Ukraine was due to the fact that all harvest was taken from peasants by force. But our life in general was so poor that we thought hunger and a lack of normal clothes was a normal thing in life, that it was how all people were supposed to live.
Only on the eve of the Second World War our life became a little better.
Our flat was small. It was on the first floor and had one room with high ceiling that was divided in half by a wooden wall. The entrance was from the yard. There was some kind of a small wooden tambour, so the entrance led through that tambour into the room. The tambour contained a small kitchen. At the end of the room was a small door with a small premise on the one end of which was a tap and on the other – toilet and bathroom. We washed in a big basin: just heated up water on a primus stove and washed. We heated the flat with the stove too. Behind the wall of our room was a drug store, and for some reason we had very unpleasant smells from it in our room sometimes.
My father worked as a chief accountant at the printing shop of the People’s Commissariat of the Interior. It was considered a very prestigious job. When arrests began at the end of the 1930-s, my father was very afraid that he might be arrested. I remember he would come home sad from work, worried; he talked to my mother in whisper a lot but would not tell me anything. Many people around us were arrested; we even had a new term – “the enemy of the nation”. Fortunately, arrests did not touch our family. I only remember worrisome talk about somebody from our house who was arrested. It happened very often because our house was big and many people lived in our yard.
My brother, Iosif Komarovsky, finished school in 1937 and entered the Leningrad Military-Engineering College. Iosif was a very cheerful guy. Very often his friends came together at our house and they always invited me too. I worshipped my brother. I remember how he sent us pictures from his college, how proud he was that he would become and officer. In 1939 he fell very ill and he was sent home for treatment. He spent several weeks at home and then we saw him off to Leningrad again. I remember that seeing-off very well, because I have never again seen my brother. He and all of his co-students were sent to the Finnish war. My brother was killed in January 1940 having not reached even 20 years old.
One of his friends from the college wrote about this to his friend in Kiev. That friend went to my father’s work because he was afraid to come to our house. Then my father told my mother and me about it. And only later we received an official message that Lieutenant Iosif Yakovlevich Komarovsky died as a hero. We also received some money; maybe it was his salary, as well as his notebook, our letters to him and pictures. So, by the time the war with Germany broke out, my brother had already been dead.
I don’t remember anyone at home talking about the coming of fascism to power in Germany or about Germany. I believe our parents cared so much for us that they did not want us to learn of anything bad.

During the war

On June 22, 1941, Kiev was bombed at night. For some reason I did not sleep well that night and heard everything. But I thought it was military training. In those years all men were called up to the army for 2-3 months for training. In the morning, when we had our breakfast, our neighbor breakfasted with us because my mother invited him after his family had gone to the village for the summer. This neighbor was a Communist Party member. So, over breakfast some man came to this neighbor, whispered something into his ear – and the neighbor left immediately. We became anxious but did not link his leaving with the bombing. And a few hours later Molotov addressed the nation on the radio and said that the war had begun. Then we listened to the famous speech of Stalin, “Dear brothers and sisters, I turn to you, my friends…”.
I had just finished 8 grades and was going to Oster to my grandparents. But on July 5 we went to evacuation. The husband of my mother’s sister took us to the train station and put on a train with the wives of his colleagues. At the train station we stood for another 5 days, during which my father was taken to the army. So, we traveled all over Ukraine. We went through Donbass and reached Uzlovaya station 200 km off Moscow. Then we were put on heated wagon and taken further on. There were many families in these wagons and all of them sat and slept on their bags and suitcases. When the train stopped we were afraid to get off it, so we just bought foods from the peasants who would come up to our train. We got off in the village of Podgornoye, Tambov region. My mother and I worked in a collective farm there.
Then, in autumn, we moved eastward on. The Germans were approaching, and we evacuated to Orenburg. Our far relatives lived there and we stayed with them for a few months. We all lived in a small room in a dormitory: my mother and me, the wife of my mother’s brother Shimon with two children, my mother’s sister Liza with her daughter and two mother’s cousins.
Then the husband of my mother’s sister found my father who was a commissary in an air college in Chkalovsk, not far from Orenburg, and he took us to live with him. Mother went to work at a telegraph. She did not work before the war, but there she learned and began to work at a telegraph.
In Chkalovsk I went to the 9th class. I went there in February, so I had to study a lot in order to catch up with my class because I had missed a lot. I was a good student. And I finished all 10 grades successfully. We had different students at our class: locals and evacuated. There were many Jews too. It is funny, but the local population never saw Jews before, so they were nice to us.
Our life was hard, just like everybody else’s life. We received bread for bread cards. We had to stand in lines since early morning, even night in order to get bread. I remember one time I stood in a line since very early morning, but the local women pushed me out of the line and I could not get my bread. They treated me like an enemy. But it was not caused by me being Jewish; I think they treated me like that only because I was not a local resident.
I finished school in evacuation and entered university. A branch of the Kharkov Institute of Railway Engineers had just opened there; the main office was in Tashkent at the time. In 1944 I went to Kharkov together with other students of that Institute because Kharkov was already free of the Germans. My parents remained in evacuation. My father was badly wounded during the war so he was an invalid.

After the war

When the war was over, we all returned to Kiev. When we came to Kiev we had no place to live in because our flat had burned. Our whole house burned down, only one part with another entrance was whole. My friend lived in that second entrance. When Kiev was liberated I wrote her a letter, but she was not living there any more. Our other neighbor got this letter. The fate of this neighbor was no simple as well. He was Jewish. During the retreat of the army he was encircled and remained in the occupied territory. He worked as a stableman in a village in Poltava region. The village elder told him he knew he was Jewish, but did not let him down. This neighbor Mikhail wrote to me that we can come and we stayed at his flat for some time. When I returned to Kiev, there were only few of my former friends there. One of my friends Fanya was killed in Babiy Yar – she and her mother did not evacuate in time. I also had a Russian friend – Svetlana Yershova, who stayed in Kiev during occupation. Svetlana’s elder sister worked for the Germans, but was spying for the guerillas and helped them a lot. Right before the liberation of Kiev she was arrested together with Svetlana and their mother. They were all shot in Babiy Yar.
My father, Yakov Komarovsky, returned from the war as an invalid. After the war he worked for some time as an accountant, but then he retired. He died in Kiev in 1975. My mother died soon after him – in 1980.
In the last years of their lives my parents began to keep the traditions of the Jewish nation. They began to go to the synagogue and celebrate the main Jewish holidays.    
Father’s brother Leibl Komarovsky was killed at the front. Both of his sons Boris and Mark Komarovsky were killed as well.
Can be the same paragraph! Father’s brother Gersh Komarovsky stayed in Kiev as part of the antiaircraft defense troops. But he failed to retreat together with his troops and was killed in Kiev, in Babiy Yar. His family was in evacuation.
Can be the same paragraph!  Brother Mitya was a very sick person – he had asthma. He was in Soleretsk in evacuation.
Can be the same paragraph! Father’s sister Rebecca with children was there as well. After the war Rebecca and her husband moved to Riga. Riva died soon after the war; she died because of cancer. Her elder son also died at the age of 30, while two others moved to Israel at the very beginning of emigration and we lost all communication with them.
Mother’s brother Semen (Shimon) Bezprozvanny spent all his life as a military. He died in 1974.
Mother’s sister Leah was in evacuation. Upon returning to Kiev she could no longer work because of a heart disease. She received pension as an invalid and died in the beginning of the 1960-s.
Brother Moisey spent all the war working at a military plant. His wife was working with him. He and his wife met in the university. Moisey died in 1978 in Kiev. My grandfather, father’s father Yakov Komarovsky, died in evacuation in Soleretsk in 1942. Grandmother survived evacuation and died either in 1960 or 1961 at the age of 86.
Then my father received a terrible little flat in the Victory Square, where we lived for 14 or 15 years. Our life was pure suffering there. There was no toilet even outside – only in the next yard.
After the war the attitude towards the Jewish population changed radically. I remember our street cleaner Matrena Sergeyevna and her husband uncle Grisha did not even greet me when I returned to Kiev after the war. They just looked away. The word “kike” could be heard everywhere. People all over said that “kikes” did not fight in the war, but spent the war in Tashkent. All this talk did not touch me personally. I studied at a department with more than 100 students of different nationalities. And even though the “Doctors’ case” was discussed on radio and TV, even though anti-Semitic campaigns were launched all over the country, it did not touch us, the students of our department. Maybe due to our young age we treated it like something foreign to us. I almost never read newspapers and was far from politics. My parents were outraged – by quietly. But at that time everyone was afraid to express his or her opinion to what was going on.
My mother said that before the Revolution there were court hearings in Kiev that accused a Jew by the name of Beilis. This process was well known and became part of history. When that court hearing ended with the verdict of “non-guilty”, my mother’s friends from school – Russian girls – congratulated her on the fact that her fellow Jew was pronounced innocent. On the contrast with this, when it became clear that the Jewish doctors of the Kremlin were not guilty and that charges against them were false, nobody congratulated me or other Jews; nobody even reacted in any way.
When Stalin died, we all cried a lot. We were so scared – what will happen to us now that the “father of nations” was gone? Nobody linked repression, arrests and fight against cosmopolitism with his name. Then rumors began about it, and then the famous 20th congress of the party took place that opened our eyes to the truth.
I was transferred to the Kiev Engineering Institute and graduated from it in 1949 majoring in industrial and civil construction After graduation from university I was sent to work at the Kiev Design Institute. I worked as an engineer and then as a chief engineer there. Then I moved to another research institute and worked there until retirement. The top of my career was the chief of the group – nothing higher. If I had not been Jewish, I would have certainly been promoted more. But then the authorities thought they should promote those who could change jobs. Since it was hard for the Jews to find a job, they never quit their existing jobs and thus were never promoted.
I remember when emigration to Israel began, special open meetings were held in our institute to put to shame those who were going to Israel. One time I could be silent no more and told the meeting that such people were not traitors, but they simply wanted to leave with their families, which is their personal business. After that I was summoned to the Communist Party committee, even though I was not a party member, and was warned that if I ever repeat such statements, I would be fired from work. In 1953 I married Naum Iosifovich Polyak. We studied at the same institute but at different courses – my husband came to the institute from the army and graduated one year after me. My husband was born in 1923 in the town of Fastov into a large Jewish family. He received Jewish education, then finished school and practically at once got to the war.
Upon graduation he was sent to work at the “Giproselproekt” research institute and worked there 40 years till retirement. Even though he was the main specialist near the time of his retirement, he often felt biased attitude to himself as a Jew. Thus, for many years we could not get a flat, even though he was the first in line for flat. Every time the authorities found an excuse to push him back in that line.
When we got married, we had no wedding ceremony. We simply went home and had a party.
Our living conditions were poor. We lived in one room with parents, my husband and then my baby. Then we also hired a nanny because somebody had to watch the baby when we were gone. So, all these 6 people lived in one 15-meter room.
In 1954 our daughter Margarita was born and in 1959 – our second daughter Yevgenia. Our elder daughter identified herself totally as a Jew. Her friends were Jewish and she married a Jew. At school she felt no biased attitude. But when she took entering exams to university, she saw that on the list of students, there were special checks against every Jewish name, and the teachers were not allowed to give good marks to the Jews. Margarita fell one point short and through some good connections she was taken to the evening department of the Construction Institute. Our younger daughter Yevgenia had the same story repeated – she was flunked by her teacher at the exam and went to Moscow to enter the Communications Institute to study by correspondence.
Our elder daughter moved to Israel in 1992 and her daughter, though born in Ukraine, identifies herself fully with Israelis.  She is now going to get married and my husband and I have been invited to the wedding. My granddaughter works as a civilian in the Israeli army after graduation from the Haifa University.
My younger daughter Yevgenia is more inclined to Russian and Ukrainian cultures; she has little Jewish in herself. To be honest, it seems sometimes that Jews irritate her. Her husband is Ukrainian and her children, my grandchildren, were baptized and are raised as Orthodox Christians. I can’t understand this and cannot accept it, even though I keep good relations with my daughter. On weekends she and her children always come over. I try to pass to my grandchildren those little things that I still have in my life – the love to the Jewish people, their history and traditions.
Now, in independent Ukraine, it became possible for every nation, including for the Jews, to identify themselves as a nation. There are Jewish religious communities in Ukraine, there are three synagogues in Kiev, one of which we attend. This synagogue is located in the territory of one of the Kiev plants, and the plant restituted it to the Jewish community. My husband and I read Jewish papers, go to the Jewish charity “Khesed” center, and receive free meals and other kinds of help. We try to note Jewish holidays, though, if speak honestly, do not know as this needed to do. Keep post in Yam Kippur, light candles on Chanukah. It is certainly a great pity that we are beginning to identify ourselves with the Jews so late, but it is probably a destiny typical to the Jews of my generation in this country.
 

Gherda Kagan
Odessa
Ukraine
Interviewer: Natalia Rezanova
Date of interview: January, 2004

Gherda Isaacovna Kagan lives in a standard house in Filatov Street. She has a slightly neglected three-bedroom apartment where she lives alone. The apartment is modestly furnished. Books are most valuable in the apartment. There is a big collection of art albums, in particular. Gherda looks young for her age. She is very friendly. She was ready to do her very best  answer all questions. She has a very correct literary manner of speaking. She had considered writing her family history and Gherda Isaacovna was very happy that we showed interest in life stories of her relatives many of who had really interesting personalities.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My maternal great great grandfather Mordko Voolih was born in 1783 in Valachia [historical region in the south of Romania], where the surname of Voolih derived from. He moved to Odessa in the first years of the 19th century and took part in construction activities. He managed to start his business. He owned an alabaster plant. He had three wives and many children, of whom I have no information. In the late 19th century the family of Mordko Voolih lived in their  own three-storied house in 13, Srednyaya Street. My grandmother Esphir told me that at his age of 103 everybody got tired of my great great grandfather Voolih and she, his 6-year-old granddaughter, was the only person to mourned over his death in 1886 .

One of Mordko Voolih’s sons, my great grandfather Meir Voolih, inherited his alabaster plant. Like all Voolih men he was a fair-haired giant with an open cheerful character. Sitting at the table he liked joking that he was eating alabaster kugel [pudding from matzah or vegetables]. Meir was happily married and had four sons. His wife Yenta was very religious and the family followed kashrut and observed all Jewish traditions for the love and respect of her. Yenta wore a wig and wore her kerchief above her ears. At Yom Kippur, before going to the synagogue, my great grandmother cleaned the house, locked the food and gave her husband a bunch of keys. My great grandfather secretly gave children the keys and they could eat anything they wanted while their great grandparents were away.  Yenta also had a sense of humor. When gefilte fish was on the table and her four sons were screaming: one wanted gefilte carp, another wanted pike and the third one wanted some other fish, she cut a piece from the same dish and served it to her sons saying: ‘here is your carp, and your pike, etc. They were a good Jewish family. Meir’s older son insulted the family honor. He was eager to study and to overcome the problem of the limited quota he got baptized and went to Petersburg. In the end he became professor of mathematic of Petersburg University. My grandmother Esphir, his niece, told me that when she studied in the university and saw the surname of Voolih on a textbook she asked at home whether it was their relative. In response she heard of storm of curses addressed to ‘this black sheep and turncoat’. Later, when few nephews wanted to get higher education and went to Petersburg to make it up with their uncle, professor kicked them downstairs. My great grandfather Voolih was paralyzed 13 years of his life and died in the early 1910s. Great grandmother Yenta died in 1912. They had four sons: Itzhak, Shaya, Berk, Huna  and two daughters: Luba and Esphir. 

Esphir, the younger daughter, became my grandmother. She was born in Odessa in 1877. She finished private grammar school. My grandmother was shortsighted and said that she ruined her eyesight reading at night with a candle under a blanket. My grandmother was a pretty blond when she studied in grammar school. She said that when she was a senior student her teacher of drawing was not indifferent to her. Grandmother Esphir wore elegant clothes when she was young. My mother told me that she had beautiful outfits decorated with bugles. She kept her fancy gowns in a bog box and during a general clean up before Pesach she took them out to air them.  There was a housemaid and a cook in the house. Esphir was so scared after a pogrom in Odessa in 1905 1 that my grandfather sent her and their three small children – Yulia, David and 6-month-old Raisa (my mother) to Vevey town in Switzerland for a year. They stayed in a boarding house. My grandmother Esphir wasn’t religious and didn’t observe any Jewish traditions. After the funeral of our religious great grandmother Yenta my 6-year-old mother  asked during dinner: ‘Is this a meat or dairy knife?’ and my grandmother Esphir answered that there were no meat or dairy knife, there were only steel or silver knives. This was the end of religiosity in our family. After October revolution 2 my grandmother  was very unhappy about having to cook her first soup at the age of 45 after they lost a cook and wash the staircase in the corridor like all other tenants. Of course, she didn’t approve of these ‘’niceties’ of Soviet life and having to stand in line to buy food products. During horrible famine in 1921 3 grandmother Esphir took her family to Druzhelubovka Voznesensk district of Nikolaev region, to a former estate of Odessa artist Nikolay Kuznetsov where she visited when she was young. In 1920 a sovkhoz was organized in this estate. They stayed there with their relatives’ families for a year, working in the garden, keeping livestock, making brynza and mamaliga and managed to survive.  

My maternal great grandfather Abram Zivik owned a shop in Privoz [a big market in Odessa], where he sold grain and seeds. My great grandfather had four children: Maria, Anetta, Lev and Boris. I knew my great aunts. Maria Galperina had no education and wasn’t a nice person. She was selling something in Privoz and lived in the Zivik family estate in Privoznaya Street. She died in the early 1960s.  Anetta was her opposite: she was an educated and nice lady. She married Lev Gerzhberg, a doctor. My grandfather’s younger brother Lev finished Polytechnic College in Liege   before the revolution and worked as an engineer in the Yanvarskogo Vosstaniya plant. He perished at the plant in 1941 during the Great Patriotic War 4 from a direct hit of a bomb.

My maternal grandfather Boris Zivik was born in Odessa in 1877. His real name must have been Bencion since his son David’s patronymic was Bencionovich according to his document and besides, my father called him Benito in a teasing manner. Grandfather Boris went to cheder. He inherited his father’s store. He expanded his business and was selling wheat for export. He studied Italian, French and German. He needed foreign languages to interface with his foreign partners. When he became a merchant of guild II 5, my grandfather provided financial support to revolutionaries. After the October revolution, when authorities came to expropriate his property, my grandfather gave away everything he had on his own good will. There were never any regrets in the family in this regard. After the revolution my grandfather worked as lid operator in a small factory of diet tinned food located in the yard of our house. Later he became a cashier in Odessa hydro airport in Odessa harbor. He was very much interested in political events. When he came home from work, grandfather Boris took off his uniform coat and cap and the first thing he did was turning on a big plate of the radio on the wall in the hallway to listen to news. During the great Patriotic War grandfather Boris miraculously managed to get out of Odessa  in siege. Brother Lev gave him his departure permit. My grandfather reached his daughter Yulia in Tbilisi and then in October 1941 he died of stenocardia attack when he heard that Germans captured Odessa. My grandfather’s mother tongue was Yiddish.  He talked Yiddish with grandmother Esphir sometimes.  There were three children, born in Odessa, in the family.  

My mother’s sister Yulia was born in 1889. She finished private grammar school and was to be awarded a golden medal for her successes. She actually didn’t get it for having one ‘4’ for her behavior. Yulia was an unbelievable chatterbox. In 1917 she entered the Medical Faculty of Novorossiysk Emperor University and after graduation she worked as a lung roentgenologist. She married Grigoriy Oswald  who had finished the Art College in Odessa and they moved to Moscow. In 1928 their son Victor was born in Moscow. Grigoriy Oswald was a horder by nature. They came to Moscow without any belongings, but soon they had an apartment and a dacha. Aunt Yulia easily spent money and didn’t value what they had. They divorced due to this difference of attitudes in 1938. During the war Yulia and her son were in evacuation in Tbilisi. Her husband Grigoriy Oswald perished at the war. His 14-year-old son Victor and his friend decided to go to the front. Militia captured them at a railway station when they were eager to return after they saw so many wounded going by trains. After the war they returned to Odessa. Victor finished Odessa Polytechnic College and got a job assignment 6 in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Later he moved to Kishinev where he worked as an engineer at a plant.  Yulia lived with her son in her last years and died in 1970. Victor died in 1993.

My mother’s brother David was born in 1902. David was a naughty boy. They could see a fire tower from windows in their apartment. This 4-year boy liked firemen passing by in their copper hard hats.  He set white fringes of a tablecloth to have them come to his home. David was a gifted boy at the same time and his family teasingly called him ‘Boris professor’ at home. David went to study in realschule 7 where he continued to be naughty. Once director invited my grandmother to visit him. She heard her son calling him ‘shkalik’ [a small bottle of vodka] at home and when she came to school she addressed him ‘Mister Shkalik’. During the Civil War 8, when David was 18 he fell under a romantic impulse and joined Kotovskiy 9 cavalry. When he faced the reality of rough military life he returned home a month later. David finished Electric Engineering Faculty of the Polytechnic College. He married his neighbor Basia Kleiner who had finished 8 years of grammar school and worked as an accountant her whole life. Uncle David lived with his wife’s family. In 1935 their daughter Yelena was born. The girl had bright red hair and there was a lot of confusion in the family until they recalled that their long liver great grandfather had a red beard.  David worked as an electrician at the Bolshevik plant. In 1941 he and his family evacuated with the plant to Kinel station near Kuibyshev.  After the war they returned to Odessa and David continued to work at this plant as a shop superintendent.  Uncle David was fond of stamps and was one of the oldest members of the society of stamp collectors in Odessa. He died in 1970 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery. His wife Basia died three years later. Their daughter Yelena finished Technological Faculty of the Refrigeration College and worked in Odessa by her specialty. Now she is a pensioner. 

