Travel

Rahmil Shmushkevich
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova

Rahmil Shmushkevich lives in a small two-room apartment in one of the most picturesque neighborhoods in Kiev – Goloseyevskiy forest. He has poor furniture, but his apartment is clean and tiny. Rahmil is an old gray haired man. He is slender. He can hardly walk and he speaks very slowly, but he is glad to have guests and share his hospitality. Many of his friends and acquaintances died. Only his friends’ widows call him every now and then. His neighbors bring Rahmil fruit and grapes from their gardens. He treated me to these fruit with great pleasure.

My father Yudko (Idl) Smushkevich was born in the town of Belaya Tserkov in about 150 km from Kiev in 1891. It was quite a big town for that time with brick buildings, big stores, a market and enterprises. Jews constituted about 50% of the population. They were tradesmen and handicraftsmen. There were also Ukrainians and Russians in the town. People spoke mixed Yiddish and Ukrainian. Most of the people spoke fluent Yiddish and Ukrainian. There were quite a few synagogues and Christian churches in town. All temples were destroyed by the Soviet power in 1930s during the period of struggle against religion.

My father was a younger son in a big Jewish family. His father was a shathen (matchmaker). It was his choice: he decided this what he wanted to do. His name was Haim. He was born in Belaya Tserkov in 1854. My grandfather studied at the cheder, and he was a very intelligent man. My grandfather studied at the cheder until he turned 14. He read a lot and was a self-educated man. He read lots of Russian and foreign classic books. He had fluent Yiddish and a good conduct of Hebrew. He also knew Russian very well. He often traveled to other towns within the residential areas. He often went to Kiev and stayed with those people who he was going to match together. If somebody was a sociable individual and liked to work with people he could choose this profession at that time. Many people addressed my grandfather asking him to find a match for their single relatives. He made lots of acquaintances and people gave his address to one another increasing his clientele with each successful match. He was paid ater the couples he introduced to one another got married. He was a popular matchmaker and people believed that the couples that Haim Shmushkevich matched had strong family ties in the future.

Haim often traveled and spent little time with his family. I know very little about the life of my grandfather and father. I know that the family was very religious. My grandfather, though, didn’t go to the synagogue. He said he didn’t need an intermediate to communicate with God. He wore a kippah or a hat, but he shaved his face. He celebrated all Jewish holidays and prayed on Saturday eve, but if his business required him to be at work on Saturday he went where he was needed. I don’t know his first wife’s name, my grandmother. She died in Belaya Tserkov in 1920. My grandfather married Professor Bykhovsky’s (Professor of Matematic) widow shortly afterward and moved to Kiev. I have visited him at his new home, his wife Ida Bykhovskaya, and I called her “Grandma”. They lived in a 3-room apartment in 5, Yaroslaskaya Street. My grandfather didn’t look for his years, he was always smartly dressed and looked young. He liked Sholem Alechem and other Jewish classic writers. He had a collection of books in Yiddish and Russian at home. I only visited him twice a year: on his birthday and another time – whenever I could make it.

He liked to tell Jewish jokes and funny stories about match making. He showed me a box full of letters from men and women requesting him to help them find a match and their photographs. There were more letters from women. I met people in Kiev before the war saying that my grandfather made them happy when hearing my last name. They were doctors, academicians, architects and writers. The Soviet authorities didn’t allow him to do his business officially, but he continued to help people find a match. My grandfather was 88 when he went to
the Babiy Yar on 29 September, but he didn’t look older than 60. Few days before Germans occupied Kiev I went there to offer my grandfather and my grandmother Ida to leave Kiev with me. My grandmother appreciated the idea, but my grandfather said that he wanted to stay. He didn’t trust the Soviet power and didn’t like it and to have a better life when Germans came to power. Many older people believed that Germans were civilized people and everything bad they heard about them was a communist propaganda. Grandfather Haim and Ida perished in the Babiy Yar in 1941.

Grandfather Haim had 7 sons and a daughter from his first wife. His daughter’s name was Eidl. I only met one of his sons – Isaac, born in 1899. He lived in Kiev. He made shoe polish. He lied in Podol and had 3 sons: Naum, Joseph and Jacob. Isaac died in 1939. Naum and Joseph perished at the front. I don’t know what happened to Jacob. Isaac’s children lived in Belaya Tserkov. I never met them. They must have finished cheder and acquired professions. They lived in Belaya Tserkov and I never saw them.

My father Yudko Shmushkevich moved to Kiev after finishing cheder. He was 16. He became an apprentice at the confectionery of Kluchaskiy, a Jew, in Podol. Kluchanskiy made all kinds of sweets. He employed Jews that didn’t have a residential permit to live in Kiev, and he could pay them very little. His employees lived illegally in their employer’s house. They celebrated all Jewish holidays with their landlord’s family. They didn’t work on Saturday and went to the synagogue in Podol (it is still there – in Schekavitskaya Street). My father became a very good specialist. He met my mother in 1910. She worked for the family of rich Jews as a housemaid. Their house was near the confectionery.

My mother Freida Shmushkevich, nee Gurevich, was born to a poor Jewish family in Rzhyschev, a small town not far from Kiev, in 1892. Parents in such families used to send their daughters to work for richer families in bigger towns, hoping that their employers would treat them well and might even give them some education. My mother didn’t get any education, but she met my father.

I have very sweet memories about my mother’s father Abraham. My grandfather Abraham Gurevich was born in Rzyschev (in 200 km from Kiev) in 1860s. Rzyschev was a small town on the right bank of the Dnepr. It stood on the Lelech River and Dnepr was in about 500 meters. The Jewish population constituted about 95%. There were few synagogues and a cheder in the town. My grandfather was a balagula (cab driver). He had red hair and a curly beard, a hooked nose and kind laughing eyes. He only spoke Yiddish, but he understood Ukrainian. He always joked and used to say that he loved Seryozha (his horse) and me more than anybody else in the world. My grandfather was a very religious man. He even prayed when he was on the road when the first star of Saturday (Friday evening) rose. On Saturday he always went to the synagogue. He was a poor man and went to the synagogue for the poor. It was a shabby building and there were no decorations in it. People respected my grandfather and often turned to him for a piece of advice. My grandfather lived in a small house with thatched roof. The windows were on the ground level and there were ground floors in it. There was a shed in the yard where he kept his horse Seryozha. My grandmother was a housewife. She was taking her of their many children. She died of dropsy in 1911.
My mother returned to Rzyschev after her mother died and my father followed her. My parents got married and had a traditional Jewish wedding, although they were poor. There was a huppah and a rabbi at the wedding party in the synagogue in Rzhyschev. My mother learned to cook in the house where she lived previously and cooked all traditional food for the wedding party. My parents lived in a rather poor house of their own in Rzyschev.

When I was a boy I liked to visit my grandfather. He put me on his horse and led the horse around his old house. He told me stories from the Bible and about Jewish traditions and holidays. I don’t think my grandfather cooked for himself. There was a stove in his house, but he only used it for heating. His main food was milk and bread and he had meals with us on holidays. He used to say that I would become a hazan (cantor) – I sang nicely when I was a child. I loved my grandfather Abraham even more than my parents. We were very good friends. In the early 1919 my grandfather Abraham was murdered by bandits in Rzhyschev. I can still remember it as if it happened yesterday. I pressed my finger to the window glass to melt the ice and looked whether my grandfather was coming home. He went out to give some food to the horse.

Many Jews were hiding in our house in 1920s. The situation was very hard: the power switched from the white, to the red or Petlura units. All of a sudden a poor old woman came to our house screaming “Come there – they are killing your father!” I was 6 years old and was crying and begging that somebody went to my grandfather’s rescue. But everybody was afraid. The bandits murdered my grandfather with planks from the fence. He happened to help an injured man the day before on his way back from Kagarlyk. That man was a Jew and a Bolshevik. When we all ran to see what happened my grandfather was lying on the snow with no clothes on and there was blood all around him. He was covered with frost. All his neighbors and relatives were looking around in fear of bandits. My grandfather had a piece of cloth on his chest where the bandits wrote a message to bury him after 3 days passed. My grandfather was laying near his house for 3 day before he was buried. Since then I've had negative feelings towards my relatives from Rzhyschev, because they didn’t come to my grandfather’s rescue and because they didn’t bury him for 3 days. That is why I know so little about them. I saw my grandfather in my dreams for a long time after he died.

Of all his children I only know my mother’s sister Fira, born in 1887. She lived in Kiev. Her husband was a driver. He didn’t live long and my aunt had tenants in her basement in Podol to earn her living. Her three children’s were deaf and dumb and went to a special school. This is all my mother told me about Fira. During the war she was in evacuation in the Ural with my mother. She died in 1947.

My father and mother had 6 children. I am the oldest of my brothers and sisters. My sister Eva, born in 1915 died from measles when she was 4 or 5 years old. My other sister Rosa, born in 1919 died when she was 1 year old. She was the loveliest girl in Rzyschev. I was 7 yeas old and went out to walk with her. My friends were playing and I ran with them and dropped the girl. She fell injuring her head. She died in 3 days’ time of this injury. It was my fault. The feeling of guilt has never left me since then. Two other children died shortly after they were born. There were only Rachel, born in 1917 and Abram, born in 1922 and I left. Abram died in Kiev in 1938. It was a tragedy. He was playing with other children in the yard and one of the boys hit him on his stomach with a steel bar. My brother didn’t tell any of us what happened. He became very ill and the doctors thought he had tuberculosis. He told me the truth 15 minutes before he died. He said “I am dying and I will tell you the truth. Vibo, the janitor’s son hit me with a steel bar”. And my handsome and intelligent brother died of blood poisoning.

My sister Rachel and our mother lived together in Kiev. Rachel finished an accounting course and worked as an accountant at the confectionery factory in Kiev before the war. She married David Dubinsky, a worker and a Jews. He was on the front during the war, was wounded and returned home almost blind. Rachel was in evacuation in Sverdlovsk region in the Ural. She worked at the military plant. She gave birth to a boy – Alik – in 1942. After the war she continued working as an accountant. Now my sister and her son live in Israel. Her husband David Dubinskiy died in 1965. They were a traditional Jewish family. They spoke Yiddish in the family and observed Jewish traditions even after the war.

I was born in Rzyschev in 1913. At that time the Beilis case was at its height. All Jews were waiting impatiently for the sentence in the case. At the moment of my birth a message from Kiev came that Beilis had won the case. An obstetrician helping at the delivery took me outside saying “Here is the best proof of victory!” Somebody carried me across the whole town and the people were shouting “Long live Beilis!”

I and my family were living in a shabby hut with thatched roof. In this same hut my father made sweets and my mother helped him. Making sweets was a very complicated process, especially of caramel candy. My father made stuffing in a big bowl, then boiled candy from sugar and had the candy wrapped in paper supplied from Kiev. Rzhyschev was a very poor town and my father didn’t do very well, but people were still buying some sweets. Tinsmiths used to make pans for marmalade and chocolate bars that my father made. There was always a sweet smell in our house and we didn’t eat candy. The smell was enough to make us sick. My parents worked from morning till night. Women came to my father to take candy for sale at the market. I had to help my parents from my early childhood wrapping candy in paper or washing the utensils.

Our family observed all Jewish traditions and celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays. We spoke Yiddish in the family. My mother was more religious than my father. She went to the synagogue more frequently (every day) than my father did. We went to the synagogue for the poorest Jews. There were synagogues for richer and poorer Jews. The one we attended was a shabby building with old furniture and no decorations whatsoever. Our synagogue was located near the town public sauna. There was another synagogue a big and beautiful one in the center of the town.
My mother always made thorough preparations for Saturday. There were no luxuries in our house, but we had silver candle stands, silver wine glasses and a silver saltcellar that were put on the table on Friday evening. By that time all housework was finished and my mother put on a clean kerchief, lit two candles and prayed. Grandfather used to visit us on Friday. He prayed, too. I remember I was given a little wine and a piece of hala even when I was small. My grandfather blessed Saturday and the children and we all had dinner: bread and vegetables. We sometimes had chicken or fish and always sang religious songs after dinner. We had a rest and read on Saturday. In general, we had a common family believing in God. We went to the synagogue and fasted at Yom Kippur. Children began to fast after they turned 5. I didn’t eat anything either. I was hungry, but I knew that I could steal something after the Moon rose. At Pesach the family got together for dinner. We were poor and couldn’t afford much, so we ate just matsah on its own. My father made me learn few questions in Hebrew. According to the tradition I ask my father and he replied. I don’t remember these questions now.

Once a Jewish theater came on tour to our town. I remember kerosene lamps on the floor of a big shed that seemed huge to me. They performed Shakespeare’s “King Lear” in Yiddish. After we saw it our neighbor’s girl Paris (this was her name) and I made performances for the family playing theater. My father sang very well and liked performances. I heard him reciting Shakespeare and Sholem Alechem in Yiddish and Shevchenko in Ukrainian. I sang very well when I was a child and my father dreamt that I would become a singer.

In 1918 I went to cheder. I studied the Torah, prayers and writing in Hebrew. Our old teacher liked me a lot. I was a success with my studies and my teacher was proud of me. The cheder was closed after the rebbe died. I went to a Jewish primary school where we studied the ABC and the basics of mathematic and languages. I enjoyed studying. There was a “Spartak” organization established at school (young revolutionaries) and I was an active participant there (we got together a couple times per week, read revolutionary books and newspapers and prepared orselves to the struggle for a happy communist future). In 1924 I finished this Jewish primary school and went to Ukrainian school to continue my studies. Handicraftsmen and workers of Rzhyschev were very enthusiastic about the revolution of 1917. They all believed that all people would be equal.

In January 1924 Lenin died. All people Jews and non Jews in Rzhyschev came out into the streets on the day of his funeral. They were all crying and we all had a strong feeling of togetherness. My father became a member of the Communist Party. He declared that he became an atheist and stopped going to the synagogue. He loved my mother and he didn’t mind her attending the synagogue. My father opened a confectionery in a house in Rzhyschev. My mother and father and several other employers worked there. All the boys wanted to be my friends, because they could have some candy as my friends. I didn’t eat candy. I don’t like sweets. I helped my parents carrying bags with sugar.. I was a very active pioneer: I issued wall newspapers, collected waste paper and helped junior pupils with their studies. My teacher was the father of a well-known Ukrainian poetess Lina Kostenko. In 1927 I became a member of trade unions.

In early 1927 a contest for best work of art dedicated to Lenin was announced in Ukraine. I made his portrait from various seeds and set it to the contest. It occurred to me that I might as well take part in this contest. I didn’t know whether or not I had any artistic talent. In summer I was requested to come to Kiev. It turned out that the portrait I made was awarded the 2nd prize and I got an offer to enter the Art College. I was impressed by Kiev and decided to stay. In Kiev I wrote my first short story in Yiddish. It was about a prostitute. I saw a hunchbacked woman near the funicular. I was so impressed that I wrote a short story and went to read it to my grandfather HaimHe liked it. He got so excited that he burst into tears and hugged me. I lived with my aunt Fira in Kiev. She had 8 or 9 tenants in her basement, but she was still very poor.

I didn’t go the Art school, though. I met a guy from Rzhyschev in Podol. I told him that I was going to study at the Art school, but he exclaimed “Anybody can be an artist, but who will build socialism? One needs to be a worker. Are you a member of trade unions?” I replied that I was and he told me to go to the teenager employment agency in 4, Borisoglebskaya Street. At that time it was more prestigious to be a worker than an artist and I followed his advice. I decided that a communist society would gain little from me as an artist and that a metalworker would be of more use to his country and I went to the employment agency. We were all patriots of our young country and wanted to take every effort in the construction of the happy communist society. I became a metalworker apprentice at the music instruments factory. My parents didn’t have any objections against my choice. I worked and studied for two years. I became a Kosomol member. I lived in the hostel. In 1929 I got a job assignment at the metalwork factory Friend of Children (Editor’s note: Late 1920s - early 1930s: community «Friend of Children» in the USSR supporting homeless children.) where employees were former homeless children and children from children’s homes. I worked for some time until I became a secretary of the Komsomol committee unit. In the evening I studied at the rabfak. Sometimes I went to bed at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. Soon Komsomol sent me as a senior pioneer tutor to the Jewish children’s home in Yaroslavskaya Street in Podol. At that time there were many homeless children that had lost their parents during the civil war. Everything was a mess in this home. Its director was a poor manager and there was a lot of theft and lack of discipline. I was only 17 and tried to improve the situation with all enthusiasm of my youth. By the way, there were quite a few Jews in the Komsomol and Party authorities of the town. I would like to mention one of these activists: Clara Gotlib. Many people in Kiev knew her and called her “Red-hair Clara”. She was Chief inspector for struggle against juvenile delinquency and a member of the Bolshevik Party since before the revolution. She decided whether to send a juvenile delinquent to a work farm or not. She was an uncompromising and ruthless revolutionary in her decisions. I visited her many times to help my pupils, because work farms closed all perspectives for the children. Clara perished in 1937 during Stalin’s repression following into steps of many devoted revolutionaries of her time.

In 1931 I was appointed director of this children’s home. Some of my pupils were of the same age with me. At that time the home was no more Jewish, we had many children of other nationalities. We switched from Yiddish to Russian and Ukrainian in the teaching process. There was no anti-Semitism at that time. Anti-Semitism was considered a crime against the state and was suppressed, if necessary. To be director of the children’s home was a risky job, considering the situation in the country: any manager or supervisor was subject to a closer attention of the authorities. And the authorities were quick to accuse an individual of all existing sins. Once I was even imprisoned. In 1931 there was a flood in Podol. Our building was flooded and I turned to one of our sponsors (we had quite a few sponsors at that time). It was a military unit and they gave us a truck that drove all children to Kreschatik. The building in 2, Kreschatik, was vacant and we went there. Militia came immediately to take me to prison, because I acted on my own without obtaining an approval from higher authorities. I stayed in the cell overnight, but in the morning they released me, as the situation was clarified. I was responsible for running the children’s home and provision of all necessary things. Of course, I have forgotten many of my pupils, but recently I received a letter from a woman that had lived in the children’s home a few years. I was pleased to hear from her. She wrote me from the US.

In the children’s home in 1934 I wrote my first 10-page novel “Knopkele” (“Little tacks”) in Yiddish. It was about the children working at school shops that decided to make tacks from metal wastes. This novel was published in parts in the pioneer newspaper “Zai Great!” (“Be ready”) and was a success. My mother was happy about my successes, and my father took it calmly. It was translated into Russian and was published in the all-Ukrainian newspaper “Yuny Leninets”. I was offered a job in the editor’s staff, first as a literary employee and then deputy chief editor. I received a small apartment in Yamskaya Street and my family – my parents, my sister and brother moved in with me till this time they were live in Rzhyschev. My father went to work at the Karl Marx sweets factory, but he didn’t work there long. He felt hurt that he was offered a job of a worker when young girls that graduated from rabfak or Food Institute were his supervisors. He thought that he was an experienced professional and was worth more. My father was involved in some public activities, my mother was a housewife, my sister and brother went to school and I happened to be the only breadwinner in the family. I began to forget about Rzhyschev and about my Jewish origin. It was of no significance at that time. In spite of the fact that my family spoke Yiddish at home, my mother celebrated all holidays and cooked traditional Jewish food, but I thought all these to be vestige of the past. We were the society of the “Soviet people” and I was very proud of it. I switched to my literary pseudonym Mikhail Shmushkevich, although I didn’t change my name and my nationality in my passport or other documents.

I remember famine of 1933 very well. All Komsomol activists including myself were sent to villages to collect grain from farmers. This was a horrible period. Even the secretary of the village council that I was staying with didn’t have anything. I had a small piece of bread that my mother had given me for the road. When I took it out of my bag, his two small children entered the room and stood in front of me looking at this bread with their hungry eyes. His wife said that she had an onion and a little oil. We gave this food to the children and on the following morning we had to go around the villages demanding that starved farmers gave all their bread away. This is what socialist discipline was like. At that time we had no doubts in the correctness of our actions.
I worked a lot during the day and studied by correspondence at the Philology Faculty of Kiev University. Our family were sleeping in our single room and I studied in our small kitchen at night. I wanted our newspaper “Yuny Leninets” to be very popular among young people, I was its editor. I tried to publish interviews with the prominent people of our time. I met writers, actors, producers, pilots and state officials and wrote about them in the newspaper. In 1930s it became risky to meet with such people. You interviewed a commandant like Fakir Iona (a Jew) one day and on the following day he was declared an enemy of the people and one could pay with one’s freedom or even life for knowing him. But God was merciful. I was a member of Kiev Town Komsomol Committee, but I didn’t become a Party member until 1940.

Many Komsomol officials spent their vacations in Crimean recreation centers. I went into a recreation center of the Central Committee in 1934 and met a nurse – Seva Bronevaya. She was 19 years old. We liked each other. Seva was born in Yalta in 1915. Her father was a sailor and then was appointed as director of Yalta film studio and her mother was a nurse. We met in autumn 1934 and in March 1935 she joined me in Kiev. We had a civil registration ceremony and there was no wedding party. We corresponded all this time. By the time she arrived my parents and I had a two-room apartment in Yamskaya Street. My parents liked Seva, but my aunt and my mother’s sister didn’t like her. My aunt Fira called her “goika” (meaning " non Jewish girl"). But Seva was very nice and kind and my aunt came to liking her. Seva was a nurse and studied at the Medical Institute.

She became a Party memberand she had very strict ideological principles. At that time official propaganda was very strong. There were often party meetings at which officials often asked provocative questions about other people, like “Are you sure that he is a decent man and that he is devoted to the party?”. They asked my wife “Where is your husband You know that half of members of the central Committee of Komsomol have been arrested? Does he know them?”, etc. She managed to put an end to this discussion, but she trusted the official propaganda so much that she didn’t have a full trust in me. She often said “You have talked with those traitors and enemies. What if you are an enemy, too?” But we loved each other and were a good family. In 1939 our son was born. We named him Valery after a Soviet pilot Valery Chkalov. We were still living in our apartment. My mother was a housewife and looked after our son and Seva and I could work and study.

We were thinking about the possibility of the war, but again, we were convinced that we would never allow the enemy to cross our borders and would win a prompt victory in any case. I believed in Stalin. I believed him to be a strong and just man.

On 22 June 1941 I was in Moscow. I took a 3 months training course for Party officials at the Lenin Academy. I stayed with my friend, a very popular Soviet poet Evgeniy Dolmatovskiy. He worked at the “Komsomolskaya Pravda” newspaper. He received a phone call early in the morning about the beginning of the war. I ran to the Academy and all who came there flew to the Kiev Military division. I was on the front on the 2nd day of the war. My wife and son were visiting Seva’s parents in Yalta at that time. At the beginning of the war she evacuated to Ladozskaya village Krasnodar region with our son. Her sister Evgenia, 13 years of age, was with them. They rented a room in the village. Seva knew German and she was to stay there to be a messenger for a partisan unit. Germans came there in autumn 1942 and in few days somebody betrayed their unit (16 members). They were all hung, including Seva. All local population was to be there. Evgenia and Valery were there, too. Valery called “Mamma, Mamma!” and Germans captured them, took them away and burnt. Seva’s parents evacuated from Yalta on a boat. In 15 km from Yalta they were hit by German mines and their boat sank. I heard about the tragedy after the war in 1945, after I reeived a response to my request submitted to one of official organizations.

My father, mother and sister were at home in Kiev. At the end of July my mother, my father and sister evacuated to the Ural via Dnepropetrovsk. On the way there my father left them and returned to Kiev to defend the city. He perished in the Goloseyevskiy woods.

On the 2nd day of the war I was senior instructor of the division political department at the Southwestern front. I was on the battlefield in various divisions and armies. I went to Western Ukraine and the locals told me about ghettos and mass shootings of the Jews. Besides, all Jewish men between 15 to 50 years of age were recruited to the army and perished having no military training or weapons. Millions of people perished in that way including Jews. I was involved in the defense of Kiev. I was in the city in September 1941 and saw my grandfather Haim (my father’s father) for the last time. We reached Kharkov where I got another assignment to the “Stalinets” newspaper in division 47. This newspapers was one of the best newspapers of the front line in the Soviet Union. I was editor of this newspaper and editor of the military intelligence unit. Our editorial office was located in the town of Izyum near Kharkov.

In 1942 our military units were encircled. It was for the first time when the Soviet Information agency issued official information that 780 thousand people were encircled. The official propaganda had never issued information about millions of deceased or captured before. It was considered to be demoralizing information for the armed forces. Commander of our division shot himself. I believed that I would manage to get out of this encirclement knowing the locality, but I didn’t. There was a horrible battle. I was wounded and lay in a ravine among dead bodies for 12 days. I ate wormwood and looked for breadcrumbs in the pockets of my dead comrades. When I climbed out of there I saw a Hungarian military. I pointed my gun at him but it didn’t shoot because it had dampened. The Hungarian grabbed my belt tying it round my neck and began to pull me along the field. I was captured. All captives were taken to a huge camp for prisoners-of-war in Smela (a town in Cherkassy region) on a truck. A German soldier and an interpreter walked among the captives putting down their names. I gave them the name of Nekhoda, my best friend and a Ukrainian poet Ivan Nekhoda. I cursed in Ukrainian and gave them the name of the village where my friend was born as my place of birth. I only made one mistake telling them that I was steeling from the collective farm – Germans didn’t like thieves. Later I was telling them that I came from the family of kulaks and that I never liked the Soviet power. I grew a moustache like a Ukrainian kozak. Nobody knew that I was a Jew.

The staff of our field hospital was captured, but they didn’t betray me to Germans. Later first lieutenant Rusetskiy began to cooperate with Germans and our nurse Lola Dzhavanidze, Georgian, told me to be careful. Our nurses hid me among those that died from dysentery and in 3 days they took me to the barrack for the prisoners that had dysentery. No officials ever entered this barrack.
Later we were put on the train and traveled for a long time until we arrived Bolhanne, a small town in Lorraine, near the French border. We were taken to the Shtalag 12F, a camp for prisoners-of-war. At the end of September 1942 I went to work at the gas engine plant and met some French that were very nice to us. They always bought us some food. One other man and I decided to try to escape. The French brought us some clothing and documents. Our escape failed and Germans captured us. We were interrogated and tortured, didn’t get any food or water for 5 days and were thrown into a stone pit. It was 10 degrees below zero but we survived. I always remembered that Germans might find out that I was a Jew and I kept thinking about an option of being shot instantly to avoid any torturing.

In February 1943 I worked at the stone quarry near Zaarbrukken in Western Germany. I became a member of an underground organization. We established contacts with German anti-fascists and French resistance. We began to receive some information about the situation at the front and it helped us a lot. We were crashing stones in the quarry and I remember a conversation with a German worker. I was talking with him when he seemed to have got lost in his thoughts. I asked him what he was thinking about and he said that he had recalled a Jewish girl that was torn by German dogs. He said she was a beautiful girl. There were different Germans. Sometimes they pushed weak workers into the quarry from a slope. Once a Ukrainian inmate (shoemaker Nesterenko from Poltava region) told me that he knew I was a Jew. I told him that I wasn’t, but the rumor about a Jew spread in the camp. The commandant of the camp interrogated all inmates, but Nesterenko didn’t betray me.

There were boxes with medications in the medical facility of the camp. I could read the names of medications and pretended that I knew what they were for. Nobody else in the camp knew anything about medicine and Germans believed that I was a medical professional and appointed me as a nurse. I kept steeling medications transferring them to the underground unit to help inmates that were ill. This lasted from the end of 1943 until 1945.

We, about 300 prisoners-of-war got free on 18 March 1945 and went to the Alps mountains. We had weapons and I became commander of battalion of former inmates of the camp. American units were moving in the Eastern direction and we met with them in Trier, Germany. (Editor’s note: where Karl Marx was born). We were all so happy about our victory. Americans treated us very nicely and arranged a reception in our honor. There was a professor from Philadelphia at the reception. He approached me and asked me whether I was a Jew, giving me a wink. There was commission for repatriation of Soviet citizens and the USSR Embassy in Paris. I got in touch with Paris requesting instruction my conduct in Trier and with Americans (Editor’s note: Soviet people could only contact or communicate foreigners upon obtaining permission from the Party and governmental officials). I was summoned to the Soviet Embassy in Paris. In Paris I met quite a few participants of French Resistance. I met a communist writer Elsa Triolet and her husband Louis Aragon. I also met Marcel Cashin who was the editor of the “L’Humanite” newspaper. On the eve of 1 May 1945 Charles de Gaulle, President of France, arranged a military parade and invited two Soviet battalions: one of them was the one under my commandment. The Communist Party of France awarded a medal with Stalin’s portrait to me. This was a special award for Soviet prisoners-of-war. I was also awarded a medal “de la Legion d’Honneur”. It vanished during a search that was conducted at my home in 1949.

In May 1945 I was called by Chairman of the Repatriation Commission General-Colonel Golikov. He gave me a task to write a play persuading Soviet citizens to return to their Motherland, because many girls were meeting French or Italian men and intended to stay in their countries. I wrote the play “Meeting” about returning to our Motherland and a happy future life. It was a lie on my part, but I didn’t just lie to my comrades and friends – I lied to myself. I believed in what I had written. Even Elsa Triolet, a communist, whispered to me “Stay here. In France. Do you know what is happening there? Numbers of people are arrested”. I told her that I couldn’t possibly be arrested after my struggle with partisans and in the underground, when de Gaulle greeted me in person in the Soviet Embassy. No, I said, this couldn’t be possible.

I went in Paris several times. At last in the end of July 1945 we were ordered to get on the train to the Soviet Union. How happy we were to cross the border of our country and find ourselves in our own country. We were taken to the woods in Byelorussia. We had given away our weapons before getting on the train. We were lined and I heard some noise. I looked back and saw that we were encircled by the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) troops. There were about 300 of us. We were escorted to the barracks. We were staying there for some time. Our position was uncertain. Every now and then we were asked general questions. We were not allowed to leave the area of our camp, but we were allowed to write letters home. I decided to not notify my family where I was. I hadn’t heard from them since 1942. In April 1946 I was called to the headquarters along with several dozens of my comrades. We received our documents and went to Kiev. All of my comrades got into Stalin’s camps sooner or later. Some of them were sent to Siberia from Byelorussia and some were exiled later, in 1949.

In Kiev I went to look for my family. All of a sudden I saw my mother near the water pump in Yamskaya Street where we lived before the war. She screamed seeing me and she was screaming in Yiddish. My mother, her sister and her sister’s family were living in a small room with no heating. I moved in with them. We lived a very poor life.

My mother introduced me to a young nurse Ida Gurevich, a Jewish girl. They became friends during evacuation. Ida was born in 1927. Her father perished at the front and her mother (I shall not call her by her name) was such a quarrelsome and hysterical person that Ida could only find warmth and sympathy from my mother and her sister. Ida was a very nice and kind girl. We got married in 1946. We had no wedding party. We rented an apartment in a small house in Goloseyevo.

In 1947 our daughter Julia was born. I got a job at the “Stalinskoye Plemia” newspaper. I was Head of agricultural division. I was a Party member. I believed that life was improving. However, anti-Semitism was gradually growing. And one of its demonstrations was struggle of the state against cosmopolitism. My name Mikhail Shmushkevich didn’t sound like a Jewish name and people didn’t suspect that I was a Jew. They spoke openly in my presence and I heard so many anti-Semitic expressions in my life and the Jews that were staying in the rear instead of going to the front, that they were to blame for all misfortunes persecuting the country and that Hitler should have killed more of them, etc. Once I lost my temper and hit one of such orators on the face. They never again had discussions of this kind in my presence.

This happened on 10 May 1949. On this day I was arrested at night in the street. I had written an article about achievements in labor of the Soviet working people for the “Stalinskoye plemia” newspaper. I submitted it to the office and was walking back home. A car stopped near me and a group of KGB guys encircled me. They showed me their IDs in the car. I was sentenced to 25 years for espionage in favor of the American and German intelligence forces. Their main evidence was a photograph of 1945 from the French communist newspaper “L’Humanite” where I was photographed standing beside de Gaulle’s wife. Many Jewish writers and activists of culture were arrested at that period. My investigation officer said to me smiling that I was lucky to have been accused of espionage and that thins could have been much worse if I had been accused of Zionism like many other people. They interrogated me for 170 nights. I signed under all their idiotic accusations or otherwise I would have been destroyed in that prison.

I had my left hand and my left leg paralyzed because of the tortures, and I could hardly move when I reached the camp. I traveled to the camp in a “Stolypinsky” railcar (Editor’s note: special railcars for prisoners in Russia since 1906) and at the destination point they carried me from the railcar on a stretcher. I was at the Vorkuta Camp, in the Far North in about 4000 km from Kiev. I got into hospital and 3 people rescued me from death. I had seen many interesting people before, but I was tremendously impressed by those I met in the Vorkuta camp. It was Professor Turkevich, Doctor of Sciences from Leningrad, - he was innocent, too, Alexei Kapler a famous producer, that got into a camp for having an affair with Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, and Sasha Savich, a poet from Kiev. The 3 of them helped me to survive. I stayed in hospital for over 5 months. Kapler managed to have his friends in Moscow send us some Nobocain. It helped me a lot. Later I work at the wood cutting site. We lived in barracks, 150-200 people in one. We lived in terrible conditions. We were starved and could wash ourselves only once per month.

There were many Jews in the camp, but there was no anti-Semitism. I had friends among the people that came from Western Ukraine. They didn’t accept the Soviet power, but we were friends. I spoke Ukrainian with them. They didn’t even know what anti-Semitism was about. I had a friend – Victor Vassilenko, an art specialist from Moscow University. He entered into a discussion about Jesus Christ with them. He told them that Jesus was a Jew. So, an inmate that had been sentenced to 25 years for anti-Soviet activities and said: “I shall listen to what you say. That zhyd (and Vassilenko wasn’t a Jew) says that Jesus Christ was a Jew. Tell me if it is true”. I said that it was true, but he didn’t believe me. They were poor ignorant people and they didn’t know anti-Semitism until it was instigated on them.
I could get only one letter at a month from my house, and send too one at a month, but I knew that beside them okay. Parcel and meeting with native were forbid.

Stalin died on 5 March 1953 and we had a feeling of concern and hope. We knew that our life was going to change but we didn’t know in what direction. Our warders were furious. I remember one of them, a red hair man cursing that if we dared to say a rude word about Stalin’s death he would shoot us. So we kept silent, but we could hardly help smiling. We were political prisoners and in 2-3 years we began to get released. Sometimes I ask myself where the situation was worse: in the German captivity or in the GULAG. I was captured by enemies and put into a German camp, but in the GULAG I felt so hurt by being imprisoned for nothing. I was a Soviet citizen and I had struggled for the Soviet power and believed in it and had to suffer so for my faith.

My family waited for me. I returned in 1956. My daughter Julia was in the 3rd form already. She didn’t know where her father had been. If they found out at school she would have been treated with suspicion. My wife Ida was a nurse in the polyclinic and my mother and sister were living in my old apartment.

Once I met by chance a prominent Ukrainian poet and a very honest and decent man Maxim Rylskiy. He helped me a lot. He advised me to stay at home and write. He said I had a great experience and witnessed so many events. I wrote books for children and adults: “Two Gavroshes”, “Zhenia at one time”, “A Parisian woman” and “A night in the churchyard”. I also wrote novels about Germany: “The Sun doesn’t fade”, “A warm autumn” and “Geology of Conscience”. I wrote in the only possible at that time style of writing: socialist realism. I wrote my works to glorify the Soviet reality, Communist Party and raise our children in the spirit of Soviet patriotism. I wrote in Ukrainian. There were only Ukrainian and Russian characters in my books. Jewish characters were not appreciated at that time. My books were published.

I never wrote about the GULAG. I still believed in the idea of communism. I thought that everything bad was Stalin’s fault. Maxim Rylskiy promoted publication of my books. He also advised me to work with big commandants of the Soviet army and heroes of the war developing their memoirs into books. Memoirs were very popular in the 1950-60s. This work was paid well and I wrote memoirs for two generals of the Great Patriotic War. They were published and the authors were generals, of course. My name was not mentioned.

I borrowed some money from Rylskiy and in 1962 we bought a two-room apartment. My wife Ida continued working. She was a very reserved, nice and kind woman. She understood me very well and we had a very warm and close family. My mother Freida Shmushkevich died 1963. She had always had a poor heart and a hard life. My mother and Rachel’s (my sister) family always observed Jewish traditions. At Pesach my mother and then my sister went to the synagogue and stood in lines over night to get some matsah. We always visited them on these days. My mother was a very good housewife. She made delicious stewed chicken, stuffed chicken neck, cutlets and clear soup. We also visited them on Soviet holidays. We didn’t observe any Jewish traditions. Firstly, we were communists and secondly, we had no faith in anything, although we always remembered who we were.

In 1965 I became a member of the Soviet writers’ Union. I could rest and write in the so-called Creativity homes for writers and travel around the country being paid for such trips. I also conducted meetings with my readers. Our life was improving. My daughter graduated from the Institute of Foreign languages. She worked as an English-Russian-Ukrainian translator and editor in scientific publishing offices. She married a Russian man. My wife and I had no objections to this. In 1969 her son Evgeniy was born. She divorced her husband soon afterward. My wife and I helped her to raise Evgeniy.
In 1990 my sister Rachel, her son Alik, her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren left for Israel. I never considered emigration for myself. I sympathized with the people that were leaving, but I knew that I would never be able to live in a different country. I am too old to change my place of living. In 1991 my wife Ida died of cancer.

I live alone. My daughter lives in another part of the city. Unfortunately, in 1990s many institutes and publishing homes were closed and my daughter lost her job. Also, at that time many preachers of various religious came to the country and my daughter was converted to Christianity. She attends a Christian church and she was baptized. Her son Evgeniy followed her. I try to explain to her that she is a Jew and she should turn to Judaism, but she wouldn’t listen to me. I am so unhappy about this.

In 1920s I stopped identifying myself a Jew after I moved to Kiev. The word “Jew” came back to me during and after the war. I only remembered that I was a Jew when there was much ado about the issue of Jewry. But now, when I am alone, Jewish organizations stretch their hand of help to me. They help me with medication and food. A woman visits me to do the apartment and shopping. I feel myself again as a Jew. I am interested in the events in Israel. I correspond with my sister and friends in Israel. I am too old to go there. I shall turn 90 soon. I have been to two hells in my life: German-fascist and Stalin - GULAG I am thinking about my life and I can finally write the truth about my life. I hope somebody will need it.

Sarah Kaplan
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: December 2002

Sarah Kaplan is 86 years old. She lives in an old house in the central part of Lvov. She owned a barbershop that used to be in the biggest room of her house. Sarah can hardly walk now; she has problems with her legs. Her friend often comes to stay with her. Sarah has a clear mind. She may not remember some dates or names, but she is smart and has a good sense of humor. At first it was difficult for Sarah to speak, but the more she talked about her family the more inspired she seemed to get. I enjoyed listening to her.

Family Background

​Growing Up

The Great Terror and the Ukrainian Famine

​During the War

After the War

Post-War Antisemitism

Glossary

Family Background

My grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s side, Joseph and Khaika Kivnik, were born in Berdichev in the 1870s. More than 90 per cent of the population of Berdichev was Jewish. The rest of the inhabitants were Ukrainians. They lived in the outskirts of town, where land wasn’t so expensive and where they could have enough space for gardens and orchards. People spoke Yiddish and Ukrainian in the town. There were several synagogues, cheders and Jewish schools in town. Jews were craftsmen for the most part. They bought products from the local farmers. There was a shochet at the market where Jews bought their poultry.

My mother’s family was moderately religious. They celebrated holidays, observed traditions and followed the kashrut. They dressed up to go to the synagogue on Saturdays, and on weekdays they prayed at home. On Yom Kippur they fasted, including children over 5 years of age. They spoke Yiddish at home and Ukrainian with an accent to their Ukrainian customers.

My grandfather was a bricklayer. He constructed houses. He built a big three-storied house for his family. His children and grandchildren lived in this house. They didn’t have a kitchen garden or a garden – they bought all their products at the market. They had many children: my mother had ten sisters and three brothers. My grandmother was a vivid lively woman. The family wasn’t wealthy, so she always tried to find work to contribute to the family budget. She always wore a shawl. She used to buy milk from a wholesaler and sold it at a retail price to her neighbors. The man who delivered milk to the town was my future father, Nahman Grinberg.

I don’t remember the names of all of my mother’s sisters, their husbands and children. My mother’s brothers studied at cheder, and the sisters studied with a teacher at home. Later all of them finished the Jewish elementary school in town. The sisters got married, were housewives and raised their children. They lived in the house that my grandfather had built, and there was enough space for them and their families there. Every family had sort of an apartment in this big house, which had as many rooms as the children my grandparents had. From the 1920-1930s 30 to 45 people lived in the house: my mother’s parents, the 13 families of my mother’s siblings and more than 15 grandchildren.

Of all my mother’s siblings only Shepsesh, the youngest brother, received a higher education. He was born around 1910. He graduated from the Construction Institute. He worked as a foreman for some time, then he became chief engineer of a construction site. In the middle of the 1930s he became chairman of the Construction Trade Union of Berdichev. Like any other manager he had friends and enemies. Some people weren’t happy with the distribution of bonuses, others couldn’t get a free ticket to a recreation center. In 1937 some people took advantage of the situation to get rid of Shepsesh [during the Great Terror] 1. During the refurbishment in his office Shepsesh took the portrait of Stalin off the wall and swept the dust off it with a sweep. His fellow employees reported on him to the authorities and the following night he was arrested on the charge of anti-Soviet activities. He was sent into exile in Nogaisk bay in the Far North.

We had no information about him for a long time. Somehow somebody notified him that his wife Polia and their two children, Rachel and Samuel, perished in 1941. They were shot by fascists along with other Jews of the town. Shepsesh met a Russian woman called Nina from Saratov on the Gulag 2. They were released in 1947 and Shepsesh went to Saratov with her. Later he described the horrors of his life in the camp in his letters. There were no trains going to the place and all food products were dropped from planes. They mainly ate fish and fish oil, dried bread and frozen potatoes. He had forgotten the taste of milk and meat. However, Shepsesh recovered from tuberculosis in the camp. He wasn’t allowed to leave Saratov, and we never saw him again. He died in Saratov in the middle of the 1960s.

My mother’s oldest brother, Simkhe, was born in 1893. He was single. He was recruited to the army during World War I and perished on the front in 1914.

My mother’s other brother, Benia, was a bricklayer and worked with my grandfather. After Shepsesh was arrested Benia, his wife Rukhl and their two children moved to Birobidzhan 3 in 1938. His departure to Birobidzhan saved his life and his family. After the war we lost track of him.

My mother was the oldest of the sisters. I only remember the three of them that came after her. Elka, born after my mother in 1896, married a shoemaker called Avrum Burshtein. She died of tuberculosis in the early 1930s. Avrum and Elka had two children: Fania and Srulik, who perished in 1941.

Pesia, the next sister, was married to a tinsmith called Weitzman, and the next one, Perl was married to a locksmith called Shaya. I vaguely remember Esphir, Fania and Tsylia. I have a photo of Tsylia and her children.

My mother, Esther Grinberg [nee Kivnik], was born in 1895. After finishing the Jewish elementary school she helped my grandmother Khaika about the house. My grandfather, grandmother, father, mother and my mother’s sisters were all shot by the fascists in Berdichev fortress in 1941 along with the rest of the Jewish population of Berdichev.

My father’s parents, Leib and Khana Grinberg, were born in the middle of the 19th century and came from Berdichev. They lived in the outskirts of Berdichev. Leib owned a milk farm. He didn’t hire any employees; his family was helping him on the farm. He had five daughters called Rosa, Dina, Sheindlia, Polia and Riva. His daughters were married and their husbands worked for my grandfather. They shepherded cows and made sour cream and butter that they sold at the market. My grandparents’ family was wealthy.

My father also had brothers. They studied after finishing cheder. They were very religious people. The oldest brother, Avrum, was born in 1880 and perished during a pogrom 4 in 1917. His wife and children lived in Berdichev. They were shot by the fascists in Berdichev in 1941. My grandparents’ other son, Haim, was a barber and had his own barber’s shop. He was married and had children. They were all shot in Berdichev in 1941. The younger son, Leivi, was born in 1887 and learned how to handle leather. He owned a shop before the Revolution of 1917. After the Revolution the Soviet authorities built a leather factory on the basis of Leivi’s shop. Leivi continued to work at the factory after the Revolution. He also had a wife and children that were shot in 1941. I didn’t know the rest of my father’s brothers and sisters, but they were all shot in the Berdichev fortress in 1941.

My grandparents and their children were very religious. They strictly observed all traditions, followed the kashrut and prayed twice a day. Grandfather Leib and Aunt Khana died in the late 1920s.

My father was born in 1889. After finishing cheder he worked with his father. Every Friday he delivered dairy products to Berdichev. He stopped near the gate of my mother’s house because my grandmother bought milk from him. My mother liked Nahman and always waited for him on the porch of the house. He gave her a ride on his cart and bought her sweets before he took her back home. This went on for several years until he was recruited to the army in 1908.

Before leaving he asked my grandfather to have his daughter wait until he came back, so that he could marry her. My grandfather was against it because my mother was the oldest daughter and according to Jewish custom younger daughters couldn’t get married until the older one was married. They would have remained spinsters if my grandfather had given Nahman his consent. Besides my grandfather said that it was difficult for him to provide for my mother for so many years. He wanted her to get married and have her husband’s support. My future father didn’t feel like giving up. He talked with a rabbi and made a vow to marry my mother when he came back. The rabbi issued a permit for the other daughters to get married in the meantime. Before his departure my father put a significant amount of money in my grandfather’s bank account.

My father served in the tsarist army in the town of Chuguyev near Poltava for seven years. He was a cavalryman. He went to the front at the beginning of World War I. He was slightly wounded and dismissed. He returned home at the beginning of 1915. My mother waited for him for seven years. My grandfather Joseph didn’t use the money that my father had put in the bank, so my mother opened a ‘kusher milkh’ [kosher milk] store with the money instead. Her business was successful. When my father returned from the army there was three times more money than when he had left.

My father and my mother’s families were religious and my parents had a traditional Jewish wedding. They had a chuppah and broke the glass from which they drank wine under the chuppah. It was a big wedding and there were many guests at the party. After their wedding my father continued to work on my grandfather Leib’s farm, and my mother worked in the store. They lived in my mother’s parents house where my grandfather gave them a room on the 3rd floor.

Growing Up

I was born on 11th May 1916, and my mother quit working at the store. One of her sisters took over the management of the store. My brother, Avrum, was born in 1917 and my sister, Rosa, followed a year later. The first memory of my childhood was of my father gluing ‘kerenki’ on the walls of a shed. [Editors note: Kerenki were banknotes, introduced by the Provisional Government headed by Kerensky 5 in 1917. Its money stopped circulating due to inflation.] The banknotes were printed on big sheets of paper, and my father used them as wallpaper.

Grandfather Joseph and Grandmother Khaika were deeply religious. They observed all Jewish traditions. Since we lived in their house, we obeyed the rules and traditions. Friday was a difficult day for us, girls. We had to clean the house, wash the floors and polish the furniture before Sabbath. My mother, her sisters and her brothers’ wives cooked dinner for Friday evenings and Saturdays. There were twelve families in the house. They all helped and supported one another. There were several kitchens and stoves in the house and there was enough space for all families. My mother made stew, chicken broth, boiled chicken and pastries, put it in the oven and closed its lid covering it with clay. On top of the stove she put bowls of boiled milk wrapped in heavy coats. By the next morning this milk had turned pink. It was delicious.

When the cleaning and cooking was over we all changed into clean clothes. My mother ceremoniously gave my father starched underwear. My father and the other men went to the synagogue. After they returned the family sat down for dinner. My mother said a prayer covering her eyes with her palms and lit candles. My father dipped a piece of challah into salt and poured some wine for himself and my mother. It was a joyful ceremony.

On Saturdays the whole family went to the synagogue. The youngest children were playing in the yard under the supervision of a guard from the synagogue. I remember two synagogues in Berdichev: one for wealthier Jews and the other one for less fortunate people. Our family attended the latter. The synagogue looked like a palace to me with beautifully carved handrails on the staircase leading to the 2nd floor, where my mother and I went, and a chandelier with clinking pieces of glass. I liked it. When we returned from the synagogue our Ukrainian neighbor Antonina came to the house to take the food out of the oven. Antonina also milked the cow while my mother and other members of the family rested.

On big Jewish holidays all families got together at my grandfather’s big table. My favorite holiday was Pesach. Sometime before the holiday the adults made matzah and we [children] rolled special patterns over the freshly baked sheets of matzah. Before the holiday all children were busy searching for breadcrumbs in the house, and the adults were engaged in cleaning activities.

At the first seder the whole family sat at the table. My grandfather reclined on a pillow at the head of the table wearing a white cloak. There was matzah and traditional dishes on the table: a chicken leg, stuffed fish, bean, eggs, etc. There was plenty of delicious food: gefilte fish, chicken, stew and chicken broth with dumplings made from matzah flour. My grandfather conducted the seder. I posed the questions [the mah nishtanah] to him because I was his oldest granddaughter. [Editors note: Usually this question has to be asked by the youngest child in the family.] Actually, it is the duty of a boy, but I was my grandfather’s favorite, and he allowed me to perform this ritual. I asked him, ‘Why do we eat both matzah and bread during a year, but can only have matzah on Pesach’. He explained why and told us the history of Pesach. The family also got together for the second seder and on the following days each family celebrated separately.

On Yom Kippur and before Rosh Hashanah the whole family fasted, even children over 5 years of age. Adults, boys over 13 and girls over 12 years of age went to the cemetery to recite the Kaddish and commemorate the deceased. Before Rosh Hashanah all children got new clothes, we dressed up and went to the synagogue. Then we ate apples with honey and wished our neighbors a nice and sweet year to come. On Chanukkah the children got presents and some change. We ran to the store to buy sweets.

When my brother turned 5 he got a private teacher. It was a rabbi who came to teach him Yiddish, prayers and everything else that boys are taught in cheder. Girls didn’t receive any education as a rule, but my parents made an exception for me. I always sat beside my brother at the desk when the teacher came. He was an old man and used to doze off at the desk, and then I turned the pages of his books over.

When I turned 7 I went to the Jewish lower secondary school. There was a Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish school in the town. The curriculum was the same but the children studied in different languages. The best teachers were at the Jewish school. There were even Ukrainian children in our school. Ukrainians and Jews got along well, there were no conflicts between them. Jews always brought matzah to the families of their Ukrainian friends [on Pesach], and on Easter Ukrainian friends brought sweet Easter bread to their Jewish neighbors. There was a beautiful Christian cathedral in Berdichev. I often went there with my Ukrainian friends. We were so close with them that Ukrainian children fasted with us on Yom Kippur, and we kept them company during the Midnight Mess.

The Great Terror and the Ukrainian Famine

In the late 1920s, when the NEP 6 was over, my father, who was a wealthy man for the time, was declared a ‘deprived’ man. [Editor’s Note: an individual deprived of social rights, in particular, of his right to vote and declared an unreliable and untrustworthy citizen.] Therefore, although I became a pioneer, I wasn’t involved in any public activities. I didn’t care much about it. I enjoyed studying and making friends.

In 1930 during the ‘gold fever’, as it was called by people, the Soviet representatives came to our house. [Editor’s note: ‘gold fever’ was a common term for the forced extraction of gold and valuables by state authorities during the Great Terror.] My father had some gold that he hid in the garden. He didn’t want to give it to the authorities because he had earned it by working hard. They knew my father was a strong man and wasn’t going to give away what he had. So they arrested my mother knowing that my father would do anything for his beloved wife.

My father went to the chief of the security department, Belozyorov, to request him to release his wife and arrest him instead. They arrested him, but they didn’t release my mother. We, three children, were left behind alone. Grandfather Joseph was impoverished by that time, so there was little he could do for us. We had a cart and a horse, and it occurred to me that we could earn our living by delivering wood to people. After a short while a log fell on my brother’s leg and broke it. My parents were released within a few days after my father promised the authorities to give them his gold. He only gave them a part of what he had, but they left us alone for the time being.

My mother told us about the horrors of jail. Her cell was stuffed with so many inmates that there was no space to sit, let alone lie down. The inmates got very little food. The prison administration did everything to create unbearable conditions for the inmates to force them to part with their valuables. Both rich and poor people were imprisoned. If they had gold, they were released, and if they didn’t they were sent to Siberia or died in jail. The wardens in jail were our neighbors and other people we knew. They were poor before because they were lazy, but during the Soviet power they enthusiastically gained official posts and took advantage to torment their more successful friends and neighbors.

In 1932 a famine [famine in Ukraine] 8 began. We were starving like all other people. There was no opportunity to get bread or flour. We were given a miserable meal at school. My father provided us with whatever he could get. My stomach began to swell up from hunger. Shunia, the son of my mother’s friend, Frida Gershman, arrived from Moscow at that time. Frida, her husband and her children, Shunia and Ania, had moved to Davydkovo near Moscow several years before. They rented a small apartment and commuted to work in Moscow by train. Shunia was a barber in Moscow. He came to visit his aunt in Berdichev. When he visited us and saw that we were starved he said to my mother, ‘Let Sonia come with me, otherwise she’ll starve to death here’. [Editor’s note: Sarah was called Sonia at home.] My mother refused to let me go.

Shunia stayed in Berdichev for a whole month trying to convince my mother. My mother was against me leaving with the young man. Before his departure from Berdichev, Shunia came to talk to my mother again. My mother said: ‘You want to take her with you – marry her!’ He agreed. This happened on a Friday. I came home from school. I was a thin young girl of 16, had plated hair and wore a dark blue skirt, a white blouse and my pioneer necktie. My mother was making some pies. I asked her, ‘Is it a holiday? And where did you get flour?’ She replied, ‘You’re getting married today’. I didn’t want to get married. Shunia seemed too old to me. He was only 5 years older, but when one is young it’s a sufficient difference in age. I didn’t dare to disobey my mother – it just wasn’t the way I was raised.

We had a small wedding party. There was a rabbi and a chuppah in our yard. We made seven rounds around it. The rabbi issued a marriage contract, and all relatives congratulated me. We didn’t have a civil ceremony because my mother didn’t want to. What mattered to her was a ceremony with a rabbi. My husband stayed at his aunt’s house overnight.

The next day we left for Moscow. I was crying, reluctant to leave my hometown. I had my mother’s down shawl. I wrapped myself in it and it made me feel better. When Shunia told his mother that I was his wife she was deeply hurt. How could he enter a marriage without her blessing, she asked herself. But in a short while she understood that he actually saved her friend’s daughter from starving to death. Frida prepared a bath for me, combed my hair and made beds for us in different rooms. During the whole time that I stayed in her house she didn’t allow my husband to share a bed with me. He was very kind to me and didn’t even try to enter my room. Every day Shunia commuted to his work in a barber’s shop in Gorky Street. I was homesick, especially when I was at home alone. I didn’t show my sorrow to Shunia and his mother, but at night I kept crying into the pillow.

After two months Frida’s brother Gedaliy came on a visit from Odessa. He was a jeweler and came to Moscow to buy golden and silver jewelry and coins at the black market. Gedaliy asked me why I looked so sad and found out that I was missing my home. He decided to take me with him on his way back to Odessa. He was planning to take me to Koziatin from where I could get home to Berdichev by myself. Gedali told me to not mention our plan to my mother-in-law. On the day of departure I packed my few belongings wrapping them in my mother’s shawl. My mother-in-law asked me to stay, but I was longing to go home. When we boarded the train I saw Shunia on the platform. The train began to roll, and Shunia was running along the platform waving his hand trying to tell me to get off, but I only waved back, feeling proud and happy.

I got off in Koziatin and from there I took a train to Berdichev. Gedaly had sent a telegram to my mother to inform her that I was on my way home, and she met me at the station. She hugged me and we burst into tears. We sat on a bench at the railway station and she told me what had happened when I was away. My younger sister Rosa starved to death. My mother lost 25 kilos due to her grief and sorrow. She ordered a cab, but I refused to go home in the cab. I wanted to walk the streets of my hometown enjoying its beauty. I fell on my knees to kiss the land of Berdichev. It was late. My mother and I walked along a boulevard. I took off my shoes to feel the warm ground. I sat on benches and cried. We got home in the morning. My relatives were waiting for me at home. They were glad to see me, although they couldn’t understand how I could leave my husband. I explained to them how it all happened and they forgave me.

It didn’t work out so good for me for some time. I couldn’t study because I was the daughter of a ‘deprived’ man. I needed to work to earn my living. I found a vacancy at a printing house. Many young people went to work there because they got a meal, a glass of milk and a bun, in return for the hazardous working conditions. I worked at the manual printing composition shop and liked this process. I had an enquiring mind and enjoyed being the first to know the news. At home, when the family came back from the synagogue, they sat on rugs and chairs in our big yard to share the news. I told them about the latest news: the flight of Chkalov 8 to America, the records of our pilots and many other things. My relatives liked listening to me. However, I didn’t work long at the printing house. I began to lose weight and my mother took me to Balaban, a Jewish doctor. He told me to quit my job because there were hazardous substances in the printing shop: lead, antimony and tin.

