Travel

I met Anatoly Lifshits in his cosy apartment in the city centre where he lives together with his wife Lubov Mironovna.

Anatoly Lifshits is a man of courage. He survived the ordeals of war. But in his life he had to exhibit not only military, but also civil bravery.

Anatoly Lifshits has kept surprising memory and we can only be envious of his wit and clarity of thought.

He is a gifted story-teller with rich and flexible language.
A meeting with such a person can be considered pennies from heaven.
I hope that readers of this interview will manage to estimate Anatoly Lifshits at his true worth.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

My children's life

Recent years

Glossary

My family background

Unfortunately I started to be interested in history of our family (especially in origin of my parents) rather late. When it became interesting to me, there was already nobody to ask. But nevertheless I remember some facts.

My mother was the youngest (the 7th) daughter of her parents. In 1890s in Ufa my maternal grandfather Joseph Gutman founded an iron workshop which was later turned into rather large iron foundry. The workshop produced even fire machines (!). It is interesting that in 1960s I travelled along the Volga River and in Volgograd I saw covers of manholes with inscription GUTMAN. My mother told me that my grandfather was very strict both at home and at work. He was also a man of great resource (in all spheres of life).

My maternal grandmother Vera Mikhailovna was born in Troitsk (Ural region). I remember my grandmother to be very good, easy-tempered and fair woman.

I was born in October 1918 in Ufa in the midst of the Civil War 1. The family of my maternal grandfather escaped from the Bolsheviks (I understood it later) in the wake of the retreating Kolchak army 2. They reached Vladivostok, and then moved to Harbin. Later they returned to Vladivostok, where my grandfather got ill and died soon. I guess it happened approximately in 1920. My grandmother lived in families of her children in turn, but the most part of her life she spent together with the family of her younger son David. I can tell nothing for a fact about the level of religiosity of my grandparents. I guess religion did not have a significant place in their life. My grandmother used to live with us for a long time, and I never saw her praying. She never attended the synagogue.

My grandmother and grandfather’s elder son’s name was Alexander. He was a man of rough temper and frequently quarreled with my grandfather (his father). Once he even left home, took a job of a sailor and went to South America. Nevertheless later he came back, healed the breach with parents, turned around and received good education in Switzerland. He worked as a chief mechanical engineer at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory. In 1937 during the Great Terror 3 he was arrested and perished in Stalin’s camps. Of course we know no details about his death. I never saw him. Another brother of my mother (David - the younger brother) was educated in Germany. He worked in the sphere of road machine-building. He worked very successfully, but he also drank the cup of woe: in 1937 he was arrested and sent to camps in Vorkuta [a city in the far north of Russia]. But he was lucky: by that time his machines stopped working and nobody could understand the reason. They retrieved David (though by that time he was already half-dead) from Vorkuta. He managed to understand reasons of malfunctions and explained how to deal with them. They did not send him back to the camp, and it saved his life. He went on working as an engineer, and did it quite successfully. Anyway in 1934 (when I finished 7 classes) I visited him in Moscow, and it appeared that he had a personal car (presented to him by Ordzhonikidze). [Sergo Ordzhonikidze was an outstanding Soviet and Communist Party figure, a professional revolutionist (1886-1937).]

Camps undermined my uncle David's health, therefore he died during the war being not old at all. I remember David to be a witty and cheerful person. Here I’ll tell you about an episode in 1934 in Moscow. When I visited my uncle David, my grandmother lived at his place. One morning we were having breakfast, when a driver entered. He was ready to bring my uncle to his office. ‘Good morning, Ivan Pavlovich!’ grandmother welcomed him. “I suppose you are cold, get warm!” And she filled a glass with vodka. Uncle said very politely (they were always very polite to each other) “Are you going to make a drunkard of my driver?” And grandmother answered “I know how to treat coachmen very well!”

My grandmother (I already told you) was very fair. Let me prove it. One of grandmother’s daughters (Rebecca) got married and moved to Kharkov. She gave birth to a son Vitya, my cousin. It was my nightmare! I was an ordinary child: I ran, played tricks, and was often punished. And he was a model child. All my life parents held him up as an example for me. Mom used to say ‘Vitya would never behave like this!’ But you see, one day my grandmother suddenly asked me to tell her about the Himalayan islands. I was already about 10 years old; I liked geography and knew that there were no Himalayan islands on earth. But it was uncomfortable for me to point her mistake out and I managed to give our conversation another turn. And in the evening I heard my grandmother speaking to Mom “You are not right, your son is not bad at all. He did not want to hurt my feelings, while Vitya explained to me in great detail that I understand nothing, that there are no Himalayan islands on earth.” After that case Vitya disappeared from my parents’ collection of educational methods. My grandmother died in 1942 at the age of 82. Later I met Vitya, he was a worthy person, a colonel of the Air Forces, had participated in the war. However, it was a pleasure for me to realize that though he was an ideal child, he achieved less than me.

My mom was born in Ufa in 1898. She finished grammar school in Ufa and went to Kiev to study at some courses for women. But by that time World War I already burst out, Germans came, and it became impossible for her to finish education. In 1916, my Mom met my father in Kiev, and that meeting was of critical importance for her. So, mom returned to Ufa, and father followed her and asked her parents for her hand. They got married. And when mom’s parents moved to the Far East, she did not go with them, but remained in Ufa with her young husband. I was born in 1918.

My paternal grandmother Basye Yakovlevna and grandfather Alexander Yosefovich were absolutely different. They lived in a small Belarus shtetl Kopys near Orsha (on the bank of the Dnieper River). Their family was very poor. Sholom-Aleikhem colorfully described life of such Jewish families in his works. [Sholom-Aleikhem was a Jewish writer (1859-1916).] They had 6 children, my father was the eldest. A small shop helped them to support their life. My grandmother was engaged in trading, and my grandfather used to pray. In contrast to Mom’s family they spoke only Yiddish. The family was very religious. They observed all Jewish traditions. I saw my paternal grandmother and grandfather only several times in my life: they came to visit us (in Ufa) to look how their elder son lived. Grandmother was very strict: she used to say she had come to organize everything in order. Mom considered her words skeptically, but kindly. She always listened to grandmother’s advices very respectfully. And my grandfather used to ask the same question “And where is the synagogue?” He usually took some striped bed sheets and leather belts and went to pray. I was surprised very much: at that time I knew nothing about tallit and tefillin.

Members of my parents’ family were respectful to religion, but (as I already told you) it did not occupy significant place in our life. During Pesach we ate matzot, but also ate Easter cakes and paskha with great pleasure [Paskha is traditional cake baked for Orthodox Easter]. When I was a child, my parents taught me to be respectful to clergymen. Later I read The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda [Balda in Russian means a stupid or not very serious person] by Pushkin 4. [In that fairy tale the orthodox priest is shown to be greedy and silly.] I was surprised that Pushkin showed disrespect to a clergyman, an orthodox priest in this case. As far as rabbis are concerned, I did not see any during my childhood.

But let’s get back to my father’s childhood. When he was 13 years old, parents sent him away. He went to Vitebsk by a steamship. In Vitebsk his sister lived together with her husband. Her husband had small business connected with textiles. So my father started working there as an accountant. He was not educated, but very capable and purposeful. He managed to pass through exams and got a school leaving certificate without attending lectures. Later he entered a Kiev College for specialists in commerce. So he got acquainted with my Mom being a student.

Growing up

My father worked in an office. They were engaged in production and sales of pottery. Now I understand that we had not plenty to live. I think so because I remember my father cooking soap for sale at home. I do not know what he made it from. I remember that it was white and blue, and father cut it into pieces using wire. But little by little our financial situation improved, there came a time of NEP 5. We were not rich, but not poor. On holidays our table was laden with rich food. We used to cook not less than 100 pelmeni [Russian dumplings] for one male member of the family. Family habits were more Russian, than Jewish. It could be seen in every moment of life, including meals. We lived on the 1st floor of a two-storey house. There was a yard covered with grass. I remember that we bought a horse because father had to go on business trips very often. The 2nd floor of the house was occupied by the family of doctor Chernyak. We were friends. Every Saturday adults played preference. So we led a steady provincial life.

In 1923 my sister Judith was born. I became an elder brother. Since I was 6, parents started to beat me if they considered me not to meet requirements of that role. But I was very much pleased to have a sister. My sister was my best friend when we were children. And later we became very close.

My sister finished school in Kiev, and entered Medical College in Ufa, in evacuation (she graduated from it in Moscow). My sister was a very capable person. She worked in Moscow; she was a well-known doctor, specialist in hematology. Unfortunately last year she died. I miss her very much. She had got a daughter Vera and a grandson.

In 1924 father moved to Kazan, where he became a director of the same office. A little bit later we joined him in Kazan. I remember that our steamship stopped at the place of junction of Kama to Volga rivers, and another steamship coming from the opposite direction moored to our steamship. From that steamship father came aboard our one: that was the way he met us. In Kazan we lived in the apartment on the 2nd floor of a house. There was a large yard full of trees. In the apartment there was a bathroom (it was very uncommon at that time). My Mom was a very sociable woman, she used to invite all old women from the neighboring houses to have a bath. After a bath, they used to twist their heads round with towels, drink tea and speak about peace time, i.e. about the time before the World War I. I listened to their stories with great interest. You know, human memory is very deceptive, no doubt. When I got to Kazan in 1980s and found our former house, I understood that it was small, and the yard was small, too. Probably it was me who grew up.

In 1927 father was advanced again and sent to Kiev. In Kiev he bought half of an apartment. Therefore in fact we lived in a communal apartment 6. Soon NEP was abandoned, father’s office was closed, and (as I understand now) father realized that no good would come of commercial activities in the USSR. He found a job at glass-works. Soon he became a chief engineer at glass-works near Zhitomir (close to the border with Poland). Altogether he worked at 2 glass-works 6 or 7 years.

Father worked very well. His main task was to support technological process in glass-furnaces. He managed. We lived in Kiev and we visited him only in summer. Having worked there several years, father expected no lift in his career, because he had no special education. He went on semi-annual leave, and graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic College (Ceramic Faculty) without attending lectures. He studied days and nights. As soon as he got his diploma, he was appointed a chief engineer at large glass-works near Kharkov. There he worked for a year, and then was invited to be a chief engineer at the new factory producing thermos bottles (in Kiev). There he worked very successfully, too (his photo could be found on the board of honor). We were not rich (we could not imagine richness), but we were not poor. I remember that one day my father, a chief engineer, received a bonus. He spent that sum of money having bought a big water-melon and a loaf of black bread. Mom rented out one room (I guess she had to). She knitted very well for all of us (my sister was always well-dressed).

In summer we used to leave for vacation. Sometimes we went to the Black Sea, sometimes rented small houses in the neighboring villages.

To my opinion my Mom had very reasonable educational principles. Our house was always open for my friends and for my sister’s friends. Mom understood children very well. Here I can tell you that my friends often asked her advice instead of their parents’. At the same time mom was very impulsive by nature and a hard hitter. She was often on my back. But I deserved punishments, because I was a rather playful child. Here I’ll tell you about an episode I remember very well. I was a schoolboy. I liked to study very much, it was interesting to me. But children at school were different. Their interests were different. Students were fond of gambling. I did not like it, but did not want to break with my comrades. We played at home of each participant in turn (when his parents were absent). So one day it was my turn. And I had no secrets from my mom.

I explained to her that it was my turn and my friends would come to play. Mom agreed. 10 boys came. We started gambling. Mom did not enter our room, but suddenly after a while there came a neighbor and asked our permission to play with us. He quickly gambled away his small sum of money and left. Then I understood that he was my mother's agent: she asked him to clear up the situation (what game we were playing, etc.). Mom did not want to come in herself because it would put me in an embarrassing situation in presence of my friends. A couple of days later Mom had a detailed talk to me about gambling. She even mentioned Dostoevsky 7. [Dostoevsky was a real gambler.] Mom forbade me nothing, but after that conversation I made my own decision and refused to gamble.

Mom worked much about the house, but we always had domestic servants. We had no governesses, but teachers regularly came to teach me and my sister foreign languages. I learned German letters before Russian ones. When I was a pupil of the 6th form, I started learning English and French. Later I had to stop studying French, it was too difficult. But when I read War and Peace by Tolstoy 8, I easily understood all text paragraphs written in French. I liked languages, they came easily to me. To tell the truth, later (when I started talking to Englishmen) I realized that I was able to communicate with books, not with people. I guess it was not my fault: they taught us that way. I became a schoolboy in Kiev. My first 7 years at school seemed to me a game: nothing was difficult for me. In the 7th grade, I realized that it was necessary to study seriously. Most of all I liked mathematics.

Boris Solomonovich Lembersky was a remarkable teacher at our school. He managed to teach every pupil individually when we were all together at lessons. After his training pupils were able to pass through entrance exams anywhere they liked. A also remember Pavel Ivanovich Novosiltsev, a teacher of history. His distinguishing feature was his true interest to children. By the way, at that time history course presented facts as if world did not exist before 1905 9. Everything I know in history, I learned without any assistance (from books).

At school literature was the worst subject. Our teacher read us aloud, without drawing our attention to the beauty of our language. Sports occupied a significant place in my life: volleyball at first, then swimming and tennis. Every day my training sessions lasted 3-4 hours. I studied very well, my school certificate was full of excellent grades, which allowed me to enter any college I liked without entrance examinations (I had to pass only through the entrance interview) 10. I had a lot of friends; I am still in touch with some of them. Our last meeting was devoted to the 65th anniversary of our school leaving. Among my friends there were both Jews and gentiles. By the way, in our class more than 50% of pupils were Jewish. But the nationality of my friends was of no importance for me.

Here I’d like to tell you that I finished school in 1937, in the midst of Stalin mass repressions. You see, I know about it not by hearsay. We lived in the five-storey house, and doors of our arrested neighbors were sealed up one by one. I remember that I woke up one night and saw my parents standing at the window and looking out. Only now I understand that they watched cars passing by and guessed whether one of them was meant for them. Members of our family agreed that arrested people were guilty in nothing. But it happened somehow (and I give Mom the credit of it) that we (children) understood everything very well: it was one thing to talk to family members and another to talk in public. Parents did not hesitate speaking about political events in our presence. My Mom was so impulsive that it was difficult for her to keep secret. I remember that after Khrushchev denounced Stalin's methods 11 and rehabilitated many prisoners (unfortunately most of them posthumously) Mom told a joke ‘Khrushchev is walking around a cemetery, bowing low to each tomb and asking ARE YOU REHABILITATED?’ So, we were taught to hold our tongues, but at the same time parents used to say that we should stand up for justice. I learned that lesson very well, and later I’ll tell you how I suffered over it. By the way, I do not believe people who say that they learned about Stalin repressions only after Khrushchev’s speech. Everyone knew, but was afraid: it was too terrible to know.

So, it was necessary to choose a college. At that time I knew nothing about pure science, because I was brought up in the family of engineers. If I knew, I would have entered Mathematical Faculty of the University and would have been engaged in my favorite mathematics. But at that time I decided between the 2 variants: a school teacher or an engineer. I chose engineering career and entered the Kiev Polytechnic College. My parents did not interfere. Again my father left Kiev for Gorky [now Nizhniy Novgorod] region to work at a factory producing windshields. I guess departure of my father had one more reason: he had a foreboding about a possible arrest. In that case simple change of residence could help.

So, I became a student. It was a rather thoughtless action. I was advised to study at the Faculty of Chemical Mechanical Engineering. I have studied there a year. That year did not impress me at all. I was an excellent student in mathematics, because I was prepared very well. But I did not like the way they taught us physics. And technical drawing was the most difficult subject for me. It was a real torture. I remember that one day a teacher made 93 remarks about my drawing. Besides our studies we had to participate in different meetings, where we were obliged to blame enemies of people 12 (it had to be a group action). Most often we had to blame participants of different antigovernment groups, who had already been arrested and condemned. Those people lived in Moscow, and we were in Kiev, but it made no difference. It was not an easy way for the College communist leaders to deal with students: they asked improper questions, refused to vote for condemning resolutions. I cannot tell that I acted up to my principles: I was a conformist (sat still, solving integrals and raising my hand when demanded). Probably, that was the way I survived. But it was impossible to survive another way.  

Well, a year passed. It was before the war, different military schools invited cadets. It was not absolutely voluntary: all Komsomol 13 members were obliged to receive medical certificates. I did not mind to become a cadet: it seemed to me that in case of war it was necessary to defend our country. Moreover, I did not hold my College dear. At the 1st medical examination a doctor asked me whether I wanted to study at that military school. I did not (and I told her about it honestly). She found a nonexistent defect. Later I went through the medical examination selecting volunteers for the Navy. By that time I decided to be engaged in shipbuilding and told the doctor about it. I passed for general service and was sent to study at the Military School named after Frunze in Leningrad. It happened in 1938.

Since then all my life is connected with fleet. I was taken in as a cadet of the 2nd course. Training was absolutely different. They taught us not physics and mathematics, but navigation and astronomy, etc. Among our teachers there were many officers of the Tsarist Fleet. Every Saturday and Sunday they gave a ball. Each cadet received two permits: for himself and for his girlfriend. Our balls were well-known all over the city, and our graduates were considered to be suitable matches. I did not like those parties; I preferred to go to the swimming pool. I took part in it only once and was surprised to be a success. Later I understood the reason. At that time portraits of Stalin scholars were placed on a special honorable board [the best students of high schools received Stalin stipends] and my photo was among them.

In winter we studied and in summer we sailed. Our 1st summer we spent on board the Aurora Cruiser. [The Cruiser Aurora was launched in 1900. It took part in the October revolution of 1917. Now it is a museum.]

Next year we sailed on board fighting ships, and got to Liepaya (it was a foreign port at that time, but our military bases were already situated there). So I participated in the early stages of occupation of the Baltic countries 14. Our last training sail took place on the Ladoga Lake. We got to the well-known Valaam Island. Monks had already run away and the monastery was handed over to the Fleet. School of Sea Cadets was to be placed there. I was surprised to see the huge and tuned monastery farming. I got into the special library team. We had to check the monastic library and do away with the literature of White Guards 15. There I found not only religious, but also secular books. There I read a lot of books by different authors I never came across before. 

During the war

Here I’ll tell you about the prewar days. Stalin tried to gain time. I know that our naval attaché in Berlin got to know for sure that Germans were going to attack the USSR on June 22. He informed Kuznetsov (Naval Minister) about it, and Kuznetsov reported to Stalin. Stalin said “Don’t give way to provocations.” I guess Stalin could not believe that someone was more artful than him, and swept aside all hints about beginning of the war. On June 14 PRAVDA newspaper published denial by the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union: “…the Germans meet all their engagements, therefore we have to stop panic mood.’ And we were lucky in a certain sense. Naval minister N.G. Kuznetsov was very capable, resolute, a man of insight (in contrast to many army generals, for example Voroshylov and even Zhukov [16, 17]. At our School they told us that newspapers could write what they wanted, but we had to keep our powder dry. The point was that Kuznetsov visited Spain in 1937 18 and saw Spanish battleship shipwrecked by German airplanes. He was impressed. Therefore he introduced into practice the following rule: only one word had to be broadcast in case of danger and that word meant combat readiness. When the war burst out, he managed to transmit that word by radio, while generals of other armies wrote long encryptions which had to be decoded. That was why during the 1st days of the war no warships were destroyed, while almost all our aircrafts were crushed.

The war burst out when I was in Leningrad passing examinations. We were divided into 2 groups: submariners and sailors. I became a submariner. We were sent to Vladivostok to finish our education. That was why I spent the first 2 months of war in the Far East. Later they divided us into 4 groups and sent to different seas. I was sent to the North. We were moving very slowly (in heated goods vans). [A heated goods van was a freight car adapted for transportation of people.] We were passing through Moscow in the beginning of November, the city was almost empty. It was a sad sight. One car was destroyed by bombing and one of our cadets was seriously wounded: he lost his legs. Before that case I was not serious thinking about the war, but then I suddenly understood how dangerous it was. We reached Arkhangelsk, and then went to Murmansk by the ship across the sea coated with ice. There I went to the staff department. They asked me where I wanted to serve. I preferred surface ship and they appointed me a junior navigator to Gremyaschiy torpedo boat.

Here I’ll tell you about my parents. Mom together with my sister hardly managed to leave Kiev and reached Ufa having been bombed several times. Father was mobilized in the beginning of the war (by that time he was 49 years old). People of his age have been quickly let off from the army. He went to Ufa, too. But at that time I knew nothing about them.

My service was to accompany escorts. Englishmen and Americans sent to the USSR lend-lease aid: tanks, airplanes, tinned stewed meat. Lend-lease aid was given on credit. [Lend-lease was a system of loaning or renting arms, ammunition, strategic raw material, foodstuffs, goods and services to countries - allies.] They sent their aid through northern way (where I served), Pacific Ocean (from the Western coast of the USA to Vladivostok), and by trains from Iran. The 3rd way was the safest, but the longest (it took many months). The northern way was the shortest one, but it was the most dangerous.

I’d like to tell you about my attitude to the lend-lease program. During the Cold War aid of allies was belittled. They used to say that it made only 4% of the total number of armament. It is true, but what 4% and during what time. In the beginning of the war our army suffered heavy losses. Without tanks, airplanes, and automobiles received according to that program, we would have not survived. That program played an important role in our war! And now it is recognized.

This cargo had to be transferred past Norway (occupied by Germans). The ships had to move along a narrow corridor: occupied Norway staffed with German airplanes on the one side and Arctic ice bar on the other one. The way was a week long, and German airplanes needed only half an hour to reach us from the Norwegian shore and drop their bombs upon us. Foreigners called that way to Murmansk real hell. It came about the following way: 20-30 trading vessels with cargo moved towards Murmansk. They were surrounded by warships forming a circle. Sometimes (if the number of warships was enough) they formed 2 circles. Patrol ships took the lead destroying German submarines. English warships moved from the West guarding cargo ships against German warships. Two groups of trading vessels started from Murmansk and from England simultaneously. We had to escort our ships and meet English ones.

In the certain point (at the 20th meridian) Soviet warships joined the accompanying ships. All these ships were called a convoy. The convoy was slow-footed. Many ships had been taken down by German airplanes. The water was icy. If a person fell down into water, he had no chance to survive. Besides the ship guns became iced and it was necessary to chop off the ice. Germans learned about a convoy long before it approached Norway and started preparing submarines and heavy bombers. Germans not only bombed us from airplanes, but also torpedoed. Very soon we learned how to shoot into the water from our biggest guns. It was necessary to shoot so that a wall of water rose in front of a dive-bomber, and it crashed into it. That was the way I served. 

I participated in 23 convoys. Englishmen, who took part in 2 convoys and survived, thought they were lucky. Our ship was lucky to catch the bomb lying in dock. It made a hole, but did not reach the engine-room, and that was the most important. But you see, about 15 persons were lost that day.

Here I’d like to get back a little. When I was a cadet, I got married. My first wife Galina was German. As soon as the communist leader of our crew got to know about it, I understood that there was no escaping fate. One day in our wardroom we were talking about prisoners of war. I expressed my opinion that not every prisoner of war was a traitor. The communist leader perverted my words and said that I called upon to give up. A week later I was read out of the Party and transferred from my ship. By that moment I had already taken part in 9 convoys. I was appointed a commander of the girls’ platoon (at that time they drafted girls). After my serious service, it was a hard blow to me, but it did not knock me down. I wrote a letter to the flagman navigator with a request to send me to some ship. A month later I was lucky to receive an assignment of navigator. Later I understood why it happened: shortly before the war the flagman navigator himself was arrested, therefore he understood well that accusations could be false.

I got to an absolutely different ship: a mobilized sweep vessel. It had 2 small guns and carried out patrol service at the entrance of Kola bay. That ship was an easy target. Flying back after an unfortunate bombardment of Murmansk, German airplanes always had an opportunity to bomb our vessel. A lot of such trawlers went down, but we were lucky. One day we received a radiogram: to the north they found a boat going full stream and carrying 50 people, more dead than alive (they were from a bombed-out convoy). We found them, lifted aboard, warmed up, and brought to the hospital. Fifty years later Englishmen, participants of northern convoys, visited Leningrad. I spoke at that meeting and told that story. A month later I received a letter from England from one of those rescued guys. We are in touch now.

At that ship I was the only professional soldier. I served there 8 months. I am not going to bore you with technical details, I’ll tell you only that I noticed certain disorders in navigation system and informed the flagman navigator. They set eyes on me and sent me from the trawler to a fighting ship. Later I started serving on board the Razumny torpedo boat and served there till the end of the war. I finished war as a captain of the torpedo boat.

During the war, I never came across manifestations of anti-Semitism. By the way at our School there were 7-8 Jews for 1,000 cadets. Among crew members there were few Jews, too. My comrades, who were not naval, told me that there were manifestations of anti-Semitism. But of course state anti-Semitism took place: both I and people around me came across it. 

So the war was finished. I was awarded 4 orders: Orders of the Great Patriotic War both 1st and 2nd Class 19 and 2 Orders of the Red Star 20. I have got more than 20 medals. After the end of the war I served 2 more years at the same torpedo boat: we trained sailors and arranged group firing.

Due to some reasons my first marriage was broken. In 1947 I married Lubov Mironovna Vovsi. Lubov Mironovna was born in Moscow in 1925. She graduated from the Physics Faculty of the Moscow University and worked in Leningrad at the Television Institute.

After the war

After the capture of Berlin I was granted leave of absence. By that time my parents and my sister had moved to Moscow, and father got a job at glassworks near Moscow. That factory was very close to Moscow. On May 9, 1945 we went to Manezhnaya square joining the crowd of triumphant Muscovites. My sister invited her friend Lubov. My sister was very cheerful and she invented the following entertainment for me: she bought 13 theater tickets admitting self and friend each and invited one of her friends for each performance. Lubov Mironovna was one of those girls and it was our 2nd meeting. At first I was only polite and entertained the girls with cakes. It was rather difficult for me, because I did not know the names of those cakes. One of my dates asked me about an éclair, and I had no idea what it looked like.

In 1947 I entered the Naval Academy named after Voroshilov in Leningrad. It was not an easy task, because there was a large entry, but I managed. I was a very good cadet. Among other subjects they taught us bases of Marxism and Leninism (of course!). And I made the most terrible boner: discussing the works of communist scholars (Lenin 21, in particular) I called one of his books (I do not know why!) notorious. I meant nothing, but it appeared to be enough to expel me from the Party. Thanks to efforts of my wife’s father professor Miron Semenovich Vovsi [Miron Semenovich (Meir Solomonovich) Vovsi (1897-1960) was a Soviet therapist, Major-General of medical service. During the war he was the chief therapist of the army. Vovsi was arrested during the Doctors’ Plot 22, but discharged after the case was closed.], the punishment was changed into an easier one: I was transferred from a Party member to a candidate Party member. It meant that they permitted me to finish my studies. I graduated from the Academy with excellent grades (all fives), but they gave me a four for the diploma. You see if I got a five for the diploma, they would have been obliged to inscribe my name on the marble board in the Academy lobby, but it was impossible for a person just expelled from the communist party. I was appointed a teacher at the Engineering Academy. It was not good for a career of a naval officer. I worked there a year, and wrote my first book. But there came 1952.

In 1952 parents of my wife were arrested in connection with Doctors’ Plot. As for me, I was expelled from the Party once more, fired and transferred to the reserve. At that time my wife worked at the Leningrad Television Institute. She was fired, too. By that time we had got 2 children: my son born in my first wedlock (in 1941) and our mutual son (born in 1949). We sent our children to my parents and were waiting for arrest every minute. I started searching for work (we were out of money and sold books, things). At first I was naïve enough to try to find work connected with my profession. I was well educated, people everywhere wanted to give me a job, but only until I named my wife. I was turned down at all special educational institutions, then at all schools. Later I simplified the problem: I wanted to work as (for example) a steersman on a small boat. And they said ‘How can we trust you to steer the boat if your father-in-law is the main murderer!’ They also did not permit me to study at trolleybus courses. I was offered to work as a tugboat captain, but only upon condition of my divorce. It was not good for me. I happened to meet my friend, a captain of torpedo boat. He had also been transferred to the reserve, but his reason was much more honorable: hard drinking. When we met, he held a post of the captain at the Leningrad fishing fleet. He promised to help me and took me to their director, whom I told everything openly. The director gave me the job of time-table clerk, but promised to fire me immediately in case somebody got to know about details of my biography. I also tried to find job for Lubov: I brought her texts for translation and she did it. But she never signed her translations.

At last Stalin died. In prison father of my wife was told that they would discharge him in a few days. They asked him whether he had a wish. He said he wanted to know about the destiny of his relatives. He got the following answer: ‘Don’t worry about your wife: she is WITH US, and we will find out about your daughter.’ We got to know about it much later. And when Stalin died, my wife cried: she was sure that execution of her father would take place very soon. My director told me ‘Do you remember that we have to fulfill our condition? Yesterday I was asked about you by NKVD 23 representatives. Please bring your resignation.’ I did it, but unexpectedly our trade union did not agree with my discharge. By the way, when they expelled me from the Party I appealed to the Party superiors against their decision and later forgot about it. After Stalin's death, they invited me to Moscow and informed that my appeal had been considered and my position in the Party was redeemed. Next day I was appointed a deputy chief of staff, squadron in Tallinn. The post was the most enviable, but at that time I warmed to my work at the Academy and wanted to return there. But the Academy chief said ‘So many people danced on your bones, it will be difficult for you to work together. Come back a year later.’

So I left for Tallinn. I served there 3 years. My family remained in Leningrad; therefore I lived in my cabin on board the ship. I served easily: in fact I had recently graduated from the Academy and wrote 2 books while working at the Krylov Academy. My scientific background was impressive. Those books were very useful to me during my service in Tallinn. Besides I was surrounded by people I got acquainted with during the war. The chief of the staff was my comrade (we studied at the same Academy). Rather quickly I gained authority and it became clear that I was the right man in the right place. You remember that I arrived to Tallinn being an associate party member. In a year I had to be promoted from associate to full membership. A year passed, but the chief of our political department said it was necessary to wait a year more. I quickly understood what the point was. At that time Beriya 24 was arrested. My wife’s father Miron Vovsi remembered that it was Beriya himself who congratulated him on the occasion of his discharge and called him a free person after Stalin’s death. And I was unwary enough to tell someone about it. Therefore Beriya’s arrest cast an imputation on my character. That was the tragicomedy of my personal contact with Beriya. I was promoted from associate to full Party membership half-year later.

In 1956 I was suggested promotion in Kamchatka. But I decided to return to Leningrad and be engaged in scientific and pedagogical activities. I got good characteristics and returned to Krylov Academy to work at a scientific group. There I wrote a book about new vintages of ships and defended my kandidat nauk dissertation basing on it. [The kandidat nauk is a scientific degree in the USSR and in Russia; it is given to college graduates, who managed to  pass through special examinations and defended their dissertation in public.] During presentation of my thesis everything was going fine, but suddenly the chief of our political department (those bodies always liked me very much!) asked me what I had been expelled from the Party for. I explained everything. He said it was clear to him and sat down. But unfortunately his question was a signal to start persecution. It manipulated the voting and the vote was negative. The Academy chief made a helpless gesture and said ‘I do not understand the members of our academic scientific council.’ In the meantime my book was published. It turned out comic: the dissertation was blocked, but the book was published. Moreover at that time many ships were constructed directly according to my book. The Academy chief invited me and said ‘It is time to finish, get ready for the second time.’ And I defended my thesis without a dissentient voice. All those events took a year. I do not regret: I worked very well.

Illness of my father-in-law professor Vovsi was another tragedy for our family. He was diagnosed with cancer. He was one of the best doctors of his time, and he himself predicted he would die not later than in 8 months. Naturally he wanted his daughter to be beside him. He asked my consent to be moved to Moscow. I could not refuse though my service was a dream of service. So I started working at the Navy Staff in Moscow. Together with my wife and 2 children (our younger son Mikhail was born in 1956) we made our abode with my parents-in-law. My elder son Alexander remained in Leningrad (by that time he was a student of the 3rd course, Polytechnic College). In the Navy Staff I served at the operations department (the most secret one), and I was the only Jew there. Perhaps that was the reason why they moved me to another department: Navy Scientific Committee. They did it nicely, and reasoned that it was necessary to satisfy the requirements of my own scientific interests.

In 1960 my father-in-law died. His death was a great loss not only for his relatives, but also for medicine. His patients carried his coffin to the grave in their arms. I am sure that his arrest hastened his death. About a year later I was suddenly deprived of the access permit. They gave me no explanations, but I was sure that the point was in the state anti-Semitism (at that time it flourished everywhere). I felt annoyed with all that, called KGB 25 (Navy representative) and asked for an audience. I met there a polite naval officer. I showed him the list of my scientific articles and he said ‘You are a research worker, why do you work at the Navy Staff?’ I explained that it was not my idea: I had to work there because of my father-in-law’s illness. The officer agreed that it altered the case. Finally I managed to return to the Krylov Academy. There were also some difficulties with accommodation, but the problem was settled. My mother-in-law refused to move with us and remained in Moscow. We returned to Leningrad together with my wife and 2 children.

There I needed an access permit (I lost it in Moscow) and received it rather quickly. I understood that that person from KGB helped me. I worked in the Academy from 1962 till 1973. I worked successfully, wrote several books more and got a doctor's degree. In 1973 I was 55 years old: it was time to retire. I got demobilized, but did not want to sit at home. I started searching for work. I made a name for myself both in scientific and educational spheres of life. I decided to become a teacher at a college. But it was not so easy: not everyone wanted to have a competitor at their faculty. As a result I found a job at the Institute of Methods and Management Technique (it was organized for improvement of professional skill in the field of new computer technique): my last 5 years at the Academy were connected with computer equipment. I worked with pleasure, taught, and was engaged in scientific work. Five years later I became a head of the department of Automated Control Systems. I worked there 23 years (till 2001). The atmosphere there was very friendly. I managed to write 2 books more and a great number of articles. I also often went on business trips, participated in various conferences. But Perestroika came. It was followed by collapse of the USSR. Many institutes decayed, but our institute managed to survive, though it changed much.

My children's life

Now I’ll tell you about our children. All my sons grew up as lovers of mathematics. My elder son Alexander was born in 1941. He was a very gifted boy. He finished his school with a gold medal, studied at the Polytechnic College and was going to be transferred to the University. But at the age of 22 he drowned in Siberia during a camping trip. My younger sons graduated from the mathematics faculty of the University. At present they are experts in the theory of probability. Boris (born in 1949) finished a school specialized in mathematics with a gold medal. It was impossible for a person with our surname to enter the University, but we decided to try. At the first examination (mathematics) he got not a good mark (three). We knew that it was absolutely impossible to enter the University having three among examination marks. Mark Bashmakov, the former teacher at Boris’ school helped us very much (by that moment he worked at the University). He advised that Boris should pass through other examinations, and later address commission of appeal (the commission had to check fairness of evaluation of student’s knowledge).

It was a very wise advice: Boris got fives for all other subjects (these marks were given fairly, because all the teachers knew that it was impossible to become a student having three). Then my son addressed the commission of appeal and his examination-paper was adjudged to be worth a five. Boris graduated from the University and tried to become a postgraduate student, but got three for Marxism-Leninism and did not manage to enter. To have a Jew as a postgraduate student was too much for the University! At that time Mark Bashmakov worked at the Leningrad Electrotechnical College. He invited Boris to work with him. Boris agreed with gratitude. By the way Mark played a large part in my life. I’ll tell you about it later. Boris has been working at the Leningrad Electrotechnical College as a senior lecturer till now. He has two daughters.

My younger son Mikhail was born in 1956. At present he is a professor of the University, he is a mathematician too, and he devoted himself to the theory of probability. He also graduated from the mathematical faculty of the University. He has three children.

Recent years

One day in 1991 or in 1992 Mark Bashmakov (I already told you about him) called me and said that in Italy he got acquainted with a Russian emigrant Vladimir Ladyzhensky. Ladyzhensky wanted to arrange assistance to Russia. Mark considered me able to participate in the project on the part of Russia. Vladimir arrived to our Institute, examined everything, appreciated our new equipment and told that we fully answered his requirements. His purpose was to create small centers for raising the level of professional skill. He wanted to create one of such centers on the basis of our Institute and make me its director. He managed. I gathered good and strong team. Our project was approved in all higher echelons. During the first year project participants went abroad on long business trips.

The first city we visited was Rome. Certainly I was shocked by the beauty of Rome, but regarding our business Italians could teach us nothing (I understood it immediately). Our level was very good and it was a pleasure. You see, the Iron Curtain 26 rose recently and we had no opportunity to compare the levels. Our next trip was to London. There we visited World ORT computer laboratory. [World ORT is a non-governmental organization whose mission is the advancement of Jewish people through training and education, with past and present activities in over 100 countries.] It was very interesting and useful, and we learned much there.

Our project was a success, and I enjoyed popularity. I was invited to participate in another joint international project. Later I organized them myself. Well, I have been wandering around Europe about 9 years. At the same time I did not stop my work as a teacher and faculty head. At present I go on arranging similar projects, but now I do it on the basis of the Polytechnic College.

In 2001 I left the post of department chair at the Institute of Methods and Management Technique, but continued working there as a consulting professor. On the basis of the Institute I created a system of distance education.

In our family we never discussed the question of departure to Israel (neither we, nor our children).

Before 1937 it was possible to speak about merits and demerits of the Soviet regime. But after 1937 all merits were made null and void by demerits. I estimated all political events sensibly. I was on the side of Hungarians during the Hungarian revolution 27 and on the side of Czechs during the Prague spring 28. But I was a conformist, I did not protest on the Red Square. [On August 28, 1968 eight Soviet dissidents came to the Red Square to protest against the USSR armies in Prague.] I think that Gorbachev 29 was a great politician: he disorganized the communist system. It seems to me that he did much more for the country, than Yeltsin. [Yeltsin Boris (1931-2007) was the first President of the Russian Federation. He was elected on June 12, 1991.] He was alone fighting against the Soviet authorities.

I do not participate in the Jewish life of Petersburg. Lubov Mironovna sometimes receives food packages there.

Glossary:

Moris Florentin
Athens
Greece
Interviewer: Lily Mordechai
Date of the interview: February 2007

Mr. Florentin is 84 years old. He is a nice man of few words who always smiles and is always willing to help in a kind and calm manner. He and his wife live in a spacious, modern apartment in a nice suburb of Athens, very close to their son and two grandchildren. In their living room they have many different books about Thessaloniki, books with pictures, history books and novels. Mr. Florentin is slim and quite tall; he has expressive eyes and a calm, straightforward nature. He limps when he walks because of a war injury on his right leg. Even so, he is a very active man, he walks a lot, he swims in the summer and he also drives. He retired from his job at the pharmaceutical company La Roche thirteen years ago.

My family backgound
Growing up
During the war
After the war 
Glossary:

My family backgound

My ancestors left Spain, went to Italy and then settled in Thessaloniki. In Italy they stayed in Florence and that is possibly where my last name, Florentin, comes from or at least that’s what they used to say in Thessaloniki. They used to tell me that different relatives of my family must have settled in Thessaloniki at least three or four generations before I was born, but I don’t know if all this is true or not. In fact, we used to go to the Italian Synagogue, it was in Faliro close to the sea opposite the cinema ‘Paté’ and it was called ‘Kal d’ Italia.’

I don’t know much about my great-grandparents, I never met any of them; I only met my grandparents on my mother’s side. My grandfather’s name was Saltiel Zadok and my grandmother’s name was Masaltov Zadok [nee Matalon]. They were both born in Thessaloniki. My grandfather was a carpenter, he specialized in furniture making and he owned the best and biggest furniture shop in Thessaloniki, named ‘Galérie Moderne’ and it was on Tsimiski Street [main road of the interwar period in Thessaloniki].

He also owned a furniture-making factory; as long back as I can remember it was behind Tsimiski Street close to the Turkish Baths, there my grandfather had his workshop and part of the factory. Later in time, the factory specialized in making metal beds and was moved close to the train station. Even so, the shop always sold furniture.

My grandparents didn’t have friends because my grandfather worked a lot, even on Saturdays. In his free time he loved fishing and listening to music. He was an amateur fisherman so he would take the boat and go fishing whenever he could. He would also go to a café that played music and sometimes he took me with him. He sat there and drank his coffee silently; he didn’t talk much, my grandfather, but he was a real music lover. That café was by the seafront close to ‘Mediteranée’ [one of the best known and most luxurious hotels in Thessaloniki], I remember it very well.

Concerning his character he was the silent type, he was a bit reserved and he didn’t make many jokes. He wasn’t religious at all, he never went to the synagogue and he didn’t keep the Sabbath. I never met any of his relatives; I don’t think he had any.

My grandmother, Masaltov didn’t work; she stayed home and didn’t go out much. She took care of the house and the cooking, even though they also had a cleaning lady who stayed overnight. My grandmother had a brother, but I don’t remember his name. He had a wife and two children, a boy and a girl but they were much older than me. He used to go to my grandparents’ house every Saturday to keep my grandmother company. He would go on Saturday morning and leave by noon; I think he lived in the same area.

In general, my grandmother stayed home and took care of her grandchildren. I wouldn’t say she was an introvert but she didn’t have much of a social circle besides her family. My grandmother wanted to be more religious but since my grandfather was not, she was not given the chance to do so. They didn’t keep any of the traditions, the Sabbath or eating kosher food, but I remember that we used to have seder in my grandparents’ house with my uncle’s family as well, Viktor Zadok.

They used to live in an area of Thessaloniki called Exohes [area on the outer part of the eastern Byzantine walls, area of residency of the middle and upper class mainly]. Exohes was the whole area from Analipseos Street until the Depot, the bus stop was by the French Lycée, it was called ‘St. George - Agios Georgios [King George] or Vasileos Georgiou.’ It was a two-story house and my mother’s brother, Viktor Zadok, and his family lived on the top floor.

I remember my grandparents’ house; it had two bedrooms, a living room and a dining room. As you went in from the entrance you could see the living and dining room and then were the bedrooms and the kitchen. They had running water and electricity and the house was heated with what we called a ‘salamander’ [big stove for heating the whole house]. You put anthracite [type of charcoal] and it was very effective. They had a garden, which they shared with my uncle; they grew some vegetables and had some flowers too.

Jewish people mainly inhabited the area they lived in, even though there were some Christians as well. I think that the majority of people my grandparents associated with were Jewish, also their neighbors with whom they got along. Their house was not far away from ours so I used to see them almost every day, at the least I would drop in and say ‘Good morning.’

My grandfather died around 1939, before the Holocaust, my grandmother was taken from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz along with my parents, and they probably died in 1943.

On my father’s side I didn’t meet my grandparents. They were both born in Thessaloniki but they died before I was born. My grandmother’s name was Oro Florentin, I don’t remember my grandfather’s name but I have seen a picture of him. My father didn’t talk about them much.

Thessaloniki had a vibrant Jewish community. There were many synagogues; I think there was a synagogue in every neighborhood. I only remember the central one that still exists today, the Italian one and another one close to my house on Gravias Street. The main Jewish area I would say was Exohes, where we lived, even though there were Jewish people everywhere.

There was also an area where Jews from lower social classes lived; it was called 156 or ‘shesh’ as everyone called it. [Editor’s note: The area Mr. Florentin is referring to was actually called ‘151,’ and ‘6’ is a different neighborhood; there were at least 10 Jewish working class neighborhoods in Salonica]. This area was strictly lower class, poor Jews. I didn’t know anyone nor had any friends from there.

Middle class Jewish people were mainly merchants, they had shops with fabrics or other things but I don’t remember any famous Jewish people being manual workers. The main market was by the White Tower; where we lived there were only a few shops. I think both my mother and my father did the shopping but I don’t remember if they had any favorite merchants. There weren’t many incidents of Anti-Semitism but I’m sure it existed because when you heard of one happening it would stay with you.

My parents’ names were Iosif, or Pepo as everybody called him, and Ida Florentin [nee Zadok]. They were both born in Thessaloniki. Their wedding took place sometime in 1919 in Thessaloniki; I think it was an arranged marriage. My father was a money-changer; it was a common profession among Jewish people. I am not sure exactly what he did but I think he bought, changed or sent money abroad, that kind of thing. It had to do with Greek and foreign currency, for example when somebody wanted to buy golden Sovereigns Liras. But I don’t remember that very well because later on he worked in my grandfather and uncle’s business, in the furniture shop ‘Galérie Moderne.’

My mother didn’t work; she cooked and took care of my brother and me. We had a cleaning lady to help her with the housework but she didn’t stay overnight, she left in the evenings. She did most of the housework but my mother was the one who cooked. I don’t remember the cleaning lady very well, in fact I think we changed a few but what I do remember is that they all came from this village in Chalkidiki called AiVat [poor village in the mountains surrounding Thessaloniki, presently called Diavata.], all the cleaning ladies in Thessaloniki came from that village. They were middle aged, Christian women.

My parents were relatively educated people, they had both gone to school but I don’t know which schools. Their mother tongue was Ladino 1 and they spoke it between them. To my brother and me they spoke French; I think they wanted us to learn. They also knew some Greek but they spoke it with a distinct, foreign accent.

My parents usually read in French. I remember them reading the newspaper everyday; they read ‘L’Indépendant’ 2 and ‘Le Progrès’ 3. They would buy it from the kiosk and I remember specifically that my mother would read them as well. They didn’t read Greek newspapers, I am sure of that, and I don’t remember if there were Spanish ones in circulation, if there were I’m sure my parents read them.

We also had a few books in our house that were mainly novels. They weren’t religious; I mean my father wasn’t religious at all and consequently my mother didn’t practice it much, even though I think that she would have liked to. My father only went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur, Pesach and another one or two of the high holidays. Sometimes he took my brother and me along but my mother never came with us. I think the only reason my father went to the synagogue was because his brother was a ‘gisbar’ [cashier of the Jewish community] in the ‘Kal d’Italia’ and he felt obliged. We didn’t keep the Sabbath or eat kosher food.

My parents like my grandparents, were modern people for their time; they didn’t dress traditionally but I’d say in a more European way. I remember my parents having a social life; they went with their friends and had people over in the house sometimes. Their friends were mainly Jewish; I don’t think they met socially with colleagues or other Christians.

When I was really young we used to go on holiday to Portaria in Pilio, without my grandparents. We would go in August and stay for three weeks. After Ektor [Mr. Florentine’s brother] and I got older we stopped going and we spent our summers in Thessaloniki, but anyway we lived really close to the sea so we went swimming every day.

My father had sixteen siblings but I only met four, three sisters and a brother. The family was kind of torn apart because of their differences, and they were out of touch with each other, that’s why I didn’t meet his other siblings. His brother’s name was Samouil Florentin and he was a ‘gisbar’ in the ‘Kal d’Italia.’ Contrary to my father he was very religious. I think that ‘gisbar’ meant he was a cashier for the synagogue. He was married and had two children Anri [Erikos] and Nina Florentin. They used to live in Agia Triada, a quite ‘Jewish’ area of Thessaloniki, as well.

During the war Nina was saved by a Christian man whose last name was Christou; he literally pulled her out of the line when she was about to board the train for Auschwitz. After the war she married him and moved to Canada. The next time I saw her, after the war, she was Christian and so ‘croyante,’ so religious. I found it very strange! Unfortunately, she died in an air crash flying from Thessaloniki to some Greek island. She had two children, one was called Aristoteli and I don’t remember the other’s name, they live in Canada and they are both married.

I don’t know what Anri, Nina’s brother, did during the war but at some point he left for Israel and became a police officer, then he went to Canada to live with his sister and that’s where he died. When we were young we didn’t play together so much, even though our age was compatible. I think Anri was older than my brother and Nina was a couple of years younger than me.

I also met three of my father’s sisters; I don’t remember them very well because we didn’t see them often. His one sister was called Tsoutsa, she must have been a widow, because I never met her husband, but she had a daughter. Her daughter was a bit mentally weak but I don’t know in what way.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember the other sisters’ names they were widows as well, because I never met their husbands. Anyway, I don’t think my father gave them any money so I guess they had their own. We saw my father’s brother and sisters about three times a year, mainly because he felt it was his duty.

My mother had two brothers, Ludovic and Viktor Zadok. Ludovic lived and worked in Paris but died at the age of twenty-three. I don’t know what he died of, but I think it happened when I was very young because I never met him; my mother said he was a very nice person.

Viktor Zadok lived on the top floor of my grandparents’ house with his family, his wife Adina and his three daughters. Adina was like a second mother to me; she was very nice and took good care of us. Their daughters’ names were Ines, but we always called her Nika, Yvet or Veta, and Keti.

Nika lives in Israel, she was married twice, her first husband was an Israeli Jew, Nisim Levi, and they had a daughter, Donna. Unfortunately, her husband died. Nika got remarried to Moris Nissim or Boubis as we called him. He was a friend of my brother’s, Jewish, from Thessaloniki. After the war he moved to Switzerland to work in the Jewish ‘Discount Bank,’ he got a good position and almost became a manager. When Boubis retired, him and Nika left Switzerland and moved to Jerusalem where he had a house. Unfortunately, he got sick and died. At least, now Nika is in Israel and lives with her daughter and her grandchildren.

Veta married Markos Tabah and they had two daughters: Polina, who lives in Israel, and Adina, who got my aunt’s name. Around 1967 Veta died in a car accident. Her husband and she had gone on an excursion with Freddy Abravanel and on the way back they had an accident. They all came out looking fine but Veta had some internal bleeding and died the next day. After Veta’s death, Keti, her sister, married her husband, Markos Tabah. They had one daughter who they named Veta in memory of the deceased Veta. Keti’s daughter Veta married a Christian and became Christian herself.

I would say that my family had closer relations with the relatives on my mother’s side, my grandparents Masaltov and Saltiel Zadok and my uncle Viktor Zadok and his family. My parents saw Viktor often and we, the children, would see each other probably every day, we were very close especially with Nika.

My brother Ektor Iesoua Salvator Florentin, who we call Ektor, was born in 1921 and I was born in 1923; we were both born in Thessaloniki. I don’t remember going to kindergarten or having a nanny at home, so I guess my mother took care of us when we were young. We did have a French teacher though who came to our house to give us lessons. I spoke French to my mother and father but I spoke Greek to my brother. When we were young I used to play with my brother a lot, but when we grew up we weren’t so close anymore, probably because we had different friends.

Growing up

In the period before the war we moved houses about four times, I remember all of them but I don’t know when or for how long we stayed in each of them. I was born or at least my first memories are from a house on Gravias Street. This was the house of Cohen the dentist, who was quite well known in Thessaloniki at the time. He had four children, three sons and a daughter; two of the sons were about my age: Tsitsos and Morikos Cohen. At the end of this street there was a small synagogue which was very nice but I don’t remember what it was called.

Then we moved to a house on Moussouri Street close to 25th Martiou Street. This was a big house too; we lived on the second floor and below us lived Sam Modiano. This house had a garden but it was overgrown and neglected. The last two were on Koromila Street, the third one had two big bedrooms, a kitchen, a living and dining room and two big verandas; it had no garden and was on the third floor of the building. Our neighbors were a married couple, he was Jewish and she was Russian and they didn’t have any children, my mother was friends with the Russian lady and would go and visit her once in a while. The last place we lived in before we were forced to move to the ghetto was much smaller; it didn’t have a garden and it was on the second floor.

I don’t know why we moved so often but all these houses were rented. We would always take with us our furniture for the living room, the dining room and the bedroom. In all these houses we had running water and electricity and they were all heated with ‘salamanders.’ These houses were all very close to each other and also very close to my grandparent’s house. I remember most of our neighbors being Jewish.

I would say the atmosphere in my family was very good and generally, we were closer to our mother than we were to our father. My father worked a lot. He opened the shop around nine in the morning or a bit earlier, then he would come home at noon, go to work again in the evening and come home around eight or nine in the evening. At noon we all had lunch together. My father’s work was in the center of Thessaloniki, quite far from our house, it was ten stops by tram.

Financially, by the standards of Thessaloniki at the time, we were probably a middle class family, we didn’t own any property but we covered our needs sufficiently. My family didn’t own a car and I don’t remember when the first time I went into one was, but I got my driver’s license after the war, not with the intention of buying a car but just learning how to drive.

Some Sundays we went out to eat by the seaside on 25th Martiou Street, not far from where we lived. There were some ‘tavernas’ by the seafront and we went there, not often but we did. At home I would say that my mother cooked traditional Sephardim dishes, not so much Greek cuisine.

The first school I went to was the ‘Kostantinidis School,’ which was private. When I first went there, they put me in the second grade of elementary school, based on my date of birth. A little in the year they realized I was too advanced, so they promoted me to the third grade, that’s why I finished school a year earlier than other people my age. So apparently I covered the whole first and second grade at home with a teacher. I stayed in that school for two years and for fifth and sixth grade I went to another private school, the ‘Zahariadis School,’ which was very close to our house on Moussouri Street.

I don’t remember my friends from these schools but they both had a majority of Christian students. I know there were a few Jewish people like John Beza in ‘Zahariadis’ but I have no vivid memories.

For gymnasium I went to a public experimental school like the ‘Varvakios School’ in Athens, it was a very good public school. I remember some of my teachers, the Chemistry teacher Menagias and the principle who taught us Physics. He loved me very much probably because Physics was my favorite subject. Every time we had to do homework he would present mine to the class saying it was the best. But I had a secret: I used to study Physics from my brother’s book who went to the French Lycée. You might wonder what the difference was but French books phrased physics differently to Greek ones. In Greek books they start by saying, ‘If you take this, you will observe this will happen’ instead of explaining the main principle first. I preferred the French way, it was more serious and that probably explains the story with the principle.

I got along with both my teachers and my classmates. I remember some of my classmates were Giannis Tzimanis, Thanasakis Flokas, the son of the famous confectioner in Thessaloniki, Stelios Halvatzis and others. There must have been Jewish students in my school but my friends were mainly my classmates who were Christian. On weekends I went out with them, we would go to parties or to the cinema; it was really rare to go to bars at that time especially at such a young age, not like nowadays.

I never experienced Anti-Semitic behavior in school or at least anything that traumatized me. Sometimes someone would say the typical nonsense like ‘Dirty Jew’ but I think people say that sometimes when they are angry, even if they don’t really mean it.

When I was going to school, I didn’t have much free time because the classes were quite difficult or anyway quite intense. I would go in the morning and I was back by two in the afternoon. In the evening I did my homework for the next day. I didn’t have any private lessons, only a few Mathematics classes before my entrance exams for the university. I only had English classes in a British Institute in Thessaloniki. I never did any Hebrew or Jewish history lessons.

I didn’t have hobbies other than sailing in the Sailing Club but even though I was a member, my friends weren’t. With my friends I usually played basketball but we never played any football.

At that time the educational system was different, we finished gymnasium [Greek equivalent of high school. It used to be 6 grades, but nowadays it is 3 years, followed by three Lyceum years.] and got a gymnasium diploma and then whoever wanted to continue with their studies took introductory exams in the polytechnic school or university or any other school they may have wanted. In fact you could take the introductory test for more than one university, like I did. I wanted to study in the Polytechnic University of Thessaloniki to become an engineer but unfortunately I failed the entrance exams. As I still had time I also took the exams for university and I passed in the Agricultural University of Thessaloniki. The university was in an old building on Stratou Avenue, it is not there anymore.

I remember we had some really good professors like the Physics Professor, Mr. Kavasiadis, the Chemistry Professor and this other one, Rousopoulos, who was our Geology Professor. Even though it wasn’t my first choice I was relatively interested in what I was studying and the university was quite demanding. It required attending the classes, being concentrated and studying, not like now where they pass the lessons without going to classes, at least that’s what I see. I don’t think anyone was checking attendance but the system was such that it was necessary to attend classes and everybody did so.

I did three years of university and then, in 1943, during the German Occupation 4, I stopped and left for the mountain. Throughout these years I continued living with my parents and my brother, it was always the four of us.

My brother Ektor went to the French Lycée. When he was finishing elementary school in the French Lycée a law was passed that the Greek nationality was only given to people with a Greek elementary school diploma. So he came to the ‘Zahariadis School’ with me for sixth grade and then went back to the Lycée. That’s why he finished school a year later than he should have. I had a completely different group of friends to my brother probably because we went to different schools. He finished school in the French Lycée, he got the two Baccalaureates and then he started working for Sam Modiano who had an agency office [legal representative of foreign companies].

Ektor didn’t want to go to university so he got this job with Modiano, who was our neighbor in the house on Moussouri Street. This was his only job until he left Thessaloniki around 1943, a little after we moved to the ghetto. He left for Israel with his girlfriend at the time, Nina Hassid, to whom he got married after they got there. I think they left via Evia and then through Turkey. When they got there they stayed in Netanya first and then in Tel Aviv. My brother worked in a diamond-cutting factory and then gradually created his own factory.

They have two daughters, Ada Schindler and Zinet Benderski. Zinet was the name of my brother’s wife’s sister, who she lost: after the liberation she was taken to a Spanish concentration camp because her father was Spanish. Zinet has two children, Sharon and Daniel, who are both married, and Ada also has two children, but they are much younger.

I didn’t know of my brother’s whereabouts until one year after the war when my uncle Viktor told me he was alive. Now we have a very good relationship with him and his family. We don’t go so often but every time they come we see them and also sometimes we arrange to meet abroad. I see my brother every four, five years on average but we talk on the phone every week.

The war was declared on 28th October 1940 5, that’s when I finished school; I was seventeen at the time. I was in Thessaloniki during the bombings in 1941 a bit before the occupation started. The bombs were mainly dropped towards the customs area, which was far away from where we lived, so we didn’t really feel them. Of course we could hear the noise of the bombs but you have to understand that it’s not like today; the airplanes didn’t drop lots of bombs then, so the damage was more limited, or at least that’s what I think. For my family it was scary but not as much as for other people who lived closer, we didn’t really feel much during the bombings.

After I finished school, I went straight to university. We already felt the effects of the war then, there were curfews and it was really hard to find food, we got some food from the villages, just about enough to survive. For me the war started in 1941 with the occupation, when the Germans entered Thessaloniki. They marched in with their typical characteristic discipline, German manner; they had so many trucks and tanks. I remember my parents and me being very scared.

During the war

Officially, the war started in 1940 when Metaxas 6 said ‘No’ to the Italians but the occupation started later and we kind of expected it because we would see, read and hear that the Germans were coming down the north side, they had been to Bulgaria and Serbia and then came Greece’s turn. When the Germans invaded, the Italians headed to the south of Greece; here in Macedonia we were under German Occupation unfortunately. A lot of people headed south then, to Athens or just anywhere in the Italian ruled south.

The first measure the Germans took targeted specifically against Jewish people was when all Jewish men of Thessaloniki had to gather in Eleutherias Square 7. I went with my brother because we were within the age range, around twenty years old. I am not sure about my father; I think he didn’t come because he was considered too old. They made us do humiliating gymnastic exercises under the sun and then they assigned us to different places to do forced labor outside Thessaloniki.

They wanted to build rail tracks for trains; the work was really hard especially with the Germans over your head not letting you rest for even a minute. I managed to avoid the forced labor because I had a Christian friend who took me with him where he was, close to the Agricultural School, I became a member of the forced labor team over there. I did absolutely nothing there, I just sat there from morning to night, but I still had to go every day.

I am not sure how they informed us that this gathering in Eleutherias Square was happening but I think it was through the Jewish Community. During the war I didn’t think that the Jewish Community in Thessaloniki acted in the right way. The chief rabbi then was Koretsch, who was German but that wasn’t important. The problem was that he didn’t give good information to the Community members. He was telling them that it was going to be fine, they would just go to Poland to move there. He didn’t say anything about concentration camps or what might happen when they got there.

I don’t know why he did that but I thought that it was very mean of him because if he had leaked the right information that something bad was going to happen to them then maybe more Jewish people would have tried to save themselves. Some people said he knew the truth all along but I don’t know if that’s true, it might be.

At some point, the Germans emptied all the businesses and shops owned by Jewish people, especially merchants and all their merchandise was being confiscated. Around 1942 a Greek man who was co-operating with the Germans turned my grandfather’s shop ‘Galerie Moderne’ into a restaurant. From then on we were living off our savings and things became even more difficult.

The most important anti-Jewish law was to put all the Jewish people in one area of the city what they called the ghetto 8. The ghetto was between Faliro and Agia Triada and between Mizrahi and Efzonon, in that area. We were forced to move there around the beginning of 1943, between January and February. I don’t know how we were informed we had to move or how we knew where to go in the ghetto, I just remember that one day we left our house on Koromila Street and moved to the apartment in the ghetto.

We were all a bit crammed in that apartment but I guess it was still a roof over our heads. It was a very small place with two rooms and a dining room, I don’t remember if we had heating. All we really took with us was clothes; we left a lot of our furniture in our last house on Koromila Street because the owner moved in when we left. That’s why when the war finished we retrieved some of our furniture.

My father and Viktor Zadok were both looking for a way to move to Athens, Viktor found a solution first and brought my grandmother Masaltov to stay with us in the ghetto; until that point my grandmother was staying with him. Because of my grandmother, my mother and father couldn’t escape from the ghetto and so they had to stay there with her. This is something that really makes me sad because I think it was really selfish on my uncle’s side to leave my grandmother with us like this, my mother was just too nice! So Viktor and his family managed to go to Athens a bit after we moved to the ghetto.

In the ghetto we had real difficulty finding food; my father was in charge of this and most of the times he bought things from the black market or products that came from villages. After three weeks or a month, I left for the mountain 9. At the time I would say that politically I was quite ‘left’ but I wasn’t a member of any political party or group. In my university, EAM 10 was very strong among the students so I heard about their activities in the mountains and I wanted to follow them. They said, ‘Since you are wanted by the Germans anyway why don’t you go to the mountain.’ I thought about it a little while and decided to go.

EAM was an organization that was 90 percent communist; its military branch was called ELAS 11 and there as well most of the members were communists. This organization was created during the occupation. I was sure I wanted to go to the mountain and since my parents didn’t oppose my decision I went, and I left the four of them – my mother, my father, my brother and my grandmother – in the ghetto.

Later on I found out my brother left the ghetto as well and went to Israel. I think my brother didn’t come with me because he had different plans with his girlfriend. As for my parents and my grandmother I am assuming they were deported 12 from the ghetto to Auschwitz were they must have been exterminated, I would think that people their age were sent directly to the gas chambers. The day I left for the mountain was the last time I ever saw them.

It was the 20th or 21st of March 1943 and I left with a friend of mine called John Bezas. He lived really close to our apartment in the ghetto, at some point I told him about what I was going to do and he decided he wanted to come with me. So that day, we wore working clothes and caps, we took the star off and passed the ghetto guards with ease like nothing was going on.

We found our contact and he took us outside Thessaloniki to a place where we could start ascending the mountain. He said, ‘Sleep here tonight and I will bring another fifteen people tomorrow.’ The next day he came back alone and said, ‘Stay here another night, I will come tomorrow with twenty-five people.’ We thought, ‘Of course we will wait, if so many more Jewish people will come as well.’ But then on the third day he showed up alone again. I never understood why no more young people came to the mountain, but I think that they had a hard time leaving their families.

After our two days waiting for the people that never showed up we started walking towards Giannitsa, sometimes we would come across a carriage and they would take us a few kilometers further. I remember on Axios Bridge we found a café and we decided to take a coffee break – John Bezas, our contact and me. As I opened the door to enter the café this guy tells me, ‘You’d better not go in there it’s full of Germans.’ I don’t understand how he realized we were fugitives or that I was Jewish, but he did. ‘You’d better not go inside,’ he said and probably saved our lives with his words.

So we didn’t go in and left in a rush, we got to Giannitsa and from there gradually we climbed up Paiko Mountain, this was our first mountain. Then we went to Kaimaktsalan another mountain close to the borders with Skopje [today Republic of Macedonia], and from there we walked across the whole of Macedonia from the borders with Albania up until the sea. We went from village to village trying to avoid the Germans; we were not ready for confrontations yet.

The ELAS people taught me how to use weapons because I hadn’t been to the army yet. After a while we were full of lice; we went there clean and naturally all the lice came on us, on our hair but also all over our body and clothes. I watched the others trying to de-lice themselves and their clothes; they would sit for hours. I never did that because I figured that I would kill ten and then twenty would come on me; there was no point in trying but it was really, really itchy. I guess that after all a person can get used to anything. I mean the situation on the mountain wasn’t the best but compared to what was in store for us in Germany it was paradise.

The contact left us with an already organized group of people from all over Greece, Kavala, Drama, Serres and Thessaloniki. There were very few Jewish people in my group I only remember one, a tobacco worker from Kavala nevertheless during our moving we crossed paths with maybe another ten Jewish people from different ELAS groups. The groups were all over the place but they all had a leader who was called Capitan Something, for example, Capitan Black etc.

We all had nicknames, I was Nikos and John Bezas was Takis; that was enough, the people on the mountain were not interested in finding out anything more. What I mean is that if you wanted to tell them they would listen but there was no obligation to discuss where you came from or who you were. There was zero Anti-Semitism and I don’t even think I ever heard the word Jewish.

These teams communicated with each other by sending messengers, people that took the information from one group to another. I was a simple soldier, only for a period of two months I was in charge of a sheepfold. As I was supposedly an agriculturalist I was in charge of the project. We found an abandoned village and we gathered all the sheep with one or two locals that knew how to make cheese. They would take the sheep to pasture and make the cheese after.

When I went back to the group my friend John Beza wasn’t there, the English had come looking for people who spoke English so they took him with them. I was a bit upset because if I hadn’t been in the sheepfold I would have been able to go with them, as I spoke good English. On the mountain there were certain groups of the English army that were sent to observe our tactics against the Germans, give us advice on how to act and information about where to go etc. I think it would have been better to be with the English because next time I crossed paths with John he was well dressed, clean with a uniform.

We were almost constantly on the move because of the Germans, sometimes if the village was ‘free’ we stayed in schools and houses, if the village wasn’t free we stayed in the forest without anything, no tents, all we had on us was our clothes and our weapon. In West Macedonia there were certain villages that were ‘free,’ this was the ‘Free Greece’ as it was called but of course there was always the fear the Germans would come so we never stayed long.

In order to find out if a village was free or not, there were certain people that observed and informed us. Sometimes we were welcome and sometimes not, but even then the villagers didn’t have a choice but to give us food. So we ate in the villages but we didn’t take much with us because we couldn’t carry much and we usually found something to eat.

In fact, I don’t think I even lost much weight. Only one time we went eight days without any food or water, it was a really rough time, the Germans had surrounded us and we couldn’t escape from any direction. We stayed in places we could hide without any food of course; we ended up eating the leaves from trees. I don’t remember what happened in the end but we found a way out and then went to a monastery where we ate a lot. We didn’t have connections with the church but in the monasteries they had to accept us.

There was always the fear that we would get involved in a battle, especially after some point that the English started blowing up rail tracks in the Tembi area. They wanted to cut the train connection between Thessaloniki and Athens because the Germans were using the trains for their purposes. So whilst the English were working on blowing up the rail tracks, we would guard the surrounding area. We were their protection; thankfully I never came face to face with them.

The Germans were furious about these damages and they were trying to think up a way to neutralize the English teams or us, the Resistance, to save them the trouble of fixing the rail tracks every time. It was then that we found ourselves in a village called Karia on the north side of Mount Olympus, above Rapsani.

We always set up watching points with binoculars to see what was happening. At some point we saw a German squad from far away, we saw they had trucks and they were about four hundred, we were only eighty men. Even so we were fortunate because the road the Germans were on crossed a little river that had hills on the left and right side, these hills had many trees on them and that’s where we were hiding.