My mother Raisa Zivik-Kagan  was born in 1906. When my mother was six the family lived in a big house on the corner of Yekaterininskaya and Malaya Arnautskaya Streets in the center of Odessa. They had an apartment on the third floor and on the first floor there was a dog that my mother was scared of. Once, when my parents went out David climbed under a bed in the dark room and barked. This caused consternation that developed into a heart disease that my mother suffered from for the rest of her life. She stayed in bed for a year and had to give up music. Doctors didn’t allow her to study at all. It was hard for the girl to go up to the third floor and my parents found another apartment in a house in Starosennaya Street. My mother was a very sensitive girl and probably, that was why she drew well.  Being bed-ridden for along time she made many drawings. She climbed a windowsill and from there she threw all her drawings to local children. In 1916 my mother’s older sister Yulia took my mother to a private grammar school and said to a grad looking porter: ‘if she is late, don’t let her in’. And my mother had this memory, as she said ‘like a stone on her heart’, for the rest of her life. In 1920, when the grammar school closed, my mother went to the Odessa school of applied arts. There were wonderful teachers in this school. My mother made friends with two girls and they kept in touch until the end of their lives. The name of one of them was Gherda and my mother named me after her. My mother finished this school in 1925.

With her friends she entered Odessa Art College. My mother was eager to join Komsomol 10, but since she was a ‘lishenka’ 11 they didn’t admit her, but since she could write well they made her responsible for Komsomol meeting minutes. The only thing she didn’t like was ‘simpleton’ Komsomol behavior like walking embracing one another, for example. When they were five-year students, my mother and her friends were expelled from college for being ‘alien elements’. They went to Kharkov, the former capital of Ukraine and managed to have them restore their status as students in college. Students of the Art College washed their brushes in kerosene that they bought in a store across the street from their college. There was chemical school across the street and students took their primus stoves that they used to experiments to the store to fill them with kerosene. In this store my mother met my future father Isaac Kagan. When my father accompanied my mother home for the first time he asked her when they reached the tower in Richelieuvskaya Street: ‘What? It’s even farther? I can’t walk any more’. My mother got angry, being a proud girl, and this might become the end of everything, but they met again in the store and made it up.

My paternal grandfather Samuel Kagan was born in Mogilyov town in 1860. In Odessa he was a clerk in a store. My father said that grandfather was a member of Odessa society of support of clerks. On Friday, when grandfather’s working week came to an end he looked into his son’s sins in a past week. His children waited for this moment with trepidation and tried to delay it as far as they could. They knew that as punished they might not be allowed to have their favorite delicacy: khalva. Their trick was in asking mother for another cup of tea and them she added some more khalva in their saucers. From what my father told me I know that grandfather Samuel, like many Jews who had come up in life from its very bottom didn’t admire the tsarist regime and supported revolutionaries with money. Grandfather Samuel died of cholera during an epidemic in Odessa in 1920. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery.   

My paternal grandmother Revekka Kagan, nee Spivak was born to an intelligent Jewish family in Nikolaev town in 1870. Her sister Adel Spivak lived in Nikolaev and it’s all I know about her.   Her brother Veniamin Spivak was a well-know therapist in Nikolaev. His son Grigoriy became a mathematician, professor of Moscow University. Another brother Akim Spivak emigrated to Sweden in the early 20th century. He lived in Stockholm.  In 1912 Revekka, her husband and children visited her brother. My father corresponded with Akim before the war, but then it became rather unsafe and their correspondence terminated. My grandmother Revekka was a housewife. They spoke Yiddish at home. Revekka wasn’t strongly religious, but she went to the synagogue with her husband and children on holidays. My mother told me that Revekka was a very interesting person. She was a smart lady. Even her female cat was particularly smart. She followed her mistress to the Privoz, waited for her at the gate and then came back home with her.  Grandmother Revekka died in 1932, shortly after I was born and I didn’t see her. I liked her face looking at her photos and her curly hair cut short.  My grandmother and grandfather had two sons: Isaac, Grigoriy and daughter Clara.   

My father’s older brother Grigoriy Kagan was born  in Odessa in 1897. Before the revolution he finished Odessa Commercial School. After grandfather died in 1920, he went to work in Nikolaev where he married Isabella Lisogor. He worked as an accountant  in ‘Soyuzpechat’. I remember that before the war, when it was a problem to subscribe to children’s magazines, my uncle Grigoriy arranged it for me in Nikolaev and then relayed them to Odessa. Grigoriy’s daughter Tusia was born in the late 1930s ad in 1940 his son Samuel was born. Grigoriy was at the front at the age of over forty. He was a soldier and perished in late 1944 near Mogilyov in Byelorussia.  During the war his wife and children evacuated to Frunze [Kirghizia]. My parents sent her money and parcels whenever they could. After the war it became known that besides parcels from my parents Isabella also received parcels for starved families. My parents thought it extremely indecent of her to behave so and terminated their relationships with her. 

My father’s sister Clara Kagan was born in Odessa in 1901. She finished Odessa Medical College and married her cousin brother Semyon Manteifel. They moved to Petersburg where her husband’s relatives owned a photo shop in a garret on the fifth floor in the very center of the town. Since Clara and her husband were very proud of this our family called the ‘Barons Manteifels’ jokingly. They had a daughter named Galina. During the war Clara and her daughter evacuated somewhere to the Northern Ural with a children’s boarding school where she worked as a doctor. Her husband perished at the front. After the war Clara returned to Leningrad. She died in 1952. Her daughter galena finished Agricultural College in Leningrad. She married a man whom our family didn’t like whatsoever and we didn’t stay in touch with them. 

My father Isaac Kagan was born in Odessa in 1904. He was raised with strict rules in his childhood. In 1920, when my father became an orphan, the family where he lived didn’t have money to buy him clothes. They made him rag shoes with rope soles. He used to play football wearing them and his sister Clara had to fix them every night expressing her distress about his conduct. My father finished a Russian grammar school and went to work at the glass factory: he needed some work experience to be able to continue his studies. My father told me that he intentionally didn’t wash after his work shift and went home in Bolshaya Arnautskaya Street across the town by tram so that everybody could see what a real worker he was! When he gained some work experience my father entered Odessa Chemical School. When he was a student, this school was given a status of college.  My father finished it in 1928 and became a specialist in food preservation. He went to work at the tinned food factory at the Karpovo station near Odessa. He told me that his career started with an accident. At the height of the season the factory stopped operations and it turned out that a frog got into the pipe pumping water to the factory from the Karpovka River.

My parents got married on 11 November 1929, a year before my mother finished her college, on my father’s birthday. During my parents’ lifetime this day was a major family holiday.  After they got married my father went to work at a big factory of tinned food in Tiraspol in 1929. My mother stayed in Odessa, but she often visited my father in Tiraspol. The town was so dirty that she lost her galoshes in the mud and never found them. My mother finished her college in 1930. At that time my father was arrested in Tiraspol. He was arrested for being a favorite student of his professor related to ‘Prompartia’ (‘the Industrial Party’) [The trial in the end of 1930 wherein the group of engineers were accused of creating anti-Soviet illegal organization.]. The professor was executed and my father managed to survive. He was transferred to a jail in Odessa. They began investigation and half a year later my father was released. Through this period he never had a chance to notify his mother or wife where he was. In the 1980s, shortly before he died, I began to ask my father what happened to him then, but my father said: ‘No, I signed a non-disclosure agreement’. In the middle 1980s, at the incentive of perestroika, 12, I thought of visiting Odessa KGB office 13, to read my father’s file and find out the truth, but I never overcame my fear of KGB that was in my blood to go there.  After my father was arrested my mother went to her sister Yulia in Moscow. My mother worked in ‘Selkhozgiz’ publishing office in Moscow illustrating agricultural books. She had a hard life in Moscow. There was a coupon system. When my father was released he came to Mother in Moscow. In Moscow he managed to find a job in the people’s committee of Food Industry. My father worked there few months. Since he hated routine paperwork he requested a transfer to another job. They sent him to Leningrad where the newly weds settled down in my father sister Clara’s apartment.  

Growing up

I was born in Leningrad in 1932. My grandmother Esphir came to Leningrad to take us back home. Being three weeks old I was taken to Odessa in a basket for chemical containers with a lid.  When axle boxes in the train caught fire I was handed from one carriage to another in the basket that had turned upside down, as it turned out. After we arrived in Odessa my father went to work at the local affiliate of the All-Union scientific research institute of refrigeration industry. My mother was a housewife and activist in the women’s council of the house of scientists. My parents moved into my grandfather Boris and grandmother Esphir’s three-bedroom apartment in Starosennaya Street. While my mother was away grandmother gave her permission to his nephew and his wife to move into the best façade room with a balcony. They were supposed to move out when we arrived, but it didn’t happen this way. They had guests at night enjoying drinking parties. The nephew’s wife had tuberculosis and intentionally spit around the corridor. My parents took me to the toilet holding my hand to prevent me from touching anything. This couple was spoiling our life until 1941, when we left Odessa.  

I attended classes of a Frebel teacher 14. Her name was Wilhelmina and she was German.  We, kids, called her Tante Minna.  My parents sent me there hoping that I would study German, but all we learned was ‘Oh, tanenbaum’. She taught us embroidery and modeling.  Wilhelmina lived at the dacha in Srednefontanskaya Street. Every now and then some men visited her. She called them nephews.  We, children, couldn’t stand them. After the war I got to know that Wilhelmina’s place was an office of German intelligence and her ‘nephews’ were agents. It was a smart disguise: children, dancing classes and holidays.  I was 5 years old when Spanish children [Editor’s note: the USSR supported republican units in Spain during the Civil War in 1936–1939. After they were defeated, many Spanish children were taken to the Soviet Union] arrived in Odessa. They were taken along Richelieu Street from the harbor to the railway station and we stood on the corner gazing at them.  

There was a children’s club in the house of scientists and I often went there. There was a huge picture of Stalin holding a little girl on the wall. We knew that her name was Ghelia Markizova and she handed Stalin a bouquet of flowers at the congress. I envied Ghelia terribly. I have a small bust of young Lenin at home. There was a whole iconostasis on red goffered paper over my desk: Lenin 15, Stalin, Kaganovich 16, Voroshilov 17, Kalinin 18. When I was 6 I had an audition in the house of scientists and when they asked me to sing something I didn’t sing them about a hedgehog or New Year tree, but I sang a heroic Soviet song  ‘Partisan sailor Zhelezniak’ and the commission was amused.  

There was a staircase behind one wall of or apartment  and my father told me that they couldn’t sleep for months hearing boots tapping on the stairs at night and they didn’t know who was to be arrested that night. During the period of arrests [Great Terror] 19 my parents never discussed this subject in my presence since I was an open-minded girl and a chatterbox. I remember that Ira Ghefter, granddaughter of my grandmother’s sister Luba, visited us before the war. She was a little older than me and I asked her usual questions about where her mother or father was and she avoided answering me as much as she could. When I grew up I got to know that her parents fell victims of arrests. Milliant, director of the institute where my father was working, who contrived polish for lids was arrested in 1937. His wife, a former class tutor of my aunt Yulia in her grammar school, and her sister didn’t have anything to live on and I remember that my family tried to support them.  

At five I learned to read well, but my writing was poor. They didn’t want to admit me to school at the age of 7, but when I turned 8, I took an exam and admitted me to the second grade. I felt very hurt. First grade schoolchildren were greeted with an orchestra and flowers and when I came to school nobody paid any attention to me. There were only two marks at school: ‘good’ and ‘excellent’. My first mark was ‘good’ in behavior.  I came home very proud, but my mother told me off so seriously that I understood that I was not allowed to chat in class. Before the war I didn’t understand the difference between Jews and Russian. I believed that since I was born in Leningrad in the USSR I automatically became Russian. My parents never told me that I was a Jew. I saw all children with painted eggs at Easter while I never had one.  When I asked my mother she said: ‘All right, next time you will have one’ and I calmed down.

In 1939 my father went to work in ‘conservetrest’. All food preserve factories all over Ukraine were under its supervision. He also did diploma designs at the institute to earn more for the family. My father was very strict, serious, pedantic and demanding and was a very hardworking person. He read many technical books and wrote articles. Before the war he was awarded the title of candidate of sciences 20. The subject of his dissertation was introduction of glass containers in food preserve industry. This subject was significant for economy and Mikoyan [then narkom (minister) of food industry of the USSR] awarded my father a trip to Sochi in 1938. My parents went for this vacation in a recreation center together. Our life improved. We bought new furniture: a wardrobe, a double coach and a desk. We also had an old carved cupboard of my grandmother’s. There were carvings of game, fruit and a fowling bag. My father dressed modestly, but my mother gave much thought to her clothing. Before the war she had a faille de Chine purple dress made by Ivia, a popular dressmaker in Odessa. She also ordered matching shoes. My mother tried to get nice clothing for me. I remember having a fancy velvet dark green suit. My mother met a less expensive dressmaker when she was young and she made clothes for me. 

During the war

In spring 1941, probably under the influence of conversations that I heard I had a dream that Germans came and grabbed me by my plaits and pushed me down to the flame on a primus stove. I woke up from horror. On 22 June, on Sunday, I was having a music class in our neighbor’s room since there was no space for a piano in our room. As a rule, my mother sat there with me, but this time she sent me to practice alone. An hour later the hostess said to me: ‘Your mother is looking out of the window. She wants you to come home’. They told me at home that a war began. From the first days a public garden near the railway station was full of refugees from Bessarabia 21. Tenants of our house went to dig shelters under the supervision of our house maintenance manager. We, children, delivered water in cans.

On 12 July uncle David, the first one in our family, left Odessa with the Bolshevik plant. People were saying: ‘Why leaving? Germans are decent people’. I witnessed my grandmother arguing with Jewish glasscutter  Kogan. He was yelling furiously: ‘Germans are decent people!’ They were almost on the edge of fighting. 
My parents and I and grandmother Esphir evacuated with Conservetrest at dawn on 22 July, actually one hour before the heaviest bombardment of Odessa. There were small boats called ‘dubki’  hauling watermelons from Kherson to Odessa. We went to Kherson on one of them. Then we went by boat up the Dnieper to Zaporozhiye. My father went to town to listen to news and he bumped into two of his colleagues from Odessa. They yelled at him: ‘Are you out of your mind? Go pick your family and join us in the train’.  This was one of the last trains leaving Zaporozhiye shortly before the town was given away. This train often stopped on its way. We arrived in Northern Caucasus. When the train stopped we bought everything people brought to sell: hard-boiled eggs, bread and boiled potatoes. 

In Apolonskaya village of Rostov region all passengers were sorted out and we went to Asinskaya village in Chechen Ingushetia where there was a tinned food factory.  It was August, vegetable harvest time, and my father spent days and nights at his factory. He was the only man in the shop. My mother, grandmother and I fell ill with malaria. The three of us were in a small room where only three beds fit. Our hostess, an old Kazak woman, came into the room. She stood at the foot of my grandmother’s bed asking one question: ‘Still alive?’ Later, when we felt better, we started talking to her and she asked: ‘How about Jews – are they Russian?’  It was a surprise for her to know that they weren’t. Shortly afterward my father got a transfer to a tinned food factory in Bazorkino village in 20 km from Ordzhonikidze where he became chief engineer.  There was a sovkhoz growing vegetables for this factory and there was a steppe around.  We also had a vegetable garden and I took to liking gardening then.  к My mother worked at the tinned food factory. She checked the quality and identified the cost of vegetable shipments. I didn’t go to school. My mother was afraid of letting me out of the house. There were rumors that Chechens kidnapped Russian children. My mother taught me the curriculum of the third grade at home. In summer 1942, when Germans were advancing to the Caucasus we evacuated along the Military Georgian Highway  22 to Tbilisi on trucks. There we stopped at my mother sister Yulia’s home. From Tbilisi we moved on by the train shipping equipment of the tinned food factory. My father was appointed chief of the train. When we were boarding the train we were robbed. Somebody stole our documents and warm clothes. Nobody cared about the factory equipment in summer 1942, and our train was traveling across Transcaucasia until late fall. We ate the remaining tinned food. Children gathered dry grass when the train stopped and then adults made fire on two bricks in railcars. They boiled a bucket of water and added a tin of meat, a tin of green peas, a tin of rice and  2-3 potatoes that we bought from locals and it made lunch of all passengers of a freight carriage. My father always joked that not a single employee of tinned food industry has starved to death.

In autumn we crossed the Caspian Sea in 8-grade intensity storm and moved on by train.  My mother fell ill with jaundice. When we arrived at Kagan station in Bukhara region [Uzbekistan] I went out alone looking for a toilet. While I was away my father obtained food and traveling documents and the train departed. The train used to wait at stations for weeks before, but this time our railcar was attached to a military train and it left. Half-blind grandmother Esphir didn’t notice that I was not there, but my mother felt that there was something wrong and cried out to father: ‘Gherda is not here!’ He jumped off. He had a fur vest and a satin jacket on top of it on and this was late November. My mother crawled to the door to give him some money. My father kept the amount of 30 thousand Soviet rubles being chief of the train. He kept this amount in my schoolbag. My mother saw that my father couldn’t possibly find the bag on tracks and decided against dropping it.  Having no money and starved we managed to catch out train few days later in Tashkent. My father met his colleagues from Odessa again and they convinced him to go to a tinned food factory in Andizhan.

In Andizhan [3 500 from Odessa in Uzbekistan] I finally went to school. My classmates were mainly children of evacuated families. One of them was Glukhov, an overgrown boy four years older than me, a very annoying albino boy with white hair and red eyes. He beat me so hard for my being a Jew that I decided for myself, being only 11 years old: I should marry a Russian man so that my children didn’t suffer as much as I did. Schoolchildren went perform concerts in hospitals and also gathered clothes for them. I saw many severely wounded maimed people and since then there is nothing more fearful than a war for me.  My father was chief engineer. We lived on the territory of the factory and he stayed there day and night. Once he decided to go to the cinema with us for the first time in two years and it was then that a boiler exploded at the factory. Once my father received a thick flannelette cut at the factory. It was nicely patterned. My mother had a nice dress with woolen trimming made for her. This was her only dress since all clothes had been stolen from us. 

In 1944 my parents decided to return to Odessa. This wasn’t an easy thing to do: they needed a pass, permit and documents. My father went to Moscow to obtain permission and we lived with uncle David’s family at Kinel station near Kuibyshev through that winter. There was no job in Odessa and my father was appointed to restore a tinned food factory in Tiraspol. We lived there for a year. Victory Day in Tiraspol is one of the strongest impressions in my life. When at half past five in the morning we woke up from crazy knocking on the door, my father decided that the factory exploded. It turned out they woke him up on the occasion of the victory. There was a small square in front of a garden in the central square. Everybody came there including schoolchildren and we, pioneers, were there wearing our red neckties. It was warm and sunny and there were lilac trees and tulips in blossom. It was so beautiful. Everybody smiled, but when they said ‘Glory to deceased heroes’, every single person burst into tears!

There was a nice collection of books in the library of the house of officers in Tiraspol. I read a lot. We had wonderful teachers at school. Our teacher of mathematic Sophia Yakovlevna, she was an old lady, struck us by addressing us with the polite form of ‘You’. She told us that she studied in a school for girls in Petersburg before the revolution. I remember her respectful manners. Our Russian teacher also had different teaching methods. For example, she suggested that we wrote an ending of Pushkin’s novel ‘Dubrovskiy’ by ourselves when we were in the 6th grade. Our teacher of biology was at the front in Germany and brought from there a suitcase full of microscopes and we could use them. Schools were struck with poverty. For example, I went to school with a stool that my father made for me. There was a Gestapo office in the school building during the war. The building was cleaned off and whitewashed afterward, of course, but on one staircase all doors were locked and there were planks across them. We stuck our noses through one door and saw bloodstains and hair tufts on the walls. 

After the war

In 1946 we returned to Odessa. I heard that my teacher of music and her mother were buried alive. She was so beautiful and so kind and I’ve never got over this. There were other tenants in our apartment. When we were still in Tiraspol, my father applied to court to have our apartment back, the court refused him. My mother and father made the rounds of their acquaintances looking for our belongings. Romanians took away all better things. We found a mirror, grandmother’s box, carved walnut wood sticks with bronze incrustation, damaged by shipworms.  Our neighbors told us that the janitor had our wardrobe. When my mother went to see the janitor’s daughter, her friends, they grew up together, she showed her an ax from behind the closed door and said: ‘If you make a step, this ax will damage the wardrobe first and then you will know it as well’. We lived in the territory of the plant for a year and a half and I went to school #103 in Moldavanka. We studied French. My grandmother helped me to improve my French and I finished the 7th grade with an award for my accomplishments. In 1947, at the age of 14, I joined Komsomol. 

In 1948 all of a sudden we received a parcel from my father’s uncle Akim from Stockholm. He, knowing that we were having a hard time, sent us two cuts for coats through the Red Cross via Palestine: one cut for me and another one for my cousin from Leningrad. I was 15 years old and had a raglan coat made for me in the latest fashion. My friends didn’t have anything to wear and they were starved and I felt ashamed of wearing this gorgeous coat. In due time I had it turned and made a longer jacket from it and later we made a coat for my little daughter from it. This was the quality of this English fabric. 

In 1948 we received an apartment in Bolshaya Arnautskaya Street, 19. I went back to my first school. It was a school for girls now. I studied there for three years. There were wonderful teachers who gave me knowledge and raining to serve me for the rest of my life.  There were 13 graduates with medals in our graduation classes in 1950. At the prom they first handed school certificates and then those who had gold and silver medals were invited to the stage where they greeted us, but we didn’t have our certificates yet since medals were to be approved by higher authorities. A week passed and it was high time to submit my documents to a college, but I didn’t have my certificate. There was another victim: Natasha Kibertseva, a Jewish girl from another graduation class. My father went to find out what was wrong and they told him to forget about my medal. My father was acquainted with ‘fair’ Soviet law proceedings and was not going to fight for the medal with authorities. Fortunately, Kibertseva and I managed to enter colleges without medals, though this was the first year when Jews began to face obstacles entering higher educational institutions. There was struggle against cosmopolitans 23 in process. Many of my Jewish friends failed to enter colleges, though they studied as well as I did. I entered the technological department of tinned food of the Food Industry College. When I became a student this dressmaker that my mother knew made me a suit from inexpensive half-woolen fabric of bottle green color. 