I read an announcement on a fence about a private course in accountancy and convinced my father to pay the fee for a year’s course. I liked studying there. The school was at some distance from my home and a young man, Alyosha Temnogradskiy, began to accompany me home. Alyosha was Ukrainian or Polish. His father had died, and his mother was growing flowers for sale. Every night we stood near my house kissing. Our neighbors told my mother about this young man. It was scandalous. My mother yelled, ‘How can you do this being a married woman?’ But I was a virgin, just a young girl. Once Alyosha invited me to his home. His mother gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers. My mother was very angry again when she heard who had given me the flowers. She wrote to my husband in Moscow. She wrote almost a whole notebook in Yiddish. At the end of the letter my mother was asking Shunia whether he was going to live with me, and if so, he should come, if not he should tear the rabbi’s certificate apart and leave me alone. Shunia arrived after a few days. He quit his job in Moscow to reunite with me.

I became a wife. We lived in a room in my parents’ home. My mother watched that I strictly followed all requirements of a Jewish woman in regards to private life. During menstruation a husband wasn’t allowed to touch his wife. After menstruation a woman had to go to the mikveh. My mother made sure that I went to the mikveh. I was afraid to catch a cold there because the water in the mikveh was very cold. But my mother said that it was God’s direction for a woman to go to the mikveh and that meant that I wasn’t going to catch a cold. And I didn’t. When the mikveh at the synagogue was closed in the late 1930s my mother didn’t allow me to share a bed with my husband. Later religious Jews found huge tubs that belonged to a butcher and one of these tubs served as a mikveh to the women from Berdichev. Men didn’t go to the mikveh, they washed themselves at home.

Shunia got a job at the barbershop. We got along well and my mother liked him a lot. Our son, Izia, was born in 1934. He had brit milah on the 8th day after he was born. It was a tradition in all Jewish families. We invited a rabbi who said a prayer, and a man from the synagogue conducted the ritual. We named my son after my husband’s uncle. I was still a young girl and didn’t feel like a mother. I went to the river with my friends and only when milk began to pour down my breasts, did I remember that it was time to feed my son. My mother looked after Izia, and I went to work.

I was assistant accountant at the construction facility of a power plant. I maintained records for the stone that the workers crushed. Once one of my bosses, Beilis, a Jew, told me to write down smaller quantities for the workers so that he could get the remaining quantities of crushed stone written under his name. I told my father about it, and he told me to quit. My husband and I bought a license to open a private barber and hairdresser shop. Small business was allowed at that time. I learned to shave clients and cut hair. When curls were in fashion I went to Trudler in Kiev. [Editor’s note: Trudler was a popular hairdresser at that time.] He taught me to wave hair with steam. When waving hair with circling irons became fashionable, I went to Trudler for training. I made the best hairdos in Berdichev. Shunia and I earned very well.

In March 1937 our cow had a calf. My father slaughtered it. There was a law forbidding the slaughter of cattle. Our neighbor reported on my father to the NKVD 9. He was arrested again and sentenced to 5 years in a camp for the secret slaughter of cattle. The camp was in the Far East, not far from Japan. The inmates starved and the wardens didn’t have sufficient food either. My father talked with the chief warden of the camp and suggested to buy a cow. The chief warden agreed and my father founded a farm. Later they bought a couple more cows and had sufficient dairy products to feed the people in the camp. As an award for decent behavior my father was released before the end of his term. He returned home in April 1941, two months before the Great Patriotic War 10. My father didn’t like to talk about the camp. All I know is that the conditions there were hard. They lived in barracks and slept on straw. There were about 150 of them in one barrack. He only washed himself twice in three years. They starved and worked on a wood-cutting site.

My brother, Avrum, finished Pedagogical College after lower secondary school. He submitted his documents to the Pedagogical Institute in Zhytomir, but he was not admitted there because he was the son of a ‘deprived’ man. Grandfather Joseph adopted him and Avrum entered the institute. Upon graduation he worked as a teacher of physics and mathematics at a school in Berdichev. At the beginning of the war he was the director of the school. Avrum’s fiancée, Sarah, worked as a teacher in Raigorodok, Vinnitsa region.

My husband didn’t serve in the army due to his poor sight. He was a member of OSOAVIACHIM [association for the support of the army’s air force and chemical defense units]. He often took part in military training, but he never thought it had anything to do with a possible war.

During the War

The war, which began in June 1941, was a surprise to all of us. We knew that there was a war in Europe, but it seemed so far away from our small town. We were always told that our country was the strongest in the world, and it never even occurred to us that somebody might attack us. A few days after the war began Berdichev was bombed. My husband was on the watchtower at that time. My 6-year-old son and I climbed the watchtower shouting to him, ‘The town is being bombed, we have to leave!’. But he thought this was just another training and couldn’t believe that Berdichev was really being bombed. When we got down I saw the car of my husband’s boss Kostyukov, the director of OSOAVIACHIM, and his wife and children. There was another car nearby loaded with carpets, dishes, bags with flour and sugar and boxes with herring. I said to my husband, ‘Look, how well prepared your boss is to run away while you stand on the watchtower’.

We ran home and I tried to convince my mother and father to go with us. I didn’t know a thing about how the German treated Jews, but some inkling told me to escape. My parents refused to go, and I failed to convince them. My mother and father’s sisters and brothers and their families also stayed in Berdichev. I ran to Kostyukov to ask him to take us in their vehicle, but he refused. Then I removed one bag of sugar from that other vehicle, got there and pulled my son and my husband onto it. Kostyukov threatened us with his gun, but I didn’t get off the vehicle. I also managed to pick up my brother and get him on the vehicle.

During the summer vacations that year Avrum worked at a pioneer camp, but he came home overnight. He was very concerned because he had left children behind in the camp. He got off the vehicle near Belaya Tserkov and went back. We moved on. Near Belaya Tserkov a bomb hit the car of Kostyukov and his family. There was only a huge pit left from it – the Kostyukov family died. We drove 500 kilometers under constant bombing. The driver and his wife dropped us near Poltava and moved on with all the belongings of the deceased Kostyukov family.

In Poltava we stayed with Ukrainian people. I shall never forget how kind they were. They gave us food and were very nice to us. We went to the evacuation agency. They sent us to Kazan [1,500 km from Berdichev]. I had relatives there: Avrum and Nina, the children of my father’s sister Riva. We stayed with them for a short while. Nina was a very beautiful and kind woman. She made a bath for our son and gave us a meal. Nina and I corresponded for many years after the war. She died in the middle of the 1950s.

I didn’t want Shunia to go to the front. I even hid him in the attic of the house for some time. But he was recruited, and in September 1941 he left for the front. I got a job at a military unit in Poltava. I shaved soldiers and cut their hair. We got accommodation with a Tatar family. Our landlady, Tamila, had six children and there were three of us – nine hungry human beings. Tamila’s husband, an agricultural engineer, perished at the front. We had no food. There were only two cards for the people who worked. The rest were cards for the children, who were dependants, for 100 grams of bread per day, which wasn’t always available. The children went to kindergarten, but they came back home hungry. We lived in the outskirts of Kazan. There were collective farm fields nearby. Tamila and I went to the field at night when nobody could see us. We found potatoes, carrots and sugar beets. We baked these vegetables to feed the children. Our first winter of the war passed. In the fall of 1942 I received my husband’s death notification. I was grieving and cried a lot, but I knew I had to be strong for the sake of my son.

In 1943 I met a Jewish barber in Kazan. His name was Zeilik Kaplan. He came from Mohilev-Podolsk. He was on business in Kazan when the war began. His wife and daughter perished in the ghetto in Mohilev-Podolsk. Zeilik and I fell in love and began to live together. We stayed with Tamila. I went to work at the barber shop of the military unit and Zeilik worked there, too. In 1943 the situation became easier. The officers shared bread and sugar with us knowing that our children were hungry. My son grew attached to Zeilik; they became friends. Zeilik read books to him in the evening.

From radio programs and newspapers we knew about the brutality of the fascists and about Babi Yar 11, about executed Jews and those that were buried alive. I kept thinking about my relatives in Berdichev. I couldn’t believe they had all perished. I wanted to believe in a miracle. When Kiev was liberated in December 1944 my son and I went home. We came to Moscow to see Shunia’s parents. My mother-in-law whose daughter Ania had starved to death, got very attached to her grandson. She didn’t want to let him go with me. She convinced me to let Izia stay with her because the war was still on and there were Germans in Ukraine. I decided it was alright for my son to stay with her until we settled down because I didn’t know where we would get accommodation or how things would go on.

After the War

I arrived in Kiev. The city was ruined. Zeilik’s relative Mendel met me at the railway station. He put me on the train to Berdichev. I didn’t recognize my town or our house. Our beautiful three-storied house had no windows or doors, and its roof was ruined. Our neighbors told me that my relatives and other Jews of the town were taken to the fortress where they were kept without water and food for a few days. Then they were shot. Grandfather Joseph was in the garden when the family was taken away. When everybody left he put on his tallit and tefillin and sat in our garden swinging back and forth and praying. Our Ukrainian neighbor saw him and reported on him to the Germans. They came to pick him up. My brother Avrum and other schoolteachers were shot a few days after the mass shooting. The Germans tied our doctor, Balaban, a respectable man, who had helped many people in the town, to the tail of a horse and pulled him through the whole town.

I entered the house. A young woman and her baby were there. She was the daughter, and the baby was the grandson of the woman that had reported on my grandfather. The woman lay in her bed like a log. A stray shell that had hit our house had torn off her legs and arms. The Lord punished her. She failed to find happiness in our house.

But what was I to do? I was standing on the debris asking God whether a human being could bear this pain, walk and breathe after what had happen. Stepan, the father of one of my Ukrainian friends, took me to his house where I stayed for several days. I knew it would be too much for me to stay in Berdichev – I couldn’t imagine walking the streets of the place where my mother, father, brother and other relatives had been killed. Stepan advised me to sell the land where our house used to be. To do this I had to restore my right to succession of the property. I went to the town housing department to obtain the necessary certificate. I went to see the chief of this department. It happened to be Alexei Temnogradskiy, a man who used to date me once. He helped me to obtain the necessary papers, and I managed to sell the plot of land and the remains of the house. I gave part of the money to Alexei to thank him for his help. I said goodbye to my hometown and left for Kiev.

After some time Zeilik arrived at his relative Mendel’s place in Kiev. We got married shortly after. We had a civil ceremony and began our life together in Mendel’s one-bedroom apartment. When the war was over Mendel helped us to obtain a license, and we opened a barber-shop at the Evbaz. [Editor’s note: Evbaz is the name of the Jewish bazaar, an old Jewish neighborhood in the center of Kiev.] However, there was too little space in Mendel’s apartment and we had to think about getting a dwelling of our own. At that time people were recruited to work in Western Ukraine and the Baltic Republics that had joined the USSR some time before. We were attracted by the promise to get a job and a place to live and went to Chernovtsy. There was work, but we didn’t get an apartment. In 1950 my husband and I arrived in Lvov where my husband’s uncle lived.

I still had some money left from selling the house. We bought and apartment and paid for the license to open a barber-shop. The shop was in the bigger room of the house. Zeilik was a barber, and I was a hairdresser. We lived in the small room in the back of the house. We had many clients and made a good living. We went to the theater and to resorts in the Crimea and the Caucasus.

My son, Izia, stayed with my first husband’s parents in Moscow. My mother-in-law didn’t forgive me for remarrying. She thought that I had betrayed her son. But I was young and wanted to enjoy life. For her sake I agreed that Izia stayed with her. After finishing school he took a course to become a trolley bus driver. In 1962 he married a Jewish girl called Lena. They had a wedding party at a restaurant; it wasn’t a religious wedding. They received an apartment in Moscow. They have two sons. Izia always identified himself as a Jew, but his family didn’t observe any Jewish traditions. I sent money to support him every month and went to visit him. Izia spent his summer vacations with us.

Post-War Antisemitism

Everything was going fine, but anti-Semitism in Western Ukraine was thriving. Everywhere I could hear ‘zhydovka’ [kike]: in the streets, on public transportation and in stores. I always observed all the Jewish traditions that my mother had taught me. My husband and I spoke Yiddish. We celebrated all Jewish holidays. The synagogue was closed, but we prayed at home every day. We have our prayer books at home. There was no place to buy kosher food, but we never ate pork or dairy and meat products together. Even when it was impossible to officially get matzah there were underground bakeries where we could always get some for Pesach. All Jews knew the addresses of these bakeries and kept them a secret from outsiders. My husband and I always fasted on Yom Kippur and commemorated the deceased. Religious Jews always had religious calendars that their friends brought from Israel. They made copies of these calendars and sold them to Jews. We never acknowledged or celebrated Soviet holidays, but used them as an occasion to meet friends and invite them to our house to have a good time together.

When the emigration to Israel began in the 1970s I was inspired to move there. But then the Yom Kippur War 12 began and we stayed. In 1987, during perestroika, we decided to move to Israel. We received an invitation from Israel in 1991, submitted all necessary documentation and obtained foreign passports, visas and permits. We had our belongings shipped to Israel. Shortly before our departure the doorbell rang. I looked through the eyelet and thought my friend’s son was standing at the door, so I opened it. Three bandits wearing masks stormed into the house. They demanded money, but we didn’t have any left. I gave them my golden jewelry, our wedding rings, golden watch and my earrings. I told them that it was all we had. They brutally beat us.

After they left I asked our neighbors to call the ambulance. Two different ambulances took my husband and me to the hospital. Zeilik died on the way to the hospital, and I had an extensive infarction. When I came back to my senses and heard that my husband had died I wished I had died, too. I didn’t want to take any medication and refused injections. The chief doctor of the hospital saved me. He was a Jew, and when he heard what had happened to us he was committed to save me. He brought medication and food from home. He fed me begging me to live. He brought me back to life.

My husband was buried in the Jewish section of the town cemetery while I was in hospital. He was buried without any rituals. When I returned home I borrowed some money and went back to work. I was 75. There wasn’t much I could do, but I worked from morning to night. I didn’t get our luggage back. I managed to buy some furniture from what I earned.

Now I live alone in this half-empty house. I know who robbed us. Every now and then I see one of those bandits. He passes by as if I weren’t there. I was afraid to go to court because I was scared of the bandits.

My son Izia and his wife live in Moscow Region. He worked as a trolleybus driver. Izia’s two sons live in Moscow. When they were young boys they used to spend their summer vacations with us. My husband loved them dearly. He took them to the sea. After finishing school they stopped seeing us that much, but we still try to see each other at least once a year. They are married. Arkasha graduated from the Technical- Physical Institute; his wife Lena, a Jewish girl, is also a physicist. Yasha graduated from the Trade Institute in Moscow. He worked at a restaurant.

During perestroika Arkasha lost his job. He could play the guitar and accordion. In 1995 he took me to his home in Moscow and I translated Jewish songs in Yiddish for him. I stayed there for three months. Arkasha founded a Jewish band. He works at the kosher restaurant near the Paveletskiy railway station in Moscow. He has two children. Yasha has a daughter. My grandchildren are doing well, but I’m here alone. It would be difficult for me to move to Moscow to join them. I’m at home here.

The Jewish charity organization Hesed provides important assistance to me. I get free meals, medication and Jewish newspapers. Hesed often invites me to the club where I have Jewish friends. Of course, I won’t go to Israel any more now, but the country is very dear to me. I feel as if it were my motherland, and I think Hesed is a part of Israel. This helps me to continue to live my long and difficult life.

Glossary:

#Growing up

#Wartime

#After the war

#Glossary

Growing up

I was born on 20 September 1928. I was called Leon at birth. This name was written in the registry book of all Jews of Bendery town. Later I had the name of Leonid written in my passport. This name is more Russian and I’ve lived the rest of my life with it.  Later it was officially proved that these are two identical names. 

I was born in the town of Kebena, Rumania. Kebena was a Rumanian name of the town. When in summer of 1940 it became part of the Soviet Union the town was given its old Turkish name of Bendery. This was a multinational town were Jews, Moldavians, Rumanians, gypsies, Russians and Ukrainians were good neighbors.  There were no national conflicts and everybody was minding his own business.  There was a cathedral, a Christian church and a synagogue in the central square and everybody was free to go to a church of his choice. 

                  I come from a Jewish family. My father Shabsa Mariasis was born in 1897.  He was a businessman during the Rumanian times. He owned a petroleum storage depot and stores. He was a wealthy man. He came from an ordinary Jewish family. My father’s father, Itsyk Mariasis was a man of his own standing. He raised 12 children. Hi tried to give education to all boys in this family. My father knew 6 of them, the others died in their childhood.  My grandfather was very kind. He called us “Meine kind” – “my children” in Yiddish. My grandfather spoke Yiddish in his house and so did his family. I remember that my grandfather was very handy. He could make anything with his own hands. People called him “golden hands”. I remember him when he was an elderly man, but people still asked him to fix a watch, bind a book, repair or make something.  He provided well for his family. My grandfather had a stone house. I don’t remember how many rooms there were, but I remember that it was a big house. I remember the living room: there was a big dinner table where the whole family got together. I also remember a gramophone with a big megaphone. It played records with Jewish songs in Yiddish. I remember the songs “Bers little town” (“My little town”) and “Oy, mome” (“Oh, Mom”).  During the family gatherings on holidays my grandfather said a prayer. I believe he was a very religious man, but I was too young to care then. He always wore a kippah at home and left home wearing a hat and long black jacket. He often went to the synagogue. I loved to visit him at Hanukkah when he had some money saved for me. This is the only holiday that I remember. I was too small and we didn’t visit him that often. I saw my grandfather for the last time in June 1941. He went to the evacuation and died in the town of Guriev (Kazakhstan) in 1943.

I remember my grandmother Ruhl, his wife. I visited her in Kishinev after the war as well, when I was older. She was born in 1875. She was always plump, kind and nice. She always wore a snow-white apron and a white kerchief on her head. My grandmother was religious. She got some education at home, which was not much. However, she knew all prayers very well and she went to the synagogue with my grandfather on holidays. Jewish women came to ask her advice on various matters before and after the war. Every Friday my grandmother lit candles, said prayers and it all seemed a solemnity to us, children.

My father’s older brother David, born in 1895, finished grammar school and did some commerce afterwards. The Soviet power sent him away to Novokuznetsk in 1939, because he was a wealthy man that meant that he was a hostile element for the Soviet power.  He worked at a plant there. Later his wife Hana and their sons Monia and Efim followed him. I know that they lived there after the war, but I have no more information about them.  David died in 1987. 

My father’s brother Israel (he was called Srulik) born in 1899 became a doctor. He worked in Lutsk for many years. I never met him after the war; so, I don’t know anything about his family or when he died.

My father’s younger brother Lazar, born in 1903 received a higher engineering education in Rumania. He worked as chief of the laboratory in Kishinev. He died in 1980. His sons Arkadiy and Iosif live in Israel. They are pensioners.  

The 3 girls – Golda, born in 1893, Zhenia, born in 1898 and Adel, born in 1905 were educated at home. Teachers from the Russian grammar school came to teach them to write and read Russian, French and music. Their mother taught them housekeeping and Jewish traditions. All sisters married Jewish men, involved in commerce until 1939 (when the Soviet power came to Rumania). After the war my father’s sisters lived in Kishinev and I kept in touch with them. My aunts died a long time ago. Golda died of cancer in 1967, Zhenia died of a heart disease in 1973 and Adel died in Haifa in 1993. Adel’s daughter Haika lives in Israel and phones me sometimes. 

         My father Shabsa Mariasis, born in 1897, was the most successful of all grandfather’s children.  He was quite an intelligent man. He finished the Russian grammar school and got involved in commercial activities. He was a success and in the 1930s he already owned a petroleum storage depot and several stores. He was Chairman of the Commercial Council in Bendery. He led a very active public life and supported many people financially. He was a Zionist. He was for a Jewish state. He believed that Jews had to live together. He believed that only a strong Jewish state could stand against anti-Semitism.  My father was very well familiar with the Beilis1 case. He told me about it in every detail. My father often traveled to Palestine in 1920 - 1930s. He was helping immigrants to settle down, supplied food products and medications and conducted classes with immigrants from Russia training them to do business and live in the desert. They published leaflets and other stuff calling all Jews to move to Palestine and establish their own state. These materials were distributed in Europe. He spoke fluent Hebrew (Ivrit). He met with Zeev Zhabotinskiy2 and they had discussions about the future Jewish state. I know that my father was saving money to buy a plot of land in Palestine, but my mother had a poor heart and was afraid of changing the climate. 

As far as I remember, all members of our family were religious. They observed all Jewish traditions, Jewish holidays and fasting. They didn’t impose their beliefs on the children. The children were raised democratically in the family. My father mainly prayed at home. On holidays he and mother went to the synagogue. My father had his own seat there. I remember when I grew up my father took me to the synagogue at Yom-Kipur. And when they were making a round with the Torah, they gave me a small Torah and I made the round there. There were two synagogues in Bendery: one for the rich and one for the poor. We attended the synagogue for the rich. This was a bigger synagogue, very richly furnished and decorated. It had golden candle stands and Hanukkiah, beautiful fancy dishes, soft comfortable chairs and a huge silver tsdoka (collecting box) for charity contributions at the entrance.  The contributions were generous and big. I know that all Jews in Bendery went to the synagogue. I remember the rabbi greeting the Jews at the synagogue with a holiday.

My father often traveled to other towns on business. In 1919 my father met the daughter of a rich businessman Mikhel Patlazhan. Her name was Perlia and she was 19 years old. She was born in 1900. She finished the grammar school for girls in Kishinev. She was a very pretty girl and they had a rich Jewish wedding in 1920. They had a wedding party in Kishinev and then, when my father took his young wife to Bendery they had another wedding party. Before the wedding my father and grandfather Patlazhan developed a tnoim (a written engagement agreement. It includes information about the dowry, presents, etc.). It was customary for rich people.

         My mother’s father Mikhel Patlazhan born in Kishinev in 1872 was a wealthy man. He owned a few houses and he leased apartments. I think he finished cheder. He observed Jewish tradition when they were in no conflict with his business. If he had business on Saturday, he did it instead of celebrating Sabbath. He wore no beard and smoked on Saturday. But still my grandfather went to the synagogue on big holidays like Purim, Pesach, Yom-Kippur and Hanukkah. My grandfather was very close with his older brother Pynia. Born in 1868 that owned the textile business. I don’t know anything about Pynia’s family. He always came alone when we were visiting my grandfather in Kishinev. Pynia and Grandfather Mikhel Patlazhan perished in 1941 when fascists came to Kishinev. I don’t remember my grandmother or her name. I know that she died of dropsy in 1934 when she was 55.

The Patlazhans had 6 daughters: my mother, Nyunia, Liza, Sonia, Fira and the youngest Riva.  Riva died of dysentery in the evacuation in Middle Asia.  She was looking after the grandfather when he was ill and caught the disease from him. Nyunia, born in 1897 married Itshak in 1919. He was a chemical engineer and worked as a chemist during the Soviet power. After the war they returned to Kishinev. Liza, born in 1904 worked at the bakery. During the war she was in the evacuation in Middle Asia with her son Aron. After the war they returned to Kishinev. They visited us four times in Siberia. Fira, born in 1902, was a housewife. Her husband Haim had died. Her daughter Rachil got married around 1970s  and they moved to Israel. Fira died in Israel in 1987. Sonia, born in 1906, married a pharmacist. Her daughter Alice worked at the pharmacy her whole life. Now she is a pensioner and lives in Kishinev. Sonia died in 1980. Grandfather Patlazhan’s daughters studied at Kishinev grammar school. They were very fond of music and very close with one another. They spoke Yiddish in the family. All girls knew Russian well as they had studied at the Russian grammar school. They were moderately religious. They went to the synagogue on big Jewish holidays, followed some of the kashruth rules. None of the family ate pork and there was matsa at home at Pesach. They didn’t wear shawls.  

My mother Perlia Patlazhan was born in Kishinev in 1900. My mother, however, remembered the pogrom in 1903. She was only 3 years old. But she remembered how one of her relatives in Kishinev was blinded. She remembered these horrible things and told me the story mentioning some names, but I don’t remember them.  My mother studied music, like her sisters, and there was a teacher to teach the girls Yiddish, their “mother tongue” and Hebrew.  My mother studied at the Goldenberg private Russian grammar school for Jewish girls.  Kishinev was a trade center. There where many rich Jewish merchants living there. There was a standard rate of 5% for the Jews at grammar schools. Private schools were established to give education to Jewish children. They had the same educational programs as state grammar schools; only there was a rabbi to teach religion instead of a Christian priest. My mother, her sisters and friends had a typical childhood of children from rich families: music lessons, walks and parties. My mother told me about her friends, but I didn’t listen to her, I wasn’t interested and was far from this subject at the time.

The Civil War of 1914-1917 didn’t have an impact on the life in Kishinev (it was still a part of the Russian Empire). In 1920 Bessarabia (Moldova) became a Rumanian territory; so, their high life continued.  My mother, however, remembered the pogrom in 1903. She was only 3 years old. But she remembered how one of her relatives in Kishinev was blinded. She remembered these horrible things and told me the story mentioning some names, but I don’t remember them. 

At 19 my mother married my father and moved to Bendery. In 1920 their daughter Dora Mariasis was born. She was called Dvoira at birth, but everybody called her Dora. The state rabbi – his name was Derbaremdiker, I remember, had a rooster with all birth records. The rabbi didn’t issue birth certificates, but he issued an official birth extract from this rooster. Theses extracts were notified and stamped.

My father built a good one-storied building. There were just few two- or three-storied buildings in Bendery at that time. There was a big yard near the house that served as petroleum storage depot. There were huge underground tanks for petroleum. We occupied 5 rooms in the house; children’s rooms, a dining room, a living room, a bedroom and a hallway. It was a beautiful house in the center of the town not far from the railway station.  There were few other apartments in our building that were on lease. Our apartment was very nice. We had a very nice apartment. We had lovely dishes, tablecloths and furniture from Vienna. There was no electricity in Bendery until 1930 when the power plant was built.  So, we used kerosene lamps before. However, my father bought a power generator. It was a luxury in Bendery and people came to take a look at the wonderful machine.  There were primus stoves in the kitchen. We had a Jewish cook. There were women to do the cleaning and washing. They were not necessarily Jewish. My nanny Katia was not Jewish. My only memory of her is when I once cut her summer dress with scissors. 

My sister Dora had a Bluthner piano in her room. It was a very good piano. My father brought it from Austria. My sister Dora had a music teacher and could play fairly well. My parents wanted me to learn to play the violin, but I understand now that I have a poor ear for music. What was most important was that I had music classes in the evening when all other boys went to the skating-rink and my classes where the last thing I needed. I oiled the fiddlestick and the teacher stopped coming to us. This was the end of my musical career. My teacher was a smart and kind man and he didn’t punish me for my tricks.

We celebrated all Jewish holidays in our family. I remember Rosh Hashanah. Just before the holiday the Jewish community organized a lottery on this holiday and my mother and father went to the building of the Commercial Council for a whole night. They were all dressed up. My mother was a very beautiful woman and she was nominated to conduct the charity lottery and the auction. The collected money was sent to give education to Jewish children from poor families and support poor Jewish families. At Yom-Kipur my father and mother fasted. My parents always supported Jewish talents. Sidi Tahl, a Jewish singer from Chernovtsy used to give concerts in Bendery. My mother and sister took tickets to the rich families to collect money for her concerts. At Yom-Kippur my father and mother fasted. On Purim mother baked hamantaschen3, she also prepared, chicken broth with dumplings. Father read a prayer. In the evening musicians came and played Jewish melodies and later mother would give them money and feed them. I don’t remember Purimshpil, I only remember meals at our house. On Hanukkah candles were lit by our father. We had a beautiful Hanukkiah. For Passover we bought matzoh. There were special bakeries that made it. We had matzoh delivered in a giant canvass sack. No bread was consumed over Passover, God forbid! Mother was in the kitchen all day long. She had beautiful Passover, dishes, which were never used on other occasions. We heated geese fat and made cracklings. We roasted potatoes with cracklings, made different kugels – from potato and matzoh, we made gefilte fish and chicken broth. Each day we had visitors and a lot of food had to prepared. Of course I always helped. During Passover, the kitchen was very animated and fun. I crushed matzoh in a large mortar and made flour. It was then sifted. Fine flour for cakes and whatever remained in the sieve mother would mix with eggs and make dumplings for chicken broth, the kneidlach. Mother also baked delicious Passover cookies.

My parents spoke Yiddish to one another and Russian to us, children. My parents only had Jewish friends and so did I. Many of my friends went to Israel.. We, children, communicated in Russian. There lived Rumanians that had arrived in 1918-1919, when Bessarabia became a part of Rumania. There were also Russians, Jews and Moldavians in Bessarabia. The Rumanians were sort of foreign elements. They even had their own stores and only spoke Rumanian. They were very nationalistic and anti-Semitic.  There was a slogan during the Rumanian times “Zhydan to Palestine”, meaning “Jews. Go to Palestine”. It was almost a state slogan. Their negative attitude towards Jews was felt everywhere. I had to go to the Rumanian grammar school, because all other schools were closed by the Rumanian authorities. I had no problems with the language; young children ach a new language easily.

I had a teacher of Torah that came to teach me at home. His name was Ruzhanskiy and he was a Jew. He told me stories from the Torah in Yiddish and I always admired them. I was amazed how Moses raised his hand over the sea opening a path through the war. He also taught me Hebrew. My father was preparing to move to Palestine and wanted me to be prepared for the departure.

My mother and I often visited my grandfather Patlazhan in Kishinev in  1930s. I remember their discussion about the private Jewish grammar school of Schwartzman in Kishinev. My grandfather suggested that my parents sent me to study there.  My parents were afraid that I was too young to leave home, so I continued my studies at the Rumanian grammar school. I spoke Rumanian at school, Russian at home and read Russian books of which we had a collection at home. My father had bookcases in his study and I remember the old books in heavy leather bindings. They were Russian classical books, encyclopedia dictionaries, French books and my father’s books on commerce and accounting. I don’t remember any Jewish books except for the book of Torah and textbooks. 

I remember 1939, the troubled time. Rumanians opened their boundary to Polish Jews that managed to escape from fascists. There were many of them at the railway station.  Our house was near the station and my mother and father sent us to take luncheons to the refugees. These people had a lot of children and luggage and they were all scared and miserable. They didn’t tell us anything about what was happening to the Jews in Poland. It was probably unbearably difficult for them to talk about extermination of hundreds of thousands of people. 

In 1940 the Soviet troops entered Bessarabia breaking our father’s plans about departure to Palestine, he never lost hope that mother would recover and we would move to Palestine. It came as a surprise to us. We just heard an ultimatum on the radio followed by entrance of the troops. My father still submitted documents for our departure to Palestine, but he never got a permit. 

My father was quite enthusiastic about the Soviet power. We had no information about what was actually happening in the country, about arrests or famine. It never occurred to us that somebody would wish to destroy our well being. We didn’t hurt anyone, vice versa, we always did charity. After the Soviet power took away our house and we had to move into a smaller house with only two rooms. Our house was given to the officers from the Soviet Union. They also took away my father’s petroleum storage depot. They issued him a passport where his social origin was determined as a “merchant” meaning that he was a hostile element to the Soviet power. He couldn’t find a job. My father did some joiner’s work earning the living for his family. This turning in life was tough for my parents. My sister Dora had finished a grammar school by then and passed her baccalaureate exam. Education at Bendery grammar school was very good. They studied French and Latin and Dora’s French was fluent. She had a collection of French books. In 1940 she entered the Commercial academy in Bucharest and studied there for a year.  In 1941 she left Rumania for Bendery on almost the last train, before Germans entered the country. 

I saw the “file” of our family recently. All Soviet archives with information about every individual were preserved in Moldova. People got access to them  in the middle of 1990s. Well, there are reports of complete outsiders in this file, like some woman writing “I hear he was a very rich man, but I didn’t know him personally” about my father. Another one wrote that he knew for sure that my father was a businessman and had a turnover of a million, etc. 

Wartime

On 13 June 1941 a cart stopped in front of our house at night. We were told to move. We were only allowed to take some clothing and documents, but no jewelry. Soviet officers were supervising the process. We were taken to the railway station and ordered to board the train for transportation of cattle. This wasn’t an anti-Jewish action. Nobody can explain what kind of action this was. There were Moldavians, Rumanians and Russians and, of course, there were many Jews on the train. They were richer and poorer and, of course, there were many Jews. There were 380 families (women, old people and children) to be removed (there were women, old people and children).  My father and many other men were separated from us. There were 50 people in each railcar and we slept on planks. We were not allowed to get off the train when it stopped.  We arrived at the point of destination on 25 July and we didn’t know that the war had begun. We happened to end up in Siberia – the Soviet farmyard “Tripolie” not far from Tumen.  We were told that we were special deportees and that we were not allowed to leave. We were supposed to go to work on the following day. We were living on the field until the middle of summer. We were involved in harvesting and construction of the livestock farm. My mother was having a difficult time. She wasn’t used to such life and she was spoiled in her previous life. She went to work in the field wearing high-heeled shoes – she just didn’t have other shoes. We were working at the construction site and she went weeding. We didn’t know where our father was or where the other men were. We were trying to get in touch with my father hoping that he was alive. Later we were told that he was under investigation and then sent to a penitentiary work camp in Siberia. We were moved to the barracks when it got cold. I wanted to go to the 7th form at school. I had a suitcase full of books, but I never took them out of the suitcase as we had to work all year round. There was no time for studying. There were many people from Moldavia, Western Ukraine and Baltic republics with us. We all got along well. There was no anti-Semitism, we were all in the same boat. We were paid peanuts for our hard work, but this was enough to make ends meet. There was one food store. They had bread delivery twice a week. Within one hour upon delivery the shelves were empty. We bought fish and vegetables from the local vendors. Many people exchanged their belongings for food, some of them had jewelry.  People didn’t starve to death, but the climate was deathly for many of them. It was very cold and there was no heating in the barracks.  People didn’t have enough warm clothes. People fell ill, but there was no doctor and they had to go to work anyway, regardless of their condition. Many people were dying in the field or on the construction site.

In July 1942 we were told to board the truck and we moved again. There was no explanation this time either. We boarded the ship and sailed up the Ob River in Siberia to Salekhard. One could only see such boat in the cinema. Two huge wheels were splashing through the water and we were sitting on deck bit by huge mosquitoes.    Salekhard is on the polar circle in Yamalo-Nenetskiy region. There was a secondary school there, a fish cannery and few plants in this town. At first we were accommodated in the barracks. There was a special settlement for the repressed in the 1930s4. They treated us with understanding. Later we were accommodated in a small room of 10 square meters in a wooden house. I met most interesting people during this period. Most of them in this exile were representatives of intelligentsia of 1920s and 1930s.  I remember Faggis, an older woman. She was a Bundovka5. She worked at the library. We remembered about Jewish rituals and traditions, but it was not possible to observe them. For example, on Saturday my mother had to go to work and I had to go to school. We also had a quiet celebration of my turning 13 years of age in 1942. I didn’t have a barmitsva.  There were no Jews familiar with this rituals in our settlement.

In Salekhard life was easier a little bit. My sister went to work as a teacher of foreign languages. She had fluent French and German. I went to study at school. It was a two-storied wooden building. We had nice teachers. They were all women and there was one man, teacher of mathematics. He had no arm. I was eager to study. We studied when the temperature was 40°С below zero, but when it dropped to -50°С we had to stay at home. We went to school in winter and worked in summer.  We also went to work during our studies: at the fish cannery or at the dock to load boxes. We were working like everybody else to support the front. In summer we were sent to the haymaking area at an island. There were no adults with us and we made a kind of a hut from hay to sleep at night. There were children of many nationalities: Finnish, Greek, Ukrainian and Lithuanian, and we all got along very well. The sanitary conditions were terrible, though. We had lice. We had a bet whose louse was the biggest and it turned out to be mine. We washed ourselves in the river. The water was very cold there. There were lots of mosquitoes.

The Nenets children (native Northern people) lived in the hostel and had a separate school. I went to see them several times. They were living a primitive life with no electricity, books or any culture whatsoever. They were forced to go to school against their will. They were almost wild and they didn’t want to study. They were taken away from their parents and their homes. I felt sorry for these people. 

My father joined us in 1943. He told us that he was judged by the “troika” – 3 people that just read his sentence: 5 years in a prison camp with no right to write letters. He was under trial as an enemy of the Soviet power, Zionsit and a spy for Israel. He said he was very lucky to have escaped, because if he had stayed he wouldn’t have survived. He was in the Ivdel camp in Sverdlovsk region for two years. He was released because he had diabetes and needed insulin injections. He didn’t tell us anything about the camp. He wanted to forget that time. He obtained a permit to reside where he wished. He arrived at where we were and obtained his passport from the authorities. But in some time the authorities took away his passport and he became a special deportee like all of us. He didn’t have the right to move around. It was mandatory for everyone to work. My father worked as a merchandise expert at a big cannery. He was very hardworking and he loved to work. My father easily adjusted to life in Siberia. He loved the Russian sauna especially. When my father started to work we received a small Finnish house. The nature in the north is beautiful. Summer lasts only a month and a half, but there were mushrooms and berries in a hundred meters from our house and there were ducks near the lake.  , I killed a couple of wild ducks with a stick. One could also buy fish at the market at that time, but we didn’t have any of these at home. My mother didn’t get used to hard conditions and climate. She didn’t work officially, but she did go to work when there were appeals for emergency work in Salekhard, like making an ice-hole to provide potable water for the people. The ice was two meters deep and it took quite an effort to break it. 

Such conditions of life didn’t allow my father to observe Jewish traditions, so we only observed fasting in the family. There was a rabbi from Kaunas that had Jewish calendars so we knew when the holidays are, although it was strictly forbidden. He had other religious books as well. My father prayed at home every day. My mother managed to bring the book of prayers. Sometimes on holidays religious Jews gathered at the rabbi’s home. This happened very rarely, because all the people did work hard and had no days off.  The Jews tried to get together at Jewish holidays. There were many of them. There was the family of Shtiry and Lichnik from Bendery and there were Jews from other locations. Younger people didn’t fast or celebrate holidays. Older people spoke Yiddish at their gatherings. There was no matsa, of course, it was just out of the question. When my father returned in 1943 he went back to work at the cannery and then my sister also went to work as an economist there. We received 600 grams of bread during the war and we knew what hunger was like. Sometimes we received fish heads. Those were big heads of sturgeon weighing about 2 kilos and there was a lot of meat in them.

We could read in newspapers what was going on at the front. We also had a radio. Military science was a very important subject at school. We were taken to the military camps. Once when I was at the military camp we were told that we could become Komsomol members in the camp. I mentioned to our military tutor that we were special deportees and asked him if we were allowed to become Komsomol members. His reply was that all people living there were special deportees and agreed to give us a recommendation. On the following day we all became Komsomol members. I was finishing school in 1945. In that year the school certificate was introduced. 

After the war

I remember 9 May 1945. Our military tutor congratulated us with the victory. He was a big strong man and he was training us in military disciplines, but when then he couldn’t hold his tears of happiness. Victory was a big happiness for our family, too. I remember my father said “If people glorify Stalin it is because they love him”. He used to say it several times.

I finished school, but to leave Salekhard we needed to obtain a permit from the commandant office. We didn’t have passports and had to attend the commandant office every second week. Such was the procedure. Every individual had to show up there in person. Another problem with leaving this area was that there was poor communications with the Big Land. In winter one could fly by plane and in summer – take the boat. I also heard that it was possible to go on deer driven cart via Vorkuta, but it was a hard route.

I worked at the radio station for a year (1945-1946). I was an apprentice at first and then became a radio operator. It was a very powerful radio station supporting communications with Dickson Island and Novosibirsk. We broadcast weather reports in Siberia – this information is very important there.  I enjoyed working there, but I wanted to continue my studies.

For a whole year I was trying to obtain a permit for departure. The nearest bigger town was Tumen, and it was the farthest where I could be allowed to go. There was only one higher educational institution in Tumen and this was a pedagogical institute. In 1946 I went to Tumen by boat. I didn’t get my passport. Instead, the commandant office issued a paper obliging me to register in Tumen. I passed exams to the institute and was admitted.

Tumen was a regional town and it seemed huge to me compared with Salekhard. Now I realize that it was a provincial town of wooden houses. There were even wooden pavements. I entered historical department of Tumen Pedagogical Institute without a problem. I got accommodation at the hostel and went to NKVD (People’s Commissariat of internal Affairs) Chief officer to ask his permission to let my sister come visit me. I obtained his permission in the late autumn of 1946. My sister came by plain. She got a job of mechanical engineer. Later we both went to NKVD Chief officer to ask permission for our parents to join us. We obtained the required permission immediately and in 1946 all our family reunited in Tumen. I was studying and my father went to work at the automobile plant. This plant manufactured electrical devices for tanks and vehicles. It mainly supplied Miass, an industrial town in the Ural). My father was logistics manager. He was a very good expert and nobody cared that he was a special deportee. He got his job and nobody ever reproached him for being who he was. 

At first we stayed with some acquaintances, but later we rented an apartment. My mother’s sisters Sonia and Liza from Kishinev visited us. They returned to Kishinev from the evacuation, but we couldn’t return and be with them because we didn’t have passports and we didn’t have a right to leave without permission of KGB. In 1950 I graduated from the Institute and went to work as a teacher in a village. I heard about Stalin’s death in this village. The First Secretary of the district Party Committee Mikhailov called us for a meeting to declare that Stalin had died. He was crying while saying this. I didn’t have any feelings. This Mikhailov was a very decent man. I was very lucky to have met many decent people. I worked at the village five years until the authorities issued a decree allowing people to resign freely. I resigned. I taught farmers' children, the children of the district Party committee secretary, the children of the commandant (I had to register myself in his office every other week) and even the children of NKVD Chief Officer. This school was a one-storied wooden building. There were 30-35 children in class. I received a room at the boarding school. The boarding school served for children from other villages. They were talented children. I met with them later in Tumen. People treated me very well. People in Siberia didn’t know any difference between a Jew and non-Jew. People in Siberia are healthy hard-working people. They didn’t have a chance to earn money to make their own living. Their wages were very low and they were very poor. 

After I returned to Tumen in 1955 I decided to change my profession. I wanted to enter machine-building institute in Sverdlovsk, but I failed. I got a refusal in a very friendly manner. Besides my being a deportee I was also a Jew. So, I went to work as a teacher of physics in Tumen. One day in 1956 I went to the commandant office to register my presence and the officer there said “You are taken off the books. Tell the deputy director at your school that she has to come to be taken off the books as well”. It meant that she or I didn’t have to go regularly to this office to register our presence in the town. It didn’t ever occur to me that she was a deportee. These people in power understood that it was about time to have things changed for us and allow us more freedom.

There were many Jews in Tumen and they were very well settled. I remember that director of the battery plant (Shapiro) was a Jew. Khutorinskiy, chief engineer at the automobile plant where my father was working was also a Jew.

In 1956 we obtained passports and could move around the country. We lived 15 years in total in Siberia. My sister studied by correspondence in Sverdlovsk Industrial Institute and graduated from it. She became a professional economist and worked at the plant where my father was working.  Chief engineer of this same plant moved to Lvov and got a job at the bicycle plant. He offered employment to my father and sister. My sister was offered a job of economist in the planning department and my father was offered position of logistics manager. My mother also left with them. I had to stay in Tumen until the end of the academic year. I arrived in Lvov in the end of 1956.

My parents were living in a rented room. Director’s office of the bicycle plant promised to give us a room, but time went by and we didn’t receive a room. I managed to get a job at school as a teacher of physics. I received a room at school. I worked in this school #28 for many years. My mother was eager to move to Kishinev to her relatives. My mother’s and father’s sisters Zhenia and Golda lived there. My parents and sister lived in Lvov for two years.

In 1958 my parents and sister moved to Kishinev and received an apartment there. My father didn’t work in Kishinev. His diabetes got worse and my father died in 1974. My parents and sister always observed Jewish traditions, Sabbath and fasting, they went to the synagogue, they didn’t follow the kashruth, but they didn’t eat pork. They spoke Yiddish at home. My mother lived after my father died, with my sister that worked as an economist at the scientific research machine-building institute. My mother died in 1989.  She had a poor heart and died of breast cancer. I often visited and supported my family, but I didn’t want to leave Lvov. I loved my job and my pupils and I also liked my cooperative apartment that I bought later. There was anti-Semitism in Lvov and the general attitude was anti-Semitic. Once I was in a bus and a man said to me “Well, you zhyd have survived. O’K I will arrange another Auschwitz and Babiy Yar6, and it will be worse than it was, you will all know!” I replied “Your Jesus was a zhyd, you know”. And he shut up. There were other incidents happening to me or my friends, but as I said, there were many decent and honest people and I was very lucky to meet so many of them.  I was treated very well at school. I was a good specialist and got along well with children.  

            I have met with women, but I don’t have a family. My sister Dora is also single. She was very ill in the last years of her life. In 1998 she fell and broke her hipbone. She was confided to bed and employees of the Chesed in Kishinev (Jewish charity organization) looked after her. Dora died in Kishinev in 1999. I am retired now. I correspond with my relatives in Israel. But I do not dare to move there. I am old and ill. I will be of no use to them. I don’t know the language and I won’t be able to learn it. I studied it a little when I was a child, but I’ve forgotten it for the most part. I’m not a religious man, but I admire the state built in a desert. I’m used to living here on my miserable pension. I do not observe Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays. I’ve forgotten them, besides, a Soviet teacher wasn’t allowed to observe any religiosity and it is too late to begin it. I am very fond of fishing. If I catch a fish I can make stuffed fish that tastes better than my mother’s. I dry average size fish and give the small ones to my neighbor’s cat. 

Glossary

1 BEILIS CASE, trial (Kiev, 1913) M. Beilis, a Jew, was falsely accused of the ritual murder of a Russian boy. This trial was arranged by the tsarist government and the Black Hundreds. It raised the protest of all the progressive people in Russia and abroad. The jury finally acquitted him.                                            

2 ZHABOTINSKIY Vladimir (Zeev) (1880-1940), writer and Zionist movement activist. Lived in Russia before 1914, and in France for the most part after 1920. He wrote in Russian, Hebrew and French. In his stories, articles and plays he expressed the idea of national self-consciousness and renaissance of the Russian Jews. 

3 triangular tarts with poppy seed and nuts

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

5 BUND (Bund in Yiddish means a “union”) ("General Jewish Union of Working People in Lithuania, Poland and Russia”): a social democratic organization representing Jewish handicraftsmen of the Western areas in the Russian Empire. It was founded in Vilno in 1897. In 1898-1903 and from 1906 the autonomous fraction in the Russian Social Democratic Working Party adhered to the Menshevist position. After the Great October Socialist Revolution the organization split: one half was against the Soviet power and another stayed in the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks.  In 1921 The Bund self-eliminated

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

SIMA-LIBA NERUBENKO

Lvov

Ukraine

Interviewer: Ella Orlikova

Date of interview: December 2002

Sima Nerubenko and her three grown up children live in a big 3-room apartment  (about 80 m2) and cold apartment in the center of Lvov. One can tell that their family was wealthier in the past, but has impoverished. Sima stays in bed for most of the time – she is very weak and her daughter helps her to move in the apartment.  Her daughter helped her to get up and get dressed to have her picture taken.  Her daughter assisted us with this interview since Sima takes time to restore her memory and rest.  Her children are very respectful to their mother’s memories.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family background

I come from a small town of Kamenka on the bank of the Dnestr River in the eastern part of Moldavia. The town was buried in verdure. There were orchards around every house. The population of Kamenka consisted of Jews and Moldavians. Jews constituted the majority of population. However, there was no Jewish neighborhood – we were dispersed in the town. Jewish families were very religious – I would even say fanatically religious. Religion played a major role in everyday life of our family and many other Jewish families – they strictly observed all traditions and rules. There was a synagogue in Kamenka – a big one-storied building with a high circular roof. Women had a space separated with a curtain. All Jewish families came to the synagogue during holidays and on Saturday. Besides, my grandfather prayed in the morning and in the evening. I remember him carefully taking his old book of prayers wrapped in a clean piece of cloth. I don’t remember seeing other books in their home. Our grandfather didn’t teach his grandchildren since we didn’t live together, but we learned everything about the Jewish way of life from our parents.  Jewish families were big – some of them had 13-14 children. Children symbolized pride and wealth in Jewish families. According to religious rules a Jewish woman had as many children as she could bear. The more children a woman had the more respected she was in the community. A childless marriage was sufficient reason for getting a divorce.  There were plenty of food products produced in this area: eggs, butter, dairy products and fruit and big families could have sufficient food to make a living. Therefore, it wasn’t a problem for families with many children to provide well for them. Jews spoke Yiddish to one another in Kamenka. All Jews were educated: they could read and write and like discussions on various subjects. Moldavians were not educated even though some of them were quite wealthy – owners of big orchards. 

Few generations of my father’s ancestors were “fruit hunters”. They knew how to determine whether an orchard would bear fruit when it was still winter and rented such gardens paying rent fee when there were no leaves on the trees yet. They waited until the fruit grew ripe and sold it – this was how they earned their living. They sold apples, pears, apricots, nuts and wonderful plums.

My grandfather Itzyk Ratzenmar, born in 1860s, was very good at his profession. He could determine the best perspective gardens and gathered unbelievable crops. Even when my grandfather grew so old that he could hardly see anything other men asked him to come with them to determine whether an orchard was going to be perspective. He was a professional and had a good intuition. Like all other Jews in Kamenka my grandfather was very religious. He wore a beard and a cap and looked strong and sun-tanned since he spent much time in orchards. He only spoke Yiddish – I don’t know in what language he communicated with Moldavians – I never heard him talking other language than Yiddish.

My grandfather had a small white house near the synagogue. It was too small for his numerous children and grandchildren. When we came to visit him my grandfather welcomed us with a smile and called my grandmother Dvoira. They were almost the same age and they got married at the age of 16-17.  To get married at an early age was customary in Jewish families. My grandmother Dvoira was called Diane in the family. Looking at her one could tell that she was very pretty when she was young. She was very nice and kind. Even we, her grandchildren, could tell how dearly our grandmother and grandfather loved one another. They died almost at the same time – in late 1930s. I had left Kamenka before and don’t remember the exact date of their death.

My father had three sisters and a brother.  His oldest sister Golda, born in 1878, was a housewife and had many children (I don't know how many). Her husband was always praying. He wasn’t a khasid and didn’t wear payes, but he wore long black jackets. At home he had his kippah on and before going out he put on a hat. I have dim memories of her and her family. I only know that one of her children took her to evacuation and she grew very old when she returned to Kamenka.

When Jewish families came back from evacuation they found all their belongings taken away by Moldavians. Aunt Golda died shortly after she returned home – in 1946.

Aunt Minia ( born in 1883) lived in a village near Kamenka. She was a farmwoman.  During the great Patriotic War 1 she was in evacuation. She died in 1948. I don’t remember anything about her family. My father’s brother Gershl, born in 1884, was a laborer in Kamenka. Like my father he finished cheder. He and my father were close friends. I don’t think he had a family. My uncle died in evacuation in Cheliabinsk during the Great Patriotic War.   My father’s youngest sister Milia  born in 1899, died from typhoid or cholera during the war.

My father Srul Ratzenmar, the older son of my grandfather Itzyk, was born in 1880. He finished cheder and then followed in his father’s footsteps that was traditional for Jewish families. My father went to work when he turned 11. They often got so many fruit that they didn’t manage to sell all of them, in which case the family made jam in huge bowls that were installed on a brick stand in the garden and fire made underneath. My father also sold jam at the markets in Kamenka and nearby towns, but some of it was left for the family. There was so much of it that we really got sick of this jam.

My mother’s family also lived in Kamenka. Her father Ershl Reznik was born in 1863. My grandfather cleansed sheepskins and sheep wool sitting in his shabby shed. He looked old and had sore eyes since there was a lot of dust generated by wool. He wore a linen apron when working.  I don’t know where he got sheepskin or who paid him for work. My grandfather went to the synagogue every day since his house was near the synagogue. My grandfather was very religious.  He prayed at home in the morning and in the evening. My grandfather didn’t have a house of his own. As far as I can remember his family rented a room and a small kitchen from a Jewish family. I don’t know what kind of education my grandfather had. There was only a prayer book at home.  My grandfather was a reserved and taciturn man. It probably hurt him to talk since he had cancer of the tongue. My mother took him to Odessa, but nobody could help my grandfather. He died in the early 1920s.

His wife Surah Reznik (born in 1861) moved in with us after he died. She was a tall and slim woman even at her old age. She adored her grandchildren. She always wore white kerchief. My grandmother was constantly doing something in the house, although she had stomach problems. My grandmother strictly followed the kashrut. My grandmother was too old to go to the synagogue when she was living with us, but our family also strictly observed all Jewish traditions and rules and my grandmother could lead a customary way of life that she was used to. She had kosher food, celebrated all holidays and Shabbat with us and lit a candle at Shabbat as the oldest member of the family. It was a tradition in that time. She died in her sleep around 1926.

I only remember Israel of all mother’s sisters and brothers. He was born in 1897. Like all other Jewish boys in Kamenka he finished cheder and a Russian secondary school.  He was a smart man and a good entrepreneur. He left Kamenka for Leningrad where he became logistics specialist and late – logistics manager at an enterprise. Prior to his departure to Leningrad he married a beautiful girl from Kamenka. Her name was Tsylia and she was the one with best taste in clothing in our family. When she was visiting us there were always bunches of girls around her that came to discuss clothing. They had no children. My uncle Israel Reznik perished during the blockade in Leningrad in 1942. Tsylia survived through the war. After the war she lived in Leningrad. She died in 1962. Israel observed all traditions when living in Kamenka with his parents, but after he moved to Leningrad he changed his way of life. He rarely celebrated Pesach (when he could buy matsah) and Chanukah as a tribute to old traditions.  

My mother Dora Ratzenmar, (nee Reznik) was born in 1886. My mother was the nicest and the most beautiful woman in the world. She was a wonderful housewife. She was very inventive at cooking that was not so easy considering the kashrut requirements. She used to buy a chicken at the market and feed it until it grew to a necessary weight, took it to a shoihet and then the shoihet slaughtered the chicken in accordance with religious requirements and my mother cooked it. We had chicken broth, stew and a wonderfully delicious chicken stuffed neck. I remember jellied chicken wings. My mother was an educated woman by the standards of our town. She could read and write in Yiddish. My grandfather taught her to read and write. He had no money to invite a teacher for her and she couldn’t go to study at cheder that was only for boys. My mother had poor Russian. She could hardly speak it. As for reading, she couldn’t read in Russian at all. My mother was religious and followed all Jewish rules. My mother always wore a kerchief. She didn’t wear a wig since she had beautiful hair. She had a good taste in clothing. I don’t remember whether there was a Mikvah. We washed in big bowls at home. On Friday our apartment was shining of cleanliness and my mother lit Saturday candles.

My parents knew each other since childhood – Kamenka was a small town and all people knew each other. My parents dated for few years before they had a Jewish wedding with a huppah under apple trees in the orchard, with a rabbi and kleizmers. The wedding party with many guests lasted for few days. There is all I know about their wedding.

Growing up

We didn’t have a house of our own  and we couldn’t afford to build one – every year we moved from one house to another. In those years when my father had a rich harvest and managed to sell fruit and jam well our family used to rent a small apartment, but when there were no crops we had to stay in poor houses and sometimes we even had to live in just one room.  We usually rented houses from people that leased their gardens to us. Our landlords were not necessarily Jews – they might be Moldavians or German colonists 2. Houses in Kamenka were made of brick and whitewashed.  This was a special style in Kamenka. Richer houses had wooden floors and poorer houses had clay floors. When my father earned more we rented two rooms and when a year was not very successful we rented one room. We tried to rent smaller areas to pay lower rental amounts. There were no comforts in those houses. Toilets were outside. We washed in big bowls and in winter. Fortunately winters were usually mild in the south of Russia, but sometimes it got cold and there was snow this process took a while – heating water, taking turns, etc. In summer we left some water outside and it got warm on hot days.

My father was a religious man and followed all traditions very strictly. He knew all prayers and knew which section from Torah had to be read on each Shabbat and which on holidays. My father was a very hardworking man, but he took his rest on Sabbath according to the rules. On Sabbath we were not allowed even to strike a match. There was a non-Jewish man that came to do all necessary work on Sabbath.  We were a poor family. My father couldn’t afford to pay for a seat of his own at the synagogue, but he went to the synagogue on holidays and every Shabbat. When my father came home from synagogue our family got together at the table. My mother lit candles and said a prayer over them, my father said a blessing and we had dinner. We had wine that my father made. On Sabbath our parents took a rest and children played in the garden or went to see our grandparents. Sometimes our neighbors or relatives came to see our parents. They talked and sang Jewish songs sometimes.

