Travel

Yakov Honiksman
Lvov
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Orlikova
Date of interview: December 2002

Yakov Honiksman, a Professor of History, lives in a cozy apartment in one of the nicest districts of Lvov near the Polytechnic College where he taught history of economy. There are many history books in his apartment. Yakov always reads lots of books. He is an author of a book about the Holocaust in Lvov region. He is a scientist and a very busy man. He still works a lot, writing books and studying historical sources. Therefore, I could hardly convince him to spend more time with us since it was a problem for him to find time for this interview in his busy schedule. He has the selective memory of a man of science. He doesn't keep in his memory, anything he believes to be insignificant. Yakov has a distinctive manner of speaking, but he has a strong Polish accent. Yakov and his wife Rita are very nice and hospitable people.

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Married life
Glossary

My family background

Lublin town, where my parents lived, is one of the oldest Polish towns - it was mentioned back in the 10th century - on the Bystrzyca River in the southeast of Poland. The first information about Jews goes back to the 14th century. At that time a district where Jews settled was founded: Piaski zydowskie ['Jewish sands' in Polish]. Jews were tradesmen and craftsmen: tailors and leather specialists. Gradually the size of the Jewish population increased and at times it constituted almost half of the population of the town. Big, beautiful synagogues were built. Lublin was called 'Yerushalayim de Polin' - Polish Jerusalem. Jews owned bakery and leather industries that were the most profitable of all. Throughout the history of Jewish residency in Lublin there were anti-Semitic demonstrations, Jewish pogroms and periods of unfriendly attitudes of the Polish population. At the time when I was born, in 1921, the Jewish population constituted 37,337 Jews, 35 % of the population.

My paternal grandfather came from the small town of Krasny Stav in Lublin province. People told me that residents of this town were beekeepers. By the way, Jews kept bees and sold honey during the period of feudalism. I guess, my great-grandfather was in this business. His last name Honiksman, or Ghoniksman in Polish, comes from 'honik' - honey and 'man' - man. I transliterated this last name into Russian as Honiksman. At the end of the 18th century Jews got their last names from the Austrian Government [Editor's note: Yakov has studied the history of Polish Jews all his life. This is literally what he said, although it is anachronistic]. Wealthier Jews could pay for more beautiful names like Goldman, Zilberman, Rosenthal and poor people got simpler names like Schwester [Smith], Portnoy [Tailor], Stoliar [Joiner] - after their profession, etc. My grandfather died long before I was born. I visited Krasny Stav only once in my life when I was a boy and I didn't care about history then. I don't remember any relatives on my father's side, I don't even remember whether I ever met any of them. In my family we never mentioned my father's relatives.

I am a son of Samuel, Jewish name: Shmil, Honiksman, born in the town of Krasny Stav near Lublin, in 1885. My father couldn't read or write and I believe he didn't even go to cheder where all Jewish boys studied, as a rule. He was a very religious person. He knew many prayers by heart, but he couldn't read his prayer book. My father didn't know how to sign papers and he wrote some sort of o-shaped signs. He came to Lublin when he was very young. He became a cabinetmaker's apprentice. My father was a failure in life. He was poor and often had no job, although he was a good cabinetmaker. He was an amazingly honest and decent man, but he often got into unpleasant situations due to his illiteracy.

I remember, he got an order from a rich Polish master to make a few new pieces of furniture for his rooms. My father took me with him. I was ten years old. I polished some items of furniture the whole day until I fell asleep. At night my father woke me up. As he was taking apart an old table, he unscrewed a leg and found it was a hiding place with valuables, diamonds and gold. My father sent me to the master and gave him everything he found. I remember it as clearly as if it were today: the master gave my father ten zloties. This was also a lot of money for us, but now, after I've lived a long time, I think that being as desperately poor as my father was at that time, I don't think I would demonstrate such utter honesty regardless of my conviction that one cannot touch what belongs to someone else.

My father got married in 1916. I don't know what my father first wife's name was. Their son Haskel was born in 1918 and shortly afterward my father's wife died of typhoid. My father's situation was miserable. They lived in a small room behind a partition in the shop where my father worked. My father had to find a wife immediately since he couldn't cope with the baby alone. The owner of the shop introduced him to a young woman, my future mother: Mina Grinberg, whose Jewish name was Mindlia.

My mother's father Moisey Grinberg was a rabbi in the small town of Ostrow Lubelski in Lublin province. I guess my grandfather was born in the 1860s. I saw him only once when I was four years old, but I remember him well. He was a tall Jewish man with a big half-gray beard. He was handsome. My grandfather was a rabbi of Hasidism 1. He seemed mean to me, as he looked at me in a way that made me feel awkward. Since then I've never really liked Hasidim. I believe the family was very religious, but I know no details. We traveled on a cart to see my grandfather through some woods, through the night. When we arrived in the morning a noisy bunch of Jewish people met us. I remember it well. Ostruv-Lubelski was a small town. I remember a small house that we entered to say 'hallo' to grandfather. I don't know how so many people could fit in it. They laughed and joked and seemed to be taking no notice of my grandfather's strict expression. They spoke Yiddish.

My grandfather's wife died long before I was born. They had many children. I remember his beautiful daughters, but I don't remember their names. His younger daughter was getting married when we were visiting, but all I remember is the noise and enjoyment. This was the last time I saw my grandfather. He died in 1933. I remember his daughters visited him in Lublin. They got married and moved to America in the 1920s. Their brother Max Grinberg, born in 1890, I think, was a tailor. He must have been a good tailor. He moved to New York, USA, when I was born. There he became an activist in the Communist Party. He was an optimist and believed in the Soviet Union. He sent us 5 or 10 dollars on holidays. In 1939 we lost contact with him. My mother told me that my Grinberg cousins were some high- ranking officials in Odessa. In the 1980s I found out that there were party officials with this last name, but I don't know whether they were our relatives. They disappeared. I searched for information about them and it turned out that they were exterminated in 1937 during the period of Great Terror 2; they were exterminated by Stalinism.

My mother was a very beautiful woman. She was born in 1894. Her father gave his children good elementary education. My mother could read and write in Yiddish, knew Hebrew and could understand and speak Polish. She said that they had a teacher from cheder and then they had another teacher that taught them Polish, German and arithmetic. She married a Jewish man from Odessa in 1914. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and rabbi in Lublin. In 1914, when World War I began, my mother's husband was recruited into the army. I guess he didn't have secondary education. My mother heard later that he had married in Odessa. For a Jewish woman that had recently got married this was a terrible thing to hear. My mother felt hurt. However, she was a strong woman. She obtained a permit from the Austrian authorities to cross the Russian border, go to Odessa and demand a divorce from that moron. She returned to Lublin with a certificate of divorce, but she couldn't expect to find a good match. She worked as a seamstress in Lublin for several years and was glad to get a chance to marry my father, a cabinetmaker that had no education and had a baby. I loved my parents and they loved me even more. My parents had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah and a rabbi in 1920.

My mother treated my father's son Haskel with warmth and when he grew up there was understanding between them. Occasionally, when my mother had some free time I saw her reading books in Yiddish. Unfortunately, I never took any interest to ask her what she was reading. My mother's attitude toward religion was more like a tribute to traditions. She followed everything as required by Jewish rules. But when it was a question of something that was necessary for her children my mother could violate any rules or bans. I started to develop tuberculosis and somebody told my mother that I needed to eat pork. She bought cheap ham remains at the market. I liked bread and ham. She would stand in front of me so that my father didn't see what I was eating. She went to the synagogue at Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and Pesach and I remember she blessed and lit candles every Saturday [Sabbath].

My older brother Haskel became enamored of revolutionary ideas when he was very young. He left our home and traveled on his own business. My father often had to search for his whereabouts. He joined the Communist Party of Poland when he was very young. We had our home searched twice. They didn't find anything, but we were told that he was involved in illegal activities. He had some education, but I don't know any details. Later he attended some course at university. In 1937, war in Spain [Spanish Civil War] 3 began and Haskel volunteered to go to the war. Shortly afterward we came to know that he perished. My father went to the synagogue and someone there said, 'Shmil, your son is gone.' Father asked, 'How did he die?' There were shoemaker, tailor and other trade union newspapers in Yiddish. Some newspaper wrote that Haskel Honiksman had perished in Spain in September 1937. Since my father couldn't read, someone else read this to him. He came home and told us this sad news.

Growing up

In December 1922 I, Yankel in Jewish, Yacob in Polish, Yakov in Russian Honiksman, was born. My younger brother Mordekhai [in all languages] followed in 1925. I already studied at cheder. Then I went to a Polish elementary school. My brother also went to cheder and to the same Polish school. We looked much alike. My brother studied well and could have grown into a very decent man.

My sister Faina, Fraida was her Jewish name, was born in 1928. She was a very nice and kind girl. She was always with our mother. In even the hardest times, my mother tried to make her something fancy, altering old clothes to make lovely outfits. When circumstances parted us in 1939, she was studying at the 2nd grade of a Polish school.

We lived in Shyrokaya Street in the Jewish neighborhood near the synagogue. This street as well as many others, was destroyed by Germans in the 1940s. I remember a big yard with large three-storied buildings around. At least they seemed big to me. There were stores and sheds in this yard and we lived there in a room that wasn't designed as a dwelling. We were very poor and didn't have enough food. My mother went to the Jewish community, which provided free meals. My mother brought some rice boiled in beef broth - of course, it was kosher food. I still remember this soup - it was very delicious. Our mother watched Mordekhai and me eat.

Every Friday evening our father covered us with his tallit to bless us. This was a tradition and he always followed it. [Editor's note: this is not the Jewish tradition, but that is what Yakov said.] My mother was the head of the house. She felt her superiority since she was educated and could sign her name while our father had no education whatsoever. I felt more respect towards my mother. I took after my mother. We had a quiet family. There were no arguments. Our father didn't drink. On holidays only, he drank a 50 ml shot of kosher wine. We understood that a Jewish man should keep up standards. Of course, our mother wasn't happy when our father lost his job, she would say, 'Shmil, why aren't you working?', but he just did what he could. Our mother didn't like it that he couldn't provide for the family.

I went to cheder at the age of three. My first teacher's name was Yankel and I also remember my prayers. I remember how I failed to get to the toilet and dirtied myself on the way home. This painful studying lasted until I reached the age of six or seven. It was difficult to study at the age of three. We had classes from 9am to 2pm. Then we had two hours for lunch and then studied from four to seven. We couldn't wait until a day was over and we could go home. We didn't have a carefree childhood. I had a bright memory and at six I knew half of my prayer book by heart. My father was very proud of me. He was very religious. He could only speak Yiddish and could not read. He was so proud, he made me read to his acquaintances. They nodded their heads saying 'alter kop' - an 'old head' in Yiddish [Editor's note: Yakov's father was proud of him and emphasized that he was far advanced for his years]. My father always took me to the synagogue with him. At 13 I had my bar mitzvah in the prayer house where men gathered for ceremonies. My father introduced me and I spoke on the subject of some Biblical story. [Editor's note: it is on the bar mitzvah ceremony that boys are first called up to read from the Torah and then they have to give a lecture about a given section of the Torah.] Everybody liked it and my father was very happy. When my Polish improved I began to help my father do shopping at the market.

When I was six or seven my father decided that I should go to the yeshivah. There was a yeshivah in Lublin with Rabbi Mayer Shapiro at its head [1887- 1934]. He was an outstanding scientist. My father sent me there since they provided meals. I did well at this school. However, since my stepbrother Haskel was under the influence of communist ideas, he thought that I needed to have a general education and my mother listened to his opinion. A year or a year and a half later she sent me to a Polish school. I began to live a dual life. At 7am I left for the yeshivah and at 2pm I arranged my payes behind my ears with invisible hairpins and put my yarmulka in my bag to avoid any mockery from my schoolmates and went to the Polish school. Of course, this dual life couldn't last long. Haskel insisted that I left the yeshivah. When I was ten I quit the yeshivah and just attended the Polish school. My parents had no objections to this. They gave me an opportunity to make my own choice.

I liked studying at this school. There were four Jewish pupils in my class. The rest of my classmates were Polish. Polish children openly mistreated us. I was shortsighted and wore glasses. I sat at the first desk in class. I shared my desk with a short Polish boy. His father was a policeman. My family was poor and when my father bought me a notebook it was quite an occasion for me. The boy messed up my notebook and it happened several times until I began to fight with him. Other boys began to shout, 'Why are you fighting here? Go into the yard' in Polish. We went into the yard where we continued fighting. Other Polish boys shouted, 'Mariam, beat this zhyd' [kike]. Other Jewish boys hid away. When I became desperate I grabbed a piece of steel and hit the boy on the head. He fell down bleeding and a teacher called an ambulance for him. The director of the school called me to his office and said, 'I hope I will not see you again at this school.' I was twelve then. What was I to do? My parents thought I should study a profession, but my father couldn't help me to find a craftsman that would teach me. He only spoke Yiddish and there was no way that somebody in a well-standing shop would even talk to him.

I took my school certificate and went out looking for a job. I had excellent marks in my certificate and spoke fluent Polish and a leather craftsman employed me in his shop. This leather craftsman was a Jew. His name was Zygmunt Zygielwarc. My brother Haskel said to me, 'You are a genius and need to continue your studies.' He talked to my master and I was allowed to continue my studies. I went to the first evening school for working people in Lublin to complete my secondary education. I lived at home. This leather craftsman lied to us. He agreed with my father that I would work as an errand boy for a year until he approved my contract and forwarded it to the chamber of crafts and commerce, but I worked for him as an errand boy for four years and he paid me peanuts for my work.

My father had no luck with his jobs. We didn't pay our rent for four or five months and based on a court order, we were evicted. The owner of our dwelling was a wealthy Jew. My father begged him to let us live in this room, but he refused. An officer of the court and a policeman came to throw our belongings into the yard. We lived in the open air in this yard for three months. My mother earned some money by doing laundry for our neighbors. In 1937 my father rented a room from a 70-year-old Jewish man. He leased his room to us under the condition that my mother would look after him and we would pay 15 zloties per month. We hoped that this room would come into our possession if he died. We had a room in a Polish district, in 86, Krul Liatoshynski Street. This house is not there any longer. Poor Polish workers lived in this district.

My brother Haskel was a communist and brought communist books to our home. We enjoyed reading those books. I worked for this leather craftsman for four years until he fired me. I was 16. My master had three or four apprentices. On 1st May I decided to make a speech and told them that they shouldn't work on this holiday, but go to the working people's demonstration. I made a very emotional speech, but other employees laughed at me and weren't interested at all. However, I continued to demonstrate my revolutionary spirit. At last my master lost his temper and said, 'Just get out and I hope I will never see you again - we could all be arrested for this.'

At about the same time, in the middle of the 1930s, I gave up going to the synagogue. I had observed all holidays and fasted before and had gone to the synagogue with my father, but then I said, 'Father, I'm not going to the synagogue tomorrow,' and the next day was Yom Kippur. My father asked me why and I told him that I didn't believe in what was written in the religious books. I began to prove that there were many discrepancies in the Torah. My father told me to get out of the house. In a couple of days my mother found me at the home of some acquaintances and took me back home.

In fall 1936 I began to attend a school for people working at the plant. My master fired me right before my exams in May 1939. I had another year of school, but I had no money to pay for my studies and so I quit school. Wherever I went to study afterwards I told people that I had a secondary education.

During the war

I had to look for a job. On 1st September 1939 World War II began. Hitler attacked Poland. Of course, we understood that it was inevitable. We read the newspapers and knew about the tension, Hitler coming to power and his attitude toward Jews. All poor people had big hopes for the Soviet Union and so did poor Jewish people. Polish newspapers wrote about Stalin's terror and the famine in 1933 4, but we believed it was bourgeois propaganda intending to blacken the Soviet reality. We only believed what the Communist Party said. All poor people believed that the Soviet Union was paradise on Earth. My friends and I attended underground party meetings and distributed communist flyers and newspapers. We dreamed about communism and equality. However, I didn't continue with this kind of activities since I was busy with my studies and earning money for bread for the family. I remember my mother's brother Max Grinberg wrote us that he had to go to Birobidzhan 5 where people had a just and happy life. I wanted to move to America and wrote him that I wanted to study in America. I hoped to make a good life there after I became a leather craftsman, but he kept saying that it wasn't a good idea. All poor Jewish people thought the same. I was a very active and emotional youth.

On 1st September 1939 our town was bombed. Our small house caught fire. This was at Rosh Hashanah. Older people didn't do anything about it. They kept sighing and praying and I yelled 'Don't pray, just fight the fire!' We 15 and 16-year-olds carried in buckets of water until the fire died down.

Later, it was Sukkot, Soviet troops arrived. How happy and euphoric we were. The first thing they did was loot the Jewish stores. They forced store-owners to open their stores in order to buy what they wanted. We were surprised since Jews weren't allowed to work on holidays. Since nobody knew what Soviet money looked like we accepted some bond paper notes. We didn't understand what was going on, but we still believed that everything was for the better. All Jewish families were overwhelmed with joy. We were happy to live under a red banner.

Our joy faded when in October 1939, under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact 6 between the USSR and Germany, Lublin became a part of Germany. On 17th October Soviet troops left the town and German armies invaded the streets. Germans captured Jews in the streets and sent them to work. I was also captured and taken to work. We loaded furniture from wealthier Jewish families and it was removed to a storage facility. But we were very surprised that when it was time to get a meal we were made to stand in different lines: for Polish and Jewish people. Polish workers got enough bread while we didn't. In a few days we were allowed to go home. My mother said that I had to get away. My friends and I decided to leave.

I remember Pinia Goldberg, my friend. His father was a tailor. He made clothes for villagers. His family was very poor and Pinia had as strong faith in the Soviet Union as I did. However, I was more handsome and active and girls liked me more. Pinia's sister, a dressmaker, was married to a barber. They had children. Their family was poor. We formed a group of 20- 30 people and started moving to the east. There was another assimilated Jewish family with us. I liked their daughter Esther. She was a beautiful girl and had a beautiful voice. She sang on the local radio. We were friends and she joined me. She had a beautiful face. She was 17, the same age as I was.

We were planning to cross the Bug River to get to the Soviet Union. We walked, but after three days the girl fell ill and became feverish. In three days we had to return home. My mother told me again that I had to get away. I regret so much that I left the girl, my brother and sister in the town. They should have come with me. We would have gotten through all the disasters. I left home again on 23rd October 1939. I had a certificate from the evening school with me and when I was stopped I explained that I was heading to my uncle in Brest [a town in Belarus on the border with Poland 180 km from Lublin]. Many people, Jews for the most part, were moving to the east. We walked at night and during the day we found shelter in the woods or abandoned sheds. It was getting colder and it got dark early. I don't remember how long our trip was, but it seemed very long to us.

We reached the Bug River. Someone from our group made arrangements for us to cross the river on a boat that belonged to a Polish villager. I had a gold watch that my parents had given me for my bar mitzvah and my mother had given me her gold earrings for the road. I gave all this for crossing the river. This villager and his neighbor took us across the river on their boats. We had to be very quiet since we were so close to the border. I remember that I found shelter in a chicken-coop. I remember a woman with a baby. Her baby burst out crying and we were afraid that somebody would hear us. I don't know what the mother did: she probably smothered her baby or something. I only remember that she looked terrible afterward, but nobody cared since everyone was thinking about his or her own business.

I remember that we heard patrolling soldiers speaking German. They said that anybody coming close to the river would be shot without prior notice. They left and the Polish villager told us that he had given them all he had gotten from us. We had to pay him again, but I had nothing and some other refugees gave him something for me. We reached the Soviet territory at 4 in the morning. We headed for Brest, the nearest town where we hoped to stay and get a job. We had covered three or four kilometers when a Soviet border patrol surrounded us and ordered us to board a truck. We traveled about 15 kilometers until we reached some headquarters. The commanding officer ordered some villagers to give us food. Then he had a discussion with each of us. They asked me who I was. I showed them my employment record book and told them where I studied and worked. They asked me where I was going. I said, 'To my uncle's.' 'Where does he live?' 'In Brest.' 'What street?' '23, Pilsudski Street.' Of course, I just made it up. They told me I was free to go. They released all the younger people and we went to Brest. Later we heard that some older people had to go back and the Germans executed them as soon as they reached their territory. We walked through the night and reached Brest in the morning.

We didn't have anything with us. We were hungry and went to get free food provided by the local military. I met my friend Pinia who had got there before us. I was very happy to see him. We decided to stay together. We went to the railway station where we stayed overnight. That same night we enrolled on the list for work and in the morning we boarded a train for cattle transportation that moved off with people singing and holding red banners. They knew how to imitate a happy life of workers and peasants. In two weeks we reached Krichev in the east of Mahilyow region, about 150 kilometers from Brest. We got a bowl of soup at the stations provided by the military. I had a mug into which they poured this soup. We were optimistic and enthusiastic. My co-travelers were sent to cement plants, coalmines or wood cutting facilities. I was lucky, as I always had been.

About 25 of us moved on by truck. In the evening we arrived at 'Mayak' kolkhoz 7. We came to the cultural center of the village. It was 7th November [October Revolution Day] 8 and there was a celebration in the center and an optimistic Jewish man was making a speech in front of villagers. His speech was interrupted and we were distributed to the houses of collective farmers. I spoke some Russian that I had picked up back in Poland. My friend and his sister were accommodated in a house of a poor villager while I got accommodation in the house of the wealthiest one. Some time passed, but we didn't get any food. The kolkhoz was supposed to receive some food supplies for us, but this didn't happen. We began to harvest potatoes in a field. It was cold and we were falling ill, but we kept working. I stayed in the house of the director of the kolkhoz shop. He had a daughter. She was 15. Her name was Katia. She was a pretty, but dumb blond girl. I began to help her with mathematics and after about a week she tried to kiss me. I got very angry. Her mother had treated me so well and cared about me. The girl said, 'Mama wouldn't know.'

My friends didn't have enough food and I began to steal some from the house where I lived. Other guys decided to move on. My friend, his sister and her family also left. Later they showed up in Minsk and he found me in the late 1940s. I had some stupid argument with Katia and decided to leave them, too. I had to walk 15 kilometers across a forest. They said there were wolves there so I had matches and some paper with me. Somebody told me that if I bumped into a wolf I had to burn paper to protect myself. I got on a train at the station. There was a conductor who asked me for my ticket. I said I didn't have one. He began to yell at me, but other passengers stood up for me saying that I was a refugee and didn't really understand the language and he finally left me alone. In the morning we arrived at Mahilyow [320 km from Kiev, in the east of Belarus, on the Dnepr River]. There were thousands of refugees in Mahilyow. Somebody explained to me that I wasn't supposed to leave the kolkhoz without a permit, but that I could obtain one at the local executive committee office [Ispolkom] 9. I went there. There was a Jewish man at the head of this office wearing a Stalin hat [a khaki cap popular with many Soviet officials parroting Stalin]. This officer didn't even want to see me, but there were women working there; they sympathized with me. One gave me a bun and another gave me some milk. I told them that I needed a document issued by their office, to allow me stay in Mahilyow. I was there a whole week. I slept at the railway station until those employees got him to sign this permit.

I remember that they allowed me to work as a loader at a garment factory in Mahilyow. I earned 152 rubles. I carried 10 kilogram packages to the fabric cutting shop on the third floor. There were only Belarus loaders at the factory and all other employees were Jews. I slept in old barracks 10 kilometers from Mahilyow. All refugees stayed in those barracks. It was a severe winter and many people got frost-bitten feet. I didn't suffer since I was strong. One of my co-tenants, a Jewish man from Germany, froze to death. He didn't get up one morning in December. I wrote a letter home telling them where I was. I was so concerned about them and hoped to get a letter from them, but there was none. Once I met pretty girls from Vilnius [Lithuania] at the post office. I always liked pretty girls and I began to ask them questions. They told me that there was a course where they trained teachers of history. The next day I went to this teacher's college and told them that I wanted to study. I lied for the first time, that I had a secondary education.

In late December 1939 I passed my exams successfully and was admitted to a group of rural elementary school teachers. I had to work and study. I left my barracks at 4am and walked 10 kilometers to the town where I worked from 7am 'till 4pm and then attended classes. Somebody told me to talk to the management of my college and request a stipend. I did so and was approved to receive a stipend of 175 rubles - that was more than I earned. I also got accommodation in the hostel at 39, Lenin Street. There were five other tenants in my room, Belarus boys. They never asked me about my nationality. They asked me my name. I said, 'Yasha.' I liked it in the hostel. I had a bed with a white sheet. In the morning I attended classes. I had friends and nobody called me 'zhyd.' I liked everything there. I also attended a theater studio for Polish Jews. To cut a long story short, we had a wonderful life.

I didn't have any information about the situation in Poland. In 1940 I received a letter from my mother. There was a photograph of my brother Mordekhai and a short note from my mother. She wrote that she was very happy that I wasn't with them since they were in a very tough situation. She didn't describe any details. There were many refugees at this college. We spoke poor Russian and there was a group of about 20 of us studying Russian. Our teacher was a young Jewish woman. I learned a little, but I could never tell the difference 'pisat' ['write' in Russian, stress on the 'a'] and 'pisat' ['pee' in Russian, stress on the 'i']. It was a puzzle for me. We had to take a Russian exam and I couldn't imagine how I was going to manage. I knew that at best I would still make 20 mistakes while five mistakes was the maximum. My friend Lyova Rotenberg sat with me and wrote a dictation instead of me. I got three out of five for it and passed my exam. All students left for vacations and I stayed.

The rector of my college helped me to get a job. There was a big chemical plant and a recreation center near Mahilyow. I went to work as an entertainer there. I got a wonderful meal: two eggs and bread and butter. However, since I spoke poor Russian they sent me away in two weeks since I failed to do my job. In order to continue my studies I had to take several exams. I went to the library where I learned everything by heart and recited pieces word by word at the exams. Teachers were amazed at my memory and admitted me to the second course of the Faculty of History of Mahilyow Pedagogical College. I was the happiest person in the world: I was a student, had a place to live and received a stipend.

In fall 1940 I had practical training at school. There were young girls in the 9th and 10th grades, staring at me. Once I got a note from a schoolgirl in which she wrote that she knew that I came from Poland and that Jews were oppressed and abused there and that she was happy to meet me and hoped to support me. She was in the 10th grade and I was a 2nd year student. We started seeing each other. She was a Jewish girl and her name was Rosa Sheinina. Her father was the director of confectionery factory. Theirs was a rich family. I began to court her.

Once a teacher of mathematics, a Jewish man, asked me whether I knew Hebrew and Yiddish. I said I did and he offered me a job as librarian at the Jewish library in a small house near our college. I became a librarian and worked from 4pm. I read books and Rosa visited me there. We flirted when there were no visitors. I was happy. I had obtained a Soviet passport by then. It was a 'category 24' passport [Passport 24] 10 It meant that I wasn'tt allowed to reside in 24 large towns. I joined the Komsomol 11 and became an active Komsomol member. I liked taking part in meetings and attending parades on Soviet holidays. My friends and I marched along the main street of the town carrying red flags, portraits of the leaders and posters with communist slogans. We were proud of our country and believed that everything happening was just. I liked the Soviet system and didn't think about any difficulties or contradictions.

This was 1941. I met with Rosa and read books on history in the library. I was passing exams and everything went well. On 22nd June Lyova Rotenberg, another boy and I were taking a walk discussing Russian classics when we heard on the radio that the Great Patriotic War 12 had begun.

We had about five exams ahead of us. Students of our college were immediately mobilized to remove all furniture from a school in the neighborhood where they were going to deploy a hospital. We worked all night. In the morning I went to the college to take an exam in medieval history. Professor Alexandr Kogan from St. Petersburg came to me, hugged me and held me tight for some time. It turned out that all Polish refugees, German teachers and senior students had been arrested at night. I was lucky that I hadn't been in the hostel that night. I don't know - they might have arrested me, too.

I was called into our Komsomol Committee, which enrolled me on the lists of a 'fighting battalion.' We were to capture German parachutists that landed in the area. We got wooden rifles. There were 800 of us in this battalion. We were distributed in groups of three. There were many refugees from Minsk in Mahilyow and we understood that the situation was difficult. I hoped to see my friend Pinia who used to write me from Minsk, but I didn't find him. I also looked for him after the war, writing to various agencies, but I didn't get any information and never found out what happened to him or his sister.

We were sent to the woods near Mahilyow. In a week I found out that there were 24 of us left from the 800. The rest of the fighters had perished. I was so upset, especially that I had never found any parachutists. There was panic and confusion around. I saw an officer shooting two other officers who were retreating. He approached them on a truck and shot them. I returned to Mahilyow where I met Rosa's father. We went to the railway station where he put me on a train. His wife and Rosa were there already. I was evacuated with the Sheinina family. This was 5th July. Our trip lasted for about a month until we reached Chistopol' in former Tatarstan [a small town on the Kama River flowing into the Volga]. Rosa's father was recruited to the army on the way. We were accommodated in a room. Rosa lost interest in me and I had no feelings left and I decided to go to a bigger town. Chistopol' was a small town, overcrowded with evacuated people. There was no job or place to study. I heard there was a barge from Chistopol' to Kuibyshev [today, Samara, a regional town on the Volga, about 2300 km from Kiev. During the war many governmental agencies were evacuated to this town]. I got on this barge. The only luggage I had was a suit that I put in my case. I put this case under my head to sleep on it. When I woke up in the morning I didn't find either the case or the suit there. When I reached Kuibyshev I remembered that this was one of the 24 towns in which I wasn't allowed to reside. When the barge was nearing the harbor I jumped off to avoid document control officers. I decided to find the Pedagogical College.

The Pedagogical College was located at 65, Stepan Razin Street. There were a few people unloading books and I decided to join them. I worked a little and addressed their supervisor. I said I was hungry and he sent me to their canteen where I had a bowl of soup and returned to work. We worked until evening. This same supervisor sent me to Nadia, the manager of their hostel. Nadia accommodated me in a room where I was alone; other students were still on vacation. The next day I went to work again. Then I went to get registered at the college. They admitted me to the third course. I unloaded books until the academic year began and had meals at the canteen. There was only one thing I didn't like: this supervisor Nadia came to my room every night. She was about 30 and I was 19. She was a beautiful woman, but I had other things to think about.

I became a student. I got a residence permit 13 to live in this hostel even though I had a 'category 24' passport and wasn't allowed to live in Kuibyshev. They stamped my passport along with other passports without taking a closer look. Students received 400 grams of bread per day. It wasn't enough for me. The academic year began and then there were six of us in the room. Four were Russian guys from the Volga and one was a Jew. His name was Fima. He was from Mahilyow. He kept himself separate and kept his own food in his locker. There was no anti-Semitism between us, but we didn't really like Fima. Once we broke the lock on his locker, got his bread and pork fat from there and ate it. All Jews forgot kashrut rules and ate what they had. When he came back he began nagging about it. We saw that this shlemazl [a weak person in Yiddish] was worthless. We had no respect for him. He perished on the way to the front later.

My other co-tenants were my friends. In fall 1941 our college began to make a wood storage for winter. We went to an island on the Volga where we cut wood and made rafts for wood transportation. A raft had to be tied to the wood underneath. We had to stay underwater for about ten minutes to make a knot. Once my safety rope broke and I almost drowned. The others rescued me, pulling me out by my trunks. I knew that other guys liked me. Once they invited me to a pancake celebration. [Editor's note: this is the Russian version of mardi-gras, it's called 'maslenitza', from the Russian word for 'butter', maslo. It is usually celebrated in the last week of February when people bake pancakes and organize all sorts of out-door activities; burning the symbolic figurine of winter. Although it is totally pagan, it prefigures the 40 days of fasting, which in turn culminates with Easter.] I had pancakes there. We also worked together in the harbor unloading melons and watermelons. We shared everything we earned or had. We lived like a commune. There were also girls that lived in the next-door room, we involved them and they cooked for us. I was happy living in this hostel. I became deputy editor of our students' newspaper, even though my Russian was poor. I shared my ideas with the editor, a student of the Faculty of Biology, and he wrote the articles.

I met a young beautiful woman at the college. Her name was Tamara and we began to see each other. Later my friends told me that she was married to Professor Aizezian, of Philosophy and that they had a child. I had a problem again. I began to avoid her, but she followed me. She was a refugee from Belarus and her husband was an old Armenian. I had an exam in June 1942. Professor Aizezian was very strict and nobody expected to get a good mark. All students wanted to get higher marks since our stipend was based on how good our marks were. I was sure that he knew that I was seeing his wife. I learned an important lesson from this man. He said only one phrase to me, 'The tragedy of history is that people that had no idea about history took to implementation of great ideas.' He gave me an excellent mark and I never saw his wife again.

We took exams for the third and the fourth year due to a ministry directive which reduced terms of studies. There were five or six young graduate men. We received our diplomas at the military registry office. We were to be sent to the Military Academy in Baku. Once I jumped off a tram between stops and was captured by a militiaman who took my passport. When they found out that I had violated my ban to live in Kuibyshev they put me on the list of the Labor army. We did any sort of hard work. I was sent to work as an equipment operator at a special expedition of the Oil Ministry of the USSR.

I had to join a field group in Kokand [a small town in Uzbekistan, 3,000 km from Kiev]. My journey there took seven or eight days until I arrived at the 'Karakum geological group.' Kokand was a small town on the Sokh River flowing into Syrdarya in Fergana region, Uzbekistan. There were few pise- [rammed earth] walled houses in the town. Uzbek people wore heavy cotton gowns and tubeteika caps that looked like a kippah to me. [Editor's note: tubeteika is a small cap worn by men in Middle Asian countries; it's very much like a kippah.] There were a few Jewish specialists who had come there from the European part of the Soviet Union before the war. During the war the population of Kokand expanded due to the arrival of evacuees.

Camels were the main form of transport. We were to collect yellow stones and some sand and send these to Moscow to be studied . We were told that they were studied to find oil and it was only 20 years later I came to know that they had been looking for uranium. In a few weeks I went into the desert in a vehicle. There were about 200 Tajik and Uzbek people there already. They were wild, uneducated people and I was to be their supervisor since I had an education. I was to explain to them what they were supposed to do. Once every two to three weeks we got food supplies and we loaded stones that we'd collected, to be taken away. Once nobody came for three or four weeks.

We were starving, but we weren't allowed to leave our work area. I took a risk, although I didn't know it was a risk. I asked the workers where they lived and it turned out that the nearest houses were 100 kilometers from where we were. I told them to bring any food they could from their homes. They returned in one week's time and the food they brought lasted for another couple of weeks. When my supervisor came and I told him what I had done, he cursed me and said that I deserved to be shot. I told him that I had to do it to save people and he replied that I could have written them off if something happened. This was when I came face to face with the Soviet mentality. They didn't care about an individual. An individual didn't matter to them.

In fall 1943 I was sent to Moscow to take secret maps there. The head of the laboratory offered me a job in his technical library. I did technical translation work, from German and Polish. I had the status of an employee on a business trip and every now and then I had to return to Kokand. In Kokand I met my first wife. Her name was Ninel Venediktova. I corresponded with Rosa Sheinina and she gave me the address of her friend Ninel, who was a student of a teacher's college in Kokand. I fell in love with Ninel. She was a pretty Russian girl. She was 18. Her mother came from Kiev. She was a business-oriented woman. She went to the Northern areas of Russia to sell fruit from the south; her daughter stayed alone. Ninel's mother was very unhappy that her daughter's boyfriend was a Polish Jew, but when I fell ill with typhoid on my way to Kokand and was removed from the train when I fell unconscious, she took a very active part in my life. She got in touch with my management and got penicillin for me. She visited me in hospital every day.

When I recovered I went back to Moscow. I liked Moscow. I could attend lectures at university and borrow books from the biggest libraries. I met Professor Vladimir Picheta, the Academic [1878 - 1947, Soviet historian, author of works about the history of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, specialist in Social and economic history]. He was an outstanding scientist and author of significant studies. This was 1944, when the liberation of Poland began. I wrote a very important essay for the time. There was an outstanding historian in Poland - Lelewel [Joachim Lelewel (1786-1861): Polish historian, politician and supporter of the November Uprising of 1830. He was an ideologist of the Polish liberation movement, a democrat- internationalist and founded the basics of a number of disciplines in the Polish historical sciences]. Marx was his friend. Nobody wrote about him and I decided to write an essay and showed it to Picheta. Picheta liked the essay and told me to enter his post-graduate school.

I was very weak after having typhoid and due to my health condition I was expelled from the labor troop. I wasn't allowed to live in Moscow. Ninel and her mother returned to Kiev from evacuation. I had to obtain a residence permit to live in Kiev.

I entered Veterinary College in Kiev and obtained a certificate confirming that I was a student. On the basis of this certificate I got registered at the hostel of this college. However, I took no interest in the Veterinary College. I lived in the family of my future wife in a communal apartment 14 in the very center of Kiev. Ninel got pregnant and we registered our marriage on 13th August 1944. I studied in college and worked as a loader at a wood-cutting facility. I wanted to be a teacher, but when I was told that a teacher earned 550 rubles per month - this was the price of a loaf of bread - I went to the university. I had an appointment with the rector of the university. He said that if I were a graduate of their university I could become a post-graduate student. During that year I passed 13 exams and got a degree from Kiev University. There was another rector though, and when I came to see him he said, 'We are encouraging national specialists.' This was April 1945, after Victory Day 15. For the first time I faced state anti-Semitism. I lived in Kiev for a year. I didn't get along with my wife or my mother-in-law. She used to say 'What kind of a Jew is it that cannot provide for his family?' I went to Lvov since I was told that it was easier to get an apartment there.

I arrived at Lvov on 9th May 1945. This was Victory Day. Expecting a telegram from my mother-in-law or wife, I went to the post office and received a telegram that said that I had a daughter and that she was named Victoria - 'victory' in Greek. We were overwhelmed with victory and hoped that life would improve. We believed that everything would be wonderful from then on. The situation was horrible in Lvov. People were arrested and then disappeared. I didn't understand what was going on. People were scared.

My closest ones - my father, brother, mother and sister perished in Lublin ghetto. Only few years ago I found out that they were on the lists of those exterminated in Lublin ghetto on 7th November 1942. I received a document from Lublin confirming that Mordekhai Honiksman and Samuel Honiksman were on the list of those that were exterminated. My mother and sister were not mentioned in any lists. They perished without being included in any lists. I don't even know where their ashes are buried.

I visited Lublin several times in the 1990s. The town had changed a lot since I was last there 60 years before. There is a multi-storied building at the spot where our house was. It became a very different town.

Post-war

In Lvov I went to work at a garment shop, but I didn't like it there. I attended the library of the Academy of Sciences. This was in 1946. I saw a man lying in a tram stop. I thought he wasn't well, but when I came closer I saw that he was drunk. He was mumbling something in Polish. I took him home where he had a big collection of Jewish books. I went to see him the next day. He introduced himself: Professor Tadeus Zadarecki. He was a Polish orientalist, a Professor of Lvov University. He owned a library and needed an employee there. He offered me a job at the library. They spoke Ukrainian there, while I didn't know a word in Ukrainian. They asked me what languages I spoke. I said, 'Polish, Russian, Yiddish and German.' They believed me and in 15 minutes I became a senior scientific worker of the Jewish department of this library of the Academy of Sciences. I quit the shop where I worked. I also lived in this library.

There were two other Jewish employees there. They told me that Zadarecki had a beautiful Jewish wife before the war. She and their child were taken to the ghetto during the war. He tried to rescue them, but they were killed in the ghetto. It was so hard on him that he took to drinking. I began to work at this library on 15th April 1946. I was happy to work there. We collected books from all the ruined Jewish houses and synagogues. We got many books from the Jewish community, which had one of the richest libraries. It's enough to say that there were 43 incunabula's [ancient printed books] before the war that were all stolen. My readers were Jewish intellectuals, writers and scientists. It was the Jewish elite.

My wife joined me in Lvov. We found a three-bedroom apartment, but we still didn't have a good life together. She didn't understand me. In 1947 I went to the Department of History at the Pedagogical College and they employed me as an assistant at the Department of Marxism-Leninism. I kept my job at the library, but my wife didn't find my earnings sufficient. We had arguments and rows with her. My mother-in-law also moved in with us. She became the mistress of our home. She was very good at making money. I left home and lived at the library.

I worked at the library from 1946 to 1948. In 1949, the campaign against cosmopolitans 16 began. All Jewish writers were arrested. I thought I would be arrested, too, since I knew all those people. The library was destroyed. 19 boxes of books were moved to the Academy of Sciences in Kiev. The library ceased to exist. In May 1949 I was declared a cosmopolitan at my college. I didn't know about it since it was announced at a party meeting that I didn't attend since I was a Komsomol member. When my boss saw me in college, he said 'Yakov, why are you here? You could be arrested. Go away. They've declared you a cosmopolitan. You are fired.' I lost my job and expected arrest every night.

I had a friend. He was also a Polish Jew. He worked in an archive and he advised me to get a job at the archive since I knew several languages. I went to see the director of this archive. His wife was a Jew. He looked like a typical man of half-Jewish origin. He took me to a colonel at the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs where I wrote an 18- page letter, requesting them to employ me. In a month I received a permit to become an employee of the archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Lvov. I worked at the logistics department and had no right to enter a sensitive - secret department. [Editor's note: the secret department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs kept materials about political trials, arrests of innocent people, fabricated cases, etc. Residents got partial access to those archives only in the early 1990s.] I did more than I was authorized to and collected a big archive of files for joint-stock companies of the oil industry. I wrote a letter to the Academy of Sciences asking them whether I might write a thesis on the basis of these documents. They replied that these documents could be the basis for both scientific candidate and doctor's thesis. Later the archive got the order 'fire' with no explanation. I was fired and so was another Jew, Grossman. This happened in 1951.

I had no food and no place to live. I lived, at one time, with a Polish countess 15 years older. She was a very beautiful woman, an aristocrat. I learned a lot from her, including manners. I remember her with very warm feelings. She was an artist. I lived with her for six months. Later I heard that she was arrested and sent into exile. I lost track of her.

I found a job as a teacher of history and German language in a village in Lvov region since I couldn't find a job in Lvov. I worked there for nine and a half years. My colleagues treated me well. I became deputy director and then director of this school. I was also responsible for the collection of money for state crediting. It was a mandatory procedure, although newspapers wrote that the population gave money to their country ruined by the war voluntarily. In May, state officers came to institutions and declared how much one owed and if people refused they beat them with sticks. However, I managed to convince people. I joined the Party. I still believed in communism. I didn't understand many things, but I also needed this for my career. I became a representative of the regional party committee for collectivization 17. People respected me. There was another Jew - a doctor. People also respected him.

At the beginning of 1952 another period of arrests began. I was very afraid of being arrested. My wife said, 'We don't need you.' My wife and my mother- in-law spoke against me to my daughter. I was afraid that they might act against me and got a divorce. I was a bachelor for four years. I was desirable as a fiancé throughout this time.

I was glad when I heard that Stalin died on 5th March 1953. I didn't know what the future might be, but I knew that one of the greatest bandits had died. He was another Hitler, only even more treacherous since Hitler spoke directly and openly while Stalin complimented somebody and then at night this person was arrested and taken away. I had realized this many years ago, but I had remained a follower of Marxism.

Married life

In 1955 my friends introduced me to my future wife Rita Vilkobrisskaya. Her parents were Jews. She was born in 1930. She is a very pretty, nice and absolutely naïve person. She finished the Faculty of Economy at the Lvov Polygraphists College. Rita's father was a high-ranking military officer, but he had passed away by the time we met. Rita received a secular education and her Jewish roots were abandoned. This family believed in Stalin's ideas fanatically. They said that Rita's father died along with the name of Stalin.

Rita and I were dating for some time until I asked her, 'Rita will you marry me?' and she replied, 'Yes.' We had a wedding party at a restaurant on 10th January 1956. My guests were about ten close friends and her guests were her father's former military comrades. They were Russian and there were very few Jews. Rita and I never argued. She is so timid, but she is the closest person I have. I am still affectionate towards my wife. She is so very nice and sweet. My scientific achievements are due to her. During the first years of our marital life she lived in Lvov alone and I came from the village at weekends.

I worked on my scientific candidate thesis on the subject of economic development of Eastern Poland at the beginning of the 20th century. In October 1960 I defended my thesis in Moscow. The subject of my thesis was the history of the Polish economy. I was awarded the scientific title of candidate of economic sciences. I got a job in Lvov where I became deputy director of an evening school. I gained a standing in my scientific field, but authorities kept emphasizing that they needed national personnel. There was no open anti-Semitism, but it was clear that the reason why it was so hard for me to find a job was my nationality.

Rita worked as an economist in an institute. She was fired along with 10-15 other Jewish employees. I went to see the secretary of the district party committee and asked him, 'Have you received an instruction to get rid of Jews?' He was shocked, 'This cannot be.' Our leadership didn't like direct accusation of being anti-Semitic and my wife got back her job. I couldn't find a job for about a year until I finally got a job offer. There was a vacancy for a lecturer at the Oil College in Drogobych [a small town, 100 km from Lvov; center of the oil industry]. I worked there for 17 years: as a senior lecturer and then as a dean for half a year.

Then I wrote my doctor's thesis. My wife stayed in Lvov. Her mother was very ill and she couldn't leave her. I received a small apartment, but again, every weekend and on holidays I went to Lvov. After I defended my thesis I got a job at the Institute of Social Sciences in Lvov. I worked there only a year. I was the only Jewish employee. The management tried to get rid of me. They wanted to use me in their struggle against the so- called Ukrainian nationalists. I refused to get involved in dirty plotting and they said, 'We won't be in your team.' I quit. I felt depressed; I was looking for a job again. Two months had passed when a former colleague of mine invited me to Ternopol [regional center in the west of Ukraine, 130 km from Lvov]. Again I traveled at weekends and on holidays. I worked there for two years, but I understood there was no future for me there. I wanted a promotion and was thinking about my career while I couldn't expect anything where I was at that time. Nobody offered me a promotion. I started looking for a job again. There were promises that never came true. I traveled to Poland where I read lectures.

We were an affectionate family. We traveled to the Crimea or Caucasus in summer as tourists. We enjoyed traveling. We didn't celebrate Soviet or religious holidays at home, but we had birthday parties. We got together with friends on birthdays and weekends to listen to music, discuss books. We made good money, went to theaters and to the cinema and to restaurants with friends.

I was over 50 and the situation with having no job affected my health. When I left another institution where I'd received a refusal, I fell. A crowd of people gathered and I was taken to hospital. This was my first infarction. When I was in hospital my wife brought me a newspaper where I read there was competition for a position of professor in Lvov Polytechnic College. When I was released from hospital I went to this college where I got the job. This happened in early April 1976. From then on I worked at the Faculty of Economy of Lvov Polytechnic Institute where I taught history of economy until 1992. So I became a professor and was happy about my degrees. I was the only Jew in this faculty. I took my job very seriously and people treated me well. I always identified myself as Jew and never forgot about my origin or my relatives who had perished, but after I left Lublin I didn't observe any Jewish traditions.

When perestroika 18 began, Jewish life began to revive in the town. In 1985 we celebrated the jubilee of Sholem Aleichem 19. I was there, of course. I attended other meetings of Jewish intellectuals. The party leadership of the college reacted immediately. They were all informed promptly. The secretary of the party unit asked me, 'Have you become a Zionist? You demonstrate too much interest in Jewish life.' However, the flow of time changed all attitudes. The attitude toward Jews changed in society. I was glad about such great progress in Jewish life. I believed that Ukraine had to be an independent country to progress in its development. In 1990 I submitted my request to quit the Party. They asked me, 'Why?', and I replied, 'I disagree with the policy of the Party'. But more and more often I recall the words of my teacher Aizezian that people that make history have no idea about it.

In 1989 I became one of the founders of the Jewish Sholem Aleichem Society 20. I began to work on Jewish subjects. I didn't write about Jewish subjects before 1992, but now I have six books, about ten brochures and over 200 articles. My books were published and became popular. The books published by the Lvov Jewish Sholem Aleichem Society are: 'Catastrophe of Jews in Western Ukraine', 300 pages, published in 1998, 5,000 copies; 'Jews of Brody Town 1584-1944', 2001, 2,000 copies; 'Yanovskiy camp', 1996, 3,000 copies; 'People, years, events. From our ancient history', 1998, 3,000 copies; '600 years and two years', about the history of Jews in Drogobych and Boryslav, 1999, 2,000 copies, and others. I have come to the end of my life - my 80th birthday, with significant accomplishments.

I visit the Sholem Aleichem Society and Hesed - these institutions are housed in the same building. Many people are interested in Jewish subjects, even those that didn't disclose their Jewish identity in the past years. My daughter Victoria Venediktova is one of such people. She works as a teacher and I have no contact with her.

My wife and I never considered departing for Israel. I have a lot of things to do here while there I would be merely a pensioner. I am a Polish - a European Jew and I belong here.

I've always remembered that being a Jew is a great responsibility. If anybody accepts a bribe, large or small, he would be called corrupt, but if I accept one people would say 'all zhydy are the same.' I must think not only about myself, but also about my people.

Glossary

Simon Gutman
Riga
Latvia
Interviewer: Svetlana Kovalchuk
Date of interview: February 2002

Do you know how old I am today? It is in the militia that they ask you the year of your birth, but for ordinary people it's good enough to know how old you are. I turned 94 in September 2001. And in my soul, I feel very young. I'm an artist, caricaturist by specialty, a humorist, and also an actor. My daddy's surname was Gutnomen-Gutman. It was in the Soviet times that we simplified it, abridged it to Gutman. My father's full name was Israel Solomonovich Gutnomen-Gutman, and he was born in 1873. He died in Kharkov in 1919, at the age of 46, of a heart attack. He was old, in my childish view.

My family background
Growing up
Married life
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

I know very little about my grandfathers and grandmothers. They traded in wood and lumber, mainly in Latgalia. About my daddy I can say that he was a good businessman. He wore rimless glasses, smoked Zefir cigarettes, and always knocked down a small glass of vodka before dinner. He was a lumber trader, but then he bought a cinema in Dvinsk. It was called Grand Electro. He bought the equipment for his cinema in Germany. This I remember very well. And when the front was very near Dvinsk, during World War I, my father was in Dvinsk all the time - the profit was quite good. There was a front zone, a large garrison. The Germans couldn't seize Dvinsk for three years. Only in 1917, when the Russian army fell apart, only then Dvinsk was taken.

About 1915, my father sent our family - mum, me and my two brothers, to Zilupe, formerly Razumovskoye. And later we lived in the vicinity of Moscow, in Pavlovski Posad. There I studied at school. We were three brothers. The eldest was Yakov and then came my twin brother, Solomon, and I. Solomon, or Salya, as we called him, was 20 minutes older than me. I was very small - no bigger than a scoop. Daddy took mum to the maternity house. Later, when he went back there on a cart to find out who was born, he was told, 'A boy!' - and he answered, 'Okay, that's fine!' Then, a couple of hours later, he went there again asking, 'Well, how's that boy?' And they told him, 'You've got another one!' Daddy apparently told the carter, 'Just don't you go in that direction again!' That was later told as a joke. Yakov was two years older than we, born in 1905. We had a governess in Dvinsk.

My elder sister Nyuta, born Anna Israelevna in 1903, had a sick leg. Mum took her to Berlin for medical treatment. She was eleven years old then, and on the eve of the war mum took her to Switzerland, and my sister stayed there. She learned German and French in Switzerland. Daddy helped her financially. When the West was cut off completely, my sister helped there working in mountain sanatoriums around Lausanne. She worked as much as she could to justify her stay in the sanatorium. She returned to Riga, to our uncle's place, via Finland in 1921. We only met in 1923.

Before we left for evacuation, we lived on 20 Rizhskaya Street in Dvinsk. Once, when mum was seeing her sister Tirtsa off to Vilnius [today Lithuania], she took me and Salya to the station. They were standing in front of the railway car and talking and had temporarily forgotten about us. And we didn't know what to do. We were six years old at the time. Salya was a dashing guy and he said, 'Let's go!'. So we addressed the cab driver, 'Hey, old man, have you seen our mum?' - 'What does she look like?' - 'She is tall and beautiful.' - 'No, I haven't.' - 'Take us home then.' And off we went to 20 Rizhskaya Street, right down the road, near the station! It seemed to us a long way to walk, but very close on a horse-cart. Just imagine, my mum turning around at the railway station, and both of us being gone! She cried, panicked and was scared to death.

My mum's name was Berta Borisovna; her maiden name Aronovich. Her mother, my grandmother Sheina Aronovich, was married three times. All her husbands died one after the other. Mum was a single child from my grandmother's first marriage. With her second husband, Velvel Israeltan, my grandmother had a whole bunch of children - my mother's stepbrothers and stepsisters. She lived with her last husband in Copenhagen, Denmark, but returned to her daughter from the second husband, Aunt Tirtsa Koldobskaya, nee Israeltan, to Vilnius. There she lived and there she died. Aunt Tirtsa's husband was a prominent businessman. Grandmother died in the summer of 1931. Mum went to Vilnius to attend the funeral. Aunt Tirts? died in Vilnius in 1936, before the war.

Let me tell you about the Israeltans, the family of my mother's stepbrother. They are the most apparent victims of the Holocaust of all my relatives. Bella Karpovna, nee Rabinovich, my uncle's wife, called me around 20th June 1941, and asked, whether it was possible for them to leave with me. And I didn't know myself what to do.

My uncle's name was Solomon Velvel - they also called him Solomon Vladimirovich - Israeltan. The state of Israel wasn't yet established, but the surname already existed. We called him Uncle Sam. He had been to the USA several times and spoke good English. They lived on ?ntonievskaya Street in Riga, in a large beautiful apartment with wall-paintings, ornaments and pictures. It is he who gave shelter to Nyuta after she returned from Switzerland in 1921. And whenever I went to Riga, I stayed in their apartment. He was the manager of a large textiles shop, owned by Kazatsky, a Jew. This big shop was situated on the corner of Krishyan Baron and Elizavetinskaya Streets. When the Soviet power was established, he was appointed the shop's manager. The relatives of his wife - the Rabinovich family - lived in Dvinsk and were engaged in the trading business. Uncle Sam sent them the goods.

His wife, Bella Karpovna, wasn't as beautiful as she was imperious and clever. They had wonderful, educated sons Yulik or Yuly, and Vovik or Velvel. They were proficient in German, Latvian and Russian, but they didn't speak Yiddish. My uncle and aunt only spoke Russian at home. Velvel married a nice girl in May 1941. I visited them on the occasion and we had a lot of fun. He sent her to a sanatorium in Sigulda [a town 50 km from Riga]; she was pregnant then. You can imagine, the war began, and she remained alone in Sigulda, expecting a baby. I was told that Yulik and Vovik were shot by Nazis at the very beginning of the war. Aunt Bella and Uncle Sam perished in the ghetto in Riga. In the 1960s I accidentally met their former housemaid in the street, Tanya, a simple Russian woman with a Nizhniy Novgorod accent. It was she who told me that my aunt and uncle had been in the ghetto and that she had brought them food suppressing her fear.

Growing up

My mother and grandmother lived in Griva district in Dvinsk. Financially they lived under very low standards, and my mother had to read books under the blanket. She was persecuted at home for wasting kerosene and candles. Daddy was much older than mum. I don't remember exactly how much older. My mother's attitude towards my father wasn't so romantic. He bought a carriage, a horse and used to take her for a ride. I learned that from my sister. Mum communicated more with her than with us.

Our language at home was exclusively Russian. However, mum spoke good Yiddish. As she was going to go abroad to bring my sister home, she attended courses in French.

In 1917 daddy took us from Pavlovski Posad to a resort on the coast of the Azov sea, in Berdyansk, for six weeks, and there we ended up staying for four years - during the revolution [see Russian Revolution of 1917] 1 and the Civil War 2 in Russia. We lived poorly, having taken to Berdyansk almost nothing, only my mother's fur coat, a coat of seal skin, which we sold, and just enough food for the winter. Daddy wasn't a religious man, but it was a generally accepted rule to visit the synagogue. When he occasionally went to Berdyansk, where there was a choral synagogue, he used to attend the service. He had a special silk cloak. I remember, he would point towards us in the synagogue and say in Yiddish, 'These are the performers of my funeral rites'.

There was that turmoil in Russia, and daddy still stayed in Dvinsk. In 1919 he was once more making his way to us with a train transporting some Austrian captives. The train was heading south. They robbed him of his purse and all his documents. He couldn't do a thing, they would just throw him out of the moving train. He was already sick, had heart attacks, and his whole body was shaking. Traveling was no good for him, but he still kept coming back to Dvinsk. So, during his last trip, he stopped in Kharkov, at my mum's cousin. He was put into a hospital and he died there of what they now call an infarct. Mum buried him in Kharkov. She went especially from Berdyansk to Kharkov to be present at the funeral ceremony. It was very difficult to get there.

We went to the synagogue when daddy died. My brother and me would go there daily, three times a day, to recite the Kaddish - the prayer of repentance. My elder brother, Yakov, didn't go. There were situations during the Civil War, when there was shooting, but all the same we used to attend the synagogue. My brother Solomon was fanatically religious in those years. He even read prayers for the night, lying in bed. But, you see, to offer a prayer you need a kippah! So he pulled a blanket over his head to say the prayer. Mum was religious, too. That was her family feature. She spoke extremely good Yiddish. And we haven't learned to speak Yiddish, whereas she taught all of her sons Hebrew. Wherever we lived, a teacher came to us, we always had a teacher of Hebrew. Many words I know up until today. A comrade taught us to read in Yiddish, when we were in the Komsomol 3. He was a highly principled, noble lad. He had taught us, and I felt somewhat comfortable at once. I still read in Yiddish today.

In Pavlovski Posad we went to a secondary school, and in Berdyansk to a grammar school. During the four years in Berdyansk I saw everything - the Civil War, the landing of troops, the anarchists of Makhno 4, the Red army, the White army 5, bombings. If I could recollect it all, you could shoot a whole film about it. In our Berdyansk home we met very interesting people. The second studio of MHAT [the Moscow Academic Arts Theater] came for guest performances, and the famous actors used to stay in our house - Stanitsyn [Viktor (1897-1976), real name Geze], Khmelev and so on. The elite of the Russian theatre. We had never been to the theater before, and they used to take us. Fantastic impressions! My elder brother was sick, he suffered from some mental disease. In 1921 my mother managed to obtain a free ticket for a group tour and our entire family went to Moscow. Imagine a free tour, at such complete poverty! We prepared for the journey, took some crackers. The journey from Berdyansk to Moscow was a whole epopee; too many details! We saw the starving people from Volga region at the stations, small children corpses! We were robbed, everything was stolen! We arrived in Moscow sick with measles, and that illness was a final blow for the mental condition of my elder brother. He was put into a hospital in Moscow, and there he died in 1922.

In Berdyansk we sympathized with the White troops, the environment was wholly bourgeois - shop-keepers, small retailers. And when from 1921 to 1923 we again lived in Pavlovski Posad, I became 'Red' under the influence of my comrades. We were publishing a newspaper! We collected money for the construction of planes, when Curzon 6 announced the ultimatum to the Red Russia. What a joy it was, when mum had finally taken our money to Moscow, and they printed a list of our names in the newspaper Izvestiya.

Salya and I liked to draw since we were children, but he drew better than me. He used to copy pictures by Russian artists from postcards. He liked water-colors, but he didn't use water; he used his tongue instead of water. His lips were always colored with paint. I copied flowers from cards. Mum found a drawing teacher in Berdyansk. I also did some modeling. I used to draw my teachers and schoolmates at lessons in Dvinsk.

We returned to Riga in September 1923 the three of us - mum, my brother and I. We arrived in Riga and stayed some time with my Uncle Solomon Israeltan, and then moved to Dvinsk. Our cinema was still there, but it appeared that the premises were already occupied. Mum tried to earn some money. We managed to make ends meet somehow, with mum borrowing some money sometimes.

The cinema attracted me and my brother. We were known in Dvinsk as the family of Gutman - the former director of Grand Electro - so they let us into the cinema free of charge. Once a mechanic at_ppolo cinema entrusted me with turning the handle of the manual film projector; his elder brother worked for my father in Grand Electro. Now they don't do it anymore! And there was a problem: when I thought the film was about to finish, I started to turn slowly, and the spectators were indignant! Wow! That's how I let myself down - and I stopped to go to the cinema from that moment on! It was really embarrassing!

We studied in a secondary Jewish school in Dvinsk. All subjects were taught in the Russian language. Of course we had to pay for the school. My brother and I participated in the Komsomol movement in school. The Komsomol had a very strong influence in Latgalia. The Komsomol organization was underground. Only the youth clubs were legal; we attended those as well. I wasn't the most active member, but I was in prison for some time, nonetheless! I was in Riga's Central prison, in the solitary cell, but only for one month. In Daugavpils [formerly called Dvinsk] I served a short term, too. I had close connections with one comrade; we rented a room together. And when the members of our central committee were arrested, they were searching apartments and I was also put under arrest. They finally released me, but I remained under the supervision of the police. Later I was acquitted! In Riga, when I started to work, I had no links with the Komsomol any more. But the police knew me. I was always shadowed.

Later, when I arrived in Riga in 1928, my sister helped me to get a job with the Jewish theatre on 6 School Street. Every inch is familiar to me there. I'm the only living employee of that Jewish theater. All the rest are dead by now! Michael Io - his stage name was Io, but his full name was Ioffe - was the chief artist of the theatre. There were many actors, I made sketches of them all. What wonderful acquaintances we had! From America, from Poland, from different countries! In the first season I worked in a workshop. I thought, let them think there, in Dvinsk, 'Wow, Simka is an actor in a theatre!' And in fact it was like this: take a brush and do the wall-painter's job!

During the first year I worked in the decoration workshop, and the next year I was offered the position of a stage property-man. What is a property- man? Well, I was supposed to prepare everything: the tools, the guns and so on. If they were going to eat on stage, I was to cut the bread. I prepared the wine, but diluted it with water; it was just for make-belief. Our guests included the American stage director Adler, and Clara Young. She was 70 years old then, but behaved like a young girl on stage. I met the local actors as well: Einas, Shapiro, Ronich, Peter Surits. There were a lot of amusing episodes. The actor and director Rubin once came from Moscow, from the theater of S. Mikhoels 7; he staged Sholom Aleichem's 8 'The Big Money' in our theater. That was a great performance! All in the modern style - the decorations, the actors' make-up, and the stage manager's fantastic ideas!

In my life I was lucky to see in close up how the famous stars like Mozhukhin [Mozhukin, Ivan (1889-1939): Russian-born actor, died of tuberculosis in France]. In the middle of the 1920s the French director Turzansky [Turzansky, Viktor (1891-1976): director, born in Kiev, today Ukraine.], a Russian emigrant was shooting a film with Russian actors Mozhukhin and Kovanko [Kovanko, Natalya (1899-1967): actress born in Yalta, died in Kiev]. The film was based on the novel by Jules Verne and was called 'Michel Strogoff'. The film was shot in Dvinsk, they thought that the nature was suitable there - Siberian! All the town did nothing except watching how the film was being shot! The Dvinsk garrison of the Latvian army participated in these shootings - they played the Russian army. I took part, too!

I studied in a number of art schools in Riga. I attended the arts studio of the Riga graphic artist Roman Suta 9, I was his 'disciple' and took part in the exhibitions. One exhibition was in 1932. They chose some pictures for the museum, including mine. I created it in my mind, when they were taking me from Dvinsk jail to Riga central prison. It is now that they transport prisoners in a special truck, but back then the guards were just convoying me along the pavement. I kept the impression from that walk for a long time! Sitting in the solitary cell, I began to draw sketches of that image. In spring they let me out, and in summer I finished the picture. And when there was an exhibition of our studio, supervised by Roman Suta, my picture was bought for the Arts Museum. The picture is entitled 'Escorting of a prisoner'.

I remember the studio of Yan Liepin on Mariinskaya Street, in the court yard. When I went there, a few more or less skilled pupils were sitting and drawing. I sat down, too, and took a sheet of paper. And here enters a naked model! Holy smoke, I held my breath! I almost fainted! Well, really! Boys use to spy, through a hole in the fence, and here she comes out in what she was born! I started to draw, and during the break I looked at the other sketches. And the other guys represented the model not in her natural size, like me, but made her look stout - with heavy legs and arms. I asked, 'Where do you see such arms and legs? The model is of quite normal stature!' And they answered, 'You should draw what you think, rather than what you see!' Well, that's the Latvian style! Later I got used to it.

My brother was staying in Dvinsk at that time. When he arrived in Riga, he found a job as an ordinary transport worker, and used to carry heavy bags. Then he left for Slovakia, the city of Brno. He studied there for about two years. It was a rare thing for Riga Jews to get a higher education. And he was studying to become a foreman in textile factories - he learnt how to make carpets, tapestries. Having returned from Brno, he worked in Dvinsk in a small textile factory. The bosses and owners of such small factories were usually Jewish. And when the Soviet power was established, he was appointed director of that factory.

Married life

In 1931 I got acquainted with my future wife, Ida Ruvimovna Kvasnik, born in 1917. I met her in Stropy. The remarkable Stropy Lake! She was sitting there on a bench near a kiosk for the holiday-makers, and I approached her and started a conversation. I'm of a deleterious character to women! I liked to fall in love back then. I had affairs with women disregarding age. That's why I had two infarcts. Back then it was a country-side romance - I took her on boat trips, though I could hardly row at that time.

I was enlisted for the army that year. She used to come down to the walls of the Dvinsk fortress, where I served in Zemgalskaya division. Once I was punished for coming late, thus violating the strict order, because I was spending time till late at night with her! And I had a watch that I had won in a soldiers' lottery - this watch worked all right while I was walking, but as soon as I stopped, it stopped too. Oh, it was a romantic story! I had a very good and beautiful wife. She was younger than me, but she's dead by now; during her last years she was very seriously ill.

We married in 1936. Did we have a chuppah? Let me just tell you this: I wasn't religious, and to this day I am not. Her father, who came from Lithuania, was religious. Her mum died two or three years before our wedding, of breast cancer. Her father spoke Russian, as everyone from Lithuania, with a very strong accent. Well, there was something like a chuppah, but I preferred not to disclose this to people! We had a kind of chuppah at some relatives' home, in an apartment. I yielded to their request to avoid a scandal. My wife wasn't especially religious. She spoke good Yiddish, but didn't go to the synagogue. They lived poorly, although they ran a small grocery store, in the house where they lived. The apartment was miserable. Her younger sister Rosa was plump and chubby. Her brother looked kind of unhealthy.

We had no property at all at first, we were renting furnished rooms, and only once we stayed in them for the summer season. In summer we usually rented a cheap cottage in Melluzhi, Yurmala. By that time, in 1938-39, I had some savings, money I had earned as an artist, and I could afford to rent the rooms in town in summer as well. We paid about 35-40 lats a month. After we started to live together, my wife stopped working. We could hardly afford buying anything. The first time we bought some furniture was in 1940, in the Soviet times!

I had an attraction for cinema, inherited from my father, and I went to work in film advertising. They gave me photographs, and I made drawings for the ?RS company. That company used to show Soviet and American films. I made posters for the Soviet films. The posters without text were used all over the pre-Baltic countries. Later I gave the originals of my posters to a cinema archive. Simultaneously, I made some additional money as a caricaturist. I signed my pictures Gutman.

By 1940 everybody knew how the situation was likely to develop. In 1939 Moscow presented an ultimatum to Ulmanis 10 and there were Soviet military bases at sea. The bases needed protection! The war was going on in full swing all around, and the people's state of mind was quite predictable! We knew that nothing good was going to come out of it. On 17th June the Soviet troops entered Riga. On the 21st there was a demonstration at the central prison: all communists were granted amnesty. On that very day I decided to go to Riga from our summer residence. I saw an incredible show! Crowds of people moving, carrying red banners. It was something tremendous! Just recently, for a red cloth, thrown at night on wires, you were sentenced to several years of imprisonment.

Not far from the prison, behind the railway, a crowd of people gathered waving trade union flags. They were mainly Latvians. Suddenly a Soviet airplane appeared, and there one elderly Latvian lady exclaimed, 'Look, our eagles are flying!' When I nowadays narrate this story to Latvians, they cannot believe it! Later, communists began to come out of the prison and the crowd greeted them warmly. Then we all headed for the presidential palace and the presidential banner was hanging there. The Latvians shouted, 'Nost so kabatlakatinu!' [Remove that handkerchief!]. There was a bunch of dare-devils, who tied an Ulmanis portrait to a bicycle, wrapped it in a prisoner's uniform and were riding along that way! All these historical events were tremendous! But I noticed angry faces in many windows as well. It should be remembered, you know, the climax was yet to come!