The period of ‘doctors’ plot’ 24 went past me somehow. I was in love and was engaged with my private life. However, I remember very well the Stalin died. We heard the news at home and I went to college by tram #23. Usually old Belgian trams, jogging and rattling were never quiet or boring. There was always a wit with his jokes or some wicked woman starting a  wrangle in a streetcar. On that day it seemed there was nobody in the tram. It took me a while to get to Grecheskaya Square from Bolshaya Arnautskaya Street and there was deathly silence all this trip. In college a young teacher came into the classroom. She had tearful eyes. She sat down and looked at us. Somebody sniffed and then everybody had tears poring down: we cried after Stalin for an hour and a half. I went to study English at school at that time and I was walking home late at night. There wee deserted streets and mourning music sounded from windows.  

In 1954, when I was a 4-year student I married Yevgeniy Grinblat, a 5-year student of Flour grinding College. He was born in Odessa in 1931. His maternal grandfather Boris Vladimirskiy was a townsman from Tiraspol. He was selling fruit in Odessa.  My husband said that there were always tangerines and oranges on his birthday in December and on new Year. His grandfather wasn’t religious. Although he wore a yarmulkah, he always said it was to keep his baldhead warm. He went to the synagogue in Pushkinskaya Street on holidays with the only purpose to meet with his old friends. He didn’t go inside, but stood in the crowd in front of the entrance talking. My husband’s father Moisey Grinblat was an accountant and worked in a shop manufacturing ship models before the war. There are many of their works kept in Odessa Navy museum. During the war his family evacuated to Ufa and then to Baku with this shop. After the war they returned to Odessa, but they couldn’t have their former apartment back, either.  They received a worse apartment in Uspenskaya Street. Moisey Grinblat died a sudden death in 1948. My husband’s mother Rosalia Grinblat worked as an accounting assistant in various offices.  Hey were cultured people. My husband’s uncle, his mother’s brother, was a big theatrical administrator in Odessa. Actors who came to the town on tours visited them in their house in Preobrazhenskaya Street. 

After finishing his college my husband received a job assignment to work on a new elevator in Novosibirsk, but he fell ill and recovered three months later when there was no more vacancy there. He went to Moscow to obtain another assignment. They offered him work in Uryupinsk town in Volgograd region. My husband was chief mechanic at a plant. I defended my diploma and went to work at this same plant as a forewoman. There was something wrong with our life there right at the beginning. Director invited us to his office and said that a shop superintendent who had a small child had a very small room and asked whether we could let him move into the apartment that was supposed to be given to chief mechanic of the plant. How could we say ‘no’?  We found ourselves living in a very small room with little windows and my husband could touch the ceiling with his palm, though he is not a giant. There was no running water, thought there was a factory boiler right against our windows. Nobody cared about installing 20 meters of piping to supply water to three plant houses. We had to go up the hill three blocks away to the to a town pump: an example of Soviet attitude to people.

In late 1955 my husband fell severely ill with spontaneous pneumothorax. At that moment I happened to break my leg.  My mother was severely ill and already obtained required documents for a surgery, but she gave it up and came to Uryupinsk to attend to my husband and me. My husband’s friend Anatoliy Timokhov who was at the front during the war and now worked at the district Party committee as an instructor showed us a report of Khrushchev 25 on the 20th Party Congress 26 in 1956. My mother, my husband and I read it commenting and remembering different events.  I always knew that my father, a decent honorable man and excellent specialist, was innocent, but sent to prison, but we couldn’t know the whole truth. Stalin was commonly believed to be a nice person and many people wrote him letters seeking for help.  After this report, we thought, everything was going to well. We had a new country and new government.  

In 1956 we returned to Odessa and settled down in my husband mother’s apartment. My husband went to work at the design office of machine building plant. I found a vacancy of rate setter technician at the rate setting research laboratory at the food industry headquarters. I worked there three years, but I didn’t like this job. Nobody needed it. My father was working at the scientific research institute of food industry. He was a scientific deputy director. I went to work in the laboratory there. I was an active Komsomol member and  in 1957  before Moscow Festival of young people and students my husband and I went to the harbor to meet Arabs and Negroes going via Odessa. We wanted to see a foreigner. It was like a miracle for us. They turned out to be human beings like us, nothing special. 

In 1958 our daughter Natalia was born. My parents received a new apartment. They exchanged it for two rooms in communal apartments in Pushkinskaya Street so that my husband and I could receive an apartment for us. I could hardly cope with everything and was stupid to give my 6-month-old baby to a nursery school. Natalia became very sickly. My parents helped us again. They bought a dacha at the 10th Fontan station [resort area in the town] so that their granddaughter could improve her health condition in summer. Grandmother Esphir who managed to nurse her granddaughter died in Odessa in 1962. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery.   

In 1962 I joined the party, but not for the sake of ideas. I had my personal reasons. Firstly, all of my former co-students were members of the party already and I was used to belong to the advanced circles of masses. Secondly, I was concerned that if my father quit his job at the institute I might lose my position of scientific employee and interesting work. My father never joined the Party, although they were trying to convince him. He teased me about it. My mother took my side. She believed joining the Party was a formal procedure necessary for a career. My mother had a surgery: they removed a cancer tumor. She died in 1971 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery.

My daughter Natalia went to school in 1963. She had expressed Jewish looks and she suffered a lot from anti-Semitic demonstrations of her classmates at school.  As a result, she developed a strongly negative attitude toward her Jewish identity.  At the age of 11-12 my daughter got fond of drawing and attended classes in an isostudio in the Palace of pioneers. Hen theater became her hobby. She attended a theatrical studio and was going to enter the theatrical College after finishing school in 1973. My husband and I thought that she needed to study a profession first. Natalia reluctantly entered the school of Soviet trade. After finishing it she worked in ‘the house of toys’. Her management valued her high, but Natalia was attracted to the theater. She went to work as an usher at the Ukrainian Theater and then became an electrician to have an opportunity to travel with the theater. She met Sergey Skripunov, Russian, at the theater. He came to Odessa from Vorkuta. He studied at the Mechanic Faculty of Theatrical School and worked as a scenery assemblyman in the Ukrainian Theater. They got married in 1980. Many employees of the theater came from Western Ukraine and had strong anti-Semitic moods. They said to Sergey: «Why did you marry a zhydovka [abusive word for a Jewess]?’ They moved into a four-bedroom apartment. It belonged to the theater and there were three other families living in it. There was one stove for four families in their 5-square-meter big kitchen. One actor’s wife pushed down all casseroles from the stove to put her own on when she came into the kitchen. So, my daughter spent weekends with me. 

We had a good life in the 1960s - 1970s. My husband was chief engineer of a plant and earned well. I also had a high salary. I often went on business trips all over the country. I met people in planes, at railway stations and in hotels. I was sociable and liked talking with people. I was a devoted Soviet person for a long time. Although I saw mismanagement and bureaucracy in our tinned food industry, I thought they were our local drawbacks related to Odessa area.  I read Soviet newspapers and believed that everything was well in the soviet country.  My daughter always laughed at me calling me an idealist. My husband was critical about the soviet reality.  He went crazy seeing Brezhnev on TV. I asked my husband to not criticize the soviet regime in a loud voice for the fear that our neighbors could hear him. 

My husband continuously faced discrimination: they never gave him permission to travel abroad due to his national identity. He was sure that KGB had information about his aunt who moved to America before the revolution and sent her relatives in Odessa minor money amounts via a bank. When new director with anti-Semitic convictions came to the plant, my husband began to have problems. I’ve never been ashamed of my nationality, but sometimes I had to keep silent about it. Since I have Slavic appearance, they often told me anti-Semitic stories in lines or elsewhere. I listened quietly and then mentioned that I was also a Jew and watched their reaction. I’ve always identified myself as a Jew, but we never thought about any Jewish traditions in our house, particularly religious, and never celebrated Jewish holidays. My mother or father never showed any interest in them until the end of her life.  

I was an active member of the party and was fond of public life. I was responsible for the wall newspaper and I also participated in a team of agitators during elections. Of course, I knew how useless and insignificant my efforts were.  When voters didn’t appear at elections my senior comrades pushed their bulletins into boxes before my eyes. When I was a member of district commissions, they sent me home before the day was over. I had no objections and one could only guess how they wrote those minutes or signed them. No decent person likes to take part in forgery, but I understood that if I wanted to leave the Party, it was like the end of one’s life: everything would be threatened – one’s work and attitudes of surrounding people. So I kept quiet. 

My father died in 1981. He was buried beside mother in the Jewish cemetery.

In 1982 my daughter’s son Alexandr was born and in 1985  - her second son Konstantin. At that time only I kept her from divorcing her husband. I thought that if life conditions improved their life would get better. My husband and I literally skinned ourselves alive. We sold everything of value we had to save for the first installment for a three-bedroom cooperative apartment. In 1987 they received this apartment and we helped them to buy furniture hoping that they would make it up. As it turned out, it wasn’t about an apartment. My daughter’s husband couldn’t care less about his family drinking and going loose. They divorced. He demanded that my husband and I should pay him a lot of money if we wanted him to leave the apartment.  We did and our daughter and grandchildren could have this apartment. My husband insisted that our older grandson Alexandr went to study in the ‘Or Sameyach’ school 27, but he was expelled for bad behavior from there. He didn’t find it interesting to study in a Jewish school. 

Perestroika started for me with a feeling of more freedom. In 1987 I traveled abroad for the first time in my life. I went to Czechoslovakia and Germany with a tourist group. I couldn’t travel abroad before. In Czechoslovakia young people expressed their obstruction to our group of Soviet tourists. It was more than unpleasant. Gorbachev 28 was nice compared to Brezhnev. He seemed like a sun to us at the beginning. We were happy that he was accessible.  It was my understanding that the meaning of perestroika was to make things good and right. It was nicely said, but it was done as before, that’s it.  People are the same and same are their attitudes, particularly in Ukraine.

In 1991 the break up of the USSR 29 was a terrible shock for me. We lost our motherland.  Then I understood a phrase from ‘Hamlet’: ‘the link of times has broken’. Until today the former Soviet Union is nothing but my country for me. When my TV doesn’t function properly and I cannot watch Moscow programs, I miss them. What’ happening in Ukraine seems to me a miserable parody on what is going on in Moscow. Let them make mistakes or do things wrong, but if you have brains and if they’ve already stepped on rakes in Moscow, learn your lessons in Ukraine and do something different. Cannot Ukraine with its 50 million population find decent and reasonable people? I live here as if it were a strange country. 

In 1991 my husband and I and my daughter with her sons submitted our documents to the OVIR office for departure to Israel since all of our friends had already left.  We obtained departure permits when a war in the Persian Gulf began and we stayed. I feel for Israel with all my heart. I would love to live there, but I am afraid of the war. We had an opportunity to move to Australia or America, but we stayed. We shall live in our motherland as long as there is no war or pogroms. In the early 1990s my husband and I divorced. He found another woman and went to live with her. I wanted to get an official divorce, but my husband talked me out of it. He believes it might create unnecessary problems. We keep nice and friendly relationships with him.

In 2002 our daughter Natalia died. She had a weak heart that failed her during a gynecological surgery. My husband and I take care of our grandchildren. Their father doesn’t care about them.  He has another wife. Alexandr is a 4-year student of Ecological University (Hydrometeorological in the past). His specialty is ecology. Konstantin is a last-year student of a machine tool plant. They come to see me, call me and help me. 

I am very happy about the rebirth of Jewish life in Odessa. I enjoy going to a wonderful Jewish library in Pionerskaya Street. I receive free Jewish newspapers ‘Or Sameyach’ and ‘Shomrei Shabos’ and I collect interesting articles from there. Few years ago I established contacts with Gemilut Hesed. An acquaintance of mine mentioned to me about this organization. I registered there and then for another year I tried to convince my husband to register there as well so that we could receive two packages instead of one. Of course, Gemilut Hesed social assistance helps me a lot. They do my laundry for me. Once my shoes needed to be fixed and Gemilut Hesed paid for shoemaker’s services.  Following my husband I got fond of the history of Odessa. We have a good collection of books on this subject. Few years ago they invited me to work in the town archives. In parallel I started looking for the documents related to the history of my family. I’ve found some and now I write memoirs hoping that my grandchildren would find it interesting. 

Glossary

Frieda Rudometova
Kherson
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: September 2003

Frieda Rudometova lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a standard 5-storied khrushchovka [1] built in the1960s Kherson. Frieda is a nice looking dark-haired lady with a short haircut. She is wearing a fancy blouse and a skirt. Her apartment is clean. There are flowers on the table and embroideries and copies of pictures on the walls. Frieda invites me for a cup of tea in the kitchen. The kitchen is also shiny clean. During our conversation the hostess gets often distracted: her neighbors or the girls who rent a bigger room from her come by. Frieda explains that she needs some additional earnings to her pension that is too small for her to make ends meet. However, she talks about her problems with a smile and she does not complain.

My farthest ancestor whom I knew was my paternal great grandmother Etl Berliand. I didn’t know her maiden name, though. Since the early 1920s our family has lived in Kiev. I often visited my great granny. Basically, the families of my parents came from Murafa, a small Jewish town in Vinnitsa region, about 300 km from Kiev. I visited Murafa in the middle 1930s and I liked the town. The nearest town to Murafa was Zhmerynka and there are other towns like Murafa in the nearest vicinity. Murafa is on the bank of the river with the same name, very picturesque, with green banks and reeds. Before the revolution of 1917 [2] 70% of the population consisted of poor uneducated Jews. They were craftsmen and had big families. Jews lived in the central part of the town. There was a market in the center where they had their shops and stores. There were tailors, shoemakers, carpenters and glass cutters. My grandmother told me there was a synagogue and cheder in the town, but this was before I went there. The soviet power destroyed [3] all religious buildings in the 1920s. After the Pale of Settlement [4] was canceled the family of my great granny Etl moved to Kiev escaping from never ending pogroms [5]. I don’t know where my great grandmother studied, but now I understand that she was a very educated woman – she read the Torah, Talmud and other books in Hebrew and Russia classics. Only few Jewish women knew Hebrew and could write in Russian. My great grandmother told me about Jewish traditions and religion and explained about the tallit and tefillin. She was too old to go to the synagogue, when I knew her. She was a housewife her whole life. When I remember her, she was about 100 years old, but she kept the apartment ideally clean and always cooked something delicious, when I came to see her: cookies or strudel. She stayed in bed most of the time in the last years of her life, but she had sound mind. My great grandmother died in the late 1920s at the age of 102. She was buried in the Lukianovskoye Jewish cemetery in Kiev according to the Jewish tradition.

My great grandmother had many children – eight, I guess, but I didn’t know them: after getting married they moved to other towns with their spouses. My great grandmother moved to Kiev with her younger daughter, my grandmother Pesia Ladinzon (nee Berliand) and her family. Grandmother Pesia and my great grandmother Etl lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in Krasnoarmeyskaya Street in the very center of Kiev.

My grandfather Yefim Ladinzon, born in Murafa in the 1860s, belonged to the Jewish intelligentsia: he was a pharmacist like his father. He owned a pharmaceutical storage facility supplying medications to the pharmacies of Murafa and other towns. He also owned a pharmacy. I don’t know whether my grandfather had special education or learned the pharmaceutical business from his father, but I know for sure that he was a well-educated Jew. He knew Hebrew and read the ancient religious books: the Torah and Talmud that he always kept with him. My grandmother Pesia, born in the early 1870s, was a housewife and took care of the children. Staying at home was customary with Jewish families before the revolution and some time after. There was one daughter and four sons in the family. The boys got a traditional Jewish education: they studied in cheder and a Jewish elementary school. Later they gave up observing Jewish traditions, but they all had Jewish spouses.

The oldest of the children was Malka, or, Manyusia, as she was affectionately called in the family. She was born around 1890. Malka helped her father in the pharmacy and married her second uncle Pinhus Schneider, who also worked in grandfather Yefim’s pharmacy. After the revolution of 1917 and the Civil War [6] they moved to Sevastopol and worked in a state owned pharmacy. Malka and Pinhus had the only son. His name was Yakov. He was born in Murafa in 1913. There is a common prejudice that children from related spouses are born with physical or mental defects, but Yakov had none. He studied successfully at school, finished the Faculty of Economics of a higher educational institution and worked many years as chief of the department of labor and salary of the Black Sea Fleet. Aunt Malka died in the middle 1960s. She had blood poisoning that resulted in psoriasis. Yakov died in Sevastopol recently at the age of a little under 90.

The next after Malka my father Samuel was born, and his brothers Abram, Grigoriy and Naum followed him 1-2 years one after another. Abram, Jewish Avraam, born in 1896, married the daughter of a rich merchant in Kiev Fane and lived in Kiev where he owned a restaurant before the revolution in 1917. After the revolution and NEP [7] Abram got adjusted to the new regime and gave his property away to the people’s power that appointed him director of the restaurant. Abram had a wife and two children: Lev and Lisa. They were very wealthy. In 1932 there was an audit at his work. This audit discovered some violations, and Abram’s family left Kiev in a rush without telling anybody. Only a year later they wrote us from Leningrad. During the Great Patriotic War [8] Abram, his wife and Lisa evacuated to Samarkand. Continuous dust storms aggravated his chronic lung disease. Abram died in 1943. Lev was recruited to the front in the first days of the war and perished. I had no information about Lisa for many years. Only a year ago I heard that she lives in the USA. I wrote her, but there is no reply.

The next after Abram was Gershl (in the Soviet time he was called Grigoriy), born in 1898, took part in the Civil War and joined the communist party. After the war uncle Grigoriy also moved to Kiev. He was director of a restaurant at one time, then the party organs appointed him director of the first bakery factory. When the Great Patriotic War began he sent away his family – his wife and daughter Musia, while he himself stayed in Kiev at the assignment of the town committee for underground activities. He perished in Kiev few days before the Soviet troops entered the city in 1943, a former bakery employee, a policeman, reported on my uncle seeing him in the street. Grigoriy’s daughter Musia and her family live in Germany.

The youngest was my uncle Naum, born in 1900. He got a higher education finishing Kharkov Polytechnic College. His wife Anna was an obstetrician. When the Great Patriotic War began, Naum was recruited to the army and his wife Anna and their children Ada and Yefim, born few months before the war, evacuated to Kazakhstan. Grandmother Pesia was there with them. Naum perished in Byelorussia at the very beginning of the war. Ada lives in Germany; Yefim lives in Kharkov.

My father Samuel was born in Murafa in 1895. He was named Shloime at birth, but later, before obtaining a Soviet passport he changed his name to Samuel that sounded more familiar to him. Being the oldest son in the family he went to work after finishing the cheder. First he worked as a loader at my grandfather’s storage facility while gradually he studied the pharmaceutical business. My father was subject to military service during WWI, but grandfather Yefim didn’t want his older son to go to the war and paid for him to be released from service. My father grew up in a very religious family. He went to the synagogue with his father and at the age of 13 he had a bar mitzvah. Therefore, when the Civil War began, my father, being a religious man, strongly believed that it was against the human nature, something that his character and education could never agree to. Many other young men including his brother Grigoriy joined the revolutionary activities, but he stayed with his parents. Somehow he met my mother, and I think they met with the help of matchmakers, and they got married in 1918.

As for my mother’s parents, I know even less about them than about my father’s parents. My maternal grandfather Berl Winner was born in the small Jewish town of Krasnoye near Murafa in the 1860s. He got married and the young couple lived with his wife’s parents. Berl had two children in this marriage: Berla, the daughter, lived with her husband in Vinnitsa region. She died in the 1930s. Then a boy was born. He was retarded and suffered from acute schizophrenia. He died before turning 13. Shortly afterward Berla died, too. My grandfather remarried, and his second marriage was more fortunate. In the 1890s he married Feiga, a young girl from Murafa. They had two girls, born one after another. My mother Revekka, was a younger daughter. My mother’s older sister Maria, born in 1899, lived in Kharkov after the revolution. She was director of a kindergarten. I didn’t have any contacts with them and don’t know what happened to her or her son during the Great Patriotic War , Berl was a craftsmen, but I don’t know what exactly he was doing. His family was rather poor: they rented two little rooms. Berl and Feiga raised their girls Jewish. They observed Jewish traditions, followed kashrut, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and fasted on Yom Kippur.

My mother Revekka Winner was born in 1900. She helped her mother Feiga about the house before getting married. My mother had no education: my grandfather could not afford to pay for a teacher, but she studied in an elementary Jewish school for a year or two. Revekka was very quiet, even phlegmatic. She was a very tight-lipped person. I am sure that her marriage was prearranged by shadkhanim considering her personality.

My parents got married in 1918. Of course, there was a chuppah at the synagogue, but there was no big wedding party due to the hard times: this was the period of the civil war, when the power switched from one group to another resulting in pogroms. After the wedding the newly weds settled down in grandfather Yefim’s house that was bigger and more comfortable than my mother parents’ apartment.

Here, in the basement of my grandfather’s house I Frieda Ladinzon, was born on 17 June 1919. At this time there were Petlura troops [9], in the town and Jews were hiding away. Our family and few neighbors’ families were hiding in the big basement of my grandfather’s house. My mother’s neighbor Hilia was a midwife for my mother. The woman had many children and was quite capable of helping my mother. In early 1920, when I was a little over six months, my parents, my grandmother and grandfather Ladinzons and my father’s brothers left the house and all their belongings to move for Kiev escaping from continuing pogroms. Actually, by this time the family of my grandfather and father was miserably poor after so many pogroms and robberies.

Uncle Abram lived in Kiev. He was rich and bought a two-bedroom apartment in the center of Kiev in Shota Rustaveli Street for us, and a good big room in an old building in Krasnoarmeyskaya Street. Our family was very poor and if it hadn’t been for my uncle Abram’s support we wouldn’t have survived the famine in the 1920s. My father didn’t have a job. I remember that one time he unloaded buns in the private bakery in the yard of our house. I often came to the bakery and occasionally I got a hot bun – this was a delicacy.

