Travel

Dora Puchalskaya
Ternopol
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: August 2003

Dora Puchalskay likes to wear warm woolen sweaters that she knitted herself and knitted leggings. Dora lives in a big three-room apartment alone: her older son Anatoli died recently after being ill for 17 years. Dora is in mourning, but she met me with pleasure. There is plain furniture in Dora’s apartment, but she has gorgeous embroidered pictures on the walls that she made herself. Dora embroidered sitting by her son’s bed in the evenings. She feels lonely and deserted after she lost her son. A nice downy cat Tom that Dora bought as a present on 8 March follows his mistress wherever she walks. He is Dora’s only consolation. Dora has a friend in the Jewish community and her neighbors also come to see and support her. Dora makes pastries and they have tea and talk about life for hours. Dora also spends a lot of time knitting and embroidering.

Family background
Growing up
During the War
After the War
GLOSSARY

Family background

My maternal and paternal ancestors came from Litin, an old district town in Vinnitsa province. I’ve never been in Litin, but my mother told me that the beginning of the 20th century its population was about ten thousand people. Almost half of them were Jews. There was Ukrainian, Russian and Polish population involved in farming for the most part. Jews dealt in crafts and trade like everywhere else within the Pale of settlement 1 of the Russian Empire. They were tailors, shoemakers, cabinetmakers, glasscutters. There was a synagogue in the center of the town, where most Jewish families traditionally resided.

My father’s parents Yakov (Yankel in the Jewish manner) and Riva Gitman lived in the center. They were born in Litin in the 1880s. They got married some time in 1905. Their wedding was prearranged by a matchmaker, which was customary for Jewish families. I don’t have any information about their families or my grandmother’s maiden name. The only education my grandfather had was cheder. He was a high skilled tailor. He made men’s and women’s clothes and provided well for his family. My grandparents had five children. Grandmother Riva was a housewife. My father told me that they observed all traditions and followed kashrut. They observed Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My grandfather didn’t work on Saturday. My grandmother and grandfather went to synagogue on Saturday and high holidays and fasted on the Day of Atonement. My grandfather wore a hat or a cap and my grandmother wore a kerchief that was a customs with Jews. However, they were not fanatically religious. My father and his brothers studied at cheder. Their parents gave their children an opportunity to determine their priorities in life and make up their own decisions. My father later they gave up religion.

Shmul Gitman, the oldest brother, who was affectionately called Shmilyk at home, was born around 1906. After the revolution of 1917 2 Shmul finished a Pedagogical School and worked as a teacher at a secondary school in Litin and then in Zhmerinka where he moved after he got married in the 1930s. Shmul was recruited to the army on the first days of the Great Patriotic War 3. He never returned home from the war and we don’t know when, where or how he perished. His wife, whose name I don’t remember, and their three children – sons Abram and Efim and daughter Maria, born in the 1930s, were in evacuation in Tomsk [about 2,000 km from Kiev]. Abram and Efim stayed in Siberia. From there they moved to Israel in the late 1970s. They finished colleges and became chemical engineers. Maria and her mother returned to Zhmerinka after the war. Maria and her family also live in Israel, also from the late 1970s. They occasionally send me greetings on holidays. I know that they are pleased with their life. 

The next child Fania was born in 1908. Fania didn’t have any education. She married a Jewish man who dealt in trade. His name was Abram Kipnis. Fania was a housewife. During the Great Patriotic War Abram, Fania and their daughters Raisa, Anna and Mara were in evacuation in Bugulma [about 3,000 km from Kiev]. After the war they lived in Zhmerinka. Fania died in 1980s. Her daughters moved to Israel in late 1980s.

My father’s younger sister Bertha – she was usually called Bella –, born in 1912 was everybody’s favorite in the family. In the late 1930s she married a Jewish man and moved to Leningrad where her husband lived. In spring 1941 Bella came to Zhmerinka to have her baby. She was there, when the war began. She, grandfather and grandmother and Fania’s family evacuated to Bugulma. Fania’s son Michael was born there. Bella’s husband perished at the front. In 1945 she married her husband’s friend who was in love with her. They moved to Leningrad. Bella had her second husband’s last name of Geller. In 1946 their son Yakov Geller was born. Bella died in Leningrad in the 1970s. Michael finished a technical school and Yakov finished a College of Economics in Ternopol. They’ve moved to the USA with their families. I’ve had no contacts with them.

My father’s youngest brother Pinkhus, born in 1915, lived his life in hometown. My father took care about him and called him ‘a little finger’ affectionately. In early 1941 he came to Vladimir-Volynskkiy where our family lived at the time. When the Great Patriotic War began he managed to send his wife and three children between 1-4 years of age in evacuation by train. It turned out later that their train was bombed near Vladimir-Volynskiy and they perished. Pinkhus was in occupation with us. During the war a Ukrainian family gave him shelter. After the war Pinkhus married a Jewish woman. They moved to Poland and from there to the USA. They didn’t have children. Pinkhus died in the middle of 1990s.

My father Lazar Gitman was born in Litin in 1910. He finished cheder and after the revolution of 1917 he studied at a Ukrainian secondary school where he met my mother and they became friends. They spent vacations in a pioneer camp and took part in pioneer meetings. They joined Komsomol 4 at school. After finishing school my father entered a Road Construction College in Vinnitsa. After finishing this college he returned to Litin and became a road engineer. My mother and father continued seeing each other, although my father’s parents were against their marriage. My father’s older brother Shmilyk was the first one to get married according to Jews traditions. Besides, my mother’s family was not as wealthy as my father’s and my father’s parents didn’t want him to marry a poor girl.

My maternal grandfather and grandmother Ghedali and Hana Richter also came from Litin. They were born in the late 1880s. I have no information about their families either. All I know is that grandmother Hana had two older brothers that moved to America in 1912 to avoid military service in the tsarist army. I don’t remember their names. My mother corresponded with them before the middle of the 1930s until corresponding with relatives abroad became unsafe [keep in touch with relatives abroad ]5. Grandfather Ghedali supplied fruit and vegetables for a tinned food factory before the revolution and during NEP 6. He owned a supply company that was nationalized 7 after the NEP. He continued working there. They had stocks of pears, apples and nuts in the basement of their house that saved them from hunger at the trying times. These stocks rescued them during famine in 1932-33 [famine in Ukraine] 8. Grandfather Ghedali and his family lived in a barrack-type house with another Jewish family. They lighted their house with candles or kerosene lamps and had a stove heating. My grandfather received this apartment from the factory where he worked and my grandparents lived there until the end of 1937. My mother’s family was not wealthy. Grandfather earned well, but grandmother Hana had stomach problems. They spent a lot of money on doctors and medications. Probably due to her illness they only had two children: my mother and her younger brother Aron, born in 1915. After finishing school Aron worked as an accountant in a military unit in Lvov. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War he went to the front with his military unit and perished. He got married in early 1941. His Jewish wife, whose name I don’t remember, perished during occupation in Zhmerinka.

My mother’s parents were religious: they observed kashrut and Sabbath. My grandfather wore a kippah at home and a wide-brimmed hat to go out. My grandmother also wore a kerchief or a lace shawl. My grandfather and grandmother went to synagogue on Saturday and my mother stayed at home to set a festive dinner. They observed all Jewish holidays and fasted at Yom Kippur. They did a major cleanup of the house before Pesach and used special kosher crockery that they kept in the attic during the year. They bought matzah at the synagogue; in the 1930s they made it at home.

My mother Basia Richter was born in Litin in 1913. She was raised to observe the Jewish traditions and religion, but she was growing up during the first Soviet years inspired by the romantic feeling of construction of socialism. My mother studied in a Ukrainian lower secondary school. She said that her parents wanted her to study in a Jewish school, but since many other children went to a Ukrainian school my mother also wanted to study there. My mother was two years younger than my father and they didn’t communicate at school. They met in a pioneer camp in summer and had been together ever since. After finishing school my mother studied in a Pedagogical School. She became a primary school teacher. Although my mother was a Komsomol member, she observed Jewish traditions at home from respect of her parents.

After my father returned from Vinnitsa, their feelings toward one another took a new turn and they resumed seeing each other. They wanted to get married and my maternal grandmother Hana approved of this plan. She was very ill and was hoping to live to see her daughter well settled in life. Besides, during the famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine my mother’s family starved, even though they had fruit and vegetables in stocks. My mother told me how they made ‘bebka’, boiled water with a little bit of flour. My mother worked in a primary school and was forced to go to villagers’ home with a commission, which purpose was struggle against kulaks 9. My mother couldn’t help crying desperately seeing children swollen from hunger and the commission that took away the last piece of bread or jar of corns from them. She couldn’t refuse from participation in this commission for the fear of losing her job. My grandmother was hoping that my mother would have a better life with her husband, particularly that my father came from a wealthy family. My father’s parents were against their marriage, and my father didn’t dare to disobey them. My father’s younger brother Pinkhus sympathized with the young couple. He took them by their hands and they went to a registry office where they got married. When they told my father’s parents about their marriage my grandmother Riva got so angry that she didn’t speak to Pinkhus for few months blaming him for what he had done. She thought that my father would never dare to disobey his parents and she didn’t want to accept my mother. She was hoping that my father would have a traditional Jewish wedding marrying a rich girl. Therefore, my parents didn’t even have a small wedding party. After they got married they began to live at my mother’s home. Two or three months later my father got a job assignment in Zhmerinka, near Litin, in Vinnitsa region. My father got a room in a communal apartment 10 in a small one-storied building where I was born on 31 August 1933.

Growing up

I have dim memories about our life in Zhmerinka. It was a small town with a railway station. About half of its population was Jewish. There was a synagogue, like in all Jewish towns. Since my father joined the Communist Party in 1930, my parents stopped observing any Jewish holidays. We visited grandmother Hana and grandfather Ghedali at Pesach and Rosh Hashanah in Litin. Grandmother Riva also tempered justice with mercy in due time, particularly that Shmilyk got married shortly after my parents. Whenever we visited grandmother Riva and grandfather Ghedali I had an inner feeling that they didn’t treat my brother or me with the same care as they did Shmilyk’s children: they didn’t give us presents or show any affection.

In 1937 my mother gave birth to a boy. He was named Moro. My father didn’t dare to complete a brit milah for him since Soviet authorities struggled against religion 11 and this information came up my father might lose his job and be expelled from the Party. Therefore, my brother was not circumcised. During the war this saved his life. Shortly after Moro was born grandfather Ghedali died in 1937 and my mother moved grandmother Hana to live with us in Zhmerinka. My grandmother did the housework, looked after my brother and played with me. My mother went back to work at school. My father worked long hours, but when he came home from work he always tried to find some time to play with us. We didn’t go to kindergarten. My father loved my mother dearly, but he didn’t have an opportunity to spend much time with her. I remember that he bought her a stay in a recreation center for a month. We missed her a lot. Our father worked for a road construction company. He went to work even if he felt ill.

In 1940 our father got a new job assignment and we moved to Vladimir-Volynskiy in 370 km from Zhmerinka. Pinkhus and his family moved there shortly afterward. This town belonged to Poland [Annexation of Western Ukraine] 12 before 1 November 1939. When we moved there it was located in 8 km from a new border of Russia and Poland. There were many Jewish refugees who escaped from Hitler who occupied Poland. [Editor’s note: in September 1939 the Jewish population raised from 9 to 25 thousand people due to refugees.] Vladimir-Volynskiy was a lovely clean town. There was a big beautiful synagogue and nice stone houses with stores and shops in the town. There was a Catholic cathedral in the center. My father received a two-room apartment in a 2-storied house behind this cathedral in early 1941. We moved there from one room that we had from the school where my mother worked. It took us few months to repair the new apartment. We moved into it in the middle of June 1941. After our father moved our belongings to this new apartment, he went on a business trip. On 22 June 1941, when the Great Patriotic War began, our father was not at home. A day later fascists came to our yard. Our mother and we rushed to the basement. Our grandmother was confined to bed and stayed inside. Her bed was beside a window and when we got out we saw that the window was broken and she was covered with pieces of glass. Our mother hastily put away our father’s clothing and documents. He wore uniformed clothes that was in fashion with governmental and Party officials and my mother didn’t want fascists to find them. We knew from refugees that fascists were killing communists and Jews in the first turn. Of course, it was hard to believe that the situation was that bad. We didn’t believe at all that somebody would dare to attack us. It just happened and it was scaring. Pinkhus came to our house and mother began to excavate a hiding pit in the basement for him since Pinkhus was a communist.

During the War

The first days of occupation with army units in the town were relatively quiet until SS Sonderverband units came to town. They started operations against Jewish people. On 5 July they shot 500 men in the yard of the town prison. [Editor’s note: Dora mistakenly indicates the number of 500. Actually, about 150 men were shot on that day.] The rest of Jewish men were in hiding in homes and in the woods. When grandmother Hana died in early September 1941 there were no Jewish men in the town to take to bury her at the cemetery. My mother didn’t allow Pinkhus to leave the house and she had to carry grandmother to the cemetery with three old women who were our neighbors. It wasn’t too heavy load for them since my grandmother was as thin as a mummy when she died. Until her last day, when she was conscious, she prayed in Hebrew and asked mother to light candles near her at Sabbath. My mother was concerned that somebody might hear Jewish prayers, but she couldn’t oppose a dying person. My mother dug a pit and lowered my grandmother in there wrapped in my grandfather’s tallit. I don’t know whether there was a Kaddish recited over her grave. I don’t think my mother found it possible considering the situation.

We didn’t have any information about my father or his parents and relatives in Litin. After their initial operations, fascists made several raids shooting innocent at people. Our mother didn’t allow us to leave the house. In early 1942 the remaining Jews – women, children and old people - were taken to the ghetto in the former storage facilities at the market in the center of the town. The area was bared, but the gate was kept open for some time. We slept on the floor under a bast mat that we fond there since we didn’t have a chance to take things from home. When the ghetto was opened, Pinkhus stayed in his hiding pit and at night our mother took him to a Ukrainian family: my mother was concerned about him. Many young men were either shot or died doing hard work. Their son was in her class before the war and mother knew them well – unfortunately, I don’t know their names. Pinkhus stayed with them until the end of the war. I don’t know why we didn’t go to this family. Perhaps, our mother thought that fascists only exterminated Jewish men and wanted to rescue Pinkhus.

I have dim memories about our life in the ghetto. Our mother had a yellow star on her clothes, but I can’t remember whether we, children had to wear it as well. I remember the never-ending feeling of hunger and fear. Our mother went to work. She washed dishes in a diner for officers. She brought us leftovers that seemed a luxury to us. Sometimes our mother took us to the café when the gate was still open. Once a man wearing a policeman uniform approached us. He knew our mother. She was much loved and respected in the town. People in Western Ukraine traditionally respected teachers. He told my mother that when they closed the gate of the ghetto, our mother and we would perish. He suggested that if she agreed he would take us, children, to a village to help us to survive. Our mother said ‘I shall be with my children to the end. Get me a Ukrainian passport and help us to get out of here, if you can’. A day later this policeman took us out on a horse-ridden cart. All I remember is that his name was Sergei. It’s hard to imagine how hard it must have been for him to get forged documents for us. He gave our mother a passport for Vera Grigorievna. This was how my mother’s pupils who found it hard to pronounce her Jewish name called her. I’ve forgotten what last name there was in this passport. Sergei took two other Jewish families from the ghetto with us. He showed the guard my mother’s forged documents and documents for other inmates of the ghetto in his wagon and he let us out. On our way we dropped by our house to pick up some warm clothes and some other belongings valuable for our mother. Sergei took us to a remote Ukrainian village and disappeared for good. He was afraid that someone might report on him. At that time someone helping Jews was subject to death penalty while he rescued few Jewish families.

This was a beginning of our adventures. I don’t remember in what farms or villages we stayed. Our mother took to any work she could lay her hands on: she learned to mow, thresh, weed the fields, milk cows and look after cattle when she had never done any farm work before. Whatever valuables she had taken from home – some silver tableware and a golden ring – she gave to the first farmer that gave us shelter. We pretended to be Ukrainians when we stayed with Ukrainian families and Polish staying with Polish families. My mother was called Vera and I was called Galina in Ukrainian villages and Halina in Polish villages. My brother was called Tadeuzs, Tadik. He is still called in the family by this name. We never stayed long in one village. Our mother saw grandfather Ghedali or grandmother Hana in her dream telling her it was time to leave a village. Here is what they were saying ‘Get up, take the children and move on, there is going to be a calamity here’. In the morning we got dressed and went away. Several times after we left there were raids in those villages. I remember that we were hiding in a basement during a raid once. There were many rats in the basement and mother stayed awake a whole night protecting us from disgusting rats since they even could chew on children’s faces.

In one village its senior man suspected that we were Jews. My brother did not quite understand what was going on and began to speak Yiddish quite out of place. This senior man said to mother ‘You are Ukrainian, but your children are zhydy’. He grabbed Tadik dragging him into the yard to give him to policemen. It helped that he had not been circumcised. Mother pulled down his pants crying and begging the senior man to have mercy. When he saw my brother he left us alone. I don’t know whether he quite believed what we told him since we left that village at night. Once we got into a raid against Jews. We were hiding in a house. Fascists shot a girl of about 10 years of age by the window of the house. I will never forget her crying and begging. How the girl begged for fascists to let her live and how she wished to stay alive!

Besides constant fear that our Jewish identity might be revealed we also had to maneuver between Ukrainian and Polish people. During the Great Patriotic War there was deadly confrontation between Ukrainian and Polish residents in Western regions of Ukraine. Ukrainians were taking vengeance on their enemy for the past centuries of oppression [Ukrainian-Polish confrontation]13. Farm went against farm and village against village with axes, other weapons or just whips. Before our eyes Ukrainians slaughtered a Polish farm tenants. When they left there was nobody to bury the dead. Our mother dug a pit and dragged the dead there. I was helping mother and I believe our 5-year-old Tadik to have matured at that moment. At least he stopped being naughty using Jewish words. Neither he nor I could understand why people killed people, but we had seen death. My mother met one participant of this blood shedding massacre: he was a school director in Vladimir-Volynski. My mother was afraid that he might recognize her. Some time later he was arrested – I don’t know why, and taken out of the town. We don’t know what happened to him, but mother breathed with relief after he was gone.

Once a Polish group came to the Ukrainian village where we were staying. They took us into the yard. They told mother to step aside and my brother and I were taken to stand by the wall of a shed. They intended to shoot us. Mother began to scream in Russian, probably shock stricken as she was. She begged them in Russian to let her children go. Commander of the gang asked her who she was. She could do nothing, but tell them the truth. He ordered his men to take away their guns and they left.

We didn’t come to Vladimir-Volynskiy knowing from farmers that Germans continued to exterminate Jews there. One day in early 1944 my mother sent me to the market in town to exchange a piece of fabric for a piece of clothing for me. I went there with another woman. The ghetto was closed: all its inmates had been exterminated by then. [The ghetto in Vladimir-Volynskiy was liquidated on 13 December 1943.] However, there were frequent raids to identify Jews hiding in houses. This woman and I got entrapped in one of these raids. Fortunately, we managed to escape and to hiding in a house. When we returned to the village my mother burst into crying from sorrow and the joy of seeing me. She heard about the raid in town and she thought we had perished. She never let me leave her again.

Our wandering lasted for about three years. Every now and then our rescuer Sergei visited us. I don’t know how he found us in various villages. Probably local villagers mentioned to him when they saw us. He brought us gifts and had long discussions with our mother. I don’t know what was between them or whether there was something else besides friendship and support. In spring 1944 I understood that mother was pregnant. It’s hard for me to talk about it. It didn’t occur to me then, that it took two people to conceive a baby, and I didn’t think how my mother got a baby. My mother never revealed this secret. I didn’t ask her and she didn’t tell me anything even when she was dying. I don’t know who was the father of her child. Mother took her secret with her. I don’t know whether there were feelings between her and our rescuer or whether it was submission to crude forces hoping to rescue us on her part.

In spring 1944 Hitler armies were retreating. Villagers were ordered to march ahead of German units to make a live shield to protect retreating fascists in case Soviet units attacked them from the rear. We were also in this column. We were hungry and thirsty. It was hard for my mother to walk. There were air raids few times and we hid in ditches along the road. We came as far as the outskirts of Lublin in Poland. There was another air raid and we fell into a ditch and mother covered us with her body to protect from bombs. When we rose to our feet we saw that we had been in a sewage gutter. We were dirty with stinking faces. Mother asked our guard permission to go wash ourselves in the river. We washed our clothes and ourselves. We were there two days. Fascists moved on and we went back to the east where our home was. We only met Soviet units on the way. Mother couldn’t help crying telling them our story. Soldiers felt sorry for us giving us a piece of bread or a piece of sugar. Few times we had meals in their field kitchen facilities. We felt so happy to be going back home! Vladimir-Volynskiy was liberated on 22 July 1944. We returned home in early August.

After the War

There were other tenants in our house and we found an abandoned apartment. We stayed to live there since its owners never came back. During the war 22,000 Jews from Vladimir-Volynskiy and surrounding areas were exterminated. There were only five Jewish families living in the town after the war, including us. We survived by miracle. 

In September 1944 our mother went to work as a primary school teacher and my brother and I went to the first form at school. He was seven and I was ten years old. I had to do many chores besides studying. In December 1944 our mother gave birth to a boy. She named him Grigori after our grandfather. She went back to work and I looked after the baby washing and feeding him. I loved him dearly.

Shortly after the victory in July 1945 our father returned home. He kissed us and went to talk with mother in the kitchen. He didn’t say anything about the baby. He and mother talked through the night. In the morning father had reddish eyes from sleepless night. He kissed us ‘good-bye’ and left. Our mother cried a lot. She told us that our father had another family. Our father told her what had happened to him through those years. He was in Zhmerinka when the war began. He went to look for us, but then there were Germans everywhere. Our father knew that Vladimir-Volynskiy was occupied and believed that were already dead. He even mentioned that he thought he saw our mother’s coat on a woman in Lutsk and this was a final proof for him that we were dead. He returned to Zhmerinka, got a truck and drove his parents and aunt Fania and her children to the railway station where they got on a train heading to the east. He also went with them. In the train he met a Jewish woman. Her name was Fira. He was suffering and he found consolation and sympathy with her. They parted on the next day. Our father took his relatives to Bugulma, in Tatarstan. I don’t know for what reason they decided to stay there. Father was recruited to the army. He served in a road construction unit installing bridges for the front line units. Our father corresponded with this unit and knew that she gave birth to a girl in 1942. The girl was named Ella. Our father asked our mother to forgive him and tried to explain that what happened to him was a result of the pain he suffered from thinking that we were dead. I don’t know whether he asked mother about Grisha. He decided that he and mother had to forget what had happened to them and live together again, but our mother was a proud woman. She never forgave our father. She said she had suffered too much during occupation and couldn’t forgive his faithlessness. She didn’t mention that she was unfaithful, though. She was probably concerned that our father could be unfair to her illegal baby. Our father went to Kiev where Fira and her daughter lived. He lived with his second family, but he didn’t lose hope to return our mother.

Our father’s sister Bella returned from evacuation and visited us several times. Grandmother Riva also returned from evacuation and kept asking mother to come live with her in Zhmerinka. Grandfather Yankel died in evacuation in Bugulma in 1942. Our grandmother begged our mother to forgive our father and let him come to live with us, but our mother never changed her mind about it. Our father came again in 1947, but our mother refused him again. We have a photo of our father wearing a Soviet military uniform and aunt Bella in Zhmerinka photographed after our mother’s final refusal in June 1947. Our father signed the photo ‘This is the most terrible day in my life’. I saw grandmother Riva once or twice after the war. She lived in Zhmerinka and died in the early 1960s.

Our life was very hard after the war. There was famine in 1946-47. Our father didn’t support us. He was either offended by mother’s refusal or our mother probably refused from his help. Our mother’s salary was hardly enough for us to live half a month. It was especially hard in summer when mother received her 3-month salary, but this money melted away promptly. We received bread per bread coupons. We also got a glass of milk at school, but not in summer when we were on vacation. Our mother bought flour and made pies and buns. She sent me to sell them at the market. She was probably concerned that she would be recognized and arrested for her activities since private entrepreneurship was forbidden. She traveled to Moscow to see her distant relatives several times. She bought women’s underwear, stockings and fabric and I went to sell them in our town. We also grew potatoes and other vegetables in our small kitchen garden. Basically, we were trying hard to survive.

My brother and I were the only Jewish children at school. Our teachers and schoolmates treated us well. When the state anti-Semitic campaign known as struggle against cosmopolitism 14 began in 1948 our mother was very worried. She read newspapers and didn’t sleep at night. She probably understood the absurdity of what was going on, but she never discussed this subject with us. This campaign had no impact on our town where there were about two dozens of Jews left.

My brother and I finished school in 1951. A year later we entered the Agronomical Faculty of the Agricultural College in Verkhovka village, Obodov district Vinnitsa region. We were the only Jewish students in this College. We lived in a hostel. My brother didn’t finish his studies. We received a stipend, but it was not enough for him. He kept asking me to give him money. He was constantly hungry. Before finishing his studies he quit and went to our father in Kiev. Our father was doing well and Tadik lived with him and worked additionally. Later he returned home, but again went back to our father. For few years he traveled between home and Kiev.

I remember Stalin’s death in 1953. We, students, were crying. We didn’t know how to live without him. We stood a guard of honor by his portrait in our College with tears in our eyes. My co-students were Ukrainian girls from surrounding villages. They had a good attitude toward me, but I never mentioned to anybody that I was in occupation. At that time there was official hostile attitude towards survivors in occupation during the war.

I began to meet with a Ukrainian guy in College. His name was Victor Puchalski. He was born in Aleksandrovka village, Vinnitsa region in 1932. He was the only child in his family and his parents spoiled him a lot. During the Great Patriotic War Victor stayed in his village. He saw fascist atrocities against Jews and he came to respecting Jewish people. I told him that I was a Jew and that we were in occupation during the war. Victor and I fell in love and actually became a husband and wife during our last year in College. His parents were also positive about our relationships. Victor’s two uncles were married to Jewish women, so there were Jews in their family already.

After finishing our College we came to my mother in Vladimir-Volynskiy. My mother didn’t care about his nationality. She saw that we were in love and this was what mattered to her. I was pregnant. We went to submit our documents to the registry office, but they refused to accept them. They explained that Victor did not have a residential permit 15 to live in the town. In the residential agency they refused to issue this permit to him since he was in no relation to me. My mother wasn’t a member of the Party, but she went to the district Party committee anyway to obtain their approval of our marriage. She managed to handle this issue for us. Victor and I got married. We didn’t have a wedding party. My mother just made a small dinner for our family and Victor’s father Andrei Puchalski who came to our wedding.

In 1957 our son Anatoli was born. I stayed at home and my husband was an agronomist in a kolkhoz near the town. Victor was an honest man and didn’t allow anybody to steal in the kolkhoz. The management of the kolkhoz was not quite happy about this situation. Once Victor bought a sack of potatoes from the kolkhoz, but they delivered a cart full of bags of potatoes trying to bribe my husband. He told them to take it back. Since then his bosses kept picking on him and fired for some minor drawback. Victor couldn’t find another job for a year. He turned to higher authorities and regional party committee, but couldn’t find justice with them. Then he wrote a letter to Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper [one of the most popular daily newspapers in the USSR]. He resumed his work after the newspaper interference. This time Victor was sent to work in a distant kolkhoz. I followed him there and my mother looked after Anatoli. I went to work as director of a store in this kolkhoz. I had a diploma of agronomist, but there was no employment for me. We didn’t stay long there since Victor lost his job again. We returned to Vladimir-Volynski and lived on my mother’s salary for almost a year. Victor’s parents and my father also supported us.

Some time later my father became director of construction material plant in Transcarpathian region with center in Ternopol town. His wife and daughter didn’t want to follow him to this provincial area and he offered us to come with him. My mother insisted that we accepted his offer. In 1959 Victor moved to Ternopol and got a job at the plant. Then he and my father returned to pick up my son and me and we left there. We lived in a one-room apartment that my father received for few years until Victor went to work at another plant and we received a 3-room apartment where we live now.

In 1961 our daughter Anna, named after my grandmother Hana, was born and in 1964 our daughter Evgenia was born. We were poor. I obtained a license for manufacture of flowers and wedding bouquets and made and sold my goods. I worked a lot at home sewing and knitting. My husband had stomach ulcer and went to resorts on vacation, but I couldn’t afford a vacation. My father’s family moved to Ternopol, but we didn’t keep in touch. They were very jealous about our father and I had nothing in common with my half-sister Ella. They were particularly jealous about my father and mother keeping in touch – by that time my father’s wife and daughter had moved to Ternopol. My mother never remarried. I think she always loved my father and hoped that they would be together one day, but my father never asked her again.

My brother Moro (we called him affectionately Tadik in the family) finished a Prosthodontic School and worked in Kiev. He was married three times. His wives were Jewish. With his latest wife Fira he moved to America in the late 1970s. They have a good life in New York. His son from his first marriage Fyodor and his daughter from the second marriage Izabella also live in the USA.

My second brother Grisha finished a school for electricians and worked in Vladimir-Volynski. In 1971 Grisha died in a car accident. My mother came to Ternopol: she came to live with me in 1967 when she retired. We buried Grisha in Ternopol. My mother was in deep sorrow and hardly ever left the house. My father died in Ternopol in 1978, We buried him at the town cemetery. His second wife and daughter live in the USA where they left in late 1980s.

Trouble has never left our family. My younger daughter Evgenia married a Ukrainian man after finishing school. His name was Grigori Kudiakov. Grigori went to serve in the army and my daughter gave birth to a boy. She named him Grigori after my brother who had perished. When the child was one year old Evgenia and her husband’s sister went to visit Grigori, her husband, in the north of Russia where he was on service. They stayed in a house. Grigori came to stay with them on a short leave. They stoked a stove in the house. They had a substantial dinner and they probably had a drink or few. They didn’t open a choke in the stove and were poisoned with charcoal gas. Grigori survived and Evgenia and his sister died. I didn’t think I could survive my younger daughter. One thing that helped me was caring about little Grigori. His father Grigori Kudiakov returned from the army and kept insisting that we gave his son back to him. He and his parents kept coming to our home abusing me and calling us ‘zhydy’ [kike]. They said they didn’t want the child to be raised in ‘zhydoski’ manner. I don’t know what they meant, but nothing good, I am sure. I decided against giving them the child of my beloved daughter. Grigori turned to court and the court decided to take my grandson from me. Then I packed and left with little Grisha. We traveled from one relative to another in Khmelnitskiy, Zhmerinka and Vinnitsa. We returned after Grigori promised my husband to leave my grandson to me and begged me to return to be able to see his son occasionally. We returned to Ternopol in 1985. My mother who had endured the death of my father, her son and granddaughter and was missing us, in addition lived only two months after we returned. She died in 1985. We buried her near the father’s grave.

However, trouble didn’t leave us then. My older son Anatoli entered a military school in Kamenets-Podolsk. After finishing it, he served in Georgia and then in Czechoslovakia. By that time he was married to a Ukrainian girl Maria. Then my son served in Latvia. His wife and their two daughters – Inna, born in 1976 and Anna, born in 1985 – were with him. In 1984 my son felt ill and came to me. He had to stay in bed. Doctors diagnosed that he had disseminated sclerosis. My son was ill for 17 years and for 15 of them he was confined to bed. His wife Maria and their children lived in the apartment that my son received in Ternopol. She also received his military pension, but she only rarely visited her husband. I was trying to do all I could to help my son live longer. My husband went back to live in his home village in 1992 there he grew vegetables in his kitchen garden. We separated since we decided that he could support us better living in the village and growing vegetables and fruit. Besides, my husband felt more comfortable living in a village. We lived separately ever since. My husband died in 2000. I stayed with my son cooking for him and giving food. I invited best doctors to consult him, but even now medicine is helpless against this terrible disease. We both enjoyed the time when I embroidered pictures sitting by his bedside. He liked the colors that replaced the colors of life for him. My son died in July 2003. He fell asleep and never woke up. Before he died he asked his wife to come to see him. She held his hands whispering something in his ear. She was probably saying her farewells and asked his forgiveness. I buried my son in accordance with Jewish traditions near my parents. Members of the Jewish community recited a prayer. Although Anatoli and my daughters were registered as Ukrainians, in his last years Anatoli read about Jews and Jewish life and felt closer to Jews. Anatoli’s daughters were raised as Ukrainian girls. Inna, the older daughter, finished a Pedagogical College in Ternopol. She is married and has two daughters: Svetlana and Ekaterina Soloviovs. Alla, the younger daughter, lives with her mother. They haven’t visited me after my son died. 

My daughter Anna lives in Khmelnitsk. She has a Jewish husband whose surname is Viller. After finishing the College of Economics in Ternopol, Anna went to work as an accountant. She works as an accountant for a private company now. She has a nice family. They observe Jewish traditions and they’ve raised their children Jewish. Their older son Evgeni, named after my daughter who perished, was born in 1986. He has finished school this year and is going to continue his studies in Israel under a students’ exchange program. Vitali, a younger son, born in 1889, goes to the 8th form at school.

Now I come to six graves of my close ones at the cemetery: my brother Grigori, my father and mother, my daughter Evgenia, my husband and my son Anatoli. The joy of my life is my grandson Grigori, Evgenia’s son. I’ve raised him Jewish, telling him about the Jewish history, traditions and culture and took him to a Jewish Sunday school. His father kept his promise: he often came to see his son and supported him, but never again tried to take him from me. My son-in-law hasn’t remarried. He comes to see me. Few years ago, in 1997 my grandson went to Israel under a students’ exchange program and decided to remain there. He serves in Israeli army now. Grigori observes Jewish traditions. He is religious, but he isn’t an orthodox Jew. He put a mezuzah on our front door. He calls me before each holiday, greets me and reminds me of what I have to do on each holiday. The other day he reminded me about fasting at Yom Kippur and I fasted. 

I’ve never been well-off in my life, but when perestroika 16 began in the late 1980s it made life unbearable. Therefore, I have negative feelings about perestroika. At the same time I am happy about a rebirth of the Jewish life. I am a member of thee Jewish community in Ternopol. There is a Hesed affiliate that provides assistance to old Jews. They deliver food packages and send a nurse to help me. Besides, I receive a German pension as victim of Holocaust and I can manage all right. We always observed Jewish holidays in the family, particularly when my mother lived with us. We bought matzah in underground bakeries before Pesach and observed Rosh Hashanah. I must say that my husband showed understanding to our needs. Now I observe Sabbath, light candles and pray over them on Friday evenings. I do not attend community events since I will be in the mourning for Anatoli for a year. I used to go to the community on Jewish holidays. I enjoyed the celebrations. I cannot attend them now. There is a lot of joy and entertainment at these celebrations while I feel like thinking about my son and praying for him. Then I would like to visit Grisha in Israel. Perhaps, I shall go there for good.

GLOSSARY:

St. Petersburg
Russia
Interviewer: Vera Postavinskaya
Date of interview: April 2007

Mark Evgenyevich Epstein is a very charming person. He is 83 years old, but he bears his age well: he is tucked up, gray-haired elegant sporting man.

Mark is very active, vigorous and full of plans. He tells the smallest details of his eventful biography and shows documents from his family archive with pleasure.

Mark is very emotional; he seems to go through the events of his life anew. It is necessary to note that Mark always liked to sing and took voice-training.

At the end of the interview we managed to record Mark's singsong. On his repertoire there are romances, songs of known Soviet composers Dunaevsky, Bogoslovsky, Mokroussov and others.

Less than 2 years have passed away since Mark Evgenyevich left his pedagogical activities. At present he is a pensioner, but devotes all his energies to public work.

In the room there are bookcases with books, most of them are devoted to physics and history of the Great Patriotic War 1.
Mark’s memory keeps a lot of information not only about distant pre-war years and wartime, but also about contemporary events. 

• Family history
• Growing up
• During the war
• After the war
• Glossary

• Family history

I was born in Leningrad on March 26, 1924 in the family of Eugeny Markovich and Evgenia Yakovlevna Epstein. I know nothing about my paternal great-grandparents. I also do not remember my paternal grandparents. I only know that my grandfather’s name was Meyer, I do not remember my grandmother's name. Their surname was Epstein. When I was born, my grandfather had already died, and we were not in touch with my grandmother.

I also know nothing about my maternal great-grandparents. My maternal grandfather’s name was Smeer (people called him Yakov 2) Shemshelevich and my grandmother’s name was Gitel Yakovlevna.

They lived in Leningrad. I do not know the place where they were born. I know that they lived in Revel (now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia). My maternal grandparents had got 2 daughters (my Mom Eugenia Yakovlevna born in 1895 and my mother's sister Dina Yakovlevna) and a son David Yakovlevich born in 1906.

Grandmother was engaged in public work at the house-keeping department, and my grandfather was a shoemaker. We lived only a short walk from them (about 15 minutes) and frequently visited each other. Both my grandfather and my grandmother loved me very much. Grandfather was a person of cheerful nature, a real devotee. He observed Tradition. If I came from school with sandwiches in my schoolbag, grandfather used to comment on it that I should never eat sandwiches.

Grandfather attended a synagogue, prayed at home, celebrated every Jewish holiday including Shabbath. Grandmother helped him to observe traditions, but I consider her to be not religious. I don’t think grandmother attended the synagogue.

My grandfather used to wear secular clothes. He was a good shoemaker, his work was highly commended, and people said he had clever fingers. One day I visited grandparents carrying sandwiches with bacon in my schoolbag (Mom had given them to me: she did not observe kashrut). Grandfather noticed them and created a scandal.

Grandfather knew that I liked jam very much. Grandmother kept jars of home-made jam in the small cupboard. Grandfather used to give me a table-spoon and a jar of jam and say ‘Start eating quickly, before Granny comes in!’ It did not mean that grandmother was greedy, but she could not understand how it was possible to eat jam with a tablespoon. And I liked it very much. Grandfather was very benevolent. Grandmother was a great contrast to him: she was strict and not always understood jokes.

People who worked together with her, used to say ‘Your grandmother is able to be in command of big military units.’ She always behaved in the spirit of Soviet authorities, but at the same time she successfully helped grandfather in observing Tradition (she carried much on her shoulders). Grandparents were a united family.

Grandfather had a beard, and he put on his kippah only when he prayed. Grandmother did not wear a wig.

Grandfather and grandmother lived in a one-room apartment. The room was large, but there was too much furniture: a big bookcase, a cupboard, a smaller cupboard with jam, a large screen, a sofa, a bed, a table, and several chairs. In the hall there was a hallstand. Their apartment was separate, not communal 3. Grandparents lived the two together. Mother’s brother and sister lived separately.

Grandmother was very active at her house-keeping department. My grandparents loved me. Each my visit was a holiday for them. Grandfather and grandmother celebrated all Jewish holidays and invited only relatives.

My father’s family came from the town of Velizh in Belarus. My paternal grandparents were born in Velizh. My father was born there too. It happened in 1885. Unfortunately certificate of his birth was lost. His name was Epstein Eugeny Markovich or Genuch Meyerovich (his Jewish name). He was a tailor. In St. Petersburg father worked at Bronstein's Berlin shop from 1912 till 1917. From 1918 till 1922 he worked as a tailor at the Theatre of Musical Comedy. Later he worked at the Smolninsky garment factory.

Father had got 4 sisters: aunt Tsilye, aunt Zhenya, aunt Rose, and aunt Sonya. They all lived in Leningrad. Aunt Tsilye was an outstanding therapist, her husband Samuil Karpovich was a lecturer at the Medical College, and their son Victor (he is 71 years old at present) works as a plasma metal cutting engineer.

Aunt Zhenya was a singer and worked at a musical school, her husband’s name was Victor Markovich. They had got a son Boris. All of them are not alive by now. All her life long aunt Rose worked with children at a kindergarten, she was not married. The 4th sister was aunt Sonya, her husband Ilya and their son Izya have already died (Izya was knocked down by a tram when he was 4 years old).

Their daughter Galina is now 86 years old and her health is very poor.

They all were educated well. I guess my father was the eldest child in the family. I do not remember where my paternal grandmother lived. I saw her only several times in my life.Father was an excellent tailor. He had got a lot of customers and not only in the city: some of them came from other cities. My father was religious: he observed the lent, prayed, attended the synagogue, but he was not fanatic.

During all his life father was engaged in individual work (he worked every evening at home), and worked honestly. Soviet authorities confiscated everything we had, and father was deported to Luga of Leningrad region, where we lived several years. It happened in 1933 or 1934, and we moved to Luga all 4 together: Mom, father, my brother Alexander (born in 1921) and I.

In Luga father found a job as a manager of tailor's workshop. He worked there very well. Later things changed and… we returned to Leningrad. Our apartment was already occupied, and we had got great difficulties changing our house in Luga for an apartment in Leningrad. At that time grandmother and grandfather lived in Leningrad in the 8th Sovetskaya Street. Both grandfather and father had no concern with military service.

My mother Epstein Evgenia Yakovlevna (nee Shemshelevich) was born in 1895 in Revel (now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia). I do not know when mother's family moved from Revel to St. Petersburg: parents never spoke about it. When they arrived in Leningrad, mother could not speak a word of Russian. At first father was distressed for her, because she spoke only Estonian language. Later Mom managed to learn Russian, and at home parents spoke only Russian.

Before the Revolution of 1917 Mom worked as a milliner. But after her marriage she became a housewife. I guess she finished only 10 classes. My parents were able to write and speak grammatically correct. They read much, especially my father. Mom took care of my brother and me. She kept a strict hand over us. Mom was authoritarian.

In the family of mother’s parents there were 3 children: mother's brother David, mother’s sister Dina and my Mom Eugenia. A lot of people (relatives and friends) used to visit us during holidays. Mom was a fine hand at cooking.

In 1930s when authorities banished my father to Luga, parents bought a small house there. They grew vegetables and berries. In Luga father did not observe Tradition (no ceremonies), because he was oppressed by the fact of deportation. I remember that in Luga father went on sewing and carried finished clothes to customers in Leningrad. His clients did not leave him. It was very difficult for him both morally and financially, but it was necessary to work: father had to support his family.

In 1936-1937 we returned to Leningrad and settled in Nevsky prospect, 158. Before our departure to Luga we lived in Pushkinskaya Street. I remember it very well, because more than 55 years I worked as a teacher and have exact memory.

• Growing up

In Leningrad our life was very interesting: we went to the cinema, to the theatre, took part in dancing sessions, had a good time on the Kirov islands, swam in the Gulf of Finland, and went boating. I liked to dance very much. I still like it: if they tell me about dancing and good music somewhere, I’ll give up everything and quickly run there. Probably I got it from Mom: she liked dancing very much.

She always said ‘Dear me, I see that you will take after me!’ Every year the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers celebrates its anniversary, therefore on February 12 I come to the Palace, watch the official ceremony and take part in dancing. After that I feel 20 years younger, I really come to life! Together with my wife we won a lot of prizes for dancing tango, waltz Boston, Cracovienne, etc. at different recreation houses.

My parents read much, first of all classics, but they also kept their eye on periodic literature: literary magazines, newspapers. They subscribed for the Leningradskaya Pravda newspaper. I used a library, and my parents exchanged books and magazines with their relatives and friends. At home there were many books.

Most parents’ friends were from among the father's customers. Mom was interested in political events, but she was a member of no political party. Her friends shared her interests. Most friends of my parents were Jewish, but there were a few Gentiles. All of them were intellectuals.

I never attended a kindergarten, Mom stayed at home with me. In summer we all went to dacha (to Kurort or Sestroretsk) in the Leningrad suburbs. When my brother and I were little, parents did not go far away from Leningrad, but later we spent summer in Sochi and other places by the Black Sea. Before the beginning of the war Mom went to Tallin, where she had a lot of friends. Daddy never left Leningrad before the war.

I was born in Leningrad on March 26, 1924. My elder brother Alexander was born in 1921.

I studied at the school #162. It was situated near the PRIZYV cinema. I studied with pleasure and was very assiduous in my studies. I was able to sit at the table doing my homework for 5 or 6 hours, especially if I had problems with my sums. I was an excellent pupil. Here you can see my school-leaving certificate, which permitted me to enter the Leningrad College of Cinema Engineers without entrance exams after the end of the war. 

My favorite subjects were mathematics and physics. That was why I became a physics teacher.

I remember my teachers. Nikolay Nikolaevich Platonenko taught us mathematics, Kotsubinsky taught us geography (he traveled much, and his stories were extremely interesting). Ketler taught chemistry. Aglaida Petrovna, our German language teacher liked me very much. Later at the front-line I was able to talk to the captured Germans (thanks to my teacher of German language). Later another teacher came to teach us geography. I was allergic to her and she was down on me. Now I understand that my nationality was the reason of it.

I do not remember any manifestations of anti-Semitism at school. Frequently my elder brother was not able to do difficult exercises in physics and asked me to do it for him. I did it, and his teacher of physics said ‘I guess it was the younger Epstein who managed.’

At the same time I studied at the musical school. I started there studying piano, but later changed for voice-training. I liked to go to the nearest house of culture for dancing, but it was a problem to leave home, because Mom usually threw cold water on it. 

At school I had got a friend Naum Katsunsky. He was the only and the best friend of mine. Here you can see his photo taken in 1945. Together with him we went for dancing, did our homework, and visited each other. My Mom liked him very much, and his mother liked me too. Naum’s mother was very kind to me and tried to do her best to set a good table for me. Our days off we devoted to film-going. We also often went out on dates with girls. By now Naum has already died.

One summer I spent in the pioneer camp in Taytsy in the suburb of Leningrad. I keep a photo of me, where it is written on the reverse side ‘During my stay in the pioneer camp I gained weight (300 gr), but at home I immediately gained  more (2 kg).’

When a schoolboy, I was fond of reading fiction and liked to retell what I had read. That was the way I developed my abilities of narrator and later it became very useful for me (when I started working as a teacher). For many years I have been engaged in military and patriotic education of schoolchildren and students of technical schools.

[Technical School in the USSR and a number of other countries was a special educational institution preparing specialists of middle level for various industrial and agricultural institutions, transport, communication, etc.] Boys and girls usually listen to me with great interest, especially when I tell them about the blockade of Leningrad.

My brother Epstein Alexander was 3 years older than me. He was talented for music, played piano very well. At school he was very good studying humanitarian subjects, but other subjects were very difficult for him. I helped him in his studies. Alexander was a very sociable person, smiling, cheerful, had good chances with girls.

My brother liked to improvise on the piano. He read much. Our relations were ideal. Unfortunately he died when he was a pupil of the 10th form: he was going home from school and boys played throwing pieces of ice at each other. By chance one of those pieces hit him on his head. 3 days later Alexander died. He was hardly 19. Those 3 days turned my Mom from a brunette into a gray-haired woman. Mom begged the surgeon to save my brother and promised to give him as much money as he wanted, but nothing could be done. My brother did not finish school. It happened right before the war burst out.

• During the war

On June 22, 1941 we learned about the beginning of war by radio. In Leningrad the weather was fine. Molotov’s speech 4 troubled everybody. Stalin addressed people on July 3. Situation reports were alarming. In Leningrad authorities issued ration cards, but gradually number of products we could buy using cards became less and less. Hard time came in November 1941 - February 1942, when it became possible to get only 125 gr of bread per day.

As a matter of fact it was not bread: sawdust and something else. In June 1941 I finished 9 classes. We started preparation for defense: stuck paper on windows cross-wise. Balloons appeared in the sky. Roofs of military establishments, schools, factories, and medical institutions were coated with special camouflage paint. 

Autumn came, it became dark, and there appeared special phosphoric badges. As the city illumination was cut off, people had to wear those phosphoric badges to be seen in the street. In October municipal transport stopped functioning (electricity supply was cut off). Water supply and heating were stopped, too. 30 degrees of frost were terrible, because people lacked fire wood. They burnt their furniture and books, tried to close windows with pillows to get warm. We cooked meals on special small stoves.

Mom casually found some raisin and walnuts in the cupboard, and it helped us to hold out for some time. My friend Naum sometimes brought us a sausage (his father worked at the meat-packing plant). We used to cut those sausages into 50 parts before eating. People reported about cannibalism cases. All cats and dogs had been eaten and some persons started eating people. They caught children, killed them, and sold their flesh and ground bones. No official reports. Only many years later I found some articles about it in newspapers.

Our teachers often sent us to find out why this or that pupil had not come to school. Usually we went together with my schoolmates, but sometimes I went there alone. I was afraid to go crazy. All doors in all apartments were open. I used to come in, say hello, ask whether there was anybody in the apartment. If nobody answered, I started moving from one room to another. People usually lay in beds. Very often all of them were dead. I saw terrible scenes: dead people lying or sitting in beds with their eyes open. Now it is impossible to imagine horror we had to go through.

Germans began dropping fire-bombs. Adults taught us how to behave. At first it was frightening, but later we understood that we had to seize a fire-bomb and quickly put it into the container with water to neutralize. Streets were almost empty. If somebody went along the street carrying something, he would have been robbed for sure. And if somebody walked carrying nothing, he could have been pushed behind a street-door, killed and eaten up. Life sparkled only in the market.

There were people who had everything (for example, directors of shops) in the midst of starving citizens. There it was possible to change valuables for bread. Famine, cold, and poverty reigned everywhere.

In our district there operated 3 schools. One day together with other excellent pupils I was invited to the Palace of Pioneers. There they set a good table for us: big dishes with sandwiches! They did not have time to give a command: children immediately fell upon those sandwiches!

Sewerage system did not function, therefore people carried sewage out to their back yards in buckets, and some people emptied those buckets out of the windows into the streets. Later authorities warned citizens by radio that the incoming of spring could cause epidemic. You see, we went through hard times; nobody has ever experienced or will experience anything of that kind. 

Things looked black: we had nothing to eat. I was advised to find work, because workers received working ration cards (250 gr of bread vs. 125 gr). I managed to find a job of metalworker apprentice in Khersonskaya Street (near Naum’s home). I immediately received a working ration card and an all-night pass.

Parents burst into tears when they got to know about my working card. Things became a little bit better. I used to bring water from the Neva River. It was an arduous trial. It was very difficult to approach the hole in ice: steps were ice-covered; therefore I slid down on my buttocks. Near the hole people stood in long line carrying hollow-ware. The hole in ice was very narrow, because it was about 30 degrees of frost. People became frozen standing in line, often fainted and sometimes died. It was impossible to help them.

So I brought water from the Neva River for 2 families: for my parents and for my grandparents.

There are a lot of stories written about blockade of Leningrad by authors who never outlived it. Therefore it is possible to find the truth only from a few witnesses who are still alive.

In August 1942 I received a notification from the local military registration and enlistment office. By that time I had finished school with excellent results and received my school-leaving certificate with distinction.

At present in my school which I finished during blockade, there is a local museum. A copy of my certificate is one of its exhibits. Now at that school I give pupils lessons of courage.

All the siege long our family was in Leningrad. Father went on working, but later he swelled up because of starvation and stayed in bed. Mother turned into a real mummy: before the war she was full-bodied (85 kg), and in blockade her weight was 36 kg... She took care of father and managed to help him be well again. My parents survived.

One day we were near to eat a human being. A dog casually ran into our apartment and started barking at the piece of meat Mom had brought from the market. We understood everything. And my uncle (chief engineer of the military factory) was eaten. One evening our neighbors came to us and sent us to the nearest doorway. The body of our relative was found there; flesh had been cut off. It was a nightmare. 

I am sure that without me my parents would have not survived. One day at school I got a kettle of shchi. Fantastic shchi! Grandfather of one of my schoolmates went to the suburb and brought some hearts of cabbage heads. At school they cooked shchi from water and that mere apology for cabbage for us, pupils. I brought that kettle to my parents, shaking with fear that someone could strip me of my shchi. Mom was a wonderful woman. In spite of the fact that water, electricity supply, central heating, and sewerage system were cut off, she tried to keep the apartment tidy.

Mom put my shchi on a small stove to reheat it. Together with my father we sat at the table covered with a snow-white cloth, and banged the table with our spoons. Mom used to cut our bread (125 gr per person per day) into thin pieces and put them on a big plate to create an abundance of bread. So we were sitting at the table and waiting for my shchi. Mom took the kettle from the stove and stepped towards the table, but caught her foot and fell down. Shchi spilled on the floor. I seized a chair and would have killed mother, but Daddy shouted ‘Sonny! Mom!’ It stopped me. We all bent down and picked slices of cabbage from the floor. We ate it with bread. I’ll never forget it.

Listen what happened later. Mom bought a cat and I ate it. For some reason I also ate the cat's eyes though Mom urged me not to do it. The cat's pigment started glittering in my eyes. One dark evening I came into the room, and Mom cried ‘A devil is here!’ Daddy said ‘What kind of devil?’ Mom cried ‘Look!’ Father looked at me and said ‘Yes, it is something terrible and looks like a devil!’

It was me who was the devil. I was surprised to watch them quickly barricading my door (they used a wardrobe and a table). I understood that my glittering eyes terrified parents to death. Parents kept me in my room during 2 days. I knocked at the door, asked them to believe me, and begged them to recognize their son. They did not trust me and said ‘Stay there in your room: you are a devil!’ Several days later I was back to normal. You see, it was another nightmare caused by the siege circumstances.

During the siege Mom carried all our valuables to the market. For example, she changed my father’s expensive suit for 200 gr of bread and a piece of sugar.

During the blockade schools went on functioning and I studied at my school #11 5. Later its number was changed for 162. 

My parents and I survived, but my grandfather and grandmother died from starvation. They were buried at the Jewish (Preobrazhenskoe) cemetery. 

Grandfather of my classmate brought us to the Preobrazhenskoe cemetery by a horsed cart. We paid him a bottle of vodka. It was very cold and difficult to find workers for digging a grave in the frozen ground. Later inscriptions we made on the gravestones disappeared, and we could not find the graves. After the end of the war I visited the cemetery many times, but found neither graves of my grandparents, nor tablets with their names. Everything disappeared. Grandfather had died earlier than grandmother. It was terrible.

In August 1942 I received call-up papers. By that time I had finished my school and got a school-leaving certificate with excellent marks.

I was called up for military service and brought to the local military registration and enlistment office. I left my parents at home. We (recruits) were offered seats at the table and given a pot of millet porridge each and it was possible to eat as much as we wanted. A doctor came in and warned us not to eat much, because we were really famished. Not all of us took his advice. Four guys died right at the table. It was terrible to watch famished people eating.

Later they gave us military uniform. They were not interested in our size, therefore they simply made a laughing-stock of us. 

We were sent to the Leningrad front. I got to the detached company of snipers in Levashovo (rifle battalion #78). There they taught us about 2 weeks. The situation there was similar to that at the front-line. We got up at 6 o'clock in the morning (we lived in large barracks and slept in plank beds). We used to run to the lake (it was very cold in the morning), and had to give a souse. Two weeks later we were sent to the front-line. And it was impossible to ask questions, otherwise you could fall into the hands of SMERSH 6 officers.

We used to sit in trenches. Sometimes they equipped special places for us: in the trees, on the roofs, etc. We were engaged in murder: we had to shoot at Germans. If we noticed a moving target, we fired a shot. 

I did not count how many Germans I killed, but my commanders told that the number was about 25 (from October till December 1942). In December we started preparing for the breach of blockade of Leningrad 7. The routine was very strict. Sometimes we went on the scout.

On the opposite side of the Neva River (near Dubrovka) Germans dug earth-houses. They made real earthworks. And in their earth-houses they had everything they needed. Later when we took that fortification by storm, we were surprised to find pianos in the German earth-houses. Our commanders trained us intensively, because Germans poured water over the steep bank of the Neva River (it was 12-14 meters high). Water froze; therefore it was necessary to use long ladders to climb up the bank after crossing the river covered with ice.

On January 12, 1943 we were ordered to fall into line near the bank of the Neva River. The first sergeant arrived carrying a large container. They handed out mugs and said ‘Men, come forward!’ All of us made a step forward. The first sergeant came up and filled every mug with alcohol (from the container).

Commanders told us that we had a hard work before us: a capture of the opposite bank of the Neva River, where Germans had entrenched position. We were dressed warmly: short fur coats, quilted trousers, warm caps. But we were inexperienced. Our commanders warned us that in case of wound, it was better for us to fall down and try to survive.

If not, nobody could help us, therefore they considered it necessary to give us a drink. Brother-soldiers were shocked: was it possible to drink, get drunk and go into battle? One guy said ‘I refuse to drink.’ The first sergeant answered ‘You declared yourself to be a man, but you are not a man yet, join the ranks!’ The first sergeant watched us drinking.

I drank half a mug of alcohol. We had nothing to take after, therefore we started eating clean snow. The orchestra began to play; we heard the thunder of cannon. We rushed forward carrying ladders. It became hot. We were drunk, we ran shouting hurrah. I guess we would have never run forward if we were able to take a practical view of the situation. Around us machine-guns and artillery fired, mines exploded. Germans pushed our ladders back as soon as we pitched them against the bank. The ladders fell back together with people and people broke their backs and heads shouting with horror and pain. At the same time shells and mines dropped into the Neva River and all this went under. Blood and flesh were around us… It is impossible to describe.

I was not religious, but I believed that every person had his fate. So we rushed into the trenches, killed Germans and hid inside the shell-hole. When we ran out of the shell-hole, a strong blow caught me on my head. I fell down and lost consciousness. Later they told me there was a big hole in my head, and it seemed that my brain was damaged.

The surgeon examined me and ordered to put me closer to the morgue. Nurses dressed my wound smartly. In the outskirts of consciousness I heard that they were going to send me to the hospital in Leningrad immediately.

I found myself in Leningrad in January 1943. When they brought me to the Neuro-Surgical Institute in Mayakovskogo Street, doctor Polenov, the founder of the Institute was on duty. He examined me and ordered to put me on the operating table at once. [Polenov Andrey Lvovich (1871-1947) was one of the founders of neurosurgery in the USSR.] I was under the knife for 6 hours. After that I was unconscious for a long time. Polenov often came to examine me, and shouted at nurses ‘Give him all the best!’ The tastiest meals were on my bedside-table. Later they moved me to the hospital named after Mechnikov. I spent half a year there at the neurological department. There I was surrounded by crazy people, many of them were bound to their beds. My parents knew nothing about me.

I was horrified to watch my neighbors. Later I was discharged from the hospital and sent to a military unit. My father visited me there, but I did not see Mom. Very soon I was at the Leningrad front again, and later at the Baltic one. There I was wounded again and was brought to a hospital in Estonia. One day a doctor came in our ward and ordered all of us to go out of the hospital and hide in the field: they expected bombardment of the hospital. We all secreted ourselves in haystacks. By the way, Estonians hated us and sometimes shot at our officers from behind.  

We found a hay-loft and hid there. We agreed upon night duty. At night an officer on duty woke us up. Fortunately he knew Estonian language and heard local people taking counsel together: ‘Some Russians came into this shed, let’s burn it to ashes.’ That officer fired a grenade at them and saved all of us.

In total I was wounded 5 times and was demobilized in 1945 in Kazan (after my 5th medical treatment). It happened shortly before the end of the war. By the way, in 1944 I took part in liberation of Siverskaya (a suburb of Leningrad), where we have our dacha 8 at present.

At the front I joined the USSR Communist Party and was its member till the day of its collapse during Perestroika 9.

After demobilization I went to Leningrad, to my parents. For my service in the army I got 14,000 rubles. At that time the sum was rather significant. We bought furniture. Parents were in fair condition.

After the end of the war Daddy went on sewing. He worked at a fashion atelier, and Mom was a housewife. My parents lived happily till 1955, when in Pyarnu (a seaside town in Estonia) father died. I’ll tell you how it happened.

• After the war

Father went on working, but with the increase of years it became hard for him. One day he got ill with influenza. Mom asked him to stay at home, but he refused and stayed on his feet. In summer he got a permit to Pyarnu sanatorium in Estonia, and they went there together with Mom. At that time I went to the seaside (to Sochi).

In Pyarnu it was very hot, and father decided to swim in the Gulf of Finland. Mom objected, because father was sick the other day, but he refused to take her advice. When he came out of the sea, he felt shivery and had running temperature. Mom was frightened. From her neighbors she got to know that Kremlin doctors from Moscow spent their vacation nearby. She paid much money to invite those physicians for council. They told her that father could die in 3 days. Mom sent me a telegram to Sochi ‘Sonny, if you want to see your father, come in short order.’ 

I bought an airplane ticket to Leningrad with great difficulty, then went to Tallin by train, and then from Tallin to Pyarnu. By that time father’s health went from bad to worse: he was inarticulate and soon died. We did not want to bury him in Pyarnu. Estonians refused to transport his body to Leningrad by car not at any price. At last we managed to arrange railway transportation (we paid a large sum of money for it). They agreed to put the coffin into the freight car. I am sure that my father was able to live a long life, but that flu had got him down.

Daddy died in 1955 at the age of 70. I remember that he was always in good health, never sick.

After father’s death something happened to Mom. Her arm and leg did not function well and I guess she became demented. At that time it was impossible to find a nurse, therefore she lived together with my wife and me. We had to leave home for work and used to leave meal for her.  When we came back in the evening we usually found her all in muck. At night she shouted loudly and we could not sleep. Later they took her away to the hospital, and on March 19, 1968 Mom died. 

After the end of the war I entered the Leningrad College for Cinema Engineers without entrance examinations, because I was a former front-line soldier and my school-leaving certificate was excellent. It was difficult for me to study, because I had forgotten almost everything. But I was assiduous in my studies again and 5 years later I got my honors degree of an engineer. Later I was invited to the local communist party committee. They wanted me to work as a director of the technical school for projectionists in Tula.

At that time I wanted to become a postgraduate student and handed in an application. But the head of the acoustics department turned me down. Later I understood that my item 5 10 was the reason. It happened in 1950. So I agreed and left for Tula, where I rented a room. I delivered lectures on amplifiers and political subjects. Everything was fine, my school was considered to be good. At that time my parents informed me that if I wanted to keep my room in Leningrad for myself, I had to come immediately. It was not easy to leave Tula, but they agreed to let me go if I found somebody to step into my shoes. I persuaded a local resident (a projectionist) to fill the position and left.

I arrived in Leningrad in 1953. Stalin died, the age was gravid.

After my return to Leningrad, I started working at the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers as an assistant manager of the department of science and technology. My task was to teach gifted schoolchildren physics. Later the Heads of the Palace offered me to supervise the city contest in physics, chemistry and mathematics. My work took plenty of time: teaching of pupils and coordinating of work in all districts of the city. Besides I arranged excursions around laboratories of our department for schoolchildren of different city schools.

I used to describe our laboratories and invite pupils to come and study. Every year we arranged an exhibition. Exhibits were created by our pupils. The Palace of Pioneers was often visited by interesting people, for example we welcomed Jawaharlal Nehru, Ives Montand and Simona Signore. At the same time I studied at the postgraduate courses for teachers of physics and radio electronics. At the same time I taught physics at several city schools. I worked at the Palace of Pioneers from 1953 till 1962.

Before the war I finished musical school (voice-training class). When I was a student of the Leningrad College of Cinema Engineers, I sang to the orchestral accompaniment at my College. I also sang at the opera studio at the Leningrad Conservatory. The studio was housed by the Teacher's Club in the former Yussupov Palace. Aron Solomonovich Bubelnikov, the Honored artist of Belarus (a father of the well-known conductor Pavel Bubelnikov) was our teacher. At that time we prepared for stage a musical comedy Okulina (based upon Pushkin’s 11 Mistress into Maid). We acted to the pianist accompaniment.

We performed Okulina not only in Leningrad, but also in Leningrad region. The performance was a great success. I sang the main part of Alexey Berestov. I also took part in fashion displays as a model. That was the way I earned additional money during my studies at the College. I was very vigorous. Among my friends there were pianists, accordionists, and guitarists. When we gathered at home, we used to sing much. I liked to sing very much and I like to do it till now. If only I had an opportunity, I would go on singing. Unfortunately, most of my friends are already not alive. 

Being a student of the last course I got qualification of a projectionist. We had practice at different cinemas of the city.

I got acquainted with my future wife when I worked at the Palace of Pioneers. My wife Rose Yakovlevna Ebert graduated from the Leningrad College of Foreign Languages (French faculty) and taught French at school. She took her pupils to the Palace of Pioneers for excursion and came to my department. We noticed each other and I started courting her. It resulted in our wedding. We celebrated our wedding in the large canteen of the Mariinsky theatre. We invited 102 guests. An orchestra played, several people shot films. We had a good time. I still keep invitation cards. The next day at home I gathered my colleagues from the Palace of Pioneers, and my wife invited her colleagues from her school.  

My wife was born in 1928.

During my work at the Palace of Pioneers the Head of our department regarded me with disfavor. I guess she was an anti-Semite.

I was a member of the CPSU since 1943. I joined the party at the front.

It was very difficult to find job at that time, especially if your item 5 was a stumbling-block. The principal of the school where my wife worked was a very decent person. He advised my wife to improve her English urgently (her basic language was French). You see, at that time English became the basic foreign language at schools, therefore my wife could loose her work teaching only French.

She finished a postgraduate course for teachers of English language, and started teaching English at school. As her salary was rather small, the director permitted her to combine teaching with a post of a Pioneer Leader 12. 

My wife’s mother Maria Romanovna was a seamstress and worked very quickly. My wife’s father was a tailor (like my father). He was a wonderful person. He loved me very much (considered me to be his son). He often asked me to tell about a book I had read or a film I had seen. He said I was the best narrator he knew. My wife had got an elder brother (he was 4 years older than me). Her brother was a medical officer (submariner). He graduated from the Army Medical College in Leningrad.

Later he left for Chelyabinsk and worked there at the faculty of microbiology. With assistance of my wife he became a PhD, and later defended his doctor's thesis. He became a professor and a Head of the microbiological faculty at the Chelyabinsk Medical College. He was also a pro-rector of the College. Later he became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. My wife’s brother was a very sociable person.

In September 1962 I changed my work for the Leningrad Technical School for Radio Engineers. Here you can see a lot of diplomas for my work there. 

I worked there about 44 years (till September 1, 2006).

In 1968 my Mom died. It was rather difficult to change our apartment for another one. But we managed and many years lived together with my wife’s parents. Later her parents died, and we remained together with my wife in that apartment.

During my work in the technical school I never came across manifestations of anti-Semitism. All my colleagues were nice to me.

In 1970s our relatives left for Canada. We discussed it with my wife and decided not to leave the country.

Among my relatives there were some religious people. My father was also religious, but he was not fanatic. He attended a synagogue, celebrated Jewish holidays (especially Pesach). Mom was not religious. And I grew up an atheist. In the family of my wife they did not celebrate Jewish holidays.

At present I often visit the Jewish Community Center (the Organization of Jews - War Veterans), when they arrange different cultural events. Jewish traditions were a part of my life only while my parents were alive.

In 1950s I got to know that Stalin prepared deportation of all Jews somewhere very far from the European part of the country. I guess a lot of them could die on their way there 13. But fortunately Stalin died in 1953.

I mentioned already that at the Palace of Pioneers my chief was in antagonism with me and evicted me out of my post without any reason. In difficult situations I always addressed the local Communist Party committee and they helped me immediately. I was an active member of the CPSU, accomplished their errands without mishap. For example, during many years I was a member of the regional election committee.

I worked in Tula, when I got to know about the Doctors’ Plot and persecution of Jews - doctors. I addressed a meeting and spoke in defence of them. Communists wanted to take away my party-membership card and expel me from the party. I had a hairbreadth escape. 

War in Israel in 1967-1973 did not concern me.

I’ve never been to Israel. Relatives of my wife, some of my friends live there, but no relatives of mine.

Most of our friends are Russian. They are good people.

After Perestroika my life did not change, because I went on working at the same place and did not change the type of my activity. I am often invited to different schools where I deliver lectures about the war and blockade of Leningrad. It is necessary to say that usually children listen to me very attentively.

Sometimes I take part in different events arranged by the Jewish community of St. Petersburg. Once I visited the new building of the Jewish Community Center in Raznichinnaya Street. Several years ago my wife and I received food packages for Jewish holidays. Firstly, it was a pleasure for us to receive them. Secondly, it was significant support for our family. This year I was invited to JCC before Pesach and received only matzot. Taking into account that I am not a young man and JCC is situated far away from my home (it takes one hour and a half to get there), this sort of attention (so to say!) causes a lot of raised eyebrows and disappointment. I can buy matzot in close propinquity to my house.  

I often visit the Organization of Jews - War Veterans in Gatchinskaya Street. Sometimes I sing there.

• Glossary:

Lasar Blekhshtein 
St. Petersburg 
Russia 
The interviewer: Anna Shubaeva 

Lasar Isaacovich Blekhshtein excites unstinted admiration because he is really hale and hearty, notwithstanding the fact that at the age of 8 he lost his leg and since then walks on crutches.

At present he is about 100 years old and he is able to fulfill exactly 100 push-ups.

Lasar strictly follows the rules of healthy life-style (information about it he had picked up from the ancient knowledge of yogis many years ago).

But after several hours of conversation you understand that hardships of his life and life of his relatives had strongly touched him and were seared into his memory.

The last misfortune (recent death of his beloved wife Gede) must have knocked him down, but Lasar, a man of spirit manages to find pleasure in his great-grandsons against everything.

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

• My family background

I was born in St. Petersburg in 1911. I managed to know something about my ancestors thanks to one very distant relative. His hobby was genealogy and he was engaged in it all his life long. He publishes articles in Russia and in America. He traced his own family back 5 hundred years and at the same time he found interesting facts for me. You know, Jews were authorized 1 to live in large cities, including capitals only since 1863; the privilege was given to college-bred people, very rich ones and handicraftsmen.

For the 1st time our surname was mentioned right then: it was spelled Blekshtein. One of those Blekshteins was a tinsmith, another one was engaged in veneering. Possibly one of them was my great-grandfather (or grandfather), but I cannot prove it.

My own information is connected with the photos I have in my album (the small album full of old photos came to me from my relatives). There are photos of my grandfather and grandmother, probably they were my father’s parents (unfortunately I do not know exactly), and also photos of my Daddy and Mom.

I know that my grandfather from that photo worked somewhere on a railway; and Mom told me with pride that he had invented an original lantern. I guess his creative abilities came down to me, because I also appeared to become a modest inventor.

Mom never spoke about her ancestors, therefore I knew nothing about them, including all her relatives. Only from that enthusiast of family trees I got to know that I had got an aunt (Mom’s sister) and her name was Tsilye!

I suppose that my both grandmothers were housewives. I also understand that my maternal grandfather’s name was Solomon, because my Mom’s name was Rebecca Solomonovna (in Russian 2 Rebecca Shlemovna). It seems to me that her maiden name was Kaplun, therefore my maternal grandfather was Solomon Kaplun. And my paternal grandfather’s name was Lasar Blekhshtein (I was named in honor of him as is customary among Jews).

I guess my father was born in Vilno [Vilnius at present, capital of Lithuania], and later his parents moved to Petersburg. Unfortunately I know very little about my father: Mom did not tell us and we (my sisters, my brother, and me) did not ask. Maybe my sisters and brother knew more, but I was the youngest among them and my father died in the year of my birth (in 1911 when he was about 40 years old). It is easy to count that he was born in 1860s.

My father’s name was Isidore (his second name was Isaac). My sisters and brother took Isaac for their patronymics (the same with me), though Isidore would have been more correct (in his birth-certificate Isaac was in brackets). Daddy was a shoemaker.

And unfortunately he got into trouble: he invested all money he had into the co-operative he worked at. But the co-operative went bankrupt and father was crushed down. Mom explained me that it resulted in his stroke. That was all.

My father was buried at the Preobrazhenskoe (Jewish) cemetery [the Jewish part of the Preobrazhenskoe cemetery was opened in 1875]. But Mom never told me about the details of the ceremony.

My Mom’s name was Rebecca (Ginde Rive) Blekhshtein, her maiden name was Kaplun. She was born in 1870 (I counted it, because she died in 1942 at the age of 72). She was religious: attended synagogue on holidays. I do not know whether Daddy did it (Mom told nothing about it). Mom belonged to Misnagdim (a Hebrew word meaning opponents). [The term Misnagdim is loosely used by Hasidim to refer to European religious Orthodox Jews who are not Hasidic 3.

I know that my Mom also came from Vilno. Mom and Dad got acquainted there. But I have no idea about the circumstances of their acquaintance. They arrived in St. Petersburg having already been married. I do not know why they appeared in St. Petersburg. Possibly there they expected to find a large labor-market for handicraftsmen.

• Growing up

In Vilno Mom worked as a senior shop assistant in the department of small wares. Probably that was why she could speak a little a lot of languages: German, French, Polish, Yiddish, and Russian. She had to accept the goods brought from different countries: France, Germany, Poland, etc. Mom told me that her Lithuanian was poor, but Polish was rather good. At home when she wanted to keep something in secret, she spoke French to my sister. But her mother tongue was Yiddish, she often spoke Yiddish to me, and I gave her answers in Russian.

Father died, and mother remained a widow with 4 children. Her life before the revolution of 1917 4 was terrible (she told about it herself). Five of us lived in a small room together. I remember the room though I was very little. I also remember the fire, and my mother pulling me out: I remember very long corridors of that communal apartment 5.

When Mom lost her husband, she immediately lost the right to live in St. Petersburg. Every week a police officer visited her to take a bribe. That was the way we lived before the revolution, but after it Soviet authorities gave us an apartment.

I also remember that during the revolution we often were hungry. A Jewish orphan asylum was opened at that time. Together with the orphans my brother, one of my sisters (middle) and I left Petersburg for Ufa (the Urals). Many years later, being already an adult, I realized that there we had seen cossacks 6 (people on horses). I guess we got there right during the fights of Chapaev brigade 7, but at that time I did not understand it.

Mom had no profession, therefore she worked at the market. She had a small stand there. For about 2 years she boiled soap (I remember it was white with dark blue strings), cooled it, cut it into pieces and sold at the market. Later she started buying and selling different things: soap, blue dye, etc. She earned little money, but she earned it. My brother also was engaged in trading (instead of studying). But in 1920s NEP 8 was abandoned by authorities.

We were often hungry: I remember myself standing beside Mom when she was frying potato pancakes (made from potato peel) on oil stove. It was a pleasure for me to wait for the next pancake. At present Mom often comes in my mind as an expert in cooking. I never ate gefilte fish cooked better than she could!

Mom was a very noble woman. Soviet authorities gave us a three-room apartment, but we lived in one rooms (for some time the second one was occupied by my sister and her husband, and the third one was empty and cold). We kept odds and ends in it.

One day in 1927 my dear Mom walked along Kanonerskaya Street [situated near Lermontovsky prospect] and saw an elderly Jewess and a girl sitting on the sidewalk. She started a talk: Fun wanen zeiter? (Where are you from?), etc. She got to know that they ran away from pogroms in Belarus, lived in need and had no place to spend the night. And Mom took them to our place and gave our cold empty room at their disposal.

They turned out to be provincial Jews with bad manners. They were ungrateful. At first they lived in out apartment without registration, but soon they got registered without our knowledge, and we lost our room (our apartment became communal). Soon they became three, and later the old woman’s son appeared.

So they lived in our room (about 16 square meters) four together. When they opened their door, something unpleasant emitted a smell. For our family it was a tragedy, a great discomfort. My Mom did her Jewish duty and in a better world (beyond the veil) she would be granted remission of forty sins.

After all our torments we had to change two our rooms for another one, dark and terrible, but in another apartment. Mother did not discuss it with her children: I was a schoolboy, and my brother and sister thought it was a temporary measure. You see what happens sometimes to polite and sorrowful people… People say that kind acts cannot be passed over as a mere trifle. That was the way we lost our apartment.

We often moved from one apartment to another. Since my birthday, I lived in 8 or 9 apartments. I was born on Vassilyevsky island [the biggest island in the delta of the Neva River]. I remember our apartment near the Great Choral Synagogue [the Great Choral Synagogue in St. Petersburg was built in 1893]. I consider that district of Leningrad to be Jewish (a lot of Jews lived near the synagogue).

Most of the Jews around the synagogue were handicraftsmen, employees, small traders, etc. - in general there were not many intelligent people. I describe the situation of 1920s and 1930s. Later people became more educated: for example, all my schoolmates received higher education. In our class there were 16 Jewish boys, and only 1 of us married a Ukrainian girl, i.e. a girl of different nationality.

I never wore a kippah; Mom forced me to wear tzitzit, but after a year I got rid of it, because I became more independent and was able not to obey Mom. I never had payes, I was always close-cut. Even the older generation did not wear Jewish lapserdak (old-fashioned floor-length frock-coat), but a lot of them were bearded.

Every day on my way to school I met people going to the synagogue. They usually carried tallit and other necessary things for praying.

Our family was rather poor, but not dirt poor. I remember that I was dressed badly, my clothes were the worst in my class. But at that time people did not pay attention to it. You see, my clothes suffered much because I used a crutch, and it rubbed against my trousers. As Mom had no time to patch, I had to do it myself and managed to repair my clothes.

My mother had got 5 children. One of them died being a baby and we never spoke about him. So I had got 2 sisters and a brother, I was the youngest.

My elder sister Elena was born in St. Petersburg in 1898 (you see, I do not know when my parents arrived in St. Petersburg, but I know that she was born here). My second sister Elizabeth was born in 1904; my brother Solomon was born in 1905. And I was born in 1911.

My elder sister Elena got married at the age of twenty. Her husband’s name was Aron Sust, he was a Jew. But he never visited his relatives. Never. I do not know why. Possibly he was a man of bad temper. I lived with Mom and my second sister Elizabeth. Elena lived with her husband in their own room (in another street), and she never came to see her mother, never brought her anything. As for me, I visited Elena many times.

Aron worked as a mechanic: he repaired sewing machines and typewriters. He made a lot of money, but I never saw him with a book in his hands. My sister also was a housewife and nothing more, but a very loving mother and a good wife. She was a real cordon bleu. A good wife, a good mother… But there happened a misfortune: she smothered a baby in her sleep.

Elena was very tired, went to bed and the baby was sleeping beside her. She turned over on her side and pressed the child against the bed. Elena’s husband loved their children very much, therefore that loss made things difficult for their family (Aron considered it to be an inexcusable sin). They had got two more children, two girls: an elder one Vera (born in 1928) and a younger one Elizabeth (I do not remember the date of her birth).

My second sister Elizabeth had a bad fall in her childhood (I guess at the age of 12) and became humpbacked and very short. She did not finish a school and did not get married. She worked as an accountant at a bank. Elizabeth read much, but had sullen disposition. She read in Russian: neither my sisters, nor my brother knew Yiddish (even the alphabet).

During 3 years I did not talk to my brother, trying to persuade him to study at the secondary school. I told him that Soviet authorities allowed us to study, we got an opportunity to study and we had to study. But my brother stood his ground and refused. So he finished only 2 classes. He was able to write and read, but he did not want to read.

My brother was dandyish: it was important for him to have two suits for each season (one for working days and one for days off), and he managed to have. Pay attention that I had got only 1 suit and wore it all the year round. Solomon liked to dress well, liked jolly crowds. But I remember no interesting persons or Jewish intellectuals among his comrades. At that time (in 1920s) it was in fashion to have parties. They used to gather every week. There they mixed with their equals, got acquainted, and married. I was never present at those parties: at that time I was too little and they did not invite me. They never arranged parties at our place.

During the NEP period my brother became interested in trading and got a small stand at the market. He sold fancy goods there. Later NEP was abandoned and in 1930 or 1931 he arranged manufacturing of woolen caps and scarves together with his friend, a Jew. They bought a knitting machine and hired a worker (a woman). That woman had no place to live, therefore we invited her to live at our place.

My brother and his partner registered her as a homemaker (I guess it was cheaper, than to register her as a worker). To cut a long story short, it was illegal. Both of them (my brother and his partner) were condemned for their crime. His partner managed to escape and ran away to China (together with his family). And my brother was brought to prison, and later to a camp. He spent two years there.

Till now I suffer, because I did not send my brother parcels while he was in prison and in the camp. Two years I sent nothing to him. You see, I was a student, I was poor, but now I think I was able to send a parcel to him! That idea did not come into my head and nobody suggested it: neither Mom, nor sisters. We acted like strangers, not relatives. We were wrong. It was necessary to send him a lot of cigarettes, so that he could change them for food… Unfortunately that cannot be remedied.

Later when he returned from the camp, he worked as a bookkeeper. You see, he was not educated, but very clever: he managed to finish courses for bookkeepers and worked as a senior bookkeeper at KIROVSTROY! The Kirov factory [The Kirov machine-building factory was founded in St. Petersburg in 1801] was a great factory! They had got a special building organization engaged in construction of new factory workshops: it was named KIROVSTROY. My brother was the Head of that organization and had got 6 subordinates. I guess he could have come to the forefront, because he was more talented than me. But he did not study…

He got married. I do not remember her name. She was a Jewess. As my brother wanted to be better and better circumstanced, his wife had to have abortions (one after another) until he got a room, furniture, cut-glass ware, clothes, etc. In the issue they had got no children. So they died having no children.

I studied at the National Jewish school #5 9. Mom sent me there. They did not teach us religion. In our class there were 8 boys and 8 girls: only Jewish children. At school there were 10 classes (about 200 pupils). All teachers were Jewish. They taught us Yiddish among other generally accepted subjects. At our school only 2 cleaners were Russian.

At that time in the city there were 5 national schools: 2 German (Annenschule, Peterschule), Greek, Polish and Jewish. The Jewish school was situated in the former gymnasium of Eizenshtadt in Lermontovsky prospect (close to the synagogue: our back door opened into the synagogue court yard).

I finished that school and I am very proud of it. In 1929 in Leningrad authorities initiated campaign for estimation of training quality and potential of pupils, i.e. investigated students’ IQ. And our school appeared to be the 2nd in the city after Annenschule.

By the way, students from Annenschule and Peterschule were from rich families: governesses saw the children to the school doors, tutors helped them in their studies, etc. And our school was a school of beggars, we were beggars. I finished my school in 1930. It functioned 20 years and was closed after our graduation.

By the way, I started my school years on September 1, 1921 and on September 30 of the same year I got under the wheels of tram. I lost my leg and since then I walk on crutches. Therefore I missed the whole year (I spent it in hospital) and continued my studies at school only a year later.

Our school was perfect! Here I’ll tell you about our director Timofey Yakovlevich Tseytlin (I do not remember his Jewish name, but I remember that it was absolutely different). He taught us social science, trained us to be good people and told us about everything. Here imagine a fine day in May, our studies are almost over. Do you think it was possible for a teacher to arrest attention of 16 boys and girls aged 16-18? Yes! He fell into talk and had been giving a lecture for 6 hours without any break.

We were so much taken with the topic that even did not leave the classroom for toilet! He was a person of encyclopedic knowledge: he was able to speak about Middle Ages, about Indians, about China. He also knew much about Jewish societies (at that time Israel did not exist). We listened and he spoke. He was a born orator! I bend my knee before him!

And his wife Lubov Sergeevna was a short slightly built woman. She taught us chemistry. But… we did not like chemistry: nobody of us (16 pupils) became a chemist. Most of us chose engineering.

Mark Yakovlevich Shnitsler taught us physics. I think he was not talented in teaching. Our Maths teacher Abram Efimovich was perfect, though he was a doctor by profession. Humanitarian subjects (History, Literature) were taught very well. Our teacher of German language knew 7 languages (her name was Anna Ossipovna Pinsker).

They taught us Yiddish (we knew nothing about Hebrew) like all other subjects: German,  Geography, Maths. At that time I could read Yiddish. At present I remember the alphabet, but I cannot read: I spell out (my English is much better), but I write easily! Four times my neighbors came to me and asked me to translate letters from Russian into Yiddish. They sent my translations to America and got answers: it means that people understand my Yiddish. Yes! I can write quickly.

Mom did not help me in my studies. You see, she worked in the market. One day a teacher from our school saw her there. She bought something from her and said ‘Your boy is a capable pupil and you should not worry about him.’ So nobody paid attention to my studies: neither my sisters, and brother, nor Mom.

In our class there were several intellectuals: for example, a son of one of our teachers (Yiddish language teacher). He became a professor later. And the majority of us were kapsonim (like my family). Kapsonim means beggars (according to Sholem Aleichem 10).

In fact nobody of us attended the synagogue. We (boys) used to run to the synagogue at Simchat Torah, because at that time they gave us gifts, and we competed (tried to receive as many gifts as we could). I walked on crutches, therefore they felt sorry for me and I got more gifts than others. I was very proud of it. They usually gave us sweets, gingerbreads, but it was not our aim, we acted for the fun of it. We were boys of 12-14 years old.

A lot of religious people attended the synagogue. I remember that at that time there were 3 synagogues: the Great Choral Synagogue, the synagogue of Hasidim (now it is called the Small Synagogue), and the synagogue of Misnagdim (inside the Great Choral Synagogue on the 2nd floor). During holidays all synagogues were full of people. And I do not remember any conflicts.

My Mom attended the Misnagdim Synagogue, and I used to bring her something to eat while she was praying. My brother and my sisters never visited the synagogue, and I attended the Great Choral (for me it was more interesting).

In the Great Choral Synagogue the first rows (about 20) were places for gvirim, i.e. for rich people; each of them had tallit bordered with gold and silver. It was impossible to have a seat there: people bought places a year beforehand (like in the Philharmonic Society). And it was expensive (I do not know how much).

There were a lot of Jews in Petersburg: I know that they were about 220,000 before Perestroika 11 and at that time they were much more. The farther from the 1st row the cheaper the seats. A lot of people had to be standing. If I came, I stood in the crowd. The synagogue hall was overcrowded.

Once in my life (I was a 12 years old boy) they trusted me to carry Torah, though I was on crutches! I carried Torah, and people touched and kissed it. That was my affecting experience.

We did not celebrate my bar mitzvah, but I remember the following. In the city there were several synagogues situated at private apartments, where religious Jews gathered to pray. One day Mom sent me to one oа those apartment on some business (she used to send me to different places: to shochet with a hen, etc.). I remember it was in June somewhere in Sadovaya Street, in the big apartment. I came in and saw people walking around the flat like sleep-walkers. As soon as I came in Jews rushed to me ‘The boy! How old are you?’ - ‘I am thirteen.’ - ‘Oh!!!!’ And they clamored at once. You see, I was the 10th Jew (minyan) and they could start praying. It was good that the 10th Jew came, though I was only a boy.

My mother forced me to go to cheder. It was here in Petersburg in 1926-1927. Mother wanted me to study Jewish Tradition, because she was a religious woman. But I haven’t learnt much there: it was not very interesting for me. Later for some reason the cheder was closed. But Mom was very persistent: she invited rabbi from the cheder to come to our place (she paid him).

He came, we read. We read in Hebrew, but I understood nothing! He read and translated. It was Humash or something of that kind: I do not remember. I also do not remember the rabbi’s name, we called him rabbi. I guess he was rather poor: he used to have dinner with us. Rabbi visited us during a year. But I was interested in Russian literature (classical). Therefore I appeared to be an underachiever and he stopped our studies. He was very nice, and I distressed him. At that time I wore tzitzit (Mom forced me). At our school nobody did it, but in cheder there were boys with payes (their parents insisted).

We finished our school in 1930. All my schoolmates started working in different spheres. Some of my friends became turners and mechanics, and I found job of a copyist at a design office.

Here I’d like to tell you that our teachers brought us up ideally: all of us became honest people, nobody of us broke the law. Almost all of my classmates have already died. All of my classmates avoided camps 12 - and it was surprising; because in 1937 13 people suffered much. Several boys served in the army. During the Great Patriotic War 14 one of them was lost.

Our teachers were professionals, therefore fifteen persons from our class (even the most slow ones) graduated from different colleges and became engineers, geologists, meteorologists, etc. And one of us (the 16th one) did not manage to receive higher education, because he was executed by shooting before 1937. Here is the story about him.

That boy was the most intelligent of us, he was from an intelligent Jewish family. His father was a bookkeeper at the Synagogue. His father was one of the Twenty [an initiative group of 20 religious persons got registered and was able to sign contracts on using religious buildings, and solve other problems connected with exercise of religion]. My schoolmate’s name was Emmanuil Kitainov, and we called him Nolik (Zero). He was talented in the humanities.

At our school there were two good reciters of verses: Nolik (he was the 1st) and me (I was the 2nd). Nolik was very good in Russian, but he was ignorant in mathematics and physics. In the 9th form he was asked to count the volume of the cube (its side was equal to ‘a’). Nolik thought for a long time, but managed to answer that it would be ‘а3’. Then the teacher changed the problem specification from ‘a’ to ‘a/2’, and Nolik gave no answer. But! He was the only pupil at our school who knew Hebrew!

His parents were grateful to me, because at school there were savage customs and guys used to play tricks on Nolik. Once they forced him to climb upon a bookcase. The bookcase was not high, but Nolik could not climb down and stayed there. I also remember that they often put Nolik into a garbage box (at school there were special boxes for rubbish), and again Nolik made no attempt to get out. It was me who often came to his succor. His mother was extremely grateful to me.

We finished our school and stopped to be in touch. But in 1934 he was brought to our mind. In December 1934 Kirov 15 was killed; the next day we read in the newspaper that 16 people were shot (in revenge, I guess), and among them we found Nolik’s name. How did he get there?! We lost ourselves in conjectures. By hearsay we got to know that he studied in some library.

We suspected that he was connected with keeping or distributing unauthorized books and in the end of 1934 he was in prison. He was taken among other prisoners. He was innocent.

After school it was necessary to find a job. When a schoolboy, I studied at the art school and finished it. I doubt that I had any creative abilities, but I had been studying drawing for 3 years and received a diploma. I decided to become an engineer, and appeared to be a good draftsman (my studies at the art school helped me much).

But at that time it was very difficult to enter a college: it was necessary to have worked for 2 years before entrance exams. All my classmates (I already told you) found their work at different factories as turners, mechanics, etc. But it was impossible for me because I had only one leg, therefore I found job of a copyist at the design office at ELECTROSILA factory [Electrosila Factory is a Leningrad Corporation for construction of electric machines – one of the largest USSR factories in this sphere.] Half a year later I became a draftsman (designer).

At ELECTROSILA they arranged the first Special Design Office in the USSR. Different people were taken to the office: 6 persons from ELECTROSILA factory, several dozens of arrested doctors and professors. A General was the office chief. For fulfilling ordinary (simple) tasks they sent there a lot of students of Electrotechnical College. [The Electrotechnical College was founded in 1891.]

Those people designed 2 mighty projects. I was so sorry that at that time I had not enough knowledge to adopt their practices and methods.

At that time they also arranged evening courses at ELECTROSILA (a branch of the Electrotechnical College). I had no chances to enter it: my brother was in prison, and Mom was a handicrafts person. At that time my nationality was not an obstacle for entrance; but the facts from my biography were.

Those learned scholars finished their work in 1932 and the Special Design Office was closed. The former chief presented me a set of clothes for my good work. You see, at that time it was a problem to buy clothes (even a handkerchief): everything was on cards 16 and salaries were crummy. And the General gave me a lot of things: from socks to winter coat, caps, suits, etc.

But I thanked the General and said that I wanted to study: ‘You know my biography, I never made secret of its facts. I guess they will not let me enter a college.’ - ‘Why didn’t you submit your application?’ - ‘It is useless.’ He answered: ‘Do it.’ And I handed my documents over to the College entrance examination. Later I did not find my name in the list of new students. I came to the General ‘They did not take me, I told you.’ The General gave me a petition (from GPU 17). It was GPU that killed millions of people under the guidance of Stalin. It was terrible (at that time people used to say that half a country was in camps and half a country was on duty). With the help of that paper I entered the College (evening course).

Soon I found out that our training there was inadequate, therefore I continued as a full-time first-year student of the Polytechnical College. [The Polytechnical College was founded in 1899.] I graduated in 1937 from the faculty of measuring technique and started my labor activity.

At first I worked at LENENERGO [the power company of St. Petersburg]. Graduates had to complete a mandatory 2-year job assignment 18 issued by the college from which they graduated. But I graduated with honors, therefore I was allowed to get employment at my discretion in any town or organization. I chose LENENERGO. They had got no service of measurements, and I started working at the department of automatic equipment.

My future wife came there to work, too. Her name was Gede Israelevna Kaplun. At that time she was 26 years old (she was a year younger than me: born in 1912). Her parents had got 3 daughters: Ida, the youngest (she is still alive), my Gede, and Ella, the eldest (she has already died). It was a Jewish family, they arrived in Petersburg from somewhere, I do not remember the place. I did not know their father (he died earlier), but I was acquainted with their mother.

She had a great deal of personality, was independent and strict. And she brought up her daughters in her own spirit. She was not religious. Their family was of average culture. My wife, for example, was not widely-read. But she was a clear head, a good expert and she was equal to the tasks of mother and wife.

We got acquainted in 1938. She graduated from the Electrotechnical College and was an electrical engineer. She understood that I was an indecisive boy-friend. So one fine evening I heard a doorbell. It was about midnight, and I usually went to bed early. I had a room at the communal apartment and my neighbor opened the door for her.

She understood that I was that sort of idiots whom it was better not to talk to much, she came in, undressed and got to my bed. Our loving relations lasted 66 years, we lived in harmony. Only one misfortune: she passed away before me (several years ago); though women usually live longer than men.

When we got married, my wife was already going to give birth to our first child. LENENERGO gave us a room (5.5 square meters). Can you imagine that I managed to place there a sofa, a large desk, a wardrobe, and 2 armchairs. I visited a furniture store 3 times to measure the pieces of furniture. All my neighbors came to our place to look what I managed to do!

The chief engineer of LENENERGO Sergey Mihaylovich Pussin was one of my benefactors (it happens not often in our life!) - may he rest in peace! When my wife became so great with child that she could not squeeze between the sofa, the wardrobe and the desk, Sergey Mihaylovich gave us charge over the room.

He had no right, because the room belonged to the LENENERGO department! But it happened and we got a possibility to change it for another one. We managed to change it for a room of 12 square meters and it became a little bit easier for us.

By 1941 our son was 10 months old. His name is Erlend. Erlend is a Norwegian name. You see, my wife Gede read a novel by Norwegian writer Sigrid Unset [1882-1949]. She received (to my knowledge) a Nobel Prize. Erlend is a hero of her novel Kristin Lavransdatter. My wife read the book and named our son Erlend. At home we called him Eric. He has got only one name (like the rest of my sons): nobody of them has Jewish name.

One clever famous Frenchman recommended people the following: if you want to know a person, give him 2 sheets of paper and ask him to write down all his good deeds (on the 1st one) and all his clever deeds (on the 2nd one). As for me, I’ll recommend to give a person the 3rd sheet of paper to write down all his silly deeds.

My list of silly deeds would be much longer than 2 previous, I am sure! But one of my cleverest ideas (I am proud of it!) came to me before the war. I analyzed information from newspapers and understood that the war was going to burst out very soon.

• During the war

I worked at LENENERGO, and one of my friends worked at the sales department. They defined quotas, therefore they could get everything by pulling strings. I asked my friend to order tickets for me. So next day (absolutely unexpectedly for my wife) I came home and brought her railway tickets. I saw my wife and our son off on the train. They left Leningrad on June 6, 1941. And the war burst out on June 22 (2 weeks later). I consider that my action to be one of the cleverest or even the cleverest in my life.

I sent my wife to her sister Ida. She and her husband were geologists and at that time worked on construction of some power station (I do not remember what power station).

My wife was very clever and active, while her sister, on the contrary, was not so active. So Gede moved her sister and her family to Tashkent [nowadays it is the capital of Uzbekistan; and during the Great Patriotic War it was a place of evacuation]. There she managed to find job of a teacher at the technical school and  got a room somehow. [Technical school in the USSR and a number of other countries was a special educational institution preparing specialists of middle level for various industrial and agricultural institutions, transport, communication, etc.]

I remained in the besieged Leningrad 19 and suffered from starvation: my weight was 32 kg when I left the city in February 1942. LENENERGO gave us a bus and we moved along the Road of Life 20. I traveled about a month and in March reached Tashkent. When my wife saw me, she nearly fainted: I was a bag of bones. In Tashkent people lived not very well, but they could eat normally. I worked there at the design office of a factory which produced electric lamps. I was a chief designer there.

My Mom, my sister Elizabeth, and my nieces (Elena’s children) stayed here in Leningrad. Elizabeth took care of them.

Elena’s husband was lost during the first months of the war. From rumors we got to know that on the Volkhov River their barge turned over and all passengers were lost. So he did not fight. Later (in 1942) Elena was killed during bombardment. She worked at the Kirov factory (wanted to get a worker’s ration card). She was buried in the Daddy’s grave. No Jewish ceremonies. I was present at the ceremony and I remember that we all were silent. I am distressed with it now.

My brother Solomon was at the front-line twice: he took part in the Soviet-Finnish War 21 and in the Great Patriotic War [WWII]. He fought from the very first day till the very last one. During the World War II he served on the Far East as a lieutenant (though I am not sure). Solomon managed to remain alive, he even was not seriously wounded. He was awarded an Order of the Red Star 22.

I could not take my relatives to evacuation with me: the bus belonged to LENENERGO (therefore only its employees were permitted to go, no relatives). I also was not sure that our bus would be able to reach the continent: I knew about trucks which had broken through the ice on the Road of Life. I addressed the local Communist Party committee and they told me that they were going to evacuate a lot of citizens very soon.

I calmed down my relatives: I told them about their forthcoming evacuation. And indeed, they left the city soon. But unfortunately by that time my mother had died. It happened on March 8, 1942 (therefore March 8, the Women's Day is not a holiday for me, but a dark unforgettable time). And Elizabeth and her nieces left for the Urals. They returned to Leningrad (to their apartment) after the end of the war.

In Tashkent my wife gave birth to our second son. It happened in 1943. We called him Simon. Why Simon? Why not Solomon (in honor of my brother)? You see, we were not sure that my brother was alive. Therefore we wanted to call our baby not Solomon (in case my brother was alive), but we wished the name to sound similar. That was why we called our son Simon. Since that time we called my brother Monya and my son Sima. We returned to Leningrad after the end of the war and in 1946 our third son Boris was born.

My wife refused to have abortions. It was in her character. Therefore everybody around us (including our director and the chief engineer) had got one child, and we had got three of them. They considered us to be crazy. I did not dare to insist: I would have never forgiven myself any tragic mischance with my wife during abortion. And she loved our children very much and devoted her life to them.

• After the war

You know, it was a problem for me to get back to Leningrad after the end of the war 23. My wife returned, but the factory administration did not want to let me go, because I was one of the leading designers. Later I was appointed a shop superintendent. It was necessary to find a replacement, so I managed and then they let me go. I got to Leningrad via Moscow.

We lost our room: leaving Leningrad I simply put my key under the rug near the front door. And when we arrived, we could not get inside the room: it was occupied. Everything was awfully difficult. Some time I worked not in compliance with my profession, and later (in 1948) I found job of designer at the Vibrator factory. I worked there from 1948 till 1984 (36 years).

Vibrator factory produced electrical measuring instruments. At that time there were 5 different types of instruments and I was the chief of design office for one of those types. I had got 18 subordinates. We worked upon a model of the instrument and handed it over to the factory where they produced instruments after our example. I invited hard-working people to the office, all of them were professionals. We were not close friends, but I remember that we celebrated someone’s birthday together (I do not remember exactly).

Jews worked in our office, too. But most of our employees were Russian. We worked and our administration board was satisfied with our work. Our instruments were on sale abroad.

By the way, the factory director and the chief designer were Jews. Our team was very efficient.

I never paid attention to nationality choosing friends. At school my friends were Jewish, because my school was Jewish. At my College there were many Jews. I did not do it on purpose, though I felt some drawn to Jews. But there was no religious aspect in our relations. We did not celebrate Jewish holidays (at school we did, but because our parents attended a synagogue.) All Jews I knew in my life knew nothing about Talmud or something of that kind. Some of them knew about Hummash.

Here are the results of my life activity: 5 books, 19 articles, 32 inventions (for 10 of them I got copyright certificates and received some money).

Using my inventions, 2 persons defended their theses and received 'kandidat nauk' degrees 24. I did not need the scientific degree, because I earned money for my family, working on inventions and books. Using one of my inventions a group of my colleagues received the State (Stalin’s) Prize. But as I was a Jew and not a communist party member, therefore I was not in the list. The same happened with my friend in 1948 and he went crazy. As for me, I did not sleep 3 nights: the situation was so insulting! You see, a good idea comes to you not every day.

One day Einstein was asked about the way he got his brilliant ideas: ‘Do you file them or keep a diary?’ Einstein answered ‘Oh, good ideas appear so seldom!’ You see, those people received the State Prize for the work I was thinking about during 8 years (and it was my fourteenth variant of solution)! But I was easy to get round. When I understood everything and recollected that my friend, I did my best to remain alive: I used yoga exercises to avoid stress results. I think that life is life and the prize is nothing… At present I often watch my instruments on TV (every month in different programs!).

I had got three sons, hence it was necessary for me to have four apartments. I managed. For example, this apartment, I got for one of my inventor’s fees: I solved the problem that people have been trying to solve for a long time (since the 19th century).

A new device I designed in 1956. Once I talked to Americans, and they told me that in their country my invention would have cost half a million dollars! Here I did not received half a million dollars, but I got an apartment: and it was very good (it was extremely difficult to receive a new apartment, I had to become a member of  a building society and pay for the apartment!).

My successful inventions disturbed the good understanding between my brother and me: he was unkind to me… A close friend of mine explained to me that I had hurt the feelings of my brother by presenting him my book with an inscription ‘To my dear brother from one of the authors.’ For me it was normal, but for him it was a misfortune. You see, he never wrote a word, and his brother wrote a book!? I guess if someone somewhere solved a difficult problem and received a million for it, he would not notice it. But if it was his brother, it was a severe hurt to his pride.

Unfortunately my brother hated me. When I visited him, he usually left the apartment supposedly to buy ice-cream. But he did not come back in my presence. I guess after my leaving his wife gave him some signals and he returned. My brother could not forgive me my success. You remember that I had got three children, and he did not have any, I received higher education and he finished only two classes… So I stopped visiting him and he came to my place never more.

My brother died in 2001. His wife died several years later.

Elizabeth, my sister died at the age of 72. She was a decent person: during the blockade she took care about her nieces (orphans) after Elena’s death. Elizabeth went to evacuation with them. After their return to Leningrad her private life was very poor, and the children were very difficult… The elder girl Vera was uncontrollable: in evacuation she tried to commit a suicide. 

Elizabeth got in the hospital and one day they called me and informed about her death. She was cremated, and I buried her near our father’s grave.

My wife died in 2004. We lived 66 years together with her. And I… I feel fine (like a young boy). I guess my heart worked not so hard because I lost my leg at the age of 8. I am able to stay in a steam room for long and do not feel high temperature.

Let's talk about my children. The elder son Eric graduated from the Conservatory, he is a chorister. We meet seldom. His family is not fine: 12 years ago he lost kidneys, his wife is sick with cancer, his daughter is about 29, but not married, his son got divorced and is not happy with his second wife…

My second son Simon left for Israel 11 years ago. Their life in Israel is not so good now. He is an engineer (graduated from the Electromechanical College), but works as a yard keeper. Several years ago he was a worker at a plant. He has got two girls: 20 and 22 years old. They are my pride and happiness, because they are beautiful, good, and talented! His wife is a chemist. Simon never calls me, his daughters or their grandmother sometimes phone me.

My younger son Boris is my beloved boy. Yesterday we visited a steam bath together. He is an engineer, graduated form the Polytechnical College. 23 years he worked in Norilsk. He often goes to business trips to solve different serious problems at different metallurgic plants: people trust him. He has got a daughter Galina. Her first marriage was not successful; and now they live together with a guy and have a child of 4 years old, but they are not married officially. They often visit me.

My children and grandchildren know that they are Jewish, but they do not live Jewish life. Only Daniil, my grandson arranged manufacturing of matzah (he is a businessman) somewhere in the suburb of St. Petersburg. Last year he brought me 2 kgs of matza. Probably my Israeli relatives understand Jewish life more than we do.

And today I’ll soon congratulate some people by telephone: ‘Gut yom tov! Gut yor.’

• Glossary:

Leonid Aptekar
Kiev
Ukraine
Date of interview: July 2004
Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

I interviewed Leonid Aptekar at the Jewish Cultural Society facility where the Kiev organization of Jewish veterans has its meetings. Leonid is a short and stout man growing bald. He is full of energy and quick in his movements and manner of speaking. He is a very open and friendly person. He is always busy despite his age. In 1992 he received a plot of land and spends a lot of time in his garden. He’s planted few cherry trees in the memory of his mother and his Skvira hometown.  Leonid reads a lot and enjoys discussing what he has read.  He takes an interest in the Jewish life in Kiev, actively participates in Hesed and the Kiev organization of Jewish veterans related activities. 

My maternal grandfather Lazar Brodskiy and grandmother Denia (nee Volodarskaya) were born in Volodarka town, Belaya Tserkov district Kiev province [37 km from Belaya Tserkov, 115 km from Kiev]. I don’t know my grandparents’ dates of birth.  

The Belaya Tserkov district was located within the [Jewish] Pale of Settlement 1 existing during the czarist regime. The Jewish population constituted a bigger part of the population. [about 40% of the population]. Most settlements, including Volodarka, were Jewish towns. The Jewish population was religious. Jews observed Jewish traditions, went to the synagogue, celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home and followed kashrut. There were atheists of Jews in bigger town, but this was not to happen in little towns. Of course, there was a synagogue, cheder, a general education Jewish school in the town. There was a Jewish cemetery in the suburb of Volodarka. 

There were five children in my mother’s family. My grandmother may have had more children, but those five survived. My mother Heisura, the oldest of the children, was born in 1895, and my mother’s brother Gersh, born in 1910, was the youngest. Between them came mama’s brother Teviye and sisters Boba and Udl. My grandfather Lazar died in 1918, before I was born. He was buried according to Jewish traditions in the Jewish cemetery.

My mother’s parents were religious. On Sabbah and holidays my grandmother and grandfather went to the synagogue with their children. They celebrated Sabbath and Jewish holidays at home. I don’t know how my grandmother and grandfather celebrated these holidays: my grandfather had died before I was born and my grandmother lived with us, when I remember her.  They spoke Yiddish at home, but they also spoke fluent Russian with their non-Jewish neighbors.

My grandmother had to support her family and took over any job to earn their living. She baked bread for sale at home and did cooking and baking for other families in her clients’ homes where she worked, but the family was big and it was difficult to provide for all of them. Mama became an apprentice of a dressmaker. When she learned this vocation she began to take orders herself. It was still hard to find clients in Volodarka: many of its residents were poor. In 1916 Jewish pogroms 2 overwhelmed Volodarka. Bandits broke into the town robbing and killing Jews and burning the Jewish houses. My grandmother decided to move to Skvira [40 km from Belaya Tserkov, 105 km from Kiev]. 

My mother and grandmother told me about the town and I also remember it very well. It was a small town with the population of about 12 thousand people. Jews constituted over a half of the population. There were three synagogues in Skvira. The biggest one was the 2-storied choral synagogue. The two other synagogues were smaller. After the revolution of 1917 3 the Soviet regime started its struggle against religion 4 and the synagogues were gradually closing. The biggest synagogue operated till the early 1940s. Later it was also closed and housed a knitwear factory. 

There were no pogroms that had overwhelmed Ukraine during the revolution and the Civil War 5 in Skvira where Jewish self-defense units 6 were formed. Their leader was local Jew Meyer Treletskiy. He was a fearless and smart man. People feared and liked him. He did not look heroic whatsoever: he was short and fat. It was thanks to his efforts that the situation in Skvira was calm and quiet through this period. The flocks and Denikin 7 troops preferred to pass by the town. 

There were 2-storied stone houses in the central part of the town. They housed administrative offices or belonged to wealthier people. The others were clay-walled huts. The clay was a mixture of clay, chopped straw and horse manure [air-brick]. Our house where we lived before the Great Patriotic War 8 was one of them. My mother’s brother Teviye, a tinsmith, installed the tin sheet roof on our house.  There were 3 rooms, a fore room and a big kitchen with a Russian stove 9 in the house. There was a store shed and a living stock shed in the yard. My grandmother kept ducks, geese and goats. There was a meadow and a river near our house. There was a water mill with a mill-pond on the river where our ducks and geese swam. There was an orchard and a vegetable garden by the house. My grandmother was the head of the family. The children obeyed her strictly. None of us ever argued with her or doubted what she said. Jews lived in Jewish neighborhoods and if one of them decided to sell his house he started looking for Jewish clients and would have never sold the house to Ukrainian buyers: they wanted to have Jewish neighbors.  

My grandmother told me that during the period of NEP 8 Jews owned all stores in the town. The shops were full and people had a good life. When the NEP was over the state took over all commercial activities, but the former Jewish store owners kept their jobs and shop assistants.  Before the revolution Jews also owned shops and factories, but the Soviet regime nationalized their property. A number of wealthier Jews moved to America after the NEP was over. They understood it was not safe for them to stay since the NKVD 9 expropriated their property at best and at worst they might be executed. These immigrants purchased land near New York and founded the town of New Scriba: it forms a part of New York state now. During perestroika 10 their descendants visited Skvira to take a look at the place where their ancestors had lived. 

There was a market in the center of Skvira. Ukrainian farmers were selling their food products on them. They knew that Jewish housewives would only want to buy the living poultry, and there was a shochet near the market, and the housewives could use his services.  Farmers also sold vegetables, fruit and berries – cherries were just great!

When the soviet power was established cooperative companies started to develop in Skvira. I remember the Metallist plant from Kiev created the ‘Metallist’ cooperative company manufacturing metalwork. This plant also did much to accomplish improvements in the town: it asphalted the streets and installed electric power lines. There was a shoemaking company, a repair company and a tailors’ company where my mother worked. 

During the period of collectivization 11, a kolkhoz 12 and a Jewish kolkhoz 13 were established in Skvira. The chairman of the Jewish kolkhoz  was the man whose family name was Zub. When the kolkhoz was established people had to give their cattle, tools and also, sewing machines for some reason to the kolkhoz. This kolkhoz was closed in 1936 for being non-profitable, all property of the Jewish kolkhoz to the neighborly non-Jewish kolkhoz and the former employees of the Jewish kolkhoz also went to work there.

The district and town authorities, director of the only plant in Skvira, executive authorities and militia were represented by Jews. There were hardly any Ukrainians among them. Jews always helped and supported each other. They spoke Yiddish at home and in the streets. They openly celebrated Jewish holidays even during the Soviet rule. All boys had brit milah rituals. The family installed tables in the yards and treated all neighbor children with sweets and cookies.

When my mother’s family moved to Skvira uncle Gersh was working as a clerk in a store. He could write and count well. I don’t know about my uncle Teviye, but my mother and her sisters had no education. After the revolution of 1917, when they were quite grown up, they finished a likbez 14 where they learned to write and read. After the revolution uncle Gersh joined Komsomol 15 and became a Komsomol activist.

Gersh became a butcher after the revolution and Teviye was a roof maker. Mama’s sisters went to work at the Metallist shop, which manufactured beds. They were laborers.

Even after the revolution Jews commonly turned to matchmakers to prearrange weddings. Matchmakers also visited my grandmother. They arranged Boba’s marriage with Idl Damskoy, a Jewish man from Pavoloch, Zhitomir region [25 km from Skvira, 105 km from Kiev]. My aunt had a real Jewish wedding with the chuppah and the rabbi. After the wedding the newly weds stayed to live in Skvira and both worked at the Metallist shop. They received an apartment in 1940, but I don’t remember where they lived before. They had two children: an older son and a daughter. I don’t remember their names. They were poor and grandmother supported them. Mama’s sister Udl was single.

My mother’s brothers also married Jewish women through matchmakers’ services. Gersh’s wife Lisa was born in Skvira in 1900. Gersh and Lisa had two daughters. Vera was born in 1933, and Inna was born in 1939. Teviye and his wife Hana had two daughters and a son: Sonia was born in 1927, Riva was born in 1933, and their long-awaited son was born in 1935.

During the Civil War a partisan unit was deployed in Skvira. My future father Iosif Aprekar, a Jew from Odessa 16 served in it. My mother liked him and they got married. They had a chuppah and klezmers at their wedding. Mama told me no details. My father stayed to live in Skvira. I was born on 25th July 1925. I was given the Russian [common] name 17 of Leonid. My Jewish name is Luzer after my maternal grandfather. Some time later my father left us for Odessa. He sent money for some time before he disappeared completely. We had no information about him. We were very poor and in 1934 mama decided to find him in Odessa and make him support us. However, I never met my father. We found his second family in Odessa: his wife and two daughters. They told us that my father worked in a store and peculated the money. He disappeared escaping from trial. Mama and I went back home and never tried to find him again. My grandmother and mother raised me to be a decent and honest man and I am very grateful to them for this.

They taught me to do any work about the house. I took the goats to the pasture, geese and ducks to the pond and weeded the vegetable garden. In winter the geese and ducks were kept in the attic of our house. We always had goose fat and meat. My grandmother melted the fat with onions: it was very delicious. I liked it spread on my bread. My grandmother did the cooking on the Russian stove in the kitchen: she made broth, borscht and stew. She also baked delicious pastries. Nobody else could cook as delicious as my grandmother! In summer and autumn my grandmother made stocks for winter. There were barrels with sauerkraut and pickles. My grandmother liked making jam. For some reason cherries were to be beaded on a thread and this was my chore. My grandma made cherry, apple, plum and pear jam. I enjoyed the process as well gathering foam and tasting it. My grandmother baked bread for a week and this was the most delicious bread I had ever had in my life. In 1934 the Skvira residents were forbidden to make bread at home. There was a bakery and a baker’s store opened. People lined up to buy bread since this was the only baker’s in the town. Komsomol activists made the rounds of houses to make sure nobody violated the order. My grandmother went to the store to buy one loaf of bread, the allowed ration. Some residents wet to buy bred in Kiev. It was not allowed to take bread from out of town, but people managed to do it in secret.  

My grandmother was very religious. We always celebrated Sabbath at home. On Friday morning my grandmother made a general clean up. We had ground floors and she swept it clean. My grandmother also cooked food for two days. There was always gefilte fish, sweet and sour stew, chicken broth and strudels with nuts and jam to eat. On Friday evening my grandma lit candles and prayed. Then the family sat down to dinner. On Saturday morning my grandma went to the synagogue. Later she read her prayer book and told me about the Jewish history. 

Of all holidays I remember Pesach. The blacksmith living in our street closed his forge one week before Pesach and engaged in baking matzah. Women joined him to make and roll the dough. Each family needed plenty of matzah: there was no bread in the Jewish houses through 8 days of Pesach.  On the eve of the holiday a general cleanup was done and all crumbles swept out. My grandmother checked how clean the house was. The Pesach crockery was taken down from the attic where it was stored during the year. My grandma followed kashrut and had all kosher crockery, but it was not appropriate for Pesach. Geese and chicken were taken to the shochet before Pesach. My grandmother made chicken broth, roasted chicken and geese, stuffed chicken necks with liver and fried onions and made gefilte fish. She made strudels with raisins and jam and honey cakes.  Grandma made potato and matzah and egg puddings. There was plenty of food at home. I am sure there was seder conducted, but I can’t remember. On Pesach grandma and mama went to the synagogue. I sometimes went there with mama. Mama and I sat on the upper tier. 

Many men of Skvira wore beards. Older women like my grandma wore kerchiefs, but my mother or other women of her age only wore shawls to go to the synagogue. 

Mama worked and grandma took care of the housekeeping. I went to a kindergarten before going to school. There were just two groups in the kindergarten. The food was very good, I remember we were given chicken legs with noodles, nice soups, boiled cereals with butter for lunch and a glass of milk and a bun for the afternoon snack.  

There were few general education schools in Skvira and two Jewish schools, the curriculum was the same, but the language of teaching was different. I went to a Jewish school at the age of 6. All subjects were taught in Yiddish, but it was no problem for me. We had Jewish teachers. I remember all teachers. Our history teacher Zaslawski was awarded an Order of Lenin 20 after the Great Patriotic War. It was a very high award. I became a young Octobrist 21 and then a pioneer 22 at school. I was not quite successful at school since I did not behave myself in class, I was a rather vivacious boy and it was next to impossible for me to sit still for 45 minutes. I was often naughty and  did not behave at times. Many of my classmates wanted to continue education after finishing school. Many became doctors and professional military.

Most of my friends were Jewish boys, my neighbors and classmates. We did our home chores and then went tobogganing, swam in the river or went fishing. There was an abandoned orchard on the bank of the river where we picked apples and pears. 

1932-33 were hard years. This was the period of terrible famine 23 in Ukraine. Many people were starving to death. My grandmother managed to feed us during this period and we survived.  The shop where my mother was working provided free meals to its employees, this was rather miserable food: a slice of dipped bread, some poor soup with potato peels, but we appreciated even this little food that we were provided. Mama shared her lunch with me. Now I know that she gave me a bigger part of it. Mama always waited for me to come home before sitting down for a meal. 

In 1933 something happened that affected our family during the war. Our Ukrainian neighbor dug a passage to our house and broke in at night thinking that women would not repulse his attack. We heard there was somebody in the house. Grandma ran to the kitchen, saw our neighbor and started beating him. She bit him hard, even his nose bled. He rushed home. We shouted to him that we would not report this to the militia, if he closed up the sap. He did it and we thought this was the end of the story, but he took his revenge on my grandma during the war reporting to the Germans that her son served in the Soviet army.

In 1936 arrests [Great Terror] 24 began. None of our relatives was arrested or declared an ‘enemy of the people’ 25. I don’t think any Jews were arrested in Skvira at that time. They only arrested Russian and Ukrainian residents. They arrested director of a Ukrainian school and few others, but that was all.  Of course, we believed those people were guilty. Nobody could even imagine that Stalin, the ‘father of all peoples’ was a horrible criminal. When we had concerts in the house of culture, the first was always to be a song about Lenin 26, or Stalin. At one time I was on the edge of becoming ‘an enemy of the people’. I was in the 4th form and was a terrible naughty boy and a fidget. There was a portrait of Stalin in our class where he was painted sitting at the table wearing his military kittel. The other boys and I were throwing paper balls into one another and my ball incidentally hit the portrait of Stalin. Of course, there was no evil intent of mine, but really what a mess it caused.  Mama was invited to school, I was crying, the management wanted to expel me and I was trying to explain that it was not my fault. Fortunately, they left me alone some time afterward. 

When the 1932-33 famine was over, life started to improve gradually, though the state introduced high taxes on those who kept livestock and had gardens. These taxes could be paid in money or agricultural products. I remember my grandmother saving eggs to pay the tax. We fed pigs for sale. Mama’s brother Gersh slaughtered them and sold at a market in Kiev. This helped us to make ends meet. Later mama’s brothers and their families moved to Kiev. Teviye worked as a tinsmith in the construction agency of the Council of Ministers. Gersh went to work at the industrial trade trust.  Gersh supported or family. He often visited Skvira bringing us clothes, food products and things for home. Of course, this was all lost during the war.

In the late 1930s the situation with food grew worse again. This was caused by the need to feed the army fighting against Finland [Soviet-Finnish War] 27, and then the need to create state food stocks in case of a war with Germany. As for the population, it had no big concerns about the war after the Finnish campaign and particularly, after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 28 was executed. We were convinced there would be no war and that ‘who came with a sword would die from sword’.  We were patriots and believed in the strength and invincibility of our army. However, this conviction was no longer strong in 1941. When people say they did not know about the war then, it’s not true.  About 2 weeks before the war military troops were marching via Skvira toward the border day and night. Of course, one couldn’t help guessing why this was happening.

I finished the 8th form of my Jewish school in 1940. This was the last graduation before the school was closed. One could tell that the authorities intended to eliminate anything Jewish from our life. 

In summer 1940 all guys of 1923-1925 years of birth were gathered in a Ukrainian school. I was to be recruited to the army 2 years from then. This was the so-called ‘labor mobilization’. We were to be under the command of veteran of the Civil War Dubyrintsev, a representative of the military registry office. We were given food ration, which I gave my mother. I knew I would manage somehow, but I also understood that it would be difficult for my mother and grandmother. We walked to Donetsk region. On the way we were provided meals. We walked across villages where we stayed overnight. When we reached Stalino [ 620 km from Kiev], we were assigned to different sites: some went to mines and the others were sent to work at plants or in kolkhozes. I was sent to work in the Stalino kolkhoz. I worked there for about a year. When I heard that Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941 without an announcement of the war, my first thought was about my mother and grandmother. I did not know what was to happen to them. I still believed that the war would be instantaneous and victorious for us. When Germans advanced as far as Donetsk region, we were told to move out of Stalino. We were given shoes and food rations for few days. I took a train to the Caucasus. The trip was long, it took about 10 days considering that I changed trains and  there were long stops. At a station in the Caucasus I bumped into my acquaintances from Skvira and joined them. We had some money to buy food products and were also provided meals at stations. Everything was organized well. However, it was not safe to stand in lines at railway stations. Local authorities had an order to send certain numbers people to the arrangement of trenches, and militia just captured people from lines to send them to the digging of trenches. I hardly managed to escape once. Of course, this was illegal, but there was nobody to complain to…

We reached the Caspian Sea and from there we took a boat across the sea. I arrived at a settlement in Andijon region in Uzbekistan over 6000 km from home. I was short and did not look my age of 16.  I was sent to a local boarding school. There were not many children at the boarding school and we had sufficient food. Some time later a children’s home evacuated from Nemirov Kiev region [220 km from Kiev] arrived at the boarding school. From then on we were given less food. Later I was sent to a vocational school in Tashkent. I was assigned to a construction group.  In the morning we had classes and in the afternoon we went to work at the construction site. The students were involved in the construction of an aircraft plant. I worked as a bricklayer. We had breakfast in the school canteen and had lunch at the construction site. Once a woman on a street asked me to carry her luggage. We talked on the way and later this woman supported me through my study at the school. She was a common Russian woman from Tashkent. Her name was Vera, but I did not ask her surname. Her husband and son were at the front and she sympathized with me. I was away from home and alone. Vera invited me for a meal and I could wash myself and stay overnight in her cozy home. There were numbers of homeless children in Tashkent. The local authorities arranged charity shelters for homeless children to provide food and clothes to them. They did it to involve these children in work later and then recruit them to the army.

In autumn 1941 I finished my vocational school and got an assignment to work at the construction of a metallurgical plant  in Zlatoust town Chelyabinsk region. I was a foreman at the construction site. It was given the status of a military construction site since metal was to be produced for army needs. We were provided 3 meals a day and 700 grams of bread.  An old foreman working at this construction site supported me. His sons were at the front and he treated me like his own son. I worked at the construction till December 1942. From there I was recruited to the army. I received a food ration for the trip to the military registry office. I had flat feet and was not fit for the army service, but it was the wartime and I believed it to be my duty to go to the front line. The medical commission confirmed that I was fit for service and I was sent to a sniper school. We lived in barracks and were trained in accurate shooting. We also studied military disciplines. We were provided sufficient food: besides the ration (three hot meals per day: macaroni and boiled cereals, bread and soup with a little piece of meat) we had white bread, frute preserve and 50 grams of sugar per day.

I studied 10 months. In November 1943 we were given military uniforms, warm underwear and winter jackets. We lined up and marched to the railway station to the music. We boarded a train. I was to go to Rechytsa [250 km from Kiev] town Gomel region in Belarus where the 48th army headquarters were located. I was assigned to the 291st regiment, 170th infantry division, Army 48, as a private. I was sent to the front line without delay. There were minor battles occurring, the so-called combat survey. Our regiment was in defense. No snipers were needed and I became a machine gunner. In 1944 an overall offensive in Belarus began. Our 170th division went first.  We beat the Germans as efficiently as they beat our troops at the beginning of the war. There were marshes on our right and left and this was advantageous for us. The Air Forces also supported us. I marched as far as Warsaw with my division. I had joined Komsomol before my first battle. Our colonel used to say: ‘If one is to die, one better dies a Komsomol member’. During this offensive I was wounded in my leg. Severely wounded patients were taken to rear hospitals, and the others could take treatment in a front-line hospital. I was taken to the army hospital and when I recovered, I was assigned to a reserve regiment where I was promoted to the rank of sergeant. We also took part in combat actions. It was good for me to have been taken to the army hospital since I managed to return to my regiment afterward. I was wounded again near Warsaw on 15 February 1945. My battalion commanding officer sent me to the combat position. I came onto the road, when a bullet hit me on my arm. This was severe injury and I was taken to a rear hospital in Orekhovo-Zuyevo near Moscow by the sanitary train. There was skilled medical personnel on this train and everything arranged for taking good care of the wounded.  When I was released I was assigned to the 91st infantry division belonging to the 39th army. We were urgently relocated to Konigsberg [Konigsberg battle] 29. There were severe battles in this area. The Konigsberg fortress was bombed day and night, Soviet, English and American Air Forces, all of them, but in vain. There was one circumstance, of which nobody was aware. Our commanding officers had detailed maps of the area, showing the roads, paths and even wells, but nobody knew that there was a whole underground town with the military forces, tanks and mortars in the forest surrounding Konigsberg. There were underground passages that Germans knew very well. In early April 1945 storm troops began to be formed reassigning a battalion or a company from each regiment. Of course, those were the strongest and bravest soldiers. Storm troops were to advance ahead of the army. On 6th April our storm troops went into attack and perished. There was a deep channel before the fortress: when our troops went in attack, the Germans filled the channel with water and our soldiers drowned. Then German tanks were released from underground passages. They attacked us and we had to retreat. Our next offensive took place on 15th April and on 16th April 1945 we moved into Konigsberg.  Our division took part in these battles.

Of course, there were intervals between operation on the front line. During such intervals one of 3 regiment divisions was left in defense and the two others were in its rear. We undertook military training, running, shooting and overcoming obstacles. Here was mandatory political training. We had political information in each class. Later we had to answer when Lenin or Stalin was born. There were concerts and each concert started from the ‘Cantata about Stalin’ [Composed by M. Inyushkin and Alexandr Alexandrov in 1937 it was to be glorifying and praising the leader.], which we sang in choir. Then one of these two regiments replaced the one in defense: in this way the regiments took turns to take some rest.  Such intervals lasted one or two weeks or one month.  Then we went into an offensive, and again two regiments were following the one moving ahead. If the front line was stretched out, the regiments were also arranged in one line. Even when we were in defense, our reconnaissance guys always had work to do. I served in the reconnaissance squad. During intervals between battles our mission was to identify German weapons emplacements, and mark their mortar locations on the map. We did reconnaissance and captured prisoners for interrogation.  They were to describe their troops’ positions. Their input and our maps indicating the enemy’s weapon emplacements made preparation for an offensive. At the beginning of an offensive our batteries shot about 200 shells and mines to eliminate those emplacements. After the artillery preparation we got on our feet: ‘Vpered! Za rodiny! Za Stalina’ [‘Forward! For Motherland! For Stalin!’] and went into offensives.

There was no anti-Semitism during the war. Nobody gave any thought to the nationality issues.  We fought and lived like friends. Of course, things happen at wars. Many perished in battles, but there were incidental and absurd deaths. Once we were sitting in a dot-pillbox [the word ‘dot’ is an abbreviation meaning a ‘long-term weapon emplacement’], it was strong and reliable with the roof of three layers of beams, when a blank shell feel and broke one of our comrade’s legs. He died on the way to the medical battalion. I also remember another accident: we were sitting in an earth hut one night. There were trenches to the left and to the right from us. Of course, we left the watch posts on the left and on the right and one ‘secret’ post in the neutral zone to warn us if Germans started an attack. There were wires to mines all around and one soldier stepped onto an anti-tank mine on a bet that it would bear his weight.  The anti-tank mines were supposed to explode under a tank weighing over 200 kg, but to remain intact under lower weights. Anyway, he stepped on it and it blew up. Many people died from other reasons than on a battlefield or from a stray bullet…

Each regiment had NKVD and SMERSH units [Abbreviation (‘Smert Shpionam’ meaning death for the spies). It was the 9th division of the KGB, dedicated to Terror and Diversion. It worked within the Soviet Army, ferreting out dissident soldiers, former prisoners-of-war, or those who had been in encirclements, and summarily executing them.] representatives. I did not encounter working with them and it’s hard to say what their mission was. Our army liberated Soviet prisoners-of-war from camps and then SMERSH dealt with them. If they detected no crimes against the Soviet regime they gave them uniforms and assigned to the front line forces, while bandits, policemen and German accomplices were convicted and sent to the GULAG 29 in Siberia. 

The war with Germany was over for me after the seizure of Konigsberg, but I don’t mean to say that I was demobilized. Our forces were still fighting in Germany, but our unit relocated to the rear and started preparations to relocate to the Far East, to the front line with Japan 30. The Soviet Union had an agreement for providing military assistance to the USA. When we were still in the rear we heard the news that the war was over and Germany had capitulated. Moscow was preparing for the victory parade. I was notified that General Major Dragunskiy [Dragunskiy, David Abramovich (1910-92), Jew, Soviet commander, General Colonel (1970), twice Hero of the Soviet Union (1944, for crossing of the Wisla River; 1945, for the Berlin operation). During the Great Patriotic War he was Commander of a Guard tank division. In 1969-85 chief of the higher ‘Vystrel’ (‘Shot’) course.], the current Army Commander and a Jew, by the way, had appointed few representatives of our division, including me, to participate in the parade. My army headquarters declared that I could not take part in the parade, being a short guy. I am sure that it had to do with my Jewish identity, but they did not mention this, of course. I felt hurt: when they were sending me to where bullets and shells were flying my shortness was of no account, but it was not appropriate for the parade… So I did not go to the victory parade. We were in the rear till late May 1945, а when we relocated to Mongolia in cattle transportation trains. Out rip lasted for about a month and we were in high spirits – victory!, and life went on; we had good food, American tinned food, white bread, people were greeting us and cheering to us as liberators and winners and threw flowers to us on the train. We were accommodated in tents. In late July 1945 we were given the alarm at night and ordered to move on to the Mongolian border where we were told that the Japanese occupied Manchuria. [Editor’s note: The Japanese occupied Manchuria (North-Eastern province of China, bordering with Mongolia) in 1941. The Soviet Army begun to attack the Japanese occupiers from Soviet and Mongolian territory in August 1945.] At 2 o’clock in the morning we were read Stalin’s order stating that we were fulfilling our agreement with the USA, and it was our duty to attack and take revenge over the Japanese. And we went into the offensive. This was the first time I witnessed a self-shooting. One guy from our regiment shot his own leg to avoid the battle. This was a disgrace for all of us. We advanced 200 km across Mongolia with no battles. There were no Japanese or Mongolians. We walked few days before we saw out tanks. We followed them to Bolshoy Hingan and Malyi Hingan. Our rear supplies were some distance behind us and we had to follow the tanks. We were hungry and had no food or water with us. The Chinese locals sympathized with us and brought us rice and flat bread. This was a hard passage. When we reached Hingan, our armed forces had already accumulated there: the Katyusha [The 82mm BM-8 and 132mm BM-13 Katyusha rocket launchers were built and fielded by the Soviet Union in World War II. The launcher got this unofficial, but immediately recognized in the Red Army, name from the title of a Russian wartime song, Katyusha.] missile units, air forces and artillery. There was artillery preparation conducted and we went into attack. We were fighting with a Samurai [Editor’s note: The Samurai caste was abolished in late 19th Century. The cavalry the Soviet Army fought with could not be made of Samurai warriors] cavalry division. We defeated them. The battle was over and we went on. We marched across some fodder plant bushes resembling our corns. Every now and then some Samurais with bunches of grenades tied to them threw themselves under our tanks. For them this kind of death was a deed of honor: they were fighting for their emperor. At the time of peace a Samurai is allowed to live peaceful life: have a family, women, eat and drink to his heart’s content, but during the war a Samurai had to fight and die for his emperor, or the disgrace would fall on his kin and affect many generations. They threw themselves under our tanks to die honorably. These were hard battles. Our forces were exhausted by the long war. There were boys and old men in our army while the Japanese were selected warriors, well-armed and strong.  Our selected armed forces perished at the beginning of the war in 1941. We didn’t have such equipment as Germans and many people had to go to attacks unarmed. There were 700 recruits from Skvira, my hometown, but only 200 of them returned home. They survived thought they became invalids, but they lived. They told us how they went into attacks having nothing but one rifle of the World War I type, the three-linear one, for three of them. I don’t know what the result of this war might have been for us, had America not dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I think this was the right decision considering the situation at the front line. This decided on the outcome of the war, which might have been negative for us otherwise. All newspapers wrote about it at that time. Everybody rejoiced about this turning point in the course of the war.

The Japanese surrendered. Their squads, companies and battalions were not disbanded. All of the higher rank officers had their weapons and horses with them. The Japanese had prepared for a long war and built hospitals and barracks for their troops. We used them to accommodate the prisoners. The Japanese officers were kept separately from soldiers and sergeants. We also lodged there. The Japanese prisoners refused to eat bread. They only ate boiled rice, corn flat bread and fish. We stayed in this area for 2 years. The situation changed radically through this period.  Struggle for the power began in China. America supported Chiang Kai-shek and the USSR stood for Mao Tse-Tung. Their armies fought in China. The Chan Kai-shek troops intended to land on the Kuan Tung Peninsula and our troops relocated to the seashore. To support the Mao Tse-Tung troops we gave them our 46 mm mortars. We were to delay the advance of the Chan Kai-shek troops. I was on this Peninsula until 1947. By that time the tension of situation reduced. The Chinese revolutionary army advanced to attack. In 1949 the Chan Kai-shek troops won the victory. Mao Tse-Tung and Chou En-lai were the leaders of China at the time.

In November 1944, during the war, I heard that Skvira was liberated from fascists. At that time our division was near Babruysk town in Belarus. I wrote my mother, but had no reply. Then I wrote the Sidoruk family, our Ukrainian neighbors asking them whether they knew anything about my family. They wrote me what happened. In September 1941 German troops invaded Skvira. The German commandment appointed the time for all Jewish families to gather in the central square of Skvira. Some had evacuated and some managed to hide away, but not my family. They failed to evacuate. They were taken out of town and killed. In 1941 Riva, my mother’s brother Teviye’s daughter, was spending her summer vacations with my family. Riva perished along with my grandmother, mother, my mother’s sisters Udl and Boba and Boba’s family. These neighbors helped me to get in touch with my mother’s brothers Gersh and Teviye. They also wrote their addresses to our neighbors. I wrote my uncles and since then we corresponded. Gersh was at the front and Teviye and his family evacuated with the Soviet of Ministers and its employees. Gersh was in the army since the beginning of the war. He was wounded near Kiev in August 1941. He was taken to a hospital and after the hospital he was sent to an artillery school. After finishing the school he went back to the front as an artillery battery commanding officer. He took part in battles near Konigsberg and had a number of combat awards. After the war my mother’s brothers returned home. Uncle Gersh sent me parcels with apples, pork fat and garlic to the front line in the Far East.

When the term of my service on the Kwan Tung peninsula was over, another order was issued. It required guys of 1925 year of birth to serve 3 years of mandatory service. I was to serve at the Lazo station in the Primorskiy Krai.  I demobilized in April 1950.

I have combat awards. In 1945, after we captured Konigsberg I was awarded a medal ‘For valor’ [Established in 1938, awarded for personal courage and valor in the defense of the Homeland and the execution of military duty involving a risk to life.] it’s a high award; I was also awarded an order of the Great Patriotic War 31.  I have medals ‘For Konigsberg’ [Established June 9, 1945.  The medal was awarded to all servicemen who were directly involved in the capture of Konigsberg as well as for the officers who led the operations.  Over 752 thousand medals were awarded], ‘For Victory in the Great Patriotic War’ [Medal ‘For Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45’, Established by Decree of the Presidium of Supreme Soviet of the USSR to commemorate the glorious victory, 15 million awards]; and ‘For victory over Japan’ [Medal ‘For victory over Japan’ established on 30 September 1945 by Decree of the Presidium of Supreme Soviet of the USSR to commemorate  the victory over Japan. 1 million 818 thousand awards].  I was awarded an order ‘For personal courage’ [Order ‘For Personal Courage’, established by Presidential Decree in 1996, to honor the personal courage and heroism demonstrated under critical circumstances] by the 55th anniversary of the victory. 

I headed to Skvira after my army service was over. I was eager to see my acquaintances and hear details about my dear ones.  Jews had already returned from evacuation and from the army. Two residents of Skvira were Heroes of the soviet Union 32, one of them was Colonel Margulis, a Jew,  commanding officer of an artillery brigade. He was a nice, decent and fair person. He undertook responsibility for making arrangements for the Jews who were returning from evacuation. If there were other tenants in their houses they went to see rabbi Zavele to resolve this kind of issues.  They did not have to go to court. Even Ukrainians followed the rabbi’s decisions. Meyer Treletskiy, another Jewish man from Skvira, started his persecution of German accomplices, when he returned from the army. He tracked down policemen of informer in villages to have them prosecuted. Many of them were executed. Our house was disassembled for wood. A woman built her own house in its place. I went to the place where my dear ones, friends, neighbors, the people, whom I had known and loved, were buried and then I went to Kiev to visit my mother’s brothers Teviye and Gersh. I was going to go back to Skvira then, but my uncles insisted that I stayed in Kiev. It was very difficult to obtain a residence permit 33 to stay to lie in Kiev. My uncle Teviye, who was a roof maker in the Council of Ministers, managed to obtain a permit for me to reside in his place. I wanted to rent a room, but my uncle insisted that I stayed with him. I went to work at the ‘Kist’ company [‘hand’ in Russian] as a founder. The state anti-Semitism was quite visible already, but there were still many Jews in the shop. They were readily employed as workers: the management knew they were decent and dedicated employees. Workers were not so oppressed as intelligentsia. Besides, Jews did not drink alcohol while many people drank after the war, even at their work places. So many managers preferred to employ Jews. Besides, managers were reluctant to employ those who had stayed on the occupied territory while Jews were returning from evacuation and had a more advantageous position than those Ukrainians who had stayed in Skvira during the rule of Germans.

There were good earnings and bonuses in the shop. Shops also contributed money to the restoration of Kiev. During the Khrushchev 34 rule our shop was converted into a small plant. A short while later I went to work at the photo goods factory where I worked 42 years. I started working with plastic and in due time I became a caster.  

Soviet authorities undertook open persecution of Jews in 1948, when I was still in the army. It all started from the elimination of the Jewish anti-fascist committee 35, formed in April 1942. It’s members were well-known actors, artists, musicians and public activists. Solomon Mikhoels 36, an outstanding Jewish actor, headed the committee. During the war the Jewish anti-fascist committee provided great assistance to the front. Members of the committee gathered money in America and England to buy tanks and aircraft. They were almost declared fascist accomplices, arrested, and most of them were executed. The rest of them were sent to the GULAG.  Solomon Mikhoels, chairman of the committee, was murdered. It was officially announced that he was hit by a vehicle, but nobody had any doubts that this ‘accident’ was thoroughly planned and executed by NKVD. Then persecution of Jewish intelligentsia began. Lecturers of higher educational institutions, actors and artists were fired. Newspapers published articles denouncing another Jewish cultural or scientific activist. Then the words ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ were applied to Jews and trials charging ‘cosmopolitans’ [Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’] 37 were conducted, i.e., a person was just convicted for being a Jew.  Everybody, even those who were devoted to the party and Stalin, knew this. This persecution did not affect workers. In January 1953 the ‘doctors’ Plot’ 38 began. Stalin’s doctors were convicted of an intention to poison Stalin. Almost all of those doctors were Jews. This resulted in another wave of anti-Semitism. At first people just refused to see Jewish doctors, but then Jews were accused of many other crimes. I don’t know what it might have resulted in, if Stalin had not died on 5 March 1953. There were rumors that Stalin intended to deport all Jews to Siberia. It was impossible to ignore this rumor: everybody understood how the Crimean Tatars and Chechen people had been deported [Forced deportation to Siberia] 39. In one night people were forced into the trains taking them to the virgin lands in Siberia and Kazakhstan. This might have happened to Jew, but God saved them. Stalin died on Purim and people were saying that God rescued Jews from extermination. However, this was later, but on the day of his death people were crying. The mourning lasted 3 days, and these days happened to be the time of common grief. Everybody thought about the same – how they were going to live without Stalin. Life seemed impossible without him: he was the symbol of the USSR for all, and for this reason he was called the ‘father of all peoples’. Later, after the Twentieth Party Congress 40, when Khrushchev spoke about Stalin’s crime, we understood what a monster he was in reality. I knew that he had ordered to remove the high-ranked Jews from the army before and during the Great Patriotic War. They were arrested and executed. Since there were many Jewish commanders in the army, Stalin actually beheaded the army. We knew that the wives of many members of the government were taken to the GULAG. I think that Beriya 41 removed Stalin from his way. He did not have to kill Stalin. It was enough to not call a doctor to his attendance, when Stalin had another attack of his disease. Beriya was executed. Of course, I did not believe what Khrushchev said at once. I was thinking and comparing. However, I knew that what Khrushchev said was true, while many people did not believe it then and do not believe it now.

My acquaintances introduced me to my future wife. My wife Enna, nee Beilis, a Jew, was born in Kiev in 1921. Her father Volko Beilis was born in a village near Kiev. He was engaged in farming when he was young. Enna’s mother was a housewife. After the revolution of 1917, when the Pale of Settlement was canceled, the family moved to Kiev. Enna was a middle sister of three of them: Tsylia, the oldest daughter, was born in 1916, and Lubov, the youngest one, was born in 1923. Their parents were religious and observed Jewish traditions, but their daughters grew up to be atheists. Tsylia and Lubov were members of the party. Tsylia worked in NKVD before the war. During the war she evacuated to Chelyabinsk region with her family. Her husband Matvey Basilovskiy went to the front. Tsylia had no information about him.  When Kiev was liberated Tsylia returned home. Her husband returned in 1945. He told Tsylia that he was in German captivity in a concentration camp and that our army liberated him. At that time the wife of a former prisoner-of-war could not keep her job at the NKVD. Tsylia was fired, but the NKVD office offered her a job in the personnel department of a bed manufacturing factory. Her husband also found a job. People supported and helped them. Only our authorities had the position that former prisoners were traitors. Enna’s sister Lubov was married. Her family name was Kaminer. Lubov worked at the personnel department of a knitwear factory. Her only son was severely ill, unfortunately. Tsylia died in 1968. Lubov died in 2002.

Enna and I got married in 1951. Enna’s family was poor and we had to borrow money for the wedding. We had a common wedding. We had a ceremony at the registry office and in the evening we invited our close ones to the wedding dinner. I received an apartment from my plant.  Our only daughter Svetlana was born in December 1952. In 1953, shortly after our daughter was born, Enna’s father died. He was buried in Lukianovka Jewish cemetery 42 in Kiev: it was still open for burials.

When I turned 28 [the age of 28 was the end of Komsomol membership], I did not apply to the party. It was compulsory for key personnel to be members of the party and the town party committee watched that all managers were communists, but it was not quite necessary for workers. I worked decently and this was sufficient. My colleagues treated me with respect. At this time one could not go to the synagogue or celebrate Jewish holidays openly, but my wife and I celebrated holidays to the extent we could afford. It was difficult to get matzah for Pesach and we just had sufficient to keep it as a symbol of the holiday. We also had traditional Jewish food: sweet and sour stew, chicken broth, gefilte fish. It was a tradition, but also, the memory of my mama and grandma for me. It’s hard to find words to describe how much I loved them and how I cherished my memories about the time, when they were with me… I went to Skvira on all anniversaries of their death. I suffered so thinking that mama and grandma did not live long for me to make their life easier and take care of them. It causes me pain, but it also gives me right memories about the time we were together. Skvira is different from what it was like in the years of my childhood. They had destroyed the old town, but what they built instead is nothing special making it one of many small towns. The war destroyed everything I loved. 

We celebrated Soviet holidays at home: 1 May , 7 November [October revolution Day] 43, Soviet army Day 42, New Year. Of course, my favorite holidays is Victory Day 44. If our army had not chased away the enemy from the USSR and other European countries the fascist black death would have spread all over the world. I had ambiguous feelings on this day. I was happy to have survived, of course, and have a family, have my daughter growing and then grandchildren, but there was always sadness and sorrow about those who became victims of this horrible war: my dear ones, friends and comrades. I always remember them. One cannot forget this.

Anti-Semitism, which mitigated after Stalin’s death and during the Khrushchev’s rule started growing again. I remember Khrushchev’s visit to Kiev. He visited our plant. He made a tour of the shops and then asked without any confusion: ‘How come you have so many Jews working here?’ Later he repeated this question at the district party committee. Jews were removed from their high posts. Our shop superintendent, a very decent and highly qualified person, was fired. We missed him a lot. Our new superintendent was mostly engaged in conducting meetings where drunkards were condemned. Perhaps, this was also useful, but this was the only thing he did. 

In the 1970s Jewish mass emigration to Israel began. When Israel was officially recognized as a state in 1948, the USSR was one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with Israel supporting it. However, at that time Jews were not allowed to leave the USSR. My uncle Gersh always wanted to move to Israel, but he died before he could implement his idea. He died in 1958 and was buried in the Jewish sector of the Baikovoye town cemetery. His daughters Vera and Inna moved to Israel and live in Jerusalem. Inna and I were friends and I was upset hearing that she was leaving.  There was a war in Israel and there was little hope that it would ever end.  However, they left. Her older son Mikhail had finished an Agricultural Academy in Kiev and got a job assignment [Mandatory job assignment in the USSR] 45 to work in a distant village in Kazakhstan. Inna knew he would never find a job in Kiev being a Jew. Her second son Vitaliy studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematic of the University, he did not have a hope to get a job in Ukraine either. Inna said that her sons would find work in Israel despite the war, but not here.  This came true. They have a good life in Israel and have jobs. Mikhail has become chief veterinary doctor in Jerusalem. Of course, he could not even dream about this kind of career here. Mikhail loves Israel, but he misses Kiev: he grew up here and knows each street and stone. His daughter is a pharmacist and works in a pharmacy. Mikhail has grandchildren. Of course, it would be much better, if they could have their life here. Nobody can feel safe in Israel. They live every day as if they were at the front. Mikhail travels to Kiev every year and visits us, of course. Inna’s younger son teaches physics in Tel Aviv. 

My friends and acquaintances also left the country at that time. I sympathized with those, who decided to leave their home: everybody has the right to choose a place to live. I understood that many of them were escaping from anti-Semitism, because their children could not go to study in higher educational institutions and their parents could not find jobs. As for me, I was not considering leaving my home. I was a worker and faced no anti-Semitism. I grew up here, I fought for this country and my dear ones were buried here. I thought that my place is here and my wife shared my opinion.

My uncle Teviye died in 1976, his wife Hana did not live much longer. They were buried in the Jewish sector of the Berkovtsy cemetery. Gersh’s wife Lisa is 104 years old.

Before perestroika I visited the place where my dear ones were buried every year. The Jewish cemetery was kept in order. I visit the graves in the cemetery and go to the monument on the common grave at the shooting spot. I recite Kaddish for the deceased and think about them.  If only they were beside me… There are no more Jews in Skvira. In the early 1990s, when industry decayed, people could find no jobs, there were no pensions paid. Many people moved to Israel. Older people receive pensions and younger people found jobs. The others moved to where their children or relatives lived. There is nobody I can visit or talk to in Skvira…

After finishing school my daughter Svetlana studied in Kiev Industrial high school. After finishing it she worked as a rate setter at a plant and later she became an economist. Later she went to work as an economist at the district trade department.  In August 1975 Svetlana married Igor Benyumov, a nice Jewish guy. Igor was born in Kiev in 1951. He finished a college and worked as an engineer. They had a secular wedding. Traditional Jewish weddings were very rare at that time. My older grandson Vladislav was born in 1977, and Mikhail, the younger one, was born in 1985. 

In the late 1980s General Secretary of the CPSU Gorbachev 46 decided to change the course of the party and initiated Perestroika 47 in the USSR. Of course, not everything was right, but Perestroika brought much positive. I think that the most important thing is that the Jewish life revived during Perestroika. At first these were books of Jewish writers, which had not been published in the USSR since about the 1930s. There were plays by Jewish writers staged in theaters and there were concerts of Jewish music. We were happy about it. Jewish newspapers and magazines started to be published, and various Jewish societies were established. Of course, I did not appreciate the final outcome of perestroika, the break up of the USSR [in 1991]. But now, I think, the situation is getting better. The national segregation in Ukraine has mitigated. Jews can enjoy the freedoms and we are second-rate people no longer. However, there are outbursts of anti-Semitism like the attack on the Brodskiy synagogue in Kiev [in 2002 hooligans broke windows at the Kiev synagogue, and it is not known where this was a demonstration of anti-Semitism or just the hooliganism of drunk teenagers], desecration of Jewish cemeteries, but now we can talk about such occurrences and fight with them. It is most important that the state policy condemns such occurrences. There is a number of Jewish organizations, but the most significant among them for older people is Hesed 48. Jews get assistance from all over the world and Hesed is an evidence of this. At one time they were collecting questionnaires and assessing, who the war had affected at the utmost. They took the right decision: it’s hard to provide for each and every one, but it’s possible to provide for all. The Hesed helps us a lot. We also receive food packages ad medical care. Hesed pays for surgeries and hospital bills. This is important since older people could hardly find such money. However, this is not all. The Hesed also takes care of the young generation. I have two grandchildren and one great grandson and Hesed did a lot to raise them Jewish. Svetlana’s husband, my son-in-law, also works in the Hesed.

When the Jewish school was opened, my grandsons went to study there. They were eager to learn about Jewish traditions and the Jewish history. They also have classes where they study prayers.  When in my older grandson’s class the teacher asked who wanted to be circumcised, my grandson Vladislav was the first to raise his hand. The ceremony was conducted at the synagogue. My grandson went there with his father. At first the children had treatments and then the brit milah was conducted. Later my younger grandson was also circumcised.  My grandchildren are religious. They have everything a Jew needs for a prayer: a tallit and tefillin. My older grandson is married and has a son. He had a traditional Jewish wedding. Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Yakov Bleich conducted the wedding ceremony of my grandson. It was beautiful and festive: the holiday that they would remember for life. My grandson’s son is 11 months old.  He had a brit milah, as the Jewish tradition requires. My grandson and his wife observe Jewish traditions, go to the synagogue and pray. My younger grandson is also religious. My grandsons study at the International Solomon University  [Jewish University in Kiev, established in 1995] , a higher educational institution. It teaches highly qualified professionals and also, the students observe Jewish traditions, and study Jewish subjects. My older grandson has graduated from Law Faculty, and the younger one is a 2nd-year student.  Their life is still ahead of them and I hope they will be all right.

I try to take part in the Jewish life. I subscribe to Jewish newspapers and magazines ‘VEK’ [monthly newspaper issued by the World Jewish Congress, circulation 5 000 copies], ‘Evreyskie Vesty’ [‘Jewish news’, the newspaper of the Jewish council of Ukraine, issued twice a month since 1990], magazine ‘Ot Srdtsa k Srdtsu’ [‘From Heart to Heart’, monthly magazine of the Chabad Lubavich movement, issued since 1992] and read them with interest. I also got enrolled in the organization of Jewish veterans of the war, when it was established in the Jewish cultural society. I attend all meetings of the organization. They are always interesting. Veterans share their memories; we watch movies and discuss what we have read.  There are concerts and lectures.  We celebrate Jewish holidays, Victory Day and the Soviet army Day. Though the average age of our veterans is 80, we try to be active. Our veterans often make speeches at schools and higher educational institutions telling young people about what things were like. This must not be forgotten or it may happen again. It cannot be allowed.

Glossary:

Matylda Wyszynska
Gdynia
Poland
Interviewer: Anna Szyba
Date of interview: March 2006

Ms. Wyszynska is a very elegant old lady.

We meet at her apartment in Gdynia, which she shares with her granddaughter.

The apartment is modest but nice. Books on Jewish subjects stand on the shelves.

Ms. Wyszynska prepares a breakfast for me, and when we eat, she tells me about how she misses Lwow, showing me photo albums and books about the city.

She gladly tells the story of her life.

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

• My Family background

I was born on 31st January 1922 in Lwow to a Jewish family. My mother, Leonia, nee Ramer, ran the house. My father, Maurycy Fuchs, was a lawyer. I knew my maternal grandparents. Only recently did I find out the name of the street they lived at, it was 18 Szpitalna Street in Lwow, the Jewish quarter.

My grandfather was called Leon Lajzer Magid, and my grandmother was Gitel Ramer. And now there’s this thing that my grandfather is always called differently than my grandmother, because they never had an official marriage only a Jewish one. And my mother is called after my grandmother rather than after my grandfather.

I very seldom visited [my mother’s parents] because we lived in a completely different part of town and we basically didn’t go to them, and they never came to us, but when I went to school, my grandfather often came to see me there in the summer.

We went out to the yard for the break and he threw me small bundles with this kind of ice candy over the fence, because he didn’t want to make himself conspicuous. It was kind of ice cream, transparent. I don’t know why he didn’t want to be seen, perhaps because he was a Jew. I don’t know whether my maternal grandparents [were religious], I quite simply don’t remember that.

Grandmother was rather bulky, the true grandmother, but I think she had blonde hair. Grandfather was short, chubby, bald. I remember Orthodox Jews in the Jewish quarter 1, with the payes, in the kaftans, but my grandfather never dressed like that. And I loved [them] very, very much. Grandmother always had some goodies in the pockets of her apron for me, which she gave me secretly, because my mother didn’t allow me to eat sweets.

Grandfather died before my mother, I think [before 1936], and my grandmother I don’t know at all when she died. She must have died after my mother’s death and I simply wasn’t informed. I had no contact with her since my mother’s death.

My paternal grandfather, in turn, was orthodox, that I know for sure. He lived in [a part of town called] Zniesienie, Grandmother was already dead. I don’t know how he was called, Grandmother was called Fidelia Udul Fuchs, I’m called Ada [after her]. [Zniesienie] was also a quarter populated chiefly by Jews.

[Grandfather] never visited us but I remember, when I was four or five and I went to visit him, I was always struck by the sight of the tower of the Baczynski [Editor’s note: Baczewski] factory [near where he lived], the inscription ‘Baczynski’, it was a vodka factory, its products were known virtually all over the world. [Lwow’s oldest, J.A. Baczewski’s made vodkas, cordials and liqueurs.

Founded 1782, in operation until 1939, it exported its products during the interwar period to virtually all European countries, Canada, South America and Australia].

And what I remember of that grandfather, my father’s father, it must have been a very religious family. I can’t remember how many times we spent holidays together there. I was a small girl when we went to Grandfather for the Seder. I remember a large table and there must have been relatives at that table [possibly Grandfather’s sisters].

One chair was left unoccupied, the door was left ajar, they told me prophet Elias would come to take that chair, there was a plate for him, and I trembled with fear and kept looking whether some ghost wasn’t coming from that direction. I remember how they poured the wine into the cup, grape wine, and my grandfather sprinkled the wine from the chalice and told the blessing.

He was very skinny, tall, dressed all black. I never remember how the ritual ended because I’d invariably fall asleep and they’d carry me away in their arms. I don’t know whether [Grandfather] had a beard. From the perspective of those childhood years, I remember him as a very old man. He died before the war, but I don’t remember the funeral.

My mother had three sisters and three brothers. She was either the first or the second child because she was the eldest of the sisters. One brother, the eldest one, I think, studied in Nancy near Paris, a textile engineer. I don’t know what his name was. I called him Ma, the older ones called him Manek – for Manuel or something like that.

Later he was sent to work at a wool factory in Bucharest and married the owner’s daughter, a Jewess, her name was Raisa, [married name] Ramer. They had a daughter called Bianka. During the war, when the Germans came, they fled through Bessarabia and found themselves in the Soviet Union.

After the war, he came to Poland with his family, became the head of the whole textile industry at the Textile Industry Administration in Lodz. He is buried at a cemetery in Lodz and, to my shame, I neither attended the funeral nor have ever visited his grave. And Aunt with Bianka went to Toronto [after Uncle died].

Helena Ramer was an aunt in Paris. She arrived there in 1926 to join her brother Ma who was studying there. In Paris she met her future husband and decided to stay. She married an Austrian, and when the war started, he joined the Wehrmacht, she [found herself] in a camp and there, in 1940, she gave birth to a daughter called Jeann.

When her husband returned from the war, he disowned them. If that were not enough, the daughter was called Jeann Haltmeier, and he went to the court to strip her of the name. He said she wouldn’t be his daughter. Aunt Helena died in July last year [2005] at the age of ninety.

My mother’s second brother I called Mis and parents called him Samek, he was Samuel Ramer. He was a dentist, married a dentist and the lived in Stary Sambor [today western Ukraine, Lwow district]. She was a prosthodontist, he specialized in restorative dentistry, they had a practice together.

She was Jewish and they had a beautiful boy named Romek, blue eyes, light blonde hair. I know I twice spent the summer holidays with them in Stary Sambor before the war. They were assimilated. Had their practice and I know they didn’t’ even [observe] kosher because I remember Aunt always bought cold cuts from a certain butcher and we very much liked the ham from that butcher, his name was Baran [‘ram’ in Polish].

One day there was no ham and my Aunt said that Baran didn’t have any ham today. And I asked whether it had to be ham from a ram, whether it couldn’t be ham from a pig, for instance, and they had a hearty laugh at my expense. You remember such silly things and you don’t remember the important ones. Uncle Mis’s whole family died in the Lwow ghetto.

The second aunt [was] my dearest, Aunt Mia, I don’t know what her real name was, perhaps Miriam. I attended her wedding under the chuppah. It was when my mother was still alive [before 1936]. I know that my aunt married the owner of Leopolia, a Lwow-based paper and confectionery plant, she worked there in the office, the man fell in love with her (he was a Jew) and married her.

There was this large room somewhere in town, I don’t remember it to have been a synagogue, but there was a chuppah, and I remember how Aunt was dressed because I have her wedding photo to this day. Aunt Helen sent her a dress from Paris, so she had a beige-blue outfit – a dress and a hat – under that chuppah. That’s all I remember. None of my father’s or mother’s sisters were religious. After her husband was murdered in the Janowski camp in Lwow, Mia went mad and was shot in the Lwow ghetto.

The third sister was called Mada, what her real name was, I don’t know. Mada was the youngest of the sisters and was very pretty. When the war started, she was very young, not much my elder. She could have been in her twenties. She had beautiful, large, almond eyes. And when [the war started], she disappeared. Later everyone refused to know her, she was seen riding in a car with the Germans, and [what happened to her] later, I don’t know. Nobody knows.

Then there was the third brother, Bernard. He lived with his wife and two sons in Katowice [ca. 380 km west of Lwow, 70 km west of Cracow]. His son, Gieniek, was a violin virtuoso and studied at a music school. As an 18-year old boy he played concerts across Europe. I had a photo of him with the violin. Fleeing from the Germans, they left Katowice and set up in Lwow. Unfortunately, the Soviets soon sent them to a camp in Siberia, where they died.

I knew my father’s two sisters. One was called Regina Fuchs and was married to a dental surgeon whose last name was Frid, and it seems to me that, with a name like that, he should have been a Jew but he was a legionnaire 2. He joined Pilsudski’s 3 legions, was wounded in the thorax, had this kind of pipe here [in the thorax], and always wore tall, rigid collars.

They had a daughter named Ada, like me, after Grandmother. And I visited her and she visited me, when my mother was already dead. [Uncle] whistled at us because he couldn’t talk. I was very afraid of him. My aunt divorced him and went to Tlumacz [today in Ukraine], a town near Lwow, to work, and she was never heard of after that.

The other aunt was called Klara. I remember her from my childhood, when she came to visit us in Brzuchowice [village near Lwow] where I [was] on vacation with my mother. She came with Uncle and made wonderful raspberry juice, and she knew I loved that juice so she gave it to me to drink. That’s how I remember her. Before the war, thought I don’t know precisely which year, she emigrated to Mexico. I wanted to find them after the war, but I don’t know their name. I don’t know to this day. She got married and had a different name than my father.

• Growing up

When still lived with my parents, we lived in those large apartment blocks on the third floor, the street was called Na Bajkach. I don’t remember how many rooms we had, I always had my own. I was the only child. We had a bathroom. There was a coal stove and by that stove a large plastered box.

It had a metal door on top and a small door at the side. Once a week the coal supplier came and poured in the coal and the maid took that coal portion by portion through the small side door. As a child, I loved to lay on that box because it was so warm there.

When my mother went out somewhere, I went to the kitchen to the servants and had my shakedown on that box. And the servants gave me scale weights to play. There was a weight called ‘mother’ and another called ‘father’ and the small ones, the children, and I played with them on those scales.

My father worked in the office of the French oil company, it was called Koncerny Francuskie Malopolska. The branch office was in Cracow, the head office in Paris. It was an oil company, the wells were in the nearby, foothill villages. My father was the head of the supplies department.

The office was in Lwow’s largest house, owned by Jews in fact; it was called the Szprecher house. I remember it was the only house in Lwow that had an elevator, an old one with metal railing, and there was that usher called Bruniany and when I came to visit my father, I always asked that Bruniany, who had a long moustache reaching up to his ears, to give me a ride and he took take me on that elevator to the sixth floor and back.

The house, slightly converted, exists [to this day], near the [city’s] largest street, Akademicka, the so called Corso, vis-à-vis the Mickiewicz monument.

My dad was a big-time sportsman and played soccer on the Polish team called Pogon, because there was also some Jewish team. When I was born, he took me to every game and I shouted together with my father, ‘Down with the referee!’ We had that huge lobby in the house on Na Bajkach. We’d stand at its opposite ends and play soccer and my mother would shout at us because we broke windows.

Besides that, I remember that my father had very many Jewish friends, I remember a man called Rapaport, for instance, he was certainly Jewish, with whom my father played tennis and who also taught me to play it.

I don’t know what schools my parents attended. My mother, when she was very young, worked in Przemysl [city 100 km west of Lwow], I don’t know why in Przemysl. She worked at a post office, as an assistant. My mother always believed in fortune-telling and I remember as a child that she [told] her sisters and me that when she was a very young girl, there was some old Jew who foretold the future.

My mother went to him with some friends and he told her she’d marry a man who would come from the military and would be in uniform. He told her his name in Yiddish. And when my mother wanted to know more, he studied her palm, closed it, and said, ‘Don’t ask for I‘ll tell you no more.’ As if he saw something bad. He refused to say anything more. And it all proved true. Even Father’s name.

My mother didn’t have a good life with my father, at the beginning perhaps it was good, I don’t know, but when I was a bit older, my father had an affair with his secretary. They [Ms. Wyszynska’s parents] separated for some time, he moved out, and it was a great time for me.

I was young and stupid, my mother cried all night, wept, and I felt great because my father asked me out, came to pick me up, took me to various places, I ate cakes, whatever I wanted, he bought it, and then he saw me off home. And I have a bad conscience to this day because I was against my mother, I offended her, I told her she was wrong, told her that my father was good and she was not.

And it was the other way round. I actually read a letter from that secretary that my mother had obtained or found somewhere, a love letter. There were scenes [the parents argued], not in front of me, of course, but a child always senses such things, and my mother, still a young person, had a stroke one night. She was a hypertensive, I’m not sure whether it wasn’t caused by one of those arguments, because my father would come home at strange times, and afterwards I always had a grudge against him.

Even though my parents were assimilated, on the high holidays they went to synagogue. I was too little; I don’t know where the synagogue was. They went to the prayer house, fasted on Yom Kippur, and I know I said the Kaddish for my mother on the high holidays.

I know we also [observed] other holidays because I remember the festival of the booths, when you built the wooden shelters and we played in those shelters with other kids. And our parents prayed during that time, I don’t know, in the prayer house or in the synagogue. I went to synagogue with my parents.

On Purim, I remember, I ran around with the rattle when they told the story of Haman. But my mother never wore a wig! She didn’t observe kosher, we had a maid, a Baptist. I know it was her who saw me off to school even though the school was close to home.

The language spoken at our home was Polish. My parents, when they didn’t want me to understand them, they spoke German. Everyone around knew German because it was the former Austrian partition 4 and my grandparents always spoke with great respect of Emperor Franz Josef 5 and about living under his rule, that everyone had a good life then, Jews included.

Grandparents spoke Polish, but what language they used between themselves, I don’t know. I never spoke Jewish. Still, I don’t know from where, I know some letters. Two or three. It seems to me I learned the Kaddish in Yiddish. I guess my father didn’t go to the cheder because he was an educated man, a lawyer, though I don’t know where he studied. There were no Jewish newspapers at home. There were Polish books and newspapers.

My mother had two cerebral strokes and was hospitalized for some time. She died in March 1936. Even though our family was assimilated, she had a Jewish funeral and I remember the ceremony as if it were today. Mama was wrapped in a white cloth, I saw only her legs, I was afraid to raise my eyes, and there was the coffin, a wooden one, I think.

I was dressed in a sweater and a coat at the cemetery, and someone cut that sweater and the coat with scissors. It’s a Jewish custom. It made me very sad because it was my beloved mohair sweater. After returning from the cemetery we sat for like a week, me, my aunts, I don’t remember whether my father sat with us all the time, I don’t remember precisely how many days, on those small stools, with our shoes off, and the mirrors were covered. It was called sitting ‘na pokuciu’ [shivah], if I remember well.

I saw it as a traditional thing, there was nothing strange in it for me. My father got married again shortly after my mother’s death, not with the secretary but with another woman, she was Jewish, less than a year had passed, it came as a shock to me and I felt a deep resentment towards him.

I lived on Na Bajkach Street with my mother, then we moved to another part of town, on Zielona Street, together with my mother, and there my mother died. [And there the maid robbed us]. One day [the maid] took everything from the house, the rest of the furniture my father gave away to some warehouse for storage because it was before he remarried, and me he gave away to the judge’s wife, because he was always on the move.

[It was] a judge’s widow who had a huge apartment near Leona Sapiehy Street, by Gleboka Street. She wasn’t Jewish, rented rooms to students, I had a room for myself. She was supposed to have custody of me, and the custody was limited  to me having to be back home at eight, and I remember I wore my school badge covered with black crepe paper [as a token of mourning].

The apartment was on the third floor, there was a window in my room, and I was alone all day, I mean, I was permitted to go to a friend [but] I had to be back home at eight, meals were delivered to my room, she had a maid, a cook. And I remember that the afternoon snack was always strawberry preserve which I put into the oven [to heat] because the widow only told my father whether I was back home at eight and whether I ate my meals.

And so, on that third floor, I did nothing but sit in the window. On the first floor across the street lived my schoolmate, and in her apartment there rented a room a technical university student named Staszek [diminutive for Stanislaw].

He lived in lodgings because his parents lived near Kalusz [town, today in Ukraine, 100 km south-east of Lwow] where they taught at school. Staszek studied at the technical university and rented a room nearby. I was sending various messages to my friend through the window. He also had a window in his room and that’s how we got to know each other.

I learned to write in reverse and read various messages. He started writing to me, her too, and it was her who persuaded me to go on the first date with him. We went to cycle or for a walk. Then it turned out I wasn’t doing well with math at school, I had to tell my father, and Staszek started giving me lessons.

We started dating each other, and he [Staszek] was an endek 6 at the university. He wore the Chrobry’s Swords [an emblem in the form of two crossed swords worn in the lapel], wore the special cap, had an endek friend. He dated me and [my friends] Tamara and Irka were angry at me because they knew I was very close with him.

We went to a park, and when we passed some endek activists on our way, I trembled with fear. I used to say, ‘Your nose is my insurance policy,’ because he had this [non-Jewish] snub nose. I don’t think he ever took part [in attacking Jews]. Those were not the German times yet.

Those were the Polish times. He took me to the polytechnic club for parties, but that was at my father’s knowledge. As my tutor. My father had to know where I went, with whom, he saw me off, and my father permitted that. I went to those student parties, it was great fun. There was no question whether someone was Jewish or Polish, well, there were the thug activists in the park, but that didn’t concern us.

[One day] my father spotted me biking with him, because [Staszek] always brought his friend’s bike for me, a men’s one, with a frame. My widow didn’t know either I was going biking, she thought I was studying with my classmate. On the stairs I took off my skirt and put on sweatpants.

And once my father caught me riding a men’s bike. He came to me looking very stern and said I was to report in his office the next day at hour so and so. And he had always threatened to give me away somewhere, to some orphanage or boarding house. So I went, with my heart in my mouth, and my father took me to a large bike store and told me to choose a women’s bike for myself.  

I trembled he’d give me away. And that was my first bike. I have photo with this bike, it had that blue mesh cover on the back wheel. And, imagine this, he told me, ‘Who’s this? Your boyfriend?’ ‘A friend.’ I said. ‘I don’t want to see you with him on the stairs, if you want to be meeting him, let him come in.’

[Then we settled with my stepmother] on Leona Sapiehy Street, an apartment I remember very vividly. It was a very large apartment, on the main street, opposite the technical university. And there occurred a clash because they assigned one large room for me and Anka [stepmother’s daughter] together, the furniture was all new, everything painted blue, and there was a wardrobe where she had the lower part and I the upper one.

Besides that there were beds with those white-and-blue kind of curtains, there were writing desks, a table, and those blue armchairs. And I rebelled, because I was already at the age when my friends from school visited me, I was in gymnasium and high school, and the chit told her mother what we talked about, and we had all kinds of secrets.

Always when I told her to leave us alone, there was an argument, because she’d open the wardrobe and sit there, in her [part], on the pretence that she needed some stuff from there. Because she had their crayons there, and her toys. With my stepmother I lived like a cat with a dog, but my father arranged it somehow and she started sleeping elsewhere, not in my room, but her wardrobe was still there and she always came, especially when Staszek visited me.

Because there was a large bathroom, my father, to spare me the effort of going through their rooms, knocked out a new door and now I had direct access from my room to the bathroom, even though that door wasn’t standard size but lower and narrower. There was a huge kitchen, and the servant’s room by it, a servant always lived there, and I remember the stove, in an alcove, fired with coal and wood.

In 1929 I went to a Polish school by the St. Mary Magdalene church. It was Catholic, but it also admitted Jewish girls. There was a priest and an altar in the corridor, but Jewish students didn’t have to pray. Nor did they have to attend religion classes, and they didn’t.

The priest played with us, I have very nice memories of him, he was such a kind-hearted man, he played ring a ring o’roses with us and sleeping bear and all. The discipline was harsh, we weren’t allowed to have curly hair, and my mother was often called to the headmistress for curling my hair, and she had to swear they were curling by themselves. In winter time you had to wear the beret [straight], never at an angle.

We had to wear those sailor-collar uniforms and ankle-length pleated skirts, which we pulled up after school. Brown stockings only. Brown leather shoes.

A white hat with navy-blue ribbons, which had to be starched so hard to hold firmly. In fact, they were very nice, those hats. That’s how we had to dress in elementary school. You weren’t supposed to run, you were supposed to stroll.

Each class had its stretch of the corridor and there you were supposed to stroll. In the summer, each class had its tree to stroll around, you weren’t allowed to run around the whole field. When my grandfather came to throw me candy over the fence, he had to aim well so that I didn’t have to run for [it].

Then I went to Zofia Strzalkowska’s gymnasium. There was this saying in Lwow, ‘a mother had two daughters – one of them was decent, and the other one went to Zofia Strzalkowska’s.’ It was a wonderful private gymnasium for girls (there were also Jewish students). A beautiful building.

It was a very good school, and a genuinely secular one. The Polish literature teacher was wonderful. I have no accent because the eastern accent wasn’t tolerated. I know Latin to this day. Each one of us had a [nickname]. [My friend] Mela was called ‘Mentecaptus’ [dimwit] by the Latin teacher because she didn’t know the answer to some question.

I was ‘Morbus’ [disease] because I didn’t know how to decline the names of diseases. I still remember the Iliad, I still remember some things I had to learn. The teacher was very demanding. Thin, tall.

But there were parties where you were allowed to bring your boyfriend, naturally in front of the teachers and the headmistress you danced like this [decently], and afterwards like this [closer to each other]. We staged cabaret shows, I still remember some songs, poems, we had funny songs about each teacher, each subject. I don’t think there were any Jewish teachers there, but I didn’t give it any thought then.

I had four friends since elementary school; we were the five of us, as close as sisters. We were all Jewish. We also had [Polish] friends but not that close. One of us was called Mela Miezes. She had those thick braids, and one night one of her [brothers] cut off one of those. [During the war] she changed her name to Melania Mirska and retained the name afterwards.

Her husband never learned who she was, and her children aren’t aware who she was either. She argued that if she didn’t tell him about her ethnic origin before the war or when she was marrying him, i.e. under the occupation in Cracow, then she was afraid to tell him afterwards. One could think she married for protection and security. They are both dead now.

Another one was Alina Kupfer, she died. She was my closest [friend]. She lived next door. I lived on Leona Sapiehy Street, corner of Gleboka, and she lived on Gleboka Street. Her parents were Jewish pharmacists, ran their own pharmacy, and had two children, Alina, whom we called Lina, and a son, I don’t remember his name, who was a great musical talent.

When my mother died and my father married again, I spent the summer vacations with them and their mother in the Eastern Beskidy mountains south-west of Lwow. [Lina’s parents] died before the war, first her father, of a heart attack, and then her mother, of cancer.

The children were left alone, they were 15 or 16 years old. Their mother died, they were left alone, in a large apartment, and we all met there, some boys [came], a bit older than us. As soon as the Germans entered, they took [Lina’s] brother right from the street, to the prison on Lackiego Street [former police buildings turned into a prison.

In June 1941, before their evacuation from Lwow, the Soviets murdered the majority of the Polish and Ukrainian prisoners held there]. They were alone, loved each other very much, she went to look for him and never returned. They killed her too. Their aunt later moved in the apartment.

There were also Tamara and Irka [Irena Weizberg, married name Herz]. They lived next door and I was virtually raised in their home. I called their mother ‘mama’ when my mother died. They were three sisters and a mother.

The mother was called Klara Weizberg, Tamara was called Zwerling, after her mother’s first husband. The mother attended the parents’ evenings in school on their account but also on mine because Tamara was in the same class with me. Irka was younger.

I didn’t know much about Jewish political life, and what I knew came from my friend Lusia Lewental. She came from the most orthodox home [of the five of us], we never visited here at home because it was far away. She was highly aware politically. She was a Zionist.

I think her whole home was like that. She told us about Palestine, about the political parties. But we listened with only half an ear. We somehow weren’t interested in all that. Lusia was killed immediately, didn’t even go to the ghetto 7, such were her looks.

So it was four years of gymnasium, then two years of high school, and I passed my maturity exams in 1940. In 1941 I was admitted to the Lwow technical university but when the Germans entered [June 1941] I could no longer study.

• During the war

Between 1939 and 1940 we were under the Soviets. And that wasn’t normal. My father lost his job, my uncle, [Aunt] Mia’s husband, was arrested. My second uncle, Ada’s father [Aunt Regina’s husband] also died in the Brygidy [Brygidy or Brygidki, called so because it was located in a former Brigittine nunnery: a major prison at Kazimierzowska Street in Lwow where, in June 1941, the Soviets murdered several thousand Poles before evacuating from the city].

When the Germans came, my mother’s brother, Uncle Bernard, fled from Katowice to Lwow and lived somewhere in Lwow. They were taken to the forest [and murdered]. My stepmother’s brother, a doctor, was also taken away, never heard of again.

My father spent a number of nights in the coal box, hiding from deportation, because during the Soviet era lights were put out in the whole city and they went from house to house, taking men, deporting them to Siberia or taking to the forest.

When my father lost his job [there was no money], I lived for some time with Aunt Mia, in a terribly cramped apartment, it was after the Soviets had taken their husband, it may have been 1940 or 1941. He [Aunt Mia’s husband] was incarcerated in Lwow’s harshest prison, the Brygidki, spent six months with his legs in water all the time. I don’t know whether such were the conditions or it was a punishment.

They were quite rich because they had a factory, and Aunt Mia had that beautiful black pearl, she sold it and ransomed my uncle from the NKVD 8. Uncle could no longer walk, his legs were very thick, and they lived in terrible conditions because she had sold everything to buy him out.

Uncle lay on the bed all the time and he sewed some cyanide into his clothes because he thought the Soviets could come for him again. He was a bourgeois, after all. My Aunt took that cyanide away from him, and when the Germans came, he was taken to the Janowski camp 9 and shot at the very first roll call because he couldn’t stand.

My Aunt went to the ghetto, lived in the same house as Samek with Romek and his wife, [because they] had come to Lwow when the Germans came. Romek may have been 5 or 6 when he was in the ghetto.

At first we terribly feared the Soviets because when the Soviets marched into Lwow, in 1939, I lived opposite the technical university. There’s a large garden in front of it, a board fence, and that’s where the Polish military surrendered their arms. The Soviets arrived riding bareback. Savages! Without uniforms, with just some red rags stuck here and there.

Their hair uncut, in those felt [hats] that are a hotbed for lice. The female soldiers were also terribly louse-infested. And they bought nightgowns as ball gowns. They commandeered our apartment and a postmaster from Odessa, now appointed the postmaster of Lwow, [moved in with us] with his wife.

The first day he stood by the bathroom light switch and toggled it on and off, because he didn’t know how it works, back in their place they had those turning knobs. Later, when he got to know us, he pushed us to attend the 1st May parade [1st May, International Labor Day, established by the International, celebrated since 1890 in the form of public rallies, demonstrations and marches] and we had to go.

I always said, ‘And why don’t you go?’ ‘I went for forty years, now it’s your turn.’ I went for the parade with the rest of my school because they wrote down who went and who didn’t and we were all afraid, they’d arrest you and deport you, so you went.

My father certainly felt Jewish. When the Germans entered 10, but before the ghetto was set up, various people were evacuating themselves from the city, among them a doctor who lived next door. I remember how they were packing their things, how they had to [get aboard] some ship somewhere to go. My father not at all, there was never any talk of us going anywhere.

I remember, in 1941, we didn’t know anything about the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact 11 we [only] knew the Germans were approaching Lwow, and my father went with other men from the neighborhood to raise barricades near our home, on Listopada Street. We realized what was happening to Jews [in German-occupied Poland] but not fully. Because we believed the [Germans] were, after all, a civilized, intelligent, music-loving nation. We didn’t know.

In the first days [of German occupation] my father was terribly beaten up, he was unconscious. There was a prison on Lackiego Street, near where we lived, and when the Soviets were leaving [June 1941], they murdered the prisoners there. When the Germans came, they caught people in the street, not only Jews, and made them remove those corpses. And when they saw a Jew (and they told men to strip so they knew who was a Jew), they beat him terribly. And my father was utterly unconscious.

Some strangers, Poles, brought him home. He stank so hard of dead bodies it took several days [to get rid of the smell]. We burned his clothes. He lay completely out of his senses, for a very long time, he was so horribly beaten. And as soon as he came to, they [Ms. Wyszynska’s father, the stepmother and her daughter] moved to the ghetto. Me, I stayed on Sapiehy with Staszek until the last moment, because I was afraid. He protected me a bit.

The Germans started setting up the ghetto as early as in July [Editor’s note: the Lwow ghetto was officially set up in November 1941]. I remember such episodes like when the Germans, helped by the Ukrainians, ordered all people from our house to gather in the courtyard.

Lined us up against the walls. Men separately, women separately. We didn’t know whether they’d shoot us or… They took the men [for labor] then. Notices were posted, all on pain of death, that by day so and so all Jews had to move to the ghetto. The armbands were introduced, Jews were like hunted animals. The szmalcowniks 12 operated in large numbers, and there were also people who denounced Jews just for the sake of it.

Under our apartment, on 29 Sapiehy Street, there was a large nightclub, with dances and all. It was called Wesolowski’s, obviously the owner’s name. When the Germans came, they requisitioned [the place] and some uniformed German ran it. One day there’s banging on the door.

Staszek went to open. A uniformed German enters. ‘Any Jews living here?’ Staszek couldn’t speak German, unfortunately, he said ‘no’ in Polish. ‘Do you have a piano?’ Indeed, there was one. I used to play it, but no longer. Never had a knack for that, and I didn’t like to practice either.

He saw me, realized immediately I was a Jew and started talking to us. I told him I was afraid, he started inquiring with Staszek, I had to act as an interpreter. Why he was there with me and so on, and [Staszek] said he loved me. And, imagine this, the German took the piano, apologizing to us for taking it, and said, ‘It’ll be of no use to you anyway because you have to leave here.’

But for as long as we stayed there, before we moved to the ghetto, he sent us food upstairs everyday. Some soups, some chickens from that restaurant. And he said, ‘If you love her, flee together, go anywhere, just don’t stay here.’ See, there were good Germans too.

But I didn’t have anywhere to go. I was afraid of the Soviet Union. Under the Soviets, we always feared we’d be deported [The Soviets carried out mass deportations of Polish citizens to the Siberia and Kazakhstan in 1940-1941]. Whom did I have there, where was I supposed to go? Men were [right to flee] perhaps, because they joined the army there, but where would I go? To work in the forest? You didn’t know things would take such a turn here.

Then I had to [move to the ghetto] because they went from apartment to apartment and checked. I don’t remember the address in the ghetto. An old brick house, wooden stairs. The third floor, I guess, I don’t even remember how many rooms, but there wer so many people there!

My father, me, my stepmother, her daughter, her mother, her sister, the sister’s husband, and some children. It was horrible, the apartment. Water froze in the glass, there was no way to wash yourself.

Filthy, no water in the toilets. Horrible. I slept on the floor, next to my stepmother and my father. I know there was no food, but when I woke up in the night, she [the stepmother] was feeding Janka [her daughter]. I don’t’ know where she had the [food] from. I was very cold that winter. Since then I’ve had deformed joints in my fingers.

I was at home [didn’t work] and was terribly afraid. I was afraid to go out on the street, everyone begged there, the sick and the dead lay on the sidewalks, and I couldn’t bear it. I don’t know where you took food from in the ghetto.

My father went to work somewhere, but where he worked, what he did… I don’t know. And my stepmother stayed at home. Before the ghetto was sealed, Staszek sometimes came to pick me up.

I remember one of my trips out of the ghetto: I put on a hat and high-heeled shoes, a streetcar passed through the ghetto heading to the Aryan side, and we decided he’d take me out aboard that streetcar.

There were prostitutes [in the ghetto], so I wore full makeup and I went with him to the streetcar without the badge, laughing out loud, he pretended to be whispering something to my ear, groping me, and kissing. I stood in the back. I crossed over to the Aryan side, I had my heart in my throat, but I kept laughing hard.

Once, I remember, I left the ghetto and Staszek went ahead of me to warn me in case of any danger. And he signaled me and immediately I saw uniformed Germans. I don’t know whether it was the Gestapo or the SS or whatever. I leaped into the nearest gate, there were stairs up and stairs down, and I didn’t know what to do.

I heard them coming after me so I his behind the gate, and when they came, they went up the stairs and down the stairs, and during that time, I heard their footsteps, I left the gate and Staszek stood there, waiting for me at a distance.

There were such situations because I left the ghetto several times, I went to Staszek’s place to wash myself or to eat something, for a day or two. There was no bread [in the ghetto], there was nothing, and he always had some bread and mustard, and we’d spread the mustard on the bread and eat it. How wonderful food it was! And I felt my heart in my throat. Chaos and confusion. And the damn fear.

It was 1942, August, the liquidation of the ghetto and the full extermination of Jews were under way, people were being shot. [Staszek] offered to take me out of the ghetto. He forced his mother [to help him] by telling her that if she didn’t help hide me, he’d go to the ghetto himself to be with me, he was her only child so she agreed to everything. He secured some documents from a friend of his.

Whether he told her it was for a Jewish girl, I don’t know. He may have told her it was for a Polish girl in hiding, because Poles faced repressions too, they were being sent for forced labor to Germany, for instance. He gave me a genuine birth certificate for one Matylda Bednarska, a smallpox vaccination certificate, a school ID, and a form for reporting one’s relocation out of Lwow.

My father saw me off to the ghetto perimeter, the wall. We dropped in on Aunt Mia to say goodbye. Aunt talked to me like [I was her husband]. His photograph lay next to her, she lay on the bed and talked nonsense, gone mad. She never had any children. My future husband, Staszek, told me later Aunt was shot in the ghetto for assaulting the Germans. She’d mouth off when on the street, and must have obviously molested some German.

I didn’t know then I’d never see my father again. He gave me very little money [on saying goodbye] because the [stepmother] had taken everything from him and he didn’t work. When giving me the few zlotys, he apologized to me for all he did, for remarrying so soon and that I had such a miserable life. I lost touch with him but I was in touch with Staszek who found out how they were doing and related the news to me. Some time later he told me my stepmother had jumped out of the window and killed herself in the ghetto.

I suppose her daughter must have been killed because she would have never left her daughter alone by killing herself. My father died in the Janowski camp in 1942 or 1943. My mother’s brother, the one from Sambor, with his wife and small boy, was also killed in the ghetto. Samek, and his family too.

As for my paternal relatives, I don’t really know because [I didn’t even know them all]. Uncle Ma was in the Soviet Union, he didn’t die, returned after the war. Aunt Hela was in a camp in France and Jean was born there. [Today] all the relatives that I knew are dead, except my cousins Jeanie and Bianca.

Staszek’s parents were teachers and ran a rural school in Kalusz. Staszek forced his mother to come near the ghetto, he took me out, by a miracle in fact, I took off the badge in the nearest gate and I went following her, not with her, because she was afraid to go with me. We also had to swear we wouldn’t be seeing each other. That was the condition on which she agreed to hide me, because she was anxious about him.

We got off at the station where the rural school was, waited until it got dark, and [walked] some 25 kilometers in the night to get there unnoticed. It was August, the summer break, no classes. The school stood away from the center of the village, I didn’t go out, I was locked away in a classroom and I didn’t even go to the lavatory, there was a free-standing one outside, but Staszek’s mother instead brought out the potties.

I can’t remember how long I was there. After a couple of days she said people in the village were talking there was a Jewess hiding in the school and that I had to leave. She was good enough, though, not to throw me out completely but again walked the 25 kilometers in the night with me to the nearest train station and took me to Staszek’s uncle, the brother of Staszek’s father, whose name was also Podchaniuk.

He was an old bachelor, the headmaster of a school in Stryj [city 70 km south of Lwow, today in Ukraine]. She brought me there in the morning, four or five o’clock, and told me I’d stay there until she found some hiding place for me. We arrive there, and we saw a drinking party, an orgy, it turned out the guy Podchaniuk had signed the Volksdeutsch list 13, the place was full of uniformed Germans, drinking.

When we went in and saw all that, she told him we’d just have a tea in the kitchen, and we fled from that kitchen so that they didn’t see me. She took me to Stanislawow [today Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine, city 70 km south-east of Lwow] where, in the suburbs, there lived Staszek’s grandfather, who was in his eighties but had a nasty daughter.

[My mother-in-law] told him I was Staszek’s friend and I was to be sent to Germany for forced labor and I was hiding. They hid me in the barn so that the daughter didn’t find me. They were liquidating the Jews in Stanislawow, it was August 1942, they were liquidating Jews everywhere.

I hear shots all the time and I heard the daughter telling her father how they were hanging Jews on trees. I overheard that because it was a plank barn, and when the daughter wasn’t home, he slid the bowl with food under those planks for me. Once, when she wasn’t home, because she worked somewhere, I begged him successfully to give me a pen and a piece of paper and then to send my letter to Staszek. And Staszek came and took me away from there.

There was a rural school in Wygoda [today in Ukraine] where his parents’ friend, not much older than me, was the headmistress and a teacher. [Staszek] took me to her and she took me in as Staszek’s fiancée who is hiding away from being sent to forced labor to Germany, while Staszek went to Dolina [today in Ukraine] to [fix me up] with a job at a sawmill.

He came back with the right paper and with it I reported to the manager. The German asked me who I was, what I could do. I said I had completed high school before the war but had no profession. I stammered a bit, I learned German at school but I hardly remembered anything. And he said okay, you’ll work at the sawmill. And so in 1943 I started working at the sawmill, Holzwerke, later renamed to Delta Flugzenhalen und Barackenbau.

At first I was employed as a simple worker: hammering in nails, cleaning, doing everything. One of the girls [working] in the office was a Jewess from my street who appeared as a Volksdeutsch, had the right papers, her hair dyed light blonde, blue eyes, and she was from the same house as Tamara. Then I worked in accounting but we were stationed together.

There were those wooden houses on the premises, because those were all formerly Jewish-owned sawmills that the Germans had requisitioned.

And I lived in one such pseudo-villa, in the loft, and she lived right next to me. She had a son who was four years old then. Her husband was killed by the Germans shortly after they marched into Lwow.

She fled and she couldn’t [stay] with that son because he looked like ten Jews together: dark, big dark eyes, curly hair, and was circumcised, so she found some woman she knew in the countryside whom she paid [for hiding the son]. [Then] she ran out of money and could not longer pay and one day the woman came with the son and left him there, said could no longer keep him.

She took the boy to where we lived. She locked him away in one of the rooms, didn’t allow [him] to go out because there were various kids wandering around the sawmill and someone could notice he was circumcised. He sat by the window all day and one time he stuffed something into his nose, a tragedy, she had to call someone to take it out. And a rumor quickly spread she was hiding a Jewish child. She ran away in the night, they caught her on the road and shot them – her and the boy.

Later, because the front was approaching, many of the Germans working at the office, especially the young ones, were taken to the front, the older ones were left in place, and I was moved to the front office, where I learned to type with two fingers on a typewriter, in German.

I didn’t know German too well at the time, and those wood industry-related terms were complete black magic to me. They put me in charge of the files. I had those ‘geheim’ [confidential] stamps, for instance, because that was classified stuff.

I met a girl there who worked at another department, her name was Olga Mieroszewska, she came from an aristocratic family, lived in a poor cottage without a chimney. Her sister, Janka Mieroszewska, worked at the Arbeitsamt [employment office] in Dolina. I became friends with Olga.

It was a family of princes, Poles. There were three daughters and four brothers, all died on the front. [Olga lived with her mother] and had a cow off which they lived. In her white gloves, in her delicate cotton hat, she led that cow to the pasture. We worked two shifts at the sawmill, until noon and from two to six.

During the break, Olga ran for the cow, [brought her] on a piece of rope, and the cow grazed on the sawmill grounds. At six, after work, she took the cow back.

Because I worked in the front office and it turned out Olga was collaborating with the partisans, the Poles from the AK 14, [she] asked me to show her the ‘geheim’ correspondence if there arrives any.

[Near the office] there was a free-standing wooden latrine and I agreed to take those documents out of the office and hide there. I was an idiot because I was [risking] my life. She passed those papers on to someone. I don’t know who, my role was to [deliver] the stuff.

There was a lot of wood cuttings all over the sawmill, and I had that room [in the loft] and I liked it to be warm, so I collected those cuttings into an apron or a blouse and placed behind the stove, and between noon and two I stoked in that stove as hard as I could so that it was always nice and warm in my room.

One day I stoked it up hard, there were those cuttings layered between the stove and the wall, I went back to work and when I returned at six [it turned out there had been a fire], I couldn’t get to my room because the stairs weren’t there anymore, everything burned down. I had that cupboard where I kept my things, all I had, [it burned down]. Naturally, there was an investigation whether it wasn’t an act of sabotage, but as the directors liked me, [I somehow got off scot-free].

The directors had been told I came from Lwow and had a family from Lwow, knew my fiancée from Lwow visited me, so they kindly gave me a few days’ leave so that  I could go to my family while they renovated the place because they didn’t have anywhere to put me. What to do? Where to go? Where to hide? In the forest?

And [because] I was friends with Olga [Mieroszewska], I told [her] I was Jewish and had nowhere to go and was terribly afraid, and what should I do? We arranged I’d pack my bags, go to the station for the evening train, enter the train, and then go out the other side before it departs.

There were those buildings [by the station] where I was to hide, then [Olga] came for me and took me to her place, in the night. I spent [the several days] there, didn’t go out anywhere. She had plates with her family’s coat of arms, there were seven clubs there.

And flatware, whatever they managed to salvage from that mansion or palace of theirs, some of that was also in that cottage. And I didn’t know a Jew was hiding in the attic above me. That she didn’t tell me until the very end. I found out after the war.

We did a terrible thing with Olga, for which we were all detained by the Gestapo for three days. We gave notice to that Volksdeutsch, Dziewonski. [He was] a Pole who collaborated with the Germans and Olga received word, from the partisans, I think, to do something with him, and that was something like half a year before the Soviets came.

I worked at the front office and I had the rook [official stamp]. It was me who typed the notices for employees. It was April Fools’ Day and we typed the notice for him, and it worked, because he was in forced labor there and used the opportunity to flee because the Soviets were approaching and he was afraid. He was given the notice on the first and he disappeared. On the third day they started looking for him, he didn’t come to work, what’s happened? Nobody knows.

An investigation was started. All of us, the office workers, were detained. They kept us for three days. [And it turned out he had been given notice]. Olga held out tough and didn’t tell them a word. I cried like an idiot and told Hermel that I did [it] because it was 1st of April. I didn’t tell about Olga.

The boss said, ‘Well, young and stupid.’ He ordered me to swear I’d never forge anyone’s signature again. I swore, of course, and the whole thing blew over. But what we went through, all the employees!

In March 1944, when the Soviets were already very close, at 2 AM [the sawmill was evacuated]. It was a harsh winter, we roamed for eight days and eight nights and finally they took us across the San to Jaroslaw [town ca. 100 km west of Lwow].

• After the war

On the San I saw Polish navy-blue police 15 for the first time in years, the Ukrainians had different uniforms. When I saw the navy-blue policeman, I felt like giving him a kiss. Those were the same kind of thugs as the Ukrainians though perhaps they didn‘t participate on this scale in the murders.

When we reached Jaroslaw, they sent us to various sawmills owned by the Delta company, the branch office was in Cracow, the main office in Breslau [German for Wroclaw, city ca. 270 km north-west of Cracow, today in western Poland].

I was sent to Grybow, a small town near Nowy Sacz [town, 160 km south-west of Jaroslaw]. When I was there, Staszek suddenly turned up, who didn’t know what was going on with me but who learned the sawmill had been evacuated. They also fled the Soviets.

He went to Chabowka [village 90 km west of Grybow] together with his mother, because his father went to Czestochowa [city 170 km north-west of Grybow] where he was put in charge of a school near the city. Staszek, in turn, got a job on the railways.

Chabowka was an important interchange between Zakopane [Poland’s major winter resort, 90 km south-west of Grybow], Cracow and Nowy Sacz, it was called the eastern railway. And he started looking for me. Later, when he came for me, I fled from Grybow. It must have been the summer or autumn of 1944.

They [Staszek and his mother] had rented a room with some farmers in Chabowka. When I fled from Grybow, I went there. [At first] his mother didn’t want me to be there, so we rented a room for me across the bridge. I was jobless. The Germans were still there. I had a Kennkarte 16.

Staszek started telling me he knew that manager, a German, who was a fantastic man, collaborating with the underground. There were Polish partisans there, very active in the area. Their job was to blow up bridges, crossings, rail tracks, viaducts, so that the transports of weapons, munitions, the deployments, didn’t go east, because it was a major interchange. And, as if knowing what would happen when, the manager always disappeared when something was to be blown up.

That manager supervised the technical staff and he was often out on the platform, and one day I accosted him and I asked him whether he could give me any job. He knew [Staszek] well so he told me to come. Because there were no vacancies, he fired a Volksdeutsch girl who brought him all kinds of cold cuts because her father was a butcher!

And I worked there until the end. The liberation came around May [Editor’s note: Nowy Sacz was liberated on 19th January 1945, and Chabowka probably around the same date].

All war I kept promising [myself] I’d [shoot] some German, which I never did because the Soviets came again. Savages, simply. They raped, plundered and drank. My neighbor in Chabowka was raped, we sat in the cellar, terrible things were happening.

Then, when the Germans had gone, Tamara [schoolmate] turned up, and persuaded us to go to Walbrzych [city 500 km north-west of Nowy Sacz].

We set up in Walbrzych, Tamara lived there too. She worked at the registry office and she married me and Staszek on 6th January, 1946. I got a job at the Polish State Railways’ road department while Staszek quit his job and went to Wroclaw to finish the studies he had begun in Lwow.

I couldn’t complete my studies because I didn’t have the documents. Then I was transferred to Wroclaw because I wanted to be with my husband. [Staszek] became a civil engineer and in 1950 he was sent to Czestochowa because that’s where he wanted to be, with his parents.

In Czestochowa my husband worked and I sat at home. He was assigned an apartment on the premises of a wool plant he was appointed the technical director of. My relations with his parents were strained because they didn’t approve of our marriage.

I didn’t even notify the Yad Vashem about Staszek as a righteous among the nations 17 because his mother didn’t want me to. They forbade me to reveal I was Jewish. They didn’t want us to have children. Staszek loved his mother very much.

I became independent, shook off the shackles. Because I couldn’t admit who I was. I didn’t know about the Jewish organizations that were being founded. We got a divorce. I went into retraining and got a new, interesting job. It was a public institution and I worked there for 40 years until my retirement.

I’m an employee of merit, have been awarded the knight’s cross, various medals… In 1959 I was transferred to Gdansk. I married again and gave birth to a daughter, Kasia. My second husband didn’t know who I was, knew nothing about my origin. I told my daughter, but fear and anxiety are in me to this day. I’ll never get rid of this. My children aren’t afraid.

My grandson, when in the third year of his exclusive high school here, came once to me and said, ‘Grandma, I have this assignment, I’m to draw my genealogical tree and list relatives who suffered during the war and where.’ And he knew I was Jewish. I told him, ‘Don’t put it there, I’m asking you. What for? You’ll have problems, perhaps there are anti-Semites at your school.’ ‘I’m not ashamed of it and I’ll put it there’, he said.

I’ve never been to Israel. I was afraid it would be too much for me. I’m 85 now, but my granddaughter’s been there many times, also as part of Jewish summer camps organized by Rabbi Schudrich [Chief Rabbi of Poland] here. So my children aren’t afraid and I’m still afraid. All the time.

I’m a member of the Jewish community. I’m the secretary, now also the chairperson, of the Gdansk branch of the Association of Jewish War Veterans and Victims of WWII 18. I’m not a full member of the Children of the Holocaust 19 but I have honorary membership, I’m very active, I’ve done lectures for high school students.

I needed it very much then and I need it now. I attend every Shabbat and that’s very important for me, that I go there like to my family, that I’m on friendly terms with everybody there, sometimes we argue, sometimes someone is cross with someone else, sometimes I don’t agree with something they do, but the bottom line is that I can say everything there, I don’t have to hide.

They feel the same, the old veterans, they are afraid, have the same fear deep down their souls. I know many people who do their best for no one to find out they are Jewish.

It’s hard to say what my attitude towards religion is. Sometimes it seems to me I’m an atheist, sometimes I believe… I know for sure that my mama protects me. I’ve been in extreme situations, it was a miracle I survived them, and I believe it’s my mother who led me and protected me somehow.

If I lose something and am looking for it, I pray to St. Anthony, because I believe in St. Anthony. I go [to the community], I say the prayers, because I’m the eldest member now, we bless the candles, I put on my tichel and recite the prayers in Hebrew. I’m very moved then. Feeling unity with my ancestors.

• Glossary:

1 The Lwow Jewish district: Jewish settlements in Lwow date back to the 14th century. At first the Jews lived on the streets later called Zolkiewska and Krakowskie Przedmiescie. In 1350 there was a huge fire, which destroyed the city. It was rebuilt outside its previous boundaries.

Thereafter, the Jews settled in the southeastern part of the new city, where a Zydowska [Jewish] Street came into being (from 1871 Blacharska Street). However, some of the Jews remained in the original district, hence the genesis of two separate Jewish religious communities in Lwow: the downtown one and that on Krakowskie Przedmiescie. In 1582 the first synagogue in the downtown community was built, the Golden Rose Synagogue, at 27 Blacharska Street.

The oldest of the suburban synagogues dates from ca. 1624. The downtown Jewish district grew in time to extend beyond Blacharska into Wekslarska (later Boimow), Serbska and Ruska. In 1795 the Austrian authorities imposed a ban on Jews living on other streets. This ban was officially lifted in 1868.

2 Polish Legions: a military formation operating in the period 1914-17, formally subordinate to the Austro-Hungarian army but fighting for Polish independence. Commanded by Józef Pilsudski. From 1915 the Legions came under German command, but some of the Legionnaires refused, which led to the collapse of the organization.

3 Pilsudski, Jozef (1867-1935): Polish activist in the independence cause, politician, statesman, marshal. With regard to the cause of Polish independence he represented the pro-Austrian current, which believed that the Polish state would be reconstructed with the assistance of Austria-Hungary. When Poland regained its independence in January 1919, he was elected Head of State by the Legislative Sejm.

In March 1920 he was nominated marshal, and until December 1922 he held the positions of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army.

After the murder of the president, Gabriel Narutowicz, he resigned from all his posts and withdrew from politics. He returned in 1926 in a political coup. He refused the presidency offered to him, and in the new government held the posts of war minister and general inspector of the armed forces. He was prime minister twice, from 1926-1928 and in 1930.

He worked to create a system of national security by concluding bilateral non-aggression pacts with the USSR (1932) and Germany (1934). He sought opportunities to conclude firm alliances with France and Britain. In 1932 owing to his deteriorating health, Pilsudski resigned from his functions. He was buried in the Crypt of Honor in Wawel Cathedral in the Royal Castle in Cracow.

4 Partitions of Poland (1772-1795): Three divisions of the Polish lands, in 1772, 1793 and 1795 by the neighboring powers: Russia, Austria and Prussia. Under the first partition Russia occupied the lands east of the Dzwina, Druja and Dnieper, a total of 92,000 km2 and a population of 1.3 million.

Austria took the southern part of the Cracow and Sandomierz provinces, the Oswiecim and Zator principalities, the Ruthenian province (except for the Chelm lands) and part of the Belz province, a total of 83,000 km2 and a population of 2.6 million. Prussia annexed Warmia, the Pomerania, Malbork and Chelmno provinces (except for Gdansk and Torun) and the lands along the Notec river and Goplo lake, altogether 36,000 km2 and 580,000 souls.

The second partition was carried out by Prussia and Russia. Prussia occupied the Poznan, Kalisz, Gniezno, Sieradz, Leczyca, Inowroclaw, Brzesc Kujawski and Plock provinces, the Dobrzyn lands, parts of the Rawa and Masovia provinces, and Torun and Gdansk, a total of 58,000 km2 and over a million inhabitants.

Russia took the Ukrainian and Belarus lands east of the Druja-Pinsk-Zbrucz line, altogether 280,000 km2 and 3 million inhabitants. Under the third partition Russia obtained the rest of the Lithuanian, Belarus and Ukrainian lands east of the Bug and the Nemirov-Grodno line, a total area of 120,000 km2 and 1.2 million inhabitants.

The Prussians took the remainder of Podlasie and Mazovia, Warsaw, and parts of Samogitia and Malopolska, 55,000 km2 and a population of 1 million. Austria annexed Cracow and the part of Malopolska between the Pilica, Vistula and Bug, and part of Podlasie and Mazovia, a total surface area of 47,000 km2 and a population of 1.2 million.

5 Franz Joseph I Habsburg (1830-1916): emperor of Austria from 1848, king of Hungary from 1867. In 1948 he suppressed a revolution in Austria (the ‘Springtime of the Peoples’), whereupon he abolished the constitution and political concessions.

His foreign policy defeats – the loss of Italy in 1859, loss of influences in the German lands, separatism in Hungary, defeat in war against the Prussians in 1866 – and the dire condition of the state finances  convinced him that reforms were vital.

In 1867 the country was reformed as a federation of two states: the Austrian empire and the Hungarian kingdom, united by a personal union in the person of Franz Joseph. A constitutional parliamentary system was also adopted, which guaranteed the various countries within the state (including Galicia, an area now largely in southern Poland) a considerable measure of internal autonomy.

In the area of foreign policy, Franz Joseph united Austria-Hungary with Germany by a treaty signed in 1892, which became the basis for the Triple Alliance.

The conflict in Bosnia Hertsegovina was the spark that ignited World War I. Subsequent generations remembered the second part of Franz Joseph’s rule as a period of stabilization and prosperity.

6 Endeks: Name formed from the initials of a right-wing party active in Poland during the inter-war period (ND – ‘en-de’). Narodowa Demokracja [National Democracy] was founded by Roman Dmowski. Its members and supporters, known as ‘Endeks’, often held anti-Semitic views.

7 Lwow Ghetto: created following an order of the German administrative authorities issued on 8th November 1941. All Jews living in Lwow, that is approx. 120,000 people, were resettled to the ghetto. During a selection which was conducted by the German authorities most elderly and sick persons were shot to death before the ghetto was formally created.

Many Jews were employed in workshops producing equipment for the Wehrmacht or the Luftwaffe. Some of them were also employed in the German administration outside of the ghetto. Since March 1941 the Germans imprisoned Jews in the Janowska forced labor camp and also deported them to the extermination camp in Belzec. Some residents died during mass street executions in the area of the ghetto called Piaski.

The Great Liquidation Action in the Lwow ghetto lasted from the 10th until the 23rd of August 1942. It is estimated that some 40,000 Jews were deported to the Belzec extermination camp. Some young men were sent to the Janowska forced labor camp. Approx. 800 people were taken to the Auschwitz extermination camp. 

8 NKVD: (Russian: Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del), People’s Committee of Internal Affairs, the supreme security authority in the USSR – the secret police. Founded by Lenin in 1917, it nevertheless played an insignificant role until 1934, when it took over the GPU (the State Political Administration), the political police.

The NKVD had its own police and military formations, and also possessed the powers to pass sentence on political matters, and as such in practice had total control over society. Under Stalin’s rule the NKVD was the key instrument used to terrorize the civilian population. The NKVD ran a network of labor camps for millions of prisoners, the Gulag.

The heads of the NKVD were as follows: Genrikh Yagoda (until 1936), Nikolai Yezhov (until 1938) and Lavrenti Beria. During the war against Germany the political police, the KGB, was spun off from the NKVD. After the war it also operated on USSR-occupied territories, including in Poland, where it assisted the nascent communist authorities in suppressing opposition. In 1946 the NKVD was renamed the Ministry of the Interior.

9 Janowski camp: a Nazi concentration camp in Lwow, one of the biggest in Western Ukraine. In November 1941 Jews from Lwow and the neighboring towns and villages were taken to the camp: about 70,000 people in total. During the occupation, thousands of Jewish inmates, Soviet prisoners-of-war and Ukrainian nationalists were exterminated in this camp.

In November 1943 the Nazis resolved to exterminate the inmates as well as all the traces of the camp before the Soviet Army’s arrival.

A group of inmates attempted to escape, but most were killed. The few survivors told the world about the camp. In total some 200,000 people, including over 130,000 Jews, were exterminated in this camp from November 1941 until November 1943.

10 Capturing of Lwow: on 30th June 1941 the German forces captured Lwow, which had been under Soviet occupation. This was part of Operation Barbarossa, initiated on 22nd June 1941, leading to the overtaking by the Third Reich of the pre-1939 Polish territories now occupied by the Soviets and a sizeable part of the Soviet Union itself..

The quick capturing of Ukraine was facilitated by the collaboration of Ukrainians themselves, who treated the Germans as liberators from Soviet terror and forced collectivization.

11 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.

12 Szmalcownik [pron. shmaltsovnick] - in Polish slang of the period of the occupation, a person who blackmailed and denounced Jews in hiding (from the Polish word for ‘lard’). There were szmalcowniks operating in all larger cities, in particular following the liquidation of the ghettoes, when Jews who had evaded deportation attempted to survive in hiding ‘on the Aryan side’. In Warsaw they often formed organized groups that prowled the ghetto exists.

They picked out their victims by subtle signs (e.g. lowered, frightened eyes, timid behavior), eccentric clothing (e.g. the lack of the fur collar so widespread at the time, or wearing winter clothes in summer), way of speaking, etc. Victims so selected were threatened with denunciation to the Germans; blackmail could be an isolated event or be repeated until the victim’s financial resources ran out. The Polish Underground State attempted to combat the szmalcowniks but in vain. To this day the crimes of the szmalcowniks are still not entirely accounted for.

13 Volksdeutsch: In Poland a person who was entered (usually voluntarily, more rarely compulsorily) on a list of people of ethnic German origin during the German occupation was called a Volksdeutsch and had various privileges in the occupied territories.

14 Home Army (Armia Krajowa - AK): underground military organization, part of the Polish armed forces operating within Polish territory (within pre-1 September 1939 borders) during World War II. Created on 14 February 1942, subordinate to the Supreme Commander and the Polish Government in Exile.

Its mission was to regain Poland’s sovereignty through armed combat and inciting to a national uprising. In 1943 the AK had over 300,000 members. AK units organized diversion, sabotage, revenge and partisan campaigns. Its military intelligence was highly successful. On 19th January 1945 the AK was disbanded on the order of its commander, but some of its members continued their independence activities throughout 1945-47.

In 1944-45 tens of thousands of AK soldiers were exiled and interned in the USSR, in places such as Ryazan, Borovichi and Ostashkov. Soldiers of the AK continued to suffer repression in Poland until 1956; many were sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment on trumped-up charges.

15 Navy-Blue Police, or Polish Police of the General Governorship: the name of the communal police which operated between 1939 and 1945 in the districts of the General Governorship. Navy-Blue police was subordinate to the order police (so-called Orpo, Ordungpolizei).

Members were forcibly employed officers of the pre-war Polish state police. Navy-Blue Policemen participated, for example, in deportations of residents, in suppressing the ‘black market’, in isolating Jews in ghettoes. Some members participated in cells of the underground state and passed on information about the functioning of the German forces.

16 Kenkarta: (Ger. Kennkarte – ID card) confirmed the identity and place of residence of its holder. It bore a photograph, a thumbprint, and the address and signature of its holder. It was the only document of its type issued to Poles during the Nazi occupation

17 Righteous Among the Nations: a medal and honorary title awarded to people who during the Holocaust selflessly and for humanitarian reasons helped Jews. It was instituted in 1953. Awarded by a special commission headed by a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, which works in the Yad Vashem National Remembrance Institute in Jerusalem.

During the ceremony the persons recognized receive a diploma and a medal with the inscription “Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world” and plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous on the Remembrance Hill in Jerusalem, which is marked with plaques bearing their names.

Since 1985 the Righteous receive honorary citizenship of Israel. So far over 20,000 people have been distinguished with the title, including almost 6,000 Poles.

18 The Association of Jewish War Veterans and Victims of Persecutions during World War II (Stowarzyszenie Zydow Kombatantow i Poszkodowanych w II Wojnie): an organization of Jewish war veterans, who had taken part in armed struggle against the Nazi Germany, and were victims of Holocaust persecution.

The organization was founded in 1991. It has 13 sections throughout Poland, and 1050 members. Its aims include providing  help to Jews who were victimized during the war and spreading knowledge about the struggle and victimization of Jews during WWII. The Association established the Medal of the 50th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which is granted to persons who have made important contributions to Polish-Jewish life and dialogue.

19 Children of the Holocaust Association: non-governmental organization associating persons who were persecuted as Jews during the German occupation of Poland and who in September 1939 were not older than 13, or were born during the war. Founded in 1991.

It is a self-help organization, providing psychological support or family search services, as well as an educational one, organizing seminars, publishing a bulletin, conducting other publishing activities (e.g. the Children of Holocaust Speak… memoir series).

The Association currently numbers close to 800 members, and has branches in Warsaw, Wroclaw, Cracow, and Gdansk.

Eugenia Berger
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Zuzanna Solakiewicz
Date of interview: January-February 2004

Eugenia Berger has been working at ‘Dos Yidishe Wort’ 1 for 35 years. She proofs articles written in Yiddish. She is a very elegant woman.

Our subject often seemed trivial to her – ‘Who is going to be interested in my family?’, she would ask. But in the course of our conversation memories slowly began to come back to her, and new stories cropped up.

We met twice in her apartment in a beautiful part of Warsaw not far from the city center. She lives alone; none of her closest relations are alive any more.

I also visited her at work, at the headquarters of ‘Dos Yidishe Wort.’

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• ​After the war and later years

• Glossary

• My family background

My family is Jewish through and through; my father’s side of the family came from Wilno and my mother’s side from Latvia. I don’t remember either of my grandfathers or my grandmother on my father’s side. They died before I was born. All I know about my grandmother on my father’s side is that I was named after her – Eugenia.

But I remember my maternal Grandma Weiner well. She brought us up; she lived with us. She was a truly fantastic grandmother! We all loved our grandma to pieces. It may sound strange, but I can’t remember her name. We always called her ‘Grandma’; we never used her name.

Grandma was from Dzwinsk. I never went there because by the time I was born Dzwinsk was abroad [Latvia]. Grandma was very energetic and cheerful. My sister used to say that it was Grandma that I inherited my energy from, not Mama.

It was Grandma who looked after us. She washed our hair, she dressed us and changed us, because Mama couldn’t manage on her own – there were eight of us children at home. Nothing was impossible for Grandma. In her view there was a remedy for everything. Often, when Father needed something sorted out at the bank or at a government office, he would ask Grandma to go and do it for him. Everyone knew her. She knew how to deal with people.

Grandma came from a very rich family. She was very rich herself, too. Back before World War I, she had a shop selling furs in Dzwinsk. But then she had to escape. At home we had a beautiful silver samovar and an accounts ledger that had survived from that time.

The story about that ledger went that it contained the names of everyone who had ever taken goods from the shop on credit. It used to be said that if Grandma could recoup all those debts she would probably be a multi-billionaire.

Was Grandma religious? At home it was Mama who kept kosher. I have the feeling that my grandmother was worldlier but Mama was very religious. Grandma did go to the synagogue, of course, at Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah – the high holidays, and on Saturdays. But like some people used to: always sitting around in the synagogue – there was none of that!

Grandma lived to a very old age; she died just before the war, in 1939 – she was 90-something. I was not at home then. I was probably on vacation. When I came back, they told me that Grandma had died. Her funeral was very solemn. An awful lot of people came, because everyone had known her. She was buried in Wilno Jewish cemetery.

There were ten people in our family – father, mother, five daughters and three sons. It doesn’t seem necessary to me to describe them all here. What can I say about them? Well, all right.

My father was called Herzl Chanion. He was born in Wilno in 1895. What did he do? My father was a true expert. He had a huge, huge workshop. After all, he had to earn enough to keep such a big family. He was a men’s tailor. He had very good employees and he was a master tailor.

Father’s firm was in the house opposite our apartment. About 20 people worked there. It has to be said, though, that it wasn’t a tailor’s for everyone – the people who came to my father were the very, very best people. Father made gala dress for generals, army officers, and for the rich and wealthy. He had a lot of regular customers, not just from Wilno. A few very rich people came to his shop every year from Warsaw.

My father was blond. All my brothers and sisters and I inherited his light hair and fair complexion. And for that reason nobody believed that we were Jewish. My father had a beautifully groomed moustache. He was very elegant. He could not but be elegant – he was one of the best tailors. Indeed, to this day my friends say of me, ‘Ah yes, she is her father’s daughter,’ because I like to dress very smartly, too.

My mama was called Sonia. She was born in Dzwinsk in 1896. She was an only child. Her maiden name was Weiner. As I mentioned, she was from Latvia. She was very religious. Mama didn’t wear a wig; she had beautiful hair. She would fasten it up in a bun. She was not from a Hasidic family 2.

She was just devout, she observed the rules, kept up traditions, but she didn’t wear a wig. [Editor’s note: At that time wigs were worn not only by Hasidic women, but also by many women belonging to other Orthodox Jewish traditions.]

She dressed very elegantly. Well, no low necklines, of course, because that was not the done thing then, but my Mama was a very smart, very beautiful woman. She kept house. There were eight of us, so keeping such a house was really very hard work. I should also say that my Mama was a socialist. She didn’t belong to any party, but I remember her singing Jewish revolutionary songs in Yiddish.

I don’t even know how my parents met. If I’d been an only child I’m sure I would have asked about all things like that. But there were so many of us that there wasn’t even time to ask. All I know is that my father was a very handsome man and Mama a very smart woman. I’m sure they met somewhere and fell in love. When they got married Mama was 17 and Father 18.

My eldest sister, Cyla – her married surname was Kopsztel – held right-wing views. She belonged to Betar 3, and was a Zionist. She was a leader in her organization. They sent her on hakhsharah 4. In 1930 she immigrated to Palestine. She was 19 then. She ended up in a right-wing kibbutz. She lives in Israel to this day. She is 90 now. Only she and I survived; all the rest of the family died in the [Wilno] ghetto 5.

The first boy in our family was Mordechaj. He was four years younger than me. There were already four girls, and still no boy. God, what joy there was when he was born. And after that, there might not be enough for us, but there was always enough for him. He was very clever, and liked studying. First he went to cheder, and later to a yeshivah.

When he got a bit older, he would never let me forget one particular story. Well, he would always get chocolate and I never did... He was very small at the time – he couldn’t read or write yet. He would always come to me and ask me to read him stories. I would take him to my room – so that nobody would see – and say: ‘Give me some chocolate and I’ll read to you.’ And he would give it to me; he really loved being read to. And later on he would never let me forget that I used to take that chocolate off him.

I remember his bar mitzvah, too. Lord... the goings-on, the goings-on! Mordechaj dressed in the tallit, in the tefillin, stood in the synagogue and read from the Torah and gave a speech. He was a very good student, so it was beautiful. And then we came home, and at home the table was already laid with all the good things in the world. And so many guests, and so many of us.

Mordechaj was given a lot of presents. Most importantly, he got a bicycle from Father. That was his dream, you see. From other people he got mostly money. Some people, such as our neighbors, brought homemade cakes with them. One neighbor brought spice cake. How tasty it was! To this day I remember the smell and the taste!

The rest of our brothers and sisters were small children. I’m not going to describe them here. I don’t want to talk about it any more.

• Growing up

I was born in Wilno in 1918, the third child in our family. I was a member of Hashomer Hatzair 6. In our organization we often had lectures about Israel [then still Palestine]. All the young people were preparing to immigrate to Palestine. We would go on hakhsharah, too. We were very involved young people. We all wore uniforms: gray blouses and navy blue skirts and gray panama hats. Our group was co-educational. Both students and grammar-school children belonged to it.

I went to a Jewish school, where the language of instruction was Yiddish, and after that to a training college run by YIVO 7. I often performed at school – I recited poems. When I was in the third grade we held a celebration in honor of Sholem Aleichem 8, Peretz 9 and An-ski 10, our Jewish writers. I was very fond of poetry, so if ever there was anything to be recited the teachers always came to me.

When I was still in third grade they invited the sixth-graders in to see me reciting. I’ll never forget that. I got so many ovations, and my teacher came up to me and kissed me on the forehead. Then she went to my parents and praised me. She said that I was bound to become an actress.

As regards religious education, all my brothers went to cheder, and then to yeshivah, and we girls went to the Tanach elementary school. We even had special Hebrew-Yiddish dictionaries so that we would understand everything fully.

I remember, too, that we were always having discussions among ourselves. Of the eight of us, you see, four of us belonged to different organizations. Cyla was in Betar, I belonged to Hashomer Hatzair, another of my sisters was in the Bund 11, and Mordechaj went to yeshivah and was very religious. We were always arguing, especially during the elections to the various organizations. We would even come to blows over whom to vote for in elections to various councils and youth organizations.

We all had our own affairs. We rarely sat around at home. We all had our friends. We would come home after school, do our homework and then off we would go to a friend’s house, for walks, to parties; we would go to the woods and down to the river. Whenever anyone came to our house, they were always surprised: ‘Such a big family – where are all the people?’

When we were little we never went to bed without a story. Mama told us the most stories – about gnomes, about Little Red Riding Hood, and other children’s stories. Sometimes Grandma told us stories, too, but Grandma mostly sang us songs in Yiddish. Many of them I remember to this day.

At home we only spoke Yiddish. The exception was Cyla, who did first grade in Polish, so she knew the language. But all of us, all the rest of us went to the Jewish school and only spoke Yiddish.

We were considered a rich family. And now I always say, ‘Yes, eight children is a great wealth.’ Our apartment was in a burgher house, and we had a yard, too. There was lots of greenery all around. The house was fenced off, and at night we closed the gate. In the house opposite, where my father’s workshop was, there was even a night watchman with his family. There was so much material there that it had to be guarded.

We had a huge apartment in a house in the center of Wilno. Five large rooms, a big bathroom and lavatory, a spacious dining room – we needed it. All of us sisters slept in one room; we each had our own bed. The boys had their own room, too. We had running water. As for electricity, I don’t remember how it was exactly. We burned candles and lamps. I know that when electric light came in it was like a new era – a new life.

In our apartment there were a lot of books; all of us collected something. Cyla had a whole library in Polish. I used to go to the Jewish library almost every day and borrow something to read. What interested me most were the Yiddish classics I mentioned before– Sholem Aleichem, Peretz and An-ski.

We had a kosher household. Always, right up until the outbreak of war. God forbid that something not kosher should turn up – I don’t even know what would have happened then. If they found out then they wouldn’t even have let us in the synagogue. My mother was particularly careful in that respect.

Once we were older we didn’t have to be so careful. But our household remained kosher to the last minute. We would have shuddered if we’d had to go and buy sausage, for example, from a Christian. There were special Jewish shops where the tastiest sausages were sold.

There were two cupboards in the kitchen. One was painted white and the other brown. The first was for dairy crockery, and the other for meat. And God forbid that anyone mix them up. If Mama saw someone putting a meat plate into the dairy cupboard, she would throw the plate away at once.

I have to admit that I was always a ‘naughty’ girl. I really didn’t like potatoes. If I even saw a potato in my soup that was it – I couldn’t eat it. One day I knew that it was going to be vegetable soup with potatoes for lunch. When I was setting the table I took one plate from the dairy cupboard on purpose and put it in front of my chair. Mama didn’t notice until she had served us all with soup. At once she took the plate, poured my portion away, smashed the plate and threw it in the garbage.

Of course, I had to be punished: I didn’t get another portion of soup. I must say that I was very pleased with that punishment, because I couldn’t look at that soup. That’s what a rogue I was. It was unthinkable that anyone should play such pranks on Mama in our house. They were more traditional and obedient than me.

We had help at home, too. She was a young girl, a Pole. Her name was Stanislawa. There is a whole story connected with her. We had a neighbor who had a daughter. The little girl’s father died when she was still very small. When she was 16, her mother died, too.

Then it transpired that before her death, the mother had come to my father – Father was known for his goodness – and said that she was very ill. She already knew that she would die soon; she was very poor and probably didn’t have any money to get treatment.

So she came to Father and asked him, if after her death he would take care of her daughter. She said, ‘You have eight children, take her in. She will help.’ Then my father said, ‘May you live even to 100; what you ask I will certainly do.’ The woman died shortly afterwards and my father kept his promise and one day brought the girl to our house and said, ‘She is going to live with us, she will go to school; I will take care of everything.’ And that was Stanislawa. She lived with us as if we were one family.

When the war broke out the Germans came and threw us all out of the house and took us to the ghetto. Then she resolved to go with us. There were some Lithuanians there [Lithuanian members of divisions collaborating with the Nazis], and they said to her, ‘What nonsense are you talking; we know you are a Christian, get out of here!’ But she said, ‘No,’ and went with us. I was told that she died along with my family in the ghetto.

On Friday evenings before we went to the synagogue, Mama would light the candles. Mama had a beautiful shawl wrapped around her head and we were all dressed in our best clothes, too. We prayed with the candles lit. Then Father went with my brothers to the synagogue, and we girls went with Mama.

When we were very small, we all went in a line, holding hands. We went to a synagogue that was in our neighborhood, on Zawalna Street. It was a very large synagogue. Afterwards, at home, we all stood around the table and when the blessing over the challah was said, we all said, ‘Amen.’

When we came back from the synagogue in the evening the table was already set with dishes that had been prepared earlier. There always had to be gefilte fish. At home the challot were always baked beforehand as well, and then they lay on the table covered with a white napkin.

We always ate chicken noodle soup and then for the second course there was always meat, but cooked so well, so aromatic, and various side dishes, and tsimes, there had to be. Tsimes is made of carrot to which raisins, prunes and sugar are added. It is all stewed together in the oven until it browns and goes very tasty.

The next day, Saturday, there was also a feast. Father prayed over the challot and we all stood around and at the end we would say, ‘Amen.’ Later on, when my brother was a little older, ten years old, he started saying the prayers over the challah, and when he was 13, he said all the prayers. Then we would sit down to eat.

Because cooking wasn’t permitted on Saturday, everything was prepared on Friday and kept warm. How they did it, so that it stayed warm, didn’t interest me, I was still young and I didn’t care, as long as the food was tasty.

On Saturdays we ate chulent and kigl [kugel]. Chulent I know how to make myself, but what Mama made kigl from I don’t remember exactly. There were eight of us – there would have been a to-do if we had all gone into the kitchen to watch Mama cooking. In any case, we children waited for those Fridays and Saturdays as if for the Lord’s coming. That food was exceptional. I was simply in raptures; it was all so tasty.

The greatest holiday for us children was Pesach. When the holiday was drawing near, Father would take us all to the shoe shop. As Father commanded great respect, so as soon as we all entered the shop, the owner came over at once and called, ‘Please put chairs, armchairs, out for these folk!’ And no wonder, really – after all, Father was buying eight pairs of shoes at once. So we would all sit down on the chairs and armchairs and the fitting would begin: slippers for some, boots for others.

Afterward, all the rest had to be bought: new dresses and stockings. We would go from shop to shop, holding each other by the hands. We were kitted out from top to toe after that shopping trip.

Then the owners of the food shops would come to see Father – the Jewish ones, of course. They pleaded and begged him to buy from them. After all, he had to buy food for eight days. Everything had to be kosher – and how kosher – extra-kosher! The Pesach dishes were brought down from the attic; they were kept there all year in a special trunk. Can there be any more beautiful memory – all those silver cups and the cutlery silver, too.

I was very fussy – one day Grandma had gone out and bought a beautiful teaspoon especially for me. Silver underneath and gold on top, and it had had a rose engraved on it for her. Nobody other than me had the right to use that spoon. Pesach was the most beautiful holiday, ah, how I used to love it.

At Sukkot a shelter [sukkah] was set up in our yard. We had to call the workers in and they would knock up this shack from planks of wood. It was covered with fir and spruce branches on top, and inside it was light and there were candles burning. But not everybody was allowed to go into that shelter: only Father and the boys. Supper was prepared for them in there. And we were only allowed to go and see it during the day.

What I remember most about Chanukkah are the presents and the lighting of the candles. To this day I have beautiful Chanukkah lamps at home. It was like this: every evening of Chanukkah we would stand by the window and every day another light was lit – eight candles, for eight days, and one was lit all the time – the shammash. It was used to light all the others.

As for vacations, yes, we did go away, but never all the family together. Firstly there were too many of us; it would have been very expensive, and secondly Father had his business, so he couldn’t go with us. Sometimes I went with Mama, but usually we children went away on school camps, and even more often than that on trips out of town.

Wilno, what can I say about Wilno? They always used to say that it was the second Jerusalem; an awful lot of Jews lived there. You could walk the streets without worry; everybody spoke Yiddish without lowering their voices, without embarrassment. The signs on the shops were in Yiddish at the top and in Polish underneath. There were a lot of synagogues there, and a yeshivah on every street. There were theaters, concert halls and libraries.

The headquarters of YIVO was also in Wilno. There were a lot of different political organizations, too. The intelligentsia mostly belonged to Hashomer Hatzair. There was the Bund, too; they propagated Yiddish and were against Hebrew. And there was the right-wing Betar. I couldn’t possibly list all the organizations.

As for Polish-Jewish relations, I have to say that until 1936 I really experienced no anti-Semitism. Our neighbors were Polish, and we never knew any nastiness from them. I had one good friend, who was Polish, and my sister Cyla, as I said, went to a Polish school – she even won a medal for her studies – and all her friends were Polish.

It was only after the death of Pilsudski 12, in 1936, that it all started at the university. ‘Right side for Poles, left side for Jews’ [see Anti-Jewish Legislation in Poland] 13. Poles could sit down during lectures, but Jews had to stand. Students beat up young Jews on the street. It was awful.

• During the war

Then the boycotts of Jewish shops started. Poles would stand at the doors and watch to make sure that other goyim didn’t go into those shops. One day I even got beaten up for going into a Jewish store. Mama asked me to go and buy something for her. So I’m going into the shop and they start to hit me with this stick. ‘You Jewish flunky!’ they shouted at me. I burst into tears, because it really hurt. And all because I was blonde and didn’t look like most Jewish girls, and they took me for a goy.

In fact, I have to say that anti-Semitism has always been around, as long as Poland has been Poland: a millennium of anti-Semitism. They used to say, in small towns, in villages and everywhere, that the Jew must be beaten, because they slaughter Christian babies and take the blood for matzah [blood libel]. What more do you need?

And then just after the war there was that pogrom [the Kielce Pogrom] 14. There too, it all started with a little boy being hidden, and immediately the rumor went round that the Jews had kidnapped him for matzah.

In 1939 the Russians came and then the Germans. We were taken to the ghetto. Of the whole family, only I and my sister Cyla, who was already in Palestine by then, survived. The rest of the family was shot in Ponary 15.

I escaped on the fourth day after they put us in the ghetto. I was very lucky I was young. A whole group of us, young people, left the ghetto. Then, sleeping in the woods, we walked east. That was right at the beginning of the war. If they’d caught us, it would have been back to the ghetto and we’d have been sent to our deaths.

In the end we made it over onto the Soviet Union side. And there it all started. We found it very hard. We were searched, they started interrogating us, but they didn’t lock us up in prison. We went to work in a kolkhoz 16. Then I escaped from the kolkhoz and got to Smolensk. I don’t want to talk about that any more.

In Smolensk – I will be honest – I netted a very high-ranking Russian. He was a general, and a senior military prosecutor. He was 16 years older than me. I was 22 at the time, and what did I have? I was poor, I had nobody in the world, nothing to live on, but I must admit that I was pretty. He was attractive, too – handsome, elegant.

The Russian women were crazy about him, and he would call me ‘child,’ ‘child’ – I was a child to him. Times were different then. I married him and we lived together in Smolensk. I have no more to say on the subject.

Then in 1949 the men from the NKVD 17 came and took me away. They threw my husband out of the Party. They accused him of marrying a woman with anti-Soviet views. They were carrying out these purges in the army at that time, and the same thing happened to everyone who had a Jewish wife.

They accused me of spying for Hitler. They wanted to give me 25 years, but they didn’t have any evidence that I was a spy. So they changed the charge. They said I was a cosmopolitan 18. They sentenced me to ten years. I was sent to a camp, to Kolyma 19.

My husband did what he could to stop them sending me there; he knew that I was an innocent child. He knew what was behind it all. When the sentence was passed on me he went home and shot himself because he hadn’t been able to save me. That’s it, there’s nothing more to say about it.

The NKVD officials took everything I had, even the family photographs that I’d managed to take with me and then smuggle out of the ghetto. Not to mention my gold rings and things like that. They never gave anything back. They deported me to a camp deep in Siberia, in Kolyma. There is only sky and tundra there. Nothing grows there. In winter only mountains and ice: to have water to boil you have to chop up blocks of ice.

Our camp was just for women. We worked, in very harsh conditions. If anyone has read Solzhenitsyn 20, they know what it was like there. Our camp was 30 kilometers away from the one where Solzhenitsyn was. We were there at more or less the same time.

There were not only Jews there. We were from different places: from cities, small towns, even from the country. There were German women there, too, and one Englishwoman. I remember that Englishwoman well. She had been a language teacher in Moscow. A Russian, an old general, had taken a fancy to her. She didn’t want to get involved with him, so he dealt with her by having her sent to Kolyma. She was so fragile and delicate; she was perhaps 19. My God, how sorry I felt for her.

I was supposed to sit out my ten years there, but they let me out after seven. That was after Stalin died. Khrushchev 21 said then that those eight million innocent people sentenced to Kolyma had to be released. I was released after seven years’ work in hunger and cold, in the most terrible conditions.

That was in 1955. I was put on a train. Twelve days later I arrived in Moscow. They wanted to send me to a kolkhoz in some village in Belarus. They thought that all we people liberated from the camps were anti-Soviet. They didn’t want us spreading propaganda, talking about the conditions in the camps.

I didn’t want to go to a kolkhoz for anything in the world. So I got out in Moscow and went straight to the NKVD. How did I look then? Like I was straight out of a camp: I was hungry, I dreamed of just a slice of bread, I had no money, no food, no home, but I was young, pretty and audacious. I thought, ‘What can I lose, when I’ve already lost everything? I have no-one, I have nothing.’

So I went to the commissariat and told the NKVD officer on duty that I was there on a very important matter, and that I had to speak to the chief of chiefs, and nobody else. The duty officer looked at me dubiously and said, ‘Sir, there is a citizen here to see you, she’s got some important matter to speak to you about, she can’t reveal what, can you see her?’

[Editor’s note: Instead of ‘Sir’ probably ‘Comrade’ was used in the conversation according to the contemporary communist jargon.] And his door was open, he looked at me like so and said, ‘Let her in.’

• After the war and later years

And there and then I said to him that I had come to him as to my own father, that I had nobody, that I had come out of a camp, that I had been rehabilitated [see Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union] 22. And at the end I said, ‘I have come to ask for help.

I have no work, nowhere to live. Look, I’m young and healthy, how can I go and live under a bridge? Sir, can you imagine that for 24 hours now not a thing has passed my lips, because I haven’t got any money to buy food with and I have no-one.’ That moved him; he stroked my head and said, ‘I was just on my way to a restaurant for lunch, come with me, child.’ So I went.

When we walked into the restaurant we were shown straight to a special table for people in superior positions. And he said to the waitress, ‘Please bring this young lady food that will make her remember you well,’ and the waitress looked at me and probably thought ‘Well, a fine ‘lady’ she is!’ I looked half-dead, I had only just come out of the camp. But I didn’t care, and all I thought was, ‘Let her talk, let her not talk, just let them give me something.’

I would have happily eaten his lunch, too. When I felt that full feeling in my stomach I blushed with happiness. And he said, ‘And now we shall go to the militia.’ So we went. We went in, he picked up the phone and called this factory director and asked me if I could sew. Sewing was one thing I could do. So he said to this factory director that tomorrow he would be sending a girl, a young woman, and told him to give me a job and a room to live in.

And then I said, ‘That’s all very well, but where am I going to stay tonight? I haven’t got anywhere to sleep.’ He said, ‘Today you shall go with me to my house, my wife will give you bed linen and everything.’ He was a man of his word. He took me to his house and introduced me to his wife. And I could see that it was a decent household.

His wife gave me tea and made some sandwiches. When I had eaten she took me to the bathroom. They even had warm water, but I washed in cold water and fell asleep... I’m sure that if they hadn’t woken me up I would have slept there for a month.

The next day he and his wife went with me to the factory. I got a room as well. And that’s how it was, that’s how I found work and a place to live in Moscow. Only that was no way out for me. I didn’t want to stay in Moscow.

I wanted to go to Israel. I wrote to my sister Cyla, who lived in Israel, and asked her to send me an invitation. I took the invitation to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I walked in and saw this real looker, a young Russian, sitting behind the desk. I told him, ‘It’s like this.’ He asked me why I wanted to leave the Soviet Union? I said, ‘I have no one here. I am alone. And there I have a sister.’

Then he said to me, ‘So you want to go to those Jews, those speculators?’ – I guess he didn’t realize that I was Jewish; I’ve always had light hair – and he went on, ‘That’s no nation. They’re speculators, swindlers, and you, you’re a young, pretty woman – what, you can’t find a husband here? You won’t be alone; you’ll have children yet. And where will you have it as good as here in our Soviet Union?’

I couldn’t tell him them that I had been in the camps. I couldn’t admit to that. They’d said to me that if I ever told anyone about that, they would come and take me away again. Anyway, it would probably only have made matters worse. In the end, he sent me away and told me to come back in two months. But I’d already realized that it was not going to work, that they wouldn’t let me out of the Soviet Union.

I worked in that factory sewing clothes for three years, and then I wrote my sister another letter. I asked her to help me get to Poland somehow. It turned out that a distant cousin of ours had a husband who was a Polish diplomat. He helped me to get to Poland. I came back in 1958.

Unfortunately there was no way of getting to Israel from Poland, either, because Khrushchev had said that Poland was not to become a stopping-off point, and that they weren’t to let people go who had returned from the Soviet Union. So I stayed in Warsaw.

In Warsaw I moved in with that diplomat and his wife – after all, they were family. As soon as I arrived I went to the editorial office of the ‘Jewish Word,’ which was called ‘Folksshtimme’ at the time. I walked into the editorial office, and there I saw a whole group of people I knew from Wilno.

As soon as they saw me, they said, ‘What a good job you’re here – tomorrow you can come to work.’ One of my friends from back in Wilno took me to the editor-in-chief and said ‘This girl knows Yiddish well.’ And that’s how I started work with the paper.

At first I was a typist – it was a huge editorial office; there must have been about 100 people working there: editors, proofreaders. Not like it is now. Then, 98 percent of the issue was in Yiddish and only 2 percent in Polish. And now it’s the other way round: 90 percent is Polish and 10 percent Yiddish.

Not long after I arrived in Warsaw I married for the second time. I must admit I was pretty and men liked me. My husband was Jewish. He was called Meir Berger. He was handsome and knew Yiddish ‘perfekt.’ He was from Volhynia; I can’t remember where from exactly.

When he was seven his father died and his mother was left alone with three children. They didn’t have anything to live on, so Meir went to learn to be a carpenter, to be able to keep the family. Meir didn’t have any higher education. He was self-taught, but he had more knowledge than many a university graduate. There was no subject he couldn’t talk about.

We met at the home of my distant cousin and her husband, where I was living. He was a friend of theirs. He was single and I was single and they very much liked him and talked well of him. Very soon, after just one week, we got married in a registry office. I didn’t want to be a lover and I was sick of living alone. He too wanted to have the security that I would be with him. And so we proposed to each other.

We didn’t have children; I didn’t want them. I had not yet recovered, and then to have a baby at once... no, no. All the more so that frankly we weren’t very well off.

Meir was a communist, an idealist. Before the war he had even been in prison for his communist activities. After the war he moved to Wroclaw and worked for the party. When the anti-Semitic purges in the party began, he applied to be moved to Warsaw. That was about 1955, 1956.

Before he left Wroclaw he was offered a move to officers’ school and a high-up post in the UB [see Office for Public Security] 23 But at that Meir said, ‘I’m not cut out for that kind of work.’ And that was the end of his party career. When he came to Warsaw he still belonged to the Party but was just a rank-and-file member.

Then he remembered that as a young boy he had done a carpentry apprenticeship, and step-by-step with his friends he organized an artisan co-operative. Its members were carpenters, furriers, cobblers and others. Meir was a carpenter, then a cabinetmaker, and ultimately he was the head of the carpentry section. As I said, we weren’t very well off; he earned very, very little, and I went out to work then, too [in ‘Folksshtimme’].

Our house was always full of guests. On Fridays sometimes even 20 people would come round, and I would make chulent. And as I already told you, chulent was something I could do. In fact we often had guests round, and we went out a lot to other people’s houses. Our house was full of people, all Jews. It didn’t matter whether they were ministers, or held other important functions, all that was important was that we were united by the fact that we felt Jewish.

Meir remained a communist to the end. He wouldn’t hear of our going to Israel. I even tried to apply for documents to go, but he didn’t want to let me. And so we stayed.

In the 1960s there were still a lot of Jews in Poland. Our editorial office [‘Folksshtimme’] was in the same building as the headquarters of the Jewish Social and Cultural Society 24. I remember how once I took part in a recital competition organized by the JSCS. I prepared a poem by Norwid, ‘To a German poet.’ I won the first prize. [Norwid, Cyprian Kamil (1821-1883): famous Polish poet, dramatist and painter]

I also read Russian and Jewish poetry many times at festivals and on other occasions at the JSCS. Once I was offered a position as an actress in the Jewish Theater, but I refused – I preferred to stay with the editorial office.

In 1968 my husband and I lived in Warsaw. He wasn’t thrown out of the Party; he was just a normal rank-and-file member. But I do remember that Meir was very distressed by those events [see Gomulka Campaign] 25. He couldn’t get over the fact that the communists had hounded out their own comrades, their own people... From then on he withdrew into himself more and more.

Then he fell ill and couldn’t work any longer. He was awarded special benefit for having been imprisoned as a communist before the war [World War II]. I was working then to keep us. I would have preferred him never to have worked if it had meant that he could have lived longer. I would have worked a thousand times harder just to have him with me.

Meir was an exceptional man. Exceptional! Everyone envied me him. He wouldn’t eat anything until I came home from work. He always had a meal ready for me. He read an awful lot, and was very knowledgeable. Everyone called him ‘professor.’

Meir died in the 1970s from leukemia. That was after the Jewish doctors had been thrown out of the hospitals, all the best doctors, so who could have treated him? [Editor’s note: Mrs. Berger probably means by this the consequences of the events of March 1968]. In hospital they only made him feel worse. The anti-Semitism in the hospital was terrible.

All the Jewish life came to an end after 1968. Now there are really no Jews in Poland, and those that are still here are assimilated. They don’t know much about Judaism. They are married to Poles – they’re more likely to go to church than to the synagogue. They’re not Jews, to me they’re just rotten people.

As for the changes since 1989 26, I’d rather not express my views. I have to say, looking at our own Jewish backyard – the community organization and so on – that I don’t even want to have any contact with them.

A few years ago I went to Germany with some other Jewish combatants. I experienced great disappointment then. We went into a church, and they’re all on their knees. And I thought, ‘Bloody hell, back there, in your own backyard, you’re all Jews, but here you’re Christians – so exactly who are you, then?’ And so that’s why I don’t like associating with them.

I have some very good friends, well-educated people, but they are Poles. I don’t really have any Jewish friends. The exception is one lady, who’s a Jewish historian. She comes from Wilno, too. We often talk.

And that’s my life and all about it… I’ve told you everything now.

• Glossary:

1 Dos Yidishe Wort/Folksztyme: Bilingual Jewish magazine that has been published in Warsaw every other week since 1992. The articles deal with the activities of the Jewish community in Poland as well as with current affairs. In addition there are reprints of articles from the Jewish press abroad.

2 Hasidism (Hasidic): Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century that reacted against Talmudic learning and maintained that God's presence was in all of one's surroundings and that one should serve God in one's every deed and word.

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

3 Betar: Brith Trumpledor (Hebrew) meaning Trumpledor Society; right-wing Revisionist Jewish youth movement. It was founded in 1923 in Riga by Vladimir Jabotinsky, in memory of J. Trumpledor, one of the first fighters to be killed in Palestine, and the fortress Betar, which was heroically defended for many months during the Bar Kohba uprising.

Its aim was to propagate the program of the revisionists and prepare young people to fight and live in Palestine. It organized emigration through both legal and illegal channels. It was a paramilitary organization; its members wore uniforms. They supported the idea to create a Jewish legion in order to liberate Palestine. From 1936-39 the popularity of Betar diminished. During WWII many of its members formed guerrilla groups.         

4 Hakhsharah: Training camps organized by the Zionists, in which Jewish youth in the Diaspora received intellectual and physical training, especially in agricultural work, in preparation for settling in Palestine.

5 Vilnius Ghetto: 95 percent of the estimated 265,000 Lithuanian Jews (254,000 people) were murdered during the Nazi occupation; no other communities were so comprehensively destroyed during WWII. Vilnius was occupied by the Germans on 26th June 1941 and two ghettos were built in the city afterwards, separated by Niemiecka Street, which lay outside both of them. On 6th September all Jews were taken to the ghettoes, at first randomly to either Ghetto 1 or Ghetto 2.

During September they were continuously slaughtered by Einsatzkommando units. Later craftsmen were moved to Ghetto 1 with their families and all others to Ghetto 2. During the 'Yom Kippur Action' on 1st October 3,000 Jews were killed. In three additional actions in October the entire Ghetto 2 was liquidated and later another 9,000 of the survivors were killed. In late 1941 the official population of the ghetto was 12,000 people and it rose to 20,000 by 1943 as a result of further transports.

In August 1943 over 7,000 people were sent to various labor camps in Lithuania and Estonia. The Vilnius ghetto was liquidated under the supervision of Bruno Kittel on 23rd and 24th September 1943. On Rossa Square a selection took place: those able to work were sent to labor camps in Latvia and Estonia and the rest to different death camps in Poland.

By 25th September 1943 only 2,000 Jews officially remained in Vilnius in small labor camps and more than 1,000 were hiding outside and were gradually hunted down. Those permitted to live continued to work at the Kailis and HKP factories until 2nd June 1944 when 1,800 of them were shot and less than 200 remained in hiding until the Red Army liberated Vilnius on 13th July 1944.  (Source:http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/vilnius%20ghetto.html)

6 Hashomer Hatzair in Poland: From 1918 Hashomer Hatzair operated throughout Poland, with its headquarters in Warsaw. It emphasized the ideological and vocational training of future settlers in Palestine and personal development in groups. Its main aim was the creation of a socialist Jewish state in Palestine.

Initially it was under the influence of the Zionist Organization in Poland, of which it was an autonomous part. In the mid-1920s it broke away and joined the newly established World Scouting Union, Hashomer Hatzair. In 1931 it had 22,000 members in Poland organized in 262 'nests' (Heb. 'ken'). During the occupation it conducted clandestine operations in most ghettos.

One of its members was Mordechaj Anielewicz, who led the rising in the Warsaw ghetto. After the war it operated legally in Poland as a party, part of the He Halutz. It was disbanded by the communist authorities in 1949.

7 YIVO: Yidisher Visenshaftlikher Institut, an Institute for Jewish Research, initially the Yiddish Scientific Institute . The first secular Yiddish academic institute, founded in 1925 at a conference of Jewish scholars in Berlin. The institute's headquarters were in Wilno. Its primary aim were the studies of the Jewish population, with particular emphasis on the Jews of Central Europe. It had 4 sections: history, philology, economics and statistics, and psychology and education.

The institute's greatest achievements include the formalization of a literary form in the Yiddish language, the inventory of archival materials and historical relics of Jewish culture, and sociological studies of the Jewish youth. In the 1930s a training program was developed enabling students with an interest in Jewish matters to gain a specialist education not offered by Polish universities. Leading figures involved in the institute's work included Simon Dubnow, Jacob Shatzky and Noah Prylucki. After the outbreak of World War II the New York branch of YIVO assumed the central direction, and still operates to this day.

8 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.

9 Peretz, Isaac Leib (1852-1915): Author and poet writing in Yiddish, one of the fathers and central figures of modern Yiddish literature, researcher of Jewish folklore. Born in Zamosc, he had both a religious and a secular education (he took courses in bookkeeping and studied law in Warsaw). Initially he wrote in Polish and Hebrew. His debut [in Yiddish] is considered to be the poem Monish, (1888, Di yidishe Folksbibliotek). From 1890 he lived in Warsaw. Peretz was an advocate of Yiddishism, and attended a conference on the subject of the Yiddish language in Jewish culture held in Czernowitz (1908). His most widely read works are his novellas, which he wrote at first in the positivist style and later in the modernist vein. In his work he often used folk motifs from the culture of Eastern European Jews (Khasidish, 1908). His best known works include Hurban beit tzaddik (The Ruin of the Tzaddik's House, 1903), Di Goldene Keyt (The Golden Chain, 1906). During World War I he was involved in bringing help to the victims of war. He died of a heart attack.

10 An-ski, Szymon (pen name of Szlojme Zajnwel Rapaport) (1863-1920): Writer, ethnographer, socialist activist. Born in a village near Vitebsk. In his youth he was an advocate of haskalah, but later joined the radical movement Narodnaya Vola. Under threat of arrest he left Russia in 1892 but returned there in 1905. From 1911-14 he led an ethnographic expedition researching the folklore of the Jews of Podolye and Volhynia. During the war he organized committees bringing aid to Jewish victims of the conflict and pogroms. In 1918 he became involved in organizing cultural life in Vilnius, as a co-founder of the Union of Jewish Writers and Journalists and the Jewish Ethnographic Society. Two years before his death he moved to Warsaw. He is the author of the Bund party's anthem, 'Di shvue' (Yid. oath). The participation of the Bund in the Revolution of 1905 influenced An-ski's decision to write in Yiddish. In his later work he used elements of Jewish legends collected during his ethnographic expedition and his experiences from WWI. His most famous work is The Dybbuk (which to this day remains one of the most popular Yiddish works for the stage). An-ski's entire literary and scientific oeuvre was published in Warsaw in 1920-25 as a 15-volume edition.

11 Bund: The short name of the General Jewish Union of Working People in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, Bund means Union in Yiddish. The Bund was a social democratic organization representing Jewish craftsmen from the Western areas of the Russian Empire. It was founded in Vilnius in 1897. In 1906 it joined the autonomous fraction of the Russian Social Democratic Working Party and took up a Menshevist position. After the Revolution of 1917 the organization split: one part was anti-Soviet power, while the other remained in the Bolsheviks' Russian Communist Party. In 1921 the Bund dissolved itself in the USSR, but continued to exist in other countries.

12 Pilsudski, Jozef (1867-1935): Polish activist in the independence cause, politician, statesman, marshal. With regard to the cause of Polish independence he represented the pro-Austrian current, which believed that the Polish state would be reconstructed with the assistance of Austria-Hungary. When Poland regained its independence in January 1919, he was elected Head of State by the Legislative Sejm. In March 1920 he was nominated marshal, and until December 1922 he held the positions of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army. After the murder of the president, Gabriel Narutowicz, he resigned from all his posts and withdrew from politics. He returned in 1926 in a political coup. He refused the presidency offered to him, and in the new government held the posts of war minister and general inspector of the armed forces. He was prime minister twice, from 1926-1928 and in 1930. He worked to create a system of national security by concluding bilateral non-aggression pacts with the USSR (1932) and Germany (1934). He sought opportunities to conclude firm alliances with France and Britain. In 1932, owing to his deteriorating health, Pilsudski resigned from his functions. He was buried in the Crypt of Honor in the Wawel Cathedral of the Royal Castle in Cracow.

13 Anti-Jewish Legislation in Poland: After World War I nationalist groupings in Poland lobbied for the introduction of the numerus clausus (Lat. closed number - a limit on the number of people admitted to the practice of a given profession or to an institution - a university, government office or association) in relation to Jews and other ethnic minorities. The most radical groupings demanded the introduction of the numerus nullus principle, i.e. a total ban on admittance to universities and certain professions. The numerus nullus principle was violated by the Polish constitution. The battle for its introduction continued throughout the interwar period. In practice the numerus clausus was applied informally. In 1938 it was indirectly introduced at the Bar.

14 Kielce Pogrom: On 4th July 1946 the alleged kidnapping of a Polish boy led to a pogrom in which 42 people were killed and over 40 wounded. The pogrom also prompted other anti-Jewish incidents in Kielce region. These events caused mass emigrations of Jews to Israel and other countries.

15 Ponary: Forest near Vilnius that became the killing field for the majority of Jews from Vilnius. The victims were shot to death by the SS and the German police assisted by Lithuanian collaborators. In September-October 1941 alone over 12,000 Jews from Vilnius and the vicinity were killed there. In total 70,000 to 100,000 people, the majority of them Jews were killed in Ponary.

16 Kolkhoz: In the Soviet Union the policy of gradual and voluntary collectivization of agriculture was adopted in 1927 to encourage food production while freeing labor and capital for industrial development. In 1929, with only 4% of farms in kolkhozes, Stalin ordered the confiscation of peasants' land, tools, and animals; the kolkhoz replaced the family farm.

17 NKVD: (Russ.: Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del), People's Committee of Internal Affairs, the supreme security authority in the USSR - the secret police. Founded by Lenin in 1917, it nevertheless played an insignificant role until 1934, when it took over the GPU (the State Political Administration), the political police.

The NKVD had its own police and military formations, and also possessed the powers to pass sentence on political matters, and as such in practice had total control over society.

Under Stalin's rule the NKVD was the key instrument used to terrorize the civilian population. The NKVD ran a network of labor camps for millions of prisoners, the Gulag.

The heads of the NKVD were as follows: Genrikh Yagoda (to 1936), Nikolai Yezhov (to 1938) and Lavrenti Beria.

During the war against Germany the political police, the KGB, was spun off from the NKVD. After the war it also operated on USSR-occupied territories, including in Poland, where it assisted the nascent communist authorities in suppressing opposition. In 1946 the NKVD was renamed the Ministry of the Interior.

18 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.'

19 Kolyma: River in north-east Siberia; the Kolyma basin is best known for its Gulag camps and gold mining. Between 1922 and 1956 there were hundreds of camps along the banks of the river, where both criminals and political prisoners were transferred. They were mainly working in the gold mines, but there were other industrial plants built there too. Over 3 million people were taken to the Kolyma camps.

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

21 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

22 Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union: Many people who had been arrested, disappeared or killed during the Stalinist era were rehabilitated after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, where Khrushchev publicly debunked the cult of Stalin and lifted the veil of secrecy from what had happened in the USSR during Stalin's leadership. It was only after the official rehabilitation that people learnt for the first time what had happened to their relatives as information on arrested people had not been disclosed before.

23 Office for Public Security, UBP: Popularly known as the UB, officially established to protect the interests of national security, but in fact served as a body whose function was to stamp out all forms of resistance during the establishment and entrenchment of communist power in Poland.

The UB was founded in 1944. Branches of the UBP were set up immediately after the occupation by the Red Army of the Polish lands west of the Bug. The first UBP functionaries were communist activists trained by the NKVD, and former soldiers of the People's Army and members of the Polish Workers' Party (PPR). In many cases they were also collaborationists from the period of German occupation and criminals.

The senior officials were NKVD officers. The primary tasks of the UBP were to crush all underground organizations with a western orientation. In 1956 the Security Service was formed and many former officers of the UBP were transferred.

24 Social and Cultural Society of Polish Jews (TSKZ): Founded in 1950 when the Central Committee of Polish Jews merged with the Jewish Society of Culture. From 1950-1991 it was the sole body representing Jews in Poland. Its statutory aim was to develop, preserve and propagate Jewish culture. During the socialist period this aim was subordinated to communist ideology.

Post-1989 most young activists gravitated towards other Jewish organizations. However, the SCSPJ continues to organize a range of cultural events and has its own magazine - The Jewish Word. It is primarily an organization of older people, who, however, have been involved with it for years.

25 Gomulka Campaign: A campaign to sack Jews employed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the army and the central administration. The trigger of this anti-Semitic campaign was the involvement of the Socialist Bloc countries on the Arab side in the Middle East conflict, in connection with which Moscow ordered purges in state institutions.

On 19th June 1967, at a trade union congress, the then First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party [PZPR], Wladyslaw Gomulka, accused the Jews of lack of loyalty to the state and of publicly demonstrating their enthusiasm for Israel's victory in the Six-Day-War. This marked the start of purges among journalists and people of other creative professions. Poland also severed diplomatic relations with Israel.

On 8th March 1968 there was a protest at Warsaw University. The Ministry of Internal Affairs responded by launching a press campaign and organizing mass demonstrations in factories and workplaces during which 'Zionists' and 'trouble-makers' were indicted and anti-Semitic and anti-intelligentsia slogans shouted.

Following the events of March, purges were also staged in all state institutions, from factories to universities, on criteria of nationality and race. 'Family liability' was also introduced (e.g. with respect to people whose spouses were Jewish). Jews were forced to emigrate. From 1968-1971 15,000-30,000 people left Poland. They were stripped of their citizenship and right of return.

26 Events of 1989: In 1989 the communist regime in Poland finally collapsed and the process of forming a multiparty, pluralistic, democratic political system and introducing a capitalist economy began. Communist policy and the deepening economic crisis since the early 1980s had caused increasing social discontent and weariness and the radicalization of moods among Solidarity activists (Solidarity: a trade union that developed into a political party and played a key role in overthrowing communism).

On 13th December 1981 the PZPR had introduced martial law (lifted on 22nd June 1983). Growing economic difficulties, social moods and the strength of the opposition persuaded the national authorities to begin gradually liberalizing the political system. Changes in the USSR also influenced the policy of the PZPR.

A series of strikes in April-May and August 1988, and demonstrations in many towns and cities forced the authorities to seek a compromise with the opposition.

After a few months of meetings and consultations the Round Table negotiations took place (6th Feb.-5th April 1989) with the participation of Solidarity activists (Lech Walesa) and the democratic opposition (Bronislaw Geremek, Jacek Kuron, Tadeusz Mazowiecki).

The resolutions it passed signaled the end of the PZPR's monopoly on power and cleared the way for the overthrow of the system. In parliamentary elections (4th June 1989) the PZPR and its subordinate political groups suffered defeat. In fall 1989 a program of fundamental economic, social and ownership transformations was drawn up and in January 1990 the PZPR dissolved.

Halina Najduchowska
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Joanna Fikus
Date of Interview: June 2005

Mrs. Halina Najduchowska is 80 years old; she is a retired sociologist. She comes from a family of assimilated Jews from Lodz.

Our conversation took place in Mrs. Najduchowska’s apartment, which is situated in a pre-war building in the Warsaw district of Mokotow. The place of honor among her many books is reserved for two family photographs. 

Mrs. Najduchowska remembers her childhood in detail, and enjoys talking about it.

As she said herself, our interview was quite an emotional experience for her – many memories came back, both good ones and bad ones.

• My family background
• My siblings
• Growing up
• In the ghetto
• In concentration and labor camps
• After the war
• Later life
• Glossary

• My family background

I know nothing about my grandparents and great-grandparents. Unfortunately, none of my grandparents, either from my mother’s or from my father’s side, were alive by the time I was born. I do know that one of my grandfathers was named Daniel, and I suspect it must have been my mother’s father, because there was a tradition of naming boys Daniel in that family.

My mother’s family comes from Lodz. Mother’s name was Maria Biber. She was born on 25th March 1899 in Lodz. She had lots of siblings: three sisters and two brothers: Sala, Hela, Ruta, Leon and Motek. There were six children altogether. I knew all my aunts, except Ruta, and uncles. My mother’s father died young and her mother died in 1919. The children were left on their own.

The oldest sister [of my mother] was already a married woman at that time. I don’t know her full name, we called her Auntie Sala. She lived in Lask. Her husband’s name was Lajb Borensztajn. After Grandma’s death, she took the youngest sister, Hela, to live with her, and my mother was left with the two younger brothers, Leon and Motek, and with Ruta. My mother was taking care of them, but it did not last too long. She soon got married.

My mother supported herself and her brothers by giving private lessons, they were probably Polish lessons. She would go to her pupils’ homes. By the standards of those days, my mother was quite an educated person – she had completed the equivalent of today’s gymnasium. She had graduated from a school in Lodz. She did the ‘small finals’ [semi-final exams held in the middle high-school years]. She knew Polish, Russian and German – she had probably studied these languages at school.

In the United States there lived an aunt of my mother’s, who had several children. She decided that since there were all these orphans left behind, she would take one of the children to live with her. And my mother was supposed to be the one to go. But she wrote to her aunt saying that she couldn’t go to the States, because she had already given her word to a man [her future husband] and so she couldn’t do it. As a result, it was my mother’s younger sister Ruta who went to the USA in 1919.

My mother’s brother Motek was crippled. As far as I know, when he was just a baby, less than a year old, he fell, during a bath I think, and so one of his legs was shorter than the other. I don’t know exactly what the problem was, but in any case he was crippled and it was very visible.

Motek got married at the beginning of the 1930s. His wife’s name was Helena, and their daughter was called Anulka. Helena was a seamstress, she adjusted dresses for people, and he was a caretaker. They lived in a basement room opposite the park in the area close to the university.

My father’s family came from a small town whose name I don’t remember, somewhere in the German sector. [Editor’s note: After 1795 the Polish state ceased to exist, and was split among three neighbors: Russia, Austria and Prussia. Prussia took over the western and northern part of Poland which was henceforth known as the Prussian or German sector. Poland regained its independence in 1918.]

My father’s name was Beniamin Szwarc and he was 13 years older than my mother, which means he was born in 1886. However, I don’t know the day or the month. Papa was a small child when his family moved to Lodz. My grandpa died when I was just a few months old [1926] and Grandma had died before then.

My father had siblings: two sisters, who were much older than he, then a younger sister, and a brother; their names were Hasura, which might have been short for Hanna Sura, Ita and Lola. I don’t remember the brother’s name. I believe my father was the youngest. I don’t know anything about the brother; he might have been around the same age as my father.

My father completed three or four classes of elementary school. When he was nine or ten years old his parents sent him off to learn to be a shoemaker. But after two to four days Father came home and said he would not go back there. He said one could learn to repair shoes in just a few days, and this was not for him. Then they tried to make him into a tailor but that didn’t work out either. Finally, he discovered electro-technology. He studied it as someone’s apprentice. This is how people learned their trades in those days.

As far back as I can remember, my father was always working as an electrician. This was quite an exclusive profession in those days, when electric light was only being developed. When someone’s lighting broke down, they would call my father and he would repair it. His entire workshop fit into a single briefcase – inside it, he had an inductor, a few screwdrivers, and some other small things. My father went to work in the same clothes he wore all day long

He didn’t make much money, we were quite poor. He would be gone all day, but he always came home for lunch at 2pm. We would all sit at the table, each person at their own place [at the table] and we would all have lunch together.

Papa did not serve in the military. In order to avoid being recruited into the Russian army, he had cut off two of his toes. [Editor’s note: men recruited into the tsarist army would spend 25 years in service – hence common cases of self-mutilation, a method of avoiding military service.] This was not a serious disability, he could walk normally, and you didn’t see it when he was walking. Quite simply, I knew about this because I saw it many times, and generally, it was a well known fact in the family.

My father’s oldest sister, Hasura, had two sons and a daughter. They were much older than me. I am not even sure if I addressed them by their first names, or more formally, as ‘cousin.’ Hasura lived in Lodz. I do not remember her husband’s name. Their sons survived in the Soviet Union. And the daughter, along with her husband, were both in Warsaw. They paid a very high price to get into Polski Hotel 1 and then they were killed.

The other sister’s name was Ita. My parents were good friends with her daughter, Sala, and the husband, whose name escapes me. They had two daughters and two sons: Hanka, Halinka, Romek and Izio. Halinka, was my age [she was born in 1925], while her sister Hanka was my sister’s age [born in 1923]. The children were also good friends with one another. The generations had gotten mixed up a bit. They were all killed in Lodz.

My father’s youngest sister was called Lola. I don’t know her last name. She lived in Berlin. When Hitler came to power 2, she emigrated to Palestine and settled in Haifa.

In 1936 or 1937 my father’s younger brother, whose name I don’t remember, took his wife and his daughter Dorka to Palestine, but after two years they came back. They probably did not like it there. Dorka was the same age as me. She died in Lodz Ghetto 3, her parents were killed in Auschwitz.

My mother and her siblings lived in a single room at 33 Wschodnia Street in Lodz. It was the second floor. Right on the other side of one of the walls of this room there was a restaurant. And on the day of my grandma’s [Mrs. Biber’s] death, my future father happened to be sitting in this restaurant, having his lunch. And he heard the terrible crying of children. He went over to the apartment to see what was going on. And he fell in love with my mother.

• My siblings

My parents’ wedding was on 11th November 1920 – they chose this date to celebrate the anniversary of Poland’s independence 4. My parents were also living at 33 Wschodnia Street, in the same building where my mother lived with her siblings. Except that their place was a floor below, on the first floor.

Wschodnia Street was inhabited by Jews. Not exclusively, of course, but it was a sort of Jewish quarter. There were some orthodox Jews living there as well. And of course you would hear Jewish [Yiddish] spoken in the street.

After my parents got married, my mother’s brothers moved in with them. At the age of 13 one of the brothers, Leon, took offence at my father. I will tell you how this happened. It was 1920 or 1921. My father was an electrician, and he wanted to teach Leon the trade. He took him as an apprentice, but Leon did not like the arrangement.

What he especially did not like was that my father would make him carry his briefcase when the two of them went over to people’s homes to repair the lighting. He was insulted by this; he told me so himself, over 40 years later. And he ran away from home.

There was no news from him until 1938. That’s when a telegram came to our house, from Spain. My mother took this telegram, read the word ‘Leon’ but then she couldn’t read any further. She asked the postman to read it to her. It turned out the telegram was in Spanish. But the postman misunderstood one word in it.

He though it said ‘dead.’ My mother fainted. And I ran downstairs to our neighbor, Rozia Bekier, a very close friend of my mother’s. She saw that it was in Spanish and told me where to go, who would translate it for me. It turned out that the telegram said: ‘Everything is fine. Leon.’

In any case, I can feel it even today – my heart pounding, as I ran over to Zawadzka Street, because that’s where this person lived who knew Spanish. And I could find this apartment even today. This is how strongly I felt about it. Soon afterwards, a letter from Leon arrived, and it turned out that he had taken part in the war in Spain 5. He needed some documents, such as his birth certificate. This is why he suddenly remembered that he had a family.

My mother was my father’s second wife. The first wife had died. I don’t know anything about her. My father had three children from that first marriage: Sala, Fela and Hersz. These children were all placed in an orphanage in Lodz – apparently, my father just couldn’t manage on his own with three children.

It wasn’t until after my parents got married that these kids returned home. And I was raised together with them. All three completed elementary school. These were schools for Jewish children, and the only difference from Polish schools was that Saturdays were free, and that Judaism was the religion taught at school.

My older stepsister was named Sala, and the younger one was Fela, and the step-brother’s name was Hersz. We were step-siblings, but this did not make any difference, we didn’t feel it that way. They addressed my mother as ‘auntie.’

The oldest sister was 14 or 15 years older than me, it must have been 1931 or 1932 when she got married. But we stayed in close touch with one another after that. She lived in Baluty [poor, working-class section of Lodz, in the northern part of the city, inhabited mostly by Jews], at 48 Limanowskiego Street, in a single room with her husband, Pinkus Wyszegrod, their son Bronek, and her husband’s mother.

I remember this room in Baluty quite well, because later [during the war] I lived there myself, with my parents. During the war, as you know, the Baluty area was the ghetto. I remember what this room looked like before the war: the door was in the middle of the wall, and on the left there was a tile stove.

Behind the stove there were two beds, where Sala and Pinkus and their small son all slept. To the right of the door there was a curtain which separated off the space used by my sister’s mother-in-law. And in the middle there was a table and some chairs. It was a sunny room. The water and the toilet were both outside, in the yard, but they did have electric light.

When I was seven years old, I was already an aunt [Bronek was born in 1932]. Sala and Pinkus had a small ice-cream shop. It was almost exactly opposite their apartment – on the other side of the road. Sala used to help her husband run this shop. An ice-cream cost 5 groszy [unit of currency, 1/100 of 1 zloty]. It was scooped up with a spoon into a wafer.

In the summer they were quite busy, but in the wintertime it all came to a standstill, maybe they managed to sell some wafers and some chocolate, but it was not a good business then. Pinkus had more free time then so he studied various languages, for instance English and Esperanto. He was very intelligent, and he just taught himself – out of books.

My other step-sister, Fela, was twelve years older than me. She was a seamstress. Before the war she fell in love with Henryk Szmulewicz, but she left him and married a Jew from an aristocratic family [meaning that they were educated and wealthy]. His name was Pawel Merenlender. People called him ‘Polek.’ I suspect that she did it partly out of snobbery. Pawel’s brother was a lawyer, and there were a few doctors in the family, too. Pawel worked in an office.

Fela gave birth to a child, but from the very beginning it suffered from epilepsy. This child died in the ghetto in 1940, when it was less than two years old. Fela stayed with her husband for another year or two after that, but she’d had enough. She left him, and went back to her first love, to Heniek. And she was with him until his death [Henryk Szmulewicz died in 2001 or 2002].

I don’t recall the date of Hersz’s birth – he is the last of my step-siblings. I know very little about him. For three years he was in the military – until 1938 or 1939. Before the war he was engaged to Guta Samsonowicz. Hersz died in Auschwitz. Guta survived, and after the war she went to Israel.

I also have a biological sister – Renata. She is two years older than me [born in 1923]. Before the war we both went to the same elementary school. She completed this school and went on to a Polish public vocational school on Narutowicza Street. She was studying book-binding. In 1939 she finished this three-year vocational school.

On Wschodnia Street we lived in a one-room apartment with a kitchen. My parents gave up renting the apartment that was left when Grandma died, because that was just one room without a kitchen.

Today I can hardly understand how we could live there. One large room and a large kitchen! I guess the size of this room must have been about 20 square meters. The view was onto the street. I think there was some wallpaper on the walls. When you entered the room, you had a stove on your left, two beds, and a laundry basket to the side of my father’s bed. Between the stove and the wall was where my father kept his tools, he had some shelves built in there.

There was a table – seven persons could sit there comfortably, so it must have been big. Around the table there were seven chairs and an arm-chair for Papa. And behind his arm-chair there was a large mirror. Opposite the door – two wardrobes. And two beautiful, huge portraits of my father and my mother were hung on the opposite wall.

In the kitchen my father made this partition – he made the kitchen smaller so that my sister Fela could have her sewing workshop. It was called ‘the little room.’ My sisters slept there, and there was a folding bed for my brother as well. The little room had a window.

So  altogether we were eight persons living in this one-room apartment: five kids, mother, father and a woman who helped run the household, before the war you would call her ‘servant girl.’ Her name was Frania, she was Polish, she stayed with us for many years, until 1935 or 1936. After that she got married.

Then there were also customers coming to see Fela. They would come into the room, of course, there was a screen, and they would get behind it to try on their dresses. I can hardly reconstruct it all today – how it was all possible.

We had to light up the tile stove and then the kitchen stove, too. It was in my lifetime, in my living memory, that a sink was installed in the kitchen. I must have been about five years old at the time. And a year or two later we had a tap. So that means that until then we didn’t even have running water in the kitchen. It’s hard to imagine today, a life like this.

Once a month my mother and Frania would spend three days washing the dirty laundry. Nobody had a separate bed just to themselves, except for my brother, and he slept in a small folding bed. I slept with Papa, my sister Renata slept with our mother, and the two older sisters shared a bed with each other. The servant girl slept on a folding bed. The kids would go to sleep before the parents. Frania used to put me to sleep by telling me stories and singing lullabies.

• Growing up

My mother took care of the household. She also read a lot – mostly literature, she read the same novels as the whole family. My father also did some reading, but he was more interested in the press. He read some Jewish paper, I think it was in Yiddish. I know for sure that my parents both knew Yiddish, but they spoke Polish with each other. I remember also that they spoke Polish with their siblings.

As for me, I don’t know Yiddish. I didn’t even understand it. I would always play with other kids in Polish. My step-sisters and step-brother did know Yiddish, I remember hearing them speak it.

In my family home we didn’t celebrate any Jewish holidays. And we never went to the temple. My mother did not have any political views. And Papa had leftist sympathies, but he didn’t have any strong political commitments either. I know that he was a sort of militant atheist, and my mother didn’t like this at all. What she resented was the militant part, the fact he would demonstrate his views openly. She thought you should not be too provocative, she wanted to avoid irritating the relatives, the aunts and uncles who would come visit us.

It was also a matter of food: my mother did not want guests to refuse to eat at our house. And my father used to say: if they don’t want to eat, they don’t need to eat. So there would not be a problem whether one can eat at our house or not because we did not keep kosher.

Thanks to Frania my mother cooked Jewish dishes. Because, to tell you the truth, it was Frania, a Polish woman, who taught my mother to cook such typical Jewish specialties as, for instance, chulent. On Fridays either my mother or Frania would take it to the bakery, where bread was baked, and on Saturday you would pick it up. Except that it wasn’t kosher. Before the war my mother did not buy kosher meat, because it was expensive, and the non-kosher type was cheaper, so she would buy that. And after the war she would even make chulent based on lard.

How do you make chulent? You take some fat, then the potatoes, barley and the meat. You bring it all to a boil, and cook it. The pot needs to be covered with paper, so the steam does not escape. Chulent has to sit in the stove for at least twelve hours.

On Friday night we often had fish, cooked the Jewish way. Carp. I can make Jewish carp, too. You slice the fish, and sprinkle salt on it. The fish has to remain in the salt for a while. Then you put it in sweetened water with sliced carrot in it, and you cook it for two hours.

Another dish was chopped liver. You slice some onions, and fry it. Then you add the liver and you grind it all. You add garlic, salt and pepper to taste. I did not know this was called Jewish caviar. At home we did not call it that. I don’t think we even knew that such a thing as caviar exists. We just said: liver paté. I don’t know any other Jewish specialties.

We had a Christmas tree every year, because Papa liked them so much. I am like that till this very day -– I can’t get rid of a Christmas tree, not until my son Piotr throws it out almost by force, after two months. Papa always bought and decorated the tree. There was no special meal on Christmas Eve. We just had the tree standing there, because it was so pretty. Before the war almost all the Christmas tree decorations were edible – little wafer houses, pieces of candy, toys, you’d eat it all afterwards. The tree was all the way to the ceiling.

I also remember goose-Monday [Christian custom which consists in pouring water on each other on Easter Monday]. But there was nothing Christian about this – it was just great fun for both kids and adults, this splashing of water in the street. So this is the sort of household we had.

My closest family was not religious. In fact, I don’t remember anyone who would really be religious. But I remember this cousin of my mother’s, Mala Bajgielman – her mother, who was very much a believer, used to come visit her from another city, and when she came, Mala would come over to borrow some plates, with a pattern different from her plates. Then she would tell her mother that one set was for meat, and the other for dairy products. As soon as her mother left, she would return the dishes to us.

I remember she did this two or three times. The point was to reassure her mother. Mala lived on Piotrkowska Street, near Zawadzka Street. She took care of the house, and her husband ran an applications-writing service.

I remember my father and my mother’s younger brother talking politics. But at the time I was too young to understand. They were basically indifferent to Zionism. The idea of leaving was simply not there. I don’t remember my parents mentioning anti-Semitism. Anyway, before the war I never experienced any of that [anti-Semitism].

My parents’ social life was with their relatives. There were almost no friends from outside of the family. Perhaps this one neighbor, Rozia Bekier, the one I told you about – my mother sent me over to her to have that telegram translated. This was a very close friend of my mother’s. And I was close with her daughter.

I think my mother and Rozia got to know each other when Rozia was living on Wschodnia Street, in her husband’s apartment. Her husband’s sister also lived there, along with her family. They took up the whole ground floor, on the right.

I was born on 30th October 1925. I can’t say what my nicest childhood memory is. It was a childhood lived in poverty. I remember that when they were collecting contributions to LOP [Air Defense League – pre-war organization which collected funds for the development of Poland’s air force], or some other cause – 5 or 10 groszy per month – then I would apologize and say I had forgotten to tell my mommy to give me the 5 or 10 groszy. This was not true, but I did not want to tell them my mother had no money.

I remember that in those days a 2 kg loaf of bread cost 50 groszy. A kilogram of sugar cost 1 zloty. It was very rarely that my mother sent me shopping, but I do remember those prices.

I don’t think it was an extraordinary childhood, but I guess it was a good one. I lived in a loving family. My father really adored my mother. I remember, one day in the ghetto, my sister and I were reading books, and Mother took a brush and started sweeping the floor. Papa got very angry with us: how can you sit around reading and let your mother do the cleaning! My mother was treated like a saint in the house. There were no riches, no special attractions, but it was a good childhood.

I remember my favorite toy – when you have just one doll then you remember it well. I think that today’s kids will not remember anything. In the USA, in the house of my cousin’s children, you could hardly enter the room of their kids, the whole place was so cluttered with toys. If I could draw, I could draw my doll perfectly even today.

My father’s sister, Lola, she lived in Berlin. Once she came to Poland, she took me to this store on Pomorska Street, and there she bought me this doll. I don’t remember how I named it. All the dolls had crooked legs, but mine had straight ones and she could stand up. She had a dress and hair made out of plastic. Sometimes, too, I would get a balloon. The balloons were filled with gas, and you had to hold on, or they would fly away.

I attended a school which seemed quite ordinary to me at the time, but now it seems strange. In Lodz, at 11 Sienkiewicza Street. I remember it very well, it was school number 131. A school for Jewish children, but it did not have only Jewish teachers. You could say that the Jewishness of this school was limited to two things:

no classes on Saturdays, and Jewish religion lessons, but nobody studied for those, because we all knew that you had a guaranteed 5 [highest grade] for behavior and for religion. I don’t remember anything from religion lessons I attended in this period.

We were being educated in the spirit of patriotism, and this really spoke to me. You had to stand up at attention in front of the eagle [White Eagle – Poland’s national symbol], and of course I remember till this day all the legion songs 6 and the Polish national anthem. We were taught all the patriotic, military and folk songs.

Pilsudski’s 7 funeral – this must have been the one pre-war event that made the strongest impression on me! The mourning was just terrible! I have no doubts that my parents felt very deeply about it as well. At school we all wore 4 stars on our berets, it was the school’s symbol. So you had to sew black crepe around the stars, and all year long we wore mourning ribbons.

They showed the film from Pilsudski’s funeral, and we would go to see it, the whole class would go to the theater to see it. I also remember the little poems I recited on Pilsudski’s name-day:

            We are both called Jozio - you and I.

            All of Poland knows you well,

            But nobody knows me yet,

            ‘Cause I am just a little kid.

But when I grow up big and strong,

            In the army with you I’ll go

We always celebrated Pilsudski’s name-day [19th March], and all these anniversaries, the Polish uprisings [In the 123 year period of Poland’s occupation there were three uprisings for independence, all failed: the Kosciuszko Uprising in 1794, the November Uprising in 1830 and the January Uprising in 1863].

My year was not yet co-educational. I believe co-education was introduced about two or three years before the war. By 1939, when I had completed seven years of elementary school, the first three classes were, I think, mixed. It sometimes happened at school that the boys would talk in Yiddish during the break – it never happened before that, with only girls around. And they would be punished for it. They would sit in ‘jail’ – it meant they were made to stay after school for an extra hour or more. This was a rule made by the school principal, a Jewish woman.

I don’t know how it worked in other schools. [Editor’s note: We have not been able to establish whether a similar ban, and punishments for its breaking, existed in other Jewish schools. In general, Jewish teachers did attach enormous importance to their students’ ability to speak proper Polish. Nonetheless, it appears that the strict ban on Yiddish was an individual idea of the principal of the school attended by Mrs. Najduchowska]. On Saturdays we had no school, instead we went on Sundays.

I can’t say which subjects I liked. I could tell you which teachers I liked. I did not enjoy school. I mean, I did not like studying, but I did like my school friends a lot. I was close with many girls. In my class there were 50 girls; four of them survived. Ewa Parzeczewska lives in Canada; Jadzia Rubinstein and Hanka Fiszman live in Israel, and I am the fourth.

My sister and I – neither of us was a good student. I always judged myself like this: that I was dull,  stupid... But now I sometimes think it was not so much a question of my stupidity, but rather of those conditions.

There was no place to do homework. I asked my sister: how did we do our homework? At this time the older sister [Fela] was still living with us, running that dress-making business. Renata told me that we often did our homework on the window sill. The clients would come, and they would sit at the table. If I sat at the table with strangers, who were all talking, there was simply no way to do homework properly, [though] mother did make sure we finished all our lessons.

The worst nightmare of my childhood were the dictations, that my mother did for us. I made terrible spelling errors. Perhaps today this would be accepted as dyslexia. For three months, from October till December, I studied German at Jaszynska’s Gymnasium. They taught us to write in gothic script, but I would go to my mother, asking her to read what I myself had written, because I couldn’t make it out.

So after school we had to do our homework, and later I would see my girl-friends. These were very close friendships, we were always visiting each other, and there was no need to call beforehand, because there were no phones. I would walk over to their homes on my own; we lived very close to each other. I did not play outside the building with kids from my block. I don’t know why. Maybe because for such a long time there had been a sewer there?

I was good friends with my cousin Halinka. And with Dorka, the daughter of my father’s younger brother, who had been to Palestine and then came back. And in our house there was this girl named Felunia, she was my age, a class above me. And our neighbor from the same floor, Stas Fajflowicz. His father was a doctor.

Stas and I used to draw and paint together, and we tried to write. His family later moved to a better house in a better part of the city. I was invited to his birthday and this was the first time I’d ever seen a radio, which talked real loud all by itself. I was very impressed

Then, on the second floor there lived this boy; I was friendly with. His father was a traveling salesman. They lived in a single room, like us, and later they moved to Koscielny Square. These were all kids from assimilated families. [According to Mrs. Najduchowska, assimilation meant departing from visible attributes of Jewishness, such as traditional clothing, kosher cooking, celebrating Jewish holidays.

In fact, assimilation is the emancipation of Jews, their opening up to external influence and their participation in non-Jewish social life. It appears that the difference between the two definitions pertains to the level of integration into Polish society. The fact of abandoning the Jewish way of life did not, in many cases, lead to a tighter bond with the Polish world].

I did not play with Polish children. I had Jewish friends, we visited each other in our homes. With the girls we mostly played with our dolls. We would also play ball, and if someone had a bicycle, they would lend it to the others. A bicycle was the great dream of my childhood.

On Sunday afternoons I went to church with [our housekeeper] Frania. I did everything that the others did. I don’t know whether I liked going there. I think it was all the same to me. I went because Frania wanted to take part in mass. After church Frania used to take me over to my friend’s house, on Koscielny Square.

From time to time school outings were organized to the cinema. And sometimes I would get 25 groszy for a movie. I don’t know how many times I went on my own. I did go a few times with school. I even remember some of the movies. But I also went with my girl-friends a few times, to different cinemas. I did not have any favorite film stars. You would have to go to the movies more often than I did, to have your own favorites.

Once I went to a play, to a children’s theater. My sister, the seamstress, must have gotten tickets from one of her clients. I don’t remember where the theater was located. I remember that all the children were supposed to point at something with their fingers and repeat some words.

My two aunts lived in Lask [town located 35 km south-west of Lodz]. I spent many Spring breaks, I mean Easter breaks, at my older aunt’s place there. I would stay for two weeks each time. I think once I went with Renata, but a few times I went on my own. My parents would put me on the train, and then my aunt, Sala, would pick me up in Lask. They lived right opposite her husband’s mother, at Tylna Street 9.

The seder table was always set and Uncle Leib’s mother came over and then supper would begin. My uncle read some things, or said some things. After half an hour they would tell his mother she was old now and had better go lie down. As soon as she was gone, the seder was over. They only did it [the seder] for her sake.

I don’t know whether they celebrated any other holidays. It was a small town and you could not really make it known to outsiders that you were not a believer. I know that my uncle used to go to the synagogue on Fridays, I remember this, but I don’t know if they were religious.

Sala had a bedroom, a dining-room and a kitchen. There were two beds in the bedroom, on the left there was their son’s bed.

The other aunt’s name was Hela. They married her off using some matchmakers. Her husband made men’s shirts, or maybe it was long underwear. On Fridays he would go to the market and sell what he had made during the week. They had a daughter named Anulka, born two or three years before the war. I used to go to their apartment in Lask, they lived in the main square. You walked through a small kitchen into the room. There were two beds to the sides, and as you entered the room you faced the table.

Beside these periods spent in Lask, at Aunt Sala’s, we also went for vacation to Teodory, 7 kilometers from Lask [village located 40 km from Lodz]. The last year there was no money at all for vacation. Three years in a row we went to Wisniowa Gora [summer resort, 10 km east of Lodz, popular with Jews in the inter-war period], because they built a swimming pool there and a dance hall, and they organized parties and dances there.

Today you would call it a club. My father worked at setting up electricity there. And we received – I think it was free of charge – an apartment to stay in, from the owners who were building it. And we lived there [through the vacations] in two or three consecutive years. My mother, my sister and myself – whereas my father only came for the weekends.

The next two or three summers we also spent in Wisniowa Gora but in a different house, these were summer rentals. My mother cooked and we ate at home. We played with other girls, the daughters of people who came there for vacations. We played ball, volleyball. These girls had a bicycle, so I rode a bicycle, too. I was never bored.

There is no river in Wisniowa Gora. It was a typical Jewish summer resort. I suspect that it was only Jews that went there, to spend two or three months each summer. There were no real peasants there, working in the fields, the sort you might see in Teodory. That was a real village.

The [financial] situation [of our family] deteriorated during the last two years before the war. My father’s relatives talked him into setting up a shop with electro-technical goods. A lot of money was spent on this – money we did not have. It was borrowed money, and it had to be paid back. The shop was on 11 Listopada Street. My mother helped Papa in the shop. Papa prepared the goods, such as lamps, and my mother sold them. By then, of course, we no longer had any domestic help.

I completed elementary school in 1939. After the summer vacation I was supposed to go over to that sister who was a seamstress [to learn the trade]. I was supposed to learn dressmaking. But war was coming. My parents didn’t believe it would break out; they did not want to leave. I think in Lodz there was really no chance to hide. Besides, nobody knew that the ghetto would be as closed as it later was.

I remember these conversations from the beginning of the war. People would suggest that we all go to the Soviet Union. My father would always say to this: here are my beds, here is my house, I’m not going anywhere. The idea of leaving was just never considered.

• In the ghetto

In February 1940 we moved to the ghetto with my parents and my sister. We took what we were able to pack. There was no way to take the shop with us. You moved things on sleighs, in suitcases, in bags. Over and over again we walked to my older step-sister Sala’s place [to Baluty]. Her mother-in-law was no longer alive by then. My sister Fela and her husband Pawel and their son took over the other room.

Also, by that time Sala and Pinkus did not have the ice-cream shop any more. Nobody made ice-cream, there was nothing to make it from. Later they moved away from Limanowskiego Street, because Pinkus got the position of a caretaker in another building.

My father didn’t have his shop any more. It functioned for another two or three months after the Germans came, but it had to be closed down before we moved to the ghetto. Papa worked in a ‘resort’ [German workshop with forced labor in Lodz ghetto] as an electrician. Mother didn’t work as long as she could avoid it, but later she too worked in one of the resorts. You had to work – maybe it was because this is how you got the food stamps?

The ghetto streets did not look the way they did in the Warsaw ghetto8 – you can see in the films that they had dead bodies lying in the streets. I think that [in the Lodz ghetto] the organization was better. Everyone had to work, and everyone got stamps for food rations. A lot of people did die of hunger, but you could also survive. I suppose it depends on one’s condition.

I did not feel fear. Only once, during the ‘great szpera’ 9. I was in the hospital then, I had jaundice. Suddenly, one morning, we heard they were removing people from two hospitals on Lagiewnicka Street. It was clear they were taking people away. A panic broke out. I was a person who calmed others down. It wasn’t clear where they were taking people, but in any case it meant parting with your family.

My mother, my father and my sister were standing in the street, like many other families of people who were in the hospital. I managed to jump out of a window on the ground floor. I wasn’t the only one, many others did the same thing. We knew by then that one hospital was already being emptied out, and that they would do the same with ours, so all those who could were running away. My parents caught me and we were walking home.

I remember precisely that before the bridge on Limanowskiego Street, we were stopped by the doctor, the one who was treating me, Doctor Nekricz. He took my mother aside and said something to her. It turned out that the Germans were doing a head-count at the hospital. Whenever they found a patient was missing, they went to their home and dragged this person out. So the doctor told my mother not to take me home, but to leave me with some friends or relatives.

We went to the family of the sister of our uncle from Lask. She also had a daughter my age, I played with her whenever we were in Lask. So my mother asked them to please keep me at their place for just a few days. She hoped that in a few days it would blow over. But they refused. Quite simply, they were afraid. I always remember this when people speak critically about those Polish families that refused to give shelter to Jews. Here we had a Jewish family, close relatives, and they didn’t want to give me shelter.

Then my sister took me over to her friend and I spent a week there. It turned out that nobody [no Germans] had come to get me [at our place]. Later the whole thing became clear. What happened was that at the same hospital, in the very next room, there was another Halina Szwarc, the daughter of one of the nurses. The nurse signed her out of the hospital with the false date before the ‘szpera.’ But by mistake, she signed me out instead of her daughter.

The Germans came to get her [this other Halina Szwarc] in her home, and they took her away. People told us later that she was screaming – instead of the right Halina, they are taking the wrong one! But she managed to get the daughter out of the bus they had put her on. I remember that the buses were used to take sick people to the train station.

When the war ended, I was in Mauthausen 10 and I heard there the name Halina Szwarc. I hope she survived. I don’t know how I could manage in life, knowing that someone else was killed in my place.

The ‘szpera’ went on for at least two weeks. People were taken into the yard, and they checked if all the rooms are empty. Germans stood there together with Jewish policemen, saying, ‘rechts’ and ‘links.’ I had jaundice, which I had caught in the hospital. I remember my father painting me. He would paint my cheeks red, so they would not see how yellow I was. But it didn’t help.

They made me go to the bad side [of people who were designated for the transport]. At some point my mother caught on to what was going on and she signaled to me that there was a way at the back, behind the Germans, where you could slip over to the good side. So it was the second time I had saved my life.

A great number of people were taken out of the ghetto that day. Mostly [they were taking] children, almost all of them. After such an intense experience, people would react by eating up all they had stored up at home. My mother watched carefully that we didn’t eat on one day what we had put away for the next. I remember our neighbors, who somehow managed to save their child that day, because they hid it somewhere. A few hours later they told us they had eaten all the food they had stored for the following week.

My step-brother Hersz was on the battlefront in 1939, and he ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp. I don’t know where this camp was. I believe he came to the ghetto in 1940, but I don’t know how he managed to get in. In 1941 he married this girl, Guta Samsonowicz, they were in love before the war. I remember that the wedding took place in the rabbi’s home. There were chairs, but no chuppah. [Mrs. Najduchowska cannot not remember any more details].

Frania was not able to stay in touch with us. The ghetto was very tightly closed. You couldn’t enter and you couldn’t leave. Till this day I sometimes wonder how my brother managed to get into the ghetto [after he escaped from the camp, when the ghetto was already closed]. But it must have been 1940 and maybe in this period it was still possible to get through.

During the war both my sister and I belonged to the Young Leftist Organization 11 in the Lodz ghetto. Even today I can’t tell exactly how I got involved in it. The organization reached me somehow, through friends. They had so called ‘loose fives,’ for candidates who wanted to join, and after that you were a full member. I belonged to the youth section.

Our meetings were held in private apartments. We studied Marxism-Leninism, and besides we had a very well-stocked library. We copied the books in longhand. Many large volumes were copied in this way, so there would be enough for everyone. Thanks to this there were many books. So I did not waste my time.

What did I learn from Marxism-Leninism? – I might have different views about it today, but it was certainly a very meaningful and important thing – the very fact that we studied, that we did all this reading and thinking. There were debates on various scientific topics. The [Marxist] interpretation was always provided – I suspect that I would disagree with many things today, nonetheless I still value that whole experience very highly.

We talked exclusively in Polish. The young people met in their fives, but there were also broader meetings. There was one more beautiful thing about this organization: we all had those tiny food rations, but each of us gave a spoon of sugar and a teaspoon of flour for those in greater need, and for the ill. It was literally taking food away from your mouth.

[In the organization] we all followed the slogan ‘WS - work slowly’ [Polish: ‘PP – Pracuj powoli’]. You were working for the Germans, so it made sense to work slowly. I worked at a sewing resort – my sister also worked there – and I was miserable. I know it’s a sin to talk like that – but if it were not for the war, I would be a seamstress today. I feel sick at the very sight of a needle, even today.

Later I worked in a metals factory, it was named the ‘metal resort.’ My first job was at a milling machine, then I operated a turning machine. This was quite unusual in those days, for a girl to be working in such a place, so I could afford to play games – I would show the men who were working there what I have made, I would boast to them what good job it was.

And then I’d put it under the cutter again, take off another millimeter, and it was ruined. Of course, they forgave me as a girl, how could a girl know how to do such things? I also tried to communicate with my co-workers in Yiddish, but that didn’t work. They began to laugh at me and I had to back out of it.

The population of the part of the ghetto where we lived was being displaced [the ghettos were being made smaller]. We moved into the factory – my father, my mother, Felka, Renata, and myself. We stayed in the ghetto until the very end, the last day. Until 1944 [the last transports from the Lodz ghetto took place in late August 1944].

I remember that people had these little plots of land where they grew something [vegetables] to eat. Papa and I crossed over to the other side illegally. If we had been caught at that point, immediately [we would have been sent] to hell [to the camp]. We picked some beets.

• In concentration and work camps

Then there was the transport to Auschwitz. We were all taken with the last transport [August 1944]. We were all taken to Auschwitz: Mother, Papa, Renata, Felka along with her husband and her son, Sala and her family. Once we got there, we were all separated. All the men go to one side, then go the children. My sister went with Bronek; she didn’t want to leave the child. Papa, as far as I know, went straight to the gas.

I was left with Mother, Renia and Felka. We survived the war together – it was a completely exceptional situation that we were not separated and that we survived. We only spent one day in Auschwitz. They took us off to Freiberg [the Freiberg camp was located in Chemnitz Kreis in Saxony, Germany]. There was a metals factory there and this is where we worked.

They had an exceptionally decent ‘Unterscharführer,’ that is camp commander. Unfortunately, the Americans killed him. On 14th April 1945 they evacuated us from Freiberg to Mauthausen and unfortunately the camp commander was killed. During the wartime I thought of him as a terrible bastard. But after the war, when I found out how things were in other camps, I thought that he was an exceptionally decent man. This was in 1944-45, I don’t know how he behaved in 1941 or 1942 or 1943.

In any case, he saved three pregnant women. He was supposed to send pregnant women to Auschwitz, but he hid them when there was some sort of inspection. These three children were born, and they all survived the war. I knew about it all the time, but we were living in dreadful conditions, eating in dreadful conditions. I didn’t know at the time that this [his hiding these women and thus saving their lives] was something extraordinary.

The Americans came to Mauthausen on 5th May, but we were not released until July. People did not return home from Mauthausen right away, because the Americans wouldn’t allow it. My mother, Felka and I returned in the first Polish transport, early in July [1945]. My sister [Renata] returned earlier, she was smuggled out of the camp by some Czechs. The Czechs stole away over a dozen people, because they were allowed to go home.

• After the war

We were kept locked up in there for another month. I was in a hospital then. I was very weak, there were problems with my heart. I was not allowed to leave the camp site. I would like to know myself why they forbade us to go outside the camp.

The Americans were spreading propaganda through the radio, claiming that they had sent messengers to Poland, to find out what was going on there. And that nobody is coming back. So they suppose that war is still going on over there, and that is why they won’t let us go.

Of course all of this was pure lies, they knew very well what was going on in Poland. They were creating a Polish Army somewhere in the west of Germany. They were encouraging men to go there. We were there as Jews, but they wouldn’t let anybody out – neither Jews, nor Poles.

It never occurred to us that we might not return to Poland. This was my homeland! I had been brought up to think in this way. I never heard at home that I was Jewish. Even today I find it hard to say that about myself. I always knew that I was a Polish-woman whose creed happens to be Judaism, except that my family were not believers.

My sister – the one who returned home a month before we did – went to the Lodz party committee. They had lots of empty apartments and she got one. Apparently, she had several to choose from, but all of the apartments were empty, without furniture. But on Strzelcow Kaniowskich Street, near the Kaliski train station, there was this one room. It wasn’t large, but there was furniture, sheets, towels, dishes, everything you need.

Olga Baden had lived there during the war. She left behind an album with photos of various SS-men. So my sister chose this one room and this is where we lived for a while.

The keys were always left with the caretaker, so when someone returned from camp and asked about us, the caretaker knew he should give them the keys. We would come home and find people there, waiting. This was my ‘largest’ apartment ever – in the sense that there was room for everyone there.

The whole floor was covered with bedding, anyone who needed to stay, was welcome. Friends from the wartime, and from before the war, they would return, ask around, find out we were living there and come over. They could stay until they got something of their own.

After the war we found out that my mother’s two sisters, and their entire families, were killed in Lask. Apparently, they took all the Jews to the cemetery, and shot them. [In 1942 4,000 Jews were taken out of the Lask ghetto: 3,500 were taken to the camp in Chelm on the Ner River, and 760 persons were taken to the Lodz ghetto]. Their children were also killed: nephew Daniel, Sala’s son and Anka, Hela’s daughter.

My mother’s brother, Motek, was killed during the war, along with his wife Hela, and their daughter, Anulka. They were taken out of the Lodz ghetto. My step-sister, Sala, died in Auschwitz with her child. They separated the children. The mothers went with their children. Her husband Pinkus survived Auschwitz, I saw him in 1964 in the United States.

My step-brother Hersz was taken to Auschwitz and died in one of the camps after Auschwitz was evacuated. His wife Guta survived, and after the war she emigrated to Israel. She completely cut her ties with our family. Evidently, she wanted to free herself of the past.

The other step-sister, Fela, survived the war. After the war, she married Henryk, when she was already pregnant. She gave birth to two children and in 1957 she left for Israel. Her son Teodor is in Australia, and her daughter lives in Israel. In Poland her name was Ryszarda, but in Israel she is called Ruth. Both the son and the daughter have their own families. Fela is no longer alive.

My mother’s brother, Leon, went to England, leaving Spain after the civil war, and he was in the Polish army 12. He married an Irishwoman, Minnie, and they had a son, another Daniel. After the war they settled in the USA, in California, in Los Angeles. He worked as a salesman in a shoe-store. He was 55 when he quit that job due to the conflict with the shop owner.

I remember that Aunt Ruth thought he had gone mad, because at his age he would never find another job. I remember that Mother told this story when she returned to Poland, and nobody could understand. He never came back to Poland again. They were not doing very well. And besides, Los Angeles is a bit further [from Poland] than New Jersey, [which is where Ruta lived]. After his wife’s death he moved to Israel and he died over there in the 1980s.

My mother’s third sister, Ruta, also survived the war, because in 1919 she had gone off to the United States. There she married Aba Fejtlowitz. They had two sons, Daniel and Harvey. My mother went to the States in 1959 – she saw her sister Ruta for the first time in 40 years then.

After that Aunt Ruta came to visit us a few times. She liked it in Poland very much. She especially enjoyed taking trams – she was very pleased that when she got on a tram, people would give up their seats for her. She did not know this custom from the States. She used to bring toilet paper with her [she probably thought Poland was terribly backwards and there isn’t enough toilet paper]. Aunt Ruta died in 1981, during martial law 13.

In 1959 my mother also met with her brother, Leon. In 1964 I had a scholarship to the States and I got to know them then. Our relations were very warm. I stayed with Aunt Ruta’s son [in New Jersey] for four and a half months. I didn’t notice them celebrating any Jewish holidays. Uncle Leon also did not know Jewish religion or Jewish customs.

When I was in the States, his son, Daniel, was 18 years old and graduating from high school. He became very religious. I was in their home for Passover and Daniel was making sure that everything was kosher, he did the whole seder celebration, because his father wouldn’t know how. His mother was getting very upset that he kept controlling her.

Later Daniel married a minister’s daughter. They brought their children up in such a way, that they could all decide on their own what they want to be: Jewish or Protestant. They celebrate the holidays of both traditions.

The first thing I did after the war was to join ZWM [Fighting Youth Union] 14 and to sign up for school. I went to school half-legally. I wanted to join straight away the fourth year of gymnasium, although I had only completed elementary school. I thought there was no point for me, at my age, to start with first year students.

One of my friends told me about this teacher who had taught in a gymnasium before the war, and whose ambition it was to be able to recognize all her former students. I went to see her. She pretended to recognize me immediately, claimed to remember me, she said I sat at the third table by the window. Of course, I confirmed that indeed this is where I used to sit and I got the permit.

I went to school, the fourth year, and for half a year I couldn’t work because I was catching up all those missing years. I did complete that fourth year of gymnasium then, and without any 3s [C’s]. For that matter, I didn’t have that many 5s [A’s] either. But I decided that this school does not satisfy my ambitions, and I went to one that did. Before the war this was a boy’s school named after Pilsudski, and after the war they turned it into the 3rd City Gymnasium on Sienkiewicza Street. This is where I completed two years of high school, while working full time at the ZWM.

I passed my final exams and enrolled in the university, the physics faculty. I wanted to study electricity, but it turned out to be too difficult, after all, to both work and study electrical engineering, so I finally opted for physics, because I thought it would be easier. But after the first semester, I found I couldn’t manage that either, even though my friends were helping me.

In Lodz there was a faculty of social pedagogy, and I began to study there. I kept at it for a year and a half, and then I moved to Warsaw, to take a position in the main headquarters of ZMP [Union of Polish Youth] 15. I moved to Warsaw on 1st March 1949. I lived at Unii Lubelskiej Square.

It took me until 1953 to bring my mother from Lodz, I only did that when I got a decent apartment, in Muranow district, on Nowolipie Street. That was also when I took [from Lodz] the remaining books and a few pieces of furniture. In Warsaw there was no pedagogy faculty, so I switched to sociology. For one month, this was in October 1955, I worked in the Department of Party History, but I quickly quit this job.

[After our return from the camp] my mother did not work. She had a job from 1954 to 1957 at ‘Ksiazka i Wiedza’ [‘Book and Knowledge’ publishing house] as a proofreader. After the political changes of 1956 16 they reduced the staff. My mother could have tried to struggle against this, she was close to retirement age, but we didn’t want it to seem like we cared so much about her getting her pension. She just stopped working and began taking care of the house.

In 1955 sociology was reactivated. I got a job at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, at the Polish Academy of Science. The head of my section was Julian Hochfeld [1911 – 1966, sociologist, socialist activist]. I did research on the process of disintegration of the ZMP structure. Later I did studies in the sociology of industry.

In 1956 we were doing our research in Zeran. I was a participant of all the changes taking place in Zeran at the time. Leszek Gozdzik [b. 1931, political activist at the Zeran car factory in Warsaw; leader of Zeran’s workers during the anticommunist protests of 1956], the leader of the workers, was in constant touch with us.

I was supposed to go to Zeran in the evening on the day of the famous Plenum of the Central Committee. [In October 1956 the Plenum session of the Central Committee (KC) of the communist party (PZPR) was held under pressure of workers’ protests, and with the threat of Soviet military intervention looming in the background. Wladyslaw Gomulka was elected for the position of the First Secretary of the Central Committee]. I stood in the hallway of our apartment, all dressed and ready to go, when my husband got a call – they said, if you want your wife to stay alive, you’d better keep her safe at home. I did not take this to heart and I went to Zeran anyway.

Later I went to work at SGPiS [Main School of Planning and Statistics – school of economics in Warsaw]. I really enjoyed teaching students. I gave lectures in sociology. In 1968 they decided I was unfit for academic work. The secret services sent in this list of people who were to be kicked out from work at SGPiS. But they had to motivate it somehow.

So they wrote that I do not seem promising in terms of my scientific research. Despite the fact that two or three months earlier I had received a post-doc scholarship, because I was finishing up my post-doctoral project. Over 60 persons were fired from SGPiS then.

It was a great tragedy for me, but my students behaved beautifully. I had a group in my MA seminar, twelve students, who sometimes visited me at home. When I told them I had been let go, one of them called to ask if he can come over. I said yes. That afternoon the bell rings, I open the door and there is line of twelve students, each of them holding flowers. This spontaneous gesture of solidarity coming from them really helped me live through the tragedy [of being fired due to Jewish roots].

Fortunately, I had good friends, who found me a job at the Institute of Politics and Scientific Research and Higher Education. But I kept up my fight to return to SGPiS, [despite the fact that] the Party organization accused me of organizing an illegal student demonstration, which was not true. A colleague warned me, however, that they might hire me again at SGPiS, and then throw me out [due to changing political atmosphere]. So I arranged to be [officially] hired again, [but did not return to work] and then resigned of my own free will.

I worked at the Institute until it was dissolved, which was in 1991 I believe. I mean it wasn’t totally dissolved, because it still exists, but there used to be 100 persons employed there, and now there are only ten left. Since I was past retirement age at the time, the new director said I might take some contracts from them, but I should not hold up a full time position. So I retired.

For a short period of time after the war, my sister worked at a post-office in Lodz. She cheated about her school years the way I did, except that in her case it was a lie of greater scope. She had finished only a vocational school. And she enrolled at the university without ever admitting that she was not a high school graduate. She told them her school documents were lost. They said she must take the finals. She would have passed them in the humanities, no problem. I don’t know, however, how it would have been with math and science.

When she was in her second year of studies she became an assistant of Ossowski, who valued her very highly, and she confessed to him that she did not have the finals. [Stanislaw Ossowski (1897–1963): great Polish sociologist and activist of the democratic opposition; enjoyed great respect and authority among the intelligentsia] When she went to take the exams it turned out there was a document from Ossowski, which said that there is no need for her to take the exam, because she is an excellent student. This way she avoided taking the finals!

Later she worked at Lodz University, then at the INS [Institute of Social Science] in Warsaw, and finally, until her retirement, she worked at the Institute of Sociology and Philosophy, Polish Academy of Science.

She married an Italian. She had studied Italian before the war. Someone had talked her into joining a course. After the war there was a trip to Italy, she was sent as translator, and this is how she met Vico. He fell in love with her and wanted her to move to Italy. She said this was out of the question, so he came here and they got married. And he stayed. They have a daughter who is a writer, her name is Magdalena Tulli.

• Later life

My husband’s name was Roman Franciszek Najduchowski. He was born on 21st January 1926, near Cracow. There was terrible poverty in that home. He lived in very bad conditions. This is probably why he got this bone disease, osteonecrosis. He had bone surgery 21 times. They amputated one of his legs. The disease attacked his kidneys.

We met during those two years when I was working at a ZMP school in Otwock, teaching history. My future husband was working at the economics department. Whether or not he knew much about economics then, I do not know. He had graduated from high school.

We got married in 1954 and we moved to Warsaw. My husband decided to continue studying – he graduated in economics at SGPiS. When we were about to get married I asked my mother if she would mind if my husband was not a Jew. She was surprised I would ask – of course she did not mind! She loved my husband.

In 1959 we had our son, Piotr Tomasz. When the child was born, my mother started taking care of him. She did absolutely everything about the house. She wouldn’t let me touch the kitchen: she thought that since I am working and my husband is working, it is her duty to do all the domestic chores. I appreciated this very much.

My son sometimes gets up at two in the morning every Friday, and puts the chulent in the oven, so that it’s ready for 2pm on Saturday. Then the guests can come. One does not eat chulent alone – so much work, all this getting up in the middle of the night – just to eat alone? But I don’t think he is especially attracted to Jewishness. At one point we used to make chulent for Sundays, because we worked on Saturdays. We treat it simply as a dish we make for our friends.

My mother died in 1978. Till the very end she was incredibly fit and active. She is buried in Warsaw in the Northern Cemetery. This is also where my husband’s grave is, and those of my mother’s cousins.

I was in Israel with my husband, for treatment for his disease, at the turn of 1977 and 1978. I managed to arrange for a certain sum of money from the bank. My sister Felka had left for Israel and was living there at the time, so we had a place to stay. For four months we lived in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv. We experienced great warmth from the people there.

We did lots of sight-seeing. Whenever my husband was not in the hospital, he would join me in my excursions. We were trying to see as much as possible. This was the best thing that could have happened to him before he died. He loved Israel. Unfortunately, there was nothing one could do for him, and my husband died in 1979.

I was in Israel once more, this time with my sister, at the beginning of the 1990s. We stayed with the husband of my sister Felka, but she was no longer alive by that time. Felka had died in the mid-1980s. We did a lot of sight-seeing, going from north to south. I have friends there, people I know from the organization in the Lodz ghetto. They often visit Poland. I also have a good friend from elementary school, Jadzia Rubinstein; we are in touch with each other on a regular basis.

Today I don’t work anymore, I live with my son. I miss work a lot. Life without it seems empty. Just three or four years ago I was still working. Now I read a lot. Sometimes I go to the cinema, to the theater or to a museum. Fortunately, I have many good, loving friends. I am happy as long as I have them.

• Glossary:

1 Hotel Polski: A well known German provocation. In 1943 the Germans announced that they would enable all Jews – citizens of neutral countries and territories incorporated into the Reich – to legally emigrate from Poland. They were supposed to be exchanged for German citizens who were being detained by the Allies.

Volunteers were supposed to come to Hotel Polski, which was located at Dluga Street 29, and to Hotel Royal on Chmielna Street in Warsaw. Many Jews considered this to be a possibility for saving their lives. They purchased documents of deceased persons or fake documents for huge sums of money.

In 1943 the first transport of Jews left Hotel Polski for a camp in Vittel in France. 4-5,000 people passed through Hotel Polski. Some were shot to death in the Pawiak prison in Warsaw. Most were taken to France and then to death camps in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Approx. 10% survived.

2 Hitler's rise to power: In the German parliamentary elections in January 1933, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) won one-third of the votes. On 30th January 1933 the German president swore in Adolf Hitler, the party's leader, as chancellor. On 27th February 1933 the building of the Reichstag (the parliament) in Berlin was burned down.

The government laid the blame with the Bulgarian communists, and a show trial was staged. This served as the pretext for ushering in a state of emergency and holding a re-election. It was won by the NSDAP, which gained 44% of the votes, and following the cancellation of the communists' votes it commanded over half of the mandates.

The new Reichstag passed an extraordinary resolution granting the government special legislative powers and waiving the constitution for 4 years. This enabled the implementation of a series of moves that laid the foundations of the totalitarian state: all parties other than the NSDAP were dissolved, key state offices were filled by party luminaries, and the political police and the apparatus of terror swiftly developed.

3 Lodz Ghetto: It was set up in February 1940 in the former Jewish quarter on the northern outskirts of the city. 164,000 Jews from Lodz were packed together in a 4 sq. km. area. In 1941 and 1942, 38,500 more Jews were deported to the ghetto. In November 1941, 5,000 Roma were also deported to the ghetto from Burgenland province, Austria.

The Jewish self-government, led by Mordechai Rumkowsky, sought to make the ghetto as productive as possible and to put as many inmates to work as he could. But not even this could prevent overcrowding and hunger or improve the inhuman living conditions.

As a result of epidemics, shortages of fuel and food and insufficient sanitary conditions, about 43,500 people (21% of all the residents of the ghetto) died of undernourishment, cold and illness. The others were transported to death camps; only a very small number of them survived.

4 Poland’s independence, 1918: In 1918 Poland regained its independence after over 100 years under the partitions, when it was divided up between Russia, Austria and Prussia. World War I ended with the defeat of all three partitioning powers, which made the liberation of Poland possible.

On 8 January 1918 the president of the USA, Woodrow Wilson, declaimed his 14 points, the 13th of which dealt with Poland's independence. In the spring of the same year, the Triple Entente was in secret negotiations with Austria-Hungary, offering them integrity and some of Poland in exchange for parting company with their German ally, but the talks were a fiasco and in June the Entente reverted to its original demands of full independence for Poland.

In the face of the defeat of the Central Powers, on 7 October 1918 the Regency Council issued a statement to the Polish nation proclaiming its independence and the reunion of Poland. Institutions representing the Polish nation on the international arena began to spring up, as did units disarming the partitioning powers' armed forces and others organizing a system of authority for the needs of the future state. In the night of 6-7 November 1918, in Lublin, a Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland was formed under Ignacy Daszynski.

Its core comprised supporters of Pilsudski. On 11 November 1918 the armistice was signed on the western front, and the Regency Council entrusted Pilsudski with the supreme command of the nascent army. On 14 November the Regency Council dissolved, handing all civilian power to Pilsudski; the Lublin government also submitted to his rule.

On 17 November Pilsudski appointed a government, which on 21 November issued a manifesto promising agricultural reforms and the nationalization of certain branches of industry. It also introduced labor legislation that strongly favored the workers, and announced parliamentary elections.

On 22 November Pilsudski announced himself Head of State and signed a decree on the provisional authorities in the Republic of Poland.

The revolutionary left, from December 1918 united in the Communist Workers' Party of Poland, came out against the government and independence, but the program of Pilsudski's government satisfied the expectations of the majority of society and emboldened it to fight for its goals within the parliamentary democracy of the independent Polish state. In January and June 1919 the first elections to the Legislative Sejm were held.

On 20 February 1919 the Legislative Sejm passed the 'small constitution'; Pilsudski remained Head of State. The first stage of establishing statehood was completed, despite the fact that the issue of Poland's borders had not yet been resolved.

5 Spanish Civil War (1936-39): A civil war in Spain, which lasted from July 1936 to April 1939, between rebels known as Nacionales and the Spanish Republican government and its supporters. The leftist government of the Spanish Republic was besieged by nationalist forces headed by General Franco, who was backed by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.

Though it had Spanish nationalist ideals as the central cause, the war was closely watched around the world mainly as the first major military contest between left-wing forces and the increasingly powerful and heavily armed fascists. The number of people killed in the war has been long disputed ranging between 500,000 and a million.

6 Polish Legions: A military formation operating in the period 1914-17, formally subordinate to the Austro-Hungarian army but fighting for Polish independence. Commanded by Jozef Pilsudski. From 1915 the Legions came under German command, but some of the Legionnaires refused, which led to the collapse of the organization.

7 Pilsudski, Jozef (1867-1935): Polish activist in the independence cause, politician, statesman, marshal. With regard to the cause of Polish independence he represented the pro-Austrian current, which believed that the Polish state would be reconstructed with the assistance of Austria-Hungary.

When Poland regained its independence in January 1919, he was elected Head of State by the Legislative Sejm. In March 1920 he was nominated marshal, and until December 1922 he held the positions of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army. After the murder of the president, Gabriel Narutowicz, he resigned from all his posts and withdrew from politics.

He returned in 1926 in a political coup. He refused the presidency offered to him, and in the new government held the posts of war minister and general inspector of the armed forces. He was prime minister twice, from 1926-1928 and in 1930.

He worked to create a system of national security by concluding bilateral non-aggression pacts with the USSR (1932) and Germany (1934). He sought opportunities to conclude firm alliances with France and Britain. In 1932, owing to his deteriorating health, Pilsudski resigned from his functions. He was buried in the Crypt of Honor in the Wawel Cathedral of the Royal Castle in Cracow.

8 Warsaw Ghetto: A separate residential district for Jews in Warsaw created over several months in 1940. On 16th November 1940 138,000 people were enclosed behind its walls. Over the following months the population of the ghetto increased as more people were relocated from the small towns surrounding the city. By March 1941 445,000 people were living in the ghetto.

Subsequently, the number of the ghetto's inhabitants began to fall sharply as a result of disease, hunger, deportation, persecution and liquidation. The ghetto was also systematically reduced in size. The internal administrative body was the Jewish Council (Judenrat). The Warsaw ghetto ceased to exist on 15th May 1943, when the Germans pronounced the failure of the uprising, staged by the Jewish soldiers, and razed the area to the ground.

9 Wielka szpera ('Great Curfew'): On 4th September 1942 the residents of the Lodz ghetto learned that according to an ordinance of the German authorities, all elders above 65 years of age and children below ten years of age would be deported from the ghetto.

Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski, head of the Council of Elders of the Lodz Ghetto, made his most famous speech then: '(…) In my old age I have to hold out my hands and beg: Brothers and Sisters, give them away! Fathers and Mothers, give me your children!' On 5th September 1942 Rumkowski implemented a curfew (German Sperre - closing, blockade, curfew).

The resettling committee began its work of preparing elders and children for deportation. The Jewish police, whose members were assured their children would not be deported, also participated in the action. Policemen with lists of names dragged children and old people out of their homes.

Sick people were also searched for by teams of Jewish physicians and nurses. Small children were torn from the hands of desperate mothers, sick people were dragged out of their beds. At the time everyone was conscious that the fate of the deported would find its end in the death camp in Chelmno upon Ner.  

10 Mauthausen: Concentration camp located in Upper Austria. Mauthausen was opened in August 1938. The first prisoners to arrive were forced to build the camp and work in the quarry. On 5th May 5, 1945 American troops arrived and liberated the camp. Altogether, 199,404 prisoners passed through Mauthausen.

Approximately 119,000 of them, including 38,120 Jews, were killed or died from the harsh conditions, exhaustion, malnourishment, and overwork. (Source: Rozett R. – Spector S.: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Facts on File, G.G. The Jerusalem Publishing House Ltd. 2000, pg. 314 – 315)

11 Leftist Organization in the Lodz Ghetto: Anti-Fascist Organization - Lewica Zwiazkowa (Union Left). - The name 'lewica' (left) began to be used in the 1930s, because the communist party was illegal. Lewica consisted mostly of young people, organized in so-called fives (five-person groups). Zula Pacanowska directed Lewica until 1942, later Hinda Barbara Beatus took over. Other well known members include Samuel Erlich (Stefan Krakowski), Natan Radzyner, Arnold Mostowicz. Their actions consisted mostly of sabotaging labor for the occupant.

12 Polish Armed Forces in the West (PSZ): Military formations of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland, organized outside of the country’s borders after the defeat in September 1939. At first PSZ forces were stationed in France, but due to the German attack on France, they were evacuated to Great Britain. The soldiers took part in the Battle for England (August 8October 31, 1940).

In 1944 PSZ, alongside the Allied forces, participated in the Normandy landing, where the Poles fought until the surrender of Germany. In 1945 the Polish Armed Forces in the West consisted of approx. 200,000 soldiers. They were dissolved in 1946-1947. Some soldiers returned to Poland, some remained abroad, disagreeing with the new pro-soviet Poland.

13 Martial law in Poland in 1981: Extraordinary legal measures introduced by a State Council decree on 13th December 1981 in an attempt to defend the communist system and destroy the democratic opposition. The martial law decree suspended the activity of associations and trades unions, including Solidarity, introduced a curfew, imposed travel restrictions, gave the authorities the right to arrest opposition activists, search private premises, and conduct body searches, ban public gatherings.

A special, non-constitutional state authority body was established, the Military Board of National Salvation (WRON), which oversaw the implementation of the martial law regulations, headed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the armed forces supreme commander. Over 5,900 persons were arrested during the martial law, chiefly Solidarity activists. Local Solidarity branches organized protest strikes.

The Wujek coal mine, occupied by striking miners, was stormed by police assault squads, leading to the death of nine miners. The martial law regulations were gradually being eased, by December 1982, for instance, all interned opposition activists were released. On 31st December 1982, the martial law was suspended, and on 21st July 1983, it was revoked.

14 Fighting Youth Union (ZWM): Communist youth organization founded in 1943. The ZWM was subordinate to the Polish Workers' Party (PPR). In 1943-44 it participated in battles against the Germans, and hit squads carried out diversion and retaliation campaigns, mainly in Warsaw, one of which was the attack on the Café Club in October 1943. In 1944 the ZWM was involved in the creation and defense of a system of authority organized by the PPR; the battle against the underground independence movement; the rebuilding of the economy from the ravages of war; and social and economic transformations. The ZWM also organized sports, cultural and educational clubs. The main ZWM paper was 'Walka Mlodych.' In July 1944 ZWM had a few hundred members, but by 1948 it counted some 250,000. Leading activists: H. Szapiro ('Hanka Sawicka'), J. Krasicki, Z. Jaworska and A. Kowalski. In July 1948 it merged with three other youth organizations to become the Polish Youth Union.

15 Union of Polish Youth (ZMP): Polish youth organization founded in July 1948 as a result of the fusion of the Youth Organization, the Society of the Workers' University, the Union of Democratic Youth, the Union of Fighting Youth, and the Union of Rural Youth ("Call to Arms"). The ZMP was politically and organizationally subordinate to the PPR and subsequently to the PZPR.

It was responsible for putting into practice the communist party's youth policy, and for ideological indoctrination designed to mould the consciousness of young people and set them against older generations. It mobilized young people to work on vast industrial construction sites, organized rivalry at work, controlled discipline at work among young people, participated in the collectivization of the countryside, monitored school curricula from the ideological standpoint, and kept strict control of the work of teachers in secondary schools and at universities.

In 1948 it had some 0.5 million members, in 1951 over a million, and in 1955 around 2 million. During the October political power struggle in 1956 the ZMP collapsed, and it was disbanded in January 1957.

16 Polish October 1956: The culmination of the political, social and economic transformations that brought about the collapse of the dictatorial regime after the death of Stalin (1953).

From 1954 the political system in Poland gradually thawed (censorship was scaled down, for instance, and political prisoners were slowly released - in April and May 1956 some 35,000 people were let out of prison). But the economic situation was deteriorating and the social and political crisis mounting.

On 28th June a strike and demonstration on the streets of Poznan escalated into an armed revolt, which was suppressed by police and army units.

From 19th to 21st October 1956 a political breakthrough occurred, the 8th Plenum of the PZPR Central Committee met under social pressure (rallies in factories and universities), and there was the threat of intervention by Soviet troops. Gomulka was appointed First Secretary of the PZPR Central Committee, and won the support of many groups, including a rally numbering hundreds of thousands of people in Warsaw on 24th October.

From 15th to 18th November the terms on which Soviet troops were stationed in Poland were agreed, a proportion of Poland's debt was annulled, the resettlement of Poles back from the USSR was resumed, and by the end of 1956 a large number of people found guilty in political trials were rehabilitated. There were changes at the top in the Polish Army: Marshal Rokossowski and the Soviet generals went back to the USSR, and changes also to the civilian authorities and the programs of political factions.

In November 1956 permission was granted for the creation of workers' councils in state enterprises, and the management of the economy was improved somewhat. In subsequent months, however, the process of partial democratization was halted, and supporters of continuing change ('revisionists') were censured.

17 Gomulka Campaign: A campaign to sack Jews employed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the army and the central administration. The trigger of this anti-Semitic campaign was the involvement of the Socialist Bloc countries on the Arab side in the Middle East conflict, in connection with which Moscow ordered purges in state institutions.

On 19th June 1967, at a trade union congress, the then First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party [PZPR], Wladyslaw Gomulka, accused the Jews of lack of loyalty to the state and of publicly demonstrating their enthusiasm for Israel's victory in the Six-Day-War. This marked the start of purges among journalists and people of other creative professions. Poland also severed diplomatic relations with Israel.

On 8th March 1968 there was a protest at Warsaw University. The Ministry of Internal Affairs responded by launching a press campaign and organizing mass demonstrations in factories and workplaces during which 'Zionists' and 'trouble-makers' were indicted and anti-Semitic and anti-intelligentsia slogans shouted.

Following the events of March, purges were also staged in all state institutions, from factories to universities, on criteria of nationality and race. 'Family liability' was also introduced (e.g. with respect to people whose spouses were Jewish). Jews were forced to emigrate. From 1968-1971 15,000-30,000 people left Poland. They were stripped of their citizenship and right of return.

Saul Eskenazi 
St. Petersburg 
Russia 
Interviewer: Olga Egudina 
Date of interview: November 2005 

I met Saul Eskenazi in his cozy apartment in one of new St. Petersburg districts. 

Saul Eskenazi speaks about his life with pleasure and in details. 

At the same time there are certain things which he wants to go into under no circumstances, and here we have no choice but to hold his decision in respect.

Saul Eskenazi is a topnotch storyteller. He speaks easily. You understand that he agonizes over every recollection only when you see him nervously clenching his hands from time to time.

Not all events he remembers equally well. But if he remembers something and agrees to share it with us, it turns out to be really invaluable.

His cheerful character, his sense of humor, his interest to everything around him excites admiration, and when you get to know what he has gone through, it also commands respect. 

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

• My family background

Here you ask me, whether I remember my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers. And immediately I start doubting: is it worth talking about my life if I remember about my relatives almost nothing (and it is wormwood to me)? I know nothing not only about my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers, I know nothing even about my grandmothers and grandfathers. And then, you know, I relive my old memories, and I say to myself ‘Are there many people in the world, whose life experience is so rich? I’ll tell you everything I remember, and my relatives (may they rest in peace!) will forgive me. They are always in my heart…’

Our family never lived in the same place for a long time. But the city of my childhood was Bucharest. The city was very large, and there were a lot of Jews there. In Bucharest there were buses, trams; streets were good (paved). A part of roads were covered with bitumen. One of my childhood sensations is the feeling of my boots sticking to road during summer heat.

I do not remember houses without electricity supply. Water supply also was almost everywhere. If it was absent, people took water from special water-pumps, which looked like fountains. Housewives with pailfuls of water gathered near them to talk behind neighbors’ back. I think that these scenes took place in the city suburbs.

In Bucharest there were two main streets, one of them was called Calais Doudesht (calais means a road) and the other one Calais Bucharest. I remember those two streets very well, because in Bucharest a lot of (if not mainly) Jews lived there, though in Bucharest there was no special district for residing of Jews. In Romania people had no respect to Jews 1.

There existed Garda di Fier (Iron Guard), a fascist organization. [Garda di Fier was a fascist organization in Romania in 1931-1944. It was dismissed and forbidden in 1944 after liberation of Romania from fascism.]

They were true Nazis. In general, in Romania there were a lot of anti-Semites. But approximately till 1938-1939 they were not in great power. Moreover, sometimes these fascist-minded swells penetrated into Jewish residential areas and behaved outrageously, but Jewish youth gave them resolute repulse. They escaped, as beaten dogs. All changed by 1939-1940. By that time these bastards, members of the Iron Guard began to march along the Calais Victoria (one of the Bucharest streets) carrying torches. And that was the moment I understood that things looked bad.

In Bucharest there was rather large Jewish community. There were several synagogues, cheders and yeshivot. There also were shochetim, and our family certainly visited them.

In Romania Jews were discriminated: it was not easy for a Jew to get higher education. Colleges and universities followed the rules of Numerus Clausus and Numerus Nulus. Numerus Clausus meant that that educational institution was authorized to have a certain percent of Jewish students. And Numerus Nulus meant that no Jews could enter. In Romania anti-Semitism was some sort of official.

In Romania there also existed Jewish organizations. I do not remember exactly: some Zionist organizations, some left ones and right ones. For the most part they assisted Jews in leaving for Palestine.

Among official holidays I can mention the King Day (on 10th May).

Jews in Romania had no right to be landowners. Sometimes a piece of land was down in the name of a gentile, and a Jew cultivated it. In general, most Jews were engaged in trade, they used to have small shops. There were a lot of Jews - owners of small pubs, where it was possible to have a drink (usually about 200 gr of green wine).

I do not remember market days in Bucharest. I only remember that it was Mum who did shopping. She often went to the market by closing time, hoping to buy something cheaper. She hugged very heavy bags, and tried to take somebody of her children with her to get help. But she (poor Mum!) managed to get our help rarely.

I do not remember any political events of that time. I think that my parents did not discuss that sort of things in the presence of their children.

Now I’ll tell you what I remember about my parents. Unfortunately, I remember very little. At the same time I am the last person on the earth, who can say these words about them. That is why we have to be content with it. My father’s name was Samuel. He was a rabbi. As far as I remember, his father (my grandfather) was also a rabbi. And Mum was from the family of rabbis. In a word, there were only rabbis around me, probably therefore I became an atheist. Well, it often happens.

My father was a very clever person, and my Mum was very kind. Please do not think that my Mum was silly and my Daddy was malicious. The point is that my mother's kindness and my father's intellect arrested everyone's attention.

My Mum’s name was Esther. Her maiden name was Fischer. She was born in Romania, in Fucheni. As far as I know, she got no education. Perhaps, she attended a school for girls during a year or two. And my father finished yeshivah. He was a very good rabbi! He was able to work both with Sephardim and with Ashkenazim. And people of that sort don't grow on trees!

My parents spoke Yiddish. They spoke to each other only Yiddish. And we (children) spoke to each other and to our parents only Romanian. As for me, I did not manage to learn Yiddish. Later, when I started studying German in lyceum, I began to understand their conversations. But I did not speak Yiddish.

I do not remember exactly the way my parents got acquainted. I know that they met each other in Fucheni, where my father arrived on official business. He saw my Mum somewhere there and fell in love with her. It was impossible not to fall in love with her: she was a real Jewish beauty. There they got married, and my elder sister was born. And I was born in Bulgaria, in Varna. I do not know how my Mum got there. My parents dressed as secular people. My Mum did not wear a wig, though she was a rabbi’s wife. I also wonder how it could be. My father put on something special (long and black, probably a coat) only when he went to synagogue.

• Growing up

I told you already that during all my childhood our family moved from place to place, because my father worked in different cities. We never had either our own house or our own apartment. We always rented very modest and small apartments (two-room, usually): one room for parents, the other one for children. We had our own furniture; probably formerly it was good, but suffered very much on the wing. In general, we were hard pressed for money. But we had enough for living. Of course, for rather modest living, but we knew nothing else. In our family it was not customary to compare our income with that of others. Anyway, we were never hungry. We ate everything we had. Mum always cooked much food, and we never thought about its quality.

In these small stoves they burnt briquettes made of breeze mixed with black oil. They gave good fire. But if they used fire wood, sometimes they had to chop it. All family members used to take part in it. 

At our place we always had cats.

In our family we never had any assistants. We could not permit it ourselves. Mum was a housekeeper. We (children) helped her, but the truth was that we did it not willingly: only when she asked us about it. She had a hard time: we (children) were four.

We always had many books: not only religious, but also secular ones. For example, I remember Balzac's collected works. [Onore de Balzac was a well-known French novelist (1799-1850).] I also remember books by Victor Hugo. [Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was the great French writer, a poet and a playwright, one of the brightest representatives of progressive romantic literature of the XIX century.]

There were books in Spanish, in French, in Latin. I do not know where from my father knew all these languages. In general my father was a widely read man (not only in religious, but also in secular sphere).

There were, certainly, religious books, too. I remember small rolls of Torah; I was very interested in them when I was a child: they reminded me some strange toys. My father read much, he always read when he had a moment to spare. But I do not remember my Mum reading. For my father we always bought newspapers. I remember the Romanian newspaper Morning.

Father closely watched my reading: he used to give me books according to his own choice. One day father gave me a book about origin of religion. That book impressed me deeply. I do not remember anybody from our family visiting library.

I do not remember any stories about family life told by our parents.

I know that both Mum and Daddy were from large families (10-11 children in each), but I can tell nothing about their brothers and sisters. I have a vague idea of my father’s brother: his name was Margulis. If I am not mistaken, he was a rabbi, too. I know that brothers and sisters of my father ran every which way all over the world.

Our parents loved us very much, their heart was always sore for us. I was my father’s favorite son. Our family was really harmonious. Now I understand that our poor, small apartments were always real HOME for me.

Perhaps I am mistaken (this is my special personal opinion), but I think that my parents were not really religious people. But they observed traditions: you know, my father was a rabbi, and everything that is in full view should be observed strictly. Every Saturday and on holidays Mum went to a synagogue (sorry, I am not sure that she did it every Saturday). At home we celebrated holidays for sure. But for some reason religiousness of my father always was open to question for me. He was very educated person, a great expert in ceremonies and traditions. But here I repeat that all my life I had some doubt in sincerity of his belief. I can not explain my doubts: only vague feeling of my childhood…

Certainly being a rabbi, my father played a great role in the life of Jewish communities in the cities where we lived. Sometimes I was invited for minyan, but since my childhood I was interested in religion very little.

My parents never joined any organizations or parties.

I do not remember friends to my parents. I know that my parents kept in touch with their brothers and sisters, but I can tell nothing about them.

Our neighbors were of different nationalities: Romanians, Jews. Our relations were always good.

My parents never went on leave. Sometimes on days off we went to suburbs with my father. Romanian nature is very beautiful! Mum always remained home. She never had time for rest and entertainment. I should think so: she had to feed such a crowd!

As I already told, I was born in Varna, in Bulgaria. My elder sister was born there, too. Soon we left for Romania (I do not remember to what city). I have a hazy recollection of my visits to a Romanian kindergarten. I also remember (from my early childhood) that we lived in some city, not in Bucharest yet (maybe in Cimpina). There was such a big parkway located on the top of a high hill or even a mountain. From that parkway there went a ladder downwards. From that place it was possible to see far out: a railway down there and a river behind it. Father showed me trains and steamships… One more I remember from my early childhood: I am lying in my bed (in some garden), and my parents are in the house. Boys are jumping over the fence into our garden. I am telling about it to my Mum with fear, and she explains me that they are schoolboys from a Romanian school, they live in a hostel at school, they are hungry, they get into our garden to eat our apples. And here I understand that my Mum is the kindest woman in the world.

Later, when I grew a little bit older, we moved to another city, and I was sent to a Jewish kindergarten. By the way, my father taught Hebrew in kindergartens and in Jewish primary schools. Later my father got a place in Bucharest. There I went to a primary Romanian school, where I studied during four years.

After that I entered a lyceum. It was not easy to get there. They did not like to have Jews as students. You remember: Numerus Nulus and Numerus Clausus. Students were admitted by competitive examination (4-5 persons for one place). But they did not accept documents to the 1st form of lyceum from Jews. Therefore I studied the program of the 1st form of lyceum by correspondence and after that passed my examinations. They allowed me to enter the 2nd from. Anti-Semitism was very strong in the lyceum. There were 40-45 pupils in every class. In our class there were 2 Jews, and in some classes there were none.

There was only one Jew among the teachers. He was a very good teacher. He was even well-known, therefore they gave him that job. One day a pupil called that teacher ‘Dirty Jew’. And despite of the strongest anti-Semitism reigning in the lyceum, it turned out that prestige of a teacher was very high there. Terrible scandal burst out. They immediately arranged teachers' meeting. The point was that the pupil who had offended the teacher was a son of a major of the Romanian army, i.e. a person of rather high-rank. What was the way out? And they made a decision worthy of Solomon. As the lyceum occupied three separate buildings, the little anti-Semite was transferred to a parallel class in the building next door.

In the lyceum they used ten-mark system: 1-4 – a weak pupil, 5-10 – an advanced one. You know, it is possible to know subject differently, and there are different degrees of lack of knowledge. We had a teacher of Romanian language, Radovich. He used to say ‘Only God can have mark 10 for knowledge, possibly I can have 9, and my best pupil is worth 8.’ I usually got 7-8. But one day I got 10: we were suggested to read a pray Our Father (Pater nostra) in Latin, and at the next lesson we were asked to write it down by heart. I made no mistakes! In general, it was rather difficult to study there: one year more than half a class remained in the same form for second year. Very often they transferred examinations to autumn. In one class there were 40 pupils, or even more. But they taught us very well: till now I remember everything they taught me in the lyceum. And I remember only partly what they taught me in the Soviet time.

I remember that when I was a boy I liked to read adventure novels very much. I read them at home and at school if the lesson was not interesting. For this purpose I elaborated a special system. My book was lying on my knees, and I was holding a sheet of paper before me, it had a small hole. From time to time it was necessary to tear myself away from the book and to look at the teacher through the hole. Teachers were strict, for instance one of our teachers of mathematics. He had a head on his shoulders. So, one day I was present at his lesson. My school desk was close to window. It was snowing in the street. Those snow-flakes bewitched me, I could not look away from the window. At that moment the teacher said ‘And now all of you should look at me.’ I did not hear him. Then he approached me and slapped my face: my cheek was red during 3 days.

Most of all I liked geography and history. But I was the last pupil in drawing. Our teacher of drawing was a great anti-Semite. But nevertheless, he never dared to give low grade to Zilberman (a pupil who was Jewish), because he was born artist. The teacher looked at Zilberman and at his drawings with undisguised aversion, but always gave him the highest mark. It is interesting that I remember nobody from my schoolmates, except that Zilberman.

Besides school I was engaged in nothing: neither music, nor languages, nor sports. You see, it was not customary among us.

Most of my friends were Romanians. I made friends only with my schoolmates, and almost all of them were Romanians. In general, I never chose friends according to their nationality and always paid no attention to it.

I always said about myself that I was a twaddler. I liked to prattle with my friends since my childhood. I can formulate it differently: most of all I appreciate discoursing.

Sometimes we went to suburbs: Romanian nature is very beautiful. We seldom gathered mushrooms: at home they said that it was no good for Jews to eat mushrooms. I used to get so much homework that practically I had no days off.
We never left for holidays or vacations when I was a boy. Nobody from our family was engaged in any political or cultural activities. 

It never came to our mind to have dinner at a restaurant. I guess Mum would have been surprised and felt hurt: ‘Don’t waste money! Don’t I cook well enough?’

II do not remember when I went by train or by automobile for the first time in my life. I guess my first trip by train was from Bulgaria to Romania. At that time I was 2 years old. Do you agree that it is possible to be forgotten?

Running a few steps forward, I can tell you that in 1960s I bought a car, and since then it became my lifestyle. I repaired it myself, I practically lived in my garage. I used to take my sons there with me. Till recently I used to be a skilled driver. But now, certainly, I am a little bit oldish for it.

In our family there were 4 children. My sister was the eldest, we called her Koka, but her real name was Rachel. I was the next one. My brother Nachum-Leyb was the third one. And my sister Frieda-Miriam was the youngest. We called her Dussya. I know that my elder sister was born in Bulgaria, and both my second sister and my brother were born in Romania in Tulcea (it is a city on Danube, near the Black sea).

In spite of the fact that my father was a rabbi (and probably just therefore) our family was not very religious, to my mind. But many traditions were observed strictly. Special dishes for Pesach, keeping the fasts – we followed these traditions for sure. Till now Sabbath remains a kind and warm memoir of my childhood. Warm light of candles, white purity of cloths, tasty meal, and (the most important!) we all together at the table. Each time I thought ‘This is what people call a real family.’ We never ate pork, but observed kashrut not strictly. When I was treated by somebody to a good dinner with pork, I ate it with pleasure. It seems to me that I was born not religious. We celebrated all holidays for sure. And my favorite holiday was Purim: Mum cooked a lot of tasty meals for Purim! I remember a nut pie... There was no flour, only ground nuts. I never ate anything of that kind.

Father taught me to read, together with him we visited synagogue to celebrate Sabbath. All I know about Judaism I got from my father. Of course, his both sons were circumcised, he arranged bar mitzvah for us. I remember my bar mitzvah very well. It was arranged in the synagogue, it was very solemnly. After it I repeated proudly: ‘I am adult.’

I finished the lyceum at the age of 17, it was already in 1938. For a short period of time I worked at a photo studio, where I showed films and printed photos. And I was thinking what to do next. The international situation was so disturbing that it was difficult to make plans for future. 

• During the War

There came 1939 year, Hitler conquered Poland: it was the beginning of the World War II. I already told you that in Romania anti-Semitism always flourished. But there were no great Jewish pogroms. Supposedly Romanian people did not permit murders of innocent people, even Jews. And by 1939 anti-Semitism reared its head. The Iron Guard already began marching with torches along the central street. As soon as I saw it, I understood that it would be impossible for us to survive. This event forced me to leave Romania illegally. Our family council advised me to leave the country, and nobody knew what would happen after it. I intended to settle in the new place, take a look-see round the place, and call for my family. If only I could make a look to the future!

At that time people moved from Moldavia to Romania and back. I took advantage of that strange period of misunderstanding and crossed the river Prut, leaving Romania. So I found myself in Bessarabia 2 and later in Ukraine. 2 or 3 months after that I ran from Romania through Moldova to Ukraine on foot. Bessarabia was annexed 3, and the border between Romania and Moldavia was closed. We were separated, but at that time I did not know yet that it was for ever. During first months I still received letters from home.

Now I can not understand the way they reached me. Once I received a letter from my dear brother. It was absolutely neutral, about nothing. And at the foot of the page it was written: ‘Recollect our games.’ I thought and thought and finally understood that when we were boys we wrote each other confidential letters using citric juice, which it was necessary to hold above a lamp to see letters. I took the received text above the fire and managed to read between its lines: ‘If you have a photo of our father, take care of it.’ I understood that our father had already died. I have no photos of him! And you see, I was his favorite son…

And the text I read in that letter further (it was written the same confidential way), doesn’t let me rest during dozens of years. In Romania I studied in the so-called prewar course. Once a week I had to put on some sort of a military uniform and go to the suburb of Bucharest. There together with young men of my age we were trained by a private first class.

And so, when I escaped, representatives of that military center came to our place and asked why I had stopped my training sessions. My relatives told them that I went abroad. And I am afraid that they killed my father for that. Possibly they tormented him to death, trying to discover where I had disappeared. I heard about many murders of Jews in Romania. It means that I caused the death of my father. And I saw nobody from my family any more.

My life turned round so sharply that if I read my story in a book, I would never believe it was true. I can not believe that all that happened to me.

I led a nomad existence. I turned into Der ewige Jude: you know, Wandering Jew. [Wandering Jew or Ahasverus is a personage of a Christian legend, a Jew-wanderer condemned by the God for eternal life in wanderings, because he refused to help Christ to carry the cross to Golgotha.] I begged for meal, sometimes ate directly from fields. And in the meantime, Germans attacked the USSR, and the war burst out 4. People started digging entrenchments. When I passed by different settlements, they involved me into that work.

[During the first months of war all able to work population without fail had to dig entrenchments around their settlements.] I reached Kharkov on foot. Somewhere near Kharkov I got on a train. I did not know the train’s destination point, but for that time it was normal: people strived for getting on any kind of transport, paying no attention to its destination point. I hardly squeezed myself onto the platform, next day I managed to penetrate into the car. And one day later a ticket collector handed me over to the chief of the train, and they made me get out nearly without stopping the train. And again I started to hang about. I ate something, I slept somewhere. Still I do not understand the way I survived.

Having walked through almost all Ukraine, I got into Russia. I walked and walked, eating vegetables from private gardens, spending nights somewhere. One day (it was in Ukraine) it was raining cats and dogs, and I was absolutely exhausted. On my way I found a haystack, I crept inside it and decided to die there. I could not drag my feet another step. But it turned out that a woman, a local inhabitant noticed me. She was brave enough to take me out from that hay. She brought me to her place. Half of her izba was occupied by Russian stove.

The hostess gave me food; I climbed on the stove and had been sleeping for two days. After that I went on. But, you see it became much easier for me to go, I do not know the reason: possibly my sound sleep helped me, but most probably it was the idea that there were kind people on the face of the earth! You see, the most painful was the fact that I was a boy from a large and united family, and suddenly I found myself alone in the world. For the most time I walked alone, but sometimes some strange persons joined me.

For some time we walked together, then separated unexpectedly (the same way we had met). We could have not exchange even a couple of words. Do not forget that I knew not a word in Russian. At last I came to Kharkov. In Kharkov I got on a train. Again I knew nothing about its destination point. For me it was all the same: I was a stranger everywhere. The only thing I knew for sure was the fact that under Germans it would be bad for me, a Jew. But in fact not everyone understood it. I found out that my train was going to Rostov region. On the way I had running temperature.

One guy unknown to me gave me his coat to get warm. At a station I got out of the train to visit a first-aid post, and the train left. I ran to the station-master, started to explain him that it was necessary for me to catch that train and return a coat. They looked at me and thought I was round the twist. They even took me for a spy. As for me, during many years I was pursued by remorse, because of that coat lost by that kind guy.

In a couple of days I boarded another train and reached Bataysk, situated several kilometers far from Rostov. There I had to dig entrenchments again. One of the soldiers who supervised the process of digging, told me ‘Recently there came the heads, they tried to make a decision, if they should immediately execute you by shooting or not. And they decided to leave you alive so far. Consider it to be your second birth.’ Again I got on a train. Of course it was not easy to board the train: I fought for it, two days I spent on the platform, and on the 3rd one I managed to get into the car.

I do not remember how long I spent in the train, probably 10 days. At last I arrived in Penza. In every city I addressed local military registration and enlistment office. [Military registration and enlistment offices in the USSR and in Russia implemented official call-up plans.] I asked to send me to the front line. I said that I had a score to settle with Germans. But they refused to take me as I was a foreigner.

All people were surprisingly nice to me, they gave me food, sometimes gave me some money. What is the most important and impossible to understand: they did not arrest me. Probably during the war NKVD 5 lost a part of its basic functions (mass execution of peaceful citizens).

I’d like to tell you about one episode, which happened during my travel. Together with me in the car there traveled a family. For some reason they had a lot of meal. They were eating continuously, in contrast to me. The only thing they lacked was bread. From time to time they spoke to each other, pointing a finger at me ‘Look, this guy eats nothing all the travel long!’ At one of railway stations I came off the train, went to a bakery and bought 3 big warm loaves of bread (I spent my last money for it). And I managed to get back to the train in time.

One loaf I presented to a Pole (I do not know, whence he appeared there). My neighbors-gluttons asked me to sell them bread or to exchange it for meal. I refused proudly and ate my bread dry, and they flashed their envious looks at me. It is strange, really, what remains in your memory sometimes!

After Penza I got to Central Asia, to a small town 30 kilometers far from Tashkent (I do not remember its name). There I found myself among local people which did not speak Russian, just like me. By pure accident I got a textbook of German language for Uzbeks. I started learning Uzbek language and after several months of studies I already spoke it. I am sure that you will excuse me, but a mullah even taught me Arabian prays. I still remember them.

The secretary of the regional Communist Party Committee told me ‘I will not let you go to the front, I need you here.’ [Regional Communist Party Committee was a supervising official body – representative of the Central Communist Party Committee.] I was appointed an accountant. After all I was a competent person: my lyceum education, you know, was no jesting matter. I drew up reports like that: ‘A ram fought against another one, and got badly wounded. It was slaughtered urgently to avoid spoiling of meat. The meat was distributed among collective farmers.’ At that time it was the only way to provide people with at least small amount of meat.

Doschanov, the secretary of the regional Communist Party Committee suggested me to marry a local girl and stay there for ever. I remember him saying ‘A lot of Russians live here for a long time knowing not a word in the Uzbek language, and you became our relative now.’ At that time in Central Asia there were a lot of evacuated people. [Evacuated peoplecame from different places of the country occupied by German army.] They lived poorly, they were treated badly. And I lived very well. When I arrived in Central Asia my weight was 53 kg, and when I left for the front line (in 1944) - 72 kg. I gained 20 kg.

Once I was almost taken. They brought us (about 600 persons) hundreds kilometers away to a recruiting center. [Recruiting center is a place where a person starts his military service.] From those 600 persons only 2 were scrapped, and I was one of them. Why did not they take me?! I wanted to go to the front! I had a score to settle with Germans: all my relatives, whom I loved, were lost (I was sure in it by that time) because of Fascism, because of Nazism. I wanted to fight. And again I was scrapped as a foreigner. 2 years more I spent in Central Asia. And at last they agreed to send me to the army.

I got to the 1st Belarus front, to the division no.69. Marshal Zhukov was the commander of the front.

I started in Poland. We were brought there via Urals.

We won back Warsaw and Berlin. I participated in the meeting with Americans on Elba. [The Meeting of the Red Army and American armies in Torgau took place on Elba in April, 1945. As a result of that meeting, Germany was split into two parts.]

I served in infantry as a submachine gunner. I was afraid of nothing: I can’t say that I ignored myself, but I thought ‘It’s better for me to perish, than to somebody else, because nobody will cry for me.’ In this connection I recollect the following tragical story. Being at the recruiting center, I saw a guy there. A very young woman (his sister or a wife) saw him off. She cried so bitterly! My heart was breaking! And later, already in Poland I suddenly saw that guy in our entrenchment (nearby and opposite to us Germans were sitting in the similar entrenchment).

Before I had time to say I was glad for him (that he was alive and fine), he got up to his full height and shouted with all his lung power: ‘Hey you, Germans (round oath), I am not afraid of you!’ and fell dead at that very second. Till now I cannot forget that crying little girl at the recruiting center, even more than him. At the front it happened sometimes that people went out of their mind.

I went through the war unhurt, though that war was terrible! Imagine, from 180 soldiers of my company only 8 survived, including me.

• After the War and later life

You know, I forgot some details, but the meeting on Elba impressed me greatly (and not only me). Certainly, everyone understands that that meeting resulted in something good (German army was divided into parts, and the war ended faster). But it was not that result that stuck to my memory. All the war time they spoke that all our allies did not hurry up to open the 2nd front, etc. You know: the Soviet propagation. And there we saw those allies first-hand. We embraced, shook hands, and exchanged souvenirs.

Stars from ours field caps were a great success among Americans. All of them knew one word in Russian - ‘a comrade’. And we drank there a lot: vodka, whisky - it didn't matter! Before the meeting political departments and SMERSH 6 recommended us to follow special instruction and carry out ‘friendly meetings in the spirit of revolutionary vigilance.’ [Political departments were special bodies created by the Central Committee of the Communist party in the Soviet Army and Navy fleet for strengthening of political work, and mainly for realization of total shadowing.] And one more trifling thing stuck to my mind: boots of American soldiers were polished!

After the victory I started working at the strategical department in Berlin. It was our secret service and counterespionage department. All inhabitants of Leningrad, and not only of Leningrad know what the Big House is. [Big House is a building in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), where since 1932 People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs was situated. The Big House became a symbol of lawlessness and terror. According to a legend, the sense of the name is the following: ‘The Big House is the highest building in the city. From its windows everyone can see Siberia.’] 

Here you can realize the level of nonsense: they refused to send me to the front line as a private because of my political unreliability (as they thought), and in Berlin they trusted me more than difficult affairs. To tell the truth, I fought fairly, I did not hide from bullets, never betrayed my comrades – so, I proved my reliability. Certainly, my perfect knowledge of German language was of great importance. Once again I had to thank the Bucharest lyceum. I rented an apartment, I took an officer’s post. I was engaged in translations, but not only in translations.

I cannot tell you everything even now. Anyway, thanks to my work in strategical department in Berlin I became able to catch pilferers, when I began working at school. No ruses could help them! If it was necessary to find out who had broken a glass, they addressed me. Once I even managed to return a motorcycle to its owner (that motorcycle was stolen by pupils of our school). You will not believe, but I was even invited to work in militia.

But in general, I did not like that work. People ought to stand aside from such places. And I decided to start new peaceful life.

In 1946 I got demobilized. And in the USSR I had nobody and nothing. I did not know how to start the new life. I wanted to go to Leningrad. But Leningrad was a closed city: people were allowed to go there only if they had been born there or had work there. My front-line comrade helped me to get to Leningrad having sent me an invitation. His name was Alexey and I do not remember his surname. What is ridiculous: when I arrived in Leningrad, I did not find him there. His neighbors told me that he had fallen in love with a girl from Tadjikistan and had urgently left for her. He even left no address. 

So I had no opportunity to thank him for his assistance. It ensured my coming to the city, which became my home very soon. You remember I thought that I would remain Wandering Jew for ever. Really, nobody waited for me, nobody was pleased with my returning. I was alone both in the city and in the whole world. I understood it, but at the same time my heart was pleased that I was alive. I fought against Hitler, I would have fought against that bastard on the side of any country. Step by step I realized that the country on which side I fought, was my native country.

So on 14th August 1946 I appeared in Leningrad. And on 16th August entrance examinations at the College of Foreign Languages began. I sent my documents to the French language department. The most difficult examination was composition. My Russian was very poor. Only regarding round oaths, I had no match. There I was worth an academic status of professor.

But unfortunately entrance examinations required different sort of knowledge. And one very beautiful girl wrote that composition for me. Don’t look at me that way: you see, now I am old and bald, but 60 years ago I was rather handsome. Moreover, I was a front-line soldier! That is why she herself suggested to do it and did it. And the rest examinations I passed myself and got very good marks.

I became a student. But the College director told me ‘Your knowledge of Russian language will not permit you to study in our College. I allow you to study till the first session.’ Here I’d like to tell you that during years of my study in that College I got only one good mark, all the others were excellent. It is interesting that that good mark I got for military translation. Guess why: because I had to translate into Russian. It was ridiculous, taking into account that I had finished war in the rank of captain-translator. 

It was very important for me to be an excellent student, because they received 25% higher stipend. And I could rely only upon myself. I lived in a hostel. My stipend (even increased one) was not enough for living. I earned money additionally: worked as a docker, helped to carry books in libraries, etc. And I was an excellent student. I had time for everything. At that time I had a feeling (more likely subconscious) that I was living not only for myself, but also for all my family members. 

I graduated from the College so successfully that acquired the right of teaching not only at schools, but also in higher educational institutions. It was written down in my diploma. I was assigned 7 to Kishinev. I asked the commission about it myself, because I knew Romanian language. And Moldavian and Romanian languages are so similar that I started speaking Moldovian at once. In Kishinev I taught French language at the Pedagogical College. By that time I was already married. Please, do not be angry with me, but I’ll tell nothing about my wife. There are things in my life, which concern only me. Do not ask me, I’ll tell nothing. My wife went with me to Kishinev and became an inspector at the Ministry of Public Education there. We lived there 3 years. After that we returned to Leningrad, and I started working in the school no.112. Shortly after our return to Leningrad, my elder son was born. 

At first we lived together with my mother-in-law, and later they gave me (as a war participant) an apartment. At the school no.112 I worked 44 years: it was my first and the only one place of work. I worked till 1996, and retired on a pension at the age of 75. Nobody dismissed me, I could go on working, but it became already a little bit difficult for me. 

In 1996 I met Bronislava Davidovna and since then we have been together with her. Her maiden name was Krifuks. She was born in Leningrad in 1925. She graduated from the Leningrad State University (department of Russian language and literature). She worked at the same school, where we worked with my first wife. She taught Russian language and literature. She was married to Vitaliy Semenovich Lurye, who died in 1994. Our families were on friendly terms. That was why when both of us lost our spouses, we paid attention to each other.

I do not remember anybody from our circle, who emigrated soon after the war. I frequently thought about leaving, but not in details. I did not want to go abroad, knowing nothing about the future: I had already knocked about the world quite enough. But my heart always belonged to Israel. Till now I am sometimes very sorry that I did not manage to visit it. It means that I was not fated to! 

I have got 2 sons Mikhail and Andrey. Mikhail was born in 1952 and Andrey in 1963. Both of them were born in Leningrad. They grew as ordinary boys. They were very good friends, despite of great disparity in years. They both graduated from the Leningrad Electrotechnical College as programmers. Each of them has 2 sons. Mikhail’s wife name is Irina. Their son Alexey is already married. He studies (as his father and his uncle did) in the Leningrad Electrotechnical College. His wife Ekaterina graduated from the Antique Department of the State University, she is a teacher of English language. They have a daughter Masha (my great-granddaughter). 

Their second son Evgeniy graduated from the Polytechnical College and went to Holland for postgraduate course. He works there now. His wife’s name is Oksana. They also have 2 sons Denis and Anton. The elder son is a 1st year student of the University of Economics and Finances. The younger brother is a schoolboy. They are good boys. Denis was the first one in my family who took great interest in Judaism. He reads books on history of Jewish people and is a member of Petersburg branch of Hillel. [Hillel is the largest International Jewish students’ organization in the world, which promotes revival of Jewish life on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Hillel has its branches in 27 cities of seven countries in CIS.]

We see each other with my children and grandsons not frequently. We live far away from each other, and they are busy very much. But somebody of them gives me a telephone call almost every day to ask about my health.

When my son Andrey was going to enter the Leningrad Electrotechnical College (in 1980), we heard that they did not want Jews to become students of the Faculty of programming. And I told you already that during the war I worked at the strategical department in Berlin. I still had some acquaintances in certain spheres. I went to the department no.1 of the College and said ‘Old men, I helped you, you help me now.’ [Department no.1 was a special department in every soviet institution. They were organized to keep people under surveillance. As a rule, there worked representatives of the National Security Committee.] And my son entered the College. 

You know, at my work I never had problems connected with my Jewish origin. The same was during my studies and at the front, though horrible anti-Semitism flourished around us. But when I worked in Kishinev, newspapers informed people about the Doctors’ Plot 8. In connection with it, Jews were fired out from offices right and left. I was not fired. I think the reason was not only in my front-line backward, but also in important position my wife occupied in the Ministry of Public Education. But why did she remain untouched? Sometimes they make mistakes! 

In fact I made no secret of the fact that I was Jewish. By the way when I served in Berlin, I had good relations with Germans, including girls. There was one girl… I immediately honestly told her that I was a Jew. And she answered ‘Well, and now what?’ 

Probably the point was that I never occupied important positions. To tell the truth, there was one exception in Kishinev. But I already told you about it.

I did not bring up my children as Jews. They certainly knew that we were Jews, but that was all. I did not visit synagogue, and never brought my children there. I don’t think that they were especially interested in my life. They never asked about details of my life (as you did). You already know about me more, than my own children do.

After the end of the war we did not observe traditions, did not celebrate Jewish holidays, - we were not Jews in the full sense of the word. We cooked no special Jewish meals. Sometimes we bought matzah in the synagogue. We had a lot of friends, both Jews and Russians. By the way, it never came to my mind to count up the percentage of my Jewish friends among the others. And I know no Jewish families which observed traditions. Perhaps, someone observed, but they preferred to keep it in secret. 

My life after 1950s did not change noticeably. Salary of teachers was always miserable. At school there worked only people who really loved their work. And I was one of them. It was very unpleasant, when school authorities forced teachers to give pupils undeserved high marks (they wanted their school to have a good reputation). Once I even spoke at a teachers' meeting against their position. I held up the Bucharest lyceum as a positive example. The director attacked me with reproaches: she blamed me for my bourgeois ideology. But I was not fired: schools always lacked teachers, and a male teacher was always worth his weight in gold. And by the way, I was a good teacher. My pupils liked me. 

Here I can tell you one story, which happened recently. Being a war participant, I have the right to rent dacha in Ushkovo in summer. [Ushkovo is a settlement in Leningrad region 55 km far from St. Petersburg.] Certainly, it is much cheaper for me, than for others, but not free-of-charge. We spend there summer time year and year out. 

Well, the rent grows and the conditions become worse from year to year. They make no repair: leak in the roof, the refrigerator out of order. I suffered for a long time, and then became angry and wrote an article. I sent it to a newspaper and named Payment for a Jolt of Fresh Air. The article was signed by me. The newspaper fell into the hands of my former schoolgirl (she studied in my class about 30 years ago). She was not lazy enough to make a telephone call to the newspaper editors and get my telephone number. She called me and said so many warm words, that now I have a lot to keep in my memory!

I never had to swear fidelity. But you should take into consideration that in 1937-1938 (during the Great Terror 9, when employees everywhere voted for executions of enemies of the people 10) I did not live in the USSR.

During the wars which were waged by Israel [11, 12], I was on the side of Israel for sure. I was very pleased with those victories, because I always considered that country to be almost my native. You should take into account that I was at war (a very serious war), and I came to know the particulars of military science and art of war. To my mind, the way Israel waged those wars was fantastically good. It seems to me that every anti-Semite should have changed his opinion of Jews during those wars.

I do not remember whether the severance of diplomatic relations with Israel influenced my life.

I have no relatives abroad. To put it more precisely, I know nothing about anybody of them. 

You know, when at present some old fools (I am sorry, but I am used to call things and people by their proper names) start complaining that democrats have crushed the ideals they shed their blood for, I’d like to say the following: ‘I liberated Berlin. I did it personally. Only 8 persons (including me) survived from 180 soldiers of my company. I fought fairly. I have the full right to judge, what is good for this country and what is evil for it. And I do not have a sense that they betrayed everything I fought for. I consider democratization to be a blessing for our country.’ 

I am connected to the life of St. Petersburg Jewish community very little. Sometimes they bring me food packages from the Hesed Welfare Center 13. Oh, you should see those packages! My income is enough for living, in fact I receive two pensions: an old age pension and pension of a war participant. But I understand that it is not a package, but attention that is dear to me.

I never received any financial assistance from Germany or Switzerland. It would be ridiculous, if Germans make compensatory payments to the person, who worked at the strategical department in Berlin! 

Here you ask me what I felt, when Stalin died. You know, according to Stalin's plan, I should have not talked to you here now, I should have lived (or most probably, be already buried) in Birobidzhan 14. Certainly all these details became known rather recently. But in fact at that time even blind understood Stalin’s attitude to Jews. And when people say that they knew nothing about Stalin’s terror, I cannot believe them. In fact almost every family suffered from repressions. I am proud of the fact that when Stalin died I not only did not cry (as everybody did around me), but felt pleasure and a sense of relief. Many people say now ‘We cried, because we were afraid to witness even worse times in the near future.’ And what could be worse? It could not be worse. And I turned to be right! The doctors were released from custody, and hard as times might be later we never experienced such horror any more.

Certainly we took the Doctors’ Plot hard. I told you already that at that time I worked in Kishinev. I remember how they fired Jews. I was not fired probably because I was a war participant. It was almost impossible to find job for a Jew in 1950s (before Stalin's death). 

Revolution in Hungary 15 and the Prague spring 16 I took hard. I understood well that it was unfair. But even better I understood that I had to keep my own opinion to myself. From that point of view I became a real Soviet citizen quickly.

I’d like to brag a little bit. I was awarded medals For Liberation of Warsaw, For Liberation of Berlin, and an Order of the Great Patriotic War 17. I deserved one award more, but I do not remember which one. Probably you have noticed my disadvantage: I am a yap. Since my childhood I had a long tongue. I said too much about private life of my commander (he lived with a nurse). Somebody told him my words with pleasure and then he said ‘That Askenazi has too long tongue, he will manage without award.’ I took no offence at him.

I was happy to remain alive and safe. I am still alive, and I am going to live a long life (minimum 100 years). Do you know why? I do not want to let the authorities save money on my pension. They should pay! I have 2 sons, 4 grandsons, 1 great-granddaughter - all of them exist thanks to me! On my birthday my grandson (he is a pupil of the 4th form) proposed a toast to me: ‘To my grandfather, our root, we all are his descendants!’ My family is large, and there are no drunkards, no peculiar fools. 

I am also proud of the high standard of my knowledge in languages. We can count: Romanian, Russian, French, English (I studied it in the College as the second language), Latin (from my lyceum), German, Uzbek! You’d better come with me to the market! I speak to every seller in his native language. And they give me 50% discount! Everyone is pleased to hear native language in a foreign city.

• Glossary:

1. Anti-Jewish laws in Romania: The first anti-Jewish laws were introduced in 1938 by the Goga-Cuza government. Further anti-Jewish laws followed in 1940 and 1941, and the situation was getting gradually worse between 1941-1944 under the Antonescu regime. According to these laws all Jews aged 18-40 living in villages were to be evacuated and concentrated in the capital town of each county. Jews from the region between the Siret and Prut Rivers were transported by wagons to the camps of Targu Jiu, Slobozia, Craiova etc. where they lived and died in misery. More than 40,000 Jews were moved. All rural Jewish property, as well as houses owned by Jews in the city, were confiscated by the state, as part of the ‘Romanisation campaign’. Marriages between Jews and Romanians were forbidden from August 1940, Jews were not allowed to have Romanian names, own rural properties, be public employees, lawyers, editors or janitors in public institutions, have a career in the army, own liquor stores, etc. Jewish employees of commercial and industrial enterprises were fired, Jewish doctors could no longer practice and Jews were not allowed to own chemist shops. Jewish students were forbidden to study in Romanian schools. 

2. Bessarabia: Historical area between the Prut and Dnestr rivers, in the southern part of Odessa region. Bessarabia was part of Russia until the Revolution of 1917. In 1918 it declared itself an independent republic, and later it united with Romania. The Treaty of Paris (1920) recognized the union but the Soviet Union never accepted this. In 1940 Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the USSR. The two provinces had almost 4 million inhabitants, mostly Romanians. Although Romania reoccupied part of the territory during World War II the Romanian peace treaty of 1947 confirmed their belonging to the Soviet Union. Today it is part of Moldavia. 

3. Annexation of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union: At the end of June 1940 the Soviet Union demanded Romania to withdraw its troops from Bessarabia and to abandon the territory. Romania withdrew its troops and administration in the same month and between 28th June and 3rd July, the Soviets occupied the region. At the same time Romania was obliged to give up Northern Transylvania to Hungary and Southern-Dobrudja to Bulgaria. These territorial losses influenced Romanian politics during World War II to a great extent.

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

5. NKVD: People’s Committee of Internal Affairs; it took over from the GPU, the state security agency, in 1934

6. SMERSH: Russian abbreviation for ‘Smert Shpionam’ meaning Death to Spies. It was a counterintelligence department in the Soviet Union formed during World War II, to secure the rear of the active Red Army, on the front to arrest ‘traitors, deserters, spies, and criminal elements’. The full name of the entity was USSR People’s Commissariat of Defense Chief Counterintelligence Directorate ‘SMERSH’. This name for the counterintelligence division of the Red Army was introduced on 19th April 1943, and worked as a separate entity until 1946. It was headed by Viktor Abakumov. At the same time a SMERSH directorate within the People’s Commissariat of the Soviet Navy and a SMERSH department of the NKVD were created. The main opponent of SMERSH in its counterintelligence activity was Abwehr, the German military foreign information and counterintelligence department. SMERSH activities also included ‘filtering’ the soldiers recovered from captivity and the population of the gained territories. It was also used to punish within the NKVD itself; allowed to investigate, arrest and torture, force to sign fake confessions, put on a show trial, and either send to the camps or shoot people. SMERSH would also often be sent out to find and kill defectors, double agents, etc.; also used to maintain military discipline in the Red Army by means of barrier forces, that were supposed to shoot down the Soviet troops in the cases of retreat. SMERSH was also used to hunt down ‘enemies of the people’ outside Soviet territory.

7. 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.

8. 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

9. 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. 

10. Enemy of the people: Soviet official term; euphemism used for real or assumed political opposition. 

11. 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

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. Birobidzhan: Formed in 1928 to give Soviet Jews a home territory and to increase settlement along the vulnerable borders of the Soviet Far East, the area was raised to the status of an autonomous region in 1934. Influenced by an effective propaganda campaign, and starvation in the east, 41,000 Soviet Jews relocated to the area between the late 1920s and early 1930s. But, by 1938 28,000 of them had fled the regions harsh conditions, There were Jewish schools and synagogues up until the 1940s, when there was a resurgence of religious repression after World War II. The Soviet government wanted the forced deportation of all Jews to Birobidzhan to be completed by the middle of the 1950s. But in 1953 Stalin died and the deportation was cancelled. Despite some remaining Yiddish influences - including a Yiddish newspaper - Jewish cultural activity in the region has declined enormously since Stalin's anti-cosmopolitanism campaigns and since the liberalization of Jewish emigration in the 1970s. Jews now make up less than 2% of the region's population

15. 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.

16. 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

17. Order of the Great Patriotic War: 1st Class: established 20th May 1942, awarded to officers and enlisted men of the armed forces and security troops and to partisans, irrespective of rank, for skillful command of their units in action. 2nd Class: established 20th May 1942, awarded to officers and enlisted men of the armed forces and security troops and to partisans, irrespective of rank, for lesser personal valor in action.