In 1940 there were meetings with many well-known Soviet artistic figures. We received a prominent Soviet film director Grigori Aleksandrov and actor Lyubov Orlova. Then we had a meeting with writer Mikhail Zoshchenko 11. I worked with the Riga magazine Crocodile then.

I didn't care about nationalization. They did what they considered necessary, but I kept my distance from it! The New Year celebrations of 1941 were very cheerful! We all gathered in the house of the Jewish community, on School Street; there was a remarkable ball!

There was a Jewish newspaper in Yiddish, a communist newspaper, and I was drawing good caricatures for it. Ulmanis expected the events and declared, that in each house there should be a pair of top-boots and a shirt, as reserves for the army. I remembered that declaration! And I made a caricature, which consisted of two parts. Part one - Ulmanis shows the boots, and part two - the boot of history, the Soviet boot, kicks him out! That caricature didn't survive, but apart from that I have a large number of caricatures at home! Especially from 'The Soviet Latvia'!

During the war

1941 - the smell of a thunder-storm hung in the air! I remember that morning, Sunday, 22nd June [the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War] 12, I was in our office. I remember the speech delivered by Molotov 13. And then we hid in a cellar as the Germans were bombing the city. On Wednesday the 25th the Fifth Column riflemen started to fire from roofs! From all roofs! It was horrible! Everything was prepared! We were sitting and asking each other, especially Jews, 'What now?!' Everyone was panic- stricken!

In our film company we had our own transport base. Mister Gudkin, a Jew, was in charge of that base. He later went to Israel, I don't know if he's still alive. He worked as a film mechanic with the 'Cinema-Town', and then he got that transport supervisor position. And so, here comes a truck, and my wife and I approach it. We were told that all men were supposed to stay and defend Riga! But where were the rifles?! Everybody kept looking at each other! The truck stopped and my wife boarded it with a bag and pillow, among other women and children. I stayed. Then came Gudkin and said, 'There, pal, get in the truck, if you want to go.' We both wrote some kind of passes for each other, saying that we were accompanying the groups, otherwise they wouldn't have let us out! That's how we left with the women.

On the way we passed by 'Cinema-Town'. There were crowds of people! They raised their hands! But it was impossible to take everybody! It was a dramatic scene! So we headed for Pskov along the highway. We saw dead bodies on the road. Somewhere far away, planes were flying low. In Pskov, in turmoil, I got over to the truck in which my wife was. Bombing began. The Germans were bombing Pskov. Later we reached the railway station, got on a train and went in the direction of Yaroslavl, Gorky. Finally, we found ourselves in Sharya, Gorky region.

The heat was awful, we were thirsty all the time. We were assigned to a wood-processing plant to work. We were accommodated in a school and given some bed linen. We worked for several weeks, preparing the logs. What for, do you think? Logs for Donetsk [the biggest coal basin in the Ukraine]. The front needed coal! In August a message was received, saying that men from Latvia were ordered to join the Latvian Battalion. I was enlisted as well. There came the moment of farewell! We went to Gorky. I swear to you, when the train was approaching the station, the howling of the women was unbearable! A nightmare! In no country do women scream as loud as in Russia when they see their men off!

From August till December I was in Gorokhovets camps. The Latvian Battalion was being formed there. Our everyday life? Nothing worth talking about! We took a hot shower in a tent. Four of us at a time - standing. Those who were taller than me were all right, but I was left only with dirty water dropping down on me! Then we were jumping out, barefoot, in October, running through the woods over cones and thorny grass. The same pot that we used for dinner we used for washing ourselves, too. The commissary in charge was arrested later and tried in the military tribunal.

On 3rd December 1941 we approached the city of Naro-Fominsk, where the Latvian Division was fighting. I was a private and remained in this rank until the end of the war. My first impression of the war was when I saw young inexperienced soldiers in a truck coming from the front line - all blood-stained and bandaged! When I saw it, I understood what it was all about. Shortly after I fell ill with an acute form of dysentery. It was hard to feel sick in the frost and while on the move! When we came to a halt, I told the commander that I felt unwell. But the military have no such word in their vocabulary - unwell that is. You are either okay or wounded in the army. So we were lying there and then the 'Katyusha' [a powerful Soviet rocket artillery unit] suddenly struck! Such an explosion, so many flames! I was moving with my last ounce of strength.

All this was happening around 1st January. I wasn't sent to hospital at once. I had been to a couple of first-aid posts first. On 1st January 1942 we were passing some sanitary unit, and they gave me a bowl of hot tea with a lump of sugar! I haven't ever drunk a tastier cup of tea! It was hot, it was sweet! Finally I reached the hospital. It was the hospital for infectious diseases of the Western front. Practically all the staff was from Belarus. The commissar, having learned that I was an artist, ordered at once, 'Leave him here! We need him.' A country woman from an adjacent village worked as a nurse there. She prepared the bed for me in the following way: she lifted me with her left arm and made the bed with her right one. That's how weak I was! Afterwards I stayed in the same hospital for a long time, until summer, with the attendants team. I was in charge of linen in the laundry. It was necessary to control the cleanliness of linen very strictly. If the boss saw an insect, you were dismissed. Then we were brought to the region of Vyazma, to the front line. I was enlisted to the Urals division; I was reluctant to go to the Latvian Battalion again.

On 12th September 1943 I thrust myself out from the trench, and was hit on my left arm. Bleeding profusely I crawled to my comrades and they gave me first aid, bandaged me - my arm was twisted the wrong way and broken. I was taken by cart to a sanitary unit. Then I got on a sanitary train, and found myself in Kuibyshev region, the station of Shantala, in a hospital. In that hospital I stayed from September to February 1944. Then I went to my wife in Stalinabad [today Dushanbe, Tajikistan].

My mum, my sister and Salya's family set off from Riga on foot. A friend, a military officer, helped them. Nyuta had always limped, so she was put on a horse. And Salya had two boys by then. How we found each other after the war, I cannot recollect. Fact is, that I had visited them, my mum and sister, in Chelyabinsk region in 1943. The family of my brother went somewhere further. My wife went via Tashkent to Stalinabad. There she found work in the directorate of a power station construction project. She had a room there. I joined her after I recovered.

From Stalinabad I returned with my wife to Riga in March 1945. We had an apartment on _k_s Street. Mum and Nyuta joined us in the fall of 1945. In November 1946, on the eve of the November holidays, my mother died in a hospital; she was extremely exhausted from the time in evacuation. My sister was very devoted to my mother, and mum suffered greatly from the fact that she had to leave her alone. She worked as a nurse in a polyclinic. She was often sick and was frequently treated in hospitals. My sister never married. She had a boyfriend, as she told me shortly before her death, a businessman from Dvinsk. He courted her for quite some time and seemed to be in love with her, but when he understood that she had nowhere to live, he broke up with her and she didn't see him again. My sister died five years ago. She was 90 years old when she died.

Many of my friends had no children before the war! But after the war the situation changed sharply. The law of nature! My son was born in May 1945, just before Victory Day 14. My son's name is Lyova, or Lev, a name inherited from our Jewish grandfathers, almost all of them had double names. My brother's name is Solomon, but in honor of our grandfather his real name is Zalman-Mendel. I'm Simon, but in honor of our grandfather I'm Simom-Shleme. Lyova was first called Ruvin-Leibe, like the father of my wife, but then we decided to give him a name in honor of Leo Tolstoy 15. He graduated from the Polytechnic Institute, the power faculty. In the army he served in Kaliningrad region. He worked here, got married and has a daughter. After some time his wife had the idea to leave for the USA. They lived in Houston. He worked under contract. Then they moved to Colorado, the State of Denver. He now works as an interpreter in the Hague, Holland, translating from English to Russian. But he divorced his wife. His daughter must be around 23 by now.

Post-war

My second son, Naum, was born in 1951. He is named in honor of grandfather Nakhman, on my wife's side. He is very devoted to me. I always consult him, I consider him to be the boss. Not I am the boss, but he is the boss for me. Naum failed to enter the Academy of Applied Arts, he didn't get enough points at the exams. He worked as an artist in the Aurora cinema, but when all the cinemas were closed, he actually remained without work. He is married and has a son.

My twin brother was absolutely different from me. But somehow we always had similar ideas. He was taller than me. In the beginning he was frantically religious, but when we both changed our views in Pavlovski Posad and Dvinsk, he became an outermost left-winger. He was politically more to the left than me, but he was never touched by the police. I was a less active Komsomol member and still I managed to serve several terms in prison somehow. He was severe, strict, and very erudite. In his apartment there were a lot of books. He was very interested in politics. His appearance was unlike mine.

After the war he came to Riga and worked in the advertising department of a film company, made large posters for cinema, and worked in the Lachplesis cinema. He worked there for a long time and had a good reputation. He didn't like melodramas, broken hearts and things. For example, he was contemptuous of the film by Sergei Bondarchuk, 'Fate of a Man'. Emotional break-down! Fie! He didn't care much about himself, but he was very devoted to children!

My brother got married even earlier than I. He was a good artist. Our father could only play the accordion and our mother could sew. There wasn't anything artistic in their characters. Salya's son, Naftoly Gutman, is also an artist, an old man by now, too. And Naftoly's son is an artist as well. Salya's daughter chose a musical career, although she was reluctant to study music as a girl and her parents had to push her. Anyway, she has become a good musician. She's a teacher in a music school. She has left for Germany with her second husband and children. My brother died a few years ago, of pancreas disease. His widow lives in Germany now. The eldest son of my brother, Sergei, was kind of a ne'er-do-well fellow. They found a job for him, in a commodity railway terminal, but he was squeezed to death between carriages there. He was only eighteen.

Gudkin invited me to work in the cinema company in 1945. I stayed there all the time, up to my retirement age. I became a member of the Union of Artists of Latvia and took part in many exhibitions. There were exhibitions of caricaturists, placard-artists, and performances by the front artists. Readers of The Soviet Latvia of the elder generation know me very well. My caricatures were constantly published. The caricatures were political. During the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 1967 [see Six-Day-War] 16 I was telling everybody, that I wasn't Simon Israelevich, but Simon Aggressorovich! Yes, I'm a humorist, an actor, a film director, and when I feel high emotionally, I can write verses. I wrote verses not so long ago. When I worked at the film-studio, I composed poems for amateur performances. I retired rather late. My labor experience is 45 years. My wife worked in the ticket office at the Pioneris cinema for a long time.

Glossary

Moisey Goihberg
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: July 2002

My family background
Growing up
My school years
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

My paternal grandfather and grandmother, Moisey and Zlata Goihberg, who were born in the 1860s, lived in Ivanovka village, in Mohilev-Podolsk district in Vinnitsa province. Ivanovka was a very picturesque village on the bank of the Murafa River. Ivanovka was a small village with a population of 500 people. There were 3 Jewish families in the village, including my grandfather's family. The Jewish families earned their living in the retail trade of essential goods, fuel, grain, etc. They had good neighborly relationships with the Ukrainian population.

My grandfather Moisey was a decent and honest businessman. He was an orderly man. He wore a small beard. My grandfather owned a store where he sold haberdashery, tools and all other essential commodities. He often went to purchase merchandise in Mohilev. In such cases my grandmother Zlata was his replacement in the store. Farmers greatly respected my grandfather's family. My grandfather often gave them food products on credit and sometimes lent them money without charging them interest. They always paid their debts on time.

My grandfather's family observed all the Jewish traditions and celebrated the Jewish holidays. They honored the Sabbath and tried to follow the laws of kashrut. I don't know whether other Jewish families in Ivanovka had a similar level of religiosity. However, I wouldn't say that my grandparents were really religious. They didn't pray and they didn't go to the synagogue in Mohilev, which was about 20 km from Ivanovka. They only went there once a year, at Rosh Hashanah. There was no synagogue in the village. My grandfather kept his store open even on Saturday if it was necessary.

My grandfather Moisey and grandmother Zlata had 4 sons and a daughter. My father Iosif, the oldest, was born in 1893. Motia was born in 1895, Meyir in 1899, Zicia in 1903, and their sister Rachel was born in 1905. There was no school or cheder in Ivanovka and the children received their religious and secular education in Mohilev. The boys finished cheder and Russian elementary school. Rachel also went to the Russian school. This was all the education my father and his brothers got. But they were very intelligent people and achieved many successes in life although they didn't have a classical education. They spoke Yiddish at home and Ukrainian with their neighbors.

Sometime in 1918, during the Civil War 1, my grandfather went from Mohilev to sell merchandise. He was coming back with 2 or 3 farmers from his village when they were attacked by either Petliura 2 or Denikin 3 units. They beat my grandfather and stole his commodities. The farmers begged the bandits to leave my grandfather alone and tried to convince them that he was a very nice man, but it didn't help. They killed my grandfather and threw his body into the Dnestr River. This happened in the fall, and the following morning the river froze. My father and his brothers went to the river to search for my grandfather's body, but they couldn't find it. My grandfather Moisey wasn't even buried.

After my grandfather's death my grandmother Zlata was inconsolable, but she had to provide for her children. She lived in the village for some time. Around 1921 she moved to America with 3 of their sons and their daughter. They had crossed the Dnestr to Romania and from there left for America. I don't know whether they observed Jewish traditions in America.

Motia and Meyir opened a small commission store in New York. Later, they expanded their business. By the time World War II started they owned two big stores. Motia had two children, a son and a daughter. His daughter fell from a horse in the 1930s and died. His son died in a car accident some time later. Motia died in the mid-1970s. Meyir's daughter inherited her father's business. Meyir died around 1978.

Rachel ran her own business, too. She lived in New York. She owned a laundry. Rachel was married but had no children. She died in the late 1960s. All my relatives abroad were rather wealthy people. My grandmother Zlata lived with Meyir's family. She died in 1938.

It happened so that Motia, Meyer and Rachel went to America from Rumania. Zicia's life story is different. Zicia thought it took too long to obtain all the necessary documentation to move to America. He decided to cross the American-Canadian border illegally. He was arrested and sent back to the Soviet Union. He lived with us until 1928. Later Zicia married a very distant relative who lived in Brazil and left with her. He first worked as a laborer and later he became a distributor of some goods. He was very successful and became a board member at the Savira Company, a garment factory. In the mid-1960s when the iron curtain 4 was removed Zicia visited Kiev. Zicia was eager to see his older brother. He stayed almost two weeks with us. Zicia lives in Rio de Janeiro now. He retired at 90 and his daughter and son took over his business. He will turn 100 in 2003. I don't know whether he has been observing the Jewish traditions in Brazil.Rachel had her business, too. She owned a laundry. Rachel was married but had no children. She died in the late 1930s. All my relatives abroad were rather wealthy people. My grandmother Zlata lived with Meyer's family. She died in the late 1930s.

My father was married by the time of his mother's departure. This was one of the reasons why he stayed in the Soviet Union. In 1918 or 1919, soon after my grandfather was killed, my father was captured by members of a gang, who wanted to kill him. They took him to Yaruga, the neighboring town. Then all the men of Ivanovka, Jews and Ukrainians, went to Yaruga to fight for my father. They came to the ataman [headman or leading cossack official of a town] and demanded that he released Iosif. However strange it may seem they managed to rescue my father. I don't know how they managed this. The bandits probably released my father because so many people came to ask for him.

That same year my father met my mother, Lisa Voloshyna. She lived in Yaruga, this typical town within the Jewish Pale of Settlement 5. There were many Jews in Yaruga. They lived in peace with the Ukrainians. There were no national conflicts. There were 3 synagogues and rabbis in Yaruga. There also was a Christian church. People in Yaruga respected the national traditions of one another.

My mother's parents, Gersh and Blima Voloshyn, were born in the 1860s and came from Yaruga. Grandfather Gersh had brothers and sisters. I only know his sisters Esphir and Hana. Esphir married Naum Liber, a Jew. The last name of Hana's husband was Balaban. Hana's daughter Mura married her cousin, Itshak Liber, Esphir's son.

My grandfather Gersh Voloshyn was a vine grower. I don't think the wine his vineyard produced was kosher wine. He sold it to Jewish and non-Jewish customers. He owned 2 hectares of vineyard, which enabled him to have a comfortable life. His sons helped him with the work at the vineyard. They all worked very hard, but my grandfather was a very cheerful and merry man and there was always a lot of laughter in my grandparents' house. My grandfather's wife, Blima, was a housewife. They had four children: my mother's older brothers Moisey and Osher, my mother Lisa, and her younger sister Rachel. Their family wasn't very religious. They went to synagogue and celebrated all the Jewish holidays, mainly in tribute to tradition. They spoke Yiddish at home, but they were fluent in Russian and Ukrainian. My parents also spoke Yiddish to one another, but they spoke Russian to me. My grandfather Gersh had brothers and sisters. I only know his sisters Esphir and Hana. Esphir married Naum Liber, a Jewish man. The last name of Hana's husband was Balaban. Hana's daughter Mura married her cousin Itshak Liber, Esphir's son. During one of the pogroms that often happened in Yaruga in the 1920s my grandfather's family was hiding in the vineyard adjacent to the forest. It was a late, cold and rainy autumn. My grandfather caught a cold that resulted in the exacerbation of his tuberculosis. My grandfather died around 1921. My mother's brother Moisey, born in 1882 and Osher, born in 1892 studied at the cheder like all Jewish boys. I don't know whether they studied at the elementary school. They worked in their father's vineyard from an early age and left to study in Leningrad in the early 1920s after their father died.

Moisey and his wife Fania had 3 children: two sons, Srul and Misha, and a daughter named Tania. Moisey was a shop assistant at a food store. When the war began Srul and Misha went to the front. Srul perished defending Leningrad and Misha returned from the war as an invalid and didn't live long. Uncle Moisey, Fania and Tania stayed in Leningrad. Tania was a volunteer medical nurse and was awarded the medal 'For the defense of Leningrad'. After the first and hardest winter of the blockade of Leningrad 6, Moisey, Fania and Tania were evacuated to Middle Asia. They stayed there after the war. Moisey and Fania died in the mid-1960s. Tania died in 1990.

Osher lived in Leningrad. He lived in Leningrad with his wife Luba, and son Grisha. He was a laborer at a plant, I don't know which one. Like his older brother, Osher remained in Leningrad during the blockade. In 1941, during the first winter of the blockade, Osher and Luba were on the edge of death from starvation. Grisha who was about 8-10 years old could still walk, and they gave him a tablecloth to exchange for some bread. It happened on a late evening. Grisha left and never returned. It was a terrible time when even cannibalism was known to have happened. Osher died, too, during that winter, but Luba survived.

My mother's younger sister Rachel was born in 1898. Her husband, Moisey Serson, their two daughters, Dusia and Riva, and their son Naum lived in Yaruga and worked at my grandfather's vineyard. My grandmother Blima lived with them. The Germans occupied Yaruga in the summer of 1941. They exterminated some of the Jews there and moved on. Yaruga, as well as the rest of Vinnitsa province, was in Transnistria 7. All the Jews of Yaruga were taken to the ghetto. Rachel, her husband Moisey, their daughters and my grandmother Blima were in the ghetto. Life there was horrible, with starvation, cold, diseases, tortures and raids. The Jews in the ghetto surrendered their jewelry or other valuables in order to ransom themselves from the Romanians. Rachel's family survived. They were liberated in 1944. My poor grandmother Blima starved to death in the ghetto. After the war Rachel's family stayed in Yaruga. Rachel and Moisey died in the mid-1970s. My cousins Dusia, Riva and Naum live in New York. They moved to America in the 1970s.

My mother was born in 1894. My mother only finished elementary school, but she read a lot, mainly Russian and foreign classics in Russian. She was an intelligent person for her time. She worked at the vineyard along with the other children.

My parents married in 1920. They had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah in Yaruga. But they didn't have a big wedding party. They just arranged a dinner for guests. This was a difficult time when the remnants of gangs attacked the villages. At first my parents lived in the house of my paternal grandparents in Ivanovka.

Growing up

I was born in Ivanovka on 23rd May 1921 and was named after my grandfather Moisey. There was a midwife in Ivanovka named Palashka who helped with my mother's delivery. The inhabitants of Ivanovka treated Jewish families very well, but there was still danger from pogroms. Three of Ivanovka's Jewish families decided that it was better to live in a Jewish environment, and so they left. I was 6 months old when my parents sold their house and moved to my mother's parents home in Yaruga. A few weeks later, the other two families from Ivanovka also moved to Yaruga.

There, my father bought a vineyard. It was hard work taking care of the vines. In the spring they had to unearth the vines and tie them. In the autumn they harvested the grapes and made wine and in winter they sold the wine. This work paid well and provided for my family's living. Besides, the family really enjoyed working with sweet juicy grapes. I grew up and began to help my father at the vineyard which was located on the southern slope of the Ivanov hill. We spent the hottest time of the day in a small lodge on the hill. At harvest time my father and I stayed at the vineyard overnight.

We lived near my grandmother Blima and Aunt Rachel. My father bought half of a house. We had two rooms: a dining room, a bedroom, and a kitchen. The toilet was in the yard. My mother was a wonderful cook. She baked delicious bread. There were mainly old wooden houses in Yaruga, but our house was made of stone. The houses were close to one another, very much like those in Marc Chagall's 8 paintings. I can't remember the titles of his pictures, but the village resembled the images created by this artist. There were no gardens near the houses. There was a shed near our houses where we kept two horses before the collectivization 9. I also used to keep rabbits in this shed. My mother bought vegetables and meat from the local Ukrainian farmers - it wasn't kosher. My mother was a wonderful cook. She baked delicious bread.

The Jews lived in Yaruga and the Ukrainian farmers lived in the adjacent village. The Jews were involved in vine growing and crafts and the farmers grew wheat and vegetables and raised livestock. The craftsmen included tailors, shoemakers, roofers, coopers, barbers, and so on.

There was a church in the central square in Yaruga - it seemed very big and beautiful to me when I was small. Many years later I saw its green cupolas and crosses in my dreams. My father and I visited Yaruga once after the war and I was surprised to see how small the church actually was. There were 3 synagogues in Yaruga. Each one was attended by members of different professional guilds. This was a tradition. Perhaps, it was for the sake of seeing and talking to one another. Besides, they all contributed money and it was good to know that the money went to their own group. My parents attended the largest synagogue of vine growers only on holidays. There were rabbis, a schochet and a melamed in Yaruga. There was a cheder at the synagogue. I didn't attend it, but I remember other boys going to the cheder wearing kippot and carrying huge volumes of the Talmud.

On Sundays there was a market in the central square where farmers from the surrounding villages came to sell their food products. They came on horseback or in bull driven carts or on foot. Those who came on foot put on their shoes before they entered the town, as they were walking barefoot. Girls, women and men wore beautiful embroidered blouses and shirts. Men wore sheepskin hats at rakish angles. The market lasted a whole day. By the end of the day many men got drunk and there were fights. But they didn't touch Jews. I don't remember one single expression of anti-Semitism in pre- war Yaruga. This bright, colorful market existed until the late 1920s.

There was also a cultural center or club in Yaruga. People turned one of the bigger sheds into a club. There was an amateur theater organized in this club in the late 1920s. They staged some plays by Jewish writers; one of them was Sholem Aleichem 10, whose plays were staged in Yiddish. The local Jews spoke Yiddish. They communicated with the Ukrainian farmers in Ukrainian. Ukrainian farmers also knew some Yiddish. My parents also talked in Yiddish to one another, but they spoke Russian to me. I also remember the musician. He had something like a street organ. There was a dove on his organ and for a small fee it picked fortune-telling notes out of a bag. This musician was blind and I felt sorry for him. My mother always gave me some food to give him.

My mother was a very kind woman. I felt that she wanted to warm up and feed all needy people. My father was also kind and intelligent. He was a very respectable man in Yaruga and people chose him to be a judge in resolving routine disputes.

My parents weren't religious people. They went to synagogue only once or twice a year. I don't remember them praying at home. However, they honored and celebrated the Jewish holidays, the Sabbath in particular. On Fridays my mother cooked Sabbath dinner. We had a nice dinner on Friday, but nobody said a prayer or lit candles. Mother made stuffed fish, chicken broth, cracklings and pastries. She didn't cook on Saturday. She wouldn't even light a fire. My parents didn't work on Saturday. They rested, read books or went to see their friends or relatives. So work on Saturday became my chore. My parents didn't follow the rules strictly and they thought it was all right for me to do it. My mother always invited poor people and visitors to our Sabbath dinners.

Pesach was my favorite holiday. Firstly, there was warm weather on this holiday. We could run barefoot on the grass outside. Our feet could feel the warmth of the soil. The housewives prepared thoroughly for Pesach, buying eggs, chicken and geese. Two or three families in Yaruga had machines for making matzah. My neighbors had one of these machines and we bought matzah from them. I watched them making matzah. It was all so very interesting to watch them making the dough and putting pieces of it into the machine, then to see the thin sheets of matzah coming out of the machine, and afterwards I like to watch the people packing the matzah into baskets and covering them with clean cloths. At home preparations for the holiday started in advance. We did a major clean up. Chametz was removed from the house. We also took fancy dishes down from the attic. The food at Pesach was very delicious. There were mandatory dishes on seder night: matzah, bitter greens, chicken, potatoes, eggs and kosher wine. My father didn't conduct the seder ritual, a tradition for religious Jews. We just had a fancy dinner. We also sent treats to our Ukrainian neighbors at Pesach, and they sent us their treats at Christian Easter. This exchange was customary among Jews and non-Jews in Yaruga.

When I turned 13 my grandmothers demanded that I had bar mitzvah, the celebration of the coming of age of Jewish boys. Circumcision is traditionally done in infancy. My father invited a man who knew Hebrew and Jewish traditions to teach me the prayer that I was supposed to recite. So, I had my bar mitzvah in secret at the age of 13, because at that time the authorities did not allow religious rituals. A rabbi presided at the ritual and many of our relatives and friends attended. My mother made a lekkah, a type of traditional egg caketraditin. She cut it into small slices, put a few into a letter, and sent them to my grandmother Zlata in America.

Our town was small and poor. We didn't have electricity or radio. Only the central street was paved. Sometimes in the spring the unpaved streets turned into impassable mud roads. On holidays the town changed. People dressed up and couples walked in the central square. Later there was another entertainment besides the Jewish theater. It was a cinema that came to town once a week. The cinema showed silent movies, but we enjoyed them. The film projector was manual and sometimes when operators got tired they allowed us to turn the handle, which was the greatest fun ever for us.

People in Yaruga were very cheerful. They were simple and naïve and often became the subject of funny stories and jokes. Thus, old miller Meylekh, a Jew, once went to Odessa on business. He decided to stay at the apartment of our relative Maria Meylekh. When he came into a typical yard in Odessa he looked around him, saw no one, and decided to change his clothes. He took off his clothes and was standing there in his underwear, ready to get dressed. At this moment he heard someone on a balcony say, 'Manya, you have a visitor!' Poor Meylakh froze in the middle of the yard. It is a true story - he just believed that he was in a safe corner and was shocked to know that he was watched.

Once in 1929 my mother took me to Odessa. My doctor, Mashkovskiy, had advised her to take me to the sea, and so we went to Odessa, where we had relatives. I was afraid that we would look too provincial in Odessa. But, as a matter of fact, we were treated very nicely. This was the first time I had ever seen a big town, and I admired the huge houses, streetcars, parks and the sea.

In the late 1920s, during the period of collectivization and dispossession of kulaks 11 someone named Firyubin came to supervise these processes. Firyubin was a communist, although he had no education whatsoever. He organized a meeting, and the people attending the meeting took a unanimous decision to join the collective farm 12 voluntarily. But in reality this decision was not voluntary. Before this meeting Firyubin and his assistants made the rounds of all the families, offering them the chance to enroll in the collective farm. If people didn't agree they were declared kulaks and enemies of the Soviet power. Some of these people ran away and others were sent into exile to Siberia. My father entered the collective farm. There were 3 collective farms in Yaruga. The Jewish farm was the vine growing and wine making collective farm. My father soon became chief vintner of thee Jewish farm. The two other collective farms were Ukrainian. One of them was agricultural and the other obtained sandstone and manufactured stone mills.

My school years

There were two schools in Yaruga: a Jewish elementary school and a Ukrainian lower secondary school that had 7 grades. The only difference between the two schools was the language of instruction, no special Jewish subjects were taught in this school. . The Jewish school was closed some time in 1935-36. In 1928 I went to the Jewish elementary school. After we finished elementary school, our entire class attended the Ukrainian secondary school, and we had no problems there. We were all fluent in Ukrainian. However, I still do my counting in Yiddish because I'm accustomed to it. The Jewish school was closed down some time in 1935-36.

I enjoyed studying very much, and began to learn chemistry, physics and botany with great interest. I studied well. I had a good voice and liked reciting poems. During the Soviet holidays there were meetings held in the central square. A stand was installed from where the chairman of the village council, chairmen of collective farms and other officials delivered their speeches, and from where I usually read a greeting from the school. I rehearsed my speech at home and my mother and father took my preparations extremely seriously.

In the early 1930s there was a great famine in Ukraine 13. We were hungry, but no people starved to death in Yaruga or the surrounding villages, because the collective farm managed to sell enough wine to provide for those who worked there. My father helped another family that had moved with us from Ivanovka to survive through those years. It was the family of a widow with 3 children. My father supported the widow and her family until her children finished their education and could earn their living.

I studied for two years in the Ukrainian secondary school. In 1934 our family left Yaruga. My parents wanted me to get a good education and so did I. It was hard to say good-bye to our house, to the town and the Ukrainian village where I had many friends. It was especially hard to say good-bye to my grandmother Blima. She was a very nice, kind grandmother. I used to call on her during intervals at school, and she prepared a nice tea for me and gave me cherry jam. I didn't know that I was saying farewell to my grandmother forever. It was hard to leave everything that I loved, but I was looking forward to a new and beautiful life.

We moved to the town of Ovruch in the Zhytomir region. My father was offered an opportunity to establish a transport agency from scratch: to purchase horses, build stables and employ the staff. My father was a very intelligent man, and he managed to do everything promptly. He was chief of this transport agency until the beginning of the war. We received a two- room apartment in the building where the office was located. It was more comfortable than our house in Yaruga: we had electricity, a radio and a bathroom.

Ovruch seemed a big town to me. It had beautiful houses, asphalted streets, a park, a stadium and a library. I read several books in Yiddish and Ukrainian every week: books about faraway countries, islands and seas, adventures and traveling. I became very fond of books.

Ovruch was mainly a Jewish town. There were several synagogues and a Jewish lower and upper secondary school. Jews held leading positions in the municipal council and the town party committee. There was also a Ukrainian secondary school and a Russian secondary school for children of the military. I studied in the Ukrainian secondary school because I had already been in a Ukrainian school and it was easier for me to continue there. I became a Komsomol 14 member and was very fond of various social activities. I was assistant chairman of the Kkomsomol committee and was responsible for conducting meetings and propaganda for the Soviet authorities. I was also editor of our newspaper and carried the flag at the parades on holidays.

It was during the so-called Great Terror 15 that the arrests of innocent people began. People were surprised at how it could happen that party and trade union leaders came to be branded enemies of the people. It was amazing that outstanding cultural and party leaders, comrades of Lenin, were arrested and declared enemies of the people. My father didn't believe this. A freight forwarder from my father's office was arrested. He vanished and nobody knew what happened to him. Every night when I went to bed, I would say inwardly good-bye to my father. I wasn't sure that I would be seeing him in the morning. Fortunately, he survived the ordeal.

After reading the book Investigating Officer's Notes by Leo Sheinin 16, I decided to enter the Faculty of Law after finishing school. But my father wanted me to become a doctor. I obeyed my parents, and never in my life did I regret it.

There were two medical institutes in Kiev; one of them was in the regional hospital, formerly a Jewish hospital. I gained admission to the Kiev Medical Institute #2. I had no problems gaining admission, as there was no anti-Semitism before the war. At first I lived in the hostel, but it was very hard living there. There were 10 of us sharing one room. It was too noisy to study, so my parents rented me a room in the home of a Jewish family living near Sennoy Market.

I liked Kiev very much: its streets and parks, museums and theaters. I spent all my free time walking in the town. I'm still surprised that I managed to finish two years of school successfully before the war. We went to the Opera, buying the cheapest tickets, listened to symphony concerts, and attended performances at the Jewish Theater located in Kreschatik, the central street in Kiev. I had relatives in Kiev, my Aunt Mura and her husband Itshak Liber who was her cousin. Mura was a dentist at the Communications College and Itshak was a violinist. Their son Vitia was a very talented young man. He knew several foreign languages and studied at the Kiev Institute of Motion Picture Engineers. We were friends and I often visited their hospitable family.

During the war

On the morning of 22nd June 1941 I was lying in bed reading the History of the Russian Communist Party manual, preparing for my exam in Marxism- Leninism, when my landlady Fania ran into my room to tell me that she heard stories told by farmers from Zhuliany [formerly a suburb of Kiev, presently a town neighborhood with an airport] that Zhuliany was being bombed by German bombers and that the war had begun. I ran to see my cousin Vitia. I couldn't believe that this could be true. Vitia was listening to Churchill's speech on the BBC. Churchill was talking about Germany's treacherous attack on the Soviet Union, and said that Great Britain was going to support the Soviet Union. So we heard about the beginning of the war even before we heard Molotov's 17 speech. I remember crowds of people on Kreschatik Street listening to Molotov's speech. It was a sunny day, but it seemed that there was a cloud over Kreschatik, so serious and grave were the faces of the people.

On the very first day of the war, my fellow-students and I went to the military registration office to volunteer to go to the front immediately. But we were medical students, so we had to continue our studies. Vitia, my second cousin, the son of Aunt Mura and Uncle Itshak, went to the front and perished during the defense of Kiev in the first months of the war. We finished our second year of studies at the Institute. The hospitals of the Institute began to receive the wounded. We helped to carry the wounded patients to the hospital. We also organized a unit to fight against parachutists. We patrolled the ravines coordinating our patrol duty with our schedules at the Institute. This was the area of Babi Yar 18. There were 20-30 of us armed only with pistols. We were lucky to have met no parachutists. If we had, there would have been no survivors in our group, because parachuters were well armed. At that time we didn't know that Babi Yar, where we used to walk before the war, would become a mass grave for hundreds of thousands of people. We were also responsible for meeting trains of refugees from the West. These were mostly families of the military. We took them to the Botanical Garden where they fell asleep either on benches or on the ground. Kiev was often bombed and we were on duty at the Institute. We were not allowed to leave our posts during air raids. It was frightening to be there alone, and I tried to stand beside a support wall just in case a bomb hit the building.

The front was nearing Ovruch and my father decided to move his transport agency to Kiev and transfer it to the authorities. My father had about a dozen carts with open platforms. My father and other Jewish men decided to move their families from Ovruch on these carts. When they arrived in Kiev nobody wanted to accept the horses. My parents moved on to Kharkov and I stayed on in Kiev. In August 1941 our Institute evacuated. The teachers went by train and the students went to Kharkov on foot. It was fun at first. The weather was nice and the road was smooth for the first 30 km. But then it became much more difficult. We covered 500 km in about a month. We stayed in villages and farmers gave us food and milk. Sometimes we felt like staying in those villages. We came to Kharkov at the end of August. My parents found me in Kharkov. They moved on to the Gorky region with some acquaintances of theirs. We didn't know whether we were ever going to see each other again.

Our Institute settled down in the very center of Kharkov. Our classes began on 1st September. We received a very small stipend that was not enough for our living expenses. Some other students and I went to work as nurses at the hospital. We worked at night and studied during the day. Two weeks later evacuation from Kharkov began. The hospital was to be evacuated and the issue of the Institute was still up in the air. The hospital management allowed us to evacuate with them. When we were boarding the train on 19th September we heard on the radio that Kiev had surrendered.

The trip took over a month and at the end of October we arrived in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. I was met there by my relatives from Kiev, Aunt Mura and Uncle Itshak. Mura evacuated with the Communications College from Kiev. They insisted that I tell my parents to come to Krasnoyarsk. I sent them a telegram, but it probably took too long before they received it. At that time there was a staff inspection at our hospital. The commission fired those few students that were working there. Their argument was that the students had to study. Our Institute was evacuated to Cheliabinsk. I didn't want to go that far away from where my parents were supposed to be. I went to Novosibirsk and was admitted to the 3rd year of Novosibirsk Medical Institute. I had to earn my living and got a job as a nurse at the radio factory. I went to classes in the morning and stayed overnight at the factory. It was a very cold winter and we didn't have enough food. Those students that came from Novosibirsk and were living with their families often took us to their homes to treat us to a meal. Soon my parents came to Krasnoyarsk and I spent my winter vacation of 1941-42 with them.

My father was mobilized into the army, but due to his age he didn't have to go to the front. Instead, he was sent to the logistics department of the Kiev Communications College that was located in Cheliabinsk. He organized a farmyard where they grew vegetables and raised pigs. In 1944 the College reevacuated and my father and mother and Mura and Itshak came to Kiev. In Kiev my father organized another farmyard and was demobilized in 1945.

After I finished my 3rd year in Novosibirsk a representative of the Military Faculty of Moscow Institute #2, located in Omsk came to enroll students for the 4th year. I submitted my application and went to Omsk in August 1942. This Military Faculty was very different from an ordinary faculty. We lived in the barracks, wore military uniforms and had to march everywhere. In May 1943 the Institute was reevacuated to Moscow. The headquarters of the Military Faculty and Military Clinics were located in the old building of Moscow Hospital #2. Well-known doctors and scientists lectured there. Soon we were given the rank of lieutenants of medical services. By that time we were allowed few freedoms. My friend Volodia Shteinberg and I rented an apartment. We were lucky with our landladies. They were two very nice women who worked at the booking offices of the Stanislavskiy and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theaters. All the theaters and other cultural institutions in Moscow were operating in 1943. We often went to plays at these theaters, as well as to the Bolshoi Theater 19 and the Philharmonic. We also went to the Jewish State Theater to watch Tevye the Dairyman by Sholem Aleichem and King Lear staged by the well-known theatrical producer Mikhoels 20. At the end of 1943 we passed our state exams and became professional doctors. We were also promoted to the rank of captains of medical services. We received our diplomas and a personal stamp. I still keep it.

In January 1944 I was sent to the Karelian front. I became commander of the sanitary unit for the infantry regiment. I got a baptism of fire in February. I volunteered to go to the rear of the enemy as a doctor with a battalion. The chief of headquarters who heard of my desire to go to the rear of the enemy asked with a hint of irony, 'Captain, can you ski? Can you shoot an automatic gun, hold the all-round defense and camouflage? So, what are you butting into, you newly born doctor?' He noticed that I was hurt by his comments and advised me to be careful and to follow what the others were doing. I didn't realize then that the chief of headquarters was worrying about me and wanted to save my life. Later I became a doctor for the medical and sanitary battalion and senior doctor of the regiment, but I always remembered the wise chief of headquarters and my dangerous campaign into the rear of the enemy.

I became a member of the Communist Party at the front. I believed it was my duty to be a communist and to face the most dangerous and difficult tasks. In 1944 we were transferred to the Murmansk area, liberated the town of Petsamo, came out to the Norwegian border and liberated the town of Kirkenes, the main navy base of the enemy. Kirkenes was practically destroyed and the fascists took all food stocks when retreating. Every day there were lines of Norwegian children with bowls lining up before the military cooks. Our cooks tried to give food to all needy people.

In November 1944 we left Norway to deploy in the vicinity of the town of Petsamo, in the tundra. I faced anti-Semitism for the first time there. Once we were sitting in the company of doctors. There were women doctors there, as well as the director of the hospital and the visiting chief of headquarters of the regiment. We were talking with him and he said to me, 'You are a good guy, even though you are a Jew'. I froze, but kept silent. The chief of headquarters was senior in rank and if I had decided to sort things out with him it might have cost me several years in prison camps. At dawn on 9th May 1945 I woke up to the sound of people shouting, 'Get up all! Victory!'. People all around were saluting and shooting their guns.

Post-war

My division doctor was appointed human resources manager at the sanitary headquarters of the Belomorsk Military Regiment. He offered me a position as his assistant. I served under him for two years at the construction of the Belomorcanal 21 in Belomorsk, and in 1947 he also helped me to get a transfer to the Kiev Military Regiment. My parents lived in Kiev after the war. My father received an apartment from the Kiev Communications College. I worked as a doctor at the military unit for some time and demobilized after few months. I left my well-paying position with a salary of 2,000 rubles for the position of a common doctor with a salary of 600 rubles. But I was eager to do scientific research in medicine.

I was introduced to my future tutor, Professor Boris Polonskiy, the best urologist in the country. I studied urology under his supervision. Soon I became a registrar at the Onco-Urological Department. I studied urology from zero. Professor Polonskiy patiently taught me everything he knew and could perform well: the science of urology, and practical skills. Soon I began to perform surgeries and soon I was performing complicated surgeries successfully.

At the beginning of 1953 when the Doctors' Plot 22 started along with other anti-Semitic campaigns stirred up in Moscow, I was going through a hard time. In February 1953 I performed a surgery on an elderly man. All the other doctors refused to operate on him. They were afraid that the patient would not survive the operation. At the end of the surgery my assistant told me that by negligence we had transfused the patient with the wrong blood type. This meant death for the patient. We quickly retransfused the patient with the appropriate blood. By some miracle the patient survived. This annoying mistake that was not my fault had serious consequences. The chief doctor of the hospital believed it was his task to get rid of Jews. If the patient had died I would have been taken to court. Before his release from hospital the patient, who didn't know what had happened during his surgery, asked a nurse for my name, saying, 'My granddaughter is a schoolgirl. There are articles in newspapers about doctors that poison people. I want to go to my granddaughter's school to tell children about this wonderful Jewish doctor, Moisey Goihberg. All the other doctors refused to operate on me, but he performed this surgery and saved me.' Every day I opened newspapers with horror. There were satirical articles with Jewish names (specifying their real names in brackets). Assistant Professor Krisson and a few other Jews were fired from our clinic. The party district committee issued a decree stating that it was difficult for a Christian to get employed because many people of different faiths got jobs.

Stalin died in 1953. I cried for him along with many other people not because I loved him, but because I was afraid that things might get worse. In 1954 they found a possibility to get rid of me. There was a party decree about strengthening the villages. I was called to the district health department and ordered to become head of the district health department in the town of Stavysche near Kiev. I had my objections, saying that I was a practicing surgeon doing scientific research and had never been an administrator. But I was told, 'You have worked enough in Kiev. Somebody else will take up your job.' Only I and another Jewish woman were sent to the village from our clinic. I worked for a year in Stavysche and did well. I also performed surgeries at the local hospital. After a year I was allowed to return to Kiev. I don't know whether it happened because I was a talented surgeon, or because my tutor Polonskiy pulled strings for me, or whether it was due to a general improvement of the situation.

We were enthusiastic about the decisions of the Twentieth Party Congress 23 denouncing the cult of Stalin. I was secretary of the party unit and received a letter at the district party committee that I had to read to the communists concerning the murderous deeds of Stalin and his colleagues. I did this with pleasure. I stopped doing anything for the party at that time.

My life after that was quiet. I defended my candidate's thesis although I was an ordinary doctor-registrar. In 1965 the Institute of Urology was established in Kiev and I was a successful applicant for the position of senior researcher. I worked successfully in that post until 1984. After I turned sixty I went to work as a consultant at the Kiev Oncological Clinic.

I've had a happy private life. I met my wife Mara Khersonskaya, a Jew, in Vorzel near Kiev in the early 1950s. Mara was born in Kiev in 1928. Her father Mikhail Khersonskiy was a party activist. Before the war he was secretary of the Podol 24 party committee. When the war began Mikhail volunteered to go to the front and perished defending Kiev. Mara's mother worked at the Torgmash Plant before and after the war. They were a very intelligent family without any religious prejudices. During the war Mara and her mother were evacuated to the Riazan region. Before we met Mara had graduated from the Philology Faculty of Kiev State University and worked as a schoolteacher of Russian language and literature. We had much in common: we both loved literature and poetry, and were fond of theater and classical music. We courted for two years. After we got married I was sent to Stavysche. At first we lived at Mara's apartment and later we moved to my parents. In due time we bought a big cooperative apartment. That's where we still live.

My father worked at the logistics department of Kiev Garrison. He died in 1976. My mother died in 1984 at the age of 90. My daughter Natalia was born in 1956. She was an ordinary Soviet child. She became a pioneer at school and then a Komsomol member. In the summer she went to pioneer camps. She had many friends. She knew that she was a Jew from early childhood, but we didn't follow any Jewish traditions or lead a Jewish way of life. She tried to enter the Kiev Conservatory after finishing music school. But this was the period when it was next to impossible to enter a cultural institution, especially in Ukraine. My daughter went to Russia and entered the Sverdlovsk Conservatory. She graduated successfully. Upon graduation she returned to Kiev. She is a pianist and works at a concert organization. She married Oleg Samsonov, a Russian, in Sverdlovsk, but divorced him later. I have a lovely granddaughter named Masha. She is a student at the English Faculty of the Kiev Institute of Foreign Languages.

I have identified myself as a Jew all my life. I have been interested in everything Jewish. After the war it was not safe to be a Jew and celebrate Jewish holidays. We went to my parents' to celebrate. My parents celebrated Jewish holidays until the end of their lives. They didn't go to synagogue or pray, but my mother always laid a fancy dinner table and had matzah at Pesach. They bought matzah secretly from some people in Podol, and fasted on Yom Kippur. In recent years the attitude towards Jews in independent Ukraine has changed dramatically. We have an opportunity to observe traditions and study the language, history and religion. There are many Jewish charity, cultural, religious and youth organizations in Kiev. I have the opportunity to compensate for all those years when we were just Soviet people without any nationality. I read a lot, attend lectures and sometimes make speeches at various Jewish organizations. Unfortunately, I have never been abroad. It was impossible in the past and now we are too old and we can't afford to travel. But I'm still happy. I like Israel and am interested in that country, but I never considered emigrating there. I would only go if Israel needed me as a doctor. However, it would still be difficult for me to move, because I was brought up on the foundations of Russian culture. I love my motherland. I'm a Russian intellectual of Jewish nationality. And now, when all conditions for the development of the Jewish nation have been created in my beloved Ukraine, I am happy.

Glossary

Galina Shkolnikova
Saint-Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Inna Gimila
Date of interview: June 2002

Galina Idelevna Shkolnikova is not a very tall woman. She is slim, has straight grayish hair and a high forehead and wears glasses. She lives alone in a three-bedroom apartment that is full of books. Her children have families of their own and live in Saint-Petersburg. She is active and mobile; in the summer she visited her husband's brother in Astrakhan. She is an engineer by occupation and is now retired. Her speech is correct and she very scrupulously corrected inaccuracies in her biography's text. She is a very calm and intelligent person.

My family background
Growing up in wartime
Post-war
My school years
Married life
Glossary

My family background

I was born in 1938 in the city of Leningrad. My paternal grandfather, Mordekhay Abramovich Farber, was born in 1868 in the town of Alushta, Tavricheskaya province. I only know that he had a sister and a brother. He had a serious quarrel with his brother early in life and didn't keep in touch with him after that. None of the relatives knew the reason for that quarrel. They assumed that it was about the difference in their material status. I don't know what education my grandfather had either. His job was related to forestry.

My paternal grandmother, Doba Yuliyevna Farber [nee Moina], was born in 1872. She became an orphan at an early age and was raised by her relatives. I don't know if she had brothers or sisters. She didn't have any education and took care of the household.

In the beginning my grandparents lived in the town of Berislav [150 km west of Kiev]. They had seven children and their first child, a girl, died as an infant. After that my father Idel was born, then Sarah, David, Isaac, Abram, Revekka and Rakhil. Grandfather Mordekhay worked in Nikopol, Southern Ukraine, as a log storage manager and had a house with a big garden on the bank of the Dnepr river. During the NEP 1 he organized a swimming pool and a boat-house in the garden, where his younger sons Isaac and Abram worked as boatmen.

Grandmother Doba and her daughters were keen on sewing and clothes- designing, besides keeping the household. They liked to wear beautiful and fashionable clothes. Aunt Rakhil and her daughter Eleonora still preserve this passion.

The Farber family was very close; the children subsequently left for various cities but always kept in touch with each other. My grandparents tried to provide education for their children. The two older sons graduated from the commercial school in Nikopol; the younger sons didn't manage to study there and finished Soviet schools, but all the seven boys got higher education.

My grandparents' mother tongue was Yiddish, but they spoke Russian in the family. They switched to Yiddish when they wanted to conceal something from the children or the maids. The boys studied Hebrew, probably in cheder. I don't know if the girls studied Hebrew. They all - grandfather, grandmother and their children - spoke very good Ukrainian.

My grandparents were religious people. All Jewish traditions were observed and all holidays were celebrated in the family. They attended the synagogue. Grandfather Mordekhay solemnly trampled on the New Testament on Sabbath, which was specially kept at home for that purpose, showing his belonging to Judaism and his denial of Russian Orthodoxy. However, all their children grew up as atheists. They left their home early in order to get education, and they lived their own life, which was common for Soviet intellectuals of that time. They never observed Jewish traditions.

My grandfather died in Nikopol in 1931, and, obviously, as a pious man, was buried according to the Jewish custom. After his death my grandmother moved to her older daughter Sarah and helped her to raise her little son, who was born in 1931. In 1934 a tragedy happened. The boy went for a walk with his grandmother, was hit by a car and killed. After that my grandmother moved to her son, my father Idel, who lived in Leningrad. She lived with our family and died in besieged Leningrad at the end of 1941. She didn't keep the Jewish tradition alive after she moved in with her children, because they were atheists. She was buried in the Volkov cemetery, but her grave doesn't exist any more because a bomb hit the place.

In my opinion, a lot of our relatives had successful lives. God was merciful to them: they survived repression, genocide and the war, though some of the relatives perished during the Holocaust. My father's older sister, Sarah Matveyevna Shevchenko [nee Farber], was born in 1898. She took the patronymic of her father's common name. She graduated from the Agricultural Institute in Dnepropetrovsk and worked as a veterinarian. Her Russian husband worked as an agronomist. They had three children: two daughters, Kima and Alvina, and a son, Leonid, who died at the age of 3, when he was hit by a car. Their family lived in Moscow. During the war they were in evacuation.

After the war public anti-Semitism started. [The interviewee refers to the campaign against 'cosmopolitans'.] 2 I think it's much more difficult for half-breds to endure it than for 'pure' Jews, especially if the mother is Jewish. They are torn between their natural love for their mother and the intention to conceal their identity of a 'despised' nation. My cousins found themselves in such a situation. Kima fell in love with her university mate. They studied at the Legal Faculty of the MGU [Moscow State University]. Kima was expecting a baby, and they planned to get married, but the fiancé's parents found out that the bride's mother was a Jew and flatly objected to the marriage. Their son was under their thumb. Kima now rests in the Promised Land. Her son, his Russian wife and their five children live in Israel.

Kima's sister Alvina concealed her marriage to a Russian from her mother for three months. They all lived together later on because Alvina's husband was from Moscow. Everything seemed quiet on the surface, but her husband was warped any time he heard the name of his mother-in-law. Sarah felt it and got very upset. She died in Moscow in 1968.

David Markovich Farber translated his father Mordekhay's name into Russian as Mark and so did his older brother, my father. All the other children used the name Matvey for their patronymic. David was an accountant, an economist. His wife was a Jew and worked as an accountant too. They were in evacuation in Siberia during the war. Their son Yuriy, born in 1927, was in the book trade. They lived and died in Moscow.

My father's other brother, Isaac Matveyevich Farber, got his education in Dnepropetrovsk. He was a talented engineer, worked in Baku and married Rimma Lvovna Chernyaeva, a Jew. They had no children. Isaac died young of cancer in Moscow and was buried there.

My father's younger brother, Abram Matveyevich Farber, also got his education in Dnepropetrovsk and was an engineer, too. His wife was a housewife. They lived in Moscow. Abram worked at Sovmin [Council of Ministers]. He was a very cheerful and witty man and liked to play tricks on everybody, including himself. He participated in the war, returned to Moscow after the war and worked at the Institute of Oil. He continued to work even when he was dying of cancer. His children, a son and a daughter, also became engineers.

Revekka Matveyevna Farber married a Russian, but didn't change her last name. Her husband was in the war, beginning with the Finnish war 3 and concluding with the war with Japan 4. He was a politruk [political official]. She was a doctor, an epidemiologist, and worked in besieged Leningrad during the war. Her daughter, Victoria, born in 1937, graduated from the Electro-Technical Institute named after Bonch-Bruyevich. Revekka died in Leningrad in 1970 and was buried in the 'Victims of 9th January' cemetery 5.

My father's younger sister, Rakhil Matveyevna Farber, born in 1909, graduated from the Dnepropetrovsk Agricultural Institute as an engineer- technologist in wine-making. She moved to Voronezh after graduation and married Abram Davidovich Gilevich, who worked as a commodity researcher in the book trade. During the war they were in evacuation in Siberia, and they lived in Lvov after the war. Aunt Rakhil's daughter graduated from the Lvov Medical Institute. It seems to me that anti-Semitism was felt less in Russia as compared to Ukraine, especially its western part. In any case, my cousin took a lot of efforts to move from Lvov to Moscow during the Soviet times, before the Soviet Union broke up. The reason for moving was anti- Semitism, both in everyday life and in state enterprises. At present she lives in Moscow with her mother and son and works as a radiologist. Aunt Rakhil is my only aunt who's still alive.

My maternal grandfather, Yankel-Movshe Yosel-Girshevich Yezersky, was born in 1860 in the town of Volkovysk, Grodno province [200 km from Minsk], which was part of the Russian Empire at that time. He was an Irregular Army warrior in 1878 [Editor's note: This was a form of draft to the Russian Army during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, which was aimed at the liberation of Bulgaria.] He probably obtained Jewish education because he worked as a melamed in his youth. My mother later wrote in all Soviet questionnaires that she was the daughter of a teacher.

My maternal grandmother, Riva Simkhovna Yezerskaya, was born in 1861. She didn't get any education and was a housewife. In the beginning my grandparents presumable lived in Brest-Litovsk, where their three older children were born: Froim-Peisakh, Iosif and Feiga. As the family grew bigger, my grandfather's salary as a melamed became insufficient to make a living for the family. With the help of a relative, he opened the 'Butter- Cheese-Yezersky' store in the town of Yekaterinoslav. Unfortunately, I don't know, how big the store was or how many employees worked there. At that time my grandfather changed his last name to Yezersky, probably for the advertisement to sound more euphonious. Before that the family name was Katzman or something the like. The change happened in the 1890s. Later all members of the family were called Yezersky.

After a ten-year period another three daughters were born in Yekaterinoslav: Shprintsa-Rochel, Lyuba and Sima, my mother. The three older children didn't get any education; the three younger ones had the opportunity to study. They went to a gymnasium and also learnt to play the piano.

Froim-Peisakh Yankel-Movshevich Yezersky had the common name of Yefrem Yakovlevich. He was a Ist Guild Merchant 6 in Kharkov before the Revolution of 1917. He owned a grocery store in the center of the town and worked as a seller after the store was nationalized. His wife, Fruma-Peisha Shlyome-Ziskelevna, was a housewife. They got evacuated to Alma-Ata during the war. We joined them and at first lived together. They had three children: Matvey, Feiga and Masha. They all got higher education. Matvey and Feiga were engineers, and Masha was a doctor. Matvey lived in Moscow, Feiga and Masha lived in Kharkov. They are not alive any more.

Iosif Yankel-Movshevich Yezersky was also a merchant before the war. He owned his father's store in Yekaterinoslav and was a commercial worker in Kharkov after the store was nationalized. His first wife died early, and he married again. He had a daughter, Pasha, and a son, Mikhail, from his first marriage and a son, Yakov, from his second marriage.

Pasha perished during the war in Dnepropetrovsk. She had a Russian husband. Her appearance was pretty international and she stayed on occupied territory. Their neighbors gave her away to the Germans. Her son, Vitya, was saved by her husband's parents. Pasha's husband perished in the war, his parents died and Vitya found himself in a children's home. The only person who tried to take care of him was Pasha's stepmother, Iosif's second wife. Iosif died before the war in 1937.

The children's home, where Vitya stayed, was very anti-Semitic. Teachers humiliated Jewish children in every possible way, and also his play-mates aimed at offending or even beating Jewish children. That's why he concealed his Jewishness as much as he could and was ashamed of his mother's Jewish stepmother, who was his only relative alive. Vitya was ashamed of her; he rudely cut short any assistance and care from her side when he was 14-16 years old and grew up a real anti-Semite.

Feiga Yankel-Movshevna Liberman [nee Yezerskaya] was born in 1886. She didn't have any education and was a housewife. Yiddish was her mother tongue; she spoke Russian poorly. She assisted in her brother Iosif's store in Yekaterinoslav and moved to Kharkov later. Her husband, Alter Liberman, died early in 1937. They had two sons, Abram and Zinoviy. Abram worked as a driver and Zinoviy got higher education and became a dentist. During the war Feiga was in evacuation. Both her sons were in the war and survived. Zinoviy was in a military hospital in Mongolia at the end of the war, where he continued to work for several years after the war. He got married there. His wife Nina had a daughter from her previous marriage. Their common daughter's name was Larisa, but we lost contact with her. Zinoviy died in 1976 in Kharkov, his mother Feiga also died there some time in the 1960s.

Shprintsa-Rokhel Yezerskaya didn't change her last name after she got married. She graduated from Lausanne University in Switzerland as a dentist. It seems that her brothers helped her financially so that she could study in Switzerland. Her husband was a real loafer; she earned the money and he spent it. The family lived in Brest-Litovsk and their fate was tragic. They didn't manage to evacuate during the war and all perished in the ghetto. Their two children, their son, Abram, a schoolboy, and their daughter Bella, perished with them. Bella had just finished school and already had a train ticket, dated 22nd June 1941, to Leningrad, where she wanted to enter the Pediatric Institute. Rumor has it that Bella didn't perish. She was a beauty and they said that a Polish officer was in love with her and saved her. Relatives were looking for Bella after the war but without success.

Lyuba Finkel [nee Yezerskaya] was born in Yekaterinoslav in 1897. She studied in a gymnasium like her sisters and ran away with a traveling theater actor when she was in the last grade. She married the actor and was cursed by her father. The marriage broke up very soon, Lyuba left for Kharkov in the 1920s and married Beinish Finkel, whose common name was Boris Aronovich. He was considered a rich fiancé in the NEP period. He owned a plant. When the authorities took away the plant, he worked in various cooperatives, and Aunt Lyuba worked with him. Later they moved to Leningrad and brought my parents there in 1931.

It was Boris's sister, Revekka Aronovna Finkel, a military doctor, who saved my father, when he was in hospital in Leningrad, heavily wounded. Lyuba and Boris evacuated from besieged Leningrad to the Ural in 1942. They came back in 1944 when the blockade 7 was lifted. They had a daughter, Irina, born in 1923. She graduated from the Construction Technical School in Leningrad and worked with a construction company. She reached the position of the head of the Planning Department. My parents kept in touch with the family and met often. It wasn't possible to observe Sabbath at that time because it was a working day and even religious Jews worked, if they were employed at public enterprises. So everybody gathered at Aunt Lyuba's place for lunch every Sunday. Aunt Lyuba was a very hospitable person. She died in Leningrad in 1963.

The family spoke Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian, but the common language at home was Yiddish, my grandparents' mother tongue. Grandmother Riva didn't speak Russian well. When children quoted her in letters, they wrote her words in Yiddish using the Russian alphabet. Her older daughter, Feiga, also spoke Russian poorly.

My mother's parents were religious people. They observed all Jewish traditions: They had a kosher household, observed Sabbath, attended the synagogue and celebrated all Jewish holidays. Grandfather Yankel was an active member of the community and a synagogue warden; he donated a lot to it. He died in 1914 in Yekaterinoslav and was buried in the Jewish cemetery according to the Jewish tradition. A lot of debts were revealed after his death, since he took the debts of the synagogue upon himself.

After her husband's death grandmother Riva lived in Yekaterinoslav in her son Iosif's family, who inherited his father's store. In 1928, after the NEP was over, the store was nationalized. Iosif, his family and grandmother Riva moved to Kharkov, where Iosif's older brother, Froim, lived. My grandmother died there in 1938. I don't know if she was buried according to the Jewish tradition. My mother's parents had died before I was born, so I have never seen them and only heard about them from my mother.

My father, Idel Mordukhovich Farber, was born in 1897 in the town of Berislav. He spent his childhood and youth in the town of Nikopol, where the family moved to. Everybody in the family had a nickname. My father's nickname was 'Chief', as he was the older brother. The children made up a language of their own using various words from different languages, trying to hide what they were saying from adults. My father preserved words from this made-up language to his dying day. For example: child - 'wurf', or, something remarkable - 'wurfyak', something annoying - 'fortych', woman - 'yena', man correspondingly - 'yener' and so on. These are inexplicable words, as they contain no semantic roots of any words. They were just created by children as associative signals.

My father finished the commercial school in Nikopol. It was the year 1915, and he was drafted to the army. From that moment on and to his dying day he had the nickname 'Soldier', which he was very proud of. To tell you the truth, Grandfather Mordekhay took some appropriate efforts to enlist his son as self-determinative to the regiment. [Editor's note: a form of draft to the Russian Army during the years of World War I, which provided some privileges as compared to privates.]

I don't know if he managed to participate in World War I military operations. He was a soldier at the beginning of the Civil War [1918-1921], but soon returned home and later served in the Red Army as a corps man for four months. In 1920 he entered the Kharkov Technological Institute and graduated in 1924 as a chemical engineer. After graduation he was assigned to Donbass, the Donetsk coal fields in the south-east of Ukraine, where he worked at JSC Koksobenzol in the town of Artyom. There was a friendly team of young people, engineers and doctors, and he met my mother in that group.

My mother Sofia Yankel-Movshevna Yezerskaya was born in 1899 in the town of Yekaterinoslav. She finished the private Jewish secular gymnasium in that town and chose the medical walk of life. She entered the Medical Faculty of the Yekaterinoslav University in 1916. The Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War prevented her from graduating. She graduated from the Medical Institute in Kharkov in 1924 and left for Donbass to work as a 'traveling' doctor. She visited various villages on a cart; the hospital coachman led the horse.

When my parents met in 1925, my mother worked in a hospital at Pereyezdnaya station. They got married in 1927. They didn't have a religious wedding: my parents' friends, young Komsomol members 8 and some other people were present. My mother didn't change her maiden name after her marriage. It was written as Sofia Yakovlevna Yezerskaya in her passport, so her name and paternal name were already russified, though, in the record-book of 1917 of the Yekaterinoslav University, she wrote her name as Sima Yankelevna.

My parents lived in Donbass until 1931. They left under the following circumstances. One of the young engineers, who worked with my father, was fired. His friends decided that he had been treated unfairly and submitted resignation applications as a sign of protest. No one managed to find another job though, and everybody, except for my father, returned to their former workplace. My parents decided to leave Donbass for Leningrad, following the advice of Lyuba, my mother's sister, who lived in Leningrad at the time. It saved father because all his friends were later subject to repression on the basis of the notorious Mining Case 9. All in all, I have to point out that destiny was in my father's favor. More than once he found himself in situations where he could have perished, but God drew the blow of at the very last moment.

My father worked at the Institute of Applied Chemistry (GIPH) in Leningrad, and my mother worked as a district doctor in the Gavan Polyclinic. She wanted to work in a hospital though and as a result found herself in the Children's Hospital, located near the Volkov cemetery. The war caught them there in 1941.

Growing up in wartime

I was born in 1938, and by the beginning of the war I was two and a half years old. I had no brothers or sisters. When the war broke out, I was very small and obviously didn't understand what was happening. When Leningrad was besieged and the Germans began to bomb it, people had to go to the bomb- shelters during the bombings. I lived with my grandmother and, as my mother told me later, I liked the bomb-shelter very much because a lot of children gathered there. So when I heard the air-raid warning signal, I began to jump and run cheerfully around the table. By the time my 80-year-old grandmother managed to catch and dress me, the bombings were over. As a result we stopped going to the bomb-shelter.

My father was a very straightforward person and supported the ideas of the Communist Party. At the beginning of the Civil War he served in the army and became a non-party Bolshevik. My mother was indignant with him because, in her opinion, he couldn't 'read between the lines' and 'lived according to the Pravda editorial', that is, in compliance with the ideology of the Communist Party of the USSR. He didn't doubt its correctness. He was always distinguished by honesty, adherence to principles, and an acute feeling for justice. In addition to his main job he was occupied with trade-union activities. He was responsible for the distribution of tickets at the Mestkom 10 of his Institute, and didn't take summer-camp tickets for me, when I was a child, because he considered it a demonstration of nepotism.

During the first days of the war my father went to sign up for the People's Volunteer Corps, as he was not subject to the draft, but mother, being a doctor, was already transferred to the state of barracks. She insisted that he stay with my grandmother and me. He continued to work in GIPH, but was soon also enlisted to the state of barracks. I stayed at home with my grandmother. In August 1941 my mother made an effort to send us into evacuation, but the Germans had bombed a train with evacuated people near Mga, Leningrad region, so she decided against the idea. Thus we all found ourselves in the siege. My mother periodically visited us. In October and November 1941 a boarding school for employees' children was arranged at my mothers' hospital, which was by that time re-organized into an evacuation hospital, and my grandmother was left alone.

Twice a week, on the days when my mother was on duty and had to 'test the food' in the kitchen, my father walked more than 10 kilometers on foot from GIPH to mother's hospital, in order to have a bowl of soup. On his way back he walked almost the same distance in order to bring mother's bread portion to my grandmother. Once he came home and found my grandmother dead.

The three of us were evacuated in July 1942 across Ladoga Lake [The so- called Road of Life] 11 and found ourselves in Alma-Ata, the capital of Kazakhstan [2,200 km south-east of Moscow], where my mother worked as a doctor at the children's hospital. My father worked as an engineer at the Chemical and Metallurgical Institute. He was preparing for the defense of his doctor's thesis, but in January 1944 he was drafted to the army. Father was at the Leningrad frontline. He was an artillery-man, an ammunition carrier. In one of the battles a shell hit the ground and everybody, except for my father, perished.

My father was carried away from the battlefield, heavily wounded, and sent to the hospital in Leningrad. His left lung was shot and he had a lot of shell fragments in his arms and legs. It turned out, that the doctor in charge of his case was my mother's relative, Revekka Aronovna Finkel. She was a pulmonologist and held the rank of a major at the time. At the end of the war she was a colonel of medical service. She fixed my father up. After the treatment he continued his service in the army, but with the NKVD forces 12. He was in Bucharest, Romania, at the end of the war. After the war he returned to Leningrad and to GIPH and my mother returned to the Children's Hospital. Both worked at those places all their lives.

My most distinct recollections are connected with the time of our evacuation to Alma-Ata, when I was 4 years old. But I also remember our boarding school during the blockade. I recall my mother, being on duty, walking into our room, approaching each bed, bending over each child. And I was so jealous because she didn't come up to me immediately. I started crying bitterly. Even though she had explained to me that she was a doctor and had to treat me the same way she treated other children because some of them didn't have mothers. I understood it but didn't stop crying.

I also remember crossing the road across the Ladoga Lake on a motor boat and railroad bridges. In Alma-Ata we lived in a pise house with the family of my mother's older brother [Editor's note: A pise house was a house with walls built out of straw mixed with clay; the floor was also clay]. Later we got a room in the hotel, where the Lenfilm employees lived. I went to a kindergarten in Alma-Ata and learnt a song there. It went: 'A Jew slowly crossed the road' and so on. I was 5 years old and it was the time when mother commenced my Jewish upbringing. At that time and during my school years she kept telling me, 'Don't forget that you are a Jew and won't get away with something your Russian friends will be able to get away with'. My husband-to-be and many other Jews, with whom I spoke about it later, heard almost the same thing from their relatives. I was convinced that if I wanted to achieve something I had to work more and harder. It became my belief. I also said this to my children when the time came.

Post-war

The most striking thing in Alma-Ata was Victory Day [then end of WWII]. I heard about it when I was in the hotel entrance hall and on my way to the kindergarten. The kindergarten wasn't far away and I walked there on my own. I ran the whole way in order to tell the children about it, because almost no one had a radio at home. And still, when I recall that moment, I hear the happy screaming and see the cloud of dust, which was the result of our happy tramping and jumping around. There were a lot of other interesting things happening before that: the earthquake, our kindergarten's performance on the radio with the song 'My motherland is broad' and our trip to the Lysaya Mountain, where I tried to eat goat droppings, thinking they were berries.

I also remember a piece of a moth-ball, which I found on the hotel floor and put into my mouth, thinking it was sugar and incomparably delicious sweet beet, cooked in the drying oven, which my father brought sometimes from work. Once he came to the kindergarten in order to say good-bye before leaving for the frontline and gave me a paper bag of caramel and a book by Marshak 13. My friend and neighbor, a Kazakh girl named Tyulpana, taught me to read with the help of this book long before school.