One of my earliest memories was my grandfather Yefim’s death and funeral. He died in January 1924 around the time when Lenin died [10]. I remember my father and his brothers discussing that they could not make arrangements for my grandfather to be buried due to Lenin’s death. My grandfather’s body was lying on the floor wrapped in cerements. I remember my mother and other women sitting on the floor in torn clothes wailing. A rabbi and cantor from the Brodskiy [Brodski family – Russian sugar manufacturers. They started sugar manufacturing business in 1840s. Organized the 1st sugar syndicate in Russia in (1887). Sponsored construction of hospitals and asylums in Kiev and other towns in Russia, including the biggest and most beautiful synagogue in Kiev] synagogue located in Shota Rustaveli Street came to recite the mourning prayer after my grandfather. My grandfather was carried to the cemetery wrapped in cerements. The other children and I stayed at home.

My next memory is the birth of my sister about two months later in 1924. She was named Yelizaveta after our great grandmother – only I don’t remember whether it the grandmother on my mother or father’s side. Everybody called her Lisa. My father had a permanent job at the ‘Tochelectropribor’ (electric devices) plant. My mother was a housewife. After Lisa was born, and her delivery had complications, my mother became weird. She could sit idly staring into one point for hours. She didn’t cook. She happened to suffer from schizophrenia from her teens, but it was kept a secret from my father, but he would have never married her had he known. My mother had to stay in mental hospital for long periods. My father and I visited her on Sundays. She was quiet and looked enlightened when we came to see her in the hospital located on a high hill and it was hard to believe that mother was ill.

My grandmother Pesia took care of us. She either stayed with us or we went to her house to stay there a week or so. We went to the synagogue for women near the Brodskiy synagogue with my grandmother. On Jewish holidays uncle Abram and his family and we went to the Brodskiy synagogue. Uncle Grisha was a communist, and his family did not celebrate Jewish holidays. We often celebrated Sabbath in our grandmother’s home. There was a freshly baked challah, wine and delicious food on the table. Uncle Abram’s family also celebrated Sabbath with us. My great grandm9other Etl lit candles and later my grandmother took over this duty. We celebrated all holidays with my grandmother: I remember fancy crockery on Pesach, my grandmother kept it in a box, delicious potato pancakes on Chanukkah and hamantashen on Purim. We didn’t have any of these at our home because our mother was ill. Our family was much poorer than my father brothers’ families.

Grandfather Berl from Murafa visited us twice, when I was a child. He brought us cottage cheese and sour cream and ‘rooster-shaped’ lolly pops for Lisa and me. He visited us last in 1926. He died a year later.

I went to the Russian school on the fifth floor of a standard apartment house near our houses in 1927. After finishing the third form we were taken to a big school in Vladimirskaya Street. There were many Jewish children in my class. I had Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish friends. We got along well and I never heard ay abusive words against Jews from my classmates. The teachers also made no segregation among us. As for me, they were particularly sympathetic. During the famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s [11] our family was probably in a more miserable situation than the others. In summer 1932 my father moved to his sister in Balaklava (a town near Sevastopol). He explained that he wanted to find a good job there to support us better, but when I grew up I realized that just left my mother; he got tired of her disease, fault-finding and of the misery of life. He probably intended to support us, but he couldn’t find a decent job there. My mother, during intervals between attacks of her disease and her retirement to the hospital worked in a cafeteria washing dishes and peeling potatoes and vegetables. We probably wouldn’t have survived the hungry years, if it hadn’t been for my father brothers’ support. I often ran to uncle Grisha’s beautiful 3-storied house in Kreschatik Street [Kreschatik is the main street of Kiev]. They always had a good dinner at home. Uncle Abram sent us dried brown crust that my mother soaked in water for us. Our everyday food on these days was plum jam made from the plums that I picked from trees in summer and soup with a bit of flour.

It was hard for my mother to raise the two of us and I went to live with grandmother Pesia. I liked it more with my grandmother, she was very kind to me. I remember that she took some spoons to the torgsin store [12] to buy me food. Once she bought me a fancy red beret that was in fashion then. My grandmother also cooked for my mother and Lisa and I took the food to them. We exchanged our two-bedroom apartment for a room in Krasnoarmeyskaya Street near where grandmother lived.

Despite difficult circumstances, I was a cheerful and pretty girl. I studied well at school and took an active part in Pioneer and Komsomol [13] activities: I mainly helped those who had problems with their studies. I also participated in preparations to the school meetings dedicated to anniversaries of the October revolution and 1 May. I liked going to parades with my classmates. We didn’t celebrate revolutionary holidays at my grandmother’s home, but I knew all Jewish holidays. She celebrated Sabbath and this was sacred for her, and other holidays, and I went to the synagogue with her. However, sometimes I became naughty and brought home the pork sausage that my friends treated me to. My grandmother got angry with me and I laughed.

I finished my 7th form in 1935. I could continue my studies, but I knew I had to go to work to support my mother. My grandmother’s neighbor working in the security of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, took me there to get an employment. I talked with Satin, a Jew, who was business manager. I worked as a courier and then went to the school in the Central Committee. I completed my secondary education. When they asked me what profession I wanted to study I almost pronounced that I wanted to be a cook. I was always hungry and my strongest desire was to eat my fill, but I was ashamed to say it and said that I wanted to be a telephone operator. I finished a course of few months and began to work as a telephone operator in the communications department of the central committee. These were the happiest years in my life. I knew all party leaders: Kosior [14], Postyshev [Pavel Postyshev (1887-1939), political activist. In 1926 he became secretary of the Central committee of the Communist party (of Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. In 1930-1933 secretary of the Central committee of the Communist party (of Bolsheviks), 1933 2nd secretary of the Central committee of the Communist party of Ukraine. Arrested in 1934-38. Rehabilitated posthumously], and I knew the voice of Stalin: I connected him through the governmental communication equipment. They were great people and they treated me, a poor Jewish girl so well giving me an opportunity to study. I received food coupons, garment and shoe coupons. I gained some weight, grew prettier and made many friends. My close friend Lenochka, the daughter of a frontier colonel, and I often went to walk on the Dnieper slopes where there was a brass orchestra playing. I loved dancing and often went to the dancing ground. The horrific 1930s [15] were on their way. I never thought why the boards on the party boss’ offices were often replaced and the people working in them disappeared to be later declared ‘enemies of the people’ [16]. Kosior and Postyshev disappeared, and so did humble human resource manager Satin and many others. Once I asked Lena’s father about it, and he advised me to never ask these questions, so I didn’t. I was young and didn’t want to think negative: we believed in communist ideas and credibility of everything happening in our great country.

In 1936 I had my first vacation. I took half of it: in May I went to my hometown of Murafa – I felt like visiting the town where I was born. My grandmother Feiga, whom I had never seen before, lived in Murafa. I plunged into the Jewish way of life that still existed in the town. We went to the synagogue, celebrated Sabbath according to all rules, went to the cemetery where grandfather Berl was buried. I was young and wanted to go to the new club to dance. There was an amateur orchestra playing: two Jewish violinists, a pianist and a drummer. The public also danced tango and waltz that had recently become in fashion. However, when they played Jewish music, everybody joined in dancing: freilakh in the circle and other dances. I met my distant relatives: uncle Grigoriy wife’s sister and her children, and we became friends. They all perished in Murafa during the Great Patriotic War. As for my grandmother Feiga, I saw her for the first and the last time in my life. She died in 1939.

That same summer I visited my father in Balaklava where he lived in a small room in the basement. When we met, we both cried: I forgave my father for having left us. He was not happy. He worked as a night man: he never managed to get a job in a pharmacy by his specialty. I spent two weeks with my father. I never saw him again: he was arrested in 1937. Even night men could be declared enemies of the people or spies at the time for a joke told at the wrong time and at the wrong place. This happened to my father. My father was taken to a camp in Komi ASSR. My grandmother Pesia wrote him letters, but I was afraid of corresponding with him, and asked her to not even mention anything about me. I understood that I would be fired if this happened. My father started work at the wood cutting ground, but later he was transferred to the pharmacy in the camp. In 1938 my grandmother went to visit uncle Abram in Leningrad, but then she stayed to live there. From there she sent my father my photograph in 1940. I was immediately invited to the human resource office where they offered me to resign. They never explained for what reason, but it was clear that it happened because of my father. What was surprising was that I had worked three years before they disclosed this information about my father: a daughter of an enemy of the people could not be allowed to work in party organs. My father died in 1940. My grandmother and I got to know this after the Great Patriotic War, when my father was rehabilitated posthumously in the 1950s.

I went to work as a telephone operator at the shipyard and repair shop ‘Leninskaya Kuznia’. My mother often went to hospital. My sister Lisa went to work at the registry office in a big polyclinic after finishing the 7th form. Lisa’s dream was to become a doctor or at least, a medical nurse.

I lived in my grandmother’s room, but I often went to visit my mother and sister. Life was gradually improving: Lisa and I earned our salaries and my mother didn’t have to peel potatoes to earn her living. On 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. Kiev was bombed on the very first day. We woke up hearing a distant roar, but it could never occur to us that these could be fascist aircraft. In the afternoon Molotov [17] spoke on the radio about the treacherous attack of Hitler armies. It was a complete surprise for me. In early July 1941 the shipyard where I was working began to prepare for evacuation: its equipment was shipped to Zelenodolsk Tatar ASSR by train. The management and engineering staff also went by this train, but there was no organized evacuation of workers or such common employees as I was. Basically, nobody ever mentioned that Jews were to evacuate in the first turn. The district Komsomol committee sent my sister Lisa to dig trenches in the Western area.

I continued going to work, helping to load the equipment and being on duty at the telephone station of the plant. In middle August, before the last train with employees was to depart, my boss, a Jew, said to me: ‘If you want to leave the town, run home to pick your documents and come back – the train is leaving soon’. I rushed home. I only had time to grab my passport, my Komsomol membership card and a change of underwear and clothing. This was all I had with me: no warm winter clothes or bed sheets. I didn’t go to see my mother: I could not take her with me and I didn’t have time to say ‘good byes’. Besides, like everybody else, I thought we would be back in two months’ time. As for me sister, she wasn’t at home: she was at the digging of trenches.

I ran back to the railway station and boarded the train. It was a freight train and we slept on plank beds. When the train was crossing the Dnieper over the railroad bridge, it was bombed for the first time. It was stupid, but I got so scared that I climbed under the plank bed. The train often stopped to let the troops going in the western direction pass. There was a fierce bombing near Bahmach. Half of the train was destroyed and we had to wait for a replacement of the damaged railcars. I met my distant relatives in Bahmach: Musia, uncle Grigoriy’s daughter. She told me she was evacuating with her mother, and her father stayed in Kiev. Few minutes late I met Zhenia Kligman, my grandmother’s cousin sister, with her family. They were surprised that I managed to leave Kiev, but neither Musia nor Zhenia offered me to join them. All other plant employees were with their families, but nobody suggested that I took my family with me. I felt bitter and hurt. Besides, I didn’t even have food with me. The other shared their food with me, however. My boss whose name I don’t remember regretfully, and his wife Sonia were particularly kind to me. They had no children and they cared about me. We occasionally had soup and porridge at bigger stations and at times we only managed to get some boiled water and some junk food.

In about 3 weeks we arrived at the point of destination: Zelenodolsk town, 2000 kilometers from home. Zelenodolsk was a small town on the steep bank of the Volga in about 40 km from Kazan, the capital of Tataria. I was accommodated in a dormitory where thanks to my boss’ arrangements, I could have a little 6-square meter room for myself, and went to work as a telephone operator. There was a bed, a table and chair in my room where I stayed till 1943. However hard yeas these were I recall them with warmth. Firstly, this was my youth. Secondly, through all these years the Soviet people were united with their common trouble. People were kind to one another and treated me well. We worked 3 shifts, and at pressing moments I went to work as a worker and I did it believing that it was my duty to work where required. I also had a big workload at my place receiving telephone messages from the center, making reports of work completed and connecting bosses with the Kremlin since our plant worked for the front. Of course, life was hard, but I was used to hunger and endured it easier than those having a good life and plenty of food before the war. I had many friends and there were Jews among them. I was particularly close with Sonia and her husband. They tried to celebrate Jewish holidays even in the evacuation. They fasted on Yom Kippur and celebrated Pesach. They always invited me to join them on holidays. Though I was not religious, I began to fast on Yom Kippur. By this time we already knew about fascist atrocities against Jews and about Babi Yar [18]. I knew that my mother and sister perished most likely. I wrote them many times, but never got their response. Of course, I blamed myself that I didn’t say good bye or take them with me, but what could I do? It was a miracle that I managed to leave. Well, what do I say? I was young and my friends and I often went to the club and cinema and dancing.

On 2 May 1943 my friend and I went to dance at the plywood factory club. I put on my new dress made from the cut of fabric that the trade union department gave me as a gif. A tall slim sailor invited me to a dance. We met: his name was Pyotr Rudometov. We dated few months and he proposed to me on 6 November 1943. This was a double holiday for me: our army liberated Kiev and also Pyotr and I entered the local registry office at 5 o’clock before it’s closure. The registry clerk was hurrying home and didn’t want to register our marriage, but Pyotr convinced her to do it telling her that on this day Kiev, the town of his beloved girl, was liberated. We got married and celebrated the wedding in the dormitory.

My husband Pyotr Rudometov, Russian, was born in Kharkov in 1918. His parents lived there. Pyotr’s father perished during the Civil War and his mother and little Pyotr moved to Arudovo village near Kalinin where she came from. After finishing school Pyotr entered a Navy school in Leningrad. When the Great Patriotic War began, Pyotr was sent to a short-term course in Batumi and then – to the ‘Stremitelniy’ cruiser ship. Pyotr was wounded and sell-shocked near Sevastopol. After recovery he was sent to serve on ‘Ohotnik’, a small boat in the rear Navy unit in Zelenodolsk. Shortly after we got married Pyotr was sent to Batumi and our wanderings began. In 1944 Pyotr was sent to Poti where I met aunt Manyusia, who was in evacuation there. In a month or two Pyotr was sent to serve in Kronshtadt. I was pregnant. Our trip lasted about three months. I started labor when we were approaching Kronshtadt. The medical nurse of the crew got scared. He said he had just finished his medical school and had no idea of deliveries. The wife of commanding officer tended to me, when my first girl was born. I had mastitis and puerperal fever, and other sailors tore beds sheets to make bandages. In Kronshtadt we were taken to hospital. I recovered, but my girl Luda died. The personnel bathed her in cold water and the girl died from pneumonia. My second baby was born in Arudovo village where my husband’s mother lived, in December 1945. I named the girl Lisa after my sister. Pyotr was serving in our army in Germany at this time. I need to say that Pyotr was very good to me. My nationality didn’t matter to him. His mother also loved me. I tended to her better than her own daughters, but Pyotr’s older sisters Vera and Tania, in particular, continuously wrote him letters trying to convince him to part with the ‘zhydovka’ [kike], setting him against me. Pyotr came to take me with him and I was beside him ever since. Pyotr served in Liepaja, Latvia, 15 years. Our daughter Nathalia was born there in 1951, and in 1956 our son Sergei was born. We had a good life. My husband supported the family. I also worked as a telephone operator few years. The anti-Semitic campaigns of the late 1940s [19] had no impact on me; firstly because I was at home and secondly, because nobody ever asked me about my nationality while I had my husband’s Russian surname. Latvia was like a foreign country for the rest of the USSR. There were many goods quite inaccessible in other towns. And Pyotr’s sisters took to liking me all of a sudden. I sent them nice clothes. Upon demobilization Pyotr’s older sister Tania living in Kherson invited us there. She wrote about nice climate and plenty of fruit, and after demobilization we moved to Kherson.

I visited Kiev, my hometown, in 1948. Our neighbors told me that my mother was taken to Babi Yar on the 2nd or 3rd day of shootings: the janitor gave her away. Sister Lisa hid at her friend’s for few days, but then she went home to find out about her mother, and the same janitor reported on her. Lisa perished in Babi Yar in early October. They also told me about the tragic death of uncle Grigoriy: the loader who recognized him in the street reported on him in early November 1943, few days before Kiev was liberated. Grigoriy was also executed. For many years I used to visit Kiev almost every year to go to Babi Yar where my dear ones were lying, I went to Kreschatik and Shota Rustaveli Street where we lied. I still believe Kiev to be my home town. I am so happy that the Brodskiy synagogue where my grandmother and I used to go has been reconstructed and is a center of the Jewish life in Kiev.

Now about my grandmother Pesia. After the war she lived with aunt Manyusia in Sevastopol. I visited her several times. Sometimes I went to see her with my children. I felt myself Jewish in my grandmother’s house recalling Jewish traditions and customs. I could not celebrate holidays or observe Jewish traditions at my home: my husband Pyotr was a military man and a party member. With all his love to me he would not have allowed this. Grandmother Pesia died in the early 1960s at the age of over 90.

After we moved to Kherson my husband sailed on civilian boats for 11 years and later he worked at a factory. I stayed at home. Then my husband had a stroke and he was bedridden and couldn’t move for 3 years. Pyotr died in 1990, 3 years before our ‘golden wedding’ anniversary. Since then I’ve been alone.

My daughters have Russian spouses. My older daughter Yelizaveta Zakurakina finished the Pharmaceutical Faculty in Kherson. She has worked as a pharmacists in Chermon for 3 years. Her daughter Ludmila named after my first daughter finished a college, worked as a teacher at school, and now she works for a commercial company. My second grandson, Yelizaveta’s son Alexei, also works for this company.

Nathalia finished a Trade School and works in a big shopping center. Her marriage to Titkov failed. Her son Andrei from her first marriage died of sarcoma, her husband took to drinking and they divorced. Now she is married for the second time. Her surname is Harlova. Her daughter Tatiana finished a college and also works for a commercial company. She is single.

My youngest is my poor son, I don’t feel like recalling him. He is a finished alcoholic. He lives with his mistress and they both drank away everything he had at home. He has tuberculosis and on top of it all he broke his femoral neck bone and he is bedridden. He lives in terrible conditions and misery.

My husband died at the time of revival of the Jewish life in Ukraine and Kherson. I began to socialize with Jews, go to the synagogue. I observe Jewish traditions and light a candle on Sabbath. I’ve got new friends among the clients and employees of the Hesed in Kherson. I attend the Day Center in Hesed every week. I get to know about the Jewish history, culture and about Israel. After a recent surgery I have problems with my right hand, and a visiting nurse from the Hesed helps me around. While my husband was working, I had a good life. I only traveled to Kiev or Sevastopol to visit grandmother, but I couldn’t afford a vacation on the seashore or a health center. After perestroika [20], I receive a small pension for my husband since I hadn’t worked enough to have my own pension. I also lease one room to students. My daughters are well provided for, but they need to support their children. I like today’s living, when Jews have opportunities to live community life and they are not ashamed of their nationality and do not fear to hear the word ‘zhydovka’ like I did. My granddaughter Tatiana studied in Israel under an educational program. She likes this country and is eager to go there. She and Nathalia go to the synagogue on holidays. Therefore, the perestroika is good, for it supported restoration of the Jewry in the country and in my family.

GLOSSARY:

[1] Khrushchovka: Five-storied apartment buildings with small one, two or three-bedroom apartments, named after Nikita Khrushchev, head of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death. These apartment buildings were constructed in the framework of Khrushchev’s program of cheap dwelling in the new neighborhood of most Soviet cities.

[2] Russian Revolution of 1917: Revolution in which the tsarist regime was overthrown in the Russian Empire and, under Lenin, was replaced by the Bolshevik rule. The two phases of the Revolution were: February Revolution, which came about due to food and fuel shortages during World War I, and during which the tsar abdicated and a provisional government took over. The second phase took place in the form of a coup led by Lenin in October/November (October Revolution) and saw the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.

[3] Struggle against religion: The 1930s was a time of anti-religion struggle in the USSR. In those years it was not safe to go to synagogue or to church. Places of worship, statues of saints, etc. were removed; rabbis, Orthodox and Roman Catholic priests disappeared behind KGB walls.

[4] Jewish Pale of Settlement: Certain provinces in the Russian Empire were designated for permanent Jewish residence and the Jewish population was only allowed to live in these areas. The Pale was first established by a decree by Catherine II in 1791. The regulation was in force until the Russian Revolution of 1917, although the limits of the Pale were modified several times. The Pale stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and 94% of the total Jewish population of Russia, almost 5 million people, lived there. The overwhelming majority of the Jews lived in the towns and shtetls of the Pale. Certain privileged groups of Jews, such as certain merchants, university graduates and craftsmen working in certain branches, were granted to live outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement permanently.

[5] Pogroms in Ukraine: In the 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.

[6] Civil War (1918-1920): The Civil War between the Reds (the Bolsheviks) and the Whites (the anti-Bolsheviks), which broke out in early 1918, ravaged Russia until 1920. The Whites represented all shades of anti-communist groups – Russian army units from World War I, led by anti-Bolshevik officers, by anti-Bolshevik volunteers and some Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. Several of their leaders favored setting up a military dictatorship, but few were outspoken tsarists. Atrocities were committed throughout the Civil War by both sides. The Civil War ended with Bolshevik military victory, thanks to the lack of cooperation among the various White commanders and to the reorganization of the Red forces after Trotsky became commissar for war. It was won, however, only at the price of immense sacrifice; by 1920 Russia was ruined and devastated. In 1920 industrial production was reduced to 14% and agriculture to 50% as compared to 1913.

[7] The so-called New Economic Policy of the Soviet authorities was launched by Lenin in 1921. It meant that private business was allowed on a small scale in order to save the country ruined by the Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War. They allowed priority development of private capital and entrepreneurship. The NEP was gradually abandoned in the 1920s with the introduction of the planned economy.

[8] Great Patriotic War: On 22nd June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War. The German blitzkrieg, known as Operation Barbarossa, nearly succeeded in breaking the Soviet Union in the months that followed. Caught unprepared, the Soviet forces lost whole armies and vast quantities of equipment to the German onslaught in the first weeks of the war. By November 1941 the German army had seized the Ukrainian Republic, besieged Leningrad, the Soviet Union's second largest city, and threatened Moscow itself. The war ended for the Soviet Union on 9th May 1945.

[9] Petliura, Simon (1879-1926): Ukrainian politician, member of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Working Party, one of the leaders of Centralnaya Rada (Central Council), the national government of Ukraine (1917-1918). Military units under his command killed Jews during the Civil War in Ukraine. In the Soviet-Polish war he was on the side of Poland; in 1920 he emigrated. He was killed in Paris by the Jewish nationalist Schwarzbard in revenge for the pogroms against Jews in Ukraine.

