Travel

Vera Sonina
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Olga Egudina
Date of interview: February 2006

I met Vera Markovna Sonina in her cozy room in the House of Veterans of the Stage. [House of Veterans of the Stage was founded in 1896 by an actress Savina and was called Refuge for Aged Actors. At that time financial support was given mainly by private persons and institutions. Now the complex includes 7 inhabited buildings (185 places), a library, a concert hall, a special medical building, and a large park. Authorities are responsible for financial support of the inhabitants.] Vera Markovna is short, slim, light on her feet. Her eyes are dark brown. She manages to make an atmosphere of coziness and kindness around. Vera Markovna attracts attention of her interlocutor by her sincere youthful interest to outward life.

Unfortunately, the text of interview cannot fully impress the reader with Vera Markovna’s charm. She tells her life story accompanying it with singing, and sometimes even dancing.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

I regret to say that I know nothing about my grandparents, especially about my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers. I do not remember anybody of them alive. But I will never forgive myself that I did not ask my Mum about our relatives. You know, we had so hard times that there was no time for conversations.

I was born in 1918 in Zaporozhye. We lived there only 4 years, but I remember myself from two-year-old age, therefore I can tell you something about the Zaporozhye period of our life. We lived very poorly. My father worked at a grain-collecting station. [Grain-collecting station was an office, where merchants brought grain bought from peasants.] Mum never worked. But once together with my sister we were searching something in Mum’s things and came across her corset, her white bone fan and father's waistcoat of fantastic beauty. These things gave us possibility to judge about standard of living of their owners. But happy life of the family ended with my birth. Certainly the point was not in appearance of the next child in our family (I was the sixth one, including the died girl), but in the date of my birth: I was born in 1918, i.e. a year after the Revolution 1. Therefore I remember nothing except poverty. I do not remember if we lived in a house or in an apartment, but I know for sure that we lived in the main and luxurious street named Sobornaya. I can tell nothing about the Jewish community of Zaporozhye and about that of Smolensk (where we moved soon), too.

I remember from our life in Zaporozhye that there were Jewish pogroms 2. Once Daddy told us very seriously ‘Children, silence! I forbid you either to cry or to shout or laugh.’ Parents threw all our pillows and feather-beds to the distant room, and placed there younger children (me and Annette). Shura and Slava (our elder sisters) went to the basement. You see, when they pushed me to the feather-bed I was suddenly taken with a fit of laughter, and Daddy allowed me to laugh, but only very quietly. I remember nothing about this pogrom, except my unrestrained laughter. It is so good to be little! I remember one more about Zaporozhye. My sister Zhenya disappeared suddenly. Everyone was nervous, we were running, shouting. Our neighbors shouted to each other ‘Which of them is missing?’ - ‘Zhenya, of course, who else could it be!’ She was a well-known hooligan. And in the meantime I was creeping round the yard. There was a huge stack of fire wood there. It seemed to me similar to a city with streets, lanes, and squares. And there I saw Zhenya sleeping in one of those streets. That scene is still before my eyes, and I do not know the reason: probably, anxiety of adults impressed me.

When I was about 4 years old, my father got seriously ill. Later (when I was already adult) Mum whispered in my ear that Daddy could not accept Revolution and had fallen ill out of grief. I do not know whether it was true, but indeed father could not go on working. And he was the only earner in our family. My Mum had a sister, I do not remember her name, because we always called her simply Aunt. She was always rich (and my Mum was almost always poor). We did not love her. When she visited us in Zaporozhye, she always took a view of our room with disgust and said ‘Bela, it is impossible to live this way! Where can I sit down here?’ This Aunt lived in Smolensk. Parents decided to move there to be close to our relative. In Smolensk my Aunt had a large apartment. A large pantry was adjacent to it. That was the place where we took up our residence. Can you imagine that you place your sister and her dying husband with their six children in such conditions? This is beyond my mind! I think Mum understood at once that she would get no help, but there was no other place to go. In our hovel we together with my younger sister occupied an upper bunk bed. I often woke up shivering with cold and found out that Annette had fallen down together with our blanket. Usually she did not wake up and continued to sleep on the floor!

I do not remember my father in good health. I remember him sitting on the bench and panting. In Smolensk Daddy did not work. Mum went out to buy something, to change something, to sell something. I remember that once Mum brought home two small bits of saccharin and one of sugar. She gave saccharin to us, and sugar to Daddy. His bit of sugar fell down on the floor; Daddy reached out for it and fell down himself. There happened insult to his brain, and he never recovered. He died very soon. They brought us (younger girls) to our acquaintances, which lived in the next street: they did not want us to be present at the funeral ceremony. I was excited very much and shouted ‘I will take care of Daddy!’ Probably they did not tell me that father had died. A little bit later, when I calmed down, I was allowed to go out to the street. There I saw a procession of people dressed in black and suddenly understood everything: ‘They are carrying my Daddy!’ And nobody convinced me to the contrary. Later someone from adults told us that Daddy was below ground. And we (together with my sister) played our own game Meckalka (it was me who constructed it). It was a game of dreams. And the main dream was the following. One day someone knocks at the window, we open it and see Daddy dirty with the earth. ‘Mummy, Daddy came back!’ we shout, feeling no fear, only happiness because father is again with us…

Mum remained alone with 5 children, having no money, no job, and no profession. On top of it all, my elder sister Slava got ill with femur osteomyelitis. Doctors said that it was necessary to amputate her leg. But Mum answered ‘Over my dead body!’ She got to know from someone that in Petrograd there lived professor Kopylov who was able to treat that disease. It was unreal: just like to depart for Mars or Venus. Only a genuine mother could take that risk. In Dudinka village near Smolensk there lived uncle Grisha and aunt Sonya, mother’s or father’s relatives. Uncle Grisha came to Smolensk to dissuade Mum from her mad decision. Uncle Grisha brought with him a small jar with burdock oil for greasing his hair. I opened the jar, and we drunk it together with my sister. You see, what trifles I keep in my mind! But if we think it over, we’ll find it to be not so trivial. First of all, you can see my mischievous character, and second: it is absolutely clear that we were very hungry. So uncle Grisha told Mum that he considered her to be abnormal and asked where she was going to find money for the trip. And Mum answered ‘I’ll go without money: I’ll go to the engine driver and tell him that my daughter can loose her leg.’ The uncle said ‘But you will die on your way together with your children.’ Mum answered ‘So be it! But I will never let my Slava loose her leg.’ It was worth seeing! You see, my Mum was a meek dove in character: she never raised her voice at or laid her finger on her children. And to tell the truth, we were worth a good beating very often. I am sure that only a genuine mother could do it.

Now before I go on with the next period of our life, I’d like to tell you what I remember about my parents. I am the last one on the earth, who is able to do it. My father Mark (Meyer) Haimovich Sonin was born in 1880; I do not remember the place of his birth. He died in 1922 in Smolensk.

My mother Bela Aronovna (Gheller) was born in 1884 in Pochepy (Ukraine). Mum died at the age of 52 in 1936. At that time she looked like a very old woman. And you can compare: at the age of 57 I played a part of golden cock, wearing a ballet suit!

My parents loved each other very much. I do not know the details of their first meeting and marriage, but I know that Mum did not want to forget Daddy after she became a widow at the age of 39.

I do not remember anything regarding political views of my parents. My father supported a large family alone: I think that he had no time for politics. However our family members used to say that it was Revolution that undermined his health. As it followed from snippets of information, long before my birth my parents lived prosperously. For example, they said that there was one more daughter who died through inadvertence of her nanny: she gave her stale milk. I do not remember any nannies or other assistants in our family. I remember that we found among mother’s things some strange one and started to play with it. And Mum said ‘Do not touch swaddling clouts of your late sister.’ 

There was a photo of my father, which showed him together with two well-dressed young gentlemen playing musical instruments. One of them played banjo, another one played a guitar, and my Daddy - a mandoline. Mum said sometimes ‘Oh, your father liked to take a stroll round the clubs.’ But our hand-to-mouth existence made me consider it fantastic.

Once I asked Mum, why we had such names, absolutely not Jewish. And she said that when we were born, they gave us Jewish names, but later they changed them. Originally I was called Dobe-Dveyre and my sister Annette - Dane-Ite. I immediately composed a song: Two little Jews are sitting at the table, they are Dobe-Dveyre and Dane-Ite, and they both are doubly fools. It was my first poetic experience. Our Jewish names were recorded in father's notebook. He wrote there: daughter Shura (Sara-Rose) was born, and the same about all other daughters. I remember nothing specifically Jewish from my childhood. The only remembrance about my Jewish origin was Yiddish, which our parents (and later Mum and elder sisters) spoke if they wanted to keep something from kids. We (younger sisters) did not know Yiddish at all.

I think that my parents were not religious people. I do not remember from my early childhood any Jewish holidays or Sabbath celebrations. I do not know if Daddy visited synagogue. I guess he did, and probably he prayed at home. After mother's death we found tefillin in his things. I also remember a mezuzah at the door. I think that it was in Zaporozhye: at that time I was about 4 years old and Mum took me in her arms and said ‘Vera, kiss the mezuzah.’ 

I remember my father a little, but absolutely clear. I remember how he got ill and how he died. I loved him very much. I know that he waited for a son. And Mum gave birth only to girls. And I know that Mum lost a baby by miscarriage. I got it to know by chance. I was sent to a city children's winter sanatorium. It happened already in Leningrad. In the sanatorium they fed up weakened and hungry children. When Mum brought me to a doctor to receive an order for that sanatorium, he began to ask her about details of her pregnancies, deliveries, etc. And at that moment I heard from Mum the word miscarriage. It was unknown to me, that was why I seemed to hear a foundling. I thought that someone from our family was a foundling. In the night time (we slept in the same bed) I pressed my poor Mum ‘Mum, I’ll tell nobody, I swear! Which of us is a foundling, tell me!’ I thought that most likely it was Annette: she was the only one with blue eyes. Many years later Mum told me that there were no foundlings in our family.

Mum was a lamblike meek person. In fact, she became a widow at the age of 39, having 5 little girls on her hands. It was necessary to feed all of them. Mum was a real beauty. Her hair was very long, it reached her knees. For a very long time she had no gray hair. And then she had a blood-stroke. I visited her in the hospital and was shocked to see her closely cropped. Mum never raised her voice speaking to us; she never laid a finger on us. But the elder sisters often beat the younger ones, and how strong! Here I have to tell you the truth that we deserved what we got. You see, our elder sisters worked, studied and kept the house. It often happened that they washed floors (in order to heat up water for it, it was necessary to burn coal in the stove!), and we (younger sisters) drew squares for hopscotch on the floor (using chalk) and jumped. Moreover, we used to invite our friends from the yard. Sometimes Mum feared for us and said ‘Children, go to housing services and tell that they beat you. Soviet authorities do not allow beating children.’ [Housing services are now named house management offices; they are responsible for maintenance of buildings.] 

Now I understand that Mum was very lonely. Her children were friends to each other, and she got no friends in Leningrad. She did not communicate with her rich sister. Mum never worked, but strived for making her contribution on the family budget. A woman called Rivva lived next door. She had got two children and a husband. Her husband was not successful: I mean maintenance of his family. Rivva had to paddle her own canoe, like my Mum did. Somehow they got acquainted with Mum and tried to earn money together. That period of time (as well as many subsequent) was characterized by great shortage of products. But from time to time they offered for sale fabrics in Gostiniy Dvor. [Gostiniy Dvor was one of the largest department stores in Leningrad.] People had to spend in lines all night long. And so, Mum and Rivva stood in those lines. Sometimes they took me with them: that was the way to buy some more meters of fabric. Later they carried their purchases to some person named Lyuba Chernaya. She, in turn, distributed fabrics among fashion houses and only after that she gave us money (a little bit more, than we had spent for the purchase). Our take-home pay was beggarly, but we had no possibility to refuse (our budget was very modest).

I do not remember relatives of my parents. I already told you about uncle Grisha, who was very fond of burdock oil, but I do not remember if he was kin to our family. Mother's sister, called Aunt, remained simply Aunt forever.

I do not remember anybody from our family to leave home for rest.

Well, we boarded the train, and we (younger girls) were put on the third luggage shelf. I made a protest against it, because I did not like the car ceiling to hang over me. But even under these conditions we managed to find occupation. Uncle Grisha had given us his burdock oil (possibly he had a pathological predilection for it). He said that it was an expensive thing, and we would be able to change it for something important for us. We remembered that it was forbidden to drink it, that is why we used it according to prescription, i.e. we greased our heads.

Our Aunt already lived in Petrograd. She did not manage to live in Smolensk and left before us. She lived in the luxurious house, in the large lordly apartment. She allowed us to live at her, having warned that not longer than for three days. When after long and hard trip, we (hungry and unhappy) came into her apartment, she hold her nose with scented scarf and said ‘Oh, what a smell!’ She felt neither compassion, nor love for us - nothing except disgust. Certainly, we were in terrible plight and order. All of us got lice during the long way. As for me, I was closely cropped. They spread some ointment over my head (it burned my skin awfully). Later I read Sholom-Aleichem’s ‘There is no poverty without lice.’ 3

Mum began to search of lodging at once. She was a poetic nature. She started searching for apartment near the Summer Garden. [The Summer Garden in Saint Petersburg is the oldest garden of the city: it was founded in 1704 by the architects Leblon, Zemtsov, and Matveev.] And she managed to find a large apartment on the ground floor. Before the Revolution it was a servants' room. The apartment was very damp, moisture oozed directly from walls. We tried to bring order to our new apartment altogether. We, younger girls distracted adults more than helped, but were very proud of ourselves. The true miracle was in the fact that doctor Kopylov whom we came to, lived next door. I still do not know if it was a concurrence or Mum chose apartment for us already knowing his address. Mum, ragged, put silver spoons into a bag, took my hand, and we went to the doctor. I was a tiny and a very thin girl with a big red nose (I had continuous cold). Mum said ‘Dear sir, my daughter is in great danger. I am a widow; I have no money, take these spoons and save her!’ And she kneeled at his feet. I saw the doctor was near to melt into tears. He lifted Mum from her knees and said ‘Madam, calm down. Bring your daughter here immediately.’ I ran home to bring Slava. The doctor examined her at home and said ‘We will save her leg.’ He operated my sister and her leg was saved. Before the operation he invited Professor Vreden for medical consultation. [Professor Vreden (1867-1934) was a well known Soviet surgeon-orthopedist. In 1906 he founded the first orthopedic institute in Russia and became its director.]

Doctor Vreden was well-known, but he also took part in Slava’s destiny. Of course doctor Kopylov refused to take those spoons. He even felt hurt and said ‘Madam, I am a genuine doctor, I am obliged to save people, and money is of no importance.’ Soon Kopylov died. I remember magnificent ceremony of his funeral. I burst out sobbing, and nobody could understand what relative of him I was. He was in coffin, and I shouted ‘Dear doctor, thank you very much for our Slava!’ Now we understand what kind of doctors worked at that time! They made no difference between life of a beggar, an unknown girl from province and life of eminent and rich patient.

So our life went on. After successful operation that saved Slava’s leg, it became clear that we came to Petrograd not in vain. Soon my sister Annette went to school. Once she told me ‘Do you know that everything we write and speak consists of 33 letters?’ I did not believe her. For a long time she tried to convince me of it. Her words shocked me. I could not imagine that some day I would be able to read.

In our family only Shura and Slava (elder sisters) worked. Shura worked at cardboard factory. They made boxes there. Slava also worked nearby. Her work was very dangerous for the person who had been operated on recently. She soaped wine bottles at the wine factory: all days long she spent in a damp room standing on the stone floor. Shura and Slava kept the house. They cooked, washed, and ironed for all members of our family. They worked and studied at rabfak 4.

Growing up

Certainly I consider Petrograd-Leningrad to be the city of my childhood. Do not forget that though we lodged in the awful apartment, it was situated in the most beautiful place of our city. We realized the beauty which surrounded us; it was unconscious, but clear. We even bowed our thanks to the beautiful. It was a special ceremony: I composed verses, beautifully wrote it down, and we buried that sheet of paper in the Summer Garden.

Entrance to our apartment was made directly from archway. In the apartment there were 3 rooms and 2 big store-rooms. The first room was occupied by Slava, the second one belonged to Shura, and Mum, Zhenya, Annette and I lived in the third room. We took pieces of our furniture from the scrap-heap. Stove heating in our apartment was arranged in a very strange way: the only stove was situated in the corridor, therefore it was awfully cold in the apartment. In winter we all moved to one room and used to sleep in one bed lying across. At first we lived in real poverty. In winter Annette and I went out by turns: we had only one set of warm clothes. I already told you about our game Meckalka, i.e. our dreams. So, there was a dream (second important after father's raising from the dead) to find a treasure of sweets to feast right royally. But at home we never had sweets.

We did not celebrate Jewish holidays and did not observe tradition. Mum probably knew when it was necessary to celebrate holidays, but she never spoke about it. I do not know any Jewish family which observed tradition. I guess that those who observed it, preferred to hold their tongue.

I know nothing about the Jewish community of Leningrad of that time. Moreover, when I became a student of the Leningrad College of Physical Culture named after Lesgaft [it was founded in 1896], I sometimes went there by tram. I say sometimes, because not always I had money for it. And so, many years later I got to know that the tram stop was a few steps away from the synagogue, but I had not a slightest idea about it.

And now I am going to surprise you. We had nothing in our apartment, we had meals not every day, and our clothes could gain sympathy of a hard-hearted person, but we always had books. These books appeared through the efforts of our silent and patient Mum. One day she came home and said ‘My dear daughters, today I had not enough money to buy bread for all of us, therefore I bought this cheap book instead.’ So that was the way books began to appear. We used to gather under an unshaded lamp and read aloud by turns. Zhenya was the best reader. To tell the truth, she tried to read with expression in her voice, but not always it helped to find sense. Till now I remember her phrase ‘At the patient’s bed there sat a nurd.’ She wanted to say nurse, but failed. It was impossible to laugh at her. In that case she stopped reading and was able to hit the laugher across his face.

This joint reading is one of my dearest memoirs. It was a substitution for entertainments, and often for supper. We liked to buy sets of NIVA magazine. [NIVA was a Russian weekly illustrated magazine for family reading in 1870-1918, editors used to publish works of many Russian and foreign writers there: it added to popularity of the magazine.]

One day a person selling NIVA magazines near the secondhand bookshop gave us a set of magazines free-of-charge. He said ‘Madam, the way your girl is looking at my books makes me throw away a chance to earn money.’ Do you know, what is interesting? My Mum always wore bad and awfully bad dresses, but nevertheless people always called her madam. Her extraordinary nobleness always shined through her rags. We did not subscribe for any newspapers: we had no money. Annette and I were school library readers.

My sister was my best friend. I also made friends with a Jewish girl Raya. Her family lived on the third floor of our house. Her mother Rose was a dressmaker. She taught my sister to sew. After Annette started sewing for us, we looked much better.

At the age of 8 I went to school. But soon that school was closed (I do not remember the reason). I found a new school on my own; it was situated far away, but in a very beautiful building. I had to cross 3 busy streets, including one with a tram-line. Nobody took into his head the idea to accompany me there: I was so independent that it was beyond my endurance. One day on my way to school I stopped feasting my eyes upon a beautiful ancient church. I came to myself only when the tram driver jumped out of his cabin and tried to pull me down from tram-line tweaking my ears. He used bad language, and I asked him ‘Guv, do you think that baron Munhgauzen hung himself on this bell tower?’ [Baron Munhgauzen is a hero of Adventures of Baron Munhgauzen novel by E. Raspe.] His answer was a little bit unexpected ‘All barons were shot down during the Revolution.’

At school I made many friends: I was a very sociable girl. At school we did not care who of us was Jewish and who not. But in our court yard everything was different. Once Maruska, a neighbor (a little girl of my age) heard me singing a romance Cornflowers, Cornflowers. [Cornflowers, Cornflowers was a popular petty-bourgeois romance in the middle of the 19th century.]

She shouted ‘Cornflowers, Cornflowers - and you are a dirty Jew!’ I heard this word for the first time in my life; I was surprised and answered ‘You are wrong, I am Sonina.’ I went home to ask my Mum about that new surname. Mum said that she would explain the details later, when I grew older. She also said that there were different nationalities and that noses like mine were typical only for Jews, but it was not a shame. Mum advised me to say Maruska that she behaved like a swine. For my mild Mum that word was the most abusive she could ever say. After that when we were playing lapta, Maruska was jealous of my adroitness and I recalled that I was Jewish. According to my Mum’s advice I said ‘The dirty Jew catches ball very well, and the swine is not able to do it.’

In our house there lived good people: for instance, Semen Fomich and his wife Nastya. He was a person of remarkable kindness and selflessness. During blockade 5 he made runners and fixed a huge container on them. All inhabitants of our house used it to carry water from the Neva River. He did not survive the blockade, but his wife Nastya came through it.

When I was in the fourth form, I changed my school for another one which was nearer to our house. My friend and neighbor Raya was my classmate. She always had her lunch with her, and she was generous enough to share it with me. I was the poorest in our class and never accepted anything from anybody, but for some reason I took Raya’s food easily.

They say ‘Childhood, childhood, our happy childhood.’ But you know I do not want to return to my childhood. Do you remember Sholom-Aleichem’s ‘Well, what for has God created bugs?’ I remember my elder sisters struggling against bugs in our beds and lice in our hair! Until now I recollect with horror the moment when a pupil on duty at our school said to our teacher in presence of my classmates ‘And Sonina has lice.’ Poverty and starvation are always accompanied by lice. Every evening Mum said ‘Children, let me look at your heads.’ She started combing insects out from our hair by means of fine-tooth comb. No, I do not want that sort of childhood!

I studied at school 8 years. There I hated mathematics, physics and chemistry. But at the College it was necessary to learn chemistry, and I found it to be very interesting, because at that time I already knew the purpose to study it. 

I liked literature, history, social science. We had a very good teacher of history. During breaks I always attacked him with different questions: sometimes he even had no time to have a drink of tea. I also was very interested in natural sciences: I guess taking care of people always was my second nature. You know, I am very glad that during the war I had to work in a hospital. The point is not only that I helped people, contributing to our victory over fascists. It was very interesting for me to do work there.

Starting from my 1st class I appeared on school stage every holiday: I recited poetry, danced, and sang songs. At that time beggars went from house to house singing doleful romances. Their texts used to be only for grown-ups, but I remembered them immediately and copied with pleasure. I even derived benefit from it. There was a bakery next door to us in a basement, where they baked wafers. They used to sell wafers filled with ice cream. Both ice-cream and wafers were absolutely prohibitive delicacy for us. The only thing we could afford were cuttings of wafers which they sold at a very low price. It was necessary to come with a clean pillowcase to get those cuttings. Well, workers of that bakery adored me, because I sang and danced for them. They called me a little Gipsy and gave me a lot of wafer cuttings. All children from our house considered it to be great success to go for wafers together with me. The only thing that confused me was laughing of my spectators: I sang so touching songs… Mum knew about my success and decided to develop my abilities and found children's drama school for me. Children aged from 12 till 16 studied there. They had 3 departments: for musicians, singers, and theater fans. I entered theatrical one. They taught us very well: I mastered basics of my future profession. They also gave us some food. There I heard strange words ‘Today you will have an omelette.’ I had no idea about it, and thought that it was a sort of punishment. But they brought a huge frying pan with fried eggs. I brought a piece of it to Mum. She turned away from me to the window and began crying. I was a little girl, but I understood at once, why she was crying. I heard her unvoiced words ‘I did not want my children to have such childhood.’ At the studio I have been studying for three years. 

When I recall days of my childhood I understand that the most part of my life was occupied by reading. I used to read till dark, sitting on the window-sill, using daylight up to the last ray. I remember myself sitting on the window-sill with a book (as usual) and our neighbor, father of my friend Raya passing by. He used to say ‘Oh, Vera you are standing guard! Hi, Vera!’ You know, I read much, but I was never boring. I used to arrange children's performances right in our dreadful, damp, cold and poor apartment. All children from our court yard were spectators, and we were actors (Raya and me). Raya had fiery red hair. She usually played roles of clowns. I liked to play the role of a street cleaner (I fixed a beard to my chin). Texts were also written by me. In spite of her hysterical features, Shura never forbade our performances. And in case Slava came home before the end of our performance, she dismissed all of us saying ‘Everyone out!’ At that time I did not understand how tired she was, and considered her to be heartless. I never was a member of any club, and was never interested in politics. It was enough for me to study at school and be engaged in my drama school. We never went anywhere to have a rest. We had no idea about going to a restaurant. For the first time in my life I went by train when we moved from Smolensk to Petrograd. I do not remember any car trips. Going by tram was a profusion. I remember that one cold winter day sirens wailed out and car drivers sounded their horns. Mum said that Lenin died 6. It produced no impression upon me.

Now I’ll tell you about my sisters. My elder sister was Alexandra, everyone called her Shura. Her Jewish name was Sara-Rose. She was born in 1908 in Zaporozhye. She had a magnificent mop of fair hair. Shura was a hysterical girl. She sometimes beat us until she stopped with pain in her hands. And then she embraced us and started wailing ‘Oh you, our poor orphans!’ She studied at the evening faculty of some economic college. I do not remember where she worked after graduation from her College. She died during the siege of Leningrad. My brother-in-law, Zhenуa’s husband was at the Leningrad front and saw Shura shortly before her death. All my life I felt unhappy about the fact that Shura died, thinking that I was not alive. You see, I was in Kishinev, when the war burst out and had no connection with my relatives during a long period of time. Shura was never married.

My next sister was Slava, her Jewish name was Sliva. She was born in 1910 in Zaporozhye. She died of brain cancer. I guess it happened in 1960s. She was operated, but after the operation she managed to live not long. She wanted to become an electrical engineer, but right at that time Stalin said that our country needed textile-workers. And she entered a Textile College. I never saw such wonderful smile as of hers. In compare with Shura, her character was different. I can judge by punishments she imposed upon us: no shouts, no hysterics, one strong spat on the face and the punished girl was sent into a dark corridor. I was so much afraid of it that felt spasms thinking about it. Above all I was afraid of darkness. Slava had a husband. I hated him. His name was Boris Leytes. He was from Smolensk by origin. He did not manage to join our family: Mum felt embarrassed and never came out of her room when he visited us. It seems to me that Slava did not love him. She married him because she felt shy with strangers because of scars on her leg (after operation). I guess she married the first person who asked her. Their daughter Rita lives in Israel now. I do not remember when she was born. Rita has got 2 children: a daughter and a son.

My third sister was Eugenia (Zhenya), her Jewish name was Genye. She was born in 1912. She got married very early and gave birth to a daughter Bela. I can not recollect what her profession was. Her husband was a very good person; we all loved him very much. Until now I call him in mind and cry bitter tears. His name was Vladimir Alexandrovich Lebedev. He was a professional military. He lived near to us. After marriage Zhenya moved there. I helped them a lot after their daughter was born: I spent nights at them and awakened Zhenya who had to breast-feed her child, but could never wake up in time. Zhenya died recently (in 2000).

My fourth sister, my favorite sister and friend was Annette, a blue-eyed angel. Her Jewish name was Dane-Ite. She was born in 1916. When Shura beat us, I shouted twice more for both myself and Annette: she never let out a cry, only shed large tears. I cried ‘Do not dare to beat my Annette, beat me.’ When I recollect it, my life seems to me a mixture of Sholom-Aleichem and Dostoevsky 7. Annette did not manage to enter a college, she finished Hydrological Technical School. She was assigned to work in Karelia, in Kondopoga. There she married Tochilin, a chief engineer. He was ill with pulmonary tuberculosis. Annette got infection from him and came back to Leningrad to die. Here she died on my hands. It happened in 1946. There was no person closer to me than her. Until her death she was extremely afraid to infect me: she did not permit anybody to use her tableware. She also tried to serve herself till her last days. 

And the fifth sister, the last one called by the members of our family ‘a little finger’, was me - Vera. My Jewish name was Dobe-Dveyre.

I already told you that my elder sisters lived hard life. Our Mum did not manage to master housekeeping in the inhuman atmosphere we lived in. She was able to cook, but she needed good products, and we had almost nothing. She said ‘I’m not able to cook your broth.’ Sisters cooked, washed, and sewed, or rather repaired old clothes.

When I finished my school, my childhood (not easy childhood) terminated also. I started working. But I already worked part-time, being a schoolgirl. We made envelopes for an envelope workshop. I made all my friends sit down at the table and organized the process. Most difficult for me was to keep still for a moment, therefore I brought material for envelopes from the workshop, gave the task, counted envelopes, carried our production back to the workshop. One more: I decided that it was easier to work with a song, so I kept a check on everybody singing.

My work after school was also connected with envelopes. Shura worked in an institution, which was engaged in dispatching of huge amount of some materials. They needed a person for packing those materials in envelopes. It was me, whom they put on to do that job. I had surprisingly adroit hands. I worked faster, than two my colleagues. One of these colleagues used to take herself hundreds of envelopes that were packed by me. And I did not dare to tell anybody about it, because I was very much afraid to lose my work. There I worked during 2 years. My salary was crummy, but for our family every kopeck was important.

All the time I was interested in theatre and in everything connected with it. I had no money to buy tickets. But I kept in touch with my former friends of drama school, and they told me all theatrical news. That was the way I got to know about admission to the studio at the Theatre for Young Spectators. [State Theatre for Young Spectators in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) is one of the oldest children's theatres of Russia. It was founded in 1922.] The studio prepared actors, mainly for children's theatres. I went there to participate in casting. And you remember that I was very short, slim, and big-nosed. They considered me to be apt for travesty. They gave me scholarship of 16 rubles, and I gave up my job. Simultaneously I entered a studio for adults (Sladkopevtsev, an actor was its director). [Vladimir Sladkopevtsev, an actor was born in 1876 and died in 1957.]

They got to know about it in the studio at the Theater for Young Spectators. They did not like it - that is why I had to leave the studio. Then I decided to enter Theatrical College. [The Leningrad College of Theater, Music and Cinematography (nowadays Theatrical Academy) was founded in 1918 as School of Actor's Skill.] For some reason it seemed to me that I was too young for that purpose. That was why I forged my age in the passport without hesitation. At the College there was large entry. Before the entrance examinations entrants had to pass through creative selection (it consisted of 3 tests). I happily reached the third test, but at that moment they found out that I had forged my passport and immediately kicked me out. So I got nothing and looked like a fool. But fortune is variant: I met a remarkable person. A year before that, Pauline Conner, an American dancer came to our city. She opened a dancing school in Leningrad. And I got to know that she invited extra students. Total number of students was planned to be 8. Rector of the Leningrad College of Physical Culture named after Lesgaft (his surname was Zelikson) put a gym hall for her disposal. The hall was amazing! There were mirrors and ballet railings on the walls - the hall was equipped according to high standard. Besides me, all schoolgirls were students of the College of Physical Culture (gymnasts).

We (newcomers) began to study together with those girls who had already studied a year. It was difficult, but of paramount interest. Unfortunately we studied with that remarkable ballet dancer only a year. Stalin decided to expel all foreign experts from the USSR. Pauline Conner also left our country. By the way, when she was going to visit cold Russia, she took several fur coats with her. All these fur coats she dealt out to her senior schoolgirls, therefore no fur coats fell to our share. But the point was not in fur coats: we lost our dear friend and a remarkable teacher. At the same time rector Zelikson was dismissed. His post was occupied by a person named Nikiforov. Nikiforov helped us very much. We, students of Pauline Conner were absolutely depressed, we did not know what to do. And the new director took us in. We became students of the gymnastics department. It happened in 1936.

Our curriculum was very extensive. We studied both anatomy and physiology, and even chemistry. I liked these subjects very much (even chemistry!) and helped everybody to prepare for examinations. Our teachers said ‘If you want to get a good mark, go to Sonina.’ After graduation I was invited to work at the Faculty of Physiology. But I refused, because I wanted to get practical experience. Then they asked me where I wanted to go (according to mandatory job assignment 8) to teach physical culture. I did not want to leave Leningrad, and kicking over the traces I poked my finger into a map at random. My finger hit Syktyvkar. I was horrified and hid myself, waiting. They started calling me by phone, reminding that I was waited for in Syktyvkar. And in 1941 the Day of Physical Culturist had to be celebrated already for the third time in Moscow. All Soviet Republics had to send their representatives to Moscow. The main parade was planned for June 22 9. I participated in two previous parades being a student, and remembered well their pomposity. We marched in step with music of Shostakovich, wearing black bathing suits with red wings.

During the war

From participation in these parades I had two main memoirs. The parade took place in the Red Square. [Red Square is the main square of Moscow.] Participants had to march by Lenin's mausoleum. They forbade us to laugh and even to smile 100 meters before we reached mausoleum and 100 meters after it. I also remember very tasty meals we were given there. My hungry childhood left me interested in tasty meal until death. So after another call from Syktyvkar, the College received an order to send some graduate to Moldova to prepare Moldavian athletes for the parade. As I was the only graduate still staying in Leningrad, they decided to send me. I went to Kishinev. But it appeared to be not so simple. First of all, I went there by plane (and it was for the first time in my life!). For some reason the plane landed in Odessa at a small airport. Till now I remember air in Odessa: fragrant with the delicate scents of heady grass and sea. The pilots felt sorry for me and decided to take me to Kishinev by a small two-seater. It made me so sick! But nevertheless all the time I was looking through the window, bewitched by unfamiliar and fine southern landscapes. My pilot decided to amuse me singing Ukrainian songs. There was nothing special in it and I would have forgotten that song if it did not appear to be prophetical. The song told about a Cossack leaving for the front line. His going away was a sore grief to his beloved. She gave him a scarf to have his eyes covered if he would be killed. Do not forget that it happened on June 14, 1941!

Well, I reached Kishinev and began preparing local athletes for the great event - parade in the Red Square. Basically I taught them dancing. Knowledge I got from Pauline Conner was useful. I lived there like in paradise. I never saw so much food. People used to leave leftovers (for instance white bread!) on their plates! Sometimes they even threw bread away (terrific!). It seemed to me real blasphemy. And what markets, what wonderful fruit they had! One day during my training session a boy ran in and shouted ‘Teacher, a bomb fell down over there!’ I said ‘Easy, easy, it is alarm for instruction.’ You see, in Leningrad they often arranged alarms for instruction and occupied citizens by civil defence studies. Later another boy brought the same message. And then we heard Molotov’s speech by radio 10. No doubt: war burst out! I felt responsible for my students and arranged the procedure of sending them home (in fact in Kishinev they gathered athletes from all over Moldova). Then I decided to go to a military registration and enlistment office. [Military registration and enlistment offices in the USSR and in Russia implemented official call-up plans.] Right away I asked them to send me to the front line: I could not imagine another way to live during the war time.

They told me ‘We are not able to waste our time talking to a woman. You should go to Leningrad, to the place of your registration.’ One of my colleagues (a Moldavian) took me to the railway station. A lot of trains went through Kishinev; all of them were overcrowded - it was a real mess. As for me, I already did not care where to go, I only wanted to change. My friend seized me by the collar and pushed me into the moving train. I fell down on heads of other passengers, but nobody grumbled. The train arrived to Odessa. There I went to a local military registration and enlistment office again. They were glad to see me and said that as far as I was a graduate of the College of Physical Culture, they directed me to the military hospital #411. Injured people were already taken to that hospital. My position was called a nurse, but in fact I did a lot of different work, necessary for the hospital. I both cleaned wards and assisted during operations. I managed to apply knowledge received at my College. I knew both anatomy and traumatology; I was able to make complex bandaging. I mastered all medical procedures very quickly and easily learnt names of medical instruments. I was lucky to work together with a remarkable doctor and a noble person - professor Ghinkovskiy. During the first operation professor Ginkovskiy whispered to the second surgeon ‘And does the newcomer know the instruments?’ And he got the following answer ‘Better than anyone!’

Soon Odessa suffered from bombardment. The hospital was evacuated. After a long way we found ourselves in Samarkand. I asked to send me to the front line. But director of our hospital put me to shame. He explained me that at bottom of fact hospital was a front line and that I had to stay where I could make myself useful. So I became thoroughly engrossed in my work. I elaborated rehabilitation system for casualties. I ran my training sessions to music. They gave me a pianist, and she appeared to be my countrywoman. She was also born in Zaporozhye and evacuated to Samarkand. We made close friends. By the way, my method of rehabilitation awaked interest of doctors from the 1st Leningrad Medical College, which was evacuated to Samarkand, too. These doctors came to our hospital, and were present at my training sessions. Try to imagine, how proud I was! I worked 24 hours a day, almost without sleeping, and I never felt tired. All my feelings were replaced by feeling of great sympathy to those wounded men. Before their discharge wounded persons appeared before the special commission which decided what to do: send them to the front line or demobilize. I was a member of that commission. The truth is that twice I played a cunning trick. Two wounded persons had limited mobility of arms after deep wounds. By means of my method I was able to rehabilitate their arms. But one of them had 6 children and the other one - 5. They were not very young any more. I told the commission that those cases were long uncared-for and that those men would never be able to shoot. And I told the truth to those wounded persons. I said that the front line would not grow poor because of the loss of 2 soldiers, it would be better for them to bring up their children. I received letters from them (from their native villages) for a long time.

In the hospital they gave us not so much food, but it was of good quality, they gave us meat once a week. They paid us salary, to tell the truth, very small. Suddenly I received a letter from my sister Annette. She found me by a miracle. She had been evacuated to the Urals.

Later I received a letter from the Leningrad Theatrical College (from Tomsk, where the College had been evacuated). Serebryakov, director of the College wrote to our hospital that Sonina Vera Markovna, a teacher of physical culture must leave for Tomsk (to the College). I took that letter and went to the military registration and enlistment office again. I said ‘Either you send me to the front line or I go to Tomsk.’ - ‘Front line is not interested in women’, they answered. - ‘Go to your College.’ It happened in 1944. I reached Tomsk and began to study at the Theatrical College (they did not stop studies in evacuation). I entered the second course. Later together with my College we moved to Novosibirsk, and then (already almost at the end of war) returned to Leningrad. We celebrated Victory Day already in Leningrad.

After the war

Our apartment appeared to be occupied, that was why they placed at my disposal only one room there. And I told you already that our apartment was awful: very damp, moisture oozed directly from walls. Suddenly I was suggested to move to another room in our house, but on the second floor. The room was very sunny. It was about 7 square meters, very long, like a gut. So I moved there. In my tiny room there lived my friends (whose living conditions were even worse than that of mine) from the College, and later from the Theatre. I continued to study. I graduated from the College in 1949 and started working in the Theatre for Young Spectators. A. Bryantsev was its director. [Alexander Bryantsev (1883-1961) - founder, actor, and director of the Theater for Young Spectators.] He was a remarkable person, talented and brave. I’ll tell you about his courage a little bit later. In the Theatre for Young Spectators I worked about 27 years. That period was very happy for me. A. Raykin himself invited me to his theater. [Arkady Raykin (1911-1987) - a famous Russian actor, master of dramatic identification, a compere, performer of monologues, feuilletons, sketches.] But I could not leave Bryantsev. I admired him. He used to bring to perfection even the most insignificant role in a crowd scene. He made no distinction between actors; all of them were equally dear and interesting to him. Here I’ll tell you a story, which shows his character much better than my words. In the Theatre for Young Spectators there were 2 remarkable actors: Teykh and Freindlich. They were Germans. And during the war the Theatre was in evacuation. At the end of the war Leningrad theatres began to come back from evacuation. But the Theatre for Young Spectators was not allowed to come back. Authorities said that its staff could come, but without Teykh and Freindlich: after the end of the war Leningrad needed no Germans. But Bryantsev himself went to Moscow. Here you have to take into consideration that it was rather dangerous to intercede for Germans at that time! I do not know what higher echelons Bryantsev visited in Moscow, what words he found, but the Theatre was allowed to return to its native city. To tell the truth, Friendlich immediately left for Alexandrinsky Theatre, expressing no thanks to Bryantsev. The point was that Alexandrinsky Theatre had academic status and salaries were higher there. But Teykh said ‘While Bryantsev is alive, I will not leave his theatre.’

After that I taught callisthenics at courses for coaches. Later I worked at a House of Culture teaching dancing. [Houses of culture in the USSR were large establishments with various forms of cultural and educational activities: exhibitions, dancing parties, various circles and studios.] I do not work only 5 years. My last place of work was at school no.214 11. I worked there 8 years as an elocutionist, conducting a studio. I guess that the main result I achieved there was attraction of my pupils to good literature, to verses. They won different competitions, traveled all over Russia free-of-charge. Five of them visit me until now. Each time they tell me so kind words that I feel uncomfortable to repeat them. But they also say sad things:  their intelligence and love to verses differs them from their coevals very much, people call them rara avis. And I answer that they can be proud of such a title. I think that this kind of people will possibly help to rise all educated people here, and they will be able to turn our life for the better.

Last two years I live in the House of Veterans of the Stage. I like everything here, but I lack activities. I have already asked managers of our House to find some children or young people whom I can teach dramatic reading.

While I worked in the Theatre, I went for vacation in recreation centers every year 12. Most often I went to the Black sea. I had the second sports category in swimming and spent hours in water!

When Stalin died, I sobbed madly. Now I am ashamed of myself. And at that time they gave me a role at the Theater (I do not remember what exactly); I only remember that it required make-up very difficult for realization. At our College they taught us basics of make-up: our teacher was Andrey Andreevich Bersenev, a remarkable expert. We often ran to him for consultation (since the Theatre was located near the College across the road). So I came to him and he helped me with that make-up. But at the end of my visit they said by the radio that Stalin had died. I burst in tears, and my make-up came to nothing. Andrey Andreevich shouted at me ‘What happened, as a matter of fact?! It doesn’t matter that someone died somewhere! You are an actress and you have a complex make-up, do not pay attention to nonsense!’ It was effective to sober me down.

I remember Doctors’ Plot very well 13. At that time I already worked at the Theatre. There was an actor of heroic type. He appeared to be a terrible Anti-Semite. Together with him we played in the play Raven by Ghocci. According to the play, I had to lie at his feet. And so, right during a rehearsal he started shouting in presence of all actors ‘It serves you right, Jews! We see what you want! You have in your head idea to destroy Russian people!’ Absolute silence established. I curled myself up into a balloon on the floor and could not raise my head. I could not understand what feelings prevailed in my heart: fear or disgust. At that moment A. Bryantsev was present there. For the first and the last time in my life I saw him losing his temper. He turned white and began to tremble. He tapped the floor with his stick. And his voice pealed louder than voice of that actor Anti-Semite ‘Never say these words at my theatre! Get out of here, get out of the theatre!’ That was the way real Russian intellectuals behaved.

Certainly I was very pleased with changes 14 in our country. If people decide for themselves what to read and what to listen, they feel like human beings. Living behind the Iron Curtain 15 is not pleasant. Now everyone can go wherever they want. It seems great, but actually it is normal. Of course our life is not easy, salaries and pensions are crummy, but I hope that everything will become normal step by step. Anyway I am glad that lived to witness the events I witnessed.

My attitude towards such events as Hungarian revolution 16, Prague spring 17 was already normal, i.e. I condemned actions of our country. Military victories of Israel [18, 19] pleased me: it seemed to me that truth and justice were on the side of Israel, not Arabs.

Falling of the Berlin wall also pleased me. [Berlin wall was erected in 1961 to divide Western part of Berlin from the Eastern one. It was destroyed in 1989. It was symbolical that its concrete was used to construct highways of the united Germany.] It is impossible to divide people of the same nationality in such a forced way.

I am connected to the Jewish community of St. Petersburg basically through the Hesed Welfare Center 20. For holidays I receive food packages from them. Thanks to them, I always have matzah for Pesach.

Glossary:

Maria Zabozlaeva
Saratov
Russia
Interviewer: Bozhena Zbaraska-Anatol
Date of interview:  30 September 2003

Maria Zabozlaeva is a very nice woman with a kind smile. She is very reserved. She was pleased to get this opportunity to tell the story of her life. She lives alone. Her children and grandchildren live separately. She wears plain clothes. Her apartment is small and she has old furniture that bought many years before. She has a small collection of books in her bookcase: there are books by Russian classics and books on medicine. Maria says that she starts her day talking to her friends and relatives on the phone: she calls it ‘phone visits’. She often talks to her brother Michael and sister Vera. They live in Israel. Her son Fyodor calls every day to ask his mother how she feels.  He always brings her all she needs when she cannot leave home. We talk in a warm and cozy room. There are fruit, sweets and tea on the table. Maria enjoys talking about her family.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

Saratov [over 800 km from Moscow] is a beautiful old town on the Volga, the biggest river in Russia. In the second half of 19th century it became a big industrial center of bread and flour grinding industries. There were steam mills and butteries built in the town. There were many stores and shops in the town and barges in the harbor selling cement, grain, water melons, fish and furs. There was book publishing developed in Saratov. There were straight streets lined with trees leading from the Volga uptown. They were called ascends. There were parks and squares with brass orchestras playing in the evenings in the center of the town. There were one and two-storied stone houses built in the town. In late 19th century there was Russian, German, Jewish, Tatar and Polish population in the town. Russians belonged to Old Believers 1 and Christians. There was a Catholic cathedral, a Lutheran church, a synagogue, and many orthodox Christian churches 2 that made the town different from other in Povolzhye.

The first Jews settled down in the town in early 19 century. In late 19 century there were first canonists 3 coming to the town. There was a pogrom in Saratov in 1853 inspired by authorities by the so-called ‘blood shedding slander’. There was a case of ritualistic murders that Jews were blamed of. After the pogrom Jews began to be deported to reside within the Pale of Settlement 4. The Jews that remained in the town formed a Jewish community by the end of 19th century. In 1897 they built a synagogue. They invited a rabbi from Tsaritsyn [Volgograd at present, 300 km from Saratov]. Jews owned stores and shops selling fish, flour, books, watches, gold and silver.  Bender was one of the biggest merchants of his time. He had a prêt-a-porter garment store on the ground floor of his house. Another merchant Ochkin owned hotel ‘Centralnaya’ and a garden with a concert hall and restaurant. Many Jews were craftsmen. They resided in the Jewish neighborhood near the synagogue.  The majority of Jews were poor. There was another pogrom in Saratov during revolutionary events in 1905. There were no Jewish educational institutions before the revolution of 1917 5 since the laws of the Russian empire didn’t allow any national educational institutions beyond the Pale of Settlement. [Editor’s note: however, Jewish communities were allowed to make contributions to existing small educational groups, but neither archives of the synagogue in Saratov nor state archives of Saratov region have any references in this regard. The state rabbi came from Tsaritsyn before 1915 and in 1915 there was a rabbi appointed in Saratov.] There was a Jewish school opened after the revolution of 1917. In 1934 Soviet authorities closed the Jewish school during the period of struggle against religion 6. Nowadays Jewish school ‘OR Avner’ functions in Saratov.

Мy paternal grandfather Semyon Ogushevich was born in Saratov, sometime in 1870s. Grandfather Semyon was a strict, morose, taciturn and severe man.  There is his portrait hanging on the wall in a photograph taken in my mother’s apartment. I remember that he worked a lot, repairing primus stoves 7 and water pipes. He was tall and thin and had a gray beard and long hair. I don’t remember whether he wore a hat or a kippah. Grandfather Semyon was very religious. He celebrated all holidays and observed traditions, went to synagogue and prayed a lot. My grandfather had two or three books with yellow pages that he used when praying. I remember that he prayed at home with his tefillin on his hand and forehead.  He also had a tallit on. I don’t think grandfather gave much thought to a change of regime since he was busy repairing primus stoves from morning till night. There were no discussions about the revolution in his home. He died when I was seven. I remember him lying on the floor wrapped in his tallit and there were candles burning around him. Grandfather was buried at the section for men at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov according to Jewish traditions in 1936.

My grandmother Vera Ogushevich, whose maiden name I don’t know, was born in Saratov in 1870s. My grandfather never talked about her and I have very little information. She was religious and went to synagogue. She wore long skirts. I only saw her portrait, a big one where she had a black shawl on her head. She was a housewife and spoke Yiddish. My grandparents didn’t give any Jewish education to their children. Grandmother Vera died in Saratov in 1929. She was buried at the section for women at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov.

My grandmother and grandfather had five children: three sons – my father Esaih Ogushevich and Osip and Michael Avgustevich, and two daughters – Sophia Ogushevich and Raisa Riabskaya, nee Ogushevich. When I grew up my father told me why his brothers had a different last name.  When World War I began their father decided to save his sons from the army. My grandfather managed somehow to give his sons different surnames. According to laws of Russian empire one son of old parents did not serve in army. Therefore my father Esaih is Ogushevich  and his  brother Michael is Avgustevich. To tell the truth my grandfather has with surnames in family a muddle.  Someone has incorrectly written down surnames of children of great-grandfather Efima, therefore my grandfather Semyon and his brother Ilya - Ogushevich, and brothers Osip, Moisey, Lev and sister Sima – Avgushevich.

Osip Avgustevich was born in Saratov in 1894. Grandfather taught Osip his profession and he became a plumber. His wife Dvosia – I don’t know her maiden name, was a Jew. She was a housewife. They were moderately religious, but they didn’t raise their children religious.  This is all I know about them. They died and were buried at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov.  They had three sons: their older son Moisey, I don’t know his date of birth. He perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War 8 in 1942. Their middle son Ilia was born in 1933. In August 1945 he married Bertha Yudovich, a Jewish girl. They had a traditional wedding with a chuppah at the synagogue. I went to the wedding and this was the first traditional Jewish wedding that I attended.   There was a big hall on the second floor of their house. There was a tent on four posts and on top of it there was a canopy of а beautiful gold glittering fabric. There were 10-15 guests at the wedding party. They were relatives, there were no other guests. Ilia wore a dark suit. Bertha had a beautiful pinkish dress of average length, bright, with flounces, elbow-long sleeves, covered shoulders. She had her long hair done and adorned. She wore white shoes and white socks. The ride and bridegroom stood under the chuppah. The rabbi spoke Yiddish, but I don’t know what it was about.  We were standing around. When he finished his recitation somebody gave the bride and bridegroom glasses with red wine and they sipped it. I remember this. I don’t remember what kind of food there was on the tables since I was overwhelmed with the occasion.
Ilia finished Pedagogical College in Saratov and went to work in Belgorod [approximately 600 km from Moscow] where he lectured at the Pedagogical College. He is candidate of philological sciences and a pensioner. He lives in Belgorod.  Ilia’s daughter Elena Elkonina lived with her husband Lev Elkonin, Jew, in Saratov. She died in 1998 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov. There were all rules followed, there was a minyan gathering and they recited Kaddish. I was present there and saw ten men wearing kippot reading the Kaddish. There was Rafail Yablonski among them, cousin brother of deceased Elena Elkonina. Since he didn’t have a kippah he wore a kerchief tied in knots.

Younger son Semyon was born in Saratov in 1938. After finishing a secondary school he finished Biological faculty of the State University in Saratov. He is candidate of psychological sciences, lives in Moscow and works in the Joint 9.  We often talk on the phone. When Semyon comes to Saratov on business he comes to see me. 

His brother Michael Avgustevich was born in Saratov in 1896. He was a plumber like his brothers.  He died in 1972. His wife Chasia, nee Sverdlova, a Jew, was born in Saratov in 1900. She was  housewife. She died in 1997. They were both buried at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov. Their daughter Elia Yablonskaya was born in Saratov in 1925. She finished an obstetrician school in Saratov and worked as an obstetrician medical assistant in maternity hospital #2. Her husband Shmul Yablonski was a Jew. All I know about him is that he died and was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov. Elia died in 2003 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery according to the Jewish tradition. There was a minyan gathering and a Kaddish recited.  Elia and Shmul had a son, born in Saratov in 1952. His name was Rafail Yablonski. He finished the Faculty of Electronics at Saratov Polytechnic College. After finishing the college he worked at the Tantal, a company belonging to an electronic industry. Now he is director of Grade-Star Ltd. Company dealing in rewinding of electric engines.  We keep in touch.

One of my grandparent’s daughter Sophia Ogushevich was born in Saratov some time in 1900s. I don’t know what kind of education she got. All I know is that she was good at accounting.  At the age of 20 or so she moved to Moscow. She was single and lived with her sister Raisa in Moscow.  Sophia had a hard life. She worked as a janitor in various companies. She died in Moscow. Regretfully, this is all I know about Sophia.  

Her sister Raisa Riabskaya, nee Ogushevich was born in 1890s. After getting married she moved to Moscow and became a housewife. Her husband Chaim Raibski was a Jew. He was a food supplier.  Their daughter Chasia was born in early 1920s. She lives in Moscow. She worked as an economist. Now she is a pensioner. Raisa’s second daughter Minna was born in the middle of 1920s. She lived in Moscow and worked in a design office. She died in Moscow in 1991. Raisa’s son Emil was born in Moscow in late 1920s. During the Great Patriotic War he was at the front. He was shell-shocked and had to wear and hearing device for the rest of his life. Emil’s wife Tamara Kluchareva is 80 years old. Their daughter’s name is Marina Riabskaya. We keep in touch with them and my sister Vera Belova lived in their home all five years of her studies.

Both sisters, Sophia and Raisa were moderately religious while Minna’s daughter Yana Khmelnitskaya is deeply religious. She celebrates all holidays, prays a lot, often goes to a synagogue in Moscow and follows kashrut. She is a real Jew. I don’t know how she came to be so religious. Yana’s son Ivan Khmelnitski studies in the 11th form in a Jewish school in Moscow and is also deeply religious. 

My father Esaih Ogushevich was born in Saratov in 1904. After the revolution of 1917 he finished a Russian lower secondary school, Construction College and worked as a plumber. My father worked long hours. He took after grandfather Semyon: taciturn, strict and hardworking. He wore a tunic, but no hat. He only put on a kippah and tallit at the synagogue and tefillin on his hand and forehead when praying.  He went to the synagogue with his father and his brother Michael.  We lived in neighboring houses with them.  And at Friday and at Saturday evening we waited at the gate of our home when they returned from synagogue.

My maternal grandfather Abram Buch was born in Saratov in 1870s. My grandfather was strict and vicious. I would even call him despotic. He seemed to be unapproachable, but he really did love us.  He was a tailor: he made women’s clothes. Grandfather Abram was a big handsome man with gray streaks in his hair. He always dressed like a dandy and wore a tolstovka 10 where he had a watch in a small pocket with a thick golden chain hanging on his chest. He lived with grandmother Sophia and their children in a two-storied house in Cheluskintsy Street on the corner of Volskaya Street. At that time it was far from the center of the town. There was a house where actors of the drama theater resided. This house is still there. There were communal apartments 11 in this house. My grandparents lived in one room where they had a bed, a wardrobe, an armchair and big table. There was a big sewing machine that was used to sew leather and thick woolen fabrics and a mannequin. In the kitchen they had a table, a kerosene stove and shelves for crockery. They had neighbors residing on the first floor – a Russian Christian family of the Victorovs and a Jewish family on the second floor. The name of the head of the family was Iosif Rys. He happened to be my future mother-in-law’s brother. My grandparents got along with their neighbors very well.

I visited my grandmother at Chanukkah with a little bag on my chest where I put Chanukkah gelt that they gave me. Even now I give Chanukkah gelt to my grandchildren, even though I do not celebrate these holidays. I give them money in the memory of my grandmother and grandfather. I don’t think grandfather Abram was not enthusiastic about the revolution of 1917 since the new regime expropriated his property 12. He was a tailor and owned a shop, as I imagine. His daughters also specialized in tailoring: Rosa made hats and my mother made dresses and suits. The family was moderately religious. I know little about them since we lived separately, but I remember that they fasted at Yom Kippur. They drank coffee with challah bread the night before and didn’t have any food until the men returned from the synagogue when the first star appeared in the sky on the following day. Grandfather Abram died in 1942 and was buried at the men’s section of the Jewish cemetery in Saratov.  I don’t know whether he was buried in accordance with the Jewish tradition. 

My maternal grandmother Sophia Buch whose maiden name I don’t remember was born in Saratov in 1870s. She was a housewife that was customary with Jewish women. My grandmother was short, thin, nice and quiet. I would call her timid. She always obeyed and listened to grandfather. She didn’t wear a wig and only wore a kerchief occasionally. She wore her hair in a knot on the back. My mother never told me whether she got any religious education. My grandparents’ daughters Vera, Anna and Rosa were not religious while my mother and her sister Anelia were moderately religious. Grandmother Sophia died in April 1941, one month before my sister Vera was born.

My grandparents had seven children. They were born in Saratov.  I don’t know their dates of birth.
The older daughter Anelia finished a grammar school in Saratov, got married and moved to Kuibyshev [present Samara, over 800 km from Moscow]. Her husband was Russian, his name was Alexei Latyshov. He was director of a military plant in Kuibyshev.  I don’t know what Anelia was doing. Their son Evgeni Latyshov, born in 1936, finished the Polytechnic College in Samara. He worked as an engineer. Aunt Anelia died in Saratov.

The next daughter was Rosa. Her husband Alexei Kanailov was Russian too. He was a Party official and worked as secretary of the regional Party committee. They lived in Leningrad [over 400 km from Moscow] before the war.  In 1942 they evacuated to Saratov and lived with us.  After the war they moved to Kaliningrad [900 km from Moscow]. They had four children. Their old daughter Ninel had a philological education. She worked as a librarian. She lives in Kaliningrad. Sophia, born in 1941, before the war I believe, lives in Tartu [today Estonia]. She worked as a teacher of mathematic at school. Now she is a pensioner. Sergei, born in 1936, lives in St. Petersburg. He finished the Polytechnic College in Kaliningrad and worked as chief construction engineer in Siberia for many years. Now he is consultant for the Union of entrepreneurs. There was another son named Valeri. He died in a car accident.

Their next daughter Katia lived in a village near Leningrad. She was a pharmacist and worked in a pharmacy. She was single. In 1943 Germans executed Katia as a Jew.

Vera was born in 1902. I don’t know where she studied, but at the age of 13 she began to do errands for Bolshevik Antonov-Ovseyenko and then she terminated any contacts with her family since they didn’t share her revolutionary ideas. Her relatives called her Verka the machine gunner. During the Civil War 13 Vera served in the Chapaev 14 division. She married commissar of this division, a Jewish man. His name was Abram Ertman. He perished in 1919. Vera moved to Odessa and finished the College of Public Economy. She returned to Saratov and worked as an economist in the regional planning department. She met her second man Moisey Brodski in Saratov in 1924. He finished a rabfak 15 and worked as an accountant in a bank office. They didn’t get married, but lived together. Their children have their father’s last name of Brodski and Vera kept her nee name of Ertman. Vera died in 1980. She was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Saratov. Moisey Brodski was buried at the Russian Voskresenskoye cemetery in Saratov. They had three daughters. Their older daughter Dina was born in 1925. She finished the Medical College in Saratov. She became a candidate of medical sciences and worked as an assistant at the department of hygiene.  Her husband Alexandr Kosmodemianski was a mathematician and correspondent member of the Academy of Sciences. They lived in Donetsk [over 900 km from Moscow] in Ukraine. Dina died in 2003. Dina’s daughter Irina was born in 1947. She and her Russian husband Vladimir Bolgrabski finished the Faculty of Mathematic of the Saratov State University. Irina is a doctor of mathematic, professor and correspondent member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.  Vladimir works in a computer center. Their son Igor Bolgrabski finished the Technological College in Leningrad. He works in a company and lives in Donetsk with his parents.

Nelia, their middle daughter, was born in 1932. She finished the Faculty of Geography of the Saratov State University and worked as a teacher. She is a pensioner and lives in Saratov. 

Ludmila, the younger daughter, was born in 1935. Her husband Valeri Trushkov, Russian, finished the Law College in Saratov and worked in law enforcement institutions in Saratov. Ludmila finished the College of Economics in Saratov. She got the profession of economist. In 1977 her husband got a job offer from Turkmenia. They moved and lived in Ashkhabad [almost 2500 km from Moscow].  About five years ago they returned to Saratov with their younger daughter Larisa and her family. Their older daughter Irina, born in 1967, finished the Law College in Saratov in 1989. Her husband Sergei Khlebnikov, born in 1962, Russian, finished the Polygraphist College in Moscow in 1984. They met in Ashkhabad where Sergei’s parents lived. They got married and settled down in Saratov. Thy lived with Irina’s aunt Nelia Brodskaya. Irina stayed with her when studying in college. They are in business now. Irina and Sergei have two daughters: Zhenia, born in 1988, and Dasha, born in 1989. They study in the Jewish school ‘Or Avner’ in Saratov. Their younger daughter Larisa, born in 1975, finished the Faculty of Therapeutic Physical Training at the Ashkhabad College of Physical Training in 1996. Her husband Akhmed Kranov, born in 1969, Kazakh, finished Medical College in Ashkhabad in 1992. Larisa is a housewife. Their son Timur was born in 2003. Her husband Akhmed is an anesthesiologist in maternity hospital #2 in Saratov.   They all keep in touch.

My mother’s brother Boris was born in 1902. During the Civil War he was in the Chapaev division. I don’t know what kind of education he had. Boris worked as an accountant in the regional department of pharmacies in Saratov. His wife Tatiana whose maiden name I don’t remember came from a religious Jewish family. They observed all traditions. We visited them on Friday and they visited us each Saturday. My aunt always cooked something delicious for us. We played cards and dominoes or lotto. Now I understood that this was Sabbath. We continued visiting them even when I grew up. When I had my own plans on this day I took my mother to my aunt and uncle and then returned to pick her up and had dinner with them. They didn’t have children. Tatiana was a housewife. She had heart problems and was sickly after a surgery, but my mother and I kept visiting her on Friday. My aunt also visited us. This was a tradition with us. Boris died in 1966 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery. Tatiana died in 1972 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery.

Anna was born in 1910. She finished the Faculty of Humanitarian Sciences Pedagogical College in Serdobsk, Penza region, [about 800 km from Moscow]. She was a teacher at the Pedagogical School and then became a human resources manager at the vocational education department.  After moving to Saratov she became a member of a Party control commission of October district committee of the Communist Party. Her husband Vasili Fokin, Russian, came from Serdobsk.  They didn’t have children. Anna died in 2000 and was buried at the Jewish cemetery. My mother had another brother whom we have never seen and have no information about him. 

My mother Taiba Ogushevich, nee Buch was born in Saratov in 1905. She finished a secular grammar school in Saratov. She could speak some French and occasionally read us poems in French. She was very kind and handy: she could sew, embroider and knit. My mother made her clothes herself. She didn’t wear any shawls or hats. She also made clothes for her acquaintances. Her clients were mostly Jewish women. All her friends and acquaintances called her affectionately Tusia. When in grammar school my mother went to dancing-party at the House of Officers where she met my father. They were seeing each other secretly from their parents since they met against the Jewish tradition of matchmaking. They got married for love in 1927. They never spoke about their wedding and I never came to asking about it.

My mother and father lived in a house with my grandfather in Niznyaya Street in the Jewish neighborhood. There was a synagogue and a mosque in this street. Our neighbors were Tatars for the most part.  There were few lilac bushes, a cherry tree and an apple tree near the house. There was also a summer tent house and vines around it that my father planted.  There was a wood shed in the backyard until some time in 1940 we had gas heating and a hollandka stove [a Dutch design built in stove] installed. We didn’t keep any livestock. There was a big kitchen and a Russian stove 16 in it. There were few small rooms in the house. Our parents had a bedroom and we, children, also had our quarters in the house. There was plain furniture: chairs and a bed with knobbles, a wardrobe and a dressing table.   There were two houses actually standing together: one where our family with grandfather Semyon resided and another house where my father’s brother Michael Avgustevich, his wife Chasia and daughter Elia lived.  Grandfather bought these houses when he returned to Saratov from Pugachov and then when his granddaughters Maria and Elia were born he gave a house into to our ownership. Therefore, I became an owner of the house where our family lived.
My mother was a housewife and did everything in the house. There was no specific religiosity in the family, but while grandfather Semyon was alive they used to go to rabbi Gorelik who performed the duties of shochet to have their chickens slaughtered, and they followed kashrut.
 
My mother was a terrific cook. She made delicious Jewish food. At Rosh Hashanah we had Gefilte fish and at Pesach we always had matzah. Our mother made chicken broth with kneydlakh. Our mother set the table and we waited until grandfather and uncle Michael came home from the synagogue to start a meal. Our uncle always came to our house, sat at the table to drink a glass of wine and then went to his home.

My mother and father had three children: I was the oldest and was born in 1929, and my brother Michael was born in 1936. We were born in Saratov. I didn’t go to a kindergarten since my grandmother Sophia was looking after me. I liked playing in the yard and spending time with my grandfather Semyon. When Michael was born I began helping my mother to look after him. He was a quiet boy and didn’t cause any problems. Shortly before the war in 1941 my younger sister Vera was born. I also helped to look after her. In summer 1935 my mother, her sisters Ania and Katia and I went to Kislovodsk on vacation. [Town in Stavropol region, Balneal resort. Located at the foothills of the Caucasus at the height of 720-1060 meters, over 1300 km from Moscow] I have dim memories of this trip, but I remember the feeling of happiness and quiet.

I went to the synagogue with my father and my maternal grandmother Sophia on holidays. There were always many people there. I have the brightest memory of the merry holiday of receiving the gift of the Torah [Simchat Torah]. My grandmother and I were on the upper floor and men were on the ground floor and I can still remember those shining scrolls being taken out. There was singing and we were watching from where we were. We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays after grandfather died. Grandfather enjoyed making a tent at Sukkot. We had meals in it. Grandfather used to drink a glass of wine in such festive manner! There was homemade challah bread on the table, greeneries and fruit.  Mother brought grapes and apples from the market. 

At Pesach we took out special crockery that was kept in a wicker basket with two handles in the attic. We had different crockery for meat and dairy products. Mother cooked Gefilte fish, tsimes      [stew with carrots, parsnips, or prunes with potatoes] and kneydl with broth, all our neighbors knew when she was cooking – the food smelled in the street. My mother and I picked matzah from the synagogue. When I was 5 or 6 the old synagogue was closed. It was closed because of the Soviet power that persecuted all religions, but I still remember it well from the time it was open. It was a two-storied stone building in Gogol Street between Volskaya and Chapaev Streets. My mother and I stayed on the upper floor from where we could see it all.  I remember rabbi Gorelik in his kippah, lapserdak [traditional outer clothing of men, including rabbi] and tallit. The present-day synagogue in Posadski Street is different from the old one. It’s just a one-storied stone building. We visited grandmother and grandfather on Sabbath and every other Saturday we spent with my mother’s brother Boris and Boris came to see us another time. My mother and I also made preparations to receive guests appropriately.

My mother and my mother brother’s wife Chasia switched to Yiddish when they didn’t want us to understand the subject of their discussion. When I began to study German at school I began to grasp the point of a subject of the discussion.  My older cousin sister Elia Avgustevich, uncle Michael’s daughter, had a good conduct of Yiddish. My parents didn’t discuss any political subjects in the presence of their children, but I cannot tell what they talked about when they switched to Yiddish.  They were not members of the Party. I understand that my parents had a loyal attitude toward the Soviet rule.  They didn’t have a fear of the regime. However, I know that there was a house in the corner of Volskaya and Zarubin Streets that other people avoided. It was called the ‘Stromin house’. Mr. Stromin was a prosecutor officer or something like that in Saratov.  My mother and father also bypassed it since all those arrested at night were taken to this house. We were not allowed to talk about this house. When the war began this building housed an NKVD 17 kindergarten. Our family didn’t suffer during the period of arrests. At least, I know nothing about it. I guess, adults in our family discussed the situation in the USSR and Europe, but I was too young to take any notice of what adults were talking about.

Growing up

I studied in school # 13 18 for girls (present-day lyceum of physics and mathematics) in 1937 – 1947. The Jewish school in Saratov was closed in 1934. My school was on the corner of Moskovskaya and Rachov Streets. There were many trees and flowers in the yard.  The school was in an old stone three-storied building with wide stairs and hallways. There were high ceilings in the building. I studied well and was fond of literature classes. When Vera was one year old she and mother fell ill with typhoid. My mother had to go to hospital due to her severe condition and Vera was at home. She also had whooping cough and I had a release from school for few months to look after my sister. Probably I chose the doctor’s profession after I nursed Vera back to health. Of course, my father and his brother were helping me since we had to do everything by ourselves. I washed clothes in a tub that I put on a stool. I disinfected all clothes and bed sheets, cooked and visited my mother in hospital. When Vera recovered I understood how much I wanted to become a doctor.

We hardly had any books at home. There were only few religious books that my grandfather left. They were very old books with yellow pages and we didn’t understand what was written in them.  We borrowed books that we wanted from a library.

We heard about the war on the radio when Molotov 19 spoke. My father was called to his office. He was released from service in the army.  He was a plumber and equipment repairman at the NKVD boiler house in Dzerzhynski Street. The NKVD office was called a ‘gray house’ (this building is still called so) and its boiler house was across the street from the office. My father worked there through the war. His brother Osip Avgustevich also worked there. They worked there 24 hours in a row, if necessary. I know that my father was respected at work.

We started school on 1 September 1941, as usual. There were talks about a war at school since many pupils’ brothers or fathers had been recruited to the army. Everybody kept track about news from the front. We were very concerned when German troops came close to Moscow. Many thought it was the end, but then the situation began to change and we were hearing about the advance of the Soviet army. I believe, some time in the end of 1943 we began to mark the advance of Soviet troops on our map at the history class at school.  

Life was hard during the war. I can’t remember whether Jews supported each other, but there was some moral support, indeed, since each family had somebody at the front. There was nobody in our family at the front, so our situation was different. Saratov was quite at a distance from the front and plants from occupied territories evacuated to our town. Those plants repaired tanks and manufactured shells for Katyusha units. Saratov worked for the front and provided food to the front. When Germans approached Stalingrad [Volgograd, over 900 km from Moscow, 300 km from Saratov], anti-aircraft units came to Saratov where girls served for the most part. Anti-aircraft units were installed in Zavodskoy district of Saratov where military plants were located. Schoolchildren from our school were taken to Yelshanka in 40 km from Saratov to dig trenches. My father’s brother Michael worked as a plumber in the hospital where Chasia was working and they helped us with food whenever they could. My father also worked from morning till night and my mother sewed for the front. 

My mother had a childhood friend whose name was Rieva Kostyunina and kept in touch with the family of Avrutovs living nearby.  Jewish women usually bought food products at the Verkhniy Bazaar located in our neighborhood. Jewish housewives went to this market because it was the nearest market to their homes. 

During the war

We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays during the war. We only baked matzah at Pesach. It was hard to observe traditions when we could hardly get what we vitally needed. We actually didn’t socialize with other people. Only my mother’s clients came to our house. For celebrations we got together with the family and there were usually about 12 people sitting at the table. I also remember that when there were 13 people sitting at the table my mother didn’t sit down. We had a close family. We still keep in touch with our relatives and their children scattered all over the world. 

I had one Jewish classmate Fania Chait. There were Jewish girls at school. We never faced any different attitudes.  I have my Jewish identity stated in all my documents. This is the so-called Item 5 20. I became a pioneer and joined the Komsomol 21. I took an active part in pioneer activities. We supported and helped older people at home. I never faced any negative attitudes. Perhaps, I never gave it a thought, really. It’s hard to say now. I participated in amateur concerts reciting excerpts from books and poems: Gertzen [Gertzen, Alexander I. (1812-1870): Russian revolutionary, writer and philosopher] ‘The Bygone and Thoughts’. When a senior pupil I attended a history club in the House of Officers. Boys from a school for boys attended it, too. When I was in the 8th form I met my future husband Yuri (Georgi) Zabozlaev. He was born in Saratov in 1929.

After the war

I finished school in 1947 and entered the Pediatric Faculty at the Medical College. I passed my entrance exams and got all excellent marks. My Jewish identity didn’t play any role 22 I finished this college in 1953. I heard about the ‘doctors’ plot’ 23, but I don’t remember anything about it. I was overwhelmed with medicine and believed that it was slander against doctors. Later newspapers began to publish disclaimers and my concerns disappeared.

Mother my future husband Evgenia Davydovna, his sister Olga and he had evacuated from Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War. There was a secondary school where they also studied aviation in Bakhmetievskaya Street. Georgi – although everybody called him Yuri, studied in this school in the 8th, 9th and 10th form.  They were very poor. Their father perished during the siege in Leningrad 24. There was one teacher of history that worked in our school for girls and in school for boys. She conducted joint classes at the history club and was not favored by the local educational authorities for this. We studied history in this club. Since then Yuri and I were together until Yuri died. My husband’s mother Evgenia Zabozlaeva, nee Rys, was a Jew. Her parents David and Olga Rys, Jews, were fabric merchants. My parents knew them. My mother and Evgenia Davydovna studied at the grammar school for girls in Saratov together.

However, Evgenia Davydovna kept the fact of her Jewish identity to herself. She had the Russian last name of Zabozlaeva and everybody believed they were Russian. For her it was a matter of convenience so that her children were not disturbed when studying at school. Yuri and Olga knew that their mother was a Jew. They joined Komsomol and later they joined the Party and of course, there was nothing Jewish in their family. After finishing the 10th form Yuri was sent to a pilot school in Balashov [over 800 km from Moscow] in Saratov region. We got married after I finished my third year in college. This happened in summer 1950, though he had proposed to me few years before. We had a very cheerful wedding. There were relatives on both sides and my co-students.  We had a wedding party and tables set in Michael’s house that was bigger than ours. My relatives helped with cooking. We had teyglakh, Gefilte fish and forshmak made. There were also lots of pastries. 

We had a civil ceremony in a registry office. We didn’t go to synagogue and didn’t have a chuppah.
It was out of the questions! Actually, my mother-in-law and her relatives were not quite happy about me as Yuri’s wife, I don’t know why. My husband was really nice and kind, there are no such husbands now. He told me that what they wanted was their business and we should do what we thought was right. My parents liked Yuri. One couldn’t help liking him!

It happened so that we took a decision to get married on the sour of the moment. Yuri was a 3rd-year student and I wasn’t quite prepared to get married. Since his mother and her sisters didn’t want this marriage to take place my father forwarded a condition that we would only get married if his relatives reached a compromise about me. Now I understand why his mother didn’t want us to get married. They were so poor and she hoped that he would support her and sisters after he finished his school. Or, perhaps, she thought we were too young to marry. I had a neighbor Luba Galper, a Jewish girl that was renting an apartment in a nearby house. She came from a wealthy family. Her father was director of a clock factory in Penza. She said to me ‘Why worry? You can borrow any  dress from my wardrobe!’ I chose a white dress that I wore to the registry office. On the following day I had to give this dress back and my mother-in-law asked me 'Where is the dress?', but Yuri replied ‘It got wine stained’. He didn’t allow anyone to have second thoughts about me. Later I had to make it up with his mother for his sake. I called her ‘mother’. 

We enjoyed the wedding party. Yuri gave me brown amber necklace. Our guests had fun and danced a lot. They also danced ‘seven forty’. My father and uncle Michael also danced. So I stepped into my marital life with a scandal and wearing somebody else’s dress.

My brother Michael was 6 when my mother sent him to an NKVD kindergarten where our father worked. There was a small garden and a playground near the kindergarten.  In 1944 Michael went to secondary school # 30 and music school to learn to play the violin. He became a young Octobrist, then a pioneer, joined Komsomol. After finishing the 7th form Michael entered the mechanical Faculty at the Aviation College in 1951. He studied well and played in the college orchestra. Students staged the musical comedy ‘A Wedding in Malinovka’ in college.  He finished college in 1955 and entered an Automobile Faculty at the Polytechnic College of Saratov. In this college Michael also played in the orchestra. In 1960 he finished college and joined the Party. 

Michael worked as an engineer in various companies of the automobile industry in Saratov.  In 1969 he was appointed as director of the design office of Privolzhskstroytrans trust.  In 1971 this design office was transformed into Saratov affiliate of the OMTS (Organization, Mechanization and Engineering Support of Construction) design institute and Michael became its director. He worked as director until 1992. He was fond of technical developments and was awarded a number of diplomas and patents for his innovations. 