We were a close family. We obeyed our father and mother and treated them with respect.  We spoke Yiddish at home and celebrated all Jewish holidays. We, children, liked Purim when our mother made delicious gomentashy pies stuffed with poppy seeds and we played with rattles. At Yom Kippur we all fasted and prayed at the synagogue, even the youngest children. At Chanukah grandmother and grandfather gave us Chanukah money that was quite an event for us. Our grandmothers also treated us to potato pancakes and doughnuts.  

Before Pesach we had to remove all breadcrumbs, bread and flour from the rooms. We usually took these leftovers to our non-Jewish landlords. My father watched that all rules were followed. Matsah was baked at the special place and was rather expensive. We bought matsah at that bakery. Our whole family went to synagogue at Pesach. When we came home we sat at the table and our mother gave us clear soup made from a special chicken fed specifically for the occasion. There was a bowl of matsah and eggs pudding in the middle of the table; chicken necks stuffed with matsah and chicken fatand gefilte fish. My father said a prayer and the older son asked him questions as required at Seder.

Our father spoke Yiddish in the family, but he could also explain himself to Moldavians and Russians. My father used to call himself “tsarist or Russian soldier”. We knew that he was a private in the tsarist army.  He didn’t participate in any military activities and I don’t remember him telling us stories about his service in the army.

My parents had eight children. Two of them died in infantry.  My older brother Oscar was born in 1905. He was a very good brother. He always supported and helped younger children. I remember Oscar preparing to the Bar-mitzva ritual. He learned things and was very excited about the ritual. Everything went well and people greeted him on coming of age. Oscar studied at the town Russian primary school. He also had an old teacher that taught him to read and write in Yiddish and Jewish traditions, but he didn’t teach Hebrew. My brother was very fond of technical things and at 14 he became an apprentice to a craftsman in metals. Later he moved to Odessa and worked at a plant.  He finished technical college and married Sophia, a nice Jewish girl. They had a son – Harry, before the war the family moved to Kiev. On the first days of the Great Patriotic war my brother went to the front and perished defending Kiev. Sophia and little Harry evacuated to the Ural. They returned to Kiev after the war. Sophia died in 1970s.Harry lives in Israel now.

My brother Syoma was born in 1910. In 1927 he finished a technical school, served in the Red army went to the front at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and perished in summer 1941. He was single. He was the most handsome boy in our family and my mother was very proud of him.

My brother Michael, born in 1911, was my parents’ favorite. He finished a silicate college and became a glass specialist.  He often visited us even when he lived in Leningrad (working at the glassware factory), far away from home. During the Great Patriotic War he worked at his “Svetlana” plant in Cheliabisk [the biggest in the USSR plant of electric lighting bulbs, located in Leningrad]. I corresponded with him. After he left his parents’ home he didn’t observe any traditions. Michael died in Leningrad in 1989.

My younger brother Fima, born in 1919, followed into his brother’s steps and became a glass specialist, too. He was born and grew up during the period of the Soviet power that struggled against religion. He didn’t have a teacher of Yiddish. Only few Jewish families took the risk of leading a Jewish way of life during the Soviet times. He didn’t have barmitzva since synagogues were closed by the time.  He wasn’t religious but he was patient and tolerant about his parents’ religiosity.  He was a pioneer and a Komsomol member. He graduated from an Institute in Leningrad.  He worked with Michael in evacuation at a military plant in Cheliabinsk. After the war Fima worked at big industrial enterprises. Now he lives in Israel with his family. I can’t remember Michael and Fima’s families. I am so very old. There are things that I’ve forgotten, but there are also some details, which I remember, as if they happened just yesterday.

My sister Genia, born in 1912, and I were very close. She finished a Soviet lower secondary school in our town and married Grisha, a Jewish man. He was  Komsomol member and atheist. He also came from our town. In the first months of the war Genia’s husband perished at the front and Genia and her little daughter Maya were in evacuation somewhere in the Ural. They had a hard time there. After the war when I lived in Lvov my husband told me to let Genia and her daughter live with us until she found a place of her own, because Kamenka was ruined and there was nothing left in it.  She stayed with us until she married a Jew from Georgia. Genia observed traditions while living with her parents, but when she married Grisha she stopped observing traditions. Genia was a worker at the pharmaceutical plant. She died in Lvov in 1982. Her daughter Maya worked at a pharmaceutical factory, now she is a pensioner.  She comes to see me every now and then. She has a daughter and her husband died of cancer. 

I, Sima-Liba Rotzenmar, was born in 1908. I was a very tiny and weak baby and got my double name due to prejudices of that time. The rabbi explained it in the following way: if the Angel of death came for Sima he would see Liba in the cradle and vice versa. It was believed to give me an opportunity to survive. 

There was only one school in Kamenka and that was a Russian school. I went there when I turned 8 years old (in 1916). Before I went to school my brother Oscar that was in the third form began to teach me to speak Russian and Russian poems. When I came to school I had no problems with my studies. We studied only most necessary things: writing, reading and counting.

I remember the Civil War of 1916-1918. There was disorder and the power switched from “green kolpak” [caps in Russian] 3 to “red kolpak” 4 several times per day. Military troops came to town, but nobody could understand who they were. They took away food, cattle, clothing and other belongings and fled away. It was quiet for some time until other troops came. This was the period of political uncertainty. People were hiding in the woods or in their cellars. There were different colors of those troops that declared themselves a power, but it was only where we lived they were called “kolpaks’. They took away everything. They robbed even the poorest people. I saw few men breaking into our house. They grabbed whatever there was on the table and left – I guess they also starved. When Denikin troops 5  came all Jews hid at the synagogue and Denikin units didn’t dare to kill us there. I also remember a pogrom made by Denikin troops in 1919 but nobody was killed – the pogrom makers only robbed people. I also remember German prisoners-of-war that were taken to some place. They were starved. We threw them pieces of bread and they picked them up from muddy ditches.

The Soviet regime was established in 1918. All people were ordered to get together at the central square where the synagogue was located. Soviet representatives declared the doctrines of the new regime: political stability and equality of all people, that they declared freedom of religious belief. They spoke in Yiddish, Moldavian and Russian. People were very enthusiastic about the Soviet power hoping for a better life. My father didn’t care much about political changes. He said that they had nothing to do with work that he was doing. He continued to work in orchards.

A Soviet Russian and Moldavian school was opened. Teaching was in Moldavian, - studying it wasn’t a problem for children – we heard it in the streets and could speak it. Before the revolution boys and girls studied separately and the Soviet power established joint classes where boys and girls studied together. We had new teachers. I was a sociable girl and had many friends. They were mainly Jewish children. We were the poorest and all of my friends came from wealthier families. My close friend was Sima-Mukah. She was commonly called by her 2nd name – Mukah. We played together, shared stories that we knew and had a good time together.

There was no Jewish school in the town, but there were private teachers of Yiddish I attended classes of one of them at his home. He was an old man with a gray beard always wearing a yarmulke.  He told a lot about the history of Jews and Jewish literature – he told me about his favorite writer – Sholem Alechem 6. Sometimes I came with a group of children and at other times I was his only pupil.  I don’t remember the teacher’s name and I don’t remember the language either.

My parents didn’t allow me to become a pioneer. For the most part children of workers and peasants were admitted to pioneer league. Actually my father was a private craftsman and I wasn’t pushed to become a pioneer, but since it wasn’t obligatory to be a pioneer at that time this had no impact on the attitude of teachers or children on me. My parents believed it was better to stay aside from such public organizations, although my father was very positive about the Soviet power. He was hoping that life of Jews would improve. The majority of officials in the town were Jewish men. This was a very positive sign since during the tsarist regime Jews couldn’t even dream of being officials. We all grieved for Lenin when he died in January 1924 – we believed that Lenin liberated people from slavery.  He gave land to farmers and industrial enterprises – to workers. But pioneers were taught to be atheists and, therefore, my father thought it wasn’t necessary for me to become a pioneer.  

All young people are eager to study. My parents supported this urge of ours. My mother used to say “If we couldn’t get proper education let our children get it”. Kamenka was a small town and the only educational institution there was a lower secondary school, so we couldn’t wait to leave Kamenka for a bigger town to continue education. There was a higher secondary school in Peschanka, a small town 27 km from Kamenka. Two of my friends and I went to Peschanka by ourselves and rented a room there. My parents paid my rent.  Peschanka was no different from Kamenka with same small houses and a lot of Jewish population. We didn’t care whether our landlords were Jewish or not, but usually we had Jewish ones. We always tried to come home on vacations and Jewish holidays when we were off from school, but on a number of Jewish holidays we had to attend school. At home we celebrated Jewish holidays with our parents according to all rules, and when we had to stay our Jewish landlords invited us to join them for a meal with traditional Jewish food. However, we didn’t observe Jewish traditions when we were away from home. At that time people didn’t care about national issues. We finished school in 1927 and left Peschanka for Rybnitsa, a bigger town in 50 km from Kamenka. There was a rabfak 7 in Rybnitsa. I went to work at a woodwork shop. I became assistant accountant at this company. This was considered to be a manual work position so I officially was a worker. This was important for me since my father was a private craftsman and only children that came from workers’ or collective farmers’ families had a right to study at higher educational institutions.   Or it was necessary to have a working experience.

Between 1927- 1931 I was preparing to go to an institute. I studied additionally for entrance exams. After a year in 1928 I moved to Kamenets-Podolskiy from Rybnitsa. This was a bigger town in Western Ukraine in about 60 km from Kamenka with institutes, schools and training courses. I finished rabfak and then a preparatory course for applicants to an institute. I was fond of chemistry. I rented rooms from Jewish families where my landlords asked me to teach their daughters, nieces and granddaughters the Russian language. This was how I became a teacher. I didn’t quite like this profession. When I had free time I went home to help my parents about the house. My mother grew older and couldn’t manage the household. When young people left their parents’ houses they spoke only Russian and didn’t observe any traditions. This seemed old-fashioned to us, but when we returned home we became Jewish children again returning to our roots. However, we always identified ourselves as Jews, but this didn’t matter at that time.

I found out that there was a Technological Institute in Kharkov, a capital of Ukraine at that time in Eastern Ukraine in 900 km from Kaments-Podolskiy. It prepared specialists for glass industry. This was what I dreamed of doing. In 1931 entered this Institute without exams since graduates from rabfak were not required to take exams. I have the happiest memories about my life as a student in Kharkov. We lived in the hostel like a family helping and supporting each other. Nobody cared about somebody else’s nationality. We lived in a big and beautiful town and we were young. We took the hardships of life easy. Now I recall that people around were starving and we never had enough food, but when one is young any difficulties seem to be temporary.

I fell in love with Grigoriy Nerubanko, a Ukrainian young man when I was at the Institute. He came from a family of workers in Donbass. He was born in 1911 and he was a serious and positive young man – he had his objectives and knew what he wanted in life. He was a communist. He was successful with his studies and was well-mannered. His mother was a communist and his father died in an accident at the railroad when he was young. Grigoriy’s mother raised four children. Grigoriy was an older son in the family and his mother hoped that he would help other children to get education upon graduation from the Institute.

Grigoriy also fell in love with me. My parents were horrified to hear that I was meeting with a non-Jewish man. They said they would never accept him into the family. I graduated from the Institute in 1936 and got a job assignment of production engineer at a glass factory in the vicinity of Leningrad.  Grigoriy had another year to study.  Grigoriy was a man of his word and wanted to return to his mother upon graduation to help his family, but his mother knew that was seeing a girl and she said to him “Go to Sima – she is your happiness”.

In 1937 Grigoriy and I got married in Kharkov. I lived in the hostel, but when we got married we received a room. We were happy. We didn’t have a wedding party. We had a civil registration ceremony at a registry office. I wore my fancy cambric dress and Grigoriy had his suit and a tie on. I took my husband’s last name and became Sima Nerubenko. I informed my parents and brothers about this important event in my life. My brothers greeted me, but my parents wrote me that they were not going to recognize my husband and me with him. It was hard for me and I tried as hard as I could to come to find their understanding, but they were inexorable.  For few years I communicated only with my brothers.       

We lived in Leningrad a little less than a year. Grigoriy was getting promotions and was offered a more perspective job at the glass factory of the Krasny May town, Kalininskaya region [Tverskaya at present]. [The “Krasny May factory was one of the oldest glass factories in the USSR. It manufactured fancy and technical glass. It manufactured stars on the Kremlin towers]. We received a nice one-room apartment at the building for non-manual employees of the factory. I worked as production engineer at the factory. We had nice and warm relationships with our co-workers and neighbors. It was the period of 1937-38. Some managers disappeared, but were replaced with younger one, but we were young and happy and believed that everything going on in the country was the only correct way. We didn’t give it much thought, eventually.

In 1938 my son Vladimir was born. I wished so much to take my son to my hometown.  I decided to go there in 1939. I didn’t notify anybody and went there in summer when all relatives were there for a summer vacation. Our neighbors saw me walking from the station. They ran to my mother to tell her that her daughter was coming home. Of course, my mother forgot all resentment and came out to meet me. We hugged and kissed. On that summer all children came on a visit and my mother’s brother Israel and his wife came from Leningrad. We spoke Yiddish again and our mother cooked our favorite food. We even enjoyed eating our father’s jam. We were happy to be together and we didn’t realize that it was for the last time. My father wished Grigoriy had come. He said “It’s O’K that he is not a Jew as long as he is good man”. My husband couldn’t come with me. He was in the army and took part in the Finnish campaign 8. I was having the time of my life – my brothers and sisters were together and we lived the life that we were used to – we obeyed our parents, had kosher food and recalled our childhood. The synagogue didn’t function at that time, but my father prayed at home and my mother always lit candles at Shabbat.

This war was short, my husband returned home and we continued to work at the factory. I got pregnant shortly before the war. We were looking forward to having our next baby. We believed there would be no end to peace and happiness.

During the war

On 22 June 1941 9 we heard about the beginning of war on the radio. Grigoriy went Immediately to the military registry office to volunteer to the front, but they refused him since he was a good specialist and the country needed his knowledge to work for the defense industry. They were afraid that Germans might begin a chemical war and the country needed to be ready to it. It was necessary to convert the factory for military production.

I was very concerned about my family especially when newspapers began to publish articles about atrocity of fascists in the countries they occupied. My parents stayed in Kamenka. They didn’t believe that Germans could be so cruel. There were German colonies near Kamenka where my father often rented orchards and there were no problems or conflicts with Germans. And my parents stayed at home. Later people told me that Germans convoyed a march of Jews and my father and mother were there. They told me my father fell and a German soldier shot him. My mother bent over my father and screamed and that German shot her, too. After the war I wrote my brothers Fima and Michael. We decided to go to Kamenka to find out what happened to our parents. People told us how they perished when we came there.  

Autumn and beginning of winter 1941 were troubling – the front was getting closer. In January 1942 the factory was evacuated to Gus-Khrustalny [Vladimirskaya region 600 km southeast from Leningrad]. We got a warm and cozy one-room apartment. Gus-Khrustalny was a typical Russian town with wooden houses with carved plat bands and beautiful churches. Jews didn’t come to live there during the tsarist regime – there were probably Jewish doctors and convicts. Only after the revolution Jewish families came to the town. They led a common way of life and were no different from other inhabitants of the town. The only difference was in their names, but nobody paid any attention to it. All life in town was focused around a small glass factory that gave a name to the town – Khrustalny [crystal in Russian]. This factory manufactured cups, vases and wine glasses for the tsar’s collection. Even during the wartime there was a shop at the factory that manufactured strikingly beautiful crystal vases.  Stalin gave them as gifts to high dignitaries that visited Moscow.

In April 1942 my daughter Svetlana was born. Since then I never worked and dedicated myself to my family and raising children. Of course, during the war I was in better conditions than other wives whose husbands were at the front and they had to evacuate from their homes. My husband worked all the time he could. There were weeks when he came home for few hours and returned to the factory. We received food packages and milk for children. However, this was a hard period for the country and people and we also went through lack of food and other hardships of the wartime. 

In December 1944 Grigoriy got a job assignment in Lvov. He was offered to be manager of the construction of the factory of glass insulators. He went there immediately. I packed our belongings and children and I followed him. We traveled via Moscow where we had to obtain all necessary travel documents. There was no place for us to stay in the capital and we called on our acquaintances whom we knew in Kharkov.  I felt uncomfortable – children were running around making a lot of noise when Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alilueva (she was a friend of the family, but to me she was the daughter of the idol of all people and I felt uncomfortable thinking that we might be a burden to our hosts) came to pick up their daughter and go skating. She was a nice redhead girl of 18 years of age. So I saw Svetlana Alilueva. To thank those people for letting us stay we gave them a very beautiful crystal vase.

Lvov joined the USSR in 1939 under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 10, - it belonged to Poland before. Many Polish families left for Poland and there were many vacant apartments in the town. By our arrival my husband moved into a beautiful mansion in the outskirts of the town. This was dangerous time with many gangs in the woods around – Ukrainian chauvinists struggling against the Soviet power and communists. The locals were polite and called us “Missis.” and “Mister”, but one could never tell what was on the back of their mind. We had polished manners and spoke fluent Russian – we were different from the locals and we were concerned to live in this distant mansion. We moved to a 3-room apartment with nicely tiled stoves in the center of the town. It is this same apartment where we live now.

After the war

My husband spent a lot of time at work – upon completion of the construction of the plant he became its director and worked there for many years. I was a housewife. In 1947 our third child Victor was born.  I understand that we had a better life than many other families at that time. My husband held a high position and had a good salary. I was concerned about articles published in newspapers: about struggle against cosmopolites 11, or the “doctors’ case” 12. I had my own small and comfortable world and life and I tried to keep it out of mind.  My husband attended meetings and sittings at the district Party Committee and always came back home late and was very upset. He was a member of the party. He joined the Party during the great Patriotic War when many people were joining the Party. He wasn’t a convinced communist, though, but he had to be one to make a career or he would never become director of a plant. My husband had to attend meetings, but this was one and only Party membership related activity that he was involved in. When I asked him what it was about he replied “I’d rather not tell”.  He was a reserved and taciturn man and always tried to protect me from any troubles. 

We didn’t have many friends since our family was most important for us. We didn’t observe any religious traditions. We celebrated Soviet holidays: 1 May, October Revolution Day, Victory Day and new Year. We also had birthday parties. I made traditional Soviet food: meat salad, jellied meat, cutlets, etc. Sometimes I made Gefilte fish. Grigoriy helped my brothers and sister Genia that lived with us for a few years. He helped Genia with employment and accommodation and supported him.  Once I said to him “If it hadn’t been for a Jewish wife you would have made a better career” and he caressed my hair and said “Don’t be stupid”. Our children were always aware of the fact that their mother was Jewish and they never kept it a secret. They chose to be put sown as Ukrainians in their passports – my husband and I understood that it would be easier for them to enter an Institute and get a good job.  

Stalin’s death in March 1953 was a big grief for our family and for the rest of the country.  I remember how our 11-year-old Svetlana closed the door to the toilet and cried there. It wasn’t customary in our family to demonstrate emotions and she was ashamed of her tears. My daughter believed he was like a God and didn’t believe that Stalin was like any other person in everyday life. This is the result of the propaganda and I didn’t think it was bad – we were also devoted to the Soviet power and served it sincerely. I had portrait of Stalin in our apartment. My husband came from work, saw the portrait and smiled. I guess he understood much more than common folks at that time. But even after denunciation of the cult of Stalin at XX Congress of the CPSU 13, when Khrushchev made a speech. Grigory didn’t express what he thought of this subject. He was a decent and reserved man. People discussed this speech and I heard things from my neighbors and acquaintances, but my husband didn’t even mention the subject to me – Khrushchev’s speech was only to be disclosed to the Party officials.

Our children studied in a Russian school. They were pioneers and Komsomol members. They spent summer vacations in pioneer and sport camps. They were sociable and had many friends of different nationalities. There was no national segregation between children.

Vladimir was not doing very well at school and it never occurred to Grigory to involve his influential friends to help our son enter an Institute.  Our son finished a technical college. Svetlana was very successful with her studies and entered the faculty of physics and mathematic of the Lvov University. Upon graduation she got a job assignment in a distant village. In a year and a half she became a postgraduate in Kharkov University, but due to her family she couldn’t finish her studies. She got married and in 1967 her son Sergey was born. Svetlana’s husband wasn’t Jewish. Her marriage failed and we prefer to not discuss this subject. In a short time she divorced and returned home to Lvov. This was a failure of a marriage and we are doing our best to forget about it.  Svetlana worked at school and then got a job at a research institute where she worked for many years.  I was raising my grandson Sergey.               

In 1972 my husband Grigoriy Nerubenko died. My husband was buried at Lychakovskoye cemetery in Lvov at the place where Party officials were buried. I stayed in this apartment with my children. I wish my children had more luck in their personal life. Vladimir was married, but his marriage failed in a short time. He doesn’t have any children. He worked at a plant for many years, but now this plant is closed like many other enterprises. He is a training instructors teaching teenagers to work with industrial units. He spends a lot of time at work and gives it much effort. Svetlana is a pensioner and gives private lessons in physics or mathematic.  Victor graduated from the Lvov Polytechnic Institute and worked at a scientific research institute. He is jobless now. He is single. My only grandchild Sergey has a higher education. He had no work here and few years ago he moved to Israel. He lives and works there. We look forward to hearing from him, listen to the radio and read newspapers to know more about this country. As for moving there – no, my children are too indecisive. I would like to visit this country, but to travel at the age of 95 – who ever heard about it? We had never discussed this issue in our family before. We had a good life – so why change anything? Those that wanted more from life left for Israel. 

Few years ago my Jewish neighbor took me to Hesed. I liked it there and all of a sudden I felt myself at home like I did many years before in Kamenka.  I recalled what I thought to be forgotten. My daughter Svetlana also liked it in Hesed. She became a volunteer and enjoys taking part in various programs. I haven’t left home for about half a year, though. If it were not for assistance of food and medications provided by Hesed life would be too hard.  I have wonderful children. They are with me and I am not alone.

GLOSSARY:

1. The Great Patriotic War, as the Soviet Union and then Russia have called that phase of World War II, thus began inauspiciously for the Soviet Union.
2. Ancestors of German peasants that were invited by Empress Catherine II in the 18th century to settle in Russia.
3. Ataman called Zeleniy, (green in Russian), head of a gang involved in robberies and banditism.
4. Red - warriors Red (Soviet) Army. All these gangs brought much misery to civilians in Russia.
5. White Guards counter-revolutionary gang led by general Denikin. They were famous for their brigandage and their anti-Semitic actions all over Russia; legends were told of their cruelty. Few survived their pogroms.
6. SHOLEM ALEicHEM (real name – Shalom Nohumovich Rabinovich) (1859-1916), Jewish writer. He lived in Russia and moved to the USA in 1914. He wrote in about the life of Jews in Russia in Yiddish, Hebrew & Russian.
7. Educational institutions for young people without secondary education, specifically established by the Soviet power.

1. SOVIET-FINNISH WAR 1939-40, the Soviet Union began the war on 30 November 1939 to take hold of the Karelian Isthmus. The red Army was stopped at the “Mannengeim line”. The League of Nations expelled the USSR from its members. In February-March 1940 the red Army broke through the Mannengeim line and  reached Vyborg. On 12.3.1940 the Peace Treaty was signed in Moscow. According to this treaty the Karelian Isthmus and some other areas  now belonged to the Soviet Union.
2. On 22 June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring a war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War.
3. non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, which fall into history under name Molotov-Ribbentrop pactum.  Engaged in a border war with Japan in the Far East and fearing the German advance in the west, the Soviet government in 1939 began secret negotiations for a nonaggression pact with Germany. In August 1939 it suddenly announced the conclusion of a Soviet-German pact of friendship and nonaggression. This pact contained a secret clause providing for the partition of Poland and for Soviet and German spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.
4. Anti-Semitic campaign initiated by J. Stalin against intellectuals: teachers, doctors and scientists.
5. «Doctors’ Case» - The so-called Doctors’ Case was a set of accusations deliberately forged by Stalin’s government and the KGB against Jewish doctors of the Kremlin hospital charging them with the murder of outstanding Bolsheviks. The “Case” was started in 1952, but was never finished because Stalin died in 1953.
6. 20th 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 was happening in the USSR during Stalin’s leadership.

• My family background
• Growing up
• After the war

• My family background

I don’t know anything about my paternal grandfather, because my father came to Pest early, they rarely went back, and it was already part of Romania by then. I think my cousin heard all kinds of details from his father [and he wrote these down] 

“In the picture taken in 1894, my grandfather is wearing a Hungarian-style suit made of black felt, a well-fitting jacket with black braids and nicely-shined boots. Only the wide-brimmed hat on his head indicates his racial  affiliation. Grandfather had a full, black beard.”

“My grandfather was born into the large family of drayman Izsak Farkas on March 15, 1848. It is a family legend that when great-grandfather arrived to register the newborn, the news of the great events [the revolution of 1848] in Pest had already reached Szatmar.

So then, when drayman Izsak Farkas announced that he intended to give his son the name Wilhelm, the notary angrily slapped his pen down on the desk  and shouted: What? Wilhelm? The German world is over now. The boy’s name is Vilmos Farkas!’ The name ‘Zev’, which means wolf (Farkas), keeps recurring amongst the Hebrew names of male members of the family.”

“Grandfather didn’t really go to school. The children were needed for work around the house and for fetching and carrying, for loading, transporting, looking after the horses and carriage. In his bachelor years, grandfather went to Szatmarnemeti, where he went into service for a Jewish grain broker called Swarz, as a sacking laborer.

After a time his master made him a storeman.  Grandfather‘s tasks included hiring reapers, since the grain broker occasionally leased land, and he purchased standing crops, so he arranged the harvest.”

However he had a very great ambition: he had a desire to study, he wanted to learn to read and write. Learning and books had been mystical things for him since his childhood, probably because they were rare guests at Izsak Farkas’ house; only on holidays did his father hold a dog-eared prayer book in his hands.

He read the letters, looked at the words without understanding their meaning.  So the reason for his having gone into town was that he had hoped to realize his dream. He learnt to read [from the rabbi] in Hungarian and Hebrew, to write nicely, with fancy letters.  

When, at the end of the day he returned home from the grain-store he washed, and changed into clean clothes, and the family sat down for supper. Then he arranged family matters, before finally retreating to his beloved books. Reading, burying himself in holy books, was his delight.  Over the years he managed to get hold of most of the holy literature in Hebrew.

He read newspapers too: "the Szatmar Messenger". On his bookshelf, there was one volume of Petofi, one of Janos Arany, a thin volume by Jozsef Kiss, and a couple of Kincses Kalendarium ( Treasury or thesaurus calendar), folk customs of Szatmar and similar publications.”

“When grandfather got married, he must have been around 22 years old, judging by the number of children he had. He married Vilma Katz who was also from a poor family. She was 17 years old when they got married. Vilma Katz gave birth to eleven children. Two of them died, and they raised nine – five boys, four girls.

All the children were assigned their own work around the house. There was not much talk around the table. One who talks remains hungry easily, as the food is eaten by the others. Grandfather never raised his voice and he never raised his hand, it was quite enough for him to look reproachfully at any of the children who were being boisterous. Grandmother was more vociferous. It was easy to receive a slap from her too, though she was moderate in that.” 

“Grandfather died suddenly, and his funeral had to be arranged in a hurry. A carriage was sent for the rabbi, who lived at the other end of Szatmar. However it returned without him. As Miklos reported, when the rabbi learnt what had happened,  he quickly recited a funeral blessing, saying that he would go to Vilmos Farkas’s funeral on foot.

He put on his black gown, put his angular priest's hat on his head, and took the prayer book and all that was needed. So he trudged along through the town with the cantor on his left, in similar mourning dress.

After the funeral the siblings sold off the house, portioned out the chattels, and the boys from Pest packed the belongings of their mother and their sister, Helen and took them along to Budapest. Vilma Katz didn’t survive her husband long. She died on January 26, 1922. 

“Out of the nine children, four went to Pest: Imre, Helen, Adolf and Miklos [the interviewee’s father]. Five of them stayed there [in Transylvania, which became part of Romania after the First World War], I only know the names of three of them, the first-born was Gerzson, and then there was Eszti and Piri  Some two or three years after the millenium celebrations, the elder children left the parental home. Eszti got married, and so did Piri.

Piri didn’t do anything, her husband was a mechanic. And the first born, Gerzson was already a respected master tailor. Aunt Helen stayed an old maid. In her youth, she had worked in the house serving the family, and she continued to do so in Pest. She sacrificed everything for her siblings, for their children and for their children’s children. The family was everything to her.

Grandfather wanted to raise his youngest child [Imre] to be a rabbi. Perhaps that was his only dream, which didn’t come true. [After WWI Imre] found employment at some transportation company. He transported timber for the State Railways. 

Adolf became a timber-merchant, too. In 1919 he also did something as an agricultural something-or-other during the Commune [The brief Communist regime in 1919. They wanted to catch him, and he left for Vienna with my father’s papers as Miklos Farkas because he couldn’t leave the country under his own name.

Quite soon he lined his pocket, and became a wealthy merchant. His daughter went to an institute in Switzerland. In 1938 when they came in [the Germans to Austria, at the Anschluss], he managed to come home with the last train. He came back home and the following day he rented an apartment somewhere in Budapest; he bought a typing machine, seated his daughter in front of it and the first thing he did was to announce:

“I have relocated my business to Budapest”, and life began anew. Anwithin one year he became really wealthy. His wife died, and he went away to Switzerland with his second wife, and died there. His daughter Anna was older than me. I was around 15 when she got married. Her husband’s name was Balazs Weisz and he magyarized to Vitez. Anna survived the war. She came back, and her son was saved by Auntie Helen. He is in Israel now.

When I was five or six years old, my parents put me on a train here, in Budapest – an acquaintance traveled with me– and they sent me to Szatmar to stay with relatives who lived there. Only Piri, my elder cousin [was still there], and I lived at their place. I [was there] for two or three weeks.  

Maternal grandfather’s name was Jakab Strausz, grandmother’s name was Betti Weisz. Their wedding was in 1843. They lived in Kallosemjen, this is in Szabolcs county, next to Nagykallo. It was a typical Szabolcs county Hungarian village: a small, dirty village, with wooden fences.

They [the Jews] didn’t live separately, but there was quite a Jewish life, they came together in the synagogue. The synagogue was very nice, and it was on the main square. On one side there was this shop, which belonged to Auntie Ella [mother’s sister], on the other side there was the synagogue, and on the third side was the Christian church. There were quite a lot of Jews, and they came in from the neighboring farms. Just like my aunt and her husband.

My grandfather was a smallholder: he had two acres or four acres, I don’t know. They were not rich people. He grew tobacco and melons. I remember that there was a big tobacco-drying barn in the courtyard, and there was a beehive. He went out to work on the land. His sons sold it, I think.

His only employees were those who were at the house, just one or two people, from time to time. They had the sort of village house, which was large enough to have enough room for the many children they had. 

When I was at school Ialways spent a few weeks there in the summer. I remember grandmother’s head was always covered, and grandfather always wore a hat. Lighting candles on Fridays was natural too.

All the family was there at the supper on Friday night. And on Saturday there was that sort of colored woven candle [the havdalah candle], which was up on the wall, and then on Saturday afternoon, the holiday was over when it was lit.

And the phylacteries, grandfather always put them on, I remember that too. And on Friday, they made bread in a huge wooden bowl for the whole week, and these tiny challahs for the children and grandchildren. Pasta with cottage cheese, that was always the main meal on Saturday. There was a small kitchen garden, and there were horses, and a carriage too, there was even a separate small house for the groom and the staff.

There was a large well in the middle of the courtyard, and there was a mulberry tree next to it, and a million ducks underneath, so if a mulberry fell down all the ducks gagged and it was eaten up. Then when I was a teenager, my father bought a holiday home in Agard.

They were called duplex houses, because there were two identical houses together, one of them was ours, and the other one was Uncle Imre’s [father’s brother’s]. They were in the same courtyard.  They had a small main room, a verandah, and a small kitchen. Then we used to go there regularly, so that we always went out to grandmothers for no more than two or three weeks. 

Unfortunately nobody was left [in Kallosemjen], everybody was taken and they perished in Auschwitz in 1944. Grandmother is said to have died already on the train, She must have been 70 years old already then. My grandfather died earlier, around 1940.

My mother had eight siblings: four boys and four girls. The eldest girl, Fanni, lived in Balkany. Auntie Gizi got married. Her husband was a tailor, he couldn’t get employment here and in 1938 they left for Paris. The children were born there. Her daughter, Anna got married, and her children are in Israel.

Her son, Laci took part in the French resistance movement. I think he was executed as a resistance fighter. Hella got married and their parents opened a village general store for them in Kallosemjen. But it seems that they weren’t good merchants, because they couldn’t make a fortune from it.

They had a son, Tibor, who became a sacker. And then the whole family was deported [in 1944]. The youngest, Aranka was a very pretty girl. Her husband was a farmer; the ranch was near Kallosemjen and he was some kind of a farm manager there. Erno got married 

in Nyiregyhaza. He studied, and he was something like a lawyer but not exactly that because he couldn’t make it to that level.  He had two daughters, who adored my father. One of them, a niece of mine named Eva, corresponded with dad, and dad told her: I will find you a husband.

That was in 1944. And in 1944 Eva wrote a letter, and she signed it: “kisses with love from a future grandmother”. She was dead half a year later. 

The other three brothers, Artur, Lajos, and Misi all lived there with their parents [in Kallosemjen]. They passed themselves off as farmers, but they didn’t actually do anything. Then they were deported [in 1944], they all died in Auschwitz.

My father was born in 1887. In 1904 he moved to Pest, and became a merchant's apprentice, and then he was sent to school from there, and he completed some kind of commercial course. He began with textiles; he was in Kiraly Street at some sort of a textile merchant's, then he went  elsewhere.

At that time, at the beginning of the 1900s, working hours were from 7 in the morning until half past ten; he was exploited. His life in the prewar times was not a characteristically Jewish life, but rather a worker’s life.

He joined the Social Democratic Party. Then, in the end, when he had been fired from everywhere because of his activities in the working class movemenand in the trade union, he found employment at the ‘Hangya’ General Consumer’s Co-operative. There he dealt with spices and such.  

In 1915 he was drafted and fought in Romania, but I don’t know which front he was at. He was even injured. Although the injury, according to one of his old letters, was like this: Once he came home for a furlough, and back then they came in wagons which were heated with stoves, and when the train stopped, he fell against it and burnt himself. So that was where his injury was from, but he got some sort of war injury medal.

[My parents] wedding was in 1920 in Kallosemjen, it was held at their place, in the courtyard of their house. They had a marriage arranged by a so-called shadchen [match-maker], my mother was paired up with my father, and then a great and beautiful love emerged from it. They came to Pest in 1922. 

I would have been born here in Budapest if my mother hadn't gone down to Kallosemjen to give birth there. At that time, the custom was that the child went home and delivered at the midwife's.  My Jewish name is Deborah. Dvoyrele as my grandmother called me.

• Growing up

When I was born, [my parents] already lived in Verseny Street, in the neighborhood of Keleti railway station in a small, one-and-a-half room apartment. Those were old workers’ homes. My mum was at home with me. At the beginning we didn’t have servants, then later there was a girl, from somewhere in the countryside, when my mum became quite ill.

That was already after my birth. In 1923 there were already quite nasty times; there was the white terr, and my mother was kicked on the train. It might have been only an accident or it might have been done on purpose; I don’t know. And then her breast got infected when she suckled me, and it was cut open. But it seems she got her heart trouble at that time, and she suffered with it for the rest of her life.

Blanka Gallo
City: Budapest 
Country: Hungary 
Interviewers: Dora Sardi and Eszter Andor 
Date of Interview: March 2002 

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

• My family background

I don’t know much about any of the (grandparents), because they lived in Munkacs (Munkachevo, today in the Ukraine), I went to Munkacs with my mother as a child, in 1937, before the Hungarian Felvidek 1 was re-annexed to Hungary – I was there at my maternal grandparents. That’s to say they were not living by then but great uncles and aunts. (Anyway) when I was there I saw a May 1st parade for the first time. Bearded Jews processed with red flags and red carnations.

I (remember) very little. (The grandparents lived in) a house, but not by themselves but with others round a courtyard. I remember my paternal grandfather. He was called Saul Leimseder.  Both grandfathers had beards. (Saul) was very old by then as far as I remember. He was deported from Munkacs at the age of 86. I remember my grandmother, Taube Hammerman, too. My paternal grandmother died of cancer, I can’t say when.

Dad had a sister Auntie Roza, who was called Weinberger, she lived in Munkacs and had seven sons and a single daughter. They rented the mikvah and ran it. The only daughter Manci was in Nyiregyhaza when the Germans invaded. Then Jews could not travel on trains so she couldn’t get home. But she met her mother in Auschwitz and when her mother was selected for the gas chambers Manci wanted to go with her, but her mother begged her not to and she survived. And as far as I know two or three boys survived too and they left in 1945-46, presumably to Australia.

We don’t know anything about them. Then there was Auntie Frida who lived in Satoraljaujhely, and her husband was also a fruit wholesaler. They only had sons too. Two of her sisters lived in Nyiregyhaza, Auntie Etel – known as Mrs Grunberger – who was also a fruit wholesaler for a while. Theirs was a childless marriage. And there was Auntie Cili, who helped them, she wasn’t a partner but helped. There was Hugo.

He was born in 1901 and was unmarried. He was a partner of my father’s, but there was never any quarrels between them.  They adored each other. Hugo was not religious. If one of my siblings or I wanted something, but didn’t dare say anything to the parents, it was him who noticed and did something about it.

He lived in Nyiregyhaza (after the war) and continued the business until it was taken over by the state. But (even after that) he continued in the trade. If I am right he married a girl in 1947.

We used to go over there, as if to our parents. My father was one of twins. His twin went to America. But we did not keep in touch with either my mother’s relatives in America or him. And there was another sibling who was also in America called Auntie Milli. And another brother of my father’s lived in Beregszasz (today Berehovo, in Ukraine), Uncle Sanyi. We didn’t really know anything about him.

Then there was Fancsi another sibling who lived in Kisvarda. There were lots of children (there). Her husband returned from forced labor and then immediately went off somewhere, I don’t know where. And my father had yet another sibling – called Uncle Geza – who was famous for his physical strength.

They said that he could lift up a cart with one hand. He married, I don’t know whether his wife died in childbirth but he remained with two daughters who were also sent to Auschwitz. And he died young too. I believe that it was precisely after a great show of strength that he perspired and died of pneumonia. They lived in Munkacs (today Mukacevo, in Ukraine) with my paternal grandfather.

My maternal grandfather was called Izrael Ostreicher. He had had a mill but then he got ill and died young. I remember him in my childhood lying down and being very thin. Izrael died sometime in the 1920s, probably in the second half.

My maternal grandmother was called Margit Herskovits. She was at home, that is a housewife who raised the children. My grandmother died the year when I was there. And I remember that she lived with her three children.

One of them, Zali, was a spinster, another Dora was divorced and had a son, Jahele was his name, I believe. The third Uncle Sie – we called him that –, who was also divorced but had a daughter from his first marriage called Manci, who lived in Pest.

She escaped and went to America in the 1950s and became terribly religious. Her mother was not, but over there she went very religious and did not get married. I don’t know where she worked at the beginning but by the end she worked in the White House library. And she was fantastically charitable.

Then there was a brother of my mother’s, Uncle Adolf who also lived in Nyiregyhaza like us. He had a glass shop, glass and porcelain. He was well to do. He had three wives and three children. One survived, Jozsef, who was taken prisoner-of-war by the Russians after Ungvar (today Uzhorod, in Ukraine) was liberated.

He returned in 1947, was at home in Nyiregyhaza for four weeks, and then went out to Israel. Then there was Aunt Lenke who lived in Nagyszollos and at the age of 24 was left a widow with three children and did not get married again. She was also deported with her children. Then my mother had a sibling – I don’t know the name – who lived in America and had a restaurant.

Only one aunt survived on my mother’s side, Aunt Kati who (lived) at first in Munkacs and then in Pozsony (today Bratislava, in Slovakia) and when they (the Germans) entered Slovakia they went back to Munkacs and came to live in Pest. Aunt Kati did not hide, her husband and son Jeno were deported. And extraordinarily, they all survived. She had an only child and they all survived. And I see Jeno regularly.

• Growing up

My father was Jakab Leimseder. He was 60 in 1944 and mum was 55. She was known to everyone as Aunt Mariska. My father was a tropical fruit dealer in Nyiregyhaza. Until the outbreak of the war in 1939 my father brought the fruit from Italy. There (were) oranges, mandarins, chestnuts, dates, grapes, figs. It was a big business.

The shop was totally separate and had a big warehouse. Since my father sold to retailers. My father was the only tropical fruit dealer beyond the river Tisza. So they came from all around Nyiregyhaza to buy from him. He always traveled on Saturday night or Sunday morning.

The big center was in Trieste. And he came home either on Thursday night or on Friday – in the winter months. The business was closed on Saturdays. He started to export in the summer months. Beginning with morello cherries, apricots and apples which were the biggest.

At that time there was only a big refrigerated store in Pest but it wasn’t a problem as the storehouse was cool enough to store fruit in the winter but he would take huge amounts of apples to the Pest fridge after the apple harvest as you could get the best price for them in the spring. He rented huge orchards – including Prime Minister Kallai’s, for 100 thousand forints a year in pengo (pre-WWII Hungarian currency).

It was an orchard of around 100 acres and in August there was a great harvest and then Kallai called my father over to Kallosemlyen to tell him how good the harvest was and how cheap he had rented it for. Then my father asked ‘Sir, do you want to use force? Because if so, I’ll rip up the contract.’ In the end they agreed that he would give back 50 thousand pengo and half of the fruit would be his.

But he promised to bring my two brothers, who were forced laborers in the Soviet Union, back home. It wasn’t his fault that he could not do so. He was attacked so severely he couldn’t do it. (At home) there was loads of fruit. They would sift through, for example, the oranges from time to time.

My mother gave birth ten times. The eldest – I don’t know the name – was run over by a tram at the age of six before my parents’ very eyes. And another died of scarlet fever. And my mother miscarried once too. Gitta was the eldest (child) She was born around 1910-11 and had three children. She got married and lived in Derecske, then in Hajduszoboszlo and finally in Papa.

Her husband was a leather merchant and did business in Debrecen. (His name) was Jeno Basch. (During the war) he paid to be in the mental ward of St John’s hospital in order to avoid forced labor. He played the lunatic but ate kosher, they got his food from some kosher restaurant. But during the last Purim he got his papers (to go). My father knew enough about what went on that he told him not to think about playing mentally ill out there.

The next (sibling) was Margit. She was born in 1914. She got married to Erno Frankel from Kassa (today Kosice, in Slovakia). He had a paint store in Slovakia, after he went back to Kassa – as that was on Hungarian territory -, he traveled. And it is typical of the family’s closeness that in the final year Gitta, like Margit, came back with her children so that they could be with the parents.

And they were all deported together – and Margit and her little daughter did not return, Gitta survived and died in Budapest in 1970. (Both their homes) were completely kosher. Gitta even wore a wig, Margit did not have one but at home, in our parents’ house she wore a scarf.

Zoltan was born in 1916 and helped in father’s business. He was the only one who attended yeshiva. Then there (was) Hugo, he was born in 1918 and he also (worked) in father’s business. Both were in forced labor and they did not come back.

I, Blanka, came next in 1922, then Geza in 1926 and Sanyi in 1928. My father was not only a fruit dealer, but exported to many places – lots to Poland, Czechoslovakia and some even to Hamburg – and the boys helped. Both Gitta and Margit were often in dad’s office, doing bookkeeping. But I did not.

Jews lived all over Nyiregyhaza. There was a Jewish district but the better off did not live there. We, for example, lived first in Bocskay Street, which was in the heart of town. There was a bakery in the same street. Then later in Kossuth Lajos Street which was also a main street as the tram went down there.

The Kossuth Lajos Street place had four rooms, a glassed in veranda, a big kitchen and a maid’s room. There were two other apartments (in the block) on the other side. We rented them. My father was well off but he did not put to much emphasis on buying property.

Mum put us girls to work, we had to do everything from the age of ten. A little at a time, but always something, as they said that we had to learn this as one could never tell what life would bring, and if you are not forced to do the housework yourself, at least you could run the household staff. We learned crafts at school, that is, knitting, crocheting and embroidery. And the routine was that we helped in the morning and in the afternoon sat down to sew. There was a permanent maid.

She lived there and in addition there was a washer woman for the big washes – because they washed the bedclothes once a month then – and at the same time did a big clean. In the final years there was a Jewish maid. When the Felvidek was annexed to us they were very poor and they often came (to be maids) at first because a lot of Christian maids reported Jewish families. But later it became illegal to employ Christians because of the anti-Jewish laws. And last of all we had a maid called Fani, a big fat woman.

She ate alone in the kitchen, not with us at the table. And I will always remember it because I thought it strange that she ate by taking a spoonful or a bite and then a sip of water. She saw me in Auschwitz and I heard „Miss, Miss!". And she brought me a flask – everything was of value there, even a spoon – But I nearly fainted, there, where everyone used the familiar address, there was no caste system, there we were all prisoners, just the same.

The grandparents must have been religious (as) even my own parents were Orthodox. They obeyed every Jewish law to the letter. Which meant that on Friday afternoon they got ready, cooking the holiday lunch. There was (only) a light lunch at noon. Then, when the holiday began, the men went to the synagogue, the women did not. (In Nyiregyhaza) there were two separate ones: the Orthodox and the Status Quo 2. Both were big but there were also many prayer houses besides. The Orthodox one survived but the Status Quo one was blown up. It was very beautiful.

My father attended the Orthodox one. It was (not far from us), there were no great distances in Nyiregyhaza. My mother laid the table with a wonderful, snow-white tablecloth and lit lots of candles – because (she lit one) for every child and every dead relation. I don’t know (how many exactly) but I do know that there was a five branched silver candlestick, but she lit at least ten others as well. And the table was laid and there were two chalas (on) the table. She baked them. And they baked bread. They did it by taking it to the bakery as we had no bread oven. And the Saturday cholent was also taken to the bakery as they could not heat it up, and the following day the maid brought it at noon.

We were not even allowed to carry it. One couldn’t even carry a handkerchief. In Munkacs it was allowed because a part of it was fenced in (Editor’s note: According to Jewish law, carrying things in public space on Sabbath, even one’s handkerchief or keys, is forbidden. Public spaces could be turned into private spaces if they were surrounded by a so-called eruv line and within the eruv line Jews were allowed to carry things even on Sabbath.).

Well, on Friday night supper was usually fish in aspic, followed by meat soup, pasta granules and some sort of pudding. They kept this warm – then there was no gas but a wood burning stove – by putting it on this because they were not even allowed to warm it up. Friday evening, like Saturday evening, began with (my father) saying a bracha over the wine and then giving everyone a drop to taste. He did the same with the chala, he prayed and then everyone got a bite. On high holidays – that is Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Tabernacles, right up until Simchat Torah – he put honey on the chala, otherwise it was salt.

On Saturday morning my mother went to the synagogue. The girls did not go only the women. She returned at noon, there was still some aspic left over. They did not warm anything up but ate warm cholent and made fruit soup in the summer. But they did not mix it up with sour cream, as they do today, but with eggs, because that was a pair

(Editor’s note: She is referring to parve, that is, food that can be eaten both with milky and meaty food – this is why it was called pair.). But there were many other things too. There were separate dishes for meaty and milky food, and a separate cupboard and table for them, and there was the pair (i.e., the parve) which had nothing separate.

The fish, eggy onion and cholent were hors d’oeuvres, and then there was cold roast and in the summer cold soup too. And towards evening only the men went to synagogue, and when father came home he performed havdalah. That meant he lit two candles and there was a long plaited candle which he also lit, and I remember that he prayed and afterwards he poured a little fruit brandy onto a tray on the table and lit that too. And there was a psamim case. All I know is that they say that Saturday night will set the tone for the whole week. That’s why we had to sniff it. Only the men sang zmirot on Friday, and sometimes at noon on Saturday too.

My mother, like my father, spent fantastic amounts of money on charity. But not for the religious community but for individuals, Jewish families. And how diplomatic they were! It was a big thing to provide proper food on Saturdays. And on Thursday evening Mother sent money to a few families. On Thursdays, because that was when the men were at synagogue and would not be humiliated by it. There was a women’s association which my mother regularly attended. They (did) mainly charity work. I also remember that there were performances but boys did not perform these with girls.

At Rosh Hashanah my mother always went to synagogue. She had clothes especially for this purpose and wore the same clothes at Yom Kippur too. Then there was Tabernacles, so after Yom Kippur they immediately started to build the sucha.

They made the sides out of rushes and the roof of reeds. And we children made various decorations and stars and decorated the sucha with them, and my father only ate there during the holiday. After that was the big holiday Simchat Torah – then they finish and start anew the Torah. And then it was wonderful as my mother made something very special: roast meats.

There was a time I recall when she beat out the beef and minced chicken, put this on the beef and placed hard boiled eggs in between, then she kneaded and roasted it. She did the same at Purim. And there were lots of cakes then too. We sent them to lots of places and we were sent some as well.

At Shavuot there were lots of flowers in the apartment, they even put flowers in the chandeliers. And I remember that the apartment was full of walnut leaves – which have a very nice smell. Mother never went to synagogue in the evening, only in the morning.

There was a big clean up (before Pesach), and separate dishes. (At Pesach) tsibere is made – this is done very carefully, there was a completely separate bit on the table. Beetroot is peeled, chopped up finely, sprinkled with water and salt and left to ferment. And this is how it gets its slightly sour taste.

They made it raw, they only boiled it and beat in eggs so it would be pair (i.e., parve). And they ate it cold and put hot potatoes in it. That’s how we do it isn’t it? Well, I remember Mum would buy a goose in the winter and cooked the fat and the liver separately in a Pesach dish. And she put it in fat for Pesach, and on the eve of Pesach there was tsibere soup and crackling with potato and liver. And in the evening (that is on Seder night) there was a big supper which was meat soup etc. etc.

But at home they did not brakk, which means they did not make matzah balls from matzah flour then only on the final day. You weren’t allowed to put matzah balls in the soup either, but they made pancakes with potato flour, as that’s allowed, and they cut them up into ribbon noodles and put that in the soup, or potato dumplings. I don’t remember how they made those. Not everyone did this, only the very religious.

They bought matzah from the community, but Dad always went at Erev Pesach, or maybe earlier, and he baked them separately. This matzah had a special name: shmira matzah. It was not kneaded by machine but by hand, and rolled out by hand and it was rounded. And on Seder night it was on the table. And my father prayed, that is, made a bracha over the matzah.

On that evening my father wore a kitl, there was a big armchair, a pillow and he was in white, and as we read the Haggadah, the youngest asked the ma nishtanah. And as we read, he stopped at a passage and one of the boys had to explain its meaning. Then there was nayn teg. This was before Tisha be-Av. And then, apart from the Saturdays, one can only eat milky things (and) fish. And at Tisha be-Av they fasted. They did not tear their (clothes).

The butchers were kosher. There was a grocery too. For example when they shopped for Pesach they only went to kosher shops. At home they leavened the bread but took it to the bakers to bake and chala was also (leavened) at home. Kosher milk, butter and cottage cheese were brought to the house from some village.

The meat was made kosher. Fruit (was bought) at the market as were live geese. They took them to the shochet, brought them home and made them kosher. Fish did not need to be made kosher, you could cut that up by yourself. When Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur was on all Jewish businesses were closed.

My father always wore a kipa, made of black velvet. In the past they were only made of that. He dressed in a suit and hat. He wore tzitzith – boys also wore them under their clothes. He went to synagogue every morning. My mother had a wig – and she wore it at home too.

At night she tied her hair up (in a scarf). (In my girlhood) I accompanied my mother to the mikvah. I was there before my marriage too. I believe they went to mikvah two weeks after menstruation and until then, not only could you not make love, but were not really allowed to touch. (My parents) had two separate beds and there was a bedside table in between.

I remember that these boys – I had two younger brothers –attended the cheder from the age of three. I don’t remember but Aranka, who lives in America, told me that papa woke the two young boys at five in the morning as they had to go (to cheder) at six, and he always said that my heart breaks for the children but I must send them. So that’s how they studied. I believe they went (there) until they entered school at six years old but maybe they went for longer. My eldest brother Zoltan attended yeshiva, but I can’t remember where. But he didn’t go for long. The boys continued to study on Saturday even later. I can read Hebrew too. There were lots of religious books at home. I had lots of prayer books too.

I don’t observe Saturday [Shabbat]. I always light two candles on Friday night and go to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and when there is the maskir. I only attend synagogue then. There is a synagogue here in Ujpest. And I don’t travel at Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This is just tradition because I don’t run a kosher household. And I do one more thing at Pesach: I don’t eat bread for eight days. That’s all.

We spoke Hungarian at home, but mum and dad spoke Yiddish especially if they didn’t want the children to hear. Yiddish not Hebrew. But Hungarian was (their mother tongue), because I remember that the grandparents spoke Hungarian. Anyway in Munkacs all the Christians knew Yiddish.

They negotiated in Yiddish. I remember that I went with my aunt to the market and she spoke Yiddish with the peasant women. I can’t speak (Yiddish) but I understand a lot. Yiddish is very like German. And anyway at that time I leared German.

I completed four years of middle school. But at that time the primary school was Jewish, I graduated from there. And there was religious instruction class for all denomination. So Jews also had religious instruction and the assistant rabbi came. He taught me once a week.

We went on Saturday but did not write. And a maid brought our bags. The Jewish school was where the Status Quo synagogue was, in its yard. In fact there were lots of apartments and the teachers lived in them. And we would meet there, and sometimes we went for a walk. And then a crowd always gathered there -- Jews.

There was a real caste system. I’ll give an example. I had a classmate, a Jewish girl, her father was a waiter. We were in the same class and lived in the same street and went home together. And my father saw me with this little girl and made me swear never to be with this girl again. As then the merchant looked down on the artisan.

The Orthodox really opposed Zionism. I was still going to the Jewish school and there were performances before various holidays in which we children took part. I was in one. „I will be a shomer, a weapon in my hand I will guard, there’s no need to fear." – I had some text like this dressed in boy’s clothes, with an imitation weapon on my shoulder. And my father was terribly attacked about this, that his daughter was a Zionist.

I wasn’t, it was just that the teachers told me to say it, that’s all. But the Orthodox opposed it. At least a third of the middle school was Jewish, I don’t know exactly. There was no (anti-Semitism) then, but later one heard more and more frequently about the beating up of Jews, and my sister Gitta was even beaten up badly by university students in Debrecen.

We spent the summer with aunts and uncles. And relations came to us too. My mother had bad rheumatism in her leg and we went to Hajduszoboszlo for the summer and she took me with her. There was certainly a synagogue but we didn’t stay in a hotel but in a private house with a Jewish family. But she didn’t eat there, there were several Jewish restaurants. (There) were strictly kosher restaurants there, and not only one.

And later, when my elder sister Gitta lived there, we were often at hers. But apart from that we were in Munkacs with my aunt and grandparents.

• During the war

(When war started and the deportations) my father reproached me for not getting married. He knew a lot about what was going on in Germany, and Poland, as refugees came and spoke about what had happened. Slovak girls were taken to the front to brothels and my father feared this would happen to me. And he made me promise that when we arrive – we didn’t know we were going to Auschwitz – I must say one of my suitors’ names as if I were a wife.

Before deportation my father made Hugo (his brother) promise to look after me. Hugo was in such a state at the end of the transport that he was among the dead. And one night he came to and remembered what he had promised my father, about looking after me. He crawled back through the living, on all fours, into the barracks. On the second or third day he was liberated otherwise he wouldn’t have survived.

I remember another thing: my father pulled himself up and said that he could work. But even he didn’t believe it, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked Hugo to look after me. My father was a very charitable man as was my mother, they helped many poor people.

They helped the refugees who came from Poland and Czechoslovakia financially. And one of the Poles wanted me to come with him to Pest. I could have had Christian papers too because one of the maid’s papers was at ours, and I could have gone with those. And there was a Christian merchant who was in business partnership with my father, they would have hidden me as a maid – that was one.

The other was at the apple harvest in the fall, the apples were sorted by size. Then about two-three hundred women worked there. And one of them came into the ghetto with her father and begged me – they lived on a homestead – to go with them and they would hide me. But I didn’t want to go with either of them. And today I’m still glad I didn’t because I would have suffered a lot more, being there and my parents and siblings never coming home.

When we put on the yellow stars my father’s business was still open for while – all the Jewish businesses were – and I went home at noon with my father and we wore the yellow stars. And two workers came towards me and the younger one made a sarcastic comment about the yellow star, and the older said to him ‘watch out because the Russians are already at Korosmezo’.

At this my father whispered to me that he didn’t know which was worse. Well, when on the last day of Pesach they started to bring in Jews from the surrounding villages, it was terrible,  when we saw the first group.

Despite the fact that Kossuth Street was a main street one of its sides was the ghetto for while. And they put four hundred country Jews into the ghetto. And my father – as I said he was a well-to-do man – did not accept anything from the Jewish community, but there were still those who brought food to our house and he fed them (the Jews from the countryside) with this.