I also remember Dzhambul's 14 funeral, upon which I incidentally came with Tyulpana, because we saw a crowd of people, passing by our hotel on their way to the theater, where the farewell took place; I also recall the departure to Leningrad and the view of the Aral sea, which we passed, and the first destroyed building in Leningrad, the Oktyabrskaya Hotel near Moscow railroad station; and the first salute on November holidays in 1945.

My father was very proud of his rank of a soldier. He stuck to a Spartan mode of life and walked a lot. Both in winter and summer he walked on foot from and to his work, approximately three kilometers. In winter he crossed the Neva river, which was covered with ice. Father loved his city very much and knew it very well. As soon as he heard about a new street, he went to explore it. He didn't go to the theater with my mother, but he liked to wander about museums on his own. He was always given some presents, but he didn't like new things and put everything into the closet. Mother used to joke about it saying that he had a 'museum of presents for comrade Stalin'.

My father worked as a senior research assistant at his Institute, although he didn't defend a doctor's thesis. In later years he worked at the Informational Department, was the academic secretary of GIPH and dealt with the distribution of precious metals for experiments. He spoke several languages besides Russian: English, German, Ukrainian, Latin and Hebrew, the language of the Torah. He had a phenomenal memory and neglected notebooks all his life. He was a very erudite person, and all employees addressed him with questions, as if he were a 'walking encyclopedia'. He was a real workaholic. When he took a vacation, he walked about Leningrad during the first week, then he would visit his relatives in Moscow and walk about Moscow during the second week, but when the third week came, he ran back to work. So, when he died, there were a lot of unused vacation days. After the war he never took a sick-leave. He took his first sick-leave two weeks before his death. He died in 1977, two and a half months after his 80th birthday was solemnly celebrated.

My father was a silent person and spoke very little. My mother used to say, 'He silences a whole room'. But when he told me something, it remained in my memory for a long time. One spring, before school exams, we had an hour off, and I went to the Orthodox Preobrazhensky Cathedral with my class- mates. We had hid our pioneer neckties under our dresses. We came from atheist families but we were curious like all children. We even tried to cross ourselves, exchanging smiles, imitating the believers.

In the evening I talked about this interesting event at home. My father was very displeased with me. He said, 'You are atheists, and you go to watch praying people, as if they were animals at the zoo. That's an outrage upon the feelings of pious people. You shouldn't do that.' I remembered these words forever and now when I enter a church as a tourist, I behave quietly, in order not to attract attention or disturb anyone. There was another incident when I climbed into the neighbor's garden with my friends and stole some cucumbers. Father was terribly angry and said, 'How dare you not respect other people's labor?'

My mother differed from my father when it came to temper. She was a sociable person, loved to chat and had a lot of friends. Her closest friend was her mate at the Institute, Nyusia, also a Jew, with whom she went to the theater and spent her vacation. In order to take me to the country- side, my mother worked in Komarovo, a resort village near Leningrad, in a district children's hospital. It only operated in the summer when a lot of children left Leningrad to spend summer holidays in kindergartens and pioneer camps, located along the Finnish Gulf. She worked there on assignment from her hospital. My mother had a very serious and responsible attitude to her job, just like my father had. She was keen on medicine. She never refused to help any of our neighbors in our big house, if they asked her to look after their sick children. She was even offended when they offered her money because she considered that assistance to sick people was her obligation according to the Hippocratic oath.

My mother's friend Nyusia listened to the 'voices', as they called it at the time in this country, that is, the radio programs Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. My father considered her anti-Soviet, didn't like her and left the room when she came to visit us. Influenced by her friend, my mother didn't quite believe in the 'correct party policy' but, just like father, had a good attitude towards Stalin. They were both very proud of him after the war. However, after the fake Doctors' Plot 15 of 1952-1953 they regarded the death of the leader rather calmly.

My father wasn't concerned about the case, but my mother was very upset. On the one hand, she was afraid to be fired, on the other hand, she suffered from undisguised suspicions, which the sick children's parents expressed towards a Jewish doctor. When usually very uncared-for children recovered, some parents apologized for their suspicions. Mother was mostly irritated by a phrase like, 'There might as well be good people among the Jews'. She often replied to it, 'They are in the majority'.

My mother was proud of her Jewish identity, telling us about the Great Jews and their contribution to the treasury of mankind, though Jewish traditions were never observed in our family. For instance, she told me about the great writer Sholem Aleichem 16 and about the scientist [Albert] Einstein. However, two customs were sacred to her and she observed them, as well as I observe them now - a separate pan for milk and the inadmissibility of food in the cemetery. [The interviewee is referring to the Russian custom of funeral repast.] 17.

Our family was not used to blame all losses on anti-Semitism. We treated the occurrence like bad weather. In such situations mother usually repeated her older brother's wife's saying, 'No need of fear for the Jews'. Mother very often used well-known folk idioms and Russian-Yiddish-Ukrainian proverbs in her speech. For example, 'Agitsyn parovoz' [heat in the steam- engine], which means 'nothing special'. My mother lived a long life. She stopped working and retired after an infarction in 1958. She lived with my family during the last years of her life and died in 1985 at the age of 86.

My school years

I went to school after we arrived in Leningrad in 1946. Only one fourth of my 42 classmates had fathers; out of those fathers some were mutilated and some drank heavily. I had a father and a mother, a good, normal family, so I was one of the lucky ones. We also lived in relatively decent conditions, as we had two rooms with a total area of 32 square meters in a communal apartment in the city center.

In 1949-1950 me and my school friends got into a difficult situation and my father had to rescue us. We were admitted to the pioneers, which we were very proud of. Under the influence of a movie called The Young Guard 18 we set up an organization of our own with the same name. The movie was about a secret youth organization that did really exist in the occupied town of Krasnodon in Donbass and fought against the German invaders. Later almost all members of the Young Guards were caught by the Germans and executed by shooting.

One fourth of our class-mates were members of our organization and our intentions were certainly the most noble: honesty, good studying and the like. We kept the secret for about half a year. When our class mistress, a Jew, found out about it, a scandal broke out, ending with a boycott and expelling us from the pioneer group. The complete terror of the situation became clear to me later, when I read about secret youth organizations being smashed by the authorities. I don't know what my parents knew about it at that time and what kind of rumors were spread.

It turned out that only I was admitted to our organization upon my word, all the others swore an oath, like real Young Guard members, but certainly with a different contents. I had tonsillitis at that time and it was resolved to admit me in my absence, just like Ulyana Gromova, the Young Guard heroine. When we understood that our silence might have a bad end, I was instructed to talk to my parents. They took the story very seriously and discussed it for a long time in the evening. The next day my father put on his worn soldier's blouse and all his medals, went to the Party's District Committee and told them about the situation. I don't know what kind of words he used in the conversation, but the case was dismissed. We were blandly scolded for hiding our good intentions from society, and our pioneer neckties were returned to us. This was how my father rescued us.

I finished school in 1956. Unfortunately, I didn't enter an institute [university] right after school because the competition was high, so I had to go work as a copyist at a Repair-Assembly Combine. My mother asked my father to arrange a job for me at GIPH, but my father, a man of principle, flatly refused to do so. In 1958 I entered the Leningrad Technological Institute of Cellulose-Paper Industry. I graduated as an engineer- technologist in 1963.

Everybody in our family liked to read, be that books, magazines or newspapers, and after the war we assembled a big library, which we still keep. This is our second library, because the first one, collected before the war, had been used for stove kindling in besieged Leningrad by people that stayed in our apartment when we had been evacuated. After the war a lot of classics were bought for me, a lot of literature about chemistry and medicine for my profession and history and art books, which I was very fond of. I didn't choose history to be my profession, because I considered this science to be too politicized. All books were in Russian.

I started to work at the Technological Department of the Giprobum Design Institute [State Design Institute for Paper Industry] and worked there as a technologist until I retired in 1996. We had a very nice and friendly team, most of the people were born between 1930 and 1939. We still keep in touch, call each other and meet from time to time. I liked the job and the business-trips, and even periodical emergencies, when we had to work till late at night and on weekends. However, there was something I really hated. Those were trips to sovkhoz fields and vegetable storages, which occurred regularly. [Editor's note: All townspeople were systematically engaged in agricultural works in kolkhozes and sovkhozes, collective and state economies, within the conditions of the chronic Soviet agricultural economical crisis.]

Married life

I got married rather late, in 1970, when I was already 31. We had a secular wedding at home, with our friends and some relatives present. My husband, Alexander Moiseyevich Shkolnikov, was born in 1933 in Leningrad. He graduated from the Leningrad Ship-Building Institute as an electrical engineer in 1957 and started to work at Gidropribor CIHD [Central Institute of Hydraulic-Engineering Devices]. He worked there all his life.

My mother knew Alexander's family very well. She worked with his aunt at the hospital and also spent her summer vacation in the village of Repino with her for 10-15 years. They often told me that Alik as they called him at home, was a wonderful man, but we didn't have a chance to meet before. One day we were sent to the theater together. We saw each other on and off for two to three years. Alexander often had to go on business-trips. When he left, we kept in contact by correspondence. We soon got married. Alexander's relatives accepted me very warmly. It was a very nice family, and the wife of Alexander's cousin, with whom they grew up, still remains my best and closest friend.

My husband's father, Moisey Mendelevich Shkolnikov, and his wife, Khana- Sarah (her common name was Anna) Abramovna Shkolnikova [nee Dvorkina] were both born in 1902 in the town of Zhlobin in Belarus, which was part of tsarist Russia. They had an economic education, lived in Leningrad and had two sons: Emmanuil, born in 1927 and Alexander, my husband.

When the war broke out, the children were evacuated from Leningrad with the kindergarten Alexander attended. At first they were brought to Yaroslavl and later to the Northern Ural. The boarding-school was located in the village of Vilva, Solikamsk district, Molotov region. Alexander's brother Emmanuil, a schoolboy at the time, lived at the same boarding-school. Their mother was later evacuated from Leningrad. She lived close to her children, but not with them, and worked as an accountant at a sovkhoz in the neighboring village.

Moisey Mendelevich Shkolnikov worked as an economist in the Purchase Department of the Oktyabrskaya Railroad before the war. He held this position up until 1943 in besieged Leningrad and was transferred to the Department of Military Reconstruction Works afterwards. Their organization was responsible for the restoration of railways, destroyed during the military operations. They reconstructed railways in Pskov, the Baltic countries and Dnepropetrovsk. He was allowed to take his family with him in 1944, so his wife and their younger son followed him to Dnepropetrovsk. After the war they returned to Leningrad and Moisey returned to his previous workplace. He died in 1958 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Leningrad. Khana moved to Astrakhan at the end of her life and lived with her older son. She died there in 1993.

Emmanuil completed secondary school in Vilva, in the Ural, in 1942 and entered the Second Leningrad Military-Navy Special School, which was evacuated from Leningrad and was located in the town of Tara, Omsk region. He finished that school in 1946 in Leningrad, but he was immediately transferred to the reserve because of poor sight. He entered the Leningrad Electro-Technical Institute of Railroad Transport and graduated from it in 1952. After graduation he left for Middle Asia to participate in the railroad construction in Tashkent. After his marriage he moved to the town of Astrakhan, where he still lives with his family. I visited them in the summer of 2002.

I always had good relations with my husband's mother and his relatives. When we got married, they gave us a one-bedroom cooperative apartment. Our son, Mikhail, was born there in 1971, and our daughter, Lyuba, followed in 1976. In the same year we moved in with my parents. We exchanged our one- bedroom apartment and two rooms of my parents in a communal apartment for a separate three-bedroom apartment.

We always got on well. My husband was a very nice man. He was known for his kindness, obligation and tenderness, and he never let anybody down. If he understood that his assistance was required, he always helped without waiting for a request. He was an optimist. I was always afraid of something bad to happen. He always calmed me down, saying 'Everything will be fine!' or 'Don't be afraid, we'll break through!' Alexander collected stamps and postcards. He liked old German movies and Charlie Chaplin, and he collected old books of the 'Life in Art' series about famous Hollywood actors. I collected books about artists.

He worked a lot, even after he was diagnosed with an incurable illness in 1991. He only stopped working in 1999, when he was confined to bed. He died in 2000, to my enormous grief. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery and rests in the same grave as his father. After his death I was in a very bad condition, and only a trip to my Aunt Rakhil and cousin Eleonora in Moscow and their sympathy softened my anguish a little. Afterwards I was able to carry on. My children are already grown-ups and have families of their own. My husband liked to joke that our children corrected our mistake: we got married late, they got married early, at the age of 19. Now they live separately from me. I live alone in our old apartment.

Our children didn't get traditional Jewish upbringing, though they identify themselves as Jews. Their mother and father are Jews, and they consider themselves Jews too, not from a religious but from a nationality point of view. Traditional Jewish customs were never observed at home and we only celebrated Soviet holidays: 7th November - the Day of the October Revolution, 1st May - the Day of the Workers' Solidarity, 8th March -Women's Day, and so on.

Mikhail graduated from the Leningrad Electro-Technical Institute named after Ulyanov-Lenin [LETI] in 1994 and works as a programmer. His wife Tamara is a Jew; they studied together. When they got married she quit, and now she looks after their daughter Asia, who was born in 1997.

My daughter, Lyubov Bugayeva [nee Shkolnikova], graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics [LITMO] in 2000. She chose to get married to a Russian man, and I insisted that she rose the issue of her Jewish nationality before the wedding. My son-in-law told me that it didn't matter to him. All in all, I've met many Russian people in my life, to whom the person was important and not his or her nationality. Of course I've also met people who were the complete opposite, but I learnt not to communicate with them or to reduce such communication to the minimum. My daughter's husband also graduated from LITMO and now works in a mobile telephone repair shop. Lyuba doesn't work at present; she looks after their daughter, Anastasia, who was born in 1999.

My cousins and their children live in different cities and countries now. All my relatives, both on my father's and my mother's side, who lived in Ukraine left for either Russia during the Soviet times, or for Israel and Germany. Actually, and strangely enough, those who were born in mixed marriages, were the first to leave. We hardly keep in touch. Sometimes we call each other, and this goes for both relatives in other countries and other cities. It's very bad that we don't communicate more, but that's the way it is.

I'm certainly very worried about Israel and get very upset, when I see and hear about acts of terrorism and the victims. It's not a foreign country to us because Jews live there. The life of the Jewish community is reviving in our city nowadays. Jewish holidays are solemnly celebrated in the best city halls. I receive food parcels on holidays from the 'Eve' Jewish charitable organization and I attend cultural events that they organize.

Glossary

Alexander Gajdoš
Karlovy Vary 
Česká republika
Rozhovor pořídil: Martin Korčok
Období vzniku rozhovoru: srpen 2005

Pán Alexander Gajdoš v súčasnosti pôsobí ako predseda Židovskej obce Karlovy Vary. Naše spoločné interview prebiehalo na obci v priestoroch jeho pracovne.

Rodina
Dětství
Za války
Po válce
Glosář

Rodina

Starí rodičia z otcovej strany žili v čase otcovej mladosti v Nitre. Starý otec sa volal Bernát Goldberger a jeho manželka sa volala Terézia Goldbergerová. Žial už si nepamätám ako sa volala babička za slobodna a neviem ani to, odkiaľ pochádzali starí rodičia. Starí otec zomrel približne v roku 1936 alebo 1937 a babička pár rokov pred ním. Obaja sú pochovaní na židovskom cintoríne v Nitre. Zúčastnil som sa aj ich pohrebov. Pretože zomreli, keď som bol ešte mladý, pamätám sa na nich len veľmi matne. Starý otec bol zamlklí. Vždy sedel pred domom na lavičke s fajkou a len dumal. Mal svojho psa a ten sedel stále vedľa neho.

V Nitre bývali v štvrti pod hradom. V tom čase sa tam nachádzali malé prízemné rodinné domčeky. Nebola to však židovská štvrť. Židovskou štvrťou v Nitre boli Párovce. Starí rodičia bývali tiež v takom prízemnom rodinnom dome. Z dvora sa vchádzalo priamo do kuchyne. Okrem kuchyne mali ďalši tri izby. V jednej mali spálňu, potom bola ešte jedna malá izbička a napokon obývačka. Do tej obývačky sa chodilo asi tak, ako sa povie: „Raz za rok“. Elektrina a voda už boli v dome zavedené. V podstate tam viedli normálny život.

Žiadny z najbližších členov otcovej rodiny nepatril k pobožným Židom. Jeden z otcových [otec sa volal Heinrich Galik (changed from Goldberger)] bratov, Gyula [Gál (changed from Goldberger)] vlastnil obchod a dieľňu s rádiami. Otec mal štyroch súrodencov. Troch bratov a jednu sestru. Bratia sa volali Gyula, Rudi a Jožko, sestra Cecília. Cecília sa vydala za holiča, pána Horna. On však zomrel ešte na začiatku tridsiatych rokov [20. stor.]. Ja si na neho ani nepamätám.

Otcových rodičov som navštevoval každé leto. V podstate leto som trávil v Nitre. Väčšinou som býval u otcovej sestry Cecílie. Takže spával som u otcovej sestry a na obec som chodil vždy k niektorému z rodinných príslušníkov. Podľa toho, kedy ma kto pozval. Inak som väčšinu času trávil so svojim bratrancom, Alexandrom. Volali sme ho Sanyi, bol Cecilkiným synom. Chodievali sme sa spolu kúpať a tak. Do Nitry som prestal chodiť, až ked začala vojna.

Neviem aký bol materinský jazyk mojich starých rodičov ale so mnou sa rozprávali vždy slovensky. Okrem toho samozrejme ovládali aj maďarký a nemecký jazyk. Neboli pobožní ani neviedli kóšer domácnosť, ale sviatky sa v rodine držali. Starký mal obchod so zmiešaným tovarom. Mal jednu miestnosť a tam bolo všetko možné. Do obchodu sa vchádzalo hneď z kuchyne. Na dverách sa nachádzal zvonček, ktorý zazvonil, keď niekto vošiel. Niekto k nim potom vybehol z kuchyne a obslúžil. Inak si zvlášť na nejaké príbehy so starými rodičmi nespomínam. Mal som k nim ako dieťa určitý odstup. Ba dokonca ani neviem, kto bol susedom starých rodičov. Otec mi o nih neskôr tiež nezvykol rozprávať.

Mamičkiny rodičia pochádzali z Trstenej na Orave. Starý otec sa volal Markus Lubovič. Babičku sipamätať nemôžem, lebo zomrela ešte pred mojim narodením. Starý otec sa potom opäť oženil, ale ani meno jeho druhej manželky si už nepamätám. V Trstenej mal starký pekáreň. Nevedel by som však už o jeho pekárni nič bližšie povedať. Starý otec mal v čase mojej mladosti silnú cukrovku. Vtom čase ešte nebol inzulín, tak sa choroba nedala liečiť. Starý otec z nej takmer úplne oslepol. Nebol úplne slepý, ale takmer nič nevidel. Chodieval o paličke. Potom mu naši zohnali vo Vrútkach byt, kde sa presťahval spolu s druhou manželkou. Starali sa o nich mama spolu so sestrou Ruženou. Keďže vtedy starí ľudia nedostávai dôchodok, podporovali ich moji rodičia. Na meno druhej manželky starého otca sa už vôbec nepamätám. Rozprávala však maďarsky, pričom na Orave sa rozprávalo hlavne slovensky, aj medzi židovským obyvateľstvom. Starý otec ešte ovládal nemčinu a myslím, že aj maďarčinu. Obaja boli počas vojny deportovaní a zahynuli.

Starý otec mal so svojou prvou manželkou tri dievčatá. Moju matku, Sidy. Jej sestry sa volali Lina a Ružena. Z jeho druhého manželstva sa narodil syn Zoli. Lina sa vydala do Poľska za holiča do mesta Nowy Targ. Myslím, že sa volal Löwenberg. Ružena sa nikdy nevydala. Ostala stará dievka.

So starým otcom vo Vrútkach som trávil viacej času, ako s tým druhým zo Žiliny. Ale žiadny zvláštny vzťah sme si nevybudovali. Býval v byte jedna plus jedna, torý bol zariadený starým nábytkom. Z môjho vtedajšieho pohľadu nič moc. Vodu už mal samozrejme zavedenú. To, že koľko Židov žilo vo Vrútkach, neviem. Bola tam však celkom slušná komunita, s peknou synagógou. V tomto meste som mal dokonca aj bar micva. Starí rodičia z oboch strán boli neologickí Židia 1, to znamená, že veľké sviatky sa v rodine držali, šábes už pomenej a kóšer vôbec nie.

Otec sa volal Heinrich Goldberger. Narodil sa 17. júla 1898 v Nitre. Po vojne sa premenoval na Galík. To bola vtedy taká móda. Zomrel v roku 1978, mal presne osemdesiat rokov. Otec získal základné vzdelanie. Pracoval ako obchodný cestujúci. Týmto zamestnaním sa živil dovtedy, kým sa neosamostatnil. Neskôr si založil vlastný obchod v Žiline. Neviem kedy presne sa sťahoval otec do Žiliny, ale učinil tak kvôli práci a mojej matke. Pracovala totiž pre tú istú firmu ako môj otec. Bol to veľkoobchod Mendl a syn. Tam sa rodičia spoznali a neskôr sa vzali, lebo čakali mňa. Matka sa narodila v roku 1900 v Trstenej na Orave. To, že kedy zomrela neviem. Bola deportovaná a už sme sa o nej nič nedozvedeli.

Finančné zabezpečenie našej rodiny by som zaradil, medzi chudobu a strednú vrstvu. Keď boli zamestnaní u toho Mendla, mali celkom slušný plat. Keď sa otec osamostatnil, založil obchod so zmiešaným tovarom. Vzal si hromadu pôžičiek a potom prišiel krach na burze Wall Street a nastala kríza 2. Nebolo práce, prišiel exekútor a bol koniec. Ak sa dobre pamätám, otec mal ako prvý na okolí elektrický krájač na šunku a údeniny. Žiaľ, už po krachu burzy to nemal z čoho splácať. Okrem otca pracovala v obchode moja matka a ďalší zamestnanec, ktorý vykonával hrubé práce. Napríklad jazdil pre múku a pracoval v sklade.

Čo sa otcových politických názorov týka, ťažko povedať. Viete on sa so mnou ako s dieťaťom o takých veciach nerozprával. Predpokladám však, že bol sociálnym demokratom. Neviem to s určitosťou, len som to tak vydedukoval. Neviem o tom, že by bol otec členom nejakých spolkov a niečoho podobného. Tiež si spomínam, že za mlada slúžil ako vojak v 1. svetovej vojne ale nič bližšie k tomu neviem povedať. Vždy spomínal, že bol na vojne ale k nejakým konkrétnym historkám sa nedostal. Ak by sme sa mali rozprávať o otcových záľubách, tak on sa hlavne venoval obchodu. Okrem toho bol viac-menej sukničkár, to bol jeho koníček.

Rodičia sa medzi sebou zhovárali maďarským jazykom. S nami deťmi rozprávali slovensky. No o otcovi by som povedal, že bol sukničkár. To viete, mamu si bral preto, lebo ma už spolu čakali. Mama bola miernej povahy, dalo by sa povedať až uzavretej. Sama sa dokonca neukázala ani na ulici.

V Žiline sme bývali na viacerých miestach, podľa toho ako upadala naša finančná situácia. Vždy sme menili byt za lacnejší. Najprv sme bývali v centre nedaleko námestia, tam som sa narodil. Potom sme bývali smerom na celulózku. Neskôr sme sa presťahovali do časti mesta, kde bola budova vtedajšej elektrárne. Napokon sme museli prejsť do časti s mestskými činžiakmi, kde bolo najlacnejšie bývanie. Odtiaľ sme sa sťahovali do Vrútok. Z prvého bytu si už veľa nepamätám. Viem, že tam bola jedna veľká izba a ja som po nej jazdil dookola na trojkolke. Na ostatné miestnosti si už nespomeniem. Zo začiatku sme mali aj slúžky, ktoré varili a upratovali. Bývali spolu s nami približne do roku 1937. Vystriedalo sa ich viacero, takže si ich ani veľmi nepamätám. Ale keď som sa narodil, mal som dokonca aj kojnú. K žiadnej som si nevybudoval bližší vzťah. Že či sme mali za susedov Židov? My sme mali zakaždým niekoho iného. Veď stále sme sa len sťahovali. Ale boli to väčšinou nežidia. Rodičia nemali veľa blízkych priateľov. No tak otec mal nejaké známe, ženské, vdovy a ja neviem, niečo také. Tam sme občas chodili a inak nejak extra kamarát, tak to nemali. Tak to si nepamätám.

Sviatky sa v našej rodine nedržali veľmi prísne. V piatok mamička zapálila svičky a potom sa podávalo hlavne pečené kura. Neskôr, keď už otec nemal obchod a stal sa z neho obchodný cestujúci, v pondelok odišiel ale na piatok sa vždy vrátil domov. Jazdil po celom Slovensku. Predával múku pre rôzne mlyny. Do synagógy však veľmi nechodieval, to len na veľké sviatky. My sme navštevovali veľkú neologickú synagógu v Žiline. V Žiline žilo pred vojnou veľa Židov. Na sviatky bola veľká synagóga plná, napriek tomu, že za miesto sa muselo platiť a nie málo. Každý si tam platil svoje miesto.

Dodržiavali sme napríklad Roš hašana [židovský Nový rok – pozn. red.]. V tento deň sme sa doma navečerali a potom sa išlo modliť do synagógy. Inak si z toho večera nič zláštne nepamätám. Na Jom kipur [Deň zmierenia. Najslávnostnejšia udalosš v židovskom kalendáry – pozn. red.] sme sa potom postili, ale keď som niečo našiel, tak som si z toho uštipol. Jom kipur som však mal najradšej zo všetkých sviatkov. Všetko bolo biela a pôsobilo to tak slávnostne. No ale hlavne to, že sme sa na dvore synagógy zišli so všetkými kamarátmi. Vzadu vedľa synagógy bola židovská škola s veľkým dvorom a tam sme vyvádzali. Rodičia zatiaľ sedeli v synagóge. Občas sme sa tam aj my objavili a potom sme opäť zmizli. Chanuku [Chanuka: sviatok svetiel, tiež pripomína povstanie Makabejcov a opätovné vysvätenie chrámu v Jeruzaleme – pozn. red.] sme tiež ešte ako tak držali, hlavne sme v tom čase šli aj do synagógy ale napríklad Sukot [Sviatok stanov. Po celý týždeň, kedy sviatok prebieha, panuje jedinečná sviatočná atmosféra, pričom najpodstatnejšie je prebývať v suke – pozn. red.] a Purim [Purim: sviatok radosti. Ako hovorí kniha Ester, sviatok ustanovil Mordechaj na pamiatku toho, ako Božia prozreteľnosť zachránila Židov v perzskej ríši pred úplným vyhladením – pozn. red.] už vôbec nie. Dodržiavali sme ešte aj Pesach [Pesach: pripomína odchod izraelcov z egyptského zajatia a vyznačuje sa mnohými predpismy a zvykmi. Hlavný je zákaz konzumácie všetkého kvaseného – pozn. red.]. Večer sa čítalo z Hagady [Hagada: kniha zaznamenávajúca postupnosť domácej bohoslužby pri sédery. Hagada je v podstate prerozprávaním príbehu o východe Židov z Egypta podľa biblického podania – pozn. red.] a bol prestretý sviatočný stôl. Ale to ostatné, že by sme nejedli chlieb, tak to nie. Macesy boli, to je pravda ale jedli sme aj chlieb.

V meste boli aj ortodoxní Židia 3, síce ich bolo oveľa menej, no a oni držali všetko. S ortodoxnými Židmi som sa stretával aj ja. Dokonca ma otec poslal do ješívy v Žiline. Vyučoval nás taký malý zlostný chlapík. Dlho som sa však v tejto škole nevzdelával. Totiž moja mama už na tradície veľa nedala a doma sme nejedli kóšer 4. Preto bolo pre ňu normálne, že mi na olovrant zabalila žemľu so šunkou. Ten malý chlapík to uvidel, priskočil ku mne, vyviedol na dvor na „nakopal mi na zadok“. Povedal, aby som sa tam už viac neukazoval. To bol koniec môjmu náboženskému vzdelávaniu. Inak mne to vtedy ani nenapadlo, že čo som s tou šunkou spáchal.

Ako som už spomínal. Otec pochádzal z Nitry. Mal štyroch súrodencov, Július, každý ho volal Gyula. Ďalším bol Rudolf, nazývaný Rudi, Jozef a sestra Cecília. Najstarším otcovým bratom bol Jozef, on viedol obchod po starom otcovi. S rodinou žili v dome starého otca. Jeho manželka sa volala Malvína. Mali syna Tibora a dcéru Magdu. Obe deti prežili vojnu. Tibor sa vysťahoval do Ekvádora a Magda do Švédska.

Gyula bol približne o dva roky starší ako otec, to znamená, že sa mohol narodiť v roku 1896. Býval v Nitre spolu so svojou rodinou. Vlastnil obchod s rádiami, kde tie rádiá aj opravovali. Mal dvoch synov, Michala a Pistu [Pista, prezývka od mena Štefan – pozn. red.]. Vychádzali sme spolu celkom dobre. Keď som bol na prázdninách v Nitre, často som ich navštevoval. Chodili sme sa spolu kúpať alebo sme robili túry na vrch Zobor [Zobor: vrch pri meste Nitra (nadmorská výška 588 m), v pohorí Tríbeč – pozn. red.]. V Nitre bolo v tom čase kúpalisko pod hradom. Neviem, či to tam ešte stále je. Možno to už zastavali. Gyulova manželka sa volala Vilma, rodená Braunová. Bola to veľká dáma. Pochádzala z lepších kruhov. Bývali spolu na takzvanej Špitálskej ulici. V dome kde bývali mal Gyula aj obchod a dieľňu.

Tretí otcov brat sa volal Rudolf, čiže Rudi. On je o nejakých päť rokov starší ako otec. Vyštudoval stavebnú školu a pracoval ako architekt, v tom čase pán architekt. Rudi mal dvoch synov, Walter a Babi. Okrem nich mal ešte dcéru. Jej meno si už nepamätám. Bola trošku telesne postihnutá, mala menší hrb. Napokon však vyštudovala medicínu a stala sa lekárkou. Meno jeho manželky si už nepamätám. Počas vojny sa dostali do Terezína. Celá rodina prežila holokaust a po vojne utiekli do terajšieho Izraela.

Jediná otcova sestra sa volala Cecília. Vydala sa za pána Horna, ktorý mal v Nitre na Hlavnej ulici holičský salón. Obývali byt nad tým salónom s prístavbou smerom na dvor. Mali to zariadené celkom slušne. Jej manžel žiaľ veľmi skoro umrel. Mali jedného syna, volal sa Alexander, čiže Sanyi.

Druhú svetoú vojnu prežil len jeden z otcových súrodencov, Rudi. Ten sa potom spolu s rodinou vysťahoval v roku 1946 alebo 1947 do Palestíny. Po niekoľkých rokoch sa vrátili, znášali dobre tie klimatické podmienky. Ostatní otcovi súrodenci počas vojny zahynuli.

Mamička mala troch súrodencov. Dve sestry a jedného nevlastného brata. Najstaršia mamina sestra sa volala Lina. Vydala sa do poľského mesta Nowy Targ za holiča menom Löwenberg. Ja som toho pána ani nepoznal. Viem, že sa im narodili dve deti, ktoré s Linou počas vojny zahynuli. Prežil len ich otec, zachránil sa kdesi v Rusku.

Ďalšia mamina sestra Ružena tiež umrela počas vojny. Pred vojnou žila istý čas s nami v Žiline a potom i vo Vrútkach, kam sme sa presťahovali. S tetou Ruženou sme celkom dobre vychádzali. Znamená to asi toľko, že žiadne srdečné vzťahy to neboli ale ani napriek sme si nikdy nerobili. O mamičkinom najmladšom bratovi, volal sa Zoli, veľa povedať neviem. Bol o dosť starší ako ja, tak sme sa veľmi nekamarátili. Zomrel spolu s ostatnými počas holokaustu.

Dětství

Ja, Alexander Gajdos [rodený Goldberger], som sa narodil 8. apríla 1924 v Žiline. Meno som si nechal zmeniť začiatkom päťdesiatych rokov. Že prečo som si vybral práve priezvisko Gajdoš? To ani tak nezáležalo na mne. Volal som sa tak ešte v nemeckom zajatí, k čomu sa ešte dostaneme. No a pri zmene som musel uviesť tri mená. Nadiktoval som Gajdoš, Gordon a to tretie si ani nepamätám a úrad mi vybral Gajdoš.

Ako malé dieťa som chodil do škôlky. U nás sa to volalo óvoda. Mal som celkom dobrú pani učiteľku. Dokonca do tej óvody som chodil rád. Nejaké extra spomienky na tú škôlku nemám. Pamätám sa len to, ako sme sa hrávli na dvore. Potom som prešiel na obecnú židovskú školu v Žiline. Bolo tam päť ročníkov – od prvej triedy po piatu. Chodili sme tam spolu chlapci a dievčatá. Chodilo tam pomerne dosť kresťanských detí, pretože to bola lepšia škola ako ostatné. Vyslovene som nemal rád matematiku a nemčinu. V škole som mal najradšej telocvik. Mali sme jedného vynikajúceho učiteľa, ktorý to s nami vedel. Toho sme mali naozaj veľmi radi. Samozrejme veľa sme cvičili a hrali hlavne hádzanú. Tá bola jednoduchá a na dvore stačili dve bránky. Dobité ruky i nohy samozrejme patrili k hre. Náš telocvikár sa volal Braun. Chodievali sme spolu aj na krátke výlety po okolí mesta. Hlavne na Dubeň a na okolité hrady. V židovskej škole sa samozrejme museli navštevovať aj hodiny judaizmu. To neexistovalo, aby sa na ne nechodilo. Náš vzťah k náboženskej výchove bol asi taký, že sme sa stále s rabínom hrali. Na jeho meno sa už nepamätám. Bol to starý pán a my sme mu vyvádzali strašné veci. Napríklad si pamätám, že sme mali zvonček a v polovici hodiny sme zazvonili, niekto vykríkol „zvonilo“. On na to „keď zvonilo, tak zvonilo“ a bol koniec hodiny. Na chodbe nás stretol riaditeľ, bol to obrovský chlap s trstenicou, ešte sa nás pýtal kam ideme. My sme mu povedali, že rabín povedal, že zvonilo. On povedal: „Veď ešte nemohlo zvoniť.“

Riaditeľ používal aj telesné tresty. Napríklad s nami chodil aj jeden zaostalejší chlapec a ten vždy niečo vyviedol dievčatám. Napríklad kým cvičili, tak im zobral šaty zo šatne a tak. Mimo školy sme boli partia židovských chlapcov, všade sme spolu chodili a trávili spolu veľa času. Boli sme tak piati. Okrem nás bola ešte jedna partia židovských chlapcov a tak sme proti sebe bojovali, hádzali kamene a tak. Mali sme asi desať, jedenásť rokov.

Vo Vrútkach som sa pripravoval aj na obrad bar micva [Bar micva: „syn prikázania“, židovský chlapec, ktorý dosiahol trinásť rokov. Obrad, pri ktorom je chlapec prehlásený bar micvou, od tejto chvíle musí plniť všetky prikázania predpísané Tórou – pozn. red.]. Otec mi zjednal vyučovanie u istého rabína. Bol to mladý človek nižšej postavy. Pochádzal z Čiech a patril k neológom. Ten ma učil. Išlo hlavne o to, aby som sa naučil text, ktorý mám prečítať počas obradu. Iné sa tam po mne ani nechcelo. No a do bar micva som sa to nejako naučil. Samotná bar micva prebiahala v synagóge vo Vrútkach. Predvolali ma k Tóre, prečítal som text a to bolo všetko. Na nejakú oslavu doma si ani nespomínam, a nespomínam si ani na to, čo som pri tejto príležitosti dostal nejaké darčeky.

Vo veku mojich štrnástich som začal pociťovať protižidovské nálady. Vychodil som päť tried obecnej židovskej školy a potom som sa dostal do gymnázia 5. Z gymnázia ma vylúčili v tretej triede, potom som už nesmel chodiť v Žiline do školy. Ale inak sa nič zvláštne nedialo, len že som nemohol chodiť do školy. Že by nás nejak inak diskriminovali, tak to nebolo. Akurát tí sopľoši na ulici vykrikovali: „Žid, smrad, kolovrat!“, ale tie nadávky sme poznali aj predtým.

Práve v tom období sme sa sťahovali zo Žiliny do Vrútok, kde som nastúpil do štvrtej meštianky. Tde priamo vo Vrútkach ma na školu nevzali. Musel som každý deň dochádzať vlakom do neďalekej obce Varín. Židom som tam bol iba ja. V podstate si ma nikto nevšímal. Všetci učitelia boli v Hlinkovej garde 6, dokonca aj riaditeľ, pre nich som ako keby ani neexistoval. Sedával so v prvej lavici, ale ani raz ma nevyvolali, napriek tomu som dostal na vysvedčenie samé trojky. Bolo to v roku 1939. So spolužiakmi som vychádzal dobre, tam nebol žiadny problém. Bolo medi nimi aj pár Čechov, ktorých nevyhnali 7 zo Slovenska. Priatelil som sa najmä s tými, ktorí spolu so mnou dochádzali. Boli sme štyria, ktorí sme jazli vlakom z Vrútok do Varína a večer naspäť.

Za války

Okrem mňa sa rodičom narodila moja sestra Viera. Narodila sa v Žiline v roku 1927.  Vychádzali sme spolu dobre, ale nie až natoľko aby sme chodili spolu von. Každý z nás mal svojich kamarátov. Sestra žiaľ vojnu neprežila. Do lágru išla spolu s mamou, ale vôbec nevieme, kde zmizli. Napriek tomu, že sme po nich pátrali, stopa sa stratila. V priebehu vojny nás celú rodinu internovali v zbernom tábore v Žiline v roku 1942 a boli sme tam do vypuknutia Slovenského národného povstania v roku 1944 8. V tom období, medzi rokom 1942 a 1944, keď nešli žiadne deportácie 9, pracovali sme v tom žilinskom tábore.

V tábore bol v tom období celkom dobrý život. Chodili sme pracovať na výstavbu športového štadióna v Žiline. Aj môj otec tam pracoval. Štadión sa nachádzal neďaleko rieky Váh. Nebola to až taká ťažká práca. Dozorcovia, gardisti, z tábora nás tam doviedli. Oni potom niekde zaliezli, alebo sa rozišli na pivo. Bol tam jeden človek, ktorý nás navygoval a to bol slušný chlap. Mama pracovala v tábore v kuchyni a sestra nerobila nič.

Život bol v tom čase naozaj znesiteľný. Dokonca som chodieval aj do mesta. Ani hviezdu som nenosil 10, v živote som ju nemal. Nikdy som sa ani nedopočul o prípade, že by bol za to niekto niekoho udal. My, ktorí sme boli zo žilinského lágra, sme hviezdu nenosili. V tábre som býval s ďalšími piatimi chlapmi. Sem tam niekto utiekol, ale veľmi sa neutekalo. O tom, čo sa deje v Poľsku sme sa dozvedali od železničiarov, ktorí sprevádzali transporty po hranice s Poľskom. Železničiari nám priniesli správu o krematóriách v Osvienčime. Myslím, že od nich sa to rozšírilo.

Počas povstania 8 sa otec, matka a sestra ukryli v lesoch v okolí Rajeckých Teplíc. Tam ich potom všetkých chytili. Otca previezli niekam inam, kde mamu a sestru a tak sa mu podarilo prežiť. Otec sa dostal do Sachsenhausenu a potom do Buchenwaldu. No a matku so sestrou vzali do ženského tábora v Ravensbrücku a tam sa ich stopa stratila. Ja som sa počas povstania pridal k armáde. V Žiline bola vojenská posádka, no a celá táto posádka sa stiahla k Martinu, do Strečna. Pred vojnou som bol členom mládežnického hnutia Hašomer Hacair 11, ale nie preto som sa pridal k armáde. Človek sa pridával tam, kde bola nádej na prežitie.

Na Strečne sme boli v nejakej obrane. Kopali sme zákopy a mali za úlohu podržať záložnú líniu. Samozrejme neboli sme len pasívnymi pozorovateľmi. Raz sme dostali rozkaz zaútočiť na železničnú trať s tunelom. Ako sme sa tam približovali, zrazu sa objavil Tiger [Tiger: nemecký tank, sériovo vyrábaný od roku 1942 – pozn. red.] a začal po nás páliť. Stiahli sme sa do zákopov. Boli tam s nami francúzski partizáni, ktorí boli na Slovensku v zajatí a počas povstania sa im podarilo utiecť. Viac o ich osude neviem, veľmi som sa s nimi nestretával. V našom odiely sme boli len dvaja Židia, ja a môj vzdialený bratranec Elemér Diamant. Žial neviem, či prežil vojnu, lebo potom sa naše cesty rozišli.

Časom sme útočili na nejakých Nemcov ukrytých v lesíku. Tam po mne začal nejaký Nemec strieľať. Žiaľ aj ma trafil. Prestrelil mi rameno, guľka našťastie vyšla druhou stranou. Zranenie bolo pomerne ťažké, ale dostali ma z neho. Najprv ma z miesta, kde ma zasiahla guľka odtiahli. Ťahali ma po zemi a na bezpečnom mieste so mnou vybehli na cestu. Po čase pre mňa prišla sanitka a vzala ma do nemocnice v Martine. Tam som bol jeden deň, pretože Nemci prerazili frontu a granáty dopadali až na nemocnicu. Rýchlo nás evakuovali do mesta Sliač.

Povstalecké územie bolo už úplne malé. V podstate len miesta v okolí obcí Banská Bystrica, Sliač a Brezno. Všetko ostatné už bolo buť obsadené alebo obkľúčené. V Sliači sa ma opýtali, či môžem chodiť. Keďže chodiť som vedel, prepustli ma z nemocnice. Ešte som sa tam stretol s Elemérom, pretože on bol tiež v nemocnici. Počas bojov pri meste Vrútky sa dostal do nejakej mely a utrpel z toho šok. Oboch nás prepustili takmer súčasne. Ja som si to namieril na hlavný stan partizánov a on povedal, že už tam nepôjde, radšej vymyslí niečo iné. Tak sme sa rozišli a od tej doby sme sa nestretli. Z nemocnice som odišiel do Banskej Bystrice, na hlavný štáb. Tam ma vzali k strážnemu oddielu. Držal som stráž pred hlavným štábom v Banskej Bystrici na hlavnom námestí.

Nemci sa tlačili aj do Banskej Bystrice. Evakuovalo sa do hôr, Staré Hory [Staré Hory: horská obec v Starohorskej doline, okres Banská Bystrica – pozn. red.], Donovaly [Donovaly: horská obec situovaná medzi pohoriami Veľká Fatra a Starohorské Vrchy, okres Banská Bystrica – pozn. red.], Kozí Chrbát [Kozí Chrbát: v súčasnosti lesná rezervácia ležiaca na severnej strane Nízkych Tatier – pozn. red.] a tak ďalej až cez Chabenec [Chabenec (1955 m): je mohutný horský masív v Nízkych Tatrách – pozn. red.]. Na tom Chabenci napríklad zmrzol Šverma 12. Mnoho z nás tam vtedy dostalo dyzentériu [dyzentéria: vážna infekčná črevná choroba. Prejavuje sa ťažkou hnačkou s prímesou krvi a horúčkou, ktorú sprevádzajú bolesti brucha – pozn. red.]. Všetkých, ktorí sme ju dostali nás ubytovali zvlášť v jednej zemľanke [zemľanka: podzemný úkryt, obyčajne vojenský – pozn. red.]. Odtiaľ nás však poslal preč jeden miestny občan so slovami: „Tu nemôžete byť, my vás nemôžeme živiť, sami nemáme čo žrať!“ Oznámili nám, že nás vezmú na kraj lesa, kde sú dediny a sami si budeme musieť niečo zohnať od miestnych ľudí. V tom čase som sa zoznámil s jedným Čechom z Ostravy. Na jeho meno sa už žiaľ nepamätám. S ním sme to odvtedy spolu „ťahali“. Odviedli nás na kraj lesa a povedali rozchod. Tam nám oznámili, že sme stále vedení ako partizáni z odielu, ktorého meno si už tiež nepamätám. Povedali nám aj, že  keď niečo prezradíme, tak si nás nájdu.

Celé sa to udialo na prelome novembra a decembra 1944. S mojim českým kamarátom sme si našli celkom slušné miesto a jedným kopcom a vykopali si buker. Najbližšia dedina bola z toho miesta vzdialená na tri hodiny chôdze. Tak sme si povedali, že tu ostaneme a každý večer sa vyberieme do dediny, vyžobrať si nejaké jedlo a zásoby. Pretože, ak by napadlo veľa snehu, aby sme neumreli hladom. Našťastie v tom období ešte nemol sneh, pretože sme sa nachádzali kdesi v Nízkych Tatrách [Nízke Tatry: 80 km dlhé pohorie nachádzajúce sa na Slovensku – pozn. red.]. Takto sme denne chodili do dediny. Vždy sme sanajedli. Niekde nám dali fazuľu, inde zemiaky a tak. Pokiaľ to bolo možné, vzali sme si aj zásoby. Keď sme už mali dostatok zásob, povedali sme si: „No, teraz sa pôjdeme najesť naposledy!“

Tak sme sa išli naposledy najesť. Zabúchali sme u jedných na dvere a otvorila veľmi slušná selka. Povedala: „Ó vy chudáci!“ Hneď nám dala večeru. Potom si všimla naše oblečenie a so slovami: „Veď vás žerú vši, ja vám to vyperem“, nás nechala vyzliecť a uložila do postele, do perín! My sme jej povedali nech nás zobudí akonáhle sa začne rozodnievať. Na čo odvetila: „Samozrejme, samozrejme“. No a naraz buchoty v dedine. Nemci hulákali. Veci sme už mali vyprané, suché a rýchlo sme sa obliekli. Ešte sme jej hovorili „Prečo ste nás nevzbudila?“ „Mne vás bolo tak ľúto, vy ste tak krásne spali.“ Vylietli sme z baráku a hneď na námestí jedna hliadka s guľometom, na druhom konci ďalšia hliadka s guľometom. Nemci už chodili z baráku do baráku. Tak sme vyleteli zadom. Obišli sme námestie a dostali sa do úhozu. Už sme boli vonku z dediny. Naraz sa oproti nám objavili dvaja Nemci. Debili tam museli ísť práve tým úhozom a my dvaja dotrhaní civili im rovno naproti. Už sme sa minuli, už sme boli asi desať krokov od seba a naraz nás zastavili. Niečo sa im nezdalo a jeden z nich zakričal: „Hej partizán!“ Tak nás zobrali. Zhromaždili nás na námestí v strede dediny. Aby sme nešli len tak naprázdno, každému naložili s nábojmi. Takže sme mali čo niesť cez ten sneh, ktorý medzičasom napadal.

Napokon nás posadili do vlaku a odviezli do väzenia v Banskej Bystrici. Tam sme boli od začiatku decembra do konca februára. No a tam v tej väznici sme vegetovali tie dva, tri mesiace. Občas niekedy kravál, niekoho vyhnali na Kremničku 13. Vyháňali ich psami, gulometmi. Potom bolo týždeň ticho. Potom ich zase nahromaždili a zase ich potom išli vystrielať. No a my sme tam stále vegetovali v tej izbe. Bol tam jeden Ukrajinec, ja a ešte dvaja Židia. Nevedeli s určitosťou, že sme Židia ale mysleli si to. Naraz nás koncom februára vyviedli a prišiel nejaký Slovák, s vysokou šaržou. To boli Slováci. Strážila nás slovenská väzenská stráž. Krútil hlavou, že ako je možné, že sme stále tam. Oznámili nám: „Tí, čo tu boli pred vami, tak tých všetkých už pozabíjali v Kremničke!“ Na našu izbu akosi zabudli. Tak otvorili dvere a pýtali sa „čo tu robíte? Už tu nemáte byť!“ No my sme hovorili: „Nemáme tu byť?“ Podľa papierov malo byť celé väzenie prázdne. Kartotéky sa už ničili, lebo oslobodzovacia armáda už dobíjala blízke Brezno a oni už chceli evakuovať aj Banskú Bystricu.

Nás si teda zapísali a odišli, proste týždeň pokoj. Potom prišiel znovu iný a zase si nás zapísal. No a potom za tri, alebo štyri dni prišiel esesák s tým, že ideme na výsluch. Cez ulicu bol banskobystrický súd a tam mali sídlo. Tak tam nás odviedli na chodbu. Potom prišiel ďalší, pýtal si meno. Nadiktoval som Gajdoš, narodený v Žiline. Zapísal si to a odišiel.

Zachvíľku prišiel nejaký vysoký dôstojník, sudeťák 14, rozprával česky a hovorí: „Ja vám teraz dám prepúšťacie papiere. Bežte domov. Nie aby ste bežali na východ! Lebo, keď vás tam uvidia naši vojaci takto otrhane, tak vás postrielajú.“ Tak sme dostali papier a išli sme. S tým kamarátom z Čiech sme si povedali: „Čo budeme robiť? Samozrejme vybali sme sa na východ. Hneď v prvej dedine za Banskou Bystricou nás pristavil jeden chlap. My sme mu ukázali papiere, že nás práve prepustili a že sa potrebujeme dostať k partizánskej jednotke. Tak dobre, povedal. Tu máte večeru, vyspíte sa a skoro ráno vás prevediem k hlavnej ceste a ukážem vám, kadiaľ máte ísť.

Či sa tým ľuďom dalo dôverovať? Čo iného nám zostávalo? On vyzeral skutočne tak seriózne. Ráno nás previedol na cestu a ukázal smer. Mali sme sa dostať do obce Priechod, kde sa nachádzali maďarské jednotky, ktoré sa odtrhli od Nemcov. My sme teda šli tým smerom. Po čase sa kamarát potreboval vysrať. Tak si vyliezol na pole, poobzeral sa dookola a uvidel nejakú postavu v bielom ako tam stojí a pozerá sa na nás. Dali sme sa na útek. Bežali sme otvoreným poľom. Keď sme sa zastavili, že už sme dosť ďaleko, pred nami sme zbadali zástup nemeckých vojakov. Zbadali nás! Nemohli sme robiť nič iné, len im kráčať naproti. Samozrejme nás zajali a odiedli do nejakej dediny. Predviedli nás pred veliteľa so slovami, že nás chytili a buď budeme partizáni alebo banditi a treba nás zlikvidovať. Veliteľ sa nás pýtal, či rozprávame nemecky. Keďže som si niečo pamätal zo školy, tak som mu povedal, že nás práve pustili. Ukázali sme mu papiere. Potom sa začal hádať s ďalším vojakom, či nás zlikvidujú alebo nie. Vojak bol za likvidáciu, veliteľ proti. Napokon veliteľ rozkázal, že nasledujúcu noc budeme spať s ním v jednej izbe. Keď sme ostali sami, nám po nemecky hovorí: „Musíte spať so mnou, lebo on je nacista a ja za neho neručím.“

Na druhý deň nás poslal s vojakom späť do Banskej Bystrice, aby sa presvedčil, či nás skutočne pustili. Te človek, sudetský Nemec, ktorý nám vypísal papiere nás zbadal. Podišiel k nám a začal rozprávať česky, aby mu nás sprievodca nerozumel. „Vy dvaja, čo som vám povedal, že máte ísť rovno na západ a že sa nemáte motať!“ Nemecký vojak samozrejme ničomu nerozumel a hlásil, že sme banditi a máme falošné papiere. On mu hovorí „Vy hovoríte o mojom podpise, že je falošný?!“ On mu tak vynadal, že až! Ešte aj nám sa ušlo, že: „Čo čumíte, okamžite sa strate, ak vás ešte raz privezú, potom bude koniec!“ Tak sme zase vybehli von. Za nami vybehol ten nemecký vojak, sadol na voz a „utekal“ rýchlo preč.

My sme sa opäť vybrali tou istou cestou ako včera, napokon už sme ju ako tak poznali. Na druhý krát sa nám podarilo dostať do deniny Priechod. Hneď nás tam zadržala stráž. Pýtali sa, čo tu chceme. Povedali sme, že ideme za partizánmi. Tam sa nás ujal nejaký chlap v civile. Rozprával slovensky aj maďarsky. Povedali sme mu, že by sme sa radi pridali k nejakej partizánskej jednotke. No tak dobre ale najprv sa navečerajte. Tí Maďari sa ešte mali dobre, mali buchty s makom. Tak sme sa tam nažrali!

Územie, na ktorom sme sa ocitli bolo slobodné a to tým, že maďarská vojenská jednotka sa odtrhla od Nemcov. Nakoniec sa dostala reč k tomu, kde budeme spať. Oznámili nám, že nad dedinou je hájovňa s partizánskym oddielom. Bolo tam pár partizánov a Maďarov. Presunuli sme sa do tej hájovne. Tam sme dostali ďalšiu večeru, zase nejaké buchty a dobroty. Vyfasovali sme zelenú československú uniformu a flintu. Napokon sme sa pobrali spať. Mohlo nás tam byť asi päťdesiat, šesťdesiat ľudí. Ráno, mohlo byť tak päť hodín, nás zobudili výkriky a streľba. Dedinu Priechod ráno obkľúčili Nemci. Použili lesť. Keďže tam boli maďarskí vojaci, Nemci poslali napred iných maďarských vojakov, ktorí boli na ich strane. Tým sa podarilo dostať k strážam, pretože na ich výzvu odpoveali maďarským jazykom. Takto stráže odzbrojili a vošli do dediny. Ako ľudia vybiehali z domov, Nemci ich rovno strieľali, ako zajace. Časť mužov pozbierali a vyniesli na koniec dediny pod strmý kopec. Kázali im utekať. Ako utekali, všetkých postrieľali. Ujsť sa podarilo len jednému nemeckému chlapcovi, mohol mať tak šesťnásť, sedemnásť rokov. Tento chlapec sa ešte predtým pridal k partizánom. Bol jediným z mužov, komu sa podarilo prežiť. Nemci napokon dedinu vypálili. Niektorým ženám sa to podarilo prežiť a oni potom zostali žiť v tej vyplienenej dedine.

Odstupom času sme sa dozvedeli, že zradcom bol chlap, ktorý sa nás ujal po príchode do dediny a nakŕmil buchtami. Ak by nás večer nebol poslal hore do hájovne k partizánom, už by som tu nebol. Nás defakto zachránil. Jeho úlohou bolo zháňať zásoby a zároveň pracoval aj pre Nemcov ako agent. Nakoniec aj jeho chytli Rusi a popravili ho. My sme ostali istý čas v hájovni. Odtiaľ sme chodievali na hliadky k okolitým dedinám, napríklad k dedine Podkonice a tak. Všade už boli Nemci. Len sme počuli ako pri nás vŕzga sneh. Pretože ich hliadky prišli až na kraj dedín, k lesu a potom sa opäť stiahli. Napriek tomu, že od nás boli len na niekoľko krokov, nemohli sme s nimi ísť do boja. Bolo by to pre nás beznádejné. Vedeli sme, že by to bolo beznádejné. Cez Podkonice viedla aj hlavná ústupová cesta Nemcov smerom na Ružomberok. My sme sa z hájovne postupne presunuli do bunkrov v lese, kde sme držali hliadky. Odtiaľ sme koncom februára, začiatkom marca, pokračovali cez Chabenec a Nízke Tatry, do Brezna. Brezno už bolo oslobodené. Zdržiavali sa tam rumunskí vojaci. Tam nás rozdelili. Maďarskí vojaci, ktorí boli s nami, šli dole na juh. Česi a Slováci pochodovali smerom na Poprad. Pešo z Brezna do Popradu [priama cestná vzdialenosť medzi mestami Brezno a Poprad je približne  90 km – pozn. red.]!

Po príchode do Popradu som sa hlásil do Prvého československého armádneho zboru. Tam som bol ovedený do poddôsojníckej školy. Dostal som peknú uniformu, zbraň a tam som slúžil do júna 1945. Poddôstojníckuškolu v armádnom zbore som absolvoval s hodnosťou slobodník. Odvtedy som sa ešte prepracoval na podplukovníka československej armády. Po škole som odišiel s ostatnými vojakmi, v rámci výcviku, pešo z Popradu do Martina [priama cestná vzdialenosť medzi mestami Brezno a Poprad je približne 130 km – pozn. red.]. Kráčali sme tri, alebo štyri dni. V Martine sme sa stretli s prezidentom Benešom 15, ktorý prišiel z Košíc 16. Tam sme nastúpili na autá a poslali nás ako zálohu na Moravu, kde sa ešte bojovalo. Vojakom pred nami sa však vždy darilo frontu preraziť a tak sme sa my priamo bojov nezúčastnili. Takto sme šli za frontou, až do Prahy.

V Prahe sme ako vojaci chodili na „cvičák“. Nacvičovali sme napríkld boj v uliciach mesta. Bolo to na Bílej hore. Tam vybehovali babičky s maskami a pokrikovali: „Ježiš Mária, Nemci sa opäť vrátili.“ Oni nevedeli, že je to výcvik, a že používame len slepé náboje. V uliciach bol rachot a babičky sa preto chceli dostať do úkrytu. My sme im hovorili: „Babi, to je len tak, to nie je skutočné.“ Koncom júna nás poslali späť na Slovensko, do vojenského útvaru v Nitre, odkiaľ ma potom prepustili do civilu.

Počas môjho pôsobenia v Prahe som kontaktoval bývalého starostu Vrútok. Zároveň bol zástupcom veliteľa Hlinkovej gardy v meste, ale aj náš ochráca a rodinný priateľ. On mi povedal, že otec sa vrátil a žije v Žiline. Tak to som vedel. Počas môjho pobytu v Nitre som sa ubytoval u otcovho brata, Rudiho. Prežil vojnu v Terezíne 17. Spal som u neho na žehliacej doske. Po niekoľkých dňoch som sa vybral v nákladnom vagóne z Nitry do Žiliny.

V Žiline sme sa stretli s otcom, ktorý am už mal vlastný podnájom. Na obedy sme chodievali k jeho kamarátkam. Raz k jednej a potom zase k druhej... Z nášho majetku sa ná nepodarilo zachrániť absolútne nič. Aby som sa uživil, začal som pracovať ako inštalatér. Síce som nemal výučný list, no napriek tomu ma zamestnala jedna firma v Žiline. Majiteľom bol tiež Žid.

Po válce

V povojnovom období sa obnovil aj chod židovskej obce v meste. Počet členov židovskej komunity však neustále klesal. Otec sa odsťahoval ešte v roku 1945 do Karlových Varov 18. Rozhodol sa tak kvôli svojej kamarátke, pani Katzovej. Ona mala v Karlových Varoch známych, rodinu Kleinman. Otec sem prišiel v domnení, že si tu vezme do prenájmu penzión. V podstate všetci odchádzali do Karlových Varov v domnení, že sa uchytia. Ja som za nimi prišiel začiatkom jari v roku 1946. Býval som s otcom. Napokon vychádzali sme spolu dobre.
Otec sa zamestnal v kúpeľoch. No najprv bol v kyslikárni, kde sa plnili kyslíkové fľaše. Potom sa stal na riaditeľstve ubytovacím referentom. Odtiaľ odišiel aj do dôchodku. Ako dôchodca robil inšpektora na kolonáde. V podstate sa tam prechádzal celý deň od rána do večera a dohliadal na poriadok.

V tom období som sa zoznámil so svojou prvou, dnes už nebohou, manželkou. Za slobodna sa volala Irena Rothová. Narodila sa v roku 1926 v meste Kajdanove na Podkarpatskej Rusi. Kajdanove patrilo do okresu Mukačevo. Pochádzala z pobožnej rodiny, ale ona už nebola po vojne tak pobožná. Po vojne sa vrátila na Podkarpatskú Rus. Zistila, že všetky jej kamarátky, ktoré prežili vojnu, sa rozutekali po svete. Jeden z bratov jej mamičky žil v Karlových Varoch. Zhodou okolností to bol pán Kleinman, ku ktorému moja budúca manželka prišla. Zoznámil som sa s ňou u otcovej kamarátky, pani Katzovej. Prišiel som k nej na večeru a moja budúca manželka tam bola tiež. Pani Katzová a Kleinmanová boli kamarátky. Tak sme sa teda „náhodou“ spoznali. Svadbu sme mali židovskú, pod chupou [Chupa: baldachýn, pod ktorým stojí pár pri svadobnom obrade – pozn. red.], v Karlových Varoch, v roku 1946. To však vtedajšie úrady nepočítali za oficiálny sobáš. Civilný sobáš sme mali na jeseň v roku 1948. Svadbu, židovskú, sme oslavovali u Kleinmanových. Zišlo sa tam približne dvadsať ľudí.

Manželka prežila vojnu v Osvienčime, odtiaľ sa dostala do nejakej továrne a nakoniec vyviazla v Terezíne. Jej rodičia zahynuli v Osvienčime. Okrem rodičov mala ešte dvoch bratov. Obaja vojnu prežili a vysťahovali sa do Izraela. Volali sa Imre Roth a Béla Roth. S Imrem som sa stretol neskôr v Karlových Varoch. Bol tu dva alebo tri krát. Jeho brata som nvidel. Manželka sa s ním stretla niekde v Budapešti. Po smrti mojej manželky som s nimi stratil kontakt. Ale myslím, že už tiež nežijú. Manželka rozprávala maďarsky a jidiš, no a samozrejme česky. Ja hovorím česky a slovensky a dohovorím sa aj maďarsky a nemecky. V našej rodine sa držali po vojne väčšie sviatky. Šábes samotný sme veľmi nedržali, len manželka zo začiatku zapaľovala sviečky, neskôr už ani to nie. Taktiež sa oslavoval pésach. Manželka pripravila pésachovú večeru, polievku s macesovými knedlíčkami.

V Karlových Varoch sa po 2. svetovej vojne obnovil aj chod židovskej obce. Napokon, bolo tu dosť Židov. Časom sa však veľa z nich vysťahovalo. Odišli hlavne do Izraela a Ameriky. Tí, čo tu ostali, sa medzi sebou vždy „hrýzli“. Napokon, ako vo všetkých obciach. Samozrejme, bola tu aj modlitebňa, ktorá už dnes nestojí. Obec mala aj rabína a šamesa. Rabín však emigroval. My sme sa na židovskom živote v meste veľmi nepodieľali. Pár krát do roka sme šli so ženou do modlitebne. Hlavne na Roš hašana a Jom kipur. Chlapci s nami nechodili.

Osobne som vnímal vznik štátu Izrael pozitívne. Dokonca by som nenamietal, keby sme sa tam s manželkou boli vysťahovali. Ona tam bola za totality navštíviť svojich bratov. Myslím, že prvý krát v roku 1965. Hovoril som jej: „Vysťahujme sa.“ Jej odpoveď znela: „Ani za nič. Ja som to tam videla a viem, o čo ide. Ja tam nejdem!“ Jej mladšiemu bratovi, Bélovi, ktorý žil v Ber Sheve, sa celkom darilo. Mal firmu, ktorá vozila piesok na stavby. Starší brat, Imre, žil v Nathanyi. Prevádzkoval obchod s nábytkom. Občas skrachoval, potom sa postavil na nohy a zase dookola. Obaja jej bratia si založili vlastné rodiny. Čo sa náboženstva týka, ani jeden z nich nebol pobožný.

Irenka pracovala ako krajčírka. Dlhé roky šlila uniformy a medzitým aj doma známym. Proste šila stále. Po príchode do Karlových Varov som istý čas pracoval ako údržbár pre podnik Československé hotely. Chodil som po hoteloch spravovať batérie a podobné veci. No a potom som sa dostal,  do funkcie tajomníka okresu pre kultúru KSČ 19. Členom strany som bol od roku 1945. Napriek tomu, že som tam vstúpil s otcom, vravieval mi: „Ty nebudeš nikdy komunista.“ Hovoril mi to preto, lebo ja som komunistom nikdy neveril. Postupne začali Slánskeho procesy 20. Mňa sa však v podstate vôbec nedotkli.

Udalosti v roku 1968 21 som vnímal pozitívne. Pracoval som vtedy v národnom podniku a bol som predsedom odborovej závodnej rady. V podstate v roku 1968 sa v Karlových Varoch konala konferencia a smerovaní strany. Na tej konferenii vystúpili niektorí členovia okresu s novým spôsobom zmýšlania a sprdli okresného tajomníka komunistickej strany. Ja som bol vtedy vo volebnej komusii a na už sme stihli zvoliť nových ľudí do funkcií v strane, čo mi neskôr samozrejme priťažilo. Ja som však veril, že konám správne. Napokon mi vytkli, moju účasť na danej konferencii. Dospelo to až k tomu, že v roku 1970 ma vykopli zo strany 22. Predtým ma navštívili páni z ŠtB. Povedali mi, že nič odomňa nechcú, len aby som... Ja som im povedal, že nebudem nikoho udávať. Ako predseda závodnej ady som sa vždy snažil, aby bolo všetko spravodlivé a toho som sa aj držal. Neskôr som sa zamestnal ako technik u pozemných stavieb. Jazdil som po stavbách v okolí, napríklad Praha, Chomutov, Cheb, Aš, proste celý región. Veľa voľného času nebolo.

V Karlových Varoch sme zo začiatku bývali v malom studenom, vlhkom, prízemnom byte. Bolo to začiatkom 50. rokov 20. storočia. Napokon sa nám narodili dvaja synovia. Milan v roku 1953 a Roman v roku 1956. Synov sme sa snažili vychovať, ako slušných ľudí. Obriezku nemali, žena to po skúsenostiach z minulost nedovolila. Odvolávala sa na to, že im nechce pokaziť život... Samozrejme, že sme pred nimi ich pôvod netajili a vedeli o všetkom.

Časom sme dostali aj nový, krásny slnečný byt na Víťaznej ulici. Chodievali sme spolu aj na dovolenky. Na západ sa vtedy nedalo. Človek na to nedostal povolenie. Chodievali sme ako rodina do Bulharska. Manželka mala veľa kamarátok a ja som mal tiež jedného kolegu z práce, s ktorým som si rozumel. Trávili sme spolu veľa času aj mimo práce. Stretávali sme sa u nás, alebo u nich. Žiaľ, aj on už zomrel. Tiež sme s manželkou a deťmi jazdili na rôzne dovolenky pod stan. Irenka chodievala aj do kúpeľov. Hlavne do Františkových Lázní a do okolia Písku. Ja som ju tam samozrejme vždy odniesol a potom prišiel pre ňu, takže to som z tých kúpeľov akurát tak mal.

Môj otec sa po vojne ešte tiež oženil. Za manželku si vzal ženu menom Eda Kleinová. Pochádzala z Podkarpatskej Rusi. Edina sestra s manželom bývali v Prahe. Rozhodli sa, že v štvorici si kúpia v Prahe dom. Otec s manželkou obývali poschodie a jeho švagor s manželkou bývali dole. Samozrejme, zvykli sme ich navštevovať, tak dva-trikrát do roka. Otec zomrel v Prahe v roku 1978. Jeho druhá manželka tiež, približne desať rokov po otcovej smrti.

Irenka dostala začiatkom 90. rokov 20. storočia mŕtvicu. Ostala ochrnutá na pol tela. K tomu všetkému sa prieplietol zápaľ pľúc. Chorobe podľahla v roku 1994. Pochovali sme ju na židovskom cintoríne v Karlových Varoch. Medzitým dospeli aj naši synovia. Milan žije v obci Tachov. Je to približne šesťdesiat kilometrov od Karlových Varov. Vyučil sa ako elektromontér. V Tachove sa však v začiatkoch zamestnal ako krmič dobytka, pretože mu pridelili byt, za podmienok, že sa tam zamestná. Roman vyštudoval vysokú školu stavebnú v Prahe. Po štúdiách ostal žiť v Karlových Varoch. Kanceláriu má hneď vedľa židovskej obce. Projektuje stavby a vodí sa mu celkom dobre. Nikdy sa však neoženil. V kancelárii trávi celé týždne, aj víkendy a domov chodí večer o desiatej. Milan si vzal za manželku nežidovské dievča a vyženil si aj syna. Spolu sa im narodil ďalší chlapec. Obe ich deti sú už však dospelé.