[10] Lenin (1870-1924): Pseudonym of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the Russian Communist leader. A profound student of Marxism, and a revolutionary in the 1890s. He became the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Social Democratic Party, whom he led to power in the coup d’état of 25th October 1917. Lenin became head of the Soviet state and retained this post until his death.

[11] Famine in Ukraine: In 1920 a deliberate famine was introduced in the Ukraine causing the death of millions of people. It was arranged in order to suppress those protesting peasants who did not want to join the collective farms. There was another dreadful deliberate famine in 1930-1934 in the Ukraine. The authorities took away the last food products from the peasants. People were dying in the streets, whole villages became deserted. The authorities arranged this specifically to suppress the rebellious peasants who did not want to accept Soviet power and join collective farms.

[12] Torgsin stores: Special retail stores, which were established in larger Russian cities in the 1920s with the purpose of selling goods to foreigners. Torgsins sold commodities that were in short supply for hard currency or exchanged them for gold and jewelry, accepting old coins as well. The real aim of this economic experiment that lasted for two years was to swindle out all gold and valuables from the population for the industrial development of the country.

[13] Komsomol: Communist youth political organization created in 1918. The task of the Komsomol was to spread of the ideas of communism and involve the worker and peasant youth in building the Soviet Union. The Komsomol also aimed at giving a communist upbringing by involving the worker youth in the political struggle, supplemented by theoretical education. The Komsomol was more popular than the Communist Party because with its aim of education people could accept uninitiated young proletarians, whereas party members had to have at least a minimal political qualification.

[14] Kossior, Stanislav (1889-1938): One of the founders of the Communist Party in Ukraine and General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1928-1938. He was arrested in the course of The Great Purges of 1936-38, known popularly as the Yezhovshchina (after NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov who conducted them), and executed.

[15] Great Terror (1934-1938): During the Great Terror, or Great Purges, which included the notorious show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik opponents in 1936-1938 and reached its peak in 1937 and 1938, millions of innocent Soviet citizens were sent off to labor camps or killed in prison. The major targets of the Great Terror were communists. Over half of the people who were arrested were members of the party at the time of their arrest. The armed forces, the Communist Party, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public ‘show trials’. By the time the terror subsided in 1939, Stalin had managed to bring both the Party and the public to a state of complete submission to his rule. Soviet society was so atomized and the people so fearful of reprisals that mass arrests were no longer necessary. Stalin ruled as absolute dictator of the Soviet Union until his death in March 1953.

[16] Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.

[17] Molotov, V. P. (1890-1986): Statesman and member of the Communist Party leadership. From 1939, Minister of Foreign Affairs. On June 22, 1941 he announced the German attack on the USSR on the radio. He and Eden also worked out the percentages agreement after the war, about Soviet and western spheres of influence in the new Europe.

[18] Babi Yar: Babi Yar is the site of the first mass shooting of Jews that was carried out openly by fascists. On 29th and 30th September 1941 33,771 Jews were shot there by a special SS unit and Ukrainian militia men. During the Nazi occupation of Kiev between 1941 and 1943 over a 100,000 people were killed in Babi Yar, most of whom were Jewish. The Germans tried in vain to efface the traces of the mass grave in August 1943 and the Soviet public learnt about mass murder after World War II.

[19] Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’: The campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’, i.e. Jews, was initiated in articles in the central organs of the Communist Party in 1949. The campaign was directed primarily at the Jewish intelligentsia and it was the first public attack on Soviet Jews as Jews. ‘Cosmopolitans’ writers were accused of hating the Russian people, of supporting Zionism, etc. Many Yiddish writers as well as the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested in November 1948 on charges that they maintained ties with Zionism and with American ‘imperialism’. They were executed secretly in 1952. The anti-Semitic Doctors’ Plot was launched in January 1953. A wave of anti-Semitism spread through the USSR. Jews were removed from their positions, and rumors of an imminent mass deportation of Jews to the eastern part of the USSR began to spread. Stalin’s death in March 1953 put an end to the campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’.

[20] Perestroika (Russian for restructuring): Soviet economic and social policy of the late 1980s, associated with the name of Soviet politician Mikhail Gorbachev. The term designated the attempts to transform the stagnant, inefficient command economy of the Soviet Union into a decentralized, market-oriented economy. Industrial managers and local government and party officials were granted greater autonomy, and open elections were introduced in an attempt to democratize the Communist Party organization. By 1991, perestroika was declining and was soon eclipsed by the dissolution of the USSR.

Bluma Katz
Mogilyov-Podolskiy
Ukraine
Date of interview: July 2004
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Bluma Katz and her husband live in a one-bedroom apartment of a house built in the 1970s. Bluma is short and fat. She has signs of gray in her wavy hair cut short. She looks young for her age. She hardly ever goes out having to look after her severely ill husband and is very happy to have guests.  She speaks with a slight Jewish accent. She willingly tells me about her family and her life. Bluma is a diligent housewife. Though they have a visiting nurse from the Jewish community helping her about the house, Bluma prefers to do as much as she can herself.  She keeps her apartment clean and cozy. There are books on the shelves. They are mainly Russian classical books and Russian translations of Jewish authors. There are many agricultural books – it is Bluma’s profession. She worked at the agricultural machine building plant and is a well-respected person in Mogilyov-Podolskiy.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My famly backgrownd

My mother and father came from Ozarintsy town in Vinnitsa region [about 300 km from Kiev], which was Vinnitsa province at the time. Ozarintsy was one of many Jewish towns in Vinnitsa region that was within the pale of Settlement 1 in Russia.

The Jewish part of Ozarintsy consisted of about 200 houses. Ozarintsy was located in the beautiful area: there were woods, ravines and a river with clear water. There was a stream in the woods where water was ice-cold even in hot weather.

Here was a Jewish hospital and a pharmacy, a Jewish school and a cheder in Ozarintsy before the revolution 1917 2. There was a 2-stiried synagogue and a shochet in the town. There was a Jewish cemetery in the suburb of the town. Many Jews dealt in farming and kept livestock: cows, goats and sheep. There were vast fields surrounding the town. Everybody could rent at the owner of the ground, a rich Ukrainian merchant, as much lad as they could manage. They grew sheep for meat and wool. They made brynza – delicious sheep cheese getting ripe in marinade. There was a cheese making shop before and after the revolution of 1917 selling in at the markets in Vinnitsa and Khmelnitskiy.

Most of the houses were made of stone. There were solid stone porches. People got together to build houses. After the day’s work they sat to dinner together. Ozarintsy was one big family.  They celebrated weddings together and lived a common lie for small towns where all people knew each other. Jews spoke Yiddish to one another, but they also got along well with Ukrainians. They had Ukrainian friends. Many generations of Ukrainian and Jewish families lived side by side in the course of time. Ukrainians understood Yiddish and had no communication problems with Jews. Before the revolution and during the Civil War 3 there were Jewish pogroms in Ozarintsy made by gangs 5, or Denikin 6 troops. Local Ukrainians often gave shelter to Jewish families risking their lives.

All Jews in Ozarintsy were religious. Despite the struggle of Soviet authorities against religion 7 the synagogue in Ozarintsy was not closed until the middle 1950s. Jews celebrated Sabbath an Jewish holidays and observed Jewish traditions. Boys had brit milah and bar mitzvah after they turned 13. Of course, the time had its impact on the Jewish way of life. The generation of my grandmother wore wigs and kerchiefs and long dark clothes. Men had beards and wore hats or caps, but the following generations wore casual clothes, did not cover their heads, women did not cut their hair before the chuppah. On Jewish holidays all Jews went to the synagogue anyway. Many men went to the synagogue before work on weekdays.

There was a big market in the center of the village where Jewish and Ukrainian farmers sold their products. All Jews followed kashrut. Housewives bought living poultry to take it to the shochet.  There was a butcher’s store selling kosher meat. Farmers delivered dairy products to Jewish homes. All food was delicious. 

My paternal grandfather’s name was Endl Katz. I don’t remember my grandmother’s name: we called her ‘granny’. I think they were born in the 1850s. My grandfather was a shochet. After the revolution he kept sheep. My grandmother was a housewife. My grandfather was short, thin and had a gray beard. On weekdays my grandfather wore his work robes. On Sabbath and before going to the synagogue he put on his long black kitel.  At home grandfather wore a black silk yarmulke, and he put on his cap or black hat to go out. My grandmother was short and plump. She was duck-legged, but she moved around quickly. My grandmother wore a black kerchief, long skirts with gathers and long-sleeved and closed-neck blouses.  

There were five children in the family. My father’s oldest brother moved to USA before the revolution and there were no contacts with him. The rest of my grandparents’ children lived in Ozarintsy. I don’t remember their dates of birth. The oldest was my father’s brother Mehl, then came Moishe and my father Benumin, and their younger sister Bluma. Bluma died in the year when I was born. My father and his brothers went to the cheder. My father could read and write in Hebrew and Yiddish and knew prayers. They also finished the 7-year Jewish school. My father’s brothers helped their father with taking care of the sheep. After the revolution of 1917 my father went to study at the rabfak 8. After finishing it he went to work as an accountant in the Jewish kolkhoz 9 in Ozarintsy. My father’s older brothers went to work in the sheep farm in the kolkhoz.  They both had Jewish wives, whose names I don’t remember. Mehl had three sons and Moishe had two sons and a daughter. I don’t remember their names.

My maternal grandfather’s name was David Gass. My grandmother Bluma Gass died in 1919 and I did not know her. My grandfather was a tailor. My mother told me that grandmother had 9 babies, but only four survived. My mother’s older brother Gershl moved to USA during the civil War and I have no information about him. Her second son Borukh was born in 1898. In 1900 my mother Golda was born and one year later – her sister Haya. Borukh studied in the cheder. My mother and her sister had a visiting teacher, who taught them Jewish traditions and Hebrew alphabet to be able to read prayers. They were not taught to understand them since only boys were taught to translate from Hebrew. The family was religious. They celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed kashrut. They observed all traditions.

The children finished a primary Jewish school and went to study in the 7-year Ukrainian school. After finishing school Borukh went to work for the forester and later became a forester himself.  His wife Riva came from Ozarintsy. They had two children. My mother and her younger sister Haya became apprentices of a seamstress. They worked as seamstresses before getting married. They made bed sheets, night gowns and women’s underwear. Haya had a prearranged wedding. She married a Jewish guy from Luchentsy village of Vinnitsa region. They had a traditional Jewish wedding in the bride’s home. After the wedding Haya moved to live with her husband. She was a housewife and had three daughters: Betia, Mania and Golda. 

I don’t know how my parents met. Since they both came from Ozarintsy where their families lived in the same street and my parents must have known each other. My parents got married in 1921. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. Mama said that there were tables installed along the street and the whole village celebrated their wedding. My parents lived with my father’s parents. My grandfather had a big house consisting of two parts. There were few fruit trees and a small vegetable garden in the backyard. There was a porch and fore room with three doors in it: one to the living room and two doors on each side to the different parts of the house. Each part had two rooms and kitchen. There were wood stoked stoves in the kitchens. The stoves heated the rooms. Housewives in Ozarintsy baked bread for their families, though there was a bakery in the village. My parents lived in one part of the house. My father worked as an accountant in the kolkhoz. My mother was a housewife. My parents observed Jewish traditions, but their appearances were no different from those of Ukrainians. Men didn’t have beards or cover their heads. Mama only wore a kerchief to go to the synagogue or on Sabbath and Jewish holidays.

Mama gave birth to three children. She didn’t go to hospital, when the babies were due. She had an assistant doctor and a midwife assisting her delivery. I was the first child. I was born in 1922 and was named Bluma after my mother’s mother and my father’s deceased sister. In 1928 my sister was born. She was given the Russian name of Lubov, Jewish Liebe. In 1930 our brother Boris, Jewish Borukh, was born. He was circumcised according to Jewish traditions. 

Growing up

Our parents spoke Yiddish to us. Of course, we also spoke Ukrainian. My parents celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and were religious like all other Jewish families in Ozarintsy.  Before Pesach all Jews whitewashed their houses and fences. About a month before the holiday they started making matzah. Several Jewish housewives got together on one house to make matzah for this family. Each of them had her own responsibility: one made the dough, another one rolled it and the others did the baking. Next day they went to another house. There was no bread in Jewish houses during Pesach. All housewives had their own recipes for traditional food. There was plenty of it cooked for the holiday. Mama made read borsch, chicken broth, puddings, stuffed fish, and chicken neck with liver and fried onions. She also made strudels, honey cakes and star-shaped cookies  from matzah flour crushed in a mortar and sieved. Mama followed the kashrut. She had separate dishes for meat and dairy products. Every Jewish family had special crockery and utensils for Pesach that was kept in attics for the rest of the year. On the first day of Pesach my parents went to the synagogue. My parents took me with them, but left the younger ones in a Ukrainian farmer’s care. On our way back home mama went to this Ukrainian woman to pick my younger sister and brother. We, children, did not know Hebrew. Mama and papa read prayers in Hebrew and translated them into Yiddish for us. During seder each person had to drink four glasses of wine. Children sipped wine from little glasses. Then we all sang jolly songs. I don’t remember anything about Rosh Hashanah, but I remember Yom Kippur that followed the Rosh Hashanah. The family had a substantial dinner before the first star appeared in the sky. Then the fast began, which lasted till evening of the following day. On Yom Kippur all Jewish families conducted the Kapores ritual. Farmers sold white chickens before Yom Kippur. They knew that nobody would buy black or speckled chickens from them before Yom Kippur. Housewives bought white hens for girls and women and white rosters for men and boys. The chickens had their legs tied. One had to recite a prayer, take the chicken and turn it over one’s head pronouncing: ‘May you be my atonement’. Parents turned the chickens over their children’s heads. I don’t know what happened to this chicken afterward. My parents strictly followed the fast, but mama always cooked for the children to have food while they were at the synagogue. The children usually missed one meal to give tribute to the tradition. I remember asking mama to let me fast a whole day like all adults did, but mama didn’t allow me to do it. My parents went to the synagogue in the morning and spent a whole day praying. Younger children came to the synagogue for a short time. My younger sister also came to us at the synagogue for one or two hours. After Yom Kippur the Sukkot was celebrated. All Jewish families had a sukkah installed in the yard and decorated it with branches and flowers. There was a table installed in the sukkah where the family had meals and prayed. We also celebrated Chanukkah and Purim. All I remember is that on Chanukkah we had a chanukkiyah on the table and mama lit one candle every day.

We also celebrated Sabbath. We had two bronze candle stands where mama lit candles on Friday evening. She covered her face with her hands and prayed over the candles. Occasionally we celebrated Sabbath with grandmother and grandfather. Saturday was a day off since it was the Jewish kolkhoz that made Saturday a day off in Ozarintsy while the rest of the USSR had an official day off on Sunday. When they returned home, my father sat down to read religious books to us. He translated what he read into Yiddish for us. Mama had dinner ready, which she cooked the day before and left it in the oven to keep it warm. Adults were not to turn on the lights or stoke the stove on Saturday, while the children were allowed to do little chores. On Saturday we often visited uncle Borukh, my mother’s brother. His wife Riva made barley flour pancakes on Sabbath. We liked them a lot. The adults talked and we played with Borukh’s children. 

I went to the 7-year Jewish school in Ozarintsy where we studied in Yiddish. I had excellent marks in all subjects at school. I studied 3 years in Ozarintsy. In autumn 1931 my father was offered a job of director of the MTS [equipment maintenance yard – they repaired plant and equipment for kolkhozes in Vinnitsa region] canteen in Vendichany village near Ozarintsy. They promised him a higher salary and lodging.  My parents decided to move there. Jews constituted maximum 30% of the total population in Vendichany. There was a sugar factory in the village.

My father received a house for the family to lodge in it. It was a big stone house with a brick plastered fence around it. The house had three rooms and a kitchen. There was a stove in the kitchen. It also heated my parents’ bedroom. There were stoves in other rooms as well. My sister, my brother and I slept in one room, and the third room was a living room. There was a wood shed in the yard and apple trees near the house. There was also a well near the house.

Many women in Vendichany went to work. Mama began to make bed sheets at home. Her clients paid her with food products or money. We were rather wealthy at the time. In 1932 famine 10 occurred in Ukraine. Our family did not suffer from hunger, as after as I can remember. My father and his employees received rationed food and so did employees of the equipment yard. Also, residents of Vendichany could buy food products in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. The situation with food supplies was better in towns. At least, there were no victims of hunger in Vendichany.

One Jewish resident of Vendichany had a 2-storied house. Two rooms on the first floor served as a prayer house in Vendichany. There was a small window in the wall between the rooms for women to listen to the rabbi’s service. Men went to the prayer house on Sabbath and on holidays and women – only on holidays. Men wore kippahs or hats and women wore kerchiefs or beautiful silk scarves to go to the prayer house. All Jews celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays, but some younger people observed Jewish traditions no longer. We celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays like we did when living in Ozarintsy. My father brought matzah for Pesach from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My parents fasted on Yom Kippur. We could not celebrate Sabbath following all rules, but mama lit candles on Friday evening, we prayed and had dinner. My father had to go to work on Saturday since the equipment yard was open and its employees needed to have meals. Mama didn’t sew on Saturday. There was no anti-Semitism in the village. We got along well with Ukrainians,. I remember that on Easter our Ukrainian neighbor brought us Easter bread and painted eggs and mama gave her family matzah on Pesach. People respected each other’s religion and traditions.

We spoke Yiddish at home as we were used to, and Ukrainian to our Ukrainian neighbors. I went to the 7-year Ukrainian school in Vendichany. My sister also went to this school later. There were quite a few Jewish students at school. There was no anti-Semitism – perhaps it did not exist before the war. I had Jewish and Ukrainian friends. We were taught to be internationalists at school. Nationality didn’t matter to me. We were told that we had one nationality – we were Soviet people.  I became a pioneer 11, and was very proud wearing my red neck tie. After finishing school my parents began to think about my further studies. They wanted me to enter a college which required a full secondary education. There was no place to continue education in Vendichany while there were higher secondary schools in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My father went to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, found a job and our family moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy.

My parents bought a small shabby house in the center of the town. During the German occupation this house happened to be within the boundaries of the ghetto. This was mainly a Jewish district. Mogilyov-Podolskiy was a Jewish town where over half of its population was Jewish. There were few synagogues, shochets and a Jewish school in the town. This was a lovely southern town buried in verdure. Jews resided in the central part of the town. They engaged in crafts and were tailors, shoemakers and barbers. Any Jews worked at supply agencies and owned stores. Mogilyov-Podolskiy stands on the Dnestr River. It lies between the Dnestr River on one side and the limestone hills covered with woods – on the other. There were cemeteries on the hills: a Jewish, a Catholic and a town cemetery. Bessarabia 12 lay on the opposite bank of the river. In 1940 this area was annexed to the USSR: Romania gave up to few ultimatums of the USSR, but before this happened Mogilyov-Podolskiy was a frontier town. Its streets were patrolled and there were special permits required to come into the town. Jews mostly resided in the central part of the town.  Their houses closely adjusted to one another. There were small backyards where only a little shed or a tiny vegetable garden could fit while in the suburbs residents had orchards, vegetable gardens and fields. They sold food products in the town. There was a loyal attitude to Jews in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. There was also Russian, Ukrainian, Moldavian and Greek population in the town. There were churches of all confessions, many of which were closed during the period of struggle against religion.   

We lived in a house made from air bricks – a mixture of cut straw and clay bricks dried in the sun - like most other houses in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. There were few stone houses owned by wealthier people. We certainly lived in better houses in Ozarintsy and Vendichany than the one we had in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. However, my parents believed it was more important for their children to get education than concentrate on certain discomforts. I went to the 8th form of a Russian school and my brother and sister later also went to this school. At first it was difficult for me to speak Russian. Many Ukrainian words slipped off my tongue. However, my Russian gradually improved. I studied well. I liked school and only had good and excellent marks for my studies. In the 8th form I joined the Komsomol 13. I studied a lot to get ready for the interview at the town Komsomol committee. We were to answer questions related to biographies of party and state leaders, political situation in the country and in the world, the history of Komsomol and the communist party of the USSR. I was excited, but I answered all questions well and obtained a Komsomol membership card and a badge. 

This was the period of persecution of ‘enemies of the people’ 14, arrests in 1937 and the following years 15. We had to remove our textbook pages with portraits of the state and party leaders that happened to be ‘enemies of the people’ and cross out their names. Like many other people I believed that those people were guilty.  We were raised to have no doubts in the infallibility of the party and Stalin. When newspapers wrote about denunciation of another enemy of the people, how could I have doubts … Nobody in our family suffered during the period of arrests. I remember that one of my father’s acquaintances or colleagues and my parents discussed this in the evening.  

In 1930 my mother’s father David Gass died. He was buried by the grandmother’s grave in the Jewish cemetery in Ozarintsy. The funeral was Jewish. Our parents went to the funeral to Ozarintsy, but left the children at home.  In the middle 1930s my father’s father Edl Katz died. My grandmother died one year afterward. They were buried near the gate to the Jewish cemetery in Ozarintsy.

I finished school in 1940. I wanted to study foreign languages and become a translator. My mother’s distant relative Yekaterina Spiegelman, who lived in Kharkov had graduated from the Philological Faculty of Kharkov University and worked in a publishing house. Her husband Vitaliy Cherviakov was Russian. He lectured at Kharkov University. My father went to Kharkov with me.   I passed exams and entered the Faculty of Translators of College of Foreign languages. There was no problem for Jews to enter higher educational institutions at that time. Admission was based on the marks and  origin Children of workers and peasants had more chances than children of non-manual workers.  I studied German and English. My father went back home and I stayed with Yekaterina and Vitaliy. They were atheists and living in their home I did not observe Jewish traditions. 

When I moved to Kharkov my parents and my younger brother and sister returned to Ozarintsy.  My father’s brothers Mehl and Moishe and my mother’s brother Borukh lived in Ozarintsy and my parents wanted to be closer to them. They moved into my father parents’ house. My sister and brother studied in the 7-year Ukrainian school in Ozarintsy. My father resumed his work as an accountant in the Jewish kolkhoz. 