After a while the ghetto on Kossuth Street was closed as it was a main street. Imre (my future husband) lived in the parallel street with his mother and we were there for a while. Then one day the gendarmes appeared and told everyone to pack up as much as they could carry and took us to Nyirjespuszta; this is a few kilometers from Nyiregyhaza – the property of a Count Molnar – here we lived in barracks.

At that time they kept tobacco or something there, so there were no bunks but boards. And there you could decide whether to work or not -- you know, so that you wouldn’t be shut in and could take your mind off things. They took us out to single turnips and when we were coming back the peasant women who had taken food into Nyiregyhaza, were coming home. And I started to talk to one of them and she had ten eggs and she had butter in a half liter jug and while we were speaking I showed her what kind of underwear I had on.

I took it off and got ten eggs and half a liter of butter for it. There was a girl called Trencsenyi who (ran) this Nyirjesi homestead, she was terrible, she laid people on the ground, old people too, and tied people up. I had a big apron which I made there and it had a big pocket. And I put the eggs and butter in it and I was worried that Trencsenyi would make me lie down with the eggs. And then happily I gave them to my mother. And they deported us from there. Gitta went with her family on another transport, and we went with the last one. We arrived in Auschwitz on 6 June (1944).

The Polish prisoners told us to give the children to the old people as they would look after them – as they knew what was going on. My mother-in-law was in the same transport as Gitta, and my mother-in-law took the three children. Sanyi, Geza, Margit, Erno and little Juliska, my parents and I went together. And I remember that my father begged the two boys to escape. But this would have been dangerous and they didn’t.

We arrived in Auschwitz. It began with having to undress totally and being shaved everywhere. And the SS guys stood about and laughed. And when we came out (of the shower) – no soap, no towel, nothing – we were given rags instead of clothes.

We were put in a barracks where there weren’t even bunks, we lay on the bare earth in a pile. We were so naive that we didn’t know what happens in a lager – after a month. They didn’t tell us. When we asked what it was that was burning, they said that you brought so much rubbish. The SS said that the old people looked after the children. And that they have much better provisions than you.

We were not long in Auschwitz, after about three of four weeks we were selected again – well, we were still in good shape. And then we got striped clothes and white kerchiefs, and in these we were put in a wagon and taken to Riga. There was a work camp there. There were lots of Rigans. And you could buy lots of things for money. And there they executed people by taking them out – the camp was in a forest --, taking them out into the forest and shooting them in the head.

When the Russian front drew nearer they made a huge selection. After this they put us on a boat and took us into Danzig (today Gdansk, Poland) by boat, but it was terrible. I was hit here, for example, for the first time.

It was a cargo boat and we were in the lower hold. It was very hot, the WC was upstairs. And there was a long queue and by the time you got there it was too late. And there was a Hungarian-speaking SS soldier who allowed a few of us to go into the bathroom and a striped suited woman came in, (the suit was marked) with black points – these were common criminals -  and hit us all over because we dared to wash.

Well, two boats left Riga at the same time, the other one was sunk. They took us from Danzig to Stutthof. We were there for about a week. And they took us to Lowen – at the mouth of the Elba --, five hundred Hungarian women. And there was the camp commandant who was very humane. And everyone got two blankets and a bunk to themselves and the food was relatively bearable.

But the front was approaching, and on 12 April 1945 we were taken away and walked 600 km and they took us to Ravensbruck. They showed us off at Ravensbruck as if we were miracles, because compared to them there we were in an alright state. And there they put us in wagons to takes us to Sweden for an exchange of prisoners, that is, for German prisoners. But there was no engine by this time, so we went on foot all the way to Malchow (Editor’s note: a subcamp of the Ravensbruck concentration camp). And on 2 May 1945 we were liberated.

The Russians liberated us. The result was that we women did not dare go out on the street, we were scared because they raped. One day the Russians announced that there is a Brandenburg camp (Editor’s note: a subcamp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp), I don’t know how many kilometers from Malchow, and we must go there, as they will take us home from there.

We didn’t dare set off, we were scared of the Russians. There were about 10-11 of us who made friends. And Italians came towards us – their national flag is like ours in reverse (like the Hungarian one) -- and one of us called out, are you Hungarians too?

Only for fun as we knew they weren’t. And finally we stood near these boys and they said they were going to Neu-Brandenburg, they had a car and we should go together. We set off with them but were worried what would happen in the evening. And we got somewhere in the evening, and these boys just chased the Germans out of the apartment – these were two-storied houses -- and started to make supper, they cooked in a pot (where they got it from I have no idea) and laid a huge table with a cloth.

Afterwards everyone wanted to lie down. And the boys asked if they could take us up. And we said, until the door. And they were very kind to us. And we arrived in Neu-Brandenburg and the Slovaks were taken home in groups by truck. And as my elder sister Margit was originally living married in Kassa (today Kosice, Slovakia), we said we were Slovaks and they took us in a truck to Prague.

We were there for three days in quarantine and then got aid. We got to Kassa from Prague by going down to Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia) and from there up to Kassa. (From there) we arrived with great difficulty back in Nyiregyhaza. Not a stick of furniture survived, they had taken everything. Not even a photograph remained.

My brother Hugo was a forced laborer in Kisvarda, he was taken from Kassa at the end, and my father came home from synagogue one noon. They had a telephone not only in the shop but at home too – a rarity in those days. And he said to him that he had a bad feeling about Hugo. I should go to the neighboring grocer and telephone and ask on Saturday. Well, of course it is allowed if an ill person wants something, then everything is allowed. (And all it was) was that they his suit had been stolen.

My husband was called Imre Grossman and he magyarized it to Gallo. I believe we were still in Nyiregyhaza when he magyarized his name. (If I hadn’t had a Jewish suitor), they would have denied him. They would have sat shive. (My husband) was born in 1911 (before the war) he was first of all a merchant apprentice, then a commercial traveler. I believe in coffee.

His father had a textile business. When it went bankrupt he started to travel and he took it over from his father, when he got ill and later died. His father died around 1940 and he still has a gravestone in Nyiregyhaza. He provided for his mother because my brother-in-law was an articled clerk and had married earlier. His mother had not, but his father had come from a very religious family, but they were not as religious as we were.

My mother-in-law did not wear a wig. And my husband became very religious (after the war) – perhaps in memory of my parents. Every Friday night, and Saturday he went to synagogue, and every holiday – of course when he no longer worked. And at home every morning we prayed in tallith and teffilin. In the final days before his death he concentrated on himself a lot, in order to divert his attention, but then he did not want to pray.

My husband was courting me. But my parents (did not wish) this marriage, because he wasn’t a rich boy, and I didn’t want to get married because both my sisters’ husbands had to go to forced labor and I didn’t want to get married.

This was 1942, and from 1943 to March 1944 he was in forced labor in the Ukraine. Having typhus he went down to 25 kilos and was in a terrible state. And afterwards they were deported and a Nyiregyhaza woman hid not only him, but two of his companions, until the Russians came. So on the night of New Year 1944 he was in Nyiregyhaza.

After the war

The wedding was on August 19th 1945 in Nyiregyhaza. It wasn’t in a synagogue because the Orthodox don’t hold them in synagogues but in the courtyard. But it wasn’t that courtyard but the Joint had a big place where those who were in need of ate.

The supper was made there but we paid for it, but we held it there because there were big rooms there. There were seventy or eighty people, that is, it was a big wedding. And then things were such that we did not travel.

They were two brothers (my husband and his brother), the elder, Frigyes, became a lawyer and married (my elder sister). It was her second marriage.  We got married first, because she was still waiting for her husband to return. And when he did not come home and my brother-in-law’s wife did not either, they, after a while, got married. And they had a child who went to America in the 1970s. And he died young, at forty, of cancer.

At first I did nothing. In order that life should start again in Nyiregyhaza the mayor appointed people to open various shops. My husband opened a grocery warehouse, with a partner, not alone. And there was also a delicatessen. And when the state take-over started I was in the delicatessen with my husband.

My daughter Judit was born in 1947. I helped in the delicatessen and, apart from the maid, there was a young girl who looked after Judit so I could work.

We wanted to emigrate in 1949. At first it was to be Israel. I can’t remember the date, only that Judit had been already born. And we had prepared so much that I even got a tranquilizer from the doctor so that (Judit) would not cry when we crossed the border. It was to be a Sunday. And those who organized the trip for us went to look round on Friday to make sure everything was alright and they caught them and locked them up and that’s why we stayed.

But Nyiregyhaza was a small town everyone knew we were going. We had told everyone we were going to Pest to live. (So that) it was imperative to go to Pest to live. When we came up, Margit (my sister) lived in a rented room with her husband, there were no children then, we lived with my aunt Kati, until we bought a flat. And then we bought a three-roomed flat with a hall in Zoltan Street and we lived together (with Margit’s family).

And I was at home for a while and Imre found a job through a highly placed Nyiregyhaza man at Betex (a textile company).  I remember that the 630-forint pay was very little but at that time we had a little extra for a while. He found a place as an assistant salesman and – because textiles was his trade – he was for a long time the deputy director of the business, as some party functionary, who did not understand the trade, was the director, and he was never seen. And in the end he became the director, he ran the silk department. And retired from there.

In 1951 – financially we were forced to by then  - I also found a place in the restaurant business. I had one place of work. I started as a cashier and then became the manager. I ran a cafe which was open until midnight and there was the little one, the family, well it was impossible.

After much pleading I was demoted to works clerk, at my request. Then I worked in one of the bars as a clerk, that is, from eight until four -- the deputy manager died, and the boss asked me if I would take on as deputy. I said yes, if I was given a clerk’s shift and that meant on Saturday until noon and not coming in on Sunday. We put her (the child) into nursery and for a week she just crouched in the corner and cried, she couldn’t bear it.

So I took her out. My elder sister Margit, while we lived together, worked, wove scarves somewhere and looked after her own (child) and Judit. But Imre’s work was very close to home and Imre often took her with him.

In the summer we took her on holiday. So we went on holiday, took Juli (Margit’s daughter) and Margit’s family also took Judit. At that time we had two two-week holidays (which is why) we placed her (in a children’s summer home) in Pest, chiefly on Svab Hill. There were families there who for years had been taking in children and taking care of them.

At the beginning (Judit) didn’t like it. It was laid down that she could be visited once or twice a week, she always cried when we left. (When) she was over ten there was a woman who took on teenage girls and was with them all day. She slept at home, she only took them during the day. She took them to the swimming pool, on trips etc.

I often (worked) on Rosh Hashanah but only once on Yom Kippur – this was during Rakosi regime 3 and people did not dare say anything – but later we took holidays in order to be able to fast, everything. At Yom Kippur I only worked once, but Imre worked then several times.

I just remember that as a manager he could just look in wherever he was, but we always went to synagogue. Then we went to the Desewffy synagogue as that was nearby. But I also fasted when I worked. And on Tisha be-Av too. Today I just semi-fast on Tisha be-Av. But I still fast (on Yom Kippur). This is the one thing Judit also does, she works but fasts then too.

I believe it was the Ozd miners who protested in Miskolc during the Rakosi regime for some reason. And the Miskolc police chief –who was disowned because he was a communist and his family did not want to acknowledge this, and so he became the police chief of Miskolc – was thrown to the wolves at this protest, afterwards they say Rakosi threw a Jew in there to calm things down. They tied him to a car and took his body right the way through Miskolc.

(When the state of Israel was established) it was such a good feeling. It still is. I was only there (in Israel) once. In 1998 Imre died and it was after that. We would have liked to go once together and didn’t because the doctor wouldn’t allow him to fly. But (after her father’s death) Judit organized it and we went.

I think (we were there) for two weeks. We arrived in Tel Aviv and as soon as we got out of the plane we rented a car. We went everywhere by car in the first week. In the second week one of Judit’s employees, who was out in Israel officially, recommended a guide to go round with, so we were taken round.

My daughter met her husband at high school. And they went out and when they graduated they announced that they would get married but only when both of them had degrees. And they stuck to it. And then I said to my daughter that it was very painful for us, for your father too (that her husband wasn’t Jewish), but we will never make an issue of it. And so it was.

She graduated with a Hungarian-English degree. During (university) she (also) went to the Soviet Union, for good grades she was sent to Lomonosov University. And when she became pregnant with Gabor she also completed a translator-interpreter and travel guide training.

Judit was brought up Jewish, in that we had a man come to us from the synagogue in Hegedus Gyula Street -- just as we had a female teacher for English --, who taught her Jewish history and prayers. She forgot it all. I’ll tell you why, because in 1956 the man emigrated.

• Glossary:

1 Felvidek: The territory of present-day Slovakia which was part of Hungary before WWI.

2 Status Quo Ante: In Hungary, the ideological conflicts between Orthodox and Reform Judaism were so strong that the two split formally at the 1868/69 congress held in Budapest, which had been organized in order to reach an agreement on the debated issues.

Those Jewish communities, which did not join either side, and kept themselves to the pre-congress state, were called Status Quo.

3 Rakosi regime: communist leader who introduced the most severe and bloody Soviet type dictatorship in Hungary in the first half of the 1950s.

Golda Salamon 
Maramarossziget 
Romania
Interviewer: Emoke Major 
Date of interview: September 2005 
 

Golda Salamon, or auntie Galdi, as people call her is a young-looking aunt of small stature.

She pays a great attention to her everyday dressing, she likes cheerful colors. She lives alone in the family house in Maramarossziget [today Sighetu Marmatiei], which was the home of a large family until the World War II.

Her grandparents on the mother’s side lived there with their eight children, and her parents too brought up there seven children.

Auntie Galdi is now alone. She is left alone not only in the house, but in the whole town, one could even say that she is left alone in the whole historical Maramaros:

she is last who lives here from the Hasid community, which used to have several ten thousands of members.

She has a great farm, she keeps poultry, and there is always work to do around the house or on the fields.

She doesn’t have children, and maybe she could live on her pension, but she is attached to her inherited lifestyle.

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• After the war and later life
• Glossaries

• My family background

My grandfather was called Jankel Malek, he was born in Jod [today Ieud in Romanian, 55 km far from Maramarossziget to the south-east], but they sold their properties and moved to Sziget [short for Maramarossziget], they lived in this street.

He was a farmer, they had a good piece of land after [behind] the house, its cultivation was their main occupation, and they kept cows and poultry.

He didn’t attend yeshiva, but he was religious, a Hasid, he went to the synagogue every day. His wife was Eszter Szegal, she was born in Szaplonca [today Sapanta in Romanian, 18 km far from Maramarossziget to the north-west].

My two grandmothers, namely the mother of my dad and the mother of my mum were full sisters. Both grandmothers were very religious.

Their hair was cut short, but they didn’t need any wig, they were wearing shawls knitted in the back. Both the father and the mother of my dad were deported [from Maramarossziget].

My father had only one younger brother, Avrom Malek. His family lived here in Sziget, in this street. His wife was called Szimi, they had about six children: Blime Hana, Mojse Lajzer, there was Dina, she didn’t come back [from deportation], then there was Berl who didn’t come back either. I don’t know the name of the other children, as they were little.

Mojse Lajzer left for Israel in the 1950s, his children were still little. He lived in Haifa, had a small store there and he was managing it. He has a son and a daughter, they are still living in Israel.

His son –he is the older – lives in Haifa, he has eight children, as he’s religious. I don’t know what he is living on. In Israel those who have many children get a significant allowance from the state. The daughter of Mojse Lajzer lives in Jerusalem, she has only three children.

My father’s name was Izidor Malek, Ezra in Jewish. I don’t know precisely when my father was born, but he must have been 3 or 4 years older than my mum [so he must have been born in the 1880s]. He was born in a village, Jod.

Both my dad and his younger brother attended the yeshiva in Pozsony 1, in the Czech Republic [Golda Salamon refers to the territory of the Czech Republic during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy].

So they were religious, we were regarded as religious Jews. My dad had a short beard, his brother was bearded too, they also had payes.

My parents were first cousins. Dad attended the university in Pozsony, in the Czech Republic, the Jewish university, the yeshiva, and when he came home from there, he always visited mum, he was courting her. The two grandmothers were delighted about this, as they wanted a religious couple.

This was permitted by the religion. And none of the children were disabled; they were beautiful, healthy children.

One must not marry his aunt, the religion prohibits it, but not the cousin, one can marry a cousin. [Editor’s note: The rules and prohibitions concerning marriage (respectively sexual relations in general) are specified in Leviticus 18:6-30, this part became the main reference in later rabbinic, Halakhic rules referring to marriage.

According to the Torah it is prohibited to establish sexual relations with parents (18:7), with the spouse of the parents (18:8), siblings and half-brother or half-sister (18:9), with one’s own descendants and the descendants of a parent’s spouse (18:10-11).

Leviticus 18:12 prohibits men to have sexual relations with their own aunt (“Do not have sexual relations with your father's sister”, and also prohibits to approach the wife of one’s uncle. However the Torah doesn’t mention the marriage between cousins, respectively between uncle and niece, thus it doesn’t prohibit it. The marriage between cousins, respectively between uncle and niece was a wide-spread custom in Europe and in the East until World War II.]

My grandpa on the mother’s side was Nachman Walter. I don’t know where he was born, he wasn’t alive anymore in that earliest period I can remember, he must have died a long time before, I could not tell when precisely. But they lived here, in this house, my mum lived with them, and they stayed here after she got married to dad.

Both of my grandmothers lived in this street. In Hungarian they called it Thokoly street, for Romanians [under Romanian rule after 1920, after the Trianon Peace Treaty] 2 it was always Dragos Voda street. Only the numbers changed [since then], as more houses were built in the meantime.

But it is also called Karacsfalusi street, because this road goes to Karacsfalva [Tiszakaracsonyfalva, in Romanian Craciunesti, 9 km far from Maramarossziget to the east]. Many Jews lived in this street, almost in every house. Four of my uncles and one of my aunts lived here as well.

Grandfather Walter had much land, elderly neighbors, who had known him explained to me that he had sold continuously pieces of his lands; they too had bought land from him. He also had a brandy distiller, he kept horses, cows. A lively farming was going on, there were two servants, and two coachmen too who went to the forest and transported wood. That is why the courtyard is so big, and the stable was large too.

He did transporting too, he had a dray, he transported goods with it from the railway station. They transported wine, brandy, sugar, flour, everything carried by the wagons into a storehouse, and they passed these to the shops from there. In older times there weren’t large carriages or trucks, goods were transported by drays. The dray is 3 meters long, 2 meters wide, and two strong horses [are harnessed] to it.

My grandfather was Hasid, he was bearded. He had two wives. His first wife died during childbirth, and she left behind 6 children, then my grandfather married my grandmother.

She wasn’t a young girl yet, they had two children together, my mum and my aunt. I think his first wife was called Szure [Sara, Sari] Dina, because in our family there was a grandchild called Szure Dina, Sara in almost every house, all inheriting the name of my grandfather’s first wife.

My grandmother was called Hene Rajze [Raise] Szegal, she was born in Szaplonca too. My mum’s mother had died here, in Maramarossziget, before they have taken us, she didn’t go to the ghetto. We were taken in 1944, so I suppose she must have died in 1943. I don’t know how old she was, but she couldn’t be that young, she was around 75. She is buried here, in the Jewish cemetery.

My mother had seven brothers and sisters. The oldest was Haim, he was a shoemaker, his wife was called Klari, Kajle in Jewish. Haim had four sons and a daughter: the oldest was Sandor, in Jewish Szedl, then Nuti, Nute in Jewish, there was Mojsi [Mojse], and Szruli [Szrul]. The girl was called Malka, Malcsi, her husband was Jeno Simonovits, who became my first husband.

They lived together ten years, than the children and Malcsi were deported and never came back. They had two children. The girl, Sari was 5 years younger than me, but she was slenderer and taller than me. Tibi, the little one was three years younger than his sister, so they were quite little children, when they were deported. Three boys came back from Haim’s family: Mojsi, Nuti and Szruli. Sandor was the oldest, he didn’t come back, nor did the girl. Szruli went to America, he stays in Brooklyn.

My mother’s next brother was Fishel, Fesl – Fish means fish in German –, he lived next to us in the second house, he also had a dray and lived on transportation. Fishel’s wife was called Pepi, Perle, they had eight children, two girls and six boys. The oldest boy was Muci, I don’t know his Jewish name, then there was Mojsi [Mojse], Slojmi [Slojme], Nachcsu [Nahman], Valvi [Volv];

I don’t remember the name of the sixth boy. Nachcsu lived here after the war, he had a store in Szinervaralja [today Seini in Romanian, 26 km from Nagybanya to the north-west], then he left for Israel too, he lived and got married there, but he isn’t alive anymore. There were two girls too, one of them was Sari – she learnt sewage in a dressmaker’s shop –, the other Agi. Sari’s Jewish name was Szure Dina, her grandfather gave her this name after his wife, Agi was Ajgl [Ajge], she received her name from her mother’s family.

These two girls didn’t even return after the war, they both left for Israel, but both are dead by now. The older, Sari got married in Israel, but she lived mostly in Canada. She died a few years ago of cancer, she had got it in the concentration camp. She died in Israel, but his husband took her body to Canada, she is buried there.

The parents of her husband are buried in Canada, so he took his wife too there; he said that when his time would come, he would like to rest there. Her husband is 83 years old, but he is well-preserved, he is vegetarian, he eats only vegetables. Sari has only one daughter, a journalist, she lives in Canada, but she was born in Israel.

We called her Nina, her Hebrew name is Knina Sichermann. Agi lived in Israel in a kibbutz that wasn’t a much religious one, as they said that pigs were kept there. I was there for two months in 1973, a cousin took me to that kibbutz, as I hadn’t seen Agi for a long time, since she had been deported.

There was a girl then, auntie Rozi, Roza, she must have been the third [among the brothers and sisters]. The family of my aunt Roza was also very religious, but not Hasid, like my dad and his brother. The husband of my aunt Roza was also from Sziget, Henrik Zemmel was his name.

He had a kiosk in Maramarossziget, where he was selling southern fruits, and all kinds of delicious sweets, chocolates, things like that. His tent was in a place where four streets were crossing, and it was just in the middle. He had a very profitable business, as children went there to buy sweets, and adults too –who had money – bought there delicious things.

Auntie Roza and my uncle Henrik were always in the store, and they had a servant who did the cooking and the housekeeping. They were in clover. They had only two children, one was Nachcsu, Nachman, he inherited my grandfather’s name, the other was Sari, she got her name also after Szure Dina, the first wife of my grandfather. Both left for Israel after the war, they don’t live anymore.

There was then uncle Miksa Walter– I don’t know his Jewish name –, his wife was auntie Hanni – Hanna perhaps in Jewish –, and auntie Hanni also had a daughter, Sari called Szure Dina, and had a son, but I don’t know yet his name, I have never seen that boy.

They lived here in Sziget, but far from us, they lived in the town [in the center], because my uncle Miksa was a printer. They were modern Jews, came here rarely, they didn’t visit too often grandma, they weren’t religious. I heard that Sari was alive, but she didn’t come to Sziget after the war, so I haven’t met her.

There was an engineer, he died in Viso [short for Felsoviso]. That must have been Joska [Jozsef] Walter, as I think his younger son inherited his name. He had three sons: Imre, Laci and Joska. I didn’t know them, I just heard the family talking about them. For I was very attentive to everything, people used to say that I knew too much.

I liked very much listening to the elders’ talk. First the father died, as in older times pneumonia couldn’t be cured, he died of it, and soon after his wife, Matild died too. The children grew up here in Maramarossziget, in our and other aunts’ house. Imre was a furrier, he fled for Russia.

When Hungarian troops entered here [in 1940, after the Second Vienna Dictate] 3 many young people fled, they thought life was great there. Russians didn’t want them to go there at all, their own people was enough. They said: ‘If you want to introduce communism – those told us, who ran away, then returned – you shouldn’t come to our country, we have communism here, but you should go where there isn’t, you should introduce communism there’.

Imre lived for a very long time in Russia, he worked for I don’t know how many years on a homestead, where there were cows, horses, stuff like that. He got married there – the woman wasn’t a Jew, but he didn’t manage to marry her [officially] –, and they had two daughters.

Then he came home, in around 1948, he couldn’t stay there, the Russians sent him home, but he couldn’t bring his family with him, they wouldn’t let it. He wanted to bring his wife by all means, but he couldn’t. He went to Bucharest, to here and there, but no success.

They wouldn’t allow it. Finally he left for Israel, and established there other family. Laci and Joska left for Israel before the war. The older, Laci was an ambassador in Poland. He graduated in Israel, and became ambassador there. I don’t know if he was married or not. The younger, Joska was ambassador too in Hungary, I don’t know in which year. That is what my cousin – auntie Roza’s daughter – told me, she knew better, as she was older than me.

Jeno Walter was the youngest boy, he made his living by a dray as well. Jeno Walter had neither payes nor beard; they were modern, though kept a kosher house. His wife was called Blanka Wiesel, they didn’t have children.

After that my mother and her young sister, Paula, Perlewere born from my grandfather’s second marriage. Paula’s real name was Perle, but we called her auntie Pepi. She was a beautiful girl, she had a little white dog, a puli called Buksi, she always went for a walk with the dog, it had a very nice small chain. And she always met her suitor. An engineer was courting her, but he wasn’t religious, therefore the family didn’t allow them to get married. In those times religion was given a special importance.

Alas, when they married her [to someone else], she wanted to kill herself. The chupa was ready [the wedding ceremony was over], and people waited for her at dinner, and she knew well – as she got married in this house, and the train goes through our garden – when the train was passing, she ran to the train, she wanted to kill herself, because they didn’t let her marry the person she loved.

People rushed to her from the garden and took her back. The husband of my auntie Perle was Fishel Fogel. He first ran a pub, which became bankrupt, then he tried out all kind of things, he didn’t have a secure job. He traveled mainly, he was always on the road, he was presenting goods from factories.

That’s what I heard back then. They had six children, the oldest was Nachcsu [Nahman], one of the girls was Julcsi, then there was Lajbi [Laje], Hersi [Hers], Berl, and the youngest was Lia, a girl. None of them returned [from deportation].

My mother’s name was Berta Walter, her Jewish name was Bajle, but everybody called her Berta. She was born here, in Sziget, in 1889. Her hair was cut short too, but she left some on the forehead, which was showing when she put on a shawl.

She also had a wig, but she didn’t put it on at home, just in the synagogue, there she put on a turban or a little hat. Yet my older sister didn’t want to cut off her hair when she got married, she was wearing a shawl only. My mother had seven children, though she could have had more.

She could have had 11 children, but one them died, a girl called Rozika, she got suffocated because of a bean, she put it up in her nose, it swelled up there, and she got suffocated.

She was at my grandmother on the father’s side, my grandmother was shelling beans, the child was playing with them, grandma was busy, she didn’t pay attention, and when she noticed what happened, and took her to the doctor to take out the bean it was too late.

This sister of mine had died before I was born, she must have been two years old. And my mother also had miscarriages, the babies weren’t born. I heard them speaking about this at home, she could have had 11 [children]. And seven left alive.

They [the parents] were deported in 1944, in the year we were all taken. They were taken first to Birkenau, and from Birkenau to Auschwitz, that was the concentration camp of death.

We were seven siblings, there were four brothers and three sisters counting myself too. Formerly it was a great sin not to give birth to a baby, they considered that you had killed that baby, if you didn’t give birth to it. It had to be born. That is why there were so many children.

I tell you, 7 children were in our family, in one of my uncle’s 5, in the other uncle’s 8, my third uncle had 6, the fourth had 6 too. There were many children in every Jewish family. It wasn’t a fashion to have an abortion or to take these pills in order to not to have children or to miscarry it, it wasn’t a fashion at all, but a great, a very grand sin. But children weren’t as demanding as they are today. They didn’t need swank or I don’t know what kind of clothes, they were modest.

First there was Dina Walter. She was born in 1920, when my mum didn’t marry yet my dad, her name was Walter as my mum was a Walter. Her husband was Mano Gertzovits, Mendel, who came back after the war [World War II], and got married again. My sister’s husband had a younger sister, Rozsi.

My sister left with her two years old daughter, she didn’t return. Then there was Nandi, Nandi Malek after my dad, Mojsi Malek, Jaszi Malek, David Malek– we called him Dodi, but his real name was David – and the youngest, my sister, she was called Rifki Malek.

We were all born in every second year after each other, Nandi in 1922, Mojsi in 1924, me in 1926, Jaszi in 1928, David in 1930 and Rifki in 1932. Nachman inherited my grandfather’s name, but he was called Nandor. None of my brothers and sisters returned.

• Growing up

I, Golda Salamon was born here in Sziget, on 30thNovember 1926. I don’t know from whom I inherited my name, but it is interesting that there wasn’t any other Golda in the family, just me. There was one more, I think a relative on my mother’s side, but they lived in Szaplonca, not in Sziget.

Since we usually didn’t look for names somewhere else, but just in the family. They give names after the grandparents, if they are no longer alive, or after a family member if they die. I have only one name, I was called Galdi from the outset. My sister, Dina had only one name too. I don’t know either about Dina having a further name. However it is a custom to give two names, especially for boys. Dodi, David had also the name David Hers.

We were considered to be religious Jews [Hasidim], as my dad and his younger brother attended the yeshiva if Pozsony, in the Czech Republic. So they were religious, and my grandmothers too were religious. Hasidim were very religious, and they observed religion.

They had a separate synagogue, separate slaughterhouse, separate shochet, they did not mix with Sephardim [Editor’s note: Golda Salamon calls the Neologs Sephardim, but not only her, they were called Sephardim in Sziget in general.].They said those were Sephardim, and they were Orthodox. The very religious ones were Orthodox. They wouldn’t have eaten from a meat slaughtered by a Sephardi shochet, they considered it to be treyf [non-kosher].

The Sephardi synagogue is the one that is still left, they didn’t demolish it. Before the war, when we had our great festivals, Rosh Hashanah for example, meaning New Year, they always engaged a famous cantor from Bucharest, Varad [short for Nagyvarad], Kolozsvar, who was praying and who conducted the whole liturgy, thus the prayer sounded great.

These cantors are usually opera singers, so they must have a good voice. On these occasions religious Jews came to that synagogue too to listen to the cantor. Still there were many Jews in those times, the seats in the synagogue were numbered, and one could buy a place.

During autumn festivals you had to give cash for a seat, you couldn’t get in just like that, up there were seats for women, and down for men. Hasidim too engaged many times cantors in the great synagogue. If not, there was a chazzan who could pray well, and had a good voice. But there wasn’t any opera singer, any cantor. Festivals were very beautiful once. On the Day of Atonement the ‘Kannedra’ [Kol Nidre] started in the evening was so beautiful, it was very nice once.

The Sephardi rabbi, Danczig [Editor’s note: dr. Samuel Benjamin Danczig was the rabbi of the Neolog community in Maramarossziget between 1906-1944. (The Heart Remembers. Jewish Sziget, ed. by Association of Former Szigetian in Izrael, Havazelet Press, 2003).], was a very intelligent person, he had a doctorate, he was a learned man.

His wife was Hanele, she came from a rabbi family. On ‘Ziua Eroilor’ holiday [Heroes’ Day in Romanian ], when people used to go to the Jewish cemetery and to the catholic one too, the rabbi always came with us, and he gave a speech, he recited a Kaddish for the dead.

The ‘Zecse Maj’ [10th of May 4 in Romanian written phonetically in Hungarian] was celebrated, and the main national day was ‘opt junie’ [the 8th of June]. [Editor’s note: On the 10thof May the day of the coronation of Romanian King Carol II 5 was celebrated, but it was also the Day of the Watchmen (‘Ziua Strajeriei’ in Romanian) 6, on this day the guards kept parades and celebrations in the honor of the king.] I don’t remember when ‘Ziua Eroilor’ was.

[Editor’s note: According to the resolution adopted on 4thMay 1920 it was introduced in Romania that people would commemorate soldiers who had died during World War I too on the 8thof June, 40 days after the Christian Easter. Thus Ascension and Heroes’ Day was celebrated on the same day.] However on that day every pupil went to the cemetery. This was when I was a schoolgirl, before the war.

There were many synagogues in Sziget. There wasn’t any Neolog synagogue, only this one that is left, the others were religious, Hasid. In front of this one, which persisted, there were two.

There was than the ‘Great Synagogue’, the ‘Old Synagogue’, that’s how people used to call it, where a grandchild of Teitelbaum was the rabbi.

[Editor’s note: Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda Teitelbaum (Yenuka, the Child, 1912-1944) was the last Hasid rabbi in Maramarossziget, between 1926-44, he died in Auschwitz (The Heart Remembers. Jewish Sziget, ed. byAssociation of Former Szigetian in Izrael, Havazelet Press, 2003).] This synagogue was in the place where the monument of deported is today.

There used to be the public baths too. We had one more baths; a synagogue was next to it too. Besides there were three or four other synagogues, smaller ones, not such big synagogues. However the rabbi of Borsa [today Borsa, 80 km far from Maramarossziget to the south-east] had a synagogue in Sziget, the rabbi of Karacsfalu and the rabbi of Szaplonca had synagogues here. [Editor’s note: The denominations were given according to the origin of a synagogue’s community.] Almost every village had a rabbi here.

All of them had their own Hasidim, their own community belonging to them, who attended the synagogue. The community bought the building they transformed into a synagogue, and they brought a rabbi here; if he had already a synagogue here, he lived in Sziget, and established a family here.

The synagogue of Szaplonca had many members, because Szaplonca wasn’t far from here, and the rabbi of Szaplonca had followers there too. Many people came to the rabbi of Szaplonca on high holidays, and they had no place where to sleep, so they slept in the hayloft, just to be together with the rabbi.

As it was acknowledged that the rabbi of Szaplonca was a very wise man. The synagogue of the rabbi of Borsa and that of Karacsfalu were in this street.

Where the hospital used to be, where Mrs. Kenyeresi was the doctor, the two synagogues were in front of that, a little bit further on from Elie Wiesel’s house. All this those elder Jews would know better, who attended the synagogue. Women didn’t really go to the synagogue, girls didn’t at all. Thus I can’t inform you well in this matter.

There were many small synagogues, houses for praying, where thirty-forty persons would pray. But at great festivals, when they knew that a cantor came, they reeled off the prayers, and went to listen to the cantor. Yet they didn’t have seats, as all places were occupied, they could enter though. My father wasn’t a Sephardi, nevertheless he went to that synagogue to listen to the cantor.

There was a small synagogue [house for praying] in this street too, my father went there. Those who lived in this street went to that one. This small synagogue didn’t have a rabbi, just a teacher – they called him ‘rabaj’ –, who taught the children Jewish [Hebrew].

We had a ‘hajder’ [cheder] here – where the Talmud was taught in Jewish –, because there were many Jewish children in this street. Everywhere where there were Jewish children, a cheder was established. It is compulsory; children [boys] go to cheder from the age of four.

They use the pencil there already, and they start to learn the numbers, they have to write numbers until 100, from the age of four. And they also learn the alphabet, which is in Jewish, since they are four.

Thus our children when they go to school at the age of six or seven, when they go to the first grade, they are not so ignorant, because they know already to count, to write letters, so they learn well, and comprehend things faster than those who attended only kindergarten, and have never taken a pencil in their hands.

These children, our children were all good students, as they were taught from the age of four already. And they attend cheder when they are in the 5th, 6th, 7thgrade. Since they study the whole book of prayers.

My father was religious, he attended the yeshiva in Pozsony, so he interrogated the boys [my brothers] every Saturday afternoon to find out what they had learned, what they knew. The boys knew very well to pray in general, because they were studying a lot. It wasn’t easy, as they had to go early in the morning to the cheder to this teacher, and they had to arrive in school at seven.

The girls had to learn only to read. They had to learn only from the age of 12-13, and we didn’t have a teacher who would have taught the girls separately. The ‘rabaj’ was teaching boys only, but not girls. We had a young teacher, who also had finished yeshiva, and was a learned man, he taught only girls, at our house or at my aunt’s house, it depended.

There were two girls in my aunt’s family, we were two sisters, there were three other girls in the neighbor’s family, we took our exercise-book and pencil, and he was teaching us how to write. First he teaches the Jewish names of months. Then the alphabet. If you know that, you can connect words. Back then it was compulsory to know these.

My poor grandmother, my mum’s mother always used to say: ‘Learn how to pray properly, you should know at least to read in the synagogue, otherwise when you will go to there, you would count the windows and the doors, because you won’t be able to read. Learn how to pray, because one must know it.’

As people were very religious in that village, in Szaplonca, where she grew up, the girls were studying like the boys. Finally I couldn’t get to [didn’t have time to] learn to read well, I know, but not well, I’m not as good in reading as I should be.

Since I was deported in the meantime, and we didn’t have enough time to learn. I couldn’t get to learn well how to pray either. It is very hard for us to pray. It isn’t in Israel, because they speak that language that is written. We pray, but we don’t know what. I can read it, but I don’t know its meaning.

Only if it is written on the other side in Jewish, in the Jewish jargon [in Yiddish]. When I was a girl, there were women in the synagogue who could pray very well, and there were some like me, who had to give to others the book, to look up the part the rabbi was reciting.

If we weren’t good enough in praying, we didn’t find it, as it isn’t written fluently, one always had to leaf a bit to find what he was saying. Women too went to the synagogue at autumn festivals. They all bought the place where to sit, the synagogue was maintained from that money. We, young girls attended this small synagogue [house of prayers].

I wasn’t married before the war [World War II] yet. Mainly married women go to the synagogue. Girls go sometimes to look around, but only those women go there to pray who are married. Anyway it isn’t obligatory for women to go to the synagogue everyday, just for men.

Men went to the synagogue every morning, especially those who weren’t employed. In older times people didn’t have an employment, they did dickering [free commerce]. My father came regularly as well to this small synagogue. Jewish men have a ‘tveln’ [tefilin] they used to put on while praying, the boys learn at the age of 13 how to put it on, and since that age it is compulsory for them to go to the synagogue.

Every man must have a tallit, even if he is not religious, he takes it with him to the other world, he is rolled up in that when he dies. He puts it when he goes to the synagogue to pray. One can not buy it from the shop; I don’t know which factory made it. It was cream-colored, with black stripes on both sides, and it had fringes at the four ends, tzitzit, that had to be sewed on.

Men also wore slipovers, it was made of white linen, and it had fringes at the four sides. It was a slip-on clothe, they wore it under the shirt so that the fringes would have not hanged out. But when they were praying, they put out the fringes. Back then a Jewish child would go at the age of four to the cheder, and wear a slipover. He put it in the morning, as soon as he got up.

Women didn’t use to pray at home. The many children consumed their time, they didn’t have time to pray. It wasn’t compulsory for a woman to pray. But in our family [for example] the custom was that when we set down to have lunch, we had to take down the rings, wash our hands, and there was a certain prayer we had to recite.

If you had eaten a fruit, there was a prayer that had to be said, when you cut the bread, there is an other to be said. These customs were compulsory for women, but going to the synagogue... [wasn’t]. At least here, in our town. They used to go in older times, the grandmothers, as long as they could. They did. But their children didn’t.

There were two mikves [ritual baths]: the central one, in front of the Old Synagogue, the other one was totally elsewhere, so I’ve just heard about it, but never been there. We always went to this central one. Neologs, the other community could go as well to both mikves.

In those times we washed ourselves at home, there wasn’t a bathroom in every house like today. And we went to the public baths to take a bath. Men had to go more frequently than women. We, the young used to go bathing to the Tisza or Iza rivers.

I went to the Tisza to bath in swimsuit, back then there was a canal which is no longer there. An old woman visits me sometimes, she keeps telling me even today: ‘Galdika, we always took delight in watching you, you were such a beautiful girl, you went to the Tisza in swimsuit.’

It was a beautiful swimsuit, an American one, dark-blue with nice white flowers. And I didn’t get sunburn, so that my skin would peel, but I got a creole-like dark skin. ‘Your blue eyes – she always says – were so shining. We always looked at you with my husband, what a beautiful girl you were.’ ‘Oh dear – I say to her – Irenke, it was so long ago. It might not even have been true.’

However we used to go to the central bath too, especially after I got married, we had to go once in a month. It was a big bath, there were about 12 bathtubs – there were rooms with two, respectively with one bathtub –, and there was a mikveh, a kind of lake, you had to go down some stairs to it.

First we washed ourselves thoroughly in the bath, and then we had to go into that lake. There was a woman responsible for the bath, as mikveh wasn’t only about going in and taking a bath.

They cut your nails, as you mustn’t have long nails, and one had to go down the three stairs to that lake [basin], and had to dive completely three times; then the woman responsible for bathing said a prayer – she was out [on the verge of the basin] – and one had to say after her, if she didn’t know it. I hated diving, when I was married, my coiffure got always spoiled.

Before getting married the bride is taken to the baths, where she is being taught about religion and how she should observe it. It is a Jewish woman’s duty to light a candle every Friday evening [at sunset] – I light four candles myself even today, two for the dead, and other two because I’m married –, and she has to say a certain prayer.

The other duty is to go once in a month to the ritual bath, after her menses ends. Back then challah was baked at every Jewish family for Sabbath – they called it ‘koldecs’ or ‘barhesz’; they took out a little from the dough they would make the challah of, they said a prayer and throw it into the fire, no matter if it was baked in a stove or in an oven.

These three things have to be known by a Jewish woman when she gets married. She went to the mikveh with her mother-in-law, her mother or sister-in-low, so that she would learn her duties and how to behave. She went to the mikveh for the first time when married, before that she just took a bath, like today in the bathroom, but she wasn’t allowed before to go in the mikveh.

The reason why people say that our religion is a rigorous one is that when a Jewish girl gets married, and she has her first menses after that, she mustn’t sleep with her husband for two weeks. The days are counted in a way so that the menses is taken into account, so after 12 days she is clean for sure.

Since some women have longer menses, some women have shorter ones. You put some white little rags there to see if you are completely clean. And when she is completely clean, after 12 days, then she can go to the mikveh. But they didn’t count too much, because children came one after the other. Women don’t have menses during those nine months while they are pregnant, just after that. Many times the baby is not even one, one and a half, the next is coming.

People say that Jewish men usually frequent prostitutes. I’ve been asked by several people about the reason for it. I tell them: don’t you know the Jewish religious prescriptions? A Jewish man won’t wait so long until his woman becomes kosher [clean] again. If it occurs to him, he won’t let the opportunity slip, on the contrary, he looks for it. And this is not a sin.

There were women who took care of it, they just had to be assured not to take home some disease. There was a brothel here too, in Maramarossziget, where such women of pleasure were. Many men used to go there, because they could be sure that the girls there weren’t ill, so they wouldn’t take up any disease. It had a price, people could have fun there, they could dance, amuse, they could do everything there.

One had to pay in, it wasn’t for free. And if one wanted to consume, it had to be paid as well. There were very beautiful women one could spend a night with, provided he had paid in. Only beautiful women were there, there were Jewish girls too, oh dear. Religious men didn’t go there, just those who weren’t that religious. They did. Both of my two husbands told me they had been there when young. They wouldn’t tell me if they went there when married as well.

We had Jewish balls before the war [World War II], at Purim and Chanukkah. I was a lass, I didn’t go to balls, but my sister did. People didn’t dance Jewish dances in a Jewish ball, as there were many Christians too, not only Jews. They danced tango, slow fox – it is a bit more shaking one, but still an even one, similar to the tango – and things of the kind.

The household was kosher in every Jewish house, because it was good for the health too. As we don’t mix the milk-pot with pots for meat, it is not good to boil the milk in a pot that you use for frying the meat, you need a separate pot for milk. Thus we always had a separate pot for milk and one for meat.

That is how most Jewish families proceeded. Now what means kosher? In big cities meat is bought ready koshered. But we bought the meat, kosher meat was slaughtered specially for us; we had a shochet who slaughtered the animals, and we had a butcher who cut up the meat.

When we brought home the meat, we would put it into water to soak it so that the blood would have gone out of it, then we would put salt on both sides, and leave it like this, salted for one hour.

We had special baskets for salting, from where the bloody fluid would fall drop by drop. We had to salt it above a bowl or a butt, after one hour we would rinse it three times, then it is koshered. We do this because Jews don’t eat blood. It is forbidden, that is why meat needs to be koshered.

In summer Jewish families prepared cholent usually. We didn’t make fire in the summer, so we would take the cholent to the neighbor at noon, there they made a fire in the stove, and every Jew from that street took there the cholent. It got ready by next day noon. They also prepared grated potatoes.

That was always the Saturday lunch. It is a good dish, as it has a lot of meat in it. Cholent is prepared in a crock, when heated up, crocks retain the warm. Thus men took home the cholent hot when they returned from the synagogue. The first dish was always fish.

We didn’t prepare it, because children wanted to eat too, but they could have not been given, because fishes have small bones. So they prepared instead eggs with onions. It is also a Jewish custom to prepare for first dish fish in aspic. In every Jewish family they prepared stuffed fish.

The meat is minced in tiny pieces, it is mixed with eggs, grated onions, hot pepper, breadcrumbs, and the [skin of the] fish is stuffed with this mixture. I can skin fish very well, only its tail remains. One has to be well up in this. First my husband wouldn’t have understood that I couldn’t.

‘If you don’t know how to do it, ask somebody, but it needs to be done.’ I was good in preparing stuffed fish. If there isn’t fish, they prepare a similar first dish, but of chicken breast.

They slice up onion, carrot, parsley, they put it on to boil, then the chicken breast is minced, mixed with spices, breadcrumbs, egg, they make balls of it, and boil it in the vegetable soup.

Not much soup is required, it needs only to cover the balls. It is called false fish. It looks like stuffed fish, as it can be prepared together, in this case it has to be sliced alike fish.

Or balls can be prepared in all kind of forms, but it has to be flavored.

There were Passover[Pesach] bowls kept in the loft in a big chest. They brought down and wash them before Pesach. They used the same bowls all year, but Pesach lasted one week, and they used separate bowls in that period.

They got prepared for Pesach, they usually organized a housecleaning, the kitchen was whitewashed, painted.

Children were very happy at Pesach, they got new shoes and clothes, thus we always waited for Pesach. At Pesach we have potatoes, eggs, onion, meat and matzah – we don’t eat bread at Pesach, only matzah –, that’s what Jews eat.

The first dish was eggs with onion: eggs are boiled, onions are cut into small pieces, and eggs are grated on the onion and mixed.

At Pesach we usually kill a chicken, we fry the liver on the coal, and grate it into the eggs with onion. They eat it with matzah or boiled potatoes, some like to put into it the boiled potatoes, some like to eat it separately.

This is the first dish, the eggs with onions. Even today those who observe Pesach eat this meal. Then they had meat-soup.

The noodles put into the soup were prepared of potato-starch. 3-4 eggs were beat up, they put into it 3-4 spoons of potato-flour, a little salt and oil. In older times they didn’t really use oil for frying, but mainly goose fat. (We used to fatten goose as well, and we would cut it at Pesach. Gooses were sitting on eggs, and ganders were cut in order to have both fat and meat. We used mainly poultry, not beef.)

At Pesach noodles were prepared of potato-flour and eggs like the dough of the pancake. As it mustn’t have been chopped up. They baked it on a baking dish, then they cut it for noodles.

[Editor’s note: Golda Salamon’s relating refers to a specific custom of over-assurance: since the matzah consumed at Pesach as bread is made of wheaten flour before Pesach, but a great attention is paid not to let the mixture of flour and water rise when they prepare it.

The matzah meal is prepared by grinding finely the matzah, which of course doesn’t contain leaven. This meal can be used for preparing any kind of meal during the eight days of Pesach, since the matzah meal can’t rise when it is “re-used” – thus the Halakhic prescriptions doesn’t prohibit the discretional use of the “matzah meal”.

But because at Pesach the prohibition of leavened meals is a very strict rule, there are some people who by way of precaution extend the prohibition to meals made of matzah meal, therefore they won’t let the mixture of meal, water and eggs to stand for more than 18 minutes, and in order not to exceed time they bake the dough immediately after mixing it.] It was put in bowls and the soup was turned on it.

After that we had meat, vegetables and khremzlakh. They used to bake khremzlakh at Pesach: they grate potatoes, put eggs into it, and roast it like meatballs, but a little bit flatter. We ate that with meat. We had plum jam for compote, or stewed apple, we had that most often. Boiled eggs play a great role at Pesach.

They eat boiled eggs, especially on the two Seder nights. Dad has always observed Seder night, it was 1-2 o’clock in the night when he finished reading out everything and explaining it to children in Jewish. It is written in Hebrew, but we couldn’t speak Hebrew yet, like people did in Israel, we spoke the jargon Jewish, the Yiddish.

We spoke at home Hungarian and Yiddish. My grandmother on the mother’s side didn’t speak Hungarian, she was speaking Jewish [Yiddish]. But we spoke Hungarian, because mum and dad went to school in the Hungarian era [in the time of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy], they spoke a very good Hungarian, but they didn’t speak perfectly Romanian.

They were reading the Hungarian newspaper – as they couldn’t understand the Romanian one – and Hungarian books. There was a printing house here in Sziget, there were two of them in fact, we had Romanian and Hungarian newspapers in my time, that’s what I remember, that must have been in around 1940 [at the end of the 1930s].

And the state didn’t forbid people to write in Hungarian or to publish Hungarian books. As if the parents went to a Hungarian school, they would read Hungarian newspapers, they liked to learn of the news. In those times very few people had a radio – in this street there might have been two radios, not more –, I won’t even mention television sets.

They liked to listen to the news, and they could get some from the newspaper. Here in Sziget Jews talked a lot in Hungarian generally. Where Jews were staying, in that house they spoke Jewish. The elder spoke, but not all children did. A very few spoke German, only those who lived environs Viso, where Germans, Saxons lived. Here in Sziget only those spoke German who were taught to, who kept a governess who spoke German. Hereabouts Jews spoke mainly Hungarian.

Most [of Sziget’s population] were Jews, there were quite a lot of Romanians too, but here on the main road only Jews lived, Romanians lived always farther back [in the outskirts]. Thus Jews weren’t badly off. There were many poor Jews too, and wealthy Jews, but generally they weren’t badly off. And Romanians and Jews didn’t hate each other, they got on well.

The [Romanian] children didn’t go to school, they didn’t really have the possibility or the ability, but otherwise all people were on good terms, we never used to tell the other you are a Jew, you are Hungarian, or Romanian, no, there weren’t such things.

The [Jewish] children who went to Romanian school had to speak Romanian. As one had to go to school, and it depended on the regime, if Romanians were [ruling], you had to learn in Romanian, if Hungarians [had the power, Golda Salamon refers to the period between 1940-1944, to the ‘Hungarian era’] 7, you were learning in Hungarian.

Mum always used to say: ‘Children have to be taught according to the regime. What good for going to a Hungarian school, but it is Romania where we are living? You can’t get on.’ I had a neighbor, she had two daughters. One of them was learning to be a medical assistant in Szatmar, the other was younger, she was attending grade school.

The elder wrote her mother a letter: ‘Take out Aniko from the Hungarian school, and let her go to the Romanian one, because every after-noon I have to seat and transform [translate] Hungarian into Romanian so that I can answer next day at school.’

I failed to pass the first grade, because I didn’t speak Romanian, only Hungarian, then my mum took me to a little Romanian girl with whom I used to go to school together, so that I would play with and talk to her and learn Romanian. Thus when I repeated first grade I could speak Romanian.

I finished six grades in a Romanian school, and only one in a Hungarian one, the seventh, Hungarians were here then [in 1940, after the Second Vienna Dictate] 3. In the 7thgrade I had a teacher, Imre Kis, he and his wife were young married, and had a child. Lojszu was the headmaster of the Hungarian school. I attended only elementary school, I couldn’t get further [because I was deported].

• During the war

However, we didn’t really go to school in the Hungarian era, because Jews weren’t accepted [because of the Anti-Jewish laws in Hungary] 8. And we were wearing the yellow star [Yellow star in Hungary] 9, we weren’t allowed to walk on the streets. However it didn’t last too long, as we were taken.

They closed a few streets, and we were all taken gradually into the ghetto. That was in 1944, shortly after Pesach. We celebrated Pesach at home, and after Pesach we were in the ghetto already. There were three streets that belonged to the ghetto, and all the Jews from Sziget and the nearby villages were taken there. They took the Jews even from the villages, they came by wagons. And 2-3 weeks after they started to put us into stock-cars, and transported us to concentration camps.

[Editor’s note: 12,849 Jews were deported from Maramarossziget on 16th, 18th, 20thand 22ndof May 1944–.] You couldn’t run away, because wherever you would run, they would have shot you. Only those survived who were hidden away in time.

There were persons hidden in some kind of cellar, someone brought them food, and they survived somehow, or there were people who hided in a well in which the water had dried up. There were some who escaped, but only a few. And there were people who wandered in the forest until they were caught. But they took everybody on the whole.

My aunt had six children, not one returned among them. In the other family with eight children two girls and a boy returned from the six brothers. My third aunt had two children, both of them returned, and from my oldest uncle’s family, where there were four boys and a girl, three boys returned.

But the girl didn’t come back – she was the wife of my first husband –, she was my cousin, she was taken with two children, she didn’t return. Those who went away with children usually didn’t return, because children couldn’t survive, they wouldn’t leave the children [alive].

Those had a chance to return who were transported in the same stock-car with their mother-in-low or mother, and they gave the child to the mother, and if the woman was young, she was selected for work. Quite a lot young women were taken, young mothers, who were with their children.

When we arrived in Birkenau – it was illuminated in such a degree that one could have found the needles –, we were chosen [sorted out] not by Germans, but by Polish, who had been taken first into concentration camps. It was them who built up the ‘waschraums’ – waschraum [washroom] is the place where we washed ourselves – and the toilets and the blocks, because we were staying in blocks like coops, you could only sit, but you couldn’t stand up. There was a doctor, Mengele, he examined everybody

[Editor’s note: It is only a presumption that Mengele would have examined personally the people.] only with the eyes, he wouldn’t touch people, but you had to undress completely, you were holding your clothes in your hands, and he would show with his finger, which would go to the right, for work, and which would go to the left, into the crematorium. Seven crematoriums were functioning day and night where I was. I passed [the medical examination] 18 times.

They separated me there from my parents and siblings, I never saw them once again. And he [the doctor] sent many people to the left, persons for example, on whom a few pimples came out because of the intense sunlight, he saw that, and found it no good. In brief he sent many to the other world.

A great number of people. Well, my mother wasn’t even 50 when she got deported. She was still young. I spent about 5-6 months in Birkenau, I worked there too, but I got a number in Auschwitz, they tattooed me, and I kept on working there.

They didn’t call us on our names, they called us only by our numbers. 7986. ‘Neunundsiebsigsechsundachtsig’ – that’s how they called me by number. Every morning at three, three and a half we had ‘zahl apell’, meaning that they counted us. We had to get up, we were taken out, alike soldiers, we had line up in lines of five, and they counted us.

Then we got breakfast, a bitter tea and 25 decagram bread for a day. A black bread, like a brick was cut in four, and that was the bread [portion] for four persons for one day. This was given in the morning.

Then they asked us who wanted to go to work. I was the first to step out, so that I would leave the concentration camp, so that I would not stay in that crowd, I wanted to go to fresh air, it didn’t matter what I had to work. Just to be outside, and not inside.

Well, and [there] they brought us lunch, we would line up again by fives, I was always in front, because I was small, I wasn’t as tall as the others. They put in a rounded bowl some wish-wash, I couldn’t call it otherwise, but you didn’t get a spoon or something, you slurped a little, and the person behind told you don’t eat too much, so that I get some for myself.

Dinner was a bitter tea, and bread, if you left some. It was a holiday when they cooked potatoes in their jackets, without cleaning them, and they would give 3-4 pieces of cooked potatoes. It was a holiday to get some. Otherwise we got a very very bad food. The food was terribly bad. So that’s how we were living in the concentration camp.

I was working on the field, for example a land was ploughed up, which might not have been for 50 years. And we got iron hoes to chop up the soil, which was grassy, so that it could be cropped. And I worked in an aircraft factory one winter.

As during winter it was snow too, it was cold, we couldn’t work on the fields, so I worked in an aircraft factory, we had to produce spare-parts. People worked there in three shifts: morning, after-noon and night shift. [I worked in the morning], then they would count us, and take us back to the concentration camp at around 5 in the after-noon.

They brought into the concentration camp women from Germany as supervisors, who had had a bad conduct, they were the kapos above us. They wore striped clothing, we wore only single-colored, gray clothing. They couldn’t manage them in Germany, they had put them in prison, they had punished them, but these women still were whores.

And they brought them into the concentration camp, they were our supervisors. They didn’t work, just looked after us so that we worked. There was a kapo, she asked the girls who could wash, put up and comb hair. I always presented myself, I [said that I] could do it.

I have never done it, however I put her hair up with small pieces of rag and newspaper, as we didn’t have any roller, I combed it out in the morning, because she wanted to look nice, so she would give me of the food she got, they had separate kitchen. Because I washed and arranged her hair, I cleaned her underwear, she always gave me a bone, like we used to throw one for dogs. However it was good, it helped me a lot. That’s how I could work. That’s why I succeeded [to survive].