Približne päť rokov dozadu som bol navštíviť Izrael. Bol som na poznávacom zájazde. Život tam bol taký, ako som si predstavoval. Ruch na uliciach, kaviarničky. Cesty sú tam prvotriedne. Mimo mesta boli všetky osvetlené, čo tu asi nenájdete. Hovoril som si, že je to celkom fajn. Čo sa životnej úrovne týka, to neviem. Nebol som tam až tak dlho, aby som to vedel posúdiť. Čo ma prekvapilo? Na šábes som bol akurát v Nathanyi. Čakal som, že v sobotu bude všade kľud. Ráno som vstal, vyšiel na okno a všade zástupy áut. Jazdilo ich toľko, ako vo všedný deň. Plné boli aj pláže a na uliciach neustal ruch.

Na prelome tisícročí som sa spoznal so svojou druhou manželkou, Miluškou. Pracovala v potravinách, kam som chodil nakupovať. Tak sme sa stále na seba usmievali, kým raz za mnou nevybehla, že má dva lístky do divadla. Pýtala sa ma, či by som s ňou nešiel. V tej chvíly som ostal v šoku. Musím povedať, že viac-menej sa mi samozrejme páčila. Odvetil som, že hneď neviem odpovedať, ale zistím, či na ten termín nemám program a ozvem sa. V tom čase som už pôsobil ako predseda židovskej obce v Karlových Varoch. Samozrejme, okamžite som si utekal kúpiť oblek a potom som sa vrátil do obchodu a povedal: „Áno, pôjdem do divadla.“ Dopadlo to tak, že sme sa vzali. Miluška nie je Židovka. Svadbu sme mali civilnú. S mojim synom Romanom sa hneď skamarátia. Milan bol zo začiatku trochu odmeraný, ale potom sa dalo všetko do poriadku. Miluška má z prvého manželstva troch synov a sedem vnúčat. Takže teraz sme celkom veľká rodina. Čo sa sviatkov týka, teraz doma nedržíme nič, pretože ona zrušila aj vianočný stromček, ktorý sme my s predošlou manželkou doma mali. Spočiatku sme spolu zvykli chodievať na kúpalisko, no a teraz väčšinou na záhradu.

Niekoľko rokov som pôsobil v predstavenstve židovskej obce v Karlových Varoch. Istý čas som bol miestopredsedom. Vtedajší predseda obce nespĺňal predstavy ostatných členov. Bol podľa nich arogantný. Napríklad niekomu nechcel dať macesy na Pésach, pretože sa neobjavil na obci dosť často a podobne. Zatvoril cintorín a pre kľúč sa muselo chodiť k nemu. Kľúč však nechcel každému požičať. Proste nebol obľúbený. Napokon na jednej výročnej schôdzi vystúpil pán Gubič, že by sa mala oddeliť náboženská funkcia vedúceho obce a funkcia predsedu obce. Napokon sa odhlasovalo, že bývalý predseda ostane ako duchovný vodca obce a mňa zvolili za predsedu. Bolo to približne pred siedmymi rokmi. Mojou úlohou je starať sa o majetok obce. Náboženské záležitosti majú na starosti rabín Kočí a šames Rubin. Tí majú na starosti náboženskú oblasť. Obec má čím ďalej, tým menej aktívnych členov. Môže ich byť asi tak desať. V predstavenstve je nás sedem, na tých sa dá povedať, že sú ako tak aktívny. Všetkých členov je približne 98. Nie všetci sú priamo z Karlových Varov. Máme členov aj v okolitých obciach a mestách, ako napríklad Sokolov a Jáchymov. Židovská obec má svoju modlitebňu, kde sa každý piatok a v sobotu schádzajú na modlenie. Niekedy nemajú minjan [minjan: modlitebné minimum desiatich mužov vo veku nad trinásť rokov – pozn. red.], sú len piati – šiesti. Ale Karlovy Vary sú lázenským mestom, s množstvom hostí, aj židovskými. Preto nie je ničím výnimočným, že sa tu zíde aj dvadsať chlapov. Niektorí z kúpeľných hostí, ktorí tu už boli viac-krát, automaticky prídu aj do modlitebne. Rovnako držíme aj väčšie sviatky. Na sukot sa na dvore budovy obce stavia aj suka.

Glosář:
1 Neolog Jewry: Following a Congress in 1868/69 in Budapest, where the Jewish community was supposed to discuss several issues on which the opinion of the traditionalists and the modernizers differed and which aimed at uniting Hungarian Jews, Hungarian Jewry was officially split into to (later three) communities, which all built up their own national community network. The Neologs were the modernizers, who opposed the Orthodox on various questions. The third group, the sop-called Status Quo Ante advocated that the Jewish community was maintained the same as before the 1868/69 Congress.

Alexander Gajdos
Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad)
Czech Republic
Interviewer: Martin Korcok
Date of interview: August 2005

Mr. Alexander Gajdos is currently the president of the Karlovy Vary Jewish community. The interview took place in his office at the community.

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

My grandparents on my father's side lived in Nitra when my father was young. My grandfather was named Bernat Goldberger, and his wife was named Terezia Goldbergerova. Unfortunately, I don't remember anymore what my grandma's maiden name had been, and I don't even know where my grandparents were from. My grandfather died around 1935 to 1937, and my grandmother a few years before him. They're both buried in the Jewish cemetery in Nitra. I was at their funerals. Because they died while I was still small, I remember them only very faintly. My grandpa was taciturn. He always just sat with a pipe on a bench in front of the house, and just pondered. He had a dog, which always sat beside him.

In Nitra they lived in a neighborhood down below the castle. In those days there were small family bungalows there. But it wasn't the Jewish quarter. The Jewish quarter in Nitra was Parovce. My grandparents also lived in one of those bungalows. From the courtyard you walked directly into the kitchen. Besides the kitchen they had another three rooms. In one they had a bedroom, then there was one more little room and then a living room. They went into the living room, as they say, 'Once a year.' The house already had electricity and running water. They basically lived a normal life there.

None of my father's immediate family members were devout Jews. One of my father's [his father was named Heinrich Galik (changed from Goldberger)] brothers, Gyula [Julius Gal (changed from Goldberger)] owned a radio store and workshop. My father had four siblings, three brothers and one sister. His brothers were named Gyula, Rudi [Rudolf] and Jozko [Jozef], his sister Cecilia. Cecilia married a barber, Mr. Horn. But he died at the beginning of the 1930s. I don't even remember him.

I used to visit my father's parents every summer. I would basically spend the summer in Nitra. Most of the time I lived at my father's sister Cecilia's place. So I slept at my father's sister's place and for lunch I'd always go to one of the family members' place. Depending on who invited me over. Otherwise I spent most of my time with my cousin, Alexander. We called him Sanyi; he was Cecilia's son. We used to go swimming together and so on. I only stopped going to Nitra once the war began.

I don't know what my grandparents' mother tongue was, but with me they always spoke Slovak. Besides this they of course spoke Hungarian and German. They weren't religious, nor did they lead a kosher household. But our family observed holidays. Grandpa had a general store. He had one room that was full of all sorts of things. You walked into the store right from the kitchen. On the door there was a bell that rang when someone entered. Someone would then run out of the kitchen and serve them. Otherwise I don't remember any special anecdotes about my grandparents. As a child, there was a certain distance between us. I don't even know who was my grandparents' neighbor. Later, my father didn't tell me about them either.

My mother's parents were from Trstena, on the Orava River. My grandfather was named Markus Lubovic. I can't remember my grandmother, because she died before I was born. My grandfather then remarried, but I don't remember his second wife's name anymore either. Grandpa had a bakery in Trstena. But I don't know anything else about his bakery. When I was young my grandfather had serious diabetes. Back then insulin didn't exist yet, so the disease couldn't be treated. My grandfather went almost completely blind from it. He wasn't completely blind, but almost couldn't see a thing. He used to walk with a cane. Then my parents found him an apartment in Vrutky, where he moved together with his second wife. My mother and her sister Ruzena took care of them. Because back then old people didn't get a pension, so my parents supported them. I don't remember the name of my grandfather's second wife at all. But she spoke Hungarian, while in the Orava region people spoke mainly Slovak, even the Jewish population. My grandfather also spoke German, and I think Hungarian as well. During the war they were both deported and died.

My grandfather had three daughters with his first wife. My mother, Sidy, and her sisters were named Lina and Ruzena. From his second marriage he had a son, Zoli. Lina married a barber in the town of Nowy Targ in Poland. I think he was named Löwenberg. Ruzena never married. She stayed an old maid.

I spent more time with my grandfather in Vrutky than with the other one in Nitra. But we didn't have any type of special relationship. He lived in a two-room apartment full of old furniture. From my point of view at the time, nothing much. He of course already had running water. How many Jews lived in Vrutky, that I don't know. But on the whole it had a decent-sized community, with a nice synagogue. I even had a bar mitzvah in this town. My grandparents on both sides were Neolog Jews 1, which means that the High Holidays were observed in the family, but the Sabbath less, and the kashrut not at all.

My father was named Heinrich Goldberger. He was born on 17th July 1898 in Nitra. After the war he changed his name to Galik. That was in fashion back then. He died in 1978, he was exactly 80. My father had a basic education. He worked as a traveling salesman. He supported himself this way until he went into business for himself. Later he opened his own store in Zilina. I don't know when exactly my father moved to Zilina, but he did it because of work and my mother. Because she worked for the same company as my father. It was Mendl & Son, a wholesale business. That's where my parents met and later they married, as I was on the way. My mother was born in 1900 in Trstena. I don't know when she died. She was deported and after that we didn't find out any more about her.

Financially, I'd classify our family between poverty and the middle class. When they worked for that Mendl, they had a relatively decent salary. When my father went into business for himself, he opened a general store. He took out a bunch of loans, and then the Wall Street stock market crash came, and the depression 2 began. There wasn't any work, the executor came and that was the end. If I remember correctly, my father was the first in the region to have an electric slicer for ham and smoked meats. Unfortunately, after the stock market crash he didn't have anything to make payments with. Besides my father, my mother also worked in the store, plus another employee that did heavier work. For example he used to go get flour and worked in the warehouse.

As far as my father's political opinions go, it's hard to say. You know, when I was a child he didn't talk to me about things like that. I assume though, that he was a social democrat. I don't know it for sure, I only kind of deduced it. My father wasn't a member of any associations or anything similar that I know of. I also remember that as a young man he served as a soldier in World War I, but I don't know anything else about it. He always mentioned that he was in the war, but never told any specific stories. If we were to talk about what my father liked to do, he mainly devoted himself to business. Besides that, he was more or less a skirt- chaser, that was his hobby.

My parents spoke Hungarian amongst each other. With us children they spoke Slovak. Well, and as far as my father goes, I'd say he was a skirt-chaser. You know, he married my mother because she was expecting me. My mother was of a mild nature, you could say even introverted. She even wouldn't go out on the street by herself.

Growing up

We lived in several places in Zilina, depending on how our financial situation was declining. Every time we moved into a cheaper apartment. At first we lived downtown, near the main square; that's where I was born. Then we lived over towards the cellulose factory. Later we moved to the part of town where the power station was at the time. Finally we had to move to where the city apartments were, which is where the cheapest places to live were. From there we moved to Vrutky. I don't remember much from the first apartment. I know that there was one large room there, where I used to ride around on a tricycle. I don't remember the other rooms anymore. In the beginning we also had servants that cooked and cleaned. They lived with us until about 1937. Several of them came and went, so I don't even remember them very much. But when I was born, I even had a wet nurse. I didn't develop a close relationship with any of them. Did we have Jewish neighbors? Each time we had someone different. Because we were always moving. But they were mostly non-Jews. My parents didn't have many close friends. Well, my father had some friends, women, widows and whatnot, something like that. We'd sometimes go there, and otherwise some extra close friends, those they didn't have. I don't remember it that way.

We didn't observe holidays very strictly in our family. On Friday my mother lit candles and then most of the time we'd have roast chicken. Later, when my father already didn't have the store and he became a traveling salesman, he'd leave on Monday but would always return home on Friday. He traveled all over Slovakia. He sold flour for various mills. But he didn't go to synagogue very often, only for the High Holidays. We used to attend the big Neolog synagogue in Zilina. There were a lot of Jews living in Zilina before the war. During the High Holidays the synagogue was full, despite the fact that you had to pay for a place there, and it wasn't cheap. Everyone had to pay for his place. We for example observed Rosh Hashanah. On that day we'd eat supper at home, and then go pray at the synagogue. Other than that I don't remember anything in particular about that evening. For Yom Kippur we'd fast, but when I found something, I pinched off a bit for myself. But I liked Yom Kippur the best of all the holidays. But mainly because I'd meet up with all my friends in the synagogue courtyard. In the back, beside the synagogue, there was a Jewish school with a big schoolyard, and we'd fool around there. Our parents would still be sitting in the synagogue. Once in a while we'd make an appearance there, and then we'd disappear again. We also more or less observed Chanukkah, mainly we'd also go to the synagogue then, but for example we didn't observe Sukkot or Purim at all. We also still observed Passover. In the evening we'd read from the Haggadah and the holiday table would be set. But the other things, like not eating bread, we didn't practice. We had matzot, that's true, but we also ate bread.

There were also Orthodox Jews 3 in town, though there were a lot less of them, and they observed everything. I also used to come into contact with Orthodox Jews. My father even sent me to the yeshivah in Zilina. This nasty little man used to teach us. But I didn't study at this school for long. You see, my mother didn't care about traditions very much any more, and at home we didn't eat kosher 4. So it was normal for her to wrap me up a bun with ham for teatime. That little man saw it, ran over to me, took me out into the courtyard and 'gave me a licking.' He told me to not show my face there anymore. That was the end of my religious upbringing. Otherwise, at that time I didn't even know what I had committed with that ham.

As I've already mentioned, my father was from Nitra. He had four siblings, Julius, who everyone called Gyula. Then there was Rudolf, called Rudi, Jozef and their sister, Cecilia. My father's oldest brother was Jozef; he ran the store after Grandpa. He and his family lived in Grandpa's house. His wife was named Malvina. They had a son, Tibor, and a daughter, Magda. Both children survived the war. Tibor moved to Ecuador and Magda to Sweden.

Gyula was about two years older than my father, which means that he was probably born in 1896. He lived in Nitra with his family. He owned a radio store, where they also repaired radios. He had two sons, Michal and Pista [a nickname for the name Stefan]. We got along fairly well. When I was in Nitra during summer vacation, I'd often visit them. We used to go swimming together, or we'd go hiking to the top of Zobor [a peak by the city of Nitra (588m above sea level), in the Tribec mountain range]. In Nitra in those days, there used to be a swimming pool below the castle. I don't know if it's still there. Maybe they've already built over it. Gyula's wife was named Vilma, nee Braunova. She was very much a lady. She came from better circles. They lived on Spitalska Street. In the building they lived in, Gyula also had his store and workshop.

My father's third brother was named Rudolf, or Rudi. He was about five years older than Father. He graduated from construction school and worked as an architect, in those days it was Mr. Architect. Rudi had two sons, Walter and Babi. Besides them, he also had a daughter. I don't remember her name anymore. She was slightly physically handicapped, she was a bit hunchbacked. But she ended up studying medicine and became a pharmacist. I don't remember his wife's name anymore. During the war they ended up in Terezin. The entire family survived the Holocaust and after the war they ran away to what today is Israel.

My father's only sister was named Cecilia. She married Mr. Horn, who had a barbershop in Nitra on Hlavna [Main] Street. They lived in an apartment above the shop that had an addition into the courtyard. They had it on the whole nicely furnished. Unfortunately, her husband died very early on. They had one son, who was named Alexander, or Sanyi.

Only one of my father's siblings, Rudi, survived World War II. He then moved with his family to Palestine in 1946 or 1947. After several years they returned, they had a hard time dealing with the climate there. The rest of my father's siblings died during the war.

My mother had three siblings, two sisters and one half-brother. My mother's oldest sister was named Lina. She married a barber by the name of Löwenberg in the Polish town of Nowy Targ. I never even met the man. I know that they had two children that died along with Lina during the war. Only their father survived, someplace in Russia.

Another of my mother's sisters, Ruzena, also died during the war. Before the war she lived for some time with us in Zilina, and then also in Vrutky, where we'd moved. Aunt Ruzena and I got along fairly well. Which basically means that we didn't have some sort of heartfelt relationship, but neither did we quarrel. I can't say much about my mother's youngest brother, who was named Zoli. He was quite a bit older than I, so we didn't hang out together much. He died along with the others during the Holocaust.

I, Alexander Gajdos [born Goldberger], was born on 8th April 1924 in Zilina. I had my name changed at the beginning of the 1950s. Why did I pick the surname Gajdos? It really didn't even depend on me that much. I already had that name when I was in German captivity, which we'll get to. Well, and when I was changing it I had to list three names. I dictated three names, Gajdos, Gordon, and the third I don't remember, and the officials picked out Gajdos.

As a small child I attended nursery school. In our part of the country it was called 'ovoda.' I had a fairly good teacher. I even enjoyed going to that nursery school. I don't have any particular memories of the nursery school. I remember only how we were playing in the schoolyard. Then I transferred to the elementary Jewish school in Zilina. It had five grades - from Grade 1 to Grade 5. It was attended by both boys and girls, together. A fair number of Christian children went there, too, because it was a better school than the others. I particularly didn't like math and German. My favorite subject in school was gym. We had one excellent teacher that knew how to handle us. We really like him a lot. Of course, we exercised a lot, and mainly played handball. It was simple, and all we needed were two goals in the schoolyard. Banged-up hands and legs of course belonged to the game. Our gym teacher was named Braun. We also went on short trips in the region around the town, especially to Duben and to nearby castles.

In the Jewish school we of course also had to go to Judaism class. Not going, that was impossible. Our attitude to religious upbringing amounted to us always fooling around on the rabbi. I don't remember his name anymore. He was an old man, and we used to do terrible things to him. For example, I remember that we had a bell, and halfway through the class we rang it, and someone exclaimed: 'it rang.' To which he said, 'if it rang, it rang' and class was over. In the hallway we ran into the principal, who was a huge man with a cane, and he asked us where we were going. We told him that the rabbi had said that the bell had rung. He said: 'But it couldn't have rung yet.'

The principal also used physical punishment. For example, this one slower boy used to be in our class, and he'd always do something to the girls. For example when they were exercising, he'd steal their clothes from the changing room, and so on. Outside of school we had this group of Jewish boys, we went everywhere together and spent a lot of time together. There were about five of us. Besides us there was one more group of Jewish boys, and so we used to fight each other, throwing stones and so on. We were about ten or eleven years old.

In Vrutky I also prepared for my bar mitzvah ceremony. My father arranged tutoring for me with one rabbi. He was a young person of shorter stature. He was from Czechia, and belonged to the Neologs. He taught me. The main thing was for me to learn the text that I was to read during the ceremony. Nothing else was required of me there. Well, up to the bar mitzvah I somehow learned it. The bar mitzvah itself took place in the synagogue in Vrutky. They summoned me to the Torah, I read some text, and that was all. I don't remember there being a party at home, and neither do I remember whether I got some presents on that occasion.

When I was 14, I began feeling anti-Jewish moods. I attended five grades of Jewish elementary school, and then got into high school 5. They expelled me from high school in third year, after that I wasn't allowed to attend school in Zilina anymore. But otherwise nothing special was going on, I just couldn't go to school. We weren't discriminated against in some way. Just some snot-nosed kids in the street would yell: 'Poo, smelly Jew!' at us, but that wasn't anything new.

It was right at that time that we were moving from Zilina to Vrutky, where I entered the fourth year of council school. Actually, they didn't accept me into school right in Vrutky. I had to commute by train every day to the nearby town of Varin. I was the only Jew there. Basically no one paid any attention to me. All the teachers were in the Hlinka Guard 6, even the principal, for them it was like I didn't even exist. I used to sit in a desk in the first row, but they didn't call on me even once, despite this I got all C's on my report card. This was in 1939. I got along well with my classmates, that wasn't a problem. There were also a couple of Czechs among them, who hadn't been chased 7 out of Slovakia. I was friends particularly with those that commuted with me. There were four of us that used to take the train from Vrutky to Varin, and back in the evening.

During the war

Besides me, my parents also had my sister Viera. She was born in Zilina in 1927. We got along well, but not so much that we'd go about together outside of home. Each of us had his own friends. Unfortunately, my sister didn't survive the war. She went to the camp together with our mother, but we don't know at all where they disappeared. Despite us searching for them, their trail disappeared. During the war they interned our whole family in the collection camp in Zilina in 1942, and we were there up until the Slovak National Uprising 8 broke out in 1944. During that time, between 1942 and 1944, when no transports were going 9, we worked in that Zilina camp.

During that time, life in the camp was on the whole good. We used to go work on the construction of a sports stadium in Zilina. My father also worked there. The stadium was located near the Vah River. The work wasn't all that heavy. The guards, Guardists, would lead us there from the camp. They'd then go sit inside somewhere, or all go their separate ways to go drink beer. There was one person there that was in charge of us, and he was a decent guy. My mother worked in the camp kitchen, and my sister didn't do anything.

Life during that time was really quite bearable. I even used to go into town. I didn't even wear a star 10, I never ever had one. I never even heard of a case where someone would have ratted on someone for that. Those of us that were from the Zilina camp didn't wear stars. In the camp I lived with another five guys. Here and there someone ran away, but escapes weren't very common. We learned about what was happening in Poland from the railway employees that were accompanying the transports to the Polish border. The railroaders brought us the news of the crematoria in Auschwitz. I think that it was through them that the news spread.

During the uprising my father, mother and sister hid in the forests around Rajecke Teplice. They then caught them all there. They took my father somewhere else than my mother and sister, and so he managed to survive. My father got into Sachsenhausen 11 and then into Buchenwald 12. Well, and my mother and sister were sent to the women's camp in Ravensbrück 13, and that's where their trail disappeared. During the uprising I joined the army. In Zilina there was an army garrison, and that entire garrison retreated towards Martin, to Strecno. Before the war I'd been a member of the Hashomer Hatzair 14 youth movement, but that's not why I joined the army. A person went there, where there was a chance of survival.

We were part of some defenses in Strecno. We dug trenches, and had the task of holding the reserve line. Of course we weren't just passive observers. Once we got orders to attack on a railway line with a tunnel. When we were drawing near, suddenly a Tiger [a German tank, mass-produced from 1942] appeared and began firing at us. We retreated into some trenches. There were French partisans with us there, who'd been in captivity in Slovakia, and during the uprising had managed to escape. I don't know anything else about them; I didn't meet up with them very much. There were only two Jews in our unit, my distant cousin Elemer Diamant and I. Unfortunately, I don't know whether he survived the war, because afterwards our paths diverged.

One time we were attacking some Germans hidden in some woods. There, some German began firing at me. Unfortunately, he also hit me. He shot me in the shoulder, luckily the bullet passed through and exited out the other side. It was a relatively serious injury, but they got me through it. First they dragged me away from where the bullet had struck me. They were dragging me along the ground, and in a dangerous spot they ran onto the road with me. After some time an ambulance came for me, and took me to the hospital in Martin. I was there for one day, because the Germans had broken through the front, and shells were falling on the hospital. They quickly evacuated us to the town of Sliac.

The territory held by the rebels was by then already very small. Basically it was only around the towns of Banska Bystrica, Sliac and Brezno. Everything else was either occupied or surrounded. In Sliac they asked me if I was able to walk. Because I could walk, they discharged me from the hospital. I also met Elemer there, because he was also in the hospital. During fighting in the town of Vrutky he'd gotten into some skirmish and ended up with shellshock. They discharged the both of us at almost the same time. I set out for the partisan headquarters, and he said that he wouldn't go there, that he'd think of something else to do. So we parted ways, and since then we never met up again. From the hospital I went to Banska Bystrica, to the headquarters. There they accepted me into the guard detachment. I stood guard in front of the headquarters on the main square in Banska Bystrica.

The Germans were pushing on into Banska Bystrica as well. People were being evacuated into the mountains, Stare Hory [mountain town in the Starohorska Valley, Banska Bystrica district], Donovaly [mountain town located between the Velka Fatra and Starohorske Vrchy mountain ranges], Kozi Chrbat [today a forest reservation located on the northern side of the Low Tatras ] and so on all the way beyond Chabenec [Chabenec (1955 m): a monumental mountain massif in the Low Tatras]. Chabenec is where for example Sverma 15 froze to death. At that time many of us got dysentery. They put up all of us that got it separately in this one zemlyanka [an underground shelter, usually military]. But a local citizen sent us away from there with the words: 'You can't stay here, we can't feed you, we don't even have anything for ourselves!' They told us that they'd take us to the edge of the forest where there were villages, and that we'd have to scrounge something up from the locals. At that time I'd gotten to know this one Czech from Ostrava. I unfortunately don't remember his name anymore. From that time onwards he and I slugged it out together. They led us to the edge of the forest, and told us to disperse. There they announced to us that we were still on evidence as partisans in that detachment, whose name I don't remember anymore. They also told us that if we betrayed something, they'd come and find us.

This all took place at the end of November and beginning of December 1944. My Czech friend and I found a fairly decent place behind some hill, and dug us a bunker. The closest village was about three hours' walk away from there. So we said to ourselves that we'd stay there, and each evening we'd go to the village to beg for some food and supplies. So that if a lot of snow fell, we wouldn't starve to death. Luckily at that time it wasn't snowing yet, because we were somewhere in the Low Tatras [an 80 km long mountain range in Slovakia]. In one place they'd give us some beans, someplace else potatoes, and so on. Whenever possible, we also took some supplies. When we had enough supplies, we said, 'All right, and now we'll go have something to eat one last time!'

So we went for one last meal. We knocked on the door at one house, and a very decent farmwoman opened the door. She said, 'Oh, you poor boys!' Right away she gave us some supper. Then she noticed our clothes, and so with the words, 'Why, you're being eaten by lice, I'll wash them for you,' she had us undress and put us into bed, under feather duvets! We told her to wake us up once dawn started breaking. To which she replied, 'Of course, of course.' Well, and suddenly a hubbub in the village. Germans yelling. Our things were already washed and dried, and we quickly dressed. We said to her, 'Why didn't you wake us up?' - 'It seemed a shame, you were sleeping so soundly.'

We ran out of the house and right on the square, one sentry with a machine gun, at the other end another sentry with a machine gun. The Germans were already making the rounds from house to house. So we ran out the back. We skirted the square and got onto a path. We were already out of the village. Suddenly two Germans appeared in front of us. The idiots had to be walking right along that path, and we two ragged civilians were walking right towards them. We'd already passed them, we were already about ten steps apart, and suddenly they stopped. Something seemed suspicious to them, and one of them yelled out: 'Hey, partisan!' So they captured us. They gathered us all in the square in the middle of the village. So that we wouldn't be walking empty-handed, they loaded each one of us up with ammunition. So we had something to carry through the snow that had fallen in the meantime.

Eventually they put us on a train and took us to a prison in Banska Bystrica. We were there from the beginning of December until the end of February. And we vegetated there in that jail for those two, three months. Once in some hubbub, they'd chase someone out to Kremnicka 16. They would chase them out there with dogs, machine guns. Then for a week it would be quiet. Then they'd round them up again, and go shoot them all again. Well, and we were still vegetating in that room. There was one Ukrainian there, I, plus two more Jews. They didn't know for sure that we were Jews, but thought we were.

At the end of February, they suddenly led us out, and some high-ranking Slovak came over. They were Slovaks. We were guarded by Slovak prison guards. He was shaking his head, that how was it possible that we were still there. He told us, 'The ones that were here before you, they've all been killed in Kremnicka!' They had somehow forgotten about our room. So they opened the door and asked us, 'what are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here anymore!' Well, and we said, 'We're not supposed to be here?' According to the paperwork, the entire jail was supposed to be empty. The files were already being destroyed, as the liberation army was already conquering nearby Brezno, and they already wanted to also evacuate Banska Bystrica.

So they made a note of us and left, so we had another week's peace. Then someone different came, and again made a note of us. Well, about three or four days later, a member of the SS came, that he was going to take us to be interrogated. Across the street was the Banska Bystrica courthouse, and that's where they had their headquarters. So they led us there, into a hallway. Then another one came, and asked our names. I told him Gajdos, born in Zilina. He wrote it down and left.

In a little while some high-ranking officer came, a Sudeten German 17, and said in Czech, 'I'm going to give you your release papers now. Go home. Don't you dare go east! Because if our soldiers see you there in those rags, they'll shoot you.' So we got our papers and left. My Czech friend and I were wondering: 'What are we going to do?' Of course we headed east. Right in the first village outside of Banska Bystrica one man stopped us. We showed him our papers, that we'd just been set free, and that we needed to get to a partisan unit. 'All right,' he said, 'here's some supper, you'll get some sleep and early in the morning I'll take you to the main road and show you where you should go.'

Were those people to be trusted? What else could we do? He really did look very trustworthy. In the morning he took us to the road and showed us the way. We were supposed to go to the town of Priechod, where there were Hungarian units that had broken away from the Germans. So we went in that direction. After some time my friend needed to take a crap. So he went over onto some field, looked around and saw some figure in white, standing there and looking at us. We took off running. We were running through an open field. When we stopped, thinking we were far enough away, we saw a group of German soldiers in front of us. They saw us! We couldn't do anything else but walk towards them.

Of course, they took us prisoner and led us off to some village. They presented us to the commander, with the words that they'd caught us and that we're either partisans or bandits, and that we should be disposed of. The commander asked us if we spoke German. Because I remembered a bit from school, I told him that we'd just been released. I showed him our papers. He then began arguing with another soldier, whether they should kill us or not. The soldier was for killing us, the commander against. Finally the commander gave the order that that night we'd sleep in the same room with him. When we were alone with him, he said to us in German, 'You've got to sleep with me, because he's a Nazi, and I can't vouch for him.'

The next day he sent us with a soldier back to Banska Bystrica, to make sure that they'd actually released us. That person, the Sudeten German who'd issued us the papers, spotted us. He came over to us and began speaking Czech so that our escort wouldn't understand. 'You two, what did I tell you, that you're supposed to go straight west and that you're not supposed to wander around!' Of course, the German soldier didn't understand anything, and reported that we were bandits and that we had false papers. He said to him, 'You're saying that my signature is fake?' He gave him what for! We got it, too: 'What're you gawking at, get lost right now, if they bring you back once more, that's the end!' So we ran out again. The German solder ran out behind us, sat in the car and quickly 'ran' away.

We again set out in the same direction as the day before, eventually we more or less recognized it. The second time around, we managed to get to the village of Priechod. Right away sentries stopped us. They asked us what we wanted there. We said that we were going to the partisans. There some guy in civilian clothing took charge of us. He spoke both Slovak and Hungarian. We told him that we'd like to join some partisan unit. All right, but have some supper first. The Hungarians had it good, they had sweet poppy-seed buns. So we stuffed ourselves full there!

The territory we were on was free, because a Hungarian army unit had broken off from the Germans. Finally talk came around to where we'd sleep. They told us that up above the village there was a gamekeeper's lodge with a partisan unit. There were a few partisans and Hungarians there. We moved ourselves over to the lodge. There we got another supper, again some sweet cakes and goodies. We were each issued a green Czechoslovak uniform and a rifle. Finally we went off to sleep. There were about fifty, sixty of us there. In the morning, around 5am, we were woken up by yelling and shooting.

In the morning, the village of Priechod had been surrounded by the Germans. They'd used a ruse. As there were Hungarian soldiers there, the Germans sent ahead some other Hungarian soldiers that were on their side. Thus they managed to get to the sentries, because they replied to their challenge in Hungarian. So they disarmed the sentries and entered the village. As people ran out the houses, the Germans shot them straight off, like rabbits. They gathered up part of the men and led them off to the edge of the village under a steep hill. They ordered them to run. As they were running, they shot them all. Only one German boy managed to escape, he might have been about 16 or 17. Earlier, this boy had joined the partisans. He was the only man who managed to survive. Finally the Germans torched the village. Some of the women had survived, and they then remained and lived in that pillaged village.

Eventually we learned that the traitor had been the man who'd taken charge of us after our arrival in the village, and who'd fed us the cakes. If he wouldn't have sent us up to the gamekeeper's lodge to the partisans, I wouldn't be here today. He de facto saved us. His role had been to gather supplies and at the same time he worked as a German agent. In the end the Russians caught and executed him. We stayed in the lodge for some time. From there we used to go on patrols to the surrounding villages, for example to the village of Podkonice and so on. But the Germans were everywhere. We just heard snow crunching beside us. Because their patrols would go to the edge of the villages, to the forest, and would then return. Despite the fact that they were only a few steps away from us, we couldn't fight them. It would have been hopeless for us. We knew that it was hopeless.

The Germans' main road of retreat led through Podkonice, in the direction of Ruzomberok. We gradually moved from the gamekeeper's lodge to bunkers in the forest, where we posted sentries. At the end of February, beginning of March we continued through Chabenec and the Low Tatras to Brezno. Brezno had already been liberated. There were Romanian soldiers there. There they split us up. The Hungarian soldiers that had been with us went down south. Czechs and Slovaks marched in the direction of Poprad. On foot from Brezno to Poprad [the traveling distance between the towns of Brezno and Poprad is around 90 km]!

After arriving in Poprad I reported to the First Czechoslovak Army Corps. There I was accepted into junior officers' school. I got a nice uniform, a weapon and served there until June 1945. I graduated from junior officers' school in the army corps with the rank of lance corporal. Since then I've worked my way up to lieutenant colonel in the Czechoslovak Army. After finishing school I left with the other soldiers, as part of our training, on foot from Poprad to Martin [the traveling distance between the towns of Poprad and Martin is about 130 km]. We walked for three or four days. In Martin we met President Benes 18, who'd come from Kosice 19. There we boarded some vehicles and they sent us as reserves to Moravia, where there was still fighting going on. But the soldiers up ahead of us always managed to break through the front, and so we never participated in direct fighting. In this way we followed the front all the way to Prague.

In Prague, we as soldiers used to go on 'maneuvers.' We'd for example train for fighting in the streets of the city. It was up on Bila Hora [White Mountain]. Grannies were running out in gas masks and shrieking, 'Jesus Mary, the Germans are back.' They didn't know that they were just exercises, and that we were only using blanks. There was noise in the streets and the so the grannies wanted to get into the shelters. We told them: 'Granny, it's only make-believe, it's not real.' At the end of June they sent us back to Slovakia, to the army column in Nitra, from where they discharged me into civilian life.

During my stay in Prague I contacted the former mayor of Vrutky. He'd been the deputy of the Hlinka Guard commander in the town, but at the same time our protector and family friend. He told me that my father had returned and was living in Zilina. So that's how I knew about it. While I was in Nitra I stayed with my father's brother, Rudi. He survived the war in Terezin 20. I slept at his place on an ironing board. After several days I set out on a freight wagon from Nitra to Zilina.

In Zilina I met up with my father, who already had his own place rented. We used to go to his girlfriends' for dinners. One time to one's place, then to another one's... We didn't manage to get back absolutely any of our property. To make ends meet, I began working as a plumber. Despite my not having a trade certificate, I got a job with one company in Zilina. The owner was a Jew, too.

Post-war

In the postwar period, the functioning of the Jewish community in the town was renewed as well. But the Jewish community's numbers were continually declining. My father moved to Karlovy Vary 21 still in the year 1945. He decided to do so because of his friend, Mrs. Katzova. She had friends in Karlovy Vary, the Kleinman family. My father came here imagining that he'd rent a guesthouse. Basically everyone left for Karlovy Vary imagining that they'd do well. I joined them at the beginning of the spring of 1946. I lived with my father. After all, we got along well. My father got a job in a spa. First he was in the oxygen shop, where they filled oxygen tanks. Then he became an accommodation officer at the head office. He stayed there until retirement. As a pensioner he worked as an inspector in the colonnade. Basically he walked around there all day, from morning to evening, and watched over things.

During that time I met my first, today already deceased wife. Her maiden name was Irena Rothova. She was born in 1926 in the town of Kajdanove in Subcarpathian Ruthenia 22. Kajdanove belonged to the Mukacevo district. She was from a devout family, but after the war she wasn't that devout any more. After the war she returned to Subcarpathian Ruthenia. She found out that all of her girlfriends that had survived the war had dispersed all over the world. One of her mother's brothers lived in Karlovy Vary. As luck would have it, it was Mr. Kleinman that my future wife came to stay with. I met her at my father's friend's, Mrs. Katzova's. I came to her place for supper, and my future wife was there, too. Mrs. Katzova and Mrs. Kleinmannova were friends. So we met 'by chance.' We had a Jewish wedding, under the chuppah, in Karlovy Vary, in 1946. But the officials there didn't count that as an official wedding. We had a civil wedding in the fall of 1948. We celebrated our wedding, the Jewish one, at the Kleinmans'. About 20 people gathered there.

My wife survived the war in Auschwitz, from there she got to some factory and finally ended up in Terezin. Her parents died in Auschwitz. Besides her parents, she also had two brothers. Both survived the war, and moved away, to Israel. They were named Imre Roth and Bela Roth. I later met Imre in Karlovy Vary. He was here two or three times. I haven't met his brother. My wife met up with him someplace in Budapest. After my wife died I lost contact with them. But I think that they're not alive anymore either. My wife spoke Hungarian and Yiddish, and of course Czech. I speak Czech and Slovak, and can also get by in Hungarian and German. After the war we observed the high holidays. We didn't observe the Sabbath very much, only my wife in the beginning lit candles, later not even that. We also celebrated Passover. My wife would prepare Passover supper, soup with matzah balls.

After World War II, the activity of the Jewish community in Karlovy Vary was renewed as well. After all, there were enough Jews here. But in time many of them moved away. The left mainly for Israel and America. The ones that stayed here always quarreled amongst each other. In the end, just like in all communities. There was of course also a prayer hall here, which today no longer exists. The community also had a rabbi and a shammash. But the rabbi emigrated. We didn't participate very much in the town's Jewish life. A couple of times a year, my wife and I would go to the prayer hall, mainly for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The boys didn't go with us.

I personally viewed the creation of the state of Israel as a positive thing. I even wouldn't have objected if my wife and I had moved there. During totalitarian times, she was there to visit her brothers. The first time was in 1965, I think. I told her, 'We'll move.' Her answer was, 'Not for anything. I've seen it there, and I know what it's like. I'm not going there!' Her younger brother, Bela, who lived in Beer Sheva, was doing quite well. He had a company that transported sand to construction sites. Her older brother, Imre, lived in Natanya. He had a furniture store. Once in a while he'd go bankrupt, then he'd get it back together, again and again. Both her brothers had families. As far as religion goes, neither of them was religious.

Irenka worked as a seamstress. For long years she sewed uniforms as well as for friends at home. Basically she was always sewing. After I arrived in Karlovy Vary, I worked as a caretaker for the company Czechoslovak Hotels. I used to go around hotels fixing taps and similar things. Well, and then I got the position of district secretary for culture for the KSC 23. I was a member of the Party since 1945. Despite the fact that I entered it with my father, he used to say to me, 'You'll never be a Communist.' He used to say that to me because I never believed the Communists. Gradually the Slansky trials 24 began. But basically they didn't affect me at all.

I looked upon the events of 1968 25 as being positive. At that time I was working in a national enterprise, and was the chairman of the company union council. Basically, in 1968 in Karlovy Vary there was a conference held regarding the Party's direction. At this conference, certain members of the district that had a new way of thinking stood up and slammed the district Communist Party secretary. At that time I was in the electoral commission, and we managed to elect new people to Party functions, which later of course worked against me. But I believed that we were doing the right thing. In the end they criticized me for participating in that conference. Things went so far that in 1970 they kicked me out of the Party 26. Before that, the boys from the StB came to see me. They told me that they didn't want anything from me, only for me to... I told them that I wouldn't rat on anyone. As chairman of the company council I had always tried for everything to be fair, and I didn't stray from that. Later I got a job as a construction technician. I drove around to construction sites in the area, for example Prague, Chomutov, Cheb, As, basically the whole region. There wasn't a lot of free time.

In Karlovy Vary we initially lived in a small, cold and damp ground-floor apartment. That was at the beginning of the 1950s. Eventually our two sons were born. Milan in 1953, and Roman in 1956. We tried to raise our sons to be decent people. They weren't circumcised; my wife wouldn't allow it due to past experiences. She said that she didn't want to ruin their lives... We of course didn't keep their origin a secret from them, and they knew about everything.

In time we also got a new, beautiful and sunny apartment on Vitezna Street. We also used to go on vacations together. Back then you couldn't go to the West. You couldn't get a permit to go there. We used to go as a family to Bulgaria. My wife had a lot of girlfriends, and I also had one colleague from work with whom I got along well. We spent a lot of time together outside of work as well. We used to get together at our place, or at theirs. Unfortunately, he's also since died. My wife and I also used to go with the children on various camping trips. Irenka also used to visit spas. Mainly Frantiskove Lazne and around Pisek. I of course always took her there and then would come back for her, so that's about all I got from those spas.

After the war, my father also got married. He married a woman by the name of Eda Kleinova. She was from Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Edina's sister lived in Prague with her husband. The four of them decided to buy a house in Prague together. My father and his wife lived upstairs, and his brother-in- law and his wife lived downstairs. We of course used to visit them, about two or three times a year. My father died in Prague in 1978. His second wife died as well, about ten years after my father's death.

Irenka had a stroke at the beginning of the 1990s. Half her body was then paralyzed. As if that wasn't enough, she also got pneumonia. She died of it in 1994. We buried her at the Jewish cemetery in Karlovy Vary. In the meantime, our sons grew up. Milan lives in the town of Tachov. It's about 60 kilometers from Karlovy Vary. He's an electrician by trade. But initially he worked in Tachov feeding cattle, because they granted him an apartment on the condition that he works there. Roman graduated from civil engineering in Prague. After finishing his studies he stayed in Karlovy Vary. His office is right next door to the Jewish community. He designs buildings, and is doing quite well. But he's never gotten married. He spends entire weeks in his office, weekends, too, and goes home for supper around 10pm. Milan married a non-Jewish girl, who already had a son. Together they've had another boy. Both their children are already grown up, though.

About five years ago, I went to visit Israel. It was with a tour group. Life there was like I had imagined it. Busy streets, cafés. The roads there are top-notch. Outside of town they were all lit up, which you won't find here. I said to myself that it's quite good. As far as standard of living goes, that I don't know. I wasn't there that long to be able to judge. What surprised me? I happened to be in Natanya during Sabbath. I was expecting that on Saturday everything would be quiet. In the morning I got up, went to the window, and everywhere there were traffic jams. There were as many cars as during a weekday. The beaches were also full, and the streets were constantly busy.

At the turn of the millennium I met my second wife, Miluska. She was working in the grocery store where I used to go shopping. So we were always smiling at each other, until once she ran out after me, that she's got two tickets to the theater. She asked me whether I wouldn't go with her. At that moment I was shocked. I've got to say that I more or less liked her. I answered that I can't say right away, but that I'll check if I'm free at that time and get back to her. At that time I was already the head of the Jewish community in Karlovy Vary. I of course immediately ran to buy a suit, and then I returned to the store and said, 'Yes, let's go to the theater.' It ended up with us getting married. Miluska isn't Jewish. We had a civil wedding. With my son Roman, she became friends right away. In the beginning Milan was a little reserved, but then it was fine. Miluska has three sons and seven grandchildren from her first marriage. So now we're a fairly big family. As far as holidays go, now we don't observe anything, because she even abolished the Christmas tree that my previous wife and I used to have at home. In the beginning we used to go to the swimming pool together, and now mostly out in the garden.

For several years I was on the board of the Jewish community in Karlovy Vary. At one time I was vice president. The president of the community at that time didn't meet the expectations of the rest of the members. According to them, he was arrogant. For example, at Passover he didn't want to give matzot to someone because he didn't come to the community often enough, and so on. He locked up the cemetery, and people had to go to him for the key. But he didn't want to lend the key out to everyone. He was simply not liked. Finally, at one annual meeting Mr. Gubic spoke up, that the functions of religious leader of the community and that of the community president should be separated. Finally they voted that the former president would stay as the community's spiritual leader, and they elected me president. This was about seven years ago.

My role is to take care of the community's property. Religious matters are taken care of by Rabbi Koci and the shammash, Rubin. They take care of the sphere or religion. As time passes, the community has less and less active members. There's about ten of them. There are seven of us on the board; about those you can say that they're more or less active. There are about 98 members in total. Not all of them are right in Karlovy Vary. We also have members in surrounding towns, like for example Sokolov and Jachymov. The Jewish community has its own prayer hall, where people meet every Friday and Saturday to pray. Sometimes they don't have a minyan, there are only five or six. But Karlovy Vary is a spa town, with many guests, Jewish ones, too. So it's nothing exceptional for even twenty men to gather here. Some of the spa guests that have already been here several times automatically also come to the prayer hall. We also observe the high holidays. For Sukkot we also put up a sukkah in the courtyard of the community building.

Glossary

Basya Chaika
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Tatyana Chaika

My family background
Childhood memories
Growing up
During the war
Returning to Kiev
Married life
Anti-Semitism in Kiev

My family background

My name is Basya. I was born in 1926 in Kiev. I was named after my grandmother - Basya Gorenstein, who died before the Revolution, that is, before 1917. I did not know my grandfather, Moshe-Leib Gorenstein either, because he died before I was born, but at home we had a big portrait of him that was made in Paris at the beginning of the century. In the portrait, my grandfather is a handsome and respectable man with a beautiful full beard and is wearing a yarmulke. He worked in commerce; he had his own bank in Kiev, according to his daughter - my mother, and they had a big expensive house. My grandfather was actively involved in charity - he sponsored Kiev's scientists and engineers. According to my mother, their home was Jewish, and they celebrated every holiday, Sabbath, and my grandfather attended synagogue every week. My mother said that on holidays, poor people came over to receive gifts from my grandfather and to be seated around his table. There were many poor people in those days who had lost their jobs and even their families, and the government of course would not help them.

Grandfather Moshe and grandmother Basya had six children. All the children finished secondary school and had secular educations. I remember almost all of his children, my aunts and uncles: the first one was Isaac, who was born in 1879 in Kiev and was killed in 1941 during the Holocaust in Babi Yar together with his wife, Hannah, and daughter. My cousin, the daughter of Isaac and Hannah, Manya, was handicapped, and she was pushed to Babi Yar in her wheelchair. The second daughter of grandfather Moshe and grandmother Basya, daughter Hannah (Khaika), born in 1883, was also killed in Babi Yar on September 29, 1941, together with her husband. Thus, out of the six children of grandfather Moshe Gorenstein, two were killed in the Holocaust. Together with their family members five were killed in total.

Then grandfather Moshe had four daughters - Malka, Rachel (my mother), Yelizaveta, and Lena, who survived the Holocaust in evacuation. All of them have passed away, and some of their family members perished during World War II (11 people), while others left Kiev for other places in the world. I know now only two of them: Alexander Pritsker - the son of aunt Hannah and Mendel Pritsker, and Marat Golik - the son of Liza Pritsker and Izya Golik. (by the way, Izya Golik was a cousin of his wife Liza. The Jewish tradition does not encourage such marriages, and in my childhood I heard a lot of bad things about it from adults.)

Childhood memories

I remember all these relatives from my pre-war childhood in Kiev very well. They lived poorly, two families in one little house on Turgenevska Street. After the Revolution, all of my grandfather Moshe's possessions were confiscated, and prior to the Second World War they remained very poor. I often went to see them there. They lived under very crowded conditions, but they were always so warm and welcoming. As I said, all of their children received higher educations, but in the Soviet times, they had practically nothing left of their wealth or their Jewish lifestyle. They lost them both.

I don't remember any Jewish holidays there and at home they spoke Russian. The oldest generation spoke Yiddish only when they did not want their children to understand them and their children were never taught it.

The first time I saw tallit and tefillin was with my father's father. His name was Aaron Pan. He came from the town of Kazatin, Kiev region. The family of grandfather Aaron was very poor, I never knew what he did, but his lifestyle was strongly Orthodox Jewish. He and his wife - my grandmother Hannah - kept their traditions until they died.

Aaron and Hannah had three sons: the oldest - my father Ber (later - Boris), Yakov and Nyuma. They also had daughter Genya, who died in 1917 in childbirth. Grandmother Hannah and grandfather Aaron brought up the son she bore - Zyunya Kuperman. Later, he became an aircraft designer. Prior to the war he worked as a chief engineer at the Makeyevka Chemical Plant. During the war and after the war, he worked at secret defense plants, taking part in the creation of the hydrogen bomb. Both during and after the war, we were forbidden to keep up a correspondence with him.

All three brothers received a good education: I think, they went to a cheder in Kazatin, and then - a secular school in Kiev. Uncle Yakov was a Communist, a military man who held a very high position; he was also a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He died in 1937 in Moscow from a stroke while speaking at a meeting to his electors. (A few months before his death, his cousin, whose name I unfortunately don't know, was arrested and shot the same night in Kiev). Uncle Yakov escaped his destiny - he died his own death. A street in Vinnitsa was named after him. I remember him very well: always a nice looking military uniform, a black car that took him everywhere, he and his wife Sarah had a luxurious flat in Kiev in Pechersk - a white bear skin on the floor of his huge study. He very seldom visited us, but I received birthday presents from him every year - large boxes of candies that we never saw in our life. Grandmother Hannah had a very hard time after the death of her son. He was her biggest pride in her life. Grandfather Aaron did not live to see his death; he died in 1936.

I also remember my uncle Nyuma. He, his wife and daughter Inna lived in the Pushkinska Street in Kiev before the war. After grandfather Aaron's death, grandmother Hannah lived with them. In 1941 Uncle Nyuma sent our whole family to evacuation and went to fight the Germans on the front. He died in 1942. His family kept kashrut, Sabbath, and all the holidays, which was an exception among the urban Jews of those times. The urban Jews of those days preferred to live just like everybody else. They usually were strongly assimilated. Many Jews, just like many other people around them, preferred to believe in the revolution, hoping that it would bring them more peaceful and better life. Urban Jews usually did not keep their Jewish traditions for only one reason: after the generation of their parents passed, they no longer believed in God and did not think there was any sense in keeping those old traditions of their parents. Not everyone thought that way, of course, but it was the majority, or it seems to me it was.

They spoke Yiddish in the family. Grandmother Hannah did not particularly like my mother and me for abandoning the tradition; she called us "goyim" [or "gentiles"]. She was especially irritated when I, being a young pioneer, argued with her that there was no God at all, neither Russian, nor Jewish. Grandmother Hannah died in 1942 in evacuation, in my mother's and my own arms. Before her death she said that I was her best granddaughter.

My father Ber, being the eldest son of Aaron and Hanna, had the hardest time making his way into the world. His constant duties to take care of the younger ones took a lot of his time. In order to pay for getting higher education, he tutored a lot of children in Jewish families of Kiev. He knew Hebrew well. The Revolution of 1917 changed little in his life, but made possible his marriage with Rachel Gorenstein, my mother, 1918, who was very rich before the Revolution. They made a very good couple. In love and peace they lived together till December 31, 1942, the day when my father died of a stroke. On the New Year night in the Urals, near the town of Krasnoufimsk, he went to get some wood, so that at least on New Year night my mother and I could be warm. He was brought home dead next morning.

Prior to the war, my father was the chief of the financial department of the Higher Police School in Kiev. My brother Yosif (7 years older than me, born in 1919) and I seldom saw our father- according to the then Soviet schedule he often worked even at night. He was quiet, calm, not very talkative, but very kind and agreeable). As far as I remember, he had no particular political preferences. It is funny that while holding such a high rank in the structure of the Interior Ministry, he was not a Communist. Neither was he an Orthodox Jew like grandfather Aaron, at least I never noticed that. He was simply a very good and hardworking man. My brother Yosif has fully inherited his character.

My mother, Rachel Gorenstein was the energy center of our family. She was born in 1897 in Kiev. She was the fourth and the most beautiful child of Moshe and Basya Gorenstein. As a baby she was taken around in a richly decorated stroller, and everyone said she was as beautiful as a rose. Rose became her second, and then main name. After the war and till her death in 1954 she was officially (in documents) registered as Rozalia Moiseyevna. The first twenty years of life, my mother lived as the daughter of a big Kiev banker; she finished a very prestigious and very expensive secondary school with honors; she knew foreign languages and wanted to continue her education. She dreamed of becoming a doctor. Moshe Gorenstein, however, explained to her that a good Jewish girl, even a very rich one, must be a good wife and mother, for which her education was already good enough. My mother felt offended by him for the rest of her life. After getting married she never worked outside the house.

Grandfather Moshe did not live to see his daughter Rachel-Rose as a wife or as a mother. In 1918 he had already passed away, and my mother had no proper Jewish wedding. (Kiev of 1918, with its pogroms and various anti- Semitic gangs was not a good place for Jewish weddings). My mother immediately switched to another life (we presume the interviewee meant that she dropped all contact to Judaism), and it was dangerous to remember or tell about that previous life during the Soviet times. My mother only shared stories with me about herself and her father who was a banker after the war, and she begged me to keep my mouth shut.

Growing up

I was born when my mother was 29. My brother Yosif was 7, he just started going to school. In 1926, we lived in downtown Kiev, at 49 Krasnoarmeyskaya Street in a big five-storey building. Seven unrelated families lived in a single apartment.. Every family had its own room, and everyone shared the kitchen, bathroom and toilet. Every family consisted of at least 4-5 people. In our small room four of us lived. Later we made two small rooms of this one room. Our neighbors were Russian, Ukrainian, and Jewish.

We were friends. It was the year 1933 - the year of famine. My mother, who used to help everyone in her childhood, shared our only food portion among all the children in our flat. My mother was a wonderful cook - the whole house asked her for recipes of Jewish cuisine. Jewish cuisine was that little detail of the Jewish tradition that I learned from my mother prior to the war. She taught me everything except kashrut because she never kept it. Sometimes grandfather Aaron came to visit us (grandmother Hannah almost never came to our non-kosher home, and when she did come, she never ate anything). For my grandparents, my mother had special kosher food and dishes. We also had a taleth and a tefilin for my grandfather. When my grandfather would leave, my mother would put these things away deep into the wardrobe, so that nobody else would see them. My father also brought real matzo for us on Passover from my grandfather, and it was a big secret. We could not share it with our neighbors, because it was against the law, but my mother's recipe of noodles was used by our whole international house.

In autumn of 1934 I went to school. I was 8 years old. From my preschool childhood I still have two vivid memories: the first one is related to the famine of 1933, when in front of my own eyes a homeless child stole the bread that my mother had just received on her bread-card. My mother began to cry, and I felt very scared. My second memory is about our big yard, where we were friends with children of at least five or six nationalities. One child was once called a kike so his parents filed a lawsuit against the offender. Court hearings were held, but I don't remember the result.

My first contacts outside my family before school were made in my yard. I was the leader in all games (mostly active ones). My friends were usually boys. I never liked playing with dolls, but since the age of 7 I liked embroidering and sewing very much. My Ukrainian neighbor taught me these skills, and she praised my abilities very much. She believed sewing was something I could always use in life, and she was right.

My first school, where I studied from the first through the third grade was school nr 15. It stood in place of today's Vatutin cinema. Then I went to a newly built school nr 131. (Schools in the Soviet Union almost never had any special names, only numbers. Sometimes they had both a name and a number, but a number was a must.) That school was Russian, and my parents could send me only there. I knew nothing about Jewish schools then, and Jews did not send their children to the few Ukrainian schools that existed at the time.

We had forty children in our class, all of different nationalities. There were many children with purely Jewish names that had not been changed yet. Among teachers there were many Jews, too, but students paid no attention to this fact: their political and human characteristics were much more important. At school, in the yard, at our shared apartment the language we spoke was Russian. We celebrated common holidays, with the exception of the first New Year, introduced in Kiev by Postyshev after it was forbidden during the Revolution.

At the age of 10 I joined young pioneers, just like everybody else. By that time I had become a strong atheist and internationalist. And just like everyone else, we children, began to look for spies. In 1937, a family was arrested in our house: a couple that was reported as Trotsky-followers. People said that the wife carried enciphered messages from Trotsky in her braid. After their arrest, a big truck came to take out their books. A year later our English teacher was arrested. Our class did not believe he was the "enemy of people", and we raised a real rebellion at school. In about six months he was rehabilitated and sent back to school, which was a rare case in those times. Almost the whole school went to visit him in hospital where he found himself after the prison.

Besides English, I also liked sports, track and field athletics, as well as gymnastics, but my mother believed that a Jewish girl from a good family should not go for sports, and she only allowed me to take dancing lessons. We also often went to the children's Jewish theater, which was not far from our school. There were plays in Yiddish, which were translated into Russian by an actor on the stage. I remember a play about a Jewish girl who fell in love with a Ukrainian guy, and their parents were against their marriage first, but then they saw how this couple was happy, and allowed their marriage. There were no arranged marriages among my relatives then, but right prior to the war such marriages became acceptable in Kiev.

In 1938 we met Spanish children in Kiev. I wanted to invite a Spanish child into our family very much, but my parents found it impossible. We wore Spanish caps and sang Spanish songs. We hated the fascists and prepared for the war, although everyone said there would be no war. In 1939, discussions about fascism became more serious, especially after Germany attacked Poland. At our house we had regular public lectures on the international situation, and children attended these lectures as well - everyone was interested in politics back then. We had special "political information hours" at school and at our amateur theater. We spoke a lot about the fascists, but never about their special attitude towards the Jews.

During the war

We were looking forward to June 22, because on that day our new central stadium was to be opened, and it was very close to us. But instead of this joyful news, we heard rumors that there were bombings somewhere in the city. We did not see the bombs yet, but went outside anyway. I think I remember seeing refugees from Western Ukraine in our Krasnoarmeyskaya Street on that day. I don't know how it could be, but they said that the Germans were shooting everyone in their lands. It is still a mystery how they could have reached Kiev by June 22. In the afternoon on that day we heard the first radio announcement that the war began. There were loud speakers on poles in the street, large black plates. People were crying and were getting ready to fight. Everyone expected Stalin to address the nation, but he did not. Instead, we listened to Molotov. Starting on June 23, the whole population of our building and other buildings were digging trenches. We had shifts of people who would stand on duty on the roofs to neutralize firebombs in time. Every house had air-raid shelters. When the bombing raids began - and in our street they began on the third day of the war - my mother and I did not go to those shelters, because my mother was afraid that she would be buried under the ground. I was not even 15 years old then. By the beginning of the war there were three of us living in Kiev: my father, my mother and me. My brother Yosif was studying at the naval college in Leningrad at the time.

This is how I remember the first bombing of my life. At night, the Germans flew and spread their missiles, so that it was light as day. Bombs did not fall often on our quarter; defense dirigibles "hung" over the city all day long, and antiaircraft guns were on every roof to shoot down the enemy. Nevertheless, in front of my own eyes, a bomb fell on the building next to ours - and destroyed it.

Later, bombing raids became awful, but during the first month there was no panic: people knew exactly what, where and when they must do. The only destructive component was the refugees. Every day their number grew, they were coming from the west, telling terrible things about the Germans. The city began to get ready for evacuation.

Evacuation was voluntary. People left with their organizations and establishments, not according to their residence or schools. People got registered at their workplaces, and companies evacuated their workers from Kiev. The first people who were evacuated - at the end of June - could take anything they wanted, even furniture. People were given a lot of place on the trains, but they did not take much, because everyone was sure that victory would come soon and evacuation would not be long. People expected to be home in one or two months. My father believed so, too. He was not going to be evacuated. He was liable for a call-up, and he expected it. They decided to evacuate my mother, my aunt (the wife of my father's brother) and me. My mother begged her brother Isaac and her sister Hannah to evacuate. They refused very firmly. They believed that the Germans they saw in Kiev in 1918 were a highly cultured nation, and nobody can expect any terrible things from them. Officially, nobody told us that the Jews had to be evacuated first of all. There were rumors to this effect, circulated by the refugees, but in our big family nobody really believed them. Only our family and two younger sisters of my mother's grandfather Gorenstein went to evacuation. When on July 7 we stood at the train station, waiting for our train having said good-bye to my father, he came back to us. He was released from the army for health reasons - he had heart problems. We were all put on the train. We had only one suitcase with us. Our railcar looked as follows: it was a big freight car, in the middle of which were two metal heating stoves and along which were several two- and three-storey plank beds, on which people and their belongings lied. Around 80 people could fit into such a car.

Right there, on the train station, there was another bombing. Everyone ran out of the train into the shelter, while my mother and I stood under the roof of the Kiev train station during the whole bombing raid, and then went back to our train. When we were crossing the Dneper, leaving Kiev, the bombing began again. We were crossing the bridge under bombs. Our train managed to escape, but the one after ours was destroyed and sank in the Dneper. We were taken to the Urals. It took us a month to get there by this train. We had to spend a lot of time at some stations. We would meet people from other trains, and then at the next station we would see that train burned out and people were dead. Our train was also often bombed. When it happened, the train would stop and all its passengers would scatter in the fields, while the German planes would fly very low and shoot people almost point-blank. This continued till Voronezh. After Voronezh the bombings gradually ceased, and the journey to Krasnoufimsk, in the Urals, was practically quiet. We did not have enough food on the train. Only small food portions were given out in a centralized manner, the rest we had to buy at the stations. Local residents offered us their products, and we had money to buy them, but even such small markets were often bombed.

Krasnoufimsk was a small town not far from Sverdlovsk, in the Urals. We arrived there on August 5, 1941 - my parents, Aunt Liza (my mother's sister), her husband, uncle Yakov, and me. Uncle Yakov worked at the railways, and due to his railway department we were evacuated. My aunt and uncle were settled in a room at the train station, and my uncle began to work at the railway depot. My parents and I were settled at the house of former White Guard soldier Orlov. We were put there by force, and he was forced to let us stay in his large summer kitchen, where we spent two years. The kitchen was big, but very cold, and in winters, when frosts reached minus 40 degrees Centigrade, the walls of the kitchen were covered with ice. Our landlord looked forward to the Germans' coming to the Urals. When he heard on the radio about cities captured by the Germans, he without any fear put icons around the house and played victory marches. Psychologically, it was very hard for us, Soviet people, to live with him.

I went to school; my mother did not work, only my father worked, so we had his salary and the money sent by brother Yosif, who fought at the front. We also had food cards, which gradually replaced money in 1941. Food was poor and usually frozen.

At the same time, there was absolute order in the city. There were no bandits, no hooligans in the streets. Food provision was poor but regular and well ordered. Special Communist Party and Soviet bodies were in control of it.

Right there in taiga, outside the city, plants that came from the Big Land were established, and a month later they began to put out planes, tanks and other military equipment. We turned out to be absolutely unprepared for winter: we had no clothes, and the Urals climate was very different from ours; it was extremely hard for many people. Some people lost a lot of weight, while others, including me, began to gain weight and looked as healthy as ever. Being almost always hungry I was rather fat, with pink cheeks, and nobody believed I was starving. I went to study at the 8th grade. Our class was big; there were mainly children from Moscow. I joined the Komsomol League there, and in the 9th grade I became the Secretary of the Komsomol School Organization. We did not only study - several months a year we spent on collective farms in the fields. We worked under awful conditions - without clothes and almost with no equipment. While studying, we also went to hospitals, read letters to the wounded, took care of them and provided political information to every stratum of population of Krasnoufimsk.

We had a radio at home, which was on day and night. It was very difficult for us to hear about the surrender of our cities; we cried hard when our dear Kiev was surrendered. Nothing special was said about Babi Yar or other places of mass shootings of the Jews. The usual formula during those times was: death of Soviet civilians. It was only in 1942 that we heard about the Jewish tragedy in Kiev. But we did hear it in an official radio program. We worried very much for our families. The attitude towards the Jews in Krasnoufimsk was fine. There were not many Jews there. I never heard the word "kike" from the local population. The only exceptions were former White Guard soldiers, many of whom were in Krasnoufimsk in exile. Their attitude towards the Jews was openly hostile.

At that time, we did not discuss the special attitude of the Germans towards the Jews. I don't remember ever asking this question. We were much more anxious about the situation at the front and famine, which was very strong since winter 1942.

We had almost nothing except bread, while its norm for students and non-working family members was 400 grams a day. At school, however, we were given a little bit more, but it was absolutely not enough. Every day I went to bed hungry.

We continued to keep the traditional Soviet lifestyle. We also tried to celebrate all the Soviet holidays and even New Year. For young girls, the military were the most handsome men and heroes. In spring 1942 I saw captured Germans for the first time in Krasnoufimsk.

Since March 1942, transport trucks with the captured Germans passed by Krasnoufimsk to go further into Siberia. The transport trucks were heavily guarded. There were three lines of guards around them. The Germans were guarded against the evacuated population, the Soviet people, who were ready to tear them apart, for many had already received letters about the death of their near and dear at the front. I remember the Germans were miserable, poorly clothed, half-frozen. Once a transport truck passed by us, and there was no one alive - all the Germans got frozen on the way and turned into ice.

We all were patriots of our country. Every schoolboy dreamed of fighting at the front. When I was at the 9th grade I went to the military registration and enlistment office, begging them to send girls to the front line. They certainly refused. In 1942, I was not even 16 years old yet.

The first loss we experienced in our family was my grandmother. She died in front of my mother and me in winter 1942. And on December 31, 1942, my father died. He had gone outside to chop wood so we wouldn't be cold. They brought his body in the next morning.

In order to make a hole in the frozen soil with temperature bellow 40 degrees and bury him we had to work three days with picks. So, my mother and I remained alone. My brother fought at the front. We knew practically nothing about his fate. Apart from bread, in winter 1942 we also had two sacks of frozen potatoes. Fresh potatoes were in our dreams until the end of evacuation. We did not starve to death only because my mother sold my father's only suit. It was very good, and we exchanged it for two sacks of flour. It lasted us till the end of summer 1943.

In June 1943 evacuation ended, and we were taken back to the territories released by the Soviet army. Now, in August 1943, we were coming home, and our way back was very much like our way to evacuation. We were in practically the same freight cars. Our journey to Voronezh was quiet, while after Voronezh bombings began again, and we again saw transports ruined on their way home, people killed ...

A little later a railway station in the Ukrainian town of Konotop was fully destroyed in front of us. Two weeks before that Konotop was liberated from the Germans. The front line was on the railway juncture Vorozhba. Kiev was still in the hands of the Germans. We could not go further. We were left in Konotop. Bodies of Soviet power were formed from our midst, the young people, Komsomol members, who were in evacuation, that is, who did not stay in the occupied territories. Local residents, who had stayed in the territories occupied by the Germans were not trusted with such work. Thus I began to work at the passport department of the Konotop police, and in two months, due to some circumstances, I became the chief of this department. I had just turned 16 at the time.

Our work at the passport department consisted of checking and re- registering residents of Konotop, putting Soviet stamps into their old, pre- war, and most often German passports. In their old pre-war Soviet passports people had big, two-page stamps - the German swastika, and we put our own Soviet stamps next to it into the passports of people we have checked.

People stood in long, several kilometers long lines to get to our department. We worked 12-14 hours a day. The flow of people did not decrease for several months. The reason was that without the Soviet mark in their passports, Konotop residents could neither find a job, nor get bread cards. Their passports were considered invalid. If I remember correctly, there were practically no Jewish names among Konotop residents I checked and registered.

Registration and checking of documents was a hard, responsible and sometimes dangerous task. Many people turned out to be without documents at all; many were hiding from the Soviet authorities or concealed their names, for different reasons, pretending to be somebody else. There were many deserters from the army and very many bandits. We had to filter out all of them, find them out and pass them on. Regularly, once or twice a week, we took part in special raids to check documents around the town.

At this work I grew very serious and suspicious. Two months later I was taken to be a court assessor in the military tribunal. The tribunal consisted of three people, it was a secret court: two assessors (I was one of them) and the chairman, sometimes a military lawyer, sometimes not. We judged all kinds of traitors: German policemen and other people who collaborated with the Germans. Information about them reached us through numerous sources, including the local population.

Two weeks before our coming to Konotop, the local population hung the man, a Ukrainian, who was chief of the police under the Germans; they hung him without any court judgment. Later we had all the necessary proceedings. We did not know the term "collaboration" then, but everyone knew the term "traitor of motherland."

A military tribunal was a secret, closed court hearing, but the procedure, as you can imagine, was kept very strict. There were many witnesses. Court hearings could last from two to ten or more days. We convicted a Ukrainian doctor, who was chief of the medical service of the concentration camp for prisoners of war in Konotop under the Germans and who gradually killed all the Soviet prisoners of war and betrayed those doctors who tried to save them. I don't remember ever convicting anyone for shooting the Jews in Konotop, although I'm sure there were such shootings. But we did not register such places or people who took part in them at that time. We convicted those locals who betrayed their fellow men, sending them to death.

I, as an assessor, had to sign death sentences more than once. Such a responsibility really changes a girl's character at 16. I was very radical and uncompromising. Local residents treated me with caution. When my friend and I turned up to the dance club, people fled from that place, often thinking we were on another raid. Several times people tried to kill me. My poor mother cried a lot because of me. But in the eyes of the local youth we were heroes, who accomplished justice.

