Travel

My paternal grandfather Israel Buchbinder was born in the 1860s. I don’t know my grandfather or grandmother’s birthplace. I think my grandmother (nee Neubauer) was the same age with my grandfather. I don’t know my grandmother’s first name. I didn’t know anybody of my grandparents’ families. My father’s family lived in the Ruthenian village of Dubovoye [It is 135 km from Uzhgorod, 580 km from Kiev] Tyachev district in Subcarpathia 1. I don’t remember Dubovoye village. My father and I visited it twice during my school vacations, but I have no memories of these short visits left. I don’t know what my grandfather did for a living. My grandmother was a housewife that was customary for Jewish families.

Before 1918 Subcarpathia belonged to Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The state language was Hungarian. There was no anti-Semitism in Subcarpathia. Jews could have their businesses, study and serve in the army. Everyday anti-Semitism was rare. There were generations of multinational population in Subcarpathia and people respected each other’s religion and traditions. In 1918 Subcarpathia was annexed to Czechoslovakia [First Czechoslovak Republic] 2. That was the heyday of Subcarpathia. Czechs were very friendly toward Jews. Jews had the right to hold official posts. Czechs patronized Jews believing them to be initiative and hardworking people.

There were four sons and two daughters in my fathers family. I remember being surprised at the thing that some brothers and sisters’ surname was Buchbinder and some – Neubauer. My father explained that at that time Jewish didn’t register marriages in the town hall, but only had religious weddings with a chuppah and a rabbi issued a ketubbah, a marriage contracts, to them. [Civil marriage was introduced in Hungary as late as 1895.] Therefore, it happened that the children had their father or mother’s last name given to them. The first baby was given his father’s surname, the second one – his mother’s, etc. My father oldest brother’s name was Moric Buchbinder, Moishe-Gersch in Jewish. Then there was a sister, whose first name I don’t remember. Her surname was Neubauer. My father brother Haskl’s surname was Buchbinder. My father, born in 1899, had the surname of Neubauer. His name was Adolf and his Jewish name was Avrum. Then there was my father’s brother Menyhert, his Jewish name was Mendl and his surname was Buchbinder, and there was a younger sister. I don’t remember her first name, but her surname was Neubauer.

My father’s family spoke Yiddish at home. Of course, they also spoke fluent Hungarian and Ruthenian [The language of the Subcarpathian Ruthenians, it is also spoken in some parts of Slovakia and Romania. Some consider it a dialect of the Ukrainian other as a separate Slavic language.]. My father said his parents were very religious, but I don’t know any details, unfortunately. My father and his brothers got religious education in cheder. The children went to cheder at the age of 3. I don’t know whether any of them had any secular education. It wasn’t mandatory at that time. A Jew was supposed to know Hebrew to read a prayer and get a profession to support a family. My father’s parents sent my father to learn the farrier’s craft. Farriers were in demand in villages where farmers kept livestock. My father loved and understood animals and worked with them his whole life. Though he didn’t have a veterinary diploma he selected and trained horses for the army.

I hardly know anything about my father’s sisters. They lived somewhere in Central Hungary after they got married. I’ve never seen them. All I know is that they had children and were housewives. My father’s older brother Moric Buchbinder lived in Kosice (in Slovakia now). He was a tailor. Moric was married and had three children. I don’t remember his wife or children’s names. After WWII Moric returned home from a camp, but his wife and children perished. After the war Moric lived in Kosice, Czechoslovakia. After the soviet regime came to Subcarpathia in 1945 our contacts terminated. My father’s brothers Haskl and Mendl lived in Dubovoye. They were married and had children. I don’t remember their names. I don’t remember what Haskl was doing for a living. Mendl owned timber storages. He was the wealthiest of all brothers. He had four sons from his first marriage. During WWII both brothers were drafted in work battalions and taken to the front in the Ukraine. Haskl perished in 1943 and Mendl returned home after the war. His wife and sons perished in a concentration camp.

My mother’s family lived in the Subcarpathia village Malaya Dobron, Kisdobrony during the Hungarian rule. This village exists no longer. There was a bigger village of Velikaya Dobron [30 km from Uzhgorod, 680 km from Kiev], nearby and these two villages merged after the war. Now it is one settlement of Velikaya Dobron. My mother’s father Moishe Preis was born in the Ruthenian village of Rakhov (it is a town now) in the 1870s. My grandmother Etel Preis was born in 1875. I don’t know my grandmother’s place of birth or maiden name.

Malaya Dobron was a small village. There were about 150 families living in the village and 30 of them were Jewish. Jewish families were big. There was a big synagogue in the village. On Sabbath and Jewish holidays men and women went to the synagogue. There was a big yard in the synagogue and there was a shochet shop in the yard and farther in the backyard there was a mikveh. There was a cheder in the same street as the synagogue. There were over 200 Jewish families in the neighboring village of Velikaya Dobron. It was a big village. There was a Jewish cemetery in the village and in Malaya Dobron there was a Jewish sector in the village cemetery.

Grandfather Moishe was a shoemaker. My grandmother was a midwife. My grandfather served in the Hungarian army in his youth. Even when I knew my grandfather he had a military bearing. He was average height, slim and straight. He didn’t have payes or a beard. He had a big curled up moustache. My grandfather wore high boots of soft shining leather and a jacket cut in military fashion. He always had a military type cap on his head. He wore a kippah to the synagogue. His fellow villagers called my grandfather Moishe the Soldier. My grandmother was a short fat woman. She had quick moves and looked young. She had no wrinkles on her face and always smiled. She was a very kind and smart woman. She wore long skirts and long-sleeved blouses with high collars like other women in the village. My grandmother wore a wig to go out and at home she covered her head with a kerchief.

My grandparents lived in a small house made from air bricks, a mixture of clay and cut straw. Many houses in Subcarpathia were built of air bricks that were inexpensive, rather strong and warm. It is used in construction even nowadays. There were three rooms, a kitchen and a small annex building where my grandfather had his shop. My grandfather worked alone and when his sons were growing old enough they began to help their father in his shop. There were no other employees in the shop working for my grandfather. He mainly fixed shoes, and this work didn’t cost much. I don’t think my grandfather’s family was wealthy. Perhaps, this was why my grandmother had to work, which was not customary with married Jewish women.

My grandparents had eight children. I only know my mother’s year of birth, but I will name the others according to their seniority. My mother’s sisters and brothers were called by their Jewish names in the family, and I don’t know their Hungarian names. My mother’s sister Elka was the oldest. The next one was their brother Pinchas. My mother was born on 4 August 1900. Her Hungarian name was Fanni, and her Jewish name was Faige. After my mother her brother Lajos was born. His Jewish name was Laib. Then came brother Lipe, sister Rivka and brother Bernat.

They spoke Yiddish in my mother’s family and Hungarian to their non-Jewish neighbors. My mother’s parents were religious. They celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home. On Saturday and on Jewish holidays my grandmother and grandfather went to the synagogue. My grandfather took his sons to the synagogue when they reached the age of 3. All children got Jewish education. The sons went to cheder in Malaya Dobron. Girls went to the cheder in Velikaya Dobron in about 2 km from Malaya Dobron twice a week. The children also finished a 4-year Hungarian elementary school. After bar mitzvah grandfather began training his sons in his business. They all became shoemakers.

My mother’s older sister Elka married Gersch Scher, a local Jewish man. He was a timber dealer. Elka and her husband had 3 children. Pinchas was married. His wife’s name was Baila. They also had eight children. Lajos’ wife Blanka was a housewife. They didn’t have children. Lipe was married. His wife’s name was Lea. They had four sons. Rivka’s husband Wolf Steinberg was a cabinetmaker. Rivka was a housewife. They had 6 children. Bernat had two children. He was a shoemaker and his wife was a housewife. My mother’s sisters and brothers were religious. They observed Jewish traditions, went to the synagogue on Sabbath and Jewish holidays and celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home. They all lived in Malaya Dobron.

I don’t know how my parents met. I think their marriage was prearranged by matchmakers, which was a customary thing at the time, when parents asked a shadkhan to find a match for their son or daughter. Usually parents of a couple made all necessary wedding arrangements and the couple only met before a chuppah. In towns, though, young people could meet by themselves, but in villages traditions were stronger. My parents got married in 1922. They never told me about their wedding, but I’m sure it was a traditional Jewish wedding.

Growing up

After the wedding the newly weds moved to Velke Kapusany village [30 km from Uzhgorod] in present-day Slovakia. They rented a house. My father was employed to prepare horses for the army. He was to determine whether a horse was fit for the army. Many Jews kept horses selling them to the army for good money. My mother was a housewife. I was born in Velke Kapusany on 2 March 1924. My Hungarian name was Ignac, and my Jewish name was Nuns-Laib. In 1926 my father’s job was over and my parents decided to move to Malaya Dobron to be close to my mother’s parents. The rest of my parents’ children were born in Malaya Dobron. There were six of us. In 1925 my brother David was born. In his birth certificate he had his Hungarian name of Dezso, if my memory doesn’t fail me. Mordechai, Marton by his birth certificate, was born in 1927. Then came Haim-Shmil, Sandor, born in 1929. In 1930 the first daughter Hermina, Haya-Tsire in Jewish, was born. Helena, the youngest, Haya in Jewish way, was born in 1934.

We lived in the house that my parents rented few years. It was a small house made from air bricks. There were two rooms, a kitchen and a storeroom. There were few fruit trees near the house and a shed and a small chicken house in the small yard. There was a big Russian stove 3 in the kitchen where my mother cooked. This stove heated the kitchen and a room and there was another stove to heat another room. My father worked as a veterinary on calls in Malay and Velikaya Dobron. My mother was a housewife. We were not wealthy. My parents were saving some of my father’s earnings to build a house. Their dream came true in 1936, when they started construction, and we moved into our new house in 1937. This house was also made from air bricks. There was one bigger room in it, two smaller rooms and a kitchen. The house was built not far from where my mother’s parents lived.

My parents were religious and observed Jewish traditions. My mother wore a wig to go out after she got married. All married Jewish women wore wigs. At home my mother wore a kerchief. My father had a big beard, but no payes. He wore a kippah at home and a dark hat to go out. We, boys, wore caps to go out and kippahs at home and in cheder. We celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home and my mother followed kashrut. She kept special crockery for dairy and meat products and she taught us to follow the rules as well. I was the oldest, and my mother always sent me to take a chicken or a goose to the shochet to slaughter. The shochet also determined whether the poultry was kosher. If he said that it was not kosher it had to be given to non-Jews. On weekdays my father prayed at home. He had a tallit, a tefillin and a prayer book. When my father was praying he was not to be distracted. He explained that when he was talking to God he didn’t care about anything else. All Jews in Malaya Dobron prayed at home. When a Jewish man, for example, was not at home, when it was time for a prayer, he had his tefillin and tallit with him to stop and pray. Nobody was surprised, when a Jew put on his tefillin or tallit to pray in a train or at a railway station. They were so used to it that nobody paid any attention.

On Friday morning my mother started preparations for Sabbath. She made dough for to bake bread. On Friday my mother made bread for a week and challah bread for Sabbath. There was a Jewish bakery nearby. My mother formed bread and challot, put them in a big basket and I took the basket to the bakery. Later in the afternoon I went back there to pick the order. Meanwhile my mother made chicken broth, made noodles for the broth and for puddings and made gefilte fish. When it was ready, she put a pot of cholnt into the oven for the next day and went to the mikveh. There was one mikveh in Malaya Dobron. Women went there in the afternoon, when men were still at work, and men went to the mikveh in the evening. When my mother returned from the mikveh she set the table. My father came back from the mikveh, put on his fancy suit and went to the synagogue with his sons over 3 years of age. Boys went to cheder at this age and were big enough to go to the synagogue. When we returned from the synagogue, my mother lit candles. She had her fancy dress on. She covered her face with her hands to not see the candle light and prayed over the candles. Then we all sat down to festive dinner. Once a funny incident happened: my father and the children returned from the synagogue, and only at the table we discovered that my younger brother Sandor was not there. He happened to fall asleep during the prayer at the synagogue. The synagogue was already closed, and my brother slept there all night. Early in the morning my father went to the synagogue and brought Sandor home. After the candles were lit no work was allowed to be done. Our Ukrainian [Ruthenian] neighbor came to our home to light the lamps and start the oven. She also took out the cholnt from the oven. [shabesgoy] Next day we all went to the synagogue, but my sisters. My mother was upstairs, and my father and the boys were downstairs with other men. Then we returned home and had dinner, and after dinner my father read a Saturday section of the Torah to us and told us stories of Jewish history. The children visited our grandmother and grandfather on Saturdays. All of my mother’s brothers and sisters lived in Malaya Dobron. On Saturday about 40 grandchildren got together at my grandmother’s house and she had a chocolate or a kind word for each of us. In the evening my father conducted the Havdalah ritual, separation of Saturday from weekdays. The family got together at the table. My father lit candles and said a blessing. Each of us had wine. The children had a little wine, just enough to wet their lip. Everybody sipped some wine, then my father poured some wine into a saucer and put down the candle in it. This was the end of Sabbath and another week began.

Preparation to Pesach began long before the holiday. There was a general clean up of the house, everything was cleaned and washed. The rabbi inspected the Jewish bakery for chametz. After such inspection the rabbi gave his permission to bake matzah. Each family ordered as much matzah as they needed. Matzah was delivered to homes. My mother took boxes with matzah to the attic where she kept our Pesach crockery. It was not allowed to keep matzah in the kitchen till there was any chametz or even bread crumbs left. On the eve of Pesach all bread was removed from the house. The house was searched even for the smallest pieces of bread and bread crumbs that were burnt then. Then my father continued a symbolic search for chametz. We washed our everyday crockery, packed it in boxes and stored in the storeroom, and then it was time to take down matzah and fancy crockery from the attic. My mother started cooking for Pesach. We always looked forward to holidays. We were poor, and the children never had too much food, except on Sabbath and holidays, when we had sufficient delicious food. My mother cooked traditional food: chicken broth with dumplings, stuffed chicken neck, gefilte fish, potato puddings, baked strudels from matzah flour with jam, raisins and nuts. My mother cooked everything on goose fat. This fat was also prepared separately, when there was to be no bread in the kitchen. My mother began to prepare it long before the holiday and stored it in a can in the attic where the Pesach crockery was kept. She had to cook food for two days before Pesach. Then Hol Amoed started. No work was allowed to do on the last two days of Pesach. In the morning all went to the synagogue. On the first day of Pesach my father conducted seder. Besides everything else, there were greeneries, horseradish, ground apples with honey and cinnamon, hard-boiled eggs and a saucer with salty water. And there was also matzah. We bought red wine at the synagogue for Pesach. On the first seder all, including the children, were to drink four glasses of wine. There was a big and fanciest wineglass for Prophet Elijah in the center of the table. The front door was kept open for Elijah to come into the house. My father wearing white clothing was sitting at the head of the table. This outfit is called kipr. Men wear it on Pesach and Yom Kippur. My father reclined on cushions supporting his back and the sides. We ate greeneries dipping then in salty water. Then my father broke matzah into three pieces and hid the middle side under the cushions. This piece of matzah was called afikoman. One of the children was to find it and then my father offered redemption for it. I asked my father traditional questions. When my brothers began to attend the cheder, they also asked my father questions. We posed questions in Hebrew and my father answered in Hebrew. Then my father started telling us about Exodus of Jews from Egypt. This story he told in Hebrew [haggadah], and then repeated each phrase in Yiddish. When he was telling about the retributions that God sent on Egypt, we were to drop wine on the saucer after he mentioned retributions. Then my father gave each of us a piece of afikoman. We all sang Pesach songs. Younger children fell asleep at the table before the seder was over. I was older and next morning, when they woke up I teased them a little saying that while they were asleep Elijah came in and I saw him. On Pesach we visited my mother’s relatives and invited them to visit us.

A month before Rosh Hashanah, New Year, they blew the shofar at the synagogue. The shofar is very loud and strident and it was heard across the village. We went to the synagogue and when we returned home, we ate apples and challah dipping them in honey.

Yom Kippur started with the Kapores ritual on the eve of Yom Kippur. There were white rosters bought for the father and the sons and white hens for the mother and sisters. The rosters were to be turned around the head saying in Hebrew: ‘May you be my atonement”. Then the chickens were slaughtered and my mother cooked them in the morning. Before Yom Kippur we only ate chicken broth and chicken meat a whole day. It was the rule to have 3 meals cooked from these Kapores chickens. The dinner was over before the first star appeared in the sky. From this moment and until the next evening the family fasted. Children fasted half a day after they turned 8 and after bar mitzvah – a whole day like adults. In the morning all went to the synagogue. Men wore white kitel outfits and women wore their fancy dresses. Everybody brought a candle. People stayed at the synagogue a whole day. When the first star appeared in the sky, all went to their homes to have dinner.

After Yom Kippur children began to make decorations for the sukkah. They made them from color paper and everybody tried to make the best decoration. The sukkah was placed in the yard. There was a frame made from pre-manufactured lath planks, then branches were entwined in it and the roof was also covered with branches. The sukkah was decorated with flowers and paper decorations and ribbons. There was a table taken into the sukkah and we had meals and prayed in the sukkah through all days of the holiday. It was customary to eat fruit on Sukkot. Children had the ‘rozhok’ –fruit that grow in Israel [etrog]. They were flat, brown and very sweet. The children bit on them and then played with stones that these fruit had inside.

For Purim children rehearsed songs, dances and little performances. Children, and sometimes adults, went from one house to other showing their performances and for this they were given small change. The more houses you visited the more coins you got. I remember a joke of this time. A rich Jew wanted his daughter to get married. He talked to shadkhan who said that there was a bridegroom, who could earn 10 pengos [Hungarian currency in the interwar period] per day. 10 pengos was a lot of money at that time. The rich man was very happy, and the wedding took place. A month passed. The rich man came to the shadkhan and said that this guy hadn’t worked a day and hadn’t earned a single coin. The shadkhan convinced him to wait another month. Nothing changed a month later. Another month passed, and the rich man came to the shadkhan again. The shadkhan said: “Be patient, there is not long to wait until Purim, and then your daughter’s husband will earn this 10 pengos”. There was also shelakhmones taken to houses at Purim. It was taken to relatives, friends and neighbors. Children ran from one house to another with trays with sweets on them. Returning the tray, the mistress of the house put coins on it for the children. After Purim children bought toys, sweets or something else.

We, children, also liked Chanukkah. On this holiday every guest gave children money. This money was supposed to be spent on gambling, but we preferred to spend it on what we believed was right. On Chanukkah children traditionally played with whipping tops that we made ourselves. There were wooden forms with carved letters where we poured melted lead and waited till it solidified. The top was divided into four sectors with a letter in each sector. Winning depended on the letter that the top fell on. On Chanukkah my mother lit a candle each day. Actually, there were no candles since they were very expensive. My mother cut off the bottom of a potato and cut out its inside, poured in oil and put a wick inside. These candles lasted a while. My mother added another potato on each day of Chanukkah.

I went to cheder at the age of 3. My younger brothers also went to cheder at this age. In the 1st and 2nd forms there was a rebe and he had an assistant, who was like a nanny for the kids, but in the 3rd form we were quite handy to manage ourselves. Our classes started at 7 o’clock in the morning. In winter and autumn we got up, when it was still dark outside. My mother woke me up and I cried and wanted to stay home. We had classes till lunch. Then the rebe let us go home for lunch and then we came back to cheder. Our classes ended at 7. We had to do homework at home. I went to school at the age of 8 and had no free time left, whatsoever. There were 2 general schools in Malaya Dobron: a Czech and Hungarian one. My parents sent me to the Hungarian school for some reason, though the state language was Czech at the time. My brothers and sisters went to the Czech school. There were more Jewish children in the Hungarian school than in the Czech one. This was a school for boys and girls. I went to cheder in the morning. We prayed and had classes. Then I ran home for breakfast and ran to the Hungarian school. After classes I went home for lunch and then went back to cheder where we studied till 8-9 o’clock in the evening. When we returned home, we had to do the homework for school and for cheder. Some parents only cared about their children’s successes at the cheder, but my father believed that I had to be good at both. This was a difficult task and I often studied till late at night.

In 1935 my grandmother Etel, my mother’s mother, fell severely ill. She was taken to the Jewish hospital in Uzhgorod where she died. This happened before Rosh Hashanah. I still remember how my mother cried and lamented for her. My grandmother was only 60 years old, while at that time it was quite common that people lived to be 80-90 years old. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Uzhgorod in accordance with Jewish traditions. My mother’s brother Pinchas recited the Kaddish after my grandmother. My mother and her sisters sat shivah after my grandmother since my mother’s brothers had to go back to work to support their families. My mother’s younger sister Riva and her family moved in with my grandfather.

Boys studied at cheder till the age of 13. The rebe prepared them for bar mitzvah. In 1937 I became of age according to Jewish traditions. I turned 13 years old. On Saturday the rabbi called me to the torah to read a section from it. I had a tallit on for the first time in my life. My parents brought honey cakes and vodka to the synagogue. After the bar mitzvah all attendants of the synagogue had treatments. In the evening my mother made a dinner for the family and relatives. They greeted me and it was quite a holiday for me. After finishing cheder those parents who could afford it sent their children to yeshivah, but I couldn’t even dream about it. We were poor and since I was the oldest son I had to support the family. My father began to have health problems – he happened to have a serious heart disease. It was hard for him to work and he needed money to buy medications. From time to time he had to stay in hospital in Uzhgorod where he had medical treatment and received some medications to take home with him, but when he ran out of them, he had to buy them. I finished school in 1938. My brothers were still at school and I became the only breadwinner in the family. I didn’t have a profession, but I couldn’t go to study since there was nobody to support the family through this time. I began to sell food products to Jewish families in Uzhgorod and soon I had my clients there. My mother kept poultry: chickens, ducks and geese. I bought eggs, chickens and veal from other villagers to sell them in Uzhgorod and later I also took my mother’s poultry to sell there. The shochet slaughtered them and on Monday I took 20-25 chickens to Uzhgorod. My clients ordered about 50-60 chickens for Sabbath. Later Jewish café owners began to order chicken from me. My father had a horse that he used to ride to his calls when he was working. I harnessed the horse to ride to Uzhgorod. So I earned our living. Of course, this was hard work, but we were not starving and managed to buy everything necessary for the family. Many other villagers earned their living in this way. There were also wealthy Jews in our village. One Jew whose last name was Weinberger had 300 hectares of land, many cows and horses. He also had equipment and tractors. Those who had land could feed their families by farming.

In 1938 Subcarpathia became Hungarian again. [Hungarian troops occupied Subcarpathia in March 1939. The western part where Malaya Dobron/Kisdobrony is was attached to Hungary as early as the 2nd November 1938, together with Southern Slovakia as a result of the First Vienna Decesion.] Though we had a good life during the Czech rule, many were happy that the Hungarians were back, especially older people. All children spoke fluent Czech, but older people didn’t know it. My mother, despite living 20 years under the Czech rule, never learned this language. She spoke Yiddish and Hungarian. At the beginning everything went well, but in 1938 persecution of Jews began, though we didn’t suffer from it since it was directed on wealthier people. In 1939 anti-Jewish laws 4 were issued. Under these laws wealthier Jews were to give away their shops, farms or stores to non-Jews or the state expropriated their property, if they didn’t. One way or another, Jewish owners didn’t get any compensation, but when they left their property with non-Jewish owners, they could at least keep the job, though their new masters paid them little. When the state expropriated the property, their former owners lost everything and were thrown into the street. Jews were not allowed to study in higher educational institutions [Numerus Clausus in Hungary] 5 or serve in the army. This was open state-level anti-Semitism and they didn’t even make an effort to camouflage it. When Germany started a war in 1939, life became even more difficult. Hungary was Germany’s ally in this war. There were food cards introduced. People in towns were starving. We didn’t suffer so much in villages. There were bread and sugar cards and what we got per cards was sufficient. However strange it may seem, my life became easier when Subcarpathia became Hungarian. I could do my business in Uzhgorod and in Hungarian towns. I took my products to the Hungarian town of Kisvarda, 30 km from Malaya Dobron. I brought back salt, sugar and spirit that people drank with water. When drought happened in Velikiy Bereznyy [35 km from Uzhgorod, 650 km from Kiev] in summer farmers failed to make hay stocks and my acquaintance offered me to buy cows from them. We went there and bought cows for 40 pengos. We sold these cows in Kisvarda 100-120 pengos each. We had 3 cows left that we had to take them back. On our way back I got very hungry. My parents taught us that we couldn’t eat anything from non-Jews. I remembered this well and when I went into a farmer’s house and asked him to sell me some food I didn’t even want to buy bread from him. I bought 3 apples and this was all I had till we reached Chop where my mother’s sister Elka and her family lived. They moved to Chop in 1939, when Elka husband’s trade business was expropriated. So only at my aunt’s house I finally had a meal. We made few more trips to Velikiy Bereznyy to buy cows to sell them in Kisvarda. This was a long trip. From Velikiy Bereznyy we went to Perechin, 25 km from Velikiy Bereznyy. There we took a rest and then walked 20 km to Uzhgorod. From there we walked 30 km to Chop and from there - 25 km to Kisvarda. This trip took us about a week. We also had to let the cows pasture so they didn’t have exhausted looks, when we reached Kisvarda or we wouldn’t have sold them. From Kisvarda we brought home 2-3 bags of flour, kosher goose fat and cereals.

Jews served in Hungarian work battalions. In March 1942 I was to turn 18, but already in January 1942 I was called to the draft board examining recruits for work battalions. However, they released guys of 1923 - 1924 from service. They began to recruit my year of birth, when we were taken to ghettos, but I was not allowed to leave the ghetto.

Before Pesach in 1944 I was in Uzhgorod, but I came home for the holiday. I always celebrated all Jewish holidays at home and couldn’t imagine otherwise. I was planning to go back to Uzhgorod after the holiday. On the last day of Pesach they placed a poster on the building of the village council announcing that all Jews were to come to the village council on Sunday. We were to have food and clothing not to exceed 10 kg of weight with us. All Jews of Malaya Dobron came there. Our family, my mother’s sisters with their families and grandfather Moishe, my mother’s father, went there, too. We were taken to Uzhgorod on horse-driven wagons. The ghetto in Uzhgorod was at the former brick factory owned by Jew Moshkovich formerly. There were 16 thousand Jews from Uzhgorod district in the ghetto. There were also people taken from villages and few days later they began to take people from Uzhgorod to the ghetto. Since there was no space left, they were taken to another ghetto in a big timber storage facility owned by Jew Blick before the Hungarian rule. We lived in the open air, though it was still rather cold at night. Some families tried to stay in brick sections with furnaces for brick baking, but there was no ventilation and it was stuffy. So they couldn’t stay there whatsoever and had to stay in the open air with their small children. When we ran out of food that we took from home we began to starve. Then younger Jews were ordered to work. We sorted out furniture, household goods, clothing and shoes in the Jewish houses whose owners were taken to the ghetto. All Jewish houses were sealed. There were many valuable things left in the houses: pictures, china, and jewelry. Gendarmes broke the seals and we came into the houses to sort out everything there was there. The gendarmes searched the walls for money in hiding place. We loaded the things on trucks that drove the loads to the Hasidic 6 synagogue on the embankment of the Uzh River. This synagogue houses a Philharmonic now. I don’t know what happened to these loads. When we found food in the houses, the gendarmes allowed us to take it with us, but when we came to the ghetto they took it away and sent it to the kitchen that made food for inmates of the ghetto. There was also a Jewish kitchen on the embankment near the Hasidic synagogue where they also made food for inmates of the ghetto, but was it possible to feed 16 thousand people?! Those who had money could buy food. There was the family of Weinberger, a rich Jew from Malaya Dobron in the ghetto. I knew the town well and went to work every day. Weinberger gave me money to buy cookies and sausage for them. I remember bringing him sausage once and he invited me to eat with his family. I thanked him and said I wasn’t hungry, but the reason was that I didn’t want to eat non-kosher sausage, just couldn’t force myself to take a bite. This was how we were raised at home.