When he was a student Michael married his co-student in 1957. His wife Ludmila Zotova, born in 1937, was Russian. They had much in common. Ludmila finished a music school and took part in amateur performances. She finished the Faculty of Economics in various design institutes.  Our mother liked Ludmila and had no objections to their marriage. Michael and Ludmila had two children. The older one – Irina, was born in 1958. She finished a music school. In 1980 she finished the Saratov Polytechnic College, the Faculty of Economics and worked as an economist in a design institute. Her husband Boris Chervotkin, born in 1954, Russian, finished the faculty of Mechanics and Mathematic of the Saratov State University.  He also finished a post-graduate course. He is candidate of mathematic science. They have two children: son Konstantin, born in 1982, and daughter Anna, born in 1984. They finished school in Israel and serve in the army in Israel. 

Michael’s younger daughter Tatiana, born in 1968, finished a higher secondary school, a music school and the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematic in Saratov State University. She worked as a programmer in a design institute. In May 1992 she fell ill with acute leucosis. Doctors examined her in Saratov and Moscow and said that she could probably be helped in Israel. In August 1992 Michael, Ludmila and Tatiana moved to Israel at the invitation of a clinic in Israel.  Irina and her family joined them two months later. Irina was supposed to be a marrow donor for her sister, but  her blood turned out to be incompatible with Tatiana’s. They found a different donor. Tatiana lived four years. Michael wasn’t religious, but the tragedy that happened to his daughter changed him. Michael and his family adopted religion. Michael had brit milah at an early age. Irina’s husband Boris had a Jewish name of Boruch. Grandson Konstantin also had bar mitzvah. His Jewish name is David and Anna has a Jewish name of Anyuta.  Tatiana began to be called Talia. She died in 1996. Michael and Ludmila live in Jerusalem. Michael is an invalid of 1 grade. He has a Parkinson disease.  Irina and her family live in Netanya. My brother Mihael’s wife Ludmila is Russian and she is Christian. However, when the family moved to Israel and their daughter Tatiana adopted Jewishness Ludmila began to follow the Jewish way of life. They celebrate Sabbath, light candles on Friday, get together with the family, follow kashrut and celebrate all holidays when their health condition permits. Ludmila goes to a Christian church as well in Israel, but she supports a Jewish way of life at home. According to the Jewish tradition she puts little stones on Tatiana’s grave, rather than flowers what is the Christian custom.

My younger sister Vera was a weak and sickly child. Vera was 9 when father died in an accident. She stayed with relatives during the funeral and later Vera said she was grateful to her relatives that took her to their house. Father was always alive in her memory. Our cousin sister Elia Avgustevich took Vera to the synagogue for the first time. This was at Pesach. Vera was 6 years old. Vera wasn’t religious, but she liked Jewish holidays. She went school #13 for girls in 1948. When she was in the 6th form the schools for boys and girls merged. Some children were assigned to other schools nearer to their homes. Vera was transferred to a former school for boys. It took her some time to get adjusted to the new school. I know that in school 13 Vera had some Jewish classmates, but I cannot say they were close friends. There were no Jews in her new school or in the drama club in the houses of officers that Vera attended. Vera didn’t have Jewish friends. Her classmates sometimes abused her for her Jewish identity calling her ‘Jew’ in an abusive manner. 

Our father’s uncle Osip Avgustevich helped Vera to get a job at a plant in 1956 since Vera failed at the competition to the Aviation College. She studied at the evening department of Saratov Aviation College and worked. She worked as production engineer and retired in 1994. Her husband had died and she needed to support her daughter Katia. She had to do something to earn more money. 

Vera worked at the ‘mail box’ 25 over 30 years. I think that her career failed due to her Jewish identity. Her boss always included her on his lists of employees to be submitted for promotions or a raise, and then he always said ‘I can’t understand why they crossed your name out of the list’.., but Vera knew. Vera married Alexandr Belov, Russian, in 1971 when she was 30. He finished the Faculty of Energy in Saratov Polytechnic College. He worked as an assistant and the faculty of Energy at the Polytechnic College. In 1972 defended his candidate's dissertation in Leningrad. After they got married they lived with our mother. In 1972 their daughter Katia was born. She finished the faculty of Biology in Saratov State University in у 1994. She is a psychologist. She defended her dissertation in 1997. She is candidate of sciences.

About 8-10 years ago Vera began to identify herself as a Jew. She said this happened when she began to work in a Jewish project of the Open Jewish University in Israel. Our cousin brother Semyon Avgustevich that was manager of Association of Public Universities employed her as project secretary in Moscow in 1996. Vera worked in this program for five years: she gained knowledge of the Jewish history and traditions. Vera studied the Jewish history. Employees of this project even studied ‘Introduction to Torah’. This project lasted four years. Later Semyon started a new program ‘Warm houses of Moscow’ and made Vera coordinator of this program. They celebrated Sabbath, Pesach and other holidays in ‘warm houses’ (‘warm houses’: charity cultural program for those who cannot attend Hesed. It includes celebration of Sabbath, birthdays, attending lectures on various subjects, small concerts and celebration of all Jewish holidays) and Vera became a hostess of one of such houses and at that time her Jewish identity showed up. She took part in celebration of Chanukkah at the ‘Russia’ cinema theater in Moscow. At the previous Pesach that Vera conducted in her ‘warm house’ there were 100 guests.  Young people from the community of young Jews conducted seder and hid afikoman. Working in this program Vera visited Israel several times. Her first visit took place in 1996. Vera was greatly impressed. She traveled for the 2nd time in 1998. During her 3rd visit Vera, her daughter Katia and Michael celebrated the new Year in Jerusalem.  Vera met a nice Jewish man in Moscow. They got married and she moved to him in Israel in 2000. She is very happy. They live in Karmiel.

Our father died in 1950 a month and a half after my wedding. He died in an accident at the factory of amplifiers was under construction. Father was buried at the Jewish cemetery. Our mother ordered a memorial prayer [Kaddish] at the synagogue. Our mother was a reserved and taciturn person. She never complained or discussed her feelings. By the way, our mother never once went to our father’s grave. It was a mystery for us, but we never dared to ask her.

In 1953 I was a last-year student in college. When Stalin died we all had a feeling that it was the end of the world and of the life. All people were crying. Students attended a memorial meeting at the Revolution Square that is now called Teatralnaya. There were crowds of people at meetings. I cannot explain now why we were crying, but that was how we were feeling. We didn’t know the real state of things and in our family we never came into any details about politics, so I believed that everything wrong was done without Stalin’s involvement.

My husband and I lived separately for many years. I was finishing my studies in Saratov and he studied in Balashov. He finished his military school with honors and worked there as pilot-instructor for few years. Upon graduation from Medical College I worked as a doctor in a children’s hospital, nursery school and was a district doctor. We rented an apartment in the outskirts of Balashov. We only had Russian neighbors and Yuri had grown up in the Russian surrounding. So it happened that Jewish traditions were absent from my life for many years. My husband liked Jewish food and when my mother visited us she cooked only Jewish food. In 1952 our daughter Sophia was born. There is a romantic story about this name.  My husband and I decided to name our daughter Sophia long before she was born. My husband traveled to many towns in the Soviet Union. Once he traveled to Uman in Ukraine and made a tour of its famous park that count Pototski made for his beloved Sophia. There are ponds in this park arranged in such manner that when flying over the park one can read the name Sophia formed by the ponds. My husband said that if we were going to have a daughter we would name her Sophia.

Yuri and I kept moving from one place to another where Yuri’s military service required. From Balashov we moved to Cheliabinsk [about 1600 km from Moscow]. My husband finished his service in Feodorovka village Kustanai region [over 1700 km from Moscow] in Kazakhstan where our son was born in 1957. I named him Fyodor after father my husband.

Our children went to school and became young Octobrists, pioneers and Komsomol members. There was overall devotion to the idea of communism and superiority of Russians and even if I wanted I wouldn’t have been able to keep any Jewish way of life. I’ve never tried to conceal the fact of my Jewish identity, but I didn’t feel anything specific about it. I’ve never faced any unjust attitudes. Our children didn’t know they were Jews. I told them about when they grew up. My husband always identified himself as a Jew. 

We returned to Saratov in 1961. We lived with my mother in our house in Nizhnyaya Street the first six months. Yuri went to work at the aviation equipment plant named after Ordjonikidze. He was a technician. He received a two-room apartment in Leninski district. In 1973 me and my husband received another apartment. This is where I live now. In 1961 I went to work in the apartment of postnatal pathology in children’s infectious hospital #2. In 1962 - 1964 I finished a residency course and became a neonatologist. I worked there from 1961 till 1995. Our chief doctor was a Jew and so were many of my colleagues and I didn’t face any negative attitudes at work. I had a happy life with my husband. We liked going to the cinema, theaters and concerts in the Philharmonic. We had a car and went to Mineralnyie Vody in the Caucasus on vacation.  In 1968 we traveled to the Baltic Republics and Leningrad.  In 1977 we made a tour of Western Ukraine and Moldova. We visited Kishinev, Yassy, Morshansk and Lvov. We had few friends and celebrated Soviet and family holidays with them. We had parties and sang Soviet songs and Russian folk songs. We didn’t sing any Jewish songs.

My husband died in 1973. He was buried at the Russian Voskresenskoye cemetery. My mother died in 1988. We buried her at the Jewish cemetery, but there were no Jewish traditions followed. We even arranged a memorial dinner since we lived in the Russian environment and this was a Russian tradition.  

Like my mother, I tried to have no political subjects discussed in the family. Of course, we heard or read in newspapers about the ‘spring in Prague’ 26, dissidents 27 and departure of many Jews to Israel in early 1970s and that many Soviet citizens were deprived of their Soviet residency, but I didn’t share my opinions about it. I believe that people always do what they think is right.  I’ve never considered moving to another country. I cannot imagine living without my family, friends or acquaintances. I had many Jewish colleagues and we always supported each other. We enjoyed working together and never had any problems due to our Jewish identity.

I have mixed feelings about perestroika 28 and the downfall of the Soviet Union.  I like it that we got an opportunity to know more about the history and read books. I was greatly impressed by Solzhenitsyn 29, Mandelshtam 30, Akhmatova 31 and Tsvetayeva.32 When I heard their life stories I thought that we knew so little about life. We only knew what we were allowed to know. The reality was different and hard. It’s hard to imagine all those hardships and deaths. On the other hand, after the downfall of the USSR it became difficult to communicate with friends and relatives and many contacts have been lost. My children have a Russian nationality indicated in their documents. Sophia finished music and secondary schools and entered the College of Cinema Engineers that she finished in 1974. Her husband Nikolay Bolshakov, Russian, was born in 1951. When he was proposing to Sophia my husband Yuri said to him ‘You think it over. Sophia’s mother is a Jew’. He said it didn’t matter to him. His parents were of the same opinion. Nikolay finished Saratov Military School of Chemical Defense in 1972. Sophia followed him to where he was to serve: Magdeburg, Piarnu, the Baikal-Amur Railroad. They’ve lived in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in Sakhalin for 16 years. Nikolay retired and Sophia is a businesswoman. They have two children: Yulia, born in 1974, and Georgi, born in 1978. Yulia finished a music school and in 1995 she finished the Primary School Faculty at Sakhalinsk Pedagogical College. She lives in Saratov and works in the Cultural center for schoolchildren. Georgi from 2000 lives near Tel-Aviv in Israel.

My son Fyodor finished a music school and Saratov Medical College in 1980. He finished a post-graduate course in 1983 and was awarded the title of candidate of medical sciences. He works at the department of morbid anatomy at the Medical College and is head of the department of morbid anatomy of town hospital #8. He is also chief morbid anatomy doctor of Saratov region. He was married twice. His first wife’s name was Olga Bashkatova and she is Russian. They have a daughter, Elena, born in 1986. She lives in Sevastopol. Saratov Medical School and works as a nurse. Their son Daniel was born in 1990.

When giving the gelt to my grandchildren at Chanukkah I once felt like telling them about the Jewish history and holidays. I felt like telling them that we were Jews. In my daughter’s family they have friendly attitudes toward the Jewish identity. My granddaughter Yulia, my daughter Sophia and her husband Nikolay have been to Israel this year. They liked it there.  Yulia attends the Jewish center for young people. They like Jewish holidays and Jewish food. . They are planning to move to Israel. The situation in Fyodor’s family is different. His first and second wives are Russian and they have a Russian way of life. However, my grandson Daniel understands very well who his grandmother is and who he is. Fyodor’s wife Elena and my grandson Daniel treat me very nicely, but they discuss no Jewish subjects in their family. I do not take part in public activities in the Jewish community. I make contributions to the synagogue on holidays. They have a special charity box: tzdaki. The same with Hesed. I have always had their support and assistance when after surgery I needed help and Hesed sent me an attendant to look after me.  They always send me gifts and greetings. I understand that I didn’t do anything big for them, but they still help me just because I am a Jew.  

I didn’t feel my Jewish identity at work or at home. Our Jewish way of life in the family ended when grandfather Semyon died. However, our mother always tried to have celebrations on holidays, but we never spoke Yiddish at home. I didn’t face any oppression. Probably because I had a Russian husband. However, I am glad to have this feeling of my Jewish identity, I’am now proud as a Jew.

In 1995 I went to Israel at the invitation of my brother Michael. I traveled all over the country: Eilat, Beer Sheva and Haifa. I was greatly impressed, though I was very unhappy about Tatiana’s condition.  I accompanied her to hospitals and clinics and gave moral support to her. I stayed three months in Israel when I realized that I was eager to go home. I knew then that I would never come to live in Israel, regardless of how willing was Michael to convince me to move to Israel. I have grown roots into my homeland. Our relatives, grandmothers and grandfathers, mother and father, uncles and aunts wee buried at the Jewish cemetery. We often visit the cemetery to keep things in order there and bow to them.  

Glossary:

Maria (Masha) Rolnikaite

Sankt Peterburgas, Rusija

Maria Grigorjevna Rolnikaitė kartu su vyru gyvena jaukiame dviejų kambarių bute viename iš naujųjų Sankt Peterburgo rajonų. Prieš mūsų interviu ji labai rekomendavo perskaityti jos parašytą knygą „Tai yra tiesa“. Vienas knygos skyrius vadinasi „Turiu jums tai papasakoti“. Iš tiesų, tai Marijos Grigorjevnos dienoraštis, kurį ji rašė būdama Vilniaus gete, o paskui dviejose nacių koncentracijos stovyklose. Knyga buvo išversta į daugelį kalbų ir išleista visame pasaulyje. Ji suteikia žmonėms galimybę sužinoti siaubingą tiesą apie tas dienas.

Nuo pirmųjų susitikimo minučių mus sužavėjo Marijos aiškus protas ir drąsa. Apie tai galima spręsti iš jos išvaizdos, kiekvieno žodžio ir nuomonės. Masha yra geranoriška, humoro jausmą turinti ir aplinkiniu pasauliu besidominti asmenybė. Masha dažnai nurodydavo faktus, aprašytus jos knygoje: ji nenorėjo vėl kalbėti apie siaubingas savo gyvenimo detales, nes, pasak jos, kiekvienas prisiminimas paliko randus.

Mano šeimos istorija

Kaip aš augau

Per karą

Po karo

Žodynėlis

Mano šeimos istorija

Deja, nieko nežinau apie pro-senelius ir pro-močiutes. Žinau tik tiek, kad jie visi kilę iš Lietuvos. Tėtis sakydavo, kad jo senelis buvo vandens nešėjas, bet gal jis taip juokavo. Dauguma mano giminaičių gyveno Plungės miestelyje (štetle) netoli Klaipėdos. [Klaipėda yra trečias pagal dydį Lietuvos miestas prie Baltijos jūros, įsikūręs ant Danės upės krantų.] Prisimenu, kad mano močiutės iš tėvo pusės vardas buvo Hana Rolnikienė.

Mano senelį iš tėvo pusės vadino Itsik Abel Rolnik. Lenkiškai „rolnik“ reiškia „ūkininkas“, bet, kiek žinau, tarp mūsų šeimos narių ūkininkų nebuvo. Jis buvo senas religingas žydas, nešiojo barzdą ir laikėsi tradicijų. Turėjo mažą parduotuvėlę. Močiutė Hana buvo gyvybinga ir šmaikšti. Ji pagimdė dešimt vaikų ir visus juos išaugino. Deja, keli vaikai mirė dar prieš karą. Pradžioje parduotuvėlė buvo labai maža: sagos, kaspinai ir pan. Vėliau jie ėmė prekiauti audiniais ir gatavomis prekėmis. Močiutė pasakojo, kad po prekystaliu laikė medinę geldą (tokiose moterys skalbdavo), kurioje gulėdavo kūdikis. Ji koja supdavo tokį „lopšį“ ir tuo pat metu prekiaudavo. Kūdikį  žindydavo mažoji kamarėlėje ir tai būdavo vienintelė jos pertrauka. Štai taip ji augino savo vaikus!

Senelis buvo religingas ir lankė sinagogą. Buvo tylus ir rimtas, o močiutė, priešingai, mėgo pajuokauti. Štai pavyzdys. Močiutė turėjo brolį, gyvenusį gretimame mieste. Jis siųsdavo laiškus visiškai neįskaitomu raštu. Todėl močiutė nusiuntė jam atsakymą: atvažiuok pas mus ir pats perskaityk savo laišką!

1938 metais parduotuvę perėmė mano dėdė Berl (tėčio brolis). Močiutė nelabai pasitikėjo jo komerciniais gebėjimais, todėl juokaudavo: „kai mirsiu, išgręžkite man karste skylę, kad galėčiau pasižiūrėti kaip tvarkaisi be manęs“. 1940 metais parduotuvę nacionalizavo ir močiutė negalėjo su tuo susitaikyti. Parduotuvė buvo jos vaikas, kurį išdrįso iš jos atimti. Valdžia atėmė viską, tad, kai dėdė visam laikui išėjo iš parduotuvės, jis nešėsi tik visiškai nudilusį arbatinuką (šluodami, su juo laistydavo grindis). Dėdė pasakė: „Dabar tai vienintelis daiktas, kurį turime“. Močiutė mirė 1941 metų sausio 3 dieną. Nacionalizacijos kampanija baigėsi 1940-jų rudenį, Lietuvai tapus Sovietine Respublika 1. Močiutė mirė miegodama nuo kraujo išsiliejimo į smegenis. Tuo metu jai buvo 64 metai. Jos širdis buvo tokia stipri, kad giminaičiai spėjo pakviesti mano Tėtį ir kitus močiutės sūnus. Jie atvyko ir galėjo atiduoti motinai paskutinę pagarbą. Per laidotuves Tėtis pasakė kalbą, nors tai nebuvo įprasta. Jis minėjo  močiutės nuopelnus ir už ką giminaičiai yra jai dėkingi.

Kai tėčiui sukako 12 metų, senelis ir močiutė išsiuntė jį į chederį (pradinę mokyklą). Mokykla buvo gretimame miestelyje. Tačiau Tėtis greit mokslu nusivylė ir pėsčiomis grįžo namo. Vėliau jis baigė vidurinę mokyklą ir išvyko į Rygą mokytis gimnazijoje. Tėvai nupirko jam juodą kostiumą ir kaklaraištį ir tik tiek tegalėjo padėti. Tėtis išvyko į Rygą visai be pinigų, uždarbiavo dirbdamas nešiku ir krovėju. Kai kelnės visiškai prairdavo, jis jas lopė karpydamas savo kaklaraištį. Tėtis sugebėjo baigti gimnaziją Rygoje (kažkodėl tai buvo rusiška gimnazija), nusprendė tapti advokatu ir studijuoti universitete Vokietijoje. Jis pasiuntė 12 prašymų į 12 universitetų ir visi prašymai buvo atmesti. Nepaisant to, tėtis išvyko į Berlyną ir sugebėjo patekti į susitikimą su vieno universiteto rektoriumi.

Juokinga, bet pašto ženklas suvaidino lemtingą rolę, padėjusią Tėčiui tapti studentu. Tėtis atėjo pas rektorių, pasakė, kad yra iš Lietuvos ir nori studijuoti universitete. Rektorius paklausė: „Tai jūs iš Lietuvos? Neseniai mes su kolegomis ginčijomės dėl Lietuvos ir Latvijos. Ar tai ta pati valstybė?“ Tėtis atsakė, kad ne, kad jis turi savo tėvų laišką su Lietuvos pašto ženklu. Po šio pokalbio rektorius leido Tėčiui tapti studentu neakivaizdininku. Vėliau Tėtis išlaikė visus egzaminus ir tapo normaliu studentu, mokėsi Berlyne ir Leipcige. Jis baigė teisės fakultetą, vėliau baigė Vokiečių kalbos ir literatūros koledžą, kuriame buvo rengiami vokiečių kalbos ir literatūros mokytojai užsieniečiams. Aš paklausiau: „Tėti, kam?“. Jis atsakė: „Man tai buvo labai įdomu“. Vokiečių kalbos žinios buvo naudingos, nes vėliau mes turėjome auklę iš Vokietijos ir ji su mumis kalbėjo vokiškai. Tai naudinga man ir dabar, po daugelio metų. Vienu metu man rodėsi, kad viską pamiršau, tačiau kai mano knygą išleido Vokietijoje, aš nuvykau ten ir nors prastai kalbėjau vokiškai, tačiau sugebėjau atsakyti į klausimus. Tarp kitko, knygos rankraštį skaičiau jidiš kalba (jų pageidavimu).

Mama buvo namų šeimininkė. Ji turėjo keturis vaikus ir šokinėjo aplink mus kaip kiekviena žydė motina. Ją vadino Taiber Koganaitė.  Neprisimenu Mamos tėvo, bet prisimenu jos motiną. Deja, vardo nepamenu. Močiutė buvo labai religinga. Ji gyveno Telšiuose, bet atvažiavusi pas mus tik sėdėdavo ir melsdavosi visą laiką. Ji taip pykdavo, jei mes nesilaikydavome šabo taisyklių. Mano mamos tėvas mirė prieš man gimstant, jo pavardė buvo Kogan.

Kaip aš augau

Gimiau 1927 metais Klaipėdoje.

Vaikystėje mėgau dainuoti ir svajojau tapti dainininke. Dainavau tiek daug, kad net užkimau. Taip pat rašiau eiles. Būdama devynerių nusprendžiau parašyti romaną ir nusipirkau storą užrašų sąsiuvinį. Romaną pavadinau „Likimas“ ir užrašiau pavadinimą ant viršelio. Pradėjau nuo grafienės laidotuvių aprašymo: karietos, juodos užuolaidos ir pan. Greitai mečiau šį užsiėmimą. Tačiau visą laiką norėjau rašyti. Mokykloje turėjome albumus, į kuriuos rašydavome eilėraščius viena kitai. Vis dar su malonumu prisimenu savo eilėraštį: kai tapsi sena ir tavo senas vyras bus šalia, užsidėk akinius ir perskaityk šiuos žodžius. Lietuviškai tai buvo surimuota ir gerai skambėjo. Taip pat nuo vaikystės rašiau dienoraštį.

Turėjome tarnaitę, nors mama nedirbo. Sekmadienį tarnaitei buvo išeiginė, todėl mes (kartu su mano trimis metais vyresne seserimi Miriam) turėjome pačios tvarkytis kambarius. Būdamos gana mažos, jau turėjome skalbti, lyginti ir siūti baltas apykakles ir rankogalius prie savo uniformų. Taip pat turėjome valytis batus. Jei pramiegodavome, tarnaitė mums padėdavo, tačiau vėliau grasindavo, kad pasakys tėčiui.

Tėtis visur žiūrėdavo tvarkos. Mamos svarbiausias rūpestis buvo mus maitinti. Tėtis mėgdavo sakyti: „Turime duonos, sviesto, pomidorų ir druskos“. Jis taip pat sakydavo, kad mes (mergaitės) turime ruoštis būsimam gyvenimui ir mokytis gaminti maistą iš Mamos. Dirbo tiktai Tėtis, taigi jo finansinė padėtis nebuvo labai gera: jis turėjo 4 vaikus, šeima taip pat laikė tarnaitę. Turėjau jaunesnį brolį Ruvel (gimė 1934 metais) ir jaunesnę seserį Rają (gimė 1936 metais). Kai kažkas paklausė Tėčio, kodėl jis turi tiek daug vaikų, jis visada atsakydavo, kad laukia gimstant sūnaus.

Lankiau žydų vaikų darželį ir vėliau žydų pagrindinę mokyklą. 1940 metais ją uždarė ir aš tapau lietuviškos gimnazijos mokine. Tačiau namuose kalbėjome tik jidiš. Vis dar galiu rašyti jidiš. Būdama gete ir koncentracijos stovyklose rašiau dienoraštį jidiš kalba. Ir dabar aš įvairiomis progomis pabrėžiu, kad mano gimtoji kalba yra jidiš, nors tai stebina aplinkinius. Per gyventojų surašymą [toks sąjunginis SSRS gyventojų surašymas vyko 1989 metais] buvau paklausta apie gimtąją kalbą ir atsakiau, kad tai žydų kalba. Darbuotojas nustebo ir pasakė, kad mano vyras ir aš kalbame rusiškai. Paaiškinau, jog rusiškai kalbame todėl, kad vyras nemoka jidiš. Darbuotojas nustebo, kad moku tris kalbas: jidiš, lietuvių ir rusų. Nesu tikra, kad jis viską užrašė, nes rašė atsakymus pieštuku ir niekas nežino, kas iš tikrųjų buvo parašyta.

Mokėmės lietuviškoje gimnazijoje kartu su seserimi. Tuo metu žmonės laikėsi tradicijų ir gerbė religingus kaimynus. Pasitaikydavo antisemitizmo apraiškų (kai kurie žmonės kaltino žydus nukryžiavus Jėzų), bet valstybinio antisemitizmo nebuvo. Pavyzdžiui, šeštadieniais gimnazijoje galėjome neatlikti užduočių raštu, mokytojai mūsų neklausinėdavo. Žinojome, kad per svarbiausias žydų šventes galime neiti į mokyklą.

Tuo metu mokyklose mokiniai turėjo tikybos pamokas (kol į valdžią neatėjo komunistai). Mūsų klasėje virš lentos kabėjo kryžius. Rytais mokytojas ateidavo į klasę, atsisukdavo į kryžių ir melsdavosi. Visi mokiniai, išskyrus mus, taip pat melsdavosi. Po paskutinės pamokos mokytojas taip pat liepdavo pasimelsti. Budintis mokinys sakydavo padėkos maldą. Man visada būdavo juokinga klausyti Te Deum, jeigu budintis mokinys tą dieną buvo gavęs blogus pažymius.

Mus taip pat mokė žydų religijos pagrindų (kiekvieną penktadienį). Visi 1-8 klasių mokiniai turėjo to mokytis. Vieną dieną susikirtau su tikybos mokytoju, nes jis sužinojo, kad mano tėvas nėra tikintis.   Dar daugiau, per Šabą mokytojas pamatė Tėtį važiuojant namo automobiliu. Tai buvo skandalas ir mokytojas atsisakė rašyti man gerą pažymį. Pagal taisykles, tokiu atveju aš negalėjau būti perkelta į aukštesnę klasę. Tarp kitko, buvau puiki mokinė, tik dailės pamokos man sunkiau sekėsi. Romos katalikų kunigas buvo mūsų klasės auklėtojas, taigi, nuėjau pas jį. Jis liepė mintinai išmokti kelias giesmes. Pagiedojau jas ir jis parašė man geriausią pažymį. Konfliktas buvo išspręstas.

Būdama mokinė, susidraugavau su Burmistro dukra. Prisimenu prancūzų kalbos mokytoją. Ji buvo tikra ponia, lankėsi Paryžiuje kiekvienais metais. Mes, mergaitės, labai atidžiai stebėjime jos aprangą. Pamenate, Tėtis ruošė mus studijoms Paryžiuje ir mokė mus prancūzų kalbos namuose. Buvau pažengusi mokinė, palyginus su mokykline programa. Tad, kai prancūzų kalbos mokytoja tingėdavo mus mokyti, ji sakydavo: „Rolnikaite, skaityk ir versk“. Lietuvių kalba man irgi sekėsi, kaip ir kitos kalbos. Apskritai, mokiausi be ypatingų sunkumų. Yra žydiškas posakis: ji gali atlikti namų darbus stovėdama ant vienos kojos. Žinot, galėjau stovėti ant vienos kojos ir rašyti. Kartą Tėtis grįžo namo ir pamatė mane gulinčią ant sofos, kojomis atsirėmusią į sieną, ir besimokančią istoriją.

Rusų kalboje yra du skirtingi žodžiai „evrej“ ir „žid“. Lietuvių ir lenkų kalbose yra tik „žid – žydas“. Neseniai, mano buvusios klasės draugės vyras pasakė „... ir jūsų tautybės žmogus“. Pataisiau jį: žydas. Supratau, kad žmogus nori pasirodyti internacionalistu. Taip pat jis bijojo įžeisti mano jausmus, bet aš jį pataisiau. Niekada neslėpiau savo tautybės.

Tačiau mokykloje suvokiau save kaip žydę. Pavyzdžiui, lietuvių kalboje labai svarbu kirčiavimas. Jei žmogus klaidingai kirčiuoja žodį, tai reiškia, kad jis blogai kalba lietuviškai. Mūsų mokytojas diktuodavo, mes turėjome pagauti žodžių kirtį iš klausos. Aš sugebėjau rašyti iš klausos. Buvau vienintelė mokinė klasėje, gaudavusi geriausius pažymius. Ir mokytojas pasakė apie mane: „Lietuvių kalba nėra jos gimtoji, bet ji rašo geriau už jus visas“. Taigi, kartais mes suvokdavome, kad esame skirtingos. Bet niekas mums to nesakė į akis.

Tėtis pasitikėjo mumis. Plungėje buvo tik vienas automobilis su vairuotoju ir daug vairuotojų. Mūsų gimnazija buvo toli nuo namų, beveik priemiestyje, prie kapinių. Buvo baisu eiti namo vakarais ir Tėtis duodavo pinigų pasisamdyti automobilį. Jis tik prašė važiuoti namo kartu. Mano sesuo jau buvo suaugusi ir jos, jaunos panelės, eidavo ir kažką diskutuodavo, o aš turėjau tyliai sekti iš paskos.

Susigalvojau programą: vykti į Paryžių su seserimi ir ten stoti į universitetą. Sesuo buvo trimis metais vyresnė. Turėjau daug mokytis mokykloje, bet kartais ilgam užtrukdavau čiuožykloje ar per ilgai užsibūdavau su draugais. Tokiais atvejais Tėtis sakydavo: „Kai nuvyksi į Sorboną, tavęs paklaus. Ką atsakysi? Manau, atsakysi tik tiek žino tavo Cypka“. Kažkodėl jis vadino mano draugę Cypka. Bet jis niekad nebaudė manęs ir neskaitė pamokslų. Kai ketindavome vėlai grįžti iš vakarėlių, niekad nemeluodavome. Tėtis neliepė grįžti nustatytu laiku, jis tik mūsų laukdavo. Manau, kad jis nemiegodavo ir laukdavo atsidarant durų.

Aišku, kai į valdžią atėjo sovietai, mes turėjome pamiršti Sorboną. Beje, močiutė jau ruošėsi duoti pinigų mano studijoms, o dėdė, kuris gyveno Prancūzijoje, ieškojo pigaus nuomojamo buto Paryžiuje mano seseriai ir man. Deja, mūsų planai žlugo. Prie komunistų valdžios mūsų gyvenimas visiškai pasikeitė.

Kalbant apie žydiškas tradicijas, mano senelis ypač griežtai jų laikėsi. Todėl šventėme Pesachą ir aš visada klausdavau tų 4 klausimų. Po to gaudavau vieną kilogramą riešutų. Kartu su močiute uždegdavome Šabo žvakes. Nors Mama nebuvo labai religinga, kaip ir Tėtis, ji laikėsi kašruto: atskirai laikė mėsą ir pieno produktus. Kai senelis aplankydavo mus, jis arbatą gėrė tik su uogiene, nes buvo laikoma, kad stiklinės nenaudojamos nei pienui, nei mėsai. Kartu su močiute eidavome į sinagogą ir mačiau, kad vyrai ir moterys joje būna atskirai. Močiutė melsdavosi. Kai per Roš ha-šana pučiant šofarą atsiverdavo dangus, kad žmonių prašymai eitų tiesiai į jį, visi verkdavo, o mes su seserimi nesuprasdavo kodėl. Per Jom Kipurą žydai melsdavosi už savo mirusiųjų atminimą ir močiutė neleisdavo man ir seseriai būti sinagogoje. Beje, gete nebuvo sinagogos, tik kambarys maldoms. Ir rabinas draudė melstis už žydų, kuriuos fašistai išvežė į Panerius 2, atminimą. Jis manė, kad tai nuodėmė, nes kai kurie iš šių žydų galėtų būti gyvi. Kartais atsitikdavo taip, kad po šaudymų kai kurie žydai likdavo gyvi, išsikapstydavo iš po lavonų ir grįždavo į getą. Pradžioje fašistai šaudė nesitaikydami ir žmonės krito žemėn tik sužeisti. Tačiau vėliau jie įsakė užpilti duobes gesintomis kalkėmis, kad niekas nebegalėtų išlipti.

Mano tėvo brolis Berl dirbo parduotuvėje, apie kurią kalbėjau. Mano teta (jo jaunesnioji sesuo) nutekėjo į Rygą ir buvo tenai nužudyta gete. Jos vyrą nušovė tarp pirmųjų žydų vyrų. Ji turėjo du vaikus (vienas iš kurių buvo kūdikis), todėl negalėjo dirbti. Jie mirė tenai iš bado. Daug vėliau dvi moterys iš Rygos mums apie ją papasakojo.

Kitas tėvo brolis buvo Mikhėj. Jis baigė gimnaziją ir išvyko į Paryžių, visiškai nemokėdamas prancūzų kalbos. Jo pirmieji laiškai buvo labai liūdni ir melancholiški. Tačiau po metų jis įstojo į Sorboną. Jis buvo labai talentingas. Vėliau jis tapo žinomu advokatu ir jo kolegos netikėjo, kad jis nėra prancūzas: tuo metu jis jau puikiai kalbėjo prancūziškai. 1938 metais jis sugebėjo atvykti į savo sesers vestuvių ceremoniją. Į Rygą jis važiavo per Vokietiją ir mes visi jaudinomės dėl jo, nes Hitleris jau buvo valdžioje.

Mano dėdė Berl (parduotuvės savininkas) buvo ištremtas į Sibirą 3 kartu su savo šeima. Jie grįžo atgal tik 1956 ar 1957 metais. Vėliau mano dėdė, teta ir jų dukra mirė. Jų sūnus dabar gyvena Izraelyje.

Plungė buvo puikus mažas miestas! Buvo didelis kunigaikščio Oginskio (kompozitoriaus Oginskio, sukūrusio įžymųjį polonezą, giminaičio) rūmų parkas. Parkas buvo atviras visiems. Parke buvo čiuožykla, kurioje mes čiuožinėdavome. Mieste buvo daugybė medžių.

Kai Hitleris atėjo į valdžią, per radiją transliavo jo kalbą. Kadangi tik mes turėjome radijo imtuvą, kaimynai atėjo pasiklausyti kalbos. Mano mažojo brolio auklė, vietinė lietuvė mergina, nesuprato Hitlerio ir keikė jį, kadangi Hitleris trukdė vaikui miegoti.

Tėtis labai gailėjosi, kad mes gyvename mažame Plungės mieste, kaimo vietovėje. Jis norėjo, kad mes gautume gerą europinio lygio išsilavinimą. Tačiau 1940 metais pagal Molotovo – Ribentropo paktą 4 Vilnius vėl tapo Lietuvos sostine ir mes persikėlėme tenai. Tai išgelbėjo mums gyvybę, nes vėliau per okupaciją (per karą) 1800 Plungės žydų buvo suvaryti į sinagogą, nuvesti už miesto į netikinčiųjų kapines ir sušaudyti. Fašistai siūlė žydams paneigti judaizmą ir taip išsaugoti gyvybes.

Kai kurie jauni žmonėms taip ir padarė, bet vis tiek visi buvo sušaudyti. Plungėje sušaudymo vietoje stovi paminklas. Pinigus paminklui surinko sušaudytų žydų giminės ir Plungės sovietiniai vadovai leido jį statyti. Įrašai paminkle yra jidiš, lietuvių ir rusų kalbomis.

Prieš karą mūsų šeima buvo gana didelė. Tačiau mano senelis, močiutės sesuo, jos vyras ir dvi dukros, ir mano tėvo pusbrolis žuvo Plungėje. Mano dėdė (mamos brolis) buvo nužudytas mažame Telšių mieste. [Telšiai – Lietuvos miestas 200 kilometrų nuo Vilniaus.] Kai Telšių žydus varė į žudymo vietą, jis sugebėjo pabėgti. Tačiau fašistai jį pagavo ir nušovė, taip sakant, individualiai. Jie privertė jį išsikasti kapą. Vėliau keli lietuviai liudininkai pasakė mums, kad jis išprotėjo: jis suprato, kad kasa sau kapą ir pakvaišo (tačiau to neįmanoma įrodyti). Mano teta, jo žmona, ir dvi dukterys žuvo Šiaulių gete. [Šiauliai yra Lietuvos miestas.]

Tėtis suskaičiavo 49 mūsų šeimos narius, kurių netekome per karą: jo ir mamos pusbroliai ir pusseserės, seserys, vaikai...

Iš mūsų šeimos tiktai Tėtis (jis buvo fronte), mano vyresnioji sesuo Miriam ir aš likome gyvi. Miriam buvo Vilniaus gete 5, tačiau sugebėjo išgyventi.

1943 metų rugsėjį hitlerininkai atsitraukė ir Raudonoji Armija priartėjo prie Smolensko. Tuo metu Miriam pavyko pabėgti iš geto. Ji tikėjosi rasti žmonių, kurie ją paslėptų ar parūpintų jai padirbtus dokumentus. Ji netgi tikėjosi padėti mums (savo šeimai) pabėgti iš geto. Tuo metu situacija gete buvo gana rami, bet netrukus pasirodė hitlerininkai. Jie perskaitė gestapo viršininko įsakymą evakuoti žydus iš Vilniaus geto. Žydai turėjo būti perkelti į dvi darbo stovyklas: viena buvo Estijoje, kita Lietuvoje. Evakuacija vyko labai greitai, viskas baigėsi per keturias valandas. Todėl aš nieko nežinojau apie Miriam iki 1945 metų.

Per karą

1941 metų birželio 22 dieną prasidėjo karas 6. Tą pačią dieną bombardavo Vilnių. Sovietų armija kovėsi atsitraukdama. Hitlerininkai beveik užėmė miestą. Mano tėvai žinojo, kad fašistai nekenčia žydų. Buvo ir kita priežastis nerimauti: mano tėvas bendradarbiavo su sovietų valdžia. Tėvai nusprendė pasitraukti į šalies gilumą, kur užpuolikai negalėtų mūsų pasiekti. Tėvas nuėjo pirkti bilietų, o mes (Mama ir keturi vaikai) likome namuose jo laukti. Mes laukėme labai ilgai, žiūrėdami kaip žmonės su daiktais, sovietų tankai, mašinos ėjo ir važiavo pro mūsų langus. Galiausiai nusprendėme eiti į geležinkelio stotį ir surasti Tėtį. Stotyje sužinojome, kad daugiau traukinių nebus, tai buvo siaubinga nelaimė. Žmonės pasakojo vieni kitiems apie paskutinį traukinį, kuris buvo subombarduotas netrukus po išvykimo. Tėčio neradome ir nusprendėme eiti iš miesto, tikėdamiesi pagauti mašiną. Tačiau eiti buvo sunku, vargino kaitra, ypač 5 ir 7 metų vaikus. Taigi, ėjome kurį laiką, paskui pasukome atgal namo. Čia sužinojome, kad, kol mūsų nebuvo, Tėtis grįžo namo ir vėl išėjo ieškoti automobilio. Fašistų kariuomenė užėmė miestą tą pačią naktį. Tėtis negrįžo.

Vienas iš pirmųjų naujos valdžios įsakymų buvo iškabintas ant restoranų ir kavinių durų „Žydams neleidžiama“. Nuėjau į mokyklą atsiimti vyresniosios sesers Miros mokyklos baigimo pažymėjimą ir kitus dokumentus. Mokykla buvo purvina ir apgriauta. Berniukas iš 9-tos klasės priėjo prie manęs ir pasakė: „Eik lauk! Nesmardink mūsų mokyklos!“. Tačiau tuo momentu mūsų mokytojas Jonaitis pašaukė mane. Jis paspaudė man ranką, paklausė, ko atėjau, nuėjo kartu su manim į raštinę ir padėjo surasti mokyklos baigimo pažymėjimą ir mūsų gimimo liudijimus. Šis žmogus mums daug padėjo vėliau, kai buvome gete. Jis davė mums maisto ir pinigų, pats rizikuodamas gyvybe.

Greitai hitlerininkai įvedė savo pinigus ir liepė užregistruoti visus radijo imtuvus. Vėliau jie įsakė visiems žydams nešioti specialų ženklą: geltoną kvadratą ir apskritimą su raide J viduryje. Kartu su Mama padarėme šiuos ženklus iš senos geltonos lovatiesės. Žydai privalėjo atnešti į komendantūrą pinigus, aukso dirbinius ir papuošalus. Tačiau buvo labiau gąsdinančių naujienų: ginkluoti patruliai areštuodavo vyrus miesto gatvėse ir vesdavo į kalėjimą. Pradžioje žmonės manė, kad iš kalėjimo vyrus gabendavo į Panerius (į darbo stovyklą), bet greitai paaiškėjo, kad Paneriuose jokios stovyklos nebuvo, ten žmonės buvo šaudomi.

Liepos 21 dieną, lygiai mėnuo po vokiečių įsiveržimo į Vilnių, man sukako 14 metų. Apsivilkau mėlyną šilkinę suknelę (be jokio ženklo ant jos) ir atrodžiau labai graži! Karo pradžia reiškė mano vaikystės pabaigą. Tik dienoraštis siejo mane su ankstesniu gyvenimu. Rašiau dienoraštį būdama mokine (tokia buvo mada) ir tęsiau tai per karą. Gete trūko popieriaus, tačiau mes įsikeldavome į tuščius butus, kuriuose galima buvo rasti senų užrašų knygų. Vieną dieną gavau buhalterinę knygą ir apsidžiaugiau radusi joje tuščių puslapių. Dabar stebiuosi, kad niekas tuo metu nesijuokė iš mano bandymų rašyti kronikas. Priešingai, mano giminaičiai sakydavo „Maša, ar apie tai parašei?“. Visi miegojome kartu ant grindų prie lango. Laikiau savo užrašus ant palangės. Mama dažnai sakydavo: „Išmok tai mintinai! Tavo užrašai pakartos tavo likimą“.

Kitas fašistų įsakymas uždraudė žydams vaikščioti šaligatviais (galėjome eiti tiktai gatve) ir važiuoti bet kokiu transportu, įskaitant automobilius.

1941 metų rugsėjo 6 dieną fašistai uždarė keletą siaurų gatvių miesto centre ir iškraustė visus jų gyventojus. Žydai buvo priversti persikelti į jų namus. Tokiu būdu atsirado Vilniaus getas. Mūsų šeima taip pat persikraustė tenai. Mes gyvenome sugrūsti su kitomis šeimomis: 18 žmonių mažame kambaryje. Neužteko vietos miegoti. Viena mergaitė miegojo ant stalo, kita – po stalu. Buvo mergaitė, kuriai reikėjo miegoti vonioje. Mama pradėjo dirbti siuvimo dirbtuvėje. Mums išdavė maisto korteles ir į dieną gaudavome tik 125 gramus duonos ir truputį juodų žirnių. Buvo uždrausta įnešti maisto į getą. Jei kas taip padarydavo, tai  kainuodavo jam gyvybę.

Gete fašistai dažnai vykdė specialias akcijas, t.y. gaudė žmones mirties bausmei. 1941 metų rudenį tokios akcijos buvo gausiausios: 3-5 tūkstančiai žmonių būdavo nužudomi per kiekvieną akciją. Vėliau, kai gete liko tik reikiamas skaičius amatininkų, fašistai pradėjo bauginti žmones netikėtomis kratomis. Kareiviai įsiverždavo į bet kurį butą ir pradėdavo jį krėsti. Jie labai stengėsi rasti drabužių be geltonos žvaigždės ar kitaip iškeptos duonos (gete kepdavo specialią duoną, atrodančią kaip molis). Jei tokių dalykų rasdavo, visus buto gyventojus išsivesdavo. Tikrai niekas jų daugiau nebematė.

Fronto naujienų nuotrupos mus retkarčiais pasiekdavo. Su dideliu malonumu sužinojome, kad vokiečiai atsitraukė nuo Maskvos ir jau paliko Kalininą [miestas prie Maskvos, dabar Tverė]. Vokiečių armija patyrė didelius nuostolius, o kareiviai labai kentėjo nuo šalčio. Todėl hitlerininkai nusprendė juos šiltai aprengti mūsų sąskaita: jie įsakė sunešti į komendantūrą visus kailinius, kailines apykakles ir kailinius rankogalius. Ir vėl buvo grasinama mirties bausme tiems, kas nepaklus.

Getas buvo tarsi maža valstybė. Gete buvo įvairios įstaigos, atsakingos už maisto kortelių ir kambarių (tiksliau, kampo kambaryje) paskirstymą. Buvo specialus skyrius, besirūpinantis našlaičiais (buvo organizuotos kelios internatinės mokyklos). Buvo mokyklos ir netgi gimnazija mokiniams, tačiau ši stovėjo pustuštė: ne todėl, kad nebuvo mokinių, bet todėl, kad jie visi dirbo. Buvo kalėjimas, ligoninė, vaistinė su skurdžiu vaistų pasirinkimu. Gete buvo netgi pogrindinė organizacija, kovojusi prieš fašizmą. Vieną dieną trys šios organizacijos aktyvistai I.Kaplan, A.Khvoinik ir A.Big sužinojo apie geto likvidavimą ir nusprendė pabėgti į mišką nutekamuoju vamzdžiu. Deja, po žeme jie pasiklydo ir išlindo miesto centre. Kareiviai juos pagavo ir pakorė. Kai mano knyga buvo paruošta pirmajam leidimui, redaktorius pasakė: „Žmonės, kuriuos išvardinote, nebuvo partizanų sąrašuose, išbraukite šį epizodą“. „Bet jie buvo organizacijos nariai“ – nepasidaviau aš. Redaktorius buvo neperkalbamas: „Rytoj jie ateis reikalauti specialios pensijos!“. „Nesijaudinkite, jie neateis: fašistai juos pakorė“ – raminau jį. Tačiau tuo metu aš nė negalvojau apie būsimą knygą ir netgi apie savo galimą išlikimą.

Fašistų persekiojimui nebuvo ribų. Vieną dieną jie surinko iš geto visus senus žmones. Sakė, kad nori juos vežti į sanatoriją geresniam maitinimui ir gydymui. Giminaičiai įtarė kažką negero ir atsisakė senukus išleisti. Tada senukai buvo išvežti jėga. Juos tikrai gerai maitino ir fotografavo pirmas dvi dienas. Paskui visus sušaudė.

Pavasarį susiradau darbą. Daugiausiai dirbome už geto ribų. Iš pradžių dirbau seno turtingo ūkininko laukuose. Kasdien turėjau nešioti šimtus kibirų su vandeniu augalų laistymui. Vėliau pradėjau dirbti mezgimo dirbtuvėje, kur moterys primegzdavo pirštinėms pirštus. Vėliau perėjau į baldų fabriką šveisti slides.

Taip mes gyvenome gete, kentėdami badą bei šaltį ir laukdami mirties. Atrodo keista, bet gete buvo choras. Aš jame dalyvavau. Dainavome hebrajų ir jidiš kalbomis. Choro vadovas taip pat įkūrė simfoninį orkestrą. Tik keli muzikantai išgyveno: jie buvo laikomi mažiausiai naudingais ir fašistai pirmiausiai nužudė juos. Tačiau orkestras atsirado ir kartu su choru paruošė pasirodymui Bethoveno Devintąją simfoniją.

Su dideliu malonumu sužinojome, kad hitlerininkai paskelbė trijų dienų gedulą dėl savo armijos pralaimėjimo prie Stalingrado. Vėliau sužinojome, kad Charkovas [dabar Charkiv, Ukraina], Rostovas prie Dono ir daug kitų miestų buvo išvaduoti. Tačiau visi tie miestai buvo taip toli nuo Vilniaus!

Žmonės sužinojo, kad aplinkiniuose miesteliuose (štetluose) hitlerininkai nušovė apie 3 tūkstančius vietinių žydų. Daug partizanų grupių atsirado kaimyniniuose miškuose, tad hitlerininkai bijojo, kad vietos žydai būtinai susisieks su partizanais. Taigi jie nusprendė dalį žydų sušaudyti, o kitus suvaryti į Vilniaus ar Kauno getą. Tačiau vėliau jie persigalvojo ir visus juos nužudė. Tik keliems pavyko pabėgti; jie įsigavo į mūsų getą ir papasakojo kaip tie žydai buvo sušaudyti miške prie didelių iš anksto iškastų duobių.

Tuo laiku mano seseriai Mirai pavyko pabėgti iš geto. Keli geranoriški žmonės pažadėjo slėpti ją. Greitai visi geto gyventojai prarado darbus. Getas tapo visiškai izoliuotu nuo pasaulio. Tačiau iš gandų mes sužinojome, kad Vilniaus geležinkelio stotyje atsirado užrašas JUDENFREI (tai reiškė, kad mieste nėra žydų). Tačiau iš tikrųjų mes dar buvome gyvi! Supratome, kad prasidėjo atgalinis skaičiavimas.

Vieną rugsėjo vakarą visiems geto gyventojams buvo pranešta, kad juos evakuos į dvi darbo stovyklas Estijoje ir Lietuvoje. Evakuacijai skirta tik viena diena. Mums buvo leista pasiimti šiek tiek drabužių.

Mano brolis Ruvel gete išmoko skaityti. Jis labai tuo didžiavosi ir sakydavo, kad Tėtis džiaugsis. Ruvel nuliūdo, kad mes pasiimsime tik drabužius, ne knygas. „Ką aš ten skaitysiu?“ – paklausė jis. Mama atsakė: „Skaitysi, kai atgausime laisvę“.

Pagaliau buvome pasiruošę išvykti. Gatvėse buvo daug žmonių. Minia buvo niūri. Kartu su kitais pasiekėme geto vartus ir išėjome. Po kurio laiko priėjome daubą ir mums buvo įsakyta sustoti. Didelė minia žmonių ten lyjant praleido naktį. Kitą dieną hitlerininkai liepė žmonėms lipti iš daubos. Jie leido žmones pro vartus po vieną ir Mama liepė man eiti pirmai. Kareivis sugriebė mane pastūmė į šoną. Mama ir du vaikai liko už vartų. Bandžiau sugrįžti pas šeimą ir staiga išgirdau, kaip Mama maldauja kareivio neleisti manęs atgal. Ji sakė, kad esu jauna ir galiu gerai dirbti. Tada ji suriko man: „Gyvenk, mano vaike! Bent jau tu!“. Ji truputį pakėlė vaikus, kad galėčiau juos pamatyti. Aš pamačiau. Paskutinį kartą gyvenime!

1700 žmonių, ir aš tame tarpe, buvome nuvaryti į geležinkelio stotį ir įsodinti į traukinį. Atvykome į koncentracijos stovyklą prie Šiaulių.

Prasidėjo mano stovyklos gyvenimas, kurį sunku pavadinti gyvenimu. Naujai atvykusiems buvo išdalinti drabužiai. Aš gavau šilkinę balinę suknią, papuoštą dirbtine raudona gėle ir su gilia iškirpte. Praėjo daug laiko, kol susiradau adatą ir truputį pataisiau suknelę. Dirbau statybose. Turėjau kapoti akmenis ir stumdyti sunkius akmenų pilnus karučius. Badavome, buvome persekiojami ir mušami, jautėme mirties skausmą. Stovykloje kabėjo užrašas „Gyvename ne tam, kad dirbtume; dirbame, kad gyventume“. Hitlerininkai rengdavo taip vadinamas atrankas, t.y. rūšiavo žmones vėlesnei mirties bausmei. Iki šiol nesuprantu, kodėl likau gyva: jie ketino išžudyti visus, jaunesnius nei 18-os ir vyresnius nei 30-ies.  Man buvo 17, bet tikriausiai mano kortelėje įsivėlė klaida. Tuo metu Sovietų armija artėjo prie Rygos: girdėjome sprogimus ir bombardavimą ir matėme danguje lėktuvus. Tikėjomės, kad mus greit išvaduos, bet vietoj to vokiečiai perkėlė mus į Vokietiją (į Štuthofą). Jie pervežė mus kariniu garlaiviu (pakrautu kažkokia įranga) – į šaltį.

Štuthofo koncentracijos stovykla buvo viena iš seniausių: ją pastatė lenkų geležinkelininkai 1938-1939 metais. Stovykla priminė vergų turgų, kadangi ūkių savininkai ateidavo čia darbininkų. Turėjome nusivilkti drabužius ir rodyti darbdaviams savo raumenis. Dėl klaikaus badavimo visi kentėjome nuo vočių. Pasakiau vokiškai „Ich bin stark“ (esu stipri) ir rodžiau raumenis, nors nebuvo ką rodyti. Pusaklis senas ūkininkas pažiūrėjo į mane ir pasiėmė į savo fermą. Ten dirbau maždaug keturis mėnesius. Miegojau kiaulidėje su kiaulėmis. Savininkas užrakindavo mus nakčiai, neturėjome jokios laisvos dienos. Tačiau man pasisekė, nes galėjau nuvogti kelias bulves nuo kiaulių ėdalo savininkui nežinant. Jis mums savaitei duodavo duonos kepalą ir grasindavo: „Jei blogai dirbsite, nusiųsiu jus atgal ne į stovyklą, o tiesiai į krematoriumą“.

Lapkričio mėnesį, po derliaus nuėmimo, grįžome į stovyklą. Nebedirbome už stovyklos ribų dėl šiltinės epidemijos. Mes negaudavome pakankamai vandens, todėl valgydavome nešvarų sniegą. Aš taip pat susirgau šiltine. Po kurio laiko, tikras stebuklas, pasveikau. Kaimynai pasakojo man, kad, kai gulėjau be sąmonės ant grindų, garsiai dainavau ir keikiau vokiečius kiek galėdama. Susigėdau: „Mano Tėtis buvo advokatas, mūsų šeimoje niekas nesikeikė..“.

Staiga, kai visi jau praradome viltį išgyventi, vokiečiai liepė evakuoti tuos, kurie gali pereiti į kitą stovyklą. Negalėjau vaikščioti, tačiau žinojau, kad tie, kurie neatlaikys, bus nužudyti. Todėl iššliaužiau ir ėjau. Tai buvo mirties kelias. Mano nelaimės draugės palaikė mane; jos sakė, kad būtų gaila palikti tokią jauną merginą. Pakeliui aptikome apsnigtus bunkerius, pilnus bulvių ir burokų. Nei smūgiai, nei šūviai negalėjo mūsų sulaikyti. Mes puolėme ant žemės, kapstėme sniegą ir žemes sustingusiomis rankomis ir nusičiupome po buroką. Kai ėjome toliau, keli kaliniai liko nušauti gulėti ant sniego. Naktis praleisdavome pakelės pašiūrėse. Mano kojos sutino, bijojau nusiauti batus. Vėliau supratome, kad vokiečiai išsiuntė mus tolyn nuo artėjančios Raudonosios Armijos.

Vieną naktį mes buvome suvarytos į didžiulę daržinę ar arklidę. Vėlai naktį išgirdome, kad kažkas beldžia į duris „Ei, moterys, išeikite, Raudonoji Armija jau čia!”. Iš pradžių niekas nepatikėjo, galvojome, kad tai provokacija: vokiečiai norėjo priversti mus išbėgti ir nušauti į nugarą. Nė viena iš 700 moterų nepajudėjo. Balsas tęsė: „Jei esat kvailos, tai ir toliau čia sėdėkit!”. Ir išnyko. Mums tai buvo neįtikėtina! Kareivis pasakė tankistams apie mus. Jie tanku išlaužė duris ir moterys išbėgo iš daržinės. Negalėjau vaikščioti, net pakilti. Gulėjau ant grindų ir laukiau kol būsiu sutrypta. Pagaliau Raudonosios Armijos kariai įėjo į daržinę. Jie pakėlė mane ir ant rankų nunešė į kaimą. Apkabinau juos ir pirmą kartą pradėjau verkti. Ašaros riedėjo skruostais. Vienas kareivis pasakė: „Neverk, sese, atkeršysime už tave!”. Turėjau tik vieną mintį: aš išgyvenau! Tai buvo 1945 metų kovo 10 diena.

Kai 1945 metais grįžau iš koncentracijos stovyklos į Vilnių, miestas buvo sugriautas. Neturėjau problemų su kaimynais. Darbe (dirbau Vilniaus savivaldybės meno skyriuje redaktore) mano viršininkas Banaitis buvo labai padorus žmogus ir atsižvelgė į mano emocinę patirtį dėl mano tautybės. Jis sakė: „Nesijaudink, čia mes nekreipiame dėmesio į tautybes“. Nepajutau jokių antisemitizmo apraiškų. Tarp mano kolegų, vyriausias buhalteris buvo žydas, direktorius – taip pat žydas. Kitą darbą gavau Vilniaus valstybinėje filharmonijoje, ten buvo daug žydų, lenkų, lietuvių. Jų neapykanta rusams vertė juos maloniai elgtis su vietiniais žydais.

Po karo

Kai grįžau į Vilnių, po visų karo išbandymų, atsitiktinai gatvėje sutikau Tėtį. Jis jau žinojo, kad Miriam liko gyva. Po karo ji pradėjo studijuoti Vilniaus Universiteto teisės fakultete.

Dabar ji gyvena Klaipėdoje. Jos vyras tragiškai žuvo, nuskendo, kai jai buvo 39 metai. Ji turi du sūnus ir penkias anūkes. Ir, nepaisant amžiaus, vis dar dirba. Kartu su vaikais, sesuo kas metai aplanko mūsų miestą Plungę liepos 18-ą - Plungės žydų sunaikinimo dieną.

Deja, pasibaigus karui Tėtis prarado viltį, kad jo žmona ir vaikai Raja ir Ruvel liko gyvi. Visa tai pagreitino jo mirtį. Manau, jis buvo nelaimingas. Pusė metų prieš mirtį jis išėjo iš darbo, nes gydytojas pasakė: „Jei toliau dirbsite, krisite negyvas!”.

Po karo leisdavome daug laiko Palangoje kartu su Tėčiu. Jis dažnai prisimindavo praeitį. Kartą prisiminė, kad, kai buvome vaikai, jis susirgo, bet vis tiek su temperatūra nuėjo į savo kontorą dirbti, nes norėjo parodyti mums, kad reikia kovoti, reikia dirbti. Pasakiau, kad tuo metu mes nieko nesupratome. Tėtis taip pat dažnai aiškino mums kaip svarbu būti išsilavinusiam. Ir vėl, tuo metu, aš negalėjau jo suprasti. Kai į valdžią atėjo Hitleris, maniau, kad svarbiausia yra turėti rankose ginklą.

Tėtis manė, kad ligoninė ir kalėjimas yra vietos, kur žmonės gali gyventi. Jis turėjo puikų humoro jausmą. Aš taip pat pradėjau rašyti komiškus apsakymus. Kai mano pirmoji knyga buvo išspausdinta Maskvoje, Miša Raytiz, Lenino premijos laureatas, parašė mano knygos įžanginį žodį. [Lenino premija SSRS buvo viena iš aukščiausių apdovanojimų piliečiams už pasiekimus mokslo, technikos ir meno srityse. Lenino premija teikiama kasmet nuo 1925 metų.]

Mano antroji knyga buvo išleista 1967 metais. Taip pat išverčiau Sajanovo pjesę. Jis buvo rašytojas, Stalino premijos laureatas. [Stalino premija SSRS buvo viena iš aukščiausių apdovanojimų piliečiams už pasiekimus mokslo, technikos ir meno srityse. Stalino premija buvo teikiama kasmet nuo 1939 metų]. Tuo metu visos rašytojų Stalino premijos laureatų knygos turėjo būti išverstos į SSRS respublikų kalbas. Verčiau sunkiai, nes prastai mokėjau rusų kalbą (niekad jos nesimokiau). Kartais negalėdavau žodyne rasti autoriaus parašytų žodžių. Nepaisant to, sugebėjau išversti ir pristatyti pjesę per stojamuosius egzaminus į Literatūros technikumą. Tapau studente.

Kalbant apie pirmąsias valstybinio antisemitizmo apraiškas, galiu paminėti Solomono Michoelso nužudymą 7.

Taip pat prisimenu, kad tuo metu buvo rasta nužudyta mergaitė. Man tai buvo taip siaubinga, kad nusprendžiau nebevažinėti miesto transportu, bet visur eiti pėsčiomis, nes bijojau būti keleivių sumušta: buvo kalbama, kad mergaitę nužudė žydai, nes jiems reikėjo jos kraujo macams gaminti. Buvo tikrai baisu.

Parašiau straipsnį į Literaturnaja Gazeta. [Literaturnaja Gazeta buvo savaitinis literatūros ir politikos laikraštis SSRS.] Pavadinau straipsnį „Kur link tu eini?“ Rašiau, kaip vieną karo dieną sovietų kareiviai išlaisvino koncentracijos stovyklos kalinius ir išnešė mane ant rankų. Jie sakė: „Neverk, sese, niekas neleisime tavęs skriausti“. O po kiek laiko tapau prilyginta žmonijos priešams, žudikams ir kosmopolitams. Paskutinis mano sakinys buvo toks „Kodėl dabar tylite? Pažadėjote nebeleisti manęs skriausti, bet dabar tylite“. Aišku, tuo metu tie kareiviai buvo gana pagyvenę, bet juk jų vaikai ir anūkai galėjo būti tarp skustagalvių.

Sausio 27 dieną radijo reporteris paskambino ir pakvietė mane dalyvauti programoje (mane rekomendavo Laisvės Radijo 8 reporteriai, kuriems kelis kartus daviau interviu). Atėjau, tai buvo gana keista radijo transliacijų stotis, įsikūrusi vieno kambario bute. Reporteris paaiškino, kad daugiausiai jie dirba jūrininkams, taigi programas transliuoja naktį, nuo 1 iki 2 valandos. Tai buvo Aušvico koncentracijos stovyklos išlaisvinimo diena (tačiau atrodė, kad reporteris nieko nežino apie Holokaustą) ir Leningrado blokados nutraukimo diena. Reporteris paklausė: „Kaip turėčiau jus pristatyti klausytojams?“

„Esu prozos rašytoja ir buvusi geto bei dviejų koncentracijos stovyklų kalinė.“ (Nemėgstu visiems sakyti, kad esu Sovietinių rašytojų sąjungos narė, nes manau, kad Čechovas 9 ir Dostojevskis 10 buvo rašytojai, ne aš.) [Sovietinių rašytojų sąjunga buvo SSRS profesionalių rašytojų organizacija.] Jis paklausė „Ką?“. Supratau, kad jis nieko nežinojo apie getą. Jis pakvietė mane prie mikrofono ir paprašė papasakoti apie save. Pradėjau nuo vokiečių okupacijos ir kai prakalbau apie getą, jis paprašė: „Gal galite paaiškinti klausytojams, kas yra getas“.

Paaiškinau, bet supratau, kad aiškinu ne tik klausytojams, bet ir reporteriui. Tada jis paklausė: „O kuo buvote apsirengę?“ – „Negi nežinote, ką dėvi kaliniai, dryžuotus drabužius.“ – „Ar jie duodavo kaliniams apatinius?“ – „Sunku pavadinti tą skudurą apatiniais.“ 

Jis suprato, kad klausimų man geriau neuždavinėti. Baigiau savo monologą ir pradėjau kosėti, tad reporteris pasiūlė man arbatos. Nuėjome į virtuvę. Jis sakė, kad jaunai atrodau, nors tiek daug iškentėjau. Tada paprašė papasakoti apie higienos sąlygas stovykloje. „Ar suvokiate, apie ką klausiate? Aš keturias dienas išbuvau be sąmonės, tada iššliaužiau iš barako nusiprausti veido nešvariu sniegu.“ – „Ar gavote kokią nors medicinos pagalbą, pavyzdžiui, aspirino?“

Tas aspirinas mane pribaigė! Pasakiau: „Kodėl kalbate apie kažkokį aspiriną, jeigu visą parą veikė dujų kamera ir krematoriumas. Žmones ten vežė mirti!”.

Išėjau iš tos radijo stoties su jausmu, tarsi prarijusi varlę. Reporteriui buvo apie 30 metų, jis buvo žurnalistas, tačiau klausinėjo manęs ar koncentracijos stovyklose kaliniai gaudavo aspirino! Žinote, kas man šioje situacijoje padėjo? Tai buvo vokiečių žurnalistas iš Austrijos, paskambinęs mano po 2 ar 3 dienų. Jis gyveno Grace (mūsų budelis Franz Mourer irgi buvo iš Graco). Tas žurnalistas man pasakė, kad žino apie Mourer, kad jis buvo baudėjas Vilniaus gete. Tarp kitko, mano knygos austriškame leidime yra epilogas su žodžiais „Šiai knygai reikia Austrijos atstovo parašyto epilogo, nes dauguma paminėtų budelių buvo austrai“. Žurnalistas dalyvavo teismo procese prieš Mourer. Jis sakė, kad auditorija palaikė Mourer, nes dauguma iš jų priklausė SS-Verfugungstruppe.

Vokiečių žurnalistas puikiai kalbėjo rusiškai. Jis pasakė man, kad mirties nuosprendis Mourer (maždaug prieš 10 metų) buvo gana pagarbus. Žurnalistas norėjo atskleisti tikrąją Mourer esmę, bent jau po mirties. Todėl jis ieškojo gyvų liudininkų. Internete jis rado informaciją apie mano knygą ir nusprendė mane aplankyti. Daviau jam Mourer nuotrauką ir du jo įsakymus apie draudimus žydams.

SSRS turėjau pati rūpintis savo knygomis. Eidavau į Leningrado centrinį knygyną ir PRAŠIAU jų paimti mano knygas prekybai. Pradžioje jie leido atnešti penkias knygas. Vėliau paskambinau jiems ir paprašiau leisti atnešti dar dešimt. Tačiau vadybininkė atsiprašė, sakydama, kad naujasis direktorius leidžia priimti tik penkias knygas iš autorių. Ji pridėjo, kad jei knygos nebus parduotos per du mėnesius, jas grąžins autoriui.

Pergalės dieną 11 buvau pakviesta kalbėti dviejų kartų susitikime. Salė buvo padalinta į dvi dalis: buvę apsiausto Leningrado 12 gyventojai ir kaliniai vienoje pusėje ir mokiniai kitoje pusėje. Renginio vedėjas paprašė manęs paruošti savo knygą su autografu mokiniams. Jie apgailestavo, kad nupirko tik penkias knygas, nes knygyne daugiau nebuvo. Tada pasakojau savo istoriją klausytojams (juk žinote, kokie tai skausmingi prisiminimai).  Man uždavė daug klausimų, tame tarpe ir šį: „Ko tikitės iš jaunosios kartos?“ Atsakiau: „Visos mano viltys siejasi su jais“. Salė man plojo.

Peterburge yra Buvusių nepilnamečių koncentracijos stovyklų kalinių asociacija. Jos nariai pradėjo gauti reparacijas iš Vokietijos. Pernai metais, rugpjūčio pradžioje, dešimt buvusių kalinių iš Maskvos ir dešimt iš Peterburgo buvo pakviesti apsilankyti Vokietijoje. Bet suprantate, tik aš kalbėjau su žmonėmis Vokietijoje. Mūsų grupėje buvo įvairūs žmonės: vieni nieko nežinojo, kiti buvo per maži, kad kažką prisimintų. Buvau jau patyrusi kalbėtoja: prie sovietų valdžios mane kviesdavo kalbėti į gamyklas ir tam buvau pasiruošusi. Taip pat priklausiau Sovietų literatūros propagandos skyriui. Žodis „propaganda“ skamba baugiai, bet iš tikrųjų skyrius organizavo rašytojų susitikimus su skaitytojais.

Kažkas pajuokavo, kad Sovietų rašytojų sąjungoje buvo daugybė žydų, bet tik viena žydė.

2003 metais Prancūzijoje atsiėmiau specialų Holokausto atminimo prizą, pasirašytą Rotšildo. Jis turėjo sakyti kalbą, bet tą dieną chuliganai kažkur priemiestyje padegė sinagogą. Todėl, deja, mes nesusitikome ir Rotšildas atsiuntė man savo kalbos rusišką vertimą. Jis rašė, kad premija skiriama kartą per metus nuo 1998 metų ir pirmą kartą istorijoje ja buvo apdovanotas asmuo iš šalies, einančios demokratinės visuomenės link.

Tarp gerai žinomų politinių įvykių, galiu paminėti Vengrijos įvykius 13 ir Stalino mirtį. Tiesą sakant, neturėjau laiko gilintis į politiką. Visada daug mokiausi mokykloje, technikume ir pan.

Kai mano knyga buvo išleista, valdžia labai didžiavosi įrodžiusi, kad antisemitizmo pas mus nėra. Suprantate, tuo metu labai norėjau, kad knyga būtų išleista (iš vienos pusės) ir supratau, kad valdžiai pasitarnauju kaip figos lapelis pridengiantis jų antisemitizmą (iš kitos pusės). Jie išleido knygos apžvalgą ir ją išplatino. Jie sulaukė daug prašymų dėl knygos iš kitų šalių ir pradėjo pardavinėti žurnalinį knygos variantą (žurnalas „Zvezda“) už dolerius. Aš, aišku, negavau nieko: iki 1973 metų Sovietų Sąjungoje nebuvo autorinių teisių.

Įdomu paminėti, kad kaip knygos autorė aš turiu keturias skirtingas pavardes. Pagal pasą esu Rolnikaitė, Izraelyje hebrajiškai ir Varšuvoje jidiš kalba jie vadina mane Rolnik. Paryžiuje jie pažinojo mano dėdę (ant namo, kuriame jis gyveno, sienos kabo atminimo lentelė), todėl ten mane vadina Rolnikas (norėdami parodyti giminystės ryšį). Žinote, Maria Rolnikas Lietuvoje reiškia tą patį, ką Maria Ivanovas – moteriškas vardas plius vyriška pavardė. O Čekoslovakijoje mano pavardė pavirto į Rolnikassova. Taigi, aš turiu keturias pavardes kaip kokia nusikaltėlė! Erenburgas 14 buvo pirmasis, paklausęs apie mano vardą, kai su juo susitikau: jis manė, kad esu Miriam. Toks mano sesers vardas. Kai paklausiau Tėčio apie savo vardą, jis paaiškino, kad kai Mama laukėsi, ji norėjo sulaukti berniuko. Tuo metu mirė mano tėvo senelis ir tėvo tėvas paprašė jo pavadinti naujagimį Mošele. Taigi, gimus mergaitei, jie ją (mane) pavadino Maša (Maria). Viskas buvo labai paprasta ir kartu sudėtinga!

Karui pasibaigus iškart pradėjau studijuoti. Mano draugės sakydavo „Kodėl leidi laiką vakarinėje mokykloje? Eime į šokius! Reikia vesti vaikinus iš proto! Turime ištekėti! Aš atsakydavau: „Ne, neliksiu be mokslo tik dėl Hitlerio okupacijos, nė už ką. Tapsiu išsilavinusia“.

Todėl ištekėjau gana vėlai, jau būdama 32-jų. Mano vyras gyveno Leningrade, todėl po vedybų persikėlėme tenai. Mano vyrą vadino Semion Saveljevič Tsukernik. Jo tėvo vardas buvo Saul, bet dokumentuose rašė Savelij. Ištekėjau 1959 metais, prieš 45 metus. Pradžioje gyvenome komunaliniame bute 15 Majakovskio gatvėje. Bute buvo 8 kambariai ir 6 savininkai. Kai Prancūzijoje manęs paklausė apie mano butą, aš sąžiningai atsakiau, kad šešios šeimos gyveno kartu viename bute. Vertėja sustojo ir paklausė manęs, ar turėtų tai versti. Ir aš atsakiau, kad taip, nenorėjau klaidinti prancūzų, nors supratau, kad susitikime gali būti pašalinių ausų.  Per paskutinį susitikimą Prancūzijoje salė atsistojo man įėjus. Buvau susijaudinusi, taip susijaudinusi, jog ėjau praėjimu visa drebėdama. Žmonės man buvo labai malonūs. Po susitikimo, prie manęs priėjo vyras ir pradėjo liesti mano veidą. Paaiškėjo, kad tai aklas mano dėdės draugas, jis pasakė: „Jūsų stiprus smakras, visai kaip Mikhejaus“. Tą dieną man padovanojo didelę puokštę rožių.

Pasakiau jiems, kad kitą rytą išvykstu į Leningradą. Papasakojau, kad Leningrade yra paminklinės Piskariovo kapinės [Piskariovo kapinėse palaidoti per blokadą mirę Leningrado gyventojai]. Pasakiau Prancūzijos žmonėms, kad jų gėles nunešiu tenai. Taip ir padariau. Užuodžiau sniego ir rožių kvapą, buvo nuostabu. Tai įvyko 1967 metais.

Dabar esu Karo veteranų, buvusių Leningrado blokados gyventojų ir geto kalinių draugijos narė ir Buvusių nepilnamečių koncentracijos stovyklų kalinių asociacijos narė. Mes kartu švenčiame žydiškas šventes. Taip pat švenčiu mūsų išlaisvinimo iš fašistinės koncentracijos stovyklos metines. Kai ta diena, kovo 10-oji, artėja, mano atsiminimai atgyja. Prisimenu ilgą kelią iki stovyklos ir kaip kareivis stumia mane į duobę ir labai stiprų vėją. Prisimenu, kad norėjau užmigti ir miegoti kaip negyva iki pat tų baisių dienų galo. Teisybę sakant, visi mano baisūs prisiminimai liks su manim amžinai.

Žodynėlis

Maria (Masha) Rolnikaite
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Olga Vladimirova
Date of interview: February 2006

Maria (Masha) Grigoryevna Rolnikaite lives together with her husband in a cozy two-room apartment in one of the new districts of Saint Petersburg.

Before the interview, she strongly recommended to read the book This Is the Truth written by her. One of its parts is called I Have to Tell You This. In point of fact it is a diary Masha kept being in Vilnius ghetto and later in 2 fascist concentration camps. The book was published all over the world in many languages. It gives all people an opportunity to get to know terrible truth of those days. 

From the very beginning of our meeting we are astonished at Masha’s strength of mind and courage. You can judge about it from her appearances, from every word and opinion of her. She is a person of affability, humor, and great interest to outward things.

Masha often appealed to the facts recorded in her book: she did not want to tell terrible details of her life again, because (according to her) each of those memoirs left its mark on her.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

Unfortunately I know nothing about my great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers. I know only that they all came from Lithuania. Daddy used to say that his grandfather was a water carter, but possibly it was a joke. Most of my relatives lived in the small shtetl Plunge near Klaypeda. [Klaypeda is the third large city in Lithuania, it is situated near the Baltic sea on both sides of the River Dane]. I remember that my paternal grandmother’s name was Hana Rolnikene.

My paternal grandfather’s name was Itsik Abel Rolnik. In Polish rolnik means a farmer, but as far as I know there were no farmers among our family members. He was an old religious Jew wearing beard and observing traditions. He was an owner of a small shop. My grandmother Hana was very vigorous and witty. She gave birth to 10 children and brought all of them up. Unfortunately not all of her children survived: some of them died before the war. At the beginning their shop was very small: buttons, ribbons, etc. (dry goods). Later they added fabrics and finished articles. Grandmother told me that under the counter she had a wooden bucket (where women used to wash linen). In that bucket she kept her baby, she rocked that makeshift cradle with her foot and sold goods at the same time. The only break she had was a short time in small pantry to breast-feed her baby. That was the way she brought up her children!