I worked there till the beginning of 1944. In January, Uncle Yakov came to pick us up from Kiev. He took my aunt, but I could not leave because, as it turned out, after working for four months in the police, I became subject to call-up, that is, the military, and I could no longer move around without permission of the military command. We learned that our house in Kiev was ruined, so we had nowhere to stay anyway. My mother and I stayed in Konotop. At the same time Uncle Yakov told us about the death of the Gorenstein family in Babi Yar.

For another whole year, until 1944, when I was 17, I was the chief of the passport department and in charge of the passport regime in Konotop and its region. Without my personal signature on passes and stamps, no one could leave Konotop, no one could come and stay to live in it for more than three days. Some people tried to bribe me, promising big money and services, while I wore shoes with torn bottoms for that whole year.

In the beginning of 1945, after a very strict checking of the Konotop passport department by the regional Sumy department, I was sent there as the chief of the passport department of the region. It was an extraordinary career for a Jewish girl, unbelievable. In the center of the city I was given a 20-meter room with two beds - for me and for my mother, one chair and a huge suitcase, which served as a table. It was an unheard-of luxury in 1945.

There was more work in the region than in Konotop district, but two months later I was again promoted to the special unit of the Department of the Interior. My unit monitored all secret information about Sumy citizens. This information, first of all, related to people whose names were found in the German archive that was captured there, that is, people, who collaborated with the Germans during the occupation. We mainly checked and traced such people. As far as I remember, I never saw any case related specifically to the Jewish mass murders in Sumy, even though there were obviously mass Jewish burial places in Sumy. Besides, we received a large group of people, who returned from the German captivity or slave labor, followed by the German information archive, transferred to us. So, I had to deal with this work as well. It was at that work that I received my first officer rank - junior lieutenant.

Returning to Kiev

At the end of April 1945 I came to Kiev by miracle. One Russian colonel in Sumy learned that I came from Kiev but did not have a chance to go there after evacuation, so he let me go there for a month. Considering that nobody got any vacation then, I can only marvel at the fact. It is impossible to describe what I saw in my native city, how I saw my house, which resembled a skeleton on the burnt out street. I hardly escaped death there, when I was running up the half-ruined stairs to the second floor, to our apartment, where in the hole in the wall I saw the remains of our pictures. In the yard, where my whole childhood passed, I met my former neighbors; our meeting was very warm, but I felt like I came from a different world: they were free people, while I, at 17-years-old, was a very responsible and secret worker. It was hard for me to find my relatives. I stayed at Uncle Yakov's and aunt Liza's and spent the month there. First I hoped very much that I would remain in Kiev and be transferred here for work. My hopes ran high because in Sumy I was working together with the niece of Polina Zhemchuzhnaya, Molotov's wife. She gave me a letter of recommendation to a big boss in Kiev, and after seeing him, I almost got registered at work in Kiev. The only difficulty was the fact that even being able to give me work at the department of the Interior, this man was unable to help me find a flat. At that time, it was practically impossible for my mother and I - my brother was still at the Northern Navy - to rent an apartment and pay for it. Besides, after staying a short time, the situation in Kiev began to weigh heavily on me. Almost a third of the Gorenstein family had died. Nobody saw their graves - it was the whole Babi Yar. I learned that after our evacuation our neighbors took all of our belongings. I was told I could turn to the court, but I just couldn't do that. My best pre-war friend Lena turned out to be a complete stranger to me. It was very had for me to live in Kiev, and when I still had about five days of my vacation left, right after the Victory Day, I went back to Sumy.

The thought about Babi Yar, where my relatives lay, which was so close to Kiev, was unbearable for me. I remember that April 1945 well. People went around Jewish homes in Kiev, collecting money for a monument. As far as I know, no monument was built there within the next 20 or even 30 years.

The only good memory I had from Kiev then was the Victory Day. I celebrated it with my friends from my Krasnoarmeyskaya Street in Kiev. Since May 7, people gathered around loudspeakers outside, waiting for the announcement of victory. And we heard this announcement at 12:00 on May 9, 1945. "Hurrah!" could be heard all over the city; people shot into the air from guns and rifles. It was a celebration for every one personally and for the whole nation at large.

I remember that immediately after the Victory Day, people began to tell the Jews to emigrate to Palestine. As far as I remember, most people did not want to go. My family, and me first of all, were very negative about emigration, we wanted to stay and build up our country. Those who emigrated were traitors in my opinion.

In comparison with pre-war times, the attitude towards the Jews was considerably worse. It was a painful paradox. It would seem that after all the atrocities that the fascists did to the Jews in front of the whole of Kiev, they were to be at least pitied. But nothing of this sort was happening. A precedent was created - the Germans demonstrated that the Jews could be destroyed, and the daringness of this crime inspired fresh anti- Semitism, which in fact had never been absent in Ukraine. Nevertheless, it did not push my family towards emigration. We were Soviet patriots and could not imagine ourselves outside our motherland. But our internationalism, especially that of my mother, was greatly shaken at that time. At the end of 1944, unexpectedly for the whole family, my older brother Yosif married a Russian woman. He spent the war serving as an officer at the Northern Navy. He had been on a trawler and led military transportation vessels across mine fields. He married a woman from his ship crew. The family did not take the fact that she was older than him as painfully as the fact that she was Russian. Unlike the pre-war times that I have already described, this fact was taken very negatively. My mother said then that if it were before the war, she would not mind a mixed marriage with a Gentile, but the war tragedy, which we did not call Holocaust yet, left an impact on her understanding, and she was afraid of mixed marriages.

Anyway, my brother's marriage was to be recognized. And it was not the last trial for my mother, because soon afterwards I met my future husband, an officer, a captian of the Soviet Army, Alexey Chaika, and in 1946, despite vigorous protests of my mother and our whole Jewish family, we got married.

I should say that Alexey Chaika was not the first one who made a proposal to me. There were a lot of boys, mainly Russian ones, around me. There were Jewish boys as well, introduced to me by my Jewish relatives. But at one point I told them not to interfere with my life because I was going to find my spouse on my own. That's how it happened. I would date others for a long time, but it took Alexey Chaika only one month to make a proposal and to get my "yes." However, it was a "yes" from me, and not from my mother. She did not mind the fact that my future husband was 12 years older than me, but she greatly minded his military profession and nationality. Just like in the case with my brother Yosif, she reminded me, too, about how Russian husbands betrayed their Jewish wives and children during the occupation. It got stuck in her memory for her whole life. In addition, she was absolutely sure that some time later he would say something bad about my nationality. Just let me tell you at once: she was wrong. My husband and I lived together for 45 years, and our marriage was unbelievably happy.

Married life

Our wedding took place on April 25, 1946. The wedding was a military one; my husband's whole regiment and my colleagues came to see us. There were no relatives, except my mother, at the wedding. My uncle and aunt, members of our Kiev family, officially rejected me. But my husband was right in saying before our wedding that if our life together went well, all the relatives will recognize us again, but if our life went badly, nobody will need me anyhow. Since our life was good, we quickly reconciled with the whole Kiev family. Alexey, with his open and kind heart, quickly won the love of my relatives, and first and best of all, my mother's.

Since the end of 1946, my husband and I began to travel all over Ukraine. My husband served at the air regiment, and together with this regiment we moved from place to place. We never stayed at one place for more than six months. In snowy frosty December of 1947, in the town of Belaya Tserkov, not far from Kiev, our daughter Tatyana was born.

In the morning of that day, I had to unload a whole truck of coal - the winter was cold and a truck of coal was an unheard-of luxury in the then Belaya Tserkov. My husband brought the truck in the morning, but we could unload it only in the evening. I did not want to wait till the evening, I was afraid that somebody would steal it. So, I decided to unload it on my own, and that is why my daughter was born one full month early. She was born at night; there was no electricity for some reason, and candles were lit around me.

I had to quit work. Our frequent moving from place to place did not let me work properly, and then my newborn daughter required my full attention. The problem was that right before her birth I slipped on the steps and fell with a bucket of coal, and so when my daughter was one year old she already had fully developed traumatic cataract. She had two surgeries, on both eyes, in Kiev, but still her sight remained very weak for the whole life.

In 1955 our traveling came to an end: our daughter had to go to school, and since she could study only at a special school for children with impaired vision, and this school was only one - in Kiev, my husband had to transfer to the reserve, having declined a higher army promotion.

Thus, since 1955, I have been living in Kiev again. When I look back at my life in various military camps, I always remember cold and almost hungry existence, crowded houses with cockroaches everywhere and huge rats active at night. Once, a rat bit my young Tanya, so the whole house ran after this rat to show it to the medics and free the child from shots. But I also remember that we were all friends in these towns and villages, the team was always international, and all the holidays were cheerful and long, even though there was not enough food.

Anti-Semitism in Kiev

We could not imagine somebody saying anything negative or irrespective about Jews. Apart from punishing it as a crime, according to the Communist Party and Soviet authorities' policy, my husband would never allow it. Once, in 1952, the situation changed in connection with the Doctors' Case. We lived in Poltava, and my mother, with tears in her eyes, told my husband that our neighbor said that our fellow Jews wanted to poison Stalin. Since Stalin was almost a living god for my mother, this offense was horrible to her. Alexey went to talk to the offender. Since their talk did not seem to go the way he wanted, he used his official position and wrote a report to the chief of the political unit of his regiment, where he worked at the time. But to his surprise, the chief of the unit explained to him that he should not worry about it, because the man who offended my mother was not very wrong. Besides, he advised that Alexey, whose wife was Jewish (meaning me), he should keep quiet and low. So, my husband went to talk to the neighbor as man to man. It seems that this talk was much more effective. We never heard anything like that again. Soon after that Stalin died. And this terrible grief united Jews, Russians, and Ukrainians in our regiment. The old and the young cried without hiding their tears. The Soviet people had no idea how to live without their great Stalin. On March 5, the day of his death, two planes crashed in our regiment - one was taking off and another was landing. They collided on the runway. 22 coffins were in the regiment on that day; they were buried on the same day as Stalin.

We came across everyday anti-Semitism in full in Kiev. Then, in 1955, spoken Yiddish was freely heard in the streets. And almost as often as Yiddish was heard, so the word "kikes" was used against us or someone else. My Russian husband Alexey could not tolerate it. Naively he thought that there was no difference between people's nationalities. "A person's good nature is only important, the rest is not so important", he said often. By the way, his many relatives in the Russian village of Tetkino outside Kursk did not object to our marriage. In the very beginning they treated me well and later our relations became very friendly; finally, if they had any family questions, they first discussed them with me and only after that - with Alexey.

In general, the transition to Kiev lifestyle turned out to be hard for us. It was hard to go back to the old memories and Babi Yar. My husband and I, my daughter and our Jewish relatives went to Babi Yar almost every year, practically in secret. That place was dark, wild and dangerous. Rumors had it that the authorities were planning to build a stadium there.

I did not go to work. I worked around the house and helped my daughter to study. It was hard for my husband to start living civilian life. He began to work at the air factory and later was transferred to the design bureau of famous aircraft designer Antonov. He worked there util his retirement. It was hard for him to take the changes in the nature of relations as compared with his military brotherhood.

The exposure of the Stalin cult was very difficult for all of our families, both Jewish and Russian. For us, he was the highest authority, an example of a true person and a state leader. Even prior to the war our family had a tradition that at our family celebrations, even at birthday parties, the first toast was the toast to the health of Comrade Stalin. Even the death of my uncle's brother changed nothing in this regard. And 20 years later, it was hard to accept that everything we believed in were lies.

After these lies we became suspicious of everything. We also were skeptical about the existence of Israel. It seemed to us that it was all a nice joke. We had only Soviet sources of information about Israel. And in general, it all was too far from our everyday life of the end of the 1950s, when we had to do our best to forget that we were Jewish in order to live in peace, so that my daughter would study peacefully as well, because she had already run across anti-Semitism in her school.

The Jewish language , Yiddish, was gradually disappearing, as well as our Jewish names. Sometimes on purpose, other times - for pronunciation reasons, they were turned into Russian names: Moishe - Misha, Izya - Igor. And me, Basya, became Asya, not on purpose, but because my Russian neighbors found it easier to say it this way. In Jewish families full names were no longer given to children in honor of their late relatives - only the first letter of the name was left, the rest of the name was Russian, for instance: in honor of Leib or Lazar a boy was named Leonid, in honor of Rivka a girl was named Raisa. Before the end of 1970s I did not even know where the only Kiev synagogue was located. So, I was very surprised when my daughter Tatyana, who, as I believed, was brought up in the spirit of internationalism, when she was going to get her passport in 1964, demanded that in the "nationality" line she would be registered as Jewish. It was correct, but impossible. This so-called "fifth line" in the passport, that is, Jewish nationality, could put an end to her further career, institute studies, finding a good job; it threatened to cause a lot of troubles. I sincerely wanted her to register as Russian, according to her father's nationality, while my husband believed she could choose whatever nationality she wanted. He still did not understand the peculiarities of our Jewish fate. Neither begging nor explanations could influence her - only my bitter tears shed for many days impacted her, and she did what I wanted from her. I still don't understand what it was - a protest on her part, her ethnic identification or the fact that on the example of her Jewish friends she could see a special attitude towards the Jews. To be frank, I need to say that anti-Semitism did not affect me personally. It did not hinder my career, or my work, or my Communist Party membership, which started when I was 19. I was more concerned about those who were with me. My Jewish relatives became fewer and fewer. In 1954, my mother died; a few years before that Aunt Liza was gone, and then Uncle Yakov. However, in 1960s, my brother Yosif came home from the army. By the way, he received a second higher education - he graduated from the Higher Military Engineer Academy in Leningrad. After coming back to Kiev he found a job at the military plant, where he worked at a very high office until his death in 1981. He could not register his sons, Vova and Boris, as the Russians, because he divorced his first wife, who was Russian, and married a Jewish woman. But, being an optimist, he believed his boys would fight their ways in this life somehow.

In 1966, my Tanya finished school with honors and entered University, philosophy department, which was another surprise for us. Prior to that she had finished music school (playing violin), and we hoped she would continue her musical education in the musical college. However, she chose a different path, and in general she became independent then. I could start working again. I certainly did not go back to my previous, semi-military profession. Having finally completed my secondary education at the age of 40, I went to work at the structure of the Education Ministry. I worked there till 1985, when my granddaughter Katya was born.

In the 1970s, life around us was slowly changing, and I could find my place in it. I became a trade union leader at my work. At the same time more people began to emigrate to Israel. There was an instruction, coming either from the party or from the Soviet authorities, according to which trade union leaders had to do explanatory work with those who were going to emigrate. I had to do it many times, and it was always hard for me. It was a little easier because the first to leave was our director, in 1975. The next step according to this instruction was a special meeting with these people to expel them from the Communist Party if they were its members. It was a very painful procedure. We all tried to escape it, and there was a method: when a person knew he would leave, he had to quit his job, leave the party ranks and work somewhere as a street cleaner, for instance; he had to put himself in such a position that he would have nothing in common with his previous work. It made situation easier for him because he did not have to blush in front of his work team where he had worked for a long time, and it made the situation easier for the organization that had to do such a thing to him. The first people who left - in 1970s - seemed to have disappeared without any trace. Technically, correspondence with them was very complicated, and literally, it was dangerous for those who were left here and received letters from abroad. In the 1980s the situation began to change. We began to get news from those who left for another world, which was so unlike ours. We learned that their lives there went well. The attitude towards them began to change, first unofficially. My attitude was also changing, even though I was still against emigration. I thought we were being deceived again. Besides, I remembered the words of my mother in evacuation in the Urals. She said she was willing to go back to Kiev even if there would be no place to stay; she was willing to kiss the rocks of the Kiev streets, so that she would only stay home. I still think the same way. By the end of the 1980s, my few relatives also began to leave. They were leaving for the United States, Israel, even Australia, and we remained even fewer in Kiev. Correspondence with our relatives became more and more legal and free, and gradually communications with the free world became a tradition in our family.

By the end of the 1980s, there were much less Jews in Kiev, but my family increased: in 1985, my long-awaited granddaughter Katya was born. Her father, Tatyana's husband, is Viktor Malakhov, son of the famous sculptor, Aaron Foterman, and Belarussian doctor Tamara Malakhova. When he finished school and could not enter the medical institute after having passed practically all exams with excellent marks, he changed his last name for his mother's. Then he entered the philosophy department of the University, where he studied together with my daughter. They have been living and working together for the past 20 years.

My husband and I doted upon our granddaughter. His last words before he died in 1991 were concerning her. Unfortunately, he did not live to see her as a student and did not know that in the third grade her parents transferred Katya to the first Jewish national school of Kiev, which she finished with honors this year.

My granddaughter Katya is a person of the new time that began for us in 1991. She is absolutely free in her political, religious and national choices. Her father is Doctor of Philosophy and Professor of the National University in Kiev. This year, Katya passed exams with a very high rating and entered two universities at once: the National "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy" University and the State Jewish Solomon University. She studies at the philosophy department. Even now she speaks fluent Russian, Ukrainian, English, and Hebrew. She knows the Jewish tradition well. She loves reading the Torah and Talmud in original. It was with her that the Jewish tradition came back to our home. Katya tells me that the most valuable thing in life is free choice. She is probably right. But it is not easy for me to understand her. Neither in my childhood nor in the rest of my life did I have such freedom, but I also understand what a dear price was paid for this freedom.

I remember that my mother, being young, told me how in the 1920s, a famous Kiev rabbi invited her to join his family in their emigration to America. And she, a daughter of rich parents, from whom Revolution confiscated everything they had, nevertheless decided to stay in her motherland - and she never regretted it. I think I have her character; only at home I can enjoy full rights of a person. But I understand that my viewpoint is not the only right one, and it is very good that the whole world is now open. Let them leave freely, and let them be free to come back should they decide to do so. The most important thing, according to my granddaughter, is free choice. A free choice to remain really human. I am very glad that my Kiev is becoming more and more not only Ukrainian, but also Jewish: Jewish schools, synagogues, theaters, "Khesed Avot" - this is all very good; I just want people to live in peace. Because there is probably no greater evil than mutual hatred. I am especially afraid of national and religious hatred. And if religions or nationalities are able to separate people and make them hate one another, then something is wrong in this world. Because the most important thing is for all people to be happy. And they need very little for this: mind, kindness and peace of heart.

Adela Hinkova
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewers: Violeta Kyurdyan, Dimitar Bozhilov
Date of interview: September 2003

Adela Hinkova is a remarkable old lady. She hasn’t gone out of her apartment for many years, being unable to walk alone. Ringing the bell, you would first hear her quick ‘I'm coming’ and then, after a short break, the rattling of her walker, while approaching the door. In the beginning, you would be amazed by Adela’s stern look and explicit speaking. But when she smiles and starts speaking, you realize what a tender and loving lady she is. And she really loves talking, though unfortunately she gets tired very quickly. Once undoubtedly an extremely energetic person, she’s now seeing only a limited number of people, but she’s still full of energy, she still keeps her mother’s sewing machine, she regularly brushes up her memories and is eager to share the story of her life with the whole world.

My father
Growing up
Our religious life
My school years
During the war
My husband
Glossary

My father

My father’s kin is from Vidin. There was a Jewish quarter there; it was situated on the so-called Kale [Greek for ‘fortress’]. Only a couple of Jewish families didn’t live there. There was a big synagogue in Vidin, the second biggest synagogue on the Balkan Peninsula [after the Sofia Great Synagogue 1]. Later, it was used for storage for a certain time. Nowadays it’s in ruins. There were only four families from the Jewish community there. My father’s kin are said to have lived there for a long time. His name was Leon Yosef Ilel. There were a lot of families named Ilel in Vidin, which means that they were a lot of brothers and sisters. He remained without a father when he was a child. My father knew nothing about his father and they sent him to be an ‘argatin’ [a seasonal worker on the fields helping with harvesting], as they said in Wallachia [an Ottoman Danubian Province; the unification of Wallachia and Moldova formed the Romanian State that was recognized independent in 1878] and that’s why he knew Romanian very well.

Then he married. He had documents for buying an estate in 1895. He lived in that house with his family. His first wife Duda bore him four children. She was very beautiful. When she died early of tuberculosis, the youngest child was 14-15 years old. There was Grandmother Ester, my father’s mother, who lived in a secluded room, but I never saw her walking around or sitting at the table. She lay on some kind of chest; she even had lice or something of the kind. I know that she was very old.

I remember my father with very little hair. He had a short haircut. His hair was a bit grayish. Even when he died at 72 years of age, he did not have white hair. He didn’t have a hair prosthesis. He said it bothered him. He wore a suit. He always wore a suit; I don’t remember if he had any cardigans. He wore pants, a shirt and a jacket. In the summer I don’t remember seeing him without his jacket, wearing a shirt only. He also wore a bowler hat. When it got cold, he wore a fur-lined short coat. In the winter he wore overshoes, because there was a lot of mud around. I had to wash them, but the water in the bucket would freeze during the night. In the morning, he would take a wooden log and hit the ice in the bucket to crush it. And he said, ‘Come now, wash yourself!’ The ground in Vidin is kind of sticky, not crumbling. It stuck to the overshoes and you can’t image how hard it was to wash two pairs of overshoes with freezing hands.

I remember my father as a vendor of charcoal. Village people came from the country and brought him charcoal. All villagers around Vidin were Wallachians [ethnic Romanians]. There was no Bulgarian village around Vidin without Wallachians living in it. I remember him coming home all black. He went to the shop, two people helped him there, holding one side of the charcoal sack and placing its other side on the scales. The scales worked with weights. When he returned home, my mother [Adela’s father’s second wife] was ready to pour him water to wash himself. There wasn’t much water at that time. We didn’t have water in the yard, my mother and I went to a well, which was two houses down the road. We called it Tatli Bunar – which means ‘sweet well’ in Turkish. Its water was very nice. So she would pour my father water so he could wash himself. I would hand him a clean shirt and a towel.

He would sit at the table and send me to buy him a bottle of mastika 2. He loved drinking mastika. The bottle was with a glass plug and I would open it to try it, but it was so strong, I wondered how he could drink that stuff. He drank the mastika with boiled eggs. They were over-boiled, which is a religious thing: if the egg isn’t boiled hard enough, it’s not Jewish. It’s not kosher. My mother boiled the eggs with onion skins and they got brown. We all sat at the table ready to eat. My father would slice an egg for himself and an egg for us, he would give us each a slice of it and we would all wait while he ate and drank. Then my mother would serve the dinner. We all sat together at the table. The four of us lived together: I, my brother Santo, my mother and my father. The others [the other siblings] had their own families already. I don’t remember if they came to visit us. I was 13-14 years old when I saw them for the first time.

My father was responsible for our moral upbringing. I don’t know how many brothers he had, I know that he had a lot of cousins. He didn’t go to school. As a child, he worked as a servant. He knew very little: to sign his name in Latin letters and to use some Jewish alphabet, consisting of pothooks. He had a big notebook for the accounts. He was a naturally intelligent man, able to understand and learn much about people. He knew a lot of short stories and proverbs. He was very eloquent and everyone loved listening to him.

My father was a very nice man. He loved people very much and they loved him, too. They called him Bai [uncle] Aslan the ‘Mangal Komuru’ [Turkish for ‘charcoal vendor’]. Aslan means ‘lion’ in Turkish. He knew many languages for his times. He knew five languages. We spoke only Spanish 3 at home. We spoke Bulgarian very rarely. When he went to work, he spoke Turkish and Wallachian. If he hadn’t known Wallachian, he wouldn’t have been able to do his job. Fifty percent of the people at the market, where he had a shop, were Wallachians. He also spoke the Gypsy [Roma] language, because there were a lot of gypsies in Vidin.

With his [first] wife, Duda, my father had four children: two sons and two daughters. The eldest one was Buka. In fact, her name was Joya. Joya is a jewel in Ladino, a gem. And she was a beautiful woman. Some of the children, Nessim and she, were a little bit swarthy. Buka married early and left the house. Many years after that, she visited me with her youngest son Leon; she had three sons. He was named after my father.

The next child was Nessim: ‘Nes’ means a good sign [miracle] in Ivrit. He loved studying. After my father’s first wife died of tuberculosis, Duda’s brother Jacques lived in the house. Duda’s maiden name was Suzin. Her brother was the future factory owner Jacques Suzin. He went to high school and knitted lace to earn money. And since he was very neat, he would always lay down his pants on the bed during the night, so that they wouldn’t be creased in the morning. He went to Italy to study and then he got rich and became a factory owner. When my brother Nessim graduated from high school, Jacques invited him to Italy where my brother studied finance. During his studies he met an Italian woman, who was very beautiful. They lived together and they had a girl. Then he returned to Bulgaria; we made great preparations for his return. He stayed with us for a very short time. He went to Pleven to see his other sisters and then he went on to Yambol.

My uncle sent him machines, with which Nessim founded the factory ‘Tundzha’ in Varna. He produced American and Oxford textiles there. The yarn arrived from Jacques’ other factory. Some years after that Nessim married Rozeta, who was studying dentistry, but gave it up and lived with him. She was a very beautiful woman. She was from Burgas, from a well-off family: they had a house in Burgas and she had four or five sisters. During those times if you wanted to marry, you had to have 100,000 levs for dowry. That was the norm, taking into account that the monthly salary was 3,000 levs. And every other year her father married off one of his daughters. My father was fretting, ‘Rozeta married off yet another sister, Nessim must have given 100,000 levs again.’ When Rozeta’s parents died, they left them a small house in the center of Burgas as inheritance. In its place he built a big three-story building with two apartments on each floor. This was the first nice house in Burgas; they called it the ‘White House.’ It still exists today on Antim 1st Street.

The factory was nationalized in 1931. In 1944 4 when the communists came to power, he was offered a job as a director of a warehouse. But he felt offended and declined. So he moved to Sofia in 1948. He was among the first to leave for Israel. He didn’t do well there, because he was quite old and had no money. He went to Italy to look for Jacques Suzim, who, however, had already passed away. Jacques’ son told him, ‘He left me nothing. The fascists took everything.’ And then together with Buka’s elder son Solomon, he opened an atelier for children’s ready-made clothes. But Nessim gave that up, too, and stayed at home. I felt very sorry for him when I visited him in Israel. I would feel very sad when he told me, ‘You know, I visited Santo today and saved the money for one lunch.’ He died at the age of 82.

The third child of my father’s first marriage was Zhaneta. She and I had at least twenty years difference in age. She married in Pleven. There she gave birth to two children, who she named after her parents-in-law: the son Benyamin, and the daughter Zelma. Zhaneta’s husband was a very nice man. His business didn’t do well in Pleven and so he moved to a village, Stezherevo, in Svishtov region. There he opened a small shop and became a merchant. He treated all the people like brothers. When I turned 14, I was able to travel by myself. I got in touch with him and his family and visited them. I traveled by a steamer from Vidin and arrived at Svishtov. He came to meet me with a cart, because there were no buses at that time. So, I spent my summers there. I had a very nice time with them.

He had rheumatism and went to spa treatments. My sister would remain in the shop to work and I did the household chores. I learned to cook at that time. When the time came to go back to Vidin, he gave me fabrics to give to my mother as a present; she made robes from them. They lived there for quite some time and then they moved to another village: Aleksandrovo, in Lovech region. He lived well there, until the Law for the Protection of the Nation 5 was passed in 1941. Then he settled in Pleven.

My sister was very kind and loved by all. When she was young, she wanted to study, but Grandmother Ester didn’t let her. She was still energetic at that time. I remember now what Grandmother Ester told her, ‘Come on, tell your ‘gosposta’…’ [short for ‘gospozhitsa,’ Bulgarian for ‘Miss’]. But instead of saying ‘gosposta,’ she would say ‘posta’ which means shit in Spanish [Ladino]. And they laughed at her. My sister was a very good student and helped the other students. But they didn’t allow her to study and she remained with little education. She left for Israel with her two children.

One of her children [Zelma] got married and had two children, the other [Benyamin] couldn’t marry, because during the youth-brigade movement in Bulgaria, he became a brigade member and got sick. Instead of treating him, the doctor said that he had caught a cold. In fact he had tuberculosis. There was no penicillin at that time; he put on a lot of weight. He wasn’t able to marry, after all. So, he worked as a bank clerk in Israel. His father died in Israel. When he went to see the doctor for his high blood pressure, he died on the doctor’s couch. The son [Benyamin] often went to play roulette, when he came to Bulgaria. He also died of high blood pressure, when coming out of a restaurant. He left a large inheritance to Zelma, his sister, but she was already in an old-age home in a wheel-chair. So, the inheritance went to his cousins.  

My next brother Yosef was the last child from my father’s first marriage. He wasn’t swarthy, he was quite fair. He was a silent man. When Nessim was in Italy, he invited Yosef to study there. Yosef spent some time in Italy, but he could neither study, nor did he manage to learn the language, so he came back. I don’t know what work he did, I only remember him joining the army as a labor service man. He brought a green blanket from there. I saw this blanket around at home for a long time and we all knew that it was Yosef’s blanket.

After some years I understood that something went wrong during his circumcision. This didn’t prevent him from marrying a very beautiful woman, Loti, and having two children, both fair-haired like him. A girl, whom he called Duda Adela, after his mother and a boy, whom he named after his father Leon. He used to say, ‘Leon Yosef Ilel, the three names of my father, are back.’ But Loti thought that she had married a very rich man, while he didn’t achieve much financially. He lived with her until he left for Israel. There he divorced and married another woman. But he couldn’t find a proper job there. He became a carrier at the port. He was always depressed. He died soon after that in 1955. He always had an inferiority complex.

My mother [Adela’s father’s second wife] arrived in Bulgaria from Greece with her parents, probably in 1912 or 1913. My mother’s family lived in a number of places. My mother told me that they lived in Xanthi and Dedeagac [both today in Greece]. They lived in Turkey and after the First Balkan War 6 they lived in Greece. My mother could speak Greek and Turkish very well. She also knew Bulgarian, but not very well. She learned it when they moved to Vidin. Her father was a chazzan. Her parents educated their children well. Their son Solomon and their daughter with her husband Bentsion remained in Greece, while they came to Bulgaria with my mother, who was already 25 years old. They married her to my father, who was 25 years older than her.

My mother told me that when she went to my father’s house, she found a heap of ashes in the yard: the burned possessions of my father’s first wife. When she raked the ashes with a stick she found a cup handle. ‘I started everything anew,’ she said to me.

She arrived with one chest. We had that chest for many years at home. She kept her most valuable things there and a dress called ‘bindali,’ an ancient Jewish national velvet dress sewn with gold threads. I don’t know if she came with that dress or if my father gave it to her as a present when she gave birth to my brother Santo. There was a tradition to give nice presents to women who had given birth to boys.

Santo and I are both from my father’s second marriage. They always paid more attention to him, because he was a son, a man. The boy in our family was always much respected. He had privileges, for example, when he became 13 years old, he got more food, because he was a boy and so on.

Santo was born on 6th July 1913. That was during the war [Second Balkan War] 7, and for greater safety my father sent his wife to Silistra, which wasn’t a military zone. My father worked as a chazzan there. They called their child Santo, which means blessed and health at the same time. He didn’t like his name much and wanted to be called Sinto, not Santo. Ever since his childhood he had more limited interests, he wasn’t attracted to science. At home he would play with the football and he often broke the windows with the ragged ball. Once my father gave him a hard beating, because he had swum in the Danube and the Danube took a number of victims every year. Soon he went to a small shop to work. He decided to marry early. Relatives of ours, married to the Paparo family, introduced him to an unmarried woman from Sofia, Eti Grinberg. Her father was a German Jew. She had big blue eyes and she was a bit older than him, very neat and hard-working, but she didn’t want to live with us and so they lived on their own.

Eti had a younger sister and an elder brother, who tried to run away from fascism, feeling it was coming to Bulgaria; it was 1940 already. Fascism came, and Eti’s sister, mother and brother left. The mother and the sister drowned, the brother was able to swim and survived. But the stress he experienced damaged his nerves. He remained mentally ill all his life. The state supported him financially.

In 1939 Eti and her child, my brother and my father went to an English camp in Palestine. The child was two years old then. He was born in 1938 and is named after my father Leon. Later he was named Arie in Ivrit. Eti didn’t give birth to another child. She had caught a cold while walking in pattens [clogs, overshoes or sandals, held on the foot by leather or cloth bands] for a long time in the camp and she could no longer conceive. My brother polished diamonds, which was very hard work. She didn’t allow him to go out, bossed him around all the time. He spent a lot of time on that job. The dust from the polishing damaged his ears and he went deaf. He had an assistant, ‘metapel,’ a companion at home, a Bulgarian, an economist, who decided to stay in Israel, because the state helped and supported financially those who helped elderly people.

Growing up

I was born on 17th September 1917 on New Year’s Eve, on Erev Rosh Hashanah. That’s why I love this holiday so much. I had long hair when I was a girl and I asked my mother to cut it, because it was bothering me. And she did it. I don’t know how old I was then. My most vivid memory is from when I was seven years old. I dreamed of going to a children’s preschool, because I was the youngest one, everyone was going to school and I was left at home alone. So, the time finally came when I could go to a preschool in the Jewish school there, in the hall on the ground floor. My mother bought cotton print and sewed me a dress, of which I was very proud. A small piece of material remained and they made me a sack. They put a wooden slate, not a notebook, a small pencil as chalk and a sponge in there. I used it to draw pictures at home. I loved that.

As a child I didn’t have a doll, I had no toys, only a rope to jump on and play ‘eshetsi’ [small bones from the front leg of a ram to play with, very smooth and painted in various colors]. When the earth was damp, we played draughts. We had no other games. When I started going to the preschool, I decided that I was too old to play with the ‘eshitsi.’ I wanted to hide them from my brother and I went behind the house. We had a woodshed and it had tiles on the roof. I decided to hide them under the tiles. I climbed over a chair, but on going down I fell and hit my mouth on a chopped-off tree. One of my front teeth, which had just come out, broke and went black. It remained such until I was 45 years old and I had a crown placed on it. My mouth was swollen for a long time. I couldn’t eat, drink, smile, or talk. So, the winter came and I couldn’t go to the preschool anymore.

Our house was on a very interesting street: one of its ends was a dead one. No one would pass along that street and a vehicle would be a very unusual sight. We didn’t have electricity. We got that late, around 1922 or 1923. Until then we used a gas lamp and kept warm by using a stove built into the wall. My mother burnt wood and put its ashes in sacks. We put the ashes in the water, because it was very hard. When we lit the stove and when the smoke subsided and there was only ash, my mother would take the ash, put it in a tin near the stove and place a lid on it. My father lit the stove when he got back from work. We sat in the cold during the day and I was always moaning that I was cold. The house was old. The rooms were big and got warm very slowly. I had to clean the rooms. The floor was covered with wooden boards and I had to clean them. I have unpleasant memories of that. The rooms were big and there was a corridor where we gathered on Pesach.

There was also a small staircase, which was the place of my dreams. I sat there to learn my lessons, do my homework on my knee. There was little furniture at home: two beds for my parents, a table with some chairs for eating and a table for the flowers, which was a small and round one, with three legs. In the other room there were two beds for my brother and me, two wardrobes and a chest of drawers. My mother would hide the jam in that chest. But sometimes I would open the chest and eat the jam. One of the wardrobes was a brown one, the other with a black door, which could never be closed. My father was a good man, but he could repair nothing. We asked a friend of ours, Liko, for help when there was something to be repaired at home.

My mother took very good care of the house. We never had carpets, but we had rugs. My mother made bands from the old sheets, gowns, and cotton clothes. My father brought threads from the market, which were the base for the rugs, then put them in a cauldron with paint. This took a long time. My mother was very neat and when she had a lot of washing up she got up at 5am. She would make a fire in the yard, would put the cauldron with the water on the fire, then she put the sacks with ash in and started washing the sheets, which were eight in number. There was a trough, in which one could fully lie down and she rinsed the sheets three times in it. There were some vendors who sold us water from the Danube, it was very smooth and we kept it in a barrel in the cellar. When I returned from school, I would find her still washing the sheets. She also put laundry blue in the washing, which gave the sheets a nice tint. She hung the washing in the yard and it froze in the winter. Then we put it inside to get dry. There was a lot of hard work to be done. My mother starched all the bed covers so that the embroidery could be seen. She made the starch and did the starching herself.

My mother did the cooking. I ate very little and I was very choosy. I loved eating bread and drinking boza 8 most of all. There was a man who produced boza: Getso the Albanian man, and who brought it to us in little pitchers. During the week we ate yoghurt, cheese, whatever we found, but not sausages, because they were from pork and there weren’t any other at that time. They gave me yogurt for dinner very often, but I didn’t like it much. My father used to bring meat and chicken. He said, ‘Children should eat meat, so that they don’t get sick with tuberculosis.’ We had a neighbor, Parashkeva, who buried her two sons and then she herself died of tuberculosis. Around six people around us died of tuberculosis within a few years.

My mother was a workaholic. She couldn’t sit doing nothing. She could knit and embroider with a needle. In her free time she attended to her flowers. She loved flowers very much. Her favorite flower was the dahlia. We also had lily-of-the-valley, snowdrops, hyacinths, but most of them were dahlias. I hated the dahlias and I had reasons for that. Dahlias are sown from tubers; they are gathered in the fall, kept during the winter and sown in the spring. They should be kept in a warm place. My mother put them in a crate near the stove and I was very annoyed that there wasn’t enough space. The charcoal was on one side of the stove and the crate on the other. My mother had a very keen sense of smell; she could smell the scent of the flowers from afar. 

There were always people at home and my mother offered them jam. I wasn’t given jam, it was only for the guests. We madе jam from everything: plums, cherries, mostly of plums, because there were different varieties. We had quinces in the yard. When we grated them for jam, their stubs remained. My mother cut them, boiled them, drained the water, put some jam and it became some kind of puree, which she wrapped in paper and preserved in tins. It was called ‘tajiko.’

My mother made me work a lot. She didn’t take ‘I can’t do it’ for an answer. She worked a lot and made me work, too. But I also had to go to school, to see my friends so I sometimes avoided it. In 1927, when I was ten years old, they made a water pump at home. She made me save the water in a barrel for irrigation and I filled the barrel with a bucket. I filled it in and she would do the irrigation. Gradually I took up all the household chores, because they both [Adela’s parents] went down ill. I went out to buy medications, I had to go shopping, light the stove, and go to school and because of all the work to be done, I had to repeat my grade at school. My mother made me work, but my brother was exempted from that.

And so, I didn’t have a strong connection with my mother. My father was calmer and told me some warm words sometimes. All those years were very oppressive for me. There’s no photo from my childhood where I’m smiling, I’m always serious. Life in general was very hard.

Our religious life

At home my mother wasn’t religious, but she observed all the rituals and holidays. I was born on a Friday evening. On Rosh Hashanah, New Year’s Eve, my mother would make a special cake called ‘tispishtil’ in a special small copper pan. It was made of oily dough and sugar and walnuts were put in the middle. She always made such a cake, observed the traditions and the Saturdays.

We all loved Sabbath at home. We started celebrating the holidays from the evening and finished the next evening. If the holiday started at five o’clock, it finished at five the next day. Our building was old and we had big rooms. It was dark and the neighbors passed through the ‘kapedjik’ the evening before Sabbath. So, we passed through that door. [Editor’s note: ‘Kapedjik’ is a Turkish word: There are fences between the yards, which surround the yard and the house, but their gates are facing the street. In order to avoid going out on the dark street to visit the neighbors, they make a small door in the fence and that is called ‘kapedjik.’]

So the evening before Sabbath, a cousin of my father and his wife came to visit us. Most of the time, we went to visit them, because the woman was a tailor and she continued working while we were there. She talked and sewed at the same time. She told very interesting stories. Her husband, my father’s cousin, didn’t speak. He would always fall asleep and she would tell him, ‘Yosef…’ – that was his name. My father would tell ‘massals’ [Turkish for ‘stories’] and his cousin wouldn’t listen to them. My father was very good at telling fairy tales and ‘massals’ and I learned many of them. Every one of them has a moral.

Another family, the Ashkenazi, also came to visit us. Our house was big and there were neighbors in half of the rooms. On paper, they rented the apartments from us. But when my mother would tell my father, ‘Okay, but won’t we take our rent?’ my father would say, ‘What rent?’ He couldn’t imagine taking money from these people. Our neighbors were the Farhi family. They weren’t relatives of ours and I called them all ‘visina’ [neighbor]. They had children.

So, on Friday evening we would prepare, wash ourselves and dress up to be ready for Saturday. On Saturdays we didn’t cook, it’s forbidden to work, it’s ‘asur’ [Hebrew for ‘forbidden’]. My mother usually made some sweets. The most used word at home was ‘mitzvah.’ She went to the neighbor’s window and said, ‘Take it and taste it.’ And I asked, ‘But what will be left for me?’ She said, ‘This is mitzvah!’ and she gave it away.

There were special things to be done for Saturdays. Firstly, we had to buy chicken from the market. The chicken had to be slaughtered. I found the preparation for the Saturday unpleasant, because I had to take that chicken to the shochet on Thursday and then I had to carry it back dead and covered in blood and this was very unpleasant. After that my mother didn’t scald it with water, it was forbidden. She plucked it, scorched it with paper and then she cooked it.

After the Saturday ceremony, there was always food and the hen was slaughtered. There was a word we used a lot and it was the key of the holiday. It was ‘chametz’ and it’s very important for Pesach. And my father would always tell us a story. He always stressed that we were Jews, which was our leitmotif in a way. He would say that we had our morality and we should observe it. Then we started eating. We always bought pumpkin seeds. Vidin was famous for its nice pumpkins: they were sweet and had very big seeds. We always prepared vegetable pickles and medlars for the winter and stored them in a blanket in the attic. My brother or I would go upstairs and fetch some for the guests. That was the most pleasant day of the week, when we were eager to gather and listen to the stories, to learn something new.

I think my father wasn’t religious, because he spent most of his childhood away from home, working as a servant. When I was born, he was already old and got sick often. But he observed all laws. During the week he would smoke two to three cigarettes outside, if it was summer, or in the corridor, if it was winter, because my mother couldn’t stand the smoke and didn’t allow him to smoke inside. I asked him why he did that only in the evenings and he answered that he couldn’t smoke at work. But on Saturdays he didn’t smoke at all. [It’s forbidden to light fire on Sabbath.] While he was reading aloud, sometimes he would skip a passage, which a very religious Jew would never do. He winked at me, because I knew Ivrit, and I saw how he skipped some passages and was hurrying to finish the story, the legend, so that we could sit down to eat. He wasn’t one of those religious Jews, I don’t think there were such in Bulgaria. There are some Orthodox Jews in Israel; we call them ‘imbabucados.’ That word means ‘something which was too much’ in Ladino. They are too pedantic in a bad sense, because one can be pedantic for the sake of his work, but they were too pedantic - to the extreme.

My father went to the synagogue only on the high holidays. He didn’t have time to go there often, because he went to work. Once, on Taanit, when we were forbidden to eat and everyone would sit in the synagogue the whole day, he didn’t do that, but went to sleep, he found that unnecessary; he had the honor of playing the shofar. I loved the Taanit very much. Usually, on Saturdays we had a chicken slaughtered. One of the drumsticks was given to my father, the other to my brother, because he was a man, and I didn’t have one. When I was a child, I ate very little and was quite choosy. So, I sat at the table, eating nothing. Then my father would take the knife, divide his drumstick and give me half of it. But on Taanit, since they didn’t eat, they gave me the whole drumstick. And that’s why I loved that holiday.

And before Pesach the whole house has to be cleaned, no crumb of bread was to be seen anywhere. The wardrobes, the rugs, the curtains were cleaned, the whole house was painted again. I learned how to paint with distemper and oil paint very early. My mother tied the brush to a long stick and I painted the outside walls. Then we would go to the town’s bathroom. I said to my mother, ‘Now, we will become Chametz, too.’ Then we boiled all the dishes in ash, salt and soap – with no running water, but only with the pump in the yard. Everything had to shine. The tinsmith came to tin the baking dishes. Pesach is the greatest holiday. We didn’t eat leavened bread, only unleavened. In Vidin we made flat cakes from it. We made the cakes without yeast; they were as hard as stone. On Pesach we gathered in the corridor. This corridor led to all the other rooms. We would gather there and listen to the Legend [Haggadah], the book being read. Then we sat at the table.

My brother would be given a towel, a napkin for the waist and they placed a loaf of bread on his back symbolizing that he was carrying the bread our ancestors ate. The bread was then used in the cooking of various things, for example dumplings immersed in eggs for the soup. Usually at least two or three families came. My father would start reading the prayer. But before that, the unmarried woman in the family would hand a jug of water to the person reading to wash his hands because it was a sin if you didn’t wash your hands. He would start reading the prayer and from time to time he would wash his hands again. He would read about what troubles God inflicted on the Egyptians: ‘Snakes, lizards and natural disasters’ and he would repeat that on and on. [The interviewee probably means locusts instead of lizards and snakes.]

For Purim, my mother made sweet ring-shaped buns with ‘alkashul’ [the filling of the bun, made of honey and walnuts]. I loved them. There’s a belief that these sweets should be preserved exactly for Pesach. There’s one month between Purim and Pesach. They take place during the early spring. The snow had just started to melt. My mother took a big earthen jar and filled it with such buns. We had an attic full of mice and we could hear them running around. Once she made my brother climb up and put the jar there so that nobody would eat the buns before Pesach. But I loved them very much and usually I would go up, take one and close the jar again. And when Pesach came, my mother said, ‘Santo, go and fetch the jar, we will eat sweets now.’ Santo fetched the jar and it was empty. My mother shouted at me, ‘You ate them!’ and I said, ‘No, I didn’t, the mice ate them.’ My mother was angry that she wasn’t able to observe the ritual. On this holiday we give away food.

My mother would buy a chicken. She boiled it, stewed it, took some fruit and vegetables, filled the basket, put a white napkin with embroidery on it and went to give it to someone in need. That person was called ‘el mirkado’ [Ladino for ‘bought’]. This meant that we ‘bought’ him, that we had made a vow to help him. And my mother would bring him food on all high holidays. But that had to happen in secret. He wouldn’t have to feel offended that someone was helping him. She dressed officially and said she was going to her ‘kupets’ [dealer]. This was a different man every year. I understood that she was going to a different person by the way she cooked the food. She was convinced that that was the way to do it, although I didn’t agree with her on that.

At some point, my father started going deaf and then my brother [Nessim], who was in Italy, invited him there for treatment. He made himself a suit and left for Italy. He didn’t know any European language, but he left. I suppose the dust from the charcoals had settled in his ears and disturbed his hearing. And he returned with restored hearing. He also came with very nice clothes, which they bought for him there. When he returned, he opened a grocery store. But he sold a lot of goods on credit: sugar today, oil tomorrow. He couldn’t imagine turning someone away, because they had no money. So, the grocery store went bankrupt. There was a terrible economic crisis at that time, in 1929 9. He went to my elder brother Nessim, who was already the director of the ‘Tundzha’ factory. Nessim told him, ‘You go back to Vidin, I will send you the textiles, which stick out of the loom, and they have some machine oil on them and are a little bit torn.’ He sold them in his store.

There were around 15 small stores one next to the other, all rented by Jews, one of which was my father’s. They were very small, three square meters each. If some fabric was left unsold, he gave it to us to sew something for ourselves. I sewed myself a blouse for my graduation ball, because I had no money to buy one. Mostly Gypsy women came to the shop and they made loose Turkish trousers from the materials. They would buy a meter and a half of the material and my brother put on a sign ‘Shop for Textile Lengths.’

This shop was all we had. So, he worked like that for some time until one nice day a neighbor, Bay Ilia, asked him to stand surety for him. Don’t worry, he told my father, lend me 100,000 levs, and I’ll return it to you. But he lied. When the loan had to be paid, he refused to do it since he went bankrupt and every month the bank deducted 1,000 levs from my father’s earnings. My father used to have the habit of sitting in front of the store, because he didn’t have many clients. But he could no longer stand seeing the man who lied to him and left the shop to my brother.

Yes, my father was a very nice man. Once my mother’s brother Solomon with his wife and two children, Leon and Victoria, arrived. I’m not sure where they came from, Turkey or Greece, but their life had been difficult and they came to live in Bulgaria. My father found a house for them in Vidin. The daughter Victoria was in the higher grades, she was a very good student. But my mother’s brother left for Israel and was killed by the Arabs. He couldn’t find work in Bulgaria. His wife remained alone with the two children. I visited them in Israel, at that time the daughter, Victoria, had passed away and the son had made a career, he did business with Germans and didn’t want to meet us, the common people coming from communist Bulgaria.

And once when I was 13-14 years old, my father told me he had received a letter from the municipality. Some relatives from Dedeagac asked my parents to help them because they had no money at all. My father took the task to heart. So, this family arrived with their four daughters – one of them had studied in a French college and knew how to read. My father wrote to my brother asking whether he would like to hire them to work for him. And since we knew they would come with no luggage whatsoever, my father said in the municipality that the people would need some household stuff and asked everyone who could afford it to help them. So, my mother and I took the laundry basket and started from house to house, collecting buckets, rugs, pillows, a mattress, everything people could spare. We placed all that in an entrance below the staircase, which had no windows. My brother and I would say to the people, ‘For we are all Jews,’ and since it was religious to give away, everyone gave us what they could. The heavier things we put in the yard.

We loaded everything onto carts; my father borrowed a wagon for the household belongings and went to Yambol. My brother hired them there. The mother stayed at home, one of the daughters sewed bras, the father worked in the shop and the other daughters were spinners. That’s how they managed to survive. And thanks to the firm belief that if you are a Jew and your fellow man is in trouble, you have to help him. That’s the kind of man my father was!

My school years

When my parents enrolled me in the Jewish school, it was very hard for me at first, because nobody at home knew Ivrit. My brother knew a word or two, but he wasn’t interested in school. In the first grade we had a special teacher, who was also the director and also taught us gymnastics. Learning Ivrit was hard and the teacher, Mr. Koen, always said, ‘You have no textbooks, you should pay attention in class to what I say to you and you should repeat to yourself what I’m writing.’

At that time we didn’t know how to write yet and it was very hard. We studied the letters for a whole year. Mr. Koen would always give us new words. And here’s how I tried to learn them: the staircase at home had two big and three small steps. I jumped on the steps and I would say ‘I’ on the first step, ‘You’ on the second one, ‘He’ on the third one, I would go back – ‘We,’ ‘You,’ ‘They.’ I repeated them twenty times. Once my mother shouted, ‘Stop jumping on that staircase, you will break it!’ and I answered, ‘Leave me alone, I’m studying!’

When I passed to the second grade, my brother received some cubes as a present – when you rotate them, you make a picture. He asked me to give them back to him. I got very angry and threw them at him and hit him. My parents beat me very hard for that. He got sick. I thought it was because I had hit him, but it turned out that he had mumps. I was also not allowed to go to school for three weeks. After the three weeks, my mother, who had not had mumps as a child, also got sick. So, I had to stay home for another three weeks. Because of that I had to repeat the grade. I was very sad and depressed. I had been separated from my friends.

The Jewish school had four grades, and I studied five years. When I was in the second grade my brother went down with mumps. So, I was under quarantine for three weeks. Then my mother also caught it and our teacher in Ivrit, who was also the school headmaster, decided that I should repeat the year. We didn’t have any textbooks and I couldn’t catch up with the studies at home. I was happy when I received a ‘good’ [four out of six] as a grade. I studied a lot, because I had to repeat the grade. Once the teacher asked me to read aloud and I said, ‘Please, wait for me to take my pencil.’ I had the habit of underlining what I read in order to avoid making mistakes. The children laughed at me saying, ‘Are you reading with your mouth or with the pencil?’

Then I went to the junior high school. It was close to Kaleto [the old part of the town dating back from the Middle Ages]. I was happy that now we had a different teacher for every subject. One very nice teacher in mathematics said that I was very good at calculations. I remember her, Miss Vasileva. There were a lot of Wallachian students in the town. They wore bowler hats. They teased me a lot and called me Duda [short for Adela]. They would twist my arms and pull my hair. Once the Bulgarian teacher met me and I was crying because they had teased me. He asked me what my name was. I told him my name was Adela and he said that my name was very nice. He sent me to the teachers’ room to take a sheet of paper and a pen. He wrote down on the paper that there was no Duda at the school, but Adela. Then they stopped calling me Duda and I passed the three junior high school grades as Adela. This man was an idol for me, he taught me Bulgarian, taught me to read, to write and to think.

One third of the junior high school students were Jews. We were the best students in the school. I was a good student, studied a lot and was very good at mathematics. There was also a subject in religious studies at the school, but we, the Jews, were forbidden to take that class. In the winter when we had that subject, we had nowhere to go but out in the cold. We felt very offended and sad. In the summer we went into the yard, but there was nowhere for us to go in the winter. Wherever we went, they banished us. We were five or six students: three girls and two or three boys.

I would sing all the time. I had a very strong voice. Every day my father gave me money for breakfast. Once I decided to learn to play the violin. I bought a violin and I saved the five levs he gave me daily to pay for my violin lessons. But at one point I had no money to pay my tuition fee. I was in the second grade in the high school. Then I sold my violin; I realized that I had no interest in music. I paid my tuition fee with the money.

When my brother grew up, he started buying newspapers and I read the supplements, which published excerpts from short stories, novels. I signed up in the ‘Sviat’ [World] community house. The more years that passed, the thicker the books became. After I finished all the work at home around midnight, I had to study. Studying what? All night I read Russian classic literature. Then I read Tolstoy 10, Dostoevsky 11 and Western European literature: Sinclair and Emil Zola. I shared the room with my brother and I wasn’t allowed to light the lamp, because he couldn’t sleep. I saved money from what they gave me for breakfast. I bought myself a battery and read under the sheets during the night. I read using that little lamp with a diameter of five centimeters.

When I was a student in the second grade, we were about to celebrate Chanukkah in the neighborhood cinema. So, we prepared a performance, I was appointed to be first candle. My mother bought me a dress made of black velvet with a white collar. After me the second candle came on stage and then all the other five. I was very proud that I was the first one. We lit only one candle at home on that holiday. My father was more interested in having enough food on the table so that we wouldn’t catch tuberculosis.

School wasn’t the most important thing for me. I didn’t take part in school life. My attention was directed towards the Hashomer Hatzair organization 12. I became a member at the age of 13. In the last grade of the junior high school I was given a leaflet proclaiming the establishment of a Jewish state. A committee was organized and we went to the meetings. One of the requirements was that if the Jewish state was founded, we had to go and live there. My family didn’t approve of those meetings and forbade me to go there. I went there every evening, although my mother didn’t allow me. We loved singing and danced folklore dances there. We were divided into groups. There were people two years older than me studying in high school and two years younger than me in elementary school. We had lectures on different topics, for example, what religion was, we talked much about emancipation.

There was no television in those times and we passed the time reading and discussing the books. But we had different views on what we had read and we argued. For example, we argued about ‘Nora,’ by Ibsen. We argued about the emancipation of women, whether it was right, what its limits should be and so on. These were our everyday activities. In Hashomer Hatzair, we tried to build our personalities so that we would be able to lead the others and make decisions. We, the Jews, were a bit like sectarians; we had to be, because we weren’t preparing to live in peaceful conditions, we were preparing to go to Israel. There was no Israel at that time, but Palestine, which had a negative attitude towards us.

I had a friend at school, Sophie Pinkas. She was the first student in class. She showed me that life can be very different, not only those pastel rugs and no curtains. Her family was rich. Her father had a shop in the center of the town. She was very beautiful and every year they went to Belgrade [today Serbia and Montenegro] and brought her dresses. I envied her, because I didn’t have such things. I saw pajamas for the first time at their place. Once I stayed at their house and when we went to bed in the evening I put on my gown and she put on her pajama. I asked her, ‘Won’t we sleep, what’s that thing you’ve put on?’ And she answered, ‘But this is a pajama.’ I also saw a gramophone for the first time there. Since her mother was afraid of leaving her alone in the house, I came to keep her company, because my father was respected and they thought that I was a serious child. They had plush curtains at home, plush blankets, and baths. Once we went on the balcony and she sat on a rocking chair and invited me to sit down, too. I declined, because I was afraid to sit on it. Afterwards, our paths went in different directions.

My other friend was Luisa. She was a member of Hashomer Hatzair. But her mother made her give it up. She listened to her, but she was very pretty and she started dating a married man. She acquired a bad reputation and that was how it all ended.

I was in the town’s leadership of the Hashomer Hatzair then. But I was evicted, because we were being prepared for farmers and we were sent to the villages to do farm work. But when I started studying at university, they told me to choose between studying and farming. So, I told them that I couldn’t give up my studies and leave my parents alone.

When I finished high school, my father enrolled me in the free university in Sofia. But the university was closed for reasons unknown to me, so I was transferred to the university in Varna, where I continued my studies in the same field, Economics. There I got in touch with the progressive-minded people. I felt my place was among them.

At that time, my father got sick; he had a bladder stone and was always wetting his pants. My mother spent all her time looking after him and washing his clothes. The mineral baths opened in Yambol at that time and he went there for treatment. One day he slipped in the bath. He was a very tall man and probably weighed around 100 kilograms. Nobody in the family was as tall as him. So, he fell down, lost consciousness and they poured cold water on him. He caught bronchopneumonia. A Jewish hospital had just opened in Sofia and he was transferred there. My brother was on some business trip and they called my mother and me to tell us that he was in a very bad condition. He couldn’t eat. His tongue was swollen. I was very frightened. He couldn’t swallow. He died at the age of 72 at the hospital. The year was 1938.

There were some debts yet to be paid, and my brother did that. My mother and I remained at home. We buried him in accordance with the Jewish ritual: we sat [shivah] doing nothing for seven days. Relatives and neighbors would come to bring us food and the people mourning would do nothing. The rabbi would come during the day to read and when he left, we would eat the food brought to us. If there was no food, my mother would sit mourning and I would make something to eat. My brother made a big gravestone out of marble for him.

After my father’s death we came to Sofia, and my mother sold everything, even our water pump. It was very hard for me after my father died. I loved him very much. And we didn’t have any money, not even my brother. There was help from nowhere. We sold everything we had: clothes, the sewing machine, whatever dowry we had. I didn’t even have money to pay for my diploma. My sister Zhaneta gave me money for that and that’s how I graduated. We rented a room. I applied for a job. I worked in an attorney’s office for a whole year. I still have some knowledge in this field. He was dealing with claims against people in debt and I assisted him with the accountants.

This was an insurance company named OREL, which is still in that same building, it was then outside the town. I walked on foot for two hours to get to work. It was very cold. I arrived at work freezing, wanted to drink some tea, but my boss was looking at the clock. My salary was 2,000 levs, and a bottle of vegetable oil was worth 1,000 levs. We lived in the house of good people, but we had no money. After some time I found out that my mother went to various houses to do the washing so that we had enough bread. Our bread was a bit sour, made of maize and something else. When we cut it, it stuck to the knife, but I had to eat it, because I was working. It was a very hard year.

During the war

After a year, we were forced to move to Haskovo [in 1943, as a result of the anti-Jewish laws]. We weren’t allowed to work in Haskovo. We lived in a small corridor. We put a mattress there every evening and slept on the floor. People passed by there to get to their rooms. We didn’t have a man to take care of us. Men went and bought food in the black-market for their families, and we were given tomatoes to eat. I can’t eat tomatoes since then. It was already in 1943, and the fascists were going to lose the war and the regime wasn’t so rigid in some towns. So, my mother made me go to my sister [Zhaneta], and she herself went to Ruse, to a friend of hers. I went to my sister’s village [Stezherevo]. There several other girls like me and I were taking care of the grape vines. We were paid for that. And my sister helped me and that’s how I got through this. I tried to make shoes out of rope at a certain point, since I was without a job, but it was extremely hard. That was in 1944. Then I went to Pleven to work for the [Communist] Party, because I had already been involved in anti-fascist activities. But my mother and I wanted to get together, that’s why we both moved to Sofia. They didn’t want to let me go, because I had higher education.

My mother rented a room at a friend’s in Sofia. I found one for myself, too. It wasn’t a real room, but a room for the housemaids: with four doors, and extremely cold. What a life it was! Then I moved to another place, renting half a room. In 1948, we lived on my money, I worked and I was paid well. It was very hard for my mother, she wanted to go out and have a good time, because she had become a widow very early and there were candidates who wanted to marry her. She went to Israel, but my brother didn’t have a room for her, he had no apartment, but lived in a very miserable place. She died during a storm [in 1949]. It was an accident. She lived in a wooden shed, which fell down during a storm. At first she managed to get out, but then she went back to get the mezuzah from the doorframe. Unfortunately, at that moment the whole house fell over her.

There were no graveyards at that time and she was buried in a soldiers’ graveyard. I went to her grave five times. She’s placed at a distance from the other graves and has a big stone instead of a monument. I don’t know how they managed to move that stone there. Her name is inscribed on it. Now I only have my memories of her. She had her views that everything she did was right and that everything she did was for the children’s sake.

After 9th September 1944 I took an active part in the party activities in Haskovo where I had been interned 13, and then in those in Sofia. I worked in the district committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party [BCP] 14 for a number of years. I have always been very serious in my work. While the other employees used to work until 6 or 7pm, I usually stayed until 1am. However, this reflected on my nervous system and I got a nervous disorder. I could stand neither phone ringing nor music playing. The doctors advised me to leave my job for a while. At that time I had just married. My husband was a military officer and he was able to provide for me. I was a very good housewife also; I never wasted money and strictly allocated it.

My husband

My husband was a silent and calm man. A military officer, neither tall, nor short, good-looking. We had been corresponding with each other before that, we had taken part in anti-fascist demonstrations together. I met him in Stezherevo; he had a friend living there who introduced us to each other. He invited me to the theater, he was very well read. But later it turned out that he was from the ‘silent academy’ [i.e. he didn’t speak much]. He couldn’t graduate from the Academy in Svishtov. He was negligent, not trying too hard, an inert man. He did hard work and didn’t mind doing household work either.

We lived like that for 30 years and raised two children. I looked after the children and did everything that was expected of me. He knew only ‘no’ in his life. For everything I asked him to do or buy, he said no. Let’s buy a fridge – we shouldn’t, let’s buy a stove – we shouldn’t. We already had two granddaughters, when he met an old love of his and we separated. But even nowadays I’m in very good relations with his sisters, Lyuba and Vera. He went to live with this old lover from Svishtov, but we got divorced three years later. After less than two years he died. Everything we have and we have achieved was thanks to me. I supported the children by myself.

My son [Oleg] was lazy; he didn’t want to walk, only to sit in the baby carriage. When he grew up, he loved reading very much. He graduated from Medical University [in Sofia] and holds the professorship of Anesthesiology. He’s an anesthesiologist now. Even when he was a student at university, Oleg was always the chairman of various scholarly circles.

My husband didn’t want to have a second child. My pregnancy was very difficult. I had to lie in bed for a year. But I wanted a girl very much. My husband went to a summer camp with the army and I gave birth to my daughter [Vesela] after seven and a half months. She was like a mouse, weighing two kilograms. I cried a lot when she was born. Once I took her out on a walk in the baby carriage and a girl said to me, ‘Why are you walking with that doll in the carriage?’ ‘It’s not a doll, but a baby,’ I replied. As a child she wasn’t very tall, she was always sick. When she went to high school, she started growing in height. Now she’s quite tall. She didn’t help me a lot at home, but now she’s a good housewife. She’s a doctor; she graduated in medicine in Sofia, like her brother. But she’s not interested in scholarly work. My daughter also had an unsuccessful marriage. She divorced and now she’s looking after her child [Yulina].

I went to Israel a couple of times. I went for the first time in 1966 when I went to see my brother in Holon. He had married a German Jew, which I didn’t like much. They had just had a son and performed the circumcision. The next time I visited other relatives of mine. They loved inviting me to visit and when I went there, I carried three suitcases of presents for them. They loved it when I told them about Bulgaria, because my nephews were born in Israel. During totalitarianism I didn’t have any problems traveling to Israel.

It’s my fault that my children weren’t raised Jewish. I remember that when my son was in the first grade, he asked me what his nationality was. He had noticed that we celebrated Chanukkah and made sweets, which the other families didn’t. Then I said that he was a Bulgarian, because he lived in Bulgaria and spoke Bulgarian. My children were informed about their origin, but they didn’t feel Jewish.

I myself didn’t observe the Jewish traditions. At the moment my physical condition doesn’t allow me to cook. But people from the Jewish Home come and bring me matzah on Pesach and alkashul for Chanukkah. I receive ready-made food from the canteen of the Jewish Home every day.

In 1990 when there was a deep crisis in Bulgaria, my daughter and granddaughter went to Israel for four years. There my granddaughter learned Ivrit perfectly and graduated from her secondary education. Her knowledge of Ivrit helps her now in her work in the Historical Museum of the [Great] Synagogue. My granddaughter is very well-brought up and visits me every week.

To be honest, I don’t like present-day capitalism. It’s wrongly interpreted capitalism. Many economic problems aren’t solved in Bulgaria. I don’t accept the idea of having both very rich and very poor people. There are many such people now. Why should my daughter, whose job as an anesthetist is very hard, go and work at another place in order to pay her bills? Many Bulgarians hope that the situation will get better if we become a member of the European Union. Maybe that’s the only right way. [Editor’s note: Bulgaria became a member of the EU on 1st January 2007.]

Glossary

Anna Ivankovitser
Chernovtsy
Ukraine
Interviewer: Ella Levistkaya
Date of interview: June 2002

My family background
Growing up
My school years
During the war
Post-war
My husband Natan
My daughters
Glossary

My family background

My name is Anna Ivankovitser. I was born in the Jewish town of Shargorod, in Vinnitsa province, on 30th December 1930. My father's name was Iosif Ivankovitser. My mother's name was Mina Ivankovitser [nee Schigol].

My father was born in the village of Dubrovka, in Zhytomir province, in 1895. The only thing I know about his mother is that she died of a disease in the 1900s, when my father was a young boy. He didn't remember his mother, and so I know nothing about her. I knew my grandfather Israil Ivankovitser. He was born in Dubrovka in the 1870s. He was always reading the Talmud. My grandfather had a beard and payes and wore a kippah. When going out he put on a hat. He always wore black clothes, even when it was hot outside. I don't know what he did for a living. He had 3 children. My father's younger sister Freidl was single and lived with us in Shargorod at one time. She moved to Polonoye before the war. She didn't evacuate during the war and the Germans killed her. My father's older brother lived in Poland. He settled down in Cracow when it still belonged to tsarist Russia. After the Revolution of 1917 1 Poland became a foreign country. I didn't know my uncle, because during the Soviet era it was not safe to keep in touch with relatives who were living abroad. He may have perished during the war. My father's youngest brother died when he was young. He had heart problems.

My grandfather didn't remarry after his wife's death. He was very religious and gave his children a religious education. My father and his brothers studied in cheder. They spoke Yiddish in the family. The family observed Jewish traditions and celebrated the Sabbath and all the Jewish holidays. My grandfather went to synagogue in Dubrovka every day. He died around 1925. Half of the inhabitants in Dubrovka were Jewish. The population of the town was Russian and Ukrainian. It was a small town and people knew each other. People in Dubrovka lived like good neighbors; they treated each other with respect and supported one another. There was a square in town and the main buildings of the town were located there. They were a church, a synagogue and a market. That is all I know about the life of my father's family in Dubrovka. Regretfully, I didn't take any interest in the history of the family while my parents were alive. Only later did I regret that I didn't do so at that time.

My father was recruited into to the tsarist army during World War I. He was captured by the Germans. He told me later that the Germans treated prisoners-of-war well. I don't know where they were kept, but I know it wasn't in Russia. There was a rabbi in the camp and they celebrated all the Jewish holidays. The local Jewish families used to invite the captives to join them for celebrations. The Germans were very good to all the captives. I believe all of them could observe their own religion. What my father told me helped me understand why members of the older generation, like my father, refused to evacuate during World War II. They trusted the Germans.

My mother was born in Polonoye, in Khmelnitskiy province, in 1900. My mother's father, Iosif Schigol, was born in Polonoye in the 1860s. He died in 1927, before I was born. I knew my mother's mother, Leya Schigol, who was born in Polonoye in 1862. I don't know her maiden name. My grandmother told me that she was the only daughter in her family. Her mother died in childbirth. Her father didn't remarry and spent all his time with his daughter who looked very much like her mother. My grandmother's father called her Mamele [mummy in Yiddish], and she was called so for the rest of her life. Even our neighbors in Shargorod called her Mamele.

My grandfather was a construction materials supplier. I don't know exactly what he supplied, something like bricks, wood, nails, cement, and so on, to landlords. He built a good brick house for his family. It was a big house. Theirs was a wealthy family. Their daughters and sons had rooms, there was their parents' bedroom, my grandfather's study, a dining-room and a living- room, besides a kitchen and bathroom and storerooms. They had good solid furniture. It wasn't posh, but they had all they needed: chairs, tables, beautiful wooden wardrobes and chests of drawers. They had books I believe they were mostly religious books in Yiddish. They also had classical world literature in Yiddish.