On their way the Germans saw the little river and decided to take off their clothes and start bathing. They knew we were in the village and they were coming for us but they didn’t know we had left the village and that we had positioned ourselves ahead of them, so as to ‘welcome’ them one or two kilometers further down. When we saw their condition we started going down the hills shooting and exterminating them. Many Germans were killed on that day, the rest were so lost that they left leaving their clothes and weapons behind.

As we were coming down the hill I was almost at river level ready to jump in a ditch, at that moment I got shot, the bullet entered my thigh from the front and exited at the back of my leg. Of course I fell down and started bleeding a lot, another soldier came and tried to put me on a mule; in the meantime most of the mules were loaded with guns, weapons and other things the Germans left behind. It was impossible for me to sit on the mule because my leg was completely dislocated. I said, ‘I have a broken bone you can’t put me on a mule, it’s too high.’ He said, ‘don’t worry,’ he put me on the ground, he tied my leg up the best way he could and put a sort of blanket over me, and said, ‘They will come and take you with a stretcher.’

I thought to myself they will never come. It started getting darker and darker and then this German airplane started flying over the area, shooting randomly in case anybody was still there that they could kill. I started putting soil and grass on my blanket to camouflage myself, that was all I could think of doing. Anyway, I don’t know how long I stayed there, I must have fallen unconscious but suddenly people started shouting my name, it was eight villagers and a soldier with a stretcher, they put me on it and took me to the village, which was about three quarters of an hour away on foot. There was an English doctor there who put a dressing on my leg and then we left straightaway because we couldn’t stay in that village any longer.

We moved to another village that had a hospital in the school building. I don’t know if anyone died but four or five of us got injured, the other ones were lightly injured. The most seriously hurt were a man with a similar leg injury to mine and another man who had been shot in the head.

Anyway, that day a doctor, a surgeon, had come to the mountain by the name of Theodoros Labrakis, his brother was the Labrakis that was murdered in Thessaloniki after the war. He had a clinic in Piraeus called ‘White Cross’ and he was an excellent surgeon. He used anything he could find, paring knives, Swiss army knives and saws and operated on the guy with the head injury. Thank God he took the bullet out because until then that man was very violent, swearing, throwing chairs around even assaulting us. Anyway he survived.

In my case the bullet had come out and the bone was in pieces. Another doctor who was there said, ‘We should cut off his leg because we don’t have anti-gangrene treatment and if he gets gangrene he will die.’ Labrakis said, ‘No I will not cut it off.’ Later on, he told me that he had been boiling an axe for three days in a row just in case he had had to cut my leg off. Fortunately I didn’t get gangrene, but I was in so much pain he had to give me morphine. After a few days I started asking for more and he said, ‘Enough with the morphine, I don’t want it to become an addiction.’

So I owe my leg to Dr. Labrakis who unfortunately died one or two years after we came down the mountain. He only treated a few people in that hospital and then he left, he was also moving from place to place.

I got shot on 6th May 1944 and from then on I was being moved from hospital to hospital, we were constantly changing villages because of the Germans. One day, shortly after I managed to keep my leg, we were in a hospital somewhere and we found out that the Germans were coming to that village. Everyone wanted to leave but they didn’t know what to do with us.

They took the three of us, the man with the head injury, me and the other man with the leg injury to a tap of running water outside the village. Of course this was very dangerous but they didn’t know what else to do with us. I think we stayed there for four days, us with the leg injury couldn’t move so the poor man with the head injury would take what we called ‘boukla,’ a wooden bucket for water, and he would bring both of us water to drink. One day the Germans came to the tap, we were totally silent and thank God they didn’t discover us because they would have definitely slaughtered us.

In the meantime my injury had been infested with flies and worms and it was itchy. Four days later I saw the doctor and I told him, ‘Doctor look what’s happened to my leg.’ And he said, ‘Very well, at least they ate up all the puss.’ He cleaned it of course but I couldn’t believe what he had said: ‘They ate away all the puss.’

So I was hurt in May 1944 and until September they were carrying me on the stretcher from place to place. The man with the head injury was fine after some time so I was left with the other man with the leg injury. He was from a village called Aiginio in Macedonia, he was the father of this man who caused trouble in a nightclub and killed someone; I don’t remember his name but I know he is out of prison now. I don’t know if his father is still alive but I doubt it because he was much older than me then.

The time I spent on the mountain we probably walked the whole mountain range of Pindos from the borders of Ipiros to the borders of Serbia and from Albania until the sea, village to village. When I left the ghetto I took nothing with me, I was wearing a pair of black boots but after a while they were completely destroyed. The situation with our shoes was a drama, in fact a lot of the time we were barefoot. I am not sure what we were wearing, I guess things they gave us in the villages and then at some point the English gave us some uniforms.

Looking back I would say that going to the mountain was a good idea. I can’t say that I have kept friends from then because the situation was different up there but still we were all very close to each other, really. Most of the people there were communists, members of the K.K.E. [Communist Party of Greece]; I wasn’t a communist but I didn’t mind them because I do believe there are some good things in this ideology.

I think my most profound experience was that I realized the stamina of the human organism and by saying stamina I mean the way man and nature complete each other and the way the human organism can cure itself. For example there was this guy named Dick Benveniste – he is dead now – who got diphtheria on the mountain – no hospital, no doctor, no medicine, nothing. At that time the Italians had made some kind of agreement and a lot of them came to the mountain. There was this Italian man that took care of him, he would take him out of his tent to do his needs and fed him, any way he could because Dick couldn’t even open his mouth. In the end he recovered, he went back to Thessaloniki, he married and had children. He died not so long after the end of the war but still this showed me how much the human body can endure.

I remember I never even got a headache or a fever, if we wanted to wash we would go to the river which was freezing cold but it didn’t bother us. I stayed with the same group almost from the beginning to the end. There weren’t any women in my group but occasionally, when we were on the move, I saw a few, not many though.

When the liberation finally arrived everybody came down from the mountain but it didn’t happen all at once, it happened in segments from the south to the north, I think Thessaloniki was liberated in October 1944. But places like Kozani and Lamia had been liberated before so a lot of Resistance soldiers came down the mountain from there.

I guess what the Liberation meant for us was that the enemies had left, someone took over from there and there were elections but I was out of it because I was in the hospital. We found out about the liberation from the villagers and after certain areas were free, I was taken to the hospital of some big village. I think it was in October 1944 they took me to Thessaloniki, to this hospital in Votsi after the Depot, it was a makeshift hospital in the palace of a pasha. The first thing they did was to de-lice me, the English had some machines and I don’t know what they put on me but all the lice were gone from my body and my clothes.

As my injury didn’t heal I had to stay in that hospital until February 1945, almost ten months. Of course, back then there were no surgeries to put screws and metal in the leg so what they did was that they put concrete to open the leg so that it stuck back by itself. The human organism is a very strong thing and even though my leg stuck back, it got stuck differently to what it should have and it became six centimeters shorter than the other one.

I didn’t have to pay anything to the hospital, everything was free: my stay, the food. At some point I got anchylosis on my leg and there was a nurse there, her name was Eleni Rimaki – I remember her clearly – and she said, ‘We need to break it, you can’t stay like this.’ It sounded easy in theory but the pain was unbearable. The other guy with the same injury as me stopped trying after a week he couldn’t bear it. I did it for a month and a half. It was not like physiotherapy or massage, it was practically breaking the knee but I’m happy I did it because now I can even ride a bike.

One time I was in Italy visiting an old friend and he said, ‘I will take you to this surgeon to examine your leg.’ The surgeon said, ‘I can lengthen your leg if that’s what you want but I see you’re walking very well with your orthopedic shoe.’ So I didn’t do anything. It never hurt me, and now sixty-four years later, it just started hurting. Now I went to this doctor who said, ‘You have osteoarthritis and we need to do joint plastic surgery. We’ll cut the bone and we’ll put a plastic one to lengthen it, we’ll see what happens.’

After the hospital I stayed in Thessaloniki with Miko Alvo, his brother Danny and an elderly aunt of his. When we found each other after the war we arranged a meeting and he said, ‘You will come and stay with me.’ I agreed and I was very grateful because I didn’t have anywhere to go.

For two years, between 1945 and 1947, I was working for the Greek English Intelligence Center in Thessaloniki and living with Miko. I was doing translations because I knew English. My supervisor there was a man called Stahtopoulos, later on he was charged of something – I am not sure what – and he ended up in prison.

After I came out of the hospital I had an intense feeling of happiness because I got myself out of this situation and I could walk. We created a group of friends and we went out and drank our ouzo in such a happy way, like we were saying, ‘Finally the occupation is over and we can enjoy certain things.’ In that group of friends there were both Jewish and Christian people: Mimis Kazakis, a lawyer, Takis Ksitzoglou, a journalist, Klitos Kirou and Panos Fasitis, both poets, Nikos Saltiel and the girls, Anna Leon and Dolly Boton.

At some point soon after the end of the war I went to get a passport so I could visit my brother in Israel and the officer said, ‘You can’t have a passport.’ I asked him, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘You can have a passport only if you denounce communism etc.’ I asked him again, ‘Why? I am not a communist, I don’t have anything to denounce’ ‘You are.’ ‘I am not.’ And then he said, ‘No passport’ and I said, ‘I don’t want one.’

Six months later an officer came to my office and said, ‘If you file an application for a passport we will give it to you.’ Nothing else. And he left. I was a bit shocked that an officer had come all the way to my office to tell me that, but I filed the application and got my passport. Around 1949 or 1950 that was, and I went to Israel to see my brother after all of this, it was a very strong experience.

After the war 

After World War II, there was the civil war 13, basically all the resistance communists from the mountains had hid their guns, which was exactly what their opponents, the government party feared. After the civil war came the great exodus of the communists and they went to places like Yugoslavia, Georgia, Taskendi, which is in Georgia, Kazakhstan etc. A lot of them stayed for good but some of them returned later on.

As for me, politically I had no involvement but my beliefs were left then and are left now. We felt the civil war in our daily lives because there was turmoil in Athens, nothing was functioning properly, to the extent that there were battles in Sidagma [very central area in Athens]. Emigrating never crossed my mind but I know a lot of people who did and went to Israel but also Canada, Italy, the USA.

When I was working for the Greek English Intelligence Organization I met a couple of English Jewish officers including a man named Shapiro. At the time I was walking with a stick because the wound hadn’t healed properly, I still had a band over it that I changed every day and occasionally little bones would come out of it. The doctor had said not to worry because the wound would heal after all the bones came out. After ten or fifteen little bones had come out the wound truly healed.

However, Shapiro said he would put me in an English hospital because at the time penicillin had just been discovered. So I went and got a shot of it. There was this Scottish nurse there who would go around saying, ‘I can’t believe we are giving this expensive drug to Greeks.’ Everyday the same thing, she annoyed me very much, to the extent that I regretted going. In fact, I thought English people were weird because they had a little bucket where they did everything; they washed their hands and their face, as well.

Anyway I got the penicillin shot but it didn’t do anything to me, as I didn’t have any bacteria for it to kill. In the meantime I got in touch with my uncle Viktor Zadok, who was in Israel, and he said, ‘What will we do with the shop?’ I am not sure how my uncle tracked me down but I should assume it wasn’t very difficult.

The shop was there but the merchandise was gone and it wasn’t in a very good condition. My uncle went to Israel like my brother and then, after the liberation, he went back to Athens. Then he came to Thessaloniki to see the state of the family business, and finally he settled in Athens. Viktor tried to make ‘Galerie Moderne’ work but he couldn’t and shortly after, he gave up and left for Athens.

In 1948 my uncle said, ‘Come to Athens and work for me.’ I had nothing left in Thessaloniki so I did. I didn’t have any property but my uncle Viktor had the house my grandparents and he used to live in before the war, and it was in a good condition when he found it. After the war the family members I kept in contact with were my uncle Viktor Zadok, my brother and my uncle Viktor’s daughters, especially Veta. I used to see her a lot socially, probably about every two weeks until her tragic death in 1962.

I moved to Athens and I was working for my uncle from 1948 until 1953 when I opened my own business. I had an agency office that imported floor polish, wax and plastic domestic utensils. I lost a lot of money because the plastic utensils I imported were expensive compared to the Greek ones in the market. I ran my own business for four years and then my wife continued it for quite a few years after I left.

My next job was in Hoffman – La Roche, Pavlos Aseo had the company’s representation in Greece at the time. I didn’t know much about pharmaceuticals but I learned the job quite quickly. Later on the company La Roche made its proper branch – La Roche Hellas – in Greece and I continued working for them. I became commercial manager for the vitamin section of the company until my retirement in 1993.

I never faced any problems with the fact that I was Jewish in any of my jobs. When my wife was in charge of the business the manager of the company we were importing from wanted to visit from England, he did, we met him and it all went well. The next year the owner of the company wanted to come so I took him out for lunch to Kineta. We ate in the only ‘taverna’ that was open, which was not a luxurious one. Anyway we sat down and there was a picture on the wall of the greatest Resistance Capitan.

As we were eating he said the word ‘andartis.’ [Editor’s note: Greek expression for one who revolts or, one who resists, but after WWII it was codified to mean resistance fighter.] I asked him, ‘Where do you know that word from?’ He said that during the war he had been sent by the English, by parachute, to Mount Olympus. He said his real job was a doctor but his father insisted on him working for their company.

We started talking about when, where, how he was there and we found out that on 6th May 1945 the English doctor who treated me first was him. His name is William Felton and I will never forget it. He came to Athens again later on and tried to convince me to import another product of his but I didn’t buy it in the end. He had five children and later on he became General Director of ‘Hallmark,’ the company that makes greeting cards.

My wife’s name is Ester Florentin [nee Altcheh] but everybody calls her Nina. She was born in 1932 so we have nine years of age difference between us. She speaks Greek, Hebrew, French, English and Ladino. She lived in Thessaloniki with her family until 1943, then they moved to Athens and hid in Iraklio [suburb of Athens], in the house of a Christian family. That family wanted to keep Nina as their own child and so betrayed the rest of my wife’s family – her mother, her father and her brother. They all went to Auschwitz.

Nina stayed with the Christian family during the war but after the liberation she left for Israel, she must have been about thirteen at the time. She went to Israel with one of these boats that took Jewish people there, she had no money and stayed in a kibbutz for a year. Then she went to school in Jerusalem for five years and now she speaks perfect Hebrew. In Greece she had to stop going to school after the sixth grade of elementary school.

Her father and brother died in the concentration camps. Thankfully, her mother Kleri Atcheh returned after the war; she weighed just thirty-six kilos then. Her mother went to Israel to find Nina, imagine that they saw each other after such a long time. After a short time in Israel her mother returned to Greece, Nina stayed there a little longer in one of her aunts’ house.

When Nina came back to Greece in 1950 she was seventeen years old. That’s when we found ourselves in the same group of friends; they were Viktor Messinas, Sam Nehama, Markos Tabah, Veta Tabah, my cousin, Nina and another friend of hers that is in Israel now. So, I met her in 1950, we became friends, we loved each other and then we got married in 1951. When we married she was nineteen years old and we have been married for fifty-two years.

I didn’t know Nina before the war but I knew her mother very well. She really wanted us to get married and since things were going in that direction anyway, she was very happy for us. I wasn’t looking for a Jewish girl to marry; I would have married her even if she had been Christian but since it happened naturally I didn’t mind. Now I am happy she is Jewish because from what I have seen from my son, who is married to a Christian girl, things are easier for a couple if they have the same religion, even if that is agnostic. I am not religious at all but my wife is more than me; I think it’s because her family, when she was growing up, was very religious.

We got married in the synagogue here in Athens, we had a rather small marriage because we didn’t have much money at the time. Of course, we invited all our friends and family but we didn’t have a reception or anything. We celebrated alone in a hotel in Paleo Faliro. Until then I was living alone in an apartment on Aiolou Street in the center of Athens. When we married we moved to Kipseli on Eptanisou Street. I was making some money working for my uncle, I don’t know if Nina was taking any money from her mother but we were just about getting by the first years.

After two years we had our first child, our daughter Ida, she was probably a bit rushed but it doesn’t matter now. I don’t remember my wife’s father’s real name, I never met him because he died in Auschwitz. After the war, my mother-in-law married Alfredo Beza. He was a very nice man and we were very close to them. For about forty years, every Saturday, we had lunch in their house, in the beginning just my wife and me, then with my children and even more recently with my grandchildren. Unfortunately, Kleri died five years ago.

I would say that my wife cooks traditional Sephardic dishes I like the pies very much and my favorite sweet dish is ‘sotlach’ which is a kind of sweet pie with milk and syrup. My favorite food though is Greek and it’s ‘fasolada’ [typical Greek bean soup].

We have two children a girl, Ida Nadia Florentin, named after my mother Ida, and a son, Iosif Tony Florentin, Iosif like my father. They were both born in Athens, my daughter in 1952 – she will be 54 at the end of the year – and my son in 1956 – now he is 51 years old. When Ida was born we were living at my mother-in-law’s house on Kalimnou Street in Kipseli. When Tony was born we had moved into our own house, which was very close to my mother-in-law’s.

Their mother tongue is Greek but they had extra-school English classes in a ‘frodistirio’ [foreign language school] and private French lessons. They also heard a lot of Ladino because of their grandparents and then at some point my son decided to also learn Spanish and went to the Cervantes Institute for two or three years. My wife and I always spoke Greek in front of them and also between us. They didn’t go to the Jewish school because I don’t think it existed back then but even if it had we wouldn’t have sent them there.

Growing up, the children had a very close relationship with their grandparents, my wife’s mother and her stepfather Alfredo. Alfredo was a real grandfather to the children and he loved them like his own. We never had disagreements on their upbringing and we would see each other almost every day. The children loved their grandmother and grandfather very much. Nina did the cooking in our house but every Saturday we would have lunch at my mother-in-law’s house.

The children grew up in a not very religious environment. Of course, they knew they were Jewish straightaway but as I am not very religious, I didn’t explain much to them. Their mother and grandmother taught them a few things about Judaism; my father-in-law wasn’t very religious. The Jewish holidays like the seder night [Pesach] we used to spend with the children’s grandparents. We didn’t really celebrate other holidays, for example Rosh Hashanah we exchanged some presents and that was it.

My children didn’t have many Jewish friends because they both went to Greek schools. I would say their upbringing was quite liberal, they brought their friends home and went out with them. We had no problem with that. We used to go on holiday for fifteen days in August to Tsagarada in Pilio, to a hotel; now we have a summerhouse in Porto Rafti [place on the outskirts of Athens] but we bought that twelve years ago when our children were already much older.

They also used to go to a summer camp for a while in the summers so we got sometime for ourselves. I don’t remember sending them to the Jewish camp but they went to various other ones like the Moraitis Summer Camp in Ekali [northern suburb of Athens].

I was always interested whether they had problems in school because of their religion so I asked them a few times and they both said they hadn’t faced any problems. We talked to them about the war and what had happened when they were much older; I think their grandmother talked to them more than us because she was more ready to talk about her experiences. My wife couldn’t because she was reminded of her brother who died, and I never really talked to them about my injury and my time on the mountain. Now they know everything, at some point I wrote my story down and they read it, but I didn’t talk about it much.

When the children were young I was very busy so I didn’t really have time to read the newspapers. I only used to read Greek newspapers, ‘Eleftherotipia,’ when it came out and before that ‘Vima.’ Also, the first few years we avoided going out with our friends a lot, but by the time we moved to the Androu Street house in Kipseli [densely populated area in Athens] the children were old enough to be left alone. We went out with our friends to the cinema, to ‘tavernas’ to eat, to the theater. They were mainly other Jewish couples. Of course we had some Christian friends but we didn’t see them as often.

With our Jewish friends, especially in the beginning we always talked about the war, later on we still talked about it, but not so much. With our Christian friends we didn’t really initiate discussions on Jewish topics but if they wanted to ask something we were very open to answer to them. That’s not to say that there were topics I felt embarrassed to discuss with them, I just didn’t choose to a lot of the time.

We also traveled a lot; we have been to England, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Cyprus, Turkey and Israel. We used to go as part of organized tours for pleasure, usually it was only my wife and I. I think with the children we only went to France together once, for a marriage or something because we have some family there. For business I only went to Switzerland and I used to go alone on these trips.

My daughter Ida was born at a point when our financial situation was terrible and we had to struggle for a while but, thankfully, by the time my son was born things were better. I have a very vivid memory of Ida’s childhood because when she was born and for a few months after she was very sick, to the extent that our pediatrician said, ‘If she is meant to die she will die.’ That was not a good thing for a doctor to say to a mother and a father.

Anyway a while after, she started getting better and then she relapsed again. We took her to a doctor, a professor named Horemis, and he said it was tuberculosis so he started treating her for that. Thank God there was another doctor, a very good one, Saroglou, who said, ‘I disagree with the professor.’ He took all his books down and he was telling me, ‘All I am doing is spending time on your daughter.’ He discovered that it was a disease called ‘Purpura’ where you get this red rash in certain places so he said stop all the tuberculosis medicine and give her this.’ A little while later she recovered and now she is perfectly healthy

That was a really rough period for my wife and me. Ida and Tony went to kindergarten and elementary school in a private school named ‘Ziridis School.’ Then for gymnasium Ida went to ‘Pierce College,’ the American College of Greece. She studied in the Pharmacy University of Athens for four years and came out with a pharmacist degree. Then she went to Paris to do her master’s in molecular biology for another three years.

When she returned she got a job in a drug warehouse and then in the National Research Institute. She quit her job a year ago and she did a degree in London on the Montessori technique for kindergartens. This year she didn’t manage to find a job but she is still looking. She is not married and she doesn’t have any children.

Tony had his bar mitzvah. He studied with the rabbi of Athens at the time whose name was Bartzilai, he said his words very well even though he was a bit stressed. It took place in the synagogue of Athens in the morning, we had invited a lot of people and then at night we had a party in our house where he invited his friends and we invited ours.

From Tony’s childhood there is one incident I remember very vividly. He was a boy scout from the age of six and then one day, when he was sixteen, they went walking from Athens to Parnitha [a mountain close to Athens]. That day it snowed a lot and we lost their tracks for a while. Anyway they made it back but we were really scared for a while.

For gymnasium, Tony went to the ‘Varvakios School,’ which is a good public, experimental school. He passed in the Polytechnic University of Athens and became a mechanical engineer, then he went to Paris for a postgraduate diploma in the mechanics of production and renewable sources of energy for six years. He got a distinction for his dissertation and was also awarded by the French academy.

In the six years he was there we visited him once. They both stayed with us during their studies in Athens but they both lived alone when they came back from their studies in Paris. For me my children’s’ education was very important I wanted them to do something that would educate them but that they could also find a job with. When they left for Paris we were sad in a happy way because they had left to do something good for themselves.

Now, Tony my son is manager in D.E.P.A., the Public Gas Supply Corporation of Greece. When he was in Paris he got married to a woman from the Czech Republic but he got a divorce from her and then married again, in 1985, Ioanna, who is Christian Orthodox, so they had a civil marriage. They met in Athens; they lived together for three years and then got married. She did all her studies in Germany and now she is a German teacher at university. They have two children: Philip, who is eleven years old, and Faedon Florentin, who is nine years old.

Right now the children don’t have a religion but they know both about Christianity and Judaism. They talk about Purim and get Rosh Hashanah presents but they have a Christmas tree during Christmas etc. My wife has taken them to the synagogue and their mother is absolutely fine with that.

They live in the building opposite us; my wife and I never put pressure on them to live close to us but when we moved here from Maroussi [middle class area in the north of Athens] they decided they wanted to buy a house close to us. We have very good relationship with our grandchildren and also with my son and his wife. We see our grandsons very often. Of course there might be periods of ten days or so that we haven’t seen them but in general they come and say ‘hi’ and stay with us a few hours.

I talk to my son and my daughter almost every day, sometimes we get together and eat but not something standard like it was when their grandmother was alive. We usually gather with my son, his family and my daughter for certain Jewish holidays like the seder night or other occasions. We gather in our house and my wife does the cooking.

Nowadays in the summer, we go to our summerhouse in Porto Rafti from the 1st of July until mid-August. It is a two-story house so my grandsons usually come with us and stay on the same floor as my wife and me. My son and his wife stay on the second floor. My grandsons love Porto Rafti. We swim in the sea, they play around, I think they really love that place. Then around the end of August we go to Abano in Italy for fifteen days. Abano is a spa town, my wife has mud baths and I swim in the swimming pool half an hour a day. I love that place and every year I can’t wait to go there.

As for my grandchildren there are certain things I would do different if they were my children. The oldest one is very smart but he doesn’t study or read books and I think his education is lacking important things like orthography, proper Greek language or just more depth in what he studies. I think he should read a book outside school, a children’s book, but I don’t want to intervene because their parents spend enough time on them.

I have a good relationship with my grandchildren but my wife has an even closer one, I try but they just have more contact with her. Sometimes I want to say certain things but I don’t want to intervene and insist on anything. Until now I haven’t spoken to them about the war and my stories.

More recently, my wife and I had a very nice group of friends but unfortunately two of them died and the other one can’t see very well so he doesn’t drive. Now we see a lot of Matoula Benroubi and her husband Andreas, we see them almost once a week. We go to ‘tavernas’ and eat, we don’t go to the cinema, I haven’t been to the cinema in five years. I don’t really know why. Anyway we also talk about the past about how things used to be and at least I enjoy these conversations very much.

I am not involved in the Jewish community or the different committees and I never was. I have a computer and e-mail but right now I haven’t set it up because when we moved I put one computer on the side and then my son brought me a laptop and on that one sometimes I push the wrong buttons and I ruin everything. But anyway, at some point I took some computer lessons, thankfully, but my wife didn’t. I think she should have done. My grandsons know everything about computers, while to me it’s the strangest thing and so they help me sometimes.

Glossary:

Golda Osherovna Gutner
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Yelena Tsarovskaya
Date of interview: November 2001

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

My family backgrownd

My name is Golda Osherovna Gutner I was born on August 15, 1916, in the town of Konotop, Ukraine.
Let me start with my grandfather, my mother’s father. I don’t know where he came from. I only know that he was born into a very poor Jewish family. His name was Boruch Lurye. He was a tinsmith and owned a workshop with work-hands in Konotop. The buckets and other articles they made they took to fairs. Mother told me that as a young man my grandfather was a solider. At that time soldiers were to serve in the army for 25 years. He got very sick in the army. According to my mother, the doctors told my grandfather that he should go to St. Petersburg, to the tsar himself, and get a release from the army. I don’t know who received him in St. Petersburg in reality, but he took his documents about kidney disease there; he was transferred to the reserve and returned to Konotop, to his wife. Grandfather died at the age of 48, in 1905, from his kidney disease. In those times young people created families. Grandfather was around 17 years old when he married my grandmother, Fruma-Tsivye. (I don’t know her maiden name). She was around 16 years old. She was a housewife. They had 14 children, but only six of them survived: three sons and three daughters. The eldest child was Soreh-Liba, born in 1875. Then Meishko was born 1888, then Rakhil and Avram were born, and Shlemka was born in 1899. I have practically no memories of my grandmother Fruma-Tsivye, because she died at the end of 1918-1919, when I was too young.
Keeping order around the house of such a large family and feeding the workers of – all of these duties rested on the shoulders of my grandmother Fruma-Tsivye. They also had cows. Their children certainly helped the parents. Everyone was working. They owned nothing but the workshop. Aunt Soreh-Liba, for instance, soldered together with her father’s workers.
Soreh-Liba, the eldest daughter of my grandparents, married a worker from grandfather’s workshop – Vengerov. They were in love with each other; when he was in the army, she waited for him. After grandfather’s death Vengerov owned the workshop. Brothers Meishko, Avram and Shlemka first worked for Vengerov. But Vengerov had a difficult character, and the brothers organized their own workshop. They were great friends. Unfortunately, Meishko was a sportsman and died at the age of 37 because of a heart disease. Then Avram and Shlemka began to provide for his family (two daughters and wife Beilya). Soon, Avram got sick with leukemia. He died either in 1932 or 1933. He left son Boris (named in honor of grandfather), daughter Fruma (named in honor of grandmother), and the wife. So, Shlemka alone provided for his own family and the families of his brothers. My father said that his ancestors came from Austro-Hungary. His grandfather was a rabbi (I don’t know his name). He was somebody special – he was buried in a crypt, with a lamp always burning in it. That rabbi had three sons. One of them was my grandfather, Ele Gurevich. His brothers came to visit us from Kharkov in 1920-s. I was named in honor of father’s grandmother. My mother said that my great-grandmother Golda came to visit us too. She liked to drink tea very much, so she always carried her own kettle with her and asked people to boil tea for her only in this kettle. As she was drinking tea, she always said in Yiddish, “Grandmother Golda loves tea”. Grandfather Ele Gurevich was a watchmaker, and his wife, grandmother Sima – a housewife. Besides my father, they also had daughters: Fanya, Liza, Gita, and son Shura (Mulya). They lived in the town of Radul, Belarus. During the Civil War there was a White Guard gang, so around 1921-1922 they moved from Belarus to Konotop (because life was quieter here). In the beginning, they lived with us, and then uncle Meishko found a flat for them and a little store where they opened a coffee-shop. All of this was during NEP∗.
Grandmother Sima was a brunette, but already grey, while grandfather was blond. He had a beard with grey hairs in it. My father looked like grandfather, but he was brunette; and I look like my father. I have the same form of the nose like my grandfather. Grandmother was a tall thin woman, who always wore long skirts, reaching her heals. Nobody else dressed like this in Konotop. She never wore any wigs, and I don’t remember anybody else in our town who would wear a wig. My grandfather wore regular clothes. On his head he always wore a yarmulke, but I remember he always wore a cap on top. When he came to us, he took off the cap, but left his yarmulke on. Grandfather visited us often. He liked playing with us. We played cards a lot. I remember when I was young and played him, if I lost, he always hugged me and laughed heartily. Grandfather died around 1928, but grandmother Sima died first. I think she died because of pneumonia. When grandmother was buried grandfather got sick. He was rushed to the hospital. I remember visiting him there, bringing him food, and he looked very content. Around 3 weeks after grandmother’s death he also died. I remember his funeral very well. He lied on straw and was buried without a coffin. His grave was covered with wooden boards. Then we took off our shoes, which is called “siveh” [this Jewish rite of farewell with decedent- seven days of mourning], and sat on the floor for the whole week (I exactly not litter what it is. Know only that was beside Jews such tradition). Gradually, these traditions died away. When my grandparents died, special white shrouds (“takhrikhim”) were sewn. Special people sewed them by hand. But afterwards there were no such people any more. However, when in 1957 my father died because of cancer, such a “takhrikhim” was sewn for him, and he was wrapped in a taleth (a special cover for Jewish men during prayer), and a costume was put on top of it. By the way, we took this taleth to evacuation with us.
My father, Osher Isaac Elevich Gurevich, was born in 1883 in Belarus. There he got his education. I think he finished a cheder and then learned Russian on his own, this was it is required for life and work. He was a very good tailor. My father sewed clothes for men: coats, special costumes, and military coats for officers. After the revolution, father worked in an artel for some time, but he did not like it there. So, he began to work alone and pay taxes. Before the war, in 1930-s, he got some additional training and began to sew for women, because, he said, women always ordered more than men. When he was young he never sat at one place for a long time, but lived and worked in different places, and in the beginning of the 20th century he found himself in Konotop. Father grew up near the Dnepr River. He was a good swimmer and an oarsman. In Radul, their house stood almost over the river. When revolutionaries had their meetings, my father helped them cross the Dnepr. He was huge and was often standing on duty for them. Right before the October Revolution, father rescued some revolutionary in Konotop. He put that man among the workers of his workshop, and the tsarist police did not find him.
My mother, Chaya Lurye, rented a small store and traded in various small articles there. In that store she met my father. Then my father met mother’s brother Meishko. They became good friends. Brothers liked sports very much – there was a “cult of muscles” in the family. Every time a guy would come to ask for my mother’s hand, Meishko, as her brother, would always try that guy’s jacket on. If the jacket was small for him, it meant the guy was not developed physically enough (this was general jacket, Meishko wanted that husband daughter's was physically strong person, either as this himself). Gurevich’s jacket was too big for Meishko. My parents married in autumn 1907. I not know was beside them wedding. My father was a raven-head with black eyes.
He was not a party member, but he sympathized with revolutionists. Probably due to being a good tailor, he had to work for his boss (when I was born he already had his own workshop with hire-hands). But he always said, “A boss is a boss”.
My mother, Chaya Borukhovna Lurye, was born in 1885 in Konotop. She was not tall; she had blue eyes and blond hair. I think she finished cheder, because she was quite literate in Yiddish. I also think she learned Russian on her own. Just like everybody else in the family, she was quite religious; she had a special seat in the synagogue. When she went to the synagogue, she wore a special outfit. I remember she had a scarf, which was beautiful. Mother always celebrated all Jewish holidays. She was a fanatic before the war, but not after the war. We never ate pork at home. We always prepared to every holiday. In autumn she bought geese and fed them well until Passover. Before Passover, no matter what the weather was, she hired somebody to whitewash the whole house. Then she cleaned the house of all “khumyts” (leaven; according to the Jewish tradition, there should be nothing made of leaven in the house on Passover). We had special crockery for Passover. We always made special Passover wine of cherry. My mother made huge jars of such wine. My grandparents would come to the first Passover seder. We all sat around a big table, and there were a lot of delicious things on the table – so many that I don’t even know how people could eat all of them! There was stuffed fish and other delicious things. Foods for the whole Passover week were cooked on geese fat only. My mother also had a lot of pans and she cooked things with fat, with flour, with poppy, and with matzos. Special people (I not know who were these people, but think that they worked in synagogue) baked matzos for Passover. At the seder, my father sat on special pillows, and brother Boris asked the four traditional questions (he studied in cheder for some time, but there were no cheders after the revolution). For the whole evening people would sit there, eat and tell interesting stories. All of this was done in Yiddish. We all spoke Yiddish at home. Yiddish was the native language for all of my relatives. I also remember there was a holiday when a chicken was rotated over head. Mother would give us all chickens, then she would put them in a basket and I went through the town to shoichet (Jewish ritual butcher). Mother told me how a chicken’s head should be put under the wing so that there would be no blood. She trusted me with money to pay the shoichet, even though I was only ten years old. But we were very independent at that age; mother taught us to do everything: clean the flat, wash windows (every ten days), clean the dust, and wash every leaf of the plants we grew (she liked them). We baked bread every week. She bolted flour and made dough, and I had to knead dough with my fists. I once asked her, “How long should I be doing this?” and my mother answered, “Until beads of sweat appear in the other corner of the room. Every Friday we did a major cleaning of the house.
Mother was a housewife.  She only hired a babysitter when she gave birth to two twins. When I was born there was no babysitter. There were no water pipes, and when we had to wash we brought water from the well. In summer we carried water ourselves, but in winter we hired a special man. In winter we washed clothes in the river in ice-holes. We carried things on slides. We always were clean. We also washed in bath once a week.
Mother had very good music ear – she sang and danced well. When she was young she was invited to Jewish weddings that it there sang. In Konotop she’s all knew and much liked to listen as she sings.She liked both Jewish and Ukrainian songs. Aunt Soreh-Liba’s son once said, “When aunt Chaika comes, no actors are needed – people will be listening to her alone”.  My father could not sing, but he liked singing. He even sang in a choir.
In 1908 my mother and father had twins: Boris, named in honor of grandfather Borukh, and Ida. For some reasons they were always ashamed of admitting that they were twins. Eight years later I was born. At that time our family stayed at the house of a rich Jew, Kozlovsky. His house was located downtown. It was a two-floor good house made of bricks with a big yard. It also had two courtyard houses. I remember horses in the yard. The main house had two big good rooms. My father’s workshop was located in one room, so workers were sitting there. But during the Civil War, the military occupied the whole house. My mother found a place for us to live on the outskirts. We settled in Yarkovskaya Street. It was an absolutely Ukrainian street, with only a few Jewish families. There was no anti-Semitism in Konotop prior to the war. My mother had Ukrainian friends, whom she knew from her youth, and they spoke fluent Yiddish with her (they little knew Yiddish, therefore that always veins amongst Jews). Among the Jewish families was the family of Tsitovskies.. Their son, Chaim, born in 1920, was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union for crossing the Dnepr during the Second World War. I think he is the only Hero of the Soviet Union who was born in Konotop. The museum of Konotop has his portrait and a memorial board. My mother’s brothers with their wives often came to visit us. We had a large hall where we all played and ran after each other. They had families, but they still ran after each other like kids. There were no TV, radio or lights then, so it was the only entertainment. Sometimes we also played cards. My father liked to eat sunflower seeds when he talked to somebody.
There was a club of handicraftsmen in Konotop. Jew Topkin was in charge of that club. My father always attended this club in winter and took me with him. Topkin delivered lectures. There was also a good drama theater in this club. They staged various plays. I also recited a poem on Lenin’s death in that theater and was awarded Lenin’s portrait for this. The Jewish theater of Zaslavsky came to Konotop. They showed “Tevye Tevel” by Sholom-Aleichem all this occurred indoors club. My parents took me with them to watch it. Some other famous actors came to our town. I think it was in the middle of 1920-s.
Konotop was a small town, but there were a lot of Jews there. There were 4 synagogues in it. The Jews were chiefly found in the center of the town. There were many tailors and shoemakers among them; also there were those who fixed bicycles. The division into rich and poor was very strong. The rich had their own stores and two-floor houses, but the rich ones often helped the poor ones. We were quite poor (life was better only right before the war). The most difficult years were the 1931-1933-s. In order to survive we sold articles made of precious metals and bought some foods instead.
At home we spoke only Yiddish before the war. My brother even went to cheder before the revolution. When I was young, there were Jewish schools in Konotop, but I went to a Russian school (even though most of the students in my class were Jewish). I finished 7 classes. I also learned music for 6 years (parents bought a piano from our neighbor). After school I finished a one-year accountancy school and since 1932 I was working as an accountant in a flax-storing company.
All Konotop boys, just like my brother Boris, were trained in Vengerov’s workshop. My brother studied metalwork in this workshop for several years. Then he said he wanted to continue his studies. Vengerov supported his idea, considering him very smart. My brother dreamt of studying in Moscow, but my mother did not like Moscow for some reason, and in around 1929 my brother Boris went to study in Kharkov, to aunt Rakhil. In Kharkov he worked at a plant as a tool-maker and simultaneously studied at the Workers’ Department . Then he entered the Heavy Engineering Institute. My parents could not help him financially, for these were the difficult 1930-s. He lived in a dormitory on his scholarship. He was a good student. He graduated around 1936. He was sent to work in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) to the “Uralmash” plant. From that plant he was sent to Leningrad, to the Higher Military Academy, where he studied for another two years. From there he was sent to Kramatorsk, where he worked as an engineer up to the beginning of the war.

Growing up

In 1933, my sister got married and moved to Kiev. I also wanted to live in a big city. In March 1937 I moved to Kiev. I lived with my sister and worked as a bookkeeper at a paintwork base. But I did not work there for long; I moved on to another organization, “Spetstorg”, where I also worked as a bookkeeper. This organization serviced exclusively the military. This organization sent me to Lvov in February 1940. I liked Lvov very much. (Just like other western regions of Ukraine, Lvov was part of Poland until 1939. In 1939, these lands were annexed to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine). I rented a room from a landlady, who treated me very nicely. I was young, I was not even 24 years old. I would go to different places, like dances, and I had many acquaintances. One of them was a military man. There is a wonderful park in Lvov – Stryisky. He and I spent June 21, Saturday, in that park. The next day he invited me to the Opera Theater to a ballet. In the morning next day I woke up from a sound of thunder. I thought to myself, “Oh, if there is thunder, it means it is raining, so how will I go to the theater?” I opened my eyes and saw the son shining. So, where did the thunder come from? Then I heard the landlady crying, “German has attacked us!” They called “Germans” – “German”.
Her husband left the day before and went to another town. They had two boys, Monek and Manek. It was a good Jewish family. The landlady was begging me to take them with me. I began to cry. I wept a lot on that day. That military man came to me and said, “Leave everything and flee immediately. Our men left in nightgowns, with only wives and children”. I spent that night in a shelter. I was the secretary of the Komsomol organization, so I was naturally waiting for some instructions. But my chief accountant, Natan Markovich Fridman, was a very good man. He told me, “Pack immediately and we will leave together”. We went to the train station. It was impossible to get on the first train, because its doors were locked. Our coworker Ostrovsky went to see us off. He found an open window in the second train, even though the doors were barricaded by suitcases. He opened the door to let people get on. We also took the sister of our chef; they came from Leningrad. Thus we left: no tickets, no money. Natan Markovich was a decent man. We could have gone to any canteen that belonged to our organization and taken some money. But neither he nor I did that. We left Lvov on June 23, in the evening, and arrived in Kiev on June 27. We stopped at every station; there were a lot of people. The train was overcrowded. People even sat on the floor. When we reached one more station, we saw that train that we could not get on – it was totally bombed and destroyed. Our train was also bombed. During the bombings we would run out of the train and lie down on the ground. In Kiev we stopped not at the central station, but in Darnitsa. I went to my sister’s house across the town, at night, in total darkness. When my sister saw me, she passed out – everybody was convinced I was already dead. 
Kiev was also bombed. From Kiev, my sister and niece (sister’s husband was at the front) we moved to Konotop, to our parents. We began to get ready to further evacuation. Father sewed big bags. He also bought a pair of horses and a large cart (father could drive horses very well. Back after the civil war he drove to a village to exchange clothes for foods).  All our belongings, even old clothes, we put on this cart and moved eastward. Roads were heavily bombed. Two weeks later we reached Voronezh. Only there we got on a train. In the middle of October we reached Pugachevsk, which is behind the Volga River, in Saratov region. It was already cold. We found a small room to rent, but when its landowner heard my parents speaking in Yiddish, she immediately exclaimed, “I don’t want to have any Jews here!” So, we had to look for another place. We settled with a family: a couple with two children, a 14-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. Their house was very poor; they had absolutely nothing there. Even in the villages in Ukraine I have never seen such poor families. In Ukrainian villages people at least have trees and flowers around their houses, but here they had nothing. My father found some wooden boards and made us trestle-beds. He could do everything with his own hands. My mother and I slept on a big trestle-bed, while he slept in a smaller one; for my sister and niece we found a real bed somewhere. It was good that we had brought bed sheets with us. But the bad thing was that our neighbors behind the wall quarreled and swore all the time. We never heard such words before. That is why mother sought and found another flat, and in spring we moved to live with a woman, whose husband was killed at the front. I quickly found a job as a bookkeeper at a mill department. Mother and sister did not work. My sister got money for her killed husband (he was killed in the first days of the war; we only got one postcard from him). At the work I was given a small land plot, but the soil there was like rock. My sister, mother and I worked hard on that land. We planted melons, water-melons, and pumpkins. My father sewed things.

During the war

When the war broke out, my brother Boris volunteered to go to the front. But at the military enlistment office he was told that specialists like him were needed in the rear. So, he was sent to Kuibyshev. We knew nothing about him. From Pugachevsk, from evacuation, we wrote to every institution we could; we had a whole folder with correspondence. Finally, with great difficulty, we found him. He was working at the aircraft-building plant in Kuibyshev.
Kuibyshev was located 150-200 km away from Pugachevsk. Sister Ida went to see him in Kuibyshev. When she came to his dormitory, none of his friends believed it was his real sister: he had blond hair and blue eyes, just like our mother, while she was a brunette with dark eyes. Due to his appearance, many people thought my brother was Russian. But he never changed his name or patronymic. Kuibyshev was in famine. My brother had to work hard; sometimes he even slept at the plant. They were building the plant and putting out products at the same time. It was very cold, and their hands froze to the metal. Everyone worked for the front back then. They put out armor. My sister met his girlfriend, Katya, whom brother married after the war. But I will tell you later about this.
From Pugachevsk, I was sent to work in Moscow, to the metro-building company. I worked as a bookkeeper. I lived outside Moscow, in a horrible dormitory with rats and no heat. At the same time I studied at the Red Cross courses and worked at a hospital. I felt ill with furunculocis. As soon as Kiev was liberated (November 6, 1943), I began to pursue return to Kiev. It was impossible for the evacuated to simply return to the places they wanted. My parents returned to Konotop in June, 1944, but I was pursuing permission to go back to Kiev. On my way to Kiev I visited parents, and on September 1, 1944 I came to Kiev. I had no problems with finding a job. I began to work as a chief accountant at a small plant. Its director and most of its workers were Jewish. We found that the room my sister used to live in before the war was occupied. A bad man settled there: he did not live in Kiev before the war, but he was a lawyer, and he knew all ways in and out. Then a wonderful law was issued that one could fight for his/her own flat if one had registration in Kiev and a flat. We had all of it because we settled with our far relative Murochka (her husband was repressed in 1937 and died; she was arrested, but returned home). When the court made the decision that our former flat belonged to us, this lawyer made the court terminate its decision; he gave false testimonies and even bribed the court. The chief of the registration office knew us before the war (I even remember his name – Klimov), but he told the court he knew nothing. With great difficulties, through different court institutions, we could finally get back our flat two years later (despite the fact that my sister had every right to have it, because her husband was killed at the front).
Immediately after the end of the war, my brother Boris married that Katya, whom he met in Kuibyshev and about whom my sister Ida told us. He brought Katya to Konotop. Boris was 37 then. Boris and Katya loved each other very much. My mother was certainly very concerned that her daughter-in-law would be Russian, but my father told her not to talk about this. So, mother received them very well. My brother remained to live in Kuibyshev for the rest of his life, together with Katya and his children.
In 1945, when the war was over, I found out that I had no winter coat. My father found some fabric to make coats for me and my sister. It was hard to get vacation at that time, so I went to Konotop on October Revolution holiday. The Vengerov family settled with my parents after the war. And before the war they lived next door to the family of my future husband. They were great friends. My aunt Soreh-Liba nursed my future husband, young Benyumchik. He was treated like their own child. So, on the October Revolution holiday in 1945, Benyamin Gutner had a leave from the military. He came from Germany to see his parents and came to visit my parents and the Vengerovs. He came, wearing a naval uniform. He was happy to see me. We sat and talked for a while. He found out when I was going back to Kiev and said he would be going together with me. Before the war he worked in Kiev and had friends there. He wanted to see these friends and walk the streets of Kiev. He still had time to do that. His mother gave him a whole suitcase of food. So, he took his suitcase and my bag and we got on the train. When we came to Kiev, my sister was happy to see him alive. In the morning I went to work, and in the evening, my sister said that he had asked her whether I would refuse to marry him should he make a proposal.
Benyusik and I went to the theater. In the break he went to the buffet and bought me a bar of chocolate. It cost 100 rubles then! I told him I would not eat it at the theater but at home, together with my sister Ida. It was a rare occasion when somebody could eat chocolate, because it was right after the war.
So, then he mastered up boldness and made me a proposal. He had to serve some more and then he wanted to marry me. I said I was worried about being 29 years old and two years older than he. To this he said that he wanted to have a quiet and good wife. And with that he left. At the same time a client came to my father, a good Jewish guy, who also was interested in me. His father was a hat-maker – “kifner” in Yiddish. But by that time Benyusik had written a letter to my parents. So, I rejected that other guy. Benyusik and I had no correspondence.
We had not no  wedding ceremony: we simply had a dinner at my parents’ house and invited close relatives. My aunt, his parents and cousins came. After the wedding we returned to Kiev. Almost immediately after moving to Kiev he became very ill. During the war he had a leg injury. But when he was fighting he forgot all about that wound, and only in Kiev he began to feel sharp pains in his leg. He also had high fever. X-ray could be done only privately. He could not walk – I almost had to carry him. He had to undergo a surgery. He had a surgery in November 1946. His bone was drilled and pus was taken out of it. But after the surgery the wound would not heal. The New Year was close, but he was still in the hospital. My mother came to visit us and suggested that he should go see a very good doctor in Konotop – a close friend of my father. His wound was open till spring and no X-ray showed anything. In April my pregnancy leave began, and we went to Konotop. The city hospital was ruined; they had nothing there, we had to bring bed sheets with us (just like now!). But the main thing was that I trusted the doctor. Another operation was made and the doctors saw that the previous surgeon left a cotton ball in his wound, and he had that cotton ball for six months. Our doctor assured us that on May 1 he would even dance. It all took place in April.

After the war

On May 9 we returned to Kiev. And on May 19, 1947, my daughter Sima was born. She was named in honor of my father’s mother. My husband certainly wanted a son, but he was happy to have a daughter too. Our second daughter, Bella, was born four years later. She was named in honor of my husband’s grandmother, Beile. After the birth of my second daughter I did not work for 16 years until my children became more or less independent.
Prior to the war we sensed no anti-Semitism at all, but after the war our children and us felt it all the time – at school and especially in entering university. Sima finished school with honors, and in her written exam in mathematics (in entering the Kiev Polytechnic Institute) she received an excellent mark, but at the next oral exam she was given a poor mark. She was able to enter the correspondence department of the Aviation Institute only a few years later, when she was already working. Bella also had problems with entering university. But even though we had problems with anti-Semitism, I’m sure I would have never endured emigration.
After my father’s death in 1957, we took mother from Konotop to Kiev. First she lived with the sister, then with me. Soreh-Liba died in Kiev too, in 1963. She also moved to live with her children – she had four of them. The youngest, Rakhil, died in 1936 in Kharkov. She had three children. Neither Soreh-Liba nor Rakhil worked outside the house after getting married.
My mother and her brother Shleimka, unlike other relatives, lived for a long time. Mother died in Kiev in 1978 at the age of 93. Shleimka also died being older than 90. His last years he lived in Minsk at his son’s.
My husband was a worker, and most of his life he worked as a plumber at construction objects. He died in Kiev in 1998.
I would like to tell you some more about my brother, Boris. He spent all his life at that plant in Kuibyshev. His and Katya’s elder daughter was born in 1946, but when she was 12 years old she died because of leukemia. Then they had two more children – Alla and Mikhail. Their children never changed their last name or patronymic.
My brother was the chief constructor. But during the Soviet Union’s fight against cosmopolitism, in early 1950-s, a Jew, Gurevich, could not remain the chief constructor. So, the plant’s director made him a teacher in the plants’ technical school and put him in charge of a desigh bureau. Of course, after Stalin’s death he could work better again. But he never shared about the nature of his work. I only know that he spent months in Moscow in business trips.
In 1978, I received tragic news about his death. He died from stomach cancer. It was hard for me to think that I would burry my brother. My children stayed with my mother, while my husband and I went to Kuibyshev. The whole plant expressed great honor to him. The cemetery (this was common town, not Jewish graveyard) was far from the town, and there was a truck covered with carpets (it was in March when it was still cold). But the workers did not put the coffin on the truck – they carried it to the cemetery in turns. They made a great funeral banquet for him. I know that Jews do not do such things, but at that place people did that. The tables of the plant’s canteen were covered, but not everyone could fit in. So again, people took turns. Many people spoke about him, shared how he taught, how he treated students, what a wonderful and honest person he was. In 1985 I went to Kuibyshev to visit Katya and her children. Katya invited me to the plant’s museum, which speaks a lot about Boris. It even has his big portrait. We came to the museum when a tour was held for children. The director of the museum told them how my brother started that plant with the first nail and what difficulties he faced. After the tour, the director invited me to his office and sadly said that he had asked Boris many times to write about himself and the plant, but Boris was a very modest person, so he wrote nothing.
My sister Ida always lives and worked in the Kiev. We with her were very friendly, children grow together. After the death of Boris, in 1989, she with the family emigrated to USA. Regrettably we can communicate on the telephone only and much seldom. I know that beside them there all well.
Praise God, we had a good life. My husbands was working, and on top of his salary he always tried to find some part-time work, for instance, fix something for the neighbors. I went to the sewing courses and after a year of studies I began to sew everything for myself and children. I did not want to pay somebody else to sew for us. When I was sewing, some things I knew exactly, other things I tried to understand. My children also learned sewing from me. Then I bought an electrict sewing machine and began to take orders from other people. It was hard at that time to buy decent clothes at the store, so I sewed for anyone who ordered and never denied help to anyone.
I’m now living with my youngest daughter, Bella. Being old is certainly not a happy thing. I need to buy medicine and food, while my pension is small. I would be in despair if there were no Kiev charity fund “Khesed Avot” that helps us a lot. It helps us not only with foods and medicines, but also with care and warm words to us. I really appreciate them very much.
I do not approve of emigration.
You see, when you come to Israel, you realize that you are a foreigner there. It’s in my nature. When I was leaving Moscow, my friends would beg me to stay, promised to provide a room for me, warned about ruins in my native town where I was going. But I told them, “It’s my home”. When I came to Konotop and walked into the town, the road was full of my tears. I saw that it was mine, my home. Once we wanted to go to Germany, but then I said, “No, I’m not going. I can’t go there. I can’t hear that language. I can’t live there. I’m not going”. My husband agreed with me that it would be better for us to stay home. I know people are moving to America, to Germany. Well, we paid too much for moving to Germany – we paid with rivers of blood. I can’t imagine how Jews can live in Germany, in that situation. The Germans hate us!

Izia Antipka
Kishinev
Moldova
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: July 2004

Izia Antipka lives in a big apartment in a many-storied apartment block on Izmailskaya Street not far from the center of Kishinev [Chisinau in Moldovan]. It’s an old street with one-storied buildings built in the early 20th century. Izia, a short, slim, baldish man, looks young for his age. Izia’s wife died a year ago. The apartment is nicely furnished: there are carpets on the floors, a Japanese TV set, a good hi-fi. One can tell that Izia is doing well in this respect. Izia gladly and very vividly describes his childhood and tells me about his relatives. Only when it comes to the moment when his grandfather and grandmother died, he lights a cigarette and stops several times during his speech. One can tell how hard it is for him. He is a great cook and talks with inspiration about making Jewish dishes that his mother used to make. He uses her recipes. The next time I visited him, he made cookies for me.

My family background
Growing up
During the 
After the war
Glossary

My family background

I don’t know anything about the origin of my surname: Antipka. They said this surname could have been possibly found among Polish Jews, and my paternal grandfather, Israel Antipka, was born in Poland in the 1860s, only I don’t know the exact location. He had passed away before I was born. My grandfather’s brother, whose name I don’t know, settled in Kiev. My grandfather Israel Antipka settled in Bessarabia 1, in the small village of Flamynzeny, Orgeyev [Orhei in Moldovan] district. Israel married Yenta, a Jewish woman from Bessarabia; this is all I know about my grandmother’s birth place. My grandfather grew corn and grapes, kept livestock and lived his life no different from other Moldovans, trying to earn their daily bread. My grandfather died in the early 1920s. He was buried at the Jewish cemetery in the village.

I knew Grandmother Yenta well. She was about ten years younger than my grandfather. Yenta lived in a nice stone house in Flamynzeny. Yenta was moderately religious. She prayed at home every morning, wore a kerchief, lit candles on Friday evening and prayed over them, followed some of the kashrut rules: I mean, there was never any pork in the house, but she didn’t have separate dishes for dairy and meat products. There was no synagogue in the village and on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Pesach, the main Jewish holidays, my grandmother went to the synagogue in Orgeyev. However, she never gave up work on Saturday. She had to take care of her garden and her livestock: chicken, ducks and geese. She also kept cows, and there was always milk, cottage cheese and cream available for the household.

My parents often sent me to spend the summer with my grandmother Yenta. They called it ‘health strengthening.’ My grandmother was always happy to see me, but she always told me, ‘Izeke, forget about the meat and stew that Mama makes for you, it’s not good for your health, but you can always have chicken and duck.’ My grandmother made perfect food for me. In the morning she made cottage cheese pudding with eggs, saying that there was no such rich milk in the whole town, as the one, from which she made pudding. There were four big rooms in her house. After my grandfather died, my grandmother divided the house into two parts: she and her single son Berl lived in one, and her son Aizek and his family lived in the other.

Israel and Yenta had six children: five sons and a daughter. I have no information about my father’s sister: not even her name. All I know is that after Bessarabia was annexed to Romania 2, she lived with her family on the other bank of the Dniestr in the Soviet Union. My father’s brothers were moderately religious: they celebrated the main holidays and observed some of the traditions.

Isaac, the oldest one, born in the 1890s, lived in a village near Orgeyev. I saw Isaac just a few times. I don’t know what he did: I was small and took no interest in such things. Isaac died in the 1930s. His wife and two children, whose names I can’t remember, evacuated in 1941. After the Great Patriotic War 3 they returned to Moldova. We had no contacts with them, and this is all I know.

My father came next in the family, and after him Aizek was born. Aizek had one leg shorter than the other. He was weak and couldn’t do farmer’s work. Aizek owned a small store, where he sold matches, kerosene, candles and salt that villagers bought from him. Aizek and his wife lived in the second half of my grandmother’s house. Aizek had no children. His wife died in evacuation, in some place in Siberia and Aizek remarried in the late 1940s. He and his wife settled in Orgeyev. Aizek died in the mid-1960s. Aizek’s son Mikhail, born in the late 1940s in his second marriage, lives in Israel. I have no contact with him.

The next son was my father’s brother Moishe. He lived in another village. I hardly know anything about him. He was married, but he and his wife disappeared during the Great Patriotic War. Most likely, they failed to evacuate and perished in the occupied territory.

The youngest one, Berl, born in the 1910s, lived with his mother. Berl worked from morning till night. That was probably why he remained single. There were no other Jewish families in the village and he had no time to look around. My grandmother and Berl were killed by the Fascists in their village of Flamynzeny in 1941.

My father Samuil, Jewish name Shmil, Antipka was born in the 1890s. I don’t know where he studied or whether he went to cheder. Most likely he started his studies with a melamed. Melamed teachers went around villages teaching Jewish children. My father started helping his father about the household at an early age. However, he had other ideas, rather than living his life in the village like his mother and father. When he turned 16, my father moved to Orgeyev, the district town. He went to work at the printing house where he became an apprentice and then a qualified printer. In the tsarist Russia printing workers were the most progressive ones: they read all the new editions, and were well aware of progressive ideas.

After Bessarabia was annexed to Romania, workers established an underground organization involved in Communist propaganda. My father was far from politics and didn’t join this organization, but when the police organized a search at his printing house, he decided to risk it no longer and left the printing house. He became a broker. He arranged food supplies to two big restaurants in Orgeyev. He made deals with farmers and also supplied meat, butter, fruit and vegetables to these restaurants having his interest from those supplies. I don’t know how my parents met. There may have been a shadkhan. They got married in 1924.

My mother came from Orgeyev. Her father, Srul Steinberg, born in the 1860s as was Israel [the paternal grandfather], worked in a ‘monopolka’ store [stores selling vodka which was the state monopoly in the tsarist Russia and Romania, too]. My grandmother Mariam owned a store. My grandmother joked that she managed a ‘gas station.’ There were just two cars in Orgeyev: the main transport means were horses and my grandmother sold food for the horses: oats, bran, etc. Jewish and Moldovan cabmen were Mariam’s customers: they knew and respected my grandmother.

Orgeyev was a truly Jewish town at that time: 80 percent of its population was Jewish. Jews kept almost all stores and shops in the center of the town. Jewish doctors, lawyers and businessmen lived in the central part of the town. There was a number of synagogues, a Jewish hospital, and later the Joint 4 established and supported an affiliate of the Jewish Health Association. My grandmother and grandfather rented an apartment, though it was spacious and well-furnished. Grandfather Srul was very religious. On Friday, Saturday and holidays he went to the synagogue. The synagogues were guild-based: my grandfather Srul went to the nearby synagogue of shoemakers, though there were no shoemakers in our family. It was just the nearest synagogue from where my grandparents lived. There were six children in the family. They were raised to respect and observe Jewish traditions.

Hana, the oldest of all children, born in the 1890s, was a very beautiful woman, but she had one problem: she had a glass eye. She failed to find a decent match and in 1933 she moved to Palestine, following the Zionist ideas of the construction of a Jewish state. She got lucky and married a widower by the name of Lis. I don’t remember his first name. Lis was rather wealthy. He owned a big two-storied house in a small town. On the first floor he arranged a café. Hana ran her household and raised her husband’s children: she didn’t have any of her own. Hana died in the mid-1980s, when she was very old.

The next in our family was Gershl. He moved to Palestine in the 1920s and from there he moved to the USA, because of the continuous troubles caused by the Arabs. He changed his name to Harry, got married and had two children. This is all I know about my uncle. In 1940, when the Soviet regime was established in Bessarabia 5, it became dangerous for the family to correspond with him and it stopped 6. All I know is that he died a long time ago, in the 1950s.

My mother was born between Gershl and Moishe, who came into this world in the 1900s. He was a very gifted person. After finishing a gymnasium with honors he went to Bucharest. Moishe was good at languages. He studied French and German at the gymnasium. In Bucharest Moishe went to work at a company selling Austrian manual knitwear units. Its owner was Arabadjiyev, a Bulgarian man. He valued my uncle for his good work and paid him well. Moishe got married and had two children: his daughter’s name was Dodika and his son’s name was Mikhail. When the Soviet regime was established, Moishe and his family moved to Kishinev: almost all Jews in Bessarabia looked forward to the Soviet days. When the Great Patriotic War began, Moishe and his family evacuated, but disappeared somewhere in Krasnodarskiy Kray [today Russia].

Rachil, Mama’s sister, born in 1904, the smartest of all the girls, studied in a gymnasium. However, she never finished it for reasons that I’m not aware of. Rachil married Musia Averbuch, a Jewish man from Orgeyev. Rachil returned to Orgeyev from the evacuation and later she moved to Kishinev. She died in 1975. Her children Alexandr and Mania moved to Israel in the late 1980s.

My mother’s youngest sister Feiga, born in 1910, followed Moishe to Bucharest looking for a job. Soon she married Marcello Iosifzon, a Jewish man. It’s a Romanian name, but I don’t know his Jewish name. He was a rabbi’s son. They were wealthy and didn’t want to have any children before the war. In 1940 Feiga and Marcello and Moishe’s family moved to Kishinev. During the Great Patriotic War they evacuated to Uzbekistan. Marcello was recruited to the labor army 7. After the war they returned to Kishinev. In 1947 their daughter Sonia was born. Later they had a son named Leonid. In the early 1970s the family moved to Israel where Feiga died at the age of 88. Her children and grandchildren live in Haifa in Israel. I know that they are happy with their life.

My mother, Sarrah Steinberg, was born in Orgeyev in the late 1890s. Like Rachil she finished several years in the gymnasium and then became an apprentice of the best dressmaker in town. Some time later she began to make clothes herself and became even better than her teacher. When she was young, my mother was fond of revolutionary ideas like many other young people in Bessarabia. She joined an underground Komsomol organization 8. My mother’s group was arrested at their gathering in the town park where they were reading the novel ‘Mother’ by Maxim Gorky 9, which was forbidden in the capitalist Romania. My mother was arrested, kept in jail and tortured for a few days. She was beaten with a metal bar and taunted. The young people were released from prison only after Grousgend, a wealthy grain supplier, interfered and paid a bail for them. After she was released, she was introduced to my father. My parents got married in 1924. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah at the synagogue. Everything was like it happened in religious Jewish families.

Growing up

I was born on 10th January 1925. I was named Izia [full name Israel] after my grandfather. This name, Izia Antipka, was written down in my birth certificate. In 1930 Mama gave birth to my sister Leya. Later she changed her name to the Russian Lidia, or Lida for short 10 – and I will call her by this name.

I recall my childhood with a warm feeling: this was the time of overall love. My father worked as a broker. He often traveled to nearby villages and towns, buying food products and making deals with farmers. My mother was a first-class dressmaker. She owned a shop and had two employees working for her. Every evening our family got together for dinner and these were the warmest evenings in my life. We discussed events of the day, had delicious food and then Mama put me and my sister to bed and this was wonderful.

We rented apartments and there were three such apartments in my childhood and youth. When I was born we rented an apartment from Reznik, a Jewish owner. Then we moved to another apartment, which we rented from Batuzh, a Moldovan man. Before the Great Patriotic War we rented an apartment from Mishkis, a Jewish owner. I remember this apartment best. It was big: there was a fore room with a coat-stand and a round table, covered with a velvet tablecloth, there was also a small living room, our parents’ bedroom, the children’s room and another room that served as my mother’s shop. There was a big cutting table in it: an oak table with carved legs where Mama cut the fabric. There was also a Singer sewing machine that Mama was very cautious about.

We had a good life, enjoying good food and nice clothes that Mama made for us. However, my parents worked very hard to support the family. Mama also did all the housework herself: we never had a housemaid. She was an excellent housewife. Our neighbors asked her for advice. They brought their dishes for her to try: ‘Madam Antipka, is there anything else to add here? Madam Antipka, is this jam ready?’

We had certain meals on certain days, and I could always guess what we were going to have tonight or tomorrow. Let me tell you starting from Friday night, when Mama cooked Saturday dinner before Sabbath. [Editor’s note: In religious households dinner had to be complete and ready before Sabbath commenced on Friday evening] There was gefilte fish with walnuts – this was a tradition in Bessarabia – chicken broth or chicken stew. Jews used to say that if a Jew didn’t have stuffed chicken neck [the neck stuffed with flour and onions fried on goose fat] on his table on Saturday, he was just not a Jew.

Mama also cooked Jewish beef stew. Real Jewish stew is cooked with beef brisket – no other meat is good for this stew. There has to be a little fat in the meat. It has to be cut in small pieces and fried with onions till the meat and the onions turn dark brown. Then boiling water is added, salt, spices, pepper and laurel and stewed till it’s ready. If there was too much meat, Mama divided it into two portions and made sweet and sour stew. She added tomato paste and cherry jam plus sugar to make it sweet.

Another mandatory Saturday beverage is compote with black plums, and we also treated ourselves to tsimes 11. In Bessarabia tsimes was made with potatoes, beans, carrots, peas and local sweet peas. Peas were kept in water since the previous evening and then boiled a little. Then flour was fried in butter, then a fat chicken tail base was added, onions fried separately and then mixed with peas, sugar was added and that was it: delicious tsimes was ready. Tsimes was to be eaten cold and with white bread. On Saturday we had white bread on the menu. Only Mama didn’t bake it, being very busy with her work. She sent me to buy fresh challah loaves in the store.

Now it’s difficult to recall all the dishes and on which day of the week we had them. I remember that we always had cutlets, fried potatoes and borscht on Monday. In our location Jewish cuisine was affected by the Moldovan cuisine and vice versa. Mama often made mititei, a Moldovan dish that I make myself now. It’s made from beef neck cut into pieces and left at room temperature for three hours. Then the pot is covered with a lid and the meat is placed in the cold – in a fridge and in the past it was kept in a cellar – for 24 hours. Then meat is to be ground with onions and garlic and some water and broth is added. Then sausages [meat balls] are made with this meat with the help of a special set installed on a meat grinder and fried in vegetable oil.

I wouldn’t say that our family was really religious. Mama came from a more traditional family, though she didn’t cover her head like her mother and grandmother, but she tried to observe all Jewish traditions. We always celebrated Sabbath. My father went to the synagogue wearing his fancy suit. Jewish men used to have two suits in Orhei: a casual dark blue and a fancy brown one. My father had a fancy brown striped suit. On Friday Mama cleaned the apartment and cooked everything for Saturday, though on Saturday she didn’t invite Moldovans to help her stoke the stove or serve the food. However, she didn’t take a needle or scissors to work on Saturday. My father took me with him to go to the synagogue of shoemakers. The synagogue was in a small one-storied building, but it was beautiful and had Venetian glass in its windows. Though my father went to the synagogue, he didn’t follow the kosher rules. He liked pork a lot. It’s even sinful to say that on Friday evening he used to send me to the Verbitskiy store to buy delicacies: smoked pork, which I liked with fat streaks and my sister liked the fillet part of it, my father also ate dried pork and fat. We also bought kosher goose sausage for Mama.