During the war

I finished the first year in College. On 21 June 1941 I passed my last exam and the next morning I was to join my family in Ozarintsy. I had sent my parents a cable and was planning to do some shopping to buy presents on Sunday. On the morning of 22 June 1941 16 I woke up early in the morning and started packing. Yekaterina and her husband were not at home. I was about to leave, when Yekaterina ran into the apartment and turned on the radio. She had a scared expression in her eyes. The radio announced that the Hitler’s Germany attacked the USSR without announcement of the war violating the peace treaty. We froze with fear. Then Stalin spoke and I can still remember his words: ‘Our army will defeat the enemy, we will win the victory’.  Somehow this calmed me down instantly. We had been convinced that if somebody attacked the USSR, it would be a ‘blitzkrieg’ war and our army would beat the enemy on its territory. We sang songs: ‘If tomorrow is the war, if tomorrow we have to go to the war, if a dark force shall attack, our Soviet people will stand like one for our beloved Motherland…’, we watched movies where it took our army a week to beat the enemy’. We had no doubts about our victory. We were so sure about it that when evacuation of Kharkov began, we didn’t consider evacuation. I was convinced that only coward and those who did not believe in the strength of our army were running away. If Stalin said that we would win then it would be so. We listened to news from the front line and were concerned about our army retreating and incurring huge losses. Later there appeared rumors that fascists were exterminating Jews and taking them to ghettos. Yekaterina decided that we should leave Kharkov. We took the last train leaving Kharkov. The trip was fearful. Germans were close to Kharkov. German planes often attacked the train.  

We arrived at Timashevo village of Kuibyshev region and were accommodated in a local house. Al local residents sympathized with evacuated people and tried to help as much as they could. A metallurgical plant from the central part of Russia evacuated to Timashevo. Yekaterina, her husband and I went to work at the construction of this plant. I worked winch. In spring 1942 the plant started operation and I went to work at the shop manufacturing heads for cannon shells. We delivered rough blocks for cannon shell heads on carts and I removed wire edges from them with a file. We received workers’ cards 17, for bread. Of course, we had little food, but we could manage on it. I didn’t have information about my family till the very end of the war. I took an effort to find them through the evacuation search bureau in Buguruslan hoping that they managed to escape from Ozarintsy, but I got the same reply: ‘Not found in evacuation lists’. I listened to news on the radio. Our army kept retreating incurring big losses. Germans were advancing to Moscow and this was scary. I already understand about the war. I knew the war was different from Soviet movies and that it was going to take a while before it ended. There was a Komsomol committee at the plant. When we heard about admission to a course of radio operators, many employees applied to the course. I was one of them. There were over 100 attendants at the course. We had classes after work in the evening. We were trained to work with a telegraph unit. After finishing this course we were sent to military units near Oryol in Russia. We were to be radio operators. I became a telegraph operator at the regiment headquarters. We were accommodated in barracks and received military uniforms. We were privates. I stayed there for two months before the commandment issued an order releasing those who had studied in colleges before the war.

Almost all agricultural workers were recruited to the army. There was a demand in new personnel.  An Agricultural College opened at Kinel station near Timashevo. All former students were sent to study there regardless where they had studied before the war. There were no entrance exams. All we had to submit was a request. I became a student of the Faculty of selection and seed farming specializing in phytopathology, plant diseases. We were accommodated in a former school adjusted to make a dormitory. I didn’t have any clothes, but the uniform fufaika jacket, skirt and boots that I received in the army. Nobody cared about such things them. We received bread cards and had one meal per day at the college canteen. I shared my room with 5 other girls from various places of various nationalities. We shared everything we had: clothes, food and books. In the evening we talked about our prewar life, made plans for the future peaceful life.

In March 1943 I heard on the radio that the Soviet army liberated Vinnitsa region from fascists.  I wrote to Ozarintsy and mama’s sister from Luchentsy. There was no reply from them, but I received a letter from our Ukrainian neighbor. She wrote about the ghetto in Ozarintsy and that all inmates of the ghetto were killed in late August 1942. She did not say a word about my family, but I understood that my mother, father, sister and brother shared the fate of the other inmates of the ghetto. This was horrific news. I lost my hope to see my family again: I was alone in this world. I did not care any longer: I didn’t eat, didn’t attend classes, read or talk to friends. I stayed in bed crying. My friends helped me to recover and I began to attend classes. 

On 9 May 1945 the war was over. This was a happy day. People greeted each other and shared the joy that the war was over. There was grief about those who never lived to see this day. I thought about my dear ones. There was no place for me to go. Yekaterina and her husband went back to Kharkov. I decided to stay in college in Kinel. In June 1945 I passed my summer exams successfully and became a 4th-year student. I also finished the 4th year in Kinel and then the college moved to Kharkov. I studied my last year in Kharkov. I lived in the dormitory. Yekaterina and her husband supported me and gave me money. I corresponded with my school friend from Mogilyov-Podolskiy. She wrote me once that my mother, sister and brother were in the town. She gave me their address and I wrote them, though I could not believe they were alive. The day, when I got their response was the happiest day in my life. I couldn’t wait till I passed my graduate exams and could go to my family. After finishing the college I went to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My family knew that I was arriving and were waiting for me. This was a happy family reunion. We kept talking – we hadn’t seen each other for so long. They told me that German troops occupied Ozarintsy on the first days of the war, fenced the Jewish district and made a ghetto of it. Later Germans left leaving the ghetto in the command of Romanian troops. Endless numbers of Jews from Moldova and Bessarabia began to arrive at the ghetto. They were accommodated in local houses. There were 6 other families besides my parents in the house of my father’s parents. Moldovan Jews could only speak Yiddish. Inmates of the ghetto were not provided any food and had to find it themselves. Risking their lives they left the ghetto earn or buy some food for their families. Mama and my younger brother Boris went to Vendichany to buy sugar that they were selling in glasses in the ghetto to earn some money to buy corn flour, potatoes and salt. Once German guards chased after them. Mama and my brother managed to hide away and the Germans passed by without discovering them.  In spring 1942 the ghetto was struck by a horrible epidemic of typhus. All members of my family had it, but they survived, fortunately. After having the typhus Boris fell ill with the Botkin’s disease. He was taken to the village hospital. He recovered, but he had liver problems for the rest of his life. My father older brother Moishe’s wife and daughter and my mother brother Borukh’s wife died from typhus.

After the war

In summer 1942 Germans lined up all men over 15 years of age, took them to the field where they had a pt dug out and shot them all. Many of them were wounded, but they buried them alive.  Ukrainian villagers said the earth stirred for a while, as f people were trying to get out of there. My mother’s brother Borukh, the forester and my father’s older Moishe Katz perished in this hooting.  My father survived. He was wounded in his chest. When the Romanian and German guards moved farther away along the line shooting at the people he crawled away to the nearby corn field. When everything was over few people from Ozarintsy came to the shooting spot looking for survivors. My father called them and they took them back home in the ghetto. My father was bleeding and needed medical assistance. Those same people brought a doctor from the village, but he could not help my father: the bullet stuck too close to his heart. My father bled to death in his presence. The Romanian guards of the ghetto allowed to bury my father in the Jewish cemetery in Ozarintsy, but no Jewish ritual was allowed. We installed the gravestones on my father’s grave and on his parents’ graves after the war. Every year on the anniversary of his death we came to his grave. My brother recited Kaddish for my father, grandmother and grandfather. There were more mass shootings afterward: there were raids in the ghetto – the captives were taken to the suburb of the village and killed. In March 1943 the Soviet army liberated Ozarintsy. Many Ukrainians were helping Jews in the ghetto even risking their lives. There are many Righteous men in Ozarintsy. Many people owe their lives to them. There are no more Jews left in Ozarintsy, though. The survivors could stay in the place associated with such terrible memories no longer, but we all come to Ozarintsy on the anniversary of the mass shooting to go to the cemetery. The rabbi recites a prayer and relatives of the deceased recite the Kaddish after their dear ones.  

Mama stayed in the village with the children for some time. In spring 1945 they moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My sister and brother finished the 10-year Ukrainian general education school in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My sister went to work as a secretary in the music school. Lubov met her future husband Ilia Lozover in Ozarintsy. His family lived nearby. Ilia is few years older than my sister. He turned 18 at the beginning of the war and was regimented to the army. He was severely wounded and demobilized as an invalid of the war in autumn 1944. He returned home and entered the extramural accounting department of Vinnitsa Financial and Economic College. Ilia and my sister got married in Mogilyov-Podolskiy in 1947. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah. The rabbi from the synagogue of Mogilyov-Podolskiy conducted the wedding ceremony. Ilia went to work as chief accountant of Mogilyov-Podolskiy district consumer society. In 1948  their son Boris and in 1960 their daughter Svetlana were born. 

My brother Boris finished school with all excellent marks and entered Kiev Financial and Economic College. He lived in the dormitory and spent vacations in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Boris finished the college with honors and could choose a location for his job assignment. He decided for Mogilyov-Podolskiy. He was offered a job of an accountant at the agricultural machine building plant named after Kirov. Soon he was promoted to chief accountant of the plant. My brother was a convinced communist and joined the party at the plant. He married Regina Samoilova, a Jewish girl from Vinnitsa, in the late 1950s. He met her in Kiev. Regina studied in Kiev Medical College. She followed her husband to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, where she was a cardiologist in the local hospital. They had a secular wedding.  Their son Viacheslav was born in 1963. My brother died young, when he was a little over 40. His liver problems that he had after the Botkin disease that he had in the ghetto resulted in the cirrhosis. The plant management arranged for my brother to go to the best clinic in Moscow, but there was nothing the doctors could do to help my brother.  Boris died in 1974. The cemetery is on a hill in Mogilyov-Podolskiy and workers of the plant carried my brother’s casket on their shoulders taking turns the whole way up the hill. Everybody loved him. The funeral was secular. Regina never remarried. She moved to Perm town in Russia where she had relatives. She worked and raised her son. Viacheslav finished the Faculty of Economy and Law of Perm University. He works as senior credit inspector in a bank. Regina is chief of the cardiology department of the hospital for invalids of the war.

My mother observed Jewish traditions after the war. My sister, y brother or I did not observe traditions at our homes, but we celebrated Jewish holidays with mama and occasionally got together to celebrate Sabbath on Friday evening.

When I returned to Mogilyov-Podolskiy I went to teach at the agricultural courses.  I worked there for a year. I got along well with my colleagues and students. I faced no anti-Semitism. I got married in 1949. Our neighbor had a relative in Chernovtsy, regional town of Bukovina [650 km from Kiev] who was single. She told me about him. When he visited her, she introduced him to me. Somehow the wedding arrangements were expedited and I didn’t even have time to learn more about my husband. Later I understood why his family was in such hurry. I don’t want to talk about this period of my life. I don’t even want to pronounce the name of my first husband. He turned out to be mentally retarded, but nobody ever mentioned this to me before the wedding. We had a short civil ceremony in the registry office, a small dinner party for the closest relatives in the evening and left for Chernovtsy.  Bukovina was annexed to the USSR in 1940, and Chernovtsy seemed a real European town to me. It was a very cozy and clean town with wide streets. Chernovtsy was a Jewish town: before the war the Jewish population constituted about 60% of the total population. There were fewer left after the war: some perished and the others moved to Romania and Palestine. However, many Jews stayed: they spoke Yiddish in the streets, synagogues operated and there was a Jewish Theater. I went to all performances. I liked the surrounding of reserved, polite and well-dressed people. Jews often went to the theater and all performances were sold out.  There were also non-Jewish theater goers, though all performances were in Yiddish, of course, but non-Jews could understand and even speak Yiddish well. I went to work as an agronomist to the kolkhoz 18 in Novoselitsy village near Chernovtsy.  Commuted to work by bus. My husband and I lived several years together being absolute strangers to one another. I divorced him and the management of the kolkhoz submitted a solicitation to the executive committee 19 for providing lodging to me. I received a small room in a shared apartment 20. I was happy to have a place to live.

I think anti-Semitism developed after the period of struggle against cosmopolitans 21, and the ‘doctors’ plot’ 22. When the period of struggle against cosmopolitans began I did not give much thought to what was going on. I believed that those people were guilty like I believed everything the communist party was doing and never allowed one doubt about them. At that time the Jewish theater and school were closed. When in January 1953 the period of the ‘doctors’ plot’ began and the first article was published indicating the names of the doctors who wanted to poison Stalin, my first thought was that this was nonsense, but many people took it very seriously. People refused to go to Jewish doctors and later they began to say that Jews could not be trusted anyway. Anti-Semitism was growing stronger. Jews were abused in the streets just for being Jews, but this was done by newcomers from the USSR. I never tied what was happening to the name of Stalin. I never thought he could initiate it. There were talks about deportation of Jews to Siberia or the Far East. At that time I thought this to be an evil fib of somebody, but later I understood that Stalin’s death prevented this from happening. There was nothing monster could not do! When Stalin died on 5 March 1953 we all cried. Everybody loved him and could not imagine life without Stalin. When at the 20th Congress of the party 23 Khrushchev 24 spoke about Stalin’s crimes, I was horrified, but I believed what Khrushchev said at once. I knew about the tragic fate of Stalin’s son Yakov Djugashvili and I did not doubt that a man, who could do this to his own son [During the war Yakov Djugashvili, a private of the soviet army, was captured and Germans offered to exchange him for a German general. Stalin said to this: ‘we do not exchange privates for generals’. His son perished in captivity], could exterminate people who were smarter and better than he. Stalin killed his most honest and devoted comrades, dedicated communists like Trotskiy 25, Kamenev 26, Zinoviev 27 and many others. His goal was ultimate power and he walked toward it over dead bodies of those who opposed him. He also exterminated common people far from politics or struggle for power. I understood how crafty and cruel Stalin was. However, the crash of my belief in Stalin did not alter my belief in Lenin 28. I still believe Lenin to be a great personality and admire him.

I worked in Novoselitsy until 1959. Then I got an offer of the position of a scientific employee in the All-Union scientific research institute of potato farming, its affiliate in Chernovtsy, where I worked in the department of potato farming till 1983. The institute had its experimental fields where I spent much time. Farming is hard work, but I liked my job. I didn’t face any anti-Semitism. I got along well with my colleagues. We were like a family. We celebrated Soviet holidays and birthdays together. My colleagues were my friends and my family. I always spent my vacations in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. I stayed with my mother and saw my brother, sister and school friends every day.  

In 1976 my mother fell severely ill. My brother’s death struck her hard and her heart condition grew worse. My sister and her family looked after her. My mother died in 1977. I came to see her in Mogilyov-Podolskiy before she died. She was buried beside my brother’s grave in the Jewish cemetery in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Before she died mama asked us to bury her according to the Jewish tradition and we fulfilled her will. Older Jews, who knew all rules made all necessary arrangements. There was a rabbi from the prayer house at the funeral. 

In the 1970s  numbers of Jews began to move to Israel. Many of my acquaintances from Mogilyov-Podolskiy and Chernovtsy went there. I sympathized with those people. Every person must have the right to make his own choices. Of course, from the official point of view they were traitors, but common people thought different wishing them happiness and luck in their new life.  My mother’s sister Haya, her husband and their three daughters moved there. Haya and her husband have passed away, but their daughters and their families live in Israel. My colleague and friend moved to Israel. We corresponded before she left and we still correspond. Considering my health condition I am not going to move to Israel. My doctors said I should not change the climate. I would move there if it were not for this circumstance. I wish peace and calm came to Israel, this little beautiful country surrounded by enemies. 

I met my second husband Lev Gershenzon, his Jewish name is Leib, when I was on vacation in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. He was a teacher of chemistry at an evening school. Lev was born in 1914 in Shargorod town of Vinnitsa region [about 350 km from Kiev]. Shortly after Lev was born – before the revolution - his father Abram Gershenzon moved to USA. He didn’t have any contacts with his family. Lev was the youngest of all children. He had two older brothers: Moisey and Aron.  Lev’s mother died from typhus in 1918. Their relatives sent Moisey to a children’s home. Aron was raised in his uncle’s family and Lev was raised by his grandmother. Lev finished 8 forms of the 8-year Jewish general education school in Shargorod and went to Vinnintsa to continue his studies. He worked as a loader at the railway station during a day and in the evening he attended a rabfak school. He finished the rabfak with honors and was sent to the Chemical Faculty of Odessa University. He lived in the dormitory. To earn his living he unloaded railcars at night. Lev finished his college with honors and got a job assignment 29 to work as a teacher of chemistry and biology in the Jewish general education school in Chernivtsy Vinnitsa region [about 300 km from Kiev] where he married a local Jewish girl. In 1938 their daughter Sophia was born. My husband’s older brother Moisey lived in Shargorod where he worked as an electrician. He was married and had two children. Aron wanted to become a pilot. After finishing school he entered Kiev pilots’ school. When the war began, my husband’s brothers went to the front. Moisey was wounded in 1944. He was taken to a rear hospital. When he recovered he returned to the front line forces. He was in Czechoslovakia, when the war ended. When he returned he was a severely ill man. He never recovered completely from his wound. He died in 1946. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Shargorod. Aron was a military pilot. In 1943 he perished fulfilling his combat duty.

Lev and his family stayed in Chernivtsy. Soon after Chernivtsy was occupied Germans gathered all Jewish and Ukrainian communists, took them out of the village and ordered them to dig pits. When the pits were ready they buried people alive, left one young guard to watch the area and left. The villagers brought this guard gold and whatever valuables they managed to get to allow them to rescue any survivors. Some of those who were nearer to the surface, including Lev, survived. He could stay no longer in Chernivtsy for the fear of being reported to Germans and he left the village at night. Lev knew about the ghetto in Mogilyov-Podolskiy and thought he might go there to get lost among the people who did not know him. Some time later somebody reported on him that he was a communists. He was taken to interrogations where he was terribly beaten. It was fortunate for him that those were Romanians guarding the ghetto for Germans would have killed him for sure.  He was taken to hospital as if to get treatment after these beatings, but actually there were experiments conducted on its patients. It became known recently. My husband receives monthly compensation nowadays. The Soviet army liberated the ghetto in March 1943. Lev returned to Chernivtsy. His wife and daughter were in Chernivtsy and managed to survive. Lev went back to his work. The Jewish school of Chernivtsy was closed after the war in 1945. Lev and his family moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, where he went to work as a teacher of chemistry and biology in a Ukrainian general education and evening schools. Lev was highly valued at work. In 1947 his son Mikhail was born in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. In the late 1950s doctors discovered that his wife had cancer. She had a surgery, but it didn’t help. She died in 1960. His daughter entered the Faculty of physics and Mathematic of Vinnitsa University. Lev was raising his son. After finishing school Mikhail entered the Krasnodar Medical College in Russia. It was hard for Jews to enter colleges in Ukraine at that time, when anti-Semitism was growing stronger. When I met Lev, he lived alone. After finishing the Medical College his daughter got married. She and her husband moved to Balashikha town near Moscow. She worked as a doctor in a hospital and her husband was an engineer at a construction site. His son got married after finishing his college and stayed to live in Krasnodar.

I returned to Chernovtsy. Lev and I corresponded. When I came to Mogilyov on another vacation we got married. We were no young any more and we didn’t have a wedding party. We registered our marriage and had a small dinner in the evening. Our guests were my sister and he husband and my husband’s few friends.  I exchanged my room in Chernovtsy for lodging in Mogilyov-Podolskiy, and moved there in 1983. In Mogilyov-Podolskiy I went to work as a lab assistant at the quality assurance laboratory of the agricultural machine building plant and from there I retired in 1993. We didn’t celebrated Jewish holidays. We celebrated Soviet holidays at home: 1 May, 7 November 30 Soviet army Day 31, Victory Day 32, and New Year. We had guests at home and visited friends. My husband’s friends were his colleagues from school. His former students who remembered their teacher came to see him. Lev worked at school till 2002. He had turned over his retirement age, but he did not want to quit his job. In 2002 a car hit my husband. He had a craniocerebral trauma and he could work no longer. My sister and her family moved to USA in the early 1990s. They live in New York.  My sister and her husband are pensioners. Her son and daughter have their own families. They are doing very well. My sister sends me money and calls me. I am glad that she is well, but I would lie to have a close person nearby. My husband or I have no relatives in Mogilyov-Podolskiy.

At the beginning I felt indifferent about the perestroika 33, in the late 1980s initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev 34 Later, when enterprises were closing up and people started having financial problems, this indifference grew into aversion of what was going on. Perhaps, perestroika resulted in something good for some people, but we, older people, see no good in it. I still feel sorry about the breakup of the USSR that perestroika resulted in. I don’t think they had to destroy what the revolution created. It was a great and powerful state that cared about its citizens, while now we have a number of ‘independent’ states ruled by poverty and confusion. Common people want to be sure of tomorrow and need free medicine and education. There was no unemployment during the socialist period, but now, it seems, there are more unemployed than working people. Even those who have jobs have no stability. I don’t think this can last long. I think we should unite and restore the USSR. And I think this will happen in the near future.

The only positive thing in independent Ukraine seems to be the reviving Jewish life. A synagogue and a Sunday Jewish school for children opened in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. When Hesed 35 and the Jewish community started their activities, our life started improving. Hesed and the Jewish community help us to survive. Hesed provides food packages and the necessary medications. There are visiting nurses helping older people about the house. This is a great support and I don’t know how we could live without it. There are many Jewish newspapers and magazines issues. I read many of them and learn many interesting things from them. I used to take part in community life. There were good concerts of Jewish music and dances. People got together to celebrate Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Presently I cannot leave my husband for a long time and I cannot attend those events, but we can always have the care and attention we need. 