My grandmother was a housewife, as was traditional at that time. She also had a housemaid to help her about the house. There was a big orchard in the backyard and a flower garden in front of the house. My grandmother kept a cow. My mother told me that had all the dairy products were made at home.

My mother's parents were very religious. My grandfather and grandmother went to synagogue at least once a week, and they prayed at each meal, in the morning and before going to bed. There was a big choral and two or three smaller synagogues in Polonoye. My grandmother always went out wearing a wig. She wore it at home, too. She had long, beautiful silk and velvet gowns. She also wore a golden Magen David around her neck. My grandfather wore a black jacket and a hat. At home he wore a yarmulka on his head. He had a small beard. They always celebrated the Sabbath at home. My grandmother lit candles and cooked a festive dinner. My grandfather read a prayer. I don't remember them singing. My grandmother strictly followed the laws of kashrut. They celebrated all the Jewish holidays. At Pesach they bought matzah, made stuffed fish, chicken, goose cracklings and stuffed chicken necks. They baked strudels with jam, nuts and raisins, sponge cake from matzah flour and special Pesach cookies. All the adults and children over 11 fasted on Yom Kippur. There was Chanukkah gelt at Chanukkah and concerts of klezmer musicians at Purim. They celebrated some other holidays, too, but I don't remember which ones. They spoke Yiddish in the family, and they knew Russian and Ukrainian very well.

My grandmother gave birth to 12 children, six of which died in infancy. The surviving children were three daughters and three sons. Their oldest daughter, Esther, was born in 1890. Etl was born in 1892. The next two were sons: Gershl, born in 1894, and another boy, born in 1895. My mother, Mina, was born in 1897 and the youngest child, Motl, was born in 1900.

The boys went to cheder and the girls must have been taught at home. My mother knew Hebrew well and she could read and write both in Hebrew and Yiddish. All of the children received religious and secular education as well. My mother and her brothers and sisters finished an 8-year grammar school. My mother always helped us with our geography and history homework. She also knew Russian, Jewish and German literature well.

My mother's sisters moved to America before the Revolution of 1917. Esther was the first to go. She was a communist and was involved in revolutionary activities. The police department became aware of this. My grandfather had acquaintances there and was told confidentially that they were going to arrest Esther. My grandfather told Esther to escape to America. She left in 1915. Esther married a Jewish man in America. I don't remember his name. He was an engineer. Esther was very good at embroidery. We had a few collars that she embroidered. But she didn't like housework and her husband did everything about the house, which he didn't mind at all. They had two daughters and a son named Erik. I don't remember their daughters' names. They lived in California.

Etl followed her to California about a year later. She was a professional photographer. Etl's fiancé had left with Esther and was waiting for Etl to join him. He became a farmer and they specialized in egg production. They had two daughters. I don't remember their names. They graduated from university and became professors in oceanology. Etl wanted her parents to come to America. She wrote them that she would send them an invitation. My grandfather didn't want to go. He didn't know what he would do there. They wrote to one another before the war. I still have Etl's letters to her mother in Yiddish.

Esther visited the USSR twice at the invitation of the Comintern [Communist International]. She came on her first visit in 1925. She came with her family and we met Esther's husband and children. Her second visit was to Moscow in 1938. She went with Erik. They lived at the Moskva hotel. Esther's son couldn't adjust to the cold climate. He fell ill and died in Moscow. My mother visited Esther in Moscow. Esther didn't visit us. During the war we heard no news from Esther. We thought she had gone back to America. After the war Mama wrote Etl from Chernovtsy to ask her if she knew Esther's address in America. Etl wrote back telling us that Esther returned to America in 1945 after the war was over. I don't know why she stayed in Moscow so long, because we didn't know anything about her. Mama didn't write them any more, because the relationship with Americans were more complicated after the war and it was not wise to correspond. My sister had just entered the Medical Institute and my mother was afraid that she might be expelled if the authorities found out about our relatives in America. Later, during the 'thaw' of the 1960s Mama wrote a letter to her sisters in America. The letter was returned indicating that the addressee had moved. Her sisters probably died of old age and their children went to different locations. I also tried to search for them but with no results.

After finishing grammar school in 1916 my mother also wanted to go to America, but it wasn't easy. Mama went to Warsaw, Poland, hoping that it would be easier to leave for America from there. She told me how beautiful Warsaw was. My father was in Warsaw at that time and my parents met. They decided to go to America together. My mother's sisters even sent them boat tickets. I don't remember what exactly happened, but they couldn't leave. They stayed in Poland for some time and then returned to Ukraine.

Before and after the Revolution of 1917 Petliura's 2 gangs attacked towns and villages. They didn't kill people, but robbed them. They would beat or threaten people, but in all this time they didn't kill anybody in Polonoye. This town was lucky in this respect, because Jews were killed in other towns. Polonoye was a small town with a population of 1,000 at most. Before the war, Jews had no conflicts with the Ukrainian and Polish population. In 1941 the entire Jewish population was exterminated. Since then there have been no Jews in this village. The Revolution of 1917 had no impact on the way of life in Polonoye. There were communists among the poorer people in Polonoye, but they didn't make any difference in the general pace of life of the town.

My parents married in 1921. I don't know whether they had a wedding party. It was a difficult time in the country. By that time my mother's brothers got married and left their parents' house. Gershl and another brother lived in their own houses in Polonoye. Motl, the youngest, moved to Murafa and worked at the mill there. My grandparents remained alone in their house. They wanted to have at least one of their children living with them. My parents settled down at my mother's parents' house. Mama told me that my grandmother did the housekeeping and wouldn't allow my mother to do anything around the house. She told her that she would have her share of housework in her life and she might as well take some rest while she could afford it. My sister Maria was born in Polonoye in 1925.

My grandfather began to have problems in 1925. Everybody in the village knew that he had money. State security officers were beginning to take away valuables from wealthy people. They summoned my grandfather to the committee and demanded that he gave them his gold. My grandfather was scared and gave them all he had. Mama kept only a few pieces of jewelry that she had received as her wedding gift from her father. Anyway, this committee didn't leave him alone. The local communists who had become state security officers constantly persecuted my grandfather. They knocked on the windows and doors at night shouting for my grandfather to give away the gold that he had stolen from the people. He kept telling them that he had nothing left, but in vain. They called him to the committee almost every week. Once, they arrested him and kept him in a cell for over a week. Then they let him go, offering no explanation. My grandfather had a poor heart and every such visit ended in a heart attack. He was living in constant tension. They threatened to send him into exile or shoot him 'accidentally' in the street. My grandfather Iosif died from a myocardial infarction in 1927, after another visit to the state security committee office. He never tried to leave his own town. He believed he was innocent and didn't owe anything to the authorities after he had given away all he had. He was hoping that they would leave him alone one day.

Growing up

In 1927 my parents and sister moved to Shargorod. People living in villages didn't have passports at that time. This means they didn't have the right to vote. Without a passport they couldn't get a job. This meant that they could only be employed in farming. This law was issued by the Soviet authorities in order to tie miserably poor villagers to the land and force them to work at collective farms 3 like slaves, leaving them no opportunity to move to towns. At that time poor people had all priorities with the Soviet power. They were nominated to all the highest positions. My father didn't come from a wealthy family. He had a cousin named Shimon who came from a very poor family. Shimon was a communist and a party leader in Vinnitsa. He suggested that my parents move to Shargorod, in Vinnitsa province. My father was an intelligent man, and Shimon helped him get a position as director of a food store. My father never became a member of any political party or movement and tried to stay away from politics. Mama helped my father with his work. When I was born Mama left work and became a housewife.

We rented an apartment in a very beautiful house in Shargorod. There were wall and ceiling paintings in the rooms. The landlord was a handsome old man, a Jew. His last name was Kipel. The landlord and his family lived in one apartment and the rest he leased out. Our apartment had two rooms, a hallway and a kitchen. It faced the yard. There was a shoe shop in two other rooms in the building. Kipel had a wife and a son. His son was married. Kipel's wife was a teacher at the Jewish school before the war. We were friends with that family. After the war I visited them in Shargorod.

My father and mother lived in the bigger room and my sister and I occupied the smaller one. We had a leather sofa with a high back that my parents brought from Polonoye. My sister and I slept on it.

There was a Russian stove 4 in the kitchen that we used for baking bread. We had ceramic pots in which to cook food. There was no running water in the house. At first, water was supplied by a cart with water barrel, but later they installed a water pump near the house. There was a heating stove to heat the rooms. It was built into the wall between the rooms and was made of beautiful patterned bricks.

Mama often took me with her to the market to do the shopping. We bought only cereals, tea and bread at the store. The rest we bought at the market. I remember seeing long wooden stands full of apples, cherries and apricots. I always liked the bright, festive colors. The unit of measurement was a bucket: a bucket of potatoes, a bucket of apples. Mama bought meat and dairy products at the market. All the butchers were Jews, and the local Ukrainian farmers sold vegetables, fruit and dairy products. Mama also bought chickens and took them to the shochet. There was a Jew who sold ducks and geese killed by the shochet, and Mama always bought these from him. I also remember pieces of butter, wrapped in big burdock leaves. The bright yellow rolls of butter were like flowers on the big green leaves. At home Mama kept butter in a bucket of cold water. There were no fridges and the food was stored in cellars. Every day housewives went to the market in the morning to buy food for the day.

My school years

In 1933 my sister began attending a Ukrainian school in Shargorod. In 1938 I went to the first grade at the same school. I don't know why our parents decided to send us to the Ukrainian school when there was a Jewish school in Shargorod before the war. We studied arithmetic, Ukrainian language and literature, calligraphy (I didn't like it) and had singing and dancing classes and physical education. Our teacher for all subjects except singing and dancing was named Voitovich.

There were quite a few Jews among the children and teachers at school. Shargorod was a Jewish town. The population in the central part of the town was Jewish. Ukrainians lived on the outskirts of the town. The secretary of the district committee of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] in Shargorod was a Jew, and all the officials in the town were Jews. There was no anti-Semitism in Shargorod.

People spoke Ukrainian in town, but we spoke Yiddish at home. Many Ukrainians spoke fluent Yiddish in Shargorod. My sister and I studied at the Ukrainian school and knew Ukrainian well.

I became a Young Octobrist 5 at school. We had different club activities after classes. I went to meetings of the literature club, played the balalaika in the orchestra and went dancing. I loved to dance the gopak, a Ukrainian folk dance. We even performed concerts in the neighboring village of Sosnovka. Before we finished the 3rd grade a few of the best Young Octobrists, including me, became pioneers. I remember feeling proud of becoming a pioneer. Mama was very ill at that time. She had polyarthritis and was confined to bed for half a year. Papa got her a ticket to the recreation home and she was cured there.

In 1932 and 1933 there was a serious famine in Ukraine 6. My mother's golden jewelry, her wedding gift from her father Iosif saved us from starving to death. We could go to Torgsin stores 7 where one could buy food for currency or gold. Mama left all her jewelry in the Torgsin in exchange for cereals, flour or butter. Mama baked our bread herself. The famine was not so visible in the bigger towns, but many people suffered from hunger in the country.

After the Revolution the Soviet authorities started a struggle against religion 8. They closed many churches and also closed the synagogue in Shargorod. I remember the scarlet poster that said 'Religion is the opium of the people!' hanging on the closed church in Shargorod. Quite a few mocked believers, calling them retrograde. After moving to Shargorod my parents didn't observe Jewish traditions as strictly as they used to before. Mama didn't light candles on Sabbath, but she made challah and stuffed fish for Sabbath dinner. She didn't quite follow the kashrut then, either. Mama always cooked traditional food at Pesach. I cook more or less the same way my mother did. We had stuffed fish, chicken broth with dumplings and eggs, chicken necks stuffed with liver, and strudels. As the synagogue was closed, a Jewish family made matzah. They had a wheel to make little holes in the matzah. They were invited into homes to make matzah. Jews continued to live their customary lives even if they were afraid of persecution by the authorities. We didn't have any relatives in Shargorod, so we celebrated Pesach just by ourselves.

In the summer my sister and I visited grandmother Leya in Polonoye. I remember having evening tea parties at grandmother's long table with a samovar on it. We had tea and jam and our grandmother told us stories from the Bible in Yiddish. My grandmother told these stories in a very nice manner, as if she were talking about somebody she knew well and loved a lot. She animated the Biblical characters for us.

My parents had a few Jewish friends. My sister and I also had friends among the school children and neighbors. They were mostly Jews. However, we also had Ukrainian friends. My sister's classmate Gorbenko, a Ukrainian, often came to our home. During the war he brought food for us to the ghetto. There was no anti-Semitism before the war. I believe that if there were any expressions of anti-Semitism before the war, they would elicit nothing but surprise or bewilderment, so strange would they seem.

Grandmother Leya used to stay with us during the winter. Her visits were always very much welcomed. We loved her dearly and she loved us. My grandmother told us episodes from Jewish history. I can still remember the story she told us about how Joseph was captured and held in a pit. My grandmother could read Yiddish. It was not very common at that time. Most Jews had no education. Our neighbors in Shargorod liked to come to grandmother's house, and she would read the Bible to them in Yiddish - both Jews and Ukrainians understood and could speak Yiddish. My grandmother knew all the prayers. She prayed at home daily. During the Soviet era my mother did not follow the kashrut and my grandmother visited us with her own kosher pot and plate. She cooked her own food and called my sister and me to help her eat it. She was very nice. She didn't wear a wig in those years. She covered her gray hair with a little shawl. She was still beautiful even in old age. She wore beautiful clothes. I remember she had a nice black suit. During the war we exchanged my grandmother's clothes for food.

In 1940 our grandmother moved in with us. She was ill at that time. She died in 1941. Later, my mother said that the Lord felt sorry for our grandmother and spared her from all the horrors that we had to live through. My grandmother's funeral was in accordance with Jewish traditions. She was wrapped in a white cerement, a takhrikhim [shrouds] in Yiddish, on the floor. Everybody sat on the floor mourning over her. The rabbi of Shargorod recited the Kaddish over my grandmother's grave. We installed a Jewish monument of granite wood over her grave. I went to Shargorod 15 years ago and saw that her grave and monument were still there.

The arrests began in 1936. [The interviewee is referring to the so-called Great Terror.] 9 They lasted until the war. They usually came for people at night. When we heard loud knocking on a door, we knew that they came for someone. Our family did not suffer from the arrests. Nobody in Shargorod knew anything about our 'criminal' bourgeois past. My father was much respected in Shargorod. Well, as they say, the Lord was merciful to us.

During the war

I can't remember how we learned that Hitler came to power in Germany or about the 'Crystal Night' and the persecution of Jews. Perhaps it was from newspapers, because we didn't have a radio. I remember the films The Oppenheim Family and Professor Mamlock 10. It was stiffening to watch them, but the events seemed so far away from us. Nobody thought that all these horrors would be a reflection on our future. I was still a child, though. Perhaps adults had a different conception of it, I don't know.

I remember 22nd June 1941, the first day of the war. There was a radio near our house in the central street. At noon we heard the Molotov's 11 speech, in which he announced that Germany had traitorously attacked the USSR. At first, we didn't quite understand what it was all about. Our mother kept crying and our neighbor, a teacher from the Jewish school, told her that the war wouldn't last long and that in a few weeks our army would be in Germany. Many people thought so then.

We were late getting evacuated, because our father was not allowed to leave his work before all food products in Shargorod were sold out or delivered to storage facilities. My father was doing the inventory at the last store in Shargorod when he was told that the Department of Commerce and all the officials had left. My father opened the door, and crowds of people instantly snapped up everything in there. Shargorod was far from the railroad. The nearest railway station was located 100 km from there, in Zhmerynka. My father got a horse and cart. My mother packed whatever few things she could and we left. We didn't get far. The Germans were about 5 km from Shargorod. We had to go back home, and after a few days the Germans occupied the town. The town was bombed once during this time. There were no strategic facilities in town. People still lived in fear. We heard the roar of the war. The Germans came to town quietly at night. One of their military units stayed in Shargorod for about a month. Germans were walking the streets with whips in hand, and the townspeople hid in their houses.

Shargorod became a Jewish ghetto. The Germans placed Jews from other locations in our houses. Another family was living in one of our rooms. Most people came to Shargorod on foot. There were a few wealthy families from Mohilev-Podolsk or Chernovtsy who paid a lot of money to come by train. In some of the rooms in our building there were 15-20 people sleeping on plank beds. They cooked on self-made steel stoves. We also had a stove. We used sunflower husks to make fires. We baked small pieces of potatoes on the stove. It was the best delicacy for us. We fetched water from a rather far away well.

Several streets in Shargorod were fenced to prevent people from going out. We were not allowed to walk out of the ghetto or to speak to people outside the ghetto. We were even afraid to meet a German soldier in the streets of the ghetto. We elected a Jewish council of older people. The Germans were giving orders, collecting people for work, and collecting money through the council. We were lucky, so to say, with our ghetto. There were no mass shootings in our ghetto.

When the Germans left Shargorod, a Romanian unit came to replace them. Life was easier with them. They didn't kill or punish people; they just watched that things were in order, and that we followed the instructions that they received from their German commanders. I can't say that they treated us nicely, but they did not hate us so vehemently and they weren't as cruel as the Germans. They liked bribes, money and gifts. One Romanian soldier even had a Jewish lover in the ghetto.

The Jewish population in the ghetto increased several times. Between 4 and 22 people were living in one room. I think that initially there were 2,000 to 2,500 people living in the ghetto in Shargorod. People were dying like flies. There were dead people lying in the streets. The first winter in the ghetto was extremely cold. People had no clothes or shoes and died from cold, starvation and infectious diseases. The dead were taken away to be buried somewhere to prevent spreading infections. My mother fell ill with typhoid. There were no doctors or medications in the ghetto. The only treatment available was an attempt to take down the fever. When there was no ice available, people wrapped the sick in a cold wet sheet. Mama had spotted fever, but nobody else in our family got the infection. Spotted fever is spread by lice, and so we tried to keep ourselves clean. I was covered with furuncles from lack of food and beriberi. There were many on my head, and my hair had to be cut.

We got food by exchanging whatever goods we had. Rich Jews from Chernovtsy came with suitcases full of goods, and they didn't starve. The poor ones were starving to death. The Romanians allowed farmers to come to the ghetto for a small bribe: a few apples or a dozen eggs. People from the ghetto were lining up to exchange whatever they had for a piece of bread or some flour and potatoes.

There was no school in the ghetto, but we were children and wanted to spend time with one another. There were Jewish boys from Bukovina in the ghetto. They could speak only German. We girls found a woman who spoke German and took classes from here. I don't remember how much we paid her, but we got German classes. My sister and I spoke almost fluent German and could talk with these Jewish boys from Bukovina. One of them played the saxophone. We got together to listen to him play. My sister Maria had many friends in the ghetto, all of them older than I. They had school textbooks, and the older children taught the younger ones. We studied and entertained ourselves with singing and dancing. My sister had a Ukrainian classmate. His last name was Gorbenko. He often came to the ghetto to spend time with us. We were not allowed to leave the ghetto, but he could come in to bring us food. We had a record player and listened to music and kissed. Whatever the times, young people are the same. We celebrated Pesach in the ghetto. There was a rabbi who came from Bukovina. He read the Pesach prayer. [The interviewee probably refers to the Pesach Haggadah.] We made matzah and that was the only traditional food that we could have. Of course this matzah was far from authentic matzah, but so was our life in the ghetto.

In April 1944 the Soviet army liberated us. The population of the ghetto was half of what it had been three years before. The war lasted for another year. We had to think of our future. We had no food or money. There were a few families from Chernovtsy. They returned home after liberation and my sister went with them to see whether it was worth moving to Chernovtsy. We didn't want to stay in Shargorod. There were too many terrible memories from living there. Gersh and another of my maternal uncles, whose name I don't remember, perished in Polonoye. They and their families were killed, shot by the Germans in 1941. Only Motl, the youngest, survived. He lived in the small town of Murafa near Shargorod. He and his wife and their children stayed alive. Motl died of cancer in 1957.

Post-war

Chernovtsy hadn't been destroyed by the war. Shops were open; there was plenty of food, and goods to be bought. My sister came from Chernovtsy several times. She brought some paint that she sold to the local farmers. She took a train to Mohilev-Podolsk and had to ride on the roof of a railcar, because these were freight trains. From the station she got to Shargorod by whatever transportation was at hand. My sister told us to move to Chernovtsy without delay. She said that there were many vacant apartments there. We went to Chernovtsy on a horse-driven cart.

There were not many people left in Chernovtsy. On 28th June 1940 Bukovina was united with the USSR. Chernovtsy was part of it. The local people had lived under Soviet power for a year before the war, so they knew already what life was like under the Soviets. Many of the locals rushed to Romania. Later, some of the Jews left Romania for Palestine. They were running away from the Soviet regime. Rosha was a German colony on the outskirts of Chernovtsy. The Germans had left it, too. We moved into a four-room apartment in the center of the city.

People treated Jews nicely in Chernovtsy. There was no demonstration of anti-Semitism. We soon felt at home. The local people told us that relations had been cordial for ages. The Jews were patrons of the arts and music. This area initially belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, then to Hungary and Romania. There was a Jewish school, a hospital for poor Jews, and a Jewish children's hospital in Chernovtsy before the war. And there were 67 synagogues! At present there is only one synagogue in town. After the Olympiad of 1980 when the eternal fire's route to Moscow crossed Chernovtsy, there appeared a joke: 'What did the Olympiad give Chernovtsy? A good road to the synagogue.' They asphalted this road in preparation for the Olympiad, and this is the road that leads to the synagogue. At one time Chernovtsy was called 'a small Paris', because it was a very culturally developed town. The writer Moshe Altman lived and worked here. The writer and poet Iosif Burg lives here. He is 90 years old. He wrote about the life of Jews in Yiddish. Speaking about the culture of Chernovtsy we need to mention the famous tenor Iosif Schmidt. He ended his life in a concentration camp. He was a world-renowned singer when the war began. The Germans sent him to a concentration camp. He wasn't allowed to sing and was constantly persecuted. He couldn't bear it any longer and committed suicide. Eleizer Shteinberg, a Jewish fable writer, lived here and many more famous people as well.

I was 14 when we came to Chernovtsy. I didn't go to school. Mama was afraid that I would be sent to the labor front in Donbass like many other youngsters. She went to talk with the director of the Construction College, gave him a jar of honey, and I was admitted to college, although I was a little bit too young. I entered the college in 1944. Over half of the students in my group were Jews. We got along well and nobody cared about our nationality at that time. Most of our teachers were Jews, too. I graduated from this college in 1948. My sister was admitted to the Commercial College and studied there for a year. She entered a preparatory course for the Medical Institute in 1945. Maria was a brilliant student and graduated from the Institute with a Red Diploma. She became a very good cardiologist. After graduating from the Institute, Maria married her co- student Isaak Tsypris, a Jew. They were a wonderful couple, but, unfortunately, they didn't have any children. Both of them got job assignments in the village of Lishkovtsy and worked there for 8 years. Later, they came to work in Chernovtsy. Maria was a very respectable person in Chernovtsy. She died in 1990. She had breast cancer. She had one breast amputated. She died soon afterwards. Her husband married again after a couple of years. He lives in Chicago in the US, but he still treats us as his family. He writes and calls us and is planning to visit here. My sister and her husband helped us financially. When our father grew ill they gave us money for medications and medical treatment. Our father died in 1950. After graduating from college I got a job assignment with the Housing Maintenance Agency in Chernovtsy. I worked as a technician, forewoman, engineer and chief engineer. My employment record book has two inscriptions: 'Employed' and 'Retired.'

Mama didn't work after we moved to Chernovtsy. She rented out one room in our apartment to students. She cooked for them and did the housework and laundry and was paid for this. She did this work until I began to earn more.

We followed Jewish traditions, although we would buy a piece of pork or ham once in a while. Mama didn't quite like it, but she didn't argue with us. We celebrated the Sabbath and Pesach together. We bought matzah at the synagogue and cooked the same food that Mama did before the war. There was a shochet in Chernovtsy, and we had him kill the chicken for our festive dinners. Mama went to synagogue on holidays. We spoke Yiddish to Mama, although she knew Russian well.

In 1948 the campaign against cosmopolitans 12 began. I had just finished college and started working. People treated me nicely at work and I didn't face any anti-Semitism. However, my colleagues were mostly Jews.

The Kiev Jewish Musical Theater performed in Chernovtsy, because their building in Kiev had been destroyed during the war. It was a very good theater. Mama, my sister and I attended all of their performances. It was visited by people of many nationalities. The actors were wonderful. The theater was full every night. They had performances in Yiddish and Russian. They staged classical

works, like Tevye the Diaryman by Sholem Aleichem 13. In 1948 the theater was closed. The building that housed the theater was very beautiful. After the theater closed, it was transferred to the university, but stood in decay until the early 1990s.

After Ukraine gained independence the building was very nicely restored and turned into the Academic Hall of the Medical Academy. The Jewish school in Chernovtsy was also closed. The authorities were firing Jewish teachers, writers and journalists. However, people understood that things weren't quite the way they were presented.

The Doctors' Plot 14 was a different matter, though. In the 1950s my sister and her husband were working at a polyclinic. They had problems. Their patients would run out of her office when they found out that my sister was a Jew. A Ukrainian nurse refused to work with my sister's husband. She said she didn't want to be an unintentional assistant of a doctor- murderer. Their patients didn't want to visit them and many of them were saying openly that they didn't want to be treated by Jewish doctors. My sister was about to quit her job and go to work as a cleaning woman. But fortunately, it was a short period of time and it was over when Stalin died in March 1953.

I cried when we heard about Stalin's death. Many people cried over him. We were convinced that he had been doing the right thing regardless of all the hardships and cruelty of reality. Everyone was concerned about what was going to happen. We thought life would be over without Stalin. We didn't know how to live or what to do without him. There was so much faith in Stalin that even the children whose fathers were in prison believed it was true that they were enemies of the people. Some people understood the true state of things, but the majority was blind to the truth. After the Twentieth Party Congress, 15 we had our eyes opened. It was easier for the Jews to believe the truth because we had seen what Stalin did to the Jews. They said that if he hadn't died all of us would have been deported like the Chechen or Tatar people. [The interviewee is referring to the policy of forced deportation to Siberia.] 16 God protected us.

Our family was enthusiastic about the establishment of Israel. Although we live here we have a feeling of assurance now that the Jews have got their own state now.

My husband Natan

In 1956 I married Natan Gorshtein, a Jew who was born in Odessa in 1926. With his fair hair and gray eyes he didn't look like a Jew. He was the only child in his family. His father, Boruch Gorshtein, and his mother Hana were very kind, intelligent people. They accepted me as their daughter from the very first day they met me. After Natan left Odessa they moved to Kotovsk in the suburbs of Odessa. Natan's parents were not religious. They only celebrated Pesach as a tribute to tradition. They spoke Russian in the family. Natan's mother was a housewife. His father was chief accountant at the Mill Factory. He was a very decent man. His wife said that he was out of this world. Other people might become millionaires holding his position, but he only received a modest salary. They lived a modest life. They loved each other very much. My father-in-law called his wife Hanochka and she addressed him as Buzinka. We often visited them and they visited us. Natan's parents were very dear to me. His father died in 1969. His mother refused to move in with us. She died in 1970. Both of them were buried in the same grave in the Jewish section of the town cemetery.

Natan graduated from the Railroad College and got a job assignment at the railcar depot in Chernovtsy. His mother's sister was living here. For a few years, Natan served in the army in the Far East, where people had no idea about what Jews were like. He never heard Yiddish and when he came to Chernovtsy he was surprised to hear Yiddish spoken in the street. Out of about about 150,000 people in Chernovtsy, 60% were Jews. He liked it so much there that he requested to be sent to Chernovtsy after finishing college. The reason he gave was that he had a fiancée in Chernovtsy. His words proved true. I had a friend who lived in the same building as his aunt. Once, his aunt mentioned to my friend that her nephew was visiting her and that it would be good if he met a nice girl. This friend of mine introduced us to each other in March. We courted for half a year and got married in September. His mother's name was Hana, the same as mine. Somebody told her that it was against Jewish tradition for a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law to have the same name. She said: 'My son wants to marry her. And if something bad were to happen, let it happen to me.' We didn't have a Jewish wedding. Mama made dinner for the family and close friends. My husband moved in with us. Mama and I spoke Yiddish, and he learned the language during those years. Some time later he entered the University of Railroad Transport Engineers.

My daughters

Our elder daughter Polina was born in 1957. Polina graduated from the music school and then attended the Musical Pedagogical College. Polina married Mihail Korenblum, A? Jew, in 1978. He is an engineer. He graduated from the Polytechnic University in Lvov. Their daughter Faina was born in 1980. Faina is a medical nurse at the military hospital now. Their son Semyon was born in 1987. He has finished the 9th grade at the Jewish school in Chernovtsy. He will continue his studies in Israel. Polina worked at the kindergarten for 8 years after finishing college. After this kindergarten was closed, she got a job as a librarian at the Jewish school. That's where she works now.

Marina, our younger daughter, was born in 1964. Marina graduated from the Department of Economics at the University of Chernovtsy. She married David Fisher, an engineer, after finishing her studies. Their older daughter, Mila, was born in 1989 and in 1990 Marina and her family moved to Israel. They live in Herzliya. Marina works as a shop assistant. Her husband graduated from the Moscow Road Transport Institute. He works as a programmer at a plant. Their second daughter, Keren, was born in 1996.

We continued celebrating the Jewish holidays in our family. We celebrated Pesach according to the tradition. We bought matzah, made stuffed fish and baked cakes. My daughter Polina cooks this traditional food now. My husband came to like these holidays. I have fasted at Yom Kippur since I was 11, and Natan joined me. Polina speaks Yiddish and Hebrew. As for Marina, I don't think she knew any Hebrew before she left. We also celebrated Soviet holidays. We enjoyed cooking a nice dinner for the family and having guests. We didn't care much about the meaning of these holidays.

From the 1950s through the late 1980s anti-Semitism was on the rise at the state level in Chernovtsy, as well as in the rest of Ukraine. It was mainly demonstrated during admission to the higher educational institutions. I will give you an example with the Medical Academy. If they admitted about 300 students per year, there could be only 2-3 Jews among them. Just because they were Jews these young people were not allowed access to higher education. Our children went to other cities, mainly in Russia and the Baltic republics, where anti-Semitism was not so strong.

In the 1970s Jewish people began to move to Israel. We sympathized with those who were leaving, and were a little bit jealous. Regretfully, our family couldn't leave. One had to pay for one's diploma at that time before moving, and we didn't have that much money. The authorities justified this requirement with the fact that the state had spent money to give us an education, so we were obliged to compensate it for the costs. My husband and I, my sister and her husband had diplomas, and the amount we were supposed to pay was far above what we could afford. We were eager to go to Israel, all of us, but our financial problems were an obstacle. When Ukraine declared its independence in 1990, we started planning to move to Israel again, but my sister fell ill with cancer. She needed help and I could not leave her when she was so ill. My sister died in 1990. Two or three years later my husband fell severely ill. We stayed. My husband died in 1997 after several surgeries. He was a wonderful man, husband and father. I shall never recover from losing my sister and my husband.

I've visited my daughter three times in Israel. I went there for the first time while my husband was still alive. I stayed there a month. My second visit was after my husband died. That time I stayed there for 4 months. I stayed half a year in Israel during my third visit. They also visited me last year. I was very impressed by what I saw in Israel. When we read the word 'paradise' in the Bible, I imagine Israel. I find it terrible that people can't live quietly and in peace in this country.

In 1990 the Jewish way of life began to revive in Chernovtsy. There are Jewish communities and Hesed here. In 1991 a Jewish school was opened in Chernovtsy. At that time about 70% of the children at this school were Jewish and all the teachers were Jewish. Afterwards, many of the Jews moved to Israel, and so there are not many Jews left at school. But this is a very good school and many non-Jewish children study here at present. And the school changed its name from the Jewish School to the Educational Institution with Advanced Courses in Jewish Subjects. Classes are taught in Ukrainian. Besides the general curriculum subjects, there are classes in Hebrew, traditions, history, music and Jewish literature.

My daughter Polina is director of Chernovtsy's community of progressive Judaism. I am a member of this community. We call ourselves mishpokhe - a family, because we are members of the family. Families are members of this community: wives, husbands, grandmothers and grandfathers. We celebrate the Sabbath, holidays and birthdays of members of our 'family'. There were over one hundred people in this community in the recent past. Many have left, but we go on. We discuss the Torah. Every Saturday we read a chapter from the Torah. I like progressive Judaism. I prefer it to a synagogue where the men sit downstairs and the women sit upstairs. We pray together. We sit beside each other, sing anthems, recite prayers and feel equal. Chernovtsy honors the Jews who perished during the war. On 9th May 2002 a monument in the shape of the Star of David was erected in memory of the 900 Jews killed in the Chernovtsy ghetto.

We are doing well now. I receive a pension as a former ghetto prisoner, plus my retirement pension. Thank God, I can even support my daughters and their families. It is most important to stay in good health and live in peace. I wish peace for Israel. God worked one miracle when he rescued the Jews from Stalin. May he show his strength in Israel. I pray that he works a miracle to spare from terror the country that accepted my young family and where my granddaughter was born. May mothers and their children live in peace everywhere on Earth.

Glossary

Mario Modiano

Interviewer: Milena Molho

Date of interview: November 2005

Mario Modiano, 80, lives in a very chic big apartment in Kolonaki, Athens, which his wife Inzi decorated with great taste when she was alive. All around the apartment you can even feel Inzi being there, her aura is very strong, and Mr. Modiano keeps it so strong because of his enormous love towards her. The house is full of souvenirs from many different places that the couple has visited during their vacations. Mr. Modiano has a very lively personality, and a huge appetite for life. Really, listening to him and his stories gives you hope for life. One would never believe that this gentleman, now in his 80,s went through the ordeal of being hidden in Greece to avoid German persecution.

My full name is Mario Modiano and I was born in Salonica in the year 1926. The Modianos come from a long line of rabbis whose ancestor, R. Samuel Modillano, moved from Italy to Salonica some time in the mid-16th century. We know this from an inscription on the grave of Isaac, his son, also a rabbi, who was buried in Salonica in the year 1635. My father used to say that we are the 'true Modianos' because we come from the line of Bonomo, a direct descendant of Rabbi Samuel.

However, in preparing our family's genealogical tree I was unable to link Bonomo to our earliest known ancestor, my great-great grandfather, Moise Modiano, who lived in the early 19th century, because of a gap of some eight generations between them.

My book on the genealogical story of the Modiano family [HAMEHUNE MODILLANO -- The Genealogical Story of the Modiano Family from ~1570 to Our Days], which was published in the year 2000, indicated that we have been in Salonica since 1570. However, during a family reunion in Florence in June 2005, we visited Modigliana, the village that gave us our family name, and I discovered evidence that perhaps the Modianos existed in Italy even before the year 1500.

My family has Italian origins in the sense that they moved to Salonica from Italy. What we don't know for sure is whether they originally came from Spain and stopped over in Italy, or if we are descendants of the Jewish captives that Titus took to Rome after the destruction of the Second Temple. One way or another, personally I feel Jewish. I feel totally Jewish. And I think that encompasses everything.

My great-grandfather, Samuel Modiano, was born in Salonica in 1828. He married Rika Modiano - intermarriage was frequent in the family. They had six children: Esther who died at birth, Moise who settled in Egypt, Estrea, who married David Simha, Yeshua who was the father of Vidal Modiano, a prominent surgeon who was leader of the Sephardic Jews of France. The youngest, Eliaou Modiano, was my grandfather.

Grandfather Eliaou, who was born in 1865, married Allegra Cohen. They had three children, my father Sam, Lily [Leal] and Joseph. As my grandfather wasn't doing too well in Salonica, he moved to Alexandria to be near his eldest brother Moise. However, he seems to have lost all his money in the cotton exchange. So he brought the family back to Salonica again.

I remember that my grandparents lived in the center of Salonica in a complex of several two- and three-floor houses that surrounded a courtyard. There, in the middle of the courtyard, was a small synagogue that was known as the 'synagogue of the rabbis.' That is where my father would take me on major holidays and we would join Grandfather who lived practically next door. I would mainly play in the courtyard rather than sit in at the service.

My grandmother Allegra died when I was ten years old. I didn't really know her much. After her death, Grandfather Eliaou moved to the Modiano Old People's Home as a paying guest. He would come and visit us on Saturdays or Sundays when the whole family would gather round the table for a meal. I don't know what language my grandparents spoke to each other. However, they spoke judesmo to my parents. [Ladino was the liturgical language; the spoken one was Judeo-Spanish or judesmo.] My parents spoke French to each other and to me; they spoke judesmo to my brother, while my brother and I spoke Greek.

I remember that my father would give me a banknote or two to take to my grandfather once a week, so he would have pocket money. During the German occupation and the persecution of the Jews in Salonica, the home was closed. Grandfather had Italian citizenship and in 1943 the Italians moved him to Athens, which was still under their control. But then, Italy collapsed. At that moment Grandfather was in a private clinic in the care of a trustworthy doctor for a prostate operation. A nurse betrayed him to the Germans who were looking for hidden Jews, and he was caught. Mercifully he died in the train taking him to Auschwitz.

My aunt Lily, who was born in 1897, had married twice but had no children. She and her husband were taken by the Germans in Salonica and were killed in the Shoah in 1943.

My father's brother, Uncle Joe [Joseph], was born in 1901. Before the war he lived in Kavalla [in northern Greece, on the way from Salonica to the Turkish border] and was in the tobacco business. When he married Aunt Aline [nee Nahmia] in a Salonica hotel, I was a page. Throughout my childhood people kept reminding me how I had dropped the bride's train and ran to collect the 'koufeta,' the sugar-coated almonds that are traditionally showered over the bride and groom.

Uncle Joe, Aunt Aline and their son, my cousin Maurice, would visit us frequently in Salonica. Our home was quite small, so they would stay in a hotel. I remember how Maurice loved wearing my father's medals as well as my school cap, which had a showy badge.

When Italy collapsed, Uncle Joe and his family went into hiding in the house of a Greek communist on the slopes of Mount Hymettus in Athens. There they had a fantastic experience. One night the Gestapo raided the house and arrested everybody in it. Joe and Aline spent the night facing a wall at the Gestapo headquarters on Merlin Street. My uncle showed them the false IDs they carried, the Germans said OK, and let them go. The Germans were only interested in their communist landlord.

Joe and family then moved to the suburb of Nea Smirni [area in Athens that the refugees from Asia Minor were placed to live], posing as refugees from the allied bombardment of Piraeus. Nea Smirni is where we were also hiding. So we would see each other infrequently and quite stealthily. They survived this ordeal and later migrated to California where Maurice graduated from Stanford University. Later they returned to Athens. Aline died first, and Joe followed at the age of 99 in the year 2000. Maurice, who has two brilliant sons, is chairman of the board of directors of the Grande Bretagne Hotel, the most important hotel in Athens. [Editor's note: The Grand Bretagne Hotel is one of the oldest and most luxurious hotels in Athens.]

My mother's name was Nella. She was the daughter of Mair Tchenio, of a prominent family from Aragon, in Spain. The family was famous because after the massacres of 1390, part of the Tchenios, or Chenillos as they were called in Aragon, converted adopting the Christian surname of Santangel. One Louis de Santangel, who was purser to the King of Aragon, provided the loans that financed Christopher Columbus' expedition to the New World. When I was a child, my mother used to tell me, 'we are Tchenio but our other name was Santangel.' I didn't understand at the time, but I remembered this when I discovered the story of Louis.

My mother was very sweet and very pretty. She was a gentle person and had a lot of understanding. She wasn't a mother that was smothering her children; she would see to it that we grew up to be human beings. She would put pepper in our mouths if we said a dirty word. She wasn't a pushy Jewish mother, not at all. Mother was running our household as well as the whole family, since Father was so busy. She would read French books. We had quite a library at home, one that the Germans took away.

My maternal grandfather, Mair Tchenio, after whom I was named, had nine children, of whom four were from his first marriage. They were Felix, Estrea, Regina and Riquetta. When his first wife died, Meir married a young girl, Sara Benadon, my grandmother. They had five children - the eldest, Albert Tchenio, became a member of the Greek Parliament; then there was Pepo, Nella, my mother, Moise, and Valerie.

Mair Tchenio had a haberdashery store, a fairly large business, on Ermou Street in Salonica in which his sons were his partners. They inherited the business after his death. I was two or three years old when he died. I remember that once a week, the maid would take me to my uncles' shop visiting. They would give me a 20-drachma coin, which made me the happiest little boy in Salonica.

My grandmother Sara lived with one of my late grandfather's daughters from his first marriage - Riquetta - who took good care of her. Mother and I would visit her often, but I had difficulty communicating with her because she only spoke judesmo. But I enjoyed the tajicos 1 they served us. I didn't get the feeling that they kept a kosher cuisine in their house.

Grandma lived at the corner of Koromila and Vassilissis Olgas Street. The house had a long narrow garden lined with fruit trees. I do remember how in our young age my brother and I would steal unripe fruit, eat it, and promptly develop tummy trouble.

Mother's brother Uncle Pepo was tall and wore glasses, and loved a good joke. They were great friends with my father - in fact that is how Father met Mother - and they would enjoy their outings. Often they would agree in advance on some prank to play on the unsuspecting waiter of the restaurant they would go to. All of my mother's family, except for her sister Valerie and her children, were lost in the Shoah.

My father's name was Sam Modiano. He was born in Salonica in 1895. He died in Athens at the age of 84. He belonged to the vast Modiano family about whom I have written in my book. Father went to school at the Mission Laique Francaise 2, one of the French schools established in Salonica at the beginning of the last century. Like all the Modianos, Father was an Italian citizen. Just before World War I, in 1911, war broke out between Italy and Turkey over Tripolitania - present-day Libya. As a result all the Italian males who lived in Salonica - then still under Ottoman rule - were expelled to Italy, some to Sicily, others to Livorno, and those of military age were recruited in the Italian army to fight in Libya. Father was only 16 at the time, so he didn't have to serve. The Greeks occupied Salonica in 1912.

My father went into journalism at the close of World War I when Salonica was a base for the French troops of General [Maurice] Sarrail [commander of the French Army stationed in Salonica, 'Front d'Orient,' during the WWI.]. He was a reporter of the French-language newspaper 'L'Opinion.' His first story was about the downing by the allies of a German zeppelin, which was flying over Salonica. That was great news at the time.

Later Father, who was a prolific writer, joined forces with Avram Houli and they launched the French-language newspaper 'Le Progres' 3 around 1926. Houli was the proprietor and Father was the editor. At the outset the paper had great financial difficulties because of competition with the long- established - also French-language - afternoon daily 'L'Indepandant,' which commanded great prestige. Houli died in 1931 and Father took over.

Most of the Jews at that time were royalists because [Eleftherios] Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister, was credited with the mass repatriation of the Greeks of Asia Minor, following a population exchange treaty with Turkey. The refugees were settled mainly in Salonica and this put them into direct competition with the Jews who had for centuries controlled the city's commerce, its business and labor market.

Contrary to the royalist trend among the Jews, my father supported Venizelos because of his democratic principles. A law in 1933, which prohibited foreign nationals from owning newspapers in Greece, forced Father to obtain Greek nationality to be able to continue with his paper. We, the children, were given an option to choose between Greek or Italian citizenship at the age of 18. By that time there was a war between Greece and Italy, which made any choice rather difficult.

In 1936 when General Metaxas 4 proclaimed a dictatorship, Father had a hard time because a censorship was imposed and every word that went into his paper had to be checked and sanctioned by the censors. During the Greek- Italian war in 1940, Father also became Reuters correspondent to report on the war on the Albanian front. This stood him in good stead after the war when Reuters searched and found him in Athens and promptly gave him a job at a time when we were really starving.

Father was a hard worker. Before the war, he would return home after 'putting the paper to bed,' so to speak. So he was never back before 1 or 2am. We saw very little of him. However, on Sundays - as no newspapers appeared on Mondays - he would preside over lunch where often there would be a bunch of cousins invited. I remember that we, the children, would keep laughing for no reason at all, making Father very angry. So he would tell us off. Otherwise, my father had an exuberant personality. He was very outgoing and he enjoyed a good joke. He had an incredibly vast repertoire of jokes, and, would you believe it, even to this day my brother and I enjoy telling some of Father's old jokes.

As far as religion went, he wasn't very observant. He would go to the synagogue on the high holidays, but not every Sabbath, mainly because his work was such that it always demanded his attention. We didn't keep a kosher house. We were quite secular.

One thing I really enjoyed during the holiday of Purim where the 'novyicas,' the little brides made of sugar. [Las novias de Pourim: it means the bride and groom of Purim; those were colored candy dolls especially made for Purim to give to Sephardic children as presents during the holiday. There are some left in the exhibit of the Jewish Museum of Greece. They were used instead of Oznei Aman used in the Ashkenazi tradition.]

After the war Father worked for Reuters, the news agency, and eventually became the chief correspondent for Greece and Turkey. He was highly respected as an honest and reliable journalist - he was regarded as number one among all the foreign correspondents in Athens.

Already before the war he had been made a 'Cavaliere,' a sort of knight of the Italian Crown, and had won the 'Palmes Academiques' from the French Government. He also had decorations from the Spanish and Polish Governments. As a postwar correspondent he was made an OBE [Officer of the Order of the British Empire] and received the Gold Cross of the Order of the Phoenix from King Paul of the Hellenes.

My parents got married in Salonica on 30th June 1920. My maternal grandfather had at first objections because at that time journalism, like theater acting, wasn't regarded as a dignified profession. The marriage took place in the house of Riquetta Bourla in Salonica. Riquetta was Father's first cousin. My parents lived on the ground floor of the same building on Miaouli Street. Later we moved to the so-called Depot district.

I grew up in Alexandrias Street number 103. It was a one-story house with a staircase on the side. You entered the house five steps up. Beneath there was a sort of rough stone cellar that we didn't use because it was too damp. The house had a large hall with a big heating stove. On the left there were two bedrooms. One I shared with my brother. The other was my parents'. To the right there was a dining room and straight ahead an ancient kitchen and bathroom. We had electricity and running water, we even had a water-well in the garden, which we used for our vegetable garden. We had electricity, but next to us there was a small shack where a very old woman and her son lived, and they had no light.

In fact there was no garden; it was a large courtyard half of it covered with flagstones. We had fruit trees - apricots and pears - and we used to steal the figs from the neighbor's tree, which was overhanging our wall. Our courtyard proved to be very useful during the 1932 earthquakes in Salonica. There were very strong shocks in the peninsula of Chalkidiki and they affected Salonica a good deal. We were all very scared. It was in the summertime so we set up some sort of straw shed and the whole neighborhood would come and sleep there at night, because they were too afraid to sleep in their houses.

At that time I was aged six and I remember that during one of the shocks, my mother fetched me, threw a mattress out of the window and then threw me on it. I was too young, and I wasn't very conscious of what was happening. But I somehow got used to earthquakes and didn't panic. Later, as a journalist, I went to the Ionian Islands to report on the earthquakes of 1953 and I felt quite relaxed in the middle of all that devastation and the shaking ground.

It was in the neighborhood of Alexandrias Street that I played with other children. We would horseplay, throw stones at each other, and we would form a gang to fight with the gang in the next street up because they had teased one of our girls. The neighborhood was mixed, there were Jewish and Christian families, and we would play together because most of us went to the same school. It was fun.

We speak of Salonica, but although I was 17 when we left, I didn't really get to know the city. My parents were very protective and wouldn't encourage me to go into town. This was naturally because of the German occupation. But the point is that I still don't really know the town outside the main sights - the White Tower, the Depot district, the villa Allatini and of course my school. My whole life revolved around home and the school.

In the summer we used to go to the seaside. There was a taxi driver called Grigoris and we would share the taxi with neighbors to go to Karabournaki for a swim. One day I convinced Grigoris to let me hold the taxi's driving wheel. I must have been seven. I promptly drove the car into a ditch. So that ended my first attempt to drive. The facilities at the beach were at the time quite primitive. However, we didn't know any better and would be very happy to be in the sea. It is later that we became spoilt. In the summer our family would also spend a few weeks in a hotel in Edessa, the city of waterfalls, west of Salonica. That was what my French-speaking parents called our 'villegiature' [French for vacation].

Father and Mother had Jewish friends and they would gather on Sundays in the home of one of them in turn to play cards and share a meal. We, the children, would gather in a room or the courtyard and play. My elder brother Lelo would go out with his friends.

My brother Lelo, which is a variation of Eliaou, Modiano was born in Salonica in 1922 in a house near Panaghia Halkeon 5. When he was a youngster he was quite restless. Father used to call him 'giovanoto,' Italian for dandy. He would return home from his outings rather late, so there would be big quarrels with Father. During the Greek-Italian war in 1940, Lelo would help Father with the newspaper. In fact, Father was very proud that they managed to print the newspaper although his offices were bombed during an Italian air raid.

Lelo was in a sense guarding our newspaper offices after the Germans occupied Salonica. One night a German officer and some soldiers came in. The officer told him, 'Take my advice: get your hat and get out of here. We are taking over.' This was the end of Father's newspaper. The Germans used the facilities to print their army newspaper.

When Italy collapsed and we went to hide in Nea Smirni, my brother Lelo escaped by boat to the Turkish coast and then joined the Greek Air Force in the Middle East. He received training in Rhodesia [today Zimbabwe] and South Africa, but then he had an accident and was hospitalized until the end of the war. After the war he married Nina Hassid, his Salonica sweetheart, in 1950. They had one son, Miki, born in 1952, who has become a very successful television producer. Nina later died of cancer. Miki and his wife Christina have a daughter, Marianina, whose name is a combination of the names of both her grandmothers.

Every year my brother and I have a picture of us taken to remind us of what we looked like several years earlier. It shows us what the ageing process can do.

As a child I was very thin. I am looking at this photograph and cannot believe I was so thin. I remember that at the age of ten my father said to me that when I would become thirty kilos he would give me 1,000 drachmas. I started wearing glasses when I was in the sixth grade of elementary school. I was then trying to learn to play the violin that my uncle Joseph had given me. But then I soon discovered that I couldn't read the music score that was just one meter away. That's how we discovered that I was shortsighted. So I gave up the violin, and I got myself a pair of glasses.

I used to go to a private school called Zahariadis in Salonica. It was near the house at 25th Martiou tram terminal. It was a good school where they taught Greek in the morning and English in the afternoon. I have used English throughout my professional life, and what I know I owe to this teacher of English who gave us the basics of the language. I'm eternally grateful to him. It was largely thanks to him that I was able to perfect my English to the point of being able to write for a newspaper such as The Times of London.

There was no obvious anti-Semitism in the air when I was growing up. You will laugh if I tell you my first anti-Semitic experience. There was this child bootblack who, whenever we crossed paths on my way to school he would shout, 'dirty Jew, dirty Jew!' The joke, as I found out later, was that he was Jewish too! That was anti-Semitism prompted by class rivalry. There have been instances of anti-Semitism in my life, but they were not serious, more a social phenomenon in which no violence was threatened or implied.

What I remember vividly from my bar mitzvah is the hard time I had trying to learn enough Hebrew to be able to read the text. I had a teacher who came home and taught me how to parrot the text from the Torah that I was supposed to read at the service in the synagogue. I very much regret that I never really learned Hebrew. After the service at the synagogue there was a reception at home, and the whole family as well as many of my father's colleagues and employees came to celebrate with us. I also remember that on that occasion my maternal uncles gave me a bicycle as a gift, and that I fell in love with it. I just would never part with the bicycle so much so that the neighbors claimed I even went to the toilet with the bicycle.

The only political event that I remember in Salonica before the war, took place on 9th May 1936, which was my 10th birthday. My mother was taking me by bus to visit an uncle. And then there was rioting by the communists so the police rushed in on horseback swinging swords. Some demonstrators were killed that day. A few months later General Metaxas proclaimed a dictatorship. Another event that impressed me very much was getting on a bus with Mother. The bus caught fire and we managed to get off just in time. The flames singed our hair.

The first time that we really felt anti-Semitism was after the Germans occupied Salonica. Greek anti-Semites took courage and came out openly to manifest their racism. After the war, however, everybody was trying to show how friendly they were; every other person said they had an uncle 'who had hidden several Jews in his house' or 'a grandfather who rescued so many others...' The truth is that many Greeks helped scores of Jews during the occupation, but only two Jewish families found a hiding place in Salonica.

The night before the Germans entered the city in March 1941, we had tried to escape southwards. The four of us - Father, Mother, Lelo and myself - went off to Aretsou [area that at the time was outside the city, in front of the sea] where Father had made arrangements for a caique, a sailboat, to pick us up and take us across to Litohoro [seaside village resort below Olympus mountain, 100 km from Salonica] at the foot of Mount Olympus so we could go on to Athens.

At that time we lived under the misconception that the Greek Army and the British allies would have halted the German advance at the river Aliakmon line. This was a fallacy. In any event, the caique never turned up, so we went back sheepishly to our home. It was a traumatic experience. We felt trapped.

The next trauma came when the German military came to the house to question Father. There were three of them. The officer took my father into the dining room and questioned him. The other two went through Father's library. They took all the books we had and placed them in two large wooden crates. They came the next day and took them away. Many years later I was given the copy of an SS order based on information they had received before the war from agents in Salonica listing important Jews in Salonica. Father's name was second after that of the chief rabbi, Zvi Koretz.

As I said, Father had had to take the Greek nationality because of the 1933 law. So, when the racial laws came into force in Salonica, unlike the other Modianos who as Italian nationals were exempt, we were forced to abandon our home and go and live in one of the two 'ghettos' where the Germans confined the Greek Jews [see Salonica Ghettos] 6. So we went and lived in the apartment of one of Father's fellow-journalists in Analipsi [name derived from the church's name, which means Ascension, in an area outside the old city of Salonica.]. We weren't allowed to go outside the boundaries of the ghetto, or to use any means of transportation, or telephones. We stayed there for about three months. I have here a picture of myself aged 16 reading Nea Evropi 7, the pro-Nazi paper, on the back balcony of the house in the ghetto.

One night my father's colleagues, the Greek journalists of Salonica, came to see him. They told him, '...don't be stupid, go to the Italian consulate and ask them to restore your Italian nationality...' Indeed he went and got his Italian nationality back. The Consul then recruited him to help the Italians with a plan to get all the families in which the wife had been Italian before marrying a Greek Jew, out of the Baron Hirsch camp 8 before they were deported. So they managed to get 138 families out. Then they sent Father to Athens, which was under Italian control, to secure housing for all the Italian Jews that would come from Salonica.

Later, from that backside balcony, I saw my best friend, Hugo Mordoh, leaving with that small convoy of people carrying things to go to the Baron Hirsch camp where he and his would be put on a train and - end of story. I was crying. He was my best friend; we were at school together and we were very close. In Salonica there was the Mordoh house 9, the first building after the Zachariades School. It was a huge, very beautiful mansion that belonged to his grandfather. At that time I didn't know where he was being taken. The Germans had convinced us that we were being sent to Cracow in Poland where the local Jewish community had prepared for us housing and work and everything. We were even asked to hand in our Greek drachmas, which would be exchanged for Polish Zloty. They assured us we would be very happy.

Father, Mother and I left Salonica in June 1943 in an Italian military train bound for Athens. The journey turned out to be a grueling experience. The resistance had blown up some important bridges, so we had to walk down the ravines and up again, but eventually we reached Athens. Uncle Joe, who lived in Athens, gave us hospitality until we found somewhere to stay. Father got in touch with the Italian Embassy and joined a committee that found houses and schools and put up the Italian Jews that were coming from Salonica. My brother came later with the main group of Italian Jews.

In August the Italian embassy asked us if we wanted to go to Italy on false papers with Christian names in order to be safe in case something happened to Italy. We refused because Father had already other plans. Italy collapsed on 8th September 1943 and the Germans seized control of Athens and started looking for Jews.

This is where my parents' friendship with our Christian neighbors in Salonica, Niko and Elli Sanikou, saved us. These neighbors had moved to Athens and lived in the suburb of Nea Smirni. They took us into hiding at great risk to themselves and their two little girls. We stayed there in hiding for nearly 15 months.

From time to time the Germans and their collaborators would organize searches in different areas of Athens looking for hiding Jews or communists. They would collect all the males in the central square and there masked traitors would point a finger at those involved with the resistance or who were giving shelter to Jews.

It was at that time that my father started losing his eyesight, so he had an excuse for not going to the gathering on the ground that he was blind. My mother was supposed to be his nurse. I would go and hide in a small hole under a stairway. Once I spent eight hours doubled up like this, while I could hear the Germans and their collaborators shouting through loudspeakers: 'Any male found hiding will be shot on the spot ...' Great fun! I must have felt pretty awful, but while it happens your adrenaline goes up and helps keep your courage.

On other occasions, when we knew in advance that the Germans were coming the following day for a round up, Father and I would take off and walk past the cemetery of Nea Smirni in the direction of Palio Faliro. We would stay all day near the mountain, until the Germans would leave the suburb. We would then just walk back together in the evening.

My mother's German came useful one night while hiding in Nea Smirni. It was towards the end of the German occupation. The Germans were so short of manpower that they had recruited young boys for the air force - I mean boys aged 15-16. Some were stationed at the air force base at Faliro. Some of them deserted one night and there was a search by the German military police. They came into the house in Nea Smirni where we were hiding. I was sleeping on the floor, and they woke me up and started barking at me in German, thinking that because of my blond hair and blue eyes, I was one of the deserters. Fortunately my mother's German came all back. She explained that I was her son, not a deserter. That saved the day.

While we were in hiding I continued learning English because there was an American lady married to a Greek, who gave me lessons in Nea Smirni. Then I would go home and study further from an English translation of Eugene Sue's 'Mysteries of Paris' with the help of a dictionary. [Sue, Eugene (real name Marie Joseph Sue, 1804-1857): French novelist, best known for his popular and sensational romances, 'The Mysteries of Paris' and 'The Wandering Jew' ranking among his most famous works.]

I never finished school because when the Germans occupied Salonica in 1941 they barred all Jews from schools. I was in the last class of the gymnasium, my finishing year. So I never got a school-leaving certificate. After we left Salonica and settled in Athens, I tried to pass the finishing exams but then Italy collapsed and we had to go into hiding. It's a good thing that I chose a profession in which they didn't require you to have a school-leaving certificate or a university degree.

I had no complex about not having gone to college, but I must admit that a higher education would have helped me greatly in my work. But then, if I had gone to university and studied to become an architect, as I had planned, I wouldn't have gone into a profession that I found so much more exciting.

Athens was liberated on 12th October 1944. We left the home of our saviors and moved to the Veto hotel which was near Omonoia Square [the most central point of reference in Athens]. We were still there when the communist uprising [see Greek Civil War] 10 broke out in December. The hotel was in no man's land. Everyday we would see dead bodies outside the hotel. At one end of the street, the British troops were firing from the rooftop of a hotel and at the other there were communists who were holed up in a brothel and were firing back. In these circumstances it became rather difficult to get food as well as charcoal for heating and cooking. At that time we were absolutely penniless.

In the early days of January, after the end of the uprising, there was a call for interpreters in the Greek Army. By that time Father had made contact with Reuters and had a steady job. He and Mother moved to the Grand Bretagne Hotel, which was the headquarters of the British military, since living anywhere else in Athens was dangerous.

I falsified my birth date on my German identity card and pretended I was old enough for the army as an interpreter. But I was still only seventeen. I was accepted and given the rank of second lieutenant. I served first in Kalamata and then in Tripoli in the Peloponnesus.

At that time there were still clusters of communist guerrillas on the mountains. I worked as an interpreter with the British military mission, which was instructing the newly recruited Greek army in all military drills. I was translating some of the manuals of the British army for the use by the Greek army, and I was demobilized about two years later, in 1947.

After I left the army I worked for the Joint 11 - the American Joint Distribution Committee, in their offices on Mitropoleos Street in Athens. I made many friends there. One of the very dear ones is Dario Gabbai who had returned from Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was in the Sonderkommando [Jews that the Germans used in the extermination camps to throw the corpses into the ovens] and had some very frightening experiences to tell. He had put into the oven of the crematoria his own family. Only one of his brothers survived. Today he lives in Los Angeles. His testimony figured prominently in Spielberg's documentary about the Hungarian Jews [The Last Days, 1998]. Dario, who was captured in Athens in 1943, served in the crematoria towards the end of the war and this saved him. The Germans used young Jews to shove the bodies of the gassed Jews into the ovens, but they would shoot them every three months so there would be no witnesses. Dario managed to flee by mixing with the other survivors from Auschwitz when the Germans evacuated the camp and led the survivors to a death march 12 westwards.

While I was on leave from the army, I would help my father at Reuters. It was in this way that I learned the profession of a foreign correspondent. During this time I met several colleagues of my father. One of them was Frank McCaskey, a British war hero turned foreign correspondent. He worked for The Times of London. One day he asked me to help him.

That was my next job. It was 1950 and I was appointed assistant correspondent for The Times. In 1952 Frank was transferred to Suez to cover the Anglo-French landing there. Frank was a very heavy drinker and eventually he died of it. The Times asked me to carry on in Greece. I accepted and I continued to work for them for the next 38 years. I always felt passionate about my new profession. It really takes you over and controls your life. You are no longer a free man. At every moment you must be on the alert just in case something important is happening in your area. It is a very exciting job but a very demanding one. You are on call 24/7.

The period between 1967 and 1974 was particularly interesting because a bunch of army colonels imposed a dictatorship in Greece. Actually mine was a risky profession to be in. From one moment to the next you couldn't tell whether they would slap you in jail because of something disagreeable you wrote in The Times. So much so that the British Ambassador gave my wife his bedside telephone number just in case something happened in the middle of the night. But they didn't touch me, although I was sharply critical of the regime in my reports. There were many other important issues that I covered during the 38 years I was in the profession. One of the big issues was Cyprus. Towards the end of my career I was awarded the OBE by the Queen of England for a job well done. It was the same award that had been presented to my father a few years earlier. During all those years as a foreign correspondent only once or twice there were references in Greek newspapers pointing out that I was Jewish, simply because they hadn't liked something I had written.

I got married to Inci, pronounced Indji, a young Turkish woman, in 1963. I was then aged 37, and my wife was six years younger. We had met during an Aegean cruise. She had just divorced and her Greek hairdresser in Istanbul advised her to go to the Greek islands, which were just then becoming a fashionable tourist destination. I had joined the ship with a friend who was British consul in Athens. Inci and I fell in love and I proposed to her while dancing in a nightclub on the Island of Rhodes.

She was a Muslim Turk and very liberal-minded. So was her family who accepted me instantly. The question of religion never came up. We had a civil wedding in Istanbul. Then we came to Athens and, since the civil marriage was not yet recognized in Greece, we looked for a hakham to marry us without too much fuss. We looked all over - Turkey, London, Paris, Rome - but they were very strict and wanted to go by the rules. Then thankfully we found a kind hakham in Athens who said to Inci, 'If you respect his faith as he respects yours, it is fine with me.' So he did. We were married in my bachelor apartment on Alopekis Street. We had 35 years of bliss, even during the most dangerous times.

Inci went through a fictitious conversion and she got the name of Lea. In this way we managed to register our religious wedding in the Athens registry. She would come to the synagogue whenever I went, which was rarely. I find that the non-Jewish wives of all my relatives and cousins also go to the synagogue and attend services. Quite naturally they expect their husbands to go to the church with them whenever they go.

Actually, the only thing I do according to the book is fast on Yom Kippur. We finish the fast - El cortar del Tanit [from Judeo-Spanish: the ceasing/cutting/or stopping the fast with the ceremonial meal that follows] - usually at my cousin Alberto's house. We just have dinner there, and it's like any other family dinner. My cousin Christian's wife prepares all the traditional things haroseth and lettuce and all. But you know, we do it casually because we don't really know how to do it properly - there is nobody at the table that would say the appropriate prayers for Yom Kippur or on Seder night for Pesach. We just enjoy the matzot and the 'uevos enhaminados' - the eggs baked in the oven with onions and coffee. I really love them.

Inci owned a school in Istanbul. She had studied abnormal psychology in Cambridge and Paris and was specializing in children with Down's syndrome. But then she decided she couldn't do it because the children would get too emotionally attached to her and she couldn't take it. So she opened a school in Istanbul for normal children - first in her paternal house - and she added one class a year. Then she moved to a bigger estate and at one point she had one of the best private schools in Istanbul with over 1,000 pupils. When we met she was at the top of her career and her decision to marry me and come and live in Athens had been a very difficult one. But she did it. It was a great sacrifice. She would go to Istanbul every two months and make her presence felt because she felt that the parents had entrusted their children to her personally.

Being my wife wasn't easy. The Greeks dislike the Turks and they don't hide it. The Turks knew that I was Greek and they were always extremely polite and would avoid any controversial subject. Here it was exactly the opposite. They often behaved in an insulting way to her. However, I called Inci 'lion-tamer.' When she saw that someone was openly hostile to her, she would go out of her way to tame them and make them eat out of her hand. She had so much charm, and she was deeply interested in people. So she would win them over.

For our 25th wedding anniversary I married her again. By this time Greece had recognized the civil wedding. We went in front of the Mayor of Athens, Miltos Evert, a close friend. His father, Colonel Evert, was the chief of the Athens police during the German occupation and it was he who had given us and many other Jews identity cards with false Christian names.

So, Inci and I were married three times. As a couple we really enjoyed traveling and we visited many places together. We went on a Safari in central Africa and, later sailed up the Nile around the late 1960s. We also visited China and Indonesia in 1985, which we really enjoyed. Shortly after we married we were invited by the U.S. Government to go on a two-month tour of the United States. We have an apartment in a complex in Eretria [a beautiful resort] on the island of Euboea, where we relaxed whenever my work would allow me to leave the city. We had no children.

In 1990 my wife and I agreed that 'enough is enough.' We made our accounts, saw the state of our financial situation and decided that I would retire. For eight years, until 1998, we had a great time, the best of our lives. Inci was very popular and on the whole I think that she enjoyed her life. Unfortunately she got cancer twice, once she had an operation and survived it for about nine years. In 1998 it moved to her liver. For a whole month she knew that she was dying. She was very, very brave until the end. I still miss her.

My father died in 1979 during his siesta, in a Kifissia hotel [an outstanding resort on the outskirts of the city of Athens]. He and Mother used to spend a month or two in this hotel every summer. He died there. The news came over the phone from my brother as we were spending the weekend at the seaside in Eretria. So we dashed back and found Mother and learned that he hadn't suffered. Still it was a great shock because his death was so sudden, although he was already 84 years old.

Father is buried in Athens in the 3rd cemetery that has a Jewish section. The community gave him an honorary place near the entrance of the cemetery. I was very impressed by the number of people who attended his funeral. There were lots of wreaths including one from King Constantine who was then living in London. When father died, I was 53 years old, and I had been married to Inci for 14 years. My mother became ill soon after Father died. She had to be taken care of until her death six years later. She is also buried in the 3rd cemetery but in a different area.

After my retirement I started looking into the genealogy of our family. I'd heard a lot of things from my father, but unfortunately he died in 1979. Had he lived, he would have spared me half the research work. I started investigating the family tree thinking that this would have been a simple affair of finding about 100 to 150 names and putting them on a tree. I thought it would be over in six months. I am still at it!

It took me ten years to research the family's origins and its different branches. So I wrote a book, 'HAMEHUNE MODILLANO -- The Genealogical Story of the Modiano Family from ~1570 to our Days.' It was first published in 2000. I made several revisions as more information kept pouring in. Now we are at the 5th edition, which is posted on the Internet at www.themodianos.gr. The tree had 1,700 names on it when the book was printed. We are now at just over 3,000 names.

Inci loved this project and the book is dedicated to her. She was thrilled every time we visited a city like Washington or London or Paris and we would gather all the Modianos of the city for dinner even if they didn't know one another. Inci loved it so much that she behaved, as I say in the book, as if she was a Modiano, not I.

Genealogy has been my main occupation for the past few years. People are constantly coming through by letter or e-mail after stumbling on the Modiano site and finding that we are related. So I keep adding and adding and I don't know when it will finish.