There was then a man from Temesvar, he must have been around 50 years old, and he fell for me. He was an SS, a guard. When we got into the concentration camp, they cropped our hair completely, but I had a curly hair, and it grew back prettily.

It wasn’t long, but I had some hair, and I wasn’t an ugly girl one would have thrown away. He says to me: ‘Aranka – in Hungarian Galdi is Aranka –, after the war, when it will end, will you be my wife?’ ‘I will, of course.’ It cost me nothing to tell him I would be his wife.

They escorted us to work with dogs, on every side there were 4 guards with dogs. The dogs were trained, if you weren’t bent down, and the guard would call it, the dog jumped on you, and tore you until you bent down and worked, and it wouldn’t have left you until the guard would shout ‘Phooey’.

It meant that it was enough, that the dogs shouldn’t continue tearing you. As there were elder women among us, who could get into the concentration camp, they bore all this with a great difficulty.

The young could carry on better, how old was I, I was only 15, I could bear it better, that is for sure, as that one who got in, and was 25, 30, 35 years old. Well now, because he [this guard] hoped to marry me after the war, he brought me [some food].

They didn’t get either I don’t know what kind of pate, but he brought two slices of bread fried in margarine. Since we got a little margarine sometimes together with the breakfast bread. And sometimes he brought me salami, he made a sandwich. He packed those two little slices of bread in a paper, and he bound it in a handkerchief.

He pretended next to me, as if he had skipped the handkerchief, he picked it up, that’s how he managed to give it to me. And that’s how I could survive. A little bit from here, a little from there, and that’s it. However it was hard, I weighed 37 kilos when I was set free.

In Auschwitz the concentration camp was fenced in with wire, and they introduced electric current in it. If you put your hand on it, you perished there. Women were on one side, men on the other. Sometimes we went to the wire fence to talk, because they couldn’t forbid that.

I met there by chance a Czech boy, who was a musician, he also threw me across the wire bread or warm stockings, when it was cold, things like that. He too: ‘When we will be set free, will you be my wife?’ ‘I will.’ I promised this to all of them. One has to endure many in order to survive.

I underwent many things. We stepped on the dead as if they had been stones. One didn’t care with other being than himself. If someone was propping against the wall and told you: ‘Brother, help me, bring me some water!’, but you had to go far to find water, [you didn’t go]. You cared only for yourself, to be able to survive, you couldn’t help the other. It was very hard, it was terribly hard.

We were taken from Auschwitz to other concentration camp, I was in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, and in other one, and the last one was in Mauthausen. I traveled enough in stock-cars when I was taken from one concentration camp to the other. It was full of snow, and the shoes froze to our legs, when it started to thaw.

Well, we bore that too, but not everybody did. They gathered there [to Mauthausen] all the heftlings [prisoners], they undermined the concentration camp, it was supposed to explode on the 7thof May [1945].

They wanted to explode us, because they realized they were going to loose the war, and they didn’t want it to become known what they did, the way they tortured people. The mines had to be placed by Jewish boys.

We had luck that the Americans came in on the 4thof May, and they destroyed the mines.

• After the war and later life

Many people would have died there, I don’t know how many heftling, as they were called, there were both women and men. I got so used to be led everywhere by guards with dogs, that when I was set free, I was looking back all the time to see if the guard was coming with the dog. This became rooted in us. We couldn’t believe anymore that we were free. It was very difficult.

After the release I got ill. The Americans were wrong to bring so much food; they brought us large kettles of food, which they shouldn’t have had. We were so starved, we didn’t get even water for 3 days in the concentration camp in Mauthausen.

First they could give us only bread and granulated sugar, they had a huge quantity of granulated sugar. But after that they started to bring food in kettles, goulash and stuff like that. They should have started with dietary regimen, with tea, zwieback, something of the kind. But people are starved, and they don’t think they would get ill.

Many people died then. They had enough, they got diarrhea, and died of it. They weren’t resistant enough. And I fell ill too, not because I would be that greedy, no matter how hungry I am, I can’t fall upon food, but everything was so fatty, our intestines didn’t get used to it. I got diarrhea too, but it wasn’t so serious, and they took me to hospital.

I got half a liter of blood in one arm, a half in the other; the blood flew down so quickly, because the veins were empty, and I also got a liter of glucose in one leg, and a liter in the other. When all that glucose flew down, I felt I could get up from my bed.

We got charity packs from the Americans while in bed, there was chocolate, zwieback, granulated sugar in it, even toilet articles for women, toilet soap, lipstick, eau de cologne, and some long-life dry cakes. It helped too, we had a good time in bed. But when I felt I was able to, I got up, I took my sheet, and [I thought] I would go to take a bath.

Since there was a bathtub, and a common bath too, like a lake, but it was roofed. As I got into the water, I didn’t feel good, I felt that my heart wouldn’t resist. I got out of the water at once, and I wound around myself the sheet, but I dropped on the corridor.

They took me into the room, and gave me a tough scolding because I went to bath and I got up from bed. We got every day a basin of water, but I couldn’t wash myself as in a bath, just how one could wash herself in bed. And they really scolded me.

Then an American professor came, he examined and took a look at everybody, he interrogated the doctor on everyone’s problem. He says, ‘What does this little girl have, as she looks fine.’ My face didn’t get so thin, but when the doctor uncovered me, the American professor was frightened of me.

is that I was 35 kilos then. The doctor said that I didn’t have any specific problem, it was just that they couldn’t stop my diarrhea. The professor took out a box of his bag, as he had a camera on one shoulder, and a medical suitcase on the other: ‘You shall give from this medicine nine pieces in a day.

Three in the morning, three at noon, three in the evening. For three days. This is a medicine, he says, which takes away by hand the illness. If she doesn’t get better in three days, then on the fourth day you shall give her only in the morning and at noon.’ And indeed, just as if it had taken away the illness by hand, I recovered due to that [medicine]. I could eat, and I didn’t have diarrhea anymore.

Then they started to count up and send us home. They listed us, meaning that we got papers, and they told us which train to get on, and that train would take us to Vienna. Many people came home in stock-cars. But when I was coming home – this should have happened in winter [in winter of 1945-46] – I had luck, because I got in a normal train.

The seats were occupied, the Romanian officers returned from war. Two persons were sitting in a line, I asked them to make room for me, because I wasn’t able [to stand], I was extremely weakened – I could speak to them in Romanian. I sat next to them.

After that Russian soldiers came up, they were pulling down girls from the train, they mocked of girls, it was terrible. A Russian wanted [to pull] me down, but one of them [of the Romanian soldiers] told him ‘This is my wife, you have nothing to do with her’, and they didn’t let me go. Well, that’s how I arrived to Vienna.

They waited for us already there, there were two large villas in Vienna, and all the girls and boys who came from concentration camps were transported there. We underwent doctors’ round [medical examination], they gave us to eat and sent us onward. I haven’t had any organic disorder, only that I was extremely weakened, and I had a very abundant flux.

That was because of the weakness. And the doctor said that this had to be treated, I couldn’t go further. There were about two hundred beds in that large villa. A young boy was laying next to my bed, he must have been 5-6 years older than me, he was from Kolozsvar. We were talking. He says to me: ‘How can you imagine that I’m coming home from the concentration camp, you pretty young girl, and I would sleep alone?’

However he introduced himself, his name was Laci. I said: ‘Listen, I’m ill, and I’m not interested in such silly things. I’m happy to be alive.’ Well, he understood that, and behaved very nice with me afterwards. He was together with three girls and two boys, all from Kolozsvar, I said: ‘You will go further, but I have to stay here, I have to stay in the hospital.’ But I didn’t want to stay in the hospital.

Thus Laci went to the doctor and told him that ‘She is my sister, I’m responsible that she would arrive to Pest with us. Give me a paper so that she gets a berth on the train.’ And I was given a small pillow and a rug, and that’s how I got to Pest. And I stayed in hospital in Pest too, until I came to the hospital in Kolozsvar.

I arrived in Kolozsvar in 1946, it must have been spring, it wasn’t cold. In Kolozsvar I stayed another three months in the hospital. There a woman from Sziget recognized me, she was referred to the hospital too, and she gave a phone call to Sziget, so that if someone from my family came home, would know that I’m alive, I came home, I’m in the hospital.

Then my former brother-in-law, Dina’s husband sent me money to go home. He was married again, as my sister didn’t return, and he sent his brother-in-law. I told his brother-in-law, that he could leave me the money, it could be useful when I needed something, if they wouldn’t give me enough, but I could not go home yet, the lady-doctor won’t let me, because I haven’t recovered yet completely. They gave me medicine there, and the flux was over.

It was winter already when I had to go home, it was cold. I went to Szatmar by train, but there wasn’t any train from Szatmar to Sziget, I could travel only on truck. In winter, on the top of some barrels, I arrived home somehow. I couldn’t come here [to the house], because the army post was here, it [the road] was blocked, they wouldn’t let me pass through.

The trains transporting German prisoners from the front arrived right there, and they selected the prisoners at the army post. If one had an SS tattooed under the armpit, he couldn’t go home, he was sent back to Russia. He was sent to Siberia, or I don’t know where, but wasn’t allowed to go home. The ordinary Germans, the Wehrmacht were released. Thus one couldn’t simply cross there, they had to go by a roundabout route.

I arrived at night, an acquaintance received me, I slept in his house, and the next day they sent somebody to pick me up, because I had arrived. My former brother-in-law came, as he had a horse, a cart, he did the rounds, and that’s how he took me home.

But my life was plenty of vicissitudes after that too. He was married already, he had a sister-in-law, brother-in-law, wife, and she didn’t approve of me, well [I was] the first wife’s sister. My brother-in-law was attached to me, I couldn’t say the contrary, but he didn’t stay at home, and women didn’t treat me well.

Thus I went to a cousin of mine, to Mojse Lajzer Malek – he is a cousin on my father’s side, he is living in Israel –, I lived in his house, but I didn’t feel at ease there either, because he wanted to marry me, and I didn’t want to accept his proposal.

Then he married a girl from that yard, she got married to him willingly, thus they didn’t welcome me anymore, I had to leave that house too. My life was a series of vicissitudes until I got married. I married a man who was 19 years older than me, because he had an apartment, he was well-situated, and I had a place where to lay my had.

As soon as I got home from the concentration camp, a boy called Hersi Ilovits, Herman Ilovits started to court me. We spoke Romanian, as he didn’t speak Hungarian. He came from across the border [from Ukraine, from the east of the River Tisza], when this became a Hungarian lend [in 1940, after the Second Vienna Dictate] 3, he came here. This boy wasn’t religious after he came home [after the World War II]. He was a serious suitor, but I didn’t want to marry him, because we were almost the same age.

I thought one could not live on love. I didn’t know what he was doing for a living. He kept it secret. Since he was doing business with currency, and this was forbidden those times. I found this out when I got married. He came to me that day by fiacre, as there weren’t taxis then, in 1947, and he told me, ‘It doesn’t matter now, you are going to get married, but at least tell me why you didn’t want to marry me.’

‘Well – I said – only because we are the same age, I didn’t know from what could you support me, as a wife.’ The poor boy answered to this: ‘I thought of everything, except that you were afraid that I couldn’t ensure you bread and butter, I wouldn’t have thought of that.’ After that he took out a lot of money, and showed it to me.

He didn’t stay for the wedding, he left. There were several Zionist movements here [in Maramarossziget], the Mizrachi 10, the Betar 11, and there was a kibbutz, some young men also lived there, who didn’t have any parents, didn’t have anybody.

I don’t know more about all this, because I didn’t want to participate, I didn’t go there, I only heard about them. Later Hersi took away a girl from the kibbutz, they got married, they had a child, left for America, and his wife became deranged. He [Hersi] became very religious, he died in America.

Well then, I got married, I knew this man, as his [first] wife had been my cousin. That’s how it had to happen, it was fate. My husband, Jeno Simonovits – in Jewish they call him Jajni, Jojne – was born in Remete [Palosremete, today Remeti in Romanian] in 1907. He lost his father when he was eight. His mother was left with five children.

He started to work at the age of eight, he was already a wage-earner. He went to shake plum and walnut from the trees, and he got paid for it. Then he became a coachman, he explained me all his life and the things he passed through. He had here [in Sziget] an uncle, who had a perfumery, he saved money there, that’s how he managed to become a ‘szkimbas’ [schimbas in Romanian, substitute], a hussar – ‘szkimbas’, that’s how hussars were called.

[Editor’s note: There weren’t hussars in the Romanian army, Golda Salamon refers to soldiers when she says hussars.] Only that person could become a hussar, who had money. He was orphan, although he was working and saving money, so he had money. My second husband was a hussar too, they were soldiers together [in Nagyvarad], both my first and second husband. All this in the Romanian era [under Romanian rule, after 1920].

My first husband was a very skilled horse-coper, a good merchant, he knew all about animals, cows and horses. Soldiers had to present themselves with their own horse. He joined up with such a beautiful mare, a white one that the colonel told him: ‘I shall ride this horse.

You go to the stable and look for other horse, which one you’d like. But you won’t ride a more beautiful horse than mine. When you’ll get disarmed, you’ll get back your horse.’ It was so splendid, one couldn’t even paint a more beautiful one. As he was an expert, and he knew what he was buying.

He was [a soldier] in Varad, and he told me that one could go to the synagogue with tickets at the autumn festivals, like in the opera, one had to buy a seat.

A very famous cantor was praying, who was an opera-singer, and even the officers bought tickets – the first line was occupied always by officers, and all of them were there, even the Christians –, because they enjoyed listening to the cantor’s prayer. They didn’t understand what he was saying, but he could perform it in a very good style, and my husband said that it had been marvelous.

The wealthy Jews, who had their own factory, and were well-to-do, always invited at autumn festivals one or two soldiers for dinner. Or at Yom Kippur they entertained the soldiers before going to the synagogue, and also after that. As they knew that soldiers couldn’t organize that in the barrack, thus the wealthy Jews invited them home. My husband related this to me, as he used to be a hussar [soldier].

My first husband explained me many things, for example he told me the most things I know about Elie Wiesel’s father, because my husband was 19 years older then me. Elie Wiesel is a Nobel Prize winner, and he is acknowledged. [Editor’s note: In 1986 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.] No wonder that he was so clever, as his father was a very intelligent man.

His father was such an intelligent man, that many times, when the court was holding a knotty trial, the prosecutors would call him and ask his opinion. Generally Jews have the custom not to take a case to the court, but to resolve it amongst themselves.

For instance, if I have an unresolved matter with my friend, Emi, let’s say she cheated me in a business affair, then I would chose a person I suppose he’s clever, she also would choose somebody, and these two persons select a third one. This third person is the one who takes a decision. And the third one was always Elie Wiesel’s father. His decision remained untouched. His word was never altered by anybody.

My husband related me a case. My husband was a baker, and there was a merchant, from he bought flour by wagons. However, they weighed one sack of flour, and the weight of this first sack, it was about 80 kilos [they counted the other sacks on the basis of this weight], they didn’t weigh all the sacks. 

I don’t know how many wagons my husband bought from that merchant. My husband had a partner, Gyula Gordan, who liked very much to drink and to play cards. They had a quarrel before the Hungarian era 7 [before 1940], because he knew very well, that he was the master, as it [the business] was running under his name, because he was Hungarian, a Jew wasn’t allowed to hold a bakery, and he treated my husband very badly – he settled up with my husband when he wanted to, and he didn’t, when didn’t want to [he wouldn’t give my husband his share], etc. So they decided to split, my husband would run his business separately, and his partner would do whatever he’d like to, this Gyula Gordan.

Thus my husband and his brother-in-law went to the bakery, took the sacks of flour, they put one here, one there, so they distributed them. And they put them on the balance sheet to see how many quintals were left for each of them, and it was then that they realized that a sack weighed only 75 kilos, not 80. Therefore the merchant had stolen 5 kilos from each sack.

That’s on what they had an argument. Then the father of Elie Wiesel decided that if Gyula Gordan took an oath to that he had been unaware that the sacks contained only 75 kilos, he would have not been convicted. He won then.

However oath is a terrible thing for us, it’s not like raising your hand and saying [in Romanian] ‘...spun adevarul, si numai adevarul, nu ascund nimic din ceea ce stiu....’ [‘... I tell the truth and only the truth, I keep nothing from what I know...’], this is a tale. For us, Jews an oath is a terrible thing. 

They light two huge candles, the person who has to take an oath is dressed in a snow-white gown and white socks, they take out the Bible, the Torah scroll, they put it on the table where they recite the preceding prayers, they open the Torah scroll, there is a part he has to read.

And he has to recite the prayer, which is written down there, and if takes it on, the rabbi administers an oath to him. ‘If you feel you are telling the truth, do you dare swearing an oath for it?’ He answered yes. [Editor’s note: The biblical texts often mention oaths and pledges, the rabbinic tradition (Mishnah, Tractate Nedarim) controls already their use, and the later tradition is dead against this custom even if it doesn’t prohibit it explicitly.

The reason for this is that when taking of the oath one summons the name of God, as if he would call Him to bear witness to his truth – see the biblical formula starting with ‘Khai Hasem’ (“The Lord lives”). In turn this is contrary to the Torah commandment “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God”. Rarely though calling the name of God is permitted in case of a strong reason.

But the person taking of the oath is dressed in white, that is in the mourning color according to the Jewish tradition, which is also the color of Yom Kippur recalling the divine judgment, they take off his shoes also according to mourning customs, and they put before him the Torah to remind him the emphasis of his action, and to the consequences in case of a false oath.

According to the Halakhic rules the person taking of the oath doesn’t have to read from the Torah. The oath is being taken of in the presence of the rabbi.]

They ask him three times: ‘Have you considered it thoroughly, whether you wanted to swear an oath or not?’ My husband said that it had been terrible even to see him in that large white gown – it had been embroidered – and white stockings, white cap on his head, those two candles, and he had said in front of the Torah what he had had to say, everybody had shuddered, if he had told a lie, a great misfortune could have occurred. And that’s what it happened.

He swore the oath, and next morning he found his son dead in his bed. It’s not an invented story. My husband said – he had been for him to swear – that he had had a very bad conscience that he had agreed to his swearing. Since he loved very much that boy.

He was such a nice child, 16 years old, they had only this son, they didn’t have any daughter, nothing. It didn’t take even two weeks, and that man [his hair and beard] turned to snow-white, he became completely white because of this annoyance [grief].

He used to have brown, dark brown hair and beard. People told him: ‘You see, they told you three times to swear the oath only if you felt you knew nothing on this issue. Since what you are going to say, it is not a simple [spoken oath]. It will have an effect.’

I kept this in my mind, my husband talked a lot about this story, because he was attached to his [Gyula Gordan’s] son. He had to go once in a week there to give an account of how many bread had been baked, how much flour had been used, that’s how he knew the child. He knew all these matters before the war, and he related them to me.

Actually I knew Elie Wiesel’s father, because I was born in this street, and they lived on the opposite side, at the corner of the Kigyo street, where the [Elie Wiesel] memorial house is. He was a well-built, broad-shouldered, tall man, he had a small beard.

He was religious, but very clever, a very clever man among Jews. He attended school, I don’t know his qualifications, but he was a very learned man among Jews. He was a merchant, but I don’t know what he was dealing in. Elie Wiesel had two sisters.

He was around 15 years old, when he was deported. It’s a great matter that he survived, as they didn’t leave such children alive in the concentration camp. It seems he must have been a well developed child. When he comes here, he speaks mainly Hungarian, he doesn’t speak Romanian anymore. His wife is from Hungary, she is a Jewish woman, but they speak Hungarian among themselves. He has only one son.

In this war [World War II] my first husband was taken to work service [forced labor] in 1943. People received their call-ups, and they left. That was in the Hungarian era 7. They were taken to the frontline, they didn’t even know that we were deported in the meantime. He says that he was at the river Don, where the battle was the hardest. Russians really ran into Germans and Hungarians [there were heavy fights].

They went through many things too. First he got typhus. He told me how he survived: he was in a big barn-like construction with other patients, and since they [the soldiers] were returning from the battlefield, they all were lousy, because they couldn’t wash, so he took his blanket and went to sleep outdoors, he didn’t sleep inside next to the others.

That’s how he escaped with life and limb, as the Germans set on fire that shed made of planks, where the other patients were. He was outdoors, thus the fire didn’t touch him. However the illness brought him down, he was much weakened. They went to the village, he had a wedding ring he had taken from home, he sold it to the Russians, he got some bread and curds, and he recovered with difficulty.

He could get back from there [the river Don] that he became a prisoner. Russian women went there [in the camp], whose husband and sons were fighting in the war, and asked people who would go to work for them. My husband spoke Russian well, many Ruthenians lived in Remete, the village where he had been born.

Thus he presented himself, because he could speak with them. He worked as a prisoner in a house where they ran a farm. He recovered completely at this family, because instead of water they were drinking milk.

He was good in it, he milked the cow for the woman. They have cows with red and white blotches, they give a lot of milk, they give 38-40 liters a day. Well, they can’t sell all that milk, so they drink it instead of water. The woman does not cook.

Before going on the fields, she makes fire in the oven, she puts on mush, that kind of food Russians eat, they have enough meat, as they keep pigs, and by the time they get home, the food is ready roasted and cooked, they eat that. It’s not rice-milk, but a rounded, yellow mush, he says. Well, it’s not bad, it’s already cooked in the oven together with meat, it couldn’t be bad. But the woman does not buckle to cook. 

My husband was able to do everything: to harness the horse, to shoe the horse, he knew how to milk, how to mow, and the housewife liked very much that he was good in everything. She didn’t really want to let him go home, because she didn’t know yet if her husband was alive, what had happened to him, as Russians too had left on the frontline, but only a few returned.

She told him: there are enough women, why should you go home, you can get married here too. He says, but I do have a wife and two children. He thought they would be at home, he didn’t know that they had been deported. However when soldiers were set free, he also asked permission to go home.

He wouldn’t have thought that he would not find his wife home, as she was young. He got papers, and got home properly, he wasn’t obliged to stay, only if he wanted to. He was set free very early, he was at home in March 1945 already.

He found his feet well here, there were Russians, there were Russians everywhere, but he could speak their language. And it counted a lot. When he got home, he took up the house of my uncle, Haim Walter, in this street, and the Russian colonel and his wife lived in his house, the woman was a doctor.

He was a baker then too, and the lady-doctor always brought him dough to bake it for her, or just to take it. And my husband could go into the lager [barrack] too, so he knew well the colonel, but my husband didn’t know that he was a Jew.

We used to observe Chanukah, like Christians did Christmas. At Chanukah one lights eight candles put in the window, eight candles during one week. And the colonel says to my husband: ‘You have a festival, when you light candles in the window. If you want to know, I’m a Jew, I just didn’t reveal myself to you.

But now I want you to take me to the rabbi.’ He opened a case – he was returning from war, he went across many countries and many towns –, and took out a black material they make the caftan of. And my husband took him to the rabbi, he stepped aside, and the rabbi and the colonel were talking among themselves about the Torah, the religion.

My husband told me that this Russian colonel had been such an intelligent, cultured Jew, he had asked such questions the rabbi that the later had had to think hard to be able to answer them. And nobody would have told that he was a Jew. My husband said that he had stepped aside, he just had watched [the conversation].

He [the Russian colonel] was a very learned man among Jews. People were religious, very religious in Russia. They didn’t observe religion under communism that much, but they were religious. Christians were in the same situation, they were religious, but they weren’t allowed to be.

Communists didn’t respect religion, they didn’t believe in it. But back then Russians, as my husband told me, drew off the curtain of their small window, they knelt down, crossed themselves, and they prayed every evening. According to their ancient custom.

They took care not to let people see that they observed religion, that they were praying. They lived in small hovels, there wasn’t any floor, just a table, a berth and maybe two chairs, that was the furniture. They thought if there was a communist world, the religion would have vanished in Russia.

But it didn’t, because when they opened the church, so much people came to the church, even the third street was full with people, they set up microphones where the priests celebrated the mass.

Religion didn’t vanish, because old people taught the youth religion at home. Well in fact the person who doesn’t believe in anything is qualified to be an animal. Because an animal believes in nothing. It’s tied to the manger, and doesn’t believe in anything. Well then, if there is no religion, and you don’t believe in anything, life is very empty.

I knew my future husband, because one of my cousins had been his wife, who had left with two children, and didn’t return. They lived too in this street, opposite to our house. He knew me well too and my parents from home. That’s how I became his wife. We had only a religious wedding, but not a civil marriage.

My husband used to say that if we had children, it was worthy going in for getting married, but if we hadn’t, it had no reason. We didn’t have any children. I don’t blame him, as he had had wife and children, but he never allowed me to see a doctor, to get examined, because it might have been a minor problem.

I would have liked to have at least one child. He said that if God didn’t give us in a normal way, he wont’ let me see a doctor, he won’t let me undergo an operation, to go to baths, he won’t let me anywhere. He didn’t want to let me anywhere. That’s how I lived next to him thirty years.

He repaired this house, only a stable and the walls were left, he built up all the rest. The walls remained, because they are large stone walls. They are old-styled, that’s why they are so high. After that we got back the house and the garden, we cultivated all the land here.

Then cooperatives were established [during the collectivization in Romania] 12, and they took the lands. But I didn’t lack anything with him, because he was skilful, he ensured everything. We kept all kind of poultry, we had cows, horses, we were farmers. We had a dray, and we transported things.

My husband wasn’t religious at all, he didn’t go to the synagogue, he went there only during the autumn festivals, at Rosh Hashanah, on the Day of Atonement and at Sukkot, on these high holidays. He attended before the war [World War II] the Neolog synagogue. He wasn’t religious at all, but he didn’t mix milk with meat, and he observed religion possibly, but he didn’t go frequently to the synagogue, because he didn’t have time for it, he was busy even on Saturdays.

He died in 1970, here in Sziget, he is buried in the Jewish cemetery. We had no rabbi anymore, the schochet buried him. I sat shivah, but not on the ground, just on a chair. I couldn’t sit for long, we still had the horses, and I had to look after my duties.

After he had died, I sold many things, I sold the horses too, but I got married for the second time, and he had a horse too. My second husband was Aron Salamon, they called him Uri. He was 1 year younger than my first husband, he was born in 1908 here, in Maramarossziget.

We had only civil marriage, in around 1972. I had to get married, as due to our profession we had two drays, horses, I worked with drivers, who were very impertinent, I couldn’t stay alone. Back then one had to get married early.

Among us, Jews, if a woman looses her husband, it is not a sin to get married even after four weeks.[Editor’s note: According to the rabbinic tradition it is desirable that a woman gets married after becoming a widow or after divorce. However the waiting period after the death of the husband or after divorce is three months, because this amount of time is (was) needed to find out unmistakably wether the woman was pregnant from her previous marriage.] Since our religion says that instead of fornicating, it’s better for her to get married and have a family.

One of my husband’s sisters was Rifki Salamon, called Rifki Moldovan after her husband. She got married here [in Maramarossziget], her children were born here, but they were little when they left for Canada. She has two daughters and she has grown-up grand-children already.

When I visited them [in 1975], the older girl, Hedi’s daughter was in the eighth grade, she is Pamela. I could talk to Hedi, because she left from here, and also with her husband, because he is from the old ‘Regat’ [Editor’s note:‘Kingdom’ was used by Transylvanians in everyday speech when referring to the Romanian Kingdom, before the unification of 1918.

It remained in use after the unification, designating the regions of Moldavia and Wallachia that had formerly composed the Romanian Kingdom.], and he could speak Romanian perfectly. But I couldn’t talk to the children, they speak only Ivrit, English and French – as the place where I was used to be a French colony.

The second younger sister of my husband was Kornelia. Her son, Miki was chief editor at a newspaper in Banya [short for Nagybanya] before leaving for Israel. Miki too has a son, who is building engineer, and also an architect. He lives now in America, they took him from Israel to America.

My second husband had a younger brother too, Jozsef Salamon. He was a very handsome boy. Joska was director at the MAT, the brandy and wine warehouse. His wife is Dori, and they have two daughters: Aliz and Havana. In 1964 they left for Israel, the girls were children yet.

Both girls have husbands who are doctors. What happened was that the two boys studied medicine in Italy, because it is very expensive in Israel. The university is in Jerusalem, and one has to pay a lot of money for it. So they went to Italy, and studied there.

One of them was already engaged to the younger, Havana, when he told the other: ‘Hey, wouldn’t you like to come with me to visit my fiancée? She has an older sister, she might like you.’ And he succeeded in it.

An engineer was courting Aliz, but she liked more this boy, because he was very nice. He was called Albert. His father died during the war, his mother was left a widow, he was the youngest child, and gave lessons to cover his study expenses. Aliz has three sons, Havana has four, she had twins, that’s how she has four children.

My second husband got married for the first time in 1936, his first wife was from Ermihalyfalva, I think she was called Juca. He had a daughter, his wife was deported together with her. His wife returned, but in 1954 the poor woman died of cancer. His first wife was still alive when they moved to this street.

As the house, where he had [previously] lived was demolished, a huge factory was built there, and in the place where his house used to be a ten-storied block was built. My second husband died in 1989, before the revolution. [before the Romanian Revolution of 1989] 13

While my first husband lived, I couldn’t go anywhere, we were farming, and I couldn’t leave the house. We were keeping all kind of poultry, we had cows, we had horses, and my husband didn’t want to be left alone even for one day. When I got married for the second time, I left my husband at home, and I could travel.

In 1973 I visited Israel, and in 1975 America. In Ceau’s time [Ceausescu, Nicolae 14 in a short form] they would let you out [from the country] in every second year [ref: Travel into and out of Romania]15. In those times a return plane ticket to America cost 13,000 lei, to Israel 2,500 lei.

In Israel people usually speak Hebrew. I speak only Yiddish, I can’t speak Hebrew. I can read, as I was taught how to recite, how to pray. But I can’t speak, thus I don’t know what I am reading. Those who live in Israel learnt to speak Hebrew too, everybody speaks it. 

When I went to Israel, I could speak Yiddish and Hungarian or Romanian only with elderly acquaintances, which had left from here. I couldn’t speak with children. They don’t speak Hungarian, or Romanian, nor Yiddish, Jewish, as we speak, they speak only Hebrew, French and English, that’s what they are being taught in school.

There was a family with a five years old girl, she could speak a perfect Romanian, because she emigrated together with her grandparents, who were from the old Regat; in order to be able to talk to her grandma and grandpa, the girl was taught Romanian. In school she spoke Hebrew and English, but at home only Romanian. I could speak in Romanian with that one girl. Well, one can hear all kind of languages in Israel. There were people who could speak only Russian, that was where immigrant Russians were living.

Usually people have only 1-2-3 children in Israel, they don’t have eight and ten anymore, only those who are very religious or don’t like to work, and the state is supporting them, if they have many children. Since in Israel those, who have many children get a considerable support from the state. 

I was visiting a relative, a woman came in, and she took a heap of bread, about 17-18 pieces of bread. I say: ‘Sari, what is she going to do with so much bread?’ She answers, ‘She has a big family.’ ‘What about her husband?’ ‘Well, she says, the state supports them. They get a good sum every month, and they raise the children of it, so that the country [the population] would grow.’ Well, for boys the military service is compulsory.

A soldier is trained for four years there, not like here. But that soldier knows everything, not only how to use a weapon. For example if a tank driver is killed, he can get on and drive the tank. And they learn to be pilots. Girls too do military service for two or three years, depending on the field they choose.

However they are not treated differently because they are girls, they pursue the same training as the boys. They even have to clean the toilets, they are being taught everything. Religious girls don’t enroll, they aren’t obliged to. However, there if a girl hasn’t been a soldier, she is not acknowledged; in general a girl has to be as capable as a man.

When I visited Israel, I thought that seeing these beautiful festivals I would remember those times when we had been celebrating at home. But festivals are not observed there either. Here [in Maramarossziget] people used to observe festivals consistently, even after the war [World War II], when there were still living Jews. 

They weren’t much too religious Jews, but we used to observe the holidays according to the custom. But in Israel I told my sister-in-law, ‘Come with me to the synagogue so that I discover your traditions.’

It was the day of Simchat Torah, when the autumn festivals are ending, when they take out the Torah and they dance with the Torah. ‘Oh, are you still observing this nonsense?’, she says: ‘Why should we go to the synagogue?’ She doesn’t light candles, she doesn’t observe Sabbath. All this in Israel, on the sacred land. She says, ‘We can’t live on this’, that is the religion. They are all great patriots, that’s true. But they don’t observe religion.

In Benei Beraq they do, only religious people live there. A cousin of mine lives there, they observe festivals as the custom is, and Sabbath too. But in other places not really. Well, they work all week. Children are taken to the ‘cresa’ [day nursery in Romanian] from the very beginning, and parents are working all week. On Saturday there are clothes hanging everywhere, it’s washday. Although they have bathrooms, there is warm water, cold water at every house, but they don’t have time for it.

They are free on Saturday, so everybody is cleaning the house, washing, putting things in order, because they start to work again on Sunday. Thus they don’t have the possibility [to observe religion]. I haven’t got used to what I saw there.

And on the Day of Atonement my brother-in-law, the younger brother of my second husband, Jozsef Salamon, who came from a religious family, went to the beach. Not to the synagogue. Since they had a day off on the Day of Atonement, they didn’t work.

People became insensible. I haven’t seen one of my cousins, Sari Walter for 50 years. She came here [in Maramarossziget] to visit after 50 years, as she used to live in this street. We were talking. She says, ‘I don’t observe any tradition. I don’t believe in anything either.

When they took us out, she says, and we were sleeping in the open air, where was God to help us? I’m not able to believe anymore.’ ‘Yet it’s not what you saw at home, your mother was very religious – I say – and you come from a religious family.’

‘It was a long time ago, people believed in God then, and they believed God would always help. But from where I came back... I don’t believe in anything.’ I say: ‘But only an animal has no faith. Life is so empty if you don’t believe is something.

You tie an animal in the stable, of course, it is not capable of believing in something, because it’s an animal, but a human being has to believe in something. It’s not the way you imagine. If everybody thought as you did, people would scratch each other’s eyes, if one had more [fortune] than the other. You shouldn’t think like that.’ ‘It’s useless – she says – you know yours, and I know mine.’ I could not convince her.

I could travel to America, because an acquaintance was here, and she compiled the invitation letter. She is from Romania, and we were on good terms. Her nephew, Sanyi Leihter was from Aknasugatag, but she didn’t even drink a glass of water in his house, because Sanyi’s wife was Christian; she was religious, and stayed at my house. Since I was acknowledged as a Jew, because my parents were Jews too. And back then I could observe religion, as we had a shochet.

America is very beautiful, it can’t be even compared [to Romania]. First I visited Israel, and I thought there couldn’t be a more beautiful country than Israel, as it is indeed very beautiful. But after going to America I noticed a huge difference. It seemed to me that Israel could be related to America as Romania to Israel.

Well America... one could not even tell what a country it is. The people, the buildings, the employments, everything, it can’t be compared. In America I arrived in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is so big, as three towns together in Romania.

I visited there a cousin too, Szruli Walter [Haim Walter, the son of one of the mother’s brothers], but I stayed mainly at an acquaintance, who had sent me the invitation letter. And they would come by car, and take me to Philadelphia, to New Jersey, I visited several places at my cousins. Then I was in Canada for three weeks, at my sister-in-law, Rifki Salamon.

Before the war [World War II] they [Jews] were very religious here in Romania, and Americans didn’t really observe religion. After the war it was inversely. People became very religious in America, there are many religious people.

Well, in Israel there are towns where religion is strictly observed, and there are towns where people don’t observe religion at all, not even the Day of Atonement. People I got to know in America usually observed [religion], otherwise the community would speak badly of them.

For example if one [a Jew] has a store, and he won’t close it on holidays, or he won’t offer kosher things in the store, Jews don’t go there shopping. There are modern Jews, many, but there are also Jews who wear payes. In some towns you find only such Jews. In Brooklyn there are many religious Jews. With beard and payes. Black hat, marvelous black patent-leather shoes, white socks, their overcoat is pitch-black, they wear caftan, and the white shirts are glittering.

Women have wigs there, but there are so nice little wigs, that no one could tell that those are wigs. And they put above the wig also a small hat, when they go to the synagogue. They have to be religious there. As if the parents are religious, then the children are too.

And they have so many children as many God gives them, they are not that modern to have abortions. Our religion strictly prohibits that, it says that it means killing a human being. Thus there are many children in a family.

In Maramarossziget religious Jews became estranged from religion [after World War II].

For example I knew boys who attended the yeshiva, they were expressly religious, and when they returned [after World War II], they had special hair-cuts, these burger-boots came into fashion, and they were wearing those, and breeches, and they smoked on Saturdays, they didn’t observe religion anymore. In older times people were more religious here than in America. After that religious people went to America, and they observe religion strictly there. Here religion is observed less.

We still had a shochet after the war, and we had a chazzan, the synagogue was open on Sabbath. So there were some [religious Jews], but they left after a while. One of the slaughterers left for Israel, the other one died, that’s it. Jews dispersed. Those who were religious left, they wouldn’t stay here at all. They left far and wide, but most of them went to America, not to Israel.

Sometimes people come from America, a bus comes with fifty-sixty people, who go to the cemetery and pray there. Many rabbis are buried here, Teitelbaum is buried here, and women, the wives of the rabbis, they are buried separately. And young people come too, bochers, who are studying, and elderly people, they come to anniversaries, they know when a rabbi has an anniversary [of the day of his death].

They come mainly on such occasions. Even today if religious [Hasid] Jews come, they won’t go to the Neolog synagogue. They discuss in the front-office what they want to, but they don’t go in the synagogue.

After I got married, I attended the synagogue. During the autumn festivals I had a seat bought in the second line, Danczig was praying, he was the rabbi. He was wearing a helmet similar to the priests’ helmet, and a large claret belt [on his waist], knitted like the catholic priests’ belt, our rabbi was dressed similarly.

All this was after the war, he came back to Sziget, and emigrated to Israel from here. Since we are just a very few left, it [the praying] is organized in the small synagogue, there is a chazzan, Sandor Leihter, and a part is fenced off, where women sit.

But nowadays I don’t go to the synagogue, because there aren’t Jews. With whom should I go to the synagogue? Should I sit there by myself? There are mixed marriages, one has a Russian wife, the other I don’t know what, these come. No, I prefer to pray at home.

After my first husband died, a neighbor woman and me went to the central [ritual] bath, in a room with two bathtubs, and we took a bath there. We went there once in a week or once in two weeks. In 1980 it was still functioning, but then it was closed.

After Jews left it was closed, and people started to modernize, everybody set up a bathroom in their house. They didn’t go to such ritual baths anymore. My second husband too had a bathroom, as he had to get shaved all the time. The kitchen was large, we built two more walls, we introduced the water, so we could have our own bathroom, we didn’t need to go to the public one.

I kept yet a kosher household. I wash the dishes together, but I don’t mix the bowls for milk with those for meat. One doesn’t put sour cream in dishes with meat. It’s interesting, none of my husbands was religious, they didn’t have payes or beard, but they didn’t like to mix things, to put sour cream on meat stewed with paprika or on stuffed cabbage or I don’t know what. Sour cream was used separately from the meat. That’s what they got used to.

I prepare cholent even today. Cholent is good if cooked of last year’s beans. First I let the beans to boil, and I filter the first brown fluid. After that I put the beans on the stove in the pot for cholent, I put in the meat – the meat has to be uncooked –, and it needs spice.

It needs two onions cut into small pieces, hot pepper, garlic, paprika, and a little salt, but not much, as it gets salty while boiling. It’s good if it’s greasy. But we don’t prepare it with fat, sometimes they make it from fatty meat, but nowadays people refrain from greasy meals.

I cook it using oil, I put in it about two deciliters of oil, I fill it up with water, and let it boil slowly, as usually we don’t stir it, just let it boil. When it is almost cooked, we put a half glass of hulled barley. It is of wheat, Romanians call it arpacas. It needs to be put in.

We don’t have slaughterer anymore, after the shochet died, nobody came to replace him. But if I buy meat, I kosher it. As I got used to it, that the blood has to be steeped out of it, it has to be salted, washed, and after that it can be cooked. It’s good for the health too.

I don’t eat pork even today, we are not accustomed to it. It is a sin, we learnt that it was a sin to eat pork. Pork is extremely unhealthy. If you get ill, the first thing is that the doctor forbids you to eat pork, because it’s very stodgy, and fatty too, it’s not healthy.

But in order to eat pork, you have to be accustomed to in your childhood. Well then, in my age, if I didn’t care my health, how would I look like? Since I’m almost 77 years old. But thanks to God, I’m fine. I don’t eat what it is not good for me. I cook it, I prepare it, as I have guests sometimes, but I don’t eat of it. Just what I know I’m allowed to and it’s good for me. I don’t go to doctors, I don’t take any medicine.

Once I lead great stress on dressing. Once I went every week to the hairdresser. My hair was so beautiful, that one could take delight just in seeing it. I had plait when I was a girl, but after that I had short hair, and it was arranged in curls. Back then the fashion was to wear curls. But today young women don’t go to he hairdresser, only the elder. When I visited Israel and America, I saw that older women go to the hairdresser, they follow the old fashion, young women don’t [go to the hairdresser].

One more thing. It makes one older to take everything to heart. For example I have quite a large garden, which goes with the house, and they haven’t given it back yet. I won’t kill myself because of that. No one pocketed that land, when they intend to give it, they will do, but I won’t make a big deal of it, like others, who are able to commit I don’t know what. No.

Whatever will be, will be. Thanks to God, I’m fine, I have money to live on, as I don’t get a normal pension from the Romanians, only 340,000 lei, but I’m receiving the German pension [compensation], because I was deported. I’m given this for several years, since we could compile in Romania the papers and send them to Germany.

They found me there, where I had worked, because I had been numbered in the concentration camp, here is my concentration camp number, A lager, 7986.

The other day a bus came with young people – there were Jewish children among them, but most of them were Romanians –, who got out from the bus at the synagogue, and they looked for me, I had to explain them, to these young people, the things I had gone through, so that it won’t occur again what it had happened in 1944. That they slaughtered like this people.

Since I was for one year and four months in concentration camp, when they deported me from here. But a very few returned, very few. 

Those young people asked me questions, and I had to answer all of them. In Romanian, as there were Jewish children among them, but just a few, the greater part was Romanian, who won’t believe even today, that there had been such a slaughter.

• Glossaries:

Rosa Kaiserman
Botoşani
Romania
Interviewer: Major Emoke 
Date of the interview: October 2006

I met Ms. Rosa for the first time at the Club of the Jewish Community in Iassy.

Twice a week about 10 mostly elderly women gather there before dinner time, they take tea and cookies, play Rummy and chat.

She invited me over for the next meetings at her place – a two-rooms apartment in one of the flats of the long line of eight-storey apartment houses strung together on a noisy boulevard, crowded with cars.

The house characterizes the person – this proved to be true in this situation as well: Ms. Rosa’s apartment is characterized by the same modesty as Ms. Rosa herself.

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• After the war and later life
• Glossary

• My family background

My grandparents came from Iassy. I can’t remember my paternal grandfather Kaiserman. I think he died, when my father was still young. He was a simple tailor, but he was a very skillful craftsman, for he earned a lot of money. At that time you couldn’t buy ready-made clothes. 

You had to go to the best tailor. I remember my grandmother vaguely. She lived with us, and my mother took care of her with the utmost respect and kindness until she died. As I was verylittle I saw her verytall.

She wasscrawny, humpbacked, walking with a stick. I remember her being sick and infirm all the time, laying in her bed. She had her own cupboard and bed. She also had a grey overcoat, very dark, almost black. 

At that time, when someone had an overcoat of cloth done, they had it for the rest of their lives. After grandmother died, my mother took that overcoat and had it done for my sister. There werevery good dressmakersback then: they cut out the shabby parts and made a new little overcoat for my sister.

I think my mother was the only daughter-in-law, whom I know, saying that she sorted it out with her mother-in-law. Her mother left for America, and she remained here alone. Her only family was the family of her husband. My [paternal] grandmother died in 1930 at the beginning of spring – I hadn’t turn five by then.

My father had only a brother, Izidor Kaiserman, who died in Iassy. We loved him a great deal. He was much older than my father, approximately 14 years older [he was born around 1874]. He was a good-humored man, but also a spendthrift.

He lost everything he gained in his youth and had a hard time at his old age. They had at that time [before WWI] a small shop, and after they went bankrupt – around 1932-34 – they worked as wage workers in another shop. That was their job.

I think my father’s brother died before 1940. Uncle Izidor’s wife was Maly – auntie Maly, that was how we called her. She was a beautiful woman. They had two daughters: Fany and Liza – we called her Lizica. Fany never married, she died here in Iassy and was buried at the Jewish Cemetery. Lizica had a boy, Grinberg Dorel (the Grinberg family is not related to my mother’s family), who got married in Iassy.

Lizica left with Dorel and his family (he had a daughter named Ami) for Israel, for Nathania and died there. Unfortunately Dorel died too. He was very sick and passed away two or three years ago [in 2003-2004]. I keep in touch with his wife, we call each other and write letters…

My father’s name was Avram Kaiserman. He was born in Iassy on the 19thof December 1888, by the time his parents were already old. I think it was an accident. It was a great age-difference between my father and his brothers, so that he married at the same time his niece Lizica got married.

When I was young I was calling my cousin “auntie”, because she was older than me and had to pay her respect. I couldn’t call her by her name. One day she got nervous: “Don’t call me that way any more! Call me by my name, we are in the end cousins!”

My father was to became a merchant, so his parents sent him to work as an apprentice at a shop: he had to clean the floor, clean the windows, he had to unroll the wedges of toile and show them to the clients, and after that to roll and put them back. It was a hard job for a child. I think he took some commerce classes as well in a high school of commerce.

I don’t know how school was back then, if it was three or four years, but he took his degree in commerce. And then, after finishing school, he used to do such things as an apprentice. And he became a merchant. Before marrying he went to the army and was allocated to the cavalry, but he didn’t know to ride a horse. He was a tall and handsome, an upright and healthy man.

My maternal grandfather was called Iancu Grinberg –  in German it would mean something like “the green mountain”. I don’t know a thing about him. When I was born, he had already died. All I know is that he was buried here in the Jewish Cemetery of Iassy. My grandmother’s name was Esther. She left for America. I don’t know when she died. It was probably before I had been born in 1925.

My mother had a brother and two sisters: Adolf Grinberg, Olga and Saly. All of them emigrated with their mother to America. My mother being already engaged by then, i.e. almost married, remained here. The first one to leave was Adolf, my mother’s brother, and he invited his sisters over to America.

He had already settled down there. He was living in Brooklyn, where he owned a little bookstore. His wife’s maiden name was Fany Rosen, and she was from Iassy too, but they met only there.

My aunt’s family lived here in Iassy, they were a large family. One of her brothers was physician – he was killed in the Iassy pogrom 1. The youngest of her daughters – her maiden name was Minca Rosen, I don’t know her married name – was a good friend of my sister. They were classmatesin school throughoutthe years, they have learned together in primary school, at high school and in college.

She lives now in America and she still keepsin touchwith my sister. She was already married and they decided to leave Romania. They didn’t want to emigrate to Israel. Back then, between 1950-60, there was a society called Hias, which lured Jews to leave for America and not for Israel.

So they lived for six months in Italy, waiting for their approval for America or for a ticket for the ship…I don’t know details. But still in Italy he had an infarct, fell on the street and died. They had a little daughter, she was seven years old when they left, and this niece of my aunt emigrated alone with her little daughter to America, and they carried it off well. She had a hard time, she raised her, and this girl made the best of it.

My mother’s brother used to write letters frequently, so we knew about them. After WWII they sent us packages. We had a hard time back then, we didn’t have any clothes, but we were very proud of the things we got from America.

I remember a trench coat I got, it was navy blue, coated with tartan, had a cowl, and when I went out in the rain everybody would stop and ask me where did I get it from. My uncle died some years after WWII, and my aunt died later. She was old and sick. She was warded in a hospital and she died there. Her sister wrote us about it afterwards. She didn’t have any children.

These two sisters were younger than my mother. She missed them a lot. I remember her talking all the time about her family, about her sisters. She would say that my sisters looks like her sister, like Olga. That I had the character of the other sister. She would find something out. 

For instance: I didn’t like to wear new clothes. I had to get used to it and then I would wear it. She said that her sister was the same: when she bought her a new dress – and the ladies were very stylish back then – Saly permitted her sisters to wear her new dress until she got used to it, and then she would wear it. My mother cried after these sisters of hers, whom she never saw again. They wrote to each other, they sent photos of different eventsfrom their lives.

They lived in New York. They got married, had children. Saly had three children – two boys and a girl: Jack, Seymour and Estelle. Jack died during WWII, I think on the front in Italy. From Estelle I’ve got many photos, even from her wedding.

Olga was the youngest – she had one child. I’ve heard that he became professor of mathematics at the same university in America. But I’ve never seen him. I think his name is Joe. 

There was a time when we used to correspond often. I did it too, but especially the parents. After my mom died, father continued the correspondence with the family of my mother. But after the parents died, my cousins being born in America didn’t know Romanian, so we wrote in English. I also learned a little English and I managed to write a letter – of course,with the dictionary. We never met each other. One day, before 1989, I’ve got a letter from Estelle. 

She wrote about her wish to come to Romania and meet us, but she wasn’t sure if she would find anybody. Because in the meantime a lot of people immigrated to Israel. The letter got by chance to us, and we answered. It took a month to get to America.

She told us that she would be in a hotel in Bucharest. I left to meet her, but I didn’t meet her. I’ve looked for her in different hotels for foreigners in Bucharest, but I couldn’t find her. After a month she wrote about her not being able to come because her mother-in-law was sick. Since then we wrote to each other less and less.

My mother’s official name was Rifca Kaiserman (born Grinberg), but people called her Bety. She was born in Iassy around 1897. She spoke and read German. I didn’t wanted to learn German, because I couldn’t put up with the Germans. We suffered to much because of them. 

My mother had naturally brown curly hair. She was short and plump, but she was proportionate and very coquettish. While being a lady she used to make hats. That was her school training, to make hats. Modiste – that’s how it was called once.

Hats used to be worn with flowers, with nets and so on. Becausetheladieswouldn’t go out without hats. My father was taller and he was a handsome man, at least that’s what I believe. They have been very beautiful people. No one of the children resemble them.

My parents never spoke about how they first met. They were visiting Nathan Weissman, whose wife, Roza, was a distantrelative of my mother, and a distantrelative of my father. In spite of that they were very close, they were all the time together. Aunt Weissman used to prepare each Thursday food for the poor people – she was from a well-off family.

A cook helped her, and the poor people who knew her, came there to take a food portion. My aunt used to prepare a lot of griddles with maize flour – I can remember these particularly. In Moldova we prepare this meal even today. You steep the flour, you put cheese, sour cream, sugar, eggs. It is a delicious cake. And my aunt had some large griddles for 30 portions.

She used to put the griddles in the oven. Barely had she finished a griddle, she had to put the next one, for people kept coming for food. Each person got one portion for each member of the family.

I know that many people were coming, because she was saying: “I prepared another griddle, another one…” All that day long, all Thursday, she used just to prepare food. There were a lot of poor people in this region. During the war, for instance, they were straying from house to house.

At our place, before entering the apartment there was a hallway under the balcony of the first floor, and at the end of that hallway we used to have a small locker where we kept the food – there wasn’t any fridge in those days. And they knew about it and came and stole the food. We were left without any.

This aunt was a very fine woman, she died unfortunately at fifty years, before WWII. She had five girls and a boy. They were much older than us. I remember going at the Weissmans while we were still very little. When the Russians came, rich families flew away because of the Communists. 

The old Weissmans were dead by now – Reiza died before WWII, and Nathan Weissman died presumably during the war and they were buried here in Iassy at the Jewish Cemetery. 

But their children took refuge in Bucharest, wherefrom they immigrated one by one to Israel. They left Iassy for Bucharest shortly after WWII, but they didn’t stay there long. Just one of the girls remained there for a while and we used to visit her.

Eventually she left for Israel too, and by the time I visited her in Israel in 1968 she was old and sick. One day my brother called me from the Club [at the Jewish Community in Iassy there is also a Club], to go there immediately to see someone. It was an older woman and two young ladies. I looked at that lady curiously. She was the only daughter of the only boy of the Weissmans. “Yes, I can remember the moment of your birth, because I have seen you.”

I was in Bucharest and her mother came with the three months old baby in her arms to show it to me. I wanted to speak to the young ladies too, because they were shy, so presuming that they must be from Israel and me not knowing Hebrew, I asked them: “Do you speak English?”, in order to have a short conversation.

And they answered in Romanian: “We speak Romanian.” “And where are you living in Israel?” “We are not living in Israel. We are living in New York.” “But how come?” “When grandpa left Romania, helived for a while in Israel, but then immigrated to America.” They spoke Romanian so well, that we got along perfectly. Because the girls lived with their grandparents they have been able to learn Romanian.

I can’t remember exactly when my parents got married, I think around 1918. I never thought of remembering it. There was a religious ceremony – by then it was impossible not to have one. My father was regarded at a moment as a rich man.  

He, his brother and a brother-in-law of his – the brother of aunt Maly Kaiserman – owned a shop with cloth and materials for overcoats and gowns. And there were good quality textiles back then! Wool 100%. There were some little wool factories in Iassy too.

And at Buhusi there was a renown textile factory. But there came hard times, and father’s shop went bankrupt around 1933. What was left of it was divided among the three owners. In whole Europe there was a harsh economic situation, Hitler had already begun to prepare for war. After he went bankrupt, my father worked as a bookkeeper for a felt factory.

• Growing up

My mother didn’t have children very early. My brother, Pincu Kaiserman, was born in 1924, I, Rosa Kaiserman, in 1925 and my sister, Clarisa Kaiserman, in 1927, but the age difference between us is just a year and a half.

At that time women didn’t usually had a career. They usually kept the house and raised three or four children. My mom was a dab hand at everything. I often say about her: whatever she would do, she did it well. Even the cleaning – she did it perfectly. 

She would planta flower and the flower would grow. She raised three children and it wasn’t an easy job. The fire in the kitchen oven used to burn the whole day long while she was cooking. When we were little and still well-off we had also a maid, who helped in the house.

By then there were in every kitchen a wood-fire oven. So you should have taken care of the wood – in the summer as well as in the winter –, to rip it, to cut it, to light the fire in the oven, to heat the tea and the milk every morning, to prepare the children for school.

And my poor mother stayed for years at the oven, in the summer and in the winter: to broil paprika, to prepare food – looking back I have pity on the life she had then. And that we couldn’t afford to have some other abode.

Our family was a modest one. In a yard with ten families there were four toilets at the ground floor and two at the first floor. I lived in my childhood on the Stephen the Greatstreet in a courtyard with many apartments: there were apartments from the front to the back of the yard on two floors. 

The yard was broad enough and aschildren we used to run a cross-country race. There was a fence between our yard and the neighboring yard, which was similar to ours, with as many apartments to the back of it. Sometimes we looked through the fence to see who was on the other side. Sometimes we played with other children through the fence. We had many neighbors, with whom we remained friends.

The rooms were very large, with very thick walls with deep windows. We had two rooms and a kitchen. In the kitchen there was also a sheet-metal bathtub. We had all the time warm water. The bathtub was near the oven, so we could pour the warm water directly in it. The water would be then dipped and thrown outside.

We used to have a bath at the Communal Bath house, where there was also a vapor bath – they call it today sauna.

There were two bath houses in Iassy, both of them administrated by the city hall, I think. They function even today. One of them, the Communal Bath, is located behind theCathedral, while the other one was the Popular Bath, located a little bit further.

The Communal Bath was only for the elite, it was more expensive, it had a sauna and masseuses, who would wash you so well, that they could take a layer of skin off you. It was actually a Turkish bath. There was a large room with showers around, and only after having taken a shower were you allowed to enter the sauna.

There was another bath here, in Targul Cucului, kept by the Jewish community. It was very close to the Large Synagogue. There were many narrow, winding streets in the area. One of them was the Synagogues Street, where were located many Synagogues which have later been destroyed.

This bath I am talking about, the Moisa Beider, named after its owner, had many tubs and a sauna. Some big stones would be heated up, probably with the help of a big, strong fire. A man would then come and throw a bucket of water over these stones, that would start to steam. The people then would just sit and enjoy the steam.

There was also a Mikveh at the Jewish Bath. This was a sort of pool where women came down the stairs before entering the water. I have never been there. My mother would go to the Mikveh as well, but she would never take us, the girls, along.

She would wash both of us in a bath, she would wrap us in towels and put us in a place like a drying room, where the clothes were. There was a window through which we would watch how the women entered the water slowly, said a prayer, made reverences and exit.

Especially before the wedding the bride had to go to the Mikveh with her future mother-in-law – I think her mother too – and with the lady who was to officiate the wedding to see if shehad menstruation.The mother-in-law wanted to see with whom she was dealing. This stuff annoyed me all my life, that religion interfered with these intimacies.

My father and men generally went every week at the communal bath or at the Jewish bath. At a moment there was a song about Friday evening – a friend of mine used to sing it: “Be it rain or be it summer, Friday evening, me and Saie, will go bathing.” Friday evening was the time for bath.