We spoke Yiddish to one another, but we also knew Romanian that we spoke to our neighbors. My parents also spoke Russian and often switched to it, when they didn’t want my sister or me to understand what they were talking about, but we understood what they were saying. We celebrated Jewish holidays at home according to traditions.

On Pesach we took special fancy crockery from the attic. My father brought a big basket with matzah from the synagogue. Mama made many delicious dishes with matzah, and I also make them on holidays. She made matzah pudding and nice little pies. Matzah is crushed as fine as flour. For the filling: 300 g lung meat, 300 g liver and 600 g beef, plus fried onions and spices. These pies are to be fried. Besides the [Pesach] dishes required by the Haggadah, we had everything else on the table: the best and delicious gefilte fish, chicken broth, stew and little pies. Mama made a fancy cake for dessert. She made it with 100 nuts. My father conducted the seder reclining on cushions, and I asked him the four questions.

On Purim Mama was sure to cook a turkey that was the central dish on the table. There were also hamantashen filled with nuts, which was also different from the common filling in Belarus and the Ukraine. There was also traditional fluden on Purim. Nuts were mixed with honey and butter plus cookies, this mixture is melt on a small fire and spread on biscuit or waffles. We used to buy waffles in a store. There was also a carnival procession in the town on Purim. There was one even in 1936, when the snow covered the ground.

I often spent summers with my grandmother Yenta. She observed Jewish traditions even with more dedication than my mother. On Friday [evening] we celebrated Sabbath. My grandmother lit candles and the whole family got together at the table: Uncle Berl, Uncle Aizek and his family and I. We also spent some time in the mansion of my father’s friend Bagdasarov, an Armenian man. Bagdasarov was a rich man. There were parquet floors in his mansion. The carpets were taken away in summer since it was too hot. We stayed in a guest house and enjoyed it very much.

At the age of seven I went to a Romanian elementary school. Most of my classmates were Jewish children. There were no prejudiced attitudes toward us and we also got along well. After I finished the elementary school my mother wanted me to go to the gymnasium, but I didn’t quite want to continue to study. I liked doing things with my own hands and I went to the vocational school of the Jewish association Tarbut 12 where students were trained in crafts.

There were many Zionist organizations in Orgeyev like in other parts of Romania and there were also such organizations for young people. I joined the Hashomer Hatzair organization 13, which had a goal to struggle for the establishment of a Jewish state with peaceful methods of negotiations and purchase of land. Each synagogue arranged for collection of contributions for this purpose. We also attended Maccabi 14, a sports organization, the only one that had gyms at its disposal in Romania. They were well equipped for all kinds of sports.

On Romanian holidays: the National Day of Romania, 1st December [Day of Unity, the greatest Romanian national day. On 1st December 1918 the unity of Transylvania and parts of Eastern Hungary with Romania was declared by the Romanian National Assembly in the Transylvanian city of Alba Iulia.] and the National Banner Day, 24th February, [Editor’s note: This national day was introduced in Romania by a governmental decree at the 150th anniversary of the 1848 revolution in 1998. During the interwar period it didn’t exist yet.] Jews made a separate column during the parade: we wore white trousers, dark blue caps and magen Davids, and were the most attractive at the parade. There was also a Jewish brass orchestra in the town. I played the drums in it. There was also a football team. Grousgend, a wealthy manufacturer, sponsored the organization. He paid for uniforms, balls, sports equipment and musical instruments for the orchestra.

The Zionist propaganda was so strong that once the son of a Moldovan policeman, a former apprentice of the Jewish blacksmith Goihman, got so attracted by the idea of the establishment of a Jewish state that he decided to move to Palestine. Despite his father’s efforts to convince him to stay at home, the guy left for Palestine and the whole town came to say good bye to him.

I studied in the Tarbut school for a year before I went to Bucharest to continue my studies. I entered the Jewish vocational gymnasium to study a vocation along with other subjects. This gymnasium also belonged to the Tarbut. Its main purpose was to train professionals for Israel. It was free of charge. It was a boarding school where Jewish guys from different Romanian villages and towns came to study. We had uniforms, were provided meals and had classes.

Of course, I missed home, the warm weather and delicious food. On Friday evenings I visited Aunt Feiga and we celebrated Sabbath. My aunt’s husband Marcello was a real dandy. He had posh clothes and shoes to match each suit he had. Aunt Feiga also enjoyed life. She always treated me to delicious food, even more delicious than my Mama or grandmother Yenta made. I also joined the Bucharest division of Hashomer Hatzair, participated in competitions organized by the Maccabi and played football. There was a small stadium with just two stands for football fans: one for Moldovan and another one for Jewish fans. There were no confrontations between them, but the atmosphere was tense at times.

I took an interest in politics from an early age. I read a lot and followed all events. I knew about the situation in Fascist Germany and was interested in any bit of information about the Soviet Union. Many young Jewish people of Bessarabia were fond of Communist ideas and dreamt of living in the Soviet Union. My father and I often visited my father’s friend Grinberg, a restorer, who had a radio: we held our breath listening to the Kremlin bells [signal of Radio Moscow] tolling at eleven o’clock in the evening [twelve Moscow time].

Mama had cousin brothers and sisters on her mother’s side: Sura and Leika lived in Kishinev and Zigmund and Rachil, members of a Communist organization, decided to cross the border to the Soviet Union. In winter, when the river [Dniestr] froze, they crossed it and got to the USSR. This happened in 1934. In 1937, in the outburst of terror  15 they were arrested and exiled to the Gulag 16 as Romanian spies. They were released in the late 1950s. Zigmund moved to Moscow and Rachil went to Vilnius. They visited Kishinev in the late 1960s for the first time.

In 1938 the Cuzist 17 and legionary [Iron Guard] 18 Fascist parties [organizations] appeared in Romania. This affected Orgeyev immediately. Fascists with swastikas marched along our streets breaking windows in Jewish stores. [Editor’s note: The symbol of the Iron Guard was three horizontal and three vertical green and black stripes. Wearing swastika, the symbol of the German Nazi party, was probably atypical.] Fortunately, this march never developed into a pogrom. In Bucharest where I spent two years I often saw young Fascist people and knew that they would cause much trouble to Jews. In early June 1940 I came to spend my vacation in Orgeyev after passing my exams. That year my father rented 20 hectares, planted soy beans and hired Moldovan workers expecting outstanding crops. He asked me to give him a hand with his work. My sister Lida, who studied in a gymnasium and was on vacation as well, and I often came to work in the field.

On 28th June 1940 the Red army came to Orgeyev! How it was met! Both brass orchestras of Orgeyev marched the streets playing the International [Anthem of the International Worker’s Movement and of the Soviet Union between 1918 and 1943. Originally French, it has been translated into most languages and has been widely used by various Socialist and Communist movements worldwide.] and Soviet songs. Madam Reznik, the wife of a millionaire of Orgeyev, who owned mills, butteries, came out onto her balcony wearing a red satin gown to demonstrate that she was for the Soviets. I also dressed up and marched in a column with the others. We expected to see the well-equipped Red Army, but we were up for the first disappointment, when we saw the first soldiers. This was an Uzbek battalion: they were black, covered with dust, dirty, tired and exhausted. Many faces were affected with smallpox [a common disease in Central Asia], they were far from dashing! They wore wrappings and old boots and they were stinking and sweaty.

The next disappointment was when all food products disappeared from stores: the first ones to disappear were chocolates, caviar and other delicacies. There was no white bread, vegetable oil, flour, sugar, just essential commodities. The only candy was caramel in sugar. Fortunately, we had stocks in the attic that my father had kept for the restaurant. Aunt Rachil brought a bunch of boubliks [round pastries] from Kishinev and we had them instead of white bread. Almost all Jews arrived from Kishinev within the first three days, including Uncle Moishe and his family, Feiga and Marcello.

A few weeks later arrests began. Fortunately, the only harm we suffered was that they took away the soy field. The restaurant owners Blumis and Menis were exiled and so was Reznik and his family: Madam Reznik’s demonstration of their loyalty was of no help. However, Reznik’s children were allowed to stay in Orgeyev. I remember Moishe Frant, who owned a small grocery store, waved his hand to us, ‘We’ll be back,’ getting into the militia car, but none of them ever returned from exile. Being used to a good life many of them died in Siberia. We couldn’t understand the criteria on the basis of which they arrested people. For example, my father’s friend Grinberg, a restaurant owner, escaped an arrest while Gruzgend, a democrat, for whom all of his employees begged, was sent to exile with his family and they all perished in Siberia. We gave shelter to Bagdasarov in our house, but somebody reported on him and he was arrested. My father went to work as supply supervisor in the fruit and vegetable supply office Moldplodoovosch. My sister and I went to the Russian Soviet school. We had no problems with the Russian language hearing it often at home. So a year passed.

During the war

On 22nd June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. We listened to Molotov’s 19 speech. I insisted on evacuation. My father was against it saying that war would not last long and we would manage staying in the caves near Orgeyev, having food stocks with us. However, my mother shared my point of view and we decided to evacuate. Uncle Musia, my mother sister’s husband, working in the military registry office, managed to arrange a wagon for us. We loaded our belongings: carpets, suitcases, food and even my mother’s sewing machine onto this wagon. In early July our family, Rachil and Musia, Grandmother Mariam and Grandfather Srul left our town.

We reached a village by the [Dniestr] river waiting for our turn to cross it. There were crowds of people, wagons, military, cars at the crossing. The priority was given to battle forces. We decided to move on separately. Uncle Musia had a map and we agreed on the spot where we would meet. My grandmother Mariam, my mother and I, Rachil and my sister crossed the Dniestr, and my father, uncle Musia and my grandfather, who couldn’t walk, stayed on the wagon waiting for their turn to cross the river.

The German troops were not far away from this area. They bombed the road and there were dead people all around. It took us a few days to reach the town of Grigoriopol on the border with Ukraine [on the Ukrainian side] where we rented an apartment waiting for the rest of our family. My father and Musia caught up with us soon. They told us that grandfather Srul had died and they buried him in a field. Grandmother Yenta and Uncle Berl also arrived at Grigoriopol on a wagon. They didn’t stay long. Some military – I think he was a German spy – convinced them to go back home. He said the war wouldn’t last and the Red Army would soon go in attack. Grandmother Yenta and Uncle Berl went back home. After the war we got to know that some villagers gave them shelter, but then their former Moldovan neighbor reported on them. Uncle Berl and Grandmother Yenta were shot by the Fascists at the very beginning of the occupation.

My mother’s brother Moishe, his wife and children also arrived at Grigoriopol. Moishe went back to Kishinev to pick up his younger sister. He brought Feiga and Marcello with him. Later he, his wife and their children disappeared somewhere in the Krasnodarskiy Kray. We tried to find them, but never received any information about them.

We left Grigoriopol on our wagon. We went all across the south and eastern part of Ukraine. We got a warm welcome wherever we arrived. We were accommodated and provided with some food. We also got some food to go, though it was just some salty cheese and dull bread. We stopped in Kirovograd region at the kolkhoz 20, established in the 1930s with the support of Agro-Joint 21. I was surprised to see how different Jewish women looked here, wearing Ukrainian skirts and embroidered blouses and kerchiefs. We were given accommodation.

My father and I went to work at the grain elevator: there was an outstanding crop that year and we worked delivering grain to the elevator. After two-three weeks we had to move on. Fascist landing troops landed in Pervomaysk and the Jewish kolkhoz 22 evacuated hastily. I remember that my mother made dough to bake bread that evening and she put the pot on our wagon when we had to leave. We moved without stopping for a few days. We crossed the Southern Bug and then the Dniepr. There were a few pontoon crossings operating. We had excellent horses. I think they pulled the wagon feeling the threat over us. They never let us down.

We finally stopped after crossing the Dniepr. We were hungry. The dough got sour, but Mama made some flat bread from it on the fire nevertheless. We stayed a few weeks in Mariupol. I liked the town very much: there were big trees, wide avenues, the sea – everything was new to me. Then we went on, crossed the Don and reached Bataysk, Rostov region in Russia [about 900 km from Kishinev]. There were catering points arranged for the evacuating people. We were provided the ration of goat cheese and bread. Papa got some tomatoes and fried crucian carps and we settled for a meal by the wagon. A thin shabby guy approached us and my father recognized the son of our neighbor Reznik. He told us he was on the go just by himself. Mama gave him some food and he left. In Bataysk the military took away our wagon and horses for the needs of the front. They gave us a letter promising to return what they had taken away after the war. We took a train heading farther to the east.

Our trip lasted for about a month. We had no idea where we were going. There was a lot of mess during the trip, some people missed the train, some got on it at the stops. There was a lot of crying, diseases and deaths: people were dying and there was no time or place to bury them. We arrived at the border [area] between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the station of Yakkabag Kazakhdarya region [today Uzbekistan], almost 3000 kilometers from home. When we got off the train we were welcomed by Uzbek people wearing their gowns and turbans. My grandmother asked my father in Yiddish, ‘Where are we, in a desert?’

The Uzbek people gave us tea and flat bread. We went to a kolkhoz. I was surprised to see how poor the Uzbek people were. There were clay huts with just holes instead of windows and doors, with just poles covered with clay on the roof. We were accommodated in one hut. It was awfully cold there: the wind was blowing through all the openings. My father decided we should move to the district town of Chirchiq, the word means ‘lamp’ in Uzbek. Papa went to the town and bumped into Moldavskiy, a Jewish man from Odessa 23, who was in evacuation with his wife and son. My father sold his posh brown suit, Moldavskiy also added something and they bought a shabby hut of one room and a kitchen. My mother’s work table was in the middle of the room and we accommodated around it. There were four of us left: Mama, Papa, my sister and I. Aunt Rachil and Grandmother Mariam moved to a nearby village. She died in 1943. She was buried without any ceremony in the village cemetery.

Our life was very hard, the bread that we received by cards 24 was too little. Mama sewed a lot and her clients paid her with food for her work. One woman was a shop assistant selling bread and she brought us a loaf of this sticky bread, which looked like soap. I had to help the family and became an apprentice of a blacksmith: he gave me food for my work. Later my father and Marcello – he and Feiga also lived in Uzbekistan – were mobilized to the labor army [mobilized to do physical work for the army], my father earned well and supported us. My father and Marcello worked near Moscow. Their Uzbek comrades didn’t want to work and starved themselves to exhaustion to be sent back home. My father and Marcello were to escort them. So he managed to visit us a few times, bringing flour, sugar, tinned meat or even sausage.

After the war

In September 1944, when Bessarabia was liberated, my father went to Kishinev and sent us a letter of invitation from there. We went back home. In Tashkent our luggage was stolen, but it was a minor problem, considering that how happy we felt going back home. Rachil, Musia, Feiga and Marcello gathered for a family council and decided it didn’t make sense to go back to Orgeyev. My father said it was only possible to live in a bigger town during the Soviet regime. At least it’s possible to get some food products. There were many abandoned apartments in the town and we moved in one on Kievskaya Street. Our neighbors from Orgeyev told us who had taken our belongings and we went there to pick them, but we only managed to get back my mother’s cutting table.

Life was improving. My father went back to work in the Moldplodoovoschtorg [Moldovan state-owned fruit and vegetable dealer] office. Mama continued with her sewing, but she couldn’t work as much as she did before the war. I finished school, of course, I was over aged, but there many such children at that time.

I was conscripted to the army in 1947. I was taken to the school of junior aviation specialists. After finishing it I served as supervisor at the air field in Balashikha near Moscow. Our commanders were very good to us. Once I was granted a leave home under the condition that I would bring a canister of wine before the New Year. I spent a whole month in Kishinev. In 1948 my commandment ordered me to go to an airfield in Bucharest since I was the only one, who knew Romanian. I had two soldiers with me: Kharitonov, a Russian guy, and Bagdasarov, an Armenian guy. We had no money with us: we only received a food ration. I picked some underwear from the storage, knowing that it was in great demand. On the way to Bucharest we stopped in Iasi [175 km north of Bucharest] where I bumped into my second cousin. This happened to be the Purim holiday and we spent the whole evening with her celebrating the holiday. This was the first time the guys tried hamantashen.

When we arrived in Bucharest I sold the clothes I had with me in a lady’s washroom. Now we had some money. This was a great risk: if we were stopped by a Soviet patrol we would have problems. Besides, we left our luggage and guns in the left luggage and all of this to go to the red-light district [brothels]. I didn’t care, but my comrades insisted that we went there; there was nothing of the kind in the USSR and prostitution was forbidden and strictly punishable. I took them to this street where girls in underwear were sitting before front doors. Seeing handsome Soviet guys they really jumped on us. Bagdasarov got frightened and we escaped. We spent the money we had in street cafes and on street shoe cleaners to polish our boots. We also had our pictures taken as a souvenir. This funny story only proves that I had no problems serving in the army.

Upon demobilization from the army I returned to my parents in Kishinev. Uncle Musia helped me to get a job at the meat grinder repair shop. I became an apprentice, a foreman and later a superintendent and worked at this shop my whole life. I also entered the Dnepropetrovsk College of Railroad Transport, but I never finished it due to my illness. I had psoriasis that acquired an acute form during examinations and my doctors advised me to quit my studies due to the stress this caused. There were mainly Jewish employees in the shop and its director was Moldovan. The anti-Semitism in the early 1950s didn’t affect us, though Jewish chief engineers were fired. I kept working without any problems. Once I visited a tobacco factory, when I was chief of technical supervision. I met Alina Litvak, a Jewish girl, who worked at this factory. I liked her and we began to see each other. Then we fell in love with each other and I proposed to her.

Alina was born in the town of Rybnitsa in 1929. She didn’t remember her father, Ilia Litvak, who died long before the Great Patriotic War, when Alina was just a small child. During the Great Patriotic War Alina and her mother were in the ghetto in Rybnitsa. Her mother, whose name I don’t remember, died in the ghetto. Alina and her sister Fania, who was a few years older than her, survived. After the war Alina lived with her aunt in Kishinev. After finishing a secondary school she went to work as a lab assistant at the tobacco factory. We had a small wedding party with my parents, relatives and a few friends. Of course, it was a common wedding with no chuppah. After the war we didn’t observe Jewish traditions, though we celebrated holidays, particularly Pesach, and my father always brought matzah from the synagogue.

After the wedding we lived with my parents for some time. My sister married Alexandr Goldstein, a Jewish man from Kishinev. Lida was a pharmacist and Alexandr was a railroad engineer. My sister and later I received apartments from his organization. Our parents stayed in their apartment. They lived a long life. My father died in the mid-1980s, and my mother lived 95 years. At the age of 90 she got bedridden and remained in this condition till she died in 1995. We buried our parents according to Jewish traditions, wrapped in takhrikhim, at the Jewish cemetery and the prayer [kaddish] was recited over their graves. 

We lived a good life. I earned well and was promoted to site superintendent in 1955. My wife joined the Communist Party. After about ten years of work she became chief of her laboratory, a forewoman and then shop superintendent. We didn’t have a car or a dacha 25, but we always spent vacations at the seashore or in a recreation center. We bought good food and clothes, often went to theaters and concerts. We celebrated birthdays and always invited friends and relatives. We also got together with friends on Soviet holidays to go to the river bank or to a forest and have a picnic and barbecue. We didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays, but we visited our parents where my mother treated us to all kinds of delicacies: she was an excellent cook.

In 1954 our son Ilia was born. We named him after his maternal grandfather. Ilia studied well. He finished the electromechanical technical school and worked at a plant. He never mentioned to me if he ever faced everyday anti-Semitism. Our family benefited well from perestroika 26. My son managed to use his commercial talent. He started from little and now he owns a big casino. In 1998 Ilia married Inna, a Russian girl, who is much younger than him. In 2003 their son Gera, my grandson, was born. They live their own life. I have little in common with my daughter-in-law, but my son helps me a lot.

My wife Alina, a holy person, a kind soul, with whom I lived a beautiful life together, died in 2003. It’s hard for me to accept that she is not with me any longer. My sister, her husband and their daughter Inna moved to Israel in the early 1990s. My sister died in 2000. My wife and I visited Israel a few times. It’s a magical country created by people’s hands and hard work, but it’s full of sunshine and light. We liked everything there: the warm sea, nice people and delicious cuisine. It’s a paradox that I, a member of a Zionist organization in my youth and a supporter of the establishment of a Jewish state, have stayed here. I always wanted to move there, but at first my wife was against it, later my son didn’t want to go there and then I gave up the thought of it. What would I do there, a  lonely old man, who doesn’t speak the language.

When Moldova became independent, it established all conditions for the development of the Jewish nation. I wouldn’t state there is no routine anti-Semitism and I’ve faced it every now and then, but we have our community, the Hesed 27, and it provides assistance to me as its client, the association of Jewish organizations. I’ve not become religious, but I often attend various events. I join my friends to celebrate holidays at the synagogue or in the Hesed, we share our memories and recipes of the Jewish cuisine: I know many from my mother. I’ve also enjoyed sharing my memories with you.

Glossary

Henryk Umow

Interviewer: Jakub Rajchman

Date of interview: July 2004

Henryk Umow is 86 years old, and he grew up in Lomza, where many Jewish families lived before the war. During our two meetings in his apartment in Legnica, Mr. Umow told me about Jewish life in Lomza and about his experiences of Polish-Jewish relations in Jedwabne 1, where he spent some time in the mid-1930s. Mr. Umow doesn't want to talk about the Holocaust period; he lost his mother and two sisters in the Lomza ghetto, and still finds it too painful to speak about. His story is interesting and full of insight into the difficult relations between Poles and Jews in Poland.

My name is Henryk Umow. Before the war my name was Chaim Umowa, but when the Russians entered Lomza in 1939 they registered me as Umow, because, they said, Umowa is feminine. [In both Russian and Polish, nouns ending with ‘a’ are usually feminine.] And then after the war I changed my first name to Henryk to make it more Polish. But my sister [Zlata] always called me Chaim, even after the war.

I was born in Kolno, a little town near Lomza, on 17th May 1917. In 1920, during the Polish-Bolshevik War [see Polish-Soviet War] 2, my family moved to Lomza. My father said that bullets where whizzing over our heads as we rode to Lomza in the cart. Which means I survived the Polish-Bolshevik War – everyone in the family says I was at the front!

My father’s name was Icchak Umowa. He already had two children from his first marriage: my brother Benzir was born in 1908, and my sister Zlata was born in 1910. Later, besides me, he had two more daughters with my mother – my younger sisters: Leja was born in 1920, and Esterka in 1922. My mother’s name was Dowa Umowa, nee Friedmann.

I don’t remember any of my grandparents, either on my mother’s side or my father’s. I don’t know where either family came from, or how they came to be in Kolno, where I was born. We never talked about it. I didn’t know anyone at all from either family, except for my mother’s brother, who was a shammash in the Jewish community in Jedwabne, and whom I lived with for a while. But I don’t even remember his name. Also, I know my brother and sister from Father’s first marriage had some family in Warsaw, but that was his late wife's family. There was an aunt too – Mother’s sister, I think – she married one of the owners of a carbonated-water plant. Wirenbaum was his name, but they emigrated to the US. I only remember that like us they lived in Lomza on Woziwodzka Street.

I remember Father well, even though he died before I was nine. He was tall – I came up to his shoulders, like Mother. I know he was a tailor by trade, but he didn’t work. He stayed home; I didn’t know exactly what he did – I was too little. He said he was a middleman, in horses or wood or whatever – it was always a bit of extra income. I remember that Father never hit us. When I’d done something wrong he sat me down and gave me a talking-to. And when I started to cry he’d ask why I was crying, since he wasn’t hitting me. But I would have rather be thrashed, and I’d tell him to do it. But he said that if he beat me, I’d just cry a while and then do something bad again. I had to sit and listen – he thought that was the best way to raise a child. I remember that, and I did the same with my own children.

Mother wasn’t tall – about the same height as me. She was my older siblings’ stepmother, but they respected her and called her Mother – she was like a real mother to them. Mother was a hosiery maker – she had a machine, and she made new stockings and repaired the runs in old ones. Sometimes she’d make new heels or toes for socks. Having them repaired was worth it to people – it was cheaper than buying new ones and they saved a few groszys that way. The best season for her was spring – that’s when the most young ladies would come to have runs repaired. My mother was a very good cook. Actually my favorite dish has always been every single one; I’ve always said there’s just one thing I won’t eat for love nor money: what we don’t have! And when Mother would ask if something she’d made tasted good, I always told her that if I’m still alive, that means it tasted good. I figure Mother was most likely born in 1895 or 1896. I used to have a picture of her from before she was married, but it got lost.

My brother Benzir was ten years older than me. We called him Bencak, and then later, after the war, he changed his name to Bronislaw. He was a shoemaker by trade – he made new uppers for shoes, and also patched holes when necessary. I don’t remember much about him from before the war, because when Father died, he and Zlata went to Warsaw, to live with their late mother’s family. I know he got married there in Warsaw, to the daughter of a master shoemaker that he worked for. His wife’s name was Roza; her maiden name was Pomeranc. I only visited them once before the war, for a few days. Mother sent me to find work in Warsaw. I remember I went there by car – by truck – some driver took me. I was there about three days, but there was no work to be had, so I went back to Lomza.

My sister’s name was Zlata – in Polish Zofia. Here in Legnica, after the war, after she died, when there are memorial prayers in the synagogue, I asked them to refer to her as Golda. Some people asked who in my family was named that. You see, Zlata means ‘gold’, and in Yiddish that’s Golda. She was eight years older than me. She was a communist, a member of the SDKPiL 3 and then the KPP 4, and she got in trouble for that. I’ll never forget how one time I took a job guarding an orchard, to earn a little money. There were two of us, and the other boy had the night shift, but he went to sleep in the shed, and that’s when there was a break-in and something was stolen. Some guys from the secret police came to ask questions. And as soon as they heard my last name, they asked me how I was related to Zofia Umow. When I said she was my sister, they asked right away whether I fooled around with communism too. I managed to wiggle out of it somehow, but they kept an eye on me for a long time after that. All the time they thought I was collaborating with my sister. I remember she never got married. There was a man who hung around her and I think he even wanted to marry her, but she didn’t have time, because she was put in jail every time she turned around. And that lasted up until the war.

My two other sisters, Leja and Esterka, were younger than me – Leja was two years younger, and Esterka four. I was always spanking Leja, because she was beating up little Esterka. Leja was such a practical joker. On 1st April – April Fool’s Day – I remember she told a couple to meet each other in two different places, the woman in one place, the guy in another, telling each of them that the other had asked to meet them there. Or she’d send a midwife somewhere where no one was having a baby. I used to have a picture of her with me in the park in Lomza, but it got lost.

In Lomza we lived on Woziwodzka Street at first, on the corner of Szkolna [Street], and then on Krotka [Street], which was later called Berek Joselewicz [Street]. On Joselewicz [Street] we had an attic apartment, a kitchen and two little rooms. I remember my youngest sister, Esterka, was still in the cradle. There were these skylights there, and once a pigeon got in through them, and Mother had Bencak catch it and made pigeon soup, and my brother and sister ate the meat off the bones.

I was a very sickly child. I remember that my parents kept goats specially for me, so that I could have goat’s milk, because it’s healthy. We were poor, but Mother made sure our food was kosher. She did all the cooking for the holidays herself, and on Sabbath there was cholent. I remember that once I was in one of the rooms eating a non-kosher sausage I’d bought for myself as soon as I’d earned a bit of money, and it smelled really good. Mother called to me from the kitchen, asking me to give her a piece of it; she didn’t know it was pork. So I told her I was very hungry but that I’d go buy another one for her. Mother cared about keeping kosher and I didn’t want to upset her. So I dashed to the shop and bought a kosher sausage. Something similar happened with Leja: she saw me eating ham once, and she kept looking at me – she wanted me to give her some. I told her I wouldn’t give her any, but that she could take some herself. Because that way it would be her own decision to sin – I didn’t want to encourage her to sin.

Not every street in Lomza had plumbing in those days; on our street they still sold water by the bucket. There were lots of Jews living in Lomza. Almost everyone in the building where we lived was Jewish. I remember there was one woman who made wigs – we called her ‘Szejtel Macher’, which means wig-maker. The assistant rabbi also lived there; I don’t remember exactly who he was and what he did for a living, but that’s what everyone called him. And the owner of the whole building lived on the second floor; he had a butcher shop. I met his son after the war – he had a butcher shop here in Legnica. He gave me meat for free many times. The only Pole in the building was the caretaker. And I remember that I’d play with all kinds of kids – Polish ones too – in the courtyard of the building. Once I heard how they kept saying ‘fucking hell’; I didn’t know what it meant and I repeated it over and over. I went home and asked Mother, and she said it was a dirty word. And I go back to the courtyard and keep on repeating it. I remember that – Mother must have come up with a very deft ‘explanation’ of what it meant. I didn’t understand it until later.

Our family wasn’t too religious. Father went to the synagogue on Fridays and Saturdays, but he didn’t have payes. He took me with him on Saturdays. I had to go – Father wouldn’t put up with any dissent. We had electric lighting and we used it on Saturdays as well – we didn’t ask anyone to turn on the lights for us. Some people asked Poles to do that, I remember. During Pesach we definitely didn’t have bread – Mother always made sure of that. Every crumb had to be cleaned out, just like you’re supposed to. Some of the pots were made kosher: we poured in water and threw in a red-hot stone and scalded it that way. Other dishes were kept separate, used only during Pesach – plates, spoons and so on – after all, you’re not going to make kosher a plate!

We had matzah too: we went to a bakery, where the women rolled out the dough, and one guy made the holes in it and then it went in the oven. But I’d always keep a couple of groszys in my pocket to buy rolls on the side – I wanted to see what a roll tastes like during Pesach. But I never spent that money, because every time I left the house to buy that bread, I was so full that I didn’t want to buy anything to eat. I don’t recall any seder, because when Father was alive I was still too little, and later there was no one to lead it: Father had died, my brother had left, and I was too young. We just had a normal supper. And on normal days Mother also made sure our food was kosher. When she bought a chicken, she’d have me take it to the butcher so that the ritual was carried out. And when she bought meat, it had to be thoroughly soaked and salted.

The synagogue in Lomza was on the corner of Jalczynska and Senatorska [Streets]. There was also a prayer room a little further down on Senatorska [Street], and another not far from our apartment. I don’t remember any others. You had to pay for your seat in the synagogue. I remember that Father had bought a place, to the right of the bimah, I think. It was a beautiful synagogue, with the signs of the zodiac painted on the ceiling, all twelve signs. That was the main decoration. I remember there was a balcony where the women stood. There was a mikveh too; I was there just once, with Father. That was one Friday, just before Sabbath. I had to go into the water three times – we said in Yiddish ‘taygel machen’ [to take a bath]. That’s the only time I was there; normally we washed at home, using a basin.

We spoke Yiddish at home, and I could read Yiddish too. There was a series of books called Groschen Bibliothek [the Penny Library] – these little booklets, published in Yiddish. I read Spinoza, and The Spanish Inquisition, about Torquemada [Tomas de, first Inquisition-General (c1420-98), a Dominican monk whose name has become a byword for cruelty and severity] and how Jews were burned alive, and about the Dreyfus trial. [Dreyfus, Alfred (1859-1935): central figure in the Dreyfus case, which divided France for four years. An officer of Jewish decent in the French artillery, Dreyfus was accused and convicted of having betrayed military secrets. He was sentenced to life. He was finally proven innocent and pardoned in 1906.] They were just little booklets, but what stories! I remember I left tons of those little books behind when I left Lomza.

Father died in 1927. He was 57, and he had a lung disease. I was in the hospital at the time, because I was also very sickly. I remember that my brother came to get me, but the doctor didn’t want to let me go, because it was the second time that year that I’d been hospitalized for rheumatism. The first time it was my groin, the second time it was my knees, and the doctor didn’t want me to have to come back a third time. It was in April, just before Pesach, and it was cold and wet. And if I’d come down with the same thing for a third time, it would have become chronic. But Mother begged him to let me come home. She had to sign a declaration that I wouldn’t go to the funeral, but I had to see him! And I saw Father laid out at home, and I began to sob. When they took his body away for the funeral, they left me with some neighbors who kept an eye on me to make sure I didn’t go out anywhere, not even out in the courtyard.

When Father died, Bencak and Zlata went to Warsaw to live with their late mother’s family. They knew Mother wouldn’t be able to support them. Even with just the three of us children it was hard. Mother arranged for me to live in the Jewish orphanage. That was lucky, because it meant she could take care of my sisters, Leja and Esterka. The orphanage was on Senatorska Street, in a nice building of its own. That building is still standing. On the ground floor there was a room where they had prayers, and a dining room, kitchen and storage room. On the second floor there was a playroom and the office, and the sleeping quarters were on the third floor. I remember there was a Jewish school on the same street, and between the school and the orphanage was a hospital.

Life in the orphanage was nice. The house-father was nice. Everything was done Jewish-style, and in accordance with the religion. In the morning when we got up we had to wash, then off to the prayer room for morning prayers. Then afternoon prayers and evening prayers – we had to pray three times a day. We ate all our meals together in the dining room. And the cooks had some trouble with me, because I kept finding hairs in my soup. After I pointed it out a few times, it stopped happening – apparently they started wearing headscarves. On the big holidays we got together with the children from another orphanage and celebrated them together.

I went to the cheder, which was right next door. I was very inquisitive in school – I was always asking: ‘why?’ But in religion the dogma is what it is and you can’t ask why. So the teacher was always sending me to stand in the corner – that was my turf. He said I was a big free-thinker, and that I could learn everything if I wanted to, but I didn’t always want to. They even wanted to send me to a yeshivah for rabbinical studies, but I didn’t want to go. But I often feel that orphanage did me a lot of good. I don’t know how Mother arranged for me to live there, and if she hadn’t, I would have turned into a street kid. Being a boy, it would have been easy to run wild, but in the orphanage there was discipline and order. And I saw my mother and sisters often – I went home for dinners, usually on Saturday, because during the week I didn’t have time, what with the cheder, and after classes there was homework to do.

I had my bar mitzvah ceremony in the orphanage as well. I remember there were several of us 13-year-old boys and we all had our bar mitzvah ceremony together. And after that, when I didn’t want to study anymore, I had to leave the orphanage and start working. While I was still in the orphanage they apprenticed me to a tailor. That was a first-class craftsman! But I didn’t take to that line of work, and he got rid of me. Then they turned me over to another one. I learned fast there; after a month I was better than the other boy, who had been there a whole year. But instead of teaching me, the craftsman sent me shopping with his wife, to carry the bags, so I ran away from there. But I had to go back home – I was about 14 or 15 then.

When I returned home, Mother gave me 25 zlotys. That tided me over for a while, but I had to start working. First I went to work for a cap-maker – a craftsman who made caps, partly by hand and partly by machine. I helped him make caps for veterans of World War I and the Polish-Bolshevik War. But later he didn’t have any more work for me, so I was unemployed again. Finally one of the orphanage board members – a shoemaker by trade – needed to hire a boy, and he hired me, and taught me the trade. I worked as a shoemaker up until the war. First for that craftsman, and then for another one, whose workshop was in a building that had a plum-jam factory in the basement. And that’s why I don’t like plum jam – I saw too much of it being made. Exactly what he did with those plums I don’t know, because I didn’t look inside, but I remember to this day all those plums lying on the street.

In 1935 I got very sick. It turned out to be pneumonia. I remember that Mother didn’t allow them to use cupping glasses on me , and I don’t know the reason, but the doctor said later that that saved my life. I was very weak and had to stay in bed. And this was in July, the time of year when everyone went swimming. I always went swimming in the Narwia [the river that flows through Lomza] at that time of year, but that year I couldn’t. At one point I started coughing up blood. Mother was working in the other room, and I called her, and she sent for the doctor right away. When he came he said I was out of danger, that now I’d get better. And not long after that I was on my feet again. And I quietly got dressed one day and went to my aunt’s house – the aunt who married Wirenbaum. I was still very weak, but I wanted to go somewhere. So Mother went hunting for me, and when she found me she yelled at me, because I hadn’t let her know where I was. That was a serious illness, but somehow I managed to pull through.

Not long after that I went to live with my uncle – my mother’s brother, who was a shammash in the Jewish community in Jedwabne. There was a job waiting for me there. I worked and had meals at the master craftsman’s place, and slept at my uncle’s. I was in Jedwabne for a few months. I don’t remember the town itself very well; I know there was a synagogue, but a much smaller one than in Lomza – more like a prayer room. I didn’t have much contact with the Jewish community; I went back to Lomza for holidays, except once, when the boss and his family went out of town for Yom Kippur and he asked me to keep an eye on his apartment. I don’t remember my uncle very well anymore either. I don’t remember his first name; his surname was Friedmann. He had a short beard, trimmed to a point. He didn’t have payes. His son studied at the yeshivah , and I remember that once he spent a few days with us in Lomza, and I saw how he shaved. He made lather from some special powder that burned the hair, then he spread it on and removed it with a little stick, because he wasn’t allowed to use a razor.

The one thing about Jedwabne that has stayed in my memory is the anti-Semitism. When I was going back to my uncle’s from work I had to go through the town square. And there were Polish kids sitting on the steps there. Once when I was passing, they threw a cap at me. It landed by my feet, so I kicked it and kept going. And the next thing I knew I was surrounded. I didn’t stop to think, just punched one of them in the mouth and started running away. Then they started throwing rocks at me. So I picked one up and threw it at them, and ran to the other side of the street so their rocks wouldn’t hit me. And then one of them saved me. I don’t remember his name – I know his brother was a communist. He calmed the others down. Then they demanded that I hand over my knife – they thought I’d wounded one of them with a knife. I showed them my hand with a bleeding finger that I’d cut when I punched the guy in the mouth, and I told them that that was my knife. They calmed down then. But there was a lot of anti-Semitism in the town. [Editor’s note: Following the publication of Jan Tomasz Gross’s book ‘Neighbors’, which revealed that Poles had carried out a pogrom on the Jewish population in July 1942, Jedwabne was stigmatized and has become a sort of symbol of the cruel anti-Semitism of provincial Poland.]

When father had died and I’d come back home after four years in the orphanage, we lived on Dluga Street in Lomza. That was our last apartment – we lived there until the Nazis drove us out. It was on the ground floor, in an annex; we had a very small room and a kitchen. I remember that when we had a houseguest – for example my sister or brother from Warsaw – I’d sleep under the table so they could have my bed. After all, I wasn’t about to share a bed with my mother or my sisters! It wasn’t what you’d call luxurious.

I had a few friends in Lomza, and sometimes we’d get together for a drink, to celebrate something, for example new tailor-made clothes. I remember that two friends – also Jews – and I all had new clothes made at about the same time, and we wanted to celebrate. And since they lived on the outskirts and I lived in the center of town, we celebrated at my place. I remember that was the first time my sister Leja ever drank vodka – and she downed a whole glass at once! And she wasn’t drunk; she just laughed at us. I was about 20 years old then, and she was about 18.

There were other ways of having fun too. There were two movie theaters in town, and we went to the movies. Most of them were in Polish, but there were Yiddish films too. I remember a movie called Ben Hur – that was in Yiddish. The first time I went to the movies my brother took me. That was just after my father’s death, but before my brother went away. I was about nine years old then. My brother was working in Lomza then. I don’t remember the title, but it was some kind of war film – some soldiers with pikes came on the screen, and I got scared and hid under the seat. And I told my brother we were lucky there was a pane of glass [between us and the soldiers]. I didn’t know they couldn’t see us from there. And he laughed and said it was called a screen. But it was my first trip to the movies! There was also a friend called Aaron Ladowicz – I'll never forget him until the day I die. His father was a shoemaker, and he worked with my brother. Right after a movie, he could always sing all the songs from it perfectly. What a memory he had!

There were also various Jewish youth organizations in Lomza. For example the ‘shomers’ – Hashomer Hatzair 5. They had their get-togethers in a separate building – it was open almost every day from 5pm. They had different lectures, Jewish ideas, but also dances and parties. I signed up as a member there, to stay off the streets. I remember that was where I ended my career as a caretaker. I was supposed to make sure everything was cleaned up and so on. And in the basement of the building, some fruit dealer had a warehouse, and there were apples in it. Everything was behind a grate, but we got ourselves a stick and put a nail in the end of it. And every day he lost two or three apples.

I met my fiancee at the ‘shomers’. Her name was Judis Fuchs and she had beautiful eyes – blue ones. I still remember her eyes – to this day I’ve never seen any like them. She was younger than me – born in 1920 or 1921. Her father was a porter: he hung around the town square with all his ropes waiting until something needed hauling. My mother didn't like it, but I wanted to marry Judis. I promised her we’d get married, but only after I got out of the army, because a man who hadn’t been in the army was nothing but a jerk-off.

I didn’t take much interest in politics. I didn’t belong to any party, just – I don’t remember who talked me into it, but I joined Hahalutz 6. That was a leftist organization. But just before the war broke out I resigned from it, because they were getting ready to go to Israel [Palestine], and I didn’t want to. I had a girlfriend here, and we were engaged, and anyway I couldn’t leave my mother alone with just my sisters.

I remember that I liked to work out. In Lomza there was a Jewish athletics club called the Maccabees [see Maccabi World Union] 7 and there were training sessions there every day. They were run by a sports champion who had even been in the Olympics – I’ve forgotten his name. They weren’t professional training sessions, just simple exercises. I was stopped pretty often by the Polish secret police then, because I would leave the house in the evening with a little package, and they thought my sister had come and that I was handing out some sort of illegal communist leaflets. Then I started taking a different route, in order to avoid them, but it was too far to go, so I thought: ‘so let them check me.’

The Maccabi club in Lomza was quite good, especially in soccer. When there was a match with the Maccabees and the LKS – the Lomza Sports Club, in which only Poles played – the stadium was always full. Because the Jews were playing the Poles. And the Maccabees frequently won. I remember they had some good players – three brothers named Jelen. The youngest of them ran so fast his feet barely touched the grass. Once during a half-time he heard that the Poles wanted to rough him up good to eliminate him from the game, and that the coach was going to take him out of the game just to protect him. So he ran out onto the field and rested there during the half-time, so that the coach wouldn’t replace him. And his brother – I don’t remember if it was the oldest or the middle one – once kicked the ball so hard that the goalkeeper slammed into the goal along with the ball. When a match was held on a Saturday, there were always Hassidim [see Hasidism] 8 standing at the [stadium] gates in their payes trying to stop Jews from going to the game, because it’s not permitted on Saturday. But hardly anyone listened to them. I remember the stadium was on the road into Lomza from Piatnica, a village north of Lomza. It was a really beautiful stadium.

Everywhere we lived, both before and after my father’s death, it was always the same: all Jews, except for a Polish caretaker. Most of the Jews were traders or craftsmen. I remember that one family had a windmill; that was on the way to Lomzyca. On Senatorska Street a Jew named Golabek had a mill, but an electric one, not a windmill. One Jew also had a sawmill; one had a brewery, another a textile factory. Then there was the Mirage Cinema – the owner of that was a Jew too. There were lots of Jewish shops. And on Sundays Jews sometimes did some stealthy business in their shops, by the back door, since they couldn’t open officially. [Working on Sundays was prohibited by law to accommodate the Christian majority.] Even Jews told a joke about how one Jew asks another: ‘How’s business?’ The other tells him that he loses money every day. So the first one is surprised – how come he hasn’t gone bankrupt?! The shopkeeper explains that he has to close on Sundays, so he doesn’t lose money then, and it all comes out even.

Relations between Poles and Jews varied. When there was some kind of holiday, for example Corpus Christi Day and there was a procession, Jewish kids were kept at home. [On Corpus Christi Day Catholic churches traditionally organize a street procession, during which prayers are said at four altars set up along the route.] And I think that was right, because they only would have gotten in the way. But there was a lot of anti-Semitism at times. There were two movie theaters in Lomza: the Mirage, which was Jewish, and the Reduta, which was owned by a Pole. But Jews went to both and made up the majority of the audience. Then the NDs [National Democrats, see Endeks] 9 set up a picket line around the Reduta and only let Poles in. And the place was full of empty seats. The cinema owner had to bribe them – 2 zlotys for philanthropic purposes – to get them to stop the picketing so that Jews could go in again.

Another time they stood in front of Jewish shops and didn’t want to let Poles go in. Their motto was ‘stick with your own kind’. It was a market day, and a lot of country people came after they’d sold their own wares, and they wanted to buy something: because they knew a Jew wouldn’t cheat them, and that they’d get better goods cheaper, and even get things on borg [Yiddish for credit] sometimes. But the NDs didn’t want to let them in. So the farmers went to their wagons and got their T-bars and drove the NDs off. It was the same when the NDs formed a picket not far from a company that a Jew owned, but where only Poles worked. They sorted old second-hand clothes there and packed them up for alterations. And all these workers came to that Jew and said they wanted a short break to straighten something out. So he let them go, and they went and beat up those NDs, and that was the end of it.

I had some adventures myself. Once I was walking down the street and a Jewish guy tells me not to go further, because some NDs are hanging about. But I kept going and they didn’t recognize me as a Jew, because I didn’t look at all Jewish, mostly because I was blond. Another time I was walking with a Hasid dressed in Jewish clothes, and we saw some Polish country boys sitting a little way off. I told him not to say anything, and we kept going. They were saying to each other: ‘Look! That Jew-boy is walking with one of us!’ And they didn’t touch us. I was thinking to myself: ‘You fuckers, it’s not one Jewboy, it’s two!’ Another time I was walking along the sidewalk by myself, and there were two guys on the other side. I heard them arguing about whether or not I was a Jew. And a moment later one of them ran up to me from behind and tried to kick me in the butt. I didn’t see him, just felt that he was behind me, and I instinctively reached out and grabbed his leg. And he fell down – could have cracked his skull open. And then the other one said to him: ‘I told you he’s one of us!’

When Hitler had come to power and the war was near, people talked about it. The NDs were on his side. But then some of them came to their senses and said that Hitler had used the Jews to distract them, and armed himself and now he was going to kill them. But I thought to myself: ‘You were on Hitler’s side, so now you’ve got what’s coming to you.’ By 1939 anyone who had a radio was listening to it and talking about it. I spent time at Hahalutz – they had a radio, so I heard Hitler bellowing sometimes. Then in August I came up for army recruitment. I was glad, because after the army I was going to marry my fiancee. I went to the commission and they gave me a check-up. I weighed 48.2 kilos then, but I was healthy. The doctor listened to my chest and I was classified as Category A. [Category A is the highest, indicating full fitness for active military duty.] I remember there was a rich guy’s son with me – he had a lung condition.

I chose the infantry, and I knew that in April of the next year I’d be on active duty. So I went back to work. But that was August [1939], and the newspapers were already saying that there might be a war. Then there was some sort of provocation – they wrote about that too. And one day – I think it was a Friday – I was at work as usual. We didn’t have a radio there, but I went home for dinner and someone said the war had started. I had something to eat at home, and went back to work, and the boss said ‘there’s no work anymore – there’s war’.

When the Germans were close to Lomza, I ran to the barracks and said I was a recruit. They told me the Germans were close and that I should escape, and that if need be they’d find me and induct me. So I escaped to Bialystok. Some very distant relatives of ours lived there – some kind of cousin of Mother’s. I never knew them at all – that was the first and last time I ever saw them. I spent a few days there and moved on. I remember that the Germans chased me all the way to Suprasl [10 km northeast of Bialystok]. I went back to Lomza, where my mother and sisters had stayed. The Germans were in Lomza for ten days and then our ‘allies’ came [see Annexation of Eastern Poland] 10.

I nearly wound up in the Russian police force. I was asked to join, but I thought I didn’t know Polish well enough, and besides, how could I boss around the old [Polish] authorities? So I escaped again, heading toward Bialystok. And then when the Germans came back, we all wound up in the Lomza ghetto. But I don’t want to talk about that. I lost my mother and two sisters there, and it’s too hard for me to talk about it. Too painful. I only know that when the ghetto was liquidated [The ghetto that was formed in July 1941 was liquidated in November 1942, and the surviving residents were transported to Zambrow (20 km south of Lomza) and from there to the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau], I managed to escape and I hid in the home of a communist in the village of Zawady [3 km south of Lomza]. And that’s where I hung out until the liberation.

The only ones who survived the Holocaust were my brother Benzir and my sister Zlata, from Father’s first marriage. Zlata was in prison just outside Warsaw when the war broke out, and when the fighting drew near, the prison staff unlocked the criminals’ cells so they could escape. But they broke down the doors of the political prisoners’ cells and they all escaped together. My sister managed to walk all the way to Warsaw, which still hadn’t been surrounded. Then – I don’t know how – she and my brother both managed to escape to Lithuania. And they lived through the whole war there.

The rest of the family died. Mother and my two other sisters, Leja and Esterka, died in the ghetto. I don’t know what happened to my uncle from Jedwabne – I reckon he was burned in that barn along with the others. The only others left were the ones who had emigrated to the USA before the war. That uncle – I don’t remember his name – sent me a letter right after the war, asking me to describe the political and economic situation in Poland, and I was so stupid that instead of writing back to him, I turned the letter over to the authorities as attempted espionage. [Editor’s note: In the early years of the communist regime in Poland, every attempt at contact with people abroad, especially in the US, was likely to be regarded as attempted espionage.] And just think – he might have arranged for me to come and live with him.

I stayed on in Zawady for a bit after the liberation, and then headed west, to the Recovered Territories [see Regained Lands] 11, because I no longer had any home or family. And that's how I got to Legnica. That was in 1946. I remember that there were a lot of Jews here. Later on, during the Sinai War 12, there was a joke going around about Nasser threatening that if Israel didn’t stop fighting he’d bomb the world’s three biggest Jewish towns: Legnica, Swidnica and Walbrzych. There was a Jewish committee, and I went there first, because where else was I supposed to go? That committee, it was like all the Jewish organizations – whoever was involved most closely with it got the most out of it. There were various gifts from abroad coming in – clothes, materials, money. They’d sort through it and keep the best stuff for themselves and give the worse stuff away to whomever they wanted. I never got anything. Once, I remember, they sent me to Wroclaw to pick up some kind of parcel. It was a great big package, with all kinds of things in it. And the train was so crowded I had to ride on the roof with that package, and every time we went under a viaduct I had to lie flat to keep my head from being knocked off. And I brought the package to the committee, and they didn’t give me anything! But I didn’t care. I had some clothes to wear, and enough money to feed myself.

At first, just after I arrived, I worked for the Russians, in a tank factory [some Soviet military industry were moved after the war to Poland]. That’s what we called it, but really it was a repair service that had been at the front and then, after the war, remained in Legnica. I didn’t want to work as a shoemaker anymore, because there was work only in the fall and spring. I pretended I was an electrician and they believed me. And I became an electrician due to that ‘ailment’ of mine – just one look and I get the hang of things. [Mr. Umow likes to joke about his inborn ability to learn.] My son and my uncle have that too. I became the staff electrician. At work I often talked with one Russian who had been at the front when Lomza was captured. He told me they had huge losses, and I asked him which side they’d taken the city from. When he told me it was from the north, I told him it would have been far easier from the south, the way Lomza was taken in World War I – that’s what older people in Lomza had told me. He said it was too bad I hadn’t been there with them, because I would have been a hero. Later on they wanted to put me on a pay-per-job system, and I quit – as a staff electrician I was mostly waiting for something that needed doing, and how much would I earn for spending five minutes to change a fuse?! Then they came to my house a few time and wanted me to come back to work – they’d put me back on salary and even give me a raise. But I thought: ‘The Russians are here today, but they’ll be gone tomorrow, and I’ll lose my job then anyway.’

I found another job almost immediately. A vacancy had just come up at a vinegar plant and I went to work there as an electrician. Then they merged the vinegar plant with a winery, and the chief engineer told me to go to the winery, because it was bigger. When I looked at those apples lying on the ground and pouring down the flue onto the production line, it reminded me of that plum-jam factory from before the war that made me stop liking jam. The same thing happened with apples. I worked there for a little while, then went to work for the police. I’d rather not say how that came about. I was in the secret police, in intelligence. I was trained in Wroclaw, and then worked in Legnica. I didn’t wear a uniform – I could only put it on on a superior’s orders. Later they wanted to transfer me to Wroclaw. I agreed on the condition that I be given an apartment. They gave me a transfer, but no apartment. I didn’t earn enough to have two homes, so I commuted to Wroclaw. Fortunately one decent officer told me to submit a petition and that they’d transfer me back to Legnica. And I wound up working in the office in charge of identification cards, and that’s where I ended my career.

For a long time I had almost no contact with the Jewish community. While I was working, I didn’t have time to go to the community or to the TSKZ 13. Anyway it was a long way from my home. It was only after I retired that I started attending both. Because I didn’t feel like cooking, and I could always have dinner at the Jewish community, and chat a bit. And at the TSKZ there were sometimes concerts or other events.

In the 1960s I thought about going to Israel. But my wife messed that up for me. There were these two Jewish merchants that I used to borrow money from frequently. I always paid them back, so they were happy to lend to me. And without saying anything to me, my wife turned them in for gambling. And she came to my office, saying I was going to get a reward. I bawled her out for butting into other people’s business. I wanted to get it all straightened out, but it was too late, and they put them both in prison. As soon as they got out they emigrated to Israel. And – well, I was afraid to go there, because I was sure they thought that it was me who had turned them in, and if I ran into them there, who knows what might happen. So I stayed in Legnica. And I still owed one of them 200 zlotys. I still haven’t paid him back.

I never personally experienced much anti-Semitism in Legnica. When someone tried making comments, I’d just shut his mouth for him. Only one time, when I was in Walbrzych visiting a woman and went to church with her, I heard a sermon where some bishop – I don’t remember where he was from – said that when Jesus was asked if he was a Jew, he had said no; but a week later the church was celebrating Jesus’s circumcision [Mr. Umow is referring to the celebration of Jesus being presented in the Temple on the eighth day after his birth.] And I didn’t personally experience anything when those events in 1968 took place [see Gomulka Campaign] 14. Just one Pole asked me why I didn’t leave the country. And he even proposed that we exchange ID papers, so that he could leave in my place. Another Pole told me that in the art school in Legnica, one of the teachers locked the Jewish students in a room and kept watch to make sure nothing happened to them. That was his duty as a human being. And I also heard about one Jew who left the country then – he came back to Poland later and wanted to put flowers on Gomułka’s grave, to thank him for kicking him out. Because he’s doing very well now.

I didn’t belong the PZPR 15. There was a time when everyone had to belong, but then they threw me out, and took away my membership card. I don’t want to talk about how that came about. Later they told me to submit a petition and they’d take me back in, but I didn’t want to. Once when I was sitting in the army canteen two Russian soldiers sat down with me, and I explained to them that I agree with communism but don’t belong to the Party. Why? Because when the committee secretary or some other member steals things, and I have to call him ‘comrade’ – if he’s a thief that makes me one too. I’d rather call him ‘mister’. I remember that those two looked at each other, bought me a shot of vodka and left, saying I should forget they’d ever been there. I understood – I knew that just for hearing something like that they could end up in Siberia.

I met my wife here in Legnica, while I was working for the police. She was Polish. I found out her life story too late – I should have left her sooner, but as it was our daughter had already been born and I didn’t want to abandon her. My wife had told me that a German had lived in her family’s home, which was in a town near Tarnowo called Mosciki. I sometimes said to her: ‘what, he couldn’t live anywhere else?!’ And later it turned out that she’d lived with that Nazi! I got a divorce in the end, but far later than I should have. Anyway I’d rather not rehash it.

My daughter Grazyna was born in 1951, and my son Bogdan two years later. Both of them grew up knowing they have Jewish ancestry. My son didn’t and still doesn’t have any contact with the Jewish community, but my daughter keeps in touch with it. She goes there for dinners, sometimes helps out when it’s needed. Sometimes when there’s a holiday she helps get everything ready. She never takes any money for it, and of course they have to pay the cooks and so on. My daughter lives on her own; she has three children, and two of her sons are away from home. She’s on public assistance and has a hard time too. My son lives here with me. After he married and he and his wife moved in, they lived in the little room; now I’ve given them the big one and live in the little one myself.

My brother and sister, Benzir and Zlata, stayed on in Warsaw after the war. I used to go there on vacation pretty often; I even had a picture of us together not long after the war, at the unveiling of the monument to the ghetto heroes. But that picture’s lost too. My brother had a daughter named Lila – a very pretty girl. She was born just before the war, in 1939. He sent her to Israel when she was a teenager, and then he and his wife emigrated to Australia. And right away he arranged for his daughter to come there too, because he didn’t want her to serve in the army, and in Israel if a girl is 18 and single she goes to the army. [In fact marital status is not a criterion. Only girls from Orthodox Jewish families do not serve in the army.] It was at the beginning of May 1963 that they left the country. And my sister died that same month.

My sister worked for the Russians after the war – she was always hanging around those little Red sweethearts. She even wanted my daughter to come and live with her in Warsaw, but my wife wouldn’t agree to it and I didn’t insist. Now I regret that – maybe she’d be better off now. Back then in May 1963 when Zlata died – I remember I came [to Warsaw] on the 3rd to say good-bye to my brother. Zlata was already in the hospital then; I remember that she didn’t want me to kiss her, because she had jaundice and was worried about my children. And that was my last conversation with her. On 16th May I was at home, and the doorbell rings. I open the door, and it’s a telegram [informing Mr Umow of his sister’s death]. I remember it was 5:05pm. When I read it I started bawling like a child. I didn’t have any family left. When my sister died, I got a letter from my brother, written in Yiddish. And my wife – a Pole – mislaid it somewhere and I couldn’t even write back, because the address was lost. And I haven’t heard anything [from him] since. My sister’s medals were left to me – a bronze service cross and a Work Banner Second Class [order of merit awarded by the state], the documents as well as the medals themselves. When I worked for the police some guy told me that I could wear those medals on national holidays. I told him no – I could wear what I’d earned myself, but I wasn’t going to parade around in my sister’s medals for her accomplishments.

And so Ilive from day to day. Every day I’m prepared for it to be my last. I’m 86 years old already, working on 87. I can barely see anymore, not even my own writing. I’ve already got a plot waiting for me in the Jewish cemetery in Legnica; all that’s left is to move in. But I don’t mind, because the one thing I’m sure of is that I’ll live until I die.

Glossary:

Judita Haikis
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya
Date of interview: May 2004

Judita Haikis is a big woman with wise, understanding, a little said, but still smiling eyes. Judita is a wonderful and very hospitable lady. Though few weeks from now Judit is leaving for Germany to her grandchildren and is very busy in this regard, she keeps her two-bedroom apartment in a rather new building on the outskirts of Kiev clean and cozy and one can tell that its owner has made a great effort to make it comfortable through years.  She has 1960s-style furniture, carefully maintained, pictures on the walls and flowers in vases. Judita welcomes me as if I were some she knows well and tells me about herself and her family in detail, though I can tell that any of her memories are hard for her.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

As for the beginnings of our family, I remember (from what my father told me) as far back as my paternal great grandfather Leopold Herman Edelmann. I need to emphasize here that all Edelmann folks have always tried to correspond to their surname that means a “noble man” in German.  I mean, they were honest, decent, men of principle, - noble men, in short.

My great grandfather Leopold Herman Edelmann and my great grandmother Terez Edelmann, nee Peterfreind, lived in the small Slovak settlement of Hrachovo. [Editor’s note: During most of the life of the great grandparents todays Hrachovo, Rimaraho at the time was in Northern Hungary. Today the village is in Slovakia.] They were farmers with an average income.  They had 12 children: six sons and six daughters. I knew few of them and know what my father told about the others. I don’t know the years of birth of my grandfather’s brothers and sisters.  My great grandfather’s older children were his sons Max and Moric, born one after another. The next was my grandfather’s sister Pepka. My grandfather Adolf, born in 1868, was the fourth child in the family. Then cane my grandfather’s sister Regina, and the next were his sisters Betka and Relka. Then my grandfather’s brothers Sandor, Pal and Jozsef were born. The youngest were sisters Anna and Etelka. I know nothing about my grandfather’s childhood. My father told me about him that he was the smartest and the most talented of 12 children. He learned to read and showed interest in all kinds of studies. My grandfather didn’t have a higher education, but he read a lot and always wanted to learn more. He studied Talmud and Jewish history. He didn’t do anything else, but study. My great grandfather’s family spoke German. Yiddish was not spread in this part of Slovakia. Leopold Herman and Terez wanted their sons to get a profession or education and their daughters to marry decently. I don’t know how religious my great grandfather and my great grandmother were, but judging from my grandfather, religion played an important role in their family. When they grew up, the children moved to other towns across Slovakia. [Editor’s note: Slovakia became independent as late as 1991, Czechoslovakia was created after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918. The interviewee probably means the towns that became parts of Czechoslovakia later, after WWI and finally Slovakia in 1991.]

My great grandfather’s oldest sons Max and Moric Edelmann went to study in America in their teens at the age of 14 and 15 and stayed to live there. From what I know, my grandfather sent them to study in the USA after they finished the cheder. I don’t know for sure what Max and Moric studied in the USA, but I think they studied in secular educational institutions, rather than in a yeshiva. Max was married, but I don’t remember his wife’s name. They had no children. Moric married Anna, who had moved from Czechoslovakia, at the age of 20.  They had three sons: Harry, Richard and Alfred. In 1933 Max and Moric came to visit their relatives. This is all I know about them. Most of the children settled down in Kosice in Czechoslovakia. Kosice had more Hungarian residents, and the majority of its population spoke Hungarian. My grandfather’s older sister Pepka was married to Singer, a Jewish man. I don’t know his surname. They had four children: daughters Aranka and Regina and sons Nandor and Jeno. Pepka and her husband died at an early age, and my grandfather took their children into his family. Relka, called Relli [editors’ note: The interviewee probably confused thease names since neither Relka nor Relli are possible names in Hungarian.] in the family, was married to Bergman. During WWI Bergman perished at the front. His widow was to raise their four children: Mór, Albert and Alexander and daughter Ilona. Relly was my grandfather’s favorite sister, and her nephews and nieces admired her beauty and intelligence. My grandfather took care of his sister and her children, and after his death his sins, including my father, supported their aunt and her children. Relly lived with her daughter Ilona, who dealt in embroidery making her living on it. Pal Edelmann owned an inn in the center of Kosice, There was a restaurant on the 21st floor of this inn. Pal wife’s name was Betti, nee Deutsch. They had two children: older son Emil and younger daughter Terez, born in 1918. During WWI Pal was severely wounded at the front. He died from in 1926 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kosice. His wife remarried. Her second husband loved his adoptive children and treated them like his own. My great grandfather’s son Jozsef also settled down in Kosice. He owned a grocery store. His wife’s name was Terez, nee Goldberger. They had five children: daughters Kato [Katalin], Magda, Judit, Eva and son Laszlo. Jozsef was also at the front during WWI and suffered from a splinter in his leg for the rest of his life. My grandfather’s daughter Etelka married Jakab Blumenfeld, a Jewish man from Kosice. They had four children: daughters Edit, Izabella and Marta and son Erno. My grandfather’s brother Sandor dealt in wholesale business and owned a wholesale store. Sandor was rather wealthy. He had two sons: son Ondrej (called Erno in Hungarian in the family) and daughter Magda, born in 1915. My grandfather’s other sisters lived with their families in Presov. Regina married Berger, a Jewish man. They had two children: son Simon and daughter Terez. Betka was married to Moric Gerstl. They had three children: daughter Ilona and sons Herman and Armin. Anna was married to Moric Hertz. They had eleven children: sons Aladar, Tibor, Marcel, Earnest, Pal and Alexander and daughters Sarolta, Ilona, Terez, Edit and Ester. This is all I know about the life of our relatives from Presov at that period.

My grandfather’s brothers and sisters were very close and kept in touch. Their children always visited their grandmother and grandfather in Hrachovo in summer. My father told me that the children always played in a big garden and three times a day their grandmother came onto the porch of the house shouting: ‘Kinder, essen!’ [German: children, to eat], and this whole bunch of them came for a meal. My grandmother cut freshly baked bread in big slices spreading butter on them and poured milk in mugs. My father liked these memories. 

My grandfather Adolf Edelmann also moved to Kosice. He married Amalia Polster from Kosice. She was born in the early 1870s. My grandfather and grandmother rented a small two-bedroom apartment, and across the street from there my grandmother’s older sister Frieda lived.  Frieda was my grandmother’s only relative, whom I knew. My grandmother was short and plump, but Frieda was a tall slender woman with regular features. Frieda’s husband was rather rich. They had a house and gave their children good education.  Two of her sons were lawyers. I remember that we were invited to Frieda and her husband’s golden wedding in the late 1930s. Regretfully, this is all I remember about my grandmother sister’s family. My grandfather was a wise, kind, very honest and decent man, and many Jews asked his advice. Kosice residents believed my grandfather to be wiser and smarter than any rabbi. He tried to help all giving money or advice. My grandmother Amalia was a breadwinner in the family. She owned a small grocery store. Grandfather spent all his time reading books. He didn’t help her in anything. My grandmother gave birth to 9 children, but only 7 of them survived.  Two children died in infancy. I only know the dates of birth of my father David Edelmann and his brother Mor. My father was born in 1905 and was the fourth child in the family. My father’s older brothers were Izidor, Elemer and Jeno.  My father’s brother Mor was born in 1906. Then my father’s only sister Etelka was born and the youngest brother was Armin. They must have had Jewish names, but I don’t know them. Besides their own children, my grandfather and grandmother also raised my grandfather sister Pepka’s children, who called my grandmother “Mama”.

Between 1867 - 1918 Czechoslovakia belonged to Austro-Hungary. [Editor’s note: Czechoslovakia was created on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy after World War I. The new Czechoslovak state was made up of the Austrian provinces of Bohemia, Moravia and Silezia as well as of parts of Northern Hungary (Slovakia and Subcarpathia).] It was divided into two parts: the Czech lands that belonged to Austria, and Slovakia that was Hungarian. This probably explains why Kosice was populated mainly by Hungarians. In 1918 the First Czechoslovakian Republic 1 was established, with Tomas Garrigue Masaryk 2 the first President of Czechoslovakia. Kosice was a small town. [Before World War I it had 44 211 inhabitants (1913), mostly Hungarians but also Slovaks, Germans, Poles, Czechs and Ruthenians.] There were bigger houses in the center and one-storied houses on the outskirts.  There was no anti-Semitism in Kosice during the Austro-Hungarian period. Jews were encouraged to take official posts. There were many Jews in Kosice. They were mainly craftsmen: some could hardly make ends meet and others owned shops and stores. There were Jewish doctors, teachers and lawyers. There were few synagogues in Kosice: for orthodox believers, neologs 4 and Hasidim 5. There were mikves and shochets and few cheder schools in the town.

My father’s parents spoke Hungarian. My grandfather and grandmother were very religious. I never saw my grandfather and cannot describe his looks or manners. My grandfather spent almost all of his time reading religious books. My grandmother wore a wig and long dark dresses. She prayed a lot at home. She took her book of prayers and when she was praying she paid no attention to anything else. My grandmother made charity contributions to the synagogue and Jewish hospital and to help the needy. My grandparents celebrated Sabbath and all Jewish holidays. On Friday my grandmother went to mikveh. On Sabbath and Jewish holidays my grandparents went to the synagogue. My father and his brothers studied in cheder. Of course, they had bar mitzvah as Jewish traditions required. As for my father’s younger sister Etelka, I think her parents may have taught her at home. She knew Hebrew, could pray and knew Jewish history and traditions. My grandmother followed kashrut strictly and taught Etelka to know it. There was a Jewish housemaid in the house.  My grandmother was not very fond of doing work about the house and in due time Etelka took over housekeeping. My father and I think all other children studied in a Czech school and later - in a grammar school. 