In January 2004 several Modianos met on a cruise in the Caribbean. There must have been about 15 of us. It was great fun. We had such a wonderful time meeting unknown relatives who became instant 'cousins.' So we decided to have a worldwide family reunion. Our Mexican Modianos organized another get-together in October of the same year and it was quite exciting. But the official worldwide reunion was held in Florence in June 2005. There were 125 Modianos or descendents of Modianos there. We spent five terrific days visiting Modigliana, the village northeast of Florence that gave us our family name. Later we visited Livorno whose citizens the Modianos had been for several centuries. We decided to hold the next reunion in Salonica in 2007. It was wonderful to get a feeling that even though you had never seen them in your whole life you knew that you were from the same family and so it was family love at first sight. I call it the Modiano magic, but I'm sure it works for other families as well.

Glossary

Peter Rabtsevich
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Bronia Borodianskaya
Date of Interview: August 2002

My father's parents lived in the town of Lyubeshov, which belonged to Poland before 1939. Lyubeshov was a small town on the bank of the Stokhod River. The population of Lyubeshov was Polish, Russian, Jewish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian. There were no national conflicts and people respected each other. There was a synagogue and a Christian church in town. Jews were mainly tradesmen and craftsmen. All tinsmiths, carpenters and tailors in Lyubeshov were Jewish.

I know very little about my grandfather and grandmother on my father's side. My grandfather's name was Shleima Rabinov. I don't know my grandmother's first name. Her maiden name was Fridman. My grandfather and grandmother both came from Lyubeshov. They had seven children.

One of my father's brothers moved to America at the beginning of World War I. After the war he brought his parents, one of his sisters and two brothers over to the US, too. My grandfather and grandmother lived in New York. I don't know when my grandfather died. My grandmother died in 1939. In 1933 my father's sister that also lived in Lyubeshov emigrated to Israel. Three brothers lived in Poland: Kiva, who lived in Pinsk, Israel, who lived in Lodz with his family and my father, Ruvin Rabinov. Only Israel survived the war. He was in evacuation in Kazakhstan with his wife and three daughters; later they all emigrated to America. We corresponded for some time with his daughter Godl, but later she stopped writing to us. That's all I know about Israel's family.

I only knew Kiva, my father's older brother. Kiva finished heder and school and moved to the town of Pogost-Zagorodskiy. He got married there. His wife, Hava, came from this town and was born in 1887. They had five children. The oldest, Yankel, was born in 1915. In 1917 their daughter Riva followed. Then came Zeyer in 1919 and Leizer in 1921. Their youngest daughter, Hana, was born in 1924. Kiva was a shoemaker, and his family was very religious observing all traditions and celebrating holidays. In 1941 the Germans came to Pogost-Zagorodskiy and shot my uncle's family, every single one of them.

My father was born in Lyubeshov in 1890. He and his brothers studied in heder and later finished trade school. My father was a cheese maker.

My mother's parents lived in Lyubeshov. My grandfather was born in Lyubeshov in 1866. I have no information about his family. He was a craftsman, but I don't know what he was exactly doing for a living. My grandmother's name was Bella Korzh. She was born in Lyubomir (near Lyubeshov) in 1868. I don't know how many children they had. My mother never told me how many brothers and sisters she had. They were a religious family. They observed all Jewish traditions. My mother told me that they celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut. My grandfather, Fishel Korzh, used to read religious books in the evening. My grandfather died in Lyubeshov in 1914; my grandmother perished in the Jewish ghetto in Pinsk on 29th October 1942.

I knew my mother's older sister Sarrah and her brother Meyer. They lived in Drogitchyn. Sarrah's family name was Popinskaya. She was a housewife. She had two daughters. I don't know what Meyer was doing for a living. I knew his daughter Bella, my cousin. They perished in the ghetto in Pinsk on 29th October 1942.

My mother, Pesia Rabinova [nee Korzh], was born in Lyubeshov in 1892. I believe my mother received religious education, because she knew Hebrew well, and Yiddish was her mother tongue. My mother finished Jewish trade school. At that time quite a few girls studied in trade school, but very few of them worked later. Most of them became housewives after they got married.

My parents got married in Lyubeshov at the very beginning of World War I. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. After the wedding the newly-weds moved into my father's parents' house. My older sister, Esther, was born in Lyubeshov in 1914 and my brother, Lev, followed in 1916. In the same year, when the Germans were retreating, they moved many families from Lyubeshov away from military operation areas. My family moved to the town of Drogitchyn. My sister Riva was born in Drogitchyn in 1921, I followed on 25th May 1923. I was named Erukhim-Fishel at birth, after my mother's father Fishel. We lived in Drogitchyn until 1924. In 1924 my father was employed by a landlord called Orgi to work on his estate in Mokraya Dubrova, Brest province. My father was a Swiss cheese maker. My younger brothers were born in Mokraya Dubrova: David in 1925 and Aron in 1927.

We were the only Jewish family on the estate. Our family observed all Jewish traditions. Once a week my parents went to the market in Pinsk to buy kosher food and stored it in a box with ice in the cellar. There was no Jewish school nearby. We had a teacher of Hebrew, religion and Jewish history and culture. My older brother completed 8 years of grammar school in Pinsk. My sister Esther also studied at the grammar school in Pinsk for 8 years.

When I was growing up the financial situation in our family got worse. My parents couldn't afford to send me and my younger brothers to grammar school. But we needed to get education somewhere. There was no school on the estate. My parents rented a room from a Jewish family in the town of Logishyn [5 km from the estate], and my brothers and I went to a (7-year) Polish school. Our landlady cooked for us and looked after us. We went to school five days a week. Jewish schoolchildren had a separate teacher of Hebrew, Jewish culture and geography of Palestine. We had these classes on Sundays. There were classes on Saturday, but my brothers and I didn't attend them. We spent Saturdays in the synagogue and had Jewish classes in our school on Sunday. Or parents wanted us to study Hebrew to be able to read the Torah, the Talmud and other sources of Jewish culture. There were about 200 Jewish families in Logishyn. There were three synagogues there, and the local Jews followed all Jewish traditions, including kashrut. There were two shochetim in town.

My parents spent all holidays in Logishyn, because the synagogue there was the closest to their house. So, we spent Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Pesach, Sukkot and Purim together. On Saturdays in summer we walked to our parents' home, on Saturdays in winter our parents visited us. My sisters and my older brother stayed at home on these days. My mother used to bring stuffed fish, challah and chicken, and we celebrated Sabbath in Logishyn. My mother lit two Sabbath candles, we said a prayer and after the prayer we welcomed 'Queen Saturday'. We left the door open to let Saturday in. We sat at the table and enjoyed the meals prepared by our mother. I remember Pesach celebrations in Logishyn. My mother came in advance to cook traditional food. We bought a lot of matzah in the synagogue. All breadcrumbs were removed from the house and burnt. My mother bought special Pesach dishes that we kept in Logishyn. We kept them in the attic, and our mother used to take them from there before Pesach. My mother cooked stuffed fish on holidays and whenever she visited us. She always took chickens to the shochet at the market in Logishyn not far from our house. She made clear soup with dumplings and stuffed chicken necks with chicken liver and fried flour. They were delicious. She also made potato and matzah puddings, sponge cakes and strudels from matzah flour.

My brother and I fasted on Yom Kippur. The children in our family began to fast when they were 5 years old. Before Sukkot our landlords' family made a sukkah in their yard, and our family also could have meals there. My mother and father came and cooked traditional food, and we had meals together with our landlord in the sukkah. At Purim my mother made hamantashen, triangle pies with poppy seeds. All children walked around with wooden rattles. Their sound was supposed to scare away the evil-doer Haman. People disguised themselves in costumes of the Purim-shpil characters: Mordecai, King Ahasuerus, Queen Esther and evil-doer Haman, of course. They walked into every Jewish house where they got small treats: sweets and some change.

I finished school in 1936 and went to study at the Jewish trade school in the town of Pinsk. Our parents rented a room for us from a Jewish family. I studied at trade school, and my brothers, David and Aron, were studying at the Sniftarbut Jewish school (this school got its name from the owner of the school, a Jew called Sniftarbut). Our older sister, Esther, moved in with us. Esther did the cooking and laundry. We kept observing all Jewish traditions that we had learned from our parents.

Jews constituted about 75% of the population in Pinsk. There were 29,000 Jews and 7,000Christians in town. People had a peaceful life. Once members of some gangs 1 arrived at the railway station in Pinsk. Their intention must have been to make a pogrom. The local cab drivers - there were Jewish, Russian and Polish people among them - didn't let them leave the station, and they had to retreat. The police didn't interfere. There were quite a few Jewish secondary schools in Pinsk. There were also two Jewish grammar schools: the Sniftarbut and the Chechik grammar school, named after its owner and director. In the Sniftarbut all subjects were taught in Hebrew - Polish was taught as a foreign language. In the Chechik grammar school all subjects were taught in Polish. It was convenient for Jewish students who wanted to continue their education in Polish universities, but there were special seats for Jewish students in Polish universities. Sitting separately from other students was disgraceful. Besides, it was very difficult for a Jew to enter university - very few Jews were admitted to higher educational institutions at the time. There was a yeshivah in Pinsk. Students had to complete their education in a higher theological school in Vilno to become rabbis. Therefore, Jews went to study abroad, either to Austria or Hungary. But only wealthier people could afford to send their children abroad.

There were a few synagogues in Pinsk. On Saturday and Jewish holidays we went to the smaller synagogue near our house. There were also a few Jewish cinemas where we could watch movies in Yiddish. I remember two movies. One of them, Der Dibuk 2 was based on religious motives. The other one, Mamele 3 was about events that happened during World War I.

My older brother, Lev, went to the army in 1934. He was recruited to a cavalry unit, but he had secondary education, so he was sent to study at a medical school. After finishing it he returned to the army and became a doctor in a cavalry unit. He stayed there until the end of his service term. My sister Riva finished a Polish lower secondary school. She didn't want to continue her studies and stayed with our parents in Mokraya Dubrova to help our mother about the house.

In 1938 landlord Orga sold his estate to farmers. There were 32 families of support staff on his estate, and they were all fired. They lost their jobs, because the new owners didn't need any support staff. Our father was among those that lost their jobs. My parents moved to Pinsk and rented a two- bedroom apartment. Riva found a job as a shop assistant at the Feldman store in the Schmidt house, the biggest store in town. My mother found a job as a seamstress. My father couldn't find a job. My mother and sister earned enough money to pay the rent and buy food for the family. I had to pay 10 zlotys monthly for my studies in the trade school, and this was a big amount for us, about one third of the family budget. My parents couldn't afford to pay for it. The Custodial Council of the school exempted me from payment of this fee because I studied very well. I had to work at the school shop during vacations in return.

In 1937 Lev returned from the army. He couldn't find a job as an assistant doctor. There were no vacancies at the medical institutions in Pinsk. He went to work at the Luriye plywood factory. He got married in 1938. His wife Haya [nee Levzina] came from Pinsk. She was a Jewish woman and a couple of years younger than Lev. She owned a small food store at the Luriye factory. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. They rented a canteen at the factory for their wedding party. They had a crew of cooks that made kosher food for the party and many guests. There was a chuppah at the wedding and a rabbi.

In 1938 my sister Esther married Abraham Warshavskiy from Pinsk. He owned a garment store. They had a traditional Jewish wedding party in a café that lasted a few days. There was a chuppah, a rabbi and klezmer musicians. There were many guests at the wedding: relatives and friends. Abram had a small apartment in the same building where he had his store, and the newly- weds moved in there. Abram worked at the store, Esther was a housewife.

There were Jewish youth Zionist organizations in Pinsk, Hashomer Haolami, Hashomer Hatzair and the Bund 4. There was one more organization, but I don't remember its name. We attended the Haolami club - it was a leftist movement. We usually attended this club on Saturday afternoons. In this club we were lectured on Jewish history. The foundation of a Jewish state was our dream. We studied and communicated in Yiddish. There was no anti- Semitism in Poland during the rule of [Jozef] Pilsudzki, the head of country, who died in 1935. There were Jewish students in all Polish schools. In 1935 two anti-Semitic organizations, Moda Polska and Ozone, were founded or probably they had existed before as underground organizations. Members of these organizations boycotted Jewish stores and Jewish institutions.

In 1938, upon the Anschluss 5, Hitler demanded the annexation of Danzig 6, and it became clear to us that war was close. In March 1939 the first mobilization to the army in Poland was announced. My older brother Lev was recruited to the army.

I finished trade school in 1939. I became an electrician. I couldn't find a job and began to assist my father in the orchard (growing apples, pears, plums and cherries). My father took care of the orchard paying a purely symbolic rental fee. We often went there on hot days to rest in the cool shade of fruit trees. My younger brothers, David and Aron, finished school. David became a shop assistant in Abraham Warshavskiy's store. We were all very concerned. The Polish authorities requested assistance from the population: contributions for the purchase of ammunition for the army, especially for air defense purposes. People began to make shelters in their gardens.

After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 7 between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, the war in Poland began. In early December trains with the wounded began to arrive in Pinsk. A hospital was arranged in the Jesuit church. Our father and we went to look for our brother in this hospital. We just thought he might happen to be among the wounded, or we just hoped to get word of him from those that might have met him at the front. Many refugees were coming to Pinsk from other districts of Poland. On 17th September 1939 the Soviet army crossed the Polish-Soviet border and on 20th September they were in Pinsk. The Polish power was suppressed. Soon all synagogues and Jewish schools, public and private, were closed. The Jewish population was happier to have the Soviet army in power than the Germans. We were aware of the German attitude towards Jews.

In November 1939 I went to work at the Western River Transport Agency. I got a job as a communications mechanic. Riva became an accountant at the Food Trade Agency. My younger brothers went to the Jewish school. They studied Yiddish as well as Russian and Belarus.

We didn't know anything about our brother Lev. He came home in 1940. He had escaped from German captivity and walked as far as Brest. He was kept in the Brest fortress for over a month while the Soviet military collected all necessary information about him. They released him and he came home. His wife, Haya, gave birth to their daughter Dina shortly afterwards. Lev went to work at the town hospital and studied at the Medical College in Pinsk.

In 1941 the Soviet authorities began to deport wealthier families to Siberia 8. Refugees from Poland were also 'hostile elements' and deported to Siberia in their majority. By 21st June 1941, 900 families of refugees remained in Pinsk.

The last time our family was together was on 22nd June 1941 9. This was the first day of the war. On this day only the husband of Abraham's sister was away. He was summoned to the military training course at the Brest fortress. Riva came to visit us on this day. She worked as a planner on the field aerodrome construction site. Lev was summoned to the military registration office, Riva went back to work and so did I. There was no certainty about what was going to happen. Panic started in town on the night of 24th June. It was caused by the explosion of the gunpowder storage facilities of the former Polish Infantry Regiment 84. People started running across the bridge to the right bank of the Pina River in the direction of David-Gorodok. My brothers and I also left town. On the 3rd day we reached the former Soviet-Polish border, but we didn't have pass permits and the Soviet military didn't let us cross it. We returned to Pinsk. I went back to work. The management left Pinsk on a truck on 24th June. The commandant of the Dnieper Fleet was the only authority left in town.

The Germans entered Pinsk and their major goal was to exterminate all Jews. 30 Jewish men were shot in Pinsk on the first day of occupation. One of them was a barber from Logishyn. He fell in the pit and the Germans thought he was dead. After the Germans left he got out of the pit and returned home. In 1942, when this man was in the ghetto, a German policeman found a piece of bread that he had with him, when returning to the ghetto from work, and shot him.

On 9th August 1941, 10,000 Jewish men were shot in Pinsk. The youngest were 6 year-old boys. My brothers David and Aron were among the ones shot on this day. I survived, because when the Germans came to our house I was in the toilet in the yard. My father also survived hiding in the attic. He was hiding because on 7th August the German commandant of Pinsk issued an order saying that all unemployed Jews had to come to the railway station to be sent to work. On 8th August a few hundred men went to the station. They were taken to a potato field and shot. A few people survived and returned to town. The news spread very fast, and on 9th August nobody went to the railway station. The Germans swooped on the town, and captives were shot in the woods near the village of Kozliakovichi. On the same day the Germans demanded that Jews turn in their gold, silver and copper. They stated that if they didn't do it the result would be a second round of shooting.

When the Germans arrived in town I was offered to resume my former job. They probably didn't have a replacement. I continued working as a communications mechanic at the River Transport Agency. Our manager, Malinovskiy, employed three more Jews called Botvinnik, Epshtein and Radkevich. The four of us survived the shooting on 9th August 1941. In September the town council in Pinsk issued yellow German identity cards, with a stamp reading 'Jew' on the front page, to all Jews.

Jewish people could stay in their apartments, but they weren't allowed to walk on pavements, talk to non-Jewish men or go to the market. On 1st May 1942 we were taken to the fenced ghetto. Zavalnaya, Logishynskaya, Gorky and Sovietskaya streets formed the borderline of this ghetto, fencing about 250 buildings within the ghetto. The Jewish cemetery was also within the ghetto. Our family lived in a 6 square meter room in the ghetto. There were six of us: my father, my mother, my sister Esther, her husband Abraham Warshavskiy, their daughter, who was born in 1939, and I. Abraham had escaped from German captivity in Czechoslovakia and returned to Pinsk in December 1941.

Conditions in the ghetto were terrible. Those who worked were allowed to leave the ghetto and they could exchange their clothing for food. It was forbidden to bring food into the ghetto. If the policemen found any food at the entrance gate they shot people immediately. It wasn't allowed to walk in the ghetto before 7am. If somebody went out to fetch some water from the pump before 7am he was shot. People in the ghetto ate anything they could find and many of them, especially older people and children, were dying from dysentery, dystrophy and other diseases. Initially there were about 28,000 people in the ghetto. Many Jews came to Pinsk from surrounding towns and villages trying to escape from shootings and thus increasing the number of the Jewish population.

There were weekly supplies of bread to the ghetto. Employed Jews received 200 grams, children 120 grams, and those who didn't go to work 80 grams of bread. But anyway, the bread they supplied was only sufficient for 150-200 families, and there were over 3,000 families there.

In May 1942 a new manager was appointed at the Department of River Transport in Pinsk. His name was Gunter Krull. My supervisor sent me to his office to do some work. All inmates in the ghetto were wearing round yellow cloth sewn on the front and back of our clothes. We had the stamps of our offices on these yellow pieces that served as our identity cards. I came to Krull's office, and he told me to remove the yellow pieces. He said I wasn't to be humiliated by wearing them. I explained to him that it was my identity card, and that I couldn't remove it because I might be shot. Then Krull told me to take off my over-clothes while working in his office. He also asked me about my family. I told him about our life conditions; that we were paid 50% of what we were earning at work and that we weren't allowed to go to the canteen. On the following day Botvinnik, Radkevich and I received coupons for meals at the canteen. Once a week a German soldier escorted us to the ghetto so that we could take some food there. It was nice of Gunter Krull to help us.

In August 1942 rumors about the extermination of the Jewish population spread. Krull told me that he wanted to rescue us, but that he didn't yet know how to do it. He told me about his family. His father was a surgeon in Berlin, and his brother was a surgeon in the German army. Krull told me that he helped his two Jewish friends to leave Berlin and that he wished he could rescue all Jews, but that it was impossible.

In September 1942 Corporal Frioff brought his maintenance crew to Pinsk from Kiev. Krull asked Frioff to pull strings for me and ask communication manager Shtoide to employ me in Kiev. Frioff knew that I was a Jew. Our company, Field Department of Water Transport, could send us to do work in smaller towns, but Krull thought that I would have better chances to 'get lost' in a bigger town.

It was so hard to tell my mother that Krull was going to rescue me, that I had an opportunity to survive. At last, when I mustered the courage to ask my mother what she thought about this possibility she said, 'We are clutching at straws. Go for it. If you survive you have to tell the others what these rascals did to us'. My mother packed a few photographs, some underwear, a towel and a spoon. I took this package to work. Every night the Germans took 300 hostages. They also shot a whole family and all hostages, if one member of the family didn't return from work to the ghetto. Therefore, I couldn't leave Pinsk. There was a synagogue in the ghetto where we celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Nobody went to work on these days. We all prayed because we knew that this was probably our last holiday together.

Krull issued me a night-shift permit to enable me to leave the ghetto at night. I had an excuse to work night-shift. Power was turned on at night, and my responsibility was to charge the electric power accumulator. I worked about ten night shifts. Throughout this period I returned home in the morning and said farewell to my family every night before going to work. At about 5am, on the morning of 29th October, I heard gunshots and dogs barking. The ghetto was located about 800 meters from where I worked. Krull took me to his home.

I stayed in Krull's house from 29th October till 22nd November. On 22nd November we received a letter from the Field Department of River Transport No. 2 requesting me to come to work there. Krull gave me an identity card, which had the name Peter Rabtsevich and a different place of birth on it. I also had my business certificate saying that I had to go to Kiev to see Shtoide. Krull told me to go in a carriage for Germans and stay at waiting rooms for Germans at the railway stations. I wasn't supposed to ask the way to my office in Kiev. And what was most important - I wasn't to avoid the police. My life was in his hands now. He told me that the ghetto in Pinsk had been eliminated on 29th October. All inmates were taken to the village of Galevo [5 km from Pinsk] and shot. My mother, my father, my sister Esther, her husband Abraham and their daughter Gita, my brother Lev's wife Haya and their daughter Dina were killed on that day. My family, my acquaintances and my life perished along with them.

In the evening of 22nd November 1942 Krull saw me off to the railway station, and I boarded a train to Brest. I arrived in Kiev on 28th November and spent my first night at the railway station. The police first didn't allow me to stay in the waiting room for Germans. I addressed the gendarmerie showing them my identity card, and they allowed me to stay in the waiting room. In the morning I went to the office of my company. The guard showed me into Shtoide's office. Shtoide allowed me to come in and sit on the sofa. I fell asleep right away because I hadn't slept for six nights.

Shtoide, Krull's acquaintance, woke me up at 9am and took me to the staff administration of Field Department No. 2 in Podol 10. I went to the human resources office to have my employment documentation processed. The human resources manager said that it was bad that they were sending employees in the Eastern direction when they were supposed to be sending them to the West. I told her that I came where my job assignment was and if she needed further clarification she should address Mr. Shtoide. I obtained my identity card and was told to go to the employment office to obtain my work certificate. Officials there started asking me questions about me being sent to the East. I addressed a German man. I spoke German with no accent. I also had fluent Polish and Russian. I didn't look like a Jew either. The German ordered them to issue my work certificate. This work certificate served as a permit to stay in town. Every Saturday they stamped it, and if the police stopped somebody to check his work certificate and there was no stamp for the previous week this person was subject to go to work in Germany.

I settled down in a hostel. I needed to have a passport to obtain my residence permit. Krull had foreseen this and said that he had my passport in the office in Pinsk and would mail it, if necessary, but I knew that my passport had been burnt in Krull's stove. The authorities in Kiev sent a request for my passport to be mailed. Krull wrote them a letter saying that he had done that already. After a month I received a certificate at work saying that my passport had been lost. On the basis of this certificate and the documents that Krull gave me in Pinsk, I received a passport under the name of Peter Romanovich Rabtsevich, nationality Russian, at the Podol Department.

In May 1943 I turned 20. Young people of this age were to be sent to work in Germany. The problem was that I had to undergo a medical check-up. I was circumcised and just couldn't have them find out that I was a Jew. I spent a few hours at the employment office and noticed that quite a few young people told the commission that they had no health problems and volunteered to go to Germany. I decided to do the same. They told me to show my hands and feet, checked my eyes and issued all necessary documents for me to go to Germany. This was all I needed. These documents were a permit to stay in Kiev, because my work at Field Department No. 2 released me from the obligation to go to Germany. Krull supported me in Kiev in 1943. Corporal Frioff once brought me a pack of matches; I could exchange one box of matches for half a loaf of bread. In 1943 Krull came to Kiev and we saw each other in a place where nobody would notice us. We saw each other from a distance standing on the opposite sites of a street.

I only had winter clothes when I came to Kiev. When summer approached Frioff bought me shoes for 400 karbovantsy. It was a lot of money for me. My salary was 700 karbovantsy. I received a meal at the canteen six days a week. I also received one loaf of bread made from millet bran a week. It was impossible to eat this bread when it turned stale.

In August 1943, along with the retreat of the Germans, Field Department No. 2 evacuated from Kiev. They offered me to evacuate with them. There was panic in the city. I was captured during a German raid on the way from the hostel to work. All captives were escorted to the railway station to be sent to Germany. I stayed at the railway station overnight, and in the morning I showed my documents to a German military telling him where I worked and that I was going to evacuate with my company. They let me go. I came to work, but there was nobody left - everybody had evacuated.

In August 1943 I went around the surrounding villages looking for work and food. On 6th November 1943 Kiev was liberated. I returned to the city and went to work at the Dneprovskoye Military Water Transport Department. I had to submit my CV and questionnaire to get employed. I wrote my true story and told the human resources manager that I wanted to get my real name back. His name was Rodman, and he was a Jew. He said that he understood and sympathized with me, but that he couldn't do anything about it. He told me to address the prosecutor's office or the militia. I went to the Water Transport prosecutor's office. They told me that if I changed my name at that time it would mean that I wanted to conceal my past and that I might be arrested. In November I was to be recruited to the army, but my work in the transport system released me from my service duty.

In 1944 Pinsk was liberated. I wrote a letter to our acquaintances in Kovnyatin village. My brother Lev also wrote a letter to this village from the army. He served at the 2nd Belarus front. We found each other and felt better from a moral point of view. We wrote to each other. My brother was wounded on his lung and sent to a hospital in Moscow. There he met a nurse that was looking after him. Her name was Tamara. She came from Moscow and was half-Russian, half-Georgian. They got married. In 1959 Tamara gave birth to a girl. After the war Lev graduated from the Moscow Medical Institute and worked as a doctor. He was a surgeon in Balashyha. He died in March 2001. His daughter and her family live in Balashyha.

Tamara had relatives in Kiev. In 1944 she came to Kiev to meet me, and when she saw me she insisted that I moved in with her relatives. I stayed with them over five years until I got married. I got married on 31st December 1949. I met my future wife, Evgenia Siderman, at work. She was a Jew and worked as an accountant. Evgenia was born in Kiev in 1926. She finished lower secondary school and an accounting school. Her father came from Rzhyschev. His father died before the revolution when my wife's father was in his teens. He became a clerk at the Crystal store. Evgenia's mother came from Mogilyov. Evgania's grandfather died when she was a child, and her grandmother gave her children to her relatives. My mother-in-law happened to live at her aunt's in Kiev. She finished Jewish trade school. My wife's parents got married when they were young. They had three children. Their older son Ilia perished in the Babi Yar 11. His wife was Polish and she convinced him to stay at home rather than run away. The Germans shot them both. My wife's older sister moved to Israel with her family in the 1990s. Evgenia and her parents were in evacuation in Kazakhstan during the war. They returned to Kiev in August 1944. Evgenia was a Komsomol 12 activist and secretary of the Komsomol unit. Later she was elected chairman of the audit commission of the Podolsk district Komsomol committee.

We didn't have a wedding party - life was too hard at the time. I moved in with my wife. Later I received a room in a communal apartment. There were two other families living there, Russians, but we got along very well. Our daughter, Polina, was born in 1952. We named her after my mother. In 1959 I received a two-bedroom apartment. There were two rooms, a kitchen and a shower, located in the kitchen. Our son, Ilia, was born in this apartment in 1959. He was named after my wife's brother who was killed at the Babi Yar. After our daughter was born my wife quit her job. When our youngest child went to school she went to work as an accountant at the kindergarten department of the river port.

From 1944 there was only one synagogue left in Podol. Almost all Jews came to the synagogue to pray on holidays. They crowded in the street at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There was a radio installed in the synagogue and people outside could hear the singing and praying. In 1946 the authorities closed this radio office, but people still crowded near the synagogue. Many people didn't have prayer books, but they wanted to pay tribute to the past and remember that they were Jews.

There were no Jewish schools after the war. The only place where Hebrew was taught was the Christian theological school in St. Andrew's Church. Its students studied Hebrew to be able to read holy books in the original language. There was a group of students officially studying Hebrew at the university. It wasn't allowed to study Hebrew or Yiddish at home. If somebody at work or educational institutions had found out anything about it, it might have resulted in problems, including firing. The only magazine issued in Yiddish was the Birobidyan Heymland, the Land of Birobidjan 13, that described the happy life of the Jews in the USSR. I read this magazine throughout all those years just to remember the language. Jewish theaters were closed. There was a Jewish singer, Tamara Hanum, but she vanished later. In 1950 I went to the concert of Alexandrovich, a Lithuanian Jew. He sang Jewish songs. The media called him a cantor and propagandist of Zionism.

There were many Jews in our navigation office. Zhelezniak, a Jew, was first deputy director of our office until the fight against cosmopolites 14 began. He was appointed by the Moscow management, but the Ukrainian central committee never approved the position. About ten other supervisors in our office were Jewish.

In 1948 the struggle against cosmopolites began. It was similar to German nazism to me. Many Jews lost their managing positions, but they stayed at their workplaces as deputy managers or got lower positions. Many writers and artists took pseudonyms because they were Jews. There were publications in newspapers revealing their actual names and stating that they were doing a lot of harm to the Soviet state by working under pseudonyms. In 1953 the Doctors' Plot 15 began. The wife of the Minister of Health at the time was a Jewish woman, and he lost his job because he didn't want to denounce and leave her.

Our human resources manager, Platonov, had a Jewish wife, too. He told me that he was summoned to the party committee. They told him to divorce his wife if he wanted to keep his position. He refused to leave his family and was fired. He moved to Novosibirsk and worked as a lecturer at the River Institute. Later he became Rector, and then Dean at the Leningrad Institute of Water-Transport Engineers. This was the third time I faced anti-Semitism in my life: the first time was polonization and open anti-Semitism, the second time was the public extermination of Jews by the Germans, and the third time was Soviet anti-Semitism.

Children of our friends and acquaintances had studied well at school, but they were not admitted to higher educational institutions. The nationality in my passport was 'Russian' until 1959, but I never concealed the fact that I was a Jew. In my birth certificate that was reissued I legalized the name of Rabtsevich because this name saved my life. In my passport I have the name of Peter Ruvinovich Rabtsevich, a Jew.

In March 1953 Stalin died. People were crying, because their 'father' had passed away. They were feeling confused and uncertain about their future. But life became easier. While Stalin was alive all managers had to stay late at work. Meetings sometimes lasted until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. But Khruschev 16 changed this procedure and fixed an 8-hour working day. After Stalin died doctors were rehabilitated. The rehabilitation of political prisoners also began. Khrushchev denounced the cult of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress 17.

I have always valued my past. I have never forgotten that I'm a Jew. I have always celebrated Jewish holidays, although they were always working days, and it was impossible to go to the synagogue in the afternoon. I always went to the synagogue in the evening after work. On the Jahrzeit of the death of my family I went to the synagogue before work to order mourning prayers. There were 33 members in my family. And there are only three survivors: my brother Lev, my sister Riva and I.

After the war I worked as a technician, then I became a site manager, and later I was promoted to the position of a leading engineer. I studied at the Communications Faculty of the Kiev Institute of Water-Transport Engineers by correspondence. I graduated in 1959 and received my diploma. I developed some technical ideas, and my work was displayed at the Exhibition of Achievements of Public Economy in Moscow and Kiev. I developed a radio facility that allowed contacting any telephone from a boat. Other improvements were related to automated telephone stations and long distance communication lines. I had a high salary and regular bonuses. Besides, I didn't have to buy clothes because I wore a military uniform at work.

The attitude towards those that were under occupation during the war was prejudiced. It was particularly difficult for Jews because people believed that if a Jew survived it was because he cooperated with the fascists. The first question people often asked was: 'How did you survive?'. I faced this attitude many times, especially from my supervisors. I didn't try to explain how I survived. I was a highly qualified employee and paid no attention to any abuse. When Pinsk was liberated I sent a request to the management for my transfer to Pinsk, but they declined.

My brother and I found our sister Riva in 1950. She lived in Priluki, Chernigov region. During the war Riva was a combat engineer. She was in Berlin at the end of the war, and after the war her military unit was transferred to Novocherkassk in the Caucasus. After the war Riva took part in the mine clearing of the Black Sea coast. While in the army Riva married her fellow military Kotov, a Russian man. Upon demobilization her husband got a job assignment with the district party committee in Priluki, and Riva became a controller at the local bank in town. She studied at the Belostok Business College by correspondence and became an accountant. Her husband went on business to Moscow and got Lev's address in the military party archives. He met Lev, and my brother informed me by cable that Riva had been found. My wife and I went to Priluki. My sister had two sons and four grandchildren. She died in February 2002. Her older son died in 2000. Her younger son is a retired colonel and lives in Krasnoyarsk.

My daughter, Polina, graduated from the Electric Engineering Faculty at the Institute of Water-Transport Engineers. She is an engineer at the Glavrechflot design office. My son, Ilia, finished the Kiev River School and works at the navigation agency. My children weren't raised Jewish, but they identify themselves as Jews and feel proud of it. I worked in the river transport for over 50 years and my wife for over 30 years. I retired in 1990, my wife retired a few years before.

My son and daughter are married. My son has four children: two sons and two daughters. My older grandson is 22. He is married and has a daughter. My daughter has two sons: Vladislav and Vladimir Khmelnitskiy. Her older son cannot find a job. Vladimir studies at the Design Faculty of the Light Industry Academy. He's a good artist.

In recent years Jewish life has revived. We celebrate Jewish holidays in our family. Of course, it's different from how our parents celebrated them. It's difficult to buy kosher food. Besides, we are getting old, but we try to have traditional celebrations. I go to the synagogue, but it's difficult for me to walk. Hesed helps us a lot. I like to read Jewish newspapers and magazines.

Every year we go to Pinsk, where our dear ones are buried. Our children and grandchildren know the history of our family. I told them about the man that rescued me. My son goes to Pinsk every year. I couldn't go there last year due to my illness, and he went alone. There are graves of three families related to us.

I have always tried to find my rescuer. I even wrote to the Embassy of Germany, but there were no results. I was trying to find Krull, Frioff and Shtoide but the officials replied that Germans had never rescued Jews, and our officials told me that it was 'politically incorrect' to be looking for a German friend.

In 1996 inmates from ghettos in Warsaw and Krakow invited Jewish ghetto and camp inmates from Kiev to visit their towns. This visit was sponsored by the Maximilian Kolbe Werk. [This is a German charity organization supporting former concentration camp prisoners and trying to bring about reconciliation.] I was in one of the groups. In Warsaw we were met by the representatives of the Polish ghetto inmates and Margaret and Werner Muller, a German couple from Cologne. I talked to the Mullers about my rescuer and asked them if they could help me find him or his relatives. I also told them that there were two more rescuers that had helped me. It was difficult to speak German. I hadn't spoken it for 54 years, and the German I spoke was closer to Yiddish.

On 14th November 1996 the Mullers called me from Cologne and said that they had received some information from the military archives. Krull died at the age of 62 in 1979. Shtoide was missing. Krull's wife Christine and their daughter Janine knew that Krull had rescued a certain Rabinov in the ghetto in Pinsk and wanted to meet with me. Margaret and Werner Muller sponsored my wife's and my trip to Germany. We stayed with the Mullers in Cologne, and they paid all our expenses. We visited the grave of Krull in Dusseldorf, and his wife Christine Krull. We met Krull's daughter Janine in Dusseldorf. I told her about the children of the ghetto who knew that they were going to die. We both cried. In 1997 my story was placed in the Yad Vashem museum 18 in Jerusalem. On 10th January 1999 my German rescuer, Gunter Krull, was awarded the title of the Righteous Among the Nations' 19 posthumously. On 3rd February 2002 Werner Muller found Hans-Joachim Shtoide, who had supported me in Kiev at the request of Gunter Krull. I talked with him on the phone. The first thing he said was how glad he was that I survived.

Muller wrote a book about my rescuers. It was published in German and Belarus. [The German version of the book was published by the Dittrich Verlag, Cologne, under the title Aus dem Feuer gerissen. Die Geschichte des Pjotr Ruwinowitsch Rabzewitsch aus Pinsk in 2001.] I think that this book is a monument to my family and to all Jews of Pinsk exterminated in the ghetto, a condemnation of fascism and a monument to Gunter Krull, Mr. Shtoide, corporal Frioff and to my dear friends Margaret and Werner Muller, who dedicated five years of their lives to find my rescuers.

Regretfully, I haven't been in Israel, but I do hope to have a chance to go to this holy land. I hope that politicians will be wise enough to put an end to fighting and establish peace in this country.

Glossary

Életrajz

Szép, új építésű lakás az Újlipótvárosban. Ide már egyedül költözött Imre bácsi, feleségét több évi betegség után, három éve temette el. Neki akarta ezt a napfényes lakást, amiben, ahogy mondani szokás, egy élet munkája van. A 83 éves külkereskedő nyugdíjba vonulása után is igen aktívan dolgozott, a rendszerváltás előnyeit kihasználva, privát irodát vezetett egészen addig, amíg felesége betegsége olyan stádiumba nem ért, hogy mellette maradt.

Egy férfi nehezebben él egyedül, mint egy asszony. Imre bácsi megpróbálja, hogy napjainak rendszeres időbeosztása, ritmusa legyen. Érdeklődik a politika, a mindennapok eseményei iránt, és tanulja az interneten való keresgélést. Lányai minden este felhívják, az idősebbik Németországból, a fiatalabbik, aki egy közeli utcában lakik, onnan.

Beszélgetésünk és az interjú feldolgozása között néhány hónap telt el. És egy hirtelen döntés következtében Imre bácsi összecsomagolt, elhagyta nagy gonddal berendezett lakását – egy idősek otthonát választotta. Lett egy szép kis apartmanja, teljes ellátása, orvosi felügyelete – és talán a mindennapokban társasága.

1921. december 16-án születtem Budapesten. A család eredetéről a 18. századból vannak ismereteim. A családunk ősét a Felvidékről II. József király [A (kalapos) király, uralkodott 1780–1790 között. – A szerk.] hívta az udvarába, ott volt udvari rabbi, úgy hívták, hogy Nátán – és akkor kapta a királytól a Natonek nevet. Azóta a család Natonek.

Dédapám, Natonek József rabbi volt. Az ország különböző helyein lakott, ahol éppen szükség volt rabbira, ahova kinevezték. Nagy cionista volt – vagy tán az első cionista. Herzl az ő tanítványaként kezdte a működését. Natonek József  Kömlődön született 1818-ban [1813-ban], és Bátorban halt meg 1892-ben [Kömlőd – Komárom vm.-ben lévő nagyközség, 1891-ben 800 főnél alig több lakossal; Bátor – kisközség, Heves vm., 1891-ben  600 lakos, kőszénbánya. – A szerk.]. Életében sokfelé utazott, többek között Zágrábban és Nikolsburgban [Morvaország] tanult, rabbi diplomáját Pozsonyban szerezte. Előbb Nagysurányban volt az iskola vezetője, azután Jászberényben rabbi [Nagysurány – nagyközség Nyitra vm.-ben,  1891-ben 4600 lakossal; Jászberény – rendezett tanácsú város Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok vm.-ben, lakóinak száma 1891-ben 24 300 fő (3%-uk tartozott az izraelita felekezethez). A 19. század végén szolgabírói hivatal, közjegyzőség, járásbíróság és adóhivatal székhelye.  Kir. főgimnázium és iparos iskola működött a városban.  – A szerk.]. Amikor 1857-ben a király, Ferenc József látogatást tett Jászberényben, ő magyar nyelvű szónoklattal üdvözölte. 1861 és 1867 között székesfehérvári főrabbi volt, ahol a hitközség színvonalát nagyon emelte. Később önként lemondott, hogy életét a zsidóság Palesztinába való visszatérésének szentelje.

Natoneket ma már úgy tekintik, mint a legrégibb tudatos cionistát Herzl előtt. Az országban sok helyütt találkozhatott Herzllel, mert Herzl is és a dédapám is járta az országot. A gyakorlatban nem akarta megvalósítani a Palesztinába való azonnali visszatérést, de az eszméit mindenhol hirdette, és ezért Párizsban az Alliance-szal is kapcsolatba került, Londonban pedig Montefiore-ral beszélt. Később Konstantinápolyba utazott, ahol a nagyvezírrel tárgyalt, aki annyira tisztelte őt, hogy udvari hordszéket és díszkíséretet küldött érte az érkezésekor.

Kidolgozta a szentföldi kolonizáció tervét, amiről tárgyalt a török császárral, arról, hogy valahol Izraelben, tehát Palesztinába visszamenve, a zsidók egy új államot alapítsanak. Ő ugyan abszolút magyar volt, mert a Felvidéken született, ami akkor még Magyarország volt, mégis azt javasolta a zsidóságnak – a magyar zsidóságnak elsősorban –, hogy vándoroljanak ki Palesztinába, alapítsanak ott egy államot. Ismeretes, hogy ez akkor még nem sikerült. Natonek fő érdeme, hogy az Alliance és Rothschild [Neves zsidó bankárcsalád – A szerk.] a palesztinai kolonizálás gondolatát az ő közreműködése nyomán valósították meg. [Munkásságáról legutóbb a HVG 2005/22. számának 72–74. oldalán olvashatunk Schweitzer András tollából, „Natonek József, az elfeledett őscionista. Magyar messiás” címmel. – A szerk.]

Amikor gégesorvadást kapott, Budapestre költözött. Gyógyulásáért minden törökországi zsinagógában imádkoztak. Budapesten Wahrmannal [lásd: Wahrmann Mór] kötött barátságot. 1870-től Budapesten szerkesztette a „Das einige Israel” című hetilapot, amely az első cionista lapnak mondható [Sokan ezt tekintik az első német nyelvű cionista lapnak. A lap, amely 1872-ben indult, mindössze hét számot ért meg. – A szerk.].

A dédapám nagy irodalmár is volt. Amellett, hogy tanította a vallási dolgokat, tudományos művei is voltak. Kezemben van az életrajza és a munkásságáról szóló anyag, amit dr. Frenkel Bernát rabbi – a nagybátyám, apám sógora – készített róla. Frenkel Bernát, amikor a háború után kivándorolt Izraelbe [Akkor még: Palesztina], eredetileg ivrit nyelven jelentette meg Tel-Avivban ezt a tanulmányt. Haláláig próbálta bebizonyítani és elfogadtatni, hogy a zsidók államának megálmodója és ennek következtében megalapítója Natonek József volt, de ezt Herzl ellenében már nem sikerült megváltoztatni. A könyv magyarul is megjelent „Natonek József, az első politikai cionista élete és művei” címmel, halálának hatvanadik évfordulójára. Ebben válogatott fejezeteket közölt Natonek főművéből, a Messiásból.

Natonek a Messiást [eredetileg: Mesiás – A szerk.] álnéven írta és jelentette meg Budán, 1861-ben a Magyar Királyi Egyetemi Nyomdából a következőképpen:

MESIÁS avagy Értekezés a zsidó emáncipátióról.
Zsidónak s kereszténynek egyaránt kedvező tanulmánya.
Írta: Ábir Amiéli igazhitű izraelita

Dédapám 1892-ben halt meg Bátor községben. Egy izraeli újságban, 1999-ben megjelent cikk szerint Natonek József sírja nagyon elhanyagolt. Ezt megírták nekem. Elhatároztam, hogy rendbe hozatom. Még az év szeptemberében fölvettem a kapcsolatot a hitközséggel, és segítséget kértem. Így az új sír elkészítési költségének a felét megkaptam tőlük, a másik felét pedig megosztva fizettük, az izraeli unokabátyám, Frenkel Bernát fia, Miklós és én.

Dédapámnak több gyermeke volt. Nem ismertem őket, csak a nagyapámat, Natonek Dezső Dávidot. A Felvidékről, Martosról jött Budapestre [Martos – nagyközség volt Komárom vm.-ben, 1910-ben 1300 lakossal. Trianon után Csehszlovákiához került. – A szerk.]. Még Martoson házasodott, a gyerekek zöme is ott született, talán csak a legutolsó, Natonek József született már Budapesten. Heten voltak eredetileg testvérek, de kettő meghalt.

A nagyszüleim a Teleki téren laktak, vallásosak voltak. A nagyapám egy jelentős magyar–osztrák biztosítónak volt a vezető munkatársa Budapesten, egészen nyugdíjazásáig. Nem tudom, mikor ment nyugdíjba. Aránylag hamar haltak el. Nagyanyám 1927-ben, nagyapám 1929-ben. Én még nagyon gyerek voltam akkor, a temetésre ki se vittek. De amikor a süve ülés volt dr. Frenkel Bernátéknál [rabbi, a nagypapa veje], akkor jelen voltam. Tehát emlékezetes volt.

Nagyapám szigorú volt az unokáihoz. Gyakran voltunk náluk a hétvégén. A szombat délutánokat meg a vasárnapokat általában vagy náluk töltöttük, vagy az ugyanabban a házban lakó Frenkel Bernátéknál, akinek a felesége volt Natonek Matild, Dezső Dávidnak a lánya. Akkor együtt volt az egész nagycsalád. Majdnem mindig Frenkel Bernátéknál. Ott voltak az ünnepek is, ő tartotta a Ros Hasónét [Ros Hásáná], a Jam Kipert [Jom Kipur], a Szükeszt [Szukot], építettek sátrat a házuk erkélyére.

A nagymamáról keveset tudok. Érdekes módon nincsenek emlékeim, vagy azért, mert nagyon csendes volt, vagy mert én hat éves voltam, amikor meghalt. Nagyapámról már több emlékem van. Nemcsak azért, mert két évvel később halt meg, hanem azért is, mert ebben a két évben már iskolába jártam, tehát valamelyest okosodtam. Nagyapám dominánsabb volt, és ha jól tudom, nagyanyámmal unokatestvérek voltak. Igen. Hát erről általában hallgattak, később tudtam csak meg. De nem született beteg gyerek tőlük. Mind nagyon stramm ember volt.

Első gyermekük volt Natonek Sándor, aki 1879-ben született, és 1971-ben halt meg, kilencvenkét éves korában. Ő az Országos Hitelvédő Egyletnek volt a szakértője [A rosszhiszemű adósok visszaélése miatti panaszok orvoslására a kormány 1926-ban rendelettel szabályozta a csődön kívüli kényszeregyezséget, és a kereskedőknél és iparosoknál a bírói eljárás előtt elrendelte magánegyezség megkísérlését. E célból létrehozták az Országos Hitelvédő Egyletet (OHE), illetőleg a Vidéki Kamarai Hitelvédő Egyleteket (VHE). Az OHE a Budapesti Kereskedelmi és iparkamara állandó ellenőrzése mellett működött. – A szerk.]. Gyakran elhívott, hogy segítsek neki az adminisztratív munkák elvégzésében, így sokat tanultam tőle a kereskedelmi dolgokból. Konkrétan nem tudom, milyen iskolákat járt, de biztos felsőfokút, mert a szakértők között az egyik legmagasabb rangú volt a cégnél, ami akkor is már állami cég volt. Felesége Stux Margit, akinek ő volt a második férje. Stux Margitnak egy lánya volt, akit ő fölnevelt, és férjhez adott. A háború után kimentek Amerikába.

A következő testvér, Natonek Jolán háziasszony volt. Tudomásom szerint semmiféle szakmát nem tanult ki. Nagyon kedveltem, és ő is engem. A szilvesztereket általában velük töltöttük. A férje, Fischer Lajos árukihordó volt. Egy lányuk volt, Márta. 1948–49 táján az egész család kiment Izraelbe, Haifán, illetve Cfaton laktak. Márta tartotta el a szüleit. Persze már meghaltak a szülők is, a lányuk is. Mártának két lánya van, Tova és Eszter. Tovának van öt lánya. Most adja férjhez a negyediket. Itt van nálam az esküvői meghívó, de sajnos nem tudok kimenni az esküvőre. Eszterrel szintén tartom a kapcsolatot, ha Izraelben vagyok, akkor természetesen fel is keresem. Ott három gyerek van, egy fiú, két lány. Igen jól megvannak. Amíg Tova és az egész családja szélsőségesen vallásos, addig Eszter egyáltalában nem volt az, semmilyen ünnepet nem tartott. De a testvérek imádták egymást.

Korban következő testvér az édesapám volt. Utána született Natonek Matild, akinek a férje dr. Frenkel Bernát rabbi volt, aki a budapesti Zsidó Gimnáziumban tanított hittant. Itt kell megjegyeznem, hogy ő tartotta a családban a zsidó vallás iránti nagy elkötelezettséget. Minden nagyünnepen a saját lakásában istentiszteletet tartott az egész család részére, ami harminc emberből állt. Külön Tórája volt, természetesen tóraszekrénnyel. Mi, gyerekek tulajdonképpen tőle tanultuk a zsidó vallási előírásokat.

Internátusuk volt a Stefánia úton, ahol vidékről jött gyerekeket neveltek. Az első lányuk Szendi (Szerén, héber neve: Ráhel), gyermeknevelő volt ugyanitt. Miklós (Mordeháj) fiuk zenész volt, 1939-ben cionistaként Izraelbe ment, ott kertészként dolgozott, 1999-ben halt meg. Vele erősen tartottam a kapcsolatot. Ha Izraelben voltam, akkor náluk aludtam. Egyszer volt Budapesten a feleségével, a Margit-szigeten laktak. A feleségével ma is tartom a kapcsolatot. Anna lányuk külön ment ki menekülthajóval Izraelbe, ő sem él már. Andor fiuk rabbi lett, Londonban élt és halt meg. Chava (Éva) lányuk ma is él Haifán. Férje dr. Zvé Kedmi rabbi, magyar származású.

Frenkel Bernáték egy-két évvel a háború befejezése után mentek ki Izraelbe [Akkor még: Palesztina; Izrael állam 1948-ban alakult meg. – A szerk. ], és ott is haltak meg. Matild 1962-ben, Bernát 1961-ben. Frenkel Bernát Izraelben is sokat publikált az ottani magyar és ivrit újságokban is Natonek Józsefről, de nem nagyon fogadták el azt az érvelését, hogy tulajdonképpen ő volt Palesztina, a későbbi Izrael elképzelője.

A legfiatalabb gyerek Natonek József volt, aki 1944-ben a nyilasok áldozata lett. A Dunába ölték kicsi fiával együtt [lásd: zsidók Dunába lövése]. A svájci védettség alatt álló Katona József utca 41 harmadik emeleti lakásának egyik ablaka a Dunára nézett. Véletlenül onnan láttuk, amikor a nagybátyámat a fiával együtt a Dunába ölték. Ez a látvány a zsidó vallásba vetett hitünket alapjaiban rázta meg. Nagybátyám a Hitelbank egyik osztályának az igazgatója volt. Felső iskolát járt, azt hiszem, egyetemet. 1939-ben, az érettségim után a Hitelbankban akart elhelyezni, de akkor már a zsidótörvény [lásd: zsidótörvények Magyarországon] miatt nem kerülhettem be. Nagy összeköttetés révén sikerült a Hitelbank egyik ügyfelénél, a STAR Kendőgyárban mint szövőinast elhelyeznie. A felesége, Aranka otthon volt, a gyereket nevelte. Aranka a svájci védett házban [lásd: védett ház] halt meg, betegségben.

Az anyai nagyszülőkkel sokkal mélyebb volt a kapcsolatom, mert mi, gyerekek minden nyarat náluk töltöttünk. Schlesinger Mihály és Mihályné Hatvanban éltek, volt egy szikvízüzemük [Hatvan – nagyközség volt Heves vm.-ben 1891-ben 7000, 1910-ben 12 100, 1920-ban  14 100 főnyi lakossal, szolgabírói hivatal, járásbíróság, közjegyzőség és adóhivatal. Jelentős az 1889-ben alapított cukorgyár (az 1891-es népszámlálás adatai szerint 500, az 1910-es szerint már 1100 munkást foglalkoztatott); a városban fiú és leány polgári iskola volt. – A szerk.]. Nagyon szegények voltak, nehéz körülmények között éltek. A nagymama szikvizet töltött. Unokabátyáimmal együtt gyakran hajtottam a szikvíztöltőgép kerekét, és a nagypapával hordtuk ki a kocsmákba a vizet.

A nagyapámnak mindig volt dugipénze, kártyázott, és összejárt a barátokkal. A nagyanyám sokkal többet dolgozott, de azért mindig volt valami segítségük. Tizenhárom gyerekük született, négy meghalt még gyerekkorában, kilencet felneveltek.

A nagyanyámat 1944-ben elvitték Auschwitzba, ott halt meg, tehát tulajdonképpen 1944-ig ismertem. Akkor már felnőtt voltam, huszonhárom éves, emiatt is közelebbi volt a kapcsolatunk. A nagyapám előbb halt meg, beteg volt, Hatvanban temették el.

A legidősebb fiuk nagyon okos ember volt, egyetemet végzett. Somló Sándor névre magyarosított. Előbb a Szerencsi, aztán a Hatvani, majd a Budapesti Cukorgyár igazgatója volt. Jó fizetésű ember volt, saját autója volt már akkor [1929. december 31-én Budapesten 5953 db személygépkocsi volt magántulajdonban (Dr. Illyefalvi I. Lajos: Tíz év Budapest székesfőváros életéből a világháború után, Székesfővárosi Statisztikai Hivatal, 1930). – A szerk.]. Sajnos elvált, bár a felesége sokkal szebb volt, mint ő, mégis megunta, és odavett egy fiatal, nálánál huszonöt évvel fiatalabb nőt, egy darabig azzal élt, aztán megszűnt a kapcsolatuk. Egyszer vendégül láttak, és a fiatal nő is ott volt. Nekem nagyon tetszett, akkor én is körülbelül huszonöt éves voltam.

Somló Sándornak két gyermeke van. Az egyik Somló György – időközben meghalt –, aki magasan képzett mérnök volt, Svájcban járt egyetemre, angolul, németül tökéletesen beszélt. Mikor Svájcból hazajött, Rákosiék koholt vádak alapján börtönbe zárták. Később szabadlábra helyezték, és egy nagy gyárnak lett az igazgatója [Somló György, akinek a neve 1949. június 16-án már szerepelt a Rajk-per vádlottjai között, a Nitrokémia Robbantóanyaggyár igazgatója volt, 1954-ben szabadult a börtönből. Címzetes egyetemi tanár volt, a Vegyterv igazgatója. – A szerk.].

Somló Sándor lánya, Zsuzsa Kanadában él, családja van. Többször házasodott. Az első férje Kozma Tamás volt. Vele voltam munkaszolgálatos. Az ő segítségével sikerült a világ legjobb munkaszolgálatát kifognom. Egyszerre vonultunk be Galántára a gyűjtőtáborba, ott találkoztunk. Akkor már Zsuzsa férje volt. Én büntetésből fogdába kerültem. Kozma Tamás a zászlós főnöknek a csicskása volt. Miután igen jómódú volt, könnyen bejutott a zászlós úr csicskásai közé. Egy alkalommal megkérdezte, hogy nem akarok-e velük menni dolgozni egy Budapest környéki gazdaságba. Galánta elosztóhely volt; összeállítottak egy csoportot, akkor még én nem tudtam pontosan, hogy hova. Természetesen egyből jelentkeztem, hogy én is megyek. Elkerültünk Ercsi [Fejér vm.] mellé, Felsőbesnyőre [Felsőbesnyő – Ercsi külterülete, 1950-től Besnyő néven önálló tanácsú község, 1941-ben 1100 lakos. – A szerk.]. Két évig voltam ott mezőgazdasági munkaszolgálatos.

Anyai részről a legidősebb nagynéném Margit néni volt. Nagyon szegény volt, a férje gyári munkásként a cukorgyárban dolgozott Somló Sándoréknál. A sógora adott neki munkát. Volt három gyerekük, egyik okosabb, mint a másik. Főleg a fiúk. A legidősebb, Berger Laci Izraelbe ment, nem tudom, hogy él-e még, már biztos több mint kilencven éves. A középső fiút, Berger Pistát megölték a németek. Berger Éva, a legfiatalabb még él Újpesten. Ő nagy kommunista lett, abszolút baloldali.

Anyám további testvérei Somló Ignác és Vilmos. Gyerekkorában mind a kettő Schlesinger volt, később magyarosítottak. Somló Ignáccal, minthogy Miskolcon élt, alig volt kapcsolatom, életemben talán egyszer láttam. Miskolcon vásárolt egy szállodát és egy vendéglőt. Vilmos volt a második ember a vendéglőben, és Ignác volt a főnök. A háborúban Ignác eltűnt, nem tudok róla semmit, bizonyára a nyilasok vitték el.

Somló Vilmos, mint említettem, kezdetben a testvérével közösen dolgozott. Később megnősült, elvett egy Bozsena nevű szlovákiai zsidó lányt. Budapestre költöztek [A „Budapesti Negyed” 1996/2–3. számában közölt lista szerint Somló Vilmos 1912-ben a Hadik kávéházat bérelte (Forrás: Magyarországi szállodák, vendéglők, korcsmák és kávéházak címtára az 1912. évre /Szerk. Zsovák Károly, Budapest, 1912/). – A szerk.]. Értelmes ember volt és szép, nagyon kedveltük. Ő is bennünket. Először egy Füzék nevű pesti mulatóssal társult. A mulatójuk az Operánál volt. A Füzéket már előbb államosították, akkor Vilmos nagybátyám vásárolta meg a Gorkij [ma Városligeti] fasorban [Akkor még Vilma királynő út. – A szerk.] lévő mulatót és vendéglőt. Első osztályú hely volt. Már házas voltam Adikámmal, sokszor odamentünk este, nem a vendéglőbe, hanem csak néztük, amint autókkal megérkeztek, és bementek a nagyon elegáns emberek. Egyszer meghívott bennünket. Amikor a mulatót államosították, az egész család kiment Kanadába feleségestül, gyerekestül [lásd: államosítás Magyarországon; a kiskereskedelem államosítása]. A Gorkij fasorban a Moszkva étterem lett a mulató utóda, azóta az is megszűnt. Két gyerekük van, mind a kettő Amerikában él. A szülők meghaltak. Fiuk orvos, boncnok. Már nem emlékszem se a fiúnak, se a lánynak a nevére.

A nagynénik közül megemlítem Schlesinger Jolánt, a férje Schwarz Richárd. Nagyon szegényen éltek. Két lányuk volt. Az egyik lányukkal, Schwarz Verával sokáig tartottam a kapcsolatot. Nem tudom, hogy mi az oka annak, hogy nem jelentkezik soha. Már évek óta nem találkoztam vele. Gyerekkorunkban összejártunk, ott laktak a Damjanich utca 28-ban, mi meg az István úton, úgyhogy sokszor átmentem hozzájuk, gyakran ők is átjöttek. Odavoltam értük. Schwarz Vera férje Práger György volt, fogtechnikus. A másik lány Jutka. Főleg Verával volt nagyon jó a kapcsolatom. Jolán nénit nem nagyon kedveltem, mert nagyon butuska volt. A papa még butuskább. Mind a kettő természetes halállal halt meg a háború után. A Dohány utcában laktak.

Anyám legfiatalabb testvére Schlesinger Terézia, Szöszy. Fényképem is van róla. Hatvanban élt, a férje jó nevű ügyvéd volt, dr. Zoltán Tibor. Két gyerekük volt. Róluk is van képem, főleg a fiúról. Gyönyörű gyerek. Zoltán Tibort munkaszolgálatba vitték, ott pusztult el. A család három tagja [Szöszy, Gyuri (9 éves), Kató (4 éves)] Auschwitzban pusztult el. A nagymamával együtt vitték ki őket. Ott pusztult el az egész család.

Aranka Hortra [Hort – nagyközség Heves vm.-ben, 1910-ben 4100 lakossal. – A szerk.] ment feleségül, Klein Artúr, akit később Koltai Artúrnak hívtak, jegyző volt Horton. 1944-ben elvitték munkaszolgálatra, aztán kivitték Auschwitzba, és ott pusztult el. Aranka visszajött a lányával, Koltai Edittel, aki még ma is él Egerben, és tartom vele a kapcsolatot [Ő mesélte el Szöszy és gyermekei, valamint édesanyjuk pusztulását. – A szerk.].

Édesapám, Natonek Vilmos 1887-ben született Martoson, a Felvidéken, és 1964-ben halt meg Budapesten.  Öten voltak élő testvérek, róluk már meséltem. Apám volt talán a legszegényebb és a legkevésbé tanult ember közöttük. Csak a jósága volt kiváló, de hát mindenki jó volt a családban. Kereskedősegéd volt, benősült anyámhoz, aki lány korában már önálló kereskedő volt. Volt egy üzlete a Garay utcában. A hozományt apám – testvérei tanácsára, akik pénzügyi emberek voltak – az első világháború után eljátszotta a tőzsdén. Mindenféle kötvényt vásárolt, amik később nem értek egy fillért sem. Úgyhogy nagyon szegények lettünk.

Amikor én születtem, szoba-konyhás lakásban laktunk az akkori Tisza Kálmán téren, ma Köztársaság tér. Négyen laktunk abban a lakásban, nehezen, de elfértünk. A konyhában mosakodtunk vagy fürödtünk, általában lavórban, mert fürdőszobánk nem volt. A vécé a lakás mellett volt, mások is jártak rá, nemcsak mi. Szóval nagyon szegények voltunk.

Az édesanyám igazi anya és háziasszony volt, imádta a gyerekeit. És amikor tudott, segített apámnak. Mint említettem, apám eljátszotta a tőzsdén anyám pénzét. Emiatt elég sok vita volt közöttük. Kedden és pénteken volt hetipiac a Garay utcában, apámnak volt ott egy sátra, ahol főleg bébi- és gyermekholmikat árult.

Nekem boldog gyerekkorom volt, nem panaszkodhattam. Emlékszem, mikor kisgyerek voltam, és anyám etetett – a zsemlét beaprította a tejeskávéba –, minden egyes falatnál ő is nyelt. Emlékszem a fürdetésekre. Amikor tiszta voltam, anyám összevissza csókolt. Ilyen emlékeim vannak. Rendkívüli anyás voltam. Ha anyám nem volt otthon, pláne, ha már tíz perce egyedül voltam, sírtam. Be voltam zárva, tehát nem mehettem ki. Anyám nagyon gyakran járt fogorvoshoz. Ha nem jött meg egy fél órán belül, akkor nagy bőgést rendeztem. A házbeliek már ott álltak az ajtó előtt, hogy „Imikém, ne sírjál!”. Volt, hogy anyám levitt a Tisza Kálmán térre, hogy várjam meg ott, amíg a Népszínház utcában, pár lépésre a lakásunktól, a fogorvosnál van. Még nem mertem átmenni az autóúton meg a villamos előtt. Kiálltam a sarokra, és sírtam, és jöttek az idegenek, hogy miért sírok, és cukorkát kaptam, és mikor már meg tudtam mondani, hogy anyám hol van, akkor egy teljesen ismeretlen arra sétáló idegen fölment a rendelőbe, hogy nagyon sír a fia, menjen már.

Édesanyám kóser volt [lásd: étkezési törvények]. Szombaton majdnem minden alkalommal sólet volt, amit péknél süttettünk meg. Első osztályú! A nagyünnepeken a megfelelő sütés-főzés történt. Külön zsíros és tejes edény nem volt. A nagyszüleimnél volt. Ott szigorúan minden volt külön. Még külön asztal is, Hatvanban külön zsíros asztal és külön tejes asztal volt. Mielőtt a húsvét beállt, ha nem is olyan alaposan, de mindent elővettünk és kikaseroltunk, a tányérokat anyám elmosta. Kenyér nem volt a háznál, macesz volt csak, és maceszlisztből csinált süteményt, szóval így megtartottuk a Pészahot. A nagyünnepek alkalmával mindig nagyon finom diós, mákos bájgli volt, Purimkor kindlit csinált anyám [A kindli receptjét lásd a honlap receptgyűjteményében. – A szerk.]. Az valami felséges volt! Anyám nagyon gyakran sütött bódást, azt is rendkívüli módon szerettük. Édes tészta, a receptjét apai nagyszüleimtől hozta. Azóta sem ettem [A bódás sok mézzel és szalalkálival készült sütemény. Receptjét egy 1870-es évekbeli szakácskönyvben leltük meg. – A szerk.].

Reggelire tejeskávét kaptunk. Utána kimentem a folyosóra játszani, és húztam magam után a különböző szerszámokat, amiket villamosnak és vonatnak néztem, kaptam egy hatalmas zsíros kenyeret vagy hatalmas vajas-lekváros kenyeret, és akkor délig elvoltam ezzel. Anyám minden nap főzött. Nem jártunk el soha vendéglőbe, nem hozatott soha ennivalót, mindig ő főzött, és nagyon jókat. Szerettük a tésztanapokat, amikor diós csík volt vagy túrós tészta. Akkor nem volt zsíros leves, tejleves volt előtte. Apám is jó evő volt, nagyon szerette az édest, mi is. Ezekre emlékszem. Estére nem főzött, az is kóserben volt, tehát nem vettünk szalámikat. Sajt volt, vagy akkor is tejeskávé vagy tejfölös túró, szardínia. Még ma is ezt tartom. Nekem nagyon gyakran van tejfölös túróm vacsorára meg tejbegríz, anyámnál is, nálam is most. Most én főzöm.

Ahogy már említettem, vallásos család voltunk, a háborúig minden nagyünnepet megünnepeltünk. Ros Hasónekor [Ros Hásáná] és Jam Kiperkor [Jom Kipur] a nagybátyámnál voltunk istentiszteleten, aki rabbi volt, péntek esténként zsinagógába jártunk, reggel apám tvilemt [tfilin] légolt táleszban [Föltekerte az imaszíjat, fölvette az imasálat. – A szerk.], minden reggel imádkozott. Én is. Születésemkor briszem [körülmetélés] volt, tizenhárom éves koromban bár micvóm, amire én is megkaptam a magam táleszát, tvilemét, amit 1944-ig használtam.

1944 után a közvetlen családom elveszítette a kapcsolatát a vallással, és nem ünnepeltünk meg semmit. Nagyon kiábrándultunk, annak ellenére, hogy az én családom a nővérem jóvoltából Budapesten vészelte át a fasizmust. Svájci védett házban voltunk [lásd: svájci diplomaták embermentő tevékenysége]. Én magam is Pesten voltam már a nyilasok bejövetele után [lásd: nyilas hatalomátvétel], addig munkaszolgálatos. Natonek József és Natonek Gyuri svéd védettek voltak [lásd: Svéd Vöröskereszt], és a Katona József utca 31-ben laktak. A nagynéném, Aranka korábban betegségben halt meg. Mi a Katona József utca 41-ben, a harmadik emeleten laktunk, amelynek egyik ablaka a Dunára nézett. Álltunk az ablakban, s véletlenül onnan láttuk, amikor a nagybátyámat a fiával együtt elvitték, és beleölték a Dunába. Mindannyian láttuk. Mi túléltük, de teljesen elveszítettük a kapcsolatot a zsidó vallással, illetve a hittel. A zsidósághoz való kapcsolatunk százszázalékosan megmaradt, de vallásilag nem ünneplünk semmit. Nem fogalmaztuk meg. Keveset beszéltünk róla, nem volt téma.

A nővérem, Natonek Erzsébet 1919. szeptember 28-án született. A Zsidó Gimnáziumban érettségizett jó eredménnyel. A háború után belépett a Jelmezkölcsönző Vállalathoz, ott lett főkönyvelő. Először férjhez ment egy Lehrner Ármin nevű zsidó csirkefogóhoz, aki esküvő után két héttel már megcsalta. Ők is az István út 40-ben laktak, az első emeleten. A nővérem alig várta, hogy elváljon tőle. Már állapotos volt, és el is vetette a gyereket, mert nem akart egy ilyen embernek gyereket szülni. Elváltak, Lehrner Ármin kiment Amerikába, ő pedig 1948-ban férjhez ment dr. Balkányi Lászlóhoz, aki igazi úriember volt. Akkor jött haza Oroszországból, a fogságból. A második férjével igen jó kapcsolatban élt. A nővérem sajnos 1961-ben, rákban meghalt, a férje még élt vagy húsz évet, és betegségben halt meg. Együtt vannak eltemetve, a zsidó temetőben természetesen. Két gyerekük van, akik rendesen élnek, és akikkel tartom a kapcsolatot. Balkányi Gyuri Budapesten dolgozik, egy nagy angol céget képvisel. Megnősült, és van egy gyereke, de nagyon hamar elvált. Egy második nőtől van még egy fia, akit nevel és eltart. Jelenleg egy zsidó asszonnyal él. A másik gyerek Balkányi Ági, ő gyermekorvos lett. A férje szintén orvos, és úgy tudom, hogy jól élnek Miskolcon. Tartjuk a kapcsolatot. Most voltunk náluk néhány héttel ezelőtt. Két lányuk van. Az egyik Ildikó, reumaorvos, a férje szemorvos, Budapesten élnek. A másik lányuk Eszter. Most találkoztunk velük, két olyan gyereke van, hogy hihetetlen! Főleg a kisebb, még nem is tapasztaltam, hogy másfél éves kisfiú ennyire okos legyen. Mindent fölismer, a televízióban valaki hasonlított apjára, és azt mondta: „Apu! Ott vagy apu. Te vagy az, apu.” Hát nem ő volt, de tényleg hasonlított rá. A kislány négy éves, ő is nagyon okos és értelmes.