There were no Germans in the ghetto. Once some Germans came to the ghetto to do some inspection. There were Hungarian gendarmes in the ghetto and they were very rude with the inmates, but not all of them. I witnessed one incident that happened to my uncle, my mother’s brother Bernat. Once we were at work sorting out things, when my uncle found vodka. He gave us a little and drank the rest of it. He got drunk. The Hungarian soldier who convoyed us to this house saw my uncle. He silently picked some things and took my uncle to a tavern in the end of the street. The soldier gave the owner of this tavern those things he took from the house and asked him to put my uncle to sleep. When it was time for us to go to the ghetto in the evening, he went to the tavern to pick my uncle who had sobered by then. So they happened to be human to Jews, but rarely, of course.

On 24 May 1944 we were ordered to gather near the gate to the ghetto. There was a railroad spur to the brick factory. There was a train with open platforms for brick transportation taken to the spur and gendarmes ordered us to board those platforms. They were narrow platforms. There were 100-120 people on each of them. Many were standing close to one another. When we reached a station we changed a train, but this was not a passenger train, but one with freight railcars, there were only small barred windows near the ceilings, but after those platforms these railcars seemed heaven to us. It was warm already and the steel railcars were overheated. The windows were closed and there was no air to breathe. We didn’t have water. There were no toilets. There were holes in the floors. At first people endured it as long as they could, but then we stopped caring. At first there were talks that they were going to keep us in those railcars till we died from the heat and thirst, but others said that we were moving to work camps. Then these talks faded out, we were all in a half-fainted state. The heat and stinking was the hardest on older people and children. The train stopped at a station and we were given one bucket of water for all of us. Everybody ran to the bucket trying to drink without thinking about the others. Thinking about it now I don’t believe this was happening to us. People just couldn’t turn into animals so fast, but this happened indeed. We arrived at Auschwitz. The train stopped at the platform where there were German soldiers and people in white robes, doctors, as we got to know later. They sorted us out sending old people and children to one side and those who were stronger – to another. Mothers were told to give their children to grandmothers and grandfathers and step to another side. Many women didn’t want to leave their children and went with them to the gas chamber, as we learned later. My brothers Dezso, Marton and Sandor were sent to the right where other young men and women gathered. My father, grandfather and younger sister Helena were sent to the left. I left the train after my father and wanted to follow him, but the officer pulled me by my sleeve and told me to step to the side where young people gathered. My mother held Hermina by her shoulders and they were sent to the women’s group. When we were separated, my mother shouted to me: ‘Don’t forget, you are the oldest and you are responsible for your brothers!’. Later I got to know that my father and grandfather were exterminated right away. I stood beside my brothers. Dezso and Marton were standing beside and I was holding Sandor, the youngest, by his hand. A soldier told me to let go of my brother’s hand. I didn’t and he hit me on my head with his gun butt so hard that I fell and fainted. When I recovered my senses, a man of average age, whose face was familiar to me from the ghetto in Uzhgorod approached me and said: ‘Sonny, you are not at home, you have to obey here’. We marched to the bathroom. When we finished washing and came outside, our clothes were gone and there were striped robes waiting for us. We got dressed and then a barber shaved our heads. My brothers and I tried to stay together. We lined up and marched to the Auschwitz work camp in 5-6 km from the central camp. There were big barracks with two-tier plank beds in them. We were given thin striped blankets from the same fabric as our robes. We were also given pieces of cloth with numbers imprinted on them. We were to saw them on our clothes on the chest and on the back. My camp number was 66, Dezso’s – 67, Marton – 68. We were ordered to line up in front of the barrack and they gave each of us a piece of bread and sausage. My brother Dezso was the biggest of us. He went in for sports, track-and-field events. In 1942 he won the first place in a district contest. Dezso was always hungry and pounced on the food. I only ate bread and couldn’t even look at the sausage. It was disgusting: there were pieces of pork fat in it. The same man, who talked to me in the central camp, approached us again and said that we had to eat what we were given here. God will forgive me this sin and I will need all my strength in the camp. I still couldn’t force myself at that moment an gave my piece of sausage to my brother, but some time later I really began to eat anything eatable without thinking whether the food was kosher or not.

There were Jews from Hungary, Poland, France, Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia in our barrack. Almost all of them spoke Yiddish so we could understand each other well. There were also few German criminals in the barrack. We were taken to the camp just for being Jews, but they were taken to court and sentenced to different terms of imprisonment. The senior man of our barrack was a German man sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment for killing a whole family. He was a murderer, but he was a senior man and he did whatever he wanted and there was nobody to complain to. He hit one Jewish man so hard that he died. We met my mother’s brother Pinchas in the camp. His situation was a little better than of the rest of us. He didn’t have to go to work. The Germans got to know that he was a shoemaker and gave him a place to work in the camp. He fixed and made boots for Germans. The Germans liked what he did and began to bring him leather to make shoes and boots for their wives and daughters in Germany. Sometimes Pinchas shared some food with us, when Germans gave him food for his work.

Then we began to go to work. We were to arrange road beds for construction of new roads: we did wood cutting and grubbing, grading with spades and placing gravel. Our morning started with breakfast. We got a piece of bread and a mug of surrogate black without sugar. Then we lined up, they counted us and convoyed to work. In the afternoon we had lunch break. Thermos bottles with soup and bread were delivered from the camp. Of course, it’s hard to call this turbid liquid with half-rotten potato pieces in it soup. Sometimes we could puck a piece of carrot or a cabbage leaf there. We got 300 grams bread for lunch. After lunch we went back to work and in the evening we were convoyed back to the camp. When Germans saw that somebody was too exhausted to work they killed him right there. In the evening the ‘funeral crew’, as we called them, they were also Jews, came to bury the dead in the wood. When back in the camp, we got our dinner: same soup as in the afternoon, but no bread. After dinner we went to sleep. We got so tired during the day that we fell asleep and had no dreams. We worked every day. We were not allowed to leave the barrack after retreat. There were armed guards of the camp and at night there were strong patrol dogs let loose in the camp. They were trained to attack people in striped robes.

My brother Dezso was gone in the camp. He was always hungry. We were no allowed to come to the kitchen. Once Dezso said that he couldn’t believe there was no food in the camp and left the barrack. My brothers and I tried to tell him to stay and that it could end up in something bad, but he left anyway. He never came back and we never found out what happened to him.

In January 1945 American troops began to attack. Krakow was liberated and the front was on the right from Krakow. [Krakow was liberated by the Soviet Army. He probably refers to the American bombardment of Krakow.] There was a road sign near our camp and there was an inscription in German: ’90 km - Krakow’. In late January evacuation of the camp began. There were 100 thousand of those who could walk. They shot all those who were weak and ill. My brothers, uncle Pinchas and I were among those, who could walk. The frost was severe. We were ordered to board the open platforms of a train. My brother Marton happened to be in another railcar. Only my younger brother Sandor was with me in the railcar. We could only stand close to one another in the railcar, so overcrowded it was. People were dying, but there wasn’t even space to fall and they remained standing supported by the others. We were starved and suffered from thirst. If somebody peed the others put their mugs to him to have at least something to drink. My brother Sandor died in this railcar. I didn’t notice when it happened, but one morning he was not there any longer. Probably somebody pushed him off the railcar, when the train stopped. 9 days later we finally arrived at the Gleiwitz camp. When we got off the train, many of us began to pounce on the snow – so dehydrated we were. I saw my brother Marton there. He was swollen and dark blue – it was horrifying to look at him. I, probably, looked no better. We were sorted out on the platform. The weaker and older inmates were exterminated. My uncle Pinchas perished there. My brother and I went to a barrack. The next morning we were taken to a hospital barrack. Three days later my brother died in this barrack. I was recovering. Our senior man in this barrack was good. He told me to be in no hurry to leave this barrack. I was afraid of staying in this barrack. Many patients were dying every day. We had sufficient bread and food, but people were still dying. The patients were saying that doctors were using people for their medical experiments. I didn’t know whether this was true, but I was scared. When I felt better, I asked them to discharge me. The senior man told me to take food and bread with me. I thought there was food in the camp. When I came out of the hospital barrack I bumped into starved inmates begging for food. Before I reached my barrack, my food that I had with me was all gone and there were only two slices of bread left. I put them under my mattress, but in the morning they were gone.

We didn’t have to go to work any longer. We were allowed toile on our plank beds all day long. Each of us got 2 potatoes boiled in their jackets and 100 grams tea with no sugar. Every day inmates were dying and the others managed to receive their ration of food. Later Germans discovered what was happening and before giving food to us they ordered us to go outside and gave us food letting us inside one after another. We knew that if we were not sent to work this meant that this was a death camp. We were waiting for the end of it. My birthday was on 2 March. Early in the morning a German officer came into our barrack and asked who wanted to go to work. He selected 40 stronger men. We lined up on the square yard and they told us that we would go to a very good camp where work was not too hard and we would get more food. We were given 200 grams bread and 20 g margarine and told us that we would not get any food on the way and we had to keep this piece of bread till we got to the place, but what was this 200 grams of bread? An hour later nobody had even a bread crumb left. We walked to this camp. It was a small camp. There were few barracks for 400 people. Later we got to know that this was just one sector of the camp and there were two other sectors for 400 inmates each. One was a central sector and another one was about 15 km from our camp. There was a kitchen there and a tractor delivered food to us in our sector. We were given half loaf of bread and a jar of soup each. They told us to find vacant beds and take them. We got up at 5 in the morning. There was no breakfast. We went to work. We had to walk for about 8 km and we walked to work every day. We worked at the construction of the railroad connecting the central camp with two others. People were exhausted. We had one meal after we returned to the camp in the evening. We were given one liter of soup per day and twice a week we got a little piece of bread to have with soup. We understood that Germans calculated everything. They knew that we wouldn’t have to work long and there was no need for us to keep strong. We worked very hard and had to cover 16 km each day. Since about 5 April English and American planes began to fly over our work site. On the next day we didn’t go to work. We were taken to the central camp. There was also another column marching there – 400 inmates from another camp. The central camp had barracks for 400 inmates, when there were already 1200 of us. We had to find a place to sleep at night. We were not allowed to come into the yard due to air raids and bombings. 2-3 inmates slept on one bed, the others slept on the floor ad in the aisles. A bomb hit one barrack. Many inmates perished. 2 days passed. On the 3rd day they ordered us to line up in the yard. The Germans sorted out stronger inmates from weaker ones. There were trucks near the gate. We were ordered to go through the gate one after another. Each was given 2 cigarettes. This was like a miracle for us. When I came to the gate they ran out of cigarettes. I said that since there were no cigarettes left, I wasn’t going. I decided: be what might, and returned to the camp where weaker inmates stayed. There were about 200 of us. I understood they were going to be shot, but I also knew it was going to happen to me sooner or later. So why wait?… We waited standing. The trucks left. We talked among ourselves that now there was more space in the barracks, but deep in our hearts we didn’t believe that there was hope for us to survive left. However, we were ordered to go back to the camp. There were few German military left in the camp. We were ordered to take food from the storeroom and cook by ourselves. We stayed in the camp few days and then we were taken to the railway station where we were ordered to board a train. The railcars were stuffed with people. Our trip lasted about 2 days. Then the train stopped, but the doors were kept closed. Through small windows near the ceiling we could see barracks and people walking. 4 or 5 we were kept in those closed railcars. Only when those, who were taken from our camp in trucks, arrived, the doors were opened. We ran to barrels with water to drink. Then we were ordered to line up again and board railcars again. There were more railcars now and there was more space inside. There was an armed German guard in every railcar. The door of our railcar was kept open. The guard sat by the door. He put his gun on his side and said that we would be all right soon, but that Germans would not be doing so well since American and Soviet troops were close. We didn’t talk back to him, but we liked what we heard. We arrived at a station. A German officer ordered everybody to get off the train since Americans were to start bombing soon. We were ordered to go to the wood near the station, as if to hide from bombing there. Soldiers with automatic guns convoyed us, but we were so used to armed convoys that we paid no attention to them. We were ordered to line up in the woods. German soldiers walked along the line shooting at people. I don’t know how I happened to survive. I don’t remember soldiers approaching me or how I fell into the pit from a bomb. I probably fainted from fear. When I recovered my consciousness I was in the pit wet from the rain and somebody else’s blood. There were corpses on top of me and underneath. I got out of the pit and ran away. I didn’t know where I was running. Then I heard somebody calling me in Yiddish. A guy in a camp robe came out of the bushes. I recognized him. He was a Polish Jew; we were in the same railcar. His name was Janec, but I don’t know his surname. He said he was waiting for a survivor for about half hour. He didn’t see where the Germans went. We didn’t have anywhere to go so we went though the wood till we came to the edge. We saw a village in about 2-3 km from there and there was a battle going on there. There were explosions and firing and we were scared. We went back to the wood. It was rather warm and there was grass growing. We walked in the wood and ate grass and roots. Few days later we bumped into four Germans running from the edge of the wood. Janec told me to keep my mouth shut and remember the only thing that we were not Jews. He was Polish and I was Hungarian. He spoke German and English. The Germans asked us what we were doing in the wood. Janec replied that we worked for Germans and then they let us go and that we had nowhere to go and kept wondering in the woods. The Germans began to discuss what to do with us. One said that we had to be shot. Another replied that we were still children and why should they kill us. We were short and thin and looked young for our years. The Germans went away, but the one who suggested to shoot us kept looking back. We were so scared that we couldn’t walk. We stayed in the wood a whole day and at night it began to rain. We decided to get to the village for any Price. We ran across the field. There was a road behind the fields and we saw military trucks driving there. We hid away not seeing whose trucks they were. When they passed we ran to the village. We came into the first house. There were no villagers left. I saw some military through the window and told Janec that Russians were coming. He replied that there could be no Russians there and that this was an American front. I came out of the house and the soldiers saw me. I didn’t know who they were. One of them asked me in German how many of us were there. I said there was another man in the house and they told me to come inside with them. I went first and they followed me. I spoke louder when we came nearer to the house for Janec to hear me and run away, but he heard them speaking English, came out of the house and spoke English to them. They were American soldiers. They gave us tinned meat and bread. When we finished eating they took us to the commander’s office in a village house on their truck. There were German prisoners in the house. The Americans took us to the cow shed. There was an attic with straw in the shed and they left us there. They gave us cigarettes, cookies and cocoa. We were both exhausted. I weighed 32 kg. Americans kept us there few days. We washed ourselves and they gave us clean American uniforms and took us to a hospital. They cordially bid ‘good bye’ to us and gave us cookies and chocolate. I was unconscious for few days. When I recovered my consciousness I discovered that I had no clothes or food left. Everything was gone. I stayed in hospital for about a month. The doctors said I had severe dystrophy and I had to be patient. When the doctor came to examine me, he asked me in German where I came from. I said I was from Subcarpathia and he began to smile and spoke Hungarian to me. I was shocked: an American speaking Hungarian! He explained that he was born in the USA, but his Jewish parents moved there from Subcarpathia and they spoke Hungarian at home. This doctor treated me as one of his family. He brought me food and medications. Most patients were Ukrainian, all from one camp. There were wooden barrels with technical spirit left in the camp and its inmates drank it when Germans left the camp. They were severely poisoned. Every day 50-60 patients died in the hospital. I stayed there for a month and then was taken to a recreation center near Berlin.

When I recovered, I was sent to a camp in about 100 km from Berlin. I don’t remember the name of the town. There were about 2000 young girls and 15 guys in the camp. I met my cousin Moishe there, my mother sister Elka’s son. We were given good food: meat, butter and chocolate every day. We were allowed to go to the town. When we went to the town, we got 30 marks each. It was a lot of money in Germany. A jar of jam cost 5-10 marks and a loaf of bread cost 2 marks. Americans were making the lists of those who wanted to move to USA, Palestine, or any other country of the world. They promised assistance to those who wanted to move to USA: with studies, employment and material assistance for the beginning. They also offered contracts for military service to those who wanted to go to the army. I didn’t want to go back home. I understood that my family must have perished and that I was alone. I thought there was nobody to help me at home and that if I went to USA I would have assistance at least at the beginning. They explained that we would stay in a camp for about half a year to learn the language. If we had relatives in USA they would help to find them. And they also promised vocational training and support to become rightful citizens. Then an American officer came to tell us that we had to be ready to depart the following day. He explained when the truck would be there to pick us up. On the morning of departure my cousin offered me to go to the town to buy some food for the road. We had fresh memories about the concentration camp and knew it was better to have some food with us that hope for somebody else to provide food. We bought some bread and sausage and when we returned to the camp it turned out that the transport with those moving to USA had left already. So the two of us stayed in the camp. We registered as Czech citizens. We really believed we were Czech citizens and thought the Hungarians were the occupants. We were sure that Subcarpathia was to become Czechoslovakian after the war. Few days later we were transferred to Russians and they took us to a Russian camp. The food we got there was no different from what we got in the concentration camp. We were kept there for 2 weeks. One night they woke us up and ordered to board trucks. We were taken to a war prisoners’ camp. The majority of prisoners were German SS officers. From their talks I understood that all inmates of this camp were to be taken to Siberia. I told Moishe about it in Yiddish saying that this was the end and that we should have better perished in the concentration camp. I didn’t notice that chief of the camp was listening to us. He asked us in Yiddish who we were and where we came from. We replied that we were Jews from Subcarpathia and that we came from Subcarpathia. The next morning our senior man brought us an assignment to work in the sugar factory in another end of the town. It was written there that we were Czechoslovakian citizens. We were accommodated in the hostel of this sugar factory and some time later we were sent to Prague in Czechoslovakia. We were accommodated in the former military barracks. There was a Red Cross canteen at the railway station where former prisoners of concentration camps had meals. There were many from Subcarpathia, particularly from Uzhgorod there and I soon got new friends. Once I was going back to the barrack from the canteen, when I saw few Czech military. One of them looked at me closely and asked me whether I was Faige Preis’s son. I said that I was, but I didn’t know him. He said he was Mayer, my mother’s cousin. I heard about him that he married a beauty of a Gypsy woman and the family refused from him. Mayer lived in Chop before the war where he owned few cabs. He drove one cab and hired drivers for the rest. In 1937 Mayer moved to Bohemia and went to the Czech army. He had the rank of major. Mayer said that he was in Uzhgorod and heard that my mother and my sister Hermina returned home from Auschwitz. He didn’t see them, but he heard this from reliable people. We said “good byes’ and I returned to the camp. Few days later we were told that we could go wherever we wished. I decided to go to Budapest, before making a final decision. I didn’t know that Subcarpathia became Soviet. We were given tickets, food and money to go. There were few of us from Subcarpathia. When we came to Budapest I met my cousin Dezso, my mother younger brother Pinchas’ son, at the railway station. He began to talk me into going home, but I didn’t agree. I didn’t quite believe that my mother and sister were back home: Mayer didn’t see them and people might have been misunderstood something. In Budapest we were accommodated in the Jewish girls’ school building, near the railway station. I registered for departure to Palestine. Of course, I wanted the USA more, but Palestine was all right too. Anywhere, but home. There were lists of those who returned from concentration camps updated every day and I went there to check the lists hoping to find my family or acquaintances. I met a girl from Malay Dobron. I didn’t recognize her at once, but she ran to hug me. She asked me at once why I was still in Budapest, when my mother was home. I asked her how she knew it and she said she was in the concentration camp with my mother and sister. I went back to the hostel and told my cousin that I was going back with him. We got tickets to Subcarpathia. There were 6 of us. We got to Chop by train. I got off the train and saw a man and a woman standing nearby. The woman looked like mother from distance, but when I came closer, I understood this was not my Mama, but the man hugged me all of a sudden. I asked him to leave me alone, but he didn’t let go of me. He turned out to be my father’s younger brother Mendl. Of course, I didn’t recognize him. He had no beard, wore a short haircut and no head covering. Mendl said he was taking me to my mother right away. We came to a small house and Mendl shouted: ‘Faige, your son is back!’ My mother ran out of the house, pressed me to her chest weeping bitter tears. I shall never forget this meeting. Somebody had told my mother that I was back to Budapest and that I didn’t want to come home. She was afraid we would never see each other again. My younger sister Hermina returned with my mother. They temporarily stayed in Chop. When I returned we moved to Uzhgorod. Mendl told me that his wife and four sons perished in the concentration camp. My grandfather and grandmother, my father and Mendl’s parents, perished in the ghetto in Dubovoye in 1944. Mendl didn’t know anything about his sisters living in Hungary before the war. Haskl perished in a work battalion and his family perished in a concentration camp. Mendl heard that older brother Moric returned to Kosice, but there was no connection with him. We were Mendl’s closest relatives and he got very attached to us and took care of us.

The Soviet rule was already established in Subcarpathia. Our hopes that Subcarpathia would be returned to Czechoslovakia failed. We knew very little about the USSR. What we heard was that there were no goods in stores and there were lines in shops to buy anything, but we never gave it a thought before we saw it with our own eyes. Anyway, we couldn’t even imagine anything like that before, but soon we learned what the soviet power was about. Mendl was a wealthy man. When in 1939 suppression of Jews began he spent all his money to buy gold that he buried in the garden near his house in Dubovoye. When he returned home, there was a Hutsul [Ruthenians living in the Carpathian Mountains, traditionally dealing with livestock breeding.] He refused to let Mendl into the house and said he would kill him if Mendl tried to go in. Mendl left and stayed with his acquaintances. At night he went to dig up his valuables in the garden, but the Hutsul saw him and reported to authorities. Mendl was arrested and kept in prison in Uzhgorod for a month without any charges against him. Then he was released and when he came home, he said to my mother that we had to escape since this country was not for us. Mendl was saying that we would not be able to live with the Soviet regime, but my mother was saying that we would get adjusted somehow and that she had no strength to start anew somewhere else. Mendl said that my mother could stay, if she thought so, but that she should give the children, i.e., my sister and me, in his care. My mother began to cry saying that uncle Mendl wanted to take away her children from her, whom the God saved in the concentration camp and that she couldn’t part with us. Mendl felt hurt and left. He never contacted us again. From our common acquaintances we heard that he secretly crossed to Romania and from there left for Israel. For a long time all we knew about Mendl was what his friend from Dubovoye, with whom he corresponded told us. It was not safe for Soviet citizens to correspond with relatives abroad 7. All correspondence was censored and everybody knew this. KGB 8 was watching the whole process, but this wouldn’t have stopped my mother if Mendl had written us, but there were no contacts with him. Only after my mother moved to Israel in the 1970s, our contacts revived. Mendl was doing well in Israel. He got married and had two daughters.

We got information about my mother’s brothers and sisters. My mother’s older sister Elka and her husband Gersch Scher perished in Auschwitz during sorting out. Of their 8 children four perished in Auschwitz, 2 moved to USA after the camp was liberated by Americans. [Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army.] There is no information about the other two children. Uncle Pinchas was with us in Auschwitz and Gleiwitz. His wife Baila and four younger children were exterminated in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Of four other children only their daughter Zsuzsa [Diminutive of the Hungarian name Zsuzsanna.] returned to Subcarpathia. She lived in Uzhgorod and died in the 1980s. After Americans liberated the camp, one daughter moved to USA and 2 sons moved to Palestine. My mother’s brother Lajos and his wife Blanka and Lipe with his wife Lea were exterminated in Auschwitz. Lipe’s two younger sons perished with their parents. His two older sons perished in a work battalion in Ukraine. My mother younger sister Riva’s husband Wolf Steinberg perished in a work battalion in 1942. Riva and her four younger children were in concentration camps. Riva perished in Auschwitz in 1944 and the younger children perished, too. Of her two older sons, who were in a work battalion one perished and one returned to Subcarpathia after the war. In the 1970s he and his family moved to Israel. My mother’s youngest brother Bernat survived in the camps and returned to Subcarpathia. His wife and two children perished in the concentration camp. Bernat married a Jewish woman and they had two daughters. When Jews were allowed to emigrate from the USSR, Bernat and his family moved to Israel. Bernat died in Israel in the 1980s. His wife also passed away. His daughters and their families live in Israel.

We settled down in Uzhgorod. When we came there, we were told to find a dwelling from where Jews had been taken to a concentration camp and move in there. We found a one-bedroom apartment: one big room, a kitchen and a toilet. The three of us moved in there. I became an apprentice of a tailor in a garment store. I had to support my mother and sister, being the only man in the family. It stimulated me to study well and two years later I became a good tailor. Many people ordered their clothes at garment shops since it was hard to buy anything in shops. I could make any clothes, but I was good at making men’s suits. The town and region’s top men were my clients. Besides my salary I got good tips from my clients, and they also brought me food products that were hard to buy.

Though the soviet power struggled against religion 9 my mother and we observed Jewish traditions after we returned to Subcarpathia. I didn’t go to the synagogue, though, in fear of having problems at work, but my mother went to the synagogue on Sabbath and Jewish holidays. On Sabbath evening my mother lit candles and made a festive dinner. I worked on Saturday, but my mother tried to do no work on Saturday. We celebrated holidays according to the rules. We always had matzah on Pesach. My mother baked it at first, but later matzah was brought from Budapest and we could buy it. On all holidays we had chicken broth with dumplings from matzah flour, gefilte fish, puddings and strudels from matzah flour. Of course, kosher food was out of question, there was nowhere to get it, but my mother followed kashrut. She didn’t mix dairy and meat products, didn’t eat pork or sausage and didn’t allow us to have any.

My mother was relatively young. She dedicated her love and care to my sister and me. We understood that it would have been better for our mother to meet a decent man and get married. My mother’s close friend introduced my mother to her distant relative Gedale Fixler, a Jew from Subcarpathia. He was born in 1900 and was the same age with my mother. During WWII he was in a work battalion. He returned to Subcarpathia after the war hoping that at least some of his family had survived, but they all perished in Auschwitz. Gedale finished the Trade Academy in Mukachevo. He worked in trade. He liked my mother and my mother was not indifferent to him. My sister and I kept telling our mother that we were going to have our families soon and it would be good for her to have a caring husband. They got married in 1947. My stepfather had an apartment and my mother moved in with him. Gedale worked and my mother was a housewife. Gedale was religious. He was a very good man, kind and honest. We liked him and he treated us as his own children. My sister and I visited them on Sabbath and all holidays, but also often just dropped by to see them. My mother and he were very happy to see us. My sister and I spent all Jewish holidays with them. We didn’t celebrate Soviet holidays, but there were banquets at work and I attended them since it would have been defiant on my part if I missed them. Of all Soviet holidays the only one that I believed was truly mine was Victory Day 10, 9 May.

Anti-Semitism emerged in Subcarpathia with the soviet rule. Of course, it was there since 1938, when Hungarians came to power, but at least the situation was clear: Hungary was a fascist country allied to Hitler’s Germany, but the Soviet Union struggling against fascism seemed to be the country where anti-Semitism was impossible. We realized soon that we were wrong about it. When newcomers from the USSR arrived, we could often hear the word ‘zhyd’ [kike] in public transport and in the streets. Nobody had ever been surprised before hearing Jews speaking Yiddish, but it made the newcomers so indignant that they demanded that we spoke Russian, but the biggest surprise for me was that the majority of Jews from the USSR looked at local Jews as if we were enemies and this demand to speak Russian often came from them. (I didn’t study the Russian language, I just listened to others speaking it and gradually began to speak and then read and write in it.) This was terrible and hard to understand. I was surprised since even in the concentration camp we spoke Yiddish to Jews from other countries and German guards didn’t mind it. Jews were always friendly and supported each other, but these Jews from the USSR kind of wanted to separate from us and demonstrate that we had nothing in common. Campaign against cosmopolites 11 that began in the USSR in 1948 were almost unnoticed in our area. The newcomers discussed them, but we had nothing to do with them. We also thought that the ‘doctors’ plot’ 12 that began in January 1953 was a lie. The majority of doctors in Subcarpathia were Jews and we trusted them, but those newcomers could say in a polyclinic: ‘I shall not have a Jewish doctor’. My wife’s sister, a children’s doctor, also said that the newcomers didn’t want her to treat their children. . In some cases, when she came to a house on call, the child’s parents closed the door before her saying: ‘Let them not send a Jewish woman again’. Anti-Semites raised their heads again. There were always meetings at work where employees had to speak against Jewish poisoners, the doctors. It was compulsory for members of the Party and desirable for others.

In March 1953 Stalin died. I remember well how grown-up men cried in the streets and were not ashamed of their tears. I didn’t have tears or grief for him, though I didn’t know the truth about Stalin’s crimes that Nikita Khrushchev 13 spoke about at the 20th Congress of the Party 14, but I already knew that those Jews who risked their lives to escape from the fascist Hungary to the USSR were sent to the GULAG 15 without trial or investigation. Some of them returned to Subcarpathia after Stalin died, but not all of them. I knew that those Jews who were liberated from concentration camps by Soviet troops were sent to camps for prisoners-of-war or GULAG. Besides, I couldn’t understand why newcomers were saying that the world was going to collapse after Stalin’s death and life was impossible without him. We lived in Subcarpathia without Stalin for many years and without the USSR and it was a good life. Leaders of the state come and go, but life goes on. Actually, I didn’t bother about the life in the USSR. However, 2 events stirred up my senses. This was invasion of Soviet troops to Hungary in 1956 16 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 [Prague Spring] 17. These were my countries and I was very concerned about the invasion. I understood that it was the policy of the USSR to suppress freedom and exterminate those who wanted changes in the existing regime in the USSR and socialist countries. Subcarpathian troops also took part in those events and people coming back from there told us that it was different from what newspapers wrote about them. The official version was that the government and people of these countries requested the USSR for military assistance, but if it had been true would the people meet their liberators with the slogans ‘Ivan, go back home’, and likewise? Of course, I didn’t speak my mind: I didn’t want to be sent to GULAG after I was in a concentration camp. I knew many people sentenced to 10 to 25 yeas of imprisonment for expressing their unhappiness or telling an anecdote, therefore. I tried to keep my tongue behind my teeth.

My sister married Ernest Spiegel from Subcarpathia in 1950. During the war her husband was in a concentration camp. After the war he returned to Subcarpathia and settled down in Uzhgorod. His family had perished. We arranged a real Jewish wedding for my sister. Of course, we had to do it in secret. We had a chuppah in the room at home. After the war the soviet power closed most of synagogues in Uzhgorod, but there was one working. My mother asked the rabbi to conduct the wedding ceremony for my sister. We invited few friends and closed ones to the chuppah and my mother cooked a wedding dinner. My sister and her husband lived in the room and I had a bed in the kitchen. My mother’s husband built an annex to the apartment, a small room and I moved in there in due time. In 1951 Yudita, my sister’s first daughter, was born and in 1958 – her second daughter Erika. My sister and her husband spoke Russian at home. The girls spoke Hungarian and Russian at home, in the street and at school.

We spent time with other Jewish young people from Subcarpathia. Some of my friends were Hungarians, Ruthenians, Slovaks, all born in Subcarpathia. I had no friends among the newcomers from the USSR. Our views on life were too different. There were many girls in our garment store. They often invited me for a walk or to the cinema. I refused referring to the lack of time. My mother tried to introduce me to Jewish girls, but I didn’t think about marriage. Once a young woman, one of the newcomers, came to our garment shop. We could distinguish them by their pure language. Subcarpathians spoke Russian with an accent. She asked the tailor to fix something in her dress. He replied with a joke and everybody laughed. I looked at her and she asked me in Yiddish: ‘Why are you laughing, brunette?’ Later we often met in the street and said ‘hello’ to each other. She arrived in Uzhgorod from Savran town in Odessa region [615 km from Uzhgorod, 270 km from Kiev], on her job assignment 18 after finishing the Pharmaceutical Faculty of Odessa Medical College. There were special permits to travel to Subcarpathia at that time since it was near the borders. People living in the USSR thought there were gangs and anti-Semites all around in Subcarpathia. Her father even wanted to bribe some officials to prevent them from sending his daughter to this terrible place. When Anna came to Uzhgorod she saw it was different and she liked it. Even during the Soviet regime the life in Subcarpathia was easier than everywhere else. In 1946-47 – famine in the USSR, she sent her family parcels from here. Then her middle sister Donia finished the Pediatrics Faculty of Odessa Medical College. She got a job assignment to the children’s home for orphan children who had lost their parents during the war in Brest in Belarus. She completed her 3-year assignment and her older sister convinced her to settle down in Uzhgorod. Donia worked as a children’s doctor in the polyclinic. Then her younger sister Lubov Kerzhner finished a Pedagogical College and got a job assignment to a Ukrainian village. Finishing her 3-year assignment Lubov arrived in Uzhgorod. She worked as elementary school teacher not far from my shop. We met every morning on our way to work. At first we just said ‘hello’ to one another, then we stopped to talk once and then began to see each other. The sisters were very close and always listen to one another. The older sister spoke well of me. Lubov was 8 years younger than me. She was born in Savran in 1932. Her Jewish name was Liebe. Her father Moisey Kerzhner and her mother Meita Kerzhner were religious. They observed Jewish traditions. Their daughters of course, were no longer religious, but they remained Jewish. They knew Jewish traditions, Jewish culture and spoke Yiddish to one another and to their parents.

My wife’s older sister Anna married a military man who had also arrived from the USSR. In 1948 their daughter was born. In 1955 he died. She never remarried. She worked and raised her daughter. Their sister Donia was beautiful, but she couldn’t find a husband. She couldn’t choose for a long time and lived her life single.

We got married in 1957. We had a civil ceremony in a registry office on 18 June and when vacations began at school and teachers went on vacation we had a Jewish wedding. We had to keep it a secret. My wife was a teacher, and authorities watched teachers’ ideology very strictly. If her management knew that we had a Jewish wedding she might have been fired with the comment that she ‘was not fit to raise the young generation in the spirit of communism’. It happened so at the time. With this entry in her employment records book she wouldn’t have found another job as a teacher, or even as a cleaning woman. Therefore, we secretly had a chuppah at home. My relatives and Lubov’s sister were with us. Her parents also arrived at the wedding. My mother was very happy that I finally got married and that I had a Jewish wife. They got along well. My mother made challah bread and honey cakes for Sabbath for our family as well. Lubov and I always celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays visiting with my mother and stepfather. My mother also often visited us. There was a market, the only one in town, near our house. My mother came by every time she went to the market. In 1959 our first baby was born. We named our son Avrum after my father. We had a brit milah ritual for him. Of course, this was also done secretly, but one of my wife’s colleagues heard about it and my wife had problems. Her director and the town educational department called her and asked her one question: ‘How could you do this?’ Fortunately, it ended just with a reprimand. In 1968 our daughter Marina was born. We gave her the Jewish name of Meita after my wife’s mother, who had died one year before our daughter was born.

My wife and I spoke Yiddish for the most part. She never learned Hungarian. She thought she didn’t need it. Russian was a state language during the soviet regime. I spoke poor Russian. I still have an accent. Our children knew Yiddish and Russian. My mother helped us to raise our son, but when our daughter was born she was severely ill and our son and my wife’s sisters were helping us with the baby. Our children studied at school and were pioneers and Komsomol 19 members. I didn’t mid this. They were growing up in this country and it was better for them to be no different from others. Still my wife and I told our children about Jewish traditions and Jewish history, but we also told them to not discuss this with anybody else. We celebrated Jewish holidays at home. I didn’t go to the synagogue, but I prayed at home. I had a tallit, a tefillin and a prayer book.

The longer I lived in the soviet regime, the more I hated it. There was no freedom in the USSR and we got used to freedoms in Subcarpathia, particularly during the Czech rule. We could speak our minds without suspecting KGB informers in everybody else. Besides, we lived near the border and to travel to another town we had to obtain a permit from militia and have our passports stamped. We couldn’t buy train tickets if we didn’t have a stamp; and there was another stamp to be obtained for each trip. We could only walk in the town with our passport. Before I got married my friends and I often accompanied girls home in the evening. There were frontier guard patrols walking the town. They checked our documents and if the girl lived nearby they let her go home, but we couldn’t walk with her. Even to go to the woods we needed passports. In 1951 I went to get some wood for stoves in the forest and left my passport at home. In the woods a patrol stopped me. I had no documents, so they put me in their vehicle and took me to the militia office. They reported of having captured a spy. I was lucky that their commander was my client who had picked his new suit just the day before. We said ‘hello’ and laughed. He released the soldier. But how was I to go home without documents? I asked him to issue a card stating that they detained me, checked and released me. He said he didn’t have the right to issue such paper, but he promised to call all posts to tell them to let me go. There were other incidents; it’s hard to name them all. Could one live in this country? It was also hard from the material point of view. There were lines in stores and one had to stand for hours before buying a thing. What is this country like where people are not free and also, are miserably poor! For me to love this country, the country had to love me, but we lived like it was a prison. Sometimes it seemed to me that we had more freedom in the concentration camp.

When in the 1970s Jews began to move to Israel, I thought about it like it was a miraculous escape from everything I hated that the God sent me. My relatives also decided to emigrate. My mother and stepfather were the first to go. They were pensioners at that time. My mother was severely ill and her doctors were talking her out of emigration telling her that she was not fit for traveling and that the climate in Israel was not good for her, but my mother decided to move there, nevertheless. She lived 7 years in Israel: good medications and qualified doctors… They lived in Bnei Brak. When my father’s brother Mendl got to know that she was in Israel he visited her right away. Mendl supported and visited my mother. My mother died in 1977. Mendl died in the middle 1980s. My mother’s husband Gedale never remarried. He lived in Bnei Brak and died in 1988. He was buried near my mother. In 1972 my sister Hermina and her family moved to Qiriat Ono. I was eager to go to Israel, but my wife was against emigration. Her sisters supported her. They lived their lives in the USSR and were patriots of their country. They blindly believed the propaganda on the radio and in publications. They never gave it a deeper thought; they just believed what they heard. Their middle sister Donia, the children’s doctor, was particularly stubborn about it. She was telling me that Israel is a capitalist country and capitalists were exploiters and working people had a very hard life there. I was trying to tell her that she had never practiced capitalism while I lived during capitalism and those were the best years of my life, that if a person had a good job, he could make his living and support his family well while with socialism it didn’t matter whether one worked or he didn’t, didn’t matter – he will be miserably poor anyways. Besides, one feels a fool, when working hard he earns the same wages as lazy bones doing nothing. However, these were mere words for my wife and her sisters that they didn’t make an effort to think about. So it happened that we stayed in the USSR. I didn’t have much choice: emigration or the family and I chose the family.

After finishing school my son entered the Faculty of Biology of Uzhgorod University. He was fond of biology at school, took part in the Olympiads [There were school Olympiads where children competed in their knowledge of school subjects. The first round was at school, then in the district, region and the final was in the Republican level] and won prizes. Of course, this helped him during admission. Only 1-2 Jews were admitted at one faculty at the University. My son was admitted at his first try. We were happy about it since if he hadn’t succeeded he would have been taken to the army and being a Jew he wouldn’t have had an easy life there. My son didn’t face any anti-Semitism at the university. His lecturers were good to him: my son was a good student. When he was the last year student, my son got married. His wife Maria, a Jew, had finished the Medical Faculty of the university by that time and was working, which helped my son to obtain a free assignment diploma instead of a fixed job assignment upon graduation. However, he couldn’t get a job by his specialty and went to work as a lab assistant. His wife was appointed chief of department in her hospital, but she received a low salary and my son didn’t earn much. Avrum went to work as a taxi driver. He lives with his wife, but we often see each other. On weekend they always come to see me. Unfortunately, they have no children.

After finishing school my daughter entered the Faculty of Russian Philology of Uzhgorod University. Upon graduation she failed to find a job by her specialty. This didn’t have anything to do with her being a Jew. This was during the period of perestroika 20, when anti-Semitism receded. It was just that there were not so many schools in Uzhgorod and there were no job vacancies. During her studies Marina got married. Her husband Leonid Shyfris, a Jewish man, also works as a cabdriver like my son. Leonid was born in Uzhgorod in 1953, his parents moved to Subcarpathia from the USSR after the war. The only language they knew was Russian. Marina and Leonid speak Russian at home. He graduated from the Lvov Polytechnic University, but an engineer’s salary was too low to support the family. In 1988 my grandson Robert, Marina’s son, was born. Marina and her family live with me. When in 1999 Hesed was established in Uzhgorod, Marina went to work there. She was chief of literature studio there. Now Marina is expecting the second baby. She doesn’t work.

I saw my sister again in 1983, before perestroika began. I could never imagine having an opportunity to visit her in Israel at that time and my sister couldn’t obtain an entry visa to the USSR. We met in Budapest. It was easier for Subcarpathians to travel to Hungary than for other citizens of the USSR. We spent two weeks in Budapest and talked a lot. I was surprised that Hermina became such a patriot of Israel. I asked her whether it was possible to take to loving the country for such short period of time and my sister replied that it was natural for Jews moving to Israel. After we met in Budapest we began to correspond regularly. Before this meeting we wrote each other occasionally. Unfortunately, I never saw my sister again. She died in 1986. In 1987 we had a family reunion with her older daughter Yudita, my niece. She also traveled to Budapest and my wife, my son and daughter and I went there to meet with her. We rented an apartment for two weeks. We took walks in Budapest and I showed them the places I remembered. When it was time for us to go home, I told my niece to send me an invitation to visit them. Of course, I had little belief that it might happen. In 1987 she sent me an invitation, but I managed to use it only a year later.

My initial attitude to perestroika that started in the late 1980s was the same as to everything else in the USSR – indifferent, but a short time later I realized that I was wrong. Gorbachev 21 truly wanted a democratic society with freedom of speech and press. Gorbachev allowed private businesses, though there were those who didn’t like it. Many of those who had come here from the USSR were saying that we were going to capitalism. For them this word was a curse word, but for me it meant a society where an individual could work to support his family and make a good living. Religion was allowed. People could go to synagogues and celebrate religious holidays openly. But unfortunately, the Soviet regime broke people of the habit to religion so much that at the beginning we couldn’t even gather 10 men for a minyan. For me it was very important that during perestroika people at last got an opportunity to correspond with their relatives or friends abroad, visit them and invite them to visit them back. In 1988 I submitted my documents for a trip to Israel. At first they refused to accept my documents and I only managed in early 1989. They accepted my documents, but said that they didn’t guarantee that I would have a permission to visit Israel. However, few months later they issued a permit and I spent four months in Israel. I visited the graves of my mother, my sister and uncle Mendl and recited the Kaddish. I have many relatives, friends and acquaintances in Israel and I was happy to see them. Of course, Israel is a wonderful country. I admired patriotism of its people. They love their country and are proud of it. Service in the army of Israel is not a burdensome necessity that they try to avoid, but an honorary right of an individual. I spoke to young people and they are proud of the possibility to serve in the army and defend their country. Hermina’s older daughter Yudita has two children: son Elan, born in 1977, and daughter Mikhalka, born in 1980. My younger niece Erika has three sons: Galiz, born in 1977, Afir, born in 1982, and Cham, born in 1985. I traveled across the country and they wanted to show me the most interesting places. I was sorry to leave Israel, but I understood that at my age it was too late to move to Israel to start a new life. I keep in touch with my relatives in Israel. My niece has been here several times and my children traveled to Israel.

When after the breakup of the USSR [1991] Ukraine gained independence I was hoping for a better life. Ukraine is a rich country: it has fruitful lands and natural deposits. There are good reserves requiring effective management, but I don’t see it happening. Life is more difficult than it was during the Soviet rule. My heart squeezes when I see comely old women digging in garbage pans looking for food leftovers. Fortunately, Hesed provides assistance to us, Jews. Old people can have free meals in the Hesed canteen and Hesed delivers meals to those who cannot leave their homes. We also receive food packages and clothes. I’ve been invited to this canteen many times, but I prefer my own cooking. It’s not bragging on my part, but many housewives ask me for my recipes of traditional Jewish cuisine. My daughter’s family likes my cooking as well. I’ve had two infarctions and several serious surgeries. Hesed helps me with medications and I can consult a doctor from Hesed. When my wife was ill, Hesed also helped us. A visiting nurse from Hesed came to look after her and we received all necessary medications. Lubov died in 2003. Hesed helped us with funeral arrangements. My wife was buried in the Jewish sector of the town cemetery in Uzhgorod. There was a Jewish funeral. The rabbi of the Uzhgorod synagogue conducted the ceremony. Hesed takes great efforts to revive the Jewry of Subcarpathia. There clubs where Jews of all ages study Hebrew and Jewish religion and traditions. My grandson also studies there. Besides, he is a member of the club for Jewish youngsters in Hesed. There are clubs of foreign languages, la literature studio, a choir and dance studio. There is a club for older people in Hesed where they can talk, listen to music or watch a film having a cup of tea. This is so wonderful since older people suffer more from solitude than diseases. Besides, there is a Jewish community and I have been chairman at the synagogue for 8 years. I know Yiddishkeit and can help those who are just coming to the religion of his ancestors. We go to the synagogue 4 times a week and people got used to this. Now we finally have a rabbi and this is a big relief for us. Young people begin to attend the synagogue and we are very happy about it. However, there is still anti-Semitism in Ukraine. Actually, it exists on everyday life level, but it is still there. It is possible to fight open anti-Semitism through court or state authorities, but when a young guy in the street yelled ‘Heil Hitler!’ seeing me, this means that fascism is alive and it can come back in Ukraine. Only if everybody stands against it there can be hope that all those horrors it brought to our country once would never recur.

Glossary:

1 Subcarpathia (also known as Ruthenia, Russian and Ukrainian name Zakarpatie)

Region situated on the border of the Carpathian Mountains with the Middle Danube lowland. The regional capitals are Uzhhorod, Berehovo, Mukachevo, Khust. It belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy until World War I; and the Saint-Germain convention declared its annexation to Czechoslovakia in 1919. It is impossible to give exact historical statistics of the language and ethnic groups living in this geographical unit: the largest groups in the interwar period were Hungarians, Rusyns, Russians, Ukrainians, Czech and Slovaks. In addition there was also a considerable Jewish and Gypsy population. In accordance with the first Vienna Decision of 1938, the area of Subcarpathia mainly inhabited by Hungarians was ceded to Hungary. The rest of the region, was proclaimed a new state called Carpathian Ukraine in 1939, with Khust as its capital, but it only existed for four and a half months, and was occupied by Hungary in March 1939. Subcarpathia was taken over by Soviet troops and local guerrillas in 1944. In 1945, Czechoslovakia ceded the area to the USSR and it gained the name Carpatho-Ukraine. The region became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1945. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, the region became an administrative region under the name of Transcarpathia.

2 First Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938)

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

3 Russian stove

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

4 Anti-Jewish laws in Hungary

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

5 Numerus clausus in Hungary

The general meaning of the term is restriction of admission to secondary school or university for economic and/or political reasons. The Numerus Clausus Act passed in Hungary in 1920 was the first anti-Jewish law in Europe. It regulated the admission of students to higher educational institutions by stating that aside from the applicants’ national loyalty and moral reliability, their origin had to be taken into account as well. The number of students of the various ethnic and national minorities had to correspond to their proportion in the population of Hungary. After the introduction of this act the number of students of Jewish origin at Hungarian universities declined dramatically.

6 The follower of the Hasidic movement, a Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century that reacted against Talmudic learning and maintained that God’s presence was in all of one’s surroundings and that one should serve God in one’s every deed and word

The movement provided spiritual hope and uplifted the common people. There were large branches of Hasidic movements and schools throughout Eastern Europe before World War II, each following the teachings of famous scholars and thinkers. Most had their own customs, rituals and life styles. Today there are substantial Hasidic communities in New York, London, Israel and Antwerp.

7 Keep in touch with relatives abroad

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

8 KGB

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

9 Struggle against religion

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

10 Victory Day in Russia (9th May)

National holiday to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II and honor the Soviets who died in the war.

11 Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’

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

12 Doctors’ Plot

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

13 Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971)

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

14 Twentieth Party Congress

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

15 Gulag

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

16 1956

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

17 Prague Spring

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

18 Mandatory job assignment in the USSR

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

19 Komsomol

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

20 Perestroika (Russian for restructuring)

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

21 Gorbachev, Mikhail (1931- )

Sally Uzvalova

Sally Uzvalova
Ukraine
Chernovtsy
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Sally Uzvalova is a short slim woman with a straight bearing. She has gray hair neatly cut. Sally is friendly and dignified. Within few minutes of our discussion I felt like we had known each other for a while. She speaks fluent Russia, although her mother tongue is Rumanian and she started learning Russian during the Great Patriotic War. Sally enjoyed giving an interview. She is the only survivor of all members of her family and she hopes that her story will become a monument to all of her relatives that were morally and physically obliterated by the Soviet power. Perhaps someone related to her family will read her story and contact her.

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

My grandfather on my father’s side Idel Barzak was born in Lodz in 1870s. I have no information about his family. They all stayed in Poland. My grandfather Idel finished Yeshiva in Krakov. He was a cantor. There were no vacancies in the synagogues in Lodz or Krakov and my grandfather was sent to the town of Soroki [Bessarabia, about 1000 km from Krakow]. He was a cantor in the synagogue there for 40 years, until 1940. His wife, my grandmother Hana came from Soroki. My grandmother was the same age as my grandfather.

Before 1918 Soroki belonged to the Russian Empire. In 1918 the town became a part of Rumania. Rumanian language became a state language. It wasn’t a problem for local population. As Moldavian was very close to Rumanian. There were slogans in public places: “Please, speak Rumanian”. Soroki was a provincial town where the flow of time only left its signs on people, but not on the town itself. It was a small town. There were about 500 Jewish families that constituted about half of population. There was also Moldavian and Russian population. There were no national conflicts in the town. Jews lived in the central part of Soroki. Moldavians were farmers in their majority. They lived in the outskirts of the town. Land was less expensive in the outskirts of the town and they had their farm fields, vineries and orchards. There were few Jewish attorneys, doctors and pharmacists in Soroki. Most of the Jewish population finished cheder (4 years) and were handicraftsmen. Most of the Jewish families were poor. Apart from this all Jews observed all Jewish traditions. There was no theft or adultery among Jewish people. They led a very decent life. However, there were two brothels in Soroki with red lamps on them: one for officers and one for soldiers, but Jews never visited them. There were big Jewish families, there wasn’t much space in their dwellings and led a transparent life. Everybody knew everything about their neighbors. All Jews were religious. In the morning and in the evening all Jews regardless of their profession dressed up to go to pray at the synagogue. There were two synagogues in Soroki – one bigger synagogue in the center of the town and a smaller one – near the Rumanian fortress in the outskirts of the town. Working people went to this smaller synagogue and the richer attended the synagogue in the center. On Friday every family got prepared for Shabbat. On holidays children gathered in the yard of the big two-storied synagogue to listen to the shofar. On holidays all Jews were dressed up. Bearded men wore their clean clothes and black hats. Their wives were housewives for the most part. But some women like my grandmother had to work to support their families. Girls from poor families that didn’t have an opportunity to study in grammar schools went to study a profession after finishing Jewish primary school. Girls were dressmakers or embroideresses for the most part.

When my grandfather was not busy at the synagogue he prayed at home and read religious books. I remember him praying with his twiln on his hand and forehead. A cantor must have received a small salary, because my grandmother owned a store to support the family of six members. It was a small store that occupied just one room in the house where the family resided. The store was open from morning till late evening and my grandmother worked there just. She sold essential goods in her store. My grandparents had five sons. The oldest Itzyk was born in 1895. The next one was my father Borukh that was born in 1898. Meyer was born in 1900. Leon (Leib) was born in 1906. Daniel, the youngest son, was born in 1908.

My grandmother’s business and my grandfather’s salary of a cantor in a synagogue allowed my grandparents to provide for the family, but it was not enough. They lived in a small house. My grandmother and grandfather lived in one room, five boys lived in another and the store was housed in the biggest room. There was a hallway between my grandparents’ room and the store where my grandfather had his desk with his accessories for praying and religious books. He prayed in this room. My grandfather was a man of average height. He wore payes and a big beard. He wore a yarmulke at home and a big black hat when he went out. My grandfather was a very nice and kind man. My grandmother was a tall and big woman. She wore long skirts and dark long-sleeved blouses. She always wore a shawl. My grandmother had thick dark hair, but I got an impression that her head was shaved and she wore a wig. When her grandchildren wanted to stroke her hair she never allowed us to do so. Perhaps, she was afraid that we would move her wig. My grandmother was a hardworking and energetic woman.

They celebrated all Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut. All members of the family knew Russian, Rumanian and Moldavian, but they spoke Yiddish in the family. On Friday my grandmother lit candles to celebrate Shabbat. I remember Shabbat in my father’s family where the tradition of celebrating Shabbat in the parents’ house was observed even when the sons were married and lived with their own families. My grandmother was a brilliant cook and always made Gefilte fish, chicken and hala bread at Shabbat. After the prayer the family sat down to festive dinner. My grandmother made food for two days to stay rested on Saturday.

My father and all five children worked very hard. The boys finished cheder (4 years) and after they had to go to work. Their parents couldn’t afford to give them education. My father worked at the state tobacco plantation since he was 11. He took a piece of mamalyga (Editor’s note: corn pudding) and a clove of garlic or an onion to work. Working hard he made some saving and at 27 he owned a house and two stores. His brothers were also doing well. Leon was my father’s partner. He married a Jewish girl from a very poor family. She had no dowry, but she was very pretty. Leon and his wife Liya had a son. Yasha was born in 1933. My father’s older brother Itzyk owned a restaurant located in the central street in Soroki. He had 6 children. Meyer owned a big shoe store. He had two children: son Lyova and daughter Bella. Daniel owned a tavern with 6 or 7 tables in it. Moldavian farmers used to drop by for a glass or two of a drink. They could have a snack: marinated herring or pickles made by my grandmother. Daniel was married and had a son.

My mother’s family lived in Yassy, Rumania. My grandmother and grandfather came from Yassy. My grandfather Ishye Roitberg was born in 1860s. My grandmother Golda was 2-3 years younger than my grandfather. I didn’t know any about my grandparents’ families. My grandparents owned a small shop where they made children’s clothes and bed sheets. There were 5 or 6 employees working in the shop. My grandmother cut fabrics. She did the cutting at night, so that seamstresses could make lovely pillows, overalls, dresses and baby’s loose jackets during a day. I remember blue and red ribbons used as adornments. I liked to play with them.

Yassy are located in Northeastern Rumania near the current border of Rumani with Moldavia. Yassy was a bigger town than Soroki. There were many Jews in Yassy, about 50% population. They were all religious. There were few synagogues in the town. I remember one of them where my grandparents took me when I came to visit them. This was the biggest synagogue, nicely and richly furnished and decorated. My grandfather had a seat of his own on the lower floor and my grandmother had a seat in the upper floor. There was a strong Jewish community in Yassy that made contributions to the synagogue, to support the poor and sickly Jews and even to provide a dowry to orphaned girls or girls from poor families. My grandfather and grandmother were very religious. They celebrated Shabbat and all Jewish holidays and followed the kashrut. My grandfather had many books in Hebrew and in Yiddish: religious and classic. He used to read in the evening. My grandparents worked very hard, but they provided well for the family. They had six children: three sons and three daughters.

The oldest son Yankel was born in 1895. The next one was Mark, born in 1899. Their next son Shymon was born in 1902. Then there came three daughters: Fania, born in 1904, my mother Tonia, born in 1906 and the youngest daughter Etia, born in 1911.

The family lived in their own house in the center of Yassy. Their sewing shop was in the same house. The house was big enough: the girls and the boys had rooms, one room belonged to their parents and there was a big living room and a kitchen that served as a dining room on weekdays. At Shabbat and on holidays the family had meals in the living room.

My grandparents spoke Yiddish and the children spoke Rumanian to one another. The boys studied at cheder and the girls had a teacher coming to teach them at home. They studied Hebrew and to read and write in Hebrew and Yiddish. All boys finished a Rumanian lower secondary (8 years) grammar school and continued their studies. Yankel studied in Yeshiva in Bucharest. After finishing the Yeshiva he became a gabba at the synagogue in Bucharest. He was married and had three children. Shymon graduated from Medical Faculty at the Bucharest University. Mark opened his own footwear store in Yassy after finishing a commercial college. They were all married and had children.

All three daughters finished a grammar school. Besides studying general subjects they were taught manners. Men willingly married graduates of this grammar school, as they made good wives and assisted their husbands in business. My mother’s sisters married wealthy men. Fania got married in 1927 and Etia - in 1930. Fania’s husband Matey Levinzon was a businessman and Etia’s husband owned a store.

My grandfather Ishye died in Yassy in 1932. He was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Yassy in accordance with the Jewish tradition.

In 1923 my father was recruited to serve in the Rumanian army two years. He served in Yassy where he met my mother’s older brother Mark. Mark invited my father to his home at weekends. My father met my mother and fell in love with her. It was love at first sight. My mother was a striking beauty when she was young. She became “Miss Yassy” several times. My father asked my grandparents their consent for marrying their daughter. They told him that my mother didn’t have a dowry. My father didn’t give up and they got engaged. After their engagement my father took my mother to the jewelry store and bought her a golden ring and a watch. This was his first gift to my mother. He was madly in love with her. This was a heavenly love and they kept it through their marriage.

In 1925 after the service term of my father was over, my parents got married. My father was 25 and my mother - 19. They had a wedding party in my mother parents’ home. My mother’s parents had just completed the construction of an annex to their house where they were going to locate their sewing shop. My parents had their wedding party in this annex. They had a traditional Jewish wedding. The rabbi from a big synagogue conducted the ceremony. There was a big wedding feast after the ceremony. There were many guests. My father’s relatives from Soroki came to the wedding. After the wedding my father took his young wife to Soroki. My father didn’t have a house. At the beginning my parents rented a house from an old gray-bearded man Volovskiy.

Growing up

In some time my father purchased that plot of land from him and built two big houses. He started construction of the 2nd house after I was born. I was born on 14 October 1927. I was named Sarah, but I mispronounced the sound “r” in my childhood saying “Sally” instead of “Sarah”. Everybody started calling me “Sally”. My father wanted me to live nearby after I got married and built a 2nd house near his own house. The 2nd house had big Venetian windows: my father saw them when he was in Rumania. He used to joke that if my mother didn’t let my admirers in, they would enter the house through the windows. We didn’t have a stove. My father built a modern house without a stove. There was no water supply or sewerage in Soroki. We had a big tank of water in the attic supplying water to the bathrooms, toilets and the kitchen. When the Soviet power was established in 1940 both houses were nationalized. They house a museum of weapons now.

There were room maids in our family. I had a room maid of my own. My mother helped my father to do business. She started to work in my father’s fabric store. My father was accounting and purchase manager of the store. In each store there were 2-3 employed shop assistants that were Jews. My mother supervised the shop assistant and advised her customers on what to select. Many people came to the store to take a look at the beautiful wife of Borukh Barzak. And they bought more from the store. My mother helped my father in many ways. My father always listened to my mother’s advice about the fabrics to purchase. My mother often arranged dinner for his business partners when they came to Soroki. It was very good for my father’s business to demonstrate that he managed his business and his household with efficiency.

My father came home for lunch. I tried to finish my lunch quickly, because then my father rode me on my sleighs for about an hour and we both enjoyed being outside in the fresh air. My father loved me dearly. When I grew older he often took me on his business trips. I was very happy to spend time with my father.

My farther was a very kind and honest man. Older Jews called him “a giter id” – a good Jew in Yiddish. Other people often came to ask my father’s advice. One of his clerks was to go to serve in the army. There was a possibility to pay a redemption fee to save a recruit for service in the army. The fee was equal to the price of a horse. My father paid this price for the man and the clerk continued his work in the store. Another clerk’s sister was getting married and had no dowry. My father gave her shoes, underwear and clothes that he had in his store. His clerks were Jewish people.

My father loved his parents. Before going to buy goods in Bucharest or other towns he went to ask my grandmother’s Jewish blessing. When he returned he went to see his parents and give them gifts that he brought from his trips. He had to pass our house, as his parents lived farther from the railway station and I often saw him going past his home to see them.

My mother always wore beautiful clothes that my father brought from Bucharest. My father and mother were a very handsome couple. They were different, though. My mother was a very educated woman, while my father just finished cheder. My mother taught him to clothe with taste and good manners. They used to dress up in the evening and go to the synagogue hand in hand. I don’t remember them arguing. My father was a very smart businessman and a good family man. He always tried to please his beloved wife. When he went to make purchases he loaded what he bought himself saving on loaders and bought big boxes of chocolates for my mother that cost 500 lei each. This was a lot of money at the time. My mother ate a box of chocolate in one evening. I tried to finish my lunch as soon as I could and my father took me out to toboggan. When I grew up my father took me with him when he went on business trips. We enjoyed spending time together.

My father and mother were very religious. My father had a seat near the Eastern wall at the synagogue and my mother had a seat on the upper floor. My father made charity contributions and took care of some poor families giving them money to buy matsah for the holidays. My father made contributions to the synagogue. The synagogue provided food products to poor families to celebrate Pesach. They bought clothes for the needy families. But every Jew had special clothes for go to synagogue. However poor they might have been every man had a black suit, kippah and a black hat and woman had fancy gowns. My mother also put on a fancy dress and they went to the synagogue holding hands. When my father came home from work in the evening he put on a suit of fine cloth, white shirt and a tie and a black hat. We spoke Rumanian at home. I only heard Yiddish when I visited my grandparents.

My parents followed the kashrut. We also had kosher utensils for dairy and meat products for everyday use. I remember washing my hands in the sink when some foam splashed onto a casserole. The soap was not kosher! It was a tragedy. I was told to get out of the kitchen and was not allowed to come in there for quite some time. My mother took the casserole outside, because it wasn’t kosher any more. My mother had special dishes and kitchen utensils for Pesach. She took he everyday dishes and utensils to the attic for the whole period of Pesach. We always had matsah at Pesach. My mother had a Jewish cook that made traditional Jewish food and baked traditional cookies. She made gefilte fish and chicken at Shabbat. Halas were delivered to rich houses. Poorer people made hala bread by themselvesWe had ridges filled with ice. Ice was placed in the upper part where there was a tube water drain. Every morning a big piece of ice wrapped in hay was delivered to our house. My father cut it into smaller pieces and sprinkled with salt to prevent it from melting. My father liked to do shopping himself. He got up at 5am to go to the market to buy the best chicken, cottage cheese and everything else. He opened his store after he returned from the market. My father always bought live chickens. Our cook brought the chickens to the shoihet. There was a Jewish butcher’s shop selling kosher veal and beef.

We often went to visit my grandparents on Jewish holidays. There was a rule in the family that the sons and their families celebrated Shabbat and holidays in their parents’ home. At Shabbat my grandmother lit candles and said a prayer over them. My grandmother baked halas, made Gefilte fish and strudels. My grandmother said a prayer over the candles and then we all prayed for health and wealth of all members of the family. Children also participated in prayers. Then the family sat at the table. Men drank a little vodka in small silver glasses and women drank a little bit of wine. Then we had a festive dinner. My parents went to the synagogue on Saturday. The cook made food for Saturday on Friday. She baked buns with chicken fat and cracklings, made stew with meat and potatoes and made various tsymes dishes. She left the food in the oven to keep it warm until the following day. Stores were closed on Saturday. On this day our father read us a section from the Torah and in the evening we often had guests. A Moldavian man came to light the lamp and stake the stove. He was paid for this service.

At Pessach the whole family was going to in parental house. They put a big table in a bigger room to have the whole family fir at the table. The sons came with their wives and children. There was traditional food for Pesach on the table: Gefilte fish, chicken broth, matsah and potato puddings and most delicious strudels, salt water, greeneries and bitter horseradish. Salt water symbolized tears of Jews and horseradish – bitterness of the Jewish slavery in Egypt. The greeneries were dipped in salt water and eaten. My grandfather conducted the Seder. One of his grandsons asked him traditional questions. We followed all traditions, as my grandfather was a cantor at the synagogue.

My father’s brothers had children and we were all very close. We often came to see our grandparents. Our grandmother was always happy to see her grandchildren. Our grandfather always prayed when he was at home. Sometimes we took advantage of the situation running into his store to grab a lollypop or something else. Our grandfather couldn’t reprimand us because he couldn’t say a word during his prayers. He only murmured “M-m-m”, but couldn’t punish us for what we did. There was a tray with a small silver glass of vodka and a piece of leikech – honey cake. After the prayer our grandfather dipped a piece of leikech into vodka and sucked it. Our grandfather was very proud of his sons and hoped that his grandchildren would also be a success in life.

In 1933 my mother gave birth to a boy. He was named Oscar. His Jewish name was Ishye after my mother’s father. The whole town was invited to the ritual of circumcision. There was a big table with gifts for children in the middle of the yard. There were 300 packages with candy and fruit. There was a violinist playing and there was much joy that a son was born.

When I turned 7 my parents sent me to the French grammar school in Yassy. I stayed in the boarding school. This grammar school was founded by French nuns and they were also teachers at the school. We studied all subject in Rumanian. There were quite a few Jewish girls in the grammar school. My mother and her sisters also studied at this grammar school. The fee to pay for my studies was rather high, but my father was sure that he would be able to provide for me.

I was to study 12 years at the grammar school: 4 years of primary school and 8 years of grammar school. We studied all general subjects plus embroidery, sewing rules of conduct, music, reception of guests, ethics and esthetics. The nuns wore long black skirts with white stripes and always had books of prayers in their hands. All nuns had finished closed higher educational institutions for girls and had at least the level of B.S. During classes there was silence in the building of the school. We had uniform of our school.

We were taught to respect older people. We were taught to be honest and kind to people. These nuns taught me the basics of morale and ethics. I was a spoiled girl from a wealthy family. My father expressed his love to me with gifts, but he couldn’t spend enough time with me to teach me what I needed to know. I’ve lived my life according to the principles that I learned from the nuns. We were taught to evaluate our behavior and to be critical to it. Every morning nuns called the names of the girls and each was supposed to evaluate her behavior during a previous day based on the 10-grade scale. The nuns were watching us and took notice of our misconduct to check how objective we were in our evaluations. We were also supposed to speak nicely to guests and be well mannered and reserved. We were to move in a nice manner and bear ourselves decently. The girls were prepared to be a wife, a mother and mistress of the house. We studied to play the piano, sing and dance.

Jewish girls arranged charity concerts and invited our families to attend them. The money that we collected selling tickets was spent to buy clothes for girls from poor Jewish families at Pesach. Pupils of other faith arranged charity concerts to contribute the money to poor families of their faith. We were taught to help less fortunate people. We celebrated all religious holidays at the boarding school. Jewish girls learned to celebrate Shabbat and light candles. We celebrated Pesach, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and Purim. Jewish girls also studied the rules of kashrut where we learned to make a menu for different occasions, cook and lay the table.

We had mandatory classes of religion – separate for believers representing different religions. The Rumanian government respected the right of national minorities to study their own language. We were taught to respect somebody else’s religion. A rabbi came to teach Jewish girls Hebrew and Yiddish. We had a special classroom for our classes. Catholic church and Christian pupils had their religious classes too.

There were rich libraries with a big collection of books in Yiddish translated into Rumanian. Jewish rules were well respected in the grammar school. Religion played the main role in the life of every family.

After Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 fascist organizations appeared in Rumania. For some period of time the Rumanian police didn’t stop their anti-Semitic attacks, but when the organization of kuzists (1) intended to usurp the power gendarmes shot kuzists in all Rumanian towns. They didn’t execute all of them, but it became a warning to all other fascists and they quieted down.

In 1940 the USSR declared an ultimatum to Rumania demanding Bessarabia and Moldavia. My father realized that the situation was rowing severe and came to Yassy to take me home. I had finished primary school and was in the 2nd year of secondary school. My grandmother Golda was terrified and begged my father to move to Rumania. My grandmother invited some Russians that had emigrated from Russia in 1918 that told my father about the horror of the Soviet power. However, my father was convinced that his children would reach more in the Soviet country that in Rumania. He said that he was young and strong and he could go to work. We had a German radio at home - «Telefunken». My father knew Russian and often listened to broadcast from the USSR. He believed the Soviet propaganda about equal rights and friendship between all nations, the right to labor and rest and social justice. He thought that in the Soviet country he wouldn’t have to worry about supporting his family because the state would take care of many issues. My father strongly refused from moving to Rumania. When I was leaving the boarding school the nuns told me something that imprinted on my memory and stayed there forever: “Girl, we are sorry that you are leaving, because there can be no good in the country where people don’t believe in God. There is no other truth on the Earth but faith in the God. Please remember what we’ve taught you and stick to these rules in life”.

We arrived at Soroki and on the next day the Soviet army came to the town. This happened on 28 June 1940. The stores sold out their stocks. In three days NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) arrested my father and his brother and partner Leon, as “socially dangerous elements”. They were considered “dangerous” to the society, because they were co-owners of a store with hired employees that meant that they were “exploiters” in terms of the Soviet power. My father and Leon were put in jail and then they were sentenced to 8 years in a high security camp. Shortly after the trial my father and Leon were sent to Siberia along with thieves, bandits and other criminals. My grandfather Idel, cantor, couldn’t bear it. He died of a heart attack. The synagogue that was still functioning helped my grandmother to bury my grandfather according to the Jewish tradition at the Jewish cemetery in Soroki. Before he died my grandfather told his grandchildren that he had buried his favorite picture in the basement of the house. There was an old Jew reading a book painted in that picture. The Jew had a handsome face and beautiful face. My grandfather believed this picture to be holy and didn’t want anyone who didn’t believe in God to have it. He asked us to get this picture when we grew up.

After my father was arrested there was a search in our house. The Soviet representatives took all our valuables into a big room and sealed the door. Among NKVD representatives that arrested my father and then did the search was Itzkevich, a Jewish man. Later this man stayed to live in one of our houses along with his Jewish wife. He came from Donbass. For some reason he felt sorry for my mother. He told her that he would go to lunch and leave the sealed door open for her to take what she needed from this room and then he would seal the door again. He addressed my mother “Madam” instead of “Comrade” that was typical for Soviet authorities. My mother said that all she wanted to have were golden coins hidden in the cornice and a box with her jewelry. I don’t remember how I got to the cornice, but I managed to get these coins. We buried them in the basement near the picture. Later that Itskevich man gave us a letter from our father (he was in the camp in Solikamsk) that was delivered to the NKVD office like all mail from prisons and camps. In this letter my father was telling us that he was sent to Solikamsk in the former Molotov region. He was very concerned about us and begged us to forgive us for his crucial mistake leading to such critical situation. After imprisonment of my father and a search in the house the Soviet authorities left us alone.

My father’s other brothers didn’t have hired employees and had no problems with the Soviet authorities for some time. Meyer and his wife worked in a store and Itzyk also worked. Daniel, the younger son, his wife and their son lived in a room in their parents’ house. They made wine for the tavern and my grandmother made herring with onions and pickles for snacks.

Our first year in the soviet regime was terrifying for us. We were in expectation of something to happen. We didn’t know Russian and couldn’t listen to the radio or read newspapers. There was tension hanging in the air like before a storm. At the beginning of June 1941 the local authorities ordered villagers from neighboring villages to come to the central square with their horse-driven carts. They were told to wait for directions to come. It was a cold and rainy summer. The farmers slept on their carts wrapped in heavy coats and wrapped their horses in horsecloths and blankets. This lasted for 3 days.

On the night of 12 June the silence exploded in women’s screaming and children’s wailing. Richer people and people with average income were taken out of their houses and onto the carts. They didn’t get a chance to take any luggage with them. The carts moved in the direction of the railway station in Floreshty where trains were waiting for them. I can still remember the tapping of horseshoes on the cobbly pavements of Soroki. It lasted for about 24 hours. People were afraid of looking out of the window or leaving their home. On this day all other members of the family were sent in exile as suspicious elements: my grandmother, my father’s brothers and their families. On 15 June 1941 (editor’s note; 6 days before the beginning of the Great patriotic War) all these people were put on a train with barred windows at the railway station in Floreshty. Inhabitants of Floreshty came to the station to give some food to people on the train, but the convoy took this food away. The train headed to Mogochino village of Krasnoyarsk region, Siberia, in 3500 km from their home. The village was fenced with barbed wire and patrol dogs guarded the area. Every day an orderly called the roll. They lived in dugout houses that they excavated by themselves for two years before barracks were built. Town people were dying, as they were not adjusted to the severe conditions of the cold climate. Men went to work at the wood throw. The ones that failed to complete a standard scope were deprived of their miserable ration of food that they also shared with their families. My grandmother and her son’s wives dug out mice holes and made soup with nettle and mouse meat. They starved to death, swell from hunger, had their feet and hands frost bitten. In 1942 the older brother Itzyk, his wife and 6 children died. They were buried in a common grave and there was no gravestone installed or no other indication of their personalities. Their exile was for an indefinite period of time. Only in 1980, in 40 years’ time the survivors were allowed to return, but they were not allowed to reside in bigger towns. However, they all stayed in Mogochino. Meyer went to exile with his wife Golda and two children: Leo, 14 years old and Bella that was 9 years old. Their children grew up and got married and had children of their own. Meyer loved his wife dearly. He was a tall handsome man and Golda was a short slim woman. Meyer died in 1980s, shortly after his wife. We have no information about their children. Daniel went to exile with his beautiful wife Eva and their 6-year-old son. They had another child in exile. Eva died in 1988 and Daniel - in 1992.

The only Jewish whore of Soroki, a beautiful woman, was also sent to exile. The Soviet power treated whores and wealthy people in a similar manner. Her mother made kvass (Russian drink made from bread and yeast) for sale. They were a poor family and the girl went to work in the brothel for officers when she turned 15. When she was to go in exile her mother couldn’t understand why she was sent away – in her opinion she was a working woman! In the camp the woman worked for the guards of the camp. She returned to Soroki after the war wearing a fur coat and golden rings. She told us the story of our relatives, as correspondence with inmates of the camp was not allowed.

On 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic war began (2). At night the Rumanian and German troops came close to Soroki. The town was not bombed, but planes flew to the East over the town. A local farmer that knew and respected my father came to tell us that Germans exterminated Jews and that we should better leave the town. He took us across the Dnestr that was the territory of Ukraine and put us on a train. We decided to go to Solikamsk where my father was. When the train stopped I got off to run to a nearest village to exchange my mother’s pieces of jewelry for food. Once I saw that my train started when I was coming to the station. I don’t know how I managed to catch it, but I didn’t drop the food that I had. There was a conductor on the stairs to the last railcar that grabbed me.

After covering about 1000 km we arrived at a village in Stalingrad region that belonged to Povolzhiye Germans (3) that had been deported. We stayed in their houses. We needed to move down the Volga River, bit it froze and we had to wait. We seemed to have been forgotten by the authorities. There were no jobs and shops, offices and schools were closed. We stayed there until autumn 1942. We didn’t have any clothes with us. Our neighbor made me some kind of underwear from an old military overcoat. My mother was a phlegmatic person and my brother took after her. They didn’t take an effort to change things. I take after my father. I was the only one that could get things. I knew firmly that I had to take care of my family. My mother and brother were swollen from lack of food and indifferent. I went to the market to exchange my mother’s rings and earrings for bread and sugar. I have the hardest memories of that period. It was the period of famine when bread was released for coupons. Bread was delivered to a store in a two-tier box on a cart. I stood in long lines. The ration of bread was 300 grams for dependants, 400 grams for clerks and 500 grams for workers. One young man desperate from hunger came to the cart from an opposite side, opened the hook and stole a loaf of bread. He started running when people standing in line saw him and began to chase after him. He managed to finish this loaf of bread while running, but the crowd caught up with him and beat him to death.

When ice on the river melted down we moved on. We sailed 500 km to Astrakhan on a freight barge. We had to stop there, as my brother and mother were too weak to even walk. We were accommodated at the “Rodina” [Motherland in Russian] in Astrakhan. It was overcrowded. There were about 3.5 thousand people accommodated there. There were only 221 survivors by spring next year. Children and adults were dying and their bodies were dumped in the foyer of the cinema theater. Every morning a truck came to take away the corpses. People had lice. I didn’t now about lice before. I ran to get some boiled water, food and sugar. Later I got ill with typhoid and was taken to a hospital. I survived there by miracle. My mother came to take me away one day and the next night the hospital was destroyed by bombing. Nobody survived. During one of raids a splinter injured my cheek. The wound didn’t heal and festered. I could touch my gum through the wound.

My mother couldn’t speak Russian. Somebody felt sorry for her and she got a job at the hospital. She was attendant at a surgery room and I assisted her. I remember how we removed amputated arms and legs from the surgery room and stored them in a shed. The 3 of us were accommodated in a small room in the hospital. We slept on heaps of hay on the floor.

I had beautiful handwriting. We practiced a lot at the grammar school. At that time all typewriters were removed from offices. I wrote all reports and documents at the hospital. I had my face bandaged. I had it washed with manganese solution in hospital and bandaged with gauze dipped in manganese solution. This gauze got dry and stuck to the wound and on the next day when I came to have it dressed the nurse tore the old dressing off to replace it. I weighed about 30 kg when I was 15 years old. Manager of the hospital told my mother that I needed to have enough food to heal the injury. But where were we to get this food. Once I came to the railway station. There was a train with prisoners-of-war that were allowed to take a breath of fresh air. They were Rumanian prisoners-of-war. I got so happy (I didn’t understand they were enemies). I ran to them asking “Gentlemen, where do you come from?” They were stunned to hear me speaking their mother tongue. They went back on the train and dropped me a bag full of food from the train. I couldn’t lift this bag and I lay on it. There was butter, tinned meat and fish, dried bread and chocolate and other food. I stayed there for a while. I was in the state of shock and couldn’t move. Later I dragged this bag home. My mother was at work in the hospital. I put a little butter onto the gauze and applied it to the wound. In the morning the wound miraculously closed and the wound began to heal.

During the raids I begged the Lord to let a bomb hit a train with food for the front. After the raids many people came to the railway station hoping to find food. Those that were stronger managed to get more, but I also managed to grab something that I brought home. I went to school, but I worked as a cleaning girl there. I also listened to teachers and began to learn Russian. I also cleaned the office of director of the school and she gave me a bowl of sour milk. She allowed me to read other pupils’ notebooks. Once she asked me to make a stove in a pigsty. I mixed cow manure with straw and dried pieces of this mixture in the sun. I didn’t know how to make a stack and I made a stove with two openings (like the ones I saw in a German village in Povolzhiye). I got a bowl of sour milk and a loaf of bread for this work. I gave this food to my mother and brother.

We didn’t observe any traditions during the war. There were hardly any Jews in our encirclement. We were just trying hard to survive. We never thought that we were not allowed to work on Saturday or that we had to celebrate. Besides, we were so intimidated by the Soviet reality that we were afraid to even mention any Jewish holidays or traditions.

In 1944 a part of Bessarabia was liberated. At the end of 1944 we obtained a permit to go to Reshetilovka station in Ukraine. Local authorities dictated destination points at their own discretion. The tried to keep people that previously resided at the areas that joined the Soviet Union shortly before the war.We – me and my mother and brother went back on open platforms. We had no luggage. When our train stopped on a station I got off the train and entered an office at the railway station. I saw a pen in an inkpot on the desk and changed the name of Reshetilovka to Floreshty in our ticket. It worked however surprising it might be. We were going on a military train heading for Rumania. We arrived at Soroki. Or acquaintances couldn’t recognize us. When I said I was the daughter of Barzak they got scared because I looked more like a ghost. I had a coat made from a uniform overcoat, address made from a military shirt and boots made from heavy woolen boots.

My family background
My early life
The famine
Before the war
During the war
After the war
Glossary

We got to know that Liya, ex-wife of Leon was in Soroki. We went to her house and she took us in. I went to our former house and got a box with golden coins from the basement. I put them in my boot. Liya’s father, a religious man, that attended the synagogue twice a day, saw me hiding mit and took it away. When I complained to Liya he told me to keep my mouth shut or we would all go to where my father was. So we found the coins – and we lost them. I have no idea what he did with this money or weather it brought him what he wanted.

In Soroki we heard what happened to my father. At the end of 1944 he committed suicide at the wood throw in Siberia. He couldn’t bear the thought that he had made a wrong choice and ruined his family when he didn’t follow my grandmother’s advice. My father wrote a farewell letter sending it to the town hall of Soroki. I don’t know whether this letter would have reached us if it hadn’t been for a woman from Soroki that used to be my room maid that had worked at the town hall since 1940. She gave us the letter. My father wrote: “I destroyed my family and there is no forgiveness for me. I have my hands and feet frost-bitten and I’ve become an invalid at 42. I don’t know whether members of my family are alive, but if they are please sent them this letter”. After sending this letter my father put his head under a circular saw at the wood cutting site. It was a typical method of suicide in the camp. My father was buried in a common grave that was a usual burial site for inmates of the camp.

When I heard that Liya was getting married I told her that Leon was alive. She replied that I was too young and didn’t know much about life. She married a Jewish man, invalid of the war, and lived with him and Leon’s son.

In May 1945 the war was over. People told my mother that she could move to Rumania. The borders were open and many people left for Rumania. Me and my mother and brother arrived in Chernovtsy on October 1945 to move to Rumania from there. But right before our departure the border was closed. We were offered to cross the border illegally for some fee, but we didn’t have money and feared the Soviet power much. We didn’t take the risk of finding ourselves in Siberia instead of Rumania and settled down in Chernovtsy. I began fighting for our survival. We rented a small room in an old Jewish neighborhood. I got a job of assistant accountant at a canteen. I was allowed to have a bowl of soup and take two home, for my work. Later I went to work as an accountant at the textile factory and the three of us could move to the hostel of the factory. There was a big wooden trestle bed in the middle of our room with straw on it. My mother and I slept on the sides and my brother slept between us. There was terrible famine in Chernovtsy in 1945–46. When I managed to get a glass of flour we added a spoon of flour to a glass of boiling water sprinkling it with salt and that was our meal. My co-employees felt sorry for me. Once I got 3 m of cheap fabric for jerky sweaters. I sold it to villagers or exchanged for food. My brother went to the first form. He was growing up fast and was always hungry. When he was in the 3rd form he helped some pupil with mathematic receiving a bowl of soup for his efforts.

Our acquaintances told us what happened to our relatives. The husband of my mother’s sister Etia turned out to be a gambler and womanizer. Etia divorced him before the war and returned to her parents’ home. When the war began Etia and her mother stayed home. They perished in their house during an air raid in 1942. My mother’s older sister Fania, her husband and their children moved to Israel after the war. Life conditions were severe at that time – lack of food, malaria, etc. Fania and her husband died in early 1950s. We have no information about their children, as well as about my mother’s brothers.

In 1946 uncle Leon came to visit us. He was stay in the camp for two more years after our father death. In 1945 he was allowed to settle down in a village instead of the camp and he could also visit his family and spend a month with us. At first Leon went to Soroki where he got to know that his wife had remarried. She didn’t even want to talk with him. Leon came to Chernovtsy. He was struck with grief. We talked and cried with him a whole night. He was very sorry that he couldn’t anything for us, as he had to go back to Siberia. Uncle Leon stayed in Siberia. He worked as an accountant and died in 1966. He was buried at the town cemetery in Solikamsk.

We didn’t observe any Jewish traditions after the war. My cousins that went to Siberia and we were afraid of going to synagogue or celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays at home. Like weaning a baby from breastfeeding everything Jewish was cut away from us. The only thing that stayed with us was our language. During the Soviet power there were people in Chernovtsy that got together in secret to pray. Only old people that had nothing to fear went to the synagogue. This fear of the Soviet power was with us for a lifetime. My mother always went to the other side of the street when she saw a militiaman. She was always afraid of hearing someone knocking on the door. Although she was good at languages she failed to learn Russian – I guess it was because of her fear. She lived until the end of her life knowing that the Soviet power put an end to everything good that she had in life. Struggle against cosmopolites in 1948 added to our fears (4). This was open persecution of Jews. My mother was afraid to discus this subject even in whisper. She concealed her past and I never mentioned my wealthy and well-to-do family when I was applying for a job. I worked on two enterprises, 20 years at each of them. I was afraid of changing a job, even if I was offered better conditions and better salary. I was afraid of having to fill up questionnaires answering questions about my parents or relatives abroad. I never mentioned my relatives in Siberia or Rumania. I had no past and no relatives – I was an incubatory person. The Soviet way of life remained alien to me – I didn’t know my rights and I didn’t even know that I could apply for getting an apartment.

In 1949 I got married. My co-employee, foreman at the factory, introduced me to my future husband. When he told me that a friend of his wanted to meet me I asked him whether he was a Jewish man. I couldn’t ever imagine even dating a non-Jewish man. I was a very shy girl. My mother continuously repeated to me that the only dowry I had was my honor. I invited the two men to my home. Other young men got scared off by my living conditions and nobody wanted to take responsibility for an additional burden – my mother and my brother. I was a breadwinner in the family; there was no one else to take care of them. They came to meet my mother and brother.

My future husband’s name was Jacob Uzvalov. His real name was Oswald. I don’t know how and when he changed his last name. Jacob was born to a religious Jewish family in Bendery (a Rumanian town at that time) in 1920. His mother’s name was Molka and his father’s name was Jacob. Jacob’s father was Molka’s 2nd husband. She had two sons with her first husband. They were much older than Jacob. Her first husband died and in 1918 she married Jacob Oswald, a very nice man. He was also a widower and was about 50 years old. His two sons and a daughter moved to America in 1930s. In 1920 Molka’s husband and her old sons fell ill with typhoid. The boys recovered, but Jacob died. His son Jacob was born after his father died. In 1923 Molka got married again. She gave birth to a son in 1924 and became a widow again before the war. Her last name in her 3rd marriage was Finkel. In 1943 her younger son perished at the front. Her older sons went to work in Rumania and stayed to live there. Jacob entered a professional school in Bucharest. He became an elevator mechanic and got a job at the government house. Jacob loved his mother. In 1944 Jacob moved to Bendery from Bucharest. His mother’s house was ruined by bombing and the locals took away whatever was left. Jacob and his mother moved to Chernovtsy and Jacob got a job at the railcar depot. Before the war my husband corresponded with his stepbrothers from America. They wrote that although they didn’t know him he was still their brother and they invited him to visit them in the US. After the war their correspondence stopped. When in Bucharest Jacob got fond of the communist ideas and even distributed flyers. It happened somehow that all communists in Rumania were Jews and Rumanians didn’t care about communist ideas. Jewish young people got inspired by communist ideas hearing that life was almost a paradise in the USSR. Jacob joined the communist Party when he came to the soviet Union. He was always a convinced communist.

After visiting us Jacob sent us a portable stove on the next day. It was staked by coal and the stack was adjusted to the flue. He also sent half a ton of coal and a bag of potatoes. My mother got very scared asking me what he wanted from us. It took Jacob some time to explain to her that he just wanted to help us. Gradually my mother began to trust him. On 30 April 1949 we got married. We just had a civil ceremony in the district registry office. We didn’t have a wedding party, because we were so poor. After our wedding I moved in with Jacob. His mother was very kind to me and I came to liking this plain kind woman. Molka was a religious woman. She observed all Jewish traditions and celebrated Shabbat and all Jewish holidays. She kept it to herself and only her closest people knew about her religiosity. Molka didn’t go to synagogue. She prayed at home. She strictly and quietly observed Jewish traditions. I joined her and felt like coming back to my happy blissful childhood. We couldn’t always afford a chicken and Gefilte fish on holiday, but there was always matsah at Pesach. My mother-in-law made it herself. We didn’t go to synagogue, because my husband was a communist and at best it might result in his having to quit the party. Molka had a book of prayers and we prayed at home.

When I got pregnant my husband got scared. We were very poor and he tried to convince me that we couldn’t afford a baby. Molka felt that there was something wrong. She interfered and thanks to her interference I had a son born on 6 June 1951. We named him Boris after my father. We lived from hand to mouth. I didn’t have diapers and wrapped my son in newspapers. My mother-in-law was very happy to have a grandson. My husband was afraid of having his son circumcised. My mother thought it was all right, but my mother-in-law insisted on circumcision. Her son said to her “Mother, do you want me to go to jail?” Yes, we were living in constant fear. Regretfully, Molka didn’t see he grandson growing. The next year at Pesach she was making matsah. It was hot and her blood pressure got higher, but she didn’t stop her work. Molka had a stroke. She died on the first day of Pesach in a week’s time in 1952. I insisted that she was buried at the Jewish cemetery, but my husband was afraid of it.

I took Stalin’s death in 1953 easy. For those that were born during the Soviet power Stalin was an icon and an idol, but for me he was a criminal and an embodiment of all evil that Soviet power brought to our family. Everything about the USSR stirred an inner protest in me. I never talked about it, but it lived deep in my soul. There is still fire burning inside me and it will never die. It is pain for my loved ones, for my family that was destroyed physically and morally. After ХХ Party Congress (5), in 1960s I received a letter from KGB where they wrote that my father was completely rehabilitated and that it was all a mistake made in his regard. So simple…

I tried to raise my son a Jew. In 1954 during census my 3-year-old son asked me to write his nationality as Russian. When I asked him why he wanted to do so he said “Because Russians are good and Jews are not. That’s what children say in the yard”. I was horrified to hear this, but I began to explain to him that Jews were smart, talented and intelligent people. I read to him books by Jewish authors and told him about actors, musicians and scientists. He gradually came to knowing the history of Jewish people. He began to study Hebrew and Yiddish. It was only possible to do this in secret at that time to avoid accusations in Zionism and Jewish chauvinism. Such accusation might result in arrest and exile. My son was very good at singing. After my mother-in-law died we stopped celebrating Jewish holidays. We worked on Saturdays and Jewish holidays were also working days. My husband was against religion. However, our son was inspired by the Jewish way of life and I didn’t interfere with him. When my son studied at school I took him to Soroki to show him my hometown. We went to the museum that was my former home. The janitor of the museum recognized me exclaiming “here’s the mistress of the house!” I didn’t remember her, although we were the same age. I asked her to let me show my son around the house during lunch interval. She left for lunch and I took my son to the basement. While she was away we managed to dig out my grandfather’s picture. Later, when my son grew up he restored the picture. After he died I gave the picture to Hesed in memory of my family and my son.

My husband and I were extremes. He was a communist and I was a former “bourgeois” woman, but we got along well, because political subjects were a taboo in our family. It was the only subject that might cause argument in the family and we didn’t touch it. My husband didn’t even show me his Party membership card, so sacred his ideas were to him.

My son was 14 when something happened that imprinted on our life. He went to the synagogue with his friends. The very fact of it might become grounds for accusations, but he also talked to foreign tourists in English. At that time any contacts with foreigners were suppressed by KGB [State Security Committee] had their informers in all organizations, even KGB. KGB called my son for interrogations for a whole year. They were trying to make him their informer, but my son didn’t agree. He signed a non-disclosure document that obliged him to keep a secret the subject of their discussions. We got to know about it later. After a year my son was left alone. He finished school and served in the army in Kamenets-Podolskiy. After his service in the army our son entered electro technical college there. Upon graduation he returned to Chernovtsy.

In 1970s Jews began to move to Israel. I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to change my life. My mother and son also were for leaving the USSR. But we faced resistance of my husband. We tried to convince him to change his mind, but it was in vain. Perhaps, men in our family are doomed to make wrong decisions that destroy them and their families.

In 1970s I went to work at the Regional Fuel Department dealing with gas and coal. I was Deputy Chief accountant. I retired from there 20 years later. I didn’t face any anti-Semitism at work. I was an only Jewish employee. I was sociable and friendly. However, I faced anti-Semitism on a state level when I came to the Human Resources Department to ask them to appoint me to the vacant position of Chief accountant whose duties I actually performed. Human resources manager told me firmly that firstly, I was not a member of the party and secondly, I was a Jew. And he added “Your husband hasn’t been appointed to the position of manager of depot, has he?” My husband, however, faced anti-Semitism expressed by his co-workers. Although he got along well with them every morning, when he came to work he saw “zhyd, it’s time for you to retire” written on his desk or something similar. They might not greet a Jew with birthday, although it was a tradition to greet every employee on his birthday. Now everything is different on the outside, but I believe there is an anti-Semite in every non-Jew. Only fools and drunken people express it while smart people try to hide it.

In 1975 my son worked as electrician at the factory. He was called to KGB again. They wanted to turn him into an informer and threatened that they would put him in jail if he refused to cooperate with them. My son came home pale and upset and refused from eating. I was worried and thought that he was suffering from unhappy love. It never occurred to me that it was something else that troubled him. Once my husband and I began to ask him about what was the matter with him and he told us the truth. My husband was very angry and said that the next time when my son was called to that office he was going with him. He believed that being a member of the Party he could talk to KGB on equal grounds. How naïve he was! He went to that office and my son and I were waiting for him at home. My husband came home and said that at first the KGB officers got angry that our son broke his obligation for non-disclosure of the information. They said that they would have to teach our son what we failed to teach him. Then they told my husband that they knew where he worked and that they also knew that once he laughed at a Party meeting. Then my husband got an idea and he said that he knew who their informer was at his work. The KGB officer that was talking with him yelled at him “Don’t you dare to touch that man!” and my husband replied “Then leave my son alone”. The KGB stopped pestering my son, but fear crawled into his heart, like it did into mine and my husband’s.

Boris married a Jewish girl. I was very happy for him and couldn’t wait to become a grandmother. But this marriage cost my son a life. He was told that his wife was unfaithful to him. My son found out that it was true. He was so shocked that he had a stroke. My son was paralyzed for few years. I was taking care of him trying to soothe his suffering. He died on 4 April 1988 when he was 36 years old. The Jewish cemetery was closed and we buried him at the cemetery of Chernovtsy and installed a gravestone on his grave.

My brother Oscar’s life ended tragically. He graduated from the Lvov Polytechnic Institute and got a job assignment at the TV factory “Electron” in Lvov. He was among developers of the first modified TV sets that replaced tube TVs. My brother was married to a very nice Jewish girl named Rita. They had a daughter – Sabina. Rita studied at the Medical Institute. They were very poor and lived in one room. Oscar decided that they would move to Israel. He went on tour to Israel to make an acquaintance with the country. There he took a bus tour. Terrorists installed a bomb in the bus and there were no survivors after the bus was blasted. This happened in 1980. His wife and daughter live in Lvov.

After our son died I tried to talk my husband into moving to Israel. One of her stepbrothers on his mother’s side and his five children lived in Israel. He found my husband and sent us an invitation. I begged my husband to agree telling him that our son had died and it would be good to reunite with our relatives. And again my husband refused, because he was afraid to leave familiar places.

In 1990 my mother got very ill. She was paralyzed and we had to move her to our home. She lived 3 years and died in November 1993. We buried her near my son’s grave. Then my husband got ill. He was suffering for a long time. He died on 2 September 1996. No member of my family was buried according to the Jewish tradition.

I am alone of my big family. The only thing I have is a place at the cemetery and I hope to be buried between my husband and my son.

Many things have changed in Ukraine in the recent ten years. I wish my close ones had lived to see restoration of the Jewish life. Hesed helps me with food and medications. I often attend lectures and meetings in Hesed. It gives me strength to go on. But Hesed cannot replace my family for me. I am not feeling well and I am losing sight. I wish there was someone to tend to me, but I am alone. I only pray to God to take me promptly when my time comes.

Glossary

1.   Cuzists – members of the fascist organization in Rumania in 1931-44 named after Cuza Alexandru (1820-73), Prince of a Rumanian principality in 1862-66, in 1859 Moldova and Valahia became his principalities. He was known for his ruthless chauvinism and anti-Semitism. Dismissed and banned in 1944 after Rumania was liberated from fascists.

2.   On 22 June 1941 at 5 o’clock in the morning Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union without declaring a war. This was the beginning of the so-called Great Patriotic War.

3.   Stalin’s policy, forced deportation of the Middle Asian people to Siberia. People were thrown out of their houses and into vehicles at night. They were caught unawares. The majority of them died on the way due to starvation, cold and illnesses.

4.   Anti-Semitic campaign initiated by J. Stalin against intellectuals: teachers, doctors and scientists.

5.   20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. Khruschov publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what was happening in the USSR during the Stalin’s leadership.

Anatoliy Shor

Anatoliy Shor
Bershad
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: May 2004

I visited Anatoliy Shor with a member of the Bershad Jewish community. Anatoliy lives in a two-bedroom apartment in a 2-storied apartment house. He told us that this house was built to replace the cottage that belonged to his wife’s family. Anatoliy’s apartment is stuffed with old books covered with a layer of dust. There are signs of neglect everywhere. Anatoliy seems to feel quite comfortable finding his way through this mess. He is a very nervous person. He was shell shocked during the war, and this affected his health condition: he gets confused about the dates, events, names of people, and at times has problems with finding the right word. He jumps up and runs around the room showing some certificates, documents, and I need to wait patiently until he composes himself.

My paternal and maternal ancestors came from Bershad town [about 270 km south-west of Kiev] in Vinnitsa province. Bershad was a Jewish town: the majority of its population in the late 19th – early 20th century was Jewish. Jews resided in the central part having their houses closely adjusting to one another, with small backyards with hardly any space, but for a little vegetable garden and a shed. Jews in Bershad dealt in crafts: they were tailors, shoemakers, potters, glass cutters, small store owners and vendors. Ukrainians and Russians lived in the suburb, on the other side of the Dohna River meandering around the town. Jews bought their food products from Ukrainian farmers, and the Ukrainians went to get their clothes, shoes and haberdashery from Jews. They were good neighbors and respected each other’s traditions and religion. Jews spoke Yiddish and were also fluent in Ukrainian, as well as Ukrainians understood Yiddish very well. Ukrainian farmers brought their products to the market square in the central street: there were wagons loaded with vegetables, poultry and fish at the market on market days. Vendors and their customers bargained in Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian all at the same time. I liked the market. My mother took me shopping. There was a pretty Christian church in the town attracting Jewish children with its golden domes and the bells tolling. However, the kids were taught that Jews were not allowed to go inside, so we all kept our distance from the church admiring the sight of it.

Regretfully, my grandmothers and grandfathers died before I was born. My parents told me a little about them, but my memory failed to keep this information, which is the result of the wounds and the contusion that I had during the Great Patriotic War 1. My paternal grandfather’s name was Shmil Shor, but I can’t remember my grandmother’s name. They were born in Bershad in the middle 19th century. I don’t know what exactly Shmil was engaged in, but he was a small craftsman and worked from morning till night to provide for his family. He was very religious and went to the small synagogue near his house every day.

There were 13 or 14 synagogues in Bershad, there was a cheder, a shochet and a Jewish hospital.

All synagogues, but one poor little synagogue, were closed in the middle 1930s, the buildings were destroyed during and after the Great Patriotic War: people disassembled them for wood and construction materials. My grandfather also prayed at home and observed all Jewish traditions: he followed kashrut and celebrated Sabbath and followed all other rules. My father’s older brothers actually told my father about their family. There were two or three of them, but I can’t remember the names. I know that one of them moved to America at the beginning of WWI, and the rest died before the Great Patriotic War. They were much older than my father. My father Pinkhus Shor was the last baby in Shmil’s family, when my grandmother expected no more children. He was born in 1890. Like his older brothers my father was raised religious and studied in the cheder. My grandfather and grandmother died from an epidemic of typhus almost at the same time in the early 1900s. My father went to study the sheepskin jacket maker’s toil at the age of 8-10. His older brothers supported him, but he had to start work at an early age anyway. When WWI began, my father was recruited to the czarist army almost at once. About a year later he was severely wounded and taken to hospital. When he was released from the hospital he returned home. I don’t know how my father met my mother – they actually may have known each other, or my grandfather knew my mother’s family, or they may have met through a shadkhan. Anyway, my parents got married in 1918.

I know about my mother’s parents even less. All I know is my grandfather’s name was Naftul since I was named after him, but I don’t remember his last name, or my grandmother’s name. My maternal grandparents were 5 years younger than my paternal grandparents. I don’t know what exactly my grandfather did for the living. My mother only told me that he was a poor craftsman. My grandmother had several children, but only my mother’s older sister, whose name I can’t remember, and my mother Reizl, born in 1893, survived. My mother was the last child, born in the family. She studied 2 or 3 years in a Jewish school, and this was all education she got. According to a common vision at the time, this education was more than sufficient for a girl from a poor Jewish family. Reizl could read and write in Yiddish and knew prayers that her father Naftul taught her. My grandfather and grandmother were very religious and raised my mother religious, too. My parents’ wedding, despite the troubled times, attacks of gangs 2, revolution 3, hunger and devastation, was arranged according to all Jewish rules. Before the war we had my parents’ wedding picture on the wall: my mother wearing a white gown and a veil and my father wearing a black suit. They were photographed the moment they stepped into the chuppah at the most beautiful synagogue in Bershad. My parents were hopeful about the revolution believing the communist propaganda with all their heart. They did not take part in the communist movement, but they were enthusiastic about everything new it brought in.

My parents lived in my mother parents’ home. My mother was a housewife. My father made warm sheepskin coats that were in demand with Jews and Ukrainians in Bershad and the neighboring villages. My father worked very hard. He often worked till late at night by the light of a kerosene lamp putting coats together and embroidering in read woolen yarn on them. Coat makers of Bershad had an unwritten rule that they followed: they divided the neighboring villages to do their trade in the areas that were assigned to them. My father often traveled to his villages where he had customers. He stayed in his shop, which was arranged in our house from morning till late at night, but there was nothing that could force him to work on Sabbath, the sacred tradition that he never breached. In 1919 my older brother named Shmil after my father’s father was born. This was a hard time. Mama told me that when gangs broke into the village, the whole family found shelter in the basement and she pressed her palm to little Shmil’s mouth to keep him quiet. If he had cried out, the bandits might have discovered the family. The town seemed to be overburdened with all kinds of trouble in those years: hunger and robbers had a hard impact on my grandmother and grandfather who fell ill and died. I don’t know the exact time of their death, but it happened before I was born.

My early life

I was born on 7 January 1922. I was given the name of Naftul after my mother’s father at the synagogue. According to the rules I had a brit milah on the 8th day after I was born. In 1926 my sister Haya was born, and in 1928 – my younger brother Gersh was born. I have dim memories about my childhood. There were three rooms and a kitchen with a Russian stove in it in our house, located in the Naberezhnaya Street, the embankment of the Dohna River. Our town was located in the southern part of Ukraine, and the summers were long and warm, so I spent most of my time playing with friends outside. There was runoff ditches along the pavement in the streets and little bridges over them to give access to houses. When they were filled with water after a rain, we liked making paper or wooden boats letting them sail in the ditches. When we grew older we ran to the river bank where were bathed and lay in the sun on the sand beach. There were only Jewish children around since we lived in the Jewish part of the town. We spoke Yiddish at home and to one another. I only heard Ukrainian, when I went to the market with my mother and she bargained with vendors in Ukrainian. By the way, Ukrainians could also speak Yiddish, so both sides enjoyed the bargaining to their heart’s content. The Ukrainian vendors showed my mother a great deal of respect and always made discounts for her. Mama was also very polite with them: she asked them how things were, how they felt and wished them health and luck. For me, a small Jewish boy that I was at the time, going shopping at the market with my mother was a kind of lessons of friendship and peace, and I was learning to respect people of different nationalities. Since early childhood I was interested in every living thing in the surrounding: I wanted to know the structure of wings of butterflies and dragonflies, I used to watch an ant moving, dissect a fish or a frog to see what there was inside. My interest to the inside of living beings was so strong that I used to dissect insects to find out what they were like and how they worked all together. I remember, when I was a child, the girl, whom I liked, caught me at this very interesting process, when I was tearing off dragonfly’s wings watching it. The girl ran away scared, ran to my mother to complain about me. Mama told me off, but this didn’t make my interest to the living beings fade: perhaps, these were the first demonstrations of my desire to deal in medicine. Though the girl never approached me again and so, this was how my first love crashed.

However, our family was a traditional Jewish family, and according to the rules, when I turned 4, my father took me to the melamed in cheder. The teacher had 8 boys in his group and we took turns having classes at the pupils’ homes. When it was turn to have a class in our home, my mother made delicious little pies for the whole bunch of us. 80 years have passed, but I still gratefully remember our teacher and can still remember the Jewish literacy he taught us. Since my childhood I saw my father putting on his tallit and tefillin to pray. When I grew a little older I accompanied him to the synagogue, and on Saturday I carried his prayer book following him. We looked forward to Sabbath. Before Sabbath mama cleaned and washed the house and covered the tables with clean flax tablecloths. On weekdays she cooked borsch, beans and noodles, but on Friday morning she started cooking for Sabbath and there was delicious smell of the Saturday food teasing us – sweet and sour stew in the pot in the oven, gefilte fish with vegetables cooking in another pot, mama took crispy challot from the oven. We washed ourselves and dressed up waiting for our father to come home from the synagogue to start celebrating Sabbath. Mama wore a white kerchief. She lit candles and covering her eyes with her hands read the prayer, my father pronounced the blessing and we dipped a challah into the salt. We were even allowed to sip few drops of red sweet wine. Mama left the ceramic pots with food for Saturday in the oven that she sealed and closed with a lid. The food kept warm in the oven. Mama opened the oven by herself, though it was against the rules – she had to invite a Christian person to do this kind of work, but my hardworking mama could not imagine that somebody else’s hands would touch the food that she had cooked with so much love. She used to say that the Lord would forgive her for this fault. We also followed kashrut. We had special utensils for meat and dairy products, boards and tableware and mama taught us to eat correctly according to the kosher rules. And how we looked forward to Pesach! Mama cooed everything so delicious for this holiday: kigelekh, kneydlakh with chicken broth, rich boiled chicken, and pies. There were such preparations to this holiday! The walls were whitewashed with the mixture of clay, lime and whiting, all corners were scrubbed. The house was shining clean. Long before the holiday we went to the market where mama chose a chicken for the seder on Pesach. I liked watching her lifting the hens – white, black and speckled, blew under their tail base to fid out whether they were fat enough, and would be good to make nourishing chicken soup. There was fish splashing in huge tubs: mama looked at their gills – how bright red they were, and also the fish eyes – whether they lost the luster. Of course, she did – we wanted the very fresh fish on our table. Also, mama bought new clothes for us, kids, here, at the market: trousers, coats or shoes. I can’t remember mama buying anything for herself: she always wore her old dress, always clean, and a kerchief. She found it important to buy something new for the children, and I believe, she enjoyed it greatly to give presents to her dear ones. My father conducted the seder reclining at the head of the table. Shmil posed the four questions to him and when he grew older it became my duty. I was looking for the afikoman, for which I could get any gift from my father.

I also liked other holidays, particularly Chanukkah, but not just because kids were given presents. Everything seemed to be brighter and merrier on this holiday. Ama’s douhnuts with jam were the most delicious, and so were potato pancakes fried to crust. I remember my father telling me about the Chanukkah and why there were dishes with plant oil on the table on this holiday. I liked autumn holidays with Simchat Torah crowning them, when the Torah scroll was taken out of the synagogue, and all Jews were dancing and singing following the rabbi. We also celebrated Shavuot and Sukkot. My father made a tent from planks and branches in the yard and we had meals there and spent most of the time in this tent. We also had guests. Rosh Hashanah was as grand as Pesach. My parents fasted on Yom Kippur, and when I grew older I also joined them.

In 1929, when I turned 7, I went to the 7-year Jewish school where Shmil studied. I took a great deal of interest in the living surrounding. I could spend hours watching dragonfly or beetle’s wings, or disembowel a frog to see what was there inside. I liked natural sciences and decided that I would become a doctor or a biologist. I began to attend a group of nature studies and the town library where I read almost all books about nature, medicine and animate nature. However, my interests were not limited to nature. I also had other interests. I became a pioneer 4 and was very proud to wear a pioneer neck tie. I remember the ceremony in the newly built club. Mama made a festive dinner. On that day I went to bed wearing my new red neck tie – I didn’t want to part with it even in my sleep. I was a rather active pioneer. I had a good memory and I was the fastest of all with learning poems and songs. I took p[art in amateur performances and concerts on Soviet holidays. There were many Soviet songs in Yiddish and I enjoyed singing them on the school stage. For the active pioneer work I was awarded a trip to a pioneer camp in Vinnitsa region. All pioneers from Bershad went there in a bus singing pioneer songs. I particularly liked the morning and evening linings. Before leaving the camp we arranged a concert and a pioneer fire. Well, this was the only time I went to the camp. In summer we usually spent one or two months in the village where my father was working. We stayed in a Ukrainian hut and I ran to the river bank with village boys. Nobody ever mentioned the nationality or the language one spoke. We just didn’t bother.

The famine

This beautiful new life ended in autumn 1932 when famine 5 started in Ukraine. I remember swollen dying people. Dead bodies were loaded onto wagons in the morning and taken to the cemetery where they were buried in common graves. They were mainly Ukrainians who came to the town from their villages hoping to get some food. The Ukrainians from the village where my father often went to work supported our family. They brought us whatever little they could share. We also tried to help the needy with whatever we could give them. We ate mamaliga , soup with nettle and herbs. Mama always shared whatever food we had with villagers – she never refused anyone. We were provided little buns or some thin soup at school.

In 1933 the situation began to improve gradually. I studied in my secondary school. I liked parades on 1 May and 7 November 6, and taking part in school concerts. There was a Jewish amateur theater in Bershad. It staged plays of popular Jewish authors, mostly of Sholem Aleichem 7. I often went to the theater with other boys. I also attended the class of political knowledge in this same club that housed the theater. We sincerely believed in the communist ideals and socialism, I read political books and brochures, and even made reports on the current international political situation presenting them at the club and at school. However strange this may sound, my school activities were in no conflict with my Jewish life and education at home. For me my home and school existed separately. The authorities were adamantly struggling against religion 8, destroying churches and synagogues. We were taught that there was no God and I kind of believed it, but at home I willingly followed our Jewish rules and there was no contradiction between the two spheres of life. Before I was to turn 13 the melamed began to visit our home preparing me for the bar mitzvah. There was the only operating synagogue at the time in Bershad where we celebrated my coming of age. Our neighbors and my friends came to a dinner at home in the evening.

In 1937 I finished school. At this time my parents sold our house in Bershad and we moved to live in Lesnichevka village of Odessa region [350 km south of Kiev]. My father had come to work in this village before and had few Ukrainian friends. He was no longer young and could not walk so far away from home. He wanted to spend more time with the family. My older brother Shmil stayed in Bershad. After finishing school he went to work at the sugar factory and lived in the dormitory. I also left Lesnichevka pretty soon. That same year I entered the general Medical Faculty of the Medical College in Tulchin town near Bershad. I had all excellent marks in my school certificate and had no problem entering this college. I shared my room in the dormitory with 6 other tenants: four Jewish and two Ukrainian guys. Of course, this matter was of no significance for us and we did not just get along well, but were friends. Of course, I could celebrate Sabbath no longer and I had to give up following the kosher rules: carefree and continuously hungry students that we were ate whatever we could get. We received parcels from home, and we opened them and ate the pork at my friend Alyosha had in his parcel and the kigeleh and strudel that my mama brought us. At Easter my Ukrainian friends shared Easter bread with me, and I liked it enormously. Of course, I did my best to celebrate major Jewish holidays with my family at home. At least I never missed my favorite Pesach. There was no synagogue in the village, but we brought matzah from the town. I never failed to spend my favorite holiday in the warm atmosphere of my home with my dearest folks.

Before the war

I joined the Komsomol 9 in College. I was also an active Komsomol member and was even elected to the Komsomol committee of my college where I was engaged in the propagandist work. However, the situation was getting more and more difficult. This was the period of mass arrests [Great Terror] 10, but we did not know the truth about this period until the 1990s. This was not just a troublesome, but really a contradictory period. I was surprised that yesterday’s leaders of the party and the state, Lenin’s comrades 11, were declared ‘enemies of the people’ 12 one after another, and disappeared from the life of the country. Common people were arrested and vanished. I didn’t dare to share my doubts even with my friends, but I think these same issues bothered them as well. I remember the state of subconscious fear: on one hand, our life was improving, there were the sounds of bravura music of new Soviet songs and marches glorifying the Soviet country and inspiring optimism heard from everywhere: on the radio in the streets and in clubs, but on the other hand, thee were many primed scared people around, horrible revelatory articles published in newspapers declaring those, who had been our idols and heroes to be enemies, and the strangest thing was that they confessed of having committed terrible crimes. Fortunately, none of my family or friends fell victims to this persecution. The international situation was growing tense. We read about fascism and Hitler wishing to conquer Europe in newspapers, but we didn’t know about his actions against Jews. We began to have military training in the college where we were openly told that fascist Germany was a probable enemy of the Soviet Union. However, after execution of the Ribbentrop-Molotov 13 Pact, regarding which my friends and I had a rather ambiguous opinion, the open propaganda against Germany stopped. My older brother was recruited to the army, when the Finnish War 14 began.

In 1940 I finished my college with honors and was assigned 15 to the position of an assistant doctor in Belyayevka village of Odessa region. There was no doctor in Belyayevka and I had to take care of patients with all kinds of diseases having to take prompt and important decisions. I also assisted at childbirth. There was predominantly Ukrainian population in this village. Its residents showed a great deal of respect to me. First of all, because I was an educated and was in demand. There was a nice library in the village and I continued reading to improve my knowledge. I was one of the very few educated people in the village and I was obliged to conduct political classes, make reports and read lectures on the political situation in the country and in the world. Of course, the essence of those lectures was that everything in the country was wonderful and great. That the only threat we were facing was international imperialism, that nobody would dare to attack us, and if they did, we would defeat them on their own territory – this was how we had been raised and what we believed piously. I made Ukrainian friends, and girls were looking at me, but I knew that I was to marry a Jewish girl since I was a child: my parents convinced me so, and this was an axiom for me. So, I never gave any hope to any girls and treated all of them nicely.

I was in Belyayevka village, when the Great Patriotic War began. My older brother, who had returned from the Finnish War just few months before, was mobilized to the front on the first day of the war. I went to the front on 7 July 1941 from the district center of Olgopol. My mother was crying. I told her to take care of my younger sister Haya and brother Gersh. I also told them to evacuate, but my father was doubtful about it. He remembered the time of WWI and didn’t believe that Germans could be violent toward Jews.

I was given the rank of senior lieutenant of medical service and made commanding officer of the sanitary platoon of 395 rifle division. For few months I took part in combat action providing the first medical aid to wounded military on the combat fields. Our division was retreating like the rest of the army. There were frequent bombings and attacks of the promptly advancing enemy. In autumn we took defense of Mariupol. In October 1941 fascists sent their landing troops to Mariupol and our division was disgracefully defeated. I got into encirclement. I had a through bursting wound in my leg. It caused the hell of pain. Fortunately I had bandages and antiseptic substances to treat my wound. I stayed in the bushed alongside the road for a day or two, and when I understood that the division no longer existed I started on my way back home. Thinking about the fear that never left me during this hard way is terrifying and shameful. My leg ached unbearably and I was hungry and even more so thirsty. Of course, I already knew about harsh treatment of Jews by Germans, and I knew that was hanging by a thread , if anybody knew I was a Jew. Fortunately, I didn’t quite look like a Jew and occasionally I went to smaller villages where people gave me food and sometimes I could spend a night in a shed or a hayloft. However, I spent most nights in haylofts or in the woods to stay away from people. I told villagers that I had fallen behind my unit and was wounded: there were many soldiers and officers plodding on the occupied territory. It took me few weeks to get to Lesnichevka where I joined my parents and my younger sister and brother.

My parents had mixed feelings, when they saw me, they felt happy that I was alive, even if I was wounded, but also, they were concerned about my safety: besides being a Jew, I was a commanding officer of the Soviet army. Our village happened to be within the Transnistria zone 16. We were the only Jewish family in the village, but fortunately, there were no German or Romanian troops in Lesnichevka. They assigned a senior man in the village, but he knew my father well and respected our family warning us about any arrivals of fascists into the village. Unfortunately, I cannot remember his name. Other Ukrainian villages also helped us as much as they could. They knew that we were Jews, but none of them ever reported on our family. Life was hard like anywhere else in the occupation. My father didn’t have a job and all we had to eat was actually what we could grow in our miserable vegetable garden. Occasionally other villagers brought my father eggs or some milk or a piece of pork fat. My mother or father never had any forbidden food while my brother, my sister and I were glad to have this non-kosher food that was forbidden by our religion. So we lived in Lesnichevka for a whole year, but in January 1943 fascists on motorcycles and policemen broke into the village capturing villagers to send them to Germany. They found out that there was a Jewish family in the village. My parents, my brother and sister were taken to the ghetto in Bershad, and set me to the construction of a bridge near Nikolaev.

This was the hardest year in my life. I was to be there 40 days initially. But I was kept there for 8 months. This was actually a concentration camp. The inmates were young men, who could manage to do the hardest work. We broke stones, carried heavy stone blocks, and installed bridge supports without any construction plant or tools. We slept in caves in the hills like beasts. At dawn the policemen yelled and this was a signal for us to start our drudgery day’s toil. We were thin from hunger, ragged and covered with scabs. In the afternoon we were given some thin soup and in the evening we had a glass of carrot tea and a slice of bread. Prisoners were dying every day, but the fascist machine never failed to deliver another group of prisoners from the Pechora concentration camp 17, and different ghettos in Transnistria. Those men got as exhausted as we were very soon. At times it seemed to me that I had died and was placed into hell for whatever sins. Once I (by that time I had been in this hell for almost 8 months) rebelled and demanded normal conditions of life. I argued with the policemen. One of them took me to a bridge support, turned me with my face to the wall and fired his machine gun. The bullets broke the support just few centimeters from my face. I fell from horror. Then this policeman approached me, helped me to stand up, slapped me on my shoulder and said in Ukrainian: ‘You’ve got luck…’. I am still unaware whether this happened because he was kind to me or it was his boss’ direction. Probably, God had mercy on me. This happened on Saturday. On the following Sunday representatives from another camp arrived to select craftsmen: carpenters and cabinetmakers. I said I was a cabinetmaker. A group of men and I were taken to some place. I still don’t know where this was. We drove about 100 kilometers. There were barracks where we were accommodated. His place seemed luxurious to me compared to this hell where I had been before. This happened in winter 1943-44. In late January 1944, when the Soviet army was close, fascists took on their retreat. This must have been such emergency for them that they had just forgotten about us. In early February 1944 there were no Germans or policemen left in the camp. From there I went to Bershad, where my family had been kept.

I didn’t have to cover as long the distance as I had to back in 1941, but I was so weak that each kilometer or even meter seemed enormous to me. On 16 February I reached Bershad. There was still a ghetto there and I found my family there: my parents, my brother and sister. They survived the horrors of the ghetto, hunger, violence of policemen and Romanian guards and hard forced labor. They looked terrible and I looked no better after being kept in the camp. I sat at the table and mama gave me some thin soup that seemed more delicious than any prewar chicken soup, so starved I was. We talked in the evening. My parents told me how they managed to survive how they bribed the policemen and Romanian guards, and how Ukrainian villagers brought them potatoes and beans to the gate of the ghetto. They stayed in an empty house that belonged to some Jews who had evacuated. There were many such houses in the ghetto. Mama kept my sister in hiding in the basement to save her from evil eyes and raptorial eyes of the occupants who raped and killed young girls. There had been an action conducted shortly before I arrived. A traitor reported on a group of inmates who collected money for the partisan unit of Yasha Thales, a Komsomol activist from Bershad. They found the lists and killed all people whose names were on the list. My parents did not fully recover from the horror of this massacre and feared that fascists might kill all inmates of the ghetto before their retreat. Perhaps this was their intention, but they just didn’t have time to do this. On 16 March, one month after I arrived in the ghetto, the Soviet army came into Bershad. There was no battle: fascists just ran away hastily. I remember how exhausted and intimidated inmates of the ghetto went to meet the Soviet tanks, how they kissed the soldiers crying from the mixed feeling of happiness and grief. The field kitchen provided food to the survivors.

I realized that my documents about recruitment me to the army were lost during the mess and confusion of the retreat in 1941, or else I could be subject to the tribunal for desertion. Therefore, when I received a subpoena from the military registry office, I just didn’t mention that I had been in the army before. On 28 March 1944 I went to the Soviet army again. This time I was assigned to the position of a sergeant of medical service. I served at the Southwestern Front liberating Ukraine, Moldavia. We were in Nove Zamky town, [today] Slovakia, when the war was over. The situation then was very different from what it was like back in 1941. We were advancing on all fronts chasing the enemy away from our homelands. We were high-spirited to fight and take revenge. We felt like having no mercy and killing all those who caused so much suffering exterminating hundreds of our compatriots – Jews, Russians and Ukrainians, raped our women and killed old people. My heart was tormented from the feeling that I had actually deserted back in 1941, however unintentionally, and I did my best to redeem my fault in the past. I went to the front line evacuating the wounded soldiers and officers, though this was not my direct duty: I was to receive the wounded and provide medical aid at the medical facility. On 13 January I was sent to the rear of the enemy with a group of surveyors. This happened in Bohemia. We stayed in an ambush for few days and I had my both feet frost-bitten. I massaged them and did whatever possible considering the circumstances, but I never fully recovered afterward. On 15 April 1945 I was wounded by a mine splinter and shell-shocked in Nove Zamky town. I was taken to hospital and demobilized later. I returned to Bershad in late 1945.

We stayed in this house for few months till its owners returned from evacuation. We received a small two-bedroom apartment. We would have waited for lodging longer, but my brother and I were veterans of the war and had some benefits compared to others. Shmil was a tank man. He was wounded in his chest at the end of the war. He had to stay quite a while in hospital and returned home in 1946. Later my older brother got married and moved out to live with his wife. My younger brother Gersh moved to Odessa 18 after finishing school where he entered a Medical College. He was fond of biology and medicine since his childhood. After the war we changed our Jewish names to more common and habitual in the Ukrainian surrounding: Shmil to Semyon, Gersh to Grigoriy, Haya to Klara and I became Anatoliy – this name had some resemblance to Naftul.

I went to work as an assistant doctor in villages and later I got a job at the surgery room in the polyclinic in Bershad where I met my future wife. She came to visit her sister Yeva working in the next-door office. Yeva introduced me to her. Beila Rabinovich was a little older than me. She was born in Bershad in 1918. Her father Naum Rabinovich owned a butcher’s store. After 1917 he worked in a store. After finishing school Beila worked as an accountant. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War their family evacuated to Tashkent where Naum, the head of the family, died. Beila, her sister Yeva and their mother Esther Rabinovich returned to Bershad after the war. Beila’s older brother Israel perished at the front. I liked Beila a lot. We saw each other for a while and got married in 1947. My fiancée and I were Komsomol members, but Jewish traditions were more important for us. We had a ceremony in the chuppah at the synagogue in Bershad, though nobody, but our families knew about this event. We had a traditional wedding party with klezmer musicians playing the whole night in Beila’s home. I moved to Beila’s home where we had a small room for ourselves. There were three rooms in their house: one was of my mother-in-law, and Yeva’s family lived in another. In 1948 Beila gave birth to a girl, but the baby died few days later. My wife could have no more children. Beila and I had a good life together. We loved a room from my work. In 1954 my mother died from cancer. We moved in with my father. Five years later my mother-in-law Esther passed away. We returned to live in my wife’s house. In the middle 1970s it was pulled down and we received this two-bedroom apartment.

The first postwar years were marked with hunger and life was hard. Gradually the situation began to improve. Though I was engaged in medicine, the anti-Semitic campaigns of the late 1940s-early 1950s [Doctors’ Plot] 19 had no impact on me. I don’t think there was as much anti-Semitism in Bershad as in bigger towns. Perhaps, this had to do with the fact that Jews constituted the major part of the population before and after the Great Patriotic War. I remember Stalin’s death in 1953, and the mourning meeting attended by all employees of the polyclinic. Like all Soviet people I sincerely grieved after the leader: it never occurred to us that that he was the cause of our hardships. I took an active part in public activities, but I never intended to join the party. I was a propagandist, agitator, a member of the local trade union committee and public control. I always supported the line of the party and the government. The Jewish traditions that we always observed in my parents’ home gradually elapsed in the course of time. We didn’t observe traditions in my family, though we always celebrated Pesach and had matzah, but I did not go the synagogue. We celebrated all Soviet holidays and went to parades with our colleagues and friends. In the evening my friends got together at our home, my wife cooked dinner, we sat at the table telling stories, laughing, then danced, sang our favorite Soviet songs and had lots of fun. We were not that wealthy, but we managed to buy new furniture, a washing machine, a fridge and everything we needed on installments. The military registry office arranged for me to go to military recreation homes 6 times, as an invalid of the war. My wife and I went to the sea several times. Basically, our life was no different from the others.

My father never recovered from my mother’s death. He continued making and fixing winter coats for some time before he retired. He died in 1984, 30 years after my mother’s death. My older brother Semyon married Riva from Odessa shortly after the war and moved to Odessa. They had a daughter, whose name I don’t remember. My brother was an invalid and was very ill. We saw each other few times, when my wife and I visited them in Odessa. He died in 1989. His wife also passed away. Their daughter lives in Australia. My younger brother Grigoriy finished Odessa Medical College and got a job assignment to Blagoveschensk town in the Far East. In Odessa he married Rosa, a Jewish girl, and they moved to where he was to work. My brother became an assistant professor and lectured in the Medical College. We only greeted each other on holidays. He died in 1991. He had a daughter and a son, whose names I don’t remember and have no contacts with them. All I know is that they were still in Blagoveschensk few years ago. My sister Klara married Yankel Geizer, a Jewish man from Bershad. They had two children and lived with my father in Bershad. Her son’s name is Roman, but I cannot remember his daughter’s name. Klara worked as a typist and a secretary. In the early 1990s their family moved to Israel where Klara died.

When emigration was allowed, many Jewish families left Bershad for Israel, USA and now many move to Germany. My wife or I never considered emigration. We had an all right life here. I’ve always been interested in the situation in Israel – the 6-Day War 20, the War of the Judgment Day [Yom Kippur War] 21, but I didn’t want to move to our historical motherland fearing hardships and obscurity. However, I just cannot understand the Jews, who move to Germany. I shall never forgive Germans for what they had done to Jews.

I worked well and helped common people. My wife and I had a good life and I believe, I’ve had a good life in general. My wife passed away in 1990. I am alone now. Now Jewish communities, cultural centers and Jewish press are developing in Ukraine as a result of the perestroika and breakup of the USSR. Though I miss the great country building an ideal society, but I stick to the reality of today. I’ve become an active member of the Jewish community. I can say I’ve returned to my roots. Every day I go to the synagogue, this small half-ruined building that we, Jews, are repairing on our own. I pray putting on my tallit and tefillin. I have an old prayer book, the one that my grandfather Shmil had. I know the mourning prayers that I am often asked to recite over the deceased. I recite the Kaddish in the Jewish cemetery where my parents and my wife were buried. This is wonderful that the Jewish community has revived, that people can turn back to the religion and traditions of their nation, I am very grateful to those, who support this process in Ukraine, their assistance is very significant: from the material standpoint, but mainly, from the moral side: they help us, old people to get rid of this acute sense of loneliness. I have friends, who are alone like me, and we are clients of the Hesed 22. We celebrate Jewish holidays together, recall our past life and learn about Israel. I cannot help admiring this country and its people. I might very well move to Israel with a bunch of my friends, I would be reluctant to do this on my own.

GLOSSARY:

1 Great Patriotic War

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

2 Gangs

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

3 Russian Revolution of 1917

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

4 All-Union pioneer organization

a communist organization for teenagers between 10 and 15 years old (cf: boy-/ girlscouts in the US). The organization aimed at educating the young generation in accordance with the communist ideals, preparing pioneers to become members of the Komsomol and later the Communist Party. In the Soviet Union, all teenagers were pioneers.

5 Famine in Ukraine

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

6 October Revolution Day

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

7 Sholem Aleichem (pen name of Shalom Rabinovich (1859-1916)

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

8 Struggle against religion

9 Komsomol

10 Great Terror (1934-1938)

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

11 Lenin (1870-1924)

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

12 Enemy of the people

Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition.

13 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, which became known under the name of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Engaged in a border war with Japan in the Far East and fearing the German advance in the west, the Soviet government began secret negotiations for a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939. In August 1939 it suddenly announced the conclusion of a Soviet-German agreement of friendship and non-aggression. The Pact contained a secret clause providing for the partition of Poland and for Soviet and German spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.

14 Soviet-Finnish War (1939-40)

The Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939 to seize the Karelian Isthmus. The Red Army was halted at the so-called Mannengeim line. The League of Nations expelled the USSR from its ranks. In February-March 1940 the Red Army broke through the Mannengeim line and reached Vyborg. In March 1940 a peace treaty was signed in Moscow, by which the Karelian Isthmus, and some other areas, became part of the Soviet Union.

15 Mandatory job assignment in the USSR

16 Transnistria

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

17 Pechora camp

On 11 November 1941 the civil governor of Transnistria issued the deportation of Jews. A camp for Jewish residents of Tulchin (3005 in total) was established in Pechora village Vinnytsya region in December 1941. This is known as the 'Dead Loop'. In total about 9000 people from various towns in Vinnytsya region were kept in the camp. They were accommodated in the former 2-storied recreation center building. There were up to 50 tenants in one room. No provisions were made for the most basic necessities of the inmates. Inmates hardly got any food and the building had no heating. About 2 500 Jews were taken away by Germans for forced labor. None of them returned, they all died from forced labor beyond their strength, lack of food, hunger and diseases. In March 1944 Soviet troops liberated the camp. There were 1550 survivors left in the camp.

18 Odessa

The Jewish community of Odessa was the second biggest Jewish community in Russia. According to the census of 1897 there were 138,935 Jews in Odessa, which was 34,41% of the local population. There were 7 big synagogues and 49 prayer houses in Odessa. There were heders in 19 prayer houses.

19 Doctors’ Plot

20 Six-Day-War

The first strikes of the Six-Day-War happened on 5th June 1967 by the Israeli Air Force. The entire war only lasted 132 hours and 30 minutes. The fighting on the Egyptian side only lasted four days, while fighting on the Jordanian side lasted three. Despite the short length of the war, this was one of the most dramatic and devastating wars ever fought between Israel and all of the Arab nations. This war resulted in a depression that lasted for many years after it ended. The Six-Day-War increased tension between the Arab nations and the Western World because of the change in mentalities and political orientations of the Arab nations.

21 Yom Kippur War

The Arab-Israeli War of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War or the Ramadan War, was a war between Israel on one side and Egypt and Syria on the other side. It was the fourth major military confrontation between Israel and the Arab states. The war lasted for three weeks: it started on 6th October 1973 and ended on 22nd October on the Syrian front and on 26th October on the Egyptian front.

22 Hesed

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

Grigoriy Fihtman

Grigoriy Fihtman
Odessa
Ukraine
Interviewer: Natalia Fomina
Date of interview: January 2004

Grigoriy Samuelovich Fihtman and his wife Raisa Moiseyevna, a small amiable lady, live in the very heart of Moldavanka on the second floor of a two-storied wing house in an old Odessa yard. The front door opens into a small hallway that also serves as a kitchen: there is a tap and a sink and a stove in here. A small room with two windows is furnished with comfortable pieces of furniture: a big sofa by the wall against the windows, where the host and hostess probably sleep, a wardrobe, a cupboard, a table and a couch by a window. There are carpets on the walls. There is a pile of newspapers: Grigoriy Samuelovich is interested in politics. He is a short, thin and lively man. He has a strong teacher’s voice and correct literary language sounding similar to newspaper editorial articles. He enjoys telling his story and tells it with all details.

I am going to be brief telling about my grandmothers and grandfathers. My paternal grandfather Avrum Fihtman was born and lived in the 19th century in Yampol town in Podolia [Yampol was a district town of Podolsk province (present Vinnitsa region). According to census in 1897 there were 6 600 residents including 2 800 Jews.] Я I know that grandfather Avrum died when my father was a young man in the 1890s. I don’t remember my grandmother’s name. They were not a wealthy family. My father had several brothers. One of them moved to England before the October revolution 1. My parents corresponded with him until before the Great Patriotic War 2. I don’t know his name, though. I remember a little one of my father’s older brothers. His name was Moisha. My father and mother and I went to see him in Yampol where he resided. He was very ill and now I understand that this was his last meeting with my father. Uncle Moisha died shortly afterward. Uncle Moisha had a family and children, but they were much older than I and I don’t remember them.

I remember my father’s another brother Borukh living in Mogilyov-Podolskiy, much better since I saw him few times. Borukh had two children: a son and a daughter. Son Abram named after grandfather was my senior. He was born in 1918. He was hard to get on with. My father said that when he visited his brother little Abram always tried to hide away from his relatives. The daughter’s name was Polina, and her Jewish name was Perl. During the Great patriotic war Polina and her parents, uncle Borukh and aunt, whose name I don’t remember, were in a ghetto. I think my aunt died in the ghetto and uncle Borukh died right after liberation. Polina survived. Abram was at the front at that time. He was recruited to the army on the first day of the war. He was 23 in 1941. He was severely wounded, but he survived. He met Maria, a Russian girl, in the hospital in Moscow region. They got married and when Mogilyov-Podolskiy was liberated Abram and his wife arrived there. He was demobilized from the army being an invalid of the war. His parents were gone. Abram was business-oriented and was doing well. He worked in the Communekhoz agency and arranged for an apartment for himself. Then he worked as director of the market in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. They had a good life. His wife Maria finished extramural department of the Vinnitsa Pedagogical College and taught Russian literature and language at school. They didn’t have children. I didn’t get along with Abram. Few years ago (2001) he died in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. Uncle Borukh’s daughter Polina worked as an accountant. She got married and had a son. I saw him when he went to a kindergarten. Polina divorced her husband. I don’t even remember his name.

My father Samuel Fihtman, one of the younger children, was born in Yampol in 1883. I cannot say where he studied besides cheder. He could speak fluent Russian and read in it well. In 1896, at the age of 13 my father went to work in Odessa. There were some distant relatives living in Odessa. I don’t know anything about them. They helped my father to find a job. My father worked as designer for an owner of a fashionable women’s clothes store in Deribassovskaya Street. According to what my father said this was a big and rich store: there was a big choice of French perfumery and haberdashery from all over Europe. My father designed shop windows. He liked his job and his master valued him high. He even sent him to polish his skills in Kiev.

My maternal grandfather was my father’s oldest brother. My father married his niece who was his age. Such marriages were frequent at the time. My grandfather Zelman Fihtman lived in Dzygovka village [Dzygovka was a town in Yampol district Podolsk province (Vinnitsa region at present). Its population in 1897 was 7 194 people, 2 187 of them were Jews], near Yampol. Grandfather Zelman was about 20 years older than my father. This means that he was born in the 1860s. I knew his wife, my grandmother Haya Fihtman, a little. She lived with us in Zhmerinka. I remember her lighting candles on Friday. She always wore a kerchief at this time. She was a quiet and nice grandmother. I loved her. Grandmother loved it when I sang her children’s songs. Grandmother Haya spoke Yiddish at home, but she could write and read in Yiddish well. When my mother was busy, my grandmother used to read me books in Russian. Grandmother Haya died when I was 9. This happened in 1935. I was in a pioneer camp and she was buried in my absence.

I don’t know how many children grandmother Haya had, but I remember one of my mother’s brothers. Uncle Leibush lived in Odessa in Bolgarskaya Street. I visited him several times before the Great Patriotic War. I don’t remember his wife. He welcomed me warmly. His wife was a housewife. Uncle Leibush was a worker in a plant. . He took me for a walk in Odessa and showed me Arcadia [well-known Odessa beach, a recreation place], and the Opera Theater on the outside, however. They had two children: son Munia, 2 years older than I, born in 1925, and daughter Zhenia, a couple of years younger than I. Uncle Leibush’s family perished during the Great Patriotic War in Odessa 3. After demobilization in 1946 I came to Odessa looking for them. Whatever little I managed to find out indicated that uncle Leibush and Munia perished during defense of the town. Their neighbors said that Romanians took away Zhenia and her mother, uncle Leibush’s wife, in 1941 and nobody ever saw them again. Where were they taken or where did they perish? This is not known, but they did perish, that’s for sure.

My mother Sima Fihtman was born in Dzygovka in 1886. She finished a primary school in Dzygovka and then studied in a grammar school in Yampol for two years. Her parents wanted to give her good education. I don’t think they were wealthy. We didn’t have any valuables proving my grandparents’ wealth somehow. My mother was short, thin, nice and quiet. When I went to the primary school she helped me do my homework. She also liked embroidery and I can still see her works before my eyes like in a dream.

My parents got married in 1908. My father took my mother to Odessa where they had a wedding party. I have no doubts that they had a chuppah: it couldn’t have been otherwise in those years. My father continued his work in the store. They rented an apartment in Malaya Arnautskaya Street. I know from my father that their first son died before he turned one year and a half. Their next two sons also died. I know that the name of one of these three boys was Zelman. Perhaps, he was named after my mother’s father who had died before. When we lived in Zhmerinka I remember a photograph of a small boy. I asked my mother: ‘Who is this?’ and she answered: This is your brother Zelman, he was one year and a half when he died’. In 1916 my mother had her fourth son. They named his Abram. In 1921, during the period of horrible famine 4, my parents moved to Zhmerinka. Some of their relatives living there wrote them that it was easier there to get food. The famine was horrible in 1921. My parents never went back to Odessa, though my father was willing to return. He traveled to Odessa several times and even found a job there, but he couldn’t get an apartment. They stayed in Zhmerinka for twenty years.

Growing up

I was born in 1926. We rented an apartment in Zhmerinka. We lived in one apartment the first seven years of my life. Our landlords, Ukrainian or Russian, were like family to us. When I turned 8 we moved to another apartment that we rented from Studzinskiye, a Polish family. We went along well with them. Ivan Studzinskiy was a joiner in a railroad depot. His wife Katia was a housewife. She was very nice, cheerful and kind. They had three sons and they were married. Their oldest son Volodia was a locomotive operator. The middle son’s name was Konstantin and the youngest was Fyodor. Volodia had two children and I used to play with them. The Studzinskiys owned a house and we rented its basement part. We had two small rooms, a kitchen and a corridor. We felt quite comfortable there. My parents had few pieces of furniture from Odessa. My father knew about beautiful furniture. We had a beautiful round table on one massive leg forking into four feet decorated with carving at the bottom. There were beautiful chairs well matched with the table. There was an ordinary sofa. There was a kerosene lamp with nice dim glass lampshade lighting the room. It was hanging on the ceiling and my father lit it every evening. When I was small I shared a room with grandmother Haya. Then she died and it became my room. I remember well that my parents were eager to have an apartment of their own and saved every nickel to buy a dwelling. Not many of our Russian or Jewish acquaintances in Zhmerinka had their own dwelling.

My father never joined the Party. He was an ordinary worker. He had different jobs trying to provide for his family. He worked at the railroad and a sawmill. Like many others he was interested in politics. He liked to read ‘Izvestiya’ [Izvestiya – News, daily communist newspaper published in Moscow], and he also subscribed to the ‘Der emes’ (Truth) in Yiddish. There was a time when this newspaper was issued and its articles were translated from the Pravda newspaper [‘Truth’, the main paper of the Communist Party of the USSR]. My mother was a housewife. She was a very good housewife: the house glittered with cleanness. My mother mainly cooked kosher food. Dairy and meat products were never mixed. We didn’t have pork. Chickens were taken to a shochet. It was my duty to go to shochet. There was a big market in Zhmerinka where mother bought sour cream, milk and cottage cheese. We bought sugar and pasta in stores, but we didn’t buy many products there. My mother made noodles at home. She also baked delicious pastries, although she didn’t do it often. She made pies with cherries and poppy seed rolls. We only spoke Yiddish at home, but we also knew Russian well.

My mother and father weren’t fanatically religious, but they always celebrated Jewish holidays. They went to the synagogue on holidays. My mother only used special crockery at Pesach. We didn’t have anything non-kosher at home through 8 days of Pesach. We dressed up on holidays. My mother made matzah pudding, very delicious. The table was set according to the rules: something bitter, matzah and everybody had their own wine glasses. I don’t remember any details, though. I can still see my little blue cup with ‘Pesach’ engraved on it. I remember well that there was the first night and the second night. My father recited the prayer and told me a little about the history of this holiday. He said it was necessary to drink four glasses of wine, but we only sipped wine from our glasses. There were no guests; everybody celebrated with their own families. I also remember that my mother treated the Studzinskiy family to her Pesach dishes. Katia also brought us Easter bread and painted eggs on Catholic Easter. We also celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. My mother and father fasted. I began to fast when I studied in the 6th or 7th grade. We also lit candles at Chanukkah: another candle each day, 8 candles in total. I liked playing with a whipping top. I also received Chanukkah gelt of few kopecks. I don’t remember much of Purim, but I remember that my mother baked hamantashen and told me why they had to be this shape.

I don’t know how many synagogues there were in Zhmerinka. I remember one located nearby. My parents went to the synagogue and when I grew older they took me several times for a minyan. I felt honored to be invited to the synagogue. However, I had to go in and out of there unnoticed since I was an active pioneer. I found everything interesting: a nicely decorated rostrum, an ark containing the Torah with a beautiful velvet curtain. Everything looked festive. There was a balcony for women on the second floor. Men sat in the pits, speaking theatrical language. Women were in kerchiefs and men wore their yarmulkes or hats. I’ve never tried on a yarmulka. I had a tubeteika cap. Actually, most people wore headpieces at the time. Boys like colorful embroidered tubeteika caps. It was allowed to wear it to the synagogue.

There was famine in Ukraine in 1933. I remember my mother and father getting corn flour, though I don’t know how and where they got it. They made flat breads called ‘malaih’ that were cut to pieces and my mother gave us some of it, but they were mainly made for sale. My mother and grandmother Haya went to sell this bread at the market. They bought flour for the money they got and then sold bread again. There was a Torgsin store 5 in Zhmerinka. I even remember the street, but we didn’t have anything to take there. Thus, we received some money from my father’s brother in London few times and bought food products in Torgsin. We bought sugar, rice and flour. My father was afraid of authorities, though. They didn’t appreciate any ties with foreigners, particularly, with the Joint that was considered to be a counterrevolutionary organization.

I went to a Ukrainian school at the age of 8 in 1934. Children went to school at the age of 8 then. Since my father was a railroad worker I went to the railroad school that was prestigious in the town. It was located near the railway station. There were best teachers and classrooms were better equipped in this school. There was electricity at school and I liked coming there. There was light at school! I liked literature, history and geography. I had all excellent marks in these subjects. I didn’t do so well at physics or mathematic. There were many Jewish children at school and there were also Russian and Ukrainian children. I got along well with all schoolmates, but there was one anti-Semitic boy named Grigoriy Zabolotny. Since I was short I sat at the first or second desk. Grigoriy sat behind me and constantly picked on me. I said to him: ‘But your name and mine is Grigoriy’ and he replied: ‘Yes, but you are a different Grigoriy’. He made it clear to me that my name wasn’t Grigoriy, and in truth I was Gershl, Jew. Zabolotny and his buddies were meeting schoolchildren by the front door before school. They lined up by the walls in the corridor and pushed everybody from one wall to another. If you dropped your bag, for example, and bent to pick it, they hit you on your back. So I tried to come to school shortly before classes and when the bell rang they had to go to the classroom and I followed them. Zabolotny pulled girls, particularly Jewish girls, by their plates and wrote things with chalk on their back. However, I never heard him saying ‘zhyd’ [abusive word for a Jew]. When I returned to Zhmerinka in 1946, I heard that this Grigoriy became a policeman on the first days of the war.

Zhmerinka of my childhood was a small town. There were one-storied building with few two-storied houses in the center. There was a nice park founded by a landlord named Belinskiy and this park was named after Belinskiy. On Soviet holidays and weekends people enjoyed walking in this park. Zhmerinka was a big railroad junction and had one of the best railroad stations in the south of Ukraine: it was a big and beautiful stone structure and there were few platforms. There was an underground passage leading to one platform.

Cinema was the main entertainment in Zhmerinka. There were few Soviet movies that they showed many times in a row. We went to watch ‘Chapaev’ movie as many times as they showed it at the cinema theater. It was the same with the ‘We are from Kronshtadt’ movie. When the ‘Circus’ and ‘Merry guys’ arrived we enjoyed them to the utmost. I liked to sign songs from these movies at our school concerts. I knew all songs by Dunayevskiy [Isaac Dunayevskiy, (1900-1955) a popular Soviet composer, Jew], sung by Utyosov [Leonid Utyosov (1895-1982) popular Soviet singer and movie actor, Jew]: ‘A merry song makes us at ease’, ‘Heart, you don’t want to know piece’. I remember every word and every note of this song. Then there was a movie ‘Captain Grant’s children’. We often watched it. We never got bored with it! Tickets cost 15-20 kopecks: this was nothing. The cinema theater was not far from my house and it was a nice building for a small provincial town. There was an orchestra of 5-6 musicians playing popular melodies in the foyer before a movie. Then the bell rang three times and after it rang the third time the audience went into the hall. I often went to the cinema with my friends and sometimes – with parents.

Two of my close friends – Volodia, Ukrainian, and Shulim, a Jew, lived in my neighborhood. We were good friends. We went to different schools. Although Volodia’s father was a railroad man his parents sent him to a Russian school. Shulim also went to the Russian school. We played ‘hide-and-seek, played with a ball and a wheel. I gave them books on their birthdays. Their parents offered us tea, cookies and jam on their birthday parties. My friends also came to my birthday parties. Both of my friends perished at the front during the Great Patriotic War.

When I was in the 2nd grade, my father managed to arrange for me to go to a pioneer camp in Odessa. This was my first trip by train when I went by myself. My father asked an acquaintance of him to keep an eye on me and in Odessa my brother Abram who was a student of a technical school in Odessa met me. Abram and I took a tram to Lustdorf (a village near Odessa, present Chernomorka). The pioneer camp was at the seashore. This was the first time I saw the sea and boats. I can still remember this. I started putting down my impressions in my diary to tell my mother and father what I saw. We went to the beach and had meals three or four times a day. I saw Dutch cheese for the first time in my life. We got it for breakfast. It was new food for me and I refused to eat it. Abram visited me few times. He explained to me that it was delicious and very good food. He whispered: ‘We don’t have it at home. Just eat it’. We were given fruit, grapes, and butter. I was supposed to spend three weeks in the camp, but I got homesick on the tenth day. I asked my brother: ‘Take me home’. He said: ‘You are all right here. Nobody does any harm here’. So we counted days together: ten, nine, eight days before going home… I enjoyed it there, but I never learned to swim. I was afraid of the sea (I still am). I stayed at the shore for hours looking at the water and breathing in the sea air.

I became a pioneer in the 3rd grade at the age of 10. I was an active pioneer. It was so interesting! This red necktie! Silk ties were the best. Not everybody could afford one. We didn’t tie them round our necks, but there was a special clip. There were three flames on a clip – very beautiful. I loved pioneer meetings. I especially liked dance, sing, or recite at school concerts. On 1 May or on October revolution Day 6 someone from the town house of culture attended our school concert and I got an invitation to perform in the town amateur club. I was also a young correspondent of the all-Union newspaper ‘Pionerskaya Pravda’ (Pioneer Truth) and Ukrainian newspaper ‘Yuny Leninets’ (Young Leninist). In the 6th and 7th grades I wrote articles about school life. I corresponded with editorial offices. Of course, these letters were gone when we evacuated. I also liked drawing. Our neighbor taught me to draw portrait copies of Stalin, for example.

I remember some noise by our window one night in 1937 [Great Тerror] 7. I was 11. In the morning Katia came crying. She said that Ivan Studzinskiy was arrested that night. We never saw him again and they didn’t either. Their older son Volodia felt bitter about the Soviet regime and when Germans came he became a policeman. After the war he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. Other brothers Konstantin and Fyodor had nothing to do with occupants.

My brother Abram was 10 years older than me. He was a student when I went to the first grade. He studied in a technical school in Odessa and then went to study in the Chemical Production College of Tinned Food Industry. In 1939, a month after WWII began he went to serve in the army. In 1940 Abram wrote us that his commandment decided to send him to study at a military school. We were happy for him, but some time later he wrote that he got a refusal for having relatives abroad. So he stayed to serve in Brest. A year later in late November he came home on leave to visit mother since she was very ill. She had a severe condition and a group of doctors issued a document confirming her hard health condition and on the basis of this document Abram got a leave. Abram came wearing his military uniform. I was turning 14 on those days, but we didn’t have any celebration since my mother was dying. She survived. Doctors helped her. My father invited professor from Vinnitsa who came to Zhmerinka to provide medical treatment to the wife of a Party boss. It turned out that the diagnosis of local doctors was wrong.

Everything my brother told me about his military routines was interesting to me. He said that Brest was located on the banks of the Bug River and there were Germans on the opposite bank. Occasionally soldiers talked across the river. Germans shouted in German and Russian soldiers yelled back in Russian. There was nothing alarming about the situation there. A month later in May 1941 we received the last and alarming card from him. He wrote: ‘You know, my dearest, that my service will be over in autumn. We shall see each other soon, but ask God that everything is all right’. This was all we had from him. Ten, fifteen, twenty days passed. Middle of June. We are waiting. Then 22 June came. Then it became clear to us that there would be no letter from him. Since Brest is Brest [The fortress with its Harrison few in number made a prolonged defense against Germans from 22 June through the twenties of July 1941]. However, according to the note my father received in 1943, Abram survived in Brest and was at the front for another year. He perished in Leningrad region in May 1942. He was 26 years old.

I remember the beginning of the Great Patriotic War very well. My father managed to go to work as a shop assistant in a store. He worked in it few months. He worked hard. It happened so that on 22 June my father skipped breakfast before going to work. My mother packed his breakfast and asked me to take it to my father. Hs store was in the center of the town near the railway station. I ran there at about 12 o’clock noon. There were people gathering near a radio on a post and I came nearer as well. I had finished the 7th grade by then, and was a big boy. I heard Molotov’s 8 speech. I ran into the store. There was a long line as usual at it is hard to think about it even now.

I ran home and told my mother about the war and she thought about my brother in Brest. She turned into a stone from sorrow. Whatever was said in the next days she had only one concern: «Abrasha [affectionate from Abram] is in Brest!’ She didn’t eat or sleep: ‘Abrasha is in Brest!’ Zhmerinka was bombed literally one day after the war began. German bombers dropped bombs on the railway station and railcar repair plant. One bomb fell on a platform, but it didn’t hit the railway station. There were German landing troopers in Zhmerinka directing German pilots and I happened to meet two of them. On about the tenth day of the war my mother sent me to meet my father from work in the evening. It was getting dark. My father and I were going home. A bomb exploded nearby and I grabbed my father by his jacket. I was scared. Two men wearing railroad uniforms came alongside. They carried cases and one of them said with an accent: ‘Are you, boy, scared? This is only a beginning’. I followed them. It was dark and they didn’t see me. We went past school building that housed a military hospital. One of them said in German (I studied German at school): ‘I wonder is in this building’. My father called me in whisper: ‘Let’s go. There is a smell of gunpowder in the air’. I think they were the ones who directed German pilots.

Two weeks later, on 9 July, I was helping my father in his store when director of the store ran inside: ‘Samuel Abramovich, we’ve got a railcar. My family is already at the railway station. Hurry up!’ The front line was nearing Mogilyov-Podolskiy. We hurried home to pack. My mother was very ill and couldn’t carry anything. I went to find a loader, but there was none. My father and I packed two bales. We didn’t take any winter clothing. My mother kept telling us that we would be back 10-12 days later. Of course, the Red army would win. When we were leaving my mother made our beds and laid a clean tablecloth on the table. On 9 July we boarded a freight train. We stayed on a reserve track over that night. In the morning men began to make plank beds in the railcar. We departed in the evening. It took us half a month to get to Krasnodarskiy region [about 800 km from Zhmerinka]. The train stopped every few kilometers since they were bombing the track. Few railcars were destroyed on the way. Their passengers perished.

We reached Korenevka station in Krasnodarskiy region. There were wagons there. They rode us to Platnirovka village. We got bread and milk and washed in a bathroom. Then we were accommodated in a house. The owner of the house was a Kazak woman. Her husband was at the front. She was a terrible anti-Semite. We stayed with her three months. She demonstrated her remorse toward us, but she couldn’t force us out of her house since we were accommodated by an order of higher authorities. When Germans were near Rostov and Krasnodar she said to my mother: ‘Go away, Germans will come tomorrow and kill you!’ She believed they would not kill a Kazak woman, but they would kill Jews. She had a small garden. There were huge crops of cherry plums and I picked few. She called my father and said: ‘Tell your son to ask my permission for picking plums!’ My father and I were working harvesting grain. There were rich crops. We received bread for our work and they also delivered hot meals to the field. We shared our food with my mother. She was very ill. She had ill stomach. Her suffering during the recent months worsened her condition. The front was nearing and we evacuated again to Northern Ossetia, Zmeyskaya village of Elhotov district. We got accommodation and work in a kolkhoz there. In 1942, when I was about 16 I and other teenage boys and girls and men who were not fit to serve in the army went to construct fortifications in the vicinity of Mozdok town: trenches and escarpments. Military engineers were supervisors of these works. Some people dropped their excavation tools and ran away. I was afraid of running away. We were near the front line. We should be grateful to a colonel: he understood that our group of women, boys and children, might get in encirclement and he ordered: ‘Dear people, go away. Few hours from now Germans will be here’. There were hours left. We were 50-60 kilometers from the village where my mother and father were. They had packed by the time I returned and we managed to leave. Again we boarded a freight train. We arrived in Baku [Azerbaijan]. In Baku we waited for our turn to board a boat for five days.

There were crowds of refugees on the shore with their bales and suitcases. We were staying in the open air and this was September. It was already getting colder. Foggy. There was one boat every five or seven days. My mother was getting worse. My father and I went to town to exchange whatever clothes we had for food. Once day we decided to storm on board of the first boat in the harbor. We managed. There was storm in the sea. We didn’t have water. We arrived in Krasnovodsk. My mother was asking for some water. I couldn’t get any. There was no water in Krasnovodsk. One woman offered a glass of milk instead of water. I gave my mother this milk. In Krasnovodsk we got into a passenger train for the first time since the war began. We didn’t know where the train was heading. We crossed Turkmenia and arrived in Stalinabad (present Dushanbe). There were changed for a narrow-gauge railway train and headed across the Pamir [mountainous region of central Asia, located mainly in Tajikistan and extending into NE Afghanistan and SW Xinjiang, China; called roof of the world. Many peaks rise to more than 20,000 ft (6,096 m); Mount Communism (24,590 ft/7,495 m) and Lenin Peak (23,508 ft/7,165 m) are the highest peaks in the Pamir. The region forms a geologic structural knot from which the great Tian Shan, Karakorum, Kunlun, and Hindu Kush mountain systems radiate. Snow-capped throughout the year, the Pamir experiences long cold winters and cool summers] and covered over 100 kilometers over mountainous passes and arrived at Kurgan-Tubeh town [Tajikistan].

As soon as the train arrived at the railway station people wearing white robes appeared there: ‘Is anybody ill? We will take them to a hospital. The rest of you will get accommodations, work, etc.’ I looked at my father and my father looked at me. What do we do? We didn’t feel like letting mother go to hospital, but we had to. We didn’t know whether we were getting accommodation, or where we would get one or where we would live before. And my mother was taken to hospital. This happened on 20 October 1942. On the last day of October we came to see her. My father had a pass and he could go inside, but I had to wait at the gate. I saw my mother talking to father at the front door. She had a white kerchief on her head. My mother asked to make her a drink from dry fruit. We went to the market to buy dried fruit and cooked them into a drink, compot. In the morning of 1 November we brought her the compot, but she was in the morgue already. I was to turn 16 in a month. When I started telling somebody what my mother was like I always added that I didn’t have time to know what she was like when she deceased. My father and I buried my mother in the local cemetery. When our landlady got to know that we had just buried my mother she began to comfort us and brought us some tea and flat bread. They were nice people and welcomed us cordially. They gave us a much better reception than we had in Krasnodarskiy region. Unfortunately, I didn’t remember their names. They had different names, hard to remember.

My father fell ill with malaria right after my mother died. I also had malaria. All newcomers had it: it was unhealthy climate. Few escaped. I lived there until autumn 1943. Within this year of my life I finished a FZU (factory vocational school). I became a tinsmith, worked for two months before I was mobilized to the army. Young men went to the army at the age of 17 at this height of the war. This was 1943, when Ukraine was to be liberated and Byelorussia and there was a long road to go before the victory. –During the war I served in the army for a year, four months and nineteen days. I remember this duration very well since presently the state counts every day of military service at wartime as three days paying pensions. At that time every day of the war meant thousands of deceased. Every day! Before going to the army I joined Komsomol 9. It was mandatory for recruits to become Komsomol members since we were to be trained to go to the front. It was a routinely process: chief of the military registry committee called secretary of the district Komsomol committee and informed him: ‘Admit this recruit to Komsomol since we are recruiting him to the army tomorrow’. I served at the border with Afghanistan where we fought basmachi gangs. Those gangs consisted of former kulaks, as Stalin called them, from Central Asia republics who escaped to Afghanistan in the early 1930s during collectivization 10. They took advantage of the war situation and engaged us into combat action in the south. I became a sergeant there and had a squad under my command. I had a Russian friend from Leningrad. His name was Gennadiy. He liked playing the guitar and I liked dancing. Gennadiy couldn’t dance, so I was giving him dancing classes and taught me elements of playing the guitar. We found a common language. Once, after another combat action he was cleaning his weapon and unintentionally shot himself. He was my age, 17 years old.

In 1944 I was sent to Orenburg infantry school. I was a cadet there for 14 months. I studied well and only had one problem. There was a mandatory item in the curriculum: 'Each officer must learn to swim’. I am afraid of water. My lieutenant said: ‘there is a swimming pool. It’s not deep. I will push you in the water and will move your hands and you will learn to swim’. I was trying hard, but I never learned to do it. In May 1945 we were finishing our school. I met victory there. I remember this day very well. We lined on the drill square and waited there for an hour. We didn’t know anything and were trying to guess: what’s happening? Chief of our school came to the square and explained: last night Germany signed its capitulation and the war was over. We began shouting ‘Hurrah!’ and officers who had guns fired out all their bullets saluting. We had tears of joy in our eyes – from then on there was to be no more killing. We understood that the war was going to last five-ten days more, and everybody knew what kind of work we would be given work. So we met Victory Day and from that day Victory Day has been the dearest holiday for me and also, for my family.

In 1946 I demobilized from the army. When my father and I met in Kurgan-Tubeh, he cried for the first time. He reached his jacket and showed me a notification on my brother’s death. He received it in 1943, but he didn’t show it to me. I had quite a temper and my father feared that if I heard that Abram perished I might run away to the front. I would have done it. My father and I returned to Zhmerinka. Again we were having a problem with getting a place to live. My father had been a pensioner for few years and I began to look for a job. I couldn’t find one for a long time. I heard, though that Stalin issued an order obliging all military registry offices to find employment for veterans of the war. My registry office argued with me: ‘We didn’t recruit you, an office in Kurgan-Tubeh did’. I replied: ‘That’s true. You didn’t, but I was born here and studied here. I came back to my hometown’. ‘We are having problems with employment and we can help only those who had been recruited here’. I don’t know what might come out of it if I hadn’t met my friend who invited me to visit his relatives in Komargorod village where he promised to introduce me to a nice Jewish girl.

We met in 1946 and in 1947 we registered our marriage. My wife Raisa Shraiman was born in Komargorod village Toimashpol district Vinnitsa region in 1927. Her father Moisey Shraiman was a tinsmith and her mother Rosa Shraiman was a dressmaker. Raisa had an older brother, born in 1924. They were in the ghetto from the first days and were liberated when Tomashpol district was cleared in middle March 1944. What they lived through would be enough to write a novel. I will tell you one episode. Occupants forced all Jewish families into few houses. They made those miserable people to install barbed wire fencing. Some time later a punitive force unit arrived at Komargorod. They ordered few men to dig a big pit in a small forest near the village. My wife’s father Moisey Shraiman was among those men doing this work. Ten they returned to the ghetto and some time later in the evening they came to take eight men including Raisa’s father. They tied them in twos, hand by hand. Four pairs. They took them to the pit. Moisey understood immediately what was going on. He whispered to his companion that they had to try to escape. His companion refused. Moisey managed to untie his knot and escape few meters away from the pit. He ran to the woods and Germans fired after him, but it was getting dark and he managed to run away. The rest of men were killed. There was a sovkhoz farm near the forest where Moisey took shelter in a box with cattle food. He didn’t remember how many days he stayed in this box. He remembered that some young people from a neighboring village opened this box and saw him there. They gave him a lump of sugar and a piece of bread. He had a passport with him. Moisey asked those guys to take this passport to his wife Rosa and tell her that he was alive. Later he returned to the ghetto. They didn’t come after him again. This was the only shooting in the ghetto. In Tomashpol they shot over one hundred people. After Komargorod was liberated Raisa’s brother Leonid was recruited to the army. He took part in action in Romania, Austria and Hungary. He returned an invalid from the war. He worked as a schoolteacher in Komargorod and then in Cherkassy. He died in 1985.

After we got married we lived in Raisa parents’ house. I occasionally visited my father in Zhmerinka. Komargorod was a big village, about five thousand residents. I know this number since I was a member of electoral commission on al elections. There were few hundred Jews in the village before the war. There was a Jewish kolkhoz named after Petrovskiy 11. When I got married there were about one hundred Jews in the village. The kolkhoz was not Jewish any more. Jews took to other crafts: two Jewish families were in sewing business, two families of tinsmiths, few Jews worked in the village department store and few Jews were teachers. There was a kolkhoz, sovkhoz, a big hospital, an agricultural school and a big part established by landlord Balashow before the revolution in the village. However, there was no electricity before 1968 in the village. So we lived with kerosene lamps. Raisa’s mother liked to embroider or sew in the evening. I prepared for my classes at school and my sons did their homework.

My wife’s family was more religious than mine. Although they didn’t have anything after the war they began to save every kopeck to buy crockery. There were to be plates for Pesach and plates for everyday use. There were to be plates for meat and for dairy products. My wife still follows these rules. My sons were circumcised on the eighth day like we used to do it at home. I didn’t get involved in those proceedings since following my Komsomol membership I became a Party member.

After we got married I went to work as senior pioneer tutor in the local school. I taught children singing, dancing, drawing and made pioneer fires for them. Everything that I was so fond of in my childhood. I was one of the best pioneer tutors in Vinnitsa region. I had awards for my accomplishments. I was a member of the teachers’ team at school, but I had to study to work at school. I studied in a physical culture school for four years and then I became a teacher of physical culture. Then I entered extramural department of the Historical Faculty of Odessa University. I had two sons by the time I finished it.

Our first baby Alexandr was born in 1948 and then Leonid was born in 1953.

I joined the party in 1952, at the period when ‘doctors’ plot’ 12 was at its height. This was a splash of anti-Semitism and you should have seen how they jeered at me at the ceremony of admission to VKP(b) (All-Union Party of Bolsheviks). It’s hard to find words to describe it! I was born Grigoriy and everybody called me by this name, though my parents knew that I wasn’t Grigoriy. One of the Party bureau members asked me all of a sudden: ‘What’s your real name?’ I said: ‘Grigoriy’. ‘And your patronymic? ‘Samuelovich’. ‘No, you tell us the truth. Why would you want to hide it? Just tell us your name'. I said: ‘This is the only name I have’. They wanted me to pronounce the name of Gershl. Anyway, they admitted me. Chairman of the village council and chairman of the kolkhoz gave me recommendations to join the Party. They were both Ukrainian. Two recommendations were required. The third recommendation was to be issued by the Party district committee. I had three recommendations and they had nothing else to do, but admit me, but those provocative questions! ‘When was the last time you worked electors? – ‘I was an agitator-propagandist in a tractor operators crew. They pounced on me ‘He hasn’t met with his people for 48 hours! You should have talked with them yesterday! You should have seen them today! And you only were there the day before yesterday’. The situation was terrible at the time: director of school was a Jew, he got fired, chief of district department of education was a Jew and he was fired, chief of financial department of the district military office, captain, was a Jew and was fired. On one of those days they told me to make my appearance at the bureau of the district Komsomol committee. By that time I was one of the best pioneer tutors and I taught physical culture. The bureau jerked on me and threatened to fire me from my position of senior pioneer tutor. That meant depriving me of my piece of bread. They were just following instructions of higher authorities. About ten years later I met with those people and they told me they were forced to do this and in truth, they didn’t have anything against me personally.

I also remember another episode in 1952. A lecturer came from Vinnitsa. Kolkhoz members, agronomists, teachers and students of technical school gathered at the club. There were about 150 of us there. The lecturer spoke about ‘monsters in white robes who received a task from the government of Israel to destroy the soviet government’, and so on and so forth. So, when the lecture was over one teacher expressed her admiration: ‘What a lecture! I wish we had more of such lectures! They’ve opened our eyes on where the evil generates!’ Here you are: this is anti-Semitism. She was an ordinary teacher. After Stalin’s death when this campaign crashed my wife’s brother Leonid asked this teacher: ‘What do you say now?’ – ‘Well, you know this was the way it was at the time’. Everybody calmed down and we continued to work in team. I worked in this Komargorod village from 1947 till 1969.

When Stalin died in March 1953 I wore a mourning armband for three days like everybody else. It couldn’t have been otherwise. The leader! The leader of the state. Generalissimos! Stalin became the leader of our country before we were born. We were raised with the name of Stalin. Stalin in the army and Stalin, Stalin everywhere. We though the world was to turn upside down. This was all to it! Life couldn’t go on! Stalin was not there and it meant that there could be nothing else!

In 1956, by the time of the 20th Party Congress 13, I had been a member of the Party few years. In February 1956 we were invited to a Party meeting at 8 o’clock in the evening. –This meeting lasted until 2 o’clock in the morning. They read Khrushchev’s 14 report to us about who Stalin was and who was Beriya 15, and so on and so forth. They told us that what we were going to hear was not to be disclosed. Later newspapers published it. They couldn’t keep it a secret for longer. People got to know about it. It was a shock. We sincerely believed that Stalin was not guilty for arrests and that Stalin didn’t know about them. If he had known, he wouldn’t have allowed them.

My father lived in Zhmerinka. In 1946 he met an aging Jewish woman named Lisa. Her husband perished at the front. They began to live together. Shortly afterward Lisa’s brother living in Alchevsk Donetsk region took them to his town and rented an apartment from nice people for them. My father lived with Lisa the last seven years of his life in Alchevsk. I visited him once. When my son Alexandr was ten years old I went to see my father. My second visit to Alchevsk was when I came to my father’s funeral in 1959. There was a civil funeral and my father was buried in the Jewish cemetery. I never went there again.

In 1960s I had a full workload at school. I also conducted extra-curriculum activities. I also taught in senior classes where they paid more. I got five, ten years of employment records at school and they gave a raise of salary for the duration of school employment. We lived with my wife’s parents and we all contributed our salaries into our common family budget. We also had a vegetable garden where we grew potatoes. There was a food store and a market in the village. We bought our first TV in 1968 after power supply wiring was installed in Komargorod. Our family was the first one to buy a TV set. We bought it on installments. I had seen a TV before when I went to take my exams in Odessa University. Our neighbors came to watch our TV. Our son had their characters, but they were kind to people, obedient and disciplined. Alexandr went to school in 1955 and Leonid - in 1961. They studied with all excellent marks in my school. They had many friends. They spent their vacations at home for the most part. They were not demanding about buying things. They understood our possibilities. We celebrated Soviet holidays: 1 May, October revolution Day and Victory Day. New Year was a family holiday. We decorated a New Year tree when our sons were small.

After the ninth form Alexandr entered the Assistant Doctor Faculty in the medical School in Odessa. After finishing school he was recruited to the army. He served as chief of sanitary services in strategic Rocket army in Moscow regiment until 1971. After the army Alexandr worked in the ambulance unit in Mogilyov-Podolskiy for a long time. He married Inna, a Jewish girl. In 1972 their daughter Maya was born. They received miserable salaries. They earned 150 rubles per month: he, and his wife who was a nurse. Work in ambulance is very hard: he had to be a surgeon and a therapist or whoever else in one person. A small salary and huge responsibility. Alexandr got tired of this miserable salary and he volunteered to the army. He served as an ensign of medical services in Kleipeda. He received an apartment there and in 1978 their second daughter Svetlana was born.

In 1969 my wife, her mother Rosa Shraiman and my younger son Leonid moved to Mogilyov-Podolskiy. My father-in-law Moisey Shraiman died in 1955. In Mogilyov-Podolskiy we lived 8 years. We moved to Odessa in 1977. We bought this apartment where my wife and I live now. It’s our property. In Odessa I worked as a teacher at the railroad training school for locomotive operators. I taught political economy, basics of political studies and civil defense. I worked there teaching these three subjects for 12 years. I retired at the age of 62 in 1988.

My younger son Leonid studied in the evening school for working young people in Mogilyov-Podolskiy and worked as a laborer at the tinned food factory. After this school he entered Odessa School of Railroad Transport and finished it with a ‘red’ diploma [Diploma with a red cover issued to graduates that had all excellent marks. Other diplomas had a blue cover], and his profession was refrigeration car mechanic. He decided to continue his education and submitted documents to the Faculty of Public Economy Planning of the Odessa College of Public Economy. Since he had a ‘red’ diploma he was to take one exam and skip the others if he passed it with an excellent mark. He lost three kilograms in one day before this exam. By that time, by that time, we already knew that there were limitations to the number of Jewish students. If he received a ‘4’ in his exams he was to take all other exams. And they would pluck him for sure at one of them. When he came out of the examination room and said that he had a ‘5’ he was on the edge of fainting. So was I. He finished his college successfully in 1978 and was allowed to chose his job assignment 16 location being one of the best graduates. He chose Odessa footwear association. He worked as a rate-setting engineer. Few months after he started work he was recruited to the army. He served in Odessa regiment in the Crimea. After the army he returned to his factory. He was appointed a shop superintendent within a short period of time. Then he met Natasha Yudavina, a Jewish girl, who was an accountant in this association. Leonid was 28 years old and Natasha was nine years his junior. They got married in 1982. After the wedding they lived with Natasha’s parents for some time. In 1983 their son Boris was born and they received an apartment in Frunze Street. In 1989 their second son Ruslan was born. Leonid became general director of the shoe association. During perestroika 17 the association crashed and he became unemployed. He received an unemployment allowance until he found a job of an economist on the outskirt of Odessa. In 1999 Leonid won competition for the position of assistant director in the Gemilut Hesed, a Jewish charity association in Odessa. V. Goldman, director of the association died in 2002 Leonid became director of Gemilut Hesed. His older son Boris studies in Odessa Academy of public Economy and his younger son Ruslan studies in the Jewish religious school ‘Or Sameach’ 18.

When in 1985 Gorbachev 19 came to power and perestroika began I was working as a teacher in the school for locomotive operators. My salary was 180 rubles before Gorbachev and it remained 180 rubles during his rule. Nothing changed in material way, but it was a different story when the USSR broke up 20 in 1991. This was liquidation of people’s lifetime savings. When my wife turned 55 in 1982 she began to receive a beggar’s pension of 15 rubles. We decided to deposit this pension to a bank when the USSR burst apart and so did our savings. Everybody in the country suffered at this time. Now the situation is different: there is mass unemployment and it has its impact on every family. A big state was created through centuries: by fair means or foul they managed to make it, but then they broke it apart. Ukraine became independent, but does it move ahead? What’s going on now? Chairman of Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian Parliament] Has to close up their session because they begin to fight. They really begin to fight! Now they are thinking of having a group of police officers to help out the deputies who interfere with the legislation generation process. So there we are: this is independence.

In 1990 my older son Alexandr and his family moved to Odessa and settled down in Slobodka [Neighborhood on the outskirts of Odessa]. His older daughter Maya got married. She has a son. Her husband was eager to move to Israel and they left here in. 1995. Alexandr’s younger daughter Svetlana followed them in 1997. When their both daughters were in Israel, Alexandr and his wife Inna decided to join them there. We all do sympathize with Israel very much, but when we discussed this issue in our family Leonid strongly refused to go to live there and my wife and I also wanted to stay here. Alexandr and Inna hesitated for a long time, but three years after Svetlana move there they went to Israel. Maya and her family and Inna and Alexandr live together in Migdal Haemeq town in the north of Israel. Svetlana graduated from University in Haifa and married a former resident of Vinnitsa region. His name is Yuriy and he is a Jew. In late 2002 Svetlana and Yuriy won a ‘green card’ lottery for residence in USA. Again there was consideration in the family. Should they go or should they ignore this card? In March last year Svetlana and Yuriy moved to USA. They live and work in San Francisco. Yuriy is a computer programmer and Svetlana also works in a company. They are happy now.

Perestroika gave a start to the rebirth of Jewish life in our town. I remember the first meeting of the Jewish community in the cinema theater ‘Sickle and hammer’ in Mizikevich Street in 1993. The situation was still alarming and we were guarded by a militia unit so that nothing happened, God forbid. The association of Jewish culture was established. Ten years passed. There are few dozens of such organizations and I can’t even name all of them. There are even more of them than needed. There used to be two hundred thousand Jews living in Odessa at some time and then there was fifty thousand of Jewish residents, but not now. However, there are two rabbis in Odessa. I think one would be sufficient.

My wife and I enjoy assistance of Gemilut Hesed. She receives monthly food packages as a former ghetto inmate. Sometimes the courier asks us: ‘Would you like me to help you with cleaning the house?’ We can still manage ourselves, though. When the synagogue in Osipov Street in the center of the town began to operate my wife and I went there on holidays several times, but in January 1998 I had a second heart attack. They actually returned me to life from another world. I stayed in the Jewish hospital 20 days after this heart attack. On the eve of my release from the hospital I had another heart attack. After this we didn’t go out since it’s difficult for me to seat somewhere for a long time.

Glossary

1 Russian Revolution of 1917

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

2 Great Patriotic War

3 Romanian occupation of Odessa

Romanian troops occupied Odessa in October 1941. They immediately enforced anti-Jewish measures. Following the Antonescu-ordered slaughter of the Jews of Odessa, the Romanian occupation authorities deported the survivors to camps in the Golta district: 54,000 to the Bogdanovka camp, 18,000 to the Akhmetchetka camp, and 8,000 to the Domanevka camp. In Bogdanovka all the Jews were shot, with the Romanian gendarmerie, the Ukrainian police, and Sonderkommando R, made up of Volksdeutsche, taking part. In January and February 1942, 12,000 Ukrainian Jews were murdered in the two other camps. A total of 185,000 Ukrainian Jews were murdered by Romanian and German army units.

4 Famine in Ukraine

5 Torgsin stores

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

6 October Revolution Day

7 Great Terror (1934-1938)

8 Molotov, V

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

9 Komsomol

10 Collectivization in the USSR

In the late 1920s - early 1930s private farms were liquidated and collective farms established by force on a mass scale in the USSR. Many peasants were arrested during this process. As a result of the collectivization, the number of farmers and the amount of agricultural production was greatly reduced and famine struck in the Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus, the Volga and other regions in 1932-33.

11 Jewish collective farms

Such farms were established in the Ukraine in the 1930s during the period of collectivization.

12 Doctors’ Plot

13 Twentieth Party Congress

14 Khrushchev, Nikita (1894-1971)

15 Beriya, L

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

16 Mandatory job assignment in the USSR

17 Perestroika (Russian for restructuring)

18 Or Sameach school in Odessa

Founded in 1994, this was the first private Jewish school in the city after Ukraine became independent. The language of teaching is Russian, and Hebrew and Jewish traditions are also taught. The school consists of a co-educational primary school and a secondary school separate for boys and for girls. It has about 500 pupils every year.

19 Gorbachev, Mikhail (1931)

20 Breakup of the USSR

Yeltsin in 1991 signed a deal with Russia's neighbours that formalized the break up of the Soviet Union. The USSR was replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Ella Lukatskaya

Ella Lukatskaya’s mother Shendel Smertenko

I was born in 1938 in Kiev. My name Ella goes back to the history of our family. Three boys and one girl (it was me) in my mother’s family were named Eleh. We were named after our grandfather Eleh Shaevich Smertenko that died during a pogrom in Kiev in 1905. Our family lived in Yurkovskaya street, Podol 1, Kiev. We lived in an apartment house located in the area that was flooded each year. The population of this neighborhood used to say that they had three misfortunes: pogroms, fire and floods. In those years (1905-10) all these 3 disasters used to happen frequently. But the most frequent were probably pogroms. Most frequently the pogroms were instigated by local Ukrainians living in Podol. But sometimes they were initiated by bandits from other locations. The most ruthless was “Chornaya Sotnia” (sotnia - a militarized unit, consisting of 100 military). My grandfather was killed during one of the pogroms, instigated by this Black hundred gang. On hearing the rattle of a nearing pogrom the tenants went to hide on the attic of the building. My grandmother Haya-Itta was holding my mother, the one year old Shendl. The baby got scared and started crying. The other tenants forced them to leave the attic. They went downstairs and my grandfather went with them, of course. When the thugs broke into the house my grandfather shielding my grandmother and the baby was the first one that they saw. The fatal blow reached my grandfather and he died on the same day. My grandmother and my mother survived. My grandfather was the only breadwinner in the family. He was a shoemaker and worked in a shop.

My grandmother Haya-Ita never accepted the revolutionary changes and the non-Jewish way of life that was forced on the people. She only received primary Jewish education. When her husband died she had to take care of her many children. She was trying to earn some money for her family. She was delivering goods to the people’s homes trying to earn anything she could. She was doing her best to raise her children out of poverty. My mother said that my grandmother was a very wise woman. All kinds of people were seeking her advice because my grandmother was known for her wisdom and kindness. She could always advise how to save some money or how to cook dinner for the whole family from the minimum products. She could also give some advice on how to get along in the family or a number of housekeeping tips. She also knew how to keep other people’s secrets and was highly respected for this. Besides my mother my grandparents had 9 other children. My mother Shendl was their 10th child. My uncle Max, the oldest of all children was 20 years older than my mother. After my grandfather perished the family had no means of existence. They decided to send my mother and two other children to an orphanage to save them from starvation. My grandmother sold my grandfather’s little shoemaking shop. She had to live on and provide food to her children. But still two twins that were a little older than my mother starved to death. My mother and her brother and sister happened to get into a founding house in Podol, supported by the synagogue. My mother lived there for almost 6 years. It was a small house, she told me. This house gave shelter to little boys and girls. They were living separately, and the synagogue acolytes’ wives were taking care of them. The children received traditional Jewish education there, but my mother told me she didn’t feel quite at home at this place.

Max, my mother’s older brother, grew up and went to work. Life became easier and my grandmother could take the children home from the founding house. My mother went to school at the synagogue and studied three years there. My mother’s mother tongue was Yiddish, but my mother knew Hebrew (she could read and write) and she had had an introductory course for Torah. In 1914 she had to terminate her studies, due to WWI. My mother’s older brother was recruited to the front and again the family was left without any means of existence. Almost all children, including my mother (she was 10 years old) went to work. My mother went to the garment factory. This was the beginning of my mother’s work experience and a turning point in her life. She changed her environment from Jewish to the working proletariat. In 3 years time she developed strong revolutionary and atheist ideas. Not review on that, her family was religious: her parents went to the synagogue, prayed, observed rituals and traditions, performed kashrut, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays.

My mother believed that the revolution was liberation from poverty and fear for being Jewish. She strongly believed that there would never be any pogroms and that all people would be well off and happy. She was absorbed by the revolution. In the 1920s she became one of the first Komsomol 2 members in Kiev. She was a member of the Komsomol unit of Ratmanskiy. He was a famous revolutionary and a Jew. He was killed by a bandit later. My mother switched to Russian when she was 13-14 years old (then all around spoke in Russian, her it is necessary was communicate and it by leaps and bounds has learned Russian). When she was an apprentice at the factory she was trying to make speeches, and they were in Russian, of course. Since then she spoke Russian. She only spoke Yiddish with her mother Ita until January 1941 when my grandmother died.

I know very little about the life of my grandmother’s children. There were two other girls after Max, the oldest boy. The name of one of the girls was Hanna, and I don’t know the name of the other girl. They left for Palestine in 1912–14. We’ve never heard from them since then. Rosa, another sister of my mother, her favorite sister, died in Kiev in 1918 from Spanish smallpox. We have pictures of her two brothers Semyon (Shymon) born in 1885 (he perished during the civil war) and Shmuel, born in 1900. We were in the closest touch with my mother’s older brother and my Uncle Max Smertenko until he died in 1967. We were also in touch with his family. Uncle Max had two sons: the older one was Ilia (Eleh) and the younger one was Semyon.

Semyon lived in Kiev. He had a higher education and was an engineer. His children (a son and a daughter) are in the United States and two other children (a son and a daughter) are in Israel now. Three children of my cousin Ilia (Max’ son) live in Germany, Russia and Kiev. We are still in close contact with these relatives of ours.

It happened so that the family of my Uncle Max is our only relation and we are very happy to be in contact with them. Such family ties were of great importance in the 1920s of the previous century. My grandmother and my mother were living in a small room in an apartment in Gorky street. My mother was a Komsomol activist and worked at the garment factory. She worked a lot but earned very little. My grandmother had occasional earnings and they lived a very poor life. Some time in 1926 my mother was sent to study at the Communist Institute. She was a member of the Communist Party already. This Institute admitted young people that could just read and write and prepared political officers. It gave little education but much Communist ideology.

In 1928 my mother met her future husband and my father Aizik Iosifovich Lukatskiy. He was one year younger than my mother. He came to Kiev from a small Jewish town of Smela in the vicinity of Cherkassy. His friends told my mother that he was a great patriot of his town. He used to say that it was the best place in the world, although he had a difficult childhood.

Actually his whole family died during one of the pogroms in 1905-10. Only his cousins stayed alive. Little Aizek went to the founding home at the synagogue in Smela. He grew an orphan. He finished primary Jewish school there. My mother said that he knew Hebrew well and that he read Torah, but this education didn’t last in his life. The revolution turned him into a convinced Communist, atheist and internationalist. He finished the Communist Institute like my mother and became a professional Communist party officer. Later he somehow learned a profession of radio operator and cryptographer.

We didn’t know anything about his relatives, and in 1947 his cousin Eva Lvovna Lukatskaya found us all of a sudden. She was living with her daughter Shurochka in Moscow. Eva has died and Shurochka Lukatskaya lives in Germany now.

Before the war

So, two Jewish children – my mother and my father – met in the Communist Institute in Kiev and got married in 1931. There was no wedding, of course. They lived in a small room in Gorky street sharing this room with my grandmother. In 1932 their first baby was born. Her name was Maria, Murochka. They spoke Yiddish in the family. My mother and my grandmother spoke Yiddish and so did my father. My older sister Mura must have said her first words in Yiddish, too. He then forgot it. When I was born in 6 years I didn’t hear any Yiddish and I didn’t know it.

Between her getting married in 1931 and my birth in 1936 my mother was a Party activist. She became a member of the Communist Party in 1924 after Lenin died. It was the so-called Lenin’s call up to join the Party. My mother told me that during this period she was singing revolutionary hymns in the choir of Komsomol members, giving concerts in the Philharmonic in Kiev. By the way, she also sang Russian and Ukrainian songs in this choir. They also sang Jewish songs in Yiddish. I remember some tunes of these songs that I heard when a child. My mother had a beautiful voice.

My father was working in the secret Department 1 of the Logistics Ministry. My mother told me that they were involved in grain storing up during the years of famine (1932-33) that was a risky activity. He was subject to numerous attacks in the country. Later he was involved in strategic food storage in Kiev. My mother, full of revolutionary ideas, also participated in this grain storing up that resulted in the famine of 1932-33. She left my older sister in my grandmother’s care and exposed herself to the fatal danger. The starving farmers brought to despair attempted to kill her, too, several times. Two years before I was born she was on one of these so-called business trips. She was on the 6th or 7th month of pregnancy, when some farmers beat her ruthlessly for taking away their last little bits of bread on behalf of the Soviet power, making their children starve to death 3. She survived then, but her twins that she was pregnant with did not. My mother finally left this job and went to work as seamstress at a factory in Kiev. I was born in 1938. My birth and the fact that my mother left her Party work and the political arena rescued my mother from the repression of 1936-38. The majority of her Party colleagues were exterminated during those years. This repression touched our family as well. Few of my Uncle Max’s cousins living in Kharkov were arrested along with their wives and families. They lost their children. The children were sent to orphanages and disappeared there. Nobody ever found them. My mother’s thoughts about the repression were hard, but she remained a convinced Communist and she believed that everything in this country was done for the good of the people. She stayed faithful to the Communist ideas until her death in 1982. Se never accepted the public denunciation of the cult of Stalin.

In 1930s only four of my grandmother’s 10 children stayed alive. Grandmother lived in Kiev with two of them: her son Max and my mother. All of us lived in one room. My grandmother helped my mother about the house. She died before WWII. She rescued our life by dying. If she had lived longer we wouldn’t have been able to evacuate during the war (my grandmother couldn’t be moved) and would have stayed in Kiev ending in the Babiy Yar most evidently.4 Before end lifes, she went to the synagogue, prayed, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays.

So, I was born in 1938. I was a 2nd child. There were five of us living in that small room in Gorky street: 2 children, my mother and father and our elderly grandmother Haya-Ita. I can hardly remember her. I have pictures of her, though.

There were five other family in the apartment where we lived. Two of them were Jewish families and the other tenants were Russian. I know these details from the stories that I was told later. I have only 3 memories from the period before the war. Number one is how my father used to toss me up near the open window of our room and I was trying to reach and touch a leaf of the chestnut tree branch, hanging into our window from above. I had a sensation of happiness.

During the war

My 2nd memory is of the wartime. I am a small 3-year-old girl, and I’m taken to the kindergarten. And then we are caught on the corner of the street by the sound of the banshee. Its strident sound was so traumatic that I still cannot bear even the honking of the passing cars. And my third memory is of the bombing when we were on a barge evacuating from Kiev in July 1941. I saw the boat sailing ahead of us bombed and drowned. The sight of it followed me for a long time.

My father was mobilized to the army from the first days of the war. He came to say good-bye to us on the bank of the Dnieper River. I was screaming and crying. I loved my father dearly and I must have had an inkling that he was leaving forever. My mother told me that when she fell asleep on the first night on the barge I got out of the bilge and almost fell into the water. My mother caught me at the last moment. I was crying and screaming that I wanted to go to my Daddy.

There were 3 of us going to the evacuation: my mother, my 7 year old sister Mura and I that had just reached three. My mother told me that before the evacuation she and my father made a fire in the stove to burn all our photographs and documents. I crawled to them and took out a small package with photographs from the pile and put it into the pillowcase of my little pillow. Later they put this pillow into one of the suitcases and we left. Half a year passed until my mother noticed that there was something hard in my pillow and she found this package with photographs and my father’s scarf. They are our only pre-war pictures.

I would also like to mention that my mother found some room in these two suitcases to put two children’s books of fairy-tales with bright pictures for her small children.

We traveled on the barge down the Dnipro river to Dnepropetrovsk, and from there we went to the town of Mozdok at the Caucasus. We lived there for a year when my mother was notified that my father was missing. He was a radio operator and in 1941 he stayed on the occupied territory. In other words, he was working in the underground and he perished at the end of 1941. This may have happened in Darnitsa camp for prisoners of war. My father looked a typical Jew. Besides, he was circumcised when a child. I think that if he had been captured by the Germans he would have had no chance to survive. In 1941 my mother received the notification that he had been missing. And only ten years later we got to know some details of his death.

On the way to Mozdok I got ill and we had to get off the train. Later we heard that this train was bombed killing everybody that was there. We had to evacuate from Mozdok, but my mother was late for the last train. She was desperate, but later there came another train. And that previous one was also destroyed by bombing and nobody survived. My mother used to say that God was protecting us during our trip.

I remember one cold night in the steppe in Turkmenia. There were 10 Russian families. We were travelling on the donkey driven wagons. We arrived at the collective farm where they were growing cotton. It was almost a desert. There were 10 clay-walled huts with no windows, only a door. Each family received a hut that could fit 4-5 people lying on the floor. There was no furniture, no chairs or tables. We had two suitcases that served us as furniture. Later we made clay floors from goat dung and saxaul remainder to make our dwelling a little warmer. It was hot during the daytime and very cold at night. We lived in this climate for 3 years. Our colony consisted of ten families. Each family had two or more children. There were no men among us. There were only women and children and I was the youngest. The Turkmenians lived in their aul and didn’t treat us well. Or, to put it mildly, they treated us badly.

Although I was the youngest I learned to understand them and speak a little. They treated my mother and me a little bit better and even sold us pumpkins and some food at the beginning. But after they found out that my mother was sharing this food with other tenants, they quit selling us food. Our food was what whatever little we got from the collective farm. We didn’t get any bread, and our food was carrots. Early in the morning our mother went to the fields and we, children, remained by ourselves without any food or anybody to take care of us. There even was a vinary in that Turkmenian village, but I never tried any grapes while we were in the evacuation. When the cotton plants were blooming we were all allergic to its blossom. My mother’s food ration was a little bit bigger, because she got some additional food for my father that had perished at the front. My mother divided this food to gine to all children at our settlement. Once in these 3 years my mother received some candy. She put it in the small suitcase and was giving them to the children that were sick to ease their coughing. My sister and I never got ill and, therefore, never tried any candy.

There were no Jewish families in the evacuation. Therefore, Russian families treated us as Russians, and the Turmenians treated everybody that was not Turkmenian badly. I think one of the reasons why they didn’t like us was that they identified us as communists – invaders and oppressors. Middle Asia never accepted the Soviet power.