My grandmother was hoping that her sons would grow up religious Jews, but her expectations were not to come true. They got fond of communist ideas. Only three of them – the oldest Izidor, Jeno  and the youngest Armin, who was single and lived with his parents, were religious. My father and his brothers became atheists.

Grandfather Adolf died of his heart failure at the age of 52. This happened in 1920. My father was 15. My grandfather was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kosice in accordance with the Jewish rituals. When I visit Kosice, I always visit my grandfather’s grave and drop a little stone there according to Jewish rules. 

My grandmother’s older son Jeno helped my grandmother with her store. My father also began to help his mother, when his father died. My grandmother bought green coffee beans, and my father was responsible for roasting it. There was a notable difference in price of green and roast coffee. My father started roasting after he came home from school and kept reading doing his work. Reading was his lifelong passion. He also had to watch the beans to not overdo them. After my grandfather died my father had to give up school and help the family. Still, my father studied by correspondence and obtained a certificate upon finishing the grammar school. My father was very handsome: tall and slender with big dark eyes and handsome features. He was also a decent, honest and noble man of principles. He hated lies. He felt very uncomfortable having to conceal from grandmother that he didn’t always go to the synagogue or follow Jewish traditions. At the age of 18 my father went to work for a confectionery company owned by two Jews. The owners valued my father well and employed him back after his service in the army.  He got promotions and was paid well.

My father’s brothers got married and had children. Izidor, a sales agent, married Gizi Katz, a Jewish girl from Vinogradovo. His wife was a seamstress. They had three children. Their daughters Lilia and Judita were older than me and their son Adolf, named after the grandfather, born in 1930, was the same age with me. My father’s brother Elemer married Terez, a Jewish girl from Kosice. I don’t remember what Elemer was doing for a living. Elemer and Terez had two children: Tomas, an older son, and daughter Julia. After my grandfather died, my grandmother left the store to Jeno. His wife’s name was Adel, but I don’t remember her maiden name. They had three children: sons Ervin and Karl and daughters Lilia and Stella. My father and his brother Mor had much in common. They were both very handsome. Uncle Mor was very cheerful, smart and kind. He owned a small store in the center of the town selling imported fruit, sweets and delicacies. He always treated his nieces and nephews to all kinds of delicious things. Mor married aunt Gizi’s sister Eva Kaz from Vinogradovo. They had two daughters: Vera and Livia. My father’s sister Etelka didn’t get married for a long time. Finally Armin Rosner, a Jew from Uzhgorod, proposed to her. She married him and moved to Uzhgorod. After getting married she became a housewife, like her brother’s wives.  Etelka had two daughters: Livia and Edit. My father’s younger brother Armin was single.

My father was recruited to the Czech army at 19. He served near Prague and had good memories about his service in the army. It was democratic and orderly. For example, officers and soldiers had same meals. Why I mention this, because I remember my father telling me how he was surprised, when he saw that in the Soviet army officers had different meals at a different place from soldiers. 

My father met my mother before he went to the army. My father’s cousin sister Ilona, Relly’s daughter, was my mother’s best friend. She introduced them to one another. . My mother was 15. She was a pretty blonde with wavy hair, gray-greenish eyes, snow-white teeth and was lovely built. Her name was Szerena Klein. Since her childhood everybody called her ‘Szöszi’ [blondy in Hungarian] My parents fell in love once and for all.

My mother’s parents came from Kosice; they were born in the early 1870s. They were a very beautiful couple. My grandfather Herman Klein was a raven-head ma with tick moustache and my grandmother was a slim blonde with green eyes. Her name was Berta Klein, nee Liebermann. They were very much in love. They had two daughters. My mother’s older sister Izabella, born in 1907, was very much like her father, and my mother Szerena, born in 1909, took after my grandmother. She was quiet and reserved.  

My mother’s parents were neologs. They went to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. My mother’s father Herman Klein worked in a state-owned printing house. He went to work on Saturday and had a day off on Sunday. My grandmother was a housewife. My grandfather and grandmother wore casual clothes in fashion at the time. They didn’t follow kashrut or paid much attention to their daughters’ religious education. They were a common family, living in a small apartment. There wasn’t even a bathroom. Both daughters finished a Czech general school.  Izabella graduated from the Department of Economics of the University and became an accountant. As for my mother, her parents sent her to study dressmaking. She learned to make garments, but she was too vivid to like this job.

My father began to write before he went to the army. At first he wrote poems inspired by his love of my mother. I read these poems, when I was a child, and admired their lyrical nature and beauty. The first letters in lines composed my mother’s name or deklaration of his love of her. My father wrote my mother poems of letters from the army. Regretfully, they got lost during the war. My father became chief editor of the communist weekly ‘Mai Nap’ (‘Today’) published in Hungarian where his writer’s talent was fully realized. My father had to work a lot to support the family. Besides, the newspaper was also funded by its employees. My father continued writing after the war. My brother Adolf keeps his stories and memoirs written in Hungarian in his archives. 

My mother received the first awards at beauty contests in her town several times. She had many admirers, but my father became number one. My parents got married on 14 July 1929. He was 24 and my mother was 20 years old. They had a real Jewish wedding with a rabbi and a chuppah.  My father was working for the company. He rented a two-room apartment and furnished it.  My mother told me that her grandmother Amalia came to their apartment on the first day after the wedding and fixed a mezuzah on the front door. Before the wedding her grandmother gave my mother a lovely wig of fair wavy hair, but my mother never wore it. Her mother Berta didn’t wear any, either. Grandmother Amalia never forgave my mother.  

Growing up

I was born on 3 June 1930. In my birth certificate my Hungarian name Judit was indicated, and my Jewish name is Sima. My parents called a ‘love child’. In April 1933 my sister was born. Father wanted to name her Katalin but I insisted on Klara, even though I was only 3 years old. I liked the name and they agreed to a compromise. My sister was named Klara in the documents, but nobody called her thus. Everybody called her Katalin, Kati in short. My sister’s Jewish name was Laya. Our apartment became too small for the four of us, and we moved into half a mansion. The tenants of another half were the Rothman family, nice and wealthy Jews. They had no children. We had a three-bedroom apartment, spacious and cozy, with all comforts. There was a small garden where my sister and I liked playing. We had a happy and cloudless childhood before 1940. Even with our father having to go on business frequently. He even bought a small sporty car. My father spent Saturday and Sunday with the family. My sister and I always looked forward to weekends. On Saturday morning we jumped into our parents’ bed. My mother went to make breakfast and our father told us everything that had happened to him through the week. He often told us about beautiful life in the Soviet Union. He told us there was no exploitation of workers in the USSR, that the power belonged to people and the people ruled their own country. My father said there were no poor or suppressed people in the USSR, that all people were equal and free. Soviet newspapers and radio programs stated the same. My father and all communists believed that the USSR was a country of equal opportunities for all people, the country of equality and brotherhood for all. Now I understand that even when people in the USSR believed this, it is no surprise that those who only heard about it from the Soviet propaganda believed the USSR to be an ideal. My father was a convinced communist, and it had nothing to do with his material situation.

Every Saturday my father and his brothers living in Kosice and their families went to visit grandmother. They got together after the morning prayer at the synagogue. Each time my father reminded me and my sister of replying positively if our grandmother asked us if he had been at the synagogue.  Our father taught us to tell the truth and my sister and I were surprised at this request of his, but my father said that this was a holy lie since grandmother would be very upset if told the truth. My grandmother’s numerous children and grandchildren got together in her small apartment.  There was a Saturday meal: challah, chicken liver paste and cholnt made from beans, pearl barley, meat, fat and spices. On Friday a pot with cholnt was left in the oven to keep it hot for a Saturday meal. Adults discussed their subjects and children played and had fun. Since the family was big, everybody got just little food, and then all went to their homes for dinner. On Sunday my father took us and his nephews and nieces for a nice drive out of town. The Edelmann family was very close and we, children, always looked forward to these outing. We still keep in touch with those who survived in the war, though many of our kin are scattered across the world.

My mother’s older sister Izabella was a very pretty girl. When she was in university, she fell in love with a senior student from the Radio Engineering Faculty. His name was Andras Tamm. He was tall and slender and very handsome. He returned my aunt’s feelings. The only obstacle was that he was Hungarian. Even though Izabella’s parents were not so religious this marriage still seemed a disgrace to them. They could only get married six years later in 1933. They could not live without one another and my grandparents gave up. They just registered their marriage in the town hall and had a wedding dinner in a restaurant in the evening. Andras rented a small facility in the central street in Kosice and open a radio store with a radio shop in it. Andras worked in the shop, and my aunt ran his store. Izabella and Andras were well-to-do and rented a nice apartment. In 1936 their son Gabor, my favorite cousin brother, was born.

My father and his brother Mor joined the Czechoslovakian communist party. They were convinced communists. The Czechoslovakian communist party was legal, though police had lists of its members, but this was a mere formality. My father began to work for ‘Mai Nap’. Besides, my father worked for ‘Munkas Ujsag’ [Workers Paper] too, both of them are published in Kosice. Before 1938 these newspapers were issued legally and regularly. In 1938 when [Southern] Slovakia became Hungarian, both ‘Mai Nap” and ‘Munkas Ujsag’ became underground newspapers, because the communist party became illegal in Hungary. In 1940 the newspapers were closed and most of their employees were arrested. My father made monthly contribution to the newspaper ‘Mai Nap”  from his earnings and so did other employees. The newspaper was distributed among communists for free and its editing office had no profits. 

1938 brought changes into our life. Hungary received a major part of Czechoslovakia, a part of Romania (Transylvania) and Subcarpathia. [Editor’s note: According to the First Vienna Decision the southern part of Slovakia was attached to Hungary in 1938, including Kosice/Kassa. In 1939 Hungary annexed Subcarpathia and in 1940, according to the Second Vienna Decision, Northern Transylvania was attached to Hungary.] Hungary actually [partly] restored its borders that existed before 1918. [Trianon Peace Treaty] 6 From the middle 1930s there were visitors in our houses staying for few days.  They were emigrants from Germany: communists and Jews escaping from Hitler. They stayed openly during the Czech regime, but had to be quiet during the Hungarian rule. The communist party had to take up the status of underground. Since the police had lists of its members, they knew that arrests were inevitable. It was just the matter of time. Hungarian authorities began to gradually introduce anti-Jewish laws 7 significantly suppressing their rights in all spheres of life.

During the war

In September 1939 WW2 began. Hitler was taking efforts to involve Hungary in the war, but it had no intention to get involved. Then Hitler undertook provocation: in June 1940 bombers without any identification signs dropped few bombs onto the central part of Kosice. The central post office and few building across the street from it were destroyed. This bombing was so unexpected that an air-raid alarm only raised a howl after the bombers were gone. They announced that those were Russian bombers attacking Kosice. The Hungarian authorities had to join Hitler in the war against the USSR. Few weeks later my father and all other members of the communist party, who were on the lists, were arrested and take to prison in Kosice. The trial against them began. They were charged in actions against the state. They were tortured and interrogated. The Hungarians wanted to know the names of those who joined the communist party during the Hungarian rule and whose names were not on the list. My mother was one of them. She joined the party under my father’s influence in late 1938. My father was brutally beaten and taken to Budapest for interrogation where one policeman injured my father’s kidney. My father suffered from pyelonephritis for the rest of his life and finally died of kidney failure. Of course, my father didn’t tell them any names. The investigation lasted five and a half months and then there was a trial where my father spoke.  He acknowledged his membership in the party. The trial sentenced him to 7 months in jail, but since by the time of trial he had already served the sentence, he only had to stay in jail 40 days.  During this period my grandfather Herman Klein fell ill with cancer and died. My mother requested the police management to let my father go to the funeral, but they refused. My grandfather Herman was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kosice. After his death my grandmother Berta began to attend the synagogue every Saturday with other Orthodox Jews and began to pray at home. She moved in with us. Her older daughter Izabella wanted her to live with them, but grandmother Berta refused point-blank to live in the house with Izabella’s non-Jewish husband.  My grandmother loved my father dearly.

Before my father’s arrest many of his comrades moved to the USSR. The Soviet government gave them this opportunity. At first they could move with their families, but when it was my father’s turn, this opportunity was closed. Communists and their families were leaving Hungary illegally, by forged documents. My father refused to go without us. Perhaps, it was for the better since many of those who went to the USSR were sent to the GULAG 8 where most of them perished.

I remember the day, when my father’s sentence was over. There was a crowd of those who sympathized with him meeting him at the gate, though this was early morning. They carried him along the street. My mother and sister also came to meet him, but we could hardly fight through the crowd to come closer. Those people followed us as far as our house. We were infinitely happy to reunite. Papa told us a lot about his imprisonment, but avoided the subject of tortures to save us from pain for him. My mother told me about it, when I grew up. She said father was continuously beat during interrogations till he fainted. They beat him on his head and vitally important parts of body where it was the most painful. They threatened him of arresting and torturing his family, if he didn’t answer their questions and this was the harder for him than not answering their questions. 

I was always a quiet and obedient child while my sister was very lively and my parents used to say she was supposed to have been born a boy.  Mama and grandma often slapped her, but my father after what he had to go through at interrogations gave a vow that he would never raise his hand to hit one person and he never did.  When my sister did something wrong, he made her sit beside him and said: ‘You deserve a good flogging, so imagine you’ve had one from me’. My sister used to sob a while after this. My father had to make his appearance in the police office three times a week for them to make sure that he had not escaped. In 1939 my father got a job in a company in Budapest. I don’t know what kind of company this was or what he was doing at work. Before his arrest he worked in Budapest on weekdays and returned home on weekends, but afterward he was to come to the police office on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. My father kept his job in Budapest, but he could not stay there a whole week and returned home on Friday. Of course, my sister and I were very happy about it.

Since 1939 grandma Amalia began to spend less time in Kosice. My father insisted that grandma lived with us, but my grandmother had solid principles. When she visited us, she never had anything to eat or even a cup of tea or coffee. Grandma knew that my mother did not follow kashrut and for this reason she did not eat anything. She spent more and more time with her daughter Etelka in Uzhgorod. Etelka and her husband were very religious and followed kashrut and Jewish traditions. My grandmother prayed few times a day. Religion was the most important part of her life. I still remember something that struck me once. When my father was released from prison, my grandmother was in Uzhgorod. 2-3 days after he returned home my father said he hadn’t seen his mother for a long time and would go to visit her. He rushed in his car to Uzhgorod.  Then my father told my mother that when he came there he rushed into the room where my grandmother was praying, but she put her finger to her lips showing him to stop distracting her. And she only came to hug her son whom she hadn’t seen for over 7 months after she finished praying. My father was so hurt that he had tears in his eyes. In 1941my grandmother went to live with her daughter in Uzhgorod. Her son Armin to avoid service in the army, or it would be more correct to say – work battalion since Jews were not taken to regular army troops, also lived with grandmother in Uzhgorod since 1943. Jews, gypsy and communists were recruited to work battalions. They did not have weapons or wear military uniforms. They wore their own clothes and had yellow armbands. Work battalions were digging trenches for the frontlines troops. They were actually easy targets at the front line. However, the Soviets somehow got to know who they were and did not fire at them. [Editor’s note: Most of the time the Soviets did not distinguished between regular Hungarian soldiers and members of the work battalion. Oftentimes they were treated as Hungarian POWs when falling captive.]

When the war with the Soviet Union began 9, my father was arrested again in July 1941 and taken to the Hungarian prison in the mountains near Garany town, in the former mansion of an Austrian lord. This area belonged to Slovakia before 1938. When Hungarians came to power, the owner of this mansion moved to Austria and his castle was converted into a prison. All prisoners were kept for political charges. My father became the leader of all prisoners. He prisoners had to cook and do all maintenance duties in the jail.  My father organized courses and hobby clubs for prisoners.  My father generated lists of attendants and also, made cleaning and cooking plans.  He learned to cook in this camp. There was also a good library in the mansion and prisoners could use it. Relatives were allowed to visit twice a month. Two relatives could visit 2-3 days. My mother went there to visit my father and took either my sister or me with her. We rented a room from local farmers. My father made arrangements with the management of the camp for prisoners to be allowed to take some time off the camp to meet with their relatives. There were strict rules about the exact time for all of them to return to the camp. My father asked my mother to bring grandmother Amalia to see him, but my grandmother never came to see him. For her it was out of the question to stay in a goy’s house and eat non-kosher food. My father was kept in the Garany prison for a year. In late 1942 it was closed and Jews were taken to work battalions while Jewish communists were sent to penal battalions to go to the frontline. They were to wear yellow armbands with a 10 cm in diameter black circle on it. The work battalion where my father was taken was following the frontline with Hungarian and German troops in the eastern direction. After defeat of Germans near Stalingrad they turned to go in the opposite direction, from east to west. My father kept thinking about how to cross the frontline and surrender to the Red Army. He organized a group of 50 people and managed to accomplish their well-considered plan near Zhytomyr. It’s scaring to think what might have happened to them since the USSR did not trust deserters believing they were spies, but my father and his comrades were lucky. There was a Jewish communist, who lived in Hungary and emigrated to the USSR in the end of 1930th in the Red Army troop where they happened to get. He knew about my father’s underground work in the communist organization in Kosice. He guaranteed for my father’s trustworthiness.  This group formed a group of prisoners-of-war following the Red Army troops liberating Ukraine.  My father proved to be good at having a brigade under his command.  The brigade consisted of Hungarians and Hungarian Jews. One of the commanders of a military division where they happened to come knew my father, and also considering that my father was a communist, this man appointed my father to command over this unit of the newcomers. This man also helped my father to improve his Russian, but at the very start this man translated my father’s commanders’ orders from Russian into Hungarian for my father to understand and follow them. My father was promoted to the rank of an officer and moved with the troops as far as the Carpathians. When they were near Uzhgorod, the military were inoculated and they must have injected some infection in my father. He fell gravely ill. He developed abscess. My father was taken to a hospital in Uzhgorod. My father’s comrades were working in the communist department in Uzhgorod and my father began to assist them even when he was in hospital. At their request my father was demobilized to establish the soviet power in Subcarpathia. He became 2nd secretary of the town party committee in 1945. We reunited with my father after the war.

One of anti-Jewish laws did not allow Jews to own stores, factories or anything that generated profit.  They were supposed to give away their property or the state confiscated it. Many Jews fictitiously sold their property to non-Jewish owners, but actually things did not change. Or they entered into agreement of common ownership and became ‘partners’. By late 1944 many Hungarians took advantage of such agreements and took over the new property. There were also honest Hungarians, who returned Jews their property after the war. My father’s brothers lost their property. My father’s brother Jeno was working for the new owner of his former store. My father’s brother Mor, when suppression of Jews began in Hungary, sold his store and moved to Presov in Slovakia where our relatives lived. One of my grandfather sister Relka’s sons Albert was a talented artist. In the late 1930s he moved to USA with his family. Relka’s other son Alexander was a communist. In 1939 he was recruited to the Hungarian army, but escaped to the USSR.  Unfortunately, he became victim like many other young people who believed the USSR to be their ideal. He was sent to the GULAG where he perished. After the war his fiancé Bozena searched for him. She found our family and my father began to look for Alexander. Of course, it was dangerous to search for a turncoat that was surely believed to have been a spy, but these considerations did not stop my father. He kept writing letters and requests, but never got a clear answer from them. Official authorities notified my father that Alexander Bergman was not on the lists of prisoners in the camps. So, we never got any information about him.

In 1936 I went to the first form of a Czech primary school. During Hungarian rule this school became a Hungarian one and I studied 2 of 4 years in the Hungarian school. I had all excellent marks at school and was allowed to go to a grammar school after the 4th form. For the rest of pupils could go to grammar school after the 5th form. I finished primary school in 1940. My father was in prison at that time. My mother sister’s husband Andras took me for an interview to the Hungarian grammar school for girls. There were restrictions already: only 2 Jewish girls were allowed for a class. My interview was successful and I was admitted to the first form. Few teachers were members of the Hungarian fascist party. They got to know that my father was a communist and was in prison. They kept finding faults with me and it caused me much distress. However, I did well at school. We had exams in summer. I remember the one in geography in early June 1941. There was an examination panel and its chairman was a teacher of mathematic, the most ardent fascist at school. As soon as I started answering she interrupted me with the question: ‘Tell me where do our and the heroic German troops fight at the front’. I knew how fast Germans were moving in the direction of Moscow and this was bitter for those who sympathized with the USSR. I pretended to be naïve and said that I didn’t know and could not be interested. The teacher shamed me for not knowing about the glorious victories of our and the German troops. My class tutor, a German teacher, who liked me came to my rescue. She asked me to goon answering my examination question. I sighed with relief, but I could never forget about this exam.  I also remember how unfair this teacher of mathematic was to me. Though I knew mathematics the best she never gave me an ‘excellent’ mark. I had the only ‘good’ mark in her subject. I remember dreaming about how I would take my revenge when the war was over. We were all sure that the USSR would win. There was one more Jewish girl in my class. We faced no anti-Semitism. My life would have been cloudless in the grammar school if it hadn’t been for me being the daughter of a communist.

After my father was arrested again, there were four of us living together: my mother, my sister, grandmother Berta and I. My mother never went to work. My father’s earnings were sufficient, though he gave away a significant portion of it for the party needs: for the newspaper, assistance to unemployed members of the party, immigrants, etc. I don’t know how we managed through four years that my father was away. I only remember that the owner of my father’s company in Budapest paid my father’s salary to uncle Izidor, who probably did my father’s job. He brought my mother this money. We had everything we needed. My mother regularly sent food parcels to my father every week.

In February-March 1943 Slovakian fascists began to persecute Jews. My father’s brother Mor decided to leave Presov for Kosice. Many Jewish families were leaving Slovakia for Hungary. Somebody reported to the police that Mor was coming back. They told Izidor, the oldest of the brothers, that if one member of the Edelmann family crossed the border, they would arrest the whole family in Kosice. Mor only got to know this after he moved to Kosice with his wife and two daughters and they settled down at my grandmother’s. Mor went to the police office the following day and told them he came on his own will and asked them to leave his family alone. They never let him go from there. On the same day they arrested his wife and children. They were taken out of town and killed.

The situation with Jews in Kosice grew worse in the middle of 1943, when Germans were losing their positions in Stalingrad. Hungarian introduced many restrictions for Jews. [Editor’s note: Mass persecutions started as late as after March 19th 1944, when Germany invaded Hungary.] Since 1944 all Jews had to wear 10-cm hexagonal yellow star on their chests. I went to school with this star, though it didn’t last long. The academic year was reduced due to the wartime. In the middle of April the school closed for vacations. Jews were not allowed to come to public places or leave their homes after dusk.

In April [19th] 1944 10 German troops occupied Hungary, though Hungarian fascists started outraging even before. I shall never forget the first evening on Pesach 1944. There was a synagogue across the street from our house where Jews got together for a prayer. All of a sudden we heard screams from the synagogue, curses and anti-Semitic shouts. This was a pogrom in the synagogue made by Hungarian fascists. During the war there were back-outs on the windows in all houses. My mother lost her temper, turned off the lights, open the window and began to shame the young people telling them to stop this disgrace. She didn’t look like a Jewish woman and they were just laughing in her face, but did her no harm. My sister, grandmother and I sat in the corner of our children’s room trembling of fear. The rascals pulled some older Jews by their payes and went away. In the morning we saw that all windows in the synagogue were broken and heard the rabbi’s wife and children crying. Then German officers and soldiers came to Kosice. They ordered wealthy Jews to come to the central square and told them to give their money and valuables to the German army voluntarily, and if they did not obey they would force them to do so and arrest them. Later Germans gathered Jews in the ghetto at the brick factory in Kosice. So the old couples, the owners of our house were arrested. There were air raids. Or house was near the railway station that was bombed most frequently. Germans also began to arrest communists and their families. We were scared. My mother was told that we had to stay elsewhere, but not at home. We separated: grandmother Berta and I stayed with my grandfather’s sister Relka, and as for my mother and sister, only Liza, my father’s cousin brother Nandor’s wife, knew. Nandor died after an unsuccessful surgery in 1942. Liza and her two sons lived on the 3rd floor in the house in the end of our street.  Liza was watching our house, when we were not at home and in case of danger was to notify us to stay away from coming home.

On 16 April 1944, on Friday, my grandmother decided to go home to clean the apartment before my mother and sister came home. We always cleaned the house on Friday. I stayed with aunt Relka. At that moment aunt Liza saw a car stop by our house. Few German officers went into the house.  Liza went to tell my mother about what was going on. My grandmother came into the house. The Germans were searching the house. They showed grandma my parents’ photograph called them ‘Kommunisten’, and asked where my mother was. My grandmother got very scared. Since she didn’t know where my mother was they let her go and she returned to aunt Relka’s home. A photographer, my father’s acquaintance, gave us shelter in his laboratory. We didn’t have any clothes. Liza found out that Germans left the house before night. My mother’s sister Izabella was in her 7th month of pregnancy. She took two big bags and went to our house. She grabbed few photographs, some clothes and left the house.

At that time my father’s cousin Ondrej Edelmann, whom everybody called Erno [Ondrej is the Czech name, this is how he was registered in his documents, Erno is the Hungarian name, the language they used in the family.], grandpa’s brother Sandor’s brother, came from Czechoslovakia. He was a last-year student of the Medical College in Prague. He had secretly crossed the border. Erno lived through a tragedy. He had a fiancé, a daughter of poor Jews, who already worked as a teacher at the age of 19.  They were going to get married after Erno finished his college, but this was not to be. In 1941 Hitler ordered to take all Jewish girls to work in Germany.  Young girls were getting married in emergency to avoid this disaster. Erno and Anna also got married, but the order for Anna to go to Germany was signed before they registered their marriage. Anna was sent to Germany. Poor Erno almost lost his mind, when this happened. He wrote Hitler asking to send back his young wife, but surely he got no reply. Later he got to know that Anna was pregnant. She died at birth and so did the baby. When Erno got to know that all Jews were to be taken to concentration camps from Hungary, he decided to spend his money to save his relatives taking them to Czechoslovakia. [Czechoslovakia was dismembered in 1938. The interviewee is here refereeing to Slovakia.] It was decided that Erno and I would be the first to go to Slovakia. We had to decide about grandmother Berta. We had to cover 20 km in the mountains to get to Slovakia and my grandma could not do this with her unhealthy legs. My grandmother firmly said she was not going to hideaway and would be with other Jews. Very soon all Jews, and my grandmother too, were taken to the ghetto at the brick factory on the outskirts of Kosice. In late April they began to be taken to concentration camps where they were sorted out. The younger and stronger ones were taken to work. They lived in barracks with inhuman conditions. Old people and children were burnt in crematoria. My grandmothers and many relatives perished there. My mother, my sister and Erno on the evening of 22 April 1944 removed yellow stars from our clothing and went to a village near Kosice where a guide was waiting for us to take us across the border. This was the night of 22 April, full of danger. The first risk was when we went across the town. At first everything was all right, but then we saw my sister’s former teacher and his wife. He was wearing the uniform of a lieutenant of the Hungarian army. Of course, he recognized us. My mother was sure he would call the police, but there are decent people in this world. He greeted my mother politely, gave my sister and me a wink and moved on. When we came to the guide, Erno gave us some Slovakian money and went back to  Kosice to take another group next night. 

We stayed till dark in the guide’s house without turning on the lights. The guide, his two brothers and sister, who spoke fluent Slovakian, came at midnight. We went a long way across the woods in the mountains. 3 hours later we stopped in a nice valley.  The guide told us to stay there till morning, when we had to get to the railway station nearby. It was cold and the men made a fire. We had sandwiches. We tried to get a nap, but it was cold and we were worried, so we stayed wide awake.  At dawn we saw a nice river in the valley, and got to the station along the rail tracks. My mother gave our companions money to buy tickets. When we were alone, a tall man in the hunter’s outfit, with a rifle over his shoulder approached us. He said he knew my mother from Kosice and advised us to get in another carriage than our companions. He said they had typical Jewish appearance and this might attract the gendarmes’ attention, but speaking good Slovakian, they would manage while for us it might be worse since Slovakian gendarmes were capturing those who crossed the border illegally. We did as he told us. It happened to be true. Gendarmes approached our companions demanding their documents and left them alone afterward. We were close to Presov, when the tall hunter told us to get off the train and walk to the town since there were many gendarmes at the station. We agreed with our companions to meet near the railway station square. They were to take us to the house where my father’s cousin Terez, daughter of Anna Hertz, and her husband lived. They were aware that we were coming and were to give us forged documents.  Everything went all right. Our relatives welcomed us and we could take a rest. On the following day our documents were ready. According to the legend, my mother was a widow of landlord Vitalishov from near Presov, and we were going to the Tatra Mountains since I had tuberculosis and had to breathe fresh air in the mountains. My sister and I had chains with crosses on our necks to prove our Christian origin. A week later, on 1 May 1944, Erno joined us. We didn’t recognize him. He colored his hair to become fair and grew a beard and moustache. Erno told us he only managed to take one more group relatives across the border before Hungarian gendarmes started looking for him. Probably someone reported on him and why he was in the town. We took a train to a resort on a mountain in the Tatras. There were posh hotels for wealthiest people on the bank of a lake. At the bottom of the hill there was a small village where railroad people lived. There were also few inexpensive and cozy recreation centers. There was a cable way from the station to the lake. It didn’t function since there were no tourists. We chose this place to be our escape. Erno rented a room on the 2nd floor in one recreation center. Downstairs the manager, his wife and their four children lived.  In the morning and evening my mother boiled some milk in their kitchen and in the afternoon we had lunch at the restaurant on the station. They served good meals. My mother and I spoke German to the owner, and my sister, who didn’t know a word in German or Slovakian, was ordered to keep silent pretending she was mute and deaf. Before 1938, when Hungarians came to power in the country, my sister didn’t go to school, stayed at home and spent time with us and our parents friends’ children. We spoke Hungarian at home and so did our friends, and my sister could only speak even a few words in Slovakian. Once a gendarme from a nearby village visited the area. He came to see us. My mother explained to him in poor Slovakian that she was German, but her husband was Slovakian, that I was ill and she took my sister and me there to improve our health.   The gendarme was satisfied with this story. There were few other Jewish families staying in the village and we met them. They were from Slovakia and this was good. In case we had to escape they knew where we might go. Erno visited us twice bringing us some money. We played with the children of the manager and picked Slovakian rather fast. Every other day we went to take milk at a farm in 2 km from the recreation center. These were lovely strolls. Days, weeks and months went by... In July a group of Hitler jugend boys, 10 Germans, came to stay in the neighboring recreation center for recreation and military training. Hitlerjugend boys were sent to Slovakia where they could have military training and rest. They marched in the morning and in the evening singing fascists songs. They also shouted patriotic slogans and trained shooting on the training ground. They were not allowed to have any contacts with the locals, but we were still of them anyway. 

In early September we got to know that Germans started occupation of Slovakia. Our acquaintances decided to leave the place. We decided to join them. There were 3 other families, but only two men, with us. Hey found a place in the mountains and took a train carriage there. It arrived at the dead end where there was a small village. There was a windmill right by the station. We were starved and my mother went to the mill to buy a little flour. Our chains with crosses helped us there. The miller’s wife felt sorry for us. She gave us food and sold some flour and bread. She thought we were Catholics and said she hated Jews and would never help one.

We stayed in a poor house whose owner was at the front. His wife had few children and was pregnant.  They had a cow and the landlady gave us some milk every day. A short time later she started labor and my mother acted as a midwife. I remember how stunned my mother was that the woman got up on the same day to milk the cow and work in the garden. It was getting colder and we didn’t have warm clothes. My mother went to the village store to buy some clothes. She bought us nice gray and black boots and some clothes. The men from other Jewish families were thinking where we could escape, if Germans came to this distant village. They discovered a path that led them to two houses where foresters with their families lived. They told the men that there was a partisan unit nearby and that partisans would mobilize men to their unit. There was one Jewish families staying in one of these houses: a husband, a wife and two adult sons. The foresters promised to give us shelter for a certain fee. They mentioned that the men would still have to hide from partisans unless they wanted to join them. The men didn’t want this to happen. Nobody knew, which was worse: to be captured by Germans or partisans.

In early October we heard that Germans were coming to the village. We went to the foresters’ houses. My sister and I liked staying there. It was still warm and there were many berries and mushrooms, particularly blackberries. We picked them and ate as much as we could. Our mother cooked mushrooms. The men were hiding in a shed in the daytime. Our mother and we had nobody to fear. One forester had a radio and we listened to news.  When we heard that a part of Slovakia was liberated, we rushed to Brezno by train. From there we went to Banska Bystrica. The town celebrated liberation and there were crowds of people in the streets. We went to our relatives. Erno, his sister Magda and many relatives, whom Erno rescued, got together in his house. We met with Adolf, uncle Izodor’s son, my cousin. We, children went to see the Soviet movie ‘6 am after the war’. It was in Russian and there was no translation, but we understood what it was about. It was a very touching movie. Next day we heard that one of the communist leaders of liberation of Czechoslovakia came to Banska Bystrica. I don’t remember his name, but my mother knew him well. He used to work with my father and often visited us at home in Kosice. He told my mother that Germans were bellicose about coming back to Slovakia and that my mother had to take a train to the town where this officer’s unit was deployed. He wrote a letter for him to give us shelter in case Germans came back. He also comforted my mother by saying that the war was to be over soon and we would survive. I remember that we waited for my mother standing in an entrance of a building while she had this meeting. My mother came back in tears: we had to get wandering again.  Erno was thinking how to help the family. He divided all relatives in groups. All of us had to go to the mountains and stay in earth huts or with partisans till the end of the war.  Erno read the letter m mother had and approved it. He also gave us the address of one of former customers of his father. He lived in a village half way from the place we were heading to. We took a train and moved on. When we were in about 5 km from the place of departure we heard that there were Germans in the place we were heading to. We went to the man Erno told us to go to. When he heard who we were he offered his help. His son had contacts with partisans. He had just got married and was hiding with his wife in the woods. My mother and other women of this family were baking bread for the road all night through. Early in the morning our group – there were about 10 people – started on our way.  My mother was carrying a heavy bag with our food stocks and clothes. She had tears of exhaustion and despair in her eyes, but to comfort us she tried to smile to us. We made short stops to rest before we continued climbing higher in the mountains. In the evening we reached two earth huts that were carefully camouflaged for outsiders not to discover them. There were 10-12 tenants in each hut located at 100 m from one another. There was a plank bed about 1 m above the floor with straw on it that made our ‘bedroom’. There was a small stove with a smoke stack with its exhaust end outside. There was a toilet – a plank over a pit in the snow – between two pine trees near the hut. We also melted snow for water. We used a helmet as a wash basin. It was late October 1944, and we could never believe that we would have to stay there as long as March 1945, i.e., five months. 

There was Mark, a Czech man, his young Jewish wife Sonia, their 6-month old son and Sonia’s mother living with us in the hut. My mother happened to know Sonia’s mother. Her husband Grunwald, a communist often visited Kosice on party business during the rule of Czechoslovakia before 1938, and knew my mother and father. Before 1939 Grunwald left his wife and daughter, crossed the border to the USSR, was kept in a camp two years, and then was sent to Moscow to take the responsibility for a radio program in Slovakian. Then he was mobilized to the Red Army, became an officer and married a Russian doctor. After the war Grunwald and his wife came to his homeland looking for his first family. My mother felt sorry for Sonia’s mother. In 1941, when Jewish girls were forced to go to Germany, she arranged for her 15-year old daughter Sonia to marry a Czech engineer, who worked in a mine. He was about 15 years older than Sonia. At first there was no love between them, but when they got to know each other better living in one apartment, they consummated their marriage. They had a lovely boy, whom we all loved. Sonia didn’t have breast milk, and Mark and other men went to buy milk and other food products in the village twice a week. They froze milk for the baby in the snow. We cooked peas, beans and sometimes baked potatoes, if we managed to get some from farmers. There was Kellerman, a 19-year old guy with us in the hut. He had a long nose and black bulging eyes. He was always hungry like my sister, and mad at the rest of the world. I remember the day, when my mother had to cut my wonderful long hair since we could not keep them clean considering our living conditions.  In another hut there were Jews and the newly married couple of farmers, who had brought us there.  There was a house nearby. It was probably a former forester’s house, but now there were partisans accommodating in it. They never left it to fight against Germans. They enjoyed themselves eating and drinking, listening to the radio and waiting for the war to come to an end. They didn’t take one effort to expedite this end.  Our men found a shelter in a rock nearby in case Germans discovered us. We used it several times, when Hungarian soldiers came close to our huts. They spoke Hungarian and we understood them and could talk to them. By the end of 1944 mainly Hungarian troops, faithful allies of Hitler, fought in Slovakia. They were even more formidable than German fascists. [editor’s note: The Hungarian army did not enter the Slovak state in World War II. The soldiers were either not Hungarian or it took place in Hungarian territory, possibly in Southern Slovakia attached to Hungary as early as 1938.] We established security guards to watch the locality and inform us of danger, if there was any, but Hungarians never came up to the mountains this far.

One day in January we got terribly scared. When we went to bed, we heard shooting above us. We froze of fear, but then it turned out those were our neighbors shooting to salute the liberation of  Kosice. They knew we came from Kosice and wanted to greet us. We invited them to the hut, they brought some wine with them, and we celebrated this wonderful event with tears in our eyes. It was more and more difficult for our men to descend from the mountains looking for food. The Hungarian troops were in rage executing partisans and the locals, who, they suspected, had contacts thereof. By end of February we ran out of food stocks and had no food whatsoever for our baby boy, who was 10 months old. His father and grandmother had to take a desperate step. Madam Grunwald spoke fluent Hungarian. She wanted to ask Hungarian troopers to give some food for her grandson or allow her to take him down to the village. Her son-in-law accompanied her. Since he didn’t speak one word in Hungarian, he hid away to watch her. He saw her talking to a Hungarian officer, saw how soldiers tied her and took her to a house.  He kept watching the house at night. In the morning the unfortunate woman was taken to the center of the village, she had a plank with “This is what will happen to all those who help partisans!’ in Slovakian and Hungarian. There were signs of beating on her skin. The Hungarians made all residents of the village watch her execution. Her son-in-law watch it. She was on the gibbet for a whole week and nobody was allowed to take her down. Poor Mark returned to our hut half-dead. He had to tell Sonia everything. We bitterly mourned the poor grandma, who sacrificed her life to rescue her grandson. 

In early March we saw that the house where the partisans used to be was deserted. They left  without warning us or leaving any food or the radio. By that time there were three polish Jewish refugees with us. They said that this part of Slovakia was liberated by the Romanian troops that were on the side of the USSR. These Polish Jews decided to move towards their liberators and save their lives by crossing the front line. They were sorry for Mark’s family and agreed to take Mark and Sonia with them. Many years later we got to know that they had survived. Sonia met with her father, divorced Mark and left with her father and son.

We had to make a decision as well. We didn’t have any food and didn’t want to starve to death at the very end of the war. There was a group of 13 of us led by the young newly wed farmer, who had a compass and some food left. In early March 1945 we moved in the eastern direction across the mountains. We were hoping to cross the front line. We walked 6 days. There were two women with us: our ‘commander’s’ mother and his young wife, the rest were men in our group. It was still cold in the mountains. There was waist-deep snow. We walked at night since we were afraid of being noticed in the daytime. We could see the road with German and Hungarian armies retreating. We managed to cross it on the third night. During the day we tried to rest a little digging pits in the snow to sleep in them. Once we bumped into a tent on four posts. There was a little straw inside.  We even dared to make a small fire and boil some water. On the first night my mother, sister and I lost the group. My sister got tired and we stopped. E were scared to be on our own, but the men noticed that we got lost and came back looking for us. The fourth day was the most difficult and scary. We crossed the road and started climbing the mountains on the opposite side of the road. We had to cross a mountainous river, wide and quick, but shallow. We had to cross it before the dawn. The men decided to carry the women and children across the river. My sister was the youngest in the group. She was 10 years old. The oldest man had to carry her across the river. I think he must have been about 45, but then he seemed an old man to me. I was the first one to be taken across the river. Then came a man with my mother on his back and beside him was this old man with my sister on his back. In the middle of the river he stumbled and my sister fell into the ice-cold water. When my mother saw it, she dropped her bag with our documents and money into the water. The bag was gone. My sister crawled out of the water onto the opposite bank. Her hands covered with ice crust instantly. Her feet in the boots were wet knee-high. She sat by a tree and said she had to sleep a while before she could move on. The rest of the group was climbing the mountain. They had to come onto another side of it before full dawn. My sister began to freeze. She closed her eyes and was falling asleep. My mother and I were shaking her by her shoulders begging her to hold on. At this time we saw two figures dressed in white climbing down the hill. My mother said this was the end, they were Germans and since we had lost our documents we would not be able to prove that we were not Jews or partisans. However, they were two men from our group. One of them poured a little alcohol and put a slice of pork fat into Kati’s mouth, and another man began to hit Kati with a stick making her walk. My sister obeyed and went on. When we climbed the top of this hill, we saw that the others from our group made a fire. They took my sister closer to the fire, pulled off her boots and stockings and began to rub her hands and feet with snow. When they got warmer, they wrapped my sister in some cloth. A woman gave my sister her valenki boots [winter boots made from sheep felt wool] and borrowed somebody else’s extra boots for herself. These valenki boots saved my sister’s life, and we shall never forget this young woman’s kindness. We fell asleep. I can hardly remember the next day. My sister’s legs were aching, and my mother or one of the men had to carry her. She also had to walk at times. The men gave her a stick to walk with us. By the evening of the sixth day we saw a wonderful house in the forest. It was empty. There was wood in the yard. We got into the house, cooked whatever beans we had and were happy to have a roof over our heads.  We went to sleep. Our leader ordered few men to investigate the situation in nearby settlements. The rest of the men took turns to guard our sleep. Early in the morning our guard saw a man and a woman nearby. They said that there was a village in about 4 km from our place. Romanian and German troops were fighting for it. There was a village in 8 km from there that was already liberated. We decided to go to this village. There was a road nearby and we saw German and Romanian troops moving along it.  My mother saw an older Russian soldier following his wagon and smoking. She suffered from lack of cigarettes and approached him. By her greedy look he knew what she wanted and offered her a self-made cigarette. My mother almost got suffocated from strong tobacco particularly that she hadn’t smoked for so long. The old soldier saw my sister limping and put her on his wagon and we took to our journey. We arrived at a village. There were mainly Romanian soldiers and officers in it. The Russian soldier took us to the military commandant, who accommodated us in a house.  The owners of the house gave us some food, then we washed ourselves and went to sleep on the floor.  In the morning my mother went to see the commandant again. She told him about us and he arranged for us to go to the Soviet military hospital in Miskolc on one of his trucks. The driver dropped us in the town. We felt more at ease there. It was a Hungarian town where we could understand the language and explain what we needed. We went to the nearest snack bar. My mother said we had no money, but we were starved and needed a place to stay. The owner said there was a Jewish community functioning in the town. We went to its office. It was overcrowded, but one man offered us a place to stay and promised to help us. His family perished in a concentration camp. His  housemaid stayed in his apartment during the war. There was a Soviet captain, a Jew, in this office. He was director of the macaroni factory. He told my mother to wait for him and brought us a big bag of macaroni. Our new landlord took us to his apartment. There were few girls, who had returned from a concentration camp, staying in his apartment. He let us his bedroom with two nice beds. We heated a big barrel of water to wash ourselves. We had veal stew with macaroni for dinner, but we were told to eat slowly and just a little. For the first time in a long time we fell asleep in a real bed. In the morning my mother carried my sister to the hospital where they amputated my sister’s toe. The doctors told my mother to bring her to the hospital to change a bandage every day.  One day my mother met our family dentist and his daughter. He told us that they survived in the basement of a house, whose owner supported them. He was eager to go to Kosice to find out about the rest of the family. He offered my mother to come with him and my mother was infinitely happy with his company. We finally got to our house. The windows were broken and it was empty inside. There was light in the neighboring apartment coming from behind the blackouts. My mother rang the bell to this apartment. We recognized the janitor from a neighboring house in the woman who opened the door. Her family lived in the basement of the house. She recognized my mother and let her in. Through the open door my mother saw few pieces of our furniture, our blankets and pillows, bed sheets with my mother’s monograms on them embroidered by a craftswoman for my mother’s wedding. The janitor was rather confused. She said she saved some of our belongings from Germans and would return them. However, this did not make us happy. The janitor said that our father had come by the night before. She told him she hadn’t seen us and he went to Izabella without even coming into the house. We went to Izabella’s house, when it got dark. My mother knocked on a window. A minute later we were hugging our dearest Izabella. Izabella was struck with how we looked. We had all possible clothes on since it was cold. My mother was wrapped in some blanket shreds. Our clothes were dirty, torn and smelly. Izabella heated some water and put my sister and me in the bathtub with hot water. Izabella burnt everything we had on in the oven. After we got washed we put on our aunts’ pajamas, big, but homey and clean. When the bathtub was being filled for mama, the doorbell rang. What happened was that my father had really returned to Kosice the night before. The town party committee organized a banquet in his honor and now he returned from it. Izabella went to open the door to prepare my father to the surprise waiting for him, but my sister and I couldn’t wait and threw ourselves on this tall lean man in a military uniform. While kissing us his eyes were searching for his beloved wife whom he hadn’t seen in three years.  When this strong and brave man, who had come through so many ordeals in recent years saw our mother, he couldn’t stand the test of joy and fainted. My sister looked at him with horror and screamed: “Papa died!’ He recovered his senses from her screaming. Izabella took us to the bedroom where her children were sleeping: my 8-year old cousin Gabor and his 8-months old  sister Marina. My aunt put us to sleep in one bed and went to sleep on another and we fell asleep. One hours later I got high fever and began to talk deliriously. My screams woke Izabella and she gave me pills and applied compresses all night through. In the morning a doctor came and said this was a nervous breakdown. He prescribed me a sedative. Our father told us how he came to Kosice from Uzhgorod. He was secretary of the regional party committee in Uzhgorod. He got a letter from his niece Judit, Izodor’s daughter, who returned to Kosice from a concentration camp and met with her fiancé. Her parents perished in the concentration camp and since she hadn’t reached the age of 18, her marriage could only be registered at her parents’ consent. Judit asked my father to give his consent to her marriage and this was how my father came to Kosice. He got a 3-week leave and had a car to take him to Kosice. My father adopted Judit, and young people got married soon.  We moved to Uzhgorod.           

There was a surprise waiting for us there. My father’s cousin Terez, grandfather brother Pal Edelmann’ daughter and her two friends, our distant relatives. They had all returned from a concentration camp. Some time later my father’s nephew Adolf joined us. His sisters Livia and Judit lived in Prague. It was hard for them to raise their younger brother and they sent him to us. Adolf was like one of us in the family.

We also got information about other members of the family. Grandfather Pal’s widow Betti, her daughter Terez, and sons Emil and Jozsef were taken to Auschwitz in April 1944. Betti perished in a gas chamber, and the children were sent to a work camp. After liberation Terez returned to Kosice, got married and was manager of a canteen at school. She is 86 now. Emil also worked in a camp. After returning home he moved to Israel. He lived his life and died there. . His family lives in Israel. Jozsef returned to Kosice after the war. He died in the 1980s. Jozsef’s family was also taken to a concentration camp. Jozsef and his wife perished in the crematorium. Their children survived.  Laszlo moved to Australia in 1946, got married and owned a men’s garments’ factory. In late 1940s he helped his sisters Kato, Magda, Judit and Eva and their families to move to Australia. Laszlo has died, but his family and his sisters’ families live in Sydney. My grandfather’s sister Regina Berger, her husband and their son Simon also moved to Australia after returning from a concentration camp. Regina and her husband lived their life in Australia, died and were buried there. Their son Simon moved to Canada where he lives with his family. My father’s cousin brothers, my grandfather sister Pepka’s children, who were raised in my grandfather’s family, were in a concentration camp. Only the middle daughter Regina (her family name was Muller) returned to  Kosice. Aranka and Jeno perished in the camp. Vilmos, the son of Nandor, who died in 1942, survived. He told me that when his mother Liza, Vilmos and 7-year old Tamas arrived at Auschwitz, the sorting began. The younger son was taken to the group of inmates that were sent to a gas chamber. A German officer approached Liza and whispered into her ear, - Vilmos heard this discussion, - ‘Gnädige Frau! – that was how he addressed Liza, - I advise you to follow your older son. Liza replied that her son could take care of himself while her younger son couldn’t. The officer was convincing her telling her that the younger son would be taken care of and she would be able to see him, but Liza was inexorable. She took her younger son by his hand and went into the gas chamber with him. 14-year old Vilmos worked at a German plant. After the war he left for Israel, studied and became a lawyer. He changed his name to Zeev Singer. Since Israel was at war, Vilmos decided his place was in the army. He was promoted to the rank of colonel of the Israel army. He served in landing units and participated in all wars with Arabs. Vilmos was severely wounded, demobilized and worked as a lawyer in Tel Aviv. Zeev Singer is a national hero of Israel. He is a pensioner. He has two children and six grandchildren in Israel. My grandfather’s sister Betka Gerstl and her husband and children were also taken to a concentration camp. Betka and her husband Moric Gerstl were exterminated immediately. Betka’s daughter Ilona Zimmermann with her children and Betka’s sons Jeno and David perished in the concentration camp. Only her son Armin Gerstl survived and moved to Israel shortly after he returned. He has passed away. Mor Bergman, son of my father’s favorite aunt Relka, married a girl from Zvolen before Hungarians came to power and moved to his wife’s town. After 1938 Zvolen belonged to Slovakia and Kosice was Hungarian. When Jews began to be sent to Germany, Mor and his wife tried to cross the border and return to Kosice, but were captured and killed right there. Relka’s daughter Ilona stayed with her mother. They both perished in a concentration camp. My father sister Anna’s family, the Hertz family, was also taken to Auschwitz. Anna and her husband Moric were exterminated immediately. Of their 10 children only two survived: son Aladar; he lives in Frankfurt in Germany, and daughter Terez – she emigrated to Israel after the war. Terez has passed away. Her children live in Israel. Anna’s younger daughter Eszter also moved to Israel. She lives and works in a kibbutz. Sons Tibor, Marcel, Erno, Pal and Sandor and daughters Sarolta, Ilona and Edit and their families perished in the concentration camp. Grandfather’s youngest sister Etelka and her husband Jakab Blumenfeld and their younger children – son Erno and daughter Marta also perished in the concentration camp. Older daughters Edit (Gerstl in marriage) and Izabella (Kovartovski in marriage) were in a work camp and survived. After the war they moved to Israel. They’ve both passed away.  

My father’s brothers and sisters also suffered. The Hungarian police arrested Izodor and his wife Gizi in 1944 and charged them with concealment of Mor and his wife who had illegally crossed the border from Slovakia to Hungary escaping from the deportation. Izodor and his wife were put to prison.  In April 1944 Izodor and his wife Gizi  were taken to Buchenwald. According to eye witnesses Izodor behaved heroically in the camp. He went on hunger strikes and called other prisoners to disobey the oppressors. Izodor was executing with an electric wire and his wife was exterminated in a gas chamber. Their three children survived. Their older daughter Livia was a serious and smart girl. She wanted to become a doctor. She finished a grammar school in 1943. This was at the time of fascist Hungary and Livia could not get a higher education.  She finished a course of medical nurses in Budapest and went to work. She managed to avoid deportation to a concentration camp. Under a different name she went to work as a housemaid in a Czech village.   After the war Livia moved to Prague where her dream came true. She finished a Medical College and became a children’s doctor. She married a Czech man and had two daughters. Livia’s husband has passed away. She is a pensioner. Her daughters are married. Izodor’s second daughter Judit and her brother Adolf lived in the Tatras during German occupation where they stayed with other members of the Edelmann’s family. They were in the 2nd group that Erno managed to take out of Kosice after us. After the war Judit returned to Kosice. After my father adopted her and gave his consent to her marriage she got married at the age of 17 and had a daughter. Shortly afterward Judit divorced her husband, left for Prague with her daughter and remarried. She became a widow recently. Her daughter Julia moved to Australia in 1968 where she lives with her family. Adolf finished a secondary school and we both went to Leningrad where he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Leningrad University. He returned to Uzhgorod, finished a post-graduate institute. He was senior lecturer of the Faculty of Philosophy of Uzhgorod University. He got married and had two sons, Ilia and Andrey. When they grew up, they decided to move to Hungary. Adolf and his wife followed them there. They live in Szolnok. Adolf and his wife are pensioners. I believe Adolf to be my brother. We keep in touch writing letters, calling each other and visiting each other every now and then.

Jeno and his family was taken to Buchenwald. German executioners killed Jeno, and his wife Adel, sons Erno and Karoly and twin daughters Livia and Stella were burnt in the crematorium. 

My father sister Etelka’s family, grandmother Amalia and the youngest brother Armin were taken to Mauthausen. Only aunt Etelka survived. Grandmother and her two granddaughters Livia and Edit were burnt in the crematorium. Etelka’s husband and brother perished in the camp. According to eye-witnesses they died of typhoid. Etelka worked at a factory. In May 1945 Americans liberated her and she returned to Uzhgorod. It was hard to look at her: a young woman turned into an old one. She weighed 37 kg.  She lived with us in Uzhgood. My parents took every effort to bring her to recovery.

After the war

Only two of 7 families survived in the war: our family and my father brother Elemer’s family. Erno managed to take him, his wife, son Tamas and daughter Julia out of Kosice. They also took hiding in the woods living in an earth hut. After the war Terez divorced him and moved with their children to USA where her brother lived. Terez has passed away and Tamas and Julia and their families live in the States.  Elemer moved to Israel where he died at the age of 70.

My mother’s sister Izabella and her family stayed in Kosice. Her children and their families still live there. My cousin Gabor Tamm became a metallurgical engineer there. His younger sister Marina was an economist.  They are pensioners. We visit each other and talk on the phone.
When I went to Israel in 1989, I filled the forms and submitted the lists of the members of our family who perished during the war to the Yad Vashem 11 in Jerusalem.

My father received a wonderful 3-bedroom apartment. There were 6 of us living in it: our family, my cousin Adolf and aunt Etelka. My father became a secretary of the regional party committee.  In 1945 my father’s comrade Vinkler visited us. He was a member of the party like my father and was put in prison in 1940. When communists began to cross the border to the USSR, Vinkler went with them. He was arrested at the border and sent to thee GULAG where he spent two years. Then he was taken to Moscow where he was made responsible for a radio program in Hungarian. He worked there during the war, and in 1945 he decided to return to Kosice. On his way home he visited Uzhgorod to see my father. My father and mother were on vacation in a recreation center. Vinkler asked me to send them a message to come back home. Vinkler understood that life in the USSR was hard and it wasn’t worth staying here, but he couldn’t talk about it with me. When I told my father, he said: ‘I’ve fought for the Soviet power and want to live where the Soviet power is. I’ve had enough of fighting’. My mother, though she was a communist, understood very soon what was going on and often spoke very emotionally about it. I think, in his heart, my father agreed with her, but he always told mother that this was the fault of some people, but not the regime. My father rarely criticized some officials, but if somebody in his presence expressed his concerns about the Soviet power, my father always spoke in its favor. Some people did it from fear: many people were afraid of speaking their mind in fear of arrests 12 that went on in the USSR. However, my father was a very brave man. When the Soviet power was established in Subcarpathia, they began to arrest the Hungarian officials for the charges of their service for fascists. They were innocent, but they were to go to prison anyway. In 1945 my father saved many of these people. He saved Laszlo Sandor, a free lance employee of the ‘Mai Nap’ newspaper, from the camp where he was taken just for being a Hungarian, which meant fascist for them. My father witnessed that Sandor had always sympathized with communists. There were other similar cases. Of course, later I realized that my father could not have kept his belief in communist ideas living in the USSR. He got disappointed and acknowledged it and suffered from it very much.

My father didn’t work as secretary of the regional party committee for long. I understood later that they could not allow a Jew to hold this kind of position. My father was appointed logistics manager of the regional executive committee [Ispolkom] 13. He supported construction of two bridges in Uzhgorod: pedestrian and automobile. He was a born administrator and manager. However, in the opinion of authorities, a Jew was no good even for this position. There were two big plants in Uzhgorod: woodworking plant and plywood and furniture plant. Their directors were not very competent and the plants were in decay. Town authorities united these plants and appointed my father director. He was dedicated to his job, and soon the enterprise began to prosper. After the campaign against cosmopolites 14 during the postwar years, anti-Semitism in the USSR was growing stronger, and again danger hanged over my father.

In 1946 my aunt Etelka living with us after she returned from the concentration camp, married Ignac Bergida, who had also lost his family to the war. He lived in Uzhgorod before the war. He liked Etelka even then. His first marriage was prearranged. He was a decent, kind and honest man. He was an accountant. When my father became director of the plant, he employed Bergida. In 1947 Bergida and Etelka’s daughter Vera was born. In 1945 the soviet regime began to struggle against religion 15. Most Jews in Subcarpathia were religious. All synagogue were closed in Uzhgorod. The biggest – the Hasidic – synagogue was given to the town Philharmonic. The Jewish community decided to send their representative to the Jewish Antifascist Committee 16 in Moscow for help. Bergida was not an activist in the community, but he was the only one who could speak Russian.  Ukrainian Ivan Turianitza, the first secretary of the regional party committee, my father’s close friend, issued a letter to Fefer, a member of the Committee, requesting him to support the community. Bergida went to Moscow. Shortly after he returned, the Antifascist Committee was liquidated and its members executed. The KGB 17 was aware of Bergida’s trip to Moscow. He was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in the GULAG. The charges against him were treason and support of international Zionism and capitalism. This was nonsense and was not true, but at the beginning even my father believed he was guilty, so strong the Soviet propaganda was. However, my father was Bergida’s relative.  Somebody reported that my father went to the synagogue and for this reason refused to work on Saturday. This was wrong, of course: my father was an atheist even when religion was the way of life. KGB officers followed my father looking for a ground to arrest him. Stalin’s death on 5 March 1953 saved my father from arrest. Bergida’s sentence was reduced to 10 years. He had cancer at that time, and they released him from the GULAG. He died in 1956 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Uzhgorod. My parents supported Etelka and her daughter. Etelka has passed away. My cousin Vera Brown lives in the USA.

My sister and I went to the school for girls. When Subcarpathia became Soviet, the Russian language was introduced in all spheres of life. There were Russian schools, and only my father could speak the language.  We still spoke Hungarian at home. However, children pick languages easily, and a year later my sister and I had no problems with speaking Russian. I had all excellent marks at school in all years. My sister had different marks. Our father was a patriot and raised us to love our Soviet Motherland. We became pioneers and then joined Komsomol 18. I didn’t face any anti-Semitism at school, but I cannot say it did not exist in Uzhgorod. After the process against cosmopolites began to encourage anti-Semitic moods, as I understand now, but our father protected us from this information. He didn’t want us to get disappointed in the Soviet power.

I finished school in 1949. I got to know that there was a faculty of eastern languages, and the Finnish-Hungarian department in it in Leningrad University. I wrote them and they replied they would be happy to admit me, particularly that Hungarian was my native language. Professor Bubrik, chief of this chair, wrote that I could work for him at the department. However, there were only 2 applications submitted to this Faculty while they needed at least 8, so they cancelled this admission.  So, they suggested that I entered another department, passed academic exams during my first year and enter the 3rd year of the university. My father wanted me to return home, but I decided to stay in Leningrad. I passed exams to the French department of the College of Foreign languages. I was accommodated in a hostel and started my study on 1 September. I never went to study in the university, though: professor Bubrik died and they closed the Finnish-Hungarian department. I finished the College of Foreign languages successfully. I studied French and English, and also, passed exams in German, that I knew since childhood to obtain a certificate for teaching it. 

I got to know what anti-Semitism is like in college. We had wonderful lecturers. During the process against cosmopolites wonderful lecturers and scientists were fired from the university and Academy. Rector of the College of Foreign languages employed them. Yefim Etkind, a brilliant scientist and a charming person, taught us stylistics and translation.  Etkind brought me to understanding that not everything in the USSR was so great as we were used to thinking. I didn’t face any anti-Semitism till early 1953, the disgraceful ‘doctors’ plot’ 19. There were Jews in college and in our group. My closest friend was Rosa Fradkina, a Jewish girl from Leningrad, whose family perished during the blockade 20. She was taken out of the city by the ‘Road of Life’ 21, and was sent to a children’s home. Rosa grew up there and returned to her home city. Rosa spent vacations at my home and became one of us in the family. Our friendship became a lifelong relation. We correspond and phone each other and sometimes Rosa visits me.

The ‘doctors’ plot’ brought open anti-Semitism to life. People with typical Semitic appearance were abused publicly and there was nobody to stand for them.  In polyclinics patients asked about doctors’ nationality and refused to go to Jewish doctors. [Jewish was considered a nationally among many others in the Soviet Union and it was registered in peoples’ passports.] This was hard and scary. When I heard that Stalin dead on 5 March 1953, I couldn’t hold back my tears. There was a mourning meeting and we were all crying. There was one question: how do we go on living and what will happen to the country now that Stalin is dead. I can still remember this feeling of fear. 

I met my future husband in Uzhgorod, when Rosa and I came home on vacation. There was an open-air swimming pool near the railway station. We spend much time there swimming and lying in the sun: Rosa, my sister and I. . Kati finished 8 forms and entered the Electric Engineering technical college in Vinogradovo, despite our parents’ protests. She fell in love with a senior student of this college. My sister’s friend was a sportsman. Once he injured his spine and the bruise developed into tumor. He was taken to a hospital in Uzhgorod. My sister gave up her studies and returned to Uzhgorod. She entered an evening school and spent days in the hospital. He died and it was very hard on my sister. We tried to support her and I always took my sister with us wherever we went. We met our future husbands by this swimming pool. My husband Adolf Haikis was a doctor in the Uzhgorod military hospital. He was born in Kiev in 1921. His father Solomon Haikis was an endocrinologist in the clinic for scientists in Kiev. He had finished the Medical Faculty of Berlin University before the revolution of 1917 22. He had good memories about the years of his studies and he gave his son the German name of Adolf.  Back in 1921it was not associated with Hitler. His mother Vera Haikis, nee Kozlova, came from the Jewish family of the Kozlovs, attorneys in Kiev.  Adolf wanted to become a literarian, but there was no literature college in Kiev and he decided to become a doctor to follow into his father’s steps. He entered Kiev Medical College. In 1944 Adolf finished college and went to the front. He was doctor in hospital. In 1947 he requested to demobilize from the army. He entered the residency department and specialized in neuropathology.  After finishing the residency he returned to the army and became a military doctor, neuropathologist in the Uzhgorod hospital.  Returned to Uzhgorod in 1956 after finishing my college and we got married. Of course, we didn’t have a traditional Jewish wedding. We registered our marriage in a registry office and had a wedding dinner for our relatives and friends.  We lived with my parents. I went to work as a French schoolteacher. In 1955 our only daughter Ludmila was born. My father loved her dearly. He called her ‘the last love of his life’. At that time my parents lived in Velikaya Dobron [30 km from Uzhgorod, 680 km from Kiev] village, but they often came to Uzhgorod: my mother visited us more often than my father. My sister married Leopold Lowenberg, a Jew from Mukachevo [40 km from Uzhgorod, 650 km from Kiev] She moved to Mukachevo with her husband. She finished higher accounting courses and worked as an accountant and then chief accountant in a big store. Her husband was a shop superintendent at a factory. In 1953 their only daughter Julia was born. We didn’t celebrate any Jewish holidays in our family even in my childhood. Since 1945 our family always celebrated Soviet holidays: 1 May, 7 November 23, Soviet army day 24, Victory Day 25 and the New Year, of course. We always had guests and lots of fun.

It was more and more difficult for my father to work as director of the plant. Workers liked him very much, but the pressure of party authorities was hard for him.  When in 1954 General Secretary of the CC CPSU Nikita Khrushchev 26 appealed to communists to go to villages to improve the kolkhoses 27, my father was among the first ones to respond to this appeal. He went to Velikaya Dobron village in Uzhgorod district and became chairman of the kolkhoz. My mother followed him, of course.  This was remote village, with no polyclinic or public baths. In one year my father turned this kolkhoz into a successful enterprises. Velikaya Dobron residents adored him for becoming wealthy. A school, a polyclinic, a public bath were built and villagers had new houses with all comforts.  The villagers called my father ‘our father’. However, not everything was well with his work. At that time local authorities demanded to show higher quantities in documents to pretend there were more successes than in reality and there was much pressure on my father in this regard. My father was an honest man and convinced communist and refused to do any falsifications. One day in June 1963 he was invited to another bureau of the district party committee. When he came home, he had an infarction. He survived, but he could work no longer. My parents returned to Uzhgorod. My father became a free lance correspondent for the ‘Karpati Igaz Szo’ newspaper. [Carpathian True Word, Hungarian language Soviet newspaper, issued in Uzhgorod.] My father suffered much than neither his daughters nor their husbands were members of the party. Though my husband was a military, he never joined the party and this had an impact on his career.  Through 14 years of his work in Uzhgorod hospital he was in the rank of captain, though it was time for him to be promoted to the rank of major. They wouldn’t have promoted a Jew, particularly that he was not a member of the party. My husband knew what the party policy was worth.  After the 20th Congress of CPSU 28 we heard about Stalin and his regime’s crimes from the speech of Nikita Khrushchev. My husband and I believed this to be true. The 20th Congress was followed by the so-called ‘thaw’. We were hoping for improvements, but some time later we realized that these expectations were not to become true. The CPSU and KGB guided the life in the country.

In late October 1956 my husband received an emergency call ordering him to come to his unit immediately. This was all he knew any relocation at that time was confidential. In the morning my husband called me to inform that he was leaving. The only point of contact was captain Ostapenko in his hospital. I put my 11-month old daughter into her pram and ran to the hospital. I got to know that they were sent to Hungary by train. I read about the events in Hungary [23rd October 1956] 29 in newspapers. It was scaring. I feared for my husband, was sorry for the actions of the Soviet government and sympathized with Hungary. My husband called me from Budapest: they deployed a hospital in the basement of the Parliament building. My husband met a telephone operator. Her name was Judit like mine. My husband didn’t speak Hungarian, but he spoke German. He told Judit about me and our daughter and she allowed him to call me every evening. My husband’s best friend Samuel Frek, a Jew, an endocrinologist from the Uzhgorod hospital was sent in his ambulance vehicle to Hungary. On their way they were halted by a group of Hungarian rebels, about 40 of them. They disarmed them and ordered our doctors to stand with their backs to trees, but they did not shoot them and let them go few minutes later. In these few minutes, Samuel Frek, a dark-haired handsome man of the same age as my husband, turned gray. Upon their return to Uzhgorod they began to have problems. The political department demanded that they explained why they gave away their weapons. Hey didn’t want to understand that 3 doctors could not resist 40 armed men, even though the rebels returned their guns to the military commandant of Uzhgorod.

Few months later the military in Hungary were allowed to bring their families there. My daughter and I joined my husband in Hungary. I was happy to speak Hungarian and hear my native language around me. I served as interpreter for other militaries. In 1957 my husband’s father died in Kiev. There were restrictions about traveling from Hungary and my husband was not allowed to go to his father’s funeral. We received the notification about his death on Friday, but my husband had to wait for a permit for departure till Monday. My father went to the funeral from Uzhgorod. My husband went to Kiev later to support his mother after the funeral. My father-in-law was buried in the Baykovoye town cemetery in Kiev.