Visszatérek egy kicsit az időben. Gyermekkoromban a Tisza Kálmán téren laktunk. A ház most is megvan, a második emelet 24-ben laktunk. Ez egy szoba-konyhás bérlakás volt. Emeletenként nyolc lakás, a négy emeleten összesen harminc-harminckét lakás volt. A földszinten egy neves színész lakott. Rég nem él, de nem tudnám most megmondani a nevét. Az utcára néző lakások nagyok voltak. Az első emeleten lakott a háziúr is. Mert ez egy magánház volt. Odavittük minden hónapban a lakbért, kábé huszonnégy pengő volt. Zömében zsidók laktak a házban. Mellettünk laktak a Brüllék. Többek között ott lakott M. V., aki nagy kommunista volt. A fia is az volt, a Rákosi-rendszerben és a Kádár-rendszerben, a kultuszminisztériumban a színházak tartoztak hozzá. Magas beosztása volt. A háború előtt nagyon szegények voltak. Jóban voltunk. Hárman voltak gyerekek, ő megmaradt, és van családja is. Most is vezető ember a fia. Ő már egyidős velem, ő is él, ha jól tudom. A szomszédokkal jóban voltam. Lakott ott egy család, úgy hívták, hogy Bucz. Apám állandóan sakkozott a Bucz papával. Keresztény emberek voltak, de nagyon kedveltek bennünket, összejártunk.

1933–34-ben valamivel jobban ment az apámnak az üzlete, és ezért a Tisza Kálmán térről átköltöztünk az István út 40-be, ahol már kétszobás-fürdőszobás, udvari lakásunk volt a negyedik emeleten. Ez nekünk nagy kiugrás volt akkor: külön aludt az anyám és a nővérem, és külön apám és én.

Én a Bezerédi utcai elemi iskolába jártam. Ez állami iskola volt. Sós nevű volt az osztályfőnök és a tanítóm. Meglehetősen gyönge tanuló voltam. Nagyon féltem az első elemiben, miután nem jártam óvodába, akkor mentem először gyerekek közé. Olyan dolgokra emlékszem vissza, amik nem érdemesek az említésre. Például a matrózruhámra, állandóan abban jártam, úgy emlékszem, kötelező volt hétköznap is. Eleinte még anyám értem jött, aztán már másodiktól nem, közel laktunk.

Az elemi után beírattak a Zsidó Gimnáziumba, ahol négy évet jártam. Nem voltam kiváló tanuló, de jól visszaemlékszem a gimnáziumi életemre. Neves tanáraim voltak, az akkori Zsidó Gimnáziumban tanítottak az ország legjobb tanerői. Például magyar tanárom volt Gedő Simon [Több könyve és műfordítása jelent meg, először fordította magyarra Martin Buber haszid történeteit. – A szerk. ], az osztályfőnök volt Vilner Ferenc [Ő volt a Vivó és Atlétikai Club (VAC) elnöke. – A szerk.], a némettanárom volt Widder Salamon [Widder Salamon (1880–1951) – tanár, héber nyelvész, irodalomtörténész. 1919–1947 között a zsidó fiúgimnáziumban német–magyar tanár, számos publikációja jelent meg a héber nyelv és irodalom témakörben. Élete utolsó évét Izraelben töltötte. – A szerk.], több nem jut eszembe.

Osztálytársaimból mind kiváló ember lett, de általában kivándoroltak, és Amerikában, Ausztráliában élnek. Zöme még most is megvan. Időnként van némi kapcsolatom velük.

A gimnázium után beiratkoztam a Vas utcai kereskedelmibe [lásd: kereskedelmi iskolák], ahol megkomolyodtam, már a jobbak közé tartoztam. Kiváló tanáraim voltak. Ott volt már egy-két antiszemita megnyilvánulás. 1939-ben érettségiztem, tehát a zsidótörvények [lásd: zsidótörvények Magyarországon] kezdetén. Ez egy vegyes osztály volt, fele zsidó volt, fele keresztény. Általában jól kijöttünk egymással. Akkor még a gyerekek között nagy antiszemitizmus nem érződött. Tartottuk a kapcsolatot, csak külön jártunk hittanra. A hittantanárunk dr. Durschlag Nándor volt, ő kiment Izraelbe. Volt zsidó tanárom is. Így a matematikatanárom, Hajdú tanár úr. És ott tanított Szerb Antal, aki az angoltanárom volt, akinek a mai tudásomat köszönhetem. Felsőfokú vizsgám van [Szerb Antal (1901–1945) – irodalomtörténész, író, műfordító. 1943-tól munkaszolgálatos volt. 1945 januárjában Balfon puskatussal verték agyon.– A szerk.]. A jó kedélyű Szerb Antalt mindenki szerette. Olyan feje volt, hogy végigmondta a tanulók nevét, de a Natoneknek örült a legjobban, mert azt nem kellett még egyszer megkérdeznie. A Nagy, Németh és Kiss nevűeket nem kedvelte, de egy Natoneket, azt mondta, könnyű megtanulni. Egyszer azt mondta nekem, hogy ilyen szemtelen izraelitával, mint én vagyok, még nem találkozott. Mert mindig heccelődtem. Ő is heccelődő volt, és én visszaheccelődtem, ezért mondta ezt nekem. De nem volt rosszindulatú.

Voltak jó barátaim, akik kilencvenkilenc százalékban zsidók voltak, többen munkatáborokban haltak meg. Heksch Laci, ma a felesége velem egy házban lakik, a lányának itt van optikai üzlete. Még mindig összejárunk a családjával. Heimann Pista, sajnos, elpusztult. Nagyon szerettük, az egyik legrendesebb gyerek volt. Günzberger Gyuri családja nagyon jómódú volt. Itthon halt meg már a felszabadulás után. Ő lett az egyik esküvői tanúnk. Keresztény lányt vett el feleségül. Az apja igazán vallásos zsidó volt.

A Hollán Ernő és a Katona József utca sarkán volt egy zsidó közösség, oda jártam táncolni. Zeneiskola volt. Ma is az. Lányokkal nem is nagyon ismerkedtem. Hekschékkel voltam együtt, későn lettem férfi. Sokáig voltam gyerek.

Nem is tudom, hogy mi mindent olvastam el gyerekkoromban. Az Aréna út [a mai Dózsa György út] sarkán volt egy kölcsönkönyvtár, ma, azt hiszem, trafik. Az Aréna út és az István út sarkán, csak a másik oldalon, a tizennegyedik kerületben. Ott van egy patika a sarkon. És amellett volt a háború előtt egy kölcsönkönyvtár. Maszek volt. Még gyerekkoromban jártam oda. Minden könyvet megkaptam. Előttem van a tulajdonos, Székely bácsi. Kaptam olyan könyveket is tőle, amiket bekötött, és ráírt más címet, hogy anyám ne lássa, hogy én ilyen szexuális tárgyú könyveket olvasok. De mást is olvastam. Olvastam May Károly- és Verne-könyveket, és mindent, ami a fiúknak akkor tetszett. Komolyabb könyveket már felnőttkoromban olvastam.

Nyáron állandóan Hatvanba jártunk nyaralni a nagyszüleimhez. Arra volt pénzünk még, hogy Hatvanig megfizessük a vonatjegyet. Majdnem minden évben ott voltunk. Ott nem voltak barátok, csak a család. Egy szomszéddal tartottuk a kapcsolatot, Schuszteréknak hívták őket. Nem laktak messze, de nem volt lényeges. Aztán később, mikor a nagynéném, a legfiatalabb, Zoltán Tiborné, akkor még Schlesinger Szöszy férjhez ment, akkor őhozzájuk is jártunk. Ott volt a két gyerek és Zoltán Tibor ügyvéd, ő már magasan fölöttünk állt, Hatvan egyik legjobb nevű ügyvédje volt. A felesége titkárnő volt nála, a házassága előtt is egy ügyvédi irodában volt titkárnő. Akkor már nem csak a nagymamáékhoz jártunk, akik nagyon egyszerű emberek voltak, hanem értelmesebb emberekkel is volt kapcsolatunk.

Még mielőtt a fiatal felnőttkorra áttérnék, elmondom, hogy azért jártam kereskedelmi iskolába, mert az volt a célja a családnak, hogy a Hitelbankba kerüljek érettségi után, ahol az apai nagybátyám, Natonek József volt igazgató. Az, akit a nyilasok a Dunába öltek. Oda kellett volna kerülnöm, de 1939-ben, amikor leérettségiztem, már megszületett az első zsidótörvény, és nagy nehezen ő behozott engem szövőinasnak a STAR Kendőgyárba, ami a Petneházy utcában volt Angyalföldön [„Star” Szövött- és Kenderárugyár Rt., korábban: „Star” Szövött- és Kendőárugyár Rt.]. És egy évig szövőinas voltam.

Meg is tanultam. Mi az hogy! Utána beiratkoztam a szövő főiskolába, még akkor be lehetett zsidónak iratkozni. Újpesten volt. Textilfőiskola. Szemmáry [Szemmáry László?] volt az igazgató, még erre is emlékszem. Minden nap reggel 6-tól 2-ig inas voltam a gyárban, 3-tól este 8-ig tanuló az iskolában, este 8-kor biciklin Újpestről jöttem haza az István út 40-be [A Magyar Iparművészeti Egyetem elődintézményében, az 1880-ban létesült Országos Magyar Királyi Iparművészeti Tanodában 1910-ben nyílt egy textilművészeti szakosztály, ahol a harmincas években az iskolában végrehajtott sorozatos tanulmányi reformok mellett korszerű textilkémiai laboratóriumot is létesítettek az oktatás technikai színvonalának emelése érdekében, az intézmény azonban csak a háború után nyerte el a főiskolai rangot. Nem tudható azonban, hogy erről az iskoláról van-e szó, „textilfőiskolának” nem bukkantunk a nyomára. Újpesten azonban volt egy állami textilipari szakiskola. Ez az iskola, mint a korabeli ipari szakiskolák, három éves volt, és a polgári iskola vagy a nyolcosztályos középiskola negyedik osztálya után lehetett elvégezni. Az ipari szakiskolákat – így nyilván ezt az újpesti iskolát is – az 1938. évi XIII. tc. (A gyakorlati irányú középiskoláról) után négy évfolyamos, felsőbb szaktanulmányok folytatására is jogosító gazdasági – ezen belül: ipari – középiskolákká szervezték át. A képzés érettségivel zárult.  – A szerk.].

Megtanultam tehát a textilszakmát. Olyannyira, hogy mikor elvégeztem az iskolát, vettem magamnak egy szövőszéket. Otthon, az István úton megkaptam az egyik szobát szövödének, ott szőttem, aztán eladtam az általam készített szöveteket. Nem volt nagyon jövedelmező, de a szakmát azt jól megtanultam. Akkor már nem volt otthon a nővérem. A szövőszék egyáltalán nem számított nagy befektetésnek, abszolút nem volt megterhelő. Mindig csak annyi anyagot vettem, amennyit egy-két hét alatt föl tudtam dolgozni. És megpróbáltam eladni, és amit eladtam, abból próbáltam megint fonalat venni, és próbáltam megrendelést szerezni, majd jártam a belvárosba, hogy el tudjam adni. Nehezen, nagyon nehezen, de elkelt. Főleg sottis szoknyaszöveteket szőttem, közönséges sottis szoknyaszövetek voltak gyapjúból, félgyapjúból. A minták voltak inkább érdekesek, hogy ki tud érdekesebb mintát kihozni. Azt vásárolták meg. Aztán mikor jött 1944, akkor már ezek se mentek el. Nem tudtam eladni.

1942. október 10-én vonultam be munkaszolgálatra, Galántára. És aznap született az én vejem Németországban, egy német családban. Ha én akkor tudtam volna, hogy ma születik meg a német vejem, akkor nem tudom, mit tettem volna! Hát el nem hittem volna, az biztos. Galántán körülbelül két-három hétig voltam. Utána nagy szerencsémre – mint már meséltem, Kozma Tamás segítségével – elvittek Ercsi mellé a felső-besnyőpusztai gazdaságba, ami a Wimpfen grófoknak a gazdasága volt. Ott mezőgazdasági munkát végeztünk. Összesen húszan voltunk, később csak tizenkilencen, mert Vértes Palit, a kis alakulat egyik tagját, a legjobb módú fiút valahová elvitte az apja, akinek késgyára volt. Ki tudta menteni a gyerekét, ennek ellenére maradtak még gazdag fiúk ott, akik pénzelték nemcsak a keretlegényt, hanem az ispánt is. Az ispánt, aki úgy fogadott bennünket, hogy „Rohadt kommunista zsidók”. A végén, nyilván az anyagi segítség következtében, mi lettünk a tanya kedvencei. Igaz, hogy dolgoztunk, elvégeztünk minden munkát. Én négy ökröt hajtottam, vetettem, megdolgoztam a földet, az aratásnál cséplőgépnél dolgoztam. De a munka eredményeképpen mindenünk megvolt. Paprikás csirke volt ebédre, amit a mi emberünk főzött, csak nekünk, a Krebsz nevű pék, és volt friss péksütemény, friss kenyér mindennap.

Istállóban laktunk. Az volt kialakítva hálószobának, de eltűrtünk mindent. Emeletes ágyak voltak, én a felső emeleten aludtam. Mellettem feküdt Schreiber Jancsi, aki valamikor velem járt iskolába. Nagyon okos gyerek volt, egyetlen hibája, hogy nem akart mosakodni. Az aratás olyan piszokkal járt, hogy fekete volt az arcunk a portól, és ő úgy feküdt le, ahogy eljött a géptől. Nem tudom, miért. Később magyarosított, és vezető állása volt Kádár mellett. Nagy kommunista lett. Ezt csak mellékesen jegyzem meg.

Gyakran jártunk haza szabadságra. Minden három hónapban haza tudtam jönni. Felváltva jártunk haza, nem egyszerre. A család is látogatott. Akkor volt egy kis menyasszonyom, ő is járt látogatni. Szegényt, aztán elpusztították Auschwitzban. Saját hibájából került ki, mert az anyját elvitték, és ment az anyja után két hét múlva. Nem találkoztak. Az anyja megszökött, visszajött, a lányt pedig elvitték Auschwitzba. Az anyja itthon volt, betegségben halt meg később. Szóval aránylag egész jó volt a helyzetünk, összehasonlítva a többi munkaszolgálatossal, akik kikerültek a Kárpátokba, Erdélybe és Oroszországba, ahhoz képest csak hálás lehettem a sorsnak, hogy ott voltam.

Először zsidó házban [lásd: csillagos ház] laktunk, odavettünk rokonokat, az egyik nagynénémet, Schlesinger Jolánt, aki később Schwarz Richárdné lett. Odavettük a családot, akkor már kétszobás-fürdőszobás lakásunk volt. Ez az István út 40-ben volt. A másik család is négytagú volt, és mindenkinek volt egy-egy szűk szobája. Aztán Schlesinger Jolánék elköltöztek, hogy hova, azt már nem tudom. De túlélték a háborút. Mi később a nővérem segítségével – mint svájci védettek – elköltöztünk a Katona József utca 41-be, ahol már más családdal laktunk egy szobában. Az akkor sok volt, és onnan láttuk a Duna parti szörnyűségeket, többek között a saját nagybátyám és unokaöcsém a halálát, Natonek József és Gyuri Dunába lövését. A szüleimet a nővérem mentette meg úgy, hogy odament az egyik nyilashoz, és az a nyilas – úgy látszik – megértette a szomorúságát. Kihivatta a szüleimet a pincéből, és visszamentek a védett lakásba. Ott találkoztunk újra. Mert később én is visszatértem oda.

1944. október 23-ig voltam a felső-besnyőpusztai munkatáborban. Október 23-án, a Horthy-proklamáció napján elhatároztam, hogy másnap megszököm [A Horthy-proklamáció pár nappal korábban, 1944. október 15-én hangzott el. – A szerk.]. Nekem elég volt, éppen két éve voltam akkor bent. 24-én megszöktem, és a háború utolsó hónapjaiban Budapesten bujkáltam. Bár többször lebuktam, de családi összefogással, Erzsi testvéremmel az élen, kihúztuk a felszabadulásig. Mindig megmenekültem. Sokszor segített a testvérem, szegény anyáméknak is Erzsi segített megszökni, amikor elvitték őket. Rendkívüli volt! Nagyszerű ember volt.

Lejártunk az óvóhelyre. Ott lettem férfi az óvóhelyen. Egy szomszédlánnyal. Nekem egész új volt, a nő csalt bele a dologba. Nálam idősebb volt, erre emlékszem még. Nem tudom, mi lett vele.

Aztán jöttek újra a nyilasok, megint elvittek bennünket, én is elkerültem a védett házból. A Kálvin téri templom tornyában bujkáltam. A házmester bújtatott el, aki apámat ismerte, mert apám a nyilas időben ott volt kapus a Kálvin téri áruházban [Fenyő Áruház], a templom mellett. Persze keresztény ember volt, nagyon rendes, jóravaló, de nagyon féltek ők is. El is pusztultak a végén. Ezt én már csak akkor tudtam meg, amikor már meghaltak.

Az oroszok január 14-én értek a Katona József utcába, akkor volt apám születésnapja, azért emlékszem pontosan. Rá három-négy napra visszamentünk az István út 40-be, ahol egy falusi család lakott, de egy-két napon belül visszamentek a vidéki lakásukba. Úgyhogy visszakaptuk a lakást. Bizonyos dolgok hiányoztak, de akkor nem foglalkoztunk evvel. Otthon voltam, és elkezdtem dolgozni. Kezdődött az új élet.

Még emlékszem rá, hogy amikor már felszabadultunk, odamentem a Kálvin térre krumpliért, mert ők vidékről kaptak. Útközben az oroszok betereltek egy kapualjba. Akkor gyűjtötték az embereket, akiket elvittek Oroszországba dolgozni [lásd: malenkij robot]. Megszöktem tőlük is, és szerencsém volt. Mert még utánam is lőttek, de nem találtak el, és hazavittem a krumplit. Ezt is túléltem.

Vissza kell térnem 1943-ra, amikor munkaszolgálatos voltam. Mint említettem, igen jó dolgunk volt. Jóban voltunk az ottani parasztokkal. Egy parasztcsaládhoz jártam át, ahol volt egy lány, akit gondoltak, hogy majd ha vége lesz a háborúnak, akkor esetleg hozzám adják feleségül. Sokszor ott vacsoráztam, de otthonról is kaptam mindenfélét, vagy hoztam magammal. Annyira jól etettek, hogy sárgaságot kaptam. A tábor zsidó orvosa gyorsan fölküldött Budapestre. A Hungária körúton lévő Honvéd Kórházba kerültem, egy nagy kórteremben voltunk vagy tizenhatan. A zöme sárgaságban volt. Többek között ott volt egy fiú, Mautner Ervin, akivel jó barátságba kerültem, neki is sárgasága volt. Bejártak hozzá a szülei meg egy lány, aki állítólag a menyasszonya volt. Hozzám csak az anyám járt be, mert akkor nem volt senkim már. És anyámmal mindig láttuk, hogy ebben a családban vita és veszekedés van, főleg a lánnyal. Nem tudtuk, hogy miért. Nem a mi dolgunk volt. Egyszer anyám jött be hozzám a kórházba, és a villamoson találkozott evvel a lánnyal. Anyám olyan természetű volt, hogy megkérdezte, hogy „Ugyan mondja már el, hogy mi van maguk között!”. És akkor elmondta a lány, hogy azok jómódú emberek, ő meg szegény, és emiatt van a vita állandóan, a szülők nem akarják, hogy tartsák a kapcsolatot. Azt mondta anyám a lánynak, hogy „Tudja mit, kislány? Üljön át a fiam ágyához!”. Amikor anyám elmesélte, majd’ az ágy alá süllyedtem szégyenemben.

Ez 1943 decemberében történt, karácsony és újév között. Már én is meggyógyultam, ez a fiú is. Azt mondta a fiú, hogy még szilveszterkor nem vonul be, én is betegállományban vagyok, és hogy náluk valahol lesz egy buli szilveszterkor, menjek oda. Mondtam, hogy nagy örömmel. Csak egy kérése volt, hogy neki van az a kislány, akit én láttam már a kórházban, az közel lakik hozzám, kísérjem el, mert fél eljönni késő este arra a környékre. Át is mentem a kislányhoz, és mondtam neki, hogy ez a Mautner Ervin kívánsága. Mondta, hogy nagyon köszöni – és én elkísértem. Ott táncoltam vele, s mikor vége volt a bulinak, akkor kérte Ervin, hogy kísérjem vissza. Minthogy ő is az István úton lakott, én is, visszakísértem.

Visszatértem munkaszolgálatos társaimhoz. Egyszer kapok egy levelet anyámtól a munkaszolgálatba, hogy „Képzeld el, nálunk volt ez a kislány, és szeretett volna odaköltözni, mert a ház, ahol laknak, nem zsidó ház, és a mi házunk zsidó ház. De nem tudtam odavenni már, mert a testvérem, a [Schwarzné Schlesinger] Jolán a családjával szintén keresztény házban lakott, és ők már odaköltöztek hozzánk. Úgyhogy egyik szobában ők laknak, a másikban mi lakunk, oda már több nem tud bejönni”. Gondoltam magamban, ha már ez a kislány ott volt, írok neki. És írtam. És visszaírt, hogy milyen bajban volt, de már el van intézve, a Murányi utcából, ahol keresztény házban laktak, átköltöztek az István út 39–41-be, egy zsidó családhoz, Faragóékhoz.

Én, mint említettem, 1944. október 23-án megszöktem, és otthon voltam. Egyszer hallottam, hogy viszik a lányokat munkaszolgálatra. Gondoltam magamban, hogy elmegyek, és elköszönök ettől a kislánytól. Elmentem az István út 41-hez, és jött ki ez a kislány az anyjával, hogy megy bevonulni. A kislány valahogy szájon csókolt, és én visszacsókoltam. Ez nekem olyan jó emlékem maradt, hogy azt mondtam anyámnak: „Látod, anyám! Ha ez a kislány visszajönne, ezt elvenném feleségül.” Visszajött, elvettem feleségül, és ötvenhét évig éltünk együtt boldogan.

Ő volt Adi, Klein Adél. A szülei nagyon fiatalon házasodtak. Az édesanyja, Weiss Aranka tizenhat éves volt, amikor férjhez ment, és tizenhét éves volt, amikor Adi 1921-ben megszületett. Az édesapja, Klein Dezső lehetett húsz éves, taxisofőr volt. Az anyja szerintem négy elemit, de lehet, hogy nyolc elemit járt [Föltehetően nem nyolc, hanem hat elemit. – A szerk.]. Nemigen volt róla szó, de hogy tanulatlan volt, azt tudom. A lányukat viszont taníttatták, le is érettségizett a Zsidó Gimnáziumban. Pestiek voltak. Adi Pest mellett, Cinkotán [Cinkota – nagyközség, Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun vm., 1920-ban 12 600 lakos. 1950-ben Budapesthez csatolták. – A szerk.] született, de hamar Pestre költöztek, mert a mama egy pékhez került az István úton. A Murányi utcában laktak. A lányával együtt vitték el [Szálasi 1944. október 22-én elrendelte, hogy minden 18 év 40 év közötti zsidó nő jelentkezzen „sorozásra”, és október 26-ig körülbelül 10 000 budapesti zsidó nőt szerveztek munkaszolgálatos századokba, és dolgoztatták őket Budapest környékén. Az orosz csapatok közeledtére a még életben maradt nőket Budakalászra vitték, és onnan vagy nyugat felé hajtották, vagy vagonokba rakták, és deportálták. – A szerk.]. Előbb pár hétig Budapest környékén – nem tudom, pontosan hol – dolgoztak a nők, és onnan kezdték kivinni őket Németországba. Adi az édesanyjával Spandauban, egy lőszergyárban dolgozott [Spandauban, Berlin egyik külvárosában egy hatalmas börtön volt, amely ez idő tájt munkatáborként működött, az ide deportáltak egy, a tábortól néhány kilométerre lévő hadiüzemben dolgoztak. – A szerk.]. Egyszer egy lövedék felrobbant a kezében, és a nyakát hátul megsértette. Hogy azután hogy robbant föl, hol robbant föl? A kezében vagy hátul, a háta mögött? Nem tudom megmondani. A sebhely élete végéig megvolt. A végén Berlinben szabadultak föl. Az oroszok jöttek be oda. Közel nem volt olyan rossz a helyzetük, nem akarták elvinni őket. Valamikor június-júliusban engedték szabadon őket. Gyalog meg vonaton hetekig tartott az út hazafelé.

A mama később [Már a háború után. – A szerk.] sajnos megcsalta a papát, el is váltak, aztán hozzáment ahhoz a férfihez. Polgári esküvője volt. Onnan gyerek nem született. A férje Stern Miklós vízvezeték-szerelő, ez volt a szakmája, de vizet akkor szerelt, mikor én, azt hiszem. Egy mulatóban volt portás. Az anyósom nyugdíjig egy péknél dolgozott. Ott lakott a Murányi utcában, és nagyon gyakran járt hozzánk, aztán odaköltöztek velünk a Lövölde térre.

Válás után Adi édesapja lement Bonnyára. Bonnya Somogy megyében van, a Balaton és Kaposvár között, ott élt az eredeti családja [Bonnya – 1949-ben 900 lakossal rendelkező kisközség volt. – A szerk.]. Jómódú zsidó család volt. Mindenkit elhurcoltak, a szüleit, a testvérét, Klein Lajost, a feleségét, annak a tizenegy éves kislányát. Mindenki elpusztult. És ottmaradt a bonnyai lakás, a ház. Már házasok voltunk Adival, amikor apósom oda lement, hogy átvegye a lakást, a házat, lekísértem, emlékszem. Át is vette, de annyira egyszerű ember volt, hogy nem volt képes tovább vezetni az üzletet. Pedig volt hentesüzlet meg péküzlet meg minden. Az ottani mozi kezelését vette át, mozis lett. Elvett egy parasztasszonyt, aki nála idősebb volt, hogy valaki gondoskodjon róla. Nem volt jelentős ez a kapcsolat. A nő aztán meghalt, az apósom meg elköltözött Bonnyáról Látrányba. Az is egy Somogy megyei falu [Látrány – kisközség, Somogy m., 1960-ban 1500 lakossal. – A szerk.]. Minden évben meglátogattuk. Ott is mozis volt, a felesége meg postás. Mert ott is megnősült, hogy ne legyen egyedül, és áttért. Mert ott csak keresztények között élt, és megkívánták az asszonyok, hogy térjen át. De zsidó maradt, csak a keresztény temetőben van eltemetve. Oda várta a feleségét is, de ő később halt meg. Ki volt írva már a felesége neve, de nem ott temették el. Mikor ott voltunk, akkor olyan rossz állapotban volt a sír, hogy bele lehetett látni, elcsúszott a kő. Rendbe hozattuk, de már nemigen jártunk le. Amíg élt, addig mindig. Az 1970-es években halt meg.

És most a házasságom története. 1945-ben meleg nyár volt. Azt hiszem, július volt, amikor az István úton egész véletlenül találkoztam Adival, aki a nyakamba ugrott. Nem tudtam, hogy megjött. Összetalálkoztunk, még aznap följött a lakásomra, és a szövőszék mellett csókolóztunk. Előtte [1943-ban] a kórházban láttam, szilveszterkor táncoltam vele, aztán elbúcsúztam tőle. 1945 júniusában hazajött, és júliusban újra találkoztunk. És júliustól aztán egészen szeptember 30-ig együtt voltunk, ismerkedtünk. Tehát három-négy hónapig jártunk együtt. Jártunk!? Találkoztunk, én fölmentem hozzájuk, ő följött hozzám. Még akkor nem volt mozi meg ilyesmi. Még semmi sem volt, nemigen lehetett szórakozni. Az elhatározásunk megszületett már július-augusztusban, és szeptember 30-án volt a házasságkötésünk. Polgári esküvő volt. Jól emlékszem, hogy a saját maga által varrt ruhában volt. Nagyon elegáns. Mert szabónő volt, ő azt is kitanulta. Csak a két tanú volt jelen. Bánát Zoli, volt munkaszolgálatos társam volt az egyik tanú, a másik meg Günzberger Gyuri, aki iskolatársam volt. Utána ebéd volt otthon, az István út 40-ben. Az édesanyám csirkepörköltet csinált nokedlival. A szüleim voltak ott, az ő édesapja, édesanyja, és hát ő, a fiatal, gyönyörű feleségem.

1995-ben az ötvenéves házassági évfordulómat egy esküvővel szenteltem meg, miután 1945-ben nem lehetett egyházi esküvőm. Ez a Dohány utcai templom kistemplomában volt. Fröhlich Róbert volt a rabbi. A tanúk pedig az egyik vejem, Robi és a német unokám, Andreas. Még akkor egészségesek voltunk. És boldogok. Mindig boldogok voltunk.

Az esküvő után albérletben laktunk, a tizennegyedik kerületben, az Abonyi utca utáni második mellékutcában. Ott lakott a sarkon Rákosi Mátyás. Amikor mentünk, mi toltuk a kocsit, amin volt egy szekrény, amit a mamájától kapott, megállítottak és igazoltattak, hogy mit csinálunk ott. Egy dúsgazdag rövidáru-kereskedőhöz mentünk, akinek a Garay utcában volt nagykereskedése, onnan ismertem. Ez egy nagyon nagy lakás volt, négy vagy öt szobás. Mi az udvari szobát kértük és kaptuk meg. Előttünk egy orosz katonatiszt akart beköltözni, be is költözött, és amikor mi jöttünk, nem akart beengedni már a háziasszony, hogy itt lakik az orosz. És az orosznak megmondtuk, hogy most volt az esküvőnk, értett valamit németül meg magyarul meg mindenféle nyelven, azt hiszem, ő is zsidó lehetett. Kiköltözött, és átengedte nekünk a szobát. Ezek a nagykereskedők rém gonosz zsidó emberek voltak. A gyerekeik rendesek voltak, csak az öregasszony volt egy ördög, és egy év után átköltöztünk az István út 40-be. Az anyámék mellett lakott az Erdős néni, aki elment a lányához Belgiumba, és akkor szabaddá vált a lakása, odaköltöztünk anyámék mellé. Pár ezer forintért meg lehetett szerezni, nem tudom, hogy honnan került a pénzünk hozzá.

A feleségem érettségi után szabónő lett, az ügyesebbek közé tartozott. Volt neki egy szabó kisiparos műhelye is, mikor már együtt voltunk. Kiváltottuk az iparigazolványt. Egy textiles meg egy szabónő. De akkor én már egy gyárban dolgoztam mint textiltechnikus, evvel nem foglalkoztam. Adi aztán elkerült a játék-nagykereskedelmi vállalathoz. Nem volt szakember, de akkor mindenkit alkalmaztak, aki jelentkezett. Onnan átment a Nemzeti Bankba tisztviselőnek az 1950-es évek elején. Oda Erzsi nővérem vitte be, mert Erzsikém akkor már bankos volt, és volt ismeretsége. Adi állandóan tanult, megtanulta a könyvelést és az adminisztrációt, és megtanult franciául. Onnan került át a Kultúrához [Kultúra Külkereskedelmi Vállalat] már ellenőrzési osztályvezetőnek. Jól befutott, okos asszony volt. Onnan ment nyugdíjba is. Nyugdíj után kicsit varrt, de hát inkább csak a családnak egy-két dolgot. Akkor én már maszek voltam, tűrhetően kerestem.

Adi sosem volt párttag. Be akarták szervezni, de sose volt kedve hozzá, és sikerült, hogy se a játéknagykernél, se a Nemzeti Banknál nem lépett be a pártba. És miután a főnökei se voltak nagy pártemberek eleinte, csak később a Fekete [Fekete János a Magyar Nemzeti Bank elnökhelyettese volt. – A szerk.] lett az, de nem erőszakolták soha, és a Kultúránál sem erőszakolták, hogy párttag legyen.

Adi családja egyáltalán nem volt vallásos. Nem tartottak semmit. Én tanítottam őt a dolgokra. A zsidósághoz való ragaszkodás mindenképpen megvolt. Ünnepeket már mi se tartottunk, mert akkor már a háború után voltunk.

Egyszerűen nem emlékszem vissza arra, hogy miből éltek a szüleim a háború után. Akkor már én is dolgoztam, hamarosan a nővérem is, segítettük őket. Az persze nem volt elég, mert nekünk is még nagyon gyönge keresetünk volt. Apám vásározott, ha jól emlékszem. Akkor is a régi cikkeivel foglalkozott, babaholmikat árult, és járta a vidéki vásárokat hatalmas nagy csomaggal. Annyira nem volt pénzük, hogy a szenet a hatvan- vagy hetvenéves apám a hátán hozta haza a szenespincéből. Az utcán vettem el tőle a zsákot, amikor találkoztam vele, hogy dehogy engedem meg, hogy ő vigye a tüzelőt. Apám 1964-ben halt meg, rákban, az Amerikai úti kórházban.

Anyám a nyolcvankettedik évében, szörnyű kínok között halt meg egy combnyaktörés következtében. Nem kelt már föl, elfekvő beteg lett, ami idős embereknél ma is gyakran előfordul. A kórházakból mindig el kellett vinni, annyira rossz beteg és olyan hangos volt. Mégis kórházban, a Szent János Kórházban halt meg. Szinte a nővérem és az én kérésemre kapott fájdalomcsillapítót még egyszer, közvetlen az előző fájdalomcsillapító után, és úgy látszik, ezt már nem viselte el a szíve. A karjaimban halt meg 1977. december 14-én.

A háború után folytattam a szövést otthon a lakáson, de aztán láttam, hogy ez már nem üzlet. Rövid ideig csináltam. Tehát a maszekolás után elmentem Pesterzsébetre a Juta Kendergyárba technikusnak. Ez 1947-ben lehetett. Onnan átkerültem az újpesti Kender Jutagyárba, és ott már osztályvezető-helyettes voltam, ahonnan átkerültem a RAGI-hoz [Ruházati Anyagátvevő Gazdasági Iroda]. Ez minőségellenőrző cég volt, a Belkereskedelemi Minisztérium egyik vállalata.

A RAGI-nál a főnököm, az osztályvezetőm Münz Rudolf, aki ügyesebb volt, mint én, mert nagyon hamar átkerült a MERT-be [Minőségellenőrző Részvénytársaság], a Külkereskedelmi Minisztérium minőségellenőrző vállalatához. Ő ott igazgató lett. Rövid időn belül átvitt engem a RAGI-ból oda [1949], mert igen jó barátok lettünk.

A háború után én a szocdem pártba léptem be, és a szocdem párttal automatikusan kerültem be a kommunista pártba [lásd: Magyar Dolgozók Pártja (MDP)]. Én mindig liberális voltam. Apám is liberális volt. Az „Esti Kurir”-t járatta, amelynek Rassay Károly volt a szerkesztője [Rassay Károly (1886–1958) – politikus, lapszerkesztő. 1921-ben megalapította a Független Kisgazda, Földműves és Polgári Pártot. Mint a polgári demokrácia híve és mint mérsékelt, több esetben a kormányokkal szemben lojális, de a szélsőjobboldali és németbarát irányzatokkal szemben álló ellenzéki képviselő hallatta szavát a parlamentben. 1923-ban megalapította és 1944-ig szerkesztette az „Esti Kurir” c. liberális napilapot. – A szerk.]. Apám főleg zsidó témával kapcsolatban levelezett rendszeresen a szerkesztőséggel. Mindig megbánta, hogy levelezett, mindig félt, hogy ebből baj lesz. Hál’ istennek nem lett.

1945 után volt a Murányi utcában Adinak egy ismerőse, az ottani suszter, keresztény ember, aki igazi szocdem volt. Oda jártam politizálni. Nagyon rendes ember volt. Így léptem be a szocdem pártba. És az is maradtam, de hát közben automatikusan sajnos MDP-s lettem, de 1956-ban nem léptem vissza a pártba, és azóta nem is vagyok párttag.

Apám is belépett a pártba. Mint zsidóknak, nem volt más választásunk. Akkor még nem is volt Rákosi sem. Nem volt aktív, otthon nemigen volt téma. És nem tért vissza semmit a valláshoz se. Sőt! De természetesen zsidó temetőbe temettettük el rendes szertartással. Apámat is, anyámat is, hiszen a zsidósággal való természetes kapcsolatunkat soha sem adtuk fel.

Mint korábban említettem, a RAGI-ból Münz Rudi barátom vitt át a MERT-hez, ahol Dávid Pista volt az osztályvezető, akitől Münz teljesen indokolatlanul meg akart szabadulni. Igaz, hogy horthysta tiszt volt, de nagyon értette a dolgát. Sokkal többet tudott, mint én. Vele együtt dolgoztam egészen 1956-ig, amikor ő magas beosztású ember lett, ő lett a vállalat forradalmi tanácsának [lásd: munkástanács] az elnöke. Mindenki szerette, de aztán kirúgták, amikor újra a baloldal került előtérbe. Elkerült onnan valamelyik textilgyárba csomagolónak, én meg osztályvezető lettem ott. Egyszer kimentem abba a gyárba minőségellenőrzésre, és ott találkoztunk. Akkor azt mondta, hogy „Neked köszönhetem, hogy itt vagyok”. Azt hitte, ezt meg is mondta, hogy én besúgtam őt. Soha nem súgtam be, annál sokkal jobban kedveltem. Még előbb mondta [1956 után], hogy én biztos megint kommunista leszek, én pedig váltig hangoztattam, hogy nem lépek be a pártba, és nem is léptem be. Egyrészt, mert őt kedveltem, másrészt azért, mert szavatartó ember voltam, harmadszor azért, mert nem bíztam a pártban, mert már láttam, hogy milyen gazemberség folyik a párton belül.

1959-ben átkerültem a Hungarotexhez. Az 1960-as évek végén – még ezt is el akarom mesélni – kinn voltam Etiópiában, egy vásárt rendeztem. Mikor jöttem visszafelé, fölhívtam Münz Rudolf igazgatómat, és elmondtam, hogy hazafelé elmegyek Izraelbe a rokonaimhoz – mert voltam vele olyan jóban. Azt mondta, hogy „Ne csináld, mert ebből csak baj lesz, ebből biztos nagy baj lesz” [Magyarországnak 1967–1989 között nem volt diplomáciai kapcsolata Izraellal. – A szerk.]. És én azt mondtam: „Jó, ha azt mondod, hogy ne csináljam, akkor nem fogom csinálni.” De nem volt igaz, mert elmentem Izraelbe feketén, és találkoztam az összes rokonommal már akkor. Elmentem Athénbe. Elmondtam az athéni izraeli követnek, hogy ki vagyok, mi vagyok, hogy énnekem ott rokonaim vannak, magyar vagyok, és én eddig legálisan nem mehettem oda, és most sem megyek legálisan, ne írják be sehova. Olyan vízumot kaptam, ami nem volt benne az útlevelemben. Így aztán Athénben fölszálltam a repülőgépre, és elmentem Izraelbe a saját pénzemen, és találkoztam valamennyi rokonommal.

Akkor semmi nem történt velem. Nem rúgtak ki, de észrevehető volt a karrieremben. Osztályvezetői beosztásom volt, de nem voltam kinevezve. Alig volt jobb fizetésem, mint az egyszerű beosztottaknak. Arról volt szó, hogy kirendeltségre fogok menni, de az osztályvezetőm, aki egy dúsgazdag családnak volt a sarja, és a felesége dettó, megjátszotta magát nagy kommunistának, és egészen biztos, hogy ő tett rám panaszt. Ő aztán elkerült Bécsbe a kirendeltségre. Állítom, hogy besúgó volt. Ő is, és az utóda is. Pedig rám szükség volt a vállalatnál, mert igazi kereskedőnek tartott mindenki. A vezérigazgatóm, aki híres volt a külkereskedelmi tudásáról, szintén nagyra becsült, és a főkönyvelő is, de kinevezésről és kirendeltségvezetésről szó sem lehetett. Biztos, hogy mások is megtudták, mert én Münznek elmeséltem. El tudom képzelni, hogy Münz – és nem bánnám, hogy most, hogy ez a nagy fölülvizsgálat van, megnézhetném – engem beárult. És persze tudták, hogy én nem léptem vissza a pártba, hogy én nem vagyok igazi kommunista.

Elmesélek egy másik dolgot. A Hungarotextől egyszer a belügy behívott, hogy én leszek az első, akit kiküldenek hivatalosan Izraelbe, hogy ott üzletet csináljak. Behívtak, és ott egy szobában, ahol semmi az égvilágon nem volt a falakon, egy üres szoba volt egy asztallal és két székkel meg egy pasas, aki biztos be akart szervezni, mert az volt a kérése, hogy én nézzek körül ott [azaz Izraelben]. Első kérdése, hogy vannak-e rokonaim. Persze tudta, hogy zsidó vagyok. Mondtam, hogy vannak rokonaim, de nem tartom velük a kapcsolatot. Ez lehetett az 1970-es évek elején. Amellett, hogy én nagyon szerettem a rokonaimat, nem leveleztem velük, mert nem lehetett. Nem telefonáltam, mert nem lehetett. De boldog voltam, hogy elmehetek újra Izraelbe, és találkozhatom megint a rokonaimmal. És találkoztam is velük. Amikor hazajöttem, elmentem ehhez az elvtárshoz a belügybe, mert ez volt a megállapodásunk, és azt mondtam, hogy nem találkoztam senkivel, mert nem tartom velük a kapcsolatot. És azokkal a zsidó kereskedőkkel, akikkel én boltot akartam csinálni, még konkrét üzletet nem csináltam. Szóval be akartak vonni ebbe a társaságba, de nem sikerült, mert semmit nem mondtam.

Ezután is voltak külföldi utak, de nem lettem soha kinevezett osztályvezető. Úgy volt, hogy kirendeltségre kerülök vezetőnek Indonéziába, és nem kerültem kirendeltségvezetőnek, pedig már be voltam jegyezve mindenhova. Elmentem a külkerbe a személyzetishez, aki gyerekkori ismerősöm volt. Ott jöttem rá. Az István út 40-ben a harmadik emeleten lakott, a szabónál volt inas. Ott volt egy Rácz nevezetű keresztény szabó, egy csuda ember, csak zsidókat mentett. És ez a fiú ott dolgozott mint inas, és ő lett a személyzetis a külkerben, és neki meséltem el a dolgokat. Ez mind hozzájárulhatott ahhoz, hogy én nem kerülhettem Indonéziába. Egész biztos.

Aktív koromban a Hungarotextől beutaztam a fél világot. Keletre legtávolabbi pont volt India. Legnyugatabbra volt Kanada. Legdélebbre volt Etiópia. Északon pedig Svédországban, Finnországban, Norvégiában jártam. Az 1970-es években jártam Indiában. Főképpen műszaki textilcikkekkel foglalkoztam, jelen esetben nyers jutával és jutazsákkal. Amikor Indiában voltam, akkor elsősorban vásárolni akartam. Indulásom előtt a kirendeltség segítségével egy előzetes versenyfelhívást tettem közzé, ami megjelent az ottani újságban. Ennek következtében a zsák- és jutakereskedők sorban álltak a kirendeltség és a szállodám előtt, hogy minél hamarabb beszélhessenek velem. És mindenki egymás alá kínált, ennek következtében életem legjobb üzletét kötöttem.

Saját kérésemre mentem el nyugdíjba hatvanéves koromban. Nem akartak elengedni, mert nagyon kedvelt engem a főosztályvezetőm meg az igazgatóm. Tündér volt, a férje zsidó volt, ő keresztény, abszolút filoszemita. Ővele is nagyon őszinte voltam. Egyszer meg is kérdeztem, hogy hogyan lehetnek ezek a dolgok, és nem válaszolt. Éreztem, hogy tud valamit, de nem mondja meg. Tehát önként mentem nyugdíjba, és mindjárt el is kezdtem dolgozni mint nyugdíjas. Előbb a Hungarotexnél, aztán onnan egy vagy két év múlva átkerültem a Huniversal nevű céghez, ami a Gellért-hegyen volt. A Hungarotexből jöttek oda emberek. Az igazgató is valamikor hungarotexes igazgató volt. Ott már kezdtem kialakítani a magam maszek világát. Még dolgoztam egy évig ennél a cégnél, de megmondtam az ügyfeleimnek, hogy én hamarosan eljövök, és szeretnék velük mint magánvállalkozó továbbra is kapcsolatban maradni.

1989-ben kiváltottam az iparengedélyemet, külkereskedelmi irodát nyitottam, és ezekkel a külföldiekkel, akik nekem régi jó barátaim voltak, tovább üzleteltem, és nagyon jól ment. Mert nagyon rendesen dolgoztunk, én mindig becsületes voltam. Ezt nagyra értékelték a partnereim. Árut vettem és eladtam. Főleg használt polietilén, polipropilén termékek, közértkosarak meg ládák darálékát és hulladékát, amit feldolgoztak, és azt nagyon jól el lehetett adni. Ez nagy üzlet volt, nagyon keresték a piacon. Aztán később újra dolgoztam a Kender Jutával, polipropilén zsákot adtam el.

Amikor Adi 1997-ben betegeskedni kezdett, akkor adtam fel. A feleségem betegsége rettenetes teher volt. Mindent abbahagytam, csak őt szolgáltam ki. Szerintem Parkinson-kórral kezdte, mert nagyon remegett a feje, a keze. Rendkívüli félelemérzete volt állandóan. Négy-öt évig tartott. Jártunk az ideggyógyászatra, rendszeresen infúziókat kapott. Mindaddig, amíg nem volt az a szerencsétlen dolog, hogy bevittem infúzióra, és nem volt már bent a régi doktornője, mert szülési szabadságra ment, így egészen más osztályra került, ahol elesett, és betörte a fejét. Betették egy zárt osztályra, és a zárt osztályon effektív megbolondult. Akkor már azt mondták, hogy Alzheimer-kór. Végül az Amerikai úti kórházban helyeztük el, amikor már olyan állapotba került, hogy nem tudott magáról. 2002. augusztus 31-én halt meg. És még mindig odavagyok. Nélküle nem élet az élet.

1956-ban [lásd: 1956-os forradalom] még a MERT-nél dolgoztam. Azon az estén, amikor a Sztálin-szobrot ledöntötték, tehát az első napon, Adival moziban voltam a Bethlen téren, már nem emlékszem rá, mit láttunk. Hallottuk, amikor húzták a Sztálin szobrát nagy zajjal ott végig az István úton. Erősen zavarta az előadást. Nem tudom, aztán hova vitték. Ez 22-én este volt [Natonek Imre rosszul emlékszik, ez október 23-án este történt. – A szerk.].

Október 23-án bent voltam a hivatalban, és úgy volt, hogy csatlakozunk a felvonulókhoz ott, a Belvárosban. A hangulat nagyon jó volt. Nagy részben entellektüel, ötödik kerületi dolgozók voltak, és azt hittük, hogy ez simán fog lemenni, de sajnos 1956-ban a nyilasok is erősen mozgolódtak. Féltem tőlük. Az István úton, ahol laktam, sok nyilas kölyök volt. Másod- vagy harmadnapra az utcán meg is támadtak, hogy „Rohadt zsidó!”. De aztán nem bántottak. Hazamentem, és megbeszéltem Adival, hogy innen elköltözünk. Másnap vagy még aznap az egész család átköltözött a Murányi utcába az anyósomhoz. Ott aludtunk, és négy-öt napig, amíg vége nem volt a nagyon zűrös dolgoknak, addig ott voltunk. Utána hazaköltöztünk. Az István út 44-ben, ahol a kocsma van, ott a tetőre fölmásztak ezek a nyilas gyerekek, és ott fönn zsidóztak. Meglehetősen félelmetes volt.

Én nem vettem részt semmiben, mert az volt az érzésem, hogy a nyilasok fogják átvenni a hatalmat. Szerencsém volt, nem a nyilasok, hanem Nagy Imre először, aztán Kádárék vették át a hatalmat. Ennek ellenére nem léptem vissza a pártba. Valahol eldobtam a tagkönyvemet. És benn az irodában még sokáig folyt a beszélgetés. Említést tettem Dávid Pistáról, aki a forradalmi tanács elnöke lett [A forradalmi tanácsok a települések közigazgatásának irányítására alakultak 1956 októberének vége felé. Itt nyilván a vállalati munkástanácsról van szó. – A szerk.], és ővele nagyon pozitív vitát folytattunk. Ő természetesen mint régi horthysta, azt hitte, hogy meg fog változni a világ teljesen, és Magyarország jobbra fog haladni. Szegényt egy év múlva kidobták a vállalattól, ezt már említettem.

Hallottuk, tudtuk, hogy megtámadták a Köztársaság téri pártszékházat a szélsőjobbosok [Sic! – A szerk.], és megöltek embereket [lásd: Köztársaság tér, 1956]. Főleg kiskatonákat, akik őrizték a kaput. Akik tulajdonképpen nem párttagok voltak, hanem aktív kiskatonák, akiket kirendeltek az épület védelmére. Amit hallottunk a pártház támadásáról, nagy félelemmel töltött el engem meg az egész családomat. És beigazolódottnak láttuk, hogy a nyilasok fognak mégis visszajönni.

Volt szó kivándorlásról, hogy Erzsi testvéremmel és a családjával együtt próbálunk kimenni. De nem tettük, hiszen a szüleink nem tudtak volna velünk jönni, mert megártott nekik már 1944 is. Nem voltak olyan állapotban. Bár nem voltak túl öregek. Apám 1887-ben született, és akkor hatvankilenc éves, anyám, aki 1892-ben született, hatvannégy éves volt. Nem akartak jönni, és nem akartuk itt hagyni őket, ezért úgy döntöttünk, hogy marad mind a két család.

Meglehetősen sokan kivándoroltak körülöttünk már a háború után is [lásd: kivándorlás és külföldre szökés], és 1956–57-ben is [lásd: kivándorlás, disszidálás]. Anyám családjának körülbelül a fele kiment Amerikába és Kanadába. Részben ott haltak meg, részben ott élnek. Főleg Kanadában vannak. Izraelbe az én családom ment. A Frenkel család meg a Fischer család, ahol az asszony Natonek Jolán, a nagynéném és Márta volt a lányuk. Azt hiszem, akkor már férjnél volt. Igen, mert iskolás gyerekei voltak. Tehát ott két család ment ki. Mi itt maradtunk, és Natonek Sándor is.

A lányaimról. Anikó 1948. június 28-án, Gabi 1954. április 17-én született.

Anikó a Kölcsey [Ferenc] Gimnáziumba járt, ott is érettségizett. Érettségi után a Kultúra Külkereskedelmi Vállalatnál dolgozott. 1970-ben egy fiatal német orvoshoz ment feleségül, aki a cottbusi kórházban dolgozott mint fül-orr-gégész, ezért ott telepedtek le, és ma már a város egyik legszebb kerületének lakói. Anikó nagyon hamar beilleszkedett. Minthogy a férje, Reinhard a cottbusi kórházban volt orvos, az esküvő után odaköltöztek, a kórháznak egy egyszobás lakásában laktak ketten. Kimondottan szolgálati apartman volt. Még akkor is ott laktak, amikor egy évre rá, 1971-ben megszületett a kisfiuk, Andreas. Emlékszem, hogy amikor megszületett, akkor nálunk, Budapesten, a Lövölde téren festés, nagytakarítás volt, és a legnagyobb zűrben szólt a telefon, és a nagypapa gratulált nekem, hogy „Imre! Te is nagypapa lettél”. Hát nálamnál boldogabb embert nemigen lehetett akkor találni. Cottbus a volt NDK területén van, közel a lengyel határhoz. Az a szellem érződött. Reinhardot mint orvost nagyon megbecsülték. Ebből a lakásból, amit az előbb említettem, hamarosan elköltöztek egy panellakásba, ott már volt két szoba, külön konyha, előszoba. Úgyhogy amíg mi minden évben meglátogattuk őket, külön szobában tudtunk aludni. Aztán egyszer közölték velünk, hogy az orvosok kapnak Cottbusban egy külön alapból egy egészen önálló lakótelepet, egyéni házakkal. Oda mi az építés alatt többször ellátogattunk, és néztük, hogyan épül. Mígnem átköltöztek. Ma is ott laknak. Gyönyörű kertjük, gyönyörű lakásuk van.

Ma már a vejem önálló orvos. Privát praxisa van, de ott a privát praxis is bekapcsolódik az államiba. Úgyhogy fogad privát betegeket is, és fogad biztosítottakat is. Nagyon szép rendelője van, három szobából meg várószobából áll. A legjobb felszerelése van. Anikó, mielőtt megnyílt ez a rendelő, kimondottan orvosi műszerek és orvosi berendezések eladásával foglalkozott. Egy nagy berlini céget képviselt az akkori NDK-ban. Nagy ismeretségre tett szert ezáltal, aztán ezen keresztül Reinhard is. Cottbus egyik legnagyobb utcájában van a rendelője, ami jól megy. Reggel 7-kor már sorban állnak a betegek, 8-kor nyit, de ő ott van ½ 8-kor, és már elkezdi. Van, amikor 7-re már ott van, és este 8-kor ér haza. Minden hónapban egy hetet ügyeletes. Akkor éjjel-nappal bent vannak, vasárnap is. Mind a ketten rendkívüli módon le vannak terhelve. Anikó is itt dolgozik, ő az egésznek a szervezője. Ő tartja kézben a fizetéseket, a bankokkal tartja a kapcsolatot, a szállítókkal, akik szállítják az anyagot. A férje csak a betegekkel foglalkozik, minden egyebet ő csinál.

Két gyerekük van. Andreas mint az apja, szintén fül-orr-gégész. Eddig a cottbusi kórházban volt, és most hallottam, a napokban hívott föl, hogy Berlinbe megy egy kórházba. Már megvan a szerződése, ott fogja tovább gyakorolni a szakmáját. Mint ahogy hallom, a főnökei igen meg vannak vele elégedve. Az operációknál már egyedül volt sokszor, vagy ő volt az irányító orvos. Mandulaműtétekkel kezdte, aztán egyre nagyobb műtéteket csinált. Most Berlinben kapott állást. Ott fogja letenni a szakvizsgát, mert Németországban a szakvizsga után kapja csak meg a doktor előnevet. Nem úgy, mint Magyarországon, ahol aki az egyetemet elvégezte, az mindjárt megkapja. Andreas sokáig volt Magyarországon, mert Magyarországon járt másfél évet egyetemre. Már kétéves korától nyaranta Magyarországon nyaralt, Gabi vigyázott rá az iskolai szünetekben. Amikor Gabinak megszületett az első gyereke, Judit, velük járt nyaralni, Ezért beszélte a magyar nyelvet olyan jól, még ma is szépen beszél. Néha persze hibázik, de akkor kijavítom. De mindent el tud mondani magyarul is. Egy igazi nyelvtehetség, mert Portugáliában volt egy hónapig, és gyönyörűen megtanult portugálul, angolul tökéletesen beszél, nem beszélve a németről, aztán még beszél szorbul, mert szorb iskolába járt [Szorbok, vendek – etnikai kisebbség a Spree felső folyásánál és Lausitz vidékén, különösen Cottbus és Bautzen környékén. Számuk kb. 100 ezer, nyelvük az indoeurópai nyelvcsalád szláv ágán belül a nyugati szláv nyelvek csoportjához tartozik. – A szerk.]. Ez egy adottság, hogy ilyen gyorsan megtanul mindent. Ő zsidónak érzi magát. Érdeklődik az én dédapám, Natonek rabbi iránt is. Neki is megvan ez a kiadvány magyarul a dédapámról, amiről már beszéltünk. Büszke a Natonek névre, és nagy tisztelettel van velem szemben, ami szintén nem semmi.

Most áttérnék akkor a kislányra. Alexandra nyolc évvel fiatalabb. Gyerekkorában nagyon súlyos beteg volt. Koplalókúrába kezdett tizennégy éves korában, anorexia nervosa betegséget szenvedett végig. Majdnem egy évig kórházban volt Cottbus mellett. Egy évet halasztania kellett az iskolában. Ennek ellenére kiváló tanuló volt, az érettségit kitűnően tette le. Pillanatnyilag Freiburgban van, az orvosi egyetem utolsó évét végzi. Már egy csomó vizsgát letett, a szakvizsgája is megvan, csak most még az egyetemi vizsgája nincsen meg. Valószínűleg bőrgyógyász lesz.

A másik lányom, Gabi imádnivaló, nagy tisztelettel van az apjával szemben. Talán nagyobb tisztelettel, mint az édesanyjával volt. Anyunál a tisztelet helyett az imádat volt a legnagyobb mértékben. Szintén a Munkácsy Mihály utcai gimnáziumban érettségizett [Kölcsey Ferenc Gimnázium – A szerk.]. Utána főiskolát végzett, egyetemen tanult, mielőtt tanár lett belőle. Matematikatanár, és imádják a gyerekei. Gabinak óriási előnye, hogy nemcsak tanár, hanem pszichológus is, és ha annak ment volna, akkor sokkal jobban járt volna. Mert mindenkinek a nyelvén tud beszélni, ragyogóan. A szülők imádják, mert a gyerekükkel úgy tud foglalkozni, hogy a gyerekek is imádják Gabit, és ez egy nagyon nagy szó. Gabi a barátnőjével együtt szervezte és alapította meg a Lauder Iskolát 1990-ben [Lauder Javne Zsidó Közösségi Óvoda, Általános, Közép- és Szakiskola, amelyet alapítvány működtet. Történetéről, különleges pedagógiai módszereiről lásd az iskola honlapját: www.lauder.hu – A szerk.]. A Lauder Iskola két részből állt korábban. Volt az elemi iskola, és volt a gimnázium, a felsősök. Gabi a gimnáziumot alapította és irányította annak idején. A zsidó vallással sokat foglalkoznak az iskolában. Annak ellenére, hogy abszolút nem vallási iskola, sőt nagyon sok keresztény tanár van. Ebben az iskolában a tanár és a gyerek viszonya a legkülönösebb. Itt a tanárok a gyerekekkel úgy foglalkoznak, mintha a saját gyerekeik lennének. Ennek következtében a gyerekek szívesen mennek az iskolába, nem teher nekik. Az innen kikerülő gyerekek, akik átkerülnek az egyetemekre, mind jól fejezik be tanulmányaikat, és jól érvényesülnek az életben. Gabi húsz éves volt, amikor férjhez ment. A férje Spielberger Róbert, aki 1947 márciusában született Salgótarjánban, ott is nevelkedett. Az apja órás-ékszerész volt. Jómódú, vallásos emberek voltak, de teljesen elszegényedtek az államosításkor. Érettségi után Robi Csehszlovákiába ment tanulni, ott végezte az egyetemet. Nem Prágában, hanem Pardubicében. Textilszakot végzett, textilvegyészetet. Amikor az egyetem elvégzése után hazajött, elhelyezkedett egy textilnagyüzemben. Ott volt három évig. 1975-ben a Nehézipari Minisztériumba került főmunkatársként, a vegyipar távlati tervezésén dolgozott. Amikor megszüntették a minisztériumot 1982-ben, magánosította magát. Hát akkor már lassan vége volt a kommunista rezsimnek. Gabi és Robi a zsidó rabbi-szemináriumban, Scheiber Sándornál ismerkedtek meg, mindketten odajártak ifjúsági rendezvényekre. Megismerkedtek, megtetszettek egymásnak, és Robi megkérte a kezét. Az esküvőjük a budapesti Rabbiképzőben volt 1974 júniusában.

Robi vallásos zsidó családból származik, ő megtartja a nagyünnepeket. Jam Kiperkor koplal, templomba megy, a szülei Jahrzeitjét tartja. Robi igen szellemes, a barátai nagyon szeretik, óriási társaságuk van, együtt járnak évek óta egy nagy társaságba. Nagyon stabil egzisztenciát teremtett a családjának. Most egy állami részvénytársaság vezérigazgatója. Egy évig én is ott dolgoztam, ott volt az irodám. Úgy tudom, nagyon meg vannak vele elégedve, és remélem, hogy még egy jó pár évig, nyugdíjig ott tud maradni. Ötvennyolc éves, hatvanöt éves koráig még van hét év.

Robi igen segítőkész volt velem szemben is. Mikor önállósítottam magamat, 1991-től 1997-ig együtt dolgoztunk. Akkor részben a segítségét vettem igénybe, részben azt akartam, hogy ebből ő is valami hasznot húzzon. Meg is találta a számítását, akkor sem volt közöttünk soha semmi vita, vagy én meghallgattam őt, és teljesítettem, vagy ő meghallgatott engem, és azt ő teljesítette. Sokszor megkímélt, és nem engedte, hogy vidékre utazzam, már idősebb koromban elment helyettem.

Gabi nagyon hamar gyerekeket szült, úgyhogy a gyerekei a barátnői, és a gyerekeinek az udvarlói szintén gyerekeiknek számítanak. Mindegyiket tegezi természetesen, mindegyikkel, mikor megjönnek, akkor puszi, puszi, puszi. Ennek ellenére semmibe nem szól bele, csak odafigyel, és figyelmezteti őket, ha gondot lát. Mindkét gyereke teljesen önálló. Se a baráti kapcsolatukba nem szól bele, se semmibe, és ha én rákérdezek, akkor mindig azt mondja: „Apu! Nem tudom. Nem foglalkozom vele, mindenki azt csinál, amit akar.” Mind a kettő önállóan él, van lakásuk, Ági önmagát is ellátja, Judit is önállóan tartotta el magát, most fog szülni.

A gyerekek közül Judit az idősebb. A József Attila Tudományegyetemen kommunikáció szakot végzett. Először a „Pesti Est” újságnál dolgozott kommunikációs igazgatóként. Onnan áthívták a Madách Színházba. Ő volt „Az Operaház fantomja” című színdarab PR vezetője. Dolgozott a Magyar Könyvklubnál, majd önálló projekteket irányított magánvállalkozásban. Hamarosan terhes lett, így az utolsó munkáját, egy filmfesztivál rendezését nem tudta befejezni, ezt átadta másnak.

Ági az egyetem utolsó évét végzi közgáz szakon. Jó tanuló. Amellett nagyon szorgalmas, tanít angolt, olaszt. Mind a két nyelvből vizsgája van. Mindenféle egyéb munkát is vállal egy marketingcégnél kreatív munkatársként. Szabadidejében dzsesszt énekel.

Judit és Ági zsidónak érzik magukat, de nem vallásosak. Gabi se vallásos. Ő nem böjtöl. De Robival eljár a templomba a nagyünnepeken, és anyukája Jahrzeitjét is tartja. De hát ők zsidók, az egész család. Az egész iskola is erről szól. Erről a zsidó öntudatról. Minden, igen. És minden további nélkül mindent elfogadnak. Ági barátja zsidó, Judité nem. Ő lesz a férje, remélem. Semmi probléma nincs ebből, se a fiú szülei részéről, se Gabiék részéről. Mindenki boldogan várja a kislányt.

Kárpótlást kapott Adi és édesanyja is, ez a kényszermunka-kárpótlás volt. Az édesanyja meghalt, úgyhogy az a kárpótlás elment, Adi halálával már az ő kárpótlása is. De azért most még valami kérdőívet kaptam az amerikaiaktól. Azt írták, csak akkor válaszoljak, hogyha valami nem teljesült. Az a dolog teljesült, így én nem válaszoltam.

A rendszerváltozás pozitívan érintette a családot, annak ellenére, hogy nekünk semmi kifogásunk nem volt a Kádár-rendszer ellen. Mert akkor is megéltünk, akkor sem volt panaszunk, a gyerekeinket rendben fölneveltük. Jártunk színházba, moziba, televíziónk volt, barátaink voltak. Nyáron külföldre mentünk nyaralni. Kocsim volt. Rendes polgári lakásunk volt. Őszintén szólva, most sem haragszom Kádárékra.

A rendszerváltozás következtében több csalódás ért. Mert nemcsak a baloldal volt uralmon, hanem a jobboldal is, és a jobboldal már mindjárt hozzáfogott az antiszemitizmushoz. És az antiszemitizmus félelemmel tölt el, egészen érthető módon. A jelenlegi kormánnyal meg vagyok elégedve. Meg voltam elégedve az előző miniszterelnökkel is, Medgyessyvel, de közel nem annyira, mint Gyurcsánnyal. Remélem, hogy megmaradnak. Ha isten ments, visszajönne Orbán, akkor nagy bajban lennénk. Egészen biztos, mert az antiszemitizmus újra lábra kapna. Bár én SZDSZ-szavazó vagyok, mégis bizonyos szempontból haragszom a túlszabadosságra, például hogy megengedik a gyűlöletbeszédet.

Anyagilag jobban jövök ki. 1981-ben mentem nyugdíjba, akkor voltam hatvan éves. Dolgoztam mint nyugdíjas, és egész szépen kerestem. Később aztán önálló lettem, és ezt folytattam az új rendszerben is, amikor tulajdonképpen meg tudtam teremteni a szentendrei házamnak a nagyobbítását. Mert azt még a Kádár-időben építtettem, az 1970-es években. De hát már akkor más viszonyok voltak. Mindig mindenki sokat dolgozott. Amikor nyugdíjba mentem, egészen a feleségem betegségéig dolgoztam. Csak amikor már őt kellett ellátnom, és még combnyaktörést is szenvedtem, akkor már érthető módon nem dolgoztam.

A feleségemet én mindig tiszteltem és becsültem. Most úgy érzem, nem adtam neki annyit, mint amennyit adnom kellett volna. Ami most utólag, a halála után nagyon fáj. Két éven keresztül nem tudtam túltenni magam az ő halálán, állandóan sírtam. És még ma is, ha rágondolok, elsírom magam. Annak ellenére, hogy lassan megszokom az ő nemlétét, de most látom igazán, hogy nekem milyen fontos volt. Ötvenhét évig voltunk házasok, megértettük egymást, vigyáztunk egymásra. És a gyerekeinket is nagyon szerettük. Bár a gyerekeink néha panaszkodnak, főleg Gabiék, hogy nem kaptak annyit tőlünk, mint amit kapni kellett volna nekik. Én ezt nem érzem, úgy érzem, hogy mindent megkaptak, ami kellett.

Izraelben legelőször az 1960-as években voltam kint illegálisan. Ezután előlépés, jutalom, külföldi kiküldetés és minden elmaradt.

Ezen az első izraeli utamon minden kint élő rokonommal találkoztam. Az ország már akkor is aránylag jó helyzetben volt. Nincsenek már feljegyzéseim, sok mindenre nem emlékszem vissza. Az ország tetszett. Haifán voltam, fölvittek a haifai hegyre, nagy élet volt. A közvetlen unokabátyám [Frenkel Miklós] és a felesége vallásosak, és általában az egész család vallásos. Ez visszatartotta őket az abszolút jó élettől. A fiatalok, a gyerekeik már közel nem olyan vallásosak, és azóta többször voltam kint, többször beszéltem velük, jól élnek, és minden rendben van tulajdonképpen. Sajnos, a család majd’ minden tagja, aki kiment, már meghalt valamilyen betegségben. A leszármazottaik jól vannak, tartom velük a kapcsolatot.

Nyilvánvaló, hogy a dédpapa kapcsán érzelmileg Izrael fontos hely. Én vagyok az egyetlen férfiutód, aki még viszi tovább a Natonek nevet. Gabi, sajnos nem hivatalosan, Natonek Gabriellának nevezteti magát. De fiú nincsen már ebben az ágban. Viszont el tudom képzelni, hogy a dédnagyapámnak több gyereke volt, s azok között van fiú, de semmi kapcsolatom nincs velük.

Sajnos nagyon egyedül élek. Minden hétvégén a lányomnál vagyok. A gyerekeim minden este fölhívnak, a németországi lányom is. A német unokáim is gyakran fölhívnak, a magyar unokáim is felhívnak, de ritkábban. Ha isten ments’, kórházban vagyok, akkor a magyar unokáim meglátogatnak, a német unokáim nem tudnak meglátogatni, de még többet hívnak, és a hogylétemről érdeklődnek. Nem vagyok elégedetlen a sorsommal.

[Interjúalanyom a beszélgetés felvétele és az anyag feldolgozása között hirtelen meghozta mostani életének legfontosabb döntését: vett egy apartmant, és beköltözött az Arany Alkony idősek otthonába. Indoklásul elmondta, hogy az egyedüllétet nehezen viseli, sokszor rossz a közérzete, a látása erősen romlik – és semmiképpen nem szeretné sokat dolgozó gyerekeit terhelni öregkorának hétköznapi problémáival. – B. J.]