Glossary

Asia Matveyuk
Kherson
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: September 2003

Asia Matveyuk lives in a standard one-bedroom apartment in a big 9-storied apartment building of the late 1970s in a residential district of Kherson. This apartment is clean and full of light. There are many handmade articles in the apartment: made from bird feathers, ivory, embroidered articles and dolls – all of them Asia’s works. She says she inherited this talent for handcrafts from her mother. Asia is slim for her age. She wears a jeans dress, has colored and nicely done hair, manicure, and she looks young for her age. Before the interview Asia shows me a number of albums with greeting cards from her frontline friends from different towns and countries. She tells me that in the article dedicated to her military past she was called a ‘girl from a  legend’. When telling her story she changes and I can really see a young girl in her.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My family came from the south of Russia where in the Azov region, in Kherson and Nikolaev steppes  [present southeastern Ukraine, about 500 km from Kiev] during the rule of Catherine the Great 1 settlements of the minorities, so-called colonies were established on rich fertile lands. In the middle of the 18th century the tsarist government of Russia sent Polish, Greek and German minority groups to populate the areas that previously belonged to the cossacks 2, who were actually exterminated.  Later, in the middle of the 19th century, they deported Jews to this area. They took to farming.  My paternal and maternal relatives lived in one of such colonies in Novopoltavka Nikolaev region where the Jewish population was prevailing, but there were also Ukrainian and German residents. Jews mostly dealt in farming, but they didn’t forget about traditional Jewish occupation in crafts. There were tailors, shoemakers, glasscutters and carpenters in our colony providing their services to the population of the town. This colony was actually a big village consisting of a German, the largest Jewish and Ukrainian parts. The Jewish sector was in the central part of the village.  There was a synagogue in the Jewish neighborhood and there were churches in the German and Ukrainian parts.  Jewish colonists tried to educate their children. Boys attended cheder until they turned 13. They received traditional Jewish education. There was also a Ukrainian school in the colony. During the Soviet period Jewish children moved to bigger towns where they could get a higher education. 

I remember my paternal great grandfather, my grandmother Zisel’s father. His surname was Grinker, but I’ve forgotten his first name, unfortunately. My great grandfather was born in 1829 some place in Vinnitsa region [250 km from Kiev] and his family moved to the colony when he was just a boy. He was not tall, stout and had strong heavy fists. I knew him when he was a 100-year old man. He used to visit us on his way to or from the synagogue. He had a glass of wine groaning with pleasure; my father’s wine was the best in the village and my great grandfather was quite an expert being a farmer and winemaker like the majority of residents of Novopoltavka. My great grandfather always wore a cap, even sitting at table, and had his religious accessories in his bag: tallit, tefillin and books of prayers. My great grandfather was never ill and lived to the age of 105. He would have lived longer if it hadn’t been for the famine 3 in Ukraine in the early 1930s that destroyed his really athletic health.  He died in 1934. 

My great grandfather had many children, but I only know the family of my father mother Zisel’s older sister living in Nikolaev, but I don’t know her name or anything about her life. Grandmother Zisel, born in the 1870s, had no education and was a housewife that was customary for Jewish families.  Zisel married Zelman Leikind, my grandfather, a Jewish man from the colony who was a little older than my grandmother.  Zelman who was called ‘Alter’ (‘old, wise’ in Yiddish) in the village was a shoemaker, and he was a very poor shoemaker. He worked at home and I remember everything in my grandparents’ home smelling of glue and paints. There were two or three rooms in their house with wooden floors, and a kitchen with the ground floor. Before Jewish holidays my grandmother thoroughly washed this floor and applied light clay onto it. There were two stoves in the house: one heating the rooms, they started fire with straw and then added wood, and a Russian stove 4, that occupied probably one third of the kitchen. My grandmother cooked and kept food for Sabbath in it. The food was kept warm until Saturday. I spent my childhood years in my grandmother’s home and have vague childish memories about their life, therefore. However, I remember well that my grandfather Zelman always wore a kippah, and put on a cap or a straw hat to go out. Grandmother Zisel always had a kerchief covering her head. The family was poor, but they always baked fresh challah bread and made delicious dinner for Sabbath. Grandmother lit candles and the family celebrated Saturday.  They also celebrated all Jewish holidays. I remember that my grandmother washed and boiled her utensils and crockery in a big basin: she didn’t have special crockery for Pesach.  They bought matzah at the synagogue and had all required food on the table: bitter greeneries, potatoes, eggs, chicken leg, etc. Besides, there was sure to be gefilte fish and sweet pastries. My grandmother always baked little ‘Haman ear-shaped’ pies: hamantashen. They also celebrated Chanukkah and had doughnuts with jam made for it and lit candles in the chanukkiyah every day of eight days.  Unfortunately, I have fragmentary memories about Jewish traditions in my grandmother’s home since later my father, who was a village activist and communist, forbade me to attend religious holidays. 

My father Shoilik Leikind was the oldest of the children. The next after him was Arkadiy, born in 1900. Arkadiy perished during the Civil War 5 – Makhno bandits 6  killed him during a pogrom 7. At that time 120 people perished in Novopoltavka. They were buried in a common grave and later a monument was installed on the grave. People called this grave ‘120’.

My father’s sister Freida was about 4 years younger than my father. Freida was married to Yosif Minot, a local Jew. He was a loader. Freida and Yosif had two sons: Arkadiy, named after his uncle and another son whose name I don’t remember. Freida, Yosif and their younger son who was to turn 16 in the first year of the Great Patriotic War 8 perished along with other Jews of Novopoltavka. Fascists killed them. Their older son Arkadiy was taken to the army and this saved his life. He was at the front and was wounded. After the war he married Sopha, a Jewish girl, and they moved to Nikolaev. They didn’t have children. He still lives there.  

My father Shoilik Leikind, born in 1898, studied in cheder. Then he finished three or four grades of a Jewish school. Like many other residents of Novopoltavka he took to farming and winemaking.  They said my father was very strong and so was Arkadiy. They used to haul a wagon full of grain to the mill.  In 1915 my father and his friend Solomon Levi were taken to the czarist army.  They were to serve in cavalry and my father’s horse was also assigned to the army. During World War I my father was wounded in his shoulder. He returned a different person from the war: like many other representatives of poor Jewish families he got fond of revolutionary ideas and dreams about a better life and construction of a communist society.  I cannot say what particularly had this effect on my father: it might have been the communist propaganda thrust on soldiers. My father stopped going to the synagogue, joined Komsomol 9, and became the leader of the village poor.

My father was also thinking of marriage. He knew my mother since childhood and before going to the czarist army he got her acceptance of his proposal to get married. However, their parents didn’t give their consent to this marriage. My mother was not the oldest daughter in the family and had to wait until her older sister got married.

My mother’s father Solomon Levit, born in the 1870s, was a farmer. I hardly know anything about my grandmother Zelda. I didn’t know her. She died of cholera in 1921. Since them my grandfather Solomon lived in one of his children’s families. My grandfather was religious. He went to the synagogue in Novopoltavka every day, observed the fast, prayed every day and celebrated Jewish holidays. He moved to Lugansk [650 km from Kiev] with his daughters and living there he also tried to observe kashrut and celebrate Saturday.  

Besides my mother, there were 6 daughters and one son in the family. The oldest was my mother’s brother Abram Levit, born in 1895. He also grew grain and grapes. He married Etl, a Jewish girl from the neighboring town of Novy Bug. The first babies in the family were two boys: Tulia and Ruvim, and there was another boy, whose name I don’t remember. In the late 1920s two twin girls were born. Only one of them grew to her adulthood. Her name was Anna. Another girl died in an accident when she was a baby.  Father Etl was smoking near the baby and dropped ash onto the baby’s diapers. When he understood what happened and rushed to put down the flames the baby got burnt and died. It was a terrible trauma for Abram and his wife, but father Etl suffered most of all. Two years later the family moved to Moscow escaping from famine. Father Etl was a breadwinner of the family at first: he worked as a janitor and was selling some little things until Abram got a job at a plant. During the Great Patriotic War Abram served in the Territorial Army [editor’s note: People’s volunteer corps during World War II; its soldiers patrolled towns, dug trenches and kept an eye on buildings during night bombing raids. Students often volunteered for these fighting battalions] near Moscow and Abram’s sons were at the front, but the rest of the family stayed in Moscow. Only Ruvim survived in the war. He lives in Moscow now. Anna died in a tram accident in the early 1950s. Abram and Etl died in Moscow in the 1990s and were buried in a town cemetery, on the Jewish part. 

The next child in my mother’s family was her older sister Rokhel-Leika, born in 1896. She was ugly and squint-eyed and nobody wanted to marry her and this delayed my mother’s marriage. My father convinced his distant maternal relative Abram Grinker, who was a shoemaker, to propose a marriage to Rokhel-Leika, who was going to have a sufficient dowry. They got married and their marriage worked well, but regretfully, it didn’t last long. Rokhel-Leika died of cancer in the late 1920s. They had two daughters. Abram remarried. His second wife also had two children. Abram died in Kirov [today Russia] where he and his daughter Zelda were in evacuation during the Great Patriotic War. His second daughter died during a bombing raid on the way to Kirov. Zelda married a Russian man. She lives in Lvov. We hardly ever communicate. We only occasionally greet each other on holidays.

The rest of my mother’s sisters were younger than her. In 1900 Maria was born, then came Feiga, born in 1903, then Etah (she was called Katia for some reason) was born, and in 1910 Zisl (called Zhenia in the family). Maria and Feiga married Jewish brothers Sakhnins from Novy Bug. Grigoriy, an older brother, married Maria, and Leonid, the younger one, married Feiga. They lived in Novopoltavka before 1932. When famine began in 1932, they went to work in the mines and settled down in Lugansk.  In 1933 Zisl married her sisters’ friend, Grisha Lein from Lugansk, and moved to Lugansk like her sisters. Etah married Yosif Berman,. A Jewish man from Novopoltavka, and they also moved to Lugansk. All my aunts had traditional weddings, but I only remember Etah and Yosif’s wedding.  The bride and bridegroom were taken to the synagogue separately and I was amazed that the bride was crying. Somebody explained to me that it was a ritual. The bride and bridegroom were standing under a chuppah at the synagogue where a marriage contract was executed. Then there was a party with wine and sweet dishes on the table. On the second day the party continued, and there was gefilte fish, meat and chicken on the table. Everybody enjoyed the party and it was a lot of fun. We, children, danced in a common circle. After the wedding Etah and Yosif registered their marriage in the registry office. I think my other aunts’ weddings were alike. My aunts and their families lived in Lugansk until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Maria, Feiga and Etah worked  in a printing house, and Zisl became a hairdresser. Maria had three children: Rosa, Arkadiy and another son, whose name I don’t remember. Feiga had two children: Raya and another girl, Etah had daughter Maya, born shortly before the war, and Zisl had son Pavlik, born in 1937, and a girl, born in 1940.  During the Great Patriotic War my mother sisters’ husbands were at the front. Leonid perished during the defense of Kiev, and Etah’s husband Yosif also perished. Grigoriy Sakhnin and Grigoriy Lein became invalids during the war. They died in the 1950s. The sisters were in evacuation in Karaganda [today Kazakhstan] and then in Tashkent [today Uzbekistan].  Maria’s son didn’t return from the war, and Zisl and Feiga’s daughters died in evacuation.  Maria and her children Rosa and Arkadiy emigrated to Israel in the 1970s where Maria died at the age of 95. Maya lives in Lugansk now. She finished a college after the war and worked as a teacher till she retired.  She was single. Etah died in the 1980s, and Feiga died in the 1990s. Zisl died in the early 1960s. She never recovered after her son Pavlik died tragically.  Pavlik perished in 1954, during a training flight in an aviation military school.

My mother Ethel Levit was born in 1898. She was raised religious and studied at home with a melamed. She also finished three years in a Jewish school. My mother’s family was wealthier than my father’s. Her father bought her a Singer sewing machine, and my mother learned to sew well. She was born a beauty and had a talent of modeling and making beautiful outfits. She was a success with her clients.  In due time my mother began to make clothes for Nikolaev actors. She made special and unique clothes. She went to Nikolaev for a few weeks to do her job once in three-four months. 

My parents got married in 1918, shortly after Rokhel-Leika’s wedding. Although my father wasn’t religious any longer and spoke against any religious traditions, to be able to marry his beloved girl he had to observe all Jewish religious wedding traditions. They had a chuppah at the synagogue according to the rules. However, there was no big wedding party since it was a hard period of life shortly after the revolution 10, the power shuffled from one group to another resulting in destitution, pogroms and  hunger.

Growing up

I was born in March 1919. I was named Asia for the first letter in my name was the same as in the name of my father’s brother Arkadiy who had perished during a pogrom. Two years later my younger brother Tulia was born. In 1924 my mother got pregnant again, but she had an abortion made in the Red Cross hospital in Nikolaev. The abortion didn’t go well and my mother got some infection. She was brought home severely ill and having a brain inflammation. I remember her crying of pain, and everybody around crying of sympathy and sorrow. This happened in January 1924. I remember somebody baking a few apples for my mother. Our neighbor brought them. I remember how I burst into tears because they gave those apples to my mother and I didn’t quite understand what was going on around. My mother was taken to a hospital in Nikolaev where she died. My father gave some money to an attendant in the morgue to take my mother away from there without autopsy that was not allowed by Jewish laws. Our relatives blamed my father that he allowed my mother to have this abortion forbidden by the Jewish religion. Grandfather Solomon didn’t even want to talk to my father for many years. My brother and I stayed with my paternal grandfather and grandmother during the funeral. All I know is that my mother died approximately at the same time as Lenin 11, and there were no funerals allowed due to the mourning period after Lenin. My family had to wait a few days to bury my mother’s body.

My brother and I lived with grandmother Zisel and grandfather Zelman for a whole year. They were very kind people and loved us a lot. I liked Friday most of all, when my grandmother prepared the house for Sabbath washing and polishing the floors, covering the tables with clean tablecloths, and we were washed and dressed up. On Saturday my grandmother and grandfather went to the synagogue and took me with them. The synagogue was big and beautiful and seemed like a palace to me.  I was sitting with my grandmother on the gallery of the second floor with all other women and watching around. My father didn’t like it that my grandmother took me to the synagogue and often argued with her. A year later my father married my grandmother’s niece Freida. Her father Ruvim Grinker was grandmother Zisel’s stepbrother. Freida’s first husband Abram Girshel’ died. She had a son named Samuel. He was the same age with me. My father and Freida registered their marriage in 1925. They didn’t have a Jewish wedding. We moved in with Freida with our father. Freida’s father Ruvim was a tailor and earned well. Freida’s mother Mindel was a very kind and nice woman. Freida had two brothers: Boris and his wife Ida and Mendel and his wife Khasia. I only saw them once, when we went to be photographed in Nikolaev. The brothers perished during the Great Patriotic War. I have no more information about their wives. The big stone house had five rooms and a big kitchen. Later they leased a part of the house and we stayed in two rooms. There was no electricity and food was cooked in a Russian stove.

In 1927 Freida gave birth to a girl named Braina after Freida’s deceased mother. Freida was a kind and nice woman and never distinguished between her own children and her stepchildren and I began to call her ‘mama’. Freida was raised in a religious family, but my father forbade her to observe Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays. He became particularly strict about it after he became a communist in 1927. There was no celebration of Sabbath in our family, and I used to run to grandmother Zisel’s secretly to meet Saturday. If my father got to know about it, there was sure to be a scandal with me, Freida and grandmother. Once my father was almost expelled from the party because my grandmother and grandfather attended the synagogue. He ordered them to stop doing that, but my grandmother continued lighting candles on Friday and praying, though authorities declared a ruthless war to any religion 12. In the early 1930s this issue was resolved. The synagogue was closed and the building housed a 10-year school.

I went to the Jewish 7-year school in 1926. Actually, it was a merge of the Jewish and Ukrainian 7-year schools: we had many common classes since there were not so many children in the town and Ukrainian and Jewish children spoke two languages fluently. We spoke Yiddish at home and Ukrainian and Yiddish to our friends. There was no anti-Semitism. We liked strolling in the Jewish, Ukrainian and German parts of our village. I had Jewish, Ukrainian and German friends. My friend Martha taught me German. I became a pioneer and then joined Komsomol at school. We liked parades on Soviet holidays. There were parties and meetings at school. We celebrated 7 November 13 and 1 May at home.

In the early 1930s collectivization 14 took place in our village under my father’s supervision. There was a Jewish kolkhoz 15 established. It was named ‘120’ after 120 Jews who perished during the Civil War. My father became chairman of the village council. People liked my father and called him with the Russian name of Sasha converted from his Jewish name of Shoilik. My father was a charming, handsome and very strong man. There were strolling circus wrestlers at the time traveling from one town to another and when they came to Novopoltavka, the villagers asked my father to wrestle with them. I remember a famous wrestler, huge, with his boots unpicked in the seams on his fat legs, came to the village. My father looked thin and short compared to him. My father grabbed him by his belt and threw him to the ground. The wrestler rose to his feet and shook my father’s hand acknowledging his victory. Then some circus representatives came trying to convince my father to become a professional wrestler, but Freida was whining begging my father to refuse and never again take part in wrestling.

In the early 1930s an accident happened. My brother Tulia was a very advanced boy for his age. He was even a genius. He solved mathematic problems for senior boys and old men were even saying that a boy with such talents hardly had many years of life ahead of him. There was this prejudice in the old times. Tulia, besides his passion to sciences, had another passion: horses. Tulia adored horseback riding. In August 1931 during harvesting Tulia and his friend were helping my father hauling grain to the elevator. Tulia gave the reigns to his friend who failed and the horses dashed off. They were crossing a bridge and Tulia fell from the wagon and hit his temple. My father drove him to the hospital, but my brother died in his arms on the way there.

My father couldn’t recover for a long time. Then another accident happened to our family. In 1932 authorities were taking away grains from farmers and denouncing the kulaks 16. My father was kind to people and couldn’t take away what they had earned working so hard. One summer night in 1932 NKVD 17 officer came for him. They turned the house upside down: there was a search and they found a bag of grain that they had put there themselves.  My father was arrested and taken to prison in Nikolaev. 36 people were arrested in Novopoltavka then. My father was charged of sabotage and wreckage of the plan of state grain procurement plan and he was to be sentenced to a long-term imprisonment. In autumn the famine broke out. People were swollen from hunger and were dying in the streets. We were also starving: my great grandfather, grandmother Zisel’s father, and my grandmother Zelman starved to death. We were picking herbs and spikes in the field and my mother made some kind of flat cookies from them. My father got some bread in prison. He dried it and sent us a bag of dried bread from prison. My father was imprisoned for almost a year and a half. Mother Freida, a common Jewish woman, realized that she had to rescue him. She took whatever miserable savings she had and went to Kharkov that was the capital of Ukraine at the time. She was away for almost a month. She told us that she had an appointment in the Party Central Committee. I don’t know whether it was for this reason or because Yezhov 18 was appointed Minister of the state security, my father’s case was reviewed and he was released. He resumed all his rights and his Party membership. He became chairman of the village council again.

He returned in spring 1934. In summer I finished school and my parents sent me to my mother’s sisters in Lugansk to continue my education. I was drawn to medicine since childhood and I could watch pharmacists making medications in the pharmacy across the street from our house for hours. I entered a Medical School in Lugansk. I lived in a hostel. My aunts’ husbands, particularly, the Sakhnin men, were very mean and didn’t allow my aunts to support me. I tried to visit my aunts when their husbands were away from home. I often visited aunt Maria with whom grandfather Solomon lived. My grandfather saved some change to my visits: he saved the change when they sent him to buy bread and gave this money to me in secret in the hallway so that nobody saw him. Aunt Zisl also came to see me bringing something to eat. My aunt Etah supported me most of all.  However, regardless of this help or a meal with my relatives once a week I was starving and got very thin by the summer of 1935 and fell ill. At that time I was having training in Debaltsevo, a miners’ town. There was an accident in a mine and seeing many dead bodies and blood I had a nervous breakdown. My father came there and took me back to Novopoltavka.

The famine was over and life was improving in our village. The people were joyful and the village looked revived. There was a new club building constructed in the center of the village where young people from the whole colony got together in the evening to dance and socialize. Many young people from our colony were studying in colleges in Odessa, Nikolaev and Kherson. They came to the village on vacation that summer. We danced, listened to the radio and watched movies. I spent in Novopoltavka almost a whole year till my health condition improved. When I returned to Lugansk, I went to study at the Pharmaceutical Faculty remembering my hobby when a child. Of all children, only Braina was at home. Freida’s son Samuel was recruited to the army.

After finishing my school I got a job assignment 19 to Nikolaev. I left Lugansk and never saw my grandfather Solomon again. In 1940 he left home and got lost. He had severe old age sclerosis. He was never found. Most likely he died somewhere on the road. 

I went to work as a pharmacist and also worked part-as an attendant in the hospital to earn more money. I lived with my distant relatives on my grandmother’s side. I dwelled behind a curtain in the kitchen and was dreaming of getting a room of my own. To stay away from this corner I often worked night shifts in the pharmacy and studied. In 1939 I entered the extramural department of Pharmaceutical College and became subject to military service like all other medical employees. I had exams twice a year and received all excellent marks for my studies. Here in Nikolaev I met my first love Mikhail Kantor, a Jew. He studied in the Shipbuilding College. We met, went for walks in the town and visited my family in Novopoltavka dreaming about our future. In 1939 I was appointed director of the pharmacy in Peresadovka village of Nikolaev region. I rented a room from a local Jewish family.  In summer 1940 Mikhail finished his college and got a job assignment to a military shipbuilding plant in the Far East in Vladivostok, in 7000 km from home. He proposed to me. When I told my father about it he forbade me to get married. He said I had to finish my college first. I couldn’t argue with my father. I understood that he was right. Mikhail left for his work and wrote letters full of love to me. In 1940 I was mobilized to the army during the Finnish War 20. We received uniforms: sheepskin jackets and valenki [warm Russian felt boots] and went to Leningrad by train. When we arrived it was announced that the war was over. It lasted 6 months. We gave back our uniforms and returned home.

During the war

In April 1941 Mikhail came on vacation. He brought me a luxurious wedding gown and we began to prepare to the wedding. Peresadovka was not far from Novopoltavka. I often went home and Mikhail came to see me there. Our wedding was appointed for 22 June 1941. We were to have a civil ceremony and go to my family in Novopoltavka where everything was ready for the wedding. On 22 June we heard that the Great Patriotic War began. I went to my father in Novopoltavka immediately. My Dad again forbade me to get married. He thought that this war was going to be no longer than the Finnish campaign and said it was not convenient time for getting married and that I had to wait until the war was over, particularly that there was not much of waiting whatsoever: no longer than 6 months.  And I missed my love for the second time. Mikhail left. I packed my wedding gown into a box and returned to Peresadovka.