From Hungary we returned to Uzhgorod with my husband’s division. In the early 1960s armed conflicts with the Chinese started on the Far Eastern border. Khrushchev began to send divisions from all over the USSR to the Far East. 1963 was a very hard year for our family. My father’s health condition was very severe after the infarction, and he had to stay in Dobron. We had to look after my father. My husband’s mother spent spring and summer with us, leaving for Kiev in early November. That year my husband was planning to take her to Kiev before 7 November. On 13 October she died suddenly of infarction. She was an atheist and we arranged a secular funeral. On 23 October my husband’s hospital was given an order to send 4 people to the Far East. There were only 3 Jewish employees in the hospital: Haikis, Flek and Wasserman, and all of them were sent to the Far East. The 4th man was a Russian doctor. They went to the gathering point in Vladimir-Volynskiy. My husband asked the general to allow him 10 days to make arrangements for his mother’s apartment in Kiev to be returned in the ownership of the state. The general gave him the leave. Then my husband in November 1963 moved on to my husband’s point of destination. He got a job in a big hospital in the Primorskiy Kray, Kraskino village, on the very border with China, a district town of the Khasan district in 50 km from the Khasan Lake. I only managed to obtain a permit in February 1964, I and our daughter came to Kraskino. We could see Chinese houses from our hut. I went to work in the only village school. My daughter also went to this school.   We spent vacations with my parents in Uzhgorod every year. In 1968 we also planned to go there, but my husband fell ill and we had to stay home. When he got better, we went to the recreation house for high-rank officers near Vladivostok. This was August 1968 , and we heard about the events in Czechoslovakia [Prague Spring] 30. I remember how shocked my husband and I were, when we heard about the invasion of Soviet armies of Czechoslovakia, the country that I believe to be my Motherland. I’ve always loved it.  In this recreation house we met a lecturer from the Academy in Leningrad, a Jewish man. When we met after we heard about the events in Czechoslovakia, I remember how this Jewish colonel and my husband cursed the Soviet power for this invasion: ‘How could we bring tanks to Prague? How could they allow it to happen?’ When I returned to Uzhgorod later, I got to know that Erno, my father’s cousin, when Soviet tanks invaded Prague in 1968, decided to leave the USSR for Israel. Erno was professor of Medicine lecturing in the Prague Medical University. He became a doctor in Israel. Erno has passed away, but his widow, son Karoly, a cardiologist, the father of four children, and his daughter Eva, an archeologist, live in Israel. She had two daughters.

The Far East promoted my husband’s military career. This was a different world with no anti-Semitism where people were valued for their human merits rather than their nationality.  My husband was appointed chief of department and promoted to the rank of major. 4 years later he became chief of the hospital and promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. During military actions my husband worked in a field hospital. The term of service in the Far East was 5 years and we lived there 7 years. Upon completion of this term my husband was sent to the Сarpathian military regiment.  We moved to Uzhgorod, and settled down with m parents. My daughter went to the 8th form a school. My husband went to the regiment commander, a general, to report of his arrival. The general stared at him: lieutenant colonel, a Jew and chief of the medical department of hospital – how could this be true? It just could not happen in Ukraine. Commander of the regiment advised my husband to visit with the family in Uzhgorod since he was not ready yet to talk with him and hopefully, when Adolf came back, he would have a job to offer him. 10 days later my husband came back to Lvov. The general offered him the position of chief of the medical department of the hospital in Korosten, a small town in Zhytomyr region [85 km from Zhytomyr, 165 km from Kiev]. Before the revolution of 1917 Korosten was within the Jewish Pale of Settlement 31. There were many Jewish residents in the town. 80% of medical employees of the hospital were Jews. We were welcomed nicely. My daughter went to school and I went to work as a French teacher at school. After finishing school my daughter went to my parents in Uzhgorod and entered the English department of the Faculty of foreign languages of Uzhgorod University. My husband wanted to demobilize from the army and move to Kiev, his hometown. We did it in 1974. We received a 2-bedroom apartment in a new house near a lake in the Sviatoshino district in Kiev. My husband had a confirmation of his transfer of the parents’ apartment to the state and this helped a lot. My husband worked a neuropathologist in the polyclinic for scientists of the Academy of Scientists. I worked as a German and French teacher at school till I retired. I got along with my colleagues and my pupils liked me. My former pupils visit and call me. I am very glad that they do not forget me.

In the 1970s Jews began to move to Israel. My husband did not appreciate this process. He did not understand how they could leave their Motherland and their kin’s graves. My father had the same attitude to emigration. Our close friend Tsypkin, a traumatologist from Uzhgorod, and his family left the country. My husband was trying to convince them against doing it.  I met with the Tsypkins in Berlin last year. They are doing very well. Their children are well. They have a decent living in their old age, which cannot be said about Ukrainian the Commonwealth of Independent States pensioners. Now I receive my husband’s pension as his dependent, as I hadn’t worked in my life. My own teacher’s pension wouldn’t even be enough to pay my monthly fees. 

In 1975 my father died few months before he was to turn 70. We buried him in the town cemetery in Uzhgorod. He was an atheists and we arranged for a secular funeral. My daughter still lived with my mother, and my mother didn’t feel complete loneliness. Upon graduation from the University Ludmila married Miloslav Goshovskiy and moved in with her husband. Their apartment faced the central synagogue that housed the Philharmonic during the Soviet power. Miloslav is a physicist. He graduated from the Lvov Polytechnic University and worked in the Uzhgorod affiliate of the institute of nuclear research. Since the head institute was in Kiev we were hoping that they would move to Kiev. Ludmila worked as an English teacher in the children’s center at the gymnasium. My granddaughter Yekaterina was born in 1978. Two years later my grandson Mikhail was born. Ludmila and her husband decided to stay in Uzhgorod. My mother often visited us in Kiev staying with us for a long time. After our grandchildren were born, she began to spend more time in Uzhgorod helping Ludmila to take care of the children. My mother died in 1985 at the age of 76. She was buried beside my father.

My sister and her family lived in Mukachevo. Her daughter Julia finished school with a golden medal and entered the University. She got an offer to go to study at the Faculty of Hungarian Language and Literature of the Budapest University under a students’ exchange program. Julia went to Budapest, and my sister and her husband wanted to live close to their daughter. They decided to move to Hungary, but they could not obtain the visa. After they had 3 refusals Klara and her husband decided to move to Israel for Julia to join them later. Of course, had my father been alive, he would have never allowed my sister to emigrate. They obtained a permit and left. They settled down in Netanya. My sister went to work as a cashier in a supermarket, and Leopold worked as a goods expert in a store. After finishing her study Julia worked in Budapest as an editor of Hebrew-Hungarian dictionaries in a dictionary publishing office. Julia had no chance to join her parents: Hungary did not allow emigration to Israel in 1970s. Julia undertook few efforts and then decided to trick the authorities: in 1978 she bought a tour to France and from there she left for Israel illegally. In Israel Julia married Boris Penson, an artist. He had come to Israel from the USSR. Julia and Boris have two wonderful sons. Max, the older one, born in 1981, served in the army and works for an army organization. Roy, the younger son, born in 1989, studied in high school and later at a higher education institution in Natanya. Now she owns a publishing house. They have a house in Netaniya. Klara and Leo are pensioners now.

In 1982 my husband died. On 30 April he was at work receiving patients and on 1 May he had an infarction. He died on 4 May 1982. We buried Adolf near his father in the Baykovoye cemetery in Kiev. Since then I’ve lived alone. I often visit my daughter’s family in Uzhgorod and my grandchildren visit me. In 2002 a terrible tragedy happened in our family. My daughter fell severely ill. She had a malicious tumor in her brain. She had a surgery, but to no avail. Nobody told me my daughter’s diagnosis, and when I heard about it, she was already dying. Despite a surgery and our efforts she died in 2002, so young that she was. There will be always pain of this loss with me.

After finishing school Yekaterina entered the Historical Faculty of Uzhgorod University. Mikhail studied at the Medical Faculty in the university. My granddaughter also taught history in the Jewish Sunday school and my grandson worked as a medical brother during studies. When she was a senior student in the university, my granddaughter. After finishing the 4th year of the university my granddaughter took an academic leave and went to work in Germany for a year, to Stuttgart. She met her future husband Michael Hertzog, a German man, there. They got married. A year later Yekaterina returned to Uzhgorod, finished her studies in the university and moved in with her husband in Germany. Now she studies at the Faculty of Economics in Osnabruck. My grandson Mikhail also moved to Germany after finishing his studies.    

In the late 1980s General Secretary of the CPSY Mikhail Gorbachev 32 initiated perestroika 33 in the USSR. I was enthusiastic about it. Finally freedom came to the USSR that I believed to be y second Motherland. There were articles on various subjects that had been forbidden formerly, published. There were books by for example, those of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn 34 published that would have been judged as anti-Soviet propaganda in the past. The ‘iron curtain’ 35 that separated us from the rest of the world for many years, collapsed. Citizens of the USSR were allowed to communicate with people living abroad without fearing the KGB, correspond with relatives 36 and invite them home. There was no longer ban on religion that had been in place since the start of the soviet power. People were allowed to go to temples and celebrate religious holidays. Religious and everyday anti-Semitism was reducing. We, citizens of the USSR, were happy and full of hopes for a different life. I could finally travel to Israel to visit my sister and see my friends. I was happy about it. It’s hard to say how much Israel impressed me. It’s an amazingly beautiful country where the antiquity and modern life are in complete conformity. Unfortunately, this little country living in the encirclement of hostile neighbors, knows no peace. I wish Israel peace, quiet life and prosperity from the bottom of my heart.   

When after the breakup of the USSR [1991] Ukraine gained independence, we were building up hopes  for a better life, but many of us still live in the humiliating poverty. Ukraine is rich in natural resources, fruitful soils and hardworking people. I believe, we have such poor life due to our leaders who guided the country in the Soviet times. However, there has been some improvement. The Jewish life is reviving. There are many Jewish organizations and associations, and the most popular with old people is the Hesed 37, of course. The Hesed in Kiev provides food packages to us, delivers meals to elderly people and bring medications. This is significant assistance. We are in a better position than non-Jewish residents. Hesed is just great! It conducts a great job to recover Jewry in Ukraine, from nursery schools to old people helping them to study the Jewish history, history of religion, and learn more about Jewish traditions. There are various studios and clubs. I like our Sunday daytime center where we talk with other people – this is very important. Sometimes talking to others is more important than food. I have new friends in the daytime center and we enjoy spending time together. I read Hesed-delivered Jewish newspapers and magazines regularly. Soon I am moving to my grandchildren in Germany, my family. It’s hard to live alone in my age. Of course, it’s hard to leave everything here, it’s been a big part of my life, hard to leave the graves of my dear ones and get adjusted to a different way of life, but I hope to able to visit Uzhgorod and Kiev, my two hometowns.

GLOSSARY:

1 First Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938): The First Czechoslovak Republic was created after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy following World War I. The union of the Czech lands and Slovakia was officially proclaimed in Prague in 1918, and formally recognized by the Treaty of St. Germain in 1919. Ruthenia was added by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Czechoslovakia inherited the greater part of the industries of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the new government carried out an extensive land reform, as a result of which the living conditions of the peasantry increasingly improved. However, the constitution of 1920 set up a highly centralized state and failed to take into account the issue of national minorities, and thus internal political life was dominated by the struggle of national minorities (especially the Hungarians and the Germans) against Czech rule. In foreign policy Czechoslovakia kept close contacts with France and initiated the foundation of the Little Entente in 1921.

Anna Gliena
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova
Date of interview: December 2002

Anna Gliena lives in an old and beautiful house in one the most picturesque streets in Lvov.  I ring the doorbell and an old stout woman opens the door. She inquires me about the purpose of my visit. She happens to be Anna Timofeeva, a Russian woman that attends to Anna Gliena. The mistress of the house has been bed-ridden for a long time. She has a number of old-age ailments that could be cured given the right care, but one can tell that she lacks such care. There is old furniture in the room that becomes of vale nowadays while back in 1950s those cupboards, sideboards and stools were easily thrown away as old junk. She has portraits of her mother and brother on the walls. Anna’s bed sheets have not been changed for long. She has a dirty and creased kerchief on her head. She doesn’t seem to care. When I ask her if I could take a photo of her next time when she had her hair done she refuses flatly. However, Anna is glad to have this opportunity to tell her story. Her attendant lends her ears to our conversation and Anna cannot talk openly in her presence, particularly when it comes to discussion of specific Jewish subjects. Anna Timofeevna is reluctant to follow my request to wait somewhere else until we finish our discussion. Even when she leaves I know that she is eavesdropping from behind the door.  She makes her living by attending to Anna Gliena and she suspects a competitor  in every visitor. Anna Gliena has promised to leave her apartment to this woman’s son and now she has fallen to be dependent on this woman.

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary

My family backgrownd

My maternal grandfather Iosif Meyerovich was born in a town within the Pale of Settlement 1 in the Russian Empire in the 1860s.  When he grew of age he was recruited to the tsarist army and served in it 25 years. He was a tailor and inherited this profession. He must have been very good at it since he made uniforms to his commanders. At the beginning of his service Iosif Meyerovich lived in a barrack with other soldiers. His regiment was in a small Lithuanian town of Ponedele town my mother told me. I’ve never again heard this word. My brother and I were trying to find the town, but failed. 

My mother told me it was a very small town and the majority of its population was Jewish. There was a synagogue in the center: a plank rectangular building with an upper tier for women. It was a poor synagogue with no decorations inside or outside the building. There was a one-storied brick building across the street from the synagogue: a Jewish bank. Most of the buildings in the town were made of wood. Jews were craftsmen in their majority: tailors, shoemakers, bakers or merchants.

On Jewish holidays, Pesach in particular, Jewish soldiers were allowed to dress up in their uniforms for special occasions to go to the synagogue and then they could visit some hospitable Jewish family to celebrate seder.  My grandfather went to a tailor’s family, of course. He met his daughter Leya. She was 16 years old and Iosif was 25. This was in 1885. A Russian colonel – my grandfather made uniforms for him, gave his permission to their marriage. According to the family legend he even attended their wedding. They had a traditional Jewish wedding party with a chuppah, a rabbi from the synagogue and a number of guests.  My grandfather Iosif Meyerovich and my grandmother’s family were religious and observed all Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays. My mother recalled that her father got up early in the morning and prayed. He fasted and went to the synagogue every Saturday. He had finished cheder and could read Jewish religious books in Hebrew. Shortly after the wedding my grandfather obtained permission to live with his family. He rented a small wooden house where he arranged a small shop in the basement. He didn’t have a sewing machine and did all work manually. After serving in the army 25 years my grandfather didn’t live long. He died in 1902. Iosif Meyerovich had asthma and my mother heard him dying of an asthmatic fit in the next-door room.

My mother told me little about her mother. Se said she was a humble Jewish woman. She wore a wig and was a good housewife. My grandmother gave birth to another baby almost every year. They were weak and sickly and my mother was the only survivor.  Grandmother Leya died in 1904. I don’t know what caused her death. My grandmother and grandfather were buried at the Jewish cemetery in accordance with all Jewish traditions. 

My mother Rosa, was born in 1887. In their Jewish neighborhood in her town Yiddish was the language they spoke in families and sang songs in Yiddish, so of course, it was my mother’s mother tongue. My grandfather’s clients spoke Russian to grandfather when they came to make orders so my mother picked up this language when she was a child. Many residents in Lithuania spoke German and my mother picked up this language as well. In this way my mother that had no education and never studied, could only write her signature and read a little, could also speak a few languages. My mother rarely recalled her childhood in this small town. She liked talking about fairs on Christian holidays and colorful performances. There was no religious or national segregation and people enjoyed these gatherings and had lots of fun. This was probably the only entertainment in this small town.  
  
After her parents died my mother had a small amount of money that she decided to spend on traveling. In early 20th century it was common for young people to travel to European countries. They formed groups (most often these were professional groups: of teachers, doctors or post office employees) of young people that had common interests, etc.  There were Jewish groups of young people that were fond of traveling. These tours were not so costly. My mother recalled their tour to Germany. They stayed in inexpensive hotels in Bremen, Munich, Dresden and toured these towns. They also went to Great Britain. My mother told me that when they got to London they were unaware of the rules and customs in this city. One of them was that if a young girl went out with her head uncovered it meant that she was a girl of easy virtue and they might take her to a brothel. When my mother heard about it she bought a little hat. My mother even thought of staying in London and getting a job of a housemaid, shop assistant or seamstress.  She didn’t feel like going back to her small town. She liked many things about this huge city, but she couldn’t find a job and besides, she became sickly due to the climate: frequent fogs and dampness. She had splitting headaches and gained migraine that she suffered from for the rest of her life. Rosa Meyerovich had to leave London. She was going back via Warsaw [before 1918 Warsaw was a part of the Russian Empire]. My mother was a tall, stately and pretty girl with big hazel eyes. She liked to dress according to the fashion. She had beautiful black hair that she liked to arrange in a popped manner. She also had a beautiful voice and she liked singing.  She sang Jewish songs in Yiddish and popular songs in other languages. One couldn’t help being attracted by such girl. My mother met a young shoemaker in Warsaw that happened to be Samuel Gliena, a Jew. He came from a small town near Warsaw. I don’t remember its name.  

I have never heard of a Jewish family from a small town near Warsaw with such strange family name. It doesn’t sound Jewish or Polish.  My father’s family was very poor. There were poor Jews living in this small town. My father’s father Froim Gliena was born in 1860s. He was a shoemaker, but he could hardly earn enough to support his family. There were more shoemakers than residents that could afford to buy an extra pair of shoes. My grandfather was very religious. His life consisted of prayers and work. He believed that his being a righteous man would one day bring wealth into his family, but there was only poverty awaiting for them. My grandmother Khana was born in 1865. She was a plain religious woman with no education. She had to go to work for a Polish landlord for additional earnings to make ends meet. She often got payment in food products rather than money.

They spoke Yiddish in the family. My grandfather studied in cheder and could write in Yiddish, but I don’t think he could read anything, but his book of prayers. My grandmother had no education whatsoever, and the letters that we received from her in 1930s were written by somebody else. Grandmother was very old. My father left his home when he was young. My grandfather and grandmother died tragically. In 1939, when Germans came to Poland, they set my grandparents’ home on fire and my grandparents perished. We got to know about this after World War II. I don’t know what happened to my father’s sisters and brothers: there were at least 12 of them.  My father told me their names, but I don’t remember.

My father Samuel Gliena was born in this small town near Warsaw in 1885. He left for Warsaw on foot when he turned 14. He became an apprentice of a shoemaker for ‘food and accommodation’. He worked and slept in the shop in the basement of his master’s house. There was not a single tree in the yard. This was a Jewish neighborhood in the town and life was no different there from the life of Jewish families in a small and poor Jewish town.  My father did not only have to do work in his master’s shop, but also look after his children and do other housekeeping chores. My father didn’t like to recall his youth. He didn’t have any bad feelings toward his master and his family, though. Those people had a hard life. My father learned to make shoes and boots within 2-3 years. He got his own clients and began to dress up to fashion and pay attention to girls.  In 1904 Samuel Gliena met a bright young girl traveling from London. It was love at first sight.  My mother stayed in Warsaw and moved in with my father in his basement. They got married shortly afterward. They had a wedding in Warsaw. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and a rabbi from the nearest synagogue. Everybody admired the beauty of the bride and my father always worshipped my mother ever after.

1905 was an uneasy year with continuous clashes between Poles and Ukrainians, Ukrainians and Jews and there were revolutionary ideas in the air.  Somebody advised my father to move to Kharkov. They said it was quieter and easier to find a job there. The newly weds moved to Kharkov and rented an apartment in Goncharovka Street. My father got a job in a shoe shop. The owner of the shop was a Jew. He closed his shop on Saturday and Jewish holidays.  My mother was a housewife. They observed Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays. My mother followed kashrut when cooking, but I wouldn’t call my family deeply religious. My father didn’t wear a kippah and shave his beard, but he had a moustache. My mother only covered her hair when going to the synagogue on Pesach and Yom Kippur. However, mother lit candles every Friday before Sabbath. She put on a kerchief and prayed over candles. Each time she mentioned that this was how her mother used to do it and that beautiful silver candlesticks were the only thing she got from her parents. These candlesticks disappeared during the Great Patriotic War 2.

In 1909 my older brother Osher was born. Later he began to be called with a Russian name of Roman  3. A year later in 1910  Bella was born and in 1914 Israel was born.

My mother told me that Bella was a very sweet girl. She was a very clean girl and when my mother had a headache she closed shutters on the windows saying ‘Mother, you go lie down and I shall wash dishes and clean up’. Bella died of scarlet fever at the age of 5. My brother Israel also died at that time. He had a bloody flux. My mother was in hospital with Bella and the little boy was in his nanny’s care. He must have grabbed something from the floor and eaten it that caused the bloody flux. Bella and Israel died in 1915 and were buried at the Jewish cemetery in accordance with the Jewish traditions. My parents often went to the cemetery and my father used to take me there, too. I remember that their graves were by a wall and there were boards with their names in Yiddish on the graves.

Growing up

I was born in 1917. My mother was very weak and sickly and had migraines. She hired a nanny to look after me. My nanny’s name was Anna Grigorenko. She was a Ukrainian woman. She spoke beautiful Ukrainian and sang Ukrainian songs. My mother and father spoke Yiddish. I picked up Yiddish and Ukrainian. Since Russian is spoken much in Kharkov I picked up Russian, too. My older brother Osher became the dearest person in my life.  He was the nicest and most handsome man and had a beautiful voice. My brother studied at a grammar school in Kharkov. However, after the revolution of 1917 4 this grammar school was dismissed and my brother followed into my father’s steps. My brother was a hardworking person and everything he took up worked out very well. Osher became fond of theater and attended a drama club in a cultural center.  He was very talented and got to play the leading roles in Ukrainian plays and performances about the Civil War 5. Performances were in Russian or Ukranian.  There was a theater near our house. My mother and brother were both theatergoers. My mother told me that there were actors living in the neighborhood and they often invited my mother to their performances. She used to take my brother to the theater with her. Some playwrights and screenwriters noted my brother’s gifts and sent him to study at the studio in the Russian Drama Theater in Kharkov. He started work in touring groups, or drama clubs in kolkhozes until he got a job at the theater for young spectators in Kharkov before the Great Patriotic War. When working in the theater my brother changed his name to Roman. It doesn’t mean that he was ashamed of his Jewish name, but it was better for his career to have a Russian name working in a Russian theater. At home my brother switched to Yiddish. Our father taught my brother to read in Yiddish. We had Talmud books at home and my father and brother read them. I remember that at Pesach they recited prayers. I was small and fell asleep early. They woke me up at midnight when it was time for seder. I don’t remember celebration of other religious holidays at home. My parents went to synagogue 2-3 times a year, but they didn’t take me with them. We had Russian classics at home: Pushkin 6, Lermontov 7 and many others and I read a lot when I went to school and learned to read. 

I have dim memories about the period of Revolution or Civil War – I was too young. I know that life was very hard and at times we had no food at home. I remember sitting on the porch waiting for my mother and father coming back from the market. I was very happy when they brought something for me.  Once they brought me a little dress and I was so happy.

In 1918 the shop where my father worked was converted into a factory. My father worked a lot and when he came home in the evening he continued working: he was fixing shoes for all neighbors. My father was a kind man and couldn’t refuse anybody. Due to his kindness we lost one room. We had two rooms and a kitchen. It goes without saying that we didn’t have a bathroom or toilet. There was a tap and a sink in the kitchen, but we fetched water from a well. There was a bucket in the kitchen that served as a toilet and there was a toilet facility in the yard.  There was a wood stoked stove that heated the rooms. However, this was a common apartment for the time.  In 1923  my father bumped into an acquaintance that he knew when living in Poland. That man said that he had divorced his wife and had no place to live. My father offered him to stay at our place overnight. He came and stayed and a week later his wife joined him. They began to live in this room. I remember that her name was Sophia, but I don’t remember his name. They were Jews. Some time later they moved out, but then another woman came to live in this room.

I remember the day when Lenin 8 died in January 1924. I remember people crying and grieving a lot.  There was a shop in our house and a big portrait of Lenin in its window. I came to kiss the glass where the portrait was behind it and my lips froze to the glass. When I tore them off the glass they were bleeding. What a fool I was. We all believed in the Soviet power and Lenin was a holy man for us.

I went to school in 1924. On the first day I went there by myself. I was a brave girl. At that time it was common for Russian children to study in Russian schools, Ukrainian children went to Ukrainian schools and Jewish children went to Jewish schools. Thus, I went to a Jewish school. There were four Jewish schools in Kharkov. We studied Yiddish, Russian, mathematics, physics and drawing. We studied in Yiddish and had Jewish teachers. I don’t remember their names, but I remember that they were nice and cheerful. I was elected a head girl in my class. I became a young Octobrist 9 in the first or second grade. We had badges with a portrait of young Lenin and were called ‘Lenin’s grandchildren’. Later we became pioneers. My parents were proud that their daughter was taking such active part in public activities. I organized gathering of metal scrap at school. We picked waste casseroles and samovars and felt proud that we could make our contribution in manufacture of new tractors and locomotives for our country.

My childhood dream was to become an actress. I went to a ballet class at the age of 10. My brother was working in the opera comedy theater and he arranged for me to take classes with their prima ballerina Klavochka.  There were two other girls in her class. We began to come out onto the stage when required. Then one day my brother came home and said ‘That’s it for you. I am to be the only actor in our family'. It turned out that he noted one ballerina of indecent conduct and forbade me to continue my studies. I didn’t mind. I was fond of skating. Skating stretches one’s muscle’s while in ballet they need to be strained.

I had many friends at school. Many of our boys perished at the front during the Great patriotic War. My closest friend was Nadia Kartud. We were sitting at the same desk in class. We were like sisters and even dressed alike. Nadia’s mother made clothes for us. Nadia finished a college and became a librarian. She married a Soviet German man 10 from Saratov before the Great Patriotic War. When the Great Patriotic War began he was arrested. Many Germans were arrested then. Soviet authorities didn’t trust them and feared their cooperation with fascists.  Nadia followed him to Siberia. Their son was born there. I also had other friends: Inna Kisler, Cheva Boguslavskaya. When I visited Kharkov in 1978 we got together at Nadia’s home and we recalled our school years. Nadia’s husband had died and about ten years ago Nadia’s son moved to Israel. Nadia went with him. She died few years ago.

My mother went to work when I was at school. She took work to do at home. She made leather bags of straps of leather. Later she made them in a shop. She used to sing when working. This shop sent my mother to a likbez 11 school. My mother learned to read well, but she couldn’t write whatsoever. At times she had splitting headaches and put her head under cold water to reduce the pain. She was awarded a trip to a resort in Odessa in 1934 for her remarkable performance at work. Then her management made arrangements for her to retire and get a pension of an invalid. It was a miserable pension. We could hardly make ends meet, but my mother could not really go to work. 

I remember in 1933 at the time of forced famine 12 my mother and I had to stand in lines for bread. Later there were bread coupons issued: there were different rates for workers, clerks and dependents. My father was a worker and had a worker’s bread coupon. I remember stared people in the streets, but I saw no dead bodies, Perhaps, I was just lucky to have not seen them. 

I went to work at the age of 16 to help to support the family. I became a tutor in a kindergarten. I just bumped into this job announcement in a street: ‘’A kindergarten tutor required’.   I went to the kindergarten to ask and they hired me without delay. I liked children and did well at work, even though I had no professional education. There were children of various nationalities in the kindergarten. Their piano teacher suggested that we staged short puppet performances for the children.  Again, it worked out well. We began to show these fairy tales in other kindergartens and clubs. I was thinking of going to work in a puppet theater, but somehow it never came to it. My parents were not very happy with my job. I earned little and they thought it wasn’t a serious profession. 
There was a museum of Skovoroda  [Hryhori Skovoroda (1722 –1794) Ukrainian philosopher, mystic, poet, author of the collection of poems Garden of Divine Songs.]. There was inventory in their library and I just happened to drop by. I got amused to see so many books and I began to work in libraries. The first library where I worked was the central scientific library at Kharkov University. I released books by the lists that students submitted to a librarian. There was a five-storied book storeroom and I ran up and down the stairs to find all books needed, but later I learned the stocks and didn’t have to run that much. There were books in Russian and Ukrainian. I don’t remember Jewish books.  Later I finished a course for librarians. I liked books and this work. I worked in the library until the war began in 1941.
We believed what newspapers wrote to be true. When I got lists of authors to extract their books from stocks I didn’t give it much thought. I never considered why those authors were honored before and then became ‘enemies of the people’ [‘Enemy of the people’: an official way mass media called political prisoners in the USSR] all of a sudden. Later they began to say: ‘1937, 1937’ – a horrific deadly year [Great Terror] 13, but then it was just life and we enjoyed being young and sang Soviet songs -‘Hey how good life is in the Soviet country…’ When our acquaintances got arrested we believed they were guilty and did something wrong to the Soviet power. We were common people and there weren’t too many among us that suffered arrests.  My father continued his work at the shoe factory. When he was not at work he fixed shoes of our neighbors and friends. My mother was a housewife and went to synagogue on Jewish holidays. The biggest pleasure for my mother was going to the theater. Later my mother got fond of the sound cinema. She watched Soviet comedies many times and sang songs from them. My friends and I went dancing or to concerts on weekends and holidays. We also went to the cinema or out of town whenever weather permitted.

My brother Osher became one of the leading actors in the theater for young spectators and played leading roles. They staged plays about heroes of the Civil War, denunciation of enemies of the Soviet power. Their performances developed patriotic feelings and hatred toward enemies in children. We often went to the theater. The art director of the theater valued my brother high. He received a small room in a communal apartment 14 near the theater. My brother married an actress. Her name was Claudia and she was Russian. My father and mother were not very happy about his marriage, but not because she was not a Jew – this was a matter of no importance at the time - , but because they thought Claudia was a frivolous and flippant person.  Osher was very independent. He respected our parents, but he relied on his own opinions. Well, he should have listened to his parents. He divorced his wife few years later. They didn’t have children. He had lovers afterward, but he never remarried. 

My personal life didn’t develop, even though I had many friends and was a sociable girl. In 1939 I met Boris Suchodolski, a young worker of Kharkov tractor plant. He was tall, blond, joyful and nice.  We met at the library and he invited me to go dancing in the cultural center. In 1940 we were married at a registry office. We only had a civil ceremony. We didn’t have a wedding party. I didn’t have a wedding gown. I took few hours off work and Boris worked 2nd shift on this day. I came home after work and told my mother that I got married. My mother was upset and cried, but not because he was Russian, but because she believed that girls had to get married in a different manner and according to the rules. I lived with Boris in his room that he received  from the plant, but I often went to see my parents. Boris came from the family of workers and his parents treated me nicely, but we never came to knowing more about each other. In July 1941 Boris Suchodolski was recruited to the army and perished shortly afterward. I even didn’t have his photograph as if he had never existed.

During the war

We didn’t think about the war. Newspapers wrote that Germans were our biggest friends and we believed it. Shortly before the war I borrowed “The Oppermanns” by Lion Feuchtwanger 15. This work was written in 1933. [It was an instant response to the political situation in Germany, prompted by interest in British government circles in making an anti-Nazi film.]

When the war began my husband went to the army and I returned to my parents’ home. The theater where my brother was working was to evacuate. Many actors were taken to the army and many volunteered to the front. My brother had no replacement and when he received a warrant to come to the military registry office secretary of the Party unit of the theater went to see chief of the registry office, explained the situation to him and obtained a temporary permit for my brother to stay at the theater.

The theater provided train boarding tickets to members of families of its employees and my brother obtained such for my mother and was having one filled up for me. My mother was living at the theater with my brother. She worked at the costumes office and I was staying at home with my father, a cat and a dog. Later the cat ran away. We couldn’t obtain a train ticket at the railway station for a long time and when we finally got one we still didn’t have a boarding permit for my father, since he wasn’t a theater employee and it was hard to get them for relatives.

My father went to the railway station with us and even got into a railcar and I was hoping that he was going with us when an actress came and said ‘it is too overcrowded here. Those that do not have official grounds to be here, leave the car’. This was the first time in my life when I heard the phrase ‘Jews know their ways’. My father got up and went out. He was very proud. My brother that time was getting a boarding ticket for our father. My father said before he stepped off the stairs: ‘Kind meyne [Yiddish for my child], we shall not see each other again. Take care’. And he left. We were trying to look for him, but he was not there. Then our train stooped in the outskirts of Kharkov and I wanted to run back to look for our father, but he had left. That was it. When Kharkov was liberated I wrote letters to our Russian neighbors that I thought stayed during the occupation, but they didn’t reply.  I don’t know anything. All I know is that he is not to be found anywhere in the world. Nobody knows what happened to Papa. Of course, he perished during the occupation, but how and where?  I will never know. Our theater was on tour in Kharkov in 1947. I went to our house, came as far as our porch and fainted. There were different tenants in the house. Nobody knew me.

We were told that we were moving to Ulan-Ude, farther than the Lake Baikal, 4500 km from home. Our trip lasted two or three months. There were air raids and people scattered around to hide, but mother said ‘I am not going out, I am staying here’.  I stayed with her. We didn’t have money or food, nothing, but the watch that my father gave me. We had to sell it to get some food.  There were free meals given at some stations, but how was one supposed to survive in between?

We covered 3000 km and got off at Poltoratskoye village in about 250 km from the Lake Balkhash in Southern Kazakhstan. There were steppes and desert around. There were Kazakhs selling tomatoes and potatoes, but we didn’t have any money or clothes to exchange for food.  We were accommodated in the cultural center. There was a little stove in this building.  We received food packages at the kolkhoz where I worked in the field picking cotton. The plants had rough stems with thorns that injured hands. After work we took a bunch of stems to stoke the stove.

There were no Russian-speaking residents in this village. They were Kazakh and Uzbek people that didn’t seem to care about the theater or culture in the general sense. We were transferred to Pavlodar, the capital of Northern Kazakhstan. We covered over 700 km on a truck across the steppe.  We had rehearsals and performances in Pavlodar and received food packages. It’s hard to tell how exhausted and starved people were. We received flour with water and people asked three or more treatments so starved they were.

Our theater gave performances in Ukrainian in Kharkov and we had to translate them into Russian. I worked at the audience department at the theater. I was to go to factories and plants, schools and hospitals to distribute tickets. My mother continued working in the costumes office. There were many Jewish employees at the theater. They got together on Jewish holidays, lit candles and made matzah from the flour that we received. I don’t think there was a synagogue in Pavlodar since there were no local Jews in Pavlodar. Our theater toured to kolkhozes and smaller towns. We had performances on the subjects of the time: about the front, victory, partisans and women working heroically in the rear and waiting for their husbands.

I faced open anti-Semitism for the first time in Pavlodar. It generated from those that evacuated from Western Ukraine and Belarus. They contracted hatred toward Jews from fascists. [Editor’s note: the anti-Semitic sentiments of the Belarussian and Ukrainian evacuees were most probably not the result of any Nazi impact. As early as the 17th Century Chmielnicki in the Ukraine perpetrated large-scale massacres. In the late 19th and early 20th Century pogroms were widespread in the Ukraine and in Belarus. Between 1903 and 1906, among others, Gomel, Odessa, Kiev, Kaments Podolsk were scenes of mass killings of Jews] There were Jews in evacuation in the town. Life was very hard and if they noticed that a Jew was doing better than the others they hissed wickedly ‘Ouh, zhydy!’ [kikes].

We stayed in Pavlodar until autumn 1942, until we received an order from Moscow about moving to Novokuznetsk [called Stalinsk at the time]. We stayed there about two years.  Novokuznetsk is a big industrial town in the south of Siberia, on the Tom River in 4500 km from Kiev. It was built during the Soviet regime. Many people evacuated to this town. They worked at military enterprises  ‘forging the victory’, as they said. There was order and discipline in the town. We were accommodated in the hostel of the town theater. Director of the theater offered me a position of chief administrator of the theater.  He arranged a meeting with all employees of the theater and introduced me to them. This was a great promotion. We continued going on tours and I was responsible for making accommodations for actors. We stayed in various apartments. There was another actor living with us and my mother, my brother and I shared one room. The owner of this apartment lodged in the kitchen. The temperatures dropped down to minus 60° and the owner took her cow into the kitchen since it was freezing in the cowshed.  The cow, of course, felt free with her needs in the kitchen.

All employees at the theater supported each other. Our theater shared the building with a theater from Zaporozhye, but our theater was more popular since we had wonderful performances. My brother played the leading roles in them.

Of course, we watched the situation at the front. The day of liberation of Kharkov in autumn 1943 was our happiest day. We were eager to go home, but to do this we needed a special order or permit.

When Ukraine was liberated we were notified that or theater was moving to Lvov. We were well aware that thee was nothing good waiting for us in Kharkov while there were facilities and  apartments in Lvov available in 1944-1945 since it had been annexed to the USSR in 1939 [Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact] 16. A part of its population left the town with the Germans, almost all Poles moved to Poland and another part of its population was deported to Siberia. There were many abandoned houses and apartments.

I was authorized to make arrangements for our departure. There was a crew of carpenters working for us. People in Siberia are very nice and friendly. These carpenters made me a stool and a table, a chest of drawers and boxes where we packed all our belongings. They understood that we were going back into poverty and uncertainty, into ruined towns where no enterprises worked and there were no provisions. They felt sorry for us and wanted to help. They also gave me glass pieces for windows ‘You shall come and see that the glass is broken in the windows’. When we arrived we installed this glass in our balcony windows in Lvov. We went to Lvov by train where we had a railcar at our disposal. 

We arrived in Lvov in autumn 1944, October or November. We were accommodated in a house in Galitskaya Street, a house for actors. We had a big room and a kitchen. We had a kitchen of our own while other actors had a common kitchen. We were privileged since my brother was a leading actor and I was one of key personnel at the theater. We got this apartment in 1945. It was on the fifth floor and there was no elevator in the house.

After the war

The theater was accommodated in the former cinema theater with no stage or curtains. We began to look for a more accommodating building and found one that housed a Jewish theater before the war.  The Jewish theater moved to Poland and we obtained permission to move into their building.  It took us sometime to get things in order there, but it was a nice cozy and warm building. 

In Lvov we performed for young spectators teaching them to be Soviet patriots. We performed in Ukrainian. My mother, brother and I were living together. It was hard for my mother to walk upstairs to the fifth floor and my brother started looking for an apartment on the first or second floor. He found one on the third floor: there were 3 nice rooms, a big kitchen and a balcony facing the yard. We moved in there. It was an abandoned apartment and there were no special permissions needed for such houses or apartments. My brother loved our mother dearly. They spoke Yiddish to one another and with his colleagues my brother spoke perfect Ukrainian. 

My mother went to a synagogue in Lvov. She went there early in the morning at Yom Kippur and came back home late at night. I felt sorry for her when she spent there a whole day without eating a thing and I went to pick her home from there. She was aging and she still suffered from headaches, but she never lost her love of songs. She often sang in Yiddish and Russian to us. We had an old record player back in Kharkov. After the war we bought a new one and collected records.  

I never kept the fact that I am a Jew a secret.  In 1949, when I had to obtain a new passport I went to the passport office and a passport clerk looked up at me when it came to item 5 17 and asked ‘What do I put in here? And I replied ‘what you see in my old passport’. She looked at me closely, probably thinking ‘What a fool you are’. I said again: ‘write what it says there. This is what I was born and I shall die what I am’. Many Jew changed their nationality then.

In 1949 struggle against cosmopolitans 18 began. One Jewish producer was fired from our theater. They told him that he was staging the wrong plays and at the meeting they called him a ‘cosmopolite with no roots’. Everybody knew that there was a censoring department that selected the repertoire, but nobody said a word. My brother didn’t have any problems being the leading actor. As for me, I did have some. Director of the theater said to me: 'You know, Anna, you need to wear fancier clothes and get a lorgnette and you should meet the audience you’re your lorgnette’. I didn’t know what a lorgnette was. I thought it was some kind of glasses and why did I ever need glasses having no sight problems? [stereotypical outfit of artists at the time] There were other picks intended to prepare the grounds for removing me from my position. I was upset, of course. I was with the theater at the most trying time during the war in Siberia and I was a reliable employee and all of a sudden they didn’t need me. In 1950 I went to work at the puppet theater.  My theater management tried to convince me to resume my work at the theater, but I refused. In 1954 they addressed me again and I returned to work at the theater for young spectators. I thought I was familiar with the situation there and I gave so much effort to this theater. I worked in the administration, but it wasn’t a key position.

Neither my brother nor I were members of the party, but we were its devoted friends, or, I would say, we loved truth and at that time the words ‘party’ and ‘truth’ were synonyms for us.…

Then newspapers began to publish strange articles condemning Jews. People began to talk openly that there could be no trust in Jewish doctors. It was a beginning of the ‘doctors’ plot’ 19. I remember when a drunken janitor was lamenting in our yard that she would rather die than visit a Jewish doctor. Why die then?

When Stalin died in 1953 I cried, and so did many people. Everybody grieved for him. It was terrible.  Although he was a hard man he tried to do best for people. He reduced prices for food and we won the victory with him. 

I failed to have a family of my own. I had acquaintances, of course, but I was always busy. My mother was often sick and so was my brother, and then my mother had to go to hospital and I had to visit her in hospital and do work at home and go to work at the theater.  My brother had heart problems. When he got ill he used to come by the window and say: ‘When I died bury me at the Jewish cemetery and may there be music’.  He died of heart attack in 1973, at the age of 64. I did as my brother asked me, but I couldn’t go on living in this apartment. I had hallucinations there. I exchanged that 3-room apartment for this 2-room one. I kept my brother’s furniture. He had a taste for beautiful things that we could buy inexpensive at that time in Lvov.

The two of us lived in this apartment for four years. In 1977 my mother died and I was alone. Shortly before she died my mother said bitterly: Feigel, feigele, (little bird) how will you live all by yourself?’ My mother was so concerned about my loneliness; she had foreseen my lonely life at the old age. Our mother was a holy person for us. She was a very nice person, she liked theater, cinema, she liked arts.  She was smart and my brother and I listened to opinion.  She believed in God and celebrated all Jewish holidays. I buried my mother near my brother’s grave. I had a beautiful gravestone installed on their graves.

I have been alone for 25 years. There were friends and acquaintances when I was stronger. I tried to help and support people and didn’t feel my loneliness so acutely. I was chairman of the housing committee of our house and the neighboring one for 17 years. I was responsible for all maintenance issues. I didn’t do it for money. I did many good things, but who cares? I never traveled on vacations.  My mother was often ill and I couldn’t leave her, and then when she died I didn’t want to go alone.

Before 1983 I worked at the theater distributing tickets at schools. Then I grew older and retired.

My mother, brother or I never considered moving to Israel. My mother said ‘it is not my Motherland and I shall not go there’. My brother despised those that were moving there, even when they were his friends. We were interested in what was happening there, but we did not consider moving to this country. 
                                                                                                                                                                                       
When perestroika 20 began I was terrified at how they could ruin such great country.  I recalled how we were welcomed in Siberia during the war and now they were in a different country.  We were a Ukrainian theater and nobody closed it. To crown it all, I had my saving for my old age, but they were lost and I am a sick miserable old woman. My acquaintances asked me why I didn’t ask Hesed for help, but I didn’t want to, I was ashamed to ask them. I don’t remember the details, but somehow they got me on their lists.  I used to buy matzah to celebrate Pesach. Well, anyway, this was the only holiday that I celebrated. Maybe I didn’t follow all rules, but I always had matzah.  I receive food packages from Hesed and they help me to do my laundry, but I am helpless now. My neighbor introduced me to Anna Fyodorova.  She lives with me. She cooks for me and helps me and I promised her to leave this apartment to her son.  We may argue every now and then, but then we make it up with her.  I depend on her much. I cannot even go to the cemetery. My mother and brother have graves nearby and I’ve prepared a place for myself there, but now I don’t know whether they will bury me there or throw into a different place. You understand, I would like to be with my dear ones so much.

I stay in bed, read a little or watch TV and sometimes short verses come to my thoughts and I put them down:
  ‘Winter, winter, winter again,
  Cold, it’s cold, it’s freezing cold,
  It snows, there’s snowstorm, blizzard.
  That’s winter’.

Or:

                     ‘How unexpectedly the old age has come
                     How fast the years passed
                     Like a dream, like a day, like the Moon
                     Lives A.G. in this world – old, ill and forgotten by all, abandoned’

GLOSSARY:

Semyon Ghendler
Ternopol
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: August 2002

When I arrived at his home, Semyon Ghendler wasn't expecting me. I was joined by the chief of the local Hesed. Semyon was planning to go to the polyclinic, but when we came he cancelled his visit to the doctor and agreed to give me an interview. Semyon is tall and still strong man. He is cheerful and has a good sense of humor. When telling his story he smoked a lot. It was exciting for him to remember the past and his loved ones. After the interview, Semyon told me that he hadn't expected the interview process to be so hard. Semyon lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a five-story building that his crew built in the 1960s. He has a set of furniture bought in the 1970s: a living room set, some plain crockery in the cupboard and classical books in the bookcase. Semyon told me there was no furniture in another room: his son took it to the apartment where he lives with his wife. His apartment doesn’t look like any other bachelor’s dwelling. One can tell that Semyon loves living and his sense of humor helps him to cope with it.

Family Background

Growing Up

​The Great Terror

During the War

​After the War

Glossary

Family Background

My paternal grandfather Nuta, or Nathan Ghendler was born in Ovruch Volyn province (Zhytomir region at present, 250 km from Kiev) in the 1860s [in the early 20th century the population of Ovruch constituted about 8 thousand people and half of them were Jewish]. In 1850 Ovruch became the Hasidic 1 center. There was a Hasidic synagogue and a private Jewish school in Ovruch. In the early 20th century Ovruch became the center of Zionist activities. During the Civil War 2 the power in town switched 15 times and there were pogroms 3. The most blood shedding pogrom was arranged by Petliura groups 4 in late 1918 – within 17 days they exterminated about one hundred Jews. Soviet authorities closed the synagogue during the period of struggle against religion 5 in the middle of the 1930s. I don’t know what my grandfather Nuta was doing before the revolution of 1917 6. When I knew him in the 1930s he didn’t work and received a small pension. My grandfather was a strong and tall man with a big gray beard. He always wore a cap and never even sat down to a meal with no headpiece on. My grandfather was religious and prayed every morning with his tallit and tefillin on. On Saturday and Jewish holidays he went to the synagogue with grandmother Feiga. Grandmother Feiga was born in the late 1960s. She was three years younger than my grandfather. She was a small and thin old woman. She wore a kerchief. She had no education whatsoever and was a quiet and taciturn woman. She was a housewife. They lived in a small house with three small rooms and a kitchen. There was a big Russian stove 7 in the kitchen. My grandmother cooked delicious food in it. She baked pies and challah bread for Sabbath. There was a small vegetable garden and a few fruit trees near the house. My grandmother Feiga never went to work. She did housekeeping and raised her children like all Jewish women at the time. 

I don’t know exactly how many children Nuta and Feiga had. Some children died in infancy. I know of four children including my father. Froim, the oldest, was born in the late 1890s. Froim became a baker and owned a bakery before 1917. During the Soviet period he was director of a state owned bakery that was later modified into a bread factory. In my childhood my parents and I visited his bakery and he treated us to nice hot rolls. Before the Great Patriotic War 8 Froim, his wife and their sons Osia and Lyova lived in Ovruch. When the Great Patriotic War began their sons were recruited to the army and Froim and his wife evacuated. After the war Froim and his wife moved to Kiev where their older son worked as an engineer. Lyova settled down in Subcarpathia 9 in Uzhhorod [850 km from Kiev] where he worked as chief engineer at the furniture factory. Froim died in the middle of the 1960s. I lost contact with Osia and Lyova’s families. I don’t even know whether they are still living. Froim was raised religious like all Jewish boys, but he was an atheist and didn’t observe Jewish traditions. However, he respected his parents and always attended celebrations of Jewish holidays in my grandfather’s home.

My father also had two sisters, whose names I don’t remember. One of them lived in Ovruch. Her son was named Shloime like me. He perished during the Great Patriotic War. Her daughter Zinaida was a dentist. In the 1970s she moved to Israel with her family. I wasn’t in contact with her after the Great Patriotic War. As for the second sister, who lived in Korosten not far from Ovruch, I only saw her once in my life at a family gathering in my grandfather’s home before the great Patriotic War. During the war she was in evacuation and after the war she lived in Simferopol in the Crimea, 800 km from Kiev. I know that she was married, but I don’t know how many children she had or their names.  I never  met with my aunt after the war and don’t know when she died.

My father Zachari Ghendler was born in Ovruch in 1904. He received traditional Jewish education: he finished cheder and four years of Jewish elementary school. He knew Yiddish well and he also knew the Torah, but during the Soviet regime he was an atheist. In 1917, during the revolution, my father joined the Red army like many Jewish young people escaping from pogroms and poverty in their towns hoping for a different life. My father served in cavalry. After the Civil War my father was a laborer at different jobs. In 1925, when he met my mother, he was a laborer at the leather factory: he handled skin leather. 

My mother came from Zhytomir. Her father Iegoshua Leiba Shlyoma Oks was born in Zhytomir in 1878 and grandmother Esther was born in Zhytomir in 1880. [Editor’s note: Zhytomir is a regional town in Ukraine, 150 km from Kiev. In 1926 its population constituted a little over 100 thousand people and 39% of it was Jewish. Two thirds of all craftsmen in the town were Jewish. Zhytomir was one of historical centers of Hasidism. Before the revolution of 1917 there were few dozens synagogues and a rabbi seminary in the town. After the revolution religious activities gradually decayed and by the early 1930s there was one synagogue operating in the town]. My grandfather finished cheder and went to work. He became a high skilled cabinetmaker.  Before the revolution he worked for his employer and after the revolution he went to work for the ‘Bogatyr’ furniture shop that became a furniture factory in the 1930s. My grandfather earned well. After the revolution he manufactured furniture on private orders. My grandfather was very religious. In the 1930s, when I knew him, my grandfather wore a small well-groomed 3-4 days’ growth beard.  He also wore a cap or a hat, but I never saw him wearing a kippah.  My grandfather always prayed before going to work with his tallit and tefillin on. On Friday, Saturday and Jewish holidays he went to the synagogue. His employers respected him so much that they allowed him to not come to work on Saturday. Instead, he came to work on Sunday to do his portion of work.  My grandfather’s portrait was on the board of honor of the factory [Editor’s note: every factory, plant, or any other state enterprise in the Soviet Union had a board of honor with portraits of the best workers of the factory. It was a great honor to have one’s portrait there]. Grandmother Esther was a housewife.  She always dusted their tiny apartment. They lived in two rooms and had a kitchen, but when their children grew up and moved out they had a tenant in one room. I loved visiting my grandfather and grandmother and remember their room very well. They had a beautiful carved cupboard that grandfather made himself, a wardrobe and chairs with high carved backs.  There were snow white napkins on the cupboard that my grandmother made and seven little elephants: a symbol of happiness at the time. I knew only one grandfather’s brother named Moishe. He was a jeweler in Zhytomir. I saw him several times. He was a presentable man with a beard. Moishe died shortly before the Great Patriotic War. I know nothing about his children Zachar and Rachil. I don’t know whether my grandfather had other brothers or sisters and I have no information about my grandmother’s family either.

My grandparents had three children: my mother and two brothers, one older than my mother and one younger. My mother’s brothers finished cheder. They grew up to be atheists. In the 1930s they joined the Communist Party. Aron, the older brother, born in 1902, dealt in trade. He was married, but divorced his wife. From Zhytomir Aron moved to Fastov where he worked at the railway station of Grebyonki and later in Nezhin. During the great Patriotic War Aron was in evacuation somewhere in the Urals. His second wife’s name was Olga, she was Russian. They didn’t have any children. After the war Aron and Olga returned to Nezhin where Aron died in the middle 1960s.

My mother’s younger brother Lazar was born in 1908. Lazar finished Kiev Engineering Construction College and worked as an engineer in Dnepropetrovsk, 350 km from Kiev. His wife was Russian. I don’t remember her name. Their daughter had a strange name of Saida. We called her Saya. During the great Patriotic War  Lazar served in an engineering unit building bridges and fortifications for frontline forces. After the war he returned to Dnepropetrovsk. Lazar died in the early 1970s. His daughter Saida and her family live in Dnepropetrovsk.  

My mother Yelizaveta Ghendler (nee Oks) was a withdrawn person. I know little about her life before marriage. She was born in Zhytomir in 1905. At home she was called Lyonia for some reason. Though her parents were religious they decided to give their daughter secular education. My mother finished a Russian grammar school in 1918. I don’t know whether my mother worked before the early 1920s, when she met my father. They met in 1925 and fell in love with one another. My father was a strong handsome man. My mother was young and fair-haired. They made a beautiful match, but they couldn’t get married right away. My grandparents Oks were against their marriage.  They believed my mother could find a better match with education equal to her own, but my mother wouldn’t even consider another man. In 1926 my mother’s parents gave up and my parents got married. I don’t know any details about their wedding. All I know is that it was a traditional Jewish wedding. The young couple was so happy to have their parents’ consent that they didn’t argue about having a chuppah, and rabbi and a marriage contract, though by this time they had given up religion. They had a traditional wedding in Zhytomir where they invited relatives from Ovruch and Korosten and then my parents had a civil ceremony in a registry office.

My parents settled down with distant relatives on my mother’s side. I guess, my mother’s parents didn’t quite approve of their daughter’s misalliance, as they thought of it. My parents lived their first years together in a small room in a long building. I was born on 8 November 1927. I was named Shlyoma, but later I changed this name to the Russian name 10 of Semyon for convenience.

Growing Up

I have some memories of my childhood. I remember visiting my maternal grandfather and grandmother at Chanukkah. Of course, I learned the name of the holiday later, but I remember delicious doughnuts that my grandmother made and I also received some money from them.  My grandmother made delicious pastries and the biggest offence for her was when somebody told her that they had eaten more delicious doughnuts. My grandfather took me to the synagogue: a big two-storied building in the center of Zhytomir. When my grandmother went with us she went upstairs and my grandfather and I stayed downstairs. We often visited my father’s parents in Ovruch. I remember the first Pesach in my life that we celebrated in their house. My father’s relatives got together on this holiday and his sister came from Korosten. There was a table beautifully set for dinner. My grandfather was reclining on two cushions with his back to the door. I was to find a piece of matzah that he hid under a cushion. There was a lot of laughter and comments while I was looking for it. Then my grandfather conducted seder and I posed four questions to him about the nature of this holiday and my father helped me. I think I have such bright memories about these celebrations since they were unusual for me. We didn’t observe Jewish traditions in our family, though my mother or father never joined Komsomol 11 or the party, but they were atheists. In the early 1930s we lived in Olevsk of Zhytomir region, 70 km from Zhytomir. My father was offered to work in a store and the family moved to this town. We lived with some relatives in a wooden house with a garret. I have dim memories of famine in 1932-33 12, when my father brought some packages from his work. This was dried bread that we dipped in water before eating them. I remember a constant feeling of hunger, but nobody died in our family, though there were dead people in the streets every morning and special trucks picked them. We stayed in Olevsk less than a year. My father proved to be good in trading business. Although he didn’t have any special education he was offered to become director of a fish store and in 1935 he got an offer to become director of a big food store in Zhytomir. We returned to Zhytomir.

We got an apartment in Zhytomir. In 1935 my mother gave birth to my sister, named Polina. That same year I went to a Russian school. My parents didn’t even discuss my going to a Jewish school. We spoke Russian in the family. My parents rarely switched to Yiddish when they didn’t want me to understand the subject of their discussions. My grandfather still took me to the synagogue on Saturday, but I lost interest in it. I ran away from him until my mother told him to stop taking me with him. I preferred to spend time playing with my friends. There were Russian, Ukrainian and Polish children among my friends. Nationality didn’t matter. We spoke Russian and enjoyed spending time together. There were few Jewish families among our neighbors. They didn’t observe any Jewish traditions either. A Jewish family lived in a small house in the middle of our yard. The father was chairman of the regional consumer association. His last name was Shames. His son Betia was my friend. Our neighbor, doctor Shapiro, was a Jew. He was a member of the party and deputy of the town council.

We lived in a small apartment. There were two rooms and a small kitchen. I remember the furniture that my father bought: big nickel-plated beds and a wardrobe. The table was always covered with a fancy tablecloth and there were linen covers on the chairs and the sofa. My father had an average income sufficient to make a decent living. My mother didn’t work before the Great Patriotic War.

My friends and I played war and pirate games and football. We often went fishing to the Teterev River. There were picturesque spots in the area: I can still remember the smell of newly mown hay and meadow herbs. On weekends my parents and I went to the riverbank. My father went swimming and my mother was waiting on the bank looking at him. They enjoyed talking to one another and my sister and I joined our friends. Another boys’ hobby was keeping pigeons. My father made a pigeon house in the yard and we spent there all our spare time. 

I had many friends of various nationalities at school. There was no such issue as nationality before the war.  I studied well and was fond of mathematic and physics. I also liked geography. My pioneer errand was issuance of a wall newspaper where I was an editor. I visited my grandfather in Ovruch on my summer vacations. I also spent my vacations in a pioneer camp on the Teterev River. We celebrated Soviet holidays at school: there were pioneer marches on 1 May and 7 November 13, and on the international Day of young people on 1 September. We always went to parades on holidays. It was a lot of fun. We also celebrated Soviet holidays at home.  My parents invited their friends. They danced to the wireless and sang Soviet songs. The only reminder of Jewish traditions was matzah that my grandfather always brought at Pesach. At Pesach and Rosh Hashanah we visited my grandfather where they had family gatherings or went to visit my father’s parents in Ovruch.  The family discussed family news and enjoyed getting together. My grandparents understood that the generation of my parents was not religious and didn’t say prayers in their presence.

The Great Terror

When in the late 1930s arrests began [Great Terror] 14, my father had a fear of being arrested, even though he wasn’t a party member. Many of his friends and acquaintances holding key positions were arrested. I think my father understood that it was despotism, but my parents didn't have any discussions in my presence. There was the feeling of alarm in our house like in many others. I remember that some time in 1938 the doorbell rang late at night. My father asked who it was before opening the door. It was a stranger. His surname was Litvak and he was a Jew. My parents took him to the kitchen, gave him some food and money and he left. From their words I understood that this man escaped from his hometown in fear of arrest and visited my father as his old acquaintance. I don’t know what happened to him then. After this visit my father had many sleepless nights fearing arrest. If somebody saw our late visitor they would have reported and my father would have been arrested for giving shelter to an ‘enemy of the people’ 15. My mother prepared a bag with underwear and dried bread for my father. This bag was in a corner in the kitchen for a long time. Fortunately, nothing of the kind happened in our family.

During the War

On 22 June 1941 my friend Beba Shames and I were to go to a pioneer camp. At 12 o’clock we listened to Molotov 16 on the radio. He said that the Great Patriotic War began. On 24 June 1941 my father volunteered to the army. Two days later we received a subpoena for him to make an appearance at the military registry office. So, he would have been recruited anyways. Some time later we received a letter from my father from somewhere near Lvov. Shortly afterward he came home during the retreat of our troops. I can still remember him in his uniform, having a gun. He was an officer. This was on 4 July 1941. My father washed and helped my mother to pack and then we went to the railway station on a truck waiting for us.  My father took us to the station where we boarded a train heading to the East. My father kissed us and then stood with my mother on the platform for a long while. I even felt hurt that he spent so much time with her saying such a short ‘good bye’ to us. He hugged and kissed her. I didn’t know then that I was seeing him for the last time.

It took us four days to get to Kharkov, about 450 km away. In Kharkov we stayed with our distant relatives for about a month. Everybody still believed that the war was to be over soon and we would return home.  In early August grandfather Iegoshua and grandmother Esther came to Kharkov. German troops were near Zhytomir. We moved on to the East. Our trip lasted for about a month and a half. When the train stopped we exchanged what we had with us for food.  I remember exchanging a bar of soap for a carrot that I brought in my cap to the railcar. I was very proud of myself. At times we got a hot meal at stations, but most often it was some boiling water. We arrived in Cheliabinsk in the Ural, 1500 kilometers from our home. Cheliabinsk was a big industrial town. There were many plants in the town and many enterprises evacuated from the western part of the country.  We stayed in the evacuation agency few days until we were accommodated in a barrack with other families. It was a wooden barrack with plywood or curtain partitions. My mother, my sister and I and my grandfather Iegoshua and my grandmother Esther lived in one of these small rooms several days until uncle Aron who came to Cheliabinsk after we did went to work at a big plant and received a room. He was manager of metal stocks at the plant.

Our life was gradually setting up. My grandfather went to work as a carpenter in the “Cheliabstroi” construction company. My grandfather got along well with his colleagues. My grandfather and grandmother tried to observe Jewish traditions. There was no synagogue in Cheliabinsk and my grandfather prayed in a corner of our room twice a day. My grandfather didn’t go to work on Saturday. He discussed this condition before getting this employment and his management showed understanding of his requirement. There was a hospital near our barrack and my mother went to work there as a logistics attendant. She received a room in the hospital and my mother, my sister and I went to live there. I went to the 7th grade at school. My sister stayed at home. Early in the morning I went to stand in line to buy bread. There were bread cards to get rationed bread and there was always too little of it.

We received only one letter from my father in September 1941. He wrote us from near Kiev. We didn’t have any information about his parents, grandmother Feiga and grandfather Nuta Ghendler.  My mother often cried at night. I felt responsible for my mother and sister being the only man in the family.  I took no interest in studies.  Thought I had learned all that I needed. I wanted to go to work to support my mother. I talked with my mother and she helped me to become an apprentice of a joiner at a military plant. I was very proud to be going to work every morning. I also received a food card that was sufficient support to our family. I smoked a lot and was very glad to receive a pack of tobacco once a month like an adult man. I worked for almost a year until I went to study at the factory vocational school in 1943. I was to become an electrician. After finishing this school I received my certificate of secondary education and went to work as an electrician at the Cheliabinsk tractor plant. I also could live in a hostel. I made friends with other workers who were older than me. We used to have a drink every now and then and I began to meet with girls. My mother didn’t like this at all. She still believed I was a child. We often argued and once I didn’t see my mother for two or three months. It was 1944 and Zhytomir was liberated. Once I bumped into a man from Zhytomir and he was surprised to see me in Cheliabinsk.  It turned out that my mother, my sister, my grandfather and grandmother had left for Zhytomir. I felt so hurt that tears came into my eyes. I still don’t know why they were so cruel to me. My mother told me later that she wanted to teach me a lesson, but I still believe it was unjust. When I got to know that my family had left I left the town as well. I didn’t quit officially and had no documents with me. I climbed the roof of a railcar to go to my Motherland. I didn’t have a permit for reevacuation or any other document. It took me a long time to get to my town. Conductors caught me and told me to get off the train and then militia caught me as well. I ran away from militia and other militiamen helped me to get on another train when they heard my story.  Then finally I arrived at Zhytomir almost three weeks later.

In Zhytomir I only found my grandfather and grandmother who lived in their apartment. My mother and sister were visiting their acquaintances in Kazan. There were other tenants in our apartment and there were no belongings of ours left. Our Polish neighbors Ignatovich took our most valuable belongings: the “Singer” sewing machine, bed sheets and some crockery. They were keeping them for us. They also gave me shelter. Then my mother arrived. It’s hard to describe how we met. We were both crying asking each other forgiveness. The Ignatoviches gave us one room in their apartment. They also made a door in the room. My mother didn’t want to go to court to get back our apartment. We couldn’t get any information about my father for a long time. My mother wrote letters to various organization, but their only response was: ‘His surname is not in the lists of deceased or missing’. Few days later a man from Zhytomir, my father’s fellow comrade, told us that my father perished near Kanev in 100 km from Kiev, and was buried in a common grave with writer Arkadiy Gaidar 17. In the 1960s my sister and I visited Kanev. We found the grave where according to what this man told us my father was buried in Kanev. This grave in on a steep bank over the Dnieper. 

In 1944, when we returned to Zhytomir, we had to think about how to survive. My mother learned to type in Cheliabinsk. She went to work as a typist in an office. My sister went to school. My father’s brother told us that grandfather Nuta and grandmother Feiga were killed with other Jews of Ovruch in late August 1941.

In late 1944 I received a subpoena to the army. I went to serve in the Navy.  In early January 1945 we boarded a train to the Far East in Zhytomir. At first I was a ship’s boy and then became a  sailor on the ‘Kalinin’ cruiser. I participated in the war with Japan 18. In 1945 our cruiser transported Soviet landing troops to Korea. I served 7 years in the navy: this was a standard term in those years. Although service in the navy is hard I enjoy recalling this time. Firstly, I ate heartily for the first time in my life. We got sufficient food. They gave us American tinned meat. What else would a young man want: rich food and good friends.  I had many friends. There was another Jewish Navy man on our boat and we never faced any prejudiced or abusive attitudes. We were all equal. In the evening we played chess, read and went on a leave together. I cannot say anything about open state anti-Semitism in the late 1940s –early 1950s. We had political classes, but our officers managed to avoid any issues related to anti-Semitic campaigns. In 1947 I received a letter saying that grandmother Esther died. She suffered from a mental illness for few years.  My grandfather died in 1963. They were buried in the Jewish section of the town cemetery in Zhytomir. I don’t know whether anybody recited the Kaddish for them.

After the War

In late 1952 I demobilized and returned to Zhytomir. This was the period of the Doctors’ Plot 19. For me this anti-Semitic propaganda in newspapers was terrible. Shortly afterward, in March 1953 Stalin died. I grieved after him sincerely. I attended a mourning meeting in the center of Zhytomir with other towns folks. I never related Stalin’s name to the horrors of what was happening around. I was too young to analyze.  

I worked as an electrician for few months. At that time I met my wife to be, a girl, and we fell in love with each other. Natalia Danilyuk, nee Kuznetsova, had already been married. She had divorced before we met. She was born in Zhytomir in 1929. Her father who was Russian perished during the great Patriotic War. Her mother was a Jew named Sheina. Natalia and her mother lived in a very small room. I knew I needed to have a place to live with my family. There were no perspectives in Zhytomir in this regard and in spring 1953 moved to Cheliabinsk writing my friends there. It was easier to find a job in Cheliabinsk. I went to work as a construction electrician at the Cheliabinsk metallurgical plant. Later I became a foreman, site manager and then was promoted to assistant manager of the ventilation shop. I had many friends. They were workers of various nationalities and we got along well. Only once I was abused. It happened at the very beginning of my career in Cheliabinsk. On a payday members of my crew were waiting for their turn to receive salary. I joined them later and then one guy from the line said: ‘Get out of here, stand in line and forget your zhydovskiye [Russian offensive for Jewish] tricks’. My friends said to me: ‘Semyon, if you let him go you are a weak man and a ninny and we are not your friends’. We waited for the guy at the entrance check point and I beat him up.