My mom didn’t usually go on Friday, because she would make a lot of dishes on that day. She wouldn’t go every week, we used to bath also at home. When I was little, until I was ten, I used to go with my mother at the Jewish bath. When I got older, beginning with 18-19 years, I went regularly at the communal bath, at the vapor bath.

The vapors were different from the ones at the Jewish bath, they were coming through tubes – I don’t know exactly how the installation worked but I can remember very well the rooms.

There were some benches to sit on. I was still strong-built and healthy back then and I used to climb on the highest bench, I would lie down, and put a wet napkin on my face, so that I could breathe. Right outside the sauna, there was a room with beds, were you could lay down. Bath was verytiring. I would always bring my own sheets from home, but you could get them there too.

There was another room with wardrobes where you could undress and leave your clothes. My thingsnever got stolenthere. After moving in a house with bathroom, we didn’t go to public bathrooms anymore. I mean I went now and then to sauna, but only till I discovered I have high bloodpressureand I wasn’t allowed to goanymore. I don’t know, it might have been around 1950-60. I have never been there ever since.

I do not remember exactly the year when the Jewish Bath was shut down, probably in the 1970s, when all the other central neighborhoods were demolished, where the Synagogue used to be and where the new apartment buildingswere built 3. 

When the reconstruction of the center began, and when they built the Independence Boulevard, all those narrow streets have disappeared. There are only blocks of flats now. In the Jewish Community in Iassy there nevertheless was build an imitation of a Mikveh– I cannot say exactly where because I haven’t seen it, it must have been somewhere in a basement.

At the age of three, our parents made sure we had a teacher who taught us Hebrew and the alphabet.

At the age of three! For this reason we were very indignant. We wanted to play, not to sit and study those signs that were so difficult to learn, and that had to be written from right to left. I remember we cursed our teacher a lot. When he left from our place – we had a large window – we would make the sign of the cross.

I thought that making this sign was a great sin. We wanted to get rid of him. I think he visited us until we were 7 and started school. I have learnt this difficult alphabet much later in the Jewish High school and at home, with more experienced teachers.

During the Second World War, and even after it ended, we had a teacher from Roman – his name was Meir Isacsohn, who was actually a doctor, but who knew Hebrew very well. Many of us would gather around himand he would teach us. He lives now in Israel and comes once a year to Iassy. When he arrives, he calls me right away, and if he has time, he visits me, and if not, we talk on the phone.

Generally speaking, the Jews lived very, very modestly, but they attached great importance to books, studying and prayer. There were days when one had to go to prayer. But in the synagogue women had their own place, and they would not mingle with the men. Men walk ahead, and the women would follow. They never walkedin line with themen. I admit, I do not remember my parents to have keptthis rule.

In our tradition, one is not allowed to mix meet with milk. Everything has to be separated. In our home as well, there were two tables. When we sat at the table, we would have a table cloth for meet and another one for milk. We had a towel for drying the glasses and the cups, and another one for drying the plates from which we ate meet. 

There was also a special animal and bird slaughter. These had to be slaughtered by somebody who has learnt to do this job, and who, before the sacrifice would say a forgiveness prayer before God. I do not keep this custom anymore. I buy, for example, poultry that is sold in butcher shops. My father would not eat something like that. And neither would my mother.

My mother used to say: “This is how I have been brought up and all these customs remind me of my parents. In their remembrance, I cannot do otherwise. I can do only according to my parents’ teachings.” I understood my mother. 

My parents respected each other, and they respected the holidays. For Saturday, the house would be better cleaned, we would all take a bath, and you could feel it was a holiday. There was an air of cleanliness in every respect: we were dressed in clean clothes and we were combed.

We would cook better meals for Saturday. Friday afternoons, my father would always go to the Communal or the Jewish Bath. My mother would prepare the food, she would put on the table a loaf of braided bread, covered with a cloth, and there was from Friday evening a bottle of wine always ready. We would place on the table two candlesticks, we would light the candles, and the mother would bless them.

When father would come home from the Synagogue, he would bless the bread: “We thank our God, who had given us the bread that we take out of the earth.” – this is how this prayer could be translated. The wine was also blessed. Afterwards father would pour wine in a glass. We had our own little glasses, and he would give some to us as well. And the wine, one liter of wine, could last us two weeks, that is how much we drank.

There was a time, when we could buy the braided bread. Mother would buy it Friday evening. When there wasn’t any to buy, she would bake it herself. She used to bake bread anyhow, twice or three times a week. She made it with potatoes and flour. 

She would go to the other end of the city when the peasant women came with products from the countryside, and she would buy from them oil and flour. I remember she used to make this sort of cake, that one doesn’t make anymore, I have no idea why it was so tasty.

The flour might have been of good quality, and the yeast as well. The filling was always the same: nuts, cocoa, sugar and raisins. But during difficult times, when we still didn’t own a gas cooker, mother would use the coals, that remained in the ovens when the fire was over. She would put the coals on the bottom of the ovens and the trays of cake on top. They were so tasty…

Friday evening we ate traditional food: first a dish of fish, then a poultry or beef soup with noodles, afterwards we would have meat – usually the meat boiled in the soup – a side dish and pickles, and finally a cakeor compote. Well, in my opinion, this was a generous meal.

In our case, even on weekdays, when we sat down to eat, the first dish was always a vorspeiss – in summer it was a salad, a tomato salad, a potato salad, or fish. Soup came always after. We would eat soup almost everyday. After soup we had meat, a side dish and pickles.

Sometimes we prepared only foods made of cheese. This was another matter. There were the cheese dumplings. At our place we would never eat milk with meat. If after you had eaten meat you wanted to eat cheese, you had to wait for six hours.

You know how the French usually finish their meals – with a piece of special cheese. No, we had to wait for six hours. We kept all these customs. I have a relative in the city, who is very faithful, but who from own initiative has reduced the six hours to three. He cannot resist longer.

There was another custom for the holidays, and also for Friday evenings, but especially for the winter holidays. Father would go to the synagogue, and when he came back home, he would bring a guest along. This guest was a poor man or a stranger in the city, who came to the synagogue just to be invited. 

For example, there were young boys who were enrolled in the Army in Iassy, but who came from other cities and couldn’t go home for the holidays. They would go to the Synagogue, and every Jew would invite one as guest to their home. They would sit at the head of the table and would be served first. Our greatest joy was when somebody was invited to have dinner with us.

One used to feel the holiday spirit back then – the house seemed cleaner, the people seemed happier, you had to buy yourself a new dress and new shoes. For mother it was always a problem, what hat to buy for the Autumn Holidays.

The first Holiday of the Autumn Holidays is the New Year, in Hebrew Rosh Hashanah. It lasts for two days, during which the women and the men of the community read prayers. At home, Rosh Hashanah was celebrated with festive meals, and a lot of sweets as well. 

For example: we would prepare white beans, the big sort, with sugar and honey. We loved it, it was delicious! How was it made? I think the beans had to be boiled, then the water had to be changed two times. The third time we added a little bit of oil, sugar and honey and baked it in the oven.

And they would turn brown, although they were white when we first bought them from the market. And there was the chickpea – coffee surrogate is its definition in word quizzes – a sort of bean, which you could eat when fried.

During WWII, because coffee was scarce, the chickpeas were fried in special trays, grinded and drunk instead of coffee. Well, we would boil them together with rice and oil or poultry fat, sugar and honey. Sweet chickpea, that is how we called this dish.

Ten days after Rosh Hashanah, we celebrated Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Everybody was fasting. We, the children, wanted to show how great we were, so we kept the fasting till midday, but to be honest we would eat or drink something in between. Our parents went to the Synagogue for Yom Kipur, and stayed there all day.

After that came the Sukkoth. We celebrated it like all the other holidays, namely with better food and a cleaner house. On Sukkoth we would build a sort of tent in front of the house. We would build it from wood pillars, dressed in linen and white sheets, we covered it with leaves. Inside we put fruits, flowers and a table with chairs. It wasn’t large.

It was big enough to fit a table and a few chairs – nothing else was there. During the 8 Days of Sukkoth we would eat there our breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we would pray there.

Where we used to live, in Steven the Great District, we had this neighbor, a Rabbi, Landman, who lived upstairs. In fact he built the Sukkoth, but he built it in front of our house, and when he came from the Synagogue, he would eat first, and we would eat afterwards in the same Sukkoth. Any of the neighbors could eat there, but because it was in front of our house, we took advantage of it first.

There were several Rabbis in Iassy. Beside the Rabbis, there are the people who know our prayers, our religion and customs very well and who perform the ritual of slaughtering the poultry and the cows. They are called the Haham, and are equally esteemed as a Rabbi.

There were many Rabbis and Hahams. A Rabbi, Landman, was our neighbor in Steven the Great District. There were some other Rabbis as well, but I don’t remember them. There was also a Haham who shared the courtyard with us, and whose name was Lichtenstein. He had a very beautiful open balcony – I can still see it before my eyes. He would eat his breakfast there in the morning and he would put there his samovar filled with water.

A Haham earned probably more than a Rabbi. The courtyard was very long, and at the back it led into a basement with two flights of stairs. There we sheltered from the bombing. I can still hear this Haham pray, as the war and the bombings started.

He prayed and asked God to send a bomb that would destroy us, as we expected very hard times. That is what he said when the war started. Until then there were the Iron Guard, but at least it wasn’t war. I was very angry when I heard this Haham’s prayer.

I said to myself: “It is easy for you to wish for that, you are already fifty, you are old, but I am young, and I still want to live my life.” Now I see that he was right. If we were finished then, we could have escaped the Transnistria, the Pogrom, and everything else. The Haham escaped, nevertheless, and fled to Australia, immediately after the war.

When the Sukkoth was over, we would go on the banks of the Bahlui River, who flows through Iassy, and we would take some pebbles out of the pockets and throw them into the water, so as to symbolize getting rid of your sins. Only men were entitled to go. Only father went. My brother never went.

Purim is celebrated first of all with those triangular cakes, hamentaschen. And what cakes my mother baked!  Hamentaschen is a recipe with ten eggs. But they were never enough! We had to make it with twenty eggs. The recipe is written, I also have it. Seven egg yolks, three eggs – this is for the dough. It is made with oil only, and not with cream or butter.

The seven egg whites that remain are used to make a sort of white cake. That is how we called it. The egg whites are beaten into a thick foam and mixed with a cup of sugar, flour, Turkish delight, raisins and exotic fruits. The mixture is then placed in greased trays and put in the oven. When done, the white cake is cut into slices, like a normal cake.

My mother would make also a sort of Roulade with honey, and filled with nuts, cocoa and jam. It was like a Strudel, filled with nuts, not with cheese. It seems to me it was a little bit like Baklava, but without the syrup.

This is how it is made: the dough is made of water, flour and salt, without yeast this time. It should be very well battered and beaten on the table – maybe you’ve heard of this. Afterwards it is set aside to rest, covered with a heated pot.

After an hour or so, the dough is laid over a white table cloth, covered with flour. Then that dough is softly rolled with the rolling pin, then put in the middle of the table and rolled the size of the table. Sometimes it would get even bigger than the table, and the margins were then cut out.

This rolled dough is very thin, like a cigarette paper. Even if it was torn a little, it was patched with some dough. After that the dough is spread with walnut blended with sugar, cherry jam, perfumed Turkish delight – on that time the Turkish delight had a rose taste, vanilla taste, according to the color.

Oh, and the pieces of butter spread on the whole table. Than this dough is taken with the table cloth and rolled like a turn-over, then cut in portions and baked in the oven. It was delicious! The butter melted, the sugar melted too and mingled with the walnut… But nobody makes this cake anymore.

On Purim they used to send sweets, cakes, especially to the poor people and to the relatives. This tradition is observed even today. For example, I don’t observe it, but I get sweets from others. My mother used to send cakes, too. Friends used to come to our house: my brother’s friends from his school, my friends and our neighbors. We used to work a whole week to prepare that many cakes. 

There were also carnivals. Musical groups, called Klezmer, used to sing in every yard and go from door to door – they performed a specific kind of music, and most of them were Gypsies. But they played Jewish music – they had an ear for that –, and they learned Jewish songs by singing from door to door.

They had a group – a cymbal, a violin, and they sung also with their voices –, they sung and got sweets and money. When we were young, we used to disguise ourselves.

I remember when I was still young, I used to draw a face on a sheet of paper, cut out the nose, the mouth and the eyes, paint it someway, hide it then somewhere under the drawer and awaited dad’s home coming. And when he came I put the mask on, so that he shouldn’t recognize me. I was so convinced, that I pulled his leg. I was certain.

Just imagine: who could have been disguised in our home? Well, childhood is beautiful. Generally I disguised myself like that. We didn’t go from door to door, but other disguised people used to come by. Butonly whenwe were still young, after that they didn’t do it anymore, for Jews weren’t allowed to leave the house.

Then the war came and after the war everything else was over, including the customs which no longer all of them observed. I used to make only hamentaschen and bring them to school, where I was working.

I was to bring beverages too – mom used to make some very fine maraschino. The cherry stones were macerated for ten days with sugar, after that they were boiled, and blended with alcohol – it was an extraordinary liquor.

On Hanukkah candles are lit every evening, beginning with the eve of the holiday. We generally use white candles, not yellow ones – but on Hanukkah only yellow candles are lit. There is an eight arms candle holder, where the candles are put.

On the eve the first candle is lit, on the second day the second one, on the third the third one, on each evening one more. The candles are lit from another small candle, called Shamash.

My father used to light the first candle, said a prayer in Hebrew – I didn’t understand what he prayed. I had the honor to light the second candle – because it was my birthday. Hanukkah used to be most of the times the day of my birthday. After that mom lit the next candle, and after her the other children.

In our home we put the candle holder on the table, in America they put it on the window – I’ve read about it in a story. It was put on the table, the candle were lit, and then they put it on the window.

I think we even got some Hanukkah money when we were young, but we didn’t know on what to spend it, we didn’t know the value of money. Later the roles changed and I began to offer my parents money. 

The most important thing for Pessah was the big cleaning. Including the drapes. Radiating cleanliness. The drapes were washed with a special brush, and then ironed, in order to kill all viruses. The dishes were cleaned scrupulously. On Pessah we had special dishes and cutlery, which were deposited in the loft. 

Actually they were normal dishes like the usual ones, but we used them only on Pessah. But before bringing them down, during the big cleaning the other dishes were cleaned. There was a special dresser for the Pessah dishes.

For example, you had things in the house, like in any other household, flour, noodles, rice – chametz for the whole year. They were listed on a sheet of paper, the list was brought to the synagogue, and somebody gave an approval to be able to keep them until after Pessah.

They were put in a place, where you weren’t allowed to use them. For the Pessah flour and for the matzos there was a separate place, kept untouched the whole year. But these things have been a tradition here, in Moldavia, in Poland, maybe in Bessarabia too. In Israel they don’t observe this tradition anymore. 

There was also a ritual, which was for me rather amusing. So, you had to clean the house in such a waythat even the smallest bread crumble disappeared. You had to wash, to clean, to shake out everything. After that, a day before Pessah, my father used to go with a pieceofbread, and put in different places bread crumbles. 

On the window sills, in as many places as possible, in order to sanctify the place. After that, he went with a goose feather, a wooden spoon, said a prayer and gathered these bread crumbles in the wooden spoon, then enwrappedthem with a piece of white cloth and tied it.

The second day he took it intothe yard, dug a hole and burnt the wooden spoon with the bread crumbles – which meant that he burnt the chametz, that is,all that was fermented. For example, if the first Seder was Friday, he put and gathered the bread crumbles Thursday evening, and Friday morning at 10 o’clock he would burn them.

If there was bread in the house until 10 o’clock, you were allowed to eat it, but not after 10 o’clock. And you weren’t allowed to eat matzos as well, until Seder night. That whole day long we ate only eggs and baked jacket potatoes.

Even the table cloth was different, it was not the usual one. We put a white unsized table cloth. In those times clothes were sized in order for a cloth to look smooth. You couldn’t wear the collars, the blouses and the skirts without sizing them. A boiled size was prepared from corn flour or wheat flour.

It was made in a large wash basin. The flour was put in first, then the boiling water was poured and mixed with a stick. The washed and rinsed clothing was put in there to stiffen the fabrics. These garments will look completely different when ironed. On Pesah the table cloth had to be an unsized one, that is without flour. 

There was a lot of work to do. But I helped my mother every time through the years, and especially in her later years, when she got old and wasn’t able to do things as usual. I was so tired on Pesah evenings… because we had also guests for Seder, and there was a lot of dish washing to do afterwards…

The Seder evening is on Pesah’s eve. On this special event you aren’t allowed to eat bread; you eat only matzos. But the Seder dinner is an usual one: with fish, meat, soup, matzos, compote, fruits. There was also a nut pie. The cake wasn’t bad at all, and you are allowed to bake it not only on Pesah.

That’s how it’s made: from 10 eggs the egg-white is whipped with ten spoonfuls of sugar. The yolk is added afterwards. 12 spoonfuls of walnut and ¾ spoonfuls of matzos flour is mixed with this content.

A griddle is greased with oil and the content is poured into it. Because you weren’t allowed to use any milk I whipped some more egg-whites for the top decoration. Once I added to the whipped egg-whites an orange, lemon juice and lemon peel. The orange was red, but the cream was green. I don’t know how it could have happened. So without any milk, sour cream, or butter. 

On Seder we recalled the exile of the Israelites out of slavery from Egypt led by Moses. The same story is told each year. My father told it in Yiddish. I understood Yiddish. The children would ask the four questions. First my brother. He was the youngest, but he was very proud because he could ask the question. 

A separate glass of wine was for the angel, who would come and taste the wine. My mom was scared and used to ask me: “Rosa, please go and open the door!” I had to protect my mother; she was afraid to open the door, so I had to go and open it, keeping at the same time my eyes on the glass of wine to see if a drop would miss. Then my mother would move the table and say: “See, he came and drank”. Afterwards I closed the door.

Among the special Passover dishes there were some special small glasses for us, the children. My brother had a small cup. I had a small tin – I loved it a lot and kept it a long time, but eventually it broke too ; it was made of glass and had a handle. In that tin dad poured for me the wine.

The wine had to be kosher too, that is it had to be prepared in special receptacles by special people. During the war you couldn’t find wine even two weeks before Seder, so mom prepared it from raisins. Adding water and sugar the raisins would ferment. The result would be a good, strong, sweet, very good wine.

The usual matzos were put in afikoman. The afikoman was a peculiar table cloth in which a piece of bread was enwrapped. My dad did this with utmost seriousnessand then hid it. Dad wrapped it, hid it, we found it and he had to ransom it with a sum of money.

We were modest and didn’t ask for much money, but my father got infuriated, because he couldn’t gain any money on Pesah and argued with us to give him the afikoman without paying. But it was some sort of farce. After getting it back, he said a prayer, and divided the matzo among us.   

At the end of the Seder we sang a song. But the children usually fall asleep until this part of the celebration. It was a sort of story: “And the lamb drunk the water, and the wolf ate the lamb, and the fire burned the wolf, and the water extinguished the fire…”. It sounded very nice and it had also a melody. 

There is another custom, before Yom Kippur, when a bird is sacrificed. I remember it from my childhood. For the girls there was a single chicken, for my brother there was a cockerel, for my father a rooster and for mom a hen. The bird was rotated above the head – my dad did it for us – and a prayer was said. 

Afterwards the birds were brought to the Chacham to be slaughtered. One bird was offered to a poor family, which didn’t have anything to eat for the holiday. I didn’t like this custom. I kept asking myself, what did that bird do wrong to be sacrificed for me? There was nobody around to rotate de birds after the death of my father. These customs slowly get lost. 

My father liked to observe all these customs and all the prayers. He used to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning, he washed his hands, his face until half past five. He didn’t drink anything. Then he went to the synagogue. He arrived there at 6 or 7 o’clock. Every day.

Then he came home and had a warm tea. Be it summer or winter. He went to pray even in the evening. People used to go to work during daytime, but he managed somehow even during the Ceausescu era 6 to go on Saturdays to the synagogue instead of going to work.

Afterward, when he remained home alone – my mom had died by then – he used to sit on a chair on the terrace we had in our apartment on the Saint Sava street and read all day long in the prayer book. And he couldn’teven see that wellanymore. I think he knew the prayers by heart, but he skimmed the book anyway.

 In an autumn, after my father paralyzed, Morica, a friend of mine and once my Hebrew teacher came along and I asked him: “Pay attention, what is my dad saying? Does he tell it right? Because he tells things by heart in Hebrew.” After the brain congestion these things still remained in his memory.

In his youth, dad used to go to a synagogue called the Tailor’s Synagogue, because of his father, who was a tailor and who went there. When the synagogue was destroyed 3, the number of the Jews shrunk, and all other synagogues were destroyed, he went on the Kahane synagogue on the Stefan cel Mare Street.

This was the only synagogue which remained safe for several years. It was pretty big, with a large yard. They used to organize there the weddings. Eventually this synagogue was destroyed too and they built apartment houses in its place.

My father went to the synagogue till he was 93 years old, barely seeing and almost deaf… I convinced him not to go anymore in the mornings, for it was cold and rainy, and in the evenings I used to walk him to the synagogue and then back home.

 From three to seven years I attended the Jewish kindergarten. It was called Gan Ailadin. I remember just one thing about that time. We used to get crayons for our drawings. And I would sit near my brother on a little desk. He drew once something extraordinary. I asked him what it was he had drawn and he told it was a well. My other sister went to another neighborhood kindergarten, to Trei Ierarhi. 

On my birthday,children were invited over, sweets and fruits were served, they ate and played. As birthday gift you could get on that time a flower, a book, nothing big. I remember my father vividly… he loved mea lot. He would buy me a present early – a toy, a game, something – and then hide it on the cupboard, so that I couldn’t get there.

On my birthday he would take it from there and bring it to me. I got games like: Loto, domino. Not games like chess, they were children’s games. We would play then together. Loto can be played by four. Everyone had a cardboard with random numbers written on it.

In a bag were the numbers – I think 70 or 80 numbers. Numbers would be picked in turn from the bag and the one who had it on his cardboard would take it. For example someone would take number two from the bag. The one who had it on his cardboard would say: “Give it to me, because I have the two.” And the one who completed the first his cardboard was the winner of the game. That was Loto. 

My father used to buy what was needed in the house, because he worked with merchants and goods. He would buy clothes for me and I liked it. What my father bought was perfect. Even nowadays when I have to buy something to wear I am very undecided. 

I had once a beautiful doll, which would open and close her eyes. My brother and a friend of his wanted to see how the bowels looked like and what was in a human body, so they cut it open. They found just straws inside. I think it was childish curiosity.

Because mom would say: “Have you hurt yourselves? The bowels would come out of your finger.” We didn’t know what the entrails were and we were scared. I think I cried because of the doll but then I resigned, I had to face it. 

All children on the Stephen the Great streetattended the same school and they were all friends. The boys from school would come and play with my brother. One of them told him: “You know, when I’ll grow older, I’ll marry your sister.” 

This guy – his first name was Zalman, I can’t remember his family name – was killed by the Iron Guard 2. He and his family moved to Galati; he was by then ten years old. We didn’t keep in touch anymore – we were children, we had a lot of friends around, so we forgot.

But I found out later that he was assassinated – my brother was 17/18 years old [in 1941-42], and his friend might have beenthe same age. Why? He was arrested because he participated in the Zionist society in Galati. He was transferred from a prison to another and got killed on the way. We found out about it just indirectly. But there is a museum in Bucharest, in one of the synagogues in Bucharest I once visited.

[Ms. Kaiserman probably refers to the Great Synagogue of Bucharest, from 1980 a museum hosting the exhibition entitled ’The Memorial of Jewish Martyrsof Romania’. – Editor’s note] That is why I know that he was killed; he passed for a fugitive, so he got killed. I read it in the newspaper at the Jewish Museum in Bucharest. 

When we were little children we went every summer to Iacobeni, a commune near Vatra Dornei. [Iacobeni is situated at 19km north of Vatra Dornei.] We went there and wherever we could find a free place, we rented a room. Because of my brother and sister, who were tender and needed fresh mountain air, we went almost every summer.

I was stronger, but they were delicate and needed strengthening. We bought milk, butter, cheese and sour cream from the woman who rented the room for us.

I remember mom fighting them to eat at least one spoonful of sour cream. For my side I liked sour cream a lot and ate usually well. My mom loved me for that. She herself was well-built – after the war she got cardiac problems and lost strength. 

Iacobeni was a very nice place: the Bistrita river, the mountains, the fresh air, the mountain flowers – it was very beautiful. Local people were stock raisers, or they rented rooms – these were their main activities. Some of them also sculpted wood cut from the forest. 

They cut with a little knife different models on fir tree branches. They even taught us to make those engravings. There were woodhouses near the Bistrita river, and the train drove us high on the mountains overlooking the valley.

My dad couldn’t come with us on these excursions because of his shop keeping. Mom would go with us, and dad would come visit once a week. Knowing the time of my father’s arrival – usually on Sunday – we would eye the train in the distance.

We had relatives, much older than mom and well-off, who went to Dorna [Vatra Dornei]. We would take a carriage and drive from Iacobeni to Dorna, to visitour relatives – Iacobeni was a small resort and it got at times boring. It isn’t a resort anymore. On that time there were some baths there too, but we went there primarily for the air. Every summer till 1933. Then hard times followed, and we had financial problems. But in my childhood we were doing well.

There were many Jewish schools in Iassy, in almost each neighborhood, some of them even near our home. Only during the war, when we were kicked out of Romanian schools 7, the Jewish high school for boys and the one for girls were founded.

At home we, the children, would talk Romanian and our parents Yiddish. They wouldn’t let us speak Yiddish, in order to learn to speak correctly Romanian. Even though the Jewish school was located nearby, my mother signed me up for a Romanian school, saying that we were living in Romania and I should learn Romanian.

The school was called Petru Răşcanu, and it was very close to our home. In this primary school the Jewish pupils had a separate teacher, who would come and teach Jewish Religion. 

At a certain point in our religion class I’ve heard about King Solomon, about some battle, about the Exodus, about Canaan…and I told myself: “But this isn’t religion, this is history. What does religion mean?” I concluded that all was just a legend. 

And I tell myself, because I see people being so religious and I don’t understand why: everything is created by man, not by God. It is of no avail that Moses writes about him climbing Mount Ararat [Moses received the Ten Commandment on Mount Sinai] and talking to God, and God asking him to write the Ten Commandments on two stone tablets. Yes, they were engraved on the stone tablets by Moses, but he invented them, they weren’t spoken by any God.

But otherwise you couldn’t convince people about a thing being good or bad. The Ten Commandments received by Moses from God and given to the Jewish people are still useful. What I disagree with concerning any religion, is that because of these religions people kill each other. I totally disagree with that. But me disagreeing with any religion is of no use either, because I am just like a smallant. 

After primary school I attended a Romanian high school called Mihail Kogălniceanu for two years. I was a very good student and in primary school I even got awarded a prize. Even though I wasn’t hard-working I was clever and quick to learn. In the first high school year – in the current system it is the fifth grade – we had an older history teacher. 

I can still remember that teacher giving us an exam in history. He said: “I will ask you about such-and-such atopic. If you write about it a page, all of you will get the highest mark. If you write four pages, you will get the lowest mark.” He was old and probably he didn’t have patience to read that many pages through anymore. I’ve always got high marks: I wrote few, focused and got a high mark. But I think because of him I don’t like history.

My schoolmates were Jewish as well as Romanian. By then boys and girls attended separate schools. Our neighbors were Jews as well as Romanians, and we remained friends with all of them.

All children played together. Colleagues and friends came by to visit, Christian friends came over and ate specific cakes made for special holidays. They respected us. FortheChristian Passover there was a Romanian traditional cake. Just on Pesah we weren’t allowed to eat anything fermented, so we didn’t eat it.

After Pesah mom would prepare for us the same traditional cake, because we were children and craved for it. But I ate a lot of matzos as well ... through the school years, no matter what friends I had, I kept on eating it. They would even compete to decide which matzos were better.

You could prepare matzos out of sour cream – they bought sour cream, which didn’t contain much fat. They sifted corn flour on a wooden cardboard, covered it with fine muslin, poured the sour cream on it and rolled it on, so that the water got filtered and the sour cream thickened.

They were the best matzos and the most delicious cream. Instead of sour cream or cheese, there was another cream made of cocoa. Some housewives made this filling out of rice – sweetened rice and spices. My mother too baked this Romanian traditional cake and matzos filled with cheese, raisins or lemon peel.  

Still, I smelled that something was against us. I was too young to realize it, but I remember one thing: I usually got from my parents one or two lei to buy me a pretzel on my way to school. At the street cornertherewas a man with a basket covered with white cloth – he would sell pretzels to the children.

One day the schoolmistress came in our class and I remember what she said: “Children, don’t buy any pretzels from that kike at the corner. I organized here for you a buffet, please buy only from the buffet.” I didn’t know at that time what a “kike” meant, but I felt insulted. I ask myself: why? I was educated to be friendswith everybody and to respect other religions, even if I had another religion.

And still, what the schoolmistress Teodorescu said that day in school I remember even today. I know it was something that annoyed me.

Afterwards I still bought pretzels from the same man at the street corner. She could have said it differently: “Those crackers are dusty, please buy from us, because they are…” She said the word “kike” and that’s what I remember. This was in the third or fourth grade in primary school. 

Because of financial reasons my parents had to withdraw me from school in my second high school grade – in the autumn of 1938. After that, I think it was 1940, Jewish children were kicked out of school 7. The Jewish high school was founded afterwards, and my brother and sister went there.

My mother wanted each of her children tobelearned, but she could afford to pay only for the other two. She couldn’t afford to pay for me too. I don’t blame her. We lived through hard times.

During the war you couldn’t find work. We felt the change for sure. Firstly we couldn’t pay off the school. Back then school wasn’t free. And my brother was to go to school – my mother wanted him to become a physicist.

Because girls become anyway housewives, so she withdrew mefrom school. I started to broom the house, to clean it, to wash the dishes. The other girl, being the little one, had the ambition and eventually learnedsomething.

I finished my high school on long distance. I couldn’t do better. I finished high school after the 23rdof August 8 – I always say – “after the war”, but I didn’t manage to go to the university. My sister and my brother did nevertheless well. 

Wartime was awful. You weren’t allowed to get out of the house except at certain hours in the morning and until certain hours in the evening. You weren’t able to procure food only after nine o’clock in the morning and till five o’clock in the evening.

Moreover during the war you couldn’t find bread to buy, so we made it at home. Every other week bread was baked. Peasants would come with a pouch with flour and sold it. My mother battered the bread and added potatoes to multiply it.

Potatoes were boiled, peeled, grated and battered together with the dough. It was a very tasteful bread – we called it ‘intermediate’. Despite all that modest situation of ours, we didn’t die from hunger. But in Transnistria 5 peoplediddie from hunger. 

The most important Iron Guard leaders 4 were in Bucharest. But some of them were in Iassy too. Their headquarters weresituated near the cathedral. We lived on the Stefan cel Mare street, and that ‘nest’ of legionnaires was on the same street, but on the other side. 

Once, in 1938-9 [more likely in  1940 – Editor’s note], King Mihai was to come to Iassy 9. It was announced that no Jews were allowed to get out on the street. Probably because of Mihai’s and the legionnaires’ visit to Iassy.

Someone told me about a picture in the newspaper of King Mihai dressed with a green shirt and a cordon tied on his chest, like the Iron Guard. We obeyed and stayed at home. In that large yard where we lived, there was an iron door, which was closed.

A friend of my brother’s, Sandu, lived on Stefan cel Mare street too. He grew tired of sitting by himself and considered coming to play with Pincu and talk to us. Some legionnaires who recognized him being a Jew caught him: “Kike, what are you doing on the street?” They took him to their ‘nest’ near the cathedral and beat him so hard, that it was a miracle that he escaped alive. He was a boy of 16.

• During the war

There are things I remember as if they were yesterday. I remember a plane flying over the city and throwing leaflets: “The army will come and fight off the Iron Guard” – Antonescu 10 was then Marshal of Romania. The Iron Guard was the worst danger for us.

I remember those leaflets falling everywhere on the ground. I took one, read aloud and was so excited. My friends admired me for that. We were so happy about Antonescu coming 10. But after that it was a disaster. He came and organized pogroms 1.

Let’s say there were around 100.000 of inhabitants in Iassy before WWII. Romanian and Jews lived together. In our yard there were Jews and Christians as well. On the 29thof June they attacked all the neighborhoods where Jews lived.

They took them from Cuza Voda street, from Lapusneanu street, from all parts of Iassy to Stefan cel Mare street, which was the main street. There was the Pacurari neighborhood, the Niculina neighborhood, Podul Rosu – in each of these neighborhoods lived more Jews than Christians.

I can still hear it even today. In our yard there lived many families. It was a yard with many apartments and stories. Jews and Christian lived there together. 

One morning, it was Sunday, they entered in the yard – they weren’t dressed like soldiers – and shouted: “All Jews, come out of your houses!” I don’t remember if anybody explained anything to us, but this is what stuckto my memory: if the Germans are against the Jews and they come by here on their way to Bessarabia, they don’t trust us and they will send us to a labor camp.

Although it was summer – it was the 29thof July, a very warm day – we put on something warm, we took our arctics, because we didn’t know where we were heading to and how long it was going to take. You never know when the war is going to be over. We didn’t take food, we didn’t take anything. We just put something more on: warm jackets and caps.

And we gotout together. When we came out on the Stefan cel Mare street, which was a large street, armed people lined us up and then crowded us towards the police headquarters. There is a memorial plaque on Vasile Alecsandri street, on the wall of the former police headquarters commemorating the victims of this pogrom.

On my way to the police headquarters I already saw dead people laying on the ground. Some of my acquaintances were laying in puddles of blood.

From Stephen the Great streetto the police headquarters isn’t a long distance, but I remember seeing a lot of dead people. Mom never allowed us to go to a funeral. There was a superstition saying that if your parents were alive you aren’t allowed to go neither to a cemetery nor to funerals. So we were somehow spared such unpleasant situations. At the police headquarters they crowded us, together with tens of other Jews from different parts of the city.

All our family were staying together, when I heard someone sayingthat women and children are to go home. Mom took us and we got to the gate. There was a police man. He looked at my brother andsaid: “This is not a child anymore. Get back!” And mom told my brother: “Go and stay with dad and don’t go away from him!” The three of us arrived eventually home. Mom thought that only men were to go to labor camps.

So she took some valuable things from the house – some jewels and the rest of the money we still had– to bring them to my father. She left us, the girls, at home and got back the police station to look for my dad. But people were going in and coming out, some of them were brought there, the women were set free, it was… she couldn’t get at him.

Someone even told her: “Go immediately home, because its dangerous.” This someone was a German. A German officer, who spoke to her in German. Mom knew very well German so she understood him, and came home. 

My sister had a friend from the primary school. Her parents hid in their basement a Jewish family. Where they were living, somewhere near the Bahlui river, Jews and Christians lived together. When they saw what was happening on the street, theybroke the fence and called the Jews in their house. They weren’t caught. They were lucky.

Afterwards it was announced in that yard that they were delivering “free”-tickets. The “free”-ticket was a piece of paper, which read “free” and had a stamp on it. The people, who were near this officethatdelivered such tickets crowded to take them. And my father took my brother, got the “free”-ticket and came home.

Some of the people were set free with this ticket. And why were they delivering this “free”-tickets? So thatthe ones who got the ticket toannounce the otherswho didn’t, and lure them in this way to get out of their hiding. They said: “Without this ticket you can’t go out”. My mother went to an older neighbor, who lived above and told him: “Look, you are aged. When you are going to need the ticket, you can borrow mine”.

And he didn’t go to take the ticket, and because of that, heremained alive. That was a happy accident. Many said: “Go and take the ticket.” And the ones, who went remained there and were killed, or were huddled in wagons and sent away. [Ms. Kaiserman is referring to the Death Trains. – Editor’s note] They never came back. 

After dad and my brother came home, we locked ourselves in the house, the windows were covered with blue paper – it was called “camouflage paper” – so that the light couldn’t be seen outside during bombardments, and we huddled together without moving. In the afternoon, around half past four they came again in the yard and called out in Romanian. There were a lot of them.

Mom looked through that “camouflage paper” and said: “These are Saxons. They are tall and blond”. This was her opinion. They were civilians, not soldiers. Someone shouted in Romanian: “Get out all Jews. Just the men, not the women. If you don’t come out, we will kill you right away”.

My brother got up and ran to the door, but my mom opposed him, holding the door with her hand and said: “They will kill us all. Don’t go out. I don’t allow you to”. That’s how he was saved. If they took him, they would have killed him at the police station, or he would havebeensent in the wagons and… Although almost 12.000 people died in the pogrom, nobody from our family died. This is the story in short.

What happened to the people in the wagons 1 is another story. They were herded in those cattle wagons, all doors and windows nailed with boards, on the floor a bed of cowpat – they were after all cattle wagons – on the top of which they threw lime.

It was in the middle of the summer, the rooftop of the train growing hot … it was terrible. On the route Iassy – Podu Iloaiei, in one of thewagons therewas my future brother-in-law, Iancu Ţucărman [interviewed by Centropa].

He told me that at a certain point they were sitting on corpses. Because in that wagon, which fitted only some cattle, they herded 130 to 150 people. They weren’t even able to sit. They were standing leaned against each other.

And everybody was looking for a broken board at the window in order to get some fresh air. Those who couldn’t keep calmdied. They died in six to seven hours. After six-seven hours, when the doors were opened, just the ones who could still walkgot out.

There were some puddles there, because the train didn’t stop in the railroad station, but some other place. A peasant, who presentthere said, that they stuck their heads in the puddle to drink the water – and some died because of that.

There were some who got out naked. They tore their clothes off in that desperate moments. Then they were brought to different families in Podu Iloaiei and hosted there. My brother-in-law was hosted with other acquaintances too – they knew each other from Iassy.

What happened to a human being in eight hours! He had black hair and he lostall of it in those eight hours. I didn’t know him and when my sister was engaged to him I kept asking: “Does he have red hair?” I didn’t like red-hair people. I don’t mind them anymore, but then I didn’t like them. And she said: “No, I think he had black hair.” He only got some hairs left on his head, here and there.

We found out about Auschwitz and Transnistria 5 in Iassy only after the Russians came…we didn’t know about any of those things. We didn’t have any newspapers or radios. We knew only what happened around us, in our city. When the Russians came, the Bessarabians started to return to Romania.

Because they didn’t have anything to live from, many people, especially Jews, moved before WWII to Bessarabia. And for a year, until thebeginning of thewar, they did well there. But not all of them. Some of them, who were considered rich, or kulaks or whatever, were sent to Siberia.

The others, which were rather modest, remained there. Then Hitler came and Romania fought on Hitler’s side in order to regain Bessarabia. The Jews were then taken and sent to Transnistria. When the Russians fought Hitler off and regained Bessarabia, many people returned to Romania, because they knew what Communism was like.

Many feared the Russian communists and came on this side without being Romanians. I knew Jews, who came back and told us what happened in Transnistria. We didn’t know until then. My sister had a colleague in high school, who came, who fled Cernauti after the war. I myself knew other persons, who came from Cernauti. 

• After the war and later life

I went to knitting school around 1946-48. There were primary schools, complimentary schools, vocational schools, and Jewish high schools. Just across the street of the National Theatre of Iassy there is today a school for deafpeople. This was once the building of the Jewish Community of Iassy. 

There was the kindergarten we attended too, the primary school, the complementary school and the trade school – it was called “The Culture”. They trained professionals: tailors, iron men, carpenters, shoemakers, dressmakers, embroiders – what was modern at that time. Afterwards they organized some workshops and I went to learn knitting. Others learned tailoring. There were even students coming to learn a trade. I learned knitting.

I happened to know a lady, she was the forewoman there, who came from Cernauti. This lady, who worked for the big and famous knitting factory Hermes, told me, that she was thrown out of Cernauti, or out of some little town near Cernauti and sent with only her clothes to Transnistria. 

She was pregnant by then. They forced them to walk, day and night. Who fell, was shot and left there. She beardachild while walking, just like that, in her trousers, and while bearing she had to keep going – she bearda dead child. Afterwards she wanted to have a baby and she had one, but it was very difficult.

When she came here, she opened a workshop with some kind of knitting machines. I learned the trade there. In 1948 the educational system was reorganized 11. These workshops were Jewish – all of them were disbanded, and belonged to the state. 

I learned knitting at a machine, where I did hemstitches with a needle. It was a knitting machine, but it was big, so I had to stand and go back and forth with a hand crank, which moved all needles and made the loops. If you wanted you could pass one loop above the other and little holes were formed. It wasn’t complicated. 

Nowit’s no longer worth knitting. But during Ceausescu’s 6 times all women knew how to knit. Because there weren’t any clothes. I knitted clothes for my nephew. I knitted for him trousers, shorties, caps, jackets.

I remember once being able to buy some scarves, I undid them and made a new jacket for me, one I used to go to work with. I got it cleaned every Saturday evening or Sunday in order to have it clean for Monday. I didn’t have any other clothes. 

Everybody tried to learnsomethingafter the war, tried to make himselfa social status. Beginning with 1949 I started to work as a typist. I worked at the town hall – back then it was called the “Popular Council” –, we were there Jews and Romanians, we were like a family, we helped each other. I didn’t hate anybody and I wasn’t hated, on the contrary, I was welcomed and appreciated. 

I did the high school in the mean time. I applied for distance education, but you had to take some evening classes. It was a given number of hours and we went almost every evening to high school and had classes. There were colleagues of mine from the town hall, who didn’t finish their education and we went together. We formed a group, we befriended. 

I finished high school after 1949. I had a maturity exam, it wasn’t called High School Baccalaureatewhen I finished school. I had on that time books translated from RussianthatI had to learn from:Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry books. 

Some of them were so badly translated, that you had to try very hard to understand, what you were reading. In my childhood [before WWII] there were more authors of schoolbooks. Every teacher had his own favoriteauthor and the beginning of school you got a list: for Mathematics author such-and-such, for Physics author such-and-suchetc. This was until 1948, when the international schoolbooks were introduced 11. 

After finishing high school I took some librarian courses. Actually there were different courses after the war so that people would learn a trade and work. And they worked. There were bookkeeping courses, and some others. I got in the librarian class – it was a coincidence. 

After ten years [beginning with 1959], I got a job aslibrarian and worked in different schools in Iassy. I got along well with my colleagues, with the whole staff. Even today there are persons, who recognize me and great me: former pupils, former colleagues, teachers. 

I was a librarian at School nr. 12, today it is called the School nr. 33. It wasn’t far from the town center. Back thenit was an experimental school, because there were differentprofessors for each subject even in the primary school. They were very good professors, it was a so-called special school.

But eventually it didn’t work and they changed the system to the old one with only one teacher for one class. A teacher has a different kind of trainingand she knows how to hold the hand of the pupil when teaching him to write.

At this school we had an extraordinary headmistress. Badrajean Elena was her name. She used to organize now and then a party. We also used to celebrate birthdays and name days, Saint John, Saint Mary – but they didn’t call it Saint – New Years Eve, Christmas Tree.

Everyone would bring something delicious, and we ate together. Despite the general need. The headmistress would ask: “What can you bring?” “You are going to bring sausage” – which you could hardly get. “You bring horse radish. You make boeuf salad.” Every lady wanted to show that she was a good housewife. Cake would be made. It was a wonderful time of my life. The rest of it was unfortunately spent waiting in the line trying to buy something to eat.

My colleague Olguta and I were sent by the school inspectorate to take some specialized library courses in Bucharest. After our homecoming the Ministry of Education made it possible for us to teachotherslibrary courses in the whole region of Moldavia. I retired in 1983. 

My father worked after the war too. He administered a building. Thanks to my brother, who got him on a building yard, where he was some kind of keeper. When he turned 60 they weren’t allowed to have him there anymore. He retired with 15 years of work. 

That many years could he gather from the documents. After loosing the money from the businesshe had, he was hired as a bookkeeper in a factory and could gather some 15 years from there. So he had a small pension, but it was good he had one atall.

His writing was beautiful and he was a very good bookkeeper. After he didn’t go to work anymore, my brother and I, began to work and keep the house. He had a jotter where he noted every day what he bought or what he spent.

My parents would go together to the cinema. Until the television appeared on the market the cinema was the only amusement. They didn’t have television in the house. Everybody went to the movies. The movie theaters were always overcrowded. We queued for tickets, we sat sometimes on the ground, or on the stairs, because we couldn’t get a chair. 

Pincu, my brother, finished the polytechnic institute in Iassy. He is an engineer. He has a son, Alfred Kaiserman. Daniela, his wife, comes from Bucharest and is Jewish too. Actually her parents lived in Bucharest, but her grandparents were from Iassy.

So we knew each other from our childhood. Alfred and his wife lived here in Iassy, but two years after finishing university – around 1986 – they emigrated to Israel. After a year and a half they moved again to Germany and then to Belgium.

They live in Bruxelles. They have a boy and a girl. The little boy – for me he is still a little boy – is called Ronen. The girl is called Astrid – reminding of Princess Astrid of Holland. The boy was born in Israel. The girl in Germany.

The nephews visit every year their grandparents, and they talk and read in Romanian. I mean, the boy slower, he searches for the right words,but the girl speaks fluently. I am very glad that, compared with the actual generationwho lives here, they read a lot of literature: in German, in English and in French. Now

[in 2006] the boy is studying, he is 18 years and a half, the girl is 15 and a half. She attends a high school in Bruxelles called the International High School were they teach in English and were they accept only exceptional children. 

Clarisa, my sister studied industrial chemistry. There was a very good chemistry teacher at the Oltea Doamna high school [the actual high school „Mihai Eminescu” in Iassy], the high school my sister attended, so that almost all girls, but two or three who studied mathematics, studied chemistry. 

They had very good teachers and because of that all pupils went to university. After university, my sister was assigned to Bucharest. She worked in this field at a Research Institute. She met her husband, Iancu Tucarman, in Bucharest thanks to family aquaintances. They had a religious ceremony. My brother-in-law was an agronomist. He worked at that time at a farm near Succeava, but he had an ID from Bucharest. She had an ID from Iassy.

So  they organized the wedding in Iassy, both the religious ceremony and the civil marriage. The religious ceremony took place in our house. We had that big house in Sfantul Sava neighbourhood, with large rooms, so we organized it there. It was harldy a year after mom died, so it was a modest wedding, but the rabbi was present. 

Nowadays they still organize religious ceremonies, but back then, if two persons belonging to different religious communities were to be married, nobody accepted it, neither the synagogue nor the church. I remember once being able to attend a wedding of some friends.

Rabbi Rosen 12 promised to approve their marriage. The father of the girl was Jewish, but her mother wasn’t. They say, you inherit your mother, not your father. You know for sure who your mother is, saying who your father is...is problematic.

All accepted to organize a religious marriage, in Hebrew, but it wasn’t approved. They made only the civil marriage, afterwards they invited everybody to lunch, where she dressed like a bride and prepared everything as for a wedding.      

We moved from Stephen the Great streetto a house on Sfantul Sava street, which had a bathroom and a WC inside. It was much better. It wasn’t our house, we got it through the Dwelling Service. I’ll explain how this worked. A census of all existing apartments in the whole country was made around 1949. People were hired to do this job. They drew the plansof all apartments from Iassy. Afterwards people would go to the Dwelling Service and apply for an apartment. 

Because flats weren’t built by then, they decided that every person has the right to eight square meters. If they were husband and wife they had to live in one room. If they had two rooms and no children, one room was taken from them, and they had to host a renter. If they had a boy and a girl, they had the right for separate rooms, one for the boy and one for the girl. That’s how apartments were alocated, that’s the way this Dwelling Service worked.

Some of the apartments were freed in time. When I moved for instance from Stefan cel Mare to Sfantul Sava, a family hadjust left from there. I had a kitchen and a bathroom there.

Afterwards my sister was assigned to Bucharest, my brother got married and moved to his wife’s apartment and I remained with my parents. I had the right to a room and my parents to another one. We rented that apartment. But there was a law regarding the rent payment too.

There were stoves, but you couldn’t find firewood anymore, so we bought a gas stove, which had to burn day and night, otherwise it got cold immediately and my father was old. Sometimes the stove clogged and I had to stave it in. I had to put my hand right to its end, and in the endI got all dirty. And it was just the moment I had to go school. Dreadful. 

I think I lived for 20 years in that house. Meanwhile the Dwelling Service was disbanded, because a lot of people moved in apartment houses. It was then when I bought this apartment, and moved in with dad. This apartment wasn’t offered to me by the state.

I bought it from start on. I had a part of the moneyI needed to for it, I borrowed a part from CEC and my siblings helped me too. I don’t know if someone else moved in on Sfantul Sava street after I left, I don’t think so. Afterwards they destroyed it. 

Mom died on Sfantul Sava street in 1965. My father died 20 years later. He died here, in this apartment. He had only one concern in his later years. To go to the prayer house. And not to mix the meat with the milk. I do the same today. I cannot eat chicken with sour cream and I wouldn’t cook like that. 

When someone dies, you have to hire an experienced man, who will read prayers and light candle after candle all night, untilthenext day, when the funeral takes place. The funeral was organized according to the Jewish Tradition. If you came at the cemetery after the dead person was burried you hadto eat a hard-boiled egg sprinkled with ash and a pretzel.

We didn’t have any ash at my dad’s funeral, but at mom’s funeral there wassome. My father observed all traditions. When I came hungry at mom’s funeral,  and ate the hard-boiled egg and the pretzel I was amazed todiscover that the egg and the pretzel were no different from the usual ones. But my brother couldn’t eatthem. It was like any other boiled egg, the difference is that it is boiled on ash, on embers, the egg is put in coal, and mixedwith the ash.

We sat shivah especially for mom. We sat shivah for dad only the period when people came and consoled us. But when the people left I got up. It is very difficult to sit shivah. You have to sit on the ground – well you can put a pad, but you have to sit for hours, and you go stiff, your legs hurt. You don’t have to sit on Friday and Saturday – more exactly from Friday evening until Saturday evening. 

And there is the custom, that every evening, instead of going as usual to the synagogue, ten men go to the house of the deceased person and pray there.

Every evening and every morning. Shivah – shivah means seven in Hebrew – lasts for seven days. After these seven days the ten men come to the house again, say the prayer, take you outside the house, go arround the house – which means that you lead the soul, who is leaving the house. 

The mourning is very hard. You are not allowed to wash yourself for a month, for 30 days. That was the most difficult thing for me. And I think you were allowed to change your clothes only on Saturday. The mourning lasts a year – you are not allowed to listen to music, to go to a concert or to a party during this time.

The wearing of mourning clothes is not compulsory – you don’t have to wear black clothes, but have to wear a black apron fastened like a belt, which you can take down Friday evening. You don’t have to wear mourning clothes on Saturdays and on feasts. Kadish is to be said for 11 months.

My brother said it too, but worked and couldn’t go in the morning, so we hired someone, who said it for him. And there was an annual commemoration with prayers at the synagogue and with donationsto poor people. 

I wasn’t a party member. Sometimes you were forced by the circumstances to keep your job. But I didn’t have an important position, so there was no need to fire me if I wasn’t a party member. I didn’t want to belong to the party, because we considered emigrating to Israel. I couldn’t say I wanted to be a party member, but I also that I want to emigrate to Israel.

They kept coming with offers, but I kept refusing. Afterwards they said that only the workers can be party members and they left me alone. I was lucky. Neither my sister nor my brother-in-law were party members. Only my brother. But he was forced to become one at his work. Someone told me once: “If you are not with us, you are against us.“

In fact Ceausescu 6  himself was an antisemite. If you wanted to have a more important job in a leading position, you had to change your name, because the Jewish name wasn’t in the good books. On that time many applied for emigrating to Israel. 

Someone got the approval, the other didn’t. We asked ourselves: “On what basis? How do they analyse these records?“ „Why does one get the approval and another onedoesn’t?“ All depended on the height of the police man. If he was small he couldn’t reach the high shelf, so the low shelf got the approval. This was a common joke. There was no logic in these approvals and denials. For instance I had a friend. She had three sisters.

The emigration of their father was approved, and the girls with their mother left only 15 or 20 years later, because they didn’t get the approval. Do you think they were the only ones? I happened to know other families, who experienced the same thing. I remember a young family, they were desperate... Both of them applied for emigration, but by the time of their appliance they weren’t married yet. Then they knew each other, got married, had a baby and then the approvals were offered.

He got the approval, but she didn’t. He left and she remained crying here with a little child, and after the war there were hard times: famine and other insufficiencies, and it was very difficult. I remember dialogues with our relatives from Israel who visited Romania. Before leaving the house I would say: „I’ll take a bag, maybe I’ll find someting.“ „What do you want to find? Can’t go to buy something?“ „Yes, I will buy, but first I have to find something to buy.“

A lot of people left for Israel around 1959-60. Afterwards rather infrequent. Eventually we remained here. My brother and sister wanted to study, to finish university and after that they didn’t want to get fired from their jobs. One wasafraid that in the end one would end up homeless. 

The engineer and the physicist got approvalsespecially hard. After applying for emigration, they could have kept you waiting for three or four years and gradually  demote you. Seeing that others were fired from their jobs and hired to do the hard jobs – they could be scavengers for ten years, until their emigration was approved – my brother and sister gave up and decided to stay.

My parents got old and didn’t have the courage anymore. They should have startedfrom the beginning there. Mom didn’t want to part with any child: „No one leaves. We stay together.“

I was only one time in Israel. My father died in 1985 and I left afterwards, but it was still before the Revolution 13. I had only one cousin (nephew) in Israel, Grinberg Dorel [his mother was actually Ms. Kaiserman’s cousin. – Editor’s note]. He died in the meantime too.

I have many friends in Israel. I visited and lived in 20 houses during my time in Israel. In Haifa three friends, in Ranana, in Tel Aviv, I stayed in Nathania at my cousin and then at his mother’s place.

I was driven with the car all time. I couldn’t have managed it alone. I liked a lot what I’ve seen. It was a feeling hard to explain. Especially when you arrive in Jerusalem – it seems as ifsomething floats through the air. The past and the present…

To see on what people managed to built the cities and the roads… I travelled from north to south, I was at the Red Sea too. On the way to the Red Sea the road is built on sand dunes. I kept watching and wondering – I couldn’t believe it. You could see sand dunes right and left and the road twisted and turned to the first oasis.

The Red Sea makes an extraordinary impression on you. I visited an underwater-museum, a building made of glass. You descended with a sort of ladder until you get on the seabed. On the seabed is this natural museum, and you can see around you all sorts of big and small and colored fish – I haven’t seen in my whole life such fish in yellow and mauve, black and white… A splendor.

And on the seaside there are some hotels, so high that you cannot see their top. One is called King David, the other the Queen of Sheba…That place was called Eylat, but we stayed some atother place, we didn’t have that much money, and my friend wasn’t rich either – we stayed in some tents. If there wasn’t any air conditioningwe wouldn’t have resisted on that weather– there were 40 degreesCelsius. 

We drove to the nearest place fromEgypt. We were in that town on the border with former Egypt – it wasn’t yet retrocede to Egypt. [Gaza, which was during 1967-1994 under Israel’s administration. – Editor’s note]. We could go near the soldierwho stood at the border between the lands.

We descended with an elevator into a cave eroded by the water and took a walk in that cave. We have seen extraordinary things there. Of all things I have an interest in all flowers and living creatures. They are fascinating. 

I liked Nathania most of all cities. I saw there jewelries for the first timein my life– I hadn’t seen real jewelries shops until then. I don’t wear jewelries, I don’t have any, but I like them. And I would stop in front of a showcase and couldn’t walk further. I stayed in front of the shopand admiredthem.

People say Haifa is a beautiful city. I didn’t like Haifa that much but it is indeed beautiful. Once we drove from Tel Aviv to Haifa on the seashore. At a certain point you can see mountings – not like the Romanian mountains with pine trees, but bald mountains.

And there are somenests, like bird nests, thatsuspended on these mountains – they were human dwellings. Everything is built on the top of the mountain, not in the valley, as cities are built in Romania. I visited also a Moroccan house. I can’t remember which friend of mine had a Moroccan friend, and she brought me to her, to see how Moroccan people live [Jews who came from Morocco].

In Haifa we went with some friends to a flower exhibition. What beautiful flowers there were… It wasn’t a permanent exhibition, it had closed the following day. What flowers, what aromas, what colors… there were flowers from all over the world. 

Before going to Israel, I was in anorganized excursion: Prague, Warsaw, Leningrad [Leningrad was the name applied during most of the Communist period (1924-91) to Saint Petersburg. – Editor’s note], Moscow. I very much liked Prague, the golden city.

We walked through Prague until 12 o’clock in the night – we were a whole group –, I went on the street and had the impression that I knew those places. That was my feeling – except that the city is wonderful.

We left the darkness in Romania and saw there illuminated and clean streets…You couldn’t see anything on the ground, not even a leaf or a cigarette butt – it was impossible to find such things in Prague. I learned there how to use a bus ticket two times. You bought a ticket made of thin paper, which the ticket collector perforated. When you came home,you moistured it, pressed it and reused it. 