My grandfather was religious: he attended synagogue. By nature he was very silent and sedate, and my grandmother (on the contrary) was very witty. Here is an example. She had got a brother who lived in the neighboring city. He used to send her letters, but wrote a miserable scratch. Therefore my grandmother sent him the following message: come to our place and read your letter!

In 1938 the shop passed into the hands of my uncle Berl (my father's brother). Grandmother did not rely on his ability to be engaged in commerce; therefore she poked fun at him: ‘After my death, make a small hole in my coffin, so that I will be able to watch you doing without me.’ In 1940 the shop was nationalized and my grandmother could not stand it. That shop was her brainchild and they dared to take it away from her. Authorities took away everything, so when my uncle left the shop for ever, he was carrying in his hands a worn through teapot (they used it to water the floor while sweeping). He said ‘This is the only thing we possess now.’ Grandmother died on January 3, 1941. And nationalization campaign was finished by autumn of 1940 (when Lithuania became a Soviet Republic 1). She died in her sleep from cerebral haemorrhage. At that time she was 64 years old. Her heart was so strong that relatives had time to send for Daddy and other sons. They arrived and had time to pay the last tribute to her. Daddy made a speech during the funeral, though it was not customary. He spoke about her merits, about what relatives were grateful to her for.

Grandmother and grandfather sent my father to cheder, when he became 12 years old. It was situated in the neighboring small town. But Daddy quickly got disappointed in it and came home afoot. Later he finished a secondary school and went to Riga to study in gymnasia. Parents were able to buy him a black suit and a tie and that was all. He went to Riga having no money. Therefore Daddy worked as a porter and as a loader. When his trousers became full of holes, he made patches from his tie. He managed to finish that gymnasia in Riga (for some reason it appeared to be a Russian gymnasia). Daddy decided to become a lawyer and study at a university in Germany. He sent 12 applications to 12 universities and received 12 refusals. Nevertheless he left for Berlin and managed to press for an audience with one of rectors.

It is funny that a postage stamp played the decisive role in the way he became a student. Daddy came to that rector, said that he was from Lithuania and wanted to enter the University. The rector asked ‘Are you from Lithuania? Recently we had differences with my colleague regarding Lithuania and Latvia. Is it the same state?’ Daddy answered that it was not true, that he had a letter from his parents with a stamp of Lithuania. After that the rector allowed Daddy to become an external student. Later he passed through examinations and became an internal student. He studied in Berlin and Leipzig. He graduated from the faculty of law and later from the College of German Language and Literature which prepared teachers of German language and literature for foreigners. I asked him ‘Daddy, what for?’ And he answered ‘It was very interesting for me.’ But the knowledge of German language appeared to be very useful, because later we got a nanny from Germany and she spoke German with us. It is useful for me now, too (many years later). Some time ago it seemed to me that I forgot everything. But when they published my book in Germany, I went there and spoke poor German, but managed to answer questions. By the way I read my manuscript in Yiddish (according to their request).

Mom was a housewife. She had four children and trembled over us like every Jewish mother. Her name was Tayber Koganayte.

I can’t recall my Mom’s father, but I remember her mother. Unfortunately I can’t recollect her name. She was very religious. She lived in Telshe, but when she visited us, she used to be sitting and praying all the time. She also was very displeased if we broke rules during Shabbath. My mother's father died before I was born, his surname was Kogan.

Growing up

I was born in 1927 in Klaypeda.

In my childhood I liked to sing and wanted to become a singer. I sang so much that even had got problems with my throat. I also wrote verses. At the age of 9 I decided to write a novel and bought a thick writing-book. I called my novel Destiny and wrote the name on the book cover. I started with funeral ceremony of a countess: carriages, black curtains, etc. But I gave it up quickly. Anyway I wanted to write all the time. At school we used to have albums where we wrote rhymes to each other. I remember my verses (it is still a pleasure for me): when you become an old woman and an old man is beside you, put on your glasses and read these words. In Lithuanian it was rhymed and sounded well. I also kept a diary since my childhood.

We had a housemaid, though Mom did not work. Sunday was the housemaid’s day off; therefore we (together with my elder sister Miriam, who was 3 years older than me) had to clean our rooms ourselves. Being rather little, we had to wash, iron and sew white collars and cuffs to our school uniform. We also were obliged to clean our footwear. If we got up late, our housemaid helped us, but later she terrorized us ‘I’ll give a report to your Daddy!’

Daddy kept an order everywhere. Mom’s chief concern was to feed us. And Daddy used to say ‘We have got bread, butter, tomatoes, and salt.’ He also told us that we (girls) had to get prepared for future life, to learn to cook from Mom. Daddy worked alone, therefore his financial situation was not very good: he had got 4 children, his family also had a housemaid. I had a younger brother Ruvel (he was born in 1934) and a younger sister Raya (she was born in 1936). When somebody asked Daddy why he had so many children, he always answered he was waiting for a son.

I visited a Jewish kindergarten and later a Jewish junior high school. In 1940 it was closed and I became a pupil of a Lithuanian grammar school. But at home we spoke only Yiddish. I still can write in Yiddish. In ghetto and in fascist concentration camps I kept my diary in Yiddish. Till now I always indicate in different forms that my mother tongue is Yiddish, though I astonish people around me. During the general census [that all-Union national census was carried out in 1989] they asked me about my mother tongue and I said it was Jewish. The employee was surprised and noticed that my husband and I spoke Russian. I explained that we spoke Russian because he was not able to speak Yiddish. The employee was surprised that I knew 3 languages: Yiddish, Lithuanian and Russian. I am not sure that he wrote it down, because filling the questionnaire he used a pencil, and nobody knows what was written there later.

We studied at Lithuanian grammar school together with my sister. At that time people observed traditions and respected religious neighbors. There were manifestations of anti-Semitism (some people blamed Jews for nailing Christ to the cross), but state anti-Semitism did not exist. For instance every Saturday in our grammar school we had the right not to fulfill written tasks, teachers did not ask us. We knew that during the main Jewish holidays we were allowed not to go to school.

At that time at schools pupils were taught religion (before the communists came to power). In our classroom a crucifix hang above the blackboard. In the morning our teacher used to come into the classroom, turn his face to the crucifix and pray. All pupils prayed, too (except us). And after the last lesson the teacher also ordered pupils to pray. A pupil on duty had to say grace. For me it was always funny to listen to Te Deum, if the pupil on duty managed to have got bad marks that day.

They taught us basics of Jewish religion, too (each Friday). All pupils from the 1st till the 8th form had to study it. One day I clashed with the teacher of religion, because he got to know that my father was not religious at all. Moreover during Sabbath he saw my Daddy going home in a cab. So it caused a scandal and the teacher refused to give me a good mark. According to rules, in that case I was not allowed to be moved up into the next form. By the way I was an excellent pupil (only Art lessons were difficult for me). A Roman Catholic priest was our form-master, therefore I went to him. He ordered me to learn by heart several sacred songs. I sang them and he gave me an excellent mark. The conflict was settled.

When a schoolgirl, I made friends with a daughter of Burgomaster. I remember our teacher of French language. She was a real lady, she visited Paris every year. We (girls) watched her dresses very attentively. You remember that Daddy prepared us for studying in Paris and taught us French at home. I was an advanced learner in compare with our school program. Therefore when our French teacher was too lazy to teach us, she said ‘Rolnikaite, read and translate.’ Lithuanian language also came easy to me (other languages, too). In general I studied without special difficulties. I know a Jewish saying: she could do homework standing on one foot.  You know, I was able to stand on one foot and write. Once Daddy came home and saw me lying on the sofa (my feet on the wall) and learning history.

In Russian there are 2 different words: a Jew and a Zhid. And in Lithuanian, as well as in Polish, they have only Zhid. Recently, my former classmate’s husband said ‘…and a person of your Nationality’. I corrected him: Zhid. I understood that he wanted to show himself an internationalist. He was afraid to hurt my feelings, but I corrected him. I never concealed my Nationality.

However at school I identified myself as a Jewess. For instance, in Lithuanian language accentuation is very important. If a person makes wrong accent in a word (especially in numerals), it means that he speaks poor Lithuanian. Our teacher dictated, and we had to catch the words by ear, and the accent was very important! And I managed: I wrote by ear. I was the only pupil in our class who used to get excellent marks. And our teacher said about me ‘Lithuanian is not her mother tongue, but she writes better than all of you.’ So you see that sometimes we realized that we were different. But nobody told it to our face.

Daddy trusted us. In Plunge there was only one car with a driver, and a lot of cab drivers. Our grammar school was situated far from our house (almost in suburb), near the cemetery. It was frightful to come back home in the evening, and Daddy gave us money to hire a cab. He only asked us to come back together. My sister was already grown-up, and they (young ladies) were going and discussing something, while I had to follow them silently.

I had a program in my mind: to go to Paris together with my sister and enter a University there. My sister was 3 years older than me. I had to work hard at school, but sometimes I stayed on a skating rink too long or spent too much time with my friend. In that case Daddy used to say ‘When you come to Sorbonne, they will ask you questions. What will you answer? I guess you will tell them only what your Tsypka knows.’ For some reason he called my friend Tsypka! But he never punished me or moralized. When we were going to be late home from different parties, we never told lies. And Daddy never ordered us to come back at a certain time, he only waited for us. I guess he did not sleep and waited till the door opened.

Of course when Soviets came to power, we had to forget about Sorbonne. By the way my grandmother was already going to give money for our studies, and my uncle who lived in France was ready to find a cheap boarding house in Paris for my sister and me. But our plans failed. Under Communists our life changed completely.

Regarding Jewish traditions, it was my grandfather who observed them especially strictly. Therefore we celebrated Pesach and I always asked those 4 questions. After that I used to get 1 kg of nuts. Together with my grandmother we lighted Sabbath candles. And though Mom was not very religious (as well as Daddy), she observed kashrut: separated meat and dairy food. And when my grandfather visited us, he used to drink tea only with jam, because glasses were considered to be not for dairy and not for meat. Together with my grandmother we went to synagogue, and I saw that men and women were separated there. Grandmother prayed. When on Rosh Hashanah blowing of the shofar opened the sky to let people’s requests go straight there, everybody cried, and my sister and I did not understand the reason. During Yom Kippur Jews prayed in memory of dead people and grandmother did not allow me and my sister to be present in the synagogue. By the way, in ghetto there was no synagogue, only an apartment for praying. And rabbi forbade praying in memory of Jews taken by fascists to Ponary 2. He considered it to be a sin, because some of them could be alive! Sometimes it happened that after execution by shooting some Jews remained alive, got out from under corpses and came back in ghetto. At first fascists fired without aiming and people fell down only wounded. But later they gave an order to cover ditches with burnt lime, so that no one was able to get out.

My father's brother Berl worked in that shop we already spoke about. My aunt (his younger sister) got married in Riga and was killed there in ghetto. Her husband was shot among the first Jewish men. She had got 2 children (one of them was a baby), therefore she could not work. They died there from starvation. Much later 2 women from Riga ghetto told us about her.

Another father's brother was Mikhey. He finished his grammar school and left for Paris knowing nothing about French language. His first letters were very sad and melancholic. But a year later he entered Sorbonne. He was very talented. Later he became a well-known lawyer and all his colleagues were surprised that he was not French: by that time he spoke excellent French. In 1938 he managed to arrive to the wedding ceremony of his sister. He crossed Germany to reach Riga, and we all worried about him, because Hilter was already in power.

My uncle Berl (the shop owner) was exiled to Siberia 3 together with his family. They managed to get back only in 1956 or 1957. Later my uncle, my aunt and their daughter died. Their son lives in Israel now.

Plunge was a very nice small town! There was a large park of prince Oghinsky (relative of that composer Oghinsky, an author of the famous polonaise). The park was open for everyone. In the park there was a skating rink, where we used to skate. There were a lot of trees in the town.

When Hitler came to power, they broadcasted his speech. As radio receiver was only in our house, neighbors came to us to listen it. And the nanny of my little brother (a local Lithuanian girl) did not understand Hitler and used bad words, because Hitler disturbed the child who wanted to sleep.

Daddy was very sorry that we lived in a small town Plunge, a country town. He wanted us to get good education of European level. But in 1940 according to Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 4 Vilnius became Lithuanian, and we moved there. And it saved our lives, because later during occupation (during the war time) 1,800 Jews of Plunge were gathered in the synagogue, taken out of town to a cemetery for atheists and executed by shooting. Fascists suggested Jews to deny Judaism to save their lives.

Some young people did, but nevertheless all of them were shot. In Plunge there is a monument on the place of execution. Certainly it were relatives of those Jews who gathered money for it, and Soviet authorities of Plunge permitted it. Inscription on the monument was written in Yiddish, Lithuanian and Russian languages.

Before the war our family was rather large. But my grandfather, the grandmother's sister, her husband with two daughters, and my father's cousin perished in Plunge. My uncle (my mother's brother) was killed in a small town Telshe. [Telshe is a town in Lithuania, situated 200 km far from Vilnius.] When Jews of Telshe were carried to the place of execution, he managed to escape. But fascists caught him and shot individually, so to say. They forced him to dig a grave for himself. Later some Lithuanians (witnesses) told us that he had gone mad: he understood that he was digging a grave for himself and went crazy (but it is impossible to be proved). And my aunt (his wife and 2 daughters) were killed in Shaulay ghetto. [Shaulay is a town in Lithuania.]

Daddy counted 49 members of our family lost during the war: his and mother’s cousins, sisters, children …

In our family only Daddy (he was at the front line), my elder sister Miriam and I survived. Miriam was in the Vilnius ghetto 5, but she managed to survive.

In September 1943 hitlerites retreated and the Red Army approached Smolensk. At that time Miriam managed to escape from the ghetto. She hoped to find some kind people to hide her or make false documents for her. She even hoped to help us (her family) out of the ghetto. At that time the situation in the ghetto was rather calm, but soon hitlerites appeared there. They read out the order of Gestapo chief about evacuation of Jews from the Vilnius ghetto. Jews had to be moved to 2 camps for work: one in Estonia, another one in Lithuania. Evacuation went off very quickly: everything was finished in 4 hours. Therefore I knew nothing about Miriam until 1945.

During the war

On June 22, 1941 the war 6 burst out. The same day Vilnius was bombed. The Soviet army started its running fight. Hitlerites were just about to occupy the city. My parents knew that fascists hated the Jews. Besides they had another reason for anxiety: my father had cooperated with the Soviet authorities. Parents decided to leave for some place far inland, where invaders would not reach us. Father went to buy tickets, and we (Mom and 4 children) remained at home waiting for him. We waited very long, watching people with their belongings, Soviet tanks, motor vehicles walking and driving by our windows. At last we decided to move to the railway station to find Dad. At the station we got to know that there would be no more trains: it was a terrible misfortune. People informed each other about the last train which had been destroyed recently by bombing immediately after its departure. We did not find Dad and decided to walk out of the city hoping to catch a car. But it appeared to be a hard task to walk being languid with the heat (children of 5 and 7 years old did not manage). So we walked some time, and then went back. There we found out that in our absence Daddy came home and left again to search a car. Fascist armies entered the city that very night. Daddy did not return.

One of the first orders of the new authority was the order they posted up on the restaurants and cafe doors: ‘No Jews allowed’. I went to our school to receive the school-leaving certificate of my elder sister Mira, and other documents. The school was dirty and ruined. A boy from the 9th grade approached me and said ‘Get out! Stop stinking at our school!’ But at that moment Yonaytis, our teacher called me. He shook hands with me, asked me what I came for, went to the school office together with me, and helped me to find the school-leaving certificate and our birth-certificates. That person did much for us later (when we were in the ghetto). He gave us food and money, risking his life.

Soon hitlerites put into use their own money and ordered to check in all radio receivers. Later they ordered every Jew to wear a special sign: a yellow square and a circle with letter J inside it. Together with Mom we made those signs out of an old yellow coverlet. Jews were obliged to bring to the commandant's office money, gold goods and other jewelry. But there came more frightening news: armed patrols arrested men in the city streets and put them into prison. At first people thought that from prison men were carried away to Ponary (to a labor camp), but soon we found out that there was no camp there, in Ponary people were executed by shooting.

On July 21, a month after Germans came to Vilnius I reached the age of 14. I put on a blue silk dress (no sign on it!) and seemed to be so beautiful! Beginning of the war was the end of my childhood. Only my diary connected me with my previous life. I kept my diary being a schoolgirl (it was in fashion!) and I went on doing it during the war. In the ghetto there was shortage of paper, but we used to occupy old apartments and it was possible to find some old writing-books. One day I was presented an accounting book, and I was happy to find blank pages in it! At present I am surprised that at that time nobody laughed at me when I tried to be a chronicler. On the contrary, my relatives used to ask me ‘Masha, have you written about it?’ We all slept together on the floor near the window. I hold my notes on the window-sill. Mom often said ‘Learn it by heart! Your notes will repeat your fate.’

The next order of fascists forbade Jews to use sidewalks (they were allowed to move only along roadways) and all kinds of transport, including cabs.

On September 6, 1941 fascists enclosed several narrow streets in the city center and moved all inhabitants away. Jews were forced to move to their houses. That was the way Vilnius ghetto appeared. Our family also moved there. We lived penned up together with other families: 18 persons in a small room. There was not enough place to sleep. A girl slept on the table, another one slept under the table. There was a girl who had to sleep in the bath. Mom started working at a sewing workshop. We were given ration cards and received only 125 grammes of bread and some black peas per day. It was forbidden to bring food into the ghetto. If somebody did, it could cost him his head.

In the ghetto fascists often carried out special actions: i.e. taking people for executions. In autumn of 1941 those actions were the most mass ones: 3-5 thousand people were executed during every action. And later when only the necessary number of handicraftsmen remained in the ghetto, they started terrifying people by unexpected searches. Soldiers rushed into any apartment and arranged a search. They did their best to find clothes without the yellow star, bread baked differently (in the ghetto they made special bread that looked like clay). If they found it, they immediately took all inhabitants of the apartment away. Certainly nobody ever saw them again.

Some news from the front line seldom reached us. With great pleasure we got to know that Germans ran away from Moscow and already left Kalinin [a city near Moscow, now Tver]. The German army suffered heavy losses and its soldiers suffered from frost very much. Therefore hitlerites decided to dress warmly at our expense: they ordered us to bring to the commandant's office all fur coats, fur collars and fur cuffs. And again death penalty was promised for those who refused.

The ghetto was some sort of a small state. In the ghetto there were different offices responsible for distribution of ration cards and rooms (or rather corners in the rooms). There was a special department taking care of orphans (several boarding schools were organized). There were schools and even a grammar school for children, but it was half empty: not because there were no children, but because they all had to work. There were a prison, a hospital, a drugstore with a poor set of medicines. In the ghetto there was even an underground organization which fought against fascism. One day 3 activists of that organization I. Kaplan, A. Khvoynik and A. Big got to know about liquidation of the ghetto and decided to leave for the forest through a drain-pipe. But unfortunately they lost their way underground and got out in the city center. Soldiers seized them and hang. When my book was ready for the first publication, the editor said ‘People you named were not listed as partisans, eliminate this episode.’ - ‘But they were the organization members’ I insisted. But nothing could move him ‘Tomorrow they will come to ask for a special pension!’ - ‘Do not worry, they will not come: fascists hang them’ I calmed him. But at that time I could not think about the future book and even about my possible survival.

Persecutions of fascists knew no limit. One day they took all old men away from the ghetto. They said they wanted to bring them to a recreation house to feed and treat. Relatives became suspicious and refused to let them go. But old people were taken away by force. They were really fed well and photographed during the first 2 days. And then they all were executed by shooting.

In the spring I found a job. For the most part we worked outside the ghetto. At first I worked on the fields of an old rich person. I had to carry hundred buckets of water a day to water plants. Later I started working at a knitting workshop, where women added fingers to gloves by knitting. Later I went to a furniture factory to polish skis. 

That was they way we lived in the ghetto: dying from starvation and cold, and waiting for death. It seems strange, but in the ghetto there was a chorus. I was its member. We sang in Hebrew and in Yiddish. The head of the chorus also created a symphonic orchestra. Very few musicians survived: they were considered to be the least useful and fascists killed them first of all. But nevertheless the orchestra appeared and together with chorus prepared the Beethoven's Ninth symphony for performance.

With great pleasure we got to know that hitlerites went into mourning for 3 days: they grieved about their armies defeated near Stalingrad. Later we knew from rumors that Kharkov [now Kharkiv, Ukraine], Rostov-on-Don and many other cities had been liberated. But all those cities were situated so far from Vilnius!

People got to know that in the neighboring shtetls hitlerites shot about 3 thousand local Jews. A lot of partisan groups appeared in the neighboring woods, therefore hitlerites were afraid that local Jews would certainly contact them. So they decided to execute a part of the Jews, and to move the rest of them to the Vilnius or Kaunas ghetto. But later they changed their mind and killed all of them! Only a few men managed to escape; they penetrated into our ghetto and told us how those Jews were shot in the wood near the large holes dug beforehand.

At that time my sister Mira managed to escape from the ghetto. Some kind people promised to hide her. Soon all inhabitants of the ghetto lost their jobs. The ghetto became completely isolated from the world. But nevertheless from rumors we got to know that at the Vilnius railway station there appeared an inscription JUDENFREI (it meant that the city was free from Jews). But in fact we were still alive! We understood that the countdown had begun.

One September evening all inhabitants of the ghetto were informed that they would be evacuated to two working camps: in Estonia and in Lithuania. Evacuation would last only 1 day. They permitted to take a small number of clothes with us.

My brother Ruvel learned to read in the ghetto. He was very proud of it, and used to say that Daddy would be pleased. Ruvel was afflicted that we were going to take only clothes (no books). ‘What shall I read there?’ he asked. Mom answered ‘You will read when we get our liberty.’

At last we got ready to leave. There were lots of people in the streets. The crowd was gloomy. Together with other people we reached the ghetto gates and went out. After a while we reached a ravine and were ordered to stop. There the large crowd of people spent a night in the rain. Next day hitlerites ordered people to get out from the ravine. They let people out through the gate one by one, and Mom ordered me to go first. A soldier seized me and pushed aside. Mom and two children remained behind the gate. I tried to get back to my family and suddenly I heard that Mom begged the soldier not to let me back in. She said that I was young and could work well. Then she shouted to me ‘Live, my child! At least you alone!’ And she lifted children a little so that I could see them. And I saw them. For the last time in my life!

1,700 people including me were moved to the railway station and took aboard the train. We arrived in a concentration camp near Shaulay.

My camp life began, however it could hardly be called a life. Newcomers were given clothes. I got a silk ball-dress. It was decorated with an artificial red flower and had very low neckline. Long time passed until I managed to get a needle and alter the dress a little. I worked at the building site: I had to peck stones off and push heavy tubs full of stones. We suffered from terrible starvation, persecution and beating; we felt pain of death. In the camp there was an inscription ‘You do not live to work, you work to live’. Hitlerites arranged the so called selections, i.e. sorting of people for subsequent execution. Till now I do not understand why I remained alive: they were going to kill everyone younger than 18 and older than 30. I was 17, but probably there was some mistake in the card index. In the meantime Soviet armies were already near Riga: we heard explosions and bombardments and saw airplanes flying in the sky. We hoped to be liberated soon, but instead Germans forced us to move to Germany (to Stutthof). They transported us by a military steamship (it was loaded with some equipment) - in the cold.

Shtutthof concentration camp was one of the oldest: it was built by Polish railwaymen as early as in 1938-1939. The camp reminded a market of slaves, because owners of farms used to come there. We had to strip to the skin and walk by employers showing our muscles. We were covered with abscesses because of terrible starvation. I said in German ‘Ich bin stark (I am still strong)’ and showed my muscles though there was nothing to be shown. A nearly blind old farmer looked at me and took me to his farm. There I worked about 4 months. I slept in the pigsty together with pigs. The owner locked us at night, we had no days off. But at the same time I was lucky to get there: it was possible to eat some potatoes from the pigs’ ration without the owner’s knowledge. He gave us a loaf of bread for a week and used to warn ‘If you work badly, I’ll send you not back to the camp, but directly to a crematorium.’

In November after harvesting we got back to the camp. We did not leave camp for work because of typhus epidemic. We got to know that there was fire in the gas chamber, therefore hitlerites poisoned the so-called soup (it was something like warm water, and it was a fortune to find a small slice of rotten cabbage in it) they fed us with. They did not give us enough water, therefore we ate dirty snow. So I got ill with typhus, too. But after a while I got better (by a miracle!). My neighbors told me that when I was lying on the floor unconscious, I sang loudly and abused Germans left and right. I felt ashamed: ‘My Daddy is a lawyer, nobody in our family used bad language…’

Suddenly when all of us lost hope to survive, Germans ordered to evacuate those who could walk to another camp. I was not able to walk, but I knew that those who did not endure torture would be killed. And I crawled out. And I walked. It was the road of death. My companions in misfortune supported me; they said that it was a pity to leave such a young girl. On our way we managed to perceive snow-covered bunkers full of potatoes or beet. Neither kicks nor shots could stop us. We fell down, raked snow aside by benumbed hands, broke off the ground and snatched beet away. When we left, several prisoners remained on the snow killed. We spent nights in sheds en route. My feet swelled up. I was afraid to take off my boots... Later we understood that Germans took us away from the advancing Red Army.

One night we were put into a huge shed or a stable. In the deep of night we heard that someone was hammering on the door ‘Hey, women, get out, Red Army is here!’ At first nobody believed, we thought it was a provocation: Germans wanted to force us run out and kill by shooting in the back. Nobody of 700 women moved. The voice continued ‘If you are so silly, go on sitting here!’ And he disappeared. It seemed to us unbelievable! That soldier told tank crews about us. They used a tank to break the door, and women ran away from the shed. I could not walk, could not get myself up. I was lying on the floor and waiting to be trampled underfoot. At last Red Army men came into the shed. They lifted me and carried me to the village in their arms. I embraced them and started crying (for the first time!). Tears were rolling down my cheeks. One of those soldiers said ‘Do not cry, sister, we will stand up for you!’ And I had only one idea: I survived! It happened on March 10, 1945.

When I returned to Vilnius from the concentration camp (in 1945), I saw the city in ruins. I had no problems with my neighbors. At my work (I was an editor at the Vilnius Municipal Arts Department) my chief Banaytis was a very decent person and he paid attention to my emotional experience regarding my nationality. He said ‘Don’t worry, here we pay no attention to nationalities.’ I didn’t come across any manifestations of anti-Semitism. Among my colleagues there was a chief accountant - a Jew, a chief manager - also a Jew. My next job I got at the State Vilnius Philharmonic Society: there were many Jews, Poles, Lithuanians. Their hatred against Russians forced them to be nice to local Jews.

After the war

When I returned to Vilnius after all ordeals of the war time, I met Daddy in the street by chance. He already knew that Miriam remained alive. After the war she became a student of the Faculty of Law at the Vilnius University.

Now she lives in Klaypeda. Her husband tragically died: he drowned when she was 39 years old. She has got 2 sons and 5 granddaughters. And she still works (notwithstanding her age). Together with her children my sister visits our town Plunge every year on July 18 (the day of execution of Jews in Plunge).

Unfortunately after the end of the war Daddy lost hope that his wife and children Raya and Ruvel remained alive. All that hastened his death. I guess he was unhappy. Half a year before his death he left his work, because a doctor said ‘If you go on working you will fall down dead!’

After the end of the war we spent a lot of time in Palanga together with Daddy. He often recollected the past. Once he reminded that when we were children, he got ill, but nevertheless (having running temperature) went to his office to work, because he wanted to show us the necessity of struggle, the necessity of work. I said that at that time we understood nothing. Daddy also often explained to us that it was very important for a person to become educated. Again, at that time I could not understand him. When Hitler came to power, I thought it was only important to have a rifle in your hands.

Daddy considered a hospital and a prison to be places where people can live. He was full of humor. I also started with comic stories. When my first book was published in Moscow, Misha Raytiz, a winner of Lenin premium wrote a foreword to my book. [Lenin premium in the USSR was one of the highest forms of encouragement of citizens for their achievements in the field of science, technique and arts. Lenin premium was awarded annually since 1925.]

My second book was published in 1967. I also made translation of Sayanov’s play. He was a writer, a winner of Stalin premium. [Stalin premium in the USSR was one of the highest forms of encouragement of citizens for their achievements in the field of science, technique and arts. Stalin premium was awarded annually since 1939.] At that time all books of writers who were awarded Stalin premium, had to be translated into languages of the USSR republics. While translating, I suffered much, because my Russian was poor (I never learnt it). Sometimes I could not find author’s words in the dictionary. But nevertheless I managed to translate it and presented the play at the entrance exams at the Literary College. I became its student. 

Regarding the first manifestations of state anti-Semitism, I can mention murder of Solomon Mikhoels 7.

I also remember that at that time a murdered girl was found. It was so terrible for me that I decided not to use municipal transport but to walk everywhere I needed, because I was afraid to be beaten black and blue by passengers: they said that the girl was killed by Jews who took her blood to make matzot. It was really terrible.

I wrote an article for Literaturnaya newspaper. [Literaturnaya newspaper was a weekly literary and political edition in the USSR.] I named that article Whither Goest Thou? There I wrote that one fine day during the war Soviet soldiers liberated prisoners of a concentration camp and carried me out of it in their arms. They said ‘Don’t cry, sister, we will never let you be offended.’ So after a time I became a companion-in-arms of enemies of people, murderers and cosmopolitans. My last sentence was the following ‘Why are you silent now? You promised never let me be offended, but keep silence now.’ Of course, by that time those soldiers were rather elderly, but in fact their children and grandchildren could be among skinheads.

On January 27 a radio reporter called me and invited to participate in broadcast program (I was recommended by Radio Liberty 8 reporters, where I gave a talk several times). I came there: it appeared to be rather strange broadcasting station situated in a one-room apartment. The reporter explained that for the most part they worked for seamen, therefore they broadcasted at night (from 1 till 2 o’clock a.m.). It was the day of liberation (but that reporter seemed to me to know nothing about the Holocaust), the day of raising the blockade of Leningrad. The reporter said ‘How shall I introduce you to our listeners?’

‘I am a prose writer and a former prisoner of the ghetto and two concentration camps.’ (I didn’t like to tell everybody that I am a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, because I consider Chekhov 9 and Dostoevsky 10 to be writers, not me). [Union of Soviet Writers was the organization of professional writers of the USSR.] He answered ‘What?’ And I understood that he knew nothing about the ghetto. He invited me to the microphone and asked to tell about myself. I started from German occupation and when I mentioned the ghetto he said ‘Will you please explain to our listeners what the ghetto was.’ 

I explained, but realized that I was explaining it not only to the audience, but to the reporter, too. Then he asked me ‘And what were you dressed in?’ - ‘Don’t you know that we wore prison clothes, the stripes.’ -  ‘Did they give prisoners underwear?’ - ‘It was difficult to call that sacking underwear.’ 

And he understood that it was better to ask me no more questions. I finished my monologue and started coughing, therefore the reporter suggested me a cup of tea. We moved to the kitchen. He said that I looked youthful, though I had suffered so much. Then he asked me the following ‘Tell me about sanitary conditions in the camp.’ - ‘What are you talking about, I wonder? As for me, four days I was unconscious and then crawled out of the barrack to wash my face with dirty snow beside it.’ - ‘Did you receive any medical assistance, for instance aspirin?’

At that moment I was absolutely drooped with that aspirin! I said ‘Why are you talking about aspirin, if a gas chamber and a crematorium functioned round the clock. People were brought there to die!!!’

So I left that broadcasting station and it seemed to me that I had swallowed a toad. That reporter was about 30 years old, he was a journalist, but he asked me if they gave prisoners aspirin in a concentration camp! Do you know who helped me in that situation?! It was a German journalist from Austria, he called me 2 or 3 days later. He lived in Graz (our executioner Franz Mourer was from Graz, too). That journalist told me that he knew about Mourer, that he was an executioner in the Vilnius ghetto. By the way in the Austrian edition of my book there is an epilogue which contains the following words ‘This book requires an epilogue from an Austrian, because the majority of the mentioned executioners were Austrians.’ That journalist was present at the legal proceedings against Mourer. He said that the audience sympathized with Mourer, because most of them were from SS-Verfugungstruppe.

That German journalist spoke excellent Russian. He told me that death notice of Mourer (about 10 years ago) was rather respectful. The journalist wanted to unmask Mourer (at least posthumously). Therefore he was searching for an eye-witness. In the Internet he found information about my book and decided to visit me. I gave him a photo of Mourer and two orders of him regarding prohibitions for Jews.

In the USSR I had to take care of my books myself. I used to go to the main bookshop of Leningrad and ASK them to take my books for sale. At first they allowed me to bring 5 books. Later I called them and asked their permission to bring another 10. And the goods manager told me apologizing that the new director ordered to take only 5 books from authors. She added that if the books were not sold during 2 months, they would be returned to the author.

On the Victory day 11 I was invited to speak at a meeting of two generations. The hall was divided into two parts: the former citizens of the besieged Leningrad 12 and the former prisoners on the one side and schoolchildren on the other one. The presenter asked me to prepare autographed copies of my books for the schoolchildren. They were sorry to have bought only 5 books (there were no more books in the bookshop!). Then I addressed the audience with my story (and you know that each recollection is painful)… They asked me many questions, including the following one ‘What's your attitude towards young generation?’ And I answered ‘I rest my hopes upon them.’  The whole room applauded.

In Petersburg there is an Association of the Former Minor Prisoners of Concentration Camps. Its members started to receive amends from Germany. Last year (in the beginning of August) 10 former prisoners from Moscow and 10 ones from Petersburg were invited to visit Germany. But you see, it was only me who spoke to people everywhere in Germany. Among the members of our group there were different people: one of them knew nothing, another one was too little to recollect anything. And I was an experienced speaker: under the Soviet regime they used to invite me to different factories, and I spoke to people readily (I knew that I had to). I also was a member of a Circle for Propagation of the Soviet Literature. The word propagation frightens people, but actually the circle arranged meetings of writers and their readers.

Someone said for a joke that in the Union of Soviet Writers there were hundreds of Jews, but only one Jewess.

In France (in 2003) I received a special prize In Memory of Holocaust, signed by Rothschild. He had to deliver a speech, but unfortunately that day hooligans set fire to a synagogue somewhere in the suburb. Therefore we did not meet (unfortunately!) and Rothschild sent me the text of his speech translated into Russian. There he wrote that that premium had been awarded since 1998 once a year, and for the first time in its history it was awarded to a person from the country which was on its way to democratic society.

Among the well known political events I can mention Hungarian events 13 and Stalin's death. To tell the truth, I had no time to be engaged in politics: I always studied hard at school, at my college, etc.

When my book was published, authorities were very proud that they proved to have no anti-Semitism. You see, at that time I wanted my book to be published very much (on the one hand), and understood that I acted as a fig leaf for authorities to cover their anti-Semitism (on the other hand). They published a review and circulated it. They received a lot of requests for the book from different countries and started selling its magazine variant (Zvezda magazine) for dollars. Of course I got nothing: till 1973 in the Soviet Union there was no copyright.

It’s interesting to mention that I have four different surnames as an author of those books. According to my passport I am Rolnikaite, in Israel (in Hebrew) and in Warsaw (in Yiddish) they called me Rolnik. In Paris they knew my uncle (there is a memorial plaque built into the wall of the house where he lived), therefore I was called there Rolnikas (to show our relationship). You know Maria Rolnikas in Lithuanian means just the same as Maria Ivanov - a woman’s variant of the first name plus a man's variant of the surname. And in Czechoslovakia they transformed my surname into Rolnikassova. Hence I have 4 surnames as a real criminal! Erenburg 14 was the first person, who asked me about my first name when I visited him: he thought I was Miriam. And it was my sister whose name was Miriam. When I asked Daddy about my first name, he explained that when Mom was pregnant, she dreamed to give birth to a boy. At that time my father's grandfather died and my father's father asked him to call the newborn boy Moshele. Therefore when a girl was born, they called her (me) Masha (Maria). All was very simple and very complicated at the same time!

After the end of the war I immediately started my studies. My friends (girls) used to say ‘Why are you spending your time at this evening school? Let’s go to dance! We must drive boys crazy! We are eager to get married!’ I answered ‘No, I won’t stay illiterate because of Hitler’s occupation - not for the world! I will become educated.’

Therefore I got married rather late: at the age of 32. My husband lived in Leningrad, therefore after marriage we moved there. My husband’s name was Semen Savelyevich Tsukernik. His father’s name was Saul, but Savely according to his documents. It happened in 1959 (45 years ago). At first we lived in a communal apartment 15 in Mayakovskaya Street. There were 8 rooms (6 owners). When in France they asked me about my apartment, I was honest: 6 families lived together in our apartment. The interpreter stopped and asked me if she had to translate my words. And I said yes, I was not going to set the Frenchmen wrong, though I understood that at that meeting some third eyes could be present. And at the last meeting in France the audience rose when I came in. I was confused. I was so much confused, that walked along the aisle all of a shake. People were very kind to me. At the end of the meeting a person approached and started touching my face. He appeared to be a visually impaired friend of my uncle, he said ‘Your chin is strong-willed, like that of Mikhey.’ That day I was given a big bunch of roses as a present.

I told them that the next morning I was leaving for Leningrad. I explained to them that in Leningrad there was Piskarevskoye memorial cemetery. [Piskarevskoye memorial cemetery was a burial place for the Leningrad citizens during blockade of Leningrad.] I told people in France that I was going to carry their flowers there. So I did it. I smelled the snow and roses: it was fantastic! It happened in 1967. 

At present I am a member of the Society for War Veterans, Former Citizens of the Besieged Leningrad and Ghetto Prisoners and also a member of the Association of the Former Minor Prisoners of Concentration Camps. There we celebrate Jewish holidays. Besides that I use to celebrate anniversaries of our liberation from fascist concentration camp. When the date (March 10) is near, it comes to my mind again and again. I recollect our long walk to the camp, and the soldier pushing me down into the ditch, and a very strong wind. I remember that I wanted to fall asleep and be sleeping like a log till the end of those terrible days. You know, to tell the truth, all my terrible memoirs will stay with me for ever 

Glossary:

EMILIA KOTLIAR
Russia
Moscow
Interviewer: Svetlana Bogdanova
Date of interview: August 2003

Emilia Kotliar is a quiet considerate lady with big hazel eyes. She is a little taller than average and she combs her dark hair back.
She has a very friendly expression of her face and dresses decently.

She lives alone in a 2-bedroom apartment in the southwest of Moscow. She has no close relatives left.  She recently had a surgery on her broken femoral neck. She moves slowly with a stick.
She is a member of the writer’ association and writes children’s poems published in a number of popular magazines and her own books of poems. 

Her apartment needs to be repaired.
Her apartment is furnished modestly, but it is clean.

Once a week the Jewish public charity fund ‘A Hand of help’ sends her a charwoman who cleans her apartment and another volunteer does shopping for her. 
There are many icons and pictures on biblical and Testament subjects on the walls.

Emilia Kotliar lived through a very hard period of life associated with professional failures and her mother’s lethal disease.
At the recommendation of archpriest Alexandr Men’ she adopted Christianity in 1988, but she identifies herself as a Jew, anyway. 

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My family came from Vasilkov [30 km from Kiev], a small town in Ukraine. The majority of population in Vasilkov was Jewish, but there were also Ukrainian residents in it. I visited it when I was very small and I don’t remember anything.

Unfortunately, I know little about my father’s family. My father died young, when I was only 9.  My paternal grandfather’s name was Efraim Kotliar. His family led a patriarchal way of life. They were respected people in the town. My grandfather was wealthy. He owned a business. He was a glasscutter and made frames. There were 8 children in the family and all had higher education. All of his sons, and there were 5 of them, used to help my grandfather in his shop. My father Peisach Kotliar was the only son who didn’t help his father in the shop. He was an idol in the family being talented and having all excellent marks at school. My grandfather used to say: ‘I don’t need your sawdust, I need your marks’. My father studied in a realschule 1. Its students got a good technical and mathematical education. I don’t know for sure, but I think my grandfather had a house having his business. My grandfather was a merry man. The family sang very well. My father’s younger brother Yasha had a particularly strong and beautiful voice. When the family got together they sang sitting at the table.  They sang Ukrainian and Jewish folk songs. 

My father’s brother Yakov studied with my father in Moscow College of Light Industry and I’ve known uncle Yasha since childhood. I didn’t see my father’s other brothers and don’t know what happened to them. My father’s mother Mendel Kotliar had a meek character. She was bringing quietude, order and peace into the houses and demanded that her children made no mess of it.  She was a housewife.
Their house was always clean and cozy. My grandmother taught the girls to do craftwork, sew and embroider. There was a custom in their family: whatever problems one had they had to wipe their shoes on a welcome rug and smile. They had to leave all their problems on the porch. There was a cheerful atmosphere at home. They loved each other very much and respected parents in the family.  Undoubtedly, they observed all Jewish traditions in the past times.  There was a synagogue and a Jewish community in Vasilkov. Unfortunately, I don’t know how religious my father’s parents were or how they observed Jewish traditions. I know that their older daughter Feiga after finishing a college in Sverdlovsk moved my grandfather and grandmother to live with her in Sverdlovsk in the Ural in about 1000 km from Moscow shortly before the Great Patriotic War 2. My grandmother died in 1942 and my grandfather died in 1943 in Sverdlovsk and there they were buried.

I know more about my mother’s family. In her older age my mother tried to write about her town and her family, but she never got to finish it. She fell ill and asked me to finish her notes for her. Following her will I wrote a poem ‘A gorgeous town’ and dedicated it to the memory of my mother Anna Vaisman. This book was published by ‘Mozhaysk-Terra’ Ltd. in 2001 in 1000 copies.

My maternal great grandfather’s name was Vigdor. Regretfully, I don’t know his last name. He lived in Vasilkov and was a very bright person. He was a melamed. Besides, he was involved in various public activities. His wife died young leaving him with 6 children. He never remarried. His older daughter Leya, my grandmother, became a housewife. Vigdor taught Talmud in cheder. Studying Talmud was his favorite pastime. He was very fond of it. Vigdor was the authority of his community. He was very smart and his neighbors often addressed him with their problems, when there was a dispute, or they wanted to share heritage or had routinely problems. Grandfather judged them objectively. He studied Talmud ‘for the development of brains’ and read religious books. At his old age he worked at a slaughterhouse where he issued receipts for one kopeck. This was a slaughterhouse that belonged to the synagogue where they slaughtered poultry in accordance with kashrut rules. He was sitting behind his counter having coins and receipts in front of him and a Talmud on his lap. Women even felt hurt that he didn’t look at them issuing those receipts. He was plunged into his book.  In 1920 white guard officers 3 during a pogrom 4 killed him. When they were shooting him, he was an old man with one leg. Something had happened to his leg and he had it amputated without anesthesia. Assistant doctors didn’t have any anesthesia means in this small town where he lived. He walked with crutches and they shot the man with crutches. I dedicated a poem to him: (translation by the line)

In the eleventh year

Reb Vigdor got in trouble.

He went to ‘elections’

In the neighboring ‘capital’,

Caught cold and was taken to hospital.

Gangrene developed.

Assistant doctors

Cut off his leg like a log without anesthesia.

Reb Vigdor clutched his teeth and kept silent.

Being a strong old man.

He came back to his village on crutches

And took to his usual activities,

As if nothing had happened.

The old reb

Like all Jews in town,

Was dreaming about his own plot of land,

About bread.

In the seventeenth he advised

his former pupils

to join the Bolsheviks

They would give them land!

A Talmud scholar, philosopher,

Connoisseur of Jewish laws,

He failed to discern

Who Bolsheviks were,

Since it’s this was with God: white is white,

Black is black

Yes is yes and no is no!

Could he imagine,

That God’s covenants were nothing for Bolsheviks?

That was the thing:

They didn’t hesitate,

With cheating people or the God

…In the twentieth

the white guard during a pogrom

shot reb Vigdor

by the wall of his house.

My maternal grandfather Isaac Vaisman was an extraordinarily kind and nice person. Grandfather Isaac had an artistic personality. He carved trays, cups and vases from wood.  My mother told me they were amazingly beautiful. Everybody laughed at him and he used to do this work in hiding. My grandmother Leya had no confidence in his work. Why make them, those unpractical things?  She told him off for his hobby and occasionally threw his works into a stove.  Grandmother Leya adored her father Vigdor, though she had a hard childhood. She grew up having no mother and was responsible for the housework and raising her younger sisters and brothers. 

Grandmother Leya!

What burden fell on your shoulders

What sorrow was awaiting!

From the age of thirteen

With a widower of a father

You had to raise

Five brothers and sisters!

You replaced their mother to them.

Vigdor, Leya’s father was a genuine

Local Talmud scholar.

His daughter respected him infinitely

And pleased him in every way.

Dreaming to marry

Another scientist like her father,

Fond of Talmud.

But her father couldn’t support

A ‘golden son-in-law’

And poor Leya

Had to lock her heart .

A ‘golden son-in-law’ was one involved only in spiritual activities studying the Talmud and his wife’s family was to provide for him. Since my great grandfather was very poor he couldn’t support this kind of a son-in-law and Leya had to marry Isaac Vaisman, my grandfather, who was as poor as she was.  This happened approximately in 1900. Of course, they had a traditional wedding and it couldn’t have been otherwise at that time. Grandfather Isaac was meek and kind. I almost shrink thinking about my grandfather. He was the best person in the family. He was very patient and his wife scolded him.  She didn’t quite respect him for his being quiet and meek and was up in the clouds, though he did everything about the house. He was very handy. I don’t know what he did before the revolution of 1917 5, but afterward he worked as a janitor in a kolkhoz 6.

The name of my second great grandfather, my grandfather Isaac’s father, was Leib.  All I know about him is that he made a sukkah at Sukkot and installed a table and a trestle bed in it, dropped grass on the floor and compacted it, put flowers on the table and lived there until night frosts. He was very handy. My great grandfather Vigdor was more a philosopher while my great grandfather Leib was an earthly man. He was a craftsman. He was also shot in 1918 or 1922. A bandit from a passing gang 7 shot a bullet on the run. He was about 70 years old. His wife, my great grandmother died young of some disease and I don’t even know the name of. My great grandfather Leib remarried. His second wife was very nice. I know little about them. People didn’t talk about themselves in the past. There is a saying ‘Every bush has its acoustics’. Everything was forbidden.

My great grandfather Leib

Was a poor man

In a small distant town.

His little house

Was all patched,

Like a dress.

His house was called

‘Leib’s palace’!

a samovar and a mattress with holes,

Iron cast in a Russian stove 8

And candles in the 7-candle stand…

He got married in the same coat,

In which he came into this world!

Grandmother Leya and grandfather Isaac settled down in Stavishche town near Vasilkov after their wedding. Before the revolution of 1917 grandmother Leya owned a store selling her products on credit for peanuts. She sold salt, matches, soap and herring. Villagers from a neighboring village liked doing shopping in Leya’s store. She even sold on credit to those who didn’t pay back their old debts. When Jewish pogroms began Ukrainian families gave shelter to Leya’s family and rescued her children.  At their old age my grandmother and grandfather worked in a kolkhoz.  My grandfather was a janitor and my grandmother worked in a kolkhoz canteen. They lived in a small clay house. I visited there. There was a living room and a table covered with a fancy white tablecloth, a mirror and scarlet ribbon along the table serving as a decoration. There was a bed for guests in the living room. My grandparents slept in a corner in the kitchen. There was a Russian stove in the house. They fetched water from a well. They had a cow. There was a manger that dried up in the sun. It glittered and looked nice and I said I wanted to sleep in it and asked my grandmother to put a sheet there for me. 

Grandmother Leya and grandfather Isaac had 8 children. Four children died in infancy and four survived. Grandmother Leya was very much attached to her father Vigdor and often left her home to visit him. Can you imagine what it was like when she came back home? When she returned the house was a mess and the children were hungry. She would have cuffed one in his nap and kick another.  Shortly before the Great Patriotic War my mother’s younger sister Sophia Goloborodko took my grandfather and grandmother to live with her family in Uman  [180 km from Kiev]. Grandfather Isaac died there in 1943 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery. After the war grandmother Leya lived in Uman. She died in 1950 and was buried in the Jewish sector of the town cemetery in Uman.  

My mother grew up in a very poor family. She was the oldest of all children. She had to do a lot of work. To tell the truth, her family wasn’t quite like a family. Grandmother Leya spent all her time with her father Vigdor and my mother had to do the housework. My mother was very proud and had a character. She had more problems than anybody else. When they punished her and told her to ask forgiveness she was stubborn and never asked pardons and thus, set her mother in opposition. The situation in the family was hard.  My mother had congenital glaucoma, but nobody knew about it and nobody intended to know.  She needed at least glasses, but she didn’t even get these. My mother was not supposed to do some work like sewing or standing by a fireplace, but they thought she just didn’t want to do this work. She was made to clean the farmyard and she worked there with my grandfather.  So, frankly speaking, she had a hard childhood. And I think that when all this revolutionary agitation began she got interested in it and joined Komsomol 9 to somehow get distracted from home and her crazy family. Later my mother joined the party. 

My mother had brothers David Vaisman and Shakhna Vaisman and sister Sophia Goloborodko. David had a higher education and lived in Leningrad [present St. Petersburg, today Russia]. He worked as a shipbuilder. During the Great Patriotic War he stayed in Leningrad and survived in its siege 10. He almost starved to death and showed no signs of life. He was taken to a morgue where he recovered his consciousness. The aftereffects of this siege had an impact on his health. He was sickly and died in Leningrad in 1950. He was buried in Leningrad. He had a family: wife Anna and sons Alexei and Isaac. David, his wife and children were not religious. Shakhna was born in 1910 and had a secondary technical education. He lived in Kadievka, Ukraine, in about 900 km from Moscow. He worked in the system of mine management. His wife Rosa was Jewish. They had a son named Leonid and a daughter named Yelizaveta.  His family wasn’t religious. Shakhna died in 1989 and was buried in Kadievka. Sophia was born in 1912. She lived in Uman, Ukraine. She had primary education. She was a housewife. She had four children: three daughters – Anna, Larisa and Lubov and son Vladimir. Her husband Goloborodko, whose surname I don’t know, was a Jew. None of them was religious. Sophia moved grandmother Leya and grandfather Isaac to live with her in Uman. Sophia died  in 1959 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Uman.  My mother kept in touch with her brothers and sister. She corresponded with them and they visited us in Moscow. She had the closes relationships with her brother Shakhna. 

My father was a middle child in his family. He finished a realschule with honors. My father wasn’t a member of the Communist Party, though he sympathized with the revolutionary movement. He spoke at a meeting. I don’t know what Party he spoke for, but I believe it was an incidental matter since it wasn’t what he really was up to. My mother and father gave up observing Jewish traditions and religion when they were young. This was the way it was at that time: the Revolution of 1917, when everything was breaking up and crashing, the routinely way of life was replaced with something different when new authorities were building up different ideology, propagating and forcing communism and atheism into people’s minds. Besides, I don’t think they would have found jobs had they remained religious. Soviet authorities did not appreciate religiosity and struggled against it 11 in every possible way. If my father had come to his plant with his kippah on and a beard and had begun to pray, can you imagine what it would have been like? Same with my mother. Although her grandfather was a Talmud scholar and she accompanied grandfather to the synagogue every day carrying his tallit for him she didn’t see anything beautiful in the life of her family regardless those traditional ceremonies. She didn’t see that it was a good life and therefore, she didn’t quite accept it. My parents and their brothers and sisters did not just nominally give up religion, they actually parted with it. Young people joined the revolution and began to study. They had nothing to lose. Most Jews were so poor that it could not be worse for them.  Many finished cheder, but few could afford to go to yeshivah. Not all of them were smart enough to go into theoretical studies of the Talmud.  Becoming a melamed? How many did a small town need? Two at the most. The rest of them had to take to trade or patching jackets or sewing? There were no vacancies in this little town and even skilled craftsmen earned little. Other towns also had their own coopers, tailors and tradesmen. Therefore, they rushed into revolution. A road to new life opened to them.

My mother and father met in Vasilkov. After finishing the realschule my father couldn’t find a job near home. He found a job in Kazan’, about 720 km east of Moscow, my mother joined him there and they got married. My father worked as technical manager in a leather factory. It was a small factory. Then the factory sent my father to study at the College of light industry. My mother didn’t tell me anything about my father: how they met or what kind of person my father was. She was very withdrawn and stern and she was not good at sentimental talk. It probably had to do with her severe childhood years. 

Growing up

I was born in Kazan’, Russia, in 1925. In Kazan’ my mother worked in zhensoviet (women's council) [editor’s note: Women’s councils – departments, included in Party organs at the direction of the party Central Committee in 1918. Their members were women activists and their tasks included ideological work with women industrial employees and peasants with the aim of their socialist education. Reorganized in 1929] with education of Tatar women. They didn’t know Russian and were taught in likbez 12 schools. We rented an apartment with three big rooms in a private house. There was a small kitchen. There was a real big stove with oven forks, wood and cast iron pots. Water was delivered to houses in barrels. There was a cellar with huge bottle green pieces of ice in it. There was food stored on them. The cellar was a very tempting place: there was sour cream in ceramic pots, milk and pelmeni dumplings. It was a very delicious cellar. My father was sent to study in Moscow in 1931 and our family followed him there: my mother, I and our nanny. The nurse was with us since I turned 2 and stayed 14 years. 

My father entered Moscow College of Light Industry. My mother also entered this college after finishing a rabfak 13 school.  We didn’t have a place to live and our nanny went to work for other people. We lived out of town. I liked it there. There was a wooden house, so mysterious, in the woods.  There were pine trees. We rented this “izba” hut, but then my mother was accommodated in a hostel and so was my father. They lived in different rooms on different floors and since children were not allowed to stay in hostels there were always problems with my presence there. My mother lived with some girls in her room and I was with them. Later I went to a kindergarten. Children could stay there overnight, but it turned out, this was not for me. I was withering away there. Nobody actually looked after me or how I ate there. Our family was poor. Then my parents got another room and there was a student girl living there with us. She was a stranger living with us. I remember my father asking her: ‘Sonia, I need to get dressed. Turn away, please’.  We lived in this room until 1938. In 1934, before my father defended his diploma, they convinced him to go to Irkutsk [4120 km east of Moscow] to become production manager of a big plant. Of course, an ill-advised step. He should have defended his diploma and besides, the climate in Irkutsk was very bad, but he went there. We were going to follow him. We started packing our miserable belongings, when all of a sudden we received a cable that he died. He only lived there 3 months. And there is still no clue to this mysterious story. We didn’t understand whether he was ill or what he had. My father’s brother Yasha went to his funeral. My father was buried in a town cemetery. They never told me anything about it. My mother got severely ill and didn’t tell me anything later: she didn’t remember. And a long time afterward I asked my father’s brothers about my father’s belongings or letters. There was nothing left. Well, this was a strange and tragic story. After my father died we were told to move out of this room, but we didn’t have a place to go. They threatened to call militia. Four years later my mother received a room in a communal apartment 14 in Moscow where we lived until 1966.

Some time later after my father died my mother entered the History Department of Moscow University. My mother liked history much. At first her co-students who were young girls, gave her a hostile reception since she was a mature woman already. I was 9 years old then. Those girls sniffed and chuckled about me, but then my mother somehow happened to become a head student of her course. They called her ‘our Mom’. She was awarded a Stalin’s stipend [Editor’s note: Stalin’s stipend was awarded to most advanced college and university students].  Shortly after my father died our nanny returned to us. My mother received a stipend and nanny had her pension and I was given minor monthly allowances after my father’s death.  We were hard up, but we didn’t lead secluded life. We received guests, especially when we lived in the hostel our door was always open. My mother was tight-lipped to talk about herself, but she was very sociable otherwise. She had many friends when a student and later she made friends with her colleagues and I had many school friends. We were very close with the family of Shakhna Vaisman, my mother’s younger brother. His family lived in Kadievka [1100 km south of Moscow]. He worked in the coal industry. He visited us in Moscow with his son Lyonia and daughter Sima and we visited them in Kadievka. Shakhna’s son Lyonia served in the army and once he came to see us in Moscow. Handsome and tall and his military uniform was so becoming. My mother’s younger sister Sophia with her numerous family and grandmother Leya lived in Uman. We met very rarely. There is nobody left in Uman. Sophia and her younger son Vladimir died. Sophia died in 1959 and Vladimir died in 1973. Their graves are in Uman. Sophia’s three daughters Anna, Luba and Larisa moved to Germany in 1990 and live in Portenschmiede.

I went to school in 1932. I went to a preparatory “zero” class. I finished this zero and 3 primary forms in this district school and then my mother sent me to the 4th form at the preparatory department of Central Music School at Moscow Conservatory. My initial audition went well and they admitted me to their piano class, but then it turned out that my hands were not technical enough. Later I understood that it had something to do with my vestibular apparatus. For example, I can dance waltz step turning to one side, but cannot change to another. My hands were not quick enough. Therefore, I didn’t do quite well at school. After the war I didn’t go back to this music school. They also got general education in this school. It was an amazing and unique school, a cradle of talented and gifted children. Leonid Kogan [Editor’s note: Leonid Kogan – (1924 – 1982) a virtuoso Jewish violinist and professor, graduate of Moscow Conservatory, laureate of several international contests and Lenin’s Award] was in my school. Later he became an outstanding musician of world class. There were many talented children, but only few came all the way up. It took colossal work, luck and skills to go up. They became schoolteachers or worked in orchestras. Many became ordinary musicians. The boy I shared my desk with became my friend. We went home together after school and went to the zoo. It was friendship of two children.

There were many Jews. Everywhere. It was some sort of a ‘Jewish Zoo’.  There were 18 children in my class, but only 12 attended classes regularly. Some were ill and others had other reasons. It was the end of the 1930s 15. This was the period of arrests of their fathers and there were children of ‘enemies of the people’ 16 in my class. Their fathers were in jail or had been executed, but they didn’t have a status of turncoats in the class. They studied like everybody else and we were all equal. I would like to say that this music school added a lot to my spiritual education, even though I didn’t feel quite comfortable there since I was sort of backward. I often went to the Bolshoy Theater 17 and to concerts at the conservatory, we were given free tickets. Besides, I studied with talented children and enjoyed talking to them. There were no conflicts in our class and children behaved themselves. They just didn’t have time for fooling around. In the morning we had music classes and studied theory and at 2 our general classes began. Therefore, there was a good atmosphere in class and we had nice teachers who were selected by special requirements.

I didn’t join Komsomol. Here is what happened. It’s not that I was some hero or something. I was sickly and at the time when my classmates joined Komsomol I was ill.  Nobody asked me about it or mentioned it afterward and I wasn’t quite eager to touch upon this subject. I was an active pioneer at my previous school. I was very interested in pioneer movement and believed it was something interesting. Once I went to a pioneer meeting. So I came there and listened. One speaks looking into his notes, then another one does the same – how dull.  So by the time I returned home I stopped being an active pioneer. Something broke up in me. I wasn’t interested in public movements since then.  My mother believed in communist slogans and tried to convert me to her views, but she failed. I was passive and somewhat deferred. Maybe it was because I was often ill. Besides, it was something not for me. She started a few times when I was an adult: ‘Why don’t you join the Party? Life would be easier for you. You have an antisocial position.’ But she understood that if somebody didn’t want something, then it didn’t make sense to force this person.  So it all went past me.

I didn’t face any anti-Semitism before the war and my mother didn’t either. There were many Jews at the university where my mother studied.

Then my school sent me to the best and biggest pioneer camp ‘Artek’ in the Crimea [1200 km south of Moscow] on the shore of the Black Sea.  I liked this camp very much. It was a model camp and lots of funds were allocated in it. There was good food and we had beautiful uniforms, there ere interesting children and at the end of our term we had a party around a big fire. There was a Kabardinian boy in the camp and he was a symbol of Artek. Kabardinians are backward mountainous people. Even now only few of them have education and it was symbolic that their boy came to this wonderful camp. We even sang song about him in Artek. During holidays he rode a horse and it was beautiful. We also arranged amateur concerts and sang songs. There was a piano in the camp. We sang pioneer and other songs. Some children sang, some danced and it was nice and joyful. I sat at the seashore gathering seashells. I brought home a suitcase full of seashells.

During the war

I had no idea that there was to be a war and was quite indifferent about a treaty between the USSR and Germany 18. Only my nanny Anna Dormidontovna spoke in agitated manner turning to Stalin’s portrait. I need to mention here that there was a portrait of Stalin in every family. ‘What are you doing, what are you doing? Why are you shipping them all our wheat and giving them our bread?’ (She meant fascists). The nanny stayed with us until the war and during the war she left us. I have no memories about the days when the war began. I remember that later, standing round a corner I thought: ‘What if I catch a spy?’ I was stupid and didn’t understand anything. And I thought: ‘What is it like when bombs begin falling all of a sudden I wonder.’ I didn’t know a thing about the war and what we were up to. I understood that something terrible happened, but I didn’t apply it to myself.  Nothing was going to happen to me and my life could not be terrible. 

We took hiding in the basement and bombshells to find shelter from bombs. There were many people hiding in metro. The University where my mother studied evacuated to Sverdlovsk, about 1400 km east of Moscow and my mother and I went there, too. We didn’t find any suitable accommodation in Sverdlovsk and my mother quit University and decided to go with me to the vicinity of Alapayevsk about 138 km north of Sverdlovsk, to Kostino village where my mother was teaching history.  My mother rented a corner in a village hut. Life was terrible there. There was only hunger. I didn’t go to school since there was only a 7-year school in the village and I was to study in the 9th form. I was hanging around there. There was a woman in evacuation in this village. She worked in a club before the war. She was a nice and tactful woman of about 60 years of age. She gathered young people into something like a drama club and we performed in surrounding villages. We didn’t get anything for it, but we were at least busy. People called us ‘artists’. There was no entertainment in villages. There was a radio near the library in the village and there was no electricity. Our performances were like holidays for them. People had a very hard life in the kolkhoz. They worked hard and worked a lot for almost nothing. Our landlady had 7 boys. Can you imagine what it took to provide food for them?  The oldest was 12. He didn’t go to school since he had to work in the kolkhoz. The only food we had were potatoes in jackets. And I remember an episode. My mother and I are eating when there appears a little face with begging eyes. This was one of our landlady’s sons. So what were we to do? We gave him a potato. Older children never begged, probably their mother told them not to, but younger ones always asked for food. It was hard to see this. Alapayevsk was a town near Sverdlovsk where members of the czar’s family were killed, including czarina’s sister Yelizaveta Fyodorovna, but in those years nobody knew about it, this was concealed. It was an industrial town. There were many steel casting and military plants in it. We stayed in Alapayevsk for a year, but I didn’t go to school. I was too weak from hunger. We rented a hallway in an overcrowded apartment. My mother taught history in a vocational school. I worked as a tutor in a kindergarten for about 8 months. In 1943 we returned home. As soon as victory was won in Stalingrad we could go to Moscow. There was nobody in our room, but it was looted and ravaged. They even stole our piano. Later my mother found this piano at our neighbors’ and they returned it. Moscow was military and there were newspaper strips on windows and bulbs were painted dark blue. We arrived and right away got under bombing. We also waited for news from the front every day. This was the most important thing for us. I remember my mother and I having 10 potatoes. They lasted 10 days: we had one half potato each per day. We boiled it and cut into halves and this made our meal. Nobody could help us. My mother’s relatives also had a hard life.  My grandmother Leya’s sister Maria Rudnik lived in Moscow. She had 7 children. They had a miserable life. We kept in touch with her at the time, but what could she do for us when she was starving, too?

My father’s brothers Israel and Volf perished at the front. My father’s cousin brother Aizenberg, unfortunately, I don’t remember his name, was a singer and had a very good voice. He perished in one of death camps. 

When we returned to Moscow, my mother defended her diploma and went to teach at school. My mother graduated from University brilliantly and was offered to start her postgraduate studies, but she had problems with her eyes. I told her: ‘Mother, you won’t be able to read this pile of books’. She could not write much. When she wrote me letters later it took me a while to guess what she wrote about. With her handwriting she couldn’t write articles or reports. She went to teach history in school # 12 [In the USSR schools had numbers and not names. It was part of the policy of the state. They were all state schools and were all supposed to be identical], where children of 3rd-rate chiefs studied. They were capricious and spoiled children. One came to the second class, another one came to the third, but they liked my mother’s classes. They gave her pictures on historical subjects, she managed to arouse their interest in history. She worked there until 1948 and then her eyes got worse and she retired. She was allowed to retire due to her poor sight. Then she went to lecture in the association of blind people. I went to work as a tutor in a kindergarten. I couldn’t continue my studies in my music school due to my hand defects. My hands turned out to lack technicality. I had finished the 9th form of district school #9 in Moscow. I didn’t like it in this school after my previous school at the Conservatory. It was like farce. Most teachers were in evacuation or at the front.  Our teachers had low qualifications and it was ridiculous how they conducted their lessons and I kept thinking about our wonderful teachers at the Central Music School. My mother knew my opinions and agreed that I should become a tutor in a kindergarten. I worked there 4 years. It was hard work, but I managed and children were good to me.  I couldn’t work as a music teacher at school due to my hands. There were 37 children in my group. It was a big group and besides, children of the war, they were problem children. Many didn’t have fathers, they had dramatic living conditions and they were all hungry. They were nervous and excitable children. In general, they made a hard company. While working in the kindergarten I finished a pedagogical school with honors and entered a Pedagogical College without taking entrance exams. I was only allowed to not take entrance exams at the Preschool Department. I wanted to go to the Philological Faculty, but I just wasn’t strong enough to take exams there. I finished my college with honors. I worked a mandatory term 19 in the kindergarten and then couldn’t find a job for a long time until I managed to become a preschool education teacher at the Pedagogical School. I began writing poems. At first I didn’t think much of it, but then I caught myself sitting at an exam at school putting down my lines instead of listening to a student. This shouldn’t be! I met young poets and we became friends and they told me that I had to quit school immediately. ‘Or, you will always remain a teacher and will never become a poet’. I left school, though we didn’t have anything at home.  I found a job in a publishing house with low payment. I was to write responses to beginners of poets. In 1958 my first book was published and I received a small fee for it. So I lived. My mother didn’t talk me out of it. She understood this was my cup of tea. I enjoyed writing poems tremendously, though it wasn’t easy, hard to find a word I needed, on the whole, it was hard work. Soon young poets began to get invitations to recite poems at schools and in libraries. I communicated with young poets in the poet section in the house of literature workers or in a café there. I wasn’t a member of the Union of writers, but they allowed me to the house of literature workers. We recited our poems to one another there.  I didn’t finish Literature College. There was a literature association ‘Magistral’ [‘highway’ in Russian] where I attended classes and took my entrance into literature. Igor Levin, a wonderful pedagog, conducted classes. We recited our poems and criticized each other. It was a good school. Levin invited best poets of the time to our sittings and they shared their views with us, recited their poems and listened to ours. I learned a lot at those classes. In 1961 I entered the Union of Writers. It was difficult to become a member of this Union at the time. I only had one book issued and I needed recommendations. S. Marshak 20 gave me one.  Somehow they admitted me, though my poems left much to be desired and unusual and people felt stunned. Then I began to have my books published.  I had 6 books for adults and 15 children’s books. I also translated 10 children’s books. My publishing house gave me books for translation. I met famous poets to be in ‘Magistral’ like Bulat Okudjava [a famous Russian bard (1924-1997)]. We were closely acquainted for a lifetime. It was hard to have books published, not only for me, but for all. Some people were against my books. There were spokes in my wheels and there were other things, but I had a wonderful editor: Victor Faigelson. He worked in the poetry section of ‘Soviet writer’ publishing house. He came to work there upon graduation from University. He adored poetry and poets and frankly speaking, he supported me. How? For example, it was very important to have not a piece read by a person who might have wanted to drown me. I had no idea who was going to read my poems, but he found ways to have a nicer person read my poems.  Reading and issuance of statement took a long time and then I was nervous about what they wrote about my poems since if proofreader wrote a few negative sentences that meant that a book was canceled.  Then one had to worry about having his book included in planning of publications. Even if they did include it, they might revise their plans. These were all nerves. Then there might be small edition, since my book might have been in little demand. If it hadn’t been for this editor I wouldn’t probably have had one book issued. My latest book is ‘Gorgeous Town’. It wasn’t published for a long time and I received an official note that the editorial portfolio was full and they were not going to publish my book. I was going to take it from there, when Faigelson all of a sudden read this paper and then said to me: ‘You go home and take a rest and don’t show up here’. I left and then my book was published some time later. So this was the way Victor Faigelson was. He supported all talented people.

After the war

After the war I faced anti-Semitism in everyday life. In 1948 mass persecution of Jews began. Being a Jew I was very concerned about it. Murder of Mikhoels 21, cosmopolitism 22 and ‘doctors’ plot’ 23. I happened to meet a boy, medical Professor Yegorov. His father was arrested during the period of ‘doctors’ plot’. He and his family were very worried. Many acquaintances turned away from his family then. One acquaintance of mine hanged himself at that period. His uncle was arrested under this case and he was hunted down. There was anti-Semitism among members of the house of literature workers. Not always evident and open, but there it was. One renowned poet was a militant anti-Semite and didn’t conceal it. Everybody knew him and avoided him. Routinely anti-Semitism was at its height and our co-tenants in our communal apartment tormented us. We used to have no conflicts before when all of a sudden our neighbors began to shout into a telephone receiver: ‘There are Jews living here’.  Of course, this was badgering against us. Other co-tenants didn’t interfere and kept silent, and my mother and I were distressed. Our neighbor used to polish his boots by our door grumbling: ‘Jews, Jews’. My mother and I lived in this communal apartment until 1960 and then the union of Writers gave me a one-bedroom apartment in the center of Moscow. 10 years later, in 1976, I received this apartment. The Union of Writers gave me this apartment since it’s impossible to write poems when there is another person in the room.

When in 1953 Stalin died, I was very upset. I thought it was going to be worse without him. I believed in his wisdom. I understood so little. One acquaintance said: ‘Better, Emilia. It’s going to be better’. I didn’t believe him, but later everything fell in its place. I remember Stalin’s funeral. I almost died in the crowd. I didn’t go there by myself, our college obliged us to go. There were no excuses accepted. My mother didn’t know. I wasn’t at home a whole night.  What could she think? And we could hardly get out of the crowd. We were on the edge of death. Denouncements of the 20th Congress 24 were a shock for me. My mother was happy that the truth found its way. My mother had different outlooks since she was a historian, but she didn’t share her opinions with me. 

When I began writing poems and then became a member of the Union of Writers my life changed. I got very interesting friends who were poets. Later they became renowned poets in the country. I can name Victor Bokov, Bulat Okudjava and others. They visited us on New Year, my birthday or my mother’s and we often celebrated on of my friend’s birthday at our place. We had joyful and noisy parties. I spent vacations in houses of creativity of the Union of Writers, mainly in the vicinity of Moscow and made new friends there.  My mother lectured in the association of blind people. She had friends there and they also visited us. Since I was plunged into my creative work my mother cared about our simple life at home. 

It happened so that I never got a family of my own. My mother was my only close person. My mother was ill for a long time before she died. She was bedridden for 10 months. I attended to her and my friends were helping me. I wasn’t alone. I wouldn’t have managed it alone. My mother died in 1993. I buried her in the Khovanskoye town cemetery in Moscow. There was no Jewish sector in this cemetery. I had a very hard period before my mother died: both in my creative work and because of my mother’s illness. My life was always hard, but it was particularly miserable during that period. My mother’s hopeless disease and I had no support. Besides, I had no luck. I wrote little and didn’t have anything published at all. I didn’t know where to apply myself and what to do with myself. We had very little money to live on. I received rare and low royalties and a health pension, or I would rather say, poor health pension. I needed money for my mother’s medical treatment. And then I met archpriest Aleksandr Men’ [Editor’s note: Aleksandr Men’ (1935-1990) Fr Alexander Men’ served as a priest in the Russian Orthodox church for thirty years. His legacy includes an Orthodox University, a Charity Group at the Russian Children's Hospital, and a Youth Missionary School. Fr Alexander is sometimes referred to as the architect of Christian renewal in Russia. He was a prolific writer, whose books cover all areas of religious thought, capped by a multi-volume study of world religions. On September 9, 1990 he was murdered. Fr Alexander's murder was never solved] and adopted Christianity. He was such a bright and light person that I followed him.

My parents gave up Judaism and didn’t give me religious education, and I had a craving for religion.   Perhaps, I took after my great grandfather Vigdor in this respect. There was a hollowness in my heart. I was a very credulous simpleton in my childhood and youth.  They told me at school that religion was a tale of uneducated old women. Teachers said this at school and chucked all religion out of my soul. I wasn’t religious at school and at 30 I became an atheist. However, I wasn’t an active atheist, I was passive. I couldn’t resist general moods. 

I heard about father Alexandr Men’ for the first time from my close friend Tamara Zhirmunskaya, a Jew and a poetess. She had stresses at home and was distressed about the situation. Alexandr Men’ whose spiritual daughter she had been for 10 years actually put together splinters of her soul. He busied himself with her like he would have with pieces of a broken cup and brought her to her feet. After I heard her story I realized that I had to see him. This was in 1988.

One Sunday my friend and I went to his church out of town. At the beginning everything was a surprise for me. It was a small wooden church. There was a crowd of people, there was no room to move.  Almost all of them came from Moscow. They were mainly intellectuals. Students, college lecturers. Many Jews. It was a fancy service and I felt like part of a stunning performance. His every move, each word, the sound of his voice, his oration imbued all. He was shining. There were strong fluids of light and kindness coming to people from him. I met a person who was convinced that Christ existed and I believed him.

Afterward I attended his lecture ‘Spiritual perestroika’ in the house of literature workers. I was shy and I went behind the curtains and said: ‘I do need to talk to you’ and he gave me his address. It was easy to address him. There were always people around him. He was very democratic. He didn’t even have arrogance inside. Although he knew his value he valued others. The following Sunday I went to the address he gave me and there was another service. There was confession. I waited till he talked with all others. They actually tortured him with their questions. He didn’t refuse one person. He listened to people and helped them to resolve their everyday issues. I waited till he finished talking with them and in 10 minutes I told him about my sorrow and problems. He replied: ‘I understand, I understand’. He was sitting in a small old arm-chair when he jumped to me like a tiger, recited a prayer and laid his hands on me. It felt so good.  They said he had healing hands and I can confirm it.  He said I had to cross myself very quickly and attend confession at least every three weeks. Then I had a feeling of faith. I began to write spiritual poems. I was different. Yes, a miracle happened to me. My life changed. I had lived with a quarter of my heart before, but then it became free and I started breathing.  And all of sudden poems came like from space, generously.  I wrote a book of poems. I started attending a temple and I made friends and they are still my friends. I stopped being alone. At first I was afraid of the thought that I was a Jew and Orthodoxy was religion of Russians and I didn’t go to church for a long time. I didn’t know that Alexandr Men’ was a Jew. And only after I got to know that he was a Jew I felt at ease and began to cross myself. Alexandr Men’ fully acknowledged his belonging to Jewish people and even believed it to be an undeserved Gift of the Lord. He highly valued his being a Jew and was proud of it. ‘Kinship with prophets, apostles, Virgin Mary and Christ is a great honor and great responsibility as a member of the Lord’s people,’ he said. In his opinion, a Christian Jew was still a Jew.  He didn’t baptize me. I was baptized after my mother died. During two years of her illness I couldn’t leave her and after she died Father Alexandr was not among the living any longer. In September 1990 he was murdered with one hit of an axe on his head on the way to church. I couldn’t understand how one could  raise his hand on a priest. This was horrible and it was a loss for me. 13 years passed, but they haven’t discovered the truth about this crime. Who plotted and committed it and will this murder ever be disclosed?  Father Alexandr belonged to the group clergy whose spreading influence was viewed by communists and their police as a threat to their power. For KGB and anti-Semites Alexandr Men’ was a suspicious figure. I think that they or the latter or together they murdered Alexandr Men’ to make him silent. Perhaps, the axe, this weapon of murder, was a symbol. They shook their axes fighting against Jews during pogroms.  Father Alexandr was concerned about increasing xenophobia in Russia. He saw a grain of Russian fascism in it. KGB authorities manipulated these fascists.