I received a room in a hostel. Natalia came to live with me and in summer 1953 we got married. We had a civil ceremony in a registry office. Natalia went to work as a shop assistant at a baker’s shop.  In 1954 Alexandr was born. We received a one-bedroom apartment.  12 years later, in 1966, our twins Georgi and Zhanna were born. We began to consider moving to Ukraine where our mothers were living and climate was pleasant and ripe apples and apricots were falling onto the ground. Fruit and vegetables were expensive in Cheliabinsk and besides, we were homesick. In 1967 I sent a job request  to Vinnitsa construction department. They sent their response with a job offer. I already had a reputation in my branch of industry. When I came there to be employed their manager seeing that I didn’t have special education, was a Jew and was no member of the party refused to employ me. A man from a higher level organization came to my help. He knew my qualifications and said that my qualification was rolling mill 2300, tube mill in Cheliabinsk that I constructed was better than any college education and then I got employment. My job was construction of a roll bearing plant in Vinnitsa. This site was in a poor condition when I came to work, but then I handled it and we became one of the best sites. My wife and children were waiting in Cheliabinsk. It was difficult to get an apartment in Vinnitsa and I decided to go back to Cheliabinsk where we at least had an apartment, but this time my manager didn’t want to let me go. He assigned me site manager of a construction site in Western Ukraine, 370 km from Kiev, in Ternopol. It was construction of a big cotton factory. I received a room in a communal apartment 20. My family joined me and there were five of us living in one room. I went to talk with first secretary of the regional Party committee and told him that if they didn’t give me an apartment I would go back to Cheliabinsk where they would be glad to have me.  First secretary ordered me to complete construction of a school within two weeks and if I managed he promised to give me an apartment. I went back to talk to my crew. When they heard what it was about they worked day and night to complete this construction. In August 1968 I received a two-bedroom apartment. This is where I live now. Later I finished the extramural department of Construction College in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Some time later my wife’s mother Sheina moved to Ternopol. She lived separately from us. Sheina was religious, and she celebrated Pesach and we visited her at her request.  We didn’t observe any traditions or celebrate Jewish holidays in our family.

We had many friends. We celebrated 1 May and 7 November. My crew members and I came to my place after parades. Natalia cooked and we had parties. We often had outings with shashlyk [barbecue]. In summer we took our children to the seashore and when they grew older we sent them to a pioneer camp and spent vacations together, just the two of us. When the time came for our children to identify their nationality they chose to be Russian and adopt my wife father’s surname of Danilyuk. I understood it would make it easier for them to get education and make a career this way. I loved my wife dearly. Before retiring in the middle of the 1980s I decided to make some money for our old age. I went to the construction of an oil pipeline in Tumen in 3000 km east from home. They paid very well for work. I lived in a tent. Living and climatic conditions there were very hard. My wife fell ill and in late 1987 I returned to Ternopol. Natalia had cancer. In late 1989 she died. I went back to the north after she was buried and worked there sometime longer. I cannot forget my wife. She was the only woman I loved in my life. Since then I’ve been alone.

After finishing school my sister Polina finished mechanical school in Zhytomir. There she met her future husband Vladimir Lukashevich. Vladimir is a half-breed like my wife. His father was Russian and his mother was Jewish. He finished a military school and was sent to Rybinsk in Moldova. Their daughter Irina was born in Rybinsk. My mother went to my sister to help her raise her daughter. Few years later Polina’s son Sergei was born. Both children received education. Sergei finished a technical school and Irina finished a precious metal vocational school in Kiev. Sergei and Irina have families. In the early 1990s my sister, her husband and their children moved to Israel. Her husband died in Israel. My sister lives with her daughter in Haifa. I correspond with her.

My mother was alone for many years. In the middle of  1960s she married our distant relative Isaac Zhuravski.  I was glad that my mother was not alone any longer. Living in Cheliabinsk I couldn’t support her. However, their marriage lasted less than a year: Isaac was pathologically greedy and my mother divorced him. She lived in Zhytomir until 1990. When I returned from the North she moved in with me here. She remained an atheist even at her old age. She didn’t observe Jewish traditions. She died in 1992. She was buried in the town cemetery and there were no rituals observed at her funeral.

My older son Alexandr graduated from the State University in Perm. He is an economist. During perestroika 21 Alexandr finished college and became a high skilled expert in stocks. Alexandr lives in Kirov in Russia, 800 km from Moscow. My son is different from me in his marital life. He has a third wife now. I don’t know them. Alexandr rarely comes to see me and he always comes alone. His sons from the first marriage Leonid, born in 1976, and Maxim, born in 1978, do not communicate with him or me.

My daughter Zhanna married Victor Shanenkov, Russian, after finishing school. He was on service in Ternopol. He came from Dzhambul in Kazakhstan. When his term of service was over Zhanna followed him to Dzhambul in 3000 km from home. Their marriage failed. In 1989 Victor left for Greece leaving his wife and daughter Alina at home. Zhanna married a civil pilot, but it didn’t work either. He was fired from work for drinking. He became a drunkard and disappeared. Zhanna had a daughter from him named Natalia after my wife. Zhanna lives in Dzhambul. She works as a secretary in a company. Natalia finished school and entered Medical College in Velikiy Novgorod where her grandmother, Victor’s wife, lives. To his honor I need to mention that Victor supports Zhanna and Natalia.    

My younger son Georgi entered Odessa artillery school after finishing secondary school. After finishing it he served in Poland. When out troops were leaving Eastern Europe in the 1990s he retired from the army. His first wife was Bulgarian. Georgi divorced her. She left their son David with her mother and went to work in Poland. We don’t know where David is now. Georgi married a woman with a child. She is Russian. Her daughter Kristina gets along well with Georgi and with me. She calls me ‘grandfather’. I treat her as my granddaughter and at Chanukkah I always give her some money as customary with Jewish families.

I had a good life. I had many friends wherever I was. The huge Soviet Union was my home and I feel bad about the breakup 22 of the country. I still have friends in Cheliabinsk, Tumen and other towns. They often call me, even at night, due to the time difference. However, I feel sad about not being able to visit them like I used to when we might come all of a sudden without notification. We often went with families to Odessa, the Crimea or Caucasus. We cannot afford this now. In the past my monthly salary was enough to buy plane tickets and stay in any town of the USSR for a couple of weeks with my family and now I have to think twice even about commuting in the town. A ticket to the nearest town costs half of my pension, not to mention planes. All my savings that I earned so hard working in the north were gone when perestroika began. My sons support me and I try to support my daughter. The only positive thing that I see in perestroika is democracy for minorities, including Jews. I am a member of the Jewish community in Ternopol. Of course, I shall never become religious, but I like studying Yiddish, Jewish traditions and celebrating Jewish holidays in the community. The local Hesed provides assistance to pensioners. I’ve been to Israel. I admired this country. It was built with love, but I understood that I would never be able to live there. It’s a different country for me with a different life style and hard climate. I couldn’t wait until my month’s long visit to my sister was over and I could return to Ternopol.

Glossary:

David Zakharovitch Levin is a non-tall, strong man, who keeps in his seventy nine being cheerful and full of energy.
Most of his life he was a naval officer and his military origins are displayed in everything.

In opposite to many retired of his age he is still working and says that he gets the same pleasure from his work and help to human beings as many years ago. He considers himself an optimist, and that is true. 

He is very interested in history of his family, completes the genealogical albums, keeps his parents’ heritage, on the walls of his cozy apartment there hang not only the usual family photos, but also the wedding gifts of his mother, and the bookshelves are full of his father’s books.

My Grandparent's background

My father's and mother's background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Marriage life and children

Recent years

Glossary

My Grandparent's background

I don’t know where from are my great grandmothers and great grandfathers. History of their lives is unknown. I don’t know where they were born, or what they were, but I think that father’s ancestors lived in the borough.

My grandfather – David Levin – was born in 1862 and died in 1917. My father even had a ring, made out of gold and platinum, where the date of his father’s death was written. I keep this ring too. They lived in Dvinsk [today Daugavpils, town in Latvia], but they moved there from Slonim [town in Grodno province], father considered that he was born in Slonim. Probably, grandfather was religious. I make this conclusion due to that fact that his sons were religious people.

Father said that granddad had a good character. They spoke Yiddish in family. That was quite usual large Jewish family with plenty of children. I remember that somebody from my father’s side made vinegar. It means that he was some kind of owner, or businessman. Perhaps, they had their own house and some small economy.

During World War I grandfather went to ask to demobilize my father from the army, and due to the unknown reason, has got heart fit. He was fifty five approximately; today he would be considered not an old man, not at all. He died on his way, on the street, we don’t know where exactly. However, I know the following: he had some money, which he supposed to pay to let my father out of the army. And when he fell down, he pointed to his chest. They were some Jews around, and one of them took this money away. And my father told that Jewish community of this settlement blamed him.

About grandmother – Frieda Levina [nee Shatkes] – I know nothing. The only thing I know that she died in 1930. And I understood that it happened in Latvia. When we’ve been to America, they showed us the genealogy of whole family, and the dates of grandmother’s and grandfather’s deaths. However, even my American relatives didn’t find the date of her birth. Both in America and in Israel we saw the family photo of Levin family, we don’t have such one. On this picture all brothers stand, everyone is seen well. I found grandmother’s photo too.

Parents of my mother – that is Vitebsk [town in Belarus, center of Jewish life]. They are viteblyans, or inhabitants of Vitebsk. Father of my mother (I don’t know exactly date of his birth), Sergey, or Shmera in Jewish, that’s why my mother was Slava Sergeevna, or Shmerovna. Approximately in 1939, when I was fourteen or fifteen, I’ve been to Vitebsk and saw my grandfather. He had paralyses. I remember the large room, Granddad sits on the chair, numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren, including me, run around. To my opinion, he died in 1940. My father called my grandmother (mother of my mother) Lesya-Ghuta, but I think she was called Lesya Meerson. She lived in Vitebsk too, later she came to visit to Leningrad, and we communicated more than with granddad.

I remember that grandmother was kind and nice, but I didn’t have long conversations to her as far as she had so many things to do. She had many children. There was a big family in Vitebsk, and many pals and friends. I can recall where they lived. If you arrived to Vitebsk, and walk a bit across the railway street, in four hundred meters to the right you see the Russian Orthodox Church, and if you turned to the left, there was a street, I don’t remember its name, maybe, something like Station road, where house of my grandparents stood. Granny, Granddad, brother of my mother, called Boris (I’ve got to know him in 1939), they all lived there.

It was a big one-stage house of their own with a large courtyard. There were many rooms, big kitchen, big dining-room, and that room, where grandfather sat, not moving, was the very large one. They had three or four rooms in total and that extra-building, where Boris and his family lived.

I don’t think they had water pipe. There was a water street fountain and, perhaps, there was electricity too. Anyway, Vitebsk was a big town, and they lived not far from the station. In 1930s they certainly had electricity at home. Apparently, the house stood almost as an angle. There were no animals and pets, neither garden. They didn’t work in the field of agriculture.

Grandfather and grandmother didn’t have any special education, in the best occasion they studied at the local school or in cheder. I don’t know if they were born in Vitebsk or not, but I remember that Granny had a brother, called Udel. He lived in Vitebsk and I saw him either. I remember him very well, because he sweated always, and came all wet. I don’t know what he did. Perhaps, grandmother had some more brothers and sisters, but I can’t recall anything about them. Shame on me, but I don’t know any of my grandfather’s relatives.

Certainly, my grandmother was a housewife. I remember well her bread, which she used to bake in the Russian Stove 1. That was large bread, fried; I still remember its smell and taste. And I don’t know what was grandfather’s business, what he was, maybe a craftsman?

The family was friendly, and there were many guests in the house. I know that half of the town came to visit. Mother got to know Chagall 2, he also came to visit. She told me that she saw him personally, not once, but from time to time. But she never told me the details, and I didn’t ask her. However, I think there were not very close, otherwise she would tell us the stories about such famous person. I think those meetings could take place in the beginning of 1910s, when my mother was a young and attractive woman.

I suppose that their guests were mainly Jews. There was big Jewish community in Vitebsk. Jewish youth came too, as far as my grandparents had many daughters, and that is always the huge attractive force. Obviously, Granddad had some authority; I know from conversations and even more from my father’s memories (he told me about Vitebsk more than my mother), that they communicated to some public prosecutor. Even after the [Russian] Revolution 3 they had some pals and later father met them in Leningrad. Somebody took a good position here. As I understood, all they were arrested and banished. So those people were not the ordinary shtetl inhabitants.

As a matter of fact my mother’s family was a real Jewish family, which observed all main Jewish traditions and rules. You can see it, if you compared Jewish names of their children. They observed Sabbath and celebrated the holidays. But I didn’t participate in it. Being a child, I wasn’t very keen of such things.

The only Jewish thing I remember is that grandmother baked matzah. The economy was a big one, so they made everything themselves, using their own opportunities. I can say even more: my mother could prepare Jewish meals, Jewish cookies, and I don’t mention my grandmother, because she was doing the same for sure. Anyway, Lesya, my grandmother taught her children to keep the house and observe Jewish traditions. All her children had their own businesses at home, all they kept the house.

Naturally, parents of my mother knew Yiddish well, they spoke it. I insist that their mother tongue was Yiddish. However, Granny knew Russian too. She talked to children both Yiddish and Russian, but mainly in Yiddish. I didn’t talk to grandfather on any language because he had paralyses.

Granddad had a beard. Grandmother didn’t put on the sheitl; she had wonderful hair of her own. She wore the dress, and, naturally wore the kerchief. I don’t remember of which color, but she had it on all the time. I can’t say what they thought about the soviet power, we didn’t even have such conversations. 

My father's and mother's background

My father, Zakhar Davidovitch, was born in 1896 and died in 1967. Apparently, my father’s family lived in Daugavpils, or Dvinsk, which is in Latvia. Father after the [Russian] Revolution, when Latvia and Lithuania became the independent states, didn’t see them and knew nothing about them till late 1940s.

Father was the youngest in his family. And when they had to decide what to do, the elder brother, I don’t remember his name, said: ‘He finished four grades, that’s enough’. I don’t know what that was: cheder or something different. And he couldn’t forgive his elder brother that entire story.

My father served in the Tsar Army during the World War I. Father told me that he happened to get into the gas attack and he was demobilized after that. After the war he found himself in Vitebsk, and they got to know each other with my mother. Perhaps, he came to visit for some occasion. And around 1920 they got married. I don’t know if they proposed father to my mother. Probably, that was a big Jewish wedding. There were plenty of gifts; I even keep some of them. I suppose that those are very expensive things (two china plates with decorations on the animal themes and a big Japanese panel). They gave them those things for the wedding, mother gave them to me and I hope to give them to my daughter.

When father was yet in Vitebsk, the NEP 4 had begun, and he went often to neighborhood areas as a commercial traveler. He worked for the private firm, which made wrappers for sweets. I even saw that album with those wrappers. He traveled with this album and signed the agreements. Probably, that could continue for ages, but then 1928 came [it was officially required to close NEP, and nepmen were arrested and put to jail], his owner happened to be a clever person and closed her business just in time. It seems to me, that he had no more job and left to Leningrad.

Father had a pal, who has got some good position in future. And that viteblyanin advised him to go to Leningrad and promised him a room, if he worked here for a while. When father has got a room, he lived there for couple months and then invited mother to come.

In Leningrad on Moika [embankment of Moika River – one of the rivers in the very center of the city] there was an artel, and he found there a job of machine operator. He was big and left-handed, and there was such a machine, which had to be revolved to the certain direction, and nobody, except him, couldn’t afford it. He showed me this place, and I saw the way he worked. Later he was a driver, worked in the subsidiary department of the Academy of Arts. His head was Gerasimov, and his brother was cinema director, famous Sergey Gerasimov 5, who came and got paid, even he didn’t do anything there. Then father worked on the factory named after Stalin, near Finland railway station [station, where trains to Finland and some part of Leningrad region depart from]. That was a huge factory, it had his own football team, and today it’s called ‘Zenith’ [the best football team in whole city, in 1984 wan the USSR championship, usually plays in the Premier league]. Father worked in the subsidiary department of the factory for a long while.

Father always paid great attention to the self-education. He studied at the English language courses, read a lot. When I was employed in the Military Naval Institute, I took books in our library (we had the very good one) and brought them to my father, I also brought all the magazines, all the novelties. Once per week we met, and I brought a new book. He was in the center of all events, had wide views, and had a wish to know everything.

Father was an intellectual, wrote a book of war memories, and later he gave this diary to the Museum of Leningrad history. We have at home some notes, where he called himself Rudnitsky. He wasn’t a professional writer and was too shy to write from his own name, so he chose a nickname and wrote his blockade diaries, using this nickname. I don’t think he knew somebody, called Rudnitsky, perhaps, he just liked this family name. Those are real memoirs of the participant of Leningrad Blockade 6.

He had a good voice, he liked to sing, and he even bought a guitar to take music lessons and learn how to play, but never did that, and the guitar stayed to hang on the wall. He could play some very easy songs on the piano, especially he liked ‘To the position a girl...’ [The first line of the famous song by M. Isakovsky about the Great Patriotic War 7, he sang military songs with great pleasure.

It is nothing to tell about my mother, she always worked a lot, being a cashier and earning money. She was called Slava otherwise she would be Lesya, Ghuta or something else in her documents. Anyway, she was Shmerovna, and in documents it was written ‘Sergeevna’, and all her sisters were ‘Sergeevna’s.

My mother was the main helper of grandfather and grandmother till 1928, in that period of time when she lived in Vitebsk. My father copied the way Granny Lesya said: ‘Slava, go here, Slava, go there’. Mother was working harder, then others. However, she finished the Gymnasium with Silver medal; her family could afford such an education.

Growing up

I was born in 1924 in Vitebsk, and when I was three or four years old, we moved to Leningrad. When I was born, my parents rented a separate apartment in Vitebsk. They called the owner as a ‘shakhmeister’; I don’t know why, maybe, this was Yiddish word for ‘owner’? We lived just near the Russian Orthodox Church. And I remember that I was going to the kindergarten.

In 1928 father moved from Vitebsk to Leningrad, and in half a year we, I and my mother, followed him. Since that time I consider Leningrad my native city. We lived on the Gogol 8 (today Malaya Morskaya) street. In that shared apartment 9, in one room, we lived for almost all our life.

Naturally, we went from Vitebsk to Leningrad by train. But what I remember exactly from my three or four years is how we arrived to Leningrad, to Vitebsky railway station. Father rented the carrier, and we went in that cab. And what I recalled for whole my life, till today is that when you go on Gorokhovaya street, previously Dzerginsky street, and cross Griboedov channel [one of the main channels of the city, is called after poet and diplomat], the bridge goes straight down, so I remember this bridge very well. I recalled that feeling when suddenly I went up, and nowadays often when I go there, I recall that.

In Leningrad we lived very poor. My parents worked very much, especially mother. She was a cashier in Leningrad House of Selling for a long while, and also she’s been working for Torgsin 10. Those Torgsin stores were organized in middle 1920s when the Soviet authorities decided to take out gold, silver and jewelry, but legally, not due to repressions, so people came and got food instead of their gold. Mother worked there, and that was a great support. In those times it was nothing to eat, there was a few of food in whole country. There were no rich people, and if somebody war richer than others, he hide his treasures. And in Torgsin they gave ratios, and that was a big business. The ratio included the piece of sausage, the piece of cheese, some butter, and some sugar. That was a holiday to get a ratio. I know all that because I helped my mother to carry the packages. All Torgsin employees got ratios in the boxes. That was such help! Later mother worked in the famous shoe store on Nevsky Avenue, 11, between streets of Gogol and Gertzen 11. And in front of it there was a ‘Death to husbands’ – the stockinet store [famous city shop].

Parents had good relations. Probably, there were some scandals, but they lived friendly, and they lived together for almost fifty years.

My mother’s and father’s mother tongue was Yiddish. But mainly they spoke Russian to each other. To tell the truth, if they and their relatives didn’t want us, the children, to understand what they were talking about, they spoke Yiddish. Like that: they spoke Russian, then suddenly put some Yiddish words, and that meant that they said something, forbidden for little children. And they talked to mother’s brothers and sisters both Russian and Yiddish.

Mother (there were quite a few children both in family of my mother and of my father, as usually in Jewish families before the [Russian] Revolution) had seven brothers and sisters. Step by step, beginning since 1928, they moved to Leningrad. Soon almost all relatives of my mother came here: brother Naum together with his family, brother Isaac, sister Zinaida, and sister Bertha. In Vitebsk Boris, sister Frada, sister Emma stayed, and one more brother died earlier, to my opinion. 

We communicated to mother’s relatives a lot. I saw my cousins every week, especially Efim and Zalman, the sons of aunt Bertha. There was also Zinovy, the son of Isaak, mother’s brother. Often we celebrated holidays, all mother’s brothers and sisters came to visit. Brother Naum, when drunk a little, began to argue to his wife, and everyone about that. In one room they placed about twenty or thirty people, a crowd of kids, it was very funny. Grandmother came to Leningrad too: hosted at one daughter, then at another one, and later she left for Vitebsk.

I remember that I was always happy to see uncle Naum, because he always brought three rubles to the child. That was a big event. And if I had money, I went to the Writer’s corner [popular soviet bookstore in the center of the city], placed on Nevsky Avenue, and bought books.

We went to Vitebsk together with my cousins, sons of mother’s sister Bertha. That was during the summer, we went to Letsy [small village near Vitebsk], to dacha [cottage], that uncle Boris rented. He had two sons too, called Mikhail and Efim. Boris worked on a moving machine with films, so-called cinema ‘peredvigka’ [the car or track with movies, traveling throughout the country]. He wasn’t a head, he was some kind of operator, or dispatcher, and directed those cars to all corners. Efim was doctor’s assistant during World War II, and Mikhail was too little, so he didn’t serve in the Army. They all survived, and Boris died later, after the War. His sons immigrated to America, first Mikhail, and then Efim. I think they both are alive, but I don’t keep in touch with them.

Other brothers, Isaac and Naum, who lived in Leningrad were civil servants both, they didn’t get any special education, I think. Isaac was married to Eugenia, she was Jewish, and they had a son, called Zinovy, who was an active Komsomol leader, he was on the front and then he became a geologist. Perhaps, his mother was geologist either, I don’t know exactly. Finally Zinovy moved to America and died their one or two years ago. Naum had a wife, called Lubov, she was Jewish too, and she’s been civil servant, just like her husband. They gave birth to two daughters: Lilia graduated from an Institute in Leningrad and worked as engineer, and Anna was a cashier. I remember her working in the bookstore not far from us, on Moscovsky Avenue.

Mother’s sister Zinaida was a librarian and worked in a library her entire life. She had a son, called Genrich, he was married to a Jewish girl with high education. When he studied at the Institute, he’s got sick, and instead of that our doctors gave some medicine, he died. He was twenty eight, I think. He is buried in Jewish cemetery. Mother’s sister Bertha was a civil servant, but after the World War II she was retired and lived on the pension, which she’s got after her son’s death, who was killed on the front. Frada was a bookkeeper and she was involved in coal industry. And Emma was killed in Latvia during the World War II together with her son, they lived near Riga, in Meguapark [neighborhoods of Riga], and she was quite rich person, I think, because they had their own house, they even sent us its photos. 

I consider that in 1930s in Vitebsk they lived a bit better than in Leningrad. They had more food and more freedom. I mean that my parents had to work hard, and in Belarus they had some jobs, taking less time. For example, uncle Boris had some official job, but still he had some free time to find something cheaper, to go to the market. We never went to the market. And they had there comparably cheap market, in Belarus everything was cheaper.

Father suffered very strong that he couldn’t communicate with his relatives. He had many brothers and one sister. Their names were: Haim, Yacob, Udel, Itsik, and I don’t remember the name of his sister. In 1934, when Latvia turned to become fascist, Itsik moved to America. 

Meeting with this brother, whom he loved and appreciated, never happened. Haim was considered a wise man, but the cleverest one was Itsik, he even got to know Albert Einstein. Father’s brother Jacob was busy in some religious activities at Latvia, in Daugavpils. I think it happened both when Latvia was independent (I mean 1930s) and after it became a part of the USSR (1940s-1950s). He went to the synagogue, to my opinion he even was its senior. Later, in late 1950s they repatriated for Israel. He had a daughter Esther; we communicated with her in those times and continue to write to her now. Thanks to God, she is still alive. And when we’ve been to Israel, we’ve been to her. She lives in outskirts of Tel-Aviv. Haim was a bookkeeper; he was working for some firm or company. But when I first met him, he was retired already. And also I have his photo, maybe, pre-revolution one: he wears a good suit; he sits in a good cabinet. Anyway, he was some kind of economist.

Father’s elder brother, whose name I can’t recall all those days, (father never forgave him for that story with education, that story, which I told above) lived in Sverdlovsk [big city in Ural, named after soviet Bolshevik, today Yekaterinburg] and died there. I never met him. However, I’ve got to know his children, and his son Benjamin even followed in my own footsteps, graduated from Military College, and while he studied in Leningrad, he came to visit often. I was an officer and went to the college to meet him. He had a sister, I don’t remember her name.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell more about my father’s siblings because first they lived abroad in another country, then some of them died (for example, Udel and his son were murdered by fascists), and finally I met only a few of them. So I don’t have any additional information about my uncles and aunts or their children.

Mother was very relative person; her origins come from the very friendly family. And  later, when I met father’s relatives too, they seemed to be very nice, very kind, very honest people. I can prove that for sure. Father was a friend not only of mother’s relatives. Sometimes he was tired of them; he said that he was full of them. But as a matter of fact he was very company person.

In our shared apartment Fedosia Yacovlevna (she was Jewish either), who, as a matter of fact, actually grew me up, lived in one of the rooms. Her daughter Olga Markovna, music teacher and husband of her Anatoly Yacovlevitch Vol, an artist, lived in another room, they had no children, and the neighbor liked me very much, I was instead of her grandchild. She studied with me a lot, brought tasty things, and when summer period had begun, she came to my parents and said: ‘When we are going to leave for dacha?’ and many years ahead we went to Sestrorezk [town near Leningrad, the spa place]. So neighbor did more for my education than my mother, who was always busy.

Another neighbor was Elizabeth Vladimirovna; I remember that she had an angry dachshund. Later she’s got married and moved from our apartment, it happened before the World War II. We had good relations with our neighbors. Everything was all right.

Sometimes parents went for holidays. Father, I know, had been to Berdyansk [port town on the bank of Azov Sea], to my opinion, that happened in 1939; they gave him a voucher on the factory (Stalin factory was quite a rich one). Mainly, the parents went for holidays separately, I think. Mother relaxed together with her sisters. And when I’ve been to dacha, father came every week to see me and Fedosya Yacovlevna. I went to the station, met him, he always brought some food. However, I guess that they didn’t have plenty of vacations or holidays.

That school, where I studied at, later became the very famous one. That was school number two hundred thirty nine, mixed, both for girls and boys. It was situated on Isaac’s square [one of the central city squares, where Isaac’s cathedral and Mariinsky Palace are situated], on that place, where you can see that building with lions. Half of my school friends were Jewish, and half were Russians. Nowadays my best friend Victor Isaev is my childhood friend; we were friends from the very first grade. Also there was Phroya Shlyyak, a Jew, he lives in Germany now, and also we were friends with Admiral Andrey Victorovitch Peterson. I had many friends.

Besides, I grew among the real hooligans, bandits, court boys. It was so funny to be with them. Naturally, they didn’t kill or murder, but they were thieving, and I tried to stop them from doing this. But, not looking at that fact that they were hooligans in the real meaning of this word, they never touched me with a finger. Never. Nobody. I’m very surprised with it. And I must say that even though I could suffer from some anti-Semitism, but I don’t remember any story.

I was keen on sports, liked our sport teacher Dmitry Sergeevitch. I loved volleyball, went to play volleyball after the school very often. And went to the football too, watched how basks [football team from Spain] played when they came. Apparently, we all days long played football in front of the school, just near Isaac’s cathedral. So we had the very usual boys’ hobbies.

I painted, even began to paint with oil. A boy who studied together with me, became a President of Academy Arts, I forgot his name. We sat together in one class, and met in many years. Thanks to Olga Markovna, they taught me some music, so I’ve been well-educated officer and intelligent. 

Also I remember our literature teacher, Alevtina, and our Math teacher, Evdokia Vasilievna. I had good relationships with them and their subjects. I remember the way Evdokia Vasilievna proved the theorem: a-prim, b-prim, c-prim. When I studied in the second grade, we had an English teacher, she was Jewish. And till today I recall her ‘How do you do, children?’ If those studies continued, I would know English very well. Apparently, I liked many of my teachers, and I have very good memories about our school and studies.  

When I studied in the eights grade, we were friends with guys from the ninth grade. We had normal relations. We didn’t have such things: you are gid [kike], you are a Jew, and we won’t communicate with you. Perhaps, they had some conversations, but mainly among guys one could say: ‘Let’s play in gid-gidovka’. This was lapta [Russian folk team game with a ball and a bat, called ‘lapta’. Players of one team throw the ball with ‘lapta’ as far as possible, and while the ball is flying, run through the field and back. Players of another team try to catch the ball and to throw it to one of the ‘enemies’], so it was called. They said it, and I said the same, I didn’t know exactly what does it mean. I knew the word, but I didn’t understand its real meaning.

I had very good organization skills, as I can recall. And they always ‘moved’ me in the field of social work. I even was senior of the class. In college I was busy in social work too; I have tens of diplomas left. So I was an active ‘tovaritsch’ [comrade] in all senses.

Each summer we went to Sestrorezk (Fedosia Yacovlevna preferred to rent dacha close to this town, so we moved from one village to another almost each summer). Chernichnoe, Gorskaya, Alezandrovskaya, Lissy Nos [villages of summerhouses in Leningrad district], I know all those places, because we rented dacha in Sestrorezk region and changed the place from year to year. Anyway, I was able to walk around and to see all neighborhood areas and villages. I walked and swam and collected the berries, and played football with my mates. Not only football, we played different games. And it was great fun. I went there together with our neighbor only for entire summer vacations, and parents came to visit. And even later, when I became an adult, I came there too. I’ve not been to the pioneer’s camp for real. Once they sent me to the camp, and I quickly asked to take me away.

Father worked on Sabbaths, he had to. But apparently he had a silk cloth, called tallit, he knew Hebrew. I mean that he could pray in Hebrew, he had a dictionary Hebrew-Yiddish somewhere (it was academic issue). I can even say that he was a Jewish nationalist; I mean he thought that Jewish culture was a great culture, and Jews made a lot for humanity. I don’t insist that he was a Zionist, but still he appreciated Jewish influence (I mean entire history of the world). Anyway, he had normal relations with Russians too.  

Father was going to teach me Yiddish, we even began to learn alphabet. But it finished very soon, because he didn’t have enough time. I understand some Yiddish, naturally, as far as I learned German at school, and it is very close to Yiddish. I know some easy everyday words, but as a matter of fact I can’t say that I know this language.

We celebrated some of the Jewish holidays, maybe, Rosh Hashanah and others. Obviously, we celebrated birthdays too. All those holidays were not bright and outstanding events, there was no delicious food, and mother never cooked any special meals, no Jewish specialties either. There was no special holiday program. Only relatives came, ate and drunk, and talked about everyday life, and sang. Even when we celebrated Jewish holidays, nothing unusual happened, otherwise I would pay attention to it and would remember traditions and so on… Mother’s relatives prayed, but I have no idea when, how often and where it happened. I never saw them praying and probably, I just heard something about it, maybe family legends or rumors, which fell deep inside in my memories. Father had Torah, later, when he was retired, he became more religious.

We knew that we were Jewish. But never anyone said: ‘Don’t speak to him because he is Russian, or don’t make Russian friends’ however, I know exactly that if I wanted to marry Russian girl, my mother would never allow, she would stand for the last. Never ever! Even though my parents were not Orthodox Jews, they had some ideas of traditional Jewry about what Jews should do and what shouldn’t. Mother never talked about my marriage, never said: ‘You shouldn’t marry non-Jewish girl’, but I heard that her relatives discussed this topic. All they didn’t liked mixed, multi-national families and my mother wasn’t exclusion. And after all, friends are one point, and the wife and questions of ‘blood’ were more important. 

In those times in Leningrad there was not such a Jewish community. We mainly supported relations with our relatives. Perhaps, they observed some traditions and holidays. But Jews were living separately, for example we lived in the very center, and others not, all Jews were spread on the territory of city and its outskirts. I don’t know if there were any kosher stores in Leningrad, I don’t think so. And I don’t remember if people gathered together to celebrate Jewish holidays.

There was a synagogue in Leningrad, on Lermontov 12 avenue [this synagogue, one of the largest ones in Europe, is still situated on the same place]. I’ve been there couple of times in the childhood. Parents didn’t actually go to the synagogue; they just didn’t have time to do that. They worked from the early morning till late evening. Where we usually went with my father on Saturday evenings. We went to banya [the place of common washing, in the URSS in most of the houses they didn’t have hot water and bathrooms]. We went to banya on Fonarny pereulok [way], which was our synagogue. Of course, I’m kidding. I mean only that those visits were the only tradition we observed.

We didn’t receive any help from Jewish organizations (I think, there were some Jewish organizations helping for poors) in those times. We didn’t get any packages or food support. We ate very usual things, nothing special. We didn’t have a possibility to ask shochet to cut our chicken; we just wanted to eat something, not looking at the way it was killed. It is shame to tell how poor we’ve been. Thanks to God, we stayed alive.

I don’t remember, what was going on in 1933, at home we didn’t discuss Hitler and how he got the power. We seldom discussed politics at home. Father wasn’t a communist, and we talked sincerely. I wouldn’t say that he had active anti-Soviet position, but he understood everything about soviet authorities. He didn’t join the party for his own reasons, and even he didn’t talk about it, but with all his view (gests and mimics) he showed what he thought about political events. Of course, he could demonstrate his feelings only when around he observed people, whom he could trust.

We spoke mainly with my father, not mother. But we didn’t have long conversations. Parents called Stalin 13 a ‘balbos’, ‘owner’ in Yiddish. We understood what Stalin was, but it was necessary to be very careful. That’s why we stayed alive. In the end of 1930s it was a hard time, when people shouldn’t trust others, everyone was frightened to death, good pals and even the relatives could go and inform on you. So less you talked, more chances you had to stay alive. I always knew what and to whom I could talk about and what I should not.

We had old furniture; maybe, it was even from Vitebsk, because it was made out of red wood. And then they sold this furniture as far as they found some bacteria inside, and bought the new one. We had a bureau, a buffet, I slept behind the curtain, and they had two beds and a sofa in this room. I consider that the furniture was quite normal, but it was no free place at all, I mean that the room was very small.

I remember that I bought my first normal shoes in 1939. We didn’t have good clothes, we couldn’t afford buying new clothes, and the choice wasn’t too big too. There was something very usual, not special, we wore what we had. For example I wore old clothes of my father, maybe I’ve got something from my relatives, perhaps, I wore some trousers or shirts of my cousins, I don’t really remember. Of course, we had to buy something, so we did it from time to time, but it happened seldom and occasionally we bought some very ordinary clothes. We bought closes, because mother never sewed. 

During the war

I met the Great Patriotic War on the Lenin stadium. When World War II started, it was the wonderful summer day (it was June the 22nd of 1941), at eleven we went to the stadium to watch the game of ‘Stalinetz’, which later became the famous ‘Zenith’ [the best football team in whole city, in 1984 won the USSR championship, usually plays in the Premier league]. So we sat and waited, and time was gone, and nothing was going on, the football didn’t begin. Then they announced that it won’t be any football. And when we walked back home, passing Dobrolubov street [one of the central streets of Leningrad, is named after writer and critic of the nineteenth century], we heard Molotov 14 speech. Stalin spoke later, and Molotov had to announce the War on this day.

I served since 1941. I studied then in the special military naval school, and we’ve been to Lugskiy front, to Bolshoye and Maloe Karlino [small villages in Leningrad region], to Marienburg [village in Leningrad region], we’ve been to the second front line, or participated in building the defense lines. In Leningrad we organized the patrols, caught the rackets and racket people. The bombing had begun on September, the eighth of 1941, and our fortune was that there were plenty of rackets, all city was full of rackets, and Germans just didn’t know where to throw bombs, they couldn’t see anything. Also we helped to evacuate kids and school children.

I could die twice, and that’s not a lie, I know exactly that forty two of my college mates were killed during the War. First, it could happen in summer of 1941, near Leningrad. Then we wore great coats, and naval great coats are black ones, so you can see them from very far away. German planes flew and threw bombs onto the houses and shut from the machine-gun. I had a shovel on my head. To my fortune, when one of those German planes approached to us and was going to threw a bomb (so we all could die), soviet fighter appeared in the sky and made him to go. And the second time was the following one. I’ve been to Voronya Mountain [mountain in outskirts of Leningrad], there was a naval battery, and we were placed not far from them. We dig the fortifications; we had one gun per five people, and nearby Germans organized the carousel: their fighters, called ‘Wolf’ flew on the wide circle and bombed us non-stop. I’ve got used to it already, guessed when it was necessary to lay down. And suddenly some drunken infantry lieutenant came and began to argue with our commander. So we found out that nobody was around, no front nearby, we stand here, and nobody else stands here, neither in front of us, nor behind. Only that battery, which you can pass easily. Lieutenant shouts: ‘What are you doing here? Tanks approach! Leave immediately!’ And they made us to go, almost forcing to do that. So we came to Leningrad by feet, and went to our military unit.

In Leningrad they shut everywhere. College, named after Frunze 15 [famous Military College in Leningrad] stood on Neva River; nearby there was our military unit, it still stands over there. Now they have a memorial desk there. So I could go to my unit, using the longer path, and there was another way. That day I walked this certain way, I never walked before. And on that shorter way the projectile exploded. I can recall thousands of such accidents. On Gogol street, where my parents lived, I saw how bomb destroyed the house, I saw that this bomb flew not straight, but a little bit obliquely, it destroyed the beer kiosk and fell to the first floor. So all the stages were completely destroyed. I was a witness of how bomb destroyed the Police school on Gogol street, number 8.

During the Blockade in Leningrad there were forty four degrees colds [it was one of the coldest winters in the history of the city,]; there was no light, no electricity, no heat, and no water. Seldom, when I came home from my military unit (it happened once or twice a week), it wasn’t long way, so I walked by foot. So coming back at home, I went to Neva [main city river] and brought water to my mother.

I’ve been to Leningrad front till March of 1942, even including March. Later the dislocation started, they sent our company to Astrakhan [big city in the lower reaches of Volga], and they supposed to send the eighth and ninth grades, which made second and third companies, to Siberia. So it happened so that they picked us to Ladoga Lake [famous lake in outskirts of Leningrad] to the Road of life 16 by train, and then we had to cross those forty kilometers. We were walking on the ice; it was forty degrees of cold. You walk on the ice and see all those dead bodies of evacuated Leningrad inhabitants and Soviet soldiers under the ice. Thanks to God, Germans didn’t throw bombs. And we were lucky because cars and tracks went to Leningrad with wheat and stuff, and they came back absolutely empty, that’s why we passed by car some part of the way, to Gikharevka station [railway station not far from Leningrad]. And there we reached the so-called Big Land. In Gikharevka they gave us some food for the first time, and it was important that they gave us only a small piece of sausage, nothing else and didn’t permit to eat anything during two hours. And then we understood why they didn’t let us to eat more: we saw thousands of dead people, stacks of dead people; all those people ate bread and something else at once and died from volvulus [some kind of stomach disease], they died because they were so weak that their organisms were not able to take food. To stay alive they had to eat very little, but nobody told them it about it. We all were dystrophic, and when you are coming out from the dystrophy, the diarrhea begins, because your organism can’t get the food.

Then they drove some echelons, put us into sanitary barriers, where they washed us, and helped to feel normal. Then they took us to those echelons and to wagons and drove somewhere. That happened for almost forty days. We passed Volkhovstroy [small town on the river Volkhov], Kirov [today that is Vyatka, big town in the Middle Povolgi], Molotov (it’s how they called Perm in soviet times); everywhere they had lights on, it looked like people don’t know about the War. So throughout Ural steppes, from the opposite side, we arrived to Astrakhan and we’ve been there for couple of months.

Soon the story started: planes fly, throw the bombs, after all that was year 1942, Stalingrad struggle 17. We helped, do whatever they ordered: guarded, helped to loading. Then we’ve got an order to go to Baku [capital of Azerbaijan, city on the Caspian Sea]. Germans approached; and we, on the special ships, called ‘seiners’ [fishing ships, which were given to Soviet army], crossed the Sea, because Caspian Sea from Astrakhanian coast isn’t wide, it is narrow, and big ships can’t come to the bank. Anyhow, the military ship stood on the road, we reached it and in two days we finally came to Baku.

In Baku there was a military naval college. There they broke up us. Some were left in Baku, and some (and me among them) were sent to Lenkoran [town in Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea], to the military naval college of waterside defense, in the department of connection. We lost about thirty people by the way. So we’ve been to Lenkoran for some time, which was almost on the Persian border. Germans went to Caucasus; they gave us infantry uniform and supposed to send us to the frontline. But then Soviet troupes stopped the Germans, and just in this infantry clothes they put us on the ship and drove to Krasnovodsk [small town on the Caspian Sea], now it is situated on the territory of Turkmenistan. And only from this place through Alma-Ata [capital of Kazakhstan, today is called Almaty] to Baikal [the largest lake on the territory of the USSR, it is situated in Siberia], from plus twenty degrees by Celsius to minus twenty degrees by Celsius, and we didn’t have nothing warm, neither gloves, nor coats, nothing. So they allowed us to warm up the hands in the pockets. We spent there awful half a year. We lived their in barracks, which were left from those, who were banished here. Unfortunately, I can’t tell more about our trip to Baikal, because I don’t remember any more stories.

Then they sent us for practice to the Far East and put us into the Pacific Ocean College. That college was built before the War, according to all necessary rules. So we were there for three months, so it was almost a Heaven. Then they put us to the so-called sixth kilometer and during next two months we were busy with painting the walls, built something and so on. There it was very cold; life was much more hard and unpleasant.

I joined the Communist Party in 1944 when I was twenty. I sincerely believed in communist future and so on. I didn’t wish to get anything from this Party and never got. However, after all, militaries had to join the Party, almost all officers were communists. And actually I wanted to join the Party in 1943, when I applied for it, but they admitted me in 1944 only. And I had to pass an exam, answering some questions about history and theory of communism.

When the war started, father was forty five. I thought that he was old. It is so funny to recall that now! Anyway he wasn’t old and had to serve. He served in the troupes of MPVO (which means Local Anti Air-craft Defense). They called him up, when we didn’t even know that the War started. His goal was to look, where the bombs fly to, and to message their directions. He was in barracks; he served on the factory, named after Volodarsky. In 1942 he’s got a dystrophy, he even could die, mother was a little bit stronger, but she wasn’t very healthy either, and due to that fact that they were very sick, they evacuated them both (father lived at home in those times too) to Ural, so finally they happened to be in Kopeisk [small town on Ural], not very far from Chelyabinsk [big metallurgical center on Ural]. There was a military factory over there, they made there rackets of ‘Katusha’ type. Soon my father had to go to the army again. Just after he felt a little bit better, they put him in the railway troupes, and he served till the very end of the War, and he’s been to the army a year after the War too. He finished the War somewhere on the Romanian front. 

When he served in the army, there were many Uzbeks. And when they had a political information [short lecture, concerning political situation in the USSR and in the World], they gave him some Uzbek text, written with Russian letters. He read this text and understood nothing, but those Uzbeks understood everything he was talking about and they were very happy with him. It happened I passed not far from Tashkent [big city in the Middle Asia, capital of Uzbekistan], I crossed whole Russia. There was a town, and there was a military unit nearby. I didn’t know that my father was just right there, and we didn’t meet, if I knew about it, I would try to see him, because it was very important for me: I didn’t meet him for ages and I wanted to see him so much!

Also in that Military college of radio electronics we had a department of fireworks, pyrotechnics and my mates went to Kopeisk. My mates mainly were from Leningrad, including Anatoly Tolstoy. I told him: ‘Please come and visit my mother’. He came to visit and there they had such a dinner, such a holiday. Of course! I didn’t see my parents for four years. Mother sent me socks and tissue, a real masterpiece.

My father served in the army, I served in the army, and my mother worked there, being a cashier, which was her civil profession. Father had a big authority; he had many war medals, for example ‘For guarding Leningrad’ and ‘For Caucasus’. Mother had some medals as well: a medal ‘For guarding Leningrad’ and ‘For forced labor’. She’s got them for working during Leningrad blockade and on the military factory on Ural. And I have sixteen medals too.

When the War started, those relatives, who stayed in Vitebsk, were evacuated or just ran away, and as a matter of fact, nobody stayed in Vitebsk during the War. They fond themselves somewhere in Russia, I don’t know where exactly. The family was all sparse. Somebody later happened to be on Donbass [coal region in Ukraine], just like Frada, sister of my mother. Her husband died from typhus. Grandmother Lesya died in evacuation in Saratov [big town in Povolgi was far away from the frontline].

My cousin Zalman, son of Bertha, was killed during the War. He was on the front, and then they sent him to the school of young lieutenants, and he became the head of machine-gunners. According to statistics, head of machine-gunners lived for two weeks only and never survived. It happened because young lieutenants usually were directed to the most dangerous parts of the front, that’s why the death level among them was very high. And also specialization of ‘head of machine-gunners’ was considered very dangerous too, because they always were on the frontline and stayed without any defense or guarding. So it happened: two weeks passed and he was killed. Efim, his brother, was a tank’s guy, he survived and we still communicate a lot. Uncle Isaac was killed in Leningrad Home Guard, and uncle Naum died from anger during Blockade. Sister of my mother Emma lived in Vitebsk and then moved to Latvia in 1930s. She had a house over there. She and her son were killed too.

Brothers of my father uncle Haim and uncle Jacob from Latvia found themselves in evacuation in Tashkent, and they stayed alive. Some of the relatives were killed, my cousin, for example, I don’t know his name, and father’s brother Udel. He was murdered; fascists killed him, perhaps, in a concentration camp.

My dear Fedosya Yacovlevna died in Leningrad during the Blockade. So many people died, dead people lay on the streets, and even one of our mates, when he fell, was put in the morgue. We took him away from there, from that room, where they brought bodies. He happened to be alive, thanks to God.

After the war

When I turned twenty one, in 1945, I’ve been the lieutenant already and finished the War in Vladivostok [big city on the Far East]. We were signalers; I worked on the flagman point of Pacific Ocean Navy. That was a hill, and knolls, and inside there was the Staff, so we kept direct connection with Moscow. And I remember that vice-admiral; the Head of the Staff came and said that the War was over. That was the eighth of May, so I learned about our victory earlier than all others, and naturally I began to tell about the victory to my mates and friends. And nobody believed. So half of the day passed, and there were no official news, and they looked at me not very friendly… However, the War was really over, and they announced that later on. And then we celebrated the victory, we celebrated this day very well, we shouted ‘Hurrah!’ And that admiral, who announced the victory on the eight of May, died from heartache when he was announcing it officially from the tribune on the next day.

On the Far East we felt also that there would be the War with Japan (it was spring and mid-summer of 1945), we constructed mining fields, we all swam on the ship, where they had almost four hundred mines, which could explore every minute to the hell. But we were very brave; we were young and were not frightened. And then they sent me to Baltic, I asked myself to send me somewhere close to home.

I arrived to Leningrad on the tenth of July of 1945, being a lieutenant of the Military Sea Navy. Naturally, that was a great joy, a great day. I left my luggage in the camera, and through Nevsky prospect walked home by feet. I didn’t see anything around. I’ve not been at home for four years! And that was such happiness to come back! To cross all Nevsky prospect, I couldn’t even imagine that before, being front. Emotions covered me. Our house was the second one on the street, and the first one was a bank, today it is ‘Aeroflot’ building. When I entered into the court, and in the window I suddenly saw my aunt Bertha, and she saw me too. I heard how she gaily shouted: ‘A-a-a’.

Bertha was in evacuation in Kirov, today it is called Vyatka [town in Middle Povolgi, faraway from the front]. The War just started, when she left for evacuation. Her husband’s sister lived there, and my cousin Efim went to the army from that place. Coming back to Leningrad, Bertha stayed with us for while, because mother came back from evacuation, and father didn’t come back from the Army.

Neighbors were so happy to see us, they all were happy about our coming back. Olga Markovna and her husband survived and they lived in this apartment for very long. We were very close to each other; I called Anatoly Yacovlevitch a ‘fason’ [someone, who follows the fashion], he was both our neighbor and good friend, and at the same time he was an artist and liked to be in the center of common attention. There were some other people, they were Russians. Apparently, there were not very many people in the city, Leningrad was half-empty. I was surprised that my parents, who were in Leningrad in 1941-1942, didn’t catch a better living space, a better apartment. They didn’t move, they returned to their room, even our house stood half-empty either. Of course, they were right. Our furniture and other values survived, because one of our neighbors became the ‘head of house economy’ and we were friends with her, so she didn’t let anybody to take our things away.

From Leningrad I went to Baltic, to Tallinn [capital of Estonia, city on the Baltic Sea], there I had to fight with local Estonian fascists for three years and from time to time I had to participate in the tribunals. It happened because we, ten young officers came to Tallinn were kept in reserve, because they didn’t know where to direct us. And we lived together with those people, who participated in tribunals, and they called us up not to find ‘Forest brothers’ (they continued to exist till 1949), but to take part in tribunals and sign the documents. Those forest brothers got medals from Germans, and some of them had five or six orders. So we were military assessors, and somebody, called Krumm, has been the procurer. Later they sent me back to Leningrad, I became a head of military unit inside the squadron of the destroyer of the Holding the Order of the Red Banner Baltic Navy, I had to command over thirty five sailors. Then they sent me to the highest radiolocation courses, and I started to pay attention not only to the connections, but also to radiolocation. After that I had different services: the learning detachment, ship, named after Kirov 18, school of radiometric. I prepared staff for Military Sea Navy. They said I was very good in teaching them. I think, I had no problems with methodic the.

After the War father tried to go to Latvia for couple of times, but they wouldn’t let him to go. Latvia and Lithuania were considered almost the separate territories, and Soviet troupes stood there. But then I had to go to Riga [capital of Latvia] for some service business, and father asked me to find his relatives. He knew that they were somewhere in Dvinsk, but didn’t here exactly. So when I was over with my business in Riga, I came back through Dvinsk, which is Daugavpils in Latvian. That was a nice town. When I first appeared there, they all were frightened, because I wore the uniform of soviet officers. Anyway, I found them, and Uncle Jacob with his wife aunt Hava happened to be wonderful people, I spent couple of days at them. Later father wrote letters to them and some time after he met them, and his other brother Haim too, that was his first real meeting to his brothers. So finally he met all his ‘Latvian’ relatives, including both brothers, their wives and children, but he never met his brother, killed in 1942, and his father, who died in 1917.

Couple of times Dad went to Daugavpils and mother went there too, because my beloved wife worked there, and my beloved daughter lived there too. My wife couldn’t find any other job after she graduated from the philological faculty of Leningrad State University and post graduate course in linguistics too, so she had to go to Latvia, for that was the only place she could find, because the ‘fight against cosmopolitans’ 19 started already.

Father, who knew that his Dad died on the street, thought that he could die on the street too, that’s why he always took his passport with him. So it happened. That year he died, in March there were elections, and he wanted to go to this elections. Just in that time aunt Bertha [sister of D.Z. Levin’s mother] died. Probably, it was funeral, and the weather was awful, we went to the hospital and then to the cemetery. And I told my father: ‘Father, you shouldn’t go to the elections’. And he answered: ‘How can I not go?’ and went there. We’ve been to the cemetery for a long while; we went there by the special funeral car. Father, it seems to me, obeyed and decided not to go to the elections, he preferred to go home. In tram he had heartache and died there. Fortunately, our pal happened to be nearby and she called me later, when I came back home. Such a life: he was afraid of such death, and that happened. Father was seventy one.

Marriage life and children

How did I meet my wife? It’s weird and funny, but in late 1940s, some when like 1949, I went for the dancing evening at the House of Teachers, later they called this place ‘House of brides’. And there I met my future wife. It’s very funny because I visited dancing evenings only two or three times in whole my life, so it was just an occasion, an accident. So we met each other, and that meeting ended with the fact that we live together for more than fifty four years. We registered our relations in September of 1949, that event took place on September, the 29th of 1949. There was no Jewish wedding, and there was no wedding at all, because we didn’t have such opportunity. My parents had only a small room.   

I know a lot about my wife and her parents. I know well the history of her family: her father was Jewish dressmaker from Bologoye [town in 300 kilometers to the South from Petersburg], Isaac Alpert, and her mother was a housewife, born in wealthy family of hat-maker Abram Linov. They both were Jews, her father spoke mainly Yiddish and even observed Sabbaths, and they both celebrated Jewish holidays. When I’ve got to know my wife, her parents lived in Moscow, because after the World War II they decided to go there to stay and care of their elder son Eizer, who was injured on the front and lost his foot.

What to us with Rebecca, we have daughter Elena, and she gave birth to son, called Sergey. Elena’s husband was Russian, Vladimir Proskuryakov from peasant family; he was a scientist, exploring some fields of metallurgy. He died eight years ago in auto crash, and that was great grief for our daughter. They lived together over twenty five years. Now she is married for the second time. Her son Sergey has two children too, and our grandchildren are called Pavel and Daria. When my daughter was born, we put the child’s bed in the middle of our twenty four meters’ rooms in that shared apartment, where we lived. Still, those were good times, because it was the very beginning of our family life and our daughter made her first steps. Then my wife had to move to Latvia, because she couldn’t find any job here, in Leningrad, and she took our little girl with her. For me it was very hard not to see them for quite a while. Fortunately, later she could get a job here, so she came back and I was happy to live with them again. Then we changed many places of living, because I was military person, and we had to move. But we never left Leningrad, which I like very much and consider my native city. In 1960s (in 1965 to be more exact), to my opinion and according to my wife’s accounts, we finally moved to this apartment on Leninsky Avenue and nowadays live here for over than thirty eight years.

Our daughter grew up here, and she moved to her own apartment after she’s got married in the middle of 1970s, being a student of metallurgical faculty. Later she’s got the second high education: she graduated from Moscow Psychological University (she studied there, living here; she only had to go to Moscow once per half a year to pass exams). Now she working as a psychologist in private kindergarten, but before she tried quite a few of jobs. She is very friendly person, helps to everyone, who needs her support. She takes care not only of her numerous friends, but also of her two dogs (she just took a little doggy, because that one, whom she took form the street, died) and her grandchildren, nice girl of five years and wonderful boy of three.

Even if I told my daughter that she was Jewish, I didn’t pay her special attention to this fact. I’m against telling little children about their nationality. It seems to me that if you told little children about their roots, it would be worse for them. I don’t know when you should start talking about it. Daughter knows very well that she is Jewish, she suffered from anti-Semitism (for example, she was trying to apply for Leningrad Pedagogical Institute for faculty of Chemistry, taught in English, but never succeed, because they wouldn’t admit Jews, so finally she had to enter Gorny Institute, where my wife was teaching Russian to foreigners), and she is enough Jewish with deep understanding of Jewish traditions.

The very heyday of anti-Semitism happened to be 1951-1952. I didn’t feel that then, because I was an officer, military person. To say truly, a little bit later they started some anti-Semite company in the College too. This College was not anti-Semite, our manager of personal wasn’t a bad man, but they ordered him to begin the fight. In soviet times they said: ‘KGB 20 is our Party’s avant-garde’. So we met with KGB due to the Party and especially department of personal. I don’t even mention that in 1948 they arrested half of the navy head, many of the Admirals, and most of them were Russians. They dismissed and arrested those Admirals because they didn’t know that the so-called Cold War started and it wasn’t allowed to show our ‘former’ English friends military equipment. They were not supposed to see some new guns, which became a secret at once. So somebody informed on them, and Naval Head decided to put them to jail.

I was very happy when this time finished, because that was such forcing, hard times, when you couldn’t trust anybody and everyone was frightened and terrified. I don’t think that any clever person could like this way of ruling and this regime. When Stalin died, and all that disclosures, denunciations had begun, and I felt that it was less dictator.

They wanted to send me to the Far East, but I’ve been married already, and my daughter was ill, she couldn’t go there, to Russian Island, and I wrote a report, asking for demobilization. They didn’t want to sing this report, and I had to go the Head of Staff, finally I’ve got an audience in Moscow and he wrote his permission on my report. So my new non-military life started. I worked in the Military Navy Institute for ten years after my demobilization, I was a scientific researcher over there, and then I completed my dissertation. That dissertation was absolutely secret, and I couldn’t take its parts or necessary materials at home, so I stayed on the working place till eleven, that was going on in Pushkin [town just near Leningrad, today is considered city district, is called after Alexander Pushkin, before the Revolution – Tsarkoe or Detskoe Selo], and then came back to Leningrad. In the Military Naval Academy there were about twenty Admirals, and all they voted for what I wrote there. I was interested in so-called radio opposition, and I found out how to do so rackets wouldn’t bother ships. That was a theme of my dissertation. I proved that instead of guns and torpedoes you can use special instruments, special equipment, which would direct rackets to another side, to another direction. Anyway, if I were Russian by nationality, I would be an admiral or a big head today.

Jewish problems were solving in the USSR in such a way. When you went to some organization or institution and began to work, none paid attention to your nationality, to that fact that you are a Jew; we were just a member of this collective. But if you had to change a job, to apply for another position, here the troubles had begun. For example, I remember very well the way they admitted me, when I had to leave this Naval Institute (because of those relatives abroad).

Actually, I don’t want to tell details of this story, but I can say that KGB found somehow that I had relatives abroad (I knew much less about them than Soviet authorities), because my cousins really lived in America and one of my uncles lived in Israel, so they got to know about it and decided that I shouldn’t work in the military institution. And I guess also that Soviet authorities didn’t like that my wife had relatives abroad either and once she went for a meeting with her cousin, who came from Israel. And then they wanted to make me a head of factory lab. All of them were not against that fact, and they were sitting one after another: the head of the factory, then secretary of partkom [local committee of Communist Party], secretary of profkom [local committee of labor union], two other heads, all of them were ‘for’ that decision, except that secretary of partkom. So they asked him if they should admit me or not, and he hurled the paper, which he singed, on this huge table to explain how much he didn’t want to admit me. Apparently, we always had troubles with department of human resources.

I worked in the factory for one year. I was a head of construction department, and my staff even made a medal for me, because I upraised their salaries and always tried to understand them and their financial situations. However, I was quite a demanded chief, and if there was some urgent work, they had to stay longer and make it. Later I passed the competition and changed the job. I began to work on the Electro mechanical factory, and my old colleagues didn’t want me to leave!

Together with Bliznyakov (one of me close friends) we were queuing five long years for small ‘Moskvitch’ [soviet car, made on Moscow Auto Factory], they had such four hundred first model, it cost nine thousand rubles. When I bought this car, I could not drive any car. But I’ve been an officer, worked in Lomonosov [town in Leningrad region, before the Revolution was called Oranienbaum], taught the sailors, and I asked one of them to show me how to drive. In few days he showed me the whole process. As a matter of fact I myself learned how to drive in three weeks, or approximately that period of time, and finally I passed the exams without studying anywhere. That was in 1956-1957.

After a week I learned how to drive my new car, (me and my wife) risked to go to Crimea through Moscow [Crimean peninsular is traditional place of rest of citizens of the country]. My wife was brave then, she didn’t know what could happen on the road. And how we decided to go to Moscow: I explored the map, and counted that it takes about ten hours to reach Moscow, because Moscow is about seven hundred kilometers away from Leningrad, in that case if you make sixty kilometers per hour. So we sat and departed. And finally we were driving about twenty one hour. First we drove on the normal asphalt, but in the map they drew splendid thick line, looking like asphalt on all the way to Moscow, and that thick line stopped just in Luban [small village on the road from Leningrad to Moscow], and further there was no road at all, not talking about that asphalt one. So I stop and ask: ‘What’s going on? What Should I do?’ and other drivers replied that till Kalinin [today it is called Tver, that town is the center of whole region, it is situated in 175 kilometers to the North from Moscow] there was no road. So twice they drove us with a track. Later I understood that you’d better make your plans a bit more carefully, with some more extra-time. Anyway, driving this small ‘Moskvitch’ we went to Latvia and to Moscow too, later on.

I was a brave guy and did everything by myself. I learned to drive a motorcycle on my own. I learned how to drive ‘Zighuly’ [famous Soviet car] on my own too. I graduated in June of 1945 from Frunze College (I started there and graduated from College of radio connections) with best results; today it is called ‘with a first class honors degree’. I often happened to be the first one, for example I first wrote the dissertation from whole my course.

In those days sometimes I went to ‘Astoria’ [one of the most expensive hotels and restaurants in Leningrad], not certainly with my wife, I mean that I could go there with my mates or friends, or colleagues. I served, and then I was employed in the Military Institute, and when officers got the salary, we went to ‘Astoria’, as far as we got good salaries, comparing to other’s ones. In ‘Astoria’ they had a ‘Hole’, such a small buffet. We took the glass of champagne, some cognac and a chocolate, so nobody turned to be drunk. We often gathered together with my course mates, I took my wife to those meetings too. Not talking about other events: daughter of some of my colleagues gets married or something else. But I don’t like to go to the restaurant with no purpose, just to have a dinner; I prefer to eat at home, because in the restaurant you can’t even talk normally.

All my free time I gave to reading. When I was working in Pushkin and lived in Leningrad, I had to use train. So everyday, on the way home and back, I had almost an hour to read. I read then a lot of books (both fiction and scientific ones), and now I also try to read a lot.

Recent years

While I was employed in the so-called ‘closed’ institutions, and that was quite a while, we couldn’t even think about leaving the country, emigration and so on. We didn’t even think about it, we couldn’t imagine that. This idea came, when people began to leave, when the first wave of emigration had begun in 1970s. We didn’t know about our relatives in those times: who is where. Many of our pals, even our neighbors left for Israel and America, and some of our friends either. When so-called ‘dopusk’ [permission to work with secret materials] was over, and we could leave freely, my daughter married the Russian guy, and didn’t suppose to leave. She had a job; he was assistant head of the science department of a scientific research Institute. They lived not very well, but not too bad, even they had some problems with apartments and didn’t go abroad. Later, when we together with my wife came back from our travel to Israel (it was in 1990), they asked us why we came back. I answered that my wife was too hot, she can’t live there. So the question wasn’t asked any more. Then we went to the USA, and my wife said: ‘we can’t live here, we can’t stay here, because our beloved daughter wouldn’t leave, she wants to stay in the USSR (it was in 1991, last year when USSR ever existed). To explain briefly, in 1990s, when we had an opportunity to immigrate our family couldn’t agree what country to choose. My wife says: ‘I would like to go to Germany’. But I don’t want to live there, because I don’t wish to live on the land of fascists. I know that in Germany things changed a lot, but I still can’t forgive Germans for Holocaust. So as a result we didn’t go anywhere, even we had such thoughts. However, I can’t say that it’s a pity that we didn't emigrate.

Apparently, Jews in soviet times had to do twice more to achieve any goal, than people of the main nationality had to do. Even if they gave us an apartment, some people had got this apartment for free, and we had to buy it for money. Even I, who appreciated the soviet power, was a member of Communist Party, officer of Military Navy; I had to do much more to influence the authorities. And sometimes it helped. For example, my wife likes to recall how I went to Moscow to Ministry of Education and asked to find her a job, because she can’t find anything on her own. That took place in 1951. Finally I’ve got what I wanted: they sent her to Latvia, to Daugavpils Pedagogical Institute. Then, in late 1950s or early 1960s, I don’t remember exactly, I went to Leningrad local department of education and asked to employee her for the second time, because she couldn’t find normal job again. And this ordinary Russian woman, sitting there, advised Rebecca to apply for teacher’s position in Gorny Institute. She said my wife would win the competition and pass the interview, if she went there when its rector, famous with his anti-Semite looks, would be on vacations. So she did and as a result, worked in Gorny Institute for ages, for more than twenty years, I think.

I didn’t feel anything about the ‘death’ of Eastern block. I didn’t worry very much about falling of Berlin wall. I was very indifferent about all those events. And democratization did it ever happen? Of course, democracy is much better. However, I think that we don’t have full democracy nowadays. But I liked what was going on in 1989. What to me, I’m calmer now. I didn’t have to change anything in my life, I was too old to change things, I mean that my life has been stabilized already, and my family relations, my daughter, her child and my work were much more important for me than any political events.
I still work on the Leningrad Electromechanical Factory; I participate in researches of electromagnetic compatibility. I work part-time, five hours per day, everyday, except Friday, and my head is happy with it. They say that I’m still necessary.

Up to today I support all Israeli actions. I don’t appreciate Palestinians, I consider them terrorists. Israel guards its territories. I say that not because I’m a Jew, but because it is necessary to understand the whole situation. When we’ve been to Israel, I saw a village and two or three olive trees nearby, and those trees don’t need any care, that is the way how Arabs live. And I trust in labor and honesty of people.

I’ve not been to Israel before 1989. I didn’t support contacts with my relatives; I had to refuse from that natural thing. That was considered as ‘connection to foreigners’, and I couldn’t afford that 21. After my cousin Esther [daughter of father’s brother Jacob] left for Israel, we didn’t keep in touch for years; we didn’t talk to each other more than thirty years, because it wasn’t allowed.

With those relatives, who live in Leningrad, I communicate both by phone and personally with great pleasure. I’ve been to my mother-in law, while she lived in Moscow. Now I write letters to America and to Israel, where my cousin Esther lives and we have very warm relations. I’m very glad that I’ve got to know my Israeli relatives, they happened to be normal people, they met us very well. In America our relatives are ordinary people, they are average Americans, representatives of the middle class, one is engineer, and another one – my cousin Mark, son of my father’s sister, he works at the United Nations, his sister Doda lives there too with her husband Fred. After all, my trip to Israel in 1990 influenced me very much. I felt like I was a cinema hero: wonderful nature, beautiful buildings. Everything breathes with history. Here you see one Bible story, and there is another one. Great place to visit!

It was my first trip to ‘capitalist’ country. Earlier I’ve been to Romania only, in 1960s, together with my wife. But this trip to Israel made much stronger impression, it influenced me and my relation to God (this is too private, so I’m not going to talk about this side of the trip). I had a feeling that I happened to be in the cinema hall, not among the audience, but from the other side of the scene. There was a Paradise, and here we had nothing in 1990. Beautiful towns, especially Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, plenty of cars and food... We went to supermarket instead of theatre, and my wife was afraid to get lost there. We’ve been to Tiberian Lake, Kineret, and learned a lot about Christ as well. Just when we’ve been there they found some note, where Pilate’s name was written, and everyone discussed this discovery, I was impressed with it too! One of my relatives bought six or eight kinds of cheese in supermarket, while we didn’t have any. We went to Italian and Japanese restaurants, we’ve been to Arabian towns, and we’ve seen a lot and were afraid of nothing. That was gorgeous trip!

In 1991 we went to the USA. Here New-York impressed me most of all. I read before in newspapers that New-York is very dark city. Not at all, that isn’t true! Everywhere you see the lights and sun is shining and so on. We’ve been to Princeton University, to Einstein lab, and to United Nations, of course. I was very surprised that instead of museum ticket in American museums you can use some special sign, put it on you cloth and go wherever you want to. New-York is very compressed, dynamic, and Washington is much alike Petersburg with its wide and green streets. And I liked people there, they are much more honest and pleasant than Russians and smile all the time.

Itsik, brother of my father, died in America, and I met there his children, my cousins: both males and females. They, besides, came here too. Itsik was involved there in some party activities; he was one of the leaders of social-democrats. He was big man over there. I think, he lived in New-York, I don’t know if he was religious, but I don’t think so. And our American relatives aren’t religious at all. I mean that I didn’t see that they prayed or observed Sabbaths.

To be honest, I always liked Jews more than Russians I thought that they are more reliable. Among my own friends half are Jews, and half are Russians. But mainly I was involved in Russian society because I was an officer, and there are not so many Jews among them. However, among sailors there are more Jews comparing to the other kinds of troupes. But I didn’t choose Jewish friends with purpose.