Leningrad is an elegant city. First of all you must walk on Neva’s bank and see the bridges lifting at nighttime and letting ships pass. I visited also Petrodvorets, a place at the Baltic Sea where the Tsar Peter the Great used to live. 

There is a garden with statues, all of them plated with gold. In autumn, when it gets colder, all statues are covered, enwrapped and kept safe. And there were many fountains. We were told, that the water falls from a high place and it falls with such power, that no energy is used for the functioning of these fountains.

Our guide wanted to tell us something secretly and called us to go with her under a tree with artificial foliage and gravel on the ground. I don’t know who walked on a stone and water started to spring from the ground. She wanted to make fun of us. I was so mad at her… but that tree was impressive. 

In Moscow we had the opportunity to go either at the Theatre or ata   Russian balletperformance, which is very famous, or at the circus. Some preferred the circus, some the theatre. Our group went to the circus. And before getting in, we walked through a big park, with a large lake with smooth water.

We liked the circus show, but it got very late, so the driver called us out to go to the hotel. And we walked again through the park. We could hear opera music and operettas, and on that lake we saw a music show and lights, and couldn’t leave that spot.

There were fountains, the light coming from the ground. You got the impression that the water was dancing. And all this went simultaneous with the music they sang, which kept changing. It was enchanting.

I think it is something unique in the world. But I’m not sure, I didn’t travel that much. In Warsaw they brought us to a Zoo, where animals lived free. For example, I saw bears and elephants with untied feet walking on a land, which belonged to them. But every piece of land was surrounded by a deep ditch, nails were therein, to hurt animals if they wanted to escape. I was impressed by this place, where animals weren’t captive in a cage – I pity them when I see them caged.

I have seen many beautiful things. It’s good that I didn’t forget these experiences. When I want to think of something nice, I think of Leningrad, of Prague and of Israel.

I personally don’t go to the synagogue. Unmarried women don’t belongthere. I observe the tradition, but not in the way my parents did it. When my father lived we lit candles on Hanukkah, but now, being alone, I don’t light any. What traditionsdo I observe? Yesterday was for instance the Day of Atonement [Yom Kippur].

On this feast you have to repent for your sins and pray for the prolongation of your life. It is a fasting day, which lasts from seven in the morning until seven o’clockthe following day. You are not even allowed to drink water, so it is a fasting day. 

We observe this tradition out of habit. We don’t believe in it. I too fasted yesterday, but I am very sick, I gathered a bag of diseases and I took one of my medicines with some water – otherwise my heart stops and there can be complications. 

I usually go to the Club on Tuesday and on Thursday before lunch. We, some elderly women, gather in a room of the Jewish Community of Iassy, we play rummy, drink tea or coffee, and eat cookies or biscuits, we talk to each other, we get to know each otherbetter, becomefriends. When I go to the Club I eat for lunch at the canteen – which is in the same building. 

I attend every conference they organize at the Community, they are very interesting. The last conference was last Sunday. It was about Jewish personalities from Iassy. And a lot of Christians attended this conference, not only Jews. 

I invite, for instance, every time one of my physicists– I have more female physicist and all of them are beautiful and good-hearted, I love them all – because this lady is very affectionate and she thanks me every time. “Please tell me every time.

I won’t come only ifI can’t.” Last week there were more speakers. But my physicist came with a bouquetof flowersonly for me. All talked, but I was the only one to leave with a bouquet. It was a very expensive bouquet, I think, the flowers were Imperial Lilies, their fragrance lasted for a week.

Do you know what women say? I don’t have enough time. I do all my housekeeping alone, rarely is there someone who helps me shake out my carpet. But now my leg is hurting and I can barely bend. It’s much harder, but I still do it alone. I wash all my clothes, go shopping, cook. 

I don’t like to make visits, and I don’t go out in the afternoon or in the evening. I do everything in the morning. I usually wake up early and do a difficult job, like washing the laundry, as I did this morning. Not all of themat once, just a few.

Or another morning I cooked 3 kilos of eggplants. I had to stand a lot, and my legs are the problem. I made some eggplant salad, and I put the rest in two separate bags in the deepfreeze. Some other time I do something else – cooking, cleaning, shopping.

The day before yesterday or yesterdayitrained a lot, so I didn’t get out at all. My neighbor brought me a loaf bread. It was my plan to buy bread but it rained so she brought it this morning for me.

I got out today and made some shopping, I prepared some things again for the morning cores. And sinceI wake up at four or five o’clock, I have plenty of time to work. Afterwards I take a shower, I get dressed and go to the Club. 

• Glossary:

Nikolay Schwartz
Uzhgorod
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: October 2003

Nikolay Schwartz is not tall and stooping man. He has long gray hair. Although he was not feeling well, Nikolay agreed to tell me about his family and his life. Nikolay has a severe hearing problem, and this made our conversation a little difficult, but he was telling much and spoke willingly. He lives alone in a one-bedroom block apartment building. His flat is very clean and he gives credit to his visiting nurse from Hesed, who visits him every day and does all housework. Nikolay has a grave form of diabetes. He doesn’t leave his home and cannot take care of himself. There is only necessary furniture in his apartment: a bed, a table with medications on it and bookcases by the walls. There are books in Hungarian, Czech, Yiddish, Hebrew and English. It’s difficult for Nikolay to read now: his eyesight is getting worse, but he tries to read at least few pages each day to remember the languages he knows.

My parents’ families lived in Subcarpathia [1]. I didn’t know my grandmothers or grandfathers. I only remember one family story that my father told me. His father, my grandfather, was forestry manager in Vinogradov all inhabitants called it Sevlyush [derived from Nagyszolos, the Hungarian name of the town, its residents called it as such affectionately] [85 km from Uzhgorod, 645 km from Kiev], for Baron Zsigmond. During World War I he left his home and to keep the gate open till he returned, but he never returned home and nobody knew what happened to him. My grandmother died before I was born. My father locked the gate after my grandmother died.

My father Izidor Schwartz was born in Vinogradov. I don’t know the year of his birth. His Jewish name was Isaac. My father had two older brothers. In the early 1900s they moved to the USA and this is all I know about them. We didn’t correspond with them.

Vinogradov was mainly a Jewish town like many other settlements in Subcarpathia. Its Jewish population constituted over 50%. There was also Hungarian, Czech [probably Slovak] and Ukrainian [Ruthenian] population in Vinogradov. Jews mainly lived in the center of the town. The houses were located very near to one another. The land was expensive, and there were no gardens near the houses. There was only enough space for utility facilities near the houses. There were 2-3 trees and that was all. There were big gardens in the suburbs of the town. There were many vineyards. The non-Jewish population of Vinogradov mainly dealt in vine growing and wine making. Jews traditionally dealt in crafts and trade. However, there were also Jewish vineyards and wineries. Vinogradov produced kosher wine for Subcarpathia and Czechoslovakia.

There were few synagogues in Vinogradov. I don’t remember the exact number. There was a Hasidic [2] synagogue. Hasidim stayed apart from non-Jewish residents and from other Jews who did not belong to Hasidim. Hasidim had a shochet who only worked for them. My parents were religious, but they weren’t Hasidim. My parents went to the synagogue near our house. It was a big and beautiful synagogue. There were few one-storied smaller synagogues. Their location was near to any Jewish houses wherever that was, but even those who lived far from the biggest synagogue, attended it. There was a very good chazan and people came to listen to him. All Jews in Vinogradov were religious. Some went to the synagogue every day, but the majority attended the synagogue on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. All Jews observed Jewish traditions. All Jewish families had many children, even the poorest ones. They had children without thinking whether they would have enough food for them. The community helped the poor. Once a week community workers collected money for the poor for Sabbath. Every family gave as much as they could.

There was no anti-Semitism in Vinogradov and there was no national segregation. There were generations of various nationalities living side by side in Subcarpathia. They learned to respect a different faith and traditions. There were no Jewish pogroms or ravaging Jewish cemeteries or other things of this kind. There was no state or routinely anti-Semitism. Jews held official positions and were on military service. It was a usual flow of things.

My mother Serena Schwartz, nee Feuerstein, was born in Irshava town [70 km from Uzhgorod, 635 km from Kiev] in Subcarpathia in the early 1890s. I don’t know my mother’s Jewish name. Her parents died, when my mother was in her teens, and the children went to live with their relatives. Life was probably hard for her. My mother didn’t like talking about her childhood and I don’t know anything about her family, brothers or sisters. I don’t know where my mother got her Jewish education, but she was very religious. She could read in Hebrew and knew prayers.

My parents got married in 1914. I don’t know how they met. I think, they met through a shadkhan, a matchmaker. At that time most Jews used assistance of shadkhanim. Young people didn’t know each other until after they were wed. This was when they saw each other for the first time. Considering that my parents were so deeply religious I believe they had a traditional Jewish wedding. After the wedding the newly weds settled down in my father’s house that he received from his parents. This was a solid spacious houses made of air bricks. Most houses in Subcarpathia were built from this construction material. Straw was finely cut and mixed with clay. Then they formed bricks from this mixture and dried them in the sun. These were good light bricks with good heat insulation. There were few houses of the local rich families and official buildings built from bricks. Our house had a sheet iron roof. There was a mezuzah by the front door of our house like in other Jewish houses. There were 3 rooms and a kitchen in the house. One room was my parents’ bedroom, one room was the sons’ room and another one was the daughters’ room. There were wood stoked stoves heating the rooms. Coal was not common in Subcarpathia. It was shipped from far away while there were woods all around.

My father was a harness maker. Horses were the only transportation. He built an annex to our house to serve as his shop. My father worked alone and at times had apprentices. His apprentices’ parents didn’t pay my father, after they finished their first year of training they began to assist my father in his work. The training lasted three years. My father provided meals to his apprentices. They could do work on their own in the third year of training, and my father profited from it. My father didn’t earn much, but it was sufficient to make our living. My mother did the housekeeping.

My mother dressed traditionally. I remember her wearing neck tight dark dresses. Even in summer she wore long-sleeved clothes. She also wore a wig to go out and at home she covered her head with a kerchief. My father wore a dark suit and a hat. At home he put on a kippah. My father didn’t have a beard or payes. At home we spoke Yiddish and Hungarian. We, kids, knew Czech, but our parents only knew few common words in Czech.

My sister Klara whose Jewish name was Haya, born in 1915, was the oldest of the children. In 1916 Yelisaveta, whose Jewish name was Leya, was born, at home we called her Liz. I was born in 1918, before Subcarpathia was annexed to Czechoslovakia. I had the name of Miklos written in my Hungarian birth certificate, and my Jewish name was Moishe. My family called me Miki affectionately. When receiving my passport in 1946 I changed my name to Nikolay, so the official has written down in my passport, without asking. There were two other children born after me, but they died in infancy and I don’t remember their names. Ernest, the youngest brother whose Jewish name was Aron, was born in 1928, he was recorded as Erno. My brother and I were circumcised according to the Jewish custom. I don’t remember my brother’s brit milah. Of course, I was not allowed to be in the room where the ritual was conducted. There were few Jews wearing black suits and black hats in the room. One of them was a rabbi. My mother took my brother’s cradle filled with candy, bagels, cookies and nuts into the yard. We rocked the cradle and picked sweets falling out of there. When the men came out of the room, my mother invited all to dinner.

We could buy bread in a store, but my mother preferred to bake it. On Friday morning my mother made dough in a big kneading trough. She usually made bread for a week. She made big round loaves of very delicious bread from brown flour and for Sabbath my mother made 2 challah loaves from white flour. My mother formed loaves from dough and pleated the challah forms, put them into a basket and sent me to the baker. He baked the loaves and I came later to pick them up. When we ran out of bread before the week was over, my mother bought some from the baker. Sabbath was sure to be celebrated. Even if my father was away, he tried to return home before Sabbath. My mother did a lot of cooking for Sabbath. The family was big, and she had to cook for two days. On Friday my mother made chicken broth with homemade noodles or with dough grains. There was gefilte fish, ground radish with onions and goose fat, and tsimes [3]. When she was done with her cooking, my mother put a pot of cholnt into the oven, closed the oven leaving the cholnt overnight. It stayed hot for a long while in a ceramic pot. On Friday, before Sabbath began, we went to the mikveh. After the mikveh my father put on his fancy suit and went to the synagogue. My mother set the table, put the Saturday challah bread on it, lit candles and prayed over them. When my father came back, we sat down to dinner. Nothing was to be done after dinner. It wasn’t allowed to hold money or strike a match. My Jewish friends were already waiting for me outside. We went for walks chatting. Next morning we went to the synagogue. My mother also went to the synagogue. The prayer ended at about 11. We had lunch after the synagogue. After lunch my father prayed and then sat down to read the Torah. We sat around him and he read us a Saturday section from the Torah. Then we went for a walk while my father read till Havdalah, when the first star appeared in the sky. By that time the children were to be back home. My father conducted the Havdalah, separation of Saturday from weekdays. My father lit candles that were smaller than the ones lit on Sabbath. Everybody had some wine, even the children. My father prayed, poured a little wine into a saucer to put down the candles in it. At this the Sabbath was over.

My father went to the synagogue on Sabbath and on holidays. On other days he prayed at home. He had a tallit, a tefillin and a book of prayers. We knew that when our father was praying we were not supposed to distract him from it. He couldn’t hush us up, when we got noisy, during the prayer, but after the prayer he told us off. My mother went to the synagogue on holidays like all other women. The children attended the synagogue after they turned 5 years of age. When boys turned 10, they went to the synagogue with their fathers.

We celebrated all Jewish holidays at home. We started preparations for Pesach in advance. There was a general clean up of the house. There were not supposed to be any breadcrumbs in the house on the eve of Pesach. My mother placed few pieces of bread at different spots in the house and my father searched for them with a candle. When the last piece was found, the chametz was wrapped up in paper and burned in the yard. Then it was time to take special crockery from the attic. My mother cooked traditional food: chicken broth with pieces of matzah, stuffed chicken neck and potato pancakes. We bought matzah from the bakery. My father conducted seder on the first evening of Pesach. My mother put traditional food on the table: hard-boiled eggs, a piece of fried meat, greeneries, horseradish and a saucer with salty water. My father reclined on cushions. Everybody had a wine glass in front of him. Everybody was to drink four glasses of wine during seder. There was the biggest and most beautiful glass for Elijah the Prophet in the center of the table. The front door was kept open for him to come into the house. My father put away a piece of matzah, afikoman. One of the children was to steal it and then give it back to the father for redemption. Of course, our father just pretended that he didn’t see how we were stealing the afikoman: this was what the ritual was about. Then I asked my father 4 traditional questions in Hebrew and he answered them. Then we sang traditional songs. Sometimes the children fell asleep at the table, but our father didn’t allow us to leave the table.

We went to the synagogue at Rosh Hashanah. When we came back, my mother put a dish with apples and honey on the table. We dipped apples into honey and ate them hoping for a good and sweet year to come.

Before Yom Kippur we conducted Kapores at home. My mother didn’t keep chicks, we bought them at the market. There were white hens bought for my mother and sisters and white rosters – for my father, my brother and me. We tied their legs to turn them above our heads holding them by their legs saying: ‘May you be my atonement’. Kapores was conducted in the morning, and before the first star appeared in the sky we were to have a sufficient meal. The adults were to fast till next evening. Children fasted half a day reaching the age of 8, and when they turned 13, they were to fast like adults. On the morning of Yom Kippur everybody, including children, went to the synagogue to pray until the star appeared in the sky. There was stuffy at the synagogue from burning candles and sometimes people fainted. When the first star appeared in the sky, everybody could go home to have dinner. Next day every Jewish family began to make a sukkah from wood and planks. Building a sukkah after Yom Kippur was a tradition. Some families started building a sukkah in their yards after dinner on Yom Kippur. Wealthier people had a folding roof in the hallway in their houses. On Sukkoth they used it for a sukkah. Sukkahs were decorated with ribbons and flowers. Branches with leaves or reed stems were put on the roof. Children made paper decorations for the sukkah. There was a table in the sukkah and we had meals and prayed there each day of the Sukkoth. Sukkoth is in autumn when it often rains, but even when water was pouring into our plates we stayed in the sukkah. My father explained that we had to do it to remember how Jews stayed in tents after they left Egypt.

In winter we celebrated Chanukkah. Visitors gave children Chanukkah gelt on this day. Customarily this money was to be spent on gambling, but we preferred to buy sweets. We liked it since we rarely could enjoy candy or nuts in the family. Purim was another merry holiday. Children wearing Purimspiel costumes made the rounds of houses performing and got small change or sweets for their performances. There was also a custom of sending treatments on trays to relatives and friends. Children took trays with sweets to houses. When a hostess returned the tray, she always put some change on it. We didn’t have any relatives, and my mother sent shelakhmones to our friends and neighbors.

At the age of 5 I went to cheder. There were 15 boys in my group. We had classes every day, but Saturday. Pupils sat at a long table in the classroom and the rebe sat at a small table in front of us. The rebe only spoke Yiddish. We had classes from early morning till afternoon. We went home for lunch and then came back to cheder where we stayed till evening. Then in the evening we had to do the homework. I got very tired. In the first grade we studied the Hebrew alphabet. The rebe had Hebrew letters written on a big sheet. The rebe pointed at a letter asking us what letter it was. If somebody didn’t know the answer, the rebe hit him with a finger-thick and about 1 meter long bamboo stick. If somebody talked during a class, the rebe hit his table with the stick calling for silence. We knew that the next blow would be on somebody’s back. In the second grade we began to read prayers and translate from Hebrew to Yiddish. My father was proud of me. He asked me to read prayers at home listening to me with a smile resting his chin on his hand. In the third grade we began to study the Torah. There was a melamed in each class. He had special training to teach this subject.

There were cheder schools for girls in Vinogradov and my sisters went to one. Girls studied the Hebrew alphabet and reading in Hebrew, but they didn't know the meaning of the words. So they read prayers aloud, but didn’t understand what they were reading.

I don’t know how it happened that since my childhood I was critical about the Jewish religion and traditions. I was raised in a religious family. My sisters took everything for granted while I looked down on it, as if those were the games adults played. Most boys in the cheder had long payes. My father insisted that I had payes, but I was crying and yelling that I didn’t want payes. I was particularly against it, when I went to a Ruthenian school. at the age of 8. I made non-Jewish friends. I saw that other boys teased their fellow pupils who had long payes pulling them by their payes. I didn’t want to be teased, so I secretly cut my payes to make them unnoticed. My father was surprised that my payes were not growing. I did well at school, though I hardly had time to do my homework. I went to cheder at 6 and we had classes for two hours, then I went to school and came home for lunch. After lunch I went back to cheder and stayed there until 7 in the evening. When I came home, I had to do my homework for both cheder and school. The rebe gave us a lot to do at home. He didn’t care that we were also busy at school. School teachers felt sorry for Jewish children and didn’t give us much homework. After finishing the fourth grade in my Ruthenian school I went to a Czech school. Many of my classmates went to this school as well, so studying in this school didn’t make much difference for me. My parents thought that I had to know the state language living in Czechoslovakia. We spoke Hungarian at home, and there was no other place where I could learn Czech.

I studied in cheder for three years. I liked football matches. There was a football match at the stadium every Sunday afternoon. In cheder we started another section of the Torah on Sunday. I thought that if I missed one Sunday, I would catch up with the class during a week. One Sunday I stayed in the cheder till afternoon and told the rebe that I couldn’t come back after lunch. He asked me why and I said I’ll go to the stadium. The rebe got very angry and said that he didn’ allow me to be absent at the lesson. The rebe began to shout and threaten me, but it didn’t keep me from going to the football match. Next day the rebe called me to his table, made me lie on his table in front of the class and began to beat me with his bamboo stick. I went home in tears and told my father that I would never again go to cheder, because the rebe beat me for going to a football match. My parents looked at my back with red swollen stripes on it. My mother burst into tears, and my father only shook his head. In the evening the melamed came by to complain on me. My father asked him who gave rebe the right to beat me. The rebe said that he had to teach me a lesson. My father said that he was the only one who could beat his son, and that he would not let his son go to the school where such teachers worked. He paid the rebe the month’s fee and didn’t send me back to the cheder. There was a poor student of yeshivah having meals in our family on Friday and Saturday. There was a custom that poor students had meals with Jewish families. My father made arrangements with him to teach me at home and promised to pay him for my classes. We had two classes per week. He taught me the torah and everything we studied in the cheder and later trained me for a bar mitzvah. It was a big relief for me to have classes at home and I had time to do my homework for school and play with my friends.

I had bar mitzvah when I turned 13. On the first Saturday after my birthday my father and I went to the synagogue. I read an section and out on a tallit for the first time in my life. My father had treatments for the attendants of the synagogue, and in the evening we had a festive dinner at home. There were my parents’ friends, the rabbi, of course, and the student who trained me for the bar mitzvah. Everybody greeted me and I felt myself like an adult.

There were few Zionist organizations in Vinogradov. There was Hashomer-Hatzair [4], a communist organization of young people, and Makkabi [5]. I was attracted by the Betar. It was called a fascist organization by members of other Zionist organizations, since Betar members believed that they had to defend Palestine with weapons rather than look for diplomatic ways to establish peace on this land. When I turned 13, I joined the Betar. Betar had a building with a conference hall and a gym. Our leader who came from Mukachevo [40 km from Uzhgorod, 660 km from Kiev], finished a grammar school there. There were 5 senior members in our division of Betar. Each Saturday we had gatherings in the Betar building. They were always interesting. The leader told us about what was happening in the world and spoke about the goals and tasks of Betar. There was a territorial center of Betar in Bratislava. They published journals sending them to all Betar regional centers. We received journals with articles by Jabotinsky [6] and other activists of Betar. Our leader read these articles to us. We had fencing classes in the gym, but we fenced with sticks. We had brown uniforms and military type caps. My younger sister Klara was learning sewing. She made me a nice uniform. We wore our uniforms on all holidays.

There was inflation in 1934 all over the world. Life was getting harder and Czechoslovakia was no exception. Our family was on the edge of poverty. I finished school in 1935 and didn’t quite know what to do next. It was difficult to find a job and I was happy, when our leader mentioned to me that there was an opportunity to enter the Ashtar industrial school in Moravska Ostrava in Moravia. Studying in this school was free. I agreed right away: I was eager to get a profession as soon as possible and start earning money. 2 other Betar members from Vinogradov went to this school with me.

When we arrived at Moravska Ostrava, we went to the local Betar center where we obtained a certificate to the hostel of this school. It was a big 4-storied building. Its chief accommodated me on the 2nd floor. There were 6 tenants in each room. There were partials making 6 compartments in each room. There was an iron bed, a wardrobe, a table with a table lamp on it and a hanger for clothes in each compartment. He chief of this hostel, whose last name was Valoch, was German, brought me an assignment to the entrance exams to school. The exams were to take place at the big machine building plant where the pupils of this school were trained. I was to take two written exams: in mathematic, and another one was a psychological test. Then we had to demonstrate how we could do manual work to show our coordination movements. My examiners asked me whether I intended to become a mechanic, turner, electrician or modeler. I said I wanted to be a turner. They told me to come to a copying machine. There was a sheet of paper on it with a trajectory drawn on it. I had to draw a trajectory over it with a pencil strictly following the existing lines. I was lucky. I passed all exams and got 92 points of 100. The passing point was 90. Those two other guys from Vinogradov failed their exams and had to go back home. 10% of applicants were admitted to school. In my group of 30 students I was the only Betar member. The rest of my group mates were members of Makkabi and Hashomer. They teased me calling me a fascist and said they would demand to have me out of their group. Few days later I was called to the director office where they demanded that I showed a document confirming that I was a citizen of Czechoslovakia. I didn’t have any documents since I was under age and I promised to ask my parents to send me the document. I wrote them, but then it turned out that they didn’t apply for Czechoslovakian citizenship. They only had documents issued by Austro-Hungarian authorities. Since the state-owned machine building plant was a training base of this school, only Czechoslovakian citizens could study at this school. Since my situation was desperate I addressed Betar for help. They advised me to address attorney Mertz, a member of Betar, asking him to apply for my citizenship. It goes without saying that I didn’t have money to pay the attorney and Mertz agreed to help me for free. He called director of the plant to ask him permission for my further stay in the hostel until there is a decision regarding my citizenship issued. Betar members supported me during this period. I needed money for meals. Other students who worked at the plant were paid for this while I did not have permission to work at the plant till I had my citizenship documents. My parents didn’t have money to send me. I lived from hand to mouth. I couldn’t even afford to buy socks, so I learned to darn my old ones. I was very concerned about what was going to happen to me. Three members of Betar arranged for me to have meals in their homes. So I lived about 3 months till I received a temporary residential permit from Brno. It might take a long time before I received approval for Czechoslovakian citizenship. However, my documents were already submitted to the Ministry and I was allowed to attend the school and have training at the plant. I had to work hard to make up for the time I missed. The plant paid me some money, and now I could have meals at the canteen. The plant worked in four shifts, and the canteen was open round the clock. It was inexpensive and the food was very good. The Betar bought me coupons for three meals per day. There were no obstacles to my studies and I began to have all excellent marks. I liked studying there. It was a huge plant with 30 thousand employees. There was state-of-the-art equipment at the plant.

Many school students were religious and could go to the synagogue. There was a day off on Saturday and in the metallurgical shop that had to operate non-stop there were non-Jewish workers on weekends. As for me, I gave up religion and Jewish traditions. I believed it all to be the vestige of middle ages.

In 1936, when I was a student of the Ashar school, the Betar committee advised me that there was a congress to take place in Vienna and offered me to attend it. We went there by a big bus. The Congress took place in the 18th district of Vienna, half a year before the Anschluss [7], Hitler’s occupation of Austria. I had my fancy Betar uniform hoping that I would need it. The trip was good. We arrived in Vienna. Most of the group had friends or relatives where they could stay. I was accommodated in a students’ hostel. I shared my room with 4 other guys from Austria and Poland who came to the congress with me. The Congress was to start 3 days after we arrived. We were to help to prepare the building for the congress. There was a lot of work to do installing stands with materials. I was the youngest participant, and they always asked me to help. I hanged big photographs of Zionist activists, posters and developed materials. The Congress was to start in the evening and we were very busy, when all of a sudden Jabotinsky and his wife entered the room where I was working with 2 other guys. . Jabotinsky asked in German: ‘Who is this young man?’ pointing at me. Hey replied that I was the youngest delegate of Betar. Jabotinsky stroked my hair and said: ‘Seier gut!’ meaning ‘very good’. He looked around the rooms and left. In the evening Jabotinsky made a speech at the opening ceremony. I was sitting on the balcony with other Betar members from Vinogradov. My friends from Betar asked me to make notes of all speeches. I put down all speeches, but when Jabotinsky came onto the stage, I couldn’t write, so overwhelmed I felt listening to him. He spoke for over two hours. He spoke German with a slight Yiddish accent. He spoke about his idea of the future of Palestine. He said it had to be a Jewish-Arab state. There were older attendants. It was hard for them to be sitting for so long and they took off their shoes to stretch their swollen feet, but it never occurred to them they could leave the room, so afraid they were of missing one word Jabotinsky was saying. Next day Jabotinsky’s friends and associates made speeches. The Congress lasted 3 days and then we returned to Moravska Ostrava.
I studied in the industrial school for 3 years. Then I had one year of industrial training at the plant. We worked 8 hours instead of 3 hours, when we studied at school. When our training was over, we received the industrial school diplomas.

The Makkabi members, my former fellow students, went to Palestine. There was an official route to Palestine via Bulgaria, from the Varna port across the Black Sea. [The route was from Varna to Istanbul in the Black Sea, across the Bosporus, the Marmara Sea, the Dardanelles, the Aegean and the Mediterranean Seas to Palestine.] What was I to do? Betar didn’t issue certificates to go to Palestine. The action of Jewish emigration to Santa Domingo began in Prague at that time. There was an office in the town called ‘Kurco Action for emigration to Santa Domingo’. It sent there wealthy Jews who could afford to invest money in housing construction and open their businesses. People were spending a lot of money to move there. They understood that Hitler had already started the war and hurried to move their families and capital to a safe location. I heard about it from my former schoolmate, whose father was going to move there. So I went to Prague. There were about 300 people there. I didn’t have money, but I got lucky: they admitted me to this organization. They were planning to send 70 young people there to start housing construction. Members of this organization were paying for these young people. They employed construction men, but I became one of the group anyway. I went to study English and Spanish. Everybody was in a hurry: the German troops invaded Poland and were moving across Czechoslovakia. The money people paid were deposited in a bank. Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia and arrested the bank accounts. There was no way to get the money back, and there was no way to travel there without money. So this plan failed.

When fascists occupied Czecoslovakia, I knew I had to leave. [Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia] [8] I knew that Subcarpathia became Hungarian [Hungarian troops occupied Subcarpathia in March 1939. The western part where Vinogradov is was attached to Hungary as early as the 2nd November 1938, together with Southern Slovakia as a result of the First Vienna Decesion.] and that Jewish oppression began there. I didn’t want to go back there. I was looking for other opportunities. Slovakia became a separate state. [After the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia the Nazi satellite Slovakia came into existence in March 14th 1939.] My friend from Tyachev [125 km from Uzhgorod, 615 km from Kiev] in Subcarpathia, started on our way to Slovakia. We managed to leave for Bratislava. After Prague was invaded, everybody had to go to the German commandant office where they issued passports with the capital letter ‘J’, Jude, typed on its cover. We obtained those passports and went to a tourist company in Prague where we got 3-month visas to Slovakia. So we took a train to Slovakia and traveled legally to Bratislava. At the border there was a luggage check. A German soldier came into our compartment and ordered us to open our suitcases. He asked us where we were heading and hearing our reply ‘To Bratislava’ he said: ‘I know you would like to go to Palestine, but we will go there, too.’

We hoped to get a job and stay in Bratislava, but there were Slovak fascists there. Persecution of Jews began in Slovakia. Jews were taken to work camps.

My sister sent me a copy of our residential certificate saying that I resided with my parents in Vinogradov and that my parents were Hungarian citizens. So I was saying that I was a citizen of Hungary. My friend stayed in Bratislava and I decided to go home. The Hungarian Embassy refused to issue me a passport, but they issued an identity card with a photograph where it was specified that I resided in Subcarpathia. The Embassy took away my passport issued in Prague and gave me a certificate for a single trip home instead. I went to Budapest. I didn’t have any acquaintances there, but I hoped to get a job. The Hungarian frontier men who came to the train to check documents took away my certificate that I got at the Embassy. When I asked what I was supposed to do without documents they replied that I would obtain them 3 days later in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Budapest. The hotel refused to accommodate me without documents. I asked them, though, and the porter allowed me to stay overnight in a little room under the roof. In the morning I had to leave. This was my first time in Budapest and I walked along the streets looking around, when I bumped into my sister Klara’s friend. She offered me to stay with her relatives and took me there. They accommodated me in a small room with a bed and a wardrobe. The host didn’t want to take money from me and suggested that I taught his son Hebrew and English. His son worked in a bookstore. In the basement of this store they made copies. There were no copy-machines and those were photo copies made. The Jewish owner of this store employed me and I learned to make photo copies. I worked there for about half a year. There were anti-Jewish laws [9] enforced in Hungary, but there was no particular oppression as yet. There were synagogues operating in Budapest and there was Jewish life. Later I got to know that the Jewish situation in Hungary was easier than in Subcarpathia where Jews were oppressed more.

In spring 1941 I received a subpoena for a work camp that was delivered to me where I lived. It said that I had to work there 3 months and there was a list of luggage I could take with me. From the gathering point a group of 200 people was taken to Nyiregyhaza, a Hungarian town near Uzhgorod. We traveled in a freight train with no comforts. In Nyiregyhaza we were working on making a big pyramid-shaped sand hill for shooting training to keep shells. We were there for 3 months. Then they let us go home to see our families for one month and ordered to gather in Budapest. I went home.

My older sister Klara married Aron Weinberger, a local Jew, in 1936. He owned a winery. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. In 1937 Klara’s first baby Tibor was born. Her younger son Laszlo was still a baby, when I came to see them. Klara lived with her husband and children in their house. Erzsebet and Earnest lived with our parents. I spent about a month at home. I didn’t know then that I saw my father, mother and my sister Klara and her family for the last time.

I was to go back to the work camp. From Budapest we were taken to a narrow-gauge railroad construction site to Transylvania by train. [The northern half of Transylvania was attached to Hungary in August 30th 1940 according to the Second Vienna Decesion, while Southern Transylvania remained Romanian.] We were to deliver carts with gravel to the track. When the construction was over, we were taken to the USSR by train. The Great Patriotic War [10] had just begun. The Hungarian army involved work battalions in the construction of trenches and blindages near the front line. Unarmed people with spades became very good targets for shooting. Soviet soldiers did not care whether this was regular army or a work battalion. Our freight train stopped for a whole hour in Poland. We managed to shave and have our hair cut in a barber’s. Then I went into a house to ask them for some hot water to get washed. I tried to keep clean and even had a folding basin for washing. I also asked those people to sell me some food. They gave me few big pieces of pork fat and a bag of flour. I exchanged my scarf, my sister’s gift, for a sledge to haul my load. The train arrived at Belgorod town in Russia, near the Ukrainian border, 450 km from Kiev. We were ordered to get off the train, lined up and walked to Staryy Oskol in about 120 km from Belgorod. It was winter and the snow covered the ground. We slept in the open air. In Staryy Oskol we were taken to an old cinema theater. There was straw on the floor. There was a field kitchen on the bank of a river, and we went there to have meals twice a day. Once, when we were on the bank, we saw a military horse-driven wagon sinking under the ice and we were ordered to haul it out of there, but nobody wanted to get into the icy water. They ordered us to line up and then told every tenth inmate to step out of the line. I was so scared that I might be one of them. I couldn’t swim. There were about 10 people stepping out of the line. They had to swim to the spot where the wagon was and drag it to the bank.

In Staryy Oskol we stayed about a week. In late autumn 1942 40 of us were taken to the work camp working for the German army in Yudino village on the bank of the Don River. The inmates worked digging trenches and removing the snow. The death rate was very high there and we were to replace the deceased. There were no residents left in the village. There were only German and Hungarian troops. The temperature was 30-35º below zero. We were told to find lodging. I stayed close to two guys from Subcarpathia. One of them was Ignac from Tyachev. I don’t remember his last name. Another guy was Henrich Singer, a tailor from Uzhgorod. We found a half-ruined hut. There were no windows or doors in it. We were allowed to miss one day at work to put the hut in order. The rest of the camp went to work on the bank of the Don. One of newcomers managed to cross the Don to the opposite bank where there were Soviet troops. His absence was only noticed when they returned to the camp. Again they ordered us to line up, selected every tenth inmate and shot them in front of the line. There, you will know how to desert to the Russians! We went to work every day to clean the snow for German tanks to attack. They were followed by the Hungarian infantry. We were at work from dawn till dark. We didn’t undress before going to sleep. We were hoping for the Russians to come each day. When we saw ‘Katyusha’ units [mobile missile unit] shooting from the opposite bank, we called them ‘Stalin’s candles’ and they implanted hope into our hearts. The Russians began their attack and there was shooting on our bank, so near, but it wasn’t our luck. The Russian troops outflanked the village of Yudino. In the morning we lined up. Our guards ordered us to take spades and move to where the Romanian army was deployed. It was a sunny day and the sun reflected from the glaringly white snow. At first I had sparks in my eyes, but then I lost my sight. My friends were guiding me holding me by my elbows. We were in the rear of the column. We decided that if we came to a village we would stay behind and try to escape. We got lucky and managed to escape, when we were near a village before evening. There were no Germans left in the village. There were only locals. We were let into a house. I was the only one of the three of us who could speak Russian. Of course, Russian is different from Ukrainian, but they could understand me. They said we had to move to the rear and showed us the direction. We thought that ‘rear’ was a name of a village or town. We crossed a Don’s arm over a bridge that the Russians built during their attack and moved on. Again we asked to stay overnight in a house. Though we were enemies, fascists, in the minds of local people, but they let us in and gave us boiled potatoes in jackets. They were very poor, but they shared with us what they had. However, before going to sleep they took away our knives, but they returned them in the morning. So we walked having a vague idea about where we were going. Henrich Singer from Uzhgorod was a tailor. When we came into a house to stay overnight, he fixed the hosts’ clothes to pay back for their hospitality. In one house I fixed a sewing machine. We got meals and food to go for this. We were always hungry, but we had good luck. Once, on the front line we bumped into a truck. The driver was dead. We found dried bread in his pockets. There were horse corpses around. The frost was so severe that the meat became stone hard. We cooked a piece of horse meat on the fire somehow. But this luck didn’t happen often.

Once we came to a small village and asked to stay overnight in a house. The hostess had a military overcoat on her table trying to cut it into something else. Singer offered her his help. He cut a man’s jacket from this overcoat and began to sew it together manually. So we stayed longer in this village. Singer sewed clothes, and the hostess gave us food. Singer didn’t hurry on purpose to enable us to stay longer. When this piece of work was over our hostess said that a school teacher asked us to come to her home to help her with sewing. The teacher lived with her sister. We stayed with them: Singer sewed clothes and I fixed whatever was broken.

Soviet soldiers came to villages looking for Germans in hiding. They came to the village where we were staying. Once the woman whom Singer made a jacket from an overcoat, asked us to cut wood for her. Singer and Ignac went there and were captured by Soviet soldiers. The woman ran to the teacher and told her that my friends were arrested. The teacher gave me shelter in her cellar. When soldiers came to ask her, she said she had no strangers in the house. So my friends were arrested and I was alone. I stayed in this village till spring 1943. The teacher told me the way where to go and I started on my way. Of course, I had to ask local resident the direction. Once I addressed a passer-by in a small town. He didn’t like my accent and called a policeman. I didn’t have any documents and they took me to a militia office. Of course, they didn’t have any proof that I was a spy, but where there is a will, there is a way. I had a nail sticking out inside my shoe injuring my foot. I had cheap paper backs in Hungarian in my back pack. I folded up one of those books and put in onto the nail under my heel in my shoe. This book got so ragged in my shoe that it was impossible to read one letter in it. When they undressed me in the militia and found this book they decided that it was very suspicious. They said that I was probably a spy, took me to a cell and locked the door. I was kept there for ten days. Ten a military came in and told me they would take me to a camp. We walked to the railway station and took a train. The military had a weapon, but understood that it didn’t make sense to try to escape anyway. We reached Voronezh [Russia, about 500 km southwest of Moscow] where there were other prisoners-of-war waiting for departure to a camp. There were many SS officers and Hungarians among them. We were kept in the quarantine few days, and when the group was big enough they took us to Usman [about 400 km southeast of Moscow]. There was a camp for prisoners-of-war in a former monastery. The camp was big. We were taken to a yard fenced with barbed wire. I was sitting on the ground, when somebody called my name from behind the wire. I saw those two guys who were with me before and few Jews. Though we met in the camp and didn’t know what was to happen to us, we were happy to see each other. I didn’t feel so lonely any longer. They told me that they were working in the camp and that the Russians had more trust in Jews than in Hungarians or Germans. The Jews working in the kitchen, brought me a tin of the US canned pork, a piece of bread and a spoon. Few Germans surrounded me asking for a bit of food. One of them began to take off his wedding ring to give it to me. They didn’t have any resemblance to those arrogant merciless SS officers whom we saw at the front. I threw few pieces of meat onto the ground and they pounced on it. The Jews who brought me the food got offended that I gave some to fascists.

Singer had opened a garment store in the camp. They fixed the inmates clothing and made common clothes. There were Germans and Romanians working in it. At Singer’s request I was sent to work in this shop. We had some privileges getting better food and being able to freely move across the camp. Then they opened a shoemaker’s shop near our garment shop. There were also prisoners working there. They fixed shoes and made canvas sabot shoes on wooden soles for inmates of the camp. We stayed in barracks for 200 inmates. There were 2-tier beds inside. The barracks were locked in the evening. The Red Cross delivered food and medications to the camp. I don’t remember how long we were kept in Usman before we were taken to another camp in Voronezh. In Voronezh we were taken to the bathroom upon arrival. Our clothing was disinfected. There was a very big camp there. There were German, Italian, Romanian and Hungarian prisoners in this camp. We stayed in huge wooden barracks. There were wooden plank beds along the walls in two rows. We got sufficient food there. There were American food packages of lentil with chicken meat delivered to the camp under an international agreement. The situation in the camp in Voronezh was much better than in Usman. There was sufficient food and there were washing facilities. There were Jews in the camp, but they didn’t observe any Jewish traditions, though there were many religious Jews. My friend Singer was religious, for example. Of course, they didn’t eat pork, but this was the only thing they could do there in this regard. This was a different world and they were torn away from their habitual reality. Singer opened a garment shop in Voronezh, only this was a better shop. They made uniforms for Russian officers, women’s clothes and fixed clothes. There were few good German tailors and Singer employed them in his shop. There was a shoemaker’s shop near the garment shop. I worked in It was a two-storied building. Chief of headquarters lived on the second floor. He was a colonel. Our shops were on the first floor. Singer and I were allowed to live in a small room near our shops. The only bad thing about it was that this room was full of bugs. There were no bugs in the barracks, but here the room was swarmed with them. Before going to bed we wrapped the legs of beds with wet cloth to prevent bugs from climbing them. However, though those bugs disturbed us a lot, this was still an illusion of home. There was a house across the street from there and we often looked at the lighted windows. There was a big family living in one of apartments. We often saw a young girl through the window. There was a small river near the camp where people went to fetch water from a pump. This girl also went there with buckets every day. Singer introduced me to her. Her name was Sophia Belinskaya. She became his wife in the future. When Singer was released in September 1946, she followed him to Subcarpathia. They live in Uzhgorod. We often see each other. Singer is one of the few friends of my youth I have.

On 9 May 1945 it was announced that the war was over and that Germany capitulated. It was great joy for us. Even German prisoners were happy that the war was over. We were hoping that we would be able to go home soon, but they only began to release prisoners in summer 1946. I don’t know what guidance the management of the camp had for releasing the prisoners. Singer and Ignac were released in September 1946. They decided to go back to Subcarpathia. We already knew that Subcarpathia became Soviet. I understood that we couldn’t judge about the rest of the Soviet Union by the situation in Soviet camps for prisoners-of-war. I also decided to go back home, though I didn’t know whether any of my family survived, but somehow, they didn’t release me from the camp. I gave Singer our address in Nagyszolos and asked him to find out what happened to my family.

Since I studied in a Ukrainian school for four years I could write in Cyrillic letters. I began to write letters in Ukrainian to Stalin, Beriya [11] and Molotov [12]. I didn’t get answers, but I kept writing. There were only SS officers left in the camp and I was kept with them. 1947 began. In spring chief of the camp called me all of a sudden. He asked me whether I wrote Stalin. I replied that I did and I also wrote others. Then he showed me a letter from Moscow: ‘Order to chief of the camp for prisoners-of-war colonel Korzetov. You should immediately release Schwartz Nikolay Isidorovich from the camp for prisoners-of-war and send him to the place of his residence’. Colonel told me to get packed and be ready to depart. A first sergeant came into my room. He said he was to drive me home.

The first sergeant escorted me to Uzhgorod, where he took me to a militia office. I didn’t have any documents, except for a certificate of release from the camp. In the militia office they developed a deed and opened a case against me since I was kept in the camp at the suspicion in espionage. They kept me in a cell in the militia for a week. They demanded that I named the people who could confirm my identity. There were no members of my family in Vinogradov that was a new name of Vinogradov. in the USSR. There were no childhood friends. Some of them perished in work battalions or concentration camps and others moved to other countries after the war. They didn’t want to return to Soviet Subcarpathia. Finally I recalled the Ukrainian greek-catholic woman who came to help my mother with the laundry before Sabbath. Her name was Marina and she lived across the street from the Catholic church in Vinogradov. She was very old and I didn’t know whether she was still there, but next day they brought her to the militia office. Marina recognized me and hugged and kissed me. She confirmed everything I said about my family and myself. They let me go. I went to Vinogradov, but I couldn’t bear the loneliness and memories. I was alone in the house where my family used to live. My neighbors told me that my family was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 where they all perished. Fortunately later it turned out that some of my dear ones survived, but my parents and sister Klara with her family and her husband’s parents did perish in Auschwitz. My sister Yelizaveta and younger brother Earnest survived. I got to know about them much later, when I lived in Uzhgorod. I moved there in 1948 at the invitation of my childhood friend, who had finished the trade Academy in Mukachevo before World War II and was chief of industrial department of the executive committee [Ispolkom] [13]. I had finished the industrial school and this was all education I had, but at that time it was valued anyway. Besides, I could speak Ukrainian and Russian. When Subcarpathia became Soviet, Russian became the state language, All documents and correspondence were conducted in Russian. My friend offered me position of chief of logistic department at the mechanic plant in Uzhgorod. I had to interface with directors of other plants and enterprises. Most of them came from the USSR and spoke Russian. I started work and was doing well. My management appreciated my performance and I became a respected person in Uzhgorod.

Many things about the Soviet regime seemed wild to me. The Soviet regime waged severe struggle against religion [14]. The majority of population in Subcarpathia, Jewish and non-Jewish, was religious. Religion was an important part of people’s life. Soviet authorities were closing temples and arrest clergymen sending them in exile. There was only one main synagogue operating in Uzhgorod. The rest of the synagogues were closed. This main synagogue was on the Uzh River. Later they also closed it and it became the Philharmonic. People were confused. They were not allowed to attend the synagogue or churches or celebrate holidays. Soviet authorities might fire people from work for this. Only old people who had nothing to fear went to the synagogue. There was nothing like this during the Czechoslovakian or Hungarian rule. There was also a concern of anti-Semitism that came to Subcarpathia with the Soviet power. Of course, there was anti-Semitism during the Hungarian rule, but it was when Hungary was fascists, and nobody believed there could be anti-Semitism in the country struggling against fascism. There were only demonstrations of routinely anti-Semitism at first. However, only newcomers from the USSR could say ‘zhyd’ [kike] in the streets or in transport. Later it developed into the state level anti-Semitism. In the late 1940s Jews had problems with getting a job or going to study in higher educational institutions. Also, the blind faith of newcomers from the USSR in the infallible rightfulness of the Communist Party and Stalin was just scary. Struggle against cosmopolites [15] in the USSR in 1948 had hardly any impact on Subcarpathia, but its range was fearful. I read newspapers and didn’t understand why those people were arrested. In January 1953 the ‘doctors’ plot’ [16] began. Perhaps, the majority of doctors in Uzhgorod were Jews. Local residents of Subcarpathia ignored newspaper publications and continued to visit Jewish doctors. Whenever somebody standing in line to a doctor’s office said something about ‘poisoners’ and ‘murderers’, this somebody was surely a newcomer from the USSR. I remember 5 March 1953, the day Stalin died. It was a relief for me. I knew from one of my friends about the scheduled deportation of Jews from Subcarpathia to Birobidzhan [17] in Siberia. I realized that Stalin’s death rescued us from the life of outcasts. There were many people crying and sobbing on this day in the streets and in offices. Of course, they were all newcomers from the USSR. I don’t think many of them suffered from losing their dear ones like they did when Stalin died. I was bewildered by it and felt like staying away from it. I felt the same about the situation in the USSR after the 20th Congress [18] of the Party. This was something that had nothing to do with me.

I rented a room in Uzhgorod, when I moved there. Later my acquaintances, who were moving to Hungary, offered me their apartment. I went to the executive committee to request them to issue all necessary documents for this apartment so that I could have it. They listened to me and gave this apartment to an employee of the executive committee. I sued chairman of the executive committee, but he didn’t even attend the sitting of the court. There was his attorney in court. The judge listened to both of us and took a decision that I was to be enrolled in the list of those who need an apartment. There were such lists in each district executive committee and it took years to receive an apartment. I really rented apartments till I grew old. I only got an apartment, when the house where I rented an apartment was to be removed. This happened in 1989.

I didn’t celebrate Soviet holidays at home. There were banquets at work and my attendance was mandatory, but I didn’t see any sense in those holidays. I didn’t join the party. At first they told me that I needed to join the party, but that I was a prisoner-of-war might make an obstacle for it, and later they stopped talking to me about it. Anyway, I wasn’t eager to join the party and took it easy.

I met my wife by chance. Shortly after I moved to Uzhgorod, I fell ill with jaundice. There was nobody to take care of me. My former school friend from Vinogradov heard that I was ill and offered me to move in with him. His wife was looking after me. There was a young Russian woman living in a neighboring house. She often came to see my friend’s wife. She was a tall and beautiful blonde. I found her stories about life in the USSR interesting and besides, it was a good opportunity for me to practice my Russian. Nina Ivanova was born and lived in Leningrad. She graduated from Leningrad University. During the war Nina stayed in Leningrad. She survived the siege [Blockade of Leningrad] [19]. She was one of the few ones who were rescued by the ‘Road of life’ [20]. Nina was a journalist. She worked for RATAU [abbreviation for the Radio and Telegraph Agency of Ukraine] in Subcarpathia. She had a telephone at home and once I came by to make a phone call to Uzhgorod. She rented an apartment from a Hungarian owner. It was a small room with few pieces of furniture: an iron bed, a table and a chair. I didn’t quite recover and fainted. Nina insisted that I stayed. She called a doctor and bought medications. I stayed with her till I recovered. Then I had to go back to Uzhgorod. I didn’t think about Nina as of my future wife. We grew up in different worlds and had nothing in common. At that time I didn’t consider marriage. I wanted to live my life for myself, particularly after the war and the camp. I imagined my future wife to come from Subcarpathia, even if she wasn’t Jewish. I left for Uzhgorod. Some time later Nina visited me in my apartment that I was renting. She said she had moved to Uzhgorod since she had a job offer here. She stayed to live with me. We didn’t register our marriage. I was OK without an official marriage. I thought I had to be free. I was thinking of possible emigration. So we lived till she got pregnant. There were few men after the war, and many women agreed to have a baby even without a husband. Nina kept telling me that she didn’t want anything from me and that she would go to Leningrad and raise the child there. Of course, I couldn’t allow it. Even though I didn’t consider her to be my wife, a baby was a different story. In 1952 Nina gave birth to my son. We named him Alexandr. I tried to help Nina to take care of the baby. We had a visiting nurse who went for walks with the baby and did washing. Later I got to know that Nina gave our son her last name of Ivanova. She said she did it for our son to face no anti-Semitism, but it was a strong blow for me. I couldn’t feel the same love to the child that I felt before.

In 1950 my sister Yelisaveta found me. Once a woman came to see me at home. I was at work and she left a package and a note for me. There was a knitted vest in the package and the address of this woman in the note. She lived in Khust [50 km from Uzhgorod, 670 km from Kiev]. I went to see her and she told me that this was a gift from my sister. They were in Hemsjo, in a camp in Sweden together. She told me the story of my sister Yelisaveta. She was taken to Auschwitz. During a selection process she added 5 years to her age. The Germans sent her to a work camp in Auschwitz. My sister was reluctant to talk about details of this period. I know that once she was sent to a gas chamber. The prisoners were naked waiting for the gas to be pumped inside, when all of a sudden the door opened and a German officer told them to come outside. There were Polish Jews working near the gas chamber. They gave my sister and other prisoners some rags to cover their bodies. The prisoners returned to their barrack. When in spring 1945 the soviet and American armies started their attack, fascists exterminated weaker and sickly prisoners, and the remaining prisoners of the Auschwitz camp, including my sister, were sent to Mauthausen. And few days later American troops liberated the camp. My sister decided there was no way she returned home. She knew that Subcarpathia became Soviet and asked to send her to Sweden. She moved to Hemsjo town in Sweden where she met the woman who brought me that parcel from my sister. In Sweden and later in the USA my sister was called Elizabeth and Lisa in Israel. However, Yelisaveta failed to learn Swedish and didn’t think she could get adjusted in Sweden. When my sister grew strong enough after the camp she asked to send her to the USA. My sister was hoping to find our father’s brothers there, the ones who left at the beginning of the century. She had no idea how big the USA was and it didn’t occur to her that our father’s brothers might have changed their surname or moved to another country. She never found them. The woman who brought me the parcel, decided to go to Subcarpathia. My sister asked her to find me to tell me she survived. However, Yelisaveta failed to learn Swedish and didn’t think she could get adjusted in Sweden.. got a US entry visa and plane tickets. Everybody going to USA, got bags with clothes. However, Yelisaveta failed to learn Swedish and didn’t think she could get adjusted in Sweden. flew to New York. She didn’t know anybody and couldn’t speak English. She was sitting in the airport not knowing what to do. A Jewish man approached her asking her in Yiddish whether she was waiting for somebody. My sister told him her story. This man found lodging for her and helped her to get a job. At first Yelisaveta worked on a conveyor at a factory. She met people from Hungary. She also met Chaim Klein, a Jewish man from Svaliava town in Subcarpathia [50 km from Uzhgorod, 630 km from Kiev]. Before WWII he finished a yeshivah in Bratislava. During the war he was in a work battalion in Ukraine. After the retreat of the Hungarian army he got to Italy and from there he moved to USA. Chaim was a rabbi in a small synagogue in Bronx in New York. In 1949 they got married. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. My sister and her husband always observed Jewish traditions. They didn’t have children.

In 1953 I was arrested. I signed bills of lading for the goods from our storage facility. There was an OBHSS audit [Department of Struggle against Theft of Socialist Property’, a division of the Ministry of Home Affairs]. There were missing goods at the storage. Then they discovered bills of lading for these goods that I signed. According to these documents the receiver of the shipment was different from what was written in the bills. Though the signature had little resemblance with my signature, and besides, I was on business trip at the time, they arrested me. Either the investigation officer wanted to get done with this case, or those who were actually guilty bribed him – I don’t know. He didn’t listen to what I was trying to explain. They didn’t examine my signature and ignored the fact that I was away from Uzhgorod on the day of issuance of those bills. I was in Kharkov [east of Ukraine, 430 km from Kiev, 1100 km from Uzhgorod]. The case was transferred to court and I was sentenced to 7 years of imprisonment in a labor penitentiary camp. I was taken to Drogobych of Lvov region [120 km from Uzhgorod, 560 km from Kiev] to this camp. I was desperate, my life seemed to be over. When I was in the camp, I started writing complaints to the Supreme Court describing the details of the investigation process. I didn’t get any response for about a year. Then a lawyer from the Supreme Court arrived to question me about my case. After listening to me he said he would solicit for the review of my case. During a retrial the court discovered many mistakes and distortion in the course of investigation. The true culprits were discovered: an accountant and a storekeeper. In 1955 they released me for absence of corpus delicti. Later I got to know that my former investigation officer was dismissed. I was restored at work, but this couldn’t replace two years of my life that were wasted. Most of all I wanted to leave the USSR, but this was impossible in those years.

After my arrest Nina moved to another apartment. In two years she never wrote me a letter. I don’t know whether she believed that I was guilty or was just concerned about her safety. When I returned from prison, she was living alone raising her son. My son was raised knowing nothing about Jewish traditions or Jewish history. Nina got panicky even hearing the word ‘Jew’. Of course, I supported her and tried to spend more time with my son, but I didn’t feel like living together with her. I had women, but I never got married.

In 1965 I met with my sister. She requested a visa to the USSR, but they refused to issue it. She came to Budapest. In those years it was easy for residents of Subcarpathia to travel to Hungary. I managed to go to Budapest where my sister and I spent almost a month. Yelisaveta and her husband decided to move to Israel, when they became pensioners. They moved to Jerusalem in 1986.

Yelisaveta told me the good news that our brother Earnest was alive. It turned out that Yelisaveta kept in touch with Earnest for a long time. When World War II began, Earnest studied in a vocational school in Budapest. The Hungarian fascists were more loyal to Hungarian Jews than to Subcarpathian Jews. Many Jews could stay in their houses in Hungary and were not taken to concentration camps. The only mandatory thing that fascists did was painting yellow hexagonal stars on Jewish houses [Yellow star houses] [21], though I guess, I know little about it, or what I know is what I heard from others. [He refers to the fact that deportations from Budapest were not finished as opposed to the Hungarian countryside.] When Germans invaded Budapest [March 19th 1944], Earnest and 50 other students of their vocational school found refuge in the Swiss Embassy. They were hiding there until the end of the war. From Budapest they moved to Romania where they tried to take a boat to Palestine. [illegally] Their boat was arrested by British soldiers and sent to Crete in Greece. They kept them for a long time there, but then Greek fishermen secretly took them to Palestine in their boats. Earnest joined a kibbutz. Then he finished a construction vocational school and returned to his kibbutz where he married Ioheved, a girl who was born in Palestine. She was a teacher. Earnest took part in the Six-Day War [22] After the war he continued his work in the kibbutz. Earnest and Ioheved didn’t have children. I met with my brother once. He arrived in Budapest like Yelisaveta since he couldn’t get a visa to the USSR. We spent a week together and then my brother returned to Israel. Earnest died in 1983. I didn’t go to his funeral. Citizens of the USSR couldn’t travel abroad then. My sister took a plane to go to my brother’s funeral. Later she wrote me that our brother was buried in accordance with Jewish traditions.

I believed Soviet invasion in Hungary in 1956 [23] and Czechoslovakia in 1968 [Prague Spring] [24] as an effort of the USSR to keep all countries of the ‘socialist camp’ behind the barbed wire. Of course, the USSR couldn’t allow a single country to refuse from socialism since it might result in many followers. The USSR took every effort, even aggression, to keep all of them under control. This was like in prison: they stopped any attempt of escape so that the others stopped even considering it.

I retired in 1982. They were trying to convince me to stay at work, but I was already seriously ill. I had diabetes and had to keep to my diet and schedule my days. It was hard to follow my prescriptions at work. My sister was telling me to join them, but I didn’t see any perspectives for myself. I should have moved there earlier, when I still could work and why would an old man want to emigrate? I am not used to be a dependent and receive what I didn’t work for. I worked for my pension here in the USSR and didn’t think it possible for me to receive alms in the USA.

My son Alexandr graduated from the Mechanic Faculty of Uzhgorod University. Upon graduation my son married his co-student Galina, a Russian girl, whose parents moved to Uzhgorod after World War II. In 1982 their daughter Yelena was born and in 1985 – their son Nikolay. My son and daughter-in-law worked a lot and I spent much time with my grandchildren. I had time for reading. I had many books in Hungarian, Yiddish, Hebrew and English. I tried to read more to remember the languages.

When in the late 1980s perestroika [25] began in the USSR, I was indifferent to it at first, like I was to anything related to the Soviet power. I didn’t care about their promises of a better life. I had heard them since I returned from the camp in 1947. Later I realized that many things were changing to the better. Gorbachev [26] allowed private entrepreneurship that had been forbidden for many years in the USSR. Many people started their businesses working for themselves. Many of my co-prisoners imprisoned for private entrepreneurship became successful entrepreneurs and respected people during perestroika. The freedom of speech that Gorbachev promised became a reality. There was no need to listen to western radios to hear the truth about the situation in the USSR. Newspapers began to publish articles describing our present and past life. The ban on religion was gone. People could go to church and celebrate religious holidays. However, in the course of Soviet rule people got so much out of this habit that at first there were not enough attendants for a minyan at the synagogue. Only few knew prayers and how to pray. Then chairman of the Jewish community of Uzhgorod suggested that I attended the synagogue. At first I went there to socialize and of course, to enable them to gather a minyan, but then it became a habit with me that developed into a need. In my childhood religion was a significant part of my life. When praying I recalled my parents, my childhood, my sisters and my brother. Every year I recited the Kaddish for my dear ones who had perished in the camp and for my deceased brother.

During perestroika citizens of the USSR got an opportunity to keep in touch with their friends and relatives living abroad. Correspondence was allowed and censorship of the mail was cancelled. It became possible to travel abroad or invite foreigners. In 1987 I visited my sister in Israel for the first time. Of course, I liked Israel very much, but I didn’t consider staying there. I felt out of place, missed my home and friends and I wouldn’t manage to learn Ivrit. I can still remember a little Hebrew that we studied in cheder, the language of the torah, but it’s hard for me to understand contemporary Ivrit spoken in Israel. I haven’t visited my sister again: I didn’t get along with her husband. We didn’t like each other, and I didn’t want to cause conflicts between Yelizaveta and her husband. There was an incident in Israel that strained our relationships. My sister and her husband observed Jewish traditions and followed kashrut. Chaim Klein always had his head covered. As for me, I didn’t think it was necessary and didn’t have a kippah or a hat. Once Chaim and I took a bus. I was sitting on a seat in the middle part and he was near the driver. A rabbi came into the bus. He happened to be Chaim’s acquaintance from New York. They used to go to the synagogue together and discuss the Torah. In Israel they also met regularly to read and discuss what they had read. The rabbi saw Chaim and nodded to him, and Chaim yelled at me from where he was sitting: ‘Put on a kippah immediately!’ I didn’t have a kippah and felt very ill at ease. Even the rabbi felt uncomfortable. He turned his head away pretending that he didn’t hear. When we got off the bus, Chaim began to shout at me reproaching me for not observing Jewish traditions. I objected that not everybody in Israel wore a kippah and that if he thought it necessary he should have warned me about it. This made our relationships worse than ever and I hurried to find an excuse for going back home. I saw Yelizaveta for the last time in July 1996, when she visited Uzhgorod. In October 1996 my sister died. 3 years later her husband died too.

When I was notified about my sister’s death, I went to the Embassy of Israel in Kiev. The funeral was to take place on 20 October. Her friends from the US were coming to her funeral. I called the Embassy and they promised to expedite the issuance of a visa for me. I went to Kiev. I didn’t have an invitation letter, but I showed the telegram and asked them to give me an opportunity to go to my sister’s funeral. I spent few days in Kiev waiting for the visa. When I came there again, they said that there was a negative response about my visa. My sister was buried, but I was not there. The Jewish community in Uzhgorod found an opportunity to have my visa for Israel issued in Budapest. Some of her friends from the US waited for me in Jerusalem to take me to the cemetery. I recited the Kaddish over Yelisaveta’s grave and lit candles. I spent few days in Israel and returned home.

After Ukraine gained independence the Jewish life had a rebirth. The Jewish community became stronger. People stopped hiding their Jewish identity. However, this refers to those Jews who had moved to Subcarpathia from other areas of the USSR since local Subcarpathian Jews have been open about their identity. More people began to attend the synagogue. Frankly, I don’t believe them to be real Jews. There can be no Jew without cheder. As for those who had moved here, only Ukrainians called them ‘zhydy’, Jews. They have never been Jews for me. They don’t know Hebrew or even Yiddish, they cannot recite a prayer and they don’t know that before entering the synagogue they have to put on a hat, which is different from Christian traditions. Christians take off their hats before entering a temple. It’s good that they teach young people in the Jewish school and in Hesed. At least our grandchildren will know what the Soviet power deprived our children of. In Hesed there are classes in Hebrew, Jewish traditions and history. Many young men and girls attend them. Regretfully, my son or grandchildren do not identify themselves as Jews and do not take part in those activities. Hesed works a lot for the restoration of the Jewry in Ukraine. It also helps old people to survive. I do not leave my home. I live alone and need help constantly. My son cannot spend much time with me. He brings me food before going to work in the morning and then he leaves. If it were not for the Hesed assistance, I would not survive. A nurse visits me every day and a doctor comes to see me once a week. They deliver meals to my home and buy medications. They also bring me Jewish newspapers and magazines. I am very grateful to all those who help me.

Glossary:

[1] Subcarpathia (also known as Ruthenia, Russian and Ukrainian name Zakarpatie): Region situate on the border of the Carpathian Mountains with the Middle Danube lowland. The regional capitals are Uzhgorod, 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.
[2] Hasid: The follower of the Hasidic movement, a Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century that reacted against Talmudic learning and maintained that God’s presence was in all of one’s surroundings and that one should serve God in one’s every deed and word. The movement provided spiritual hope and uplifted the common people. There were large branches of Hasidic movements and schools throughout Eastern Europe before World War II, each following the teachings of famous scholars and thinkers. Most had their own customs, rituals and life styles. Today there are substantial Hasidic communities in New York, London, Israel and Antwerp.

[3] Tsimes: Stew made usually of carrots, parsnips, or plums with potatoes.

[4] Hashomer Hatzair: ‘The Young Watchman’; A Zionist-socialist pioneering movement founded in Eastern Europe, Hashomer Hatzair trained youth for kibbutz life and set up kibbutzim in Palestine. During World War II, members were sent to Nazi-occupied areas and became leaders in Jewish resistance groups. After the war, Hashomer Hatzair was active in ‘illegal’ immigration to Palestine.

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

[6] Jabotinsky, Vladimir (1880-1940): Founder and leader of the Revisionist Zionist movement; soldier, orator and a prolific author writing in Hebrew, Russian, and English. During World War I he established and served as an officer in the Jewish Legion, which fought in the British army for the liberation of the Land of Israel from Turkish rule. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Keren Hayesod, the financial arm of the World Zionist Organization, founded in London in 1920, and was later elected to the Zionist Executive. He resigned in 1923 in protest over CChaim Weizmann’s pro-British policy and founded the Revisionist Zionist movement and the Betar youth movement two years later. Jabotinsky also founded the ETZEL (National Military Organization) during the 1936-39 Arab rebellion in Palestine.

[7] Anschluss: The annexation of Austria to Germany. The 1919 peace treaty of St. Germain prohibited the Anschluss, to prevent a resurgence of a strong Germany. On 12th March 1938 Hitler occupied Austria, and, to popular approval, annexed it as the province of Ostmark. In April 1945 Austria regained independence legalizing it with the Austrian State Treaty in 1955.

[8] 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.

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

[10] 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.

[11] 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.

[12] 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.

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

[14] 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.

[15] 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’.

[16] 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.

[17] Birobidzhan: Formed in 1928 to give Soviet Jews a home territory and to increase settlement along the vulnerable borders of the Soviet Far East, the area was raised to the status of an autonomous region in 1934. Influenced by an effective propaganda campaign, and starvation in the east, 41,000 Soviet Jews relocated to the area between the late 1920s and early 1930s. But, by 1938 28,000 of them had fled the regions harsh conditions, There were Jewish schools and synagogues up until the 1940s, when there was a resurgence of religious repression after World War II. The Soviet government wanted the forced deportation of all Jews to Birobidzhan to be completed by the middle of the 1950s. But in 1953 Stalin died and the deportation was cancelled. Despite some remaining Yiddish influences - including a Yiddish newspaper - Jewish cultural activity in the region has declined enormously since Stalin's anti-cosmopolitanism campaigns and since the liberalization of Jewish emigration in the 1970s. Jews now make up less than 2% of the region's population.

[18] 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.

[19] Blockade of Leningrad: On September 8, 1941 the Germans fully encircled Leningrad and its siege began. It lasted until January 27, 1944. The blockade meant incredible hardships and privations for the population of the town. Hundreds of thousands died from hunger, cold and diseases during the almost 900 days of the blockade.

[20] Road of Life: It was a passage across Lake Ladoga in winter during the Blockade of Leningrad. It was due to the Road of Life that Leningrad survived in the terrible winter of 1941-42.

[21] Yellow star houses: The system of exclusively Jewish houses which acted as a form of hostage taking was introduced by the Hungarian authorities in June 1944 in Budapest. The authorities believed that if they concentrated all the Jews of Budapest in the ghetto, the Allies would not attack it, but if they placed such houses all over Budapest, especially near important public buildings it was a kind of guarantee. Jews were only allowed to leave such houses for two hours a day to buy supplies and such.
[22] Six-Day-War: The first strikes of the Six-Day-War happened on 5th June 1967 by the Israeli Air Force. The entire war only lasted 132 hours and 30 minutes. The fighting on the Egyptian side only lasted four days, while fighting on the Jordanian side lasted three. Despite the short length of the war, this was one of the most dramatic and devastating wars ever fought between Israel and all of the Arab nations. This war resulted in a depression that lasted for many years after it ended. The Six-Day-War increased tension between the Arab nations and the Western World because of the change in mentalities and political orientations of the Arab nations.
[23] 1956: It designates the Revolution, which started on 23rd October 1956 against Soviet rule and the communists in Hungary. It was started by student and worker demonstrations in Budapest started in which Stalin’s gigantic statue was destroyed. Moderate communist leader Imre Nagy was appointed as prime minister and he promised reform and democratization. The Soviet Union withdrew its troops which had been stationing in Hungary since the end of World War II, but they returned after Nagy’s announcement that Hungary would pull out of the Warsaw Pact to pursue a policy of neutrality. The Soviet army put an end to the rising on 4th November and mass repression and arrests started. About 200,000 Hungarians fled from the country. Nagy, and a number of his supporters were executed. Until 1989, the fall of the communist regime, the Revolution of 1956 was officially considered a counter-revolution.

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

[25] 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.

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

Tatiana Tilipman
Odessa
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ludmila Grinshpoon
Date of interview: October 2003

Tatiana Izrailevna Tilipman is a short elegant lady. At the age of 83 she has kept her attractiveness and charm. She is a wonderful storyteller. She is very emotional and she has a very tender attitude toward her relatives. She even tried to write her memoirs about her hometown. She showed me her writings. Tatiana Izrailevna lives with her husband Semyon Moiseyevich and their son Yevgeni in a 4-bedroom apartment on the 5th floor of a house in a new district of Odessa. Semyon Moiseyevich is a retired military. One can tell that he loves his wife and willingly subdues to her. Their apartment is very clean and cozy. They have furniture of the 1970s, carpets and a few photo portraits on the walls and a nice china set in the cupboard.

My parents came from Dzygovka, a small Jewish town [Dzygovka was a town in Yampol district Podolsk province, Vinnitsa region at present. Its population in 1897 was 7 194 people, 2 187 of them were Jews]. Dzygovka was located on the slopes of a small ravine and all streets descended to the center. There was a market square and shops in the center. There were fairs in Dzygovka on Thursday and Sunday. Farmers from surrounding villages brought vegetables, fruit, milk and butter to sell at the market. On Thursday evening the square was cleaned and on Friday night the holiday began. It was a Jewish town indeed. There were two synagogues in Dzygovka in the 1920s. My parents went to the synagogue that was constructed as rules required: men were on the first floor and women upstairs. There was also a Catholic cathedral and a Christian church in the town. There were a few two-storied buildings in the town. All houses were kept clean, even the ones with thatched roofs. There was Jewish, Ukrainian, Russian and Polish population in the town.

My maternal grandfather Iehil Trachtman was born in Dzygovka in the 1840s. His wife Ghenia was the same age with him. I don’t remember my grandmother’s maiden name. Grandfather Iehil owned a small tobacco shop where they cut tobacco leaves. The family owned a house in a street descending to the center of the town. It had two floors, or, to be more exact, there were two apartments on different levels. Grandfather Iehil died in the early 1900s, long before I was born. Grandmother Ghenia died in the early 1920s, when I was small and I don’t remember any details. My grandmother and grandfather had two children: Shlomo and Hana.

My mother’s older brother Shlomo Trachtman was born in the 1970s. He inherited his parent’s house and shop after my grandfather died. The shop operated until approximately early 1920s. Shlomo married Tzyrl Shwartz. She came from Mogilev. They had five children: three boys and two girls.
Shlomo’s older daughter Ita married Elek Reznik. Their marriage was arranged by matchmakers. They lived in the lower apartment of his parents’ house. They had a daughter and a son. Iehil Trachtman worked as an accountant at the buttery in Yampol. He married a Jewish girl whose surname was Yaruga. They had two children. Meichik Trachtman worked at the buttery in Chernovtsy Vinnitsa region. He married my classmate Lisa. They had a son who became a dentist and a girl who was ill and didn’t live long.
Feiga Trachtman worked in a bookstore in Dzygovka. I used to borrow books from this store. I read them accurately and then took them back to the store. Feiga married a Latvian man, a financial inspector from Yampol, though her parents were against it. However, they changed their attitude to him to better later. Feiga had a son. The youngest Shmilik
Trachtman worked at the power saw bench in Yampol. His wife’s name was Hana and they had two daughters. During the Great Patriotic War [1] he was in evacuation in the Ural with his family. Now Shmilik, his wife and their daughters live in Israel. Uncle Shlomo perished in Dzygovka during the Great Patriotic War. After the Great Patriotic War I had no contacts with my relatives in Dzygovka. I had a busy life and I don’t have any information about uncle Shlomo’s other children. I don’t know what happened to them during or after the Great Patriotic War.

My mother Hana Trachtman was born in Dzygovka in 1881. She was of average height, beautiful and had regular thin features. My mother finished a primary school in Dzygovka. She could write in Russian and Yiddish. She boasted that her teacher was Bloch, a renowned teacher in Dzygovka. Before she got married my mother worked in her brother’s shop cutting tobacco leaves. She was raised religious and she kept our household in accordance with Jewish rules.

My father’s parents also came from Dzygovka. My paternal grandfather Meyer Krupnik was born approximately in the 1840s. He was married to Rivka from Dzygovka who was a few years younger than him. I don’t know my grandmother’s maiden name. Grandfather Meyer owned two stores: drapery and grocery stores. My grandparents had four children. This is all I know about grandfather Meyer. He died in the early 1890s. Grandmother Rieva lived with us. She had a room of her own in the house. My grandmother followed kashrut, went to the synagogue on holidays and wore a kerchief. My mother and grandmother got along ideally. I never heard them arguing. My grandmother Rieva died at Yom Kippur in 1929. She went to the synagogue in the morning. She returned home and sat on the porch and her neighbor asked her: ‘Rivka, why are sitting?’ My grandmother replied in Yiddish: ‘I am sitting waiting for a cart from there’. She died about three hours later. She was 80. She was buried in a cerement according to the Jewish ritual in the Jewish cemetery. This is all I remember.

I never saw my father’s older brother Itzyk or sister Brucha. Itzyk and Brucha were born in Dzygovka in the 1870s. Itzyk moved to America in the 1920s. Itzyk had six fingers on one hand. He sent us a photo from America after a surgery when they removed his sixth finger. This is all I can tell about him. Brucha and her husband Boria Bortman lived in Mogilev. In the 1920s they moved to Brazil. I don’t know whether they had children or anything about their life there.

My father’s younger brother Moisha Krupnik was a few years younger than my father. He lived with his family in Borovka town Vinnitsa region. I didn’t know him. He died long before I was born. He had three sons: Pinia, Shmil and Itzyk. By the early 1930s the brothers moved to Chernovtsy Yampol district. During the Great Patriotic War they stayed in Chernovtsy with their families. They survived since, as they wrote us later, there was no ghetto in Chernovtsy. Jews managed to pay ransom to Romanian troops in the area. During occupation uncle Moisha’s sons lived in my parents’ home. When after the Great Patriotic War my father wrote them a letter asking how things were with them they wrote back that the house belonged to them since they had repaired the roof. Therefore, my parents couldn’t return to their house in Chernovtsy, although I still have a deed of purchase of this house.

My father Srul Krupnik was born in Dzygovka in 1881. He was short and thin and had a beard and moustache. My father was a reserved and taciturn man, but when he said something it was always to the point and at the appropriate moment. My father had authority in the town and people often came to ask his advice. I don’t know what kind of education my father had, but he could write in Russian and Yiddish. My father inherited grandfather Meyer’s business: he owned a drapery and grocery stores in a two-storied building at the market square. The drapery store was on the second floor and the grocery store was on the first floor.

My parents got married in 1905. Their marriage was arranged by matchmakers. They had a traditional wedding with a chuppah according to all rules. I remember my parents’ photograph after their wedding where my mother had a wig. They settled down in my father’s home.
The house was in the center of the town. There were flowers and acacia growing near the house. There were four rooms: two bedrooms – one of grandmother Rieva and another one of my father and mother. We, children, lived in a big room. The fourth room with a back door and a door to the big room was a storeroom for keeping corn, sunflowers and wheat. The house was heated with stoves. One stove heated the rooms and there was a Russian stove in the kitchen where my mother cooked and baked bread. We ate plain food: chicken broth, fish, stewed meat and boiled cereals.
My mother was a good housewife. She always baked bread for the family and never bought any bread. When we ran out of her bread we managed without. We followed kashrut rules. We only bought kosher meat from the Jewish butchers we knew. We took chickens to a shochet to slaughter them. There are particular slaughter rules: mentally ill people cannot do it and it cannot be slaughtered with a blunt razor. The razor had to be so sharp that it could cut a hair. Also, if a chicken didn’t die immediately one wasn’t allowed to eat it. On Thursday before Sabbath I took a chicken to the shochet. I waited outside. The shochet kept me behind his door since he didn’t want me to have bad feelings afterward. We never mixed meat and dairy products at home. Utensils and crockery for meat and dairy products were washed in different basins.

At lunchtime my mother sent me to call my brothers and sisters home and I was running around the town looking for them. Even if we just had potato soup for lunch the whole family had to eat together. Each of us had a seat at the table. My father always sat at the table with his head covered while my brothers were allowed to not wear a headpiece. We always behaved ourselves at the table. I tried to not dangle my legs. My father used to say: ‘I didn’t teach my children. Good children do not need to be taught and I didn’t have bad children’. We only spoke Yiddish at home. I remember that some time before I went to school my sister Rosa and I attended a group of girls studying prayers, but it was for a short time. My brothers attended cheder, but I don’t know for how long.

My mother dressed modestly wearing a black skirt and a dark blouse or a dress, but she always looked nice. She turned gray young. I remember her coloring her hair before the Great Patriotic War. My sister Rosa made a coloring mixture for her. My mother wore a kerchief. I still have her shawl and kerchiefs. My mother was kind and friendly. She got along well with all neighbors and always talked with them smiling. All neighbors, even Christians living on the outskirts of the town knew that they could always borrow some money from Hana Krupnik. When I was small my family already owned a grocery store on the first floor. My father went to purchase goods in Kishinev (today Moldova), Mogilev and Odessa. He and my mother worked in the shop. On Saturday my father didn’t work. My father was a very religious man. He always wore a yarmulka or a hat. When going to the synagogue he wore a nice black coat with a velvet collar. Father went to the synagogue on Saturday and on holidays. On weekdays he prayed at home in the morning and in the evening. He had a beautiful black tallit trimmed with silver. When a neighbor came to return a debt to my mother my father nodded to him to put the money on the table, but he didn’t take banknotes.
My parents had 5 children.

My older sister Ida was born in 1907.
The second child was my brother Moishe-Iehil, born in 1909. He was named after my maternal grandfather and in his passport he had the name of Moisey written. At home he was called Lusik. Then came my brother Haim-Iosl, born in 1912. In his passport he was Iosif. At home he was called Munia. My sister Rosa was born in 1917.

I was the youngest in the family. I was born in 1920 . I was named Tuba, but in my documents I have the name of Tatiana. As far as I remember by the middle of the 1920s my older brothers and sister finished a primary school in Dzygovka and moved to study in other towns. Moisey studied in a vocational school in Glimbovka in our district. He studied drawing and embroidery. Ida was finishing a secondary school in Yampol. I don’t remember where Iosif studied. Rosa and I stayed at home. Ida returned home after finishing school. She was helping mother about the house. She was my second mother. She always kissed me good night. My mother never did this. She was too busy. My sister was very handy. She could sew very well. Ida always attracted people’s attention in the streets. She was very beautiful and the best dancer. Once her friend Anyuta Eidelman made a birthday party, but she didn’t invite Ida since all boys courted Ida. Ida stayed at home, but all boys came to our place instead of going to the party. I remember this. It happened so that Ida’s most interesting admirers left the country. One moved to Argentina and another one went to Palestine.

I was called ‘a sis kopele’ [‘sweet head’ in Yiddish] in the family since I remembered everything and absorbed knowledge like a sponge. I remembered all rules and traditions and everyday details our life consisted of. One of my earliest memories is associated with grandmother Rivka. Once I woke up in the morning and saw my grandmother sitting by my bed crying. It turned out that my parents went to my grandmother grandson Itzyk’s wedding in Borovka, a neighboring village, and my grandmother was crying for her son Moisha who had not lived until Itzyk’s wedding. My grandmother was too old to go to the wedding. I was too young to go to this wedding and we both stayed at home. To make up for this misfortune my parents gave me two kopecks to buy khalva with nuts. I remember getting a big piece of khalva in the store.
In the evenings the family sat at table reading in Russian and Yiddish, as a rule. There was a kerosene lamp on the table. I was to wipe its glass shade with a piece of newspaper every morning. Our family liked books. My father always brought books from Mogilev and Kishinev when we went to make his purchases there. He mainly brought books in Russian. I remember my first book in Russian. There were poems, fables and fairy tales. The book was entitles ‘Russian writers’. My mother darned or knitted socks while I read to her. When my brothers were at home my father played dominoes with them. We also dried sunflower seeds in the oven and enjoyed eating them. Sometimes we had guests: aunt Tsyrl, my mother older brother Shlomo’s wife, and her cousins who loved my mother’s cookies. In summer my mother sent me to bring some water from a stream. The guests had cherry jam, water and cookies.

We celebrated Sabbath. On Thursday evening my mother sieved some flour and made dough. On Friday morning before dawn my mother started baking. She baked bread for a week and it never got stale. When my sister Rosa and I woke up my mother brought us delicious doughnuts. My older sister Ida was doing the house at this time. Rosa and I joined her after getting up. Everything was clean before lunch. My mother made dinner for Friday and Sabbath. She left her cooking in the oven. My father came from the store, changed and went to the synagogue. My mother went to the synagogue on holidays. Mother lit candles and there was no more work done at home. We, children, dressed up and went to walk in the market square that was also cleaned for a fair. In summer on Sabbath we went to an orchard near our school. It was a private orchard. There was an entrance fee to be paid and separate payment for fruit. My friends and I used to stay there all day long. We paid 5 kopeck each to pay a violinist that we invited and one of the boys played drums and we danced.

We started preparations for Pesach in advance. We made matzah in special pans. My mother wore a white outfit. We stored matzah in a special pillowcase with the word ‘Pesach’ written on it. Long before the holiday my mother started feeding two geese for goose fat for keyzele, matzah and potato puddings. The geese were slaughtered and since two geese were too much for us we gave one to aunt Tsyrl. Aunt Tsyrl also gave us one goose when she slaughtered hers. There was a general cleanup done in the house. We took down a barrel with Pesach crockery from the attic and stored our everyday crockery back. It was only allowed to use a mortar and water barrel. My brothers were working in Vinnitsa region, but they came for Pesach. On Pesach eve my father walked the rooms reciting a prayer placing chametz, pieces of bread, and at about 12 o’clock he picked chametz with a wooden spoon and burnt it. We never had any bread left in the house. After 12 we were given matzah to eat. My mother made potato pancakes. She cooked for the coming evening. The first seder was in the evening. My father was at the synagogue. I guess my mother didn’t go to the synagogue. My mother lit candles. When my father came from the synagogue the family sat down to dinner. My father sat in an armchair with a white cover and my mother sat beside him and I reckon they were even called a czar and czarina. My brothers sat on the right and then my grandmother Rivka sat across the table from my father. My sisters and I were sitting on the left side. Well, it was required to drink four glasses of wine eating food. There was a boiled egg, potatoes, and a boiled chicken neck put on a plate, but the neck was supposed to be there through eight days. There was also horseradish, khoroises (ground apples with nuts and cinnamon) served. My father gave each of us a piece of matzah, then another piece with salt, and another one with horseradish, egg, apple and potatoes. While handing this to us he recited a prayer. My brother Iosif posed four questions. This lasted till about 12 o’clock. There were glasses with wine on the table. During the prayer it was required to let prophet Elijah in. I think, my mother went to open the door as if for Elijah to come in and we were sitting there gazing at the door until late evening. This is how I remember seder. We didn’t have guests, but I remember mother always giving matzah to the poor.

At Yom Kippur we fasted and my mother and father spent a day at the synagogue. At the end of service they blew a horn [shofar]. I always stayed near the synagogue and when I heard a shofar I ran back to tell Ida to start a samovar. When my parents returned we had tea and jam. My father blessed bread and honey, dipped a piece of bread in honey and gave us to eat it.

At Sukkoth we used our storeroom for sukkah. My mother covered our food stocks with a tablecloth, there was a table brought in and covered with a fancy tablecloth. There was a folding ceiling and roof. We had meals in this room for a week. We always celebrated Chanukkah. Every day another candle was lit. My uncle Shlomo always gave me some money on this holiday.

I remember Jewish weddings where we were invited. My father wasn’t quite fond of attending such events, but my mother and I enjoyed them. People usually rented a hall and invited a music band to their wedding parties. It was a lot of fun. I remember how a chuppah was installed. The bride and bridegroom went around it. I don’t remember any other details. I liked dancing. They usually danced ‘sher’, a long up-tempo dance that lasted about 20 minutes. We also danced a Hungarian polka and waltz.

My sister Rosa went to a Jewish school in 1925. I was only 5, but I also went to school because I always followed what my sister did. However, I only attended school for few days until it rained. I actually went to school the following year when I turned 6. The school was in a brick one-storied building across the street from the cathedral. It was customary to study at school by guilds. My classmates were children of tradesmen. My close school friend’s name was Rachil Shoichet. Rachil’s father sold leather and leather goods. Rachil had three brothers and was the youngest in her family like me. Her mother was a housewife that was also customary with Jewish families. She had an old grandmother. Her older brother Aron moved to Palestine in the 1920s. Two other brothers lived in Ukraine, one of them was a teacher. Another brother Yankele lived in Dzygovka. He was my brother Iosif’s friend. I did well at school. I was good at all subjects. Rachil and I became pioneers, but I didn’t take an active part in this organization. I was more interested in our family life and spending time with my friends.

In the late 1920s religious repressions began. For example, at Pesach they began to give children of the Jewish school breakfast. We never got any during an academic year, but at Pesach all of a sudden. I remember it brightly: fried sausage, mashed potatoes and bread. Authorities forced our director Boruch Morgulis, a Jew, to do it. At home there was mamaliga [boiled corn flour] on the table and matzah was taken away. My parents closed the door so that nobody saw that we had matzah, but anyway, everybody made matzah. Before my departure from Dzygovka in 1935 there was still a synagogue and a rabbi there.

In the late 1920s - early 1930s the NEP [2] was over and many of our acquaintances began moving to Odessa. The father of Hana Krutianskaya, my brother Moisey’s friend, owned a big store in Dzygovka. When suppression of Jews began he closed his store and moved to Odessa with his family. My friend Rachil’s brothers left. My brother Iosif also moved to Odessa where he worked at the Monti shipyard. My father’s stores worked until the late 1920s. First his drapery store was liquidated and he assigned his grocery store to my mother, but later it was closed as well. In 1929 SOZ (farming association) was established in the town and my father got an offer to work there as an accountant. A few families that had horses joined this cooperative to farm the land. Later this became a kolkhoz [3] named after Kirov [4] in 1934, when Kirov was murdered. We all worked in this SOZ. My family and I and my cousin brothers and sisters also worked in this kolkhoz.

My older sister Ida married Petia Mostovoy, а Jew, a carpenter, in 1930. His family escaped from pogroms in Kazatin in the early 1900s. Petia’s family was poor. There were about 10 children. He was the fifth or the fourth child. I remember their wedding well. I was 10 in 1930. Ida made me a white cambric dress with a rose shaped pink ribbon. I called it a wedding dress. Ida had a traditional wedding with a chuppah. However, it wasn’t appropriate time to celebrate wedding as before and we arranged a party at home. An old Jewish man was invited. I don’t know whether he was a rabbi, but he conducted the ceremony and recited a prayer. I was so delighted by my dress and my sister’s gown that missed any other details. Ida seemed fabulously beautiful to me. Shortly after the wedding my sister and her husband moved to Odessa. Ida’s husband made nice cupboards with grape bunches on them. In Odessa they changed a few apartments before they settled down in Malaya Arnautskaya Street. In 1931 their daughter Raya was born.

In 1932, when I was 12, my father and I went to visit my sister Ida in Odessa on winter holidays. My father packed bed sheets and other luggage to take them to Ida. We went to Vapnyarka station on a sledge with a cabman. My father helped me to get into a carriage when a conductor closed the door. I hit the conductor on his back with my fists screaming to him to let my father in, but he of course ignored me. My father remained on the steps and militia probably made him get off. I went as far as Kodyma station where my father sent a telegram for them to take me off the train with my luggage. I pulled myself together to behave like an adult. My co-travelers were sympathetic and joked goodheartedly: ‘Don’t believe her, can’t you see, she is a profiteer with all her bags’. My father caught up with me taking the next train to Kodyma and then we came to Odessa. I saw many new and interesting things in Odessa. I saw an electric bulb for the first time in my life and I was the only one in my class who saw it. My brother Iosif, who worked in the shipyard, showed me the town. I remember the Transfiguration cathedral. There was a small cathedral in our town, but it wasn’t as beautiful as this big one. They took me to the Opera Theater and to a museum, but I do not remember any details.

My brother Moisey was one of the best read people in our town. He read Russian and French classics. I remember the ‘The laughing man’ novel [by Victor Hugo (1802-1885), a novelist, poet, and dramatist, one of the French Romantic writers], it was read to a lattered condition since everybody borrowed this book from him. A few of my brother’s friends were teachers and one was a local doctor. In 1929 Moisey finished a vocational school in Glimbovka and went to teach drawing at school some place in Vinnitsa region. Moisey married his childhood friend Hana Krutianskaya in 1933. They got married secretly since their parents were against their marriage: Jewish rules do not allow a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law to have the same name and my mother’s name was also Hana [Editor’s note: This was a custom among some branches of the ultra-Orthodox.] I remember that after the wedding our neighbor came to see my mother. He said: ‘Hana, don’t worry. Moisey will be all right. Our acacia in the yard withered. It withered so that nothing bad happened to Moisey’. Moisey went to live with his wife in Odessa and they lived in Malaya Arnautskaya Street. He worked as an accountant in the tuberculosis institute in Belinskiy Street where there is a regional tuberculosis clinic now. In 1935 Hana and Moisey’s son Bencion was born.

In 1933, during famine [5], my father worked at the granite quarry in Dzygovka to receive a bread card. I don’t remember any details about the period of famine since my parents tried to protect me as much as they could from it. I finished 7 grades in 1933. Then I didn’t go to school for two years. I was tiny and weak and suffered from frequent headaches. They thought I head rheumatism and a local doctor tried to cure me with aspirin. In 1934 I entered a prosthodontic school in Odessa, but I couldn’t stay in Odessa. I had no place to live: my relatives didn’t have a space to accommodate me and there were no vacant beds in the dormitory. I returned home.

In 1935 I went to Odessa again and entered a rabfak [6] in the Medical College. After two years of studies I was admitted to the College. I enjoyed my studies very much. There was no anti-Semitism and we were friends. I joined Komsomol [7], like the majority of my peers. I believed that everybody else around me had as much fun and found life as interesting as I did. Arrests in 1937 [Great Terror] [8] had no impact on my relatives and passed unnoticed for me.

My sister Rosa gad finished the extramural department of Pharmaceutical College by then and got a job assignment in Chernovtsy, Yampol district. My parents moved to the town with her. I never went to Dzygovka again. My father worked as an accountant in a store in Chernovtsy. My brother Iosif married my classmate Polina and also moved to Chernovtsy. Iosif worked at the state insurance department. He provided insurance to agricultural companies.

I often visited Moisey and his family in Arnautskaya Street. In 1936 I met a young man. He lived in the same neighborhood. His name was Semyon Tilipman. His father Moisey Tilipman came from Dzygovka and his mother Hana Tilipman came from Soroki. My parents didn’t allow Moisey to marry Hana since she was a dressmaker and this was not a proper “iches” [‘noble descent’ in Yiddish]. They moved to Odessa where they got married. Semyon lived with parents, brother Yefim and sister Ghenia in a three-bedroom apartment. He was a student of the Communication College. Sister Ida wrote home: ‘Tatiana is seeing a very nice guy, I hope my Marcus will be as good as him’. My father came to Odessa to meet Semyon and his parents. My father liked Semyon. In spring 1939 he and mother came to Odessa bringing everything that needs to be at a Jewish wedding with them: fried geese, chicken, sweets and my dowry. We had a wedding party in Semyon’s apartment. There were only our families at our wedding. My father invited a rabbi he knew. This rabbi conducted the ceremony, but there was no chuppah. We settled down with my husband’s parents.

In 1939 my husband finished his college and received a job assignment in the headquarters of Byelorussian regiment in Smolensk. I got a transfer to the third year of Smolensk Medical College. In autumn 1939 after the Western Byelorussia was annexed to the Soviet Union we moved to Minsk. We got an apartment with all comforts in the military housing district in Minsk. There was another tenant in the apartment. There was heating, hot water and telephone: it was gorgeous. It took me 20 minutes by tram to get to the center of the town. We had a nickel-plated bed and a wardrobe that I received as dowry and a record player that my sister Ida gave us as a wedding gift. Our neighbors often came to listen to records. I studied in the Medical College in Minsk and particularly enjoyed lectures in neurology read by professor Makarov. In summer 1941 after finishing the fourth year I went for practical training in a hospital in Chernovtsy Vinnitsa region where my parents lived. In winter I had a very nice ratteen winter coat made by a dressmaker for me and I wanted to take it with me to show it at home, but my husband said I shouldn’t boast of things and I left it at home. I arrived at my parents’ home on 18 June. On 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began.

My brother Moisey Krupnik was mobilized to marine troops in Odessa on 23 June. He only managed to pick his newly born daughter Tamara from a maternity hospital to take her home and left for the front. He didn’t even have time to unwrap her to take a look at his baby. In summer 1942 we received Moisey’s first letter that he wrote in Sevastopol on 28 July. It happened to be the last one. Moisey perished in Sevastopol. We don’t know any details. His wife Hana and two children managed to leave Odessa. They got to Tashkent (today Uzbekistan) where they stayed until the war was over.
My nephew Bencion told me that he played dices with other boys in Tashkent. When he won some change he bought pies for Tamara.
My sister Rosa’s husband Abram Poliak was mobilized to the army on the first days of the war. We received a card from him where he wrote that bigger towns were going to be better defended and he decided it was better for Rosa and their son Milia to stay in Vinnitsa. His mother and father lived in Vinnitsa. His mother was bedridden due to her podagra. My sister couldn’t leave her. We don’t know what happened later. We don’t know any details of her death.

There were escapists from Bessarabia [9] coming to Chernovtsy from the first days of the war. My brother Iosif also received a letter from the military office, but he was proved to be unfit for combatant service and stayed to serve in the recruitment commission. In early July institutions began to leave the town. Chairman of the kolkhoz gave Iosif a wagon and horses and said; ‘take your family out of the town. The Germans are approaching’. My parents and I and my brother with his wife Polina left the town. We went as far as the Dnieper on the wagon. We left the horses on the bank and crossed the river. My brother was to go back to take the horses, but there were Germans already on that bank. So we had lost our horses. Some drivers going in that direction gave us rides to Poltava. From there we went to Kharkov and then to Rostov. After Rostov we came to Stalingrad. In Stalingrad we stayed at the stadium for a few days. I met my school friend Rachil there. Then air raids began. We were put on a train. Rachil and I were in different trains. Ours was a freight train. They were stuffed with people. Some slept on the floor. We got some bread or some other food in evacuation offices at stations. The train stayed two or three days at each station. German troops followed hard on our heels. In Alexikovo station near Stalingrad my father sold his fancy coat that he used to wear to the synagogue. We bought some mutton. My mother fried it and put it in a jar with fat to keep longer. I remember that this was Yom Kippur.

So we got to Turkestan station in Northern Kazakhstan. My father was smart and said: ‘Well, since we don’t have enough money to get to Tashkent, we need to get off this train some place before’. So we got off in Turkestan. We didn’t know anything about the town. We stayed in a garden at the station for almost 24 hours until the ‘Berlik’ kolkhoz sent a camel-driven wagon to pick us. Our landlord took us to his home. His mother-in-law watched my father reading Jewish books – he had a Torah and Talmud. The font seemed similar to Arabic language to her and she asked me in whisper: ‘Is your father a mullah?’ We worked in the kolkhoz in 5-7 km from the town, but we were to receive food provisions in Turkestan and we commuted 5 km to receive bread there. My father and mother were sorting out onions. My brother Iosif, his wife Polina and I worked in a field. Iosif dug potatoes and we picked them. I found a Russian-Uzbek textbook and learned a few words in Uzbek. Many locals were Uzbek. They were terribly proud that I knew a
few words and used to ask me in Uzbek: ‘Tania, what time is it now” and I replied in Uzbek. I had a watch, my husband’s gift. It was a rarity in Turkestan. .

Since I finished 4 years of the Medical College I went to the district health care department. Its chief Isaac Markovich, a Jew, asked me what I wanted to do. I replied: ‘You know, I was a 4-year student, but actually, perhaps a practicing nurse would know more than I do’. He sent me to work as a doctor in ‘Urtak’ kolkhoz. The kolkhoz accommodated us in one big room that occupied half of a house. My monthly payment consisted of 300 rubles and 24 kg flour. The kolkhoz employed my father as a storekeeper.

I didn’t know where my husband was for a whole year. They told me in a registry office how I could get some information about him. The first letter to my husband that I sent to the front returned to me. Later I found out that I put a wrong address. I sent a request to his headquarters and received my husband’s reply to my next letter. My husband Semyon Tilipman was mobilized on the first day of the war. He served in a communication regiment, at first in the 29th army and then in first tank army. He took part in combat action near Moscow and then in Kursk battle [10], with this Tank army he took part in the liberation of Kiev and Warsaw. At the end of the war he was in Berlin. Semyon was awarded a Red Star Order and four medals. After the war he stayed to serve in Radebeul, Germany.

In 1942, my brother Iosif was recruited to the army from Turkestan. He was sent to study in an artillery school in Tambov. His wife Polina moved to her relatives. When I wrote my brother that she left he confessed that he had thought about divorcing her for quite some time, but he didn’t want to upset our parents. After finishing the artillery school Iosif was sent to serve in an air force unit in Semipalatinsk.

My sister Ida and her children evacuated on one of the last boats from Odessa. They lived near the border with China in Kazakhstan. Ida worked in a kolkhoz. My sister’s husband Petia Mostovoy took part in defense of Odessa, then he participated in combat action in the Crimea, was wounded near Kerch, spent half a year in hospitals and was acknowledged to be unfit for military service. He found his family.
In 1942 Ida, her husband and their two children moved in with us. We all lived in one room. Our Uzbek hosts gave us two wide trestle beds. There were eight of us sleeping on them, but we didn’t mind it since we knew that other people lived in even worse conditions. Petia worked in the kolkhoz at first, but then he went to work in a state insurance agency as an invalid of the war.

In 1943 I was sent to work in an outpatient clinic in Turkestan. I received an apartment near the clinic. I was involved in liquidation of epidemics such as typhus and dysentery. In 1944 to Turkestan were brought some deported Chechens [11]. They were accommodated in the Hantanga mine where they were working. There was an infectious department opened there and I became its chief. I treated them well. The state punished them and I was a doctor and it was my duty to provide proper medical services to them. Our main task was their sanitary treatment since there was lack of medications. As soon as I managed to handle typhoid my patients fell ill with dysentery. My patients were sleeping on straw and once when I bent to examine a patient I saw a louse on my robe. I told the nurse to put down the beginning of the incubation period. I fell ill with typhus and had to stay in clinic. Once my father came to visit me, but they didn’t let him in. He heard in the receptionist office that a doctor died. He was terrified thinking it was me, but it was my colleague who died. I survived.

My father prayed every day. Buchara Jews and one Polish Jews were his friends.
We made a shower cabin made from branches with a barrel on top of it in Turkestan. During Sukkoth we removed the barrel and we had dinners there through 8 days of the holiday. During Chanukkah my father made us makeshift lamps from potatoes, cotton oil and a wick.

I worked in Turkestan until 1945. When Minsk was liberated I wrote a letter to my college. I wrote that I was a 4-year student and requested a permit to continue my studies. They sent me such permit. In September my husband came on a short leave to Turkestan. In late September we took a train from Turkestan to Minsk. I stayed in Minsk and my husband went back to Radebeul near Dresden.

After finishing my college in 1946 I moved to my husband in Germany. I couldn’t get a job. There were 40 doctors there. All officers’ wives were doctors. I worked in the women’s council of the army with other officers’ wives. We arranged celebrations for officers and soldiers. In 1947 my first baby Mikhail was born. I had my baby in a military hospital in Dresden that was registered in Potsdam, Berlin.

When Israel was established I lived with my husband in Germany and I was more concerned about talks that Jews avoided struggling at the front. Therefore, when a woman said in my presence that she had been at the front, but she didn’t meet any Jews I felt like beating her, but I just said: ‘You know what, I wish that you have as many pimples on your tongue as many members of my family perished’.

Shortly after Mikhail was born I went to my parents. By that time my parents and sister Ida and her family moved to Bastandyk, a small settlement in 5 km from Chirchik near Tashkent.
Ida’s husband was transferred there from Turkestan. They received a small house there and we built an annex of one room and a kitchen to it. We made bricks from clay and straw. Ida’s husband Petia joked looking at me that it was a decent job for a doctor. Some time later I got a job at a tinned food plant.

In 1949 my husband was transferred to a communication regiment in Odessa and left Radebeul. Semyon came to pick me and two-year-old Mikhail. We failed to get back our apartment. My husband’s parents and sister Ghenia perished in Domanevka camp [12], and his brother Yefim perished at the front. We moved from one room to another after their owners returned home. I began to apply to military headquarters to get back our apartment. I didn’t go to work and had sufficient time to spend on it. I went to see commanding officer and we received a nice big room in a communal apartment [13] for three families in a house in Pirogovskaya Street. Our co-tenants were decent people and we got along well. In 1951 my second son was born. We named him Yevgeni. He was a weak and sickly boy.
In 1953, when Stalin died, I cried. His full height portrait was installed in Kulikovo Pole [a town square near the railway station]. I saw this portrait and burst into tears. It seemed to me then that this was the end of our life.

Almost every summer we spent vacations with our parents. My children enjoyed spending time with their grandfather and grandmother. In the middle of the 1960s Ida’s family and my father and mother moved to Tashkent. It took me a long time to find a job. Health care department in Odessa told me there were no vacancies for me.
I wrote requests to the ministry in Kiev. They replied there was nothing they could do to help me.
In 1954 my older son Mikhail went to school #59 near our house. He did well at school, but he stuttered when speaking. In 1958 I took him to Kiev to consult a professor who was an expert in stuttering. Mikhail’s reading improved after this. I also had an appointment with Deputy Health Minister asking him to help me get a job. Deputy Minister was a sympathetic person. He gave me a letter addressed to Odessa regional health care department requesting them to help me with employment as I was an officer’s wife. Odessa department offered me a job in Illichevsk [14]. It was difficult to work there. Regular buses were rare and I had to commute on random traffic. It took a lot of my time. We sent my younger son Mikhail to a kindergarten, but he refused to attend it and we had to hire a babysitter while I worked in Illichevsk for about half year. Then I was offered to take up a vacancy of neuropathologist in district polyclinic #5. The polyclinic occupied a part of a building in Deribassovskaya Street.

In 1962 my older son Mikhail went to school 116. This was a popular school of physics and mathematic in Odessa. Mikhail had all excellent grades and successfully passed an interview and was admitted to this school. My younger son Yevgeni studied in school #90 that taught subjects in Ukrainian and German. In 1965 Mikhail finished school #116 with a gold medal [with honors] and went to Moscow. He entered the Mathematic Faculty of Moscow State University.

In 1966, after an earthquake in Tashkent, my husband and I took my parents to Odessa. At first I rented an apartment for them, but it happened to be very damp. Even photographs turned gray and there was mould on the shoes. Well, they moved in with us and we lived in one room in our communal apartment. I separated their quarters with a wardrobe. We lived thus for two years. In 1968 we received a new four-room apartment. When my parents moved to Odessa I bought them matzah and Jewish calendars in the synagogue in Peresyp [industrial neighborhood in the outskirts of Odessa]. I tried to do my housework in the evening to do no work on Saturday.

After the Great Patriotic War my brother Iosif served near Leningrad. When military staff was reduced in the early 1960s he moved to Moscow. He remarried there. His wife Sopha is a dentist. They had a daughter named Ludmila and a son named Boria. Iosif died in 2002.

In early 1966 my sister Ida decided to move to Tashkent where her children had moved by the middle of the 1960s and had their own families. Her daughter Raya graduated from the French Faculty of Tashkent University. She is married to a Jewish man. Her family name is Shtramel. They have two sons. Raya’s husband was a construction manager. Their son Marcus finished a technical college in Tashkent. He is married and has two children. Marcus was chief of highway department in Tashkent. My sister Ida died in Tashkent in 1983 at the age of 76 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery. She was buried in her clothes, but there came a Jewish old man who recited a prayer at home and in the cemetery. Her death was hard on her husband Petia Mostovoy. He lived 10 years longer, but his mental health failed him. He began to slender on his children and submitted a claim to militia stating that his children were going to leave him. They showed documents that he was going to Israel with them. They moved to Israel in 1992, but some time later Petia jumped out of the window.

Hana Krutianskaya, the widow of my deceased brother Moisey, and her children returned to Odessa from evacuation to their previous apartment in Malaya Arnautskaya Street. Moisey’s son Bencion Krupnik finished the Industrial Automation College in Odessa and got married. He had a son. In August 1974 he moved to Israel with his family. He lives with his family near Haifa. He is a pensioner. He has two children: son Mikhail and daughter Mirrah, born in Israel. Her daughter was born this (2003) year. The second generation already was born in Israel. Bencion visits his mother in Odessa every year. His sister Tamara finished a medical school and married a Jewish man. Her surname after her husband is Zolotaryova. Her husband is director of a plant. They live in Odessa. Hana, my brother Moisey’s wife, lives in the same apartment as before the Great Patriotic War
.

My parents were growing older. My life became very hard. I often failed to have breakfast before going to work. I had to cook for my parents for a whole day. My mother was bedridden and needed special care. My father had to serve her food. My mother died on 22 June 1973. My mother was buried according to Jewish customs. A Russian woman, married to a Jewish man, made a cerement for my mother. I brought a black cover from the synagogue. When my mother died my father recited the Kaddish. I also hired a Jewish man from the synagogue. Ten months later, at the same time, hour and minute, at 4 o’clock 20 minutes, on 22 April 1974 my father Srul Krupnik died. I heard him saying in Jewish; ‘God bless the children, blessed be my children’. I called my husband. My father said: ‘Don’t give me any medications. I already want to die’. He turned his face away and died. My father lived 93 years and one week. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery according to Jewish traditions. I brought a special cloth from the synagogue. A Jewish old man came from the synagogue and we also invited our close friend’s father, a Jew. My father had two tallits, one was trimmed with silver. Another one was an old tallit where my father wrote ‘Funeral tallit’. We put both tallits in his cerement.

When our children grew older we traveled a lot with them. My husband and our son Zhenia [nickname of Yevgenii] went to Kaliningrad (today Russia), Riga (today Latvia) and Yalta. My husband spent his vacations in a military recreation center in Riga while he was on military service. I also went there alone and with my son Zhenia. I traveled to Minsk (today Byelarus), Brest (today Byelarus), Leningrad (today Russia). We liked going to the theaters: Opera Theater and Russian and Ukrainian Drama Theaters. There were interesting performances. We often visited friends. There were two-three families living in our neighborhood: the Goldshteins and Chizhyks, but on holidays I had gatherings of about 20 people at home. We celebrated New Year with our children at my old friend Yuzef Chizhyk’s home. We were very good friends. We went to the cinema together. Mr. Goldshtein had a car. We went to the cinema and out of the town together. We particularly liked the house of culture of the Polytechnic College, they always showed new movies there.

After graduation from the University my older son Mikhail stayed in Moscow. He got a job offer to work in a scientific research institute. He defended his candidate’s dissertation [15]. Mikhail married his co-student Galina Grinberg. Galina was from Moscow. She had a Russian mother and a Jewish father. In 1974 their first son Anton was born and four years later in 1978 their son Sergey was born. I spent my vacations in Moscow where I went to stay with my grandchildren for a number of years. When my grandchildren grew older they came to spend their vacations with us in Odessa. We used to rent a dacha [summer cottage] at the seashore. Now I already have a great grandson Denis, my grandson Anton’s son. Galina lectures on mathematic in the Pedagogical College. Mikhail continues to work in his scientific research institute. He also works as a programmer for a private Canadian company.

After finishing school in 1968, my younger son Yevgeni finished a preparatory course in the College of Public Economy. He simultaneously started work at the factory of manuals to be able to enter an evening department of the Financial College. We were concerned that being a Jew he might have problems with entering a regular daytime department. State anti-Semitism was quite strong in Odessa at that time. He finished his College in 1975 and works as a programmer in Odessa Standardization, Metrology and Certification Center. He is single. My son was subject to awards for brilliant performance several times. At the 100th anniversary of this center in 2002 he was awarded a memorable medal for good work.

I always liked my work. There was a good staff in our polyclinic. I never faced any anti-Semitism. We celebrated all holidays together. We celebrated 23 February (Soviet Army Day) [16] and 8 March (International Women’s Day). I took advanced teachers’ training twice: in Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk. My husband Semyon retired in 1988, but continued working part-time for some time. I retired in 1990, when I turned 70. I missed going to work. I sometimes feel jealous when I see people in white robes. We recently sorted out our correspondence: there were many greeting cards from my patients. Although I retired they kept sending me cards on New Year and 8 March. I don’t know whether I was a good doctor: neuropathology is a difficult science, but I was always eager to help my patients and did a lot of good with my kind and careful attitude toward them.

In 1992 my sister Ida’s daughter Raya and her family moved to Israel. I went to Tashkent to say good bye to them. About half year later Ida’s son Marcus moved there. I went to Moscow to say good bye to them. Raya and her family live in Lod, Israel. Raya’s husband who worked a manager in Tashkent, is a guard in a kindergarten. Raya’s son works for an Arabic owner of a construction company. His wife confirmed her medical qualifications in Israel and works as a doctor. Alik’s son is in the army. He comes home on Saturday. Raya’s second son failed to get adjusted in Israel. He moved to Moscow where he married a Russian woman. He has a daughter. Marcus Mostovoy cleans streets in Israel. He doesn’t know Ivrit. He jokes that this must be some anti-Semitic language if he cannot learn it.

In 1994 Raya sent me money for a ticket to Israel. I went to visit her. When I got off my plane and breathed in the smell of oranges it felt like smelling acacia trees in Odessa. I couldn’t breathe in enough of this air. It was a sunny day and my relatives came to meet me at the airport. I have many impressions about Israel. Once I heard somebody singing at 2 in the morning: “Mazl tov, mazl tov” [in Ivrit ‘Wish you happiness!’]. They were greeting somebody in a neighboring house dancing and singing. We do not have such late celebrations. At 10 in the evening there are many people shopping in Lod. I admired it. However, every morning there were announcements about explosions on bus stops and people dead. I traveled to Jerusalem once and then I never went on tours again. I thought I had to return home alive. I met with my childhood friend Rachil in Israel. She married Mr. Koch, a Polish Jews, in evacuation. After the Great Patriotic War they lived in Lvov, then they moved to Poland and from there they came to Israel. Rachil has two sons. Her older son is a violinist. He lives in Holland. Her younger son is a programmer and lives in Israel. We’ve kept in touch through the recent years. Rachil and I spoke until 4 o’clock in the morning. We laughed a lot recalling our childhood in Dzygovka and our friends.
I’ve never been interested in politics and did not care about perestroika [17]. Our material status didn’t change to worse, but we got more freedoms.
The rebirth of Jewish life in Odessa began in the 1990s. Gemilut Hesed, this Jewish charity center, began its activities. My husband and I receive food packages from this center. There is a club ‘The front brotherhood’ of veterans of the war in Gemilut Hesed.
We have gatherings twice a week. There are over 100 members in this club. Most of them are invalids of the war. There are very interesting people among them. I also received a status of veteran of the war: so many of my patients returned to the front line. It means I also made my contribution during the war. The Maodon club operates in Gemilut Hesed on Sundays. Interesting people get together at this club. They invite actors, writers and poets.
There is also a library where I borrow books. I try to celebrate Sabbath and do no work on Saturday. On some holidays my husband and I go to the synagogue. I light memorial candles for our deceased and lost dear ones.

Glossary

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

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

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

[4] Kirov, Sergey (born Kostrikov) (1886-1934): Soviet communist. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1904. During the Revolution of 1905 he was arrested; after his release he joined the Bolsheviks and was arrested several more times for revolutionary activity. He occupied high positions in the hierarchy of the Communist Party. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, as well as of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee. He was a loyal supporter of Stalin. In 1934 Kirov's popularity had increased and Stalin showed signs of mistrust. In December of that year Kirov was assassinated by a younger party member. It is believed that Stalin ordered the murder, but it has never been proven.

[5] 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.

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

[7] 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.

[8] 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.

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

[10] Kursk battle: The greatest tank battle in the history of World War II, which began on 5th July 1943 and ended eight days later. The biggest tank fight, involving almost 1,200 tanks and mobile cannon units on both sides, took place in Prokhorovka on 12th July and ended with the defeat of the German tank unit.

[11] Forced deportation to Siberia and Central Asia: Stalin introduced the deportation of some people, like the Crimean Tatars and the Chechens, to Siberia and Central Asia. Without warning, people were thrown out of their houses and into vehicles at night. The majority of them died on the way of starvation, cold and illnesses.

[12] Domanevka: District town in Odessa region. Hundreds of thousands Jews were exterminated in the camp located in this town during the war.

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

[14] Illichevsk: Port on the Black Sea, 25 km from Odessa; became a town in 1973.

[15] Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees: Graduate school in the Soviet Union (aspirantura, or ordinatura for medical students), which usually took about 3 years and resulted in a dissertation. Students who passed were awarded a 'kandidat nauk' (lit. candidate of sciences) degree. If a person wanted to proceed with his or her research, the next step would be to apply for a doctorate degree (doktarontura). To be awarded a doctorate degree, the person had to be involved in the academia, publish consistently, and write an original dissertation. In the end he/she would be awarded a 'doctor nauk' (lit. doctor of sciences) degree.

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

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