I went on working. I received lots of medications in the pharmacy department. My father volunteered to the army in early July 1941. On 7 August retreating Red army troops were moving through Peresadovka.  I was enlisted into a field engineering brigade. I came to Nikolaev with this brigade. I submitted the poisons and cash, about three thousand rubles that I had to the pharmacy department. They accepted the cash and disposed of the poisons in the toilet. From this day of 7 August 1941 my army service began. I didn’t have time to say good bye to my grandmother Zisel, mother Freida  and sister Braina.

In this engineering brigade I was chief of the so-called sanitary unit consisting of me, a sanitary bag, a gas mask, a small-caliber rifle and a sanitary cart. I also acted as a pharmacy supervisor. We were retreating and somewhere near Krivoy Rog Germans actually exterminated our field engineering brigade. The remaining part of the brigade with slightly and severely wounded soldiers was retreating across the burning steppe. We covered about 70 km from Pervomaysk to Dnepropetrovsk hiding from the enemy’s aircraft in the fields of wheat. We often found burnt bodies after air raids. Where did this fear that I felt at the mine disappear? I dragged the wounded, applied bandages and helped them as much as I could. So we reached Dnepropetrovsk where the sanitary department of the 4th Ukrainian Front was located. I was burnt when I came to Dnepropetrovsk: even my skin was peeling off my face. We were sent to take the wounded into a sanitary train heading to Pavlograd. As soon as we loaded them in the train it was bombed down. We went to make rafts for the wounded on the Dnieper and the enemy’s aircraft were firing at us. God was just guarding me. I was sent to Lugansk from Dnepropetrovsk. My aunts were still in Lugansk. They were to evacuate. I helped them to board a train taking advantage of my officer’s status. I was appointed chief of the chemical department of the pharmacy headquarters. It evacuated to Kuibyshev [present Samara, Russia, 1400 km from Kiev]. Sanitary headquarters of the Red Army was in Kuibyshev. 

Some time in late September 1941 we arrived in Kuibyshev. Chief of the sanitary headquarters offered me to enter the Medical Academy in Kuibyshev, but, being raised as a patriot, I was eager to go to the front. I knew that my division was in the process of remanning in Novosibirsk and I managed to obtain permission to go there. This process of remanning of our Red Banner Division #235 lasted from November 1941 till March 1942. On my birthday on 20 March 1942 we moved on to the North-Western front by train. Our division deployed near Kulotino village holding defense from an SS division. We were there about 10 months and there was combat action through this whole period. I served in the sanitary unit and was chief of the pharmacy of the regiment.  I slept in an earth hut, under one overcoat with Anechka Shulginova. I was young, slim and even pretty. Few times I received unequivocal proposals from officers to share their bed and become their combat girlfriend, as it was called then, but I took an oath to preserve my virginity and youth for Mikhail. They backed off gradually, but they treated me with respect and care and called me a ‘fiancée’. Only one sergeant said with an ironical smile once: ‘Don’t touch Asia, she is keeping herself safe for Abram’ [Jewish names were targets of mockery, vulgar jokes and often exclusion at the time], and I slept him on the face instantly. This was the only demonstration of anti-Semitism that I faced. I need to mention here that this guy got a good telling off from other officers and never offended me again.  

I corresponded with my father. He was commanding officer of a mine firing company and was severely wounded in combat action near Stalingrad [present Volgograd, today Russia]. He had gangrene of his leg, but his doctors managed to save his leg. My father spent in hospital six months and then he left for Begovat town in Tashkent region where many residents of Novopoltavka were in evacuation. Mikhail found me via my father and we began to correspond. He wrote me about his love and our wonderful future and begged me to take care of myself. Mikhail was a military representative at his shipyard. He was a very good specialist and they didn’t let him go to the front. My father sent me his photograph in the hospital.

We had sufficient food at the front. It was plain food: a bowl of soup and boiled cereals, but there was enough of it in a meal. Before combat actions soldiers received 100 grams of vodka and every day in winter for keeping warm. 

We shared duties at the front: I went with assistant doctors and sanitary attendants to pick the wounded at the front line. Our regiment got an important task to capture a prisoner for interrogation. The regiment often went to get combat intelligence and my task was to prepare everything necessary for 400 wounded.  I loaded everything necessary on a horseback and rode the horse to haul the load to its destination. I mobilized a field hospital and received the wounded, cleaned their wounds and applied bandages and sometimes I closed their eyes and heard their final sighs.

I was elected secretary of the Komsomol unit of the company. I was preparing to join the Party and got a Party task: I became an agitator for German troops. Here I could make a good use of those German lessons that my friend Martha gave me. I was in a vehicle with a loudspeaker where I was reading my announcements in German calling soldiers to drop their weapons and voluntarily come to our side. I spoke about their wives and children waiting for them in Germany. However, I did not usually manage to pronounce this part of my speech: there was a squall of firing falling onto the vehicle and I had to retreat. Once I was too late to retreat and a stray bullet wounded my leg. I had this bullet removed and my wound bandaged and continued my performance on my combat post.  When our interpreter perished I took up his functions. Once our intelligence group managed to capture a prisoner for interrogation. They were dragging him in the snow for several hours and his legs were frost bitten that resulted in the gangrene. This German was big and strong and he didn’t allow anybody to approach him, and there was no question of interrogating him, but saving his life to be able to get some information from him. My fellow comrades addressed me: ‘Asia, only you can help!’ I came to the earth hut where the prisoner was. He was surprised to see me: a girl, lieutenant! His legs were black already. I sat beside him and started talking: that I liked Germans, that they were wonderful and cultured people, that they were not to blame and that soon Hitler would be done with. This German screamed: ‘Nein kaputt!’ I talked to him for a long time asking about his wife and children. He finally allowed me to treat his wounds, I made an injection of morphine and he calmed down and kissed my hand. I managed to get valuable information from him necessary for our further advance.  Then the German was taken away, my headquarters sent a truck to drive me to the office where I reported what this German told me. They praised and greeted me on my success and made an entry in my officer’s record book about an award ‘For valor!’

The conditions in our area of the frontline were very bad. It happened so that soldiers didn’t get washed through a whole winter being in trenches all the time. One of our routinely tasks was fighting lice. Ania and I went to examine our soldiers in trenches.  We took soldiers’ overcoats and underwear throwing them into the snow: it became black with lice. We shook them out till they were clean.  We treated soldiers with special soap. Once in late November 1942 Ania and I were busy with our inspection. At that time General Gorokhov, member of the Military Council arrived to do inspection and saw us shaking out the overcoats. I reported to him according to the procedure: how many patients we had and how many were sent to hospital. I told him my name and military rank. He asked me more questions and when he heard that I had been taken to the front from the second year of Pharmaceutical College, he got angry: ‘We need specialists, and she is fighting lice here’. He said this in a joking manner, but he was angry. A month later I was sent to the 28th Guard Division that had recently escaped from encirclement. Chief of medical logistics of the division had perished and I replaced him. This was a major’s position and I was promoted to senior lieutenant.  

I went across Ukraine with this division. We liberated a number of towns in the south and east, Moldavia, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. Our unit was a rear unit of the frontline following the regiment. We got under firing and bombings, but the Lord guarded me. I might have perished many times, and I remained safe just by chance. I remember one incident. I was going to the medical unit to get medications and, as usual, there were a few wounded put into my cart.  Once I was riding holding the head of a severely wounded soldier, when another air raid began. Somebody screamed calling for me and I rushed from where I heard the call. When I returned, there was no cart or my wounded patient: a bomb had hit my cart.

In early March 1943 our division liberated Krivoy Rog. There was to be a big concert on 8 March, International Women’s Day, and I, being a member of the Party, was to speak in front of our women to raise their spirits telling them about our victories and the nearing victory over fascism. But the most important event that I was looking forward to, was award of a medal ‘For valor’ [Established October 17, 1938. The medal was awarded for personal courage and valor in the defense of the Homeland and the execution of military duty involving a risk to life]. The meeting had just started, when all medical staff was urgently called to leave. It turned out that our officers decided to celebrate 8 March with our laundry girls and drank liquor from the container with the inscription ‘Alcohol’ on it that Germans had left behind.  It turned out that it contained waste braking fluid. They were delivered to the sanitary unit for severe poisoning. We kept fighting to save their lives, but they all died except one girl, who drank a little. Regretfully, there were many such cases during the war: fascists used to leave food and alcohol on tables, and our soldiers and officers couldn’t resist the temptation to eat and drink, though there were numerous warnings against it. There were many deaths caused by poisoning, and they were particularly frequent in Poland and Germany. My cousin brother Tulia from Moscow, my uncle Abram’s son, died the same death. On 9 May he came to a basement with his intelligence company in a town near Berlin. There were tables set there and they sat at a table. None of them left the tables: the whole company died. And their parents received letters that the cause of their sons’ deaths was their lack of discipline. This accident in Krivoy Rog was my first and last case of this kind. Of course, I received my medal, but it wasn’t as ceremonious as I expected.  There were other cases when our soldiers and officers fell victims of their own lack of discipline and laxity.  They were young and often had affairs with women in the towns they liberated.  Those women were often ill and our guys contracted infections. When we were liberating Bessarabia 21, they had contacts with nuns who had venereal diseases, all of them. Our warriors also fell ill and it took us a long time to bring them to recovery.

In spring 1944 our division was moving across the south of Ukraine, near the area where I lived. When we came to Novy Bug I asked commander of the division to let me go to Novopoltavka. Of course, I knew about thousands of Jews who perished on the occupied territory, but I still had hoped that my dear ones managed to survive. It was pouring with rain and the ground roads were muddy. I had a motorbike with a soldier to drive it and an officer to accompany me. When we arrived at Novopoltavka and its residents heard that Sasha’s daughter was there and she was a military they rushed to see me. The Ukrainian residents of our colony, who witnessed this horrific tragedy, told me the terrible news: all of my dear ones, 16 of them, had perished and their death was terrible. The wife of my stepmother’s cousin brother Anna Sabryuk, Ukrainian, told me the story, sobbing. She was hiding her husband underneath the floor for over a year before Germans found and executed him.  My family failed to evacuate. They departed on a cart, but it was too late. Fascists ordered them to go back home.  Mother Freida broke her leg getting under a wheel. When fascists came to the village somebody spread a rumor that they had seen my father. Fascists captured 356 hostages telling people to find my father. Grandmother Zisel came to tell them that her son, my father, was in the army. She begged fascists to let go of the hostages. They released the hostages, but they buried my grandmother alive right there. Fascists raped all young girls who came to the village on vacation: Manya Yankelevich, Nastia. They taunted them and made them walk across the village. They raped my sister Braina who had just finished the 8th form in 1941 before mother Freida’s eyes. They beat the girls to death.  My stepmother lost her mind. Fascists locked her in the basement of the village shop where she died. They tied ropes around her dead body and dragged her across the village. The rest of Jews were taken to the outskirt of the village where they were ordered to dig two pits. They shot and threw children into one pit and adults – into another. My father’s sister Freida and her family, grandmother Mindel and grandfather Ruvim perished there. My co-villagers took spades and rakes and went to these graves. There were still hands or heads exposed sticking out of the pits. They backfilled the graves under the command of an officer. I also heard about my friends. One of them Emma, German, followed her Jewish husband when he was captured. They fell into a grave holding hands. Martha, who taught me German, worked in the German commandant office. She left the village with Germans.   

When I returned to my unit, they understood that something terrible had happened. They told me later that I looked black from grief. Later my father wrote me that he had known about what happened, but kept it a secret from me.  Samuel who was in the army since 1938 and was on the same front as I, also knew about it.  

After the war

The war was over, when I was in the Bulgarian town of Yambol near Sophia. We came there in the end of 1944. We were accommodated in the houses and I must say that Bulgarians greeted us happily and sincerely. I made friends with my landlady. I even have a photo where I was photographed wearing her suit that I borrowed. I was so tired of wearing my boots and soldier’s shirt, but I had to wear them for a year after the victory. Our division stayed in Bulgaria until January 1946. I was responsible for medical supplies, and they didn’t demobilize me.

At that time Vasiliy Matveyuk, a military doctor, began to court me. Vasiliy is Ukrainian, but nationality didn’t matter to me. Vasiliy was born in Chernorutka village of Fastov district Kiev region in 1914. Before the war he finished a Medical College and became a military doctor in the army.  Vasiliy was single and was very kind and nice to me. He was telling me to marry him, but I was going to marry Mikhail. I liked Vasiliy, too, but I made no promises to him. In summer 1945 I got a leave and went to visit my father in Ukraine who resumed his position of chairman of the village council in Novopoltavka. I was going through Kiev and Vasiliy asked me to take a parcel to his mother and sister. In Kiev I left my luggage in a military registry office and took a local train to deliver the parcel to Vasiliy’s family.  I was to get to the station and then walk to the village across the forest. I was wearing my fancy officer uniform with the straps of senior lieutenant.  My co-passenger, a Ukrainian woman, was looking at me and then she started a conversation. When I told her where I was going, she began telling me to go back. She said there was a Ukrainian nationalistic gang in the forest and they were killing Soviet officers.  The woman said that a few days ago they had killed a village teacher and that I wasn’t going to make it safe when they saw my uniform and medal on my chest. Then another woman joined her and they literally pushed me out of the train. I returned to Kiev and from there I went to visit my father. Is stayed with him for about a month. We mourned after our dear ones. My father asked my advice about Zhenia, our neighbor, whose husband perished during the Great Patriotic War. He wanted to marry her. I understood that my father would have a hard life alone and encouraged his intentions. Then Freida’s son Samuel Girshel returned to Novopoltavka. He stayed to serve in the army. During his leave he married Dora Kogan, a local Jewish girl.  My father often went to the grave and in 1947 he installed a monument there on contributions of the villagers. The former villagers came to visit the grave in Novopoltavka from Odessa 22, Kiev, Moscow, Israel and America, but it happened later.

When I returned to my unit with the parcel, Vasiliy felt hurt that I hadn’t delivered it to his family and stopped talking to me. I even sighed with relief. Some time later he received a letter from his sister where she warned him to send nobody to them since there was a gang in the village. Vasiliy fell to his knees before me asking my pardon. Again I had to choose between Mikhail and Vasiliy.  In January 1946 our unit relocated to Odessa. My service continued for some time. Vasiliy insisted on marrying me and Mikhail kept writing that he was dreaming about our wedding. I don’t know what affected my choice: whether it was a saying ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, or my subconscious desire to rid my children from what the Jewish people and my family had to live through, but I married Vasiliy. I wrote Mikhail that his friend told me that he had an affair in Vladivostok.  Of course, it was mere lying, but it was easier for me to refuse in this manner. 

I introduced my father to Vasiliy and he liked him instantly. On 21 January we went to the district registry office in Odessa, but they didn’t register us since it was a day of the mourning: an anniversary of Lenin’s death. We had a civil ceremony on 23 January  and arranged a small wedding party at Galina Filatova, my landlady’s apartment.  Vasiliy was a very kind and caring man. He loved me dearly and called ‘mummy, my little sun and kitten’.  My husband’s mother and his sister Yevdokia treated me like their own kind, and Vasiliy’s father, a farmer, found much in common with my father.  

I demobilized and Vasiliy continued his service. And… like all military we began to move from one harrison to another. We didn’t have a place of our own, we didn’t even have a kettle, everything we had was military property with inventory numbers.  In 1947 our first daughter Galina was born in Odessa. In 1948 Vasiliy went on service to Germany and I stayed in the USSR with my baby. Vasiliy served there for two years and I rented a room in Nikolaev. I was director of a pharmacy. Vasiliy came on vacation every 6 months and two years later after he returned he entered the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad. We lived there for few years and Vasiliy got a rare and sensitive profession of a microbiologist. This period was one of the very sad periods in the Jewish history: struggle against cosmopolitism 23, anti-Semitic campaigns, the ‘doctors’ plot’ 24. I must say, we hardly ever discussed this subject in our family and I didn’t face any prejudiced attitudes at work. Only when we mentioned doctors poisoners, my husband said he thought it was anti-Semitic propaganda and he didn’t believe what newspapers wrote. The death of Stalin in 1953 was for us like for many other Soviet people. We were crying and thinking what was going to be ahead of us!

Later we lived in Riga [today Latvia], Kaliningrad [today Russia] where in 1954 my daughter Natalia was born. In 1957 my husband got an assignment to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy in the Far East, in 7500 km from Kiev and we arrived in Vladivostok where we were supposed to stay few days to obtain documents.  I knew that Mikhail was still working there and remembered his address. And I said: ‘Vasiliy, let me find Mikhail: he used to be my best friend and my fellow countryman!’ And my husband replied: ‘Of course, go ahead!’ I went to see Mikhail who had been married for three years. His mother-in-law opened the door and suspected something. Mikhail lost his breath when he saw me. Lydia, his wife, understood instantly who I was. She kissed me and invited me to come with Vasiliy and the children. She began cooking a dinner and Mikhail and I sat in his car to go pick my husband and children. His mother-in-law, though, came along with us and didn’t take her eyes off me, but Mikhail left her near a store. And then… He told me to sit beside him kissing me and crying. And I was sobbing in his arms. But…We were grown up and responsible people! I calmed down and Vasiliy, the children and I moved to Vasiliy’s home to stay a few days with them. Once I overheard their discussion when Mikhail was telling Vasiliy how much he loved me and how good I was and asked him to care for me.  And my husband told him about his love for me and they became friends. We left for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy and corresponded with Mikhail and Lydia for several years. Then our correspondence gradually ended: I decided for it since I still loved Mikhail, but I couldn’t leave Vasiliy or destroy Mikhail’s family. In Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy I also worked in a pharmacy. We were given a one-bedroom apartment. Our children went to a nursery school and kindergarten. We often got together with other officers’ families. We celebrated 1 May and 7 November. We stayed in Kamchatka for four years. Then there was an order of the Party to demobilize one million and two hundred Soviet officers and my husband was one of them. In 1961 we were offered to choose a town to live in: Kiev, Moscow or Leningrad. I was eager to go back to my countryside. I liked Kherson: a warm a hospitable town where the Dnieper flows into the Black Sea, where there is a lot of greenery and flowers, where there are gorgeous markets with plenty of fish, fruit, watermelons and melons.  So we decided for Kherson. Since then I’ve lived here. I never saw Mikhail again. He died in 1965.

My stepbrother Samuel served in Semipalatinsk where the Soviet atomic and hydrogen bombs were developed. In 1955 there was a huge accident when a bomb exploded and many people, including Samuel, were killed.  His wife Dora became a widow. They didn’t have children.

Shortly after we moved to Kherson, my father sold his house in Novopoltavka and we helped him to buy half a house in Kherson near where we lived. In 1972 my father died. I worked as director of a pharmacy in Kherson for many years. I was secretary of the pharmacy department Party organization. My husband was director of a bacteriological laboratory. We were rather well off, but we couldn’t afford any luxuries: a car or a dacha. My husband, my girls and I spent vacations on resorts in the Crimea and Caucasus and traveled to Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad. In bigger towns we liked going to theaters, exhibitions and concerts. We had a mixed marriage and never celebrated Jewish or Christian holidays, besides, we were both sincere communists. We never discussed any subjects related to Israel or the 6-day war 25, war of the Judgment Day 26, or this whole propaganda of the USSR against Israel. I think, my husband understood that I could not be impartial in these issues and tried to avoid the subjects that were painful for me as a Jew.  Of course, in my heart I was always on the side of the Jewish state.  

We raised our children to be internationalists. My daughters decided to choose their father’s nationality. They are Ukrainian. After finishing school Galina studied in a vocational school for a year and became a specialist in optics.  She met Anatoliy, a handsome Russian man in her school and they got married. They have two children: Anna, born in 1970, and Andrey, born in 1980. Unfortunately, my daughter’s family life with her handsome husband failed: he began to drink and abuse Galina and me calling us ‘zhydovka’ [kike]. When my husband and I heard that he beat Galina we took her and our grandchildren here. Galina was alone for a few years before she married a nice Jewish man whose name was also Anatoliy by coincidence. In the late 1990s they moved to Germany. Anna, my dear granddaughter, died from brain aneurism at the age of 25. Andrey went to study in Israel and stayed to live there.

Natalia, my second daughter, finished the Conservatory in Kharkov. She married her Jewish fellow student Valeriy Gorskiy. Natalia and Valeriy live in Zaporozhiye [350 km from Kiev], where they have jobs. Natalia and Valeriy have two children: Maria, born in 1982, a student of the Theatrical College, and Yuri, who studies in the 8th form. My daughter and grandchildren visit me on summer vacations and stay a few weeks and we also call each other once a week. It is unfortunate that we cannot see each other more frequently. 

Perestroika 27 was a strong blow for my family, and it is not a deficit of material character that I mean, but it is of moral value. I have a rather good pension as a veteran of the war. My husband Vasiliy died in 1995, so little before our ‘golden wedding’. It was so very hard for me. I continue to be a Soviet person. During the Soviet regime I felt that people needed me: I was secretary of the Party organization of pensioners and often met with veterans of the Great Patriotic War.  Now I don’t think anybody needs me. My activities and ideals don’t mean anything and I’ve lost a lot. Most importantly, I’ve lost my idea and faith. I always attended meetings of veterans of our division in Odessa and also went to a meeting in Leningrad, but now I am hard up and cannot afford it. Besides, nobody wants this to happen. All of my fellow comrades happen to live abroad: in Russia, Baltic republics and Moldova and even to correspond with them is far too expensive, to say nothing of arranging meetings.  Besides, not many of us are living. I am a client of Hesed and attend the Day Center, but I do not observe Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays at home. It’s too far from me and I take no interest in them, but my daughter Natalia is close to the Jewish way of life. Her father-in-law Mikhail Gorskiy is head of the Jewish community in Kharkov and he gradually involves Natalia’s family to the observance of Jewish traditions. Victory Day 28, when we meet with my fellow comrades, has always been the biggest and most important holiday for me. On these days I feel a young and fearless girl again.

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