My own family that Jewish family for sure, and that family, according to its possibilities and forces, tried to assimilate, tried to participate in Russian life, but still we felt like we were Jews. After all, from time to time, they made us to recall that we were Jews, not Russians; they didn’t admit us for jobs, made some other awful things. However, I never thought that I shouldn’t communicate with Russians; even I heard such expression as ‘goy’, that meant ‘Russian’ for me. I know that actually goy means ‘non-Jewish’, but for me ‘non-Jewish’ is the same as Russian. Our family happened to be in the middle of two cultures, it is still Jewish, but it could turn to the Russian one, if Russians behaved better. I’m always kidding that I’m a bad Jew, because I don’t know Jewish language. But I’m still a Jew! Even the bad one!

We celebrated some of the Jewish holidays, but not after the War, I mean only in the last few years. They bring us food packages from ‘Eva’ [Jewish society of retired people in Petersburg], and I find inside special booklets about holidays, we read them and then follow the instruction what to do and how to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, for example.

I’m a great fan of Jewish meals. Matzah is one of my favorite foods. I eat it with the great pleasure. Mother of my wife, Esphir Abramovna, she cooked Jewish meals very well: she cooked soup with kletzks, something else. My mother cooked gefelte fish [traditional Yiddish meal] we had a lot of tasty Jewish meals at home.

We don’t go to the synagogue, I have no strong wish to go there and pray. I pay more attention to self-education, I try to understand what’s going on, and that is really interesting for me. Now I feel like Jewish much stronger than I used to.

I think that local Jewish community develops, and it works normally, especially ‘Hesed Abraham’ [Petersburg Charity Center, which offers help to retired people]. I communicate with their staff, sometimes I go there and I get packages on Jewish holidays. Thanks them very much for this support.

Glossary:

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

2. Chagall, Marc (1889-1985): Russian-born French painter. Since Marc Chagall survived two world wars and the Revolution of 1917 he increasingly introduced social and religious elements into his art.

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

4. 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.
5. Gerasimov Sergey (1906-1985): Famous soviet cinema director, author of the ‘Young guard’. Together with his wife, actress Tamara Makarova, organized his own studio in Russian State Institute of Cinema, many famous actors were their pupils.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Gogol, Nikolai (1809-1852): Russian novelist, dramatist, satirist, founder of the so-called critical realism in Russian literature, best known for his novel the Dead Souls (1842).

9. Shared 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.

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

11. Gertzen, Alexander I. (1812-1870): Russian revolutionary, writer and philosopher.

12. Lermontov, Mikhail, (1814-1841): Russian poet and novelist. His poetic reputation, second in Russia only to Pushkin's, rests upon the lyric and narrative works of his last five years. Lermontov, who had sought a position in fashionable society, became enormously critical of it. His novel, A Hero of Our Time (1840), is partly autobiographical. It consists of five tales about Pechorin, a disenchanted and bored nobleman. The novel is considered a classic of Russian psychological realism.

13. Stalin: the Communist Party leader, Supreme Commander in-Chief, ruled the country in 1924-1953. Used totalitarian methods of ruling, provided police of soviet people’ genocide.

14. 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.

15. Frunze, Mikhail (1885-1925): Soviet political and military leader.

16. Road of Life: Passage across the Ladoga Lake in winter. It was due to the Road of Life across the frozen Lake Ladoga that Leningrad survived in the terrible winter of 1941-42.

17. Stalingrad struggle: key struggle during The Great Patriotic War, its main events took place in winter of 1942-1943. It happened on Volga; as a result general Paulus’ group was surrounded and demolished by soviet troupes. 

18. 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.

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

20. KGB: Committee of State Security, the punishing organ, which main functions were to provide external State security, and also to fight against opposition and dissidents inside the country.

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

I met Boris Yosefovich in his 5th floor apartment. He and his wife Faina Vladimirovna are very hospitable hosts. Boris Yosefovich is a talkative, energetic and
a cheerful person despite his suffering during the siege of Leningrad 1 and the Great Patriotic War 2, as well as since the death of his son.
 

He recently celebrated his 81st birthday and continues to lead an active life.

He has a good memory and is an excellent storyteller. Moreover, his friendliness and humor make his life story even more impactful. 
It was a real pleasure to listen to his recollections and we are lucky that Boris Yosefovich shared his memories with us.

My family background

Growing up

During the war

After the war

Glossary 

My family background

There is a saying that goes: ‘we all come from childhood.’ However, I like to be more specific: I come from the Jewish shtetl Ushachi in the Vitebsk province (now it is in Vitebsk region on the territory of Belarus - 40 kilometers far from the city of Polotsk). The city is situated on the bank of the Dvina River. It is also home to the picturesque Ushacha River, which is 70 kilometers long. In fact, the settlement was founded in the 17th century on the banks of the Ushacha River. The original settlers included Jews. It was a unique beautiful territory of lakes and woods full of fish and animals - gifts of nature. It did not take the citizens much time to reach a lake or a wood – the settlements were surrounded by nature.

Polotsk is now 1,140 years old. The city has a rich history. One can still find a small, one-storied house, where the Russian tsar Peter the Great lived for some time. And it was in Polotsk where local citizens aided in Napoleon’s defeat.

My father, his father, and his grandfather were born in Ushachi. My father’s name was Yosef, and my grandfather’s name was Shimen-Dovid. My grandfather died in 1915.

My father had had two elder brothers named Zalman and Isaya. Their houses were next door to ours. They also had a younger sister named Menye. She married a young local man, Sinkin. In 1911 they left for America. When they settled in New York, they sent special invitations for Menye’s brothers to join them in America. I saw the invitation at home; everybody forgot about it. We probably only remembered it once we were living in the ghetto.

My Mum’s name was Hane-Seyne (many of us had two names). She was born in 1879 in the settlement Drissa, which is situated on the Zapadnaya Dvina River (Vitebsk province, Belarus). Her maiden name was Klet. She was very beautiful. Shadkhan arranged her marriage, bringing her from Drissa for my father. They got married in approximately 1903. Their wedding took place in a synagogue (with a chuppah, etc.) according to all of the Jewish rules. At that time there were no official wedding records. Rather, my parents just remembered that they got married in the winter, sometime before Chanukkah and the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.

My parents also connected the dates of their children’s births with different holidays, events, circumstances, or seasons. Then, when it came time for my siblings to leave home, they obtained their certificates of birth according to their appearance and with the help of witnesses. I was the first among our family members to receive the correct official certificate of birth (for June 24, 1925).

By 1922, my parents already had seven children: two daughters (Nekhama and Libe) and five sons (Berl, Haim, Shimen, Ele, Isaak).

In 1923, my oldest sister, Nekhama, moved to Petrograd [Petrograd was renamed Leningrad after Lenin’s death in 1924]. My parents then had six children, but that did not last for long. In the same year, Mikhael was born. And again father had to work hard to support seven children.

In 1925, Libe left for Leningrad, but I was born immediately after she left. And again our family had seven children. I was named Bentse (Bentsion). I became Boris much later in the reserve regiment #111. This is how my name was ‘changed:’ Before our departure for the training tank battalion, the first sergeant asked my first and last names in order to complete the muster roll. I, of course, told him my real name. But the first sergeant interrupted me: ‘What is your name, again? Say it in Russian.’ He ordered for me to say my ‘real’ Russian name. I said ‘Boris,’ and that is how Boris became my name.

In 1927, Berl left for Leningrad too, but after his departure Leybe was born. Leybe was my parents’ last child. Despite the fact that he was the youngest, he was very talented. Nowadays we call such children prodigies. He did very well in school—so much so that his classmates gave him a nickname: a mathematician. He was the best in chess (we made chess-men of spool of thread and drew chess-board on a cardboard). But during the war he was executed by shooting together with my parents by fascists.

When our parents had seven children, my father had to work hard to support a family of nine. How did he manage?! It is difficult to imagine.

Father began his professional life as a smith, and later (in the beginning of 1920s) he trained to be a wagoner.

He earned money mainly conveying passengers and luggage from Ushachi to Polotsk and back. Besides that he had to take care of the horse and the cow and to chop firewood for winter, etc. To tell the truth, even when the elder sons started helping my father, the hardest part of work still rested on his shoulders.

To this day, I am haunted by the tune of a song my father used to sing while working (Michael Alexandrovich, a Soviet singer sang it and I still take care of his record). The song is called ‘Bin ich mir a Fuhrman.’ Here is its literal translation:

My home is road,

My bed is a cart.

My work is to hurry.

The horse is running at full speed.

In summer and in winter,

In hot and cold weather,

On the sands and in the marsh,

I sing this song.

And my Mum! I guess she deserves many awards, if we consider the fact that nowadays, mothers with only three children receive social services benefits. And my Mum (think about it!) gave birth to ten children and had no maternity leaves. She even knew nothing about maternity hospitals. And she spent so many days and sleepless nights beside the cradle, singing lullabies…

She washed many baby linens, worried about her children when they were sick (you understand that they were sick very often). She never received assistance from a nurse-maid. In Ushachi there were a lot of women who wanted to work as nurses, but my family could not afford such a service. Mum was pregnant almost all of the time, but she went on working till the very day of delivery. I remember my elder brothers joking: Leybe (the tenth child) was practically born in the vegetable garden near our cabbage plants.

Mum had to take care not only of her children. In fact, at that time, we did not have gas, electric, water supply, or central heating. Mum had to get up early in the morning to start a fire (kerosene was in short supply).

She also had to bring and chop firewood, bring water from far distances, and ‘invent’ breakfast for the entire family. I say ‘invent’ because we always lacked food. However Mum managed to feed and do all of the washing for every member of our large family. She was an excellent cook, because before her wedding she had worked as a cook for a rich Jewish family.

In Ushachi, each family had many children, but less than ten. Only our parents had ten children. Father and Mother were very proud of it and they did their best to send children to cheder and to Jewish school. In Ushachi there were two schools: Belarus secondary school and Jewish junior school. Although we children had more opportunities for education, our parents had received only a religious education.

The Jewish school was very small. There were small classrooms with school desks for pupils (three seats each). Our teachers were very strict, but fair. The teachers were also very competent and did their best to help us in our studies and to grow up to be worthy Jews. As such, we took examinations and did not cheat.

There were people in need everywhere. There was shortage of everything: copybooks, pens, pencils, ink, etc. At school they gave us one textbook every two or three pupils. From spring until autumn we went to school barefoot. Sometimes they gave out one or two boots, but the children without fathers always received these shoes.

There were a lot of poor families. Some houses had dirt floors and windows at the ground level. Only tailors, shoemakers, tinsmiths, tradesmen, and office workers always had work and therefore managed to make ends meet. Wagoners lost their jobs when people started to have cars.

During the second half of the 1930s, the Sunday market in Uschachi was filled with people. It was possible to buy high-quality food there. You only had to have money.

In our shtetl there were three synagogues and two Jewish cemeteries. My parents and uncles Isaya and Zalman were very religious. At home we spoke only Yiddish: it was our mother tongue and favorite language. All of my siblings and I finished Jewish school and we all also studied in cheder – actually, all of them but me. By the time I started my education, the cheders were already closed. [In 1918 Soviet authorities permitted national minorities to teach their children at schools in their mother tongue. But in 1938 they issued an edict ordering to teach all schoolchildren in Russian.] To clarify, Cheder literally means ‘a room’ in Hebrew. In the context of education, a cheder is a room where children gather to study Hebrew and Torah.

Father was very religious. He never missed the morning prayers and always put on tefillin. He always took tefillin with him when he went out of town. And God forbid if he got home late on a Friday evening and missed lighting the Shabbat candles! He was not educated but was still a very wise person. Many people asked his advice (for example when they wanted to buy a horse or a cow).

Although Father was very religious, my parents never dressed according to Jewish tradition. Instead, they wore very modest secular clothes. Most of our neighbors were religious Jews.

We usually met our relatives in synagogue and at market on Sundays.

Members of our family never traveled farther than to Polotsk, and the purpose of those trips was only business affairs. We did not even consider going on vacations.

Also, Father was never called up [for military service].

Politically, our family was very loyal to the government. My parents never criticized the actions of authorities (or at least they never discussed their dissatisfactions in the presence of their children). They were afraid of saying too much; therefore, they always warned me to keep my mouth shut. 

Growing up

I did not attend kindergarten. Rather, I stayed at home with Mum, my brothers, and my sisters. I do not remember having any particular school-like activities. We always had chores in the house and in the vegetable garden to do, regardless of our age. We also used to help grazing a cow and a horse.

We lived in a wooden house. During the winter, we closed half of the house to save on firewood for heating. We had no bathroom or bathhouse. We had to rent a bathhouse for washing until we built our own in 1935. We had no orchard, only a vegetable garden with potatoes and other vegetables. We kept a cow and poultry. Our parents never had servants. As I mentioned before, us children always worked around the house according to our abilities.

Our family lived modestly financially since only Father worked. You remember that our parents had ten children (seven of them lived at home; the older children had left home). Still, it was impossible for us to survive without our vegetable garden and a cow.

At home we had only religious books. Other books we borrowed at school. We did not subscribe to newspapers, but bought them. There was a library in Ushachi and it was possible to borrow books there, too.

I studied four languages: Yiddish, Belarusian, Russian, and German. At school I liked all subjects and received only excellent marks. I studied Yiddish for seven years and managed to finish my Yiddish education before Jewish schools were closed in 1938. I never studied Hebrew.

I remember many of our teachers. After the end of the war I saw some of them. The son of one of our teachers lived in Leningrad, and she always visited him after her retirement. We met since I was also living in Leningrad at that time.

Our family was religious and our parents were members of the Jewish community. We strictly observed all Jewish traditions (such as kashrut and the Sabbath). In fact, our family ate only kosher food. We had separate dishes for dairy and meat dishes, and special set of plates and dishes for Pesach (we kept these dishes in the attic during the rest of the year). We celebrated all Jewish holidays and went to synagogue. Despite our poverty, we celebrated Sabbath and holidays according to all religious rules and traditions.

For example, a month or so before Pesach it was time to make matzah. In 1930s, the authorities did not officially forbid making matzah, but they actively propagandized against it. At school, teachers strictly warned us not to take part in making matzah and threatened to expel from the Pioneer organization 4. Mum asked all of us to keep my participation in matzah making a secret. Everybody did.

Since my parents had eight sons, they arranged for a circumcision on the eighth day for each boy, as prescribed by the tradition.

I remember that at school, teachers started explaining that we lived better than we were before the October Revolution of 1917. They told us to ask our parents and to compare the ways of living before and after the Revolution.

So I asked Mum and she answered: ‘We were satisfied with food and well dressed. We lived better before the Revolution.’ At school I retold her words, and teachers cursed and almost expelled me.

We were surrounded by a lot of young people and children, so we had a good time! We used to gather at somebody’s house, play mandolins and balalaikas, and tell stories. In summer we went to the woods to gather berries and mushrooms and to swim in the lake. And in winter we went to ski and skate (we used self-made skis and skates since we had no money to buy new ones).

We often went horseback riding late at night. I enjoyed riding and especially liked to gallop bareback at full speed.

Although we had a lot of fun, there were also many negative aspects of life: fights at school and in the streets, unauthorized visits of the authorities to the gardens of collective-farms 5, and punishments for grazing horses on the collective-farm fields. Sometimes we were whipped for it. Gershen, a horse-trainer, would get particularly angry for the latter infraction. Many times he arrested our cow and horse, took them away from the field, and kept them in a shed as hostages until we brought him ransom (three or five rubles).

Despite the disorderly aspects of life, Jewish life flourished. People arranged weddings with chuppot, brit milot [circumcisions], Bar Mitzvot. On Purim, young people used to come to the Great Synagogue carrying rattles and other gadgets to make noises at the appropriate times. Sometimes we made so much noise that they sent us out of the synagogue.

In our shtetl we had our own Hakhamim [wise men], sorcerers, midwives, and physicians. Here I’d like to tell you about our neighbor Ele-Rose. When somebody got ill, they went to her for a so-called ‘treatment’ (now I recollect it with horror!). She would put her dirty hands into somebody’s mouth or lick specks of dust away from somebody’s eye.

When I read Sholem Aleichem 6 or Dovid Bergelson 7 (descriptions of Jewish life in shtetls), it seems to me that they describe my shtetl Ushachi: our life, troubles, and habits. Sholem Aleichem explained why Jews laughed and made fun all the time, despite their bitter lot and poverty: they had no choice but to do so.

The Jews of Ushachi experienced difficulties under all political regimes. I remember Mum told me that during the Civil War 8, two strong Russians from the Red Army came to Uschachi. They demanded gold and threatened to shoot everyone if their demands were not fulfilled. Mum started crying and asking for mercy. But they ordered Mother and Father to go to the closet and shot at them through the door. Father and Mother lay on the floor and therefore remained safe. Those guys took a bag of grain and left. And the hole made by the bullet remained in the closet door forever as a reminder of a happy ending.

At the end of 1920s and beginning of 1930s, the GPU 10 often arrested Jews and demanded gold, too. One day my father was also taken away to the GPU office, which was situated in a small house. I stood near the window and watched them beating him. In the afternoon they arrested Mum, and placed her into prison. But by the evening father was released (he was black and blue, his ear was smashed), and two days later Mum was released, too.

In the middle of 1930s, authorities started their slow but sure attack against Jewish culture and religion.

Local authorities gathered shoemakers and decided to create a workmen's cooperative association. They needed a space for their gatherings. So the authorities arrived at a wise decision to arrange the workshop in the Great Synagogue. To be fair, it is necessary to add that in the remarkable Roman-Catholic church they also arranged a special office where people brought their vegetables, fruit, mushrooms and berries to sell.

In 1936 authorities started building a new brick two-storied Jewish school. I transported bricks from brick-works to the building site in a cart for a scanty salary. But, alas! The building was constructed, but it did not house the Jewish school. In 1938, the government closed all Jewish schools. That school became a Belarusian school. Jewish, Belarusian, and Russian children studied there together.

After finishing school, young people tended to leave Ushachi. In 1938, my brother Mikhael left for Leningrad (he was born in 1923), and in 1940 it was my turn to leave.

I went by car for the first time in my life at the age of fifteen. In our shtetl there was only one car, and all of us went to the owner asking to go for a drive.

And my first trip by train was in 1940 when I went to Leningrad—before that I had never seen a train and had never left Uschachi. In Leningrad, I entered the Industrial School #7. [In industrial schools they trained young people to attain working specialties]. That school belonged to the plant named after Voroshilov 11. I studied in the group of opticians and mechanics. I finished the school and started earning money little by little, but then the war broke out.

In the Industrial School it was necessary to fill out a questionnaire about my siblings. It took a long time, and the employee who was assisting me got very tired and even asked to take a break from this hard work!

Nekhama (Nina) was my eldest sister. According to her documents she was born in 1908, but she was actually born in 1905. In 1923 she left for Leningrad where she worked and graduated from the Technological College. She got married in 1933. After the end of the war she gave birth to three sons, at this time they are all alive. She died in Leningrad in 1996 at the age of 90.

Libe (Lyuba) was born in 1907. She also left for Leningrad and worked there as a nurse. Later (during the war with Finland 12 and the Great Patriotic War, too) she worked in a military hospital. She died in 1968 at the age of 60. Libe had two children. Her daughter lives in St. Petersburg, and her son in Jerusalem.

Berl was born in 1909. He graduated from the Leningrad Pedagogical College. During the war he was at the front line. He died in 1990 at the age of 80.

Haim was born in 1913, Shimen in 1915, and Ele in 1917. All of them finished only Jewish junior school. During the war Haim and Shimen (as well as Berl) were at the front line. They died in Leningrad in 1993 and 1986, respectively. Haim’s two children died during the war, and Shimen’s daughter lives now in Jerusalem (Israel).

I’d like to tell you about my brother Ele later and in more detail.

Isaak was born in 1920. He graduated from the Pedagogical Technical School and worked as a teacher of German language in high school of Kublichi (20 kilometers far from Ushachi). He knew German perfectly. I’ll tell you about his death later.

Mikhael was born in 1923. In Leningrad, he graduated from the Timber Industry College and worked at the Institute of Fish Industry. During the war he was at the front line. Mikhael died in 2000 in Jerusalem (Israel). His son lives in Israel, and his daughter in Germany.

I went to Leningrad, and my mother, father, and younger brother Leybe remained in Ushachi. Leybe was a still schoolboy. Isaak worked as a teacher in Kublichi. My brother Ele, his wife Ester, and their four-year-old daughter Sonya lived in Polotsk.

With almost all of their children out of the house, it was time for my parents to reap the rewards of their hard work. It was fantastic that they managed to raise ten children without any assistance! All their children were already able to offer financial assistance to our parents, and I looked forward to receiving my first salary to do so as well. When Mum saw me off to the train from Polotsk to Leningrad, I promised her that I would come back in a year for holidays and bring her the most beautiful dress I could find. But I never received my first salary. And who ever would have thought that we parted, we would never meet again.

During the war

The Germans arrived in Ushachi on July 4, 1941. They arrived easily: in our area, the fascist armies moved forward with barely any resistance. In fact, on the sixth day of the war, the Germans took Minsk [capital of Belarus; Minsk is located250 kilometers from Ushachi]. Jews were so confused about what to do and where to move. Still, at that time, they believed that Germans would not harm innocent old people and children. Only several families left all their property and ran away before Germans appeared. Those Jews who remained in Ushachi perished later.

Among those who remained was my brother Ele. He (together with his family) came to Ushachi to visit our parents. On July 4, 1941 (early in the morning) they tied their cow to the cart and started moving eastward. Several families followed them. Having covered 35 kilometers, they reached the small Ulla River and saw the wooden bridge in ruins. The retreating Red Army soldiers, who did not want Germans to cross the river and pursue them, had destroyed it the day before. The Jews became panic-stricken. At that moment, the Germans approached them and ordered to come back home. The carts returned home.

At first, the Germans left Jews alone. It was a disturbing calm.

Later, my cousin Aron, Isaya’s son (Isaya was my father’s brother) was the first in our family executed by Germans. And at the end of summer 1941, all Jews in Ushachi were ordered to move to the left bank of the river into houses located around the small synagogue (those houses were cleared out beforehand). So that was the way ghetto in Ushachi was organized. Children and old men, sick and disabled people moved there. It was their last shelter.

My brother Ele managed to get out of the ghetto. People advised him not to come back. He could be rescued, especially because at that time partisan groups were being organized nearby. Ele thought it over, gathered some food, and made a decision to go back to his family. But in the ghetto, the Germans took the food away from him. Ele’s wife gave birth to a boy, but several hours later he died of hypothermia.

It happened on January 12, 1942. People in the ghetto were ordered to stand in line. The Germans said that they would be sent to the east by train. Jews moved forward under he escort of submachine gunners. They covered several hundreds of meters, and then the column was ordered to go right (to the left bank of the river). Everyone who was still able to think realized that it was their final journey.

Here I’ll retell you the story of an acquaintance, whom I met in 1950: ‘The day before the execution, the Germans forced twenty strong men to dig a hole near the road. The ground was very frozen, therefore the hole was not very deep. The Germans stopped the column in front of the hole, selected parties of 20-25 people, and shot them using submachine guns. Injured people were pushed down in the hole alive.’

Two days later, Germans brought about 200 Jews from the Kublichi shtetl to the same place. They were executed by shooting the same way as the previous group of Jews. Along with the Kublichi Jews, my brother Isaak Lerman, the German language schoolteacher, was shot, too. He would have preferred to remain alive but in hell, but he refused to work for Germans as an interpreter.

But in spring of 1942, powerful partisan groups sprang into existence. In Belarus there were 350,000 partisans. The headquarters of the partisan movement was situated in Ushachi. Partisans (among them there were many Jews) fought for Ushachi and managed to liberate it and all settlements around it. The fascist garrison was annihilated. The partisan zone of Ushachi became the most armed one in Belarus, and Germans were not able to reoccupy it.

In July 1944, I heard that my hometown had been liberated from the fascist occupation. I was eager to find my relatives. The Communist Party leader (assistant of battalion commander in political and educational work) of our battalion sent a letter of inquiry to a military registration and enlistment office of Ushachi. [Military registration and enlistment offices in the USSR and in Russia are special institutions that implement call-up plans.] Soon I received a terrible message: the Lermans (my father, mother, brothers, their wives and children – fourteen people in total) were executed by the fascists (shot together with hundreds of other Jews in 1942). I could not stop crying.

After the end of the war, only several Jewish families returned to Ushachi. Most of the town’s former Jewish inhabitants settled in Leningrad. Now only two of them remained alive in Leningrad. Two more live somewhere in Israel, and one of them is in Los Angeles, in America. Only these five people remained from our large Jewish community—only one among many Jewish communities in Belarus that faced such a horrible end.

In 1945, my cousin Emma returned to Ushachi and immediately started investigating the circumstances of execution of its Jewish inhabitants. She found eyewitnesses who told her about it. But nobody wanted to show her the very place of execution. They only said that it happened near the cemetery, but Emma found there only flat ground, covered with grass. Later Emma found a courageous woman who showed her the exact place of execution. People put columns in that place and built grave mounds over the holes; they also planted trees around the place.

In the 1950s, the inhabitants of Leningrad, Minsk, Vitebsk, Polotsk, etc. collected money and put iron fencing and a small cement obelisk on the tombs. In the 1960s, we decided to put a commemorative stone plaque there. The authorities refused to finance it (they explained that there were no money for it). Again we arranged fund raising and ordered a stone in Vitebsk. When it was time to erect the monument, local authorities decided to pay for it, but forbade writing the word Jews on the plaque. So the following text is written there: ‘On January 14, 1942 on this place 925 Soviet citizens - inhabitants of Ushachi settlement and Kublichi village - were executed by shooting by German soldiers.’

After the war

So every year after the end of the war, the former Ushachi inhabitants (sick or disabled) came to visit the commemorative plaque from all over the Soviet Union. They gathered to commemorate their murdered relatives. After all, before the war, 2,000 people lived in Ushachi and 80% of them were Jewish.

Years passed, and we changed the date of our visit to Ushachi to the first Sunday of August (it was easier for us to come there during summer holidays). We gathered to recite the Kaddish and to commemorate the memory of our tortured and murdered dear ones. Every year the number of visitors thinns out. In 1996 we were ten; in 1997 only four. In 2000 nobody arrived except me. I was alone standing in the rain and reciting Kaddish. The tomb was neglected and everything was downtrodden and rusty. I addressed the local authorities with a request to take care of the plaque for the Ushachi citizens. They promised to do so. And indeed later they later did everything necessary.

Here I’ll tell you some words about my brothers and sisters who lived in Leningrad at the beginning of the war. Haim, Berl, Mikhael, Shimen, and Libe were mobilized on June 25, 1941. My sister Nekhama remained in the city. Blockade, bombardments, cold, and the most terrible famine began.

When Germans laid siege on Leningrad we stopped our studies. Transport did not function. Our school was located near the Bolshevik factory and I lived in Vereyskaya Street near Vitebsk railway station. It was necessary to walk twenty-four tram stages to reach the school. At school I received breakfast (some porridge and 75 grams of some kind of bread). There I waited for dinner (they gave us 175 grams of bread more). I did not eat everything at dinner, but took it home and shared with Nekhama (she received only 125 grams of bread per day) 13.

Later I was not able to walk anymore, so they gave me a children’s bread ration card for me to receive 125 grams of bread instead of 250 grams.

It is necessary to say here that when we came to Leningrad we no longer observed Jewish traditions.

In the middle of February 1942, a messenger from Smolny came to our place. [Smolny monastery housed supervising Communist party and Soviet state bodies of the city.] He was well dressed and well-groomed. He brought us instructions regarding my sister’s and mine evacuation me. Those directions came from the Ministry of Petroleum Industry. You see, my sister’s husband (Solomon Mikhailovich) was evacuated to Nizhni Tagil and worked at a defense enterprise there. He held a very important post in petroleum industry; therefore, he managed to arrange our evacuation from Leningrad. He sent a telegram through the Ministry with instructions to provide our departure from the besieged city.

On the appointed day we put our belongings on a sledge and left our house. We had bought the sledge from our neighbors. I walked about 100 or 150 meters, and then understood that I was not able to make the next step: my legs went weak. My sister cursed me to get up: ‘Let’s go quickly, I’m afraid we may be late!’ I asked her to go alone, to save herself. So I persuaded my sister to go, and remained there in the street alone. My sister left the besieged city and reached Nizhni Tagil where her husband worked.Later I somehow crawled home, reached our apartment, and lay in bed to die.

On the radio I heard the voice of Olga Berggolts: ‘Hold on a bit longer, just a little…’ [Olga Berggolts was a poetess, who wrote her patriotic poems in the besieged Leningrad].

But my destiny carried me along another way. Two days later I heard a knock at the outer wall (the doorbell did not function). A short soldier (a Jew) came in carrying a huge package in his hands. I immediately understood that someone had lent me a helping hand.

The soldier said that he had a parcel from my brother Haim (from the Leningrad front) for his sister Nina. The soldier had served with Haim. They were anti-aircraft gunners at the famous Road of Life 14. There they were fed well, and had some extra food at their disposal.

The soldier refused to give me the parcel since Nina was absent. In the accompanying letter my brother said that he had sent us parcels several times before, but they did not reach the addressee. The first time messenger fairly confessed that he had kept the parcel for his family when he found his wife dying and his relatives suffering of starvation. The second time the messenger told Haim that he did not find us because we had died. For the third parcel, Haim permitted the messenger to keep it if he found us to be dead. So that third messenger was in front of me.

I explained him that Nina and I were brother and sister, she had left, and Haim was my brother. I showed him our photograph and my passport (I got it in June 1941). But the soldier remained unmoved by all of this information: he wanted to see Nina. I cried and begged to give food to me because I was dying of starvation. He thought it over, had compassion on me, and gave me the parcel, but only when I wrote a letter to Haim confirming the receipt of the food. Our apartment was communal 15. If my hungry neighbors had seen my food, I think they would have taken it away from me, probably killed me, and eaten the food as well as me.

I had a small iron stove. I opened the parcel and could scarcely believe my eyes: flour, crackers (big soldier's crackers), a piece of honey (rolled in a piece of paper), and tea! I made pancakes using my stove, and a week later I felt better. It was possible for me to go on living.

In fact, that parcel saved me. Soon I was able to walk and decided to go to the Central Administrative Board of Industrial schools (it was situated near the Circus). There I told them that I was left alone and physically was not able to reach our school canteen.

An employee asked me distrustfully: ‘Who is the director of your school?’ – and other similar questions. I answered all of them correctly. And again, a life-saving miracle: they gave me permission to eat at the canteen at the Industrial School #38, which was situated ten minutes walk away from my house.

They wrote: ‘Put B. Lerman down for allowances until trams resume operation.’

This occurred on February 25, 1942. And on March 8 we learned that our school was going to be evacuated by crossing the Ladoga Lake (the Ladoga Lake is 40 km far from Leningrad) southward (to Stavropol region). The director warned me that I had to be evacuated with my school. So I packed my things and went with that school. Every student was allowed to bring one person (a relative) along, but I had nobody to take with me.

We reached the Finnish railway station and moved towards the Ladoga Lake. There we spent a night. The next day we boarded the train. We were lucky to get into the heated car, but there were too many of us In it: we were only permitted to seat. So it took us 22 days (sitting in the car) to reach a settlement in Stavropol region. It was Gorbachev's birthplace 16. There they placed us in a school building and fed us like prize turkeys. People did not starve there. When we got off the train we were given a loaf of bread (one for every two people) and a piece of lard. It was like a dream! Bread seemed to be sweet honey. They also gave us soup and porridge. So we were fattened up and sent (again by train) to Moscow to aircraft factory.

I entered the army as a volunteer in summer of 1943. At that time I worked as a turner and had an exemption from military service. But I wanted to volunteer. The factory produced airplanes; therefore every worker was part of the war effort already. When I told the director that I wanted to volunteer anyways, he told me to return to my work. Later I went to the military registration and enlistment office, and they advised me to tell nobody and go directly to the army base to join.

‘And what will happen at my factory?’ – I asked. ‘Later we will inform them that you left for the front line,’ they responded.

So I went to Ryazan (a city 200 km far from Moscow) to the training tank battalion. Later we received new American self-propelled guns and were sent to the 1st Tank Army, to the Tank Corps #11. I participated in defense of Moscow until 1944.

Later I fought against the Germans in Belarus and in Ukraine. When our self-propelled gun was knocked out in Poland, the driver was taken to the hospital and I became a motorcycle submachine gunner at the reconnaissance battalion. I liberated Poland along with the soldiers of the 1st Tank Army.

On March 29, 1945, when we liberated Gdynia (a city in Poland), we learned that the Germans had retreated and had left a lot of technical equipment. So we went to have a look at it.

On our way to do so, we saw barbed wire and people puttering about. We stopped. Since I could understand German, I was sent to go closer and to get a sense of the situation. I walked closer and saw the barbed wire and a locked gate. I asked: ‘What is going on here?’ And I got the answer: ‘This is a camp.’

I came in and saw people lying, kneeling. Some of them were dead. Those who were able to speak said that they were Jews and were afraid to leave. I explained to them that the war was finished and that they were free.

And we went on to find German technical equipment. It turned out that it was damaged and could not be repaired. I only picked up only two wrenches.

On our way back to Gdynia we saw people who had left the camp. They were more dead than alive. They were trudging along the road carrying bread (slices and loaves), probably given to them by local residents. Now it seems to me that that concentration camp was situated 40 kilometers from Gdynia on the shore of the Baltic Sea.

We were the first to enter Berlin (it happened on April 21, 1945). We participated in street fights and attacked Reichstag. Usually the infantry goes behind the tanks, but in Berlin it was the opposite: we moved in front of tanks.

When we approached the Reichstag, we received an order to organize special assault groups consisting of four to ten tanks and 40-60 submachine gunners (the number depended on the number of soldiers we could gather around one). The soldiers went in front of the tanks, armed with panzerfausts (weapon of the latest design - a prototype of modern grenade launcher). Soldiers made their way through the streets of the city. They were able to destroy tanks from a distance of 100-200 meters. If we had been armed that way in the beginning of the war, German tanks would have never cut their way through the Soviet Union.

The assault groups approached the city center from different directions. Our group moved ahead to Imperial Office, under which Hitler was in hiding in a deep underground shelter. On April 29, we were already very near to that Imperial Office, but suddenly we received an order to change the direction of our attacks since the shock army #5 was approaching the same location from the opposite angle (and running into each other could result in incidental casualties).

Later we learned that Hitler committed suicide.

On April 30, Soviet army commanders delivered an ultimatum to the Germans, but they refused. Therefore we started taking the city by storm: artillery, Katyushas, airplanes bombed the city. The Germans’ resistance was broken down, and they surrendered their guns in front of their houses.

We celebrated a long-awaited VICTORY with pride and elation.

That was the end of the war. Our tank battalion was lodged in German military barracks in Dresden. I served for four more years in Germany.

I only got home in 1949. On my worldly-wise soldier's jacket people could see the following decorations: Order of the Great Patriotic War (2nd Class) 17, Order of the Red Star 18, Medal for taking Berlin, Medal for liberation of Warsaw, Medal for Victory over Germany 19.

I served honestly and was considered to be a very efficient soldier. I remember that after demobilization headquarters of our battalion received two letters of acknowledgement. Our commanders decided to write the first one in my name (Boris Lerman), and to adjourn consideration of the second letter.

Fortunately, all of my brothers and sisters returned from front line alive. They all died natural deaths. Libe died in 1968 (she was 60 years old). Shimen died in 1986 (at the age of 70). Berl died in 1990 (he was 80). Haim died in 1993 (at the age of 80). Mikhael died in Jerusalem (he left for Israel in 1990 together with his son and grandson) in 2000 at the age of 77. Nekhama died in 1996 at the age of 90.

One day after my return to Leningrad I heard by the radio that the trolleybus depot had invited people for apprentice training. I decided to become a trolleybus driver. At that time that trolleybus depot was the only one in the city. Five years later I became a 1st class driver. When the 2nd trolleybus depot was opened, I was sent there as the best driver. I worked and at the same time studied at the evening courses of the Leningrad Electromechanical School. I got a diploma of a specialist in operation and repair of municipal electric transport. When there were more trams in the city, I taught courses for tram drivers. Later I worked as a chief inspector for electric transport safety regulations. In 1985 I retired on pension [in the USSR and in Russia men can retire on a pension at the age of 60].

I met my wife Haya Wolfovna (here people call her Faina Vladimirovna) after the war. Her sister was married to my cousin. I used to visit them. I wanted to find a woman who already had an apartment, but I did not manage to do so. Neither of us had an apartment, so we rented a room in a semibasement. Then we got married. I had only a soldier's blanket with me. We had no money to arrange our wedding. So our relatives collected money and helped us plan a modest wedding ceremony (not religious, of course). It was on New Year's Eve.

My wife was born in Polotsk. She studied at the Belarus school. She could speak Belarusian, but she grew up speaking Yiddish at home. Her father was a qualified tailor and her mother worked as a dressmaker. Their family was well-to-do. Right before the beginning of the war they bought a big house. When the Germans started the bombardment of Polotsk, they hid themselves in a special self-made dugout.

My wife’s father was clever. One day warm summer day (June 30, 1941), he and his family went to a bombproof shelter located near the railway station. After the white alert he heard the announcement that the last train to the East was leaving in one hour. My wife’s father appeared to have a head on his shoulders: he took his three daughters and his wife to the railway station immediately, not stopping at home. They all squeezed themselves into the freight car: mother, father and their children. That was the way they left for Totsk of the Chkalovsk region carrying nothing with them. But they managed to escape. In evacuation my wife’s father worked in a military workshop (he cut out overcoats).

We lived in our semibasement for about a year. Later we got a room (we had been on the waiting list). My wife worked as a chief accountant for the central chemist's warehouse. Her salary was 61 rubles (the sum was not great; you can compare it with 120 rubles – the salary of an engineer).

Our son was born in 1961. He studied very well and he was also a strong athlete. Later he began university, having passed the required exams. He got excellent marks in all of his exams except composition (there he made one mistake). He studied in the college of the paper-cellulose industry. Leonid knew that he was a Jew, but he did not care. We did not bring our son up as a Jew. He was sociable and cheerful.

I’m also a cheerful person but feel wronged by my life. Once I wrote a story describing my life. It was called My Destiny. It was published in the book by Lazar Ratner: Unloved Children of Fatherland.

My son graduated from university and was a qualified engineer. At that time, his documents were ready for departure to Israel. Later he got ill and he died in 1995.

So I remained with my wife Haya Wolfovna. Our grandson Vadim is very close to our hearts. He was born on August 28, 1985. He promised to take the place of our son for us, and we promised to replace his father. At this time he is a professional soldier. He participated in war in the Chechen Republic [Chechen Republic is situated in the Caucasian region of Russia]. During the summit in summer 2006 he was in security detachment at the Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg.

My daughter-in-law (Vadim’s mother) is Russian. Once we decided to send our grandson to a Jewish summer camp, but to our surprise they did accept him: they required to documents confirming that his mother was Jewish.

Anti-Semitism in our country occurred at the state level, but as far as I am concerned, I also came across everyday manifestations of anti-Semitism. For example, in the army they did not beat or hurt me, but they told spiteful jokes about Jews in my presence. They used to say that Jews did not want to fight and did not want to be at war. And I laughed with them—I had no choice.

After the end of the war I never came across manifestations of anti-Semitism. I never felt it myself and never witnessed other Jews experiencing it either. People around me respected each other and one another’s religion. At that time people were more tolerant than they are now.

Here I’d like to say some words regarding anti-Semitism in 1980-1990.

When the Pamyat society appeared (writer Vassilyev was the leader of that anti-Semitic nationalistic organization), they organized anti-Semitic meetings. I used to watch people at those meetings (they took place in different places of the city). I used to be seated, listening, and guessing if I was present at a Nazi meeting in Munich of 1930s in Germany. I listened to awful speeches: speakers incited people to kill Jews, etc. And nobody objected. I was the only Jew there and I was afraid to utter a word.

In October 1989 in Leningrad, there was a meeting arranged on behalf of Palestinian Arabs. From announcements I understood that Pamyat had arranged the meeting. Nevertheless I decided to see everything first-hand. I could barely trust my own eyes and made me think about about what was going on.

Professor Romanenko opened the meeting. He wore a scarf a la Yasser Arafat (the former Palestine leader). He spoke about the way he himself helped Arabs to fight against Zionists and Jews, who were the root of all evil.

Serving in Germany I had learned much about activities of Hitler and Goebbels, the greatest evildoers of all times and peoples. I can tell you with confidence that their speeches against Jews were much more polite than the speeches of Leningrad fascists-racists.

At the meeting I listened to the people standing around. A group of young people (well dressed and handsome) talked about the humanity of Hitler regarding the Jews: he did not touch them until 1938 and permitted them to leave Germany. They said it was necessary to avoid that mistake in Leningrad. From their perspective it was necessary to kill all Jews here and to give them no opportunity to leave. One person dared to oppose: he said it was impossible to accuse all Jews, not all of them were guilty. People almost beat him.

After that meeting I came home and immediately wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU [the Communist Party of the Soviet Union].

In the beginning I wrote: ‘To the secretary general M. Gorbachev (CC Leningrad regional CPSU Committee). From a CPSU member (since 1948), war veteran and pensioner.’

Below I wrote the following: ‘Every year I visit the grave of my relatives who were executed by shooting. I used to lay flowers on the grave, walk along their road of death from the ghetto to the place of execution, and think about the following. Is it real that one day my children and grandchildren will have to walk along the similar road at the point of bayonet, forced by Leningrad Nazi rogues? Far be it from me to think so. But when Hitler started his movement in Munich pub with a few gangsters, everybody laughed and did not take them seriously. The Pamyat organization is really dangerous. They blame Jews for everything, and insist that Jews have already organized fighting groups to begin an armed struggle against Russians. I do not believe that the country’s leaders support Pamyat. Otherwise Pamyay would not complain that authorities gave them no permission to arrange that meeting. So I am obliged to address you and to bring to your attention the activities of the Pamyat Society. Do not give them an opportunity to propagate Fascism.’

In the end of the letter I asked to the recipient to show it to M. Gorbachev because it was very important.

Ten days later I got an answer that my letter had been received and would be considered.

Later they called me from the city Communist Party Committee [that committee supervised all spheres of the city life] and informed that my letter had been forwarded to them. They assured me that everything was under control, and they would never allow Pamyat to propagate Fascism.

Later I received a call from the regional Communist Party Committee. They said the same: ‘Do not worry.’ I said that fascism was rising again. And they answered ‘Do not worry, it cannot be allowed.’

Then they called me from Moscow (from the Central Communist Party Committee): ‘We inform you that your letter was taken into account.’

When my friends left the USSR, I figured everyone had a chance to make his own decision to leave or not. If you leave, you have no way back. My friends complained from Israel that it was difficult to live there for the first five years. But everything depended on your personal activity. For example, my nephew started in Israel as an unskilled worker even though he was an educated engineer. Soon they understood that he was intelligent and gave him engineer’s work. Later he became a chief engineer.

During the wars in Israel [20, 21] I listened to the Voice of America 22 by radio. I used to share the news with everybody. I was a real fan of Israel. At our institution people called Israeli soldiers gangsters. I wanted to retort but my coworker stopped me and forced me to keep silence.

When Perestroika came at the end of 1980s 23, authorities started the democratization of the country. I was very pleased with it. I read newspapers where they denounced communists, and was pleased again.

I did not visit Israel before 1989. But in 1991 and in 1998 I visited my only brother Mikhael there.

In Jerusalem I visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial where among other victims of Nazism I found the names of my relatives executed by fascists that terrible day of January 12, 1942 in Ushachi near Polotsk.

To my great regret Mikhael got ill and died in 2000. Therefore I cancelled my next visit to see him.

Our life changed after 1991: it became very poor. People could buy nothing in shops, but my son worked at a factory and received special food packages for factory workers.

At this time I am an active member of the St. Petersburg Jewish organization for war veterans and disabled soldiers. We often visit Jewish schools and talk with schoolchildren, especially on Jewish holidays.

In the Hesed Avraham Welfare Center 24 we usually have dinner (earlier it was free-of-charge, and now we pay fifteen rubles for it). During hard times we received food packages from Hesed.

When I learned about the Doctors’ Plot 25 from a newspaper, I lived in a communal apartment. When the doctors were liberated, I told my neighbors about it, but they assaulted me. 

After Stalin's death most people were silent, but pleased at heart.

As for the events of 1968 (Prague Spring 26), I supported Czechoslovakia.

I liked traveling very much: I visited a lot of cities and towns of our country. I keep great number of photos from my trips to different boarding houses and tourist areas in the USSR.

In 2005, our country celebrated the 60th anniversary of our Victory 27 in the Great Patriotic War. Veterans took part in celebrating of the Great Victory. My wife and I were invited to watch a concert at the Octyabrsky Concert Hall. We had our picture taken at the entrance.

I tried to avoid conflicts throughout my life. Everyone must be conscientious and responsible. I was never reprimanded. I was honorably mentioned forty-five times throughout my professional life. My photograph can be seen on the Board of Fame from all of the time that I worked.

Glossary:

Minna Birman
Odessa
Ukraine
Interviewer: Natalia Rezanova
Date of interview: November 2003

Minna Mordkovna Birman lives with her single daughter Yekaterina in a two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a 1956 house called ‘Stalinskiy’ design. A big old mirror in a carved frame catches my eye in the hallway. This mirror and two very old wardrobes are family relics. Minna received them from her parents. The rest of furniture was bought in the 1960s. There is a big round table covered with a tablecloth in the middle of the room. Minna Mordkovna is a hospitable hostess and it is next to impossible to refuse from pastries she has made particularly for this occasion. There are medications on a low table by her sofa. Regardless of her diseases 80-year-old Minna Mordkovna delights me with her young lively voice and inexhaustible jokes.  She loves talking and laughs at this fondness of hers. She speaks emphatically with theatrical pauses and jests. She was enthusiastic about this opportunity to tell the story of her family of which she is very proud. 

All I know about my paternal grandfather Moisey Birman is that he was born in the Jewish neighborhood in Warsaw in the 1860s. He was a melamed. He was an expert in Torah and Talmud readings and this is all he could do. The only language he spoke was Yiddish. He died in Warsaw in 1915.

I don’t remember my paternal grandmother’s name or date of birth. All I know is that she was a housewife and took care of the household and the children. After my grandfather died my grandmother lived with her daughter’s family in Lodz. When her daughter died in 1936 my grandmother, her two granddaughters and her son-in-law moved to my grandmother’s sons in Paris in 1926. During WWII, when Germans occupied Paris and announced registration of all Jews my grandmother refused to go and didn’t allow her granddaughters to follow this order. Her son-in-law and one of her granddaughters went to this registration, though. They never returned home and were never seen again. My grandmother and her granddaughter Malka found shelter in their neighbor’s apartment during German raids. Their neighbor was an immigrant from Italy. My grandmother corresponded with my father till the end of her life. I remember my father saying once that my grandmother had sent us an invitation to a world exhibition in Paris. She died in the late 1950s.

My father had two brothers and two sisters. I don’t know much about them. His older sister, whose name I don’t know, died in Lodz in 1936. My grandmother raised her two daughters. My father’s brothers Iosif and Shmil were born in Warsaw in the early 1900s. My father’s younger sister Rieva was born in Warsaw in 1912. All children had education.
After the October revolution 1 the family stayed in Poland that had separated. In 1926 Pilsudski [Editor’s note: Yuzef Pilsudski (1867 – 1935), actual dictator of Poland after the military coup that he headed in May 1926. In 1926-1928, 1930 – Prime minister of Poland] came to power. Iosif had to go to the polish army. He didn’t want it and was thinking of moving to the USSR. At this time Pilsudski executed a treaty with France that needed workers and many Polish workers moved to France.  Both brothers were glove makers. They were both married and decided to move to France with their families. In Paris they rented a room on the top floor of a house. Top floors were commonly accommodated by servants. They worked at home and also gave work to other Jewish immigrants. Sister Rieva worked with her brothers in Paris. She married French Jew Moris and they had a daughter named Rachel. 

During WWII my father’s brothers and families left Paris. Iosif and Shmil took part in the Resistance movement [Editor’s note: national liberation anti-fascist movement against German occupants during WWII]. Before departure they assigned their shop to their neighbor, an Italian immigrant, since Germans took away Jewish property. During occupation this Italian man cooperated with fascists and expanded his business. After the war, when Iosif and Shmil returned to Paris, this neighbor reassigned all rights for the shop to them. Iosif’s son married this Italian neighbor’s daughter.
In the 1950s my father’s brothers belonged to middle class and had houses on the outskirts of Paris. Iosif, Shmil and Rieva and their spouses and children came on tour to Odessa in 1961. This was the first ship with foreign tourists in Odessa. Almost all passengers were former emigrants from Russia and there was a crowd of their relatives meeting them on the seashore in Odessa. My husband and I and my mother and father came to the pier, but we had no idea whether we would recognize them. They recognized me since Rieva’s daughter Rachel and I were as like as two peas in a pod. This is all I know about my father’s relatives from France.  After he died in 1976 I lost contact with them.

My father Mordko Birman was born in Warsaw in 1895. He was the oldest child in the family and there were numerous children born after him, which was a usual thing with every poor Jewish family. Grandfather Moisey said that there was no need for my father to go to cheder.  A poor Jew had to learn his craft. My father was educated at home and the only language he spoke was Yiddish. He became an apprentice of a Jewish shoemaker. At 17 my father joined the Zionist Jewish socialist party of workers [Paolei Zion] [Editor’s note: the social democratic party Paolei Zion (workers of Zion) was founded by Ber Borokhov in Poltava in 1906. In April 1917 it branched a radical socialist party Paolei Zion. The seat of its central committee was in Odessa. The social democratic party Paolei Zion adopted the doctrines of Bolshevik ideology and existed in the USSR until 1928. Soviet authorities liquidated it]. My father was a shoemaker’s assistant for some time. He gave his mother his earnings and paid Party fees. He had tuberculosis since childhood. They used oxygen enrichment to cure him. As a result, my father had only one lung left.  He wasn’t recruited to the army due to his health condition. In 1913 my father was sent in exile to Siberia for his revolutionary activities. He was to accommodate in a village in Verholensk district of Irkutsk province [Editor’s note: Verholensk district of Irkutsk region was a place for criminal and political convicts in czarist Russia (from the second quarter of the 19th century)]. My father made cone stocks in the taiga and was paid for his work. My father’s younger sister Rieva told me how my father sent them some money to them in Warsaw  and they could buy potatoes and herring and she went to buy some coal from a coal seller. It was like a feast. In 1917 the term of my father’s exile was over and he decided to go to Odessa to improve his health condition in the south. He was hoping to have no problem finding a job at the shoe factory in Odessa. During his trip back my father felt ill. He started hemoptysis and arriving in Odessa my father had to sit at the railway station all exhausted. This was where my father met my future mother.

My maternal grandfather Mordko Gredenitski was born in Gradanitsy village Ovidiopol district Odessa region in the 1860s. In the 1880s he moved to Odessa and got married. Grandfather Mordko was a small stockjobber dealing in wheat. He wasn’t doing very well. I heard in my childhood grandfather calling his family ‘kaptsans’ [‘beggars’ in Yiddish]. I visited my grandmother and grandfather when they lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the same house where we lived. They had beautiful furniture. My parents told me that in 1912 my grandfather made good money and bought new furniture. I have a mirror in the carved fame and a wardrobe from this set of furniture in my apartment. When I visited my grandparents I opened the wardrobe to pick pieces of matzah wrapped in a tablecloth. I remember that grandfather Mordko was a handsome old man with a gray beard. He wore casual clothes common with townsfolk. He was religious. He attended a synagogue and spoke Yiddish at home. My grandfather died in a hospital in Slobodka [Neighborhood on the outskirts of Odessa.] in 1927. He was buried in the 3rd Jewish cemetery in Slobodka.

My grandfather Mordko had two sisters. I know little about them. They lived in Tiraspol (in Moldavia presently) where they got married.  After the NEP 2, was over their husbands lost their business and they all moved to their relatives in Odessa. His younger sister lived with our family for some time. I remember that she was called ‘bobele’ [‘grandmother in Yiddish].    She didn’t have children. Bobele died shortly before the war. The second sister, whose name I don’t remember, left Odessa after her husband left her.  This is all I know about their life.

My maternal grandmother Ghitl Gredenitskaya (nee Kerzhner) was born in Akkerman [Belgorod-Dnestrovski since 1918] in the 1850s. When living in Odessa she was a housewife. Grandmother Ghitl also cooked for our family. At Pesach she made dishes from matzah. Grandmother Ghitl was very religious. She went to the synagogue in Pushkinskaya Street, but she did it in secret to not spoil the reputation of my parents who were Party members. She wore dark modest dresses and a kerchief tying it over her ears. The only language grandmother Ghitl talked was Yiddish. She spoke poor Russian. Ghitl had brother Yakov and sister Sopha. I don’t think I know anything about them. Ghitl died in 1930. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery

My mother Sophia Gredenitskaya was the only daughter n her family. She was born in Odessa in 1893. At that time my grandfather had a three-bedroom apartment. My grandfather let one room to a Jewish teacher who was only allowed to teach Jews. This teacher helped my mother to prepare to study in a grammar school. My mother went to the 7th grade in a grammar school in order to save money and receive a certificate as soon as possible.  After finishing the 8th grade in grammar school students were allowed to teach. My mother wanted to continue her studies, but her family couldn’t afford it.  During WWI all relatives of veterans of the war were issued a permit for free education. One of my mother uncle Yakov’s sons was at the front during the war. He sent my mother confirmation that he was at the front and my mother managed to enter  the medical Faculty of Novorossiysk University in 1915. In 1917 a revolution began. My mother got involved in revolutionary activities ad quit the university. Her fellow students were involved in revolutionary activities and they involved my mother. My mother’s friends were Jews from Foreign collegium [Editor’s note: collegium of foreign propaganda in Odessa regional committee of the Communist party of Bolsheviks  (December 1918 - August 1919) – an underground Party group formed at the decision of the central committee of the Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks to conduct revolutionary propaganda in interventionist troops in the south of Ukraine during the Civil war. This group was shot by Denikin troops in 1919]. Its member was Jacques Yelin [Editor’s note: Yakov (Jacques) Yelin (1888 – 1919), one of organizers of the foreign collegium. Shot by French interventionists in 1919], Shtivelman among them and she knew many other members.  These young people couldn’t enter a university in Russia due to the quota. They went to study in France, came to Russia on vacation and when the Civil War 3 began they couldn’t go back to France.

My mother also had ties with the Zionist socialist working party. Once in 1917 she heard somebody saying ‘A comrade has returned from exile. He has hemoptysis and is staying at the railway station’. My mother and her friend Manya Gombakh went to the railway station to pick up a former convict. Manya was an orphan. She lived with her brother and there was no space for anybody else in their dwelling.  My mother took my future father to her home. Grandfather Mordko and grandmother Ghitl didn’t mind. They helped my mother to look after my father. The young people fell in love with each other and began to live in a civil marriage.  They also belonged to the same party. At that time left procommunist wings separated from bourgeois Jewish socialist parties and united into a Jewish communist union that supported Bolsheviks. My father was a member of the committee of the union and my mother was his messenger. When Denikin troops 4 came my parents went into the underground with Bolsheviks. In 1920 when the Soviet regime won over they officially joined the party of Bolsheviks. My father was sent to the Romanian border. During the famine of 1921 5 many people tried to leave Russia for Romania and there were many arrests. My father had unlimited authority. He could even cancel arrests of ChK 6. Later he started hemoptysis and had to return to Odessa.

My grandmother and grandfather wanted my parents to have a religious wedding and convinced my parents to enter into one. My mother and father went to the synagogue. There was a chuppah at their wedding. However, I’ve never seen any document from the rabbi’s office. When in 1921 my father was a member of the regional committee of the Communist Party there was a Party purge. My mother was trying to tell my father to keep the fact of their wedding at the synagogue since she had already been through it and told them everything. However, my father didn’t understand such things. He wrote the truth in his report and was expelled. He lost his position, but he had ties with Jewish organizations. They valued him and during the famine in 1922  my father was appointed a Joint representative in Yelisavetgrad of Odessa province. My mother went with him. She was manager of a women’s department. My parents were paid in golden 10-ruble coins. They sent some money to my father’s mother in Poland. 

They stayed there through 1922 and 1923. I was born in Yelisavetgrad [Kirovograd from 1924] on 2 January 1923.

In early 1924 my father came to Odessa. The period of famine was over and Joint ended its activities in the USSR. My father was appointed chairman of the party committee at the shoe factory. Holding this position he took over the Brodskiy synagogue [Editor’s note: one of the biggest and most beautiful synagogues in Odessa. Its origin goes back to the arrival of Jewish migrants from Germany and Halitsia in the early 1820s in Odessa. They were called ‘Brodskiy’ Jews after the name of Brody town. The synagogue was open in 1940. This was the first choral synagogue in Russia. Construction of the building of the synagogue started in 1863 under supervision of architect F.Kolovich. It was funded by contributions. Since 1925 the Brodskiy synagogue housed Odessa regional archive] to make a factory club in it. Once I asked my father ‘Why did it have to be the Brodskiy synagogue?’ and he replied ‘It was the most beautiful one and I wanted poor Jews  who had lived in basements and had never had an opportunity to go to this synagogue to come to this beautiful club and feel human there’. He frankly believed it was a noble deed on his part.

On 19 February  1927 my brother Ilia was born in Odessa. We lived in 12, Lenin Street then. My mother was ill after childbirth and the baby screamed all the time. I remember coming to his bed and dumping all my toys into his bed: it was a doll crockery tin set. My parents talked me off since I scratched the baby. Ilia’s birth was a trauma for me. I believed he was loved more. At the age of 3 I went to the kindergarten of leather craftsmen in 25, Yekaterininskaya Street. The kindergarten was one block away from where we lived. I remember my father teaching me to be on my own. He didn’t hold me by my hand, but walked fast ahead of me. I followed him gazing at his gray head. There was a noise orchestra in our kindergarten. We played triangles, castanets and tambourines. In summer the kindergarten went to a dacha. We lay in the sun, bathed in the sea, played and had meals outside. My mother always shaved my head to avoid the risk of fleas.  

In 1930 –my mother was sent to study in Odessa College of Tinned Food (present Refrigeration Industry College). This same year I went to school. People’s commissar [minister] of education issued an order to witch to the Ukrainian language of teaching at schools.  There was one Russian school left in each district of Odessa. For some reason my parents sent me to Ukrainian school #4 on the corner of Troitskaya and Preobrazhenskaya Streets. I was a miserable pupil since I didn’t know Ukrainian. My Ukrainian teacher used to say ‘Is this a girl? This is a boy and isn’t he a bad one!’ considering my short haircut and bad marks. Once my teacher told me to tell my mother to come to school for a talk. My mother was so busy that I decided to tell her nothing. Instead, I stopped going to school. I left home in the morning and went to walk along Alexandrovski Prospect where I played with cobbles. Then I went to Troitskaya Street and waited until schoolchildren began to leave school and I went home. This lasted for a month and a half.  

My friends from our yard Vitia Degtiar, Volodia Chudinov, Nadia Shyriaeva, Volodia Shtubes, Boria Sovietov studied in Russian school #25, in Bariatinski Lane (present Nakhimov Lane). My friend Nadia Shyriaeva tried to pull strings for my transfer to her school.  Her teacher Maria Isaakovna said it was not possible. The port was sponsoring his Russian school and children had their school parties in the port club. Nadia invited me once to a party. The entrance to this club was on the first floor from Lastochkin descend and exit from the concert hall was from the second floor down a very narrow staircase. When we were going in somebody yelled ‘Fire!’ and everybody ran to the exit door.  Only noticed the beginning of panic and when I came back to my senses  I saw Nadia standing over me crying and Maria Isaakovna standing beside her.  When Maria Isaakovna saw me opening my eyes she sighed with relief ‘Hey, she is alive!’ I had a hemorrhage in my eye. After this happened Maria Isaakovna felt sorry for me and convinced my mother to send me to school #25.

The famine in 1933 didn’t have an impact on our family. We even had extra food. My father was director of mixed fodder plant and received good food rations there. Besides, he was a member of the association of former political convicts [Editor’s note: for some reason (1921 -1935) was founded in Moscow and had over 50 affiliates in various towns of the USSR. It published the ‘Katorga and ssylka’ and ‘Bulletin’ magazines] and all members received food at the regional Party committee food department. My mother was in the Tinned Food College that had ties with tinned food factories. She also received food packages and lunches. My parents also had additional food cards as members of the party. I know that my parents gave their extra cards and food to their relatives. I also remember that there were many homeless children at this period. There were asphalt containers in the streets. They were for melting asphalt and kept warm for a long time. At night those children slept in them. Once my friend and I went to a confectionery store in 12, Deribassovskaya Street. It was in the basement and there were bars on its windows.  There were homeless boys sticking to these bars. One boy untied his clift, a quilted cotton wool coat, and we saw that he was absolutely naked underneath.  What happened was that they were taken to a children’s room in the railway station. They took their clothes for sanitary treatment and then it turned out there was no place to accommodate the children. All children’s homes were overcrowded. They gave them these quilted coats and let them go. My friend and I grabbed the boy and brought him to my home. My parents decided that my father would try to pull strings for the boy to go to a children’s home, but then my mother said: ‘Let him stay and this means that we will have three children’. The boy stayed with us for some time. My parents gave him good clothes, but once he told our housemaid Fenia that he was going to look for his brother. He left and disappeared.

We had a two-bedroom apartment. The bigger room had an area of 30 square meters. My mother liked everything in the apartment to be nice. She bought a beautiful silk shawl and ordered a lampshade to be made from it.  There were curtains on the windows and there were woolen strip carpets on the floors. There was a beautiful mirror in a carved frame over the sofa and a big Ukrainian woolen carpet in red roses on it. There was a big table in the center of the room. My mother didn’t do any housework. She couldn’t cook. Our housemaid did the cooking and served meals to us. Our first housemaid Emma was German. She came from a family of dispossessed German colonists 7. Then we had housemaid Fenia. She was also German. Our neighbors used to say to my mother: ‘You pay your housemaid everything you earn’. My mother replied that she preferred to go to work and feel an active member of the community. We didn’t often have guests, but they came to us after a parade on 1 May and 7 November [October revolution Day] 8. The table was covered with two white tablecloths. After a meal the guests sang revolutionary songs and danced. My father danced very well. He was an artistic, easy-going and very sociable person. He was very thin due to his disease. My mother was a tall grand lady. She liked to dress nicely and never had enough money left for food. My mother wore crepe de Chine dresses and hats. My mother’s dressmaker made clothes for her and for me. Every year I had a fancy dress made for me. After wearing it for a year I began to wear it to school and had a new fancy dress made for me. I remember going with my mother to a hat shop to order a new hat for her. This was the only time she took me there and I was so happy that I felt like floating beside her. My mother chose a pink felt hat with silk bands. My mother was so beautiful! She always had her hair done and her nails manicured. Once her colleagues commented that a member of the Party wasn’t supposed to have manicured nails and my mother replied with defiance: ‘Would you feel better if I had black nails>’ –You will be expelled from the Party!’ – You just try!’ My mother was never afraid. She had this kind of character.

My mother and father were so different: she was noisy and had a loud voice, she could even slap us if she was in this kind of mood. My father was quiet her opposite: he never raised his voice and spoke quietly and was against physical punishment of the children. My parents were very kind and sympathetic people. My parents hardly spent time with us. My mother was at work until late. She worked in the trade department of the town Party committee and didn’t have time for her children. I came from school and my brother came from his kindergarten and we played in the yard until my father came home from work. My mother came home at six o’clock. By this time we had to be at home and have our hands washed.  The family got together for dinner and our housemaid was at the table with us. After dinner my mother went back to work and stayed there until nine o’clock. My father often left home in the evening. He spent time at the association of political convicts and was involved in social activities.

In the early 1930s my father and other communists were sent to a district town to organize collectivization 9. My father was reluctant to be involved in this and didn’t accept any forced measures toward farmers. This became known and my father was called back for a discussion in the town Party committee. At this time he had hemoptysis again and my mother didn’t allow him to go there. She sent my father to a tuberculosis recreation center in Gagry. When he returned home this incident was forgotten.  
We had portraits of Marx 10, Engels 11 at home and a photograph of Lenin 12 on the table, but we never had any portraits of Stalin. My mother called him ‘a man with moustache’. In 1934, when Kirov 13 was murdered my parents had a hot discussion about how this could happen and where his guards where at the time. They thought it was different from what an official version described.  

In 1936 Ushrovich, director of Odessa Torgsin 14 stood in public court. The charges against him stated that he was a provoker since the time when he was in exile in Siberia. Ushrovich managed to prove that all these charges were false. Beginning from middle 1937 [Great Terror] 15 many of my classmates’ relatives were arrested. There were children of 12 nationalities in my class. Galia Panaioti, a Greek girl, had her mother and father arrested in 1936. Luba Turchenko, a Ukrainian girl, her mother was arrested. Her mother was chief of political department of Chernomorsk shipyard. Ania Gavrilchenko, Ukrainian – her uncle was arrested. Galka Dyomina, Russian, her father was arrested.  Our Ukrainian teacher Polikarp Lvovich disappeared. Later he returned and continued teaching. He never mentioned what happened to him. My friend Rogovaya’s father worked in railroad shops and was a Party organizer of the association of political convicts. He was arrested in 1936 and he disappeared.

My parents discussed the subject of arrests in 1937 whispering at night. Their loud whisper woke me up sometimes and I heard their conversations unintentionally, but I didn’t tell anybody.  My mother was strict about the family order: the children were not allowed to talk about any talks or happenings at home. I remember my mother once punishing my brother with a belt for blurting something out in the yard that my father was grabbing her hands screaming ‘Sophia, you will kill him!’ My parents sorted out their collection of books. There were political books that my father collected and they had to get rid of them. There were works by Trotskiy 16, Kamenev 17. They threw them out.

My father was arrested in 1938. He was accused of wishing to assist Hitler and Japan to attack the Soviet Union. What else could they accuse him of?  Shortly before arrest our janitor Gidulian told my father that he knew very well who was the next to be arrested. Before arresting a person NKVD 18 officers visit a janitor under pretense that they intend to check a housing roster, but actually they ask questions about the tenant that interests them. The janitor said that they’ve come to see him and asked about our neighbor Rhubel, director of a recreation center in Kholodnaya Balka town, but this Rhubel was away from home. The janitor respected my father and advised him to leave home as well, but my father ignored it: ‘Where can I go? We don’t have money to travel!’  By that time he was fired from work. However, we moved to the dacha where he was arrested on 8 June 1938. Young NKVD officers came to arrest him. My mother and father slept on the terrace and my brother and I slept in the room. They made a careless search and my mother managed to put some Party documents into my pocket.  They didn’t search us and we kept these documents.
  
Somebody named Melnichenko had something to do with my father’s arrest. I remember this name very well even now. He probably wanted to have a big Jewish trial in Odessa and all arrested Jews were kept in the town. This saved many Jews, including my father. My mother wrote a letter to Stalin. She told my brother and me that Stalin’s office would send this letter back to Odessa and my father would stay in town until they clarified all circumstances. My father stayed in prison for about two years and returned home. He was very lucky to have been arrested on 8 June 1938 and Yezhov [Editor’s note: N.I. Yezhov (1895-1940) – people’s commissar of home affairs in the USSR in 1936-1937] had been replaced with Beriya 19. During the Yezhov rule prisoners were beaten and put on conveyor like they did in the past.  Beriya issued an order to stop beating and tortures. When my father was arrested the housing authorities gave one room to a woman whose husband was also arrested. My mother didn’t get along with her. They argued and my mother called her a whore. When my father was released she sued this woman to have her out of our apartment and the court took a decision for this woman to move out. Then all of a sudden my mother declared that however bad this neighbor might be she was the wife of a prisoner and we couldn’t throw her out. This woman stayed to live with us.  