I stayed in hospitals 9 times in my life. Every time it was terrible. Last time in May 2002 I broke neck of femur on my left leg. I had limped slightly on my leg and had severe trombophlebitis. I sat on my bed 17 without moving, and even slept sitting. I thought it was trombophlebitis, but it was a fracture with displacement. I didn’t even fall I just sat on a bench somehow incautiously and then I fell from my bed and it led to displacement. I was alone, but members of our community helped me. Other patients in my ward were jealous about me. Their relatives didn’t visit them as often as my friends. I had a surgery. It was free of charge, but as it is customary in this or other hospitals I gave my doctor 100$ [Editor’s note: it is not uncommon to give small gifts or money, usually dollars, to doctors in Russia unofficially, in return for good treatment. Doctors usually expect such expressions of gratitude. This practice has always been especially widespread in bigger cities]. He was a nice doctor. I didn’t think that such skilled doctor would do this surgery on me, but he was on duty when I came to hospital and he started talking to me. I had health problems, and my heart was poor and I had diabetes and lots of other things. He said: ‘And what shall we do with you?’ I said ’Surgery’ ‘What if you remain on the table?’ I said: ‘It’s also a way out’. So he did this surgery on me. It was well done. They inserted an artificial joint. Staying in our hospitals is a great ordeal. I don’t like recalling this hospital. For example, if you need a night pot or want a wash you have to pay each time. I had 150 rubles [$6 at the time] in my drawer, an attendant saw money and took it looking as if she was doing me a great favor.  But there was nothing else to do. I was helpless and couldn’t rise from my bed. Those attendants were like gangsters and doctors were good specialists. They watched my health condition and my heart constantly. There were 8 patients in my ward and all were bedridden and helpless. One might even have died there at night if the door had been closed and nobody would have noticed. At night there was one attendant for 70 patients in the hospital. What could she do? Besides, her salary was very low and there were not many willing to take this job. It’s hard and low paid work. Now I can walk in my apartment, go downstairs to pick my mail, but my walking radius is limited.

I had big hopes for perestroika 25. It was like some fresh wind blowing. I do not watch TV now, but when I watched it, Duma meetings and speeches of various politicians I had hopes for something better. As for Gorbachev 26, I do not blame him. He raised the ‘iron curtain’ 27. This stupid Cold War that swallowed all our money and brought our state to ruin. It became easier to breathe and I got to know more.  It was always hard to be published. For different reasons. In the past it was a state monopoly and only literature officials, absolutely ignorant and uneducated, could decide to publish or forbid a book, whether it complied with moral and ethical standards of a Soviet citizen or not, there was censure and ideological commission and a book also needed to be included in publication plan.  Now one can publish anything, but it is a matter of money, which I don’t have. My savings were gone during default in 1990. Besides, I am old and cannot go around and ‘legs feed a wolf’, they say. There were many democratic slogans during perestroika and they seemed to have a meaning. I was glad about it and had hopes. But unfortunately, these events happened at my old age and illnesses when I couldn’t be an active member of society any longer. I don’t care that some people became rich and I am almost a beggar. I won’t get rich regardless of regime. I don’t need it. I have moderate demands and don’t need extra riches, they are a burden and do not contribute to creativity.

So who am I? A Jewish woman in blood turned to Christianity. Of course, I am a Jew. Jews were my ancestors. I am interested in their life, history and traditions. I think I am genetically linked to Jewry.  I don’t know why, but I am touched by Jewish folk songs and dances. If I had healthy legs, probably hearing Jewish music I would start dancing. I like Ukrainian and Russian songs, but listening to them, I do not have this anxious feeling that overwhelms me when listening to Jewish songs.  I didn’t get any religious education and was raised in a family of atheists, but I cannot say that my linking with Jewish people is merely ethnic or determined by a stamp in my passport. This is not the only reason why I feel my connection to Jewish people. If in the past religion in Russia was determined by nationality, now it’s not so. Not all Russian become Christian and the word Jew is not a synonym of a follower of Judaism. Though I adopted Orthodoxy, I’ve identified myself as a Jew.  I don’t attend a Jewish community since I haven’t left my home since I fractured my leg. When I asked the Hand of Help for help a curator visited me and when she saw icons on the walls she was struck dumb and didn’t know what to do at first, but then she decided to include me in the patronage list after talking to her management.

Gossary:

Sarra Shylman
Ukraine
Kiev
Interviewer — Inna Zlotnik
Date of interview: September 2003

Sarra Shylman lives in a two-bedroom apartment with all comforts in a 9-storied building in Kharkovskoye shosse in a new district of Kiev in some distance from the center of the city. The Shylman family received this apartment in 1963, after their house in the center of the city where they had lived for about 40 years was pulled down. Sarra is a short slim woman with attentive gray eyes and gray hair cut short. She has a fancy blouse on. She made it herself. She’s always made her own clothes. There is asset of furniture of 1960s in her room. There are many books by Russian and foreign classics, but there are also books by modern Jewish authors. 3 years ago her husband Yefim Shyfris died. They lived together for almost 50 years and now books and family albums help her to cope with her loneliness. Sarra has a hearing problem and she's had a stroke recently, but she is energetic and reads a lot. She is interested in Jewish life. She enjoys telling me the past and present history of her family, even though it hurts: many of her dear ones are gone.
It happened so that she has no relatives left with her. Now she can only look at their photographs in her album. She has acquaintances in Kiev. They often call her. Sarra Davidovna lives on her pension and Hesed provides food packages to her. Before her husband passed away they often celebrated Jewish holidays at Hesed, but she does not go there any longer. She is too weak for that. She celebrates Jewish holidays at home now. She always lights candles on Friday like her mother did on those far away days.

I want to tell you about my dearest ones: the Shylman family. My paternal grandfather Itzyk Shylman was born in Belopolie town Berdichev district in 200 km from Kiev in 1840s. He was a teacher at cheder and his surname Shylman means ‘school man’ in Yiddish. The majority of population in Belopolie was Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish. Jews sold agricultural products and were shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, blacksmiths and leather specialists.

My grandmother Rosa Shylman was also born in Belopolie in 1840s. She was a housewife as customary in Jewish families. My grandparents had 9 children: eight sons and one daughter. I don’t know the names of my father’s older brothers. There was a great difference in age between them. My father’s sister Leika was about five years older than my father. She was looking after him and they were very close during their lifetime. My father Duvid Shylman was born in 1888 and was the youngest in the family. They were a poor family and they didn’t have baby food for the baby. They wrapped bead in a cloth and gave it to the baby as a baby soother. My father told me that their family was very religious: there was Torah in the house, his father prayed and his mother lit candles on Friday. The family sat down to the table and although there was plain food they always celebrated Sabbath according to the rules. My father recalled how he and his brothers and their parents dressed up to go to the synagogue on Saturday. Grandmother Rosa made clothes for older boys and the younger sons wore their older brothers’ clothes after they grew out of it. Though the family had little to live on they always celebrated Pesach, Purim, Chanukkah and other religious holidays according to traditions. Rosa was a good housewife: she had a big vegetable garden and kept chickens. Her children always had clothes to wear and food to eat. Grandfather Itzyk died of some disease in early 1900s. My father hadn’t finished cheder by then. My grandmother Rosa had some education. She could count well and after my grandfather died she went to work as an exchange agent at the market. When somebody needed to count money or get smaller change my grandmother was always at hand. She did these operations for a small fee. She was well respected in her town. My father told me that she was cheerful and energetic and always wore a kerchief, as was a custom with Jewish women.

All boys finished cheder in Belopolie, but they didn’t continue their education. Older brothers moved to America in the early 20th century. My father didn’t correspond with them since our country people couldn’t acknowledge having relatives abroad [1]. They were never mentioned in our family and I don’t even know their names. Aunt Leika corresponded with them, but she perished during Holocaust and took with her everything she knew about them.

In early 1900s Leika married Gershl Vagner, a Jewish man, that she met through matchmakers. They lived in Maly Ostrozhok village Vinnitsa district, in 220 km from Kiev. I often visited them in my childhood and I remember their pise-walled hut with thatched roof. There was one big room in the hut where Leika, Gersh and their five children: four boys and one girl. Aunt Leika’s daughter was five years older than I. She was born about 1925, but I didn’t know her. She died in infancy. The older son’s name was Srul, but all acquaintances called him with the Russian name of Sergei [common name] [2]. When Leika’s son died in 1920s Srul went to work in a kolkhoz to support the family. His younger brothers Meyer and David finished a school in Maly Ostrozhok. Thanks to Srul’s support they could continue their education. Mayer finished a Pedagogical College in Berdichev. There was lack of specialists and he was appointed director of school in a village. David finished a Pedagogical College in Berdichev before the war and was appointed director of school in Lurintsi village of Vinnitsa region.

Once Srul was transporting grain and one bag fell from the wagon and was lost and Srul was accused of theft. He was sentenced to exile in Nagaevo bay in the Far East, in 7000 km from home. This happened in 1937– 38 [Great Terror] [3], when many innocent people suffered. During the Great Patriotic War [4] he was in imprisonment in the Far East. When in 1945 the Japanese War [5] began he was sent to the front with a penal company and perished.

His brothers Meyer and David got married before the war. Meyer married a Jewish woman and David married a Ukrainian woman. Their sons had the same name of Grigori after grandfather Gershl: these names sound alike. David and Meyer were in occupation and in 1941 they came to their mother Leika in Maly Ostrozhok. Their neighbors gave them away to Germans and before aunt Leika’s eyes her grandchildren (sons of Meyer and Srul) and then David and Meyer were killed. It happened near her house.

Leika’s younger son Sergei [Srul] was born in 1919. Before the Great Patriotic War he studied in the military infantry school in Dniprodzerzhynsk, and when the war began he went to the front in the rank of lieutenant. In 1942 was severely wounded and taken to hospital. After he was released he returned to the front. In 1948 he was sent to the Far East. He was promoted to the rank of colonel, retired and moved to Leningrad to his cousin brother Leonid Medved. Sergei worked at a big plant and held a big position. I don’t remember anything about his family. All I remember is that Sergei died in Leningrad in 1979 on the 61st year of his life.

Perhaps, David’s son Grigori Vagner, born around 1937–39, survived. I hope that his Ukrainian mother manager to rescue him during the Holocaust. I once read in the ‘Yevreiskie Vesti’ [‘Jewish News’, issued by the Jewish council of Ukraine, established in 1992] a story by Grigori Vagner borrowed from an Israeli newspaper. Perhaps, Grigori Davidovich Vagner, my nephew, lives in Israel? I hope he will read this interview and find me, if it is him.

My mother Ghitlia Shylman was also born in Belopolie in 1893. My mother’s father Moisha-Alter Yablochnik was also born in Belopolie in 1860s. He rented apple orchards. He was a good specialist in apple trees. He could determine, which orchard would give good harvest. He rented such orchards and then sold apples. The surname of Yablochnik derived from the word ‘yablonia’ [apple tree]. I cannot say for sure, but I think that my grandfather’s ancestors may have received this surname in connection with their profession. Alter is ‘old’ in Yiddish. He had this name because he got married at an old age.

My maternal grandmother Surah-Leya Yablochnik, was born in Belopolie in early 1870s. My grandparents had five children. Their older son (I can’t remember what his name was) died in an accident in his infancy. A horse-driven cart riding fast down a hill rode over him. My mother Ghitlia Yablochnik was born in 1893. There were 3 sisters born after my mother: Basia was 2 years younger than my mother, Sonia, born in 1898, and Fania, the youngest, born in 1900. My grandmother Surah-Leya kept the house and was a vendor and my mother looked after the children. My mother was very crafted: she liked knitting and embroidery. All girls helped grandmother Surah-Leya in the garden and orchard. My mother told me that they spoke Yiddish in the family. My grandmother and grandfather were very religious: they followed kashrut, celebrated Pesach, Purim, Canukkah and fasted at Yom Kippur.

I remember my grandfather well. He was tall, handsome and kind. He always wore a black yarmulka. My grandmother Surah-Leya died in 1910s and my grandfather married a Jewish woman from Belopolie. Basia got married and moved to Berdichev with her husband and Sonia stayed in Belopolie after she got married. My mother and her sister Fania stayed in their parents’ home. Shortly after the revolution of 1917 [6] my grandfather and my mother’s stepmother moved to Kiev. They lived in Stalinka district. It almost in the center of the city now, while at that time It was its outskirts. I visited them several times, but I don’t remember anything about their house. My grandfather took me onto his lap and was eager to teach me Hebrew. I was a naughty girl. I didn’t stay with him long. So, never learned Hebrew and I am sorry about it. My grandfather and his wife had a daughter. Her name was Busha, but I’ve forgotten the stepmother’s name. My grandfather was very religious. He went to the synagogue in Podol [7] every day. There used to be a synagogue near their house in Stalinka, but in 1920s during the struggle of Soviet authorities against religion [8] it was closed. My grandfather collected clothes and money for needy Jews.

My father didn’t get any education. He was a laborer in Belopolie and then constructed roads in Berdichev. Shortly before the revolution of 1917 he met my mother and in 1918 my parents got married. My mother told me they had a chuppah and there were klezmer musicians playing at their wedding. Shortly after their wedding my parents moved to Kiev from Belopolie. They rented an apartment in Podol. My father was a worker. Replaced pavements. My mother was a housewife. My mother’s sister Fania got married few years after the revolution and also moved to Kiev with her husband.

In summer 1919 my older brother Boris Shylman was born. I was was born on 13 March 1921 and my sister Golda Shylman was born on 23 January 1923. We spoke Yiddish at home. My mother knitted stockings on a stocking machine that had probably 1000 needles. She sold stockings at the market.

Later my father went to work as a clerk at a plant. I don’t know how he managed to get this job, but I think that maybe his proletarian roots and that he could write and read played a decisive role. The plant constructed an apartment house for its employees and my father received a three-bedroom apartment in the center of Kiev not far from the plant. There was a soap factory near our house. We lived in a two-storied house: there was a ground floor and we lived on the first floor. Our apartment had 30 square meters. There were no comforts. My sister and I had a very small room. We slept in a small metal bed. We were growing up and once I said ‘Mother! I shall suffocate because of her and my parents hurried to buy a folding bed and Golda began to sleep on this bed. My brother also had a small room, but I don’t remember what there was in this room. Our parents slept on a big metal bed in the biggest room. There was a table covered with a big tablecloth with fringe in the middle of the room and four chairs round the table. I remember how we sat at this table on Jewish holidays. My father was very religious then. At Pesach my mother took fancy crockery from an entresol. She covered the table with a white tablecloth and put delicious food on it. My father sat at the head of the table and we had seder. I loved Purim. It coincided with my birthday on 13 March. I remember my father turning a chicken over the head at Yom Kippur. This is all I remember. I was too young and cannot remember any details. I don’t know what influenced my father, perhaps, this happened due to general historical tendencies when many young people, particularly workers at plants and factories, got overwhelmed with revolutionary ideas. In 1925 he became a communist and we stopped celebrating Jewish holidays at home. We began to celebrate Soviet holidays: 1 May, October revolution Day [9].

There was a number of houses in our yard. I was small when we moved into this house. When I came into the yard for the first time children asked me my name and I replied ‘Syulia’. I couldn’t pronounce almost half of the ABC. My former neighbors still call me Syulia. There were many Russian children in our yard. My sister Golda understood that Golda was a Jewish name and she stated once ‘I want to be Olia’. She told everybody in the yard that she was Olia. All acquaintances and neighbors began to call her Olia and then we began to call her Olia as well. When at the age of 16 she was receiving her passport she had her new Russian name indicated in her passport. She already got used to be called Olia and had forgotten her Jewish name. My sister made a vegetable garden in our yard and worked there. There was a market across the street from our yard. My mother went there to buy food products. I remember plentiful counters with colorful fruit and vegetables.

I went to a kindergarten as a child. It was difficult to get into a kindergarten in those years. Since I had bronchial asthma and needed special food they sent me to a kindergarten as an ill child. My sister and brother got no opportunity to get permission to go to the kindergarten. It was a Jewish kindergarten. I was too small and my brother and sister and other children from our yard took me to the kindergarten. We spoke Yiddish, sang Jewish songs, and recited Jewish poems in this kindergarten. I particularly liked verses by Lev Kvitko [10]. There was a bookstand not far from our house and my father bought me children’s books. I remember how they smelled, but I’ve forgotten in what language they were. We didn’t have books by Jewish authors at home, but I remember a collection of poems by Shevchenko [11].

After the kindergarten I went to a Jewish lower secondary school. It was a policy then that children were to study in their national schools. Admission to my school required that I passed an interview. I knew Yiddish and my admission was positively resolved. When it was time for Olia to go to school she went to the interview in the Jewish school and said there in Yiddish ‘I don’t speak Yiddish’. She had Russian friends in the yard and didn’t want to go to the Jewish school, but they admitted her anyway. My brother Boris studied in a Ukrainian school. That order about national schools was issued after he went to school. He finished his school in 1936 and entered Kiev Polytechnic College.

I remember the subjects that we learned at school: Yiddish, Russian, Russian literature, mathematics, geography and history. I don’t think we studied Ukrainian. We read books by Jewish authors in Yiddish: Sholem Alechem [12] and others. I can still read in Yiddish. We had a library at school. I remember I liked Gaidar novels [13]. I read his ‘School’ in Yiddish and then in Russian. At the end of each academic year we passed exams. When we became pioneers we often had meetings and I was a secretary at meetings.

I had bronchial asthma since childhood and doctors advised me to spend more time in a village breathing in field and river bank air. When I turned 10 I spent my summer vacations in the village with my aunt Leika. She had a cow and I had delicious fresh milk. I remember that during famine in 1933 [14] my parents sent bread to aunt Leika from Kiev. She worked in a kolkhoz, but they starved anyway. Her brothers sent Leika white flour from America. Aunt Leika loved me a lot: she made me flat cookies from this flour and I had cookies with milk. She tried to save me from hunger, but they starved. By that tie Leika’s sons lived separately. I spent summers with my aunt Leika 5 years in a row and when I turned 15 I actually recovered. I believe people in Kiev also starved. When I returned to Kiev I remember long lines for bread. There was a store near our house and I remember how my mother and I stood in lines there.

After we finished this lower secondary school our teachers advised our parents to allow us to continue our education in the Jewish high school, but I didn’t want to go there. I was 15 years old. I took my documents and submitted them to Russian school #15 in Pushkinskaya Street. I was fluent in Russian and it wasn’t a problem for me to study in a Russian school. I was successful at school and got along well with my classmates and teachers.

I was a favorite daughter. I was interested in everything and I studied well. In 1939 after finishing school I entered Kiev technological College of Silicates. Before the Great Patriotic War our situation improved and my parents bought me a desk, a wardrobe and a sewing machine. My college was an affiliate of the Polytechnic College. I entered there without any problems. Jewish origin was no obstacle at admission. I liked mathematics and had a good knowledge of it. I got along well with our teachers and students regardless of my name Sarra [Jewish names were targets of mockery, vulgar jokes and often exclusion at the time.]. I had excellent marks in my college: I had an excellent knowledge of chemistry, physics and mathematic. I wasn’t a Komsomol member [15], but I was an activist and I lectured to students. I remember I prepared a lecture ‘Physical occurrences from the point of view of electronic theory’ to our students.

My sister decided that since I studied in college it became a must for her to enter college too. Se entered an evening department of the Polytechnic College. I received a stipend and Olia wanted to be as good and I and went to work. There was a military special school and she went to work as a lab assistant in this school.

In 1939 Hitler started a war in Europe. Before the war we heard rumors about the virulent anti-Semitism in Germany. But radio broadcasts were convincing us that Germans would not dare to attack the USSR. My father also said that there would be no war.

22nd June 1941 was Sunday and I was preparing to an exam. We had a radio at home when all of a sudden we heard Molotov’s speech [16]: the war began. I was to take an exam in chemistry on Monday. When we came to college on Monday all students were sent to dig trenches. I came home and said to mother ‘I am going to do trenches’. She cried so bitterly, because I was so sickly: I had running nose all the time and my legs swelled. ‘At least put on your galoshes!’ she fell on her knees begging me to stay, but I was a Soviet person: they told us to go and we went. In college we boarded trucks and drove in the direction of Vasilkov. We were accommodated in cowsheds. We were provided with food: there were boxes with bread and butter and sausage. We were digging trenches: it was raining, there was mud, it was cold, my legs swelled. We were there about a month. It was the end of July. Germans were advancing and we, students, had to walk back to Kiev. I came home – there was nobody in. The door was open, everything was a mess. I cried so… My neighbor Bella Pristup told me that my brother went to the front with the Polytechnic College. My parents didn’t want to leave without me, but my sister had a friend named Buma Bentsionov. He was a driver of chief of a military registry office and my sister convinced my parents: ‘Don’t worry, when Sarra returns from trenches Buma will help her’. My sister left me a letter: ‘You are no longer a small girl. Our parents have left. When you return to Kiev Buma will arrange it all’. Olia was more independent than I. Though she was younger. Buma helped our parents to leave Kiev in a special vehicle. The special school where my sister worked was modified into a hospital at the beginning of the war and my sister was employed as a storekeeper in it. While I was digging trenches Olia was sent to the front with her hospital.

I was alone in an empty apartment. There was a telephone in an office in the adjoining house. I went there to call Buma Bencionov. He came immediately and said ‘You can stay with me or I will help you to evacuate from Kiev’. ‘I shall go’. Buma helped me to join a march of military going to the front as medical nurse. I and another medical nurse were put on a wagon and the rest of them walked from the military office. We walked as far as a bridge in Darnitsa [opposite side of Dnieper River], when Germans began to bomb the bridge. All military scattered around. This other girl and I decided to cross the bridge. We walked and walked when I saw another march of military and decided to join them. There was a call to defend our Motherland. It meant to me that we had to go to the front. My sister served in a hospital and I intended to go to the front, too. I joined a military march. We walked at night and slept during the day. I remember that I walked asleep. We reached a village once and were waiting there for an assignment to the front. I met few guys from my college. I said I was a medical nurse hoping to go to the front with them. I received a uniform and a medical kit. There was a doctor who taught me to apply bandages. Young men were not used to wearing boots and had their feet rubbed sore. They used to say waiting for their assignment to the front ‘Sarra, don’t worry, we are not scared, we are communications operators’. None of them returned from the front. Once we were sitting and talking when I saw deputy director of our college walking by. He noticed me ‘What are you doing here?’ I replied ‘Komsomol has sent me’ to prevent him from asking any further questions. My companions joined me and told him that I was alone and wanted to go to the front. He looked at me ‘Just stand up, change into your civilian clothes and come with me!’ I changed and went with him. He gave me 500 rubles ‘Here, take this! I will put you on a train and you will go find your parents. The front is no place for you!’ He treated me in such father’s manner, and I had suffered so much that this time I burst into tears. He said ‘Sarra, don’t cry! I and other men like me go to the front for you, girls, to stop crying’. He put me on a train. This train took me to Poltava, [about 300 km east of Kiev]. It was destiny. God was always with me. I came to Poltava and kept asking people ‘Do you know where hospital 14-04 is?’ I was looking for my sister. Somebody called a militiaman and said pointing at me ‘A spy’. I was 20, but due to malnutrition I looked 15. They interrogated me in a militia office, but then their chief saw who I was and said ‘Go look for your sister’. I walked out, bought a bagel and kept walking chewing the bagel when I saw a guy I knew. His name was Yasha. He dated a neighbor girl who was my sister’s friend. He was young, but he had very poor sight. I didn’t look myself from hunger. He looked at me, but he didn’t recognize me without his glasses. ‘Syulia, what are you doing here? Your sister is in hospital in Kremenchug’. I went to the railway station immediately and took a train to Kremenchug. This God, God was helping me all the time. On this train I met a women who was going to the hospital in Kremenchug to see her wounded husband. Our train was bombed and we had to wait until they fixed the track after it was ruined with bombs. At last we arrived in Kremenchug [250 km from Kiev]. All of a sudden it began to pour. There were tables with parasols at the railway station. This woman and I stood by a table and waited until morning there. In the morning I went looking for the hospital and a guy told me the way. When I came to the hospital I asked someone to call my sister. She was also looking for me all this time and told everybody that her beauty of a sister had perished. You can imagine how we met! Manager of this hospital doctor Shechtel employed me as a hospital attendant.

German troops were on one side of the Dnieper and we were on another. We were at the front – we were a front team. We picked the wounded from battlefields and provided first aid to them. 2 or 3 months later we were ordered to move to the rear and wait for another assignment to the front.

We didn’t know that our parents were with my father’s relative in Dedkovo village near Voronezh at this time. Our parents missed us a lot: Boris was at the front, Olia was at a hospital at the front and they had no information about my whereabouts. My father was very energetic: he bought postcards and was mailing them all over the Soviet Union. When we were still in Kremenchug doctor Shechtel received one card. He gave it to us and we sent a telegram to our parents informing them that we were moving to Kursk region to wait there for a new assignment to the front. We arrived at Solntsevo village, Kursk region [Russia, 100 km from Kiev] and my mother and father also came to the commandant of the village knowing of our whereabouts. They bumped into manager of our hospital Shechtel. He said ‘Your daughters work with me!’ and my father came to Solntsevo with him. It was a moving meeting. My father asked Shechtel ‘What do I do now?’ and the doctor said ‘Take one daughter with you and let another stay in the hospital. It is a war and who knows who will perish at the front and who – in evacuation?’ but my father said ‘No, they both will go come with me’.

We went to Voronezh [over 1200 km from Kiev], and from there we moved to Central Asia. We went on a freight train. Our trip lasted for over a month until we arrived in Namangan [Uzbekistan, 3300 km from Kiev]. We rented a pise-walled hut on the outskirts of the town from an Uzbek man. Te owner of the hut had a vegetable garden and he allowed us to pick tomatoes from there. We were happy. Some time later my father went to work as chief of the town utilities and received a one-bedroom apartment near the railway station. My father, my mother, my sister and I lived in this apartment. My sister and I were looking for a job to receive bread coupons. I went to work at the bureau of current changes in a college. I had finished my first year of studies and knew about drawings. I inspected yards for new facilities and if I found any I marked them on a drawing and made a general layout of the section. Then I was fired due to reduction of staff and went to work in an evacuation hospital in Namangan. I was chief of logistics. Olia worked at the Water Engineering College as a lab assistant.

The local population was friendly and we didn’t face any anti-Semitism. We got a plot of land from work and this supported us. Olia seeded her plot of land with wheat and we planted pees. There were aryks [irrigation canals] and we watered our gardens. We received bread per or bread coupons. My father often lost his coupons and we ate pees and vegetables from our vegetable garden. My sister gathered one sack of wheat from her plot of land. She sold it and went to study in Moscow. In 1943 Olia entered Bauman Moscow Technical University.

In 1944 I received an invitation letter to continue studies in my college in Kiev. I arrived in Kiev in autumn 1944. There was a hospital in our house and our apartment served as a hostel of this hospital. I didn’t have a place to live and our neighbor Bella Pristup who had returned from evacuation offered me a lodging. She and I celebrated the victory on 9th May 1945 together. What happiness it was!

I was a second-year student in college. Many boys from my group didn’t return from the front. There were no relatives or friends in Kiev. I wrote my parents that our apartment housed a hospital. They arrived in 1945 after the victory. My father went to chief of this hospital and showed him the documents that his son was at the front and that we were the family of a military. They moved out of our apartment and we had it back.

My grandfather Moisha-Alter and his wife stayed in Kiev when German troops came. Our neighbors told us that Germans took them to Babi Yar [17] in September 1941.

In 1948 my sister graduated from her college in Moscow and returned to Kiev. She got a job assignment to work at the metallurgical plant ‘Leninskaya kuznia’ as an engineer. She met a foreman at the plant. He was a Jew. His name was Mikhail Shafranovich. They got married. They have two children: daughter Lara and son Vladimir. Olia’s daughter and son have a higher education. They are engineers.

My brother Boris returned from the front. He entered Agricultural College in Moscow. He married a Jewish woman in Moscow. Her last name was Yakobson, but I don’t remember her first name. After finishing his college Boris got a job assignment to an agricultural equipment plant in Riga. He was an engineer. Sometime later he moved to Daugavpils with his wife. [Latvia] Boris was promoted. He became chief engineer at the agricultural equipment plant. They live there. They don’t have children, regretfully. We correspond. When we were younger we visited each other, but we are growing no younger.

We were very happy when Israel was established in 1948, but we didn’t consider moving there. We believe that the Soviet Union is our Motherland and we shall stay here.

In 1949 I finished the Communications College and I felt a change in attitude toward Jews. My co-students stayed to work in Kiev while I received a job assignment [18] to Southern Sakhalin in 6000 km from home. [The Soviet Union acquired the Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin at the very end of World War II.] There were only few Jews in my group, but they managed to stay in Kiev: they involved their acquaintances to pull strings for them. I decided to fight and managed to receive a job assignment to the east of Ukraine, 400 km from Kiev, in the brick factory of Kharkov. I worked as construction materials production engineer. I rented a storeroom. I don’t remember the owner’s name, but her mother’s name was Evgenia Busykina. Her husband was a priest. In 1937 his church was closed and he was expelled to Siberia. Poor Evgenia dropped a sewing machine she was carrying when hearing about his arrest, fell and broke her hip. She was still bedridden while I was living with them (1949 – 50).

When I came to work at the plant it’s construction had just been finished. There were construction deficiencies, but we were required to do the plan. I was a young specialist: I could do drawing or other technical work, but I had no experience in managing workers. They appointed me chief of the drying shop, the forming shop delivered bricks for drying in our shop. We dried it in a chamber and then placed it in the oven to burn. My workers specified bigger quantities of brick supplies in documents to sell the extras. I didn’t know that and it couldn’t even occur to me that this was possible. My situation was hard there; I had a poor place to live and at work we didn’t complete planned quantities. I fought for completion of plans for 7 months when new director came to the factory. His last name was Volk. He accused me of brick theft. Instead of helping me to clear it up he attacked me. I believe it happened because I was a Jew. I didn’t know what to do and wrote my parents in Kiev. My father went to the Ministry of Construction materials where he told them what happened and I got a transfer to the cement plant in Podol in Kiev.

Shortly after I returned to Kiev I met my future husband Chaim Shyfris, a Jew, at a party. It happened in 1950. A year later we got married. We lived in our apartment: my parents, I and Chaim. Olia was married and had moved to her husband, Michael. We didn’t have a Jewish wedding. Chaim was a Komsomol member and my father was a Communist and observation of any Jewish traditions was out of the question. We didn’t even celebrate Jewish holidays.

Chaim was born in Kiev in 1925. His father Leib Shyfris came from Belopolie like my parents. He worked as a cabinetmaker. My husband’s mother Bashyva Tachanskaya came from Belopolie. Her father Yakov Tachanski made bricks from clay and sold them. Shortly after the wedding Leib and Bashyva moved to Kiev. In 1922 their son Izia was born and 3 years later Chaim was born. My husband’s grandfather Yankel Shyfris and grandmother Rieva Shyfris also lived in Kiev before the war. They had no education and were very religious. I don’t know where they came from. They had passed away before we met. In 1941 they perished in Babi Yar. There were their prewar photographs that Chaim’s parents took with them in evacuation.

Before the war Chaim studied in a Jewish school. He liked skiing and skating. The war began shortly after he turned 15. His older brother Izia was working at the biggest Kiev military plant ‘Arsenal’. He was a turner. The plant evacuated to the rear and Izia managed to take his parents and Chaim to Votkinsk [Udmutria, in Russia, 3500 km from Kiev]. Chaim became a turner apprentice at the plant and became a turner after his training was over. He worked as a turner all through the war period staying at work round the clock at times. He had a folding bed in his shop where he took a nap and then got back to work. For his self-sacrifice Chaim Shyfris was awarded a medal ‘For heroic work during the Great patriotic war’. He completed 300-400% of his standard scope and once he even did 1090%. All members of his crew received awards. All of them received orders, but he was ill at the time and they decided to award him a medal. Chaim also took part in a dancing and singing group. They toured to villages. He said that once he went out of the warm house when it was freezing and fell ill with lug fever. He survived thanks to people's care. Director of his plant Chebotaryov called an honored therapist from Izhevsk. She took a plane to get there, prescribed injections and then visited him several times to check his condition. His colleagues attended to him: young girls cleaned and washed him, washed his clothes and floors in his room. Older women prayed standing on their knees asking God to give the remaining years of their lives to this young man. This is an example of people’s attitudes during the war.

At the end of the war Izia became a cadet of Higher Military Infantry School in Mozhga town in Udmutria.[Russia]. In 1944 Chaim and his parents returned to Kiev. He went to work as equipment repairman at a pharmacy. He did well and his colleagues treated him well. When in 1948 struggle against cosmopolitism [19] began he was fired. It was very difficult for a Jew to find a job. At one time he worked at a plant in Donbass [Donetsk Basin] in the east of Ukraine, but then he returned to Kiev. In the long run he became an apprentice of an assembly worked at the ‘Arsenal’ plant. After his training was over he became an assembly worker and then he worked as an assembly turner. After the war Izia married a Jewish girl. They had a son. I don’t remember his wife or son’s names. I remember that after the war Izia worked in commerce and then in 1970s he moved to the USA with his family and we had no contacts with them.

On 2 January 1952 our son Mikhail was born. We lived with my parents. My father went to work and my mother was a housewife and looked after her grandson. Shortly after our son was born Chaim’s father Leib Shyfris died at the age of 63 and his wife Bashyva lived 22 years longer. She died at the age of 84. They were buried in the Jewish section of a town cemetery in Kiev.

I remember the period of ‘doctors’ plot’ [20] when Mikhail was small. I heard how they accused saboteur doctors on the radio when I walked the streets. I knew many doctors in Kiev. Fortunately, none of them suffered during this period. On 5 March 1953 Stalin died. I didn’t associate the events of 1937 and the ‘doctors’ plot’ with Stalin’s name. His death was a big shock for me: we loved Stalin and believed him. We got to know the truth about the ‘doctors’ plot’ only after the 20th Congress of the Party in 1956 [21].

The cement plat where I was working was closed. I lost my job and my father’s acquaintance helped me to get a job of a lab assistant in the factory of musical instruments. I had a small salary, but I liked my job. There was a clasp in tape recorders. It had to be solid enough and my task was to inspect its solidity. I began to modify the process. I was a beauty and my chief fell in love with me. He arranged for my transfer to the quality assurance department. I was responsible for determining thickness of units and accuracy of turner work. But I was a production engineer with higher education and had to do such unqualified work! I felt hurt and I quit.

There was a Stroyindustria Design Institute in Kreschatik [main street in Kiev] and my father’s acquaintance helped me to get a job there. I worked as a production engineer for designing of brick factories in Kiev region. I often went on business trips and I got familiar with the process in no time and soon I was doing work on the level of chief engineer.

Since I went to work I had to send Mikhail to a kindergarten that wasn’t easy at the time. However, we managed, but he was small and didn’t want to go to kindergarten. My mother took him to the kindergarten and then watched him crying in the yard through a slot in the fence. Mikhail was a sociable boy and he got used to the kindergarten soon. After the kindergarten he went to a Russian school. He studied very well, he had all excellent grades.

Mikhail was very sickly in the 1st grade and his doctor said he needed to spend time in a village. My husband’s cousin brother lived in the little town of Pyrnovo in 20 km from Kiev, on the Desna River and we took Mikhail there every summer 8 years in a row. I took vacation in June and then my husband took a vacation and we stayed with Mikhail there. Mikhail was cheerful and sociable and his classmates liked him. He never had to do his homework since he remembered subjects listening to his teachers in class. He used to say: ‘It’s so hard for me! I have to get only excellent grades. With everybody else it’s easier while I must have excellent grades’. He decided it for himself. I never spoke to him about it.

Once I returned from another business trip and got to know that my management had increased my salary and promoted me. The next day I was fired. Besides me, Luba Bencionova was fired. Her father-in-law Bencionov was chief modeler in Kiev. Chief engineer of the institute Sokolovski asked Bencionov to make a nice coat for his wife. That modeler was probably too busy and didn’t make a coat. They fired us both: Luba due to her father-in-law and me because I was a Jew. Some time before this chief of our estimation department offered me a job. I went to talk to him. There were about 20 employees in the room. He took my passport and began to read aloud ‘Shylman Surah-Leya Duvidovna’. I was still Surah by my passport. I changed my name to Sarra later. ‘Shylman Surah-Leya, you know, we have no vacancies left’. I turned my back to him and walked out, I was walking along the street crying. I changed my name in 1961 for convenience and simpler pronunciation.

There was a small design institute nearby. Luba Bencionova’s husband was chief engineer in this institute. He helped Luba to get a job there and later Luba helped me to get a job of design production engineer. I got a task to design manufacture of bricks from brown coal. I made a design of a brick factory in a village. Later I made a design of a chalk factory. Then there was another project: separation of molding at the ‘Leninskaya kuznia’ plant. However, I didn’t like the atmosphere in our group. There were few of us and everybody thought he didn’t fit in there.

I met with my cousin Yefim, my mother sister Fania’s son, and told him that I was looking for a job. He spoke with chief of the design technical bureau of the construction materials trust who told him to invite me to come to see him. He employed me as a designer. They had got an order to design an automatic line at the brick factory in Podol. I took those drawings home, reviewed them and came to the office to work. I made sketches for production engineers and they were to make drawings based on my sketches. We received a bonus for this job. I was designer and received 125 rubles. I bought a wireless, it still works. I liked my job in this bureau and I worked there until I retired.

In 1959 my father died after having his 4th heart attack. We buried him in the Jewish section near his parents’ graves at the town cemetery. In 1971 my mother passed away and we buried her near my father’s grave.

In 1963 all houses in our neighborhood were removed and tenants received new apartments. We received a two-bedroom apartment in a 9-storied building on the left bank of the Dnieper in Kharkovskoye shosse. It seemed to be at the end of the world at that time. We commuted in overcrowded buses from the center of the city and it took us about two hours to get there. Now there is metro and it’s convenient. Mikhail went to another Russian school not far from the house.

My cousin Yefim’s acquaintances talked to him about moving to Israel. He received a nice apartment from his work. He was doing well at work, but he was obsessed about the idea of going to Israel. He even started to learn Ivrit. His family lived with his mother. She was against his decision. They argued a lot. Then he fell ill with cancer and died. Yefim’s older son Boris studied in college in Novocherkassk [Russia]. He couldn’t enter a college in Kiev, being a Jew. After finishing his college he got a job assignment to Tashkent [Uzbekistan]. He worked as an engineer. He got married in Tashkent and they had a child. Yefim’s younger son Marik was very fond of chess. He failed to enter a college in Kiev. He went to Lvov and entered a college there. My sister Olia’s son Vladimir Shafranovich and Marik became friends. They decided to go to Israel and that was it. They moved in 1991. When Marik left for Israel the family decided that Yefim’s wife Manya also had to move to Israel and so did Boris. Boris moved with his wife and their child, his mother-in-law and his father-in-law. Olia’s son Vladimir kept writing her ‘Olia, do come here! You’ve always helped us, you helped my sister, now I need your help, do come’. Olia and her husband moved to their son in Israel, they live in Haifa. Olia’s daughter Lara and her family moved to Germany in 1990s.

My son Mikhail finished school in 1969. He always had excellent grades in all subjects, but it came to putting marks in school certificates they put him ‘4’s in Russian and Ukrainian. [the equivalent of ‘B’] They did it to not have to give him a gold medal. Mikhail knew that it was impossible for a Jew to enter a college in Kiev. He went to the Forestry Engineering academy in Leningrad. I decided to go with him for moral support. They didn’t want to give me vacation at work, but I said firmly: ‘My son is taking exams and I must go’. I lived with him at a hostel and helped him to prepare for exams. He passed his exams with all excellent grades.

Mikhail studied successfully at the college. He met his future wife Valia Tikhonova there and they became friends. He helped Valia with preparation of her diploma and my husband and I went there to help them. Later they got married. Valia is Russian. Her mother lives somewhere in Russia. I saw that they loved one another and accepted it that Valia wasn’t a Jew. Since Mikhail finished the college with all excellent marks he had the right to choose his job assignment. He and Valia wanted to go to Siberia, but then they got an offer to go to Riga. [Latvia] We were so happy. They went to Riga and became superintendents at a furniture factory.

On 9 June 1976 their daughter Evgenia was born. She was rowing a smart and beautiful girl. They often visited us in summer and my husband and I doted on her. Shortly before Evgenia was born in 1976 I retired. 3 years later in 1979 my husband retired at the age of 54 as an invalid.

Our son Mikhail was promoted at work. He was superintendent, then assistant chief of shop, then chief of shop and then he became chief engineer at the factory. Then there was a vacancy f chief engineer at a plant and he went to work there. When he came to work in the morning he went to talk with workers. Workers of the plant elected his director of this plant. He was a terrific director!

Mikhail died before he turned 40. He went on business trip with his employees. They took a drive in a car. He didn’t have to go on this trip, but they convinced him telling him that he was the best to establish contacts. A truck rode over their car on a turn. He was sitting on the driver’s right. He was the only one who died... This happened in 1991. When my husband and I came to his funeral his workers came to me and said kissing my hand: ‘What a person you raised!’ He always helped people and was a born director.

When in 1980s perestroika began [22] Chaim and I had a small hope for positive changes in our country and even if they take place after we die our granddaughter will live to see them. Of course, there are many hardships during this turning period, but I still believe that Ukraine will become a democratic, free and prosperous country.

Mikhail died when Evgenia was 15. She finished a music school well, then she finished a secondary school and entered the Faculty of Philology at the University. Se gave music lessons in a kindergarten when she was a student, then she gave English classes. She is very good at languages. Now she has a Master’s degree. She works at the Israeli Embassy in Riga.

In 2000 I lost Chaim. We lived together for almost 50 years. I am happy to have Valia and Evgenia. They came to the funeral and spent some time with me afterward. Valia and Evgenia often call me and come to see me every year. They visited me recently. They painted windows and doors and helped me to prepare for the winter.

My husband and I lived a happy life. We had many friends and we traveled a lot. Every summer we went to the seashore. We went to concerts and theaters. Our friends and colleagues visited us on holidays and birthdays.

In 2002 Evgenia got married. Her husband Mikhail (I’ve forgotten his surname) is half-Jew. He is a lawyer and often goes on trips abroad. He proposed to Evgenia to have a wedding on the Canary Islands and they spent their honeymoon there. I am so happy for my granddaughter and I hope to cuddle my great grandchildren.

When my husband was alive he and I often went to celebrate Jewish holidays in the Hesed. We attended the synagogue and a course on Torah studies that our rabbi’s wife conducted. We got together once a week at the synagogue. She read an article from the Torah and then we had discussions about it. We were not really religious with him: we didn’t celebrate Sabbath or follow kashrut, but we liked to be involved in observation of Jewish traditions. When I lost Chaim I had a sudden change in my heart: I began to believe in God. It’s difficult for me to go to the synagogue or Hesed alone. Hesed assists me with medication and food packages and I am grateful to them. I light candles every Saturday, celebrate Sabbath, pray, observe kashrut and fast at Yom Kippur. I do not forget to celebrate all holidays, however small celebrations they are, but it is my heart’s need.

GLOSSARY:

[1] 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.

[2] 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 instead of 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.

[3] 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.

[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] War with Japan: In 1945 the war in Europe was over, but in the Far East Japan was still fighting against the anti-fascist coalition countries and China. The USSR declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945 and Japan signed the act of capitulation in September 1945.

[6] 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.

[7] 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.

[8] 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.

[9] 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.

[10] Kvitko, Lev (1890-1952): Jewish writer, arrested and shot dead together with several other Yiddish writers, rehabilitated posthumously.

[11] Shevchenko T. G. (1814-1861): Ukrainian national poet and painter. His poems are an expression of love of the Ukraine, and sympathy with its people and their hard life. In his poetry Shevchenko stood up against the social and national oppression of his country. His painting initiated realism in Ukrainian art.

[12] Sholem Aleichem (pen name of Shalom Rabinovich (1859-1916): Yiddish author and humorist, a prolific writer of novels, stories, feuilletons, critical reviews, and poem in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. He also contributed regularly to Yiddish dailies and weeklies. In his writings he described the life of Jews in Russia, creating a gallery of bright characters. His creative work is an alloy of humor and lyricism, accurate psychological and details of everyday life. He founded a literary Yiddish annual called Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek (The Popular Jewish Library), with which he wanted to raise the despised Yiddish literature from its mean status and at the same time to fight authors of trash literature, who dragged Yiddish literature to the lowest popular level. The first volume was a turning point in the history of modern Yiddish literature. Sholem Aleichem died in New York in 1916. His popularity increased beyond the Yiddish-speaking public after his death. Some of his writings have been translated into most European languages and his plays and dramatic versions of his stories have been performed in many countries. The dramatic version of Tevye the Dairyman became an international hit as a musical (Fiddler on the Roof) in the 1960s.

[13] Gaidar, Arkadiy, real name Golikov (1904-1941): Russian writer who wrote about the revolutionary struggle and the construction of a new life.

[14] 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.

[15] 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.

[16] 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.

[17] 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.

[18] Mandatory job assignment in the USSR: Graduates of higher educational institutions had to complete a mandatory 3-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.

[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] 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] 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.

[22] 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.

Kurt Sadlik
Uzhorod
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of the interview: June 2003

Kurt Sadlik, his daughter Irina and her two children live in a two-room apartment in a new district of Uzhorod. The house was built in the 1970s and the furniture was also acquired about this time. Kurt is a tall, somewhat stooping man. His dark hair with streaks of gray has thinned a little. He is severely ill. He suffers from high blood pressure, heart problems and poor sight. Kurt is a reserved and taciturn man. The horrors of Stalin’s camp taught him to carefully weigh his words. He has never told his daughters or grandchildren about Stalin’s camps or his residence in remote areas. Kurt loves his younger granddaughter dearly. He spends a lot of time with her and enjoys her company.

I know very little about my father’s family. My paternal grandfather, whose family name was Sadlik, died in 1927, before I was born. I don’t even know his first name: my father never told me about his childhood or youth or about his family. My paternal grandmother, Maria Sadlik, is the only one of my father’s family whom I knew. I don’t know her place or date of birth though. All I know is that in the 1880s my father’s family lived somewhere in Austria-Hungary and that was where my father was born.

At the time when I remember my grandmother she was living with her mother in the town of Tuszyn in Poland. I don’t remember my great-grandmother. She was an elderly woman. When I went to school in 1935 I spent all my summer vacations with my grandmother in Tuszyn. Grandmother had a small stone house in Tuszyn. Here were three or four rooms in the house. Grandmother spoke Polish with her neighbors and Yiddish and Slovak to me. She only spoke Yiddish with her mother.

My grandmother was a short fatty woman with a round smiling face. She was very quiet and kind. She had long black hair with streaks of gray that she wore in a knot. She didn’t cover her head. She wore common clothes like all other women in smaller towns at that time. She wore light dresses and shoes with heels.

My grandmother lived in a Polish neighborhood. I cannot say for sure, but I don’t think Jews had their own Jewish district in Tuszyn. I played with Polish children. I remember that grandmother took me to her friends or relatives whose house was also in a Polish neighborhood.

My grandmother wasn’t fanatically religious. She didn’t wear a wig. She went to the synagogue on Jewish holidays and observed Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home. As far as I remember, Grandmother didn’t observe the kashrut. We never heard about my grandmother again after Poland was occupied in 1939 [1]. I think she perished during the German occupation.

My father, Karl Sadlik, was born in Austria-Hungary in 1886. I don’t know his place of birth or his Jewish name. I don’t know whether he had brothers or sisters. I have no information about his childhood.

My mother’s family lived in Slovakia. I don’t know the location, but I think it might have been in Liptovsky Mikulas since at the time when I remember them my maternal grandmother and my mother’s brother and sisters lived there.

All I know about my maternal grandfather is that his last name was Bogner and that he perished during World War I. He was not young, but he volunteered to the front. My maternal grandmother, Othelia Bogner, nee Rot, was born in 1845 or 1846. I don’t know her place of birth or anybody of her family.

There were six children in my mother’s family. I knew four of them. My mother’s two older brothers moved to the USA in the 1900s. I have no information about them. There was no correspondence. As for the rest, I don’t know their dates of birth, but I shall name them in sequence of their birth.

The oldest child was Cecilia. The second child was Iosif and then came Adelina. My mother Irina was the youngest. She was born in 1884. Of course, they had Jewish names, but I don’t know them. At that time children had their secular names written in documents in Slovakian and a rabbi registered the children in a register in the synagogue where the child was given a Jewish name.

Liptovsky Mikulas was a small town. Jews constituted a significant part of its population. I cannot say exactly, but I guess Jews constituted about one third of the total population. There was no Jewish district in the town. Only gypsies [Roma] lived separately. They installed their tents on the outskirts of the town behind the river. Our parents didn’t allow us to go to this area.

Jews enjoyed a free life in Slovakia. It was a truly democratic country. The president of Czechoslovakia, Masaryk [2], who ruled before 1935, and his successor, Benes [3], were intelligent, progressive and democratic people. There were no restrictions for Jews.

There were many rich Jews in the country. In the town there were two leather factories, a knitwear factory, a distillery and an alcohol factory – these were owned by Jews. There were many smaller and bigger Jewish stores. Many Jews were doctors and lawyers. And there were, of course, poor Jewish craftsmen living from hand to mouth.

There were two synagogues in Liptovsky Mikulas. There was a big and beautiful synagogue in the center of the town. It was always full of Jews during the Sabbath and holidays. And there was a smaller one for orthodox Hasidim [4]. There were 10-15 Hasid families in the town.

The majority of the Jews observed Jewish traditions, Sabbath and Jewish holidays, but they were not fanatically religious. It never happened with them that a man would read his religious books all day long and then discuss this with others when his family was hungry, like it happened with Hasidim.

The bigger synagogue is still there. I visited Liptovsky Mikulas in 2000. It was restored and turned into a Jewish museum. Due to the fine acoustic a part of the synagogue was given to the Philharmonic. The synagogue looks as beautiful as when I was a child.

There was a big and rich Jewish community in the town. I don’t know any details about its organization, but I know that the community supported lonely people or poor families. Orphaned children and children from poor families had free education. The community distributed presents on all Jewish holidays: Purim, Pesach, Chanukkah, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. They provided matzah to poor families at Pesach and food for Sabbath.

My mother’s family was religious. My mother, her brother and sisters knew Hebrew. They prayed in Hebrew and knew prayers by heart. I cannot say where they got religious education. In their family they observed Sabbath and Jewish holidays. They lived in Liptovsky Mikulas with their families.

My mother’s older sister Cecilia was married to a tavern owner. She helped her husband in the tavern and did housekeeping. Their children also helped them when they grew big enough to do work. Cecilia’s husband died and she took over his business.

They had four children: sons Vilo, Altrey and Lazo and daughter Marguta. Cecilia’s older son Vilo made gravestones at the Jewish cemetery. Lazo was a car mechanic and owned a garage. Only wealthy people had cars. Lazo did repairs and gave driving classes. Altrey was an attendant in a hospital. Marguta was married, she was a housewife.

At the beginning of World War II Lazo converted to Lutheranism, though reluctantly. He understood that a Jew didn’t have a chance to survive during the fascist regime. His wife was also a Lutheran.

Cecilia had high blood pressure and Altrey managed to hide her at the hospital where he was working as an attendant. She stayed there throughout the occupation period. Cecilia’s other three children perished in a German concentration camp. This is all the information I have about Cecilia and Altrey.

My mother’s brother Iosif was a tinsmith. He was married, but I didn’t know his wife. She died before I was born. Iosif had two children: son Peter – his Jewish name was Pinchas – and a daughter, whose name I don’t remember. Iosif trained his son to be a tinsmith. They worked together. They roofed houses and installed water piping. The family perished during World War II, only Peter survived.

I didn’t know my mother older sister Adelina’s husband. He died early leaving her with four children: three sons and daughter Zita. After her husband died Adelina became a dressmaker. Adelina’s sons became apprentices of a bricklayer and became bricklayers.

During World War II Adelina, Zita and the sons were in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Adelina’s sons and their families perished in the camp. Zita and Adelina returned home after they were released from the camp. After the war they moved to Israel. Zita got married. Zita and Adelina have passed away and I have no contact with Zita’s children.

I don’t know how my parents met. My mother never told me about it. I think my parents had a traditional Jewish wedding. This had to be so at the time. At least, I know that all of my cousins had traditional Jewish weddings with a chuppah and klezmer music. My parents got married in 1925.

I was born in 1928 and named Kurt. My Jewish name is Itzhak.

After the wedding my parents settled down in the house of my mother’s parents. It was a one-storied brick house divided into two sections: my mother’s sister Adelina lived in one and our family and Grandmother Othelia lived in the other part. There were two big rooms in each section and a big common kitchen in the central part. There were separate entranceways to the house. We lived in the center of the town and didn’t have a garden or livestock. There was a small flower garden near the house and a woodshed in the backyard.

My father drove the only bus in the town that commuted from the railway station to the hotel and then to the Tatry Mountain. There were big caves near our town. There were ancient idols, an ice cave and grottos with stalactites and stalagmites there. It was a place of interest where my father took tourists.

A bus driver was a popular person at that time since cars were rare. Only rich people had cars. There were two or three in our town. The main means of transport were wagons and carts. When I was five or six my father took me with him and all other boys envied me a lot.

My mother was a hairdresser. Before Sabbath and Jewish holidays she did the hair of rich women in their homes. The rest of the time my mother did sewing at home. She sewed bed sheets, nightgowns and fixed clothes. She had a Singer sewing machine at home.

My father wore common clothes. He didn’t have a beard or payes. He didn’t cover his head. My mother didn’t cover her head either. Only orthodox Jewish women wore wigs and dark clothes. My mother had long and very thick dark hair that she wore in a knot. My parents covered their heads only when they went to the synagogue. My grandmother and my mother’s sisters had their hair done in the same fashion. They also wore common clothes in the fashion of this time.

Our family and my mother’s relatives were religious. We had faith in God and prayed. We observed traditions, but we didn’t always observe the kashrut in everyday life at home.

On Friday my mother made food and baked challah for Sabbath. There were two Jewish bakeries in the town: one owned by Altman and another was owned by Nyumberg. Mother made dough for challah and plated it. She also made bagels and rolls. She put those in a big canvas bag and covered it with a white napkin. I took this bag to the bakery: they did it for peanuts. In the afternoon I picked up the pastries. I can still remember the wonderful smell!

In the evening my mother lit candles and prayed over them. We recited a prayer and sat down to dinner. On Sabbath our Christian neighbors came to stoke the stove to warm up the food and to light lamps.

My mother and father went to the synagogue on Sabbath. My mother took me with her. Many women took their children to the synagogue with them if there was nobody to leave them with at home. Women were on the second floor at the synagogue. There were three rows of seats with stands for prayer books.

We made a general cleanup of the house before Pesach. Our fancy crockery that we only used at Pesach was stored in the attic. We took it from there before Pesach and kept it in the boiling water. Everyday utensils were taken to the attic.

We bought matzah in the Nyumberg bakery. That matzah was different from what they make nowadays: those were round-shaped thin flat cookies baked on charcoal in ovens. It was such yummy matzah! Present-day matzah has a different taste. The recipe is the same: water and flour, but the taste is different. The matzah of my time was crispy and I enjoyed eating it. Present-day matzah is like straw, far from what I remember.

We didn’t have any bread at home throughout the eight days of Pesach. Mother cooked traditional Jewish food at Pesach: chicken broth with matzah, fried chicken or geese, stuffed gooseneck, pudding with matzah and eggs and strudels with jam, nuts and raisins. We only had kosher food at Pesach.

We spent both seders at Aunt Cecilia’s home. We visited them after the synagogue in the morning and stayed almost until the next morning, the end of seder. Her son Altrey, the one who converted to Lutheranism during World War II, was very religious at that time. He conducted the seder. They had a big room and a table big enough for all of us. The family got together, said a common prayer [broche] and then sat down to a meal.

During seder each of us including children was to drink four glasses of wine. Of course, children had small glasses. In the center of the table there was an extra glass for Elijah the Prophet [5]. The front door was open for him to come into the house.

It didn’t usually happen that people stopped working throughout the eight days of Pesach. Only on the first and the second day when the first and second seder was conducted nobody worked. On the other days a person could decide for himself whether he needed to do some work or not.

Our father worked from the third day of the holiday to the last, eighth day. There were tourists coming to town and they needed a bus to transport them. My father made an arrangement with his colleague to have the first two days off at Pesach. When my father was at work my mother and I visited relatives and had guests at home.

At Rosh Hashanah my mother always made a festive meal. In the morning the family went to the synagogue to pray. At Yom Kippur adults fasted. They had dinner a day before Yom Kippur before the first evening star. They tried to have a bigger meal since they had 24 hours ahead of them with no eating.

I remember that my mother and aunt Adelina stuck cloves into an apple that they took with them to the synagogue. When they couldn’t stand the hunger any longer, at 3-4pm, they smelled these cloves. Its heady smell made them feel better. Children fasted from morning till lunch and adults fasted until the first evening star appeared in the sky.

I remember Chanukkah very well. My mother put a big bronze Chanukkah candle stand and lit one more candle every day with the same candle. All Jewish children received presents from the Jewish community: bags full of candy, peanuts and chocolate. Our guests always gave me some money at Chanukkah.

At Purim performers came to Jewish houses. They were wearing costumes to act as characters of the Book of Ester: Mordecai, King Ahasuerus and Haman, the villain of the story. The performers sang songs asking to give them a few coins for their performance. When I turned six I also performed in houses. We were given some change, candy and honey cakes.

At the age of six I went to a Jewish school in a beautiful two-storied building in the neighboring street. There was a synagogue near the school. We attended this synagogue. Our school was called cheder, but besides religion we studied general subjects: mathematics, Slovakian and German languages, history and geography. Boys and girls went to this school. It was a school for boys and girls.

We also studied Jewish religion and traditions. A rabbi taught us to read and write in Hebrew and Yiddish and translate from Hebrew to Yiddish. We learned prayers by heart and later read them when we learned to read in Hebrew. The rabbi read articles from the Torah and we discussed them.

I studied well. My favorite subjects were history, geography and Hebrew. I didn’t like mathematics. I just hated it. Before Purim we prepared Purimspiel performances. We performed in the school concert hall at Purim. Our spectators were our families. We also gave concerts at Chanukkah.

There were no sport clubs at school. There used to be a football club, but for some reason it was closed. I was a sociable boy and got along well with other children at school. I had four close friends. Of course, my school friends were Jews. Later, when I grew older, I had Christian friends.

In the 1970s I traveled to Czechoslovakia. I went to where my school was. It was still there; only it had become a vocational school. When I came to Liptovsky Mikulas in 2000 the school was not there any longer.

In 1935 my grandmother Othelia died. She was 89 or 90 years old – I don’t know for sure. My grandmother was buried in the Jewish cemetery. There was a Jewish funeral. There were two Jewish cemeteries in Liptovsky Mikulas: one from the 19th-century and the new one. In 1936 my father caught a cold and died. He was buried near my grandmother’s grave. The funeral was Jewish as well. My mother’s brother Iosif recited the Kaddish after him.

I was eight when it happened. Our life changed for the worse. My mother had to work more: she did wealthier women’s hair and sewed at home. I also went to work. There were Bulgarian farmers in our village growing greeneries and vegetables. On summer vacations I did field work for them: weeding or pricking out. I got my daily earnings.

I also hauled brushwood for stoves from the power saw facility to the store where they were selling it. They were bundled into 5 kg piles. I hauled five to six bundles to the store located some 15 kilometers from the saw facility. I earned little, but I could pay for a ticket to the cinema or buy some lollipops.

The Jewish community also supported us giving my mother a suit, a coat or a pair of boots for me since I was outgrowing my clothes fast. It also provided food for Sabbath and other holidays. There was a leather factory that belonged to the Geksner brothers in our town. They were very rich. The older brother held me during my brit milah. After my father died he always supported us with some money.

Jews had equal rights as Slovakian citizens. In 1939 Hitler attacked Poland. We were concerned about what was going to happen next. On the radio they often broadcast Hitler speeches. The local population knew German. We spoke Yiddish at home for the most part, and sometimes we spoke German and Slovakian. I took no interest in politics then, but I could feel how concerned and even scared my family was.

In 1939 fascists appeared in Slovakia. They called themselves People’s Guard [6]. They wore black suits with armbands. They were Christian and Catholic, of course. They were rabble that didn’t want to work, but torture and rob Jews. In 1940 German fascists occupied Czechia. Local fascists ruled in Slovakia [7]. Jews began to be persecuted.

In fall 1941 Jews were ordered to wear yellow stars [8] on the chest and arm, and were not allowed to go out without them. However, there was some Jewish life. The synagogues were open and Jews could attend them. In 1941 I turned 13 and had a bar mitzvah at the synagogue.

In spring 1942 all Jews in Liptovsky Mikulas were ordered to gather in the yard of the synagogue near my school. Ordered means fascists came to Jewish houses and told people to gather in the yard of the synagogue. They said that people didn’t need much luggage, just for two or three days. They said that people didn’t have to worry about their houses, they would be sealed.

People went there as obediently as sheep to a slaughterhouse as if they were hypnotized. I still cannot understand how come they didn’t resist, but kept praying and wondering what was going to happen to them. Of course, nobody knew that they were going to die.

My mother and I and my mother’s sisters and brother and their families went there, too. There was a two meter high fence around the yard. Beyond the fence there was an old Jewish cemetery. We didn’t have any idea what was going to happen to us.

I cannot explain why my friend and I decided to climb over the fence to the old Jewish cemetery at night. My mother didn’t know about it. From the cemetery we went to somebody’s yard and from that yard we escaped to the forest where we stayed. Then my friend left me. His parents’ acquaintances lived in a neighboring village. He wanted me to go with him, but I was afraid since there were fascists in villages as well. I never saw him again. I don’t know what happened to him.

I was hiding in the Lower Tatry. I lived in a shepherd’s abandoned hut, in a ‘kolyba’ made of branches. There was a stove inside. These huts were usually made near a stream or spring to have potable water.

Every now and then woodcutters came to the hut. They were aware of my whereabouts, but I still hid in the woods from them. When I returned to the ‘kolyba’ I found bread, boiled potatoes and milk. They were nice people. They didn’t have much food, but they shared with me whatever little they had. They didn’t give me out to the Germans either.

In summer and fall I ate berries and eatable roots. There were lots of mushrooms, but I was afraid of making a fire in the stove to cook them for safety reasons. I didn’t have matches either. It was cold in winter. I picked pine branches to sleep on them. Anyway, I managed there until the winter of 1943-44 and never caught a cold.

In winter 1943-44 some Russian parachutists landed nearby. I didn’t know who they were and hid in the woods. I heard some foreign languages they spoke, but it wasn’t German. They saw branches and food leftovers in my hut and understood there was someone living in it. Of course, it took them little time to find me. I didn’t know Russian, but there was a Slovakian translator with them.

I was fluent in German and the Russians took me into their group. I was a kind of spy for the Russians. I put on farmer’s clothes and went to villages to investigate where the German troops were and listen to what the Germans were saying.

On 29th August 1944 the Slovakian people’s riot began [9]. Many partisans came from the mountains. There were many Germans and Slovakian fascists killed. For five months fascists were having problems with moving their troops to the USSR across this area. Then German troops were sent there to fight with partisans and partisans had to go back to the woods. Partisans were staying in the woods until February 1945, and I stayed with them.

In 1945 I went home looking for my mother. My aunt Adelina and my mother returned home from a concentration camp. In winter 1945 German troops began to attack our town again. In March we had to escape to the town of Poprad in the east of Slovakia, some 30 kilometers from our town. A local Jewish woman offered us accommodation in her house. We stayed there a few days.

I was a little over 16 years old. Мy mother and I didn’t discuss what happened. We reached a silent agreement that we would not discuss things, but wait until our recollections became less painful. Well, I never got to know in what concentration camp my mother was.

A few days after we arrived at Poprad I was stopped by two Russian soldiers with automatic guns. They asked me something in Russian. I didn’t understand what it was about and they convoyed me to a KGB office [10]. They kept me in a cell for few days and then I was taken to a prison in Slovakia. I don’t know where it was.

In a few days I was taken to court. There were three people sitting at the table. They had some papers in front of them. They asked me something that I didn’t understand. They spoke Russian and there was no interpreter. The only thing I understood was ‘ten years’: it sounds similar in Russian and Slovakian.

I was taken back to prison and then convoyed somewhere else. I didn’t understand what the charges were. I didn’t have an attorney. They didn’t allow me to say ‘good bye’ to Mother or write her a letter. I never saw her again.

We went across the mountains and covered 150 kilometers. We reached Cracow. The town was ruined and destroyed. The only undamaged building was a prison. We were kept in this prison for two months. It was stuffed with inmates who were no less scared than I. They were accused of cooperation with the fascist regime only because they survived. Actually, this was our guess since there was no investigation. We didn’t even get to telling them about ourselves.

Every day groups of prisoners were transported by train to the Gulag [11] in the north of the USSR. One day it was my turn. We were taken to a distribution camp in Magadan and from there we were convoyed to Norilsk in the permafrost area over 4500 kilometers from home.

There were camps – long wooden barracks with primitive two-tier plank beds – on the outskirts of the town. The camp was fenced with electrified barbed wire. On four sides there were guard towers. Soldiers with shepherd dogs patrolled the area. The dogs were specially trained to guard the inmates.

I was a political prisoner and stayed in a camp for political prisoners. There were criminal prisoners as well. They lived in more comfortable barracks that had better heating. We had stoves on the opposite sides of the barrack. They heated maximum 3 meters in the barrack and the rest of it was very cold. At night we took turns to warm up by a stove. In the morning we lined up and then convoyed to work at a mine. We returned to the barrack in the evening.

I don’t feel like talking about my life in the camp. It is unbearable to recall this time. There are lots of publications on this subjects and one can read about it in Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s [12] or other writers’ novels and stories. All I can say is that our life was no different from how Solzhenitsyn described it.

Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were suffering and dying there. I worked at a mine until an old man who worked as an electrician felt sorry for me. I became his apprentice. I was an industrious apprentice and learned what I needed in a short time. I began to work and my life became easier.

I was released in 1953 after Stalin died. The director of the camp called me to his office and just said ‘Released.’ I was in prison for six years of my ten-year sentence. For many people Stalin’s death was a shock, even in the camp, but not so for me. I was happy that such a monster of cruelty croaked. However young I was I understood that all this suffering was his doing.

I obtained a certificate of release at the head office of the camp. My name was written as Karol Karolevich instead of Kurt Karlovich in it and they wrote a wrong year of birth: 1926 instead of 1928. Perhaps, they made me two years older intentionally to make me of age in court. I don’t know.

This certificate was my only document. I didn’t have permission to leave Norilsk, though. Every Saturday I had to register at the district militia office. I worked at the same mine where I had worked being a prisoner. The only difference was that I lived in a hostel for employees. There were seven of us in a room. I had meals at a diner at the mine. The accounting office deducted the cost of meals from my salary and the rest of it was mine.

I met my future wife in the hostel. She wasn’t a prisoner. Ludmila Protopopova was Russian, she was born in Novosibirsk in 1922. I know little about her family. Her father, Ignat Protopopov, went to the army and perished at the front during World War II. Ludmila’s mother starved to death. Ludmila couldn’t find a job in Novosibirsk after finishing a secondary school. She went to Norilsk where her maternal aunt lived and went to work as assistant accountant at a mine.

We began to see each other. I couldn’t marry Ludmila even when she got pregnant. The only document I had was my certificate of release. I was eager to restore my Slovakian citizenship, but it was out of question. In all offices I addressed they told me this was impossible.

I had little choice: either rot to death at the mine in Norilsk or obtain Soviet citizenship however much I hated this country. And I got this damned Soviet citizenship. We lived in Norilsk until 1955 and after I became a Soviet citizen we went to Novosibirsk, Ludmila’s home town. In 1956 our daughter Vera was born.

Throughout this whole period I was trying to find out what happened to my family in Slovakia. I started writing letters when I was allowed. I don’t think those letters ever crossed the border of the USSR. All letters were censured and read by KGB employees. I tried to search for my family through the Red Cross. I received their response ‘Neither found dead nor alive in Czechoslovakia.’ It also said that my mother, Irina Sadlik, nee Bogner, died in 1947.

In Novosibirsk I began to work as an electrician at a construction site and entered an extramural department in the Novosibirsk Energy Technical School. My wife got a residential permit [13] to live in Novosibirsk while I was not allowed to reside in big towns. I was allowed to live in a village 15 kilometers from Novosibirsk where I received a room. Every day I had to get a ride to work. It was hard and I even quit school three months before graduation.

Ludmila’s distant relatives lived in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan. We decided to move there to be close to at least some relatives. In Petropavlovsk I went to work at the construction of a big power plant where I was an electrician. We received a room in a hostel. Ludmila looked after our daughter Vera. In 1958 our younger daughter Irina, named after my mother, was born in Petropavlovsk.

We lived in Petropavlovsk in 1958–1959 until I got to know that in Subcarpathia [14] the border was open and it was allowed to move to Hungary and Czechoslovakia. There was always an Iron Curtain [15] separating the USSR from other countries or how else would Soviet people believe that life in the USSR was better than in other countries.

I saved some money to buy tickets and we moved to Uzhorod. It turned out that it was during a short period after World War II when it was allowed to move from Uzhorod, but it was over in 1946. What were we to do? We didn’t feel like going back to Kazakhstan. We decided to stay in Uzhorod.

We didn’t have a place to live or work. We rented a room and our heart sank every time there was a knock on the door. We were afraid that a district militia would come. We didn’t have residential permits. It was like a closed circle: when I came to a job interview they told me that I needed a residential permit to get a job and when I went to the militia office to request a permit they replied that they would only issue it if I got a job.

Fortunately, our landlords were kind people. They helped us to obtain a permit for temporary residence and this was sufficient for me to get employed. I went to work as an electrician at the distillery. We received a room in a half-ruined barrack. I repaired it myself. The four of us lived in this room for 14 years.

In 1971 I left the distillery and went to work at the alarm systems non-governmental security department. In 1973 I received a three-room apartment from my work. I’ve lived in this apartment for 30 years.

I’ve never faced any anti-Semitism after World War II. I’ve always identified myself as a Jew. I learned fluent Russian. I worked in the environment of plain people who express themselves with curse language for the most part. I learned this curse language as well. It never occurred to them that I might be a Jew since they knew that Jewish men never cursed for their fear of God. My principle was ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’. I had to get adjusted.

However, I was aware of everyday and governmental anti-Semitism in the USSR. My Jewish acquaintances had problems with getting a job or entering higher educational institutions. There were many such examples and I knew that there was more to it than we could think of. It started during Stalin’s rule and couldn’t have been initiated by some lower officials.

My wife was very concerned about our daughters. I was thinking about this, too, and resolved this issue in the manner that occurred to me at the moment. I submitted a report to a militia office that I had lost my passport. I was fined and had to wait for some time until I obtained a new passport where my nationality was identified as Slovakian. I believed that I had a right to protect my children from this state with whatever means available. Besides, frankly speaking I did not quite worship a Soviet passport.

When Khrushchev [16] at the Twentieth Party Congress [17] denounced the cult of Stalin and spoke about the crimes of the Soviet regime I had a dual feeling. Of course, it was a criminal regime and a criminal leader: I went through it myself. But Khrushchev and others who were blaming Stalin had been on top during his rule. Couldn’t they do anything? Why did they keep quiet? Were they so much scared of Stalin or Beriya? [18] There were many more than Stalin and Beriya. They were afraid and didn’t want to lose their post or life.

I don’t believe anybody. Khrushchev made a good beginning and how did it end? Promises to catch up with and surpass America? With what: with slogans and empty stores where it was always a problem to buy even a pair of socks? Could I believe him? Nowadays I don’t have much hope either that Ukraine will become free, wealthy and independent. Things are different in reality.

After the release from the camp I didn’t observe any Jewish traditions, although I felt the need to do so. My wife didn’t care about religion while I wanted to talk with someone in Yiddish, observe a Jewish holiday and pray on Sabbath, but I didn’t get a chance in the North or in Kazakhstan. There were very few Jews there. There were not even ten for a minyan and there was no synagogue in Novosibirsk or Petropavlovsk.

We didn’t celebrate Soviet holidays at home. I participated in meetings at work when I had to. Naturally, I didn’t join the Party and nobody ever suggested that I did considering that I was a former convict. However, I would have never joined this disgusting Party anyway. What can one say? This Party destroyed everything good, nice and decent and built its world of fear, violence and tyranny on the ruins!

My wife and I had a good life. There were just the two of us in the whole world. We often spent vacations at the seashore. When I found my cousin we traveled to Slovakia every now and then. For residents of Subcarpathia traveling to Slovakia was easier than for the rest of the USSR.

Most of my friends in Uzhorod were Jews. It wasn’t just a coincidence since I looked for Jews in every place I came to. However, Soviet citizens were reluctant to make new friends. It wasn’t their fault, I understood that any person might happen to be a KGB informer and people tried to secure themselves. When I approached a man of Semitic appearance whether he was a Jew he rushed to reply ‘no’ and go away.

For me nationality was always important. I believed that I could have more trust in Jews and I thought that only with them I could feel at ease. Perhaps, this was something subconscious since Russians, Ukrainians and other nations living in the USSR were different to me while Jews were always Jews whether they were in the USSR or Slovakia.

When I lived in Uzhorod my neighbor became my friend. There was a synagogue in Uzhorod and my neighbor offered me to go to the synagogue together. I was happy to go with him. He introduced me to others at the synagogue.

They didn’t like the name of Kurt and began to talk that I wasn’t a Jew. I didn’t look like a Jew. Then the senior man came. I talked to him in Yiddish. I said I could present an immediate proof that I was a Jew. He allowed me to stay for a prayer.

I felt hurt: I didn’t think they could treat a man who came to the synagogue in this crude manner. However, I understood that they were afraid of traitors and informers since life in this country taught everyone to be on guard.

My wife also asked me to stop going to the synagogue since the state persecuted religion and she was afraid that it might not be good for the children, either. I resumed going to synagogue after my wife died in 1993.

In 1968 I finally found my only relative in Czechoslovakia: my cousin Peter, my uncle Iosif’s son. An aunt of my wife’s acquaintance came on a visit from Czechoslovakia. My wife told her the story of my family and that I couldn’t find my family. That woman promised to help me.

Soon after she left for Czechoslovakia we received a letter with my cousin’s address from her. We began to write letters. My cousin sent me my birth certificate. He also sent us an invitation letter and in 1970 my wife and I went to visit him.

In Liptovsky Mikulas I got to know that almost all my relatives of my family and friends perished in a camp near the town and were buried in a common grave near the old Jewish cemetery. My aunt Cecilia’s two sons and a daughter, my mother’s brother Iosif and his daughter, and my aunt Adelina’s three sons and their families perished in the camp.

My mother died in 1947 and was buried in the same cemetery. In 1970 a huge marble board with the names of Jews, residents of the town who perished during World War II, engraved on it was installed at the entrance to the cemetery. I found the names of our relatives and my school friends on this board. There is a monument installed at the beginning of the cemetery.

When I came on another visit in 1991 there was nothing left. The cemetery and the monuments had been removed. They didn’t remove the graves to another location. They graded the area and planted a park. It was a blasphemy for me.

I walked along the asphalted walkways in the park recalling the spots where my grandmother, mother, cousin sister and father were buried. There were benches on their bones. This was heartbreaking. It was fearful. This was humiliation of the dead and mockery on the memory of the living. They had removed the two-meter high fence around the cemetery and the memorial board.

When Jews were leaving for Israel in the 1970s I didn’t consider emigration. Firstly, we didn’t have enough money to move there. Secondly, my wife didn’t want to move there. I, actually, didn’t take any effort to convince her. ‘Look before you leap’ is my principle. I didn’t even want to move to my Motherland. My wife liked it in Slovakia and she wished we moved there.

I decided to move to Slovakia, but then I thought, ‘Who needs me there with two children? My mother and my father are gone. I have no sister or brother there. Does my cousin brother need me? He has his family and his cares.’ Besides, I realized that I would always be an immigrant from the USSR. And there was no friendly attitude toward the USSR. I had a job and an apartment here. I earned my living and I didn’t feel strong enough to start my life from zero. I considered this – and stayed here.

In the course of many years I wrote in all application forms that I had served a sentence in prison, until in 1991 I received a letter of rehabilitation [19] from the KGB office in Moscow due to absence of corpus delicti. It said that the court verdict in my case was illegal. And, of course, they misspelled my name and put a wrong year of birth. Well, let them, but who is responsible for my broken life, for the youth spent in camps, for my life here? Nobody is responsible…

I won’t mention my daughters’ and grandchildren names. I’ve lived my life and I do not have fears for myself, but I fear for them. Even though the Communist Party is not in power in independent Ukraine any longer, but communists are too ardent in their strive for power. I fear to think what it would be like if they ever take power again. I don’t want my daughters or grandchildren to have problems just because I am too open here.

My girls were nice and obedient daughters when they were children. They always knew that their father is a Jew, but nationality didn’t matter to them. Vera, my older daughter, graduated from the Technical Faculty of Uzhorod University. She went to work as an engineer in a design office.

Vera is married to a Ukrainian man. She has two children. Inga, the older one, was born in 1976. Inga studies at the Physical Culture College. Rodion was born in 1977. After finishing a lower secondary school he finished a Computer College with honors. He works in a computer repair shop. Vera and her family live in their apartment in Uzhorod.

My younger daughter Irina married a Jewish man. She has two children. Her older son Denis was born in 1978. Denis finished a lower secondary school and didn’t want to continue his education. He is a baker. My younger granddaughter Olga, born in 1991 goes to school. She studies well. I spend a lot of time with her. I enjoy these moments.

When perestroika [20] began in the early 1980s I understood that the Soviet power was coming to an end. I wouldn’t argue that we’ve gained freedom, but who knows when and what price we shall have to pay for it? People got freedom and an opportunity to travel abroad. They see live in capitalist countries and they’ve changed their outlooks. Yes, things were less expensive in the Soviet Union, but there were long lines to get even a piece of meat!

However, I didn’t think the Soviet regime would collapse that fast. It was powerful, indeed. And all of a sudden it ended in a day. I was positive about the downfall of the USSR. Of course, it should have been arranged differently. There were economic ties between the republics that were also broken. Factories in Uzhorod cooperated with Kazakhstan, Siberia and Moscow. Those ties are gone and nobody cares.

Machine building, mechanic, equipment plant Uzhorodpribor, Electric Engine, gas equipment plants were shut down. Nobody needs them and nobody cares about former employees. It’s like communists whose slogan was ‘we shall destroy to foundations the world of violence and then…’ Well, they’ve destroyed the past. But God knows what they will build.

People of power are all the same, only now they call themselves democrats and yesterday they were communists. They don’t care a bit about people who are like cattle for them.

I don’t believe in anything with this government. They take loans from abroad for restoration of industries and where is this money? What industries have they restored? People sell rags in markets: they are former professors and academicians. Teachers and doctors are miserably poor. People search for food leftovers in garbage containers. There were homeless dogs looking for leftovers in garbage pans, but not people. The situation is terrible.

I am against communism, but it has never been like this. One could make ends meet during the Soviet regime. Children could study and education was mandatory. Nowadays nobody cares whether a child is at school or in the streets. The state doesn’t need us. There are no jobs; people have to think by themselves how to live on… Is this democracy? No, policy is truly disgusting!

Jewish life in Uzhorod revived during perestroika. Jews could go to the synagogue without fear that someone would see them. When Ukraine gained independence the Jewish life began to develop rapidly.

I am very pleased that my younger granddaughter identifies herself as Jew. Olga has attended a Jewish school for two years. I told her that there was such a school and she wanted to go there. I took her there for the first time since she was a little shy, but then she began to go there every Sunday. Olga took part in their performance at Purim. They sing and dance at school. This year [in 2003] Olga attends an evening club at Hesed [21] where they study Ivrit.

We observe Sabbath at home and have a festive meal. Olga lights candles and prays over them. My daughter Irina observes it with us. Regretfully, my other grandchildren don’t care about their Jewish identity. Olga enjoys her studies and I hope she will learn everything a Jewish girl is supposed to know while I am with them.

Since Hesed was established in Uzhorod in 1999 our life became easier. Hesed takes care of Jews: from infants to old people, it provides a big assistance to Jews of all ages. There are clubs of interest and everybody can find interesting things to do there.

Young people become more interested in the Jewish life. My granddaughter is an example of this interest. We observe Jewish holidays in Hesed, they are wonderful: bright and joyful. There is a computer club and foreign languages clubs. There are no age restrictions. They provide diapers and baby food to mothers with babies and support old people.

I am deputy chairman of social assistance in Hesed. Hesed provides money to buy medications for elderly people on a monthly basis. They also make arrangements for free treatment in hospital, if necessary. Relatives don’t need to bring medications to a hospital. Hesed pays for all necessary medications. There are doctors in Hesed. We have a therapeutic office of physical training in Hesed. There is a free swimming pool. Swimming helps older people to stay healthy.

There is a free barber and hairdresser in Hesed. There is free manicure. They also help invalids. Handicapped receive free wheel chairs. They are very expensive and people cannot afford to buy them. There are all kinds of supporting devices for ill people that are very important.

Old people receive food packages and hot meals delivered to their homes. Hesed does necessary repairs of private houses, fixes leaking roofs. Hesed also supplies gas to those that use gas in containers. There are three-day recreation camps for parents and children. Children can go to a health camp in Hungary for one month. Children like it there a lot. I cannot imagine life without Hesed and what we would do without considering the reality of today.

Glossary

[1] German Invasion of Poland: The German attack of Poland on 1st September 1939 is widely considered the date in the West for the start of World War II. After having gained both Austria and the Bohemian and Moravian parts of Czechoslovakia, Hitler was confident that he could acquire Poland without having to fight Britain and France. (To eliminate the possibility of the Soviet Union fighting if Poland were attacked, Hitler made a pact with the Soviet Union, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.) On the morning of 1st September 1939, German troops entered Poland. The German air attack hit so quickly that most of Poland's air force was destroyed while still on the ground. To hinder Polish mobilization, the Germans bombed bridges and roads. Groups of marching soldiers were machine-gunned from the air, and they also aimed at civilians. On 1st September, the beginning of the attack, Great Britain and France sent Hitler an ultimatum - withdraw German forces from Poland or Great Britain and France would go to war against Germany. On 3rd September, with Germany's forces penetrating deeper into Poland, Great Britain and France both declared war on Germany.

[2] Masaryk, Tomas Garrigue (1850-1937): Czechoslovak political leader and philosopher and chief founder of the First Czechoslovak Republic. He founded the Czech People's Party in 1900, which strove for Czech independence within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, for the protection of minorities and the unity of Czechs and Slovaks. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918, Masaryk became the first president of Czechoslovakia. He was reelected in 1920, 1927, and 1934. Among the first acts of his government was an extensive land reform. He steered a moderate course on such sensitive issues as the status of minorities, especially the Slovaks and Germans, and the relations between the church and the state. Masaryk resigned in 1935 and Edvard Benes, his former foreign minister, succeeded him.

[3] Benes, Edvard (1884-1948): Czechoslovak politician and president from 1935-38 and 1946-48. He was a follower of T. G. Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, and the idea of Czechoslovakism, and later Masaryk's right-hand man. After World War I he represented Czechoslovakia at the Paris Peace Conference. He was Foreign Minister (1918-1935) and Prime Minister (1921-1922) of the new Czechoslovak state and became president after Masaryk retired in 1935. The Czechoslovak alliance with France and the creation of the Little Entente (Czechoslovak, Romanian and Yugoslav alliance against Hungarian revisionism and the restoration of the Habsburgs) were essentially his work. After the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by the Munich Pact (1938) he resigned and went into exile. Returning to Prague in 1945, he was confirmed in office and was reelected president in 1946. After the communist coup in February 1948 he resigned in June on the grounds of illness, refusing to sign the new constitution.

[4] Hasid: 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.

[5] Elijah the Prophet: According to the Jewish legend the prophet Elijah visits every home on the first day of Pesach and drinks from the cup that has been poured for him. He is invisible but he can see everything in the house. The door is kept open for the prophet to come in and honor the holiday with his presence.
[6] People’s Guard: Fascist organization in Slovakia between 1939-1945. The People’s Guard propagated nationalist, Christian-mystical and anti-Semitic views.

[7] Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: Bohemia and Moravia were occupied by the Germans and transformed into a German Protectorate in March 1939, after Slovakia declared its independence. The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was placed under the supervision of the Reich protector, Konstantin von Neurath. The Gestapo assumed police authority. Jews were dismissed from civil service and placed in an extralegal position. In the fall of 1941, the Reich adopted a more radical policy in the Protectorate. The Gestapo became very active in arrests and executions. The deportation of Jews to concentration camps was organized, and Terezin/Theresienstadt was turned into a ghetto for Jewish families. During the existence of the Protectorate the Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia was virtually annihilated. After World War II the pre-1938 boundaries were restored, and most of the German-speaking population was expelled.

[8] Yellow star in Slovakia: On 18th September 1941 an order passed by the Slovakian Minister of the Interior required all Jews to wear a clearly visible yellow star, at least 6 cm in diameter, on the left side of their clothing. After 20th October 1941 only stars issued by the Jewish Center were permitted. Children under the age of six, Jews married to non-Jews and their children if not of Jewish religion, were exempt, as well as those who had converted before 10th September 1941. Further exemptions were given to Jews who filled certain posts (civil servants, industrial executives, leaders of institutions and funds) and to those receiving reprieve from the state president. Exempted Jews were certified at the relevant constabulary authority. The order was valid from 22nd September 1941.

[9] Slovak Uprising: At Christmas 1943 the Slovak National Council was formed, consisting of various oppositional groups (communists, social democrats, agrarians etc.). Their aim was to fight the Slovak fascist state. The uprising broke out in Banska Bystrica, central Slovakia, on 29th August 1944. On 18th October the Germans launched an offensive. A large part of the regular Slovak army joined the uprising and the Soviet Army also joined in. Nevertheless the Germans put down the riot and occupied Banska Bystrica on 27th October, but weren't able to stop the partisan activities. As the Soviet army was drawing closer many of the Slovak partisans joined them in Eastern Slovakia under either Soviet or Slovak command.

[10] KGB: The KGB or Committee for State Security was the main Soviet external security and intelligence agency, as well as the main secret police agency from 1954 to 1991.

[11] 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.

[12] Solzhenitsyn, Alexander (1918-2008): Russian novelist and publicist. He spent eight years in prisons and labor camps, and three more years in enforced exile. After the publication of a collection of his short stories in 1963, he was denied further official publication of his work, and so he circulated them clandestinely, in samizdat publications, and published them abroad. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 and was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 after publishing his famous book, The Gulag Archipelago, in which he describes Soviet labor camps.

[13] 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.

[14] 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.

[15] 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.

[16] 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.

[17] 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.

[18] 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.

[19] 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.

[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.

[21] Hesed: Meaning care and mercy in Hebrew, Hesed stands for the charity organization founded by Amos Avgar in the early 20th century. Supported by Claims Conference and Joint Hesed helps for Jews in need to have a decent life despite hard economic conditions and encourages development of their self-identity. Hesed provides a number of services aimed at supporting the needs of all, and particularly elderly members of the society. The major social services include: work in the center facilities (information, advertisement of the center activities, foreign ties and free lease of medical equipment); services at homes (care and help at home, food products delivery, delivery of hot meals, minor repairs); work in the community (clubs, meals together, day-time polyclinic, medical and legal consultations); service for volunteers (training programs). The Hesed centers have inspired a real revolution in the Jewish life in the FSU countries. People have seen and sensed the rebirth of the Jewish traditions of humanism. Currently over eighty Hesed centers exist in the FSU countries. Their activities cover the Jewish population of over eight hundred settlements.

Semyon Vilenskiy
Moscow
Russia
Interviewer: Svetlana Bogdanova
Date of interview: May 2004

Semyon Vilenskiy is a lively and active man of average height. He is very sociable, easy-going and friendly. He is fond of his book publishing job. During the interview his phone kept ringing all the time. His friends, colleagues and acquaintances wanted to talk to him, and he always had time for them. Many people seek his advice that he willingly gives to them, as well as offers whatever support that can help them. He lives in a small two-bedroom apartment in a 1960s house in the northern part of Moscow. He has many books, and a number of manuscripts of his own and his friends – former prisoners of the Gulag. He intends to publish them all. 

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My father’s ancestors came from Pochep, Bryansk region in Russia [150 km from Moscow]. My paternal great grandfather Fikelman had four sons. To avoid service in the army [ single sons in families were not subject to the army service] the rabbi registered his sons as children of his distant childless relatives. Therefore, there were members of the family with different surnames -   Vilenskiy, Khazanov, Kopperschmidt – in my great grandfather’s family. I have no information about them, but in this manner my grandfather’s name became Solomon Vilenskiy. He and my paternal grandmother, whose name I don’t know died during an epidemic in 1920. They had five children: daughter Luba and four sons. They were Yosif, the oldest son, Mark, Moisey and my father Samuel, the youngest. They were born and spent their childhood in Pochep. I remember my uncles and my aunt well. They visited us in Moscow. 

My father’s older brother Yosif Vilenskiy was business manager of a big forestry estate. During the revolution of 1917 1 he became chief of a forestry organization. He lived in Sharya Kostroma region [about 200 km from Moscow] where he was director of the forestry. Uncle Yosif was born in 1889 and died in 1959. His wife Rosa was very religious and his family observed all Jewish traditions. Even during the period of anti-Semitic demonstrations they baked their own matzah and celebrated Saturday. There was no synagogue or a rabbi in Sharya, and other Jews celebrated all holidays and conducted rituals in my uncle’s house secretly from outsiders. They had two children: daughter Vera and son Samuel, born in the 1920s. Their parents taught them to not mention anything about their home at school: this was the period of official struggle against religion 2. They had prayer boos and a Torah scroll, which they kept in a suitcase. There was a mezuzah on their door.

We hardly ever met with my father’s other brothers. They lived in different towns. My father’s brothers and my father finished a cheder. My father studied in cheder, when Lazar Kaganovich 3 also studied there. Their teacher taught the boys to be courageous. He made them lie on the floor, covered them with a bed sheet, drew the curtains and told them scary stories saying: ‘Now you are dead!’ Lazar Kaganovich was the only one of them, who failed the test. Though my father did not get a higher education, he was a very talented person having an exclusive memory and great organizational skills.  

My father reached the biggest success in the forestry business. None of the Vilenskiy family ever joined the communist party. After the Civil War 4 my father was manager of the office responsible for restoration of the Eastern Siberian Railroad in Khabarovsk [about 6200 km east of Moscow]. My father worked in field offices moving from one location to another.  My father often traveled to Moscow. When my father was young, he was friends with Khomutov, who came from a noble family. The Khomutov family moved to America. During the first five-year plan period 5 Khomutov, inspired by the ideas of communism and suffering from nostalgia returned to Russia. He found my father and they went to work at the construction of a big chemical plant in Voznesensk near Moscow. I was only about 5 years old. I remember from what my mother told me that papa and Khomutov came to Moscow once a month and went to the Bolshoy Theater 6 with their wives.  When in 1934 at the very start of arrests [Great Terror] 7 they were invited to Moscow to receive their awards, but both of them were taken to the Lubianka 8 prison for the charges of sabotage.  My father had a relative, who was his second uncle Dubinskiy – I don’t remember his name.  Before the revolution this uncle was probably one Jewish forester in Russia working for a count. Dubinskiy gave shelter to young communists Molotov 9, Kaganovich and others in his woods. Dubinskiy faced great risks. The czarist police hunted for these people and giving them shelter might mean death sentence. Dubinskiy also got infatuated by communist ideas. After the revolution those whom he had given shelter became governmental officials. They remembered their rescuer, and Dubinskiy stayed to work in this forestry that became the state property. Dubinskiy had many awards from state authorities. He was well-respected by his relatives. I remember that when he visited us, he brought me toys, I remember the lotto game [popular gambling game – one player picks cards with numbers from a bag and the others place chips on the numbers he names. The winner is the one, who covers all numbers on one of his cards] and we played it together. He always stayed with us. When he visited us that time, he found out that Samuel was in Lubianka. He went to see his old friends and told them he was going to stay there till Samuel got out of the prison. They released Samuel, but executed Khomutov. My father’s uncle could not do anything about it since he was not his relative. My father never spoke to anyone about this incident as if nothing had happened at all. In the 1930s my father worked as chief of the forestry department of the Ministry of Aviation Industry. Aircraft were manufactured from compressed wood at the time.

Papa and mama met in Moscow. Papa was a friend of mama’s brother  Grigoriy. Grigoriy was a financial officer during the Soviet period. Papa visited Grigoriy at his home and everybody could tell that mama fell in love with my papa, and my papa, being a decent man, married her in 1919. He liked her, but that was all, but my father believed it to be indecent conduct to refuse a woman, if she loved a man – this was what the etiquette of good manners demanded at the time. My parents just had a civil ceremony in the registry office.

Mama came from a very poor family. Before 1913 they lived in Snovsk town Chernihov region [180 km east of Kiev]. My maternal grandfather’s name was Aron Belenkiy, and my grandmother’s name was Lisa. I visited them in my childhood, but I can hardly remember them. My mother said my grandfather finished a yeshivah and dedicated his life to religious activities. He had many religious books and knew Hebrew. My grandfather spent most of his time in bed, when I remember him. Some people’s faces enlighten and get nobler, when they grow older. My grandfather Aron had such face. My grandmother was a housewife. I guess my mother had 7 brothers and sisters, but I only knew some of them. They got together in their parents’ home. I remember those gatherings and delicious food. We visited my grandparents on Jewish holidays. I remember little about traditions, but I remember the smell of delicacies and Jewish sweets. They were a clan of a family supporting and helping each other. When my father was arrested, my mama’s relatives took turns to stay with us supporting my mother. 

My mother’s older brother Zinoviy Belenkiy (Ziama in short) finished a gymnasium as an external student.  His anti-Semitic teacher refused to give him an excellent mark in the Russian literature and language till a curator came from the district town and my uncle passed his exam with an excellent mark.  My uncle entered the Philological Faculty of Moscow University in 1911 or 1912. Having all excellent marks in his school certificate he was admitted within the quota 10 without exams. He graduated from the Philological and Medical Faculties. Since the family could not support him he gave private classes to earn his living. He taught the son of an officer for the mayor of the town.  The boy improved his knowledge and his father once called my uncle: ‘Young man,  I owe you a lot for helping my son – I could not handle this before. What can I do for you?’ My uncle said he wanted his family to move to Moscow. This officer said he could not help them obtain a residential permit to live outside the Pale of Settlement 11, but they could move to Moscow without a permit and that he would make arrangements with a policeman for my uncle to pay him 3 ruble bribe per month to leave them alone. My mother’s family rented a small apartment in Moscow and paid the fee to the policeman until the Pale of Settlement was cancelled after the revolution. My mother’s brothers and sisters finished a gymnasium in Moscow. My uncle Zinoviy Belenkiy supported them. Then they got married and moved to various towns. I don’t know the names of my mother’s brothers or sisters.
During the Soviet period my uncle’s professor of medicine invited him to take part in the consultation for the child of a big Soviet official and my uncle diagnosed the disease correctly. This was the beginning of his career as a private doctor. He married Rosa, whose father was an oil manufacturer from Baku [Azerbaijan]. In the 1920s their sons Lev and Naum were born. They lived in a nice apartment in the center of Moscow.  When the Great Patriotic War 12 began, my uncle volunteered to the front. He was awfully fat. He was assigned to a cavalry kazak regiment where they made him to ride a horse for 4 hours to lose some weight. Zinoviy was a well educated man. He knew Jewish history, Hebrew and literature. He was well respected in his regiment. He was a good doctor and did his job well. He visited all locations of mass shootings of Jews: cemeteries, pits, burial locations to honor the deceased Jews. He told me about this and mentioned the names of towns. People respected him for honoring the memory of his people. My uncle Zinoviy always stressed that he was a Jew. At the end of the war he was chief doctor in the Marshal Rokossovskiy army [Rokossovskiy Konstantin Konstantinovich (1896-1968), Marshal of the Soviet Union (1944), Marshal of Poland (1949), Hero of the Soviet Union, twice (1944, 1945). Born to the family of a railroad man in Velikiye Luki. October 1917 went to the Red army. During the Great Patriotic War he was Army Commander in Moscow battle, commander of Briansk and Donskoy fronts (Stalingrad battle), Central, Belarussian, 1st and 2nd Belarussian (Visla\Oder and Berlin operations) Fronts. In 1945-49 Chief Commander of the Northern group of armed forces. In 1949 — 56 Minister of National defense and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the PRP. In 1956-57 and 1958-62 deputy minister of defense of the USSR.]. On their way back home Marshal Rokossovskiy asked my uncle: ‚Well, then, and what are you bringing your wife, Doctor?’  ‚Nothing special’, - said my uncle. Rokossovskiy ordered his aide to take my uncle to their trophey stocks and my uncle brought home some clothes. He gave me a pair of cavalry pants and I wore them. We lived on the 6th floor and there was no elevator. When my uncle visited us, it was no problem for him to walk upstairs. He continued his private practice. Then he got blind, but his former patients still came with their children and grandchildren and he examined them by touch. He died in the late 1980s and was buried in a town cemetery in Moscow. 

After the gymnasium my mother finished a 2-year dentistry course, but she never worked. She got married and became a housewife. She looked after the children and papa often went on business and was rarely home. After my parents got married my father received two rooms in a 4-bedroom communal apartment 13 in the center of Moscow. The building was constructed in 1914. It’s still their, an old house. There was a sculpture of a knight at the entrance. Engineers and other intelligent people lived in this house. After the revolution some moved to other countries and others were executed in 1937, and the building decayed. Those, who wanted to move into this house, were offered to join the association of tenants for restoration of the house. They were to fix water supply, heating or gas supply. I was born here in 1928. In 1920 my sister Bertha was born. She became a talented mathematician. She graduated from the Engineering Mathematical Faculty of MSU and was a very talented person. Her teacher, an outstanding mathematician, used to say that women were worthless in mathematics, but Bertha Vilenskaya. After the war she was editor of the ‘Mathematical Bulletin’ journal. It was a very popular journal. In 1941 she volunteered to the front, she returned in 1945. She never got married, but in 1945 her son Yevgeniy Vilenskiy was born. He died from cancer in 1980. After the war my sister kept working for this journal. She died in 1983. We buried her in a town cemetery.

Mama was a real Jewish mama. On my way to school I had to cross the Sadovoye Koltso street and she watched my each step standing on the window sill. I grew up healthy thanks to mama. She was a great housewife. She was very fond of music, and she raised me to love songs and literature. She was a good friend. I remember, when in 1937 many of her friends’ husbands were arrested, she helped them with consolation and money. 

Mama and papa had a good life before the war raising their children and meeting with friends and relatives. The family got together with grandmother and grandfather to celebrate Jewish holidays, but later, when the older generation passed away, there were rare family gatherings. My parents were far from fitting into the definition of the ‘right Soviet people’. My father told me how in 1917 he came to Alatyr in Chuvashia [about 5000 km east of Moscow] where his relatives – young communists were establishing the Soviet power. They were fervent revolutionaries and communists. When he arrived, they were partying in the house. They had already executed some people, when all of a sudden in light of general intolerance to religion and struggle against religion decided to execute the priest. My father jumped out of the window, found this priest and told him to hide away.  My father had no sympathy to these drunken party revolutionaries and he never joined the party.

My parents, their relatives and friends gave up their parents’ religion and traditions. They were atheists. After the Pale of Settlement was cancelled, Jews began to move to bigger towns and to the capital. They associated their past, when they were not allowed to take part in public life, with Jewish rules, holidays and religion. Jewish young people believed this past to be dull and boring. They rejected all traditions. They already identified themselves with Russian, when all of a sudden they were brutally reminded that they were Jews. Once, when my father was an older man and had health problems, he came to see me and said he was at the synagogue. ‘Are you religious now?’ – I asked him. ‘No, I just went there to take a look at Jews’. He was drawn to Jews, perhaps, this was the call of the blood.

My father was a brave man and had good organizational skills. At some time he was manager of the office dealing in external sales of wood:  ‘Les Eksport’ [meaning Wood Export] in Arkhangelsk [about 1000 km north of Moscow]. In 1937 all brokers were arrested. Brokers were responsible for quality assurance of wood and support of the trade process. They needed high skills and experience to do their job well and there were not so many of them available. My father went to Moscow. He changed trains fearing an arrest. He went to see Mikoyan [Mikoyan Anastas Ivanovich (1895-1978) – Soviet party and state activist. In 1926 – Minister of Home and Foreign trade of the USSR, in 1946 deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Minister of Foreign Trade]. Mikoyan told my father to wait for him in his office and managed to have few brokers released.  There were no replacements, and to avoid paying forfeits to western companies, the authorities decided to release the brokers. My father told me that he avoided arrest in Arkhangelsk thanks to me. I was 9 or 10 years old, and my father took me with him. We stayed at a hotel. All local NKVD 14 officers were arrested. An officer from another town came to work for NKVD. He had his son with him. Since this man had to work at night, he left his sons at the hotel and we played together.  His father took us to the port on his motorcycle. My father said that if this man had somebody to watch his son, my father would have been arrested. He worked with captains of foreign ships waiting for wood loading in the port, and all of his co-workers were arrested then. 

Growing up

I went to the Russian gymnasium across the street from our home. My sister studied in this gymnasium. Later it became a Russian school. There were very good teachers in it. I studied well and didn’t have to work hard for it. I was fond of Russian literature and read a lot of Russian classical books. I became a young Octobrist 15, and a pioneer 16 at school. In summer my parents usually rented a dacha [countryside cottage] near Moscow where my mother, my sister and I enjoyed the quietude, the birds singing, fresh cow milk that peasant women from a neighboring village brought, and each other’s company. Many other people from Moscow also rented dachas and we socialized with them. We usually made new friends in summer. We got together to play the lotto, to party. My father joined us at weekends. He brought food with him. We rode bicycles, bathed in the river and got suntanned by the end of summer. I had many friends at school. We went to the cinema and theaters, played with a ball at the school stadium and nothing betokened the gloomy years to come. Like all other children of my age I was careless and had no premonition of the upcoming war.

During the war

In 1941 my mama was seriously ill, she had a mental disorder and had to stay in hospital. My father wanted to send me away from Moscow for the summer and he sent me to his acquaintance, whose Russian [Common] name 17 was Polina Mikhailovna, or Perlia Mendeleyevna Cheushevskaya, this was her Jewish name, in May 1941. After my mother died she became my stepmother, but my father and she only saw each other several times. This was a kumyss [Horse milk. Steppe people grew horses to produce kumyss. There were health centers for people with stomach problems built there. This horse milk was believed to be salubrious and doctors included it in everyday ration of patients] –recreation center in the steppe near Orenburg. [about 1200 km southeast of Moscow]. She was director of this recreation center. On 22 June 1941 the war began. Mama died in a hospital in Moscow in 1942. None of us was in Moscow at the time. My sister’s friend buried her. We didn’t find her grave after the war. 

Some time after the war my father and the Ministry of Forestry moved to Kuibyshev [about 800 km southeast of Moscow], and in 1943, after the turning point in the war, when it became clear that fascists would never come to Moscow, my father and his Ministry returned to Moscow. I stayed in the recreation center with my stepmother. I didn’t go to school. She bribed some officials who issued me certificates about finishing another form at school. I lived in tents in field hospitals and transported the wounded from the railroad station. I was 13, when the war began. My stepmother was eager to please me fearing that I might run away and then my father might leave her. My father came on vacation several times. They stayed together whispering to one another till late at night and I was awfully jealous. I knew already that mama was gone.  My stepmother had strong will and was not afraid of going against the law. According to instructions, she had to send her patients to the battalions for recovering military involved in the construction of fortifications, but she felt sorry for them and sent them to work in kolkhozes where they worked 2-3 months having better food than in battalions. Once she was almost subject to the tribunal trial, but the district commander helped her.  She also kept livestock in the center. There were 50 horses in it. In 1943 she was made responsible for organizing an evacuation hospital. It was slowly moving to the west till it joined the combat forces. She perished at the end of the war dragging a wounded military from a battlefield. In 1943, when this hospital moved to the front line, I went back to Moscow. According to the documents I had finished the 5th form, but I didn’t spend more than two months at the school desk through this whole period. In Moscow I finished the remaining years at school in two years as an external student.  I also joined Komsomol 18 then. My former school girlfriend worked in the district Komsomol committee and she issued me a Komsomol membership card, which was illegal. The official procedure took too much time while there were just few weeks left before the entrance exams. I was neither willing nor had time to submit an official request and than wait for an official interview and worry about this interview in the district Komsomol committee. And besides all, I only needed this to enter the University. I needed to join Komsomol. I decided to enter the University and this would hardly happen had I not been a Komsomol member. When I was arrested, I feared that this might come up and she would have huge problems, but my interrogation officers never asked for my Komsomol membership card. All young people were Komosomol members then.

After the war

In 1945 I passed exams to the Russian Philological Faculty of Moscow State University. The competition was 25 applicants per one student’s position. The war was over and many young people wanted to become writers. Then they publicized the results of the composition: there were two marks given, one for the content and one for literacy. I had ‘5’ for the content and ‘2’ for the literacy. I decided I failed and turned to leave the building, when they announced that the applicants with such marks as I had could be admitted as external students. Permanent students were to receive bread cards [the card system was introduced to directly regulate food supplies to the population by food and industrial product rates. During and after the great Patriotic War there were cards for workers, non-manual employees and dependents in the USSR. The biggest rates were on workers’ cards: 400 grams of bread per day], but external students were not given this privilege. Besides, we had to pay 100 rubles per exam – this was the price of one loaf of bread at that time and 25 rubles for one credit. If external students finished the 1st year successfully, they were to be admitted to the stationary department. I became an external student in summer 1945. I made friends with my fellow students. Many of them had at the front. Many graduates of the Philological Faculty, who entered the university in 1945, became good writers, poets and literary critics.  Once my co-students and I went out of the city. It was a beautiful spot, green groves and a lovely day. We talked and philosophized. We discussed recent exams and history of the USSR.  We were taught that a society consisted of workers and peasants. As for intelligentsia, it was not granted belonging to a class, but just an interlayer. All in all, the word interlayer was rather abusive, besides, we could not understand this. If there were more educated people, the other classes were to reduce in number and the interlayer was to become more numerous. I sang four lines with the tune of the Polish national anthem:
The intelligents
Have become rougher
The are agents all around,
And the first of them is Stalin.
This verse cost me a lot. I don’t know which of my comrades reported on me since the main informer was not with us that time. I was followed, though it wasn’t done openly. After the war our knowledge of the fascist genocide awakened the Jewish self-identification in me and my Jewish comrades. The press published information about the genocide, but they didn’t mention that native residents of the occupied areas had their part in it. Actually, we didn’t know the Jewish language, Jewish history. There were people of the Russian culture in my surrounding: the future philologists, writers and historians. This self-identification revealed itself within the Russian language and literature. There were poems, in which those, who arrested us discovered nationalistic motives. This was described in protocols and this was identified as a criminal action. The Jews, who did not know the Jewish language [Yiddish], found refuge in the brilliant Jewish theater in Moscow with its leader Mikhoels 19. They staged their performances in Yiddish. My cousin brother Zinoviy Vilenskiy wife’s sister attended a studio in this theater. My friends and I often went to the theater. When she did not play on the stage, she often sat beside us translating for us and our neighbors shushed at us: ‘Be quiet!’ – many Jews at that time knew the language.  Later, after I was released, I went to Jewish concerts and performances with her. She translated for me and the others yelled: ‘Louder, louder!’ This was a different generation that didn’t know the language. This happened just within 15 years.

In 1945 my friend Lev Malkin and few other University students were arrested. I would have been arrested at the same time, only I rarely met with my friends. Perhaps, for this reason I was arrested later. The trial took place in the town court. They were charged under article 58 (anti-Soviet activities). The court sitting were closed. One of my friends and Gulag fellow prisoners Gasteyev described the trial in detail in his book ‘The lives of destitute sybarites’ published in Russian in America. Gasteyev moved to USA. HE died in Boston. At that time he was also arrested later. I came to the court, when he was under trial. I saw my friend, when he was escorted in the corridor. The visitors, including me, were allowed to come into the court room, when his sentence was announced. I sat beside academician Williams [Williams, Vasiliy Robertovich (1863— 1939), Soviet Academitian, founder and first chief of the department ‘Basics of farming and plant cultivation’, a genius of the Russian scientific school of soil scientists and agronomists], whose son was under trial. When the sentence was announced, he dropped his hat on the floor. These actually youngsters were accused of anti-Soviet agitation, espionage for capitalist countries, corruption and disorientation of Soviet students and God knows what nonsense. My friend was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Later this sentence was changed to 3.5 years, but even this sentence was enough for him to never return and perish in the camp, stay there for good.  He wrote in one letter from the camp: ‘Philosopher Kant got up at 6 am and his work day ended, after dark. He lived over 80 years. I don’t think I will live 20 years considering the way of life and food here’. There was evidence collected about these guys and of course, my name was mentioned there.  My friend said at interrogations that we were childhood friends, but I was hopelessly behind him, that I was dull, and he or his friends never discussed life or politics with me. They must have been interested in dull people as well. They photographed those, who came to the trial.  Since 1945 they showed interest in me. My external co-student Vsevolod Kolesnikov was my friend and I introduced him to my university fellow students. He never invited any of us to his home. After school he offered me to enter the Military College of Foreign languages. He said he knew director of this college, who promised to admit him and me. When we came to this college, I saw its students marching and refused to go there. I said that the army and drilling were not for me. I entered the university, but we kept meeting. I recited my poems to him and talked about my vision of intelligentsia and classes. He replied that these brilliant thoughts should be kept for the history and put them down. I was flattered. I didn’t suspect anything. Only later I found out that his father was a KGB 20 general. During investigation my interrogators wanted me to confront him hoping that I would confess then, but this confrontation never happened. My interrogation officer said he broke his leg, but I just think he probably feared to look into my eyes. He also betrayed my other friends without any afterthoughts. When I returned to Moscow after I was released and the issue of my rehabilitation was under review, I went to this man’s home trying to see him. His mother was at home, but I never saw him again in my life. 

I finished the 1st year successfully, but the university authorities offered us to choose any other university in the Soviet Union instead making us stationary students as they had promised.  I tried other universities till I found the Lvov [Ukraine, about 1200 km southeast of Moscow] University. They admitted me to the 1st year again due to my lack of the Ukrainian language. Rector of this university sent me to Moscow to search necessary books for him in libraries. Again, I didn’t have a chance to attend classes in the university like I didn’t at school. I often traveled to Moscow selecting books for Lvov University, and the Lvov University also sent books to Moscow University as a gift. During occupation of Lvov Germans made a toilet in the storage of the university library. Many valuable volumes in Greek and Latin were destroyed. There was a military order in Lvov. This was the period of desperate struggle of the new Soviet regime 21 with Ukrainian Bandera nationalists 22. I felt myself a Jew particularly acutely in Lvov in 1946. At first I stayed in a hostel where my co-tenants were the Hutsul [native mountain Ukrainians, resided in Western Ukraine and Subcarpathia 23 students, most of them banderovtsy, from various towns of western Ukraine and Subcarpathia. One night I woke up and saw a Hutsul guy sitting beside me. He said he was watching me so that the others did not kill me. They hated Russians and believed them to be invaders, particularly those from Moscow, and Jews, who they thought kept the steering wheel of the Soviet power, particularly that I was a Komsomol member. There were only 5 Komsomol members in the University. It was not safe to stay in the hostel. One night banderovtsy hanged 1 Komsomol member at the stadium. I left the hostel, my co-student and I slept on the desks in the library for some time. Later we rented a room for three. There was brutal anti-Semitism that became common for few generations.

One day I went to the human resource department of the university to obtain some documents that I needed. The HR manager told me to come by later. When I came back at the time she appointed, she invited me to her office where only registered personnel was allowed, closed the door tightly and showed me a letter from the KGB where they requested information about my contacts, activities and attached a detailed questionnaire. I read it and gave it back to her without saying a word. She indicated to me that I was followed while she believed this was unfair particularly in view of the situation, when one of us was hanged. Seeing this paper, an experienced person would have tried to get lost in the big countries, like my father did at his time, but I went back to Moscow. I decided to try to stay in Moscow University, when it was impossible in Lvov. I stayed with my father, my sister and her son for about a month. I went to the university, but they didn’t tell me anything certain. I was crossing a highway in Moscow and stopped in the middle. A man with some weird face was crossing the street in the opposite direction. Without turning to me he said while walking: ‘Don’t choke with a fish bone. You are followed’. I saw some shadows in the entrance ways, but I was young and didn’t remember such things. I didn’t want to disturb my father about such small things and didn’t tell him anything. Once, when my father was away on business and my sister and I were at home, the door bell gave a demanding ring. I asked my sister to open the door. Few men swiftly proceeded into the room pushing her aside. ‘Don’t move. Do you have weapons?’ They took me with them and there was a search at home that lasted till next morning. They found letters, poems, notebooks, everything they could find. They found gunpowder on the entresol. My neighbor’s friend was a forester, perhaps, this was his gunpowder, but they added it to the evidence. There was a ready case: a poem against Stalin, wanted to kill him, prepared gunpowder, etc. I was taken to the Lubianka prison. They took away my boot laces, my belt, badges, everything made of metal. He first thing a man feels there is that he has to hold his trousers. They replaced metal nails in the boot soles with wooden ones and locked me in a box cell. Next morning I was taken to another cell with 6 other men in it.  There were spacious cells with parquet floors in the prison. Every detail was taken into consideration to exhaust, scare and humiliate a person. For meals we had cooked buckwheat, but with peas. We were allowed to go to the toilet twice in 24 hours. There was a toilet in the cell, but we could not use it in front of everybody else. My fellow prisoners told me that Zuskin, the leading actor of the Mikhoels’ Theater, and his friend were in this cell. There was a tale about him. One day, when he was escorted to his cell from another interrogation,  Zuskin dashed forward and hit his head against the window sill hoping to kill himself, but it didn’t happen and he was taken to the sanitary cell. Later he was executed. I was taken to interrogation on the first day. My fellow prisoners managed to explain that on the first interrogation officers imitate the particular seriousness of charges.  There were few interrogation officers waiting for me in the interrogation office as if the whole Moscow only discussed my arrest. There were phone calls, and some men came in and out with weapons. Though I was warned about it, I was still stupefied by these activities. They were not rude during interrogation, but they spoke with an anti-Semitic hint, as if they meant that Christian people would not dare to speak so deprecatingly about the people of power, whom one owns everything in the world. They asked questions about my friends and provoked me to report on my acquaintances. The Lubianka officers were the most mature anti-Semites I ever faced. There is no surprise that in 1952, when Jewish doctors were arrested, 24 those anti-Semites  arrested and brutally beat their chief prosecutor Doron, a Jewish man. There was an investigation and he was to be killed, when Stalin died and he was released. It should be mentioned that Stalin and the KGB office dealing with the so-called anti-Soviet elements, looked at Jews as oppositionists since there were many Jews in the Trotskiy 25 opposition. For some time I was called to interrogations at night. They decided to behave correctly with me at first. They said that my relative Zinoviy Vilenskiy was here. He cooperated with the power and was only sentenced to 5 years. This was my cousin brother imprisoned for refusal to report on others. Later it turned out he didn’t cooperate with them. They had no evidence against him. After 5 years in prison he returned without his teeth. My interrogation officers demanded that I signed the paper confirming that I told jokes. I didn’t sign anything and refused to admit that I was the author of these lines about Stalin. I thought that if they identified that I was the author they would shoot me, but they had no written proof of it. They didn’t beat me. This was a short period, when they did not beat prisoners. So they could not handle this situation, when they intended to undo an anti-Soviet organization, of which I was sort of a member, but I never said a word about anyone and never mentioned one name. One day they told me to pack and follow them. There was a truck with the ‘meat’ inscription on it in the yard. Inside it was divided into cages with other people in them, but we could not see each other.  At first I heard the noises of streets in Moscow, but then it became quiet. We were moving out of town for about half an hour. The truck stopped. There were birds singing and I heard the breechblocks clicking. I thought they were going to shoot us. It was scary, but the truck moved on. It stopped by Sukhanovskaya prison, right where the nuns had their cells.  This was a nunnery before 1935. They forced residents of few nearby villages to move out, chased away some nuns and killed the others and converted the nunnery into a prison. On 18 August 1948 I was taken to Sukhanovskaya prison. I was just 20 years of age. I got to know that this was the Sukhanovskaya prison only after 1953. I was taken to a small cell with cement floor. The stool and the table were fixed to the floor, and the berth was fixed to the wall. There was a transom window with blurred glass and wire bars and a narrow window sill. It hardly let any light in. I stumbled all the time and had bruises on my knees – I called it ‘a nose walk’. I knew, when the warden opened the peep hole to look in, and then I jumped onto the sill to breathe in some air.  They never took me out for walks. In 100 days I was outside only once, when they took me to a mental hospital for examination. Some prisoners lost their sanity in this prison. They screamed and howled at night, particularly women. I was not called for interrogation. I demanded a prosecutor. They sent me an investigation officer. I didn’t need him since he only demanded that I signed the paper that I wanted to kill Stalin. The warden didn’t allow me to sleep during a day. The cell was damp and cold. I was covered with furuncles. There were so worn out sheets and blankets in the Sukhanovskaya prison that it was impossible to tie them together to hang oneself on them. The cells were kept damp and cold on purpose. The meals consisted of 2 lumps of sugar and about 400 grams of bread ration. I cannot tell whether it was good or bad. It was damp. There was also undercooked pearl barley in the morning. I was young and hungry and ate this ration of cereal and then I suffered from terrible stomach pains. 100% gastritis for the rest of your life. Terrible condition. You can do nothing, you cannot talk to anybody, you are not allowed to read or write. My poems saved me. In these 100 days I wrote the biggest number of poems. I had to repeat them to learn them by heart. I worked with inspiration. I worked as hard as I worked never after. I remember all of these poems.
My sad abode, tell me why you need me?
Why do these bars divide the integral world into quadrates?
Why soldiers? Why wail of these innocent victims?
That I curse my every day and long for the salutary night,
There are ghosts here, and the hostile shade
It’s not the devil, but so much like it.
There were 3 doctors in the prison. They made the rounds of cell in the morning escorted by an officer and two wardens. One doctor demonstratively wore an order of Lenin 26. He had empty eyes and an indifferent look. He applied ichthyol ointment on my furuncles. It didn’t help, but the cell smelled of it. The smell in this prison was unbearable. Another doctor had the eyes of a morphine infatuated man. He was young and black haired, a sadist. He applied the ointment, but also squeezed the out – it hurt. The third doctor was a woman. She had a good face. She appeared later. Once we had a talk and I wrote a poem about it. It was like a ray of light – a living human face in the midst of this nightmare.
Where do I start? I start from what it happened before.
Have you ever been in a damp cell, so comfortable and tight as a grave,
A bulb in bars above your head?
My days were still like in backwater, the light came in through the blurred glass.
And the wheels – no they didn’t spin, but unwound the base of days dropping the fibers.
And I begged without calling the name of God, I begged not with words, but with my being,
For have someone to walk beside me on my last path at least for an instant and be human.
Once upon a time, was it autumn or winter
The door opened and a woman came in. Beautiful and alive, from the free world
She looked into my eyes and understood.
He asked me quietly whether my heart bothered me or did I have headaches in the evenings?
She told me to take off my shirt. The warden in the doorframe like an owl.
The escort and an officer in the corridor, registering each word.
And the woman said with a humble smile: ’Don’t worry. It will pass’.

I went on a hunger strike refusing from sugar and bread in the morning. Hey put my food on the window sill. I didn’t eat. They didn’t care. The longer it lasted the more excited I became. I began to talk loudly, sing and yell. I cannot tell how many days it lasted till finally the chief warden came in. He said: ‘Stay quiet’. I replied: ‘I will not’. I was taken to an isolation ward downstairs. I fainted. I recovered my senses, when they dragged me to the chief warden. He told me  to stay quiet in my cell. I refused and they dragged me back to the isolation ward. There was a big barrel by the isolation ward and I thought it was a toilet for gigantic prisoners. As it turned out they filled this barrel with boiling or ice cold water and put people inside. However, I can witness that there was no need to torture prisoners. Making them stay a little in isolation ward was sufficient, it was like torturing with electric current. At least after tortures prisoners could have some quiet, but here there was no quiet, all nerves were tense, women were screaming and one couldn’t tell what they did to them. He state of madness. Death everywhere. I understood that they were bringing prisoners to  the condition, when they agreed to sign under all accusations, and individual tortures were to become a 2nd phase. I recovered my consciousness in the cell. There was daylight, I was lying and this woman doctor bent over me. She must have given me something to smell. She said: ‘Start eating’. At first I could only have boiling water. I felt that she was asking me. I was taken to another cell, a dryer and warmer one. 2 or 3 days later this doctor came in again. She said: ‘You’ll be taken to a different place. I have to examine you for injuries’.  When she left, I saw a white handkerchief. It smelled of women’s perfume. I understood she dropped it for me.  Was taken to the Institute of forensic psychiatry named after Serbskiy. They were to identify whether I was sane.  They didn’t keep me long there before they took me back to Lubianka. A thorough search and a shower. The warden decided to play a joke on me. He turned on cold water and boiling hot water from the pipe at the bottom. I pressed myself to the wall screaming. He laughed: ‘Mistake’. During the search he found the woman’s handkerchief and sensed the smell of perfume. He looked at me, this inveterate scoundrel and then gave me back this handkerchief, a man to a man deed. He didn’t ask where I got it. He thought is I managed to save the smell of perfume, it gave me credit. This was early winter 1948. During the 1st interrogation the investigation officer read the statement issued by the Serbskiy Institute: ‘Sane. He is in the state of extreme nervous and physical exhaustion’. He said this meant I was not to be interrogated at night time. The investigation intended to complete this case. During a short period in 1948 they followed the rules. They were trying for a long time to make me accept their accusations. In May 1949 I was taken to Butyrskaya prison.  Hey announced the verdict of the Special council of NKVD USSR [ extrajudicial punitive body in NKVD authorized to issue sentences without a trial or attorney.], written on a thin sheet of cigarette paper. ‘Sentence under articles 58-8/19 (intention to execute a terrorist attack) and 58-10 (anti-Soviet agitation) to 10 years in special camps’. The investigation officer, who was not the worst person among other investigation officers, said at the last interrogation: ‘I only did what my bosses ordered me. You will go to the camp within our system’. At this time they were establishing special camps [1948 special GULAG camps for political prisoners: Norilsk – Gorny camp, Gorlag, Kolyma – Berlag, etc.]. Special camps were created for prisoners to stay in the area they were assigned to after they were released. These people had to obtain special permits from the commandant to leave the area, or they were sentenced to 20 years of penal servitude for desertion, if they left the area without such permit. The Butyrskaya prison was like a resting house against the former prison. There were many prisoners from Moscow, their relatives sent them parcels delivered to the cells on big carts. Every day prisoners were allowed 30 minute walks. There was a wide yard with high fence walls. There were about 100 prisoners in my cell. We were to be transported to exile all together.

When I was arrested, the management of aviation industry where my father was working, called him offering that he signed up a disavowal from his son. This was to be a pure formality, and my father could keep his job they said. My father asked for some time. He went to see his friends in the Ministry of Forest Industry and asked them to send him to the most distant and backward forestry. They sent him to Shakhunia in the very wilderness of Kostroma region, 500 km from Moscow where he became director. My father worked there till I returned to Moscow. 

I was taken to a halting place in Kuibyshev [about 900 km east of Moscow] where they were forming groups of convicts. We were assigned to be deported to the farthest East Siberian exile. We were transported in a cattle freight train. There were criminals in other carriages, but our carriage was for political convicts. The rest of convicts were cursing, but the ones in our carriage spoke the human language. We arrived at the Vanino port [about 8000 km east of Moscow] From there we were to be taken to Magadan [about 8500 km east of Moscow] across the sea. There was a huge halting camp in Vanino. I walked across all zones there. This was dangerous. There were political convicts in one part of it, criminals – in another, and there was a zone where ‘suka’ [bitch, a curse in Russian, in this case rapists and murderers, rascals and traitors, people, who came down – the most dangerous and despised category of prisoners, these prisoners who refused to follow the rules of the camp served its management and reported on everything happening in the camp] inmates. Emotions were boiling. Life was worth nothing. There were boards with posers on them by the barbed wire fence, separating the zone from the rest of the world: ‘Honest labor is the road to release before term’, ‘You can be released before term in Kolyma’. We were taken to the ‘bathroom’ barrack. There was little water there. From the ‘bathroom’ we went to the ‘barber’s’ where the ‘suka’ inmates worked. They had such blunt tools that they seemed to be cutting off the scalp rather than making a haircut. I remember an old rabbi with madman’s eyes. He grabbed his red hair beard with his both hands trying to protect it, but he suffered the same fate. Deportation… We were taken to the pier. Convoy wardens and dogs by the ship’s ladder and on board. Run, run, to the plank beds in the hold hole. Three-tier plank beds. I happened to have the lower one. When the hold hole was full, the wardens battened down the hatch. Criminal groups started taking away things from other prisoners. Screaming, yelling, cursing…My fellow inmate hit one thief on his face breaking his nose. They left, but promised to be back to kill all of us. Then the others came by telling my Lithuanian fellow prisoner to follow them. He had a talk with other thieves – ‘authority thieves’. He happened to be a former captain of this ship. At that time hardly any prisoners returned from Kolyma. The road to the ice land was visioned as death road. These thieves wanted to capture the ship, kill  the wardens and change the route. The former captain said this was not possible. There was a submarine following the boat. It was to torpedo the boat in case it changed the route.  At that time the criminals broke the partial to the part where women were kept. The wardens captured few dozen criminals from there and took them to the punishment hold hole, but the wardens themselves stayed outside, when capturing the criminals. The reason was that the toilets were not cleaned and filled the hold hole with terrible stench unbearable for outsiders to come in. We arrived in Magadan and were taken to a halting point. We washed in the public bathroom and our clothes were treated with heat against lice. We were given prisoner uniforms: a cotton shirt and trousers, a jacket, boots and feet wraps instead of socks. I didn’t wrap mine properly and when we came out of the bathroom they unwrapped and the others kept stepping on those black bands and I stumbled all over. I was assigned to the camp on Dneprovskiy gold mine, 200 km from Magadan, where I was kept for almost 5 years since 1949. The camp administration told the criminal inmates that they were expecting enemies of people 27, fascists, who were to be taught how to change.  Political prisoners of the 1930s were literally stupefied by what was happening. Any resistance to the camp administration was out of the question, but the situation in Kolyma was different after the war. These convicts were sentenced to 25 years – the limit sentence. They had seen death and  hardships of the war. The prisoners of war, who had been in military camps, but who did not become traitors, partisans and chasteners, Bandera people. There were also old camp prisoners (most of them invalids), students, teachers and other newcomers in the early 1950s, cosmopolites 28. There were also Polish, German, Czech and Japanese prisoners at one time. In 1954 they were sent back to their countries. Winter 1949 was hard for us since this was our first acquaintance with Kolyma. We were freezing, the food was horrible. The best food was cabbage. Sovkhozes 29 grew it in Kolyma. Dirty upper leaves were removed, placed in pans and women compacted them wearing dirty rubber boots. We ate the so-called ‘black borsch’ made with these leaves. This was sort of ‘vitamin-enriched’ food.  They also added some fish bones and cereal in there. The inmates dreamed at night that they would be lucky to have the bread heel, since it was under baked inside. Once we were sent to work at the officers’ storage facility where I stole a pack of butter and ate it.  I got so sick afterward!

In autumn 1949, when we arrived at the Dneprovskiy camp, we had to build our own barracks. We lived in tents, when it was -30 °C outside. There was a steel barrel where fuel was previously kept in the middle of the tent and one inmate was constantly watching the fire burning inside through the night.  The head was freezing to the tarpaulin and the heels were burning hot. On Saturday all prisoners were taken to the nearest mounds to make wood stocks. There was fire in the taiga and we were to pull up the burnt trunks (the roots were not deep due to the cold climate) and drag them to the camp. When we marched out of the camp the orchestra of other inmates played some merry tunes, but there was no music, when we came back. We were searched before going back to our barracks and the search took a lot of time. Prisoners had to unbutton their cotton wool jackets with freezing hands. Prisoners could not manage it and wardens usually tore off the buttons in a jerk. We had to sew on new wooden buttons each time after a search. Once I happened to be coming in with the last five inmate line of prisoners. The wardens ordered me to remove the snow from the right corner of the gate to the left one. Then another prisoner from another crew was ordered to remove this snow from the left to the right corner. Another time they made me wash the floors at the warden shack.  The warden shack was a 10-12 square meter house where few soldiers and chief warden stayed. At the Dneprovskiy gold mine we were to pan out gold from gold sand and other metals. When water freezes in Kolyma in winter, this work cannot be done, but that winter in 1949 the management decided to have bonuses for exceeding quantities of metal and made us pan out frozen sands. We melted snow and then we worked our scrapers in this ice cold water. Our skin got blue and cracked.  Hungry and freezing, we tried to stay closer to fire and our upper jackets and valenki boots [warm Russian felt boots] were burnt through. If somebody failed to do the standard quantity they were made to stay there for days. Once after such double or triple shift I came back to the camp, when our crew was ordered to fetch water from a small river nearby. Two inmates carried big ice-covered barrels on their shoulders, with the stick put through its bails. I was exhausted and refused to go waiting for a warden to kill me. One inmate – an engineer and inventor decided to help me. He had access to chief warden of the camp and he told him that there was a young writer, who could write a novel to glorify the camp and its chief warden. I was taken to the office of the chief warden. He gave me ‘chifir’ – black strong tea. A pack of tea was boiled in a tin. When the tea chips came up in the tin, the tea was ready. This was the ‘first portion’, then water was added again to this same tea and boil it again. This was the second portion. When the water gets no color, it is poured out, and the leftovers are given to the weakest inmates to eat it. I got the ‘first portion’.  Few sips, and my heart began to beat like crazy. Unnatural courage and strength, stolen from my future days. I agreed to write a novel. They gave me a table lamp and numbered sheets of paper. I was transferred into the 30th crew. It consisted of the inmates, who provided services to the camp management. There were artists making pictures for officers and wardens, the Hutsul inmates, making nice snuff boxes and cigarette holders incrusted with pearl buttons. There were inmates from the Baltic republics, whose relatives sent them money. They paid to be assigned to the 30th crew. There were many informers in this crew. We were to clean the streets in the village, fetch wood to officers and wash floors. This was easier work than any other in the camp. It didn’t last long for me. The chief warden had big problems for allowing me to write a book and I was sent to the wood cutting site.

This site also belonged to the camp, but it was completely closed from the rest of the world. We were to stock wood and before shipping it we were to clean up the roadway, 20 km long, so no inspectors could arrive here suddenly. Common nature for Kolyma: the snow covered valley, a river that one can hardly see, hills.  Two barracks on one mould. One for wardens, about 15 of them and another one – for inmates, about 30 of us. A guard tower between the barracks. He site was in about 5 km from the barrack. We went to work at dawn and returned by the end of the day. Each carried a thick 2 m log on his shoulder. It was severe winter and we needed a lot of wood. There were mostly Ukrainian inmates, the Hutsuls. They were called ‘westerners’ in the camp. There was an assistant doctor over 60 years old. He was to give each inmate one table spoon cod-liver oil in the evening. We had standard quantities to do, but they were impossible to follow. However, to try to do, one needed special skills to pile the logs. The pile had to be stable, though it was to contain much less wood than the measurement would show. This was a deceit pile. A log was cut into pieces that were added to the pile and covered with beams on the sides. So we filled the pile to meet the quantity requirements. We also did the following work, clean and safe: we cut the snow in quadrates removing it to the sides of the road with a wide plywood shovel.  I assisted the crew leader with filling up the work orders to show that the norm was fulfilled.  6 months later a former engineer (he was a rate setter in the camp) said that ‘if one was to believe these work orders, you’ve cleaned the road as far as Moscow from snow’. Te boundaries of our site were marked with flags in the taiga. It was not allowed to cross them and we were afraid of even coming closer to the flags. Older inmates told us that it happened so that wardens called prisoners to come nearer and killed them, if they crossed the line.

Soon we became exhausted. I fell from fatigue coming back from work. The assistant doctor wanted to help me I don’t know why. He took the risk of sending me back to the main camp with the diagnosis of jaundice. They didn’t take me to hospital since I had no disease, but was exhausted. Since I was weak, I was assigned to the crew working at the mining and processing factory. This was hard work. Besides, we worked in the open air. Besides, our crew leader did not like me. He was a thin wicked man with red cockroach-like moustache. He literally maltreated me. We worked near the forge by the river. One of my fellow inmates offered me to have a smoke. I stepped aside from my work place, when the crew leader ran to me and began to throttle me. At this time blacksmiths were going to fetch some water. They dropped their barrel and began to beat this crew leader. For them I was just a youngster, whom another man was beating. Spring... We were marching to work under the convoy. Inmates always tried to march inside the column or at its beginning to avoid being seen by the wardens. On that day I was marching at the end of the column. I marched alone. I marched according to the rules with my hands behind my back, but the wardens didn’t like the way I marched: with my back straight and holding my head high. One warden with a dog approached me close so that I could hear his dog breathing. The dog bit me on my gauntlet. I turned my head asking the warden to take away the dog, but this only stirred him up. The line already knew that the warden was tethering me, and the crew leader also knew it. When he loosened his dog and I said loudly ‘Move off!’ the line sort of stumbled and stopped. I heard the crew leader saying: ‘Take away the dog’. ‘Quick march!’, but the line didn’t move till a captain came up to march beside the warden.

Before March 1953 I was a common inmate and was not distinguished among others. Prisoners were allowed to write complaints. Soon I became a connoisseur of this business. Different inmates asked me to do this for them. This was a good school of literature. Some of inmates were heroes of the war, but none of them was released after sending complaints. Most of them were addressed to Stalin, but only few complaints were really sent to Moscow. The camp administration did not appreciate writing claims where they described their cases under which they were sentenced to imprisonment, but they did not forbid writing them either. But it was different, when prisoners dared to complain of the camp administration – then they were merciless. I was also known for telling ‘novels’. I just told them the content of the books I knew. When one prisoner heard that Jesus Christ was a Jew, he interrupted me and asked a criminal inmate whether this was true. The prisoner replied unwillingly: ‘True’. Next morning one of us, who was the first to go to the toilet, saw a neck cross in it.  Once a year there was ‘commissioning’ in the camp. Chief of the sanitary unit and officers were sitting at the table covered with a white bed sheet and undressed prisoners walked past the table. Coming to the middle of the table, the prisoners were to tell his number and turn his back to the commission. Based on the extent of his exhaustion the commission was to determine whether he was fit to do physical work. There were three categories: one for the inmates, who could do hard physical work (blacksmiths and drillers,); the second category -  the rest of inmates and the third category was given in exceptional cases, when an inmate, as other prisoners joked, could be looked through.  In 1952 during this commissioning I was assigned to the 2nd category with a minus, and the work setter was to send me to the mining and processing factory.  The factory operated round the clock. Two crews of over 100 inmates in each worked there. The shift lasted 12 hours. It took 15 hours including the time it took to get to work: the factory was in 3 km from the camp beyond the camp zone. I was assigned to the crew of Budnikov, an old camp inmate, who survived by some miracle. He was convicted in 1936 for political conspiracy and anti-Soviet activities. From the first days he began to teach me to be a crew leader. When he had to stay in the camp due to his health condition, he authorized me to take the crew to work. I refused many times, but he was insistent. Most of the members of his crew came from western areas, ‘poisoned with  capitalism’ while I came from Moscow and above all, was a Komsomol member.  He wanted to share his experience with me. I was to watch him setting the tasks. He sent some to do the hardest work, and the others – to easier work tasks. He had inkling about who could cope with hard work and who needed a little rest to carry on. When we returned to the camp from the factory, we went to the long wooden dining barrack with two rows of tables for 12 inmates. Budnikov told me to stay by the distribution window. Usually a crew received few additional bowls of skilly soup. Some crew leaders had these bowls on their tables allowing their stooges to eat the food, but Budnikov always gave this soup to those who needed it at the most. One day, when I took the crew to the factory and he was not there, an unforeseen incident happened. The inmates worked in the damp shop and at the end of the shift they hurried to the guard shack to not let the others wait for them in the frost. That day one old Estonian man fell asleep at his work place. I couldn’t find him. When he woke up, he rushed to join the others. It took me some time to release him from the furious crowd of prisoners. Later Budnikov reproached me for being unable to pull myself together and cut off the mess, when necessary. Once Tiazhev, an agent provocateur was sent to the camp. He openly called to a strike. Only later we found out that he had come from a women’s camp where he provoked a strike and many prisoners were killed. Some prisoners heard this from camp doctors and told the others. His tasks was to provoke other prisoners to confront each other. There was a direction to shoot prisoners at fault immediately. After Stalin died in 1953 and Beriya 30 was executed, the camp administration faced ‘rainy’ days. Professional KGB officers were thinking what was to happen to them. Perhaps, some officials from Magadan were trying to prove to the government that there were mortal enemies of the state kept in these camps and hard measures were quite justifiable there. A country needs jailers. So the officers were trying to provoke prisoners to violation to strengthen their power. Someone had to take the lead over Tiazhev and stand against him. The fate willed that this someone was to be me. And I managed to handle this. 5-6 crew leaders left 2-3 members of their crews in the camp one day having authority to do so at their discretion. They were strong Russian, Ukrainian and Tatar guys. On that day Tiazhev didn’t go to work. We armed ourselves with sticks and went into his barrack. There were about 10 of us. I was the first to come in there. For the first time in my life I was to tell a person that he was a provoker and rascal looking into his eyes. And I said this. Someone threw a log into Tiazhev. He ran out of the barrack and ran to the guard shack. We were following him yelling: ‘Warden, take your man back!’ Tiazhev ran into the shack and nobody saw him in the camp again. Shortly afterward all of us, who chased Tiazhev away, were taken to jail. We didn’t know what our jailers were up to, but we had a bad premonition. We were kept in a gloomy stinking cell. We were not allowed walks outside. There was a cement floor and a wooden plank on the window. All of a sudden it occurred to me what we had to do.  We argued for few days. At first only few inmates agreed with me, but then all of them believed this was the only opportunity for us to get out of here. On Saturday evening, when all crews were on their way back to the camp after their daytime shift, when villagers were going to the cinema, we broke the wooden plank on the little barred window and shouted as loudly as we could: ‘Beriya stooges have tortured us!’ Te stone mounds spread our voices far away and everybody could hear our screams. The crews of prisoners refused to go into the camp. Inmates in the camp came out of their barracks and ran to the isolation building. There was a crowd gathering in front of it. The chief of the gold mine called the chief of the camp: ‘What are you doing to the people? If they don’t stop shouting, I will call Magadan’. This couldn’t happen, if Beriya had not been executed. If it happened at a different time, nobody would call the chief of the camp or approached the camp, and we would have lost our lives. We were released. This day, when we were released from the isolation ward, was the brightest day in my life. Shortly afterward we were deported farther to the north, 400 km from Magadan to the Sosuman mine department. From then on the Kolyma chiefs began to transfer me from one camp to another. I went to the Chelbanya gold mine recovering gold dust. They have the narrowest pass ways in mines. From Chelbanya we were transported to the mine named after Lazo. There were two big parts in the camp. One was at the mine and another one – at the processing factory. I worked sorting out the protore, and worked the night shift at the timber storage. I had furuncles and high fever. I could not go to work. Before spring few inmates and I moved to the factory camp in the valley. I hadn’t recovered and looked miserable. I was assigned to be night watch at the electric shop. There was nothing to watch there, and it was quiet and warm. It took me few evenings to recall all my poems and wrote down the first lines. This was sufficient to recover all poems 10 years later.  Shortly afterward few prisoners and I were deported to the Sosuman halting camp and from there – to the lime camp – there were lime quarries nearby, and the camp got this name. This was a rotten place with swamps around it, not even a tractor could pass them in summer. This was a camp for the most violent infringers of the camp rules. A group of prisoners from Norilsk was transported to this camp. They were sent here as participants of a strike. In Norilsk wardens shot at prisoners provoking troubles. Once prisoners there refused to go to work demanding that representatives of the government came to Norilsk. Administration of Norilsk did not want to inform Moscow about what happened and brought in military units. The prisoners repelled their attack. They were all deported to the lime camp where they continued their strike. We had nothing to do, but support the prisoners from Norilsk. We refused to go to work. Each day the situation became more concerning. They said there were military units brought to our camp and that it would all end up in shooting. Almost all management of the department of Kolyma camps arrived from Magadan. Later a commission from Moscow arrived. They talked to me among others. I was trying to make them answer why all other convicts and former policemen had no convoy while I was kept under the strengthened convoy. When they saw that they could not reach an agreement with us, they sent me and few other prisoners to the remote camps in Kolyma. They sent us to the camp for thieves and then – to the camp of ‘suka’ prisoners. They made attempts to kill us, but we survived by miracle. After Beriya’s execution I was hoping that I and many other convicts would be released. I had less than a year to be kept in prison. At that time my case was under review in Moscow. Erenburg 31 solicited for my release. My civil colleague took my poems out of the zone and sent them to Erenburg, who read my poems, wrote a letter to the Prosecutor’s office and another letter to my father. I also managed to send my father a letter from the lime camp through my fellow inmate, who was released. This was the first time I managed to inform my family that I was still living. In my letter I wrote that I had been taken here to be killed and if my father didn’t help nobody else would. My father managed to talk with the GULAG chief. That day they sent a special representative to Kolyma… I don’t know what they investigated there, but 4 months later, in autumn 1954 I was released. I was released after my term of sentence expired. Hardly any political prisoners were released then. They only released criminal convicts. I was one of the first ones. I received a parcel from my father. He sent me his suit: I was as tall as him.

The camp department gave me 530 rubles to buy tickets and food. A ticket to Moscow cost about 3000 rubles. My father sent me some money and my fellow inmates gathered quite a big amount of money. 1000 inmates gave me 3, 5 rubles each. They were nice to me. I hailed a truck to Magadan. On our way I asked the driver to stop the car. He shut off the engine and we plunged into the quiet. There was the taiga around – almost all trees were cut down, but it was still a taiga and it was as quiet as it can be in the north. I bid farewell to Kolyma. In Magadan I stayed overnight in Yuri Strizhevskiy home. He was my friend from Dneprovskoye. His wife had joined him 6 months before. She arrived there from Moscow. They lived in a small room in a barrack: there was a narrow passage between the wall and the bed.  They came from noble families that lived in Arbat [Moscow promenade] in Moscow. I fell ill. They gave me their bed and slept on the floor. They gave me chicken to eat. I hadn’t seen normal food  for 7 years. I stayed few days in Magadan. They helped me to get a ticket to Sovetskaya Gavan, and I became a 1st class passenger on the ‘Felix Dzerzhinskiy’ boat. Recently this boat transported prisoners. Almost all passengers were former convicts from Kolyma. Many of them were in common camps sentenced for domestic crimes. Chiefs hardly ever came out of their 1st class wards fearing these people. They told me ugly stories about prisoners, but I kept silent. They understood that I was a former convict on the 2nd day and got confused. I remember playing chess with a KGB officer on deck. There were people crowding around. They didn’t care about the game, but about who would win. They shouted for me. I won. I walked along the streets in Sovetskaya Gavan for quite a while. This was a new town. I never again looked at apartment buildings with such eagerness. I bought a light-weight suit and threw my old wooden suit into the sea. 

I didn’t have the right to live in Moscow and was sent to Sharya town, Kostroma region, 700 km from Moscow, where my uncle Yosif Vilenskiy was director of a timber industry enterprise. I knew that my cousin brother Yonia Vilenskiy, my father brother Mark Vilenskiy’s son, lived in Blagoveschensk [about 680 km east of Moscow]. He was older than me. He was the tallest of all Vilenskiys. He was a good sportsman, when he was young. I liked him, when I was a child. Without giving it much thought I bought a train ticket to Blagoveschensk. Blagoveschensk was a frontier town [on the Chinese border] and I was not allowed to go there. My co-passenger, a frontier lieutenant colonel helped me. He said to the military checking documents giving his words much significance: ‘This comrade is with me’.  My brother met me in Blagoveschensk. We came to his home, but we went to walk along the Amur embankment. Then my father called me and said: ‘Come back immediately’. It turned out that my case was reviewed by Chief military prosecution office and the officer responsible for my case wanted to see me. My father took every effort to expedite my rehabilitation. I went to Moscow and told them about my case. A year later my case was reviewed and I obtained a certificate of rehabilitation in late 1956.

When I returned, I stayed with my uncle in Sharya. He fed me as if I was a child. He was nice and didn’t allow me to go to work.  After rehabilitation 32 I went back to Moscow before the new 1957 Year. Soon I began to publish my works. I could not have my poems published since their themes did not fit the Soviet publication rules. I translated poems by national authors having line by line translation and wrote reviews. My university friends taught me this job and published the poems under their names since not a single Soviet publication would dare to publish the author, who had been in jail 8 years under a political conviction. They gave me money for these publications. Some time later I learned to translate poems as skillfully as they did it. The ‘Soviet writer’ publishing house sent me to Nalchik in the Caucasus. The Balkarian people were returning from exile 33. My friend Golubkov and I translated the book ‘Balkarian poets’. This was the period in my life, when I earned my living by translating poems and writing review. Georgiy Sviridov [Russian Soviet composer, one of the most outstanding vocal composers.] wrote few songs on my poems. This was some moral support for me. I didn’t feel like being published any longer. After rehabilitation they resumed my University status. I finished 5 years, but I didn’t defend my diploma. I didn’t feel I needed this. By that time I was already a literature professional. I wasn’t going to do teaching ever.  Being a member of the trade union of literature workers, I did not have to be a staff employee and authorities could not blame me of being a parasite. This enabled me to walk across Russia and stay in remote villages. This became a way of my life. I met people and gained great life experience. Before the GULAG I was a very cheerful young man, but I lost a lot of this joyousness. On the other hand, I gained the experience and knowledge of people that I needed as a writer and a human being. I was 20, when I was arrested, but I was the youngest in the special camp. My imprisonment did not allow me to hold higher positions in my future career, but I didn’t want a career. I didn’t need it. I was still shadowed. I wrote to party and state bodies that I was squeezed out of the country. They dismissed me joking, but the shadowing went on. I felt on the edge of arrest, but God was merciful to me. 

In Moscow I returned to my former apartment, but when I got married, I moved in with my wife. She lived in an old apartment building for professors. It was a communal apartment, but we had 4 rooms and it was in the center of Moscow. My wife Raisa Gordon was a Jew. She was born in 1924. There were 4 generations of doctors in her family. She was a doctor, too. Her great grandfather and grandfather were doctors in the czarist army. They studied in Berlin. Her father, professor Gordon, was chief of the therapeutic department of the clinic of therapeutic food. My wife kept her surname of hereditary doctors. Her father was not arrested during the ‘doctors’ plot’ [Doctors’ Plot] period. When the people arrested under this conviction were released, they came to see him. He supported their families giving them money and treated their children. He told me why he was not arrested. Director of the Institute of Food invited him to her office and said: ‘Osip Lvovich, there is nothing I can do to help you. You will be arrested, but you will be the last one, if it happens’. However, Stalin died before they arrested him. Vovsi, Rappoport, all other doctors convicted under this case were his friends. Osip Gordon was a very thorough and nice person. My wife was a kidney doctor. She started serious nephrology in Russia. My father-in-law died few years later. My wife had a small salary. My wife died from the Alzheimer disease in 1993. She was ill for a long time before she died. She was buried at the town cemetery where her father had been buried. 

My daughter Maria was born in 1958. She was a good kid. She studied well. She finished Moscow Oil College and got married. She has two children: Rebecca and David. Rebecca is 12 and David is 5 years old. Maria moved to America 12 years ago. She has a good life there. She actually wasn’t going to move there. She happened to have the nephropathy of pregnant women. Women usually die from this disease. Since she came from a family of medical workers, the most outstanding reanimation specialist in Russia watched her closely. Academician Sakharov 34 and his wife Bonner made arrangements for an American doctor to visit here twice. This doctor said it would be better for her to move to America or Europe to survive. She had numerous blood transfusions and for 60 days she was kept on artificial respiration. In 1991 her family moved to. She wanted me to join them, but I refused. It’s hard to change life, habits and languages at my age.  
 
In 1963 I established the historical and literary society ‘Return’. It was illegal in those years. Its members were former Kolyma prisoners of the 1920s, 1930s, authors of memoirs, literature works, historical researches proving the crimes of the Soviet regime, and also, participants of the European resistance – prisoners of Nazi camps. The objective of our society is to preserve the historical memory and spread true information about the recent history of the country. We were supporting current prisoners (people were arrested again for political reasons), dissidents, their families; we published manuscripts and distributed them. At this time it was not safe to keep manuscripts at home. I hid them in remote villages. In 1988 I brought them to Moscow and in 1989 the first book about the GULAG ‘Still overbearing’ was issued in 100000 copies by the ‘Soviet writer’ publishing house. These are memories of 23 female prisoners of the Gulag. People lined up to buy it very early in the morning.  It was translated into English and published in America, England and France.  I wrote a foreword for it. Establishment of the society that had no official approval of state authorities or colossal archives of manuscripts about the Gulag was punishable at the time. I didn’t get actively involved in the dissidents’ movement, though I didn’t stay aside from them either. Another difference of the ‘Return’ is that we refused from any support from the outside. Western funds support many such organizations, but nobody gives us money. However, we have estate on the Volga – the ‘House of a prisoner of the totalitarian systems’, the only one of its kind in Russia. The children of former convicts provide some assistance to us. They help us to publish books and fix our equipment. Many members of our society moved abroad and their parents joined them there. The latter sent us their pensions and we could publish books on this money. We are the only specialized publishing house in Russia publishing exclusively books about the totalitarian systems. I have published over 80 books by date. The society published a reading book about the history of the Gulag in 26 000 copies for senior schoolchildren. The current textbooks in history actually have nothing about the Gulag and schoolchildren can study it by our books. 

I’ve prepared an anthology of the poets of the Gulag, it will be published in a series. Alexandr Yakovlev publishes a multivolume history of Russia in the documents of the 20th century. He asked my opinion about which documents of the Gulag I believe to be the most important – ‘Letters?’ I said – no, letters were subject to censorship. ‘Investigation files?’ ‘No, evidence was given under pressure and tortures’. ‘What then?’ he asked. I said – poems of prisoners, they are the documents. We published over 1000 pages, 315 authors. There are Jewish authors among them, and there is high poetry.

This is all I’ve accomplished. Our society conducts conferences ‘Resistance in the Gulag’.  There were strikes and uprisings in the camps. We worked on this subject and organized international meetings and conferences since 1992. There were 4 in total, the latest one in 2002. Up to 300 people attended it. There were also former Nazi prisoners, members of the European resistance and Jews. There were German anti-fascists Participants of these conferences were trying to warn the coming generations of repetition of the past. Germans arranged a similar conference in Germany before the 50th anniversary of the war. It took place in an old camp for prisoners of war near Muldenberg town. It was unforgettable. The camp existed since 1940. There were French prisoners, American pilots, British pilots and then Soviet prisoners kept in it. When the Soviet troops liberated this camp, they turned it into the camp for German prisoners of war. Many prisoners died there. There was a cross installed in the memory of all. The ceremony dedicated to the end of the war took place in the hangar where the ecumenical service was conducted. The procession to the burial location of Soviet prisoners of war was headed by three people: a former French prisoner of the camp, a German pilot, who made a mine under the Berlin wall and was arrested, and me.

I assisted with shooting the film ‘Stolen Years’. It’s a documentary. [Producer, camera operator and director: Vladimir Klimenko.] The film was produced in Moscow in 1994: at my home former prisoners of the GULAG tell the story of their drudgery and imprisonment. Besides, we traveled to Kolyma to shoot at the camp cemetery. I’ve never watched this film again, it was not shown in Russia and this is all information I have about it. It was produced in America. He film was made in Kolyma and at my home. It was made by American. The presentation took place in Washington University in Seattle. The script was written by my comrade Vladimir Klemenko.

I was invited to Washington to the 1st congress of prisoners of the Chinese GULAG - Laoguy. My friend Albert Lion, professor, translator of Oregon University, a great connoisseur of the Russian literature, art and language. He told the Chinese about me. I was the only representative from Russia there. The Chinese eagerly listened to what was happening in Russia, particularly that many of the studied in Russia in the 1950s. They sang Russian songs in Chinese restaurants. This was the part of the Chinese intelligentsia deeply attached to the Russian culture and Russia. This was in 1999.

Once I met an interesting person. She was Bronislava Bubchina, a philologist. My communication with her played an important role in my understanding of the Jewry and my attitude toward Jews.  She told me about her youth during the war. A Ukrainian family rescued her from death. This happened in a small town near Bershad [about km south of Moscow]. There were small Jewish towns there [shtetl]. In 1937 she visited her aunt there on summer vacation. She arrived there from Arkhangelsk. At that time her parents were arrested and she stayed in this town. In 1941 she finished school and fell in love with a Ukrainian guy. Some time after invasion he already served in the police and was escorting her aunt and her to the shooting place. The girl managed to escape. She took hiding in a cemetery and then at her friend’s home, but her friend’s, who was also a policeman told her to go away or else he would take her to the police. Later her friend’s relatives gave her shelter. This happened in Transnistria 35. There are no books about Transnistria in the Soviet literature. I decided to go there and interview the survivors. I traveled to villages and met with Jews. This was the only location in Ukraine where there happened to be Jewish survivors. I put down many amazing stories about the life of Jews, their rescue, sometimes they were unbelievable stories. I also collected materials about the underground. When I returned to Moscow, though, I realized time had come to tell people about the Kolyma. This was in 1988. I placed all materials about Transnistria in the archives of our publishing house. I haven’t got time to work on them as yet. I’ve always been devoted to the topic of the GULAG. Actually, it has been with me through my life, in memory of my friends, who perished there. My own poems and memories have not been published yet. Only a little Xerox copied book. There are also my poems in the collection of romances by Sviridov issued. I have prepared my memoirs and poems for publication. They are translated into French and will be translated into English. They will be published in autumn 2003. Besides, my poems are issued in the anthology of poets – former prisoners of the GULAG, and there is also my foreword in there about the camp poetry. I’ve just returned from Geneva where I read the lecture ‘The literature of the GULAG as it’s seen by a camp prisoner of Kolyma’ in their university. I think the topic of the GULAG needs to be studied as they study the Holocaust now. This is history of the 20th century. 50 Russian secondary schools study the Holocaust now while there are just few lines about the GULAG in textbooks, and the study of the GULAG depends on teachers’ personal initiative. In Germany private schools may lose their license, if they fail to take their students to the memorial in a former concentration camp, but we don’t have anything like this. 

I have a positive attitude toward perestroika 36, naturally. The totalitarian regime was the rule in Russia. A totalitarian state and anti-Semitism are integral since in such state it is easy to blame Jews in all failures and thefts. Therefore, democratization and perestroika of the state eliminate state anti-Semitism. It is known that Stalin was preparing the deportation of Jews. God removed him on time. We don’t know what this deportation might end up with. Unfortunately, perestroika has basically failed. Actually, perestroika happened to be hard and painful for the people in Russia. Besides, it was implemented by the party and Komsomol bosses, who had Soviet psychology and experiences.  In my opinion, American authorities are also to blame. Seeing that Russia was falling apart, they decided that the most important thing was to weaken Russia. The best method to do it was to support colossal segregation in Russia. They’ve succeeded in breaking up Russia, they share a great deal of guilt. Now it turns out that a whole institute developed reforms for Russia. When I visited America, I told them that we live in one world and our people are very close, don’t make them enemies. I think they compromised the idea of perestroika and the idea of democracy. 

I’ve always identified myself as a Jew, but I am a person of the Russian culture. Everything I’ve done in my life has been tied to Russia. I think Russia is a conglomerate of peoples. I believe the Russian culture and the Russian religious idea in their deep demonstrations to be exclusive phenomena.  Jews have made a valuable contribution into the Russian culture. Jews have been always beaten and Jews do feel themselves Jews in the Russian culture, Russian business and Russian science. I believe that the mission laid upon this nation – and this has historical grounds – is to ferment societies in many countries. If all Jews lived in Israel, nothing good would come out of it. It’s wrong to demand that Jews in Diaspora were citizens of Israel. This would only raise anger and distrust of the people among which they live. The line of Israel is very wrong, in my opinion. Each Jew is proud of the Army of defense of Israel, that girls serve in it, that for the first time in history this nation is as heroic as others. For each Jew, wherever he lives, this is a balsam for his heart since he identifies himself with this nation. The Jew identifying himself as a Jew, but his roots are in Russia, at some moment identifies himself with these people. He shouts from a Russian football team and identifies himself as Russian at this moment. There are also more serious things. Or when he reads Russian classics, this person perceives it closely and deeply, and his way of thinking is Russian at this instant, and he understands the characters, which is not like a native Israeli would understand it. I think that in any case after the Holocaust only some kind of degenerates would not acknowledge their Jewish identity or conceal their Jewish origin. If you are a Jew in basic things, what kind of Russian patriotism would you be talking about. I know Mexican Jews, who visited here. Hey are big patriots of Mexico, and this is probably the right thing. 

Glossary

Rahil Shabad is a petite fragile lady with a small face and bright brown eyes. She looks like the Biblical character Rahil, who was the favorite wife of the forefather Jacob. She was known for her modesty and kindness. Rahil Shabad is both kind and modest. She has a quite and distinctive voice. She is very brisk and agile for her age of 85. Even some young people wished they were like that. There were all kinds of things in her fate. She had to overcome a lot of sorrow. It was hard for her to stand it. She looks calm, but she does not smile a lot. Rahil lost her only daughter, who was an intelligent and beautiful woman. Then she lost her husband, who could not get over his daughter’s death. At the very beginning she said: ”I must have been made from iron”. Rahil lives by herself in a 2-room apartment of the standard house built in the 1960s in the northern part of Moscow. Her apartment is cozy and clean. There are a lot of doilies, cushions and rugs made by her. There are pictures of her relatives on the walls as well as the souvenirs brought from the trips abroad.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

My father’s family lived in Lithuania in the village of Olkeniki [Editor’s note: This village does not exist today. It might have merged with a bigger town or may have disappeared for some other reason.]. There was a Jewish Pale of Settlement 1 in Russia – Jews were not permitted to settle in big cities. It was not happening in Lithuania. Even in the biggest Lithuanian city, the capital Vilnius, half of the population accounted for Jews. Thus, the Jews in Lithuania could live in big cities and in villages. Piety was encouraged by the local authorities. The overwhelming majority of the Lithuanian Jews was religious and kept Jewish traditions no matter where they lived - in the city or in a hamlet. The children were also raised in religious Jewish traditions for them to become true Jews.

I do not know where and when my parental grandfather Gesel-Tsodik Karpas was born. He was a forester. Neither do I know when my paternal grandmother Rive-Malke was born. I do not know her maiden name either. Grandmother was a tall slender brunette with a beautiful face. They say my face looks like hers. Grandfather worked, and grandmother was a housewife, which was customary for those times. There were five children in the family. There were two elder daughters Hana-Feiga and Neha, born in 1885 and 1886 respectively. Then sons were born. Avrom-Itshok was born in 1887, Leib in 1889 and my father Haim-Dovid, the youngest, was born on the 20th of April  1893. In accordance with the Jewish traditions children were given hyphenated names. They believed if kids were severely ill, death could be tricked - for instance it would come after Haim, but meet Dovid and leave empty handed.

I do not know the details of my father’s childhood. Grandfather died in 1895, when father was 2.   Grandmother remained a widow with 5 children. I have no idea how could they have survived without a bread-winner. Father told us that the family was getting assistance from some relatives, but still it was not enough to get by. The eldest son and daughter Faina-Feiga immigrated to the USA at the end of the 19th century. They got married there and lived in Boston and in the towns in the closest vicinity of Boston. Avrom-Itshok did well. He sold ready-made clothes. I do not know why he remained a bachelor. In his lifetime he had been helping his kin, including my father as well. Part of the Avrom-Itshok’s capital was demised to the relatives under condition that they would spend the money on education of children and grandchildren. Unfortunately we corresponded with the relatives in the USA after revolution as of 1917 [Russian Revolution of 1917] 2. Then it was terminated as it was very dangerous [keep in touch with relatives abroad] 3. We did not keep in touch and I knew hardly anything about my American relatives. I only know that uncle Avrom-Itshok died in the 1940s and aunt Hana-Feiga passed away in 1936.

Only in the 1990s I unexpectedly found out about my American kin. I was on the Jewish Vostriakovskoye Cemetery in Moscow where my relatives were buried, including my husband’s brother Isidor  Shabad, who perished during WW2. I saw a crowd of people by the graves of my relatives. It turned out that one of them, Olga, came from the USA, where she immigrated with the kin in the 1970s. She was the first cousin once removed. She broached a conversation and asked whether she could help me in any way. I asked her to search my father’s relatives, who left for the USA. I said I would be happy to find out something about them. There was a miracle. Olga fulfilled my request. She found my aunt cousin Rita Carpas, the only relative of mine, who is still in the USA. Rita and I exchanged letters and photographs. I came to her to the USA for a visit. It was hard for us to communicate as Rita did not speak Russian and I did not speak English, but there were voluntary interpreters who helped us out. Besides, we used to communicate non-verbally.

Grandmother Rive-Malke never got married again. When the elder children left, she stayed with a younger daughter Neha and a small son, my father. The living was hard and my father’s childhood was over very early. He had to help the family. Grandmother apprenticed my father to the wood-carver since early teens. Father had been an apprentice for 4 years, which was a hard and painstaking. It caused the myopia because eyes were strained. When father understood that he would not be able to use his potential, he went to the Russian city Saratov [800 km to the east from Moscow] and entered construction school. He did well at school and decided to go on with his education upon finishing school.  He went to Saint-Petersburg to take entrance exams at the Institute of Civil Engineering. Back in that time there was a 5-per cent admission quota for the Jews [percent of Jews admitted to higher educational institutions] 4. Father passed several exams and flunked one. I do not know whether my father was not admitted because of his nationality or the lack of knowledge. Father went to the town Valuiki [about 630 km to the south from Moscow] and found a job as a construction/technician. Father liked to tell about his life in Valuiki. Both the workers and the management treated him very well and appreciated as a good specialist. Father learnt a lot in construction. He was supposed to tackle technical tasks independently and it was very useful for him. He did not feel anti-Semitism. Judging from his own experience father said that anti-Semitism was displayed in big cities and provincial people were much more tolerant.

In 1911 my father was drafted in the tsarist army. Father went though a physical in Vilnius and he was recognized unfit for the army service as he had poor eye-sight. When the military clerk was issuing a document for my father, he said that father’s name did not sound Lithuanian and put him Karpis. So the last name Karpis remained and father’s children and grandchildren got that name as well. Father did not change his name officially but Haim-Dovid Karpis is written in all his documents. In Valuiki father was called Russian name Efim [common name] 5, which was euphonious with his original name Haim.

Father’s sister Neha was married to a local Jew called Polyachek in Olkeniki. After the Revolution of 1917 they immigrated to Palestine. Some of our distant relatives said that some relatives of Polyachek family lived in Israel. There is nothing I know about them.

My mother’s family lived in a Latvian town Kraziai [about 200 km from Vilnius]. Their house was on the stately bank of the Western Dvina, abundant in pine trees. My maternal grandfather Leizer-Aba Tsentsiper was involved in wood processing, timber rafting and timber trade. There was a ferry by their house. It was the only way for the local inhabitants to cross the river. Grandfather derived a lot of profit from the ferry. There was a family legend about his extraordinary visual memory and his mathematic capabilities. He was shown coins of different denomination for just couple of seconds and after that he unmistakably could name their total amount as well as subtotals of the coins of different denomination. I do not know anything about my maternal grandmother, not even her name. I know for sure that she was a housewife. There were four children in the family: the elder sons Abo-Simon and Ehiel and daughters Esfir and  my mother Eida-Sheina, the youngest. I only know when my mother was born, it was in 1890. My mother’s Russian name was Sofia. Grandmother died young, when mother was a baby and mother’s elder sister Esfir died shortly afterwards. Their deaths might have been caused by some sort of epidemic.   Grandfather did not want to get married again, though he was not old. Grandmother’s kin lived in Kraziai, viz. Her sister Beila and her husband, whose name was Gaimer. The spouses helped grandfather raise 3 orphaned children. The family was rather well-off. Grandfather made a lot of money. His house was open to friends. He generously helped them. I think the family was religious, which was traditional for those times. Grandfather clearly and fairly understood that apart from Jewish education children were supposed to get the secular one. The three of them finished lyceums. I do not know whether they went to Jewish lyceums. I know that mother was fluent in Yiddish, German and Russian. When the sons finished studies they started helping grandfather with the forestry.

I do not know how my parents met. All I know is that it happened in 1910. They got married on the 8th of February of 1912. My maternal grandfather made a traditional Jewish wedding in Kraziai. First they lived in grandfather’s house and shortly after the wedding father was offered a job at the pipe mill in Poltava to work as a technician/builder. Parents moved to Poltava and in half year they moved to Ekaterinoslav [now Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, 450 km from Kiev], where father also worked in construction. There in 1913 the fist child was born, Evsey. Daughter Esfir, named after early deceased sister of my mother, was born in 1915.

My parents were rather well-heeled. Before revolution father got 110 golden rubles per month. It was a lot of money. Father said that he preferred banknotes as the coins of soft gold were given in certain number, but they were exchanged by weight. Besides coins could be easily lost if there was a hole in the pocket. According to my parents’ tales the life before the Revolution was not that bad. Father was operated on in spring 1917. He was in a separate ward and the nurse was at beck and call. She could be called by ringing a bell, placed above the head. Mother and children went to the hospital to see the father. Soon father recouped and was discharged from the hospital. Things seemed to have settled down, if not by a coming change – the Revolution as of 1917.

Father lost his job. It was the period of unrest, when construction workers were not needed. There was a total devastation. Then Civil War 6 was unleashed. Father ought to earn money for the family so he decided to make soap. He boiled soap and cast them in bars. Mother and father sold the bars of soap on the market. Of course they did not yield that much profit, but it was enough to get by.

In 1918 Jewish pogroms [Pogroms in Ukraine] 7 commenced in Ekaterinoslav. Our family did not suffer, but there were victims among Jews. My elder brother Evsey told me about the carts passing by our house. There were white coffins with the Jews - the victims of pogroms. The house, where our family used to live, was mostly inhabited by Ukrainians and Russians. There were few Jewish families. All dwellers of the house made self-defense squads [Jewish self-defense movement] 8 no matter what nationality they were. They were not armed, just used the hatches and clubs. Our short-sighted father also took part in that squad.

Growing up

I was born in 1918. I was named Rahil. In late 1917, before I was born, grandmother Rive-Malke came for a visit. I do not remember her, but my brother remembered that kind and beautiful woman. He always remembered her affectionately. Father worshiped her and siblings loved her very much. Grandmother was going to help my mother after I was born and then she planned to return to Olkeniki. Grandmother tended me, cooked food and watched elder children. Parents sold soap on the market and grandmother sent the elder brother to bring them food in the pots covered with towels. Then in 1918 Lithuania was severed from Russia [Lithuanian independence] 9, and grandmother turned out to be abroad. She was supposed to get the permit from the Soviet regime to come back home. She did not live to get it. She died in 1918 in Ekaterinoslav. She was buried in the local Jewish cemetery. She got the permit posthumously.

In 1919 there was the outbreak of cholera epidemic in Ekaterinoslav. People got sick and died. There was a serious unemployment. It was next to impossible to find a job. Father kept on making soap. Then he began buying tobacco from the peasants and resold it. Parents dried tobacco leaves, cut them and sold on the market. Then father managed to find a job at the metallurgic plant. He caught typhus fever during one of his trip to Kharkov. His distant relatives, who lived in Kharkov, looked after him. The Civil War was on and we and father were on different front lines. There were battles and artillery fire in Ekaterinoslav. We got used to the noise of the shells flying over our house. At night mother told us to lie down on the floor close to each other. She said if the shell was to hit our house, it would be better if all of us died at once. I was afflicted with measles. Mother decided to isolate me from brother and sister and put me in her room. The window shutters were closed for my eyes not to be irritated by the sunlight. When I was recovering, the shutters were open and there was a small aperture in the glass and a shell between the shutters and the window. Thus, closed shutters saved my life.

Once, when I was ill, the German squad came in our house. Mother offered the soldiers to take a seat and apologized that she had nothing to treat them with. She spoke German. The soldiers talked to my mom and left without taking anything. Armed people came in our yard in the carts. They say these were Makhno’s 10 squads, but they did no harm to anybody. The other way around, they were very generous. They took the loaves of wheat bread, the rolls of calico, cut them with sabers and gave to the kids who came up to them. Mother bewared them and told brother not to approach their carts. She was afraid that they would identify him as Jew and kill him with the saber. 

We did not have fire wood, and the house was not heated. Mother caught cold. First she coughed and then hemoptysis started. The doctor said that she had a galloping consumption. I do not know how father found out about that but he crossed the front line. He was eager to treat my mom. He managed to get the medicine for her, fish liver oil, but nothing helped. Parents dreamt they would come to the pine forest and inhale the healing air. But these were only dreams. The war was on and we lived in the steppe part of Ukraine. In April 1921 my mother died at the age of 31. Evsey was going on the 7th year, Esfir was 5 and I was less than two. Mother was buried on the Jewish cemetery of Ekaterinoslav in accordance with the Jewish rite.

Father remained a widower with 3 little kids. It was hard for him to get over mother’s death and he tried to comfort us. Mother’s brother Abo-Simon came from Latvia to help out father. He was a  citizen of Latvia and had the right to come back. Abo-Simon talked my father into leaving Ekaterinoslav for Kraziai, the motherland of my mom. It was not easy for us to get to Vitebsk 11 [240 km to the north-west from Moscow] and there we found out that Latvia-Russia border was closed. We understood that we would not be able to leave Kraziai, so he left by himself, I do not know that with him happened, we never saw him again. We must have been lucky that the border was closed, because during the first days of WW2 Latvia was occupied by Germans and Jews were exterminated. All our close relatives were killed by Germans: mother’s brother Ehiel, his wife and 2 children, widow of Abo-Simon with two kids and other relatives whom I do not remember.

We stayed in Vitebsk. Father rented a poky room with the wooden floor and ramshackle walls. We lived there in the period of 1921-1926. We slept on the baskets with the clothes of my father’s sister Neha. Before the outbreak of the WW1 Neha brought 3 large willow baskets with her things from Olkenikov to Ekaterinoslav fearing that her property would be plundered. Father watched the chattels of her sister and even when we were indigent her things remained untouched. He moved her things to Vitebsk from Ekaterinoslav, and from Vitebsk to Moscow to the evacuation, from one apartment to another. Her things remained they way they were. We started using those things when we got a notification about her death in the year of 1946.

In 1922 the mourning period was over for my father and he got married for the second time. His second wife was a Jew, Raisa Slobodkina. She was born in Kraziai in 1883. She knew grandfather Leizer and all his family very well. She studied in the same lyceum with my mother. She worked –as a librarian before the Revolution. Raisa took a hard cross by marrying a widower with three children. She diligently fulfilled her duty. She was a true loving and caring mother. In 1923 our younger brother Naum was born and in 1928 sister Maria. Raisa’s single sister Hava also lived with us. There were 8 people in the family and father was the only one who worked. There was a raging unemployment in our country at that time. Father was on odd jobs. The family was indigent. In 1924 father went to Moscow hoping to find a job and lodging. He managed to find a job in construction and his salary was rather decent for those times. The better part of his salary was sent to us in Vitebsk. Soon the organization where my father worked was closed down and father remained jobless. Again he was looking for a job. As soon as he found one, he invited us in Moscow.

In 1926 we moved to father. We lived in one room of 9,5 sq. m. Father worked very hard. In 1928 he lost job again. Father and Raisa vended cigarettes. Only in 1929 father found a job at the construction site. He worked and studied at the evening department of Moscow construction institute. In spite of the fact that our living was very hard father managed to graduate from the institute. 

I vividly remember the lane where we lived. There were 3 houses on each side. Those houses were so densely populated that the children from those houses would occupy several kindergartens. All families were large. Most of our neighbors were cabmen. There were few cars in Moscow and people mostly took the carriages. We lived in one room of a communal apartment 12. We were friendly, but life was hard on us. We did not have furniture. We still slept on the baskets of aunt Neha. We used Raisa’s sawing-machine as a table. The most important for my parents was for us to be well fed and to be healthy. They always kept in mind that mother died from tuberculosis.

All our neighbors were Russian and we were the only Jewish family in the entire house. However we did not feel anti-Semitism coming from them, though. We got along very well and were on friendly terms. Though there was one exception: our neighbor, who worked for NKVD 13 as a janitor. She liked to eavesdrop to our conversations standing by our door.
Parents (I considered Raisa to be my mother and was always thankful to that wonderful woman and later on in my story I would refer to her as to my mother - the way I  have been calling her all my life) spoke Yiddish between themselves but out of all children only elder brother Evsey understood it. First he went to cheder and then to the compulsory Jewish school. We, the younger, did not know Yiddish. Parents wanted us to speak pure Russian as they thought it would make our lifes easier. Parents also knew how to write in Yiddish. Raisa even composed verses in Yiddish during war times. Unfortunately nothing was preserved. Parents also loved singing Jewish songs but they were doing it in sotto for our neighbor not to hear them. 
I cannot say how religious my parents were. All I know is that they observed Jewish traditions. We had separate dishes for milk and meat courses and mother closely followed for us not to confuse anything. Mother enjoyed cooking traditional Jewish dishes. She was a good cook. We marked the major Jewish holidays in our family. Pesach was the sacred day for my parents. Even when there was a lack of products in Moscow father used to say: ”How can we do without gefilte fish on Pesach?”. He got up very early and spent hours in the lines to buy the fish and always managed to get fish home. Mother baked matzah and cooked traditional Paschal dishes. During the entire Paschal period there was no bread in the house, we ate only matzah. For Pesach we always had boiled chicken, gefilte fish, all kinds of tsimes, strudel with jam, raisons and nuts. We also had Paschal dishes, which were kept in a separate drawer. It was taken out only on Pesach. Parents fasted on Yom Kippur, but they did not make children do that. On Friday evening we had the rite to light the candles. Mother made a festive dinner. But on Saturday father went to work. It was an official working day and father could not miss it. Father had tallit and tefillin. Synagogue was rather far away from our house, but father went there on Saturday after work. Mother rarely went to the synagogue, on Jewish holidays. Parents did not teach us how to pray and did not tell us about the history of Jewish peoples. There were the years when the Soviet regime undertook an active struggle against religion 14 and parents did not want to aggravate the situation with our Jewish history for us not to stick out. Now, when I hear people sing Jewish songs and observe Jewish traditions openly I feel hurt for my parents who had to do it surreptitiously.
I went to Russian compulsory school at the age of 8. Our school was far from our house. There were children of almost all our neighbors. Sometimes we walked to school. At times our neighbor,  a drayman gave us a lift to school in his cart. I was a good student, though I did not get straight excellent marks. It did not take me long to do home work. When I had spare time I helped mother about the house, tended my little sister Maria, whom I loved very much. Mother’s sister Hava, who lived with us, died shortly after we moved to Moscow. I saw that it was hard for mother to do all the chores by herself. Some adult in the yard told me that Raisa was not my birthmother, but it did not shake my love for her and my elder siblings also loved her very much. She was a kind and wise woman and treated us like her own children. I think my parents loved each other very much. I think only mutual love can create such harmony like in our family. Father was a friend who always gave a reasonable piece of advice and mother was there to comfort and care.
Unfortunately, we did not have relatives in Moscow. Almost all father’s relatives left Russia. Mother’s elder brother lived in Kharkov. He came over very rarely as he was not rich. We had  kin in Kraziai and Vitebsk. Parents got along with them very well. Mother for instance kept friends with Mark Chagall. 15. All friends were Jews. Besides father was on good terms with his colleagues, school and institute friends. Not all of them were Jews. In our family nationality factor was not the most important one. The doors of our house were open to everybody. Mother liked to receive guests. She always tried to cook something delicious.

When I go back to my school years I understand that almost all my friends were Russian and the nationality factor did not stand in the way of our friendship. I did not feel anti-Semitism and did not even understand what it was like. I was a pioneer at school [All-Union pioneer organization] 16, then a Komsomol 17 member. I was an active member of society. I was very diligent and exigent. If I was given a task I strove to fulfill it no matter what impediments might arise. 

Having graduated school I decided to enter medical institute. I made up my mind to become a doctor because mother’s health was feeble and I hoped that I would be able to help her get better. There was a tough competition in Moscow Medical Institute. I did not enter the institute like many other entrants. I went to Kursk [about 480 km to the south from Moscow] and entered Medical Institute there. The institute was newly founded, viz. 2 years. It was in the premise of former prison. I lived in the hostel. I was keen on studies. Student’s life appealed to me. In a year and a half I got ill. My elder brother Evsey came and took me to Moscow. In a year I transferred to Moscow Medical Institute, but I was in the first year again. Remarkable people, best doctors of the country, great scientists  taught us medicine. They did not only teach us mere medicine, they nurtured good human qualities in us, to be responsible for our actions. Consequently I worked in Moscow municipal committee of the peoples’ control before it was reformed and my boss once said that I would become a good attorney as I fought for the justice and the right cause. I told: ”I would not make a bad doctor either”. We were taught to write the history of the patient thinking that a criminal investigator was behind us. We were very responsible for our actions. There were Jews in the institute but we did not cluster together by national groups. We chose friends by interests.

In 1936-1937 repressions [Great Terror] 18 commenced. Fortunately it did not refer to my kin, but everybody understood that there was no guarantee that we would be safe from them. There was a Jew Evgeniy Katsnelson among my fellow students. He was from Voronezh. His father was the head of Voronezh military command. Evgeniy was a tall and handsome blond. At that time he was friends with the doctor of archbishop. Maybe it was the reason for his arrest. He was arrested in the middle of the lecture. He was 18 at that time. He was released in some time. My friends saw him and said that he changed a lot. He was asked what it was like in Gulag 19, and he replied: ”Those who were there, would never forget, and those who weren’t would never understand”. Children of ‘peoples’ enemies’ [Enemy of the people] 20, whose parents were arrested, studied with me. They looked worried but they did not speak of their anxieties. We did not want to hurt them and did not broach the subject about their parents. I was too young and it was hard for me to understand what was going on without knowing their parents. But at the back of my mind I did not fully believe that ‘peoples’ enemies’ were everywhere.

During the war

In 1941 I finished 4 courses of the institute and had practice in Vyshniuy Volochka [about  300 km to the north west from Moscow] together with 10 girls. I clearly remember the outbreak of war, on the 22nd June of 1941 [Great Patriotic War] 21. It was a warm sunny day boding no tribulation. We went swimming to the river. When we were on the way back from the beach we heard on the radio (there were loud-speaker outdoors) that the war was unleashed. We immediately began to think what to do. We went to the chief doctor of Vyshniy Volochek. He told us: ”It’s up to you”, he did not have time to bother with us. Then we decided that it was time for us to come back to Moscow. It was hard and painstaking to get to Moscow. It was next to impossible to buy the tickets to Moscow. We turned grown-up swiftly being serious and sensible. The roads were crowed with people carrying children and their things, we understood that it was a calamity. First we walked, then we were given a lift by the passing vehicles. We tried to keep together. By the fall we managed to get to Moscow. When we came back to Moscow, our institute had been already evacuated. Our documents were scattered around the institute building. It was October 1941. Moscow was panic stricken.  Germans were approaching Moscow. We started looking for the documents and managed to find them. It was written in our documents that each of us was a doctor, having finished only 4 courses, but not a full course of studies.

At home it turned out that the organization where my father worked was evacuated to Kuibyshev [now Samara, about 950 km to the east from Moscow] together with the employees and their families. My parents left as well. Our family was scattered all over the country. Younger sister Maria was in the pioneer’s camp. All children from the camp were taken somewhere without parents  preliminary being informed. It took pains for my mother to find out that the children were taken in the vicinity of Saratov. She went there to that pioneer camp, in a disastrous state, and took Maria to Kuibyshev. Elder brother Evsey had defended dissertation [Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] 22, he was promised a brilliant future. He was on the business trip. Elder sister Esfir graduated from Moscow Engineering and Construction Institute and worked as per mandatory job assignment [Mandatory job assignment in the USSR] 23 in Ural. I and my younger brother Naum remained in Moscow. In 1941 Naum finished the first course of Moscow Energy Institute, Automation Department. Almost at the same time we came to the military enlistment office and voluntarily joined the Soviet Army. Naum was in the artillery troops and in 1942 he was killed in action in the bounds of Kerch. Evsey was sent to tank troops.

I happened to be in Kuibyshev, where SES (Sanitary and Epidemiology Squad) #35 was formed. Each army had its own SES. Our squad was by 48th attack army and followed the army, sometimes even being ahead of the troops. Personnel and laboratories were in the emergency trucks covered with tarpaulin. I was sent to Elets [360 km to the South from Moscow] to get the emergency vehicles. I was assigned the head of the column and was to get the vehicles to Bryansk front [350 km to the south-west from Moscow]. It was November 1941. I was a young girl and all drivers were men much older than me. There was a military doctor Egorov with us. He turned out to be an alcoholic. He drank up all spirit which was given to us for medical purpose.

Sanitary and epidemiologic unit takes credit that there was no outbreak of epidemic for the entire period of war neither in the front lines nor in partisan squads. A lot of preventive measures were taken. Chambers of sanitary processing also were a great achievement. In battle conditions militaries did have a chance to change their clothes. Nobody took bath after staying in the trenches. So the uniforms were processed in those chambers, so there were no epidemics. Moreover, I think that physicians did colossal work with the help of the leading experts were highly-skilled professors, academicians. They managed to assist the army.

SES work was dangerous and hard. There was time when I was about to stay in Pinsk marshes for good. It was winter. Medical assistant Klyuev and I were on our way back from the place where we were to fulfill the task. The ice was not strong enough and we fell in ice-cold water. My heavy rubber boots stuck to the bottom and it appeared that I would never be able to get out of the bog. But I did! I was afflicted with polyarthritis. My legs hurt and got swollen so I had to cut my boots. Besides during the war times I was wounded and got a contusion. We were caught in the fire and I had a light fragment wound in the knee-joint. The bone remained untouched. I was in the hospital.

When it was time for me to be discharged from the hospital they suggested that I should stay there for medical service as an attending physician of field mobile hospital of attack army #48. My military service was over in this hospital and my career was ended at the rank of acting head of the department. Being in the ranks of that army I went to Bryansk, Central, 1st attack army and Far East fronts. It  was on the leading edge. Our hospital was called ‘first line’ hospital. It meant that we were in the immediate vicinity of the front line. The wounded were taken to us straight from the trenches. Moreover, we did not stay in one place longer than for 2-3 days. The hospital moved on trucks, sleighs and carts. Good thing if we managed to settle in any houses, but usually we lived in the tents, 25 people in each. We also operated in the tents as well. The entire medical staff lived in the tents, including the chief surgeon. He was offered a separate place, but he said: “No, I will stay only with the girls”. The partitions were made with the bed sheets. We slept on the floor. Bunks were made only for the wounded. There was no comfort at all. It was hard for ladies to keep hygiene as there were no special uniforms for women. For instance there was no underwear for ladies. It was good that we were given head kerchiefs and we made bras from them. We were clad in military uniform: rubber boots and overcoat. The uniform was not given by size, just whatever commissary had in stock. We put the documents in the breast pockets of the blouse. We were supposed to carry them always as there was no place to keep them. There was no certain place to sleep. We had to stay in the tents even during winter if there no houses close by.

The hospital was receiving patients - round o’clock. I do not remember how many wounded we had per day on the average. All I know is that there were days when there were hundreds of wounded. The medical personnel had to sleep for 2-3 hours per day. There were only 8 doctors and the rest were nurses. Wounded were carried by the nurses and orderlies (out of those who were recovering). In the event when there were a lot of wounded after the battle, everybody, including all doctors, took the stretches and carried the wounded. Patients were also brought from medical battalion and from the leading edge. Though, medical battalion was supposed to take the wounded from the battle field and from there the wounded were taken to our hospital. But in fact, it was not observed. There were times when the medical battalion and our hospital were in different places. Sometimes we stood in front of the medical battalion, in the immediate vicinity. That is why orderlies from the front line took the wounded straight to us. We were supposed to allocate the wounded very swiftly - some of them could be taken to more remote tents, others were to be operated on immediately. The flow of wounded was very large. The patients were taken in sleighs, carts, horses and freight cars. The came to us and then they were to be taken to the clearing hospital. We were supposed to assist the wounded. Severely wounded were sent in the rear and those who had lighter wounds were operated on the table, treated for a while before going back to the lines.

Out of 8 surgeons only two of them had practice in operations and the six, who were to become therapists, neurologists or oculists. I was specialized in pediatrics. The six girls had spent hours by the operating table. Every day there were lectures in field surgery and simultaneous exams. The lectures were held by the chief physician of the hospital Alexander Pavlov and his deputy, the leading surgeon Peter Illionov right in the middle of the operation, in the tent imbued in blood, passing from one operating table. We were asked: “What are you to do next? What will be your steps?” Those teachers had a vast experience. They were wonderful experts in abdominal operations. The first war years, when the army was retreating, were very fierce in all respects. We performed a load of work - over  73% of the wounded were put in the lines. I was straight from the university, without any practical experience and expertise and there was always a consultant by me. Of course, diagnostics was of paramount importance, especially in our conditions. There was no way to prove. Our mentors close by helped us to diagnose, especially taking into the conditions. They were near no matter what. There was no way we could be mistaken. The leading surgeon and the chief physician of the hospital were constantly advising us and stayed close. They treated us very well, with understanding. I think they made true doctors out of us. I deeply respect them and thank for everything. I will always keep them in my heart. I did not look like an experienced doctor. I remember there was a case of gas gangrene. The colonel was supposed to be operated immediately and was to conduct the operation as the leading surgeon was scheduled to perform abdominal operations. The colonel refused and said: “I do not trust my life to the callow girl”. I came to the chief physician of the hospital, the major, and reported that the patient was against my operating him, however gas gangrene was to be operated immediately. The chief physician came to the colonel and said that unfortunately there was no other doctor available and he would be thankful to that ‘callow youth’. I made the operation and we were able to save his leg. The patient was sent to the evacuation hospital and I never saw him again. I received a lot of thank-you letters from the patients whom I operated.

There was a lack of medicine and bandage materials. We, the medics, found the way out. We washed the bandages and made the contraptions from the fence boards to transport the wounded as well as splints and crutches. We were supposed to be gumptious and brave. We studied military field surgery at the institute, but in actuality things were different. We had to come up with all kinds of mobile bandages and find a solution how to transport the wounded without injuring him. We made a use of everything we saw. We were supplied with narcosis for amputation and pills on time. We enjoyed launch of penicillin production was launched and we started to use it. When there was an abdominal wounded we put a lot of penicillin for disinfection. We also had portable disinfection chambers. The clothes were decontaminated as the soldiers were lice-ridden because they did not have a chance to take a bath. We did not recognize the world wary. We did not accept ‘I cannot’, ‘I do not know how’, we only knew ‘I must’. We had been working hard round o’clock. Now, when I recollect the military years I am thinking how could we possibly stand that? Maybe we were young and it was easier. War made us sturdy. We did not think of ourselves nor felt sorry for ourselves. My main job was to amputate arms and legs. It was hard to conduct such operation for young people both from the moral and physical standpoint. I was supposed to hold on heavy amputated part. I also operated on light abdominal wounds and lungs.  

We were fed pretty well. We ate the same things as the wounded, who were supposed to have good calories to get better. We also were supposed to test food before it was given to the wounded, made the menu for the wounded and calculate the calories. As far as I remember one egg was equal to 125 grams of meat in terms of calories. Egg powder was widely used. We had our own cooks. I cannot judge how skilled they were but the food was fresh and there was no stealing. I remember we were given canned sausage. We facetiously called it ’Roosevelt’s smile’. The sausage was supplied from America as the assistance in accordance with lend-lease [Editor’s note: lend-lease is the system of transfer  (loan or lease) of weaponry, ammunition, strategic raw materials, provision etc.; supplies in terms of lend-lease were made by USA to the ally-countries on anti-Hitler coalition in the period of the second world war. The law on lend-lease was adopted by USA Congress in 1941]. Egg powder was also American. We received additional ration. Men were given cigarettes and the ladies German chocolate. The officers were also given 25 grams of cookies per day and we shared it with everybody. Though, cookies were not given every day. I cannot say that we were starving. There was no luxury, but there was no famish either. There were times when there was no chance for us to grab a bite because there was a large flow of the wounded. The most important was to assist the wounded and feed them. It took a long time to operate, then there was a break and we were supposed to save sterile materials and hands. Sweet tea was brought to the operation table to support us. At times we did not care for food as there was a lack of spirit and our hands were supposed to be sterile. Sometimes we had to process our hands with iodine no matter that our hands wound be burnt.

Our ‘idol’, the surgeon Ivanov had one pet peeve. That intelligent person swore like a bargee during the operation and I could not get used to it. After contusion I was delirious. Once, my friends heard me swearing in my delirium: ”Shame on you! I have never heard such expressions at home!” – it was the way I talked to Ivanov in my dream. He was informed about that. He felt ashamed and calmed down.

I also remember the episode in Bryansk forests when our troops were retreating. There were great many wounded. The hospital dislocated in the forest and was scattered it different huts. There was an aerodrome close by. Suddenly I received the order from the chief physician of the hospital regarding evacuation. I was supposed to stay with the severely wounded in lungs and abdomen, who could not be transported. I was given a truck but taking into account the state of the wounded I would not use it anyway. In the evening the aircraft landed by the hospital. I was so surprised when I saw the pilot, my Moscow acquaintance Anatoliy Kiselev, the former cadet of aviation school of Tushinskiy aerodrome. In 1939 being a student of the medical institute I had a part-time job on the aerodrome on the night duty. I met Anatoliy there. We had not seen each other since. Anatoliy said that Germans were expected here pretty soon and offered his help. I said that the most important task for me was to evacuate the wounded and Anatoliy promised to assist me in that. Before soon the whole squadron flew and they loaded the wounded in the planes. Hardly had we taken off, when the Germans occupied the place we left. We were taken to the hospital.

Battles in the vicinity of Kursk [Kursk battle] 24 laid an imprint on me as there was a large flow of the wounded. We hardly ate and slept as there were constant operations. My legs were swollen because I had been standing by the operating table for a long time. I will always bear in mind forced crossing of Dnestr in fall 1943. Our troops were attacking. Our army was supposed to undergo forced crossing. We turned out to be in Rechitse [about 1500 km to the South-West from Moscow]. By that time I was acting chief of the department. We settled at school, not far from the river. I still remember the school building, where our hospital was positioned. I vividly remember the layout.  The entire 4-storied building was occupied with numerous wounded. The battles were fierce. Our troops managed to cross Dnestr, but could not go further as they were besieged. We operated on the school desks. We used kerosene or gasoline lamps instead of operation lamps. Suddenly one of the lamps fell and desks were on fire. I did not think of myself at that moment. I tried to admonish the wounded from knowing about the fire but they were panic-mongers. We tried hard to put out the fire by using our jackets and some of the convalescing patients were helping us. We managed to quench the fire and at that time the commandment came over to see us - army commander, front commander, several generals. I made the report on the situation. They looked at me and burst into laughter. I did not understand what was happening. It turned out that they were laughing at my face, dirty with soot. I was conferred Great Patriotic War Order of the second class 25 for quenching the fire.

There were 2 Jews in the hospital - I and doctor Maya Borisovna. Both the doctors and wounded treated us very well. We did not feel any anti-Semitism. During one of the hardest period – when our army was retreating – the chief physician told me not to leave far from the territory as I might get into trouble because of my nationality. Everybody knew that fascists were exterminating Jews. I had never heard any disrespectful word towards me. I knew that Germans were exterminating Jews, taking them to ghettos, concentration camps, but I did not know the details. When the war was winding we liberated 2 concentration camps. I have not seen those camps. The army entered the camps, we just received the wounded and sick from there. We also treated civilian Germans and military captives. Maybe I should take more interest in the thing not relating to my job, but in the first place I was to be responsible for the patients I was treating. There were only few German captives. We treated them as human beings. I think that common people should not be responsible for the things happening. They suffered as well, either themselves or their families. The leaders and commanders were to blame. Rank and file Germans just were fulfilling the orders of their commanders.

In autumn 1944 I took the floor at the conference of the front-line surgeons as a representative of the military surgeons attack army #48. My report on ‘Surgical methods of thorax treatment’ was approved by chief front-line surgeon, general Akhutin. He told me that it was a real dissertation and suggested that I should enroll for residency training.

When I was in the front lines, I joined the Party. It stood to reason for me as I considered myself to be a true communist. Like most of people I believed in Party. I was involved in active social work being a Party member. When I was working in the hospital I was the chairman of the local committee [Mestkom] 26, the secretary of Party organization. I was rather industrious.

We were very young during the war. If we if those were peaceful times it would be the age of love and sizzling passion. Front-lines were not the right place for love affaires. All thoughts and instincts were directed towards rescuing lives and assisting people. Many lives were saved and each case was unique. None of our wounded was stricken with post-operation gas gangrene. Surgeons can understand how hard it must have been for us. We made strap discussions on the leg in order to prevent gangrene and it helped. It did not do anything at random. Our mentor taught us how to diagnose properly. Besides, we were supposed to brief our mentor on the plan of operation before we started it.  By the end of war we were considered to be experienced surgeons and our mentors trusted us to work independently. I thought over all my steps before each operation. 10 years passed after war and I still saw in my dreams the operation I was doing during the war times. I woke up so tired as if it was in real life.

When Konigsberg 27 [about 1000 km to the west from Moscow] was captured by our troops in 1945 our army stopped. Battles were held on another front line, out of Berlin. We were in high spirits. It was warm spring and everybody understood that the war was coming to an end. We did not stay by Konigsberg for a long time. Then we got on freight cars and went to another destination. Nobody told us where we were heading. The commander of the hospital was given a package with the order. He was supposed to open it in certain point. We were on the road for a long time. When the train stopped we were told that we came to Moscow. We were rejoicing! They did not even let us take off the train. In Moscow the chief of the hospital opened up the package and we found out that we were heading for Far East. In Moscow we found about the capitulation of Germany on the 9th of May 1945. We were exulting. Nobody knew that new war was ahead of us, the Japanese war [War with Japan] 28.

It was the time when we thought what was happening to our kin. I corresponded with my parents and knew what was going on with them. My parents and Maria were in evacuation. Life was hard on them. They were starving. Father was the only one who worked and I sent them my officer’s certificate. When in 1943 there was no threat that Germans would besiege Moscow and Muscovites were coming back, I was given solicitation in my headquarters regarding return of my family to Moscow. They came back in 1943. First they were looking for the way to settle down and make a living. Parents bought some haberdashery items in Moscow and resold them to the suburbs and hamlets out of Moscow. With time father managed to find a job in some state organization. I already knew that my younger brother Naum died in the vicinity if Kerch in 1942. I felt hurt as I cared for my brother. I did not know what happened to my brother and sister. I wanted to visit my family, but I had no time as the train was about to depart.

We turned out to be in Manchuria [Editor’s note: The Japanese occupied Manchuria (North-Eastern province of China, bordering with Mongolia) in 1941. The Soviet Army begun to attack the Japanese occupiers from Soviet and Mongolian territory in August 1945.]. There were no large military operations, but still we had some work to do. The war in Manchuria was over very quickly, on the 3rd of September 1945. There were no fierce battles, but there was another fear. Most of all we were appalled by kamikaze, who slaughtered our soldiers. During one of my trips I met my friend Raisa Tsipkina. We worked together in SES #35 . She still was in that squad. We hugged each other and cried. After having military actions we were allowed to go to Kharbin. We went to the opera theatre to see the opera by Puccini Chio-Chio-San [Madame Butterfly]. We girls felt ourselves terrible in military uniform and rubber boots among dressed up women.

They wanted to send me to Kurile Islands [over 7000 km to the east from Moscow], but there was the order on demobilization. So I was demobilized from the army and I was sent to Moscow to study.  Instead of finishing the 5th grade I was supposed to go through residency training.

I got couple of governmental awards for the work in the front-line hospital. In summer 1942 I was awarded with the ‘Medal for Military Merits’ 29 for evacuation of the wounded in Bryansk vicinity. My second award, the ‘Order of the Red Star’ 30 was conferred in 1944 for work in the hospital in Eastern Prussia. There were a lot of wounded there. I got Great Patriotic War Order of the 2nd class for liquidation of the fire in Rechitse, when hundreds of wounded were saved. Our army and front took part in large operations: Kursk battle and operation ‘Bagration’ in Belorussia. I was awarded with medals for both of these operations. Besides I was awarded the ‘Medal for Capture of Konigsberg’ 31, the ‘Medal for Victory over Germany’ 32, the ‘Medal for Victory over Japan’ 33. On the occasion of 50-year anniversary of the victory in WW2 I was awarded Great Patriotic War Order of the first class. In post war period I was awarded with the medals to commemorate the jubilee dates of  WW2 and Soviet Army.

After the war

War left a trace. I could not listen to music for a long time. When I heard the march, I burst into tears. I still cannot listen to military marches, watch movies about war because too deep the imprint is.

I was demobilized in June 1946 and left Manchuria in late fall. When I came back home, I was a different person, not the student girl. I could not get over Naum’s death. We were bonded though he was younger than me. Naum was gifted. He was an excellent student at school. He was fond of physics, poetry, chess, swimming, rowing. He was an avid reader. I took it hard because it was the son of Raisa, my second mother. I came back alive, and he was killed. I felt guilty. I came back to my parents to the same apartment, where my mother and sister Maria lived. Then brother Evsey came back from the front lines. There was no room for all of us. Evsey rented lodging and was on his own. I had lived with my parents until 1961.

When I came back to Moscow, I tried to become a post-graduate student. I had to go through residency training first. Anti-Semitism was not only observed in every day life, but at the state level as well. It was hard for me, a Jew, to enter. I decided not regain pediatrics studies (it was my specialty at the institute). I had to amputate too often… I was afraid that my heart hardened and I would not be able to treat children. I applied for surgery chair, but I was not admitted there because of my nationality. None of the Jews was admitted. It was the first time when I came across state anti-Semitism, which was not felt before the war.

I managed to go to the chair of radio and nuclear medicine, but I could not finish it as I was afflicted with leucopenia because of working with x-ray machines. Doctors prohibited me to work in the field of radio and nuclear medicine, but knowledge, acquired in residency training were used further on in my work. I took different refreshment courses and became multi-field doctor. After unsuccessful attempt to finish residency training, I had to look for a job. It was the year of 1948 there was a rotten air of anti-Semitism. Fortunately the deputy head of the chief therapeutic physician was Ivanov, my former boss during the war. Of course, he hired me. I had worked there for 23 years as a common surgeon with intermission during oncology courses. Having finished oncology courses, I became oncologist-surgeon.

Beginning from 1948 cosmopolite processes [Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’] 34 commenced in USSR. It was a hard period for the Jewish intelligentsia. There were multiple articles in press regarding divulgement of another cosmopolite, a Jew. Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee 35 was shattered no matter how much it did for the victory in WW2. Many of its members were shot and the rest were sent to Gulag. In 1948 a great actor and bright person Solomon Mikhoels 36 was assassinated. Though his death was an imitated accident. It was a tragedy for us. I did not see many of his performances in the theatre, but my parents were theater-goers and loved Mikhoels. It was hard for them to get over his death. When ‘the Doctors Plot’ 37 was commenced in 1953, two months before Stalin’s death, I understood that it was a blatant lie. I was mostly shocked by arrest of Lina Stern 38. She came back from Switzerland intending to help the Soviet regime and exerted her every effort in that. She did not have a family and dedicated her life to work. She taught physiology at our courses. When Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was founded Lina took an active part in it. Neither me nor my colleagues could possibly believe that this petite and fragile woman could have been ‘peoples’ enemy’! We did not believe that all those brilliant people were guilty. But we could not say anything about it as we understood that we were fraught with danger. Only Stalin’s death in 1953 saved our country from further repressions.

Оnce in February 1950, engineer Yuri Shabad came to our hospital to see a doctor. It was a fateful visit. Soon Yuri married me. Yuri was born in Minsk in 1913. He came of intelligentsia. His father was a professor and his mother graduated from a lyceum. There were a lot of bright scientists in the Shabad family: oncologist Ivan Shabad, Yuri’s uncle, mathematician Shabad, economist Shabad, physician Shabad, who work with academician Sakharov 39. Yuri remained an orphan pretty early. His father died when he was 7 and his mother died when he turned 22. He had younger siblings: sister Evgenia and brother Isidor, who was the bread-winner because Yuri worked and studied in the evening institute. He became electric engineer. His sister became a gynecologist and his brother graduated from chemical department of Minsk institute. Before we met Yuri was married to a Russian woman Valentina Blokhina (after getting married she did not take his name) and their daughter Natalia Blokhina was born in 1941. She took her mother’s name. In his sister’s words they were having tiffs and finally they broke up. When the war was unleashed Yuri  was confined to barracks at military plant. He worked there as a leading engineer. At the end of the war Yuri was sent to Germany, where he was supposed to taken part in repatriation of arms. My parents’s bosom friend was a distant relative of Yuri Shabad. He asked me to examine her 9-year old daughter Natalia. Doctors suspected that she had rheumatic heart disease. I agreed. He took her to me and since that day we started seeing each other. He often met me after work. He suggested that we should go on vacation together. I refused because he was married and went to Sochi by myself [Editor’s note: Black Sea resort town in the Caucasus about 1600 km south of Moscow. Popular Russian resort, specialized in treatment of digestive apparatus and metabolism. There were over 20 mineral springs, used in treatment.] Soon, I received a letter from him saying if I refused him he would feel wretched by the end of his days. He was very attractive and had the gift of a gab. My mother also liked him. Yuri proposed to me and I agreed to marry him. On the 5th of August 1950 we got married. We registered our marriage in a regional marriage registration office. In the evening we had a party with our relatives and friends. We could not even think of a traditional Jewish wedding back at that time. Both of us were communists, so it was impossible for us.

Both Yuri and I had neither money nor a lodging. We lived with our parents in a room of 10 sq. m. Yuri was also to pay alimony for his daughter. His salary was skimpy and my salary was not that big, but he had never heard a reproach from me regarding the lack of money. Father taught his children how to get by with what you’ve got. We had lived that way for 32 years. We got along with his daughter from the first marriage. Our daughter Sofia named after my deceased mother was born in 1951, when we lived with our parents. When my daughter was born her baby-sitter also moved in our 10 sq. m. apartment. We made a partition with the wardrobe and put bed for the baby-sitter on another side. My daughter was premature born and quite feeble. I was taking good care of her. I had to work a lot and came home late at night. Sofia was missing me and did not go to sleep before I came. I fed her, tucked her in bed at night. In the morning she was sleeping, when I left for work. Mother cared for Sofia and loved her even more than other grandchildren. Once our neighbor told my daughter that Raisa was not her full-blood grandmother and that her full-blood grandmother passed away. It was a hard conversation for me. I said that I considered Raisa to be my mother because she raised me and taught me everything I knew. I also told her about my love for her and added if my daughter did not love her grandmother, it meant she did not love mother either. We never broached the subject again. Sofia and Raisa cared for each other. When I gave money to Sofia to buy a tit-bit, she bought something for grandmother. Raisa brought up Sofia very well. She taught her good manners. Sofia was a very pretty girl and I tried to dress her well. There was hardly anything pretty in the store and tried to do something by myself. When I was on duty at night I was sawing some piece and then stitched it at home. 

In the post-war period father worked as a deputy chief of the legal department of a large construction trusts. He retired at the age of 72. He kept in touch with us. He got along with grandchildren. Sofia was his favorite. Gradually father’s health weakened, he could hardly walk. He died in 1968. He is buried at Vostryakovskoye cemetery in Moscow. 

Even after war my parents kept religious traditions. When we lived with them, we marked Jewish holidays together. When we lived separately we came over to their place to mark Jewish holidays. We understood how important it was for them. We did not observe those traditions in our family. Our daughter was aware that she was a Jew, but she was not raised in accordance with the Jewish religion and Jewish traditions.

We had a lot of friends. I had school and university friends. There were friends among my colleagues as well. Of course, my husband and daughter had their own friends. Guests were welcome in our house. Some of them found no pretext to come over. They just came to chat. On the occasion of birthday or celebration of soviet holidays we had to invite friends in several rounds as our apartment was too poky. We always celebrated 1st of May, 7th of November [October Revolution Day] 40, New Year’s Day, Soviet Army Day 41 and Victory Day 42. We liked to spend vacations in the hamlet out of Moscow. We rented a room from the locals not far from the pond. Sometimes I went to the sanatorium to treat my legs. I have always felt the consequences of my ‘bath’ in Pinsk marshes and wound.

Being a veteran of war I got a separated 2-room apartment in 1968. My daughter had her own room. Sofia was finishing school and she had to study a lot. The same year she entered Moscow Construction Institute following in the footsteps of my father and elder siblings. She was a good student. In 1973 Sofia married a Jew, Mikhail Tulchinskiy. He was her fellow student. They had a common wedding: got registered in state marriage registration office and in the evening had a wedding party at home. Our kin and friends were invited. The were a lot of people. Sofia lived separately, but she called us and grandparents everyday and was concerned with hour problems. In 1974 mother passed away. In 2 years the most terrible thing happened in my life: my daughter died. She was stricken with cancer, having taken her life very quickly, the way it usually happens with young people. I, the oncologist, could not save my only daughter from that dreadful disease. My heart is still bleeding because of that. My husband was taking it very hard. In 1982 he passed away. He, my daughter and my mother were buried on Jewish Vostryakovskoye cemetery in Moscow.

My brother Evsey graduated from Moscow construction institute, Heating and Ventilation  Department. During WW2 he was a volunteer in the front lines and had been in the tank troops for the whole war. He defended his thesis before the outbreak of war. In the post-war period he defended doctorate dissertation and published over 700 scientific articles. He was a great scientist, professor, then academician.  Evsey was married to a Jew. I do not remember her name. They had 3 children: twins Leonid and Victor born in 1946 and daughter Elena born in 1955. Victor died in 1965. Evsey died in 2000. He was buried on Jewish Vostryakovskoye cemetery in Moscow.

My sister Esfir graduated Moscow Construction Institute, the Faculty of Concrete Constructions before the outbreak of war.  Upon graduation she worked in the town Verkhnyaya Salda [about 1400 km to the east from Moscow] at metallurgic plant. After war she came back to Moscow and was enrolled at the design institute Stalproject. She became a wonderful designer. My sister had worked for 41 years at Stalproject and retired in 1981. Esfir had lived with her parents all her life, she could not make her own family. She is currently living by herself. She does not repine and does not feel lonely.

Having finished school my younger sister Maria entered Moscow Aviation Institute, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Maria had worked at the same enterprise until retirement, i.e 1986. In 1951 she married a Jew Lev Titov. In 1953 their only daughter Maria was born. Being retired my sister Maria helped raising grandchildren: Evgeniy and Inna. Thanks to her the family was doing well. Maria died in 2003. She was buried on Jewish Vostryakovskoye cemetery in Moscow.

I had worked for the acqua hospital until 1970. It was hard for me to conduct operations and be on duty in the hospital. I was employed by the policlinic and I had consulting hours with patients. Besides, it took me a long time to get to the hospital from my house, and the policlinic was not far away. I had worked there until 1984. I had stayed by myself. My daughter is dead and my husband is dead.  I decided there was no need for me to earn money and I just would get by with the pension. I had other tasks: to get the tombstones done and attend the cemetery. It is hard for me to get over my solitude. I am like a fish out of water. I would like to breathe, but there is no way I can inhale. Old age and loneliness are the hardest when you are ailing and when you are not capable of doing things you need.

When in the 1970s mass immigration of Jews to Israel commenced, I was not willing to leave. When my father died and my mother stayed by herself, I could not leave anyway. I never disapproved of those who made up their minds to immigrate. I do not think I am entitled to judge them. Many of my pals and colleagues left at that time. I did my best to assist them. People who were on the bound of immigration were supposed to process the documents for immigration in Moscow even if they lived in other cities. All of my acquaintances who came to Moscow on that purpose, stayed in our place. I thought the most important thing was to offer people a place to stay. When I stayed by myself I was reluctant to leave. If my loved ones were alive, I would think that over. For me to be far away from the graves of my close relatives is like death in itself. The memory of them is alive while I am alive and if I leave they would died for the second time. I tried to get their tombstones installed as soon as possible because I did not think I would have a long life, but I did. I turned out to be strong.

When I was retired I took up social work in Moscow Committee of Veterans of War. First I was in the international group then I became the secretary of the international committee. The Japanese group was founded and I was offered a job in it. In actuality, Russian Committee of Veterans of War consists of 21 groups of international committees. The groups are classified by countries. In 1988 the group of veterans consisting of 30 people came to us from Israel. The team leader was a Polish Jew Abram Kowen. He is fluent in Russian, He loves Russian songs and sings very well. He knows Russia very well as he was the 2nd secretary of the Israeli embassy in Russia until 1967. Abram Kowen is the leader of the Jewish Council of Veterans of War and Disabled. He is the smartest person. He established things so well that he gained respect both of the government and the veterans of war. When they came over we began to found the Israeli group. The former title of the group was ‘Israeli Group War Veterans Relations’ and now the group is called ‘Russia-Israel. We are part and parcel of Russian Committee of Veterans of War. We correspond with each other and exchange opinions. I also receive magazine from them. Now the book ’The book of memory’ [Remembrance book] is being published. There is a search of those who perished during the war and their documents. Artificial limbs are made in Israel. We come to each other for a visit. I organized a group in 1991 and  remained its leader for  4-5 years. Then I understood that it was hard for me, so another leader was elected, viz. Peter Bograd. In two years he refused from being a leader due to his state of health and we elected another leader: Alexander Tsvey. We have a lot of work to do. Each of the group member is responsible for certain tasks. Several people from our group were invited to celebrate the Victory day in Israel. I also was in that delegation. We get together at least once a month to discuss different issues. The Committee of War Veterans is contented with our work. We do not get any funding. Each of us annually contributes 100 rubles [Editor’s note: $3,3]. There are 36 people in our group. So, this is all we have got. We spend this money on correspondence and at times for payment of the telephone conversations. We collect additional money when some delegations are coming over. We mark jubilees. We address to our management on these occasions. They give us jubilee prizes. Those who made the most contribution in work, are given precious gifts, mostly watches.  

I was deeply impressed by my trip to Israel. I consider Israel to be a great state. It was a real feat to make a true oasis from a bare desert. It is blooming now. Israeli people are very industrious. I am ravished by their organizational skills. The citizens of this wonderful country also have a lot of sorrow. There are incessant terrorist actions. I admire Israeli youth, their sincere patriotic spirit. I am pleased to see how proud they are to wear military uniform. I was told if a young man was not drafted in the army for some reason, he takes it as real sorrow. I worship that country, its peoples. From the bottom of my heart I wish them peace and welfare.
I did not quite get the events taken place in late 1980s, namely perestroika 43 in USSR, initiated by General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party Mikhail Gorbachev 44. In my opinion, perestroika was supposed to be gradual. For instance, they could start from agriculture – give the opportunity for the rural people to get property rights for land, till it and sell the products. In reality things were happening simultaneously, which undermined much, without having restored.  Medicine is my cup of tea. It is still in the wane. The doctors, working in the policlinic are illiterate. They are occupied with prescriptions, which are not correct sometimes. I feel like a culprit schoolgirl when I come to see a doctor. I think the diagnostics is missing. We used to have conferences, ward rounds. Now there is nothing like that. When I was working, we had been constantly studying, attending some sort of courses. I do not know whether it is happening now. I had to stay in the hospital and I had never come across a skillful doctor. As for other fields, industry is practically busted. Now practically all manufactured goods are imported, Russian ones are few and of low quality. It is good that the borders are open, but it is not affordable for everybody to go abroad. You have got to know foreign language and have money to go abroad.

I do not resort to the help of Jewish charitable organizations. I think their assistance is not sufficient and humiliating to a certain extent. I have enough money for myself. Being a veteran of war my pension is a little bit higher than of a common pensioner. Since childhood I had been taught by my  parents that my expenses should correspond to my income. That is why I do not even crave for things I cannot afford. Maybe my apartment is not as good as others, but the most important thing is that it is neat and tidy for the visitors to enjoy staying in it. The worst thing for me is to feel sorry for myself. I think at any age you can overcome hardships if you have a head on your shoulders. So far I can get over my ailments and feebleness. I have to do everything by myself. I do not even to think what might have happened if I am completely inapt. I feel that it is getting harder and harder with years, especially for the last 4 years. My eyesight became poor as well. When I was on the cemetery I lost consciousness. When I bent I felt that I could not see anything. I was stricken with thrombosis of the temporal artery and retina hemorrhage. Then I lost my voice. I was disable to speak for 9 months. Then I had a complicated arm fracture and finally I was afflicted with hypertension. Of course, I feel my age, but I am telling everybody that I am well. I am getting tired but I do not want to burden anybody with my maladies. I had to face death for so many times that my views changed. I understand that I had to fight and nobody could do it for you. Sometimes I do not want to get up in the morning and I am telling myself ”Comrade Shabad, nobody is here to help you. There is no use in staying in bed, all the same you have to get up” and I am getting up. Besides, hard military years exhausted me and gave me stamina. I did not know the words ‘I can’t’ or ‘don’t want’. I knew one word ‘I need’. This is the main word for me.

GLOSSARY:

Berta Zelbert
Russia
Moscow
Interviewer: Svetlana Bogdanova
Date of the Interview: November 2004

Berta Zelbert is of short height, very pretty, jovial and open-hearted woman. Berta is a modest person; she did not agree to be interviewed at once. She said that there was nothing special in her vita. Berta lives with her husband Simeon Gorelik in a two-room apartment in the center of Moscow in a ten-storied house constructed in the 1950s. The newly-remodeled apartment is cozy and well-furnished. There are a lot of fiction books and technical manuals. There are pictures of the relatives, children, grandchildren on the walls as well as replica of the pieces of Russian artists.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

Unfortunately, there is nothing I can say about my paternal grandparents. They died at a young age, when father was a kid. All I know is that grandfather’s name was Samuel Zelbert. As for paternal grandmother, I even do not know her name. Father did not tell me much about his childhood. I do not know what grandfather did for a living. Grandmother was most likely a housewife as most married Jewish women. They lived in the town of Berdyansk, on the coast of Azov sea [Ukraine, 700 km away from Kiev]. There were five children in the family: the eldest child- daughter Rena and four sons: Markus, Isaac, Haim and my father Moses. Father was the youngest child in the family. He was born in 1892. I do not know when his siblings were born. When children became orphans, Rena became their foster parent. It is hard to say how they manage to survive, what money they lived on– father never spoke about it. All of them started to work early. Since childhood father ran errands for the owner of the footwear store. I do not know what education he got, but he was literate. I kept father’s letters. They were written in good Russian. During his childhood he learnt how to play clarinet. I think father got Jewish education as well. At any rate, he had all praying paraphernalia– tallith, tefillin, prayer books. Father knew Ivrit. He was religious. He prayed at home, marked Sabbath and Jewish holidays.

When father reached drafting age, he was drafted in the tsarist army, where he served in the musicians’ regiment. In father’s words that regiment was even called to the palace of the Tsar of Livadiua in Crimea and musicians played for the Tsar Nikolay II 1. When in 1914 World War I was unleashed, father and his regiment went to the front. He was in the orchestra. In late 1915 father was captured by Austrians and he was sent to the Austrian town Reisenberg together with other captives. They worked by some local hospital there. Judging by the pictures of that period of time, which my father managed to preserve, Russian captives lived pretty well there. Anyway they did not look meager in the photo. They looked rather funny. Father did not tell me much about his captivity. He said that Austrians saw no difference between Jews and non-Jews. There was no anti-Semitism. Father and Jews-captives were not differentiated by Austrians in any way, they took them as Russian soldiers. Captives were not hold for a long time, they were exchanged for Austrian captives. In 1916 my father was permitted to go home. He must have passed via Byelorussian village Smilovichi on his way to Berdyansk. He met mother there.

Father’s eldest sister Rena was the only one out of father’s kin who stayed in Berdyansk after the Revolution 2 She was married to a local Jew Reinov. They had two sons, Samuel, named after grandfather, and Vladimir. During the Great Patriotic War 3 Rena and her family evacuated in Baku, where they had stayed. She died in Baku in 1970. Markus moved to Moscow after the Revolution of 1917, when the Pale of Settlement was abolished 4. He was a tailor. Markus was married and had two sons- Rafael and Moses. Markus died in Moscow in 1978. He was buried in the Jewish Vostryakovskoye cemetery in Moscow. Isaac lived in Melitopol [Ukraine, 550 km from Kiev]. He had 3 daughters: Polya. Basya and Tsilya. I do not remember anything about him. Haim left for America before revolution. He was married at that time, so he immigrated with his wife and little daughter Betya. During the Soviet regime in USSR it was dangerous to correspond with the relatives, who lived abroad 5. There was no correspondence with Haim and no trace left.

Maternal grandparents lived in a small Jewish village Smilovichi in Byelorussia, 30 km from Minsk. In 1930, when I was a child, I went to Smilovichi with my mother. I remember that village, motherland of my mom. It was a small Jewish village with wooden sidewalks. People were very affable. The population consisted mostly of Jews, but there were also Byelorussians, Poles and Russians. They lived friendly, willing to help each other.

I did not know maternal grandfather either. He died before I was born. The only thing I know is that his name was Jacob Shulman. I remember grandmother. Her name was Mina Shulman. I do not know her maiden name. There is hardly anything I know about my mother’s childhood Grandfather was a bread-winner and grandmother was a housewife. There were three daughters in the family. My mother Tsilya was the eldest. She was born in 1900. He sister Sofia [common name] 6, Jewish Sosl was born in 1903, and Anna, Jewish Hanna was born in 1906. Grandmother became a widow rather early remaining with three little daughters. She never married again. She lived in a small wooden house, where the whole family could fit. She had neither orchard nor cattle. The only thing she had was a small kitchen garden. When I stayed with grandmother, she asked me to go to the kitchen garden to take fresh cucumbers and eat them. Grandmother planted vegetables in the garden and sold them, for the family to get by. I think grandmother was very beautiful when she was young. When she was elderly, there were still traces of her former beauty. She was a very kind, caring and clever woman. Grandmother was tall and slim. She was reserved and tacit. She must have been religious, because mother learnt about Jewish traditions from her. Grandmother also taught her how to cook Jewish dishes. Grandmother loved her daughters very much and they cared for her as well.

My parents got married in 1918. I do not know whether they had a traditional Jewish wedding. Maybe in Smilovichi, where they got married, Jewish traditions were strong even after the Revolution, when the Soviet regime oppressed any Jewish traditions 7. First, parents lived with grandmother and younger sisters. In 1922 I was born. I was called Batsheva. There was no room to swing a cat, when I was born and parents decided to go to father’s motherland, Berdyansk. I think it was important for father that his eldest sister Rena lived there with her family. During childhood Rena was like mother to father and they were bonded. When I turned one year in December 1923 we moved to Berdyansk.

Mother’s sisters also had families. Sofia married a Jew Levinchik from Smilovichi. They lived with grandmother. Sofia had two daughters. I remember Sofia very well. She was a beautiful young woman with fluffy red hair. Mother’s second sister Anna Isakova after wedding moved to her husband in Zhlobino, not far from Smilovichi. She had an only daughter Zoya.

The fate of the family of grandmother Sofia was tragic. With the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War Sofia’s husband went to the front and there was no information about him. He must have died at once as Belarus took the first hit of the fascist troops. Soon Germans came to Smilovichi. On the first day of occupation they shot a lot of Jews and during one of those actions grandmother Sofia, her children and all her kin from Smilovichi perished. Anna and her family managed to get evacuated before the occupation. They reached Derbent in the Dagestan republic [about 2200 km to the South from Moscow]. When the Great Patriotic War was over, they decided to stay in Derbent. Anna’s husband, who was older than her, died in the 1960s. Anna lived with her daughter Zoya and her family. Then both Zoya and her husband got an offer to teach in Makhachkala and Anna stayed with her grown-up granddaughter. She was really upset that her granddaughter married a local guy who wasn’t Jewish. Anna was in dumps. In 1993 she committed suicide. She was 87, but she was a rather healthy and robust women.

Father found a job at a shoe factory in Berdyansk. He had worked there until the very outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. Father was given an apartment by the factory. It was a large 3-room apartment on the first floor of 3-storied brick house. Windows faced the yard. In 1925 my junior sister Enia Zelbet was born. We called her Gena. Father was appreciated at his work. Since childhood was knowledgeable about leather as he worked in the shoe stores. Besides he was honest and bona-fide. Soon father became the deputy director of the shoe factory, being operations manager. He was a rather decent salary and we did well. Before my sister was born mother tried to work as well. First, she worked as a cashier at the store. They worked at home being given work by cooperative association of the workers. Mother learnt how to knit stockings on a knitting machine. She handed the ready-made products to the artel. Her health was poor and father insisted that mother should just take care of the household and children. Moreover, there was enough money that father earned. Sometimes in summer mother leased one room to the people who came to our town on vacation or for a treatment. It was also an additional income for the family.

My parents loved each other. Our family was friendly and happy. Father was very kind, tactful and wise. Mother was a beautiful women and a good housewife. She was a great cook. She cooked traditional Jewish dishes best of all. Mother always cooked them for Jewish holidays. For Pesach she baked strudels and made very tasty dishes from matzah. On Purim she baked hamantashen- pies of triangular shape with poppy seeds, raisins and nuts. We enjoyed all those dishes without knowing that they were cooked for certain Jewish holidays. Mother said that she would teach everything when I would need it, but it was not important for me at that moment. She said I had to think of school.

My parents spoke Yiddish between themselves at home. Neither my sister nor I were taught Yiddish. Parents thought that there was no future in Yiddish and wanted us to speak Russian without any accent. Listening to their talks I gradually began to understand Yiddish, then I began speaking it. Father was religious. There was a mezuzah above the entrance door and father came up to it to pray. He marked Sabbath and on Friday evening mother lit candles. Jewish holidays were marked at home. I do not remember whether father went to the synagogue. I even do not remember if there was a synagogue in Berdyansk. These were the years of the active struggle against religion in the country, so all Jewish holidays were quietly marked for other people not to know about it. Moreover, we were surrounded by Russians in Berdyansk.

Growing up

I remember Berdyansk of my childhood and adolescence. It was a flourishing southern town. In spring acacia trees bloomed and its blossom spread fragrance all over the town. There was a small land plot in front of our house. There were acacia trees and flowers planted between them. Flowerbeds were by almost every house in Berdyansk. We did not plant vegetables. There was no sense in that as they were very available on the market, besides they were very cheap. I remember Ukrainian market: reams of watermelons, melons, all kinds of apples, plums, grapes and apricots. Peasant ladies sold home-maid butter on large burdock leaves, which had small dewdrops.

The town was divided in two parts-upland and lowland. The population of the town was international: Ukrainians, Russians, Greeks, Jews, Germans. Berdyansk Jews were not clustered, they lived in different parts of the town.

Before Great Patriotic war Berdyansk was a small town. There were hardly any large industrial enterprises. There was one large instrument making or tool making plant called ‘Chernomorskiy’ and shoe factory, where father worked. The rest enterprises were small-scale-artels and private workshops. Most Jews of Berdyansk worked in such workshops.

There were couple of Russian and Ukrainian schools in town. There were no Jewish ones. There was a theater and a very nice park in the center. There was a summer stage there. In summer symphonic orchestras came to us very often. Our family went there to listen to music. There were cabs in the city. I do not remember the cars. In general everything was within walking distance.

In summer Berdyansk population was drastically increased due to the influx of tourists. The city boasted on its beaches. The Sea of Azov is shallow and the water gets warm. There was fine sand on the beach. Thus, mothers with small kids liked that resort area. There were a lot of vineyards. There was resort hospital and mud cures. Azov muds were salves and people suffering form different diseases came to Berdyansk from every corner of USSR. They had been bathing in the sea from spring till deep autumn. Mother always took my sister and I to the beach. When we grew up, we went there by ourselves. We took bread with butter, apples and grapes and spent a lot of time there. Then winter came and the littoral part of the coast was frozen. We could skate there. We loved our town. It was good in all seasons.

Mother was a housewife, but my sister and I went to the kindergarten. Mother did it because it was necessary for the kids to be in the team. I remember my group and my child’s minder. We were given classes, taught how to draw, sculpture from plasticine. We had music and PT classes. Mother always made sure than we were neatly dressed. She also nurtured morale in us. We liked talking to father and listen to his stories.  Father raised in us benevolent attitude towards people

Sister and I helped mother about the house. There was a well in the yard, but the water there was kind of salty like in Berdyansk wells. It was used for some chores, i.e. washing the floor. It was bad for laundry and cooking. We had to take fresh water from the water pump, which was by our house. My sister and I had to fetch water home.

Mother wanted me to play music. They bought a piano before I went to school. A woman, pianist, lived in our house. First, she was my music teacher. When I grew older, mother found a professional teacher for me. I really enjoyed my music classes. Later, when I had my own family, I bought a piano for my daughter and taught her how to play piano. None of us became a pianist.

When I turned 8, I went to compulsory 8-year Ukrainian schools. The choice was justified because it was close to our house and nobody had to take me in/from the school. All subjects were taught in Ukrainian. I was a good student and kept out of trouble. I had studied in Ukrainian school for 4 years, so my Ukrainian was good and I could read Ukrainian books. After the 4th grade I was transferred to Russian school, because it was a 10-year one. There Ukrainian was taught like one of the subjects. I still know Ukrainian. I had been an excellent student for 10 school years. We had wonderful teachers. Mathematics teacher was German, he was a very gifted mathematician and a teacher. His last name was Herman. He praised me and said that in future I would become a good scientist-mathematician. There were other good teachers as well. I liked literature most of all. I composed verses. They were placed in school wall newspaper. There was a good All-Union pioneer organization in the town 8. There were a lot of groups there: radio, literature circles, jazz studio. All schoolchildren went there after school. I was enrolled in literature circle for couple of years. I had a cloudless childhood. I was a great patriot, an active pioneer and later Komsomol member 9. I took part in demonstrations during Soviet holidays. We marked them both in school and at home. They were joyful and long-awaited for us. I and my coevals were avid readers of books about revolution. The characters of those books took part in revolution and civil war 10. They were idols for us. We adored a popular band at that time and its leader – the singer Leonid Utyosov. We could have listened to them by radio for hours. I also remember a popular movie about happy life of common workers in the USSR «Hilarious guys», where Utyosov played the part. I did not feel anti-Semitism before war. I think it did not exist. There were Jews and non-Jews among my friends. I did not care about nationality at all.

I was called Baya at home. It is a diminutive from Batsheva. When I came to school I was called Bella there. At the age of 16 I came to get my passport and the lady put the name Berta in my document.

I finished school with honors and was entitled to enter the institute without preliminary entrance exams. I wanted to enter biological department of Moscow University [M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, the best University in the Soviet Union, also well known abroad for its high level of education and research]. I was inspired by a famous physiologist Lina Shtern 11. I had read and heard a lot about her. I decided to become physiologist as well. Neither I nor my parents paid attention to my appeal to literature. It was considered that there should be some profession, and literature should be left for leisure. It seemed to me that there would be brilliant future ahead of me- studies in Moscow, but there were other things in store for me.

In the middle 1930s mother was getting more often and often ill. Doctor could not find what was wrong with her. Then they understood that she had trouble with her kidneys. Mother kept to bed and father took her to Zaporozhie, where doctors were more experienced. Mother must have had a heart attack because she was unconscious in the last days of her life. After autopsy they it was revealed that she had renal scarring. Mother died in early summer 1940 at the age of 39. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berdyansk. During German occupation the cemetery was devastated and we could not find mother’s grave.

I sent out letters to several institutions of higher education asking whether they could provide a room in the dormitory for me. I sent a letter to Moscow and Leningrad universities and to Moscow Institute of Physiology, headed by academician Lina Shtern. I was sure that it was an educational institution, but it turned out that it was scientific and research. They were ready to admit me in Moscow, but they could not provide a dormitory. As for Leningrad they wrote that they would provide me with a room in the dormitory. I did not have any relatives or acquaintances in Leningrad, but I had relatives in Moscow – the family of my father’s brother- Markus. Then I got a letter from Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys, where it was indicated that I had been admitted and would be provided with the dormitory. Riva, Markus’s wife told me about that institute. She graduated from it. She came over to us in summer and told about that institute. I thought that engineers were in demand in our country and I decided to enter the institute. In August 1939 I left for Moscow. I was admitted to the institute and given a room in the dorms. The dormitory was located in a very interesting place called ‘commune–house’. It was a long 7-storied building on props. The walls, consisting of wooden boards, at the bottom were one meter long, there was an opal glass above them. There were no common rooms in the building, just separate cubicles. There was not enough room, but still each student had a separate place with a bed and a table. I was deeply immersed in studies and social life of the institute. Students were of different nationalities, there was no national discrimination. I did not feel any anti-Semitism. My life became very interesting. New pals, institute, dorms… I went to museums and theatre with my chums. For the first time in my life I was in Bolshoy theatre 12. I saw ballet Swan Lake composed by P. Chaikovskiy 13. I was rapt. Then I tried to save some money from scholarship to be able to go to Bolshoy Theatre.

During the first years of my studies at the institute I met future husband Simeon Gorelik. Simeon was also a new-comer. He was born in Mariupol [Ukraine, about 500 km from Kiev] in 1911. His father Samuel Gorelik and mother Rosa lived in Mariupol. Simeon’s junior sister Tsilya, born in 1915, lived in Moscow. She finished Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages and worked as a translator. After that she was transferred to Moscow Teachers’ Training Institute named after Lenin 14. There she defended a thesis in linguistics and worked as a teacher. Simeon studied at our institute at the senior course and was often in that hostel. We met there. We must have liked each other at once and decided to date.

During the war

When I lived in Berdyansk, I had a premonition of the imminent war, and I was not the only one who thought like that. It was the time of anxiety. Father was keen on politics. He read couple of papers daily. Our neighbor, Ershov, who was a cobbler and father liked to discuss the things that they read. In the evening Ershov came to us and started incessant arguments with my father, accompanied by strong emotions. At that time I did not listen to their talks, I just heard that they spoke loudly and mentioned such alarming words as «war», «Hitler», «Europe». When I left for Moscow, there was no father and his papers close to me, so the feeling of alarm was gone and it did not seem to me that the war would be unleashed before soon.

The calamity came unexpected. It was a weekend day, the 22 of June 1941. We did not have classes at the institute. All of a sudden the secretary of Komsomol Committee [editor’s note: Komsomol units existed at all educational and industrial enterprises. They were headed by Komsomol committees involved in organizational activities] came to the hostel and announced that the war had been unleashed and all students were to come to the institute ASAP. We went to the assembly hall and started listening to the speech of the minister of the foreign affaires, V. Molotov 15, who informed of the unexpected attack of fascist Germany. Life changed drastically.

We had passed the exams already and had to go to Donetsk oblast of Ukraine [about 1000 km. to the South from Moscow] for practical training. During the first days of war Germans were moving rapidly towards the East of the country and rector cancelled practical training. We decided to work at the plant, which produced artificial limbs. It was not far away from our dorms. It was hard and hazardous work. In a month after the outbreak of war, Germans started bombing Moscow. Air raid alarms were announced by the radio and population had to go down to the air raid shelters, located in specially re-equipped basements of the houses. We had such a shelter in the basement of our dorm. Palpably, German planes bombed our district for the reason that there were a lot of large plants. Once bomb hit our dormitory. When we went up, we saw a mess. All glass partitions fell and smashed into smithereens. We walked on crushed glass to our cubicles. Then partitions were restored. They were made from plywood.

There was an announcement about evacuation at the institute. We were told that we had to pack only necessary things and take them to the institute. I called Simeon Gorelik and said that I was leaving Moscow. Only junior courses were evacuated. Senior students had to stay in Moscow for a while. Simeon was to stay. I did not know my future address that is why we agreed that I would write to him as soon as I arrived. On the 16th of October, we –the student of the 2nd and the 3rd year, gathered by institute and walked from Moscow in columns. Several teachers were at the lead of our column. The discipline was stern. We were heading towards Vladimir [175 km to the east from Moscow]. We spent night in devastated schools. I do not remember what we ate. We must have bought some things in villages. We had walked for about 150 km to the east from Moscow. We walked both on the highway and on the country tracks. We were lightly dressed, but it was getting cold. We also were allowed to thumb for the passing cars and ask for a lift. Of course, not all of us managed to go by car, so we were told to go to Gorkiy [about 320 km to the east from Moscow] (present Nizhniy Novgorod) and go to the industrial institute on a certain day.

One girl and I managed to get in the car, equipped with radio station. Maybe it was a mere coincidence, but in a year I worked with the same radio station in the lines. The car took us to Gorkiy. We went to the institute and met our comrades. Then we were taken to the train station. We got on the cars and went to Stalinsk [about 3200 km to the east from Moscow]. Now the town is called Novokuznetsk. It was a long trip. First of all, it was far away and secondly the train did not follow the schedule and made frequent stops. We slept on the bunks- boys and girls mixed together. It took us about two weeks to get to Stalinsk. When we arrived there, the temperature was -30° С, but we did not have warm clothes. I had a spring coat on and high rubber overshoes with hollow heels, which were in fashion at that time. For the heels not to be spoiled I inserted heeled sandals in them. I had some money on me, but it was not enough to buy warm clothes.

Upon arrival I wrote letters to Simeon and father. I did not get a response from Simeon. We did not get in touch for a long time. When we met after war, he said that he was given work in the district party committee. Then he was assigned as an instructor in the departments of the defense industry by Moscow municipal party committee. Simeon was in charge of evacuation of the plants of defense industry, armament and ammunition supply. His work was very tense. He often went to the rear front, to the locations of the evacuated plants. He was rarely at home, so he did not get my letter. Father answered me immediately. I sent a letter to the attention of my father to Buguruslan, where the inquiry bureau for evacuees was located. They resent the letter to my father. At the beginning of war when Germans were approaching Berdyansk, father took my sister and they headed to Baku (Azerbaijan) [about 1920 km to the south-east from Moscow], where his sister Rena’s family and some other relatives were evacuated. They reached Derbent [about 950 km to the south- east from Moscow] and they were not allowed to go further. I do not know why it happened so. Probably there were too many fugitives in the Caucasus and it was the reason why they were left in Derbent. From father’s letter I found out that Bluma, wife of Rena’s eldest son Samuel did not leave Berdyansk. She and two of her children were shot by Germans. First children were shot in Bluma’s presence, then she was murdered. There were cases when Germans who came of Berdyansk were on the fascist’s side and gave away Jews. When the Great Patriotic War was over I recalled that before war there were Germans-paupers or dressed like vagrants. They came in the houses and asked for alms and mentioned some German names asking whether they lived there. There were a lot of Germans in town as in XVIII century there was a large German colony in Berdyansk and offspring of those colonists 16 stayed in the town. When the war began, I understood that those people were looking for Germans in the town to make contacts. They must have been German spies. When Great Patriotic War was unleashed our neighbor from Berdyansk wrote that a German lady came to our apartment and took all our furniture and things. We had pretty good furniture for those times and a piano. I knew that German lady. She lived in Berdyansk. In general, Berdyansk Germans behaved in different ways. There was one German girl in my class. When Germans retreated from Berdyansk, she and her family left with them. Our school mathematics teacher Herman went to the front in the front as volunteer. He served for the Red Army.

First, father and sister had a hard living- in unheated room with iced walls. Father found a job as a nurse in the hospital and sister studied at school. Then father worked for hospitals in the support staff. When the war was about to end he was deputy of the chief physician on management. Father was very smart, responsible and active man. When he found out my address he managed to send me valenki [editor’s note: warm Russian felt boots], which were very handy. It was easier for me now.

Municipal authorities gave our institute two premises –one for classes and another one for hostel. The hostel was very close to institute and it saved us a little bit from severe frosts. Living conditions made our life harder. We lived on the 2nd floor and toilets were outside. It was not very convenient, especially at night or early in the morning. When we got out of bed, we had to put a shirt or a coat, valenki and run outside. But, we understood that it was a war time and our conveniences were not the most important.

Our studies in Stalinsk took its normal course. Almost all our teachers were evacuated with us. Our Komsomol Committee from the institute also was working. Wall newspaper was issued. There were problems with food. We got food cards 17. We had to get up at night to get our turn in the line and then spend the whole day there to get the products. We, students, made a roster. Several people stood in the line by turns and then got the products for everybody by cards. The products were not diversified, though we were not starving and ate everything we could get, e.g. soup from herring is not very tasty, but we gladly ate it. Besides, we were fed at the institute’s canteen, but we gave there some of our food cards. We were paid a stipend. We were involved in social work. We worked from one house to another and read the local fresh news. It was hard from the moral standpoint, because in most families men were in the lines and they did not get letters from them. We told things happening on the front, but the news were not comforting – everybody understood that it was perilous. So, I finished the second course of the institute. I was rather diligent and did well.

We read papers, listened to the radio and new what was happening in the lines. We had a feeling that we were living in the rear, and people were fighting in the lines. I was aware that I should not live like that and my friends had the same feeling. We were patriots. When the drafting for the girls was announced, before annual exams for the 2nd course a couple of girls and I wrote an application to the military enlistment office asking to draft us in the acting army. First, we were not called. We thought that the rector of the institute agreed with the military office not to disrupt exams. When we passed our exams in May 1942 we were invited by the military enlistment office. I remember that I asked in my application to learn some military profession. We had to go through a rather rigid medical examination – turning centrifuge and all kinds of other tests. I passed all those tests easily. Only 5 girls were selected out of 10 who applied. We were admitted to school of junior aircraft experts #66, located in the vicinity of Novosibirsk [about 2800 km to the east from Moscow]. My fellow student Svetlana Kirianova also was admitted there. Previously the school trained aircraft radio operators/gunners. Our team consisted only of women. We were told that we would be radio operators, but we would not work on the aircrafts, but at the aerodromes. We were supposed to work with aircrafts, aviation headquarters and with aviation in general. We were trained for a year and a half. We were taught by highly skilled officers. It was the first course, consisting of girls and officers were very tactful towards us. I remember our sergeant-major, who was blushing, when he handed out our toggery.

We lived in barracks. There were double-tiered bunks and people slept on both tiers. We had a serious military training. Apart from training on radio operation, Morse code and radio devices, we also had a physical training. Training alarms were organized, mostly in the night time. We had to get dressed for 2 minutes and take necessary things with us – gas mask, backpack, rolled coat and then put in one through shoulder. Then we had to walk for couple of kilometers at night, no matter what kind of weather it was. Everybody had comfortable military uniform, it was even adjusted to women. There high boots, skirts and jackets of the needed sizes. First we wore skirts and in winter we were given warm quilted pants.

In summer our entire school was sent to help out the farmers. We lived in a large army tent. We got up with a sunrise. Officers’ wives worked with us and helped us with farm work. We were ignoramuses in agricultural works. We were given scythes and we mowed. We even had to stack. My friend and I were told to take a horsed cart, go through the field, gather sheaves and take them to the haystack. Men put them together in the rick. Of course, we urban girls did not know how to lead a horse. It took us to the forest and stopped. We decided that it stopped because it felt that wolves were near. I stayed in the cart and my companion returned to the village. In an hour she came back with a farmer, who looked at the bridle and said that the horse was not harnessed in the right way.

In October 1942 we finished school and I got the rank of sergeant. Five more people and I were sent to the front to the place by Maloyaroslavets, Kaluga oblast [about 115 km to the south- west from Moscow]. All of us got different directions. I had to part with my fellow student- Svetlana Kiryanova, with whom I was admitted to the school. I was sent to the western front and Svetlana to the east. In many years, we met at school accidentally, at the graduation party of our children: my son and her daughter studied at one school. We were so happy to see each other and our friendship regained.

One of the school officers accompanied us to Moscow on our way to the lines. I was a student, having finished the second course of the institute, but there were girls younger than me. That is why I was in charge of the group consisting of 5 girls. I had to take them to Maloyaroslavets, to support aerodrome battalion, were we were supposed to serve. We went to Novosibirsk in passenger car. It was October 1942. Women sold milk at the stations. It was in frozen rings. We exchanged our civilian clothes for those milk rings. Then we came to Moscow Kievskiy train station [There are nine main railroad stations in Moscow. The stations are named after train routes: from Yaroslavlskiy train station the trains leave in Yaroslavl direction, from Belarusskiy train station in direction to Belarussia, from Kiev rail station –to Kiev etc.]. Officer, who accompanied us, left and I was the leader of the group. We went to Maloyaroslavets by train. We got off the train late at night. We did not know where to go. Maloyaroslavets was totally devastated, but there were no Germans there. We were told how to get to aerodrome and we headed there in a pitch dark night, losing our way at times. We were not sure that we moving in the right direction. We had been walking for a long time and finally we saw the light and heard somebody cry: «Stop! Who are you?». It turned out that we came to the center of the aerodrome and happened to be right by the aircrafts. We were taken to the dug-out where officers were sitting. The dug-out was lighted with oil lamp: oil and wick were in the socket body. We introduced ourselves and showed our documents. We were shown to the dug-out to stay overnight and told to come to the radio station. We started work at radio station. It was a powerful radio station, installed in a covered truck. It was called battle radio station. Our work was to hear the signals over headphones in the chaos of sounds, respond, connect with the radio station, which was seeking us, and record the message. Good knowledge of Morse code was necessary for that. We really knew it very well. We worked in shifts, each consisted of the chief of radio station, mechanic and three radio operators. We were called radio telegraphists (code operators). Most radio operators were girls, but there were boys as well, but very few. Radio stations were always based on the edge of the aerodrome. I was to be disguised. Battalion consisted of reconnoiters, telephone operators and code operators. There was a cook and some other support staff. On a new position (we were constantly moving towards west) we knew the certain place where we were supposed to settle. The reconnoiterers were to come to the place of the re-dislocation to find a certain place. Besides, if we had to spend a night in the dugs-out, they made bunks for us or perched tents.

We worked on field aerodromes. They were not based on the very leading edge, but close to it. We always were by aerodrome and worked with the aircrafts, taking off from aerodrome. They transmitted messages during reconnaissance or battle. We took the messages and sent them to the headquarters of our battalion. When we worked with headquarters all radio operators worked with Morse code and when we were working with fighter planes or attack planes, we sent voice messages. The pilots at those aircrafts had necklace microphones on the helmets. That is why they did not use Morse code. The hardest was to work with bombardiers as there were highly-skilled radio operators, who knew Morse code better than we did and transmitted the messages at rapid speed. Our work was very responsible. If code operator failed to take the message right, it was next to impossible to decipher it when it came to the special department. If things like that happened code operator, who took the message, was called as he knew where he made a mistake.

Aerodrome support battalion served aviation regiments, which were either landing or taking off from the aerodromes. We were not attached to any constant aviation regiment. For a while regiments positioned at one aerodrome, then they moved forward and repositioned at other aerodromes. Our battalion stayed at one and the same aerodrome and served other regiments.

Subdivisions changed. We had been moving westward. We started from Maloyaroslavets, then moved to Smolensk [about 400 km to the west from Moscow]. We were allowed to go to the bathhouse in the vicinity of Smolensk. We were on the hill and close to us there was a bathhouse. There was a river by the mountain. We took water there foretasting a good bath. Hardly had we started bathing, when air raid alarm was announced. We did not manage to take a bath. It was a pity as it was my first and last bath in a true wooden Russian bathhouse.

There were quite a few girls in the regiment: apart from radio operators there were telephone operators, civilians and cooks. Life conditions were hard for the girls. We were not given brassieres and we sewed them from the foot wraps. I used the foot wraps for its intended purpose only at the military school. We had undershirts from coarse calico and underpants (I could not get used to them). In general our uniform was pretty good. I cannot say we could not get by.

For the radio station to work incessantly we had to charge accumulators. I did not know how to do it as nobody explained me and I took with my bare hands. My hands were inflamed, but I had to work all the time. Rather often I had to return from the duty at night and it was scary. There were no lights to find my way. Sometimes I walked probing telephone cable and I had a rifle behind my back. I had to use it if somebody attacked me. It was dreadful. Pitch dark night and I, a small girl with a huge heavy rifle. I had to overcome fear and get to the subdivision without showing that I was scared.

We spent a night in the forsaken houses, which the reconnoiterers found for us, in the tents or in dugs-out. We often used readymade dugs-out without knowing who left them - Germans or our soldiers. Sometimes in winter dugs-out were so covered with snow that we could not open the door. We had double-tiered bunks in dugs-out. We slept both on the top and on the bottom tiers. There were people on duty in our unit. One winter I was on duty by the river, caught cold and got severely ill. I thought I would die. Everybody left for work and I was the only one who stayed in lying on the bunk and awaiting death. My young body coped with the decease and I was cured with warm tea and good care. So, I even did not go to the hospital.

Pilots lived separately from aerodrome support staff, but we got in touch on different occasions. We talked to them and dreamt what we would be doing after war. Later on when we received messages  from the pilot, with whom we talked on the eve. A pilot or a navigator said in his necklace mike that he was having a battle over some town and all of a sudden there was no connection and complete stillness. That was it. It meant that he was pranged. They did not say good-bye, I understood what had happened. It is difficult to say how many our aircrafts were brought down by Germans. I think – a lot. When we moved westwards, fewer of our aircrafts were taken down as compared to the previous times.

In winter we had to clean aerodrome landing strip from ice and snow. Men broke ice and girls loaded that ice on the trucks. It was a hard work. In the morning we worked rather swiftly, but later we could barely lift heavy spades.

German aircrafts often raided aerodrome. There was no frequent bombing as aircraft guns on the aerodromes repelled raids of German aircrafts. Though, sometimes German aircrafts broke through. We were near aerodrome and radio station was always to be disguised. Germans hunted our aerodromes and could easily crash radio station. In summer it was hard to disguise the station. It was positioned in some bushes. In winter it was difficult as well we had to cover the station with a white cloth.

I was surrounded by young people, mostly 20-year old guys and girls. Those, who were over 30, seemed old to us. When we had spare time we had amateur contests, where we sang, recited verses, told funny stories: youth… We had a very good political officer 18. At that time he seemed elderly to me, he was 40. He planned amateur performances. Actors, the spouses, came to us. Husband played a musical instrument and wife was singing. They also took part in our concerts. I composed verses, I even sent them to the paper of the first airforce army «Stalinsk pilot». I was sent to the meeting of young poets and prose writes, arranged by the paper «Stalinsk pilot». It happened on some other aerodrome and our commandment gave me aircraft «U-2», to get there. I remember that for the holiday of the 7th of November 19 our political officer told me to write a poem- for the choir to sing it and for people to recite it. I wrote a poem about Stalin and Lenin. Besides, we had political classes. We released battle leaflets. We also had dancing parties. Those who were off duty came over to dance. There was courtship and flirtation and love. Guys considered me to be a pure girl. Once girls started smoking as they were worried expecting a raid. I had never smoked before and decided to try. I asked one of the girls to give me a cigarette. A Ukrainian soldier stood close by. He was older than me, about 30. He told me to drop a cigarette. He also said that I should not smoke as I was so pretty and cigarette was not becoming to me. So, it was the last time I smoked.

We were heading towards the west. It was the time when our troops were attacking. We stayed in Lithuania for a while. Then we went through Poland and later came to Eastern Prussia. Our work was complicated because there such towns we did not know of and we had to send messages anyway. We always had to ask to repeat the name of the local towns when we were communicating with the pilots. Of course, pilots were irritated sometimes as every second was precious for them. There were cases when could not really catch the names. It was easier when the navigator gave me a map so I that I could learn the names of the towns. Once I was reprimanded. I had to substitute for a telephone operator who was sick and I was sent to work on the switchboard. I did not know how to work on that equipment and nobody showed me. Suddenly, the commander of the battalion asked to connect him with somebody. I started frantically shove attaching plugs to the plugholes, but I did it wrong. He asked who was working on the switchboard and gave me 10 days of extra duty.

It was dangerous in the Western and in Eastern Prussia. Our troops crashed Germans, liberated towns, but German units were in sconce periodically attacking our military subdivisions and making skirmishes. One year and a half before the end of war, I was caught in the middle of one of those skirmishes. I was wounded in the hand and was sent to field hospital. Meanwhile my battalion was repositioned. My hand healed and I was discharged from the hospital in March. Since nobody knew where my battalion was positioned, I was offered to transfer to the forming reserve regiment. That reserve ladies regiment was to head eastward, not to the west. I could not get it. I had been in the lines all the time and was supposed to go to the rear to the east without seeing the victory. I do not know whether it was true, but they said that the reserve regiment would have to attend the courses for tractor drivers. For the first time during my front-line experience I did not obey. I gave my documents to the commander of the forming regiment and went to the opposite direction – to the west. I was walking with a backpack, without documents. I had an idea where to go. When I was in the hospital, commanders of the tank squad came to the hospital. The squad was positioned not far from the it. I knew that there were radio operators in the tank squad. I walked along road and read the signs of our squads. It was written on the sign: «Administration – and the last name of the commander of the squad». Our cars were going back and forth on the roads of Eastern Prussia. Our soldiers were marching along the road. Finally I reached the tank squad. I went to the commander and asked him to help me get to my unit or leave me in his squad. I was checked by the special department [responsible for checking political reliability of the troopers. There were special departments in all civil offices, army units and in prisons] and afterwards I was left in the tank squad as radio operator. Tank men had different radio station – portable. It was not installed on the covered truck, like it was with the pilots. It was easy to assemble and carry that radio station. We worked both with a key and with Morse code. I went to Konigsberg 20 with that tank squad. When we reached Konigsberg, the snow had already thawed. There were corpses of our soldiers on the ground. They were lying in the position they faced death. Konigsberg was taken, when it was snowing and the cadavers were covered with snow. In spring the snow melted. It was definitely a dreadful scene.

I and other girls radio-operators lived in the houses left by Konigsberg population. We were well fed. The food was cooked by field kitchen. I even drank 100 grams of vodka on the front (given to me in the ration), but I never got drunk.

I got along with my fellow soldiers. I should say that all of us were united by a strong patriotic feeling on the lines. We were aware that the country was in great danger. Patriotism, love for the motherland and feeling of duty were not mere words for us, we felt each of those notions in our soul. There was no national discrimination. We had to think of other things at that time.

We lived and worked in the town Konigsberg, when it had not yet been totally captured. First, we stayed in the basement of the house. We did not see what was happening on the top since we stayed down in the basement by the radio stations. When we went outside, we saw a pandemonium. There was a strong artillery shooting from different weapons. There was a terrible clatter and a dense fog. Germans were desperately fighting. There were a couple of strong citadels in Konigsberg. Our artillery had to crush the walls of those fortresses before taking them. Only then Konigsberg could be captured. Tank men were totally exhausted and black from the soot after the battle. I was in touch with them and sent messages to the headquarters via radio. Commander of the headquarters was close to me and took messages where the tanks were and indicated directions for the tanks to take. It was much more difficult for me than working with the pilots. It was the leading edge. Half of three quarters of Konigsberg was taken by Germans. Besides, our planes were bombing military sites and communications, but Americans and English people made carpet bombings of the towns, which were supposed to be taken by us after victory. They crashed the town of Dresden and they bombed Konigsberg that way as well.

War did not finish for us after Konigsberg had been captured. Our squad was told to liberate the port Pilau (now Baltiysk) [about 1000 km to the west from Moscow]. It was a historic citadel. There were huge marine weapons. There was a German tank regiment, several infantry squads in Pilau. Soon, they started attacking and even took a lot of captives. There were a lot of battles and assaults. Especially I remembered one fierce battle. It was called ‘paratroopers on the armor’. Tank men were inside on the tank and infantrymen were on the armor. We had to maintain an incessant communication in order to know the location of the tanks and periodically advise them on directions.  Port Pilau was taken by our troops. Having liberated it we got an order to come back to Konigsberg. On our way to Konigsberg some German squads were still resisting and we were caught in the skirmishes. We were ordered to leave the cars, lied down and disguise ourselves. There was «Katyusha» in front of us. [editor’s note: The 82mm BM-8 and 132mm BM-13 Katyusha rocket launchers were built and fielded by the Soviet Union in World War II. The launcher got this unofficial, but immediately recognized in the Red Army, name from the title of a Russian wartime song, Katyusha.] That gun «Katyusha» was working. I cannot even put it into words. There was such a clatter that it was difficult to discern whether the shells were coming from us or from Germans. The operation on capturing Konigsberg lasted from the 6th till 9th or 10th of April.

I did not have to contact local population, but I often caught malignant stealthy looks. Once I broached a conversation with one young German lady. She said she had been raped by our soldiers.

When I was in the front, I kept corresponding with my father. He kept my letters. I did not write about my work in detail as we were banned to write about our work and location. I just wrote that we were advancing and moving to another location. I also wrote about my feelings. Father did not know where I was, he knew only the number of my field post.

We could feel that the war was winding up. One night we heard the shooting while we were sleeping in the tent of the ladies –radio operators. We darted outside and saw that our tank men were shooting in the air from all the weapons they had. They were celebrating Victory Day. We were overwhelmed with joy. The whole garrison was on parade.

I got awards at the end of war. I did not have too many of them. I was given a medal «For Bravery» 21, medal «For Liberation of Konigsberg» [Established June 9, 1945. The medal was awarded to all servicemen who were directly involved in the capture of Keningsburg as well as for the officers who led the operations. Over 752 thousand medals were awarded]. After war I got jubilee medals, devoted to commemoration of the dates of the Victory Day Great Patriotic War Order of the first class 22.

After victory I stayed in Konigsberg for a while. There was a party committee and I was assigned in charge of it. I became the candidate of the party on the front and when I returned home I became the member of the party. I was demobilized in July. There were no obstacles for my demobilization since I was a volunteer and did not have to serve in the army. Upon demobilization I went to my father in Derbent.

When father lived in Derbent he married a Russian women Anna Torgasheva, who a doctor in the hospital, where father was working. Anna was a very good woman- kind and caring. My junior sister still went to school. They lived in Anna’s place. I was really happy to see my kin, but I was not going to stay with them. I wanted to return to my institute. I was given a certificate at the military enlistment office in Derbernt saying that I was not liable for military service. Then I was issued a passport using the data from that certificate. I went to Moscow and regained studies at the institute by the beginning of the school year. When arrived in Moscow I caught malaria. I must have caught it in Dagestan. Father’s brother Markus invited me over and I lived in his place before I got better. I could not stay with them permanently because Markus, his wife Riva and two sons Rafael ad Moses lived in a poky room in the communal apartment 23. Then I recouped and regained my studies at get institute. I was enrolled for the 3rd course and moved to the dormitory where I used to live before war. Then I got ill again. I had a sharp pain in abdomen and my roommate took me to the hospital. By chance I met Simeon Gorelik, whom I knew before war. I said that I returned to the institute, but was to be hospitalized at the moment. He came to the hospital immediately. We met for the first time after the war and never parted again. On the 2nd of December 1945 we got married. At that t time Simeon worked in Moscow party committee. After 1945 he decided to quit his service at the party and start a scientific career. He left Moscow party committee and entered post-graduate studies by the institute of Steel and Alloys. He was writing candidate thesis for 2 years, though usually it took people 3 years. In general he was a gifted man. Then he defended doctorate thesis [Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] 24. All his life Simeon had worked for the Institute Steel and Alloys. He was conferred the title of a professor and an honorable scientist. In 1944 he was conferred with the order of Red Banner 25. Simeon is still working for that institute.

Simeon had a room in a communal apartment. When we got married, I left the dormitory and moved to Simeon. Before war his parents lived in Mariupol [about 960 km to the South from Moscow During the war they got evacuated and moved to Simeon in Moscow. In 1945 sister Gena came to Moscow when she finished school. She entered Moscow Institute of Meat processing and Dairy Industry. She lived with us while studying. Upon graduation she acquired the specialty of dietitian. She came back to Derbent. There she married a very good and talented man Davletkhanov, Lezghin. Davletkhanov in due time became a great manager of the regional scale. He was the deputy chairman of the council of minister of Dagestan. After getting married my sister and her family lived in Makhachkala [about 1600 km to the South from Moscow]. Sister worked in the canteens and restaurants as a dietitian. Sister had two children: the eldest daughter Alla and junior son Enver. Alla finished construction institute in Moscow. She married a Jew from Makhachkala. In couple of years she defended candidate thesis at Moscow construction institute. In couple of years in late 1970s she gave birth to a daughter and a son. Then her family left for Israel. She and her husband worked there. Her husband worked for American company. Then he was offered a job at the same company in the USA. Alla, her husband and junior son moved to the USA. Daughter remained in Israel. She is currently studying at Jerusalem University. Gena did not want to immigrate neither to Israel nor America. She stayed in Makhachkala. She died in 1998. She was seriously afflicted with diabetes, so she felt unwell. Sister was buried in Makhachkala, in the town cemetery. Her husband died a year before. Their son Enver lives in Makhachkala with his family.

In 1946 I gave birth to my son Evgeniy. I was still studying and writing my diploma. It was difficult: family, house chores. We lived separately from Simeon’s parents in a small room which he previously got. My mother-in-law Rosa Gorelik was of big help. My son was in day nursery before he caught whooping-cough. She was ill for a long time. I did not give him the day-nursery after that and we hired a babysitter. She was an elderly lady. When son was fit for the kindergarten, I took him there.

After the war

After war father lived in Derbent with his second wife Anna Torgasheva. They lived very well, in full harmony. They came to Moscow for a couple of times and stayed in the family. Anna died before father in 1981. Father lived by himself. He caught cold and died in 1982. I do not know if there was a Jewish cemetery in Derbent. I do not think there was. Jewish rites were not observed at the funeral. Father used to communicate with the family of my sister Gena. They were friends with her husband Lesghin. He kept in touch with Dovletkhanov’s family. They loved him. So, it was a secular funeral.

In 1948 I finished institute and got a mandatory job assignment 26 at Moscow 2nd bearing fund not far from our house. I had worked there for 12 years.

In 1951 my daughter Olga was born. Our family was always friendly. Children were raised to be honest, respect and love family and parents. They knew that they were Jews and did not reject it. Though, they were not raised Jewish. Husband and I did not stick to the traditions in everyday life. There were few people in Moscow who raised children in Jewish traditions. Thy were raised in international spirit. Our son married a Russian girl and my elder grandson also is married to a Russian. There were no national discords in our family.

Children got good education. Evgeniy finished Moscow State University, Applied Mathematics Department. He is currently working for one of the commercial banks in Moscow. Olga finished Moscow institute of Steel and Alloys. She worked in a scientific research institute. She has 2 children and a grandson. She recently stopped working. Now she is a housewife. Now I have 3 grandchildren and one great grandchild. Evgeniy has a son Dmitriy Gorelik and daughters Olga has two sons: Sergey and Mikhail Shtern. My great grandson’s is Artyom Shtern, Sergey’s son.

When I was working at the plant I entered post-graduate evening school by Energy Institute and defended candidate dissertation. I was deputy of the chief metallurgist of the plant. Being the candidate of science I went to work in All-Union Institute of Bearing Industry. I started as an engineer and was promoted to the position of the laboratory chief. I had worked for that institute by 1987 and retired.

In 1952 Institute Steel and Alloys, where my husband worked, built a house in the center of Moscow. There was board which selected people who should be given apartment in that house. The members of the board came to our place and saw that the four of us were living in one room of the communal apartment and decided to give us apartment in the house built by the institute. My husband of assigned to be in charge of the finishing work. Of course, he could choose any apartment for us. But he turned out to be a modest man and he chose a 2-room apartment, though he could have taken 4 or 5-rooom apartment. We were happy with the apartment we had got. My husband and I are still living there. We bought the apartment for our son, when he was in his graduate year. Father of my daughter’s husband worked as a deputy chief engineer of Metrostroy and was entitled for the apartment. We helped with money to furnish the apartment.

I think we always pertained to the middle class- neither rich nor poor. I do not remember times when we had to borrow money from somebody because there was not enough before the salary. We always bought things we could afford. We were lucky to buy dacha [summer house] dirt cheap. It was sold to us by husband’s friend from childhood. It was half of the house out of Moscow. Our children grew up there. Our family used to like spending time there on the weekends and during vacations and we still do. We liked to mark holidays at home. We always marked birthdays of all family members. Of course, we celebrated the soviet holidays liked by us since childhood – 1st of May, 7th of November, Soviet Army Day 27, Victory Day 28.

Husband and I traveled a lot both in the USSR and abroad. My husband has trouble with his stomach, he has anacidity so he had to go through the treatment in Essentuki [about 1400 km to the South from Moscow]. We often went to that resort. Besides, we went skiing on winter vacation for two weeks. When it became possible to take tourist trips abroad, we enjoyed traveling throughout the world, for example in 1966 we took a tour Cuba-Czechoslovakia-Italy. We went to India to Ceylon. I was in Paris and Portugal. Then my husband went to Paris with me. We also went to London. Besides, my husband went to Bulgaria and lived there for two months. So, I think we have seen quite a lot around the world.

Fortunately, our family was not affected by any state actions against Jews, starting from assassination of Mikhoels 29, arrest of Jewish anti-fascist committee 30, so called campaign against cosmopolites 31 etc. The year 1948 was the time of anxiety. Mikhoels was assassinated, then arrests started. I remember the day when in 1953 there was an article revealing «doctors’ plot» 32. When I came to work I saw that terrible article on my desk. Somebody did it, but I cannot say that I came across open anti-Semitism. Of course, all of us had to go through that. We read the articles, but we did not believe what was written as we understood that it was baiting of Jews.

I liked the idea of the foundation of the state of Israel. I remember that prime-minister of Israel Golda Meir 33 came to Moscow. She was welcomed by the crowds of the Jews. Husband and I visited our niece in Israel to see how they live there. We liked the state. My husband and I visited Israeli Technical University. They had a very nice university and we liked it a lot. Anyway I would not like to stay there. I did not want to leave Moscow.

I think of perestroika 34 positively. Earlier we had to stay in the lines to get all kinds of products and because of perestroika we managed to start a more civilized mode of life. When I had to buy the furniture for my apartment, I went to the furniture store every day and marked my turn in order to get it. Now things are available. There are products in the store and industrial goods.

Now I am taking part in Jewish social life. I am a member of the group of the Friendship with Israel, International Board of Russian Committee of Russian Veterans of War. I am working for that group.  Sometimes we get requests to provide charitable assistance and we are doing it. Now we got a request from the Jewish community Fund ‘Hurry to do Good’ to assist the victims of the terror in Israel and Russia. We responded to that request. We can afford it. I think we have a comfortable living. I have a rather decent pension for being a veteran of war. My husband works and receives pension. We are not needy.

Now when I am thinking of my life I can say that I am not ashamed of it. I only regret that I am not young any more.

Glossary

Moscow
Russia
Interviewer: Svetlana Bogdanova
Date of interview: November 2003

Alexandr Grin is a friendly, amiable and hospitable host and an interesting and educated conversationalist. He is an average height, gray-haired, blue-eyed handsome man.
Alexandr lives with his wife Galina and their grandson Pyotr Grin in a three-bedroom apartment in a recently built house in Krasnopresnenskiy district, not far from the center of Moscow.

It’s a spacious, comfortable and nicely furnished apartment. One of the rooms serves as Alexandr’s study. There is old restored furniture that belonged to his parents.

Alexandr has many books: scientific books in geography, manuals and fiction. There are photographs of his relatives and pictures on the walls. Alexandr had a stroke in 1997.

The doctors saved him and his wife brought him to recovery. His left hand and left leg are disabled now. He can hardly walk and needs care. His wife Galina takes care of him.
Alexandr willingly agreed to tell me about his family and his life, particularly after his son talked him into recording his memories. Alexandr fondly talks about his family and speaks with ease.

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• After the war
• Glossary

• My family background

My paternal great-grandfather and grandfather’s surname was Grinberg. This was also my father’s surname, but later he shortened it to Grin. My father was a journalist and Grin first became his writing pseudonym and then his family name. Unfortunately, I was told little about my ancestors. Just a tiny bit. My great-grandfather, Zundel Grinberg, was a cantonist 1 serving in Nikolai’s army 2. I don’t know how many years he was in the army, but I presume it was for a long time. He retired in the rank of sergeant major and had the right to live within the Jewish Pale of Settlement 3. He settled down in Rostov-on-Don [about 1,000 km from Moscow]. I don’t know where and when he was born or his wife’s name.

My great-grandparents had seven children: Yakov, Abram, my grandfather Filip, Ilia, Boris, Vera and Sofia. There was an interesting story about his children. My grandfather Filip and his four brothers married four sisters who were their cousin sisters and came from Nevel [about 1,100 km from Moscow]. Unfortunately, I don’t know the surname of these sisters. They were a good family and I never heard anything about any conflicts in this family. They said the ‘mishpacha’ [Hebrew for family] was big and harmonious.

Yakov and his family moved to America in 1910 and contact with him was lost because after the Russian Revolution of 1917 4 it wasn’t allowed to keep in touch with relatives abroad 5. I know very little about the other brothers and sisters of my grandfather. I know nothing about his sisters Sofia and Vera or their families. His brothers lived in Rostov. Abram’s children moved to Moscow. I know that [Abram’s son] Moisey was the director of the philharmonics for some time and his other son, Lev, was the director of a big food store in the center of Moscow.

My father and Mark, the son of my grandfather’s brother Boris, were very good friends. Mark was born in 1907. He worked in the editor’s office of the newspaper where my father was manager and later he became a well-known photo-artist. Mark lives in Moscow and we talk on the phone occasionally. I don’t know when my grandfather Filip was born, but he died in Rostov-on-Don in 1925 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery there. This is an old cemetery and no more burials are allowed, but when I was there about 15 years ago, I visited the cemetery and it was still there.

My grandmother Amalia came from Nevel. Unfortunately, I don’t know when she was born. She died in Moscow in 1969.

My grandparents had two sons: Ilia Grinberg and my father, Moisey Grinberg. My grandfather was a clerk in a hardware store. My grandparents were a family with an average income. Their children went to a grammar school. There were grammar schools in Rostov where Jewish children were admitted. My grandfather paid for his children’s studies.

My grandfather and grandmother were religious. When I was born, my parents took me to visit my grandfather. When he got access to me he immediately had me circumcised, which horrified my mother and father, who weren’t religious. My grandmother was so religious that even in the Soviet Union, when it wasn’t appreciated, she celebrated Saturday lighting candles and reciting a prayer over them [see struggle against religion] 6.

My grandmother told me that my grandfather was so strong physically that during the period of Jewish pogroms in Ukraine 7 he stood at the gate of his house and when pogrom-makers saw how big he was they passed by to avoid trouble. I don’t think any of my ancestors fell victim to pogrom-makers. My grandmother told me little about their life in Rostov. She left Rostov and lived either with our family or with my Uncle Ilia’s family. I rarely saw her and she didn’t have a part in raising me. I think my parents kept us away from her so that she wouldn’t teach us any ‘religious prejudices’. Regretfully, this was their conviction at the time.

My grandmother wasn’t old, but she seemed old when she lived in our family and we showed little interest in her. She had no education. My father said that she was praying with her prayer book without understanding a word in it, that she recited prayers and pretended to be turning the pages of her book. She died in 1969 and was buried in the Jewish sector of Vostriakovskoye cemetery in Moscow. She was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions.

My father’s older brother Ilia Grinberg followed my father to Moscow. He worked in a design institute developing power equipment designs for various enterprises. His wife Sarah Maltinskaya’s father was also very religious. He conducted the ritual. He lived in a small old house near his daughter and gathered his relatives on Jewish holidays. There were many children and there was a lot of fun. On Pesach he observed all Jewish rituals and traditions. He hid matzah under a cushion [the so-called afikoman] and the children were looking for it and then received redemption for it. The youngest of the children posed the traditional questions [the mah nishtanah], but I don’t remember any details. There was traditional food and very delicious gefilte fish. Yummy! I learned to cook it from my grandmother. This was a few years before World War II. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow any traditions since nobody at home believed in it.

Uncle Ilia Grinberg was also buried in the Jewish sector of Vostriakovskoye cemetery in 1956 in accordance with the Jewish traditions. I remembered it well because numerous mourners hired for money made a terrible impression on me. He was buried in winter and was transported on sledges. There was a crowd of beggars clutching at him and lamenting and relatives could not come close. I remember a cantor at the funeral reciting the Kaddish. The body was washed and wrapped in a shroud. There was no casket. Uncle Ilia had a daughter. Her name was Zina Vaisbord. In 1980 she emigrated to the USA with her family. She still lives there now.

As for my maternal grandmother and grandfather, the Libermans: my grandfather, Aron Liberman, born in 1862, was a musician. He played the clarinet and was the manager of a small orchestra playing in a café. His father, Pyotr, was born in Bakhmut [about 1,000 km from Moscow]. My grandmother, Anna Liberman, nee Tahilevich, was born in 1869 in Azov [about 1,000 kilometers from Moscow]. Her father’s name was Zahar. My grandmother was a housewife. Aron and Anna had eight children: Zahar, Pyotr, Matvey, Nathan, Yelizaveta, Yevgenia, my mother Raisa and Sarah.

Their family must have been wealthy. All of the children, even the girls, studied in grammar school. Most of them lived in Rostov. Zahar died in 1903. Pyotr, born in 1889, was the oldest son and after his parents’ death he became the head of the Liberman family. Yelizaveta, or Lisa, born in 1894, lived a hard and poor life. Her husband died young and her son Mark perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War 8. My mother’s brother Matvey, born in 1902, was arrested in 1937 [during the so-called Great Terror] 9 and executed in 1939. His daughter Nora lives in the USA. Uncle Nathan, born in 1911, and his family moved to Kislovodsk. His children live in Riga, Kislovodsk and Rostov. Sarah and Zhenia lived and died in Moscow. When in Israel, I visited the diaspora museum and discovered that the Libermans were mentioned for the first time in 1310. The surname of Liberman was registered in the birth index of the synagogue in Cologne, Germany.

My father, Moisey Grinberg, was born in Rostov-on-Don in 1899. He finished school and got attracted by revolutionary ideas. During the Civil War 10 he served in the political department of the 2nd Red army cavalry unit. My mother and father met, when Red army troops entered Rostov. My mother and father never told me any details about how they met, though they actually actively communicated with us. My mother also took some part in revolutionary activities, though not as passionately as my father. He was an active member of the Communist Party, though he quit during the period of the NEP 11 because of his disagreement with the policy of the party. He did it quietly and there were no consequences of this for him. This episode was never discussed in the family because if people quit the party for ideological reasons they might have been sent to camps. During perestroika 12 my father told me the story.

My parents didn’t have a religious wedding. They belonged to the generation that made the Revolution and their position was to reject the significance of nationality. They believed that a person should be a revolutionary and internationalist and rejected religion or traditions. No nationality or tradition-related issues were ever discussed in our family and there was no orientation of our Jewish identity.

My father began to get involved in journalism in Rostov, but there were no career opportunities for him and my parents moved to Moscow in 1924. My father began to work as chief editor of a trade union magazine. He was about 30 years old then. At that time my father changed his surname to Grin.

We lived in a big communal apartment 13 on Basmannaya Street in the very center of Moscow at first. Well, it seemed big to me. There were big rooms, but the apartment as such was probably not that big. There were two families sharing it: our family and my parents’ friends who had also moved to Moscow from Rostov. I was born there in December 1924. My parents had two rooms in this apartment: my mother and father shared one room and my nanny and I the other.

My nanny’s name was Nadezhda, but everybody called her ‘nanny’ since she was the oldest sister in her family, lived in a village and raised her younger brothers and sisters. My nanny was like a member of our family. She came to work for us when I was a few months old and raised me, my younger sister and my son. She was a Christian and very religious. She attended church and contributed everything to it she earned. It’s also funny that this nanny, a plain village woman, was my grandmother’s best friend and always stood for my grandmother when the family had arguments with her about her prayers on Saturday. We were surprised at that, but probably religiosity makes people tolerant and respectful about different faiths.

In 1928 my parents bought a cooperative apartment on Krestovozdvizhenskiy Lane. This was the first cooperative in Moscow. It was a fabulous apartment for this period: three rooms and a hallway, all comforts and a bathroom. There was a gas boiler for heating water. Later, after the house was overhauled, this gas water heating was replaced with centralized hot water supply piping. We lived in this apartment till March 2003. I seem to remember, or perhaps I remember it from what my mother told me, how we moved from Basmannaya to Krestovozdvizhenskaya Street. I was four or five. I remember a horse-drawn wagon overloaded with our belongings and we walked behind it across Moscow. I was held by my hand and we were walking across beautiful sunny Moscow. This was my first childhood memory.

There was an actual threat of my father’s arrest in 1937, but thank God, he wasn’t arrested in the end. It happened due to very interesting circumstances. In 1930 he quit his job as chief editor of a trade union magazine and switched to geography. He did it because he wanted to do scientific work. Perhaps, he didn’t even realize that his fate smiled at him at that time. Probably the authorities didn’t find him. There were ten or eleven apartments in our part of the house. Only two men weren’t arrested: my father and a severely ill man.

My father was a talented man. He took part in and won literature contests, liked writing greetings in the form of poems and did it well. He wrote a children’s book entitled ‘Notes of Doctor Dobrov’ where he described his expeditions in which children took part. There were scientific and scientific educational expeditions that he arranged. He also took me along in the 1930-1940s. I was with him in the Crimea and took part in scientific expeditions in the Altay and Caucasus. He spent a lot of time with my sister and me. I became a geographer under his influence. My father was a joyful man with a great sense of humor and irony. I believe it to be a part of the Jewish nature: this ironic attitude toward one’s own self and the surrounding.

My mother, Raisa Grin, nee Liberman, was an intelligent, well-educated person, though she had only one official document about finishing a grammar school. She studied at university, but never graduated from it and didn’t have any documents proving her higher education. She sang very well and attended evening classes at the conservatory before the war, but she never reached a professional level. She had no time having to raise two children. She was a statistics economist. She worked in the institute of figurative statistics.

My mother was a wonderful person. She was my most loved and beautiful person. She spent a lot of time with my sister and me. My mother shared my father’s views on politics and religion. She had formulated her family role and later taught my wife Galia, ‘You must do everything for your home and your husband must sit at his desk earning money’. She didn’t like it that I got involved in everything going on at home and helped Galia with the housework. She thought it was wrong. Here is an example:

Once my sister or I asked my father: ‘Papa, do you eat all food at home?’ ‘Yes’, he said, ‘absolutely everything’. My mother laughed loudly, ‘But of course. You like macaroni, but we’ve never cooked any’. He never interfered with any household issues and had no idea about them. During the war there were problems with food, but he had no idea where or how to get food. He just brought his earnings home and that was it. Of course, he was the head of family, but my mother was its neck and turned the head as she believed right.

We were a close family. My mother and father loved each other and the children. My mother was very close with her brothers and sisters. She was particularly close with Yevgenia Liberman, who was single and worked as a teacher in a kindergarten. I used to visit her in the kindergarten and was a nuisance. I was naughty and she felt uncomfortable about it since everybody knew that I was her nephew. I once drowned a crayfish from the zoo room of the kindergarten in the toilet and was driven out of the kindergarten with a terrible scandal.

My parents kept the door open for friends. In the 1930s people were afraid of meeting or discussing political issues, and no political subjects were discussed in our family. Interesting people visited us. A well-known geographer named Baranskiy, the author of a school geography textbook that existed till about 1960, visited us. He was a big Siberian man. My parents had many Jewish friends visiting us, but there were no discussions of Jewish subjects. Shira Gorshman, wife of the artist Gorshman [Soviet Jewish book illustrator] and a popular Jewish writer who wrote in Yiddish was my mother and father’s close friend and often visited us.

• Growing up

My mother and father didn’t spend vacations together. My mother and we, kids, spent vacations in the Crimea or Ukraine. It was warm and there was sufficient food. My father worked hard and spent his vacations alone. He traveled to Sochi in the Caucasus alone. In 1937 my parents built a dacha [summer cottage]. My mother had a colleague, a Latvian woman whose husband was an engineer at the furniture factory.

This factory obtained a permit to build a hostel for its workers on a site in the woods. They cut the trees and built a huge barracks from the logs. Non-manual personnel of the factory was given permission to build dachas on the spots where the trees had been removed. My mother’s friend suggested that my parents join them to build a house for two families. They didn’t have money, but they had a plot of land.

My father, thank God, had money, but at that time it was very difficult to receive a plot of land. To cut this long story short: they built a house with two entrances. It was a small, but nice house. There were three rooms for each family and an open verandah. It’s still there, but we modified the house. We often spent time there in winter and in summer.

My younger sister, Galina Grin, was born in Moscow in 1932. She finished the Biological Faculty of Moscow University. My sister was a geobotanist studying plants. She was a talented person and took part in various expeditions to Kazakhstan [about 2,000 km from Moscow], where she happened to work on a nuclear testing site. She was exposed to radiation and fell ill with leukemia at the age of 23.

My mother was trying to rescue her from death. There was no treatment available at that time, but it doesn’t exist nowadays either, as it happens. There was the issue of marrow transplantation. At that time a big group of Yugoslav scientists was also exposed to radiation and there was a lot of ado about this case. There were discussions about possible treatment, including marrow transplantation.

A professor, the first-rate hematologist of the country, visited Lialia – that’ how we called my sister at home. He said we were not going to apply any new methods of treatment and that her goal was to survive as long as she could while waiting for new medication to appear, but it never did. My mother supported her for five years. My sister died at the age of 28. Everything possible was done to prolong her life. She had blood transfusion every now and then. I remember that she was taken to Botkin’s hospital, one of the central clinics in Moscow. Once there was a threat of a cholera epidemic in Moscow, when it was time for her blood transfusion. There was quarantine in hospitals and my mother wasn’t allowed to visit her. My mother managed to make arrangements for blood transfusion at home, which was a difficult thing to do. Basically, my mother took every effort to rescue her. From time to time my sister was taken to the hospital near our house for another course of treatment. She died in this hospital.

My first childhood memories are associated with our yard. It was an asphalted yard. We played lapta [rounders] in the yard. Gee, it was exciting! We also played ‘shtander’ throwing a ball up in the air and the one who caught it shouted ‘Shtander!’ [exclamation used exclusively in this game meaning ‘stand’] and then he had to hit motionless players. The boys from my yard were my friends and later I made friends at school too. The children from our yard went to different schools. I went to school #92 14 in our district. I also had friends at the dacha. Our neighbors in Moscow, the Vorontsov family, happened to be our neighbors in the dacha village. There were three brothers: one was one year older than me, one was the same age and one was a year younger. We became friends at the dacha. They lived on 5, Granovskogo Street in Moscow and when we were in Moscow I went to meet with them in their yard.

I joined the Komsomol 15 at school. It couldn’t have been otherwise at that time. I was chairman of the pupils’ committee. We were responsible for good progress in our studies. Like any other public organizations we did a lot of rubbish: had meetings and various cultural activities. The situation in our school was complicated. There were many pupils from the so-called ‘5th house of Soviets’. Families of high Soviet officials lived in the house on 5, Granovskogo Street. There were two blockheads, the sons of the Minister of Finance, in our school. They were hooligans who only had bad marks at school, but the school had to be patient with them. Who could dare to reprimand the son of the Minister of Finance? There were also nice children at school. One of my classmates was the daughter of the Minister of Heavy Industry; I don’t remember her name. She was a good pupil and so was I. I did well at school.

I have dim memories about the arrests in 1937. I didn’t have the slightest idea about things then, though I saw a suitcase with all necessary things packed in my father’s room. I didn’t feel alarmed. I was too young and our parents protected us from any subjects of this kind. My mother’s brother Matvey suffered during this period. He perished in a camp. Now we know that he was executed, but at that time nobody knew what was happening. He was arrested and disappeared and that was all. Some of my schoolmates’ parents were arrested and the children were sent to children’s homes, but nobody discussed these subjects ever. We were just children and had easy attitudes to such things.

• During the war

In 1941 it started. I had no feeling that it was going to be a world war. We just didn’t understand what was happening. All of a sudden we became friends with the Germans signing the Non-aggression Pact [the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact] 16; this seemed strange. No political questions were discussed at home. I remember the day of 22nd June 1941, when the war began. I listened to Molotov’s 17 speech on the radio on the first day and then Stalin’s speech on 1st July, I think. There was concern in the air and it couldn’t be ignored. We were at the dacha, but we often came back to the city.

On 1st July our Komsomol group went to the construction of defense lines near Moscow. I wasn’t mobilized, but all activities were volunteer mandatory. I was a Komsomol activist and the Komsomol was sending its members without asking their consent. The Komsomol district committee sent our group to the vicinity of Yelnya, about 250 kilometers southwest of Moscow, where we excavated anti-tank trenches. It was hard work for teenage boys.

There was intelligentsia from Moscow there. At that time people didn’t have clothes for all occasions. My parents’ clothes fit in one small wardrobe. My mother had one dress for work, one for special occasions and two pairs of shoes, accordingly. So, women came to do this hard work wearing silk dresses and high-heeled shoes. They just didn’t have anything else to wear.

We had to handle the soil standing on terraces to gradually move soil from the bottom to the top. I spent a month there. There were Spartan living conditions. Our group slept on the ground in the stables. We had more or less sufficient food, as I understand it was a soldiers’ ration. There was a field kitchen where they cooked. We worked and worked and didn’t know about evacuation or where the locals were. All we thought was going back to work.

In late July the Germans began to drop bombs on Moscow. We were still working on the defense lines when our artillery units were already firing over our heads. Germans were advancing to Yelnya promptly. We heard the roar of cannons. There was the terrible impression of German bombers flying to drop bombs on Moscow. We knew nothing. Nobody informed us on what was happening. There were no newspapers. We listened to the radio, but it was hard to tell the whereabouts of German troops by the names of towns and villages. Nobody said, for example, that they were close to Yelnya.

In the last week of July Germans broke through the front line near Yelnya and we urgently boarded a freight train to Moscow. We walked home from the railway station hoping that our houses were still there. My house was there. So I had to think about what to do. Go to the 10th grade at school? Our school was already closed. Most of our teachers and pupils evacuated. There was another school in our district, but I didn’t quite feel like going back to school and my parents didn’t insist that I did. My friend and I became apprentices of a turner at the aviation plant. The night shift began at 9 to 10 and approximately at that time German bombers started their attacks that ended at 3am sharp. There was no way to get to work during air raids. The public transport stopped and there was an alarm announcement. In order to get to work I had to catch a tram before this alarm since if they started on their route they had to continue on it regardless the alarm. But if you failed to catch it and missed your shift at work, it might have caused problems.

At times we didn’t feel like going to work at all. We went to the subway before the alarm and wandered along the tracks looking for our friends. The subway was used as shelter during air raids. There were wooden decks placed over the tracks to walk on them or sleep at night. I didn’t have any fear being a young man with romantic outlooks.

There was one episode when I felt fear in my life. Once, and I don’t know what led to it, but during an air raid I stayed at home with a girl. Probably it was just my desire to spend time with the girl. There were many bombs dropped in the center of Moscow. It was scaring. There were flak units shooting and bombs roaring. Germans attached sirens to bombs to produce this sound. It gave the feeling that everything near you was falling into an abyss and that another bomb was going to hit the house.

I worked at the plant till 13th October 1941. It was the day of great panic in Moscow, real panic, whatever they say. The Ministries were burning their papers. Military units of shabby soldiers - as if they had just come out of battles - were crossing Moscow and cattle was also moving along the streets. At night food storages went up in flames. Flour and sugar were burning and people were pulling out bags of them. Our plant was to evacuate, so they announced at work. Only workers who could repair equipment and load it were to stay. They told all boys to go home.

On 13th October my father told us that his institute was evacuating and we could go with them. My mother managed to get my father out of the Territorial army [Fighting Battalion] 17, formed before our departure from Moscow. Only later they issued an order releasing people with scientific degrees or other merits from this service. Of course nobody was going to release anybody from there. My mother found my father in his unit housed in a school building, showed this order to his commandment and demanded that they released my father. He was a doctor of sciences by then. So we evacuated. We only had a few bags packed for the road. This was all we could take with us. My mother, my sister and I and my mother’s sister Zhenia Liberman went to the railway station. My nanny refused to go with us. She said she would guard the apartment. My grandmother was living with uncle Ilia’s family at that time. They evacuated to Central Asia.

We boarded a passenger train that departed when it got dark. However, in the morning we discovered that the train didn’t leave Moscow moving along peripheral railroad tracks. This continued two or three days. There were few trains that had to take turns for departure to the east. We finally left Moscow moving in the direction of Voronezh, about 800 kilometers southeast of Moscow. In Kuibyshev we changed to a freight train heading to Central Asia. This was a train for cattle and prisoner transportation. We arrived in Frunze, about 3,200 kilometers southeast of Moscow. There was another shock waiting for us there. There was a lot of bread, vegetables, onions and fruit at the market as if there was no war. Back in Moscow there were already bread coupons. I also obtained a worker’s card at the plant. [Editor’s note: the card system was introduced to directly regulate food supplies to the population by food and industrial product rates. During and after the Great Patriotic War there were cards for workers, non-manual employees and dependents in the USSR. The biggest rates were on workers’ cards: 400 grams of bread per day.]

This abundance of food products lasted about a month and then it just disappeared as if ‘a cow licked it off with its tongue’ [Russian idiom], but there were still more food stocks in Frunze than in Moscow. We were accommodated in a room in a private house. Life was hard, but there was still enough food and it was warm. Children could play outside and run to the market. I went to work at the Kyrghyz scale repair plant where I was an apprentice to an equipment mechanic. There were high-skilled workers from Leningrad who trained me in their job. So the winter of 1941/1942 passed.

The local population treated us all right. At least I didn’t hear of any problems. Aunt Zhenia stayed at home and my parents went to work. My father became an executive secretary of the newspaper ‘Kyrghyzskaya Pravda’ since there was no work for a geographer. My mother worked in an office making provisions for artists in evacuation. She worked in the logistics department. When we returned to Moscow she continued her work in this office till she retired. My sister went to school. Life was tolerable, I would say. Aunt Zhenia worked culinary miracles. She made onion jam, for example. We didn’t starve, but of course our life in evacuation was far from the prewar level. Though even before the war, when my father was professor and dean and my mother worked as well we led a modest life. I remember my mother saying before the war: ‘I can’t afford to give you gastronomic breakfast every day’. This meant that we could only have sausage and cheese for breakfast on weekends or holidays and on weekdays we had cereal.

In May 1942, when I was 17 and a half years old [the recruitment age was 18], the military registry office summoned me. They said, ‘Sit down and write a volunteer application to the army’. Who would dare to refuse those orders at that time! They sentenced people for desertion and then nobody would ever find justice. I was recruited to the 17th squadron of the Civil Aviation near the railway station in Frunze where they trained navigators/radio operators on aircraft. All cadets had finished the 9th grade at school. Later this squadron was renamed into a radio operator school. We lived in a barrack. There was poor food: sprat soup and boiled cereals. Those who came from Frunze rarely got leave to go home. We were given uniforms: boots, trousers and overcoats. There were two groups of 25 cadets each at school. There was military order. Our commander was first sergeant of the training unit and had been at war. For some reason he became furious with us and made our life as hard as we could imagine. He was to train us in drilling.

We had wonderful teachers in other military disciplines who were navigators and radio operators of the Civil Aviation. This was a privileged group. There weren’t many pilots at that time, and they told us that they knew all of them in the Civil Aviation. We also had flying training on DS-3 [Douglas], American aircraft with which our Civil Aviation was equipped before the war. There were also German Junkers planes furnished from the vicinity of Stalingrad. Near Stalingrad [present-day Volgograd, 800 km from Moscow] many planes left from many airfields. Later the Tashkent aviation plant got a license to manufacture those DS-3 planes, but they became Li-2, of course. They replaced passenger seats with steel benches and installed machine guns on them.

We finished our training in May 1943 and went to the headquarters in Moscow by train. We were accommodated in a military unit, the 1st air transportation division of the civil military aviation, near Vnukovo airport [domestic flights airport about 75 km southwest of Moscow]. I went there a couple of years ago and there were still two-storied barracks there where we lived. The pilots flew former passenger planes modified to become military aircraft. They transported people and loads to partisan units, for example. I can tell you a few anecdotes. When we came there planes were flying to Berlin on low altitudes or they would have been knocked down, lighted the landing spot with a torch and moved our intelligence men from there. They also transported the wounded from partisan units. Lighter planes were based near the front line, but ours were heavy planes and they flew directly from Moscow. There was a division of planes. Our division was a military unit, though it belonged to the Civil Fleet.

I flew to take partisans to the vicinity of Kiev. Kiev was occupied by the Germans. These were mostly girls. They jumped from the plane with parachutes. They had so many weapons and explosives on them that they couldn’t walk themselves inside the plane and we pushed them off board. I was responsible for communications and navigation during flights. I was the navigator/radio operator of the plane. At times Germans knocked down our planes. It’s aviation, and many things happened.

In fall we were sent to a bombers’ unit, that is, to the army. I was sent to the 11th Guards Night Bomber regiment west of Stalingrad in Morozovskaya station, about 900 kilometers south of Moscow. Our regiment was also involved in the liberation of Stalingrad. We bombed German positions and ramparts. We flew to bomb Donetsk basin in Ukraine, 600 kilometers west of Stalingrad where the front line was. We only flew at night since our planes flew at low speed. Our army lost many planes and crews during the Stalingrad battle flying during the daytime.

Other pilots, war veterans, told me that they were fired at as if in a shooting range: German fighter planes came from behind shooting at them. At that time our pilots were flying on Tb-3 planes, heavy bombers that were used for transportation of expeditions to the North Pole after the war. We heard many stories when we came to this regiment. Some military started the war at the borders. Many of them perished, but some survived. They told us stories and shared their experiences.

We were located far from the front line. Later we were called ‘Long-range aviation’ and became a reserve of the chief commandment. We rarely took part in front line operations. We were sent to the locations of another one of Stalin’s blows. [Editor’s note: 10 subsequent decisive blows on German troops during World War II resulting in the expulsion of Germans from the territory of the Soviet Union. The Soviet propaganda referred to the authorship of Stalin in the development of the strategy of those combat actions and they were called Stalin’s blows.] Our commander was Marshall of Aviation Golovanov. We didn’t get closer than 200 to 300 kilometers from the front line. There were airdromes where we were deployed, but they weren’t always properly equipped; sometimes they were field air fields. The Land Lease provided the so-called ‘net’ to us. [Editor’s note: the system of USA lease or transfer of weapons, ammunition, food and other logistics resources to the countries of anti-Hitler coalition during WWII. The US Congress adopted the Land Lease law in 1941.] It could be placed on the field ground and planes could take off or land on it. We were in the vicinity of Stalingrad till winter.

In winter 1943 we relocated to Ukraine, to the town of Gorlovka in the vicinity of Donetsk liberated from fascists [about 900 km from Moscow]. We flew to drop bombs across Ukraine and Poland. There was one plane in the division equipped with photographic equipment to take photographs of the combat site after the bombardment to control the correctness of fulfillment of combat tasks. There were squadrons or regiments flying on tasks. Besides, each crew wrote a report upon return from tasks, and photographs served as proof of the accuracy of such reports. As far as I understood there were no lies written in reports. Lying might have been punished by the tribunal, penal battalions or execution.

We lived in former hostels or likewise modified into barracks. We had good food. Pilots had very good provisions. We even got chocolate under the Land Lease law, but not those who smoked. They got cigarettes. We got dark chocolate with nuts. It was packed in lumps in boxes and our logistics people broke it into pieces. For every successful flight we received 100 grams vodka, but since there was no vodka available we received 42 grams of pure alcohol. Since our logistic people were reluctant to weigh 42 grams each time they summed up a few flights to release more spirit, but our commandment didn’t appreciate this practice because they wanted to prevent intoxication. There was a poet in our squadron. He wrote: Dva pozharchika, Dva vzryvchika, Dai talonchiki na sto gramm, which means Two little fires, Two little blasts, Give me a card of 100 grams’. We called this ration of 100 grams ‘people’s commissar’s’ hundred, since this permission was issued by the people’s commissar of defense.

As a rule, we flew every night. At least, we were to be ready to fly every night whether or not we received a task that night. There was no fighters’ escort with us. At times German flak cannons attacked us. Our planes were equipped with two machine guns and a 20 mm aviation cannon gun installed in a machine gun ring in the cabin. The ring was covered with plexiglass for observation and wind protection purposes. There were machine guns on the right and left sides in the tail of a plane.

Once, when our unit was deployed near Leningrad we bombed Finland calling this action ‘to drive Finland out of the war’. This operation started after the blockade of Leningrad 19 was broken. We bombed Helsinki and Turku port in the Gulf of Finland. A shell hit our plane there, broke through the engine and fortunately exploded somewhere higher. It was a two-engine plane and there was one left. We managed to fly to the area between the towns of Porokhov and Dno in Pskov region [about 500 km from Moscow]. We landed in a field at night without releasing the landing gear. We survived.

This was the territory of partisans. The front line was somewhere near. The partisans helped us to cross the front line. We returned to our unit leaving the plane behind. Its propellers and engine were damaged. Later we repaired the plane and moved it to our unit. When we returned to our units we had to write to a number of explanatory units about what happened and how. The special department [this department dealt with the work of employees with sensitive documentation containing state secrets. This department reported to the KGB] was shaking the information out of us, particularly because we had landed behind the front line. They wanted to know whether we had had contacts with the Germans, transferred any secret information to them or intended to surrender. It was stupid and humiliating, but it was their job. They were responsible for security. We described the situation referring to partisans who witnessed the circumstances and the special department believed us.

There was another episode when we were near Leningrad. It was a siege and we were deployed on the other side of the siege. The German front line was between Leningrad and us. Though residents of Leningrad were dying from hunger we had probably the most sufficient food supplies of the war period there. I remember having red caviar for the first time in my life. Of course, they gave it to pilots. From there we flew to bomb Finland and the Baltic Republics.

I remember a funny incident. We were to know the wind direction over the target before we took off on our task, but there was no information except the intelligence data. If there were intelligence people in the vicinity of the target they provided the information about the weather conditions in the area to us, but if there were none of them, they provided the data from the area where they were located - that might be up to 300 kilometers away from the target. We once received a task and the discrepancy of the data about the wind direction we received and the actual situation was 180 degrees. They told us the wind was blowing from the north to the south in the area, while actually it was blowing from the south to the north.

We were flying over the Gulf of Finland to avoid German flaks. There was a lot of confusion and once one of our crews dropped bombs on Sweden, which was out of the war. We were to drop bombs on Finland. They returned and wrote a report: ‘These damned Finns don’t even care about black-out. Here is lighting everywhere and even trams commute. We gave them a sharp blow without seeing the target’.

In summer 1944 we were in the vicinity of Kiev. Kiev was liberated in early November and the front line was actually near our border. We were dropping bombs on Romania. Our major task was to deprive Germans of Romanian gasoline. In 1945 we bombed Berlin. At times we were wrong and dropped bombs in the wrong places, but nobody ever mentioned it in our reports for the fear of the tribunal. There were four 250 kg bombs in the plane, or two 500 kg bombs or one one-ton bomb. There was a bombardment navigator in the crew determining the location for dropping bombs. I identified the direction by radio beacons. They were reliable. Besides at night we could see geographical guiding points, such as rivers, settlements or railroads. We often returned home along railroad tracks. At times, when it was getting light at dawn, we descended at lower heights to read the name of railroad stations.

At that time I knew nothing of the genocide of Germans against Jews, the ghettos and mass shootings. When we were near Kiev, I had no idea of Babi Yar 20. I didn’t know about the Holocaust until some time after the war. My fellow comrades knew that I was a Jew. We got along well. However, as for awards or promotions, they stumbled on the commissar. The commissar and I had good relationships personally, but he probably had instructions from his commandment to not bestow awards on Jews. At least I didn’t face routinely anti-Semitism in the army. I didn’t understand then why I didn’t have awards or promotions. I thought it was a misunderstanding and tried to think of explanations. I only realized it after the war. I used to think: ‘Why did they award an order to Vanika, but no order to me?’ There are orders and medals awarded to him for his combat deeds and labor achievements on his jacket, including the Order of Great Patriotic War, Order of Glory, medal for the defense of Stalingrad, medal for Courage, etc. I thought about it after the war, but nothing of the kind occurred to me during the war.

Anyway, I was awarded an order of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ and a medal ‘For courage’ We got awards for successful flights. There were curious Stalin directives: for example, an order was to be awarded for 50 successful flights, a medal for 30 successful flights, and the award of the ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’ for 250 successful flights. This was for the bombardment aviation. It was different for fighters. They counted the number of planes they lost. Our flights were considered successful when we hit the target.

I joined the Party at the front. I joined it because of conviction; there were no other thoughts at that time. I started my service in the rank of sergeant and when the war was over I was Guards first sergeant. On Victory Day 21, 9th May 1945, we were near Kiev. We heard about the victory at night. All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, there was terrible shooting in the military living quarters near the aerodrome. We didn’t understand a damned thing at first. Naturally, we ran outside and heard the shouting: ‘Victory! Victory!’ We were in the rear. Perhaps, they felt the victory differently at the front. For us it was a huge surprise and a great joy. Then our crew was to be included in the combined regiment to prepare for the Victory Parade and fly over the Red Square, the main square of the country. This was summer 1945. The parade was to take place in May, but it was continuously delayed and when it took place the weather was terrible and we didn’t fly on that day. There were no planes taking part in the parade.

In summer 1945 we relocated to the Far East. We were to start the war with Japan 22. Crews of commanding officer, second pilot, navigator and board mechanic flew to the Far East. Our pilots were flying Tu-2 aircraft, designed by Tupolev. They were high-speed high-altitude bombers, better aircraft than we used to fly before. This was a military aircraft manufactured for military purposes. I was a radio operator/gunner at that time already. All radio operators and gunners and support personnel went to the Far East by train. It took us a month to cross Russia. It was a passenger train. When passing their home towns many of our crew members hurried to visit their homes and later caught up with the train. Trains moved slowly due to damages on the roads, taking long stops and it was not a problem to catch up with a train getting a drive to another station.

In August we arrived in Vladivostok about 7,000 kilometers east of Moscow. We installed tents on the bank of the Chornaya River in the suburb of Vladivostok and lived there for quite a while. Then we took a boat to Sakhalin Island about 800 kilometers from Vladivostok. As soon as we left Vladivostok harbor there was a vigorous storm on the sea and to approach Sakhalin Island we were to cross the Laperuz Strait. We had to heave to drift since there was no way to orient the boat. We were sailing for a week instead of one day trip. This was August 1945. We finally reached the destination, but it was a long sail.

There was a lot of spirit that they were to release to us. There was a people’s commissar rate in Vladivostok: 100 grams of vodka per day. We received this rate for flights during the war while here they released it every day. Everybody drank a lot on the boat, including the crew and there was a small fight that was stopped with a water cannon. So we were at the destination point in late August. There was Zonalnoye settlement on the border of the Northern and Southern parts of Sakhalin. The air field was very small. There were few houses that could only accommodate officers. The rest of the staff had to make earth pits. We had to cut wood. There were Land Lease furnished Studebaker vehicles that could climb the hills. There were about 600-meter high hills in this area. So we cut the trees to make cuttings in the woods. Studebecker cars drove uphill to pick 12-13 meter tree trunks and we made earth huts from them. We had to hurry. Winter was approaching and we didn’t know what kind of climate to expect in Sakhalin.

There was one episode for which later all new recruits teased us. It was called ‘They came to bomb Muroran’. Muroran, I think, was a major town on Hokkaido Island. There was an air field there. It became our target and we were preparing for this operation. There were delays due to weather conditions. There was vigorous fog and we couldn’t fly there and the ships of the Pacific Ocean Navy couldn’t leave the bay. This ended rather sadly for our commandment. Marshal Novikov, Commander of the Far East Air Force, was dismissed, and so was the Admiral of the Pacific Ocean Navy. Thank God, we didn’t invade Hokkaido Island, or things might have been worse, but there was an intention of this kind. The war was over on 11th September. We were to drop bombs on Japan, but we didn’t. We didn’t know that an atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. We got to know this much later, after the war was over.

• After the war

I served in Sakhalin till 1950. They didn’t demobilize anybody from our military unit. It was hard to bring replacement for us because we were too far away. We went on training flights and bombing. There were deserted islands along the seashore. They became our training grounds and we bombed them vigorously. I knew nothing about what was happening in the country: about the death of Mikhoels 23, or the campaign against cosmopolitans 24. Our political officers propagated communism to us. There were political hours more often than once a week. I got tired of the army by that time. Here is how I demobilized: When the Korean War began, it turned out that our planes were good for nothing; the ones that seemed so good to us. We needed replacement of equipment and training of staff. Then our commandment decided that there was no sense in spending money for training of old staff and demobilized us in May 1950. We flew to the continent in the same aircraft that I flew during the war. It also served as the main civil aircraft. Our flight to Moscow lasted two days. It turned out that it was much easier to fly when I worked than just being a passenger.  

I came home. Everything was fine there. Everybody was healthy. Lialia studied at university. Our dacha had been in a German controlled area during the war and the Germans had burnt it down. When I arrived, my parents had already built a new dacha. There was a big plot of land: 40 hundred parts of a hectare. It was turned into a vegetable garden where my parents grew potatoes and other vegetables for our family and two families of their friends. Their friends with whom they had initially shared this dacha perished in the camps in 1937.

My relatives in Rostov were in the occupation twice. The Germans retreated and then returned. My cousin Mark Yerenevskiy, aunt Lisa Liberman’s son, perished there. He served in the infantry. People saw him coming home and then he disappeared and was on the lists as a missing one. I don’t know how he perished. My cousin Nora Liberman from Rostov evacuated to Kislovodsk in the Caucasus, but German troops advanced there and she and her parents moved to Central Asia where she met Boris Gofman, a Polish Jew, and married him. Boris served in the Polish army and Nora followed him to Iran and after the war they moved to the USA. She lives in Los Angeles now. My mother corresponded with her, though it was risky, but my mother was old at that time and had no fear any longer. Nora visited Rostov twice and traveled via Moscow during perestroika.

I had to finish school and enter a college. I went to a young working people’s school. I studied at school and worked at the construction trust office as a clerk. Actually, I rather pretended to be working. I needed a certificate to confirm that I was working for school. I studied well. I finished school in winter 1950-1951 with all excellent marks. At that time the persecution of Jews in the country grew stronger. My father lost his job as dean of the Geographical Faculty of the Pedagogical College. He went to work as senior scientific worker in the College of Railroad Transport. There was no fear of arrests, though, like in 1937, and there was no packed suitcase in the house.

In 1951 I submitted my documents to the Geographical Faculty of Moscow State University. In those years they didn’t admit Jews to colleges and my parents were very concerned. I was still young and light-minded and didn’t quite understand the situation. I passed the entrance interview 25 along with other applicants with all excellent marks in their school certificates. I didn’t have to take exams and this was my good luck. The atmosphere during the interview was very calm and I answered all questions. They admitted me. Of course, I was nervous, but my parents were even more nervous having a much better understanding of what was going on. My father probably had some connections at the university and most likely made some arrangements for my admission, but I don’t know anything about it.

There were only few Jewish students at the faculty. Student life was wonderful. We went on expeditions in the Geographical Faculty and became very close. I took an active part in public life. There were only five or six party members. Other students were Komsomol members. I was the party leader of my course. I was fond of sports and went in for volleyball. We had excellent lecturers. We respected them a lot. Their lectures were very interesting. We had wonderful parties and meetings. I studied well and received the Lenin’s stipend. [Editor’s note: the highest stipend in higher educational institutions in the USSR awarded to the best students for special merits. This stipend was only awarded to a maximum of ten students per institution.]

Again, I was young and stupid and the Doctors’ Plot 26 went past me, but I didn’t believe what the newspapers wrote. I thought it was just anti-Semitism. This was what they said at home. We were a patriarchal family and respected our parents. For example, we had to come home for dinner regardless of where we were or what we were doing. My parents returned home at about 6 and then we had dinner. I smoked when serving in the army, but my parents didn’t allow me to smoke inside and I had to go into the corridor to have a cigarette. In the end I quit smoking. My father couldn’t stand the smoke and my mother decided that I wasn’t allowed to smoke at home. Everything in the family was subject to my father’s interests. There were discussions of life matters during dinner and those were interesting discussions. My father was a smart and bright person and it was always interesting to spend time with him.

I remember the day of Stalin’s funeral in 1953. It was rather dramatic. When it was announced that Stalin had died, of course everyone gathered and our lecturer in scientific communism - by the way, this was a mandatory subject in all higher educational institutions of he USSR - held a very emotional speech about the Great Stalin. This lecturer was loved by the students for her interesting lectures and of course, after this speech, there was sobbing. I listened to her quietly, but with alarm. We were raised this way. The world seemed to have come to an end. Nobody could imagine who would become the leader of the state to lead us on this fair way to communism. Fortunately, I didn’t go to the funeral, or I might have got into this meat grinder where many people died. I was smart enough to stay away from there.

During our studies we went on expeditions and training tours. I had a very interesting trip called ‘On great construction sites of communism’. We went to Kuibyshev, Stalingrad and to other hydro power plants. Later I went on an expedition to Bodaibo, to the gold mines [about 4,400 km from Moscow]. I saw things there. There were prisoners and exiles working in the mines. Dredges were washed on the surface while some deposits were underneath the river beds. A horizontal mine was operating where they mined for gold and it was like a river of gold flowing along the track. We, hydrologists, were to determine how much water they used. We were surprised that the people’s faces were dirty though there was so much water around. I asked why that was and they explained to me that when a prisoner found a nugget he put it in his mouth to keep it there till the end of the shift. Since there were metal detectors at the entrance/exit of the mine it made no sense to hide gold. After the shift the prisoner had to spit the piece of gold out of his mouth onto a cart. They couldn’t leave with it, but they just couldn’t help hiding and trying to smuggle out a piece anyway. People changed into work robes at the check-in point and after work they took off their robes to pass through the metal detector naked.

The Koreans living in this settlement of gold diggers surprised us. They managed to grow terrific crops. The Russians hardly managed to grow potatoes while the Koreans grew plenty of things and sold the vegetables at the market. They were expensive, though. One pickled cucumber could cost as much as a bottle of vodka. I traveled there in 1953. This was a terrible time. There had been an amnesty in the country, but they only released criminals. The situation there was fearful. There was no order whatsoever and the authorities were helpless. All workers in our research expeditions were former criminals sentenced for murder for the most part, but they were excellent workers and we got along well with them.

My chief of expedition, an old topographer, was a terrible drunkard. Once he was bringing our salaries, including the wages of those workers who were former criminals and got so drunk that he fell and didn’t remember anything and somebody took away his bag full of money. He said that he had lost his bag and they returned it to him and not one ruble was gone. That’s how big an authority he was. I heard many stories about the situation and rules in camps. There was a riot in a camp near Bodaibo and the guards killed everyone. It was disclosed only after the sister of one prisoner started to roll up this case. They notified her that her brother had died of heart failure. She didn’t believe them and went to the camp where she took a roster where they registered deaths and discovered that there were 100 people who died on one day from flu or heart failure. After Stalin’s death she wrote to the prosecutor’s office and finally found out the truth.

I met my future wife, Galina Ghermanson, at university. We studied in the same group. She was also a hydrologist. She was a nice young girl. We got married between the 4th and the 5th year of our studies. We had our wedding on New Year’s Eve. We had a civil registry in the registry office and a wedding party at home in the evening. There were many guests.

My wife came from a family of Baltic Germans or Swedes, but she was registered as Russian in her passport. Her grandfather was a Lutheran. He came from Rzhev, but later they moved to Moscow. Her father was an administrative worker in a military hospital. He was an officer and officers’ families were accommodated in hostels. I visited them in their room in the hostel. She was the only daughter. Neither my parents nor Galina’s expressed any discontent about our wedding. Though my parents were unhappy knowing that it was wrong for a Jew to marry a Russian, they never spoke their mind about it. I also believe that it is a wrong thing for Jews to have non-Jewish spouses. The Revolution destroyed everything Jewish and in mixed marriages things also get dispersed.

We lived with my parents. My wife defended her diploma before our son was born in 1956. I was happy to have a baby. It didn’t matter to me whether it was a boy or a girl. It was a human being and I was very happy. We named my son Andrey. My nanny looked after him and my wife or I didn’t have to raise him till he turned five. We had to start working and build up our life.

My work experience in the Institute of Geography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where I worked all my life, started on the day when Andrey was born. When I was employed they made me feel a Jew. Galina and I received diplomas without any mandatory job assignment 27. This was rare. Job assignments were convenient. It was good to know that there was a job waiting for you upon graduation. I had an appointment with the deputy director of the Institute, the academician Avsyuk. Later he became my scientific supervisor. He said I would get a job and could start the following day, but I had to make arrangements with the human resources department where they told me there was no need to hurry and advised me to come by at a later time to find out about the state of affairs. This took me about a month.

I sort of guessed that the reason was my nationality. This was how it was at the time! So I told them a miserable story saying that my wife was to have a baby and they felt sorry for me and told me to come to work. I took Galia to the maternity hospital and went to work. I began to take an active part in the public activities of the institute. I must have had good organizational skills. I became secretary of the Komsomol unit of the institute. There were about 500 Komsomol members there.

I started to work as a senior lab assistant with the salary of 83 rubles per month, but soon they gave me a raise to 105 rubles. [Editor’s note: This is probably a slip of the tongue. At that time his salary was probably 830 rubles. In 1961, upon denomination of money in the USSR his salary was 83 rubles. Before 1961 1 kg of bread in the USSR cost about 1.4 rubles and 1 liter of milk 1.2 rubles and after 1961 about 14 & 12 kopeck, accordingly.] This was the average salary of a young specialist in the country, but it was hard to live on it. The chief accountant, Anatoliy Raskin, an old Jew, was quite an important person in the institute. I think that because of Jewish solidarity he soon increased my salary to 120 rubles, but again, it wasn’t that much, particularly as we lived as a family paying our expenses separately from my parents.

It was hard for Galina to live in a different family, even though all of us were smart and educated. My father had a good sense of humor and Galina had a different background. In 1956 she was only 23 years old. She was very young. My sister Lialia, my grandmother and nanny lived in one room, my mother and father shared the second, and Galina, Andrey and I were in the third room. My sister fell ill at about this time. Galina went to work at the Institute of Water Issues of the Academy of Sciences. Our parents helped us, but life wasn’t easy. We weren’t hungry or poor, but I remember I had to buy cheap meat wastes from the meat factory at the market.

My son studied well and didn’t cause us much concern. However, he was quite an idler since he didn’t learn mathematics as he should have. After school he submitted his documents to the university and mathematics was his first entrance exam and he failed. He took his documents and passed exams in French to the Geographical Faculty of Moscow Pedagogical College. My mother spent a lot of time with him. She knew French from grammar school and when Andrey studied French at school she was helping him with his homework till the 5th grade. Andrey studied in a special French school. He had excellent marks in all subjects, but mathematics where he received ‘4’ or ‘3’ out of 5.

In summer we lived at the dacha. Andrey studied well in college; his only mistake was that he got married. This was his first wife. He had four altogether. They were Russian wives. He divorced his first wife promptly. His son Pyotr, from his third wife Olia, was born in 1985. Pyotr is a student of the Faculty of Economics in Moscow State University now. Olga went to visit her friend in the USA during perestroika and stayed there. Later she married an American and they have two lovely daughters. She visited us here with her family and they stayed at the dacha. Pyotr has visited her in the USA several times, but he didn’t dare to stay there. Olga lives near San Diego in California. Her surname is Beauty now, I think.

Pyotr lives with us. He is like our son. Galina and I don’t think it’s good though. A son must live with his father and mother rather than his grandparents. Andrey is married again. We get along well with his wife. Galina is her favorite mother-in-law. She has good relationships even with Andrey’s ex-wives. I think his family life failed because he didn’t find whom he needed. At first my son was a teacher at school and then he was promoted to deputy director. He was even about to become director of a school, but then he went to work at the Academic ‘Systems Analysis Institute’. School teachers have low salaries and this was one of the reasons why he left. At the institute Andrey worked as an economist, studied in the post-graduate class and became a candidate of economic sciences [see Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] 28. Some time later my son quit this job and went to work at the Moscow committee for architecture where he became deputy chief architect of Moscow for economics. He was responsible for all business related issues, developing estimated cost of building design and construction.

I worked at the institute of Geography for 46 years. I defended my candidate and doctor’s dissertation, received my scientific status of professor and became scientific deputy director. I have about 300 scientific works. I traveled all over the world. My first trip was to the Assembly of the Union of Geodesy and Geophysics in Switzerland in 1957. This is a strong international union uniting geodesists and hydrologists and many other professionals. I received a ridiculous per diem on this trip. I remember they gave us $30 for two weeks, but since this was the first trip of Soviet professionals abroad the receiving firm did everything they could to establish good relationships with Soviet tourist agencies. We were accommodated in a luxury hotel near Bern.

We were shocked at the life abroad. Besides plentiful shops and beautiful places we were shocked at their business management skills. The manager of the affiliate of the tourist company in Bern was a 23 to 25-year-old girl. We were trying to get more money in addition to the allowances that we had. We found out that we could refuse from lunches and get reimbursement for them which was two or three times more than we received at home. This girl had discussions with us and we were shocked when she opened a safe and gave us the necessary amount of money without asking anybody’s permission or approval. We only signed a receipt.

I bought many clothes for my wife, my son and my relatives for the money I received in compensation for my meals. A year later I went to a similar meeting in England. Of course, these trips happened because I was a member of the Communist Party and secretary of the Komsomol unit - what I mean by that is that I was a public figure - but also because I had scientific potential. I was a senior scientific employee and had scientific works.

I had an interesting job. I went on expeditions every summer. At that time I got involved in the issues of observation of the earth from space. It was very interesting. I had access to Russian, American and French cosmic photographs. Later we began to cooperate with the Americans in those issues. I traveled to America and Americans visited our country. I had an experimental ground near Kursk and they were absolutely surprised that it was located on a former military base. When our spy working for American intelligence sold our secrets this base was closed and turned over to the Academy of Sciences.

To decipher the cosmic photographs we had to identify the geodesic characteristics of the surface and compare them with earth-based photographs. We conducted open research with Americans in this field. This subject was a progressive direction and at the conference of geodesy and physics in Germany I was elected chairman of our working group. At that time it was necessary to obtain permission of the Central Committee of the Party to become chairman of an international committee. I couldn’t tell them that I needed this permission and pretended that it wasn’t quite what I wanted. What else could I do, when respectful people wanted me to become their chairman? Our interpreter was a KGB 29 informer, and she wrote in her report that I refused indistinctly, when they wanted to elect me and our organs closed the issue of my traveling abroad for six or seven years.

There was a special procedure of traveling abroad at that time. There was a special commission in a Party district committee which checked the reliability, looked closely into people’s biographies and asked idiotic questions related to the course of scientific communism. We had interviews. Now these interviews seem crazy. They instructed us: ‘You can only walk in groups of three or more’ fearing that the agents of the world imperialism were on guard and would not miss a chance to drag to their side or kill the star of Soviet science.

They also gave other instructions like: ‘do not make soup in a sink’: our actors brought boilers with them and since they didn’t have plates or mugs they plugged the sinks to boil soup or pasta to save money to buy clothes and gifts for their families. They also asked us whether we knew the words of the anthem by heart. There were old Bolsheviks in those commissions who were even crazier. So, after the report of this interpreter I wasn’t allowed to go on trips for six years. I could only communicate with my American colleagues, when they visited me.

My former supervisor, Grigoriy Ovsyuk, helped me a lot. He was working in the presidium of the Academy of Sciences and was well respected there. He was also chairman of the housing commission of the Academy. This was an important position at that time considering the deficit of dwellings. He was the one to decide whether to give an apartment to someone or not: to academicians, not common employees! He pressed on our foreign department to have their KGB representatives make the necessary arrangements for me with the relevant KGB office, and they allowed me to travel again.

I visited the USA several times. I went to their aerospace ground in Kansas and flew their aircraft. We used aircraft and helicopters for taking photographs with our equipment to compare the results and determine the level of accuracy. This Soviet-American program was complicated. Once I had an argument with our 1st department dealing in the issues of state security. They blamed us that we were disclosing our state secrets to the Americans. They would forecast the crops from our photographs and regulate the wheat prices to sell us wheat. I convinced them that it was nonsense, because if an American intelligence man drives a car from Moscow to Sochi he would disclose all so-called secrets along the way.

I conducted expeditions to study hydrology in Cuba twice. Later our institute issued an Atlas of Cuba with the whole hydrogeological part. Then I worked in China. We performed a similar program as we did with the Americans, entitled ‘Natural resources research from space’. I became deputy director of the institute for science.

In 1970, when the foreign mass media published articles about the oppression of Jews in Russia, a group of Jewish communists from Argentina arrived in Moscow looking for evidence that this wasn’t true and that Jews were prospering in the country. They gathered a group of prosperous Jewish scientists in Moscow. They were deputy directors of research institutes, including me. By the way, I never understood why we had this meeting or who they were. We had a meeting in the House of Friendship of the People. One of the employees there, a former employee of our institute, explained to me what it was about.

The chief editor of ‘Our Soviet Russia’ magazine, the only magazine in Yiddish in the USSR, with ridiculous circulation, was there. This was a pro-Soviet magazine. This editor entertained us with his chattering saying that knowing Yiddish one could travel anywhere. There were Jews speaking Yiddish all across the globe. He said he had been traveling all over the world and even in Shanghai met a man who could speak Yiddish.

We were sitting round the table talking about our life. There is a very powerful diaspora in Argentina. There are many Jews who escaped from Germany, when Hitler came to power. They gathered proof that we had a good life. We told them that we didn’t see distinct signs of anti-Semitism. The career level of the participants of this meeting was high and this was sufficient proof for them. They didn’t care about our well-being. My wife was also successful. She became a candidate of sciences and was chairman of the local committee [Mestkom] 30.

In 1980 my mother died. She had heart problems and had six or seven heart attacks. Her heart turned out to be like a cloth, even when she was young she was ill. I remember that she walked from the railway station to the dacha carrying bags, and then lay down in bed screaming from pain in her heart. Then there was the tragedy with my sister and my mother fought for her life for four years, but lost this battle. My mother was buried in Donskoye cemetery. My father died five years later, in 1985, and was buried there as well. I believe my father died from old age. He wasn’t ill. He grew older and older and then he sat in this arm-chair - where I am sitting now - and stayed there till he died. One morning before going to work I helped him sit in this chair and he died in it.

My wife Galina and my mother didn’t get along and nothing could be done about it. Two women in one kitchen – that’s impossible. In 1969 we bought a cooperative apartment thanks to Grigoriy Ovsyuk who included me in the list. We bought a two-bedroom apartment from the Academy of Sciences and moved there. We lived there till 1980. When my mother died, we couldn’t leave my father alone and moved back to my parents’ apartment. We left our apartment to Andrey. He was married at the time.

When Israel was established in 1948, I was in the army and didn’t know anything about it. Then, when I returned home, I didn’t pay attention to the issue of emigrating. I didn’t care about things, just like any other common person in the Soviet Union. Regretfully, I need to confess that my non-Jewish attitude was very strong at the time. Many employees of our institute moved to Israel. There was only one scandalous departure to America. One professor worked a long time in a health care agency in Switzerland. He developed contacts with Americans and decided to emigrate. The attitude toward him was disgusting and I didn’t even take part in this whole story. Everybody condemned him blaming him of betrayal. I didn’t understand him and also condemned him.

Now I think different about Israel. I had a heart surgery in Israel. In 1992 I had a heart attack that I overcame, but it resulted in stenocardia. I had a medical examination and they said I needed surgery. I asked the director of this clinic where he would advise me to have surgery - in our country or abroad -and he said that he was a good surgeon but had nothing for post surgery treatment. Therefore, he concluded, if I had a chance of having it in Israel, I should go there. I had friends in Israel. I stayed with them for some time and got to know more about the country. Life there was wonderful in 1993 or 1994.

My friends told me that I had to obtain the citizenship and medical insurance in Israel or the surgery would cost me about USD 25,000. I wrote an application, but it turned out that it was not specified in my birth certificate that I was a Jew. They didn’t indicate it at that time. A year later I returned to Israel and they declared that they didn’t believe my new birth certificate and that I could throw it away. They knew that for a small bribe one could become a Jew immediately in Russia. They asked for my old certificate which didn’t say that I was a Jew, but had my mother’s name, Raisa Aronovna, and my father’s name, Moisey Filipovich, and they processed all necessary documents for me. I obtained mandatory medical insurance from the Ministry of Absorption. I returned to Moscow and a year later went to Israel with Galina. I had all medical examinations and they sent me to the American-Israeli cardiologic clinic. It was a nice clinic, but since I wanted to expedite the surgery and go back to Moscow, and also wanted a Russian speaking professor from Russia to do the surgery I had to pay an additional USD 2,000. In May I had coronary artery grafting and could go home a short time later.

When perestroika began in the 1980s, I didn’t pay much attention to it. I didn’t take part in any movements. I wasn’t indifferent and was really glad about it, but I was ill at that time. I thought positive of Gorbachev 31 unlike many other people. I understood that a young and smart leader was very good for the country. I think it was a wonderful idea of democracy and glasnost, but I cannot say that the results were good. Still, it’s much better than it used to be. The country became open and people got more opportunities. Smart people can build their life without caring about Party district committees or mean secretaries of the party organization. As for contracts in society I think they are inevitable. It was transmission from one system into another in a short time and there was no different way.

I continue working. I edit books written by the director of my institute. He writes a lot and the academy allotted money for the publication of his works. My wife and I have enough for a good life. I have a big pension as a veteran of the war and we have Galina’s pension as well and we can make do without my son’s support in everyday life. When we need bigger amounts, my son helps us. We often spend time at the dacha in summer and in winter. Though I can hardly walk after the stroke, we keep in touch with our relatives and friends. Our friends visit us and we have parties. I identify myself as a Jew. I don’t know why. It’s hard to say. It’s in the blood - just like my deceased grandmother used to say: ‘Blood is most important’.

• Glossary:

Semyon Tilipman  
Odessa
Ukraine
Interviewer: Natalia Fomina
Date of interview: October, 2003

Semyon Moiseevich Tilipman, his wife Tatiana and their younger son Evgeni live in a four-room apartment in a new district of Odessa. Semyon Moiseevich has kept his military bearing. He is tall and slender man with thinning gray hair on his forehead. Semyon Moiseevich can hardly speak considering his age of 87. Semyon’s wife Tatiana Israilevna is little, nice and lively women of 83. Semyon Moiseevich often made interval while speaking, but Tatiana Israilevna helped her husband every now and then mentioning details of the family history that she remembered well. In one room there is a small sofa covered with a plaid and a nice Chinese carpet on the wall. The living room is big and bright. It’s beautifully furnished with the furniture pieces that they bought in the 1970s. There is a dinner set of Meisen china in the cupboard, old bronze candle stands on the TV set and few portraits of Tatiana Israilevna and Semyon Moiseevich on the walls.

My paternal grandfather Shymon Tilipman was living in Dzygovka town, Vinnitsa region. [Dzygovka is a town in Yampol district, Podolsk province, in 1897 its population was 7,194 residents and 2,187 of them were Jews.] I have very little information about him. I don’t know where he was born or what he did for a living. I was named Shymon after my grandfather. I was born in 1916 and since Jews traditionally name their children after their deceased relatives I guess my grandfather must have passed away before. I was the third son in the family. My older brother Boris was born in 1911, I believe my grandfather died some time at this period. I don’t know anything about my grandmother. My wife Tatiana grew up in Dzygovka where people knew each other, and she thinks my grandfather Shymon Tilipman was a melamed. I am sure my grandfather and grandmother were religious. My father was raised religious. I know about my grandparents’ four children. They were born in Dzygovka.

My father’s older brother Leib was born in the late 1880s. My wife says he was a Yiddish teacher in the Jewish school in the village. She knew him. I only saw him once in the early 1930s when uncle Leib came to Odessa to exchange some foreign money to rubles. He didn’t mention to my father the purpose of his visit. He probably didn’t want my father to know that he was receiving money from abroad. I think my father had one more brother who moved abroad and uncle Leib received money from him. Private currency exchange agents in Odessa cheated him. They took his currency and gave him a ‘doll’ [a pile of paper sheets with banknotes on the top and at the bottom of a pile]. Since this operation was illegal there was nobody he could complain to and uncle Leib went back home with nothing for his pain. Uncle Leib died Dzygovka in the early 1930s. He had three children: two sons and a daughter. His daughter Basia visited Odessa in 1936 and my future wife took her around the town. After the Great Patriotic War 1 my wife and I received an invitation to Basia daughter’s wedding, but we failed to go there because our children were too little then. We didn’t keep any contacts with them and have no information about them.  

My father’s brother Meir Tilipman lived in Odessa. I think he was born in the late 1890s. Meir was ill with tuberculosis since his childhood. He didn’t have a profession. Meir’s wife was some distant relative and belonged to the Tilipman kinship. She died long before the Great Patriotic War. They had two sons: Shymon and Yania. Shymon, the older one, was born in Odessa in 1923. My parents kept in touch and supported them. Meir and his son stayed in Odessa during occupation. They perished. Shymon was at the front. He demobilized in 1947 and returned to Odessa. He got married. His wife Tsylia was a Jew. I attended his son Edik circumcision ritual. Edik was born in 1948. The ritual took place in their home and they invited the only mohel in Odessa Mr Biebergal. Somebody from the community assisted him. Few years after the army Shymon was a sailor and worked for a whaling association called Antarctic. Shymon told me that when his boat harbored in the ports abroad he spoke Yiddish to local Jews that Soviet sailors were forbidden to do. They were allowed to land in groups of three so that one of them kept an eye on the others and reported to his management. So someone reported on Shymon and he was fired. After dismissal Shymon was a tailor and then worked at the machine building plant in Odessa. Shymon’s son Edik tried to enter a college in Odessa several times. He failed at exams for something ridiculous like a wrong description of a subject in his composition. He finished a college in Irkutsk, [in Russia] in the end. Shymon was a talented and hardworking man. He studied English on his own. In the 1970s Shymon and Tsylia moved to USA. They live in New Jersey. We correspond with them. Edik lives in Israel.

My father Moisey Tilipman was born in Dzygovka town some time in the 1890s. My father was raised religious. I think he studied in cheder. Father spoke Yiddish and prayed in Hebrew. He met my mother in the town when he was in his teens.

My mother’s parents came from Soroki town [a district town in Bessarabia province, today in Moldavia; according to census of 1897 there were 15,351 residents and 8,783 of them were Jews. In 1910 there was a synagogue and 16 prayer houses in Soroki] in Bessarabia 2. All I know about my maternal grandfather is that his name was Naum Davidovich. Before 1940 Soroki belonged to Romania and we didn’t have any contact with my mother’s relatives. In the 1950s I visited Soroki in search of my mother’s family, but I didn’t find anyone. I don’t even know the name of my maternal grandmother.

I remember my mother’s brother Moisha Davidovich residing in Odessa. His wife’s name was Riva. They had two children: son Naum and daughter Rosa. They were born in Odessa. I guess, Moisha moved to Odessa before the October Revolution 3. I know that he delivered bread to customers of a bakery in Odessa. During the famine [in Ukraine] 4 in 1932-1933 he supported our family. He perished along with my parents. He and both of them were convinced that there was nothing to fear about Germans. They even convinced other Jews to stay in their homes. Riva and her children were in evacuation and survived. Aunt Riva died in the 1950s. Rosa moved to the USA in the 1970s and we lost contact with her. Naum finished the Jewish college called Euromol on the corner of Kanatnaya and Kirov Streets. He was a sociable young man and was fond of photography. After finishing his College he worked at the plant named after Lenin. He managed to arrange for evacuation of his mother and sister with other employees of his plant to Sverdlovsk. From there he went to the army and was demobilized after he was wounded at the front. He returned to Sverdlovsk and worked as chief engineer of the machine building plant. Naum spent his vacation in Odessa every year. He died six years ago, in 1998.

My mother Hana Davidovich was born in Soroki in late 1890s. At the age of 14 she came to Dzygovka located on the opposite bank of the Dnestr River to study sewing. She met my father there. My father’s parents were against their marriage. They were probably a wealthier family than my mother's. My parents moved to Odessa secretly in the late 1900s. They had a traditional Jewish wedding in Odessa. My grandfather didn’t forgive my father. He didn’t have any contacts with father. My parents never visited Dzygovka from what I remember. Our father loved our mother dearly and respected her. He believed and so do I that a woman is the head of a family. She needs to be cared for and get everything best. My mother was a Greek type: she had swarthy skin, big black eyes and thick hair. She was nice and kind like all mothers are.

In 1911 my parents had their older son born. It seems they named him Boris. In 1913 another boy was born whose name I can’t remember. I was born in 1916. I was born on the last day of Pesach, but since it is observed on different dates of the European calendar I wrote it in my documents as 22 April – Lenin’s birthday 5. I was named Shymon after my paternal grandfather. Later I changed the name Shymon to Semyon for my sons’ sake. [Editor’s note: Semyon wanted his sons to have a patronymic that sounded more familiar to Russians.] When I was born we were living in a basement apartment in Malorossiyskaya Street, Lazarev Street at present. As far as I remember there were 8 steps downstairs to our apartment. I still have a scar on my finger on the right hand I had squeezed with the door to the basement when I was about 5 years old. There were two rooms in the apartment, I believe. There was no kitchen, but we had a kerosene stove and a table in the corner of the room. In 1921 during the famine in Odessa my older brothers starved to death. They were buried on the same day at Jewish cemetery. At that time an apartment on the first floor was vacated and we moved there. It was bigger than our previous apartment. I remember that the front door opened into some kind of a kitchen. I remember my mother cutting bread into small pieces and my older brother always watching her. He never had enough food and was always hungry. I don’t remember any furniture. I remember that a window faced the yard and there was sufficient light in the apartment. My father’s brother Meir moved into our former apartment in the basement.

My mother didn’t work. My father was a vendor at the Alexeevski market. He had a small booth shop at the market selling something. According to gradations of Soviet authorities he was a ‘non-working element’ [a term that determined businessmen in the former USSR at that period]. I went to school at the age of six in 1922. There were specific schools where I could be admitted as a son of a ‘non-working element’. There was a big higher secondary school in Komsomolskaya Street where they didn’t admit me. I went to lower secondary school #64 in Vneshniaya Street. I remember director of my school Vasili Ivanovich. He was our teacher of mathematics. I was good at mathematics. My favorite subjects were arithmetic, geometry and algebra. I also remember our art teacher. Her patronymic was Petrovna and we blandly teased her calling her 'Petrushka'. I don’t even remember whether I ever became a pioneer at school. At that period we lived in a new apartment in Maloarnautskaya Street where there was a pioneer fore post that was sort of a pioneer club. I remember that Stoliarskiy students often performed there. [Editor’s note: Pyotr Solomonovich Stolarskiy, 1871–1944, was a Soviet violinist and pedagog. One of the founders of the Soviet violin school. He developed a new method of teaching to play the violin. In 1933 he organized the first 10-year music school that was given his name.] Many of his pupils became famous musicians. There were other educational activities in this pioneer club. I also remember the cinema theater named after Trotskiy 6 behind the corner in Preobrazhenskogo Street. There was an inn nearby where farmers who brought their food products to sell at Privoz [the biggest market in Odessa] stayed. There was a big yard where about two dozens wagons could park where they had a big screen to show movies. We sneaked in there across the roof of a neighboring house.

In 1923 my brother Fima was born. In 1924 my sister Ghenia was born. They were both born in the apartment on the second floor of a two-storied wing in the yard in 84, Arnautskaya Street. There was running water in this apartment, but the toilet was in the yard. There was a hallway, a small kitchen and a big room in this apartment. In the early 1930s we had a kerosene lamp hanging in the center of the ceiling. This room was my parents and my sister’s bedroom. I slept in the hallway. As for Fima, I guess he slept in the kitchen. Our neighbors were Jews, the family of Kapels. I remember when Ghenia was born. There is a Jewish traditional celebration of birth with lekakh mit bronfn [honey cake with vodka in Yiddish]. My mother made delicious lekakh. Our neighbors – the Kapel family – uncle Moisha and aunt Riva and Meir came to celebrate. Ghenia was a long waited girl in the family. I also remember something else. Once our parents went to the theater and we, kids, were at home. We put Ghenia to bed – and she slept with our mother. Ghenia was about five years old. The wing of the house where we lived was old. A mouse or even a rat got into the bed and bit Ghenia on her temple. Fima and I chased after it but gave up when it got between our wardrobe and the wall. A day later it was discovered in a small drawer in the samovar table where we kept spoons and forks. Ghenia had injections against rabies made, but everything turned out to be all right and she didn’t even have a scar afterward.

My parents were religious. On holidays they went to the synagogue on the corner of Staroportofrankovskaya and Novorybnaya Streets. This synagogue was ruined during the Great Patriotic War. There were few other synagogues in Odessa. I attended the synagogue with my parents when I was 10-12 years old, but I don’t remember any details. I remember that my father liked listening to a good cantor. My parents spoke Yiddish and I could understand Yiddish well. They observed Sabbath. I remember my mother lighting candles. I don’t know whether my father worked on Saturday. I just don’t remember. I didn’t care. My mother made Gefilte fish and matzah dishes at Pesach: pudding and pancakes. My father and I liked goose fat cracklings. My mother put a bowl of cracklings on the table for us to ‘satisfy our eyes’ hunger’. I remember what she said: ‘When you want to give someone food to eat to his heart’s content give him a lot of food and his appetite would be half less’. I also remember Chanukkah and dreidel and we got Chanukkah gelt. My mother went to buy food at the Privoz: fish, poultry, vegetables and fruit. I also remember that mother bought live chickens and took them to a shochet. There was a shochet at Privoz for a long time after the Great Patriotic War.

My father had to fight to make his living. He was a vendor, but he didn’t quite like it and in the 1920s he went to work as a binder at the ‘Chermorskaya Communa’ publishing office. Since his salary was not enough to support the family, he additionally made elastic bands, leather wristlets and shoelaces. Actually such small craftsmen preferred to unite into teams to be able to purchase necessary equipment and materials. My father treated leather in the attic. I helped my father as much as I could with operating his weaving equipment or, wristlet and elastic band making units. Or I fixed shoelace tips with a special device. I don’t remember how these goods were sold, I guess there was someone whom I didn’t know.

I remember the Lerner family. I believe the head of the family was my father’s companion. They lived in #28, Komsomolskaya Street. I remember that they visited us and we visited them. I remember that my parents’ closest friends were the Pavlovskiye, a Jewish family. Their son Izia was about the same age with me. Izia had twins born in 1947: Leonid and Alexandr. They finished VGIK [All-Union State College of Cinematography in Moscow]. Alexandr became a popular cinema producer. Izia Pavlovski’s father was a tailor. (When we returned to Odessa after the Great Patriotic War he made clothes for our children. I remember that he altered my uniform overcoat to make a coat for my older son Michael in the 1950s. I can’t remember when he died. )

I finished the 7 years school in 1930. To continue my education I needed to get some work experience. It was difficult to find a job. There was an employment agency in a lane in Grecheskaya square. There were long lines of people near this agency and I remember how my friends and I stayed overnight near the sculptures of two lions in Deribassovskaya Street waiting for our turn to get inside the agency. I obtained a recommendation to a vocational school at Odessa cinema factory: this was how Odessa cinema studio was called at the time. I studied at school three years and worked as an electrician at the studio. Every day I commuted to the studio by tram #25. It was always overcrowded and people were hanging from its rear and sides. When a trapezium-shaped wagon rode in a street it hitched up a tram occasionally. I remember snowdrifts in Odessa on the first winter of my work at the studio. My mother was very worried about me since I was only 14 years old. To make sure I got to work all right she managed to find a phone from where she called the studio. This was the first time my mother and I talked on the phone. Our voices sounded different on the phone and to make sue that I was I, my mother asked me what I had for breakfast. She believed that she was talking to me when I said that I had semolina for breakfast. My wife and I still laugh remembering this.

I joined Komsomol 7 at vocational school, but I never took an active part in it. All I can remember is that I attended Komsomol meetings. At that time communists and party leaders used to report to people on their activities and Komsomol members were to attend Party meetings where they reviewed Party activities in detail.

I met Yuzef Chizhyk at work and we became lifetime friends. We subscribed to big volumes of German catalogues from abroad. We were very fond of reading these catalogues thinking about profession of electricians and further education. We had poor German and could hardly understand what was written there, but we liked interesting photographs of electric and other equipment. We read a lot in Russian. Before World War II, I was fond of Conan Doyle [Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859–1930, was an English author, created the character of amateur detective Sherlock Holmes.]

In the 1930s Torgsin stores 8 were open in Odessa selling food products for gold and foreign currency. At the same time people were not allowed to deal with foreign currency in private. They were arrested and persecuted for foreign currency operations. My father was doing better at his work and decided to buy few dollars to keep them as savings. He bound then in carton. Our kitchen door led to the attic of an adjoining house. There was carton in place of glass in this door and my father kept his dollars in this carton. The person who sold these dollars to my father reported on him. He stayed in prison 24 hours. He never told us what they did to him there. NKVD 9 employees convoyed him home and he showed them his hiding place. They took away my father’s dollars. This was called in Odessa the ‘gold fever’ and took place in 1932–1933s. Many people were arrested on false charges.

Yuzef Chizhyk and I entered short-term communication course in the Odessa Communications College. I finished the course in 1933 and entered the Faculty of Telephone and Telegraph Communications. I was a student during the period of famine in 1932-1933 and had meals at our students’ diner. We had all food made of soybeans: soup, cookies and a drink. I don’t remember mass arrests in 1937 [during the Great Terror] 10, but I remember us marching at our military training classes singing: ‘We shall sing a song about Yakir, our army commander!’ and later this Yakir 11 was arrested and executed. A group of military commanding officers was executed at this period of time. In 1941, when the Great Patriotic War began it became clear how unprepared we were – the army was beheaded. I didn’t believe this commandment was guilty. I didn’t have any fear for my family or me: we didn’t belong to those circles that had to be concerned about their position. In 1938, after finishing my fourth year I was awarded the rank of junior commanding officer of a platoon.  

There was a group of five friends in College: Akiva Averbuch, Yuzef Chizhyk, Zhora Shcwartz, Fyodor Tomchakovski and myself. Akiva and Yuzef were Jews, Zhora was German and Tomchakovski was Polish. Chizhyk left the college after his first year of studies and the rest of us finished it. Tomchakovski lived in his own house in Slobodka [Neighborhood on the outskirts of Odessa]. We got together there to prepare for our exams. We went to the seashore in Lanjeron, Otrada, Arkadia [town beaches in Odessa]. But with my parents we went there seldom. My father couldn’t stay in the sun since he had very white skin that easily got burned. Generally in those times people didn’t go to the seashore like nowadays. Maybe my parents considered it improper to take off clothes in their age.

My brother Fima studied at the factory vocational school in the Marty shipyard. Ghenia studied at school – it seems, it was school # 68. She studied well and was a nice girl. She read a lot. She studied to play the piano, but when she began to have cramps in her fingers she gave up her studies. Our parents bought her a piano, but there were termites in it and they sold it before the war. Ghenia had many friends, but I don’t remember them. I only remember one friend  that had something wrong with her eye and combed her hair to cover it. Ghenia finished school in 1941.

In 1936 I met my future wife Tatiana Krupnik who visited her older brother Moisey Krupnik living in our house. Our neighbor Rosa Kolesnik, a very sickly woman, used to sit under the mulberry tree in our yard and Tatiana used to stop for a chat with her. I watched her from the window. I liked her much. I kept looking at her. She fit a Jewish saying of being ‘a kleine, a Schwartz, a springendik’ [little, black and fidgety in Yiddish]. They usually say so about a flea, but Tatiana was little, well-fed, black-haired, vivid and very pretty. I was shy and had no experience with girls. Since I was an electrician I was helping with electrical maintenance of our house. My friends and I made a plot and I made a short circuit to get into Tatiana brother’s apartment to meet her, but it didn’t work. Finally I gathered my courage and approached her in the yard where she was with her one-year-old nephew. I didn’t find anything better than: ‘Have I seen you somewhere?’ She studied at the vocational school at the Medical college. I’ve been to the morbid anatomy room there and lied that I had seen her there. Anyway, we made our acquaintance.  

Tatiana was born in the Jewish town of Dzygovka, Vinnitsa region in 1920. She was the fifth daughter in her family. The last and favorite one. Her parents Srul and Hana Krupnik were also born in Dzygovka. They were deeply religious. Tatiana was raised Jewish. The eldest sister Ida Mostovaya was born in 1907. She lived in Odessa with her Jewish husband Petya and two children. During the Great Patriotic War her husband was on the front and Ida with daughter Raisa and son Marcus were in Uzbekistan. After the war they lived in Tashkent. Ida died in 1983. Raisa and Marcus live in Israel. Tatiana’s brother Moisey Krupnik was born in 1909. He lived in Odessa. His wife Ania was Jewish. They had a son Bencion, in the summer 1941 their daughter Tamara was born. Ania and children were evacuated to Tashkent. Moisey perished in 1942 in Sevastopol. Ania and Tamara live in Odessa. Bencion lives now in Haifa. Tatiana’s second brother Iosif was born in 1912. He was in the army but not on the front during the war. After the war he lived in Moscow. He married a Jewish girl Sopha. Iosif died in 2002. His daughter Ludmila lives in the USA, and the son Boris lives in Moscow with the mother Sopha. Tatiana’s sister Rosa Poliak was born in 1917 and perished in ghetto in 1941 in Vinnitsa with her two years old son Milia.

When Tatiana turned 15 in 1935, she went to Odessa to enter the Stomatological College. She failed and went to study at the vocational school. After finishing this school she entered the Medical College. We decided to get married in 1939. I was in my last year at the Communications College and Tatiana had finished her 2nd year. We got married on 25 March 1939. We had a wedding party for the family: my parents and Tatiana’s parents Srul and Hana. We had a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony at home, but there was no chuppah. Our parents’ acquaintance, an old religious Jew conducted the ceremony. I recited a prayer that I had written for me in Russian letters. After the ceremony we had a wedding party. A day later we had a civil ceremony in the registry office near the Opera Theater. After the wedding Tatiana and I lived with my parents. Tatiana got along with my mother very well. Tatiana likes to recall the way they met. My mother took her hands, pressed them to her chest and said ‘I’m glad to be able to call you Tilipman’. I wish my parents had lived longer. Tatiana corresponded with my parents when we left Odessa. She became friend with Ghenia. In June 1941 Ghenia wrote Tatiana to greet her with the birth of her niece Tamara, her brother Moisey’s daughter. Tamara was born on 17 June 1941, five days before the Great Patriotic War.

In summer 1939 I finished my College with honors and we moved to Smolensk where I got a mandatory job assignment. 12. Tatiana could continue her studies in the Medical College in Smolensk. I became a civil communications engineer in communication department of Byelorussian military regiment. Before 1940 its headquarters was in Smolensk. After the annexation of Western Belorus [and Western Ukraine] 13 the headquarters moved to Minsk. I moved with the headquarters and Tatiana stayed in Smolensk to finish her 3rd year in College. In summer 1940 she joined me in Minsk. She went to study her fourth year in the Minsk Medical College. We got an apartment in an officers’ house in the military housing district of Antonovo Аin 2-3 kilometers from Minsk. Our neighbors were a young Russian couple. The husband Alexei Pudovkin was a builder and also worked in the Byelorussian regiment. We became friends and visited each other.  

After finishing her fourth year Tatiana was supposed to have practical training in a hospital in Pinsk or Brest. I recommended her father to obtain an invitation letter for her to work in the hospital in Chernovtsy village, Yampol district, Vinnitsa region. Tatiana went to stay with her parents and I stayed in Minsk. In summer 1941 the Moscow Art Theater came on tour to Minsk. I got a ticket for 22 June and was to go to the theater with a colleague of mine. I got up and had a snack on 22 June. Since I was alone I didn’t even turn on the radio. I packed my gray suit and brown shoes to change to the theater in the evening and went to work by tram. It was Sunday, but I had some urgent work to do. The first thing I heard when I got into a tram was Molotov’s speech 14. The War! I was a reserve officer and I believed it was my duty to go to the headquarters. I never came back home. In the afternoon German planes were already flying over Minsk. There was a German car caught near the headquarters. It was camouflaged to look like a Soviet ZIS car, but there were German uniforms loaded in it. Although I had documents with me I was thoroughly inspected before I was allowed to enter the headquarters office. They were concerned about penetration of the enemy’s intelligence. I was engaged in packing secret documents. We stayed in the office overnight and slept on desks.  

We continued our work next morning and in the evening and then the following evening we were taken to dig trenches in the Urochishche area, near Minsk. There were planes flying over Minsk and flares with which saboteurs signaled to German planes. Minsk was bombed continuously. All civil employees were given military ranks. My rank that I was awarded in communications school was first lieutenant. I received my uniform: a khaki shirt, galife breeches and boots with leg wrappings. Those leg wrappings were amazingly uncomfortable slipping down all the time. I also received a dark blue flask with a wooden cork. I also had a German trophy aluminum flask with a screw top and plywood encasing for thermal effect. What I would say everything that we got was a kind of junk: they were not too generous about providing young officers with good quality things. In the morning the storehouse got burned we heard, and officers’ uniforms and everything else was gone.

Germans were advancing fast. Three days later our military units were leaving Minsk. We were evacuating on trucks with benches. There was a many-kilometer log march of people escaping to the east carrying their luggage. There must have been saboteurs in this march as well. They were trying to stir up panic in the crowd screaming ‘brothers, don’t leave us’, etc. There were German planes attacking us many times and scattered around to hide in the surrounding. We arrived at Mogilev where we saw superior commanding officers including Voroshilov 15 in his leather jacket. He arrived there to arrest other commanders charged in allowing retreat. Commanding officer of Byelorussian Special Military regiment General-Colonel Pavlov and Communications Chief general Grigoriev were arrested. [Dmitri Grigorievich Pavlov, 1897–1941, was a Soviet military commander. He was arrested under false charges and later rehabilitated posthumously.]

The army was retreating. People kept asking ‘Why are you leaving?’ and we were promising to come back, but we didn’t know when. When we were in the vicinity of Vyazma, we heard the roar of German planes flying to Moscow every night. The radio announced how many bombers attacked Moscow every day. The Soviet troops were retreating and we didn’t know when we would manage to return, but there was no despair among soldiers.  

In August 1941 I was sent to army 29 at the Kalinin front. I received my uniform that finally included high boots. I chose my size of boots that was a mistake since I had to wear thicker flannel foot wraps in winter and my boots turned out to be too tight and I was in pain for few days before I managed to get a bigger size of boots. I also received an overcoat and then when I was at the Ukrainian Front during the cold winter of 1943 we received sheepskin vests. I’ve kept mine until today. We also received warm gloves and those that were at the battlefield received white robes. We wore our overcoats and slept on it using it as a wrapper.  

We had warm clothes and sufficient food. I don’t think people ate better food in the rear. We received packaged food and hot meals: cereals and canned meat. We received fresh and dried bread. There were horses in the army and when they got wounded their meat was used to cook food. Once our first sergeant brought us horse meat and said ‘This is nice meat. Would you like some?’ I wish I had at least tried it then.

I was commanding officer of Communications Company in army 29. We were responsible for telephone communications between the army and divisions. In the first days of the war it became clear how unprepared we were to many situations. There were special two-wire phones: we had to install many kilometers of wiring to support communication between the headquarters and divisions. We had not sufficient quantities of wires and installed one wire instead of two: the ground was the 2nd wire. To support the low-point telephone circuit we grounded one wire with a metal rod. The same was done on the other end: one wire was connected to a phone and another – into the ground with a rod. If the ground was conducting: wet or black soil, it was bearable and made it possible to hear at some distance, but hearing was impossible when it was freezing or when the ground was dry. Besides, if the ground serves as conductor it is all right for one line of communication, but when this line supports communications between 5-7 divisions supported by one wire, all conversations could be overheard since they all had one common conductor – the soil. There were antediluvian phones. A telephone operator had to shout into the receiver having it tied to his head turning the handle of a switchboard. German phones were more up to date: they only had to push a button to turn them on. Also there were inappropriate call words at the beginning and one could hear a telephone operator sitting in the headquarters yelling ‘Fire! Fire! –I am the farm!’ and then an officer on duty running toward him ‘Where is fire? On a farm?’ – when those were just call words. We had miserable equipment. The radios to support communications between the headquarters and divisions were transported on horse-driven wagons at the beginning before we got special transportation trucks. There were also shoulder radios: dozens of kilos to be carried on our backs.  

Success of military operations depended on the quality of communications to a big extent. When we were retreating the only communications equipment available were radios that had limitations in supporting communications and our troops often got into encirclements for the lack of communications. There was an order ‘Not a step backward!’ that meant that a unit could only retreat when they got such order and the order could not reach those that were in encirclement. Germans were more maneuverable. Their infantry had transportation means while our troops only walked. At the Kalinin front a group of communication operators was sent to military units in Rzhev. While they were on the way there the German troops broke though the front line and they got into encirclement. It was next to impossible to escape from encirclement in open area or in towns. I remember I was on the phone when Communication Chief of the Front came and took the receiver from me. He talked to our operator on the other end of the wire ‘I order you to retreat!’ when the line was cut off. We had no information about our operators: whether they were captured or perished. They were listed as ‘missing’ and there were many such cases.    

There were many cases when Germans captured our messengers and then they bombed the location indicated in the message. Once before my eyes a subdivision of our unit perished. They were on a farm when German planes dropped three bombs hitting directly their dislocation. Our communication unit was in about half of kilometer from this place.

In late 1941 we were at the Kalinin front. It was Christmas. German commandment provided Christmas parcels to their units: schnapps, tinned meat and chocolate. Germans were advancing to Moscow and there was Deshovka village (the word ‘deshovka’ means ‘cheap junk’ in Russian) on their way. This Deshovka turned out to be very costly for us. Several times it passed from our troops to German troops and back again. When our troops beat German troops out of their blindages they would find German schnapps and get drunk and then German troops would beat them out of there. Our communication point was in some village church and there was Commander of army 29 standing beside me. He heard that this village had passed several times between German and out troops… He demanded that I connected him with commanding officer of the division. I remember his order word by word: ‘You, son of a bitch, colonel Kupriyanov! Just get all cooks and communication operators and lead them in attack! I want you to take control of this Deshovka!’ This meant that he was sending the young and inexperienced onto the battlefield. Such orders caused many deaths. This happened often. All battle operations were conducted under the motto ‘For Motherland! For Stalin!’ and people died for this. One had to follow orders in the army. They followed orders. It wasn’t too bad when there was artillery support of infantry troops.

Commander of army 29 was noted for his despotic nature. He used to walk with a stick at the Kalinin front. He could easily hit an officer, even of senior rank. Once our truck was moving on a road and commanding officer of our communication regiment didn’t pull over seeing the vehicle of our army commander that got stuck there. For this commander didn’t submit lists of officers subject to awards for six months.    

I didn’t have any information about my family from the beginning of the war. I received the latest card from my father from Odessa in August 1941. I knew about German atrocities against Jews from newspapers and kept writing my father to leave Odessa. After Odessa was occupied I received a letter from my friend Akiva Averbuch’s father in October 1941. He stayed with my parents for some time before he evacuated and also tried to convince my parents to evacuate. My younger brother Fima was in the army near Odessa and my parents couldn’t leave the town without knowing what had happened to him. Shortly after Odessa was liberated in 1944 – I was at the front in Poland – I received a letter from my cousin brother Naum Davidovich. He returned to Odessa from evacuation. He wrote that my parents and sister perished in Domanevka 16 camp for Jews in 1942 and Fima perished during defense of Odessa in 1941. When I returned to our house after the war or neighbors gave me a card that Ghenia’s friend wrote her from the front. I didn’t even know that she had a young man who was writing her from the front.

My friend Yuzef evacuated to Siberia. He was released from service in the army due to epilepsy. My fellow students and I kept in touch through him. Akiva Averbuch was at the front. Zhora Schwartz wasn’t taken to the army due to his German nationality. He lived in Novosibirsk, I guess. Yuzef wrote me in late 1941 that he had seen my wife Tatiana in a train on Alexikovo station near Stalingrad. I wrote letters to this Alexikovo and employees of the post office were very sympathetic, but they could do nothing to help me. Tatiana was not in Alexikovo any longer. She bumped into Alexei Pudovkin, our friend in Minsk and he suggested that she wrote to the Communication Department of the Soviet army. She did and they sent her my field mail address. I received a letter from Tatiana in June 1942. She evacuated with her parents and older brother Iosif. Her brother managed to evacuate his family and parents on a wagon driven by two horses. They crossed the Dnepr River in the vicinity of Kryukovo station. They went to Stalingrad by train and from there they headed to Turkestan station in Kazakhstan [3,000 km from Odessa]. Tatiana was a physician in Urtak kolkhoz. She lived with her parents. The kolkhoz accommodated them in a house with a garden.  

I would like to say that during the war people treated letters with special care. Field mail communications were very reliable. At least letters found us wherever we moved. There were never long delays with delivery of letters to and from the front. A postman at the front was a very special person. Letters from the front could have been different; they might bring sad news, but letters from the rear usually brought good news from families. I do think that a postman is a very kind and hearty profession, military postmen in particular. My wife and I even established our own communication at the front. I wrote her ‘You will look at the Moon and so will I and it will be our date’ – like satellite communications nowadays. I’ve kept few hundreds of her letters through the war. I carried them in my backpack. My letters to her were lost in evacuation.

We had different lodgings at the front: during retreat, interval or advance. When we were retreating toward Moscow or advancing with the Kalinin front we lodged in dugouts with wooden logs and soil on top. There were two or three layers on top to protect a dugout from bombings and each layer was placed crosswise on a previous. Like they sing in a song ‘…Our dugout in three layers…’ It also protected from shells. Once commanding officer was killed with a shell at the entrance to his dugout, but he would have survived had he stayed inside. During an interval we planked the walls with wood or thick branches. We made two-tier plank beds. We had oil-lamps for lighting. We made them from tank shell cartridges, 5-6 cm in diameter with one end squeezed with a cloth wick squeezed in it. We dipped this wick in kerosene or benzene. It produced a lot of black soot and it made it difficult to breathe in a dugout, but it kept it warm, on the other hand. There were 8-12 tenants in a dugout. In our advance march we lodged in blindages left by Germans. Near Moscow we lodged in a dugout made by Germans. Germans liked birch trees. There was a small table and a stool made of birch wood at the entrance to the dugout. The walls inside were also decorated with birch wood. There was a small stove made from a bomb box.  

I was chief of the telephone facility of a regiment at the Kalinin front. The chief of telegraph facility was Kostia Shendera. We happened to have finished the same faculty in the same college, only we studied in different periods. He was a 5th-year student when I entered the college in 1933. We often recalled our college and common acquaintances. Once I recalled how we, 1st-year students went to work in the fields in Novaya Odessa in Nikolaev region in 1933. We got together in the evenings and sang and talked. I remembered a Ukrainian song that someone I didn’t know sang: ‘It snowed in the month of June when an old man fell in love with an old woman, cause he liked her…’. Kostia said ‘I sang it’.

I remember my 26th birthday on 24 April in the Kalinin front. We had just got an interval after a battle. There was some kind of a buffet in the army headquarters during such intervals or remanning of units. They had kwass [a soft drink] smelling of burned bread a little. My fellow comrades got to know that it was my birthday and decided to celebrate. We were young. Kostia Shendera sent his telegraph operators to get some self-made vodka in a nearby village. We mixed kwass and vodka and got a nice drink. I put on my suit and shoes that I had with me when I left my home in Minsk on 22 June 1941: whatever was left there. I dressed up and we partied. Kostia sang popular songs and romances. He sang the ‘Metelitsa’ [a Russian folksong]. He had a very good voice. Since then it became a tradition to celebrate all birthdays. I still have the list of my fellow comrades: there are 28 names on the list. I greet them with their birthdays every year. Now there are fewer on the list…

Kostia was Russian and so was commanding officer of my battalion: Vitali Vasilievich Legeida. There was no anti-Semitism in our circles in the army. There were tatars in my unit and there was Brodski, a Jew. However, there were demonstrations of anti-Semitism among high-level officers that were responsible for awards. I faced it when I was to be awarded a medal ‘For combat merits’. Awards were usually handed during intervals when the army units were remanning. The ones that were on the lists for awards were notified in advance. I got a notification and even prepared a speech, but it never got to it. My subordinate received an award and I don’t know for what reason. We were not supposed to ask questions. When I was to be awarded for the second time I was told that it was going to be a ‘Red Star’ order, but instead I was awarded a ‘For combat merits’ medal. I received my ‘Red Star’ when we were near Kiev. My nationality played its negative role in my promotion in the army and after the war.  

In February 1943 a new tank army was formed near Moscow on the basis of our army 29. Its commander became Michael Efimovich Katukov [Michael Efimovich Katukov, 1900–1976, was a Soviet commander, Marshall of tank armed forces in 1959, Hero of the Soviet Union  in 1944 and 1945. During the Great Patriotic War he was commanding officer of a tank division, brigade, corps, guard tank army since 1943.] By that time the rear manufactured sufficient quantities of weapons. The tanks that we had at the beginning of the war in 1941 were not fir for this kind of the war. We got a new division of T-34 tanks. We got fresh forces of female telephone operators in our communications regiment. The majority of them were from Moscow. Male operators mainly were involved in installation of telephone lines and other hard work. Many of my fellow comrades are still living. I still communicate with Ania Krotova, nee Dyomina, a telephone operator from my regiment. She married a tank man Michael Krotov at the front, Hero of the Soviet Union. My wife and I meet with them when we visit our son in Moscow.  

In winter 1943 the battle of Stalingrad was coming to an end. Our tank army was transported to the vicinity of Stalingrad by railroad. By the time we arrived in this area the battle of Stalingrad was over. This was Stepnoy front that was later renamed to Voronezhski. After our successful completion of the Stalingrad battle Germans intended to gain revenge at the Kursk salient. In summer 1943 near Prokhorovka 17 two heavily armed tank units collided. There was the third tank army near Prokhorovka and our first tank unit was deployed further to the south in the direction of Kharkov. Our army cut the roadway Kharkov-Poltava. We were holding back German units that were striving to cross the Kursk salient. Katukov, commander of the tank army, was at the vanguard tank unit on the firing line and we were responsible for supporting his communication with the army headquarters. He and commander of the brigade were watching the battle and gave verbal commands to the army headquarters that was developing the tactics of the battle: where to send forces, what additional units to allocate, involve artillery or even air forces. During the battle commander was in a trench with a tank over it; it made a reliable hiding spot. Commanding officers of tank units also usually stayed in such trenches. Communications operators that were responsible for supporting communication with the army headquarters were also in the trench with commander.  

The tank army was moving ahead fast covering dozens kilometers during a battle. They advanced so fast that they lost communications since communication units were left far behind. To avoid this situation a small group of communication operators went ahead to the location to make the headquarters. This group was called a mobile control unit. Prior to a battle the army headquarters established communications with frontline and corps. They identified the movement direction and appointed a group of operators: radio and homing communication to support communication for commander when he arrived there. I remember how after defensive battles near Kursk our army advanced ahead very quickly. We, communication operators, had to move to the next command post to establish communications. We had two vehicles with soldiers and equipment. Commanding officer of our battalion Legeida was on one truck and I was on another with communication operators. It was summer and the heat was oppressive. The tanks turned soil into dust. We were moving in this cloud of dust. There was a lot of tension. Legeida was a soft and intelligent man open his cabin and yelled at me ‘If you are going to be late, you…’ and he continued in a whole set of curse language. We came in time. We corresponded after the war and often recalled such moments.  

During one of those battles one of my operators – Brodski, a Jew, perished. I don’t remember his first name. We addressed each other saying the rank and the last name: lieutenant Tilipman, private Brodski… I don’t remember where he came from, but I remember that before the war he was chief of Centrospirt trust [alcohol sale]. However, he wasn’t one of these dealers and wheelers. He was well liked and respected. When our first sergeant brought food for distribution he was always appointed to distribute sugar, tobacco and other products. During an offensive he was sent to establish communications with our operations department when German bombers began dropping bombs. Brodski got between three bombs that literally tore him to pieces. There was nothing left to bury. There were special burial troops. They were also responsible for keeping records of the dead and all relevant information: the place and date of death. Commanding officers had to notify their families and give them information about the burial location.  

At the beginning of the war I was first Lieutenant and then I became lieutenant-technician, commander of a platoon. In 1943 an order was issued to confer the rank of captain to officers with higher education. After the Kursk battle I was given the rank of captain.  

After the offensive and liberation of Chernovtsy our army was moved to the rear. We were to be remanned and meanwhile deployed near a settlement in a forest from where we went to Chernovtsy for spoils of the war: food and other. I went to get some trophies when we were advancing to Kazatin in Vinnitsa region. There we got a German diesel fuel vehicle with a telephone facility. Communications people also took communication cables and everything else they might be in need of in future operations. There were special trophy units that gathered trophy weapons. I had a trophy German carbine. I don’t even remember how I got it. We also took trophy fuel that was always in demand. I shall not hide the truth that we also got alcohol as trophy.  

Besides communications regiment there were communication companies in our regiment. Commanding officers of two of them were my friends: captain Zhuk and captain Yunyshev. Captain Zhuk was sent to the penal battalion due to trophy fuel. Captain Zhuk got some fuel stocks as trophy, but instead of reporting to the fuel department he used it for the needs of his company. At that time commanding officers reviewed the recent operations to award the distinguished ones. When they were reviewing performance of officers and soldiers of captain Zhuk’s company they recalled this fuel. There was one ‘osobist’ – they called so officers of special department [NKVD units in the Soviet army]. This ‘osobist’ participated in a dinner party where he got to know about the fuel during the conversation and then wrote a report about captain Zhuk misusing the fuel. Zhuk was reduced to the rank of a private and sent to a penal battalion. He was a still a communications operator. It was next to impossible to survive in those battalions. They could only hope for good luck. They were always ahead of any offensive. I received a letter from him and even tried to find him later. Zhuk was wounded, but I don’t know what happened to him further on. I don’t know whether he survived. Captain Yunyshev’s story is different. After the war he was in Meissen, in Germany, with his unit and I was in Dresden. Some time in 1947 he visited communications department in Dresden. We met and he told me that he was having an affair with a German woman. He said ‘You know their attitude to German women in our country and I am in love with her. What do you think about it?’ ‘You know that you can be expelled from the Party and reduced in ranks, etc.’ Later I heard that he was transferred to a unit in Western Ukraine fighting ‘banderovtsy’ 18. He was shell-shocked and demobilized. Then he got married with a Ukrainian woman and lived in Kharkov with his wife. My younger son Evgeni and I went to Tbilisi via Kharkov by train in the 1970s. We met with Yunyshev. He was a teacher. I corresponded with him all the time. In the late 1980s I went to Moscow where chairman of our regiment veteran organization, who was my subordinate during the war, told me that Yunyshev died.

In winter 1944 we were in Poland. Polish residents had a friendly attitude toward us. In Niedzwiada village boys used to sing: ‘Polska hasn’t died yet and it will not…’ Then there were words that they would make Germans to wash their boots. We were accommodated in a house. There was a Polish family of a husband, wife and a young daughter living in the house. This family invited us to a celebration of liberation of Poland. Our telephone operator, private Vladimir Miakushko, that was also our logistic supervisor, brought some food products and we set the table. We proposed a toast to victory, of course. There was an interesting custom with the Poles: they had their classes filled to the brim and when touching glasses they tried to let their wine overflow into somebody else’s glass. We had lots of fun. Later our tank brigade took part in liberation of Warsaw. In 1944 I became a candidate to the Communist party and I joined the Party in Odessa in 1948.

Tank units need lots of fuel to support operations, repairs and replacement of tanks. Therefore, army rear services need to be very reliable. There was no rear communications department included in the army staff while there was a great need in one. So, the department was formed and its chief was Lopukhov. He came from Moscow where he was involved in metro construction before the war. In 1944, when we were advancing successfully Moscow began to call back specialists required in public economy. Lopukhov demobilized and went back to Moscow and I was appointed as part-time chief of the rear communications services. However, I kept positions of chief of a company or equipment yard or a reserve unit. My wife Tatiana received allowances by my military certificate. When I had a full-time position in my regiment there were no problems with this certificate, but then when I began to change positions there were delays with payments or reevaluation of the amounts.

When we entered the territory of Germany we stayed in abandoned houses or apartments. Some time before the end of the war we found a top hat, tuxedo and cigars in one apartment. We dressed up our telephone operator Alexei Ilinski, photographed him and sent this photo to his home. There was also censoring of letters in the army. We had to face this department. At night they woke me up and ordered to come to chief of rear services of the army colonel Kon’kov. He showed me the photo: ‘Yours’. I said ‘Yes, mine’. He reprimanded me ‘What are they doing here? Is it during field action or recreation?’ There was another time that I faced this censorship when I sent my wife a picture from a medical book. It was a picture of a human being and when unfolded it revealed a picture of the human body. So, I added a short note for a censor ‘Dear censor, if you find it impossible to send this to the addressee, please, send it back to me’. My wife received it.

The Katukov’s army ended up in Berlin. The army headquarters were in 25, Druchenstrasse in Berlin. I went there on business on 8 May 1945. I had a map of Berlin withal streets indicated on it. Although Berlin was ruined in the center it still made it possible to find any location. I remember meeting Kostia Shendera in the army headquarters. He and I listened to an English radio channel in Russian. It announced that capitulation was going to be signed at 11 pm. I decided to go back to my unit. Shendera showed me a shortcut through channels. He didn’t know they were blasted and access to them ruined. To make a long story short, I got lost. I managed to find my way by the lights of moving traffic. I got to the central street and from there I made my way to my unit. We waited for the announcement about capitulation: the clock struck 10, 11 pm, midnight. We were waiting. We were listening to the radio when, I believe, 5 minutes past one it said that there was going to be an important announcement. And indeed, at ten minutes past one our renowned announcer Levitan announced fascist Germany signed unconditional surrender. [Levitan Yury, 1914–1983, was the announcer of All-Union State Radio. He delivered all most important official information, also during the Great Patriotic War.] Our joy was enormous! Those that couldn’t keep it to themselves started shooting in the air. From joy, of course. So I met the Victory Day in Berlin.

I finished the war in the rank of captain. I had several combat awards: two medal’s ‘For combat merits’, order of ‘Red Star’, medals ‘For liberation of Warsaw’, ‘For capture Berlin’. I stayed to continue my military service in Radeboil near Dresden in the communications department in the army headquarters. In September there was a war with Japan 19. In autumn I got a two-week leave. I went to visit Tatiana and her parents in Turkestan. On my way back I took her back to Minsk to finish her studies at the Medical College. After finishing it she joined me in Radebeul in 1946. Tatiana was involved in public activities in the women’s council of the army. We still laugh that I was on battlefields while she shook hands with commander of the army Katukov. The highest rank I had to deal with during my service was a general, chief of communications while she had interface with the army commander. Many officers’ wives came there. Kostia Shendera’s wife was a shop assistant at the military department store. The wife of Valeri Legeida was a telephone operator in our regiment. We were all friends. After demobilization Kostia lived near Vinnitsa. I saw him at his 70th birthday in 1971 for the last time. He was a heavy man and suffered from hypertension. Tatiana and I were planning to come to his 75th birthday, but he died before. Valeri Legeida is living. He wrote us that his wife died.

In 1947 our son was born in the army hospital in Dresden. We named him Michael. My wife’s parents had moved to their eldest daughter Ida near Tashkent. In 1948 I sent my wife and son to them. Tatiana and our son went to Moscow biplane and from there took a train to Tashkent. When Tatiana left I began to submit requests for demobilization. I wrote a letter of request to the Communications department of the Soviet army asking. I expected some problems in this regard: the army did not appreciate jumping over one’s head. I was lucky. There was a vacancy of chief of a communications department in Odessa. My predecessor was sent to serve in the army abroad. I went to work there in 1949. I remember returning to Odessa. The train arrived early in the morning. The streets were deserted and there were porters with carts in front of the railway station. I walked to Deribassovskaya Street and stayed in the Passage hotel. Then I searched for my cousin brother Shymon Tilipman. What surprised me in Odessa was that there were vendors on each corner. I had legal grounds to move back into my parents’ apartment, but there was another tenant in it already: an invalid of the war. Besides, I would have been terrified to reside there when my family perished. Local authorities gave me a kitchen in a communal apartment 20 in Seminarski Lane near the headquarters of Odessa military regiment. I went to Moscow and then to Tashkent to take my wife and son home. The trip from Moscow took me four days and I had to sleep on the third birth intended for luggage. The train was slow.

We returned to Odessa. I got in touch with Yuzef Chizhyk who returned with his wife and children from evacuation in Siberia. We had another friend: my fellow comrade Semyon Goldshtein and his wife Inna. She was a doctor. My cousin brother Shymon Tilipman, his wife and son lived in Odessa. We were young and valued the joys of peaceful life. We celebrated all birthdays and Soviet holidays: the Soviet Army Day 21, October Revolution 22 Day. We always got together at Yozef Chizhyk’s home to celebrate New Year. We lived in a big room in 19, Pirogovskaya Street in the early 1950s. There were 18-20 people at our parties in our room.

In 1951 our second son Evgeni was born. We named him after my sister Ghenia. When Stalin died in 1953 I was serving in the communications unit in Odessa. We all feared a coup or some dramatic changes. There was to be a replacement of Stalin. We were ordered to stay in the unit. However, nothing happened. Our people were taught to have no different opinions. The military that were at the front during the war respected Stalin a lot. We believed that he lead us to the victory along with Zhukov 23.

In 1954 our older son Michael went to school # 59 near our home. Tatiana was eager to go back to work. She couldn’t find a job in Odessa for 12 years. She applied to the regional health department with requests for employment many times, but they replied that she didn’t have to go to work being a military’s wife. In 1958 she went to the Ministry of Health in Kiev. The Minister happened to be a kind person. He issued a letter addressed to the regional health department ordering them to help Tatiana find a job to keep up her qualifications. She started work in Illichevsk 24. There was no regular transportation to Illichevsk and Tatiana often had to get a ride on trucks. Commuting took a lot of time. She also had to take care of the household and take care of our sons. Michael was in the 4th form and Evgeni went to school. Four months later Tatiana found a job in a local polyclinic in Deribassovskaya where she worked as a neuropathologist until she retired.  

I was earning well and so did Tatiana and we were quite well off. In the early 1950s we bought our first TV set. We spent our summer vacations with Tatiana’s parents in Chirchik near Tashkent. We spent time with friends and went to the theater. Before the war Tatiana and I went to the Jewish theater. I couldn’t understand Yiddish that well and Tatiana translated for me. After the war we went to the Ukrainian and Russian theaters – in one of them performed in Ukrainian and in the other one in Russian. In summer theaters from Moscow came on tours and we attended their performances. The thing is, our children didn’t need us any more. I remember performance ‘And then there was silence’ [after the modern American writer Vina Delmar’s play] staged by the Mossoviet Theater with Ranevskaya and Pliatt [famous Soviet actors]. We preferred the same play staged by our Odessa theater. We thought that Pliatt was overdoing his acting. We also went to the Opera Theater, but not that often. We subscribed to Roman-gazeta [publication of fiction issued twice a month in Moscow], Rabotnitsa [Women-worker, a monthly social and political magazine issued in Moscow], Zdorovie [Health, a monthly scientific popular magazine issued by the Ministry of Health in Moscow]. We still keep articles from this magazine with health recommendations. We also subscribed to newspapers: Krasnaya Zviezda [Red star, daily military and political newspaper of the Ministry of defense, issued in Moscow], Pravda [Truth, the main paper of the Communist Party of the USSR]. We always read articles in newspapers, but we did understand that what they wrote was different from what things were in reality.

In 1966, after an earthquake in Tashkent, we took Tatiana’s parents to Odessa. I demobilized from the army that same year and received a pension after 25 years of military service. I was 50 years old and wanted to go to work. It was difficult for a Jew to find a job. There was a vacancy at a plant, but when they heard that I was a Jew they refused me. It happened several times until I met my former fellow student Michael Tesler, a Jew. He helped me to get an employment at the Standardization Center in Odessa where I was employed as an engineer. In 1968 I received a new 4-room apartment in a 5-storied house in Cheryomushki, a new district of Odessa, built with the involvement of Standardization Center. This is where we live now.

In 1964, 25 years after we graduated, I organized a reunification of graduates of our college. Our graduates were working all over the Soviet Union. Many of them, including my old friends, came to this meeting. Akiva Averbuch came from Kherson, Zhora Schwartz came from Kazan. He came with another graduate of our college Kaminski. We met him at the airport and drove the car around Odessa. He was very happy to see us and talked to us fondly about Kazan, how much he liked it and how wonderful the town was, when all of a sudden he said when we were driving along Pushkinskaya Street ‘Pull over, I shall kiss the stones of the pavement!’ Odessites shall always be like this: they know no better town than Odessa. Zhora Schwartz visited us about five years ago, in 1998. He is in good shape: we went to the seashore with him. I often met with Akiva Averbuch – he lived in Kherson. He suffered from hypertension and when he visited us Tatiana checked his blood pressure before offering him a strong drink. Akiva died in Kherson in the late 1990s. I was away and didn’t go to his funeral. Yuzef Chizhyk and his wife went to the funeral. Yuzef Chizhyk died in 1996. One of his sons lives in Berlin, Germany. Fydor Tomchakovski lives in Slobodka. My wife and I always go to see him when going to the Jewish cemetery to the graves of our dear ones.

I remember my young years at the front. The friendship that started at the front is the strongest friendship ever. My wife and I have kept in touch with my friends. We corresponded and met with them and mailed greetings on their birthdays. Few times my wife and I went to celebrate 23 February, the Soviet Army Day that we also celebrate as the Day of the first guard tank army with my fellow comrades in Moscow. In summer 1976 we came to Moscow to come to the grave of Marshall M.E. Katukov, our commander. He had died six years before we got together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the army in Moscow on 23 February 1983.

In 1962 my older son Michael went to school 116, with advanced studies of physics and mathematic. Michael passed an interview successfully and was admitted to the 8th form. He had all excellent marks in this school. There was no anti-Semitism. He had many Jewish classmates. In 1964 he finished this school with a gold medal. 15 other children were awarded god medals along with him. After finishing school he went to take entrance exams to the Faculty of Mathematics in Moscow State University. We were eager for him to be a success and he did enter the university. There was a group of other students from Odessa. They grouped into an association to support each other. There were so many Jewish students at the faculty of Mathematics in Moscow University that it was jokingly called by his friends a ‘cheder with advanced studies of mathematics’.  

Evgeni studied in school #90 with the Ukrainian and German languages of teaching. He studied well and was particularly good at history and geography. I brought an ‘officer’s Atlas’ issued in Russian in Dresden after the war: a thick volume including the history of all wars and a detailed description of the Great Patriotic War. We still have this atlas. It is quite worn and shabby after Michael and then Evgeni had it. We always liked books in our family and our sons inherited this from us. In 1969 grandfather Srul gave Evgeni five rubles and our son subscribed to Big Soviet Encyclopedia. We received all five volumes. After finishing school in 1968 finished a preparatory course to the College of Public Economy. He also started work at the factory of manuals to be able to enter an evening department of the Financial Faculty. He was concerned to go to the daytime department being a Jew and considering the existing situation. There was state-level anti-Semitism in Odessa. Now he works as a programmer in Odessa center of Standardization, Metrology and Certification. He is single.

In the 1970s my cousin brother Shymon Tilipman was moving to the USA. My wife and I went to say ‘good bye’ to him and his wife Tsylia on the evening before their departure. They were not at home and we threw what we had with us inside their apartment through a windowpane. At that time contacts with emigrants were not favored in the USSR and we didn’t go to see them at the railway station. Shymon felt hurt and couldn’t forgive us for a long time.  

In 1972 my wife’s mother Hana Krupnik died at the age of 89. She was very ill in the last two years of her life. She didn’t remember anything and didn’t recognize our old son Michael who lived in Moscow. We buried her at the Jewish cemetery in Slobodka. Tatiana asked some older Jews to recite a memorial prayer at the cemetery. Tatiana’s father died one year and ten months later in 1973 at the age of 90. He had a sound mind until the end although he was bed-ridden in the last days of his life. On his last night he recited a prayer and blessed us in Yiddish. We buried him near his wife’s grave.  

I heard about the establishment of Israel when I was in service in Germany. I’ve always identified myself as a Jew and my family perished due to their Jewish origin. ‘I’ve always sympathized with Israel, but I had to keep silent about my attitudes. I remember Tatiana’s nephew Bencion Krupnik leaving for Israel in the 1970s. He was manager of a shop at a plant and workers of the plant condemned him at the meeting, although his colleagues had always respected and valued him for his qualifications. Thank God the attitudes have changed. In 1986 Tatiana visited her niece Raisa in Lod, Israel. I wished I could go with her, but our family circumstances didn’t allow me to travel there. Tatiana was very impressed with what she saw in Israel. She told us how beautiful the country is. Our relatives live in Israel and we always watch everything they show about Israel on TV. We sympathize with this country. There is no war, but people die at peaceful times because of the terrorism.

Upon graduation from University my older son Michael stayed to work in Moscow. He got a job offer from a scientific research institute. He defended his candidate’s dissertation. 25 Michael married his fellow student Galina Grinberg. She came from Moscow. Her mother is Russian and her father is a Jew. In 1974 Galina and Michael’s older son Anton was born and in 1978 their son Sergei was born. They came to spend their summer vacations with us and we rented a dacha at the seashore, in Arkadia or at station 16 in Bolshoy Fontan. Anton graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics in Moscow State University. He works as a programmer. He was married and has a son – our great grandson Dennis. Our younger grandson Sergei finished four years in Moscow State University and has a job. Galina lectures on mathematics at a Pedagogical College. Michael works at a scientific research institute. He also works as a programmer for a private Canadian company.

I retired in 1988, but continued working part-time for some time. Tatiana retired in 1990. We believed that perestroika 26 initiated by Gorbachev 27 was a big step forward comparing to the period before. We got more freedom. We were allowed to socialize with our relatives abroad. But most important is that the attitude toward Jews has changed. There is no state-level anti-Semitism. As for our material situation it became worse, but not as bad as it became with civilians since retired military receive higher pensions.

In the 1990s the rebirth of the Jewish life began in Odessa. My wife and I are members of the Front Line Fraternity – the association of Jewish veterans of the Great Patriotic War at the charity organization of Gmilus Hesed. We get together every other week and celebrate birthdays. On 9 may we celebrate Victory Day. Besides, we attend Sunday parties at the Moadon club in Hesed where they invite musicians from the Philharmonic or amateur performers. Recently the Jewish theater from Chernovtsy came on tour. My wife organizes celebration of Sabbath at home and tries to do no work on Saturday. Sometimes we go to synagogue on holidays. Tatiana lights memorial candles in commemoration of our deceased relatives.

Glossary