After my father was arrested I left school and entered a Jewish Machine building Technical School. My mother felt positive about it. She was afraid of being arrested and hoped that they wouldn't send my brother to a children's home now that I was a student. I received a stipend at school and I could learn a profession soon. Prisoners’ children were thrown out of educational institutions, but when filling up my application form in the line item ‘father’ I wrote ‘my father doesn’t live with us at present’. I didn’t lie, but I didn’t tell the truth either. Later it became known that director of my school knew that my father was in prison, but she kept silent about it. I studied at school for three years. I didn’t join Komsomol 20, since I didn’t want to join an organization of executioners. I thought: Komsomol and Party members were involved in beating my father and I couldn’t be in the same organization with them. My mother argued with me. She thought this was dangerous conduct, but I stood my point.

Through this whole period my classmate Revmir Cherniak gave me moral support. He was my future husband.  He often came to my home and helped me with everything. Revmir was born in Odessa in 1923. His parents Isaac and Torah Cherniak came from Lithuania. They were also involved in the revolutionary movement. His father was sent in exile in Arkhangelsk region before 1905 and his wife followed him there. Later they moved to Odessa. They were tailors. Revmir had two brothers: Israel and Mikhail and sister Mariana Aihenvald in her marriage.  They were much older than Revmir. Mikhail, their youngest, was born in 1910. Revmir finished school in 1940 and entered a military school in Leningrad. I corresponded with him.

On 21 June 1941 [Great Patriotic War] 21 I went to the dacha to visit my father’s friend from Kharkov Shura Poplavskaya. The weather was bad on the next day that was Sunday. It was raining. All of a sudden we heard Levitan’s 22 voice on the radio at 12 o’clock: ‘All radio stations of the Soviet Union speaking’. He announced that fascist Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Everybody knew that there was going to be a war, though. Shura said that we had to buy tickets to Kharkov. Shura and I went to the railway station. It was awful there with crowds of people trying to buy tickets. Shura managed to buy a ticket and went to Kharkov. On the first day Levitan announced that Odessa and Sevastopol were bombed. I didn’t see any bombing in Odessa on that day. The first serious bombing was on 22 July. German planes were combing streets on a low level flight.  I was going along Grecheskaya Street to my friend when I heard explosions and jumped into an entrance of a house. There were trams #23 moving along Grecheskaya Street. Streetcars rushed up and down the street at full speed so that sparks were falling from wires. Passers by told each other that many young men and women perished in Primorski Boulevard. I ran home to make sure that my family was all right. On my way home I saw Pushkin’s house [A.S. Pushkin museum] on fire. There was nobody home. My parents were at work.

My father was again director of mixed fodder plant and my mother worked in the trade department of the Party town committee. She said that members of the Party were not allowed to evacuate, but they received evacuation cards for members of their families. She obtained cards for us and her cousin sister Vitia who was her close friend as well.  I said we were not leaving without her. Our neighbor Lisa Alevenshtein didn’t want to evacuate for a different reason. She said: ‘Where would I go? I have no husband and I have three small children and my old mother. I have no money’. She was very concerned about expensiveness of life. There were rumors in Odessa that evacuation was very expensive, that a bagel cost 5 rubles. We were going to leave Odessa in the direction of Nikolaev along with army troops. Once during another air raid I was hiding in an entrance with a woman. She asked me why we were not leaving and I replied that we were planning to leave with army troops. She said: ‘I am from Pereyaslav [present Pereyaslav-Khmelnitskiy]. The army left it. They don’t even take officers’ wives with them! This is not even a Civil War, you know!’  I felt scared. When I came home I told my mother that we had to leave immediately. My mother made jute sacks for each of us to be able to walk with our luggage. My father couldn’t leave the town due to his orders. While we were waiting for him we found out that Germans had come to Nikolaev and Odessa was in encirclement and there was the only way out by sea. My mother’s acquaintance from the Party town committee gave us boat boarding tickets to Novorossiysk [700 km to Odessa by sea].  

My mother’s cousin sister Vitia Vishnevskaya said when my mother brought her a ticket: ‘My daughter-in-law (she was Russian) is not allowed to quit her job and I cannot leave her with a baby and go!’  Aunt Vitia and her younger son Yakov stayed in Odessa. Once, when they were out, her bitch of a daughter-in-law took their gold from a hiding place in their apartment and aunt Vitia’s good coat and left for Nikolaev with her baby. Aunt Vitia stayed in Odessa during occupation 23. Aunt Vitia didn’t even have a coat to go to the ghetto. Her neighbor gave her a coat. Her daughter-in-law came to their apartment in 1942 during occupation and took away all their furniture. Their neighbors told her off and she threatened them: ‘If you talk much I will go to the town office and report that you help Jews!’ At this time other people were rescuing aunt Vitia’s son Lazar Vishnevski. He was captured and when Germans ordered: ‘Communists and Jews make a step ahead’ Lazar was standing in the second line and wanted to step forward, but the men standing in front of him didn’t let him. Lazar asked him to move aside, but he replied: ‘Go to hell!’ ‘I am a Jew!’ ‘What the hell, you are Vishnevski, a Polish!’ «Russians saved his life another time as well. Prisoners were to go to a bathroom. Lazar said to his fellow prisoner: ‘What do I do now? I am circumcised!’ He gathered few reliable men and they shielded Lazar so that a guard didn’t see him. They saved his life.

Two Russian women living in our house Berezovskaya and Rogova cooked cereals every day, took buckets of water that they carried on a yoke and went to the ghetto in Slobodka. They brought food for the family of Lisa Alevenshtein and our neighbor Rhubel. Rhubel’s two sons were at the front. Before going to the ghetto she left two suits with Berezovskaya in case her sons returned from the army and had nothing to wear.  The Alevenshtein family and Rhubel perished. They were probably shot near our house where there is the Park of Lenin. There used to be a ravine and now there is a pond in this spot.

From Novorossiysk we were taken to Ust-Labinsk of Krasnodar region. We didn’t have any money and my mother went to a district Party committee looking for a job. Secretary of the district committee said: ‘Why do you want to get a job here? Germans are advancing. They are almost near Rostov. Move farther to the east of the country!’ My mother said we didn’t have money. The secretary arranged a free train trip to Kropotkin town and gave us a note addressed to commandant of Kropotkin requesting assistance for us. Nevertheless, we stayed in Ust-Labinsk for about two weeks. We worked in a kolkhoz: my brother mowed grass and I worked in a vegetable crew. Chairman of the kolkhoz gave us some flour: this was our earning, he said.  The owner of the house where we stayed, a Kazak woman, baked us some bread and gave us some cheese. She said: ‘I don’t know what is going to happen to us. What if we have to escape and then somebody will help us?’   

I faced anti-Semitism for the first time in my life during this trip. I was sitting on a platform at the railway station in Kropotkino when a train from Caucasus arrived. Some recruits came onto the platform. They asked me: ‘What’s the news?’ I began to tell them about the situation when one of them asked all of a sudden: ‘What’s your nationality?’ I said: ‘I am a Jew’ and he said: ‘Can’t you hear that she burrs her ‘r’?’ I felt like doused with boiling water.  Nobody ever said anything like that to me.  At that moment a young man, a Russian blond with blue eyes, came up to me and said: ‘Don’t listen to this idiot. He cannot talk himself. Don’t be afraid. We shall beat Germans and you will go back home. All the best to you!’ and he shook my hand. I shall never forget this.  

We finally arrived in Tashkent [3.200 km from Odessa in Uzbekistan] We immediately obtained a residential permit and received a 14-square-meter room at reasonable cost. Later we exchanged this room for another room in a private sector. Here we also paid reasonable fees for the room and power. My parents were treated well. My father worked as a controller of water gauge facilities.  He inspected water jets. My mother worked as an accountant. I don’t know in what organization she worked.  My brother Ilia went to a vocational school where he received a uniform and was provided meals.  I went to work at the Tashkent agricultural machine building plant that manufactured shells and repaired tanks at that period. There were vacancies in a foundry and I went to work there.  I was a core rod installer installing core rods into shells. We worked 12 hours per day. There were Uzbek workers as well. They didn’t speak Russian and didn’t understand anything.  They were constantly scolded. They had to carry such heavy loads that we felt sorry for them, even though our life was as rough. Thus, I heard some Uzbek talking about ‘zhydy’ [abusive word for a Jew] behind my back on a bus. I turned to them and said that in that case they were ‘sarty’, abusive for Uzbek people. They were about to beat me.

In Tashkent we received 800 grams bread per day per our bread coupons and workers of the foundry received a free lunch and additional 200 grams of bread. It was a miserable lunch with flour prevailing in dishes. There was a spontaneous market near the entrance to the plant where workers were selling their ration of bread. 800 grams was the weight of a loaf of bread. I went to the market once and found out that selling one loaf I could buy enough food for my whole family. I sold a loaf every other day buying rice and even plant oil. Uzbeks delivered milk to houses. They sold it on credit. We were surprised, but our landlady explained that there were no local customers to buy it anyways and all they wanted was selling it one way or another. I also donated blood and received additional food for it. Some time later my father went to work at the Tashkent town executive committee, but their ration of food was small and my father was swollen from hunger. My mother and I had pellagra [Editor’s note: disease caused by lack of nicotinic acid and some other vitamins of B group]. My parents and I wore our winter coats that my mother had packed into our sacks back in Odessa. My brother also received a quilted coat and boots in his vocational school. There were very cold days in Tashkent. Once my brother caught cold. He felt ill, but he went to school for a meal. They even had meat for lunch. He was told that he could take his food home. His ration of food was enough for three of us.

My brother Ilia studied at school for a year and became a car mechanic. He and other graduates were sent to work in the Ural. There doctors discovered that my brother had tuberculosis and sent my brother back to Tashkent. On the way to Tashkent he was robbed somewhere in Kazakhstan. He went to commandant of a town and since he looked older than he actually was this commandant sent him to a medical check up and from there my brother was sent to a march company. Since he was educated they made him a clerk. He stayed in Kazakhstan for four months.  Then he returned to Tashkent. Ilia was eager to go to the front. He continuously went to a military registry office requesting them to send him to the frontline. Chief of the registry office got so tired of him that he burned Ilia’s passport, wrote that his year of birth was 1926 and sent him to the army in 1944. Ilia studied in a sniper school in Kushka. Then he studied in Volskoye technical school and after finishing it in 1945 he was sent to an aviation regiment that moved to Austria. Ilia was a technician in a squadron. At the end of the war he was in Austria. After the war Ilia served in the army for 7 years.  He finished his service in Grozny where he married a local woman. Her name was Taya Shubina. He moved to Odessa with his wife. We made Ilia finish the 10th grade. Is wife didn’t want to live in Odessa and they moved to Grozny. Ilia finished the Oil College. His wife worked as a seamstress. In 1956 their son Igor was born.

My parents and I returned to Odessa in 1944. There were other tenants in our apartment. We went to court. We felt anti-Semitic attitude toward us. Since my mother and father were members of the party since 1919 and they wrote a complaint to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine they managed to obtain a residential permit for us to live in Odessa. They returned one room to us. The judge said: ‘This is sufficient for three people’. My brother was at the front. I didn’t work at first. I donated blood and received a food package and a meal for it. My mother began to work in the city finance department and father soon got a job of inspector in savings-bank. 

My fiancé Revmir was at the front near Moscow in 1941. He was wounded and was taken to hospital with his legs frost-bitten. Gangrene started on one foot. It was amputated and he was sent to a hospital in Kazan. After he was released he was sent to Podolsk infantry school where he taught artillery. He continuously requested to send him to the front and he finally succeeded. In 1943 he took part in Kursk battle 24, and then in Korsun-Shevchenkovskiy operation [Editor’s note: 24.1 – 17.2 1944, in the course of struggle for Pravoberezhnaya Ukraine Soviet armies of the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts П (army generals N. F. Vatutin and I.S. Konev) encircled over 10 armies of the South group German armies (General Field Marshal Manstein) and crushed them], he was awarded an order, he also took part in battles near Yassy and was awarded another order. He sent me his officer’s certificate for allowances. Revmir was in Banska-Bistrica in Czechoslovakia when the was over. He arrived in Odessa in autumn 1945. We became a husband and wife, but we didn’t register our marriage.

In 1946 our daughter Yekaterina was born. Only then we registered our marriage to obtain a card for the baby. It was a card for 400 grams of bread. My husband entered the Mechanic Faculty of Odessa Polytechnic College. I entered Communications College and received a stipend. In 1951 our son Mikhail was born. We didn’t doubt that my husband would get a job assignment 25 in Odessa after finishing his college since he was an invalid of war and had two children. : However, he was the only one of all graduates to be sent to Petropavlovsk [in Kazakhstan] in the north. Of course, this had to do with my husband’s nationality. It took us quite an effort to have them change my husband’s job assignment. We moved to Kaspiysk [in Russia now]. I commuted 20 km to work in Makhachkala. I worked as senior technician of international telephone communications. I continued my studies as extramural student in Odessa Communications College. 

In 1953 in Kaspiysk we got to know about Stalin’s death. The only thought I had had about Stalin was “Let him die!’ I lived with a constant oppressive feeling as if the sky was on my head.  When Stalin died I felt as if this sky lifted up. I felt so happy! However, my husband cried. He easily subdued to influences. When he joined the Party I asked him how he could do it and he replied: ‘My commissar was so good and we were friends!’ ‘But you laughed at him saying that a political officer was nobody!’ 

In Kaspiysk our daughter Yekaterina went to school in 1953. I went to take my exams in Odessa.  I had all excellent marks, but they didn’t give me a diploma. I had to complete practical training and I failed to find a job of telephone operator in Odessa. So I never got my diploma. My husband completed his mandatory term in Kaspiysk and we returned to Odessa in 1955. We lived with my parents. An acquaintance of mine helped me to get a job of assistant accountant in the jute factory storeroom. In 1956 it was decided to remove our house in Lenin Street. We received a billet for a two-bedroom apartment for six of us.  My husband was on the list for receiving an apartment as an invalid of war and I thought we had to fight for receiving two apartments, but my father, my mother and my husband were telling me that we had to agree. Their major argument was ‘There is a bathroom in the apartment!’ I tried to tell where I was going to have my children sleeping – in the bathroom?', but they didn’t hear my point.   Since then we’ve lived in those two rooms in Gamarnik Street.

Our family had a difficult life, but we were seeing changes to better during Khrushchev rule 26. Khrushchev was a good person. He gave apartments to people living in basements and earth-hoses. It was impossible to make a living on pensions before Khrushchev, but he made pensions to enable people to live on them. However, the state level anti-Semitism became stronger during Khrushchev rule. My husband and I did face it. He left his job and it took him a month of searching before he managed to get another job. Nobody was employing him!  The human resource manager of one Odessa plant, who formerly worked in a labor camp employed him and his director asked him ‘How come you you’ve employed a Jew?’ and he replied ‘I had a vacancy of an engineer and he is an experienced engineer! I didn’t look at his passport, I don’t care about his nationality! There were Jews and Ukrainians in my camp and they were all equal!’ Later somebody told my husband this story. Our daughter and son also faced negative attitudes at school, particularly our daughter since she happened to be the only Jewish pupil in her class. 

In the late 1950s my brother Ilia, his wife and their son moved to Odessa from Grozny. They came to live with us. There were 9 of us living in two rooms. It was awfully hard. Ilia’s wife Taya turned out to be greedy. She used to nag to her husband for a whole week that he dared to spend three rubles without her permission. My mother offered them money for them to rent a room, but Taya didn’t want it. She felt as a hostess in our apartment. After another row I opened the door and said: ‘Get the hell out of here or I will throw you out with all your belongings!’ They left. My parents gave them money to buy a one-bedroom cooperative apartment that they bought in Filatov Street. Ilia fell under his wife’s influence and became as greedy as she was.

In 1961 my mother died. She was buried in the 2nd Christian cemetery. My daughter Yekaterina finished school in 1964. She tried to enter the Chemical Faculty of Odessa University four times and only the fifth time she was successful. She is sure that these failures at the exams were not incidental. Yekaterina managed to enter an evening department. She never got married.  

In 1965 my father traveled to Paris at the invitation of his brothers Iosif and Shmil. It took him quite an effort to obtain a permit to go abroad. He had to go to various authorities to prove his right to visit his brothers. Life abroad made a great impression on him. He used to criticize the soviet regime, but after he returned from France he said that even workers had very decent life there. My father wanted to move abroad and his French relatives offered their assistance, but he didn’t want to go there alone and my family wanted to stay at home. My husband thought that he had reached his status here, he was an engineer and if he decided to move he would have to stand by a desk cutting fur for gloves. Uncle Iosif sent me an invitation to France. I went to the foreign passport office where they told me that people were allowed only to visit close relatives and uncles were not considered as such. I wasn’t allowed to go.

After finishing school in 1968 my son went to serve in the army. He served in Volgograd and Khabarovsk region. After the army in 1972 Mikhail entered the Mechanical and Mathematic Faculty of Odessa University. After graduation he couldn’t get a job due to his nationality. He picked up all kinds of jobs that he could get. In 1978 he married Marina Solodovnikova from Moscow and moved to live in Moscow. There he found a job of programmer that was his specialty. Irina is Russian. In December 1981 their daughter Olia was born. Irina works as a librarian at school. Her sister emigrated to Germany a long time ago. They could move there as well, but they didn’t want to change their life. My granddaughter Olia studies at the Faculty of Sociology in a Pedagogical College. Unfortunately, I do not get along with my daughter-in-law. For this reason my granddaughter does not visit me. 

In Brezhnev’s epoch [1960s – 1970s] our life consisted of trying to get food and clothes. There was no meat or butter and there were no beautiful clothes. My son and I got up at six o’clock in the morning and went to the market. We stood in two lines waiting for meat to be delivered.  If we managed to return home at three in the afternoon with meat we felt happy. My husband was allowed to buy food in special stores for invalids of the war. We called these stores ‘thank you, Hitler’. We were allowed to buy 6 kg of miserable meat per month, some other products and clothes.   

During Brezhnev regime I didn’t vote in principle. My husband and I always had arguments because of this. He was very law-obedient and he couldn’t believe it when I told him that somebody else would use my voucher. Once, for the sake of experiment I came to the polling station 15 minutes before their closure. A woman on duty told me that Minna Birman had already voted. I was indignant and they gave me a blank form. So I proved to my husband that I was right and never again went to vote. Our family was always interested in politics. We discussed all political news at home. Our children read a lot and were thoughtful personalities. We often took our son and daughter to theaters and museums.  

When in the 1970s people began to move to Israel I was eager to go there, too, and obtained several invitations, but my children didn’t want to go and here I am. 

In 1976 my father died. He was buried in the 2nd Christian cemetery by my mother’s grave.  They lived their lives together and they lie beside each other.

In 1985 my husband died. Revmir was buried in the Tairovskoye cemetery [international town cemetery]. After my husband died my daughter and I had a difficult life. My brother Ilia didn’t support us, although he could have. He worked as chief engineer of the Kislorodmash plant. We had an argument when in 1982 he refused to contribute 1992. His wife Taya lives in Cheryomushki in Odessa. She has a two-bedroom apartment. Ilia’s son Igor and I are friends. He often visits me. Igor is married to Tatiana, a nice Russian woman. He has a daughter named Lena. Igor is a computer specialist. He works in a private company.

My daughter Yekaterina changed few jobs. She worked as a chemist in Probirnaya Chamber, an engineer in design office ‘Kinooborudovamiye’ (cinema equipment) and an environmental chemist for sewerage facilities. During perestroika 27, when there were economic problems and she didn’t get her salary regularly my daughter finished an accounting course.  She worked as an accountant in Filatov Institute for 8 years. In 2002 Yekaterina retired, but she continues to work as an accountant in a trade company. 

I accepted the beginning of perestroika with understanding. I think that Mikhail Gorbachev 28 is a very decent man. People blame him that perestroika failed, but I believe he did everything he could. He initiated changes, though in his position of the secretary he would have sufficient for the rest of his life. The situation couldn’t develop any differently. The USSR lived on oil needle that was like drugs. It crashed, but Gorbachev has nothing to do with it. I felt negative about the breakdown of the USSR 29. It was all right for Baltic Republics where the mentality is different. I’ve always thought and believe it now that Ukraine lost from separation. There is no oil or woods, the coal is expensive and all industries were tied to the USSR. We argued a lot about it. My children told me that Ukraine gave Russia bread and we were feeding the USSR. I cannot say for sure whether perestroika failed or not.  It failed in Ukraine. Life is better in Russia. Much failed because the Russian Empire was always enslaved whether it was serfdom or Stalin’s regime. People are not used to freedom and independence. I felt more comfortable living like that as well, but I realized that it was wrong. However, one felt rather calm receiving a fixed salary and knowing that employers wouldn’t fire their employees.  

Worked as an accountant in Chernomorniiproject for over 20 years. I literally worked for two. According to all existing standards I needed an assistant. I submitted requests for one many times, but nothing came out of it. I had to quit since I didn’t get along with my boss who was a militant anti-Semite and it was difficult for me to work with her.

I live with my daughter. My son works as a programmer in Moscow maintaining computer networks of few companies. They are not considering moving abroad. The main reason is that they feel that they won’t be able to follow the Western standards and merge into a different life.   They identify themselves as Jews, but they are far from Jewish traditions. We do not celebrate Jewish holidays. I am not religious and my children aren’t either. Back in the early 1980s I once went to the synagogue in Peresyp [in an industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of Odessa]. I went to see how Jews celebrated Pesach. They sent me onto the balcony where I was standing behind other women where I couldn’t see anything from behind. Another time I went to the Osipov synagogue some time in 1999. I went there to subscribe to the Jewish newspaper ‘Shomrei Shabos’. It was a day off and there was a man on duty. I asked ‘May I come in to look?’ He replied ‘Come in, are you a Jew?’ ‘Can’t you tell?’ ‘Come in!’  I came in and looked around. It beautiful, but it didn’t stir any religious feelings in me. 

I’ve been in touch with Jewish charity organizations for a long time since the early 1990s. At first I received humanitarian aid in the Palace of Culture named after Lesia Ukrainka in Tiraspolskaya Square. When Gemilut Hesed began its activities I was almost the first one to enroll on its lists. My daughter and I receive food packages there. My daughter and I do sympathize with the rebirth of Jewish life in Odessa. We began to attend the Jewish center when it resided in the house of medical employees in Grecheskaya Street ]late 1980s]. We also enjoyed attending concerts of cantors and performances of the Jewish Theater ‘Shalom’ that came on tour to Odessa several times. I am very much interested in the Jewish history and culture. I am now putting in order our family archive that is of interest to the community. Sometimes historians come to talk with me. I want to be of help to people.

Glossary

Samuel Eirus
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Anna Shubaeva
Date of interview: April 2005

At first glance Samuel Maxovich Eirus looks much younger than he is. And he is already about eighty.

Samuel is short, slender and rather vigorous (possibly because of his athletic background), but we can see that at present some extra steps turn to be a heavy duty for him.

He is sitting next to his wife at their kitchen table: he is deeply touched recollecting episodes of his life and his wife is laughing softly at him.

Many young couples will be envious of the warm-heartedness of their relations after so many years of their married life, after birth of their son and grandsons.

And at that moment looking at Samuel and his wife, you understand what makes them look so young: their bright shining eyes.

• My family background
• Growing up 
• During the war
• After the war and recent years
• Glossary

• My family background

My name is Samuel Maxovich Eirus; I was born in 1929 in Tartu. [Tartu is a small town in Estonia, it is situated 185 km south-eastward from Tallin.]. My mother and father lived there. My paternal grandmother and grandfather also lived in Estonia, but I do not know in what town they were born.

My grandfather’s name was Samuel Eirus. My grandmother’s name was Sara Meirovna Eirus and her sister’s name was Rive Meirovna Brand. Brand was her 2nd husband’s surname and I know nothing about her 1st husband, except his surname: Kalyu. Rive arrived in Leningrad together with her 2nd husband and my grandmother. 

Unfortunately I know nothing about my great-grandparents. In fact I was not interested in it. You see, when I was little (we left Estonia when I was 4 years old) I was interested only in my toys and childish emotions. At that time I was not old enough to concern myself with my ancestors.

Only later I started to be interested in my ancestors, but... unfortunately I had no system: I asked Rive questions from time to time. She outlived my grandmother by many years; she went through the war together with us and died in 1950s. Sometimes in the evening we had long talks, and I used to ask her different questions.

It was Rive who told me that my grandfather and grandmother were professional revolutionaries. And Rive was a revolutionary too.

I do not know what they were engaged in besides that. I have no idea about their financial situation… But if they were revolutionaries and managed to provide an education to their children, I guess they were not poor. My father knew two foreign languages (German and French), and I think that at that time most Jews knew only their shtetl dialect and Russian. To my mind they were too much oppressed to become educated and study foreign languages. It was possible for Jews to receive formal education only if their parents already had got money and were persons of high position. All the rest were underprivileged.

Probably my grandparents were members of a political party (I do not know exactly what party). Their activity resulted in the attempt of making revolution, but it failed. My grandparents were arrested, tried and sentenced to death. They were kept in the death ward. Grandfather was executed by shooting, but Estonian authorities had no time to do it with my grandmother and her sister: our government exchanged them for some Estonian political figures arrested in Russia. Probably my grandmother and her sister were granted a political asylum in Russia and made Petrograd their home in the beginning of the XX century.

My grandmother and her sister (like all revolutionaries in the USSR) enjoyed certain privileges. Grandmother was a merit pensioner of Russian Federation. [Merit pension of Russian Federation was established for persons of priceless services to the country in the field of revolutionary, state, public and economic activities or for outstanding merits in the field of culture, science and engineering.] At that time they were very few. They used special shops and special medical service. Authorities appreciated old revolutionaries.

I do not remember the date of their arrival, but in 1933 they invited my father (son of Sara Meirovna), my mother, me and probably someone from our family to come to Leningrad from Estonia.

My Mom told me about her childhood very little. Her family lived in the town of Opochka. [Opochka is situated 130 km far from Pskov.] Her mother had got 3 children: 2 girls and a boy.

Her father (my maternal grandfather) was a true Jewish small trader: he had got a horse and carried junk from village to village, changing it for money or for different things. Mom said that he traveled much and worked as a real commercial traveler. So the family was rather poor. But my grandfather’s wife did not work and he had a horse, therefore he was wealthier than the others. On the other hand, they lived in out-of-the-way village: life was cheaper there than in cities.

They observed no Jewish traditions. The same was with my paternal grandparents: it goes without saying, because they were revolutionaries!

I know nothing about the way my mother and her relatives got to Estonia. I was born in Tartu where my father and mother lived at that time. I think that they lived there for a rather long period of time: my mother’s husband and her brother Mulya, for example, played together in the orchestra - I guess it means that the family settled down for good in Tartu.

My father was born in Estonian city Vyru in 1905. I already told you that my paternal grandfather was a professional revolutionary, and he managed to educate all his sons. My father spoke Russian, Estonian (I do not take these 2 languages into consideration), German and French. By the way I do not know if he knew Yiddish or Hebrew. Besides, he finished a musical school and played in the Estonian National Orchestra. I keep a photo showing him together with the orchestra musicians. Pay attention that musical education was not free at that time.

• Growing up

My father was a real professional:  he was able to perform serious musical compositions. I remember my Mom mentioned that he wrote notes himself. Some musical scores he arranged for his balalaika [a national Russian musical instrument]. I remember him frequently writing notes at home…

I was not much interested about the way my father earned the living: in fact he was arrested when I was little. It was Rive who told me some facts about him when I asked her (for example) what I had to write down about my father in different questionnaires.

I know that after my father’s arrival in Leningrad he managed to find a job at LENEXPORTLES (at that time there were a lot of foreign firms), because he knew German language well. [LENEXPORTLES was founded in 1926 and was engaged in timber export.] He worked there as a quality control inspector. Possibly later this fact helped authorities to fabricate a charge against my father: he worked in a foreign firm and was in touch with foreigners.

Mikhail Kushnarev, a cousin of Rive and a coeval of my father graduated from the Leningrad Timber College. Probably it was him who helped my father to get that job. I guess that my father was educated in the sphere of timber industry, but I know nothing about the College he graduated from.

Later (after NEP 1 was abandoned) all foreign firms were closed, and my father found a job of a goods manager at the Krasnaya Zarya factory (I got to know about it much later). [Krasnaya Zarya factory was founded in 1897 and produced telephone sets.]

And here in Russia my father did not forget his musical knowledge. We arrived in Leningrad in 1933. We lived near Fontanka River and there was a Club named after Kalinin 2 next door. Like in other houses of culture they arranged different meetings including cinema shows. Different orchestras used to give small concerts before the beginning of cinema shows. And I remember very well that my father organized an ensemble (some sort of orchestra) to perform before cinema shows. He played balalaika.

I remember it very well because father used to take me with him, so that I could watch cinema show. I was absolutely not interested in performances of his ensemble. But to tell the truth, at present I remember only his performances and nothing about those feature films.

My father used to wear ordinary suits (secular).

I know nothing about the way my father got acquainted with my Mom: I was not interested and Mom didn’t tell me about my father much.

My mother was born in Opochka (a town near Pskov) in 1901. Her parents were poor. She finished only 4 classes, therefore it was possible to call her illiterate. But she was very beautiful!

Mom worked as a hairdresser. In the beginning she was a master; later she was appointed a manager of her hairdressing saloon because of her diligence and good service.

My Mom’s circle of acquaintance was rather wide because of her work: several theaters were situated near her hairdressing saloon. One of them was the Bolshoy Drama Theater named after Tovstonogov [it was founded in 1919 and is one of the most popular theaters of the city]. Another one was the Drama Theater named after Pushkin [one of the oldest professional theaters of Russia was founded in 1756]. There was also the Comedy Theater [founded in 1935] situated in Nevsky prospect. Therefore a lot of her customers were actors. Mom knew many actors personally. It was very interesting.

So we lived in that house near Fontanka River since 1933. The house was 4-storied, but later the 5th floor was built for the College of Film Engineers. It was a true mansion with marble stairs and tile floors. In the hall near the front door there was a small door leading to a special room which had been occupied by a door-keeper in the former times. Near the same front door there was a fireplace. I remember copper bars fixing the carpet on the staircase. Later the carpet disappeared, but the bars remained on the footsteps during a long period of time. So it was a real manor-house! To my mind it looked like a museum. Sometimes now I wish to go there and make a glance at it again. You see, I got married and left for another apartment. Later my brother also got married and they changed that apartment for a 3-room flat. At present my relatives do not live there any more.

The house was richly decorated, but we lived in 2 communicating rooms of a communal apartment 3. The apartment was very large, and our rooms were very large, too: about 50 and 25 square meters. And the fretted ceiling was 5 meters high.

We lived there 9 together: father, mother, grandmother, aunt Rive, her husband, 3 brothers of my father, and I. Of course my grandmother placed my aunt and her husband in the smaller communicating room. All the rest slept in the larger room on the floor or in folding-beds.

At that time my parents decided to cabin off (probably they already got to know about the future birth of my brother). But it was not easy to make 3 rooms of 2 communicating ones. We considered it to be absolutely inconvenient to disturb each other passing through the rooms. You see, in our rooms there were 3 windows and in the apartment there was a long corridor. So we used a part of our rooms to lengthen the corridor. We cut 2 doors in the wall and got 3 separate rooms.

My aunt’s husband Grigory Brand was an artist and a restorer. He could paint ceilings using oil paint. We had fretted ceiling. I guess earlier it was pictured, because once when the room was under repair I found there a painting which had been covered with plaster. My aunt’s husband managed to clear that painting and we saw angels and Amours there. All visitors used to hold their heads high and take a good look at it. And it arrested their attention for a long time.

My aunt’s husband told me a lot about his military service in the tsarist army. He said that Jews were not oppressed there. He was an infantryman and they devoted a lot of time to drilling and physical exercises. Many soldiers were not able to pull themselves up, and officers caned them on their backside until they pulled up. But it could not help. The officer used to order my aunt’s husband ‘Well, show them how it has to be done!’ And Grigory answered ‘Yes, Sir!’ He usually demonstrated excellent pull-ups and he was always pointed at by officers as an example. Unfortunately I can tell you nothing about the time of his service. I am not sure if he participated in the WWI, because I do not know how old he was at that time. I guess that he was younger than my grandmother; he seemed to be a coeval of Rive. He outlived my grandmother by many years. He outlived his wife too, but by a short period of time because after her death he took to drinking. After Rive’s death he managed to marry a Russian woman, and I think that after his death she made much money changing his large room for a smaller one.

Our room was 12 square meters large, and grandmother had a larger room. They lived there 3 together: my grandmother, her younger son Emil and one of her elder sons Grigory (he was younger than my father). To tell the truth, Grigory did not live with us: he had been arrested and exiled (we hoped that he would come back one day). Practically I do not remember him, but I remember that he was the shortest in the family.

There was stove heating, electricity and water supply. We had got a large copper gas-bath. We washed in turn: there were 12 rooms in our communal apartment.

The kitchen was very large: about 50 square meters. There was a large tiled gas-stove, but I remember that it was not in use: at that time people preferred kerosene stoves.

Every family had got a little table in the kitchen. And later when they supplied gas and central heating, there appeared 4 gas-stoves: one stove for 3 families.

I remember that we all lived in peace and friendship. Families were large (by the way, at present 2 persons often are not able to get along together). We were less fastidious…

In the day time all adults worked, children were in kindergartens or in day nurseries. And in the evening all members of the families gathered in the kitchen to have supper, because their rooms were rather small for it. They moved tables to the middle of the kitchen making one large table. All people sat at that table eating their own meals and talking about everything.

And children (including me: at that time I was 5 or 6 years old) ran around the table, collecting clips and gathering some tasty things. Adults usually sent us to the corridor. The corridor was very long (it consisted of 3 long parts). We used to ride bicycles in competition with each other…

I do not remember many Jews among father’s or mother’s friends. Most visitors were father’s colleagues or musicians. I remember that talking to them, father often played his balalaika and they argued about something. We (children) were usually sent to the corridor not to distract adults.

Neither my father nor anyone from our family was religious. I mean they never showed it anyhow… I also remember no icons, nothing of that kind. Our family members were indifferent to prays and kippot. I am sure in it because they were communists, especially my grandmother and her sister Rive (they were true revolutionaries, faithful to principles of communists). But! Recently I found a photo of my father where he wore some sort of a badge in the form of magen David (it was fixed to his coat’s lapel).

My grandmother knew Yiddish: she spoke Yiddish with her sister and my Mom.

And I cannot speak Yiddish at all. Unfortunately I did not listen to my grandmother speaking Yiddish to her sister or my Mom. I was not interested.

They did not speak German language. I am sure in it, because nobody of my relatives could help me when I started studying German at school. If they knew, I would have no problems.

All of us were hundred-per-cent Jews. I know that Grigory, the 2nd husband of Rive was Jewish, too. When I was going to receive my passport, authorities asked my certificate of birth from Estonia, where I was born. According to the inquiry Estonians sent us my certificate in Estonian language. It was written there that my parents were Jewish.

My paternal grandmother had got 4 sons: my father Max, his elder brother Jacob, his younger brother Grigory (all of them were adult when they arrived in Petrograd) and the youngest one Emil (he was a schoolboy at that time). Though I was born in Tartu, I remember almost nothing about our life there. We left in 1933.

I already told you that Grigory, my father’s younger brother was arrested before the beginning of the war for some reason and exiled to Kamchatka. Sometimes he sent us letters. Therefore now it seems to me that he was arrested not for political reason. You see, it happened even before the beginning of mass repressions. Besides he was allowed to correspond with his relatives. We often sent him parcels. Many times I watched my grandmother making up a parcel for Grigory. We sent him warm clothes. Unfortunately during the war our correspondence was not maintained (I do not remember the reason).

In 1937 authorities started mass repressions 4. My grandmother’s sons were arrested first. They took all her sons except Emil, the youngest, who was a schoolboy at that time.

Special NKVD 5 Troika (no public trial) sentenced my father and his elder brother Jacob to 10 years of camps without right of correspondence. As we got to know much later (after Stalin’s death) it meant execution (at bottom of fact).

I do not know when Jacob was born. In Leningrad he married a Russian girl Antonina. They had got a daughter. When he was arrested in 1937, his wife changed her surname for her maiden name. I think she also changed their daughter’s surname … At that time a lot of people did it: they were afraid to be relatives of enemies of the people 6. Authorities used to inform former coworkers of every new enemy of the people. I know nothing about Antonina’s profession, but they often visited us and I remember that they were a family of real intellectuals. You see, that was the time of liquidation of Russian intelligentsia. They were engineers, very good specialists. Unfortunately I know very little about them. Asking my Mom, I tried to learn something only about my father. Of course I had to ask more… 

Jacob was the 2nd to be arrested in our family. Grigory was the 1st one among my grandmother’s sons. In 1937 it became clear for us that my father was in danger, too.

At that particular time (I remember it quite well) Misha Kushnarev, a cousin of Rive came to visit us and had a talk with my father. He said ‘Max, things look black; you are near to be arrested.’ Misha worked as an engineer in the sphere of timber industry (somewhere in Leningrad region). He said ‘You should leave. You should come with me, you should disappear!’ My father was very stubborn, he answered ‘I am not guilty, there must be some misunderstanding.’ And so on and so forth. So he did not take the advice and you know the result…

Mom told me that my father was very sociable, very cheerful and liked to talk. I guess he had said too much in a company, and somebody informed NKVD against him (somebody who was evil-eyed). But when my father was taken away, we were not informed about any charges against him.

It happened in summer when we were at dacha 7. Father was alone at home. Our neighbors told us later that he was taken at night (we knew that it always happened at night time). They arrived in a black car (people called in Cherny Voron). They used to come together with a street cleaner, and father had to open the door. They made a search. Everything was turned upside down: all linen was thrown out of the wardrobe, all books were on the floor… Our neighbors informed us, and we immediately rushed home…

Mother addressed municipal officials and got to know that father was in the Kresty prison [a well-known prison on the territory of Leningrad]. At first Mom brought father food packages. And then one day they refused to take her package and informed that father was sentenced to 10 years of camps without right of correspondence. We never got to know where he was taken from Leningrad. I told you already that only much later we found out what it meant. My father was hopeful of justice, but alas: at that time there was no justice.

In 1958 my Mom received a certificate of father’s death. It was written there that he was rehabilitated posthumously 8.

In 1992 I officially asked for additional information about my father’s destiny (a victim of political repressions). I received another certificate (archival) in reply to my inquiry. It read that my father had been accused of espionage activity for the benefit of Estonia. In 1938 he was sentenced to execution, and executed by shooting. In 1938 victims of mass repressions used to be buried near Levashevo of Leningrad region. I got no more information about the burial place. Every year I visit Levashevo.

You already know that my grandmother was a merit pensioner of the Russian Federation, an old revolutionary. During mass repressions she was not arrested. I remember her gathering friends at home in the evenings. Probably there were lawyers among them, and they wrote letters to Voroshilov 9 and Zhdanov. [Zhdanov Andrey (1896-1948) was a Soviet communist party figure, a close companion-in-arms of Stalin.] They considered them to be important persons, worth to pay their attention to the facts. The answer was usually formal: do not worry, all circumstances would be investigated, innocent people would be released, guilty persons would be punished.

In 1940 my grandmother died from rupture of the heart. She was a hypertensive patient and suffered much...

After father’s arrest in 1937 Mom had to work hard at her hairdressing saloon. She came home very late: it was necessary to earn money to feed children.

I remember that we never were rich. Possibly if we remained in Estonia we could have lived better… But we moved to Leningrad.

Authorities could have banished us from the city: a lot of family members of enemies of people had been banished to Siberia or to Kazakhstan. One day they said ‘We are leaving.’ And that was all. Nobody knew where they moved… Fortunately we remained in Leningrad (I think due to my grandmother’s merits).

On a lower floor there lived a family of Charles Shreder, a German engineer. I studied in the same school with his children (they were 3 or 4). I remember that the youngest boy had 6 fingers on his hand and used to show it everybody (he was little: 3 or 4 years old). One day I came to them and saw them very much upset: they had to leave. They were not arrested, they only had to leave somewhere: to Kazakhstan or to the Far East (to uncrowded regions). It was awful: people usually were taken directly to woods and given spades to dig earth-houses for living... It happened before the beginning of the war, in 1938 or 1940. Later I heard nothing about them.

A lot of foreigners lived in our house. Our neighbor in the flat overhead was an engineer from America. He had got a family and lived in a large room. I knew that engineer’s son, we called him American. He was very orderly, self-restrained, and quiet. Besides he wore boots, long socks and shorts. Here nobody wore those things. We were dressed like tramps, we ran and shouted! He was absolutely different. I do not understand how we managed to become friends. He invited me to visit their apartment. There I saw different electric toys (for example, a toy railway which we could only dream about!). I remember that when I was going to visit them, Mom used to say ‘Don’t forget to say Good evening!’

His father, an engineer used to smoke a pipe. I remember their large room: one half of it was occupied by the engineer (his secretaire, his desk): he used to work there smoking his pipe. And we played in the opposite corner. In the middle of the room there was a large table separating 2 parts of the room.

In our communal apartment there lived two Germans. The woman’s name was Elza (I do not remember her surname). She helped me in mathematics. Later they left Leningrad. They were not arrested. Probably they were German citizens and worked in Russia according to contract.

In fact there were many foreigners working in Russia at that time. There were Englishmen, too. I read the book by Evgenia Ginzburg (she was an active communist party figure). She wrote there that many Germans (foreign communists) had been taken to Stalin’s camps. She did not explain the reason.

At present I got to know a lot from different books. I read there that mass repressions started in 1935. In 1935 authorities arrested communists who participated in Trotsky 10 and Bukharin coalition. [Bukharin Nikolay (1888-1938) was a well-known Soviet state and party figure.] And at school teachers told us that they were parricides. In fact the charges were trumped-up: Stalin wanted to destroy the old guards, who created the USSR. Stalin destroyed people without distinction 11, and engineers, too.

At present I read much. I always liked to read books, but now a lot of things move me to tears (I am old!). Authors of the books I read speak about many people lost during Stalin’s repressions. People know about them almost nothing, only the fact that they were banished.

Time was getting on. The war burst out.

Most probably my father’s elder brothers were executed by shooting. Grigory stopped sending letters to us (I guess he was also killed in the camp). Nobody of them was found alive.

Only Emil, my grandmother’s younger son remained with us. Shortly before the war he finished his school (he was 18 years old). It was a good boy: he could draw very well, he studied very well. He was drafted. He went to the local military registration and enlistment office and what a surprise! They called him to serve in the navy. Why? He had got a congenital heart disease. Nevertheless… He showed us his new identity card with an anchor and a star.

Emil was appointed a political officer 12. During the war we corresponded. In 1943 he fought somewhere near Leningrad. Emil loved my younger brother very much. He used to send us his ration certificate. I keep one of those certificates till now.

In 1943 we received a notification that Emil was wounded, died and was buried in the town of Pitkyaranta [in Karelia]. My younger brother (before his departure to Israel) and I visited Pitkyaranta twice. There is a common grave, but we did not manage to find Emil’s name. We went to the local Ispolkom 13, showed them a letter (a notification about Emil’s death in Pitkyaranta). They promised to inscribe Emil’s name on the stele (all victims had to be named there). We promised to check the result later, but did not manage: my brother left for Israel, and it is too much for me alone.

War began in 1941 when I was 12 years old. Mom said that at that time I was a typical idler (capricious and unmanageable child). I think I was simply spoilt: I had got too many tutors… Before the war burst out I finished 4 classes. Our form-master Ekaterina Nikolaevna, a very good teacher used to say that I was very lazy, but very capable. Nobody could set me on the right track. In the 4th form our math teacher considered me to be a dunce and tried to beat me on my head with a ruler.

In 1941 we hoped to start our school studies. But one clever local official decided to evacuate children of different ages to the Leningrad suburbs (later I read about it in a newspaper). Children were placed in pioneer camps 14. It happened in August, possibly authorities were afraid of bombardments. I guess they believed that the war would be finished quickly (like the Soviet-Finnish War 15) and children would return home soon. But in fact everything turned out tragically. I remember that in the pioneer camp we spent about 2 months. And then one day Germans appeared very close to our camp… I am not sure that they understood who we were, but they started bombing and firing upon us as if we were a military unit. Our teachers jumped out of their cottages and shouted ‘Children! Run into the wood! Germans are here!’ And we ran in various directions into the wood. We never returned to the camp because we were very frightened, ran very far away and lost our way.

I found myself in a group of 7 or 8 children. Among us there was an elder girl. We weaved our way through the forest. At last we came up to the railroad and argued about the way to choose. Younger children got tired and started to cry ‘We want to eat! We want to sleep!’ Hobbling, we reached a railway station. There we saw a troop train ready to move to Leningrad. We asked soldiers to take us with them and described our situation. What could they do? The train commander agreed. Soldiers gave us food and the train moved. It moved very slowly because Germans controlled most roads. We arrived in Leningrad in the morning. Moscow railway station was situated not far from my home and half an hour later I already was at home.

My younger brother also was in a pioneer camp in the suburb of the city. After my return home Mom rushed there and managed to bring him home safely. So for us that was the beginning of the war, blockade 16 and starvation.

From the very beginning of the war we got to know about fascist atrocities. We read newspapers. As for me I was subscribed to Leninskiye Iskry [a Soviet newspaper for pioneers], then to Komsomolskaya Pravda [a Soviet daily newspaper for youth audience] and later to Leningradskaya Pravda. We also listened to the radio. By the way, we used to know about bomb raids and bombardments from the radio (we also heard factories, steam locomotives, and automobiles honking in the beginning of bomb raids). On the radio they informed us about atrocities of fascists: probably informers were people who managed to escape from encirclements, came from partisan detachments, or gave information from occupied regions.

• During the war

So the war burst out and we all remained in the besieged Leningrad: my younger brother Mark, Mom, my aunt Rive, her husband and I. We managed to survive during terrible starvation.

After the beginning of the war, people were ordered to liquidate all wooden constructions which could be burnt by fire-bombs. And in our yard there was a laundry (a wooden house). Yard keepers were mainly women (men were at the front), therefore boys of my age and older helped to demolish that building. We worked under direction of the yard keepers: leaned our weight upon the walls. We also had to paint wooden joist ceiling with special compound and prepare containers with water and sand in case of fire-bombing. Earlier we played, but during the war we had to work.

Later we got another job: to check blackout of windows. At that time in Leningrad electricity supply was still in order and we had to go around our house and check the blackout. If we noticed light, we ran to that apartment and informed our housemates. People listened to our requirements, because our lives depended on it. We were on duty almost every evening and it was interesting for us, because at that time we had nothing else to do and it was our responsibility. We were engaged in it till the beginning of winter when authorities cut off electricity supply.

At first they cut off water supply, and we had to bring water from Fontanka River (the gradual descent to the river was near our house). Adults made there a hole in ice. I used to take a long serving spoon and a three-liter bottle. Water was rather deep there in the hole, therefore I had to kneel on ice and draw the water. I remember that people stood in line to take water.

When the electricity supply was cut off, people thought out the so-called Leningrad wick lamps: a small bottle with kerosene (kerosene was on sale all the time) and a wick. I perfected the construction by using a toy metal wheel with a hole for fixing wick. People also had no firewood. We burnt chairs, tables, etc. Later we started burning books. We had a lot of them. I especially remember one book Maugli (it was large and colorful, its paper was of high-quality, its cover was red with beautiful gold stamping). The book was of great value for me; but one day I had to permit Mom to burn it, because she wanted to make tea…

At that time my brother attended a kindergarten: I took him there early in the morning and took him back home at 6 o’clock in the evening. Parents gave kindergarten employees their children’s ration cards and they arranged 3 meals a day for children. But it was necessary to give Mark something to eat in the evening when he came home (Mom managed to give him something, I do not remember what exactly). My brother kept himself to himself and was sleepy all the time: he could sleep both in the sitting and standing positions. At that time we all were sleepy and hungry, but I managed to keep control upon myself due to my important duties: I had to go shopping, bring water and firewood (in bombed-out houses we used to collect everything that could burn, including wall-paper).

Once in winter (in February) people could not get their ration of bread during 3 days. The reason was unknown: shop assistants explained that fascists had destroyed waterpipe by bombing. I guess it was not the reason, because people took water from Neva, from Fontanka and I think the employees of bread-baking plant did the same. People were informed about nothing, in spite of the fact that radio worked 24 hours a day. People stood in line near bakeries hoping to get bread. They stood 3 days and 3 nights: at night they did not leave for home because they were afraid to loose their place in line. People suffered much, because most of them were already exhausted and it was very frosty at night.

I remember myself standing in line near bakery keeping our ration cards in my right mitten. I was very sleepy and rested my back against the counter. I felt nothing, but when I woke up, I found out that my right mitten disappeared. I cried ‘Oh! Where are my cards?’ I searched the bakery for the mitten, but uselessly. I became very anxious, because the month was only in its first decade. I could not imagine myself telling Mom that I had lost the cards. Probably if Fontanka River was not covered with ice, I would have committed a suicide... I went along the street and cried. When I came home, Mom was at home. I said ‘Mom, kill me: I lost our ration cards!’ Mom embraced me, we cried together, and then she said ‘Well, we have to survive…’

At that time people had no stocks. But Mom knew that in Leningrad there was a black market where it was possible to buy bread for jewelry. In the beginning of the war many people voluntary gave their jewelry to authorities to help the army. Mom kept small golden wrist-watch in memory of Daddy: he had given it to her as a wedding present. Mom went to the black market and swapped it for 3 kilograms of bread. It saved our lives.

When fascists were going to storm Leningrad once again, authorities decided to evacuate mothers with 2 or more children. Therefore in spring of 1942 we were evacuated.

We received an order to be ready for leaving. A car brought us to the railway station. And we left, though we did not want to. We already heard about the Road of Life, knew that it was regularly bombed… Earlier it was on a voluntary basis, but at that moment we were ordered to leave and had to obey. Of course it was up to Mom (we were ready both to stay with her in Leningrad and to follow her everywhere).

In evacuation we were in Bashkiria, in a local village called Malomeleus (it was situated near the city of Belebey). [Belebey is situated 180 km far from Ufa.] In that village people burnt wood for heating. My brother and I had to chop firewood, and Mom worked. Local people showed us (boys) how to saw and cut wood. Mom worked as a hairdresser, but there was no hairdressing saloon, she had to go from one house of the village to another and offer her services. Not many people agreed… They used to give her food or clothes for her services.

Later I worked in the field: harrowed. We worked together with local guys, elder boys of 16 or 17 years old were our leaders. All the boys were good friends.

Evacuated people were given American humanitarian help: we received a lot of clothes. It was just in time, because we had already worn out our clothes. I got yellow trousers. Local boys ran after me crying ‘American!’ (they wore linsey-woolsey clothes). In reply I threw stones towards them, because they bothered me very much. Certainly I did not want to hurt anybody.

Later we moved to Bishbulyak town, because Mom was a hairdresser and nobody needed a hairdresser in the village. In the town she worked in the club where they showed movies every evening. There we lived a little bit better, because they gave a vegetable garden at our disposal. And we cut wood ourselves as we did before.

In evacuation I studied at school 2 years. I studied in winter, and worked in summer. We left for evacuation in 1942. There I repeated the 4th form (they checked my knowledge and found out that my level was rather low) and finished the 5th and the 6th ones. When we returned to Leningrad, it seemed to be too late for me to go on studying.

In evacuation Rose (wife of Mulya, my mother's brother) and her little daughter Raya lived with us for some period of time. Raya was about 4 years old at that time. At first they were evacuated to Kara-Kalpakia [autonomy of Uzbekistan]. Rose’s surname was Vareyatova (the surname of my mother’s brother and my mother’s maiden name). Rose’s husband perished at the front line. Raya was ill. They corresponded with us and Mom invited them to us (to Bashkiria).

They lived with us about a year. But Rose did not like it, because she could not find a job. You see, she was a fashionable dressmaker. But who was interested in fashionable underwear at that time? Besides there was no fabric at all (only sackcloth).

• After the war and recent years

After the end of the war we got to know that my mother's mother who remained in Estonia (she refused to leave for evacuation because of her age) had been betrayed by her neighbors. When Germans occupied those territories, they started to destroy communists and Jews. Grandmother did not look like a Jewess (she was very old and gray-haired), but someone informed fascists that she was Jewish. They came and took her away. This information came to us from Rose, who returned to Estonia after the end of the war. I do not know who told her about grandmother. In Estonia they did not and do not like Jews in contrast to other western countries.

Raya graduated from the Pedagogical College and became a teacher. Later she worked in the district communist party committee. She was a Komsomol 17 member and later a Communist Party member.

I was already adult and more or less independent when I spent my first summer holiday with them. I do not remember how old was Rose at that time, but we were in touch with her, we corresponded. She often visited us together with Raya. In fact it was not a problem to go to Estonia from Leningrad: we used to go there by bus (no visa was required, because Estonia 18 was of one of Soviet Republics). Much later when Rose died, we attended her funeral…

We were in touch with Raya for a long time. She married a Russian guy, they had got 2 children. The boy’s name was Igor and I do not remember the girl’s name. Raya’s surname was Zhanzharova. When everything was balled up [Perestroyka 19 in Estonia, Estonians started oppressing communists and Russians and people wanted to run away from Estonia. A lot of them arrived in Russia. But Raya had got friends abroad and decided to leave for Canada together with her children. Unfortunately she suddenly died from heart attack. We attended her funeral together with my brother, who is in Israel now. But Raya’s children did left for Canada. We lost touch with them… Much later my brother’s daughter found them through the Internet, they corresponded and already visited Raya’s children in Canada!

My mother’s sister Alexandra was married to Eugeny Shuster. They had got 2 children: Roman and Simon. Simon, the younger brother died during the war. Before the war he studied at the musical school (he played the violin). When the war burst out, he started working as a milling-machine operator at a plant. When the blockade began, all plants were evacuated, and his factory moved to Chelyabinsk. There he could not survive under unbearable conditions (he was only a boy, mamma's darling) and decided to run away from Chelyabinsk to Leningrad. They caught him on his way and sent to penal battalion [penal battalions consisted of military men who committed crimes during wartime], where he was killed. You see, the boy was considered to be a deserter!

Roman was a student of the 3rd course when he was drafted in 1939. He finished a school of younger commanders and fought at the German front line and later in Japan 20. When we finished war against Germany, our armies were moved to Japan [the interviewee is mistaken: they moved to the Far East, Soviet armies never were in Japan]. Roman returned home with a lot of military awards. I remember that he was an orderly of a high commander. After the end of the war he started working at the Leningrad cartographical factory. He considered himself to be too old for studying. All his life long he worked. Recently he became a pensioner, but unfortunately while crossing the street he was run over and died. Roman was married to a Russian woman, but they divorced long time ago (he did not marry for the 2nd time). He had got a son Anatoly Shuster. Anatoly lives in St. Petersburg. He is married to a Jewess.

I do not remember when aunt Alexandra arrived in Leningrad. I remember her and her husband well because we often visited each other. She stayed in Leningrad during the blockade. Aunt Alexandra received an award for defense of Leningrad: she was in fighting battalion 21 (they put out fire bombs on city roofs).

Alexandra died in 1980s and her husband died in 1975.

When we arrived in Leningrad after evacuation, we placed ourselves at aunt Alexandra’s room, because our room appeared to be occupied. At that time Roman was still in the army. They lived in a 2-room communal apartment (occupied 1 room). And next door there lived Valya, a girl whom Roman married later. She was very nice and I often gave her the look. I was 16 years old, and she was older (maybe 20). She was very sociable and we frequently talked about nothing.

Rive, my grandmother’s sister survived the war: she evacuated from Leningrad in February 1942 (through the Road of the Life 22), but I do not know where they went. Rive together with her husband returned to Leningrad in autumn of 1945.

We were in evacuation till 1945 and then returned to Leningrad. At that time it was possible to be hired for disassembling blockages in Leningrad. Recruiters made contracts and gave people advance payment. So we signed a contract. You know that only Mom was able to work there, but we all were hired. I do not know how she managed to arrange it (possibly she bribed the recruiter or did something else). That was the way we returned to Leningrad 23.

When we returned to Leningrad, it was difficult time for us, because our room had been occupied. We lodged at mother's sister and they had only one room. We slept in the kitchen, in the corridor, everywhere. You see, our room (warm and cozy) was occupied by a woman (our former neighbor). We were at law with her during all summer long. We still had our residence permit 24 and had the right to get our room back. We successfully got it back and moved from Rive’s place to our empty room.

Mom told me ‘You should continue your studies.’ But I was already 16 years old. I answered ‘Mom, I’ll enter an industrial school.’ [Industrial schools gave young people who finished 7 classes a worker’s profession.] I went there myself, while at that time a lot of young people received an order from authorities to become a student of an industrial school.

I realized that it was necessary to help Mom earning money for living. She worked as a hairdresser and her salary was not adequate to support our family. Mom cried when I told her about my decision. She asked me to enter a technical school and promised to do her best to make both ends meet. [Technical School in the USSR and a number of other countries was a special educational institution preparing specialists of middle level for various industrial and agricultural institutions, transport, communication, etc.] But I refused: technical schools offered a small stipend and industrial schools gave students packed meal. So I made my decision (it happened in 1945).

I remember that when I came to the local communist party committee to get a permit, they were very surprised: a Jew was going to study at industrial school on voluntary basis! I explained them everything regarding financial situation in our family. I said that I wanted to help my Mom.

I had some plans. Before I made that decision I got advice from some elderly men. They said that wood or metal turner was a very good profession: I would have large salary and there would be no need to get higher education.  I understood it, but planned to work and become a part-time student.

Well, indeed I was the only Jew at our industrial school. I know that Jewish families were skeptical regarding working class.

At my industrial school and later in the army I came across no manifestations of anti-Semitism. Soldiers in the army sometimes laughed at me, but friendly. But later (I am sure in it!) my nationality 25 played a trick on me. I was sent to penal battalion and found myself among young guys who had been not lucky to be on the occupied territory. They told me that during the war they were forced by Germans to serve in police under the threat of execution. Most of them were 16-19 years old at that time. Later they gave themselves up on voluntary basis, but were taken to the penal battalion. They laughed ‘We know the reason why we are here, and what about you?’ At that time it did not come to my mind that it could be connected with my item 5. It was necessary to fight there (in the penal battalion) and for me it made no difference.

Now I realize that my item 5 influenced my life greatly… Perhaps it was additional minus to my status of a member of family of the enemy of people. I never told anybody about my father. I hoped that most people would not rake over the dust and ashes of my past. If I was asked about my father, I answered that he had been killed in fights with fascists. Probably, real facts were recorded somewhere in my documents and interested people were able to find them, but the rest were not concerned. For instance, at our industrial school people did not care. To tell the truth, it surprised me a little: our school was situated at a military factory. That factory was a former shipyard, adjoining the Admiralteysky dockyard [the Admiralty dockyard was founded in 1704]. At that time our factory produced submarines - so it was in the secret list. Of course they had a valid reason not to admit me into the school. Probably I was a small fry for them. Anyway it happened.

I finished my industrial school and got the 5th grade (rather high for a final-year student of industrial school). My school-leaving certificate was full of good marks (do you remember my school teacher of mathematics?), because I liked studying at my school!

Due to my 5th working grade I got draft deferment. Therefore I was called up for military service at the age of 21, when all draft deferments were cancelled by authorities. I already told you that they sent me to a penal battalion - and I know nothing about the reason.

In the army I was a private. My fellow and I got axes and arm-saws. We were taken to the forest and got an order to cut 8 cubic meters of wood. Every day.

All my life long I went in for sports. I liked different kinds of sport and managed to get the 2nd category in track-and-field athletics and the 1st category in skiing.

In the army my physical fitness was of great assistance for me. At first we (together with my partner) could not fulfill our norm. Our political officer said ‘I see that your team works rather badly.’ And he took my partner away from me. Instead of him he gave me another guy, a real muscleman. That guy looked at me appraisingly and said ‘He will not be able to follow my working pace.’ I was silent. And the political officer said ‘Try him!’ So we started. I decided not to ask for his mercy until he himself stopped sawing. At last he became covered with sweat, I was wet also, and both of us got tired. But I won. Later he said ‘I never expected it from a guy like you’.

To tell the truth, I looked rather weak: I was only 1,68 m high and my weight was 60 kg… But probably sport works wonders. For example, in order to ski 15-20 kilometers you need both spirit and strength. I liked sport. I considered skiing to be sport for horses. I dreamed to become a coach (to enter a school for coaches at the Leningrad College of Physical Culture named after Lesgaft). [Leningrad College of Physical Culture named after Lesgaft was founded in 1896.] But in order to become a student I had to finish 7 classes. After my army service I went to the 6th form (again) of the evening school. By the way, later I did not manage to enter the College of Physical Culture, because I failed at the Russian language examination. But my achievements in sports were much better.

After 3 months in the army during the evening roll-call an officer suddenly read out an order: ‘Private Eirus is placed under the orders of the Leningrad military department beginning from tomorrow morning.’ Soldiers’ eyes started from their sockets. The same was with my eyes. What was the matter? The point was that all qualified workers from our factory had been drafted and the factory failed to fulfill the production plan. The director was reprimanded. He tried to explain that the factory lacked qualified workers and authorities brought all of us back to the factory. It happened in 1951.

After that I worked at our factory. Meanwhile I finished 10 classes. Then I entered and 6 years later graduated from the Timber College (evening course) in 1964. I decided to tread in my father's steps. I expected to be sent somewhere according to mandatory job assignment 26. But they gave me my diploma and let me go to the four winds. I found a job of engineer-designer and worked at different research institutions.

On graduation from my College I got acquainted with my future wife. We are still married. We have got a son. My wife Margarita Goldina was born in Khabarovsk in 1938. She graduated from the Sanitary College in Leningrad. She works as a department head at a regional sanitary and epidemiologic station. I got acquainted with her when I was 35 years old: I had no time earlier. 

My wife’s mother Maria is Russian. She worked in hospital as a doctor. My wife’s father Efim Goldin was a Jew from Mogilev, a retired lieutenant colonel. All his life long he worked in the Far East. He knew Japanese language very well. He used to say that it was Japanese language that saved his life when a lot of professional soldiers suffered from repressions. Efim was able not only to speak, but also to make leaflets, write newspaper articles in Japanese, he also worked with prisoners. Efim knew that if he was in Leningrad, he would have been arrested for sure. He served in different regions on the country; therefore my wife (being a little girl) studied at different schools in great number of towns. By the way, it engraved in my mind that there was a period in their life when they lived in Birobidzhan 27.

Family of my wife observed no Jewish traditions, because her father was a political worker and a military man. They were absolutely not religious. You see, civilians were able to have private life, but political workers were treated more strictly 28, especially in the army. Military men use to live in military camps together with their families. Very often their families live in the same house with families of other officers as in large communal apartment; therefore it is difficult to keep secrets. And we must take into account that at that time there was a terrible number of informers. Anyway my wife came from not religious family.

At first I worked at the Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering. There I had problems with the chiefs. My work was interesting. I was fond of new industrial technologies and I worked in the department of new technologies. I already chose my future dissertation topic and it was approved. I only needed to make an agreement with the head of laboratory, because it was necessary for me to have access to laboratory for carrying out tests.

I addressed the laboratory chief with a suggestion to change my working place for his laboratory. He asked me about the reason. I answered frankly that I was going to write a dissertation and it was necessary for me to work on vibrating machines. He refused. I guess my item 5 played its role. Besides he was a PhD and was afraid of rivals. You see, I heard rumors about him: he was that sort of a department head who had to receive and approve suggestions of different development engineers in his duty bound. People said he collected a number of those innovations, summarized and gave himself out to be the real author of them. I think it was possible. 

This story had its background. Some time before I suggested my first invention. Talking to him, I hinted that I had no objection to his participation in my work. I said that I appreciated his experience. In fact it was an invitation to become my co-designer. He seemed to agree and took my data. But several months later when I reminded him about our talk, he said ‘No, we will not work together. We will submit our ideas separately’.

In our Institute there was a Patent Department, where employees checked every invention before applying for a patent in Moscow. The process of checking usually took about a year and covered both our country and foreign ones. Regarding my first invention, I made that check together with my coworkers earlier and the Patent Department employees knew me very well. One day they called me and informed that they received another application for patent from that laboratory head. They said that the topic was very similar to mine. They also asked me why I was not present in the list of authors. I visited the Department and found out that he took my idea as a basis and added some details! Point at issue! But as I had registered my invention first, the Institute director decided to send my application first.

So the laboratory head nursed a grievance against me, in spite of the fact that I had invited him to become my co-author. It was him who appeared to be unscrupulous! And certainly he started to press me. I understood that it was time to leave the Institute. And I left my service.

Later (since the beginning of 1970s) I worked in different institutions, I already told you about it. I have six copyright certificates. But it brought me no profit...

When my brother left for Israel (it happened approximately in 1996), he called me to follow him, but I refused. The point is that I am an engineer and I like to work. In the beginning of 1990s (when Perestroika came) they simply knocked me out from the institute and said that I could take comfort in my pension (at least), while many other people had got nothing. But I considered myself to be still able to work; I considered my head to be still worth something. You see, in fact Israel is a large village! They have no industry: mainly rural economy. They certainly try to regulate, but it is very difficult for them. Even now when my brother comes to visit me (he usually does it every 2 years), he says that it is very difficult to find job in Israel.

Germany is absolutely different. Everybody knows that it is a hi-tech industrial country with advanced exact science. I wanted to go to Germany. It also happened many years ago: approximately when my brother left for Israel. Germany offered to cover traveling expenses and free-of-charge accommodation. At present it is better not to go there: it is useless. Recently a friend of mine had to come back from Germany: welfare payment was the only income she could get there. But those people, who managed to leave for Germany earlier, live there much better. I remember a lot of people standing in line to get into the German embassy! At that time I wanted to leave for Germany together with my son. But later everything changed: my son found good work and decided that it would be silly to give up his new work.

My son Igor was born in 1964. He finished 7 classes, then technical school. He was sent to work at a car pool. But later he changed it for a bread-baking plant. He worked there as a driver till Perestroika. At present he repairs automobiles at a privately owned car repair service: it means that his salary is high. He is married for the 2nd time. And I have two grandsons; Alexey and Mikhail (Alexey is by my son’s previous marriage). His wife’s name is Elena.

And my brother and his family live in Israel. They are very pleased to have left. At present we are often informed about firing in Israel. I suggest my brother’s family to come back if they are frightened. They answer ‘No, we’ll never return!’ They left about 10 years ago, when Israel already became independent. Sorry, I am not sure about the Israeli historical events: I do not keep my eye on it...

My brother’s daughter Julia was the 1st to leave for Israel. She graduated from the Architectural College. [The Architectural College was founded in 1832.] She started working at the beginning of Perestroika and soon realized that she had no future there as an engineer. She also had nobody in sight regarding marriage: all men around her were married.

Here in St. Petersburg we used to receive appreciable assistance from the Hesed Avraham Welfare Center 29: food packages and medical care. But it depends on your pension: the poorer you are the greater assistance you get. To tell the truth, since my pension had been increased (I have a status of the former citizen of the besieged Leningrad), I did stopped addressing the Hesed Center.

We never received any assistance from Germany.

• Glossary: